Creative Tangents
(Please be forewarned. This post is full of incongruous
tangents, as happens a lot when I am ranting)
One of the things I do often is make a list of all the feelings I bought myself in a day and think about whether they were worth my time or not, and if they should have even been allowed.
I think we all do this subconsciously. Our tweets and facebook statuses are evidence of this. Some of us steer clear from publicizing our feelings, but that is because we like to keep them to ourselves without feeding people’s curiosity or eagerness to judge us.
But, our whole life can be summed up as an activity of collecting feelings. Some of us choose to collect a wide assortment of them, and some of us stick to collecting a lot of the same few feelings we think pleasurable.
But, if you consciously list out the feelings you bought yourself, you will start to see patterns in your attitudes. I do this mainly to keep myself entertained when I am occupied in some mundane activity. It’s nice to let your mind go off on tangents and think about random things with the tap running in the background when you are doing the dishes. :)
But I encourage you to try it. Here are some starters.
Who did you meet today and what kind of social conversation did you make? What do you like most about that fragrant, all-natural organic handmade soap you bought at the specialty store? What do you think of abstract art? What was the last movie you watched that you found so offensive that you thought it shouldn’t have been made? What kind of advertisements appeal to you?
The thought that’s currently occupying my mind is on the subject of creativity. I have been wiki-hopping and picking up all kinds of thoughts about this seemingly uncomplicated word.
What I set out to do was understand the value of creativity, mostly related to my work. Sometimes I am vexed by the limitations I need to conform to when I am thinking of ideas for my projects (because they make no business sense!). Then, I take a little break to encourage bitter thoughts about how my brilliance and creativity are being thwarted by these imbecilic notions of what makes sense and what does not! Why can’t people just accept that “I am talent” and shower me with praise (and money)
Mainly, how is a person to engage in the activity of being creative (or innovative) if people are constantly drawing perimeters around what is creative and what is not, what should be allowed and what should not?
As I was moping about all of this, my mind wandered slightly off-topic (although, if I want to, I can connect the dots and make them seem related). I was thinking about art. What if the role of art was not to entertain or make a compelling point, but to simply be art! By this, I don’t mean creating anti-art or anti-anti-art, but embracing the idea that art is whatever is presented as art.
The minute you define art even as one that rejects all prior definitions of art, you are creating a new definition, which too should be rejected by that same logic. But, what if we stopped defining art and started embracing everything more open-mindedly. By this I don’t mean we should accept everything we don’t find beautiful as beautiful, but that we could accept that everything need not be beautiful or compelling! Can we not collect more feelings from art than just the small set that we have assigned to it? Can we also not assess one art as being better than another because it possesses more layers of meaning?
This brings me to another of my peeves. How do we decide which cause is worthy of prioritizing over another? I keep looking at how cause marketing is evolving and making remarkable things happen. We are suddenly more aware and more pumped up about creating change than even before. I find that I am on both sides of this equation (I am the “marketer” and the “marketee”), but I especially enjoy looking at what kind of feelings businesses and nonprofits are tapping into (beyond our feelings of empathy and compassion that is) to make us respond to their satisfaction.
For instance, I was thinking about the environment, and how one of our justifications for saving the planet seems to be that it is beautiful and therefore worth saving. I am constantly watching wildlife documentaries and wondrously admiring these animals, as if the only reason they need to be saved is because they inspire wonder or awe! What if they were not so beautiful and do not inspire wonder or awe? Shouldn’t we still save them?
What if we are to prevent the extinction of tribal communities, not because we think they have a rich cultural heritage and are full of ancient wisdom, but because they deserve to live on this planet as much as we do regardless of whether we can appreciate them or not!
How about we let people, nature and things be, simply because they deserve to be and not because they appeal to our sense of gratification and our estimation of what is worthy of keeping!
You can see how my mind keeps wandering aimlessly. Now that I have ranted and gone off on tangents, I have lost the initial anger I felt a few minutes ago towards my work. Now I can go back to it in peace and conform to the limitations imposed on me without feeling so bitter :)
One of the things I do often is make a list of all the feelings I bought myself in a day and think about whether they were worth my time or not, and if they should have even been allowed.
I think we all do this subconsciously. Our tweets and facebook statuses are evidence of this. Some of us steer clear from publicizing our feelings, but that is because we like to keep them to ourselves without feeding people’s curiosity or eagerness to judge us.
But, our whole life can be summed up as an activity of collecting feelings. Some of us choose to collect a wide assortment of them, and some of us stick to collecting a lot of the same few feelings we think pleasurable.
But, if you consciously list out the feelings you bought yourself, you will start to see patterns in your attitudes. I do this mainly to keep myself entertained when I am occupied in some mundane activity. It’s nice to let your mind go off on tangents and think about random things with the tap running in the background when you are doing the dishes. :)
But I encourage you to try it. Here are some starters.
Who did you meet today and what kind of social conversation did you make? What do you like most about that fragrant, all-natural organic handmade soap you bought at the specialty store? What do you think of abstract art? What was the last movie you watched that you found so offensive that you thought it shouldn’t have been made? What kind of advertisements appeal to you?
The thought that’s currently occupying my mind is on the subject of creativity. I have been wiki-hopping and picking up all kinds of thoughts about this seemingly uncomplicated word.
What I set out to do was understand the value of creativity, mostly related to my work. Sometimes I am vexed by the limitations I need to conform to when I am thinking of ideas for my projects (because they make no business sense!). Then, I take a little break to encourage bitter thoughts about how my brilliance and creativity are being thwarted by these imbecilic notions of what makes sense and what does not! Why can’t people just accept that “I am talent” and shower me with praise (and money)
Mainly, how is a person to engage in the activity of being creative (or innovative) if people are constantly drawing perimeters around what is creative and what is not, what should be allowed and what should not?
As I was moping about all of this, my mind wandered slightly off-topic (although, if I want to, I can connect the dots and make them seem related). I was thinking about art. What if the role of art was not to entertain or make a compelling point, but to simply be art! By this, I don’t mean creating anti-art or anti-anti-art, but embracing the idea that art is whatever is presented as art.
The minute you define art even as one that rejects all prior definitions of art, you are creating a new definition, which too should be rejected by that same logic. But, what if we stopped defining art and started embracing everything more open-mindedly. By this I don’t mean we should accept everything we don’t find beautiful as beautiful, but that we could accept that everything need not be beautiful or compelling! Can we not collect more feelings from art than just the small set that we have assigned to it? Can we also not assess one art as being better than another because it possesses more layers of meaning?
This brings me to another of my peeves. How do we decide which cause is worthy of prioritizing over another? I keep looking at how cause marketing is evolving and making remarkable things happen. We are suddenly more aware and more pumped up about creating change than even before. I find that I am on both sides of this equation (I am the “marketer” and the “marketee”), but I especially enjoy looking at what kind of feelings businesses and nonprofits are tapping into (beyond our feelings of empathy and compassion that is) to make us respond to their satisfaction.
For instance, I was thinking about the environment, and how one of our justifications for saving the planet seems to be that it is beautiful and therefore worth saving. I am constantly watching wildlife documentaries and wondrously admiring these animals, as if the only reason they need to be saved is because they inspire wonder or awe! What if they were not so beautiful and do not inspire wonder or awe? Shouldn’t we still save them?
What if we are to prevent the extinction of tribal communities, not because we think they have a rich cultural heritage and are full of ancient wisdom, but because they deserve to live on this planet as much as we do regardless of whether we can appreciate them or not!
How about we let people, nature and things be, simply because they deserve to be and not because they appeal to our sense of gratification and our estimation of what is worthy of keeping!
You can see how my mind keeps wandering aimlessly. Now that I have ranted and gone off on tangents, I have lost the initial anger I felt a few minutes ago towards my work. Now I can go back to it in peace and conform to the limitations imposed on me without feeling so bitter :)
Blind Faith and Skepticism
People keep throwing numbers all the time to validate
their personal opinions on things. I find numbers
persuasive, but they are not enough to propel me to
take action.
On second thoughts.. instances come to mind when numbers affected me emotionally but I was paralyzed by the magnitude of the problem and didn’t know how to take action.
I remember the war in Darfur because it summons up dreadful images of violent deaths to about 500,000 people. That is almost the population of the city I am currently living in. AIDS currently affects over 35 million people in the world. There are about 40,000 reported cases of Swine flu in the world.
Perhaps, it is unfair to make a point about the relevance of numbers when we speak of something sensational like genocide or diseases. Their relevance mostly comes from numbers!
I have been reading amusing and distressing news stories related to endangered species in ecoworldly. Read this:
There are many more. If you have read this far, I highly recommend subscribing to ecoworldly. :) They have much more than news about endangered species!
As I read this kind of news every morning and become affected by it, I realize it may be the effusive way in which the numbers are relayed in these articles that makes me feel remorseful. Talk to me about something with a lot of interest, wax lyrically, even lose your sense of proportion, and I will listen to you. If you are convincing enough, I will act with you and become a champion of your cause.
That being said, if there is only one of a species left in the world, or thousands of people slaughtered in a distant country, what can I do to help! How about giving me action steps to take aside from affecting me emotionally with effusion! Tell me exactly what I can do to save the world in one or two easy steps, like a click of a button. Don’t ask me for money, because when your acquisitive agenda becomes apparent, even if it is for a noble cause, all sympathetic feelings will have evaporated. How can I help for free!
