Simply Nirvana

The following is a Tweet from today’s TEDxChange hosted by Melinda Gates. The speaker, Mechai Viravaidya, gave one of the most inspiring talks about large-scale behavior change:

@ideasforafrica #TEDxChange - “Poor people are business people without business training & access to credit.” Mechai Viravaidya

From: Mr David Mugah
Subject: todays update
To: “Nirvana Cable”
Date: Friday, December 18, 2009, 7:54 AM 

We created a miracle. On the Barclays Bank draft program we were slotted for a 1 hour to do our presentation. While on the stage the mood was getting charged and soft. We saw the Barclays Bank CEO pass a note to the Master of Ceremony. At first we thought the time was running out fast. But lo! To our surprise the note was informing us to continue for the next remaining 3 hours. At this point we knew we were just about to crack the code, this rejuvenated more strength within the GCA team.

After the skit we led the 160 participants in the room, among them being the Branch Managers and Top Management of the Barclays bank, into a conversation of identifying their time bomb ideas. This included: Mistrust, limited communication, Bitterness, nepotism, fear, uncared for, among others. The mood shifted to aggressiveness and eagerness. Equipped with the three laws of performance, the Mr.  Momanyi prudently calmed down the audience by asking them “what they thought will happen if the above mentioned time bomb ideas were not be fixed.”

For a while, a dead silence ensued. Then one by one like the “popcorns scenario” they started shooting up their hands. One Branch manager from Kilifi said “the bank will continue loosing its clients which in return will threaten our job security”. Another one from Malindi said “there would be unbearable hatred and bitterness and we would not be able to raise our families”. The branch manager from Mombasa added that if that trend continues for the next 10 or so years then “some branches would close down, which would be a scaring scenario, even to think about”. In agreement with the rest, one branch manager from Nairobi said that “millions of shillings would be lost giving our competitors a cutting edge”.  He added that this is something that must be stopped at all possible ways and costs. Many others added their voices to the discussion and all unanimously agreed they needed to urgently address these issues. This led them to being light even as they embraced GCA’s ATT concept.

Though slightly relieved, they still stared at us expecting more. At this point, Mugah wrote on the flip chart “what do you have to let go or drop in order for you to boost your performance”. We divided them into 5 groups and gave them a 20min break after which they were to discuss the question. When we resumed, interesting points were shared. One branch manager said “I would let go my pride and perception that the community members can’t pay borrowed loans”. Another said “I drop my mistrust over my fellow colleagues and clients”. He demonstrated this by rolling his handkerchief and threw it down hard, causing a loud laughter in the room. “Oh, so my withholding of information has led us to this stagnant position”, another said with teary eyes.

The Barclays Bank CEO broke his silence by saying that “maybe what we need to drop is our business as usual strategy of marketing – using huge bill boards, expensive television adverts, etc – which are largely extravagant  and monotonous, and adopt GCA’s concept which seems irresistibly attractive and productive”. “Actually I recommend we partner with GCA especially in our market strategies”. The CEO added amidst heavy applause from the branch managers who felt effectively and largely relieved of tough tasks of pulling more clients to the bank. “Further, I request the director of finance to factor in two pilot projects to be conducted by GCA in Voi and Malindi in Coast Province before the end of January 2010. I commit myself to table this to the Board of Directors for approval,” the CEO said.

As we came to an end, everyone present was excited by the content we had shared. The Director of finance said that “our institution is vigorously enriched. We feel you have restored us back to our wholeness”.

The CEO, in his vote of thanks to us said “you have helped us discover that we have an inside that doesn’t match our outside. Personally I feel ageless and unlimited. Your training is brilliantly simple and simply brilliant! I see us engaging with you more and more in future.

This is the best Christmas gift we’ve ever received”.

Following the unprecedented show, and results, the team is preparing to live at 6.00pm for Nairobi. The Barclays Bank group will also check out tomorrow in the morning and disperse for the Christmas holidays.

This marks yet another milestone in GCA’s history. While we celebrate this triumphant trip, we are most grateful to Diane and you for boldly stepping forth and facilitating our trip to Coast. We dedicate our victory to Diane and you and the rest over their.

Asante Sana!

