 Mr. Carmichael Jerry good morning. How are you doing? Good morning? What's that background? Did you ever see Zootopia? No, it's a pretty funny animation. This is the Department of Mammal Vehicles and it's the home of a very funny scene where The rabbit protagonist is trying to get some DMV information. They're trying to trace a vehicle. They suspect and All of the attendants in the DMV are sloths and so They talk Like this and she's a rabbit and she's in a damned hurry and the fox who's helping her is like, mm-hmm. Yeah Tell me that joke again, Mr. Sloth. It's a very funny scene Terrific. So I think today I'd be working in the Department of Mammal Vehicles How's with you? Well, you know, it's this funny kind of Existence where we're fine and look locally. You'd never know anything that's going on. No fires nearby No, at the moment Sonoma County is fire-free. That's crazy, but it's great. It won't stay that way So, you know, it's a Lot of imagination and trying to figure out what the fires are gonna do They're kind of animated critters. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm getting more and more unpredictable and Well, yeah, although it's just obvious that this part of California is gonna all burn at some point So it doesn't once once a big piece. I think I asked this last week even but once a big piece of territory is burned Doesn't it create kind of a natural firebreak? For a while because that fuel that fuel is kind of gone for a while Right So, you know, I don't like a chessboard Here it goes there. So how often can you have the largest fire or the third largest fire in recorded history? Like like what and then Pete Pete sensor was turns out California is really really big well It's hard to predict because here's the problem with clear-cutting is All the trees that grow back are the same generation. Yep So there is a much weaker system Though my guess is with we've talked 40 years Has anyone done the analysis of How much of the burn for each of these last decades forest fires? How much of it was warehouses and Champions and whoever else was making paper like how much of it was was planted replanted forests that were monocrops and how much of it was wild I'm sure there are people who do that, but I don't know it. I'm sure those companies have figured that out But I wish I would love to know that because it's it'd be really interesting if a lot of this is actually a Crop basically crop damage self-inflicted crop damage of some sort kind of Yeah, I think it really is and the amount of You know, what looks like nature is really second or third growth. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm So have you heard of the book the mushroom at the end of the world? I've heard of it. It's it's actually it's actually it's actually lovely and The author is writing about the matzotaki mushroom and can I spoil the plot a little bit for you? Okay, so the matzotaki is prized in Japan We don't really eat it or know it in the US But because Japan manages to sort of pave over most of its country the matzotaki has been farmed out in Japan And they were desperate like back in the 80s or so they were like, ah, jeez. We have no more source for matzotaki Then they discovered that in the Pacific Northwest Where I am they had a lot of matzotaki in the forest and I'll tell you the reason why is really cool But they also discovered that there were a lot of immigrants who had liked flood Vietnam laos Cambodia knew how to forage and live in the forest needed employment and so a bunch of people who were kind of Southeast Asian refugees And other people who'd left started taking up on occupation as Matzotaki foragers in the Pacific Northwest and then a whole other layer of middlemen showed up who would buy them from The foragers in bulk and sell them off to restaurants and ship them back to Japan and do whatever else But but one of the really fascinating angles was that the Pacific Northwest and here I'm a I'm no lumberjack for Agri-economist or anything, but apparently the Pacific Northwest was mostly ponderosa pine Which are which are gigantic trees and not as big as you know, the giant sequoias, but they're huge big beautiful trees and those got logged out and What comes in naturally because they weren't they weren't busy planting, you know, regrowth back in the day They were just cutting down trees and taking them out what grows back naturally is large large pole pine and Douglas fir and What loves a 10 year old large pole pine? Matzotaki mushrooms So the Matzotaki was thriving in a damaged environment A dad an environment that was recovering it wouldn't have naturally shown up I mean the ponderosa because that's not its home But it was happy to find a whole bunch of logical and if you're foraging you go find the logical look at look at the Mature logical look at the base and chances are that's where you'll find your Matzotaki So so her book is kind of this This is the mushroom at the end of the world Her book is this meditation on capitalism micro economies nature and a bunch of other stuff I haven't finished the book, but it was just like she's just kind of wandering through these things. She's discovered. It's it's lovely Yeah, we're getting a lot of writing like that. It's quite I'm reading one called The missing hand Missing hand or ham and of course the hand that's missing is Adam Smith's Oh good. I haven't heard of this book. Sounds great. It is And I should I should remember the author, but I don't we can look that up in instance You wouldn't believe this which we can source this Really? It's crazy. It's like we have a special magic genie in a bottle. That's extra. It is Tronso the inner table with the teenager who documents every piece of the conversation This is true. It was like being too long in the tabard with Cliff Fibron Yeah Anyway, her book is just a wonderful meandering around in the current economy With the idea that the hand that would guide things is missing So you get a kind of chaos and confusion I love and the writing is you know I love that and we should probably use the matter most chat if we can maintain chat discipline today that'd be great um, hey everybody welcome to the OGM check-in call for thursday august 19 2021 Why don't we go into normal kind of checking pattern and uh, let's see uh mark gill stacey And mark i'm calling on you even though you're hidden. Are you breakfasting or? Oh, I am here. Excellent. Good morning. Bonjour How are you? Well, um What do I have to check in? Oh, um, I have been pondering a question Um, how do we embody our values? And I'm I'm I'm asking the question because I'm um I don't know if you guys have the Check the society 2045 and ken omer's uh interview there Not seen it. Not seen it. Okay, um, so And he speaks he speaks a lot of of Principles and values and not to say, you know, how to do things but looking more at a systemic change of our societies And and very often I'm always, you know, I've not spoke of unintended consequences Um, that's very often what we start doing and then oh, yeah, you know, we'll figure out the problems later Man, I wonder if it has to do with uh us not Really looking at um The values that we hold when we do something how do we apply ourselves? to changing something or building something or Co-creating solutions even the co-creating is interesting in itself um So how do we how do we Get to the point where everybody shares the same type of values, but um And bodying them every day I love the question and As a as I think this is going to be a partial answer, but I think it'll be an interesting answer Let me do a quick screen share Because one of the tabs open on my desktop is this it's demartini's 13 questions that determine your core values And you'll see that it's not necessarily about how would you handle international crises and climate change or whatever else But but you'll see that these are also really perceptive questions And it's my intention to sit down and fill these out in this google doc, which I have not done yet But I created kind of a template for this which I can share that file Um, so I'll just read the questions really quickly. What do you fill your personal space with? So that's that's what you value. What do you spend your time on? What energizes you? What do you spend your money on? Where are you most organized and ordered? Where are you most disciplined and reliable? What do you think about most? What do you visualize most what do you have an internal dialogue about most? What do you want to converse with other people about? What inspires you most? What are your three most consistent goals? And what do you love to learn about? This is a little bit like Proust's questionnaire, but for me more interesting more self exploratory in a sense Um But it's a nice set of questions that as you were asking your question I'm like, gosh, this doesn't this doesn't say anything about how I would handle the trolley problem or You know any any kind of dilemma you wanted to pose out in the outer world But it does I think Have a nice way of finding like what's up with us And you'll share that sure Yes I'm gonna share it in a couple ways because I've got a link to it. Of course in my brain, which I'll share And I haven't been able to find the the missing hand. Does anybody else found it? Which is probably a bad pun as I as I just said that but I did a quick search and it gave me a bunch of the wrong things so What does the missing hand mean? Pardon What does the missing hand mean the missing hand is the book that Doug just mentioned which was about the invisible hand I'm sorry. And yeah, and it's it's about how well my own belief here is that uh Predatory capitalism and today's neoliberal capitalism kind of relies on the the shared fiction that there's this invisible hand That moves the economy toward balance and equilibrium and does good things for us And all we need to do as individuals is be agree acting our greedy self-interest because that levels out on the whole And I think that the book's thesis is something like hey, guess what that doesn't actually work Doug. Did you did you locate it? Yeah, the title is the absent hand