Years ago, I subscribed to Brain Pickings (recently rebranded as The Marginalian): Maria Popova’s amazing twice-weekly celebration of science, art, music, literature, and nature. While I have no memory of how I first discovered it, I immediately embraced the abundant world she lives in, and her eagerness to share the treasures she finds.First screen of Maria Popova’s introduction to Ursula Le Guin’s essay, On Being a Man”
I rarely read it, but I will keep my subscription, thank you. Every issue is a gem—and every issue is a rabbit hole that leaves me following so many links that I don’t emerge for 30 or 60 minutes. And if I only dip in every once in a while, it’s still a special pleasure.
Long ago, I resigned myself to knowing that the richness of the world’s knowledge is something I can only skim the surface of, no matter how many books and articles I read and how many podcasts and seminars I listen to. I read more than most people—80+ books and thousands of articles in a typical year—but it’s still 0.000000001 percent of what I COULD immerse myself into, if I didn’t have a life to live, a living to earn, and eyes that need to rest. I’ve made my peace with that reality and don’t waste energy on FOMO (fear of missing out), nor do I beat myself up for not striving harder to soak it all in.
I’m really glad I opened today’s newsletter. I followed links to Ursula Le Guin’s poem “Kinship,” which Popova describes accurately as a “love poem to trees.” That led me first to one then another remarkable poem by Jane Hirshfield—the first read by the author and the second by Amanda Palmer (unfortunately, I took an unmarked turn somewhere in the rabbit hole and can’t get back to those—but I did create a long list of Hirshfield poems on Popova’s site). Then I went back to the current edition and read Le Guin’s witty essay on gender pronouns and aging. I could have stayed much longer, following links until my eyes bugged out.
In fact, I finally became a paying monthly sustainer just now—something I should have done years ago!
I love the idea of acting locally and have done it (and written and spoken about it) for decades. My biggest success in 50 years as an activist was a local campaign that saved a threatened mountain. Your chances of winning are often higher, it’s easy to reach those most affected, and you can parley your success into much greater influence on the future direction of your community. And yes, it can be empowering.
BUT…we also have to do the long, hard work on the big-picture stuff. It took 100 years of hard organizing to end legalized slavery for non-criminals in the US (and by the way, the exemption for convicted criminals has been used shamefully in too many instances). It took decades to get national civil rights legislation, the right of women and people of color to vote, the right of same-sex couples to marry…pretty much anything worth fighting for. And sometimes, even large-scale victories happen surprisingly quickly. As an example, the safe energy movement took only five or six years to make nuclear power unbuildable.
And those local victories can inspire the national and international work–which often gets done most effectively at the local level, by existing organizations and coalitions.
I love this post from the Changemaker Institute, How to Change The World By Meeting People Where They Care. I love it because it approaches social change through a marketing lens. It starts by revisiting the famous Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court Case of 1967, which struck down longstanding bans on marrying across the color line. Pointing out how Richard and Mildred Loving got people to care, the post goes on to ask how to get people to care about what you’re doing–and answers with a business-oriented focus on outcomes of your social change action, which you arrive at through these questions (quoting directly from the post):
What does it take to get an investor to believe in your business and invest in your mission?
What does it take to get customers to believe in your product or service and invest in it?
What does it take to get your employees to believe in your company’s mission and invest time and energy in supporting it?
What does it take to get people to support your vision for a better world? [end of quote]
Shel’s inspirational posters describing his “sweet spot” institutional mission and his 2020 and 2021 sets of three words to inspire his year
To take it a step further: I see getting out of the silo, rubbing shoulders with people who are not like you and examining different ideas from different industries or different sectors of the same industry as crucial is testing your own ideas, sharpening them enough to really get inside someone’s head and cause enough discomfort with the status quo to embrace the brighter future you propose. Whether you’re marketing a business or a movement, that’s a pretty important thing to do.
Guest Post by Sam Horn, author of Tongue Fu and many other books.
