 Well, what's really nice. Sorry, Stacy, let me just stamp the call. This is the OGM weekly call for Thursday, November 9th, 2023. Our topic today is the situation in Gaza. Go ahead, if you'd like to jump in. I was just going to respond to Jesse and her son's interest. And what I really like about that is that at least they're coming from a place of no bias. So they may get biased along the way, but at least the starting point is there and coming from me, who I look at myself as having a beginner's mind. So I appreciate that fact now more than I did before, because it's easier to change my mind. It's perfectly stated, yeah. We're talking about this because Jesse's 17-year-old son may join us for part of this conversation because he has some good opinions about the matter at hand. Shimon Waldfogel also sent me some links, including a Kumu map. I wrote him back asking if I can share them and I think he's going to listen in or maybe even be on the call, so I'll wait until that. But he's been working on this question for a long time as well, so that was lovely. Does anybody have anything they'd like to say, do, read or ask us to do by way of opening this space for this conversation? I sent a few things onto the Google groups last night. I don't know if people have had a chance to see it. One is a New York Times podcast called 1948, which is from the former bureau chief in Jerusalem, which is a pretty well-balanced and nuanced story of the different narratives that the Israelis and Palestinians have about what happened in 1948. So that's one, and I forget what the second one was. I've been posting a lot of resources on Facebook. I don't have ability to pull them all together here, but folks who have access to that can see that. I've been trying to support grounded and not majoric reactive conversations about this stuff, which is very, very challenging to do as you might imagine. I'll post those last couple of things in the chat here, but I'm not going to power you up in a lot of other stuff. Thanks, Gil. Shimon, glad to see you made it to the call. That's great. Thanks for letting us use that. We will get to those. I had just asked everybody if there's anything they wanted to say or ask us to do by way of opening this conversation, opening this space. And I'll ask it the second time and then we'll just dive in. Would anyone like to start the conversation? There's plenty to say, lots of places to go, nobody, nothing needs to be definitive or all-encompassing, but we're in trying to be productive about the situation in Gaza. What's a step we can take into it? What do you mean, being productive? What do I mean, we? Which is an old question I thought would come up. Ken's not here, sir. Yeah, but only just barely, he is back from Italy. If Shimon has questions that he's been working on for a while, maybe hearing the questions could be a good start. That sounds good. Let me try to address Gil's question real quick. I'm obviously a peaceful solution where the various nations in conflict could live peaceably is a great outcome that would be productive. And some course, some path, some means of getting to that is a big piece of what I mean, but I may mean other things that I'm not aware of, but I'm hoping some of those things will surface as we talk. Shimon, you sent me a really lovely email with some links that I can screen share or we can share in the chat if you'd like. And you've been looking at the situation for a long time. Do you wanna describe your work in the area? Yeah, first of all, it's nice to be back on kind of with familiar faces. Yeah, just as background, I mean, I was born in Israel, grew up, indoctrinated, worked for sort of Israeli information on American campuses, went back to Israel, lived in the Kibbutz, found out that the Kibbutz I lived on was actually before an Arab village. I got married on a place called Tel Gezer, which is a mound right by the Kibbutz, which is about 3,000 years old. And it was like we were the first Jewish couple to get married there in 3,000 years. And since I've been back in the States, I mean, I haven't really followed that much of what was going on in Israel. I did go to medical school in Israel in Beersheva where my son was born. And during the time I was in the medical school and he was born, the Israeli doctors were on strike. And one of the possibilities was that all the women who were about to give birth were gonna go to Gaza to one of the hospitals there to give birth. So I mean, my connection to this issue is sort of like on different levels. And recently because of the legislature trying to change Israel, which as far as I was concerned was like an existential issue in terms of Israel continuing being a democracy, I got very involved in thinking about what's missing in Israel. And I came with a lot of other people but really focusing on the fact that Israel needs a constitution, the fact that it does not have a constitution. And I was very interested and listened to the Ezra Klein interview, but I forgot who it was who talked about that we need to move forward towards a nation of all its citizens. And actually that whole conversation for the last nine months before October 13th, October 7th was about what is Israel gonna look like? And in my mind, thinking about how to create a constitution for Israel that includes everybody including Arab, Christian Arabs, Druze, Bedouins. I mean, it's a really complex tapestry there. I thought was really a worthwhile endeavor. So that's what I started doing. I actually use Kumu because I thought that Kumu was an excellent platform to really show the relationships. And one of the relationships that I was focusing on is the current government, how it came to be, who does it represent, who the population and the demographics are. I didn't get so much into the Palestinian Arab community in the occupied territories, but certainly the people who were more the same settlers and their different religious views. I got also very interested in America or Americans influence on what's happening in the Middle East. And one of the things was through donations, but the more interesting and important part was all the ideological right wing fanatic, messianic Jews who came to Israel. And actually, essentially as far as I'm concerned, hijacked what was fairly kind of egalitarian progressive society to a very kind of messianic and somehow they tied into like a capitalist kind of laissez-faire idea. So that's what we were seeing over the last nine months. And before that, for the last 10 years, that was not noticed. Actually, one of the people that was mentioned in Miha Sifri's article about, you know, if you don't have anything to do, just shut up was Chaim Katzman who I just happened to get to know because unfortunately it was killed in one of the Kibbutzim and he was a good friend of my daughter. He has written probably the best stuff for his PhD and otherwise about the role of messianic Jews and their political agenda, tying it into the capitalist effort, which is very unusual. Why would Orthodox religious people tie their lot with, you know, American kind of American enterprise and right of that? So that's really fascinating. And I think it's helped to understand what's happening in Israel right now. Most recently, because of what happened in October 7th, and one of my very, very close friends, we started the Kibbutz together where I live is actually one of the hostages and she was dedicating, she's from Kibbutz-Bairi. She dedicated her whole life to actually, you know, like how to create dialogue with Palestinians. She would drive Palestinian children to hospitals in Israel. She did incredible work, including with the Bedouin community and things of that kind. So recently I got re-engaged with that aspect of the Middle East problem. But more importantly for me, and I share some of the recommended solution by Thomas Papio or some other people that are talking about it, is to how to look at a long-term, because this is gonna be a very long-term kind of effort to work with the next generation and what to do with that. And that's actually the project I've been working on within the US, because I think that there's quite a lot of similarities on certain levels in terms of what democracy is, how do we create democracy of opportunity for people? So I've been working on the project of the first thousand days of life, how to kind of think of it in a way and how to implement it locally to allow people to flourish. And that's what I'm trying to deal with within the Israeli context. And I'm working with a number of groups. One of the nice things that happened as a result of October 7th, there's a lot of nice things that happened. And again, I agree with that