More than anything else, this is a piece about hope: about the power of each of us to have impact in our own lives, in the lives of those around us, in our communities, and to our ecosystem and the entire planet.
Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz
Two case studies from my own life:
How a Single Demonstration Redirected US Energy Away from a Super-Toxic and Dangerous Future to a Much Saner Alternative
At age 20, I was one of 1414 protestors arrested as we occupied the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear power plant. At that time, the US government was envisioning 1000 nuclear power plants around the country. They never got past about a tenth of that, and I’m convinced that the ripples from that demonstration have a lot to do with why. On the 40th anniversary, I wrote a five-part blog series about what happened and my take on why. That link will take you to part one, with jumps to each succeeding part at the bottom. It’s really important reading for activists, authors, business innovators, educators, and others who want to change the world.
How Changing What I Eat Led Me to a Writing and Marketing Career I don’t know the exact date, but I think some time last week marked 50 years since I stopped eating meat. I know that I threw a party to mark my conversion and planned to stop eating meat as of that late August date, but I’d actually stopped several days earlier. I’m grateful for several things about that transition:
1) that after almost four years as an activist it was the first major step I consciously took toward living lighter on the earth, changing my lifestyle to match by beliefs;
2) that it was the first time I was really thinking long-term and strategically: I came home from a fishing trip at age 12 and announced I was turning vegetarian. My mom immediately responded that vegetarianism would stunt my growth. I was already a runty kid, small and weak for my age, and we didn’t have the Internet to check easily—so I promised her that I’d wait—and promised myself that I would remember and honor my promise to go off meat once I’d reached that milestone);
3) that I actually was capable of remembering and fulfilling a promise made four years earlier
4) that the whole world of food alternatives began to open up to me with this transition. Although Yoshi had been part of my life for about five years and thus I had some exposure to Japanese food, we had very little money and seldom ate out, and my mom’s cooking was tilted heavily toward kid-pleasing macaroni casseroles and meat loaves. She was into whole wheat and brown rice, so we were a step ahead. But I knew nothing about the flavor and nutrition and cooking techniques of Indian, Thai, Turkish, Mexican, Ethiopian, Vegamerican, Szechuan, Arabic… I’d never made bread, or yogurt, or sprouts, or pretty much anything from scratch other than salad dressing. The deeper my explorations, the more exciting eating became.
5) that I would arrive two months later for my first term at Antioch College with a new identity and lifestyle, and would not have to remake myself later in the eyes of my peers: something that deepened once I did arrive on campus and (with 600 miles between me and the stairwell where I was raped by a stranger several years earlier) almost immediately got in touch with my bisexuality and became active in the school’s flourishing LGBT community—which in turn led me to be involved in campus theater, campus radio, my first public speaking, my first time running an organization, an extended and public dialogue with the town’s mostly-progressive but homophobic newspaper that gave me a window into the power of the press (and thus my career as a writer and marketer), and more.
Lessons for Organizers, Change Agents, and Business Visionaries
In other words, there’s truth in the parable about a single butterfly’s wings changing the climate on a different continent. Our actions ripple out and ripple out and ripple out again, and we never know the full consequences of those actions when we undertake them. I had no idea when I stopped eating meat how far that would reverberate and how much it would shape me. I had no idea when I took the training ahead of the Seabrook occupation that we would leave a national movement in our wake whose effects are still felt almost 50 years later. Did Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Mary Kay, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Edison, Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web), Mother Teresa, or Nelson Mandela know at the beginning of their careers what impact they’d have? I very much doubt it.
[Editor’s Note: I’ve been a fan of Bob Burg since discovering his “Winning WITHOUT Intimidation newsletter, about the power of being nice even when the other person isn’t, sometime in the mid’90s. He’s also known for “Endless Referrals” (how to network the right way)and the series of Go-Giver books. While he has discontinued that wonderful publication, he now offers a daily dose of inspiration called “Daily Impact,” which you can subscribe to by visiting https://burg.com/ , scrolling, and waiting for the pop-up subscription box. Being a fan for so long, I was delighted that Bob endorsed my most recent book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. The rest of this post was taken from that newsletter and used with his graceful permission.
Bob Burg: The Surprising Benefits of This Powerful Trait
Notable: Named by Harvard Business Review as one of the decade’s top 100 most successful CEOs, Mr. Allison and BB&T refused to participate in the subprime lending calamity leading up to the 2007 financial meltdown, choosing to write only conventional mortgages. He stated that the decision, as opposed to the majority of his banking colleagues, was actually an easy one for him to make. Why? Because subprime mortgages were contrary to the principles upon which he and his bank stood, i.e., “making their profit through providing value to their clients.” And when the cards came crashing down, his bank was left standing, both in great reputation and immense profitability.
After a brief but brilliant explanation regarding how one cannot act with integrity if one’s values are either contradictory or not aligned with reality, Mr. Allison made what I felt was another profound point…
Important: “Many people view integrity as some form of duty. Integrity is not a duty. It is a means to improve the probability of being successful and happy.”
A powerful statement because…
Key Point: If one displays integrity *only* out of obligation to others, he or she cannot be truly happy. It’s only when one lives with integrity because it is congruent with their own values and how they wish to relate to the world that it can lead to happiness and personal fulfillment.
The *additional* benefit to living with integrity is that others respect you; they trust you more…and they are more likely to want to be in relationship with you (both personally and professionally).
Yes, living with integrity certainly makes you more *valuable* to those whose lives you touch and influence.
It affects *you,* however, on a much deeper level.
Because, when it comes right down to it…
End Result:Â It allows you to genuinely feel good about yourself and live with a sense of joy, peace of mind, and happiness.
And isn’t that how you want to feel and to live?
Today’s Exercise: Discuss the above premise (that integrity is about internal *self*-benefits first and external benefits second) with different groups of people: your team members, entrepreneurs, friends, your children, etc. See where the agreement and disagreement might be. Could make for some interesting conversations and deep-level thinking.
El Greco’s painting of Jesus chasing the money changers out of the temple. Via Wikipedia.
