Lamed Vovniks, all

Whew! Liz and I are at a crossroads today. Our HumanKind Media launch in early September on ending poverty and our efforts to help people change their media diet to 5 percent more "possibility" and 5 percent less conventional media brought us more readers than we had hoped. And, our HumanKind Challenge #1 helped purchase a bunch of bed nets (which, by the way, is one of the single most effective things you can possibly do to help end world poverty). We're still shooting for 2,000 nets, but we're patient.

This first month of having HumanKind out in the world has left us feeling a bit like Alices in the wonderland of citizen media, social entrepreneurship, and good works. We could be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of truly cool ideas, people, and organizations out there, but actually we're just giddy and excited. Tomorrow we'll begin covering a whole new issue, one we're really excited about, with all new stories, interviews, book suggestions, and more, plus a new HumanKind Challenge. Until then ...

Over the past few months of discovering -- or uncovering -- the beautiful hearts and courage and energy of so many people around the world, I have been reminded of one of my favorite stories, the story of the Lamed Vovniks (pronounced la-med vov-nicks), otherwise known as the Thirty-Six.

I am not a Jewish scholar -- I'm not even a scholar or Jewish, actually -- but I do love this story. It comes from the Torah and tells of 36 just men who, unbeknownst to everyone, including themselves, carry the suffering of the world with them. They are touched and moved by human suffering like no one else on the planet, and without them, the world would end.

I'm also not a mathematician, but I checked out this cool population chart on Wikipedia and spent way too much time with a calculator hypothesizing on the possible growth of Lamed Vovniks over two and a half millennia. I included my own assumptions from the population growth chart and some estimates for the exponential passing along of the wisdom and just-ness genes. Here's where I should mention I'm not a geneticist, either, but I am someone who will go to amazing lengths just to make a point.

In spite of the fact that I don't know what the heck I'm doing, I must still tell you how excited I am that my little study shows that the number of Lamed Vovniks on the planet is way into the millions -- which explains why everywhere we turn, we find more and more people who, sometimes unbeknownst to themselves, are carrying the suffering of the world, helping create a place of possibility and community.

So if you'll allow me these small liberties with genetics and math, you can agree that now there are way more than thirty-six (but the name is so cool, we should keep it) of these wise and just women and men in the world. And even though Jewish scholars, mathematicians, and geneticists of the world may find my methods slightly unusual, I think I'm still going to proclaim that 5,453,000,000 people later, we all have some Lamed Vovnik in us. (Note: Feel free to send any concerns you have about the scientific portion of this blog to liz[at]humankindmedia.com. Just kidding.)

Hope you'll come back again tomorrow and in the coming weeks for more good media about the possibility of healing the world. Send us your ideas, and get those other LV's out there who don't know yet the awesome power they have to come visit HumanKind Media, too.