 This is the OGM weekly call on Thursday, June 30th, 2022. Today in our alternating schedule is a topic call. I'm going to turn on the transcript as well. There we go. Yeah, and I just started reading a very good book about internal family systems, IFS. It's written by the creator of IFS and the title is No Bad Parts. And just the intro was actually very clarifying and helpful. It's just really clearly written. And so IFS basically says that we, our personalities are constituted of sub personalities that they call, he calls parts. And these parts are busy trying to be helpful and often they get dysfunctional and figuring out how to harmonize those parts is a huge piece of the process of IFS. But when you overlay this on other sort of approaches to living, it's really interesting because it gives you good information about why things happen. And the piece of the intro is a little bit of a critique of sort of Buddhism in a way. And I'm not going to get it right. So I should go back and find the quote. But he says very often what we try to do is sort of suppress many of our parts and or master them. Like willpower is like a big thing. How do you get willpower? How do you master yourself? And he's like, you know, and doing so you just often crank up the volume on the problem that your parts are having. And his approach is like, try to figure out how to talk to your parts and then get them to collaborate. And he says sometimes, and the reason it's called no bad parts is that he believes that even people whose parts make them cut themselves or kill people or be addicted. That those parts really would rather be doing something else. Those parts are acting in that way because of something that happened in that person's life. And they think they have to. And that often the bad parts will, once sort of heard and recognized and harmonized a bit, the parts will then change a lot and we'll pick up a different role and it turns out that they're not bad parts after all. Yeah, thanks Pete. Parts as parts. So anyway. Hi everybody. Nice to see you. So topics, thoughts could be anything. It could be like how to make a miniature remote control aircraft out of paper and toothpicks. It could be Scott. This is what came to mind for me. So is the challenge and you can put whatever. Subject matter you wanted to there. Is the challenge more sophistication. Or more simplicity. In other words. Is. Do we need to be diving deeper to better understand what we don't. Or do we need to be making what we already understand simpler and more shareable. And it seems like it's. Something that I find in these conversations and. A few other groups that I've been playing around with. We tend to want to go. Deeper deeper deeper deeper deeper into the infinity of things we don't yet understand. Which. Sometimes feels, I mean, it's absolutely critical. To do that. But it also feels like a way to. Avoid. Picking. These simple messages and getting them. Out into an actionable. An actionable way. So I think it's, it's obviously a balance, but. That's something where I've noticed that the. Simpler and more shareable. Tends to be things that are. Not necessarily helpful. The things that we're making simple and sharing are. You know, something like that. Intagonistic. Or we need to do something. Or, you know, something like that. So I saw Doug raised his hand. And I think that frames my suggestion for the moment. Love your suggestions. Got Doug Ben Stewart. Does that mean now. I think it is. We have two dogs on the call. Sorry. So it is. When do we stop treating the world as though it's normal and we don't know what to do with it. We don't know what to do with it. We don't know what to do with it. We don't know what to do with it. And the two questions don't. Obviate each other. One could be a channel or a path to resolve the other. Thank you. Stewart. Yeah. So. What. In some ways, what both Scott and, and Doug. Expressed fits into. Something that popped into my brain this morning. And that was. A lot of people who have a tech orientation. I remember in 1981, I was working for AT&T and. PCs started to pop up on people's desks. Well, that's only 40 years ago. And look at the mass transformation since then. So how do we, how do we analogize that and create a mass transfer transformation of the way human beings live. In the next 40 years. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. Thanks to her. Mr. This might be. Contentious, but Jesus fucking Christ, the Supreme Court just said Congress has to do all the science, the EPA is no longer able to regulate things. And that has implications that are. Amazingly. Potent and destructive. So. I mean, I think in the world that where all the institutions that you grew up with that you trusted just seemed to be rotting and falling apart in front of your eyes. I mean, I am beyond pissed between the last couple of Supreme Court. Announcements of their decisions and what's going on with the hearings. And. I just, I'm stunned. I'm, I really do not know. How to handle what's going on here. It's just called the Chevron. EPA. Oh, they're the reversing Chevron, essentially it's, it's a EPA versus Virginia or West Virginia versus EPA, something like that. That had been decided today, but there's a word for this. It's called the Chevron deference. Yeah, Chevron deference basically says that agencies have the power to regulate. And SCOTUS and correct me if I'm wrong. But SCOTUS has just ruled the opposite that agencies just don't have a lot of power. I just sent a, an article from WAPO out to the OGM list so you can find it there, but just like here we have a court packed by a man who lost the popular vote who was impeached twice who clearly is not fit for as, as very conservative. What was the national review or Washington examiner said, it's not fit for power anywhere. And his, his legacy, forget what he did to undermine the transfer of power and constitution, the legacy of, of installing three extremely conservative originalist justices on the Supreme Court over the objections of the majority of people. I am, I am at a loss to find a way for this country to move forward in a, in the manner in which I grew up with the institutions working. It feels like they're completely corrupted now. And if the Supreme Court is not impartial and is enacting an agenda of legislating from the bench, which is to say, we're going back to the way that the, the original to the framers thought, I mean, overruling Roe v Wade, the women didn't even have the right to vote when the 14th amendment was written. Women are men, women are never mentioned in the constitution. Yes. So they should have no rights then. And I mean, I'm, I'm really upset about what's going on right now. Thanks, Ken. Me too. Arguably, everything you just said is a reason why conservatives still love Trump and are not leaving his side in that arguably they have made more progress in the last years since 2016 than any other conservative has in forever. And what I've been reading about the Federalist Society and the bench is that conservatives for a while thought, oh, we'll just get some conservatives on the bench and they'll legislate for us. And then there was a, there were a bunch of decisions in the 80s, 90s that weren't really conservative. And all these conservative justices were going with like, like what's reasonable. And they were like, well, that won't work. So the Federalist Society turned into a kind of quiet litmus test. If you were a member of the Federalist Society, you were sort of guaranteed to be pretty extreme on these views. But everybody knew that nobody on that path to join SCOTUS could leave a trail. So as much as possible, you, you thought you didn't put out extreme opinions. You didn't join extremist groups. You didn't do whatever. Or that was in your misspent youth. And that's how over a really long term over a 30, 40 year strategy since 1964 is the marker in my head. When Goldwater loses that the Republicans figure out, oh my God, we've got to actually take the long view here. And so, and so Ken, I don't think that this is the long armor of history bending backwards and breaking the elbow. I think this is aspect elements at play in the arena who have made a concerted, determined, hold your nose and keep going kind of effort that is paying off at this point. And the fact that it's paying off gives it more energy, even as it inflames the other side. But the other side is in disarray. And I think the question might be, how do you fight this with more complexity or simplicity? I think we might be able to combine some of these