 Welcome to economics and beyond. I'm Rob Johnson president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I'm here today with author Psychologist and dear friend John O'Neill. He's been the president of California School of Professional Psychology He's been a leadership coach he's written books like the very profound paradox of success leadership at keto and Seasons of Grace which is a wonderful book about gratitude that he wrote with the head of Ellen Jones the head of the Great Cathedral John I Reaching out to you today. Thank you for joining me, but I can feel within my bones an urgency This is a great time of disorientation a great time of despair time of transformation and you've had these beautiful conferences and most importantly a long time ago After I got off to the airplane From the going from Kennedy Airport to Beijing and I hadn't taken anything to read I ran another book shop when I got this book called the paradoxic success and I read it and when I got to World Economic Forum you were running a panel and I became a client and you helped me sort myself out is one of the most disoriented Confusing times of my life so in a disoriented confusing time for society I couldn't imagine bringing a greater grip to my audience and by and then inviting you to explore with me here tonight So thanks for thanks for being a part of this Well, you're welcome. I'm delighted. I'm just delighted Well, John you you are also I'm gonna go right to the heart of the matter at the outset You've recently written a book that hasn't been released yet. It's called life the whole enchilada And you've created a wonderful nudge in your profile of me where you said I was too media shy And if you said to me, who's my co-author and found in this podcast? There is no question that was when I read that paragraph in golf I said I better get on my horse John John's back But John we're where we are right now Lots of social unsustainability lots of despondent politics Lots of fear of climate change and then this pandemic comes down like an alien on the planet earth and I Want to hope that it's a gift because it was disorienting an unsustainable system But it's too daunting to be that cheerful at the outset How are you seeing what's happening? You've worked with powerful people as the life coach Many many people who are in the which I call the pantheon of American awareness and heroes What are you seeing them? What are you? What are you recommending and teaching people in this dreadful experience? Well, thanks, Rob. It's a great pleasure to be here. Let me go quickly Through the setup, so I I kind of understand where where you want to go and make sure I'm going in the right direction Let's start with look where we are Let's identify it properly because we so often don't and that's understandable since we live in the present and we're now Experiencing the future that we've never seen and we don't understand There are three parts to the future as I see it that are hitting us sort of almost all at once The first part is we had a very flawed economic system That has kind of held us up in a curious way It floated us if you will you can imagine humanity floating on a sea of economic nonsense So that's number one that's been going on for some time and you and others have been trying to call attention to that The second thing is this thing called climate change, which is very slow it makes It makes market crashes look almost Speedy as it were but when you have something as Grand and as horrible as we have been treating the earth our Tribe, if you will has been deliberately trying to destroy the earth as best they can Without knowing that that's what they're they're doing By just gouging us taking a piece here a piece there letting this go by the way Whatever pleases us. In fact, there's a very interesting group of Israelis who wrote a book called sapiens I've been deep into that and and into the heads of those guys and they've got they've got a full understanding I think of how serious this is how deliberate it is and how hard it is to turn around It's not easy at all. And then the third thing is the consequences of Climate change may be reinforcing the pandemic So if it didn't reinforce this one, it will the next one Because climate deeply affects how we interact with each other and As you know, this is not the first not the last pandemic will have more and Climate change in addition to all the other things is doing To affect our lives is a deeply deeply affecting in the case of something like a pandemic a new disease So there's all the good news right up front. That's where we are. Let's go Let's don't blunt it. Let's don't put any kind of a sheen on it But let's do is to try to understand how we got here And when Europe was in deep trouble back in the 20s and 30s really deep trouble And it suddenly erupted in the form of Nazi Germany We were surprised, but if you did just a little bit of work, you could see Where all the shadows were all over Europe dark dark shadows I'm reading another Churchill book I've written though I'm he's a lot of that written about him. They're all pretty good This one is very good and Churchill saw these shadows and He was almost panicky about it. He had a kind of sensitivity to it he saw the dark thing that was