A few weeks ago I attended a conference called “LibCon2026,” held at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC. The topic: political liberalism, in all its complexities and ambiguities. The speaker lineup was really a “who’s who” of liberal thinkers of our time, including journalists Ezra Klein and Anne Applebaum, former White House Chief of Staff and Bulwark Editor Bill Kristol, political scientist Francis Fukuyama, and many others.

In the wake of the conference, one question I’ve been grappling with is how potentialism compares to political liberalism. Potentialism is a political philosophy we’re developing at the Beacon Project based on the idea that everyone has a gift, and a right and responsibility to develop and share it. Political liberalism (not to be confused with liberalism, the left-leaning ideology) is a political philosophy grounded, broadly speaking, in principles of freedom, dignity, and equality.

Is potentialism a specific kind of liberalism? Is it fundamentally at odds with liberalism? Or is it something else entirely?

Answering this question is more than just an abstract philosophical exercise. Both boosters and critics of modern political liberalism agree that the deep assumptions informing our current epoch are ones that emanate from the liberal tradition. So if we want to understand potentialism, it will be helpful to see how potentialism’s assumptions compare to those of the reigning paradigm.

The best way to approach this question is to examine each side of the potentialist equation: rights and responsibilities.

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Rights

Let’s start with rights. Here, it is helpful to distinguish between two concepts: “negative liberty,” and “positive liberty.” At the heart of this distinction is the following question: What does it take for people to be truly free?

Proponents of negative liberty argue that freedom requires protection from interference. On this view, the purpose of the government is to do things like secure people’s life and property, guard against tyranny, and protect against foreign invasion. The phrase “don’t tread on me,” originally coined during the Revolutionary War, reflects this sentiment.

Proponents of positive liberty, by contrast, argue that true freedom requires more than merely protection from interference. It also requires the government to take an active role in ensuring people have access to the conditions necessary for them to flourish. According to this view, someone who lacks access to a quality education is not truly free., even if they are not being actively coerced by the government.

Negative and positive liberty mean very different things, but they both have a home in the liberal tent. Proponents of negative liberty include such figures as John Locke, the French philosopher Montesquieu (best known for pioneering the idea of the separation of powers), and the philosopher who originally developed the distinction between positive and negative liberty itself, Isaiah Berlin. These thinkers harbored a deep distrust of the state actively intervening in people’s lives, even with the ostensibly benevolent goal of creating better conditions for all. This perspective reached its apotheosis in the writings of neoliberal thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, who, in light of the failures of socialism in the USSR and elsewhere, issued stark warnings about the dangers of concentrated state power.

Positive liberty, by contrast, has found its most vocal advocates in the 20^th century, particularly following FDR’s New Deal. (Roosevelt famously said, “necessitous men are not free men.”) Other advocates include philosophers John Dewey, Amartya Sen, and Martha Nussbaum, the economist Joseph Stiglitz, and the political scientist , all of whom have argued that a higher floor of opportunity secured by the state is necessary for human freedom.

Potentialism falls squarely in the ‘positive liberty’ camp. It argues that justice requires more than protection from coercion and tyranny. It also requires securing the conditions that allow everyone to explore, cultivate, and share their gifts. That’s a higher “floor” than what we currently have, and certainly higher than what proponents of negative liberty would advocate for.

Responsibilities

The picture becomes murkier when we turn to responsibility.

When potentialism says people have a responsibility to share their gifts, it is making a statement about how we ought to live. It’s saying we each have a duty to work to identify what it is we have to offer the world, to cultivate the skills and mindset needed to realize this contribution, and to deploy it in ways that benefit others and give our lives meaning. It’s calling us to approach life in a certain way, to view ourselves and our relationships with others in a certain way, and to hold certain types of values. It is, in this way, painting a certain picture of what the “good life” looks like.

By some interpretations, this goes beyond the stipulations of liberalism. The whole point of liberalism, after all, is to remain neutral with respect to the good life.

This is a recurrent theme in literature on political liberalism. John Stuart Mill, for instance—arguably the godfather, or at least a godfather, of liberalism—famously wrote: “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs.

The point is also made vividly in the writings of the philosopher Michael Sandel. Liberalism, Sandel argues, conceives people as “free and independent selves, unbound by moral ties we have not chosen.” This approach to politics “makes it difficult to account for civic obligations and other moral and political ties.”

Similarly, the political theorist Judith Shklar wrote:

“Apart from prohibiting interference with the freedom of others, liberalism does not have any particular positive doctrines about how people are to conduct their lives or what personal choices they are to make.”

These interpretations are tough to square with the view that everyone has a responsibility to develop and share their gifts.

But other perspectives paint a different picture. Consider the following passage by in a recent article, entitled “Liberal Societies Need Grand Stories About Themselves.”

Values liberalism agrees that liberals embrace no single vision of the good, but it rejects the notion that liberalism is value-neutral. To the contrary, liberalism presupposes and promulgates a hefty bundle of values, such as empathy, reciprocity, fairness, equality, lawfulness, truthfulness, forbearance, and (of course) freedom. Values liberalism draws inspiration from (among others) the philosopher John Rawls and the political theorist William Galston—and, more recently, from Alexandre Lefebvre, who writes, in his feisty 2024 book Liberalism as a Way of Life, “I propose that liberalism is a good way of life.”

From this point of view, liberalism is in fact perfectly compatible with taking a stand about better or worse ways to live one’s life. In particular, one could imagine adding “contribution” to the list of values Rauch enumerates, thus making potentialism compatible with liberalism.

Corroborating this view, in The Lost History of Liberalism, the historian Helena Rosenblatt argues that political liberalism traces its roots back to a much richer moral tradition than the current “thin” moral vision it is associated with today. She writes:

“For centuries...being liberal meant something very different [than it does today]. It meant being a giving and a civic-minded citizen; it meant understanding one’s connectedness to other citizens and acting in ways conducive to the common good.”

In sum, there are two competing interpretations about whether advocating for the responsibility to share one’s gifts is compatible with political liberalism. In one interpretation, potentialism is not compatible with liberalism because it violates liberal neutrality by advocating for a particular conception of the “good life” (namely, one that entails developing and sharing one’s gifts); in the other, it is compatible with the type of historical liberalism Rosenblatt describes.

