I used to watch videos like this. Watching youth getting jazzed would give me a chill (a real thing) that would go all the way up my spine. But now, I only get a small shiver that is felt in only a small section of my spine. Is my physical response sending me a message?
When I watch videos like this, I know their intent is good. They are trying to get youth inspired, which is most important. But now I watch things like this and feel deeply that something is missing. This approach, exciting as it may be, has been attempted over the ages in different forms and mediums, and yet NOTHING has changed – Our situation has only gotten worse, hasn’t it?
I listen to my own voice monitoring what I am seeing, with the question ‘what is truth?’, while assuming my own voice may not be correct. The voice that speaks back is my TRUTH, as I see it today. Unfortunately, the truth that speaks is nothing close to what juiced up videos like this are trying to offer. SO WHAT IS MISSING?
Listen to the language in the video – It’s of ‘revolution’, not ‘evolution’. It is NOT about ‘evolving’, but rather about ‘revolting’. This is nothing but the same, which we have all seen through the millennia.
Humanity can NOT go through another REVOLUTION … It will take ALL of us down, not just some of us. The next revolution will be humanity’s last.
Instead, how do we move ourselves into an awareness of EVOLUTIONARY (not revolutionary) perspective? I want to see the youth dancing to an evolved way of being. No more to fighting what has never worked, except for an elitist few. It is time we tell that new story differently – the story of an evolved humanity.
I say this to the youth mostly … Since my generation, and those before me, have failed their future: WE NOW HAVE TO DEPEND ON YOU. MAKE IT SO. I for one will be there to support you in anyway that I can. Just call on me (Vic Desotelle 831-515-8141 email).
Read more on how the Occupy Movement can catalyze an evolutionary revolution.
May 2014 be the year when the men and women of ‘the arena’ (see below) come together to share our triumphs and struggles, and to celebrate the making of a world that works for all. I wish a to extend to each of you who stand in this very special place, a joyful and transformative New Year.
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THE MAN IN THE ARENA by Theodore Roosevelt
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Preparing Your Enterprise for an Emerging Global Ethic
Email Vic To Learn More About Onsite and Online Workshops at Your Company
From Ethics To Innovation
I have been been training businesses and educational institutions using a unique approach to ethics management. Our ‘Right vs Right’ workshop has been taught at UC Santa Cruz’s Leadership and Management Programs. By incorporating our workshop managers gain a deeper understanding of ethics’ role in their workplace. They also gain essential leadership tools for creating and sustaining a healthy company.
Organizational Ethics – A Conceptual Overview
Today’s troubling business climate requires that organizations have a thorough understanding of ethics so that appropriate decisions can be made when dilemmas arise. But ethics management consists of more than knowing what to do once a problem arises. Appropriate ethical action can only be applied when company managers are committed to leading from an ethical rightness based on values, not just the law. A broader education on ethics can help to reduce legal action by teaching managers how to make clear decisions early in the process.
These ethical concepts for company managers to comprehend:
Know why doing the right thing is important as a principle.
Know how to incorporate ethics as part of a daily decision-making practice.
Know what the legal responsibilities of corporate and government policy.
Knowing the ‘why, ‘how’, and ‘what’ of ethics allows managers to:
Intuitively respond to principle needs of involved stakeholders [the why].
Rationally apply legal policy-correctness to ethical circumstances [the what].
Exercise ethics as part of making quality day-to-day decisions, such as hiring employees, or determining the appropriateness of new technologies [the how].
Ever find yourself choosing between corporate and personal values? What process do you employ to approach ethical problems? This interactive workshop will explore ethical decision-making through the views of Joseph Badaracco’s book “Defining Moments”. Multiple perspectives from great thinkers including Aristotle, Machiavelli, and William James will be considered. Participants will learn to make ethical decisions by asking a series of ‘right-versus-right’ (rather than right vs wrong) questions aimed at clarifying ethical dilemmas and making better strategic decisions.
This workshop will help you determine what can be done when ethical activity is in question.
Managers will learn how to:
Explore what can be done when confronted with an ethical dilemma.
Determine how to make ethical decisions using a non-judgmental, collaborative process.
View ethical decision-making from multiple perspectives.
This ‘Right vs Right’ workshop will help your organization be more successful by helping its people make better day-to-day. Whether you are part of a large or small organization, the success of your business now requires that decisions be made based on a larger perspective.