I have been thinking about our sense of morality and where it comes from. It can’t all be a result of our individual conscience. It can’t also be prescriptive or based on long-standing custom through an institution like religion or the government. It has to come from a combination of blind-faith and skepticism, only, how they are combined varies from person to person. Which is why, some kinds of morality have changed over time, like our views on marriage or the way women are treated. And some have remained the same, like our views on murder and burglary.
Needless to say, there are those for who the question of morality is in a state of uncertainty, like war or abortion or capital punishment. But, we would much rather leave these decisions to the cat that is willing to bell itself!
No matter where our sense of morality comes from, it is certain to some degree at least that it has little to do with numbers. At least, our sense of right and wrong does not come from how many people agree or disagree with a value. Around the globe, over half a million people kill unlawfully every year. Does the vast number of people who take to murdering makes it morally acceptable? What we sometimes deem as deviant behavior are acts of millions of people! If our moral judgment tells us homicide is immoral, it is not because of how few people take to killing or how many people are killed. It has to do with how we define ability to empathize in another and how our conscience guides our sense of rightness and wrongness.
I am reminded of my ethics class in grad school in which I learnt of the many ways of looking at morality and ethics. It’s bewildering how much thought has gone into this area of study. As you learn about moral absolutism, relativism, realism, anti-realism and so on… where each kind is as convincing as the other, you realize that it is impossible to be right about anything, including what we now perceive as natural instinctive states of mind like empathy and compassion!
Added to that, as I read about the scientific studies on behavioral neuroscience, like how mirror neurons affect our capability to share our feelings and understand another's feelings, it makes me want to question why I feel morally answerable.
Could it be that we use these devices such as numbers and effusive expression to force a false sense of morality?
On second thoughts.. instances come to mind when numbers affected me emotionally but I was paralyzed by the magnitude of the problem and didn’t know how to take action.
I remember the war in Darfur because it summons up dreadful images of violent deaths to about 500,000 people. That is almost the population of the city I am currently living in. AIDS currently affects over 35 million people in the world. There are about 40,000 reported cases of Swine flu in the world.
Perhaps, it is unfair to make a point about the relevance of numbers when we speak of something sensational like genocide or diseases. Their relevance mostly comes from numbers!
I have been reading amusing and distressing news stories related to endangered species in ecoworldly. Read this:
A species of bird so rare it was thought perhaps to be extinct was captured on video and still images in the Phillipines province of Nueva Vizcaya… right before it was cooked and eaten. Read more
Scientists succeeded for the first time in achieving the holy grail of conservation: bringing to life an extinct animal through cloning. For seven minutes. Read more
Last year one of the most critically endangered birds in the world, the Northern Bald Ibis, nested in Spain for the 1st time in 500 years. Terrific news has now arrived that a pair is nesting again in the same location this year. Read more
According to a new study, climate change could drastically alter 88% of the waters where dolphins, whales and porpoises are found. While some species may stand to benefit from the changes, the research concluded that one fifth of cetacean species could be lost forever. Read more
There are many more. If you have read this far, I highly recommend subscribing to ecoworldly. :) They have much more than news about endangered species!
As I read this kind of news every morning and become affected by it, I realize it may be the effusive way in which the numbers are relayed in these articles that makes me feel remorseful. Talk to me about something with a lot of interest, wax lyrically, even lose your sense of proportion, and I will listen to you. If you are convincing enough, I will act with you and become a champion of your cause.
That being said, if there is only one of a species left in the world, or thousands of people slaughtered in a distant country, what can I do to help! How about giving me action steps to take aside from affecting me emotionally with effusion! Tell me exactly what I can do to save the world in one or two easy steps, like a click of a button. Don’t ask me for money, because when your acquisitive agenda becomes apparent, even if it is for a noble cause, all sympathetic feelings will have evaporated. How can I help for free!
I have been thinking about our sense of morality and where it comes from. It can’t all be a result of our individual conscience. It can’t also be prescriptive or based on long-standing custom through an institution like religion or the government. It has to come from a combination of blind-faith and skepticism, only, how they are combined varies from person to person. Which is why, some kinds of morality have changed over time, like our views on marriage or the way women are treated. And some have remained the same, like our views on murder and burglary.
Needless to say, there are those for who the question of morality is in a state of uncertainty, like war or abortion or capital punishment. But, we would much rather leave these decisions to the cat that is willing to bell itself!
No matter where our sense of morality comes from, it is certain to some degree at least that it has little to do with numbers. At least, our sense of right and wrong does not come from how many people agree or disagree with a value. Around the globe, over half a million people kill unlawfully every year. Does the vast number of people who take to murdering makes it morally acceptable? What we sometimes deem as deviant behavior are acts of millions of people! If our moral judgment tells us homicide is immoral, it is not because of how few people take to killing or how many people are killed. It has to do with how we define ability to empathize in another and how our conscience guides our sense of rightness and wrongness.
I am reminded of my ethics class in grad school in which I learnt of the many ways of looking at morality and ethics. It’s bewildering how much thought has gone into this area of study. As you learn about moral absolutism, relativism, realism, anti-realism and so on… where each kind is as convincing as the other, you realize that it is impossible to be right about anything, including what we now perceive as natural instinctive states of mind like empathy and compassion!
Added to that, as I read about the scientific studies on behavioral neuroscience, like how mirror neurons affect our capability to share our feelings and understand another's feelings, it makes me want to question why I feel morally answerable.
Could it be that we use these devices such as numbers and effusive expression to force a false sense of morality?
Checking Out!
Death sites depress me, not because they deal with
death and have sinister-sounding names
like Death Switch, Slightly Morbid, or Legacy Locker, but because they
take care of who has access to your
online content after you die! I
suppose it makes sense. A decade or two ago,
matters related to death were a lot more
straight-forward. You had some tangible personal
belongings, that you could easily divy up among
your friends and family. Even intangible
assets - negotiable instruments,
intellectual property and such could be easily
passed on. The more assets you had, the more
complicated it got, but on the whole,
bequesting assets to an heir was less and less
labyrinthine in each previous decade.
But, now given that much of our time is spent on the net, and we participate in confidential online activities that may (or may not) involve financial transactions, you have to think about who has access to you digital property, that is your online accounts and documents after you have given up the ghost! This is especially something of concern if you want to keep all that information private as long as you are alive! The net is littered with email accounts, blogs and social network profiles of people who are no longer with us and who have no one to claim their accounts. Their online life is there somewhere, lingering like a poltergeist. Who knows when they might show up and what they might reveal to the world about them! I am willing to bet there is millions of dollars in unclaimed money sitting on the net in many paypal accounts and such as I write about it! A huge waste of wealth!
If I were to make a quick list of all my online accounts that mean something to me, it would add up to at least 20. Tapi and some of my family already have the key to my online life. They are free to go into my email inboxes and read my email, tweet from my twitter, spy on my friends on facebook, edit all my blog posts and defame me all they want, whenever they want. It's besides the point that they don't do any of that despite such free access, except watching my netflix movies and occasionally messing with my queue. I suppose they have no reason to. I don't live that covetable life that they would want to experience vicariously through me. But what this means is, I am clearly not the best patron for these death sites. My loved ones already have access to my online assets and don't have to wait till I've met my end.
But if, unlike me, you are that buttoned-up person, who likes to keep your online activity private, you may want to consider these sites.
Not just death, Slightly Morbid for instance, provides the same services to people who are in an emergency situation, like a serious accident or a natural disaster. Death Switch has an automated system that prompts you to type out your password on a regular schedule. If you do not enter the password for some period of time, it deduces you as critically disabled or dead, and sends out your pre-scripted automated message to your loves ones. This I find scary. It's a lot to put my family through by having them read my death letter when I am still alive! I also have accounts on sites that I've stopped using. I don't want them thinking my lack of activity on their site is because I have gone to meet my maker! But as far as they are concerned, I may very well have. It's all the same to them! I also don't want to have to keep proving that I am alive on "Death Switch", even if they let me set how frequently I want to prove it to them.
But, here is the thing. I am one of those people you don't like! My job requires me to spam people every once in a while to promote some of the excellent work we do in our organization. I am not about to tell you what I do for a living, and get dissed for sounding preachy. But, I deal with online marketing and I send out a lot of emails to a lot of people.
Every so often I feel the need to purge my office email database off deceased people! It's a dodgy and depressing decision. You may wonder why I care that deceased people continue to receive my emails in their inbox. But, if someone has inherited the inbox of a deceased relative, I have found new audience to promote my cause (healthy living!), which for all you know is advice they need (especially if the relative passed away as a result of ill-health) or may be interested in (if the relative was an admirable advocate for healthy living) They may want to carry on the tradition and contribute to the cause or even pay a tribute to their relative for having gone through a difficult time or serving a great cause. In essence, they have inherited goodwill and good health!
On the other hand, you want to be respectful and not spam a deceased person's inbox for ethical reasons! It's not the most wonderful feeling to think that there are people out there wanting to make money off you for having lost a loved one! It's a matter of perspective whether it is okay that death is such a huge business. But death is business to many. I can easily think up a hundred important jobs related to death that I am glad are being addressed. In the case of nonprofits, it is not even business, it has to do with passing on the legacy of serving a good cause.
Another reason I feel the need to purge my database is because, if an email I send out goes unread because a person is deceased, it throws off statistics on email performance, making it difficult for me to gauge accurately how many "living" people were inspired to act on the cause after reading the email.
