Category: General Commentary

By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, General Commentary, Innovation, language, Mindset, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Screenshot: Opening lines of the poem, "Sometimes the Wolf Cries Girl": Sometimes the hero stumbles/ and falls right off the page./Sometimes the princess…
Opening lines of the poem, “Sometimes the Wolf Cries Girl”

Recently, I posted this poem on Facebook:

A cynical friend responded, “Sometimes…none of this is true.” And I replied,

But all of it is, sometimes. Sometimes is the anchor word here, that allows us to play with our perceptions. All of it is true once in a while, but all of it is not true often enough that the inability to go there feels normative to you. As someone who has spent some big chunks of my life on the margins for various reasons, I can assure you that the narrow, normative, conformist version of reality isn’t real for a big percentage of the population—but who’s in and who’s out might vary over time.

My “margins” experience is both direct and indirect. Directly, I’ve been treated as marginal—”othered”—for living in poverty in my younger years…for not being into sports, hypermasculinity, or TV celebrity culture…for being Jewish…for being bisexual…for being a Northerner in Georgia and an Easterner in Southwest Ohio…And I’ve confronted ageism against both the young and the old—which started when I was very young and has continued now that people are beginning to think of me as old.

But I’ve also worked with a lot of groups that were marginalized in ways outside of my own direct experience of it. In college in the 1970s—long before same-sex couples were socially acceptable—I ran the campus Gay Center and started two more in cities where I had college co-op jobs and went to my first same-sex wedding in 1978 or ’79. I did community organizing around the environment and safe energy all the way back to 1971, when I was a 14-year-old high school junior—and that consciousness didn’t really become mainstream until THIS century.  I worked as a paid organizer for an elders’ rights organization at 22 and 23. I had my consciousness raised about a whole bunch of disability rights and minority rights issues during the six years in the 1990s when I served on my city’s official disability access committee (helping public spaces like theaters and restaurants meet accessibility codes) and simultaneously on the District Attorney’s Civil Rights Advisory Board (sensitizing lawyers, cops, and criminal justice workers to the needs of marginalized communities). I worked for 15 years in that city and 24 years in the neighboring small town where I live now on opening up the electoral process and city/town government to disenfranchised voices. And for more than three years, I’ve been deeply involved with immigration/refugee justice work, including an extended visit to the US-Mexico border where we visited a huge refugee camp daily and heard the stories of some of the most marginalized people in the world. 

This diversity of experience may seem very random—but certain common threads hold it all together into a larger whole that feels coherent and meaningful to me. A few examples:

  • All of this work is about empowering people who have felt powerless
  • All of it embraces the same construct that the poet presents: that just because something is a certain way doesn’t at all mean it’s impossible to change it (I even did a TEDx talk on this called “‘Impossible’ Is A Dare” (it’s 15 minutes long, riffs on a quote by Muhammad Ali that I misattributed at the time, and discusses how socially and environmentally conscious businesses can change the world—to watch, click the link and then click again on “event videos”)
  • All of it works on the theory that change happens faster and more fully when it becomes a movement—while acknowledging that acting alone can still make a significant difference. (I’m very proud of my one-person, three-day demonstration against the US bombing of Libya that drew middle fingers and jeers on the first day, but supportive honks and waves on the third day, as well as many individual conversations with people who thought differently, sometimes reaching common ground and always de-demonizing each other—but I’m even prouder of the broad-based movement I founded that saved an endangered local mountain.)
  • It all recognizes that change happens both internally, inside your own heart and brain, and externally, as the actions of one person or a movement ripple out into the wider world–and as these movements find common ground and begin to work together, discovering their intersectionality: their common struggle.
  • As these movements begin to combine like an amoeba merging with its neighbor, it becomes easier to achieve drastic restructuring of society as people begin to look at solutions to our biggest problems as interrelated, holistic, and systemic.

So yes, we have the power to change ourselves and the world. As the poem says in its final lines,

just because it’s what we’ve been told
doesn’t make it true.

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By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, Eco-friendly, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, General Commentary, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Uncategorized Tagged with , , ,

After reading this post on the Indoor Health Council’s blog, I wrote a response worth sharing with you:

Cleaning by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Re: The Problem with Green Standard Offerings: You write, “focus on the main issue, health-focused cleaning; directing energy to one and not two main goals: health or sustainability, not both, or you compromise the program.” We need a reframing here.

