Leadership

Can you help me understand how liberals and progressives view leadership?

Leadership / Models

Can you help me understand how liberals and progressives view leadership?

I grew up in liberal, progressive households and I don't remember everything of how I viewed leadership, but I'm pretty sure I viewed it skeptically. Well, when Martin Luther King or Gandhi did it, it seemed inspirational, but when I considered doing it, I shied away. I'm trying to remember how I viewed it because I work with a lot of people who are liberal and progressive and they shy away from leading people. More than shy away, they seem to sabotage themselves from improving at it. They seem to shun it as something unseemly. I think they view it as coercive, like "If I do something that leads someone to do something they wouldn't have otherwise, I must be coercing them without their consent."…

January 9, 2026

Do people who fear learning to lead think it means imposing hierarchy?

Awareness / Leadership

Do people who fear learning to lead think it means imposing hierarchy?

A friend calls leadership "the l-word." I used to think of leadership as not something anyone could learn. I thought you either had it or you didn't. I also associated it with control. Today I associate it with help, support, empathy, compassion, listening, awareness, and social and emotional skills like them. It's been so long since I associated it with control, I have to work to reconnect with that feeling so it takes work for me to empathize with someone who describes it as "the l-word." I mean, when I was little we used "the f-word" to describe the worst curse word, which rhymes with duck. Today, "the n-word" seems the most taboo word to say or write, at least for people who aren't African-American.…

December 24, 2025

Dr. Larry Arnn on Churchill on technology and modern life

Freedom / Leadership

Dr. Larry Arnn on Churchill on technology and modern life

I recently finished Hillsdale College's course on Churchill, hosted by the school's president, Dr. Larry Arnn. If you don't know, the school is as conservative as schools get. Arnn is also on the board of the Heritage Foundation, also as conservative as they come. Both institutions support policies and activities that pollute and deplete. To my mind, activities that pollute and deplete deprive people of life, liberty, and property without due process of law and violate the principle of the consent of the governed---that is, they violate the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence. People at those institutions haven't seen that problem yet, as far as I can tell, but it looks like they violate their values. A different, though similar, violation appeared to Churchill.…

December 17, 2025

Have you thought about sanitation systems? They violate ideals of the left and right. They are socialist *and* imperialist.

Leadership / Models

Have you thought about sanitation systems? They violate ideals of the left and right. They are socialist and imperialist.

Americans are divided over health care. Since everyone knows about the controversy there, I'll share some properties about it, then connect to sanitation. For comparison: health care People on the left want socialized health care. Everyone gets sick, no one wants to, so to them it makes politically, morally, and economically to provide health care to all. It spreads out the costs no one wants to pay but everyone has to. People on the right want a free, competitive market. Health care is a service. It benefits from people developing new technologies, drugs, ways to provide service, and other things that free markets develop best. People on the left fear that a free market with lead to monopolies, price gouging, oversupply of health care to…

December 10, 2025

Listening is sharpening your axe

Leadership / Tips

Listening is sharpening your axe

The playing field of leadership is the other person's emotional system and situation. The more you know them, the more you can lead and inspire them. The challenge is that people's greatest motivations tend to be their greatest vulnerabilities, so we tend to protect them instead of sharing them. Thus it helps to listen, but many people who want to accomplish things tend toward action. Acting or prompting others to act rarely leads people to lower their protections and share their vulnerabilities. You've probably heard the saying, often mis-attributed to Abraham Lincoln, "If I had four hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first two hours sharpening the axe." It says that preparation for action helps, and often the more the better. I've…

December 6, 2025

Democracy, wedge issues, and calm

Leadership / Nonjudgment / Relationships

Democracy, wedge issues, and calm

People's language and emotions get intense around wedge issues like abortion, gun rights, and tax levels. One side says the other wants to control women's bodies, the other says the one wants to kill babies. Such characterizations, mischaracterizations, and seeing the other from your view not theirs makes finding common ground nearly impossible. I call this pattern the worst problem in the world. Yet we have to live together. Secession didn't work so well in 1861. That's at the national level. At the individual level, if we can't talk calmly to our neighbors or think calmly, we can't become calm in the rest of life. Being angry all the time, or being stuck in emotions in that direction, doesn't make for a fulfilling life. My…

December 5, 2025

One of the most important statements of environmentalism: giving up on changing culture (and what to do instead)

Artificial Intelligence / Doof / Freedom / Leadership

One of the most important statements of environmentalism: giving up on changing culture (and what to do instead)

