Simply Nirvana

Occasionally, one of Global Community Africa’s team members, Aristarchus Munish, puts his thoughts into an email to me. I cherish these communications.

***
Monday, January 26, 2009 11:45 AM

Hello,

Hope this mail finds you well. Hope your days have been really refreshing.

Yesterday, on my way from church I met a friend of mine and as usual asked me how I was faring. My response to him was “I’ve never been any more better than now!” That response deeply struck him because it was far much from deep beyond my lips. And it came with an accompaniment of immense joy, satisfaction and stress-free - engulfed by a huge presence of greatness. My friend has known me for quite some time and knows such a time of the year, many people would be lamenting the financial hard times. He would expect a story that goes something like “well, I’m still struggling as usual”, or “you see, things are really tough nowadays”, or even “the going is getting tougher”, and so the story would go. These are all statements I’ve heard from many a people and also they are statements I used to make some time back. They are the usual statements for people leading a usual life. I no longer belong there. I find myself somehow sheltered from such turmoils and torments of difficult times. Never in my entire life have I enjoyed such great peace of mind, great courage and confidence, such serenity and abundant comfort, than what I’m going through.Yes, not even ever during my greatest achievements nor my finest moments have I experienced such a renewed flow of life in my life! It’s like I’ve just opened my mental eyes to behold the treasure house of infinity within me - to live gloriously, joyously and abundantly.

The month of January is particularly challenging.The unemployed are faced with a myriad and frustrating nightmares of coping with life without a coin. This is coming at such a time when, making a shilling and getting ahead are the preferred ethos of our times. It’s against this old paradigm that my response to my friend caught his attention.My “I’ve never been more better than now” response was like, in a sense, an island of tolerance in a sea of intolerance. Ah, what our alternative thinking training has done to me is turning out to be more unthinkable, even awesome. It gives one the master key and power to access and smash through the mental roadblocks that sabotage ones future. I keep on inviting many to align their minds to and harmoniously vibrate with the universe - the reservoir of all greatness. The timing can never be more apt than now.

Over the years, Kenyan society has learned and mastered the dependency culture. But the mastery of this culture has left many disillusioned and desperate. Many appear stressed and fatigued - a demeanor highly incongruous with their environments. The mindset of poverty on display is even more alarming. Nevertheless, what is more relieving is the power of transformation contained in alternative thinking training which a few people within my area are grasping.

Following the December 2007 election and the subsequent violence in Kenya early last year, majority of the “losers” and their “followers” were utterly disappointed. This was evident through the disintegration of the community. One of the civic candidates, who is a friend of mine once approached me and vowed “never to go back in politics and never to involve himself in any community affairs”. Because “I’ve tried to show this community the right direction but they have refused”, he added. Well, this moved me. I looked at him and asked him to tell me what he intended to do once elected but felt he couldn’t achieve now that he was not elected. “I would have constructed roads in our ward, built schools, put up a lighting system”, etc. Then I asked him whether he was sure he couldn’t accomplish all that without necessarily becoming a councilor. He shouted at me “but how can I do all that when I’m not in power and can’t access the (government) resources to implement the projects?” This gave me an opportunity to share with him the concept of alternative thinking and most importantly the “Work”. What a transformational journey! I told him that it’s not about positions, because the fulfillment of our resolutions lies not on what we want to do , but rather, in who we choose to be. My words led him to a pensive mood, his facial expressions changing from that of a bold and cunning politician to a warm smile of a little kid.

Our conversations kept growing with time. We would meet at most of our evenings and further share. I felt enlightened whenever I listened to what he was going through. The more we shared the more he re-examined himself, and the more he developed a strong sense of commitment towards the community! And the last 3 months bears witness of this simple yet powerful moments we’ve had with him. Through the sharing, he has managed to put together a group of 560 people, with no no age, gender, tribe, class or even religion barriers. The group keeps growing.

Though the objective of the welfare group is to support one another through contributions, it is becoming more interesting whenever I share with them about our alternative thinking training. It’s fulfilling to see how, not after long, those who people who appeared perpetually stressed, depressed and repressed, now taking charge of their own lives. And better still, how they keep themselves mentally self-sufficient, self-poised and self-pleased.

