Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with Tea.
Why tea?According to Greg Mortenson writing in Three Cups of Tea, in the mountainous villages of Pakistan they have a saying:“The first cup of tea we share, we are strangers.The second cup of tea we share, we are friends.But with the third cup of tea we are family.”When we meet as strangers, we need to take the time to find out what we have in common, to build bridges.When we meet as friends, we strengthen those bridges and begin to develop plans together.When we meet as family, we recognize ourselves as members of the same close group and will work for our common good.
The goal, then, is to take the time to get past our differences and to broaden our definition of family.
Returning from a failed attempt in 1993 at summiting K2 in the Himalayas, Mortenson became disoriented and lost.He was rescued by a Pakistani family living in an extremely poor, isolated mountain village.After recovering in their home and sharing the symbolic three cups of tea, Mortenson discovered that what the people of the village most desired was a school for their children.When Mortenson returned to the United States, he devoted himself to trying to raise enough money to build the school.He eventually succeeded and, with the help of a generous benefactor who provided the initial endowment, created the Central Asia Institute (CAI).As of 2010, the CAI has built over 130 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.https://www.ikat.org/
Three Cups of Tea details Mortenson’s trials, tribulations, and successes building schools in Pakistan.The story continues in Stones into Schools with Mortenson’s efforts to build schools in Afghanistan amidst the fighting and threats from the Taliban.The schools the CAI helps fund and build differ in many ways from other schools in these countries.They are not religious schools.Any girl who wishes to attend may do so. In fact, many of the schools are built just for girls.This is especially important in Afghanistan where the Taliban prohibited the education of all females.The village people choose where the school will be built, donate the land, and provide significant labor resources to build the school.In this way, the school is firmly embedded in the community.It is part of the larger family.
As the schools were being built, Mortenson discovered that the adult women also craved opportunities for education.CAI now supports dozens of women’s educational cooperatives in the two countries.When women achieve more education, they are better able to have successful pregnancies and prevent infant and child mortality.This leads to having fewer children with the results that the women remain healthier and that more resources are available for the fewer children in the family.Educated women are also able to obtain better jobs and/or develop their own businesses, thus improving the economic standing of their families.Improved living conditions lead to less conflict.Therefore, the CAI (and many other NGOs) view the education of women as a critical step in achieving peace in conflict-torn nations.
A friend of Mortenson’s is quoted in Three Cups of Tea as saying that he fully expects that Greg will one day win the Noble Peace Prize.Perhaps he will.In the meantime, Mortenson was recently honored [October 29-31, 2010] with the International Peace Award during the annual Peace Colloquy in Independence, Missouri. http://www.cofchrist.org/peacecolloquy/He joins a list of distinguished recipients.http://www.cofchrist.org/peaceaward/honorroll.asp
As we enter the winter holiday season and thoughts to turn charitable donations, I would like to suggest donating to the CAI.If true peace is ever to come to Afghanistan and Pakistan it will probably be in large measure from those girls and women educated with the help of the Central Asian Institute.https://www.ikat.org/how-to-help/
The Gallup Organization has just published a new book: Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements by Tom Rath and Jim Harter.The five essential elements are presented in a fast 100 pages.The remaining 100 pages or so are devoted to the worldwide research Gallup undertook that provides the support for the first 100 pages.
In brief, the five essential elements are: Career Wellbeing, Social Wellbeing, Financial Wellbeing, Physical Wellbeing, and Community Wellbeing.If one wishes to have overall wellbeing, these five elements need to be optimized.A chapter is devoted to each element giving helpful tips for increasing your wellbeing in that particular element.
These tips can be summarized as follows:
Focus on your strengths.
Do work that you love.
Have a good friend at work.
Spend several hours each day with people who make you feel good.
Good experiences and donating to others improve your wellbeing more than “retail therapy.”
Automate bill paying and saving.
EXERCISE!
Eat right: lots of colorful fruits and veggies.
Get enough sleep: at least 7-8 hours.
Contribute to your community.
All this seems pretty straightforward, and we probably are aware of all these tips.So where do you rate?You can find out here, if you buy the book and get the code: http://www.wbfinder.com/home.aspx
If you don’t want to do that, the website does have some other useful info.
However, the book does rate cities, states, and countries on three criteria of Wellbeing: 1] percentage Thriving; 2] percentage Struggling; and 3] percentage Suffering.The highest ranks will obviously be filled with those having the highest percentage of their population Thriving.
Based on Gallup’s research, the top 10 countries from 1 – 10 are Denmark (82% Thriving), Finland (75% Thriving), Ireland (72% Thriving), Norway (69% Thriving), Sweden (68% Thriving), Netherlands (68% Thriving), Canada ((68% Thriving), New Zealand (63% Thriving), Switzerland (62% Thriving), and Australia (62% Thriving).The United States comes in at #19 with 50% Thriving.
Now, what is quite interesting about the Top Ten Thriving Countries is that except for Ireland and Australia (Australia’s tax rates work out to be about the same as that of the US), all of them have higher tax rates; generally, significantly higher tax rates, than does the United States.See the table below based on OECD 2005 data.
Another fascinating tidbit, is that all of the Top Ten Thriving Countries also have universal healthcare.
As Arsenio Hall used to say: “Things that make you go hmmmm….”
So, it looks like the Top Ten are using their higher tax rates to provide their citizens with the kind of infrastructure and benefits that improve Wellbeing.
It gives you something to think about before the elections.
