By Jen Matteis, Source Community
Desk Chief:
For someone who has
written three books since February, you’d think that Christopher Dunn of Madison would consider
himself foremost an author—but that isn’t the case. For Chris, writing is
merely a method by which he can convey his ideas.
“It seemed to me a
necessary evil,” Chris says. “I made a discovery and I wanted to get the
discovery out.”
Since he began
writing four years ago, Chris has produced a number of books geared towards
that goal, including Living Aligned, Leading Aligned, and What You Can Bee.
While the first two are geared towards adults, the latter is a children’s book.
“We can improve our
world if we understand the principles of these books,” Chris comments. “Living
Aligned is more focused on how a person would use this to create balance in
their life. Leading Aligned is geared towards the policy maker who’s looking to
align an organization.”
While they could be described
as self-improvement books, the goal goes much further—and involves the
transformation of society as well as self. Chris describes his discovery as a
paradigm shift that would create balance through the alignment of many parts.
“It’s a small tweak
that could turn a big ship around,” he notes. “We can do it before we hit the
iceberg, we can do it after.
“I’m hoping that
people do it before the iceberg melts completely,” he adds, referencing global
warming.
As a former employee
of WorldCom, a company rife with fraudulent bookkeeping that went bankrupt in
2002, Chris gained a personal view of the importance of corporate
responsibility.
“That made a huge
impression on me,” Chris says. “We need to fix the imbalances and the greed.”
To this end, his
propositions include a plan that would create a company retirement fund
directly linked to its legal fees. Lawsuits would be paid out of the account,
giving employees an incentive to avoid litigation.
As for the root of
his greater framework of ideas, Chris credits the works of Guido Calabresi, a
legal scholar, judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, and former dean of Yale Law
School, considered one of
the founders of the field of law and economics.
“I found as I wrote
that the greater significance of his work had been overlooked,” Chris says.
“His work could be used to solve a lot of socioeconomic challenges today.”
Chris, a former
accounting major at UMass Amherst and a recent graduate of Pace Law School in White
Plains, New York, has
expanded Calabresi’s thoughts on the rigid structure and flexible
responsiveness of law into the realm of the individual and society in general.
“When I was done
writing about how law could be made more responsive, I realized that structure
and responsiveness, alternately called rights and society responsibility, are
two pieces in the broader social institutions,” he explains. “These two
functions are in every process in the universe and they’re in our daily lives.”
As for the
specifics?
“I’m asserting the
discovery of a law of nature,” Chris says. “It becomes too big a topic for an
article.”
Christopher Dunn
will present “How to Be Happy and What It Means: Designing a Happy Life” at a
meeting of the Happiness Club of Greater Milford on Dec. 11 from 6 to 8 p.m. at
the Golden Hill Health Care Center, 2028 Bridgeport Avenue, Milford. To find
out more, email Chris at christopherdunn7@hotmail.com.
Pictured: Christopher
Dunn and his laptop are a familiar sight at the Madison Starbucks, where the
author pounds out his big ideas into digital form.
Photo by Jen Matteis
To nominate a person
of the week, call 203-245-1877, ext. 6119 or email j.matteis@shorepublishing.com.