Feb 22 2008
Gandhi, Mead, Ben, Jerry…
Just a few days ago I published this quote by the great Indian Leader and pacifist Mahatma Gandhi:
Be the change you want to see in the world
Today (again by chance?) I stumble into this video on the same issue, titled
“We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For“
Unfortunately the video likeso many has been removed from youtube. Meanwhile Barack Obama has used this quote in some of his speaches.
At the end of this video there is a quote by the great anthropologist Margaret Mead:
Never doubt, that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. In fact it is the only thing that ever has.
I first read this Mead quote in the mid 90´s on one of my first journeys to the USA. I loved eating “Ben & Jerry´s Ice Cream” and read through their company brochures in one of their parlors in Georgetown Washington D.C. I still have and sometimes read their brochures about their concept of “caring capitalism“. The second proverb I remember from my visit to their shop is: “If it´s not fun, why do it?“. It was very popular among me and my friends at that time. On one of my later journeys I visited the Ben & Jerry´s factory in Burlington, Vermont including a cemetery for Ice Cream Flavors no longer produced. Today Ben & Jerry´s is no longer owned by its founders. They sold it to Unilever. So there Vision is just a brand of onoe of those multinationals.
A brand is not a mission. But that is a different story.
Ein Video passend zum Gandhi Zitat vor einigen Tagen. Am Ende des Films steht ohne Quellenangabe: “Never doubt, that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. In fact it is the only thing that ever has”. Dieser Spruch ist von Margaret Mead. Das wiederum weiss ich durch einen Besuch in den Eiscreme Salons der beiden Vermonter Freaks Ben & Jerry. Vor vielen Jahren in Washington DC. Ein spannendes Konzept, ihr “caring capitalism“, was sie leider nicht daran gehindert hat, das Ganze an Unilever zu verkaufen, wo die Vision der Gründer doch arg zu blosser Markenpolitik degeneriert.
