Scott London

The Spirit of Service

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:36:24 -0800

“There is a call to us, a call of service,” Dorothy Day once said, “that we join with others to try to make things better in this world.”

This phrase gave rise to the title of Robert Coles’s 1993 book, The Call of Service, a meditation on the meaning of voluntary service — the kind we offer to others and the impact it has on us in the process.

I was quite inspired by the book when it came out. Coles himself seemed to exemplify the spirit of service in his writing, in his teaching and in his own personal life.

After reading The Call of Service, I went on to read several other books by Coles and eventually to write an article about his work. I then posted the piece on my website. This was in the early days of the Internet, before most people had discovered e-mail or started searching the Web.

One day, about a year later, the phone rang. When I answered, the voice at the other end said, “Hello, Scott? This is Robert Coles. I just read an essay you wrote about me. It was a very fine piece of work, and I just wanted to say thank you.” He didn’t use a computer, he told me, but a friend of his had run across my article on the Internet, printed it out and mailed it to him.

We went on to talk for almost an hour. He called me one of the “finest interpreters” of his work, which was quite a compliment given that he has been the subject of countless newspaper and magazine profiles, at least a half-dozen TV documentaries, and several major biographies.

He wasn’t very interested in talking about himself, it turned out. He kept on asking me about my work, my family, how I liked living on the West Coast, and so on. It was a warm and inspiring conversation, one that subsequently blossomed into a friendship.

After our talk I asked myself what it was that prompted Coles to call me that day. I can’t be sure, but I believe it was something deeper than just the impusle to say thanks. It was more likely a desire to give something back. It was a gesture born of gratitude, not obligation or duty. A kind of reaching out. And that, I think, is the essence of true service — a desire to acknowledge another and give thanks in whatever small way we can.

To write a book about service is one thing, I realized, but to exemplify it in our everyday lives is quite another. Coles taught me that in a vivid and direct way.

I was reminded of this episode because my essay on Robert Coles — the one that prompted him to call me that day — has just been reprinted as part of a special tribute to Robert Coles in the new issue of Parents League Review. The man and his work are still timely, perhaps more so than when I first discovered him almost twenty years ago. My piece is called A Way of Seeing: The Work of Robert Coles.

Immigration: How Do We Fix a System in Crisis?

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 09:40:18 -0800

Immigration has always been a subject of heated debate in America. But the issue reached a flash point after a controversial Arizona statute was passed in April 2010 taking a tough — some say too tough — stand on illegal immigration. The measure required that immigrants carry documentation at all times. It also gave law enforcement officers wide latitude to stop anyone they had “reasonable cause” to suspect was in the country illegally.

An injunction not to enforce the Arizona measure was filed by a federal judge just days before it took effect. But the new law had widespread public support and similar legislation is now being considered in other states. In Alabama, for example, lawmakers recently approved an anti-immigration bill that’s widely regarded as the toughest of its kind in the country.

The current debate has zeroed in on the millions of unauthorized immigrants currently living in the U.S. But the problems with our current system aren’t limited to people overstaying their visas or crossing into the country illegally. Consider that

More than half the crop pickers in America are undocumented, and across the country otherwise law-abiding citizens routinely hire maids, nannies, gardeners and construction workers without legal papers. Our economy now depends — to an extent it never has in the past — on the energy and hard work of people living here illegally.
Arbitrary visa caps have created enormous backlogs where family members have to wait up to 20 years to be reunited with relatives living in the U.S. Bureaucratic hurdles also make it hard for skilled workers from other countries to come and be part of America’s unique culture of entrepreneurship.
While we offer visas to students from around the world so they can earn degrees from our top universities, our laws effectively discourage them from putting their talents and energy to work right here in the U.S. Instead of training entrepreneurs to create jobs on our shores, we train our competition.

A New York Times/CBS poll conducted in April 2010 found that a vast majority of Americans think that the U.S. immigration system is in need of overhaul. While many of those surveyed said it needed “fundamental changes,” a full 44 percent insisted that it needed to be “completely rebuilt.” But the public remains divided about what kind of reform the country needs.

For a growing number of Americans, the immigration issue is a tangible and pressing one. Those who support immigration are often bent on helping or employing newcomers. Those in favor of restricting immigrants worry about the growing costs — both social and economic — of assimilating and aiding new arrivals. For their part, immigrants themselves typically want little more than a better life. Whose interests should be served? Can these often-conflicting interests be balanced?

