Category: General Commentary

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, General Commentary, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Guest post by Paul Loeb

Remember the World Trade Organization, which slipped into the shadows after massive Seattle protests in 1999? The same day last week that Congress initially blocked the possibility of fast track approval for the TPP trade agreement, the House voted to overturn rules requiring country-of-origin labeling for meat. Those supporting the vote said they were responding to a World Trade Organization ruling, judging US country-of-origin labeling unfair competition with meat coming from foreign countries like Canada and Mexico, and therefore a violation. They said they had no choice for fear of triggering sanctions or lawsuits from countries exporting meat across our borders.

I don’t know about you, but I like knowing whether my meat comes from Iowa or Uzbekistan, Montana or Mexico, Kentucky or Kenya. So do 93% of Americans, according to a Consumer’s Union survey. People like supporting US farmers, cutting down distance travelled, knowing there will be at least minimal inspection standards, even if the delights of e coli occasionally slip through. It seems commonsensical that we’d want at least the chance to become informed consumers, whether with the origins of our meat, GMO-derived crops, or the amount of sugar and calories in our baked goods.

Maybe the House members are wrong in insisting that the international tribunals that adjudicate trade disputes would deem this a violation. But if this particular House bill passes the Senate and gets signed by Obama, even the mere possibility of a lawsuit will have struck down a wholly reasonable law that protects our health and supports our local economies. And if TPP passes the Senate, other attempts to regulate commerce for the common good will be potentially gutted as well, from attempts at financial regulation to limits on the prices charged for drugs, to environmental rules and seemingly innocuous actions like requiring accurate labeling. Some of this could occur through legal action, and some through the mere fear that such action could occur.

Now maybe TPP won’t contain rules on meat. Maybe it will simply limit other ways we might try to exert our sovereignty over critical choices that affect us. But we do know that this agreement—involving countries constituting 40% of the global economy—through what’s called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement process, will establish unaccountable tribunals with the power to let corporations collect damages for loss of profits. We don’t know the precise reach of the agreement because ordinary citizens haven’t seen it. Even Congressional opponents were prohibited from taking notes when they looked at it, and “cleared advisors” who’ve seen it have been legally prohibited from talking specifics. Yet we’re told it represents an inevitable future, that the benefits will trickle down to ordinary citizens, and that those who ask reasonable questions about its profound implications are merely obstructionist whiners.

So do we demand full transparency before moving ahead? Or do we trust that the corporations that negotiated these rules have our interests at heart, and would never, in the slightest, harm our democracy? Whether or not the country-of-origin labeling on meat survives or is ended by the House bill and WTO ruling, TPP plays for far larger stakes, the ground rules that affect our very potential to take common action. The meat bill is one more warning that there are some rules and agreements where we should be careful to eagerly swallow.

Paul Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While

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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Eco-friendly, Environment, General Commentary, localism/locavore Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Over the past several months, I’ve been learning more about biomimcry: emulating nature’s designs to solve problems humans need solved. Often, the results are aesthetically pleasing, environmentally friendly, and energy conserving.

While, as far as I know, he wasn’t paying attention to energy use or design challenges like harvesting rainwater in the desert, the famed late-19th/early-20th century architect and artist Antoni Gaudí certainly was a biomimic. Here’s what the Barcelona Tourist Guide says about Gaudí:

Most of Gaudí’s constructions have an organic look to them. This basic concept of using nature as the primary influences for his creativity is reflected in the use of the natural curved construction stones, twisted iron sculptures, and organic-like shapes—all of which are characteristic traits of Gaudí’s architecture.

I just visited Barcelona, where Gaudí left his mark and helped inspire the whole Modernist movement that gives today’s Barcelona so much character—and I found myself thinking often about biomimicry, and how the Modernists used nature forms to create a powerful aesthetic. Many of our other great inventors took inspiration from nature as well; Da Vinci and Buckminster Fuller were also biomimics.

In addition to his world-famous cathedral, La Sagrada Familia Basilica, commenced in 1882 and not yet finished, he did several residential buildings, a palace for his patron, and even a stunning municipal park.

But the Sagrada Familia is probably the single best reason to visit Barcelona. It’s just magnificent. The interior and exterior are completely different experiences. The exterior is almost like it was done by an out-of-control cake decorator with a compulsion to sculpt every available surface; the interior is serene and calm, yet soaring and spiritually uplifting. It feels almost like some of the great mosques in Istanbul.

The exterior is iconic; you’ve surely seen photographs.

Exterior shot, Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona
Arch and four towers of the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, designed by Antoni Gaudií

But to me, the deeper experience of this building is the sacred space within the walls. This brief movie clip gives at least a little taste of the Sagrada Familia interior experience. 

 

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Diversity, General Commentary, language, propaganda, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , ,

A friend shared a meme on Facebook this morning: photo of an Assembly of God church marquee with this message on its movable sign: “A free thinker is Satan’s slave.”