person. Again, I know you put it in the chat that Ezra Klein interview. I think that the Israeli Arab population, Muslim, Christian, Druze, Bedouins are really, really the potential for peace moving forward. I think what we've seen, for example, the medical school that I went to- Is that when some of the women struggle to lose weight? Oh, really? There is good medications for that. Anyways, what I have noticed is the person in the hospital I trained at, the head of the intensive care or the trauma center is actually an Arab. His family actually went to where the massacres were and actually the whole family like actually rescued people there. One of the first Israelis who was killed in Gaza during this Northern Gaza incursion is actually a Druze who happened to be a Lieutenant Colonel and was also involved in rescuing people from the various kibbutzine. So I really do think that there's going to be a different conversation with a lot of people about how to create the kind of society that was mentioned in one of the talks. And I think that I see my role with a lot of other people. I mean, this is groups called The Day After, trying to create a narrative that allows for it and also a narrative that provides more understanding of how we got here, not just the military kind of mess ups, but also going back, people want to go back 3000 years, that's okay. But, you know, the Zionist enterprise and all these other things. So I'm actually somewhat hopeful. The way I look at it, there were a couple of things that were totally unintended that's actually been very, you know, actually protective for Israel. I mean, as a physician, I know that sometimes symptoms, you know, when symptoms come and you address them early, it's a good thing. I think that would happen in January with the effort to change the Israeli democracy where they really try to push everything in one swoop, woke up Israelis. I mean, you can see now what's happening in Israel in terms of their connectedness and their passion. I think it's unlike any other place in the world right now in terms of the fact that those people were leading the demonstrations took up the role of the state in terms of organizing social services and support services and whatever, starting with October 7th. The other thing is I think that what Hamas did October 7th as horrific as it is is actually a good kind of, not a good, but a symptoms because if you can imagine like a year from now, a coordinated Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian from Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, attack on Israel, because Israel is like the intelligence, their concept would not have changed. I think Israel would have been in really horrible trouble. So I think this is as horrible as it's been. It seems to me that people are gonna be leveraging it to really look at certainly the military, the security thing. I think that the conversation about how to create kind of the political entity that works for people to minimize the hatred, I think that's possible. I mean, I'm in contact with quite a lot of people in Israel that that's their mission right now. So overall with all their horrendousness, my close friend who was supposed to be visiting with us now is a hostage. I look at the past bit. Timon, thank you. And I would just like us to be quiet for a little bit and sit with everything you said because you said so many things, important things. And thank you for clearing your calendar to be here when you saw what the call was about. So let's just be still for a moment and I'll bring us back out and then go to Gil. And I'll add that this is a really hard loaded subject and some people are way closer to it than others as we just heard. And it's okay to cry or to take time out from the conversation or whatever else. This is like, we'll go with what shows up but don't feel you've gotta tough it out or don't feel you've gotta do anything besides feel what's here. Gil, please go ahead whenever you want to. Yeah, I'm not sure how to speak into this. Timon, thank you very much for that, for both the overall framing and for bringing the anguish present at the end. It just sort of very quickly took me out of my thoughts about this to the feelings that I've been experiencing for the last month. And I want to ask you a question but I want to say one thing first. I've gotten to the point where I am shutting off photos that people are sending of the anguish on either side of photos of hostages or dead Israelis or photos of bombing in Gaza because they both feel so one sided to the anguish, to the pain, to the suffering. And I'm not interested in the calculus of who's pain is worse. It's, you know, there's misery all around. So I just want to say that for starters and I'm very present to that. And lots of thoughts on this. I apologize, I'm gonna have to be driving for a bunch of this call. But what struck me, Timon, listening to you and the possibilities of something new coming out of this is where I feel very stuck is that both sides now are in the grips of religious fanatics. And it's very hard to imagine how that gets shifted creatively. And, you know, there's a glimmer of possibility in Israel now because Netanyahu and his gang are probably gonna be tossed once this matter settles. There's so much outrage at them for so many reasons. I don't see a parallel prospect among the Palestinians. And I wonder, maybe you do, but, you know, how does the grip of the religious fanatics get broke? There's one of the several questions at the heart of this mess. Timon, you're, I guess you were asking me. I mean, that's like a very core aspect of the lens in which I look at this situation. I mean, as a psychiatrist, actually I was, my area of interest was religion and how it plays into kind of psychological formation and coherence and all that. I actually published a few articles on that. As I said, with this guy, Chaim Kotzman, his whole focus was on the Jewish religious fundamentalists. So I think you're totally right. I think that the key is to minimize the irritant that causes people to act. And I think that Israel has done everything, both sides have done everything, you know, for ever that I remember, to just whenever there was a possibility of peace to torpedo it, you know? I think that has to be understood by people. I mean, we're talking about, again, this is what I'm saying, the American influence. I mean, one of the biggest kind of road bomb was this guy, Baruch Goldstein, who massacred, I think, of 36 Palestinians. Then he got Amir killing Rabin and Sharon going up to Al-Aqsa. I mean, all these different things. I think that my understanding, not necessarily what people's identification is, religiously, but how they manifested in the world. So when they don't have anything else, it becomes a central issue. And that's where I see what's happening in Israel. You know, the Palestinians in Israel, like 40% of pharmacists and doctors are Palestinian Arabs. I mean, there's a Palestinian Arab on the Supreme Court. I think what's happening now is that people are getting, some people are getting more of a lens of the ministers who are representing the far right that tried to make everything about Arabs and Jews and things of that kind, while hiding their religious motivation for the whole land of Israel. I mean, it's a much longer discussion. For me, this whole process has been amazingly educational. I mean, growing up in Tel Aviv, I mean, I was in a youth movement. And the thing that we used to do on Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day where we don't eat, try to fast, we would go in front of one of the synagogues in the area and eat as people were coming out. I mean, that was that kind of, at that time already, kind of split. So I think that with Hamas, the thing is that there was no alternative to the populations there. And I think that the guy who has her client interviewed spoke beautifully about that. I mean, they are seen as the only force right now. Again, Islamic fundamentalists with the Gaza nationalist agenda as the ones that have had any impact. Why are we talking about this now? We weren't talking about it a while ago and even during the demonstrations for democracy in Israel, anytime a Palestinian flag appeared, people would get, send them away. They're 20% of the population. I mean, politically it's very possible to incorporate that. I think the biggest danger for Hamas and the other Islamic states, we've seen that, that access is that people are gonna not necessarily become secular, but start believing that they need to develop an economy for the 21st century because 50 to 60% of their population are youth. 