 Good morning. This is the OGM call for 11 May 2023. Jerry is elsewhere, so I'm taking the con. And this is a check-in call. So we will open the floor to anyone who'd like to check in. Yeah, so Doug, before we started, I just wanted to clear up a possible misconception. I don't know if it is or not, but it was suggested that because you hadn't responded to one of the sensemaking calls that maybe you were too busy or not interested. And I was thinking that it was just that you were away. So I just wanted to clear that up. Well, I was in the process of getting ready to travel and then travel. And I am now away being in Montenegro on the eastern shore of the Adriatic. So my question is, in the future, are you interested in the part of it that's dealing with regeneration? Well, maybe class could explain the book part I'm speaking about and find out if you're interested in contributing. Doug, we're still trying to follow this concept that we discussed, where we used the concept of Garden World to define this as a destination for the future, what a world should look like or how we can protect ourselves, mitigate against climate change and adapt to it. So what would that look like? And then we can separately talk about the journey from here to there. Well, I'm very interested in participating because of where I am, time is tricky because so much of it is at midnight. But the basic idea, I mean, I'm convinced that Garden World works under any scenario. And I don't think of it as necessary the goal, but as a way station towards a future which is unknown and that is emerging. It's a fairly safe place to go and it's attractive because it blends gardens and habitat together in the same place so it's safe for children, that's all people like me, and artists, and it's just, it's a good thing. I think that the amount of energy in the world going towards regenerative agriculture is increasing very rapidly, language is spreading very rapidly, which is very encouraging. And I just would love to see Garden World as part of it. So we get away from imagining landscapes that are agricultural without people in them. Blending the people into the way we plan to grow and harvest is really important. This is one of the wonderful picture by Boygal, some of you will know it. This group of farmers having a picnic next to the hayfield at the mowing. It's so evocatively wonderful. Anyway, so yes, the answer is I want to participate. And I'd you may if I seem to be missing it. Well, that's why I wanted to clear that up because now we'll make it a priority to find a time that works. Thanks. Good. What is the time difference from the West Coast? Is it nine or 10 hours? It's eight, I think. Eight, okay, so it's eight o'clock here. What do you got? Four o'clock there? Five. Okay, so it's nine hours. Nine hours, okay. So you're in central European time. All right, welcome everybody. This is our weekly check-in call. I'm not Jerry McCalske, but I'm standing in for him. We're sitting in for him. The floor is open. Who'd like to check in and we will use the S protocol of pausing between people speaking. Kevin, please. Thanks, I got to go in a bit. Yeah, I live in Swannanoa, in the Swannanoa watershed and the town of Black Mountain has been given two parcels that equal 50 acres that they, they, they're letting the creative group, not the park service and not the city sort of design. It's a three hour thing tomorrow, a meeting, you know, take up three hours on Saturday, but they want to be open to any new idea. And this, this, this group, it's a group of activists who then formed as the trails and greenways and park sort of group. And we have done like a story trail around the lake, you know, with histories and stuff and they do. They walk you through neighborhoods and with history and stuff. And, you know, I'm exploring the idea of being sort of involved as a citizen, even though it takes three hours. And it's just kind of interesting. And this, this is land that is not easy to integrate, which makes it sort of interesting they're going to have to create access to it there's a private rail crossing there's a tunnel under the highway and so that but you know that means that it won't be used like other land, because you'll have to park and walk a good ways to get there or something, you know, it won't be easily accessible. But it's really super interesting land and one was a subdivision that when bus that never started and an old ladies request and they happened to be kind of stitched together next to each other and the idea of sitting in three hours where they wanted to have different ideas about imagination that could last for 50 years if you stick with the process is an interesting thing and I'm, I'm, I'm decided it's worth giving up three hours and I'll see how I stay engaged but I think it's it's an interesting idea. There's a request from Stacy if you could put a link to there's no call it's it's showing up for three hours. There may be a call when you get there but this is this is three hours of people. Got it. Yeah. Well, please report back with us and that goes. Yeah. It's so hard to be patient enough to be an active citizen. Yeah, it's something else to be an active citizen. I did have actually a really good week last week. We did a presentation to the biofuel sector. And I'm here my speaker notes, you can see that I was very blunt, you know, in the way that we address this group. And this was hosted by an online magazine which is the largest of its kind publication and have a very large international circulation to to the biotech sector and biofuel sectors. And there were two, there were two things that came out of him out of that conversation that really surprised me I was speaking for about 15 minutes my partner also combined we spoke like 20 minutes. So my partner is from the biofuel has a biofuel background he was a CEO of a biofuel company billion dollar company. And he's also so like me you know reformed oh my God what did we do kind of thing. So there were two things that came out of it first of all, about 40% of us corn and 11% of us soy is used for biofuels. So this is how in competition with the food supply, because the when you when you see when you think of the Ukraine you think of the cop outages and and and yields reductions we have last year. The food supply is really precarious already so this is just, I mean it's just not sustainable to use food crops for biofuels. So there are other crops that you can use you know you can use the oil seeds or cover crops, you know, was or grasses perennial grasses that don't compete with the food supply. But that work requires coordination with the regular agricultural sector. So this was the first time that I'm aware of that we actually had a conversation between biofuels which is running totally on its own track and the farm sector farm and food sector in the regenerative. So that was what that was, you know, pretty amazing then the other thing was, these were all mostly engineers, right. And one of them all of a sudden got the idea so how does this work how do you how does agriculture put up and into the ground was who photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is direct air capture when you think about it right I mean