I enjoyed reading Bill McKibben's latest book Here Comes the Sun. I found much of it well researched. Still, I don't think it made clear what I consider its starting point. Before you read the critical stuff I start with about the book, I end on a high note. I've written many times how tools like technology, market incentives, and legislation aren't good or bad. They implement and augment the values of the people and culture wielding them. As long as our culture rewards behaviors that pollute and deplete, it will bend the use of any tool to accelerate itself. Whatever your intent with, say, solar panels, if you don't change culture, however much solar panels decrease emissions in one area, overall, they will enable…

December 4, 2025

Differences between environmentalists’ strategies and mine

Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership / Nature / Nonjudgment

Differences between environmentalists’ strategies and mine

I've been increasingly realizing and pointing out that I am not an environmentalist. I surprised myself to discover it. I had long felt misunderstood when people asked, “If you like nature so much, why don't you go to the woods live in nature?” It had long been obvious to me that we needed to change culture, not escape it, and New York is an influential cultural center. Then I checked and in 2014, shortly before my first experiment in acting sustainably of avoiding packaged food for a week, in a post in this blog entitled The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the world we live in, I wrote, "The issue is not how other people think about us or trends. Polluting means hurting people. Dirty…

November 11, 2025

Lincoln didn’t heal slaves’ wounds. He led their “owners” to stop owning them. I’m following Lincoln, and then some.

Freedom / Leadership / Nature

Lincoln didn’t heal slaves’ wounds. He led their “owners” to stop owning them. I’m following Lincoln, and then some.

Our environmental problems are symptoms. I won't fight people trying to protect and conserve nature, but the degradation of nature isn't the problem. Restoring an old growth forest doesn't change that billions of people are acting in ways to cut down whatever is restored. Many times I've described how the suffering and death we and our culture is causing is orders of magnitude times greater than slavery, so I won't hesitate describing what I'm doing in terms of slavery. Also, while I value nature, we have laws to protect people, not as much to protect nature. Many environmentalists point out that since we're all connected, protecting wildlife is protecting humans. It works the other way too: protecting humans means protecting wildlife, since protecting humans means…

October 31, 2025

Climate Week NYC: Slimy and Duplicitous, causing the problems they complain about.

Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

Climate Week NYC: Slimy and Duplicitous, causing the problems they complain about.

Climate Week NYC was a month or so ago, but its sliminess lingers. I'm writing this post not to complain, but to call attention for the need for leadership, integrity, and credibility. I saw none there, but huge demand for it. I haven't engaged yet with the event planners so attended passively, therefore include myself in showing no leadership there. It's further motivation to finish my next book, which will be my platform for taking responsibility and leading. In the meantime, people act performatively---that is, as if they were helping, but doing nothing effective, or more often counterproductive. Take, for example, the first thing on display at one of the main events, a race car. Is the idea that its being electric means it helps?…

October 29, 2025

Hear my second time on the Heritage Foundation podcast The Power Hour with Jack Spencer

Audio / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership / Podcast

Hear my second time on the Heritage Foundation podcast The Power Hour with Jack Spencer

It's been close to a year since I first appeared on the Heritage Foundation's podcast The Power Hour, hosted by Jack Spencer, who has been a guest on my podcast three times. First, I enjoy Jack's hosting both as a guest and a listener. I really was laughing as hard as I said when I came on. You'll hear me share more about how America's founders, Lincoln, Adam Smith, and other Enlightendigenous thinkers inform my views and actions. To my credit, I think I convey important thinking about sustainability based on what we need for society to work. It won't work if anyone can just do what they want. Roles for government include ensuring the consent of the governed and protecting people's life, liberty, and…

October 21, 2025

Abolitionists didn’t free slaves by teaching children that slavery was wrong. Yes, they taught children, but they freed slaves by freeing slaves.

Education / Freedom / Leadership

Abolitionists didn’t free slaves by teaching children that slavery was wrong. Yes, they taught children, but they freed slaves by freeing slaves.

I've written that, yes, we should teach children about living sustainably, but teaching children doesn't solve the problems we're teaching them about. On the contrary, if we teach them to do what we aren't doing ourselves, they learn from our behavior, not our words. We will lead them to see polluting and depleting like cursing or drinking, something kids have to wait until they grow up to do but that is okay for adults to do as long as they mostly hide it from kids. I put it in the frame of smoking in my post Don’t “teach children sustainability”. Here’s why and what to do instead. I also wrote How environmentalists are like smokers who tell others not to smoke … while smoking. Today…

October 18, 2025

Tik Tok and Instagram or hands-on practical experience?

Choosing/Decision-Making / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

Tik Tok and Instagram or hands-on practical experience?