Interestingly, many of the most deeply religious people I know would take strong issue with that. They engage with God intellectually. They argue with God when they feel it’s justified. An honorable tradition that goes back at least to Abraham—who, in one of the most remarkable stories in the entire Bible, argues with God about destroying Sodom and Gomorra. Abraham asks if God would spare the cities if there are 50 righteous citizens. God agrees. And then Abraham keeps negotiating, until God agrees to save the city if only 10 righteous souls are present.

But apparently even this is too high a barrier. All they can find are Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family—and they are not exactly models of terrific human behavior. They are taken to safety and the cities are destroyed.

Though I’m not particularly religious, I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household. People obeyed the commandments as they understood them, but spent lots of time debating their merits—and, for that matter, dissecting the world’s news. And of course, much of the commentary on the Torah came from the sages of old, who would spend hours discussing the intricacies and shades of meaning of some obscure passage. In today’s world, the Jewish Renewal movement (which I do consider myself a part of) has again, actively engaged, reinvented traditions, and provided lots of commentary.

And this is certainly not an exclusively Jewish trait. From the Catholic Worker, Vatican II, and Liberation Theology movements to the preachings of Pope Francis, we see active engagement permeating Catholicism. And we find similar movements in the Islamic, Protestant, and Buddhist worlds (think about the Dalai Lama, for example). And, I’m guessing, in every other significant religion.

The miracle of religion, in my mind, is that people do question, grapple, argue, test out theories—and continue to come back to their own personal version of God.

I feel sorry for the person who crafted the message on the sign.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Demographics/Psychographics, General Commentary, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,
Happy mother and baby
Happy mother and baby—photo by Cynthia Turek

The 2015 edition of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s World Happiness Report is out. It lists the five happiest countries.

Drumroll, please…

 

  1. Switzerland
  2. Iceland
  3. Denmark
  4. Norway
  5. Canada

Isn’t that interesting? Every one of the five is a social democracy with a strong safety net. The four European countries are also known for their leadership in reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint; in fact, Iceland’s stationery power needs are met almost entirely through (renewable, clean) geothermal and hydro. These are countries that take care of their own. Their citizens correctly assume that medical care, education, and so forth are their right, and that government will do what it can to assist in preserving the earth as human habitat. The social services are funded by higher taxes than we pay in the US, but they get something for their money. And none of them are highly militarized or known for excessive violence. (Yes the Swiss do have universal male military service— but they don’t fight wars, and in my two trips to Switzerland, I’ve hardly even seen a soldier.)

Despite the cold climates where all five are located, these are happy people.

Now, if only we could get politicians in the US to pay attention.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Diversity, General Commentary, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

Starbucks has been getting a lot of flack since announcing its “Race Together” initiative. People are mostly either calling the company self-serving or questioning why a cafe chain would want to take on an agenda that seems so unrelated to its core business.

Now, I’ve certainly criticized companies for cause marketing that seems to have nothing to do with its purpose. For example, I’ve publicly questioned why Ford has chosen to support a breast cancer charity rather than something related to, say, transportation access.

And I’ve given space to Starbucks critics like Dean Cycon of Dean’s Beans, who says the coffee giant could be doing a lot more on sustainability, fair trade, and organic.

But I actually think this time Starbucks did something sensible and good, and I was really pretty shocked at the negative media firestorm.

Consider this:

  • In the post-Ferguson climate, where black communities are showing righteous anger about police violence, race is back on the agenda
  • Many legislative bodies are imposing onerous barriers to registering and voting, ostensibly to stop “voter fraud” (which is close to zero)—but whose deeper agenda seems to be denying the vote to people of color and those with low incomes
  • As a culture, when we want to talk things over, we do so over coffee—so what better place to start a national conversation?
  • Starbucks has thousands of locations in cities—Ground Zero for the recent race incidents; thus, the company has a vested interest in de-escalating tensions and opening dialog so those stores continue to thrive, in addition to the moral grounds it cites

While writing the message “Race together” on cups ends today, Starbucks continues to see fostering dialog on race as a priority. In a public letter yesterday to the company’s employees, CEO Howard Schultz wrote,

We have a number of planned Race Together activities in the weeks and months to come: more partner open forums, three more special sections co-produced with USA TODAY over the course of the next year, more open dialogue with police and community leaders in cities across our country, a continued focus on jobs and education for our nation’s young people plus our commitment to hire 10,000 opportunity youth over the next three years, expanding our store footprint in urban communities across the country, and new partnerships to foster dialogue and empathy and help bridge the racial and ethnic divides within our society that have existed for so many years…The heart of Race Together has always been about humanity: the promise of the American Dream should be available to every person in this country, not just a select few.  We leaned in because we believed that starting this dialogue is what matters most.  We are learning a lot. And will always aim high in our efforts to make a difference on the issues that matter most.

