Disappointment
Written on 12/05 at 09:56 PM by Andy Posner
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Filed under: in Poetry & Musings Blog
This morning I find myself disappointed with myself. I spend so much time trying to bridge the gap between who I am who I would like to be, yet so often the bridge I build is structurally unsound. I find that rather than focusing on my projects, I focus on whether or not I am engaging the projects properly. By properly I mean "in accordance with my expectations." Given that my expectations are consistently lofty it isn't uncommon for me to feel the stress of not living up to myself. I don't fully understand why I turn every little endeavour into a life-or-death struggle between greatness and mediocrity, but the fact that I do is problematic. I don't know how I will ever do the things I want to do-write books, undertake innovative projects, etc-unless I get over this constant need to turn everything into something amazing. Not that I am misguided in my longing for greatness; rather, I am misguided in how I go about pursuing greatness. I have to learn to relax more, enjoy the process more, be more confident, and so on.
A Celebration of the Amateur
Written on 12/03 at 09:58 PM by Andy Posner
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Filed under: in Ideas Blog
A NY Times article today entitled "Ending Famine, Simply By Ignoring the Experts," ties in perfectly with some exciting news just announced by my good friends and colleagues, T.H. and Sybille Culhane. The NY Times article discusses the fact that for years the World Bank has urged poor African countries such as Mallawi to reduce or eliminate subsidies for fertilizer and seeds. The hope was that African farmers would plant cash crops and use the extra income they generate from them to import food. Unfortunately, for Mallawi and other countries, the situation is rarely that simple.
The Two-Way Street of Development
Written on 12/01 at 10:06 PM by Andy Posner
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Viewing sustainable development as a two-way street is an important way to foster a true global village, one in which people are able to maintain their cultural identities while partaking in global flows of information, trade, finance and ideas. The problem, however, is how to get people onto this two-way street. In other words, what are the on-ramps, especially for those that are currently poor?I think an important on-ramp to the two way street is green job creation. This is something that Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland has pointed out numerous times. Things Must Get Better Before They Get Better? America certainly has its poor, and they can't care about polar ice caps, deforestation and slums in Cairo until they have met their lower-order needs of job/fiscal security, safety and so on. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenback, in their provocative book "From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility," point out that the traditional environmentalist view is that things will have to get a lot worse before they get better-in other words, once environmental problems become so visible as to be impossible to ignore, the rational response will be for people to take action. They argue, however, that things with have to get a lot better before they get better. Why? Because only then can people contemplate the larger picture of how their actions correspond to global issues such as poverty and climate change.
- Meet My New Folding Bike! (Poetry & Musings)
- Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States (Ideas)
- Executive Summary of the Capital Good Fund Business Plan (Ideas)
- A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States? (Ideas)
- Photos of Some Upgrades to My Bikes! (Poetry & Musings)
Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States
Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!
My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…
A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?
Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development. To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…
Tonight, the Oneness of Things
It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come. I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…