Introduction to Let's Be Well's Website
Our decision to host a website has been influenced by a book called The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for The New Yorker.
It's been easy, over the past few years, to decide that we didn't know how to host a website, we didn't have the time to maintain one, and we don't really have anything to say that is different from anything else on the web. But none of that is important if we believe that "little things can make a big difference."
Part of the thesis of Gladwell's book is that ideas and messages have tipping points, dramatic moments when, like epidemics, they explode upon a society and infect it. He believes that understanding the life cycle of cultural trends in terms of disease epidemics can help us "start and control positive social epidemics of our own."
Since January 1993, we have been infecting a corner of southern MN with a wellness message with a Christian worldview. It is centered around a plant-based diet that emphasizes the importance of eating living food, that is, food with its enzymes intact.
Although we have lost count of the number of those who have taken our 10-week classes, we do know that people from 37 communities around Northfield have participated. Others have been impacted by the Optimal Health Seminars we have sponsored every other year through the summer conference facilities at St Olaf College*, beginning in 1996. Some of these people are still following their own form of what we teach; others find it too rigorous and try something else. Since we do not prescribe a particular diet, but rather describe a number of healthy plant-based diets, we do not notch our belts with our success stories. Rather we see ourselves as reporters and resource people.
Gladwell's Tipping Point describes several laws of disease epidemics that can be applied to social trends. Much of the following has been culled from an interview with the author reported by Michael Cromartie in the August 7, 2000 issue of Christianity Today.
First, there is the Law of the Few. In a disease epidemic, a few do all the damage and all the spreading. In society, certain charismatic personality types play important roles. Gladwell identifies "connectors"–a small number of people who know a lot more people than the rest of us. There are also "mavens," who specialize in knowledge accumulation; we look to them for insight or expertise. "Salesmen," who have gifts of persuading others, are the third type. In our Let's Be Well classes, our summer seminars at St Olaf*, and in our newsletters, we have made good use of connectors, mavens, and salesmen.
Whether our trying to infect in a culture dominated by animal products by exposing that culture to the advantages of a plant-based diet will result in an epidemic depends on the other principles Gladwell describes. His second law is the Stickiness Factor. The common cold is not considered an epidemic because it doesn't last very long. The flu, on the other hand, sticks around long enough that if you're on your back feeling miserable for two weeks you remember it, at least as long as it is changing your life. Gladwell says, "The same is true of ideas. For an idea to take off, it must be more than simply infectious. It also has to make a lasting impact on everyone it infects, which is that additional quality of stickiness."
We're not sure how to make the message of Let's Be Well sticky. We do know that the nine years we have followed a plant-based diet have had a profound impact for good on our own health, and also on the health of many of those who have welcomed our message. I am encouraged by the thesis that little things make a difference, and some of my favorite childhood stories like "The Princess and the Pea," and many of Aesop's fables have imprinted that idea deep into my psyche. So we keep sending our message, though seminars we offer, and through our newsletter–and we have decided that one additional way to disseminate it can be through the web.
Gladwell's third point is the Power of Context: "external circumstances are incredibly powerful, and human beings are much more sensitive to their environment than they think they are." The application I see for our wellness message is that there has never been a better time to disinclude conventionally-raised animal products from one's diet. I like to say, "it's not God's fault; he made animals and called them good. It's not the animal's fault; they do not enjoy the environment of the factory farm where they are shot full of hormones and antibiotics. It's not the fault of the family farmer who wants to make a decent living doing what he believes is a service to his community. It's about safety–choosing to avoid the disastrous results on the health of North Americans that has been caused by human greed. It is sad that the lowest common denominator influencing what we eat is whatever produces the biggest profits for agribusinesses, that have made it their priority to get rid of the family farm."
We believe that a small group of people can begin a social trend away from the three-square meatbased meals that cost our parents' generation their health. We want to be part of that trend. Although I have historically called myself a "gatherer," in Gladwell's terminology, I may be a connector, since my paper newsletter goes out to over 1000 people. The resource people we invite to speak for us through videos in our classes and in person at our Optimal Health Seminars are the mavens and salesmen. We'd like to use this platform to introduce you to a number of people whose ideas we have come to respect.
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* St Olaf College is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, MN. It is not affiliated with Let's Be Well, Inc.
ph:(507)645-7202, (877)6-BE WELL fax:(507)645-2594
e-mail:LetsBeWellInc@charter.net
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