 This is the OGM weekly call on Thursday, January 18th, 2024. We are gathered here in the spirit of check-in, because we alternate formats, and this week is a check-in format. I will wait until a couple more people join us. In the meantime, anybody who'd like to make small talk, please do so. I learned from a friend who is a historian of many things, including early British roads and turnpikes, that small talk seems to have been invented, at least in England, when the turnpikes showed up, because now you could take carriages and travel with other people in an enclosed container for a long distance. So you had to sort of make things up to say, because before that, if you were on the road, everybody had their own horse or cart or whatever, and you were a separate traveling party, so you knew everybody you were traveling with, and all of a sudden you were near strangers. So I was like, oh, nice weather we're having, wasn't a thing before that, and that's just a theory, but you can take it for what it's worth. It's apparently not a thing here too, Jerry. Wait, no, it is a thing. It is a thing. Well, small talk, we all engage like elevators, right? Except many people no longer talk, so that's non-talk. My wife is astonished that I can actually start up a conversation while waiting in line for the restroom on an airplane, which is like the least small talk environment possible, and yet I do it. Pretty inhospitable, but there you are. Well, you know, talk about captive audience. I usually start those conversations with high. That's a bad joke, sorry. Thank God for English. So many homonyms, so many puns. Is English the punniest language? No question about it. Just because we've put so many different languages together. Although the Chinese are pretty good at it too, because they have all these sounds that are the same, except it's Lee. Or homophones, is it homophones or homonyms? Homophones, words that sound alike, but have different meanings? Homonyms are words that sound alike, but are spelled differently. And homophones are things that sound the same, but might have different meanings. Cool. Then there's mononyms, and there's obviously synonyms and antonyms. In another life, I would be a linguist. Yeah, exactly. There were any path in that career, who knows. So we are in- That would be a good discussion sometimes, what career choice could have you taken? What have you taken? Might have you taken? If money did not matter, would be a nice addition to that. Yes. I mean, I think that lots of people's choices about what they would have done are still colored by that. Who knows? I will commence our check-in round, explaining the rules very lightly. Please step in only once during the check-in round. Use your electronic hand to step into the queue, or if nobody has their hand up, you can step in. We will use the chat minimally during check-in. I will use it to explain if we have a newbie who doesn't know what we're doing, and put them into the dance. But otherwise, I will step out and not step back in unless I'm really needed to do anything. So just please take a moment, take a beat before you step in. Part of the fun of check-in rounds these days is the pauses between the check-ins, which sometimes cause our calls to feel a little bit more like quicker meeting than a busy Zoom call, which is a feature, not a bug. With that, I will step to the periphery and see who would like to jump in whenever they would like to jump in. I will boldly step in, partly because I'm only here for the first 30 minutes. Unfortunately, I have to go to something else. I have been growing increasingly frustrated with the amount of information out there to assimilate, at least in the areas that I care about, and I care about more and more things. This week is always particularly challenging because this is the week of the World Economic Forum in Davos, and they are showing some amazingly useful panels, particularly on artificial intelligence and the digital transformation, which is something I track pretty closely. And unlike most high-level panels at places like Davos, these AI panels have been incredibly useful. My record, at least my experience is that 90% of these panels on AI are the uninformed talking to the uninformed and everybody walking away less informed or actually misinformed. These have been really good. And they're not just corporate people like Sam Altman and the CEO of IBM. We had the AI minister of UAE. But as I say, my frustration is that the amount of knowledge is growing, and so the leading edge of knowledge is getting bigger and bigger, and I'm more and more of a generalist and I'm supposed to know more and more about more and more. And I'm just getting quite overwhelmed because I'm also supposed to take some time and share my insights with people. And I have not got that balance right. I'm not writing nearly as much as I should and I'm behind in a couple of big projects and that's driving me a little crazy. But the other thing that's driving me crazy is the incredible distraction of this election, which I think will only get worse. I tried to avoid all of the Iowa caucuses coverage because even though I'm inside the Beltway, I am very aware that we were watching 120,000 people decide who they thought the next Republican nominee could be. And these people are self-selected. They're certifiably crazy because they went out when there was a minus 10 windshield on icy roads and it was also clear they're certifiably crazy because when they interviewed these people, 60 or 70% of them thought that Biden was not elected legitimately. However, legitimately was defined. So I'm very stressed out about the impact of disinformation. I'm stressed out about the fact that our news media is completely focused on the wrong things and very frustrated with the fact that I'm working in a think tank. Our goal is to work on the big issues and the long-term problems and the better the analysis I write, the less likely it is that it'll be read, consumed and have an impact. I'm getting lots of hand signals from Jerry here. So I will share my frustrations and now I'll spend one minute sharing the joys. Kathleen was on a long trip. Well, it was supposed to be a short trip to California because of the United having a bunch of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft and because of the terrible weather, she left a day late and she got back two days late. So I'm very happy she's back. She came back with a miserable, terrible sinus infection and or bronchitis, but I'm happy that she's getting better and I hear her coughing as she walks up the stairs right now. So that's where I'm at. And I'm very excited about going out to California, Palm Springs and then up to Seattle starting a week from Friday. So, thank you. Maybe I'll go next here. I've also listened in on the World Economic Forum and of course what stood out for me was that Blinken did a presentation on soil and at a workshop explaining for the first time effort you know that without healthy soil, the planet simply cannot survive. And so the linkage between the natural world and the biosphere and the baby farm was sent a part of his conversation. So that was encouraging. What's not so encouraging is that the solutions that were discussed at the World Economic Forum over the last few years, you know, guided by McKinsey were all technical focused. And none of them have paid any attention to the socioeconomic impacts of their decisions which just dooms them to fail from the start, right? Because now as you change the food system, it's changing jobs, it requires different skill sets, it requires a different supply chain configuration, it