happening and So did young Carl young and so did Freud and They were the ones who gave it the name Shadow and what it is is all the repressed anger and fear that we walk around with every day Suddenly comes to the surface And we see really frightening horrible things happening And that's what happened in Nazi Germany. You can read that in great detail So we know that and we know that we have shadows all over the place our society right now It's probably Filled with shadows that we have never really believed we would have We have shadows of the most horrible kind of bigotry That's just coming oozing out of it. It's almost like it's it's part of the plant That we call the earth. It's just oozing out We have shadows around hate and and frankly and injustice that have gone on for years and years They're now coming to the surface and as we squeeze everyday life for people More and more of these shadows will start to surface Now some of them could wake us up. Which would be nice. That would be lovely But most of them unfortunately right now are just leading us in the wrong direction In fact, I think what they're doing is really being us as a humanity Into the direction of some kind of game zero-sum game in which if I sit in here in the US and you sit Just south of the border of the US you're less Significant than I am You're less worthwhile in terms of what I should do for you In short, we become provincial. We become really ugly and our hatred And we've got to turn all that around all that shadow has to be released And if I didn't learn anything else From you on it said if you don't get things out of the shadow in your own personal life In your society, they're gonna come back and they're really going to haunt you and that's what we are Yeah, and when you talk about Climate change in your three-part context of where we are Ugliness hatred provincial it takes my mind rights to the United States in China who must collaborate on climate change Pandemics and many other issues For this planet to survive Yeah, and we're going in the wrong direction that high velocity right now in terms of that Corruptive and collaborative spirit So when did that start in your mind Rob? When did we start to turn that corner? Oh in the US China relationship, I I'm quite Attended as you know, I even When I was flying from Beijing to Davos when I first met you I was I Ran the Soros quantum emergent growth in the non-Japan Asia portfolio In those days, and I've stayed very Devoted to to them and that region and its implications for the world ever since and What I would say is John there's a kind of Rough and tumble political economy and you see America Multinational enterprise in particular Going over foreign direct investment Technology diffusing into China Taking advantage of low environmental restrictions low labor costs and Exporting back to the United States What we saw in that context Was very very disruptive Influence particularly in the manufacturing sector in the United States But what we saw Was when the currency The Chinese were memby was misaligned when it was undervalued with the dollar a Whole bunch of powerful interest in the United States Nike Walmart people who benefited from foreign direct investment Try to stop the United States government from Complaining and demanding adjustment Wall Street Wanted access to the financial market of China as it modernized and integrated with the rest of the world So there were and there was what I'll call the Pepsi dream Pepsi or Coca-Cola can sell 1.2 billion consumers huge scale And all of those dreams carry us from the 1990s Maybe even a little earlier in the era of Deng Xiaoping Through the WTO But and this is before Donald Trump the Chinese started to have to improve their environmental conditions the Chinese started to have to Raise the compensation of their workforce as they were moving towards the middle income status and Many people were migrating to the coastline the Chinese had a lot of woundedness from the opium war had a lot of woundedness from the Japanese invasion During the war the second world war and The dignity of that nation which was once called the Middle Kingdom was Harmed was wounded and they sought to regain their stature Around 2015 and this is really to answer your point Chinese did not choose to integrate their financial market They compartmentalized their market maintained the intensified capital controls, right? American technology firms were finding instead of the magic what I call the Coca-Cola dream The Chinese were learning the technology and then replicating the firm right next door and the state management would Facilitate growth of market share by the domestic firm not by the joint venture. All right the rising labor standards and the rising wages compressed the profits of the traditional Chinese foreign direct investments owned by the best and I would say Finally, the Chinese announced a program called China 2025 which discuss displacing knowledge intensive Systems or sectors of production With Chinese domestic Including things like the Silicon Valley the Amazons and Googles and so forth being held out and domestic alternatives So the Americans said in a model of comparative advantage. They didn't meld with our system. They didn't converge with our system