jonathan stegall

Recently, I finished reading The Wal-Mat Effect. It has been a thoroughly gripping and unique read, unlike any other business book I have ever read.

I read a decent number of business books. I enjoy a lot of the ones I read, especially the ones that really examine culture. The impact of business on culture, the impact of culture on business, ways to do business better, and so on. Many times, they are incredibly relevant to theology, ministry, and the church as well as business.

The Wal-Mat Effect does not have a surface relevance to these things. On the surface, it sets out to examine Wal-Mart and its impact. The impact that it has on business: its own business, the business of its competitors, the business of its suppliers, and the business of the rest of the world.

The reason that this is so gripping is that it reaches to the way Wal-Mart impacts me, in my shopping, my ways of spending money, my expectations of what things should cost, and the ethics and decisions of my financial life.

It seems that this is a bit dramatic, but after reading throughout the book about the scale that Wal-Mart has, and its power and influence and insistence on secrecy, it feels that the book’s impact is entirely justified. I want to recommend it.

Consider the following:

It’s time to do two things: To acknowledge in public policy terms that there is a difference between a $10 million corporation, a $100 million corporation, and a $100 billion corporation. We need to acknowledge that scale matters. And we need to start a fresh process of understanding by insisting on a level of information from megacorporations that they will vigorously resist providing. As with other shifts in corporate accountability, we can be absolutely confident that as soon as the new era of megacorporation transparency is in place, not only will we benefit, but the companies themselves will benefit.

There are many people who are aware of what this transparency, if it ever comes, will reveal about Wal-Mart. The interesting thing is that it will reveal much of the same about companies across the spectrum of large American business, from Target to Starbucks.

What I am interested to learn is whether or not this kind of knowledge will change us. Will more people make informed decisions about how, when, and why they shop? Will there be more real choices, with real differences, available to the consumer?

Jim Walls, who wrote God’s Politics, recently released The Great Awakening. Along with the book’s release, he is traveling around the country on The Great Awakening Tour.
The event is described like this:

“What would it take to end extreme poverty, to address climate change, to create peace?

For too long, a narrow religious agenda has been used like a wedge to divide people. But a wider and deeper vision of faith and values is emerging. It’s a renewal of faith – a great awakening – that combines personal faith with social justice. A new social movement is on the rise. The Great Awakening is upon us. “

From time to time, Sojourners, Jim Wallis’ organization, seems a bit naive with the way it wants faith to impact politics. Some of this is the language that is used to describe things, and some of it is probably what is actually being expressed.

But with things like this book, and the tour accompanying it, they really perceive something that is happening, and the potential for growth to happen, in the way that faith relates to politics in the United States. A recent blog post from Jim Wallis says this:

This doesn’t mean young evangelicals are automatically becoming Democrats (and I don’t think they should). It does mean that their agenda is broader and deeper, no longer beholden to a single partisan ideology – more concerned with 30,000 children dying daily of poverty and disease than with gay marriage amendments in Ohio.

Theologically, these 20-somethings are abandoning a worldview that reduces the gospel of Jesus Christ to an afterlife-oriented, fire-insurance, salvation pitch. These are Matthew 25, Luke 4, and “Sermon on the Mount” Christians. They really believe that the kingdom of God represents God’s best hopes and dreams for this present age, not only for the life to come.

This goes alongside any number of other things that God is doing in the United States, specifically. He’s doing amazing things in the rest of the world, and it is easy to be discouraged by the situation here in the States. He is asking us to begin to see past our attempts to box in the ways we expect and want him to interact with us. For many years, there have been people at the forefront of new things that he is doing, and I believe that things like this indicate that their message can have an impact.

If you are a member of Facebook, or if you aren’t, please consider the following:

Not For Sale (NFS) is a campaign of individuals, musicians, artists, people of faith, businesses, schools and sports teams united to stop human trafficking and end modern day slavery in our lifetime.

On Facebook, there is currently an award of $50,000 US being offered to the organization (through Causes) that gets the most unique donors in seven days. The seven days ends at Noon PST (3pm EST) February 1st. The amount of the donation is not the issue; the number of donors is. Not For Sale is requesting $10 donations, as that is the minimum qualifying amount.

For more information, see the Not For Sale Giving Challenge 2008 cause on Facebook. This alone is worth giving in and getting a Facebook account, if you don’t have one already.

There are over 27 million people around the world who exist in slavery. Today. Not 1864. Today. It is more of an issue than it has ever been in recorded history. It’s wonderful to see action being taken, and ways in which we can be involved in that action.

To give a little perspective on this post, I began creating websites in August of 1997. I was 14 years old. Back then, knowing how to make a site with frames made you look really cool. Yahoo! didn’t own Geocities. Google didn’t exist. AltaVista was a big deal. Netscape was fighting hard against Internet Explorer.

User generated content, for most people, boiled down to hosting a free guestbook where people could leave comments about the whole website. Commenting on individual pages? Users collaborating to create high quality content? Didn’t happen, for most of us.

For the entire time I’ve been creating websites, I have been intrigued by the possibilities that come from the web, and from design as it exists on the web. Possibilities of expression, exchange of ideas, open communication, and any number of other things that, although I knew they were cool, had potential that I didn’t understand back in the days of free hosting on Geocities.

Since I was in art school, I have been increasingly interested in the ability of design, both on the web and in general, to encourage change in society. Web design is interesting because it puts a bunch of different parts of a bunch of different media together. There are concepts of various kinds of graphic design (posters, magazines, newspapers), architecture, and any number of other things. This is part of what makes it exciting. All of these media, including web design in itself, have ways of presenting messages to society in powerful ways. Ways that connect with people.

Sometimes, the job of good design is to get out of the way. To keep the user from paying attention to it by avoiding flashy kitsch and overall busyness so they can really pay attention to the content. Sometimes, though, the job of good design is to work with the content. To be a part of the content. These are the best websites. These are the ones I want to create. This is why design, in and of itself, began to grab me as a real way of engaging with and challenging society, to bring about change in individuals and push for change in societies.

From time to time, I run across organizations and opportunities that exist to promote design as a way of enacting social change. I try to keep up with and learn from these. One of these is Design Can Change, which does multiple things. It brings together designers who care about issues of climate change and the environment, and it also serves as a poignant and beautiful message that pushes for action.

There are also Centers for Sustainable Design, combinations of theology and technology, beautiful responses to human crisis, and any number of other things. I want to continue learning about these kind of things.