Robbie MacKay

just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s a good idea (or a bad one). It means you should think hard about how everyone benefits (including you).

 - Seth Godin

.. and the same applies if it’s not free. Just because you’re being paid doesn’t mean you should ignore how something benefits you and everyone else involved.

How much pain, confusion and conflict in the world is caused by mis-understandings about love?

If you take the position that love is not the same thing is commitment, love doesn’t mean a relationship will work. Love is just love. It’s not conditional, until we make it conditional. What changes if you assume love is unconditional? What if you give you love unconditionally?

If your relationship breaks down, if things in your relationship are not working, it doesn’t mean they don’t love you anymore, or you don’t love each other anymore. They will always love you, they always have. You can still love them, you always have, you always will..

The relationship in its current from just doesn’t work.
It still hurts. It’s still hard.
Be sad, do resist it – but then move on.

This extends to friendships too… you don’t have to pretend you can make a relationship work and be friends with someone when you can’t. There is no shame in admitting you can’t deal with someone, it doesn’t make you a smaller person, in fact it makes you larger for admitting the truth.
Remember too, you don’t have to take your love away from someone if things don’t work. But you don’t have to continue the relationship the same way, just to prove you love them.

I’m not saying this is the truth. You don’t have believe it if you don’t like. If it doesn’t work for you, don’t worry about it.
It’s just a place to stand, a powerful place to stand if it works for you. What If you assume love is unconditional?

For anyone who hasn’t played with an XO, the laptops made by the One Laptop Per Child project, you really should. They’re quite brilliant: simple, easy to use, and very unlike any laptop I’ve used before.

There are testing groups in both Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand, that spend their weekends messing with XO’s, installing software, testing it, tracking bugs and reporting the results. There’s a simple joy to it. Learning how to work these laptops. Trying out all the software. Showing young kids how to use them. Discovering the kids can use them better than you can (!).

Find your local group. Join in.

OLPC testing. The joy of

I wrote this over a year ago, after watching the morning news covering a terrorist attack in Mumbai

I don’t get it

Whatever their cause, whatever their goals…
How does killing or injuring other people become an appropriate or acceptable action?!

How do they justify that?

I can only think these people must be disconnected from reality. How do you not recognise that there is another person you’re hurting…

There is supposed to be a development stage for people as we grow up – at some point we develop empathy, we realise that when we do something it actually has affects on other people, or more to the point: we realise thats there IS actually another person over there. That like us they can feel things.

The world becomes less about us as we realise we are not the only one who can feel.

How do some people miss this? or forget it? and end up treating a whole section of the world population as people and another section as thought they’re not people?

It seems like this is tied to an illusion of seperation that we all have (to varying degrees): different countries, cities, families, businesses, teams, etc.

We talk about growing the economy of a country and think about the factors in those decisions based on what’s best for the country (or insert some other group / decision here).

We forget to account for the effects on other countries.

The borders are all artificial anyway – we’re all one people.
It is one planet.

Even seperating humans from animals and nature… life is life.. we should be looking after all of it.

I’m not saying anyone should give up everything for another person… that serves neither person. But sometimes we could give up something for the good of another. Not because we have some self interest, not as a compromise, but just because it helps someone else, because it pains us to see someone else suffer.

(and in the end, that other is us)

I think about the work non profits do a lot, for some obvious reasons: I used to work for one, Greenpeace NZ, and I helped start another one, Engineers Without Borders NZ. Even for causes and purposes that aren’t particularly interesting to me, non profits are still close to my heart.

I appreciate the special something it takes for someone to decide they want to dedicate a massive amount of effort to something for a reason greater than just money.

But that’s not really what I want to write about.

What I’ve noticed recently is that the link between environmental issues and development issues is often over looked.

To be more specific – since no one knows what the hell ‘environmental issues’ or ‘development issues’ actually are! – I’m talking about the link between environment damage, destruction of habitats, pollution, climate change, etc.. and poverty, disease, hiv, political persecution, repression, etc.

