Humility, balance and responsibility- combined behaviors that have never failed us, personally or collectively. We can do this. Nice piece here. A tad long. But thank you.
I’ve been feeling this push -pull for years now, and always attributed it to my background as an Indian. This idea of needing a community, feeling like we impact that community, and feeling like we have some sort of purpose within that community. I think you’ve hit the right balance, but how do we translate this idea into our politics so that people don’t get sucked into an either/or (jd Vance on one side, and insert x democrat on the other side), but rather getting someone to articulate this vision in a way that captures the public’s attention and reminds them it is something they’ve been yearning for all along?
I love this question!! This is exactly what we’re exploring at the Beacon Project. The solution we’ve identified is as necessary as it is ambitious…popularize an entirely new political identity that takes homo contribuens as a first principle. It’s long-term work but that’s what we’re working toward!
I love how your view offers a possible way to explain something I’ve seen all too often amongst many liberals (of which I am one, to be clear), and which has been the source of their persistent difficulty with finding any kind of toehold with the right-leaning exhausted middle:
Too many liberals seem to view themselves as morally *superior*.
Using your construct, it would explain that liberals have used a rigged scorecard of sorts—“we’re ‘better’ than the right because we center these particular values! And they’re better values!” The problem: the right could just swap in “we’re better than the left,” and THEY re right, using their own rigged scorecard.
I completely agree the hope for progress lies in finding *compatible* values, which, as evidenced by the ones you propose, we don’t have to look far to find.
I appreciate your efforts so much - but its a lot of words. Many of our "red" minded friends are not reading and listening. I believe we need to be able to speak a language that captures the masses right now. If we explain how the internet is killing us for example, that is something all people (both sides of our current political divide) and if we stay focused on your idea about "Potentialism". We don't need to agree on everything, we don't need to seek total unification, but you can help a great many alienated and confused people right now, find a way to build more trust in their fellow man. So we can let our guards down for a minute- and regroup upon our shared natural born potential for smarts, humility, family, etc. Those values we all share. Thank you again for your articles.
Daniel. I read this the same week you subscribed, and the convergence between our ideas is striking enough that I wanted to acknowledge it, warmly.
Your Homo contribuens against Homo economicus is, I think, the same frame I've been making against the self-interested consumer as a complete account of human nature. The individual who imagines he authors himself, while disowning everyone who formed his capacity to choose at all. And "freedom to contribute, not merely freedom from coercion" states rather nicely what I've elsewhere called a double helix (personal cultivation and the surrounding social conditions rising together, neither prior). Potentialism (society structured to realize human potential) lands very close to a formulation I lean on heavily: the full, free, rich, all-round development of every person (shades of Marx). We seem to have walked to the same place through different doors. You through the empirical literature, me through Aristotle and the interior work of individuation.
Two things you bring that I haven't foregrounded:
The first is mattering. Naming the contribution-need as a distinct motivational force. Frankl, Adler's social interest, Sandel's contributive justice. This supplies a mechanism for something I tend to assert more than explain: why relational flourishing isn't self-sacrifice. It's not that the self yields to the group; it's that mattering to others is a precondition of flourishing at all. That's explanatory work I've been doing with the single word 'love'. You've given it a second, complementary term.
The second is the thin-versus-thick norms point. The observation that a thin moral order is the rational output of Homo economicus is rather apt. It explains why liberalism defaults to procedural thinness without having to call anyone a villain. And it shows how a richer anthropology licenses a thicker order without sliding into the straitjacket the liberals rightly fear.
If I'd press on anything (in the spirit of building rather than disputing), you frame the destination as "an updated form of liberalism," and I wonder whether the engine you've described can be installed within that frame, or whether it eventually pops a gasket. My own worry runs one level beneath the social contract ... that a population already deformed into isolated consumers, its attention a managed commodity, may have lost some of the very capacity to recognize a common good when one is offered. The diagnosis you and I share may need to reckon with a substrate that resists the cure. But that's a question for any possible subsequent exchange, not a quarrel with this piece.
Glad to have found a fellow traveler. Subscribed in return.
Really enjoyed this. The idea that a “Homo Contribuens” society could generate moral order organically is a powerful one.