When you work in a health organization, dealing with death is inevitable! But the fact that reading about death sites is making me think of how it will affect my work and not so much my personal life is really disturbing! What I find amusing is how much we take the whole religious concept of "life after death" to a whole new level! We seem not only to want to live on forever, but also control how we will the live and with whom we will live, after we've crossed the great divide.
But, now given that much of our time is spent on the net, and we participate in confidential online activities that may (or may not) involve financial transactions, you have to think about who has access to you digital property, that is your online accounts and documents after you have given up the ghost! This is especially something of concern if you want to keep all that information private as long as you are alive! The net is littered with email accounts, blogs and social network profiles of people who are no longer with us and who have no one to claim their accounts. Their online life is there somewhere, lingering like a poltergeist. Who knows when they might show up and what they might reveal to the world about them! I am willing to bet there is millions of dollars in unclaimed money sitting on the net in many paypal accounts and such as I write about it! A huge waste of wealth!
If I were to make a quick list of all my online accounts that mean something to me, it would add up to at least 20. Tapi and some of my family already have the key to my online life. They are free to go into my email inboxes and read my email, tweet from my twitter, spy on my friends on facebook, edit all my blog posts and defame me all they want, whenever they want. It's besides the point that they don't do any of that despite such free access, except watching my netflix movies and occasionally messing with my queue. I suppose they have no reason to. I don't live that covetable life that they would want to experience vicariously through me. But what this means is, I am clearly not the best patron for these death sites. My loved ones already have access to my online assets and don't have to wait till I've met my end.
But if, unlike me, you are that buttoned-up person, who likes to keep your online activity private, you may want to consider these sites.
Not just death, Slightly Morbid for instance, provides the same services to people who are in an emergency situation, like a serious accident or a natural disaster. Death Switch has an automated system that prompts you to type out your password on a regular schedule. If you do not enter the password for some period of time, it deduces you as critically disabled or dead, and sends out your pre-scripted automated message to your loves ones. This I find scary. It's a lot to put my family through by having them read my death letter when I am still alive! I also have accounts on sites that I've stopped using. I don't want them thinking my lack of activity on their site is because I have gone to meet my maker! But as far as they are concerned, I may very well have. It's all the same to them! I also don't want to have to keep proving that I am alive on "Death Switch", even if they let me set how frequently I want to prove it to them.
But, here is the thing. I am one of those people you don't like! My job requires me to spam people every once in a while to promote some of the excellent work we do in our organization. I am not about to tell you what I do for a living, and get dissed for sounding preachy. But, I deal with online marketing and I send out a lot of emails to a lot of people.
Every so often I feel the need to purge my office email database off deceased people! It's a dodgy and depressing decision. You may wonder why I care that deceased people continue to receive my emails in their inbox. But, if someone has inherited the inbox of a deceased relative, I have found new audience to promote my cause (healthy living!), which for all you know is advice they need (especially if the relative passed away as a result of ill-health) or may be interested in (if the relative was an admirable advocate for healthy living) They may want to carry on the tradition and contribute to the cause or even pay a tribute to their relative for having gone through a difficult time or serving a great cause. In essence, they have inherited goodwill and good health!
On the other hand, you want to be respectful and not spam a deceased person's inbox for ethical reasons! It's not the most wonderful feeling to think that there are people out there wanting to make money off you for having lost a loved one! It's a matter of perspective whether it is okay that death is such a huge business. But death is business to many. I can easily think up a hundred important jobs related to death that I am glad are being addressed. In the case of nonprofits, it is not even business, it has to do with passing on the legacy of serving a good cause.
Another reason I feel the need to purge my database is because, if an email I send out goes unread because a person is deceased, it throws off statistics on email performance, making it difficult for me to gauge accurately how many "living" people were inspired to act on the cause after reading the email.
When you work in a health organization, dealing with death is inevitable! But the fact that reading about death sites is making me think of how it will affect my work and not so much my personal life is really disturbing! What I find amusing is how much we take the whole religious concept of "life after death" to a whole new level! We seem not only to want to live on forever, but also control how we will the live and with whom we will live, after we've crossed the great divide.
One More.. and for the Third Time!
It's
Mithaki this time! She did the 20-mile Walk for Hunger
too, and for the
third consecutive
year! How does one beat that!!
By now she is a total pro and can do the whole thing in her sleep!
Come to think of it, I too can do the walk in my sleep. It's real life that I find challenging! ;)
By now she is a total pro and can do the whole thing in her sleep!
Come to think of it, I too can do the walk in my sleep. It's real life that I find challenging! ;)
Wowee!
And while I am still stuck on little 5K runs,
Sveta did the "practice" Thames Bridges
Bike Ride "from Tower Bridge to Hampton
Court across all the bridges in between to raise
money for the Stroke Association - about
33 miles"! The
real event is on May 31st when she will be doing it
again! How cool is that!!
You kicked butt Batanirani!!!! Well done you!! xx
What an inspiring lot, these active philanthropic friends and family! You guys are making me look bad! I am going to have to build up more stamina to cheer you! :D
Love and Hugs xx
You kicked butt Batanirani!!!! Well done you!! xx
What an inspiring lot, these active philanthropic friends and family! You guys are making me look bad! I am going to have to build up more stamina to cheer you! :D
Love and Hugs xx
The SuperWalkers!
Anand and Akshay did the 20-mile Walk for Hunger today in 5.5 hours and raised $500! It is SO incredible!
MORE POWER TO YOU and your legs of steel!
YOU GUYS ROCK!
LOVE AND HUGS xx
Pro Bono!
I have been volunteering with non-profits for quite
some time on many different projects, and I find that
working pro-bono is not all that easy. Finding projects
to work on is the toughest part. I signed up with
Taproot Foundation, which matches
your skills with organizations that need your
help. A great idea! It satisfies one's conception
of what is perfect! You have skills, you want to
help, organizations need your help, Taproot brings
you together. Tada!
They had a lot of marketing and design projects (my area of expertise), which I found very unusual and appealing. I was excited about the work they do, the competence level of volunteers, the organizations they work with. It seemed very impressive. I could see a lot of non-profits benefitting from skilled volunteers with a design background, because design projects are otherwise expensive as hell! Even companies that work specifically with non-profits charge exorbitantly for design work! I considered approaching Taproot not only to volunteer, but also for my organization. So I did! I signed up to volunteer, attended the orientation, uploaded my resume and was raring to get started!
It has been disappointing so far. There is a fair bit of competition among volunteers, because you sometimes have to bid for projects or are put on a waiting list before they call you and put your through a few rounds of interview. At the end of the process you are either "yay"ed or "nay"ed.
I have been "yay"ed by Taproot, but I still find this process absurd. Finding a paid, full-time position in a non-profit organization has not been this hard! Every time I've applied for a full-time salaried position, I was called immediately for an interview! So I am confident it can't be my lack of skills that are hampering my chances of being selected for a project! That being said, one can presume that people who finally make it to the projects through Taproot must be of very high caliber!
I tried VolunteerMatch.org, an online website that lists volunteering opportunities in the country by location, area of Interest, skills etc. Again, a great idea. I have found this website useful, but the site works just like any other online job site, and finding a volunteering opportunity is as tough as finding a salaried position! It shouldn't have to be! I wouldn't blame VolunteerMatch as much as the organizations listing opportunities on their site for this. Perhaps they find the whole process of hiring and training volunteers, and then managing them cumbersome and not worth the effort!
During Earth Month in April, I signed up for a whole lot of volunteering projects that required a lot of physical labor - house construction projects, planting trees, cleaning the river, etc. These have been the most enjoyable projects so far and I will continue to do them. However, they have also been the most popular projects despite being physically demanding, requiring many hours of manual labor. Each project takes in 50 to 100 people, perhaps more, and still hundreds of people have to be rejected because the slots are filled out almost immediately after the projects are listed. The good thing at least is that they take volunteers in on a first come first serve basis. So the rejection is less personal. Also, if you are really dying to work on a project you can shoot them an email and profess your allegiance to their cause, and they will take you in.
Something about the difficulty in finding pro bono projects doesn't sit well with me! I can't seem to figure out why it is so hard to work for free. Volunteers should not have to be rejected for any reason. Perhaps there is an explanation for why free work is harder to find than paid work or why some volunteers even have to pay to volunteer!! (a whole different issue, for some other time)
Some of my friends who volunteer have groused about this as well! So this is really a shout to all the organizations that need volunteers. We are out there, willing to work for you and waiting, so do your bit and reach out to us! :)
A related article I found on this
They had a lot of marketing and design projects (my area of expertise), which I found very unusual and appealing. I was excited about the work they do, the competence level of volunteers, the organizations they work with. It seemed very impressive. I could see a lot of non-profits benefitting from skilled volunteers with a design background, because design projects are otherwise expensive as hell! Even companies that work specifically with non-profits charge exorbitantly for design work! I considered approaching Taproot not only to volunteer, but also for my organization. So I did! I signed up to volunteer, attended the orientation, uploaded my resume and was raring to get started!
It has been disappointing so far. There is a fair bit of competition among volunteers, because you sometimes have to bid for projects or are put on a waiting list before they call you and put your through a few rounds of interview. At the end of the process you are either "yay"ed or "nay"ed.
I have been "yay"ed by Taproot, but I still find this process absurd. Finding a paid, full-time position in a non-profit organization has not been this hard! Every time I've applied for a full-time salaried position, I was called immediately for an interview! So I am confident it can't be my lack of skills that are hampering my chances of being selected for a project! That being said, one can presume that people who finally make it to the projects through Taproot must be of very high caliber!
