electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change."
—
Greg Mortenson, author of "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace, One School At A Time"
Greg's talking about digging into roots. He's talking about very poor people in Pakistan and, more recently, Afghanistan. He's talking about the way to really beat the Taliban in the Middle East.
We're talking about insurgency, too.
The common foe, when it comes to our health care system: dogma. Do the same thing, hope for a different result. Feed the machine until you're elected out of office. Repeat the same information until it becomes a cultural mainstay.
"Walk-ing-means-the-loss-of-weight! / Ev'ry-body-knows-it's great!"
Except it doesn't work.
"Eat-your-grains-and-you-will-see / You-can-beat-di-a-beet-ees!"
Not so much.
"Once-I-swore-by-Lip-I-Tor / Now-it's-ACE-in-hib-it-ors!"
….or you can do something else.
We're not going to change the system from the inside: that much is clear. We've been waving flags, from deep in the back pocket of the Industrial Park, for years. That doesn't work either. We could revert to our more primitive techniques of yesteryear, and write angry editorials in the middle of the night, to no effect. There's no way to make it through the centre.
We're going around. In the next few months, we're building a library.
Though we're going to plant the seeds, this will be a community garden. Using the mezzanine space at the Park, we'll make our texts, research, and Journals available to everyone, for free. Got an interesting study? Bring it in. But this isn't about the Dewey Decimal System.
Our goal is to spur discussion, and debate. Dissemination of information is a skill, just like public speaking, cleans from the high hang, driving a car, or muscle-ups. Practice is required.
Yesterday, I wrote about the stressed-out Healthcare system relying on the old fallbacks of low-calorie, low-fat diets. The basic code of The System is still an "if/then" model, in a world full of greys. YOU'RE the one who's going to have to pull the sword from that stone. Luckily, you're in the right group.
We have a few municipal wrinkles to iron out, first. And we need permission to reprint certain Journals and articles. But in the meantime, start ripping things out; printing things off; storing things away. Our interns are working on a filing system. Coop's finalizing engineering-type stuff with the City. We hope to deliver by September. Thanks for making it possible.