questions or if somebody wants to sort of recommend a path into the conversation. But I appreciate you bringing the very hot and very present issues that SCOTUS is dropping, the turds that SCOTUS is dropping on the tray into our conversation. Because I feel the same way. Stacy Gill, Doug B. To Scott's original point, I don't think most people know what to do and how do we get back to learning what is the best thing to do? And to the point I made before the cameras went on, I was trying to figure out how do I get out of my own emotion to be able to discuss that without going on the ramp that I want to go on so that we could figure out what do we do? Sometimes ranting helps. Right. But to Scott's point, if we just answer the first question, and I think we should because, so what do we do? So this decision is really important. That you're talking about. So what would be the way forward? And how do we get people, regular people on both sides to see, regardless of what your opinion is, how should we set up the process? Whereby decisions are made, regardless of what parties in control? How do we even have those conversations? When we're just saying, well, it's this, you know, how do we get there? There's a term, couple of things. There's a term called regular order, which John McCain famously wanted us to go back to, and which was destroyed very intentionally as part of this long-term strategy. And regular order is bipartisan politics where there's compromises where people make deals. Sometimes you don't like the deals because there's poor and earmarks and all that kind of weird stuff. The hava sausage is made is not pretty, but the sausage is not this extreme. It's not habanero, ghost pepper, whatever the most spicy pepper there could be just to overwork a bad analogy anyway. And so regular order has been shredded. And I, and in my own narrative, I laid this at the feet of Gingrich a lot. He systematically destroyed this. But so did Tom delay. So did a bunch of other people in the middle. I'm like, Oh, right. Because there was just an article yesterday that mentioned regular order. And then secondly, there's a role for getting pissed off because, and I think I said this maybe two weeks ago when we talked, Democrats don't really do a good job of getting pissed off. And for me, there's an Oscar winning moment when Lindsey Graham gets incensed and just curled up like he's sucking lemons and spits it out. And that's really intentional because he knows Kavanaugh is a bro. He knows Kavanaugh is going to vote for, you know, that overturning all these terrible liberal acts of the last 34 years. And he knows, and he believes and he's correct. That his anger and Kavanaugh's anger will be interpreted as righteous indignation and people will just say, okay, good. We're good. Let's go. If I could just add one. Yeah, please. Just in case anybody's interested, something that I would really like to work on because I think we can make a difference has to do with the media. Because that's just the place that I think we, we have power if we work together. So I'll just leave it there. Well, the good news is that we, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, I think it's, it's who I'm talking to right now, but. So the good news is that we. Now participate in the media a lot more than we ever did. You know, before just the last 20 years period. Done. Like bloggers are now actual things and never mind everything else and podcasts and everything else. So, so I might go back also to the question of. Do we try to learn what do we try to explore where no man has gone before, or do we actually take what we know and make it simpler and more useful, which was another question that came up at the very beginning of this call. And I love that question because that's a very og I'm a question. It's like, how do we take what we know, share it back to ourselves, and how do we bring it into spaces so that it's more so that it's more possible even never mind the for us to talk about these contentious issues in a way that doesn't spiral out of control and end up at the extremes. And Stacy feel free to jump back in if you want. Yeah, I was just going to say, even basics like calling out unidentified sources. If I have to listen to one more person that I used to respect on CNN saying, well, unidentified sources at the CIA, I mean at the, at the service said, I mean, they know they're throwing in bullshit. They know it's bullshit, but they say it just to like, you know, I'm referring to the testimony of, of saying that you know the whole thing with the Trump and the choking and saying, Oh, well this wasn't said I mean they're playing with, they're just playing with words and you know if you're a little bit more sophisticated you realize they're using technicality of words. But if you're not, then you, you're just throwing out fodder for people to play with and avoid just getting to the facts and it's frustrating. And it's, yeah, I'm just, I'm fed up. Well, thanks Stacy, appreciate that. Gil then Doug B. Good morning everybody this is a great conversation where we're in the questions that started getting asked at the top and I don't think we need to resolve which one we're focusing on they're all well went together. Can to your observation that everything is rotting. Thank you by the way I hadn't seen the news yet this morning so you've now dropped me into the decision I've been dreading same here, always since ropes and this was coming. It's not rotting it's being actively dismantled. This is not a 30 or 40 year process this is a this is 70 years of social progress being actively strategically systematically dismantled. And we can look at the historical precedents but this is a focus systematic campaign of a sort that the democrats have never been able to mount with consistency. And so when we talk about simplicity and complexity that Scott raised at the top, the republicans have been remarkably good at staying very focused on a very narrow set of messages. The democrats tend to talk about everything all the time. And, you know, I'm not saying that's bad I'm saying that's consequential. So, you know when we talk about what do we do the we is not just us bunch of smart people sitting here talking but it has to be, you know, dramatic national and local organizing campaign. You know, people forget that and we talked about this before here I think that Rosa parks didn't just get fed up one day and sit down on the bus in Montgomery and exasperation. She was trained for years at the Highlander Institute which produced a whole lot of the cadre of the civil rights movement. And that is strategic and personal training, safety, Stacey training around emotions. You know, and what do you do with emotions you don't suppress them you don't yield to them but they're part you know they're they're part of how we show up in the world we're emotional beings. We're rational beings and we're emotional beings and we're historical beings and all that's in there I'm trying to stay away from word parts Jerry because I, I didn't like the introduction you made to the book about the parts not bad thing. I think Buddhism sounded kind of superficial. I think Buddhism could make just the same kind of critique and reverse. So I'm not interested in finding our parts I'm interested in how do we as whole as beings live in the world. And the question that asked to the question list is how do we live is that we actually belong to the living world and to each other. You know, what would that look like if we were if we were like that. There was one by here was just there was one other I wanted to touch on. Oh yeah, can use the word indignation and I think it's a really important word I've been in a conversation with a couple of colleagues. I guess this year about anger and rage and indignation and the relationship and the differences between. And rage is turns out to be a quality that the ancient Greek Greek tragedies talked about a lot of something different than anger with a different kind of grounding and a different kind of power. And I like the indignation when I was talking with with with floris talking about being angry at something so you're not angry. I thought what the fuck are you telling me what I'm thinking so you're indignant. Oh, oh, indignant violation of dignity. Dignity is a quality of human beings that we all have potential to us and what happens when that gets broken. And so, maybe that has more potency, more generative power than just anger and anger arises and evolves and how do we take that and do live into that emotion. And that has powerful