A prisoner of hope

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"Hope and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things are gonna be better, much more rational, deeply secular, whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, 'It doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odds, no guarantee whatsoever.' That's hope. I'm a prisoner of hope, though. Gonna die a prisoner of hope." - Cornel West

A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.

According to Cornel West's definition I am a prisoner of hope.

But I don't think we need to go "beyond" the evidence. Wherever I look I see clear and substantial proof of new possibilities being made real. Here's a few examples I found this week.

Happy Friday.

Company, Mission
Genius teams are agents of breakthroughs: They fix large-scale challenges and needs.

Neil Armstrong thought that the Apollo 11 team they had a 90% chance of survival, but only a 50-50 chance of landing on the first attempt. Photo of the flight's engineering team shot by NASA engineer Ann Montgomery c 1968. Pubic domain.

Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg has identified three characteristics of the most effective executive teams. Yes, each team member brings an outstanding capability that complements the capabilities of other team members. Less obvious is the fact that energy on stellar teams is sparked by "benevolent friction, conflict, impatience, and even well-intentioned intolerance".

But I find it really interesting that the scale of the team's mission is as important. Big, hairy and audacious goals motivate.

Article: What Sets Genius Teams Apart

Communication, Visual Identity
Less than an hour after Joe Biden announced his departure from the presidential race, a call went out on Slack to see which staff were available to redesign the campaign's logo.

“'The Harris for President creative and web teams sprang into action, rebranded the entire campaign overnight, and launched a new website in just 26 hours,' Harris for President Creative Director Kate Conway told The Independent. 'There’s really no overselling how difficult a task that is.'

"The creative team — mostly made up of women and led by women — designed six different new logo options. They narrowed it down to two, and then shared it with Harris’ team for final sign off." - Isaac Lozano

Article: Kamala Harris Unveiled Her Campaign Logo Hours After Biden’s Exit. Political Graphic Designers Deconstruct The Meaning Behind It

Company, Business Model
How one company combines sustainable farming, waste management, and community empowerment to build a more environmentally sustainable and socially equitable future.

Nivedita Bansal Shah is co-founder of Shah Hemp Inno-Ventures (SHIV) where she manages administration and human resources, and imbues every aspect of the company with social consciousness. Trained as a psychologist and life and relationship coach, she began her professional career in organization development, working toward improving the quality of education for underprivileged students. Image via Hemp Today

"Nepal-based startup Shah Hemp Inno-Ventures (SHIV) is a unique social enterprise transforming wild-grown hemp, bamboo and other natural resources into a catalyst for fair employment, economic growth and climate-change mitigation.

"Guided by a mission to harness local resources for global impact, SHIV also cultivates relationships with local communities to ensure a positive impact and above-standard working conditions for its employees — who essentially turn local ‘weeds’ into everything from hemp bags, backpacks, paper, soaps, hemp seed oil and hempcrete to bamboo mats and furniture." - Fatima Fasih

Article: This Nepalese B Corp Illustrates a Holistic Model for Sustainable Development

Learning, Personal Development
“Remember that you are one of 8 billion.”

Photo by Mark Selige

"Through my study of Tibetan Buddhism, I have been lucky enough to work with His Holiness on a number of occasions, including a trip to Dharamshala, India, last year. In that decade-long collaboration, he has convinced me that the solutions to problems larger than myself lie not in huge acts from such renowned figures as him. Rather, the answers to life’s greatest challenges reside in minor decisions I make every day. The wisdom of that Tibetan tradition can teach any of us how small acts can foster great love in the world, bringing more happiness to others and to ourselves." - Arthur C. Brooks

Article: Five Teachings of the Dalai Lama I Try to Live By

Learning, Personal Development
An antidote to anger

"We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in such times another reflex is the longing for an authority figure selling certainty, claiming the fist to be a helping hand. It is a touchingly human impulse, primal and pacifying — children turn to the parent to remove the overwhelm and uncertainty of a world they don’t yet understand and cannot carry. It is also a dangerous impulse, for it pulsates beneath every war and every reign of terror in the history of the world.

"Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934–November 7, 2016), who thought deeply and passionately about the cracks in democracy and its redemptions, shines a sidewise gleam on this eternal challenge of the human spirit in a couple of pieces found in his Book of Longing, the collection of poems, drawings, and prose meditations composed over the course of the five years he spent living in a Zen monastery." - Maria Popova

Article: Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance

Civics, Social Intelligence
Relationships are vital to the way we think.