There is a part of me that hopes the Republican Party nominates DeSantis, because when he loses the general election by a huge margin, it will be a repudiation of the entire loathsome cloak of hatred that DT and RDS both stand for. No one will be able to make a case that it was merely a rejection of DT’s criminal activity, egomania, lack of loyalty to those who stood by him, and/or incompetence.
I like to think–and maybe it’s a delusion–that the vast majority of US voters want no truck with either of these men’s open racism, homophobia/transphobia, self-defined “Christian” nationalism, xenophobia, attacks on women’s reproductive rights, love of guns more than the right not to be randomly shot, and all the rest of it.
If I were to flag every passage of Jesus living His life and preaching His truth in direct opposition to the intolerance, violence, and small-mindedness of these “Christians,” this post would go on for many pages. But the elevator-pitch version is simply this: If you call yourself a Christian and claim to follow the teachings of Jesus, you must be willing to accept and even celebrate values like peace, nonviolence, diversity, equality, respect for the natural environment, fair treatment of “the stranger” (immigrants, those of different races or ethnicities or gender orientation), and improving the lot of the poor and the ostracized.
And as an immigration justice, social justice, and environmental activist who has read the Gospels more than once even though I’m not a Christian, I welcome His allyship.
Bothsidesim, as you might have guessed, is the mainstream media’s tendency to pretend that reporting objectively requires covering “both sides” with equal weight. But here are a few problems with that approach:
Often, there are many more than two sides. Bothsidesism pushes other voices and more nuanced analysis to the margins, just as the two-party system that drives most US politics. Not everything can be separated into either/or, black/white, environmentally friendly/environmentally harmful. A great example would be US Supreme Court decisions in the 1970s, where Justices would frequently write concurring opinions that raised issues and perspectives outside the “official” opinion (this is less true of the current court, which disposes of many cases in the “shadow docket“).
When there are just two sides, one side may be well-reasoned and make a compelling case, while the other puts forth “alternative facts“–in other words, lies–to build a case based on demagoguery or deceit. (The link goes to an NBC clip of then presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway, 2 minutes in, introducing the term in an interview early in the term of the 45th US president–and the interviewer, Chuck Todd, calling her out immediately.)
Bothsidesim turns any contest of ideas into a “horse race” where the issues get swept aside in favor of who appears to be the better debater.
The current “debate” over DT’s federal indictment in the document-hiding case shows what happens when bothsidesim runs amok–and this is NOT about Republican vs. Democrat. While some media fall all over themselves to cry, “both sides did this,” quoting hyperpartisan pols like Ted Cruz, there is a lot of similarity between the approaches of Republican former VP Mike Pence and Democratic former VP (now president) Joe Biden, and basically none between either of them and DT.
DT falsely claimed all the documents had already been turned in and stalled so long that the government sent in the FBI to retrieve them. Also, DT’s document trove reportedly includes important military secrets, and DT showed these to people who were not authorized to see them–potentially putting our country and its military at risk.
The astute historian Heather Cox Richardson provides an equally current example thousands of miles outside the US. She quotes Timothy Snyder, a Yale scholar of authoritarianism on the recent Russian attack on Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka Dam:
Snyder warned journalists not to “bothsides” the story by offering equal time to both sides. “What Russian spokespersons have said has almost always been untrue, whereas what Ukrainian spokespersons have said has largely been reliable. The juxtaposition suggests a false equality,” he wrote. “The story doesn’t start at the moment the dam explodes. For the last fifteen months Russia has been killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, whereas Ukraine has been trying to protect its people and the structures that keep them alive.” “Objectivity does not mean treating an event as a coin flip between two public statements,” he said. “It demands thinking about the objects and the settings that readers require for understanding amidst uncertainty.”
Let’s hope that becomes the mantra for journalists everywhere.
Ramadan started Wednesday. Passover starts next Wednesday. Easter weekend begins two days after Passover. And today, the Wednesday halfway between the starts of these sacred Muslim and Jewish celebrations, we mourn. Again.
As a Jew, I’ll be celebrating Passover Seders next week with family and friends. Part of the Seder is a song called “Dayenu,” which means “It would have been enough for us.” The song thanks God for many miracles involving the exodus from Egypt and the journey across the desert.
Many Jews also add a second text: “Lo Dayenu”: It is NOT Enough for Us.” In the modern Midrashic tradition, lots of people have written their own versions. I like this “Lo Dayenu,” by Joy Stember.
Social Justice “Lo Dayenu” Seder reading by Joy Stember
With the six deaths in Nashville yesterday, the grisly total of people in the US killed in school mass shootings from Columbine in 1999 through yesterday has grown again. It reached 554 10 months ago. 554 children and adults who died for no reason other than a broken political process that gets in the way of even the most basic protection from gun violence. While they are quick to offer another round of “thoughts and prayers,” they offer no action. It is easier to get an assault rifle than a license to cut hair.
Interestingly, many of the guns-uber-alles crowd are the same people who suddenly discover that life is sacred after all, as long as it’s a life inside a pregnant woman (a position that happens to violate several religious traditions that consider the life of the mother more important than the life of an unborn fetus). But apparently, once these kids are born, they’re no longer important.
Here’s a basic human decency rule I’d love to see taught in every classroom, reinforced in every workplace and community gathering:Â Freedom TO take an action stops when it interferes with another person’s freedom FROM harm. By my logic, the freedom to own or use an assault rifle–a weapon of mass destruction–is overridden by the freedom from being randomly shot.
And here are a few “Lo Dayenu” verses I just wrote:
If we could block killers from having access to assault rifles,
But allow them to enter schools, cultural venues, places of worship, and public spaces with other murder weapons, Lo dayenu. It would not be enough for us.
If we could have international peace meetings and far-reaching agreements,
But still “solve” international disputes with war, Lo dayenu. It would not be enough for us.
If we address the violence of mass shootings,
But not address the violence of poverty and starvation, or of rape and beatings, Lo dayenu. It would not be enough for us.
