Nipun Mehta has provided the material for many NPD posts through his wonderful Daily Good blog. I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with him several years ago and greatly admire his service orientation. I believe service is the antidote to greed and can help transform a “me” into a “we”mentality. Nipun is also the founder of ServiceSpace.org, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of the gift-economy, technology and volunteerism.  His popular TED talk “Designing for Generosity” provides an overview of their work and guiding principles.

You might also enjoy reading an edited transcript of a Baccalaureate address he gave to the 2012 graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania. If you know any graduating seniors, you might want to pass it along to them. It might serve them well on their coming life adventure.

Is a paradigm shift underway in sugary beverages like Coke and Pepsi? Let’s hope so. According to the following NY Times article, a seismic shift is underway as schools begin to ban these drinks from their campuses in favor of healthier alternatives. This trend is likely to accelerate as the connection between disease and sugar is amplified. This excellent Natural News article on sugar is worth reading. And, for now, New York State has shelved the idea of a soda tax on sugary sodas and juice drinks. But New York City’s public health officials opened a new front in their struggle against high-calorie beverages on Monday, unveiling a new ad campaign that graphically depicts globs of human fat gushing from a sideways drink bottle.

Today’s economic crisis is capitalism’s worst since the Great Depression. Millions have lost their jobs, homes and healthcare while those who work watch their pensions, benefits and job security decline. As more and more are impacted by the crisis, the system continues to make the very wealthy even richer. In eye-opening interviews with prominent economist Richard Wolff, David Barsamian probes the root causes of the current economic crisis, its unjust social consequences and what can and should be done to turn things around. While others blame corrupt bankers and unregulated speculators or the government or even the poor who borrowed, the authors show that the causes of the crisis run much deeper. They reach back to the 1970s when the capitalist system itself shifted, ending the century-old pattern of rising wages for U.S. workers and thereby enabling the top 1% to become ultra-rich at the expense of the 99%. Since then, economic injustice has become chronic and further corrupted politics. The Occupy movement, by articulating deep indignation with the whole system, mobilizes huge numbers who seek basic change. Occupy the Economy not only clarifies and analyzes the crisis in U.S. capitalism today, it also points toward solutions that can shape a far better future for all.

Richard D. Wolff is Professor Emeritus of Economics at U. Mass, and Visiting Professor at the New School University. Author of Capitalism Hits the Fan, he’s been a guest on NPR, Glenn Beck Show, and Democracy Now!

David Barsamian is founder and director of Alternative Radio and author of Targeting Iran. He is best known for his interview books with Noam Chomsky, including What We Say Goes.

Listen to Richard Wolff’s recent radio interview.

On November 13th 2011, economists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst drafted an open statement to the Occupy Wall Street movement pledging their support. Since then, more than 250 economists from around the world have added their names.

A new light has gone on in the Green Party. Her name is Dr.  Jill Stein and it appears she will be their Presidential nominee. She may not win but her voice is clear and she tells the truth, a rarity in politics today. Visit her website http://www.jillstein.org

“The kernel, the soul – let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances – is plagiarism.”

The combinatorial nature of creativity is something I think about a great deal, so this 1903 letter Mark Twain wrote to his friend Helen Keller, found in Mark Twain’s Letters, Vol. 2 of 2, makes me nod with the manic indefatigability of a dashboard bobble-head dog. In this excerpt, Twain addresses some plagiarism charges that had been made against Keller some 11 years prior, when her short story “The Frost King” was found to be strikingly similar to Margaret Canby’s “Frost Fairies.” Heller was acquitted after an investigation, but the incident stuck with Twain and prompted him to pen the following passionate words more than a decade later, which articulate just about everything I believe to be true of combinatorial creativity and the myth of originality:

Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that ‘plagiarism’ farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul – let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances – is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men – but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington’s battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing – and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite – that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.

Steve Jobs, of course, knew this when he famously proclaimed that “creativity is just connecting things” – and Kirby Ferguson reminds us that Jobs didn’t technically invent any of the things that made him into a cultural icon, he merely perfected them to a point of genius. Still, this fear of unoriginality – and, at its extreme, plagiarism – plagues the creative ego like no other malady. No one has countered this paradox more eloquently and succinctly than Salvador Dalí:

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

–by Bob Dotson, Original Story, May 11, 2012

Charging the price of a fancy cup of coffee, Dr. Russell Dohner has cared for Rushville, an Illinois town of 4,300 people, for more than half a century, delivering 3,500 babies, and never taking a vacation — or even an entire day off.

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Here in this 3 minute clip, Bernard speaks on what he refers to as Yin and Yang currencies and that “it’s time to create a balanced view.”

Bernard will be presenting via Skype at the upcoming Money & Life 2012 event at the Whidbey Institute. For more information click here. We hope you can join us for what promises to be an exciting and engaging event.

Those receiving this by e-mail can watch this video by clicking on the yellow link or visiting newparadigmdigest.com. Enjoy!

This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.

“For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process.

“If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially ‘playing dice with the universe’, then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning.

“But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives.”

“God does not play dice with the universe,”

–Albert Einstein

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