8 Resources for Good Living and Giving in 2012

New Year's Resolutions for conscious consumption, giving, generosity, focusing on what matters? If so, check out this quick list on a new site I'm developing - Building a Better World: The Pedagogy and Practice of Global Service-Learning. It's a site to go along with a book I'm completing with Richard Kiely, Christopher Boettcher, and Jessica Friedrichs - all good old friends.


We'd love your feedback on the site and whether you find the links useful before we go 'totally live' with it. This new site will let me blog on all things global service-learning over there - and go off about good clean livin', politics, travel, and pick-up trucks full of social justice, here.

Please take a look at the 8 Resources for Good Living and Giving in 2012 and - via comments there, personal email, or comments here, let me know how you like the site.

The Emerging Global Elite, Protests, Riots, Martinis, Taxes, and American Patriotism

Middle class riots all over the place, from Athens to Israel and with The Tea Party anti-establishment ascendant over here on the Atlantic's West Side. The people are running a muck with rage. Thomas Friedman explains it away with the suggestion that,

• "Across the world, a lot of middle- and lower-middle-class people now feel that the “future” is out of their grasp, and they are letting their leaders know it." The future is increasingly out of reach, as once safe national middle class communities drop farther and farther behind 
• "The Rise of the New Global Elite,"  a phenomenon Chrystia Freeland traced expertly in a January Atlantic Monthly article. The new growing, global elite is characterized by unprecedented wealth and decreasing connections to country and nation, which is very well illustrated by the rising costs of living high on the hog in Brazil, 
• where martinis are topping $35 and apartments are hitting $10,000 a month in the most coveted parts of Rio, this in large part because those with extraordinary wealth are free to flee and relocate wherever they wish, which makes one wonder why a fat cat as cool and plump as the old Oracle of Omaha would ever be so bold as to propose
• Higher taxes on himself and his friends. He must be some kind of patriot or something, caring for education and health care and basic infrastructure for his fellow countrymen and women.   
• If Americans wish to compete, to excel, to continue to do well and lead across sectors and disciplines, or even simply to remain respectable and not lose ground, we need to get serious about taxes. The global elite leaves. Our schools are here. Our middle class is here. There's no free lunch. To win, play the game. To play the game, educate the next generation. 
• That's just to get started. I have to go to work tomorrow. 

Meals, Markets, Managing Mayhem: The Everyday Global Economy

After a few days with limited access to computers and outside the affordable space of United States data downloads on my phone, I slipped back into the NY Times yesterday to see that:

• quinoa's increasing popularity as a global health food has been a boon for Bolivian farmers and deepened the challenges for Bolivians struggling with hunger and food insecurity; 
• in addition to its severe and important humanitarian and environmental effects, the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan has called attention to the complex adaptive system that is our growing web of global supply chains; 
• and that in turn, along with the transitions, conflicts and protests currently engaged throughout North Africa and the Middle East, has called even more attention to our collective uncertainty at the moment, our deep interdependence, and our (Wall Street's, Governments', Corporations', Citizens') seemingly futile efforts to predict the future.  

Volvo has ten days more of Japanese-made supplies before it runs out at its plants in Sweden, General Motors has halted production at a plant in Louisiana due to lack of Japanese parts in their global supply chain, and the world is watching with trepidation as international and Japanese disaster responders work to continue to save lives, work with those who are recovering, and God willing, avert nuclear catastrophe (that, if it comes, of course, would not limit itself to the islands).  

Today's post is very short as I am catching up on other work and the point is perhaps rather simple: We are deeply interconnected. All of our purchases and employment opportunities are part of a global economy. This deep interconnection requires that we (1) recognize one another's common dignity and humanity, regardless of nationality (my old saw), and (2) recognize that challenges are never merely national. Our webs of interconnection run deep enough and in sufficiently diverse directions that we cannot isolate actions or challenges. We are, for better and for worse, absolutely living in a globally connected world.