beings able to work with other people who maybe share that or some version of it. The last thing I want to say here is that. Ken I'm referencing you a lot this morning I know why that is but but but but Ken has been too worse. Systematically busting us for weeks maybe months about our use, our use of the word we have no unreferenced in context that is in normal human conversation we as us in this group we as all the people like us, we as America we as humanity. We humans tend to be very sloppy about differentiating that. And it gets messy and loses loses some potency and it would be good for us to be clear about that more. What we do in this group what we do as a cohort of, you know, awake inspired progressives in America. I'm most struck at how narrow that circle is, and how little contact I at least have number one with the people who I fiercely disagree with, who may actually share some of the same concerns that I have, but show up in a really different environment. And, and very limited interaction with people who are, you know, kind of in that great big middle of sort of this sort of that maybe vote maybe don't vote. You know, the political strategies either you get your base out and get enough amount to win and just you know be in constant battle with the other side or you bring people into your base from the middle. It requires conversation and engagement, and really let deep listening to who they are and where they are in house, they see the world. You know, I hear from, I hear from some people on, well, let's just call it our side that are word who sort of get this and say we really need to talk to the other side. And I would say maybe but we also really need to listen to the other side. I think of the rage for example around the road decision. I've heard a few people on the anti abortion side, who have, who communicate deeply heartfelt thoughtful anguish perspective on this issue from their point of view, in a way that I could actually hear I can't hear most of them. I can hear some of them. And so what happens if we actually hear each other across this fierce and widening Gulf that we're living in. That's correct. Thank you. Dudley. You're muted. She disappeared from view because you lowered your hand and I'm like great where'd he go where'd he go. And then I saw your mouth. Sorry, I, that's sort of a perfect queue up kill for where I was, I was planning on sharing. So, on Sunday, my father was a army vet. And he's in hospice right now. And about two months ago he wanted to go to church, and my wife's family isn't religious they've never been church covers but if they were it would be Lutheran. And so the church was having a veterans day meets, you know fundamentalist Christian service. Celebration. And, and so I went to honor him. And where Gil where you just left off is what I was what I experienced. When I opened, I went without judgment. To sort of be with and in the middle of. And the most powerful palpable dimension of all of it was how fundamentally grounded they were in their fundamentals. Even if those fundamentals aren't my fundamentals. All of it is embodied. All of it is rationalized, but also held on a belief basis on an emotional basis. What struck me first was anything directed at or with the intention or energy of shifting or changing their minds. Like, absolutely, that is not an effect going to be an effective strategy, presumably any more than somebody trying to do that to me and swing me over to the whatever would probably not be likely to succeed. And in that recognition, the lowest hanging fruit biggest 3000 pound gorilla that emerged in my mind was how to, how can, how can the, the center of polarity of adversity of conflict be lodged, loosened up, opened up. How can the us against them be tackled. And, and I started thinking about it in a very tactical practical ground grounded grassroots way. Like, if that's the problem, if that's the challenge, how could if if we were the first groups of gingrich's and bannons and others, if we put ourselves in a seat where they were when they started us down the path that we are now realizing and experiencing. If we took a strategic positioning and orientation and said, this is the Manhattan Project call to action. The mission is how to, in a catalytic way, trigger, not a letting go of beliefs that are polar that are polar, but trigger a awakening recognition of the things in common. Which is actually go like what you were speaking like, we actually are human beings all. So, there's vastly more that the people in that church, and I have in common, then three to five things that are the center of what we don't. So energetically, intellectually, consciously, experientially, how might it be possible to just catalyze design something that would catalyze an awakening applause like, Oh, they're me. I'm them. We agree on. So that's what popped up as a call to action. And, and I thought about all of the mechanics today current present moment because the world is the immediate is in the present moment. And I think one of the modalities and learnings that we have at hand that were employed by banning company in 2016 to propagate polarity and hate and fear, and, and divisiveness and bigotry, all of the, all of those things were proactively reprimanded and implemented using all the technology and online and social media and regular media and messaging and like state of the art practice, the data mining, the getting granular down to the household, all of that stuff. And I was like, Well, what if we took the same approach use the same tool and methodology, but in service to creating a catalytic moment of everybody being confronted with the things in common. So I'm going to stop there. I mean I've actually done a bunch of noodling drilling down into what would that look like but I put that on the table because in the scheme of what's needed right now, and what's been proven can be done in in turning massive numbers of people against each other. What if a campaign by design could be figured out by bunch of smart creative people to do the opposite. Now, stop. Thanks Doug. And there are many movements and organizations that are trying to take the approach you described. I posted a link to bridging the cultural divide in my brain I collect them there. I just posted Joe Cox's quote. There's a group called more in common there's a whole bunch of others. And maybe one thing we could do is take a deeper and longer excursion into that space. That might be fruitful. Thank you. Mark and class. You know, I put up to some to quote, because to me it really epitomizes the, the, the problem that we that we're talking about and that we have a lot of things can be part of strategy. But, you know, and hearing some of the different pundits about the recent court decisions. You know, one interesting piece of analysis was that you know Democrats, Democrats have an abortion problem they have a gerrymandering problem they have a climate problem blah blah blah blah blah they have all these problems that they're running around trying to tackle the Republicans have a strategy for changing the Supreme Court. And, and that that solves all their problems in effect. And, you know, it really in the climate space for example, I can distinctly remember conversations 30 years ago with sort of leading environmental people leading NGOs about the topic of climate education in the schools. And the answer was, we don't have time for that. This is an emergency. And so it on the climate side, we are constantly simply recreating the charge of the Light Brigade. And, and it's always an emergency. And it's always we got to do this. And even today, you know, everybody says well all we have to do is go out and vote in the midterms or 24 vote climate. Well, no. The system. How are you, the system is broken. Skill skill. Just did. Thank you. Thanks I was looking around to figure out who's whose window was lighting up and I couldn't tell. It's a great book the industry of politics that sort of documents how the system is broken and that, you know, the votes of 98% of the people in the US, literally don't matter at this point. And, and so it really is frustrating that, that we're, we're, we're totally tactical on the left. And there's, I'm not aware of strategy and maybe there's strategy going on behind the scenes that I'm simply not privy to, but we're not certainly not seeing a lot of benefit of that, of that strategy. And by the way, I don't know if anybody's mentioned it I came in a little bit late I apologize. But if you've heard about what the court has accepted for next