My Take: The Potentialist Expansion Pack

I’m going to be honest: I’m confused. I don’t know the answer. I feel like the philosophical waters have gotten so muddied about what political liberalism actually is that it’s hard to know what’s what.

But in the spirit of inquiry, I’ll share with you the best analogy I’ve come up with about the relationship between these political philosophies.

I don’t think potentialism is incompatible with liberalism, nor do I think it’s simply another name for liberalism. I think it’s an extension of the liberal tradition. It is, to borrow an analogy from the world of board games, an expansion pack.

An expansion pack is an add-on sold separately from an original board game that retains many of the game’s core features, while introducing modifications that result in meaningful differences in game play. It is often in the same spirit of the original game, but also imposes new incentives, rules, and strategies.

For true devotees, expansion packs open up new worlds of enjoyment. Consider this description from a five-star review of the Cities and Knights expansion pack for the board game Settlers of Catan:

“Cities & Knights expansion has completely revitalized my gaming experience with Catan and friends. It adds a strategic depth that makes every game feel fresh and challenging.”

I think something similar can be said about potentialism.

Liberalism says that society should be governed by rules of freedom, dignity, equality, and respect. It also says that the state should remain neutral with respect to different versions of the good life.

Potentialism says, “Yes! Let’s have all of these things. Freedom. Fairness. Dignity. And let’s agree that the state should not tell people how to live their lives. But let’s spice things up a little bit. Let’s add some new rules to the board. Let’s recognize that each of us has something to bring to the table. And let’s agree that part of what it means to be a good member of society, a good citizen, a good player, is to figure out what that is and share it.”

That’s the potentialist expansion pack.

You have a gift. Your quest is to find it.

The Beacon Project is a multi-year initiative at More in Common seeking to advance a new civic vision for America’s Exhausted Majority. In October 2025, we published an essay introducing a prototype for that vision, called “potentialism.” The question we’re asking is: What would it take for potentialism to offer a legitimate alternative to the prevailing political philosophies of our time? Over the past several months, we’ve shared this vision with everyone from community organizers in Alabama to leading policymakers in Washington, D.C. The response has been positive enough that it’s encouraged us to continue working out the theory. What follows is the second installment in this series.

Want some more context before diving in? Check out these posts:

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Potentialism is based on a simple idea, called the “potentialist maxim”: Everyone has a gift, and a right and responsibility to develop and share that gift.

That’s it. That’s the philosophy.

In this post, I want to explore the concept of “gifts.” What is a gift, exactly? How do we discover our own? And what does this mean for the way we should treat each other?

The idea of “giftedness” has seen its share of controversy in American culture. On one hand, the notion that everyone has something to offer has gained popularity in recent decades, in response to the recognition that intelligence tests fail to capture the full range of human potential. As the psychologist writes in Ungifted, “We each have unique ways of enriching the world, many of which are not reflected in that single IQ score.”

On the other hand, scholars like have warned about the dangers of the “self-esteem movement.” Telling every child that they are the world’s next creative genius, she argues, has bred a “culture of entitlement” that sets young people up for disappointment when reality falls short.

We need a more nuanced account of giftedness, one that honors human potential without handing out too many participation trophies. That is the account I want to develop here.

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1. Gifts are not (just) talents.

Today, when we say someone is “gifted,” we usually mean they have extraordinary talents or abilities that set them apart from their peers. In The Gift, Lewis Hyde describes gifts as an output of the “creative spirit.”

The problem with these definitions is they put gifts on a pedestal, giving the impression that they are possessed only by the truly “gifted” among us.

I’d like to offer a slightly humbler definition.

From the point of view of potentialism, a “gift” is anything you do that gives you a sense of meaning and helps others. Under this view, writing a symphony is a gift—but so is organizing a food train for your pregnant neighbor. Starting a business can be a gift—but so is taking care of an aging parent.

Gifts often draw on distinct strengths and capacities, are refined over time, and feel deeply personal. They produce a sense of “fit”: the feeling that our abilities are well-suited to the task at hand.

Sharing our gifts is necessary for human wellbeing. As psychologist Martin Seligman writes: “The meaningful life [is about] using your signature strengths in the service of something larger than you are.”

This ability to experience meaning through contribution is common to us all.

That is our gift.

2. Gifts change over time.

Understanding gifts as meaning-making contributions, rather than singular talents, helps clarify the role they can play in our lives. It shows that people rarely have a single gift; instead, they usually manifest a range of gifts that evolve over time.

Early in life, educational institutions—high school, college, vocational school, apprenticeships—help us acquire the knowledge and training that will let us discover, cultivate, and share our gifts later on.

Someone might spend the first part of their life pursuing a fulfilling career in public administration. Then they might step back and spend a decade or two raising a family. Later on, they might sit on a local community board, or host weekly neighborhood gatherings, or moderate an online message board. Each of these is a distinct gift tied to a certain phase of life.

The psychologist in The End of Average calls this the “pathways” principle: the journey to a fulfilling life is long and winding, filled with unexpected detours and pit stops. We cannot predict what gifts may materialize as the journey unfolds.

One consequence of this perspective is it takes the pressure off. Instead of feeling like we need to find that ONE THING that we are uniquely good at, we have countless opportunities to pursue new ways of sharing our gifts.

3. Your gift doesn’t have to be your job.

“Find your calling.” “Pursue your passion.” These refrains echo through graduation speeches and self-help books across America.

Implicit in these phrases is the belief that our jobs are a primary source of meaning in life.

This is fine for the few who are fortunate enough to get paid to follow their dream. But what about everyone else? As David Graeber explains in Bullshit Jobs, all too many people labor each day under the belief that their work has no meaningful impact on society.

But by the definition of gifts I’ve proposed, this is fine! A gift doesn’t need to be something you’re paid to do. The world is full of what calls niches—little corners of the world that you and only you can fill. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find one and fill it.

Consider my neighbors Doug and Natalie, who host a little gathering every Friday evening on their porch. A handful of people show up, sip a beer, and chat about the weather or the New Orleans Saints, while WWOZ, the local radio station, plays in the background. It’s not a flashy event, but it really ties the neighborhood together.

