 You know, I mean, it's maybe a finer grain than the fathom one, but interestingly is that it gives it structure. Yeah, and it does a really nice job of clumping up the conversation into themes and titling the themes, which is all more than a high school that could normally do. Yeah. So I'm impressed as well. Yeah. This is the OGM weekly call on Thursday, November 23rd 2023, which is Thanksgiving morning. And a happy, happy turbulent Thanksgiving to you. Yeah. May you live an entry. Exactly Todd and how's it how's it going far away. It's going great. Yay. Is that your local volcano. That's that's about three hours away. Very cool. We know a majority humans that's good. We do we do. We got Rick. This picture from the interfaith Thanksgiving so these are all people standing on each other and the world. One person let's go everybody falls. So. Yeah, this is nice illustration. Yeah. It's from a 13 year old. Paced a few more links for your brain. The theme today as often is on Thanksgiving is gratitude. We can start there. If we end up at some point talking about the open AI kerfluffle and what it means for the world that would not be a terrible thing. But I'm interested in how we're approaching. Maybe, maybe what does gratitude mean for us as an interesting place to start. Anybody who'd like to jump in. Great to be able to join you. Which I usually can't, as you know, because I'm usually working with a client. And of course they're having Thanksgiving holiday so. So are you. So am I. Yeah. So I did think about this a little bit. And the, even having a conversation about gratitude. Is. You know, considered morally good. Right. And I thought about that. What's going on there, you know, and I thought about it in the context of other conversations. Many of us have been having about. Different things, including the gift economy. Or gift economy versus transactional. And part of that, if you explore that conversation a little bit, you know, it turns out that in the gift, the gift economy is not purely. Non transactional. In that people do think about, well, wait a minute, what has so and so done for us. And you know, we better not get too far out of proportion. You know, we want to appreciate. What we get and what we give. But we're going to be aware of the proportion. Because if we're not, it's going to get out of balance. And what is it we're trying to balance. We're trying to balance the relationship. So that's the key to me that's the key to the gift economy is that it puts the relationship above the, at least the accuracy of the transactional value of transactions. It says, Hey, look, look at the look at this for the longer term. And I think that's better. I mean, I think in general, we would do well to move from the kind of instantaneous transactional accounting of late capitalism in the direction of gift economy. But I would say, let's not stop there. Let's, let's keep exploring, at least philosophically, whether there's anything that's really post transactional and what that would be like. So those are my opening. Thanksgiving thoughts. Love that John, that's a great, great starting point. Gil jump in and then I'd like to jump in as well. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, John for that. My first thought Jerry is that is that gratitude is a choice. It's a decision it's an assessment people make and choose to select a mood of gratitude out of the many other possible moods in any moments and interpretation of how we are encountering the world. So that's sort of the philosophical opening. John, I was going to disagree with you at first and I found myself agreeing with you. And, but coming in from the other direction, coming in from the direction of relationship. And I think about in a family or you're in a reasonably healthy family, it's not transactional. It's, it's really the foundation is relationship and in the relationship they were sharing, and it only becomes transactional when things get severely out of whack. There's a there's a large, a very large, fuzzily bounded set in which transaction doesn't show up. Somewhere when things stray outside those boundaries than transaction does show up and I think the challenge is it's one thing to imagine that in a nuclear family it's another in an extended family or in a village it's quite another in a nation of millions of people or a planet of billions of people where the relationships are very different. So I wonder about that you know you you you raise the speculation of how do we move from capitalism towards something gift like and lots of layers of the question but one of them is scale. And the last thing I'll say is I'm remembering one of the things that really struck me in the dawn of everything which we've discussed over the years is, is when Condi on rock the American philosopher and dialogue with the with the European Jesuits who came in here to Turtle Island reports on I think he or one of his colleagues had traveled in Europe, and can came back and said we're just we're just absolutely dismayed, we do not understand that you have people lying in the street starving. What's what's wrong with you people here, you know, we take care of each other we feed each other. We raise on hard times, we feed them it's just like it's just to give it it's not and my interpretation of that was that it was not transaction. It was just part of the fabric of life what Darce lesson called the substance of we feeling, which I think is part of the story here about gift economy. So thank you for the provocation, both of you. That was a really lovely start for the conversation john. I want to put a couple of thoughts in in the conversation, some of which have been heard in OGM before but one of them is that good gifts auto circulate. And if you look at Lewis's book, the gift. And before that Marcel mouse's book the gift and a bunch of other stuff gift giving gift exchange is a lot of the basis of society in different ways. And when Native Americans gave, and you know, stereotypically gave settlers something like a peace pipe, they kind of expected it back in a year or two, along with the stories of what had happened, while the peace pipe was making the rounds. And that was what they expected. And instead the peace pipes weren't were sent to Queen Victoria Elizabeth or whatever, and I wound up in a museum or who knows what and it was a one way exchange it was considered just sort of like I hear this is yours now. And it's ironic to me that Indian giver is considered a pejorative it's a person who gives a gift and takes it back. And this understanding of the gift circle. Where where the gift is meant to circulate and a bunch of years ago, I have a couple large antique French posters, and a couple years ago I put a note up on one of my lists to see if I could circulate that poster because I had no goal to put it on. And I was like, Hey, this would be cool if this moved around and we could put a sheet of paper on the back of it, so that people can write down their name and like the dates they had they sort of kept the painting and so forth. And there were no takers I got nobody to pick up and go Oh sure let's do that. The second thing I want to say is, if you have dinner with friends and you leave $100 bill on the table on your way out. You just broken a social contract that's a that's an insult there's a like our being together socially is really like key and important and we do that. A lot of interesting ways. And the word poverty is a new thing around 1650 unemployment is a new term around 1750. They both show up with the industrial commercial economy with the industrial revolution and the notion that everything has a price is new also like like things, things didn't all have a price you you could stay alive without earning income for a really long time. And the things that we think of as necessities, or commandments of modern life are actually really modern they're actually very new. And as the dawn of everything I think tries really hard to point out. It is really hard for us to un unsee that we can't unimagine modern living where everything has a price and if you don't have enough money you will starve and die. We can't unsee that thing. And yet, most of human civilization was not like that. And, and I find that fascinating and scary because humans are so adaptable that we're like get on this is the way. And there's also been a concerted effort to make sure that we demonize other ways of organizing society. There's been a really concerted effort to say, don't look at those anarchists and years ago, I went and read some Murray Bookchin, because I was like I want to read a little bit of anarchist these people must be terrible. And I start reading a book that's all about cooperation in nature. And the whole first half of the book is all about how coyotes and termites and, you know, all these social insects and everybody else is busy like cooperating and the cooperation is actually the default setting, which works really well, all over the place. So those are, I think I had. I think I had no no other thoughts but I'm, I'm also really interested in the term gift economy. I think it's a misnomer. I like I prefer gift exchange. And one last story. I read a sociology text long ago that and I forgot where this was but I think this is maybe sort of common in this culture it was common if you entered a town if you were new to a town that people would come over and bring you like bread and salt, or