They didn't allow us Market share and benefits and even in 2014 and 15 places as multilateral as the council on foreign relations were writing angry hostile National state strategy anti-Chinese reports. Yeah, add to that with the workforce that had been displaced in manufacturing watched a deregulation Tax cuts for the wealthy and a gutting of their infrastructure and school systems and no adjustment systems and that's Chinese fault. That's the response of the American Plutocratic governance So you have two wings The powerful felt like they had to develop a tougher stance vis-a-vis China And the people who've been displaced were bitter and despair Yeah, and Donald Trump brought those together But those reports and those episodes that I described here in a long-winded way were all available on January 10 of 2015 and he didn't get elected until November of 2016 right, right The Chinese the Chinese will say to you we never intended to converge to become free market capitalism We have a different social system and a social philosophy and We're we that was your illusion not ours. Yeah Well, the other little fact of it. I remember I think you told me it was Japan Japan had really come up in fact if you remember a wonderful book my friend Tony Ackles wrote called Japanese the Japanese System of the Japanese method and what it said was really they they understood how to do manufacturing that Japan Really had conquered that and they were going to take over manufacturing and the Chinese took that very seriously and so what they did Was they began to steal all of Toby's work? Because they thought he had the right the right idea and and then when that when the paradox came out and it took off and in in Japan which surprised them and South Korea started to buy a lot of copies China decided to publish it themselves and So they didn't bother telling us about it They just went ahead and published it and then distributed it to to the first-year class Of every college student in China. Wow, and why why did they do that? Because they saw what happened in Japan was that as soon as they got successful really successful They started to ball it and they really gave away their their advantage and we remember that very well So China's been playing the long game and the short game. We always want to give them one game or the other Well, you're right. This round time. I met you 1995 I think we met it's 1994 The Chinese did a massive Devaluation and before that the Japanese were doing their outward foreign direct investment right in Malaysia Thailand Indonesia and It reoriented The Asia crisis of the late 1990s 97 98 was the byproduct of the 94 devaluation Which just reoriented all production towards China and away from the ASEAN Constellation so and so the Japanese were outsourcing and faltering at home and Then China accelerated that and drew the energy through their platform their country. Yeah, exactly exactly They also revamped their educational system, which we don't need to go into here but they were playing many many many sides to this game and Frankly, they just saw that we were just getting behind that we were getting lazy We were getting very self-satisfied. We were bragging about how good we were and always a bad thing and And they saw that and Japan and China both took advantage of it So Rob, are you engaging these days much of in giving the pandemic? what comes next and And and then what is it that we need to be doing? People like us. What do we need to be doing to help out in the effort? Very much at the center of our inquiry. I mean I John I start with the Institute for new economic thinking in the realm of ideas the Dysfunction that you described the failure of the economy the challenge of climate the pandemic is an unmasking Okay, no one can stand up at this juncture, right? Even when people are afraid and and want to cling to the familiar in the past they cannot stand up and tell you the Orthodox economic model Will deliver you from evil, right? Because ever it's like Rome's burning here Exactly, and we can't be civil so it is the in the intellectual realm the question of what do people trust? believe in what I will call the the collapse in the integrity and Trust in expertise, which has got a lot of negative consequences But the question of the resurrection of expertise is a part of I net's view, but but John What's interesting to me is these are not disembodied Mechanical external sizes. These are emotional textured exercise and you have worked with leaders leaders probably Are susceptible To thinking that their formula that brought them to power and strengths might be good for all time. That's right They become systemic conservatives. They become defending of what Ernest Becker would call their Their legacy or their immortal identity precisely just beyond their bodily life, right? How do you break leadership out of those? Crutches and put them on the path of truly leading Evolving the dynamic and being truly great which deserves a legacy of that. How do how you you live in? Tutoring people including myself at much higher level people. How do you help that process? Recently Rob, I've been doing two things and they both seem to be working and I don't want to Say enough to brag about but one of them is to insist. I won't