Category Archives: Leadership

If you build or buy a home in Phoenix, AZ, your claims that you “need air conditioning” lose credibility, as do your claims to others’ resources.

on July 16, 2024 in Choosing/Decision-Making, Leadership, Nature

The title says it all, but for clarity, I’ll generalize: if you choose to do something that requires polluting, depleting, or plundering, you don’t get to claim your life requires living unsustainably. You don’t get to then make claims on others’ resources. A life requiring hurting others is not liberty. Its’ the opposite: it’s destroying other people’s liberty. Why don’t I spend all my money and then claim you have[…] Keep reading →

Are environmentalists nearly all science deniers?

on July 13, 2024 in Education, Leadership, Nature

Environmentalists call people who disagree with them “science deniers” and “climate deniers.” They get annoyed when people presented with the science don’t change their behavior when science shows it’s creating undesired outcomes. Meanwhile, I see environmentalists use ineffective techniques to try to change others’ behavior. When their techniques don’t work, they don’t change their behavior to ways that work. The science is clear that their techniques don’t work, yet they[…] Keep reading →

A Visual Representation of the Spodek Method in Venn Diagrams

on July 6, 2024 in Leadership, Nature, Visualization

I can’t think of a message I received from environmentalists that suggested I would enjoy the experience of trying to live more sustainably. Every message from every source, including the most ardent environmentalists, told me living more sustainably meant giving something up. We had to worsen our lives to possibly help someone far away or in the future. A definite loss here and now for a possible gain sometime somewhere[…] Keep reading →

How I don’t need willpower by learning to feel disgust for what once tempted me. You can too.

on June 28, 2024 in Addiction, Leadership, Models, Tips

Maybe you’ve heard me share how from when I had my own kitchen, I always had ice cream in my freezer and pretzels and Doritos in my cupboard. I struggled to pace my consuming them, but nearly always ate more than I meant to, but kept buying more. Now I say there isn’t enough money in the world for me to eat that stuff. I also talk about my relationship[…] Keep reading →

What I think of when I think of Taylor Swift and her jet

on June 22, 2024 in Choosing/Decision-Making, Leadership

Is someone criticizing Taylor Swift’s flying lately? People talk to me about it all the time. In the past few days, a few people told me she was in the news for flying a few miles on her jet. Today, I turned the corner from Sixth Avenue onto Waverly and saw the scene below. I didn’t want to include identifying pictures so didn’t take it from their front, but what[…] Keep reading →

Are liberals trying to prove conservatives right?

on June 17, 2024 in Addiction, Leadership

Last week I posted about Why many litterers are entitled and one way the most entitled justify littering. People, including poor and homeless people, justify littering and try to stop me from cleaning up litter. They say other people are paid to do it, so it’s okay and right to leave plastic cups and food containers on the ground, then walk way. The result: on pleasant days, my neighborhood looks[…] Keep reading →

Magnitude of suffering and death then and now

on June 15, 2024 in Leadership, Models, Visualization

I wrote recently in When changing fast is easier than slow about the growth in number of slaves in the United States based on a peer-reviewed paper From ‘20 and odd’ to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States, by J. David Hacker in the journal Slavery & Abolition. That paper also reported the cumulative number of slaves in the United States. Before looking at[…] Keep reading →

Followed up: watched recommended historical videos from the Leadership Institute’s course “Conservatism 101”

on June 13, 2024 in Leadership, Nonjudgment

I’ve written about taking several courses at the Leadership Institute. Conservatism 101 recommended a lot of historical videos to augment their lectures. Though I finished the course a while ago, I took a while to finish the videos. If interested, here they are. I didn’t grow up learning these views. Adults around me during my childhood seemed to view, say, Phyllis Schlafly, as weird and devious: why would a woman[…] Keep reading →

Hear me on the Inspire Someone Today podcast

on June 11, 2024 in Audio, Leadership, Nature

I recommend this podcast if you like my work and learning more of where my passion comes from. Srikanth, the host, prompted me to share my origin story and describe the Spodek Method. I haven’t appeared on another podcast for a while, so I share things I’ve been developing how to communicate but haven’t. Available on all podcast platforms: From the show notes: Joshua Spodek is a sustainability advocate whose[…] Keep reading →

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