I want to believe something that makes my chest hurt. It seems that a lot of people do.
Hugh MacLeod from Gaping Void is asking for 500 word manifestos.
Submission guidelines here. The manifesto archive is here.
Here’s some edited highlights
Does it take 500 words to change things?
Probably not. It probably takes less than a hundred, plus a secret ingredient.
The secret ingredient is your desire to actually do something about it. To take action, to believe that it’s worthwhile, to confront what feels like a risk but really isn’t. The secret ingredient is to ignore excuses, abandon procrastination and stop looking for proof.
P.T. Barnum said “There’s a sucker born every minute,” but it’s high time we realized that these days, for every minute, the sucker in someone is withering away. Now, with every passing minute, there’s a sucker out there wising up. You had better be ready. It’s a sucker revolution, and it’s about time.
Karma is taking a virtually physical presence in our communities and mindspace. We know not only that we don’t like a company, but also why we don’t like it… or if we don’t, finding out is just a few keystrokes away.
Don’t listen to them just because they are talking. Don’t learn how to be dumb. Before you let them into your mind find out if they have anything to say or if they are just saying anything. Don’t just listen, be attentive.
You cannot live forever, and the greatest of empires will crumble. With every action or inaction, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, you steer the future of a world that will resonate throughout the universe for eternity.
And a ten minute manifesto by Thomas R. Clifford:
1. Why? Keep asking it. Crystallize why you are here…in eight words or less. Your life depends on it.
2. Inspire someone to do something positive in their life.
3. Blogging changes how you see the world. How you see the world changes your blogging.
4. Create something meaningful…even if it benefits a few.
5. Spend some time each day in silence. Discover the world within yourself. The answers are not “out there.” “Out there” is “in here.” See #6.
6. Quantum physics changes the game entirely. Take the time to find out why.
7. Be a “Perpetual Student” of Life…you know a lot less than you think you do.
8. Brand yourself. People are doing it for you, anyways.
9. When you think you’ve “got it,” you probably don’t. Ask a different question to get a different answer. See #1.
Filed under: Zeitgeist
I wanted to comment on UGC and show the picture and it’s story (in the post below Beauty= Truth) as an example of expression (in conversation with the video blog piece) in our 2.0 Share Economy (I’ll reference CK too!)
Note: CK reminded me that it is Vaspers that named the Share Economy.
I assure you that they’ll be hypertext love and linkages. I might even get to a conclusion.
But I’m not at my desk and I can’t remember any of my passwords….ANY
Sob. It would be great if my google/flickr ID gave me access to my blog account.
This makes me think of a couple things I know for sure about falling down:
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- You walk away bruised, humbled and a little bit smarter.
- You only ever have to get up once more than you fall over.
Filed under: Zeitgeist
beauty = truth, etc., originally uploaded by romanlily.
I found this beautiful post that supported this photo on flickr:
I picked up a great many things in my years in the Christian church. There are still wholly formed passages of Scripture floating around in the back corridors of my brain, unsung hymns with lovely melodies that bring tears to the eyes. There are also many logical arguments living in my brain on expired leases. The Teleological argument, the Cosmological argument, the Ontological argument. Their business cards are still here in my purse.
I was trained vigorously in these arguments in the philosophy course I took in college. Twelve years later, every time I start flirting with a religious framework that does not center around the very particular conservative Christian system of sacrifice and atonement I was trained in, Teleo, Cosmo, and Onto pop up, look over my shoulder nervously. “Are you sure you want to do that?” “I’m thinking you might regret that eventually.”
For a brief passage early in the decade, my then-husband and I attended elaborate Christian apologetics courses at night. We would drive to a big church on the other side of town and listen to heady lectures delivered by well-educated professors on the validity of the Christian message. We took notes in the notebooks they provided us. They talked a lot about “the inherent dignity of man,” which is a beautiful belief, one I deeply miss now that I have stepped away from the Christian ecosystem it lives in. It’s good to have a belief system that honors the anonymous moments of suffering and sadness that each person endures.
