building a new world

freedom doesn't become real just because it's written into founding documents. It has to be experienced — in neighborhoods, schools, libraries, and local digital spaces. It's in the daily work of building trust, solving problems together, and showing up for one another that we bring life to our universal ideals. That's the work of local community.

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Generative Engagement, as a model, is a way of thinking about how you make moment-by-moment choices to interact with others to create generative space between you. It asks that you consider three conditions* in your interactions to shape patterns of generative engagement.

• You stand together, sharing identity. You come together, across your

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I don’t have any answers because I don’t think there are any. But I’m fond of Margaret Wheatley’s framing of creating “islands of sanity,” which a kind reader reminded me of in the lovely comments of my last post. These islands are crucially not places of retreat, but rather of contribution — hyperlocal, small in scale, yet deeply meaningful. To... See more

Their way of adapting, the way they have to be resilient, is through mutual care, listening to others, accepting difference and pluralism, and being, in core ways, other-focused. The acceleration and accumulation of overlapping crises made our interdependencies — otherwise masked in slow violence and harm — more obvious. Technology and social media... See more

Why would I care about the “way things are” if I’m actively trying to change that?

“Our friends broaden our field of concern; they get us involved in the world, and they build the trust that human beings appear to require to open up to new ideas. Their indirect influence achieves more than arguments, especially from strangers, ever could. In other words: when it comes to persuasion, it’s not the conversation, it’s the... See more

“If you want a new world, start making it right now, in whatever you are doing.” This is the best advice I ever had, it came from Brian Eno. If you imagine the world you would like to be in and start making objects, systems and collaborations that belong to that world, that world comes into being.