10 ways to make a difference: Advice for change agents

Let’s say you’ve got a cause you care deeply about, and you want to move it forward. It may be an initiative at work, a political issue, a community concern, or something else that matters. You may be at the beginning, in the middle, or tantalizingly close to success.

I deliberately gave this post a somewhat breezy title, but you’ll see my intent is to be more “big picture” as opposed to “checklist” or “plug-and-play.” What follows are hardly the first or last words about making a difference, but perhaps you’ll find them useful. In no particular order:

1. Be responsibly bold — I’ve been using this phrase a lot in talking about social change. Real change is neither reckless nor timid.

2. Take a next step — If you’re stuck, take a next step. It doesn’t have to be the next step, but it should be an affirmative one. It may lead you to something significant.

3. Put it on paper — Writing out your ideas pushes you to think logically about your passion. Let your right brain inspire your left brain, and vice versa.

4. Persevere – Sounds obvious, right? Well, if you’ve ever seen the resume of a very smart, able individual whose work record is a long list of short gigs, you know what I mean. Or maybe it’s someone who cares deeply about a cause but keeps addressing it in stops and starts or by constantly switching gears. Chances are they’ve never stuck with something long enough to make a deeper impact.

5. Learn — Change agents are lifelong learners. Pick up a book, talk to people (and listen!), dig into that website, read that journal article, scan the paper, watch a documentary, just keeping learning. A key to your initiative may be in the next study you read.

6. Affiliate and organize – Individuals can make a difference, but it’s awfully hard to effect change as a lone wolf. The right affiliations with other individuals and organizations can have a tremendously galvanizing effect and bring together complementary skill sets. (And if you find that there’s no core group of people addressing your cause, start one!)

7. Take a break — Burnout is real. Sometimes the best step forward is to step out for a bit.

8. Plan, do, evaluate, repeat — A good mantra to follow.

9. Celebrate victories, then get back to work — If you celebrate too long, you risk deluding yourself that the task is over. If you don’t celebrate at all, you’ll be pretty glum and miss a chance to recharge your spirit. So, take occasional bows, and then ask what comes next.

10. When despairing, dig deep — Changing some small part of the world for the better can be challenging, frustrating, and difficult work. Setbacks are almost inevitable. When they occur, dig deep . . . perhaps into your devotion to the cause, your faith or spirituality, or your connection with others who share your commitment.

Intellectual Activism

For some time, I’ve been developing my ideas on a topic I call “intellectual activism,” which I define as using scholarly research to inform and shape social change initiatives. Two weeks ago, I hopped on a train to New York to give a lunchtime talk on intellectual activism to faculty members of the City University of New York Law School (CUNY), located in Long Island City, Queens. CUNY Law is one of the nation’s leading incubators of future public interest lawyers, so this was a great opportunity to discuss the topic with a receptive group of colleagues.

I examined how law professors can use our legal scholarship as the foundations for engaging in legislative advocacy, impact litigation, and public education through social media. I used my work concerning workplace bullying and unpaid internships as personal examples, but the discussion went well beyond that, as others in the room shared their experiences and interests.

Theory, research, and practice all come together in this model. Effective intellectual activism requires sharp thinking and research, honest and dispassionate analysis, and common sense grounded in experience and observation. Ideally this blend leads to us to prescriptive responses that are, as I like to say it, responsibly bold.

For a copy of my paper, “Law Professors as Intellectual Activists,” go here.

Mary Pipher on Writing to Change the World

I encounter a lot of good people who are trying to make the world a better place through their writing. They may be writing books, articles, short stories, blog posts, Facebook entries, reports, creative works, or a host of other possibilities.

For all in this broad category, Mary Pipher’s Writing to Change the World (2006) is instructive and inspirational.

