 Or it might have been on HBO now to think about it because we were watching Game of Thrones. It could have been an HBO Excellent. Um, this is an inside Jerry's brain call on Wednesday, May 1st the 1st of May 2019 We have as our topic does 2020 indicate some kind of a generational tipping point and we're just starting to dip into the conversations Ken was telling me about a short trailer that he had just watched From young people saying we're coming or we're we're mad as hell And we're not going to take it anymore to borrow an old phase Yeah, it was it was very inspiring and caught both my wife and I by surprise. I'm trying to remember it could have been We sort of squat on our next door neighbors HBO and showtime and so we we're watching billions of game of thrones on there It was on that or on a disc that I got from Netflix, but it was very powerful I was like, wow, that's hopeful. That gave me a jolt of yes, it's good to see this I hope this gets out there and spreads. I really hope this is going to be the case That'd be great. I'd love that and So I'll describe the moment Kevin Jones said he appeared to say that he was going to be on the call right now, which I would love But I don't see him yet on the call So I will trust that if he's gonna make it he's gonna make it So let let me just describe the moment. I had a couple weeks ago in Boulder And I'll I'll since this is inside Jerry's brain. I have a little bit of Moderators permission to overshare my brain. So as I talk, I'll kind of come here because I created this thought in my brain As I was having that notion And I was I was sitting at the conference on world affairs that which April and I have gone to now for Three years in a row and the conference on world affairs is a My brain is a little slow. Well, that's interesting There we go the conference on world affairs is a All volunteer event that happens over five days and you get put on some panels That are kind of your own sweet spot and you get put on some panels that that are not So I was on a panel late in the week on the opioid epidemic And I'm like not an expert there, but had a fun time anyway But at the very beginning the first panel I sat down to listen to was about gen z And I'm typically a little leery of generational descriptions and trying to generalize from generational descriptions And boomers are this and extras are that and so on and so forth So I don't know that I want to connect the thought I had specifically to gen z But I do want to connect it to young people because it suddenly dawned on me. I was watching there were two young people on the panel And they were highly capable. They were both They were both from Europe, so they were both having a great time And I realized that there were a whole bunch of different things that had to do with young people who were kind of In different ways fed up and about to take action Maybe the most notable of those most recently is Greta Thunberg Who starting at age 12? Yeah, hey Michael, welcome to call Greta Thunberg who at age 12 now she's a bit older Started speaking out and has spoken in front of the United Nations and so forth And what's really interesting is She wants people to act as if this was world war two level of emergency And everybody's like gosh, isn't it cool that a young woman can speak like that and they don't they don't pick up and start doing stuff So she's getting you know Mobilizing school strikes for climate change, which I've got here in my brain And a bunch of other things basically saying look look people the houses on fire You older generation have had many chances to work on this and you're really screwed it up And so we're going to do something about it So that's one and then the Marjorie Stonem Douglas students the Parkland students after the shooting And there've been way too many shootings way too often In fact, if I go here, here's the Stoneman Douglas shootings I have a thought in my brain for school shootings, which is depressingly Full of Of shootings that happened here we go Well, that's interesting my brain is not There we go, so here here are school shootings in my brain from Columbine to you know all of Virginia Tech to a whole bunch of others and The msd students have been very different from Others and mobilized and spent a year on a bus going around the country talking about this I don't know exactly what they're up to at this very minute But I was really motivated by by their response that with never again boycott an array A bunch of other things coming out of The The parkland students Then I realized that my favorite candidate in this Coming electoral cycle my favorite candidate so far is Pete booty judge Who is Seizing people's imagination and he sees my imagination at the very beginning when he had an interview On the late show And he just sat there and every answer he gave Was better than I could have imagined the answer be And I was like, oh, okay, and and He's now been you know under the spotlight for quite a while and we will see how this plays out and there's still two years until election time But I realized that one of the things that Pete answered when he was asked Hey, isn't it crazy that you're going to be 39 if you're elected you'll be 39 You'll be younger than jfk everybody else And his answer is you know, it's first it's audacious for anybody to imagine being president Nice answer and then he says but this is really about generational change That that the older generations have fallen down on the job and the current generations in charge are sort of Proving this and we need to step in step up and make this change Well, you know now that we can so that was great and then and then I also had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others doing the Green New Deal Leading proposals to tack the tax the rich medicare for all a series of one would would consider, you know, New Dealey very social democratic kind of proposals that are getting a tremendous amount of traction and the undemonization of the term socialism For at least some proportion of the population. I should also include that universal basic income is one of these very very interesting Sort of bipartisan kind of things where you'll see kato institute and some conservative people coming out in favor of some form of universal basic income