These are some of the questions at the heart of a new issue book that I prepared for the National Issues Forums. It presents an in-depth look at the immigration issue. The idea is to promote dialogue and deliberation — the kind that spans ideological divides — about the need to overhaul our immigration system. For more information, you can get a copy (or download a Kindle version) at Amazon.com.

Icon Magazine

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:24:50 -0800

Eight of my photos from Burning Man appear in this month’s issue of Icon, the British architecture and design magazine, together with a nicely written piece by Charlie Hailey titled “Burn After Building.” Read more about the issue here. Here’s a preview of the spread:

A Favorite Holiday Tradition

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:21:48 -0800

I’m getting into the holiday spirit making glögg, a favorite annual tradition. Here I’ve brought together cinnamon, cloves, cardemon, ginger, orange peel, and other spices and let them soak in vodka for a couple of days. Next the booze will be sifted, mixed with red wine and a little sugar, heated and served with raisins and slivered almonds. So good.

Hangovers and Hope

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 11:00:59 -0800

I love reading people’s tweets and status updates on New Year’s Day. It’s a mixture of hangovers and hope. And wacky resolutions.

For me, the start of a new year is as good a time as any to reflect on the importance of staying grounded in the present, in the now.

Here’s a line by Emerson, taken from his Essays and Lectures, that captures this point in a vivid and poetic way:

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time for them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to forsee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

A Clear Day Over Los Angeles

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:04:50 -0800

Someone once quipped that there’s nothing like autumn in Los Angeles when throngs of tourists come to watch the smog change colors. If the line is funny it’s because there’s more than a little truth to it. Smog is what I expected to see some weeks ago when I took to the skies with my pilot friend, Sam, for a daytrip to the Palm Desert. But it was one of those rare mornings where it seemed to lift for a few fleeting hours. As you can see in this photo, we flew just north of the city above the San Fernando Valley. Looking south we could see across the entire Los Angeles Basin. Palos Verde and even Catalina Island are visible in the distance. Aerial photos of L.A. are hard to come by — you need a clear day and a good vantage point. On this particular morning, I was lucky to have both.

The Still and Secret Revolution

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:30:00 -0700

There’s been a lot of talk of revolution in 2011, especially in connection with the Arab Spring and the continuing Occupy Wall Street protests. The word revolution conjures up images of political violence and social turmoil, of insurgent militias and defiant chants, of street barricades made from overturned vehicles and ragged crowds armed with makeshift weapons. In recent months, the word has often been paired with images of stormed palaces, angry mobs, even bullet-riddled dictators being dragged through the streets.

For those of us who came of age at the end of the Cold War, the word had kinder and more benign connotations — the “velvet” transition toward free-market economics, perhaps, or the end of institutionalized racism. It’s also synonymous in many people’s minds with the notion of progress and technological advancement, as in the “digital revolution,” the “communications revolution,” or the “biotechnology” revolution.

But there is another kind of revolution, one that is less apparent but more profound. It’s the sort that begins at the level of perceptions, ideas, and values. We don’t know much about these types of revolutions, because they tend to proceed quietly within the minds of individuals for a long time before manifesting outwardly in the culture at large. They are silent, invisible, and relatively rare in human history.

Writing a century and a half ago, Alexis de Tocqueville described them in a vivid way. “Time, events, or the unaided action of the mind will sometimes undermine or destroy an opinion without any outward signs of change,” he noted. “No conspiracy has been formed to make war on it, but its followers one by one noiselessly secede. As its opponents remain mute or only interchange their thoughts by stealth, they are themselves unaware for a long period that a great revolution has actually been effected.”

Instigating a good old-fashioned revolution is comparatively easy compared to bringing about this kind of “noiseless secession” from the dominant way of seeing the world. It’s easy because the key ingredient of a traditional revolution is anger, bitterness, and opposition to a perceived enemy or system. A bit of public outrage coupled with a revolutionary group and a charismatic leader is not a very impressive formula for long-term change.

The trouble with mere regime-change is that if and when such an effort succeeds the new leaders typically lack the experience and the constructive attitudes needed to create and maintain a new social order. The negativity then turns inward and breeds divisiveness, in-fighting, and ultimately counter-revolutions. As history clearly shows, most revolutions become self-defeating and even dangerous since the struggle against “the enemy” becomes an end in itself.

The question we need to ask today is whether it’s possible to start a revolution the other way around — whether it’s possible to have a general shift in mood and action first. Such a revolution would build on values and perceptions, not bullets and bombs. It would be constructive, not contentious. It would emphasize design, not criticism. It would be self-organized, not centrally planned. It would take its cues from imagination and vision, not opposition to the status quo.