Love

From: aristarchus munish
Subject: Things are Getting Better
To: “Nirvana Cable”
Date: Saturday, August 29, 2009, 6:45 AM

Hello,
GCA’s ATT [Global Community Africa, Alternative Thinking Training] is indeed a journey. Sometime back I saw you wearing a T-Shirt and on it was inscribed the words, “Not all who wander are lost.” Looking back some two-and-one-half-years ago, one would have easily brushed off the ATT concept and the direction we were bound. The destination was uncertain, to say the least. However, if there are still any who doubt the power of ATT, then I bet him/her to accompany us in our work. Nirvana, some of the results we are now getting are far beyond anyone’s imagination.

Kilonzo, Nderitu and I are just from a training in a place called Maungu. We had split the team into two because the trainings were arranged to run concurrently.

The youth in our training had given up on life. This was evident from the sharing they had, with a vast majority confessing they had resorted to drinking to hide away from the harsh realities of life. As this life is addictive, we needed a strategy to deal with this. And yes, we got one. What was readily available was a quick flashback of our own lives right to the point you introduced ATT to us. Personally I remembered how addictive my former lifestyle was and how I managed to put that past in the past. I also realized that, in dealing with such tough situations, one needs to drop (give up) one thing and pick up a new one. You simply can’t drop and move on. You must fill the space created by dropping down something [by filling the space with something to replace what is being dropped].

Sharing the challenges they were facing, they mentioned unemployment, lack of capital, poverty, witchcraft and poor education as some of the impediments to their success. Then Nderitu led them to picking the main problem or identifying the priority. They all shouted, “Of course, poverty is the main problem.” “How do you feel when you think the thought, ‘I am poor?,’ he asked them. One by one they poured out their hearts, “miserable”, “weak”, “devastated”, “a nobody”, “I have no say” and “powerless”. “Up to date, up to now, that’s what has characterized your lives,” he told them, “However, there is good news!” All eyes were wide open, all ears attentive, with everyone curiously waiting to hear this one, good news. And as though this was taking forever, they simultaneously asked, “You mean something can be done to ‘repair’ our lives?” “Yes,” we answered. “How many are willing to live different lives?,” I asked them. Instead of raising their hands, some stood up while others shouted, “Me, me, me,” as though they were competing.

We noted down on a black board all they had said. Then I told them, “That is your past life. I want you to create for yourselves what future you envision for yourselves.” “A satisfying life where I enjoy plenty,” one said and the rest nodded in agreement. Another added, “A life where all live in unity is ideal for me”. One participant who was holding his cheek captured my attention, and I asked him what he was thinking. Shaking his head and referring to the list of how they feel when they think they are poor, he said, “I’m staring at what I have been carrying all along my life. I can’t carry anymore these truth!” ”No wonder we appear skinny, it’s because we are overburdened by these poor thoughts!,” implored another.

Thanking GCA, one youth said that they have realized that “the youth are picking excuses for who they are. Yet they make who they are by carrying such poor thoughts.”

One realization the youth woke up to is that the catalogue of their woes has one seamless thread that binds them: their woes are, to a great extent, man-made and trying to blame unemployment, rain scarcity and leaders, for example, simply won’t do. They all committed to living differently.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

One youth proudly shared what he is witnessing in his community following the training we offered in May. He said now in his community there are over 4 women who have started vegetable farming and set up small shops and over 8 women who have started Mandazi [donuts] baking to sell to the community. All these women were depending on their husbands before our training. When they went back they said, “We can no longer sit and wait for our husbands to provide for us. We must be responsible for our lives and compliment on what is given to us.”

The youth will take us to visit these women after this week’s  programme.

Talk soon.

Munish.

The following is a transcript of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s TEDTalk:

—-

Can I say how delighted I am to be away from the calm of Westminster and Whitehall?

This is Kim, a nine-year-old Vietnam girl, her back ruined by napalm, and she awakened the conscience of the nation of America to begin to end the Vietnam War. This is Birhan, who was the Ethiopian girl who launched Live Aid in the 1980s, 15 minutes away from death when she was rescued, and that picture of her being rescued is one that went round the world. This is Tiananmen Square. A man before a tank became a picture that became a symbol, for the whole world, of resistance. This next is the Sudanese girl, a few moments from death, a vulture hovering in the background, a picture that went round the world and shocked people into action on poverty. This is Neda, the Iranian girl who was shot while at a demonstration with her father in Iran only a few weeks ago, and she is now the focus, rightly so, of the YouTube generation.