Doug and Natalie aren’t paid for this. Neither would describe it as a professional calling. But their porch is an anchor in the neighborhood.

What a gift!

4. Gifts are context-dependent.

Popular culture tends to think of people’s gifts as emerging spontaneously: think of Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting.

In fact, gifts emerge in dialogue with the needs of one’s environment. By definition, gifts must benefit others, and so if a particular strength or talent is not “in demand,” it doesn’t qualify as a gift.

Consider the time period in which we are born. If Albert Einstein had been born 100 years earlier, he likely would not have been a world-famous physicist. Similarly, history abounds with examples of people being in the “right place at the right time.” Bill Gates, for instance, has credited luck as an important factor in his success.

Conversely, throughout history, many people have been denied the opportunity to realize their gifts because of the time period in which they were born.

But local events shape our gifts, too. Unexpected life events may force us to pursue gifts that weren’t originally on our Bingo card. In Lord of the Rings, for example, Frodo and his friends are compelled to leave the Shire to carry out a much more consequential mission—destroy the Ring of Power. Similarly, every year, thousands of Americans forgo promising career opportunities to tend to less glamorous obligations, such as caring for an elderly parent or raising a family.

This means that identifying your gifts is not merely a matter of navel-gazing or self-reflection. It’s an active process that takes into account both your own strengths and preferences and the needs of others.

It also shows that gifts are often determined by forces outside our control. Not only can we not control our genes and parents; we also can’t dictate which of our particular skills and interests will be most useful to others. This suggests that part of wise living involves cultivating that idea captured in the Alcoholics Anonymous phrase: the “serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”

5. The value of gifts is scale-neutral.

In today’s culture, we idolize the startup entrepreneur who founded a unicorn company; the inventor who saved millions of lives. Yet the value of a gift does not depend on the quantity of lives it touches. Instead, it depends on what let’s call the “goodness-of-fit” between the capacities of the giver and the needs of the environment.

A useful concept here is flow, coined by the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. Csíkszentmihályi suggests that the most meaningful moments in our lives occur when our skills and aptitudes are perfectly suited to the needs of the environment—think of a baseball player so locked in that the ball seems to slow down, or a surgeon for whom a difficult procedure feels almost effortless.

Csíkszentmihályi writes:

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

While such moments often happen in sports or absorbing work, they may unfold on a more prolonged scale, too. The key idea here is “fit.” Fit is the feeling of rightness that arises when our abilities match the challenge. That sense of fit, I suggest, is an important part of what it means to share our gifts.

The kind of work that elicits flow varies widely from person to person. For some, it may be engaging in high-level intellectual work; for others, something more seemingly mundane.

As an example, a close friend of mine has an adult brother with developmental delays. For years he languished at his childhood home with no direction. Then his parents found him a job as a dishwasher at a local restaurant. The job was perfectly suited to his aptitudes and attention to detail. His mood and behavior changed rapidly, as he began to view himself as having something valuable to contribute to society.

He had found his gift.

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6. Gifts are “collectively emergent.”

Our culture tends to view people in a zero-sum competition, where my win is your loss.

Yet when we see society through the lens of gifts, the picture changes.

Gifts are capacities that both give meaning to our lives and contribute to the lives of others. Because our own wellbeing depends on developing and sharing these gifts, helping others flourish means helping them develop theirs as well. The more I cultivate and share my gifts, the more I ensure others have the same opportunity.

This is the principle of the collective emergence. Gifts do not emerge in isolation, but through relationships of mutual support. Each person’s growth expands the possibilities for everyone else’s growth. It’s a flywheel. As the civic leader Eric Liu puts it: “We’re all better off when we’re all better off.”

This suggests that we pursue our individual potential not just on our own behalf but on others’ as well. There is, at the heart of gifts, a sense of shared fate. (I’m reminded of the conversation I had with in which he described democracy as “co-creating our shared world”.) Conversely, when we fail to fully realize our gifts, we are shortchanging not just ourselves but also the people around us. In this sense, developing our gifts is a moral act.

It also highlights that it’s in my interest to ensure other people are developing their gifts, too. In contrast to the zero-sum view, I want other people to thrive. When other people are realizing their gifts, I will reap the benefits. This means I should be on the lookout for opportunities to to help people identify their gifts. While this work often falls on parents, teachers, managers, it is something we can all do. It also means we should all support social policies that ensure everyone has access to the conditions they need to develop and share their gifts.

Gifts, in sum, show our interdependence.

7. Gifts are personal.

The book-turned-show Handmaid’s Tale offers a cautionary tale about how gifts can go awry. The story depicts a society in which women are told that their gift is bearing children for elite couples.

While this arguably benefits the couples, it’s not great for the women.

The point is: no one can tell you what your gifts are. The process of identifying and cultivating the particular capacities that bring meaning to our lives and help others is ours alone. Life, in this view, is a “journey of discovery”: an iterative process of experimentation and reflection that helps us to identify our gifts over time and share them with others.

Of course, there is a balance to be struck here, since young people are notoriously bad at knowing what’s good for them, and the accumulated wisdom of society does contain useful truths that can help us on our journey. It would be foolish to ignore these truths completely. Furthermore, we’ve already seen that circumstances can call on us to pursue gifts we didn’t ask for.

But at the end of the day the choice is ours alone to make. This is the root of our agency.

8. Gifts take work.

In popular culture, gifts are often portrayed as remarkable talents that spring unbidden from people in their early years of life. (Think Tiger Woods playing competitive golf at age 5.)

In truth, gifts are often the result of a much more laborious process.

The Harvard psychologist Jon Jachimowicz writes about something called leidenschaft. A German word usually translated as “passion,” it more literally means “the ability to endure hardship.” His point is that the things that give us the most meaning in life—our gifts—are often the result of painstaking effort.

