The Frank Forum

This quote from the late Amitai Etzioni has become my new mantra: "...we are not merely rights-bearing individuals, but also community members who are responsible for each other." While these words sound good on paper, are they realized in practice?  The answer to that is quite simply: no.  This, from Joseph Longley in  Governing : In 2023, for the third consecutive year, drug overdose deaths robbed more than 100,000 Americans of their lives, according to  recently released data . The scale of this loss — a fivefold increase from the early 2000s — is shocking: Overdose deaths today  outnumber fatalities from gun violence and car accidents combined. Would a nation of people who truly felt "responsible for each other" stand idly by as over 100,000 of their brothers and sisters suffered such miserable and premature deaths? I would think not.  Longley presents us with some disturbing data: Despite the crisis we are in,  85.1 percent of people with a sub...

Dale Carnegie - in his 1936 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People - wrote that "a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language."  Too often, though, I find myself forgetting people's names at various functions and gatherings. This is not only embarrassing for me, but insulting to the person on the receiving end of my lapsed memory.  Your name is your identity.  As Alan Ehrenhalt once told me, "At the pharmacy that I go to, I know the names of all of the technicians, and they know my name, and I actually find that rather comforting."  One thing that can help facilitate name-to-name, weak-tie relationships are name badges. This is something that Starbucks understands.  Sherry Turkle, in her book,  Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, writes: When Starbucks got into financial trouble, it rebuilt its brand with seemingly small changes, some of which highlighted the importance of conversati...