ah And in the author That's another question Jerry what you were just describing reminds me of nothing more than a sleight of hand magician on stage Or maybe right in front of you at a cafe saying you know pay no attention To the invisible hand Um well and and you could argue that modern economics is a sleight of hand trick look over here Right. Yeah, because good illusion good illusionists make you look over here while they're doing something over here I I had an experience in Reno some years ago at a casino Theater dinner theater and magician before the show was making the rounds And he was doing rolled up sleeves Right in front of your face sleight of hand it's called it's called close in magic Call what close in magic. It's called close in magic. It's a whole subset of of magic It's remarkable to watch. It's amazing how well it works And probably better at people who are paying a lot of attention Um class you had your hand up about the missing hand. I think rather absent hand Yeah, I participated In an exercise yesterday with the global regeneration co-lab Which was no exactly around This this question that mark asked and if I may just take the screen for a moment to explain So they used the image of these kinds of trees and to say There is so much chaos In in our groups. So and no one can agree on anything. There are NGOs So we are looking like a tree like this where everything Is it's just kitty mambos and and how this could even emerge into a common In a common tree like this thing here, for example, it's just incredible And so my impression was yeah, this is chaos. This tree is is a mess when you look at it But it has a common purpose, right? It succeeds in organizing itself To create a canvas to push out leaves Which means it can stimulate photosynthesis meaning it can grow and nourish itself, right? So what we know about ourselves Is is embedded in thousands of years of observation, right the best Case study empirical data we have is in the scriptures that have described how we function and what drives us so And it all comes basically down to the golden rule, you know, that is the condensation of multiple religions and scriptures and philosophies that says We have to be empathetic. We have to have or Refkin now who defines this we are an empathetic Society on empathetic species without empathy and without care for one another We can't call anything So it's just like this tree if these branches started fighting each other That tree wouldn't wouldn't happen, right? So we are just like this tree. We are a mess, but It's a common purpose we can call something that is that is beneficial Love that i'm mark there's a emergent systems notion about autonomy where Individual cells when they form into larger organisms lose the autonomy that they Originally had as individual cells so my liver cells are not going to become lung cells there's a constraint that's placed on Individuals and larger organizations where You know as I join a corporation a company an organization even this call I lose some of my autonomy and This is a choice that I can that I can make um, and there's a lot of passionate discussions and A lot of strangeness around freedom, you know a mask, you know is basically totalitarian in a symbology now in in some circles and certainly I don't know Chaos is an interesting word that klaus used. I see I see constraint in organization not chaos in these trees But the issue of autonomy Is something that is very Interesting to me when it comes to choice and Collaboration and I'm not uh, I'm exploring that but I'm not exactly sure how to frame it yet And that's it for now I love that mark. Thank you and and Being in society is some kind of a trade-off between our own autonomy freedom whatever and Other people and what's going on around this In lots of different ways and how we negotiate that matters a lot And a lot of that is often governed by shared fictions as you will harari would put it that make up the rules of our society or the assumptions We've been fed or whatever else and there's those can really cock things up Klaus is your hand still up from before That's okay. Thanks cool and I Mark thank you for for starting that and I think I was going uh stacey and then gill. Is that right? Wow, so much of what's been said ties into what I've been thinking the past couple of days. Um First of all class with the whole empathy piece. That's absolutely necessary Which I think has a lot to do with what I've started writing But if I could add some questions cherry to your list In what I'm writing the director asks the actress You know, what is your purpose? What is the gift you want to give to the audience? And how do you want them to feel leaving the theater? And I know firsthand those are important questions because that's what I needed to answer To get from my block Um, as far as the capitalism piece that came in yesterday. I was watching a a great documentary. Um, it was fantastic Fungi maybe But but here's the interesting piece of it. So I'm watching it and it's really beautiful and I love learning I mean, I was especially interested when they started talking about the applications to mental health and how they're working with people with PTSD And the first thought I had is you don't need the mushrooms for it Although some people may and the biggest concern that I have is that We treat medicine like medicine And not like something we do every day. So I almost started seeing the possibility of something as wonderful as mushrooms Turning into something as negative as pharmaceuticals Because as I'm watching I'm like, wow, this is such they must have had a lot of money to make this movie And then and I'm not doubting the intentions of the creator. I'm not doing that at all But we do live in a system We're programmed. How can we make money and I'll stop there? But the last thing I want to say about this group because again, um, it's being illustrated with claus's project and it relates to trust What I love about ogm Is that even as a project starts taken off The door is still open. I can still walk in and sit there and observe Whereas in the old way as far as I know and of course, I don't have that much experience Those doors would be slam shut Because somebody might get your idea or somebody might beat you to it So I just wanted to point out those things because that's what I look at my role as here Thank you. Thank you. We we kind of work a little bit by some of the rules of open space And uh, one of those is the law of two feet go You know go where your interests are best served and your skills are best put to work But also, um, some people are butterflies and bumblebees And the butterflies go sit outside. They don't participate in the sessions But they hang out in the hall They're like a beautiful butterfly perched and people stop by and talk with them and share stuff And the bumblebees are hopping from room to room and they're carrying information carrying Hey, you know what they they just said that in the in the other meeting over there And they make those connections perhaps to see Yeah, I just wanted to say to keep in mind that sometimes bumbles Bumblebees and butterflies can also lay an egg so Let's not lock each other, you know, I think that's something that we do And I think that's a fear people have that they're going to be locked into one thing And we're not we're every we're so many things different concentrations But I think we need to have a flow in some new paradigm that we move into I think that's part of what's been missing Yeah, thank you. It's also that negotiated loss of autonomy whether voluntary or involuntary or what um So let's go gill neal ken And thanks. Good morning everybody The the the butterfly metaphor reminds me of the most fun. I ever had at a conference So it's a green build Some years ago in green build the national green building conference went from like 300 people of 3000 people of 30 000 people over the course of a few years and I was at one of these 30 000 ones with you know 20 people that I really wanted to talk to and it was too complex to figure it out and what we did kind of not by plan But by circumstance A friend of mine and I parked ourselves at one of the stand-up tables in the big hallway outside the exhibition hall And it was like being a coral reef every hour floods of people would go by us in one direction or the other and Lo and behold out of that crowd the 20 people that I needed to see passed by and came over And so it was very relaxed and effortless woo-way conference hopping butterfly. Thank you Nice work Yeah, it was good. Um, um, can I have the screen for a sec? Yeah, yeah, I think it's that so anybody can share and I'm not I'm kind of not the host On thursdays we use our collective necks zoom because they're using the otter plugin Uh-huh great. Um, so to claus's point about about trees and order and chaos and I may have shared this before but I just I just love this one It is up That's great. I haven't seen that one before Yeah, it's it's it's a very rich actually, you know, I'd like to organize an event just around this image Uh-huh that provokes for people to um to what mark was saying about autonomy. I'm struck that, um, you know Autonomy is one of those narratives, you know, for us autonomy is important. It hasn't always been a primal value for humans in human history So it's just worth thinking about what that means for us because we are you know, we we we we prize that as a almost as a given Let's take this down Well rugged individualism is a part of the american Country country building myth and we have pumped it very very hard capitalism pumps it really really hard So we feel it's extremely dominant right now And then you can scroll back to early christianity, which in a sense is a claim about individuality also I guess although i'm not sure I understand those narratives Uh, and so forth And then historically your mileage may vary of course cause Yeah, just just to guilds picture there and coming back to the trees we showed before it it it's basically Coming back down to empathy right everybody helps somebody who's helping somebody right so this tree