work with any company now Unless they give me ten questions that are vexing them that they must answer in the next five years Ten questions and they're big ones and they can't just be trivial. They'd have to be really serious and One of them is a very large transportation company that everybody knows the name of And they're now working on the sixth. I that was two years ago when I did that presentation They're not working on their sixth big crack through that'll keeps them up to load Transportation is really up for grabs. They know it. They're very smart people And so that's the first thing I do is insist that they claim their problems In other words, it's another to translate that into Jungian speak Insist that they look at the shadows What's brought them here what makes them great? What do they brag about in all their ads? Well, that's where your shadows are. Let's get on with it the second thing is that I Then I insist that they form teams and that those teams be extremely well balanced even if they have to go outside the company Well balanced in every Possibility so that they don't have a bunch of feet People from the staff sitting on these committees. They can have a seat one but that's it and so The same company had teams of ten there and they cut those back to eight because it's a global company They were having a hard time sustaining that But that's what's solving the problem Is what is it that we as a team can understand and get our arms around and solve And that's going to make the difference in our business and to our customers and the whole exercise starts with a deep understanding of what their customers are going through Especially if they don't know their customers very well and in this case This company is in so many different business lines That they know just a little bit about their customers, but not a lot So that's that's what that's today's exercise. It's it's doesn't sound very Exciting or glamorous, but it's it's quite effective Well at some level it's not wasting your time They're prepared right they can't impart and be and benefit you can't impart to them and benefit from your insights with them So so why bother when there's all kinds of yearning out there for you to serve So I think well, it's interesting how quickly Big global companies say, yeah, you're right. I mean they absolutely see it and They just never have known quite what to do about it or it's come to them at different pieces and never as a global problem And how about individual leaders, how do you what I would call Help them evolve into a constructive and less careful or defensive posture Well that takes that takes much more time, unfortunately So the first thing is they have to spend their first year when we're together Digging into their shadows where are they what do they how do they get there? How they gotta get rid of them and that's a that really turns out to be the most exciting part of the exercise They love it. Mm-hmm. The second thing is they have to go back into their Businesses or their investments and take another look and see if those are lined up with their soul If you don't have investments that are lined up with your soul You and your team are destined to create real trouble in the world for yourself and everybody else And the third thing I think that happens over and over with individuals Rob. Is it? They the shadows keep growing the ego keeps getting bigger and juicier and They just simply have to go through a number of exercises to get that back in some kind of shape You know, especially if they had a serious damage like you did where they had a big overnight success and There was no time for anybody to be prepared for it. So then you had to go back and dig out and say, okay What happened here? Days when I was disoriented and shuddering and yeah People wouldn't let me watch soccer games to my children because they all wanted to do business deals They're trying to top enough Oh, yeah, as you know, I clung to my buddies from Detroit to get Grounded if I knew that there was love between us that existed before that crazy fanfare And I remember a reading that you sent me There's a Indian guru Sri Ramana Ramana Maharshi Maharshi, excuse me Yeah, and there was a woman who was a disciple Her name was Lucy Cornelsen. Oh my god, you remember that hunting the eye Satisfied I was not in a place that I thought was Resonant with where I wanted to be I kept saying to me this has got to be a chapter not the whole book But when I read Lucy Cornelsen hunting the eye and hunting the eye was Title paraphrase which said essentially when you're unhappy you start to dig in and when you finally dig in the thing you're hunting Is your own ego? And it's how you break through that You're not on a path towards what they would call enlightenment or or a deeper sense of purpose Right and and I kept felt like I'm hunting myself. I used to look in the mirror and say that you were you were like how would I say my Advisor in the field to kill this animal That's it. That's it. You gotta find it. You gotta find it but But I think John, you know they My intuition here is that For us collectively and individually to make progress It's precisely at the time that People are most disoriented and anxious that they can become most defensive. Yeah, right