And what do all these pictures and events have in common? What they have in common is what we see unlocked and what we cannot see. What we see unlocked: the invisible ties and bonds of sympathy that bring us together to become a human community. What these pictures demonstrate is that we do feel the pain of others, however distantly. What I think these pictures demonstrate is that we do believe in something bigger than ourselves. What these pictures demonstrate is that there is a moral sense across all religions, across all faiths, across all continents — a moral sense that not only do we share the pain of others, and believe in something bigger than ourselves but we have a duty to act when we see things that are wrong that need righted, see injuries that need to be corrected, see problems that need to be rectified.

There is a story about Olof Palme, the Swedish Prime Minister, going to see Ronald Reagan in America in the 1980s. Before he arrived Ronald Reagan said — and he was the Swedish Social Democratic Prime Minister — “Isn’t this man a communist?” The reply was, “No, Mr President, he’s an anti-communist.” And Ronald Reagan said, “I don’t care what kind of communist he is!” (Laughter) Ronald Reagan asked Olof Palme, the Social Democratic Prime Minister of Sweden, “Well, what do you believe in? Do you want to abolish the rich?” He said, “No, I want to abolish the poor.” Our responsibility is to let everyone have the chance to realize their potential to the full.

I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith. But I think what’s new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world. We now have the capacity to find common ground with people we will never meet but who we will meet through the Internet and through all the modern means of communication, that we now have the capacity to organize and take collective action together to deal with the problem or an injustice that we want to deal with, and I believe that this makes this a unique age in human history, and it is the start of what I would call the creation of a truly global society.

Go back 200 years when the slave trade was under pressure from William Wilberforce and all the protesters. They protested across Britain. They won public opinion over a long period of time. But it took 24 years for the campaign to be successful. What could they have done with the pictures they could have shown if they were able to use the modern means of communication to win people’s hearts and minds?

Or if you take Eglantyne Jebb, the woman who created Save the Children 90 years ago. She was so appalled by what was happening in Austria as a result of the First World War and what was happening to children who were part of the defeated families of Austria, that in Britain she wanted to take action, but she had to go house to house, leaflet to leaflet, to get people to attend a rally in the Royal Albert Hall that eventually gave birth to Save the Children, an international organization that is now fully recognized as one of the great institutions in our land and in the world. But what more could she have done if she’d had the modern means of communications available to her to create a sense that the injustice that people saw had to be acted upon immediately?

Now look at what’s happened in the last 10 years. In Philippines in 2001, President Estrada — a million people texted each other about the corruption of that regime, eventually brought it down and it was, of course, called the “coup de text.” Then you have in Zimbabwe the first election under Robert Mugabe a year ago. Because people were able to take mobile-phone photographs of what was happening at the polling stations, it was impossible for that Premier to fix that election in the way that he wanted to do. Or take Burma and the monks that were blogging out, a country that nobody knew anything that was happening until these blogs told the world that there was a repression, meaning that lives were being lost and people were being persecuted and Aung San Suu Kyi, who is one of the great prisoners of conscience of the world, had to be listened to. Then take Iran itself, and what people are doing today, following what happened to Neda, people who are preventing the security services of Iran finding those people who are blogging out of Iran, changing their address to Tehran, Iran, and making it difficult for the security services.

Take, therefore, what modern technology is capable of: the power of our moral sense allied to the power of communications and our ability to organize internationally.

That, in my view, gives us the first opportunity as a community to fundamentally change the world. Foreign policy can never be the same again. It cannot be run by elites; it’s got to be run by listening to the public opinions of peoples who are blogging, who are communicating with each other around the world. 200 years ago the problem we had to solve was slavery. 150 years ago I suppose the main problem in a country like ours was how young people, children, had the right to education. 100 years ago in most countries in Europe, the pressure was for the right to vote. 50 years ago the pressure was for the right to social security and welfare. In the last 50-60 years we have seen fascism, anti-Semitism, racism, apartheid, discrimination on the basis of sex and gender and sexuality; all these have come under pressure because of the campaigns by people to change the world.

