Christopher Wink

Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age

Too often we seek big, dramatic and comprehensive change when the far more common and effective way to make change in a democratic system is through a grinding and collaborative approach.

One way that’s the case is because making real change requires three stages (the politics, the policy and implementing the practice) but we commonly forget that third step. All told, incrementalism gets a bad rap. Nearly all lasting change has happened gradually, not boldly. The world is complex, no coalition is ideologically cohesive and those implementing change are flawed.

That’s the case made in the 2023 book “Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age,” written by two longtime advocates in criminal justice reform, Aubrey Fox and Greg Berman. Below I share my notes for future reference.

Wine making with Patrick

I’ve joined and toured distilling processes going back years, and taken an interest in commercial and homebound beer brewing. Yet outside a few winery tours over the years, I haven’t been as close to wine-making. That’s silly because one of my closest friends in the world has taken up his grandfather’s tradition.

What should your city be in 150 years?

Spinning out of the THRIVING reporting project I’ve led at Technical.ly, I’ve hosted a pair of sessions imagining Philadelphia in 150 years. I hope to do similar longterm future-thinking here and elsewhere.

I’ve found helpful several books on longtermism and other community engagement experience of my past. This week, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an op-ed I wrote with my friend and collaborator Mike O’Bryan on the topic. I wrote this summer on the concept after our first session. (photos below)

Humanity is on ‘The Precipice’: How can we think about lasting a million years more?

Humanity is at a crucial moment in which our technologies are advanced enough to have created our own existential risks and secure enough to consider a longterm enough future in which natural risks pose true threats. This moment can be called the Precipice, the name of a 2020 book by Toby Ord.

I enjoyed it, came to it around organizing I’ve done toward longtermism, and another buzzy book on the topic.

Below I share my notes for future reference.

Inciting Joy

Late in his fall 2022 book Inciting Joy, essayist and poet Ross Gay confronts criticism he’s received for the writing he’s done on Joy. Most of it amounts to, the author says: how can a black man write about flowers in a time like this?

Earlier on, he gives his answer: Sorrow doesn’t need any help; “I think sorrow’s gonna be just fine.”

It’s an energizing and beautiful collection. I strongly recommend it. I share my notes for future reference below.

Advice on ‘the creative act’ from Rick Rubin

One of the most celebrated music producers alive can’t play an instrument.

Instead he follows and teachers creators to create. Rick Rubin published back in January a charming book called The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It reads like a book that any creator could pick up and source inspiration. I strongly recommend it.

My notes for future reference are below.

How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America

The debate about whether private equity provides any real value to the economy comes down to whether they force worthwhile business efficiencies. Or are instead, as it was memorably put in 2010 “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Little question the stance from the 2023 book “These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America” by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson and financial policy analyst Joshua Rosner. It’s thorough and puts into context the people effected by private equity, a murky financial industry that owns businesses that employ something like 12% of all American jobs.

Below I share my notes for future reference.

Beyond Order

If his 2018 book came before he was a political shibboleth, then Jordan Peterson’s 2021 followup Beyond Order was an instrument of his unexpected partisan celebrity.

A psychologist-lecturer turned conservative firebrand I finished this followup right after reading the first. It’s longer than it needs to be, and he

Featured speaker @ Sloss Tech in Birmingham, Alabama

I traveled to Birmingham, Alabama to be part of the revival of SlossTech, where I joined a panel discussing how different entrepreneurship ecosystems vary by geography.

Among my favorite pushes: Everyone has projections about why their city is special but spreadsheets are full of hopes and lies.

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson

In 2018, before he had become an unexpected avatar of the American culture war, then-56-year-old Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson published 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

It took a conservative tack on discipline and relationships, inspired by his clinical practice, his teaching and his politics. I certainly didn’t agree with all of it back then, but the framework of spinning a specific even prosaic rule-of-thumb into a bit of wider philosophy seemed like fun. Friends and I created our own lists.

In the years since, Peterson became an unexpected lightning rod, and a near cartoonish hero or villain depending on your politics. It was time to go back and read his breakout book. So I did just that. It’s too long and does dip into strange pseudoscience at times. I also think it presents a worldview that looked fresh and productive to many, especially young men.

My notes for future reference below.