Insights Into Cultural Understanding

Talk about the relativity of time and space, in the last two weeks, I’ve trained an amazing group of people for some visionary folks in Salt Lake City in awakening to their personal power or as my co-trainer said so well, “discovering who they are not.” I’m getting them ready to take on the more intense next level - discovering their brilliance, who they really are, from where, in Level 3, they take off from the training room into their lives with new passion, skills, and coaching.

Then I flew to Florida to deliver a workshop on diversity aka the economic, global, cultural, gender, customer service, marketing, engine of US business. (Without a doubt, diversity goes way beyond race and gender for progressive companies.)

Now I am flying through cyber space checking out Second Life. This is a way to take education and transformation into the high gear. Here are some quotes from an article on Second Life courtesy of POPSCI.COM. “There are at least 3,000 entrepreneurs making $20,000 or more a year on SL (Second Life) businesses…..In the past year, several companies have built replicas of their conference rooms in SL so that far-flung employees can meet and exchange information….More than a dozen colleges are also experimenting with SL.”

Hold Up! That was in 2004. Here’s what’s said in 2006: Second Life residents are spending $7 million a month on digital goods and services. If you’re wondering what people do in a world with no levels, no score, no set challenges or quests, perhaps a clue may be found in some of the 15 terabytes of user-created content being bought and sold within the virtual world.” Read the whole article on Wired News.

If we can dream it, we can achieve it - in more ways than one! 

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Harvard University’s Robert Putnam research on Diversity points to something obvious, people don’t trust one another. There are plenty of smart people out there trying desperately to understand why we are so afraid. Is it because something going to get us. Eventually it will. But in the mean time our fear allows us to be manipulated (just watch the evening news, cnn, fox etc.) and we cast a suspicious eye towards anyone that looks a little different.

Different factions have taken to Professor Putnam research as way to justify their stand on immigration and other hot political items to help increase our fear of each other.

I would like to see a study about a community that is diverse that does get along with one another. Lets make an effort to find things that work and learn from them. If we can’t find a community that is working lets make one.

Niall Ferguson’s “The War of the World“ with the subtitle “Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West” points towards events that happen at the beginning of the last century and the results is a wave of diversity heading west and north. It’s not stoppable but it need not be disastrous.

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Recently I spoke to the Ohio State University Alumni Association. It was great to be able to contribute to this diverse group of men and women representing my “Go Buckeyes!” roots. My theme was “Giving to Get and Getting to Give.” I received a standing ovation. As a speaker, I asked myself “how was I being and what was I saying?” that brought them to their feet.

In my speech, I asked them, “How would your life be if you hadn’t gone to college?” I praised today’s poets. I included quotes that inspire me. I shared how many $ millions people of color are donating to education (contrary to what is seen on the 5 O’Clock News). I gave props to generational differences.

But what I believe touched them the most was passionately asking them to …

“IMAGINE a standing in front of you is a future Nobel laureate, they are saying to you: “Please find me! And assist me in going to college, even if I don’t know that I need to be there. I have a dream worth living and I can’t see how I can get there without you. Please find me.” Or there is a young artist, “Please find me. Be my mentor, show me how, I’m willing to learn. I’m smart. You should see what I can do with a video game. Please find me.” Or another, “I don’t know if I will live to see 20. Please find me and show me how I can be the next genius Rapper, Inc. without losing my soul or my life. Please find me…before it is too late.”

It is not a burden it is a gift and a get to. We give to get…a better world. To give someone a fresh start. To leave a legacy. Giving to get and getting to give is one of the attributes of leadership. The word education is based on the Latin word educo = I lead out.

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“Generally understood and embraced, is not casual liberal tolerance of anything and everything not yourself. It is not polite accommodation. Instead, diversity is, in action, the sometimes painful awareness that other people, other races, other voices, other habits of mind, have as much integrity of being, as much claim upon the world, as you do.” William M. Chance

Has the Internet created the possibility of a true democracy? Everyone has a say and unfortunately everyone thinks that they are right and truthful. This is both liberating and fearful thought and in order for this to work we need to do more then sing “We are the World”. We better figure out a way to understand each other. In the last twenty years or so the powerful Nation have lost the ability to bully other governments around. Large corporations have been humbled by the by likes of Google, EBay and others. The Planet seems to be gearing up to wipe out the human race, with toxic air and water. Everybody has or wants a Nuclear Bomb so that they can see if they wipe out the human race before Mother Nature takes her course.

So as difficult as it is to believe, the song we need to be singing is “Getting to Know You”. This is our intention for the journal. We want to hear from people who understand that it is truly up to them and they are involved in doing something to avoid what looks like hell around the corner.

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