it captures, it screens the air and pulse carbon nitrogen out of it. So the engineering minds were going oh my god you know this is this and and we in the deck we inserted that how many gigatons of carbon, you could sequester on an annual basis. If you really deploy regenerative agriculture at scale, or deploy photosynthesis on the border level including reforestation and wilding and stuff like that. So, so that was for them, you know, they've inserted debate what the waste of money it is to develop direct air capture technology and there are billions of dollars in the inflation reduction act allocated to that technology it's a complete waste. It's, I mean they were explained and one of one of the engineers explains how impossible it is, you know, to use that technology to make an impact, because he would bankrupt yourself in the process of building you know so much capacity. So now we're, we are, we are moving forward with this, this, this mind, this model, you know, this, this picture of a of bio regions to be developed, you know, in the for for for the environment to become the responsibility of the community. And to have the food supply work around this and deal with the restrictions limitations and potential of a bio region. So, so I thought that was pretty cool and and that was from from the world that I'm listening in on that was a major breakthrough so that was a good one. Kos, who were the people in the audience that you were speaking to. What kind of people were there. So they were mostly engineers and and and so the bio fuel sector, not just engineers but also sales people and the plant managers and so people involved in the bio fuel sector, and then in bio tech. Bio tech is, for example, making fertilizers out of biomass and things like that. So, and then materials that are made out made this this bio reaction. So were there any policy people in there and he's making policy or representation. You know, I don't think that I mean this was a very technical group, but they were aware of legislation on the way and this is really another important learning right. You, you, which, which yesterday had a meeting, you know, you locally, you have people who are getting into the into the business that they want to innovate stuff they have a new product and they want to create something. They just don't know about how the political process works, you know, so in Oregon right now in Salem, you know, there's several bills on the table that would assist farmers to get into the market, for example, to get market access right. So they are that the legislative process is nebulous to to most people. And my point is, you know, when you have business associations and you know, a doing to startups and innovators and so on. You have to pay attention to the regulatory process that aims you in, you know, and you may need to have a change then you need to know who to talk to to make a change. And this is super local because much of the restrictions are the local zoning laws, you know, things of that sort. So, so, and this is true to be a citizen, right, you have to be now educated on the political process. And I think it's a big wake up time for everybody, but right now, you see what are these guys cooking up then in Washington but then also in your state, which impacts your business and impacts your way of life. And what kind of reception did you get when you were one with them or these people going, you're right or in denial or resisting or what's are they open to this but how's it has it been received your message. It was, it was awesome. I was so not prepared to have such a positive reception to the topic, because what I was putting out there when you look at my slides was basically, you know, without food without fixing agriculture. You may as well forget anything else you do because, you know, it's going to push us beyond 2% by far, you know, and so to and to change agriculture means you have to change the entire system, because agriculture is deeply embedded in the global economy, right, I mean, everything you touch it somehow involves the natural world around you. So, so, no, they were ready, you know, I mean they were super skeptical on this air capture technology that's being pushed on them, you know, but and Yeah, no, it was in totally like the understanding the food supply has issues. You know, we can't take food, turn it into biofuel, particularly when you use irrigation water for it. Now I was, I was, I was blown away actually by how well that went. That's exciting. That's great news. So thank you for sharing that. Everybody we're doing check in. Where is the cycle analyst who can tell us what's happening. So, so that's a great prompt Doug, and I will, I will courageously pick up on that okay. I was thinking about this be even before the prompt. In some ways I think we're at a juncture that the human species has never been at before. I don't think there's ever been a level of mass destruction that human beings have caused to the environment. And, you know, that I mean the metaphor that I always use is that we're killing the goose that laid the golden egg. I mean, you know, the natural world of which we are very, very much a part of is so critical to our survival. You know, it's our home. And so, you know, class that was a great story because I think that more and more people are are waking up to this fact that business as usual can't go on. You know, it's interesting I had a metaphor in my own life with a major health challenge that I'm dealing with right now. And it's kind of like, you know, life in its existing form has to change. It can't go on the way it is. And so as we kind of awaken to this fact. It demands all of our creativity and our innovation and, you know, who knows what it's going to, what it might look like and where it's going to go and nobody knows. The other point that I want to share by way of personal check-in is I was sitting and reading the other day a couple of days ago. I lived right on the bay, and it was about five o'clock in the afternoon, and the water was kind of lapping in, and I looked out and there were the plants. And I just had this incredible feeling about how nature gives. Nature just gives and gives and gives and asks for nothing in return. It's just an incredible example of aliveness. Yeah. And I watched, I don't know if anybody has seen the movie Aware. It's about, I was going to post it in the OGM chat, because it's all about consciousness and revealing experiments of the consciousness and language of plants. It's just some amazing, amazing stuff. I mean language, like audible language. So that's my check-in. Thank you, Stuart. Another thing, I also, Doug, I sent you a private message because it related to Garden World. I just read something about the Tano Society. I don't know if anybody knows about the Tano Society, T-A-I-N-O-S. It's the society in Mexico that when the Mexican, when the Spanish conquerors came over, you know, Columbus time, they found this beautiful society that existed without war, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there's precedent for Garden World. Historic precedent. You can find a lot more historic precedent for Garden World if you read the Dawn of Everything. That