I was with Nelson Mandela a year ago when he was in London. I was at a concert that he was attending to mark his birthday and for the creation of new resources for his foundation. I was sitting next to Nelson Mandela — I was very privileged to do so — when Amy Winehouse came onto the stage and Nelson Mandela was quite surprised at the appearance of the singer and I was explaining to him at the time who she was. Amy Winehouse said, “Nelson Mandela and I have a lot in common. My husband too has spent a long time in prison.” (Laughter) Nelson Mandela then went down to the stage and he summarized the challenge for us all. He said in his lifetime he had climbed a great mountain, the mountain of challenging and then defeating racial oppression and defeating apartheid. He said that there was a greater challenge ahead, the challenge of poverty, of climate change, global challenges that needed global solutions and needed the creation of a truly global society.

We are the first generation that is in a position to do this. Combine the power of a global ethic with the power of our ability to communicate and organize globally with the challenges that we now face, most of which are global in their nature. Climate change cannot be solved in one country but has got to be solved by the world working together. A financial crisis, just as we have seen, could not be solved by America alone or Europe alone; it needed the world to work together. Take the problems of security and terrorism and, equally, the problem of human rights and development: they cannot be solved by Africa alone; they cannot be solved by America or Europe alone. We cannot solve these problems unless we work together.

So the great project of our generation, it seems to me, is to build for the first time out of a global ethic and our global ability to communicate and organize together, a truly global society, built on that ethic but with institutions that can serve that global society and make for a different future. We have now, and are the first generation with, the power to do this. Take climate change. Is it not absolutely scandalous that we have a situation where we know that there is a climate change problem, where we know also that that will mean we have to give more resources to the poorest countries to deal with that, when we want to create a global carbon market, but there is no global institution that people have been able to agree upon to deal with this problem? One of the things that has to come out of Copenhagen in the next few months is an agreement that there will be a global environmental institution that is able to deal with the problems of persuading the whole of the world to move along a climate-change agenda.

(Applause)

One of the reasons why an institution is not in itself enough is that we have to persuade people around the world to change their behavior as well, so you need that global ethic of fairness and responsibility across the generations. Take the financial crisis. If people in poorer countries can be hit by a crisis that starts in New York or starts in the sub-prime market of the United States of America. If people can find that that sub-prime product has been transferred across nations many, many times until it ends up in banks in Iceland or the rest in Britain, and people’s ordinary savings are affected by it, then you cannot rely on a system of national supervision. You need in the long run for stability, for economic growth, for jobs, as well as for financial stability, global economic institutions that make sure that growth to be sustained has to be shared, and are built on the principle that the prosperity of this world is indivisible.

So another challenge for our generation is to create global institutions that reflect our ideas of fairness and responsibility, not the ideas that were the basis of the last stage of financial development over these recent years. Then take development and take the partnership we need between our countries and the rest of the world, the poorest part of the world. We do not have the basis of a proper partnership for the future, and yet, out of people’s desire for a global ethic and a global society that can be done.

I have just been talking to the President of Sierra Leone. This is a country of six and a half million people, but it has only 80 doctors, it has 200 nurses, it has 120 midwives. You cannot begin to build a healthcare system for six million people with such limited resources.

Or take the girl I met when I was in Tanzania, a girl called Miriam. She was 11 years old, her parents had both died from AIDS, her mother and then her father. She was an AIDS orphan being handed across different extended families to be cared for. She herself was suffering from HIV, she was suffering from tuberculosis. I met her in a field, she was ragged, she had no shoes. When you looked in her eyes, any girl at the age of eleven is looking forward to the future, but there was an unreachable sadness in that girl’s eyes and if I could have translated that to the rest of the world for that moment, I believe that all the work that it had done for the global HIV/AIDS fund would be rewarded by people prepared to make donations.

We must then build a proper relationship between the richest and the poorest countries based on our desire that they are able to fend for themselves with the investment that is necessary in their agriculture, so that Africa is not a net importer of food, but an exporter of food.

