Notes on being human in an artificial world.

Something’s been thinning out. Our attention, our sense of being present, our felt connection to the world and to each other. It’s easy to blame social media and screens, but the shift is older than that: we’re built for a world of direct experience, yet we keep building the opposite, a world that runs on abstraction and grows more artificial by the decade.

I’m James Meaden, an organizational psychologist. I’ve spent years studying how our environments shape what we’re capable of, and what stays human even as those environments change. The Alive Letter is where I think through that in the open, the notebook of The Alive Institute, shared as it forms: essays, conversations, the occasional paper, and an honest attempt to figure it out. If it resonates, come think alongside me.

For the work I do with organizations, visit thealive.institute