How to become the richest man in the world

There’s an appeal to living life purely through arm’s-length transactions.

We agree on terms, make an exchange, shake hands, and we’re done. No recurring obligations. No one owes anyone anything. It can easily be how we operate in many situations: buying a new pair of jeans, running a garden club, working a job, or splitting chores with our wives.

A life of deals and agreements can feel in control, efficient, even profitable in a sense.

But I don’t want this.

I want my life to have strings attached. I don’t want to live at arm’s length from everyone else. I don’t want to depend on the market or a series of transactions to bring companionship, compassion, or joy into my life.

I want to be enmeshed. I want to watch my brothers’, sisters’, and friends’ kids when they need a date night out. I want to know the next time I hug someone in my family or anyone else I always hug is going to be soon.

I want to accept meals after we have a baby and reciprocate that kindness to the next ten families in line. I want my neighbors to call me when their computer monitor is broken, and I want to lean on them when I need a ride to the airport, and Robyn has to take the kids to a piano lesson.

I want to stay up later than I should to hear one more story over beers with my buddies, especially when they’re visiting from far away. I want the DCFC clubhouse to feel like our country club because that means we’re showing up for soccer practices, and cheering not just for our sons but also their teammates.

I want the gentle nudge—and the pressure—to show up to Mass or open car doors in the school drop-off line, knowing the kids and other dads notice when I’ve been MIA for a while. I want to linger places, even at work, just to ask someone about how they and their family are doing.

I want to pour my love and laughter into someone who is struggling, even though it obligates me to the scary reality that, maybe—just maybe—I’ll have to open my heart and let it in when someone notices my grief and suffering and pours it right back.

These are the scenes from a life with strings attached.

This is what I want for us. I want us all to work hard and build just a little surplus—of money, love, time, and health—so we can take that extra and give it away.

Doing that isn’t how we become wealthy. In fact, we’re probably better off keeping people at arm’s length if wealth is our goal. Why? Because it’s easier to extract money from people when we stick to the terms of the contract. Our pesky emotions and feelings of attachment won’t dull our killer instincts, so to speak.

So intertwining ourselves with others—stringing ourselves to them and them to us—may not be the best way to become wealthy.

It is, I’d argue, how we become rich.

Audacious Dreams: The Key to True Inclusivity

Real, genuine inclusion is hard. It demands a level of effort and commitment that can feel daunting. But it’s also essential.

The Tough Reality of True Inclusivity

Creating a truly inclusive culture—whether in a society, a company, a small team, or even a family—in a diverse environment requires a special mindset. We have to believe that everybody matters and has a place if they treat others with respect. More importantly, we have to believe that it’s possible for everybody to matter.

Here’s what I mean by “it’s possible” for everybody to matter. Some situations feel like a prisoners’ dilemma, where not everyone can win. For example, multiple people vying for the same CEO position may see each other as competitors. Only one person can win, so it feels like others must lose.

Or consider children who feel they must be their parents’ favorite to feel secure and loved. This zero-sum mindset leads them to believe that not everyone can matter equally.

People who think this way might believe: We can’t have true inclusivity because there will always be winners and losers. Only winners matter. Everyone mattering is therefore impossible.

Inclusivity is hard because we must overcome this zero-sum mindset—that the world must always have winners and losers—to begin creating an inclusive society, company, or team. We have to believe that it’s even possible for everyone to matter.

Simply saying that everybody matters and it’s possible for everyone to matter can be dismissed as cheap talk. Why should we believe it’s possible for everyone to matter when the zero-sum mindset is so pervasive? A skeptic might say, “prove it.”

And to be fair, examples of true inclusivity are rare and often seem exceptional. How many spaces have you seen where everyone truly mattered? When I think of public examples, I think of the Apollo program, which brought together diverse talents to land people on the moon. Other examples include the Manhattan Project, the Toyota Production System, Microsoft’s transformation under Satya Nadella, and Southwest Airlines in its heyday. But even these examples have flaws and limitations, showing how hard it is to scale inclusivity.

Audacious Dreams

Inclusion is a complex phenomenon that’s hard to explain, but I think a big part of it is dreams. We need audacious dreams.

Inclusion is really hard. To counter the zero-sum mindset, inclusion can't be voluntary. It has to be involuntary, where we have no choice but to put aside our fears and egos and create the gravity that brings everyone in.

Audacious dreams create this gravity and make inclusion emerge. When we have a dream that matters deeply, we do anything to bring people in to achieve it. We look for the superpowers in others to help make the dream come true. With these dreams, we forget how hard it is to build an inclusive culture and just do it because we care about the dream and the mission.

I saw this when I worked at the Detroit Police Department. Many leaders, community members, and staffers—inside and outside of government—had the audacious dream to reduce gun violence in Detroit. This was audacious because for decades, Detroit had been one of the most violent cities in the country, with no data suggesting it would change.

The audacity of this dream brought everyone in. We had no choice but to include people because there was too much work to do. We had to find and involve new funders, community partners, law enforcement agencies, university researchers, and even victims and perpetrators of violence. We had to be inclusive and find ways for everyone to contribute their unique gifts because the dream of reducing violence was so challenging.

I’ve been away from this work for several years, but a lot of good work to reduce gun violence in Detroit has happened in the past decade. Audacious dreams that foster inclusivity are possible.

Guarding Against the Dark Side of Dreams

Audacious dreams create the gravity that helps inclusion emerge involuntarily. We need audacious dreams about “all of us.”

Yet, if contemplated with bad intent, audacious dreams can also be dangerous. There are many examples of people who manipulate others by sharing an audacious dream, recruiting people to help them, and ultimately pursuing an agenda of self-enrichment.

It’s also easy to use audacious dreams to be selectively inclusive—only including a chosen few and excluding others to build in-group unity.

How do we ensure our audacious dreams lead to an inclusive culture instead of a toxic one?

I think how we, as individual dreamers, dream matters. Is our dream one where the final image is of our own personal glory? Or is the final glimpse a better future for everyone? Is the dream about just us as individuals or all of us as a group?

This is hard. I’ve struggled with delusional dreams about my own advancement and personal glory for decades. I try not to be too hard on myself because our culture worships achievement, but it’s true. I’ve had dreams of being inaugurated as a senator or giving a press conference as a CEO. Even after seven-plus years of inner work as I’ve written a book - Character by Choice - which goes deep on the inner work that builds our capacity to be good people, I still relapse into dreams about moments of personal glory instead of dreams about all of us.