whatever Weird the woods are springing up and whatever is happening is because This limb is getting too heavy it needs support So there is a shoot coming down that supports it so he can stand up All right, so that it's it's it is a a beneficial empathetic focused Community that builds towards a common outcome towards a collective outcome Well back and And the fabulous fun guy people talk about guilds about associations of trees with each other and trees with fun guy and fun guy with each other And a whole unseen world to speaking about invisible hands And unseen world and collaboration and coordination and so this you know this this The not privileging autonomy privileging Empathy and mutual aid and solidarity and so forth is a character is a characteristic Aboriginal societies If some would say a core message of Torah about how to live together collaboratively in a world And it's a different story than I mean mind how does everything serve me and maximize me a very different story That's very you're gonna say something. Yeah What you're saying right this minute reminded me of several things that I hadn't really connected my head yet Which is the wood wide web and susan simard and listening to trees looking for the mother tree. Okay, good but also Slowing down and listening to nature kind of his biomimicry, which was a kind of very techy movement that that had its moment 15 years ago and it's still going on and growing I hope but then also Masanobu fukuoka and the one straw revolution and no till farming and his whole story is about observing what crops worked Well with what crops under what conditions and just being highly observant season to season and then tweaking everything and so this this this notion of connecting back to nature and listening with care and trying to do things with nature instead of against nature Is a great general principle, but I hadn't I hadn't connected sort of biomimicry to fukuoka to The wood wide web Yep, absolutely. And it's a long legacy in the whole organic agriculture realm going back to agricultural testament from Howard in 150 years ago Wendell Berry famously said that the thing about organic agriculture is not that it uses organic wastes It's that it treats treats the farm as an organism So it's kind of a misappropriation of the term and what he was saying is you know And what the best of the organic farmers I think do is look at farms as ecosystems Look at the ecosystems in the region that you're in look at how they work See if you can somehow replicate that structure in your agricultural enterprise rather than Rather than an extractive system that depends on imported materials from somewhere else Because you know standing forest does fine all by itself with no inputs Anyway, so there's that whole story. Um, I have been Um And on that note Clouser you familiar with the guy named Walter Yenny from australia I don't think so He's an agronomist I guess by training. He's with csiro the major national scientific institute in australia He's been doing some phenomenal work in agriculture and climate That is to really oversimplify it is saying Yeah, reducing co2 emissions is is important But what's really important is the is the is the vital health of the soil sponge And the ability of soils to both sequester carbon, but also hold water And support vegetation the transpiration of which Provides a major cooling effect on the planet. That's very oversimplified. There's a ton of youtube's from him. He builds the case Very simply and clearly of its rich territory. And I think uh, potentially revolutionary for how we think about climate and food systems And what's needed in the world now where we have rendered According to him something like 60 of the earth's surface into desert or near-desert conditions on a planet used to be highly forested And talks about the the role of humans in desertification and the role of a forestation And grazing and prairie in the right kind of agriculture in cooling the planet and restabilizing it So I commend that to folks There you go. Um, so I've been thinking a lot about systems change lately Lots of folks talk about it. We I we did the living between worlds webinar yesterday focused on that question And you know, sort of what it is how it happens that where we learn and one of the things that struck me And I haven't thought this through very much, but it seems to me that all changes systems change But some of it is skillful And a lot of it is not Because you can't do just one thing and anything you do will have implications throughout the system and so The folks who don't talk about system change are doing it all the time and it may be skillful And it may be and it begs the question always for the sake of what systems change for the sake of what? At the at the future future of capital conference we've had at the un and will bank two years ago um Very rich ferment among 50 people from around the world and At some point we were trying to find what's the what's the theme of what we're talking about here And there's a lot of argument about it And we sent the three loudest voices off to another room to argue among themselves and come back with some kind of synthesis And what they came back with was systems change for the common good As the story that we were trying to craft and everybody in the room suddenly quieted and eyes popped open people said Yeah, that's that's kind of what we're talking about here. So That's all all I have to say about that for the moment Last but very much not least on the matter of empathy I saw a very interesting piece. I'll try to dig it up When I stopped speaking Someone talked about the challenge of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers and how how to talk to them, which is already a problematic construction And he suggested that the key was empathy Um, I can get that you feel that way and that you're deeply troubled by whatever blah blah blah and curiosity An authentic empathy and authentic curiosity will do something to shift the listening of the person that you're with And open up the possibility of a different kind of conversation between it's a gorgeous piece and I'll post a little chat as soon as I find it So, um, this is this conversation is moving quickly for me because I have lots of things I wanted to come back and cheer and I kind of want to slow it down and I kind of don't want to slow it down But I wanted to share Mara Zepeda's favorite book in the world Is wendelberries it all turns on affection which which sort of is a bit of what you just said Gil and very much about empathy and and all those kinds of things and it's a relatively short read and then these are the Pardon, I know a lot of wendels working. I've never seen that one. So thank you. I think you'll actually really really love it And then these these are my notes for this call. So we started with a mushroom at the end of the world Uh, which is Anna Tsing And although and how Tsing uh, and so on and so forth assemblages. She talks about et cetera, et cetera then I went to fukuoka's four principles of natural farming and then found my way toward What you also just said which what also just got said which is teacher farm as an ecosystem Which came out of this article More crops from paul keiser Uh, oh, which is who is the part of a couple of a farm that uh, dav and claudia and I visited Uh, so remember elizabeth keiser from singing frog farms, Dave Um, part of the wisdom we got on that call was a teacher farm as an ecosystem And uh, part of that that I just wanted to link to it here and show it to everybody I've got sort of a pattern language for growing food Uh, which is under uh, an important nexus for me my ahas about soil and growing or raising food Which I put in some time ago when I realized I had a bunch of disconnected things in my brain Around those topics. So I put this in in 2015. I created this thought in 2015 But I had stuff about healing in the earth soil fertility regenerative agriculture natural farming the wood wide web perennial planting uh, allen savory and uh, Basically reversing those to certification. I don't know bugs mycelium Fungi all that kind of stuff and I brought it into this nexus as you see it's not like beautiful and orderly But it's kind of this this is a uh, a schwerpunkt to borrow German military word, uh for where these kinds of topics live in my brain. So I'll stop sharing there, but But Pardon schwerpunkt, uh the heavy So it's basically the point of emphasis for a military campaign like like when you're in a battle Like you you figure out where the schwerpunkt is and then you have need and print it Which are nearby also points of emphasis to draw attention to distract and do whatever And I'm reading john boyd's discourse on war Which is his famous deck. He basically had a had like a 400 page Deck that he would present to people about the history of warfare and all that kind of stuff And he goes into into those those terms and I find a lot of boyd's thinking actually very applicable outside of warfare Yeah, um in different ways. So I'm gonna now I'm going to go like the discourse on war to today's uh Thing and as well as schwerpunkt, but in the meantime, I'm going to go back to the queue Uh and ask neil canon ellison to jump in and neil's good to see you Yeah, nice to see everybody here too. Um, thanks for uh welcoming back in as though I haven't been away I don't know what I've missed. I'm sure it's a huge amount But I'm picking up the threads as I'm going and see what I can weave Um, I'm coming to you from leaven in belgium and we're having what I'm told is closer to a normal Summer than has been for the last five years. So you may recall when I came in last year. I was doing a lot of hand watering um To try and keep crops alive this year, it's been more of several runs around the uh, uh, the small lot Destroying slugs in the evening to try and prevent them from eating the organic crop um, but in the context of the regenerative farming I'm sitting here on on the benefit of 50 years of organic capture into sandy loam soil on a hill um The neighboring farms neighboring homes won't have gardens like this and it'll