requires changing of menus and things of that sort which so far has not been acknowledged. So it's encouraging to see that at least the need for change is on the table now and the question then is now, so where does it go? So my partner and I hosted a meeting we had very diverse group of senior people at the table or at the Zoom and there were two NGOs represented who are very active and who have a big impact in their particular regions, one from Oregon, one from Idaho. There was a seed call that people who are international, it's a subsidiary of Siemens that have just an amazing technology to use food scraps and leftovers to make powder products, protein extracts and things of that sort. So the point of this was to let everybody talk and realize there's so much going on already around them and developing tools and process structures that are really exciting, but there is no good mechanism to get this information around and to help people see what's already there and find partners to connect with who have complementary products, services and knowledge. So we are now also using AI to extract how much can we get out of this meeting and make that understandable going forward. And then of course, I totally share Mike's fear and frustration about the political process. I think in the farm community we have a real opportunity about, I would say two thirds of farmers vote for Trump empathetic, I mean, this is bigger. And if you ask them why, they can't really explain a lot of the technical reasons, but the regulatory process and the way that our market rules are defined makes it very difficult for farmers to make a living and to get fairly compensated and it forces them to do things to their land that is just harmful, that's just destructive on their soils and their watersheds. And so the, but at the same time, the Biden administration has done an amazing job with the secretary of agriculture, Wilsack have done an amazing job to open up funding and expertise to assist farmers to change. The hang up now is access to markets. And this is the, I think the challenge that goes throughout the entire economy, wanting to change and wanting to make structural changes like you have in the electricity sector, in the food sector, it's newer because the conversation about the environmental impact of food and agriculture is not as old and mature as it is in the energy sector, but it's coming on rapidly. So the, and the capacity to make changes in the food system if you get people excited about the potential impact of changing our buying patterns and our dietary habits is amazing. So that's a communications challenge to get that out and then to provide products into that market that are representative, attractive and fun to work with. So anyway, the, I don't think there is a political, solution to this. I don't know what you could talk about with farmers people who are in the, let's say working environment. It has to be actions. It has to be action focused. It has to be practical. And then you have this insane food fight in Congress, for example, in the agriculture sector, the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act is allocated now 20 billion dollars to go to conservation programs for farmers, which would be a total game changer. It's the first ever federal investment into climate change at scale into the agricultural sector. And the fight over this is absolutely incredible. So we're mobilizing our networks to reach out and talk with farmers and engage them into a very practical conversation about farming, not about politics, but about farming. And just, you can't debate on the wavelength that Trump and his cohorts there are communicating at because, I don't know who said some famous person once said, you never wanna argue with stupid because it's gonna pull you into the mud and then beat you with experience. And so it makes no sense. And I think all of us have engaged into some conversations there and you realize how faultless that is. So we just have to change the conversation and move it into a practical sphere where it matters to people. Like for a farmer, for example, to get access to markets by creating a product line that is totally regenerative and allows them to recover his soil and make it profitable. So that was a long one. But that's that sort of, I think we're really challenging time. We time a bit to figure this out. So that's sort of where I'm at. I will check in. I also have to go here in a few minutes at the half hour mark. I have been in Illinois for a few days now. I've been quite closely involved in a caretaking situation for a loved one who is currently moving through a mental illness challenge and I have been pretty involved in this for the last month or so and really struck by how much time and resources are needed for supporting someone who is moving through a situation like this. And while I'm exceptionally happy to be here and I'm here of choice and I am just, yeah, I'm really glad to be here. I can't help but think about the, if anyone here has read the book Power Versus Force by David Hawkins, he has this framework, this idea of understanding the role of emotional, the role of the impact that our emotional internalized emotional processes kind of play on how the rest of the world is in balance or out of balance or how the communities or people around us how we affect them. And he suggests that emotions, each identified emotion kind of calibrates at a certain numerical value. And he suggests, and someone can check me on this if I'm wrong, I think he suggests that when the calibration of an emotion is lower than this, I think it's a logarithmic scale of the number 300. So this is emotions like shame or anger or guilt or pride. We individuals who calibrate at that level tend to take energy from the world. And once we hit this certain numerical value of 300 and we are calibrated to these emotional states that are of at or above the number 300, we can give energy to the world. And as I'm watching this situation and involved in this situation at the micro level, I'm also very closely following what has been unfolding in Palestine. I can't help but I'm just very conscious of that right now of this idea. And while I don't necessarily agree with the methods that David Hawkins used to formulate this idea, I think it's a really interesting concept. And I just struck again and again by how much our unprocessed collective pain is causing the planet at the planetary level, at the level of resources, at the level of humanity and all life on the planet. And I think I am struggling to come back to hope within myself. I'm also not taking as great of care of myself, especially I'm out of my own environment right now, my own patterns and routine. And I trust that this is also impacting how hopeful I can feel. And so I am really present to the importance of taking care of oneself when holding and navigating and being in support of any way to a larger process than that of my own. And it just feels really intense right now, I'm very present to it and I feel complete. I have a whole lot to report, but I do have a couple of things. One Gil and I hosted Hunter Levens yesterday on our call. I know Jerry was there, Hank was there. I don't know if anybody else was there, but it was just woman is a force of nature. I mean, she just sits there and pulls fact after she's a walking encyclopedia of sustainability and systems thinking. And it was really amazing to watch her. We talked a lot about what happened at COP. She said, it's the UN's annual exercise in frustration. At one level, nothing happens. At another level, a lot of really good things happened. And it