Pipher is a bestselling author and therapist. Her book reflects upon the uses of writing to make a positive difference. Here are a few snippets from the introduction:

Writing to connect is “change writing,” which, like good therapy, creates the conditions that allow people to be transformed. (p. 6)

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When you take pen to paper with the goal of making a difference, you join a community of people for whom words and issues matter. . . . As a writer, your life goal may involve a worthy cause I cannot even imagine. Whatever it is, you are fortunate. (p. 10)

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The title of this book . . . may sound grandiose, but I truly believe that positive changes come from decent people acting properly. (p. 13)

We need healthier stories

Pipher laments our unhealthy popular culture that feeds on tawdry details and appeals to superficial values. Instead, she would like us to focus on tales of meaningful work and lives.

“Healthy cultures pass on healthy stories from generation to generation,” she notes, adding that “We need stories that teach us to be patient, to share, and to put things into perspective.” (pp. 11-12)

Many forms

Pipher devotes chapters to various writing forms, including letters, speeches, personal essays, blogs, and music & poetry.

In other words, if you’re not a bestselling novelist or prize-winning journalist, not to worry. It’s about effecting good changes in small and large ways through the written word.

If the title draws you, welcome to a thoughtful and pleasurable read.

Dignity work

December 2012 workshop participants (photo: Anna Strout)

Dignity work. In a blog about work, that’s the best way I can tag the array of projects, initiatives, and passions that drew people from around the world to the annual Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict, sponsored by the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies Network (HumanDHS) and hosted by Columbia University, Teachers College, in New York.  This year’s workshop ran last Thursday and Friday.

About HumanDHS

HumanDHS is a unique association. Here’s a self-description from the website:

We are a global transdisciplinary network and fellowship of concerned academics and practitioners. We wish to stimulate systemic change, globally and locally, to open space for dignity and mutual respect and esteem to take root and grow, thus ending humiliating practices and breaking cycles of humiliation throughout the world.

We suggest that a frame of cooperation and shared humility is necessary – not a mindset of humiliation – if we wish to build a better world, a world of equal dignity for all.

Untypical

In other words, HumanDHS is not your typical academic assemblage. For example, in the Round Table in which I participated, we heard presentations about sojourns to the Amazon rainforest, conflict resolution on large and small scales, America’s aging population base, and the criminal justice system. Theory, research, and action all play important roles at this gathering and often come together in individual talks.

A group ethic of respectful exchange frames the event. On topics as difficult as, say, the impact of required English education on the preservation of traditional languages in Africa, emotions can run strong. It may take an effort, at times, to keep certain expressions in check and to listen to others amid earnest discussion. Nevertheless, such attempts are far preferable to imposing a cloak of superficial dialogue that dodges hard topics, or allowing exchanges to disintegrate into angry barbs tossed back and forth.

Group hug

Yes, there’s a group hug at the end, but we shouldn’t dismiss this as a standard-brand “feel good” event. Not, for example, when a participant shares a personal story of childhood sexual abuse. You see, the founders of HumanDHS included the word humiliation in the group’s name for a reason: You can’t affirm human dignity without facing what’s uncomfortable and painful.

And yet it does feel good to be a part of this group. These gatherings are life-affirming in a world where the embrace of human dignity remains too rare an event.

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Notes

Evelin Linder, Linda Hartling, Tonya Hammer, and a crew of other dedicated volunteers deserve our thanks for making the workshop such a meaningful gathering.

Congratulations to friend and colleague Michael Perlin (New York Law School), who received the HumanDHS Lifetime Achievement Award at the workshop. Michael is a leading authority on mental disability law and is among a core group of law professors who extended a warm welcome to me when I became involved with the therapeutic jurisprudence movement.

For more photos of the event by the ever present (but never intrusive) camera of Anna Strout, go here and scroll down to the links.

World Future Society: We’re facing a Global MegaCrisis

I’ve always regarded the World Future Society (WFS), a non-profit, non-partisan organization devoted to forecasting the future, as leaning toward the optimistic. I guess that makes sense for a group committed to the future — at least one that wants to keep its members and donor base!