If we reach the ability of people around the world to live in harmony with each other,
But fail to curb violence against the planet, Lo dayenu. It would not be enough for us.
Please feel welcome to add other verses in the comments.
May whatever holidays you celebrate be joyous, despite the troubled world we share. And may we come together with both our Dayenus of gratitude and our Lo Dayenus of work that we still need to do.
I spend a fair bit of time meeting with “practical visionaries.” I think you’ll enjoy these excerpts from the conversation I had with one of them this week. Tom Nodine managed to leapfrog from a typical insurance consultant to someone who is always thinking about how to extend both the length and the quality of human life. Now, he works with life insurance companies, who of course have a vested interest in longevity.
Our conversation touched on a whole range of topics starting with how switching to renewable energy can increase lifespan (which he’d asked about on the networking call where we met earlier in the month).
How Green Energy Can Increase Life Expectancy
Shel: I realized you didn’t get a great answer when you posed, repeatedly, your question about energy issues and life expansion on the call with Bill.
So I figured I would give my take on it. I don’t see myself as exactly an expert in that, although I’m kind of an expert in basic wide-ranging, holistic sustainability and regenerative. I don’t usually get down in dirty with specifics very much.
Number one. When you move to green energy to eliminate, not all, but many of the toxic work environments in the industry, the energy industry, such as coal mining, such as working in an oil refinery. Of course, you still have the issues with solar and wind. They certainly have impact in their construction and in their use of mineral resources and that sort of thing. So mining is something that’s still very much an issue. If you dig out lithium from somewhere.
Tom: I saw Greta Thunberg got towed away this morning. She was demonstrating against a Wind farm. So to your point. Wind apparently has some anti green aspects to it, as well.
Shel: Oh, it does! The birds are not very happy with our shift to wind, and right rightly so, and we need to figure out some way of letting the birds know. You know, “Danger, Will Robinson!” Warning. Don’t cross into that lane, beep, beep. But we don’t speak Bird well enough to have made that happen, I think. and then, of course, there’s like, you know, 8,000 bird languages that you’d have to master. There’s a challenge for chat GPT, yeah, so that’s one piece. Another piece is that the life expectancy expansion of the user is going to be much higher.
I have a gas stove right now, and I’ve been thinking that it may be time to see if we can convert that to an induction cooktop or something, because now that I’m in my sixties, I seem to be much more sensitive to the fumes from that stove than I was 20 years ago.
Tom: So you say, life expectancy of the user is higher?
Shel: Yeah, because there’s no toxic fumes involved.
Tom: Oh, user of an induction stoves. That sort of thing.
Shel: Versus a gas stove. Yeah. Now, of course, you have to look holistically.
Tom: Yep.
Shel: And you have to see, okay, where is the electricity coming for that stove? If it’s coming from a nuclear power plant or a coal fired fire plant, you’ve not made any progress except that you personally aren’t exposed to the fumes. So that’s that’s maybe the beginning of the answer.
Tom: Oh, thank you, that’s helpful. And do you mind if I ask you an even more broad question, because I know you, you focus at the in the broad space at the top level? What do you think of the notion of tying corporate activities to human life expectancy?
Shel: I think it’s a great idea. It very much dovetails with the work I’ve been doing to tie them into green and social change, and—
Tom: That has been my hope. My reaction to it, or the reason I did it is, I realized, that this seems to be a very fundamental thing that no one seems to be looking at, and I would imagine that perhaps implicitly behind almost everything. The majority of green activities as well, what we’re trying to do is help ourselves and other species to live longer.
Shel: In a broad context, yes. And if the earth lives longer, then the creatures on it live longer.
Tom: Right, exactly. And again, whether or not there’s carbon in the atmosphere, as George Carlin basically called out, you know the earth doesn’t care. It’s the people that are alive on the earth that care.
Tom: Exactly. Okay, and do you in any way find it threatening to greens or competing with greens or dysfunctional? Because I don’t! Last thing I want to do is distract from what I think is very, very solid and appropriate green activities, which I strongly support.
Why You Can’t Lump All Greens Together—And A Style Difference with Greta Thunberg
Shel: Okay. Well, first of all, you have to look at the greens as a category the way you would look at, say, the Christians, what does a Unitarian have in common with a Bible-thumping Baptist fundamentalist, not much—
Tom: Oh, I would say they both want to live longer.
Shel: Maybe, maybe not. Some of those millennialists, they’re waiting for the Rapture.
Tom: Yeah, you’re right. But moment by moment, I promise you they want to live longer.
Shel: But you know you have Greta protesting against wind power on one extreme. She is not going to be a convert to your way of thinking, no matter what you do. She’s an absolutist, and absolutely won’t compromise and probably would be a pain to work with. I have enormous respect for which she’s done, but I also recognize that she has a very limited worldview. She was 16 when she started. She’s probably 21 now, so there’s a lot more wisdom that will likely work its way down at some point. I mean, I see it in my own kid. I had a very, very strident younger child, who is now, at age 30, considerably less strident.
Tom: The world has a way of teaching us all, doesn’t it?
Shel: Yeah. And I was when I was that age, I was totally strident.
Tom: Yeah. If you don’t mind my complimenting you…
Shel: Go ahead.
Tom: You’ve done a lot over the years, you know. I’ve loved I’ve looked at the books that you’ve written from your first book on smoking way back, when which, by the way, is something that early on, I felt strongly about as well—
Shel: Oh, you really have gone back! That was 1980.
Tom: To Principled Profit. And all that you’re doing now on Guerrilla Green Marketing and Grassroots Marketing, and all that sort of stuff. It does kind of seem like there’s a trajectory that you have gone on the same dimension.
Shel: Yeah, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World is my tenth book. And the fourth in a series that started in 2003 with Principled Profit on business ethics, environmentalism, and social justice as business success strategies—as profitable enterprises.
Tom: That’s great. I mean, I love that stuff, and I haven’t read the books yet, anyway. But I think I get the gist of it.
