Tennenbaum

tumblrbot asked: WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

Right now? Alaska!

Joseph Kony

This article on Joseph Kony poses the perfect questions: can we use numbers and internet technology to affect justice?

Being Good to Others Means Being Good to Us

In the kind of Buddhism I practice, Nichiren Buddhism, its founder (13^th Century Japanese monk Nichiren) has a quote: “if you light a lamp for another, your own way will be lit.” This is a statement by which I try to live my life, and living this way has shown me time and time again that when I extend myself for others my own life is more full than it would have ever been otherwise. It also keeps me kind and from falling into the agonies of competitiveness. The reason why this theory holds true in Buddhism is that all of life is interrelated, so your behavior towards others is linked deeply to your own life.

My thesis is now going about exploring the validity of this belief in the context of international relations. Globalization and global problems are forcing us to view ourselves as an interrelated planet instead of individual countries. In that case, do policies that take this interrelated view actually prove better for national self interest? Make for a more secure planet?

There are two parts to this research. The first is exploring the underlying political theories that discuss these concepts (I’m starting with cosmopolitanism first).  The next is actually discussing how this would look from a policy perspective. What would the U.S. do if it viewed itself as part of a global community? My passion is diplomacy but I may tackle this argument from an environmental perspective because it is where these ideas make themselves the most clear.

In the meantime these ideas are all over the place, and it really feels as though our society is moving in a new direction. Robert Wright wrote Non-Zero, in which he discusses that mutually beneficial agreements in fact pushed life and innovation forward. Jeffrey Sachs and Bill McKibben also discuss how a change in our value system will ensure our security as a planet. This changing viewpoint also has implications (from a political theory perspective) for an international state-based system, but I haven’t done as much research on that subject yet.

Any of you know what else is out there? 

Content Marketing

Below we’ve got the 10 Commandments for Content Marketing (as it applies to Brand Journalism) put together by Shane Snow. You can check them out yourself, but there were a few things that stuck out to me in relation to the blog. Namely: Content has to be intellectually stimulating, original, and transparent. It has to be geared to its audience and to its medium (twitter, blog or print). It’s gotta keep it real and needs to be planned like a publication.

Gives me some good things with which to go back to the drawing board for my online publication.