You Can’t Just Lean on a Shovel and Pray for a Hole.
I guess it sounds obvious when you say it that way. But, people do it all the time. We hope for better relationships while isolating ourselves from…
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Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Reach, and Freedom of Ownership
I’ve been thinking a lot about social media. Specifically how it’s been coopting me to do its dirty work. How it’s been brainwashing me, slowly and imperceptibly,…
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The Darjeeling Limited: Letting Go of the Baggage
On the surface, it’s a story about three brothers traveling across India by train after the death of their father. But like many of Wes Anderson’s films,…
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The Real Work is Stewardship
For many years, I believed my work was about changing things. I believed the challenge was to build better systems, create stronger networks, develop new models of…
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How Metaphor Shapes Our Experience of Reality
One might think that metaphors belong in poetry and literature. We tend to see them as decorative language; colorful ways of expressing ideas that could just as…
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Tending the Social Garden: living systems have their own agency
“If you can see patterns across systems, connect people across networks, and inspire culture toward a shared purpose, this is your moment in history.” When someone hears…
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Paleolithic Emotions with God-Like Power
Someone mentioned the following quote (usually attributed to E. O. Wilson) in an essay recently: “The real problem of humanity is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval…
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Does Meaning Even Matter?
Meaning Has Nothing to Do With Purpose. And I’m going to make a bold statement: Meaning is connection. If we look at what is meaningful in a…
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The Long Migration of Power
Given this crazy situation in which we find ourselves geopolitically and politically, how can one not spend a considerable amount of time thinking about the subject of…
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Let Community Service Be Your “Bling”
For a long time, I’ve noticed something that seems almost universal in communities that are struggling economically: status still matters. In many ways, it matters even more.…