Shel: Yeah, well, this would be the one to read. Most of what’s in the three leading up to this one is are in Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. Grassroots Marketing and Marketing without Megabucks, and my way early self-published book on marketing, are all kind of Marketing 101 books. How to write a press release, how to use good triggers in your ad copy, and that sort of thing. And they’re also all pretty old at this point.
Should Tom Publish a Book or Focus on Youtube?
Tom: Yeah, yeah. Well, do you mind if I ask you? How have you found the publishing route for your overall impact for your consulting business? For your life? Are you happy you did it?
Shel: Okay, I’m definitely happy I did it. But as far as material success, stemming directly from publication? Doesn’t happen. There’ll be 5 books a year where the authors can really kind of live off what they’re making. Maybe 50, not anywhere near the millions of books that are seeing print all the time, and but what it does when you have even one book, and I have 10.
Tom: Yeah.
Shel: You are taken seriously when you invite yourself to speak at conferences, you are taken seriously when your clients look you up on Google or prospects, you have an easier time getting meetings with important people. So if you see it as a 300-page-long business card, it’s a great, and and I actually a lot of my work is in the area of taking would-be authors, and making them successfully published authors, which is a long and involved and many-step process, and which I definitely recommend people not to on their own, because it is a mine field if you don’t know what you do.
Tom: Yeah, I started out with a topic of basically looking at technology, and how they’ll impact human life expectancy. And at the result of kind of a 2 year effort of interviewing experts on all this, and working with actuaries. And all this came to the conclusion that we’re all going to be living 10 years longer within the next 20 years. The average global life expectancy will go up pretty dramatically and not be talking about this. And so I actually figured, I really want to understand it. And so I wrote a book called Dead Reckoning that’s all about this and that book turned out to be, oh, 900 pages that I then cut down to 300 pages, and even then I realized, no one’s going to read this these days.
Shel: Wow!
Tom: It would have taken me well over a year to get it through a publisher. And at the end of it all, only a few people would read it. And so instead, I decided to go with a series of Youtube videos. And I don’t know whether that was a good decision or a bad decision. I mean, so far, one of my videos, the one on genetic and epigenetic testing I’ve got, 3,000 or so views on it. It’s not nothing. But you know Edward Sheeran has nothing to fear from me, for sure, and so I’m thinking that although I could publish it in a book, are videos a better way to go.
Shel: Well, I want you to think of this as a both-and, and not an either-or. There’s absolutely nothing that prevents a video superstar on Youtube—let’s just say for the moment you become one—from doing a book. In fact, there’s synergy there, because you can tell the people who watch your Youtube channel, “hey, I’ve got a book coming out. It’s a great present for you to buy for other people.”
How Does Increasing Longevity Affect the Business World?
Shel: I find it really interesting that you come out of the insurance industry to this, because insurance will play longevity 2 ways. The life insurers are delighted because it delays the payout, but the health insurers the annuity people, the retirement people, are maybe not so happy because it lengthens the number of years they’re paying out.
Tom: Let let me refine that understanding. So you’re absolutely right on the life insurance side. The incentives are completely aligned. You know they want people to live longer, for sure, both financially and otherwise. And that is a huge opportunity, because insurers right now are challenged in their customer relationships, sometimes considered collectors of premiums? There’s such an opportunity to change what their company is about, by helping their customers to live longer. So that is one big thing on the health side, though kind of 2 points. Once again, you’re absolutely right that the annuity people are realizing that if people are going to be living longer, we’re going to be underwater really quickly.” On the health insurance side, though the economics, actually turned out to be the other way. If you can help people to live longer healthfully, it actually helps them reduce their claims. And also the technology offers the prospect for reducing medical costs over time, which has not happened over the past 75 years. Increasing technology has actually been one of the causes of increased health care costs.
Shel: Yeah, whenever a GP has to have a CAT scan [machine] in their office. That’s expensive.
Tom: Exactly. CAT scans alone involved brillions of dollars. It’s ridiculous. So completely agree that that’s been the past. But there’s reason to believe that that may not be the future. So, anyway, yes, and it is a little bit odd that I came from the insurance industry. I mean, I spent years in innovation, in insurance, and looked at all kinds of things from driverless cars to artificial intelligence And, worked for Allstate doing all that, and it was great. But when I realized there’s new technologies like genetics, epigenetic tests, and other things that are coming down the pike that can really impact life expectancy, it kind of seems irrelevant to me thinking about driverless cars when there was something so much more germane for humanity to focus on, and so decided to really go in that direction.
Can’t Humans Just Relocate to Other Planets?
Shel: Yeah, well, it’s a big leap for somebody with your background because insurance people tend to be very narrowly focused, not seeing so much the big picture. And here you’re not only seeing the global big picture you’re seeing kind of a universal big picture, and I’ll just put my foot in my mouth, maybe, and speculate that you have at least explored what it might be like to start colonizing other planets.
Tom: I’m sorry. Say that once again.
Shel: You have at least explored the idea of what it might be like to have human colonies on other planets, even if it’s just by reading science fiction.
Tom: Absolutely. I’ve explored that idea and while I’m in favor of the space program, I’m not a fan of the idea of moving to Mars.
Shel: Yeah. Well, better to fix the planet we have, I think. But.
Tom: How badly would we have to screw up this planet before Mars or the moon becomes a better place for us to live.
Shel: Yeah, a barren rock with no atmosphere is not exactly my ideal.
Tom: Exactly. And I actually agree with those who say that holding Mars out as an alternative is really quite dysfunctional if it causes people to think credibly, which they shouldn’t, that there is an alternative to here.
Shel: Yeah, what is interesting to me about the whole space endeavor—and I actually, when NASA thought they were going to send a journalist to space, I wanted to be that journalist—what interests me is the way space travel could expand our horizons about what’s out there. Perhaps break down, not just the human-to-human xenophobia, but human-to-whatever-is-out-there xenophobia. When I first started reading science fiction, most of the books I read were very dystopian about all the invaders are coming with their lasers and they’re going to wipe us out. And then there was one book that I came across as a very early teenager, I don’t know, 13, 12, something like that. I don’t remember the name.
