What Do You Stand For
Congress shall make no law respecting ...or the right of the people peaceably to assemble...while powerful, we must move from being against to standing for!
Privilege
Privilege is often invisible to those who posses it because it represents the absence of obstacle. A collective of unearned advantages, social buffers and systemic benefits that pave an easier path through life.
It was almost 11pm and Alicia’s mom realized she still hadn’t gotten her goodnight text. It was Alicia’s first year away at college and she promised to let her mom know she was okay. Almost as if the thought was a premonition, the phone rang.
“Hi mom…I’m okay…they finally let me make my phone call!”
Her mom was relieved…”What did you get arrested for this time?”
Alicia let out a short laugh, “We occupied the Provost’s office to protest tuition hikes and cuts to financial aid!”
“Are you hurt? Are you alone? Do you need money?” her mom asked.
It wasn’t the handcuffs, the chanting, the photo someone took of her sitting cross-legged on a cold tile floor beside three other students, her hair messy, her cheeks flushed, her eyes full of purpose. It was that last question that jarred Alicia!
She knew the money was there, because her family supported her in doing what she had just done. She knew her father would come get her. There would be money if bail was needed. They had connections and could hire a good lawyer if things became serious. She knew her family would be there for her. Finally she said “I’ll be fine, they’re releasing us with a desk appearance ticket.” She exchanged “I love you’s” with her mother and hung up.
At nineteen, Alicia understood it as family. In later years she would come to see it as a privilege. A cushion, an escape hatch, a way out of consequences that most people didn’t have. That night, she only felt proud. She was a freshman at Belvedere College and followed in the footsteps of her family, becoming an activist. She was against banks, against greed, against racism, against tuition hikes, against war, against however “the system” was oppressing ordinary people.
She was not wrong, that was the complicated part. Families were losing homes. Students were graduating into debt. Neighborhoods were being renamed, repriced, and shutting out the people who had once simply lived there.
Alicia felt outrage. Protesting gave the outrage somewhere to go. The meetings, arguments in dorm rooms, late nights, printing flyers, marches, people speaking in large words about power and injustice. Alicia loved the urgency, being useful to a crowd. She loved using her voice, one that others followed. She would never admit it, she liked being someone who was fighting against “the system.”.
She had met Sally Wainright in her freshman history class. To her surprise, they were in the same dorm. Very quickly they started sharing notes, having study sessions and more importantly, late night discussions on some historical events. Sally was impressed by Alicia’s commitment to social change. By sophomore year, they became roommates in the dorm, they were inseparable.
What We Sacrifice
There are times in life we have to make sacrifices, choices to support our kids, parents or a dear friend. Maybe there are 2 events happening at the same time and there is only 1 of me! What we don't often see is the sacrifices we make automatically because we don't know we have other options.
The Nature Of Work
The current narrative around how AI is going to change the nature of work is really just exposing an illusion we have yet to name. Those who are being paid the most are doing the least valuable work and those being paid the least are not valuable because they are easily replaceable. The system is inside-out!
* * * – – – * * * S. O. S.
Ironically, we sit in the silence of our aloneness, not realizing that the answer is obvious... we need others to achieve anything great in the world. It's time we notice what's needed, ask what we can do, and most importantly, find those who can help us.
The Real Cost
Supply and demand, marketplaces or advertising specials...how do prices get set? More important what does something really cost? In our current system there are many hidden and deferred costs. Yet amongst them all, there is a cost that we except as natural without ever questioning it...that cost DEBT.
How Would You Like To Pay For That?
In our current world our economic system siphons money out of local communities and into a financial system that's primary purpose is to generate more money. It doesn't create any value! What if it's possible to build a system that works feeds the local community first.
One Money To Rule Them All…
Our current monetary system is organized around debt-based fiat currencies. What if the failures we see in society are based on this design.
The Last Pod Caste
We seek content and information from a variety of on-line social media influencers and podcasters. What if this is just a way of avoiding the hard work of claiming our agency and actually having an impact in the world?
GURU – Gee, You Are You
We are living through a quiet collapse of trust. The old authorities still speak with confidence; governments, experts, institutions, systems; but more and more people can feel the fracture between what is said and what is lived. Where do you look for trust?
Becoming Hopetopian
We are living in a time that could be a pivotal moment in human evolution. Will our technology, in particular Artificial Intelligence, lead to a utopian or dystopian future? There is a different choice.