This blog post continues the discussion first presented in Teens and the BioSocial MisMatch: the period of adolescence does not match the biological development of teens.An excellent book on this topic is Escaping the Endless Adolescence: How We Can Help Our Teenagers Grow Up Before They Grow Old by Joseph A. Allen, PhD and Claudia W. Allen, PhD.Based on their years of experience working with troubled teens, the Allens have concluded that many of the difficulties of adolescence are due to parental and societal efforts to control teens by keeping them in a dependent, childlike state rather than encouraging teens to develop independent, adultlike behaviors.
Many high school administrators are among the worst offenders in this regard.I have been shocked to hear principals and school counselors refer to young adults aged 16 to 18 as “kiddos” or “boys and girls”.Is it any wonder they react poorly to the rules and regulations of schools and fight back with disruptive behavior.What adult appreciates being spoken to by a supervisor in a belittling manner?If we want teens to be cooperative and behave in more mature ways, wouldn’t it be wiser to treat them more as adults and less as preschoolers?
As the Allens point out,if teens do not always act in mature ways it “…may well be partly brought about by living with developing capacities that are near adultlike, while moving about in a world that on a day-to-day basis treats one largely as a big child.” (p.128)When the adults change their behavior, changes in teen behavior will follow.
How do we get teens to behave in a more responsible manner?By giving them choices based on the level of maturity shown in their behavior.If a daughter wants a later curfew, then she needs to demonstrate responsible behavior (e.g. doing school work and chores) for a period of time that gives her parents confidence that the she is ready to handle a later curfew.“Freedom should be linked to behavior.” [p. 136, italics in original.]First the behavior improves, then more freedom is given.
However, learning to make wise choices needs to begin in childhood.Waiting until adolescence makes it much more difficult.For instance, let a preschooler decide what he wants to wear.So what if it doesn’t match?The only person who is going to care is the parent.And isn’t a little parental embarrassment (that no one else will probably notice) worth it if by the time the boy is an adolescent he knows how to make wise clothing choices without any parental input?And if the parent is still choosing his clothes when he is 13, what does that say about the parent’s desire to control and even inhibit the growth of the teen?
Communication with teens can be a huge issue.A way to solve communication problems is to speak to teens as one would to an adult friend or colleague.If you speak to a teen in a way that you never would to a friend, you, the adult/parent, have a problem that you need to fix.When you change your style of communication, it is probable that your relationship with the teen will improve.Again, this type of communication should begin with young children.Waiting until they are teens makes it much more difficult for the parent to change his/her communication style.
Treat your children, even toddlers, with politeness and respect.Really listen to what they have to say.Children who constantly demand a parent’s attention probably are not getting enough of the proper kind of attention.Again, think about your friends and how you treat them when you converse.If you are not treating children and teens in the same way you do your friends and colleagues, then you should not be surprised if you have problems with them.
What if you are doing all these things, but your teen still seems listless, apathetic, uninspired?It is probably because the teen feels her life is pointless; that she does nothing to contribute to something outside herself.This is when it is time to find a way to challenge your teen. “Teens thrive on challenge and need as much of it as we can provide.”[p. 177, italics in original.]The current educational system provides little in the way of life-enhancing challenges.Trying to stay awake (most high schools begin far too early for the adolescent biological clock), fight boredom, and get a good grade do not make for the type of challenges that will stimulate teens and encourage their success.They want to be challenged in ways that will make a meaningful difference in the world of adults.Education has to change if students are going to thrive and survive the many years it takes to get their high school diplomas and college degrees.“If we accept that at least a two-year college degree is going to be important to thriving in the workplace of the twenty-first century, then our current system is an abject failure for more then [sic] 80 percent of the teens moving through it!” (p. 197)[Also see my blog post Schools Should Spotlight Student Strengthsfor more of my thoughts on education.]
One program the Allens highlight appears to achieve a great deal of success with troubled teens through providing appropriate challenges: Youth Action Projecthttp://www.youthactionproject.org/Teens volunteer and do meaningful work that makes a difference in someone’s life.It is the type of work adults would do if the teen weren’t there.
Adolescence should be a time where teens take on increasing responsibilities, develop independence, and achieve adulthood.If this is not happening, it is up to the adults (parents, teachers, administrators, coaches) to rethink how they are treating and interacting with the teens.Adult changes in their own behavior are necessary before we will see productive changes in adolescent behavior.
My previous blog post discussed how No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is destroying American education, making the lives of teachers and students miserable. This post will discuss changes that should be made to eliminate that misery, leading to happier students and teachers, and better education outcomes.
Children are born with an eagerness to learn, an over-riding desire to attain mastery of their world. But something happens once they begin school. Learning becomes a chore. It’s now work and no longer fun. Who or what is to blame for this? Some might say it’s the teacher’s fault. Others might say it’s the parents’ fault. And certainly there are teachers who do not enjoy what they are doing; and parents who do not care.
However, as NCLB has forcefully demonstrated, it is a structural problem embedded within the way in which schools are organized and evaluated. To fix education maybe we will have to let NCLB continue on its merry way to destroying our current educational system. When every drop of creativity has been drained from the system; when every spark of excited enlightenment has been extinguished; when all that remains are the droning students and teachers slogging through the wasteland of the required, testable data bits; when we’ve completed our plunge to the bottom of the list of industrialized nations with educated, knowledgeable citizens, then perhaps changes that revitalize education will be made.
