Laslo Zsolnai is a professor of business administration, runs a center for business ethics, and cofounded a conference for transatlantic business conference. He called himself a businessman several times during the process of the lecture, yet he promotes a business model that seems unmarketable. He spoke at length about the failures of business leadership in terms of ecology. However his methods for being ethical seemed to make competition and free-market systems negatives. While not all people in the world are huge fans of a competitive free-market, I think most Americans tend to be.

Zsolnai stated that business are so engaged in self enhancement that they are opened up to justifying destruction and poor practices. He said that businesses must pass the test of ecology, being favorable for future generations, up to 200 years, so that they can live a better life than previous generations, and it needs to positively influence the social community. He even cited three businesses that have employed these methods and have operated successful business. However, I doubt that these three would be successful should they operate in a market where every business uses the same practices.

These businesses can operate like this because they can charge more and market sustainability. They operate in their own market and cater to people who will make the concessions for a “friendlier product” by ecological standards. However, if every business uses these options and drives the price down through competition how will any company be profitable while giving the future generations a better style of life. If prices have to go up across the board, what does that say for the lower class? If business close, what does that do for jobs?

Businesses must promote sustainability and good practices however I can’t see looking 200 years into the future and making decisions off of lofty predictions to be a good idea. If Henry Ford had to determine if he would build the Mustang and F-150 based on global warming, millions of cars may have never rolled off the assembly lines. I think Zsolnai has good intentions and favorable ideas. However I don’t see his encouraged ideas being sustainable in a competitive market.

The last lecture I wrote on was for Václav Klaus in which he spoke about his experience as the past President of the Czech Republic and his comments on Friedrich Hayek.  He spoke about many of the challenges that he faced as a leader during the rise and fall of communism.  He was inspired by Friedrich Hayek because of his brilliance in how he thought about and wrote against socialism.  My favorite part of his lecture, and honestly, the part I followed most clearly, (Klaus spoke English but it was noticeably difficult to follow his lecture), was when he spoke about the student protests and how his own son was involved in one of them and turned to his dad, the President, and said something along the lines of: “we’ve done what we can, now its your turn to make this happen.”  It was very interesting to hear about how his son and the other students and young adults motivated him and others in the government to fight for change.  Eventually the economy did improve and social issues became less and less of a problem, but it was a difficult time for those living through that experience because it was dangerous and volatile.  Many of the questions he was asked afterwards were about the current economy situations in Europe and the United States and the strength of the Euro.  From what I understood, he is not a fan of the Euro but he believes if they can work together to figure out a just way to bail out the failing countries, the currency can still be strong.

The first lecture I attended was Zach Wahls’ when he spoke about marriage equality.  Zach comes from a “unconventional” American family in that he has two mothers.  It was interesting hearing someone our own age with such a personal story talk about the importance of marriage equality.  Zach actually became a “famous”, if you will, through youtube when the video of him speaking for marriage equality in front of his state’s legislature went viral.  Being so young, his story became inspirational because it highlighted the fact that our generation understands what love is and does not disrespect others because of their sexuality.  He used many personal stories about his mothers to bring his point to life.  He spoke about how they are actually a typical family who love each other, fight, support one another, and learn from each other.  His point: there’s really no difference between you and me…just because I have two moms doesn’t make me any less of a man. Zach’s talk showed how leadership can come from any person regardless of their age, and that personal experiences have huge impacts on the way people lead and encourage and inspire others to follow in their footsteps.

This afternoon was a brilliantly beautiful one and I spent an hour of it strolling around the sculpture garden at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I went to a free how to talk on landscaping given by VMFA’s head horticulturalist and it was both informative and enriching! Again, my friends and I were probably the only ones in the group under 60, but I didn’t really mind considering the weather and scenery. The man giving the talk spoke on the underlying structure in the sculpture garden and the drainage system that is important because a significant portion of the garden lies above the parking garage. Additionally, he pointed out a variety of holly found in the garden that had the convenient property of being less flammable than most. For that reason, they use the shrubs a lot in California and places where fires are more prone to happen.

The horticulturist then showed us some trees that they had to plant differently than where they were initially because they were planted too deep. Apparently, one should plant a tree so that the tree roots start to branch out right where the soil meets the trunk. If soil comes up much higher, the tree can actually suffocate. We ended the talk at the chapel where there was a beautiful flowerbed with some varieties of tulips in it and the plants all were of the “sorbet” variety. Each flower had a different “flavor” like blueberry, lemon, etc. It was a very interesting talk and I learned a good bit about both gardening and the sculpture garden!

I went to the brown bag lunch to hear about ”Interpreting the Beach Boys: Sun, Surf, and the Quest for Fulfillment,” a talk given by Dr. Dagger. Dr. Dagger is a political science professor and the topic of his talk was his interpretation of the Beach Boys as Christian missionaries. He started his talk by explaining that people who are interested in politics need to also pay attention to those that are apolitical like the Beach Boys. He compared them to Diogenes who carried a lamp around in broad daylight during the time of Plato to find an honest person. Diogenes and the Beach Boys believed that other people lived a phony life with pretentious ideals and they needed to return to nature. The Beach Boys emphasis on on the universal reflects their sense of their Christian mission. Dagger argued that they were pioneers of Christian rock and the quest for fulfillment was understood and they sought full communion with God. The ocean mentioned in the Beach Boys songs is a metaphor for God and the sun is a homonym for Son (Jesus). The most shocking argument he made was the the song Good Vibrations is about the Holy Spirit.

Overall Daggers talk was interesting but highly unconvincing. I heard rumors after the talk that the lecture was meant to be a joke, but I have a hard time believing that an academic event sponsored by the university would be a joke. He also failed to support his argument with characteristics of the actual Beach Boys that would support the notion that their music is missionary work.