The Conversations We Need To STOP Having
Our current world is self-organized into opposing groups who engage in a dialog where no agreement is possible...the result, nothing changes.
Rules Always Fail
We live in a world that wants certainty, where there is a fear of uncertainty. Unfortunately one of he core tenants of physics is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Our human response to this, is putting in rules, and in that bureaucracies are born!
The Art of Failure
We live in a world that separates arts and science, the creative and the reductive. Its time to shift from an either/or to a both/and perspective.
Leaders Eat Last
In our current hierarchical world our power dynamic is top down, command and control...more simple power over and power without. In a new world we shift to a network model of power within and power with.
WWW – World Wide Why
Our hyper-masculine world is characterized by jumping straight into solving a problem, the what and how...never asking the why! And underneath this what and how, seeing individual needs, without identifying the greater need, the needs of the system.
Mirror, Mirror On The Bridge
In our current paradigm, money is power, the ability to channel capital is the ultimate power. Even when channeled to social impact it is often akin to putting lipstick on a pig...the underlying system doesn't change.
Walking Across The Bardo
We are staring out across a chasm, seeing the storms of multiple disasters approaching in the rear-view mirror...we need to build a bridge!
The Things We Don’t See Coming
We think we know, so therefore we do. And in that knowing we limit possibilities, miss what is right in front of us. This is where we miss the need. By taking a step into the not knowing, magic happens!
Good Problems To Have
We are living in what Buddhist philosophy calls the Bardo, the place between death and birth. During this time it's important how we navigate it, solving problems, the right problems at the right time. We must build a bridge from where we are to a future we must believe is possible.
The Girl Who Couldn’t Say NO
Sofia learned to survive by disappearing…until her boss tries to pull her back into a familiar trap. This time, she doesn’t freeze. She burns.
What You Heal, We Inherit
We’ve mistaken policy for medicine and spreadsheets for soul, but systems don’t heal unless people do. The violence of our economy, the brittleness of our institutions, the loneliness in our neighborhoods — these aren’t glitches; they’re the outer shape of inner wounds we’ve left unnamed. This piece makes a simple, demanding claim: what you heal, we all inherit. If we want a livable future, the work begins in our nervous systems and ripples into how we design, decide, and care for our shared home.
The Week The Lights Didn’t Go Out
Imagine a neighborhood anywhere in the world...winter has set in and all that comes with it. Something happens and in that moment contributionism comes to life...
The Flawed Economy
We’ve mistaken money for the economy and built our lives around a profit-centric world...like insisting the Earth sits at the center of the cosmos while the stars and planets refuse to align. What happens if we challenge that assumption, separate needs from desires, and redesign “the management of our home” around people and planet first?
Winter is Here
We have to face the reality of our current situation. Framed from the cycles of The Fourth Turning and redesigned through Living System Design and Contributionism.
After Times
With the crisis in our current social, political and economic systems accelerating, it is important to envision what comes next.
Alicia pulled Sally into her world: student meetings, parties, lectures, weekend plans made casually. In return, Sally brought Alicia into another world without even knowing it. When everyone was going out to eat, Sally would say “I can’t afford it.”
Alicia would say, “Just come, I’ll cover you.”
Sally’s response, “That’s nice, I can’t, that’s not how I was brought up”
In the summer between her junior and senior years, Sally stayed on campus. Alicia invited her to her family’s beach house. “It’s not fancy,” Alicia said.
“You have a beach house,” Sally said.
“It’s old.” responded Alicia.
With an awkward smile Sally said “Okay, it’ll be fun.” All the time wondering what Alicia meant by that last statement.
The house had gray shingles, blue shutters, old towels, and sand in the entryway even after being freshly swept! Alicia told Sally about summers spent there since childhood. To her, it was normal. To Sally, it was foreign. There was enough of everything. Enough rooms, food, and the flexibility where plans could change without anyone’s face tightening.
After dinner one night where Alicia’s father had talked to the girls about their plans for their senior year and after college. Alicia was planning to travel, Sally was going to start looking for a job.
Later that night, as they sat around the fire on the beach Sally said “do you know how lucky you are Alicia?”
“What do you mean?” Alicia said.
Tentatively Sally said, “you know how much I respect your activism, but I sometimes wonder if you know how privileged you are to be able to do it. And I wonder how much of a difference it makes.”
Alicia stared into the fire, pausing before saying “I never thought of it that way, it was how I was raised.” Yet it planted a seed in Alicia’s mind.