But this inner work is worth doing because we desperately need audacious dreams that create the gravity to bring everybody in. We need to leave ourselves no choice but to find ways for everyone to matter. I truly believe that an inclusive culture will lead to a healthier, more prosperous, and greener world in the long run. So we have no choice but to dream audacious dreams.

But like power, audacious dreams can corrupt. If we make them about just us instead of all of us, those dreams can lead to exclusion and exploitation.

We can’t have it both ways. If we want to create an inclusive culture, we have to dream audaciously. But we also have to do the inner work to ensure those dreams aren’t about just us, but about all of us.

Breaking Free of the Daily Grind (It’s hard)

Imagine with me.

Imagine that we have achieved individual success, measured by status and extrinsic rewards. We have reached the pinnacle of our careers, prospered, and provided for our families, as well as our immediate circle of acquaintances and charitable organizations. We have established ourselves in our community. Just picture it; we've "crushed" it.

Also, envision these triumphs extending to our community as a whole. Visualize our community thriving, adorned with fine restaurants and a vibrant cultural scene. Imagine that we enjoy a wealth of amenities and a high quality of life in our surroundings.

From an outsider's perspective, we've achieved what the American dream is often portrayed as: individual and communal comfort and affluence. The mere thought of it fills me with a sense of contentment.

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Recently, I've been pondering this question: What could potentially tarnish the allure of this comfort and affluence? What circumstances, if true, would make me feel as though I hadn't truly lived it the right way? What are the underlying indicators that need to hold true for me to believe our affluence isn't tainted in some manner?

To me, these questions serve as a means to comprehend: "What do I care about that’s bigger than me? Than us?"

Here are my five responses. Success and affluence will only truly feel worthwhile if...

1. Murders are rare. Murders epitomize the degree of connection and harmony within our society. If murder persists, it implies the existence of conflict, suffering, pain, and anger. For me, genuine success hinges on the rarity of murders.

2. Suicides are rare. Suicides reflect how connected and in harmony we are with ourselves. When suicides occur, it signifies loneliness, despair, hopelessness, and profound sadness. Authentic success, to me, necessitates the rarity of suicides.

3. Everyone is literate. The ability to read and write holds transformative power. Literacy is indispensable for personal growth, connecting with others, securing a decent livelihood, and realizing one's personal aspirations. High illiteracy rates indicate that there are individuals who may never develop sufficiently to thrive. True success, in my view, requires universal literacy.

4. We can play outside. The great outdoors, in all its forms, holds a special place in my heart. Whether it's a soccer field, a serene lake, a city's greenway, or a majestic national park, I find joy in simply being there and breathing in the fresh air. I firmly believe that both children and adults need the joy of outdoor play in their lives. True success, for me, means the ability to play outside.

5. I've done right by others. Have I genuinely achieved success if I've done it at the expense of others? If I've been a toxic colleague or an absent father, a neglectful husband or a selfish neighbor? If I've taken advantage of people I had influence over or been dishonest merely to get ahead? Real success, in my eyes, necessitates doing right by others.

—

There are moments when I find myself excessively preoccupied with my own comfort and affluence. If you're still reading, you might have experienced this too. I sometimes dwell too much on things like career advancements, our next home improvement project, or ways to simplify our daily routine. Reflecting on such matters isn't inherently wrong; comfort and affluence, in my book, aren't immoral. But at times, it becomes excessive, and I become too self-absorbed.

In these moments, I inevitably arrive at this fundamental question: "Why am I here?"

These five aspects – murder, suicide, literacy, outdoor recreation, and ethical treatment of others – happen to be the indicators that connect to what I value beyond my individual life. What you hold dear, something bigger than yourself, is likely to differ, and it should.

I find it crucial, yet challenging, to shift my perspective away from being consumed by thoughts of my own life, particularly given how much energy we expend just to navigate each week. Lately, the prompt, "All this success and affluence will feel worth it if...," has helped me refocus on something larger than myself. If you, too, aim to anchor yourself to a purpose greater than personal gain, I hope this thought exercise proves beneficial to you.

Photo by Zachary Keimig on Unsplash

Detroiter Kindness

Detroit has taken me in like no place I have ever lived.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @gerogia_vis

Having left Buffalo at age 5, I don’t remember much other than glimpses of my Kindergarten classroom, the nearby Tops grocery store, and the red-haired girl named Dina who lived next door - who was both my first friend and someone I will likely never hear of again.

Rochester was where I lived for most of my childhood, a well-to-do northern suburb of Detroit. It was a good place to grow up, but there were enough glares that I received in public - which I realize now were from a place of discomfort and skepticism, probably about race - to never allow that place to feel like one I could be from.

Ann Arbor was nice - lively, intellectual, and inclusive. People there were kind, even though I was a shrimpy college kid, and therefore loud and usually irritating to the locals.

Living there, something funny happened. The same, race-based, alienation I felt in Rochester made me feel exotic in Ann Arbor. It was as if the town was so oriented toward inclusion, people so willing to be kind, that my race felt extra salient.

That attitude of inclusivity that seemed to permeate the town was so generous, and I am grateful to have lived in place that was so midwestern, in the purest sense. But alas, Ann Arbor couldn’t feel like home for the same reason Disney World cannot: Ann Arbor is among the happiest of places, but it’s too magical - just beyond what feels real - to feel like I could actually be from there.

I never expected Detroit to be the place, the first place, to feel like home. And yet, here we are.

One of my favorite things to do while running is to wave. I wave at everyone I see. When I used to live nearer to the City center, I would go jogging, often ending up downtown. And no matter who it was I waved at - whether old, young, rich, poor, without a fixed address, or a young professional walking a dog - almost everyone waved back at me. This place, Detroit, I thought, was different.

When started working as in intern in City government, later joining the Police Department I was in the most diverse workforce I’d ever been part of, and not just on the basis of race. But also by age, professional experience, creed, sexual orientation, educational background, family origin, and likelihood to use profanity.

And yet, no matter whether I was talking to a career public servant, a political operative, a cop, a returned citizen, a pastor, a basketball coach, or an activist - people were cool with me. Citizens I met because of my job were cool with me. Everyone was cool with me. It wasn’t that people treated me in any special way - they were just cool with it.