Through a relational lens, it also suggests something deeper—if people are primarily contributing to one another, their identities are constantly reinforced through meaningful feedback loops. That could create more stable, load-bearing forms of identity, which might explain why such a society wouldn’t just function well, but feel better to live in.
It does make me wonder whether, underneath everything else, a lot of people are really just looking for that kind of meaningful participation.
Daniel, I appreciate your thinking and your efforts to build a movement that shifts our thinking from viewing people as rational actors in an economic system that seeks to maximize their individual economic interest. I also like the framing of basically a different view of humanity as a different species perse. Homo contribuens. I think this distinction lines up with Ian McGilchrist's work around left-brain and right-brain thinking. I'm butchering the nuance, but left brain thinking will be more rational and economic in nature, while right brain being more holistic in its approach.
As a result of this switch, I think individuals become more aware of other somatic senses that help them see their connection to others and perceive a somatic relationality where the are able to aware of how their actions impact the lives of others.
As I've been grappling with how do you maintain individual liberty, while getting individuals to act in ways that promote the common good, I've come to terms with that this work needs to be more somatic and sensory and less cognitive and ideological. Waking people up to Homo contribuens to see how their actions connect with an impact others will not come through argument alone, but will come through embodied relationality. Cognition will come second. The New Civic Futures work is critical to making Homo contribuens a reality.
We also need a way to restrict the coercive economic power of corporations and overweeningly wealthy individuals, much like the power of government is restricted to avoid social malefaction.
Great piece. I probably suffer from generational bias but I see much more self interest in younger generations - especially in how they have chosen career paths - and particularly in the Jewish community. Hence - Wall Street and business in general are the chosen paths rather then the law, medicine or engineering - fields with more Homo contribuens than most business enterprises.
Thanks Rich! I think young people are grappling with this question a lot, and the data on this is mixed. I heard recently that young people at least *say* they value careers that prioritize meaning and purpose over happiness. But other work suggests the opposite, so the jury's still out!
Daniel Yudkin proposal of ‘potentionalism’ suggests people can be persuaded toward shared norms through evidence, argument, and rational self-reflection. That’s Enlightenment thinking, whether the author acknowledges it or not.
But the progressive orthodoxy that now dominates institutions, campuses, and large chunks of media doesn’t just disagree with your conclusions. It rejects the method. Feelings outrank data. Lived experience is unchallengeable. Demanding evidence is itself an act of power. The very tools the essay uses to make its case, peer-reviewed psychology, historical philosophy, reasoned synthesis, are exactly what that orthodoxy has spent twenty years delegitimizing.
So when the essay proposes a “new synthesis” built on shared understanding and collective recognition, it’s writing a constitution for a country where half the political class has already rejected constitutional thinking. We’re not going to argue someone into “contributive justice” if they’ve decided that argument itself is a weapon of the dominant culture.
The woke movement fatally undermines the essay’s central claim about meaning. It did give people purpose, belonging, moral urgency, and a clear sense of contribution. It just located all of those things in group identity and grievance rather than individual agency. Frankl’s insight was that meaning must be earned, not assigned. A movement that tells you your suffering is your identity, and your identity is your destiny, is the precise inversion of everything Frankl stood for.
The essay needs to reckon with that before “potentialism” is anything more than an academic seminar paper.
Nicely written critique! The only path forward is a political movement based on these principles. The strange thing is that there is no major party or ideology in America that does this. We’re trying to change that.
Thanks for the introduction. What an impressive pedigree and project. I am very curious how you plan to convert thought into deeds into change in a liberal democracy that is horribly fractured and tribal. Surely it requires a party, or a coalition of parties? Have reached out on X.
I don't understand what you are actually proposing. What major laws do you want to see implemented, or repealed? What's your position on controversial issues which have sharp splits, such as abortion or guns? How deferential should we be to religion? Is Free Speech a core value, or will some political ideas be restricted - and which ones?
I can't glean any answers about these questions from the article.
The French revolutionaries understood this. Liberté and egalité are not enough. We need the fraternité too.
Humility, balance and responsibility- combined behaviors that have never failed us, personally or collectively. We can do this. Nice piece here. A tad long. But thank you.