take a long time to get to this level of uh of soil carbon and productivity Despite the best intentions of generally under informed You know backyard gardeners So there's an agriculture issue here that claus and others will be very well aware of that We have lost some of those skills of how to keep things alive and how to keep the soil alive and how to keep all alive And so claus is an example of the tree You know pulling together to do the right thing You know depends very much on what it is that you have decided is the right thing And so I saw from your brain just then gerry that you had Multiple things in terms of don't damage the soil and various other things But in some cases the soil has been so damaged It will require a huge amount of human intervention to get the soil back to a point Which can actually start to become close enough to natural to actually farm it naturally So let's not kid ourselves that we're starting with a clean slate or natural soils in most cases were not And in most cases, you know, what was underneath the house that's there now has been pushed into the backyard to prevent The um the builders from having to go through that stuff and unfortunately It's the wrong soil and the wrong on top of all the rest of the soil that was there previously guilty had your hand up Yeah, a guy named um ed hooling who's an organic farmer from back east It's super fine by my notes on him has developed a program working with farmers to to Basically reawaken their soils. It's done as a business proposition With no investment from the farmer delivers significantly increased yields as well as all kinds of ecological Marker benefits And I From from the little that I know about so far has the potential to scale significantly in the sense of you know horizontal widespread scale not going to not growing a unicorn But propagating a a simple and replicable procedure out to lots of farms. They're going from They've gone from 50 acres to 750 acres and that's kind of case of scale They're working yet supported by the granting foundation, which is in itself a very interesting thing Yeah, I'm not saying it can't be done But in the context of permaculture, we're trying to farm humans who don't agree on what the objectives are Which I think was part of what class was saying and the humans that have the capacity to make the collective decisions You know need to be well informed about what's possible and they need to be starting from a current picture of reality not from false assumptions about what's possible No, no, I know that and if I can continue the part of this discussion about empathy and around You know, how do you get an ecology or a tree to function? You know, if you look at pro-social, which is about how to farm humans and not in the Solid and green sense Exactly um, but they're talking there about a multi-level selection as opposed to just competition or just cooperation And the key quoted, you know multi-level selections like a tug of war With within group selection pulling towards self-serving traits and between group selection pulling towards group-serving traits And it's this competition between World views and competition between groups and competition between policies and competitions between economies And my vested interests versus your vested interests, which are the biggest barriers to the synthesis of the good ecology ecological understandings that we have and so The challenge we've got is how do we farm humans to actually align with the biomimicry ecological principles that would enable us to act as mycelia in the production of multiple models globally each tailored for place and existing conditions And pre-empting and anticipating future likely conditions Because otherwise you're planting the wrong stuff in the wrong place with the wrong soils the wrong people And without agreement and everybody thinks they're doing it And I see I've stirred it stirred the pot a little bit, but I'll step back to say just just for a second May I may I submit that what you described perfectly describes? Sorry, perfectly is probably the wrong word there, but describes really well at least in my head What indigenous communities around the world figured out Up until we arrived to stamp it all out Um, and which we are naively now trying to resuscitate and maybe incorporate into modern living somehow But but those groups of humans who haven't killed themselves off Figured out how to live in community on their comments and it was very specific to their location And their language embedded the wisdom and their stories embedded all of the above and their cosmologies embedded all of the all of the above so So we we used to know Yeah, and you've probably in this group heard me mention this before about connection with the indigenous australians and the wonderful elder who's mary graham Talks about land comes first and people come second And so it's connection to land and country and it's respect for that and we don't have that All of our property laws Are about carving it up and giving it to individuals for them to use Right, and then we have some compliance requirements to prevent you doing absolutely All the damage that you could but even those fail Especially when the corporations and others pay out the courts and pay out the legislate Latest to change the rules to allow them to get away with literally side and so I agree with you very much jerry that the part of the key here is a return to become the neo indigenous But that comes with the respect for land first and that comes with Accepting the land in its current condition and nurturing it back to health Not just assuming that I can go and start growing stuff tomorrow Especially when there's 8 billion of us now not only you know 1.5 billion as there might have been When you know pre colonization So I'm not even sure if that number is correct But we've got a massive number of people. I keep seeing the quote by buckminster fuller brought up About you know, we should convert all the the weaponry to livingry and we can we've got sufficient technology to feed all the world's people He died in 1983 the populations were most doubled since then climate has changed significantly Soils have been destroyed oceans have been destroyed rivers have been destroyed So we've got to stop hitting ourselves that we can just turn around and do this stuff We can't because of the gaps between people the gaps between world views and the assumptions that we can solve it with technology You know the technology we need is right here And here and we've got to get that aligned with what earth needs not what we need And that means less of us doing less damage in in more places And actually actively restoring places and so as I say I'm talking here from belgium where I'm Privilege to be on and honored to be helping to look after a 50 year old It's obviously older than that soil with a 50 year old organic garden And to have seen the abundance and productivity From this place in this season But also knowing the farmer's grief of trying to keep things alive last year with a very minimal harvest And knowing that that is what's coming There's a heat dome just down the road in the Mediterranean. There was a heat dome Over you know, Oregon and California Fires everywhere as you know when I left Australia it was on fire two years ago So, you know, we've We've got to talk about the positives We also have to face the reality of the negatives and we have to understand where we're starting from And we're not all starting from the same place and we're not all starting from a tabula rasa Thanks. I'm nice to see you all. Yeah. Thanks, Neil. Mark Tebow then Mark Carranza then Gil Yeah, I'm I'm just wondering from what you just said Neil what Um What the word system to me comes to mind when we speak of indigenous people or maybe becoming new indigenous If we are becoming new indigenous then what type of systems that we need to build To support the new worldview or At least You know build build a wisdom Around these systems in the if it is to regenerate the soil that's that one thing Understanding how different ecosystems work. That's another thing, but ultimately Whether it is traditional knowledge In in implants medicine or cosmic stories They all are supported by a system and the system defined This wisdom this knowledge, etc so If i'm correct in the assumption about the question it's The you know, what are the what is what is the nature of the system that we're trying to align with? Is that correct? Yes, and I but also the first question that I asked early on At the beginning of the call was how do we embody our on our values? You know values are based on the value system belief systems, etc So every time we talk we talk about something we always very often. Unfortunately, we've missing the word system I and I'm brought back Greta Thunberg has been quoted a couple times this in the last couple days as saying hey If we're trying to fix problems within the system, and that's not working. Maybe we need to change the system And that should be part of the conversation I think every time that we assessing something you we come like for instance We come into a new group of people or a new project or a new something And we say oh, that's great I love what i'm hearing And then you jump into it and then you realize after a while that well the system that that project or anything was built upon Has some deficiencies that is impeding the growth of that or the deployment of it So we have mark gill dug on this topic and then we'll go back to the queue. Sorry, can I just respond? Can I just respond to that? Go ahead? I'm living in lovin and the norbertine monks founded a monastery down the road here that celebrated its 600th anniversary recently They built lakes in the 13th century to increase agriculture For the people of this area and they became a safe haven for people during the medieval period And the way things are going we're going to need islands of sanity In a sea of destruction And so what does an island of sanity look like as a system boundary? Well, obviously an individual who can hold core and embody their own values And actually