Even if many of our traditional or inherited institutions are broken today, that begs the question what to do about them now.

For, in general, they are not going away. We will still need institutions of governance, education, and business. That’s simply the upshot of our political nature.

At such times, we tend to see two types of problematic would-be reformers. One group are the utopian revolutionaries. Seeing a broken arm or leg, they propose to cut it off and grow a new one. The other group are the willfully blind reactionaries. “It’s not broken,” they insist. “Shake it off.”

That might make for exciting television, but it does not make for good politics or policy.

By and large, our political fights today are not about “fake” news but rather apparently opposed profound truths. Loss of a job or status is profoundly painful; so is historical and daily oppression.

We’re facing a crying need for the cultural equivalent of the kind of personality integration that’s supposed to come with adulthood. It’s not easy for any of us, and it surely won’t be easy for all of us.

Political, cultural, and civic institutions are where we have traditionally turned to work on this kind of integration, and that need is as live as ever. But, given the widespread sense of brokenness and disillusionment, we have an extraordinary opportunity to re-examine how these institutions function, whom they serve, and how we might improve them.

Evolution is sometimes harder than amputation, but that’s what we’re being asked to do. Rather than flee reality or join the shouting fray on television, we could start by asking some simple questions:

What, specifically, is broken?

How do you know?

What would it take to change it?

What would you be willing to do?

Just over a year ago, at the first On Being Gathering, Krista Tippett spoke the words I’d been needing to hear for some time: our inherited institutions are broken.

I believe that’s true — especially at the federal and international levels, where I’ve tended to focus. I believe it’s pervasive (implicating at least our economic, educational, and cultural institutions as well as our political ones), and I don’t believe it’s any great secret.

But, for all that, it’s not an easy thing to say out loud. For, if it’s true that these institutions are broken, what does that say about the stories we tell ourselves, the goals we’ve set for ourselves, and the tasks we may need to take up?

Still, admitting reality is the essential first step in making things better. And I believe there are enormous — perhaps once-in-a-century — opportunities to make things better. As with depression or disease, we’re being forced to confront sickness, find out what’s out of whack, and determine how we’re going to change in response to the challenge.

We may never be the same, but we have a precious opportunity to determine what better might mean, and what it will take to get there.

We can’t start that conversation soon enough.

***

Today marks 100 days of blogging in a row. When I started, I had no idea if I’d be able to do such a thing. If you’re reading this, thank you.

The incentive structure in U.S. politics is all out of whack.

Part of the problem is that politicians are elected locally to govern nationally, but the media that matter are increasingly national — so elected politicians have to keep posturing for local audiences through national media as they conduct the nation’s business.

Being more local is a great strategy for getting elected, but it’s not always a recipe for good governance.

Somehow, sometime, somewhere, someone’s going to have to tell a couple of important truths about 21st-century politics in the United States:

• The proper business of national politics is to do what’s best for the nation — and the least harm to local communities.
• The proper focus of a government as powerful as ours, in a country as big as ours, is to set the minimum conditions for national prosperity and global stability.

If being more Brooklyn is your thing, stay local. If, however, you’re committed to bringing a better-informed voice from Brooklyn into the national conversation, run for national office by all means.

Just remember: once you get there, your job is to represent your district, not to scale it.

A couple of nights ago, I watched Peter Jackson’s film They Shall Not Grow Old, which features exquisitely restored and colorized archival footage of World War I.

WWI is a totemic problem of modern international relations: we still don’t have a single accepted explanation for it, and the death and destruction it caused continue to haunt our imaginations.

The film, like the war, alternates between the utter inhumanity of anonymous killing, the savagery of close-quarters combat, and the gentler moments in which former enemies interact playfully with each other as fellow soldiers.

Watching the war unfold through artillery barrages, huge explosions, charges across no-man’s land, and bodies left to decompose in the open, it’s impossible not to grimace at the senseless waste of it all.

Watching German prisoners carrying wounded British soldiers and British captors cheerfully swapping caps with Germans, it’s impossible not to marvel at man’s capacity for humanity toward his fellow man — even under the most inhumane conditions.

Both conflict and cooperation are possible in human nature. The perennial challenge of politics is to find the right balance between them.

Our civic and political discourse (I can’t even say “dialogue”) is poisonous.

