| |
Hope And Personal Relationships In A Time Of Catastrophe
Published: June 16th, 2009
Over twenty years ago Scott Peck, the author of “The Road Less Traveled,” wrote how crisis was a powerful catalyst for drawing people together. Relationships are formed when there are significant and meaningful challenges at hand. In other words, people pull together around calamity-both personal and social. During the 1980s and early 90s the congregating effect of crisis was important for easing pain among those struggling along the roads to success. At that time, crisis, while they occurred regularly, were not yet as debilitating or pervasive as they have recently become. In light of our huge global recession, you would think, if misery provides a center for relationships to congeal around, that we would be experiencing remarkable growth among people. But is that happening?
There are statistical indications that society has changed profoundly. I mean there has been a cataclysmic economic shift, from wild “exuberance,” to trillion-dollar bailout. Societies all around the globe are reeling with shock and hanging on for dear life. But what are these stormy circumstances doing for personal relationships?
To start, we can take a quick peak at a few defining statistics. It’s no surprise that foreclosures are on the rise. Take a look how CBS News presents the picture. California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida had over 30 households per thousand in foreclosure during 2008. Considering that in 2006 foreclosure rates throughout America were 225% lower than in 2008, it’s obvious we are facing dramatically changed conditions. Yet, I only offer these dismal statistics to help characterize the trend of our times. So, to establish the context within which personal relationships now occur, let me show you just a few more sobering numbers and then turn to a few of the hopeful and positive ways people are responding.
As you might expect, the number of people getting married is down slightly in the last two years (see national vital statistics). In the four states with the highest level of foreclosures marriages are down in three of the four. Californians have somehow taken a devil may care approach to foreclosure; so the number of marriages there are actually up. Unemployment reached 9.4% of employable Americans in May 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up 100% from 4.7 percent just 18 months earlier. In 2009, steep job losses continue in manufacturing, although declines moderated slightly in construction and some service-providing industries.
People are dining out more than ever. In fact, according to Department of Agriculture statistics, Americans now spend 47% of their food dollars away from home. This is a long-term trend not specifically tied to current economic circumstances. But, be that as it may, eating on the run usually means there are fewer family meals being eaten. And, of course, family meals are one of the positive sharing activities that support families-especially children. Eating out also boosts caloric intake, which generally undercuts nutrition quality and fosters poor health.
On the up side of these social statistics, divorce has slightly lessened over the last two years according to the same Bureau of Labor statistics (listed above). But is the fact that people are staying together a good thing or the result of people having too few funds to seek legal remedies? Both in 2008 and 2009 American movie attendance increased, which is probably good for relationships. I suppose people just want to get away from their problems and be with the friends that comfort them most-so off to see a film.
Finding Hope In These Strange Days
If all the above stats represent challenges and limitations placed on personal relationships, there are also indications that many people are reaching out towards new opportunity. After all hope is the first step in constructing a workable future and new opportunities offer hope. First and foremost among events offering hope is the administration in Washington. Over the last two years, Barack Obama’s organization produced successful results, so lets take a look how they did that.
Obama’s campaign manger, David Plouffe, recently commented on just how importance personal relationships were for the success of their campaign. He was talking about how Barack needed to reach out to individuals in order to establish loyal and enthusiastic supporters. But this was not a campaign built around a small inside cadre of devotees that somehow caught fire. This was a campaign that successfully built a huge network of passionate supporters in every state. It was achieved by combining internet communication with personal appearances. In other words a blending of computer methods and personal relationship building. The lesson is: hope is available with the internet. You can find success online, but it has to also involve careful attention to personal relationships.
So what about the internet? What are people really doing to reach out and make connections, and is there genuine hope for us average folk if we attempt to employ Obama’s strategy. Well there are certainly more and more people using the internet. For example, in the last nine years internet usage has grown on every continent and combined global use is up over 340%. So people are setting up blogs and blabbing away-I know I am too. But success isn’t that easy according to the New York Times, who recently wrote about “blogs falling in an empty forest.” The Times offer more bleak numbers. “According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream - or at least an ambition - unfulfilled.”
A blog by itself doesn’t usually lead to personal relationship building. Hope for a more workable future means envisioning a future worth becoming excited about. I write about the many ways the future works in our lives in my book, Reading Minds With Feelings. For the future to work online, people have to reach out for other people who share some common goal or crisis. Fortunately, there are websites that offer just such opportunities-so hope is available if you make the right efforts. Both meetup.com and twellow.com are sites that help people to connect. Meetup.com is organized around many categories of groups. The groups use internet coordination to arrange face-to-face meetings around their shared interests. Sometimes group members use blogs to pursue their shared interests, but that is not essential. Personal relationships are the result, whether blogs are used or not.