Take the problems of human rights and the problems of security in so many countries around the world. Burma is in chains, Zimbabwe is a human tragedy, in Sudan thousands of people have died unnecessarily for wars that we could prevent. In the Rwanda Children’s Museum, there is a photograph of a 10-year-old boy and the Children’s Museum is commemorating the lives that were lost in the Rwandan genocide where a million people died.

There is a photograph of a boy called David. Beside that photograph there is the information about his life. It said “David, age 10.” David: ambition to be a doctor. Favorite sport: football. What did he enjoy most? Making people laugh. How did he die? Tortured to death. Last words said to his mother who was also tortured to death: “Don’t worry. The United Nations are coming.” And we never did.

And that young boy believed our promises that we would help people in difficulty in Rwanda, and we never did.

So we have got to create in this world also institutions for peacekeeping and humanitarian aid, but also for reconstruction and security for some of the conflict-ridden states of the world. So my argument today is basically this. We have the means by which we could create a truly global society. The institutions of this global society can be created by our endeavors. That global ethic can infuse the fairness and responsibility that is necessary for these institutions to work, but we should not lose the chance in this generation, in this decade in particular, with President Obama in America, with other people working with us around the world, to create global institutions for the environment, and for finance, and for security and for development, that make sense of our responsibility to other peoples, our desire to bind the world together, and our need to tackle problems that everybody knows exist.

It is said that in Ancient Rome that when Cicero spoke to his audiences, people used to turn to each other and say about Cicero, “Great speech.” But it is said that in Ancient Greece when Demosthenes spoke to his audiences, people turned to each other and didn’t say “Great speech.” They said, “Let’s march.” We should be marching towards a global society. Thank you.

(Applause)

—–

Brown speaks of seeing an “unreachable sadness” in the eyes of Miriam, the HIV orphan in Tanzania. I have been amazed to hear the backlash to this talk. Upon reflection, I sense Brown’s talk is piercing an unreachable sadness in us. Do we dare dream humanity can actually reach where he is pointing.

Escape Your Rat Race
By Martha Beck
O, The Oprah Magazine, January 2009

Feeling trapped by a job, relationship, or routine, but terrified of making a change? Martha Beck shows you how to feel your way to freedom.

Sheila and I are conversing at a drug treatment center, where she’s been remanded. Counselors are listening, so we can’t plan a way to break her out. As it happens, escape is the last thing on Sheila’s mind. I’m not coaching her through the woes of being institutionalized for drug use but prepping her for her upcoming release.

“In here everything’s simple,” Sheila says. “Outside I’ll have to deal with my crazy mom, get a job, pay the bills. I don’t know how to handle that without drugs.” When I ask her to picture a peaceful, happy life, Sheila draws a blank. “I can’t imagine anything except what I’ve already seen,” she says.

The despair in her voice is so heavy it makes me want to huff a little glue myself, but two things give me hope: a fabled land known in the annals of psychology as Rat Park, and a montage of other clients, once as hopeless as Sheila, who went on to live happy, meaningful lives. The concepts I learned from Rat Park, channeled through the behaviors I’ve seen in those courageous clients, just may transform Sheila’s future.

But first, what is this mythic Rat Park? And how might it relate to you? The term comes from a study conducted in 1981 by psychologist Bruce Alexander and colleagues. He noted that many addiction studies had something in common: The lab rats they used were locked in uncomfortable, isolating cages. Testing a hunch, Alexander gathered two groups of rats. For the first, he built a 200-square-foot rodent paradise called Rat Park. There a colony of white Wister rats found luxurious accommodations for all their favorite pastimes—mingling, mating, raising pups, writing articles for newspaper tabloids. The second group was housed in the traditional cages.

Alexander offered both groups a choice of plain water or sugar water laced with morphine. Like rats in other studies, the traditionally caged animals became instant addicts. However, the residents of Rat Park tended to “just say no,” avoiding the drug-treated sugar water. Even rats that were already addicted to morphine tended to lay off the hard stuff when in Rat Park. Put them back in their cages, however, and they’d stay stoned as Deadheads.

Alexander saw many parallels between these junkie rats and human addicts. He has talked of one patient who worked as a shopping mall Santa. “He couldn’t do his job unless he was high on heroin,” Alexander remembered. “He would shoot up, climb into that red Santa Claus costume, put on those black plastic boots, and smile for six hours straight.”