50% of the population are not getting any education. My solution, one of them, and actually I'm writing a paper that I've written about cancer in the US political system as it's a great metaphor about cancer in the Middle East looking at religious fundamentalists, both the Islamic type and the Israeli type, the Jewish type as cancers and then applying how we approach cancer. And again, there's different types of cancer, blah, blah, but how do we apply kind of treatment approaches to that? But I do think that one of the first things to do, and as hard as it is, I agree with the Israeli place and the American and all that, that you gotta get Hamas out of there. It's like a metastatic cancer and it's not just Hamas. I mean, it's like the whole region has got infiltrated. ISIS is still there. Iran certainly has their impact on people. So yeah, I totally agree with you. I do think that there is things happening that are hopefully gonna emerge and become not necessarily mainstream, but are gonna change some of the educational system. Because right now, I mean, again, what was spoken in that interview, Thomas was talking about education. Right now, the Israeli educational system promotes for a large part of the population, religious, orthodox, messianic education. And those people are going into the army as units and it's pretty frightening. I was frightening before, it's frightening now. You saw some of those tapes of rabbis exalting the last, what happened because now Israel can go to Gaza and can easily take over the West Bank and Lebanon. I mean, you gotta certainly understand that, but most Israelis are not there. I think this could be a wake up call. That's what I'm saying. I think as a symptom of what happened that it got so exposed, I think it's a good thing if we know how to leverage it towards areas of peace. And again, peace needs to be defined. Yeah, I wanna pick up one thing you said and just add a tiny historic note and then possibly ask Jesse's son to step in and just reflect on what he was thinking and what he's been hearing if he's up for it right now. But first I'll throw in that apparently Bibi was busy negotiating with Hamas because he wanted to negotiate with the hard asses on the Arab side and deprecating the Palestinian authority which might have been a more legitimate thing. There is a long history of people picking the worst partner. One of them is that after World War I, the treaty that Germany hated basically forced them to make reparations payments. Most of the money that Germany ever paid in reparations was financed by England because England's foreign policy was always there should never be one dominant power on the continent because they always try to attack us. And at the end of World War I, the dominant power is France. And they do things to undermine the French like crazy between the wars that lead into the mess we know of afterwards. Then Reagan famously backed the Mujahideen which later comes to bite us back in the butt as Osama bin Laden, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a whole bunch of picking bad partners and doing extreme things as part of the great game as part of this attempt to do giant scale manipulation of populations to solve global problems. And it backfires a whole great bunch. Gilda, do you wanna jump in for it? Go ahead, you're muted. Just one thing very quickly and this is in Ezra Klein's interview with Amani Jamal. One of the things she says is that people have talked again and again about how the peace process is broken because RFI did this or didn't do this and Rabin did that and so forth and so forth. And Sharon does this and she said, when folks are negotiating and they're break down to negotiation, the deal is not to just like walk away and go back towards to go back to the table. It breaks, you go back again and it breaks and you go back again and it breaks and you go back again and she was really beautifully contrasted that to the way the story is told again by both sides of, Jerry, this is right in your wheelhouse. Like how do you build trust? How do you rebuild trust? Trust breaks, even among people who trust each other. Absolutely. And you remind me of people who don't and how do you create and recreate and constantly recreate trust is one of the challenges at the heart of this thing. Another brief historic thing is when the Vietnam War was winding down and it looked like the Vietnamese North Vietnam was going to win, there were negotiations started in Geneva and the Americans showed up and they went to their hotel. The North Vietnamese delegation showed up and leased a house, leased a house because they knew this was not gonna be a month or a couple months worth of thing. And then famously, there's a year of debate that goes on about the shape of the table where they're going to negotiate and who sits where. And the North Vietnamese are playing rope-a-dope which is Muhammad Ali's famous strategy of just taking a whole bunch of blows and exhausting as opponent. They know that the media is going to change America against the war and that America will have to fight that battle at home and they can wait that out because they can take a punch apparently which they did over and over and over. We dropped more munitions on Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos, then we're dropped in World War II. So all these things are parts of negotiation and parts of how things play out and you can't give up hope at any term because sometimes the worst stuff happens just before the breakthroughs. Anyway, sorry about all that. I wanted to get to Jesse's son, but Jesse, is he around? Did he want to jump in or not? I might just put in the chat that he's not, he's still pondering. He's very inspired by what's been sharing and when he's ready, I'll put in the chat for sure. That sounds terrific. I appreciate that very much. And could you tell us his name? Jazz. Jazz, thank you. And what's the context? He's Jesse's 17-year-old son who's been listening at the periphery of our conversation and prior and would love to sort of, would possibly love to share what he's been thinking. That's great. With that, we go to Klaus. Yeah, so my daughter married a young man from Tel Aviv and converted into Judaism and that conversion is orthodox in nature, right? So she has to be kosher and all those things. And we went through some struggles in our relationship because she sort of, we both had to redefine how we are her father and daughter here. And we got into some trouble because in a previous flare-up of Palestine in Israel with the Palestinians, she started posting very assertively. And I said, maybe you want to hold back a little bit. I mean, she went through five different universities around the world, in China, in France, in Germany, in America and so on. And I said, you have so many friends all over the world. So be somewhat conscious how you express yourself and that led to us not being able to talk with each other for almost two years. But now we decided that we need to put all of that aside. So I just came back yesterday, in fact, from visiting her. She lives in Nashville and she has three little girls. She's pregnant with the fourth girl coming up and she just returned from her annual visit to Tel Aviv. And she was in Tel Aviv when this thing broke out. So she spends quite a bit of time in the bomb shelter and not stop watching these horrendous images on TV. And so I also got engaged. I called my senator and went to get her into a flight because the airlines all stopped flying out. So we had quite some excitement to get her on the plane and come back out. So then I just spent, I'm with my wife and I just spent 10 days with her. And obviously we had to go and sort out what we each think about this. And also with Gal, her husband. I had some very brief conversations. We mostly tried to avoid to get too deep into it. But we went over to visit one of her best friends in Nashville, also a Jewish family. And her brother is in the war, he's in the Gaza war. And then her husband's brother is in the North, no, in the war. So it's really up close and personal. And so what I shared is, I'm 73 years old. I said, Israel has been and Gaza and Palestinians has been a constant story, flaring up periodically in my lifetime. I said, but what I do remember quite distinctly is Arafat now when he was in power and the millions of dollars that were put into the solution of this. And Arafat bought himself a mansion in Paris. His wife was spending millions of dollars on clothes and fancy lifestyles. But none of that money apparently ever made it to develop an infrastructure for the Palestinians. A school system, a governance function and so on. So it's a truly perplexing issue. But what dominates it is this hate on the one side of having been