It was precisely that I wasn’t special, that made the interactions I had feel so uncommon. For the first time in my life, I was just a guy doing a job. I was treated, just like a regular guy. If I was a decent guy, they were decent back. If I was respectful, I got it back. I was given the chance to just…be a guy doing a job. Detroit, I thought, is different.

When we moved into our neighborhood, I realized this Detroiter kindness wasn’t a coincidence or an unusual deference paid to me because I was a political appointee.

When Robyn and I walked down the street, first with our pup, and later with our sons, people would smile and wave back. Our neighbors, irrespective of our obvious demographic differences, actually wanted to know us. We would talk on the street, and everywhere we went, we got to be Neil and Robyn, that young couple up the street with the black dog and those three sons who were always rolling around on a stroller, tricycle, or scooter. This could be the last place I ever live, and that’d be nice, I thought. Seeing myself in this one place, for the rest of my days was different.

And then there was Church today, which reminded me of all this Detroit kindness and brought these memories about place back to the forefront of my mind in a surge.

Gesu is a Catholic Church of the Jesuit tradition. It’s a place where every week, during church announcements, any one who is a guest is invited to stand and be recognized. And the applause that follows is unfailingly sincere. I know many churches do this, but it just feels so sincere and never something that is just going through the motions.

In the pews there, I can be there and listen and pray. I don’t feel the searing eyes of the congregation, questioning why I’m there, when I don’t come forward to take communion. At that point in the service, when it’s time to give a sign of peace to others, people give me a sign of peace, warmly. It feels different.

There is an usher at the 8:00am Mass who is always at the door near where we usually sit. He is dressed well, usually with a brown overcoat, brown turtleneck, and a thin gold chain. He is older, but what I notice more is that he’s always smiling. At the end of mass today, he came over to say, “you have a beautiful family, such nice kids.”

“Thank you, we are blessed,” I said. And after a pause I added, with the slightest trepidation, “I’m Neil.”

“I’m Fitz. They call me Fitz. And this is my friend Walter.”

This type of interaction, genuinely kind and without any frills, pomp, or reservation, has only ever happened to me at Churches in Detroit. Detroit is different.

If you’ve never been here, I must admit that I don’t know quite how to describe Detroiter kindness. It’s genuine, but not from a place of bubbly energy or naïveté. It’s warm, but never given with waste or haste. It’s a no frills, meet-energy-with-energy, this is just how we do it, sort of kindness. It’s a kindness that seems like it can only be given by a person that’s lived in a City who has seen some things. It is a kindness that is not flashy and lavish, but is also not meek, and because of that it feels more sincere and is somewhat disarming. It’s a kindness that can only be earned, I think, not inherited.

Detroiter kindness is different.

I am so grateful for this place, and for it’s kindness. For many years I felt like a nomad in my own country, my identity caught between geography, ancestry, demeanor, and race. When someone asked me where I was from, I didn’t have an answer I actually felt comfortable saying or actually believed.

But now, I can say, “I’m from Detroit.” And it’s actually true. I actually feel it, and feel it in my bones. What a gift it has been for Detroit to have taken me in. What a blessing it is to finally be home.

“Our freedom is inextricably linked to goodness”

This post is an excerpt from Choosing Goodness - a series of letters to my sons, that is both a memoir and a book of everyday philosophy. To find out more about this project, click here.

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Why do we need to be good people?

Photo Credit: Unsplash @jvshbk

We have two really difficult problems when we humans live in a community of others rather than in the state of nature. We have the problem of how to ensure that the community doesn't devolve into a state of violence (i.e., we have to create rules and institutions), and, we have the problem of ensuring that the corrupting influence of power doesn't cause the system of government to rot from within.

My whole adult life, until your mom and I found out we were having you, I've been reading, writing, and thinking about institutions and how to create and run them well. Take a look at our bookshelf at home, the majority of what you'll find are books about institutions in one way or another. For most of my life, I've been nutty about making institutions work better and changing the system to make sure they do.

But since I've been reflecting on fatherhood, and starting to write these letters to you, I've grown more and more confused about institutions and their role in society. I suppose I've come to see institutions more for what they are: an intentional concentration of power that is bounded by rules, controls, and systems to ensure, god willing, that it’s wielded benevolently, and without abuse. 

As I’ve challenged myself to think about institutions through the lens of power and goodness, I’ve cooled my singular focus on building better institutions. I don’t like the world that I foresee an institutions heavy approach would create, because institutions necessarily manage, regulate, and constrain freedoms.

I don’t want our world to be one where to resolve conflict, prevent violence, and deter corruption we stack rule on top of rule, penalty on top of penalty, oversight board after oversight board, and check after balance all to deal with conflict and the corrupting influence of power. I don't like the idea of a community that is so controlled and I'm not even sure that it's a strategy that would ultimately lead to less conflict, violence, and corruption.

Which makes building character, and moving toward a vision where our community and culture chooses freely to walk the path of goodness so important to me. A culture motivated by goodness deals with conflict, violence, and corruption by preventing it in the first place; character doesn't require changing institutions, it reduces the need for institutions in the first place.

To be sure, building character and a goodness-motivated culture is at least as difficult as reforming institutions. And we will always obviously need better institutions - the size of our society requires it. 

But if it were possible to make our world a place that built character and a culture of goodness, I would much rather live in that world than a world on the verge of subduing itself through laws, regulation, and an ever greater requirement to concentrate power in institutions so those laws and regulations can be enforced.

The schism here you must be feeling, as to how your individual choice to choose the work and walk the path of goodness ladders up to the community’s aggregate culture, is not lost on me. It’s hard to see how individual acts affect the broader culture. But they are connected, because our individual actions affect perceptions of normal and vice-versa.

Our decisions and actions are infectious. The actions you take don't necessarily compel others to behave a certain way, but they do have influence because our actions shape what's normal. For example if you lie, others you interact with consistently will think it is more normal to lie than they otherwise would have, had you not lied. And if you lie consistently, it will give others more implicit, social permission to lie than they otherwise would have. Over time, these seemingly little acts will generate a feedback loop which eventually will be powerful enough to shift what constitutes normal behavior around lying and telling the truth.