Initially, the group intended to recruit members from within its own ward. But barely 3 months down the line, people come a long way to join this increasingly fun-filled ‘market of ideas” - and the cash tills keep ringing! With a monthly contribution of only Kenya shillings 300,there is a new sense of responsibility. It is gradually dawning to us all that we should stop expecting that the onus for changing our destiny rests with those responsible for our hopelessness. Initiatives like building schools, earlier left to the government, are now topping the priority list which now the community feels is their role to upgrade the learning standards of the area. The experience of watching this community arise and rise, and cross ranks, with the slogan “Together we can” is novel entertaining in itself. I’m overwhelmed when I hear statements like “Oh, so we had reduced ourselves to cry-babies over issues that are largely within our control!”

Change of mind set, what a breakthrough!

Much love.

Munish.

Escape Your Rat Race
By Martha Beck
O, The Oprah Magazine, January 2009

Feeling trapped by a job, relationship, or routine, but terrified of making a change? Martha Beck shows you how to feel your way to freedom.

Sheila and I are conversing at a drug treatment center, where she’s been remanded. Counselors are listening, so we can’t plan a way to break her out. As it happens, escape is the last thing on Sheila’s mind. I’m not coaching her through the woes of being institutionalized for drug use but prepping her for her upcoming release.

“In here everything’s simple,” Sheila says. “Outside I’ll have to deal with my crazy mom, get a job, pay the bills. I don’t know how to handle that without drugs.” When I ask her to picture a peaceful, happy life, Sheila draws a blank. “I can’t imagine anything except what I’ve already seen,” she says.

The despair in her voice is so heavy it makes me want to huff a little glue myself, but two things give me hope: a fabled land known in the annals of psychology as Rat Park, and a montage of other clients, once as hopeless as Sheila, who went on to live happy, meaningful lives. The concepts I learned from Rat Park, channeled through the behaviors I’ve seen in those courageous clients, just may transform Sheila’s future.

But first, what is this mythic Rat Park? And how might it relate to you? The term comes from a study conducted in 1981 by psychologist Bruce Alexander and colleagues. He noted that many addiction studies had something in common: The lab rats they used were locked in uncomfortable, isolating cages. Testing a hunch, Alexander gathered two groups of rats. For the first, he built a 200-square-foot rodent paradise called Rat Park. There a colony of white Wister rats found luxurious accommodations for all their favorite pastimes—mingling, mating, raising pups, writing articles for newspaper tabloids. The second group was housed in the traditional cages.

Alexander offered both groups a choice of plain water or sugar water laced with morphine. Like rats in other studies, the traditionally caged animals became instant addicts. However, the residents of Rat Park tended to “just say no,” avoiding the drug-treated sugar water. Even rats that were already addicted to morphine tended to lay off the hard stuff when in Rat Park. Put them back in their cages, however, and they’d stay stoned as Deadheads.

Alexander saw many parallels between these junkie rats and human addicts. He has talked of one patient who worked as a shopping mall Santa. “He couldn’t do his job unless he was high on heroin,” Alexander remembered. “He would shoot up, climb into that red Santa Claus costume, put on those black plastic boots, and smile for six hours straight.”

This story jingles bells for many of my clients. Like Smack Santa, they spend many hours playing roles that don’t match their innate personalities and preferences, dulling the pain with mood-altering substances. Miserable with their jobs, relationships, or daily routines, they gulp down a fifth of Scotch, buy 46 commemorative Elvis plates on QVC, superglue phony smiles to their faces, and head on out to whatever rat race is gradually destroying them.

Sheila was actually a step ahead of most of my clients, in that she knew she was locked up. Most people are trapped in prisons made of mind stuff—attitudes and beliefs such as “I have to look successful” or “I can’t disappoint my dad.” Ideas like these—being deeply entrenched and invisible—are often more powerful than physical prisons. When we’re trapped in mind cages, gulping happy pills by the handful and fantasizing about lethally stapling coworkers, we rarely even consider that our unhappiness comes from living in captivity. And if we ever come close to recognizing the truth, we’re stopped by a barrage of terrifying questions: “What if there’s nothing better than this?” “What if I quit my job, lose my seniority, and end up somewhere even worse?” “What if I break off this relationship and end up alone forever?” “What if I get my hopes up and the big break never comes?”

When the alternatives are staying in the familiar cage or facing the unknown, trust me, most people choose the cage—over and over and over again. It’s painful to watch, especially knowing that liberation is only a few simple steps away. If you suspect that you might need to engineer your own prison break, the following pieces of commonsense advice can set you free forever.