disenfranchised from their land. And the ongoing violence that you see where it's not necessary, like in the West Bank, where Palestinians are being disenfranchised from their land and exposed to constant harassment and violence which is so unnecessary, because it doesn't really, I mean, this is not to protect yourself. This is not to keep populations in check and so on. So there's this, and then my wife and I visited Israel and we went over to the West Bank. I mean, we visited Bethlehem and the Church of Nazarene and on the way back, you see this wall and it's really a present. I mean, it's just, it really damaged us emotionally to see this violence between these two parties, right? And so, yeah, I mean, we just had to come together and saying, you know, there's just not a really good answer but we need to maintain our family and our, maintain us, you know? And we succeeded, you know? We love each other and that's really all that counts. So we are a family but in just, you know, horrendous time, absolutely horrendous time. And I don't see an answer, you know? I just don't know where this is supposed to go and who could lead this, you know? I had a conversation with someone on LinkedIn and said, we need a Mandela here, someone who inspires space but there's no Mandela inside. So anyway, it's up close and personal and all you can do is be respectful to both sides and isolate this hate, you know? And on both sides, you know, on the one side, Juval Harari calls it, one side is dominated by religious fantasies, you know, that impact the entire society in pulling us back into the middle ages and the other side is just blinded with hate and rage for, you know, being disenfranchised. So no answers, but I think what it comes back down to is the only thing that can really guide us is empathy and love. I don't know what other emotion or what other sentiment here can drive us forward. Can I just add one thing or, you know, amplify what you were saying? You were saying that the settlers are attacking, I guess the Palestinians with no threat. The fundamental issue is that for them, it's an existential threat not to achieve a whole messianic Israel where they're on every piece of land because someone walked that land. So by having Palestinians in certain locations, for them, that's a threat. It's interesting, by the way, when I went to Israel, back to Israel, I was born there, but I went back to live on this kibbutz, which is kind of in the center of the country. By the way, Yuvah Harari lives right next door, you know, to that kibbutz. And that was, we went on the land 50 years ago, next year, July 4th, you know, 1974. And interestingly enough, that was the exact date which the Israeli government allowed one of the first settlements on the West Bank. Wow. It was Gusha Munim, it was, you know, like one of those settlements. I look at it, I mean, we did okay. I mean, the kibbutz is still there, it's somewhat secular or whatever. The kibbutz movement has been having some difficulties, but look at the settlement movement. How did they get to that point where right now, I mean, there's like 700,000 people there, they have all these religious institutions that indoctrinate people, I'm not using it in a negative way, that's the reality, to have continuation of this messianic vision. And unless you act on it, then you're not a good Jewish person, you know. And I think the US has a role to play in it. I think that they're getting a shitload of money from the US, whether through nonprofits, you know, I think we saw that in Israelis woke up to that with this group called Kohelet, which actually legislated or created the legislation that led to a few years ago, the Jewish national law, which essentially said that it's almost like you have to be Jewish to be a citizen. And now they are the ones that push this legislature agenda. Right now they've come under a lot more scrutiny here in, actually they're from Philadelphia. I think that there needs to be more scrutiny about the sources for a lot of these organizations. I think the US State Department and their religion equity thing has to get involved. And my kind of one solution that I think would be interesting, my creative solution, you know, Hamas came into power in 2005, 2006, mostly because they provided services to the population. One of the first things that they did was organize soccer leagues, you know, somewhat like the black Muslims in the US at some point, you know, any kind of radical movement you take care of people's needs and then you get their hearts. I think that what needs to be happening and I hope to kind of get involved with some of that, build a huge space where Kibbutz Bari was and some of these other places that would be a memorial to what happened. It's like the Vietnam Memorial that has names but have names on both sides, like Israelis that died, Palestinians that died, you have to find some way around it, establish like peaceful activities that people can engage with, whether we do ping-pong stuff or soccer or whatever. You know, a good friend of mine lives in Israel and they live in a place called Zihon Yaakov which is in the North, right by Arab towns and I talked to them, their grandchildren are still playing soccer with their Arab neighbors right now. So I think we have to start thinking about it in terms of connecting to what people are doing that makes them feel like there is hope. People want hope, you know? So that's one of the things that I hope to get involved with. Thank you. Thank you, Klaus. Thank you, Shimon. I will also point out in the nature of anniversaries. Today is the anniversary date of Kristallnacht and some of you have heard me on other calls. Kristallnacht has a really personal role in my existence on the planet because my grandfather lived through it in Germany. A story I will tell some other time. Kevin. There you go. You know, I've done a lot of reporting and work on the Christian right and I think I did back a long time ago and it was a small thing but it was they were sending a delegation up to South Korea to North Korea and the Christian right was against that and I was researching all the things they were against at this convention where we were trying to get a gay bishop elected and I said, you know, like, why are you wanting to oppose reaching across the line to the people who are different? You know, it's like you're demonizing and they really honestly said they need to be demonized. You know, it's a slippery slope if we go down that way and that they're essentially, their existence is a threat to me and so that's the fundamentalist's basic reaction is militant separatist and then legal, legalistically use any text that will, you know, there's one person in Leviticus but not the others that say don't eat shellfish those sorts of things. But I think it also relates to the book cast by Isabel Wilkerson where one group has to put another down to create their own status and how black folks are a cast in the same way that they're a cast in India and that the Nazis also did cast. You know, there's a need, their existence is a threat and I think that's, I hear that from fundamentalists all over the place so that's just that. Thanks Kevin. Let's go for another moment of silence and then someone who hasn't spoken yet whoever would like to step in take us in some direction you'd like to take us. So let's just go quiet for a second and someone jump in. Anyone who hasn't gone yet like to step in? A lot, I mean, I feel for everything that's been said here. I wanna pick up on what Shimon was saying about the Messianic Jews and how it relates to the states. What I find myself doing in conversations is trying to pivot so that people could see that the enemy since we need an enemy for some reason are these fundamentalist thinkers because frankly I'm concerned about how the fundamentalists in our country impact everything that's happening. And I typed in the chat earlier half and just half very seriously maybe being a fundamentalist meaning in part having as part of your belief system that the people at the very opposite end of the field need to die or be removed or not exist because they threaten your existence should be a disqualifying factor for political participation for a bunch of other things. I don't think you should be imprisoned. I don't think like nothing else but you shouldn't be allowed to put your hand on the tiller. It ends badly. One of the things that surprised me I was tracking Bibi Netanyahu's sort of political career remotely in my brain and at one point in 21 I said, oh great, Bibi's finally out because it looked like he was out for good and he was being prosecuted for corruption and a bunch of other stuff. I'm like, okay, good. And