Shel: I think the author’s first name was Jack, where the aliens were treated as a gift, almost as like here’s how we can improve our species. [NOTE FROM SHEL: As I was editing the transcript, I remembered that it was Jack Williamson. I still don’t remember the title, and he was a prolific author.] Here’s how we can improve our communication, people that we can learn from who don’t happen to look like human bodies. And that was really kind of a revelatory book for me. I wish I remembered the author and the title, so I could recommend it to people, but since then I’ve come across many others with that worldview.
Tom: Hmm, well, I agree with your thesis. I mean taking a galactic perspective can only enhance our understanding of who we are, and therefore what we should do.
Shel: Yeah, okay. Yeah. But that doesn’t give us the license to say, Okay, we can just destroy the earth and go someplace, else.
How This Conversation might Lead to Collaboration
Tom: Exactly, exactly, exactly… And more broadly, Shel, I’m pleased to meet you. I sense that we are kindred spirits in thinking broadly about how business can impact our world, impact our lives and would welcome your collaboration, as I mentioned in the call. I really would like to be able to build a bridge between what I’ll call green activities and life extend activities, because I think that we’re moving in in much the same direction.
Shel: Yeah, and I think that that synergy is there. For some of the reasons I talked about at the very beginning of this call…
The Marriage of Science and Spirit in the Study of Evolution
Shel: And I’m actually reading a book right now that I think might be germane to this conversation and it’s another Chicago guy named Perry Marshall, and he wrote a book called Evolution, 2.0. And he talks a lot about epigenetic. He’s from what he calls a Young Earth Creationist Christian background, which is to say, I think, literal interpretation of the 7 days of creation—so raised not to believe in evolution at all, but with a tech background. He was an electrical engineer working on audio systems before he became a marketer. He kind of invented Google Adwords marketing the way we know it today.
Shel: And then he wrote a really impressive book that I reviewed several years ago, called 80/20 Sales and Marketing and it was all about the Pareto Principle. And his basic insight on that book which was worth the other 200 pages to go through was that the 80/20 is fractal. So you take your well performing 20% and you rinse and repeat, and then you take 20% of that 20%. You iterate that 5 or 6 times, and you have a super power.
Tom: Yeah, got it. Thank you very much. I’ll give Perry Marshall a look.
Shel: So the evolution book, which I’m about halfway through, the first half, which is a part I’ve just finished, is basically proving that evolution is not random noise or accidents. And I totally agree with him that you do not fix the system by introducing things that don’t work into it. But now he’s got to convince me that the Creator that he sees at the beginning of this is real, and that’s going to be a harder self for me, because my question is always going to be to him: Okay. So if there is an intelligent designer who put this entity there, how did it come about? Because somewhere along the way there has to be a first point.
Tom: Well, Shel, should you be interested in knowing my thoughts on this topic—you might, you might not—but I have thought rather deeply about it in technology and biology. It has led me to a very interesting place.
Shel: Sure. Go ahead!
Tom: I think in my Youtube videos, there’s one called is Evolving. And it basically goes through how, in fact, evolution is evolving very quickly to be more and more what’s called volitional evolution, where we, as humans are choosing the course of our evolution and the evolution of other species.
Shel: That goes back at least to plant hybridization, 3,000 years ago.
Tom: Absolutely, and is only accentuated now that we’re gaining capabilities and genetic engineering. So it’s it’s really a very interesting thing. So anyway, I’d also be personally interested if you have any views regarding the video channel. And you know the look and feel of the the videos we’re putting out.
Shel: Okay, I haven’t watched yet, but I will start with that one.
Tom: That’s kind of you. Thank you. It’s it’s called the Human Life Expectancy Channel on Youtube. And we put something out every week, and we’ll do until at least June, because we’ve got them produced already. There’s also another one there on energy technologies and how energy technologies might well impact human life expectancy, there’s others I’ve created but not yet published on restructuring the food chain, which, of course, is a big part of both greenness and human life expectancy, getting clean water to people and new water technologies, new transportation technologies, and all the things all those are coming up soon.
How Virtual Meetings Help the Planet
Shel: To interface this with the huge acceleration in the last 3 years in non-person-to-person/face-to-face, contacts such as we’re doing right now [online meetings].
Tom: Absolutely. Let’s hope that it cuts down on senseless carbon emissions from business travel.
Shel: Hopefully. Yeah. And I think the senseless carbon emissions from computer networks are going to be a lot lower number.
Tom: I’m sure that they will.
Shel: It’s not an insignificant number.
Tom: No, it’s not nothing, but it’s better, definitely, better.
Shel: It’s way better. Yeah. So if it’s my guess is, it’s probably a savings of roughly 90, 95% of the energy involved in moving people to meetings.
Tom: Yeah, that’s great. Well, Shel, I mean, is there anything you can imagine that I might be able to do for you? Connect?
Shel: I’m sure there is. I don’t yet have a handle on what that might be, and well, one thing actually is, I’m always looking for clients who want to build more social equity, capital and environmental capital into the core of their businesses that can be made to see that—again, into both-and, that you can have a business that is both doing right by the world, and a profitable business, and that you can build it into the core of the business, into all its products and services. If you if you haven’t yet watched my TEDx talk, I would say that’s a good 15-minute summary of what I’m talking about…Â
And I’m thinking, in the work you do, you might very well find that when you’re talking to insurers, for example, insurers will know of people who really want to do this and insurers can lower their costs. Also by backing companies that are not destructive to the environment and that are actually advancing social justice. And I’m talking when I say social justice, I’m talking about things like hunger, poverty, racism, climate change, war—“little easy things to fix.”
[Tom chuckles]
Shel: But with the exception of the recognition of climate change as a big problem, which is quite recent, only 150 years or so, all of those things have been with us since there were humans.
Tom: Or minus 5 years, depending upon who you’re talking about.