We all know it. We all note it.

Who’s it for? What’s it for?

How much attention or trust are you willing to pay the people who produce the poison?

As ethics is the study of managing oneself and economics is the study of managing the goods of a household, politics is the study of how we live together.

Humans, as Aristotle wrote, are by nature a social — and therefore political — animal. Like some other animals, we live in groups; unlike other animals, we are conscious as well as social.

For consciously social animals, “how we live together” is not merely a statement of fact. It is also a tangle of interesting questions: Who are “we”? Who are “they”? Where and how do we live? What does “together” mean? What might each of us owe the group?

Much as it’s become commonplace to speak of “this moment” as though it is something novel or unique, it might be more accurate to say that we are being forced back into the ring to wrestle again with ancient questions.

An experience or sensation novel in one human lifetime is often not novel to the human experience, and great wisdom for our times may be found in the lives and works of wise people who have walked before us.

Let’s walk with them — and with these questions — for a month.

Today wraps up a month’s worth of playing with ideas about economics.

Throughout the exploration, the theme that has most stood out to me is that the most successful people — however wealthy they might be — are those who understand that economics is merely a means to an end. The real secret of their success, then, is properly defining their ends and then organizing their efforts to achieve them.

Only some of that has to do with money. Though it’s clearly possible to make a lot of money with no deeper or greater sense of value or purpose (examples are not hard to spot), seeking money for its own sake or as a way to keep score seems like the path to less freedom rather than more. If, as the Motley Fool says, “the value of money is opportunity,” what good is opportunity if you’re too fixated on making more money to make good use of opportunity?

Or, to go all the way back to Aristotle, economics constantly tests whether we’re able to never expect more certainty of a science than it can give. We truly cannot buy happiness, but we can learn to manage our affairs in such a way as to be able to find happiness in sufficiency (or even in surplus).

Aristotle also famously taught the concept of the mean: right conduct is always found at the midpoint between unhealthy extremes. That can be a useful principle in economics, too. Happiness is not to be found in communist idealism, nor in wanton pursuit of money under the rules of what we presently call capitalism.

Sufficiency, like happiness, is an interior condition. Paradoxically, it cannot be bought. Rather, it depends on a solid ethical foundation (we have to know what is good for us, and why), as well as attention to the political context (we must know how our pursuit of what we want affects those we live with, like it or not).

For, just as we all must manage ourselves and our households, we also must respect our political nature — a topic we’ll start exploring tomorrow.

Someone once said to me of the college experience that “the days are long but the weeks are short.”

The same seems true of life after college: days can seem very long and chocked full of activities, obligations, and opportunities — yet we’re always wondering where the last year went.

A year turns out to be a very long time, especially if you organize your days and weeks effectively.

Days spent waiting for a miracle are interminable. But a year’s worth of intention and attention can make an enormous difference.

The rent check goes out today.

That means I’m creeping up on two years of paying for flexibility without building any equity.

The connection economy makes it easier to rent than ever before. You can rent a printing press, a media channel, or even a stranger’s house or car.

But, as always, the real value goes to the asset owners. Uber used to collect some rent from helping you rent your car; now, they’ll even rent you a car (and collect more rent from you in return).

Renting can be a good short-term strategy when you’re still getting money organized and building an asset. It can also work at scale: big companies don’t need to own their own office buildings.

The trick is not to be lulled by “free” or “cheap” forever. There are reasons to rent — and building an asset is a really good one.

Just know when it’s time to move out on your own.

When I lived out West, I occasionally encountered little pockets of a modern-day barter economy.

People would trade skill for skill, work for work, item for item — or some combination that felt right. People who live on the land, especially, still have a neighborly economy going: ranchers schedule their brandings on consecutive weekends so the extra hands can help with each; everyone works the stock together, then comes in for a big dinner afterwards.

I always enjoyed things like this: broadly speaking, I grew up with the suburban model — if you wanted something, you drove out and bought it.

Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to participate in some creative barters, and it’s been another lesson in generosity and refusing to let money be a limiting factor. The price is still the price, but it’s sometimes possible to cover some of it by creating value rather than paying money.

It’s a fun and neighborly way to do business, and I’m always amazed at how such generous interactions build and broaden a community.