Start Good Blog

I could live without a TV, but I have one sitting in the same room that I am typing this blog. The $1000 I spent on that slick LCD TV could have immunized about 58 children from 6 major childhood diseases according to UNICEF. Is it wrong that I bought the TV? Peter Singer, a philosophy professor at Princeton, probably would say yes. He formulated that it was immoral to consume beyond a comfortable level when the same money could be used to save lives.

While it may be unrealistic to merely live at a comfortable level and to donate the rest to charity, in my opinion, it is insightful to contemplate the extremes of “being good.” It is complicated though since where does the extreme line start anyway? Does Warren Buffett qualify as being extreme? I could not imagine giving up $30 billion, even if that was “only” 60% of my net worth. He is still rich, but how much does that discount what he donated?

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The internet has been criticized as killing person to person contact and making people out of touch with the world. However the internet is also an amazing way to connect people in different ways. Stories don’t stop at the local neighborhood meet up, an article in the newspaper, a radio show or even on national TV. Big or small, a story can be read by nearly anyone, anywhere. In addition, art, knowledge and passion can all be passed through the wires of the world wide web. Although people of power and prestige still create much of the culture of our world, the internet has allowed each person to pass something onto a stranger or even a million strangers. This mass exposure, this unraveling of distance is commonly called the democratization of media and it has touched me so greatly that I wish to contribute as I am doing here at SGB. With this in mind, I want to feature a few of my favorite sources of inspiration, interest, and awe that I have found online. I hope to have a few separate posts, focusing on different aspects of online media with this one starting the series by touching on a few favorite online videos. Below you will find videos I have collected over the years from all over the internet. Each touches on different things, but taught me something new.

See the videos after the jump:

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The documentary The Corporation, with its discussions of ways corporations end up hurting society, aided in my move towards becoming more socially and environmentally aware.  In it was a man I remember fondly and came across in the New York Times recently, Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, a carpet tile company.  He spoke from the heart about discovering how destructive his company was to the environment and how he has steered his company to sustainability with a pledge to be completely sustainable by 2020.  With $1.1 billion in annual sales or 38% of global market share, this is no small feat and is almost an experiment in our time of if the green of the environment and the green of profits can coexist.  There have been a lot of gains by big business moving towards being more socially and environmentally friendly, however being completely sustainable, meaning having no net impact on the environment in every aspect, is far from what they are trying to achieve.  So far Interface has been successful with their green approach, so much so that it spawned a consulting branch to help other companies switch to sustainable practices.To this end, Ray Anderson is onto something much bigger than growing the profits of his own company, he is showing corporate America what is possible with sustainability.  Being green is quickly becoming the popular method to help a company, not just be good but also, do better business.  Over time there has many methods that has changed business, everything from the Henry Ford’s assembly line to Japan’s quality philosophy.  I see sustainable business as the next marker in history for business.  A trend that makes sense economically and just so happens does the world some good.

Bringing this down a level, how can you make your office a little more green?  Although the focus is usually on making your home green, it makes just as much sense to carry that into the workplace.  If you can save your boss some money through making a green choice, then not only did you save the business some cash, but you just made yourself look better too.  So follow Ray’s lead by going green at home and at the office and encourage companies you interact with, either professionally or as a consumer, to follow the (green) leader too.  Even if someone does not care about the environment, they usually do care about the bottom line and so use that to your advantage… in a good way.

Gas Works Park became a comforting home to me while attending the University of Washington.  Named for the former occupant, the real draw is the waterfront view, willingly shared to anyone who steps onto its grassy grounds. With each visit, I seem to gleam a new insight. Some way or another, the park taps into my heart and mind, giving me wisdom through inexplicable and intangible osmosis. Through this, one sunny day at that park turned me onto a journey to become more aware of our world and to want to create change. I saw the gorgeous city of Seattle surrounded by nature`s hills and water, a beautiful amalgamation, brought together seamlessly as if the land had willingly allowed the city inside its doors. The more I looked over the site, the more I realized that people, human beings, with their two fragile hands, created the great city. The power we have to build great towers, expansive streets, shops and residences, not only amazed me but also frightened me. The metropolis, intertwining with the land and water, spoke encouragingly and cautiously: I could do something great with my life, but I could also do nothing and, at worst, I could create much harm.  My two hands, no different than others, could build anything. In my case, I wanted not a city but a better world.

That day my heart became compassionately consumed with the thought that we all have a real responsibility to our planet and who we share it with.  The choices and actions of one does not build a city alone, neither does it destroy the land one hopes to build it on.  However, each person who chooses to lay a brick sets a foundation for the next man, woman or child to stand on.  I asked myself if I wanted to build something great, to allow others to reach higher than myself or if I was going to hope for someone else to do it.  I made a choice that day and I am trying to live up to it.

I love that park, it has comforted me each time I have gone and helped me clear my thoughts and opened up new roads in my mind. Although Gasworks Park may not be the impetus to anyone else`s actions, many have a place, person or thing that inspires them most and I encourage you to find what inspires you.  In the end I hope each person can inspire one another, even if the influence is small, inspiration is not a zero-sum game. Add a drop of inspiration to someone’s life and it will build along with each moment that makes them think a little harder and appreciate life a little more.  Luckily, inspiration is contagious.  Inspire one and they will inspire many.

I don’t believe that one person can change the world by themselves, but I believe it only takes one person to start.

Photo Credit: Kris

You ever believe something silly as a kid or have an older sibling tell you something that you believed for the longest time? For some reason, as a kid things just make sense and in a strange way things do make sense. I ran into two golden sources of these stories and they are so genuine that they can either be really funny or really inspiring and many times they are both.

The first is I Used to Believe, a site that collects stories from users and displays them for the world to see. Here’s some of the best ones:

My brother and I thought that Grandma lived at the airport because that’s where we always went to get her. Then when we were tired of her, we took her back.

As a 3 year old, I always believed that the little “no right turn” signs on traffic islands meant “no boomerangs”. Being from Australia, this seemed perfectly logical until I was about five or six and my dad explained what they really meant.

The other source of childhood goodness is from This American Life and their program on Kid Logic. The tagline is “Stories of kids using perfectly logical arguments, and arriving at perfectly wrong conclusions.” This American Life already is amazing and is by far my favorite program on NPR and podcast already, but this episode really surpasses them all.

Take some time out of your day and just have some fun reading and listening to the stories. Try remember what it is like to be a kid, how to think like one. It might just teach you something you forgot you already knew.

Conan O’Brien, my favorite late night host, gave a hilarious and inspiring commencement speech at his alum, Harvard, in 2000. This made rounds when it was first done in 2000 and for good reason it is resurfacing again because even reading it over for the second time it still is entertaining and inspiring. It’s a long read, but trust me, it’s worth it.