Abundance Tree by Anvar Saifutdinov: Painting of a green-colored male lion sitting under a large tree bearing many kinds of fruits and vegetables.
Abundance Tree by Anvar Saifutdinov, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

In the coverage of President Biden’s November 1, 2022 speech about the chaos the enemies of democracy want, something else important was missed: Biden is a rare politician who understands the Abundance Principle:

At our best, America’s not a zero-sum society or for you to succeed, someone else has to fail. A promise in America is big enough, is big enough, for everyone to succeed. Every generation opening the door of opportunity just a little bit wider. Every generation including those who’ve been excluded before.

We believe we should leave no one behind, because each one of us is a child of God, and every person, every person is sacred. If that’s true, then every person’s rights must be sacred as well. Individual dignity, individual worth, individual determination, that’s America, that’s democracy and that’s what we have to defend.

These powerful words embrace what I’ve been talking about for years: that we have enough to go around, but have to address kinks in the distribution and a lack of political will that leave some clinging by a thread while others amass far more than they need or even can use. These truths are amplified in powerful books like The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Business Solution to Poverty, and my own Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

We don’t need to live in a world crippled by dire hunger and poverty–cutting off who knows how many amazing new discoveries because the people who would have made them are too busy struggling for basic survival. We don’t have to accept war as a consequence of limited resources, because the abundance mindset understands that a particular resource is only one path to a goal, and there are others. We especially don’t need to go to war over petroleum (which has incited so many wars, including US-conducted wars in places like Iraq and Vietnam)–because we are already using different energy resources, such as solar, wind, and geothermal, which are already edging out fossil and nuclear in both financial and environmental benefits.

And we can absolutely reject the outdated concept that if one person or group wins, some other has to lose. The abundance mindset is collaborative: we win by joining forces for common goals. This powerful frame can apply to material goods, and also to intangibles like love–as Malvina Reynolds made clear decades ago in her charming song, “Magic Penny.”

How are you using abundance to create a better world? Please  respond in the comments (which are moderated, so don’t bother filling it with junk).

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A whole bag of usable produce thrown away. Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dumpster-a-plenty.jpg

I have a moral problem with food waste when others are going hungry. In the developed world, our hunger crisis has nothing to do with insufficient supply–and everything to do with throwing out vast quantities of usable food, and the people who need it being unable to get it. 30 to 40 percent of all food grown in the US is tossed. Some gets thrown away because it spoils–but 1) a whole lot of perfectly good food goes to the landfill, and 2) if one area has gone bad (like mold one side of a block of cheese), in many cases, the item can be trimmed and most of it saved. Smell, taste, and appearance can help you decide what can be salvaged and what should go in the compost.

Where it does food waste come from? To name a few: Restaurants cooking more than they sell. Uninformed consumers who think food has to be dumped once it passes its sell-by date. Produce wholesalers who reject fruits and vegetables because of non-uniform appearance. Commercial processors who are not set up to capture and process every bit.

This New York Times article describes two apps, Too Good to Go and Flashfood, that match unsold food with ready bargain-seeking buyers. I think this is terrific–a win-win-win. It reduces costs for restaurants, who still get paid a reduced price rather than having to pay to throw it away. It reduces costs for consumers who’d like a good meal and don’t mind taking whatever’s available. It reduces pressure on landfills, which are overrun with wasted food, and on the environment and climate, which take multiple hits when food is wasted.

Grocery stores need similar programs. One step in the right direction is services like Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market, both of which sell reject produce direct-to-consumers.

On the consumer side, the biggest results will come from education. We need trainings that demonstrate:

  • What foods really aren’t safe past their expiration dates, and which are perfectly fine (in general, meat products should be used or frozen before their expiry dates, opened refrigerated dairy is typically good for at least three days beyond, and unopened often for a week or two, while many processed foods are shelf-stable for years)
  • How to preserve various foods
  • Where to donate if you have too much food that’s still good
  • How buying locally grown organic foods minimizes waste (including the huge environmental burden of transporting foods across oceans and continents
  • What makes sense for your size household to buy in bulk, and what’s much better to just buy as much as you need inn the near future
  • How to use smell, appearance, and small tastes to determine whether food is still ok
  • When it makes sense to trim bad parts off, and when to discard the whole thing
  • How to use leftovers without getting bored with them
  • Environmentally friendly options for disposing of spoiled food (compost, slops for animals, etc.)

