I confess I haven’t read Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis, but I’m working so much on opposing coercion and tyranny, I keep coming across him. I’m trying to learn more about the conditions that led to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Learning history is one thing. Getting inside the hearts and minds of the people acting is another. What values were they acting on or not? If you[…] Keep reading →

I like finding patterns and making mnemonics. I like making acronyms like sidcha, which I use here a lot, and PAID culture, which I use in my book, for concepts I use a lot but that don’t have words for. I create the term doof, which I find life-changing. I write a lot about values that as far as I know approach universal in human cultures, though I’m not an[…] Keep reading →

Abraham Lincoln talked about a house divided being unable to stand. A Constitution that protected freedom in one place and slavery in another contradicted itself. You can protect freedom only. You can protect slavery only. If you try to do both, that divided house cannot stand. Likewise, you can have a Constitution that protects your life, liberty, and property from me taking or destroying it without your consent. You can[…] Keep reading →

I wrote in my post a couple days ago, Racist jokes, polluting, depleting, and integrity, I lamented how environmentalists missed the greatest point of acting by your values: credibility and integrity. Sadly, sustainability lacks both. I wrote: Does anyone believe that not polluting or depleting once or twice will end our environmental problems? Of course not. The point of not living sustainably is not to solve all our environmental problems.[…] Keep reading →

One of the most common rationalizations/justifications/excuses I hear for not trying to live more sustainably is saying someone’s spouse or kids make it impossible. Never mind that humans lived sustainably as healthy, safe, and secure as today for 250,000 years. One person told me “sustainability is nice until it runs into a six year old.” Another: “my wife shops for food. She gets what she gets. If it’s packaged, it’s[…] Keep reading →

I’ve thought of a simple way to illustrate what the Spodek Method workshop delivers. The mission is to change American and global culture to embrace sustainability by evoking our powerful, basic human emotions relevant to nature. The Spodek Method unearths joy, wonder, oneness, connection, spirituality, divinity, and related passions in people you do it with. They return gratitude. Evoking joy and returning gratitude leads to growing community acting together, achieving[…] Keep reading →

It’s nice to know about problems and people seem to like complaining about them, but these reactions don’t compare with solving them. Acting takes resolution. Gandhi wasn’t just thrown off a train. He resolved to fight the injustice. Some historical heroes who transformed cultures wrote their experiences of such moments of resolution. We can learn from them. I find their words inspirational. Robert Carter III Robert Carter III freed his[…] Keep reading →

The audio book for Sustainability Simplified is on sale at last! If you’ve been waiting to hear me read it, now’s your chance. It’s only available on Amazon (I’ll work with my publisher to make it available elsewhere). The free preview of the first five minutes is captures the opening story. I predict you’ll find it engaging. I confess I’m nervous how people will find my reading, which I consider[…] Keep reading →

Journalists keep asking about the workshop: what it’s like, as do people interested in taking the workshops, and a few HR people curious about offering the workshop at their firms. The author of the New York Times piece on me sat in on one session, but only the first session, when people get to know each other. In later sessions, participants can open up and privacy becomes important, so we[…] Keep reading →