Nevertheless, as someone who fears that we are heading into perilous times absent major course corrections, I was heartened to find WFS’s 2011 feature on what it calls a potential Global MegaCrisis.

The WFS defines this MegaCrisis as “a global environmental and economic collapse or near collapse, along with attendant problems of rising prices, mass protests, widespread psychic stress, and lawlessness.” These trends could drive it:

• “Climate Change, No Matter What.”
• “Political Will to Reduce CO₂ Is Lacking.”
• “Methane May Be Worse Than CO₂.”
• “Freshwater Is Becoming More Scarce.”
• “Recession Likely to Last for Years.”
• “Severe Institutional Failures.”
• “Cyberwarfare/Cyberterrorism.”
• “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

Four scenarios

The WFS assesses our options and envisions one of four scenarios taking place:

• “Scenario 1: Decline to Disaster”
• “Scenario 2: Muddling Down”
• “Scenario 3: Muddling Up”
• “Scenario 4: Rise to Maturity”

Halal vs. Marien

Two noted future studies scholars and analysts, William Halal and Michael Marien, add opinion pieces assessing the likelihood of these scenarios coming to pass.

Halal is the more optimistic of the two, predicting that we will muddle up to a better place, buoyed by his conviction that “The World Is Entering an Advanced Stage of Evolution.”

Marien, on the other hand, believes it is more likely we will muddle down, awash in “Infoglut, Ignorance, Indecision, and Inadequacy.”

Reluctantly, I must say that my money is on Marien. I’ve admired his work for years, and his current thinking reflects a career immersed in understanding the choices before us as a society. In addition, while I agree that humankind is fully poised to take some remarkable forward steps in our development, I doubt that we will fully embrace the opportunities. Rather, I fear that small pockets of light — a mini-Enlightenment of sorts — will flicker about amid what the late Jane Jacobs characterized as a new Dark Age.

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Am I too pessimistic? Are you interested in the future (and who isn’t)? The full feature may be worth your time and attention.

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Added note: A group of researchers from MIT also are predicting a severe global depression if we continue to pursue unsustainable consumption patterns, as Eric Pfeiffer blogs for Yahoo! News (link here):

A new study from researchers at Jay W. Forrester’s institute at MIT says that the world could suffer from “global economic collapse” and “precipitous population decline” if people continue to consume the world’s resources at the current pace.

 

A plea for art as vocation and artists as leaders

Kayhan Irani

What if our society made more room for artistic expression as a form of vocation and recognized more artists as leaders? Those are among the questions raised by Kayhan Irani, a self-styled “artivist” based in New York who uses her artistic and creative gifts to advance social change.

Kayhan has been a dear friend since 2004, when I invited her to Boston to present “We’ve Come Undone,” her compelling one-woman play about the challenges confronting immigrant women in the post-9/11 era. Since then, I’ve watched her define her vocational role and win plaudits for her artistic work, including a 2010 New York Emmy for a 9-episode educational television drama for immigrant New Yorkers and co-editorship of a book about the use of storytelling to advance social change. (Go here for her interesting and impressive bio.)

Yesterday on her blog, Kayhan asked readers to consider how art (of all types) can be sustaining work and how artists can serve as societal leaders. I wanted to share some of that with you and to offer a few responses.

Art as vocation

Kayhan first takes issue with stereotypes about artists and with assumptions that artistic work should not be a sustaining form of vocation:

The messages that are broadcast in our society about artists are that we are irresponsible, stupid, drug addicts, mentally ill, have questionable morals; and that art is frivolous, a diversion, not serious work, it’s only for some people, it’s stupid, and can’t pay the bills.  In order to maintain the status quo, we need artists to remain on the fringes of society, barely visible, always teetering on the brink of poverty and irrelevance.

These messages get enforced from a very early age.  Imagine an adult asking you, with pleasure, if you are going to be a lawyer or a dancer when you grow up; what about a firefighter or a painter?  From a very young age, we are steered away from art-making as a life choice.