I tried VolunteerMatch.org, an online website that lists volunteering opportunities in the country by location, area of Interest, skills etc. Again, a great idea. I have found this website useful, but the site works just like any other online job site, and finding a volunteering opportunity is as tough as finding a salaried position! It shouldn't have to be! I wouldn't blame VolunteerMatch as much as the organizations listing opportunities on their site for this. Perhaps they find the whole process of hiring and training volunteers, and then managing them cumbersome and not worth the effort!
During Earth Month in April, I signed up for a whole lot of volunteering projects that required a lot of physical labor - house construction projects, planting trees, cleaning the river, etc. These have been the most enjoyable projects so far and I will continue to do them. However, they have also been the most popular projects despite being physically demanding, requiring many hours of manual labor. Each project takes in 50 to 100 people, perhaps more, and still hundreds of people have to be rejected because the slots are filled out almost immediately after the projects are listed. The good thing at least is that they take volunteers in on a first come first serve basis. So the rejection is less personal. Also, if you are really dying to work on a project you can shoot them an email and profess your allegiance to their cause, and they will take you in.
Something about the difficulty in finding pro bono projects doesn't sit well with me! I can't seem to figure out why it is so hard to work for free. Volunteers should not have to be rejected for any reason. Perhaps there is an explanation for why free work is harder to find than paid work or why some volunteers even have to pay to volunteer!! (a whole different issue, for some other time)
Some of my friends who volunteer have groused about this as well! So this is really a shout to all the organizations that need volunteers. We are out there, willing to work for you and waiting, so do your bit and reach out to us! :)
A related article I found on this
Just Not on My Turf!
We dug up the ground, shifted dirt, raked the soil,
laid the sod and came home sore! Homeowners instant
gratification of a lush, green lawn wasn't all that
instant. It took about 8 hours and 20 people, with
shovels, rakes and barrows to prepare the lawn and make
it turf-worthy. I can't remember the last time a
volunteering project was this
much fun! I am itching to go back on Saturday to see
what they have in store next!
There are some people, like this college kid I met, who will be going on a cross-country biking trip, from DC to San Francisco and helping build sustainable houses on the way! I thought the whole concept of peddling to end poverty was very innovative, only it is open to participants ages 18-25! That doesn't seem fair! :(
There are some people, like this college kid I met, who will be going on a cross-country biking trip, from DC to San Francisco and helping build sustainable houses on the way! I thought the whole concept of peddling to end poverty was very innovative, only it is open to participants ages 18-25! That doesn't seem fair! :(
Unconventional Law(gu) For Rum
(This title should make Alternative Law
Forum (ALF) very proud, because Laagu is Telugu for
Chaddi)
But, I hope that my "verbal" gesture on this blog at least "Loosely" establishes me as a Pub-going, Forward Woman. Because that is more important to me than making Sri Rama Sene Comrades' day!
I don't understand how ALF thinks pink chaddis will cause anxiety or be received badly by our Sene people... if anything, Sri Rama Sene should be ecstatic. Then again, the ALF aren't being all that generous. They are certainly not sending Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women giftwrapped in pink chaddis! :D
Am I being politically incorrect or apolitically correct! :D
A quiz question (the answer is all over your gtalk and facebook): What is one-word to describe a Pub-going, Loose and Forward Woman? Bev D ..... Ha!
Chugger off? Give it Up!
It’s that time of the year when the holiday cheer
inspires philanthropy amongst other things like gift
giving! There’s also my own personal hope that
end-of-year tax will cause an upsurge in donations even
this year!
No matter how we choose to spread our wealth, we will pretend that all money flow this season is a consequence of our benevolence. What more? To cloud our buying decisions, there are more shopping sites making promises to funnel a portion of our spending to charity this year than ever before.
So come December, you are in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and abstaining from all the candy around you is highly unlikely! What you can do, like Charlie, is to sneak a candy just like the other kids, but otherwise be on your best behavior and hope that there is still a huge reward waiting for you in the end!
So, read up on the charity you want to donate to and how the shopping site proposes to direct a part of your money to the charity. You know all the dos and donts. May the force be with you!
Dupont Circle is full of chuggers distributing pamphlets and soliciting donations for obscure causes. They are usually young credulous students themselves, who don't really know who they are representing or what, but seem to think they are carrying out a very worthy task!
Thinking back to the days when I had to stand in the Alternative Gift Fairs all day and get creative with promoting my cause, I can only empathize with them. Given that there are hundreds of other nonprofits representing equally compelling causes, there is this struggle in finding a balance between promoting your cause and marketing it. However, at the alternative gift fairs, there’s one less thing to worry about. People who come there are eager to make a difference and are only looking to find that one exceptional organization that will inspire them to pull out their wallet and contribute. So the pressure is on the advocate! (Me and many like me!)
I mostly have positive things to say about alternative gift fairs, even though I question their long-term benefit to the nonprofit. The experience is especially overwhelming given how many incredible organizations you come across doing remarkable work that is vital and worthy of encouragement. Until that point, you didn’t even know they existed, and suddenly you realize how they are transforming the world unknowing to you. It reminds me of the the Grimm’s Brothers tale - The Elves and the Shoemaker, in which the Elves work secretly by night and produce the most flawless shoes for the shoemaker who wakes up every morning to find that new shoes have appeared magically out of nowhere! Not only that, the gift fairs put on show some of the most benevolent people you might ever come across in your life in the form of donors. The very notion that they want to celebrate Christmas by making a charitable donation is venerable. I can’t think of what would compel them to come to the fair on a cold weekend afternoon, and patiently listen to the work being done by the different charities and then donate to them.
Chuggers on the other hand face an uphill battle from the start. Most often than not, they have nothing to do with the charity they promote, even though they are legally collecting donations. They are paid per-hour or per-donor-signup by an agency (hired by the charity) that takes a huge cut from the donated money. They are told little to nothing about what they are promoting and are in it out of necessity than intention. This in no way should undermine the charity they represent, although it is not to say that all charities are genuine.
They then have to inspire compassion in disgruntled office-goers who have nothing but that blasted 9 o’ clock meeting on their minds.
If you want to support a charity, it would only seem sensible to do it directly through their website, rather than through a chugger (to avoid the chugger fee, poor guy!). Then why do the charities still use this disdainful method? Because they find it beneficial in raising money! (even if it is at the risk of creating a bad reputation for themselves). Especially at this time of economic recession, where nonprofits are even struggling to break even, any little donation is considered good fortune. My heart go out to all the great organizations working in spite of making a loss!
But, I dread walking in Dupont now, out of fear of being hounded by these aggressive young guys. I find them very invasive and have to keep reminding myself to see things from their point of view. So I give in to their unpleasant harangues every now and then out of frustration or guilt or both, and end up being subject to everything from political half-truths to religious propaganda.
Good arguments don’t ever come by, and if they do I think it is only fair that the chugger gets a reward for convincing me. But, this is as plausible or imaginary as heaven and hell. But if he manages to convince me and I donate to the charity online, I am depriving him of his earnings, which is not the most comforting thought!
But, I would still strongly advocate the need to train these chuggers on fundraising ethics. As the visual face of a respectable organization, some real knowledge of the cause they represent would be helpful too!
Happy ThanksforGiving!
No matter how we choose to spread our wealth, we will pretend that all money flow this season is a consequence of our benevolence. What more? To cloud our buying decisions, there are more shopping sites making promises to funnel a portion of our spending to charity this year than ever before.
So come December, you are in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and abstaining from all the candy around you is highly unlikely! What you can do, like Charlie, is to sneak a candy just like the other kids, but otherwise be on your best behavior and hope that there is still a huge reward waiting for you in the end!
So, read up on the charity you want to donate to and how the shopping site proposes to direct a part of your money to the charity. You know all the dos and donts. May the force be with you!
Dupont Circle is full of chuggers distributing pamphlets and soliciting donations for obscure causes. They are usually young credulous students themselves, who don't really know who they are representing or what, but seem to think they are carrying out a very worthy task!
Thinking back to the days when I had to stand in the Alternative Gift Fairs all day and get creative with promoting my cause, I can only empathize with them. Given that there are hundreds of other nonprofits representing equally compelling causes, there is this struggle in finding a balance between promoting your cause and marketing it. However, at the alternative gift fairs, there’s one less thing to worry about. People who come there are eager to make a difference and are only looking to find that one exceptional organization that will inspire them to pull out their wallet and contribute. So the pressure is on the advocate! (Me and many like me!)
I mostly have positive things to say about alternative gift fairs, even though I question their long-term benefit to the nonprofit. The experience is especially overwhelming given how many incredible organizations you come across doing remarkable work that is vital and worthy of encouragement. Until that point, you didn’t even know they existed, and suddenly you realize how they are transforming the world unknowing to you. It reminds me of the the Grimm’s Brothers tale - The Elves and the Shoemaker, in which the Elves work secretly by night and produce the most flawless shoes for the shoemaker who wakes up every morning to find that new shoes have appeared magically out of nowhere! Not only that, the gift fairs put on show some of the most benevolent people you might ever come across in your life in the form of donors. The very notion that they want to celebrate Christmas by making a charitable donation is venerable. I can’t think of what would compel them to come to the fair on a cold weekend afternoon, and patiently listen to the work being done by the different charities and then donate to them.