We’ve known what part of the problem is for decades; at least since the 1964 publication of John Holt’s seminal book How Children Fail(which I read in 1971 when it was still one of the hottest books in education): if we focus on weaknesses, what students are doing wrong, students become disengaged. Some teachers and schools tried to make the needed changes, but the public school system as a whole refused to change, and most public schools that had tried to change drifted back to the status quo.
The status quo may have been OK when most individuals worked in jobs that were rote and limited in scope. Teaching that was rote and limited in scope was, perhaps, adequate preparation for those jobs. But those jobs are being outsourced to computers and cheaper labor in other countries. Public schools are “preparing” students for jobs/lives that no longer exist. In the real world, both present and future, students will need to be innovative and creative thinkers who are self-motivated. Public schools are not preparing them for this world.
Since focusing on a student’s weaknesses leads to failure and disengagement, we need to focus on a student’s strengths. If we can get students engaged by facilitating their strengths, they will learn to compensate for any weakness. And it may turn out that a perceived weakness does not really exist when the student is engaged in a creative, affirming endeavor.
Encouraging creativity is also key to developing individuals who will be successful in the world outside the classroom. This cannot be accomplished if schools are focused on testing or assessing every activity.
What education should provide and what students need include:
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation is rapidly destroying the public education system in the United States.This is the overall message of Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System.Ravitch, a professor of education and former Assistant Secretary of Education, was initially a strong supporter of NCLB; but over the years, as she’s seen the actual outcomes of the NCLB legislation, Ravitch has changed her mind.
The stated purpose of NCLB is to make sure that all children are proficient in reading and math.Proficiency is determined by scores on state-created standardized (multiple choice) exams.Schools whose students fail to show progress are penalized by loss of students to charter schools, loss of federal funding, firings of administrators and teachers, and even having the school shut down.The actual end results of these goals and measures according to Ravitch are: teaching to the test; lowering the percentage score needed to pass state exams; cheating by administrators and teachers; and rampant fear among staff members.I’m surprised the student dropout rate and staff turnover rate are not higher than the already high rates that exist.Who would really enjoy attending or working in such schools under these conditions?“Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.” (p. 111)
A recently-published article, “Ten signs you work in a fear-based workplace”,
highlights the current situation for most schools.Teachers are micro-managed and threatened, all to produce dubious student test results of progress towards proficiency.
Most of those going into the teaching profession want students to obtain new knowledge and to learn to think critically.Unfortunately, as Ravitch points out, “[NLCB] ignored the importance of knowledge.It promoted a cramped, mechanistic, profoundly anti-intellectual definition of education.In the age of NCLB, knowledge was irrelevant.” (p. 29) When knowledge is irrelevant and standardized test scores are the only measure of effectiveness, any teacher who opposes the narrow focus of NCLB is punished, and even forced out of her chosen profession.“Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves?” (p. 67).
All the pressure to make the grade is on the teacher.If a student doesn’t show progress or proficiency, it is the teacher’s fault.According to Ravitch, “NCLB neglected to acknowledge that students share in the responsibility for their academic performance and that they are not merely passive recipients of their teachers’ influence.Nowhere in the federal accountability scheme are there measures or indicators of students’ diligence, effort, and motivation…These factors affect their school performance as much as or more than their teachers’ skill.”(pp. 162-63)And what about the parents?“…in the eyes of the law, the responsibility of the family disappears.” (p. 163) I agree with Ravitch that, “Something is fundamentally wrong with an accountability system that disregards the many factors that influence students’ performance on an annual test—including the students’ own efforts—except for what teachers do in the classroom for forty-five minutes or an hour a day.”(p. 163)“None of us would want to be evaluated—with our reputation and livelihood on the line—solely on the basis of an instrument that is prone to error and ambiguity.”(p. 166)
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation entered into the high-stakes education sweepstakes in a big way.Initially, they poured millions into the small schools concept, certain that this would be the magic bullet.Gates admits in a recent article [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38282806/ns/business-bloomberg_businessweek/] that this hasn’t really worked as planned.But his new idea will surely work:reward successful teachers (those whose students achieve proficiency) with big bonuses, while firing unsuccessful teachers.Right, like that won’t lead to cheating.Or, as Ravitch points out, the current myth is that we can have schools “…made up exclusively of superstar teachers…This is akin to saying that baseball teams should consist only of players who hit over .300 and pitchers who win at least twenty games every season; after all, such players exist, so why should not such teams exist?That fact that no such team exists should give pause to those who believe that almost every teacher in almost every school in almost every district might be a superstar if only school leaders could fire at will.”(p. 184)The fallacy of the myth of superstars is highlighted by research which shows that most teachers ranked ‘best’ in a particular school one year were not the best in a subsequent year.“In other words, being an effective teacher is not necessarily a permanent, unchanging quality…Apparently, the test scores of their students reflected something other than what the teachers did, such as the students’ ability and motivation, or the characteristics of a class or conditions in the school.”(p. 186)
The disturbing conclusion one draws from Ravitch’s analysis is that the true purpose of NCLB is to destroy the public education system and replace it with private, charter, and religious schools, none of which would be required to take the lowest-functioning and/or most troubled students.As it stands, under NCLB, students in low-testing schools can opt out to attend a different school of their choice.But as Ravitch notes, “The regular public schools will enroll a disproportionate share of students with learning disabilities and students who are classified as English-language learners; they will enroll the kids from the most troubled home circumstances, the ones with the worst attendance records and the lowest grades and test scores.”(p. 220)And what will be the outcome for these public schools?They will be closed due to the inability of the teachers to raise test scores.“Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or the police department.It is possible, but it is not wise.” (p. 221)“Deregulation contributed to the near collapse of our national economy in 2008, and there is no reason to anticipate that it will make education better for most children…Education is too important to relinquish to the vagaries of the market and the good intentions of amateurs.”(p. 222)
Our students are not educated when we only teach to the test.Teachers are not considered professionals when they are micro-managed and threatened.If we want the United States to maintain its place in the world, we need to understand that, “Not everything that matters can be quantified.What is tested may ultimately be less important than what is untested, such as a student’s ability to seek alternative explanations, to raise questions, to pursue knowledge on his own, and to think differently.If we do not treasure our individualists, we will lose the spirit of innovation, inquiry, imagination, and dissent that has contributed powerfully to the success of our society in many different fields of endeavor.”(p. 226)Since NCLB drives out those teachers who are most capable of treasuring individualism, it may already be too late.
