It’s election season in North America! Just like Thanksgiving, Canada went first, and soon the US will follow. These elections are being touted as being of particular importance; after watching the markets go up and down in the last couple of weeks, I have come to the brilliantly original conclusion that it’s because things aren’t… Read More Eeny-meeny-mino-mo, catch a leader by the toe…
My concern about the advancement of humanity through the development of each community makes me naturally think a lot about the question of what makes a good leader. I find myself often wondering how the conceptions about leadership that I encounter in my reading and in my conversations with other can ever pave the way… Read More A New Kind of Leader: Stepping Away From Old Conceptions of Leadership
Someone recently mentioned that there is no institution older than that of marriage, which really got me thinking. If this institution has been part of human society for millennia, why are we still so terrible at maintaining it, with divorce rates in North America so high? No wonder, then, that so many conversations revolve on… Read More From Governing One’s Family to Governing the World: Learning to Use the Vital Instrument of Consultation
I have had the amazing opportunity, in the last year or so, to both see and be a part of decision-making processes that were very different from what I had experienced previously. Those processes were based on one person convincing the others that his or her opinion was the best. It felt more like a… Read More Why Compete? Building on Strength as an Approach to Seek Truth
Living on different continents allows for the immersion into different types of cultures. The way these differ is a great way of gaining insight into patterns of behaviour that affect our personal development and our contribution to building vibrant communities. A really interesting surprise was the difference between conversation styles in different cultures. In some,… Read More Conversing to Consult or Conversing to Convince: Implications for Community Building
Hospitality is probably as old as humanity itself. I can easily imagine cave people inviting each other over to share fresh mammoth meat around the warmth of a fire. Since those (very) simple times, hospitality has evolved into a complex concept that varies from culture to culture, but also from one socioeconomic background to another.… Read More Not Breeding Passivity, or Who Would Have Thought that a Simple Dinner Could Turn into an Empowerment Festival?
Sahar’s Blog’s editorial calendar is pretty clear: Wednesdays are dedicated to product reviews. But once in awhile, things happen and plans change. One of these things is an amazingly powerful post Martha uploaded a little under a month ago. In it, she discusses how she was affected after being sexually abused by a family friend… Read More Positive, Powerful, and Empowering: Standing Up for Compassionate Justice in the Face of Sexual Abuse
On Friday 19 February 2016, a judge in New York ruled that Kesha could not cancel her six album contract with Sony. From what I understand, Kesha wants to break all ties with Sony, where she would continue to have some form of contact with Dr. Luke, the producer she said drugged her, raped her,… Read More Putting Justice Back at the Centre of the Legal System: the Case of Kesha and Dr. Luke
If you are a long time reader of my blog, it will come as absolutely no surprise that I am a firm believer in the power of the individual to make a difference. And I believe in this power not only in the small or even medium things, but in the big things. One such… Read More Voicing Our Concern for Injustice: It Starts at the Very Foundation of Our Societies
Last June, I came across an article by John Haltiwanger in which he explained why optimists are always late. While articles such as his do help understand how people—ourselves or others—think and function, the way Haltiwanger went about excusing lateness as a natural consequence of a virtue didn’t jive well with me. I felt that… Read More Developing Virtues: Never One At the Expense of Another