The Bottom Line

I’ve suggested that instead of seeing gifts as amazing talents, we should see them merely as abilities which, when deployed, help others and give our lives meaning. When we do this, several things happen:

• We stop seeing gifts as confined to the few and start seeing as common to us all

• We stop seeing gifts as singular pursuits and start seeing them as varied and malleable

• We stop seeing gifts as cosmically predetermined and start seeing them as environmentally contingent

• We see the value of gifts as dependent not on the magnitude of its impact but on the goodness-of-fit between the capacities of the giver and the needs of the environment

• We see society not as zero-sum but positive-sum

• We see realizing our potential not just as a personal, but also as a moral, pursuit

• We start judging society based on its ability to ensure everyone has access to the conditions that make sharing their gifts possible

• We come to appreciate the important role we each play in helping others develop their gifts

• We begin to recognize the personal qualities—patience, grit, humility, courage—that sharing our gifts requires

In short, redefining gifts in this way opens the door to a reality in which our ability to identify and share our gifts becomes a building block of a flourishing human life and a good society.

This, in turn, has important implications for how we ought to structure the “social contract”—a question I’ll tackle in the next post.

Want to learn more about potentialism? See below.

Sparks are flying in my nerdy little corner of the internet right now. Public intellectuals are debating the merits of liberalism.1

On one side of the debate are the “post-liberals.” This includes writers such as the Notre Dame political scientist , the New York Times writer , and the Harvard legal scholar . These writers argue that liberalism has “failed”: by prioritizing personal rights and freedoms at the expense of a unifying moral order, liberalism has eroded a shared vision of the common good. This has led to a host of social ills, from loneliness to political polarization. Liberalism, they argue, must be replaced with a different political “regime” with a more muscular vision of the good life.

On the other side are the classical liberals, including journalists , , , and . They argue that liberalism is essential. By ensuring people have the ability to pursue their own values, liberalism gives people the freedom they need to thrive. Sure, it may not offer the strongest sense of meaning or solidarity, but attempting to do so through political ends risks putting people in a moral straightjacket. Liberalism may not be a perfect system, but it’s the best we’ve got

Far from esoteric quibbles about abstract political theory, these debates have national significance. Deneen is a major influence on J.D. Vance, the heir-apparent to the Trump dynasty. So expect to see Deenen’s ideas echoing in Vance’s stump speeches in the 2028 Presidential campaign. Meanwhile, Democrats are doing some soul-searching as they struggle to reassemble a coherent political strategy after a devastating 2024 election loss. Critical to this will be figuring out how to address questions of justice, purpose, and solidarity.

No Small Task

Here’s the problem: Everyone is wrong.

No, we don’t need to abandon liberalism.

No, liberalism is not the best we can do.

Instead, what we need is a political vision that preserves the values of liberalism while offering a stronger sense of moral order.

Developing this vision is no small task, especially considering it’s not the first time philosophers have grappled with this challenge. Yet research by the Beacon Project offers clues about how to resolve this dilemma. In fact, our work suggests the solution to the liberal conundrum may be hiding in plain sight.

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Homo contribuens

Let’s go back to basics.

Like all political philosophies, liberalism offers a vision of the “social contract” (that is, what we owe each other) based on a particular understanding of human nature. This is reflected in the well-known phrase Homo economicus: the idea that human beings are rational agents acting in their own self-interest. In this view, the common good arises as a result of everyone pursuing these interests. (As Adam Smith famously put it: “[man] intends only his own gain, and he is...led by an invisible hand to promote an end which has no part of his intention.”)

This view that people are self-interested “consumers” of goods and experiences has dominated our politics and economy for centuries, bringing us wonderful things like the Apple computer and 2-day shipping, as well as not-so-wonderful things like wealth inequality and planned obsolescence.

Yet this view of human nature is incomplete.

Yes, people are self-interested. But, as the psychologist Victor Frankl showed in his influential book Man’s Search for Meaning, people have an even more fundamental need: namely, the quest for a sense of purpose—a belief that one’s life amounts to something, that one matters.

Mattering. It’s a basic requirement for a flourishing life. Yet it can’t be achieved through consumption alone. To matter, one must feel as though one’s presence is felt in the lives of others. One must feel as though one makes a difference, that one has impact, that one has something to offer.

As Frankl wrote:

Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself.

Call it Homo contribuens—contributing man.

An Old Idea

The difference between Homo economicus and Homo contribuens is a subtle one. We’re not all Mother Theresa. Instead, our deepest needs and motivations are inextricably tied to the needs and motivations of others. We can’t flourish if we don’t feel that we matter, and we can’t feel that we matter if we don’t feel believe we are making a difference in the world.

This idea isn’t new. As matter of fact, philosophers and scientists have been saying it for centuries:

• The historian Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, noted that Americans help each other because they understood their fates were intertwined. He called it “enlightened self-interest.”

• The psychologist Alfred Adler argued in the 1930s that mental health depends on a person’s capacity to contribute to the well-being of others. He called it the “doctrine of social interest.”

• The philosopher Michael Sandel recently argued that contribution is a fundamental feature of healthy societies. He calls it “contributive justice.”

• Even Adam Smith, famous for his “invisible hand” metaphor in the Wealth of Nations, argued in a separate (better!) work that people have a basic “interest in the fortune of others.” He called it “sympathy.”

The idea is already there. We just need to take it seriously.

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Restoring (Moral) Order

If liberalism, which articulates a particular vision of the social contract, is built on an incomplete picture of human nature, this raises the question of how that contract might change if we replace Homo economicus with Homo contribuens.

One of the main changes speaks directly to the question of moral order.

Moral order is the idea that society recognizes and promotes a “right” and “wrong” way to go about things.

One way that moral order can be promoted is through laws. We have laws against assault, for example, because we’ve agreed as a society that people should not be allowed to harm others without consequences.

Another way that moral order can be promoted is through social norms—that is, culturally-mediated expectations about how people ought to behave.2

Social norms are a form of soft power. If you violate them, you don’t go to jail. Instead, you experience social sanctions in the form of, say, social disapproval, or gossip.

Humans have been using social norms to promote desirable behavior for millennia. Some have argued they are the “secret to our success.”

The liberal tradition promotes a particular set of norms. One quintessential liberal norm is toleration. Another is civility. Some have even extolled the importance of a good sense of humor.

Notably, liberal norms are thin, meaning they permit a wide latitude of acceptable behavior. Toleration, for example, is a thin social norm, since it asks us to place fewer demands on others’ actions.