Teens in the 21st century are at a point of extreme mismatch between their biological maturity and their social maturity. The mismatch for girls actually begins in the tween years (9 – 14), while for boys the mismatch may not become a problem until age 16 or so. The mismatch is easier to track with girls because they have a definite biological landmark: menarche.
In the 19th century, girls did not reach menarche until they were about 16.5 years old. By the time they were 18 or 19, they were probably married with their first child on the way. Biological development was in sync with social development. [Girls do not become fully fertile until around 18 months after menarche.]
Beginning in the 20th century, the age at which menarche occurred gradually dropped, while the age at which a teen was considered an adult rose. Now in the first decade of the 21st century, girls reach menarche at an average age of 12.5 years, fully 4 years younger than 150 years ago, but they are generally not considered to be adults for another 8 years or so. And the current average age at first marriage for women is 26 years.
While the average age at menarche is 12.5 years, the range is about 9 – 14 years: those same tween years. It should be no wonder that younger and younger girls are dressing and acting like their older peers. A girl who reaches menarche at age 10 is fertile by age 12. Her hormones are pushing her to mate and reproduce, with unfortunate consequences given how out of sync she is with the currently-accepted age for social maturity.
The mismatch is just as difficult for boys. In the 19th century, a boy often would have been apprenticed by age 13, learning to do productive work. By the time he completed his apprentice-ship in his late teens, he would have been able to support himself, and maybe also a wife. In the first decades of the 20th century, many young teens left school early to help support their families, despite compulsory schooling laws mandating attendance until age 16. However, the enactment of child labor laws in 1938 in the United States made it difficult for young teens to do productive, paid work.
As with girls, a boy’s age at biological maturity was declining at the same time that the age at which society considered him socially mature was increasing. Gluckman, Beedle, and Hanson (Principles of Evolutionary Medicine) believe “…this mismatch plays a role in teenage depression, acting-out behavior, drug abuse, and suicide.” [p.237]
The psychosocial mismatch of the 21st century is the result of unintended consequences of what were otherwise positive changes. Age at biological maturity declined because children are healthier and better fed. Enactment of child labor laws protected children from exploitation. Age at social maturity increased because our society has become more complex, requiring more years of education to achieve success.
Our educational system has changed little since the 19th and early 20th centuries. Yes, students now learn keyboarding instead of typing, but the overall structure and content has changed very little. The result is that biologically mature teens are locked into a structure that treats them as if they were children because society is not yet ready for them to be adults. In fact, the current educational structure may actually encourage social immaturity, thus exacerbating the problem. Biologically mature teens behave like children because we want them to still be children. The result is that due to this mismatch, many teens make unfortunate decisions with life-changing consequences.
There are many things that you can and should be doing to make sure you are as healthy as possible. But, frankly, most of you will resist doing them for one reason or another. You won’t really change your diet because, “I can’t live without bread!”; or “Cheesy fries are SO good!”; or whatever. Maybe you will try to add a few more fruits and veggies, but give up anything you love? No way!
And what about exercise? You know you need to get more, but your life is so busy! Where can you fit it in? You could park at the back of lot so that you’d at least get a little exercise at the office or the store, but hey, “I’m running late!”; or “The bags are so heavy!”; or whatever.
Recent research has shown that adequate sleep (8 – 10 hours) is necessary to consolidate learning and to reboot our immune system which gives our bodies a chance to heal and fend off invaders. But we live in a 24/7 society. Who has time to sleep?! So much to do; so many places to be. So…not enough sleep.
We’ve become a pill-popping, easy-fix society. Normally, I am against this. But there is one case where I no longer think we have a choice; where popping the pills may be the best and simplest key to better health.
Those of you who’ve read my newsletters and blogs over the years probably know where I am headed with this. Yes, the simple key to better health is taking more vitamin D3 pills. You can do this in, what, 30 seconds? I think you can manage to fit that into your busy schedule. And the cost is reasonable. Give up a can of soda and you’ve paid for about one week’s worth of pills [2000 IU/day].
Now, your skin is capable of making vitamin D, but… But unless you have very light skin and can spend about 10 minutes/day between 10 am and 3 pm in the sunlight, making adequate levels of vitamin D via your skin is going to be difficult. The range of skin color is large and as each shade darkens, the length of time needed to spend in the sun increases. If you have very dark skin color, you will need to spend around 6 hours in the sunlight. Unless you have an outdoor job and expose your skin without sunscreen or clothing (say, like a life guard), getting enough sun exposure is just not feasible for most of us. And the dermatologists would have a fit anyway.