year, in terms of the North Carolina carries. You know, that case, depending on how they decide it will remove all judicial oversight from state elections. So the legislatures will be able to do whatever they want with elections in their states. And without any oversight of any kind. And, and they just accepted that case this morning for, for next year. So it is this ride is not over quite yet. By far, just starting. So, Mark that Republicans have a strategy for changing Supreme Court that solves other problems in effect. My understanding is that this strategy is in fact kind of a plan D it's like a last ditch effort because they realized that the popular vote on most of these issues would swing the other way. And they tried a bunch of different things, and finally figured out that the only place where they could get leverage and basically get minority rule is by packing the court by taking over state legislatures by doing a bunch of things that they actively did. But, and I agree a lot and thank you for crispening it in my head that at least they've got a strategy and an offense and they know what they're doing, and they make sure that they keep everybody in line on that offense and the offense is paying off. Well, I mean just to give one very quick example, you know, 10 years ago when when my son was sort of getting into the professional workforce and starting to get jobs in the political arena and etc. He said, you know, the Republicans have, have this entire minor league system for identifying and and promoting and helping young people in that world. And the Republicans and and bringing them forward and he said, you know, the liberals don't have anything in that space. And as he was out sort of surveying the the neighborhood so it's just, it may, I'm not sure. I mean if it's a successful strategy I'm not sure. It's a strategy based on what wasn't working they came up with a strategy that would work. And they've been pursuing it in all kinds of ways for many, many years. And, and we're sort of asleep at the wheel. It's it, it, I don't know how you change that. Agreed. Thanks, Mark class class your audio is not not very clear I don't know what's wrong but we're not hearing you very well. It's not your first you sound like whatever your microphone is. It's not actually connected to the sounds like the wrong mic. Yeah, the wrong mic if you go. Not yet. That stream was good, but still not not clear. You'd be better off right this minute just talking over your laptop and switching to the system microphone. So it should. We can hear you but it's not the right setup but go ahead and go ahead and jump in. So, so the talking about the tactics versus strategy whenever power gets concentrated in the way that it is being done or has happened now, basically a system so optimizes itself. And the, the systems are optimizes itself. It loses connection, right the interconnectedness between systems to opponents, the communication within the system is getting lost. And that the idea that Republicans that the corporate and financial power folks have is that they're just no better they just just move stuff out of the way. I have an example my son is a corporate employer is a manager is a corporate employer branding of corporate employer branding. And that position is has been created its brand new is under marketing. And the reason that this position is now has now become necessary is because basically the unions have been completely disempowered. So the communication within an organization, we look at a larger organization has gotten lost and they are legitimate reasons for having a union. So if you have a manager running a department in ways that disenfranchises the employees or creates a lot of issues and so on that information doesn't reach senior management because there is no direct line of communication event. So, so now there has to be a circumnavigation of that. In order to, in order to find ways and it's only coming into view because employees are hard to find particularly knowledge workers are hard to find there's a huge amount of turnover in the industry. So we have to find ways to retain people in the absence of having representation, you know, there needs to be a different form of that there needs to be a different communication channels created. We see the same this environmental issues where companies think they have a solution, but that solution creates problems within the system in terms of externalities in other ways. So that concentration of power always, always creates inefficiencies and it creates. I love what Mark posted there, you know, strategy is our tactics versus tactics is our strategy we are doing tactics is our strategy right now. You know, it's a disaster because we do not national strategy we cannot be unable to form the national strategy on climate change for example, because we are sub optimized and these these groups are paralyzing each other's actions. So, so yeah, I don't know how, how we would get around this because to wait until until the impacts become so obvious, you know that you just must act like you have all taken out somewhere. In this case, I mean this with climate change we are, we have reached tipping points that are already irreversible that are already running into some some pretty catastrophic outcomes. Right, so we are in a mitigation. We're not there to do it. So this is what you're saying we're not going into a crisis mode because it's already on us. We're not going to be a swirling where we are, even to put. Yeah, and two quick thoughts one is that, ironically, or terrifyingly, going into crisis mode is the opposite of the mode that Doug B was describing for us to actually melt what's dividing us from the people who could help us solve all these problems. So, and ironically this goes right back into my internal my introduction about internal family systems. It's very strange. What I like about IFS is that it's just systems all the way down. And it turns out that our personality is a system to and that's sort of the approach that they take. My second thought is, I think, and class you can correct me if I'm wrong and I think people correct me anyway. The German constitution that wouldn't cassettes includes rules that say any organization larger than x maybe 30 people must have labor represented on its board. It's mandated. It's mandated. It's a requirement. And in the US we've managed to dismantle, disable and defang and totally marginalize unions. And we're so happy now when like one Starbucks unionizes. It's like everybody, everybody goes huzzah and the union movement is just like like destroyed in the US very effectively destroyed and undermined in the US because so inconvenient when people want more money, and you can't keep everyday low prices which is what proves that you're not properly. This thing is like, you know, this, it's an arroborous of bad decisions that are that are sort of holding this whole system in place at this point, and make it really hard to come back so go ahead class. Fortunately, that same phenomenon extends into any aspect so for example, in the food business. And I wanted to do fermented meats, they need source materials, which is soy or peas are basically like gold for these protein extracts that they're using. There's absolutely no reason for those source materials to not be called regeneratively into integrate the sourcing of these materials into shifting nature into a customer. It would be a perfect opportunity to do that is spending millions of dollars to go in there. So I so I was contacted by a Brazilian firm that is getting into this business for marketing. And my point was, why don't you use this as a different, and I don't use the differentiation of sourcing organic, you know, to position yourself in the market. And then return basically, of course, we can do it because no one else does it that means we would have a cost disadvantage, which would make it difficult for us to enter the market. There's an absence of regulations, you know that that put a floor underneath. You have a race to the bottom and that race to the bottom is what you see in the labor markets but you see in the environmental markets, it's everywhere. And the more successful they are, what's just now happening in the Supreme Court the most successful they are to take these regulatory structures apart, instead of reforming them. The more hopeless this is getting. We've been in the mix of long game thinking citizens united, which has caused some of the corruption, at least I suspect actually probably hard to prove, but unlimited financing