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CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

Stephen Dubner on what he learnt from hanging out with economists — probability and clear-eyed reasoning is important.

And what he didn’t — the connection between people is far more important.

freakonomics.com/podcast/what...

Hanging out with economists did make me really think about making a lot more decisions on a fully rational basis. Economists bring a cold — not a cold-blooded, but a cold-eyed rationality to a lot of policy conversations that are very, very important. And I will never give up on that. But if you start looking at everything that way, it makes you a cold person. And so I feel like, for a while, I tried a form of being — as a parent, as a husband, as friend — that was a little bit like, That really doesn’t matter, the data show that doesn’t matter. And even though the data show that it doesn’t matter, how people feel about it matters. We’re all a lot more than what the probabilities say. Probability is very important, and data is important. But I feel like the connection between people is far more important. Decency is a virtue that has been appreciated throughout civilization. We see it. We have the ancient writings. I think it’s appreciated differently now than it has been in the past. But I think it will be appreciated more in the future and I think that decency is a kind of foundation upon which to build your life.

November 30, 2025 at 3:26 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

What's Common Endeavour about?

Help us get the word out!

www.commonendeavour.org

#connection #auspol #DemocracySausage

Common Endeavour is online

www.commonendeavour.org

Help us get the word out!
Find out and share what’s important to us; how we think; how to be part of what we’re doing

November 22, 2025 at 12:09 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

What's Common Endeavour about?

Connection. Not always easy but important.

Political parties are important too - but don't always do a lot to help connection.

The goal of Common Endeavour is to to be a party focused on the importance of connection.

#connection #auspol #DemocracySausage

Common Endeavour Is about connection
.
Connection with each other between our communities with the world around us

Common Endeavour recognises that connection isn’t always easy, and yet...

Connection is how we thrive is how we stay safe is the reason for Common Endeavour

Common Endeavour believes that...
Political parties
are important to how we live together;
provide a vehicle for working out and doing what’s important to our communities;
are not currently where we need them to be

The goal of Common Endeavour is to become a party of government

November 21, 2025 at 11:59 PM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

Connection can be considered a conduit that creates an association or relationship but it's not value free, it has direction and valence. It can be positive or negative, strong or weak.

From Brown et al. 2015, Applied Geography.

The place attachment concept focuses on how strongly people
feel a sense of connection to a particular place and captures the
distinction between the goods and services provided by that place
and the emotional and symbolic relationships people form with
place (Williams, Stewart, & Kruger, 2013). These connections can be
positive or negative, depending upon one's experience in place
(Manzo, 2005). However, conceptualizations of place attachment
vary depending upon the whether scholars focus on the personal,
environmental, and/or social context of people-place interactions
(Raymond, Brown, & Weber, 2010). Multiple studies have emphasized
the personal context, particularly the emotional and physical/

functional bonds which develop between an individual and a
geographic locale (Bricker & Kerstetter, 2000; Gunderson, 2006;
Moore & Graefe, 1994; Williams, Patterson, Roggenbuck, &
Watson, 1992). Other studies have emphasized the connections
developed between multiple people in place (social context),
including dimensions related to community place attachment, social
bonding, belongingness, and familiarity with one's neighborhood
or social group (Christensen & Burchfield, 2013; Hammitt,
Backlund, & Bixler, 2004; Kyle, Graefe, & Manning, 2005;
Mihaylov & Perkins, 2014; Perkins & Long, 2002; Trentelman,
2009). A third strand has emphasized how aspects of the physical
setting (particularly the natural setting) shape place bonds, reflected
in the related constructs of environmental identity,
connectedness to nature, and nature bonding (Brügger, Kaiser, &
Roczen, 2011; Mayer & Frantz, 2004; Raymond et al., 2010; Schultz, Shriver, Tabanico, & Khazian, 2004).

November 16, 2025 at 11:32 PM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

#CareerConnections

Supervisors showing care. Research careers outside academia.

APA Monitor

www.apa.org/monitor/2025...

Faculty are Facilitating Career Connections for Young Researchers.
Jobs in academia are becoming scarcer, leading faculty to consider how to better prepare students for research careers outside the ivory tower.

November 1, 2025 at 10:24 PM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

#EmotionalConnection

APA Monitor

www.apa.org/monitor/2025...

ethinking Masculinity to Build Healthier Outcomes
Rigid gender norms are taking a serious toll on boys’ and men’s mental health, prompting psychologists to promote healthier masculinities rooted in emotional connection, authenticity, and resilience.

November 1, 2025 at 10:16 PM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

Movement, platform, political party; which comes first? A new LinkedIn piece looks at this question and provides a diagram of some work on this question for Common Endeavour. The article suggests that perhaps the process begins with a political philosophy.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/platfo...

A diagram showing two steps in the process of developing the movement, platform political party idea for Common Endeavour.