came away just feeling very much better informed about why it is important. She's like, why burn up all this jet fuel to go there? Because it is people talking. Maybe we don't get what we wanted, but the fact that people are talking is hugely important. And as someone who focuses on conversation as a way of getting work done, that to me just really resonated very deeply. We'll have that video posted probably in the next week or 10 days. And I'll make sure that send it out to the OGM list. I would recommend you take a look at it. It's very inspiring. And it just, I like Hunter because she posts things like how to combat climate despair. And I see so many people, if you look at my latest post in flex, it's about coping with despair. And speaking of coping with despair, I'm also involved in this study group for ontological coaching. And I'm rereading a book I read 18 years ago called ontological coaching, or coaching the human soul ontological coaching and deep change. And this thing jumped off the page at me. He's talking about Alvin Toffler and Toffler's work on Future Shock. And I just wanna read a very brief excerpt here. Toffler focused on the human organisms, physical adaptive systems and decision-making processes. Dealing with a lot of changes in a short time puts an enormous challenge on the body and its coping mechanisms may be overwhelmed. Typical response to these situations are, let's see if these resonate for you, increased anxiety and hostility to authority, an increased in tendency towards violence, physical illness, depression, apathy, erratic swings in mood, interest and lifestyle followed by an effort to crawl into a shell through social, intellectual and emotional withdrawal, feeling continually bugged and harassed and desperately wanting to reduce the number of decisions being made. He wrote this 54 years ago in 1970. And I just read that and I went, this is so present for so many people, especially on the right. I think there's all these folks who are just very hostile to authority. They just wanna withdraw and go back to some mythic time that never existed. And I'm just struck by the cyclical nature of this and the long-term nature of this that at a collective scale, we've yet to crack the code on how to cope with it. So I'm still working on that along with Mike, getting frustrated on all the stuff. And I'm really looking at, I've greatly reduced the amount of media that I'm taking in, because I just find it produces such a dissonance in me. I can't focus on anything else. So I'm only asking myself, what is mine to do? What's important now? And how does taking in a whole bunch of media move me forward in my life? And I'm finding it really doesn't. I posted something to the list the other day, this talk by Jonathan Rosen. It's actually a little half hour video, it's a film. It's quite lovely. It covers a lot of the same ground as Daniel Schmockdenberger, but with a much less dire and doom perspective. If you want, I'll stick it in the chat here when I'm done with my check-in. I'd never heard of this guy before. He's a world champion, chess grandmaster, get to Greece from Harvard, Bristol and Oxford. Really amazing synthesis. And he's talking about the meta crisis and how important it is to recognize the meta crisis and how dire it is. And yet at the same time, he's like, I don't have a lot of faith in the political solutions to it, but there might be a consciousness shift that can go on. And wow, that's really fascinating. So half hour of your time, I think you'll come away with a little bit of a less dire perspective on things and maybe a little bit more hope. And if nothing else, it's a beautiful film to watch. It's interview interspersed with lots of great imagery. So I throw that out there for those of you who are struggling to keep up with the flow here. And that's me, thank you. Good morning, everybody. Ken, would you say again about the less dire? I want that, but I didn't hear what it was. Yeah, I try to follow Schmacktenberger and I just get really depressed. Yeah, I get that. So, Jonathan Rosen, I sent you the video in the chat the other day. Thank you. Yeah, that'll do it. Okay, and you posted that into the OGM please. And I'm gonna post it right now into the chat here. Yeah, thank you. So, Kali, a few reaction, I wanted to follow Ken to talk about the call with Hunter yesterday, but I first wanted to just comment on what Mike said about Iowa. I did a rare thing the last couple of nights after watching MSNBC. I spent some time on Fox News, which is a hard thing for me to do, but it was fascinating to see how similar they both were. Both of them, both channels were working really, really hard to spin their story. MSNBC was a story of this is like, yeah, only 120,000 people, like 20% of the population of a very small state. They were trying to construct a story about how there's a Democrat victory here. And Fox was spinning a story of it is all just locked down, go home. And what was notable was not the content of it, but the theater of both of them felt identical. Could turn the sound off, would have been the same show. So there's that. And yeah, so I lived in a sense of dread and a recognition of the power of organizing. People actually work the issues and get folks out to vote, things happen. So that's gonna be a very interesting, what, 10 and a half months in front of us. I echo everything Ken said about Hunter. We will have the video up in a few days, not a week or 10, so probably by early next week at the latest, not sooner. And it's really worth watching. And one of the things that was really notable to me and surprising, I've known Hunter for decades, we've worked together, we've talked together in the MBA program, Studio, done some clients together, Force of Nature, yeah, for sure. Well, two things. One is that she, in her report back from COP, it wasn't just conversations. Somebody, you know, hundreds of conversations with hundreds of people. And those are not just about people having chats, they're weaving the web. Connecting people with projects they should be involved and making people aware of what's going on. It's in a way the work that we do here at OGM that a lot of us do in our lives is connecting people with possibilities. And it sounded like she was kind of full time doing that at Davos. So it didn't matter what Aljaber said and what the document said, but the work of thousands of people being enriched by finding ways to work together was really stunning. And one example in Klaus, this is relevant for you. I think you were on the call, I think, weren't you? I think I saw you there in the tiles. Was she took one of the leadership of one of the Gulf States out into the desert. Tonya's been doing a lot of work on regenerative agriculture. And exposed this guy, I don't know what the whole story was to the realization that the land that he was looking at his desert used to be grassland. He'd never known that before, I never imagined that before and saw a possibility for a new future for agriculture in a Gulf state, in the desert lands of the Middle East. And so just small encounters like that, offering up the sense of the possible, because something has existed, it may be as possible again. So that was all rich and inspiring. There's a wealth in the call. But the thing that shocked me was she said that we've been working at this for decades, trying to change companies and economy and so forth, and we're losing. The vital signs are going in the wrong direction. But we've heard many times from many people, but then this person who's been dedicated since like her teenager, full time to this stuff said, I'm thinking