Artists as leaders

Kayhan concludes by urging us to consider how artistic leadership can be a force for positive social change:

And that brings me to my main point: art and creativity are the most powerful forces we have for liberation.

Art can bring people together.  We don’t even need to speak the same language.

Art can make a way out of no way.  When people are living in oppressive situations, artists can help imagine a way out.  The fight for another world has to imagine that the impossible is possible.

Artists never stop questioning.  Creativity means to use your senses to engage in a process of inquiry.

So let the artists lead us.  Let us recognize that they already do!

Spot on

Kayhan’s call for a world where artistic expression helps us to envision better communities and lives sounds pretty good to me. And it sure would be nice if it was provided by artists who are able to earn a decent living from their work.

I’m not suggesting that we live without formal structures or ditch anything that smacks of “businesslike.” After all, as a lawyer and law professor, I believe that a world without the rule of law would be a pretty scary one. (I’m not exactly enamored with the legal system we have, but that’s for other posts.) And I fully acknowledge that enterprise and technology can bring us some neat stuff, such as the computer I’m using to produce this article.

However, we have got things way, way out of balance. In particular, the financial insanity that led us to the economic meltdown should have prompted a deeper questioning of basic values and major institutions, but I fear we are squandering that opportunity as we yearn for a “recovery” that puts us in a position to do it all over again.

In the meantime, many artists who have been dependent upon outside funding and non-profit sponsorship for their work are struggling even more.

New ways

So…to Kayhan’s eloquent plea I’ll add the need for societal structures that enable artistic work and are not as subject to the boom-and-bust cycles of our casino economy. I confess that I haven’t made all the “third way” connections between this and other forms of sustainable, community-oriented initiatives and enterprises, but I’m sure others have done so. Surely we cannot repeat the mess we’re in, right? Right?

Free podcast series, No. 1: About the New Workplace Institute

I’ve launched a new podcast series that will serve as a multimedia complement to this blog. You can access the podcasts without charge from iTunes!

In podcast No. 1, “Creating Healthy Workplaces: The New Workplace Institute,” I answer these questions from Ian Menchini, Director of Electronic Marketing at Suffolk University Law School:

1. Professor, what is the New Workplace Institute and why did you create it?

2. Can you give us an example of the kind of activity you want the Institute to host or sponsor?

3. Tell us a bit about your blog, Minding the Workplace, as well as your plans for this Podcast series.

4. Will Suffolk law students have opportunities to become involved with the Institute?

We’ll be posting new podcasts roughly 3-4 times a month. Next week’s podcast will be devoted to explaining the Healthy Workplace Bill, the anti-bullying legislation I’ve written that is the basis of our law reform movement.

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Many thanks to Ian Menchini at Suffolk University Law School for his instrumental assistance in creating this series.

Building a global society that embraces human dignity

I’ve just had the privilege of participating in the annual workshop of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS) Network, a global gathering of scholars and practitioners devoted to advancing dignity and ending humiliation in our society. The workshop was held on Thursday and Friday at Teachers College of Columbia University.

Here’s how HumanDHS describes its mission:

We are a global transdisciplinary network and fellowship of concerned academics and practitioners. We wish to stimulate systemic change, globally and locally, to open space for dignity and mutual respect and esteem to take root and grow, thus ending humiliating practices and breaking cycles of humiliation throughout the world.

We suggest that a frame of cooperation and shared humility is necessary – not a mindset of humiliation – if we wish to build a better world, a world of equal dignity for all.

It’s not easy for me to capture to breadth and depth of this gathering. In programmatic terms, it consists of several roundtable discussions, dialogue sessions, and lectures (plus a dash of live musical entertainment) — in other words, on the surface it may appear to be just another conference. But what happens during that time is very special, a sharing of experiences, research, ideas, and actions ranging from trauma and healing in Romania to cultural issues implicated by English language instruction in Zanzibar. You can look at the overall agenda here.

