Write to witness, think, and share
A short manifesto to share why I am inspired to write here and describe the kind of writing I hope to publish.
Writing is a miraculous technology. We assemble letters into words into sentences into paragraphs to render ideas, tell stories, and make arguments. Writing allows us to translate ephemeral ideas into (one hopes) legible text. I drafted this short manifesto to share why I am inspired to write here and describe the kind of writing I hope to publish.
Write to witness. "We are living in crazy times," a phrase I say, and hear, all the time. That feels true, but what does it mean? We're inundated with headlines and social posts telling us of the horror unfolding all around us. The news comes fast and in high volume. We can try to live in ignorance of it all, and maybe that works for a short while, until something happens to us or those we love. We can try to stay responsive to it all but quickly crumble under the weight of it. It's easy to feel depressed, overwhelmed, tired, hopeless. The only thing that I have discovered that helps in this situation is to take seriously the responsibility we each have to bear witness. Witnessing requires us to slow down, to listen, to observe. In slowing down, we might see things as they are — the horrors, but also the glory of life all around us. Witnessing is antidote to scrolling.
Write to think. If we allow ourselves to slow down enough to witness, rather than consume, writing helps us to think through and give meaning to new developments and experiences. This kind of thinking is vital yet increasingly harder to access. Technology is getting in the way of thinking: social media saps our attention and artificial intelligence tempts us to outsource our thinking to LLMs owned by a handful of AI companies. The more we are pressured to outsource intellectual work to machines, the more urgent it is to practice thinking for ourselves.
Write to share. There is so much inspiring work happening today, and I've benefited from the perspective and resources others have shared. I hope that some of the experiences and observations I gather from my work might be of interest, and potentially helpful, to others. I approach writing with an "open source" mindset.
Alongside project updates and case studies, I plan to publish writing on five related themes:
- Systems and ecology. I believe our challenges are interconnected; systems thinking, attention to relationships, and attunement to nature can illuminate connections and help us see barriers — and opportunities — more clearly.
- Change and belonging. We build identity, cohesion, and meaning through collective practice — music and culture, oral history, community. I am interested in the connection between creative practice and social change work.
- Funding and resource mobilization. How we (re)distribute capital determines which ideas thrive and which flounder. I think about and work with others who are imagining new (and old) ways of practicing philanthropy to realize a more just distribution of capital and power.
- Media and communications. I am coming to believe that most (all?) problems are ultimately problems of coordination, and coordination requires communication.
- How and why we work. I am fascinated by how people actually do their jobs, and how individuals — and organizations — sustain themselves and their practice.
I have never once started writing and ended up where I thought I would. Writing is an adventure.