about hanging out my spurs. I'm thinking about declaring defeat and just going riding horses and running my ranch. I was really surprised to hear that from her. She also said that that's not what she's doing. No, she's staying in the game, but it's another perspective on the despair that Patty was talking about. And somehow, I guess some people do give it up and some people stay in the game. Yield, do you remember her answer to why, when you said why didn't you hang up your spurs and remember her answer? I don't, but I know you do. Because Guterres gave a speech on regenerative agriculture, you said, I could have given that speech. I got to get back in here. She says, I'm not giving up yet. This is actually the words getting out. Yep, and it's both that she could have given that speech and also that people are picking up on her work and work of class and work of others. It's a slow and strange process, but we do see shifts in the narrative because of the thankless, invisible work that thousands of us are doing all the time. And it's a reminder that we don't know very much about cause and effect. Now, everybody talks about theories of change, but nobody really knows how change happens, but it does. And so we do what we do. And it's not like Jane and I have been watching lots of house building programs on the TV, much, much, much more better than news. And there, you measure the thing and it fits or it doesn't. You roll the truck in and it's there on time or it's not. The thing gets built or it doesn't. It stands or it does very direct feedback on certain kind of work. And we, looking at the screen, all of us, I think, if not most of us live in a world of not direct cause and effect from our work. We do what we do. If things happen or don't. There you go. I was on a call before this with Bruce Pasecki from the AHC group back in New York State. Bruce is a consummate environmental and sustainability consultant who has frankly baffled me for years. He seems very unassuming, a lot of name dropping. And from my historical assessment, has been very much a moderate incrementalist not moving the ball very much. And I'm learning that this man has been enormously effective at weaving together big players. It's just come out with a book which I have not read yet called Wealth and Climate Competitiveness. How do you get zoom cameras to work? Slim book gives a lot of a lot of boughs to Henry, David Thoreau and Robin Hood. And I found that this guy is you know, a enormously effective as a consultant, more effective than I've been by far and a guy with a soul of a poet. And you know, one of the, talked about the stories of Robin Hood, the earliest sort of like 1296 from someone named Holt. Contemporaneous with what Bruce said is one of his other heroes, Dante, who was writing about at that time about bankers going to hell, which has been on the divine comedy that I hadn't quite heard. And talked about a mind shift that only fable enables. And how you know, the Robin Hood legend has lived on in so many ways since then, but that phrase has resonated for me. So I wanted to share that. Mike, like you, I have not been writing enough. I'm talking to Mike who's not here. Like, so like, perhaps like many of you, I'm not writing enough, I'm writing more. I'm trying to write more. I'm dancing a bunch with the GPTs, exploring what I can do with them, how they can support the work that we're up to enhance my own writing. I think I've mentioned before that we're building a couple of AIs right now, one that's trained on the living between worlds conversations the past four years. One that's trained on my book of 14 years ago, The Truth About Green Business, which we're interested in updating. And Pete and I have been having a little bit of a chat about neobooking the thing in a kind of open source process of inviting the world to help us update it. The book was written principle-based and designed to be timeless, but the examples are not timeless. So the examples need refreshing. And there are themes that we didn't see in 2009 that are front and center now. So interested in how, I guess with both of these, how we can use these technologies, not just to create artifacts, but to enrich the conversation interaction among people. Very, very rich conversation on the call yesterday, not just Hunter's brilliance, but the chat was more full than I've ever seen it. I can't, I think one of our jobs in the next week or so is to wander through the chat and digest it and pull nuggets out from that. I think there's a lot to do there. And what else? Yeah, other GPT stuff, which I'm not ready to talk about yet, but I will in future sessions. And just thank you all for this group. This is one of a, I guess about a half a dozen regular conversations I have on the Zoom. And I really look forward to this and spending time with you and being enriched by these conversations. So thank you. I'm done. I have to go momentarily, but I'm finding myself treading into waters sort of beyond cybernetics and what's old is new again. So I've been up to my neck and Pete and Bates and then and a foam and immersed in the elements, which is a really ancient fundamental. As a contrast to all of that and getting to something simpler as a way of catalyzing and metamorphosing people's consciousness and orientation. And I'm seeing sort of really a common theme across all of the shares today in a way of looking at it not as the chaos in the maelstrom end of the telescope, but as the other end, which is everything is connected and everything is working off one source. And the closer the conversation is to where an individual lives in a relational, energetic, emotional way, the opener they are to learning and to connection and to sharing. And just as a touchstone, I know we're in check-in mode but class I've had like bump ups against farmers over the years in different contexts and live in the middle of them here where I am now. And they're deep when you talk to them about things farming, like your comment about that, like when you get into the reality of farming not that anything matter or abstract, they're fully present to cannon for interested curious in learning open receptor. And I think that's sort of true with all of the constituencies that are at each other's throats. And with that I'm complete. So I'll have a short check-in today and interesting to follow Doug. Ken, I wanna thank you for sending that video out of grossing. It's just extraordinary. When I stop being a human doing and get a little quiet, I find myself whimpering a bit, like an animal whimpers because there's so much going on, so much going on. And I think I'm just exhausted in a certain way. And that video really says it all. If we think about the field that we're in and what we're all dealing with and what we're all tilting at in terms of trying to make sense of stuff that doesn't make sense and trying to create solutions for a species on a planet that we're in process of killing in some ways or have killed in some ways or have certainly damaged or wounded. And I guess speaking, that whimpering is my own woundedness as a reflection or an embodiment of the woundedness that we're all living in. And the only real consolation and it's interesting and I keep being one of the few who raises the human element. The question that I asked the hunter yesterday which turned the conversation a little bit, I think from the engineering solutions into the human element, I just wanted to make sure that that was kind of dropped into the conversation. It was a brilliant and wonderful coming together that you guys created Gil and Kim. But understanding the context that we're in