Twellow.com also has many categories describing people online, although on this site the categories are for a social media known as twitter. In fact, twellow is considered the twitter yellow pages, as the name implies. But here too people are able to find others, both locally and globally, that share common interests. With twellow, there isn’t any direct method that creates fact-to-face meetings. The idea is to sort and arrange twitter users by category so that they can connect. How they connect and whether personal relationships evolve from those connections, is each individual’s responsibility. Yet with twellow accessibility between twitter users hugely increases and that is a good first step towards initiating the growth of personal relationships.
Finally, for those of you, like me, who are new to online communication, don’t let the clutter of electronic technology keep you from believing there is ‘hope’ to be found online. There are wonderful online instruction sites, such as N Ten that explain how to use social media. At this site you will find tools for connecting with people and used wisely, these tools will help you build a workable future for yourself. In fact, in light of the daunting social circumstances the global community is now facing, these new tools may be one of the few places where real opportunities still exist to help those who are reaching out for help.
The source for the above photograph is:
http://mytakeoneverything9.blogspot.com/2009/04/holding-hands.html
A Rational Advance into The Irrational: Lifelong Learning
Published: March 13th, 2009
President Obama’s support for education is strong and rational. He is emphasizing merit pay for teachers, construction of more charter schools and more class time. All of these items are good choices for educating our children. There are also other items in President Obama’s budget and stimulus packages that support education, including a few entries that help lifelong education. (See “Stimulus And Lifelong Education” on this blog) But to understand how education succeeds, let’s consider how instruction is structured in relationship to people’s learning needs.
Behavioral scientists have found that many of the decisions people make are not rational. For example, there is the issue of “invariance,” which means that the way information is stated has a large effect on how it is received. We think we know what we want and what we don’t want and that there is no inconsistancy in our opinions. That would be invariance. But as a matter of fact we avoid strong negative outcomes more than we purse opportunity. This asymmetry in our natural estimation of the world around us causes us to vary our opinions depending on how information is stated. If a fact is stated so there is a potential threat, it will be received differently than if it is stated in a different way. It’s just an irrational quirk in our nature, but these irrational quirks have an effect on how we go about learning.
Educators organize learning material into rational systems that can be easily absorbed. But for a person to learn material that is rationally arranged requires that they want to learn that material. It takes effort to absorb rationally arranged materials. Sometimes the material is so complex that to understand the basics it’s necessary to memorize pieces of information. Memorization takes effort and you have to want to do it. So learning in most education systems really depends upon how open and ready the students are to absorb the material. It’s not like learning by doing.
In learning by doing, you learn just by participating, whether you are motivated to learn or not. For example, if you walk down the street you learn things about what goes on along that street. It’s not really a rational process. You learn if there are parked cars along the street, you learn how far apart the houses are placed along the street, and you learn a whole lot of other incidental information about what goes on in that location. It’s learning by doing and it’s not really rational. In life we are sometimes eager to learn, and other times not so ready. That’s just how people experience life. So the ideas of lifelong learning are meant to accommodate this on-again, off-again situation. In fact, even if you are always ready to learn, the question then becomes what are you ready to learn. The idea of lifelong learning is to make the learning available when the individual is eager to absorb the material.
Since most educational materials are arranged rationally, lifelong learning is designed to accommodate the irrational parts of life where experience is more significant than concentration. Let the individual arrange his life so he can pursue what most interests him. As he encounters circumstances that require more information, education about any needed materials will make sense and be easy to pursue. In a society that is structured to provide lifelong learning, availability and timing are the most significant features of education.
Stimulus In A Changing Tide
Published: March 9th, 2009
 There’s a difference between today’s economy, in March 2009, and the economy of three years ago. Something fundamental has changed. It’s not just interest rates, housing prices or employment statistics. It is our psychological outlook. The threadbare optimism that held our economy together for the last several decades seems to have turned. Today, no one is willing to borrow money at inflated rates. Today, no one is looking to flip houses. Today, no one is toying with a job change just to see if she can find a slightly higher salary. This psychological shift is now palpable, and yet I’m not suggesting that pessimism is the necessary next phase to follow our ebbing optimism.