too. Yeah. I'll check in then. It wouldn't be my normal check-in, but can you post it on interesting article in the OGM list? It was about Mississippi learnings. And what I was particularly interested in was the pitfalls he mentioned in creating systems change. And the reason it's coming to mind now is one of the pitfalls, trying to think of the words he used, had to do with, let me see if I have the actual term. It had to do with pitfalls of abstraction, making what we are doing too intellectual and inaccessible. And what I liked about classes, I watched classes presentation, and what I liked about it is it made it really accessible to me. So I walked away all of a sudden thinking about sunflower seeds and how a simple thing like changing recipes to sunflower seeds and how, you know, creating a demand for sunflower seeds could possibly influence why people would start growing different things. You know, just sparking different ideas and I think just having access to these kinds of talks, which I didn't have access to 10 years ago is such a positive thing. So I just wanted to mention that. That's what's coming to my mind right now. Thanks, Stacy. Yeah. For everybody who's interested. I've never met Curtis in person, but we've been friends on Facebook for years and now I'm not on Facebook, but I'm still connected to LinkedIn. Here we're just going to make all the interaction Institute and they do a lot of actually class you might pinch and they do a lot of local food stuff, especially in New England food safety in England and he's a great facilitator and he posts really interesting things so connect with Curtis Ogden, OGDN on LinkedIn, or follow him he's just he posts really interesting stuff from from his work. And he's still on Facebook. I'm sure he is yeah. That's where I do my connecting. But this this thing about abstraction really struck me. Anybody who's been looking at my posts on the gemless knows I'm really right now I'm very captivated by Manfred Max Knief thinking Chilean economist and he came and got a PhD in economics at Cal Berkeley and taught here for a while and then he started crumbling about the World Bank in the IMF being a terrible thing and Berkeley kind of invited him to go elsewhere. So he went back to Chile and so you know I'm standing knee deep in the mud with a peasant in Chile and I realized nothing that I've learned about economics is useful to him there's nothing I can say to this guy nothing because everything that I learned is about abstraction and I had to invent a new language for economics and that was his you know experiments what he called barefoot economics. And it's like, you know when you live and work with people in poverty you discover these people are amazingly creative you cannot be an idiot and survive if you're living in poverty you're constantly having to invent things and figure out how can I get this and how do I do that. And it was eyeopening them you know that that we write people off who are in extreme poverty as you know, subhuman and it's like they are some of the most creative humans that he talks a lot about how you often find in impoverished communities I'm putting that kind of quotes because it's their impoverished financially but their quality of life that they they have tremendous capability of sharing it's very much like Garden World you know where whatever you have you you share because that's how you make stone soup that's how everybody gets around gets gets to survive so. I'm very intrigued by how we're going to recognize that giving rich people access to the world's resources so they can burn them up and they won't be there for future generations is starting to dawn on people as not such a good idea and there's got to be a better way. And there's some interesting stuff coming out of South America where marginalized communities who have been resisting the dominant culture of neoliberal economics and you know World Bank and I have comes in and sets up these debt programs to take all the resources out huge resistance to that and it's very carefully thought out and academic and actually rigorous and it's just really interesting to read about so it's kind of where that sort of fits in for me with the stuff that Curtis is posting Doug please. Doug. Yeah, I. Stacy was part of an experiment that friend of ours in Germany was doing here. And this was a gathering where an individual was given sort of space and time to share where they were at, and to have inquiry into where they were at, and then appreciation circle on the heels of that. And we had a person drop in from rural Africa was contending with. The slide that had just taken out like six months worth of work. And I forget the, the, you know, the connection and web that had him converge with this. But I remember him sharing toward the end of the session, how amazed he was that a group of people have the time to come together. And do what we were doing that that there was the space. There was the leisure. There was the complete just insane luxury of being able to do that. I've never experienced that or seen that or been exposed to that before. And, and, and he shared it's just sort of mind blowing to me that this exists that you people can come together that you can do this. There was no judgment in it, there was just shock and awe at it. Which I think is sort of another version of what you just shared with him standing in the field saying I got nothing for this guy. And the flip side of that is, you know, you know, if 8 billion of the population of the planet are concerned with next meal and with survival and with the fundamentals. Abstractions don't don't map to meaning or value in any way. So I just, I just wanted to share the turning of the telescope on that. I'm complete. Thank you. That's Patty please. Well, I don't know that I have much to check in around other than there's just a project I'm working on that I could use. I'm looking for examples of governance systems that use power in a way that seems to contribute to the health of all humans within that system. Anything from, it doesn't matter the size of the governance system or the population that is using the system or involved in the system, but I am on the lookout for examples of governance systems that seem to use power in a way that contributes to the health of all involved. So if anyone has ideas around that, that would be helpful for me and my project right now. And I don't know that I have anything else to check in around right now. Can you give us a little bit more context like are you looking for organizational examples of governance, you know, elected representation. What, what specifically would be most useful to you. Thank you. That's a, that's a helpful clarifying question. I need to think about it for a moment. Sure. Take your time. I had a thought recently about this, which is that in our society right now many people are hurting. If the society was organized as a well meaning corporation. If it's a problem lower down in the organization, the ethic is that you pass it up to the level that can do something about it. You don't let it fall faster. That would be organizational hierarchy at its best. There's a lot wrong with it, but that's also pretty interesting. And we don't