My World of “Ought to Be”
by Timothy Wilken, MD










Subscribe to "My World of  “Ought to Be”" in Radio UserLand.

Click to see the XML version of this web page.

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.
 

 

Monday, March 22, 2004
 

Veritable Vegetable — Another Way

Lisa HamiltonLisa M. Hamilton writes: At 2:45 pm, the produce warehouse at 1100 Cesar Chavez Avenue is a ghost town. Twelve hours later, as the surrounding city sleeps under blankets of fog, this place is so awake it seems to buzz. Workers push into damp coolers to retrieve boxes of x, y, and z, then push back to stack them atop the pallets already towering with countless other boxes. As they weave through the maze they dodge a forklift shuffling 800-pound bins of pumpkins and a new shipment of apples that’s moving against the tide, back toward the coolers. The noise of the shrink wrapper rips the air like the smacking of giant lips. When they began working at 10 last night, these people took their time. But the pace has now quickened, as truck drivers arrive to whisk the pallets out of San Francisco and onto highways that fan across the West. By the time the sun rises, the warehouse will be empty. Standing in the hollow building you can see why people traditionally hate distributors and other middlemen: they don’t actually make things, they just move them. The service is vital—all food must somehow travel from grower to consumer—but at most warehouses, the only product is profit. At 1100 Cesar Chavez Avenue, a.k.a. Veritable Vegetable, all that furious work in the middle of the night actually produces something tangible: change. Bu Nygrens is the purchasing manager and second in charge at Veritable Vegetable, the country’s original organic produce distributor. Watching the late-night frenzy, she joked to me, “We’re no different from other produce companies—except we’re 80% women.” That’s an anomaly in the gruff wholesaling business; not an advantage per se, but another long-time employee insists that it makes the place superior. “I can’t stand the big wholesale produce market on Jerrold Avenue,” she says. “Over there the guys are swearing and smoking and just being nasty to each other, like ‘Hey, get the &%$#%-ing nectarines.’ It’s not like that here. We’re nice to each other. Credit it to the estrogen or not, there is a pervasive fairness and generosity about Veritable. The highest-paid employees carry titles no higher than “manager” and earn no more than four times the company’s lowest wage. In order to uproot the stereotype that, as Bu puts it, “white, well-educated people work in the office and brown, non-English speaking people work in the warehouse,” they give all the workers decision-making power and duly reward labors both mental and physical. (03/22/04)


  b-CommUnity:

Wealthy Beyond our Dreams

Timothy Wilken, MD writes: If we humans synergically reorganized our world, we would all be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. Today in 2002, if we were to reclaim the gift of all the land and natural resources presently held on planet Earth as individual property. And if we were to further reclaim the gift of Progress from those few who control it today, and then divided these two gifts equally among the 6 billions of us living on the planet, we would discover to our surprise and amazement that every man, woman, and child is wealthy beyond their dreams. With synergic organization, and careful utilization of the planet’s total wealth for the benefit of all humanity, the carrying capacity of the Earth could be maximized to solve all our human problems and meet our all our needs. And this is without any need to damage the Earth, or degrade our environment. There would never be any need for humans to earn their livings again. Our livings have already been earned by all those humans who lived and died to give us the great gift of progess. Then all humans would be free to spend their time making their lives meaningful by creating more wealth to be gifted to living and future humanity. To better understand my proposal for a synergic future, it is important to understand what I mean by wealth. ... In a synergic culture wealth is defined as that which supports life for self and others. It is mutually life affirming. This by definition excludes adversary wealth — physical force that hurts other human beings, and neutral wealth — money that ignores other human beings. Synergic humans recognize that interdependence is the human condition. They recognize that all humans need help unless they wish to live at the level of animal subsistence. They know that adversarial humans make people help them. This is help obtained with coercion — force or fraud. Those providing the help are losing. When you force others to help you, they do the least they possibly can. Because the helper is hurt, adversary help produces the lowest quality help. They know that neutral humans purchase help through the open market place. This is help purchased from others. This is the way most of us living in the free world get help today. We hire it or we buy it in the market place. When I go to McDonald's, I pay them five dollars to help feed me. The focus in the market place is on a fair price. Because the helper is ignored, neutral help is of average quality. They understand that synergic humans attract help by helping others. This is help attracted by helping others — when another individual understands that by helping you, they will also be helped, they will automatically help you. When others understand that when you win, they win, they will support and celebrate your success. This is the power of the win-win relationship. Show those who can help you, how they will win by doing so. Show them how they will be helped by helping you. Because the helper is helped, synergic help is of highest quality.  (03/22/04)


  b-future:

