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Public Discourse The opposite of a strawman — and one of the most powerful thinking tools you can practice. There is a simple intellectual move that, practiced consistently, will make you a clearer thinker, a more persuasive arguer, and a more generous human being all at once. It is called steelmanning, and it is the … Read more
Public Discourse We’ve never had more access to opposing ideas — and never worked harder to avoid them. One of the strange features of the information age is that unprecedented access to every conceivable viewpoint has coincided with people feeling more sealed inside their own. We could, in theory, read the best arguments from every … Read more
Public Discourse The feeds that feel like they’re showing you the world are quietly optimizing you for fury. It is worth sitting with an uncomfortable possibility: that the anger you feel when you open a social feed is not an accident, not a reflection of how bad the world has gotten, but a product — … Read more
Connection & Belonging Loneliness isn’t only a feeling. Sometimes it’s poured in concrete. We tend to think of loneliness as something that happens inside us — a matter of psychology, choice, or circumstance. But a great deal of our disconnection is built into the physical world we move through every day, designed in by decisions … Read more
Connection & Belonging The casual contacts we underrate may matter more than the close friends we cherish. Ask anyone to name the relationships that matter, and they will list the inner circle: family, best friends, a partner. Almost no one mentions the barista, the dog-park acquaintance, the former colleague, the neighbor two doors down whose … Read more
Connection & Belonging Not home, not work — the in-between places where community quietly happened. There is a particular kind of place that most of us no longer have, and many of us never learned to miss because it disappeared so gradually. It is not your home and not your workplace. It is the third … Read more
Connection & Belonging We are more reachable than any humans in history — and, by many measures, lonelier than most. We carry in our pockets a device that can reach almost anyone on earth in seconds, and yet a great many of us go to bed feeling that no one would really notice if we … Read more
The Civic Desk · Community & Local Life · Est. Today > Big change rarely starts big. It starts with a handful of people and one winnable fight. We tend to imagine that changing policy requires a movement, a charismatic leader, and a march on the capital. So we conclude, reasonably, that it is beyond … Read more
The Civic Desk · Community & Local Life · Est. Today The Volunteer Paradox: Why We Want to Help but Rarely Show Up Almost everyone intends to volunteer. Far fewer ever do. Here’s the gap. Ask people whether helping their community matters and you will get near-universal agreement. Ask whether they volunteered in the past … Read more
The Civic Desk · Community & Local Life · Est. Today The strongest safety net is the one that lives on your own street Once, knowing your neighbors was not a virtue you cultivated; it was simply a fact of living somewhere. You borrowed an egg, you watched each other’s kids, you knew whose car … Read more