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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

Robert Hubbell’s Today’s Edition politics newsletter (which I read daily) quoted a reader who suggested that Democrats label the Republican platform for 2022 as “The Big Steal.” Here is his suggestion, with edits and additions by me:

Vote Republican, and you vote for the “Big Steal”:

Your Social Security will be stolen.

Your Medicare will be stolen.

Your prescription drugs will be stolen.

Your affordable health care will be stolen.

Your right to privacy will be stolen.

Your control over reproductive choices will be stolen.

Your voting rights will be stolen.

Your right to elect leaders will be stolen.

Our democracy will be stolen.

It’s not perfect, but you get the idea. Iterations are endless. Republicans want to take things away (The Big Steal), including personal liberties and equal protection under law. Democrats want to provide Americans the things they need to lead safe, healthy, productive lives—including personal liberties and equal protection under the law. Somewhere in there is a winning message.

Republicans doing The Big Steal is half of the messaging. Yes, absolutely, we need to show that corrupt and greedy party for what it is. But we also need another half, maybe call it The Big Payoff. And the second part will subdivide into two as well.

The first part will be what the Democrats have actively accomplished. They have created jobs in a terrible economy. They have restored us leadership in the world sphere. They have taken some action to mitigate climate change. They have stood up for integrity of the political process and showed that insurrections and coup attempts will not be tolerated here. They have supported Ukraine against Putin’s barbaric war. And they have restored dignity and mission to a corrupt and twisted executive branch.

The second part is the wish list: things Biden and the Democrats tried to do but were blocked by filibusters, judicial opinions, or just plain refusal to cooperate from the Republican side. This would include Build Back Better, protecting the right to vote, protecting women’s right to control their own bodies, meaningful progress on the biggest issues like climate change and immigration reform, and of course, the right of regulatory bodies to regulate. Not only have Republican judges forced the CDC–which stands for, let us remind them, Centers for Disease Control–to give up protecting the public in transit facilities, but other decisions will threaten such rights as environmental protection and labor protection, using that very bad precedent to attack EPA and OSHA. Let’s also talk about the right not to be sitting next to someone who is carrying a concealed weapon. The right to love and marry whom you choose as long as they are above the age of consent. Etc, etc, etcFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

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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Don’t the Republicans ever get tired of their own shameless hypocrisy? A lot of the rest of us are sure tired of it. It’s time for the Dems to focus their messaging on why the Party of Never-if-a-Democrat-proposed-it is no friend of the people.

I offer these as a gift to the Democratic Party, its candidates, and its supporters.

  • Why do Republicans support socializing the costs of billionaires’ mistakes and misdeeds while privatizing their profits? Why should working folks have to pay to clean up their mess when billionaires don’t even pay taxes on much of their wealth?
  • Why do we pay so much more for health care, for university education, for prescription drugs, for so much else–and get less for our money than most other countries? Why did Republicans hold all three branches of government and come up with nothing to address these crises?
  • If we want to free the world of power-mad dictators and thugs like Putin, we need TRUE energy independence from renewable sources like solar, wind, small-scale hydro, and geothermal–so Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries can’t push us around because of our dependence on fossil fuel. That’s also our way out of the carbon crisis.
  • If you want to halt fuel-cost-related inflation, ditto. That will lead to better health outcomes, too.
  • Green energy will continue to create good, well-paying jobs right here in the US–and by the way Biden has presided over the longest steady growth in employment since 1939.
  • If expulsions of immigrants at the border due to fear of COVID–which are against both international law and human decency–aren’t warranted for Ukrainians, there’s no justification for their use to keep Black and Brown people out. Don’t accede to Republicans’ racist demands to hold COVID prevention/protection/treatment funding hostage to keep this cruel, illegal, and discriminatory policy in place.
  • Stop defending domestic terrorists! January 6 was an attempted coup, an attempt to blow up our democracy. Even Republican Secretaries of State admit that the 2020 election was the most fraud-free in history and that Biden won honestly (something we can’t say with certainty about Trump in 2016, since the Republicans blocked recounts in three crucial swing states). And yet you refuse to discipline even the most blatant seditionists in your ranks! Doesn’t democracy mean anything to you anymore?
  • Why are you, the party that claims to believe in freedom, passing laws that take “cancel culture” to levels approaching those of early Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia? How dare you make it a crime to teach or read honest history! How dare you try to suppress the speech rights of whole classes of people! How dare you try to roll back women’s reproductive rights, the right of people of color to vote, and the right to live without fearing violence because of who you are, what way you worship, or what you look like? Stop trying to grasp at your fading power OVER others and focus on your power TO do good in the world (hint: oppressing others is not doing good in the world)
  • Why was it OK to refuse to even hold a hearing on Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland because nine months before the election was “too close to the election”–while Barrett was rushed through just weeks before?