something like that, or a gift. And you were expected to reciprocate but you were not expected to reciprocate in equal kind. Meaning, if you gave if you went and visited them and gave them exactly the same amount of let's pretend it's bread and salt. It would be like you'd evened out the setting, and there was there was no relationship left between you so you'd sort of said enough of you, but you would come back and give a little bit more or a little bit less mentally. And that meant you had this ongoing little bond between you of the gifts sort of flowing back and forth and I thought that was really beautiful. I was thinking about gratitude. And I'm going to posit that it's both a practice and an outcome. It's a practice meaning pragmatically those who orient towards feeling grateful expressing gratitude feel better about their life. And so by investing in gratitude. There are benefits of that, but I don't think that's complete. There's also gratitude as an outcome that if I am attuned to the flow of life. If I am living in accordance with who I am treating all creatures with respect, feeling the beauty of life itself, then I'm naturally grateful. I have to try to be grateful. And perhaps that the practice of gratitude helps lead to the outcome of gratitude. Or, and at the same time we can attune to the flow of life and experience gratitude. And I'm trying both. Rick and take your time with stepping in. Yeah, I sent a note of gratitude to a colleague of mine who you have known for 30 years and last Thanksgiving. We were home alone because my family went off to their other families so I'm characteristically, we were home alone at Thanksgiving. And I didn't even, you know, I just was in casual conversation, you know, I wasn't even, and he says, Oh, why don't you come over Thanksgiving? And I said, Oh, that's nice. And it was a great Thanksgiving. I mean, it really was an amazing Thanksgiving. I mean, it was so memorable. And so I sent him and I thanked him and I said to my regards to Brenda and Mira and whatever. And he sent something back. And so that's, you know, the practice of gratitude. I mean, there's so much research on the power of gratitude on mental health. It's just astounding. Anyway, so it so happened. My colleague had written a blog post and commented on a blog post on gratitude who connected me to another colleague who had written about gratitude and did a video on it. And then that took me to YouTube on gratitude, which is a three hour video on the research of gratitude. So gratitude is something that's, you know, a top of mind. But interesting enough, I wrote a blog post and then I suddenly realized I shouldn't reframe this with a gratitude lens. And then I came to realize gratitude is about improving one's own mental health and helping others, but it's actually primarily beneficial to yourself. But then I came up with a notion of equity practice, which is uses the Romney and rule, which is about being fair and kind to everything. And that is about improving the mental health of others. So I want to introduce the concept of equity practice in terms of fairness, not in finance. And then lastly, I'll give a brief story. This was about 25 years ago, I went to Korea with my adopted daughter who was 11 at that time. And we had a host and Hong Soo was, I got to know him, he spent a year with me when I was the University of Rochester, we became good friends and we made connections. And so he was my host. And I knew about the custom there about, you know, they pay for everything if you're a host. You know, you go to a hotel, you have meals, it's the responsibility, and that is the Korean tradition. And I was told respect and of course I did. But it got to a point where my daughter would just point to something and be low before, before, you know, he would go into the shop and buy it for. I'm thinking to tell me, don't say you like anything because anyway, it got to a point where I had this interesting conversation with him. And I said, I truly respect your Korean culture. I want to be clear. And I do not want to offend you, but I think you're spending too much money on me. And I said, if you would allow me, I would like to pay for this hotel bill. But if you want to, that's fine. And I said to him, I said, if you're a modern Korean, you'll accept it. If you're a traditional Korean, I will respect your customs. And he allowed me to pay for the hotel bill. Love that. Thank you, Rick. Doug. Well, one other thing very quickly, I want to put a plug in for, for Jerry. Actually, I want to appreciate Jerry for initiating the neo blogs, the new book rather, and experimenting with some stack, which I'm doing. And I won't go into the details of it, but I just think there's huge potential there. And Doug, I do read your sub stack. Occasionally like it. So how can we connect with each other? Substance. Okay. Thanks, Rick. Okay. I looked up thanks in the etymology dictionary and found that it's related and it's root to the word think. So I thought, why that? And of course, it's that thanks is to become aware. Through a relationship with something that you're thankful for. And which seems to me making it related to the must stay. Let the God and me greet the God in you. And so on. It's to be thoughtful. Another interesting word along that line is metanoite. What John the Baptist is saying when he goes around saying, wake up my beloved. Or just wake up in the original Aramaic it meant to, to become conscious to become awake. I'm thankful. I mean, that by and large, is there anything I'm not thankful for? There's nothing you can't learn from. So that's where I am. Thanks. Thanks, Doug. There's this whole notion of expanding your circle of gratitude. There's also a meditation. I'm forgetting what it's called. You're grateful for yourself and then your family and then you expand out until you encompass the universe and then you work your way back. That's a well known meditation. And it seems like a lot of people alive right now are not grateful for anything. They're expecting everything to be dropped in their laps or they have no understanding for gratitude or they think the world is so fucked up that they're not going to try being grateful for anything. There's a dozen reasons why that could be, but it seems like there's a whole lot of people who have no sense of gratitude. And I wonder how that works in the world and what it does to us over time. Eric, please go ahead. Thank you. So, I'm just picking up on what you said, those people who are do not have gratitude. Can we look at what brought them to that point and what kind of childhood they grew up in. I think older people need to try and have a certain compassion, especially like kids growing up in COVID and lockdown and what does that impact on their lives. So, I participated in an interfaith Thanksgiving service on Tuesday, I sang in the choir, and I was showing this picture earlier of all the people holding up, and the earth has the two hands on the top. And everyone's dependent on each other or the whole thing falls apart. I think that's very poignant these days we're all the interdependent, and that's a key. But gratitude, it starts the moment you wake up. Wow, I have another day of life. Wow, I can get up I can walk or whatever. And in the Jewish tradition there are blessings for every little thing. Thanking God for everything I have my body and. But what this service brought up is the problem of homelessness, the deficit of homelessness and the book I started reading by Corey doctor O called the lost cause also addresses it. I think Corey is painting a picture of a possible future society that many of us can't envision yet. And what has to change in attitudes before that society that that would support the young people of today and their children. So it's just something to digest and process and then see where that takes us. Thank you. Thanks Eric. Yeah. Thanks Eric in the Jewish tradition, the first words that you utter in the morning or words of gratitude. Gratitude for your breath returning for waking in your breath returning to you. In the Orthodox Jewish tradition and the Jewish tradition is filled with blessings of everything blessings before eating before Washington's blessing after toileting. Blessings blessings blessings of which are basically gratitude affirmations. And for the among the Orthodox, the tradition is to is to say 100 blessings a day. At least, which means to find 100 opportunities to be grateful every day. I was in a choir years ago, the teacher Ruby throwed a human named support a sling. At the end of practice at the end of the choir practice would share her practice with us which was that she brought out a gorgeous turned polish turn and polish wooden bowl filled with 100 glass marbles I guess we'd call them. And her practice at the end of every day is to go through the entire bowl and transfer marble from one bowl to another, and be grateful for something 100 times at the end of every day and we were kind of staggered you said I'll make it easy on you there's 10 of us here let's pass the bowl around and each of you do one at a time and each of you will get a chance to do 10. It was fascinating to experience and observe that you know the first one was pretty easy and the second one was relatively easy and then it kind of got hard for people. And people had to dig and reflect and reach for what they were grateful for that day and gradually the muscle kind of got built. And