“I just don’t think I’ll ever find the right life for me,” Sheila frets.

“Of course you won’t!” I say. “How strange to think you would!”

It amazes me how often people use that phrase: “Find the right life.” Would you walk into your kitchen hoping to find the right fried egg, the right cup of coffee, the right toast? Such things don’t simply appear before you; they arrive because you rummage around, figure out what’s available, and make what you want. (If you’re rich, you can hire a chef and place your order, but you’re still creating the result.)

Bruce Alexander’s rats were hand-delivered into paradise. Lucky critters, indeed—but not nearly as lucky as Alexander himself, or the rest of us humans, who have the astonishing ability to envision and build Rat Parks. All animals are shaped by their environment, but we, more than any other species, can shape our environment right back. We can cook the egg, brew the coffee, paint the room, change the space. We can fabricate our Rat Parks, and we must, if we want them built to spec.

“But I don’t know what I’m trying to build,” Sheila protests when I tell her this. “How can I create something when I don’t have a clue what it looks like?”

Time for commonsense suggestion number two.

I often invite clients to play the dead-simple game You’re Getting Warmer, You’re Getting Colder. The client leaves the room, and I hide a simple object—say, a key—in a tricky place, such as the inside of a cake. (Not that I would have done this with someone locked up. Like Sheila. Absolutely not.) When the client returns to the room, he almost invariably stands still, and asks, “What am I looking for?”

Obviously, I don’t answer him. The only feedback I’ll give is “You’re getting warmer” or “You’re getting colder.” Eventually clients will start moving. Guided by the words warmer and colder, they quickly identify the general hiding area. Then there’s a period of confusion, fueled by assumptions like “Well, she certainly wouldn’t hide it in the cake.” They go back and forth for a bit, then stop and demand, “Where is it?” Again, this gets them nothing. Peeved, they revert to following the “warmer/colder” feedback until they arrive at the object.

I’ve never had a client who didn’t ultimately succeed. Not one.

My point: Life has installed within you powerful “getting warmer, getting colder” signals. When Sheila thought of leaving the treatment center, her tension, anxiety, and drug cravings soared. The time she had to serve was “warmer”; her outside life, “colder.” Certain activities were freezing cold—dealing with her mother, working, paying bills. As we examined each of these, we found that her guidance system was giving her beautifully clear messages. For instance, being around sane noncriminals, even officials at the treatment center, felt “warmer” than Sheila’s crazy dope-dealing mother. Working in the cafeteria, with its institutional predictability, was “warmer” than her old cocktail waitress job, where she’d flashed her flesh to elicit unpredictable tips from drunken customers. Living within her economic means felt “warmer” than credit card shopping sprees she couldn’t afford.

True, Sheila was a long way from her own Rat Park. But with the knowledge that her navigation system was functioning perfectly, all she had to do was play her life as a game of You’re Getting Warmer, You’re Getting Colder. The same is true for you. It isn’t necessary to know exactly how your ideal life will look; you only have to know what feels better and what feels worse. If something feels both good and bad, break it down into its components to see which are warm, which cold. Begin making choices based on what makes you feel freer and happier, rather than how you think an ideal life should look. It’s the process of feeling our way toward happiness, not the realization of some Platonic ideal, that creates our best lives.

“My life is so far from perfect,” Sheila says as we end our session. “I don’t know if it’s fixable.”

She’s ready to hear my third and last piece of commonsense advice.

This step is something I stole from philosopher and engineer Buckminster Fuller. Bucky, as his friends knew him, chose for his epitaph just three words: call me trimtab. Trim tabs are tiny rudders attached to the back of larger rudders that steer huge ships. The big rudders would snap off if turned directly, but, as Fuller famously said, “just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So…you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.”

Every life is a series of trim-tab decisions. Should you read tonight or watch TV? Choose what feels warmer. Self-help or thriller? Choose what feels warmer. Cuddle with the dog or banish him from the bed? Choose what feels (psychologically) warmer.

If you make mistakes, no problem; you’ll soon feel colder and correct your course. Making consistent trim-tab choices toward happiness is what steers the mighty ship of your life into exotic ports, safe havens—in short, into every Rat Park you can imagine, and then some.