Still from Ode to My Father, 2014, Director: JK Youn

"Developmental psychology has long recognised the social element in thinking. Almost a hundred years ago the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky observed that the emergence of individual thought can be understood as the internalisation of interpersonal dialogue. Young children playing alone often talk to themselves, echoing what sound like the instructions of adults. These clearly resemble the kind of verbal structure they have been given by caregivers. Learning to think for yourself is a process of representing the contributions of others.

"The people around us can also cognitively impair us. A conversational partner who seems to want to avoid a topic can make it surprisingly difficult for you to think about it properly.

"So while my brain is important, cognition exists beyond my head. I make important decisions by consulting with those close to me. I use reminders and rely on family and colleagues to deliberate about plans. This sort of social process is not only supportive of my cognition – it is my cognition. By extension, the extent to which a person is cognitively impaired is a function of the social supports they have around them. That’s not to say that we can wish away the ill effects of brain injury and dementia. Damage to the brain will tend to lead to difficulties in thinking. But to talk about cognitive impairment is to talk about something that couldn’t exist in the same way without the other people who populate our lives." - Huw Green

Article: The Big Idea: Why Your Brain Needs Other People

Economics, Labor
Abraham Lincoln believed that both human advancement and political stability for the American democratic republic depended on workers’ dignity and ability to improve their conditions.

A colorized photograph of Abraham Lincoln in February of 1865 via Wikimedia Commons

In 1847, Lincoln wrote that goods rightfully “belong to those whose labour has produced them,” and any good government should ensure that workers receive the entire product of their labor “or as nearly as possible.”

"...(Literature scholar Owen) Cantrell writes that Lincoln believed that both human advancement and political stability for the American democratic republic depended on workers’ dignity and ability to improve their conditions. He envisioned the Civil War as a fight between a slave economy that left workers powerless and a kind of capitalism in which they could use the cash economy to advance, improve production techniques, and create better material conditions for the country as a whole."

"...In the end, the post-Civil War era did bring a new labor system, though not one for which either Marx or Lincoln had hoped. It saw the rise of large corporate employers and the consignment of an increasing part of the workforce to lifelong wage work—thanks in significant part to Lincoln’s Republican Party choosing to ally itself with the corporations." - Livia Gershon

Article: Abraham Lincoln’s Labor Theory of Value

One-liners

Article: Poetry used to be an actual Olympic sport, and the first openly gay olympic medalist was a poet.

Article: Most social media users do not primarily visit platforms for news but rather stumble upon it.

Article: A Dutch wellness clinic is offering psychedelic couples therapy.

Article: My friend and colleague Gayle Kabaker has designed a great T that celebrates Kamala. All proceeds go to the campaign.

Article: Older people’s minds wander less.

Playlist

Video: Sweet Honey in The Rock - Wade in the Water

"Bernice Johnson Reagon, whose stirring gospel voice helped provide the soundtrack of the civil rights movement, and who went on to become a cultural historian, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution and the founder of the women’s a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, died on July 16, 2024 in Washington. She was 81."

"Bernice Reagon, the daughter of a Baptist preacher in Albany, Ga., grew up in a church without a piano, and the first music she absorbed, rooted in spirituals and hymns, was performed by human voices to the accompaniment of clapping and foot stomping.

She was an original member in 1962 of the Freedom Singers, a vocal quartet that provided anthems of defiance for civil rights protesters who were preparing to confront the police or being hauled away to jail. The Freedom Singers were associated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which sent them across the South as well as to the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in 1963."

"Ms. Reagon once wrote, 'I sang and heard the freedom songs and saw them pull together sections of the Black community at times when other means of communication were ineffective.'"

"She founded Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973. Its African American singers, all women, wove together Black musical traditions from the church and the fields with original songs." - Trip Gabriel

Article: Bernice Johnson Reagon, a Musical Voice for Civil Rights, Is Dead at 81

Weekly Mixtape
In memory of Bernice Johnson Reagon

Playlist: Prayer

Image of the Week

The 2024 Refugee Olympic Team. Photo by Mathieu Richer Mamousse

"In the past decade, a confluence of violent conflicts — in Ukraine, in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Sudan, in Palestine and beyond — have forced roughly 120 million people from their homes, driving them to seek asylum in foreign countries. The crisis has come coupled with spiking xenophobia and hostility toward immigrants, particularly across Europe and in the United States. Over the next two and a half weeks in Paris, the task of the Refugee Team will extend beyond athleticism and personal achievement. Its purpose, according to Jojo Ferris, head of the Olympic Refuge Foundation (ORF), “is to really reach the hearts and minds of the public.” It’s to challenge “the negative rhetoric around refugees in communities or cultures,” Ferris continues, and to remind viewers what people are capable of — just how much they can contribute — when they receive the requisite support." - Claire Lampen

Article: 120 Million, 13 Reasons to Hope

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