Lessons in making a difference

Kevin Kelly is one of the more effective
activists and world changers I know of. His buddy Stewart Brand is no slacker either. Danny Hillis and these guys are part of the Long Bets and Long Now Foundation, an interesting idea. Free downloadable seminars on topics no one else is discussing.

Kevin recommends these interesting programs that can maximize your donations while changing the lives of people directly in ways that they can turn around and help those around them. All of these programs benefit women and improve the lives of their families.

Heifer.org/ gives animals and bees to people. Opportunity.org funds microloans to village entrepreneurs. Trickle Up provides "conditional seed capital and business training essential to the launch of a small business. Trickle Up has started over 135,000 businesses in more than 120 countries. "

And while I'm worshipping heroes, here's to one of the most human of beings, John Perry Barlow. His words never fail to inspire even when they are about things we don't want to hear about. Today's discovery, on his blog where he speaks of his friend Spalding Grey's suicide:

".. Making public the intimately personal is a revolutionary act in an atomized society where many feel compelled to play so close to the chest that they can't read their own cards. Being emotionally naked before strangers extends to them a permission for self-revelation they badly need if they are to loosen the shackles of their own quiet desperations. It is a blow against the pursuit of loneliness."

"...But death has become wild and obscene in this country. Its power threatens our national religion of control. To die in America is to fail. It is an act of weakness. The dead could have beaten it had they been tough enough. And suicide, of course, is even worse, whatever the unendurable torments or neurological malfunctions that might drive one to it. Believe me, he tried some truly medieval procedures to penetrate his horror."

"Merely to speak of death in plain terms is considered by many to be disrespectful and offensive. This is a peculiarly American sickness which is, among other things, wrecking our health care system - over 70% of America's total medical expenditures are devoted to extending the last few miserable weeks of life. Our pathology about death abstracts us from it and renders us far too capable of inflicting it on others without remorse. And, worst, it allows us to dwell in a kind of numbness to life that we would not permit ourselves if we did not make ourselves numb to death. To be in denial about death is to be in denial about life."

"Groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having."