HOLONOMY: the science of interacting parts within wholes.
Holos = Whole.
On = Part.
Nomy = Systematized Knowledge.
The Study or Science of Wholeness.
The balance between Self-Assertion and Integration.
Sadly ABCD rhetoric is being bandied about in some quarters as a quick fix solution, as is Time Banking, Local Area Coordination and anything else that speaks to community-led action.
But both citizens and savvy practitioners know rhetoric is not practice, and ABCD in particular is not a model. You can’t therefore throw it at people as a means of getting them to do for themselves and each other what you can no longer package and deliver in a service.
The thinking around all of this has become confused of late, especially in the UK, so in an effort to be helpful and hopeful, yet challenging, I wanted to put together a clear articulation of how ABCD as a practice and perspective differs to more traditional community engagement approaches.
Here it goes. Suffice to say Asset-Based Community Development practice does not seek to save the system money, but rather to save people from the system.
Ethical ABCD practitioners are not interested in creating citizen-led ‘services’ or alternatives to mainstream services, they are interested in supporting regular people to live interdependent lives and to grow powerful civic action. The box below sets out how ABCD differs to traditional “service based thinking”, hence it is not about service reform or redesign but about having a life, growing free space and deepening democracy.
Click on the image to make it larger. This is a further development on the Dan Duncan’s excellent work. We are sharing it with his permission. For more info on Dan Duncan, you can go here: http://www.abcdinstitute.org/faculty/duncan/
As with every approach, when it comes to ABCD there are those who talk a good show but engage in crap practice, those who’ve never heard the words ABCD but live it every day in their practice, and those who do both. Hopefully the distinctions above help in figuring out the difference and making the best choices possible in difficult times.
As
a teacher, you put a lot of thought into how to make your class and the
material as accessible and engaging as possible. You think about what
you know, and how you first learned it. You think about what your
students already know, and how to use that knowledge as the foundation
for what you're about to teach. And, as if that's not enough, you think
about how to make your content so engaging that no matter what else is
happening (lunch next period, upcoming prom, or the latest social media
scandal among the sophomores), your lesson will hold your students'
attention. All that thought goes into a lesson, and still there
are students spacing out during class or seeming to fall behind.
Working so hard and still not reaching every student can be frustrating.
And you have no one to blame but yourself -- you're hogging all the
best learning in your classroom.
Thinking About Learning
In 2005, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed everything we know about learning in a paper called How Students Learn. In this report, 600 pages of research culminate in a single word, which the NAS identifies as the key to effective learning: metacognition.
Metacognition (or thinking about thinking) is the secret to and driving
force behind all effective learning. If you want your students to learn
as much as possible, then you want to maximize the amount of
metacognition they're doing. It's a pretty simple equation.
The only problem is that most classrooms are set up to promote
metacognition in the teachers, not the students. To succeed, you need to
think about your own thinking (How did I learn this? How have I taught
this before? What worked and didn't work?) as well as your students'
thinking (What do they know? What will keep them engaged?). However,
it's far too easy for your students to kick back, disengage, and wait
for you to simplify the material for them. You're like a
personal trainer who says, "I'm going to help you meet all your fitness
goals. Now sit back and watch me lift all the weight."
Teaching is hard
work -- you have to be constantly engaged and aware of your process and
how to improve it. That's exactly what makes an expert learner. So share
the wealth! If you really want your students to be better learners,
then let them walk a mile in your shoes.
That's exactly what Eric Mazur decided to do. As a professor of
physics at Harvard, Mazur was working with some of the most educated
undergraduates in the world and yet, as he discovered, their lack of
understanding was truly shocking. Mazur decided he needed to force his
students to think more, so he made them teach each other. The change was
astounding. His peer instruction approach has since grown into the
flipped classroom movement, and research shows that it consistently
produces better results than traditional lecture-based classrooms. No
wonder! Flipping the classroom shifts the metacognitive balance toward
the students. We want our students to do as much thinking as possible,
and that's why the world's greatest teachers actively avoid teaching.
Shifting the Responsibility
We've seen this tactic succeed on a personal level. Ten years ago,
when we started tutoring full time, we did everything we could to help
our students. It was our job to make sure that they understood and
succeeded. Pretty soon, we realized that our desire to help was exactly
what was hurting our students the most. They knew we'd do everything we
could, so they stopped doing things for themselves.
