Practical
Connections Between Ideas and Action
Today’s musing is the final musing of Fleas and rats.
The Little Thing: Connections
The Final Musing
First, a few updates on the progress of Fleas and rats:
This is the final musing.
The first serialized essay starts on Monday June 8th.
To provide time for me to write the first essay, May’s musings have been about Fleas and rats and my vision for writing the Substack. The aim is to write about news of the decade (not news of the day), the little things that add up to big differences, and connections between ideas and action (or at least connections between ideas and understanding).
In sum, Fleas and rats is meant to be thoughtful, positive, and practical. Today’s musing focuses on the value of practical.
Practical
I would like to build an audience that reads these essays with the hope of understanding how little things function in our lives. As a society, what are we doing that makes things be as they are? What are we doing to make this be our social, cultural, political, and economic reality?
Once the above questions are answered, next we ask: What can we do to make our world and its societies be more like how we want them to be — for us?
Why write about little things? Because I am a little person; we all are. I live in these times, with you, and together we are the little people whose thoughts, beliefs, efforts, and actions add up to the collective “we” who form “the society,” who make things be as they are.
We are each of us dependent on all of us yous — the yous that with all the other little persons continuously function in near invisibility to form the human power (and human value) that exists and makes social reality be what it is. It’s just you, and you, and you, and you, and all the other yous and yous. What we each think (all of us), and how this leads us to each act (all of us), constructs our impacts on the outcomes that determine every other aspect of our lives.
The truth is, we live in a world that leaves lots of people out of the comfort, agency, and joys that this particular time in human society could provide to everyone. The potentials of today’s science, technology, economics, government, and other social systems are awesome. But billions of people barely survive. Billions more struggle. With technology alone, our world could provide for all humans; we could live peacefully, abundantly, and harmoniously. Universally. But instead, there are haves and have nots. Because not everyone gets to live in peace, nobody does.
Essays will not, certainly not the essays of Fleas and rats, end hunger, war, disease, fear, insecurity, poverty, hatred, isolation, addiction, inequality, violence, indifference, death, and suffering. Human societies, even with great essays to help guide us, will almost certainly continue to fail to live up to the promises and hopes that we have of them. But that’s not the point, because the point is figuring out how to do a better job at what we can do.
I navigate life as part of a global social system in comfort and security. I am afforded a union to protect my job, paid a government wage (at a robust-to-change institution that will last beyond the start of a pension), and spend my day being with people in a caring environment. I have health, security, friendship, love, and lots more (house, food, etc.). I benefit from all of this. I am also responsible for helping maintain some of the systems that make these benefits possible — public schools, unions, local government, literacy, churches, and community organizations, etc.
In all of this I am fortunate, but not unique. There are other teachers, other union activists, other local citizens, other home owners, other consumers, other churchgoers (and people of other faiths), other investors in pensions and retirement funds, other Canadians, and others with similar responsibilities. The aim of these essays is provide relevant analysis to help others like me, those in similar circumstances or with similar roles and responsibilities, to do our jobs as best we can. We are all the keepers of society, the expanders of possibilities, and the benefactors of our collective work for the common good.
And with that… no more musings. The next posting will be part one of the June 2026 essay. It will be posted at 8 AM on Monday June 8, which will be the new regular time and day of the week for each additional essay (or serialized part of the monthly essay). Essays will be emailed and posted on the Substack (almost) every Monday at 8 AM (Pacific) until I no longer wish to (or can no longer) keep thinking about thoughtful, positive, and practical ways to understand and act upon our shared social realities and collective human experiences as a society of human beings.