Leaders

The founding president of HumanDHS is Dr. Evelin Lindner, a physician, psychologist, and self-styled global citizen whose life mission is rooted in the displacement of her family during the ravages of the First and Second World Wars. Evelin speaks in visionary terms of what our society can become, and she’s ever conscious of how pain and trauma call upon us to embrace those ideals.

The director of HumanDHS is Dr. Linda Hartling, a psychologist and leading authority on relational-cultural theory who worked with renowned psychiatrist Jean Baker Miller. Linda’s work in identifying different types of workplace cultures is one of the most valuable framing concepts I’ve encountered in trying to grasp variations in organizational life.

Evelin and Linda would be quick to emphasize that HumanDHS is a large assemblage of people dedicated to both scholarship and action. Ideas, research, and theory are deeply respected. Concrete actions to advance positive individual and social change are celebrated.

World Dignity University

This year’s workshop also served as a sort of brainstorming session about a new HumanDHS initiative, the World Dignity University, described as follows:

The education branch of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS) aims to increase our understanding of the negative consequences of humiliation and generate support of alternative approaches that promote human dignity. We have therefore begun in 2010 to form a World Dignity University.

We wish to disseminate the research findings related to dignity (with humiliation as its violation) to a wide variety of audiences. Thereby we wish to contribute to the capacity of people to build peaceful societies and be mindful of how humiliation may disrupt the social fabric and how social cohesion may be sustained by preventing humiliation from occurring.

Although still in the very early stages of development, World Dignity University will offer educational programs and a university press dedicated to addressing human dignity and humiliation. I’m tremendously excited about its potential. See the video clip above for more of Evelin’s and Linda’s ideas about this initiative.

Personal appreciation

My discovery of HumanDHS several years ago has been a genuine gift, made possible by the welcoming spirit of its pioneering core group. Today I serve on the HumanDHS global advisory board, at this year’s workshop I shared some of my work concerning workplace bullying and the practice of intellectual activism.

In addition, I join with New York Law School professor Michael Perlin — a leading authority on mental health law — in having strong connections to both the HumanDHS Network and the Therapeutic Jurisprudence movement, the latter of which has been a common topic on this blog.

The “butterfly effect” and working as an educator

I’ve just finished Stephen King’s new bestseller, 11/22/63, which centers on a modern day schoolteacher, Jake Epping, going back in time in an attempt to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy. Even though it weighs in at nearly 850 pages, it’s an absorbing tale. And like the best of popular fiction, it’s both accessible (i.e., perfect for a long Thanksgiving weekend) and thought provoking.

Although the challenge of saving the President is the main plot driver, the novel also offers a terrific backstory about Jake’s work as a teacher, and naturally I found myself dwelling upon it.

Butterfly effect

King’s novel, and many time travel tales in general, embrace the idea of the “butterfly effect.” In science, the butterfly effect theorizes that a butterfly’s wings potentially could create a tornado hundreds or thousands of miles away. In popular culture, it has come to represent the idea that small changes in choices or actions may trigger or lead to ripple effects of a profound and unanticipated nature.

I make no claim of expertise about the butterfly effect’s legitimacy as a scientific theory, but I have to say that as a social phenomenon, it makes intuitive sense to me. One thing leads to another, say two of my favorite educators about the art and process of learning, Drs. John Bilorusky and Cynthia Lawrence, and the butterfly effect takes that idea to more dramatic ends.

Of course, inherent in the butterfly effect is its unpredictability. We can’t necessarily foresee these significant events, and they will be a mix of good and bad. (Butterfly. Tornado. Only good if you’re a storm chaser or a bored weather reporter.) That’s what makes the theory so appealing for time travel stories.

The work of an educator

However, I also know as an educator that a good action one day can spawn further good actions by others in the years to come. Indeed, that’s what teaching, mentoring, and scholarship are all about: If we’ve been at this business long enough, we’ve witnessed what happens when our work has a positive impact somewhere down the line.

