New dimension?

I put a blanket in the wash today, first checking the tag just to be sure it could go in the washer. It said: "Machine wash cold with like colors. Turn inside out." I really tried, but had to admit defeat.

B Corporations

There are certain accepted business structures - eg, sole proprietorships, partnerships, corporations (differing mainly on legal liability, ownership, and methods of financing). And within corporations, there are several structures. Now there is a new one.

B Corporations.

The "B" is for Benefit. B Corps agree to adopt a version of the triple-bottom-line in their corporate charter. This means measuring and acting in favor of not only financial profit, but also environmental and social value. B Corps intend consciously to do good-- for people, the planet, and in creating financial value. They deliberately seek the places where these things overlap and enhance each other.

I find this heartening. A handful of companies have pioneered the B-Corp status, and others will likely follow. It may not become mainstream anytime soon (Wal-mart? Hmm. Probably not even HP), but it demonstrates to all companies that there is an option about how to be in the business world. The goal and intention behind a business is a genuine choice; it's not just "all-out-for-financial profit" or "take-the-high-road-and-be-a-nonprofit."

I suspect B Corps-- if and when they include public companies-- will be pretty interesting to SRI (socially responsible investment) funds. Given that this type of investment is becoming more popular, it is likely becoming "safer" to go public as a socially-minded organization.

Adhering to a triple bottom line is different from adhering to the single (financial) bottom line we have now. It requires more complex thinking, for one thing. But it also begins to loosen the unnecessary associations that have grown in our minds between suppressing our values and making a living. Many of us have come to dully accept that if we want to support our families, we need to knuckle under and work in a hierarchical office with rules that make no sense, doing something we're not that connected to that probably also burns the planet's resources. What choice is there, we think day after day as we plod through our lives.

Well, there is a choice. If we decide to make it. The new presence of B Corporation status offers that choice to CEOs when it didn't officially exist before. The rest of us have to make it in our own way also.

What's stopping you?

Do you need a Big Belly?

Urban trash cans are often overflowing, despite being emptied multiple times/day (up to 10 in New York City!). While "reduce" is the best solution to our growing mountain of trash, Sea Horse Power has a nifty practical idea for urban waste. It's the Big Belly, a solar-powered compacting trash can! Using energy from the sun, it automatically crushes the deposited waste into two smaller cubes, ready for collection.

Watch the Big Belly in action

This is a great idea because denser urban living is often more sustainable than spread-out or rural options, and hence a method for controlling trash is welcome. Jim Poss, one of the inventors, is a professor at Bainbridge Graduate Institute, among other talents.

The future of solar power

The future of solar is already here. A group of kids -- as in, 5th through 8th graders -- has created a solar energy start-up in Silicon Valley.

Start-Up Fueled by Kids' Imaginations

The energy and interest here are inspiring. These children are looking at the world and trying to help in whatever way they can, not from a place of greed or fear ("how can I get what I want and feel secure about it?"), but from a place of connection. They are totally undaunted by the fact that they can't create a standard balance sheet and don't have a clear sense of where the money they'll need is coming from. They are just going ahead with the idea that emerged.

So the rest of us hardly have an excuse for feeling daunted :-). This was a such a welcome inspiration for me to read this morning.

Body metaphors

I recently read Donella Meadows' The Global Citizen, and felt freshly inspired about the wonders of systems theory. She had a marvelous gift for encapsulating complex ideas in readable essays formed around real-world examples, from policies to sheep farming. It reinforced the sense that although the world is not simple, it is comprehensible, and the roadblocks we suffer can be opened up by just a small shift in perspective.

A recent conversation with a friend centered on the use of body metaphors to reconceptualize economics. I found myself thinking of Meadows' beautifully interconnected worldview, and we mused on how to communicate the image of a biological economy. It's not a unique image-- others have seen it-- but we felt moved by its significance.

Of course, there is a broader perspective. Just today, I ran across this passage in Stephen Batchelor's Living with the Devil--

"In 494 BCE ... the consul Menenius Agrippa successfully put down a slave revolt in Rome. Agrippa persuaded the slaves that just as it would be unreasonable for the limbs of a body to rebel against the belly that sustains them, so it was unreasonable for workers to rebel against the Senate. Convinced, the slaves left their entrenched positions on the Aventine Hill and returned to the city to serve their masters. The same argument has also been used to justify the Indian caste system, in which each caste is seen as a different body part of the great primordial Man (Purusha): "His mouth became the Brahmin; his arms were made into the Warrior; his thighs the People, and from his feet the Servants were born." By sacrificing narrow self-interest and acting according to one's nature, each person thereby plays an essential role in sustaining the greater life of the whole.

When Shantideva uses this same organicist metaphor to illustrate how all beings are empathically interconnected, and Pascal and Eckhart, following Paul, draw on it to affirm how all members of the church are one in the body of Christ, they ignore its potential for justifying tyrrany. The story of Agrippa shows how the mere recognition of the organic interconnectedness of society is not in itself sufficient to generate compassion for others. Nor does the Indian belief that all people are one as members of a single body imply that they are entitled to the same rights or freedoms. [...]

Insight into the interconnectedness of life with only reinforce feelings of universal love and respect if we are already committed to the principles of equality, liberty, compassion, and nonviolence.... The image of life as a single organism in which we are all connected to each other is an insufficient basis for morality and ethics." (pp. 170-173)

His answer for what is a sufficient basis for morality is interesting too -- it's the realization of our own fragile vulnerability and the recognition that everyone else feels this at their core, too. Forget the organism -- we can connect on the level of being frightened little cells. And in fact, until we do this, we will not be able to create a well-functioning organism, an idea Batchelor develops throughout the course of the book.

Batchelor would agree with this comment from my friend (thanks J): "It's like a contrapositive -- knowing we're interconected doesn't bring peace, but forgetting that we are surely brings misery."