Shel: Well, the scientific consensus is there. There are the people who feed on stupid, untrue quote, news, unquote. You know, they’ve also been with us since the beginning of time. I think there are examples of propaganda in the Old Testament, if I remember correctly. There’s also that wonderful argument that Abraham has with God about if there are 100 good people, 50 people, 10 people, one person, will you save the village? So that’s essentially public relations. Maybe the first recorded public relations writing.
Tom: Cool, although I’ll bet it was a problem way before that.
Shel: Oh, I’m sure it was. That’s just the first documentation we have.
Tom: It’s it’s a rather universal human thing. I think.
Shel: Yeah, but it’s interesting, because the Old Testament—and I’m not a particularly religious person, I see myself as spiritual, and I certainly believe there are entities out there that are bigger than humans, and in their capabilities—and communicate with them regularly. But the Old Testament also has the first instance I’m aware of documenting nonviolent civil disobedience, which is what I see as the primary level lever for social change. Not civil disobedience, but nonviolent resistance in general, it doesn’t necessarily have to be civil disobedience. You have this very interesting scene where Pharaoh was telling the midwives for the Hebrews go out and kill the male babies, and they come back and say, “we’re so sorry they have babies so fast we can’t get there in time.” That’s, as far as I know, the first time that anybody talked back to a Supreme Ruler and got away with it and and changed the outcome.
Tom: So are these early examples of guerrilla marketing?
Shel: Well, yeah, I would say, yeah, marketing of the social change movement. Both the cases. Yeah. Abraham was definitely being a guerrilla marketer in his argument about how many souls were viable to save a city. And the midwives Shifra and Puah were definitely using a guerrilla approach. I don’t know if you could call it marketing.
Tom: Okay. Fair enough. Well, Shel, thank you very much. I really appreciate getting to know you better, and I appreciate you taking the time to get to know me a little better, too. I will definitely do the things you recommend. I will order your Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World book and read it also look at Perry Marshall’s book and look at your TED Talk, which I haven’t yet done but would be happy to do.
Shel: Great. On the Going Beyond Sustainability site, you’ll find on the book page, there are links to a number of places to order it. One of them is me. In that way, you can get an autographed copy if you want one and another is IndyBound, which will hook you up with whatever independent bookstore you like to use.
Tom: So Amazon will not get me to Guerrilla Marketing?
Shel: Amazon will, but I prefer the people send their money to local bookstores, independents, rather than the one that’s trying to drive them all out of business.
Tom: Fine, I’m happy to do that, too. I don’t suppose you mentioned you as a possibility. Okay, is there any chance I can order one directly right now?
Shel: Sure. Let me get my cell phone, and I can take your credit card information.
[transaction details removed]
How to Find Shel’s and Tom’s Videos
Tom: In the meantime, I presume I can find your TED talk by just going to TED Talks and typing in your name?
Shel: It’s actually easier to go on my speaking page and find it there, because it is on the TED site but it’s really hard to find there. It’s not indexed, for some reason.
Tom: Okay. Can you send me a link to your speaking page?
Shel: Absolutely.
Tom: Please do. And in the meantime, yes, if you would kindly take a look at the human life expectancy channel, if you can, if if you’re so inclined, it would be great if you could subscribe to that, so you’ll get to see the new, videos as they come out and even more importantly, share whatever thoughts you might have. And, by the way, the negative thoughts are probably the more valuable.
Shel: Okay. I’ll open that up on my browser.
Tom: So if you could say, Hey, Tom, you are jumping off of a cliff here, don’t do this, or you know that sort of stuff. That’s the kind of feedback that I actually most need, and would appreciate at this point.
Shel: Yeah. And similarly, if you see any big holes to poke in my TEDx, please let me know.
Tom: Well, I gotta believe people have been poking if they’re going to poke since 2014. So I don’t know if I’m going to come up with anything new. But I’ll definitely look at it with interest.
Shel: Great. Cool and groovy. Well, this was fun, and you know there’s I think the ways that we might work together will evolve, using the word on purpose, over time.
Tom: Yeah, that’s great. That sounds great. Let’s do that and let’s just kinda be open to the opportunity.
Tom: But whatever case, real pleasure to meet you, Shel!
Tips on Booking a TEDx Talk
Shel: Likewise. And have you done a TEDx? You sound like you ought to have if you haven’t.
Tom: No, I have not I’d be wide open to it. But you know the opportunity hasn’t yet presented.
Shel: I don’t have any contacts for you. They’re all locally organized. But within Chicagoland, there’s probably at least 100 a year.
Tom: Yeah, I mean, that would be another great conversation if you’d be willing to have it. Which is how the heck do you get a TED Talk?
Shel: There are a couple of books out there [on getting a TED talk] that are not written by me that would be worth your while to read. I got mine by working with a local organizer and pitching her on various talks over a period of years. Right when I was starting to shift toward this work, she decided to organize an event, and I got in with a proposal. I already knew her. I’d been to a couple of the events she had produced. And I explained the overall concept and she said, “Yeah, let’s do that one.” So I don’t have any great secrets there except for persistence, and keep making—
Tom: The right person. Make the right pitch. If we’re modifying it. Right? Or finally finding out what pitch they’re looking for.
Shel: And TED talks don’t pay, by the way.
Tom: Oh, I had no expectation that they would, but they were—it’s possible that you could give me more advice on the find-the-right-person piece. Is all of that well-known? If I type in TEDx Chicago, am I going to find the contact and give her a call.
Shel: Probably, but you might have to play with your search query. I might do TEDx Illinois and TEDx Indiana, and just see what comes up. I mean, I imagine you’d be willing to drive 3, 4Â hours to go give a TEDx and have that credential.
Tom: Of course.
Shel: So, yeah. Or TEDx near me. See what comes up. I don’t know how many are doing live events these days, and how many are doing virtual, or how many just folded their tents in the pandemic. But yeah, if this is sort of thing where you could get, you know, an intern or somebody in the Philippines to go do some research for you.
Tom: Yeah, thank you. I’ll look into that, too, because you’re right. I mean, I would love to do a TEDx, and I’ve certainly got a concept that’s broad enough and big enough to merit consideration.