Eventually, we
turned our tutoring sessions around. When a student asked how something
was done, we'd play dumb and say, "I don't know. We should probably look
it up." The student would look it up, ask another question, and we'd
say, "Hmmm. That's interesting. How can we find that out?" Again, the
student would go to the book. After enough of those sessions, our
students stopped bothering to ask us for the answers -- they already
knew all the behaviors that would lead to understanding.
Curious whether this shift in our students was just a fluke, we began
working our way through the scientific literature, and the picture
quickly became clear. Today's students have incredible resources -- and a
troubling lack of resourcefulness. They have brand new textbooks that
they never crack open. They have the collected knowledge of the world
available at the click of a mouse, but they never use it to look up
things they don't know. After years of classroom lectures, students
everywhere -- regardless of cultural or socioeconomic background -- had
internalized the idea that students are supposed to get answers from
teachers. At its core, that translates to the idea that the person in
charge of their learning is someone other than them. And that's a huge problem because, ultimately, no one else can be responsible for our learning.
No matter how entertaining you make your lectures, you can't make
your students pay attention. Only they can do that, and yet we fall
victim to the idea that if the student isn't learning or isn’t paying
attention, it's the teacher's fault. From a neuroscience perspective,
that's just wrong. Yet by doing the majority of students' thinking and
rushing to solve their problems, we reinforce that idea. In our
experience, that has done America's students a tremendous disservice. A
great education doesn't come from a teacher who thinks for you. It comes
from a teacher who teaches (and pushes) you to think for yourself.
The Hands-Off Teacher
Of course, being pushed to think for yourself can initially be
frustrating and emotionally uncomfortable. But we need to let America's
children struggle if we want them to develop the skills to succeed on
their own in the workforce of the future. And that means we all need a
more sophisticated model of what makes a great teacher. We've all heard
the horror stories of tenured teachers who did nothing all class period,
but the reality is that a teacher who doesn't push students to figure
things out for themselves isn't much better help. A great teacher
doesn't teach as much as possible. A great teacher teaches as little
as possible, while modeling the behaviors of how to figure something
out. Perhaps it seems too obvious to say that your goal should be for
students to think as much as possible during your class. But in this
case, "thinking" really means thinking about the material plus how to
dig in, break it apart, understand it, and build on that. It means
thinking about how to constantly get better.
We know that not every teacher has the luxury of flipping his or her
classroom, but here are some simple things you can do to move your
students toward more metacognition:
At least once each class period, refuse to answer a student's question and instead get everybody to look up the answer.
Instead of marking exactly where the mistakes are on a test, essay,
or homework assignment, tell students how many mistakes there are and
challenge them to find every one.
Let students try planning an entire class period and recording
themselves giving that lesson. The ability to teach something clearly is
the best test of whether you understand it. (And there's no faster way
to help them appreciate what you do!)
After a test, give your students the same test again, but fill it
in first with actual wrong answers that students gave. As students grade
this test and provide corrections (a process typically reserved for
teachers), they'll have to think not only about the right way to do
things, but also why someone might make each particular error.
Our school district is failing our parents.
It is failing our children. That means it is failing our future — and Detroit’s renaissance.
This
is no time to debate that some schools work while others don't. This is
no time to defend graduation rates that remain too low and dropout
rates that remain too high.
Teachers,
through sick-outs, have forced us to look at the conditions some of our
children endure every school year. The mayor looked and
immediately ordered city inspections of all 97 schools. We can no longer
look away.
It is finally time to stop living with failure.
It
has become clearer than ever that the fix for our failing district will
likely not come from the state Legislature. It won’t be found in the
bills introduced last week by State Sen. Goeff Hansen, R-Hart, whose
hard work is notable more for what they lack than what they do:
They would allow for the election of a city school board, but one that cannot choose its own district superintendent.
They would authorize $250 million to open a new school district, but ignore the current district’s $515 million-and-rising debt.
They
ignore the troubles of a second Detroit-based state district run by the
Education Achievement Authority, a district being investigated by
federal authorities.
But the greatest failure of
Hansen's well-intentioned bills is that they did not include what Mayor
Mike Duggan, a diverse coalition of leaders and most parents want:
educational accountability. The bills do not include the education
commission that Duggan, in news reports, said would “establish a single
standard of performance for all public schools in Detroit — district and
charter.”
Hansen
didn't offer the legislation that was needed. According to news
reports, he said "we had to craft something that would get 20 votes in
the Senate and get through the House. The charters were unhappy with the
governance of it.”
The charters were unhappy about the governance of it. Sigh.
