Selected Articles & Essays
"For a small city of just 90,000 people, Santa Barbara has always loomed large in the collective imagination. With its whitewashed walls, red roof-tiles and open-air paseos, the city epitomizes the laid-back elegance of the California good life. The place has often felt to me like a world apart, an enchanted realm of wide-open vistas bathed in gold and silver sunlight, a place where plants bloom year-round and the air is always lightly permeated with the scent of jasmine, lavender and sage..."
Three Surreal Nights in the Strangest Town in California
"A tiny, half-abandoned town in a neglected corner of the California desert seems like an unlikely hotspot for street theater, classical opera and large-scale public art. Yet Bombay Beach on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea has become a gathering place for free-thinking artists, performers, poets and philosophers. Every other year, the town mounts a three-day celebration, archly known as the Bombay Beach Biennale, that transforms the its abandoned housing, vacant lots and decaying shoreline into a canvas for renegade art and free expression..."
Cultivating Inner Awareness, Unlocking Hidden Capacities
"Founded a half-century ago on a new vision of human possibility, the Esalen Institute helped spawn avant-garde ideas and practices that have moved into the mainstream. Today the center is building on that legacy by preparing a new generation for the challenges of twenty-first century leadership. Many of the programs focus on personal growth and self-development, just as they did a half-century ago, but the institute has broadened its focus to include social responsibility, conscious leadership, and how to engage and transform pressing global issues..."
Is there a Role for Philanthropy in Protecting Democracy?
"The challenges facing American democracy raise difficult questions for philanthropy. Has the foundation world done everything it can to shore up democratic values and aspirations, or has it been pursuing its own ideas of the public good and, as some critics maintain, turning a blind eye to the gathering storm? To what extent can philanthropy's efforts to strengthen communities and rebuild public trust be effective in the face of stiff headwinds? ..."
"'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.' These words by anthropologist Margaret Mead are famous for good reason. They capture an essential truth about social change: it begins in the most unassuming contexts — in small groups of people who share a common passion, who come together after work, on weekends, or over lunch, and who devote their talents and energies to bringing about change."
"Burning Man has gone from a fringe event, one started by a handful of artists and performers on Baker Beach in San Francisco, to a worldwide cultural phenomenon. Some wonder whether mainstream exposure will compromise the qualities that make the gathering so unique and fascinating as a countercultural experiment. The verdict is still out. But there is no doubt that many of the radical ideas at the heart of the Burning Man experience are catching fire in the American art world..."
"It's a sad fact that while most of us spend a sizeable part of our lives communicating with others, we seem more separate and disconnected than ever. We speak at each other, or past each other. We speak different conceptual languages, hold different values, embody different ways of seeing the world. Much of the time, we're not even listening to each other at all — the dialogue is a monologue..."
The Face of Tomorrow: Reflections on Diversity in America
"The United States is no longer a nation of Scandinavian, Chinese, and Irish immigrants. It's a nation of hybrids and crossbreeds. In recent decades, the incidence of births of mixed-race babies has multiplied 26 times as fast as that of any other group. The question is, will the obliteration of certain distinctions mean the obliteration of identity itself? I don't think so. I see the hybridization of America as a source of great promise. The future belongs to the mestizo — the person who straddles many different worlds and can help explain them to each other..."
Thinking Together: The Art of Deliberative Dialogue
"Deliberative dialogue differs from other forms of public discourse — such as debate, negotiation, brainstorming, consensus-building — because the objective is not so much to talk together as to think together, not so much to reach a conclusion as to discover where a conclusion might lie..."
"Today, some 75 years after his death, John Dewey remains if not America's premier political philosopher, then at least its greatest spokesman for civil society, community values, grass-roots liberalism, and — some would argue — even democracy itself. While his defense of participatory democracy may be hard to defend on purely practical grounds, it nevertheless represents a powerful aspiration — one we need more than ever given the mounting threats to our basic political rights and civil liberties today..."
Building Collaborative Communities
"Collaborative efforts tend to be loosely structured, highly adaptive, and inherently creative. By creating spaces where connections are made, ideas are cross-fertilized, and collective knowledge is developed, collaborative teams are able to create powerful visions and robust strategies for change..."
The 2005 Nobel Peace Prize: A Report from Oslo
"The Nobel Peace Prize for 2005 was awarded jointly to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its director general Mohamed ElBaradei for their efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons and promote peaceful applications of nuclear technologies. On October 7, 2005, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that Mohamed ElBaradei and the IAEA deserved recognition for addressing one of the greatest dangers facing global security..."
"The call for a European constitution has reached an almost feverish pitch in recent years. In October 2000, the Economist magazine boldly drafted a constitution of its own to, as its editors declared, stimulate a greater debate about the issue and to ensure that citizens are given a greater voice in European politics. It's an exceptionally concise and clearly presented document which suggests that democracy has clearly evolved since the U.S. Constitution was drafted two centuries ago..."
Revisiting the Idea of Fraternity
"A half-century has passed since the publication of The Idea of Fraternity in America, Wilson Carey McWilliams's sweeping study of community in American political and intellectual history. Though it was enthusiastically received by both the mainstream press and the academic world when it appeared in 1973, it nevertheless faded into relative obscurity by the end of the 1970s. It's a sad thing, for what McWilliams succeeded in doing was not only to illuminate a core aspiration of American life, but to trace the roots of our eroding civic culture..."
The Still and Secret Revolution
"Is it possible to start a revolution the other way around — one built on values and perceptions, not bullets and bombs? This type of revolution would have to be constructive, not contentious. It would have to emphasize design, not criticism. It would have to be self-organized, not centrally planned. It would have to take its cues from imagination and vision, not opposition to the status quo. Not only is such a revolution possible, I believe we're already seeing the early signs of it on a range of fronts..."
Civic Networks: Building Community on the Net
"The trouble with the virtual community metaphor is that it implies that technology itself can create community. Usually its effect is the very opposite: it hastens the breakdown of traditional community. Still, electronic networks can play a role in strengthening communities if they are used to augment social networks that are already in place."
Letter from Oslo: 100 Years of the Nobel Peace Prize
The centennial of the Nobel Peace Prize brought together an extraordinary group of former peace laureates, international statesmen, distinguished scholars, and champions of human rights for one of the greatest peace summits of all time. The event was long on pomp and circumstance, as expected, but also genuine soul-searching about peace prospects in a world of conflict, terrorism, and deepening uncertainty.
In Defense of the American Jury System
"Whether or not to preserve the American jury system is not an open question. If anything, we need to strengthen the tradition of ordinary people brokering the disputes of their neighbors. The jury system, far from a mystical ideal, is based on the common sense and reasoned judgment of ordinary citizens. An effective system must foster, not discourage, that civic judgment."
A Way of Seeing: The Work of Robert Coles
"Robert Coles's technique is to get to know people, ask them significant questions, and simply let them speak. He strongly believes that their stories speak for themselves. He doesn't start from a given point and progress to deeper and broader insights. Rather, he circles around certain themes, sometimes appearing to make a point and then quickly moving away from it. For stories to have force and moral significance, he insists, they must be told in the words of the characters themselves..."
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