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commonendeavour.bsky.social
CommonEndeavour
@commonendeavour.bsky.social
25 followers 66 following 98 posts
A place to explore political possibilities.
Putting our connections at the heart of our politics.

www.commonendeavour.org
Posts Replies Media Videos
commonendeavour.bsky.social
Love this idea of “rebellious connection” from the folk at Good Conflict.

People expecting division? Connect anyway. You just might see the power of diversity in action.

Takes courage but many worthwhile things do. And you’ve got it.

www.thegoodconflict.com
January 29, 2026 at 11:03 PM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
Join in the polis chat @CAPADAUS.bsky.social are running.

WHAT do you want GOVERNMENT to do for us in 2026?

Take our poll to help shape a clear message to our MPs
Vote on others' ideas
Share the poll widely: more people, stronger message.
Details & links: canberra-alliance.org.au/activity/
January 28, 2026 at 10:48 PM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
A new publication from the National Academies (USA) about the the way "mutual, meaningful, and affirming moments of connection" in our earliest relationships help build "thriving children, families, and communities."

www.nationalacademies.org/publications...

#Connection
A screenshot of the report's description. It says: "Early relationships are foundational for lifelong health, learning, and well-being. Mutual, meaningful, and affirming moments of connection in the youngest relationships support brain development, resilience, and social-emotional growth. These experiences, known as early relational health (ERH), can also buffer the impacts of adversity and help create pathways toward thriving children, families, and communities."
January 12, 2026 at 4:56 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
Perfectly captures our need to be both alone and connected.

#connection
I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. - Rainer Maria Rilke
December 6, 2025 at 7:29 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
Stephen Dubner on what he learnt from hanging out with economists — probability and clear-eyed reasoning is important.

And what he didn’t — the connection between people is far more important.

freakonomics.com/podcast/what...
Hanging out with economists did make me really think about making a lot more decisions on a fully rational basis. Economists bring a cold — not a cold-blooded, but a cold-eyed rationality to a lot of policy conversations that are very, very important. And I will never give up on that. But if you start looking at everything that way, it makes you a cold person. And so I feel like, for a while, I tried a form of being — as a parent, as a husband, as friend — that was a little bit like, That really doesn’t matter, the data show that doesn’t matter. And even though the data show that it doesn’t matter, how people feel about it matters. We’re all a lot more than what the probabilities say. Probability is very important, and data is important. But I feel like the connection between people is far more important. Decency is a virtue that has been appreciated throughout civilization. We see it. We have the ancient writings. I think it’s appreciated differently now than it has been in the past. But I think it will be appreciated more in the future and I think that decency is a kind of foundation upon which to build your life.
November 30, 2025 at 3:26 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
What's Common Endeavour about?

Help us get the word out!

www.commonendeavour.org

#connection #auspol #DemocracySausage
Common Endeavour is online www.commonendeavour.org Help us get the word out! Find out and share what’s important to us; how we think; how to be part of what we’re doing
November 22, 2025 at 12:09 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
What's Common Endeavour about?

Connection. Not always easy but important.

Political parties are important too - but don't always do a lot to help connection.

The goal of Common Endeavour is to to be a party focused on the importance of connection.

#connection #auspol #DemocracySausage
Common Endeavour Is about connection . Connection with each other between our communities with the world around us Common Endeavour recognises that connection isn’t always easy, and yet... Connection is how we thrive is how we stay safe is the reason for Common Endeavour Common Endeavour believes that... Political parties are important to how we live together; provide a vehicle for working out and doing what’s important to our communities; are not currently where we need them to be The goal of Common Endeavour is to become a party of government
November 21, 2025 at 11:59 PM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
Connection can be considered a conduit that creates an association or relationship but it's not value free, it has direction and valence. It can be positive or negative, strong or weak.