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Those of us in the US are probably used to hearing people go on and on about our high status in rankings of desirability. And in some ways, we are. (I am a US citizen and a lifelong resident, so in this post, I’m going to use “we” and “our” when referring to Americans.)File:Life expectancy vs healthcare spending.jpg

  • We are super-cosmopolitan, able to create cities where hundreds of different ethnic, racial, and religious groups not only live and work together but enjoy each other’s food, music, etc.
  • We introduced modern democracy to the world–a huge improvement over the divine right of kings
  • We have enormous diversity in geography, agriculture, weather conditions…whatever you want, you can find it somewhere in the US
  • US technology leadership sparked enormous progress in fields as diverse as computing, clean energy, and space exploration

BUT on a lot of other metrics, we fall alarmingly short. Consider, for instance:

I could go on,  but you get the idea. In metric after metric, the US was once the leader and now lags.

Isn’t it time to reclaim that greatness?Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

The Guardian reports on a shameful attempt to criminalize the school district of Texas state capital Austin’s annual LGBT Pride Week!
When is the ultra-right going to recognize that non-heterosexuals are people too?
This is one part of the culture war that they aren’t going to win. Since the legalization of same-sex marriage, conservative heterosexuals have sat next to openly LGBT folks at Parent Teacher Association meetings, worked with them on community issues, and in many cases, discovered that beloved family members and friends and work colleagues were not hetero.
47th Gay Pride Parade, New York City, 2017. Creative Commons photo by Elvert Barnes
AND they noticed the sky hasn’t fallen, the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, and the only thing that has really shifted due to that normalization (something I would not have predicted even as recently as 20 years ago that I’d live to see) is the crumbling of prejudices based on demonizing people they thought they didn’t know.
Sunlight and exposure, as usual, prove the best medicine against prejudice. That genie will no longer fit in the old repressive bottle, no matter how many idiotic laws the right-wing fringe manages to force through their state legislatures–and thats a good thing.
Maybe Putin would have had better luck if instead of invading to “denazify” Ukraine, he tried a nonviolent embarrassment campaign to denazify Texas ;-).
Personal disclosure: I discovered that I am bisexual at age 16 and spent about a decade where LGBT rights was the cause I was most strongly involved with.
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I just experienced such a screwed-up customer service encounter that I have to share it.

Do you pass the squeak test? - Victus Catering ConsultancyIn August, I received a letter from my primary care doctor announcing that he was cutting back on his patient hours. He has been my doctor since about 2003. In November, as COVID seemed to be easing, I called to schedule a physical exam for the first time in several years. I explained that I had several concerns and I really trusted my doctor’s diagnostic ability and asked if it was possible, despite his scaling back, to schedule with him. And I was given an appointment for today at 2:40 p.m.

Yesterday, at 4:12 p.m., less than 24 hours before my appointment, I received a call from one of the nurses that they were canceling my appointment because my doctor was scaling back and “needed to reduce his patient panel.” I said that they’d had four months to figure that out, that canceling on less than a day’s notice was extremely rude and unacceptable, that I had been willing to wait so long only because it would be with MY doctor. To their credit, they did offer me an appointment with a different doctor on Friday but I said very politely that I had specific reasons for wanting this practitioner and they had no right to snatch it away at the last moment for an issue they could have fixed at the time the appointment was set. She said the practice manager would call me.