What I’m wondering now is who’s still around when Teleo, Cosmo, and Onto finally fall asleep. Can I invite the “inherent dignity of man” over for tea? The logicians are so severe. They are made of bone. There is no muscle in them, no heart. I don’t want a belief system that adores my brain and ignores my body. I want to believe something that makes my chest hurt. In a good way.
I’ve been scratching about this issue for quite a while in my journal. A few weeks ago, I wrote this question in the margins of my journal. And yeah, it’s sort of an ontological argument, I suppose. But so far, I can’t answer the question, and that’s okay with me.
Filed under: Get Activist
The amazing organizations that received the Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Awards have found a better way to do good: They’re using the disciplines of the corporate world to tackle daunting social problems
For the six weeks leading up to Christmas, from 13 November to 24 December, StreetSmart is giving restaurant diners the chance to help others every time they eat out.
Participating restaurants give diners the option of a $2 addition to their bill at the end of the night, which will then go directly to charities supporting homeless people.
StreetSmart patron Tim Costello explains the program: “If you see a lime green StreetSmart table-card, and are asked to contribute an extra $2 on your tab, say a profound “yes”. While you are at it, spare a thought for how important our homes are to us and what it might be like without one.”
Karma Credit to you guys!
Paul Coleman in posting this YouTube video started a comment storm that I think adds quite a bit to the experience of the video.
Over 1.5 million people have viewed it.
It’s overly long and the music is as Jared commented so heavy-handed that it could’ve been an ad for cancer research. But I really do think that what is says is more than everyday people have access to cameras and the internet.
How to define it? Perhaps using CK’s methodology: This is what it’s not:
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- It’s not fake
- It’s not funny
- It’s not filtered
- It’s not polished
- It’s not perfect
- It isn’t about empowerment
- It’s not about artistic merit
It is:
- About wanting to be heard
- About sharing
- About trying to connect
A few blog commentators were scathing. I was amazed by the sentiment that sentiment itself is bad. That emotion is naff. That the real loneliness of most people is tacky, crap and should be swept under the carpet where urban hipsters don’t have to see.
Ben puts it well:
“It has nothing to do with taste or artistic merit. I suppose there’s an element of voyeurism, liking looking into people’s gardens as you whizz past on the train. It’s real, which I like. It’s not a version of real or some one’s perception of real, these are real videos of real people uploaded to YouTube with no intention of being put into a 1M plus video montage. Literally. Boys, girls, black, white, old, young, mums, dads, kids, grans, animations, cats, dogs and even some EMO’s.
One of my favourite quote is from Larry Page, “Knowing what’s really happening is more important than trying to control people”. To me, that’s what’s happens on YouTube.”
And William Deed nails it:
“ I was genuinely interested in each person who appeared in that video and not in a fucking, ain’t that interesting kind of way, but I was able to empathise with a whole load of people who were not only trying to understand themselves, but understand how to live in an age where the personal has become public.”
I agree, all you too cool for school marketing types. This is your audience fellas- look and learn. Most of these people could do with a good friend.
Filed under: Zeitgeist
I like the brands that I work with to be friends with their consumers.
I was reading an article about ‘friends with benefits’, which is not a bad way of describing the current relationship between brands and consumers- mostly useful, sometimes amusing and yet there is no commitment, real affinity or long term relationship.
Take Aristotle’s concept of friendship. He proposed three models: friendship based on utility (a friend who provides something useful to us); friendship based on pleasure (we enjoy a friend’s company); and friendship based on virtue or mutual admiration (we find a friend who shares our values).
You can see in the Brand Utility movement the notion of the first model. It has at it’s heart the notion that, in order to achieve engagement, marketers should create widgets or things that consumers can actually use.
Undoubtedly most brands have surfed the wave of Pleasure: the friendship has been based on amusing and entertaining brand experiences.
Increasingly brands also have a Virtue component too, usually bundled away at the back. There are, of course great examples like this , this and this.