There are questions that have to be asked once a profound psychological shift has occurred in a consumer economy. Questions like, what effect will stimulus have on an economy where scrutiny and caution have become the watchwords replacing that previous optimism? Yes, one of the biggest effects of the stimulus package thus far has been psychological. Just the very fact that a team of politicians decided to act is a positive stroke. But that positive impetus can only carry us so far. And let’s not kid ourselves, the choice to act was made as a reaction to the severity of our economic circumstances rather than as a positive forward action.
Can stimulus move an economy that is in a phase of retreat and regrouping, or are more fundamental structural changes necessary to get society moving forward again? The Obama team seems very aware that many things have changed and also that many things need to be addressed. The shaping of the stimulus package was done with positive end goals in mind. Many positive issues such as preventive medicine, renewable energy and technology distribution were worked into the package. But that’s not all; other areas of the economy have also been considered. The Obama team speaks clearly about their firm intention to apply regulations to many financial areas. They are also looking carefully at how to reorganize the banking and automobile industries, which are now in complete disarray. And, of course, we shouldn’t overlook the Obama/ Clinton changes already begun in international relations. Certainly there are new responsible changes afoot.
And yet with all these positive initiatives I still get the distinct feeling we are not yet close to addressing the structural changes that society will require. The underlying psychological change from blind optimism to a more critical cautious posture is going to continue. Yet to get the economy rolling will require a positive outlook based on believable realistic political and social changes. But political change is precarious and difficult. Somehow the most profound changes only seem to happen when the pain of not changing becomes so high that a new order becomes visible. We are not there yet.
The changes that I surmise are in our near future are an honest reappraisal and substantial restructuring of our tax system. It is the tax system that holds the real tools of social change. Tools that are socially far more powerful than adjusting interest rates or pumping piles of dollars into a deflating economy. The tax system has the carrots and sticks that actually reshape both individual and social behavior. Tax deferments, tax deductions and tax increases all guide the way people and groups choose to behave. And if those carrots and sticks are used with real positive effect, positive social change results. But we are not there yet. I am certainly not predicting or pondering a worse economic situation than we currently face. But when I ask myself if the stimulus package is likely to succeed, I still have no answer. I am sure there are more changes required before the United States and the world get back on a positive track. Stimulus alone, in a changing tide, is likely to bob, churn and possibly change the direction of events. But it will accomplish no more than that. It can only be an opening move.
Locating The Stimulus For Sustainable Food
Published: March 3rd, 2009
 There are at least four programs receiving suppot from the stimulus package, which are relevant for sustainable food. There are many other programs receiving support that are relevant to agricuture and could be helpful for sustainable agriculture. But let’s start with the four that seem most related to sustainable food. These areas are funding for braadband develolpment, WIC Program (Women, Infants and Children), farm loans and food stamps.
Broadband support and development is significant as an online link for many rural areas of the United States. Small farmers, farmer’s markets and food cooperatives all can benifit from easier more direct local communications. For example, a farmer’s market that collects email addresses from its patrons can remind them of market day and special events. But that assumes the local community has wide access to the Internet. According to MinnPost.com the stimulus bill directs $4.7 billion to the Commerce Department and $2.5 billion to teh Agriculture Department to expand broadband services in rural America. Fortunately, the wording of the legislation was technically savvy and included explicit definitions for understanding broadband.
The Organic Trade Association provided background on the WIC program and farm loans prior tothe stimulus bills enactment. The significance of the WIC program for sustainable food is the vouchers they supply for fruit and vegetables purchases. As far as the farm loans are concerned, they are not targeted for sustainable agriculture, but are available for small farmers. Yet, these are the people most likely to be concerned about sustainable food and practicing sustainable agriculture.
Finally, stimulus money for the food stamps program, according to National Farmers Union President, Tom Buis, “…will help farmers, who as a result of the econmic downturn have experienced decreased demnad for their products.” The stimulus package includes $20 million for a temporary increase in food stamps. Some of that money is likely to be spent on organic foods that are raised by sustainable agriculture methods.
Preventive Medicine Online
Published: February 25th, 2009
We now have a better idea how President Obama plans to proceed with health care reform. Today’s (Thursday February 26th, 2009) 3.5 trillion dollar proposed budget includes a 634 billion dollar health care reserve fund. The money is to be collected and used during the next 10 years. This reserve fund is over and above the ongoing health care section of the budget. Just how the reserve fund will be used is not yet known, although Senator Edward M. Kennedy has a biweekly study group working on health care policy. Kennedy’s group is particularly interested in finding consensus solutions.