Chuggers on the other hand face an uphill battle from the start. Most often than not, they have nothing to do with the charity they promote, even though they are legally collecting donations. They are paid per-hour or per-donor-signup by an agency (hired by the charity) that takes a huge cut from the donated money. They are told little to nothing about what they are promoting and are in it out of necessity than intention. This in no way should undermine the charity they represent, although it is not to say that all charities are genuine.
They then have to inspire compassion in disgruntled office-goers who have nothing but that blasted 9 o’ clock meeting on their minds.
If you want to support a charity, it would only seem sensible to do it directly through their website, rather than through a chugger (to avoid the chugger fee, poor guy!). Then why do the charities still use this disdainful method? Because they find it beneficial in raising money! (even if it is at the risk of creating a bad reputation for themselves). Especially at this time of economic recession, where nonprofits are even struggling to break even, any little donation is considered good fortune. My heart go out to all the great organizations working in spite of making a loss!
But, I dread walking in Dupont now, out of fear of being hounded by these aggressive young guys. I find them very invasive and have to keep reminding myself to see things from their point of view. So I give in to their unpleasant harangues every now and then out of frustration or guilt or both, and end up being subject to everything from political half-truths to religious propaganda.
Good arguments don’t ever come by, and if they do I think it is only fair that the chugger gets a reward for convincing me. But, this is as plausible or imaginary as heaven and hell. But if he manages to convince me and I donate to the charity online, I am depriving him of his earnings, which is not the most comforting thought!
But, I would still strongly advocate the need to train these chuggers on fundraising ethics. As the visual face of a respectable organization, some real knowledge of the cause they represent would be helpful too!
Happy ThanksforGiving!
Giving Up
Forrester: Now, about this professor of yours. How did it feel having him tell you what you can't do?
Jamal: Like he knew he was better than me.
Forrester: Then let's show him what you can do.....Why is it the words we write for ourselves, are always so much better than the words we write for others? ... Sit…Go ahead.
Jamal: Go ahead and what?
Forrester: Write.
Jamal: What are you doing?
Forrester: I'm writing. Like you'll be, when you start punching those keys… Is there a problem?
Jamal: No. I'm just thinking.
Forrester: No thinking. That comes later. You write your first draft...with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is... to write.
Not to think.
Jamal: Jesus.
Forrester: Is there a chance you might sit down?
Jamal: "A Season of Faith's Perfection." What's this?
Forrester: Start typing that.
Sometimes the simple rhythm of typing gets us from page one to page two. When you begin to feel your own words, start typing them. Punch the keys for God's sake!
Jamal: Yes!
Forrester: You're the man now, dog.
I love reading film scripts and screenplays, and I read them with great interest after I watch some films. Watching a movie and reading the script are two very different things. They are both captivating in their own way. Think about it like owning an awesome gadget and playing with it, and then opening it up and marveling at the inner workings. They are two very different things, each with its own value.
I find sometimes that the scripts of some movies are way better than the movies themselves. I have also seen the contrary. This makes it all the more fascinating when a book adaptation metamorphosizes into a film script that in turn becomes a film. When the book works and not the movie or vice versa, it makes me wonder where the film script stands in all this.
These are all things to talk about at leisure. I could dedicate a whole blog to them. But, I really want to talk about this Finding Forrester scene. I had been thinking about this scene all day today. It’s not the most engaging film, but it has its moments and some of the dialogues are quite compelling. I wish I could find the script somewhere. I found the transcript however, with just the dialogues, but it’s not quite the same.
Still, there is something about this one scene that I find rings true for me. I relate to his theory of writing in a lot of ways, even when it comes to things like making changes to my life. I don’t always act on sane judgment, but it has worked out well so far. If anything I have come to realize some things about myself, and have grown as a result. I almost feel like when one acts on impulse, they are creating their first draft that they type out without thinking. I have a lot of first drafts that I need to develop beyond raw thought and impulse, but I am hoping that with time, I will come to see at least one "complete work" that I can be proud of!
Speaking specifically, I have decided to fast every Wednesday. I haven’t quite thought of why, but at the moment, I feel like the act of fasting to me is more important than the reasoning, which I hope will eventually come, perhaps as a consequence of the action.
A year ago I gave up leather and other products that kill animals. That was a more deliberate choice. Back then I felt like it was illogical that being vegetarian I should dress in animal skin. My act was more to defend my vegetarianism than out of genuine compassion for animals. But since the time I gave it up, I have developed the sensitivity. Now the sheer thought of dressing in leather disturbs me. I haven't discarded some of my leather boots that I bought over a year ago and I continue to wear them in pain! I can't bring myself to throw them away. There is also the thought that whether I have them at home or throw them out, I have already done the damage of buying them. How does it matter whether they exist in my apartment or outside? How can it be okay to waste them? How can I gift something that I feel ethically wrong about to someone as charity? Moreover, they are the only real formal shoes I have for work! I have all this to think about. But, until then I will continue to be pseudo-ethical and work on improving it bit by bit.
There are instances where my thought-out decisions haven’t really benefited anyone or myself. Six months ago, I gave up Starbucks coffee. At that time, I felt that I would donate the money that I had been spending on starbucks to a cause. Based on some "sensible" reasoning, I felt like I can never bring myself to donate 1000 bucks to a cause without feeling the pinch of it, even though I unthinkingly spend much more than that amount frivolously on things that I can’t even remember. So I figured, the only way I will do it is to give something up that I pay for on a regular basis and donate the amount to a cause. I do donate the amount, but I don’t feel satisfied. If anything, I feel guilty. I can’t seem to figure out why.
Six months ago I gave up using the cell phone, except to talk to my mom and sometimes my brother. I love talking to mom on the phone, she may be the only person I can talk to for hours without wanting to put the phone down, except when we get into a huge argument about what I choose to do with my life or how she chooses to live hers, at which point we end up banging down the phone and calling each other several times over the next few minutes until we have temporarily resolved our differences. Here I would also like to clarify that I am usually always right, but I give in because of my unconditional love for my mom. :-)
With mom and my brother as exceptions, I have stopped using my cell phone almost completely. I carry it for emergencies, but beyond that it is as good as nonexistent to me. My friends call me at home, they send me emails, which have become longer and more entertaining overtime, they chat with me, and I meet them more often. I have come to realize that I have more meaningful conversations with them now than I did on the phone. I have also noticed that my social life has become more entertaining. I go out a lot more, I meet new people and I like what I do with my time alone as well.
Interestingly, I have noticed that fewer people call me at home than on my cell. I really don't know why. It is almost like people feel restricted by my use of a home phone. But it has worked out well for me. I seem to have narrowed down my options to close friends, family and tele-marketers. :-)
I have been having a tough time deciding what to give up next. I feel like saying email or gtalk, but I dread to think of how I would survive without them. I decided therefore to use them as minimally as possible. How I define minimal is a whole different issue. For one thing, I like the idea of checking and responding to personal emails twice a week. That's reasonable enough and even challenging given that I check my email every few minutes now. I could use gtalk over the weekends, and access facebook twice a month. But, would all this constitute as giving something up? Perhaps not.
In the latest Wired, there is an article by Scott Brown about facebook in which he says
“Thanks to Facebook, I never lose touch with anyone. And that, my Friend, is a problem.”
They're all there: elementary school friends, high school friends, college friends, work friends, friends of friends, friends of ex-girlfriends—the constellation of familiar faces crowds my Friendbox like medals on Mussolini's chest. I'm Friend-rich—at least onscreen. I've never lost touch with anyone, it seems. What I've lost is the right to lose touch. This says less about my innate lovability, I think, than about the current inflated state of Friendonomics.
…keeping friends requires almost no effort at all. We have achieved Infinite Friendspace, which means we need never drift from old pals nor feel the poignant tug of passive friend-loss. It also means that even the flimsiest of attachments—the chance convention buddy, the cube-mate from the '90s, the bar-napkin hookup—will be preserved, in perpetuity, under the flattering, flattening banner of "Friend."
It is true. It seems like there is no such thing as falling out with old pals and moving on. You are stuck with them and even their buddies for eternity. But, I have a lot of old school and college buddies that I have come back in contact with through orkut and facebook and it is exciting to talk to them after several years. I can't think of people I wouldn't want to keep in touch with, moreover I have made new friends and love them to death. I can only see benefits to using these sites. But, I miss having private conversations with close buddies. I also miss the idea of knowing everyone on a personal level. I need that. I think I am getting that more now with my communication restrictions than ever before.
Newseum: In Words and Pictures
When Anand was here with his friend Snuggy, we spent a
few hours in the Newseum before the Pearl Jam concert.
I have been itching to write about it, and relive the
whole adrenaline rush I felt as I walked through
certain sections, especially the Pulitzer Prize
Photography Exhibit, which was emotionally
overpowering, in a way that was disturbing and humbling
at the same time.
There was a small exhibit displaying the oldest to the newest editorial cartoons and comics in a timeline fashion, which I was thrilled to see. I took a picture with the original copies for the first Yellow Kid and The Katzenjammer Kids, and saw so many of the comics that I had only read about in books about the history of comics. I am glad the newseum thought it worthwhile to dedicate a section to this art form, even though I secretly wish it were bigger.
There was a whole floor with newspapers all through time, reminding us of how far we have come in this literary genre and profession of gathering news and exposing and influencing belief systems all over the world.
We spotted the Telugu "Eenadu" newspaper on a wall that lists all the newspapers of the world. I never thought of it as a paper worth mentioning in a museum outside the country. Hey, why the heck not!