Two things I haven't kept track of but happen over and over: People saying, "Your material is great! You should promote it more on Tik Tok, Instagram, etc to make it available to more people." Me saying, "Leadership requires credibility and integrity, which require hands-on practical experience." Sure, I could go for the quick clicks as the guy off the grid in Manhattan. I could probably get a million followers, but to change global culture, continuing the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, requires a solid, deep foundation. I'm getting closer to launch all the time, but not there yet. The reason my material has value and meaning and that there is so much of it is that I'm not going for the quick clicks, which would…

October 11, 2025

My top thought about Climate Week

Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

My top thought about Climate Week

With a podcast and book on sustainability leadership, I've been invited to many events at so-called Climate Week. It's when people fly from all over the world to talk about what other people should do. I wrote the following as constructive criticism. It's what I would expect people who take personal responsibility for how their actions affect others would want to know. My top thought is surprise, even as jaded as I am about so-called environmentalists: Everyone I heard speak, when they talk about polluters, they talk as if it's different people than themselves. This makes no sense. They are among the greatest polluters on the planet, who have ever lived. Why do they act like the big polluters are other people? It bears repeating:…

September 24, 2025

“Do the reps, you get the results. Don’t do the reps, you don’t get the results.”

Education / Fitness / Habits / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

“Do the reps, you get the results. Don’t do the reps, you don’t get the results.”

I've been saying these words lately. Do the reps, you get the results. Don't do the reps, you don't get the results. I've said them to myself, my teammates, and my coaching clients. As regular readers know from my sidchas and standard procedures, I live them. When I search the web for them as a quote, I don't find them, so maybe I created the quote. They ring true, particularly based on the Martha Graham and Jocko Willink quotes I live by. Graham: The dancer is realistic. His craft teaches him to be. Either the foot is pointed or it is not. No amount of dreaming will point it for you. This requires discipline, not drill, not something imposed from without, but discipline imposed by…

September 17, 2025

If you claim to consent for someone else, you’re a tyrant

Freedom / Leadership

If you claim to consent for someone else, you’re a tyrant

This nation's government says it's just only if based on the consent of the governed. Consider Cancer Alley. Nobody consents to being given cancer. Nobody consents to being born with a birth defect. Yet Cancer Alley and other sacrifice zones are growing. I don't deny that people can benefit from perks that come from activities that pollute and deplete, but as long as they pollute and deplete, they violate what makes government just. You might like the perks, but you can't consent for other people. There is a word for people who "consent" for others. They are tyrants. If you claim to consent for someone else, you're a tyrant. I'm not saying you're good or bad. You have your values. I'm only saying something as…

September 9, 2025

Solving environmental problems today by teaching kids is like fighting fascism in 1941 by teaching kids

Education / Leadership

Solving environmental problems today by teaching kids is like fighting fascism in 1941 by teaching kids

Context: Remember the first time someone said you could undo the environmental harms of your flight by paying a few dollars for an "offset"? It seemed too good to be true, right? Thousands of dollars going to extract and burn jet fuel offset by a few dollars? It was too good to be true and you knew it. Nearly none of the projects achieved the effects they promoted. Nearly all would have happened anyway. The demand for something to work that was impossible led to fraud around the world, people offering bogus offsets. Fraudsters pocketed the money while people who wanted to help actually flying more---that is, destroying more people's life, liberty, and property without their consent---mistakenly believing they weren't. Sure, teaching kids about something…

August 14, 2025

James Madison on slavery (in contrast with Abraham Lincoln)

Freedom / Leadership

James Madison on slavery (in contrast with Abraham Lincoln)

I've been learning more about America's founders who opposed slavery, their personal actions on slavery, and their resulting views. Lately I've been learning more about James Madison so saved some comments on him by a biographer, Drew McCoy. I haven't finished a full biography of him, so I'm just starting learning about him in more depth, but I'm coming to see his views on slavery versus liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy as relevant today, in particular to pollution and depletion, which undermine liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy. Like Jefferson, he considered slavery wrong but didn't act against it---that is, he valued freedom but didn't fight for it in all cases. It looks like he valued it more for himself and his peers than for slaves.…

August 12, 2025

Professions and people NOT to ask how to solve our environmental situation

Education / Exercises / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership / Nature

Professions and people NOT to ask how to solve our environmental situation

I have a PhD in physics, the most advanced degree in the most fundamental science. It was my priority for most of a decade. I loved and still love the field. I believe if you want to understand our situation, you must understand science or at least its findings. I also consider nature among the most beautiful thing to learn about. Scientists found out about our environmental situation. They project possible resolutions. Nonetheless, I don't consider scientists people to ask how to solve our environmental problem. Why not? Here's an example. When I started graduate school at Penn, there was a professor there, Howard Brody, who studied the physics of tennis. In his youth he played varsity tennis. He apparently led the field of the…

