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The eminent social scientist Karl Weick once said that social problems are often defined in ways that prevent us doing anything about them.
I have been watching the Zimbabwean elections closely. As facts emerge, I have been listing them on a “secondary” blog.
The situation in Zimbabwe is as dire any conflict in history. Can we move here? Can we move there? It seems the ultimate Catch 22. Whatever we do may create more damage.
I believe however that much of our hopelessness comes from our own representation of what is happening. Could we not, instead, look at difficult objective conditions that require resolution?
Today, people are starting close in, as the poet David Whyte would say.
Today, we are going to do something positive. Today we are going to say thank you. Today we are going to say we are with you. Today we are going to send emails to the President of Zambia who is the current chairman of SADC. Today, we are going to take 3 minutes to write a short, brief, courteous email saying,
Dear President Mwanawasa,
I write to thank you and the leaders of SADC sincerely for convening the extraordinary meeting concerning Zimbabwe and to extend my support and goodwill for a resolution that is satisfactory to all the people of Zimbabwe and her neighbours.
Sincerely,
I am patching in a long excerpt of a post from Sokwanele that gives the email addresses of SADC. Zimbabwe for a positive future.
TAKE ACTION
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa has called an emergency meeting of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to discuss the Zimbabwean presidential poll delay. This is the first move by Zimbabwe’s regional neighbours to intervene since the elections on 29th March 2008. President Mwanawasa is the current Chairman of the 14-nation South African Development Community. This is what he said yesterday:
I wish to take this opportunity to commend the people of Zimbabwe for the calm and peaceful manner in which the elections were conducted.
Similarly, I appeal to them to maintain the same spirit of calmness which they exhibited during the elections as they await the results of the presidential elections.
However, given developments immediately following the elections, I have decided, as Chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to call an extraordinary summit on Saturday 12th April, 2008 to discuss ways and means of assisting the people of Zimbabwe with the current impasse as well as adopt a co-ordinated approach to the situation in that country.
Both President Morgan Tsvangirai and opposition leader Robert Mugabe will be attending the emergency meeting.
Support our democratically elected leader and take action.
What YOU can do
You can voice your feelings and SHOUT OUT for FREEDOM. Communicate with key SADC people attending the meeting.
Tell them that Zimbabweans have the right to live in a democratic, free and peaceful country. Tell them your personal experiences and why you want change. Make them understand what it is like to be in Zimbabwe today. Tell them we voted for change, we got change, and we want change now. Speak the TRUTH.
HOW you can do it
Email, fax or phone using the details provided below. Keep your messages real and honest but also short and to the point. Remember: thousands of us will be doing this so they will have a lot to read. Let’s make sure they can read and hear it all!
Be polite at all times. People don’t pay attention to angry messages (look at us: Mugabe has been angry with the people for many years now and we just ignored him and voted him out anyway). Anger does not work.
1. Call or fax or email the Zambian State House with a message for President Levy Mwanawasa:
- Tel: +260 1 266147 or 262094
- Fax: +260 1 266092
- Send an email to Mr John Musukuma, Special Assistant to the President for Press and Public Relations: johnmu@nkwazi.gov.zm
- Use the contact form on the Zambian State House website here to send an email:
http://www.statehouse.gov.zm/index.php?option=com_contact&Itemid=3 - Bonus email: we’re not sure if this is a direct contact for President Mwanawasa, but just in case it is, copy all the emails you send to: differmu@nkwazi.gov.zm
2. Call or fax a message to President Thabo Mbeki - President of South Africa
- Tel: +27 (0)12 300 5200 and +27 (0)21 464 2100
- Fax: +27 (0)12 323 8246 and +27 (0)21 462 2838
- Send an email to Mr Mukoni Ratshitanga Thabo Mbeki’s Presidential Spokesperson: mukoni@po.gov.za
3. Call or email Lieutenant Colonel Tanki Mothae - Director of Politics, Defence and Security Affairs at SADC
- Tel: +267 361 1001 or +267 397 2848
- E-mail: tmothae@sadc.int
4. Copy all your emails to this general SADC email address:
- Email: registry@sadc.int
5. If you want to attach images to your emails, you can download copies of the photographs at the top of this mailing from the Sokwanele flickr account here:
6. Forward this email to everyone you know and ask them to take action too.
7. Be positive, stay strong, and never forget that we have won.
I have never been totally happy, no pun intended, with positive psychology’s approach to objectively bad situations. I am totally persuaded by our ability to make the best of good situation. I am persuaded by our contribution to sort-of-bad situations. I am persuaded that in a terminal situation, we may as well be happy. I can also point you towards little experiments that cost you nothing but your time and that you can try on your own.