In essence, being an educator is an ongoing act of faith. On a day-to-day basis, the benefits of our work to others may not always be evident. In fact, a class or course that didn’t go as well as we had hoped, or a publication that doesn’t appear to be attracting much attention, may well cause us to wonder if we’re spinning our wheels or wasting our time. But on occasion, perhaps on many occasions if we are fortunate, we are gifted with the realization that our work allows us to make a difference, even if we’ll never be aware of its full effects.

Responsibility

I don’t want to overstate our potential influence. Folks, it’s not like our students and readers are hanging on to our every word — a basic truth that too many educators forget or never learn. Nevertheless, we have a responsibility to put into the stream of human ideas and activity our best insights, understandings, and instructions.

And — even then — we have no guarantees how our lessons will be used or misused or forgotten. After all, butterflies are free, yes?

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The butterfly effect and teaching

Heather A. Hass, “Teaching and the Butterfly Effect,” Chronicle of Higher Education (2004)

Paul D. Carrington, “Butterfly Effects: The Possibilities of Law Teaching in a Democracy,” Duke Law Journal (1992)

Wikipedia articles

Butterfly effect

Butterfly effect in popular culture

Book recommendation!

It has nothing to do with the main themes of this blog, but if you’re into time travel stories, check out Jack Finney’s classic illustrated novel, Time and Again (1970), which takes its protagonist back to New York City, circa 1882. Stephen King calls it the best time travel story ever written. For me, discovering the book some 25 years ago was a magical reading experience.

Occupy movement goes global: 900 cities and counting

The social protest movement that started several weeks ago with Occupy Wall Street has gone global, as Esther Addley reports for Guardian newspaper (link here):

• 60,000 protesters in Barcelona, Spain
• 25,000 in Santiago, Chile
• 5,000+ “massed outside the European Central Bank” in Frankfurt, Germany
• 4,000 in London
• 3,000 in Auckland, New Zealand

Addley adds:

The Occupy campaign may have hoped, at its launch, to inspire similar action elsewhere, but few can have foreseen that within four weeks, more than 900 cities around the world would host co-ordinated protests directly or loosely affiliated to the Occupy cause.

Testifying on the human costs: Occupy the Boardroom

As protests mount, others are finding ways to spread the message online. Joshua Holland, writing for AlterNet (link here) reports on Occupy the Boardroom, a project that allows members of the public to share personal stories of what the economic meltdown has done to them and their families. For example, here is what one woman from North Carolina wrote to fellow Tar Heel Erskine Bowles, co-chair of the President’s national debt commission:

Like you I’m from the Tar Heel state so I thought I’d tell you my story. A couple of years ago my father died waiting for a liver transplant. It was an ugly, horrible death and left me parentless while still in my 20s. My brother and I inherited the small ranch-style house my father worked his whole life to pay off. (Our mother died during our childhoods.) I wanted to take care of my father’s money so I invested it. Six months later I had lost over half of it when the crash happened. I lost half of my father’s life savings because of the corrupt practices of Wall Street. My father worked his whole life. He was the 11th child of a sharecropping family and was sent to the cotton fields before he was ten. He completed high school but there was no money for college so he went to work at blue-collar jobs which he used to support us his whole life.

When I think of the money I lost, I think of my father’s hands. I think of his broken, scarred hands that built a home and future for me. It wasn’t just money that Wall Street stole. Futures, trust, hard work and respect — those are the things Wall Street corruption has stolen from the American People, not just money. I don’t think everyone on Wall Street is corrupt, but the system is, and I want to do my part to correct it, even if it’s just writing a letter like this. I owe my father that. Mr. Bowles, I hope you do your part too. Because of your position, you are a powerful person in our society. So I ask you, how will you use your power? What will your legacy be?

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Watch and listen to this catchy video and song above, “We Are the 99%,” posted on YouTube.

Related posts

Economics 101: Defining terms and saving capitalism from itself

From “punk-styled kids” to airline pilots, is Occupy Wall Street the start of something big?

Post-meltdown America: An economic recovery for the wealthy

Globalization and workers 101: A quick primer