In addition, making vitamin D via skin exposure to sunlight only works during April – October in northern latitudes. During the winter months, you are draining your stores so that by February, you are running on empty. The easy fix to this problem is to take vitamin D pills year round.
Some of you might think you can get enough vitamin D from food sources, but this is not the case. The best food source is fatty fish such as sardines, but that will give you only about one-quarter of what you need daily. I do eat sardines daily, but I also take a supplement. Milk is not a good source of vitamin D for multiple reasons, but primarily because it provides so little per glass compared to what your body actually needs. Skip the milk and take the pills.
Back in the early 1990s when I first began doing research on vitamin D deprivation, the literature stated that 20 ng/mL was the normal (and presumably adequate) level of 25 OHD (the baseline form of vitamin D used in your body). By the late 1990s, the optimal level was raised to 32 ng/mL. It has been going up ever since as researchers discover more and more health issues related to vitamin D deprivation. The optimal level is now at 60 ng/mL. This level is impossible to achieve with the current RDIs of 200 IU [children and young adults] or 400 IU [adults over 50] or even 800 IU [senior citizens]. The minimum daily dose recommended by most researchers in the field is now 2000 IU/day for older children and adults. During the winter months, you will need more. If you are confined inside or are a senior citizen, you will need more year-round. Vitamin D is fat soluble, so if you are overweight, your fat cells are pulling 25 OHD out of your blood stream, preventing it from doing its job. This means that you will also need to take more vitamin D year-round than may be true of someone who is slimmer.
Because vitamin D is fat soluble, pills should be taken with healthy-fat foods. For instance, I take my pills in the morning with my real egg salsa omelet. You might want to take yours with a handful tree nuts such as cashews. Current researchers do not recommend taking cod liver oil. Cod liver oil contains significant levels of vitamin A in addition to vitamin D. Vitamin A acts as an antagonist to vitamin D limiting its effectiveness. Also, excessive doses of vitamin A are harmful. Therefore, it is better to take a vitamin D pill that is not combined with vitamin A. It should also not be combined with calcium. If you and/or your doctor feel you need more calcium, it is probably because your vitamin D levels are much too low. When vitamin D is optimized, the body can function properly with around 500 mg of calcium/day. Getting too much calcium in supplements can also be harmful.
For those who want to know more, a recent book, The Sunlight Solution by Laurie Winn Carlson, PhD, provides a good source of information on the history of vitamin D deprivation and research, and on current research along with all the various health issues related to vitamin D deprivation. [Full Disclosure: Dr. Carlson devotes two pages to the discussion of my article: Health Disparities: Reframing the Problem. 2003 Medical Science Monitor 9 (3): SR9-15] After reading the book, you will probably want to spend more time in the sun and will definitely want to take more vitamin D.
Vitamin D is not a panacea. Taking a couple of pills each day will not magically change your life, nor will it solve all your health problems. However, if you are reluctant or unwilling to make the type of changes that take more effort (e.g. diet, exercise, sleep), taking vitamin D supplementation will at least give your body and your health a fighting chance. If you decide you want to learn more about these other aspects of your health, in addition to further information on vitamin D, you can order my book: Walking in Sunshine: LifeStyle Changes to Make for a Bright, Healthy Future.
Watch out! Change is coming. Are you comfortable in your little niche? Watch out! Your niche may disappear. In fact, it is probable that all our current, comfortable niches will disappear in the next 10 – 20 years. What will you do? For many who are conservatives, the answer is to build walls and dams that they believe/hope will protect their niches. Some of these walls and dams are literal (the southern border fence) while others are figurative (banning ethnic studies). But all will ultimately fail. The flood of change that is happening cannot be dammed.
I think many conservatives would like to return to a pre-industrial world that somehow included all the gadgets of the 21st century. Of course, that’s impossible. The reason we have 21st century technology is precisely because of the changes wrought by industrialization, one of the most important of which is massively increased population density.
Back in the distant and conservative past, when change was so slow that your niche seemed to last forever, population density was extremely low. You would have lived in groups of 25 – 50, separated from other such groups by a many-days walk. The stone tools of the Lower Paleolithic showed no change for about one million years: Conservative Heaven.
Then groups became more mobile, meeting up with other groups, exchanging ideas. And tools changed, became more sophisticated. But those changes lasted almost one million years, too. Oh, Happy Conservatives!
During the Middle Paleolithic, human brain size reached its current capacity and tools became more sophisticated yet. These changes lasted around 250,000 years. Joy in the Conservative World!
But then climate change forced groups into smaller regions, requiring that they interact more. New ideas sprang forth and we entered the Upper Paleolithic. Humans weren’t any smarter than they had been, they were just experiencing the benefits of increased population density: more diversity and exchange of ideas leading to new inventions. Of course, compared to the Present, change was still slow, so perhaps conservatives would find this world to their liking.
Yet more climate change pushed more populations closer together, and in some areas led to the development of agriculture and settled populations. In short order, population density increased dramatically, and by 5000 years ago we had the first urban centers. With urban centers came bureaucracy (big government) and taxation: the two evils against which many conservatives rail.
Hmmm…so the world to which these conservatives must wish to return is a pre-agricultural one since urbanization requires and results from the development of agriculture. I don’t know about you, but I can’t quite see those conservatives giving up their current lifestyles to live the life of foragers, even if that is the only lifestyle consistent with an anti-big government, no taxes stance. Even the Amish are reliant on big government to provide roads to market towns and police and fire fighters for protection; all of which are funded by taxes.