This morning, the practice manager called back. Her customer service skills were atrocious. First she insisted that because I had received the August letter, that “it wasn’t our fault.” I explained repeatedly that I had been willing to wait more than four months only because I was promised an appointment with my chosen doctor. I actually had to say (several times) that while I understood it wasn’t her fault personally, it was absolutely the fault of her organization. I said I wanted a real apology that accepted responsibility organizationally, and she eventually admitted that yes, the organization made an error that was causing harm to me, and that she would review the interaction where I booked the appointment and find out why the person I spoke to had made an appointment that shouldn’t have been allowed.

Then I asked her how she was going to “make me whole.” She didn’t seem to understand what I meant. I said “how are you going to make it right for me?” She said there was nothing she could do. “I can’t talk to the doctor!”

Me: “Why not?”

Her: “I can’t talk to him.”

Me: “Could you explain the circumstances to him and ask that just this once, could he make an exception because of the promise made to me that it would be with him. I could find a new primary care doctor going forward but he really should keep this appointment as a one-time exception. I understand  if it can’t be today. I don’t mind if it’s later this week.”

Her: “The nurse spoke to him after talking with you. He wanted the appointment canceled.”

Me: “I doubt that she explained the full situation to him, that I was willing to wait the four months specifically in order to see him, and that you gave me inadequate notice. Would you please explain the full situation and ask him if under the circumstances, he would make an exception? Again, if it doesn’t work with his schedule today, I can be flexible about when I see him.”

Her: (big sigh). “Okay, I will ask him and call you back.” No word from her.

2-1/2 hours after she called and only 2-1/2 hours before I was due to show up, I called again. After checking their automated confirmation system, which had only the rescheduled appointment with the different doc on Friday. I spoke with a very pleasant receptionist who told me that the practice manager was in a meeting and would call before the end of the business day. I explained that this was about an appointment for today and I really didn’t want to discover after-the-fact that she had reinstated it. The receptionist said she’d have her call within the next hour. I wasn’t holding my breath and was not surprised that she hadn’t called as of the time I would have needed to arrive, or even by the time I probably would have been done. I have no way of checking, but based on her general attitude, I would be very surprised if she actually bothered to communicate with the doctor.

Customer Service is not my primary jam, but it is something I speak and write about fairly often. Done well, it’s an essential marketing function that turns customer problems into loyalists. The flip side of that is that bad or absent service converts loyalists into enemies–people who will speak up and leave poor ratings, tell their friends to avoid that business. Not the sort of messaging you want following your business around.

If I were training this organization, I would:

  1. First instill a culture of actually serving customers (patients, in this case)–of understanding that it’s not about your convenience but about making the customer feel heard and appreciated–and meeting customer needs.
  2. Teach compassionate listening skills and sincere, immediate apologies that accept responsibility.
  3. Empower the staff to offer suitable make-goods and think creatively about what the right make-good is in a particular situation. This is one time to be led by the customer; it’s totally okay to ask, “what can we do to make it up to you?” Often, their answer will be much more modest than you might have expected. In this case, I gave her what I needed: to have her offer to talk to the doc and see if he would reconsider–and even that faced a wall of resistance.
  4. Teach and model appropriate responses that make the customer feel heard.
  5. Teach the importance of keeping promises–as Google did several years ago when they actually went back and re-listened to the customer service call where I was told misinformation and cheerfully refunded the $200+ I’d been charged for following the advice I’d been given. They’ve now kept me as a cell phone customer longer than three previous companies.

As a customer of this organization, I not only had the bad experience above, but my wife has been getting the runaround for months on a chronic problem, with calls not being returned and a generally desultory attitude. At this point, they will be getting negative reviews in public places from us and we will make inquiries about other area practices that are accepting patients. I recognize that our area has a doctor shortage and we might be stuck with them, but we are tired of being kicked around and we certainly won’t recommend them to others.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

I found myself deeply touched by Jennifer Atkinson’s essay arguing that grief is necessary not just when a loved one departs, but when we act as climate allies. “In similar ways, when we openly grieve for the loss of other species or forests or rivers, we’re asserting that nonhuman lives are also worthy of mourning. We refuse to accept their exclusion from human circles of compassion.”

She goes on to discuss the connection between grief and love–and even to claim that grief is an aspect of love.

It’s short and only took me two or three minutes to read. Well worth it.



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