A Beautiful Thermostat: How Beauty Can Better the World

Source: Cooper Hewitt

Last week, we looked at the link between Joy and Justice, and this week we consider beauty, beautiful design and their connection to a beautiful world.

Here's a simple fact that may be surprising to many: beautiful design is essential to a beautiful world.  Smartphones, tablets, the Internet...all are useful for gaming, keeping us in touch with others, and so on, but they can also be essential tools for bettering the world.  One of the points I most often make is that when Exxon Mobile explores for oil, they use the most advanced imaging technologies operated by the most brilliant geologist in the world, yet when a social entrepreneur seeks to solve a social or environmental problem, she is forced to make due with underpaid and overworked employees and subpar technology.

How, when those of us fighting for social justice are already facing an uphill battle, are we to achieve or goals when we are further handicapped by technological and personnel limitations? Fortunately, good design and the continued advancement of technology can make it easier for us to overcome these challenges. For instance, a recent exhibit, called Design for the Other 90%,  focused on how good design can transform the world for the better--projects included low-cost irrigation pumps, easy-to-use water filtration systems and solar powered street lamps for rural areas.

Joy and Justice - The Sublime Link

If you spend enough time around people that are even remotely interested in social or environmental issues, you are almost certain to sense in them a kind of melancholy tinged with cynicism and frustration.  Of course, this is not surprising, for the vast majority of people have enough difficulty thinking about their own lives--schooling, money, love, friendships, family--let alone tackling larger issues.  And so those that have chosen to take a different path are almost inevitably left fighting an uphill battle.

I want to write this short blog post for the changemakers in this world to say to them that there is a sublime link between joy and justice.  You must love the world to make it better; love humanity to serve it; love nature to protect; love justice to fight for it.  If you bring joy to your work, your employees will feel more motivated, less likely to burn out, and more able to think creatively.  Your joy will squash cynicism and awaken even the most jaded soul.

The DoubleGreen Loan and Superstorm Sandy

I decided to start Capital Good Fund (CGF) in response to the 2008 financial collapse because I feel that, in the face of calamity, it is far better to take action than to lament.  From day one--indeed, from the time I moved to Providence, RI for a masters program in environmental studies at Brown--my interest has been the intersection of poverty and the environment (my masters thesis deals with this very topic--you can check it out here).  Why?  Because it turns out that the poor bear the brunt of environmental destruction.  Consider this: low-income Americans spend 17% of their income on energy, compared to 4% for the rest of the population.  This makes them far more vulnerable to energy price volatility.  At the same time, low-income families are more likely to live in neighborhoods with poor indoor and outdoor air quality.  What's more, by virtue of more often living in low-lying areas, they are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change (something Hurricane Katrina clearly demonstrated) and less able to evacuate from and rebuild after a storm.

Unfortunately, for the first couple of years as Executive Director of CGF, I've had to focus my efforts on the more immediate challenges of fundraising, building infrastructure, developing policies and procedures, and so on.  In addition, I've had to accept that just tackling poverty is hard enough without incorporating an environmental justice component.  That said, I never gave up on the idea of using equitable financing in order to tackle poverty and redress environmental degradation.

The Role of Youth in Tackling Poverty

I'm currently in New Brunswick, New Jersey for the 4th annual Lend for America Summit, which is geared towards inspiring and guiding college students from across the country to start and expand organizations that serve America's poor and create economic opportunity for them.  Part of the reason why I am here, giving a talk to dozens of enthusiastic, bright young people, is that we will never solve the endemic problems of poverty, injustice, etc., unless more people graduate college and go into government, social enterprise, or non-profit work.  This is not an opinion, but rather a fact: young people were one of the primary drivers of the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement against Vietnam, and countless other initiatives that fostered a more just society in America.  What's more, youth helped spur the recent Arab Spring, led to the downfall of the Shah of Iran, partook in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and so on.  These are just a few examples of the ways in which young, predominately educated people have made the world a better place.

But more needs to be done.  We now live in a country where, despite being the wealthiest in the planet, 1 out of 3 Americans are either in poverty (46 million) or at 150% of the poverty line or below (54 million).  That number is breathtaking, shocking, unimaginable.  We think of America as being the land of opportunity, but the sad fact is that if you are born in poverty here, you are likely going to die in poverty, and your children will live and die in poverty as well.  We focus on the few 'rags-to-riches' stories, and mistakenly assume that hard work alone is enough to move ahead.  That simply is no longer the case, in large part because the high-paying jobs of today require a college education (or more), and those living in poverty are far less likely to go to good public schools, and far less likely to be able to afford, or go to and graduate from, a four-year college.  As a result, America's poor are stuck in low-wage, low-skill jobs with little-to-no upward mobility.