Detroit
needs someone to monitor the landscape, to ensure that all schools
serve students equally and valiantly — and that schools exist where
children live. More importantly, the city needs an entity that holds
for-profit schools as accountable as other public schools.
So,
again, the fix for our failing district will not fall from the sky
between Dan Gilbert building purchases and transportation
ideas suggested by Michael Ford, CEO of the Regional Transit Authority
of Southeast Michigan.
And the state Legislature cannot save it.
Detroit
is going to have to stop waiting for Superman. That was Clark Kent, not
Rick Snyder. And the governor, who can't fix roads and can’t fix Flint,
certainly can’t fix education.
It’s time that Detroit stood up
and fixed itself. It’s time that the governor stop holding the city
district hostage, preventing it from declaring bankruptcy. It's time for
Detroit to force the state to pay the state-guaranteed debt.
It's
time for Detroit to shut down the old school district and create a new
one on its own, one without crooks, without bad apples and with
processes in place to stay financially healthy.
The governor's a
little busy right now explaining how his staff allowed an entire city to
drink toxic water. So let's tell him that Detroit no longer needs the
state to run its schools. Or we can take a lesson from the teachers and
just tell him we're sick.
Contact Rochelle Riley: rriley99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley.
For the past century, the price and performance of computing has been on
an exponential curve. And, as futurist Ray Kurzweil observed, once any
technology becomes an information technology, its development follows
the same curve, so we are seeing exponential advances in technologies
such as sensors, networks, artificial intelligence, and robotics. The
convergence of these technologies is making amazing things possible.
2015
was the tipping point in the global adoption of the Internet, digital
medical devices, blockchain, gene editing, drones, and solar energy.
2016 will be the beginning of an even bigger revolution, one that will
change the way we live, let us visit new worlds, and lead us into a
jobless future. Yes, with every good there is a bad; wonderful things
will become possible, but with them we will also create new problems for
mankind.
Here are six of the technologies that will make this happen, and the good they will do.
Artificial Intelligence
In
the artificial-intelligence community, there is a common saying: “A.I.
is whatever hasn’t been done yet”. They call this the “A.I. effect”.
Skeptics discount the behavior of an artificial-intelligence program by
arguing that, rather than being real intelligence, it is just brute
force computing and algorithms.
There is merit to the criticism:
even though computers have beaten chess masters and Jeopardy players and
learnt to talk to us and drive cars, Siri and Cortana are still
imperfect and infuriating.
Yes, they crack jokes and tell us the
weather, but are nothing like the seductive digital assistant we saw in
the movie Her.
But that is about to change—so that even
the skeptics will say that A.I. has arrived. There have been major
advances in “deep learning” neural networks, which learn by ingesting
large amounts of data: IBM has taught its A.I. system, Watson,
everything from cooking, to finance, to medicine; and Facebook, Google,
and Microsoft have made great strides in face recognition and human-like
speech systems. A.I.-based face recognition, for example, has almost
reached human capability. And IBM Watson can diagnose certain cancers
better than any human doctor can.
With IBM Watson being made
available to developers, Google open-sourcing its deep learning A.I.
software, and Facebook releasing the designs of its specialized A.I.
hardware, we can expect to see a broad variety of A.I. applications
emerging—because entrepreneurs all over the world are taking up the
baton. A.I. will be wherever computers are, and will seem human-like.
Fortunately, we don’t need to worry about superhuman A.I. yet; that is still a decade or two away.
The 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge required robots to navigate over an
eight-task course simulating a disaster zone. It was almost comical to
see them moving at the speed of molasses, freezing up, and falling
over. Forget folding laundry and serving humans; these robots could
hardly walk. As well, although we heard some three years ago that
Foxconn would replace a million workers with robots in its Chinese
factories, it never did so.
The breakthroughs may, however, be at
hand. To begin with, a new generation of robots is being introduced by
companies such as Switzerland’s ABB, Denmark’s Universal Robots, and
Boston’s Rethink Robotics—robots dextrous enough to thread a needle and
sensitive enough to work alongside humans. They can assemble circuits
and pack boxes. We are at the cusp of the industrial-robot revolution.
Household
robots are another matter. Household tasks may seem mundane, but they
are incredibly difficult for machines to perform. Cleaning a room and
folding laundry necessitate software algorithms that are more complex
than those to land a man on the moon. But there have been many
breakthroughs of late, largely driven by A.I., enabling robots to learn
certain tasks by themselves and teach each other what they have learnt.