Technology Offers Second Chance

Jim BraidBBC Health -- Jim Braid was so ill his only chance of survival was a highly experimental heart operation - with a touch of brain surgery thrown in. The 57-year-old Scot's heart was so weak that doctors told him he probably only had two weeks to live. He couldn't even have a bath because he feared he would drown. Too weak to withstand a full heart transplant, his only option was to become one of the first people in the UK to be fitted with an artificial heart pump. The operation, only previously attempted on a handful of occasions, was highly risky, but Mr Braid had no real option but to take a chance. He was lucky that the cardiac surgeon overseeing his care was Steve Westaby. Mr Westaby is one of the UK's leading cardiac specialists, with 18 years' experience at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. He also has a reputation for taking on high risk patients that more conservative surgeons, mindful of their performance targets, would be tempted to turn down. "It's the easiest thing in the world to turn down a high risk patient, but what does that do for the patient? For me surgery is not a job. It has always been a compulsion. If I can do it all of the day, and most of the night that is just what I will do." The operation on Mr Braid was certainly a challenging one. First the artificial Jarvik heart had to be sewn into the top of his own, failing organ. Then a power cable had to be fed up through Mr Braid's chest and into his head, where it was to be attached to a pedestal screwed onto his skull and connected to an external power supply. ... Mr Braid's recovery was long and painful. His entire body had to adjust slowly to the heart pump. "It may never been quite a normal life. We don't deceive ourselves that things are absolutely normal when you are attached to batteries and a controller," said Mr Westaby. "But it is a fantastic thing to be able to take a device off the shelf, put it into a patient like Jim, who is literally dying in front of you, and resurrect him, if you like." Jim was well enough to go home just three weeks after his operation. Two months after surgery, he was up and about and enjoying life in a way that was impossible before. "I feel I'm getting better every day. I have got a life back, which I really did not have for the last year-and-a-half, " he said. For Mr Westaby the satisfaction lies in giving hope to patients who many may have written off. (03/22/04)


  b-theInternet:

Ocean Needs Protection

BBC Environment -- Urgent UK government action is needed to protect the sea's environment, an all party committee of MPs has said. Ocean floors and biodiversity are being damaged through human activities, says the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. It is calling for laws to be updated and for a cabinet sub-committee to be established to oversee marine issues. The MPs say they are particularly concerned over the lack of knowledge on the effects of deep sea trawling. The MPs said the government must ensure work carried out in universities and research institutions that underpins scientific understanding of marine ecosystems could continue. ... The MPs said: "On land, people can see the impact of human activities on the environment. "But at sea, pollution, damage to fish stocks, degradation of habitats and declines in biodiversity are less immediately apparent." Committee chairman Michael Jack MP said: "The report highlights the complexity of the issues which affect policy towards the marine environment which needs government protection, as far as the seas around the United Kingdom are concerned. But this will not be achieved unless the government creates a much improved mechanism to ensure all the departments that have both an interest and a responsibility in this area, work together much more effectively than at present." (03/22/04)


  b-theInternet:

Climate Taskforce Launched

Traffic congestionBBC Environment -- A taskforce made up of leading international think tanks is due to launch to tackle climate change. Former UK cabinet minister Stephen Byers will chair the group's opening meeting in Windsor, Berkshire on Monday. Mr Byers will warn climate change is the "overriding environmental challenge" of our age. The taskforce - which includes the UK Institute for Public Policy Research - will make recommendations to world governments in 2005. A statement released before the inaugural conference said the participants were taking "a responsibility to future generations to hand to them a planet that is habitable and rich in life". Mr Byers is expected to say: "Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities threatens that objective". Climate change could drive a million of the world's species to extinction as soon as 2050, according to a study published in January. The study - published in the journal Nature - suggested a quarter of animals and plants living on land in six world regions could be forced into oblivion. Only cutting greenhouse gases and storing the main one, carbon dioxide, could save many species from vanishing, it warned. (03/22/04)


  b-theInternet:


6:21:39 AM    


Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website. © TrustMark 2004 Timothy Wilken.
Last update: 3/31/2004; 6:04:09 AM.
This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.
March 2004
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30 31      
Feb   Apr


This site is a member of WebRing. To browse visit here.