of electoral races has led to hey we have the best kind of we have the best government we can buy, which is what what's happened right and they can deregulate and de legislate the ways have the way we're witnessing right this very minute. We're seeing an unwrapping of whatever constraints and whatever regs. We're keeping these these wheels on the track or these things heading at least in the generally right direction so I'm with you. Mr Carmichael. I think it's not correct to say that the Democrats don't have a strategy. They don't have a strategy. It's powerful and it's working. And it's basically the strategy of concentrating in Wall Street and big corporations big money. The Democratic Party as the party of the workers became the party of the bankers. The Clinton administration is probably one of the key focal points for that. So we actually have no party that represents public interest. The Democrats are not there. And because they're persisting in where they're going have been going. They run the danger of losing the next election. And the thought. Thanks. Perfect segue Doug thank you those just the perfect tea up what I was going to say which is that the historical narrative of democracy for the last 240 years has been about how great America is but the historical narrative of capitalism has been about how great money is and the two of them are not compatible in the long run and there are now as has been mentioned on this call numerous other times, you know, dating back to as soon as FDR one, you know, they started to figure out how we're going to undo the new deal. This is terrible. This is socialism. Right. And for the power memo and just so many things Newt Gingrich, the whole Reagan Revolution has all been about dismantling the regulation of business this is this is about unfettered business this Supreme Court is now deciding with with West Virginia versus EPA. We're not going to let any non congressional body regulate business in any way I think that is kind of the bottom line for the Supreme Court is we're going to undo every possible regulation, and that really is incompatible with sustainability life on a sustainable planet because that's just going to get permission to to burn up all the coal all the oil anything we want so we're faced with an existential choice and you know my understanding and I'm not an historian the way the Doug is and I have the Constitution a couple of times it's been years. I believe Jefferson and others I don't want to scroll on Jefferson. And of course we have to actually look at the whole you're quite confederacy underlying the whole system of governance that we have, but Jefferson others foresaw that sooner or later it become corrupt and we would need a mechanism to I no longer give my consent, the United States government as it is currently constituted to be the government for my life they I don't think they're acting in my best interest. They're acting in community is best interest I don't think they're acting in the nation's best interest. I don't think they're acting in the planet's best interest. I'm sure there's many other people who joined me in that. So what is the way that we can non violently and wisely reconstitute a government where we would give our consent to be governed. Well, strangely. This is going to sound like me promoting us but in my head, a reason for OGM is to actually have us come back into community come back into mutual decisions base our decisions on data from a grassroots you kind of level, and then come back up and infect electoral process and educations and science and journalism and civic participation and all those things. I'm inspired a little bit by. I think I told the story a long time ago but in the early days of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales gave a talk in San Francisco which I attended. And he said, and he said, a couple days ago I got a lot of congratulatory emails because a week ago. The Pope just got elected and this is Pope Benedict. And journalists were writing saying God impressive how good a page Wikipedia created on Pope Benedict. And he laughed and he's like, we had a really deep page on every cardinal that was up for election and a whole bunch of others. All somebody did when the white smoke went up was changed the name of the page and the and add something to the first paragraph that said on this date he was elected Pope by the Cardinal, the Council of Cardinals and took the name, Benedict, the 13th or whatever right. That's it. And, and there was this shared memory that everybody had been working on that was really rich and so forth and it had stood the test of time, and whoever was trying to affect affect the page there's lots of conflict there. But, but all of that conflict and all of that process was just embedded in the community that was curating this knowledge. And so Wikipedia because it's just an encyclopedia is limited doesn't do enough for us, even though it's a phenomenal asset. So I think one of the answers here is sharing what we know, and doing so with people who disagree with us, and respectfully listening to them and their arguments and saying well, can we can we just complexify this and look over here. And let's let's spend a week or a month, just on this set of issues or set of concepts or something like that I don't know but, but the irony is that we're in a state of emergency and the proper behavior is to act very quickly and to remedy this. And at the same time, trying to do that will cause immediate abrupt negation by the other side. In Aikido. When you're doing a throw, you don't want to telegraph what throw you're doing, because you're not gay, who's okay attacks you you're not gay. And when when when you're starting the throw, you want to sort of be, you could go any place because the moment they know where you're going they're going to resist that particular action they're going to block it and stop it. So, I think there's a lot of a lot of things at hand there. Yeah, I just wanted to say that, and I put some of these in the chat that beneath the anger and indignant and indignity. And I know that I'm feeling this there's an extraordinary and deep sadness and disappointment. You know, who works with conflict knows and understands that deep sadness deep disappointment. All the foundations that we grew up with are just kind of totally crumbling. And so we are in an emergency situation as Doug mentioned earlier, not just in the US but you know we have all of these amazing, you know, global challenges. And I agree so much with what Doug B said about having much greater levels of commonality than difference. And so how is it that we can bump the conversation up to get people to let go of all of their current thinking, which is right wrong fault blame them us other, and just drop all that stuff and realize, aha, we have a challenge as a species. A lot of it is kind of self imposed, but that doesn't it doesn't matter what the cause is, whether it's internal or whether it's some external great challenge. And it's time for everybody to just kind of really bump up. And the question is, how do we do that how do we do that quickly enough so that we can ward off the incredible level of damage that's going to be wreaked upon all of us and the dystopian world that we're going to be living in, if we do not act. I, you know, I don't know what the action is but as I said earlier, you know we transform our world in the last 40 years. How can we do it again at this at this at this particular juncture. Thank you. In the interest of simplicity and conversation and conversation. You just reminded me, Dave Gray of x plane, who is a really nice visualizer of ideas and so forth, created a deck of cards years ago that he was using as a diagnostic tool for clients, and his deck of cards, each card was like a thing that might be going on inside your organization. Some of them were dysfunctional some of them are functional, and he would hand the deck of cards to a prospect and he'd say sort these into two piles. One pile is the stuff that you see happening in your company and the other pile is the stuff that's just not here. And that was just a fantastically clear way of getting to a conversation that was really interesting was like super super cool. I'm wondering. There's a set of beliefs that we have, many of which we don't have articulated we don't know that we have them but we'd be like yeah that one. It would be fun to have a deck of cards that contains all the set of beliefs of the mixture of progressive and conservative beliefs and others, all mixed in, and see if