Saving Starfish...One at a Time

THE POWER OF THINKING SMALL

Barack Obama is apparently going to call for a new age of responsibility in his inaugural address on Tuesday. If anyone can make responsibility cool again its probably him. Obama has proven that he can move millions…hopefully to do the right thing…with just a speech. And he will, I believe - and pray – continue to do so over the next few years.

But what I truly liked about Obama and his campaign was his emphasis on individual action. On his repetition of the cliché – We are the ones we’re looking for. Its apparently an old Navajo saying. And Paulo Coelho allegedly said the same thing (allegedly because I haven’t read the book) in his popularly acclaimed book The Alchemist. Millions of people, inspired by this slogan, amongst others voted Obama in. However I suspect, no matter how many times Obama tells us we need to look within ourselves to find a solution, the truth is that most people will continue to believe that he and only he is the solution.

Here’s the issue. Real leaders are hard to come by. And when they do come around, every other decade or four, they generally focus on inspiring great achievements or finding great solutions to big problems - like landing on the moon. Until the time they depart; whence most societies fall back into a stupor of mediocrity or worse. Fact is, great leaders can paralyze as much as inspire, emasculate as much as they empower. Take landing on the moon for example. The problem with inspiring people to landing on the moon or joining the Peace Corps is that you can only fit so many people in a space-craft and there’s only so many people adventurous and passionate and tie-less enough to head off to war-torn Darfur for the foreseeable future. The vast majority of people find themselves unable to find a role for themselves in these great enterprises of the human spirit and don’t participate in them beyond feeling vaguely inspired. That’s a lot of sparks extinguished; a lot of inspiration gone waste.

People don’t believe the average Joe can drive big changes and so most people don’t try. They just wait around for another inspiring leader to come on by to do it for them. Kennedy gave a fiery inaugural address in which he demanded that every American ask what he/she can do for their country. And though the speech outlived him by decades, the spark he ignited mostly died with him. He was followed by the sixties counter-culture, Vietnam and Nixon – and eventually the ascendance, over the last three decades, of the idea that the pursuit of an individual’s own happiness is the key to prosperity for all. Similarly, Nehru was followed by his dynasty simply because people didn’t really believe they could continue to be the kind of nation they were, without someone like him at the helm.

So how about a leader who demands that everyone, individually, do one or two really small things that make a difference however small, to whichever issue they’re passionate about. Malcolm Gladwell in his brilliant book, The Tipping Point, describes how Mayor Giuliani and a small team reduced crime in New York by nearly 60% in just a few years – “simply” by changing the context in which people dwelled. They cracked down on the smallest of crimes and the “offenders” committing them – panhandlers, graffiti artists, drunks creating a nuisance, people using the subway without a ticket. By making it difficult and costly to commit small crimes, they sent a subliminal signal throughout the city that there was someone in charge and that betting on impunity was a bad idea. In providing a (negative) incentive for each person to be more law-abiding in general they engendered a cultural change that reversed a seemingly irreversible crime wave.

I think we could begin to build a lasting culture of empowerment, if we had great leaders who demanded that every single person – no matter how poor, or unfortunate - pick a cause every year, dear to them, and do something small towards it. They could grow their hair long enough to donate to charities that make free wigs for cancer patients who cannot afford them. They could decide to fight corruption in a small way by resolving to always pay the full traffic fine versus a bribe, or the black market by always paying the sales tax on an item they purchase. They could let a less fortunate neighbour borrow their tool-set so they can get a construction job a la Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. Or if they are the less fortunate neighbour, they could invite the lonely rich guy next door over to family gatherings. When finding ways of making a positive difference, small or large, becomes a habit, that’s when we may no longer need the occasional inspiring leader to come along to solve our big problems – or maybe we’ll just find that we have many more of them (leaders that is, not problems) - because now millions (instead of thousands) of people believe in themselves and think beyond themselves.

It might seem a little wishy-washy to say that if everyone did small good deeds, that in itself could solve the really complex problems in the world. But think back to how we learn a new language in school. We start with learning the alphabet and then each year we learn how to construct ever larger words and express ever more complex thoughts in sentences. A few people go on to become great writers and orators. But those who don't become great writers/orators - pretty much everyone really - still learn how to do really important and complex things with the language they’ve learned: order a tall, non-fat, caramel macchiato at a Starbucks, tell a joke to a friend needing cheering up, or express their love for those they care for. We take our ability to communicate for granted. But if you think about it, it’s a very complex human achievement. It looks simple, because making magic – mundane or exotic – with words becomes a habit for us. Whats to say, the same thing wouldn’t happen with solving world problems?

A friend related this parable to me recently…A man finds hundreds of starfish stranded and dying on a beach at low tide and moved by their plight starts throwing them into the ocean, one by one. Along comes a fellow and seeing what he’s doing says – “There’s hundreds of them here…you’re never going to make a difference by yourself.” The guy throws one more starfish into the sea and says “I made a difference to that one.” In an ideal world, the other guy would be inspired and join him in throwing the starfish back into the ocean. But even if no more help came, the fact is that there would be fewer needlessly dead starfish because of just the one guy and that would be a good thing (assuming you like starfish, of course).

So you and I can hope, dear reader, that Obama will be the kind of leader who encourages people to do small good deeds as well as inspiring them to large achievements. Or if you buy this theory, perhaps you won’t wait for Obama to do it. Perhaps you could make it a point to tell other people to find a starfish, just one, to throw back into the sea.