is what the Rostin video brought up. And maybe I'm the canary in the coal mine, maybe others have more fortitude than I but the idea of making sure that we take care of ourselves and each other as we keep tilting at windmills because it's gonna get worse before it might get better. So that's my check-in today. I have a short check-in as well. I was also on the call with the hunt 11th yesterday and building on what Gil introduced her rhetorical question about whether it was time to hang up her spurs and enjoy life while she can is something that also goes through my mind. And so far I've decided very strongly that it's not time to stop but there's a question which keeps me engaged. So this is a check-in and maybe someone will come back to it for their own answer in their own lives after the check-in is finished. But this is my question. If you're not going to hang up your spurs and you want to come back and either do an alchor what you've always done well and maybe do it better with more practical wisdom or maybe something completely different that you always wanted to do when you want to engage with something important for example, the next 10 years of your life should you do what's within your comfort zone? Should you do what you know you can get accomplished? Or should you be more like Don Quixote and try to engage with something that's really difficult that's almost impossible because it's not being done enough and you think with your little contribution of energy it can move the world a bit forward in that direction. So come back and improve your comfort zone or go for something which everyone thinks is impossible. And aside from that, I have a question as many of you know, I'm originally an American and I've lived the last 54 years outside of America so I don't understand everything that's going on there and I don't want to talk about why people seem to like Trump. I'm just completely amazed why nobody acknowledges the job that Biden's doing. Well, I'm proud she did earlier in this call but I mean in American politics, in American media at least what gets reported over here in Europe it seems nobody thinks he's capable of doing a good job whereas to my innocent eyes, being a couple of thousand miles away from it, it seems he's doing lots of good things. So that's another question I'm posing for possibly after the check-in round. Thank you. I guess I'm in Hank go for what you think is impossible I think is what's resonating for me because this will tie into the comment I was gonna make one of my thoughts a couple of years ago was that infinity is too much and it was something that we were dealing with the human body and mind is limited and we have suddenly become tried to take on global individually as Stuart was talking about whimpering which I'll comment in a second Stuart because I had a very interesting thing that sparked from that. So Hank, instead of what everyone thinks is impossible why not go after something that you think might be impossible which might be possible because it's smaller, it's human-scaled and that's what I've been trying to do. I believe Gil, when you were talking about writing more I believe writing is thinking there's a reason to do it which is why I do not use chat GPT for any of my writing because I am, it's like having someone else do the push-ups for me. Like it's okay, the work is getting done but I going through the process is what's developing me and writing for me is developing myself more than producing a final product. So I can produce a final product using those tools but that's not the purpose for me. So Stuart, when you're talking about this whimpering which I think was a wonderful word that I haven't heard in many, I haven't heard that in a long time and thinking about this idea of infinity being too much is there more going on or if we just increased our individual fields beyond our human individual capacity. By field I mean field of awareness. And so when you described whimpering I was thinking of the vision that's presented as staring at the face of God blinded, overwhelmed, whimpering in awe, in just you can't even comprehend which is how it's, I've seen it written in many ways. And I think no matter how you conceptualize it it's what's bigger than us and if God is an entity, is a conceptualization of reality is a personification of everything. I'm a person, I'm one person, how can I face that and not whimper? And I think that's where this constraining is so vital to say, I understand that there's problems that are global but to try to carry that is in some ways admirable but it's also maybe foolish and maybe a little beyond what we as individuals can hope to do. So instead of trying to do something that would be impossible or seem impossible for the entire human race to pull together why not take on something that seems beyond my own capabilities, which is currently technically impossible for myself until I achieve it. But it's something that I could hope to achieve as opposed to that scale. So that's my thought. This is my check and I'm just feel like I'm churning a lot of ways that the gas pedal stuff and the cars are neutral and just vibrating and things of hearing people talk, I was reminded there's a David G Allen at the Getting Things Done Guide. Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind, which is kind of several things like that that are kind of like kind of mantras, open space technology also has some whatever happens and seeing what we can that could happen. So I'm just trying to try your best. So today's, well, yesterday was actually the John and me years resolution day. So if you're serious about it, making any changes today is the day to start. Yeah, I'm just really trying to get back to basics and just being more aware of using my time and there's the various techniques like the Pomodoro technique, which is like setting like a 25 minute time block looking at time block. I think that's going to be key for me as I look to get back to re-enrolling and PhD program for the summer. And I have made a presentation at work last week and I'm making one Saturday and just kind of one little piece and let it kind of let the communities, I let my bosses kind of set the pace. I put an idea out there, trying not to get too far ahead. I mean, it's like being able to delegate to people and delegate to people who are already doing it or really passionate about that anyway. And then they can probably take things in a way that you could eradicate. So many ideas, I don't know what. Thank you all. I really appreciate the silence in between and I almost feel like I'm going a little too quick right there. I do have to go pretty soon. So that's my urgency. So for those who don't know me, I create mindful tools that support balance. And I'm always on a search for frameworks that I can share with others. And I feel like this is the right time for this one. And I'm sure a lot of you know about this framework, but it's the triangulation, the drama triangle. Is anyone familiar with that? Yeah. So there's a hero victim villain or the victim rescuer, persecutor and people are often in those roles. And you can tell because there's an emotional charge a negative emotional charge in that role. But I've noticed that Trump plays all three roles very well. He'll be from the victim standpoint. Oh, I'm a victim to the rescuer. Well, I'm going to rescue all the victims of, you know and I don't know, there's just a, he's got that down. It's very interesting. Also the persecutor. So I used to do workshops, facilitate workshops called complaint therapy years ago. And I was just, I just love going through my day and noticing, just