I’ve been feeling this push -pull for years now, and always attributed it to my background as an Indian. This idea of needing a community, feeling like we impact that community, and feeling like we have some sort of purpose within that community. I think you’ve hit the right balance, but how do we translate this idea into our politics so that people don’t get sucked into an either/or (jd Vance on one side, and insert x democrat on the other side), but rather getting someone to articulate this vision in a way that captures the public’s attention and reminds them it is something they’ve been yearning for all along?
I love this question!! This is exactly what we’re exploring at the Beacon Project. The solution we’ve identified is as necessary as it is ambitious…popularize an entirely new political identity that takes homo contribuens as a first principle. It’s long-term work but that’s what we’re working toward!
I love the mission and movement you are trying to build!
Beautiful. I've been reading a book about the ancient Stoic tradition and it rings some bells here. (A Guide to the Good Life, by William Irving).
I love how your view offers a possible way to explain something I’ve seen all too often amongst many liberals (of which I am one, to be clear), and which has been the source of their persistent difficulty with finding any kind of toehold with the right-leaning exhausted middle:
Too many liberals seem to view themselves as morally *superior*.
Using your construct, it would explain that liberals have used a rigged scorecard of sorts—“we’re ‘better’ than the right because we center these particular values! And they’re better values!” The problem: the right could just swap in “we’re better than the left,” and THEY re right, using their own rigged scorecard.
I completely agree the hope for progress lies in finding *compatible* values, which, as evidenced by the ones you propose, we don’t have to look far to find.
Right, Tamsen!
I appreciate your efforts so much - but its a lot of words. Many of our "red" minded friends are not reading and listening. I believe we need to be able to speak a language that captures the masses right now. If we explain how the internet is killing us for example, that is something all people (both sides of our current political divide) and if we stay focused on your idea about "Potentialism". We don't need to agree on everything, we don't need to seek total unification, but you can help a great many alienated and confused people right now, find a way to build more trust in their fellow man. So we can let our guards down for a minute- and regroup upon our shared natural born potential for smarts, humility, family, etc. Those values we all share. Thank you again for your articles.
Daniel. I read this the same week you subscribed, and the convergence between our ideas is striking enough that I wanted to acknowledge it, warmly.
Your Homo contribuens against Homo economicus is, I think, the same frame I've been making against the self-interested consumer as a complete account of human nature. The individual who imagines he authors himself, while disowning everyone who formed his capacity to choose at all. And "freedom to contribute, not merely freedom from coercion" states rather nicely what I've elsewhere called a double helix (personal cultivation and the surrounding social conditions rising together, neither prior). Potentialism (society structured to realize human potential) lands very close to a formulation I lean on heavily: the full, free, rich, all-round development of every person (shades of Marx). We seem to have walked to the same place through different doors. You through the empirical literature, me through Aristotle and the interior work of individuation.
Two things you bring that I haven't foregrounded:
The first is mattering. Naming the contribution-need as a distinct motivational force. Frankl, Adler's social interest, Sandel's contributive justice. This supplies a mechanism for something I tend to assert more than explain: why relational flourishing isn't self-sacrifice. It's not that the self yields to the group; it's that mattering to others is a precondition of flourishing at all. That's explanatory work I've been doing with the single word 'love'. You've given it a second, complementary term.
The second is the thin-versus-thick norms point. The observation that a thin moral order is the rational output of Homo economicus is rather apt. It explains why liberalism defaults to procedural thinness without having to call anyone a villain. And it shows how a richer anthropology licenses a thicker order without sliding into the straitjacket the liberals rightly fear.
If I'd press on anything (in the spirit of building rather than disputing), you frame the destination as "an updated form of liberalism," and I wonder whether the engine you've described can be installed within that frame, or whether it eventually pops a gasket. My own worry runs one level beneath the social contract ... that a population already deformed into isolated consumers, its attention a managed commodity, may have lost some of the very capacity to recognize a common good when one is offered. The diagnosis you and I share may need to reckon with a substrate that resists the cure. But that's a question for any possible subsequent exchange, not a quarrel with this piece.
Glad to have found a fellow traveler. Subscribed in return.
Really enjoyed this. The idea that a “Homo Contribuens” society could generate moral order organically is a powerful one.
Through a relational lens, it also suggests something deeper—if people are primarily contributing to one another, their identities are constantly reinforced through meaningful feedback loops. That could create more stable, load-bearing forms of identity, which might explain why such a society wouldn’t just function well, but feel better to live in.