Thin norms make sense if our starting assumption is Homo economicus. If we are operating under the belief that people are fundamentally self-interested, but we don’t know what these interests are, then the safest bet is to let them choose their own path, lest we end up forcing them to violate those interests. This idea is what underlies the famous liberal maxim, “Do what you want, as long as it doesn’t harm others.”

But if our starting point is Homo contribuens, the picture changes. Homo contribuens offers a richer picture of human motivation—namely, that people have a need and capacity to contribute—and, as a result, gives rise to a stronger set of social norms.

What would this look like?

It looks like embracing a shared understanding of the ways that culture and society can augment or undermine a life of contribution, and of the active role each of us has in creating this life for ourselves and the people around us.

It looks like a collective recognition of the ways each person’s unique capacities for contribution might be shared or squandered, and of the practices one might engage in to promote the former and stave off the latter.

It looks like a set of social norms that encourage participation, self-cultivation, and contribution.

It looks, in short, like moral order.

Freedom and Constraint

Wait a second, you might say. If you start talking about people’s responsibility to contribute, won’t that undermine their freedom to choose their own path? Isn’t that the kind of authoritarianism the liberals have been warning us about?

Not at all. Homo contribuens simply states that people have a need and capacity to contribute. It doesn’t say anything about how they contribute. From the perspective of the framework, the only requirement is that people’s contributions give them a sense of meaning and purpose.

The moral order we’re talking about, therefore, encourages human flourishing while allowing individuals the opportunity to choose their own path.

This is an updated form of liberalism: a political philosophy that offers a richer vision of the “good life”—that is, a life of purpose and contribution—without undermining freedom.

At the Beacon Project, we call this potentialism: the view that society should be structured to realize human potential, and that this potential is achieved when we recognize people’s right and responsibility to contribute.

The New Synthesis

Potentialism resolves the liberal conundrum by putting the human need and capacity for contribution at the center of the story.

When you do this, you start to see things differently.

• You see people not just as consumers of society but as active creators of it.

• You see people not as isolated individuals but as interconnected beings.

• You see society as a shared enterprise where our ability to thrive depends on others’ ability to do the same.

• You see freedom as not just freedom from coercion but freedom to contribute.

• You see communities as support mechanisms for the discovery and cultivation of people’s gifts and talents.

I started out by saying that the intellectual heavyweights debating the merits of liberalism are both wrong.

But they’re also both right.

Freedom is essential. So is a shared sense of the common good. The question is whether this balance can be preserved.

I think it can. We just need to realize the truth about ourselves.

Want to learn more about potentialism? See our short introduction here.

Over the course of several hours, guests shared their views on polarization and how to fix it, with suggestions ranging from strengthening our political parties to harnessing the power of tech to enhance local connections.

It was fascinating to hear such a wide range of perspectives and ideas. But as the evening went on, I began to feel as though something was missing from the conversation.

All the changes people were suggesting were focused on changing institutions: e.g., improving government, tech, or nonprofits. The problem is that these institutions exists within a deeper context—the unspoken norms, values, expectations, and assumptions we hold about what it means to be American.

Call it civic culture.

If our civic culture is broken, then no amount of institutional change will fix it.

The bad news is that our civic culture is broken. The good news is that potentialism, a new political philosophy developed by the Beacon Project, can help.

From “I” to “We” and Back

To see how, consider the book The Upswing by Robert Putnam. Putnam is a legendary sociologist who is best known for his book Bowling Alone, which documented a marked decrease in memberships in unions, churches, rotary clubs, and other connecting organizations in the second half of the twentieth century. This decline in membership, he argues, is partly responsible for increased loneliness, alienation, disconnection, and political division.

In The Upswing, Putnam digs deeper into these trends, finding that American social solidarity, which was low in the early 1900’s, reached its peak in the middle of the century and has been declining ever since. He calls it the “I-We-I” curve.

What is responsible for this pronounced downturn in social connection? Putnam is explicit in his diagnosis: an “ideology of individualism” where the “pursuit of unfettered self-interest is considered a laudable ethic to live by.”

A similar case is made by James Davison Hunter, in his phenomenal book Democracy and Solidarity, who argues that the failures in our political system are the result of “growing individualism and the loss of social capital.”

The bottom line is there is a growing recognition that our current political problems are the result not just of failing institutions but also of a culture of individualism that places the “me” over the “we.”

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Right Question, Wrong Answers

If a culture of rampant individualism is the problem, then the solution is clear: we need to restore our bonds of mutual obligation.

Consider an analogy to physics. When you have a spinning wheel, two forces are at play: centrifugal forces, which point away from the center, and centripetal forces, which point toward it.

It appears that the centrifugal forces in our society are overpowering the centripetal ones, leaving people more divided and alone.

We need to ramp up those centripetal forces. More “in,” less “out.”

Over the past ten years or so, there has been a proliferation of ideas for how to do this, often grouped under the term “postliberalism.”

The problem is, they’re all bad.

Consider the work of Curtis Yarvin, an erstwhile software engineer turned influential blogger who apparently has the ear of Elon Musk. Yarvin has advocated for replacing the American President with a CEO in order to promote progress and social order. It takes only a moment’s reflection to realize how bad of an idea this is given how different a country is from a corporation.

But there are less facile—and more dangerous—proposals. Consider “Common Good Constitutionalism,” promoted most notably by the philosopher Adrian Vermeule. This view argues that the state should have broad authority to direct citizens towards “virtuous” ends. What this means is a radical curtailing of the freedoms many cherish in American life: more power of the State to censor speech it considers harmful, a stronger role of religion in public education, and more policies that promote “traditional” family structures.

Then there are other movements, like the National Conservatism movement, which is the better-dressed cousin of Christian Nationalism, and then even more extreme are racist ideologues like Nick Fuentes and his trollish Groyper Army.

In sum, what we have are a series of wrong answers to the right question. Yes, part of our current political woes is the result of a culture that places the “me” over the “we.” Yes, we need a stronger culture of mutual obligation. No, the solution is not an American Dictator or a return to the Handmaid’s Tale.

Which leaves the question: how do we strengthen our common bonds while preserving our liberty?

Enter Potentialism

Potentialism, a new vision developed by the Beacon Project, offers an alternative.