I believe this kind of movement is possible. In fact, we’re already seeing signs of it all around us — and I’m not talking about the Occupy Wall Street protests, though some of the people spearheading the effort clearly embody a new vision. This silent revolution I’m talking about gathers into its framework a wide range of innovative ideas drawn from across a host of disciplines, from science and technology to psychology and education. Its leaders can be found all over the world. They make up what might be called an invisible network — a global underground of individuals from different cultures and backgrounds who are committed to a more humane and sustainable world, who embody a value-system based on compassion, kindness and respect for diversity, and who see the fulfilment of our highest capacities as human beings as the single most important goal as we look to the future.

The revolution comes as a response to breakdowns on many fronts — the environmental crisis, the deepening divide between the world’s richest and poorest, the crisis of confidence in institutions, and the bankruptcy of once-dominant ideologies and systems of belief, such as communism and free-market economics. But the revolution is not a reaction to crisis so much as a reflection of an emergent culture rising to take the place of the one we have now. It is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

I must confess that for almost two decades now, I’ve devoted much of my professional life to seeking out these quiet revolutionaries — to learning from them and to trying to articulate and disseminate their ideas in as clear and compelling a way as I can. In the early days, I had some trouble identifying these instigators. I used to think all good ideas were equal. It was only later that I understood that ideas and intentions go hand in hand. The mark of a good idea, I learned, is that it’s backed by a noble intention. I don’t mean the kind of noble intention we pay lip-service to; I mean the kind that is born from a faith in human virtue and possibility, from an animating vision of a more humane and sustainable world.

The German philosopher Hegel once remarked that great revolutions are always preceded by “a still and secret revolution in the spirit of the age.” This revolution is “as hard to discern as to describe in words.” Those who fail to recognize it as it gathers strength, he said, are always astonished by the sweeping changes left in its wake.

That’s what we are in the throes of today — a still and secret revolution, one that will ultimately change how we see ourselves, how we define our collective purpose, and how we take care of ourselves, each other, and the planet.

It’s Nice That

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:39:37 -0700

Earlier this week I was interviewed by It’s Nice That about my Burning Man photography. It’s Nice That is a beautiful and well-curated art magazine and website based in London. The interview appeared along with about a dozen of my photographs. Since it was edited for length, I’m including the complete exchange below.

You’ve been documenting Burning Man for the last eight years. Why do you find it so compelling to document?

Burning Man is one of the most interesting events in the world, in my experience, but also one of the most difficult to describe. It’s not quite an art festival, not quite a desert rave, and not quite a social experiment, but something of all three. What’s remarkable about it is that it’s organized around creativity and self-expression. The idea is to fully immerse and express yourself in some creative capacity — through building installations, making art, playing music, dressing up, walking on stilts, spinning fire, or simply being beautiful. It means that it’s an endlessly fascinating place where you never know what to expect and surprise awaits you at every turn.

The scale and the ephemeral nature of the event must be hard to communicate to people who haven’t been there.

Yes, there is no way to convey the sheer immensity of Burning Man to someone who has never been there. There is also something rather dreamlike and enchanting about the way it rises out of the open desert for a few brief days only to vanish again after the event is over. Toward the end of the week, much of the infrastructure — including the 40-foot effigy from which Burning Man takes its name — goes up in flames.

Have you noticed it changing and evolving over the years?

When the event got its start 25 years ago, it was little more than a bonfire on a beach in San Francisco. It moved to the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada some years later but was still relatively small and unstructured. For many participants, the appeal of the desert was that there were no rules. If you wanted to shoot guns, play with fire, or blow up cars, there was no one to stop you. But as the event grew, so did the need for order and safety. Today the event attracts over 50,000 people from all over the world. It’s highly organized and tightly run, and perhaps a little less fun. Old-timers complain that the anarchy and lawlessness of the early days has been lost.

Do you recognise people when you go back each year?

Yes, a lot of people return to Burning Man year after year. I’ve developed some quite special and enduring friendships there. It’s also allowed me to explore the anthropology of the event — the way people’s perspectives change over time. This is reflected in some of my photographs of artists and their installations, for example, which show how their creative vision has evolved and transformed.

Would you describe yourself foremost as a photographer or a journalist/writer?

I would say that my journalism takes different forms depending on the nature of the project. I started my career in radio and still think that’s the best medium for conversation and storytelling. Over time I shifted to print and devoted myself more to writing articles and books. Print excels as a medium for presenting facts, analysis, and ideas. In recent years I’ve been exploring the possibilities of photojournalism. Though I learned photography as a kid and studied it in college, it’s only recently that I’ve discovered how powerful it can be.

