Lynn Margulis,2005. Photo by Javier Pedreira, Creative Commons license.
I love this quote from biologist (and Carl Sagan’s wife) Lynn Margulis and her son Dorion Sagan: “Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking.”
Noah Webster dictionary frontispiece and title page, 1828
Now that more than half a year since Merriam-Webster (as in Webster’s dictionary) released this list of its most searched words for 2019, I thought it might be fun to revisit it. I wrote most of this in response to a reporter query last December on what this list says about our society. The parts in italics are written in July, 2020, with the benefit of hindsight.
THEY: The Word of the Year is enormous recognition for the rapidly growing nonbinary community. I too have a child who now uses they/them/their, and so do many of their friends. This is a choice I might have made for myself in my 20s (and might still make in the future). A friend remarked to me recently that our generation (I’m turning 63 next week)(that was in December; next December will be my “Paul McCartney birthday”) worked to eliminate gender roles, while Millennials work to eliminate the concept of gender itself.
QUID PRO QUO: Asking for a favor in return for another favor. The search popularity of this phrase indicates that people want to understand what’s really true. For a public figure to be caught flat-out asking the president of another country, using the language, “a favor,” and then claiming there is no quid pro quo makes people wonder what this public figure has to gain from such an obvious lie–and what does it mean for a president to call on a foreign power to investigate his likely opponent. It also brings up questions about why foreign policy is being weaponized for personal political gain, threatening to deny already-approved aid an ally that is under attack by a neighboring superpower. We have an administration that tries to weaponize just about anything, refuses to work with Democrats in any meaningful way, and has spent the entire first half of 2020 sewing division and stupidity in everything from how to contain a virus pandemic to how to treat immigrants and refugees.
IMPEACH: Since this [impeachment of a president] was only used three times previously since the founding of the Republic, voters–especially those age 35 and under who probably don’t remember the last time–want to know exactly what it means, when it may be invoked, what the consequences are, and perhaps what the Founders had in mind when they wrote it into the Constitution. The high level of interest shows that we are not nearly as apathetic and apolitical as the media would portray us. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached, as was the current president; Richard Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment. What we’ve proven in 2020 is that there is, unfortunately, no requirement that the Senate discharge its duties properly. With minds already made up for acquittal, Senate Republicans other than Mitt Romney refused to hear evidence or call willing witnesses and ignored the copious violations of law, ethics, and the Constitution by the most corrupt and least qualified person ever to hold the office. I hope many of these Senators are defeated in November.
CRAWDAD is a bit of an outlier in that it has nothing to do with politics. It does show that even in our device-oriented world, a book can still make an impact on the way we talk, and that English is such a rich language in part because it borrows so liberally from other tongues.
EGREGIOUS: Although the Merriam-Webster (M-W) example cited is about the Boeing 737 Max scandal, a lot of this word’s popularity also has to do with the political situation. Searching “egregious trump” brings up 2,470,000 hits on Google, while “egregious boeing max” returns only 178,000.
CLEMENCY: Essentially a form of pardon. This year’s use of the word is particularly interesting because the Tennessee case cited on M-W’s page of a woman who murdered her abuser being granted clemency contrasts so sharply with the recent Kentucky governor’s grant of clemency for more than 400 felons on his last day in office, including one convicted of child rape and another whose murder victim was beheaded and stuffed into an oil drum–and another whose family held a campaign fundraiser for that governor.
THE is an example that craziness can gain entry to the list. Adding the word “the” to an official university name is just a marketing stunt that should have been ignored. But it does revisit many interesting issues about rebranding, going back at least as far as 1972, when Standard Oil’s US division gave up the warm and cuddly Esso for the cold, corporate Exxon, but the Canadian branch kept Esso.
SNITTY is an apt description for much of what passes for public discourse these days, including on social media. While I’m not personally a fan of Barr, I enjoyed his use of this term as cited on M-W’s page.