Spending on Elections: The Paradox of a Bad Investment

Every time we make a decision about how to spend or invest our money, one of the fundamental cost-benefit analyses we conduct is the following: for every increase in 'unit' of spending, what will be the expected increase in value? At some point, our own budgets, the quality of the product we are seeking to purchase, the law of diminishing returns and other behavioral and psychological factors--marketing, social pressure, etc--lead us to a choice. Generally speaking, when we spend more we expect to get more.

Consider, for instance, the electric shaver I recently purchased. After doing my homework, I narrowed the choice down to three (3) models of Braun shavers (and no, I'm not being paid to advertise for Braun!): the Series 3, which costs $70, the Series 5, which costs ~$150 and the ~$200 Series 7. Looking at the features and price of each, I decided that the Series 3 lacked some of the things I needed, and the Series 7 came with whiz-bang technology from which my face would never benefit. Put another way, had I spent the extra $50 on the Series 7, the marginal return would not have justified the additional price.

The 47% And Disdain for the Poor

Mitt Romney's recent remarks about the 47% of Americans who pay no income tax, where he essentially argued that nearly half of the country consists of lazy moochers, is extremely galling and upsetting.  For me, however, the frustration comes not from the fact that a candidate for president of the United States of America holds such views, but rather because his arguments speak to a larger, bipartisan truth: as a society, generally speaking, we disdain the poor.  This might come as especially surprising given the fact that 1 out of 3 Americans either lives in poverty or close to it--a fact that would seem to imply that many Americans loathe themselves!

But no, we don't live in a nation of masochists; instead, we live in a nation so swayed by the illusion of upward mobility that we can't see our own stagnation.  Even worse, by refusing to note that hard work and perseverance are no longer enough to make it into the middle class--and stay there--we pour our anger onto the 47 million of those that live in poverty.  We do this in a myriad of subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  For instance, we have a tax policy that favors the wealthy (loopholes, capital gains tax rates that are far lower than income tax rates, mortgage deductions, etc).  Or there's the fact that the poor are more likely to be audited than the rich.  Or a funding system for public schools based largely on local property tax revenues, ensuring that the wealth of those living in a community dictates the quality of a school and the likelihood of its children graduating from high school and college.  And so on and so on and so on.

Officiating in the National Football League & Children Dying

Last Monday, two 'events' transpired, only one of which elicited national anger.  On the one hand, 25,000 children around the world died from eminently treatable illnesses like diarrhea--25,000 human lives, with all their potential, their beauty, their hope, snuffed out due to a lack of clean water to drink or cheap antibiotics to treat them.  On the other hand, the Green Bay Packers lost to the Seattle Seahawks on a last minute call that, observers around the country agree, was blown by replacement referees.  Now, there are many angles to this.  For one thing, the regular, unionized referees have been locked out by the NFL due to a dispute over pay and pensions, creating a fascinating dynamic whereby numerous anti-union figures, such as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, find themselves begging for a return to the unionized referees.  What's more, it's been absolutely fascinating to read about the fact that, despite a litany of horrible calls by these amateur refs, many of which have literally changed the outcomes of games, viewership has actually gone up!  So it seems that the old adage 'there is no such thing as bad publicity' holds true.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, right, national anger.  So one of these two events got the President of the United States, presidential and vice presidential candidates Romney and Ryan, several governors, talk show hosts, tv show hosts, bloggers, newspapers and countless millions of ordinary Americans to unleash a unified crescendo of dismay, disgust and disdain for...the NFL.  The fact that so many died quiet deaths in distant villages, crowded cities and everything in between?  Not a peep.  Not a word.  Not even a side note on the evening news.

Am I surprised?  No, of course not.  And there's no use rambling on and on with an acerbic and cynical tongue about how much more Americans seem to care about football than about injustice.  Instead, I want to propose something.  It's an idea I got while thinking over the paradox that when 30 people are shot dead in a movie theatre, the entire nation is moved to support the victims, but when tens of thousands die in unspectacular--one might call it unglamorous--fashion, nothing happens, beyond the trickle of donations that reach NGOs around the world on an annual basis--donations that fall far short of what it would take to ensure dignity and justice for all human beings.  So here's the idea: one day, just one day, I'd like for the front page news in the New York times to read as follows;

"Today, 25,000 children around the world died for no other reason than that no one cared enough to keep them alive, just as 25,000 more children will die tomorrow, and the day after that, and in perpetuity until we decide to care."  The rest of the article will be a real article, treating the death of these children as though it were as 'exciting' as a war or a natural disaster, instead of the unnatural and entirely avoidable calamity and injustice that it is.

I wonder if such an article would spur people into action?  I mean, after the tsunami of 2004, or the earthquakes in Haiti or Pakistan, Americans, and people all around the world, contributed billions of dollars and got involved in countless other ways.  So if we could just frame daily suffering in the same way we view disasters and war, might we not see a similar outpouring?  And, most importantly, might we not see so many lives lost to apathy?

I challenge the New York Times, or any other media outlet, to publish a story of this nature and see what kind of impact it has.