provide that sort of mentorship leadership eldership to others is a An island of sanity at that microcosmic level What does a community look like that embodies those values? What does a neighborhood or a bigger area look like that embodies those values? The problem is that if you're embodying values that don't align with what the cosmos needs right now Then they're the wrong values Right, if you're embodying values that you think are your values But they're not actually integral to what the ecosystem needs to survive and therefore for you to survive in the ecosystem Then they're the wrong values And what the indigenous people did over a long time was co-evolution with natural systems Recognizing the selves as part of not above and imposing their values on them And their values became integral with the survival of the whole ecosystem Not the survival of us as humans in the ecosystem And so, you know the indigenous wisdom and gill posted on facebook recently about his rewrite of ducky fuller's I'm quote And I think that you know that the simple three word slogan that I heard to describe the indigenous wisdom australia is so true Keep all alive Right, and so it's not how do I keep all the humans alive? It's how do I keep all the living things alive? Which means how do I foster and nurture and look after all of those things? And we wherever you draw that system boundary If those aren't your values, then you're in the wrong place at the wrong time Thanks. Thanks Neil. So we're still on this on this tangent here. Let's go Yeah, I want to basically challenge, uh, I guess two assumptions that I heard from neil. Um, you know a lot of What you're saying is incredible and wonderful, but First on the last thing you said there's a lot of indigenous societies that Destroyed their ecosystem completely and and basically went to um extinction Um, and I'm I'm really not sure. You know, we got to make some kinds of distinctions between these you know indigenous wisdom kinds of things um, the second is uh Previously this I'll just respond very quickly. I I agree. I'm not trying to make noble savages, right? I'm actually saying they survived because they survived and we've just had the IPCC report. We're on code red We're killing ourselves And so if we don't become somebody that at least recognizes how to live within our own environments We won't be here full stop. So I agree with you. Don't want to argue Um, and uh, you know, I'm very interested in the assumption um that Or or basically the research that buck. Mr. Fuller did to basically say we have the resources to make um, all of humanity 100 successful and certainly he meant, um, You know the wider ecosystems ecosystem as well, but certainly, um, I'd be very interested in Following the world games that are kind of tracking, you know, the resources versus population versus soil versus um climate I have not heard that We are now past some kind of tipping point where we can't make The world work for a hundred percent of humanity Even if humanity is growing and it looks like it it might be shrinking given some demographics Um, you know over the next 50 years And let's say I'm very quick response to that one. I've got my bells in the background that call to prayer in the Roman Catholic area and the um Buckminster Fuller wouldn't wouldn't have then been aware of peak everything Right, and we're at peak everything except for those things which we're still putting into the atmosphere at a rate greater than the atmosphere can take And into the ocean at rates greater than the ocean can take And so when you look at what's happening in california with this water reservoirs When you look at the amount of people to feed with the the agricultural situation With the way we've set up our economies with the extraction that's going on And with the amount of carbon that's still being pushed into the system Right, if we were actually taking any sense as elders Were speaking to the tribe We would be at zero carbon production now because we would be realizing we are destroying our own nest while we're living in it But we're not and we won't be there And we won't get there and so we can't continue to push This amount of pollution from this number of people into a planet that has tipping points of its own But don't depend on whether or not we can economically develop these things Because the ecology will rule the economy and that was the also the point about the indigenous perspective So that's where i'm coming from and there's a lot more evidence behind what i'm saying that i can say here in a couple minutes quick response But i'd suggest you do have a look at You know the peak everything Collapsology deep adaptation a variety of other things which talk about the rates at which we are depleting the resources that you might be depending on for Techno solutions and the impacts of those on the systems in which we live Thanks mark Let's go gill dug class and then back to our queue Yeah, thank you. Um lots to absorb your nil. First of all, thank you very much For the for the past bit. I have some questions for you about the process of cultivating humans and cultures But let me first respond to some of what you can say about About collapse ology and bucky and so forth Jane I had the privilege of doing some of that research in world game 1972 And that's that that for me was like the the pivot point in my life and my commitment and the work that i've done and um um One of the stunning lessons from that work was that we have the capacity to have 100 percent success to rewrite that um that that you know that you just referred to Was that i've been troubled by the commitment of a world that works for 100 percent of humanity because that's too small a commitment And it has to be a commitment to hunt to the to the thrival of all life and keeping all alive as nil said So that's what that was about But in that work it became clear to all of us that there was no necessary physical barrier to human success on this planet People are not hungry because there's not enough food You know people are not unhoused because there's not enough buildings and material to make buildings from it's something else that blocks us Yes, it's here and here and i'd love your thoughts on how how we transform Heart and mind and reindigenize what is essentially an urban planet so far from indigenosity or whatever the word is that we might imagine But back to the bucky thing. Um, there was very much an awareness of peak everything limits to growth had just come out in that very same year And the systems dynamics we were looking in bucky among other things was not just an architect of the trend watcher and you know back in the 1930s he was commissioned by Forbes to look at industrial trends the 20th century. So there was an eye toward all that work in that and The the specific Parameters if you right reran those exercises they would be different because the population is eight not three And the atmosphere where it is not where it was but the methodology This you know the discipline systems methodology of under looking at the trends Being clear about present state being clear about preferred state. What would a world that works for all life have to look like And then reengineering the strategy from there not from where we are today And how do we do politically acceptable incremental stuff? But what does it look like and what had to happen in the last decade before we got there and what had to happen before that Just I think a timeless methodology and worth applying within the constraints clause that you're that you know that you're talking about um The other thing I just want to it's very much in in Residence what what you're saying. I had a conversation. Where's it on clubhouse about a month ago? um and it was Part of one of the hosts was waxing enthusiastically about the the the contribution on the promise of capitalism in the world today and I among others raised some questions about You know, maybe there are some limits there and some problems just climb it ended up And this guy went off saying look, you know, this has been the engine of prosperity It's brought billions of people out of poverty. It's reduced when when we did world game in 73 um Out of a population of 3 billion 1 billion went to sleep hungry every night Today out of a population of 8 billion about a billion go to sleep hungry every night Still horrible, but on a percentage basis you could say that's progress of a certain sort and my response was yeah Yeah, but that progress has been a subsidized progress because it's at the expense Of all that you just described that the vitality of Earth's ecosystems the fertility of our soils to run away of the climate the demise of the oceans six What 75 percent of insect species being gone And you know impending not just economic collapse, but biological collapse as a real prospect for us All the prosperity that we live on including all of us including machinery We're using now is built on a fragile subsidized system And what I hear you talking about and many of us talking about here is is a call to reality Is to pay attention to what's real and what everything sits on And deal with the crumbling foundations that we take for granted So I thank you very much for what you've raised, but I wanted to add those perspectives to it Thanks, Kim And we have dug in class on this and we'll go back to the queue and dug up before off to you And in addition to whatever you were going to add to this thread I'm just curious because I think of you because of your relationship with inath the institute for new economic thinking I think of you as swimming among economists all the time And I'm wondering how do you have a conversation with many lifelong card-carrying economists whose jobs career status everything depend on economics To even contemplate an altered system that that Deprecates neoclassical economics or even modern, you know kinds of economics to shift to something else. I think that that's just daunting Well, it is and I am only partially successful at swimming in those waters amongst those sharks I have two thoughts that I want to share one is pretty