Tag Archives: declaration

12-Step Program for America: Step 1

By Jim Selman | Bio

I work with organizations that are attempting to change. At the beginning of working with a new client, I point out what’s missing for any organization that has recurring or seemingly intractable problems: what’s missing is a different way of observing. Whether we’re talking about a company, a community or a continent, a new perspective always gives us an opening to create new possibilities, have new choices and take new actions: a new way of observing the world effectively gives us a different future than some variation of ‘more of the same’. =&0=&. When we do, we begin to realize that we have a paradigm problem. Until we deal with that, none of our seemingly intractable problems—from staggering debt to unending war, climate change to the underlying causes of the mortgage crises—can be solved. Albert Einstein expressed this concisely when he said that sometimes our problems cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them.

Paradigm problems are like addictions. They are ‘self-referential’ structures that, at some point, disconnect us from a larger ‘reality’. Once disconnected, we begin to follow self-destructive patterns of behavior until we ‘hit bottom’ or have some form of crisis that ‘breaks the paradigm’ and opens possibilities for making other choices. In AA and most ‘recovery’ literature, the self-destructive behavior is understood to be the symptom. The ‘disease’

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UN Declaration

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When the declaration was signed in 1948, it was the first time in history that nations came together to agree on
basic principles of justice, equality, and rights for all. The Univeral Declaration has become the most translated, the most ‘universal’ in the world. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was awarded the Guiness World

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Brave Nation

By Jim Selman | Bio

There is an amazing website called The Brave Nation that is showcasing people who’ve made a difference. Many of these examples of human vision, commitment and perseverance are boomers who challenged ‘the system’ in the ’60s and ’70s and are now sharing their experience with the current generation of ‘change agents’. It is inspiring to remember and reconnect with the idealism of our youth and perplexing to wonder what happened to so many of us who have drifted into complacency about (or in some cases complicity with) current events.

Personally, I think the idealism is still there, perhaps under a cloak of resignation and lost dreams. So much has happened in the past 35 years or so that it is difficult to imagine, let alone remember, who we were. It seems so long ago that I can’t even remember how it felt to live in the possibility of a “world that works for everyone”. Civil rights marches and protests aside, the world of my youth was a heady time—a time when ‘the best and the brightest’ went

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International Women’s Day

Today is International Women’s Day—a day to celebrate the political,
social and economic achievements of women around the world, a day to
promote political and human rights in countries where violence and
inequity still make life a struggle for women, and, in an increasing
number of countries, a day to express love and sympathy to the women in
your life. The theme for 2007 is “Ending Impunity for Violence against
Women and Girls”.

The
concept of an IWD was established in 1910 at

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