As Aristotle would argue, the reason friendships based on utility are incomplete, is that they are motivated by short-term considerations and are contingent on changeable circumstances. Similarly, friendships based on pleasure are contingent on feelings and accidental conditions. The friendship of mutual admiration is most enduring, and complete, because they “wish well for each other for each other’s own sake”, in addition to being useful and pleasant to each other.
I like to say that employed individually and without complexity and integration into a brand’s persona, these approach models simply create brand ephemera
Get the mix right:
and you’d move your brand beyond the five minute fling and into something that would last.
Filed under: Get Activist
Fabrica Forma Fotografia aims to promote photography as a means of transmitting information and creating awareness.
Launched by Fabrica, the Benetton Group’s communication research center, and Forma, Centro Internazionale di Fotografia (international photography center)it’s promoted by Contrasto and Fondazione Corriere della Sera (the Corriere della Sera foundation) in collaboration with ATM.
Aims:
To involve photographers from all over the world.To award photography that documents and criticizes, that tells a story: dramas, struggles, abused rights, but also dignity; pain and consolation, desperation and hope; the loss of everything and the triumph of life’s new possibilities and lastly the things that people do to face all of this. In a word, life.
Check out the work here.
Filed under: Get Activist
“Our mission is to create an economy that rewards care, courtesy and passion form justice.” Or, as the title of the famous article by its founder Edgar S. Cahn says: no more exclusion!
The Timedollar Institute was created in the 1980s by Edgar S. Cahn and after different phases in its history today it can count over 65 active member groups in the USA as well as a network of international partners that sprung from it.
The Institute’s activities vary and obviously range from the most traditional application of the community Time Bank model, to juvenile crime prevention programs and education programs based on carefully chosen curricula aimed at realizing the potential of the specific abilities of the young people who participate in them.
In reality, far from being just a Time Bank in itself, in the last few years the Institute has been dedicating most of its energies to spreading Cahn’s fundamental concepts and ideas, and trying to apply them, both by making the theories more available and promoting actual education campaigns for whoever wants to learn more about the exchange of time without the involvement of money, or for whoever wants to set up their own Time Bank.
More recently Timedollar has been promoting the concept of Co-Production through which it strives to provide the conceptual basis to the collaboration between the beneficiaries and professionals of social services. The four basic principles of Co-Production are:
• each person can contribute to building the wellbeing of the community;
• the concept of work must be redefined to include any action that contributes to raising healthy children and rendering the community safer and more active, and that offers opportunities for the protection of the weak or vulnerable;
• reciprocity lies at the base of almost all human relationships and so it is necessary to value interdependence within social relationships;
• social networks need to invest in social capital, based on trust, reciprocity and social involvement.
via BennetonTalk
Some things just have to be experienced.
You can’t photograph them. You can’t film them. Dancing about architecture…
I can’t tell you what it was like to be in a crowd of 70,000 people at the U2 concert but perhaps I can give you a glimpse of a moment.
Australia has one of the highest penetrations of mobile phones on the planet, so when Bono asked the crowd to raise their mobile phones in the air it made the stars in the sky look dull.
I know that this is a MO for a U2 concert:
“Time to do a magic trick. “These little devices — these cell phones — they can do all sorts of things.”
Then the band launches into the next song and Bono encourages the audience to use their phones to send an SMS to (in Australia it is www.makepovertyhistory.com), a sort of digital petition voicing support for poverty relief. Later, during the encore, the names of all who did so are scrolled on the same screen.
But just because it’s been rehearsed doesn’t mean it wasn’t magical.
The story: we have the power in our hands to make a difference.
Beautiful.
Filed under: Get Friendly
This post is for Paul. He’s the author of my most favoritest blog phrase ever: ‘like eating apple pie with a shit fork’, and a sage of, amongst many things, the role of intentional pain in humour.
Recently he’s shared a lovely lesson inspired by his grandmother Mimi.
It made me think about the kind of lessons we leave behind.