Burning Man has helped me in that process. When I first attended the event, I was struck by the sheer inadequacy of words. Photography seemed like a more powerful medium for documenting the experience. Photographs convey but don’t interpret. At their best, they are very intimate. They capture the imagination and speak to the heart, but without saying a word.

Is the Nobel Peace Prize Overtly Political?

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:29:58 -0700

The question is often asked: How political is the Nobel Peace Prize?

I see it as an inherently political prize and I think Alfred Nobel intended it that way. That's why he left it to the Norwegian parliament to elect the committee that picks the winners each year.

Given that the laureates are chosen by current and former politicians, it stands to reason that it's a political prize. But if your politics are motivated by a yearning for peace, freedom, democracy, human rights, and the empowerment of women, is that a bad thing?

Here I discuss that question with Larisa Epatko of the PBS Newshour: Is the Nobel Peace Prize Overtly Political?

Linked by Scott London

Who Will Win the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize?

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 23:26:18 -0700

The winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced tomorrow. Some leaders of the Arab Spring uprisings are favored to win it this year. But based on the way the Norwegian Nobel Committee has been selecting its winners in recent years, I don’t think that will happen. I’m pulling for long-shot Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia and still the only woman elected head of state in Africa. Her many remarkable achievements include bringing an end to the nation’s long and bloody civil war.

By Scott London

Steve Jobs Has Died

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:43:49 -0700

The news just broke that Steve Jobs has died. It comes as a bit of a shock. I never met him, but like millions of people the world over I was the beneficiary of his brilliant mind and unique vision.

I’ve been using Apple computers for most of my professional life and rarely has a day gone by that I haven’t feel a sense of gratitude for the technologies he brought into being. I’ve produced radio programs, written books, edited films, retouched photos, and produced beautiful graphic designs on the Mac. And that’s just the beginning. My story is hardly unique. Countless people will tell you the same thing.

Though I never met Jobs in person, I photographed him some years ago in Oslo. He was there to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for his friend Al Gore. My photo made the rounds. Apparently people were shocked to see Jobs in a suit and tie. Some people imagined that his closets were full of nothing but black turtlenecks and blue jeans, and I had proved them wrong.

People will be discussing his legacy for years to come. But right now, all I can say is that feels like the sudden end of an era.

Wangari Maathai, 1940-2011

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 10:14:31 -0700

Wangari Maathai, the environmental and political activist from Kenya, passed away on Sunday. She was one of the most memorable figures I’ve covered as a journalist, a woman of extraordinary courage and dignity, but also a person with a disarming humility, a wonderful sense of humor, and a remarkable luminosity of spirit.

Wangari won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 chiefly for her environmental work in Kenya. In 1977, she started the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots tree-planting campaign aimed at combating soil erosion and deforestation while also providing fuel for cooking in rural villages where women were often forced to walk miles in search of firewood. To date, the Green Belt Movement has planted over thirty million trees, provided work for tens of thousands of women, and seen its efforts replicated in countries across Africa.

For Wangari, planting trees wasn’t only about protecting the environment. It was a way to promote democracy, empower women, and safeguard human rights in Africa. As she saw it, there was a direct connection between the depletion of natural resources and the failures of Kenya’s authoritarian government. In fact, she had taken on Kenya’s ruling party and its autocratic president, Daniel arap Moi, on numerous occasions during the 1980s and 90s. Though she was vilified by the government, arrested more than a dozen times, and even beaten by police, her methods were surprisingly effective.

The Nobel Peace Prize for Wangari Maathai was the first ever to an environmental activist and still the only award to an African woman in the prize’s 111-year history. She accepted it at an unusually festive award ceremony that included African drumming and performances by a Kenyan dance troupe. Over 1,000 guests filled the auditorium of Oslo City Hall, including a large delegation of Africans, many of them cheering, whistling and waving small hand flags — a welcome departure from what tends to be an overly solemn and formal award ceremony.

Dressed in a bright orange gown with a matching headband, Wangari was radiant that December afternoon. She said she was humbled and uplifted by the award and accepted it “on behalf of the people of Kenya and Africa.” In her acceptance speech, she looked back on her work over the course of three decades. The Green Belt Movement, together with other civil society organizations and the Kenyan people as a whole, had much to be proud of, she said — most notably, the peaceful transition to democratic government in 2002. Yet there were still a host of critical challenges.

She concluded her speech with words that are still vivid in my memory. “In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fears and give hope to each other.” That time, she said, is now.

