Some days it’s hard to be hopeful. The scope and scale of polarization and doom-loop thinking about the U.S. and the future can feel like an hourly, daily, monthly assault on the senses. Then a book like Strong Floor, No Ceiling comes out. My intuition sirens flare and my energy returns. A few differently firing synapses, [...]
Winston Churchill once observed that democracy may be the worst form of government—except for all the others that have been tried. It is the kind of line that gets laughs because it lands close enough to the truth to sting a little. Democracy is messy. It is slow. It often looks like argument layered on top [...]
(Part I, "HOPE! Strong Floor, No Ceiling" preceded this Part II.) There is an oft-repeated phrase in the global community of Polarity Thinkers: “Simple, not easy.” Strong Floor AND No Ceiling is a simple idea. It is clear. It is compelling. It resonates across differences in a way that most policy ideas do not. It offers [...]
There’s an old Chinese story about a farmer whose livelihood depends on a single horse. One day the horse runs away. The neighbors stop by and say, “That’s bad.” The farmer replies, “Maybe.” A few days later the horse returns—bringing several wild horses with it. The neighbors return and say, “That’s [...]
One word could change our trajectory. “And.” Every generation inherits problems it didn’t personally create. Some inherit wars. Some inherit economic collapse. Some inherit institutions that no longer work the way anyone hoped they would. The generation coming of age right now has inherited something different. They have inherited a planetary system sending increasingly unmistakable signals [...]
See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE From my interpretation of Chapter 66 of the Tao Te Ching (Unpublished): Streams and rivers flow down to valleys. Valleys hold the sea by staying low. Those who [...]
What happens when Either/Or Thinking to the neglect of Both/And Thinking, gets backed by God? There’s a pattern that shows up across religions, politics, and organizations—anywhere belief and power combine. Something complex and deeply human gets simplified into a choice. Not just a preference, but the right choice. Once that happens, everything on the other side [...]
I recently heard something that made me smile at first and then poked at me until I sat down to write this. When some AI systems interact internally, they sometimes refer to humans with a particular word. Watchers. It is a curious label. If one human described another that way — “Oh, that person’s a Watcher” [...]
After twenty years working with Polarity Thinking, one word finally helped me explain why it works: metatheory. A metatheory isn’t another model or framework. It’s the lens behind the lens — the way of seeing that shapes how we understand everything else. In that sense, the usefulness of Polarity Thinking is not simply that it offers [...]
See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 48 (Unpublished): Being in learning each day, There is accumulation. Being in It each day, There is distribution. In [...]