Potentialism begins with the assumption that everyone has something to offer. Call it a “gift.” Gifts take any number of forms, from caring for an Alzheimer’s patient to performing a piano sonata.

Potentialism then argues that the society we should be striving to create is one that recognizes both people’s right and responsibility to develop and share their gifts.

The power of potentialism is that it offers a more robust set of centripetal forces (the responsibility to share our gifts) without undermining the centrifugal ones.

Under potentialism, people are free to explore their gifts as they define them. The only requirement is that they offer you a sense of meaning or purpose while helping others. This could be anything from raising a family to starting a business. Because there is no state-imposed definition of what does versus does not count as a gift, personal freedom is maintained.

Yet this freedom is not absolute. Potentialism does place certain requirements on the individual: namely, the obligation to identify, cultivate, and share one’s gifts. These obligations are upheld through our culture: namely, the norms, expectations, and assumptions we impose on ourselves and each other. This encourages a culture of contribution: each person is asked to recognize their obligation to contribute to the common good. This responsibility serves as the centripetal force that maintains social solidarity.

Potentialism offers a way of solving the core tension at the heart of our modern political discourse: the tension between freedom and responsibility.

We’re free to define our gifts for ourselves. But we have a duty to share them.

The Bottom Line

Our cultural crisis is real. We do need to recover our bonds of mutual obligation. Yet our current political discourse is plagued by ham-fisted attempts to increase social solidarity that contradict American ideals of liberty and justice. We need a more balanced approach that preserves the lessons of the liberal tradition while restoring a sense of solidarity to our political culture. Potentialism can help.

I wish I had had the wherewithal to say this at dinner.

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[P]eople in the exhausted majority have no narrative. They have no coherent philosophic worldview to organize their thinking and compel action. When they get one I suspect it will look totally unlike the two dominant narratives today.

– David Brooks, New York Times

Background

There is a growing sense that something in our society is profoundly broken. It is tempting to believe these issues can be fixed by enacting a certain policy or winning a certain election. But our problems run deeper than anything that can be addressed in a single election cycle. Instead, we need a new way of thinking about what we owe each other and what it means to be American. Call it a new “civic vision.”

For the past five years at the Beacon Project, we’ve been developing such a vision. Now, we want to share it with you. Over the coming months, we’ll be releasing a series of articles explaining the vision, called potentialism, in hopes of sparking feedback and dialogue. This is the first article in the series.

Do you think potentialism can help? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments!

A Tug Of War

In 2018, More in Common, the nonpartisan research organization that houses the Beacon Project, published an influential study on political polarization called Hidden Tribes. The study revealed that two-thirds of Americans belong to what it called the “Exhausted Majority.”

The Exhausted Majority is fed up with political polarization. They want people to disagree without hating each other and leaders to work together to address shared problems. They want to live in a world where people’s political beliefs don’t define them.

If there is any hope of restoring sanity to our nation’s politics, the Exhausted Majority is key. But there’s a problem: the narratives being offered by politicians today don’t reflect their core beliefs.

Our country today is dominated by two competing visions. Progressives focus on systems and institutions, but downplay the importance of individual choices in shaping people’s lives. Conservatives, by contrast, emphasize individual choice but underweight the importance of a responsive and effective government in ensuring everyone has a fair shot. Meanwhile, research by the Beacon Project has shown that the Exhausted Majority believes we need more responsibility from both people and government for everyone to thrive.

America is caught in a game of tug-of-war, with the Exhausted Majority caught in the middle.

To appeal to the Exhausted Majority, we need a new vision that transcends this binary.

Developing this vision has been our central mission at the Beacon Project. Over the past five years, we have interviewed hundreds of Americans, fielded scores of national surveys, analyzed millions of social media posts, spoken with dozens of experts, and engaged with classic and contemporary texts in political philosophy. Building on these insights, we put together a sketch of a new civic vision that we believe can speak to the Exhausted Majority and help address the challenges of our current moment. We call it potentialism.

The Potentialist Maxim

Potentialism is a “political philosophy” in that it starts with certain assumptions about human nature then makes claims about how we ought to structure our society based on these assumptions. The assumption that potentialism begins with is straightforward: namely, that everyone has something to offer. Call it a “gift.”

Gifts are capacities that can be used to enrich our own lives and the lives of the people around us1. They take a variety of forms. They may be small or large, from tutoring a child to playing in an orchestra. They may be beautiful or practical, from building a sculpture to repairing a water main. They may be visible or discreet, from serving as a CEO to caring for a dementia patient. Most people possess multiple gifts, with different gifts evolving over the course of life.

Potentialism then asks: in a world in which everyone has a gift, what kind of society should we build together?2

The first answer, according to potentialism, is one in which everyone has an opportunity, or right, to develop their gifts.3 This means ensuring everyone has the basic conditions—for instance, good schools, safe neighborhoods, and supportive communities—they need to thrive.4

But opportunity alone isn’t enough. A gift is a source of value, both to oneself and to others. This means that failing to develop one’s gifts would be to shortchange oneself and one’s community. Thus, developing our gifts is not just a right. It’s also a responsibility.5 This responsibility is something we uphold together, through our culture—i.e., the norms, values, and expectations we pass on to one another. In this way, potentialism advocates for both a commitment to individual development and for a culture of responsibility to share our gifts.

Taken together, these ideas form what we call the “potentialist maxim”: Everyone has a gift, and the right and the responsibility to develop that gift and share it with others.

Old Questions, New Answers

The potentialist maxim may strike you as fairly intuitive, even obvious. But despite its simplicity, it offers a range of novel solutions to the challenges we are facing today.

Polarization

To start, potentialism transcends the political binary described above. Recall that the narrative on the political Left tends to emphasize systems and institutions, while the narrative on the Right emphasizes individual choices. Meanwhile, the Exhausted Majority recognizes the importance of both institutions and individuals. In its acknowledgement of the right and responsibility to develop one’s gifts, potentialism reflects this duality.

