Thoughts on Helena Christensen's Blog

Helena Christensen's recent thoughts about the impact of the warming global climate on her mother country of Peru published in Huffington Post on Friday November 20 touched a nerve. I have climbed in years past in the Sierra Blanca range north of Lima, where each massif of lordly peaks must be acquired by traveling down a long half-pipe of a valley rimmed on the east by the glistening reflective white of the Sierra Blanca and on the west by the barren light-absorbent summits of the Sierra Negro. To climb the high peaks, it was necessary to ascend the abrupt 1000 ft wall on steep, switch backed roads to the floor of the 'quebrada', the narrow canyons within the cluster of high peaks formed like toboggan chutes aimed at the valley below. Even when I was climbing there 15 years ago, each quebrada held a reservoir of water contained only by an earthen dam formed from the glacial moraine. The size of the reservoir, and the consequent pressure upon the natural dam, corresponded to the rate of melt of the glacier that fed it. Even then, disastrous floods and mudslides into the valley below were not uncommon, including the burial of an entire town. Helena's words about the particular vulnerability of Peru's high altitude regions and the economic hardships the people must face ring true, and any climber can assure you of the rapid rate of snow and glacier melt on the high peaks of the Sierra Blanca by its impact on the 'classic' and long standing climbing routes which are no longer climbable or forever changed because of it. Helena waits with bated breath for an outcome from the global environmental climate conference in Copenhagen that few even remember is about to happen. And after the meeting we will probably go comfortably back to forgetting again, after a smaller than usual spate of dire predictions and concerns expressed in the media, increasingly hamstrung by the dying of newspapers. It is only human for us to do this, because the nature of the impending global disaster is such that suffering occurs not universally but regionally, such as in high altitude Peru or the desert regions of Africa or the tundras of Alaska. To the inhabitants of these regions, it is global disaster. To those of us inhabiting areas not yet impacted, it is a news bite. And unless gasoline disappears, or potable water can't be acquired, or our home is flooded, it is easy to assume the mantle of business as usual.

What is EQ and Why Do We Need It?

This week the unbelievable occurred. A fifteen year old girl was gang raped by 6 or 7 young men while another dozen or more watched, laughed, and took photos. This act was not committed by a street gang in LA but by a group of students attending a homecoming dance at the local high school in Richmond, California.
Lessons that teach children to 'get along with your neighbor' have always been high on the agenda at preschools. During the next several grade levels social skills continue to be an integral part of school lessons until a baseline of acceptable group behavior is reached. After that, the time spent specifically on interpersonal skills begins to fade to make room for areas of academic intelligence; reading, writing, and arithmetic. But are schools truly preparing a young person for a fulfilling and useful life by neglecting emotional and social skills in later years?
Daniel Goleman brought this subject to the nation's attention in 1995 in his book, "Emotional Intelligence". He wondered why some students with high IQ's did not succeed in school as well as others less gifted intellectually. And why talented adults sometimes fail where less talented adults succeed. He concluded that education cannot be accomplished in the abstract but requires a balance of emotional and intellectual skill sets. This work set the stage for a new look at the acquisition of a full set of necessary human capabilities including self-awareness, self-discipline, and empathy, disciplines for regulating emotion termed 'emotional intelligence', or EQ. These capabilities are not set at birth, but must be nurtured and developed. A comprehensive life skills curriculum that included EQ skills would likely have prevented the tragic incident at Richmond High.
A successful EQ curriculum is developmental and chronologically allied with brain and biological maturation. Those major transition times of childhood, passing into grade school and again into junior high or middle school, and the traumatic yet critical entry into puberty, are crucial times for emotional and social lessons. The emotional effects of these passages, if particularly distressful, can echo and re-echo down life's future corridors. An EQ based life skills curriculum will establish both a realistic anticipatory understanding and a framework of behavior expectations in advance of the development of the actual cognitive capabilities that follow puberty and that will allow informed decision making in the future.
Empathy, that 'sense of other', and the self-awareness from which it stems are the building blocks of civilization and the humanity that holds it together. Who would wish their child to react to inhuman acts such as beatings and rape with laughter and photo taking? Who would not prefer their child to use that same phone to dial 911 and to raise a cry of distress? But such a culture does not develop naturally; schools must become actively involved in developing curriculums that shape the culture. In the words of the song from South Pacific, “They must be carefully taught!”.