Peter Dalglish, ’79, is the founder of Street Kids International. Days after I entered the legal profession in 1985, I was hired by the United Nations to coordinate humanitarian assistance for 50,000 children displaced by famine and drought in the Sudan. My responsibilities included supervising the burial of dozens of Chadian girls and boys in empty food grain bags marked with the words “A Gift from the People of the United States of America.”Over the last 20 years I have worked with bruised and battered children confined to squalid cells in jails and mental institutions, with girls struggling to read and write in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, and with seminomadic children living on abandoned oil barges on the White Nile in South Sudan. I launched my first project for street children in Khartoum in 1986, after catching a 10-year-old who was breaking into my military-specification Land Cruiser with a bent nail. The boy inspired me to open a technical training school for displaced kids. Since October 2002 I have been working on child-labor issues in Nepal. Tens of thousands of destitute children have been lost to India, where most end up employed in factories and brothels. The worst part of my job is losing a child to disease or indifference, or witnessing a child’s despair after having his shoe-shine kit confiscated by the policeman who demands a bribe. I visit jails and often recognize kids who once were enrolled in our programs. Now all hope is lost. I wish people knew this: You can find courage in the most unlikely places—in a refugee camp, a jail cell or a classroom full of Tibetan kids struggling with their English grammar lessons. For children still confined to carpet factories and coal mines, I dream of linking them with Stanford’s talented alumni, and employing technology to provide an education not tied to traditional classrooms.
Zoe Lofgren, ’70, represents California’s 16th district in Congress. When all is said and done, the American people decide the kind of American government they get. It’s largely a myth that elected officials disregard the viewpoints of their constituents. That only happens when voters forgo the opportunity to express their point of view or when an elected official (knowingly or not) is preparing to leave his or her elected office. A dozen unscripted, individual letters on a subject are enough to galvanize a member of Congress representing 670,000 people.
Doug Osheroff, the J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood Professor of Physics, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1996. I wish that more people had an understanding and appreciation of how science is done. That is, how scientists are able to expand the boundaries of our knowledge and at the same time develop new techniques and technologies that really do benefit mankind.
Meredith Phillips, ’65, is editor of Perseverance Press. I wish more adults knew the difference between lie and lay. And between it’s and its. And that forte has one syllable and comes from sword. And that you can’t give people free reign, only rein. And that you don’t tow the line, but toe it. And on and on. . . . Basically, I wish people realized that you can’t learn to use words correctly just by hearing them and watching TV, but only by reading. And that reading is the best escape in the world.
Aparna Mehrotra, ’82, MA ’83, is the focal point for women in the Secretariat of the United Nations. Gender balance and gender equality—both in terms of numbers at all levels of the labor force, and in life in all its dimensions—benefit all.
Spencer Sherman, MA ’69, PhD ’71, is a clinical psychologist in Santa Barbara, Calif. Psychotherapists know that it’s okay to be not okay. That everyone suffers sometimes. That suffering is not unending, unendurable or without value. That confusion and despair have meaning, and that out of them wisdom and compassion emerge. That help exists and that it is sage to ask for it. That strength can be built and happiness learned. That trials and mistakes are necessary parts of that learning. That there is no life free from pain. That it is the pain that drives the growth. That flowers thank the soil from which they rise.
Dave Shore, ’75, is a partner at Marin Financial Advisors in Larkspur, Calif. Growing money can and should be a joyous, low-stress endeavor. If you find work you enjoy, save 10 percent of your income over your lifetime and invest in globally diversified index mutual funds, you will most likely enjoy a life of great choices and be free of money stress.
James Mendoza, ’93, MA ’94, is a firefighter and paramedic in San Jose. Part of his answer appears in the print magazine. Here are a dozen things that I wish people knew:
- Life is short, and any day may be your last. Live so as to not regret your last day.
- Family is the most important thing in our tenuous lives.
- Family is what happens to people when they spend time together. (We spend 24 hours at a time with our co-workers, whether we like them or not.) Eat meals together, with the TV off. Work on projects together. Laugh together.
- Fire destroys completely. Have spare copies of photos in other places, with other family members, because you can never replace photos destroyed in a fire.
- Fire moves incredibly fast, so take a minute to notice the exits. Too many people have died because of not knowing where the nearest exit was, and they couldn’t react fast enough to the spreading smoke and fire.
- When you hear sirens, proceed to the right side of the road safely and quickly. After all, we may be going to help your loved one.
- We really don’t mind if you bring your son or daughter over to look at the fire engine; we love it as much as they do.
- Thank you for the outpouring of love after 9-11. It moved firefighters beyond words, and made the toughest of men cry.
- Yes, you really do have to be a bit crazy to run into a burning building when everyone else is running out.
- It’s okay to be afraid, as long as you still do your job.
- Life is easier when you work as a team.
- Dark humor is an excellent coping strategy for seeing horrible things.
The following is supplemental material that did not appear in the print edition of Stanford.
