This week I finished:

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg: Approaching a quarter-million burpees without missing a day in over a decade, among other habits, I always enjoy reading about habits. This book is engaging. Duhigg tells stories, presents science, and builds engagement over the course of the book well.

I still haven’t found someone who treats how not to stop habits as well as my technique in starting sidchas in my video in Life Changing Habits. Also, that starting habits that stick is a skill that the more you do the better you get at it.

I see changing habits, breaking old ones, and recognizing you don’t have to keep at old ones as a critical frontier for sustainability. I hope to partner with Duhigg. some of his peers, or both to take on that challenge so people can expect the liberation and joy they’ll experience with each step practicing more sustainability.

I recommend the book.

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Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, by Roger Scruton: I’m developing conservative approaches to sustainability, which I think when people get them may lead conservatives to embrace sustainability more than liberals. I was catching up with an executive at a company with a reputation for authentic and genuine sustainability action and shared some of my approach. He seemed to like it and recommended Roger Scruton’s Green Philosophy.

I hadn’t heard of Scruton so looked him up. Conservatism was available at the library, so I picked it up. It’s short and has a lot in common with Russell Kirk’s Conservative Mind, which I read this year, with the main differences that it’s shorter and include another fifty years of history.

I see more how conservatives tend to react to liberals. The two groups value tradition differently, as well as liberty versus structure. Having been surrounded by liberals more of my life, I’m inclined to believe that liberals misunderstand conservatives, often deliberately. The more I learn views I never knew before, the less stuck I feel in beliefs, as well as more flexible, understanding, and empathetic. I’ll have to keep meeting people I don’t understand or disagree with.

I can’t help digressing. Why do people think they have to fly around the world to meet diverse people? For one thing, travel involving suitcases with little wheels on them, I don’t consider travel any more than going to the zoo is going on a safari or exploring nature. Those little wheels mean the suitcase’s owner is only going where people have paved or otherwise made flat and smooth surfaces, all connected. That faux travel is just seeing different parts of your own culture, while destroying what vestiges of diversity remained. It causes lovely little Starbucks to appear there.

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