Does it feel like you’re talking on eggshells these days? You’re not alone. A report from McKinsey says, “Rudeness is on the rise and incivility is getting worse.”
As one woman said, “It feels like I can’t say anything right. It seems everyone’s on edge. They take offense at the least little thing. What can we do when everyone’s stressed out?”
She has a point, doesn’t she?
The last year and a half has been tough.
People have lost loved ones and jobs. Controversies around masks and vaccinations have put people at odds. Remote work and home-schooling have frayed nerves and tempers.
So, what can we do? We can Tongue Fu!
Tongue Fu! (a trademarked communication – conflict prevention/resolution process) teaches what to say – and not say – in sensitive, stressful situations you face every day.
It’s ironic. We’re taught math, science and history in school, we’re not taught how to deal with difficult people without becoming one ourselves.
And in these tough times, it’s more important than ever to know how to proactively handle complaints, disagreements, and unhappy, upset people.
Fortunately, that’s what Tongue Fu! teaches.
Here are a few challenges you may face at work, at home, online and in public – with tips on how to respond in the moment instead of thinking of the perfect response on the way home.
4 Tongue Fu! Tips for What to Say/Do When Things Go Wrong
Complaints When people complain, don’t explain. Explanations come across as excuses. They make people angrier because they feel you’re not being accountable. For example, if a host is upset because you’re late for a meeting, don’t explain why, just take the AAA Train:
Agree: “You’re right, Bob, our meeting was supposed to start at 9 am.
Apologize: And I’m sorry I’m late.
Act: AND I’ve got those stats you had requested. Would you like to hear them?”
When you take the AAA Train – Agree, Apologize and Act – instead of belaboring why things went wrong, you advance the conversation instead of anchoring it in an argument.
2. Negative accusation.
Whatever you do, don’t defend or deny untrue accusations. If someone says “You are so emotional!” and you say, “I am not emotional!” now you are! Instead, put the ball back in their court by asking, “What do you mean?” That questions motivates people to reveal the real issue and you can address that instead of reacting to their attack.
Imagine says, “You don’t care about your customers.” Reacting with, “We do care about our customers.” makes them wrong. Instead ask, “Why do you say that?” The client may say “I ordered supplies two weeks ago and still haven’t received them.” Now you know what’s really bothering them and you can fix their problem instead of debating their accusation.
3. Arguments.
If people are upset and you try to talk over them, what will happen? They’ll talk louder. The voice of reason will get drowned out in the commotion.
Instead, make a T with your hands (like a referee would) to cause a pause. Then say these magic words, “Let’s not do this. We could go back and forth for the rest of the afternoon about what should have been done, and it won’t undo what happened. Instead, let’s put a system in place to prevent this from happening again.”
You can also put your hand up like a traffic cop to do a pattern interrupt. Say, “Blaming each other won’t help. Instead, let’s figure out who will be in charge of this in the future so we can trust it will be handled promptly.”
As John F. Kennedy said, “Our goal is not to fix blame for the past, it’s to fix the course for the future.” If people start blaming, remind them, “We’re here to find solutions, not fault.”
4. Have to give bad news.
It’s easy to get defensive if your have to give bad news and say “It’s not my fault,” however that makes people feel you’re brushing them off.
A more empathetic response is to say “I can only imagine” as in ‘I can only imagine how disappointing this is.”
Then turn, “There’s nothing I can do” into “There’s something I can suggest. We have set up a 24 hour job-line with…”
In the real world, things go wrong. And sometimes we can’t fix them. We can at least let people know we care and we’re doing the best we can to help out.
Don Draper said, “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”
We can change conversations and outcomes for good by using Tongue Fu! approaches.
Because when we treat people with respect, they’re more likely to treat us with respect.
And that’s a win for everyone.
This post originally appeared in Sam Horn’s newsletter and LinkedIn. Reprinted with permission. Sam’s 3 TEDx talks and 9 books have been featured in NY Times, on NPR, and taught to Intel, Cisco, Boeing, Capital One, NASA, Fidelity and Oracle. Want support completing your creative projects? Check out Sam’s Stop Wishing – Start Writing Community.