The question is not whether to choose health over green practices (of course we do!). The better question is how to achieve the health outcomes while also minimizing negative and maximizing positive environmental impacts. As one very easy example, how much packaging do we really need? Does it really increase safety to wrap every component of a kit individually, place the wrapped components on a foam tray, wrap the entire inner contents, box the wrapped set, and then add another layer of shrinkwrap around the box, stick the box in a case with 11 others, shrinkwrap the case, stack cases on a pallet, and then wrap the pallet?

For that matter, could some of the components in that kit be used again? Why do we design so many products to be used once and then thrown away?

My comment ended there–but that’s only the beginning of a much larger discussion. Some other questions to raise would include:

  • When can we use nontoxic natural cleansers and disinfectants such as baking soda and peroxide–and when do we actually need something stronger?
  • Can we get our cleaning agents in eco-friendly formats such as pellets to be dissolved in water, rather than harmful ones such as aerosol cans?
  • What are the most ergonomic ways to clean that protect our hands, shoulders, and backs from injury?
  • How do we most effectively train cleaning personnel to understand health, environmental, and safety issues?

Please add your own questions in the comments.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, General Commentary, language, Mindset, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

A popular music festival in Atlanta, founded back in 1996, will not be taking place in Piedmont Park (or anywhere else) this September as scheduled. The organizers cancelled it, apparently because of Georgia’s ever-more-skewed laws that give gun owners the right to carry weapons at massive public events. Apparently, this right is stronger in Georgia (and elsewhere) than the rights of people who might not care to be shot at while enjoying a concert. The event was actively targeted by gun worshippers who informed the festival organizers that they’d be sued if they tried to block access to ticket holders bearing firearms, even though contracts with artists mandated a no-gun policy.

While the cause of cancellation was widely reported in media as diverse as The Hill (a nonpartisan political blog), Rolling Stone, and CNN, the organizers are publicly blaming unspecified “unforeseen circumstances.”

Which is really a shame. I hope the organizers find the courage to say, “Georgia legislators, YOU and your guns-without-limits laws are the reason we had to cancel. You’ve cost Atlanta hospitality business owners (restaurants, hotels, etc.) millions in lost revenue because you do not allow us a way to keep our artists and patrons safe.”

Because THAT kind of messaging is how we will eventually, finally, turn back the culture of gun-rights-matter-more-than-human-rights. All the deaths of little kids and innocent bystanders haven’t mattered despite Sandy Hook, Columbine, Tree of Life, Las Vegas, Texas, and all the other horrific mass shootings.

And if businesses, conference organizers and others start boycotting states with obscenely pro-gun policies, the change will come faster.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Democracy, General Commentary, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, privacy, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Muhammad Ai probably wore gloves like these. Photo by Wojciech Ner.
Our rights are under attack! Photo by Wojciech Ner.

Ever since the upcoming decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked, I’ve been stewing on it. Tomorrow, I am going to my second rally to uphold women’s reproductive rights. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it is. If we can prevent Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale from moving from a dystopian novel to a description of life in 2020s America, it’s our obligation to do so. I don’t know about you, but I do not want to live in anyplace resembling the theocratic dictatorship of Gilead that she describes.