that goes any place and it doesn't meet it would be fun to have materialize it as a deck of cards, but it could easily be a website where you just sort a from B, and then come into conversation or something like that, and likely somebody's already doing something like this in different ways, but, but trying to surface the unspoken assumptions that stand behind our firmly held convictions, I think is a useful exercise. And Doug B, we've got to run dugs. Oh, we keep looking for things to do to try and help out. But maybe the reality is that things falling apart is actually in our favor for a while. Things have to fall apart in order to reorganize. It's going to be very difficult, but boy it's going to be very difficult anyway. So maybe that's important. My second thought is, I'm just wondering about our conversation here. Are we under some set of rules that we're not following. Which rules are you referring to right now. Well I have, if we started out with we're going to choose a topic we'd want to go around and get proposals for topics and then come to some kind of consensus. So what we've done is act as generally as though we've already chosen the topic, and each person is taking a slice of it. Sort of, and I think Gil at some point early on said it seems like these topics are interwoven, and there were kind of working on all of them and that's okay and I kind of went along with that so I skipped the hey let's narrow down on one and go that way. I don't know if it worked for you from anybody else whether that worked or didn't work for you. If this was gone too broad, and we should have narrowed down or something else. And Doug I appreciate you're bringing up roughly a point of order. There being no strong feelings about that. If you don't mind. I'll go to the next Doug in the queue. So where you just went is is sort of where I landed, which was, what if you could come up with 15 statements, belief statements that are subject matter specific thematically specific. And that both ends of the polls. Most extreme ends of the polls would instantaneously and rapidly embrace. And you were to design a campaign targeting each extreme. Because each has their own channels, their own media, their own echo chambers their own silos. And you were literally to do a media as the message do a subsidized resource to organize data driven campaign to plant those statements in the belly of the beast of both of those polls. So that they start to appear they start to be echoed they start to be featured by the people, the usual suspects and the usual channels completely independent each other because they never cross reference or look at the other. And you were to do that over a sustained long period of time, and you were to pick your shot and target your moment where you actually then introduce and stand up. That the same mean the same belief is held and endorsed by both. So that there there's it's sort of irrefutable that there are things in common. And that was sort of like the simplest most reductionist idea I could come up with in a pure media tactical mechanical way. To break to break the ice to create a moment of, it's a disruptive moment. It's not an advocacy moment, but it's a confrontation with something that is cognitively discontinuous. How can I have my hatred of the other and have this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this in common with the other. Create a pause. And, and I think, you know, there are probably a dozen variations on the theme other ideas in the same spirit, but the technology the media the phenomenology of the times that we're living in the channels we're living in the means to affect massive analytic moment are there. And the current the last hearing, the young woman from the last hearing is proof like just it was a mix of a whole bunch of dimensions that people that have expertise in media could analyze and break out for you for why her persona her presentation and what she shared and the words she chose to share it and all of that has has made that really start to break things up at least in the ways that Trump. So, like, we can do that for the white wolf. Anyway. Thanks. So, I probably told the story before I was once asked to host a gathering of business people and peace activists and it's like, this is really not a good thing because you know it's tough to get those people to talk to each other and the way I entered into the conversation was to have people sit at tables for and tell the story the first time that they realized peace was important to them. And so that they were no longer peace activists as business people there are people concerned about peace. So I think a lot of what we're talking about here has to do with and I like Dave Gray's idea of the cards but I as a facilitator I've learned wherever you point people's attention to the group, it grows in their awareness so I don't want to point our attention at what divides us I want to point our attention at what our common concerns are. I want to point our attention at why we're concerned about things and what that means to us and hear stories long before we ever get to trying to fix anything just this, which is why I always begin with listening with people I use the breath and listening exercise and have people listen for what's going on live what does it feel like to to hear this other person where are they impressing you where is that impinging on your body go oh my god I really feel that you know, because we have to create empathy before we can move into any kind of solution, and we have to have empathy and understanding what we're facing. And these are not things that you find on Facebook groups Stacy maybe the exception to this I don't know but I think these happen best in relatively different groups of somewhere between 10 and 50 people, maybe you know I could do a cafe for a few hundred on this but I think that best face to face where it could be done on zoom but it's it's going to require break rooms of people really deeply listening to each other and staying in the why is this important why is it important to you. And that might take months of conversation before you can say now what do you want to do about that because as soon as you're going to do what you want to do, then you get the contention, as long as you can stay with the really listening at my. Yes, because I don't have this I haven't done this a long term to know for sure but my guess is if we did that. People would start to soften their positions a lot around what's required, you know it's they'd be much more open to hearing other people's perspectives. I've listened to this guy and or this woman and I really get where they're coming from and I feel them and I think they've got something that I can relate to, because as long as it's an other as long as it's somebody who you're whatever you hold that position that is and therefore I'm going to delegitimize your position I'm not going to be in my life then I can do anything to you I can I can become someone who's a horrible person to you. So, maybe we need to start having conversations around how do we depolarize and the depolarizing starts with yes thanks for dehumanization because essentially that's at the root of all of our problems as soon as we dehumanize somebody we're we're really, you know so humanizing and depolarizing conversations would be an excellent approach to started to work through some of these problems. Again, stepping into that imaginal space of what is it like for you and what's important to you, rather than what do you think is wrong because what do you think is wrong is the wrong fricking question. Agreed. Stuart do you have your hand up from before or are you in the queue. You're muted right now. I'm in the queue. I'm in the queue to kind of punctuate a couple of things. The chunking up piece where we find the commonality is is critical. What's also critical I think is some kind of the vehicle that enables people to explore what's driving them. What's driving them. Each one of us has a driver. It was implanted, perhaps unconsciously perhaps consciously, but it's present, and those drivers create the dissonance between different groups in terms of, you know, othering. What what's critical here is is to is to get more and more people to unplug their driver and realize there is a bigger important concern here, because if they keep operating on that driver that was motivating them, you know, 25 or 50 or 75 years ago, it's going to kill them. All right, we're all we are all going to be dead. So those drivers and the metrics with which they measure their value