And with the open source robotic operating system, ROS, thousands of
developers worldwide are getting close to perfecting the algorithms.
Don’t
be surprised when robots start showing up in supermarkets and malls—and
in our homes. Remember Rosie, the robotic housekeeper from the TV
series “The Jetsons”? I am expecting version 1 to begin shipping in the
early 2020s.
Once considered to be in the realm of science fiction, autonomous cars
made big news in 2015. Google crossed the million-mile mark with its
prototypes; Tesla began releasing functionality in its cars; and major
car manufacturers announced their plans for robocars. These are coming,
whether we are ready or not. And, just as the robots will, they will
learn from each other—about the landscape of our roads and the bad
habits of humans.
In the next year or two, we will see fully
functional robocars being tested on our highways, and then they will
take over our roads. Just as the horseless carriage threw horses off
the roads, these cars will displace us humans. Because they won’t crash
into each other as we humans do, they won’t need the bumper bars or
steel cages, so they will be more comfortable and lighter. Most will be
electric. We also won’t have to worry about parking spots, because
they will be able to drop us where we want to go to and pick us up when
we are ready. We won’t even need to own our own cars, because
transportation will be available on demand through our smartphones.
Best of all, we won’t need speed limits, so distance will be less of a
barrier—enabling us to leave the cities and suburbs.
In March, Facebook announced the availability of its much anticipated
virtual-reality headset, Oculus. Microsoft, Magic Leap, and dozens of
startups won’t be far behind with their new technologies. The early
versions of these products will surely be expensive and clumsy and cause
dizziness and other adverse reactions. But prices will fall,
capabilities will increase, and footprints will shrink as is the case
with all exponential technologies, and 2016 will mark the beginning of
the VR revolution.
Virtual reality will change how we learn and
how we entertain ourselves. Our children’s education will become
experiential, because they will be able to visit ancient Greece and
journey within the human body. We will spend our lunchtimes touring
far-off destinations and our evenings playing laser tag with friends who
are thousands of miles away. And, rather than watching movies at IMAX
theatres, we will be able to be part of the action, virtually in the
back seat of the car chase.
Mark Zuckerberg recently announced plans to create his own artificially
intelligent, voice-controlled butler to help run his life at home and at
work. For this, he will need appliances that can talk to his digital
butler—a connected home, office, and car. These are all coming, as CES,
the big consumer electronics tradeshow in Las Vegas, demonstrated.
From showerheads that track how much water we’ve used to toothbrushes
that watch out for cavities, to refrigerators that order food that is
running out, they are all on their way.
Starting in 2016,
everything will be be connected—including our homes and appliances, our
cars, street lights, and medical instruments. They will be sharing
information with each other and perhaps gossiping about us, and will
introduce massive security risks as well as many efficiencies. And we
won’t have much choice, because they will be standard features—as are
the cameras on our Smart TVs that stare at us, and the smartphones that
listen to everything we say.
Rockets, satellites, and spaceships were things that governments
built—until Elon Musk stepped into the ring in 2002, with his startup
SpaceX. A decade later, he demonstrated the ability to dock a
spacecraft with the International Space Station and return with cargo. A
year later, he launched a commercial geostationary satellite. And
then, in 2015, out of the blue, came another billionaire, Jeff Bezos,
whose space company, Blue Origin, launched a rocket 100 kilometers into
space and landed its booster within five feet of its launch pad. This is
a feat that SpaceX only achieved a month later, so Bezos one-upped
Musk.
It took a race, in the 1960s, between the U.S. and the
U.S.S.R. to get man to the Moon. For decades after this, little more
happened, because there was no one for the U.S. to compete with. Now,
thanks to technology costs’ falling so far that space exploration can be
done for millions rather than billions of dollars, and the raging egos
of two billionaires, we will see the breakthroughs in space travel that
we have been waiting for. Maybe there’ll be nothing beyond some rocket
launches and a few competitive tweets between Musk and Bezos in 2016,
but we will be closer to having colonies on Mars.
This surely is
the most innovative period in human history, an era that will be
remembered as the inflexion point in exponential technologies that made
the impossible possible.