I will not address the valid question of when does a fetus’s life take precedence over the mother’s because I don’t have the medical qualifications to give an answer that is based on fact. But let me raise a personal liberty argument: I will bring up the extension of the upcoming court decision to other areas, because we know that is coming–and because it personally affects my family. One former National Review editor actually posted on social media, “Next stop Brown vs. Board!” That was the decision that outlawed segregation in 1954. Here’s a screenshot of that post (NOTE: the blog that shows the post is a foul-mouthed screed–but you can see a picture of the post and learn some useful information about the person who wrote that post).
There is no doubt in my mind that they will go after easier marks first: such as the LGBT community and especially the T (trans) part. But they’ve said it out loud (or at least in a Tweet): they will eventually go after interracial couples–and likely, eventually, the ability to even socialize with people of different skin colors (see this analysis from Reuters).
Alito has a long history of speaking out against same-sex marriage and cannot be trusted not to use the same twisted reasoning to go after it. He also authored the Hobby Lobby case, which could be seen as a wedge decision that could eventually be used to eliminate legal contraception. In both of these probable attacks on our rights, it gets personal for me.
  • My younger child identifies as nonbinary, uses they-them pronouns, and is five years into a beautiful relationship with someone who has the same types of body parts and chromosomes but a very different cultural and religious upbringing. I fully support them, their choice of identity, and their wonderful life-partner.
  • My older one married another lovely guy from a different cultural and religious upbringing–who is the product of a White father and a Latina mom who clearly has indigenous ancestry. He is an excellent life partner for my daughter. My wife and I love both of our kids’ partners.
  • My mother, raised in a super-observant Orthodox Jewish family, divorced my father and married a Japanese man who was raised Buddhist. She also did some pretty intense civil rights work, including serving as a tester for the Urban League to determine if those apartments declined to Black families were really “already rented.”
  • I identify as bi and have had relationships before my marriage with both men and women. And I have slept with people who were not the same color as me. If I were my kids’ age, I might well have chosen to identify as nonbinary. While I am now very comfortable in my maleness, I was very UNcomfortable with it in my teens and 20s.
  • I am a survivor of rape by a grown male stranger who literally grabbed me off the street when I was 10 or 11. Fortunately, becoming pregnant was not an issue–but what if I’d been a 15-year-old girl, and had been forced to bear a child whose every moment would remind me of the violence done to me–a violence that was extremely traumatic even without a pregnancy?
Let’s also put this into a wider context: this is the same Supreme Court that recently decided that the Centers for Disease Control does not have the right to control disease by mandating masks in public conveyances–so you could be sitting next to a superspreader on a six-hour flight with no protection other than your own voluntary mask, and a coughing fit on a rush-hour subway car could expose dozens.
In fact, two people I’m very close to, who bought plane tickets before the mask mandate was overturned but flew later, have come down with COVID. I am flying next month, and I’m not happy about it. But my 91-year-old dad no longer travels and it’s important to see him when we can.
Even before that inane ruling, it was necessary to fight for my right to protect myself and the people I pod with. I refused to sit next to someone on a plane who would not mask (while that ruling was still in effect), and he was eventually taken off the plane. And at our official Town Meeting last week, I had to call a Point of Order to demand that the inadequate separation of masked and unmasked on opposite sides of an aisle be enforced, after asking someone to either put on a mask or go sit in the no-mask section. You would think the anti-vax crowd would actually be in favor of masks in public indoor spaces, since they would have lower risk of getting a bad case of COVID–but no. I still don’t understand the way these basic public health measures have been weaponized, even after many prominent mask critics contracted fatal cases. After all, we have seat belt laws, motorcycle helmet laws,  and requirements that school children receive various other vaccines.
The same back-asswards SCOTUS logic that killed the transportation mask mandate could threaten the abilities of OSHA and EPA (and many other agencies) to protect citizens in their domains. This is the same Supreme Court that has upheld discriminatory voting rules in several decisions. Here’s a Fox News report on the decision to hear a case in Arizona where they later decided in favor of the state and against election justice activists— and here’s a report on the actual decision, from C|Net.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Environment, General Commentary, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

It’s easy to get discouraged when we look around and see all the problems. But it’s also crucial to see our progress and celebrate our victories. The massive outpouring following the murder of George Floyd is one recent example of a people’s movement that made change. His murderer, a white cop who would have been expected to get off, was convicted, and many communities have been grappling with the role of police.

Nonviolent peace demonstration in Britain
Nonviolent peace demonstration in Britain

I am 65 years old and have been an activist for 52 years. In my short time, I’ve seen people’s movements achieve many victories for human rights, for the planet, and for ending poverty. Yes, the pace is too slow. But yes, the wheels of positive change are turning. When I was a child, segregation was still the law in the American South and in openly racist apartheid regimes like South Africa and Rhodesia. If women worked, it was mostly as teachers, nurses, and domestic. Lesbians and gays were completely marginalized and ridiculed–and bisexual or trans people were invisible. People with disabilities were often warehoused in horrible institutions. Agriculture was so focused on overprocessed foods with the nutrition stripped out and chemicals put in. Most people had never even heard about the environment and concern around climate change was almost unknown–while factories spewed toxins into the air and water. The UN Sustainable Development Goals would not be written for decades. Nuclear power and fossil fuels were all that people thought about for energy, and no attempt was made to conserve or recycle.