Evidence collected by the Beacon Project confirms potentialism’s cross-partisan appeal. We find that about four in five Americans—regardless of political party—agree with a version of the potentialist maxim.6 This suggests potentialism may help transcend our current political divisions by offering a new civic vision that appeals to Americans across the political spectrum.7

Education

Outside of polarization, perhaps the most relevant area for potentialism is in education. Experts have noted that our current educational system is poorly suited to prepare young people for the challenges of the modern world. Much of the curriculum is a vestige of an era when schools were designed to train factory workers, not to equip students to thrive in the 21st century. As Sir Ken Robinson argued in a popular TED talk, we are “killing creativity.”

A potentialist approach would begin with the idea that every child has gifts to offer society. Their education—whether through traditional schooling, apprenticeships, vocational training, or other pathways—should be designed to help them explore, develop, and share these gifts. Opportunities for adult education should ensure that people can explore and cultivate new gifts later in life. Potentialism thus argues that a priority should be to make excellent education available to all Americans regardless of age, class, or background.

Furthermore, because potentialism affirms not only people’s right but also their responsibility to develop their gifts, education would not just be about training but also about instilling a sense of civic duty. Striving to achieve one’s potential should be considered not just something one does for oneself but also for others: not just a personal quest, but a moral one. This idea is closely related to the ancient view that education is not just an exercise in learning facts but also in character formation. Thus, potentialism advocates for more civic education and emphasis on civic virtues.

Healthcare

Healthcare is a contentious issue in America—one that took center stage with the controversy around the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and then, more recently, with the assassination of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson last year. While the US drives much medical innovation around the world, conservatives and liberals alike agree that the healthcare system is overly costly, complex, and unequal in its distribution of care.

While healthcare does not feature prominently in headlines these days, according to recent research by More in Common, this topic remains among the top most important issues to Americans.

When advocating for fixing this dysfunctional system, many organizations frame the conversation using the value of care. A report by the World Health Organization, for example, stated that healthcare “is the embodiment of human rights in the practice of care.”

Potentialism takes a different approach. To the potentialist, healthcare isn’t just about care; it’s also about agency.

When people depend on employers for healthcare, as is the case in the US system, leaving one’s job means losing health coverage, thus opening the risk for catastrophic financial loss in the case of a health emergency. Consequently, people remain in suboptimal jobs just to preserve their benefits—a phenomenon known as “job lock.” This stifles people’s agency and their ability to develop their gifts because it prevents them from taking entrepreneurial risks or exploring other ways they can pursue their potential.

The potentialist advocates for systems that ensure that people are not prevented from exploring and developing their gifts due to a loss of health insurance. As an example that could garner bipartisan support, a state-sponsored program could offer free health coverage to individuals (and their families) pursuing adult education or starting a business.

Status and Respect

In today’s world—particularly among today’s youth—becoming an “influencer” has become a hallmark of success. This is part of a larger phenomenon whereby success is marked by titles, salaries, and follower counts. Meanwhile, essential work—such as that performed by teachers, mechanics, and caregivers—is undervalued.

Potentialism offers a different path. According to potentialism, the value of one’s gifts does not depend on the number of “likes” they get or the scale of their influence. Instead, they depend on the goodness-of-fit between the capacities of the giver and the needs of the community.

By this metric, someone who spends ten years working with a disabled child should be afforded just as much respect as someone who started a company. Thus, potentialism advocates for a redistribution of respect in our culture for the myriad ways, large and small, that people can enrich their own lives and the lives of the people around them.8

AI and the Freedom Paradox

Maybe you have heard: AI is coming for our jobs.

In theory, this should be great news! We should all be looking forward to 8-hour workweeks and spending the rest of our time mastering the ukulele or finally reading War and Peace.

But there’s a problem. Most visions of an AI future involve some sort of massive wealth transfer, so everyone can reap the productivity benefits generated by our new robot companions. Yet a recent meta-analyses of such programs—including a large study funded by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI—showed that people who receive cash are, on average, no happier than those who don’t.

These findings are a thorn in the side of those who argue that advances in artificial intelligence, when coupled with massive wealth redistributions, will lead to substantial increases in social welfare.

One possible reason for these findings is what we might call the Freedom Paradox. Social science shows us that the more control people have over their lives – that is, the more freedom they have – the happier they feel. Yet, paradoxically, studies also show that too much freedom can actually diminish happiness. With no demands on one’s time, it is far too easy to get sucked into Instagram’s infinite scroll.

This exact point was recently raised by Joe Rogan in an interview with Bernie Sanders (excerpted below and edited for clarity):

JOE ROGAN: I’m a big supporter of social safety nets. What worries me is that if all the jobs are gone and everything gets automated, even if people have universal basic income, they don’t have meaning. How do you find meaning if all you’re doing is just getting a check and you can just stay at home and stare at the TV?

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s the trillion dollar question. I don’t have an easy answer to it.

Potentialism offers an answer. The Freedom Paradox emerges when there are no demands on our time. Yet potentialism does place such demands—namely, the responsibility to develop and share one’s gifts. By imposing guardrails (in the form of social norms) around our behavior, we can thwart the shiftlessness that could emerge with more free time.

(Sam Altman, if you are reading this, we suggest you make the following modification to your next cash transfer study: urge people to spend more time developing their gifts!)

Loneliness and Alienation

In 2023, the US Surgeon General issued a report arguing that Americans were experiencing a “loneliness epidemic.” Americans are increasingly feeling anxious, isolated, disconnected, and alienated from their communities.

Addressing this complex issue will undoubtedly require efforts from multiple sectors, but potentialism offers one perspective. According to potentialism, gifts aren’t developed alone. Instead, they are “collectively emergent,” meaning that it’s easier for people to develop their own gifts when others are developing theirs. Simply put, we thrive together.

This has two implications. First, it suggests that it is to everyone’s benefit—not just those who are socially isolated—to invest in civic infrastructure that increases opportunities for social connection. (A recent More in Common report called the Connection Opportunity confirms that people want to connect with others to solve problems in their communities.) Potentialism thus calls for greater investment in public infrastructure, including public transportation and so-called “third spaces”—that is, areas like parks and libraries that provide opportunities for connection.9

Furthermore, potentialism views loneliness as not just a policy problem but also a culture problem. Our modern culture of individualism, which touts the virtue of self-interest, has frayed our social bonds and exacerbated social isolation. This means that we need to reform not just our institutions but our civic culture: to replace our modern culture of individualism with a “culture of connection.”