will not mean anything. We are in a new world. We're in a new world. We can invent and we can invent, because we understand and know what to do. How can we change people's internal thinking. I, you know, many people on this call probably know more than me about the resistance to technology when it was first introduced into the population. And boom, all of a sudden it's like massive and present. And, you know, we're all like cyborgs to some degree, moving around the earth. Well, that's the kind of movement that that that we need. And we have the capacity and understanding to do that. And we need to just shift all of our languaging, you know, Democrat Republicans it's just, it's in some ways it's it's all silly, because they're a much bigger at stateness and much bigger vistas and perspective that we all need to have. Thanks to a couple of things I wanted to put in the chat. I think it's regarding resistance to technology and technological change and then also overcoming that. When cars first came out they were noisy and they scared the horses. So many states instituted red flag laws where a person carrying a red flag had to walk 30 feet ahead of the car, or 60 feet or something to warn other people in horses and buggies that there was a car coming in the middle. Their horse might get spooked. Then different technology American tobacco hired Eddie Bernays one of the fathers of public relations to make smoking among women popular in public, because half the population wasn't without smoking cigarettes in public so there was this huge market untapped. So he called some of his debutant friends and colluded with them called the press and said gosh I hear something's up on the Easter parade coming up soon. And then on a signal in the middle of the Easter parade these these young elegant women drew out cigarettes and lit up. And then they called it the torches of freedom, March, I will just point to the interesting ironies about freedom, liberty, all those things as being a trope that gets used a whole bunch. Then separately I wanted to do a quick screen share because one of the important thoughts in my brain which I've shown here before is that we are in a Titanic battle over the narratives in our heads and we always have been. In my junior varsity amateur version of history, that history really is a fight over the narratives the scripts that we have running in our minds, and these scripts, as Stuart just said, are overpowering really overwhelming. The stories we believe here's another thought our beliefs shape what we see, not not just sort of what we say, but, but what we see we will miss evidence that's right in front of us. If it doesn't fit our beliefs. But this Titanic battle is the battle that we've been sitting here talking about for two years in OGM in many different ways, and finding clever ways to undermine it deflate it bypass it step past it through it. I think is hugely important to solving the problems that were that were busy talking about here. There was in fact Freud's nephew there's a whole really actually let me screen share again for Bernays he's completely worth knowing more about. He is has no relationship to the sauce. He was a friend of Sigmund Freud's nephew. And, in fact, visited Freud, so he was part of the office, the committee on public information which was the propaganda committee also known as the creel committee on in Woodrow Wilson's administration. At the end of World War one Wilson went to the Paris peace talks, and was greeted as a hero, partly because the CPI did some really good propaganda, and Bernays is like damn that really worked. At the Paris peace conference, he went to visit his uncle Sigmund, and was leaping through these books, which were not translated into English yet. And so, Eddie not only help translate Sigmund's works into English but then became the ego to consultant for all of American business to, to basically use, use psychology in business in different ways. And if you watch the century of the self part one happiness machines. The whole hour is basically a biography of Eddie Bernays including people like Walter Lippman and others, and explained this story really beautifully. Sorry for the long digression but this is a really important piece of history for me. What's, Carl, do you want to explain drive. There's a whole whole framework, just gone to a meeting on Saturday and stuff so there it's a, it's a pretty comprehensive frame framework there's six main areas and then 28 drivers and stuff but it's all about. It's all about what we're just talking about so there's a whole inventory process to about motive, you know what drives and range you basically so that's a book behind behind it. I have, I got it. I'm going to be looking at some follow up actions to take from last week to get more information about it so I'll be able to let you know. Cool, thank you. Mr. Caronza. Thank you Jerry. Second to lower that man. I hear things that concern me. The first was Stuart, my interpretation of what you were saying is how can we change them. And this is a root assumption. It's seemingly that they need to change. It is something I struggle with at the root. That sounds very logical. And I don't want to put words in your mouse to it but but that's what I heard. And please I'd like to hear if if there's a difference there somehow. The second is if you want. No, I was just going to say, it's not they need to change. All of us need to change. Everybody on this call needs to change. Period. You know, how we live in the world needs to change. You know, how we live in the world needs to change. Otherwise it's just going to totally all fall apart. And as Doug earlier said, that might be the best thing that could happen because then we have to rebuild from ground zero, but no, Mark, I, you know, I wasn't at all. Othering. And my point was that that the othering is what's getting us all in trouble. All right. I, I, I don't know that's right. I or or maybe I don't feel that that's the whole solution in some way. You know, I'll leave it that there it's it's certainly, you know, struggle to say, sometimes in a mass situation where there are billions of people on the planet, how to coordinate the choices that affect collectively with the health of the entire planet. The second is an assumption about stories and I've, I've said this before and I'm trying to work on it and I don't have that much in terms of, you know, great research. But I look at stories as something that is that are that are very powerful, certainly, but stories are not systems. And if we talk about, as Jerry brought up before, you know, the personality as a system, you know, I think of street lights are not stories and stories do affect behavior, but stories aren't behavior. I need to fix my car and a story is not going to fix it. I hear, maybe not from this conversation as much but we need a better story than them. And that is also a concerning statement where our stories are going to fight and our stories better so our stories going to win. I just don't see that as the actual method for change. I don't have solutions but you know I hope I'm trying to ask the questions that feel more, much more difficult and engaging to me, and I'll, I'll pass the duck. Thanks for listening. Thanks for that mark. Just to reflect on what you said about stories for a sec. I'm, I love logic I think like facts are good I, you know. I think understanding how a car actually functions makes it much easier to diagnose when you hear a funny sound and when something goes wrong and you're suddenly unable to move forward, etc. And I don't think those are stories. I think my raised awareness on story has come from years of looking at social change cultural change and other sorts of things and realizing that a whole bunch of stories that dominate the arena that cause a bunch of narratives that come up in the sense that cause them to say X instead of why are driven by stories are planted and these stories in many cases are crafted and planted and we told on purpose and religions are stories and very much so like religions are big collections of stories in some in some large sense. And the narratives that hold religions are storytelling all over the place that they're not tables you don't you don't you don't find a lot of religions with tables in them and decision matrices and flashcards like like that doesn't seem to be the organizing method for for a lot of religions, although it would be interesting to start one that did that. And if anybody wants to start a religion I have food barism.com on the idea what if, what if