WE, THE PEOPLE, CHANGED ALL THAT! And we can do it again and again. We may not live to see the change we want, but we CAN make a difference when we work together for change. If future generations have better conditions because of our efforts, our work is not for naught–just as the work of people in the 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, 1950s, and all the way back for centuries made things better for us.

Knowing that moving the business world is crucial to leverage change, I’ve focused much of my career as a writer, speaker, and consultant on showing that when business chooses to operate in ways that make a difference for such issues as hunger, poverty, racism/othering, democracy, war, and catastrophic climate change (to name a few), they can succeed financially as well. I’ve set up a website at https://GoingBeyondSustainability.com to provide resources for that transition.

On the activist side, I’ve been involved with many causes over the years, and have had a few victories, including starting the movement that saved a mountain threatened by a disgusting real estate development. Because we always had the mindset that we would win, we did, and it was quick–just 13 months. My current main cause is immigration justice–but all the issues are related and we have to seem them holistically.

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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, General Commentary, Gratitude, Innovation, language, People Helping People, Psychology, Science, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,
Years ago, I subscribed to Brain Pickings (recently rebranded as The Marginalian): Maria Popova’s amazing twice-weekly celebration of science, art, music, literature, and nature. While I have no memory of how I first discovered it, I immediately embraced the abundant world she lives in, and her eagerness to share the treasures she finds.

First screen of Maria Popova’s introduction to Ursula Le Guin’s essay, On Being a Man”

 
I rarely read it, but I will keep my subscription, thank you. Every issue is a gem—and every issue is a rabbit hole that leaves me following so many links that I don’t emerge for 30 or 60 minutes. And if I only dip in every once in a while, it’s still a special pleasure.
 
Long ago, I resigned myself to knowing that the richness of the world’s knowledge is something I can only skim the surface of, no matter how many books and articles I read and how many podcasts and seminars I listen to. I read more than most people—80+ books and thousands of articles in a typical year—but it’s still 0.000000001 percent of what I COULD immerse myself into, if I didn’t have a life to live, a living to earn, and eyes that need to rest. I’ve made my peace with that reality and don’t waste energy on FOMO (fear of missing out), nor do I beat myself up for not striving harder to soak it all in.
 
I’m really glad I opened today’s newsletter. I followed links to Ursula Le Guin’s poem “Kinship,” which Popova describes accurately as a “love poem to trees.” That led me first to one then another remarkable poem by Jane Hirshfield—the first read by the author and the second by Amanda Palmer (unfortunately, I took an unmarked turn somewhere in the rabbit hole and can’t get back to those—but I did create a long list of Hirshfield poems on Popova’s site). Then I went back to the current edition and read Le Guin’s witty essay on gender pronouns and aging. I could have stayed much longer, following links until my eyes bugged out.
 
In fact, I finally became a paying monthly sustainer just now—something I should have done years ago!

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, General Commentary, Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

One of the graphs in the Leonhardt article shows that tax rates for the top 0.01 percent of earners are approaching the rate foe the bottom 90 percent.
One of the graphs in the Leonhardt article shows that tax rates for the top 0.01 percent of earners are approaching the rate foe the bottom 90 percent.

For most of us in the US who are neither super-wealthy nor desperately poor, our largest financial asset is our home. And we pay annual taxes on the worth of that asset–called property tax. Here in Massachusetts, we also pay annual excise taxes on our cars and certain other kinds of property.  David Leonhardt of the New York Times explains this eloquently in today’s This Morning newsletter, with lots of charts and graphs to make the data more understandable. I strongly recommend this article.

But while those whose multiple lavish mansions represent only a tiny fraction of their financial worth also pay property taxes, most of their wealth is not taxed except that portion that arrives new each year (income).

Let’s not forget that when Dwight Eisenhower was president, the top federal marginal tax rate on income was astonishingly higher than it is now: 91 percent at the top end, until it was lowered during Lyndon Johnson’s first full year to 77 percent. It’s been lowered again several times, and now stands at 37 percent, according to the Tax Foundation. President Biden has proposed a slight increase, to 39.6 percent.