From Brown et al. 2015, Applied Geography.
The place attachment concept focuses on how strongly people feel a sense of connection to a particular place and captures the distinction between the goods and services provided by that place and the emotional and symbolic relationships people form with place (Williams, Stewart, & Kruger, 2013). These connections can be positive or negative, depending upon one's experience in place (Manzo, 2005). However, conceptualizations of place attachment vary depending upon the whether scholars focus on the personal, environmental, and/or social context of people-place interactions (Raymond, Brown, & Weber, 2010). Multiple studies have emphasized the personal context, particularly the emotional and physical/ functional bonds which develop between an individual and a geographic locale (Bricker & Kerstetter, 2000; Gunderson, 2006; Moore & Graefe, 1994; Williams, Patterson, Roggenbuck, & Watson, 1992). Other studies have emphasized the connections developed between multiple people in place (social context), including dimensions related to community place attachment, social bonding, belongingness, and familiarity with one's neighborhood or social group (Christensen & Burchfield, 2013; Hammitt, Backlund, & Bixler, 2004; Kyle, Graefe, & Manning, 2005; Mihaylov & Perkins, 2014; Perkins & Long, 2002; Trentelman, 2009). A third strand has emphasized how aspects of the physical setting (particularly the natural setting) shape place bonds, reflected in the related constructs of environmental identity, connectedness to nature, and nature bonding (Brügger, Kaiser, & Roczen, 2011; Mayer & Frantz, 2004; Raymond et al., 2010; Schultz, Shriver, Tabanico, & Khazian, 2004).
November 16, 2025 at 11:32 PM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
#CareerConnections

Supervisors showing care. Research careers outside academia.

APA Monitor

www.apa.org/monitor/2025...
Faculty are Facilitating Career Connections for Young Researchers. Jobs in academia are becoming scarcer, leading faculty to consider how to better prepare students for research careers outside the ivory tower.
November 1, 2025 at 10:24 PM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
#EmotionalConnection

APA Monitor

www.apa.org/monitor/2025...
ethinking Masculinity to Build Healthier Outcomes Rigid gender norms are taking a serious toll on boys’ and men’s mental health, prompting psychologists to promote healthier masculinities rooted in emotional connection, authenticity, and resilience.
November 1, 2025 at 10:16 PM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
Movement, platform, political party; which comes first? A new LinkedIn piece looks at this question and provides a diagram of some work on this question for Common Endeavour. The article suggests that perhaps the process begins with a political philosophy.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/platfo...
A diagram showing two steps in the process of developing the movement, platform political party idea for Common Endeavour.
October 27, 2025 at 3:52 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
Maury Giles, CEO of Braver Angels describes a tool for difficult conversations
I want to share one last thought that has helped me in my own family discussions. I just read over the weekend a tip that John Inazu, professor of law and religion at Washington University, shares to remember how to develop this civic muscle (sounds like the Braver Angels Way). He calls it G-R-A-C-E: Ground yourself in your convictions Respect others Assume complexity (more to the story), not character (assuming someone is evil) Cultivate curiosity Engage with empathy Even now. Especially now. We need to practice grace in our courageous citizenship.
September 30, 2025 at 12:09 PM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
‘…among the best things we can try to do … to be good ancestors.’

Onkalo: a Finnish spent nuclear fuel repository - to store dangerous nuclear waste for millions of years
Sampo: a magical substance from the Finnish epic, Kalevala. To McFarlane, reminiscent of the nuclear waste stored at Onkalo
“Here a problem is being solved, gradually and practically, by a community of people to the best of their abilities. Here the hard labour of collective decision-taking and world-making is being carried out, imperfectly but necessarily, and with a care that extends not only for a decade or a generation but far forwards into a post-human future. Maybe this is among the best things we can try to do, I think, as Sampo grinds through the world’s epochs: to be good ancestors.”
September 19, 2025 at 1:43 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
The Common Endeavour project grows from the idea that it might take a new political entity to get us to be “actually doing something”.
If you’re inclined to tilting at windmills for a good reason get in touch! And let others of a similar inclination know. Together we can. #auspol
commonendeavour.org
“In our conversation, Henry reaches back 40-odd years for a moment of political opportunity analogous to the present, to the transition from the policy inertia of the late 1970s to the reform era of the 1980s, when the political system, for a decade or so “realised that there might be advantage in actually doing something rather than just sitting around and having arguments about it”.
July 27, 2025 at 1:30 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
High conflict is dangerous and destructive but most conflict is not high conflict.

