On Christmas I received a copy of The Forgotten Way by Matthew Kelly. I started reading and felt something subtle but powerful: not “new information,” but a return to fundamentals. I started to question what kind of growth is actually real? What endures? What becomes larger without becoming corrupt?

That question pulled my attention into three seemingly unrelated directions: James the Greater, sequoia trees, and Bitcoin.

One sits in the realm of religious tradition, one in biology, and one in technology. And yet they began to converge around the same underlying pattern: durable transformation often starts small, grows slowly, and compounds through networks, especially when the system is open enough to adapt and robust enough to endure.

Enter James the Greater.

The details of early Christian missions can be debated historically, but the philosophical image is clear: a person carries a message outward with no guarantee of measurable success. Even the idea of “only a few converts” functions as an antidote to modern thinking. We live inside dashboards - metrics, virality, instant scale - so we forget that some of the most consequential changes spread through human-scale transmission: one relationship at a time. In network terms, the message travels through edges, not broadcasts.

Sequoias make the same point without language.

A sequoia becomes immense through gradual accumulation across time: ring upon ring, season upon season. Its strength is not spectacle but consistency. It is also a symbol of robustness - the capacity to withstand stress without falling apart - and generativity - the ability to contribute to renewal beyond itself. It doesn’t merely survive; it participates in a system that keeps producing life.

Then there is Bitcoin.

The point is not price or ideology. The point is structural: Bitcoin is an open-source protocol and a decentralized network that continues because many independent participants choose to coordinate around shared rules. That architecture creates a distinctive form of robustness - no single owner, no single point of failure, no single permission gate. Participation is voluntary; verification is public.

This also highlights an “evidence-based” principle that appears across many systems: feedback loops create non-linear growth. Networks often don’t grow like straight lines. More participation can create more utility and more infrastructure, which lowers friction and attracts more participation.

In some settings, these dynamics produce highly skewed outcomes that resemble power laws, not because of magic, but because compounding dominates.

Placed together, these three images rhyme. James suggests that meaning often spreads relationally, not instantly. Sequoias show that time and consistency can create a form of greatness that cannot be faked. Bitcoin illustrates how openness and distributed participation can produce robustness at scale.

So when I use the word “goodness,” I’m not claiming that everything that grows is good. I mean something narrower and more practical: goodness as a system property - robustness and generativity, grounded in openness. Openness matters because it permits correction, adaptation, and learning. Closed systems can be efficient, but they often become brittle because they lose the ability to evolve.

That is the thread I keep returning to; unexpectedly prompted by a Christmas gift and a few pages of reading: the deepest changes often have a recognizable shape. They begin quietly, grow patiently, compound through networks, and remain alive by staying open enough to adapt.