Angela Jones, ’94, is a New York City trapeze artist. Circus people know how to take their work seriously without taking themselves seriously. Working professionals know how important it is to be completely focused, whether simply checking rigging or preparing for the hardest trick. However, this daily intensity almost requires a certain amount of playfulness. Once offstage or back on the ground, we can go from thirtysomething to preteen with just the slightest provocation. These moments of pure goofiness keep fear and anxiety in check, and remind us that our jobs are still about creating more joy.
Toni Turner Morley, ’60, is an art therapist who worked, most recently, with the Northern California and Northern Nevada chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. I wish that everyone knew that making art bypasses the verbal defenses that are so easy to use in what is primarily a left-brain society. When a trained therapist looks at a child’s picture of his or her family, you can see what the child has no words to tell you. Individuals painting or drawing their feelings take what is internal and put it on paper, which serves to externalize and make it safe to talk about the feelings that they are experiencing.
Ron Swenson, ’64, MS ’68, is a founder of ElectroRoof, a solar installation firm, and EgoSage, an educational services company. Within the energy profession there are groups (for example, ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas) that are grappling with the challenge of “peak oil.” While the efforts of Al Gore and others have raised awareness of the threat of global warming, society is not in any way prepared for the imminent decline in global oil production. In the near term, declining production will impact certain countries more than others. Cantarell, the largest field in the Western Hemisphere, is declining rapidly. Over the next couple of years, Mexico's economy will be hard-hit. Without imports, the USA’s domestic oil reserves would be exhausted in three years at the current rate of consumption. The Oil War option is losing favor. Technological breakthroughs will be too slow and voluntary conservation will be too shallow to avert widespread disruption of economic activity, especially transportation and consequently food. Lacking the political will to make conscious, rapid, drastic changes, Americans will be subjected to Mother Nature’s adjustments. She did not negotiate with the Mayor of New Orleans; nor will She negotiate the American Way of Life when Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field collapses of its own accord. Liquid fuel substitutes (tar sands, coal-to-liquids, oil shale, and even ethanol and biodiesel) are carbon intensive and will only exacerbate global warming. Plus they cannot be scaled up on a timely basis. It would take one new nuclear power plant every week until 2050 to fill the oil gap. (Minor detail: uranium shortages would emerge long before 2050, unless as-yet-unproven breeder reactors come on line soon.) While it will take time, direct conversion of solar radiation to electricity (photovoltaics and concentrating solar power) can be scaled up. One viable sustainable alternative also exists for repetitive travel (for example, commuting—more than half of all urban transport). It is the rapid build-out of solar powered electric vehicles on fixed guideways (“pod cars”). A continuous solar array, well within the width of the guideway, is sufficient to provide 100 percent of the power required for this efficient form of high-capacity transit.
Lynne Morrow, ’76, is an assistant professor of music at Sonoma State University. I’m a musician—a conductor and a performer. What we know is that there’s nothing better than working collaboratively at a high level. That exhilaration keeps everyone flowing! We know that learning new things (music, instruments, composers, yoga poses) keeps you young at heart. Your brain loves that! We know that art is what makes life worth pursuing and striving toward (even if it’s not as lucrative as that computer job I used to have). And we know that being nominated for the Grammy is a win, not a loss.
John M. Fischer, ’75, MA ’75, a professorof philosophy at UC-Riverside, is the author, most recently, of My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility. I was curious about how my colleagues in the philosophy department would answer this question. One colleague said, ”Inspired by that wonderful old Encyclopedia of Philosophy piece on the subject, I would simply write one word: nothing.” He was referring to an entire encyclopedia article on “Nothing.” Two colleagues suggested Socrates’ answer that we know what we do not know. But another colleague replied, “Speak for yourselves!” Yet another colleague replied, “I’d take the opportunity to challenge the implicit presuppositions in the question—aren’t we philosophers supposed to be annoying in just that way?” Of course, Socrates was so annoying that they put him to death; typically, contemporary philosophers are consigned merely to unemployment or (in more fortunate circumstances) long departmental meetings.
I suppose I would want to distinguish between knowing a set of propositions in some special domain of knowledge, and knowing how to evaluate arguments. Sometimes philosophers make a distinction between “knowing that” and “knowing how.” This is a helpful beginning. Further, I would suggest that most philosophers are good at knowing how to bring out and judge arguments—to see their structure, and to distinguish good from bad reasoning. So it is not so much that we know a bunch of propositions in a special domain of knowledge, but I would say that we are good at identifying and assessing arguments. At its core, an argument is the offering of reasons to accept a conclusion based on certain premises.
This kind of “knowing how” is certainly an important skill in a world of rapidly changing realms of information and knowledge, when a specific set of truths can rapidly become outdated or irrelevant, and in which our political and ethical views are often called into question by competing views. Perhaps philosophers’ distinctive answer to the question is that “knowing how” has a certain priority over “knowing that,” although of course both are important.
Alvaro Fernandez, MBA ’01, MA ’02, is CEO and co-founder of SharpBrains, Inc. Many cognitive neuroscientists wish that more people knew how flexible our brains are throughout our whole lives and what a big difference we can make to ensure a healthy, fit, brain and mind. We can exercise our brains—not just our biceps.
Next Question: What don’t you worry about?
Send your response, with Just One Question in the subject line, to: stanford.magazine@stanford.edu.