But conversely, if you tell the truth, and do it consistently, it will give others the implicit, social permission to tell the truth. Your actions, you see, have reverberations beyond your own life. The book How Behavior Spreads, by Damon Centola, explain this complex system dynamic of how behaviors spread from neighborhood to neighborhood. Pick up that book from our bookshelf at home for a rich discussion about this point.

This observation of how our actions affect others and how the culture affects us is especially important to keep in mind because of the time we live in. Social technologies make it easier and faster to influence what’s normal. And I've noticed that the terrible parts of our humanity are the ideas that spread wider and faster. And so our perception of normal gets skewed.

If we - and by that I mean you and me specifically, in addition to “society” - don't choose the work and walk the path of goodness, behaving with goodness will become less normal, and perhaps even become abnormal eventually. And that to me is a scary, scary world. But remember, we have the ability to shape what is normal with our own choices. Why not shape that normal to be goodness instead of the abuse of power?

I'm not much of a gambler, as you three will come to learn as you get older, but I'll make a bet with you. I bet that at some point in your life you will be in some position of power. Whether at work, at school, or volunteering - in some role, whether big or small. In some, if not all, of these positions you will have an opportunity to be corrupt, even if just in a small way. You'll have an opportunity to abuse the power you have to enrich yourself at the expense of others. And you'll have to make a decision to give into this temptation or not.

The key point here is not that you'll be in a position of power at some point in life, or that in that position you'll have a choice between goodness and power. That is all obvious, and something we've been considering together in these letters since the very beginning.

They key point, rather, is that this choice between goodness and power, between character and corruption will have a real effect on other people's lives. In that moment, when the opportunity to abuse power is thrust in front of you, how you choose to act will have real consequences. How you choose will affect what’s normal, even if it’s just in a small way that adds up over time.

If you choose to live in a community with others, the tension between power and goodness will be a constant part of your life, for your whole life. The choice is not imaginary, it’s a real choice, with real stakes that we must make.

Because we came out of the state of nature, and chose to live in communities this tension between power and goodness, between corruption and integrity will always be part of our life. It's a struggle we have inherited from our mothers and fathers before us and their mothers and fathers before them. And because we are mere mortals, and are not perfectly good, we, as a society, formed rules and institutions to help us navigate and manage that tension.

This may always be what mothers and father think as they prepare for their children to be born, but the America you are being born into seems more and more like it is consumed by a lust of power and control, which leads an ever escalating cycle of conflict, rules, the struggle to control those rules, and conflict again.

I always wondered why your Dada wanted to sacrifice everything and move to the United States. And one day he finally told me. Of course, part of what we sought was greater opportunities for prosperity – what he thought of as a better life than the poverty he experienced in his youth and early adulthood. But I’ll never forget what we hold me next.

He saw corruption in India, his motherland, and in America, his adoptive land. And that’s true. All places, I think, have some amount of corruption, albeit in different forms. But what your Dada believed to be difference between corruption in India and America was that in America the corruption didn’t affect “little people” in their everyday lives. Regular people could have a good life without having to succumb to the effects of corruption on a daily basis. In the halls of power, sure, there was corruption. But he respected that in America regular, everyday, people didn’t get squashed by it.

In the decades since I talked with your Dada about his aspirations to emigrate to America, and his view of life here, I’ve come to agree with him. Corruption is a leach. It siphons prosperity through graft and rent seeking. It saps people of their trust in each other and in institutions. It’s a disease, comparable to a cancer, that slowly eats away at a pleasant, peaceful, and prosperous society. The real enemy of any society is not a policy decision or a rival policy – we all have a stake in solving the corruption problem. To make the community a place worth living in, corruption is our common enemy.

The real practical question to me, then, is how. We have a few strategies, as we’ve seen, to address the problem of corruption. To me abundance is an enabler not a solution. Homogenization is a non-starter. That leaves only two viable strategies – building character and building institutions.

My case for “why goodness” and the need to build character into our culture boils down to this: If we choose to live in community with others, the incidence of corruption is inevitable. Accepting corruption is not an option, and neither is homogenization. We can’t depend on abundance to solve our problems, either. That leaves us with the choices to build institutions and build character, and in reality we need to do both.

But building more institutions comes at a hefty price because the more institutions we depend on, the less freedom we will have. Every rule we make constrains our future choices. That leaves goodness as our best option, even though building a society driven by goodness is extremely challenging. If we choose to leave the state of nature and live in community with others, we must also choose the work and walk the path of goodness so that we can do our part to preserve as much of our freedoms as possible.

The world I hope for me and your mother, and the world I hope to pay forward to you, my three sons, is a world that is truly free – like the freedom of heaven the renowned Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore describes in Gitanjali 35.

Instead of succumbing to a culture struggling for power, I hope you aspire to find peace in goodness and that the world ends up requiring fewer rules and institutions as time goes on, instead of more. I hope you are persuaded that our freedom, from the ever growing reach of rules and institutions, is inextricably linked to goodness. But for that to happen, more and more people have to choose the work to walk the path of goodness, rather than power. And that my sons, starts with us and the choices we make every day of our lives. We must choose.

How We Should Treat Aliens

How should I treat a glass of water? Here are a few gut reactions:

1. I should not shatter it senselessly on the floor. Effort and resources went into making the glass. Destroying it for no reason would be wasteful.

2. I should keep it clean and in good working order. That way, there’s no stress because it’s ready for use. There’s no need to inconvenience someone else with even a trivial amount of unnecessary suffering.

3. I should use it in a way that’s helpful. It would be exploitative, in a way, if I took a perfectly good glass and used it as a weapon. If it’s there, I might as well use it to quench thirst, or do something else positive with it. Even glasses are better used for noble purposes than ignoble ones.

4. If I’m thirsty, I should drink the water. After all, it’s here and it won’t be here for ever - life is short.

5. And finally, if someone else is thirsty, I should share what I have. After all, we’re all in this together, trying to survive in a lonely universe.

How should I treat an alien?

The thought experiment of the glass of water is interesting because I don’t know how the glass wants to be treated. I can’t communicate with the glass, so I don’t even know if it has preferences. It is after all, just a glass.

And because the glass doesn’t have any discernible preferences, all my suppositions on how to treat the glass are a reflection of my own intuitions about how other beings should be treated. The question is a revealing one, if one chooses to play along with the thought experiment, because I’m asking a question that’s usually reserved for sentient being about an inanimate object. I can more easily access my true, unbiased, preference because I’m thinking about how to treat a glass of water and not, say, my wife and children.

