Strong Sauce!

how certain relational ingredients can bring us back to life

“The F*%#ing Strong Sauce” — Jim Rutt in a recent Life Itself Podcast

I know that this quote is not your typical theoretical phrase to introduce a complex idea but maybe that’s exactly the point. With just a few words, Jim Rutt cuts through the abstraction to name something vital: the cultural code that envibes a generative society. The strong sauce is the essence — the shared agreements, norms, and values — that give coherence to a group of people. Without it, things inevitably fall apart.

The term, Game A, describes our current civilizational operating system, one that is built on extraction, acceleration, and externalities. It rewards manipulation over mutuality, short-term wins over long-term flourishing, and individual optimization over collective wellbeing. Its sauce is thin, brittle, unsatisfying, and clearly toxic, as is evidenced by the global, sociopolitical pickle we currently find ourselves in.

By contrast, Game B, Rutt suggests, describes a bold experiment in imagining another way of being together. It’s less revolution and more evolution. It’s a mode of human coordination that prizes sustainability, coherence, and the wellbeing of people and planet alike. While many frameworks and policies have been proposed, I am beginning to become convinced that the shift begins with us, with how we show up to one another. This is where Wisdom Exchange, or WE, comes in, one of many experiments arising in the Game B space.

WE emerged as a response to what I see as a crisis of relationship. In a time of deep fragmentation and polarization — when even our tools for connection often make relating more frictionless than real — our community believes that finding our trusted others is not just pleasurable but necessary, because belonging isn’t bland. It’s strong sauce!

From this perspective, moving toward Game B requires wise action or how to do the right thing at the right time. However, wisdom doesn’t usually arise in isolation; it arises in dialogue with other people. And not just any dialogue, but the kind that becomes communion. That’s why WE gathers in small, trusted, interconnected groups to speak, listen, and sense together. We don’t just exchange ideas, we consistently cohere within ourselves, between each other, and among the collective whole.

Yet, the closer we come into contact with one another, the more likely we are to step on each other’s psychological toes. As WE knows, that’s not a flaw; it’s a natural part of relating, because relational friction is the medium through which psychological and intellectual growth occurs. And for that growth to be generative rather than malignant, we need something strong enough to hold us when tensions arise.

That’s why WE emphasizes, as does Rutt, the importance of accords — exquisite, relational agreements that guide how we relate, how we repair, and ultimately, how we remain viable as a community. Without them, coherence dissolves, and the group risks collapsing under the weight of unprocessed rupture and pain. In this sense, WE is a living experiment in what it takes to cohere. Because we practice presence, mutuality, and repair, we don’t just tolerate difference; we honor and enjoy it. As a result, we are learning, slowly and together, how to move through conflict with compassion, and emerge on the other side more whole than before.

As such, WE can be considered a microcosm of a larger cultural shift — a prototype of what Game B might feel like, one in which a new kind of belonging, rooted less in the need for dominance or control, and more in presence, dialogue, dignity, and care can emerge.

The further WE goes, the more it’s becoming clearer to me that the future won’t be built on strategy or policy alone. It will be built on personal and interpersonal trust. Because trust is relational, messy, and slow, it requires patience, embodied attention, and a willingness to be changed by what we experience and hear. In a modern world drunk on optimization and speed, WE invites us to slow down, listen carefully, and nourish the moment with something stronger, and perhaps, even something wiser.

It’s that strong sauce that brings the whole recipe together, infusing human wellbeing with depth and richness, all while keeping it simmering gently within the planet’s bounds.