as well as a whole bunch of other people thinking about it So these were all the kinds of things that that Provoked me to start saying a If these things can start pulling together maybe they can actually Cause a large shift in terms of who represents us in terms of what policies get proposed and how things get done And then b How do we help that happen? I mean that that's my own sort of goal role desire in this is to help catalyze this generational tipping point because I pretty much agree with the descriptions I just I just gave you that that you know the older generations have fallen down on the job and are in Vapor lock politically they're you know, they there there's been intentional Division divisiveness of the body politic we cannot get shit done and And we've got to break through somehow so that that's my opening premise and I'd love anybody to take it in any direction you'd like and Todd Do you it sounds like your audio problems are resolved if you want to unmute and jump in? Yes, it seems like resolved And and I I don't have I just found out about this five minutes ago and I've got I've got a little time so I wanted to hop on join see what's and Happy to happy to Participate for a little bit, but yeah, thanks. Thank you. That's great. Um, does any of this does any of this either Rub you the right way or rub you the wrong way? Oh, so so right as the the father of a 21 year old who's about to graduate from the new school In two weeks I'm really I'm really aware of her what the work and the thinking that she's doing and what she's you know ready to take on and You know, the one way I'm supporting is supporting her Trying to partner with her because I I think she's um She's got a lot, you know, a lot of energy ideas and and currency and so, um, yes, yes and And just seeing you know, I'm here at the impact hub in Oakland Uh, I work out of out of the space and there's you know, just looking around it's it's mostly You know young vibrant folks that are out to make an impact in the world and uh Again trying to connect with them and support them and in every way So yeah Thank you. And I think that notion of how do we how do we make ourselves good allies without coming in and saying We know better It's really big. I think that's that's super important Um Cool that your daughter's at the new school the new school has great history Like it was a place of massive social change back before world war two Basically a lot of refugee thinkers showed up at the new school and formed the basis for tremendous, uh body of work Yeah, she's she's soaked it all in she's studying media culture and uh capitalism studies and the the papers Now is called, uh Like thought bubbles No, yeah thought Yeah, the thought bubbles Uh segregated memory and fossilized distrust in american democracy Wow So she's thought bubbles. What was it? What was the second one segregated distrust? segregated memory And fossilized distrust in american democracy So I've I've only read the the two page proposal and I was like, whoa, you're you're putting it all it's Start very well put And I can't wait to read the paper. Yeah, exactly. That's beautiful. Um Fabulous, thank you. Uh, and thanks for jumping in. Nice to nice to make make your acquaintance and feel free to jump in at any point This is all very informal. Um Michael any any thoughts on on the The starting point here and you are muted There you go Many thoughts. Um, nothing very coherent You always say that Michael and then you come out with something going in No, no pressure, huh? Yeah, no pressure at all Well, you know, I think it's it's when the going Gets crazy the crazy gotta get going sort of time that there's a match here There's certainly something happening the PCs are Not as much falling into places falling apart the De-fossilization in some respect But it's going to be a crazy ride so, um The more we are in enabled to empower these um fresh initiatives the In the medieval age of 60 Yeah So, no, I think that you your take on it the sort of Things that are showing up. Yeah, perfect. Yeah. Thank you. Also, um, not a young person's thing But a really nice cross-generational thing that's happening and spreading quickly is this extinction rebellion set of protests Um that are being extremely creative about how to do nonviolent social action Um, so I'm really liking that and it's funny because Donald trump in particular The way he ran and the way he's acted as president has normalized crazy So so in the previous president's administration It was no drama obama during eight years of obama tenure. There were zero scandals zero None, right which also meant that for eight years He was basically operating within a straight jacket That that he didn't have a lot of elbow room to do much of anything his his was a an administration of compromises and of getting a few things done but really really Not being able ever to be seen as angry or anything like that and and now we have a president Who's completely normalized waking up in the morning and having a tantrum on anybody Who's crossing his mind or fox and friends on twitter and making the news that way and on we go on that That's a normal beginning of a day in the current president's administration and a piece of what i'm thinking about is Okay, good. Uh, I hate that that's happened. What does crazy look like from the other side? Can we take that elbow room? Can we take that leeway? And do something really crazy ass productive with it Ken, I think you probably have a couple of ideas going here at one of the throw to you Your voice is suddenly much lower than it was before a little bit better now Okay So we're gonna we're gonna talk about you know Can you bring your computer closer to you? Yeah, you're suddenly much lower volume than before Cool and hold that thought Um If either of you'd like to jump in Please feel free Well, I liked I liked what you said earlier about supporting them without Without being you know Overdoing you know like how with my daughter, you know, I I'm like I don't want to like here's how to do it You know, I want her to come to me, but she sees the work I'm doing and she gets inspired and she asks questions that I'm not like, you know It's it's a balance and uh You know I'll kind of wait for folks to come to me before Like hey, I've got I've got