noticing when I'm dropping into one of those roles. And of course the emotions are the tell tales, the telling tales. So I just learned recently how to flip those three roles though, so I'm just going to share it really quickly. Whenever I'm feeling in a victim mode, like how dare they or the world is going to go down whatever kind of victim state I'm in, I can flip it to co-creator. I like, there's another word for creator but I love co-creation instead. So the moment I'm feeling down to change the question as someone shared in this room just earlier, if you change the question, the dialogue changes. So what can I co-create right now is the question when feeling down or angry. And the rescuer instead of the enabler can turn to coach instead. How can I coach someone at this point without advising them? And then the persecutor changes to challenger. And that's a healthy version of bringing challenge into the room. So we'd love to talk about it anytime, ever, ever again. If anybody wants to talk about it, I love this topic but I just wanted to introduce that into our day as we drop into our day today. And are we going forward? At first I thought, oh yeah, this is the check-in day. And I'm like, oh, I don't have anything to say. And then everybody just says everything and then you're like, oh my God, I have so much to say. And it's weird because today the thing I wanna say sounds so anti-me and maybe it's not but it feels like it is. I'm struck by this sense of how passionate we all are about whatever it is we're doing. So much so that we're suffering for it. And we feel the pain, the agony, the struggle for wanting to see things be different and wanting to get them to be better and wanting things to be something other than what they are. And I'm one of those people, so that's why I'm here and I think that's why we're all here. But at the same time, today I got a different vibe which is, it sounds almost religious but it's not because of my religion I swear. It's a sense of letting go, of do what you can do in the moment, be where you can be in the moment, support, help, serve in the moment and let go of the big picture stuff because the big picture stuff is not something that any of us can do by ourselves but we can help each other and we can do the things that are in front of us. And I think for me the idea that we're so struck by this meta this and poly that and everything else is in part being in a place of overthinking and under feeling. We are so stuck in this more knowledge, more information, we're gonna find the solution, we're gonna figure it out, yes, yes, yes, give me more. And it's overwhelming our emotional signs, it's overwhelming our feeling signs and let's just sort of let go a bit and let go of, I wake up most mornings I turn on the news, turn on the news, right? And doom scroll for 20 minutes, easy, right? Until somebody says, whoa, aren't you gonna get up? And she's right, yeah, I need to get up and I need to stop doing that but then I get going and then I start feeling and I start connecting with people. And sometimes I actually pause from whatever agony I was in from whatever is driving me from this big picture stuff and actually listen to somebody and actually want to reach out and help somebody and actually want to connect with somebody and to me that feels a lot more doable, real and approachable than getting stuck in that space. And I think we're all there. So I don't think it's a space that any one of us has complete and utter control over. I think it's a space that we all share. I'm hopeful that we can all find that ability to let go a little bit. Thank you. I want to say thank you for putting words to something I was feeling but didn't know I was feeling when you started what you just said, it was lovely about how everybody putting their stones in the pot suddenly makes it. Tasty, full of things. The thing that's presenting for me is I feel like I'm in the middle of a 30 year long identity crisis that isn't really identity crisis. I'm not sure what words to put around it but I'm curious about absolutely everything and it's a bit of a problem because as you just said we now have access to just about everything and worse, 26 years ago I was infected by a tool that allows me to curate all the things about all the things I care about and I've been doing that as a bit of a distraction with apologies to the group during this call because I'm sort of obsessive about that. And also along the path a lot of things really clicked into place and it's always small clicks. It's always, there's a comedy book called Peck to Death by Ducks. And I feel like I'm sort of trying to peck the world by making little things collapse and click into place and places and trying to do that as openly as I can. But I'm in the middle of a process of trying to explain who the hell I am in a clearer way as part of a long-term project to figure out how actually to make a sustainable living. And the low hanging fruit for a person like me in that world is public speaking which I love doing and used to do a bunch that I haven't done very much lately. And I'm an old white guy. So on the one hand, I would rather have other faces on stages but I feel like I have a lot of unique things to say. So that's not off the table. In fact, I'm sort of heading back into that world a bit. But the thing that really compels me and obsesses me is trying to weave together. This came up earlier and now I'm forgetting who actually put it in the conversation. We've together what is and what we see and do so in a way that's not so obsessive about what we see that I forget what we feel because we might be overthinking this and under feeling it. I'll say again, thank you. And I'm continually non-plussed at how primitive our tools are for actually doing this with each other. And we're way down the road on technology. Like I recently scanned output from a deckwriter three of an econometrics program called Jaguar that I was using at UC Irvine in college because my professor Charlie Lave was an econometrician and we were busy trying to predict how many miles people would drive in their cars for Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee. That was kind of the thing I ended up doing at the end of college. And at this point, we're all talking through Zoom. We, most of us have a little slab of an obtenium that lets us do anything we want that we underutilize like crazy. And we are busy drowning in the information torrent. And I think that there are waterwings available but at this point they're leaky and we could build rafts but we're busy like being blown down the torrent. We're not actually doing enough of that in some sense. And that is my sense of urgency is a piece of what's broken for us is not being able to make sense during the torrent hence things like open global mind. Anyone who's interested in this quest I would love your feedback or help. I'm actually sort of soliciting from people who I've worked for in the past. I'm setting up interviews to go figure out like, okay, so one of the things I said or did was helpful. What works, that kind of thing. And I will come back with feedback as I learn things but I'm in the middle of that process and feeling in part daunted by it and part rejuvenated by it because it's allowing me to think more clearly about what I do. And I feel I have this historic pattern where every five years or so things kind of crystallize and a new thesis shows up that builds on the old one it doesn't replace it but builds on the old one. So around 2010 I created the relationship economy expedition. That was my living for two or three or four years. It was