It does make me wonder whether, underneath everything else, a lot of people are really just looking for that kind of meaningful participation.
What does potentialism look like in practice?
For some low-hanging policy recommendations, check out https://thebeaconproject.substack.com/p/introducing-potentialism
A subtle but powerful shift in norms, institutions, culture: how we live together
Daniel, I appreciate your thinking and your efforts to build a movement that shifts our thinking from viewing people as rational actors in an economic system that seeks to maximize their individual economic interest. I also like the framing of basically a different view of humanity as a different species perse. Homo contribuens. I think this distinction lines up with Ian McGilchrist's work around left-brain and right-brain thinking. I'm butchering the nuance, but left brain thinking will be more rational and economic in nature, while right brain being more holistic in its approach.
As a result of this switch, I think individuals become more aware of other somatic senses that help them see their connection to others and perceive a somatic relationality where the are able to aware of how their actions impact the lives of others.
As I've been grappling with how do you maintain individual liberty, while getting individuals to act in ways that promote the common good, I've come to terms with that this work needs to be more somatic and sensory and less cognitive and ideological. Waking people up to Homo contribuens to see how their actions connect with an impact others will not come through argument alone, but will come through embodied relationality. Cognition will come second. The New Civic Futures work is critical to making Homo contribuens a reality.
We love to see it, Daniel!
Thanks Zac!
We also need a way to restrict the coercive economic power of corporations and overweeningly wealthy individuals, much like the power of government is restricted to avoid social malefaction.
Great piece. I probably suffer from generational bias but I see much more self interest in younger generations - especially in how they have chosen career paths - and particularly in the Jewish community. Hence - Wall Street and business in general are the chosen paths rather then the law, medicine or engineering - fields with more Homo contribuens than most business enterprises.
Your lens may have a different view of this.
Thanks Rich! I think young people are grappling with this question a lot, and the data on this is mixed. I heard recently that young people at least *say* they value careers that prioritize meaning and purpose over happiness. But other work suggests the opposite, so the jury's still out!
Daniel Yudkin proposal of ‘potentionalism’ suggests people can be persuaded toward shared norms through evidence, argument, and rational self-reflection. That’s Enlightenment thinking, whether the author acknowledges it or not.
But the progressive orthodoxy that now dominates institutions, campuses, and large chunks of media doesn’t just disagree with your conclusions. It rejects the method. Feelings outrank data. Lived experience is unchallengeable. Demanding evidence is itself an act of power. The very tools the essay uses to make its case, peer-reviewed psychology, historical philosophy, reasoned synthesis, are exactly what that orthodoxy has spent twenty years delegitimizing.
So when the essay proposes a “new synthesis” built on shared understanding and collective recognition, it’s writing a constitution for a country where half the political class has already rejected constitutional thinking. We’re not going to argue someone into “contributive justice” if they’ve decided that argument itself is a weapon of the dominant culture.
The woke movement fatally undermines the essay’s central claim about meaning. It did give people purpose, belonging, moral urgency, and a clear sense of contribution. It just located all of those things in group identity and grievance rather than individual agency. Frankl’s insight was that meaning must be earned, not assigned. A movement that tells you your suffering is your identity, and your identity is your destiny, is the precise inversion of everything Frankl stood for.
The essay needs to reckon with that before “potentialism” is anything more than an academic seminar paper.
Nicely written critique! The only path forward is a political movement based on these principles. The strange thing is that there is no major party or ideology in America that does this. We’re trying to change that.
Humble thanks. What are your thoughts on The Forward Party? And please let me know who ‘we’ is.
“We” is the Beacon Project! https://beaconproject.us/
Forward Party is great but it doesn’t start from first principles and so ultimately suffers a lack of ideological clarity
Thanks for the introduction. What an impressive pedigree and project. I am very curious how you plan to convert thought into deeds into change in a liberal democracy that is horribly fractured and tribal. Surely it requires a party, or a coalition of parties? Have reached out on X.
I don't understand what you are actually proposing. What major laws do you want to see implemented, or repealed? What's your position on controversial issues which have sharp splits, such as abortion or guns? How deferential should we be to religion? Is Free Speech a core value, or will some political ideas be restricted - and which ones?
I can't glean any answers about these questions from the article.
On step at a time :)