I recently watched a TED Talk where the speaker ended with a, to me, powerful line: “Beat a drum, build a tribe, start a movement.” I can’t stop thinking about it because […]
Social and Self-Help
Book Review: Building Communities from the Inside Out (By John L. McKnight and John P. Kretzmann)
If you’ve ever worked in community development, you’ve probably noticed that most efforts start with what’s broken (poverty, addiction, unemployment, poor health) and then try to fix those things by […]
Social and Self-Help
The One Thing That Keeps a Community From Falling Apart
Accountability is truly the glue that holds a community together. Without it, even the most well-intentioned group begins to unravel. People start slipping away; first in spirit, then in action, […]
Health and Wellness - Social and Self-Help
Eight Simple Rules for a Better World
Today I was volunteering at a community free clinic that was being held in a Boy Scout lodge on the grounds of a Methodist church. It’s a nice little place, […]
Finance and Economy - Making Money - Social and Self-Help
The Garden and the Machine
For most of modern history, our financial systems have behaved like machines; cold, efficient, and designed for extraction. They take from the earth, from labor, from communities, and call the […]
Finance and Economy - Making Money - Social and Self-Help
The Beauty of Natural Systems (and the Tragedy of Human Ones)
Nature has a knack for doing things in a beautifully simple way; and it makes human invention look almost comical. A tree, for example, doesn’t hold a committee meeting to […]
Health and Wellness - Social and Self-Help
Building a Bigger Life Around the Pain
You can’t get rid of painful memories. They’re not stains you can scrub away or files you can delete. They’re part of the structure now; like knots in a wooden […]
Finance and Economy - Making Money - Social and Self-Help
Why Relationships May Outlast Hierarchies in a Changing World
Hierarchies and Human Connection For most of human history, societies have leaned heavily on hierarchy to keep order. From monarchs and generals to managers and mayors, people have organized themselves […]
Social and Self-Help
The Antichrist, the Katechon, and the Shape of Things to Come
When Peter Thiel starts talking about the Antichrist, it sounds at first like eccentric theology from a Silicon Valley billionaire with too much time on his hands. But if you […]
Finance and Economy - Making Money - Social and Self-Help
Can Capitalism Ever Be Ethical?
Every so often, someone suggests that capitalism can be saved if we just give it a good scrubbing. Wash off the grime of corruption, ring it out, hang it in […]