we invented a placeholder religion so food bar is a placeholder file name. And so if you want access to edit food barism calm tell me it's a Google site super easy to edit I'm happy to give you access. So with that on to Doug be. Yeah, I mark. orientation. Is not to project anything on anyone. I think intrinsic to your share is that everything that happens today is attached to an agenda is an attached to some variation on projection of power control authority or affect an influence over. It's usually in service to something. And part of the transcending of the polar, the polarization, like giving people an awakening to a bigger space, in which the differences become proportionally much smaller relative to the things in common. So the idea that catalyzing an awakening, a reawakening on a being level on an experiential level on an emotional level on a spiritual level for each individual is not with any for the purpose of, and not with any carry desire to then do something to them or direct them in some way once they've gotten there. And, and that just it sort of is rooted in a vision of what's the reality I want the reality I want is that every man woman and child on the planet is has the opportunity to be part of to contribute to be valued acknowledged her. And to hear others and to realize their individual greatest generative potential for the whole like so that so that's the it and aspirationally. It also means transcending projecting or asserting anything on anybody in any context. And being open and accepting of where they go once they have reawakened to their own generative potential, like, I don't have a horse in that race. That's not part of anything that I have power control, my power and control stops at my skin. So, you know that there's sort of two shoes to the paradigm shift in that sense. Mark, did Doug just raise questions you'd like to ask. We have a transcripts. Yes. Yeah, I didn't understand how it sounded something came across to Doug about it sounded if I can remember that you know I'm assuming a polarization between people. I'm trying to, I think, get more to this wonderful position that can has brought up in private conversation that every human being deserves equal access to dignity belonging justice. And these are not stories with their systems are human systems, they're not technological systems, their systems that we learn in school they may have stories behind them. But it's a stance that, you know, I think I've told the story before. I mean, we had this thing yesterday or day before, where we wanted women and non binary people to meet. And as a worshiper of the sacred and Rajini, I feel as non binary as anybody. I talked with a trans person before this meeting. And I said, you know, I, I, I want to show up but it feels wrong. And they replied. Yeah, this male person tried to go to one of these meetings male appearing people and he was barred from entering and they say well we really want females and females who identify as non binary. Now, this is a digression I'm sorry, sorry to go there. This is a story of exclusion, you know, and I'm fine I think women deserve a space to themselves I think, you know, it's, I encountered somebody who uses wonderful term. The label machine. I used to be part of a group of radical folk sexually in San Francisco, and we call ourselves ambisexuals, we fuck categories, and certainly, you know, the, the, one of the points is you know don't take this stuff too seriously just, you know, achieve your own general potential. However, however you like and if you need support we're here. You know, raise your hand. Sorry for the digression but the shift in values and in behavior. What else, what else, other than values and behavior is it stories is it that, you know, new technology is it new ways of starting neighborhood groups or new political systems on the internet that have some kind of, you know, technological tracking, like DAOs, we're looking at many different things. But to me it comes down to values and behavior, and starting with common values. And starting with somehow non, you know this realization that when I stop at a stoplight, I'm giving up my autonomy, my freedom for the general good for not killing somebody else for not, you know, crashing my car I mean it's a it's a, it's a trade off that I'm willing to make. And as a recent redriver I don't drive too much. My God there are nuts on the highway. I came back I was tired I went to bed and I had a dream about that. I have at the moment no control, nor do I hope to have the level of Chinese technology and artificial intelligence that, you know, I could, you know, pull up my you know visual thing you know take my virtual finger and click on that driver, and you know the police would get you know an instant video from my car of the bad thing that they did. You know, helicopter drones would come in and you know grab that car and fly them off to jail. Um, yeah, I think that's a little, you know, techno futurist fantasy that would be unkind unfair and unwise. But yeah, that would be kind of nice to see some time encountering those bad drivers, getting back to behavior and values is, and what's common, I don't know where to start other than, you know, a real movement to influence the lives of children, but like we're doing here, listening to each other, and saying, you know, I value change, and I value my autonomy, but there's ways that I'm going to have to change that I have to give up part of my autonomy. If a collective solution decided by people, mostly not me is going to say, we think this is the way to do it. We think this is the way to change the collaborative collective behavior of humanity in a way that we can have a sustainable planet for not only humanity but the rest of life and nature that, you know, is integrated with, you know, the biological beings that we are. So I'll go back to the, you know, transcript later, because, you know, it's not that important to me if Doug, I misunderstood your understanding of what I was saying previously. I think you've come here with a good heart and a good mind. But it feels like, it feels like we still have a hell of a lot of work to do. Thank you for the most fascinating digression I've been on in a really long time. That was awesome. In a couple hours I will have posted the video, the transcript in the chat to the town hall, GM town hall channel on matter most so it will all be there. I wanted to pick up one thing you said about stop lights, just to add a little kind of a to pick up what you're doing and bend it a little bit, which is, I'm having kind of traffic calming that said that stop lights are stupid, because we don't act because they actually increase fatalities and we don't need them and there's no reason for half the people to be sitting there going to be done be done wasting energy. And that the solution requires people to come into relationship and make eye contact at the intersection, so that they can match pace and make their way through the intersection without killing everybody and that this actually creates the same kind of an intersection with hospitality and with like like conviviality as a as a nice side benefit, etc etc there's a whole bunch of stuff there. But some of the narratives in our heads are well if we didn't have stop lights that we would kill everybody and everybody would die and that's been ingrained very very deeply. And some of the things that make a lot of sense socially and with trust, don't make sense otherwise and like shock us other. You've opened up a fun can of worms in my head so. But this is probably a good place for us to hit pause on this conversation because you've just taken us a lot of different places that that I think are rich. I thought we had a lot more time sorry. No that's all right that's all right we've gone through our 90 minutes that's all. And what you said this was perfect for where we were and what's going on. Good to see you Judy long time. You're muted Judy. Sorry, I mute because of background noises. It's great to listen to this discussion and I was prompted by Jerry's question what we should talk about, and was delighted to tune in and find out we were already talking about it. That's great. I love how the world works that way sometimes. So with that. I thank you all. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for digging a little further into this vast network of underground tunnels and tubes. How are the world through the fears of humanity. Who knew that Monsters Inc was actually like, correct. Thanks everybody. Good day. On the tubes. Amen. Happy July.