Confirmed yet again that the way to build community, and indeed strengthen participatory and democratic societies is to do work together. Peter Levine, who I feel like everyone should read, has a nice little blog post today that serves as a bit of a gateway to his own research and thoughts on this topic. Here’s his basic thesis: People are more likely to trust institutions if they are involved in diverse, participatory groups, because such participation gives them a feeling of agency, teaches them that compromise is necessary (it’s not a sign that leaders are corrupt), and encourages them to …
Here is my monthly summary of some interesting finds from around the web from November and posted on my Mastodon page.
C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) appearing in the night sky October 17 over Lake Opinion in Ontario. Shot with my iPhone 13 A collection of interesting links I found and posted at my Mastodon account this month. Happy Hallowe’en!
Links and short reflections that were posted this month on my Mastodon page and rolled up here for your interest and reflection.
Back in 2022 Peter Levine – whose thought blog posts are amongst my favourite reads on a regular basis – wrote the following: The left should represent the lower-income half of the population; the right should represent the top half. When that happens, the left will generally advocate government spending and regulation. Such policies may or may not be wise, but they can be changed if they fail and prove unpopular. Meanwhile, the right will advocate less government, which (again) may or may not be desirable but will not destroy the constitutional order. After all, limited government is a self-limiting …