It covers a lot of ground: optimism, hope, organizing mass movements, climate justice, the role of indigenous people in todays struggles, and much more. I found it well-worth the 15 minutes or so it took to read the whole thing.
Three short excerpts from this long article:
1] I have often met people who think the time I have spent around progressive movements was pure dutifulness or dues-paying, when in fact it was a reward in itself – because to find idealism amid indifference and cynicism is that good.
2] [Halting the Keystone XL pipeline] was not a gift from Biden; it was a debt being paid to the climate activists who had made it an important goal. Patience counts, and change is not linear. It radiates outward like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond. It matters in ways no one anticipates. Indirect consequences can be some of the most important ones. [She goes on to trace the Standing Rock movement and AOC’s decision to run for Congress to earlier struggles that appeared, in the moment, to fail. These types of indirect sparks to deep change are something I’ve often written and spoken about, including this post about how one environmental justice action changed the world.]
3] We have victories. Some of them are very large, and are why your life is the shape it is. The victories are reminders that we are not powerless, and our work is not futile. The future is not yet written, but by reading the past, we see patterns that can help us shape that future.
One small quibble: while I agree with Solnit that individual lifestyle changes are far less consequential than mass organizing, and that the solutions have to really reinvent the entire worlds of business and government–I do think the lifestyle choices, the changes we make in the ways we are on this planet, should not be trivialized or dismissed.
Via Robert Hubbell’s always-optimistic Today’s Edition newsletter, which I read before breakfast every weekday morning. Hubbell is a champion of the Democrats and far more centrist than I am. But I love that he is always a cheerleader for what went right and a strong advocate of the need to keep organizing and working for change when things don’t go according to our wishes.
It is very unfortunate that the original developer didn’t get any guarantees that a buyer would maintain the fossil-free commitment written into the sale documents. Nonetheless, I think a creative and skilled attorney could make a number of different legal arguments that could force the developer to honor the agreement. Could the Environmental Defense Fund? perhaps take this on? It would be a great precedent to say that a community developed specifically as an eco-community could not then be put at the mercy of eco-hostile development.
As a non-lawyer, all I can do is speculate about the arguments a lawyer might use to block the conversion of the acquired parcels to fossil fuels (I have no idea if any of these would hold up in court and I am not presenting this as legal advice). Arguments could be made about such harms as
Introducing new health risks (especially to children)
Negative progress on climate that goes against International, US,Colorado, and neighborhood climate goals
Adverse possession (a doctrine that gives rights to squatters in certain circumstances)
The deliberate destruction of a cohesive intentional community
And of course, about consumers’ rights: this could clearly be seen as bait-and-switch: buying into a community with a stated purpose, and having that purpose violated, even shredded.
But the courts aren’t the only recourse. I do know something about organizing movements, and these neighbors should be organizing a movement. To list a few among many possibilities, they could be:
Organizing mass protests outside the developer’s office
Saturating the local paper with letters to the editor and op-eds
Enlisting allies in powerful environmental organizations, of which Colorado has no shortage
Protesting at the capital in Denver that their rights are being taken away
Contacting the press ahead of and after all of these events
Physically but nonviolently blocking attempts to connect the pipelines (note: this is illegal civil disobedience and participants might be subject to arrest)
Researching obscure laws that might provide tools that can successfully block the connection
Organizing boycotts and other public shamings of the developer
Plus, I really have to wonder what the developer is thinking. Eco-friendly homes are in high demand, can often sell for more than the price of comparable fossil-powered homes, and prove a skill set that many homeowners want. After all, people moved from other states just to participate in this community. And forcing eco-hostile housing development into an eco-friendly community is a recipe for public relations disaster and a bad, bad reputation.