It’s not clear yet how new health care reform will shake out after it passes through the political process, but the Department Of Health And Human Services section of the budget has an encouraging hint. There is a sentence that includes these words, “…align incentives toward quality, and encourage shared responsibility.” On pages 26-27 of the proposed budget there is specific mention of preventive medicine. “Investing in Prevention and Wellness.” There is 1 billion dollars in the Recovery Act for prevention and wellness. So we should be moving into an era of better health. Let’s look at several sites that deal with preventive medicine.
The American College of Preventive Medicine has a system for deciding how to proceed towards better health. They have a committee that established ten leading health indicators for measuring the health of people in the United States.
The Leading Health Indicators are—
- Physical Activity
- Overweight and Obesity
- Tobacco Use
- Substance Abuse
- Responsible Sexual Behavior
- Mental Health
- Injury and Violence
- Environmental Quality
- Immunization
- Access to Health Care
There is also a page on their website providing links to several data sources for measuring these health indicators. The U.S. Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services annual report is also a data source.
Another place to look for information about preventive medicine is the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine. While this site is about the quality of health among enlisted people, there is a lot of useful technical information about health.
Stimulus And Lifelong Education
Published: February 20th, 2009
 In the $787 billion stimulus package that was signed into law this week, education gets $98,238 billion dollars. The bulk of this money will be distributed to states for pre-school thru 12th grade education–approximately $80 billion. There is also money for college grants and college education tax cuts. For a breakdown of these numbers, see Leslie Madsen Brooks’ article “Education in the Stimulus Package. Also see Laura Devaney’s article about enhanced technology funding that discusses the $650 million that goes to the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program.
The Stimulus package was much more modest with lifelong education. There is $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts as long as the money goes to museums, theatres and arts centers. According to the U.S. Department of Education website, there is $640 million dollars for vocational rehabilitation grants for states.
Lifelong education is likely to become an ever more important part of our technical society. I realize the stimulus package has been cobbled together quickly and under political pressure. Also, the primary reason for stimulus is to get the country back to healthy economic conditions. But, with all the disruptions and job displacements that we continue to experience, it is time for a new approach to education. We need a more comprehensive strategy for supporting worker productivity by enabling people to pursue their passions throughout their lives. See Mark K. Smith’s web article about the development of lifelong education.
21st Century Agriculture Conference March 18-20, 2009
Published: February 19th, 2009
 The Sustainable Food Lab is co-hosting a three day conference on “Growing a 21st Century Agricultural Revolution. This coference is financially supported by several very large food companies. There will be panel discussions on: Small Farmers and Big Markets; How can your supply chains support poverty alleviation? “Water Footprint” What must you know about water efficiency and water quality in agriculture? Emerging Markets and Ecosystem Services: Opportunities, risks, and prospects. It appears this event brings together the commercial food industry, members of the sustainable food movement from a variety of sources, and NGO organizations. There should be follow up on the Sustainable Food Lab Website.
To view the Sustainable Food Labs’ Website click here.
How Do You Hand Out 100 Billion Dollars For Education?
Published: February 17th, 2009
 After President Obama signed the stimulus package today, new secretary of edcation, Arne Duncan found himself flush with cash. Duncan’s immediate problem is figuring out how to disburse the money. The stimulus money will double federal spending on disadvantaged and disabled children. It also provides healthy increases for college scholarships, for the Head Start program and school renovations. All of this is good for education programs and hopefully will also stimulate the economy.
For more about education see edutopia.org.
Sustainable Agriculture In A Theater Near You
Published: February 14th, 2009
 There are four documentaries about sustainable food according to the food.change.org website. This coming summer a Hollywood production titled, Food Inc. will be released across the country. The other films are The Real Dirt on Farmer John, The Garden and Growing Awareness.
For more information see the food.change.org website.
First Bailout Package Has Tax Credit For “Plug-In” Cars
Published: February 5th, 2009
 Recently automotive journalist, Bill Visnic, wrote about the ultra-efficient hybrid-electric cars that will hit the market in 2010. These are the cars that will be adapted to plug-in at home. Bill points out that as a result of the first “Bailout Package” there will be a tax credit available for the Chevy Volt and the Saturn Vue. Both cars will have larger, more efficient batteries and therefore an extended driving range of up to 40 miles of driving just on the battery alone. The government will provide an earned income tax credit from between $2,500 and $7,500 for the original purchasers of these cars. The amount of the tax credit will depend on the battery’s electrical capacity. The larger the capacity, the greater the tax credit.
For more information see the EPA Fuel-Economy Website.
Older Posts »
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Leave a Comment (0) 
Subscribe to Todd Royer 
Follow me on Twitter
What is RSS? 