have that in society. I would add on to that Doug. I think when the company right now that it's 15 billion dollar organization, they really seem to understand the principle of subsidiarity, which is ensuring that wherever the problem exists, the local, at the local level, the local people have the ability to deal with that they don't have to raise things up and wait and go through channels. So, you know, they're doing a lot of work around providing middle managers with coaching opportunities and helping them to understand influence as opposed to power because you know you have to influence people who you are are not there above you and there's no no direct line of authority with them and so how can you get them to engage with what your project is and support you. And I think that's another aspect of our tends to consolidate and the principle of subsidiary is trying to distribute power so it's a very dynamic tension that you know if you have people in the system who want power, very hard to get them to let go of it and distribute it to where it needs to go because they don't have everything. So, that might also be a way to look at where is this happening. And maybe Kevin has said in this you know he's working a lot with local watershed groups which seem to be. We need to power to restore our watershed right here on the ground what can we do. Kevin you got any thoughts about that. Yeah, we got kind of, I was had to be absent for about two months when I was working on the conference and we got kind of taken over by UN veteran, who reduced it to a talking group and disbanded the working groups. And then people have from 15 where there are three people and he was called on it last week and it may not meet today but it's splintering what's happening is that there's a guy in East Asheville that wants to do a swan networked group with his people there. There is a new walkway to the river. And so they want to be involved in it. And so there are groups. It's like the, the core got rotten and it's splintering and there's a group that's going to meet at 530 that doesn't work for other people and so it's the thing that we're doing is it's splintering and the guy, the little potentate I think is going to have nobody there at the three o'clock meeting so it's a, it's a really wild kind of thing. It's the kind of thing that would have made me angry earlier and I just sort of when there's another guy, he's gotten a grant to be a community organizer to have 100 conversations one on one with folks to figure out what to build a sense and kind of network. And I said I want to help him and I didn't think this group under this guy's leadership was going to go do anything and he said, Why aren't I being in the umbrella group and he just stood up and flipped out and started making big umbrellas in his hands with his hands, you know, I want, why am I not that and it was just like, you know, very odd. I mean he, he's always seen, you know, you and people seem calm when they're passive aggressive and they smile. That's just part of what you learn, you know, you have to say you're doing more and hide the fact that you're doing less. And so the fact that he erupted and then afterwards, I mean this is just in the story. He does not seem to have remembered it and people have asked him about it and just said, Well, and he didn't even have to be saying I wasn't quite as compassionate as I should have been. I was like, dude, you delivered a passive aggressive attack and stood up and stopped around, but he doesn't seem to remember it. So anyway, so it's, you know, it is something's happening and a bunch of those folks are showing up at the planning meeting about this 50 acres, who are real smart and they've been with riparian groups in Riverlink and other kinds of they've been some have been professional watershed managers with nonprofits and stuff. So we'll see. I don't know. Thanks Kevin. Yeah, I just wanted to go type something in the chat and I'm just curious, Gil, if you could, if you're able to unmute and share a little more about what you just said power is always granted yielded as much as taken if you're able to come on that love to hear more. Yeah, I don't know how much more I can say about that but that's that's that's been striking me lately we think about people seizing power build to the season of power. I was at Gregory Bates and when he was talking about the about the fallacy of the of using the metaphor of force in human relations is, you know, forces of physics phenomenon. And it and nobody ever forces anybody to do something someone presents you with consequences and you make choices about that someone puts a gun to your head. You're not forced to do something you choose to not die. And so that's an extreme example but I think about it very much in the context of the color revolutions. And when the legitimacy of a state just evaporates at some point because people will not put up with it anymore and are no longer so afraid of the consequences and you look at Iran or like they executed 60 people last week or two but people are still going at it. So it's the thoughts not well formed but it's kind of around that about stepping us out of the notion of, they made me do this and it's even there in our in our in our everyday speech like you know he made me feel this way. No, no he thinks and I feel this way, which both recaptures the agency but it's also on ontologically I think more valid, certainly more useful like he did shit that I hate what do I do now. So, that's not, you know, that's not seen tactically clean and complete but that's sort of where I am with that that's why I'm raising that power is very mysterious. And, and maybe it has some of its own dynamic. There, there, something happens about power and organizations but I suspect it's not the most important conversation. And I'm much more interested in what do people really care about. And how do they coordinate their actions around the things they care about to take care of the things they care about. And power is one traditional way that we do that or that some of us take care of the things that we care about. And you're raising the question about how do we get more of us in the story. And what kinds of structures processes relationships agreements. Power structures. Do we design that help us do that better. That's what I got for the moment that helpful at all for. Yeah, or does it generate new problems. So, looking at it from the historical side, the words like energy and force and so on in Greek, always had to do with human relationships. And they moved from the description of the human into the physical world. Back from physics to human in a sloppier way. Interesting. And I think it generates the juncture that we're at that we absolutely need to learn how to do that, because the way we have been being and this is, you know, this is a page out of Doug bees book. You know the way we've been being isn't working. So we need to learn how to be a different way with each other. Otherwise, you know, there is no hope. There may not be any hope anyway but that's a longer conversation. Hope may not be the most useful concept. No, no, no. I use that in that word in quotes it's not about it's not about it, you know, when I