I say goodbye to Sheila not knowing whether she’ll set her trim tabs toward happiness or back to her drug-abusing cage of a life. I’ve learned not to get my hopes up with humans, who aren’t nearly as clear-sighted and authentic as rats. But our session reminds me to keep following my own tiny feelings and impulses to their distant and amazing destinations. So instead of worrying about Sheila—or me, or you—I’ll choose to trust our powerful instincts, our desire to be happy, our amazing human capacity for invention. You may choose cynical despair instead—it’s all the rage in intellectual circles—but if you care to join me, I think you’ll find it’s a whole lot warmer over here in Rat Park.

History `last refuge of the failed president’
By Leonard Pitts, Jr.

lpitts@miamiherald.com

History. We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.” - George W. Bush

Dear President Bush:

I am glad you are, at 62, still a relatively young man. I am glad you are in robust health. This means there is a good likelihood of your being with us for decades yet to come, and I dearly want that. You see, history’s verdict is on the way, and I want you to see it for yourself.

We’ve been hearing the “h” word a lot from your surrogates, your supporters and you as you make your final rounds before handing over the keys to the new team. History, we are told, will render the truest verdict on your time in office. History, it is implied, will say you were a far better president than we ever gave you credit for.

You said it again Monday in your farewell press conference. History will have the final say.

It is a curious position for someone who has been, as the quote above suggests, rather dismissive of history’s judgment. It occurs to me that, as patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, so history is the last refuge of the failed president.

But you and yours keep returning to it, reminding us how Harry Truman left office not much more beloved than you are now, but history took another look and decided he was a better president than anyone thought at the time. Frankly, the very fact that you and your team repeatedly invoke the 33rd president in defending your legacy is rather telling.

That’s not a defense, it’s a Hail Mary pass. It’s hoping against hope. Truman enjoyed an extreme makeover, yes. Most presidents do not.

Yes, history does refine our initial assessments of a given president. But those refinements usually move in increments.

You would need more than increments of movement, sir. You would need a football field. I don’t see it happening.

Credit where it’s due: you were the best U.S. president Africa ever had. Your work to reduce AIDS rates on the mother continent never got as much attention – and praise – as it deserved.

But there the list ends: I find it impossible to think of another praiseworthy achievement. The failures, though, rush readily to mind: Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Justice Department scandal, torture, Iraq War, Social Security, immigration . . . You leave a legacy of regression and division, and a nation worse off by multiple measures than before you took office.

But you know what, sir? That’s not even the worst of it. No, the worst is the way you turned our government into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, the way you disdained objective truth in favor of ideological fiction, the way you treated dissent as disloyalty, the way you repeatedly poured sewage on our heads and swore it was water from a mountain spring.

So yes, I’m happy you’ll likely be around 20 years from now. Because, contrary to what you seem to think, it doesn’t take centuries to get some initial sense of history’s verdict. That takes about a generation. Meaning that when history weighs in on your presidency, you’ll probably be here to see it. And I don’t think you’re going to like it.

Yes, I’m stepping out on a limb here. The future is, by definition, unknowable. But it is simply inconceivable to me that history will judge you anything but harshly. Frankly, I think it will judge us all that way, will marvel at the things we let you get away with, the principles Americans can betray, when they are scared.

As with the internment of the Japanese during World War II, and the McCarthy excesses of the 1950s, I think fear will be the defining statement of this era. Fear, and the terrible things we did, condoned and became as a result.

Godspeed, then, Mr. Bush. Good health and long life. I hope you live to hear history itself tell you what an awful president you were [and what terrible citizens we were].

*****

I’ve had two great teachers, each highly controversial. One was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the Indian teacher known for Rolls Royces and the mischief of his followers on their ranch commune in Oregon.

The story that has never been told relates to Rajneesh’s brinkmanship with his followers. He operated from his own definition of compassion: such a depth of love that one is willing to do whatever it takes to bring awareness to a situation.

I watched from afar [I was kicked out of the prior commune in India] as Rajneesh brought awareness to the principles his followers would betray in the face of threats of ostracism. Fascism indeed took root and the commune collapsed from the weight of it. Many got the lesson. Most have not.

Because I did get the lesson, I am now leading a national change management process by addressing the fear that allows Kenyans to betray what they know and results in behavior that holds poverty in place.