Helpfully, asking the question revealed some of my deep-seeded moral principles. Each of these intuitions are builds on one of the statements I made above:

1. Don’t be wasteful - energy, and resources are finite.

2. Be kind - other beings feel pain so it’s good not to inflict suffering unnecessarily.

3. Have good intentions - I have the chance to make the world better, using my talents for good purposes. The world can be cruel, so why not make it more tolerable for others.

4. Uncertainty matters - Sooner is better than later because we don’t know how much time we have left. If you have an opportunity, take it. The opportunity cost of time is high, and the future has a risk of not happening the way we want it to.

5. Cooperate if you can - we are all in this universe together, nobody can help us but each other. Life is precious, beautiful, and so rare in this universe, so we should try to keep it going even if it requires sacrifices.

Like a glass of water, if we were to come across an alien species, we would not know what their preferences were. But unlike a glass of water, the aliens might actually have preferences - presumably, the aliens wouldn’t be inanimate objects.

And let’s assume for a minute that we out to respect the moral preferences of aliens, though I acknowledge that whether or not to recognize the moral standing of aliens is a different question, which we may not answer affirmatively.

But let’s say we did.

How we should treat aliens (and how they might treat us)

What this thought experiment helps to reveal is that we have meta-constraints that shape our moral intuitions and in turn, affect our moral preferences.

It matters to our morality that resources and energy are finite. It matters to our morality that we feel mental and physical pain. It matters that the world is an imperfect, sometimes brutal, place. It matters that the future is uncertain. It matters that life is fragile and that for the entirety of our history we’ve never found it anywhere else. Our reality is shaped by these constraints and manifest in how we think about moral questions.

So, like many difficult questions I only have a probabilistic answer to the question of how we should treat aliens: I think it depends. If they face the same sorts of constraints we do, maybe we should treat them as we treat humans. If they face the same constraints we do - like finite resources, uncertainty, and the feeling of physical pain - maybe we could also expect them to treat us with a strangely familiar morality, that even feels human.

But what if? What if the aliens’ face no resource constraints? What if their life spans are nearly infinite? What if their predictive modeling of the future is nearly perfect? What if they know of life existing infinitely across the universe? If some of these “facts” we believe to be universal, are only earthly, it’s quite possible that the aliens’ moral framework is, pun intended, quite alien to our own.

Maybe we’ll encounter aliens 10,000 years or more from now, and maybe it’ll be next week. Who knows. I hope if you are a human from the far out future, relative to my existence in the 21st Century, I hope you find this primitive thought experiment helpful as you prepare to make first contact. More than anything, I’m trying to offer an approach to even contemplate the question of alien morality: one tack we can take is to look at the meta-constraints that affect us at the species and planetary level, and then see how the aliens’ constraints compare.

But for all us living now, in the year of our lord, two thousand twenty two, I think there’s still a takeaway. Thinking about how we should treat glasses of water and aliens provides a window into our own sense of right and wrong. Maybe we can use these same discerned principles to better understand other cultures and other periods of history. Do other cultures have different levels of scarcity or uncertainty, for example? Maybe that affects their culture’s moral attitudes, and we can use that insight to get along better.

If we’re lucky, doing this sort of comparative moral analysis will make the people and species we share this planet with feel a little less, well, alien, while we figure out who else is out there in the universe.

Creating Safe and Welcoming Cultures

To help people feel safe and welcome within a family, team, organization, or community, two general strategies are: special attention and consistent treatment.

Examining the tension between those two strategies is a simple, powerful lens for understanding and improving culture.

The Strategies

The first strategy is to provide special attention.

Under this view, everyone is special and everyone gets a turn in the spotlight. Every type of person gets an awareness month or some sort of special appreciation day - nobody is left out. Everyone’s flag gets a turn to fly on the flag pole. The best of the best - whether it’s for performance, representing values, or going through adversity - are recognized. We shine a light on the bright spots, to shape behaviors and norms.

And for those that aren’t the best of the best, they get the equivalent of a paper plate award - we find something to recognize, because everyone has a bright spot if only we look.

This strategy works because special attention makes people feel seen and acknowledged. And when we feel seen, we feel like we belong and can be ourselves.

But providing special attention has tradeoffs, as is the case with all strategies.

The first is that someone is always slipping through the cracks. We never quite can neatly capture everyone in a category to provide them special attention. It’s really hard to create a recognition day, for example, for every type of group in society. Lots of people live on the edges of groups and they are left out. When someone feels left out, the safe, welcoming culture we intended is never fully forged and rivalries form.

The second trade off is that special attention has diminishing marginal returns. The more ways we provide special attention, the less “special” that attention feels. Did you know, for example, that on June 4th (the day I’m writing this post) is National Old Maid’s day, National Corgi Day, and part of National Fishing and Boating week, plus many more? Outside of the big days like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day - how can someone possible feel seen and special if the identity they care about is obscure and celebrated on a recognition day that nobody even knows exists?

The existence of “National Old Maid’s day” is obviously a narrow example, but it illustrates a broader point: the shine of special attention wears off the more you do it, which leads to the more obscure folks in the community feeling less special and less visible, which breeds resentment.

The second strategy to create a feeling of safety and welcoming in a community is to treat everyone consistently well.

In this world everyone is treated fairly and with respect. Every interaction that happens in the community is fair, consistent, and kind. We don’t treat anyone with boastful attention, but we don’t demean anyone either. We have a high standard of honesty, integrity, and compassion that we apply consistently to every person we encounter..

The most powerful and elite don’t get special privileges - everyone in the family only gets one cookie and only after finishing dinner, the executives and the employees all get the same selection of coffee and lunch in the cafeteria, and we either celebrate the birthday of everyone on the team with cake or we celebrate nobody at all.

The strategy of treating everyone consistently well works because fairness and kindness makes people feel safe. When we’re in communities that behave consistently, the fear of being surprised with abuse fades away because our expectations and our reality are one, and we know that we will be treated fairly no matter who we are.

But this strategy of treating other consistently well also has two tradeoffs.