by the end, you know by the time you got to eight or nine or 10 they were like 10 or 15 other things that you wanted to say. To, I think, Todd what you were talking about before as gratitude as a practice with outcomes, those great experience of that. So, you know, we can, we can, we can adopt practices that affect our imaginations Jerry I was really struck by what you were saying before that in which I interpreted as our imaginations are trapped and transactional. I remember the way that you know, attributed to CSEC and Franco and all sorts of other people of you know it's harder to imagine the end of easier to imagine the end of the world, then the end of capitalism. And people forget that capitalism is about 500 years old. You know humans are about what you know, depending on what kind of counts we want to do five or 25 or 50,000 or so. We haven't always lived in this. But now it seems to be all we can imagine. And the power of these stories or glimpses of other communities other cultures other times it will live in other ways seems to me to be deeply deeply important. For the passage that we're going through in the next, you know, decades or century. Thanks, go. So I don't know if you can do me. I'm jumping in because I can't get to get the control off it says I'm driving. I'm on my iPhone on the treadmill in the in the Napa Valley. One of my favorite places in the world. And we're going on a wine train for Thanksgiving lunch. So I'm filled with gratitude. I'm healthy. I think I have a path forward right now in terms of treatment. And I'm feeling gratitude for the, for the friend that I was testing this morning. Some that have been in touch with regularly some haven't been in touch with for a while. And Rick, you, you actually simulated a great story of remembering that has two parts. One, the culture of Japan, same as Korea. And in terms of, you know, when you're hosting your hosting. And I mean, a number of years ago, I think it was when I was having a hip replacement. I had a Korean nurse and I was talking about how he just recently visited Japan. Well, the Japanese are cultural traditions. Everything they do, they sell from us. I found, you know, kind of rather humorous. But what happened in Japan, my son in law, my Japanese mentor, who was a multi generation medical family and my own. We went to all the hospitals in Super Waka province. And when Marty was alive, we visited and had a wonderful time to travel all over Japan. But we were hosted for three days. We went up in the Medivac Holocaust helicopter. We had traditional meal at a Japanese home. We had dinner. We'd taken around for all the shrine. We made traditional mochi, a pounding rice batter and traditional permit containers. And we stayed at a lovely hotel for a couple of nights and I went to pay the bill. And it was all taken care of. And I said to my son in law, I said, Bryce, you know, come on, this is way, way beyond. And he said, don't worry, you're a tradition and you'll get your back. So that two years later, I get a call from Bryce, my son in law, and he said, well, it's payment time. And I said, oh, he said, yeah. Dr. Kamachi, who I've been calling Dr. Hamachi, which means tuna. If you know those who you don't want, don't see your sashimi form. He said he'd pay that time. He said the doctor is coming to San Francisco with his two granddaughters. One of his sons and his mistress and get to the tour guide. They're coming to look at Stanford and Cal and get through the tour guide of the day. So Bryce hired a small van. And I was a tour guide for two days, taking them all around the day. And that's my great Thanksgiving story. And thank you for that fond stimulation of the memories that I appreciate that. And I just, I may run out of power any time. So I wish all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving. And thank you for the stimulation that these calls have been. Thank you, Stuart. Thank you very much. Thanks also for stopping sort of for sort of dropping into practical gratitude about things in your life, which I wanted to head us toward also. Rick, I think you had your hand up earlier and it may have gone down automatically. Yeah, that's fine. No, I just wanted to pinpoint a point of this three hour thing that talked about the science of gratitude. It'll probably come no surprise to many of you that when you practice it actually helps to down regulate your amygdala brain. And it actually enables the neocortical brain to work more effectively you feel more freer more creative and whatever. But, you know, you know, even though you, you know, you, you know, talked about the practices of gratitude. I only wish it had a more enduring effect in terms of peacemaking. So to me the gratitude practices are a requisite but insufficient. And I've been, you know, it's funny because when I was, you know, responding to these people are talking about gratitude. It's certainly what's equity practice. So I'm going to dive into that see how well that concept is already been described. And I have a certain sense of it, which comes from a position of gratitude but it's different because it's really focusing on other rather than self. Rick the practice thing is, I think it's I'm glad you raised the point of you know, wishing that were enough or that it was last but you know, Jerry and I go to the dojo and practice martial arts and we keep practicing. And I paint, I paint my house and, you know, someday a couple of days later I got to paint it again I've got to change the roof. You know, I, I just took a breath that should that be enough I'm going to take another one. We're, you know, we're, it's ongoing. If this is, you know, we're not, we're not machines that we set and forget and even those have entropy that they're looking within so this is ongoing. And back to, I think maybe what Todd said earlier on it's not that it's a practice to get somewhere it's a it's a way to live. And maybe that's actually, I think what you just said makes the point that I was saying actually it's prerequisite, but there are other practices that have to be integrated and so if we're going to practice peacemaking. You know how can we do that more effectively. We're obviously not very good at it. So how can we get better at that so I think there's a, you know, sort of overlapping domains of practices that if we were to harness that we might be able to overcome our social dysfunctional social tribalism. It's interesting because I'm curious how there can be so many religious traditions on the planet where things like gratitude run really deep. And yet they seem to apply only to their own people. And there's this desacralization of the other. Some religious traditions on or every speck of life on the planet. Jainism Buddhism, and others are kind of like that. And I'm just very curious that there seem to be contradictory commands inside of the traditions or something like that where there's a noble, there's a noble practice married to a really limiting belief and a harmful belief to a lot of people and I don't like that that makes me really angry. And I think people are, we are extremely malleable we love story we love narrative, we really obey culture, we will do what our neighbors say, and we will in fact be restricted from doing other kinds of things if our neighbors don't like it. Very often it's the rare maverick that kind of makes it go a bit and does something really different among their neighbors. And I think this is the piece of the conundrum we're facing right now worldwide. I'm, I'm, I'm grateful. I'm very grateful to be alive for the period of time I've been given on this planet. I'm old enough to have used a manual typewriter had a little all of Eddie letter of 32 little reporters typewriter and I would take carbon paper and go into forest run park in the plain Virginia with my little all of Eddie typewriter, and I would write letters to friends and keep a carbon so I knew what I'd sent. That was the original CC for people who don't know where the sea and the sea come from. And I learned how to run a key punch machine for a Fortran course at Irvine that I dropped, but but learned how to run the key key punch thank God I didn't need to know Fortran. And now have a slab of unobtainium sitting next to me that that that will translate languages for free. I can set this thing on the table between me and a person from Afghanistan China, whatever, like like, and we can understand each other. And that's one of a whole bunch of brilliant features that it does. And my little life span encompasses that and behind me in the next room is a box, my little time capsule box, and that has for example five different versions of the palm pilot, and an Apple Newton, and a whole bunch of and magic links and a radio shack model 100, which was way ahead of its time. That was like a little reporters computer with a six line LCD display that I wrote some papers on and stuff like, and that's just the technology arc of my life. And my life almost spans kind of spans women's rights, weirdly, I don't go I'm not I'm not old enough to span women's suffrage in the US or nation or worldwide. But certainly the pill is 1961 I'm born just before that. And all these other sorts of things have come out during my lifetime, which is just not a to me, not a to me I never got a Sinclair Gil that I didn't go the time x and clear out, or an Osborne, or a pro. Yeah, I had a CPM card for my Apple to so I could run CPM briefly