The conservatives, who cannot go back and do not want to go forward, are busily building their dams to protect their niches. In Texas, they are trying to build a textbook dam that will keep within its walls only the information they want their children to learn. But the flood of knowledge will breech the walls of that dam.
In Arizona, the dam builders hope to stem the tide of ethnic change that is flooding over the state. One law after another is passed in an attempt to build the dam walls higher and higher. But these dams, too, will fail.
Change will happen no matter how much we might fear it or fight it or build dams against it. And it will happen at a faster pace than ever before. The population of the United States has more than doubled since 1950, the year to which those conservatives hiding behind their dams appear to wish to return. From 1950 to 2010, Arizona’s population increased almost 900%!! No wonder there are furious attempts to put up dams to stem this flood. But just as the New Orleans’ levies were no match for category 5 Katrina, conservadams will be no match for the 21st century’s flood of change.
Population growth is everywhere. From 1950 to the present, the world population has almost tripled. Most of this increase in population (in both the US and the rest of the world) lives in densely-populated urban centers. While this can create many problems, it also has beneficial results.
Higher density populations mean more contacts with more diverse individuals which can lead to an increased exchange of ideas resulting in more creativity and a snowball effect of technological and social change. The globalization of interconnective technologies has accelerated this change. As more of the world’s population becomes better educated, the pace of change will race ahead.
Trying to hold onto the past, to stay safely behind our dams, will not succeed. As the Red Queen states to Alice in Through the Looking Glass, "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
If we refuse to run at all, the future will pass us by and we will be left in our little niche, cowering behind our dam; if the flood of change hasn’t destroyed the dam and swept us away.
One of my favorite authors, the novelist Neal Stephenson, created a family that epitomizes the virtues of adaptability: the Shaftoes. The Shaftoes were first introduced in Cryptonomicon, but we discover their ancestor, Jack Shaftoe, who displayed amazing, resilient adaptability, in the Baroque Cycle novels (think Captain Jack Sparrow on steroids). Whenever the 20th century Shaftoes (Marines and marine salvage operators) encountered a problem or crisis, their signature phrase and action was to “display some adaptability.” This is good advice for all of us.
Change happens. [Feel free to insert a more colorful term for ‘change’.] How we respond to that change indicates how adaptable we are. One would think we would all be pretty adaptable since we are the descendants of those who survived prior changes. But that is the thing about change: it changes. Techniques/behaviors/physiology that worked, or at least didn’t hinder, in the past may well be less than optimal today.
Some changes require fast action: your house is on fire, run, call 911! But many changes give you a chance to pause and think about how you could best adapt to the change. Here the techniques/behaviors/physiology of the Shaftoes can provides us with some useful guidelines.
• Be aware of your surroundings. Don’t go through life on autopilot. Change is less likely to take you by surprise.
• Become acquainted and make friends with those who come from backgrounds/cultures that differ from yours. You can learn a lot from them and they may provide you with needed contacts when change occurs.
• Try out new things and learn new skills. You never know when they will come in handy.
• To emphasize the previous point: Never Stop Learning! The ability to learn is key to displaying some adaptability.
• Get plenty of exercise: stay in good shape. Change is easier if you are healthy and fit.
• No matter how much change flattens you, if you use your brain and get help from your friends, you can survive, and even thrive, when change occurs.
I know that many of you have read Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle. Are there any guidelines you would add to this list? Please add comments.
Let’s say that one of your New Year’s Resolutions was to be healthier. It is now three months down the road. How is that resolution going? Maybe you made some changes, but now you’ve slipped back to old habits.
Change is difficult, especially if you are trying to make big changes. And it may be unclear what would be the best way to change. So let’s start small with a simple dietary change. This change is called Color It Bright.
The biggest mistake that most individuals make when cooking at home or eating out is to have a meal where all or most of the food is in a similar, boring color palette of white, cream, tan, brown. A palette of that color scheme often means fried food (high fat) is present. But the biggest problem is that the nutrient content of such a meal is poor.
For instance, look at this picture of a typical restaurant southern fried chicken dinner. Note that the color scheme is blah: brown fried chicken and fried okra; brown pinto beans; cream/brown corn bread; and creamy coleslaw. BORING!!
Fried chicken dinner with pinto beans, fried okra, coleslaw, and cornbread.
This meal will fill you up and will provide you with some protein, but it is high in fat and low in vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients that are needed for good health. If most of your meals are in the blah, boring color palette, this needs to change.
The best meals are those where two-thirds to three-quarters of the foods you eat are brightly-colored fruits and vegetables: the deeper, the richer the color, the better. If you cook/boil your vegetables until they are a pale imitation of their fresh or frozen state, then you are cooking out the good stuff. It is best to eat fruits and vegetables raw or steamed.
Some of you may be saying, well I have a pretty colorful meal because I eat yellow corn with my chicken. Sorry, but corn is not a fruit or vegetable. It is a grain, so it doesn’t count towards the two-thirds to three-quarters total of brightly-colored, nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables. Nor does yellow cheese count as a colorful food. This is just a saturated-fat version of white milk.
The picture below provides you with a better example of healthy eating. Note that about half of the food on the foil is brightly colored. The other half will be grilled tilapia: an excellent low-fat source of protein, which makes the 50/50 balance acceptable.