I learnt a few things about the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall in a way that I will remember for a very long time. Seeing the visuals of people escaping to west berlin from the east, of brave reporters, of photographers and fighters was moving. Here's an online exhibit on the newseum site The wall itself looked colorful. I'm told all good art comes out of bad circumstances. This could very well be an example of it.
As I felt about the Berlin Exhibit, I felt even as I walked through the 9/11 gallery, which focussed on the challenges the media faced in reporting news about the horrifying event that shook the world. Many lost their lives or live with permanent injuries.
Aside from the galleries and exhibits, we saw a collection of articles, unlike anything you will see in other museums. There was Time Magazines truck lined with bullet holes in every inch of it's body, protecting journalists as they reported news in the Balkans; there was the laptop and passport of the Wall Street Reporter Daniel Pearl who was murdered in Pakistan; there was the door that burglers taped after they broke into the watergate complex, leading to Pres.Nixon's resignation, among many others and they all felt very REAL serving as a reminder that these things REALLY happened, like they were not fictional, faraway things that don't affect us. These are real people risking their lives to report terrible events all over the world. They shape and reflect our future. By the time you walk from floor to floor, it hits you - the remarkable work, the sacrifices, the tragic events, the struggles, the humanness, the REALness of it all.
But, in all this, I feel like I only passed through the exhibits and didn't get a chance to take everything in. I am eager to go back soon, and spend a good half day, if I can just find an unhurried weekend to do it.
ps: the new NEWseum is impressive looking and worth going to just for the architecture. A $400M, 250,000-square-foot contemporary structure smack in the center of downtown DC (near the US capitol).
There was a small exhibit displaying the oldest to the newest editorial cartoons and comics in a timeline fashion, which I was thrilled to see. I took a picture with the original copies for the first Yellow Kid and The Katzenjammer Kids, and saw so many of the comics that I had only read about in books about the history of comics. I am glad the newseum thought it worthwhile to dedicate a section to this art form, even though I secretly wish it were bigger.
There was a whole floor with newspapers all through time, reminding us of how far we have come in this literary genre and profession of gathering news and exposing and influencing belief systems all over the world.
We spotted the Telugu "Eenadu" newspaper on a wall that lists all the newspapers of the world. I never thought of it as a paper worth mentioning in a museum outside the country. Hey, why the heck not!
I learnt a few things about the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall in a way that I will remember for a very long time. Seeing the visuals of people escaping to west berlin from the east, of brave reporters, of photographers and fighters was moving. Here's an online exhibit on the newseum site The wall itself looked colorful. I'm told all good art comes out of bad circumstances. This could very well be an example of it.
As I felt about the Berlin Exhibit, I felt even as I walked through the 9/11 gallery, which focussed on the challenges the media faced in reporting news about the horrifying event that shook the world. Many lost their lives or live with permanent injuries.
Aside from the galleries and exhibits, we saw a collection of articles, unlike anything you will see in other museums. There was Time Magazines truck lined with bullet holes in every inch of it's body, protecting journalists as they reported news in the Balkans; there was the laptop and passport of the Wall Street Reporter Daniel Pearl who was murdered in Pakistan; there was the door that burglers taped after they broke into the watergate complex, leading to Pres.Nixon's resignation, among many others and they all felt very REAL serving as a reminder that these things REALLY happened, like they were not fictional, faraway things that don't affect us. These are real people risking their lives to report terrible events all over the world. They shape and reflect our future. By the time you walk from floor to floor, it hits you - the remarkable work, the sacrifices, the tragic events, the struggles, the humanness, the REALness of it all.
But, in all this, I feel like I only passed through the exhibits and didn't get a chance to take everything in. I am eager to go back soon, and spend a good half day, if I can just find an unhurried weekend to do it.
ps: the new NEWseum is impressive looking and worth going to just for the architecture. A $400M, 250,000-square-foot contemporary structure smack in the center of downtown DC (near the US capitol).
From coffee to gorillas
Is genocide a strong enough word? I can only answer for
myself. I don’t think it is strong enough. It doesn’t
evoke enough horror. When I think of everything that
the word represents, I feel knotted inside in a way
that is hard to describe in words. I am imagining very
shameful acts that should not be imagined, and there
are some acts I suspect that are worse than anything I
can imagine. I can barely form images of what I am told
of in my mind.
Feelings of empathy and powerlessness come easily. What do I do about it?
I buy a grande white mocha with
whipped cream in starbucks every weekday morning.
That is roughly $80 on coffee every month. It is a
part of my daily routine now, and I drink it
whether I feel like it or not. I spend over a
thousand dollars a year on coffee. I am a
self-proclaimed coffee hater. I hate the smell of
coffee. White chocolate mocha, I love.
There was a cyclone that killed thousands of people in Myanmar recently. People are still dying or living a life worse than death. I research for hours carefully on relief organizations working to rescue them. I go back and forth with family on how much is a good amount to donate. “50 is enough” “who knows how those organizations will use your donation” “You cant help everyone in the world even if you give away your lifetime’s earnings” “There will be some other crisis tomorrow, what will you do then” “why Myanmar? donate in India. Here too thousands are dying” In the end, I spend half as much as I do on a year’s coffee.
I discovered for myself that I react spontaneously to satisfy my desires. I don’t research a company’s trade policies or their ethical stance before I buy their clothes or shoes. But, when it comes to doing things out of good concern, there is endless discussion on whom to approach and whether it is an endeavor in futility or not. It seems, magnanimity is a trait to be cultivated, so that you react with compassion as spontaneously as you react with desire. How does one cultivate it?
We are seeing an end of a species. There are only 720 mountain gorillas left in the world. It is such a small number that their survival is considered genetically unviable, meaning our kids may not see mountain gorillas in their lifetime. Some of us haven’t even seen one in our lifetime. In ten years they will be gone if something dramatic is not done now.
Civil war in Congo is mainly to blame. As thousands of men and women are losing their lives and their dignity, you would imagine that this dreadful war is affecting only humans, but mountain gorillas and bonobos are being slaughtered mindlessly (even as we speak). Many are being killed systematically, in execution-style. And then there are poachers, illegal timber harvesters and charcoal traders making things worse.
The gorillas live exclusively in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Virunga National Park, which is the only park in the world where these gorillas continue to exist.
In 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis were killed in Rwanda, thousands of refugees moved to the Virunga park border, cutting down trees to clear up space to live. Soon they began illegal charcoal production for their everyday needs and to fund the operations of rebel Tutsi fighters. Cutting down of trees and close contact with humans has resulted in the spread of infectious diseases. Several gorillas died as a result. Moreover, the rebels fighting the government have been killing the endangered apes to make a political point, or sometimes out of sheer ignorance of the effects of close contact of humans with apes.
Three issues fight for attention: War among humans, genocide and the extinction of a species.
As the incidences of genocides in the world are growing we are made more and more aware of a basic flaw in our humanity. We cannot relate to mass tragedy. We can act only if we see individuals suffer, like when we see a picture of an orphaned child dying of hunger, or a even an old woman crossing the road. But, somehow we are not able to see individuals within a mass. The more numbers we hear of people suffering, the more paralyzed we become into inaction.
A reporter on NPR pointed out that the death of two gorillas has become bigger news now than the genocide issue or the war in Congo, because with a number as small as two, it is easier for us to feel like we are capable of helping. We react immediately, and want to urge someone to pull the gorillas out of the park and into safety. But the war in congo is barely made known to the world, we too are indifferent to it.
Still the gorillas are dying, the humans are killing each other and destroying everything around them, and there is nothing we can do about the former or the latter. The problems are too big for us. We move on.
Feelings of empathy and powerlessness come easily. What do I do about it?
I buy a grande white mocha with
whipped cream in starbucks every weekday morning.
That is roughly $80 on coffee every month. It is a
part of my daily routine now, and I drink it
whether I feel like it or not. I spend over a
thousand dollars a year on coffee. I am a
self-proclaimed coffee hater. I hate the smell of
coffee. White chocolate mocha, I love.
There was a cyclone that killed thousands of people in Myanmar recently. People are still dying or living a life worse than death. I research for hours carefully on relief organizations working to rescue them. I go back and forth with family on how much is a good amount to donate. “50 is enough” “who knows how those organizations will use your donation” “You cant help everyone in the world even if you give away your lifetime’s earnings” “There will be some other crisis tomorrow, what will you do then” “why Myanmar? donate in India. Here too thousands are dying” In the end, I spend half as much as I do on a year’s coffee.
I discovered for myself that I react spontaneously to satisfy my desires. I don’t research a company’s trade policies or their ethical stance before I buy their clothes or shoes. But, when it comes to doing things out of good concern, there is endless discussion on whom to approach and whether it is an endeavor in futility or not. It seems, magnanimity is a trait to be cultivated, so that you react with compassion as spontaneously as you react with desire. How does one cultivate it?
We are seeing an end of a species. There are only 720 mountain gorillas left in the world. It is such a small number that their survival is considered genetically unviable, meaning our kids may not see mountain gorillas in their lifetime. Some of us haven’t even seen one in our lifetime. In ten years they will be gone if something dramatic is not done now.
Civil war in Congo is mainly to blame. As thousands of men and women are losing their lives and their dignity, you would imagine that this dreadful war is affecting only humans, but mountain gorillas and bonobos are being slaughtered mindlessly (even as we speak). Many are being killed systematically, in execution-style. And then there are poachers, illegal timber harvesters and charcoal traders making things worse.