The first, is that it’s really hard. The level of empathy and humility required to treat everyone consistently well is enormous. The most powerful in a group have to basically relinquish the power and privilege of their social standing, which is uncommon. The boss, for example, has to be willing to give up the corner office and as parent’s we can’t say things like “the rules don’t apply to grown ups.” A culture of consistently well, needs leadership at every level and on every block. To pull that off is not only hard, it takes a long time and a lot of sacrifice.

The second tradeoff is that to create a culture of consistently well there are no days off. For a culture of consistently well to stick, it has to be, well, consistent. There are no cheat days where the big dog in the group is allowed to treat people like garbage. There are no exceptions to the idea of everyone treated fairly and with respect - it doesn’t matter if you don’t like them or they are weird. There is no such thing as a culture of treating people consistently well if it’s not 24/7/365.

The Tension

The answer to the question, “Well, which strategy should I use?” Is obvious: both. The problem is, the two approaches are in tension with each other. Providing special attention makes it harder to treat others consistently and vice versa. They key is to put the two strategies into play and let them moderate each other.

A good first step is to use the lenses of the two strategies to examine current practices:

• Who is given special attention? Who is not?

• Who doesn’t fit neatly into a category of identity or function? Who’s at risk of slipping through the cracks?

• What do our practices around special attention say about who we are? Are those implicit value statements reflective of who we want to be?

• What are the customs that are commonplace? How do we greet, communicate, and criticize each other?

• Who is treated well? Who isn’t? Are differences in treatment justified?

• How do the people with the most authority and status behave? Is it consistent? is it fair?

• What are the processes and practices that affect people’s lives and feelings the most (e.g., hiring, firing, promotion, access to training)? Are those processes consistent? Are they fair? Do they live up to our highest ideals?

As I said, the real key is to utilize both strategies and think of them as a sort of check and balance on each other - special attention prevents consistency from creating homogeneity and consistency prevents special attention from becoming unfairly distributed.

From my observation, however, is that most organizations do not utilize these strategies in the appropriate balance. Usually, it’s because of an over-reliance on the strategy of providing special attention. That imbalance worries me.

I do understand why it happens. Providing special attention feels good to give and to receive and is tangible. It’s easy to deploy a recognition program or plan an appreciation day quickly. And most of all, speical attention strategies are scalable and have the potential to have huge reach if they “go viral.”

What I worry about is the overuse of special attention strategies and the negative externalities that creates. For example, all the special appreciation days and awareness months can feel like an arms race, at least to me. And, I personally feel the resentment that comes with slipping through the cracks and see that resentment in others, too.

Excessive praise and recognition makes me (and my kids, I think) into praise-hungry, externally-driven people. The ability to have likes on a post leads to a life of “doing it for the gram”. The externalities are real, and show up within families, teams, organizations, and communities.

At the same, I know it would be impractical and ineffective to focus one-dimensionally on creating cultures of consistently well. It’s important that we celebrate differences because we need to ensure our thoughts and communities stay diverse so we can solve complex problems. I worry that just creating a dominant culture without special attention, even one that’s rooted on the idea of treating people consistently well, would ultimately lead to homogeneity of perspective, values, skills, and ideologies instead of diversity.

The solution here is the paradoxical one, we can’t just utilize special attention or treating people consistently well to create safe and welcoming communities - we need to do both at the same time. Even though difficult, navigating this tension is well worth it because creating a family, team, organization, or community that feels safe and welcoming is a big deal. We can be our best selves, do our best work, and contribute the fullest extent of our talents when we feel psychological safety.

Mentors are momentary fathers

I met Phelps Connell in 2005, during my fraternity pledge term in my freshman year at Michigan. Flip, as everyone called him, was an alumnus of my fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta, and moved back to Ann Arbor after retirement. He was always around the house for alumni matters, and our fraternity was one of the organizations he devoted himself to. 

He was 80 when I met him, but I would’ve never realized that from his demeanor. He was as vibrant and active as the collegians who lived in the fraternity house he now was overseeing as part of our alumni board. I found this excerpt of his obituary to be a perfect representation of the man he was:

Phelps was first and foremost a gentleman, adored and respected by many for his kindness, loyalty, personal integrity, and concern for others.

I distinctly remember one day I was talking to Flip, in the Fraternity’s kitchen, because I was on dishwashing duty that week. I was a Junior at the time, living in the house, and serving on the Chapter’s executive board. I had gotten to know Flip well during my time as a collegian. He had always taken an interest in me and checked-in on me often.

Flip and I were chatting, but then he asked me - quite directly - if I was going to run in the election for the Interfraternity Council’s executive board, which was the governing body for many of the fraternities at Michigan. In campus life, the IFC as it’s called is one of the more influential extra-curricular organizations for undergrads because it oversees a huge part of the greek system, which at Michigan is a major part of campus life.

I gave him a hemming and hawing answer, and basically shared some lame him excuses for why I didn’t think it was a good idea to run. To be sure, deep down I wanted to run for an office, but didn’t believe in myself enough to try.

Flip was having none of this, of course. He encouraged me to run for a post. He told me that I was a capable leader and that I would represent our chapter well. He saw that I was intimidated at the responsibility and scrutiny that would be part of a campus-wide office and convinced me I could handle it.

He saw something in me and cultivated it. He was probably the first person to do this that wasn’t a teacher or related to me.

And this mentor ship didn’t stop once I graduated college. As a young alumnus I lived in Ann Arbor and served on my fraternity’s alumni board with him for a few years. I got to know his wonderful wife, Jean, over the years I knew home. They invited me and my close friend Jenny - my roommate at the time - over for dinner. It learned the important lesson of what adult friendships are supposed to look like.

I only knew Flip for eight years, from 2005 until he passed in 2013. But in that time he had an outsized influence on my life. He wasn’t just a mentor he was a father to me for a narrowly scoped, temporally limited part of my life.

I realized only recently that the concept of a mentor comes from Homer’s Odyssey (a new translation came out recently, it’s terrific). 

In the epic, Mentor is a friend of Odysseus and counsels Odysseus’s son Telemachus to rise up against the suitors wasting his father’s wealth and courting his mother. Mentor, who is inhabited by the goddess Athena during this scene, is a critical figure guiding Telemachus, who has been without a father his entire life, while away at war.

My own father, Girish, was deeply influenced by Hindu philosophy and lived by a code: take care of yourself and then take care of your family. Only then should you help others. He always questioned my community pursuits because in his view, one should get his own house in order first, so that he doesn’t burden others in the community.