then he comes back in and then he forms a coalition that is way, way, way farther to the right of any of his prior ones and then all the current stuff kind of happens after. And it was amazing to me that he not only had to come back but he came back way to the right of his previous positions. It was just very distressing. Where does all this put us? I love what we've been putting into the conversation so far. I think, can I just suggest something? I think I like the framing that you had in terms of looking at it from a complexity point of view. I think it really lends itself to complexity. I think another kind of anniversary recently was the murder of Rabin. And certainly that took people in a whole different direction. But I've been listening to some of the conversations with people who are his strategic advisors and things of that kind. And they're talking about how he envisioned the strategy of first circle or first ring of Israel, second ring, third ring, how to engage with people, what to create peace and things of that kind. And it really, in my mind, lends itself to very interesting exploration of complex ideas. That's why I've been using Kumu. I find it to be very useful. Looking at just mapping out who are the people involved? What are their relationships? What I find frustrating is people just, oh, it's Palestinians, then it's Hamas or it's Arabs. No, it's these, you know, unless you really break it down, in my mind, it's really hard to understand what's going on. And I take it again, like I said before, a step further and I bring the cancer metaphor, which gives you information about immune system, treatments, you know, like past history. And the amazing thing is, when you start listening to people, right now as I've been doing because somewhat consumed with this, people who are advising the Israeli government, like in 2006, like one of the leading people who were experts on Hamas, the recommendations that they gave were totally ignored. And they just described the whole process of how certain people just hijacked the conversation and then Hamas became what it became. Hisbalah, the same thing, you know? The Israelis would just take out someone because they could and then they would blow up an embassy in Argentina and then it would be all to the races about anti-Semitism and then you have to do this and that. And unless you really understand that, I mean, we'll continue having these conversations about, you know, moral equivalencies and things of that kind, which may be interesting, but I don't think it's as potentially impactful on life in that region. And feuds can go down generations. Feuds last a very long time. A couple of years ago, Danny Hillis gave a talk about cancer and he's not a doctor and at the start of the talk, he's like kind of nervous about giving the talk, but he said a really, really interesting thing. He said, cancer is a verb. Cancer is not like a bacterium that jumps onto your body or a virus that takes over something. Cancer is your own cells running amok. And it feels like, and I'm gonna stretch the analogy here, but the way we're talking about fundamentalism and that belief is a form of cancer that takes over cells in our body politic and causes them to do things that are really bad for the body as a whole. And maybe I've just broken that metaphor. I don't know. Gil then Klaus, please. Yeah, I appreciate Shimon's suggestion that we look at this through the lens of complexity or complexity theory or complexity systems or however you wanna go with that. One of the things that struck me in the online conversations is a number of people, some of them, really smart folks who should know better have said things like, it's really very simple. It's not complicated. It's plain and simple. And boy, it strikes me that there's anything that it's not. It's not plain and simple. And people who say that are maybe kind of simple minded in themselves. So I don't know where to go with that, but I like the invitation to look at this through a complexity lens and see what that might illuminate. Thanks, Gil. Go ahead, Klaus, whenever you, and take your time stepping in. Yeah, that's actually where I was just wanting to go. So I posted a video from Michio Kaku, which he developed a few years back that he really has captured my imagination. And I don't know how many times I listened to it. And what he's basically arguing here, and this is in quantum physics, a line of thinking is that humanity and consciousness will evolve in stages. And we are currently a Type-0 civilization, transitioning into a Type-1 civilization and so on and so on. And the transition from Type-0 to Type-1 is the most dangerous part of evolution because we have the capacity for the first time to destroy the planet. Now we have nuclear weapons. We have biological weapons. Now we can destroy, we can overheat the planet, by destroying the biosphere and the way we call food and all of those things. And what he is saying is you see the birth pangs of a Type-1 civilization emerge. We have the internet. You have music and culture that has come global. But at the same time, you have a pulling back where a significant part of the population really, really does not like to have multiculturalism. An open, tolerant society, they really want a theocracy. And you can see the drive towards theocracies all over the world. You see it in Hinduism in India. You see it here in the United States with the right-wing Christians. You see it in Israel. You see it with the Muslims. I mean, really everywhere you have the strong pull towards theocracy, monoculture basically. And so there is a part of our evolutionary pathway that is creating a chasm and what Kagu is arguing. If we can't preach this chasm, we'll perish, because we'll destroy ourselves because we have to come as it is to destroy ourselves. And so it's a bigger thing. So it's horrible as it is what we're observing in Israel right now. Look around the world. I mean, this is happening everywhere. It's happening in Myanmar. It's happening in Ethiopia, right? I mean, it's happening in India, between Hindus and Muslims. It is a, it's a phenomena that has gotten global. And here in the US, I mean, we have a strain of theocratic messianic kind of ideas that has the capacity to turn violent and destroy our democracy. So it requires a bigger resolution. Now, it requires the idea of democracy and openness and tolerance and so on has lost its appeal. And the part of the population, the population segments that understand or have the conscious capacity, their consciousness now to advance us are not really fighting. I mean, they're not really acting. You don't really see the uniformity of engagement that this requires, the collectiveness that this requires. So, and it's really interesting to watch this video if you have a chance to do this latest like a 10 minute video, but it's, I thought it was really captivating. Thank you, Klaus. Gil, Gil, you're unmuted. I think I muted you a little earlier because we were getting some ambient noise from your mic. I think he's driving, so he may not be able to. Thank you, I've forgotten that. Gil, if you want to jump in, please do step in. Otherwise, let's go to Stuart for it now. Thanks, Stacy. Yeah, sorry to be late and to jump in and to immediately raise my hand. But there you are, go, go, go. That seems my way. So, I just wanted to kind of comment on what I heard Klaus saying and yeah, you're right. But I think what we need to be careful about is speaking in absolutes, that this is the way it is versus this. Barack Obama and his campaign, the first time was really blasted because what he said was when things get hard, people turn to religion. And what he really meant was, people don't want to think for themselves and they don't want to stand in their own presence. And I think that that's so true. So I think we've got both phenomenon going on, extraordinary repressive governments and leaders raising their hands and filling a void. And I think you've got a lot of people out there whose egos are threatened at some psychospiritual level. It's biological in some sense. It's protection of a way of being as opposed to being able to step into some new way of being. And so those of us who ostensibly have stepped over to the other side and want to appreciate the flowering of what humanity can be existing on this extraordinary and beautiful planet that we've been gifted. We need to pause in some sense, in the words of Victor Frankel before judging and continue to act on our own higher angels, best angels or best sense of humanity and continue to do the work that we're doing. I don't think there's anything else to do. You know, it's funny. I articulated yesterday that I was feeling kind of a bit ashamed of my Jewish background. And I mentioned that to a teacher, a mentor who said, oh, you know, Hebrew people and the Jewish religion has done some great things historically. Right now it's just some leadership that has just gone off the deep end, gone off the rails. And I kind of readjusted my own thinking around that. So that's all I wanted to say for now. I'm sorry that I missed the conversation. Obviously there was something else that was slightly more compelling. So I'll shut up now. That's okay, Stuart. Thank you. I think you may wanna listen to this one from the top. It's been a really lovely call. A small historical footnote that really puzzled me and I think this is a comment on religion and power and politics. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama could all dish Bible. They all knew their Bible. They were all well-schooled. They could all like wade into those waters very comfortably contrast that with Donald Trump and then contrast that with who the church supports. It's really weird and interesting. And Carter is the president who was sort of quite religious. The evangelical right woke up and said, oh my gosh, religion could have a role and power back around Carter. And then Reagan figured out how to weaponize that. There's a whole really interesting sort of a political religious history that we haven't brought into this conversation but that clearly plays a role because the political part of it is what leads to power and wars. Stacey, please. So I know what I'm gonna say is all my ego talking and that's okay because I'm here as Stacey. I was not raised religious at all, although even before I knew the word God I was talking to somebody. So clearly I believed in some higher power. That being said, when my son was a bar mitzvah age I joined a temple. I even served on the board of that temple. But I remember reflecting on a question that the rabbi asked, which was why be a Jew? And I have to say that I'm proud to be a Jew. To me, the whole thing about the Jewish religion is this idea of, I mean, I think of Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof and reflecting on what's being taught and making decisions for yourself and stepping into your own role. So I just felt a need to say that. So thank you. Thanks Stacey. Pete and Jesse. Thanks for this call Jerry and Shimon, especially thanks for everything you've said. It's super illuminating and super helpful and a little bit hopeful, which I treasure. I liked what Klaus said, talking about Mishio Kashi, Kaku's video and then the way he went into talking about religious fundamentalism and how that conflict plays itself out all over the world with lots of religions. And I don't mean to distract us from the topic of the call, but I also kind of want to notice that we have this problem endemically and systemically whenever human society gets to the scale it is, it starts acting in ways that individuals might not have chosen to act. And right now we have a demonstration of that. We have the climate change crisis where we have a species wide existential threat, literally extinction level threat. And we don't have fundamentalist religion fighting that, but we do have fundamentalism, capitalism or whatever saying that no, I'd rather keep status quo and I'd rather burn the planet to the ground instead of giving that up. And I'd rather scorch the planet for the rest of all the generations instead of changing my generation. So again, I don't mean to distract this from the topic at hand, but it's also a thing that humans do or a thing that human society does more properly. Individual humans I don't think typically like living in fear and living in danger and living without agency in their lives. But when you group together into societies, you get this polarity that ends up creating that situation. Pete, thank you. And I don't think you're off topic at all. I think you're right in the heart of things here. Jesse, then Mike. I agree, Pete, not off topic. I'm just had to get ready for school but he's saying how people can and will preach their values and the impact will be out of our control. But I think we should be careful of getting on sides and really what this comes down to is just a lot of generational trauma just being carried cycle over cycle over cycle depending that doesn't even matter what side. And it's hard enough to break our own generational trauma. Talk about agency though. That's where we could put our efforts but it requires deep listening and it's very hard to practice when we're getting triggered when our values are at stake. I just think about if someone came into this conversation and just had a different point of view, all of our emotions would be going a little bit higher and our bodies would get a little more tense and that trigger, that anger is really helpful. It's a message but it's not only our anger that we're holding, it's societal anger. We're holding that when we feel angry or triggered. We're representing society at large holding that. So next time you're feeling angry or I am, I just invite us to pay attention to that. It's not just our own anger that we're holding but we're representing and that that agency comes from really deep listening. That's it. And it just sounds so simplified but that's what I would like to share. Jesse, thank you. I just wanna underline the thing you said which is how hard it is to be tolerant or pliable or calm when you're being triggered. I think that's really, that just happens so much all the time. Mike than Hank. Yeah, I apologize for joining late. We had a bit of a crisis. My wife was headed downtown and took Uber and managed to leave her suitcase for her trip to Philadelphia in the back of the trunk and we don't know where it is. Oh, still now? Oh, damn. Yeah, but anyway, I wish I, I will go back and listen to this. I'm gonna take the discussion up about three levels and just give two minutes from a fascinating conference that was held in Canada Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Some of you may know Alistair Kroll. He runs the FWD 50 conference which is the best meeting I've heard on e-government in Canada. Maybe one of the best, most visionary conferences on e-government anywhere. And he is asking the fundamental questions is how do you change government at the core level so that we don't have corrupt leaders who go out of control and hang onto power like Hamas has become like some countries and like Libya was under Gaddafi, like Maghabi and these people have destroyed their country and they're just for personal gain. And one of his answers was more modular, more pushing down local governance, letting the people of neighborhoods take control. Is there, I don't know if there's any way we could do a case study, use Gaza as a case study and what happens when we let power, absolute power be co-opted by these people. And again, I'm not a political scientist, I'm a physicist but there's clear frustration with the way government works and it's just so clear that the systems are set up to concentrate power and wealth. And when that control is threatened, we get behavior like Donald Trump, we get behavior like Hamas and I just have to wonder if there's a story to be told, if there's a utopia that we can paint and then help start building. But I think the core piece of it would be decentralized power and it would be very, it'd be quite libertarian because clearly we're not able to regulate from the top down. Yeah, and Mike, you're pointing to something we've touched on a couple of previous RGM calls and the topic I'd love to return to, which is like, what is a great healthy form of governance? Little G governance that is decentralized, credible, hard to corrupt, scalable, but not in the sense of industrial scale, but in human scale, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that we're in the middle of an era where we either solve for that well and that gets contagious and moves around the world or we crater our civilization the way we're doing right now. But thank you for- Do you have a guru on this? I mean, have you- I think it- 3.0? I have like a hangover cocktail mix for it, which is like when you put like an egg in with some tomato juice or whatever, but a mixture of polycentric governance, Ostrom style, all sorts of distributed democracy and local citizens doing stuff, my own obsession with building a shared memory so that we can reliably tell each other what we think and why we think it and then compare notes and a couple other things. And it's a dog's breakfast of bits and pieces, but if it can be brought together into some sort of replicable modifiable system, because I think the key here is that people need to be able to adapt things to their own situation and resources without corrupting them. And that's really hard to design any kind of system that's adaptable, but hard to corrupt is really hard. A nice example, a nice semi-modern example is Alcoholics Anonymous, which is a leaderless organization that basically has a couple of precepts and tries really hard to not let those precepts get violated. And works, works, works all over the place in different ways. There's also some critiques of AA has spawned a whole series of other anonymous movements for a variety of other addictions, et cetera, but it's a very, it's an interesting model to borrow some lessons from. Well, thank you for that. I mean, I just wish there was somebody doing something I could point to and say, that has the, that's the seed. So the place in my brain where this lives is what are the next two stacks? And I've talked before about using this, the software stack is a metaphor for our civilizational stack and our organizational stack. And I think these are being renegotiated right now. And they're gonna be very different in 50 years, really different. We may not be alive for it, but in 50 years we'll be doing all those things quite differently from today. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. Hank, Michael, Doug, C. Well, thanks to everybody for this very instructive conversation and also a conversation on a level that I think it should be taking part ideas and emotions together, especially Siobhan, I was very moved by the things you said. And I heard a lot of interesting ideas. It's still very emotional situation for me. So I think the only thing I can bring in to the conversation now is a set of questions, not questions like on a systemic level, what can we do about it? Those are also extremely important, but on a practical level, considering the generational trauma, considering, as Jesse said, it's society's anger, not just individual anger. Who is there at the moment who can mediate in the situation? There may not be a Mandela, but who is there? Is there anyone in Palestine? Is there anyone in Israel? Can a foreign country or someone from a foreign country play a meaningful role? I think the systemic issues are really important as well. And they can be applied hopefully one day to all the places in the world with generational hatred. But I'm really concerned about the practical aspects of tomorrow and next week. So my question to the group. Thank you, Hank. Mr. Grossman. Hi, I'm really sorry to have missed the earlier parts of this, but I will comment on something that I heard and just want to drill down on the question of local control and pushing down from the supposed kind of dictatorial and power grabbing. I think it was Stuart who was talking about Hamas and drawing parallels to other regimes. But when we think about, in terms of America, it totally breaks down. In the US, we think of federal control as what keeps the locals in line or else we'd have local homophobic, racist, sexist, classist rules that would be fine in some small community, but we have a universality of rights that are imposed from above. And it would probably be a more harmonious world if we didn't have any sense of universal human rights and we let everyone everywhere live the way that they've lived for generations as their religion teaches, however sexist that might be or hateful that might be to other religions. And I don't particularly think it's any kind of a solution in the physical space that we're talking about. I mean, if we had localized control based on majority rule and custom, what we'd have is something that looked like the West Bank more than it looks like Gaza or the state of Israel where you have this intermingling of majorities and probably lots of local hostility. Just as you'd have in the United States where you have like different sets of laws next to other sets of laws. So I want to push back on the idea of localization being any kind of panacea, it seems, I'm not saying that one world order is a solution either, obviously, but it has to be, I don't know. And I'd really love to hear us discussing that in more general terms, just how governments can work in a way that lets people be who they are, but the way all of us think they should be. Yeah, just want to put that out there. Thanks, Michael, important angle. Doug Carmichael. So I am in many ways an outsider to this conversation. I have no particular connection to anybody in the Middle East. From this position, it looks to me like we are dealing with a pathology of thought. And that is the idea of the chosen people. If the Jews are the chosen people, then everybody else is not the chosen people and have no right to be in the conversation. That seems to me to be a real mistake. Arnold Toynbee writes that the problem for Israel is that it made this choice of the chosen people at the point where it could have become a universalist religion. And that we're stuck in this parochialism that's defended to the end. And what's striking to me is that the problem is at the level of thought, no thinker, no person, no political personality can do anything unless they take on that issue because they're within the framework where discussion is impossible at the core. End of thought. As Doug rolls a tiny grenade into the room. Doug, I will suggest to you that a lot of religions have the we are superior and everybody else is going to hell kind of framing. It's just worded differently in different places. And I think Gil wrote in the chat that this is a misread and he's been holding his hand up while driving. And I put your hand down earlier because I thought it was up by mistake because I had asked you to step in and you weren't able to. So at this point, if you can unmute and jump in, the timing is perfect. Gil. Yeah, before it was up by mistake and then it was up and then it came down by itself. And so I'll take the timing is perfect. A couple of things. Jerry, I love what you said. And I look forward to you writing and speaking more publicly about what that world looks like but also how we get from here to there or maybe the back casting version of how we got here from where we were because the transition is kind of impossible to see from where we are now. So that's number one, two, Pete, you said when society gets to a certain size, I'd love to know more about what size that is. Any thoughts on that? Three, I think, Jerry, what you said about, oh yeah, about Carter and Clinton and Obama being deeply rooted in Bible. A story came through yesterday about pastors around the country who were reporting that their parishioners were saying, where are you getting all this woke shit from the Sermon on the Mount? It sounds like liberal talking points. Astounding because these are people in evangelical churches who are not grounded in Bible. And we don't know what would Jesus do but know something else. So there's that. To the grenade, I'm very provoked, Doug, by your comment. And as I said to somebody the other day who was talking about, Israel's asking for this because of the Zionist enterprise, that wasn't the reason that Hitler gave or that Stalin gave or that the Inquisition gave or that the Russian pogroms gave and on and on down through history, that was not the reason. The misread on the chosen people, it does not say anywhere in the Bible about chosen people. First of all, we'll have you a problem, Sierra. We're hearing you fine, Gil. Okay. And to the extent that there's anything about chosen, the Bible does say, any implication of chosenness, which again is not there literally, but any implication of chosenness is deeply conditioned. It says, God says to these people, if you live right, if you treat each other justly, if you do all these things which are like significantly ethical, then things will be well. And if you don't, the land will vomit you out. So it's a highly conditional chosenness if it's chosen at all, but I think, Doug, I don't think this is your intention, but what you've said, I've heard in anti-Semitic canards over the years. So there may be a different way of addressing what you're trying to address. Thank you for saying that. I'll say, Sherry, I was very apprehensive about this conversation. And I'm deeply grateful for how it's been held and how it's unfolded. Your gratitude should be steered towards Stacy, who had the insight to say, hey, this is a group that could handle this, and why don't we do this? And what are we doing talking about music instead? And so Stacy, thank you for steering us in this direction. I really appreciate it. I was reading in the last couple of days, some place about Christian nationalism, there was a bunch of really good stuff about it. And strangely enough, a whole bunch of