This story jingles bells for many of my clients. Like Smack Santa, they spend many hours playing roles that don’t match their innate personalities and preferences, dulling the pain with mood-altering substances. Miserable with their jobs, relationships, or daily routines, they gulp down a fifth of Scotch, buy 46 commemorative Elvis plates on QVC, superglue phony smiles to their faces, and head on out to whatever rat race is gradually destroying them.

Sheila was actually a step ahead of most of my clients, in that she knew she was locked up. Most people are trapped in prisons made of mind stuff—attitudes and beliefs such as “I have to look successful” or “I can’t disappoint my dad.” Ideas like these—being deeply entrenched and invisible—are often more powerful than physical prisons. When we’re trapped in mind cages, gulping happy pills by the handful and fantasizing about lethally stapling coworkers, we rarely even consider that our unhappiness comes from living in captivity. And if we ever come close to recognizing the truth, we’re stopped by a barrage of terrifying questions: “What if there’s nothing better than this?” “What if I quit my job, lose my seniority, and end up somewhere even worse?” “What if I break off this relationship and end up alone forever?” “What if I get my hopes up and the big break never comes?”

When the alternatives are staying in the familiar cage or facing the unknown, trust me, most people choose the cage—over and over and over again. It’s painful to watch, especially knowing that liberation is only a few simple steps away. If you suspect that you might need to engineer your own prison break, the following pieces of commonsense advice can set you free forever.

“I just don’t think I’ll ever find the right life for me,” Sheila frets.

“Of course you won’t!” I say. “How strange to think you would!”

It amazes me how often people use that phrase: “Find the right life.” Would you walk into your kitchen hoping to find the right fried egg, the right cup of coffee, the right toast? Such things don’t simply appear before you; they arrive because you rummage around, figure out what’s available, and make what you want. (If you’re rich, you can hire a chef and place your order, but you’re still creating the result.)

Bruce Alexander’s rats were hand-delivered into paradise. Lucky critters, indeed—but not nearly as lucky as Alexander himself, or the rest of us humans, who have the astonishing ability to envision and build Rat Parks. All animals are shaped by their environment, but we, more than any other species, can shape our environment right back. We can cook the egg, brew the coffee, paint the room, change the space. We can fabricate our Rat Parks, and we must, if we want them built to spec.

“But I don’t know what I’m trying to build,” Sheila protests when I tell her this. “How can I create something when I don’t have a clue what it looks like?”

Time for commonsense suggestion number two.

I often invite clients to play the dead-simple game You’re Getting Warmer, You’re Getting Colder. The client leaves the room, and I hide a simple object—say, a key—in a tricky place, such as the inside of a cake. (Not that I would have done this with someone locked up. Like Sheila. Absolutely not.) When the client returns to the room, he almost invariably stands still, and asks, “What am I looking for?”

Obviously, I don’t answer him. The only feedback I’ll give is “You’re getting warmer” or “You’re getting colder.” Eventually clients will start moving. Guided by the words warmer and colder, they quickly identify the general hiding area. Then there’s a period of confusion, fueled by assumptions like “Well, she certainly wouldn’t hide it in the cake.” They go back and forth for a bit, then stop and demand, “Where is it?” Again, this gets them nothing. Peeved, they revert to following the “warmer/colder” feedback until they arrive at the object.

I’ve never had a client who didn’t ultimately succeed. Not one.

My point: Life has installed within you powerful “getting warmer, getting colder” signals. When Sheila thought of leaving the treatment center, her tension, anxiety, and drug cravings soared. The time she had to serve was “warmer”; her outside life, “colder.” Certain activities were freezing cold—dealing with her mother, working, paying bills. As we examined each of these, we found that her guidance system was giving her beautifully clear messages. For instance, being around sane noncriminals, even officials at the treatment center, felt “warmer” than Sheila’s crazy dope-dealing mother. Working in the cafeteria, with its institutional predictability, was “warmer” than her old cocktail waitress job, where she’d flashed her flesh to elicit unpredictable tips from drunken customers. Living within her economic means felt “warmer” than credit card shopping sprees she couldn’t afford.