Shel: And then the other thing I would say is, whenever one is convenient to you, go attend it, watch the sorts of things that work, and be also aware that if you get a gig that there’s significant time upfront because there’s coaching involved that is actually really helpful.
Tom: Yeah. Good.
Shel: Yeah, I mean, I’m a pretty experienced speaker, but I found that I benefited greatly from the coaching I got before my TEDx and before my Pecha Kucha, which is a different format where you have 20 slides in 6 minutes, 20 seconds each slide yeah, that’s one you—
Tom: Yikes. Yeah.
Shel: —don’t want to do without scripting. I normally speak off, not off-the-cuff, but I speak without a formal script, but for the TEDx and the Pecha Kucha, in order to fit the format, I scripted everything I was going to say.
Tom: Sounds great, thank you. Sure. I’ll look into that as well.
Shel: You’re welcome. All right!
Tom: Well, let’s keep in touch, and again look forward to hearing back from you. If you have any thoughts, and I suspect that, based on all I read, I may have a few things to come back to you with as well. Great, Shel.
Shel: Great.
Shel: All right! Thanks! Oh! And let me just grab the transcript before we exit, and I’ll send it to you.
Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz
An energy consultant I’ve known since high school raised a frustration he has in his work:
Sadly, the biggest problem is culture, Shel Horowitz. Building owners have a mentality in their culture, in their business dealings of loving the status quo. I can’t tell you how many times I have offered free energy audits, to give them information and tips to save money, and they turn it down. Free (no obligation). They just don’t want to know. I have been involved in many proposals for simple upgrades with numbers that show that this will help their bottomline ($$$), for solar panels or LED lights, and they say no. As long as money is flowing in, they don’t want to change. How do you get over that mindset?
And I responded,
You have to approach changing culture with the mentality of a marketer and organizer–this is what I do, and I’ve helped to change some cultures in my time. Think about what the world was like when you and I met in the early 1970s: Environmental consciousness was close to zero. Most families had never tried organic produce, or tofu, or even yogurt. War was still raging in Vietnam, and you could be drafted at 18 but had to be 21 to vote. South Africa and Rhodesia had rigid apartheid. Dictators were running things in places like Spain. All of these changed because organizers and marketers changed the culture. When I moved to my current town of Hadley, in 1998, the dominant paradigm was “You can’t change Town Hall.” 14 months later, our landscape was threatened and I launched Save the Mountain, and did so with mom-and-apple-pie messaging like “[developer’s name] has wildly underestimated the love the people of Hadley have for this mountain.” I knew we’d win, but I expected it to take five years. We did it in just 13 months!
It’s true that culture change is usually neither easy nor fast. But it DOES happen. Usually, it happens because people’s movements for change bubble up from the grassroots. Sometimes, technological shifts speed the process of change, turbocharge it. As one example, the widespread acceptance of clean energy had to do with technological shifts that made those choices economically as well as environmentally superior–but it was the widespread rejection of dangerous, polluting energy systems such as fossil and nuclear that created the momentum behind the technological growth and price drops/efficiency increases.
I would suggest to my old friend that his offers need to be phrased in terms of how they mitigate pain and add profit. Marketing to others’ self–interest in order to foster your own agenda of social and environmental progress is totally legitimate. And if the case is made properly, they will see that the cost of moving forward is lower, and the benefits higher, than the cost and benefits of keeping things as they are.
One of the most fascinating talks I’ve ever heard happened this morning on a guided bush walk in Kruger National Park, South Africa, delivered from atop a huge termite mound.
Standing atop a giant termite mound, Ranger Nico explains why termites are critical in the South African ecosystem and how they make the giant predators possible. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Termites are largely responsible for shaping and managing the ecosystem that allows the magnificent animals we see on safaris: the elephants, lions, giraffes, zebras, and more. They are master builders, creating mounds and underground caverns (two or three times as big as the visible parts of the mounds) that can stretch 50 meters into the earth.
Termites invented climate control millions of years ago. They move wet earth astonishing distances to plaster the walls, creating an ideal environment for the fungus their queen loves to eat, and they build chimneys—heat vents they can open and close—to maintain the ideal temperature for the queen’s comfort. They are such sophisticated engineers that some plaster casts of abandoned mounds have required pumping in ten tons of plaster.
That queen starts tiny but eventually reaches a length of five inches or so, loses her legs, and turns her attention to hive management and reproduction. But not just any kind of reproduction! She picks the type of worker the colony needs at that moment and produces farmers, soldiers, attendants staff who attend to her needs as commanded by pheromones, flying termites (including scouts, wood scavengers, and future kings and queens who go off to start new colonies), and other types as needed.
These different types have biological differences, each equipped for their own mission. And she will lay about 40,000 eggs every day, but most of the young’uns will only live for a few days. Still, a large mound can have hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.
The queen outlives thousands of generations of her offspring. At the end of her 30- to 40-year life, she clones herself and produces one new queen, genetically identical, who will manage the same mound—so some of these mounds are centuries old, with a ruler identical to the mound’s female co-founder. Her partner is a king who fertilizes the queen, and paired couples fly off to start the new mounds—a complex process where both of them find a soft digging spot they can manage without the tools of the construction-worker termites and begin digging and egg-laying exactly three days before a significant rainfall.
The eggs take three days to gestate and require lots of moisture. If a queen dies before cloning herself, the whole colony dies. Queens cannot be introduced from elsewhere, and the workers lose all interest in their tasks—or in living—without a queen.
And here’s why this is a problem: Not only do termites clear the dead wood around them by digesting it, the mounds and chambers provide enormous nutritional boost to the soil. Termites are what creates the richness that allows grasses, shrubs, and trees to flourish. Without all that, the herbivores like elephants, giraffes, rhinos, impalas, hippos, warthogs, etc. would have nothing to eat and would not exist. And without them, the apex predators including the big cats would not have their food.