there which was which was the operating systems that should have won DOS, what DOS should have been CPM. And I also still I have to Macintosh classics out there in the in the giant case with a zipper around the top. Those things are like incredibly heavy, I don't believe that I lug them back and forth from work to home every day. Twice a day that's incredible. Anyway, so I'm grateful for the span and extremely saddened by the direction I see everything going and right now, which I attribute a lot to humans malleability and complacency. And lack of that realization of the other. We instead we demonize the other. And it makes me really sad. So, a few thoughts. In some ways. It's all about power and politics. About 20 years ago, I got into a cabin San Francisco going to the airport. It was 11 years cab driver and I said, well, there will be peace in the Middle East. And yeah, when the politicians get out of the way. So I commend everybody to read. Tom pleases later column of that time on the ground in Israel. The stories that he came back about. But he came back to us about Israelis and Arabs and Palestinians taking care of each other. And it provided a little bit of light for him. The other spot is about Jerry appreciate what you said about technology. Yes. And in some ways, the whole AI conundrum. drama that's going on. It's kind of an effort and kind of like we have this great tool. Let's just figure out how to use it and figure out how to how to prevent the calamity that it might be. flashback. So, thanks for listening. Thank you, Stuart. And you're reminding me that we're at a moment right this moment. And I think this last weekend's events were really strong evidence of it that this these technologies which have advanced so far that they could solve a bunch of our problems or they could catalyze us. And I think that a big piece of the fight at open AI was over governing this technology so that it doesn't perform the latter function and stays on track to do the former function. And I don't think that that's easy at all. I don't think that's easy at all. No, it's not. It takes work. It takes, it takes, it takes real work, and as Schmackenberg said, you know, no matter what we invent as a system, they're always going to be some bad actors and we need to figure out what to what to do with them. It doesn't just take work up. Sorry, Rick. You'll see your head. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Go. It doesn't just take work. It takes commitments and norms and structures. And, you know, some sense of what the work is about or for one of the things that's been puzzling me about open AI and I've been posting in the in the Google group about that is, you know, the open AI has got a very interesting corporate structure and the question for me is, who is the board accountable to, you know, I mean, a normal corporation of boards accountable to shareholders elected officials are accountable to the people who elect them, not for profit organizations, the board is often accountable to admission, whatever that is, but also to itself. You know, this was a nonprofit it was exactly that. It was not the profit that has set for profit subsidiary that Microsoft invested in it, but there's a governing board of a not for profit. Who are they accountable to. But it's just what you just said, they're accountable to the mission statement of the nonprofit and to themselves that's it that's just like just like other nonprofits, which is which which is which is arguably fucked up. Why, because they're how do you have what if the board strays from the mission. If it's if it's elected, you can throw them out and in theory elect a new board if it's a self perpetuating board of a not for profit and they stray from the mission. What do you do turns out as we discovered in the last couple of days that this board is actually in a strange way accountable to the employees of the open AI for profit subsidiary because those 700 people vetoed the board's decision. And in part because a whole bunch of employees broke away and formed a company called anthropic that probably is going to hue more closely to the original mission of open AI, because they rejected the direction open AI was going in. And that and that meant that the people who felt strongly about that were no longer present for all the subsequent actions. I want to suggest that we stopped getting down into the weeds, because what I was going to say is, it takes setting the right context, and the right person, and the right investigation, understand all the new on pieces, and whether or not those traditional things that you guys are pointing at are really a useful way to think about and frame the dialogue. There are extraordinary peacemakers and peacekeepers in the world who are biting at the bit to help facilitate all of these dialogues. But the politicians, and as you know, a lot of politics in this conversation always get in the way often for their own self preservation. What do you mean by politicians, any operative that has power or control or sway over a group of people who will follow what they have to do. I mean that's my off the cuff definition. So we're back, we're back to the Jerry's conversation about anarchism before. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, whether or not it's in the political realm of the neighborhood well realm of the religious realm or the Asian state realm, you know, there's that group of people who are more concerned about their own self preservation. Remember, I can, when the US Congress is filled with safe people, statesmen, and a few stateswomen who would put their own concerns aside, their own party aside for wisdom. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, but they answered to a bigger calling, a higher calling on that pack in his, you know, magnum opus, a road less travel articulated the premise that most people get wrong. I don't translate what he said, many are called pure chosen. And the new words are reading from the original, many are called to choose to choose is answering to a higher calling. At some point, when I read that I said, no wonder my life. Well, then it's fucked up, because I made the choice and it just had a bunch of films fall into place. So I'm sorry to cut off that conversation that I just thought, and we might take it to a little bit of a higher level. Thank you and we were thinking we slowly into the quagmire of the open AI kerf level of the weekend, which we can, I think, save for a future OGM call because it's super interesting and hot. Yeah, I was, I was, I was actually learning some of the nuance, what you guys were articulating. But I just thought we might have a little bit different conversation. Exactly. And I think Rick has a suggestion for us. Yeah, it's something just dawned on me as we're having this conversation I thought of before but I haven't actually done this and I'll make a suggestion if people want to play that's fine if they don't that's fine too. But it's an inquiry practice and the one of the things that happen in groups zoom calls is you're following the flow of the conversation the chat can capture some off, you know, information. But actually every time I go to the practice that I go to every zoom call is what question is not being asked and needs to be asked as a discipline. And so as this conversation has gone on I composed one but if people feel the mood, one could just take one minute for people to think about what question about gratitude that has not been addressed that you would like to ask. And this to me creates more of a divergent framework and inclusion where everyone and participate if they want to. I've never done this before, and I just thought about it today. I thought about but not actually offered it so I just put that on the table to see if people want to I've composed a question which I'm willing to share. But in the spirit of equity, I think everyone, if they feel so inclined to do the same but if you want to go with the flow of the conversation that's fine as well. I'd be happy to go along with that any objections. Anyone not want to do that. Rick, do you want to take the question into the chat so that we can all stare at it. No, what I was going to suggest not to put my question everyone put. I mean I can put my question in but I actually I'm interested in the questions that people have the way we frame questions say so much about ourselves. Well as the inquiry you want to make and even the first pass of a question is just the beginning of a journey, because as you get into it you'll change a question I've done this sort of professional development before. And it's fascinating how people can start with initial question and as they reflect and come back to it. And it's a question that doesn't have a simple answer obviously it's a wicked problem. Where does the question land that you feel like would be beneficial to explore. I'm going to spend much more time than one minute on this but at least go through the exercise if people feel like, I mean it takes time, you know it takes time to actually, you know, you know, but that's one of the practices I do with old zoom calls I come away with a question, where I feel like. That's what I want to continue my inquiry and community with others. Well, thanks. So where you're heading seems very close to Doug Carmichael's me a serious conversations protocol where he's asking people to focus on. What is the thing that we should