the way to go and Go ahead. I'm done. The other Well, a group I want to bring in is Ashoka and thinking about the work that they're doing in supporting uh innovation innovative leaders And uh that work Yeah, I agreed Um And I had a thought that just like fled my mind a moment ago. Sorry Ken, do you want to jump jump back in? And now we don't hear you at all Try again make a noise Now you're frozen The freezing is gone Uh, you're I see your lips moving, but we're not hearing you. We're not hearing it. Yeah. Here we are No, no, we're not Oh, man. I feel like a cell phone commercial. Can you hear me now? Yes, only you're still really low volume, but uh, if there's any way you can speak into your mic or whatever that'll help a lot Okay It's now you need to select the right microphone. So and you go to the little microphone And the app arrow and then select external That's probably the problem. Yeah, it's not listening it from the right microphone All right In the zoom setup or in the uh system setup In since I'll be in zoom Okay One or the other Because you were louder at the beginning of the call. That was very strange. Is it has it better now? Yes For somebody I went into the zoom preferences I'm going to try that. Did you say make me sound bad? It was set all the way over to the left So I moved I moved it Working, okay Okay, go ahead. So I had this I had this this friend that we get together and have very interesting conversations And he said, you know, what's what's something on your mind and and I said my big question right now is how to be effective There's so much change going on, you know, and So many places to put our attention. We have to be very careful My experience as a facilitator is whatever you focus your attention on We focus a group's attention on grows in your awareness So, you know, he started talking about pendulum swings And I flashed back to my childhood of going to the boston museum of science They had a wonderful sand pendulum there And you'd take this pendulum and pull it all the way back and let it go And if you watched it for a little while, it didn't just swing back and forth Because of the it was hanging from a very high point in the ceiling because the earth rotation stuff It would trace in the sand this very complex We didn't realize it at the time, but it was a complexity pattern, right? and I think When people use metaphors like pendulum swings, we're thinking back and forth instead of a pendulum swinging around In cycles through a pattern where sooner or later it's going to coalesce into that particular corner or that particular area and There's very strong Signals coming converging from aOC from Greta from from the summer From generation waking up from all these things and as far as I can tell they're still flying below the radar Because they're not paid attention to by the mainstream media, but they're all over facebook. They're all over twitter They seem to be pretty well known in the bay area I don't know about the rest of the country because I'm in the bay area and that's you know, that thing But remember almost 30 years ago hearing Michael E. recite Gates's second coming and there's a line that says things fall apart that simply will not hold And what's your math is I said when the center you're not pulled, where do you go? You go to the margins you look for what's happening on the margins because that's When the center falls apart and You know You see it was abandoned by it was a huge industrial capital machine right and it was abandoned when The the daughter's she went belly up And people on the margins went in there and they've begun to reclaim land. They're they're doing urban gardening There's all kinds of very interesting experiments going on there. So I'm sensing that there's Lots happening at the margins and the question is Is there enough of a critical mass for it to bring us to that tipping point and the the fear I have is that The certainty have is that it is the fear I have is it's not going to happen in time because it doesn't happen in 2020 I'm afraid what will happen in the next four years till the next election will be so catastrophic will never recover so there's I'm paying attention to gretta's Admonition to act as if the house is on fire and I've been acting as if house is on fire for 30 years So finding ways to speak to people about it that doesn't trigger denial that doesn't trigger fear that doesn't trigger. Oh my god But that moves them to action brings me to my question of how do we be effective what you know How can we talk to people about These very challenging things And take them they're going to bump up against despair I just was was I posted a Joanna Macy interview today because we bump into despair It's it's an appropriate response When you see what's happening to the land to the water to the air to the the future generations It's an appropriate response to to be first outright outraged and then deeply saddened and into despair and if you can't Move through that at an emotional level you'll stay stuck at a cognitive level of being in denial or taking one side so I think the complexity of it is just Freaking enormous the challenges There's the cognition part. There's the emotional part. There's the social part. There's the relational part There's the ancestral part the transcendence. You know, how do we put those into? Chunks that people can digest and one thing from Joanna's View that I posted today she said, you know the work that reconnects is done in groups and there's power in speaking your your truth And your despair because it breaks the myth of isolation. We are not isolated We are inherently a collaborative and cooperative species and when you begin to say this is This is what's going on for me. This is this is my despair People are touched they move by it and they're moved to action the way that they don't get if all you're doing is yelling and being angry Mm-hmm, so those are that's I don't know how coherent that is, but that's my Look for me It's it's lovely and resonates in many different ways with things that I'm seeing and then partly um, there's a couple of sort of large dark clouds in the background one of which is that A bunch of people have discovered that they can weaponize truth and trust in in political discourse and that it's winning