So if you’ve gone on safari and seen these beautiful animals in the wild, you can thank the termites. And the best way to thank them is to recognize their role and not use pesticides against them. If you live in a termite-prone area, treat the wood of your house instead of fogging the air with poison that poisons you, your family, and the much-needed termites—and help your friends understand that when we treat nature as a teacher and ally, the results are far better than if we treat her as an enemy.
Other tidbits from this hike: • Elephants will destroy one marula tree at a time to get the fruit—but their digestive enzymes activate the seeds, so when they poop them back out and natural forces spread them, a thousand marula trees could germinate from the single sacrificed one.
• Elephant tracks look kind of like snowshoe tracks. You can tell females form males because if it’s a female, you’ll also find tracks from the babies.
• Spear grass seed will actually drill itself into a growing medium by spinning in one direction. Even though they can’t survive there, they will even drill into human skin and you can’t get them out with tweezers. Nico’s mentor used to always carry a medical scalpel to excise them. Nico prefers to avoid them in the first place.
Jacinda Ardern of NZ in mourner’s hijab, following the mass shooting at a New Zealand mosque.
It’s sad that New Zealand’s amazing Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, is stepping down. I’ve been an admirer since she first came across my radar during her campaign to lead that country–and I remain one. She has been a competent, non-bloviating voice of reason and compassion, as well as an excellent role model who proves that at not-yet-40–she took office at 37 and is now 42–a progressive woman can be an effective shepherd of government, even during a term that encompassed multiple global and at least two national crises.
She is my favorite of the current crop of world leaders, in fact.
When I went looking for the photo to accompany this blog, I found this text. Like the photo, it is attributed only to “Appaloosa,” who appears to be a photographer in French Canada and was unlikely to have taken the picture. It sums up my feelings perfectly:
In the aftermath the Christchurch, NZ mosque shootings, the world witnessed what a real leader looks like in New Zealand’s Prime Minister #jacindaardern.
72 hours after the tragedy occurred, Prime Minister Ardern mourned at a vigil in full hijab attire, and promised the nation would not only cover the costs of 51 funerals, but would look after the families and their expenses for as long as it took.
This, after announcing the New Zealand government would ban assault rifles.
It takes courage to lead a country at any time. When you also have to navigate a global pandemic, a world economic mess, a massacre and a natural disaster in your home country, and a rising tide of totalitarian, racist so-called populists, it’s no wonder she feels her “tank is empty.” It also takes courage to know when it’s time to stop. My hat is off to her and I wish her the best in her next phase.
When I wrote this article back in 2014, it was published in three places. But it’s long enough ago that I can’t find it online. The message is too important to let slip away, so I’m reprinting it here–unchanged except for adding one sentence. –Shel Horowitz
I laugh whenever I hear that famous phrase, “failure is not an option.” It shows not only enormous ignorance of the real world and the human brain, but also enormous hubris.Let’s get real. Failure is always an option—with sufficient bad luck or timing, loss of motivation, key player defections, or inadequate funding. This doesn’t mean the task is impossible; it’s just that currently, for whatever reason, it doesn’t seem worth marshaling the necessary resources to finish the task. And when the stakes are high (brain surgery or piloting a fully loaded commercial jet, for example), failure is a terrible option with horrible consequences—but even that doesn’t guarantee success.
Sometimes, we can minimize the impact of choosing failure. Almost always, we can embrace it as a learning opportunity.
The trick is to fail cheaply and early—and maybe often, make your mistakes, and move on. See what can be salvaged, what can be reinvented, and what should be thrown in the trash. Thomas Edison took 10,000 steps to invent the light bulb. Most people would say he failed 9999 times. He saw it not as a failure but as a 10,000-step process. In other words, our failures teach us enough to achieve our successes.
I’ve had my share of failures. This spring, for example, I set up a telesummit involving 17 speakers, plus eight bonus calls from my archives for those who purchased the recording package. I spent some money and a considerable amount of time.
And it failed.
The business model is proven. I just got a mailing from the organizer of another telesummit, and she reported 2500 signups and a 5% conversion to the paid recording package. If I’d had those numbers, I would have made a profit even after paying 50% commissions to the speakers who brought in those buyers. But I was not able to motivate people to visit, sign up, and buy.
What did she do differently? First, she had a much broader-based subject appeal. There are a lot more people who want to succeed as book authors than in running a green business. Second, she had more speakers. And third, she motivated all her participants with leaderboards and contests and a general sense that things were really moving and we all would want to get on the bandwagon.
While I was expecting a revenue stream instead of a cost center, I learned enormously from this failure. Among other things, I learned not to count on your speakers promoting your event in a meaningful way. Some of the largest list owners never mailed, and thus my traffic was far lower than expected. Low enough that the sales were basically invisible.
Here are some of my other takeaways: 1. Learn when to work with off-the-shelf products and when to go custom. I could have done 90 percent of what I wanted to with an off-the-shelf software package called Instant Teleseminar. But their model involves paying every month, forever—so instead, I just hired someone to build the functionality I was looking for. That decision led to some serious cost overruns, and I still didn’t achieve all the functionality I wanted. If the summit had succeeded and I did a new one every six or 12 months, developing the in-house solution still would have been the right decision, because it would probably pay for itself around the fourth summit. But since I doubt I’ll organize another series like this one—though I might very well reuse the content I created and rerun the series at some point—I should have just bought the product. 2. Keep it simple! The website is beautiful, but it’s too hard to use. I think it scared people off. I should have really improved the usability before I let it go live. 3. Identify an audience of buyers. The woman who achieved that big telesummit success could draw from tens of millions of people who want to be successful published authors. While there are hundreds of thousands who want to run successful green businesses, maybe that isn’t a critical mass, especially since I didn’t have a direct channel to reach them. 4. Keep the content focused. I think my series split its energy between being about marketing, generally, and being about green business success. This may not have been wise. Maybe I needed to push more of the marketing experts to speak specifically about applying their techniques in the green world.
When I wrote this article back in 2014, it was published in three places. But it’s long enough ago that I can’t find it online. The message is too important to let slip away, so I’m reprinting it here–unchanged except for adding one sentence.