focus on what is the most important thing we could focus on right now which is similar but not the same as what What I what I meant by what question I didn't mean for you to put your own question in the room, but I think that the question you asked earlier is what question is not being asked and needs to be asked, which then allows each of us to explore our own space. That's kind of what I meant to set this up. Is that okay. Oh, absolutely. That's exactly. But that's that's that's all I was looking for. So I'm going to suggest that we go quiet for a minute with this question or whatever just came up for you in this last little bit let's not use the chat for a minute let's just be quiet for a bit, and then let's step back in and we can use the chat and the, and the conversation to sort that out but I will mind a minute's time. Hey Ken, you're just landing as we're going into a minute of pondering a question I just put in the chat which is what question is not being asked, and needs to be asked. So we'll come back out of silence with that. That would be my time are going on. Well, Jerry, since I can't type. I mean, I just want to throw my question in. Please do. Thank you. So one of the great. I have found on mediation technique is like geometry, which I got through high school by starting with the truth and working my way backwards. So great mediation techniques is what is the vision that we could all agree upon that we'd like to see as a compelling question, and then figure it out. So what's what agreements can we make to get there familiar with current law. I know what my answer to the question is that I'll leave that open. I'll go back to it. And I'm thinking let's get a bunch of questions in the room, and then we can go back and talk about them. So let's not discuss each one right now. Let's just either put your question in the chat. Right now, or step in raise your hand and tell us what your question is either way is fine. And so while people are typing in the chat, I will go to Rick. Yeah, I just put mine in I've been, I've been thinking about this so that's my question. Jeff tells Jeff sells very nice and would still just talked about actually, what is the vision. I'm going to read. I'm going to read what you put in the chat real quick just to have it in the recording. How might we cultivate the practices of equity governance based on the rhodium rule, be fair and kind to all people the planet the environment nature by diversity animals the soil and plants. So equity governance is about co creating fair rules fair plays fair games fair opportunities and fair awards to benefit all on a healthy planet. Alas, this conflicts with what I saw when I googled the rhodium rule which I had never heard of before. And the rhodium rule that I found online is take care of yourself first. There's many versions of it. So there's another one that it's not going to help you decide a rule that has like 12 different versions I'm afraid. Well, I do we let's put that argument aside other people. Okay, thank you. Just wanted to point that out that it's not it's not helping your argument. So we have be kind of termites is Eric because they're the ones we're going to win at the end. John Kelly has his hand up please jump in john. Okay, I'm going to paraphrase the title of a book that my client is writing he's a emeritus professor of law. He's working on a book called there's no such thing as a fair lunch. And it's a discussion of discrimination. I'm not going where he's going with that title I I'm thinking that the there's no such thing as a fair lunch is a provocation. It's a provocation to say there are limits to using fairness as the means of trying to manage or facilitate our engagements. And we need, we need a beyond fairness motivation of some kind and when several have been suggested already in this call and you know we know we can think about what those are but I mean, in other words don't get overly focused on fairness as and having it prevent you from doing something that's that's worthwhile and mutual but doesn't meet a strict definition of fairness. Thanks john. So meditation on how fairness or the, the goal of equity and fairness might actually be a limiting factor in making things better. Yeah, sort of like the good, the perfect as the enemy of the good kind of thing fairness would be great and that's not, that's not stopped if we can't get there. Well, if people, if people, excuse me, people live by the golden rule or whatever rare metal we want to name things with the people, if people treat each other well then fairness doesn't matter fairness just sort of shakes out the mix. If you do if you do want to others. Unfortunately, yeah, I was going to start grifting on that but I'd rather hear what other questions we have in the room. Ken Todd Julian Judy. Why do we sometimes resist expressing gratitude publicly. Thank you others jump on in Doug C. You're muted. You're still muted Doug. Now you're unmuted. Shouldn't we be thankful for all the things that we're not thankful for. That's right you did put that in the chat a little bit earlier. Good one. Thank you. And it's mean the logic behind that is the dialectics requires that there be an opposition in order to get anywhere. Even the burr in your pants is serving a purpose. Others. I'm sorry, I haven't, I haven't been able to formulate it, but based on, if you look at what can just put in the chat. I'm still trying to get actually what can set as where I am. So I'm still trying to formulate the question without it just being more of the same old stuff. So this is a meta question designed to break the question. Interesting. I like thankful. And I'd like to come back into that conversation Judy go ahead. Well the question I put in, which I suspect would be different for our group than the general group of the world is our questions a part of your regular reflection and practice on a daily basis. I have insatiable curiosity. So my whole day is filled with questions. Which I pursue as I can. But they range from ridiculously simple to ridiculously complex. And I think that the curiosity that's intrinsic and questioning is something that we've lost culturally in many different areas and it's to our detriment. Can I point out enhancing on that what Judith just said, one of the things I noticed a long time ago is I think the US Constitution is actually pretty well designed. But when I think back to the 18th century people had time to think about stuff. So it took you two days to get from Philadelphia to New York, I believe, because you're on a horse, even longer if you were walking. So that left plenty of time to think. Nowadays you're stuck in traffic you're rushing here and there if you're a parent you got to go pick up the kids from cheerleading, etc. There's no time to think and thus you end up with these hasty decisions, which are spurred by the media that loves to do click bait and trying to push you into a frame of thinking. And it's, how can you possibly come up with a thoughtful approach to anything when you don't have the time to engage in thought. I have friends who listened to tons of podcasts while they're driving or doing other things and my interpret, I don't know if it's true my interpretation is that they have no time to think by themselves. It's all input from something, you know, so-called idle time filled with stuff. Exactly. Yeah, Judy, I live in questions to I'm a curious guy I don't always pursue questions sometimes I just like to have them just hang out with me and see what see what develops. I'm, I'm really struck by what seems to me to be the lack of curiosity. Particularly among younger people I've been I've been in a bunch of sort of networking conversations, not networking conversations or what are the what do you call this. You know, some younger professional wants to talk to me and sort of get my perspective on stuff or look for common interests and again and again I'm just struck that. People have conversations and don't ask questions. It feels like they're in curious. And it really, and I don't know if other people have this experience this this is a sense I have of people significantly younger than me. And I'm baffled by it. Since curiosity and questioning is so much a part of who I am. I think a lot of kids have been raised to be in curious to study for the test regurgitate what's there like the school system is designed to stamp out curiosity. And if you've got a high achieving family your goal is to pass all these hurdles that are standardized tests, and to get into a great college. And if you're in train to that voyage. It's going to damage your curiosity unless you're really, really strong. And I think only, only let the strong and or really the rejects out of the system are the ones who managed to protect their curiosity and keep it going and protect their sense of agency. For example, anyway, we've got Rick and Julian with their hands up. Yeah, I'll be very brief. I think whenever you pose a question before there was a quick reaction to my question. One rejected different the whatever the thing is you have to understand the meaning of the words and the questions before you start discussing them otherwise you end up talking across purposes. So, you know, and immediately, Jerry, you went into a sort of what I would could say debating mode, dispute me. Oh, that's you can't use that. And then John came in with his framework of thinking about fairness and then Gil came in