A Bold Aspiration

Potentialism is straightforward, yet it differs in meaningful ways from the prevailing political narratives of our time. It centers social justice and personal responsibility; opportunity and agency; institutions and culture; community and the individual. In its assertion of the individuality of gifts, it advocates for human autonomy and self-exploration; in its assertion of the responsibility conferred by these gifts, it advocates for personal obligation and civic duty.

Yet potentialism is not a form of milquetoast centrism. It offers clear positions on a range of issues, including (but not limited to) those mentioned above. It casts its eye upon society and sees too many cases where people continue to be unfairly deprived of the chance to develop their gifts. It also sees too many cases where our culture has failed to adequately reflect the moral dimension of self-improvement.

It is our hope that potentialism becomes a serious alternative to the prevailing political philosophies of our time. Perhaps one could identify not as a liberal or progressive, conservative or libertarian, socialist or communist, but as a potentialist—someone committed to the core belief that everyone has both a right and responsibility to develop and share their gifts.

We are aware that this is a bold aspiration. But it is also increasingly clear that our political moment cries out for such boldness. Millions of Americans are fed up with business-as-usual and are hungry for new, creative solutions to our country’s challenges. As we approach America’s 250th anniversary, surely we can do better than the status quo, and we owe it to ourselves—and to future generations—to try.

What’s Next

We are growing a community of thoughtful, engaged people who are exhausted by the political dysfunction in our country and eager for new solutions. Our aim is for this community to provide feedback and share those ideas with a broader audience. As this community grows, so too will our chances of expanding this movement and enacting real change.

That community starts here, with you. If you know someone who you think would be interested in advancing any of the ideas presented in this article, please share it with them! We are looking for thought partners, policy experts, scientists, philosophers, friends, allies, skeptics, funders, collaborators, readers, and sharers—anyone who is intrigued by our thinking and wants to help build something new. If you have any ideas about how to advance this work, please let us know by reaching out to beaconproject@moreincommon.com. And if you haven’t yet signed up to follow this newsletter, please do so!

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Over the coming months, we will be offering a series of additional reflections on potentialism, including:

• A more precise definition of “gifts” and how we identify them

• A deep dive into rights, responsibilities, and the limits of each

• How potentialism relates to other frameworks (e.g., the “Abundance Agenda”) and political parties (e.g., Elon Musk’s “America Party” and Andrew Yang’s “Forward Party”)10

• How potentialism relates to other political philosophies (e.g., liberalism)11

• Other implications for our current political moment

This is the start of a great adventure, and we look forward to taking it with you.

Further Reading

A version of this article was originally published in the newsletter for More in Common, a nonprofit organization seeking to understand and address social division, where I am a Senior Advisor.

More in Common released its Hidden Tribes report in 2018, the word we used to describe the feeling of many Americans was “exhausted.” We coined the term “Exhausted Majority” to describe the group of Americans who are frustrated with division and more flexible in their views.

Now, another word might be “indifferent.”  

By all accounts, this should be a riveting (if also troubling) time in politics. The Supreme Court recently passed a decision that radically expands Presidential power. Joe Biden had a cringeworthy performance at last week’s debate. And the presidential election is four months away.

And yet study after study shows that a surprisingly high number of Americans’ reactions to the news is best captured by a single word: “meh.”

An investigation by Pew, for example, found that the number of Americans who follow the news frequently decreased from 51 percent in 2016 to 38 percent in 2022. Even more recently, a PBS poll showed that a majority of Americans—55 percent—said they were not following Trump’s hush money trial much or at all, and few changed their views following the conviction. And for all the devastation that has happened in the Middle East over the past nine months, only 22 percent of Americans say they are following it very or extremely closely.  

As one participant in a Pew research survey said, “You just get tired of the arguing and bickering back and forth...So, I’m still gonna vote, but I don’t see myself getting more engaged in the process.” 

We’ve gone from frustrated, to exhausted, to utterly indifferent.  

What explains this growing apathy? 

The answer, according to some experts, is straightforward: people are burnt out. We have the same two men running for office that we did four years ago. Both are at or approaching eighty. For all the scandals surrounding Donald Trump, it has been difficult to convince the public that these differ in meaningful ways from all the others we’ve been exposed to over the years. Meanwhile, Biden’s rallying cry (when he’s able to shout loud enough) appears to be, “more of the same!” Hardly a vision to rush into battle for.  

American politics is beginning to feel like a rerun of a bad television show where we all know the plot, the characters, and even the credits.  

What we need is a new, positive political vision that can inspire people, spur them to action, and give them hope for the future.

By giving people a better sense of this current moment in history and their place in it, this “narrative moonshot” might alleviate Americans’ feelings of political detachment.  

What might such a vision look like? Building on More in Common’s research, here are four principles that can help guide such a project:  

• Center the experiences of the Exhausted Majority. The controversial issues playing out on social media do not reflect most Americans’ main concerns. By listening to these Americans and centering their values and beliefs, we may be able to build a more effective narrative that resonates with their deepest convictions.   

• Build on psychological research. A growing body of evidence in the social sciences, along with More in Common’s own research, highlights the importance of “core beliefs” for understanding political attitudes and behavior. Any new political narrative should be based on an understanding of human psychology.  

• Highlight the power of personal agency. Research shows how much people’s outcomes in life are due to circumstances that are outside of their control. At the same time, work by More in Common suggests that a majority of Americans, across race, gender, and immigration status, maintain an abiding faith in people’s ability to transcend adverse circumstances. This suggests that new narratives should build on (rather than downplay) the power of human agency.  

• Make it positive. As noted above, in today’s toxic landscape, so much rhetoric is focused on the negative. While this language is driving short-term clicks and shares on social media, it is also exhausting and contributes to Americans’ frustration and pessimism. Other research suggests negative campaign language is generally ineffective. A more successful narrative would spark hope rather than fear, and focus on what brings us together rather than on what pulls us apart.  

One thing is clear: we need a new kind of politics. One that captures people’s imagination; one that fosters a sense of collective purpose and shared destiny; one that focuses on the future rather than fixating on the past.

This is our best hope of getting out of our current political rut.