I was fleeced by Madoff

The financial guru’s Ponzi scheme cost me 30 years of retirement savings. How could he do this to me — and why did I let him?
By Geneen Roth

Jan. 07, 2009 |

I was standing in my kitchen wondering what to have for lunch when my friend Taj called.

“Sit down,” she said.

I thought she was going to tell me she had just gotten the haircut from hell. I laughed and said, “It can’t be that bad.”

But it was. Before the phone call I had 30 years of retirement savings in a “safe” fund with a brilliant financial guru. When I put down the phone, my savings were gone and my genius financial guru, Bernie Madoff, was in handcuffs. I felt as if I had died and, for some unknown reason, was still breathing.

Since Madoff’s arrest in December on charges of running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, I’ve read many articles about how we Madoff investors should have known what was going on, how believing in Madoff was no different than believing there were WMD in Iraq. And I wish I could say I had reservations about Madoff before “the Call.” I wish I could say I knew better about getting such consistently good returns, but I did not. Besides, everything I “knew better” about — stocks, smart financial advisors, real estate — had also proved disastrous: Our financial advisor embezzled a quarter of our money 10 years ago, I lost another third in the stock market during the boom times, and we bought our house at the top of the market and sold at the bottom. Considering that, Madoff seemed like a respite — his fund showed occasional losses, along with small, steady gains. (I’m keeping a list of people who want to be notified of our next investment so they can sprint in the other direction. Feel free to add your name.)

It was always more important for me to find work that I loved than to be rich. I know this is a ridiculously privileged attitude since so much of the world must concern itself with getting food. But I was (and still am) one of the privileged: I’ve always had clean water, clothes to spare, enough to eat. And so I spent years washing dishes and being a maid so that I could write poetry. Then I spent more years as a sales clerk and an avocado-and-cheese-sandwich maker in a health food store so that I could write nonfiction. I lived out of the back of a station wagon, brushing my teeth and washing my face in public bathrooms so that I could keep writing. I started my first groups for emotional eaters, a topic about which I’ve written six books, in someone else’s living room. I chose to do what I had to do for money so that I could do what I wanted to do for love. And when the money started coming in, when my book was on the New York Times Bestseller List, it was like getting a paper bag filled with Monopoly money. I had no idea what to do with it, no way of relating to the fact that I now had hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or, as James Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, says, “Insofar as there is a lesson in history, it’s that human beings are not good with large sums of money, anything over $136.”

Did I hear that diversification was smart? Absolutely. Did I choose to ignore that advice because I also got conflicting advice about Madoff being, as someone said, “the Jewish equivalent of T-bills”? Yes. I chose to find very smart people who (I thought) were as smart in their fields as I was in mine, and I chose to listen to them.

Since the Call, I have chanted the mantra of “How could you, why did you, what’s the matter with you?” Another, even meaner version of this is, “It serves you right. You thought you were above it all, different than everyone else. Well, guess what, honey? You’re not.” I have also been eager to blame someone else — anyone else — for the mess I am in: my friend Richard, who offered to let my husband and me into his Madoff fund; my accountant, who encouraged me to put all my money in one place; my friends, who all did the same thing. Where does the blame end? My father taught me to take risks, to accumulate wealth. He said it didn’t matter how I did it. But this was after 40 members of his family were killed in Auschwitz and his motto became, “God abandoned us. There is no such thing as morality, and it’s every man for himself.” Do I blame my father, who has been dead for eight years? Or is it Hitler’s fault that I put my money into a Ponzi scheme?

Unlike many people who lost everything in Madoff, and unlike so much of the world, I still have money to live day-to-day. I am still teaching, and I am still writing, and there is still nothing else I would rather do. But still. I go to sleep at night oscillating between ranting about Madoff and being terrified that we won’t be able to keep our house. Then I realize that, for me, the real suffering is not living without money; it’s living with this rage. The devastation is horrible, but if I don’t allow myself to feel this, then I can’t learn what there is to learn. I will not see, for instance, that I participated in the fraud by being willing to close my eyes about what Madoff was doing.