But why mess with perfection? LYRICS are "And I think my Spaceship
knows which way to go" & "Planet Earth is Blue and there's Nothing I
can Do"
"The famous parade of personae that
defined his astounding 1970s discography represented not just new sounds
and aesthetics; Bowie was essentially a human Internet, with each album
serving as a hyperlink into a vast network of underground music,
avant-garde art, art-house film, and left-field literature. Bowie was
the nexus through which many rock fans were first introduced to not just
the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and Kraftwerk and Neu!, but also
William S. Burroughs and Klaus Nomi and Nicolas Roeg and Ryuichi
Sakamoto and Nina Simone. By design, most pop music is a closed loop—a
rollercoaster that’s expertly designed for maximal thrills, to make you
go “wheee!” over and over again. Bowie envisioned pop as Grand Central
Station, the train tracks branching off into infinite new directions."
"Art’s filthy lesson is inauthenticity all the way down, a
series of repetitions and reenactments: fakes that strip away the illusion of
reality in which we live and confront us with the reality of illusion. Bowie’s
world is like a dystopian version of The
Truman Show, the sick place of the world that is forcefully expressed in
the ruined, violent cityscapes of “Aladdin Sane” and “Diamond Dogs” and, more
subtly, in the desolate soundscapes of “Warszawa” and “Neuköln.” To borrow
Iggy Pop’s idiom from Lust for Life
(itself borrowed from Antonioni’s 1975 movie, although Bowie might well be its
implicit referent), Bowie is the passenger who rides through the city’s ripped
backside, under a bright and hollow sky."
An Experiment in Love: Martin Luther
King, Jr. on the Six Pillars of Nonviolent Resistance and the Ancient
Greek Notion of ‘Agape’
“Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and
morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by
projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.”
By Maria Popova
Although Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
used Christian social ethics and the New Testament concept of “love”
heavily in his writings and speeches, he was as influenced by Eastern
spiritual traditions, Gandhi’s political writings, Buddhism’s notion of
the interconnectedness of all beings, and Ancient Greek philosophy. His
enduring ethos, at its core, is nonreligious — rather, it champions a
set of moral, spiritual, and civic responsibilities that fortify our
humanity, individually and collectively.
Nowhere does he transmute spiritual ideas from various traditions
into secular principles more masterfully than in his extraordinary 1958
essay “An Experiment in Love,” in which he examines the six essential
principles of his philosophy of nonviolence, debunks popular
misconceptions about it, and considers how these basic tenets can be
used in guiding any successful movement of nonviolent resistance. Penned
five years before his famous Letter from Birmingham City Jail and exactly a decade before his assassination, the essay was eventually included in the indispensable A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (public library) — required reading for every human being with a clicking mind and a ticking heart.
In the first of the six basic philosophies, Dr. King addresses the
tendency to mistake nonviolence for passivity, pointing out that it is a
form not of cowardice but of courage:
It must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a
method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he
is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is
not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is
the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight… The way of
nonviolent resistance … is ultimately the way of the strong man. It is
not a method of stagnant passivity… For while the nonviolent resister is
passive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his
opponent, his mind and his emotions are always active, constantly
seeking to persuade his opponent that he is wrong. The method is passive
physically but strongly active spiritually. It is not passive
non-resistance to evil, it is active nonviolent resistance to evil.
He turns to the second tenet of nonviolence:
Nonviolence … does not seek to defeat or humiliate the
opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent
resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or
boycotts, but he realizes that these are not ends themselves; they are
merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end
is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the
creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is
tragic bitterness.
Illustration by Olivier Tallec from ‘Waterloo and Trafalgar.’ Click image for more.
In considering the third characteristic of nonviolence, Dr. King
appeals to the conscientious recognition that those who perpetrate
violence are often victims themselves:
The attack is directed against forces of evil rather than
against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is the evil that
the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by
the evil. If he is opposing racial injustice, the nonviolent resister
has the vision to see that the basic tension is not between the races…
The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the
forces of light and the forces of darkness…. We are out to defeat
injustice and not white persons who may be unjust.
Out of this recognition flows the fourth tenet:
Nonviolent resistance [requires] a willingness to accept
suffering without retaliation, to accept blows from the opponent without
striking back… The nonviolent resister is willing to accept violence if
necessary, but never to inflict it. He does not seek to dodge jail. If
going to jail is necessary, he enters it “as a bridegroom enters the
bride’s chamber.”
That, in fact, is precisely how Dr. King himself entered jail five years later. To those skeptical of the value of turning the other cheek, he offers:
Unearned suffering is redemptive. Suffering, the
nonviolent resister realizes, has tremendous educational and
transforming possibilities.
The fifth basic philosophy turns the fourth inward and arrives at the
most central point of the essay — the noblest use of what we call
“love”:
Nonviolent resistance … avoids not only external physical
violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister
not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him.