with his. And to me that's where a lot of disagreements occur because we're not we're not even sure we understand the question the same way. So a fundamental principle of using questions of inquiry is you have to understand what the pose I meant by the question, see where the disagreements or agreements are and then discuss it. Otherwise, you end up in debating modes, which end up to be largely futile, especially when you're dealing with complex problems and on that note can put a bunch of questions in that need to be read out. Yes, and I want to get I want to get to Ken's questions exactly. And, and Rick. Yes, and I think your use of the word equity, ever since I've met you confuses me because I think equity is one of those squishy words that means different things to different people. And I think that the debate over just trying to narrow down how we mean equity and what you mean by equity and what I might mean and how there is a really long conversation. Exactly. That's why it needs to be co negotiated as with fairness. It's co constructed. It's not the imposition of me on you or whatever. And the problem US culture is it's got a fundamental bias against equality and equity, even though it professes to have one. Thanks. We're much better at defining liberty and freedom, but we're not so good at defining what we mean by equality, what it really means and what equity means. I would actually suggest that we're not that good at defining liberty and freedom and that freedom has been co opted like crazy by the far right and I'm against us. I agree but I'm degrees degrees it's better than. And it's given a higher priority than. And that's the reason why we need to go ahead. Julian and then I'll ask Ken to talk through his contributions to the conversation if you would. I'll just talk about equity reminds me of the old parable about how do you fairly divide a cake when 2 anxious people are waiting to get their hands on it. Right. You let 1 cut and the other 1 choose 1st. Which is the old conundrum among siblings right. Yeah, 1 1 cuts 1 picks. Ken, you put a bunch of thoughtful things. One of the things that one of my constant request to Pete for the plex is that there be permalinks to the individual posts in the plex, because I see good stuff go through the plex and I can't point to it in my brain which is my own problem because of the quirky ways I use the brain, but I would love to be able to annotate so Ken, I'm actually really happy you have a full LinkedIn post for the way you took the I'm assuming mostly the same materials I will go look. But I'm thrilled you did that because now I can actually kind of curated and I would love for you to talk us through it a little bit if you'd like. Sure. So the LinkedIn post builds on what I wrote for plex and talks a little bit more about the management and assessments and how the assessments we make about the future then predispose us to towards certain actions away from others and then I went on to talk about the news and how the news doesn't ask important questions. And so these are the questions that when I find the news is eating my brain that I go to. So what's important now and what information and knowledge might I be missing and how can I acquire it. Whose views might I be overlooking either consciously or unconsciously. What do I value differently than the people I disagree with and kind of understand why they value what they do before I go and judge them. This came out of reading Monica Guzman's book I never thought of it that way it's just a terrific book I really recommend it. How can I shift my perspective to see differently and hopefully more comprehensively, and how can I increase the well being intelligence diversity variety connectedness and coherence of the systems that I'm nested within. Thank you for for that I will go read the LinkedIn post and I'd love to just sit with that as a group for a moment if anybody wants to riff add question. Exercise this set of lovely questions and can. I just wish everybody I bumped into and everybody I hear about we're thinking in these ways I just wish this was common practice it would be lovely your I think your suggestions are great. Thank you. We can start the movement right here. We can all start to embrace these questions and just then put them out there and you know it's like. I've done the first move who's going to be the second follower and get this thing going for the people who are watching. You have to start doing a really crazy ass dance on the side of the hill first though. There you go. Yeah, I really like what you just said actually and I would say that all those questions could be applied to the question I posed and the initial reactions that I got to it. Actually I feel like that this actually is a format for new books that the way develop a process about how to create new books so that when we have our differences which we inevitably do. We can see where we're this middle ground. Well, where can we acknowledge the differences in a way that can be inclusive so that you actually address the questions you just said. So how do you create learning communities that do this, so it can provide the governance stewardship and leadership so we're more effective in solving our wicked problems. Thank you. And I'm wondering. Can this set of questions to the does it parallel a movement or a document or a statement you've seen out in the world or is this relatively a new configuration of these things like, I think I know you're being inspired by a bunch of different works. Have you seen anything like this collection existing already. Some of it comes from my own thinking some of it comes from indigenous teachers. It's a lovely synthesis of lots of really great thinking. Yeah, I mean it's really hard at this point in my life having been exposed to and teachers and method always in traditions and what I've read and you know I don't know where one thing starts and the other one, you know leaves off and it's like. This is just the latest iteration of what's going through my head these days and thinking of. I'm made a couple of decisions in my life here. One is, I don't I want to amplify what's working in the world and not focus on what's not I know there's plenty of shit that's not working. Nobody needs to tell anybody that, but Daniel put in the post I say you know, with regard to moods. A mood of resourcefulness and fulfillment comes from doing an appreciative inquiry into what's working what can be built upon and what is effective risk management look like yeah I know there's all kinds of things happening, not ignoring them. I'm focused on oh my God it's going to paralyze me with fear. It's more like okay if this is happening. What precautions can we take what what can we do to mitigate risk and and then what can we work with that's already working and build on so that things get better. And that's the stance I want to take for whatever remaining time I have in my life I've tried troubleshooting for years and it doesn't work. And so I want to work with what's. I want to work with the principles and processes that that nature uses for collaboration and cooperation, collaboration and cooperation, and to get systems to work I believe that a friend of mine I came to the various soul one day and he said, what would you do if you knew the universe would back you up by anything you did. If you can learn how to work with the universe, the universe will back you up. So how do we learn to work with the universe is kind of where all these are pointing towards. I saw as the Society for organizational learning is that yes, yes. Sorry, I was just going to clear I was just going to clarify the acronym. Doug's got his hand up. Yeah, so if I can quickly and then I'm going to go ahead. So, small pieces self promotion. My neobook addresses. Many of the current code problems in the world, things that need exploration and dressing. And one of the elements of it. Aside from some poetry to drive people into their bellies and feelings. And some of the facilitation techniques that I've used over time is the notion that we need a some form of secular 10 commandment for the year 2023. That looks to many of the things that we've been chatting about as guidelines. As ways of being with each other. All the 10 commandments of major religions. The US Constitution. We're written in a so so different than currently on planet Earth. And so one of the things I'm excited about in terms of me over is that, you know, this is just my music. Just like they were the musings of Muhammad or Buddha, you know, many eons ago. But now we get to use our technology to expand a labyrinth. And what a beautiful opportunity. I agree, Doug, if you'll hold up one second. I'm just going to put in I'm going to screen share for a moment the link I just shared in the chat. Christopher Hitchens is a, I think, lovely philosopher, I'm sad he's passed. He did a talk for Vanity Fair called his 10 commandments where he criticizes the 10 commandments and then offers these 10 commandments for the modern era so somebody's been working on this and I'm sure there are plenty of other variants. I will also add that the 10 commandments out of said Bible are one of my pet peeves. In fact, I think they're terrible just terrible. Anyway, do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity of color do not even think of using people as private property, etc, etc. I'll let you read them yourselves but I wanted to, I