October 27, 2025 at 3:52 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

Maury Giles, CEO of Braver Angels describes a tool for difficult conversations

I want to share one last thought that has helped me in my own family discussions. I just read over the weekend a tip that John Inazu, professor of law and religion at Washington University, shares to remember how to develop this civic muscle (sounds like the Braver Angels Way). He calls it G-R-A-C-E:

Ground yourself in your convictions

Respect others

Assume complexity (more to the story), not character (assuming someone is evil)

Cultivate curiosity

Engage with empathy

Even now. Especially now. We need to practice grace in our courageous citizenship.

September 30, 2025 at 12:09 PM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

‘…among the best things we can try to do … to be good ancestors.’

Onkalo: a Finnish spent nuclear fuel repository - to store dangerous nuclear waste for millions of years
Sampo: a magical substance from the Finnish epic, Kalevala. To McFarlane, reminiscent of the nuclear waste stored at Onkalo

“Here a problem is being solved, gradually and practically, by a community of people to the best of their abilities. Here the hard labour of collective decision-taking and world-making is being carried out, imperfectly but necessarily, and with a care that extends not only for a decade or a generation but far forwards into a post-human future.
Maybe this is among the best things we can try to do, I think, as Sampo grinds through the world’s epochs: to be good ancestors.”

September 19, 2025 at 1:43 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

The Common Endeavour project grows from the idea that it might take a new political entity to get us to be “actually doing something”.
If you’re inclined to tilting at windmills for a good reason get in touch! And let others of a similar inclination know. Together we can. #auspol
commonendeavour.org

“In our conversation, Henry reaches back 40-odd years for a moment of political opportunity analogous to the present, to the transition from the policy inertia of the late 1970s to the reform era of the 1980s, when the political system, for a decade or so “realised that there might be advantage in actually doing something rather than just sitting around and having arguments about it”.

July 27, 2025 at 1:30 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

High conflict is dangerous and destructive but most conflict is not high conflict.

“The truth is, good conflict can help uncover opportunity and even create connection.”

Amanda Ripley and Hélène Biandudi Hofer

www.thegoodconflict.com

The truth is, good conflict can help uncover opportunity and even create connection. But that requires a mental shift: instead of thinking of conflict as a fight, approach it as a friction — necessary resistance that helps you get stronger and more resilient. It’s not about being the victim or the villain but rather a detective –– investigating the problem, identifying options, and focusing on what you can control.

July 13, 2025 at 12:21 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

Lawrence Freedman in Foreign Affairs on the folly of thinking a short, sharp war is the solution to a problem - or even possible.

www.foreignaffairs.com/age-forever-...

In recent decades, many politicians and generals have planned for short wars but ended up getting long ones, the scholar Lawrence Freedman wrote this spring. Wars become intractable, he argued, when political and military objectives do not align. Combat rarely resolves the root causes of a dispute and cease-fires can become mere pauses that allow both sides to prepare for more fighting. “One of the great allures of military power is that it promises to bring conflicts to a quick and decisive conclusion,” Freedman wrote. Yet “in practice, it rarely does.”

July 6, 2025 at 12:46 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

“Coming together over something we can’t do without. I can’t think of anything else that connects people so powerfully.”

“Sharing a meal places people on the same level, which fosters connection.”
- Sofia Levin

MasterChef judge describes connection in a grocery chain magazine.

Coles magazine cover, in which MasterChef judge Sofia Levin describes connection in a grocery chain magazine.

June 12, 2025 at 12:38 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

An excellent guide to addressing the challenges in public education.

Clear-eyed, caring and practical.

It could have been written as Common Endeavour education policy. The solutions? Equity, connection, connection.

www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/educati...

Funding is imprtant but a sense of belonging is the key

Schools are struggling to connect with young people

May 24, 2025 at 1:12 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

A Common Endeavour endorsed poem.
Amazing heights await us in so many aspects of our lives. Let’s try to resist the urge to undermine ourselves.

With thanks to the Academy of American Poets
poets.org/poem/we-neve...

The text of the Emily Dickinson poem “We never know how high we are”

May 20, 2025 at 12:31 PM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

Mapping the total national vote in relation to first preferences for Labor, Lib/Nat, or Other candidates.

There is a solid appetite for something other than the traditional two major parties.

With thanks to ABC News Storylab: www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05...

A figure showing a triangle of first preference votes broken down by Labor, LNP, and Other candidates. The national vote is just inside the Labor section.

May 12, 2025 at 6:53 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

From @azeem.bsky.social end of year wrap.

Reminding us that change is hard. Even beneficial change comes with downstream challenges that we typically don’t anticipate or plan for.

January 5, 2025 at 3:36 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

Purple and green. Common Endeavour colours.

A green bush on a suburban street with pretty pink flowers and a power line in the background

October 5, 2024 at 5:57 AM

CommonEndeavour

@commonendeavour.bsky.social

The Progressive Action Lab is a project that Common Endeavour is associated with. Not because it is progressive but because it is building a forum to discuss processes for strengthening #democracy.

www.progressiveactionlab.com.au