August 7, 2025

I love a good leadership or entrepreneurial challenge, but few others seem to

Education / Entrepreneurship / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

I love a good leadership or entrepreneurial challenge, but few others seem to

Why do my students give me reviews like: “This was the best course I ever took at NYU. There is no substitute for doing the exercises. Thinking I understand a concept and actually trying to execute the concept was difficult. Only in working through the exercises was I able to be aware of what I am currently doing. With these exercises, I now have a roadmap for how to be the kind of person I want to be. Thank you for changing my life for the better!”? I do because when I began teaching, I started learning experiential, project-based learning. I don't teach through lecture or assigning reading and writing papers. I don't claim to be the best in the world, but I try to…

July 26, 2025

I love learning about the Enlightendigenous origins of liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy in America

Education / Freedom / Leadership

I love learning about the Enlightendigenous origins of liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy in America

I've written before about my functional new word Enlightendigenous. In that post I shared what I learned about the evidence for the philosophy and practice of indigenous people in North America influencing and inspiring Europeans into what became called the Enlightenment. Europe at the time had little to no democracy or social mobility. Your status at birth---that is, the status of your parents---determined your place and role for life with rare exception. People lived under a dominance hierarchy based on access to resources like arable land enforced by a system of justice and military. Meanwhile, on the east coast of North America, there were no river valleys like Mesopotamia or the Nile to precipitate dominance hierarchy on that scale so people practiced local politics. They…

July 25, 2025

I love simple things, like this Gandhi statue

Art / Leadership

I love simple things, like this Gandhi statue

Of the throngs of people who pass this Gandhi statue in Union Square, I'd guess a few percent notice it. That modesty and humility are part of its appeal to me. Also that my parents met in Ahmedabad, India, where his ashram was. I spent a year there as a child. My father probably spent ten or fifteen years of his life there. Also that Gandhi has long been one of my leadership role models. When people want to meet near Union Square, I usually suggest meeting near this statue. The statue isn't usually covered with this canopy of green. Rarely do I take a picture of it, but the green compelled me. He was backlit, so I changed the contrast in this version: He…

July 21, 2025

A broad outline of my vision and mission for the workshop and alumni community I love

Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Leadership

A broad outline of my vision and mission for the workshop and alumni community I love

About a month ago, the core organizational team behind the workshop I lead and its alumni community had our quarterly meeting. I shared my vision and mission. I thought everyone knew it, but when I finished, they said, "You have to share this message with the alumni community." I was wrong: everyone didn't know it. It was my responsibility to share it. I didn't want to impose my views on others, but my history having started many of the projects and exploring the frontier of leadership in this area, I could see how my views could help others see beyond their horizons. Future vision 1 year: thriving online community, self-sustaining. A core team will still manage things like the online site and new initiatives, but…

July 10, 2025

I love finding yet more ways to reduce how much I pollute (that is, hurt people)

Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

I love finding yet more ways to reduce how much I pollute (that is, hurt people)

There's nothing like Hands-On Practical Experience. People who haven't tried keep telling me various ways of hurting people are impossible, that people wouldn't go for them. Yet, simply trying reveals ever more little advances. Once I learned to find it joyful and rewarding to reduce suffering instead of a burden or chore, as mainstream global teaches, I find ever more ways to create joy and find reward. Two examples I don't claim these examples make that much of a difference, but the Spodek Method leads to a mindset shift followed by continual improvement, not followed by perfection. For years, for some reason, I've had a hard time moving sound and video files from my computer to my cell phone to where I could listen and…

July 7, 2025

Not hurting innocent people a “purity test”? I think your ignorance or internal conflict is showing.

Freedom / Leadership / Nonjudgment

Not hurting innocent people a “purity test”? I think your ignorance or internal conflict is showing.

Thomas Jefferson owning slaves, including his own children, wasn't an abstract immoral act. He hurt people. He took away their freedom and hurt them. It isn't a "purity test" to say that by owning slaves he hurt people. When people act like living more sustainably is a "purity test" I see two possible causes. The generous one, which I find implausible in today's world, is that people don't know polluting hurts people. People often tell me "Josh, they really don't know. " When I respond that they know enough and if they pretend not to know, they're deliberately keeping themselves ignorant, people generally agree, and intentional ignorance doesn't make you innocent. It means they knew enough to know they're hurting people, they just want to…

June 22, 2025

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