like number eight turn off that fucking cell phone. But I think there's a lot of wisdom in in his approach here so I will stop share and go to Doug. Can I just make a quick, quick comment to Stuart before he leaves very quick before he goes. Just, Stuart, I love what you're just talking about and I'd love to see in the new books. I mean, we're all sort of doing something here. Imagine if you presented your article pre publication substack. People came together went through some of the process we're doing here enriched it, publish it and then come back again and keep iterating and getting people to react to it and creating a sort of my serum network of people's posts on new books, their own substack and really try to create something that is the ghost beyond the individual author. It's really a collaborative process and what can just said about you can't remember where he got this influence from other I mean that happens all the time. It doesn't matter just get it out there. I agree completely with if a conversation started. And what Rick is saying is extremely neo bookie so thank you for that Rick I appreciate it. You've been very patient. I'd love to get what you're thinking into the conversation. Well, I want to build on what Ken was saying about work with a positive. And I want to be critical of that a little bit. I mean, if you went to a doctor, because you're sick, would you be comfortable if they only looked at what was working. And it's not either or one of the others, both. And the interplay between the two. That's so important. And so much of the discussion here has been my side is right. And everybody else is absent from the conversation. I didn't advocate being Polly Anna only with me what's working. I said do good risk assessment. Look at what is danger what is what is causing harm, figure out how to mitigate and ameliorate that, but also focus on what can what can be built because that's where the immune system is going to be strongest yesterday. And I heard you say that you have made a personal choice to stop wasting your air breath, life energy on the negative stuff and on what's broken and I'm even maybe trying to explain what's broken to everybody. And I'm trying to raise and lift up and amplify the stuff that works. And I'm like, that's a great life choice. I didn't, I didn't hear you saying, we should avoid talking about the negative all of us. I was like, I heard you say, this is a decision I've made for the rest of my life energy and I'm I can totally respect that that sounds awesome. Other thoughts we've got a lot of stuff on the table. And Ken, I wanted to say, there are a million manifestos in the world they are a dime a dozen. I collect them. I've got a thought that I'll share in the chat called manifesting. I don't think this is a manifesto but I would love if this were and I really don't want it framed as 10 commandments. I've got to talk to Gil about like how I got a straight in my head around the commandments. But, but I'm really interested in giving this a title so that there's like an irritant in the oyster that we might all be able to point to and rally around. And I think you might have a suggestion for that or something else. Not, but you're muted. So you're going to have to unmute or we're never going to hear your, your pearls of wisdom. I just have it in my brain as Ken's questions. Yeah, but we tag tag to enumerated wisdom, which is category I learned from you. Well, no, if it were, if it were enumerated wisdom, it would be 10 10 questions or Ken seven questions. But I have a, but I have a parallel thought called non enumerated wisdom, which is in fact where it would go. Excellent. Well, I could, I could toggle on numbers or not. So that there's that but to the question of sourcing. I mean, can yes, of course you were, you were in every moment to synthesis of all you've ever been but I'm calling these your questions. Which is a great starting point. And some of them you may have exactly quoted from somebody else and some of them you've been influenced by other people but it's it's a distinctively Ken home reformulation and I like it. How about Homeric wisdom. Oh yeah. Just be careful you might go blind. Other thoughts comments in particular on Ken's questions, but also about the whole conversation. Which, you know, unfortunately, I'm like, John, I can't, I can't meet Thursdays. And I wish I could. But what I've appreciated about the session is that there's been some healthy generative dialogue with conflicts. I would love to go into the conflicts and the differences. And having a forum where, you know, John and I could talk about and Gil and whoever else wants to disagree on the issue of fairness equity that you could do that because to me it's even to those things are dynamic involving it's not a static process. And so we have to have some sort of sort of guardrails around what we mean by the term so at least we know where we disagree generally and where we generally disagree on something. Thanks. I agree with go ahead, Gil. I disagree that we need to know that. I also, I, I, I just debate between Doug and Ken. I have no difference there. Diagnosis is critically important to understand the systems and dynamics and prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. And I'm with Ken I found that to the extent that I have a theory of change. It's highlighting what's working. Because existence is proof of the possible and I found that to be, you know, this is a game I played through my throughout my whole career is saying to people here. Here's the thing that's actually working that you like you can't tell me that it's impossible if I can show it to you on the ground. And I've found that to be one of the most powerful ways of breaking people open when they feel stuck like there's nothing to be done here. Well, here I have a look earlier in the conversation Jerry when you were talking about Murray Bookchin. There's a Rojava mini nation in the Kurdish lands in the Middle East, very much inspired by Murray. And it's a it's an anarchist feminist sort of ecological community. I mean, I've never stated in recent wars, but you know, when people say of that can't possibly work. Go take a look. Totally agree. And then the diagnostics become critically important to say well, so like what's in the way here. You know, what are the things that that take us down the wrong path or paths we don't like what can we learn from that how can we think about where interventions might be appropriate with a vision of something that's working to guide us. I'm not going to go on the side but I'm just planning ahead for GM a little bit. April and I had an acquaintance who's in the water world, who we had a really great conversation with last week, he is going to be in Dubai for cop 28, and has a he sent us some materials about his start at his nonprofit called circle of blue, and it was too many words and he could really use some help synthesizing an elevator pitch or something really simple way to explain what he's doing. So I kind of, I volunteered OGM for it because the work he's doing is really OGM me circle of blue is all about shared data open data, rethinking journalism, connecting up a bunch of stuff it's extremely OGM me so I'm going to put an invite to the OGM list, describing next week's call shortly, so that we can think about it for a week and martial resources and and look at his materials because he sent a deck and a text description, both of which are just like Tldr. Will he be on the call with us. Yes, he's actually going to be in Dubai and we'll call in I locked down the time with him. Yeah, please. When Hunter Levenson I were teaching the principles course for the Presidio sustainability MBA program some years ago. One of the things that would happen toward the end of the semester was that student groups would present their pitches, their deck and their elevator pitch for their project for their for their sustainability entrepreneurship projects. And we drove them really hard to elevator pitch. And it was amazing how difficult it was for motivated passionate well intentioned people to get really crisp and sharp. And, you know, on the principle of you got 15 seconds to get somebody to say I'd like to talk with you further that's the only goal. We surprised and we had a klaxon horn under the under the desk the first time. We have me and Hunter and as soon as somebody said in their elevator pitch systems thinking we would blast. Because that was being offered is like a proof of something like sorry. It was, it's almost tautological. And it was a terrific, terrific discipline to just drill and drill and drill and try to get that thing down to essence. And so I look forward to that. Thank you, you're reminding me my first experience of something like that in the world was when I got out of grad school my first job, my first sort of full time job was at price water house before was pwc. I was a newly minted strategic management consulting group, which had been started because McKinsey did a study for pw. And one of the results of the study was you need to get into our business so you can be a full service, full service firm. And so I was one of 20 MBAs plucked from different business schools. They had a couple partners from the various big consultancies, Bain Mac BCG McKinsey, and then they didn't hire enough middle managers who knew what to do which was the flaws of the program going forward, but we had a two week