Why not simply stop, think about the benefits of keeping this community identity, and use it as a marketing tool? That would make so much more sense than risking ongoing hostility, a ruined reputation and possibly much worse.
One of the graphs in the Leonhardt article shows that tax rates for the top 0.01 percent of earners are approaching the rate foe the bottom 90 percent.
But while those whose multiple lavish mansions represent only a tiny fraction of their financial worth also pay property taxes, most of their wealth is not taxed except that portion that arrives new each year (income).
The effective rate is much lower, though. Only the amount of income above the threshold for that rate (currently $628,301) is taxed at that rate. Each portion of income is taxed at the bracket for that level. So if you file singly and make $700,000 (and I don’t come anywhere near that), only $71,699 is taxed at 37 percent. The first $9950 is taxed at just 10 percent, the next $30,575 is taxed at 12 percent, and so on. This is why it is often an advantage to file jointly with your spouse–because more of your money is taxed at the lower rates. In the above example, $19,900 would be taxed at the 10 percent level, versus $99,000 if you split the income evenly and each filed separately.
Having dropped the tax rate on the wealthiest income earners by about 60 percent, the government has been considerably less aggressive about making up the difference. The One Percent used to pay heavily in the year they acquired the money–but now that they’re paying much less, an asset tax could help fund the things we really want government to do: Clean up the planet, educate and protect all its citizenry, provide services and a leg up for the disempowered, and make sure no one is crushed by the ever-growing costs of basic survival. In other words, Build Back Better and the Green New Deal. Both of these will create massive numbers of new jobs, clean up the planet, and leave the average person with more money in their bank account.
Advanced support systems for elders, children, people with disabilities, and others in need (this is a long academic paper but it has a one-paragraph abstract)
In our country, we are facing an absurd situation where two Democratic Senators representing less thanthree percent of the total population are holding America hostage. They say we can’t afford these investments, but they also shoot down all attempts to institute mechanisms to pay for them. And an even more absurd situation where most laws can only pass with a supermajority and virtually all Republican Senators refuse to vote for anything that the Democrats support. So much for the vaunted bipartisanship Senator Manchin in particular keeps insisting on. But the American people strongly support these investments.
It’s time to turn that support into action. First, write your Senators. You can find their addresses here. Use the appropriate sample letter (or letters, if you have one Senator in each party) from the three below as a model, but take three minutes to make it uniquely your own (especially the first sentence and the last three sentences), so it doesn’t look like a form letter. Better yet, write yur own, from scratch. If you live out-of-state, don’t lobby Manchin or Sinema directly. That will be counterproductive. Instead, reach out to friends, family members, people who are in the same organizations you participate in who do live in those states. If you are a business owner, start with “As a business owner and constituent in…”
Second, get involved. Do some phone banking or text banking or postcard writing. Show up when organizations like Fairvote, Movement Voter Project, Common Cause, voting rights divisions of NAACP and ACLU, and environmental groups hold rallies, lobbying days, meetings, and presentations. Personally contact your own friends and family. write letters to the editor for publication in your local newspaper. Be an election protection volunteer.
If you live in West Virginia or Arizona
Dear Senator,
As a constituent in [your town and state], I am deeply concerned at your role in blocking an agenda that most Americans support. 48 of your fellow Senate Democrats have shown incredible willingness to compromise with your demands–but you keep moving the goalposts. It is well past time for you to find a way to support these necessary Build Back Better, Green New Deal, and Voting Rights bills that will get the job done, give the Democrats something to brag about in next year’s crucial elections, and improve lives for all residents of our wonderful state. You will have another feather in your cap if you can bring these bills into law, even if it means getting them out from under the filibuster. But you will lose local support if you keep blocking the progress we so desperately need. I am eager to vote for a Senator who has put the needs of constituents ahead of narrow corporate and special interests. Please BE that Senator.