True, Sheila was a long way from her own Rat Park. But with the knowledge that her navigation system was functioning perfectly, all she had to do was play her life as a game of You’re Getting Warmer, You’re Getting Colder. The same is true for you. It isn’t necessary to know exactly how your ideal life will look; you only have to know what feels better and what feels worse. If something feels both good and bad, break it down into its components to see which are warm, which cold. Begin making choices based on what makes you feel freer and happier, rather than how you think an ideal life should look. It’s the process of feeling our way toward happiness, not the realization of some Platonic ideal, that creates our best lives.

“My life is so far from perfect,” Sheila says as we end our session. “I don’t know if it’s fixable.”

She’s ready to hear my third and last piece of commonsense advice.

This step is something I stole from philosopher and engineer Buckminster Fuller. Bucky, as his friends knew him, chose for his epitaph just three words: call me trimtab. Trim tabs are tiny rudders attached to the back of larger rudders that steer huge ships. The big rudders would snap off if turned directly, but, as Fuller famously said, “just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So…you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.”

Every life is a series of trim-tab decisions. Should you read tonight or watch TV? Choose what feels warmer. Self-help or thriller? Choose what feels warmer. Cuddle with the dog or banish him from the bed? Choose what feels (psychologically) warmer.

If you make mistakes, no problem; you’ll soon feel colder and correct your course. Making consistent trim-tab choices toward happiness is what steers the mighty ship of your life into exotic ports, safe havens—in short, into every Rat Park you can imagine, and then some.

I say goodbye to Sheila not knowing whether she’ll set her trim tabs toward happiness or back to her drug-abusing cage of a life. I’ve learned not to get my hopes up with humans, who aren’t nearly as clear-sighted and authentic as rats. But our session reminds me to keep following my own tiny feelings and impulses to their distant and amazing destinations. So instead of worrying about Sheila—or me, or you—I’ll choose to trust our powerful instincts, our desire to be happy, our amazing human capacity for invention. You may choose cynical despair instead—it’s all the rage in intellectual circles—but if you care to join me, I think you’ll find it’s a whole lot warmer over here in Rat Park.

The Choice Is Ours Now

by Melissa Etheridge
Oscar and Grammy Award-Winning Singer/Songwriter

Posted December 22, 2008

This is a message for my brothers and sisters who have fought so long and so hard for gay rights and liberty. We have spent a long time climbing up this mountain, looking at the impossible, changing a thousand year-old paradigm. We have asked for the right to love the human of our choice, and to be protected equally under the laws of this great country. The road at times has been so bloody, and so horrible, and so disheartening. From being blamed for 9/11 and Katrina, to hateful crimes committed against us, we are battle weary. We watched as our nation took a step in the right direction, against all odds and elected Barack Obama as our next leader. Then we were jerked back into the last century as we watched our rights taken away by prop 8 in California. Still sore and angry we felt another slap in the face as the man we helped get elected seemingly invited a gay-hater to address the world at his inauguration.

I hadn’t heard of Pastor Rick Warren before all of this. When I heard the news, in its neat little sound bite form that we are so accustomed to, it painted the picture for me. This Pastor Rick must surely be one hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist like all the others. He probably has his own gay little secret bathroom stall somewhere, you know. One more hater working up his congregation to hate the gays, comparing us to pedophiles and those who commit incest, blah blah blah. Same ‘ole thing. Would I be boycotting the inauguration? Would we be marching again?

Well, I have to tell you my friends, the universe has a sense of humor and indeed works in mysterious ways. As I was winding down the promotion for my Christmas album I had one more stop last night. I’d agreed to play a song I’d written with my friend Salman Ahmed, a Sufi Muslim from Pakistan. The song is called “Ring The Bells,” and it’s a call for peace and unity in our world. We were going to perform our song for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group of Muslim Americans that tries to raise awareness in this country, and the world, about the majority of good, loving, Muslims. I was honored, considering some in the Muslim religion consider singing to be against God, while other Muslim countries have harsh penalties, even death for homosexuals. I felt it was a very brave gesture for them to make. I received a call the day before to inform me of the keynote speaker that night… Pastor Rick Warren. I was stunned. My fight or flight instinct took over, should I cancel? Then a calm voice inside me said, “Are you really about peace or not?”