Complex, but it's very easy to state And that is what do we imagine is the relationship between ecology and civilization? I find myself really puzzled by that What in civilization is worth saving and worth working on? That it's it's not an object of destruction So that to me is a really critical question. It's coming up a lot lately in my thinking separate issue On economics and the current state The Greeks meant by economics eco home nomos law or management So economics for Plato and Aristotle and those folks was how do you manage the estate? For the benefit of the people who live there What's striking is that the word economics moved into the uh, the new testament And but translated as Uh, something else. So the word got hidden. But what the monastic movement meant by economics Was the cultivation of the garden for God's benefit. It was God's Economy that was to be developed and the word economy is all through the new testament in the original Greek I find that pretty interesting because it transfers then to the task Of managing the estate now, which is the world for humanity Integrated into a nature that we really care about Thank you, Dr. Hi class Yeah, you know, I've been working in this space for 10 years, right? I mean after I retired and I've been in the food business all my life Um, I mean I took the first course on sustainability at UC Illinois and I'm going This is a shipwreck. I mean my god. We are running this thing into a wall. This is completely predictable It's a matter of timing, right? And then oftentimes I hear You know, you're preaching preaching to the choir and then if I might take the screen for a moment and and uh But am I because everybody knows this But then do you really to take a look at this thing here? Okay, california is flat out of water California is flat out of water. They're sucking the aquifers try They're sucking the aquifers down to a level where cities run off out of water. Mendocino is out of water They have to trucking water into it So there is no way no practical way That next year california is going to repeat this gold cycle They're flat out of water. There is nothing left in the aquifers So now look at these production statistics here You know, where where is this product going to grow next year? Yeah, and so california at the same time Is a huge exporter of food. So this has global implications And yeah, we can forget about almonds. I mean who needs to Yeah, it's not on there, but we're actually producing something like 95 percent of the world's almonds which use about 1900 liters of water per pound You know, we're flooding the fields to co-rise We're flooding fields to co-alpha alpha to ship hay to china for animal feed I mean the system is insane, right and no one talks about it Oregon the pacific northwest has lost This year the pacific northwest oregon and washington is growing miles and miles and miles of wheat You can try from where I live in bent to sprokeane And you're passing 100 miles of wheat fields as far as the eye can reach left and right They're lost over 50 of the yield already this year Russia has lost about 50 of its crop. No one is talking about this so so we keep talking about Philosophy and you know Have all this angst about you know, how do we go? No I mean We have reached a point that everyone has been talking about for the for 10 years You know where we could have easily modified the system adapted ourselves to it Until we are now in a crisis mode, right? I mean we're now In an existential mode. I mean you will you will see Hundreds of millions of people start moving now if they're at the risk of starvation and this is no Exaggeration I mean she's look at the statistics So so that's sort of so when I what neil is saying Yeah, that's it. I mean we are we are inside the vortex right now And and to think this is somehow magically going to resolve its service more Now so the question is how do we Create this crazy tree right where? You know some limp wants to go out and be be strong But it's going to crash off unless there's a hole coming down to support it so we can keep going That's really that's that's sort of what I see. So um, I mean I'm just frightened, right? I think I'm thinking holy smokes We have like maybe one or two more years next year's growing season will be critical For the maintenance of our civilization There will be counselors available in the hallways after this session Um So let's go back to the and and cause I think I think we're here and we're concerned and we're exploding our brains because we We're trying to figure out that puzzle. We're trying to figure out. What do we need to say? Who do we need to convince? What when we? Individually do what can we collectively do to stop those things from happening and to move into a better world? So let's go back to the queue. We have ken, allison, dave everybody I would like to invite you to put your feet flat on the floor Close your eyes if you're comfortable doing so And find your breath in your body and just naturally let it deepen And as you let your breath deep into your body See if you can find us some kind of center in this swirl of information in this Brush of emotions that comes up. What's really calling to you now? Calling from your gut calling from your heart not your head. What's in there that needs expression? What's in it that needs? Tending to That needs connection Thank you We'd just like to check in at all um Just feels like there's such a swirl of stuff going on around us Between the IPCC code red and the clubs at afghanistan, which was completely predictable and You know the backlash against vaccines. I mean, I just feel like I'm living in a in a in a nightmare In a bad science fiction a bad science fiction will be like not even grade b but like Grade z or something like, you know, who the fuck funded this? Um And so and I am really part of me is in despair around The last 50 years so many of us work so hard to bring about an ecological consciousness and a sense ability uh I think bio memory bio mimicry is a is an inaccurate term We are natural intelligence the earth brings forth human beings. We don't have to imitate nature We are nature. We are nature in an intelligent form that doesn't recognize itself as such So connecting to the earth directly Would be a really great start. I have a friend who every day Goes out and lays down on the ground for a half an hour This is she says it's her sanity You know, she finds some grass and or there's no grass. She lays down in dirt She won't like a concrete, but she weighs down on the earth every day unless it's raining and um just listens And I think that would be an amazing practice. I also have been thinking a lot about, um Michael Pollan's work around changing your mind The people in charge Are so stuck There's no Cognitive way in these people need to sit down Have a blindfold put on them have some nice music put on Take some freaking mushrooms and be guided through a tour of their consciousness to come out the other side in a different relationship to the world as we are seeing people doing um who have severe PTSD and Who have terminal illness and are terrified and they they take one or two of these experiences and they they're like, oh my god I'm rearranged. I I can now be in the world in a way that's not so terrifying for me I think there's a huge amount of terror. We talked about empathy It's very hard to have empathy for billionaires and really poor people It's very hard to have empathy for um The people we see as as the enemy for the the GOP for Mitch McConnell for name your favorite, you know villain But imagine the terror these people are fearing. They're trying really hard to control ship That's not in their control and they're making a mess of it as a result So, you know, I think of abby hoffman's idea of putting lsd in the drinking water supply Not actually a very good idea because unsupervised that would be really horrible, but supervised Uh psychoactive experiences for our readers would be a phenomenal breakthrough And I think might be the only thing that's going to move us move the needle But I don't have a huge amount of hope that that's going to happen, but it's at least it's it's an idea I'd love to see it tried I was going to suggest uh civil siphon in the congressional water supply, but I guess you're saying that's not practical Well, yeah, the thing is I think you really need to be in a safe environment You know, if you you're having that going on uh while you're at work it's not cool but but You know, there's it's now approved for treatment. This is happening for people with um severe ptsd and it's having remarkable effects. So I think that's amazingly hopeful it's a type of medicine and and not lsd is um, you know synthesized Suicide bin is natural. It's it's a different kind of energy so Anyway, I think that would be an amazing thing to try. Uh, we can hope for it And other than that, I'm just trying to get through my my life oddly enough You know, despite the state of the world things are going pretty well for me. I feel I feel good, you know, I have work I have income coming in and you know, I have friends around me and I'm doing okay, but I'm watching the world with horror and I'm aghast most of the time So I have to keep checking in slowing down breathing connecting to the earth and and finding my own resources and I get into this conversation here and I listen to all the brilliance and all of the the amazing thought processes that have gone on the analysis and and the the Hard raw truths and they're all there and that don't make sense to me, but it's also as allison pointed out at some point I have to like Turn that down and check in and come back to myself so that I don't get caught up and walk around. Oh my god You know, it's it's all terrible. It is all terrible and there's still an enormous amount of good in the world There's still an enormous amount of resilience and strength that we have So I It's really important where we focus our attention We're in a bardo, you know Things are coming into and out of existence very quickly and we're in a bardo You want to look for the light if you focus on the things