For meat and potatoes fans, there are also healthier, colorful options such as shown below. In place of nutrient-poor white potatoes, substitute bright orange sweet potatoes. Make sure the meat portion is only one-third or less of the meal. Add another brightly-colored vegetable, and you are good to go.
Salads are an excellent way to get lots of fruits and vegetables into your meal, but only if richly-colored leaves are used. As noted above, creamy coleslaw is a big no-no. This is also true of salads primarily based on iceberg lettuce. Most leaves of iceberg lettuce are so pale that they contain only the idea of green, not the reality, as is obvious in this salad shown below. Yes, it does include a bit of a bright spot with the few tomato pieces; but otherwise, it is strongly tilted towards the boring end of the eating palette.
On the other hand, the salad shown below hits the right, bright spot for dining pleasure. The leaves are richly colored. There are broccoli florets and cherry tomatoes. And only about one-quarter of the salad is the pale tilapia. You could add some julienned carrots for even more color and nutrition.
Here is another excellent choice: Thai chicken salad which is three-quarters spring greens and spinach and one-quarter grilled chicken.
What about dessert? Pink frosting on confetti cake doesn’t count. Sorry. But you can still make your sweet tooth happy with a beautiful bowl of mixed berries; and get tons of great nutrients in the bargain.
Let’s not forget breakfast. Most of you probably consider breakfast a bowl of cereal with milk. Not a good color scheme. You may add fruit to the cereal, which is better. But the fruit needs to be at least 50% of what is in the bowl to make it a good balance. Or, you could have 25% fruit mixed with cereal, and also eat half a grapefruit.
For those not into cereal, a better option overall is an omelet made with the entire egg, not just the whites. There are lots of good nutrients that your body needs in the yolk. The spinach omelet shown below packs a good and colorful nutrient punch, but could be even better if tomatoes were included.
So make the easy change to eating nutrient-rich meals:
Spring is coming. I hope. It is hard to tell here in the Midwest where snow storms have seemed endless this winter. But I fully expect to see trees budding out and the crocus peeking up later this month. The stark winter branches will eventually be hidden by green.
Which brings me to the topic of this blog: What does it mean to live green ? How do we manage to minimize our impact on the environment? Will using green products do it? Will recycling? Will sizing down? What should we do? Three authors come to rather different conclusions about the best ways to live greener lives.
Our first protagonist, Doug Fine, author of Farewell, My Subaru, is a self-described adventure journalist who traveled the world from hot spots (Rwanda) to cold spots (the Arctic Ocean), sending in reports to NPR and other publications. A few years ago, he decided to try living totally off the grid: provide his own power, raise his own food. He chose as the setting for this adventure New Mexico, for its relatively mild climate and plentiful sunshine. Farewell, My Subaru is the humorous story of his eventually fairly successful attempts to go green. Along the way, he gives up his Subaru for a diesel pickup powered by cooking grease; installs solar panels and a windmill for power and running water; and raises goats for their milk (yoghurt, cheese, and ice cream, anyone?). While I recommend reading the book, you can get a taste (feta?) of Fine’s life from this video clip:
While Fine’s choices seem to be working for himself and his family, how many others could make those same changes? Or would want to do so? New Mexico is not heavily-populated, but there is a reason for that. The ecosystem cannot support very many. So, although Fine’s story is impressive, it cannot really be said to provide much guidance for the rest of us.
Our second protagonist, Colin Beavan, author of No Impact Man, went off-grid in a completely different locale from Fine. Beavan and his family stayed put in their Manhattan apartment, but gradually reduced their use of resources to the absolute minimum. And I do mean absolute minimum. They quit using all disposable products. Think about that one. They tried to reduce their trash to zero, in part by having a composting bin in the kitchen. [From Fast Company, March 2003: “One of the more shocking measures of our ‘prosperity’ is the fact that the United States spends more on trash bags than 90 other countries spend on everything. In other words, the receptacles of our waste cost more than all of the goods consumed by nearly half of the world’s nations.”] Beavan and his wife bought only foods grown locally and seasonally(which pretty much meant a vegan diet): lots of time was spent at the farmer’s market. Their dietary choices were rather limited in the winter. The electricity was turned off. No late nights. Heating was “provided” by spillover from the surrounding apartments. Travel was by foot or bicycle. If clothing were needed, consignment stores were shopped. It was really amazing how minimal and no impact they were able to go. This video clip gives you some idea of the challenges.
Because Farewell, My Subaru had been humorous, I was expecting No Impact Man also to be written with a light touch. It was not. Beavan’s style is much more serious and well-researched (including a dense appendix of references and resources), as befits his academic origins. He has a PhD in electronic engineering. However, his story is just as compelling as that of Fine’s, maybe more so, because Beavan made his changes in a city of millions. Rather than uprooting himself to become a subsistence farmer in the wild west, Beavan and his wife kept their jobs, but dramatically changed their lifestyle. Whether or not others can go as minimal as the Beavans did is a serious question, but at least the possibility exists for others to follow in their ecological footprint. The last thing Fine should desire is for others to follow him to New Mexico to try to replicate his lifestyle since the end result would be increased environmental degradation.