TERGIVERSATION is new to me. George Will actually apologized for using such an obscure word in describing the hypocrisy of Senator Lindsey Graham, once a strong critic of Trump and now one of his staunchest defenders. It has been fascinating to see George Will, an apologist for Republican presidents back to the Nixon-Ford era, become ever-more-clear that this one is not fit for office. Even Fox News gave huge play to Will’s late-May call to remove not just Trump but his “congressional enablers.”
CAMP: Ahh, a relief from politics that might hearken back to they/them/their as nonbinary pronouns. This has been around in the gay subculture for decades; I encountered it in the early 1970s. As conservatives try to double down on “traditional” family structures, expressions of camp creep ever-more-frequently into the wider culture, and society as a whole is a lot more accepting of male fashionistas (as an example). If you want a wonderful example of how gay male camp can take a court-jester role and use humor to attack the current administration, watch a few Randy Rainbow videos. They’re great fun. A recent one, “Bunker Boy”, is one of my favorites, and also one of the recent ones. You can find many of them at this search results page.
EXCULPATE: Now we’re back to the heart of the matter: the question several of these words and phrase raise about corruption in the conduct of senior government officials. Mueller said the report did not exculpate, and the quid pro quo demand makes it clear that the behavior hasn’t changed, either. Of course people will want to know whether their president was exculpated, and what that means.
Taken as a totality, these words show a keen interest in the legal challenges to the Trump administration. When we note that justice and feminism were the top words of the administration’s first two years, and we look at the enormous growth in protest movements immediately following the 2016 election (engaging millions of people who had not been active before, or had not been active in decades) 2018 and 2019 elections as well as the surge in popularity of presidential candidates who would have been considered fringe-left not that long ago, we see that these lookup spikes tell an important story about a growing and powerful movement for deep social change. We see that despite a rightward, authoritarian trend in governments around the world, there’s a strong undercurrent for social justice, and that includes bringing a cruel and corrupt president to justice. And while the centrist Biden came away the winner in the Dems’ nomination process, he has shown himself far more willing than I would have expected to embrace many elements of the progressive agenda, and to build real coalitions with progressive leaders including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Every year, bestselling author and social media visionary Chris Brogan challenges his huge reader base to come up with three words to provide focus for the coming year. This year, I decided to take the challenge for the first time since 2016. And this time, I’m going to emblazon them on a printout in huge type, and post it where I can see my words every day. My three words are:
Clarity
Justice
Healing
Clarity
I’ll discuss Justice in Part 2 (with lots of links(), and Healing–including a deeply personal experience that happened to me this month–in Part 3.eye chart reminds me of having clarity in this year of 20//20 Clarity, 2020 AD
The year 2020 reminds me of 20/20 vision: seeing with perfect clarity. While I don’t expect to achieve perfect clarity, even with the new glasses I’ve just been prescribed ;-), I do want to focus on seeing and acting as clearly as possible.
It’s been several years since I changed the focus of my business toward helping other businesses (and other types of organizations such as nonprofits) find the sweet spot where profitability intersects with environmental and social good.
I now market myself as the person who can help any organization discover opportunities to do go in the world by creating, identifying and re-purposing, and/or marketing profitable products and services that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance.
I’ve gotten a lot clearer in my messaging since starting this quest in the summer of 2013, since giving my TEDx talk in 2014, and even since publishing my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, in 2016 (which Chris Brogan endorsed, along with Seth Godin, Jack Canfield, and many others).
But I’m still nowhere near as clear as I need to be about:
Who wants to pay me to do this work?
Which services they most want, and to achieve what goals?
How to set a price structure that’s fair both to solopreneurs and large corporations?
Who do I most want to serve?
I’m beginning to figure out the answers. I’ve settled on pricing based on the size of the organization, which seems reasonably fair because larger organizations are more complex and therefore a task such as a marketing plan our outlining a product development campaign will take a lot more of my time–but I’m not sure I’ve got all the bugs worked out yet. I’ve realized that I’d rather work with small entities than large ones, but I am very open to being farmed out by a larger entity to their smaller customers, suppliers, or business units–and to the larger entities sponsoring me in other ways, such as funding my speaking to organizations that can’t otherwise afford me.
