Last week around the world, the story of “The World’s Most Generous Boss” splashed the headlines. Ken Grenda, CEO and Owner of Grenda Corp, a conglomeration of bus companies with 1,800 employees in Australia, sold company for $425 (Aus) million and gave $15 million to the workers in bonuses. Grenda, a quiet, kind man completely surprised his employees, some of whom received over $50,000 because of length of service. Grenda himself was completely surprised by the world attention.

Twin Oaks is an intentional community in rural Virginia. The community has no leader or hierarchy, pools its income, and is completely economically self-sufficient. Established way back in 1967, Twin Oaks has achieved what few intentional communities have: continuity and sustainability. So, what's their secret? How have they managed, against great odds, to hang on over the decades? I read Is It Utopia Yet? by founding member Kat Kinkade to shine some light on that question.

For a community to persist, a common theory holds, it needs a common religious, spiritual or ideological belief system. The persistence of community is also aided by the influence of charismatic leader/s. Twin Oaks has none of this.

Is your compassion only “ribbon deep”? Do you worry about the possibility that your compassionate actions are insincere? Or do you just want to explore the possibility of being a genuinely compassionate person? Then this is the place for you. You can start with the background essay or skip to the Compassion Superficiality Quiz in the last section.

This is the 10^th anniversary of what the western world calls “9/11.” Most Americans (and the western media) treat it as a time to memorialize the dead, honor the first responders, and reflect on the good in American culture.

Meanwhile, some like Paul Krugman in his NY Times column “Years of Shame,” and Huffington Post blogger Michael Gould-Wartofsky in “America the Amnesiac: On Remembering to Forget on September 11,” and UK’s Dominic Sandbrook’s Mail Online article on 9/11, point out that the 9/11 10-year anniversary celebration is a symbol of the disgracing of American and the bad in American culture. The critics point out that America’s response to 9/11 made the USA an “evil avenger” in eyes of much of the world.

 Sitting here in super-cooled Las Vegas at the annual convention of the American Sociological Association, I am listening to one of at least a dozen papers on the digital divide. Each paper sounds like digital divides are some new, surprising scar on digital societies.

 Yet, my colleagues and I published a paper on digit divides 27 years ago in 1984 in The Computer Teacher. If you  check Amazon books for “digital divide” you will find that in the past year approximate 25 new books have been published on the subject. And an additional  seven books are in press but can be pre-ordered. They cover all kinds of digital inequities along every kind of social line imaginable: wealth, race, gender, disability, region, culture, and regions of the world.

Eleven days ago, I blogged about the how “America looks the other way” from the famine in East Africa, including Somalia. At that time, the European press and media had been covering the humanitarian disaster for several days. However, it took a week for the American press and media to recognize the story, now saying that nearly 4 million people are in crisis and tens of thousands are dying.

Why does it take so long for journalists and their editors in the USA to recognize a critical humanitarian crisis in Africa? Typically, their answer would be that they select the stories that the people want to hear or read. While it is true that the American public has relatively little interest in foreign affairs, they do want to keep abreast of humanitarian crises. But this past week, both the press and the public have been pre-occupied with the budget battle in Washington and illegal hacking by the press in London.

I have only compassion for the families of those that died on 9/11 and I wonder if they feel any resolution at the recent news of Osama Bin Laden’s death. My heart truly goes out to them: I feel their loss.

As I scroll through Bin Laden focused news reels and headlines shouting victory I also feel compassion for those who lost loved ones in the military action that took place in Afghanistan just days ago. And so too do I mourn the jubilance expressed by many in our society over the brutal death of another being as I mourn the the political system that takes lives out of necessity.

Our nation has been focused as a free-enterprise, capitalist country where each person has the opportunity to improve their financial and social status in life. For years, this system has seemed to work very well. However, recent events have shown that the focus of an individual's own gain has perhaps been carried too far, and more focus needs to be put on the community.

Everyday, there are articles in the news regarding crimes or events that demonstrate the lack of care for others. Occurrences such as Ponzi Schemes and burglaries depict the attitude that these people only care for themselves and disregard the effects on others. One could say that these incidences describe a small amount of the population and do not fairly address the majority, but crime rates have continued to rise in cities around the nation, as well as other foreign countries on the other side of the globe.

Is paying it forward real?  Are people capable of empathy? Does it have an impact? A friend of mine from the University of Minnesota Duluth recently told me a story that made me believe in compassion and that everyone has the capability of feeling and doing it.  

When you pay it forward, the beneficiary is a third party.  My friend had a few ideas including buying coffee for random strangers or classmates and leaving it on their desks before class. She also thought about paying for the orders of people behind her in drive-thrus or restaurants.She really wanted to do this experiment, but did not know where to start or how to come up with the extra money to do such gestures for others.  After all, she is only a poor college student.

As I walked with my friend to class yesterday, we passed some janitors cleaning up outside the buildings. About half a block later, we walked past an ash tray with a takeout container on top of it. As we passed it, my friend said "This isn’t a garbage can, people! This is littering.” She picked it up and took it to a garbage can and threw it away. The janitors were making their way down the sidewalk, so they could have picked it up when they came to it. But my friend had done it for them.

In recent months I have been blogging about my trip to Tanzania, and until now I have only discussed short stories about my time there. In this blog post, I will run through a typical day and some forms of the compassion that I experienced throughout those days.

Last week, on the eve of Thanksgiving, four teenagers sexually assaulted a 45-year-old woman in front of her two children in Minneapolis's Powderhorn Park. The incident shocked people around the city and scared the neighborhood, but the mother made a statement that inspired the community and empowered us to believe in non-violence and restorative justice.  Her son responded similarly. The Minneapolis Star Tribune article on this remarkable story can be found at this link. The tragic incident was followed with several heart-warming letters to the editor. Below is one of those letters: 

Alice Herz-Sommer is the oldest Holocaust survivor in the world and this month she turns 107. She is the subject of a new documentary to be released in a few months. In the mean time, you can see and hear for yourself, in the YouTube trailer below, her vitality, her love of beauty, her skill in playing the piano, her laughter and joy in living.

Alice serves as a paragon of the triumph of the human spirit.

The first time you watch this video you will see Alice as remarkable for all of these things, but look also for her compassion and caring for others and her refusal to hate. Note how she cared for her son in the death camp, how she organized a choir, and how she maintains relationships with close friends. In short, she is a template for the passionately compassionate life.

One of the most disheartening evolutions of Western society is the way we act towards elderly people—the people who are not only among the most vulnerable but often the most isolated in our society. Older people are often treated as if their “shelf-life” is over and that they are more a liability than an asset. But the million dollar point we are missing is how much their wisdom, experiences, and their attitudes are much more precious and effective than the little knowledge the younger generation has accumulated.

Going to Guatemala was an unbelievable experience and i took so much from it.  You learn a lot about the culture and what people really value in just a matter of 14 days. Check out my video about the normal day we had on our mission trip. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dP6qzDiUJA