Canada's response to the U.S. hockey team's win

It's all connected

It's just amazing how the currency, obesity, military-industrial complex, and other relevant discussions going on in my cohort and at BGI are all connected. Here's my latest post that brings in accounting, economics, SJ, and more http://bgichannel.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=44247#p125727.

Jamaica and the IMF

I just finished watching Life and Debt and my feelings are wavering between shame and hope. BGIers, read more in the Boeing ALP Social Justice blog.

Paralympics a great sign of increasing SJ for the disabled, now heightened by Canadian Olympic Gold

Perhaps BGI's greatest contribution to its community is the understanding that everything is connected. I posted this reflection for my Leadership and Personal Development class. Give it a read to see examples of how the International Olympic Committee has extended Social Justice to the physically disabled.

A new SJ hero speaking out on governance

Our readings for this week have revealed a new hero, Systems Ecologist James Gustave Speth, who says we need to “revoke the charters of corporations that grossly violate the public interest, and to exclude or expel unwanted corporations, roll back limited liability, eliminate corporate personhood, bar corporations from making political contributions, and limit corporate lobbying.” Hear, hear! In regards to economic growth he said we need to build community rather than increase consumption to attain good health and happiness. WRT SJ he said that extreme poverty and extreme wealth are the opposite sides of the same coin. We need to redistribute wealth to solve it. I would go one step farther than the author David Korten did in comparing to neoclassical economist Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs said fine tuning at the margins is one way to solve the governance problem. With that I agree. Carving off wealth from the extremely wealthy will have an indiscernable marginal effect to them, but a sea change effect to the extremely poor. The high tide raises all boats theory Sachs espouses does not apply because we're running out of water (pun intended). When there's nothing left to "trickle down," the trickle down theory is disproven. Redistributing from the wealthiest (most generated from overly powerful large corporations) directly to the poorest is the best direct method to get all the boats in the water.

Bill Gates raises the bar for reversing climate change

At a TED talk last week and posted to the Huffington Post, Bill Gates said, "If CO2 reduction is important, we need to make it clear to people what really matters - getting to zero." That's huge in two huge ways. First, when the world's richest philanthropist talks, people listen. Second, the conversation has been elevated from "we need to reduce" to "we need to get to zero." To me this represents a tipping point in the climate change discussion from "is it occuring" to "how do we fix it?" Bravo, Bill.

I should disclose that I'm a little biased. I used to work in the same building as "billg" (we were all known by our email aliases back in 1991 - I was "mikeed"). This was before Bill Gates was a household name. Before I took a job there I had heard that he had a woman follow him around with a notepad to take down his ideas so they wouldn't get lost. I thought it was extremely pious and actually sort of held him in disdain. After a couple months of sharing the same restroom with him I finally asked my coworkers who the stinky guy in the urinal next me was with the dishevelled hair and wrinkled tweed suit. "Dude, that's Bill!" On one another occasion I had to let him in the building because he had forgotten his cardkey. Without thinking I said playfully, "Wow, kind of a bummer you can't get into your own building." Fortunately, he had his mind on bigger things...
I'm really glad he still has his mind on bigger things.

The true meaning of the Olympics

Represented well by Canada

SJ in the BGI community

The past several weeks seem to be a true test of the mettle of members of the BGI community. I have proposed solutions to both the circle size issue and the ethics/alcohol and drug abuse issue. It seems that there are real parallels to, for instance, climate change. Those arguing that everybody needs to curb emissions to keep the eco-system in equilibrium seems like a similar argument to those arguing that everybody needs to follow the rules for alcohol and drug use to keep the campus privileges intact. In terms of SJ, the argument that some make for observing their own cultural heritage with the respect of others seems very similar to one group respecting another's desire to have their own circle. There are also some parallels to the differences in culture and the respective influences between Japan and the USA.

2nd Reflective Essay and figuring out my 'blog problems

4/28/05 I created this 'blog because, well, I thought I had to get the blog name in order to keep up with technology. Nearly 5 years later the only entries on it were 5 spam comments to my "Hello 'blog World" entry whose title was longer than the actual post, "QED." Who knows how many changes of ownership the blog host had seen before Google swallowed it. After wrangling with it for several hours, I finally figured out how to move my original blog to here and gain access so I could edit it. I couldn't figure out how to delete the spam comments so I just deleted the entire post and created a new post with a fancy new template. OK, enough of the administration and on with the reflecting.

