September 24th 2026 Interrogating Stress Interrogating Stress Stress comes in all shapes and sizes. What is your stress might be another’s pleasure. There are some stressors we choose deliberately, like going to the gym and stressing muscles. Or putting ourselves in a learning context as a novice. My daughter is driving a manual hire car, driving on the wrong side of the road in a foreign country. A chosen stress. (She said, never again.) There are stresses we did not seek, but cannot avoid....
2 days ago • 1 min read
September 23rd 2026 Normal Is Because We Made It So Normal Is Because We Made It So Today in New York, a number of men took to a podium and spoke to ‘the world.’ For the most part, they spoke to their own country, their political future front of mind. The institution was created with good intent. Yet it has become a spineless parody surrounded by states led by men who only care for themselves. Its spine is broken, its heart on life support. How else could a room of people sit and listen to a...
3 days ago • 2 min read
September 22nd 2026 The Incentives Are Wrong The Incentives Are Wrong When a system rewards a salesperson for making sales on a commission basis, the temptation is for the salesperson to manipulate, gaslight, lie, deceive and obfuscate to make the sale. When a system rewards the CEO for profit margins, the temptation is for the CEO to squeeze out everything, get the workers’ wages down to rock bottom, cut corners, anything, to get that profit margin. When a system allows a politician to be...
4 days ago • 1 min read
September 21st 2026 The System Working as Built The System Working as Built My training in systems thinking began in my twenties, with Buckminster Fuller. His core maxim was the Generalised Principle, something true in all cases, a working law of Universe. The Principle of Principles is synergy: the behaviour of a whole cannot be determined by examining its parts separately. Start with Universe first, Bucky would say. Aspirational. Rarely achievable. Always the right instruction. Since...
5 days ago • 2 min read
September 18th 2026 There is nothing natural about it There is nothing natural about it The floods. The fires. We have called them natural disasters. But perhaps it is time to reframe our language. More and more, what we call disasters are the political outcomes produced by a system designed to extract to extinction, exploit till broken, and colonise till hollowed out. Profits hold supremacy over the health, livelihood and well-being of billions of humans. Debased and discounted as worth less...
8 days ago • 2 min read
September 17th 2026 Tools of domination Tools of domination Pressure Pressure (n.): from Latin pressura, from premere, to press. The sense “moral or mental coercing force, exertion of authority or influence” arrives in the 1620s — the word migrates from the body to the will. (Online Etymology Dictionary) When do we feel pressure? And from whom, or from what? Some pressure carries information. A deadline, a failing system, a body that will not keep going. These pressures exist because...
9 days ago • 1 min read
September 16th 2026 Holding the Shape Without Folding Holding the Shape Without Folding Integrity is this big, fat, loaded word. Like any word, so easy to say. So much harder to live. If there is a value I hold closest, it is integrity. Digging into the meaning it carries, from its etymological roots, meaning oneness, wholeness, I hold integrity to mean holding the shape without folding. I hold my values and principles, especially when things get hard. This is the test, is it not? Easy to be...
10 days ago • 1 min read
September 15th 2026 Remaining apolitical Remaining apolitical Ed Sheeran, the singer-songwriter, wants to remain apolitical. No stand is a stand. Apolitical is a stand. It stands for safety. It stands for the desire to be loved by all. To not rock boats. Nice and safe and apolitical in a world on fire is only a temporary illusion of safety. Silence makes us complicit. Prolonged silence against terrible crimes makes us advocates of terrible crimes. When you know something evil is happening and...
11 days ago • 3 min read
September 14th 2026 To cultivate love To cultivate love AI will…probably lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there will be GREAT companies created, says Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT. I wonder how anyone arrives at this comment without questioning its insanity. Actually, I think I know. It is baked into everything, and has been for centuries. I watched this ten-minute video about Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s new book, End Times Fascism. (Very worth taking the time.) Watch here...
12 days ago • 1 min read