that terrify you that's where you will go so Don't ignore the terrifying things be aware of them, but don't put too much focus and attention on them or that's where you'll go Maybe we need good advice like from scuba divers like follow the bubbles Follow the bubbles exactly that's excellent, you know, or the or the umbrella movement be like water yeah, um Allison if you're not too traumatized you're sort of next in the queue Allison Pete and then julian and claus if you don't mind putting your hand back down Thanks, go ahead allison I love follow the bubbles. Thanks. You're and then thanks ken everything that you said I really resonate with I Trained as a nature and forest therapy guide because I I do feel that that deep noticing. Um, you know, we had I I'm a teacher in northern california. So let the you know, I teach economics and Coming into teaching economics at a time when we are addressing Legally needing to address suicide And the the remedy for that because it is such a point of crisis is to Reduce stigma around suicide and talk about it Of course that becomes a video and a questionnaire about how often kids ideate We had something come up in a conversation in the room with gill yesterday and it was yeah focused towards the light and somebody else said well, you never know if that's the light or a train wreck, but it is it is um You do actually we do know are you which which direction are we focused on and um I I find that coming into a room of young people um And focusing on how we are going to talk about economics and the challenges that face us is an Incredibly delicate An important thing just like any room that we enter into conversation with anybody with because so often what's resulting Isn't a proactive response. It's um I find I don't like to talk about climate Not because i'm ignoring climate But because everything that's involved with that word is embroiled in an unbattled I like to talk about regeneration I like to call talk about cultivation I like to talk about how we can cultivate economic ecosystems to create more prosperity right now in the in the moment But I do also like to talk about economic trauma and it was something that I was thinking about bringing up with you all What is economic trauma? Why is it worth knowing? What isn't economic trauma? more more aptly And why is it worth Being aware or or using that term if at all. I'm totally on board with the psilocybin approach My and I think that it's absolutely a viable business model I think it's an absolutely viable way for somebody to enter into the space With businessman or with policy leaders or with groups of people who are making change and bring them into nature and touch Down into understanding and connecting and residing with the patterns of constant existing never-ending life force within all of us and there's The mental health crisis is is real eco anxiety is part of that because our our planet and our people are shared parts of us So when we see suffering it's traumatizing We call it right. You've probably heard nature deficit disorder Kids are out in nature less And you know what with all that we see of raising forests and ecosystems and coral reefs and ocean floors There's less ecosystem. There's less nature. It seems But I propose we have nature attention deficit disorder Then the lack of putting our attention on to the nature that we are in our bodies and the resonance that we have with the natural world around us and where it is in the rising of the sun and the movement of the Just anything so I've had profound Hosting when we went into kovat We began doing Forest bathing walks online because people could get out of their house and you think what a Ridiculous thing you're getting on a zoom call to do a forest bathing walk and it works It's amazing For people who couldn't even just leave their home just to observe from wherever you are and recognize Oh, I don't have to go out into Nature is all around me and it's about touching in with our sensations and recognizing those as part of nature even as well And getting out of the story in our head a little bit too Into how much more is present there are some researchers looking at peace deficit Attention deficit disorder, and I loved seeing that and I think it's the same thing That's what I've been focusing on. So how do we I heard a question. How do we get these economists, you know to to see the light and There are a lot there. We're all economic actors And I am so So so lucky to have some some Spanish skills and to be able to be connecting with these women who are doing a radio show locally And I got on a call with them talking about alternative economies And they call themselves housewives. I'm a de casa I said that is the best Definition or translation of economists. I'm a de casa someone who loves the home We're all economists and all of our actions are economic actions And and it's just a what for myself. I want to bring attention to economic trauma Because when we focus on a problem We're focusing here and here and here and here and we end up feeling like We need to garner attention towards our problem. So let's just say okay We need to heal economic trauma in order for like Gil said so that we can think better together How do we cultivate economic ecosystems and how do we drop down not just the carbon But I propose that far more damaging than the carbon is Is the money That was created with debt that is devaluing but never dying And with this additional invented thing Einstein called the most powerful force in the universe of Compound interest that grows those derivatives. We have quadrillion dollars out there in meaningless purposeless Growth just to secure a future for ourselves and it's doing exactly the opposite And I think that we have let's have the conversations about How to create what it is that we need purposefully and I I really think that we can we can do that And that's what I propose to do with my classroom with classrooms everywhere with classrooms connected to communities So that they can grow the the ecosystems that we want How do we get investments into the projects that are actually working? How do we do that? How do we amplify and a return on investment? And I'll stop and shut down now, but I thought that that was really interesting getting into a conversation In a group that I'm a part of an international group of community currency designers Saying how do we amplify our efforts together map our efforts and draw more attention and investment into what we're doing Because somebody has just spent 69 million dollars on an nft Which is a digital piece of artwork that you can do anything you want with You can have it but he owns it and it's 16 that cost 69 million dollars Why because we don't know where to park our money So we're creating whatever it is that we can create to have a unique Digital id so that we can siphon our money and park it and then it's all that's that's just it's just hype But it's okay. It's innovative, isn't it? It's actually less damaging than a bunch of other stuff But it can give us some ideas on how else we can create these right unique a forest is pretty damn unique Create an nft for our actual tree So I think so I do and Anyway, trying to get the conversation around so if we're going to design with communities My students design with peace prosperity regeneration and well-being in mind Those are four measurable outcomes and if it's measurable, it's a return on investment period A city a county a business could do the same thing But we'll just start with community groups because community groups are more flexible. We can start right now But the other half of the community currency people are very much with a libertarian mindset I'm going to say well, my organization is doing this and our values are life liberty and perpetual property rights Ah, well interesting how that changes our designs And I think it's a really really outdated one anyway That was long, but thanks for listening That was therapeutic and helpful Thanks, Allison And and you've got your feet on the ground with little humans Well, not little humans are probably pretty grown humans, but really like people who care and whose future is in your hands and our hands That's right. Yeah Neil Thanks, Allison. I loved what you said And some of the questions that were coming up there around conversation and also How do we have the truthful conversations? Not just the positive conversations is something that I'm working on with colleagues around our offering called and now what Which is about facing reality and living the questions together And so I've also spoken to students and I've you know, you have to challenge We have to be gentle any room you come into you listen first How do you sense into what's coming up and whatever that if you don't warn people about impending dangers? Are you complicit? and so As an adult in the room with children you would be careful to warn them not to run outside onto the road or whatever so The some words just to let you know that there is a resonance in what you're saying But there's also a connection to the other side the darker side that I think two of those things are necessary Economics ought to be moving away from those things which cause harm including compound interest Toward those things which do all those four P's you mentioned So some words literally directly from something I wrote yesterday in the absence of awareness Ignorance whether feigned or real can be bliss Which is possibly why the collapse aware find it so difficult to have conversations that challenge others happiness with unwelcome realities and inconvenient truths What if courageous conversations enable people to articulate and address their feelings associated with collapse awareness? What if the essence of directed agency is not just becoming aware of one's future But reconnect it with one's self and one's informed calling in the present Parker J. Palmer in a hidden wholeness says the soul wants hospitality But it also wants honesty. It wants to engage challenging questions that we would prefer to avoid How can we keep the circle open to diverse views while keeping it