Sincerely,
[Your name and postal/email addresses]
If You Have One or Two Republican Senators
Dear Senator,
As a constituent in [your town and state], I am deeply concerned at your role in blocking an agenda that most Americans support. President Biden came to you in a spirit of bipartisanship. Senators Manchin and Sinema came to you in a spirit of bipartisanship. 48 of your fellow Senators have shown incredible willingness to compromise with your demands–but you keep moving the goalposts. We citizens of [your state] did not elect you to be an obstacle to programs that we desperately need, just because it wasn’t the Republicans who proposed them. It is well past time for you to find a way to support necessary infrastructure that goes beyond roads and bridges, address the carbon crisis with job-creating green initiatives, and ensure that every citizen has the right to vote and have that vote counted. Please, let’s see you be a Senator who represents the entire state, not just narrow special interests and conspiracy theorists. You will lose local support if you keep blocking the progress we so desperately need. I will use my volunteer hours and my campaign contributions dollars to vote for a Senator or candidate who has put the needs of constituents ahead of narrow corporate and special interests. Please BE that Senator.
Sincerely,
[Your name and postal/email addresses]
If You Have One or Two Democratic Senators
Dear Senator,
As a constituent in [your town and state], I am deeply concerned at the lack of progress on an agenda that most Americans support: upgrading necessary infrastructure that goes beyond roads and bridges, addressing the carbon crisis with job-creating green initiatives, and ensuring that every citizen has the right to vote and have that vote counted. I appreciate that you and 47 of your fellow Senators have shown incredible willingness to compromise–but Senators Manchin and Sinema keep moving the goalposts farther backward and the Republicans are not even interested. We citizens of [your state] are counting on YOU to move those goal posts forward again, to convince those obstructionist Senators that they need to represent the entire state, not just narrow special interests and conspiracy theorists. If you can get them to stop blocking the progress our nation so desperately needs, I will eagerly use my volunteer hours and my campaign contributions dollars to support you as a Senator or candidate who has convinced the holdouts to put the needs of constituents ahead of narrow corporate and special interests. Please BE that Senator.
This is an issue important enough to me that I have a category in this blog called “Talking to the Other Side.” If you click on the tab with that label, you’ll see all my posts on that topic. You’ll also see a whole lot of discourse between liberals/progressives and conservatives over the last many years of my Facebook feed. And yes, I go to as many Braver Angels events as I can.
I don’t typically get to play detective—but one recent morning, I received a priority morning FedEx delivery containing a check for just under $6K from a company I’d never heard of. No note. No trace of this company or even the dollar amount when I searched my email. Some other red flags, too, like a total mismatch of sender and company (different states), the misspelling of the bank’s name and the absence of any branch address—although it had several security features that seemed to check out.
Having trained as a journalist and been online since 1994 (not counting a brief experiment with Compuserve in 1987), I have pretty decent research skills. So the first thing I did was call the phone number on the check, where I got a recording about the “text subscriber” not being available (not a company phone, in other words). Second, I googled the bank routing number, which came up empty—so I flipped it around, searched for the routing number for this bank’s Pennsylvania branches, and got a match. I was expecting it to be the group of numbers on the left, but it was the middle set, which is why I didn’t find it the first time. Next, I searched for the company name. It’s a real company, it’s in the green energy industry, and it is located where it says on the check. And then I left a voicemail for the accounting department.
The company controller called me back about two minutes later, confirmed that the check was bogus, and was thrilled that I was willing to send pictures of the check and the FedEx envelope. She said it was the second call like this she’d received today. So, hopefully, we’re catching a crook. It was actually kind of fun, and not hugely time-consuming. Plus, since I’m a consultant to green and socially conscious businesses, I mentioned that I’d be happy to send information on how I help companies like hers, if she wanted to pass it on to her marketing people—and in her thank-you note, she mentioned that she’d passed the correspondence to the company president. It would be such sweet irony if this ended up netting me a real client.
