The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men (2 page)

This book is inspired by Alima’s memory. But beyond being a celebration of her, it is a tribute to the quest undertaken by a small number of heroic idealists. It is a tribute to the imaginations of unreasonable men.

—Philip M. Boffey, “Malaria Vaccine Is Near,
U.S. Health Officials Say,”
New York Times
, August 3, 1984

 

 

 

I
N THE FALL OF 2009, I was invited to speak at a gathering of foundation and nonprofit CEOs from Massachusetts. I’ve spoken to many such groups over the years, usually about nonprofit effectiveness and strategies for reaching scale and sustainability. This was different, a setting unlike any I’d
encountered, as was the theme I was asked to address. It became a turning point in my thinking about the ingredients needed to succeed at the kind of work in which we engage.

The invitation came from the Pucker Gallery in Boston, which was showing the work of a renowned potter, the late Brother Thomas Bezanson. His pottery includes tea bowls, vases, and large decorative plates known for their elegant glazes. His work has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston’s Museum of Fine Art, the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, and many other prominent institutions.

I know little about pottery and ceramics and had never heard of Brother Thomas. But the gallery owners, Bernie and Sue Pucker, are active in Boston’s philanthropic community and we had mutual friends and interests. They asked me to speak on the connections between the spirituality of Brother Thomas’s art and spirituality in social justice work. It was virgin territory for me, requiring more than the usual amount of preparation. I visited the gallery several times to learn more about Brother Thomas and his work.

I prepared my talk at the same time I was working on this book. Science and pottery might seem to have little overlap, but what I was finding most exciting in my research for the book were the qualities of character and entrepreneurial strategies that led to discoveries and breakthroughs. They had relevance beyond any single project. They were pertinent to my own life’s work of trying to end hunger and to a plethora of seemingly impossible-to-solve issues, such as climate change, education, human rights, and health care. Such qualities
and strategies are not always as obvious and familiar as the more concrete external resources we reflexively seek, such as money, technology, expertise, and political support. But that doesn’t make them less essential. Like diamonds deep beneath the surface, their scarcity and invisibility make them all the more valuable to capture and bring to light. As Antoine de Saint Exupery’s fox said to the Little Prince, “what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
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Character qualities are especially critical for tackling problems that affect people so politically and economically marginalized that there are no market incentives for solving them. My dozen years on Capitol Hill and in presidential politics, and quarter century in the nonprofit sector, taught that those problems seem never to go away and are the toughest of all to solve: poverty, disease, ignorance, inequality. Traditional approaches always fall short. People who devote their careers to such problems are simultaneously admired and dismissed as idealists. In the absence of a new way of thinking, the frustrating cycle of finding and allocating hard-won resources, whether public or private, toward problems that resources alone can’t solve, futilely continues.

Such pathology is discouraging to the increasing number of people who desire to make a difference. They want to give something back, but are not sure how to do so most effectively. The nonprofit sector is growing rapidly and is increasingly diverse. But it seems perennially hobbled by shortages of money and talent and by old traditional ways of doing things. Too often, good intentions stand in for
transformational thinking and disciplined strategy. Many well-meaning organizations, efforts, and movements fail to live up to their full potential.

But what is full potential? And how can we discover it? Here, the detour of trying to understand Brother Thomas through his art was profoundly revelatory.

To read the basic biographical facts about Brother Thomas Bezanson, you’d think he’d lived an ordinary monastic life. He was born in Nova Scotia in 1929, graduated from the College of Art and Design there at the age of twenty-one, and then earned a degree in commerce from St. Mary’s University in Halifax. He’d entered the Benedictine Monastery in Weston, Vermont, by the age of thirty, and earned a doctoral degree in philosophy at Ottawa University in 1968. Brother Thomas became artist-in-residence with the Benedictine Sisters in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1985, and he died, at the age of seventy-eight, in 2007.
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But Brother Thomas was far from ordinary. His work has appeared in dozens of public exhibits in some of the most prominent museums in the world, as sought after today as it was during his lifetime. And then there is this curious fact: Of the first 1,200 pieces he created, Brother Thomas broke 1,100, a ratio he adhered to throughout his life. He routinely destroyed hours’ and days’ worth of solitary creative effort and disciplined craftsmanship.

Brother Thomas lived by a unique set of standards. Even when his pots were good, they were not good enough, begging the question: Not good enough for whom? Would the flaws even have been noticeable to anyone but himself? Yet, no matter how good they may have been, they were not good enough for Brother Thomas. As much as others may have admired them, they did not represent the version of himself that he was determined to express. They were not true to what he believed to be his highest potential.

It’s not that Brother Thomas was aiming for perfection—he was wise enough to know that is unattainable. But he was aiming for the best possible. What distinguished him from his peers, and what accounted for his success, was a more expansive vision of what could be accomplished. Impractical was not a disqualifier. Nor was inconvenient, expensive, or extremely labor-intensive. These were merely obstacles to be worked around or run over. They rendered his quest more difficult, but in no way altered the reality of what he knew to be within reach.

Most important of all, he was not just aiming for the best possible but was holding himself accountable to the highest of standards. In an essay in
Creation Out of Clay
, a collection of his art and writings, Brother Thomas wrote: “If I were a pottery manufacturer, then losing half of my work would be madness. . . . To be unfaithful to my own inner vision of what is beautiful-to-me would be the beginning of an inner lie . . . that would soon render my work inauthentic.”
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Extensive photos documenting Brother Thomas at work show a man, not surprisingly, as physically strong as he was mentally tough and determined. Large, round, black-rimmed glasses are all that soften the Zeus-like look bestowed by a large and long head, thick tight curls of grey hair, and a speckled full beard. His powerful hands shape the clay into the most delicate-looking vessels, at times so lathered in wet clay, and so sturdy in appearance, that it is hard to tell where his flesh ends and the pot begins.