But there are three situations where I am not persuaded positive psychology can help us much, though in truth, nothing much helps in these situations.
First, when you are in a bad situation alone, and I mean socially alone. I haven’t looked closely at being physically alone.
Second, when other people will harm you, unless you harm them first.
Third, when you have experienced sustained social abuse and your fight/flight mechanism is on a hair trigger.
I watched a Scottish movie over the weekend, 16 Years of Alcohol, that illustrated a combination of these three situations. The protagonist grew up with an alcoholic father and joined a gang. While he was generally terrorizing the neighborhood, he met a girl and was motivated to change his life. The story is about his intelligent and thoughtful attempts and ultimately his death on the streets.
We can compare this story to Goodbye Mr Chips, which I watched last weekend, and the well known movie about hope, Shawshank Redemption. In Shawshank, we have a protagonist who out-thinks and outwits people and is able to leave the situation by tunneling out of the jail. In Goodbye Mr Chips, the protagonist has a mentor who is slightly above the situation and he is able to grow himself and ultimately change the environment around him. Put this starkly, I think you already see the shape of my point.
In 16 Years of Alcohol, the agent of change, a young woman, was a resource but not sufficient to change the situation for the protagonist. And importantly, he did not exit the situation. I’m afraid he should have left town!
The protagonist asks himself at one point: where is hope in a hopeless place? There was an excellent line though where the young lady suggests to the protagonist that the past does not come looking for him - that he went looking for the past. And he talks about stopping the past leaking into your heart. These are good points - with slightly more resources and slightly less stress, he might have made it.
This is a realistic account of dealing with extreme hardship. If you are interested in using positive psychology to move on from bad places, you should have a look. Though a tragedy and not a feel good movie, you are left with an abiding memory of struggle and courage. It is a respectful account of people brought up in the hardest places in our society.
I discovered Paulo Coelho this year. I am amazed I spent this long on this earth without finding his books.
His stories have mystical settings. By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept is about a woman and her childhood sweetheart who meet up again in their twenties to make a hard decision: should they get together or should he follow his vocation into a Catholic seminary and a life as charismatic and healer.
All Coelho’s books (I think) have a happy ending, but not a silly ending. After many trials, the protagonists resolve to take the high road: living in solidarity with this world. These may be mystical stories, but they are neither fantasies nor escapist.
And the trials faced by the characters are never gratuitous. Each in itself offers a perspective on relating to the world and, I think, the tension between commitment and uncertainty.
They are a remarkably “open” read too. He has a light style that draws you into the story. And then releases you from time to time to ponder what he or one of his characters has just said.
Wikipedia describes the book as “a week in the life of someone ordinary to whom something extraordinary happens”. Read it at the end of a long week to ponder extraordinary people who live ordinary lives.
I’ve just found Curriculumillusione, a Dutch interface (pick the English top right).
Pick a user name, set your date of birth and the year you wish to die. The programme prompts you to consider the most important thing you want to accomplish in life and corollary events.
And it won’t let you stay too long! It sends you packing after a while and tells you to come back in 24 hours!
I look forward to your comments when you’ve had a chance to use it.
Hit tip to Everything 2.0.
Sometimes during the working day, I arrive at a website. I have no idea how I got there and I have no idea why I have never been there before. But there I am, at the place I want to be.
A site with essays and poetry about the Hero’s Journey.
For people new to the Hero’s Journey, the HJ is a narrative form, the structure of a story, that seems to be a suitable way of organizing our stories about our own lives. Who else is the hero of our journey but ourselves.
“ how I want to know
that sun,
and how I want to flower
and how I want to claim
my happiness
and how I want to walk
through life
amazed and inarticulate
with thanks.”
David Whyte in a collection about the Hero’s Journey.
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