focused on the difficult truths? If we cannot answer that question our conversations will not take us to the depth And the truth-loving soul will leave the room end of quote How many of us have truth-loving souls How many of us can show up whole around issues of collapse? How many of a self-sensor to prevent backlash at work on social media within families within universities? And then we go on to say our primary goal as and now what? Is liberating connecting and nurturing the vital energy each of us can bring as positive generative responses? If we can show up whole to honor our deepest callings in these times of collapse And we have as somebody else mentioned here safety nets Dropout rooms grief and my partner here is a psychologist of grief counselor We're looking at how do we hold facilitated structured sessions? How do I do the innovative dance around intuitive dance with the system listening tune in keynote listening? And how does and then provide both the content and structure direction? But also the grief counseling for those that can't handle that in those in those moments, but as Doug sorry as Gil mentioned earlier You have to provide a strange attractor for those who are ready to drop in Not necessarily Be the one who stands up in front of the crowd and tells them what you want them to believe And when he was at the conference, you said you sat there in one spot and the people you wanted came to you Same with us. There's a warning on the door Yeah, if you're going to come in here, you're going to be faced with some difficult truths You may already know them Right, same with students students that take an elective course that actually says that in it Have elected to be in that room And so you have an opportunity to actually structure and frame the conversations that you can have in that room And so I applaud you for what you're doing I was saying I think we need to hold both the away from and the towards because it actually gives people the energy and the gradient on which to move Thanks Thank you for your feedback and I'd like to respond to that if there's space in the room Go for it. Alison. We're getting 10 minutes away from the end of the call and Neil if it's possible for you to share what you read to us That would be lovely You're muted again So I just tried to copy and paste it that it won't copy and paste. I've got a new mac and I'm trying to work out How do I do this? I'll work it out. Thank you back to you, Alison Just just quickly me that there's there's absolutely no way that we wouldn't come up upon The challenges that be set us, you know, we're take a design thinking approach. And so we begin with with Touching base with nature. I begin with a phenomenology sort of approach or a noticing nature approach. We go into nonviolent communication Approach, right? We to understand how to communicate our needs to understand all of that. We get into design thinking this is relational design It is what challenge do you have and so as we go forward? It's inevitable that we're going to come up upon challenges everybody It's an effort. They're there that it's inevitable and therefore they're there for a growth So I I just find it interesting Neil with all, you know The the need to make sure that we're not ignoring the problems and that we're sticking our head in the sand Because we we will We will see them inevitably they will come but if we see them as being oh, what is this as a design challenge? That helping too, right? That means that inherently I'm looking at it from the perspective of I see these all the time. It's a design challenge whether it's a conflict with another human being I don't see it as something that is going to then need to Sacrifice it. It's a transformative opportunity. There's synergy here I don't even I don't need to engage in this conversation with a predetermined outcome I need to know that I can recognize what my actual needs are in this conversation and see what their needs are And oh my gosh, what transformation is possible from that and what synergy is possible from the solutions we come up against together when we have That frame that's a non traumatized Frame of solution making I would like to think so. That's my hope. That's my that's my response Love that. Thank you. I'm Eric Yeah, I'm mute. Okay, so I was just another group called Network weavers or weaving labs. So it's a very similar group. Which is funny. It overlaps with this group Which is less funny. I thought we looked like a patent on this whole process Yeah, no, yeah, apparently no, but it's also amazing group. So it's lovely to see that there's other groups And it's also got a very soft energy And then I started talking about trauma Which was not such such an easy process I was just trying to think like what is essential here and what am I trying to clarify? And I remember in process work There's this exercise where you've got like the high story and the low story And somebody who's in the high story doesn't really want to hear the low story and somebody who's in the low story Doesn't want to really hear the low the high story And how to hold them both And another level is I'm quite engaged in IFS nowadays, which is internal family systems And I know it's a lot of people there struggle to get a hang of IFS. It's quite an intense process where you learn, okay, I've got parts. I'm not just one person, but one Unified mind. I've got actually several parts in me that they're trying to relate And people who went through Complex issues or difficult trauma. It's much more difficult than to figure out how to handle that without proper support And then one of the main focuses of the model is the self with the capital s and that's like To connect to yourself and when they talk about How to heal the parts in you that are traumatized or something it's coming from itself But then if you ask how do you develop the self? It's things like yeah being in nature focusing on the positive meditating Real positive things and for me there it's I don't have the answer actually Maybe I sound like that. I hope not But something like for me that's a really interesting place to look at like how to hold both How to balance them out and be with all that's bad and difficult but also Nourish enough and how to keep that also Even in this kind of online calls how to keep the balance Yeah Thank you, Eric We're nearing the end of our call time and I apologize for people who are still in the queue Gil asked if Jane could step in I'd love to hear from her and I'm glad to I'm actually very happy to hear her voice Thank you Good morning I'm so moved by who Alice is and and and what Alice and what she's up to She's like a beach And I've drowned and washed ashore on the beach that she is I feel so moved And I would love to have a conversation with her On debt forgiveness and how we can focus consumer credit card debt forgiveness On paying back our debt to mother earth So that we can focus on photosynthesis. That's the light at the end of the tunnel It's photosynthesis And it's forests and it's the stomata that release the bacteria that make rain for california and might Stave off famine Because it's very real that we could face famine in the next year or so Not just in the world but in the blessed united states So There is a capitalist At gabriel capital and in in philadelphia name richard vague Who has become interested in debt forgiveness? and You imagine a consumer getting a letter Saying I will forgive your credit card debt down to zero If you will enter a program Of getting trees planted in your bio region and you can document your participation We need to underwrite that kind of debt forgiveness that gets Student loans we need to we need to get the human being focused on The ecological solutions which are the repair of the hydrologic cycle as we know from yanny and and getting trees Thriving and planted and transpiring so that we can cool the earth quickly So it's a social cultural leadership problem. And I think alice has the spirit for it and um I think there's something we could do with this person. He's a good friend of of uh Professor steven keen who wrote debunking economics and his hard at work on transforming Economics to tell the truth with thermodynamics so I'm breathless with the possibility You're all a blessing. Thank you You You so much jane. Thank you um We're actually at the end of our time and I have So like a half dozen people that didn't get to check in I apologize for that clouds posted in the in the zoom chat a session that we're having in an hour and a half Which is a case clinic for trisha who is on the ground in costa rica Uh, so if you're interested in the food system and how to improve it and you'd like to sort of listen in that would be we'd love to have you there And ken thank you for Holding us by the collar briefly and helping us sit back down in the chair and ground us a bit and let us Breathe into the space Jerry jerry could can could can maybe help us breathe us out of the space I was just thinking something rather like that You are muted. So again, I invite you to place your feet flat on the floor And if you're comfortable close your eyes And just find where your breath is in your body Are you inhaling or exhaling? And as you as you connect with your breath just naturally allow it to deepen Deepen a little more See if you can fill your whole torso with breath And just sense into what's gone on here today Your connection with the people here our joint connection to creating a livable future Not just our connection our dedication our longing our commitment In your mind just reach out to everybody here If you want to you can hand your arms out and just Fuel that collective embrace we are together We are doing what we can We have resources And we have each other and whatever happens We will give it our best effort and take that Merit whatever we might be and talk it into your heart And carry it with you throughout the rest of this day With that I wish everybody a great day and all of us a great future. Let's figure this thing out Thank you so much Ken. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Oh, well everybody