David Brooks is making me think again. This time he is pointing to the limits of policy. Yes, he’s throwing stones at what is a sacred cow for change makers of all stripes – and I’m glad he is doing it. As happens too often with Brooks, he gets dangerously close to cultural determinism, but it is by walking that line that he can manage to highlight some very important empirical patterns. Read More
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I’m a big fan of Kevin Kelly. His latest blog post reflects on what he calls “Two Kinds of Generativity” and it has me thinking about the next phase of movement. Kelly describes the evolutionary process of an innovation. He speaks of the first stage as one that is “vague, incomplete and open to change.” This first stage is appealing to the early adapters, “tinkerers, nerds, fans, and hacks who will make it do all kinds of things no one had thought of.” Read More
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In this post I take a look at the overlap and differences between three leadership approaches to which we here at IISC regularly turn in light of our bent towards social change and beliefs about the world in which we live.
Leave a commentHaving attended a community MLK Day celebration and listened to several radio programs today, I’m more convinced than ever that we’re missing the point about the meaning of Dr. King.
One student, to his credit, spoke of Dr. King’s opposition to discrimination and linked that to what he saw as injustice in our present day health care system. No one should be discriminated against – and everyone has a right to access health care. Right on! This young man got the point. But, sadly, he’s the only young person I heard today who spoke of justice or attempted to connect Dr. King’s legacy to current day justice issues. I heard several other middle and high school students say things like, “No one wanted to resist Jim Crow until Dr. King gave them inspiration,” or “He opened the doors for hope and then people walked through.”
Not quite. Read More
Leave a commentI just had the unbelievable privilege of facilitating the leadership convening of the Gathering for Justice at the Stone House in North Carolina. The experience left me with a powerful sense of being “on purpose” of doing precisely what I’m supposed to be doing in the world. I can only wish that more of us have that experience as we go about our work and our lives. There is more to say than I could possibly capture with a single blog post, but I’m not speaking in hyperbole when I tell you that this is the closest I have come to the potentiality of real movement.
The Gathering looks at juvenile incarceration not just as an issue, but as moral calling (this article just out today in the New York Times and if you are outraged, be sure to check out CJNY). Incarcerating our children is a counter-evolutionary move, it is indicative of a systems break down at the heart of our society. So the Gathering is not just about a compelling issue, it is about a daring to rethink how we go about movement. Read More
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