Skip to content

Sustainable Development.

24-Mar-07

We have made an advance in our understanding of the capstone project this week.

Danny and Patrick in researching economic development (one of our four original goals for the international system) realized that what we are attempting to describe is sustainable development.

The definition for sustainable development has not been defined quite in the way that we are defining it, but it is not much of a stretch.

We really prefer to think of it as more of a clarification than anything else. This means that we saying that in order for development to be sustainable, it requires economic development, good governance, environmental sustainability, and cultural sensitivity.

This makes perfect sense, and wraps everything up into an easy-to-explain definition. Consequently, we can now define the project as ‘establishing a viable international system that promotes and maintains sustainable development.’

Exciting stuff!

Powered by ScribeFire.

Filed in Capstone, Philosophizing | | Comments (0) »

No-price goods.

24-Feb-07

Seattle Times Article

A coffee shop in Kirkland, WA is NOT posting prices for the coffee and sandwiches that it sells, and is expecting customers to simply pay what they think is right. Cash is deposited into an anonymous drop box. Will this work? Excellent question. It will be interesting to see the results of this experiment.

This causes to dream up a new experiment in social capitalism that would provide more information so that customers would have legitimate reference points as to the amount of money that they’re spending. For example, maybe the menu would show the cost of producing the coffee (including overhead), the price at a reasonable profit of say 30%, the average price that other consumers pay, and the average going price for similar coffee shops in the area.

Then the decision is up to an informed consumer and is not based solely on an abstract feeling of right or moral necessity. If they can afford to spend more, they may do so out of desire to support the business or out of desire to help those less fortunate to be able to enjoy the same items. Either way, the ambiguity of how much to leave and the potential guilt from wondering, “Did I leave enough?” will be reduced if not eliminated. The consumer is empowered to determine the impact of his or her expenditures.

It’s also fascinating to consider this system being applied to other industries: supermarkets, drug stores, gas stations, maybe even car dealers. This type of system would really encourage excellent customer service, not unlike tipping does in the restaurant industry today.

It’s possible that these ideas would not work in the marketplace, but it’s interesting to think of them in terms of further empowering consumers to make choices that support businesses they enjoy and want to ensure the continued profitability and existence of.

Filed in Ideas | | Comments (0) »

Freedom.

20-Feb-07

If it is, as certainly seems to be the case, the public’s responsibility to stake out their freedoms, lay claim to them, demand them, and not take ‘no’ for an answer; then how do we engender that desire in the heart and soul of each individual?

As I study the responsibilities of civil society in maintaining good governance, economic development, cultural sensitivity, and environmental protection; it seems more and more as if the results of my research may be summed up as:

The public must demand what is best for the public!

The question posed above is only the first of many that must be answered in order to create this as a legitimate solution. How is the public to know what is best for it without proper education? Who determines what makes up proper education? Is it also the public’s job to demand education that it finds fitting?

This leads into the need for open discussion and argument amongst the populace in order to facilitate the development and advancement of notions relating to how they are educated and governed, how their environment is cared for or not, how their economy is encouraged to develop or not, and many other factors.

There is much to do and much to learn.

Cicero, writing more than 2000 years ago, stated that “Freedom is participation in power.” This makes perfect sense in that if you don’t participate, you don’t get a voice, and you don’t get to do what you want to do.

So much has changed, and yet, so little…

Filed in Capstone, Philosophizing | | Comments (1) »

Innovative Solutions to Global Issues.

19-Feb-07

Capstone Proposal

It has occurred to me that I never posted this prior to now and that it is critical to the focus of my work this semester. This is the proposal that we submitted for our Capstone project at the end of January. While our focus has changed slightly as we have researched, it gives a good overview of our goals and the direction we are aiming for.

There are six of us in the group, all in the final semester of our Master’s degrees at NYU’s Center for Global Affair. We are working together to establish a framework for the international system that incorporates the desirable qualities of good governance, economic development, cultural sensitivity, and environmental sustainability. We believe this is becoming increasingly realistic with the growth of collaboration between governments, businesses, and civil society.

Once this framework is developed, we will then apply it to three global issues to show its utility. These issues are corruption, the illicit drug trade, and global warming.

Filed in Capstone, Education | | Comments (0) »

Priorities.

14-Feb-07

As I continue to ponder and apply the usefulness of the topic discussed in the previous post, I’ve decided that one of the things that is necessary for making the ‘right’ decisions in every moment is a clear understanding of what my priorities are in life. I see now that the priorities that I would set consciously, may or may not agree with the priorities that I inadvertently use in making decisions in the now, the decisions that actually create who I am and the life that I lead.

Analyzing how I would LIKE to prioritize has been a somewhat convoluted and complex task, but I think the results are quite nice. I have reduced each priority to a single word in order to facilitate ease of recollection for myself.

