Friday, May 07, 2004

Engineering with Soul featuring Professor Bernard Amadei I attended the Engineering with Soul presentation by Bernard Amadei. The talk was sponsored by P3 Colorado and held at the Historic Highland Building in Boulder. Dr. Amadei spoke of many things related to sustainability and most particularly his work with Engineers Without Borders. He spoke of a place where they don't name their children until they are five years old because half of them don't live that long. He spoke of engineering a low technology well pump, one that would work without electricity or fossil fuels, to bring clean water to a community. With this well, a young girl was able to go to school instead of carrying water from the river. And with this well, there will be less sickness and maybe someday they will name their children as babies instead of toddlers. He started his talk with his conclusions and then elaborated. One of the conclusions was that the people who are most comfortable and powerful in this world and the least likely to work for change. Not too surprising. Nobody is comfortable with change. Bernard quoted Margaret Mead: (I might not have this perfectly right) "The only person who likes change is a wet baby." In addition to ones natural change resistance, those who are most powerful realize that change is likely degrade, rather than enhance, their own personal situation. Even with tremendous need to change our ways of development, those most able to effect change are the least likely to want to do so. At the end there was an opportunity for questions and I asked about this. I asked how we might overcome this basic flaw in leadership and human nature. Dr. Amadei cast about for a few minutes, reiterating the original point and speaking of a few related things. Eventually he came to the word Compassion. He said "Passion-With. Passion with who?" He stressed that the key is working together. It is important to work with our adversaries, show them our passion and bring them into the process of finding solutions. In this way, they may see the need for change in a context greater than their own situation and thus transcend their reluctance. 3:18:56 AM    comment []

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