The effective rate is much  lower, though. Only the amount of income above the threshold for that rate (currently $628,301) is taxed at that rate. Each portion of income is taxed at the bracket for that level. So if you file singly and make $700,000 (and I don’t come anywhere near that), only $71,699 is taxed at 37 percent. The first $9950 is taxed at just 10 percent, the next $30,575 is taxed at 12 percent, and so on. This is why it is often an advantage to file jointly with your spouse–because more of your money is taxed at the lower rates. In the above example, $19,900 would be taxed at the 10 percent level, versus $99,000 if you split the income evenly and each filed separately.

Having dropped the tax rate on the wealthiest income earners by about 60 percent, the government has been considerably less aggressive about making up the difference. The One Percent used to pay heavily in the year  they acquired the money–but now that they’re paying much less, an asset tax could help fund the things we really want government to do: Clean up the planet, educate and protect all its citizenry, provide services and a leg up for the disempowered, and make sure no one is crushed by the ever-growing costs of basic survival. In other words, Build Back Better and the Green New Deal. Both of these will create massive numbers of new jobs, clean up the planet, and leave the average person with more money in their bank account.

Doing these things costs money. And that money comes from taxes and fees. 16 European countries with high standards of living and high quality of life have marginal tax rates between 45-56 percent. But look what they get for their money!

So Let’s Get It Done in the US, Already!

In our country, we are facing an absurd situation where two Democratic Senators representing less than three percent of the total population are holding America hostage. They say we can’t afford these investments, but they also shoot down all attempts to institute mechanisms to pay for them. And an even more absurd situation where most laws can only pass with a supermajority and virtually all Republican Senators refuse to vote for anything that the Democrats support. So much for the vaunted bipartisanship Senator Manchin in particular keeps insisting on. But the American people strongly support these investments.

It’s time to turn that support into action. First, write your Senators. You can find their addresses here. Use the appropriate sample letter (or letters, if you have one Senator in each party) from the three below as a model, but take three minutes to make it uniquely your own (especially the first sentence and the last three sentences), so it doesn’t look like a form letter. Better yet, write yur own, from scratch. If you live out-of-state, don’t lobby Manchin or Sinema directly. That will be counterproductive. Instead, reach out to friends, family members, people who are in the same organizations you participate in who do live in those states. If you are a business owner, start with “As a business owner and constituent in…”

Second, get involved. Do some phone banking or text banking or postcard writing. Show up when organizations like Fairvote, Movement Voter Project, Common Cause, voting rights divisions of NAACP and ACLU, and environmental groups hold rallies, lobbying days, meetings, and presentations. Personally contact your own friends and family. write letters to the editor for publication in your local newspaper. Be an election protection volunteer.

If you live in West Virginia or Arizona

Dear Senator,

As a constituent in [your town and state], I am deeply concerned at your role in blocking an agenda that most Americans support. 48 of your fellow Senate Democrats have shown incredible willingness to compromise with your demands–but you keep moving the goalposts. It is well past time for you to find a way to support these necessary Build Back Better, Green New Deal, and Voting Rights bills that will get the job done, give the Democrats something to brag about in next year’s crucial elections, and improve lives for all residents of our wonderful state. You will have another feather in your cap if you can bring these bills into law, even if it means getting them out from under the filibuster. But you will lose local support if you keep blocking the progress we so desperately need. I am eager to vote for a Senator who has put the needs of constituents ahead of narrow corporate and special interests. Please BE that Senator.

Sincerely,

[Your name and postal/email addresses]

If You Have One or Two Republican Senators

Dear Senator,

As a constituent in [your town and state], I am deeply concerned at your role in blocking an agenda that most Americans support. President Biden came to you in a spirit of bipartisanship. Senators Manchin and Sinema came to you in a spirit of bipartisanship. 48 of your fellow Senators have shown incredible willingness to compromise with your demands–but you keep moving the goalposts. We citizens of [your state] did not elect you to be an obstacle to programs that we desperately need, just because it wasn’t the Republicans who proposed them. It is well past time for you to find a way to support necessary infrastructure that goes beyond roads and bridges, address the carbon crisis with job-creating green initiatives, and ensure that every citizen has the right to vote and have that vote counted. Please, let’s see you be a Senator who represents the entire state, not just narrow special interests and conspiracy theorists. You will lose local support if you keep blocking the progress we so desperately need. I will use my volunteer hours and my campaign contributions dollars  to vote for a Senator or candidate who has put the needs of constituents ahead of narrow corporate and special interests. Please BE that Senator.