Hopefully, seeing that message of clarity on the wall of my workspace every day will inspire me to figure all this out, and to make my message so clear that everyone understands exactly how I can help and why it’s important.
I’ll discuss Justice in Part 2 (with lots of links), and Healing–including a deeply personal experience that happened to me this month–in Part 3.
Concern for the planet—and the living things that ride “Spaceship Earth”—is good for business
One of my goals is to spring the message about regenerative, profitable business more widely. So I’m reaching out to other publications, and not just publishing on my own blog.
When I do something worth sharing here, I’ll post the link—as I’m doing here.
After the Business Roundtable, consisting of most of the US’s most powerful corporation heads, finally rejected the tired old bottom-line-is everything mentality last month, I pitched an article to GreenBiz.com on what that means for green and social change businesses. You can read it at https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-business-roundtables-big-green-shift-creates-opportunity
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
Editor’s Note from Shel Horowitz: this was originally published on Seth’s blog under the title, Where Will the Media Take Us Next? I am a long-time reader and fan of author and teacher Seth’s daily blog (and thrilled that he gave me a terrific endorsement for my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World). I have often linked to his blog posts on Facebook, and sometimes corresponded with him. This one struck me as one I wanted to share on my own website. Used with his permission. And now, here’s Seth.
Where Will the Media Take Us, by Seth Godin
Since the first story was carved on a rock, media pundits have explained that they have simply given people what they want, reporting the best they can on what’s happening.
Cause (the culture, human activity, people’s desires) leads to effect (front page news).
In fact, it’s becoming ever more clear that the attention-seeking, profit-driven media industrial complex drives our culture even more than it reports on it.
Thoughtful people regularly bemoan our loss of civility, the rise of trolling and bullying and most of all, divisive behavior designed to rip people apart instead of moving us productively forward.
And at the very same time, reality TV gets ever better ratings. So much so that the news has become the longest-running, cheapest to produce and most corrosive TV show in history. Increase that exponentially by adding in the peer-to-peer reality show that is social media, and you can see what’s happening.
Imagine two classrooms, each filled with second graders.
In the first classroom, the teacher shines a spotlight on the bullies, the troublemakers and the fighters, going so far as to arrange all the chairs so that the students are watching them and cheering them on all day.
In the second classroom, the teacher establishes standards, acts as a damper on selfish outliers and celebrates the generous and productive kids in the classroom…
How will the classrooms diverge? Which one would you rather have your child enrolled in?
We’re not in elementary school anymore, and the media isn’t our teacher or our nanny. But the attention we pay to the electronic channels we click on consumes more of our day than we ever spent with Miss Binder in second grade. And that attention is corrosive. To us and to those around us.
The producers of reality TV know this. And they seek out more of it. When they can’t find it easily, they search harder. Because that’s their job.
It’s their job to amp up the reality show that is our culture.
But it’s not our job to buy into it. More than anything, profit-driven media needs our active participation in order to pay their bills.
It’s an asymmetrical game, with tons of behavioral research working against each of us–the uncoordinated but disaffected masses. Perhaps we can find the resolve to seek out the others, to connect and to organize in a direction that actually works.
The first step is to stop taking the bait. The second step is to say, “follow me.”
The LGBT Pride March in Northampton, Massachusetts has happened every May since 1982. Northampton, an artsy college town on the Connecticut River with a population under 30,000, has mostly been a haven for lesbians and gays (and more recently, for trans, bisexual, and gender-queer folks) for decades–but there were some major bumps along the road, such as the arrest of several gay male Smith College professors in 1960. Another bump occurred in 1983, as you’ll read below. And at one point someone tried to shut down the event because it was too big and the person tried to claim that the town was overwhelmed. But the March marches on.
I marched in the first Northampton Pride March, served on the organizing committee for the following three years (1983-85), and have marched every year I’ve not been traveling except for one year when a friend’s daughter was becoming Bat Mitzvah. I haven’t counted but it’s probably at least 32 of the 38 years.
