“Be anything you like,” Thomas Merton once said, “be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success.”

I love this quote. It’s a reminder to slow down and reexamine what we’re doing.

The fierce drive to accomplish something and make a name for ourselves too often takes us down the wrong path. In the end, the qualities we’re looking for are those that go with being free of worldly success.

Ultimately, the aim must be to become indifferent to what people think of us — to become immune to applause and unmoved by criticism. There is integrity in that.

The goal must be to be present with what we’re doing — so present that we do it gracefully, effortlessly. There is great joy in that.

Success, when it does come, tends to be relatively short-lived in any case. That means that we’re all thrown back on ourselves sooner or later. When that day arrives we have no choice but to find something more lasting to pin our hopes to.

And that, I believe, is what Merton was saying.

Incidentally, he became very successful himself. But he understood what few of us, in our quest for worldly recognition, realize — that celebrity, when freed of the trappings of ego, is simply another path of service.

About a dozen of my photos from Burning Man 2009 appear in the October issue of Common Ground magazine. It’s a Bay Area-only publication, but you can view the full issue online at www.commongroundmag.com. My images begin on page 18.

Check out the spread here.

I was delighted by the news that this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics went to Elinor Ostrom (along with Oliver Williamson). She’s a maverick, someone who has challenged conventional wisdom in her field for some time. By recognizing her work in understanding resource management systems, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is acknowledging the need for new models and new ways of thinking in economics. It was a bold choice, and I think a very good one.

The subject of her research has long been considered peripheral to the main business of economics. But today, as we face a global recession and a very serious environmental crisis, her work has special resonance. She’s shown that the three dominant economic models used for dealing with collective resource management — the tragedy of the commons, the prisoners’s dilemma, and the logic of collective action — are all inadequate. They are not necessarily wrong, but the conditions under which they hold are very specific. Her research suggests that there are other viable systems that work. For example, she has looked at Swiss grazing pastures, Japanese forests, and irrigation systems in Spain and the Philippines based on sound principles of collective decision-making that are both democratic and empowering to ordinary people.

Ostrom was the first woman to win the economics prize, which is significant. And with the exception of the prize to Amartya Sen (for his work on welfare economics) it’s one of the few awards that have recognized alternatives to the traditional neoclassical economics. I’m confident that her ideas will help us broaden our thinking to make resource management more democratic, more participatory, more community-based, and above all more responsive to everyday citizens.

Read more:

• My review of Elinor Ostrom’s book Governing the Commons

It’s been a big week, juggling a thousand projects and, in the midst of it all, getting swept up in the media whirlwind surrounding the announcement of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama. Like many people I was stunned by the news. I certainly agree with the Norwegian Nobel Committee that no one has done more “to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” as the citation put it, and that thanks to President Obama the United States is now playing a more constructive role on a wide range of global fronts, from democracy and human rights to climate change and the reduction of nuclear weapons.

But prizes awarded to statesmen always present certain challenges. There have been about about three dozen such prizes, by my count. The most significant problem is that political leaders who win the prize are being awarded for work they were appointed or elected to do. If the fundamental task of a political leader is to keep the peace, as it were, then they hardly deserve a prize for that.

In his will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the prize should go to individuals who have won some victory for peace during the preceding year. But in the case of statesmen this rules out a longer term perspective, to say nothing of a deeper analysis of documents and other evidence about the underlying motives behind their efforts to solve conflicts and promote peace.

Few of the prizes awarded to statesmen have stood the test of time, in my view. Even the two awards to sitting US presidents (Roosevelt in 1906 and Wilson in 1919) were controversial. Roosevelt was hardly a man of peace, as we know, though he did manage to help bring the Russo-Japanese war to an end. And Wilson’s great achievement, the League of Nations, failed to accomplish what it was supposed to.

That said, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has taken an increasingly broad view of peace in the 21st century, defining it not in the narrow terms Nobel laid out in his will, but as a broad mission that must include work for human rights, environmental sustainability, international tolerance, economic justice, mutual understanding between peoples, and a range of other pressing challenges. From that broader perspective, the prize to Obama certainly makes sense and might yet serve its intended purpose.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has taken a gamble by giving the prize to Obama. It may weigh heavily on him now, especially at home. But in time we make look back on it as one of the best and most obvious of prizes, much as we now look upon the awards to Martin Luther King Jr., Dag Hammarskjöld, Nelson Mandela, and other great figures who were not only exemplary leaders but also champions of human rights, human freedom and human dignity.

For more of my thoughts on the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, check out the links below. I was interviewed for several newspaper stories and also appeared on a number of radio and television programs. I’ll be adding to the list in coming days as the clips are posted online.

• Wall Street Journal: An Award Often Tinged by Politics by Michael M. Phillips and Guy Chazan
• Toronto Star: Nobel Peace Prize Coveted, But Oh So Controversial by Olivia Ward
• Christian Science Monitor: With Elinor Ostrom, Oliver Williamson, US Nearly Sweeps Nobels by Mark Sappenfield
• NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: Examining the Road to Becoming a Nobel Laureate by Jeffrey Brown
• WYPR Public Radio: President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize from Midday with Dan Rodricks

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced in Oslo on October 9. In recent weeks, there has been a lot of speculation — as there is every year — about who will get the award. The Norwegian Nobel Committee will pick from a record 205 nominees this year (172 individuals and 33 organizations). While most of the names on the list are a well-kept secret, nominators sometimes make a point of publicizing their recommendations.

For example, we know that Íngrid Betancourt, the former Colombian senator and anti-corruption activist who was kidnapped and held by guerrillas for six years, was nominated by Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet. Similarly, Greg Mortenson, the American humanitarian and co-founder of the Central Asia Institute and Pennies for Peace, was nominated by several members of the U.S. Congress.

Unconfirmed nominees this year apparently include French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Do, Bolivian president Juan Evo Morales Ayma, Denis Mukwege and the Panzi Hospital of Bukavu, and the Israeli anti-nuclear activist and whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, among others.

As we move into the final week before the announcement, I’m inclined to favor a number of Chinese activists who have been pressing for basic human rights and expanded political freedoms in their homeland. Among the most prominent are:

• Hu Jia
• Sun Wenguang
• Liu Xiaobo
• Chen Guangcheng
• Gao Zhisheng

Anyone of them, individually or in combination, would be eminently worthy of the award — especially this year. 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the completion of China’s occupation of Tibet, and the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, two events which continue to cast a long shadow over China and raise troubling questions about its dismal commitment to political freedom and basic human rights.

A year has also passed since the Chinese abruptly broke off talks with the Tibetans following the Olympic Games last year, clearly showing that the discussions were little more than a publicity stunt on their part and that they had little intention of granting the Tibetans greater cultural and religious autonomy.

Just as it’s been 20 years since Tiananman Square, it’s also been 20 years since the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Dalai Lama. It’s worth noting that for the first time he has started to express his doubts about the effectiveness of his policy of nonviolence and open dialogue with the Chinese. That was most likely an important factor in his decision last December to enter into semi-retirement. As we know, he’s been embroiled in a complicated chess game with the Chinese for decades, but time seems to be running out and the Chinese are clearly well aware of that.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee could do worse than to call attention to the plight of those in China advocating basic human rights and cultural and religious tolerance. A prize to those advancing the cause of freedom in China might also lend much-needed support to the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama himself.

No Chinese person has ever been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize (although some Chinese might claim the Dalai Lama as one of their own, he hardly qualifies). That could change this year and I for one hope it does.