[This post is an excerpt from Chapter One in The Great Growing Up book] Some years back, before voicemail, a friend of mine recorded a memorable message on his answering machine. As I recall, it went something like this: “Hi, this is Gary. At the sound of the beep please tell me who you are […]

March 2013 When we humans come together and organize ourselves for some purpose, we tend to agree about the context or mental framework containing that purpose. While in the best cases this agreement is explicit and conscious, agreement is often implicit and less than fully conscious. In the latter cases, people may start protecting the […]

In writing The Great Growing Up, I had originally included lots of material that had to be cut for the final print version, including a rant on partisanship and the concerns expressed by George Washington about how it could ruin our nation. Washington was clear there needed to be more than one political party, despite […]

February 2013 In July, I published a short piece in this newsletter about a book by Belgian banker Bernard Lietaer (see link here), someone I have known for several years who seems to see the insanity in this unsustainable system, based on flawed assumptions, we call the economy.     I am now moved to […]

Given all the crises we have in this world, I constantly look for the leverage points, those crises that may have more influence – and thereby deserve more of our attention – in the cascade of challenges and problems facing humanity today. In November, here in this blog, I wrote about the “Crisis of Courage.” […]

January 2013 Late last year Fortune magazine published an article by Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin entitled “How companies can get America’s edge back while advancing their own interests.”While focused on restoring U.S. competitiveness, the authors addressed a notion that American business might be shooting itself in the foot by seeking special treatment. In a […]

A habit I picked up some years ago was to be more aware of words I was using and make distinctions where many may not. For instance, there is what I know versus what I believe to be true. One is a belief; the other is a knowing – a knowledge that is pure wisdom, […]

December 2012 Futurist and consultant Hardy Schloer wrote an article in the November 2012 issue of the Club of Amsterdam Journal that cited a time window he calls “The Consequence Era” to which I had a palpable response. Perhaps it was because our adolescent ways tend to ignore consequences, much like teenagers don’t think about […]

Do you wonder why things are so mediocre today? Do you wonder why our leaders seem to be playing it safe, unwilling to risk, stick their necks out, or take a chance based on principle? Is this a crisis of courage or what some might call a lack of bravery? Indigenous cultures have long talked […]

November 2012 New Age rhetoric or truth? Fantasy or fact? What philosophers and mystics have been saying for years is now being confirmed by science. What indigenous people have known for millennia, modern researchers are now validating. We are all interconnected and “inner connected”. The ancient African philosophy unbuntu believes that my humanity, my beingness, […]