I was caught completely by surprise when I was asked to be the first person in our class of 2 or 3 dozen cohorts to tell why I was at BGI in the context of Social Justice. As Masai spoke I had some time to think about what I was going to say, but I totally forgot about the time limit AND I didn't recognize her subtle hint that my time had expired. I was leading up to the whole SJ part, but never got there. As other people relayed their moving stories I deeply regretted not being able to tell mine, especially since I didn't go to Channel Rock with any of my cohorts. They really don't know me. On the other hand, one of my LPD goals is to let go of things and not take myself so seriously. In the spirit of the Olympics and in my athletic parlance that would be, "relax and go fast." Relaxing is so hard for me because I really feel it would benefit everyone to know where I'm coming from, but I guess there's a time and place - and this is it.

I was really moved by some of my cohorts' reasons for being at BGI. To be honest, I feel like I have not had the "male white privilege" of which so many speak. In fact, I feel like it's quite the opposite. I am not a really smart person, but I work really hard and everything I've attained was through sweat equity. About ten years ago I started looking into top tier MBA programs. I was told flat out almost universally that being a white heterosexual male in his 30's with a B average in college, even if it was West Point, and no big leadership positions in business would not give me the opportunity to be accepted into a top tier school. That made me feel angry.

On the other hand, one privilege I did have was to serve in and travel through much more of the world than most others on this earth. That really helped me to understand just how much privilege members of the USA have compared to most of the world. And, perhaps more importantly, how much we "Americans" take it for granted. "American" in and of itself is very offensive to me now. There are South, Central, Latin, North, etc "Americans," but we act like the term is reserved for us. While touring Europe in 2000 by bike I had a really interesting "potluck" dinner in a hostel with a French woman and Belgian, Portuguese, Australian, and English men. When talking about this issue they coined the term "ignoranus" to use in lieu of "American." How interesting that they knew OUR language well enough to make a pun out of ignorant and arrogant (or, more accurately, a pseudo crude extension) to describe most of us; ignorant to the rest of the world or too arrogant to care. So, the silver lining to the black cloud that I wasn't not white, not male, not young, and not successful enough to gain admission to Stanford GSB is that I'm at BGI opening my eyes to the many different perspectives, cultures, and upbringings of my cohorts and the community.

Some of the exposures that I really appreciate are the things that the folks at Solar Richmond are doing to meld "green technology" and jobs in an underprivileged community, the acknowledgement that there is increasing economic disparity throughout the world that threatens to make all of us live (or not live) like the citizens of Cuba, and that there are others who feel it's unjust that a corporation has the rights, but not the responsibilities, of an individual.

In many ways I am perceived to represent white male privilege - I graduated from West Point, I worked at Microsoft, and I now work at Boeing. While I want to show my cohorts that I really don't, that I have been "swimming upstream" for most my life, it seems that the best thing I bring to the community is my understanding of the devil's advocate point of view. My hope is that this will make their understanding better so that they can seek to have others understand our position better, that position being wonderfully summarized by Native American Tadodaho Leon Shenando:

Look behind you. See your sons and your daughters. They are your future. Look farther, and see your sons’ and your daughters’ children and their childrens’ children even unto the Seventh Generation.

First Reflective Essay and cutting 'blog teeth

1/24/10 at 11:40 PM , meinnovations said...

Wow, I really appreciate the BGI community's recognition and response of the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. I had the benefit of growing up in Puyallup that was very much like Bainbridge in terms of environment and very much like Vancouver socially. We had only one Afican American person in my HS class, but my Pre-Calculus class had 4 girls, 5 boys, the daughter of a Japanese farmer, and two sons of Vietnamese immigrants among us white folks. The beauty was that we never even considered anyone was lesser or greater. It wasn't until I went to West Point with people throughout the country when I learned that people grew up learning to hate people of different skin color, different regional upbringing, and the opposite gender. It was a rude awakening. I didn't understand it. So, I revere MLK's birthday and it does my heart so much good to see the BGI community embrace it. I felt hope. Tues AM I watched the MLK Day evening news on NBC I had recorded. Appropriately, Haiti dominated the broadcast. Sadly, though, there was not even a mention of MLK Day. We have a lot of work to do. Thank you all for your hand in the work.