Love & Work A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.
Last weekend Debbie and I xc-skied for the first time of the year at our beloved Prospect Mountain. While there was only 3 inches of sticky snow on unfrozen ground, it was enough to attract about 30 die-hard skiers to gather in the lodge for the first time since 2019. Of these regulars we know at least 20 by name. We brought braised short ribs, mashed potatoes, vegetables, and chocolate chip pound cake. We enjoyed a proper Sunday dinner around a table with friends.
On the last Friday before Thanksgiving I hope that you are embracing your communities, too.
Happy Friday.
Peacemaking The never-before-told story of a friendship between two of the most well-known peace icons of the twentieth century.
"Thich Nhat Hanh wrote an open letter to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 as part of his effort to raise awareness and bring peace in Vietnam. There was an unexpected outcome of Nhat Hanh’s letter to King: The two men met in 1966 and 1967 and became not only allies in the peace movement, but friends. This friendship between two prophetic figures from different religions and cultures, from countries at war with one another, reached a great depth in a short period of time. Dr. King nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. He wrote: 'Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.'”
Society, Systems Thinking, Futures Thinking The 2018 Camp Fire was the result of system-wide failure. What would system-wide health look like? What is possible now?
"In 2018, the historic Camp Fire destroyed the town Paradise and killed 85 people. In its wake, the community gathered to talk about their values and enact them in the rebuilding. Their vision ensured housing and employment for the survivors, and an economy and community that are resilient in disaster.
"This (very short) film is set 50 years in the future and reflects on the rebuilding process in Paradise. It is comprised of 12 original paintings documented from start to finish with stop-motion. Stroke by stroke the artist creates each painting, mirroring the process of a community manifesting a vision. With each step the vision becomes clearer. The film is a blueprint for communities around the world who are facing disastrous conditions and seek to create a better world."
Society When societal values compromise what's best for us
Political scientist Deborah SchildkrautCREDIT: JAMES PROVOST (CC BY-ND)
"For political scientists like Deborah Schildkraut of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, the US response to the pandemic can be seen through the lens of American identity. For more than two decades, Schildkraut has been studying what it means to be American, a topic she explored in an article in the Annual Review of Political Science. In it, she wrote that scholars increasingly regard American identity as a social identity, 'which refers to the part of a person’s sense of self that derives from his or her membership in a particular group and the value or meaning that he or she attaches to such membership'.
Society We have the capacity to build a better future right now. Some leaders are driving a fundamental redefinition of value by adopting new metrics and standards.
"We know the world we want. It’s spelled out in the Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030. Even before COP26, world leaders were well-versed in the dire situation at hand; so, why is it so hard to create a plan of action?
"Those of us working to bring to life this concept of “business as a force for good” often find ourselves running up against the same wall over and over: Our current economic system is not designed to balance ‘people, planet, profit’ — and often works against those trying to change it.
"So, how do we change the system we’re in? The pragmatic answer is to work with it. We must find a way to redefine value so that global corporate actors can harness their power, influence and potential to build a better system."
Futures Thinking "The average life span of a civilization is 336 years."
"As an archaeologist, I see evidence that a profound, perhaps apocalyptic, change is bound to happen sooner or later. There is a nascent field of study dealing with the likelihood and nature of societal disintegration, known as collapsology. In a recent book, two French collapsologists, Pablo Servigne, an agronomist and biologist, and Raphaël Stevens, an 'eco-adviser' who focuses on the resilience of socio-ecological systems, conclude that collapse is likely, but they argue that simplistic statements like this do not capture the complex future. They stress the need for change, suggesting that a belief that we can continue as before is akin to a utopian viewpoint, while realists recognize that a transition is coming. Looking at the collapsologists who assess our current condition and estimate the potential for widespread, profound change, there seems to be widespread agreement that cataclysmic change is a real possibility, maybe an inevitability, and climate change ranks up there as a likely cause."
Creativity, Learning Why PowerPoint is the "perfect toy for thought".
"PowerPoint is the software we hate to love. It’s one of our most original and successful technologies, and yet it’s mostly written about in serious publications under headlines like 'Death By PowerPoint.'There are countless reasons this contempt for PowerPoint is wrong but a little stream of nerdiness that burst into life the other day reminded me of my favorite and least understood: it’s the perfect 'toy for thought.'
"Two characteristics of PowerPoint explain this:
First, it’s the perfect multimedia sparkfile. The prolific science writer and thinker Steven Johnson is fascinated by how ideas are created and sustained and one of his practices is keeping and regularly reviewing a Sparkfile: a long-running list of thoughts, ideas, and hunches. It lets you capture words, pictures, video, links. It’s how to build a slow hunch that goes beyond words. PowerPoint is to modern communications as a text file is to books.
"Second, it’s a brilliant idea-processing tool. In her book Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made The Internet Claire L Evans interviews a number of hypertext pioneers and investigates how software can help us think. For instance, Alison Kidd a researcher at Hewlett-Packard, talks about the physical piles of paper we make as “spatial holding patterns” that enable us in “creating exploring and changing structures which can help inform us in novel ways.” Or Cathy Marshall of PARC and Microsoft Advanced Research builds hypertext systems 'meant to empower kinesthetic thinking, the process of moving things around and trying them out akin to "wiggling molecular models in space or moving a jigsaw puzzle piece into different orientations.’"
"Anyone who’s spent time building a presentation by noodling around in the Slide Sorter will recognize that PowerPoint excels at this. It lets you store and juxtapose language and image. You can play, wiggle, juggle. You can dive in and pull back, swoop down and sweep past. And then it lets you share them. In person. With other people who are in the same room as you. (For post-pandemic definitions of “‘room”’). At which point it also becomes about collective endeavor. It’s the modern successor to HyperCard, built for sociality, and networks of cooperation."
Creativity, Learning "I’ve recently been to Florence, and I bring you stories."
Aleksandra Melnikova, who calls herself an "experience designer, a systems thinker, and a curious mind", recently visited Florence, Italy. She brought back stories about three creative Florentines and what we can learn from them.
"When Filippo Brunelleschi was born, the main Cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria Degli Fiori, stood dome-less for about 80 years with no resolution in sight — no one could think of a solution that would work to build a dome of this size. Brunelleschi studied to be a goldsmith and sculptor, not an architect. Yet he won, and succeeded at the commission, by demonstrating that parabolic curves distribute force tangentially, giving such forms powerful load-bering properties.
"Legend has it he had no plans to show the adjudicators — a newbie, competing for the most prestigious project of the city.
"He surprised the judges with a challenge, asking them to balance an egg on one end. After each of them failed, Brunelleschi took back the egg and brought it down onto the tabletop with just enough force to impact the shell at one end, effectively flattening the small air space within it so that the egg stood stable and upright.
"The panel dismissed his little trick, claiming that any one of them could’ve done that! Brunelleschi pointed out that, nevertheless, not one of them had.
"This is such an elegant example of not following the rigid rules set forth. Rather than breaking those rules, which anyone can do, he bypassed them, essentially, rewriting the rule without destroying it. Such a graceful mind intent on innovation."
What's Love & Work? Love & Work is the weekly newsletter by me, Mitch Anthony. I help people use their brand - their purpose, values, and stories - as a pedagogy and toolbox for transformation.
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