The US Supreme Court is in the middle of its deliberations over the health care mandate, triggering a flow of media attention. One headline in the NYTimes caught my attention. It reads “If Health Law Is Overturned, What Will Liberals Do?” It really is of little consequences in this matter what liberals do, but the decision would have a huge impact on those who would be left out. It should read “If Health Law Is Overturned, What Will the Uninsured Do? It is patently premature to prejudge what the Court will finally do and say, but I will do it… Read More
Continue ReadingSustainability and Spirituality (Continued)
Over the last few months I have been thinking about the relationships between sustainability and spirituality. I have almost completed the fourth module of my Exploring Sustainability course at Marlboro College Managing for Sustainability MBA program. At the same time, I am in the last stages of my fellowship at the Fowler Center, a part of the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. And third, I recently gave a weekend long course on sustainability to a PhD program on Values-driven Leadership at Benedictine University, near Chicago. In all of these I have been exploring the place of… Read More
Continue Reading“Sustainability Nears a Tipping Point”
The headline of this post comes from a recent [report](http://sloanreview.mit.edu/feature/sustainability-strategy/) found in MIT Sloan management review. What do you think it means? I find this sentence to be another example of the fuzzy, sloppy, and dangerous way sustainability is used in business. [If the tone and rhythm of this post appear different from my usual style, it’s because I am trying a voice recognition program to write with. I hope to save a lot of time using this because my typing is so bad it takes me about twice as long to do a piece as it should. I find,… Read More
Continue ReadingSustainability and the Sacred
Jonathan Haidt [writing](http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/forget-the-money-follow-the-sacredness/?scp=1&sq=Haidt&st=cse) in today’s New York Times tells an interesting story about sacredness. Haidt is attempting to explain the vehemence of the “culture” war that the current Republican primary appears to be fighting. Haidt’s thesis is that ideologies, although that’s my word, can become sacred objects, held by “political” tribes engaged in a war to see their side capture the system and put their notions into play. I find it clearer talk about tribal conflicts than culture wars. Those who argue for and against large government, or the causes and remedies for inequality. Sacred objects are things and ideas… Read More
Continue ReadingSpeaking Events
I will be giving a couple of public lectures in the next few weeks. *March 23, 2012* Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec Distinguished Lecture Series Title: Sustainability by Design Details on this link. Concordia *April 4th, 2012* Sustainability Belmont, MA Title: Sustainability by Design: A Progress Report Details on this link. Belmont
Continue ReadingCreatures of Habit
David Brooks has been writing much of late about human behavior. He has fallen into this habit exhibiting a human side I once thought was missing from his columns. At the same time that such notions about human behavior are making it into the mainstream media, they are showing up more and more in academic and scholarly sources. I have been reading a bunch of articles from the open source journal, [Constructivist Foundations](http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/), that underlay the findings Brooks has become fond of. As I read these, I am finding my own sense of what Being is all about is becoming… Read More
Continue ReadingTaking Candy from Babies and Other Unethical Acts
It’s either synchronicity or my narrow focus at work, but I am caught up in an interesting stream of news. My last post tells of the stressed Wall Streeters, who are getting lowered bonuses, complaining of their unfortunate lot in life. The one prior to that was about altruism and whether it was nature or nurture (a little of both). Today the post is based on a report of psychological research arguing that wealth and other elite privileges create a kind of moral breakdown. In research just published in the *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences* (subscription only), Piff… Read More
Continue ReadingLet Them Eat Cake
In a wonderful ironic turn, my colleagues in the sustainable consumption (a bit of an oxymoron) world have been circulating a Bloomberg news story about the hardships of many Wall Streeters who, this year, are getting lower bonuses than has been the past practice. You really should read the whole [article](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/wall-street-bonus-withdrawal-means-trading-aspen-for-cheap-chex.html) to catch the full impact, but here are a few snippets. > “People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what… Read More
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