As a young man, I thought his view was selfish and narrow minded. But over the years, I’ve come to find great wisdom in my father’s approach. Getting my own house in order does come first, because he was right - we need the community to help with our burdens. But he was also right in that our own stability must quickly be followed by serving others. We cannot enrich our own households indefinitely.

This has become very real to me lately. If I’m being honest, our house is almost in order - at least once we’re out of the newborn phase with all our kids. I am much better off than my parents were at my age, mostly due to their financial sacrifices, their insistence that I get an education, and their upbringing of me. 

This is actually a scary, slightly unnerving thought, because the burden of serving others is heavy and consequential. 

In our culture today, I think we use the term mentor a bit too lightly. At their best, mentors are not just advisors, they are momentary fathers. Flip was not just a mentor, he was a momentary father to me. Moses and Roger, are not just my neighbors - they have been momentary fathers to me when they taught me how to change my car battery or offer advice on how to go on a camping trip with young kids. 

Two Police Commanders were not just my colleagues, they were momentary fathers to me when they reminded me to take a leave of absence when Bo was born or rushed me out of a situation at a community event when a dude who beat double murder was asking me a ton of personal questions. 

The father of a friend from business school, who happens to also be a writer, has been a momentary father to me when we have chatted on the telephone about finding purpose in life and work.

I think if we’re honest, those of us who feel like we’ve had some success at living life have been blessed with many momentary mothers and fathers along the way.

There is a time that comes where we must expand our sphere. When that time comes, we cannot walk away from being momentary fathers to others. I - and many of us, I think - am closer to that time than I expected.

The rare second chance we all have

As our family “gets back to normal”, I’m having to relearn how to get on with other people. Like, literally yesterday we had a few people over for a 5k and pancakes after and my muscle memory was rusty; I shook hands without making eye contact. I’m just out of practice, and I think most of us feel this way.

As I’ve gone through these growing pains, I’ve come to be skeptical of this idea of “getting back to normal.” After all, prior to the pandemic I was not a perfect husband, father, citizen, or friend. And if I wasn’t the best person prior to all this, why would I wan’t to just get back to living that life or back to being that guy?

Most of us crave second chances in life, and now we all, simultaneously, have one. We all have a mulligan on our relationships. We all have an opportunity to make a new sort-of first impression. We all had a long pause our social relationships and now we have the chance to be better versions of ourselves as we rekindle old ties and nurture new ones. We, all at the same time, have this rare opportunity to have a soft-reset in our social and community lives. 

Instead of just “getting back to normal”, I want to be a better friend than I was before. Because, how often do second chances come along?

I want to not let rekindled relationships with college friends just fizzle out. I want to stay open to meeting new neighbors while on walks, instead of just waving hello and keeping it moving. I want to be a better listener, and put my phone away when I’m with others. I want to send more, “hey, I was just thinking about you” texts. I want to be more courageous and really share deeply and make others feel safe enough to share, too. I want to keep deepening with the family and friends that we leaned on (and leaned on us) in the past year.

And before the pandemic, too many of my social were relationships were comfortable, because most people I know act like me, think like me, and talk like me. Maybe that’s not what I want to do from now on. Maybe I could really dig in and pen my heart to those people that are good souls, but make me uncomfortable in some way. And maybe too, I can let go of relationships of obligation faster and let some folks simply pass by on their journey; it’s okay to just cross-paths once with some.

And yet, before the pandemic I started to subscribe to the idea of “no new friends.” Because honestly, I felt stretched and I couldn’t nurture the friendships I had enough. Maybe, just maybe I can dig deeper and find a way to nurture whatever friendships I have - whether they’re strong or weak ties - in a way that is sensible and caring, without hiding behind a door that’s closed to new people. 

Maybe this time around I can be better than the friend I was before. 

It’s just astounding to me how rare a second chance like this can come around - it’s a chance to be better without the fear and shame that can often come in tow with personal and cultural transformation. 

Instead of thinking of this spring as the time we all “got back to normal”, I would rather think of it as the time we, after a long and lonely winter, emerged wiser than we were, and got back to the important work of creating a world we are proud to pass on.

The pizza stone, snowblower, and being that kind of man

Two gifts I’ve been using a lot lately are a snowblower and a (2nd) pizza stone. Both were Christmas gifts from our parents in recent years.

The extra pizza stone has doubled our oven’s throughput for making pizza. Which is convenient for us a nuclear family, but it isn’t essential on a weekly basis. Where it makes a big difference is when we’re hosting - say close friends or family. Having that 2nd stone gives us the capability to throw a pizza party. 

Similarly, the snowblower is convenient - especially on days of large snowfall - but not essential. I can muddle through with just a shovel if I really need to. Where the snowblower makes a huge difference is for our block. 

Our next-door neighbors and we have an unwritten code: whoever gets to the shoveling first takes care of the others’ sidewalk. This makes it easier for whoever comes out second, and it clears more of the sidewalk, earlier in the day, for people walking down the block. Having the snowblower makes it much more possible for me to honor that neighborly code.

With the snowblower, I can basically guarantee I’ll be able to remove snow from our house, as well as for each of our next-door neighbors in about 30 minutes. Without the snowblower, it might take me closer to two hours on a day of heavy snowfall to manage that same task.

Receiving the stone and snowblower wasn’t a particularly flashy ordeal. Both were extremely generous and practical gifts, but it wasn’t particularly exciting to receive something so mundane, in the moment of unwrapping the present on Christmas day.

But these sorts of gifts, I’ve realized, are much more than practical. I’ve come to think of them as exponential because they give us the ability to give to others. In this example, the 2nd stone and snowblower has made the amount of times we’ll end up throwing pizza parties or helping out our neighbors over our lifetime exponentially greater.

I’ve thought recently, how humble one must have to be to give an exponential gift. When someone says “thanks for the pizza, it was great” I don’t, after all, make it a point to say something like, “You’re welcome, it would probably wouldn’t have happened if our parents hadn’t got us a 2nd pizza stone for Christmas 3 years ago.”

Or talking to our neighbors across the fence, I would never in a 100 years say something like, “No problem, I was happy to get your snow while I was out. The credit really goes to our parents who got us this snowblower. It would have been much harder to help you if not for their gift.”