and I remember readings There's a wonderful philosopher names Steven Tullman. He wrote a book about the It was a call the hidden history of modernity. It's called Cosmopolis and in the book. He said You could see After the 30 years war how everybody was afraid they went into this abstract place that we now call the Cartesian Enlightenment All right, and the humanism of Shakespeare and the humanism of All right, turn me over to the famous French humanist Starts with an M Montaigne Montaigne. Oh Monty. Yeah, and these people were almost extinguished in terms of the mindset and Then you applied the technocratic Disciplines the mechanical disciplines that worked well in the natural science the social science And what Tullman says and then the fault lines just became so big and so vivid But every time you had a social breakdown people got so scared They lurched back to the familiar not forward to the evolution in the case study in his book was the civil rights movement the 1960s the Eastern philosophy the enlightenment of different ways of seeing and And the anti-war movement I was he fueled some of that and then everybody lurched back into what I'll call the years of Reagan's right and the nostalgia and And he wrote the book about all of these episodes, but the culminating chapters were those and So I guess it's a long-winded way of asking you a question. What do we do now? What do we do now so that we don't? Sit in the fetal position Drink too much huddle Around our past successes. How do we how do we help people? leap forward and embrace this very Complex and disorienting failure of many of our systems and put help you help you back together. Yes Right, okay. Well, first of all we have to completely revise and update and clean up The education system. We are not educating people. We haven't for a long time We are at best. We're at best training them and training them to be technocrats Yeah, and and we're afraid of true education. We're afraid because True education as we all know is based on questions ask the great mystics ask the great philosophers questions questions questions and we become terrified of questions and I wasn't going to use Trump, but I have to one of the worst and Saddest tragedies that we're witnessing here is his inadequate capacity To frame a good question Questions terrified poor Donald because poor Donald doesn't have even attack one sensibly and honestly he throws some kind of TV made up Language at the question and then walks away and pretends that it didn't happen And so we're we're stuck for this little tiny period right now that we're in Yeah, until we get on the other side of this and Begin to really ask questions. So I'm going to give you a hint about what I'm going to tell Joe Biden when he calls All right So Biden's gonna call and he's gonna say what can I do at this stage because the world is coming apart And they don't want to hear his political speech and I'm gonna say yes, don't do that No political speeches no pious babble But what you can do is begin to get people equated with the big questions that have to be raised Where are we going? How are we gonna get there? Who's gonna take us there? One of the big barriers that we face How can we use our generosity and warmth and and love? In our favor as opposed to turning that into some kind of acidic Process that destroys everything we see And I'm gonna ask him to appoint his new cabinet. I'm following Doris Kearns Goodwin's great book and Say, okay starting tomorrow. These are the people I'm going to have around me and I'm promising them a job in in the cabinet We'll sort out what that the exact details is how that's going to work But in the meantime, I've asked them all to address the biggest three questions that they know of in their realm You know if they're in HEW, what are the three is three biggest questions there and so forth Wherever their center of expertise is and we've seen what this nice Italian frail Doctor has done with the pandemic He's gradually take over the leadership of that whatever there is Because he's honest and he's decent and he asked good questions and he doesn't pretend like he knows everything Yeah, so if Joe had a cabinet like that that just kind of Just honestly just filled the room with that kind of energy that kind of a remarkably Exciting adventure. We don't want to go. We all want to jump on That's what Joe is going to hear from me when he calls and I hope it doesn't what was Lawrence Goodwin's book. You said That democratic promise team of rivals Okay, okay. Yeah, Lincoln's cabinet. Oh, right, right And you remember Rob. He promised those people their cabinet positions when they were still in Chicago at the convention That's right That's well. He that way he let out To the party bosses. We're gonna be in good hands. We're not gonna have any Really horrible people on the other hand He reassured a lot of people that they were gonna have a real job to do and they weren't coming just to fill up seats Yes Yes, well, I I'm very interested. I know John. You've been involved in the Relationship between technology and broadening the dissemination and access to education. There you go and the other dimension that I I've also powerfully impacted by one of the future guests on this podcast and man has