We need to talk about an aspect of our culture, a pervasive value that has impacted all of us, for our whole lives. Perfectionism. If we were lucky, it first happened in our early school days. Most of us were informed by kids or teachers about how we didn’t measure up. Not pretty, not smart […]
One of my book groups recently read Madeliene Albright’s book, Fascism: A Warning. It was published in 2018, though much of it written before Donald Trump was elected to the presidency. While it didn’t succinctly describe the current situation in dire terms, it did describe many historical examples of rule by fascists which allows one […]
The only way we are going to get through this marathon of malaise, with our well-being intact, is to practice self care. “Yeah, it’s tough out there.” “No,” I say, “it’s impossible. That’s different than tough. It’s worse.” A fellow prison volunteer and I were talking about the wages for unskilled work, and how a […]
The structure of a system, even if populated with fair-minded or generous actors can give rise to vast inequalities. For the last several years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with the gifted faculty who teach leadership at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. In particular, I find Adam Grant’s research has […]
We cannot individually grasp the whole of reality, so we need one another to figure it out. One of the most important things to do now is to learn to listen to one another. It’s so easy to get rooted in that place where what we individually see, hear, and feel are the one Truth, the […]
Vices such as boastfulness, cruelty, vulgarity, spitefulness, pettiness, dishonesty, excessive ambition, violence, and/or greed, lead me to respect a person less. I’ve been thinking about respect lately. I think people have pretty different working definitions. So maybe I’ll share, and you can add your thoughts? For me, there are different kinds of respect. And I […]
Educated enough to be comfortable. Comfortable enough to care more about decency than money. I was as surprised as anyone about the outcome of the election. I should have seen the clues. I’m from rural America, Pennsylvania, the Keystone state. In our monthly pilgrimage there, we drive through a lot of small towns, and almost […]
In a recent meeting held by SURJ-Boston (Stand Up for Racial Justice) and the Boston Anti-Racism Knapsack group, we talked about all the laws and practices that have led to structural racism throughout our history. This is the list we came up with collectively; it is not exhaustive. From a systems thinking point of view it is quite impressive. […]
Systems thinking tools focus on cause and effect relationships that together drive the behavior of things we care about over time. Profits are just one of those things. This blog is part four in a several part series on Incarceration & Health. Below are links to the three previous blogs in this series: Part I: […]
This blog is part three in a several part series on Incarceration & Health. Here are links to the two previous blogs in this series: Part I: A Lifelong Sentence Part II: Families Repeating Patterns Preface I welcome your comments. On this topic, I am groping in the dark. I opted to publish this before editing […]
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