I often asked Richard, the head of our feeder fund, how Madoff made such consistently good returns. Although Richard tried to explain it to me, it was clear he didn’t know, either, because I’d leave our meetings still unable to explain to anyone else how it worked. But that didn’t deter me. And so, rather than put my money where my values were — into real things, real people, real companies — I allowed myself to be part of this insane leveraging of money upon money. I allowed myself to be sucked into the belief that as long as I was giving away large chunks of money, as long as I was doing good work in the world, it was OK to participate in a venture that was not contributing to anything in which I believed. I engaged in the money split to which we as a culture subscribe: We say we believe in wind energy, but we put our money into oil. We say we believe in education and healthcare, but we put our money into advanced weaponry. We say we want to stop violence, but we allow genocide in Darfur. I can’t change the culture’s behavior, but I can change my own.

Over and over again, I’ve asked myself: Why didn’t I secure the most basic of all things — shelter itself? Why didn’t I pay off my mortgage? And if I don’t engage in blame, I see the answer clearly: because I believed in something else more — I believed in accumulating. And when you believe in accumulating, you see what you don’t have, not what you have. My relationship to money was no different from my relationship to food, to love, to fabulous sweaters: I never felt as if I had enough. I was always focused on the bite that was yet to come, not the one in my mouth. I was focused on the way my husband wasn’t perfect, not the way he was. And on the sweater I saw in the window, not the one in my closet that I hadn’t worn for a year.

Although I never would have chosen this path, and although it still feels terrifying at moments, I know I can never see the whole picture in the chaos of the moment. And sometimes, sometimes I am aware that there’s an unimaginable, uncharted world on the other side of this loss, like stepping through the Narnia wardrobe.

On this side of the loss, there is the necessity — the urgency– of staying in the moment. This breath. This step. This splash of sun. The money I lost will never come back. But if I wander into fear — what if my husband or I get sick and we can’t pay the medical bills, what if there is an accident and we can’t work, what will we do when we get old — I’m lost, too.

– By Geneen Roth

*****

I’ve read much of Geneen’s writing as it addresses the issues behind my New Year’s Resolution. I sense Geneen will use her writing gifts to further bless us with her takeaways from this lesson.

“We all seek pleasure,” says Bob Greene. “How do you get that pleasure or happiness or joy? And when it’s not readily available in the real areas that you want—relationships, family, fulfilling career—food is a hundred times more attractive and it’s readily available. It’s there, and it is the drug of choice for most people.”

Yup, it’s mine. This year, I’m committed to scratching the real itch. This is where my poverty mentality shows up! :~p

The Choice Is Ours Now

by Melissa Etheridge
Oscar and Grammy Award-Winning Singer/Songwriter

Posted December 22, 2008

This is a message for my brothers and sisters who have fought so long and so hard for gay rights and liberty. We have spent a long time climbing up this mountain, looking at the impossible, changing a thousand year-old paradigm. We have asked for the right to love the human of our choice, and to be protected equally under the laws of this great country. The road at times has been so bloody, and so horrible, and so disheartening. From being blamed for 9/11 and Katrina, to hateful crimes committed against us, we are battle weary. We watched as our nation took a step in the right direction, against all odds and elected Barack Obama as our next leader. Then we were jerked back into the last century as we watched our rights taken away by prop 8 in California. Still sore and angry we felt another slap in the face as the man we helped get elected seemingly invited a gay-hater to address the world at his inauguration.

I hadn’t heard of Pastor Rick Warren before all of this. When I heard the news, in its neat little sound bite form that we are so accustomed to, it painted the picture for me. This Pastor Rick must surely be one hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist like all the others. He probably has his own gay little secret bathroom stall somewhere, you know. One more hater working up his congregation to hate the gays, comparing us to pedophiles and those who commit incest, blah blah blah. Same ‘ole thing. Would I be boycotting the inauguration? Would we be marching again?

Well, I have to tell you my friends, the universe has a sense of humor and indeed works in mysterious ways. As I was winding down the promotion for my Christmas album I had one more stop last night. I’d agreed to play a song I’d written with my friend Salman Ahmed, a Sufi Muslim from Pakistan. The song is called “Ring The Bells,” and it’s a call for peace and unity in our world. We were going to perform our song for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group of Muslim Americans that tries to raise awareness in this country, and the world, about the majority of good, loving, Muslims. I was honored, considering some in the Muslim religion consider singing to be against God, while other Muslim countries have harsh penalties, even death for homosexuals. I felt it was a very brave gesture for them to make. I received a call the day before to inform me of the keynote speaker that night… Pastor Rick Warren. I was stunned. My fight or flight instinct took over, should I cancel? Then a calm voice inside me said, “Are you really about peace or not?”