use the word hope it's you know, Joe had a Macy's, you know, activist hope, you know, Rebecca soul that says that hope is not so much a prediction as a stance. Yeah. Somebody say hope floats. from what said, don't hope for what already is, and don't hope for what never can be. Don't worry if it doesn't happen in your lifetime. Did you put that in the chat deck. I'm not a chat person. I'll get out of transcript some other time. Good. I can repeat it. That's okay got it. Don't, don't hope for what already is and never and don't hope for what never can be. And don't worry if it doesn't happen in your lifetime. Right. So as some of you know, I find chat very disruptive of the process of being conscious and letting things filter into the proper level. Please, please forgive me for raising the bugaboo. Mr B floors yours, but you got to unmute if you want us to hear you. So, um, I spent like the last five years studying groups and, and why they do what Kevin just described. And I actually wrote a medium piece called why the great new groups go flat. And in service to this idea of doing us differently and doing us better. The universe is this creation machine and we get exactly and literally what we ask for. So if if your inquiry Patty starts with the meme of power, then you're going to get power. If you are curious about how what replaces. What has been known as governments and power structures in people co-creating together in hierarchies or other. If you're if your inquiry is how do we do that, how do we do that better then you don't invite power to the party. So one of the first things at the top of the list is whatever the new is, I don't want any of that to be a feature of whatever the emergent new is. So, when you take that out of the equation and power sort of extends into power control over authority, right. You need the minute you invoke power, you have somebody who has it over somebody who doesn't. Otherwise, it doesn't exist conceptually, semantically meaning wise. If you take it out of the equation. It means that you sort of needs be shift into something that's much more peer to peer in nature decentralized much more organic and biological in terms of sensing feeling into what is needed by who we're when and then how does a collective respond to that. So it's really a complete inversion and a complete transformation of the orientation of the way you're looking at how you're doing what you're doing others and how they're looking at it the way they're doing you and consent sort of arises out of that emergency as a as a governing principle. But it's consent in relation to individual agency as part of a collective effort or collaboration and negotiating and navigating. For what that's worth. Thanks Doug. I could offer a little more context around the question I had posed earlier in the meeting, and I think this, I'm afraid this isn't going to. These are really unfinished ideas. And I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to articulate it was clearly as I'd like, but just as a thought exercise what I've been playing around with is the idea that power whatever that word means because I think it can mean a lot of different things to different people. But let's say for our purposes power, not just in the more how it's traditionally spoken ever understood sense of you know, the, you know, billionaire's wealth authority. You know that power over power that we tend to speak of, but also the intrinsic power personal power that we many are you know I'd like to think we're born with it's fairly universal. And people have access to it to different degrees for different reasons and different circumstances but for our purposes what is the underlying. I just I just can't help but think that they're probably something close to like laws of physics that govern power transfer and power. There's a power equalizing and power transfer between two people but also within ourselves and I'm really curious around what governs that transfer internally what dictates the trip the movement of personal power how we relate to ourselves and our own power how we relate to other people and their power. And I'm curious around whether or not. I think the Monday, no the Friday society 2045 group heard me speak on this little bit but I am curious around how much personal power is actually a biological necessity for life right and so if personal power is or acts as a homeostatic function. Does that change. I don't know it does does that might that inform what is actually dictating how power moves between humans how we perceive power. And so the question earlier about looking for governance structures that exemplify, let's say power being used in a helpful way I'm curious if there's a micro and macro relationship between healthy power use so as does their existing governance structure where power is being used or moving in a way that actually supports the entire system. And I just was looking for examples of that so I could kind of try to see if something like that could exist within one person how power is managed within oneself. So that I don't know if that if that actually gives clear context it may not but that was a little more of the intention behind the question and that's where my curiosity is. I might just make things more confusing, but that's where I'm at. So I know going and Kevin has a business to respond to Patty or something else is let's respond to Patty first so it's respond to Patty and I can go into check into my check or not. It's not. It's just a little thing. Okay, so me. Okay. I like unfinished thoughts that unfinished thoughts need no ecology. You're in the inquiry and it's a bunch of big questions and I suspect that there is a question beneath or within the question that you're asking. And perhaps one beneath or within that one. And so my invitation to you rather than responding to the question is to invite you to just sort of go deeper into the question and peel it down and peel it down and see what it is what's good. This is a realm where the questions may be more valuable than the answers. So that's thought. That said, I'm personally wary of the direction that you just spoke about, because, you know, we're not billiard balls. And power means something very different on a billiard table than on a basketball court. It's a complex adaptive biological system and so looking for the analogies may be illuminating and it may be really misdirecting and so I have just a big caution on that for me, maybe not for you. That's kind of where I go with that. And that's what I have to respond I've got check in but I'll wait because there's other hands up here. And the guy that from the UN has written multiple books about compassion. And someone been translated into whatever they speak in there Paul, and the most passive aggressive guy that I know like him has also written books about compassion and once had a network of 25 compassionate cities. So it's like if somebody has written a book about compassion. I have now become wary just for whatever it's worth. Yeah, I just wanted to jump in real quickly and say to everything Patty just said without going into detail that I think people like Patty and me that look like Patty and me are going to see this issue from a