We're Not Machines

Reflecting on the costs of life in the social sector

This is my first Substack post where I’ll explore the costs of work in the social sector, especially non-profit and philanthropic organizations. It’s my sense that we talk too little about these significant costs and the toll they take on those seeking change. I’ll be exploring these questions through the lens of my own story. 

I’m glad you’re here, from wherever you’ve come and wherever you are. Please subscribe and take this journey with me. For those of you I’ve taken the liberty to add to the list myself, if you’d rather not receive these posts, please feel free to unsubscribe.

Who am I? 

My life is a case study in the observation what you see is not what you get. 

Aren’t all our lives a bit like that? 

I was a quiet and shy kid who kept to the margins. Some of my earliest memories are voicing a desire to understand the other. I was a kid in rural Ohio fascinated by the Soviet Union. As the Cold War reached a fever pitch in the early 1980s, I latched onto the campaign that “the Soviets love their children too.” I longed to understand. I bubbled with exuberant curiosity. 

I carried that curiosity into adulthood, even as life squelched my exuberance a bit. I began a life of journeys, including a deep dive into the complex worlds of the former Soviet Union. Those Russian/Ukrainian years taught me the lesson that the world looks different depending on where you stand. That tool of perspective was the first thing I packed as I traveled the world over the next 20 years. 

While I embraced the tools and questions of spaces where I earned my living (theological education, Christian missions, leadership, and community development), my questions were always deeper. I never felt quite at home in those spaces. I longed to understand how we got here. I tried to understand how we accomplish things and organize ourselves. Perhaps above all else, I sought to understand how we change, both ourselves and the world around us. 

My journey includes a lot of dissonance. I grew masterful at pushing down tensions, performing, and self-protecting. It all caught up with me. Life came crashing down on all fronts in 2018-2020 as I could no longer sustain the deafening dissonance. Coming to peace with being gay was important, but it was only part of my story. I’d also tried far too hard to be a hero and placed far too much responsibility on myself. The past few years have been slowly coming to terms with myself, the pain I’ve caused, and a meandering journey toward a truer home. 

Why am I doing this? 

I’ve lived this journey in the social change sector. I’ve met so many fascinating people who share my longing for positive change in the world. I’ve seen bold and beautiful people and actions.

Yet I’ve also witnessed the cost. The social change sector takes a toll on those who labor there. I’ve seen the toll on those laboring to bring change at the community level and on those who sit in protected spaces contemplating how to invest wealth in social change. While many of these people appear at first glance to be assured heroes, a more patient gaze reveals that they are troubled by questions. Am I making a difference? Am I good enough? And in many cases can I continue to sacrifice my well-being and that of my family to continue this work? 

All too often, the social sector continues to operate with an implicit machine-like understanding of our work. An input-output frame drawn from manufacturing strips the nuance and life from the work while holding up a desired result (a product) as the goal to be achieved at all cost. At its most basic and damaging, this machine-like approach to work subtly suggests that only the outcome matters. Any manner of sacrifice to get there is defensible. This disconnecting, disembodying approach comes at a high cost to the well-being of the humans in the system. It also often forces us to see highly complex, nuanced realities in simplistic terms in a way that degrades our work. Unfortunately, these machine metaphors permeate much of the funding and evaluation structure of the social sector. 

Holding this machine-like approach to organization in tension with the complexity we face daily leads to a remarkable amount of dissonance. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that dissonance of any sort is always costly. 

I believe that the social sector needs to take this dissonance more seriously and ask itself hard questions. I’ve learned in new ways in my work with unRival Network over the past four years that we’re all asking these hard questions, and yet somehow still manage to believe that we are alone in asking them. I continue to be struck by how often the question “Am I crazy for asking…” shows up in my conversations and research with change-makers. I’m glad to be part of work that creates spaces for us to be more honest and find deeper hope and community. Perhaps the most powerful words we can hear are “You are not alone and you aren’t crazy.” 

I’m writing this substack to hold up some of these hard questions in a safe, curious way. It would be simpler to explore these questions in the abstract. But my primary goal here is to explore these in a very personal way, traced onto the learning cycles of my own life. In many ways, I’m inviting you into my story, both its past and its unfolding future journey. 

What to expect? 

I will be framing posts around a question. These are questions that have been central to my journey, but they are also questions that are relevant to the broader space. I’ll explore each in the context of my own story and learning. Look for posts such as:

Why do we expect too much of ourselves? How I tried to be a hero. 

How do we listen to quieter voices? How I’m learning to listen to the margins. 

Are we the good guys or the bad guys?  How I learned to see myself more honestly. 

What are we missing? How I missed conflict and trauma for too long. 

You’ll find my own journey woven through every post. You’ll see a man who was deeply wounded by evangelical Christian faith and no longer claims those beliefs. Yet you’ll see as well a profound appreciation and respect for many who taught and teach me well. You’ll see an unabashedly queer/gay perspective, and at the same time, hopefully grace toward those who think differently. I hope you’ll see as well more of the exuberant curiosity that bubbled in child-me. And I hope you’ll see a desire to get beyond the us vs. them narratives that are ripping us apart. 

I anticipate posting once or twice a month.

I’m new to this medium. But I hope that this will also be a conversational journey. I invite you to participate, to comment, even to co-create with me. If you find it useful, I invite you to follow, recommend, or share my work in whatever way works best for you. 

May the conversation continue to widen. May we know ever more deeply that we are not alone, that we are human. 

Some Questions to Consider

Have you ever wondered if you were crazy, or felt you were all alone in your sense that things must work differently? 

What have been the costs of your investment of yourself and your life in the social sector? How do you weigh these costs? 

What gives you hope that life and service can be less machine-like and more life-like?