A door is not responsible if it swings and hits you in the nose. Neither is the hand of the guy who punched you.
Philosphers and lawyers talk about agency. Responsibility comes with the capacity to act in the world. If you can decide, if you can act, you have agency.
Life without agency would be a nightmare. Trapped in a box, unable to do anything by choice, nothing but a puppet…
Why then, do organizations and individuals struggle so intently to avoid the responsibility that comes with agency? “It's not my job, my boss won't let me, there's a federal regulation, we're prohibited, it's our supplier, that's our policy…”
It's not something you can turn on or off. Either you have the capacity to act in the world. Or you don't.
Robyn O¹Brien lives in the Boulder area. She is a fresh, inspiring and credible voice for the information/patterns she has assembled/synthesized about how our food ³industry² makes us sick (allergies, cancer, etc., etc.), raises our health care costs, weakens our global competitiveness, also etc. etc. and what we can do about it. And, she brings a deep level of compassion and wisdom to the task of transformation at hand. Kudos to Robyn….JS
Robyn O¹Brien shares her personal story and how it inspired her current path as a “Real Food” evangelist. Grounded in a successful Wall Street career that was more interested in food as good business than good-for-you, this mother of four was shaken awake by the dangerous allergic reaction of one of her children to a “typical” breakfast. Her mission to unearth the cause revealed more about the food industry than she could stomach, and impelled her to share her findings with others. Informative and inspiring.
Amazon Page
Robyn authored The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It. A former Wall Street food industry analyst, Robyn brings insight, compassion and detailed analysis to her research into the impact that the global food system is having on the health of our children. She founded allergykidsfoundation.org and was named by Forbes as one of “20 Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter.” The New York Times has passionately described her as “Food's Erin Brockovich.”
Phi Beta Iota: The industrialization of agriculture, and the corruption of government, have led to a complete ignorance of the “true cost” of bad food, not only in making children ill, but in consuming fuel, water, sweatshop labor, and enabling tax avoidance and the externalization of pollution costs to the public present and future. It bears mention that US Government regulation has totally trashed the emergent organic food movement in the USA, and there are only two sustainable agricultural models on the planet: the Amish in the USA, and the Cubans. The truth at any cost now lowers all other costs forever.
At the International Monetary Fund, there is one set of ethics guidelines for the rank-and-file staff and another for the 24 elite executive directors who oversee the powerful organization.
. . . . . . .
“There are a lot of controls in place when it comes to the staff, but not for the leadership,” said Katrina Campbell, a compliance and ethics expert at Global Compliance.
The Economist was founded in 1843 by James Wilson, a hat manufacturer temporarily brought low by one of global capitalism’s first identifiable business cycles. By a series of courageous re-inventions over 168 years, it has managed to become, and then remain, one of the most influential editorial voices in the world.
It is time for another of those periodic reinventions.
Wilson’s original prospectus announced his determination to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.”
. . . . . . .
The shift required – one that already has begun under editor John Micklethwait, but one which still has far to go – involves the recognition that the social sciences have begun to integrate concepts of governance, organization and cooperation into the center of their conception of the world, rather than confining them (as they were in The Wealth of Nations) as something of an afterthought to the last section of Smith’s great book.
Phi Beta Iota: Brother Penguin has brought forth a very articulate statement on the role of humanity in changing–the the point of catastrophic implosion–the Earth. While lamenting the lack of responsibility of governments and corporations, the article stops short of recognizing that the challenge is not about governance, which is a process, but rather about information, which is a foundation. Multinational information-sharing and sense-making among the eight tribes of intelligence is the non-negotiable first step toward illuminating and then eradicating the corruption and waste that is now characteristic of all organizations and individuals that lack integrity. Everyone has intelligence. Virtually no one has integrity. That is where we start. Integrity in information-sharing and sense-making.
A better search is <bin laden condi rice>. Here is the photo, still one of Condi's favorites (and just as valid as the 935 lies she helped tell to get us to go to an elective three-trillion dollar war, invasion, and occupation of Iraq).
The US Government will continue to be corrupt until people like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Condi Rice are held accountable for their lies and high crimes against the public. And of course Barack Obama and his Cabinet–one bird, two wings, same shit. We also need to hold accountable all those who violated their oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, domestic and foreign. We do not seek vengeance, only truth & reconciliation. “…until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you cannot deal with it.” Bob Seelert
That was the second year of the Third World War,
The one between Us and Them.
Well, we've gotten used.
We don't talk much about it, queerly enough.
There was all sorts of talk the first years after the Peace,
A million theories, a million wild suppositions,
A million hopeful explanations and plans,
But we don't talk about it, now. We don't even ask.
We might do the wrong thing. I don't guess you'd understand that.
But you're eighteen, now. You can take it. You'd better know.
