Curing Cancer In Savannah, Tennessee
I am sitting in the Green Acres RV Park outside Savannah, Tennessee after “sleeping in” on our rest day until seven AM. Appropriately there is a large map of the United States in front of me with a map of Hardin County below. There is a picture on course artist paper of a riverboat named the Pickwick Delle. “PickwickDelle.com” it says on the boat’s side. People are milling about on the top deck none looking at the camera.
There is an “Elect Kim Stricklin Hardin County Mayor” pamphlet on the desk. The one page pamphlet has a picture of Kim and his wife Patti. There is a list of accomplishments including: “County Mayor (Executive) 1990 – 1994, No Property, Sales or Wheel Tax Increase, Ability to Manage Money and 60 years and 6 generations in Hardin County (parents J. R. and Dorthea Stricklin). The pamphlet promises to “focus on the future” and work for “all Hardin countians”.
It is raining hard today, much harder than yesterday. Good thing today is a rest day because riding a bicycle in this down pour would be impossible. We pulled into Hardin County yesterday after forty-three miles of riding in the rain, had a great free lunch for cancer at the Uptown Restaurant and met the owner Gail and a group of older gentlemen, the town fathers we would later learn, who also love to ride bicycles.
Last night Brian had a chance to attend a discussion of the Dead Sea Scrolls and discuss Martin’s Ride with people from Savannah. When doctor came over to pick Brian up he pulled a large bill out of his pocket handing it to me he said, “to help with your expenses.” We’ve encountered this kind of selfless generosity many times during Martin’s Ride.
I wrote a piece before Martin’s Ride started about how strangers always save our lives. Now I don’t like the word “stranger”. Perhaps we are all connected in many ways? Some ways we know. You probably know people who know people I know. This “six degrees of separation” idea is real and why Facebook and LinkedIn work so well. If we are all connected by networks within six people what other connections exist we aren’t aware of or don’t realize?
One of my basic beliefs is people want to help each other. We are genetically programmed to do so (read NonZero by Wright or Mind of the Market by Shermer or the Selfish Gene by Dawkins). I’ve already received tremendous amounts of help from strangers. Strangers have quite literally saved my life, so Martin’s Ride wasn’t so much a test of the “people are generous” idea as an opportunity to experience it all over again many times.
Our generosity to each other is something I will never tire of experiencing or thinking about. In fact, I believe there is a new altruism; a new altruism fueled by social networks, a shrinking planet and genetics. Dawkins book The Selfish Gene, contrary to its title, discusses how humans learn quickly to cooperate and assist. Dawkins had computer programmers try to find the most optimal solution to The Prisoners Dilemma. You are familiar with the prisoner’s dilemma if you’ve ever watched a single episode of Law and Order. The dilemma is how can a “prisoner” maximize personal benefit over time. Turns out cooperation is the key to less jail time or more rewards (the game is often played with material rewards instead of sentences). Dawkins’ computer programmers, try as they may, could not beat cooperation as a strategy for personal AND social gain.
We know this. Deep down we know cooperation is our best solution. When I worked at M&M/Mars the Five Principles of Mars, something that may be the best corporate mission statement work ever done, called this concept “Mutual Benefit”. Mars understood their “prisoner’s dilemma”. It was possible to achieve unilateral benefit but not advisable. Singular benefit created repercussions and problems. Mutual benefit, allowing the other party in any transaction to benefit AT LEAST AS WELL AS Mars meant the benefit would endure and so too M&M/Mars.
New altruism updates the Golden Rule’s ideas. Instead of “Do unto others as they do unto you” new altruism says helping others is really helping yourself. This is another key to Martin’s Ride. Curing cancer in our lifetime is simultaneously a selfish and communal idea. Like 11 million other people and projected to be 30 million by 2025 I have cancer. Curing cancer helps more than people who have cancer. Let’s use our six degrees of separation rule again and simply multiply 11 million by 6. Sixty-six million people are being directly affected by cancer as I write this.
Cancer is more than a disease. Cancer is a fear. Many think cancer equals death. I’ve been involved in many high performance business teams. Never in thirty years has any one of those teams EVER started a project with the idea that something was impossible or simply too daunting. We never gave up before we started. Cancer has this “it always wins” reputation. Yes more than half a million people die yearly from cancer. It is a killer, but cancer can be defeated or, if not defeated, tamed.
The key to curing cancer is a doctor who we met at lunch yesterday pulling a big bill out of his pocket and saying simply, “this is to help with your expenses”. Our new and growing altruism is how we will “cure” cancer. This is why I wrote this idea when thinking of Martin’s Ride:
Together we cure cancer in our lifetime.
Thanks residents of Savannah, TN, Soddy-Daisy, TN, Durham, NC, Dillsboro, NC and Statesville, NC for taking Martin’s Ride in with generosity, care and love. Together we cure cancer in our lifetime.
Martin Smith
Green Acres RV Park
Savannah, TN
July 13, 2010