  1. Enjoyment

    This word has many different uses, but in this situation, it reminds me that I get caught up in projects and don’t make time to relax and enjoy life as it is passing by. This can result in frustration, general surliness, and lack of enjoyment. This is particularly unfortunate because I pick, I decide how I’m spending my time. Every project I take on should excite, energize, and enrich my life from first consideration through the sometimes necessary, tedious components, and all the way to completion.

    Simultaneously, ‘enjoyment’ conjures up the necessity to get enough sleep, eat right, make time to exercise and have fun: in short, to take care of myself physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

    This is the necessary foundation for accomplishing everything else in life. Without being in peak form myself, how can I expect to effectively have a positive impact on others?

  2. Melanie

    Melanie is my fiancée and in this context, her name represents the ongoing pursuit of the perfect relationship, and my desire to raise a family.

    I have often heard, and have no reason to doubt, that the greatest satisfaction a person may experience is that of creating life; raising children and watching them find their own way in the world. This is something that I have always intended to do, but have never really focused on and prioritized.

    Melanie is idealistic, sweet, and beautiful, with a child-like quality of her own. She has always been drawn to and worked with children, and I know that we will be loving and caring parents. Our love for one another is greater than the difficulties that arise in the course of a relationship, and neither one of us are content to settle for less than our dreams. Together, we support one another and become better and better with each passing year.

  3. World

    Last, but not least, is my commitment to making the world a better place. As I alluded to in the Wow!!! post, this is a feeling that I have always carried with me, and one that my current education is preparing me for. There are so many ways to do this, big and small, from conserving energy to working to improve the way governments, corporations, and members of civil society inter-relate on the international stage.

It is easy for me to lose myself in pursuit of this last priority, and that is why it is important for the other two to be ahead of it. I expect that all three of these will be ongoing pursuits throughout the rest of my life, and there is so much that I want to accomplish. For me, maintaining these priorities will keep everything that I experience and am working towards in perspective, and enable me to make the most pertinent decision in every moment.

Filed in Philosophizing | | Comments (0) »

Only now.

10-Feb-07

In the middle of a philosophical discussion last night, it occurred to me that it’s only possible to make decisions right now. I suppose that seems like a silly thing to say, but it’s not quite as obvious as it seems at first blush. We like to think that we can decide what we’re going to do next week, but this is not entirely accurate. We can plan for those things, we can state our intentions, but we can’t actually decide until the moment itself arrives.

Two weeks ago I decided to go to an event that took place last night. I didn’t go. Not much of a decision then, was it? Barring the discussion of the necessity of sticking to one’s decisions, this is exactly what I’m talking about. I couldn’t actually make the decision to go until the moment came to arrive at the event. Up until that point, something more important may have come up.

Why is this important? Well, I spend a lot of time planning my life; making decisions about what I want to do and who I want to be and how I’m going to get there. I make lists. I schedule things. I have dreams: places I want to go, things I want to do; but the truth of the matter is, none of those are decisions. It’s possible that none of it will happen. None of those things are happening now.

There is no way that I can decide right now that I’m going to Guatamala this summer and know for a fact that it’s going to happen. I can buy airfare, schedule the time, book hotels, etc. but there are too many uncontrollable eventualities for me to say that the decision is final. As a most obvious example, perhaps a member of my family will become ill and I will have to cancel the entire trip at the last moment.

Where I will be in six months is the culmination of the decisions that I make now, but I can’t decide now where I will be in six months.

I believe it was John Lennon who said, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” (It’s fascinating how we hear these little tidbits of knowledge, but can go on not understanding them for years.) Suddenly this has new meaning to me. What you decide right now is what determines who you are and what you accomplish in life. Are you actively making your life and the world, what you want it to be? Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” This takes on new meaning given this context. It’s not that I was clueless to it before. I thought I was working towards the world I want to live in, but in large part, I was preparing to work toward the world that I want to live.

Every instant, the future becomes now, and we have a new opportunity to live how we want to live and in the the world that we want to live in. If everyone decided this … now, it would be a different world. Instantly.

Any discussion of now would be incomplete without consideration of the other end of the spectrum: the past. Similarly, I can’t change what I have done, and yet it can be so tempting to long for it to be different. How many times do you think, “If I had only…” when the reality is: you can’t. It’s the past. Is this Obvious? Of course it is. Do we live as if we can change the past? Wishing that it were different? Of course we do.

But it’s too late. All we can do is learn from those experiences and then let them go. This makes us better able to make good decisions, now. I suppose if you are perfectly content with your life and with the world that you live in, then there is no need to improve upon the decisions that you make. However, if you want your life, where you live, what you do; if you want the world itself to be different, then you need to make decisions now that correlate with what you want. And you need to know that those decisions may not be the right ones. This is how it works for each one of us every moment.