Wangari's inscription in my copy of her memoir 'Unbowed'

Posted by Scott London

Burning Man 2011

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:54:24 -0700

I’m back from an enchanting week at Burning Man 2011. It was my eighth consecutive year at the event. The gathering felt massive this year, from the huge crowds (nearly 54,000, according to reports) to the sheer size of the “city,” which was scaled up in 2011 and was in fact so big that there were large parts of it I never got to see. There were many impressive art installations, wacky art cars, and mindblowing performances in 2011, but I found myself mostly drawn to the beautiful and creative people of Burning Man. This is reflected in the sizable number of portraits in this year’s batch of images. My 2011 set can be found here. In addition to my usual collection of 100 images, my plan is to launch a new photoblog devoted to the people of Burning Man. Please stay tuned.

John Taylor Gatto on Beating the System

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 09:42:01 -0700

John Taylor Gatto’s career as a school teacher began in 1965 when he borrowed his roommate’s teaching license and began working as a per diem substitute in New York City. He went on to become the city’s Teacher of the Year three years in a row and then New York State Teacher of the Year. But Gatto didn’t care for being in the public spotlight, and he ended his teaching career in 1991 with a now famous resignation letter published in the Wall Street Journal.

In the letter, he criticized the public school system for teaching what he called “a curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency.”

Since then, Gatto has traveled across the country talking about the need to overhaul America’s public education system. He’s also written numerous books, including Dumbing Us Down and Weapons of Mass Instruction.

He’s a strong advocate of homeschooling. His books left a profound impression on me and were a key influence in my decision to homeschool my own kids.

On one of his visits to California, I sat down with him to talk about the trouble with America’s schools. We spoke at length about his experiences as a school teacher. I was especially curious to know how his students managed to win New York State’s essay contest year after year. His answer surprised me but also revealed an essential truth about our public education system.

“A girl came to me early on in my teaching career,” Gatto said. “She wanted to enter a congressman’s essay contest. I don’t know if she wanted to win a trip to Washington or a gold star. ‘Why are you wasting your time chasing these prizes?’ I asked her. ‘There are so many worthwhile things to do.’ But she pressed the point. So I said I would help her. I couldn’t promise that she would win, but I could guarantee that she would be in the finals.”

“How could you guarantee that?” I said. “After all, there were some fifty schools in the running for the prize.”

“Here’s what I told her,” he continued. “‘You have to follow my instructions to the letter, and it’s going to be a lot of work for you. I want you to take a week off from school. I’ll cover for you. I want you to research the congressman’s career from the beginning. I want to know what college he went to, his earliest public speeches, and what he is famous for. He’s going to give this award to somebody who agrees with him. And no one your age will be able to agree with him other than in some generic fashion. But you are going to agree with everything he said at the time when he was class president in 3rd grade. You’re going to research this man and find out what his hot-buttons are.’”

“Isn’t that a rather cynical way to go about it,” I protested.

“If that sounds cynical, Scott, let me tell you that’s as idealistic an enterprise as I can think of,” he shot back. “It’s showing people how to pull the screen back and see for themselves how the system really works.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “What happened?”

“Well, she did in fact win the trip to Washington (or whatever it was he was giving away). And a couple of her friends won second and third place. My students did this year after year. My kids were the valedictorians of the school. Our school gives the valedictorian prize not for the highest average but for the best speech.”

“What did you tell your kids about giving good speeches?” I asked.

“I said, first of all, that we would have to practice giving speeches in the auditorium, because they don’t want to pick someone for valedictorian who is going to embarrass them by freezing up on stage. So I got a key from the custodian — he was Irish, so it took three bottles of whiskey — and we made a master so that we could do all our practicing in the auditorium. Then I told them they had to know exactly what the committee believed. The committee was made up of a social studies teacher, a science teacher, and the principal. They had gone on record many times about who they were and what they believed. I said to the kids, “you’re going to say in your speech that who they are is the best of all, that’s how you’re going to be valedictorian.’”

Gatto registered the concerned look on my face. “Well,” he added, “you don’t actually believe that anyone in charge of giving a prize could give it to someone who contradicts their dearest, most cherished beliefs, do you? It would be madness.”

Well, I couldn’t disagree with him. And, in fact, what he said opened my eyes to an essential truth about awards and honors — that oftentimes they are given to those who express or exemplify what the award-givers themselves most fervently believe.

What Gatto was telling me — and who can deny the truth of it — is that awards say more about the people who give the honors than it does about those who receive them. This is a subject I want to come back to in another post.