I like the notion of those lessons being the afterglow of a life.
I think a spirit that has touched you continues to provide guidance and can light the way and continue to delight long after the physical has passed.
While you are are here rage against the dying of the light: build a bonfire; create a pathway of illumination; leave a glow that’s visible from space.
Start today.
Filed under: Zeitgeist
north sydney lamppost 2, originally uploaded by Illuminata.
Is it personal?
Is it from the heart?
Is it believable?
Does it go beyond the one to one and say something about what it means to be human?
Does the simple expression of the message draw a smile?
Filed under: Zeitgeist
double two, originally uploaded by james m.
Tell me – I forget,
Show me – I remember,
Involve me – I understand.”
- Confucius
We Are What We Do have set up all sorts of ways for you to share your ideas, vote for what you believe, dare your friends to do new things, get others involved, and ultimately… change the world
Moms Rising is working to build a massive grassroots online resource to move motherhood and family issues to the forefront of awareness, and to provide grassroots support for leaders, as well as organizations, addressing key motherhood issues.
The intent is to reach millions of women who have not previously been active, to educate people about the problems facing mothers and families, and to provide avenues for common sense solutions to those problems.
GOOD Magazine, touted as a “cultural magazine for people who give a damn,” aims to promote social, political and environmental change by educating young people on world news and issues and empowering them to take action.
via Good Magazine check it out
Inspired by the utilitarian shoes of Argentine workers, these comfortable canvas slip-ons come in a range of colors and patterns, from camo to pink. If a vibrant new pair of shoes at a great price isn’t enough to grab you, there’s a bonus: every time someone purchases a pair of Toms Shoes, founder Blake Mycoskie donates a pair to a South American child. Now you can easily turn your problematic shoe fetish into something more productive.
$38, tomsshoes.com
Filed under: Zeitgeist
YOU know who you are.
Brand Autopsy outlines Bob Sutton’s THE NO ASSHOLE RULE
Learn more by watching this short video where Bob explains the concept.
Institutionalised Rudeness by Sociopaths (IRS from now on) is far from OK. In fact IRS is so far from OK it is huddling in a yurt in Outer Siberia. With no booze. And no friends.
And it’s not invited to any tzushy end of year drinks parties either. It’s banned. Passe.
In addition the “Punch In The Face” motivation technique is also banned. Previously thought to inspire the creative class to consistently meet the 20 hours overtime barrier, it has been recognised as an illegal tool of IRS and is now a Taser-able offence.
If you have been subject to IRS, or any suspect ‘motivation’ techniques, you can apply for your branded taser (which can also do double duty as an attractive cocktail shaker).
Bring it on.
Filed under: Zeitgeist
Whatever this is I’m going to order a truckload- anyone else in?
I do have to fight to keep my lover’s quarrel with the world in check. I acknowledge that it’s the ability to see how magnificent this place is and humanity’s potential for the sublime that is the cause of a lot of my Shouty behaviour.
Over on Jeffre Jackson’s Pink Air is a post about Idealism, which comments: both the optimism and the disgust are characteristic of idealism. He goes on to say that: we the people who work in advertising bear some responsibility for (the world being a cynical place). And yet, we’re not an especially cynical bunch as far as I can tell. So I’m wondering, what does a marketing idealist believe?
I like the notion of the responsibility of a “marketing idealist” Jeffree puts forward the “Be optimistic” campaign which was designed by a group of people in the Dutch communications industry to get people to look at things in a more positive light, to see that everything isn’t going downhill. What cracks me up is that there is nothing on this site- there is no good news!
Jeffree sums it up like this:
“I hoped a global band of marketing savvy idealists was starting a movement to get people to think, not just happier thoughts, but bigger thoughts about what is possible. “
I think we’re all a little swamped by the sheer volume of bad news that we get subject to every day.
Amidst all this noise and despair perhaps the first thing that marketing idealists can achieve is to motivate people through the compassion fatigue, through the moral apathy that we generate to help get us through the day.