a mastermind group in retrospect. That's what I would call it today but that wasn't the big thing in 2010 or I guess it existed. I just didn't know it existed. And then it took me seven, eight, nine years to realize that the common thread was trust. And then I spent some time working on trust in different ways which it doesn't sell that well. It's so many problems actually come down to trust but selling trust is like pushing a noodle up a wall. It doesn't actually work very well. And that took me into a bunch of different directions which are too numerous to explain but I'm thrilled to be in a community this one where I get to immerse myself in what you all are thinking and doing and I get to share what I'm up to and trying to figure out. And it feels, I don't know, it feels good and it feels like progress in some interesting ways. And then every now and then Doug Carmichael will push us hard and say, why aren't you doing more? And I will feel those frustrations and I'll come back into what we're doing and also be motivated to try to do it more effectively and in bigger ways. And I think all of us, I think all of us help motivate one another to go back out into the field and to do the thing that we're called to do and to do it with more energy and more clever solutions and whatever else. This is maybe a place where we share what we found and whether it's working or not and all of that. So I'm grateful to all of you for your presence here and what you bring, the gifts you bring when you show up and when you open your orifices. So thank you very much and with that I'm complete and with that I believe everybody has stepped into the check-in round. No, oh, Ken, Gilly you're pointing that way but Ken is over here for me. Pete has his hand up. And Pete has his hand up. Oh, so I've peed up for some reason and I thought you'd already gone. So my apologies, I think you're the last one and you're over here for me. Everybody point to Pete right now. Oh, I like that. That's pretty cool. I will go quiet again with apologies. I'll take a beat. This is my check-in for today. Sometimes I try to breathe more and appreciate more. Sometimes I try to center more and accept my energy and powerfulness both within myself and with others and use it for good. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your presence. I believe now we are all properly checked and it's got the floor is yours. Jesse, I will echo your reminder or acknowledgement that the little gaps are delightful. I think I've said it before, but I miss that in every other conversation. I have in any other situation, actually, no one stops in between. It's my next thing, which I've been dying to say and I'm gonna say it immediately. So a couple of quick thoughts. Jose, one of the things you've mentioned was a connection between passion and suffering. And I understood what you were saying as those two things being either separate or opposite or something like that. And in my understanding is that they're the same. And people talk about passion as being this thing that I love to do. And they never talk about it. No, this is this thing that I'm going to give my life to because if we're using our time to do something instead of doing something else, we are literally giving our life to it. And so passion and suffering, I don't think are opposites. Or if I'm suffering, then the passion is somehow this is not my passion or whatever. I think, no, you are, if you're doing it, even in spite of these difficulties, then that to me makes it even more aligned with passion. You mentioned something about the doom scrolling in the morning, just need to get up just and stop doing all of that. And I've said before that I think that the bigger, the bigger, the more, the more meta, the doom scrolling, which tends to be usually outside of our actual seared influence, right? I mean, that's why it stresses it out. It's bigger than us. But I've often felt that that's hiding because I can always say, oh yeah, but what about food? Oh yeah, but what about climate? Oh yeah, but what about the political unrest in over here? And by doing that, I'm taking all of my potential action in my space and saying, yeah, well, you know, if there wasn't all of this, this whole world that I'm trying to fix and worry about, then I would have mental energy and lower anxiety to deal with this thing in front of me. But I don't have to deal with this thing in front of me because I'm so focused on this bigger thing and this bigger thing. So I've looked at that as a form of hiding and that's where I'm trying to align with that whole infinity is too much. And infinity in my definition is anything beyond my scope, my ability. That's technically infinity because it's beyond what I can count and what I can do. Jerry, you were talking about how delightful this group is and I was thinking it's so interesting because it's human scale. I can see all of you. I can count all of you. I know most of you in through this call. And to me, it's not overwhelming because it's this limited group. It's a room of people. And that to me feels comfortable even when we're talking about things that are much bigger than us. You know, and you were saying can we make sense of the torrent? And I'm thinking, well, maybe we can't because it's bigger than us. And can we make sense of it individually? Sure, in our own way, but can we make sense of it as a group? I don't know. With this many people, we have this many perspectives and that can be a real challenge. But the one thing that you said at the end, Jerry, was something about going away and doing our thing with a renewed energy. And what I'm getting out of this call is a reminder again to like Jose said, do your thing. Actually do it. Not everybody else's thing. Do your thing. And be able to do that with focus and joy and passion because you know that you're affecting something. And that to me feels way different than a call every week where I'm still focused on things that are larger than me every time. And I haven't made any progress and I don't feel like any progress is being made. And that is overwhelming to me. And so that's the one thing I have to have gotten about this is that resignation, I think you said, maybe it wasn't resignation, acceptance, letting go and saying, but by letting go, I'm also saying, but what's right here, this is mine. And I need to double down on that because that's where my agency is. So I appreciate that. Thank you, Scott. I've got reflections on what several of you have said, I'll go kind of in reverse order from Scott. I appreciate what you're saying about the human scale of this call having just come off a hundred percent call yesterday, which was delightful in a very different way and was offered something that's not possible in any other format than that kind of Zoom call, but it doesn't do things that this call this. So thank you for that. Jose, on the waking up into the chaos of the world, we'll practice that I've been cultivating over the past couple of months is to wake up and first thing is to pay attention to my breath and my body. And then the next thing is to dive into creative work on what calls to me right then. So that might be getting up and writing. It's actually often just lying in bed and writing, Scott, sometimes by dictation, but in that liminal space of not even completely awake, not completely out of dream to go and do what is most expressive of me. And this is thanks to Stephen Kotler, the Flow Research Collective and a number of other people have suggested and I found it transformative, both in how my day unfolds and also in what I'm able to generate. And yes, Scott, this is the