“The truth is, good conflict can help uncover opportunity and even create connection.”

Amanda Ripley and Hélène Biandudi Hofer

www.thegoodconflict.com
The truth is, good conflict can help uncover opportunity and even create connection. But that requires a mental shift: instead of thinking of conflict as a fight, approach it as a friction — necessary resistance that helps you get stronger and more resilient. It’s not about being the victim or the villain but rather a detective –– investigating the problem, identifying options, and focusing on what you can control.
July 13, 2025 at 12:21 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
Lawrence Freedman in Foreign Affairs on the folly of thinking a short, sharp war is the solution to a problem - or even possible.

www.foreignaffairs.com/age-forever-...
In recent decades, many politicians and generals have planned for short wars but ended up getting long ones, the scholar Lawrence Freedman wrote this spring. Wars become intractable, he argued, when political and military objectives do not align. Combat rarely resolves the root causes of a dispute and cease-fires can become mere pauses that allow both sides to prepare for more fighting. “One of the great allures of military power is that it promises to bring conflicts to a quick and decisive conclusion,” Freedman wrote. Yet “in practice, it rarely does.”
July 6, 2025 at 12:46 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
“Coming together over something we can’t do without. I can’t think of anything else that connects people so powerfully.”

“Sharing a meal places people on the same level, which fosters connection.”
- Sofia Levin

MasterChef judge describes connection in a grocery chain magazine.
Coles magazine cover, in which MasterChef judge Sofia Levin describes connection in a grocery chain magazine.
June 12, 2025 at 12:38 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
An excellent guide to addressing the challenges in public education.

Clear-eyed, caring and practical.

It could have been written as Common Endeavour education policy. The solutions? Equity, connection, connection.

www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/educati...
Improvement comes from within schools Funding is imprtant but a sense of belonging is the key Schools are struggling to connect with young people
May 24, 2025 at 1:12 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
A Common Endeavour endorsed poem.
Amazing heights await us in so many aspects of our lives. Let’s try to resist the urge to undermine ourselves.

With thanks to the Academy of American Poets
poets.org/poem/we-neve...
The text of the Emily Dickinson poem “We never know how high we are”
May 20, 2025 at 12:31 PM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
Mapping the total national vote in relation to first preferences for Labor, Lib/Nat, or Other candidates.

There is a solid appetite for something other than the traditional two major parties.

With thanks to ABC News Storylab: www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05...
A figure showing a triangle of first preference votes broken down by Labor, LNP, and Other candidates. The national vote is just inside the Labor section.
May 12, 2025 at 6:53 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
From @azeem.bsky.social end of year wrap.

Reminding us that change is hard. Even beneficial change comes with downstream challenges that we typically don’t anticipate or plan for.
January 5, 2025 at 3:36 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
Purple and green. Common Endeavour colours.
A green bush on a suburban street with pretty pink flowers and a power line in the background
October 5, 2024 at 5:57 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
The Progressive Action Lab is a project that Common Endeavour is associated with. Not because it is progressive but because it is building a forum to discuss processes for strengthening #democracy.

www.progressiveactionlab.com.au
The Progressive Action Lab home page, which describes the lab’s interests as reviving political participation, the future of political parties, and getting the best people into parliament.
September 30, 2024 at 9:08 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
A cute neon sign, a classic love song, and a pretty good political philosophy!

‘Imagine me and you’
A pink neon sign on a brick wall. The sign says: Imagine me and you
September 28, 2024 at 6:03 AM
commonendeavour.bsky.social
‘A national identity based on civic belonging … takes hard work.’ But when it works…

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
A screenshot quoting Timothy Garton-Ash describing the warm-hearted nation that can result from a civic-based national identity.
August 22, 2024 at 6:33 AM