different direction. I'm just going to leave that there. I'm sure before you go to someone respond to Stacy as this conversation has been unfolding I keep thinking about testosterone and what that does for power versus estrogen. So just throw that in. And I just wanted to make sure I threw in the distinction between, you know, personal power and positional power, which is just a kind of a critical piece. And, you know, the more I roam around in the world the more that I see the lack of people exerting gravitas of real personal power. And that I think is one of the things that is just so missing in the context where we're operating in right now. I mean, it's just it's it's just not present. I mean, you know, the idea that the idea that where are you looking. Where am I looking. You're you looking and not seeing this. Oh, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the public forum. Okay. In the traditional public forum. It's not, it's not present in our, in our politics it's not present. And last night. Oh yeah. Absolutely. And, and, and that's a, that's a good example Gilead and I almost didn't want to bring that in. But the fact that that a major political party in the US, IE Republicans, that there's nobody standing up and just coming from a place of, of, of ethic a place of morality, a place of seeing is, is not calling Trump out and that this is the leading candidate for a major political party. There was no, you know, ethic you said there was no power and gravitas and Trump is certainly exercising power and doing it rather masterfully. Yes. And, okay. He's also doing it in a manipulative. Yeah, yeah. Truthful. Yeah, yeah. Unethical. Yeah, so way. But you said there that you're not seeing power. No, I said that I'm not, I'm not seeing personal power exercised in a way that's pushing back against the kind of stuff that Trump is is the shenanigans that he's pulling off. That there's not a strong that there's not a strong voice that there's not a real strong voice about Clarence Thomas. I mean, it's just, it's almost it's almost unfathomable it's comical in a certain in a certain way that there's not a great voice out there, pushing back against that kind of stuff. There is not that there is not a strong push against him. There is active support. It makes it even worse. I know class. Let's see an end town hall which I thought was brilliant because they stay stocked it with Trump supporters to the audience was full of Trump supporters who were, who were laughing and clapping at things that we find just the or show right. I mean, it really shows there is like what 20 30% of the population who embrace that and promote it. That's the scary part. Yes, I agree. Stuart this is why I asked where is your gaze because you say there's nobody speaking out against Trump. I mean my my feed this morning and last night was filled with people including tons of journalists, including journalists from CNN denouncing that show. I'm, I see tons of people on the ass of Clarence Thomas including the frontline show the other night. So when you say no one is saying what you're, what you're, you're like, if you're, if you're captured by mainstream media and the story and the people who have given us. Sure, yeah. But in fact, there's a lot of ferment around the country that we don't see on these news. Yeah, I guess I would, I would, I would modify my statements to say, I'm not, I'm not seeing it in as powerful and strong way, as I'd like to see it. I'm saying you need to get out more. I watched CNN, I watched the commentary, I watched, you know, what all the, what all the pundits were saying by way of pushback, right. That wasn't that wasn't missing. That's good. That's how, how nations fall apart. That's how civil wars start. Right. I mean, because you have population coops that are so dug in and so bitter, you know, in, in, in their in their opposing each other. I mean, look at Sudan, Sudan just fell apart because you had two conflicting powers. And that can be influenced from the outside. That's the really scary part, right, because if you want to undermine a nation, you know, then you support something like a crump and marker movement, you know, and boost that up because, you know, it paralyzes us as a country. Right. I mean, it makes it very difficult for us to please to preserve our position in in global commerce conflicts, what have you. This is a really scary moment. And, and so far there is no clear path how to get out of this mess without breakage. I completely agree class. I completely agree with everything you just said. So, I just want to note that this, we've been seduced by the power conversation. We haven't completed check in. And I want to make sure everybody has a chance to do that and I'm happy to have this conversation. This actually I think would be a great topic powered be an awesome topic for a call. But I just want to make sure people have a chance to recenter and come back and check in if they've not done that so far. So, Patty, you had your hand up you want to go ahead. You can keep going on this if you want, but I just want to create a space for folks to come back in. I'm just going to invite reintroducing the practice of taking selectively taking a breath before shares and creating some space in the in the moving conversation would be my request. I enjoyed that and I appreciate that. Thank you. Before I forget, I would like to add that I think when we do talk about power, we spend a lot of time talking about how we give our power away. But I think we need to take a look at how we grab for other people's power, because that's something that we can then look at ourselves and see how we do that, and how that then scales up. Thank you. Please, you be the. You be the cause. I said really happen to miss. I thought that a video from this doctor make a kill Chris tier, which really captured my attention it was really an amazing talk. We basically focused on the brain hemisphere left brain and right brain, and in this conversation he's pondering, you know that was our western culture is left brain dominant, which causes a conflict in the right brain that leads actually to a disassociation of reality. So we live in a deluded world because the right brain is into sense making modes that may not make any sense. I mean that that created distorted perception of reality right and I thought it was it was really I mean basically these things that Western culture is in a state of schizophrenia induced by the way that we make sense of reality, you know after we have the natural world around us. And that leads us to this exploitation and in a destructive way of living. But I think I mean I don't have enough I mean it's a really complex topic I mean it's a very rich conversation. I mean if you have time to listen in. I think it's really worthwhile because I think there's more to it. Now because they are they are right brain dominant cultures. So we're expressing themselves in in one way and then there's the Western civilization, which is left brain dominant, causing all kinds of, of, of issues in the way that we structure and organize our society. So I don't have anybody has more on this. And I just thought it was a fascinating introduction to trying to understand us