The ‘Right vs. Right’ concept for decision-making will help to:
REVEAL basic values and ethical beliefs held by managers that may be keeping your organization from realizing its optimal place within the global market.
STRENGTHEN managers commitments to the organization and to doing the right thing.
SHAPE their personal character to better match the needs of company stakeholders. As the character of management shifts, so will the character of your organization.
‘Right vs. Right’ practices will help to define a more strategic enterprise that is aligned with today’s global society.
The Ethical Onion
Ethics are based in personal and collective values, which are buried at the center of the organization.
Outer Skin: Ethical Policy of the Organization relating to Customer and Supply Chain Relations
Inner Layers: Manager Awareness of Values and Applied Practices
At the Core: Underlying Cultural Belief Systems & Mythical Assumptions.
Corporate Ethics – A Company Conversation
Workshop 2
Description:
I also offer facilitated cafe conversations and other collaborative design solutions relating to ethics through DiscoveryColabs.com. Shift your company’s orientation from ‘passively listening to a presentation’ to ‘actively engaging in a conversation. An organization’s commitment to ethics provides value beyond simply getting employees to do the right thing. By engaging in ethical conversations, a company actually opens doors to new forms of innovation at all levels of the enterprise – from hiring quality staff, to producing better products and services.
The conversation will be focused on three primary influences upon organizational ethics: principles, practices, and policies. We will discuss personal understandings of these terms, how they relate to ethical activity within companies, and how both corporate and individual values play a role in building a balanced ethical practice within enterprise and its implications on innovation.
Ask me for a copy of my ethics conversation slides and conversation table cards.
I find that this subject is one of the more revealing issues of our time. A place that requires us to reshape our understanding and meaning of ‘environment’. Read this great article on the link between our human psyche and the Earth.
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By DANIEL B. SMITH
Published: January 27, 2010
The terms in which ecopsychology pursues this admittedly ambitious goal are steeped in the field’s countercultural beginnings. Ecopsychology emerged in the early 1960s, just as the modern environmental movement was gathering strength, when a group of Boston-area graduate students gathered to discuss what they saw as the isolation and malaise infecting modern life. It had another brief period of efflorescence, particularly on the West Coast and among practitioners of alternative therapies, in the early ’90s, when Theodore Roszak, a professor of history (he coined the word “counterculture”) published a manifesto, “The Voice of the Earth,” in which he criticized modern psychology for neglecting the primal bond between man and nature. “Mainstream Western psychology has limited the definition of mental health to the interpersonal context of an urban-industrial society,” he later wrote. “All that lies beyond the citified psyche has seemed of no human relevance — or perhaps too frightening to think about.” Ecopsychology’s eclectic following, which includes therapists, researchers, ecologists and activists, still reflects these earlier foundations. So does its rhetoric. Practitioners are as apt, if not more apt, to cite Native American folk tales as they are empirical data to make their points.
Yet even as it remains committed to its origins, ecopsychology has begun in recent years to enter mainstream academic circles. more …
I want you to click on the picture of the ‘invention machine’ at the left and watch the video. As your watching the video, make a list of the things that (in your mind) make up ‘sustainable’ innovation, based on how they describe it to be.
Then, look at your list and consider how they are using the definition of sustainability. In some parts, they show energy efficient light bulbs, etc, suggesting that sustainability truly is influencing our thinking and methods of innovation. Hooray !
But wait a minute.
There’s something missing here. Look at the image above. Notice the direction of product coming out of the machine. Where are these products going? Isn’t a part of sustainability mean that everything becomes food for another system and another and another. Including possibly the system that made it in the first place? Yes. The full meaning of ‘sustainable innovation’ means that everything is defined in closed loops, not assembly lines that have no return.
Unfortunately, the way most folks are using the term ‘sustainable innovation’ is limited to defining processes that allow the continued production of stuff without considering its RE-production at the end of the product’s usable life cycle.
Click on pic to access enlarged version
We are now entering a new age of innovation, and the principles sustainability are directly affecting how innovation is designed, manufactured, used, … and regenerated. The missing link in the video above is REGENERATION. All products, which are an outcome of innovation, must be designed into closed loop systems that do not allow for even the idea of waste to enter the equation.
Either we evolve the meaning of ‘sustainable innovation’ or we are merely making green stuff that is more efficient but still unclaimed at the end of an open cycle. This is not sustainable. Closed loop systems that are incorporated at the beginning of the product design process is the answer.