The gorillas live exclusively in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Virunga National Park, which is the only park in the world where these gorillas continue to exist.
In 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis were killed in Rwanda, thousands of refugees moved to the Virunga park border, cutting down trees to clear up space to live. Soon they began illegal charcoal production for their everyday needs and to fund the operations of rebel Tutsi fighters. Cutting down of trees and close contact with humans has resulted in the spread of infectious diseases. Several gorillas died as a result. Moreover, the rebels fighting the government have been killing the endangered apes to make a political point, or sometimes out of sheer ignorance of the effects of close contact of humans with apes.
Three issues fight for attention: War among humans, genocide and the extinction of a species.
As the incidences of genocides in the world are growing we are made more and more aware of a basic flaw in our humanity. We cannot relate to mass tragedy. We can act only if we see individuals suffer, like when we see a picture of an orphaned child dying of hunger, or a even an old woman crossing the road. But, somehow we are not able to see individuals within a mass. The more numbers we hear of people suffering, the more paralyzed we become into inaction.
A reporter on NPR pointed out that the death of two gorillas has become bigger news now than the genocide issue or the war in Congo, because with a number as small as two, it is easier for us to feel like we are capable of helping. We react immediately, and want to urge someone to pull the gorillas out of the park and into safety. But the war in congo is barely made known to the world, we too are indifferent to it.
Still the gorillas are dying, the humans are killing each other and destroying everything around them, and there is nothing we can do about the former or the latter. The problems are too big for us. We move on.
Help Myanmar
You may be aware of the cyclone that has ravaged Myanmar (formerly Burma) in Southeast Asia. The death toll from the devastating cyclone might exceed 100,000. To put this in perspective, the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 consumed about 200,000 lives and Hurricane Katrina took about 2,000 lives.
About six million people in Myanmar are directly affected by this catastrophe, and the entire country is reeling from severe shortages in food and medicine. Current foreign aid is highly inadequate and slow-moving, partly because of blocked access to the country by the ruling military junta. Yet many international organizations are making tireless efforts to respond to this crisis.
I humbly ask for your contribution towards helping our unfortunate brethren in Myanmar if you haven’t given already.
I have compiled a small list of some international organizations that are working on the ground in Myanmar and providing humanitarian aid. While this is certainly no comprehensive list, you might find this helpful in making your donation.
http://helpmyanmar.blogspot.com/
Anand
Odomos Won't Work, Colorful Thongs Might (But They're Banned)
I am so glad I am not a teenager anymore, because
today's news would have made me extremely unhappy.
I learnt about a unique kind of mosquito, the shocking kind that needs a serious slap on the back. =)
It says on their official website that:
Since the device emits high frequency sounds that are only audible to young people, adults are oblivious to this sound. That (thankfully) hasn't stopped the device from receiving all the criticism it deserves, with one campaign called Buzz Off taking the lead. There is no doubt that anti-social behavior needs to be tackled, but the Mosquito is a weapon against all young people (babies included) whether they are misbehaving or not. Canada and the United States are now selling this device, and private citizens too can legally purchase the product and use it at home. Imagine the Mosquito being the punishment at home for not cleaning your room or doing your homework! Yikes!
Here's the much needed silver lining. Smart teenagers have been putting this "repelling" product to a very sly use. They have turned the annoying Mosquito buzz into a ring tone, which is inaudible to adults and therefore can be used in class without the teachers' knowledge. =)
----
Speaking of human rights violations and the curbing of right to freedom, I also learnt that Louisiana town is banning "controversial clothing", meaning saggy pants revealing undergarments or "certain" body parts. The penalty is set to 6 months in jail and a $500 fine. Back in India, when my college banned short skirts or spaghetti tops, we were all so outraged. After I left college, I was told that the authorities further restricted students from wearing any western clothes. Of course, that is nothing compared to the dress restrictions imposed in some nations or the curbing of certain religious beliefs in some other. Still, I'm finding all these restrictions and sonic tortures very bothersome.
--
You may wonder why this article is labeled under "Environment". It turns out, this Mosquito too breaks some environmental laws (specifically Noise and Nuisance Acts) even though it does not sting or cause long term health problems. And it's wrongly labeled under "Philanthropy" because that's the closest label in my list to "Social Issues". I use it for all matters affecting members of a society concerning moral or ethical values. I take my blog too seriously, don't I! =)
I learnt about a unique kind of mosquito, the shocking kind that needs a serious slap on the back. =)
It says on their official website that:
The Mosquito™ ultrasonic teenage deterrent is the solution to the eternal problem of unwanted gatherings of youths and teenagers in shopping malls, around shops and anywhere else they are causing problems. The presence of these teenagers discourages genuine shoppers and customers’ from coming into your shop, affecting your turnover and profits. Anti social behavior has become the biggest threat to private property over the last decade and there has been no effective deterrent until now. Acclaimed by the Police forces of many areas of the United Kingdom, the Mosquito ultrasonic teenage deterrent has been described as “the most effective tool in our fight against anti social behaviour”. Shop keepers around the world have purchased the device to move along unwanted gatherings of teenagers and anti social youths. Railway companies have placed the device to discourage youths from spraying graffiti on their trains and the walls of stations.
Since the device emits high frequency sounds that are only audible to young people, adults are oblivious to this sound. That (thankfully) hasn't stopped the device from receiving all the criticism it deserves, with one campaign called Buzz Off taking the lead. There is no doubt that anti-social behavior needs to be tackled, but the Mosquito is a weapon against all young people (babies included) whether they are misbehaving or not. Canada and the United States are now selling this device, and private citizens too can legally purchase the product and use it at home. Imagine the Mosquito being the punishment at home for not cleaning your room or doing your homework! Yikes!
Here's the much needed silver lining. Smart teenagers have been putting this "repelling" product to a very sly use. They have turned the annoying Mosquito buzz into a ring tone, which is inaudible to adults and therefore can be used in class without the teachers' knowledge. =)
----
Speaking of human rights violations and the curbing of right to freedom, I also learnt that Louisiana town is banning "controversial clothing", meaning saggy pants revealing undergarments or "certain" body parts. The penalty is set to 6 months in jail and a $500 fine. Back in India, when my college banned short skirts or spaghetti tops, we were all so outraged. After I left college, I was told that the authorities further restricted students from wearing any western clothes. Of course, that is nothing compared to the dress restrictions imposed in some nations or the curbing of certain religious beliefs in some other. Still, I'm finding all these restrictions and sonic tortures very bothersome.
--
You may wonder why this article is labeled under "Environment". It turns out, this Mosquito too breaks some environmental laws (specifically Noise and Nuisance Acts) even though it does not sting or cause long term health problems. And it's wrongly labeled under "Philanthropy" because that's the closest label in my list to "Social Issues". I use it for all matters affecting members of a society concerning moral or ethical values. I take my blog too seriously, don't I! =)
Clickety Click, Clickety Clack
Remember The HungerSite with a magic button that
generates a cup of rice to the hungry for free? I
always wondered if it was a prank. How could it be
possible? But of course, it is. By clicking on the
button, we are generating advertising revenue for
their website, which makes it possible for them to
donate a cup of rice to the hungry!
But even though the idea of helping without volunteering services or shelling a dime sounded good, it wasn't enough to make me do it. For some time, I set HungerSite as my homepage on the browser, and clicked on the button everyday before I did anything else. But soon, it got old. I didn't feel like it anymore. What was my cup of rice going to do!
Maybe I needed more value for the click, like a sack of rice instead of a cup. I most certainly needed something to boost my ego. I would have continued to click everyday if I had proof of people benefiting from it; if they met me in person or sent me a youtube video bowing down to me and saying Thank You. I needed something to tell me that I wasn't wasting my time. And not just that, I needed something to tell me that what they benefit from my click outweighs the effort it takes me to click everyday. Now, how is HungerSite supposed to do that? How much more easy can they make this process? They don't ask for money, they don't ask for services, not even time. All they want is a click a day.
Still, my homepage on the browser changed to Google. I went to The HungerSite only once in a while, when I felt philanthropic or guilty and now my visit is down to once every 6 months.
Over time, there were more click-to-donate sites on the web. In fact, this site called Daily Charity has a button that lets you donate to almost every click-to-donate site on the net in one go. So here's truly one site that does promise more value for a click. I can feed the hungry, stop breast cancer, plant more trees, increase illiteracy, prevent extinction of species … all in just one click.
Was that enough for me to do it? Not in the least bit. I needed more.
Recently, a friend's email to Free Rice roused my interest. It is a website with a vocabulary game. For every right answer to a vocabulary question, they donate 20 grains of rice to UN’s World Food Programme that distributes food in some of the world’s poorest countries.
Now, you may ask what English vocabulary and 20 grains of rice can do to the world. But I am told that they donate about 3,200,000,000 grains of rice (444445 cups of rice or 150000 pounds of rice or 7500 sacks of rice @ 20 lbs/sack) via this game every month.
What about English Vocabulary? They say, it will help you:
Formulate your ideas better
Write better papers, emails and business letters
Speak more precisely and persuasively
Comprehend more of what you read
Read faster because you comprehend better
Get better grades in high school, college and graduate school
Score higher on tests like the SAT, GRE, LSAT and GMAT
Perform better at job interviews and conferences
Sell yourself, your services, and your products better
Be more effective and successful at your job
Moreover the game is entertaining and has proved to be quite addictive so far. Tell me I fell for a marketing gimmick or that it is utterly disgusting that it took an entertaining game to provoke me to act, or even that what I am doing is not helping, but I just hope it sticks….. until something better comes my way that requires no clicking either. Some day, maybe fantasizing about a utopian world alone will do. But for now I will do good only if I am done good to!