ourselves. And that point, going back to what I posted from Curtis Ogden around abstraction left brain takes things apart analyzes them abstracts them the right brain is holistic and sees things in context and when you have a left brain dominant stance on anything, you're you're not going to see the whole picture you're going to start to, to abstract things and then, if you don't put them back together you get into trouble as we all are right now. It's a little it's a little bit orthogonal class but I think relevant to where you just went. So there's a, there's a friend of mine is one of the fathers of bio acoustics, recording in the natural world in the wild. Bernie Kraus and his PhD thesis was on something called the niche hypothesis which was the biome in a particular location is the way it is because each of this, the creatures that landed there, found their frequency open and clear to be able to communicate with each other. That was the defining factor and every location is unique in terms of that mix. And, but one of the other dimensions of it is that in the natural world and, and as living beings, each living being has its own frequency vibration frequency energetically as part of its intrinsic vitality, like the living dimension of being a living creature, and, and Bernie posited what he what he referred to as nature deficit disorder that not being exposed to that mix of frequencies and energetic vibrations and fields. Over time produces psychosis. At the global and cultural level. Everything that we have done in terms of the Western developed world is to cut us off and insulate us from that those domains energetic vibrational domains and actually electric electromagnetic systems of being insulated from the earth with shoes and concrete and all of the rest, which, which is all about separating and severing any connection vital connection to the natural world around us. And I, I think that's sort of intrinsic to the same subject domain you just pointed to. Well, I can check in. Speaking of power. The other day I was coaching a man who works for a very large international bank and I said what do you do he said well I start how'd you get into this work he so I started out as a lawyer and then I became a prosecutor against and financial crimes and now I work for an audit division of a large international bank and I seize the assets of people who are like Russian oligarchs I thought that is so cool I'm really glad someone's doing that and that's a that's powered and that's the power to go and take someone's assets and freeze them, you know, it's it's institutional right and it's, it's, it's power granted by the force of the state in creating a banking system that was this to happen so I just it was really interesting conversation I enjoyed talking this guy a lot we had a, you know, really good connection but it just made me feel good to know this is actually happening. Another news. My friend Gil here and I, we host these monthly calls called living between worlds and we're in conversation around the next call and, and this is related to this call in some ways of, I'm really interested in looking at the future and in envisioning and imagining the future that works, where we are on a planet that works everybody where the governance is set up so that all human beings and all life in the system is taken care of. How often people, when you start to talk about this, they, they come up with. Oh, well, you know, you can't change human nature and that's that's really nice idea but you know the systems that are in place and they're going to allow that and you know. But that is a statement about their worldview, not about the actual world itself. That's kind of where you come up to the limits of your worldview says, I can't imagine this. It's been tossed around an ogm before that it's easier to imagine the end of the world and the end of capitalism. This is part of our problem we have a lack of imagination, and I wish Doug see was still with us because I'd like to hear his thoughts on this but I'm really curious to know if people have a way of observing when they bump up against the limits of their worldview of G, you know, I'd love to see the world work but man it's such a mess and people are the way they are and it's never going to happen so just be happy that I lived when I did and you know I'm not going to worry about comes after me which I find to be a moral lapse. You know we are all embedded in the flow of humanity we don't get to say I had my time and my peace and I got my stuff and sorry about all the rest you coming after me because that does not, in my mind, live up to what our debt to life is. I'm reading David Graber's debt the first 5,000 years and there's a lot of cultures that see when you're born you owe a debt to society because people gave up resources to bring you into the world and you take up, you know, takes the village people have to sacrifice in order to raise you up and and make you into a mature human being and so just by virtue of being born and living you owe a debt to people around you. And I think that's one of the things that's really that's an abstraction we've done in our weird cultures Western industrialized rich educated democratic cultures where we think, hey, you know, it's just me I'm just I'm just a billiard ball. You know bopping around so how my question is, how can we be more aware of when our bump up against limits of our own individual worldview, which we take to be the limits of the world, because there's way more beyond what we can see your and if we put them together. Instead of saying well that's how it is we start to say what do you think oh you think that that's interesting maybe there is a chance you know so how do we collectively get into an imaginal spaces where we can start to think about what a world that works everybody really could look like without worrying that that can't happen because you can't change human nature and human nature says you're always going to have war and you're going to have you know people you know grabbing everything they can for themselves. This is a story that we tell ourselves but it is not one that that has held up throughout history because we only have this tiny little piece of history Western history, you know we think everything started with the Greeks. Well, you know, there was a long period of history before the Greeks came along. That's the stuff that's that's on my mind. And if you want to engage in more of this come to next Wednesday's living between world calls at noon Pacific to 130 it'll be going to be, it's going to be wild be there. It's Wednesday of every month and the title is living between worlds but the subtitle is with grace, dignity and power. So this power conversation has been threaded throughout the past four years sometimes explicitly sometimes in the background. It's going to get interesting for the rest of this year. You see the link patty. Just just scroll to see kills some mentioned worlds there's a link there. I do. Thank you, Mr. And moral imagination is from Phoebe to Cal in London and it speaks can to some of what you were talking about. And some very eloquent clockwise and in fact Phoebe and McGill Chris to have a conversation McGill Chris is