If this is self-serving, I say we need more of that kind of self-serving.

 

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By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Shel's Personal Life, travel Tagged with , ,

The famous globe at the Epcot Center entrance
The famous globe at the Epcot Center entrance
On my fifth trip to Orlando, staying 3 miles from the Walt Disney World entrance, I figured it was time. So I arranged for press comps and spent half a day at Epcot (the logical park for someone into both travel and outer space). I had low expectations, but the experience fell so far below those low expectations it was shameful.

I’d always thought that the travel half of Epcot attempted to recreate the experience of being in many different parts of the world. They featured exactly 11 countries, eight of which I’d been to. Nine of those 11 were exclusively about shopping and eating. Two actually had an educational exhibit (one of which, in the Japan pavilion, was quite well done but only took about 30 minutes to go through the whole thing). We did catch one excellent performance by a Chinese dance troupe. On the space side, the simulated space ride was excellent, but the rest of it was pretty mediocre, and the lines were very long. And considering that almost all the space exhibits had corporate sponsors, you’d think they could do something about the very high admission fees.

I’d experienced a similar space simulation 40 miles away at the Kennedy Space Center, a much more interesting park overall, and considerably cheaper, to boot. In fact, we liked Kennedy so much, we went back the next day to see the parts we’d missed. If you’re going to Orlando and you’ve got a personality like mine, it’s a better bet.

The whole experience made me very grateful that neither of my kids ever showed any interest in going to Disney. They’d much rather come with us to places like Denmark, Italy, and California (we live in Massachusetts).

Real places, in other words. Disney is a marketing machine that has very little to do with recreating reality.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, General Commentary, language, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, propaganda, Psychology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , ,

This may be a new level of stupidity. Murdoch-owned publishing behomoth HarperCollins actually prepared and started to sell an atlas that does not show Israel. At all. Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank are there.

No big surprise, there was lots of pushback when word got out, and HC removed the atlas from circulation and said it would pulp any remaining copies. Even the UK Bishops’ Conference Department of International Affairs condemned the publication as a blow against peace in the region.

The company sheepishly withdrew, saying,

HarperCollins sincerely apologises for this omission and for any offence caused.

But the company is talking out of two sides of its mouth. Earlier, as reported in the Washington Post, it tried to justify the omission:

Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, told the Tablet that it would have been “unacceptable” to include Israel in atlases intended for the Middle East. They had deleted Israel to satisfy “local preferences.”

HarperCollins has quickly found out that it’s also unacceptable to abandon truth in a volume that claims to offer

“in-depth coverage of the region and its issues.” Its stated goals include helping kids understand the “relationship between the social and physical environment, the region’s challenges [and] its socio-economic development.”

Ummm, hello, and just how do you intend to put the region in context if you ignore the most conflicted issue it faces? Do you really think students in Arab countries haven’t heard of it? Did you really think this would stay a safe little conspiratorial secret just for the cognoscenti?

HarperCollins would have been totally justified in marking the West Bank and Gaza as disputed territory held by Israel, following conquest. But there’s no dispute about Israel being a nation.

This is a time when we all have social media at our disposal. That means it not only should have been totally obvious that this would backfire, but HarperCollins had the tools at its disposal to make the governments demanding this absurdity to be the ones looking ridiculous. If any governments insisted on refusing entry to accurate atlases, the company could have had a skilled social media manager explain why HC would no longer sell atlases into these countries, and create a pressure movement both from outside the country and from those inside who recognize that not knowing geography is a handicap in the global economic arena, and the Gulf states would have lifted the restriction.

Instead, what HarperCollins has done is to eliminate its own credibility. It’s hard to imagine anyone in the future trusting any reference materials from this publisher. Blatant and deliberate repudiation of truth is not a recipe for success in the world of reference books—especially reference books about the world.

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, General Commentary, Innovation, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , ,

In yesterday’s post, “Does Making Decisions Lower Our Math Skills?” I looked at Paul Petrone’s article, “The Genius of Wearing the Same Outfit Every Day.” He describes why President Barack Obama (to simplify his day) and Steve Jobs (to brand himself) wear similar outfits day after day. Yesterday, I looked at the part of Petrone’s article that supported Obama’s reasoning, claiming that too many decisions weaken our brains. I took issue with that, as you’ll see if you click through.

But I’m basically in agreement with the other part of Petrone’s article: there can indeed be solid branding reasons behind keeping a wardrobe choice to a bunch of identical black turtlenecks, as Jobs did. For jobs, the black turtleneck made a lot of sense, for several reasons:

  • It’s sleek and modern looking, like Apple’s product line (at least if you stay trim, as Jobs did)
  • It reinforces the “think different” culture at Apple, a company that has built its brand from the beginning on not being the corporate-zombie persona that wears conventional business attire and buys conventional (IBM) computers; the very first Macintosh ad said, “you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’”

So now, let me jump into uncharted (and maybe shark-infested) waters: let’s look at President Obama’s wardrobe choice from a branding perspective. And let’s start by looking at the wardrobe choices of his own bed partner, First Lady Michelle Obama.