Philanthropy Shopping!
There was an episode on Seinfeld, where George Costanza
is extremely angry about receiving a "donation for
charity" instead of a christmas gift, so he takes
revenge by making up his own charity and handing out
fake donations as gifts to people.
I was reminded of that episode while designing "thank you" greeting cards for my organization. The cards are handed out to people who donate money for a project as a gift to a loved one.
Donating for a cause in the name of someone instead of giving them a gift is a very noble idea. I knew it could work well (in concept) but it was only in the last few weeks that I witnessed how enriching the whole experience can be.
My organization participated in some Alternative Gift Fairs and I went to one as a representative. The event was held in Takoma Park, MD and about two dozen organizations set up their tables with interesting posters and articles and waited anxiously for visitors to come and learn about the most pressing problems in the world and what these organizations (and through them these visitors) can do to make a difference!
So here's how it worked. As soon as the visitors entered, they were given a gift form with a list of the participating organizations and their "gift options".
They walked by each table and browsed through the displays and talked to the representatives about the organizations work (in as much detail as the visitor liked) and picked up a handful of brochures and cards to "learn more" later.
There was Ashoka's HeroRat.org, an organization that trains rats to sniff out landmines to save people's lives; there was Las Pacayas giving academic scholarships to girls as an incentive to attend school; there was Internews Network giving out wind-up radios to refugees in Pakistan and Chad... among many others.
Surprisingly, we were the only environmental organization at the fair, and an international one at that. In an attempt to broaden the impact of gift giving to include sustainable development projects and the environment, my organization offered three environmental business training projects to support youth and women entrepreneurs to start and run successful businesses in Africa as Alternative Gifts.
Our first gift option was to help the youth in Kibera slums produce mini solar panels that can charge cell phones or any electronic device; The second was to help women make low-cost briquets (small round discs made out of agricultural waste such as leaves, paper, sawdust...) that can be used instead of charcoal as a cheaper, healthier and more eco-friendly fuel alternative; and the third was to provide renewable energy training to individuals wanting to learn how to convert waste into fuel.
While the work done by each organization was impressive, I was taken aback by the large number of visitors who attended the gift fair. Imagine, spending a good half of your regular weekend in some charity gift fair! How does one pick a fair to attend? Where do they hear about it? What motivates them to get off the couch on a Sunday morning and drag their entire family to learn about different social issues? I talk about wanting to do a lot of things, but I never get around to them unless I'm forced to, and somehow assumed that it was okay to be that way because there are a lot of people in this world who are as lazy and unpersevering as me. But, now I feel terrible after seeing how little I actually do in comparison with a lot of other active and socially conscious people around me.
I am yet to find out how much money we made during the event and don't think I will until the end of next month. I hear the gift fair made over a hundred thousand dollars in gift donations last year.
Anyway, now that it is all over and done with, I ask myself if I would honor someone with a charity donation on their behalf... and I know I will not! At least not as a gift. I spent a lot of money donating to organizations at the fair, but realized the picking a cause to donate to is a personal decision that involves not just money, but a lot of emotions and a certain set of beliefs. It's best done on your own and for your own satisfaction than as a gift, unless you are very sure that your loved ones will be pleased with your donating money to a specific cause as a gift to them.
I also find that making a donation a "gift" in a way "objectifies" the social issue, even though it does benefit it at some level. It also encourages big-headedness or self-aggrandizing. I am also not convinced that it serves as a long term solution. That said, I like the idea of providing "training" as a gift, like my organization does. Business training is one that will last a lifetime and will continue to multiply as entrepreneurs share their success with their families and communities. It could make a good "gift" but more than that it is something I would donate to anyway, not just as a gift.
Moreover, I love giving and receiving gifts. Even thinking about tearing a gift-wrap open to see what's inside gives me goose-bumps! =) But, what I took from this gift fair experience is really that I would like to put a conscious effort into buying gifts that are purposeful. Buying a gift takes up a lot of time and energy. It only makes sense to mitigate the damage that choosing the wrong gift does (both in terms of product wastage as well as the heartache it causes) by picking useful, eco-friendly gifts. I know that for every giftable product in this world, there is an eco-friendly alternative. So it's not hard to make that choice.
Come to think of it, the overall environmental impact of gift-giving holidays (like Christmas and diwali) is huge. We are not just wasting money, but leaving a massive ecological footprint. Right from the millions of chopped down trees, to home decorations, to megawatts of power usage from single-use flashing lights, to wrapping papers, bouquets, ... the list is endless.
But, it's motivating to see people adopting new Christmas traditions and willing to make slight adjustments from gift-giving to the moment of celebration, to make their holidays special for their families, friends while honoring the earth and its people =) Happy Holidays!
I was reminded of that episode while designing "thank you" greeting cards for my organization. The cards are handed out to people who donate money for a project as a gift to a loved one.
Donating for a cause in the name of someone instead of giving them a gift is a very noble idea. I knew it could work well (in concept) but it was only in the last few weeks that I witnessed how enriching the whole experience can be.
My organization participated in some Alternative Gift Fairs and I went to one as a representative. The event was held in Takoma Park, MD and about two dozen organizations set up their tables with interesting posters and articles and waited anxiously for visitors to come and learn about the most pressing problems in the world and what these organizations (and through them these visitors) can do to make a difference!
So here's how it worked. As soon as the visitors entered, they were given a gift form with a list of the participating organizations and their "gift options".
They walked by each table and browsed through the displays and talked to the representatives about the organizations work (in as much detail as the visitor liked) and picked up a handful of brochures and cards to "learn more" later.
There was Ashoka's HeroRat.org, an organization that trains rats to sniff out landmines to save people's lives; there was Las Pacayas giving academic scholarships to girls as an incentive to attend school; there was Internews Network giving out wind-up radios to refugees in Pakistan and Chad... among many others.
Surprisingly, we were the only environmental organization at the fair, and an international one at that. In an attempt to broaden the impact of gift giving to include sustainable development projects and the environment, my organization offered three environmental business training projects to support youth and women entrepreneurs to start and run successful businesses in Africa as Alternative Gifts.
Our first gift option was to help the youth in Kibera slums produce mini solar panels that can charge cell phones or any electronic device; The second was to help women make low-cost briquets (small round discs made out of agricultural waste such as leaves, paper, sawdust...) that can be used instead of charcoal as a cheaper, healthier and more eco-friendly fuel alternative; and the third was to provide renewable energy training to individuals wanting to learn how to convert waste into fuel.
While the work done by each organization was impressive, I was taken aback by the large number of visitors who attended the gift fair. Imagine, spending a good half of your regular weekend in some charity gift fair! How does one pick a fair to attend? Where do they hear about it? What motivates them to get off the couch on a Sunday morning and drag their entire family to learn about different social issues? I talk about wanting to do a lot of things, but I never get around to them unless I'm forced to, and somehow assumed that it was okay to be that way because there are a lot of people in this world who are as lazy and unpersevering as me. But, now I feel terrible after seeing how little I actually do in comparison with a lot of other active and socially conscious people around me.
I am yet to find out how much money we made during the event and don't think I will until the end of next month. I hear the gift fair made over a hundred thousand dollars in gift donations last year.
Anyway, now that it is all over and done with, I ask myself if I would honor someone with a charity donation on their behalf... and I know I will not! At least not as a gift. I spent a lot of money donating to organizations at the fair, but realized the picking a cause to donate to is a personal decision that involves not just money, but a lot of emotions and a certain set of beliefs. It's best done on your own and for your own satisfaction than as a gift, unless you are very sure that your loved ones will be pleased with your donating money to a specific cause as a gift to them.
I also find that making a donation a "gift" in a way "objectifies" the social issue, even though it does benefit it at some level. It also encourages big-headedness or self-aggrandizing. I am also not convinced that it serves as a long term solution. That said, I like the idea of providing "training" as a gift, like my organization does. Business training is one that will last a lifetime and will continue to multiply as entrepreneurs share their success with their families and communities. It could make a good "gift" but more than that it is something I would donate to anyway, not just as a gift.
Moreover, I love giving and receiving gifts. Even thinking about tearing a gift-wrap open to see what's inside gives me goose-bumps! =) But, what I took from this gift fair experience is really that I would like to put a conscious effort into buying gifts that are purposeful. Buying a gift takes up a lot of time and energy. It only makes sense to mitigate the damage that choosing the wrong gift does (both in terms of product wastage as well as the heartache it causes) by picking useful, eco-friendly gifts. I know that for every giftable product in this world, there is an eco-friendly alternative. So it's not hard to make that choice.
Come to think of it, the overall environmental impact of gift-giving holidays (like Christmas and diwali) is huge. We are not just wasting money, but leaving a massive ecological footprint. Right from the millions of chopped down trees, to home decorations, to megawatts of power usage from single-use flashing lights, to wrapping papers, bouquets, ... the list is endless.
But, it's motivating to see people adopting new Christmas traditions and willing to make slight adjustments from gift-giving to the moment of celebration, to make their holidays special for their families, friends while honoring the earth and its people =) Happy Holidays!