long training program in Keystone, Colorado. One of the things we got was Barbara Minto came in and taught us the pyramid principle in person, and that was like really awesome. Which is a cool thing. And then the other exercise one of the other exercises we did was to come up with an elevator pitch. And I never really thought about the concept before and, and they were like, you know, the partner the managing partner of the whole firm is in the elevator with you you have 10 floors to explain what the strategic management does. And we came up with a really nice elegant like two sentence solution I don't remember what it is now it's not drilled in so deep that I can remember it right now, but it worked it completely worked and we had this like thing we could say to anybody and to explain our existence. The rest of it was you know an exercise left to the reader that didn't work so well over the next over the next decade that this group lasted. But anyway, you're reminding me of that. Rick, and then we're getting near the end of our call and I have hopes that Mr Homer has a perhaps a poem. Actually, I would like to invite the people haven't spoken to say if they have anything to say about what they've heard so far. So, strictly Judith, I'd love to hear what your thoughts are. If you feel so inclined if you don't that's fine but you know in the spirit of equity, I think it's important to allow people who have spoken less to say something at the end if they want to. Well I can jump in real quickly. This is a very meaty subject for me. I was trained at the need to question because my mother's first response to any of my questions was what do you think. So my daughter would say I have an insatiable quest in this regard. And I spend a fair bit of my time trying to learn new things, but how to instill the quest for questions would be something worthy of further discussion, because we seem to have a very unquestioning field around us that assumes that information that's garbage is not garbage and so forth. And so I'd enjoy a still deeper conversation around how to instill questioning or invite questioning or whatever that might be. I don't want to be too directed. If you could write a little article on that and we could discuss it because I'd love to hear, you know, what your mindset is behind it so I don't know if you're interested in writing something and maybe for a new book or something but I just feel to do justice to it if you give an advance and you read it like what Ken has written, and then you come prepared, then I think it's, you know, it's an inverted classroom technique which I think can lead to a deeper conversation about the power of questioning. Okay, that's a that's a fair suggestion to make and I'll try to do that. And I do appreciate the work that can always puts into these things so. Love that. Eric you still have your hand up are you done are you. Okay. So, years ago, Peter Russell was actually my first coaching client when I got my certification is a very interesting guy and you call him up and he said, this is not an answering machine it's a questioning machine, who are you and what do you want, which I thought was really fun. To the point. So, this is not a poem. This is for those of you who lived in the Bay Area at a certain time this is john carol's annual Thanksgiving column which I really like so. Thanksgiving's always been my favorite holiday. It's comfortably free of the strident religious and or militaristic overtones that give other holidays, their soft emanations of uneasiness at Christmas for instance were required to deal with the divinity of Christ. I know some of you folks have been up your minds about that one, but not me on the fourth of July we must wrestle with the question of whether all those simulated aerial bombardments represent the most useful form of nationalism available. At Thanksgiving, all we have to worry about is whether you can wholeheartedly support a roasted turkey be friends and see gratitude. My opinions on these matters are unambiguous. I am in favor of them all the squanto gave corn stuff has been blessedly eliminated from the iconography. So the thrill of Thanksgiving is undiminished by caveats, caudas or carps. That alone is something to be thankful for Thanksgiving provides a formal context in which to consider the kindness of those that have enlightened our lives moments of grace that have gotten us through when all seemed to us. These are fine and sentimental subjects for contemplation. Why does start this year buying by being grateful for life itself. Think of respiration, where you take in oxygen, fortunately available in the air and exhale carbon dioxide, and then plants feed on carbon dioxide dioxide and spit out oxygen. Such a coincidence, where the eerie beauty of the hand, the rare remarkable ability to walk upright, your eyes, your tongue blessings on the component parts. Thank you evolution. And I'm grateful for the teachers, the men and women who took time to fire a passion for the abstract to give us each a visceral sense of the continuity of history and the adventure of the future. Our society seems determined to denigrate its teachers at its peril and ours. This is their day as well. We all learned about good sex from somebody and that person deserves a moment. Let's take a moment right now for that. Somebody taught us some hard lessons of life, told us something for our own good and that willingness to risk conflict for friendship is worth a pause this day. And somebody sat with us through one long night and listened to our crazy talk and turned it towards sanity. That person is earned this moment too. And a moment for old friends now estranged victims of the flux of alliances and changing perceptions. There was something there once, and that something is worth honoring as well. Our parents, of course, and our children are grandparents and grandchildren. We are caught in the dance of life with them. And however tedious that dance can sometimes seem, it is the music of our lives to deny it to die our heritage and our legacy. And for all the past thanksgivings, for all the people we shared them with, thanks for the time the turkey fell on the floor during the carving process. For the time Uncle Benny was persuaded to sing Peg of My Heart just one more time, for the time the two strangers fell in love and two lovers fell asleep in front of the fire, even before the pumpkin pie. And the final beat on the string is this very Thanksgiving, this particular Thursday, and the people with whom we'll be sharing it, whoever they are and whatever the circumstances that have brought us together. We will be today celebrating with them the gift of life, the persistence of charity in a world that seems bent on ending one and denying the other. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. That's beautiful Ken. Thank you for sharing that with us. I read it a very long time ago and completely forgotten about it. It's magical. Yeah, it's he's got another one to which I couldn't find it's an it's an older one that talks about you know somebody taught us how to tie our shoes and how to use a spoon and you know these these things that we forget about that without which our lives would be pretty miserable. And if you don't know John Carroll, he is just a master SAS that put a link to his site in the chat. Yeah, thank you. And if anybody hasn't walked around comparing how people tie their shoelaces you'll be surprised at how many variants there are. I just dropped the link in the chat there for everybody who wants to see this. Good I had done the SFK SF Chronicle is very mean about people who are not subscribers. I'm not a subscriber I just found that I just went to Google and said John Carroll Thanksgiving it popped up like that. Cool I went to that and it was like unfriendly so I found the one in my brain which was SF gate calm that works. Well, who knows the vagaries of paywalls and not. But I appreciate very much you're reading that into the record here. Yeah, there's a there's a service now that does AI for podcasts, I think it's called decar or something like that. I'll find a link but it occurs to me we have a whole series of podcasts it would be really interesting to run a chat bot against them and see what we said, like train it up on the corpus of our conversations. We've been. We've been training a chat bot on the corpus of the living between worlds conversations that 10 and I have been doing for the last four years, I mean for the last four years can year and a half right. And next month, which will be what December 15 third Wednesday in December, we're going to preview the chat bot with the gathered multitudes of 30 or 40 people in a call and ask it questions together and see what it tells us pretty fascinating process. And Eric's got the prompt all written up. Judy, you wanted to jump in. No, no, I was just congratulating him on what he's going to do with the next Wednesday call. Excellent. Be there folks. Cool. Was a really good call. Thank you. Thank you all very much. I am grateful and enjoy your Thanksgiving. I'm grateful to all of you and very super grateful to you for holding this space for however damn long you've been doing it. Thank you. All the way back to you 10. Exactly. I remember you 10. At one point this morning I was like, oh, and I've got the 10 call this today and then she's like, aha. So, thank you very much. And. See you real soon, buddy. Thank you. Bye bye.