Pardon the profanity, but I'm tired of the bullshit.
People like to be right. Often being right means making other people wrong. This is not productive.
Saying that it is productive because you are engaging in debate... does not make it productive either.
All you are really doing is trying to win to be right. And who does that help? You. Who doesn't it help? Everyone else.
If you want to be productive, contribute. Instead of being right, help the recipient of your righteousness try and explore their issue further. And if you find you're not learning through the conversation then, again, ...
If mothering isn't one of the more important things that shape our society and our future, I don't know what is.
Somehow though I think it gets taken for granted. That couldn't be more clear from the announcement that the leading organization that researches the topic is being forced to close. How is it that an organization like this cannot get more support?
Of course, people are making themselves heard on the interwebz. My partner Shawna started up a Facebook Group and the blogosphere and media are taking notice too.
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/775217--mothering-research-centre-to-close
http://thestar.blogs.com/anndouglas/2010/03/as-soon-as-word-got-out-that--the-association-for-research-on-mothering-was-going-to-close-its-doors-the--mothers-started-ta.html
http://thestar.blogs.com/anndouglas/2010/03/interview-with-andrea-oreilly-arms-mama-speaks-frankly-about-whats-ailing-her-baby.html
http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/newsfeatures/article/775217--mothering-research-centre-to-close
http://www.picklemethis.com/2010/03/03/the-association-for-research-on-mothering-and-me/
http://www.parentopia.net/blog/2010/03/association-for-research-on-mothering.html
http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/closure-of-association-for-research-on-mothering/
http://www.phdinparenting.com/2010/03/02/a-day-in-the-life-of-marginalizing-fringe-groups-in-canada/
http://plainsfeminist.blogspot.com/2010/03/closure-of-association-for-research-on.html
It's an important organization that runs very lean. I can't help but believe ...
I am privileged. Very privileged, and too often I lose sight of that and what it means.
As a healthy and able mid-thirties, white, upper-class, educated male, I am in a position where I don't face discrimination in any way. I can go for a run in the park at night, breeze through airport security, meet someone for the first time and have the luxury of going about life undisturbed. And this is of course because everything I use and interact with is desinged with me in mind, usually by people very much like me. Physical things like chairs, cars, ...
Last year was a pivot for me. But while I'm entering with a new stance, my direction, my intention, remains.
To that, Ryan Coleman and I crafted this:
To have fun, live well, and make the world better by facilitating ambitious ventures.
Like last year, my focus rests on social technologies and how they are shifting our culture, disrupting and enabling the systems of our society, and changing the way in which we came together. ChangeMedium is the charitable expression of that, Shouldless is the commercial expression, and ProjectX is the ongoing work - re-inspired by the Vartana review - to develop tools ...
I was just writing an update to some great partners of mine and realized I needed to include a recap of 2009 for some context on what's next. That of course reminded me that I'd yet to post one. So here goes.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="233" caption="Into the Wild"][/caption]
2009 was a pivotal one for me - a year of transition. It was full of new adventures and an unexpected closure of an old one. 2009 started with a bunch of excitement and energy around the Social Venture Commons, VenTwits, and Thread.io. A group of us had come together and were sweating ...
It seems that every day I find myself wanting an iPad for something. Those moments are coming not from being on the computer, but from going about my daily life, and that's what I think is what the iPad is about.
I started out thinking it would be ideal for my kids to use their favourite learning sites and with the attached keyboard as my mom's next computer for the basic email and browsing that she really needs it for. But I'm also now finding a bunch of other uses, like browsing for movies to rent, watching those movies while travelling, ...
December 18th was the first ever StatusCamp. It was also another ChangeMedium experiment - bringing the context of the medium of change to the developers building its future.
The event was an excellent day with over two dozen folks including the Status.net team and Peter Deitz of SocialActions. It was an amazing event to learn about where Status.net and the OpenMicroBlogging initiative (OMB) are going. The wiki has more details on OMB but it is due for a major new release and will be integrating PubSubHubBub, ActivityStrea.ms, Salmon, and WebFinger. What this means is an integration of emerging protocols to put ...
Lemonade stands are an old symbol of enterprising youth - where the best ones were the ones that made the most money. Today's kids are still enterprising but they're doing for a different reason - to help others out.
I've recently seen it first hand as I was recruited by my munchkins to create a calendar of drawings from them and their friends together in support of Kids Saving the Rainforest. It's great to see how quickly the kids came together to make this happen. They're learning that joy of coming together and creating something for a greater purpose. They're learning ...
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Image by ***Images*** via Flickr"][/caption]
Coming to SoCap09 has proved to be a good opportunity to integrate a number of threads I’ve been exploring over the past few years. Accelerated by an exploration with Jeremy Heigh and crystalized through provocative conversations with Stephen Huddart and Tom Reis, here’s the perspective I now find myself now arriving with.
We know complexity is rising and change is quickening. The systems of society are reaching their limits. Our interventions are having more impact. Repercussions ripple up, down, across systems.
We’re responding with rigor, improving our understanding, building models, measuring, and evaluating our ...
Image via Wikipedia
this post an experiment in co-posting - with thanks to Jeremy Heigh
Impact is no reason to invest. Impact is an outcome.
Investment is a choice. A choice for a reason. A choice of reason.
Reason is not static. Reason evolves.
Teach a person to fish, they fish. Pond gets over-fished, they go hungry. Every system is part of other systems. Every action affects others. Nothing stays the same.
Impact is easy. Reason is hard
Impact is a measure. Reason is understanding. As systems collapse and collide, impact becomes erratic and un-predictable. Reason responds, metrics reset, action ...
Igniter "We are no longer in a universe of messaging and marketing. It’s a universe of doing." - Doug Rushkoff Quote... http://tumblr.com/xyj7c39xe [igniter].