For more on John Taylor Gatto, go to Wikipedia or his official website.

Extraordinary Women

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:46:54 -0700

The late British economist Robert Theobald once asked me, “of all the people you have interviewed over the years, who left the deepest impression?”

His question was not easy to answer. Memorable conversations, I find, often have less to do with the person you’re speaking with and more to do with the insights they lead you to. Nevertheless I came up with a half-dozen names.

To my surprise, all of them were women.

“Why do you think they were all women?” he asked.

I ventured something about how women seem more grounded in their own experience and their own inner authority.

That was true for him as well, he said. Some of the most remarkable women he had met combined the qualities of the thinker, the philosopher, the mystic and the activist. Unlike many of the brilliant men he knew, he said that women seemed to understand the importance of grounding their ideals in practice.

Years later, I mentioned this exchange to Adam Curle, the distinguished peace scholar and international mediator. He had spent more than half a century trying to understand the roots of violent conflict. Over the course of his career, he had also negotiated settlements and facilitated behind-the-scenes talks in places like India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Sri Lanka.

Echoing what Theobald had said, he told me that many of the best mediators he had worked with were women. He thought it might be because “women are not so impressed by hierarchy.”

“There is a certain competitiveness among men that can impede development of friendship and common understanding,” I offered.

He agreed, saying that he often found himself “slightly in awe” when he would meet a president, prime minister, or other important figure. ”I realize that in a lot of relationships between men, there is a kind of subtle, sensitive ‘who’s on top and who’s on bottom.’ Women don’t have that.”

He went on to say whenever he had worked with women, they immediately created an easy rapport with men, especially those in positions of power. “Women are not intimidated,” he noted. “They don’t have a need to secure their position in a hierarchy. They seem to be more concerned with fundamental things.”

I’ve thought often about these conversations with Theobald and Curle. Odd as it may sound, I’ve found myself in more than a few situations in the intervening years — in professional meetings or encounters with dignitaries, for example — when I’ve asked myself, “what would a woman do in this situation?”

I think most men would benefit from doing the same.

Tweets and Retweets

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:17:38 -0700

Here’s a handful of recent Twitter entries on random subjects like kindness, grievances, consensus, and the limits of humility. If you don’t already, feel free to follow me on Twitter here.

The trouble with opinions is that they drive wedges between people. Stories unite, opinions divide.
I look forward to the day when journalists, producers and filmmakers describe themselves not as independent but as interdependent.
Technological advances have to proceed in step with social advances or they lead to recklessness and misery.
I shudder every time I hear someone say that the iPad, and other devices like it, allow us “to consume content.”
Sooner or later we come to recognize that most of our problems in life are tied to grievances we simply refuse to let go.
The only change that matters in the end is the kind that starts with me.
Sometimes a loving act may be perceived as unloving — refusing to commiserate, for example.
I think consensus is better to strive for than to attain.
I used to say “I don’t know” a lot. Humility is good, right? Then a wise friend told me: “Stop pretending you don’t know and live your truth.”
Why do we know more at 25 than we do at 50? Because it takes half a lifetime to fully confront our own ignorance.
We don’t need our kindnesses returned, we need them passed on.
Gratitude is the highest form of devotion.

Burning Man Slideshow

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:58:03 -0700

I've posted a new slideshow of 100 photographs from Burning Man, a "best of" collection of some of my most widely published and exhibited images taken between 2004 and 2010. [Contains some nudity]

Common Ground

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:14:12 -0700

My photo of the fabulous Jesster Canucklehead appears on the cover of Common Ground magazine this month. The summer issue features a preview of Burning Man 2011, along with a lovely photoessay from Ales Prikryl.

You can view the complete issue online at: http://www.sopdigitaledition.com/commonground/

More than a dozen of my photos also appear in the current issue of The Outlook magazine, China's leading culture and lifestyle publication. You won't be able to glean much from the article, unless you happen to read Chinese, but you can always enjoy the photos. Go to: http://www.theoutlookmagazine.com/3202/

For more news about my Burning Man photography, please check out my blog.

Solstice Celebration

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:04:04 -0700

Each year at the end of June, Santa Barbara officially kicks off summer with a three-day Solstice Celebration. The highlight of the event is a fabulous parade known for its whimsical floats, colorfully-costumed stiltwalkers, goofy performance artists, Brazilian drummers, and giggling kids donning masks, costumes, and painted faces — to say nothing of the amazing samba dancers wearing feathers and sequins and not much else. The annual parade got its start in 1974 and now attracts some 100,000 spectators and participants from around the world. Here are some of my photos from this year’s festivities.