After graduation, Sally went home to Oakmont and started her job search. Alicia started traveling. She sent Sally pictures; Europe: London, Paris, Rome; South America: Rio, Buenos Aires, a small village in Peru. To Sally it was an unimagined freedom, for Alicia it was natural, yet that fireside conversation with Sally was ever present, “you’re privileged.”
Alicia got to see the difference between the developed world and the developing world. In Europe the familiar activists, protesting. What surprised her, in South America it was different, organizing. It showed up in Peru, in a small mountain town where rain had taken out a small footbridge. Without it, children walked the long way to school. Elders were trapped, unable to reach town. Women carrying food had to climb the hill slowly and stop halfway.
In Alicia’s world they might have protested to the government to do something. In their world, they organized and started rebuilding. When Alicia showed up she was ready to help, or maybe ready to be seen helping. She introduced herself to a woman named Milutza, explained that she had organized student actions in college, asked about schedules, materials, volunteers, and documentation.
Milutza listened. Then she handed Alicia a coil of rope. “Take this down,” pointing toward the river.
Alicia was surprised, it wasn’t what she expected, the rope was heavy. By evening, her hands hurt, her socks were damp. No one had asked what she believed. They only cared whether she did her part. For the next few days, Alicia carried rope, boards, water, stones, whatever was needed. Eventually she stopped trying to improve the work and started watching it.
She watched Milutza know who needed rest before they asked. She watched a man with bad knees teach a boy how to set a post. She watched a grandmother bring food and somehow settle three disagreements without seeming involved in any of them. Nothing looked like leadership as Alicia had experienced it. Yet it worked.
One evening, near the almost finished bridge, Alicia said, “I used to protest things like this.”
Milutza looked at the river. “Bridges?”
Alicia laughed a little. “No. Neglect. Poverty. A system that leaves people with problems they didn’t create.”
Milutza nodded.
“I thought being against it meant I was helping” Alicia continued.
Milutza was quiet for a while before saying. “Sometimes it helps, makes people aware.” Then, after another pause: “But in the morning, there still isn’t a bridge.”
In that moment what Sally had said to her around the campfire landed with its full weight. For all her activism, nothing had changed!
The next day she sent a new set of pictures to Sally, showing people working on the bridge, sitting together, covered in mud, with smiles on their faces. Showing the progress of the bridge. A community coming together to solve a problem. It was incomplete, but there was progress.
Along with the pictures, a note “thank you Sally, you made me see the world from a different perspective. These people showed me I can do more than protest. I can be a part of doing something about it.”
A few weeks later Alica stopped in Oakmont to see her friend. Sally could see something was different about Alicia. As they walked around Oakmont, and saw how the city was suffering in “the system.” The outrage was still there, but it was being channeled in a new way. Alicia was saying “we have to do something about this.”
As the days became weeks and the weeks became months, Alicia fell in love with Oakmont, the place, the people, the possibilities. One day, while Sally worked, Alicia walked through Oakmont and stumbled on the Community Wneeds Association. It wasn’t big, a small office, unpretentious: folding chairs, a noisy printer, a map taped to the wall, sticky notes on a whiteboard, organized under headings: housing, food, transportation, repairs, school lunches.
Alicia’s eyes had a distant look, thinking about her time with Milutza, the bridge, the rope, the mud. An older woman turned and looked at her. “Are you here to watch or help?” The force of the question brought Alicia back to the present moment. “I’m not sure yet,” Alicia said. “I’m trying to learn.”
The woman studied her, then pointed to a stack of papers. “Start there.” So Alicia started there. Not dramatically, not perfectly. She copied forms, made calls, took notes and brought coffee. She learned who trusted the association and who had good reasons not to. Learned how much work had been happening before she arrived, how they were building a different kind of bridge!
Privilege did not disappear because she noticed it. It remained in her education, her confidence, her family, her ability to survive uncertainty with more room than Sally had ever been given. She began to understand privilege less as a verdict and more as a debt. Not a debt to be performed in public. A debt to be paid in usefulness. In staying, in listening, in becoming dependable.
Alicia decided to stay in Oakmont, close to her friend, but more importantly close to work that she knew made a difference. She changed her worldview from being against things to taking a stand for something new, different, better.
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE.
She believed that, and knew that it was unfinished. Knowing, when the morning comes, someone has to build the bridge.