Sincerely,

[Your name and postal/email addresses]

If You Have One or Two Democratic Senators

Dear Senator,

As a constituent in [your town and state], I am deeply concerned at the lack of progress on an agenda that most Americans support: upgrading necessary infrastructure that goes beyond roads and bridges, addressing the carbon crisis with job-creating green initiatives, and ensuring that every citizen has the right to vote and have that vote counted. I appreciate that you and 47 of your fellow Senators have shown incredible willingness to compromise–but Senators Manchin and Sinema keep moving the goalposts farther backward and the Republicans are not even interested. We citizens of [your state] are counting on YOU to move those goal posts forward again, to convince those obstructionist Senators that they need to represent the entire state, not just narrow special interests and conspiracy theorists. If you can get them to stop blocking the progress our nation so desperately needs, I will eagerly use my volunteer hours and my campaign contributions dollars to support you as a Senator or candidate who has convinced the holdouts to put the needs of constituents ahead of narrow corporate and special interests. Please BE that Senator.

Sincerely,

[Your name and postal/email addresses]Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Ethics: General, General Commentary, language, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , ,

We hear a lot about being shamed for doing the right thing–yet there’s little mention of the internal shame we might feel when we FAIL to step up and be vulnerable. I have very few regrets in my life, but I feel shame about three incidents where I had the chance to do the right thing and didn’t take it: one was right after we bought our first house and our immediate neighbors invited us over to get acquainted–and made a racist remark about Puerto Ricans. Knowing I was going to have to live next to these people for years, I chose to remain silent and I still feel shame over that. The other was many years earlier, when, as a teenager in high school, I walked by a large man who was addressing a petite young woman. He turned straight to me and asked, “doesn’t she have tiny t–ts?” I knew I didn’t want to encourage him but at 14 or 15, I didn’t yet have the languaging to effectively interrupt that kind of oppression. I didn’t know how to throw some comfort her way without sending him into a potentially violent rage against her. I took the cheap cop-out, “I can’t see. Her arm is in her way.”

The third was even earlier. I think I was 11. My only summer in sleep-away camp. There were six of us in my bunk. Three were bullies, two of us were constantly picked on, and the 6th was our protector. Near the end of that horrible two weeks, the bullies forced me and the other scrawny kid to fight each other. He was even weaker than me. Shamefully, I chose the self-protection of not getting beaten up by the three thugs. I hit him as gently as I could. Our protector (a small-framed boy, but one with enormous self-confidence) walked in near the end of the battle and was disgusted with the me. I lost his respect. He gained even more respect from me. And I don’t think I’ve hit anyone since.

And I was enormously proud decades later when my daughter, then just six years old, interrupted the bullying of the odd-boy in her kindergarten. 

The shame of letting others down and not being true to myself I felt in these three incidents is very different than the shame I felt at about age 11 when I experienced a rape by a stranger on the street (yeah, I’m a male #MeToo). I felt horribly unclean and ashamed, but I knew this was out of my control. Still, it was four years before I could bring myself to tell anyone–and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I didn’t discover my bisexuality until I moved 600 miles (1000 km) away from that stairwell.

There are plenty of times when I did speak out. When I did the right thing. When I took some personal risk. But these three failures still hang over me. The most recent was in 1986, yet, all those decades later, I am still ashamed.

Are there times in your life that YOU regret not stepping up?

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Ethics: General, General Commentary, Gratitude, Innovation, language, People Helping People, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , ,
Here’s a true incident from my teenage college years. I made a mild request to a group of people and one of my dorm-mates lit into me about how I was always so selfish and didn’t care about other people. It hurt like hell to hear this–but I reflected on it and decided that he had a point. So I changed my behavior. Decades later, I saw him at a reunion and thanked him. He had no memory of the incident, but to me it was a key turning point.