Hungarian-born artist Pali-X-Mano (center) is known for his eye-popping inflatable sculptures. This year’s creation, called “Sundance of the Magical Jungle Parade,” was a full 22 feet high and 55 feet long, barely fitting under the tree canopy of State Street.

Beverly Place Holmes was one of many fabulous dancers in the Hip Brazil dance troupe. Their feathered headpieces in neon green and blue conjured up images of the Rio Carneval.

What’s a parade without kids blowing confetti?

One of this year’s most talked about floats was a huge multicolored
Quetzalcoatl heart made by artist Anado McLaughlin, a resident of San Miguel
de Allende, Mexico, who traveled from afar to be part of this year’s parade.

All you need to participate is a colorful costume and some sunshiny facepaint.

The parade kicked off with a troupe of folk musicians, including a pair of women playing folk flutes, but the music gave way in short order to amplified rock and thunderous samba drumming.

One of my favorite characters this year was a steampunk accordion player in shades.

Our lovely mayor, Helene Schneider, dressed up in facepaint and costume.

Stiltwalker extraordinaire Ahni Radvanyi danced
down State Street with a pair of hula hoops.

Five friends in festive headpieces epitomized the spirit of Solstice.

For more of my photos from the Solstice festivities, go to:

Becoming an Adult in Relationships

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:34:13 -0700

“New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything,” wrote Michael Ondaatje in The English Patient.

It’s a bittersweet fact of life — and a recurring theme in literature, film and the arts — that we start out reckless and clumsy in matters of the heart. Learning how to love and be loved takes time and the process is often a painstaking one.

For psychotherapist and author David Richo, the process can hold the key to inner healing and transformation. He makes this point in his bestselling book, How to Be an Adult in Relationships.

Relationships are a journey, he says. They test us, they prod us, they give us a chance for self-reflection and growth. Approaching them with maturity, patience, and a sense of selflessness creates a new paradigm for embracing the inevitability of their ups and downs.

In the fall of 2010, I sat down with him to explore this idea and what it takes — in the most practical terms — to develop mature and lasting relationships. Filmmaker Russ Spencer has crafted our conversation into a standalone interview now available on DVD through Depth Video.

The interview is described as “a thoughtful and nuanced two-hour discussion rich with clarity and inspiration,” one that “offers couples, or anyone experiencing the difficulties that relationships inevitably bring, a trusted advisor through the turbulence.”

You can also order a copy directly from the Depth Video website, or through Amazon.com. Here’s the trailer:

Things Are Not As They Seem

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 12:49:38 -0700

Some years ago, I had the good fortune to spend time with Huston Smith, the distinguished philosopher of religion. Over a period of two months, we met for a series of interviews covering fascinating subjects like the troubled relationship between science and spirituality, the rise of fundamentalism, the common threads at the heart of the world’s wisdom traditions, and some of the surprising insights about human consciousness coming out of psychedelic research. The interviews aired on public radio stations nationwide a while back, and I’m now editing them for print.

Huston Smith has had a profound influence on me. He introduced to me the idea that there is an identifiable transcendent unity at the core of the enduring wisdom traditions — a common vision as to the nature of ultimate reality, knowledge, ethics, and spiritual life — despite the great surface variety of doctrines, practices, and cultures. He refers to it as the “primordial tradition” or “perennial philosophy.”

I had encountered the idea of the perennial philosophy from Aldous Huxley (his book by that name is one I keep at my bedside), but I never realized the extent to which people of various mystical traditions shared a common vision. I found that deeply thought-provoking, and more than a little inspiring.

This outlook is common to people everywhere and at all times, Smith says, with a single notable exception: the modern West. Our contemporary Western worldview differs from what might otherwise be called “the human unanimity,” as he calls it, because of an unfortunate “misreading” of science.

In several of his books, he shows how science presumes to be the authoritative way of establishing truth, yet ultimately reveals only partial truths. Strictly speaking, Smith says, a scientific worldview is a contradiction in terms since the world science deals with is one limited to space, time, matter/energy, and mathematics. “Values, life meanings, purposes, and qualities slip through science like sea slips through the nets of fishermen.”

The triumphs of modern science have blinded us to the fact that it is an inherently restricted form of knowing, that what can be measured empirically is not exhaustive of reality, that there are other higher domains that can be apprehended only through contemplation, intuition, and inner experience.