And later in the day, I got a note from someone who had been in discussion with me about writing an article—and with whom I was treading cautiously (including requesting payment ahead in full via teller’s check) because there were definitely some yellow flags in his correspondence. It was the scammer! So I wrote back to him, “I only received the check this morning with no note, drawn on the account of a company I’d never heard of, and for an amount almost triple what I had requested. I didn’t even know it was from you until just now (there was a sticker over the return address so I couldn’t see it until I pulled it off). The phone number on the check was bogus, so I called the company, and they said the check was bogus as well. Needless to say, we will not be doing business.” And then I forwarded the entire email correspondence to the company whose check he forged! Now, the company has the phone number the sender gave FedEx, the one on the check, and the crook’s working email address. I’m hanging on to the original check and envelope for now, in case they are needed for a mail fraud case.
This shortcuts the typical interaction, where scammers say they accidentally overpaid, you refund the difference, and then you’re out of luck when the first check bounces :-).
I still believe that most people are basically good—but there are enough bad apples in there that you really do have to be careful. When I punch my security code into an ATM or card terminal, I always shield the keyboard with my other hand. My passwords are not guessable and the cheat sheet I’ve made for them not only uses a non-obvious file name but has nicknames that are only meaningful to me. I will instantly understand what “1stdaupobhse” means, but it would be meaningless to anyone else. And I keep a virus scanner on my computer, as well as file backup to the cloud. And when I get a Facebook friend request from someone who is already my friend, I post publicly on their timeline to warn people, give the URL of the scam profile, and suggest they change their password and report the scammer. In rare instances, it turns out the person found it easier to start a new profile than to get a new password for the existing one (yes, I have some seriously technophobic friends)–but usually, it’s an attempt at identity theft.
In short, we can all take little steps to ensure security and make us all safer, without getting compulsive about it. If you’re still using any passwords that are really easy to guess, change them! And if you’re suspicious, listen to your intuition and take some basic precautions. Don’t send money or give cc information to anyone who contacts you by phone or email with a crazy story (like your grandkid is stranded in a foreign country with no money). If someone claims to be from a government agency (especially a tax department), verify by calling the agency through the number on their official website (NOT a number they give you over the phone or in an email). Don’t panic and do verify. If you get the “grandkid” call, call your grandkid’s cell phone, and if you don’t get an answer, call their parents. And remember: a foreign prince doesn’t need your help to facilitate an illegal money transfer, an award that requires you to pay anything is not an award but a scam, and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Snopes and Google are your friends. So is AARP’s fraud research, if you’re a member. A little due diligence can save a lot of heartache.
This is not a coincidence; Gil sent the link to Joel’s article around before the call to everyone who registered for it.
I found the article provocative enough that I posted this comment (and the Living Between Worlds open discussion was so fascinating that I plan to listen again once the video is available):
Good piece, Joel. You’ll be glad to know Gil Friend @gfriend kept his promise to discuss this topic in the monthly “Living Between Worlds” brain trust Zoom.
I come at systemic change through a lifetime of weaving together my two “split personalities” as both a marketer specializing in green and social change companies/products/services and as an environmental, social justice, and peace activist whose credits include starting the movement that saved a threatened local mountain.
Through the nonviolent social change lens of people like George Lakey and Erica Chenoweth, I look at institutional structures: how they prop up the system, create major barriers to change, and ultimately fail because they fail to change–and where they are weak and shaky and vulnerable. Sometimes they collapse with surprising speed (think about the Arab Spring a decade ago, or the government of Afghanistan just in the last ten days. Sometimes, it takes decades. The Quakers targeted slavery for about a century before it was illegalized.
But the marketer in me says systemic change is far more likely to succeed if the effort was made to change popular opinion first. The US civil rights movement created the opinion shift that made civil rights legislation not only possible but enforceable. Opposition to the Vietnam war was strong enough that LBJ felt a need to withdraw from his re-election campaign, years before the troops finally came home. And when we did Save the Mountain here in Western Massachusetts 21 years ago, our first task was to change the “this is terrible, but there’s nothing we can do” mentality. Once we shifted that, the victory was very quick.