I contend that this is how real change can happen. I make better decisions, now, based on the past. Tomorrow, I may discover that the decisions I make are wrong. On Monday, when confronted with a similar situation, I will make a different decision.

Better decisions, better living, every day, every moment, starting now.

Filed in Philosophizing | | Comments (3) »

Welcome.

10-Feb-07

I am entering the world of US foreign policy, with a specific interest in US interactions with intergovernmental organizations, and the ways in which those interactions may enhance or reduce long-term security and prosperity for the United States, as well as the rest of the world. I’m excited at the prospect of applying my diverse history to this new endeavour.

I just received my Master’s degree in Global Affairs from New York University and was honored by being chosen to give the student speech at our convocation ceremony (See it here). My thesis was a collaboration with five other students to describe a viable international framework for sustainable development. My component within the project focused on the responsibilities that civil society has to itself, to governments, and to businesses.

My background includes a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in Engineering; experience in engineering and business management at Lakeshore Products and AlumiRamp, both small manufacturing companies owned by my family; entrepreneurship in computer consulting and clinical hypnotherapy; and citizen advocacy for electoral reform. My full CV is available here.

I bring a unique perspective to any task that I undertake. Please browse around my site to learn more about where I’ve been and what I’ve done, or peruse my blog to see what I’m working on and thinking about now.

Enjoy,
Wayne

Filed in Welcome | | Comments (0) »

Wow!!!!

28-Jan-07

And so it begins.

It seems that the capstone project is about to fully take on a life of its own. This is an historic moment, whether or not we stop to realize it. Perhaps that history will only be pertinent to those of us directly involved, but the feeling, for me at least, is much greater. It is, in one regard, as though the project will run under its own power from this point forward; not unlike a boulder rolling down a hill. It has not yet built up much momentum, but that will come. Naturally, it will still need to be guided to ensure that it travels the right path, but it no longer requires continuous effort just to keep it moving.

On a more personal level, this moment feels like an important marker on the path towards turning a feeling into reality. The feeling has always been with me: a blurry, ill-defined need to make a positive contribution to things, to big things! Throughout my entire life, I have been accumulating skills and experiences that have enabled me to transform this feeling into a dream. In this moment, I feel as though the dream is becoming a vision. This capstone project is the lens through which the vision will become clearly defined.

It seems to me that the end result of this momentum must be the transformation of the original feeling into reality, a tangible result, something that directly impacts the real world, the way in which people relate to one another, their ability to pursue their own goals and accomplish them. It’s still too early to understand how this will play out, but it seems much more clear now that, in fact, it will.

It is critical to understand also that this feelng is not mine alone. It is the work of my entire generation, loosele defined. Perhaps it is also the work of the next generation, as well. It is a feeling that we all have, although some are more inclined to notice than others. It is a perspective, a viewpoint, a framework that many will contribute to, each in their own way. It is a method of relating, a new way to see the world and its people and their lives. It is the future. It is a solution. It is the fulfilled promise of humanity and the universe living as one. It is the promised land and the end of history.

Too grandiose? Too fantastical? Too idealistic? Perhaps, but it’s still only a dream and we just started the ball rolling.

Wow!!

Filed in Capstone, Dreams | | Comments (1) »

Back to School.

07-Aug-06

Soon I will be returning to the Big City and searching for a place to live while completing the final year of my Master’s degree program. I just signed up for classes, and I think they’ll be very interesting:

  1. Machinery of US Foreign Policy. This is fascinating specifically because of the discussion concerning thosee factors external to the government bureacracy. How do the media, think tanks, and NGOs affect US foreign policy?
  2. Human Rights Law. When I realized that I was shying away from this class, it made me question my rationale. What I discovered is that, while much of my interest in the international arena technically falls under the heading of “human rights,” there is something about the title that I find objectionable. What better way to understand my own objection (and perhaps that of others) than while learning about the essence that underlies “Human Rights”?
  3. Europe in the 21st Century. I had to take this because the title is so reminiscent of Buck Rogers.
  4. Conflict Assessment. A course dedicated to how international groups assess conflict and thereby, the methods they employ in dealing (or not) with it. I’m fascinated by the notion of having multiple theories or contexts within which to place a conflict, each of which may result in a different response. It seems that there is too much categorization of particular events, and I hope that this course will give me some additional tools with which to broaden the discussion of any particular event.
Filed in Education | | Comments (0) »

Summer in Santa Fe!!!!

06-Aug-06

I have been lucky enough to acquire a summer internship with the state Office of International Trade in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This has given me the opportunity to learn a little about economic development works inside the United States, both in terms of growing international trade and also in terms of supporting emerging industries within the state itself.

Filed in Education | | Comments (0) »