The first year, there were about 500 of us, many covering their heads with paper bags for fear of retribution—and many others did their best to avoid cameras. We were met with a couple of thousand curious gawkers and maybe 100 very loud, very hostile counterprotestors from the local Baptist church. We considered it an enormous success. The next year, I think we had about 1000, and about 20 counterprotestors.
But later that year, a sitting at-large City Councilor ran for re-election, and won, on a platform of “I will stop the gay rights march.” Also around that same time, lesbian activists started receiving anonymous death threats over the phone. We demanded and received a mass meeting with the then-mayor and county District Attorney, where we demanded a statement condemning the violence. The mayor shilly-shallied around for an hour, until the DA, a quiet guy named Mike Ryan from an old Northampton family and someone with a strong passion for social justice, finally blurted out, “I’ll give you a statement.” Once he had cover from Mike, the mayor agreed as well. Eventually, someone was convicted for the harassing phone calls.
Pride Day kept growing from there, and after a few years, there were no more counterprotestors. In the 1990s, 10-12,000 was fairly typical, if I remember right. Then in the past few years it started to grow much larger.
The first several marches started at Bridge Street School and marched up Main Street to Pulaski Park. Later, as the crowds got too big for that little park, the direction was reversed. For many years now, it starts at a staging area in a big parking lot behind Main Street and heads down Main and Bridge to the 3-County Fairgrounds, which are enormous.
Part of the Elizabeth Warren contingent marches past the Northampton parking garage #Nohopride2019. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
This year, it didn’t even fit into the staging area and spread into several surrounding streets. By the time it reached the Fairgrounds, gathering up so many of the bystanders along the way, it took over an hour and a half for the whole march to pass by.
The Springfield paper estimated 35,000, but I think they were counting the march as it left the staging area. At least 10,000 waited for us along the whole length of Main Street, watched the parade go by, and then joined in. The Gazette said 30-40,000, and I think that higher number is more accurate.
Back in the early 1980s, we were considered curiosities, even in liberal Northampton. Even as recently as 1991, the first publication in the Gazette of a same-sex wedding announcement sparked an outrageous article in the National Enquirer headlined “Lesbianville, USA.”
But for a decade now, the contingents have included dozens of school groups from kindergarten through college, the occasional daycare center, banks, churches and synagogues, real estate agencies, hospitals…every type of business you can think of. People come with their kids, same- or different-sex partners (as usual, I was there with my wife, D. Dina Friedman), grandparents, pets…and homemade or store-bought rainbow apparel.
The first person I saw that I knew this year was Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz, who was officiating a wedding on stage at the rally that followed the march. He didn’t just show up to do his bit, but marched with the rest of us. He posed for a picture but my camera didn’t cooperate. But I snapped this unposed one while he was talking to someone (possibly State Senator Jo Comerford—I couldn’t tell from the back). Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse was also in attendance, as was former Northampton Mayor Mary Clare Higgins. Holyoke City Councilor and staffer for Elizabeth Warren’s presidential run Jossie Valentín organized the Warren contingent.
Those first years were about anger, vulnerability, and claiming our right to be part of the community. Now, it’s a celebration. Much less activism and much more a great big day-long party with the march, the rally, and various dances and cultural events in the evening. The hotels, restaurants, and retail businesses downtown are packed.
This is how far we’ve come! From fringe to totally normal. The legalization of same-sex marriage was certainly a factor in normalizing the LGBT community, but acceptance was permeating through the local culture long before that. I’m convinced that when someone from a conservative culture sits on e.g. a PTA committee with a same-sex parent, and they both realize they want basically the same things for their kids and their community, those barriers break down.
I’m proud that Northampton has been in the vanguard of this movement (a movement I first got involved with in 1973, before I ever heard of Northampton). While I haven’t lived within city borders since 1998 when I moved across the river to Hadley, it’s still my community, I’m there several times a week, and I can see it from the hill behind my house.
What other issues come up, and how to we address them? Let’s start TALKING! I’d love to see some serious discussion of the merits or issues. And it would be great if some politicians join the discussion.
