Only a couple of the kids died; the rest had a GREAT time.

I grew up in a small town, in a neighborhood with lots of kids. We played army games, or hide and seek, or rode bikes around the block, mostly with very little supervision. Sometimes we got hurt. It seemed pretty normal to us.

Some parents today are wondering where that kind of play went, and in response to the trend of helicopter parenting and intense supervision, are trying to actively create a culture of more freedom and independence for their kids. Via NYT:

“Think about your own 10 best memories of childhood, and chances are most of them involve free play outdoors,” Mike is fond of saying. “How many of them took place with a grown-up around? I remember that when the grown-ups came over, we stopped playing and waited for them to go away. But moms nowadays never go away.”

Then he built what many kids would call the coolest yard ever (pictured above) to encourage more physical play and even risk-taking.

Is this a necessary corrective, or an unnecessary risk?

How much danger and freedom is the right amount for healthy kids?

Do you think you had too little, too much, or just the right amount of freedom and danger in your own childhood?

Badass women, barred from work, found alternate ways to f’ing take care of business.

Plenty of writers have tackled the classic “Can Working Women Have It All?” premise (yaaaaawn), but this Atlantic piece came at the question from a different, historic angle I appreciated. Instead of looking at how hard it is to be a parent and a spouse and a successful professional, it asks who has time to run civic organizations (historically done by non-working women), when everyone’s so focused and busy running their own careers and households in tandem?

That’s not to indulge in nostalgia for a period of American history when women primarily led clubs rather than companies. Women frequently organized to fight for rights they had been denied by men, and they often aspired to lead charitable organizations because they were prevented from pursuing other paths. But ironically, in winning fuller equality with men, some women lost a share of the meaning and purpose that comes from life outside of productive labor. This is not a story about women’s failures, or a polemic against their advancement. It’s a cautionary tale for men and women alike. The corner office isn’t always the pinnacle of leadership. Often, the most important leadership happens in local communities.

So if we’re all busy working 40+ hours a week and trying to squeeze in family and friends in the time that’s left, what’s left to devote to causes or groups that move society forward?

Have we squeezed out time to be citizens of our communities in chasing the perfect work/life balance for both men and women?

How might we carve out more space for public life among personal ambitions?

If we don’t, who does the work that needs to be done in society?

Or is it a clever way to keep useless people pleasantly occupied and out of trouble?

Andrew Sullivan’s longform reflection on his own struggle resisting the constant distraction of the digital age — titled “I Used To Be a Human Being” — is full of interesting arguments. Some are obvious, like the obvious pros and cons of the unending stream of info we’re all immersed in. Some are more personal, like his experience trying to battle that connectivity compulsion through meditation. All of it is recognizably relevant to our daily lives, and worth a read.

One quote I liked in particular:

Has our enslavement to dopamine — to the instant hits of validation that come with a well-crafted tweet or Snapchat streak — made us happier? I suspect it has simply made us less unhappy, or rather less aware of our unhappiness, and that our phones are merely new and powerful antidepressants of a non-pharmaceutical variety.

It may be oversimple, but worth asking:

Are you really happier when you’re more digitally connected, or is a constant stream of digital stimulation a distraction from “real life”?

Be a part of something bigger; just not “burn in hell if you don’t” bigger.

Occasionally, like this week in The Atlantic, I will read articles about groups for the non-religious attempting to replace the feeling of community that churches have traditionally provided. Weekly gathering, light ritual and a chance to meet people you share beliefs with, only without the dogma and judgment.

Some secular communities seem to be negotiating between conflicting impulses: to separate from religion on the one hand, and to adopt the frameworks often associated with religion on the other. Rather than experimenting with something wholly new, they seem to be inviting nonreligious people to revise their relationships to the kinds of collective rituals they may have avoided—or felt excluded from—in the past.

Every time I hear about one of these groups, as a non-religious person myself, I’m always torn between those impulses listed above. Part of me wonders if that slight yearning for a larger community connection is a natural human one that I should pursue, or an outdated and unnecessary one I’ll be just fine without.

Should non-religious people look for that sense of community that churches provide in other places? Where and how might they find it?

With the religious aspect removed, what should the goals and common purpose of these type of groups be in a modern world?

Or alternately, is that local community an old notion that we can fulfill in other, equally healthy and productive ways?

This one may be kind of cheating, since a whole lot of potential answers are right here in this super cool/weird video. But as this only scratches the surface (and there have only been so many episodes of Black Mirror so far)…

What other potentially strange uses might result from everyone having AR or VR on a regular basis?

Which ones sound great, and which ones sound awful or terrifying?