When big ideas come before big money
Emily and I have been talking about where we can take Lane Change. We started Lane Change to kick off our “Winter B-icicle Challenge” but were careful to chose a name that was only vaguely linked to bicycles, thereby giving us the capacity to expand. After all, the two of us are not bike nerds. We’re environmentalists. We’re activists. We believe in change, in a better world. And the bike thing is just one battle in a bigger war to “win hearts and minds.”
Now we’d love to make a living out of Lane Change so we can dedicate more than just a few hours a week on it. But when we got talking suddenly the “how to make money” question began to dominate the brainstorm.
At some point I stopped and said, “Emily, if money was no option, what would you like to do?”
It’s kind of the same with this writing group I belong to, in which every week someone from the group submits a short story for the rest to critique. And the thing I’ve learned recently is that it’s important to first ask yourself, before you’ve written a single word, what is this story really about? What is the big picture theme? Because if you want to really create something meaningful, something great, there needs to be BIG IDEA behind it. Otherwise it’s just shadows and glitter.
In the bio-pic about gay-rights activist Harvey Milk, it’s clear that for Harvey he was not driven by a thirst for power or the prestige of a political career. “Politics is theater,” he says, and he used it only to further a greater cause: the acceptance of gay people in a then incredibly hostile environment. For Harvey it was the gay movement first, and politics second. And without the former, the latter had no meaning.
And that’s how Emily and I need to think. We need to ask ourselves, what do we want to achieve, how do we want to change the world? And then work out how to fund it.
Which is the opposite to how a businessman might think. They search for business opportunities. They first think, what can make me money? And the impact that it has on the environment and society is a secondary issue, or in some cases, not an issue at all.
30 Dec 2011 / 10 notes / social enterprise work lane change business harvey milk writing
Fundamentalism vs. Pragmatism. Should we completely live the change we want to see?
One of our Winter B-icicle Challengers sent in a mainly positive email, but also with this to say:
I love the idea behind your winter cycling drive. More people on more bikes more often! But what is the point of pledging to ride everyday in the winter if you aren’t prepared to ride in the conditions that winter provides?
The reason I feel its important to mention this is because as a winter commuter I get asked by car drivers constantly about the conditions during my ride.
All the time they are talking to me they are trying to impose a subtext to their statements that it is too dangerous to be riding a bicycle in the winter and that I should be careful so that they don’t kill me with their 2000LB vehicle.
By saying there are conditions in which it’d be so icy you’d probably break your neck continues this tradition of poo-pooing bicycles as viable means of transportation.
Emily read this and assumed (I now believe correctly) that he was simply suggesting we don’t over-exaggerate the dangers of riding, but when I originally read this I assumed something a bit different.
What is the point of our challenge? Is it to simply encourage less car driving and more cycling. OR, are we claiming that cycling as a viable form of transport that can replace cars altogether. That we should and can live in a world without personal automobiles - and in attempting to make that statement the challenge should never allow for the use of cars or cabs - even on days where the road is icy. And where do we stand on public transport, such as subways and busses?
The dilemma is actually a fascinating one and is pertinent to anyone trying to lead a more ethical life. How far does one go? Do we completely live the change we want to see? Or do we give ourselves more leeway? And does that leeway lead to a slippery slope back to the beginning?
Take, for example, shopping organic. It is very, very difficult to eat organic 100% of the time. Even if you are lucky enough to live in a city in which shopping for organic groceries is easy (and within your budget), you’ll be hard pressed to be able to stick with it whenever you’re going out to eat or go to a friend’s place to eat. Shopping organic is a choice you had to make in your life, and one that is either more expensive or less convenient than the shopping that 99% of the population do. If it was mainstream it wouldn’t be called shopping organic. It would simply be called shopping.
And while you know that in shopping organic you’re helping grow the ‘organic food scene’ and hopefully helping it become more mainstream so that one day it will become the standard. But for now it’s a royal pain in the ass and it’s easy to become discouraged and feel like what’s the point in just little old me just doing this?
Firstly, individual choices matter. Why? Because societal movements are simply individual choices in mass. And there’s a certain degree of faith required. One can never really know what difference or impact one’s individual choices will have or are already having.
Secondly, it’s OK to draw a line. That’s all social mores are. Lines drawn in the sand where we say, this is OK and this isn’t. Think about this - the age of consent. Be it in your country 16, 18 or 21 - that age is totally arbitrary. Nothing magical happens on a 15 year old’s birthday when they turn 16. And yet if an adult was to have sex with them one hour prior it’s the difference between a prison sentence.
I do question whether we should live in a world with personal automobiles. I think the convenience of driving a car does not justify the social and environmental destruction it has unleashed on this earth. And yet in my lifetime have I driven cars? Have I accepted lifts from people? Yes.
But I don’t consider this hypocritical. We live in cities (some more so than others) designed around the car. Wide roads, urban sprawl. In some places like Sydney where bike culture barely exists and the public transport is terrible, it’s extremely, extremely inconvenient not to drive a car. I know this, and therefore I can be in Sydney using a car, but petition for more bike lanes and support city planning that doesn’t lead to urban sprawl and will encourage Sydney to become a more foot and bike friendly city (and less accommodating to cars). And as that change happens, it will allow me to use the car less and less, and ride my bike more and more.
And that’s the third thing, it’s OK to let that line shift.
If people in our bike challenge want to be hardcore and refuse to step foot in a car - or even in a bus or subway - that’s pretty awesome. But I feel like that right now - in the world we live in and the way that cars are just so prevalent that they’re too easy a temptation, that bar is too high to set for everyone. If we’d made that condition, too few people would have signed up and the challenge would have been dead before it had even begun. For now, just getting people out on the bikes throughout almost all the days of winter is the first step. And maybe in the bike-beautiful future, we can raise the bar a bit higher.
"But, in the end, the point of Occupy Wall Street is not its platform so much as its form: people sit down and hash things out instead of passing their complaints on to Washington. “We are our demands,” as the slogan goes. And horizontalism seems made for this moment. It relies on people forming loose connections quickly—something that modern technology excels at."
The origins and future of Occupy Wall Street by Mattathias Schwartz in the New Yorker.
A friend of mine recently asked if it mattered whether people who signed up to our Winter B-icicle Challenge actually bothered riding their bike every day. Wasn’t it more important that they simply signed up and showed their support? After all, did it matter if people who did the 40 Hour Famine cheated or not? They still raised money.
I said it did, because in carrying out our challenge (riding to work or school everyday throughout winter) you were actually fulfilling our purpose - which is to advocate bike riding and get more bikes on the road. Every challenger on the road, on each day, would be a riding advertisement for biking.
We are our demands.