According to Smith, this latter idea stands at the center of all the great wisdom traditions, from Taoism to Vedanta, Zen to Sufism, Neoplatonism to Confucianism. The primordial tradition views reality as hierarchically ordered, consisting of at least three realms: earth, human, and celestial, correlated with body, mind, and spirit.

This suggests, in effect, that 1) things are not as they seem, 2) that the other-than-the-seeing represents infinitely “more,” 3) that this more cannot be known in ordinary ways, 4) that it can, however, be known in ways appropriate to it, 5) that these appropriate ways require cultivation, and 6) that they require tools or practices. (For more on this last point, please see my post on Spiritual Practice.)

Smith has helped me recognize that the best hope for Western culture is not to go back to some idealized past, but to retrieve a more expanded and timeless view of reality, to recover a lost dimension of human understanding. In his words, we need “to reknit the rich coherence of a fully human consciousness which the cramped and aggressive rationality of modernity has bruised so badly.”

For more on Huston Smith, please see my review of his book Beyond the Postmodern Mind

Living Cities

Mon, 16 May 2011 20:39:45 -0700

I grew up in Stockholm, Sweden, a city that is often ranked as one of the most pleasant and liveable places in the world. When I moved to the U.S. in my mid-20s, I was surprised to discover that the American city was a place of distress and decay. People seemed desperate to get out of their cities and into suburbs.

One survey I read showed that, given a choice, 9 out of 10 Americans would prefer to live outside the city.

It struck me as odd that in the world’s most powerful nation — a marvel of technological progress, industrial ingenuity, and economic strength — cities had become infested with crime, homelessness, and pollution.

So I began to look at urban areas elsewhere in the world to understand what makes a great living city. I talked with visionary architects and urban planners. And I studied some of the key features of thriving cities and towns.

I share some of what I learned in a recent six-part documentary series that aired earlier this year on the Discovery Channel. I’m one of a number of talking heads on the program discussing the essential characteristics of a “living city.” Here are some highlights from the series: Living Cities.

Stay tuned for more on the subject in the weeks and months ahead.

The Power of Informal Networks

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 18:54:14 -0700

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” These words by anthropologist Margaret Mead are famous for good reason. They capture an essential truth about social change: it begins in the most unassuming contexts — in small groups of people who share a common passion, who come together after work, on weekends, or over lunch, and who devote their talents and energies to bringing about change.

I recently wrapped up a year-long research project for the Harwood Institute where I studied these informal networks at some depth. I looked at citizen groups in four communities across the country to learn how they come into being, the nature of their conversations, how they change and evolve over time, and the outcomes, both tangible and intangible, of their activities.

What I learned was both heartening and humbling — heartening because I found that informal circles can be powerful agents of change, just as Margaret Mead observed, and humbling because the dynamics of small groups challenge our conventional way of thinking about change.

I found that the purposes of informal groups were usually quite modest — to compare notes, share information, and explore ideas. But when they came together with passion and a sense of common purpose, they were able to do magnificent things.

A crucial finding of the study was that unlike formal organizations, informal networks are not instruments of action, at least not in the traditional sense. They serve a more basic function. They provide spaces for learning, sources of affirmation and support, and contexts for the emergence of new ideas and possibilities for action.

When groups that have been meeting informally are ready to mobilize and take action, they either adopt a formal structure or they take their ideas and plans back into existing organizations to make something happen.

In their efforts to create change, many groups rush too quickly to formalize their activities. While launching a new program or organization can give them an air of legitimacy, access to resources, and other tangible benefits, it can also choke off the innovation and creativity needed to really make a difference.

What people need in order to be effective are informal settings where they can find each other, share ideas, and discover common ground. They need spaces where they can receive support and be acknowledged as public actors. And they need contexts for imagining and acting from an awakened sense of possibility.

The trouble, of course, is there aren’t a lot of venues in public life where people can do that in an open and authentic way. All too often, community processes are organized around issues to be confronted and problems to be solved, not possibilities that can be lived into.

The research suggests that it’s time to engage in a different conversation, one about what we aspire to, what we imagine, and what we can create together. Strategizing about how to make change happen is important, but the conversations have to be rooted in something more basic — the animating purpose of the work.

Informal groups provide settings where people can openly explore that and connect with others who are treading the same path and working toward similar ends.

“Truthfulness, honor, is not something that springs ablaze of itself,” the poet Adrienne Rich once observed. “It has to be created between people.” The same might be said about work carried out on behalf of the common good. The impulse to innovate, to build, and to renew our communities does not exist in a vacuum. It has to be kindled through meaningful interactions and mutual discovery.

Please contact me for more information about the informal networks study or a copy of the report.