been a fellow at I net Michael Sandel He's right. Oh, yeah, yeah We did a video course for students together six hour course called what money can't buy morals and markets Oh my he is so good. And he's got a new book now. That's in process coming out probably in the fall called the tyranny of meritocracy and I know other William Dara switch at Yale has one called Excellent Sheik the miseducation of the American elite. Yeah, and and what interests me here is that When you watch Trump get elected I'm really going looping back to his incapacity to be supple and empathetic and Confident in an intellectual realm actually met with some applause Because the whole lot of people felt like elite degrees We're not a symbol of someone who had earnestly gone deep and Bought and had gifts to battle pattern recognition and could synthesize Say from a position of leadership and governance for the common good they knew these people is getting a certificate to membership In the elite club that was a marketing agency for plutocracy and corporate dollars and So the excellent sheik We're becoming what you might call in the knowledge and sense of inputs to production and legitimation And they weren't dealing with the big questions because the big questions are often paradoxical They are all dilemmas. They have a sense of poetic Publications, they're unsettling Yeah, who are self-satisfied with their existing power precisely and I Really have been interested In your passion Through your good life series, which I've attended and enjoyed greatly and through our conversations about how not only do you want to reform the Dissemination of education but the content of what is in that education and the things you had us reading were old Shakespearean plays and Philosophical tracks and biographies of fast and people like Churchill How do how do we? Not only use technology to create broader access But reset what is the priority of content? To create a more soulful society and leadership within that society Well, we probably need right away something like well what David Brooks asked for this morning was trivial compared to what we really need We need a WPA for the mind and the soul We need big big projects Rescuing kids rescuing people who are on the streets and so forth not just rescue them to feed them and put them in some kind of housing What we need is to rescue them as people before they get there if we can and then help them find their way out on their own And that requires a huge huge undertaking It's the WPA the mind and the soul and we need that now. We need it right today And if we just change people a little bit if we just give them enough hot food and housing to keep going While we create another one of these problems We haven't done a damn thing. So we need to get on with Real real examination at the roots of our society. Why are we here? What are we doing? Why do we need so damn many of us? We don't and How are we going to deal with climate change those questions alone? Would bring us to our knees if we truly addressed them Mm-hmm. I agree. I Agree, I see a lot of people Which you might call working to disseminate those STEM disciplines to the Emerging countries and poor regions within the advanced countries and so forth and that's not a bad thing No, but I think the deepening of that curriculum of The sense defining the sense of collective and individual purpose from a deeper place That's also a missing ingredient Huge ingredient and that by the way is the job of tomorrow's leader that we need the one we need right there Yeah that's the job and We have lost so we were so far away from that. It's just it's just the most scary how far away and yet I'm not pessimistic. I think we can do it. I Think we can do it if I can watch some some huckster from New York Have as much power and wield it and they create so much damage What would it be like if we found someone who was really good And she started to ask these questions and get us to ask them. Yes So we've proven we can destroy now. Let's prove we can build and I Know how I said, yeah, I can't remember what you Describe people that in your new book Yeah, you're the whole enchilada Life the whole inch cloud. I would call this the working title. Yeah, you have people who were like shapers They were like shapers of The future or I can't remember what how you described it, but there were sort of certain people that were like embodiment of wisdom Right, right. That's right. Emphasize and then there were other people who were like examples and It was just fascinating for me to see, you know, how you wove than the Nelson Mandela's and others into this vision and and it was done beautifully in the Because I can feel your professional experience the different stages of life Yeah, require different How do you say different transitions and different types of Wisdom and different types of teaching. I always remembered Kimber who was it that said her name was Pearson and and She said the hardest transition for a man is to go from being the warrior to being the wizard You're done with your accomplishments and now you're trying to impart Goodness Elevation for other people. Yeah, she was sort of a Joseph Campbell Style of writer and I'll have to dig that up. I remember James Hollis writing a lot