Before we start in on the many reforms they need, let’s take a moment to appreciate just how hard it is to build strong institutions.

All institutions are messy. All institutions are flawed. All institutions need to pushed.

There’s an easy way to tell if an institution is broken. Just look at the incentives.

Techniques stolen from the social sciences have completely transformed how our institutions operate.

There’s a separate, unequal pathway for kids from affluent families—and a pathway for everyone else.

There are inherent problems with both government-funded and privately-owned media.

Believe what you want. Just don’t believe your religion is any less susceptible to the problems that afflict our other institutions.

The free market approach to producing information is failing.

If we want to fix our major problems, the government is going to have to play a major role.

Our government can either be the champion of the people…or yet another oppressive institution.

For all its virtues, there are many things capitalism can’t do—or won’t do, unless it’s forced to do it.

Nobody in American politics today has the right solution to fix our economic woes.

We can’t break our deadlock by going through this two-party system. We have to rise above it.

Electoral reform isn’t the sexiest political issue. But it’s among the most important.

The governments of the world need to take away the ability of corporations to run away from regulations they don’t like.

Narrow ideologies limit our numbers, and motivate others to oppose everything we do.

Too many overlapping organizations compete for the same pool of funders and followers.

Institutions aren’t capable of empathizing with people. Only people can empathize with people.

We need to let as many people as possible be part of the solution.

There are a lot of ways our own individual hangups, insecurities, and egos get in the way of collective action.

We’ve lost our ability as a society to agree on what’s really happening in the world.

Keeping ourselves small and divided is the surest way to prevent real, positive social change.

We should make the path to conversion as easy and painless as possible.

There are countless organizations that are already working on good causes.

For every leader, we need thousands of front-line folks, willing to chip in and do their little part.

Patience is an important virtue in creating social change—but one that’s often lacking in social movements.

Directly challenging our most entrenched, powerful institutions is the last step in a long process.

In the media, the talk is always about finding out “the truth.” But what attracts attention is controversy.

Organizations that start out democratic often become undemocratic over time.

It’s not really about the criticism itself. It’s about who’s doing it, and what role they’re supposed to have within the group.

First, we have to come together. And then we have to stay together.

Our struggles over truth, knowledge, and beliefs have been getting more heated and divisive.

Reconciling these supposedly “irreconcilable differences” is the easiest thing in the world.

We just don’t have enough brainpower to wrap our heads around the enormity and complexity of this universe.

Nobody owns the truth. We can’t cram reality into a few ideas, or a single institution.

We need to be a million times more humble about what we think we know.

A famous philosophical thought experiment shows it’s impossible to prove anything to be true.

The suitability of a particular perspective depends on what we’re trying to accomplish.

Who benefits from all our bitter, divisive, ideological struggles over who’s right and who’s wrong?

Science does a fantastic job of doing what it’s set up to do–but it does have limits.

Religions try to answer a really wide range of concerns–even though it isn’t really necessary anymore.

The biggest challenge for liberals today is to be careful not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Is conservatism today about moving forward cautiously—or trying to go backwards?

We don’t often think about how to create opportunities for people to back down, while also saving face.

It’s the how—not the what—that makes our ideological struggles so hostile and deadly.