not GPT part. This is straight out of wherever it's coming from through me. I don't think a GPT is a final product tool. I think of it as a really good set of research assistants and lawyers and stuff who I don't have to pay anything to. Who could help me uncover and excavate and kind of expose the pieces of something that I care about and give me a richness from which I can then do my work. So it's still challenging to not let the news end early. But I think it's an enormous, for me it's an enormously important practice is to do my own day first. And then news and that includes email. Well, if I start my day with email, I've got 10 minutes or 90 minutes in reaction to other people and what they've got on their minds and what their agendas are around than what mine is. So there's that. On the matter of passion, thanks to my sophomore year of high school, English professor named Emmanuel Bloom, I've been an etymology geek my whole life. And because I'm multilingual, I'm etymology geek in multiple languages and look at the differences and luck to look at the differences in translations and so forth. But Jose, when you were talking about passion, I went and checked it out. And it's a word of somewhat uncertain origin, it turns out, but what they seem to think is that it comes from the Latin pati, which means to endure, to undergo, to experience. So the notion of passion is that which must be endured. To those are really interesting perspective on it. Last but not least, Hank, to when listening to you speak, I remember this, gonna be a wonderful quote from Buckinghamster Fuller who said, the things to do are the things that need doing that you see need to be done and that no one else seems to see, seems to see need to be done. I'm gonna say it again. The things to do are, instead of going to be able to see the words this time, the things to do are the things that need doing that you see need to be done and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Over to you, Carl. Yeah, it's kind of interesting with the technology. I was taking notes earlier in the brain and then I decided it was gonna keep crashing on me. So I was like, okay, I should be listening more. I also did just put into LinkedIn, I put in Jesse and you popped up at the top of the list. So that was kind of, the technology does seem to kind of weigh, I guess one of the first comments we started talking about was with, and also with language and things. And I haven't done a lot of working to it, but I think one of the things that kind of makes English unique or at least part of its character is that it really spread to the vernacular with wandering minstrels and the British had such a, like wordplay is very important and it's just like all the, like the British humor seems to be focused on that. So I mean, that's something that intrigues me. Then as far as trying to move forward and things I'm really trying to look at scenarios and really focusing on events. So kind of identifying different events that I wanna try to make happen in July. When I'm taking a course from Dan Rohn, he wrote a book back in about six bestsellers I think now, but his latest one was the pop-up pitch and there's a 10 page. It's basically following the hero's journey and things, but it's all about making a persuasive argument and stuff. So I'm actually looking at how I can use that for, I mean, taking a class on how to, the time to write a book and things. So I'm thinking in terms of those scenarios for July, kind of like each scenario could be a chapter. There's also Doug Engelbart, someone been a huge, pardon me, career and everything and he'll be his 99th birthday is January 30th. So there's the whole Doug's 100th year coming up with culminating in January 30th, 2025, it's 100th birthday. So I've been privileged to have a lot of, really, some of the thinkers in different areas. So maybe that, so that's what I'm towing around with, but I got to present to class on Tuesday, so that the things have to collapse into reality at some point to line that up, that's a long story. Thanks, Carl. Stuart, you may have an ultimate voice here because I'm hoping Ken might have a poem for us, but we are at time and you're muted. I'm sure Ken will have a poem. So very, very quickly. One, the conversation and my own check-in reminded me some work I did around 1990, around 30 years ago, about what ultimate question drives you in your work and life in the world. And I was living in a question of, how can I fix the world? And that's gonna certainly be exhausting and kind of change that question to how can I be a contribution to people who are trying to fix the world? The other thing is in response to Hank's stimulation, is a statement from the Talmud, which makes me think about what we're grappling with is nothing new because I'm not sure when the Talmud was conceived or written. But before I say it, I just wanna appreciate Scott's sharing about the face of God, which is a really interesting conception to create perspective for all of us. But from the Talmud, do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. Thank you, Stuart. Thank you, Stuart. You're welcome. So the notion of soul has come up here and soul was deeply connected to the earth, that is our connection to the earth and that needs to soil. And so I dedicate this poem to Klaus. This is a poem from Sharon Olds called Ode to Dirt. Dear dirt, I am sorry I slighted you. I thought that you were only the background of the leading characters, the plants and the animals and human animals. It's as if I loved only the stars and not the sky, which gave them space and which to shine. Subtle, various, sensitive. You are the skin of our terrain. You're our democracy. When I understood I had never honored you as a living equal, I was ashamed of myself as if I had not recognized a character who looked so different from me. But now I can see us all made of the same basic materials. Cousins of that first exploding from nothing are in articulate equation together. Ode Dirt, help us find ways to serve your life. You who have brought us forth and fed us and who at the end will take us in and rotate with us and wobble and orbit. Sharon Olds, Ode to Dirt. Klaus, you should use that with your farmer friends. Absolutely. Klaus, read that in front of your meetings. From dirt we come, from dirt to dirt we return, right? Yes, absolutely. So in soul, look at the etymology, they go way back. I'm a human, same thing. I thought it was chickpeas. Well, those are there too. Rumi writes about chickpeas being, you know, get back on the pot. And I do want to say one other thing. For those of you who doom scroll first thing in the morning, about 22 years ago, 2002, get yourself a personal practice. I got a book. It happened to be Vistava Zimborski's book of collected poems. And I made it a point every morning, first thing in the morning to get up and read one of the poems and just contemplate it. I did that for an entire year, practice poetry, get yourself a good anthology or some poet that you like. And every day, first thing before you read any news, read a poem and think about it. And just let it sink into you. And, you know, it took for it, there were only like 150 poems. So I read every poem in there at least twice. And of course of that year, it's really, it's life changing. It's a great way to begin your day. It's way better than looking at the news. That's, that's the design of my book, pilgrims path morning practice for seekers, one poem a day for every day of the year with reflective questions. Very nice. Got to run. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you everybody. Bye bye. Ciao.