I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say “In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him.” They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn’t sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn’t want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife’s struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.

When we met later that night, he entered the room with open arms and an open heart. We agreed to build bridges to the future.

Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world’s attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don’t hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world.

Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us.

I know, call me a dreamer, but I feel a new era is upon us.

I will be attending the inauguration with my family, and with hope in my heart. I know we are headed in the direction of marriage equality and equal protection for all families.

Happy Holidays my friends and a Happy New Year to you.

*****

“Every stuck tribe is a movement waiting to happen.” - Seth Godin

Go, Melissa!

January 03, 2009

Nature Or Nurture In Social Networking

by Stowe Boyd

We suffer from a collective delusion, in Western society, and it comes to the fore this time of year, like clockwork, as we make New Year’s resolutions. That delusion is that what we choose to do, how we live our lives, act, eat, and dream — who we are, essentially — is in our own control. That through will power and hard striving we can change our ways, largely independently of others.

However, more research is coming to light all the time that suggests that this simplistic notion of the individuality of our core being is just not true.

Recent research by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler has demonstrated that emotions — specifically happiness — moves through social networks without conscious action (see Happiness Is An Emergent Property Of Social Networks), and other research has focused on how positive activities like giving up smoking are better accomplished in social groups, and that negative behaviors — like suicidal thoughts — are also transmitted like a virus through social connections: so-called “social contagion”.

One of the most interesting avenues of research is genetics: how much of our way of social networking is inherited, and how much is learned? New research is soon to be published that suggests it’s more innate than we might believe:

[from How your friends’ friends can affect your mood by Michael Bond]

[…] what shapes the architecture of our social networks and our position in them? Clearly, many factors contribute: where we live, where we work, family size, education, religion, income, our interests, and our tendency to gravitate towards people similar to us. New research by Christakis’s team, due to be published in the next few weeks, suggests there is also a strong genetic component. The study compared the social networks of identical and fraternal twins, and found that identical twins had significantly more similar social networks than fraternal twins, suggesting the structure of your social network is influenced by your genes. That may not sound remarkable, since personality traits such as gregariousness and shyness clearly play a role in determining how connected we are. But there is much more to it, says Christakis. “It’s not just about having a genetic predilection to be friends with a lot of people, it’s about having a genetic predilection to be friends with a lot of popular people. That’s mysterious: how could our genes determine our actual location in this socio-topological space?”

Answering that should help us understand more about the “collective intelligence” of social networks, which some researchers liken to the flocking of birds - the decision to quit smoking, for example, is no more an isolated move than the decision by a bird in a flock to fly to the left.

So, in the spirit of New Year’s resolutions, it seems that this indicates a necessary meta-level of resolution, one that sounds a lot like a nagging mother:

1. Resolve to surround yourself with people who are actively involved with activities and behaviors you want to do more of.

2. Avoid people who are involved with activities and behaviors you want to do less of.

3. When around people that you are consciously trying not to emulate, avoid ‘mirroring’ their talk, facial expressions, or interaction patterns: to not imprint on these people.

4. When around people you want to emulate, ‘mirror’ the small graces of social interaction — turns of phrase, facial expressions, hand gestures, etc. — so that you are helping along the integration of norms you admire. Try to think ‘like them’, by adopting their rhetoric and logical analysis. (Think of a teacher you admired in school, and how you might have adopted her thinking in discussing the class with others.)

5. When in contact with people who want to emulate you, be aware that you have this sort of impact on them. Do not be surprised to find them feeding back your thoughts, turns of phrase, terms, even facial expressions. Imitation is more that flattery: it’s social contagion, which is normal, inevitable, and generally positive.

Looks like we are who we hang with, for better or worse, and to the degree that we can control where we wind up networked we should try to move toward those that are doing the fun stuff.

For me, in 2009, that means more time with foodies, musicians, thinkers, and doers. I am going to hang with people trying to make the world a better place– at every scale — and shy away from those consumed with money, power, and fame for their own sake.

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” I want to spend more time with the great minds of our time. Maybe something will rub off.

[via @panklam, @davidgurteen]

*******

So, I’ve gone through my Twitter followees and kept the authors whose Tweets I’m happy to read.