them elections And that social media have very poor defense mechanisms against this happening to them So there's that kind of going on which is really difficult and then right next to that is A sad truth that most people will They will prefer membership over logic meaning if they're faced the decision of saying something that's going to get them booted from their in group Or Adopting a new line of reasoning they will they will ignore the line of reasoning as inconvenient in order to stay within the in group And that's just one of humans sort of lesser less noble traits is that is that we're willing to overlook a lot of reason To get someplace never mind that sometimes the reason is complicated never mind a whole bunch of other things But even just this whole thing that membership trumps reason much of the time and I can I've got that in my brain Which I'll I'll show in a second. So so one of the things I really admire about buddha judge Is his ability to speak in ways that I can imagine people who are conservative also appreciate entirely I I also like this about his basically, uh resume Uh that he did a tour in afghanistan, you know and was in danger and Uh, you know as a mayor of a rust belt city who's done a few things not a whole bunch But a few things that are interesting and seem to be helping, you know the city and so forth. So So I'm listening with care to that because at some in some sense gretta thunberg is at the opposite rhetorical extreme Right She's saying We are in meltdown. You are ignoring it You need to wake up and act as if the house is on fire That is the opposite rhetorical and again not opposite opposite But but it's she's way at the other end of the field somehow from from Mayor pizza approach To this whole issue and and i'm acutely aware and I think many of our conversations here at inside jerry's brain Keep coming back to this notion of How do we surface these things in a way that leads us to action in a way that doesn't Distance the other diss the other ignore the other and make things worse I want to say one more thing. I went to hear larry lessig two weeks ago. He was here in center fell and I'd never heard him speak before I was very pleased with his presence and and they opened with Will durst who's a political comedian and and I got to say I laughed my ass off the guys is very funny But uh, all his better lines was, you know, traditionally the presidency is not an entry level job, which I found amusing but Larry was saying that he showed some very disturbing graphics of how You know How little power voters have And you know the amount of time that once elected congresspeople spend 30 to 70 percent of their time Dialing for dollars and they the presidential campaign happens in 14 states That does not happen in california doesn't happen in new york does not important states because Money the the the way the electoral college sets is 14 states that determine what's happened Candidates go to the big states to raise money But they don't actually go there to talk about what they're going to do and and connect with the people And then this really disturbing graphic that said, you know, um If If you're a special interest, you know, you can get stuff done But if you're the people it's flat nothing happens What was really interesting was two things he said one is that 89 his researchers on 89 percent of people are Aligned in an agreement that the system is broken that it's not serving people and it needs to change And yet nothing seems to be happening That was one interesting the second interesting Interesting thing he said was i'm actually more optimistic and hopeful now than I have been in years He too is seeing something that he thinks 2020 is going to be a turning point Collaborate on any specifics just this it's a gut thing and people i'm talking to them being the way i'm being Received so that's another, you know, it's anecdotal evidence But it was delightful to hear him say that because I know he gets around quite a bit and and you know, he's He's not always welcome in some of it with his message is not always welcome So if he's getting a better reception that speaks quite well, I think to our future Yeah, and I love his speaking style. I love the way he thinks So one of the sentences you just said or phrases you just said is that nothing seems to be happening and I will throw a contrarian thought on that which is that Donald j trump is a fire ship That who has been sent into the system to destroy it By some large proportion of his voters and so far he is succeeding He has put morons and pr hacks and lobbyists in charge of Large departments given them instructions to dismantle all the all the regs and basically leave the sign on the door But take apart everything possible the judiciary one of the things that Mitch mcconnell is doing is he's fast-tracking approvals of everybody in the judiciary So that he can load up the entire system with conservatives as fast as possible So There is stuff happening. It's just reactionary stuff that's happening. That's being I think remarkably successful If you're an evangelical christian Donald trump has been the best thing for you in five conservative administrations. I hate to say I really hate to say But but that's not nothing happening This is Obviously an important moment for me to introduce this device. This is tensegrity Yeah, this is Three things pulling in different directions and held together with string and it's the basic building block of the universe but most interestingly it's um Let's begin this the right way around you can see it there. It's a spiral You see it's spiral that way and you turn it over It's the spiral the other way So what these things are it's easy to look at them as a whirlpool because that's what it is. It's mathematics of vortex the smoke ring And the thing about these things is as you're getting into them. It just gets faster and worse Until all of a sudden the same elements are expanding you out in the other direction There's sort of an inversion of all the polarities You know it's so Well, we can't do this because this gets in the way and then we can't do that because that gets in the way and then It can't do that because this gets in the way and you're just oscillating around this this curve Right push through the other side and all of a sudden it's it's totally transcendent with no reason at all it reminds me of uh So carol quickly wrote in tragedy and hope about the sort of what what caused the lock-in of the great depression And I don't remember any of the details, but basically Each of the countries was leaning against the other country in a different way And there were all these kind of bilateral lock-ups that were terrible And nobody was willing to rip this up and change the policies and move things around So everybody was stuck for a decade In the great depression until war kind of pulled everybody out But but it looks it so it feels like it looks like the thing you were just holding up Yeah, it's sort of it's wicked problems sort of territory and You can't fix one thing because the other one pops up wakamoli around loops But then it sort of moves through some sort of a an urgency of confusion very much through the looking glass through the inversion and um It just looks different So let me throw something in that I just discovered over the last couple days because Uh, I just met a met a woman who's just moved here to portland We sat down and had coffee and she was like, I know that we've just gotten to portland But I'm about to sign up for this transition design program at CMU for a year and I'm like, what's transition design and uh, I hadn't really heard of transition design and I do collect in my brain design specialties and I'll show you Oops, it's not behaving the way I'd like it to We go So this is just a through d of design specialties from active design and activity centered design To bio design biophilic design critical design and drug and Dutch design over here So the you know this roll bar will show you more types of design, but transition design is drawing on Um The great transition idea, which is uh has been in And I think this is part of the one of the movements can that you were kind of alluding to when you were saying Hey, people have actually been working, you know people have been on deck working on this really hard and so transition towns the age of transition commons transition a whole bunch of other Transition is a is a very powerful meme here for where we're moving and how it's moving He's uh, the transition designers are also pulling on wicked problems as horse riddle kind of Defined wicked problems way back when of situations that are so complicated that you just sorry horse riddle That you think you're never going to you know get out of that kind of that kind of problem There's no real way out And then also transition design is pulling on a lot of systems thinking and sort of systems change thinking in very nice ways So I'm terry urwin is the head of the program If you go look at the transition design seminar I was quite amazed and i'm halfway through listening to this talk of hers I will share links to the talk in our chat and to this spot in my brain in our chat But i'm quite blown away by the sophisticated way in which Transition design seems to be pulling a lot of the right elements together So i'm going to try to learn more and maybe do a ijb call about transition design Because i'm finding it to be extremely amenable as a Gathering point for thinking about how to go about doing the change we're talking about Does that make sense fabulous Nice to see you have counsel of all beings in there. Have you ever done a counsel of all beings? I have not I've not What's it like? it's profound For those that don't know it a counsel of all beings is is held in and out in the natural space. I did one with john c who's one of the co-authors the joanna macy of thinking like a mountain towards a council And you're instructed to go off and spend time alone in nature and find something in nature that you feel is Under threat and find something that represents it and you come back and One by one people go around the circle and they say this is my object and it represents the dolphins or the whales or You know the trees the old trees and and you speak about what it means to you to Try to speak with the voice of whatever you're representing and also what it means to you to see it leaving and It's it's one of those portals that takes you into another dimension of being Um, where you're asked to speak on behalf of another entity. So that's pretty interesting And you're also Confronted with the fact that you're you're with a bunch of people who are now giving voice to other elements of life and And that has a very Interesting way of waking different parts of your brain up and then there's there's Moving through the the despair part of that of you know, what are we gonna do about it? So, uh, it's a ritual for for healing and bringing some beauty into into a destructive act It's been she's been like 25 years since I did it So I'm a little hazing on all the details, but I just remember the emotional tone to it And the other part of transition, um, there's the work of the great turning from david courtland. Joanna macy Uh-huh, which brings in one of my favorite things is working with beings in deep time So one exercise we did when I used to hang out with Joanna a lot in the early 90s And those are the group about 100 people when we were outside and we had 50 people in an inner circle and 50 people in an outer circle in the inner circle were people who were living 10,000 years from now And they would ask questions of those of us on the outer circle saying, you know Once area was their their their world is thriving and they would say what did you do to provide us with a thriving world? You know, you made your your generation was critical. You were there alive that critical turning time And what did you do? And then We did the flip side, which is their generation is actually just barely scraping by Hardly surviving at all terrible low quality life and they're say, what did you do? And again, it wakes something up in you to participate in this that that brings a Very different perspective than what you get from reading about something or or, you know, just being in your own little bubble Very few people think in terms of 10,000 year life cycles That's it's a little bit of a stretch for for most of us Well, um short termism is epidemic and I think very intentionally Also a fear the politics of fear drives people into short term thinking Basically, you know, eliminates your your short term storage You go from being able to remember like seven plus or minus two things to maybe three When you're when you're afraid and when you have no time when your time is filled with constant nonsense You also don't have time to attend to things like empathy and you know concern for for other sorts of things So all of this is very nicely reinforcing People's not paying attention to To all of this here we go. I found a nice thought three dimensions of the great turning Number one actions to slow the to slow the damage to earth and its beings to analysis of structural causes and the three creation of structural alternatives and three a shift in consciousness And if I had a nickel for all the different people who are trying to create a shift in consciousness for the better I'd be wealthy and hopefully so would be, you know, so would all the people working on that, but It's it's amazing how often this thought here is not connected to nearly enough nearly enough things because Clearly this has been happening all over the place. So here's a here's a piece by Navi Raju about bioeconomics And the frugal innovation hub and a couple other, you know, conscious society reinventing how we consume work relate and live A book that he's writing So I'm especially interested in how we can be good allies for the young generation I'm I'm I'm just very curious because I I'm happy to share all the things I've found that have been struggling with this And chewing on it over the years um I've had the great pleasure of meeting a bunch of young people who Have made more strides in understanding how the world works than I have And then really seem to get it and and They're not naive they're they they they seem well informed about what the problems are But they seem also to have like a systems perspective and other kinds of good things and surprisingly broad purview over What's happened and what's going on so So how do we become great resources and help make the links? I think a couple things come to mind one is you know one is to try to be At hand but not, you know, not telling people what to do Another one is that I think a lot of what we carry is a memory of what's gone before And stories of why it failed stories of things that actually did work But stories like that are actually helpful when you're planning looking forward And every now and then I see people, you know reinventing stuff that Somebody's already doing and you don't need to waste your breath and life energy doing because all you need to do is back Those other people and then pick the next problem, right? I see I see a bunch of that happening, but I'm trying to figure out how does how does sort of history and context Help us and then the third thing that occurs to me is making introductions and being a bridge So connecting people that need to connect And then seeing if we can be of help for whatever those new new connections make or want to do Look for opportunities to collaborate. It's not like, you know, one's leading the other or, you know, we have to offer but look for, you know Ways to bring young people into the work any work you are, you know that you're already involved in That's that's one thought Totally agree And I have a funny feeling there's many many ways and times to cooperate It's just finding our way to them and then some of us need to make a living as we're cooperating So that actually, you know layers a bunch of complexity on top of this because A lot of the work to be done Isn't hard to do but it does require time effort and focus, but it often is unpaid Um, and that's a problem because if we you know, if we've got to all figure out how to stay in the monetary economy While doing this work, that's gotta gotta get figured out somehow Maybe that comes to my mind is is more of a quality than a than a doing thing, which is having some humility um The older I get the more I realize, you know, I really don't know very much There's so much to know in the world and um, and I've seen so many young people As you were just mentioning who've got things figured out at age 25 or 30 that I like wow Where did you get that, you know, like that's amazing and so I find myself quite often humbled and um, you know, I I want to contribute and I I don't want to be that person that knows it all right As the older guy, um, and it's very odd to me to be the older guy because throughout my entire life I've always been the young person with a bunch of older people and And now if I'm finding myself in the oldest person in the room, and that's really challenging sometimes um, so along with humility is humor, you know Recognizing that I often don't know what they're talking about because they're using some Lingo that I'm not up on, you know the jargon and whatever that is for the day Um, I do have a young man that that I've met through the Institute for evolutionary leadership and I'm I check in with him once a month and we've been working on a project together and I'm kind of Informally mentoring him and I find that to be really satisfying because you know, I'm Unlike Todd, I did not have children and most of some I'm okay with that but I really like that connection with the ever generation and uh And so I need to seek out more of that because I find it's very very rewarding and as you say it's time consuming I can't be a mentor to a lot of people that's um, so Also what Todd just said about working for options to collaborate I'm pretty clear that at this point in my life as I work with groups They've got to be multi-generational We've got to bring in A big cross-section of all the generations in one role including those who are to you have to speak and those who may be too old to speak for whatever Yeah I think that's also great To mix it up and and have the listening for that Sometimes I find myself listening to young people and I really have to Ground myself and and and go okay turn off the judging mind You know, I get certain things get triggered and it's like oh, and then I'm not now I'm not listening I've been judgment. So I'm coming back to myself and really listening deeply for what what's important here. What's underneath this? Thinking about those mentor relationships is being too late So, you know, what we have to share with them and what they have what we can learn from them and their their perspective because they are Like you said, they know more than we do in some things and they're they're like Grown up in this this crazy world So it can go both ways Like we said about humility Coming with that leading with that and there's a part of Modern literacy Communicational competence that's really interesting in in the sense that Some of it is just like you want to throw your hands up and despair like, you know, instagram feeds and And all that all that kind of stuff to be like, ah, what is going on here? and then In other cases the speed with which like something can travel Um, and the power that it can have when it hits um And I think a lousy example of this but but a moment when it hit me was the koni 2012 Where there was a video made of you know, get your parents to watch this with you And send money to help get this warlord out of africa And it proved to be like really flimsy and and poorly done and whatever else But boy they get a lot of young people to sit down with their parents and say, hey, you must do something about this Like it was it was remarkable in the sense that it could really move and activate a bunch of people That it being just a video just an old school video that happened to be on a new social media platform But I'm torn because you know, some some young people are Completely into the well I guess since life might end at any moment I'll just just satisfy my my immediate wants and not worry about stuff and not work You know, everything serious seems to be too big to to make a dent in so we might as well just go on Get on the hedonic treadmill and and buck up and enjoy it Um, but then there's a bunch of other young ones. We're like, um, not so much Let's uh, let's fix this Yeah, when when I first about this And I I was uh Like all into it green new deal. No way you know and like I'm like, how can I get involved and I was like Then I heard oh, it's just young people and I felt oh no, I'm not I shouldn't go I was like on my way to a to a rally and uh, I stopped myself because I was like, oh shoot Maybe I'm too old to go and I later talked to some of you know, like no, you know And there's there are to be involved, but I'm I mean in one way, you know, it's like don't let them Do their thing and I know that like Naomi Klein's involved with them and that's that's like really good They've got support there um So now I just send them money, you know, little money every month support Yeah, yeah Are there any other uh young groups that um that Are doing interesting things like it's funny when I when I think about youth. I think often about like the Uh nerdfighteria. Are you guys familiar with that? Yeah So, uh, Hank and John Green the vlog brothers um Invented a term nerdfighters or nerdfighteria And it's it's not people fighting nerds Hank and John Green, you've probably seen some other stuff One of them is a songwriter one of them is an author. They're they make awesome videos online. They are youtube stars And they invented this thing which is not fighting nerds. It's actually nerds fighting worlds suck And so they put really great videos out explaining stuff in the world and then they give, you know, young people opportunities to get together and go do stuff and there's The harry potter alliance is kind of like this as well Um, but I don't know enough about what it's like inside these things and whether they're still, you know Whether the energy is growing or not or what but these are younger folk. These are like Usually like tweens Young kids who are learning stuff and doing stuff, but they're fabulous. They have a saying dftba Which means don't forget to be awesome Uh, they created a record label called dftba records Uh, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They have the project for awesome or p4a, which was a hashtag back in the day Which was actually nerd fighters on kiva Trying to sort through which kiva projects nerd fighters should back So stuff like that, right? It's it's it's just it's really interesting and amazing Um, and I won't and here's hank green and his brother john Um, so I'm trying to figure out. All right, which of these things is still has heat right now And is doing really interesting things Uh And how do we help? education And john green is the author of the fault in our stars and more recent book on abundance of catharines Uh fault in our stars got made into a movie Here it is By josh boon with some actors. We haven't heard of so there we are Yeah, this is great to hear about it. I'm sure there's a zillion more honestly. I think that they're The young people are out there and uh, you know, we're not hearing about a lot of it. It's local I look forward to spending some time with my daughter kind of checking in on this uh, I look forward to sharing that I was part of this today and Uh, kind of tapping into her thinking and Seeing, uh, you know again looking for ways to collaborate with her And support support her, you know in what she's doing So I think what I'll do is I'll set up a similar call Uh, set it out 10 days or something ahead so we can sort of marshal people And then invite as many young young capable people as we know to the call see who can show up And and see what they say see where they where they take this Um, I would love to know Those young people from uh, the call is soon all that day is daughters and her friends from india. Yeah, they were So interesting. I was really delighted. They were on the call. It's like wow, so they were great. So east East was gone for like three weeks on on summer vacation. I just saw her on a call this morning She's but she would be like the first person I would think to invite to to be on this call. So like that There's another organization called I think it's it used to be generation waking up. I think it's just gen up now um I was exposed to them when I was working at the institute for noetic sciences several years ago and they were all about You know getting young people Socially active, you know, it's you've got to go out and register to vote You've got to work on local issues. Um, and there's pretty widely spread There's many many thousands in there. So I haven't heard from them when quite some time I don't know what they're up to but I do know they exist Yeah, joshua glum is the guy that I I knew back in the day Yep, and and I haven't heard anything about them for a while, but this is what I've got um Here's generation waking up and getting a movement We're at a cliff the story of a generation is to either fall or fly is the So it's what Greta Thunberg is saying except that Greta is getting more traction somehow Why do you brought up again? There's young people there's old people And there's youngers and there's elders Uh-huh. Because you have gray hair. It doesn't mean you're an elder, you know And just because you're young doesn't mean you can't be an elder To me Greta is an example of an elder In a younger Yeah Maladoma Samay who's a initiated west african medicine man from Burkina Faso said that In many tribes in african now the older people are Making younger people Official elders making their chiefs are saying we don't know how to handle it. We need the younger generations to help them So there is a shift going on in some indigenous communities in africa Where the the elder younger Polls are being reversed kind of like what michael was talking about you suddenly turns into its opposite, you know And they're they're they're saying help us. We need your help Um, so that's pretty interesting, you know, that's happening in the indigenous world We don't usually pay a lot of attention to that here with us in the western world But I believe it has a very profound impact on us and So when I see somebody like Greta Speaking up in the way that she does which is just You know, I she's I want to Seriously, you know, I'm not I'm not some I'm just a kid who's taking science seriously and She speaks with with clarity and authenticity that is very difficult to argue with in the same way that aoc speaks, you know, she's really disarming and charming and But spot-on and and and Super smart, you know, she's not just some bimbo waitress from from new york. She's really really smart intelligent and and she's got a way of Framing things that is very inclusive without I know it polarizes those who are just turned off by her anyway, but for the rest of us I find her message to be very inclusive And I think that's another piece that is is really critical of Um, we need to be discerning about about things that are toxic But we need to be in as inclusive as we can and say even toxic people if they can Get themselves de traumatized, you know, right with qualities and everybody everybody can be healed Everybody can read be redeemed even donald trump can be redeemed, which I know would be a heretical thing to say a lot of folks, you know Um, but I have to believe that because if I don't then then we're all you know, we're all screwed Um I just flashed on something in 2006. I was at a conference on bowling and desmond tutu was there and he gave a very powerful talk and he said, you know When you call someone a monster, this was in reference to the truth and reconciliation commission You call someone a monster you absolve them of human responsibility and then you are able to become a monster yourself You can say it's a person doing monstrous acts committing monstrous acts, but you can't call someone a monster I think that's a really key thing for us to pay attention to of who we Otherwise who Donald trump is very easy to otherwise. He's a bad guy, right? And I keep going well with you know, he's a human being and and he's doing terrible things Where could I find a redemptive quality in there that I could relate to? So and I don't have one come up empty, but at least make the effort I That's the that's the that's the action is to try and find where there are shared values and get to that start there build on You know what we what we do share and agree on and then build from there It's funny. Um I think I think aoc's intentions are very inclusive I think her approach with the green new deal and with uh democratic socialism Is Kind of the all right people we're fed up trying to play your game and walk the middle course We're going to actually take a pretty strong left course Uh for social welfare and all these other things which Then becomes not that inclusive if you've been raised to demonize socialism in any way which You know every two thirds of the three quarters of the country thought, you know from the 40 50 60 70s That socialism was as terrible as communism was the worst thing that could ever happen to the world So, you know, we're trying to we're in the face of that kind of headwind or that kind of training um I remember a long time ago being in a in a group where al gore spoke and his first words were I don't understand why conservatives don't see climate change as a huge business opportunity like electrification I do not understand Why they why they don't see that or get that or want to do that? and and so I I think that the The politics and the power sort of behind the curtain are really Powerful here. They're really uh different from what we think I for example don't understand why corporate why american corporations want Anything ever to do again with health care? If I were them, I'd be saying go immediately to national health care get rid of you know Why are companies co-paying health insurance? It's a it's a handicap in global competition. It's a stupid ass thing It's a it's a it's a artifact of world war two the way we handled Price freezes during world war two. That's all it is So why do companies want to continue doing that? I don't get it Well, I I need to bow out at this time I got to jump to another thing, but I really appreciate being engaged and look forward to following up. Thank you, Todd Great, really appreciate you being here. Yeah, take care. Thanks. Bye. Bye That's right. See you and me If you want we can kick this around some more or we can fold the pub tent for now and I'll set up the the next call same topic for For the cross-generational mixing I'm just I I told you I did a big cleaning project on the grill and I skipped lunch and I just realized I'm really really hungry I need to go get myself some food before I pass out here. So excellent, but this has been uh, it's fun I really appreciate these calls and good to be connecting with you this way. So Uh, look forward to this this next call. This is a this is fun. Awesome. Thank you. Same here same here Take care. Bye. Bye. Bye Kent