At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. The
nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human
dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the
temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To
retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate
in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough
and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done
by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.
Illustration by Maurice Sendak from ‘Let’s Be Enemies’ by Janice May Udry. Click image for more.
Here, Dr. King turns to Ancient Greek philosophy, pointing out that
the love he speaks of is not the sentimental or affectionate kind — “it
would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an
affectionate sense,” he readily acknowledges — but love in the sense of
understanding and redemptive goodwill. The Greeks called this agape — a love distinctly different from the eros, reserved for our lovers, or philia, with which we love our friends and family. Dr. King explains:
Agape means understanding, redeeming good will
for all men. It is an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous,
unmotivated, groundless, and creative. It is not set in motion by any
quality or function of its object… Agape is disinterested love. It is a love in which the individual seeks not his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Agape
does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or
any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. It is an entirely “neighbor-regarding concern for others,” which discovers the neighbor in every man it meets.
Therefore, agape
makes no distinction between friends and enemy; it is directed toward
both. If one loves an individual merely on account of his friendliness,
he loves him for the sake of the benefits to be gained from the
friendship, rather than for the friend’s own sake. Consequently, the
best way to assure oneself that love is disinterested is to have love
for the enemy-neighbor from whom you can expect no good in return, but
only hostility and persecution.
This notion is nearly identical to one of Buddhism’s four brahmaviharas, or divine attitudes — the concept of Metta,
often translated as lovingkindness or benevolence. The parallel speaks
not only to Dr. King’s extraordinarily diverse intellectual toolkit of
influences and inspirations — a high form of combinatorial creativity necessary for any meaningful contribution to humanity’s common record — but also to the core commonalities between the world’s major spiritual and philosophical traditions.
In a sentiment that Margaret Mead and James Baldwin would echo twelve years later in their spectacular conversation on race — “In any oppressive situation both groups suffer, the oppressors and the oppressed,”
Mead observed, asserting that the oppressors suffer morally with the
recognition of what they’re committing, which Baldwin noted is “a worse
kind of suffering” — Dr. King adds:
Another basic point about agape is that it springs from the need
of the other person — his need for belonging to the best in the human
family… Since the white man’s personality is greatly distorted by
segregation, and his soul is greatly scarred, he needs the love of the
Negro. The Negro must love the white man, because the white man needs
his love to remove his tensions, insecurities, and fears.
Illustration
by Alice and Martin Provensen for a vintage children’s-book adaptation
of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Click image for more.
At the heart of agape, he argues, is the notion of forgiveness — something Mead and Baldwin also explored with great intellectual elegance. Dr. King writes:
Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love in action… Agape
is a willingness to go to any length to restore community… It is a
willingness to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven to
restore community…. If I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate I do
nothing but intensify the cleavage in broken community. I can only close
the gap in broken community by meeting hate with love.
Nonviolent resistance … is base don the conviction that
the universe is on the side of justice. Consequently, the believer in
nonviolence has deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason
why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation.
For he knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic
companionship. It is true that there are devout believers in nonviolence
who find it difficult to believe in a personal God. But even these
persons believe in the existence of some creative force that works for
universal wholeness. Whether we call it an unconscious process, an
impersonal Brahman, or a Personal Being of matchless power of infinite
love, there is a creative force in this universe that works to bring the
disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole.
Companies operate in an increasingly complex world: Business environments are more diverse, dynamic, and interconnected than ever—and far less predictable. Yet many firms still pursue classic approaches to strategy that were designed for more-stable times, emphasizing analysis and planning focused on maximizing short-term performance rather than long-term robustness. How are they faring?
To answer that question, we investigated the longevity of more than 30,000 public firms in the United States over a 50-year span. The results are stark: Businesses are disappearing faster than ever before. Public companies have a one in three chance of being delisted in the next five years, whether because of bankruptcy, liquidation, M&A, or other causes. That’s six times the delisting rate of companies 40 years ago. Although we may perceive corporations as enduring institutions, they now die, on average, at a younger age than their employees. And the rise in mortality applies regardless of size, age, or sector. Neither scale nor experience guards against an early demise. Read More... https://hbr.org/2016/01/the-biology-of-corporate-survival
As she’s scanning organic bananas or buckwheat kernels at the checkout the assistant at local health food store strikes up a conversation. She’s curious to know if the bananas are just for making smoothies and what the customer uses the buckwheat for. These seemingly insignificant interactions are hardly worth remembering and yet over time they spark ideas for new menu items to be introduced at the in-store cafe and give rise to opportunities to better serve her community of customers.