This leads to our third protagonist, David Owen, author of Green Metropolis, the most scholarly book of the three. Owen is a writer for the New Yorker, which should give you some idea of his writing style. Green Metropolis is a paean to the virtues of Manhattan. One might think given how gloriously, ecologically green he views Manhattan to be that he and Beavan would be totally in sync and living very similar lifestyles in Manhattan apartments. But no. Owen lives with his family in an old house in a small town in Connecticut. Hmmm…
Owen’s main thesis is that it is only in dense urban centers, of which Manhattan is the prime exemplar, that humans can live truly green lives. The reasons for this are many and include the following. The dense integration of stores and housing allows residents to easily walk most places they need to go. Mass transit that is a short walk to and from any destination within the city is available for longer trips. Vertical structures with a small footprint are more efficient in their use of resources than are long, low structures. Overall, per capita resource consumption and trash accumulation is lower than in less dense environments. You can get a feel for the first chapter of his book from this video clip:
Owen evidently believes that if all humans lived in cities modeled after Manhattan, and if these cities had excellent mass transit along with policies that discouraged use of cars, the world would be a happier, greener place. He really loathes the urban/suburban sprawl of the Kansas City and Phoenix Metro regions, verbally shredding them throughout the book. Dubai and the new cities in China also get their share of the whip’s lash, in large part because they were not built on the Manhattan formula of dense business/residential integration and well-planned mass transit.
The world probably would be a greener place if humanity were confined to cities of skyscrapers on a few square miles of land. But this would require that natural selection work over time to shift the inborn desire of most individuals to live in an open area where they have long views to the horizon and some distance from their neighbors. If dense urban centers were natural for most humans, city residents would not have vacation homes in the country. They would not pack up and move to the suburbs as soon as they could afford to do so, like Owen and his wife did. And why did they move? Because they didn’t want to bring up their children in the city. They wanted their children to experience a more natural environment.
Owen may hate Kansas City and Phoenix for their sprawl, but it is that very sprawl that makes them feel like comfortable places to live for most individuals. However, I agree with Owen that they are definitely problematic environmentally since cars and all that goes with them are a necessity. I also agree with Owen’s statement that “Environmental changes that rely solely on willpower are doomed to fail.” We cannot all be like Colin Beavan and reduce our impact to near zero. Beaven wouldn’t be able to do what he did to the extent that he did it anywhere else in the United States but the dense urban center of Manhattan. Beavan went even further than Owen would consider necessary by eschewing elevators and mass transit. When Beavan said no electricity, he meant no electricity. But would the rest of us have his willpower and stamina?
So here is our conundrum. Most humans are better-adapted to suburban sprawl than high-density urban living. They can manage the urban jungle, but when given the opportunity, a significant portion of the population chooses to move to the edges, or further out. Returning to subsistence farming a la Doug Fine is not an option. The world is too populous for that. Only a tiny fraction of us have the willpower (or the location) to live the stripped-down life of Colin Beavan. And all of us cannot or will not move to Manhattan or similar cities in order to live David Owen’s version of truly green lives. Even he isn’t doing that.
Assuming that we do care about our planet and that we won’t just throw our hands in the air and give up, what should we do? What are you doing? I would really like to see some comments from readers posted below this blog. Maybe we can get a dialog going on this topic. It might not be easy being green, but do we really have a long-term option?
How many of you would like to achieve peak performance at home, school, and/or work? I will assume the answer is something like, “Well, Duh!” And parents probably want their children to achieve in school. Are you and/or your children achieving peak performance now? If not, what can you do?
John Medina, a molecular biologist/researcher, thinks he has the answers. He has gathered them together in his book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. The text of the book is a pretty easy, breezy read. But if reading seems like too much bother, Medina has included a DVD which is basically a video “Cliffs Notes” version of the text that is very amusing. Can’t (be bothered to) find a book? No worries. Medina also has a website [http://www.brainrules.net/] which provides the same material in yet other formats including tutorials and newsletters, among others. Medina wants to make sure you have no excuse for not getting the information on making the most of your brain.
For those of you who are unable to exert yourself beyond reading this blog, here are the 12 Rules as listed in the Table of Contents. (With my comments.)
Exercise Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power. (Whoops! Better get up and dash to the bookstore or library after all!)
Survival Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too. (Our brain is the result of our ancestors who were better able to survive and reproduce than the others in their group.)
Wiring Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently. (Individual life experiences result in individual brain wiring patterns.)
Attention Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things. (SEX! DANGER! Not boring. Scary maybe. Emotionally charged for sure. Journal articles: not so much.)
Short-term Memory Rule #5: Repeat to remember. (Looks like the advertisers have this rule down.)
Long-term Memory: Rule #6: Remember to repeat. (Really short version: schools are doing it all wrong. Big surprise. What we are “teaching” students is that most “learning” is boring. Dissection labs, on the other hand...)
Sleep Rule #7: Sleep well, think well. (Your brain has tons of work to do while your body is sleeping. If it doesn’t get this off-hours work time, your on-hours efficiency and effectiveness plummet.)
Stress Rule #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way. (Too much stress prevents memory formation and can even kill memory cells. Kids with stressful home lives can’t learn.)
Sensory Integration Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses. (Multisensory environments lead to better, more creative learning and result in better, longer recall than does learning in a unisensory environment.)
Vision Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses. (A picture is worth… Are all these photos working? By the way, vision trumps because we are adapted to climbing and swinging from branches in trees where depth perception is critical.)
Gender Rule #11: Male and female brains are different. (On average, men get the gist of a situation; women focus on details. Recognizing and working with these differences can give a fuller, better perspective to a situation.)
Exploration Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers. (Hypothesis testing, problem solving, and risking failure are how we learn.)
In summary, Medina has provided much useful information in nice, bite-sized chunks. Explore Brain Rules in any of the diverse formats Medina has provided, and peak performance of your brain may be yours; if you make the effort.
