Quote of the Day -- Richard Edelman

In this period of information bankruptcy and instability, business has to be a primary source of objective facts, a catalyst for change and a standard-bearer for universal values.

-- Richard Edelman

Quote of the Day -- Tim Cook

Technology does not need vast troves of personal data, stitched together across dozens of websites and apps, in order to succeed. Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it. And we're here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.

If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform...

At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement — the longer the better — and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible...

It is long past time to stop pretending that this approach doesn't come with a cost — of polarization, of lost trust and, yes, of violence.

A social dilemma cannot be allowed to become a social catastrophe.

-- Tim Cook

Quote of the Day -- Robert Reich

No economy can continue to function when the vast middle class and everybody else don’t have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing without going deeper and deeper into debt.

-- Robert Reich

Quote of the Day -- Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell

Social media has changed the lives of millions of Americans with a suddenness and force that few expected. The question is whether those changes might invalidate assumptions made by Madison and the other Founders as they designed a system of self-governance. Compared with Americans in the 18th century—and even the late 20th century—citizens are now more connected to one another, in ways that increase public performance and foster moral grandstanding, on platforms that have been designed to make outrage contagious, all while focusing people’s minds on immediate conflicts and untested ideas, untethered from traditions, knowledge, and values that previously exerted a stabilizing effect. This, we believe, is why many Americans—and citizens of many other countries, too—experience democracy as a place where everything is going haywire.

-- Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell, The Atlantic

Quote of the Day -- W.E.B. Du Bois

Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.

-- W.E.B. Du Bois

Quote of the Day -- Vernon Jordan

You are where you are today because you stand on somebody’s shoulders. And wherever you are heading, you cannot get there by yourself. If you stand on the shoulders of others, you have a reciprocal responsibility to live your life so that others may stand on your shoulders. It’s the quid pro quo of life. We exist temporarily through what we take, but we live forever through what we give.

-- Vernon Jordan

Quote of the Day -- Nelson Mandela

Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.  

-- Nelson Mandela

Quote of the Day -- Wendell Berry

The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first. 

-- Wendell Berry

Quote of the Day -- Fred Rogers

Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must continue against all odds. Life is for service. 

– Fred Rogers

Quote of the Day -- Jane Goodall

My job now is to try and help people understand every one of us makes a difference. And cumulatively, wise choices in how we act each day can begin to change the world.   

-- Jane Goodall

Quote of the Day -- Plutarch

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

-- Plutarch

Quote of the Day -- Jane Addams

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.
-- Jane Addams, considered the founder of Social Work. Winner of Nobel Peace Prize 1931

Quote of the Day -- Elie Wiesel

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

-- Elie Wiesel

Quote of the Day -- Chief Seattle

Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

-- Chief Seattle

Maps and Perspective

Last week was a tough week to be an American who values attributes like civility, honesty, and respect for other cultures. According to a reliable "witness," our President (a.k.a. racist-in-chief) referred to immigrants from Africa and Haiti as coming from sh#%hole countries. You could hear people around the world literally gasp. And then you could hear the apologists on Fox News declare that the President was just representing what the average Joe in a bar in Wisconsin would say. First, I think that many average Joe's in Wisconsin would probably cringe at that generalization, just like people around the world cringed at our President's generalization.  And second, I don't want an average Joe from Wisconsin as my president. I think the president should be smarter, better-educated, and more qualified than I am. He should be someone I look up to, not an object of disdain.

I wonder how much our President or the average Joe knows about Africa? I'm sure he's never visited. Does he have any idea how big it is, how many countries it contains, what languages the people speak?  I recently stumbled across this map in my internet wanderings. It's a great perspective on the vastness of Africa -- it can hold the United States, China, the Indian subcontinent and big chunks of Europe. I know from personal experience that the drive through the Serengeti, which is just one part of one African country (Tanzania), seems endless. Africa is immense and immensely diverse -- not to be dismissed with the wave of a hand or a thoughtless remark.

On the other hand, we know from experience in our US elections that size is not necessarily the most important measure of value and importance. People have struggled with many different ways to represent the relationship between population, geography, and electoral votes in the US states. This is the best one that I've seen. While it's true that both the US Senate and the electoral college are designed to make sure that rural America has a voice, this map demonstrates that their voice has become disproportionately loud. We live in an urban world. We live in a diverse world. And we need to find a way to better represent that in our political system. (By the way, you can find much more detail about this map and the ideas behind it here.) 

Maps like statistics can be useful or they can be misused. And they can also teach us that size isn't the only thing that matters.

Quote of the Day -- William Jennings Bryan

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.

-- William Jennings Bryan, Cross of Gold speech

Quote of the Day -- Adam Smith

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

-- Adam Smith

Quote of the Day -- Toni Morrison

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

-- Toni Morrison

Quote of the Day -- Paulo Coelho

The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.

-- Paulo Coelho

Exceptionalism

Most of us are pretty ordinary people, destined to live ordinary lives. We strive to do well, to provide for our families, to improve our minds, nourish our bodies and our spirits. But basically, we are ordinary. And that should be OK. If we can look back at a life well-lived, we should be proud. And yet...

In The Road to Character, David Brooks talks about a culture shift from self-effacement -- "Nobody's better than me, but I'm no better than anyone else" -- to a culture of self-promotion -- "Recognize my accomplishments, I'm pretty special." He cites Gallup surveys in 1950 and 2005 that asked high school seniors if they considered themselves important. In 1950, 12% said yes. In 2005, 80% said yes. This seems like self-esteem run amok. We can't all be important and exceptional. Some of us (actually most of us) just need to be regular folk doing our best. In Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain notes a similar shift from a culture of character to a culture of personality.

As individuals, we yearn to be important, exceptional, even famous. We want more "likes" and more "followers." We want to see our name and face in lights. And as a country, many of us tout American exceptionalism, forgetting that exceptional means different, not necessarily better. According to Wikipedia, Alexis de Tocqueville was probably the first to couple American and exceptionalism in print. It was only partially a compliment:

"The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people."

 

Those words by a somewhat snobbish European were penned in 1835. In the intervening years, America has emerged from isolationism at important moments and really stepped up to make a difference in the course of history. And despite a still strong bent of anti-intellectualism, we have produced many brilliant minds and ground-breaking ideas. But so have other nations around the world. And that's what so few Americans seem to understand. We are exceptional -- meaning different -- in many ways, but exceptional does not equate to better. 

No one can be the best at everything, and we certainly aren't. We need to teach our children to be realistic about their strengths and weaknesses and to strive to live a good life, not necessarily a famous life. And we need to teach ourselves as a nation to recognize that we are not the best at everything, any more than our children are. A good parent helps their children be both proud and realistic. A good citizen should do the same.