Never Under-Estimate the Immune System | John Hagel warns us of the almost reflex rejection of new ideas by the innately conservative culture of organizations, and which may be the central weakness of organizations to the world of today:
Every large and successful institution has an immune system– a collection of individuals who are prepared to mobilize at the slightest sign of any “outside” ideas or people in order to ensure that these foreign bodies are neutralized and that the existing institution survives intact and can continue on course. Just like the immune system all organisms have, this institutional immune system is adept at recognizing foreign bodies as soon as they appear and very effective at protecting the institution from infection. It is in fact what has helped large institutions to survive – they are in fact “built to last.”
But here’s the paradox: the immune system that has given large institutions extraordinary resilience in the past may be the very thing that makes these institutions so vulnerable today.
I clicked through to the original article. Hagel continues:
In more stable times, institutional immune systems are very effective at keeping institutions focused and on course, resistant to the distractions that might lead to their downfall. In more rapidly changing and volatile signs, this same immune system can become deadly by resisting the very changes that are required for the survival of the institution…
I’ve been involved in large scale transformation efforts for decades now and there’s only one lesson that I really have to share from all that experience: never, ever under-estimate the power of the immune system of a large existing institution…
[W]e need to craft approaches to transformation that have the ability to respect the power of the immune system and find ways to minimize the risk that the immune system will mobilize to crush the transformation effort. [emphasis in original]
Pointing out that threat-based change increases resistance, Hagel lays out a detailed transformational change action map that positions change as an opportunity. It’s worth reading.
Progressives and environmentalists often try to motivate negatively: through guilt, shame, and fear. And as I think about it, I realize the Right also uses negative motivations, notably fear and greed. Both sides are Chicken Littles, screaming that the world will end. So the far-Left gets people sunk and worried that the world will end, while the far-Right gets people on a treadmill of hatred, xenophobia, etc.
Neither of these approaches create positive social change. But Hagel’s focus on showing the opportunities does.
Boyd focuses on workforce issues, Hagel apparently on organizational transformation. My own focus is on opportunities for transformational social/environmental change to intersect and overlap with business profitability. In my own work, I often talk about the need to motivate positively. I’ve spent the last five years demonstrating those opportunities. I show business how to identify/create/market profitable offerings that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance–not through guilt, shame, and fear, but through enlightened organizational and personal self-interest. Thus, my speaking and writing focuses on building profitability through those social and environmental change products and services. A successful initiative:
Finds money in making the world better
Creates brand loyalty leading to repeat and ever-larger purchases
Encourages customers to spread the word about your good work, inspiring an army of unpaid brand ambassadors
Reduces operating costs and internal resource consumption (in keeping with Hagel’s challenge to avoid igniting the corporate immune system by minimizing new initiative’s need for resources )
And of course, actually does improve things for those suffering the consequences of crises like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change
DT forces out Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not being enough of a yes-man, and replaces him with someone expected to be a complete toady, who has stated publicly that he thinks the White House should replace Sessions with someone who will muzzle the Mueller investigation
Two years ago, possibly the most corrupt, venal, and dishonest presidential candidate ever nominated by a major party managed to come up with an apparent majority in the Electoral College.
Forbes leads 13 million Google results on DT bullying (screenshot)
Corrupt: Numerous scandals involving diverting business to his hotels in DC and Florida, daughter Ivanka’s role in government and thin line between her business and his politics, refusal to disclose his taxes and thus conflicts of interest, violation of the Constitutions Emoluments Clause from the moment he was sworn in…
Why do I say “:apparent majority”? We knew immediately, in November, 2016, that a lot of funny business went on; Green Party candidate Jill Stein filed for a recount in three key states (we still don’t know why key elements within the Democratic Party supported the Republican efforts to block these recounts, only one of which was carried out). We know now that at least one foreign government was actively interfering in the election. To me, this means the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania is not there legitimately.