Michelle’s fashion choices for formal occasions are quite dramatic. Typically her outfits combine three elements: they’re bold, elegant, and surprising. She’s the most fashionista First Lady I can remember, surpassing even Jacqueline Kennedy.

Her husband Barack Obama, however, tends to dress “safe,” in conservative dark suits. When he wore a sharp-looking tan suit, he was heavily criticized—but I thought it was a good move, though years too late. (In fairness—the commentator who started it all said he didn’t care that the suit was tan, but he didn’t think it fit properly.) Still, in typical Barack Obama fashion, he retreated with his actions and went back to his power suits.

The problem is, those “safe” dark suits are at odds with the brand of his 2008 campaign: “change.” The boldness of his rhetoric wasn’t matched by the drab sameness of his attire.

I empathize with him. I don’t spend a lot of energy thinking about the clothes I wear, and I usually dress for comfort. I’m not particularly comfortable in suits and abhor neckties. But I do wonder—and here’s the big heresy:

Would President Barack Obama have had an easier time pushing an agenda of “change” if he had dressed the part?

If, starting on the campaign trail in 2007, he had emphasized Michelle Obama’s three wardrobe attributes of boldness, elegance, and surprise, would he have been better able to marshall support for his initiatives? Is the conformist wardrobe secretly saying “I’m not serious about change”?

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, General Commentary, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Here’s an odd one: Paul Petrone’s article, “The Genius of Wearing the Same Outfit Every Day,”  describes why President Obama (to simplify his day) and Steve Jobs (to brand himself) wear similar outfits day after day—and then supports Obama’s reasoning, saying that too many decisions weaken our brains. It’s gotten more than 1000 comments.

Leaving aside the flaw in the Obama example—he’s often photographed wearing something other than a suit—let’s look at Petrone’s claim, based on an L.A. Times article, “Too many decisions can tax the brain, research shows,” that too many decisions can lower math skills:

Two college professors…both found that a person has a limited amount of brain power in a day, so the more decisions they have to make, the weaker their decision-making process becomes…

Vohs…asked a group of random people how many decisions they made that day, and then asked them a series of simple math questions. The more decisions they made in the day, the worse they did on the math questions.

I was instantly skeptical.  1) I’d guess the more we train our brain to make interesting, challenging, important decisions, the more of those we empower it to make. But yes, if we fill our brains up with trivial decisions, we limit them.

And 2) there are many different kinds of decisions. Exercising critical thinking skills–or for that matter, intuitive snap judgments a la Gladwell’s “blink” theory–might actually boost our math performance. Other types of decisions could sharpen or weaken our math performance.

So I went back to the original article. The logic is far more nuanced than Petrone implies. What’s fatiguing is not how many decisions we make, but overwhelming choice in a single decision:

…When people have too many decisions to make — consumers end up making poor decisions, are more dissatisfied with their choices or become paralyzed and don’t choose at all.

And as the complexity of a decision increases, a person is more likely to look for ways—often erroneous—to simplify the choosing process. If there are 100 kinds of cereal, instead of looking at all of the characteristics, people will evaluate a product based on something familiar, such as brand name, or easy, such as price.

Now this actually does make sense. Marketers know fewer choices = more purchases.

Come back tomorrow for a look at the branding (Steve Jobs) part of Petrone’s argument. (Subscribe to this blog so you’ll be notified.)

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Business-general, General Commentary, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, privacy, Shel's Personal Life, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , ,

How many times will they try to beat us into submission before they see it doesn’t work?

It’s bad enough that I have to delete some 200 spams a day from my email inboxes…that I get at least 10 junk calls every week from robots, and another 5 or so from poorly trained humans…that I have to spend my precious time flushing spams out of the moderation queues on my WordPress sites.

It is absolutely unacceptable that today, not only did I get two bounce messages from Russia for emails I never sent, I actually got a robocall (about lowering my credit card rate) that showed up with my own name and number on caller ID!

I was among the first to sign up for the do-not-call list. I moderate my website comments, so no junk gets through. And I value my reputation to the point where if I could figure out how to track and report these scum who are trashing my good name pretending to be me, I would make things very ugly for them.

Attention spammers: if you think I will *ever* do business with someone who not only forces unwanted (and often-deceptive) intrusions on me, but actually forges my name to the attempt, you are sorely mistaken. To paraphrase Phil Ochs, “Stupid spammer, find another planet to be part of!” And in the meantime, at least get me OFF your list!

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