Paths of apology and Forgiveness

Criticism usually has a grain of truth (or sometimes a bushel)–so start by expressing thanks, even if it’s delivered nastily. Especially, then, because listening and appreciating is the only way you’re going to get into a positive outcome with someone who’s hostile. Listen, let them get their feelings out, acknowledge their feelings, meaningfully apologize for your action if that’s appropriate. And even if you don’t feel a need to apologize for the behavior or policy, apologize for upsetting them or making them feel unvalued. Don’t try to explain or justify your action yet. Just listen.And whatever you do, don’t say, “I’m sorry, but…”–that’s not an apology. Keep an ear out for the opportunity to take a specific step that will help, and offer, out loud, to take that step. That might just be informing them ahead the next time, or it might be completely undoing an action. You have to decide how much of the criticism is justified and figure out what the real issue is (which may not be the expressed issue).
Once the other person is done venting and you’ve apologized or de-escalated, you might (but might not) want to ask, “would you like to know why I did it that way? Maybe we could think together about how I could do it differently next time so both of our needs get met.” With this, you make them a partner in your growth, and you increase the likelihood of finding a viable solution for both of you, building a relationship of cooperation, not hostility. But you’re really asking. if they decline, drop it. They don’t want to be your partner in potentially changing their behavior, or maybe they are just tired of doing the work of educating others on an issue that is a sore spot for them.
Abundance thinking applies not just to stuff or lifestyle, but to relationships. This is a strategy to create abundance by welcoming even the nay-sayers. Not only do you get to build a relationship, you discover flaws in your thinking, planning, and action that you might not have seen and can now work around. Who knows–maybe your critics will even become your friends or your business partners.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, General Commentary, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , ,

A lead story in my local paper covers a proposed ordinance banning plastic in local businesses, with special attention to food businesses, in the small city of Northampton, MA (a big restaurant destination).

The sponsoring City Councilor is someone I know, and I wrote her this note:

Thanks for your good work on the plastics ordinance. As you know, I’ve been a green guy for 50 years, write books and give talks on greening business. One of my talks is called “Making Green Sexy.” Thus, the concerns I have with the plastics bill you’re championing are not about the intent. I would like to see potential problems addressed before it becomes law–so we avoid a debacle like the one we just had over the Main Street improvements (which I loved) and their sad, swift demise).

My big concern is that “recyclable” food containers aren’t recyclable, because paper and cardboard with food waste is not recyclable. We already know we’re not supposed to recycle pizza boxes. Any food waste in paper for recycling could cause the whole batch (potentially thousands of pounds) to be landfilled. It would make more sense to 1) require compostable, and 2) provide city composting stations in several neighborhoods as well as multiple ones downtown. It makes no sense to require compostable and do nothing to encourage composting. Many people will eat their food while still downtown and won’t be bothered to bring their compostable containers to their home compost pile or may not have access to composting at home.

Second, on the straw issue [banning plastic drinking straws]. Why not simply make an exemption for people with motor disabilities in their arms or mouth. For most businesses, a box of 100 plastic straws would probably last months.

Please share this note with your committee at today’s meeting.

We see over and over again that good intentions, not thought through, create more problems than they solve. The Main Street issue involved the city making its extremely wide Main Street much friendlier to bicyclists, pedestrians, and patrons of restaurant outdoor dining areas (which, in the pandemic, have increased in number tremendously)—but failing to get buy-in from (or even consult with) affected business owners, who agitated successfully, and the mayor removed all the improvements. This was sad, as a better situation returned to a worse one, wasting significant money in the process.

In my mind, the lesson was to think things through before acting.

I got this response, which shows that the councilors are indeed thinking about these issues:

Hi Shel- thanks for your support and counsel! Straws for those with disabilities are exempt. We are requiring reusable or compostable and are working on composting services and bulk buying.

Which then says to me that they’ve got a marketing challenge. The general public doesn’t know about this exemption. They also had a marketing challenge with the Main Street improvements. Getting affected parties to participate in decisions that affect them is always a good strategy. Putting in improvements only to discover that vested interests will fight them is not. The trick is to win over those vested interests before they dig in their heels.

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