So how are these linked?
It’s seems likely that all these issues are the result of the same mindset. But I’d suggest its actually a more direct link then that.
First just take a look at where a large amount of environmental damage is done, by whom its done, and who bears the brunt of the cost.
It often occurs in developing countries, funded by governments or large corporations in developed countries. And poor and underpriveleged communities often bear the worst cost: destruction of their home and the environments they need to survive.

People in poverty have little power (in our current world model anyway), and have little ability to protect their environment. They’re also sometimes desperate enough that they will take a short term deal to make it through… even if it makes things worse for them later.

If these people had more power – it would be much harder for us to live the way we do, exploiting them and their resources. We do terrible damage to our own countries environments. but not on the scale (and without being noticed) that it is in developing countries.

I used to think these problems were separate. And weigh up supporting environmental charities against development charities. Usually deciding to support those fighting climate change. Reasoning that there wasn’t much point helping developing countries, if our eco system just stopped functioning.
But really, you can’t have one without the other.
We need to have both.

I haven’t posted here for quite a while but I’ve still got quite a few drafts I haven’t edited. So I’m going to just post them with minimal changes just to get them out and clear a space.
Lets see how this goes

They start charities and non profits
They start social movements

These all require similar skills, spirit and courage… but have slightly different goals.

An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome.

- from Entrepreneur on Wikipedia

Bring your enthusiasm to life

Don’t settle for being a cog in the machine.

It’s really not the job your in that matters

But what you bring to it

I know I can bring real enthusiasm and passion to life
And I know from the people around me who do bring their passion too that it makes a huge difference to those they interact with

Let go

Share yourself

and see just how much richer life can be…

I read quite a while back in a post by Seth Godin on Chris Anderson’s book Free, that it doesn’t matter if we want Free, it’s already here anyway.

“Who cares if we want it? It is.”

The same is true of markets, capitalism, globalisation, etc. It doesn’t matter if they’re good or not, or if we want them. They’re here. We have to deal with them while they’re here (Don’t worry it probably won’t be forever).

That’s why Fairtrade is such a good idea, and micro finance too. They work with what we’ve already got, to make a positive change in the world.

Hopefully they’re the first of many good plans.

This isn’t to say that you should always just accept the status quo. But I’m not convinced you can ignore the whole of the current system. Take the bits you can work with, and refuse the bits that don’t work. Some great successes have come from those who chose to ignore the status quo, but usually only on a few key points – not everything.

I had an insight about choices recently. I was talking with a friend about going travelling overseas and he asked – “Why travel? What’s wrong with New Zealand?” . I didn’t have an answer, I just thought “There’s nothing wrong with New Zealand – I just want to travel”, but still he’d got the impression I was trying to get out of New Zealand.

Wanting to go somewhere else really doesn’t have much to do with New Zealand and what’s wrong/right here. The question was appropriate to where I was at when it was asked but as I moved past it I discovered gift.

When faced with several alternatives, choosing one of them doesn’t mean anything about the others.

This applies to other situations too:

• Ending a relationship doesn’t mean anything was wrong, it was just no longer what you wanted.
• Moving to another country/city/house doesn’t mean anything was wrong with the current one. You are just choosing to move to something else.

This is particularly relevant for me as I’ve recently accepted a job offer. This is a change from working as a freelance web developer, and happens when I’m really beginning to enjoy my work. There are even some things I’m not too sure about with the new job, like working more normal hours again!

But it’s a new challenge I’ve chosen. Hopefully I will enjoy it, I won’t know till I’m there. But I do know that if I compare it to freelancing then I’ll always find something to dislike.

Often when we make a change in life, we are asked to justify that choice. In an effort to justify ourselves to other, we sometimes make the way things were into  ‘the wrong way’, when in fact we  just chose a new way.

I originally wrote this post on Anzac day. At the dawn service that morning I was struck by a comment about along the lines of “We do not seek to glorify war, but to honor those who fought for our freedom”. It is worth remembering this – in choosing to not go to war does not in itself dishonor those who have fought for us in the past, it simply says that we have now choosen something different.

Again, this applys to many things in life: We do not have to dishonor our parents and/or ancestors when we choose a different path from them. I think we would be wise to understand their choices and the consequences, whether we disagree or not. Then choose our futures freely.

Choose the future while honouring the present & the past.