Don't Develop Alone

Becoming You is a Social Achievement

In the Soviet Union, a common “individual” survival strategy was “internal immigration.” This was a radical withdrawal inward, reflecting energetic dis-investment from the false and repressive world outside oneself. Artists, intelligensia, and anyone committed to developing a unique, creative identity intentionally moved deeper into the only space where rich dialogue and safe consideration of ideas was possible — their own minds. To replace a social world that embraced individual expression, they smuggled in whatever meaningful poetry, literature, and remembered conversation they could. The lesson? Even though it may appear otherwise, no one develops alone, nor does anyone develop optimally in a context hostile to their growth. This is not only true when we are forming, but throughout our lives. Our challenge, always, is to find a way to grow in the world as we find it.

Individuals Develop in Community

Within a world that embraced creative self-expression, I started my career as a philosophy professor, with the goal of teaching students how to talk about difficult things in service of their growth. One of the first things my students taught me was how difficult it is to sit in a circle, look each other in the eyes, and explain your view on something that matters. I learned quickly that this involves vulnerability that is deeply counter-cultural. Our society rewards self-expression — most notably the variety that is outrageous, provocative, and theatrical. This is not true individuality, and part of the proof is how much easier it is than revealing yourself by saying what you really think about something, expaining it, and then awaiting deeply critical responses from others. Becoming who you are meant to be is an achievement made possible only by engaging authentically with others. This is the work of a lifetime.

Control Your Attention to become Yourself

We now inhabit a world far removed from the physical world where my professional journey began, and the difficulty in expressing what matters has accelerated. Online spaces are wildly uncivil, there is no expert facilitor, and almost nowhere is safe from politics, drama and discord, hostility and incivility. Indeed, resources are aligned to manipulate your worst impulses —- fear, lust and greed. The assault on your attention is relentless. The information you receive is curated for people “just like you.” This is the algorithm’s “growth-be-gone” strategy! It works because it winds you up, and shuts you down. Your choice is to remove yourself strategically. You might call it “attention control,” with the purpose of dis-investing from what does not serve you. Attention control will allow you to invest in communities and relationships that serve your growth. Recognize that this is a social problem, not an individual problem. Act counterculturally. Bravely commit to exploring the real world of human disagreement and understanding.

Commit to Truth Telling and Truth Seeking

Questions to Begin

Have you tried committing to telling the truth about what really matters to you? Ask yourself this:

• How can I show up braver, more connected, and more willing to live my values? (What are my values? How are they different than your preferences and what keeps you comfortable?)

• Does my (friend group, job, organization) support my continuous improvement by challenging me with new persepctives? Do I consider challenges to my perspective with the goal of continual improvement?

• What gets your attention that should not? What can you commit to doing to keep more of your attention where you want it?

Book Recommendations

• Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits, by James Clear, 2018": The key insight of this valuable guide to individual change and being how you want to be: “You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fail to the level of your systems.”

• On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill, 1859: Re-read the classic defense of Liberalism - meaning the development of the individual within a minimally restrictive society.

• Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Spot Deception, 2012 The most important insight of this book is that we allow ourselves to be deceived because we prefer to leave our biases unchallenged than to engage with discipline and risk social conflict. This book is an invitation to commit to the civil pursuit of truth though disciplined approaches to communication.

Research

The Pew Research Center has found that Americans agreement with the statement “most people can be trusted” declined from 42% in the 1970s to 34% in 2024. A much smaller percentage (22% of “trusters” and 11% of “nontrusters”) say the government can be trusted.

Your Organization: Empowerment Starts with Management Behavior

Growth begins with individual safety to act “efficiently and effectively,” and that behavior can be learned vicariously through modeling. Dr. Christine Porath, a researcher on civility, found that leaders who work with “autonomy and expediency” in their own decision making and behavior, naturally empower employees to do the same. Not a surprise, considering that culture is about what is rewarded and what is permitted. Simple to say, but not simple to achieve. Cultures manifest what they tolerate.

Look at your own management behaviors and ask if they reflect “autonomy and expediency” (making a good and quick decision), and if not, ask why. Chances are very good that if you are falling short it is because your organizational culture rewards second-guessing and other behaviors that disempower leaders.

If so, get back to basics — transparency, accountability, and clarity around shared goals will empower leaders, which in turn empowers whole teams. Notice— it is not teaching about empowerment that makes a difference— but your empowered behavior.

Affordable Housing - Sharing is Caring

The recent Wall Street Journal story on the “Superman building,” a landmark in Providence that has stood empty and “on life support” since 2013, highlights the perils of development, and affordable development is often the most perilous of all to attempt. The overlapping jurisdictions within our regulatory envionment, intended to reflect each local community’s preferences, is, instead, the single greatest impediment to creating the affordable housing those very same communities need. Here’s why:

1. The proliferation of rules created by overlapping jurisdictions creates blocks to approval at every step of the development process.

2. The unintended consequences of specific rules raises the cost, hitting affordable projects hardest, since they have the smallest profit margins.

The Basics: Developers cannot invest time and money in projects that do not have a reasonable likelihood of making them money (typically 10% at a minimum) — while paying investors. Being a developer is a job; they are neither superheros nor supervillains. They are community-minded risk takers, willing to compromise while leveraging energy, capital, financing, and coordinating plans and processes on a large scale. Developers need to build their own risk and time into cost calculations.

The problem of overlapping jurisdictions in the US is extreme with city, state, and federal jurisdictions plus project specific hurdles. In the best case, a city council or planning commission, a state HFA or Housing Authority, and a City Department of Buildings will all need to sign off to get control and approval over the site, financing, and specific plans. That often takes years.

Unintended consequences of laws passed with good intentions create barriers at every stage of the project. These include environmental protection laws that require extensive site testing, zoning laws that challenge ingenuity, rules for the use of labor and products in construction that raise costs dramatically, occupancy rules for the completed project that make it less desirable to communities, public commentary rules that keep timelines long and projects provisionary, and more.

The upshot is that communication efforts are key. There is no magic solution. It is difficult to create affordable housing projects, and even when they are successful, it is diffcult to replicate successful projects. What works in one jurisdiction, or at one time, may not work for another. Every affordable project in the US requires a complex mix of will and public private partnership subsidies as well as a public process of facilitated conversation at every step, to be successful.

Actually, I’d rather not receive this.