People who agree with me that to achieve sustainability, we have to change our culture, still struggle to see why making things more efficient not only doesn’t change our culture, it accelerates it. That is, it will lead us to create more of the results we get now. Imagine going back to 1942. We are fighting the Nazis and imperialist Japanese. We know every German isn’t a Nazi nor does[…] Keep reading →

I’ve meant to post this video for a while. I haven’t posted in a while about my trips to North Korea. I found this video on my hard drive. I hadn’t thought about visiting North Korea in a while, not having flown since 2016. I hope Cyrus doesn’t mind my posting it. Plus you can see my long hair days. Here’s a picture of me in North Korea. Those were[…] Keep reading →

Jordan Harbinger and I met when he lived in New York City about ten years ago. I haven’t seen him as much since he moved to California except for two things. First, he invited my to North Korea twice, making two of my life’s most memorable trips. As I wrote in 2011, here’s how it began: The trip of a lifetime began with this message on my birthday from my[…] Keep reading →

Two weeks in North Korea gives you the chance to get to know someone. Few writers define a genre. Neil Strauss made himself one of the great writers of our time by creating Transformational Journalism. His About page begins: Neil’s Journey into Transformational Journalism Neil Strauss is a seven-time New York Times best-selling author. His books, The Game and Rules Of The Game, for which he went undercover in a secret society of pickup artists[…] Keep reading →

When my friend set up this blog page for me, I asked him how often he blogged. I expected him to say something like three days a week, weekdays, when big events happened, or something like that. Instead he said “Every day,” then adding: If you miss one day you can miss two. If you miss two, it’s all over. I took the practice to heart. Today finishes my fifth[…] Keep reading →

I had the chance to lead a leadership workshop at the United States Army Garrison Yongsan in Seoul, South Korea. This was my first chance to work with the military, though I felt particularly motivated after lunch with Frances Hesselbein last summer, who has worked with West Point and the White House for decades and holds many there in the highest regard, and after interacting with an NYU-based project with[…] Keep reading →

Articles like “Can cities kick ads? Inside the global movement to ban urban billboards” remind me of North Korea, where I saw pictures of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il in most rooms of every building I entered. I wondered, “how does it affect someone’s life to see those pictures every day, everywhere?” Then I realized people there weren’t comparing their environments to ones they didn’t know about. The images probably[…] Keep reading →

Today’s post is mostly a rant from someone who has eaten too many carrots and little else for a week, but I’ve traveled six continents and in only two places did I go hungry—Brazil and North Korea. North Korea has a failed authoritarian central planned economy. It’s tragic for the people living there, but at least I understand the situation and knew to prepare for difficulty finding food. Brazil has[…] Keep reading →

Different people mean different things by the term justice. I think of the term having at least four meanings or purposes. To deter people from committing crimes To punish people who committed crimes To give crime victims a sense of retribution To keep criminals away from society if society expects them to commit crimes again These four purposes don’t always work in concert. In any case, the United States seems[…] Keep reading →