The question I’m pondering is: can we truly get to a better world by all of us tending to our tiny corner of it? Or would a truly better world require all those micro actions to be complemented by some grand-scale work?

My thoughts on educating children and teenagers; an evolving document as I think more.

3D chess is a tired metaphor that will lead you in the wrong direction. Instead, you want to play fractal chess: increase the layers of game that you're playing, not simply the complexity.

In The Four-Hour Work Week Tim Ferriss tells a story about a Mexican fisherman and an American businessman. Not many people know that there is actually a second half to this fable. I was lucky enough to hear it from a wandering shaman in a Berlin nightclub, and with his permission I have reproduced it here.

Don’t choose something (a class, a book, a job, a partner) based on its headline – choose it based on what you want to get out of it, then engage in a way that makes this happen.

The sad/rain fallacy: situations in which you’ve have the causal relationship backwards, in a way that denies your own agency. (I believe I am the first to identify it, although I would be happy to be corrected!)

The most compelling proponents of reform are those who are successful members of the system. Complaints from those who have been burned by the fire too often seem like the sour grapes accusations of a sore loser. Plus, winners have resources and power to use as a megaphone, whereas losers are marginalised by definition. Despise, denounce, but exploit.