The link between belief and behavior (Case Study: global warming)

CO2 is the exhaling breath of the global economy. Changing this will require an unprecedented and united global effort. Which, in turn, will require a higher level of global consciousness. This is the inevitable direction we’re heading, and we should be privileged that our generation has the opportunity to achieve it.

That’s my best summary of the message in Al Gore’s new slideshow. The question of how belief and behavior are linked is a central one for this blog, and we’ll have more to stay on it, and look forward to your comments, in the coming posts. For now, here’s Al:

So how do we go about achieving a new level of global consciousness? In Gore’s 1992 book, he points out various philosophies and Faith movements that could inspire us in this direction, including the Baha’i Faith:

One of the newest of the great universalist religions, Baha’i, founded in 1863 in Persia by Mirza Husayn Ali, warns us not only to properly regard the relationship between humankind and nature but also the one between civilization and the environment. Perhaps because its guiding visions were formed during the period of accelerating industrialism, Baha’i seems to dwell on the spiritual implications of the great transformation to which it bore fresh witness:

“We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life molds the environment and is itself deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions.”

And, again, from the Baha’i sacred writings comes this:“Civilization, so often vaunted by the learned exponents of arts and sciences will, if allowed to overleap the bounds of moderation, bring great evil upon men.”

What do you see as the role of religion in addressing climate change or other global issues?

Can entrepreneurs create demand?

I was reading about entrepreneurs last weekend and was struck by a simple yet powerful notion. Some entrepreneurs set out to fill demand while others aim to create demand. But what exactly is the difference?

It wasn’t the first time I had this thought, but this time I decided to ponder it. (It helped that I was sitting on the patio of a little cafe enjoying perfect weather with no schedule to speak of.)

So, I wondered, can you really create demand?

Let’s start with an easier question: who is filling demand? Well, most entrepreneurs. They see a market, usually a big and growing one, and throw their hat in the ring with the other players in the hopes of getting a piece of the pie. If they can turn a profit it’s usually because their offering is cheaper or differentiated or both. And if they build a sustainable business then they’ve figured out a way to protect their earnings with a difficult to replicate competitive advantage. There’s nothing easy about any of that, but at least the path is clear.

But what if there is no existing market for your product? Are you creating demand then?

When Cisco co-founder Len Bosack was asked how he priced his invention, the world’s first fully functional network routers, he replied simply: “we guessed.” That’s because they didn’t have any direct competitors. Cisco was the first. Things turned out well – very well in fact – for Cisco. But did they truly create demand, or was the demand already there? Didn’t companies want their networks to talk to each other? Of course they did, but they didn’t have a good way to do it before Cisco came along.

Thus, Cisco wasn’t creating demand, they were simply revealing it.

Then it hit me.

In order to create demand, you’ve got to offer something that is not only new, but also solves a problem people never knew they had. Even if you were the first to articulate the solution (as was Cisco), you can only claim to have gone so far as to reveal the latent demand.

It is only when you articulate the problem as well as the solution that you can be said to be creating demand. In the language of this blog’s central theme: you’ve got to transform people’s thoughts before you can transform their actions.

Al Gore, for example, is certainly on a mission to create demand. His slideshow is attemping to awaken people to the problem of climate change. If he succeeds, he will have helped to create demand for green products (and green policy).

But it’s certainly not just social entrepreneurs who play this game. Steve Wozniak invented the PC, but it was Steve Jobs who created the demand for it. You could argue Jobs was only revealing latent demand for productivity, but that’s splitting hairs; no one knew they needed their own personal computer before Jobs came along.

Demand creators take a risk that demand fillers (or even revealers) never do. They have to have the conviction to believe that demand will emerge once people “wake up.” They have to be thought leaders as well as innovators. Motivators as well as inventors. Mentors as well as managers. And if it is about ego (i.e., “I know what’s best”) instead of a genuine attempt to guide people to a new beneficial perspective, then they’re likely to fail.

That’s why I believe creating demand is the pinnacle of entrepreneurship. John Schaar sums it up eloquently:

The future is not the result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created – created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.

How do we choose?

When I was a student at Berkeley I would often grab lunch on Telegraph Avenue. This usually meant walking through Sproul Plaza and contending with at least a dozen pamphlet-pushing students pleading for my support for an environmental cause or ballot issue or sport’s team or you-name-it.

I didn’t mind so much – after all, it was Berkeley and it was part of the exictement of the place and of college in general. But I often asked “how.” That is, how did these students choose – out of all of the noise – what issue, what approach, and what people with which to engage? Why was this girl handing me a flyer for an upcoming political rally while that guy wanted me to attend his interfaith forum? With so little time in college, or life, how do we decide where we put our energy? Are we rational about it? Do passions move us? Is it a combination or something else entirely?

Earlier this week Natalie Angier wrote about Change Blindness for the New York Times, and I think it provides clues to the mechanism our minds employ to focus on one thing or another:

The mechanisms that succeed in seizing our sightline fall into two basic classes: bottom up and top down. Bottom-up attentiveness originates with the stimulus, with something in our visual field that is the optical equivalent of a shout: a wildly waving hand, a bright red object against a green field. Bottom-up stimuli seem to head straight for the brainstem and are almost impossible to ignore, said Nancy Kanwisher, a vision researcher at M.I.T., and thus they are popular in Internet ads.

Top-down attentiveness, by comparison, is a volitional act, the decision by the viewer that an item, even in the absence of flapping parts or strobe lights, is nonetheless a sight to behold. When you are looking for a specific object — say, your black suitcase on a moving baggage carousel occupied largely by black suitcases — you apply a top-down approach, the bouncing searchlights configured to specific parameters, like a smallish, scuffed black suitcase with one broken wheel.

This leads me to believe that, at least in part, we are either attracted to movements in a bottom-up fashion because they are the loudest, most popular, most frightening or most interesting OR in a top-down fashion, where we ignore the flashing lights and shouting pundits and pressure from friends and instead search within ourselves, think critically about what the world truly needs and what we can best offer, and then go and search for that cause. And we don’t become dismayed even if, when we find it, the thing we’re looking for is a bit scuffed and has a broken wheel.

The NY Times article concludes:

“Our spotlight of attention is grabbing objects at such a fast rate that introspectively it feels like you’re recognizing many things at once,” Dr. Wolfe said. “But the reality is that you are only accurately representing the state of one or a few objects at any given moment.” As for the rest of our visual experience, he said, it has been aptly called “a grand illusion.”

If we can only truly focus on one thing at a time – one perspective, if you will – then what a pity if our calling exists outside our current frame of reference, and when it asks for a moment of our time on Sproul we dismiss it as nothing more than a grand illusion.

What is Elemental Change?

We live in a unique period of history. Change is happening everywhere. The rate of change is accelerating.

If we want to be instruments for positive change, where should we concentrate our efforts? Which movements are ephemeral and which are important? Which forces represent undercurrents and which are nothing but flippant waves on the surface of a turbulent age?

This blog is a forum to examine these questions.

The starting hypothesis – which could change – is that answering these questions about the world around us requires first examining the world within us: our perceptions, our beliefs, our assumptions about reality. Ghandi said we should “be the change we wish to see in the world” and Abdu’l-Baha said “the reality of man is his thought.”

This isn’t a call to stop moving. On the contrary, we should redouble our efforts to make the world a better place, only with a feedback loop. A period for reflection. Are we being deliberate in our action? What are we truly advocating? Why?

This blog will strive to stimulate thinking about these questions.

Thanks for visiting.