Upstream Is Not Charity; When Doing Good Makes Financial Sense
For most of modern nonprofit history, we’ve raised money by telling stories of need. We show the hungry child. The overwhelmed mother. The struggling family. And we…
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Swimming the Mississippi of Life
Sometimes I think living in this world is like floating down the Mississippi River. You didn’t choose the river. You didn’t choose the century. You didn’t choose…
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What If Your Neighborhood Became an Intentional Community?
What if nothing changed… and yet everything did? I don’t mean selling your house and moving to a commune where everyone owns exactly two spoons and a…
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Comfort, Conviction, and the Line in the Sand
A couple of years ago, there was this idea of “quiet quitting.” It was a trend where people would show up for work but do the absolute…
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The Party is Over
Since the end of World War II—and with the birth of the mass marketing industry—we have been slowly replacing connection with consumption. Our lives used to be…
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Why Small Communities are the Survival Strategy of the Future
This is an edited and recycled piece from the past. Enjoy. It doesn’t take an economist to see what’s happening. We all know that we’re in the…
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On Free Markets, Capital, and the Illusion of a Perfect System
I had a brief exchange with someone a few days ago about capitalism and free markets (then sussed it out further with ChatGPT). I found it very…
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Mutually One-Way
I started exploring this subject with the following short essay… Parasocial Relationships I heard someone mention this word recently, and I thought it was interesting. “Para,” in…
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Loneliness Capitalism
I just ran across a video on YouTube titled Loneliness Capitalism. That’s awesome. What an interesting idea. And no, I don’t mean loneliness is awesome, or that…
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Entropy and the Cost of Holding Things Together
Entropy is a word that sounds scientific enough to be safely ignored by most. A physics term, yes. A classroom idea, maybe. Something about heat death and…