A Working Theory of the "Us"
I have spent nearly 18 years working in my regional community as an applied social researcher. Serving through public, social, municipal, and non profit institutions and associations, has been a true blessing. After all this time, I can honestly say I have found a sense of belonging I never knew was possible.
Now, I love community work, but to those who know me best, know I actually have a variety of “expressions”. At my heart, I am really just a maker. I love imagining an idea, sketching it out in one of my notebooks, and ultimately executing the idea into something tangible. It is truly one of those most joyous parts of life.
And wether I am making a custom garment for one of my clients, or working with a community or neighbor to do something dope in the neighborhood, or even just playing legos with my kids, in my mind, I am doing always doing the exact same thing.
I am using my imagination, trying to have fun, and building something wonderful with a brother or sister. And usually taking way too long to do it.
One of my primary areas of study, is developing my skills as a tailor and clothing designer. And its here that I feel lies a perfect analogy for how I have come to see community work.
I like to see the world in threads. I see how pieces are constructed, where the seams are weak, and how a beautiful garment is built one stitch at a time. This perspective has led me to a realization that isn't in the textbooks: the very fabric of how we build our communities is being sewn with the wrong thread.
When we look at the big picture, the macro level of our world, everything feels heavy, dark, and daunting. We feel like simple individuals can’t make a difference. But I believe that’s just a trick of scale. We are looking at a picture so big, that we can't see the fibers.
So here lies the root of this codex. When we look closer, with our tailors eye, around the big picture, down to our micro communities, our Garden Regions, we will find a critical math error that has stalled our progress as civilization for over a century.
In the social sector, we live by the "Primary Metric." We track "Families Served" like a scoreboard. We look at those numbers to tell us if a program is successful, but I have finally realized, that’s looking at the wrong end of the telescope.
"Families Served" is the outcome of the equation and its not even in the actual equation; it’s just the outcome! What?
When I finally saw this, I couldn’t unsee it. The current system operates on a broken logic: Policy + Units = People Served (People). In this formula, the human is the product at the end of a manufacturing line.
But simple physics says a result cannot be more complex than its input. You cannot "produce" a “person served”, if “person” wasn’t originally in your equation. So what this means is, “People” must return as a variable to the equation we all have been trying to understand for over a century.
It’s wild, really! I mean, I can’t believe it still. As a social scientist, shoot, as a community advocate, I have, like many across the world, been hunting for that main variable. I’ve been hunting for that missing thing that can help us move social challenges forward best.
We’ve all been trying to understand which variable is the most essential, or which combination of variables we’re missing. We think the staff are wrong. We think the people are wrong. We think we just need to train them differently, get new ones. But regardless of policy, units, leadership changes, workforce shifts, or training, things in our civilization appear to be swinging for the worse, well at least for the bottom 90-95% of the world that is.
Holy buckets!!!
I realized we have misdiagnosed the crisis. We spend so much energy on the "Units" and the "Policies," but those are dependent variables. They cannot move if the lead variable is stuck.
The piece we’ve been missing isn’t a new program; it’s the realization that the Independent Variable is actually “Us.” People, and more specifically, the “State of Us.”
This isn't just about math; it's about a state of matter. We’ve been trying to build the future with a neutralized variable because we’ve forgotten to look at the person in the mirror and standing right next to us.
In an upcoming Codex, I will explain the State of Us and break down the Six Universal States of Us, that I have come to identify over the last 18 years.
It’s time to get the true variable back into the right position, in the spotlight of hope.
What’s your “State” right now?
Thank you for reading and for the great work you are doing in your own community.
This codex, is part of a larger work that will be embodied in my first text which is seeking to help move all our communities forward together.
The Garden Regions of Tomorrow: Reviving our Civic Imagination, is scheduled for released June 1, 2026.
To follow the journey, visit www.gardenregions.com