NonprofitEye

Thinking Clearly by pam ashlund Remember Hobbes describing life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"? Well how about this quote from the critical thinking website: "much of our thinking...is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or downright prejudiced." Critical Thinking Website I'm thinking about nonprofit effectiveness today (again). Why is it one of my favorite topics? Because...IF WE AREN'T EFFECTIVE WHY ARE WE BOTHERING???? It seems even Bill Gates Senior is asking this question. I have to paraphrase him here (from a talk at a small gathering). The essence of his statement was this: Historically most efforts to cure social problems had little or no effect or (this is the frightening part) only made them worse . What a disturbing claim; even more so because of how it resonates. In a February post I wrote about the counterintuitive nature of social problems . That article (more than many) has influenced (haunted?) my thinking ever sin...

Historical Memory, Social Change and the Limitations of the Human Psyche Challenges Facing Nonprofits and Society as a Whole by pam ashlund Two problems are troubling me tonight: 1) Progress is so slow (in every arena, but it's social change that I have in mind here); and 2) For whatever reason, human thought falls victim to the most base errors; preventing us from seeing and thinking clearly. Progress is slow: The challenging part of any academic endeavor is that we have to start over again with every generation. Unlike physical genes, these non-physical meme thingy’s are not transferred by DNA through reproduction (or any other physical mechanism). Fortunately, there is some overlap of generations to achieve a modicum of historical memory. The invention of the printing press didn't hurt either (should I be saying silicon chip?). Still this darn transmission process is SO fragile. The dark ages almost wiped out all of human knowledge were it not for a couple of cloistered monk...