If marriage is meant to create families—i.e. the building blocks of society—then weddings are part of the process in which societies are built. And interestingly enough, I find that even weddings that are not organised with community building in mind bring people together and develop strong bonds between them like few other events can. I… Read More Weddings Bells and Community Building
One of the greatest obstacles to building a vibrant, healthy global community–i.e. a better world–is the apathy of so many of its members, a large proportion of which go about life within a limited bubble: they go to work, go home, do their shopping, go on vacation, and ignore the negative things happening in the… Read More The Limitations of Shocking People Out of Apathy In The Hopes Of Building A Better World
There is an exciting discourse gaining increasing momentum online: how to use what the world has to give us—food, clothes, stuff—to live a better life, rather than living life to collect increasing amounts of food, clothes, and stuff. There is the minimalist movement, the sharing economy, the buy local movement, and, of course, efforts to… Read More Fulfilling Our Individual Responsibility Towards Global Economic Life
A lot of important elections have been happening around the world lately, and, as many prepare to vote, it has come to my attention that we spend way too much time looking into things that do not matter at the expense of looking carefully into what does matter. For example, I was reading about the… Read More Who Cares About What They Wear: Choosing Who To Vote For
I am a bit of a nerd, just in case you haven’t noticed yet. I love reading studies and reflecting on the implications of the results found. However, I also can be quite harsh when it comes to studies that demonstrate a combination of laxity in their data analysis and over-confidence in their interpretation. I… Read More Parenting and Marital Happiness: Not Mutually Exclusive
The transformation of the world from its current state to a place where every individual can participate actively in their personal material and spiritual development as well as contribute to the progress of humankind as a whole is going to need the upending of a lot of things—and I mean, a lot. This means that… Read More Petitions and Boycotts: Why I Am Boycotting Nestlé Products
I spent a large chunk of last weekend working on a list of blogging related tasks as part of Bloggiesta. Every couple of months, the website hosts an event during which a group of book bloggers take on certain tasks and complete them during a set number of days. Lists are posted on the website,… Read More Mutual Support and Assistance in the Book Blogging World: My First Bloggiesta Experience
NaNoWriMo 2014 came to a close on 30 November, but I was lucky enough to reach the goal a couple of days before. Although I don’t know if all of them will make the final cut, I managed to write over 50,000 words of the sequel to the Spirit Within Club. I had discussed at… Read More Did I Win? Some Thoughts on NaNoWriMo 2014
By Larry Shnyder Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about just how much my life has changed with regard to personal entertainment. I’ve never been too much of a “gamer,” per se, but when I did play video games I usually did so alone. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. I always saw it… Read More Modern Gaming Thrives On Communities & Friendships
Just a couple of weeks ago, Bahá’í communities around the world elected their national administrative bodies in a unique electoral process. One of its aspects is, as I personally understand it, that each elector has to make the effort to get to know all the members of one’s community. I also understand that to build… Read More How to Make the Time to Nurture Deep Friendships while Having the Time to get to Know All Community Members: Some Thoughts