The past 21 months have been a barrage of broken promises, broken treaties and international agreements…sabotaging the environment, education, and the safety net…diverting billions in tax breaks to those who are already among the wealthiest people and corporations in history, while slashing funds to human services…inciting violence against his opponents…attacking people of color, women, disabled people, the press, his critics, and others…tearing immigrant children from their families and imprisoning them, and failing to keep good records of what kids they stole from whom…threatening the citizenship of children born in the US…appointing a proven liar and probable multiple sexual predator to the Supreme Court…blaming others every time something goes wrong (which is frequent)…appointing corrupt Cabinet members who snack at the public trough while making no pretense of actually carrying out their departmental mandates–it’s far too long a list to fully document here; it would go on for hundreds of pages. I am more ashamed of this administration than of any previous one. Being an American is embarrassing these days.
It is time for this disgraceful man to leave office–preferably in handcuffs. It is time for his enablers in Congress to step down and apologize to the American people. It is well-past time. We have at least two paths to get him out: impeachment and the 25th Amendment *removal for incompetence).
Under the guise of protecting small business from frivolous lawsuits, the House of Representatives just gutted the Americans With Disabilities Act—a major piece of civil rights legislation signed by George H.W. Bush. I have to say, I’m on a LOT of small business discussion boards, and I haven’t heard any business owners screaming about hardship. Small businesses in pre-ADA buildings are exempt unless they do major renovations.
One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users
It’s up to us to make sure the Senate doesn’t follow along. Contact your Senators and let them know this is a vote where you will hold them accountable. And if your Rep was one who voted Aye, give them a piece of your mind too.
Of course, we’ll be tempted to argue on the basis of compassion. But remember who we’re dealing with here. These people have a long history of NOT acting out of compassion, often of doing the opposite. So compassion arguments “ain’t gonna cut it.” We have to get to them on the things they will listen to: costs to taxpayers, personal hardship to them, and of course, voting and campaigning for and donating to their opponents.
Don’t Waste My Tax Dollars: How dare you make it harder for productive citizens to work, just because they have disabilities. If you think I want my tax dollars squandered on welfare payments to people who could have had a job until you made it impossible to get to work, you’d better think again.
Don’t Hurt the Economy by Hurting Disabled People: For new construction, it’s really easy to design in ADA compliance from the ground up. By allowing builders to take shortcuts because you took away the teeth of this legislation, you’re encouraging them to stop designing in ramps and wider doorways, setting aside parking, making elevators disabled-friendly, etc have you noticed how many people with disabilities who in pre-ADA days had to sit home and be a burden have gone on to start job-creating companies making our economy better (like the personal-transportation vehicle for wheelchair users in the photo—designed by a wheelchair-using Texas woman)? There’s even an organization of disabled business owners that was named one of President George H.W. Bush’s 1000 Points of Light. Do you really want the blame for squashing that on your shoulders?
Protect Our Veterans: Do you realize that veterans have much higher disability rates than the general population (due to war wounds), and that many have a hard time finding work and frequently start their own businesses? Thus, many of these job creators are veterans.You are hurting the people who served our country and defended our freedom.
Pointless Government Meddling: The ADA has been around since 1990. Most public buildings are already accessible. This is bringing in the government to break a system that’s working just fine right now, and that has enabled millions of people to be productive members of society. And if buildings are allowed to come online without meeting current ADA code, it will be expensive to retrofit them later, when (not if) this weakening of the law is repealed.
Personal Inconvenience to the Senator (this one takes a wee bit of research): I noticed that [name a family member of theirs with a disability] uses a wheelchair [cane, walker, seeing-eye dog, whatever]. Do you really want to be called away from important Senate business every time [name]has to go to the bank? How do you think I’m going to feel as a [business owner, manager, productive employee supporting my family] if I have to leave work to help my Aunt Mary do things she could have done for herself until you put obstacles in her way? And what’s going to happen to you, 20 years from now, when you may not be able-bodied yourself?
Vote No or You’ll Organize to Defeat the Senator During the Next Election: Don’t just pledge to vote for your Senator’s opponent. Say you’ll be willing to campaign and fundraise for someone who understands that disability rights are important. If you’ve voted, donated, or volunteered for your Senator in the past, be sure to let them know.