And it’s not like I frequently say to our parents, “oh thanks for those gifts, it’s really helped me to be a better friend and neighbor.” Maybe I should, but that’s not really the sort of exchange I’d probably naturally have in real life.

Nobody knows the impact these gifts from our parents have had. Our parent’s probably don’t even realize it.

Essentially, when you give an exponential gift like a 2nd pizza stone or a snowblower, you can’t expect to get credit for it. This is much different than say a more novel gift that other people notice, like a consumer electronic or a very nice piece of new clothing.

Take a sweater I got this Christmas, for example. People noticed and said things like, “that’s a nice sweater, is it new?” And I could reply with something like, “oh yeah, I’ve loved it - it was a great Christmas gift from our parents.”

That sort of affirmation doesn’t happen with exponential gifts. Which is why I think giving an exponential gift takes tremendous generosity and humility, because the gift-giver isn’t recognized for it, nor might they even know how impactful their gift was.

And as I started contemplating this, I began to wonder - am I humble an generous enough to give gifts that nobody will ever know I was responsible for? And let’s put aside Christmas and birthdays and get to the big stuff.

What about in my job? Am I unconsciously holding back on making a contribution that I know won’t help me land a promotion? Am I working hard, just so I can get a pat on the back? 

Do I volunteer in my community because I relish the credit and respect it provides, or because it’s just the right thing to do? Are there things I do, only because of how someone else might see it on instagram? Am I humble and generous, or am I just a peacock and a brat who gives only to get back reciprocally?

I don’t know how to know this, not yet at least. I think this problem - of knowing whether our own actions are done for their own righteous sake or because of the rewards we expect for them - is one of the essential, practical, moral struggles that we all face.

But I feel strongly that it’s important to try understanding this, and acting differently - more humbly and generously - if we can. Because exponential gifts are transformational in real people’s lives, and they transform the culture we live in for the better. I want to be humble and generous enough to give an exponential gift that I never expect to get any credit or recognition for. 

I want to be that kind of man.

Kitchen Table Entrepreneurship

I have been trying my damndest this year to not give into the “that’s 2020” mentality. This whole year, I’ve been operating with a mantra of “get up off the mat, get up off the mat, get up off the mat.”

And let me start with honesty: I’ve failed on many fronts.

I didn’t finish this book, I shouted a lot at my sons, and attended church less, even though it was easier than before - to name a few ways I’ve failed.

But I’m encouraged. At the beginning of the year, I thought basically everyone but me had given up on 2020, as if it made you one of the cool kids to talk about how much 2020 sucked. 

But this week, after taking a breath, it hit me how many people hadn’t given up on 2020, and were just going about their lives, quietly, but with tremendous courage and persistence.

In retrospect, I’ve seen an explosion of what I’d call “kitchen table entrepreneurship.”

By this, I don’t mean the venture-backed startups that develop software or some lifestyle product. Though I’m sure that’s continued.

I mean the ideas that were born around kitchen tables, in WhatsApp threads, or on Zoom calls by regular folks just trying to find a way to make things better for the people around them.

Like my sister-in-law who proclaimed it to be “Pajama Christmas” this year, rolled with three onsies to our family get together, and found a way for us to do a family social-distanced wine tasting after virtual church, complete with tasting scorecards to make up for the fact we couldn’t safely do our normal traditions.

Or the public servants in Detroit who just figured out how to rapidly build out drive-through Covid testing within days and weeks of the pandemic starting, put in protocols almost literally overnight to prevent the spread of Covid within DPD and DFD, launched a virtual concert of Detroit artists to help people stay sane, or delivered thousands of laptops to schoolchildren that didn’t have remote learning capabilities.

Or my wife, who’s been charging with some of her colleagues on legit, sincere Diversity and Inclusion programs and a Caregiver support group. She’s too humble to make noise about it, but she and her colleagues are doing really innovative work to change their particular workplace and improving the lives of their colleagues.

Or there are so many people who have figured out how to get their elderly neighbors groceries, or shovel their sidewalks, or get things like neighborhood storm drain cleanings coordinated even though some folks in the neighborhood barely knew how to send an email before this thing started, let alone join a Zoom call.

Or just today, I was able to use my Meijer App like a mobile cash register to scan my items as I shopped - minimizing time in the store and contacts with frontline employees.

Or our local businesses on Livernois, just turning on a dime to find ways to stay in business and operate safely. Narrow Way, our local coffee shop, is really efficient now, has used technology and new offerings to make their customer experience even better than it was before, and even though I’ve been in a mask, they still found a way to know me by name and make me feel respected and welcomed.

And even people who’ve had relative after relative get sick or pass away - I’ve heard so many stories of how they’re finding ways to get through, or continue to help others, or just keep doing what they do.

These are just examples from my own life, but they seem to be illustrative examples of people just making things better where they are, without a lot of money or a lot of fanfare. They’re just doing it.

Maybe this has always been happening and I haven’t noticed it as much. Either way, I think this kitchen table entrepreneurship is worth celebrating.

As I’ve reflected on these stories of kitchen table entrepreneurship, there has been one lesson that’s struck me most.

During this year, the entrepreneurship I’ve seen has all been on things that are important. Like, I haven’t seen stupid or totally self-indulgent or narcissistic apps, products, and services emerge from this situation. Those are getting less buzz at least.

The kitchen table entrepreneurship I’ve seen has addressed problems that matter. People are finding ways to make things better in material ways for the people around them. They’re not doing this stuff to get a pat on the back, get in the paper, or hustle someone out of a dollar. They’re doing it because it matters for the people around them: their families, friends, employees, neighbors, and customers.

And the lesson for me has been relearning a simple but wise idea: focus on what matters. That’s when hard stuff gets done, and new ideas emerge from unlikely places - when the outcome matters.

In that expression - focus on what matters - I’ve always leaned into the focus part. If I just focus more, I can live out my intentions, I thought.

But I’ve learned this year, that it might be wiser to lean in the the “what matters” part of that expression. Is what we’re trying to do really, really important? If not, why are we even doing it?

The lesson of kitchen table entrepreneurship, for me at least, has been to dig deeper for why something matters. If we can find things that matter, the focus part seems to mostly take care of itself.

Seeing all this entrepreneurial activity emerge from kitchen tables all across the country has been truly inspiring to me. And more importantly, it has been a great reminder that we get up off the mat if and when something truly matters.