Twenty-six commitments in eight overlapping clusters, concrete enough to shape conduct and open to revision.
Commitments in practice
26 commitments in eight overlapping clusters.
These statements are concrete enough to shape conduct while remaining open to
revision. A single commitment may belong to several parts of life at once.
A
Embodied attention
Body and perception operate as continuous instruments of relational attention.
Anticipate shared trajectories
Attention to another person's movement becomes a small, repeated form of spatial care.
Meet the other person's gaze
Recognition is carried through a repeatable embodied gesture rather than an abstract profession of regard.
Answer the whole communication
Response is calibrated to what the other person actually offered, with attention to both content and volume.
Treat bodily state as information
The body is treated as a source of honest information rather than an obstacle to a preselected plan.
Imagine how words and actions land
Ethical attention includes an active attempt to encounter an action from the receiver's position.
B
Materially distributed practice
Objects, positions, and physical arrangements carry commitments that would otherwise depend on remembered intention.
Place the phone face-down
The position of an object carries the commitment, reducing dependence on continuous self-control.
Keep a writing medium ready
A creative practice stays available because its material support is kept physically present.
Keep a gratuity floor
Economic recognition is made concrete through a repeated material minimum rather than left as general goodwill.
Treat dress as an embodied practice
Aesthetic attention is carried through the dressed body as a repeated material practice.
Join the cleanup
Care enters the material aftermath of a shared setting instead of ending when the visible encounter ends.
C
Communal citizenship
A shared setting is co-produced through duration, attention, and material help.
Stay through the communal event
Communal participation includes remaining present for other people's work, including when that presence has a cost.
Give each performer full attention
Audience attention is treated as part of making the shared event rather than as passive consumption.
Join the cleanup
Care enters the material aftermath of a shared setting instead of ending when the visible encounter ends.
D
Integrity and honesty
Truthful presence is held through discomfort rather than exchanged for evasion or impression management.
Hold a categorical truthfulness line
Truthfulness is presented as a bright-line commitment rather than a preference applied only when convenient.
Choose integrity over placation
Immediate ease is not allowed to purchase agreement at the cost of a held position.
Say what is present with an ethical filter
Candor and care are treated as simultaneous constraints rather than competing options.
Keep conduct consistent across audiences
Calibration to context is distinguished from changing a position for impression management.
Make relational context visible
Short-term comfort is not allowed to replace the information another person needs to understand the relationship they inhabit.
E
Epistemic humility
Knowledge stays provisional, challenge stays welcome, and another person is not treated as a correction project.
Prefer learning to winning
Argument becomes an opportunity for correction rather than a contest whose purpose is self-defense.
Keep positions open to challenge
A published position remains revisable; articulation does not convert it into certainty.
Permit the other person to remain other
Difference is not automatically converted into a project of correction.
F
Care under stress
Kindness and boundary-setting remain active when internal state or social pressure makes them costly.
Do not pass inner turmoil onward
Treatment of another person is not made conditional on the speaker's internal state.
Leave unwanted conversations kindly
Boundary-setting is named as unfinished work, with self-honoring and care kept in the same sentence.
Decline events that will not be enjoyed
A social invitation does not automatically override an honest account of capacity or desire.
G
Service recognition
People encountered in service roles are addressed as people rather than treated as an invisible function.
Recognize people in service roles
A routine exchange is opened into real recognition instead of treating the person providing help as part of the background.
H
Asking and in-progress work
Receiving asymmetry is named without disguise and paired with a visible, unfinished practice of asking.
Practice asking explicitly
An asymmetry in receiving is acknowledged together with the corrective practice, without presenting the correction as complete.