Working with little else but those hands, and occasionally a stick or knife, Brother Thomas produced a stunning range of art. A fire burned within that was every bit as intense as the fire in his workshop’s kiln. And he put it to the same use: hardening his determination to work according to his own vision, no matter what others might have thought.

For Brother Thomas, good was not and never would be good enough. It’s an admirable, even inspirational, philosophy. But it might be better suited to the monastery than the marketplace. Breaking 1,100 of every 1,200 pots could also be interpreted as stubborn, eccentric, unrealistic, or unreasonable.

“Good but not good enough” implies a restless and relentless push for more, a refusal to accept what others accept. It borders on hubris that nearly disparages the ease and comfort most of us are content to seek and embrace. But aren’t these qualities often embedded somewhere in the foundations of great achievement? Aren’t they always?

In the DNA of every great and worthy breakthrough is a gene encoded with the instruction that good is not good enough. It is not only in Brother Thomas’s pottery: It was also in Joe DiMaggio’s swing of a bat. It is visible in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and audible in the strains proceeding from Yo Yo Ma’s cello. It was evident in Rosa Parks’s belief that a seat in the back of the bus was not good enough, and her refusal to accept one. It prevailed in NASA’s determination to reach the moon and Gandhi’s determination that India reach independence.

It would be easy to confuse this quality with a classic work ethic, the kind that leads a Boy Scout to an Eagle badge. However, good but not good enough is not just about practicing longer, working harder, or being more competitive. Instead it is a deeply intrinsic drive to achieve what others have dismissed as unachievable, or have simply not been able to even imagine. It’s a drive powered by internal vision and compass and indifferent to external expectations, conventional wisdom, skepticism, or even ridicule. It demands a willingness to take risks that often seem unreasonable right up until the moment they succeed.

Eradication of the threat of malaria throughout the world is the kind of challenge that demands unreasonable imagination, a willingness to break a lot of pots before expecting a solution.

The audacious goal of saving the lives of nearly 1 million children a year—the number currently dying from malaria—will require new breakthrough thinking, considering the half
century of high but continually shattered hopes in the history of malaria eradication efforts. Brilliant research by dedicated scientists across the globe has taken place over the past fifty years, most of it against the backdrop of the incremental progress that was believed to be all that was possible at the time. And yet the problem persisted, with the number of malaria cases actually rising instead of falling around the world.

What was needed in the seemingly quixotic quest to create and manufacture an effective vaccine for malaria was the stubborn conviction that what could be accomplished was greater than what anyone else in the field had thought possible. Good was not good enough.

Many of those pursuing social change have reached a similar place—a place where incremental progress has led to a frustrating plateau. And then along comes someone who decides to turn the old methods upside-down and do something different. Whether with hunger, health care, housing, schools, or any of dozens of other issues, a dividing line has grown ever brighter: On one side are the many efforts to ameliorate the symptoms of a problem; on the other are extraordinary efforts to attack the root causes and eradicate it altogether. That line marks the difference between those content to stand on good intentions and those willing to risk a public commitment to a specific, often ambitious outcome.

Wealthy donors, foundations, and others are increasingly gathering on one side of that line. It is creating a sea change in the conduct of philanthropy and explains why
there is so much emphasis today on more focused investing for impact, strategic management, and technical assistance; measurable outcomes and greater transparency; and the scaling of evidence-based programs. From small family and community foundations to massive institutions like the Kellogg and Ford foundations, there is long overdue reorientation and refocusing underway founded on the impatience that accompanies the idea that good is not good enough.

Share Our Strength went through just such an evolution in thinking and strategy, which gave me a firsthand perspective of what is involved. We had to establish a priority: Was it to feed hungry people, or to address the root causes of what made people hungry and try to eradicate them?

The urgent and immediate needs of people who are hungry often overwhelm the more ambitious target. When you look into the eyes of those who are suffering, whether from sickness, cold, or hunger, or just because they lack opportunities enjoyed by the rest of society, it can sound callous to say, “Sorry, I’m devoting my energy to attacking the root causes of your suffering, but unfortunately can’t address your suffering itself.”

Share Our Strength began in 1984 as a grant-maker and for many years funded hundreds of anti-hunger organizations across the country and around the world, awarding more than $100 million in grants by 2010. We didn’t compete for existing philanthropic dollars but brought new resources into the community. We funded the operating expenses of organizations that no one else wanted to fund.
We were nonbureaucratic, reliable, and loyal to those we funded. We received great press for our work as well as awards and recognition. Everything we did delighted everyone—except ourselves. We got to a point where we didn’t want to just feed people. We wanted to end hunger. And that required an entirely different approach.

As we thought about how to pivot and achieve that goal we heeded the advice of social science writer Jonathan Kozol, who said that one should “pick battles big enough to matter, but small enough to win.” The battle to end childhood hunger in the United States was just such a battle. Kids in America aren’t hungry because there isn’t enough food but because they lack access to public food and nutrition programs, and that’s a solvable problem. But it meant that, like Brother Thomas, we had to break a lot of our own pots. We had to confront the notion that good was not good enough. It was not sufficient to please other nonprofits, reporters, politicians, or even funders. We had to achieve the best version of ourselves that we could be. We had to work differently.