about these issues as well That's right. The passage is in the middle of life and particularly he focused in some of his writings What was the one on the under Saturn shadow? That's it. You gave I remember that was a book that you turned me on to it. So that's but I think but You talk also about in the mature years. We have people who are very powerful and elderly and Looks like what was Helen Luke's book old age. Yeah, right Her chapter of the windowing fan about the kind of fantasy beyond Homer's Odyssey that There was a passage in Homer's Odyssey which talked about What you had to do to evolve to the next stage it was left there and She wrote the story of what should have been We can my call the story that fulfilled that curiosity. That's correct. Yeah, but I'm just curious what it for people 55 and over Other than the paradox of success a keynote leadership What what where do you take those people so that they don't feel powerless or helpless or put out to pasture in this new technological age How do you what's your call to action to them? Well, I think Thank you. I my feeling is that you named most of the people For whom we should express our eternal gratitude, okay, you name most of them our teachers right our mentors the people who we I call wisdom carriers people who brought a little bit of wisdom to a young guy in Detroit just at the right moment and It took them in a whole direction that he never knew existed and then these lovely people called character shapers and And I I love that name because it really means that they came along and in their own way Shaped our characters and we may or may never remain never have actually thanked them for it, you know So now's our time To thank them now's our time to show our gratitude Because without them without a John Gardner in my case my life would have been very very different Without a Nelson Mandela who came into my life. It would have been very different for me and so forth each one brought something and The proximity didn't matter as much as our readiness to listen That's what mattered. Hmm So when whenever you meet someone like that to my for me, I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt when I was just a kid it Just changed somehow how I thought about the world Because the questions L. R. Roosevelt Asked me raised me 10 feet off the floor because she really was honoring me with those questions And I felt like hey, I can go do things. I can go I can go do a lot So those are the people who are that I think we need a lot more of and we need to recognize them And the funny thing is you don't need to pay them huge salaries. They really like doing what they do and wouldn't do anything else Yes, but they in essence They're not working for money. They're working for missions. That's exactly right and they love learning themselves So it just makes their lives so happy to help teach a grateful student. Well, it does you and me I mean, we're very grateful Occasionally when we get a student who comes along and says, you know, I want to know something and boy, it feels so good. Yeah. Yeah, it does and So John, I I think you ought to be in Joe Biden's cabinet If this was the circus you should be the ringmaster If you had if you had a if you had a way of being the person That could filter out who belongs and Who doesn't in that role of leadership with all the teaching. I remember Joe Henderson was a big teacher of yours All the people that you've shared with me All the ways that I've come to understand my own challenges. If you were sitting at Joe Biden's side and or whoever is the president side, but I think You'll be talking to him. If you if you were sitting there with him You can recognize the character, the sense of purpose and and help people refine and evolve that And I think I think it could it could transpire you could bring it off. I mean, I remember reading George Leonard's book Mastery That's your initiative. That's right. And the gifts from the sea which was an easy one because I was a sailor sailor and There were just so many different Tom's and things that did jog me. I kind of like I feel like I want to raise money So if Joe Biden's elected You can use half the money for his Election campaign from the other half is to support your office in his White House Well, I would I would be honored to help set something like that up that would be great fun So if you run into an opportunity to do it, let's let's do it together. Okay. All right, as you said in your reference to me in your latest book That we need as Dylan Thomas said to all go bravely into the dark night. I Know you're the guy with the flashlight I Want to I want to thank you for being with me today And exploring and I want to reserve the right in a few months time to call you back It might be the day after election day see how I can What you've taught me and help you in part To this next administration these necessary ingredients so that we can evolve That would be lovely. Thank you so much. This has been great fun, my friend Never know where you're gonna pop up and Davos one day and the next day. I'm in Saucalina. Thank you so much Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. You too. Bye. Bye and check out more from the Institute for new Economic thinking at Inet economics.org