Good marketing starts with the customer’s needs and wants, not with the company’s emergency.
A great marketing strategy is geared towards creating lasting connections instead of simply being focused on reaching short term targets.
The gifted marketer doesn’t simply try to sell what’s in stock today. She strives to understand what her customer will want tomorrow and then creates the culture and momentum to deliver that.
If your success and profits are by-product of satisfied customers, it stands to reason that your priority is to matter, not simply to make and sell.
Detroit Free Press Editorial Board
11:02 p.m. EST January 7, 2016
A
new report describes Detroit Public Schools' financial crisis in a
series of appalling numbers. The district has $3.5 billion in total
debt: $1.9 billion in legacy costs and short-term debt and almost $1.7
billion for bonds and capital improvements. The district’s
accumulated deficit has soared to $215 million. It's behind on payments
to its pension fund. And it may run out of cash by April.
Yet Lansing seems no closer to a solution for DPS than it ever has been.
Last
year, Gov. Rick Snyder, who has appointed or re-appointed four
emergency managers to lead the district during his five years in office,
said he was committed to finding a long-term solution. Last fall,
he unveiled a plan to split the district in two: DPS would exist only
to collect the district's operating millage and pay its debt, while a
new entity would receive the state's per-pupil allowance and educate
children.
No bills have been introduced in the state Legislature; no detailed plans have been released.
David
Murray, a spokesman for Snyder, noted that recent reports highlight the
"urgency" of DPS' situation, and said the governor's office expects
action "soon," and that "good discussions" will ensue.
Those terms don't strike us as conveying a sense of urgency — not the kind DPS' problems merit.
What's
particularly noxious is that while DPS languishes, Lansing lawmakers
have prioritized other, far less-pressing matters: eliminating
straight-ticket voting, a purely partisan move, barring school districts
from distributing factual information about millage votes within 60
days of an election, and effectively doubling the amount of
contributions allowable to political campaigns. It's a stunning
misunderstanding of the state's most pressing needs
.
We have
concerns about the outlines of Snyder's proposed plan — it's not clear
whether the old district/new district split would free sufficient funds
to satisfy the district's debt, including its pension liabilities — but
it's the only plan lawmakers are even contemplating.
But
it is not without hurdles to clear. In order for the new district to be
viable, Snyder must convince lawmakers to free up more money for DPS,
to replace revenue generated by the operating millage. Initially, the
governor's team had signaled that money would come at the expense of
other districts across the state; more recently, he's said that money
for DPS need not impact other districts. That's welcome news, and should
provide inducement for outstate or suburban lawmakers to support DPS
reforms.
And then there's this: Much of DPS' debt was incurred
during the district's 15 years (and counting) under state oversight.
That places the moral obligation to cover district debt firmly in the
state's hands — and legally, because the state stood surety for much of
that borrowing.
The state's largest public school district, the
system we're relying on to educate 47,000 children, is floundering. We
knew this. Now it is nearly out of cash. The state is legally and
morally obligated to pick up this burden. And time is running out.
So what's the holdup?
Flint Wants Safe Water, and Someone to Answer for Its Crisis
FLINT,
Mich. — A caravan of Genesee County sheriff’s office cruisers snaked
its way through the streets here on Thursday, doling out water filters
and jugs of water to frustrated and terrified residents who have been
trying to cope for more than a year with the public health crisis that
has been flowing out of their taps.
Shortly after officials switched the source of their drinking water
to the Flint River from Lake Huron in April 2014 to save money,
residents started complaining that their tap water looked strange,
tasted bad and caused rashes. But not until the fall of 2015, when the water was found to have elevated levels of lead that were reflected in children’s blood, did state officials swing into action.
Now
they are scrambling to address a situation that has endangered the
health of Flint’s children and generated untold costs and anxiety.
“It’s
ridiculous we have to live in such a way,” said Colette Brown, a Flint
native who months ago stopped drinking tap water. She said the filter at
her home needed a replacement cartridge.
Water filters and jugs of water were distributed on Thursday to residents.Credit
Brittany Greeson for The New York Times
“Put yourself in our shoes,” she said. “It’s hurting kids, the elderly. It’s hurting all of us.”
And
there was plenty of blame to go around, she added. “It’s almost like a
stepladder — you start from the top and you go all the way down to the
bottom,” she said.
