July 5, 2024

Civics

'By ourselves we are outside the human definition, outside our identity.'

"It is not simply that we are here, made of the same matter, sharing the same improbable planet; it is that the sharing makes us what we are, each of us a fractal of this immense and indivisible ecosystem of relationship, a golden strand in a tapestry whose only meaning is in the interweaving of its threads. 

"That despite this elemental interdependence we remain riven by conflict and division is the great paradox and the great tragedy and great opportunity for redemption. 

"In his agrarian essay collection The Art of the Commonplace, poet, farmer, and philosopher Wendell Berry dismantles the paradox to the building blocks of the tragedy and reconfigures them into a cathedral of redemption." - Maria Popova

ARTICLE: The Sunflower and the Soul: Wendell Berry on the Collaborative Nature of the Universe and the Cure for Conflict

Civics

The news feels hopeless; my neighborhood doesn't.

ARTICLE: The Antidote to Despair Is Finding our Role in Community Building

Civics

How shared hardship reveals our innate capacity for belonging, agency, and interdependence

Book: Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Civics

"Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war. Too many people still expect it to look like war."

INTERVIEW: Rebecca Solnit Says the Left’s Next Hero Is Already Here

Civics

What does it take for a society to grow?

BOOK: A Way of Being