Christian nationalists are not regular attendees of church. They're using Christian nationalism, they're using church as a political vehicle or whatever else, it's really interesting. Jesse. Thank you for everyone's input. Oh my gosh, I'm just so inspired. And I got it, I'm gonna drop something here though. I might get some feedback. As I see it, power and greed and fanaticism derives from generational trauma as I shared. And I really think that men probably have it harder because they were the ones having to kill the animals and bring it home and they had to go to war a lot in the generational look of things. I know a woman just as much had to do these things too, but I think a lot of the power and the greed and the fanaticism come from that generational trauma, that pain. And we just need to learn how to suffer at this moment better and stress better. And we're not able to solve for what's happening today without nurturing the experience of our past ancestors. And I think this requires changing history's narrative to change the future. So whenever we're stressing out and we're thinking about what's happening today without thinking about what's happening, how to change our own family lineage's trauma by changing the way that we have a framework around that, we can't model for our children to do that. And that requires a lot of work. It's a lot of work to do. So, yeah, another conversation there. Thank you. Desi, thank you. Among the many things that you just said provoked for me was the thought that we ought to have a call or three hear about trauma, the role of trauma, the varieties of trauma, and in particular how to heal from trauma. Like how do you help address trauma? Because trauma is a lot of, I like your mental model or your metaphor that the trauma is behind a lot of what's happening here. So thank you for that. Stuart, and then we're getting close to the end of our call. Yeah. So very, very related to what Jesse articulated is the male-female dichotomy. I was on a call yesterday. It was a wellbeing committee of a large entity of the American Bar Association. And it was me and 12 women. And, you know, I threw the gender piece out into the call and it really generated an amazing generative conversation about gender differences. My own very, very kind of uninformed and cryptic piece. And I'm sure that many of the, you know, sociologists and biologists would have a great deal more to say is the whole notion of, you know, male leadership and domination and projectiles and war and as a way of solving challenges and problems. And that's, you know, that in part is not gonna get us where we need to go. For years, I would say, oh, things will not be right on the planet until women take over leadership. And then I was nicely corrected to say until we have collaboration between men and women, real collaboration across the board. But if you look at, you know, the wars that are going on mostly started by men in some sense. The inability to process perhaps the generational trauma or the background or to deal with their own biology. Bingo, I just read something yesterday that I found unfortunate that this is direction that they're starting to recruit women to fight on the front lines in Ukraine. And they're trying to come up with the right kind of uniforms and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that, you know, we've talked about that in this group but that to me is one of the core pieces and some ways that ties into one of the things that came up in the conversation yesterday was, you know, men's incapacity to deal effectively with pain and how much more capable women are dealing with that. And so men act out, you know, they act out in violent ways. And when you've got a leader acting out in violent ways, we've got some of the catastrophe that we've got going on now. Thanks, Stuart. I shame on to think it's great for you to wrap up the conversation. And I also have a poem I'd love to read in after you're done. Yeah, just be very brief. First of all, thanks for this conversation. As you know, I haven't been part of this group for a while and certainly resonated with me the topic and the ability to share. I know a lot about trauma. I mean, I've actually written about Holocaust and trauma, actually developing a center that's called salutogenesis, which essentially talks about, you know, how do we overcome essentially towards health? To Mike's point, I mean, you got me at your wife going to Philadelphia, I'm in Philadelphia. So I hope she gets her luggage. But the more central question that you asked is, you know, like how do we move forward? I've given this a lot of thought and I think, and again, it's tied to trauma and all these other things. But we know so much about brain development these days, certainly neurodevelopment from preconception and the importance of the first thousand days. And that's why I think we need to focus on, I think that trauma happens in so many different ways and what one person interprets as trauma for another person is the possibility for post-traumatic growth. So I think that there's ways to think about it. What I've dedicated myself to now is thinking about the first thousand days of life. How do we in each locality make sure that people have the opportunity to flourish? And another thing perhaps for a future conversation is how to incorporate the new tools of AI into that conversation. What I'm finding, again, Constitution Project that I did uses a lot of AI. This is ChatGPT 3.5. The new project that I'm working on, ChatGPT 4, as well as Claude, as well as Bard, incredible sources that can really change how we think about issues that we wanna address. And if you are kind of aware of how people develop these thoughts in terms of how they relate in the world, it happens certainly the first years of life, school, whatever, and there's ways not to address it. That's what I'm trying to do. And what I've learned is that oftentimes you can't do it with volunteers as much as this group is great. So I'm developing a business model of how to do that. So again, I think there's hope. You missed the part about how I think of Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East in terms of an hopeful possibility. But this has been great conversation. And I think, again, the hope is people like ourselves having these conversations, shedding different lines. I mean, I'm not as triggered being Jewish about the Jews being the chosen people. I just think different people have different operating system. I think that the Jewish, certain Jewish operating systems lead us to be able to function in certain worlds in a certain way. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. Islam has a different operating system. Different people have a different operating system. I think it's great. So again, thanks for the opportunity to kind of share with the group. And I did not expect to get so emotional. So thanks for holding the container for that. Everyone, thank you so much. And at some future moment, I'd love to learn more about your first 1000 days project. That really sounds lovely. We've got our, the end of our call, class has got to go. I'm going to, in a moment, jump to a different call, but I'd like to read Making Peace by Denise Levertov because it seems appropriate. And then it goes as follows. A voice from the dark called out. The poets must give us imagination of peace to oust the intense familiar imagination of disaster. Peace, not only the absence of war, but peace like a poem is not there ahead of itself, can't be imagined before it is made, can't be known except in the words of its making, grammar of justice, syntax of mutual aid. A feeling towards it, dimly sensing a rhythm is all we have until we begin to utter its metaphors, learning them as we speak. A line of peace might appear if we restructure the sentences, the sentence our lives are making, revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power, questioned our needs, allowed long pauses. A cadence of peace might balance its weight on that different fulcrum. Peace, a presence, an energy field more intense than war might pulse them, stanza by stanza into the world, each act of living, one of its words, each word, a vibration of light facets of the forming crystal. Although I do miss Ken's ability to pick the perfect poem at the right time, but this one showed up. That one was perfect. Thank you all very, very much. I look forward to continuing this in whatever ways that we choose to continue it. So let me know what you think and on the Mattermost Chat or on the OGM list and I really appreciate you all being here very much and everything you've brought to this conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry.