 This is the last OGM call of 2023 on Thursday, December 28th. We are gathered here to reflect on 2023 and maybe shine some light on 2024. This is also the time when lots of columnists and other people write either retrospectives or analyses of what the coming year is going to come. If you've seen a good one of those, please share those in the chat or come up and talk about them. And happy to start anywhere on this or switch topics if you're overcooked on 2023 and don't want to go back over it, for example, and we can skip on. Anybody? Anybody want to relate your best experience of the year? What memorable thing happened to you in 2023? Was it so unmemorable that none of us will remember the year? It'll just be like elided from memory? It was memorable, but you asked for the best thing. You know, I didn't want us to go doom-scrolling in our history so quickly. But now that you've asked... I had an interesting experience a week ago. I found myself at a dinner party with four very maga people and one who, you know, my friend who had just been influenced by the people around her. And so, you know, at first I wasn't going to say anything and they started talking about immigration. So under my breath, I said to my friend, that's not true. And she thought it was really funny to out me. So she did. And for the rest of the night, now I wasn't going to stop. I wanted to discuss it. The two women and her went outside. They were watching like QVC. I mean, it was totally not where I belonged. And I stayed with the two men and we were talking politics. And we did really... I mean, this went on for a few hours. And I was really proud of myself, you know, like they were listening to me. I was listening to them. We were finding places of agreement. Matter of fact, the one, the host, when I left, he really thanked me for having this conversation. But the other gentleman got a little drunk. So when he was talking about immigration at one point, I said, well, actually, there have been more arrests at the border since Biden. And he couldn't believe it. So of course I pull out my phone and I show it to him. And he's like, no, no, it's not real. Where's it from? I said, um, the Cato Institute, I said, I don't remember what that is, but I'm pretty sure it's not a left wing thing. And I looked it up. His head got to a point that out of nowhere he just said, well, it's better than Michelle Obama being your transvestite. At that point, at that point, I just said, you just, I said, that's it. I said, that's it. I said, you just devolved the conversation. And I went into the other room where people were getting ready to say goodbye. And I said, um, I said, he just ruined it, you know, and I, and they kind of bought into it. And it really took me back. And I just said, you know, that's like really rude and disrespectful. But anyway, I wasn't perfect towards the end because it really triggered me. I wound up, you know, I shouldn't be saying this, but I wound up, I wound up pulling up the naked pictures of Melania for, oh, I left out this. I go to sit at the table and they made these really nice cranberry martinis and they were delicious. And I turn around and on the wall was orange Jesus. Oh, nice. But I got through all that. So I was so proud of myself the whole time. But towards the end, I guess with the alcohol and just my resistance was down. I mean, it was, you know, the odds were against me, but I really thought the woman's head was going to explode. It was, it was just weird looking at these two people because I almost felt like I did damage to them because, and they were very lovely people. I have to say they were very lovely and they were great hosts to me and they hugged me and they were wonderful. But the truth was hurt. I mean, it was literally hurting them. And I could see it in their face. So that was my experience. I went home and I was like, well, you didn't do that bad. You wanted to say this, this and this and you didn't, but I still got sucked in a little bit. So that was my end of year experience. That is awesome. I feel like I've just heard a three Musketeers adventure. Yeah. Where you were sort of riding across the town square and suddenly there were soldiers in red who drew their swords and they had feathers in their hats and then they like surrounded you and you were like dueling it out with them and it sounds great. I love it. Thank you. That being said one thing and you're muted anyway, but that being said, I really felt it was important because I did feel like an ambassador in a lot of ways. It did feel important. Sorry. And someone had their hand up before Doug and I was sort of stepping in front of them, but I've forgotten who it was. It was me. So let's go. Let's go. Kevin just real quickly. Stacy, I'm enormously impressed. I don't whatever you think you didn't do. It sounds like it sounds like a stunning experience. I never thought of making people's heads explode as a political strategy, but you can feel that. This is part of my reflection on 2023. As apologies, Ken Homer, as afraid I am of Trump and what he's up to, I am much more afraid of the people that you had dinner with. And just to reinforce that, we did our once every out in those six months, 10 minutes on Fox News this week. Holy crap. The thought that that is the place where most Americans get their quote news is really disturbing. Modern media strategy is super powerful. Yeah. For now. Yeah. Thanks, Gil. Doug C. Well, I might be like the drunk guy at the party that Stacy was talking about, but I hope not. It seems to me that in this group more than any group I'm in, we ought to be able to talk about anything. So the one that's on my mind a lot is with increasing temperatures, making life impossible in lots of places. And things like that. We're beginning to face the issue of how do we die. Starvation is not fun. Heat death is not fun. Is there is a time coming when we're going to make choices about how it happens or are we going to just let history roll us over? Have you read much Jim Bendell? Some. Or seen his stuff because there's a deep adaptation movement, which is trying to address not dying, but adapting deeply. Also the first time I met Vinay Gupta, I was supposed to have a 15 minute call with him and it turned into an hour and a half when it was midnight in London on a Sunday on his side. And one of the first things he brought up was the six ways that humans die, which is a trope of his that says you, you star view extreme temperatures, lack of food, lack of oxygen, old age, I don't remember what it was. I'll find it. I'll find the site. So that might be relevant, but. And I don't know if anyone else wants to respond to Doug or if I just go to Kevin. Let's see how that rolls. Doug and Kevin, why don't you jump in? Well, I've got a, a thing that is my look at the year that will end up close to where Stasis was. And I've been working it on economic justice for a while. And as this group knows, it's not a popular topic. Almost no one ever asked anything more about what I talk about. They just say, oh, that's nice, but it's never a topic for continuing conversation. And my mentor in this work is a black woman here named Stephanie sweats and Twitty said, Kevin, when we built our community equity fund, which solves the problem of friends and family funding for sole proprietors, not startups who don't have friends and family money and never get into a CDFI, you know, concessionary loans. And by the way, I'm not afraid of gills ghostly image. That may be your goal with that image to go, but it's not as scary as you think. Anyway, the, she said, look, you're creating a marketplace for all the white folks who care and there's not enough. So this year, I've been working on building partnerships on single issues where affluent white folks have a common cause with us. And we've done it to reverse redlining on just accounting.org is the first initiative of that. And it brings in strong towns. And they're the new urbanists that call themselves the children of Jane Jacobs are the folks who know the folks that zoning and planning are the folks that zoning and planning are the folks who advocate for walkable neighborhoods. And they've discovered that taxation is unfair and they want transparent taxation. Then they discovered it's unfair. And then they discovered that it's unfair historically and unfair to those people in the same neighborhoods. Oh, and look, those people are not like us. And so they, along with the racial justice coalition and a foundation are trying to get the heart of it that you can address of redlining is that poor neighborhoods are subsidizing rich neighborhoods with their property taxes. They're taxed at fair value and rich neighborhoods are not taxed at fair value. And if they can make transition transparent, there'll be more money for walkable neighborhoods. In San Antonio, where we're doing, we're doing the same thing with foundations behind it, but also affluent white folks who own big businesses. And now we've got the realtors board on board. And there's a pretty amazing book that is freedom to discriminate that talks about the, the separation and division in the U S actually started with the guy you can point to lots of starts, but this, this realtor in Fresno who had the realtors board that became a national program right after Martin Luther King's 63 speech, you know, I have a dream, et cetera. And, you know, they redefined freedom as the freedom of individual and that if you, you get freedom, I lose freedom as opposed to freedom for all. And that became a national thing that realtors used to redline and only serve white neighborhoods and consciously discriminated against black and Hispanic neighborhoods. And, and they, it's a continuing thing. And it was, when it became illegal with some fair housing stuff, it was adopted by Ronald Reagan and then Nixon. And the freedom to discriminate. And it's the story of how the realtors created the, they had to redefine freedom. And that's what the heritage foundation really loves about what they did is that they redefined freedom as freedom of the individual and it was freedom from rather than freedom for all. And so the freedom of the individual meant that any freedom you had was taking it away from me. And so it really, it then becomes, you know, that's where fear of immigration comes. They're going to come in and take our stuff. So it was an interesting thing. So anyway, what I found in my economic justice work is that, you know, it isn't a popular thing. Again, no one on this call ever asked more about what I, what I talk about. But I'm finding single issue things that affluent people are about, like the folks who want walkable neighborhoods who were strong towns who were, who were urbanists and now the realtors in one place. So anyway, you have to find your allies who don't care about what you care about. This group cares about climate. They don't really care about economic justice. And so that's okay. You know, yeah, you can say that, but it's just, it is totally true. It isn't, I never get a follow-up question of anything I talk about. So, you know, you can look at your actions and look at the recording to see that I'm actually accurate in saying that no one here ever asked a follow-up question about what I'm doing or how they can do it locally. Whereas stuff about climate is often followed up. So anyway, it doesn't matter. I don't expect this group to be any different. You're a great test case of who you are. I enjoy being in the group. I'm trying to calm down after that. Hands down. But again, I know that, that threatens you, Jerry. And that's okay. Sorry, it doesn't threaten me. I've asked you follow-up questions in the zoom before when you've done several demonstrations in the work you did. It happens exceptionally well. So, you know. Well, that's not never. Okay. You made a declarative. Nobody ever follows up this group. Only cares about climate. Doug C. has been trying to make sure we only care about climate for a long time. And we talk about everything else. So, I don't know, you're generalizing a lot. And I'm sorry that this brought up a lot of emotions for you. I wasn't trying to trigger you. I was just trying to say, hey, when you make the broad, sweepy declarations, we do care. And I refer people to your work in Swannanoa. You don't hear about it, but like, I love the work you're doing. And I think you've got feet on the street that matter a lot. And you're doing a lot more actual stuff in the world than many of us are. So, all hail. And I'm thrilled you're here. So. I want to hear what Kevin said, whether or not it's 100% accurate. I, I, I, I, I honor the, the, the, the, the impression that, that he has, I think he's got a valid impression. We talk a lot about climate and we don't talk a lot about economic fairness. Thanks, Pete. I appreciate that. I appreciate that too. Doug B. You're muted. I echo Pete's acknowledgement and ditto that. And, but there was, there was something in your share, Kevin, where you, you talked about the contextualization of freedom. In that particular bucket. And the power of that as the seed for what, what's followed. And, and it's almost identical. What was done around the opioid crisis with the word pain. And the pharmaceutical company took the word pain. Turned it into a disease condition to be treated. And that was the foundation of their marketing. Of their pain killer. With the underlying representation as an opioid that it wasn't addictive. But it was the whole thing pivoted around their marketing pain as something quote, treatable. They invented that. That graphic of one to 10 on a scale of one to 10. What, where's your pain? They created that as part of their marketing. Are you positive about that? Because that's an ancient graphic. I believe they, they would have had that around for a really long time. I think if I, if I remember the tail. I mean, the, the, the rise of, uh, what's the company that was behind, um, uh, um, Purdue. Purdue. Yeah. Purdue, Purdue Pharma. That was, like the fan, one of the foundation pieces of their marketing campaign to doctors. Now it may have existed them, but they made it mass market in the medical field. Barbara King solvers, uh, demon copperhead is great about that with poor white folks in Kentucky and how it was marketed as, as pain. And they said there was no risk. It's a really amazing book. And, and I, you know, I just pulling back from both of those examples. It makes me sort of wonder what is, what's the languaging shift? And this is sort of for the room. But what are the, what are the, what are the, what are the, what are the, what are the, what are the re-contextualization and change of orientation? For the room. But what are the words and what are the recontextualization opportunities. In connection with those words. So potentially energize and pivot. A change in orientation. That would speak to. Both economic justice, speak to our environmental challenges, You know, and I think that they lie in fundamental nouns. I think somewhere the truth lies in identification of certain nouns. And how might they be recontextualized to to generate a new narrative. And with that I'm complete. Thanks to be can you say a little a little more about reappropriation reframing of nouns and stuff like that because I think that's one of the keys that's happening in the, in the verbal battle that is playing out in front of all of us and I think you know, freedom is one of freedom and liberty are words that certainly have been in the center of that of that battle in lots of interesting ways. Absolutely. And, and a big part of the a big part of the undermining and propaganda programs of the of the last several years have been about rendering terms that had meanings, meaning less. Or, or in new speak ways perverted to the opposite. So, so literally, if, if underlying all of those, those gymnastics those those linguistic conceptual gymnastics and distortions words just really have power, and if words themselves are rendered value meaningless, rendered value less. It gets really difficult to counter what Stacy ran into, because if you're up against a viscerally attached belief, rooted, not in reality or facts or data any of that just rooted in belief pure belief like I bought something. And this is my belief, you know, like that scene from full metal jacket when the guy loses and he goes this is my rifle. You know, it's like this is my belief. And at that point, I don't think, you know, I don't think there's any way in linguistically. But is there a means to energize words vitalize certain words and language to turn the tide on. You know, I don't know whether any of you saw the Nikki Haley thing. Well, the most recent one where she twisted herself to avoid using the word slavery in response to the question. What was the reason you know what was the underlying reason for the Civil War. And she gave an answer and it was sort of like the university presidents. And it was, it wasn't a violation of, you know, they're, they're, it's, it was exactly the same moment and all she had to do was say well slavery of course, and instead she did 158 words without ever using the word slave. The guy at the end said, it sort of amazes me in 2023 you answered that question never used the word slavery and she looked at him and said well what do you want me to say. I don't know if this is the story of her campaign, but at the end of the day. Language intrinsically has huge power to be a tool or a weapon. And that it seems to me that maybe some attention and focused work collaboratively on words. Could be contextualized and, and, and energized. Could be a powerful orientation and approach to changing the changing the flow. Actually the realtors in San Antonio say we cannot talk to our board about reparations, but we can use the word repair. And I'm finding that a lot of places people can point to the current damage that's been caused. Look at the rubble and Gaza and not do reparations that reparations won't work. So, but repair will work and you can point to a current thing that can that needs some amendment. I think years ago you were talking about a repair tax or a voluntary repair payment that people might pay as tourists. Yeah, and it's, it's, it's complicated in Asheville we there is a reparations commission that's trying to extend itself to get the problem solved and they've got too many old moderates on there and it's it's it's politically complicated. It exists and they can't agree on anyway. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not simple. Thanks. I'm kill. I'm going to quote you on it's not simple. I've had a number of people in discussions on social media in particular about Israel Palestine who say who stay with exclamation points. It's not complicated. In other words, like, you know what I say is right and don't give you any of the nuance and it's remarkable to me to my experiences is like stunned because it tells me more about them than about the issues. Because it strikes me that a lot of things are actually quite complex and understanding the nuances is really important to get at it. I'm struck by this by this Doug be even saying about language and the distinction between repair and reparations. And we back up. I've been thinking about lake off through this conversation who's been talking about framing and the power of words and setting context with words for decades. And the, the Dems have been had a very hard time absorbing that for whatever reason seem to have not been able to master that. And when you talk about repair and versus reparation. I think about the tendency on the left to really want to make sure you use the right word. Reparation not repair without an understanding of what the political and social dynamics are. And Kevin, I love what you said about doing things with people about the single issues that we care about together. Which is the way the coalitions grow. You start there and then you find, oh, there's some other things we might care about together or maybe it's different people, but, you know, gradually a fabric gets stitched together. And, and, and last I'll just say I was reminded of this yesterday in a conversation Bernice Reagan. Who you may know is the anchor of the sweet honey and the rock a cappella group is also a major scholar at the Smithsonian. For many years, spoke at a conference California gosh must have been back in the 80s where she said, memorably she said, if you're in a coalition around whatever if you're in a coalition if you're not deeply uncomfortable all the time. Your coalition is not big enough. Done. Thank you. I really like. I really appreciate it I really value the story that Kevin told about the word, or the idea of freedom and and Doug's story of the word, or the pain scale and the rest of it. Another one in the, in the article that I linked. They were trying to make pain, a fifth vital sign. I actually really like the, that post that I linked to, because the guy says, this, this was actually a disservice to people to reduce a complex set of things that you're feeling down to a one to 10 scale so the nurse says, Okay, what's your number is it four or five six 10 whatever you know and he's like dude, you know, I'd like to actually tell you about my lived experience more than I want to be a number on a chart, you know. I, the, and Doug I really appreciate talking about the language and the words and, and I wanted to reflect a little bit more that I think a lot of times those marketing things another one of my marketing unfavorites is milk equals calcium. drinking milk to get calcium actually is bad. It's not good for you. But, you know, that drilled into our heads in the 40s or something like that and, you know, now it's now it's truth, you know. So I think the, what I wanted to say is it's not just the word or the language, it's actually a simplification of a worldview, right. So I've got this complicated thing my head hurts and you know it hurts this way hurts that way it hurts when I do this it doesn't hurt when I do that, and I want to describe that to the doctor and, you know, and then I got a promise from from farmer that, dude, all you need to do is, just pick a number and then the doctor can give you a pill and it's all better right, and we'll call that the pain scale we'll call that, you know, a non addictive, you know, medicine for you, it will make you better so a complicated situation got distilled down into a very simple thing right. Same thing with with, you know, thinking about freedom, you know, well I want what I want so I'm going to if I can call that freedom that's great you know. And then you forget kind of the externalities of that worldview that it changes, you know, it's simplified it. Somebody, some marketing person made it super easy for you to believe a simple thing when the world is actually complicated right. So I think, Doug, I really like your idea of, you know, engineering or reverse engineering ways to ways to help people understand thing with language. And, and a lot of it is for better for worse, I wish it wasn't worth this way but for better for worse, it's helped me, you know, I want to help you make the world a simpler more easy to understand place. And here's a model, rather than just here's, you know, here's a word that makes more sense to me or to you or should make more sense to you. It's actually a lot more complicated and it's about, you know, helping people cope with reality, which is hard. Thanks. Thanks, Pete. Before going to Kevin I just want to reflect for a second on the pain skill because I saw that thing I've seen it a long time but it was really helpful for me communicating with my mom and doctors communicating with my mom in her decline of the last five, the last five years of her life. And it just basically it just basically helps standardize like is this pain immobilizing to you like you can't think or do anything else that's number four or five or something like that or maybe seven. But it but it sets a couple different barriers. And at no point that I see it used for guidance to pills, although I can see how that I can easily see how that would be done. I can see how it would be manipulated to like oh we have a pill for this that's just stronger than this one over here. You, you're a seven not a six union opiate not an aspirin. That's a very easy conversation to, to come up with. But I, but I found that a different, a different way to do that rather than a number is suggested in the article. What does your pain prevent you from doing, which is the question which is the question that the scale is asking. And people aren't my after my mom had a stroke, she wasn't verbal, so she couldn't actually answer that question, but she could point to a sheet of paper. Right. So, so if you're, if you're not verbal, you got some problems. Gil about the pain scale. Yeah, Kevin, if I could just jump in for a moment. Yeah, sure. So, you know, my wife who's been in cancer treatment for 10 years sees doctors regularly and they always sort of the admitting there's always asked the pain question. And it's pretty much always without any of the kind of context you're talking about it's like what's the number or it's like what's, you know, how are you now. It's not asking about how are you today, or how have you been this week or how have you been since the last time you saw the doctor. So, and it's not with the context of four means this and seven means this just asking for a number. And I've had that experience when I've seen doctors myself and I'm often just kind of groping for I don't know what the right number is I sort of have a sense of range, but no precision. And they're using that to track something in an assumption that there's a statistical way to get insight into people's state and it's part of this lust for standardization. Industrial medicine and industrial everything, which, you know, understandable. I want a certain amount of standardization. I want to know that the screws are going to fit in the wings of the airplane with some reliability wherever they have come from. But we're really caught up in a mess between our hunger for recurrent predictable recurrence. And, and under is not the right word and it's something and a, and a, and a, and a desire or willingness for emergence and adaptation and things being, you know, different and appropriate to the moment. And it's hard to imagine how you do that at scale in an eight billion person industrial society. But it all lives in these one on one conversations in a doctor and a patient or a person in the neighbor or whatever else it is. Once I saw the written out pain scale with descriptions of what the numbers were supposed to mean, I had the same exact reaction you were having like one to 10, my skills can be real different from everyone else as I'm just fishing. But once I saw the descriptions, I was like, Oh, okay, this pain is irritating and in my conscience but doesn't stop me from doing things. Great, that this number right here. It really added to the precision of them of the metric, not just the precision of the metric but like that actually that asking me that kind of question actually brings me self awareness. Right. Where I'm what's going on in me I have, I've seen the elaboration of the scale, maybe one or 2% of the time that I've encountered the scale. It's 90% time is just the number sometimes number with a happy face. There's that that's the other one that's the happy face skill hardly ever with the narrative unpacking, which I agree with you is actually useful. But then you have to have a doctor or a nurse who's having a conversation with you. Right. Not a 10 minute insurance company mediated encountering Kevin if I could just say one more thing on this because this was also very fresh on. How I built this on NPR this week I came in a little of a show and they were talking about various Nobel Prize winning economists observations on certain things and the one I walked in in the middle of was. We have found that people are are really not. People are not very capable of making decisions about what kind of medical plan to go on. I thought holy crap man how about like you're not very good at presenting people with either clear choices, or how about like no choice at all just like comprehensive coverage like you get in France or various other places in this planet. And it was, and it was, it apologize. The mess that we've been, we just went through open enrollment about Medicare supplement plans and it's an absolute pain in the ass nightmare needs. We have a professional consultant who spends hours on this paid for by them. God bless them. But it's, you know, create a mess and pathologize people for not being able to move through it. You know, three years ago, looking at one of these sort of drug selection drug plans and you had to choose a plan that assumed you knew what diseases you were going to get the next because the different because the different plans were good for chronic diseases or emergencies or whatever and you were like, there is no way a human knows what their pattern is going to be, unless you have a pre existing condition in case case you're in a different plot of trouble until Obamacare, even not that I mean, you know, James got pre existing just, you know, she's in various kinds of chemical treatment for cancer. We have to choose a plan based on last year's medications. You know, next week, the doctor may change the meds and that this and that decision is a 10s of thousands of dollars difference. Right. And there's, and there's no way to know. And you'd make your decision when you're locked in for 15 months. Very insane. Yeah. Thanks, Gil. Kevin, thank you for your patience. And you'll thank you. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. She's been through a lot. A lot. Please Kevin, go ahead. One other thing about pain before I go into what I was going to say is that in King solvers, but they talk. Purdue goes in and sets up pays doctors set up pain clinics in a place where the industry is just banished coal. And they're doing mountain top removal so no job so people are depressed and injured and have no jobs and so then they victimize on on Israel. I've been really reading make a syphilis. Substack. And I said, well, you know, this is a genocide that's going on. He says, no, it's not genocide. That's a specific thing where you want to eliminate the whole people. You can call it ethnic cleansing if it continues. So he said that that's what you can call Israel's policy if it continues as ethnic cleansing. So that's just one white guy reporting on what a knowledgeable. Jewish guy is saying about it. So there you go. Thank you, Kevin. Why don't we pause for a second. A lot of stuff. Hank, nice to see you. Hank, can curl anybody who hasn't jumped in for a bit if you'd like to tell us what's on your mind or take us in a different direction please feel free. Well, let me change the direction or at least suggest a different direction based on what's on my mind. I began the year with intense pain in both legs and had a back operation to remove a stenosis in February and have recovered nicely from that. At the moment, what's on my mind is remembering how much pain I had a year ago and being very thankful for, let's call it normal medicine, medicinal track for helping me get over it. And that was my reflection on the discussion of the scale for pain because I was asked that maybe a dozen or two dozen times before the operation getting the diagnosis and after the operation. But what's on my mind now is actually next year and what the opportunities are that a brand new year might bring us. A lot less of the many conflicts in the world going on and Israel Palestine was just mentioned but that's just one of very many conflicts in the world where people are dying or being ethnically cleansed. Okay, that's all stuff that we have to figure out how to deal with either, or let's say both in our personal lives, where we may or may not have much influence. And considering that other people who can influence things like that are not successful at the moment, or haven't been brought into the conversation as yet. And that's a bridge to an activity that I've been working on for the last, last year, and it's a conference, which will finally be held next February in Iceland about different futures of democracies. I've mentioned something about that an earlier calls, but there's a confirmation that we will have visitors from participants from 15 different countries, including parliamentarians who are engaged in parliamentary committees of the future. Finland has one of the most famous ones. Last two months ago there was a conference in Uruguay brought together dozens of parliamentarians who either are parts of committees for the future or investigating how to how to create something like that. And we'll have a delegation from Uruguay, a delegation from Nepal also very interested in that and we're assuming that there will be four or five other delegations signing up to participate. And what I with my co-organizers are hoping to do is to create three days where there are conditions for people to discuss amongst themselves in creative ways what are the values needed for renewing democracies, what are the drivers of change, which could be obstacles or or advantages in trying to renew democracies in the future. We'll have one day of presentations, building up a number of building blocks for people to take into a second day, which will be eight hours of creative dialogue in laboratory sessions, one about climate change, one about technology, and one about governance paradigms. And the third day we'll focus very much on what people have learned in the first two days will take away. And I'm very interested in what people on this call and people in OGM think about the futures of democracies. It certainly relates very much to what Kevin was talking about at the beginning of the call. But anyone on this call who has something to share about futures of democracy in a positive way, in a way that we would hope people would get together around the world to to support or to translate into their own culture and take forward. I'd be very happy to either have conversations with them between now and February, or look up any material that they might suggest on the chat. Thanks for listening. Thank you. And I love your explorations into democracy and world futures and all of that. And it's funny because democracy is one of those words we use a lot but don't seem to understand very well at all. And civics courses have gone out of fashion or got stamped out of school so kids don't even usually understand how, you know, as they grow up, they don't usually understand the mechanisms that govern their lives in the future. And then there's a whole bunch of sort of unwritten rules about democracy, unwritten taboos, like direct democracy is impossible, could never work. There's a bunch of other things like that. And I have a multiple, I was just sort of looking through the different collections of things I have around repairing democracy, defending democracy, rethinking democracy and all that, making better connections between them. I'll send you a bunch of links or I'll put them in the chat here. Great. Thank you for bringing that up. Anybody else who wants to jump in, please get in the queue. Go ahead, Kevin. Okay, yeah. I was part of a group trying to get the first openly gay Episcopal bishop elected. And we had a litmus test. I was the straight white guy on the thing, but I was the underground reporter, undercover reporter, so I was okay. And we had a litmus test. And so the urban caucus, which is the black Episcopalians weren't allowed in because they were not aligned with the progressives on abortion and they couldn't be in the room with them. Whereas the Christian right were single issue partnerships. So there was a group and I was undercover and in a room where the folks who hated women bishops and women priests were doing a deal with the folks who hated LGBT and the other folks hated LGBT too. And they said, look, we have nine points. We agree on three, six and eight. We can do an alliance and forget about the other stuff, but the leftist couldn't agree about the other. And that's also true of freedom of choice and right to life. And so that's why Barbasi's book link points to the fact that right to life groups grew geometrically, you know, and but the links to the freedom of choice folks only grew arrethmetically because you needed to sign on to a litmus test. So I'd say in democracy find the single issue, like for us, the new urbanists don't care about economic justice, they care about fair taxation. We're doing the same thing with folks who care about a partnership with folks who want to invest in local businesses who don't care about justice, but there is no forum for folks who just care about investing in local businesses. So we're single issue partnerships and they don't have to agree with us on all the other things and you know that's that's working. Thank you. The, yeah, those politics of how the sausage is made politically is fascinating and scary often. Doug B. You're muted. It's sort of turning the telescope around Hank on where you're going. But one of the questions that rises for me is and I know there's lots of there's a large body of work as to the the pattern and the the emergence of fascism. If that's the sort of polar tension to democracy and we're sort of in the middle of experiencing that I just wonder whether on a on a living experiential emotional energetic basis. There's a route underlying those attracted attracted to fascism who experience it as pole. Whether there's an underlying route on a fundamental basis that might be susceptible or vulnerable to opening into softening that is more sort of more existentially fundamental in a humanist way. Then the political. You know, focusing on the political or responding to the political. And I just wonder whether there's something more vital as a as a potential opening or vulnerability to that mindset Stacy read to and whether whether affecting that that attraction that fascism seems to exert on certain people might also be an angle of attack complimenting getting back to democracy, you know, freeing people up to you know, if if they don't get drawn to that they're they're going to drift in the other direction the other direction is democracy. So it's sort of like freeing them up to float toward your neck of the woods. Just curious. Thanks. Stacy you had your hand up earlier did you take down or did it go down by mistake. No zoom took it down but right now they're like low. Can you hear this background noise here. No. We hear you clearly go right ahead. It's hard for me to think and I can't hear you but maybe I can speak. So as related to concerns about democracy and this might not sound so connected but it is. So one of the questions that's been coming up for me has to do with the genocide and sedan and why that doesn't make it into the narrative, which brings me to the role of the media. And that's really my biggest concern. So I just wanted to put that out there and also if anybody can give me some insight into the role of the Arab nations in that whole thing. That's a piece that I feel if more information got out. Doug to what you're talking about. There's something in that information that I think could connect. Yeah, I can't articulate what I'm trying to say, but there is something in what you just said Doug. And there is an inroad not all the people there. But to some of the people and that's the case finding the people in the different groups that you can relate. That's what I was trying to do in the experience that I spoke about. And with one of those people I was able to do that. In the other person who clearly no matter what that's not the person I want to deal with. But by dealing with the other one there's ripple effects. Thank you. Are you complete. I am I'm sorry I don't have better words for that and I was also frazzled by the outside noise. Thank you it worked out fine. Pete please. Thank you Stacy. I really like I don't have better words for that. Seems like a headline for our times. Hank, thank you for working on democracy and and I wouldn't say this to somebody who's not a friend, but I have a bit of skepticism about democracy which maybe I can kind of put aside but that it makes me think also that a topic for me and maybe for this group is what's the role of democracy in in an age of preparing for collapse. And I think, you know, if there's collapse, I pray that there won't be, but if there is collapse. Democracy is probably not the best way to the best stance, you know, and post collapse. So, you know, I don't know there's a whole bunch of fraud things there, you know, like, why would you prepare for a disaster when, you know, that the disaster would mean the end of everything. But, but I guess if I were at a conference about democracy, I would be really interested in what's the role of democracy in preparing for collapse. Thanks. Let me just mention that. Well, I absolutely agree with you, Pete, and I'm also unfortunately very skeptical about the hours of democracy in the face of collapse and that something else which we don't know yet will be used or could be used or should be used to deal with it. One of the things that we really want to do with this conference is look to the positive rather than look at the obstacles and the negative things because there's so much in the media, at least in the European media about all the negative things driving democracy down a dead end street. So one of the premises of the conference is to bring together people to specifically focus on the futures of democracies that they would want and how they in their cities or countries or parliaments would be ready to deal with it. That doesn't take away that I'm often very skeptical about renewing democracy with with cello tape and paper clips and the other things that are being offered at the moment. I'm reminded of Doug C in conversation with him recently, he was saying that it seems like the challenge of climate and carbon and all the other things that are going on is outside the limits of nation state. It's, you know, transcendent above that the problem is, you can't fix it if you're one nation state, you, you know, and he called it civilization level. So I guess another, another question I would kind of have is, how can a democracy participate in a civilization and maybe with, you know, other other nation states who don't really care to have democracy. In the service of saving civilization. So it's a, you know, not only do I need my democracy to fix my nation, I need my democracy to fix, not fix to participate in in a civilization that's going to survive. You know, most equitably and most least least damagingly into the future. Thanks Pete. I love this topic of democracy, etc. So I want to put a couple ideas in the room. I've said a couple of places where I see a difference between big G governance and little big G government. I miss I even mistyped that in my notes. It should be big big G government versus little G governance and big G government has mostly become a consumer mass marketing exercise of politics. It isn't really governance in a, in a highly functional way we are trapped inside of a variety of assumptions and systems. If you look in my brain under variants of anarchism anarchism was very effectively demonized. And years ago I've told this story several times I went to read some book chin because I wanted to read one of the anarchists and see how terrible it was. The first half of the book is all about collaboration among animals in nature. And really, most of the anarchists are trying to figure out how do we manage one another together in a way that has the least overhead. It's something a libertarian ought to love, but hey we managed to demonize anarchism completely. So some people are anarcho anarcho capitalists these days, which is an attempt to cut that edge and find a path. There's a lot of anarcho syndicalism there's a there's flavors of anarchism I couldn't describe to you at all, but but there's lots of them just as there are many flavors of capitalism and many flavors of democracy. I have all those variants, sort of, you know, in my brain with who came up with the idea what book did they write whatever whatever. But but to me that exploration is really interesting. One of the reasons dawn of everything is so fascinating is that it's an attempt, a kind of a messy attempt I think to go back and explore the various ways we tried to govern one another, and to form society and famously that you're saying there is no such thing as society was the like this ultimate sort of far this ultimate Reaganist. I'm going to lose the framing for it because I probably not accurate on it, but it's really interesting how that all worked out. I'm really interested in a global movement to pretend to create a fake global government as as a game, because it's easier to take games less seriously so they don't get in and interdicted or intercepted as much. But what if we pretended to govern together along watershed lines as our as our boundaries. And what if we then came up with a variety of the most highly functional kind of ways of doing things following Ostrom's polycentric governance principles and other sorts of principles. What would that look like and might it get interesting and big enough that it could in fact do that. So anyway, and such a such a fictitious wishful thinking governance system would include actual sense making exploration experimentation. We talk about whether it's refugees at the border or drug use and drug deaths or homelessness in cities or whatever. There's plenty of earth to that that has already experimented with a lot of these things we should be learning from them. Portland right now is facing a huge crisis with, you know fentanyl on math and all that they tried to copy Portugal which decriminalized drugs back some years ago successfully until they stopped funding the support systems for it and then that thing started falling apart. So now that the paradigmatic example got worse. And yet when Portland passed the law just in the last election cycle, they didn't put in any of the other support systems and Portland has like really lousy stats on mental health support and all that other kind of stuff crappy stats. And then now they're scratching their heads wondering why it failed so I've been listening in on a couple of zoom calls from authorities that you know in the area trying to sort this out. And it's just, it seems really obvious that they could see the problem, they didn't do much about the problem and nobody really fixed it. So, it's weird. Thank you for tolerating my little screen there. Shrader has been writing about that a lot in both sci-fi and as a futurist. Which one Carl Schrader, Carl Schrader, yeah, Carl with a K. Schroeder, but he says Schrader, not the trader. Thank you. Catching my breath after your rant, Jerry. Thanks. It's the most excellent rant. I think you've got your next project laid out for you. Oh, good. So good, shadow global, shadow global government go do that right behind you. I like the topic of democracy. I look forward to us talking more about that and I look forward to us talking more about anarchism. Because you're, you're, you're, I think you're right in how you characterize it and what's, what's been hidden there. Bookchin has been one of the, one of the formative people in my life and his work is deep and very rich and full of love. And if people are not aware, look up the Rojava communities in Kurdish Turkey. Where, where there's a remarkable expression of that work. I don't know if any of those folks are alive anymore after all the bombs that have been dropped recently. Democracy is really messy. It's really hard. It's a pain in the ass. If anybody has been to meetings, you know, council meetings, community meetings, co-op meetings, whatever it's, it's rough stuff to do. You know, Doug C has, are you still here? You are still here. Talked a bunch about the need for autocratic responses to things like the climate crisis, but of course the question is who's the autocrat? You know, is it our guy or their guy or somebody we like or down or somebody who's wise or not? I keep going back on one of the, one of the challenges for me with autocracy versus democracy is Ross Ashby's law of requisite variety, which is that an autocracy just doesn't, doesn't move enough information through the system to enable wise decisions. And we see that, you know, we see that in the Israel debacle where the Israeli political establishment didn't get, wasn't able to interpret the information that was gathering to prepare itself for what was coming. And I did a, I did an inquiry on Facebook in the last couple of days asking people for examples of where human society has collectively decided to ban innovative technology. And I thought the examples I thought was a very short list and it turns out it's a very large list. I mean, we, you know, we actually know how to do this. We actually know how to come together as society, despite what Maggie Thatcher says, and make decisions that affect our collective, collective evolution, but you know, not all the time. And, you know, and there, there, there is in a big global scale Montreal protocol and ozone depleting substances is, you know, like a sterling example of that. It took a while and has been successful to a large degree. I don't say democracy doesn't work. I think, you know, as one example of working my friend Sean C bell, who has been working with large industrial companies, never under the guise of democracy but for example with with folks were building a billion dollar semiconductor fab factories in bringing the executive leadership to the willingness to turn over the work to the trades, you know, to the to the to the crafts people and workers and put more control in the hands of the people on the ground. And guess what this is not a waste of time this produces, you know, factories that are built ahead of schedule under budget. So the notion of democracy being messy is maybe another opioid scale that we've been taught. And actually where I started this might my rank in response to your rant about the difficulty of democracy is that we are talking now about democracy in a world of media consolidation. Citizens united the disappearance of the fairness doctrine, and a whole set of conditions that have really shifted the landscape of democracy at least in this country I don't know how it is in Europe or other places. But the game is has been game for decades. And that's, you know, so we're playing inside of that game and part of the question is how do we invent new games. And, you know, I find when I talk about games a lot, I often get the response that way this is this is serious this is not a game. But game just means a set of rules that people agree on about how to do something and games get invented all the time. And maybe that's a place for us to think about also in the future. Yeah, thank you. Before I go to Pete, we're real quick you touched something that keeps coming up in conversations I have, and I just don't like it so I gave it I think better. I give it better freezing in the chat than I usually do which is, there's a common false dichotomy that it's either free markets or absolute centralization God everybody knows what happened to the Soviet Union in China and that's just terrible. And that's just a completely broken argument, because the only it isn't that isn't the spectrum, and we don't have a free market. And the only alternative isn't that I think the really interesting question is, what are some fabulous ways to make sure resources get around. I mean, we've all heard the true ism that there's enough food to feed everybody on the planet it just doesn't make its way around. It's economics it's everything else that the great Bengal famine was an economic famine and there's a thought in my brain that most famines are economic. The British had plenty of grain. Indians had no money to buy grain with and the British wouldn't release their supplies. So millions of people starve to death in Bengal. Yep. Yep. And on the free market piece, Elizabeth Warren's been terrifically eloquent about the folks who say free markets I built this company and she points out, you know, the massive amount of social subsidy. Yep. You know, ranging from roads to educational systems that support every individual out of action so it's never just one or the other. Thank you for that chair. Yeah, love that. Pete, please. I think I have a question for Hank about democracy but but let me let me preface it kind of. I realized I was I was thinking about it and my skepticism around democracy. And I also like the, I don't know if I like it. I know of the Churchill quote, democracy is the worst form of government except everything else has been tried. And I hear Mr. Churchill saying that in my head and I go okay well I guess we have to fix democracy. I think we need to come up with something better. But but and for me it's network decentralization somehow but but anyway I realized my uncomfortable with uncomfortableness with democracy. And by the way, for anybody listening I'm not trying to overthrow any governments or anything like that I appreciate the government within sort of sad about that Pete. I say what I say, you know. So I have two models for democracy and neither one of them is. Well, I mean, one of them, one of them worked, you know for 100 years or something like that so there's the democracy that the US was founded upon. There's white landowners, kind of in an old boys network making decisions about, you know, their concerns, you know, that's democracy everybody's got to vote except the people who don't count as people were all good. Everybody was educated. Everybody had kind of the same concerns and so you know that kind of democracy. And that was the democracy that I was sold in school, you know this is this is how we govern our country, everybody has a vote. You know, everybody is educated. Everybody thinks this, you know, more or less the same when we have some little quibbles about crossing the T's and dotting eyes and, you know, and the greater statesmen among us statesmen among us, you know, we'll have a good idea and then we'll all you know debate the idea and then, you know, agree to follow you know Mr Lincoln or Mr Washington or Mr Jefferson or whoever right. And that's, you know, that's the model of democracy that I grew up with and I probably, you know, thought that's how the world ran for the first 40 years of my life or something like that and then at some point my you know I kind of started learning how the world works and that you know the US democracy from for in my, my understanding of it, it got taken over by corporatism and the 1800s corporations figured out how to game the system and become persons themselves and corporation persons are even more person ish person ish than rich white males. So, oh my god, you know, so 1900s was the age of big corporations and robber barons pretending to be nice people and, and sometimes kind of being nice people to the poor, poor masses. And then the military industrial complex, etc, etc, right so and that's the world that that's the democracy that I feel like I live in now. You know, of, of people who figured out to game the power. And so, so here's my question and sitting where you are in Europe and contemplating your, your conference in Iceland. I think you're talking about a different kind of democracy a different model of democracy than than I have in my, in my quiver of what a democracy is right. I think you have some, I so I imagine you have some Nordic sensibility which I think a lot of people in the US would call socialism, you know, there's socialist crazy, you know, people are not actually, you know, real democrats like we are you know what they're doing. So, what's, when you, when you're contemplating democracy, what, like, so I, I literally, and this is a weird thing to, you know, to admit to, you know, people I care about and, and being, you know, 60 plus years old. Like, just mechanically it cannot work because in in a is my understanding of it because in a, in a population such as the US that's very diverse, where most people aren't educated, or most people are indoctrinated into certain ideologies by by partially the education system partly the media partly the, and mostly by the plutocrats. You know, like, like, if you give every person in the US a vote, and bless us for doing that, you get chaos, you get people like not making good decisions, you get people who don't decide to vote. And so then the people who do vote are manipulated into, you know, blessing the the plutocrat of their, you know, of their tribe. And, you know, that's, I mean, you can call it democracy, but it's not. So, literally, are there places in the world where you would say there's democracy that actually, you know, works and makes sense. Sorry to put that all on you. Yeah, no, it's a it's a stepping stone to a broader conversation, of course. The premise of the conference of the working conference is Nordic democracy, and there are five Nordic countries and all of them have a sort of similar view of what democracy is or should be. It's the rule of law. It's high trust, low control. It's voting for every resident, not just every citizen. There are a couple of other things. I'll look it up and put it in a chat. And those five Nordic countries and I'm taking part as a sort of honorary Nordic European because I've been American by origin and have lived almost 50 years in the Netherlands. So, we see that in each one of those Nordic five Nordic countries and the Netherlands and other reasonably progressive countries in Europe. Democracy is very quickly being eroded by a number of the things that you were just talking about Pete education ability to to think independently fear of the future which helps people submit to someone who has a loud voice and rides a white horse and waves a big stick. I think at the moment of the countries that I'm rather familiar with. I would say that Finland and Denmark have a lot of things that could be translated to the future. If you're still on the thread at the moment, Finland also has a coalition government with a party of two fins who would never say the anti democratic but would probably quote Victor Orban of Hungary and say we're ill, illiberal democracies. But those two countries and maybe some things that are going on in Norway and Iceland and Sweden and the Netherlands and why not India, which is using the word democracy in quotation marks is the biggest democracy in the world. And things. There are values that people have their values that people have, which aren't necessarily reflected by the governments that are in power now. And to try to make a short answer to your question. Yes, if we're going to try to invent something new. Yeah, there are building blocks which we could use, which have been really reasonably successful in the 75 or so years since the Second World War. I hope that's a satisfactory answer, but I appreciate the answer and I'll have to think about it some more. I the, if, if I, if I think of Finland or Denmark. I think of fairly uniform populations, and that it seems like it kind of goes and and, you know, progressive and things like I, I, you know, unlike, unlike the US in the 1700s, you know, I also know that Finland and Denmark think that that women are people too, for instance, you know, oh my God, what a concept. But it still seems they seem fairly homogenous to me and I think, you know, when you get a lot of this homogeneity heterogeneity of education levels and living conditions and cultures and stuff like that. And it starts to seem to me that democracy is a really hard ask. And, you know, and, and so in my perfect world which I know is never going to happen and I'm okay with that. But in my perfect world, you get much, much smaller groups, self governing groups, very small self governing groups, you know, 3050 people something and those federate with other small groups like that kind of fractally up until you get, until you get bigger. It's just really hard. I think I've, I've, I've got this gut feel that democracy is And, you know, I'm fine. I know that we're kind of revolving around the current definition of the word democracy which, you know, I would be perfectly happy to continue using the word democracy if we redefined it again to mean something different. So I don't care about the word I care about the ideas. The, but the idea of a massively heterogeneous civilization running through a small pipeline called democracy where everybody votes on everything. You know, it just, it seems impractical right. So I guess I guess I'm what I'm thinking of is something more like distributed democracy or, you know, or hyper federalization or I don't know hyper federation or something. But it, you know, it seems like we, I feel sitting in the US that we got stuck on this democracy and we're very proud of it in the US. And we got stuck on it as a solution to, you know, a frontier country in the 17 late 1700s, you know, and then, and then we've abused the heck out of the, the court tenants and principles we've kept the letter of the, you know, the rules we've kept the rules of the game, the same. While the world has changed around us. So, continuing to call that, you know, the democracy of Washington seems crazy to me and thinking and so even using the word democracy we're going to change democracy for me sitting, you know, in San Diego in 2023. It brings so much baggage in that is just, you know, kind of, kind of really friction. Anyway, thanks. And I'm sorry, I love that you're doing a conference and democracy in 2024 and Iceland so I'm not, I'm not trying to poop without more power to you. Just as a very quick answer to Pete before Doug and Carl. If you ask me right now what the world can use to to have equity and rule of law and and equal rights and responsibilities for everyone. I can answer the question, but I do think that you can't go from the damaged democracies of now to something completely new without stepping stones. So, this whole idea of renewing democracies and we try to use it as in the plural as much as we can is more about figuring out stepping stones so well I've got this map. In front of behind me as I'm talking, you know, and we don't know exactly where we are and we don't know exactly where we're going, but we're definitely going because we're not in command. So this, I think the stepping stones in the next decade will be very important. I'm inspired to have a future OGM call be about democracy or governance at scale and would love to have us bring our better game to it so that we're a little more organized about it and step through. Yes, no. Sounds good. Sounds good. Okay, with soon like who calls from now if we do next call check in and then call after that democracy that gives us a couple weeks. Sounds good. Let's do that. Oh, good. And Mike just joined us. So how appropriate. Also, we number among our friends, a lot of people who are experts in democracy, like Jake Donaghan, John Atley, a bunch of others who have very, very deep knowledge about this and have been kicking this around for a while might be interesting to invite them to the call I will I will I will invite the ones I know in to see if they want to join us. Doug B, then Carl, then we're here at Carnegie has a whole team working on democracy and conflict and would do you mind either connecting me to them or inviting them to the call once I put the invite out. Yeah, I'll see a racial client field would be the most amazing person to get. Let me see what I can do link her to you. Thank you very much, Mike. Good idea. Doug B, then Carl then to Ken I'm hoping. Yeah Hank, I, I, I can't help but feel that you know without the law of John today you wouldn't have the Nordic democracies like the underpinning cultural foundation of that. enables the other. I will ask you to explain John to love and to everybody so that we can Well, it's there are sort of actually I'm going to share my screen to make it a little bit easier because yeah it's come up before it's it's a fair it's a lot but it's basically there are a set of rules, sort of tacit social rules. Do not think you're anything special do not think you're as good as we are do not think you're you are smarter than you are do not imagine yourself better than we are do not think you know more than we do. But it's it's an internalized socialization with sort of a fundament of underlying equality. Not equality on a in a in a political sense but equality on a whole being basis. If really quickly that the realtors and Fresno thought King was a threat to bring that kind of equality there. And that's why they redefine freedom as freedom for the individual rather than the collective. And that became right when doctrine. Yeah. So, so my point is that it's, it's culturally imprinted to be oriented toward the collective. And to not, and to do the opposite, actually, that it's it's you are part of your one of you're no better than no worse than no more entitled no less entitled. It's sort of why you have that striking homogenization of clothing, like everybody looks the same, because to do something loud and garish, you would see in America would violate that it would sort of be like why are you standing out. What makes you special. So there's literally a cultural judgment and, you know, approbation in relation to not being part of an in service to the all. And that certainly doesn't exist in the United States. And Scott was pointing out in the chat that few of us have any experience of being under any other kind of system, whether it worked or works or not so I appreciate that as well. So bring up more my ideas, a couple weeks, but I mean, our, our framers were dealing with trying to come up with an alternative to the divine right of kings. The main thing to them was trying to establish a system of government that was stable that you could have peaceful trends for power. So what happened, January 6 2021 is the biggest event about to everything our framers stood stood for, and stuff I mean you can't. You can't see people criticizing with the modernism and stuff it's like, everybody use the word he, until the women's movement of the late 60s and stuff so don't get. I mean to criticize them because there's no she and the Constitution, I mean, give me a break. I'd like to go up further for that but I guess for 2024, we have the incident. International society for the system sciences and we'll be having our conference in June. It's really what I'm trying to focus on. And, well, I have this whole idea that I've talked a lot with that be about with sunrise in Washington but there's just this stone. We've got a lot of ideas I'm going to kind of, I'm thinking them in terms of scenarios for events that would be happening in July. So it's where I'm headed and I got a lot of things to share with you. Do that later time. Thanks Carl. Michael. Hey, I apologize for having missed the beginning of the call but it's funny I was listening to a conversation that was that proves relevant about about connection and collectivization and co ops, and really made me think, as Jerry you were talking about alternative world governance. It seems to me that one key and one one doable thing is for interest groups, whether they're demographic groups, you know whether it's anything from. The ARP does not cross borders, particularly. But, you know, there are there are entities and organizations like amnesty and international like doctors without borders. But, you know, why not older citizens on the ARP model older citizens without borders. Both without borders mothers without borders artists without borders and and you know the more collectivization and and kind of membership organizations that exist, trying to espouse the interests of that group across national borders, and unionizing to push ideas that that benefit their constituents. I think the more effect can be had on governments in an extra governmental way. And so I'm really curious to know about any movement successes like that that have existed and and how we might, you know, how we might make ourselves union members of all the unions that we belong to. And, and advocate in ways that, you know, go across watersheds. I worry, I were a little bit about, you know, nested networked democracies. And just because the special interests of people in one locality. Don't take into account the pan regional interests of groups that exist within all watersheds. Thank you. Thanks, Michael. And I think we have like lots of lots of chewy stuff to come back to when we revive this topic and dive into it more. Well, I was just curious. I'm going to share screen for a second. You made a fun statement there that made me do something that I'm going to share with a share screen with. So the US Constitution is modeled in some measure on the great law of peace of the had no sonny confederacy the great six nations in the US. It had a tremendous effect on it. So I asked chat GPT, hey, does the great law of peace mention women. And the answer is, and I hope it's not hallucinating and I'll have to fact check this later, but GPT forces the great law of peace also known as the guy guy national goal law is the founding constitution of the record confederacy a group of Native American tribes in North America. The Constitution significant including a synchronous on the formation of the US Constitution it does indeed mention women and in fact give some significant power and responsibility. I think that the founding fathers were a particular set of people building a particular document that we defy a lot at great risk. It's a great document. It's really interesting. But boy is it flawed. And we haven't made changes to it recently where the Constitution is very static we have originalists who are in charge of the court. We're basically fucked because of the way the Constitution is being used and weaponized at this point. I'm really curious about the Colorado disqualification decision and how it plays in the Supreme Court because on purpose I think the Colorado justices played an original list card in their decision. They said hey look here look here look here and look at they actually quote Gorsuch from a prior court from when he was in a lower court they quote him in the decision. And for for the SCOTUS to over to overturn Colorado Colorado is going to be a big deal I think. So anyway I'm interested in how this plays out but but the had no sonny like there were matrilineal tribes all across the North American continent before Europeans showed up. Yeah there's a long time conversation. So I guess gills. Yeah. The had no sonny use gender roles as a kind of checks and balances system maybe that's one of the things the founders learn from. Yeah, I don't know if I'd say the Constitution is flawed Jerry it's what it was at the time it was a brilliant innovation for its time. And it's not all the things that we want now. It actually part of its brilliance is that it did provide for amendment. And we've had dozens of amendments since which is a kind of adaptation. As things go forward and. Part of the brilliance which is really troubling and painful as now is that the amendment process isn't easy. And it had to be not easy because you ever you ever drive a car without shock absorbers. So that damping function of a slow amendment process is necessary but how slow and what it takes is a big problem. We, you know, we've tried for what 50 years to get an equal rights amendment. And we don't have 1 on the other hand, you know, the call for a constitutional convention, which some are doing actually mostly on the right and we are. We are not far from the trigger point on that could be a wholesale mess of scrapping everything and starting from scratch in the current environment where money rules so. Given all those flaws, I kind of, I'm a semi, I'm a semi originalist, I guess I'm treating intriguing. I want to keep this document for now till we find a better pathway to something else because I think the protections in it are far more the protections in it far outweighs flaws at this point. And we shall have in 2 weeks. Abundant more time or at least 90 minutes more time to talk about these issues. So. And now do we get a poem. I hope we do. Ken. We do. Kevin just Kevin just put something by Wendell Berry in the chat so I will turn to Wendell Berry. So Wendell says practice resurrection. Love the quick profit. The annual raise vacation with pay. Be more of everything ready made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery anymore. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something, they will call you when they want you to die for profit. They will let you know. So friends, every day do something that won't compute love the Lord love the world work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it denounce the government and embrace the flag hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Raise ignorance. What man has not encountered what he has not yet destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant that you will not live to harvest. Said that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Decide such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of hummus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion. Put your ear close and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful. You have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power. Please women more than men. Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is niest in your thoughts. And as soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the movements of your mind. Leaves it, leave it as a sign to mark the false trail. The way you didn't go, be like a fox who makes more tracks than necessary. Some in the wrong direction practice. That's beautiful. Ken, thank you. And the year. Exactly. Thank you for posting a link to the poem and the chat. Anybody who's not familiar with Wendell Berry. It's a very worthwhile deep dive. go wander. Thank you, Ken. Thank you all. Thank you all for a spicy and intriguing and fun end of your call. Check in next week and then after that democracy or governance or something like that. Pardon? Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Yeah, exactly. And thanks everyone for feeding my thinking about democracy. Happy New Year. And thanks everyone for feeding our mutual thinking. On the OGM list, we have used the line democracy next or something to put our thoughts about democracy at a time. If you want to do that as a subject line, that would be fine. Yeah, that's what I mean. That's a subject line, yeah. And if you're on the Mattermost channel, the OGM Town Square, that's a good place as well. Yeah, I have a hard time with Mattermost. Okay, feel free to use the OGM less than. But that's a great idea. Democracy next, okay. Cool. Thanks everybody. Keeping in mind that Hank is our real audience. With a couple of million or a hundred million other people, I hope. Yeah, you're the gateway. You're the gateway to millions. He's the key master. Oh, wait a minute. So the gateway to multitudes. All right. Thanks, y'all. Happy New Year. Go join all your unions. That's right. Join and form all your unions. Mike, I want to hear about what you've been up to with that. Whoops, he's gone. Oh, you're not coming. Union's in co-ops. Let's talk about that. Yeah. Okay. I would love to. See you guys. All right.