I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say “In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him.” They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn’t sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn’t want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife’s struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.

When we met later that night, he entered the room with open arms and an open heart. We agreed to build bridges to the future.

Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world’s attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don’t hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world.

Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us.

I know, call me a dreamer, but I feel a new era is upon us.

I will be attending the inauguration with my family, and with hope in my heart. I know we are headed in the direction of marriage equality and equal protection for all families.

Happy Holidays my friends and a Happy New Year to you.

*****

“Every stuck tribe is a movement waiting to happen.” - Seth Godin

Go, Melissa!

January 03, 2009

Nature Or Nurture In Social Networking

by Stowe Boyd

We suffer from a collective delusion, in Western society, and it comes to the fore this time of year, like clockwork, as we make New Year’s resolutions. That delusion is that what we choose to do, how we live our lives, act, eat, and dream — who we are, essentially — is in our own control. That through will power and hard striving we can change our ways, largely independently of others.

However, more research is coming to light all the time that suggests that this simplistic notion of the individuality of our core being is just not true.

Recent research by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler has demonstrated that emotions — specifically happiness — moves through social networks without conscious action (see Happiness Is An Emergent Property Of Social Networks), and other research has focused on how positive activities like giving up smoking are better accomplished in social groups, and that negative behaviors — like suicidal thoughts — are also transmitted like a virus through social connections: so-called “social contagion”.

One of the most interesting avenues of research is genetics: how much of our way of social networking is inherited, and how much is learned? New research is soon to be published that suggests it’s more innate than we might believe:

[from How your friends’ friends can affect your mood by Michael Bond]

[…] what shapes the architecture of our social networks and our position in them? Clearly, many factors contribute: where we live, where we work, family size, education, religion, income, our interests, and our tendency to gravitate towards people similar to us. New research by Christakis’s team, due to be published in the next few weeks, suggests there is also a strong genetic component. The study compared the social networks of identical and fraternal twins, and found that identical twins had significantly more similar social networks than fraternal twins, suggesting the structure of your social network is influenced by your genes. That may not sound remarkable, since personality traits such as gregariousness and shyness clearly play a role in determining how connected we are. But there is much more to it, says Christakis. “It’s not just about having a genetic predilection to be friends with a lot of people, it’s about having a genetic predilection to be friends with a lot of popular people. That’s mysterious: how could our genes determine our actual location in this socio-topological space?”

Answering that should help us understand more about the “collective intelligence” of social networks, which some researchers liken to the flocking of birds - the decision to quit smoking, for example, is no more an isolated move than the decision by a bird in a flock to fly to the left.

So, in the spirit of New Year’s resolutions, it seems that this indicates a necessary meta-level of resolution, one that sounds a lot like a nagging mother:

1. Resolve to surround yourself with people who are actively involved with activities and behaviors you want to do more of.

2. Avoid people who are involved with activities and behaviors you want to do less of.

3. When around people that you are consciously trying not to emulate, avoid ‘mirroring’ their talk, facial expressions, or interaction patterns: to not imprint on these people.

4. When around people you want to emulate, ‘mirror’ the small graces of social interaction — turns of phrase, facial expressions, hand gestures, etc. — so that you are helping along the integration of norms you admire. Try to think ‘like them’, by adopting their rhetoric and logical analysis. (Think of a teacher you admired in school, and how you might have adopted her thinking in discussing the class with others.)

5. When in contact with people who want to emulate you, be aware that you have this sort of impact on them. Do not be surprised to find them feeding back your thoughts, turns of phrase, terms, even facial expressions. Imitation is more that flattery: it’s social contagion, which is normal, inevitable, and generally positive.

Looks like we are who we hang with, for better or worse, and to the degree that we can control where we wind up networked we should try to move toward those that are doing the fun stuff.

For me, in 2009, that means more time with foodies, musicians, thinkers, and doers. I am going to hang with people trying to make the world a better place– at every scale — and shy away from those consumed with money, power, and fame for their own sake.

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” I want to spend more time with the great minds of our time. Maybe something will rub off.

[via @panklam, @davidgurteen]

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So, I’ve gone through my Twitter followees and kept the authors whose Tweets I’m happy to read.