Switching
the source of drinking water was meant to relieve some of the financial
pressures on this struggling city. Flint has high rates of gun violence
and crumbling infrastructure. And as manufacturing jobs have moved
overseas, the population has steadily dropped to fewer than 100,000 —
more than 40 percent of whom live below the poverty line.
But
it was not long before some in Flint were pointing out the nasty color
and odor of what was coming out of their taps, and digging into their
wallets to buy bottled water for drinking and cooking, and baby wipes
for bathing.
State and city leaders had largely dismissed residents’ complaints for months, assuring them that the water was safe
and being tested regularly. With the emergence of the blood level data,
officials began advising residents not to drink unfiltered tap water — a
recommendation that remains in effect.
In October, Gov. Rick Snyder helped orchestrate a switch back to Lake Huron water.
Though Mayor Karen Weaver called that a positive step, she said the
change did not undo corrosion damage from the river water that caused
pipes to leach lead.
As
of last month, the state had identified 43 people with elevated lead
levels in their blood. Lead is toxic, and can cause stunted development
in children.
“Their
one job was to make sure our water was safe,” Melissa Mays, a Flint
resident, said of Michigan environmental officials. Ms. Mays, who has
helped organize protests and been among the most outspoken critics of
the water situation, said she worried about how the water might be
affecting her young sons’ health.
“They cut every corner,” she said. “They did more to cover up than actually fix it. That’s criminal.”
In
a scathing initial report last month, a task force appointed by Mr.
Snyder found that the State Department of Environmental Quality’s
response to health concerns “was often one of aggressive dismissal,
belittlement and attempts to discredit these efforts and the individuals
involved.” That approach, the report added, was “completely
unacceptable.”
For protection, Keri Webber washed dishes wearing gloves.Credit
Brittany Greeson for The New York Times
After the letter was released, Mr. Snyder, a Republican and former businessman who took office in 2011, apologized and announced the resignation of the director of the Department of Environmental Quality.
On
Thursday, after he met with Ms. Weaver, Mr. Snyder told reporters that
he would work to provide “a broad-based suite of services” to address
the water issues and other problems in Flint. Among the services could
be more water testing, more filters, and health care and education
support for those affected. Many residents have called for state money
to replace the city’s old pipe infrastructure — which the mayor has said
could cost up to $1.5 billion — and a fund to address any developmental
impact on children.
“You have to earn trust,” Mr. Snyder said. “This will be a process by showing the steps we’re taking to be proactive.”
Many residents are reserving judgment. Researchers at Virginia Tech who detected
the lead contamination last year released state employee emails
obtained through a public records request. In a message in July, the
governor’s chief of staff at the time, Dennis Muchmore, wrote that he
was “frustrated by the water issue in Flint” and that “folks are scared
and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting
blown off by us.”
In response, a state health official assured Mr. Muchmore that there was no evidence of increased lead poisoning, a finding later called into question.
A
spokesman for Mr. Snyder said the message indicated that the governor’s
staff members were engaged and seeking answers on behalf of worried
community members.
Some
residents are quick to point out that it was an emergency manager
appointed by the governor who approved the 2014 switch away from Lake
Huron water to save money.
Wantwaz Davis, a member of Flint’s City Council, said the emergency manager “created this problem.”
“What
the governor should do is become fully accountable to this problem and
give us the finances that we need to rectify the problem,” Mr. Davis
said.
Some
efforts already underway have added to residents’ frustrations. At City
Hall on Thursday, where signs advertise free water filters, Quintina
Swanson stopped by to pick up a replacement cartridge. But Ms. Swanson,
25, was told that the model she needed was out of stock, and that she
would need to return later or go to a different distribution site.
Sheriff
Robert J. Pickell of Genesee County, who organized the door-to-door
water filter distribution, said traveling to another site was not always
possible in a place like Flint. “People over in Lansing, they forget
how the poor folks live,” Sheriff Pickell said, referring to the state
capital. “They say they’re going to have a distribution center. They
forget that not everybody has a car.”
Still,
residents said they were grateful that state officials and federal
investigators were now engaged. Ms. Weaver, a clinical psychologist
elected last year largely on a promise to improve the water, praised Mr.
Snyder for his emergency declaration, even as she cautioned that major
commitments of time and money would be needed.
“It
does let us know that our voice is being heard,” Ms. Weaver said. “And
for such a long time, the residents of the city said, ‘We do not have a
voice.’
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