all over the place lately and dialogues 75 minutes dialogues with lots of interesting people and one of them is with Phoebe. Patty have you had up. Was that a rhetorical question. Kevin you're asking like how do we notice when we're bumping into the edges of our. Oh I'm happy to hear it's not rhetorical it's it's definitely if you've got step. I take on that please let it know. Yeah, I think I think personally I pick up on that when I hear in my own, you know in my mind I hear the language that's like, it doesn't always actually sound like doesn't apply to me but it's iterations it doesn't apply to me. I don't hear stuff like that, but it also usually is combined with the it's like a somatic, it's like a visceral sense of, it's not resignation, it's it feels kind of like a flatness or a dullness I'll notice it there. Definitely if I feel like afraid, if I feel if I'm hearing about something I don't understand and I'll clock in or check in or check that I'm noticing like a sense of like tightness or unease. I don't know what that can be for me like you that like, oh is this something like what is this Oh I don't think I actually understand what this is or what this means, you know is there something for me to learn here the answers, you know, yes right. Most of the time. Yeah, I think I think those are the ones that come to mind immediately and most easily for me. Thank you. It's great and good somatic awareness. It's lovely. So you said you wanted to check in, and we haven't heard from Karl or mark and welcome Mike. Thanks for joining us for the second time today. Mike like me has been hopping between calls. I'm also taking care of appliances and all sorts of things. Sorry. No worries you're here, you know, you overcomes the right people that whenever you show up is the right time so that's my philosophy. The one thing I'll say but we have check in Ken is, you know, thinking about it earlier on when I was when I was a declaiming about power. And sharing all kinds of announcements that grand philosophical scale and I'm struck by the. I'm not going to say conflict not say tension the dance between the grand perspective and the perspective of my personal life. With decisions that I need to make as, you know, as a as a grain family in a. What to say in a very messy society. And, you know, the financial and health management and strategic and logistics, et cetera, and relational decisions to make in the midst of that very concretely. And I just noticed myself, you know, listening. I was saying things about there is no force right there's yielding to demands or not. And it's easy to say that in my direct personal life. It often feels like there's force. And so it takes a real. Settling down and stepping back and. Looking for clarity to see, oh, no, no, even, even though it may feel like that on the face of it. In fact, there are. There's an array of choices and consequences. That I can look at more dispassionately. I mean, Doug, Doug sees not here anymore. I was intrigued that Doug see talked about that the. I was decrying the shift from powers of physics metaphor to a powers and emotional metaphors and the Greeks actually had it back before as an emotional metaphor. So I'm intrigued by that and how we. How we form and navigate our interpretations. As we move through the world. And so I'm very present to that both on a. You know, could sort of philosophical ontological political strategic perspective. And at a personal. Relational, you know, me, my wife, our family, our friends, but also our clients and our colleagues and the organizations of our clients so very ramifying scale so. That's sort of a rambling check and to say that I'm. I'm grateful for that particular mess of thoughts and what it might open up. And I was, I was talking with my friend Chauncey bell yesterday who reminded me that what's that the answers are never as interesting as the questions. That's why I'm an Episcopalian. Here's all the questions. Great Mike that's why I'm at you terrific. But you're, you're, you're special because not only do you have good questions you always have five answers. Which means more questions right. Of course, that comes from being a Jew put put three Jews in a room you get 12 at 12 opinions so you know. Is it is it my turn. Yeah sure go ahead. I didn't I didn't wait the obligatory 27 seconds. But this has been an emotional week or two. On the high side. Tomorrow the final paperwork on selling my house where I've lived for 30 years. And luckily we seem to have timed it pretty well it's a nice spring day the house looks better than it's ever looked flowers all around. More importantly, I live in a neighborhood where there's not a lot of turnover. And right now, nobody is selling their house in the DC area, because they have 5%, they have 3% mortgages, and if they're going to sell and buy something new, they have to buy a have to take on a 6% mortgage. I'm newly married and so I'm living with my wife and her townhouse now, and we don't need a house and so we just got rid of that don't have to molons or anything like that anymore. So that's a huge weight off my shoulders that took more than a year to organize 30 years of my life that was in the moment. Thank God for storage lockers. I still have a lot more organizing to do. Just as an aside that whole exercise has been fascinating because a lot of the boxes in the basement were records from my days in the White House. And, and tying into what Gil just said, going back and seeing all the forces that were at play in the 90s when we were trying to get the internet commercialized and build the government all these different forces and the different agencies all pushing against each other. As a physicist I always thought of things that way. On the downside, last Friday, early, early last Friday morning my college roommate, one of my oldest and closest friends passed away from aggressive brain cancer. And we had his funeral yesterday. The good side of that was my daughter and I and my wife got in the car and we drove up to Bryn Maher drove back in the same day and we had, you know, six, six and a half hours of really interesting conversation and it was also wonderful to see my college roommate's wife and three kids and his two brothers and people I've known since I was 18. I obviously didn't know his kids and as, but I was the best man at his wedding in 1985. So it's, it's hard and it's hard to see somebody disappear 20 years early. You know, that's just not fair. Yeah, my condolences Mike. And that's also really the first person in my generation that I've lost some. Sure, some of you have had to people that you were close to but it's, it's, it's also hard, you know, I got to give the toast at his wedding and I gave a eulogy yesterday and it sort of, I mean, full circle. One thing that I'll mention, so it's, you know, good, bad, good. In about seven hours I hop on a plane to San Francisco to go to Bit West. Does anybody know Alistair Kroll? Yes. Yes, well he has organized something called Bit North, Canadian visionaries, startups, provocateurs. It's a little bit like food camp for Canadians, but they're doing a Silicon Valley version so Canadians Silicon Valley, other people from places like Washington DC. And it's just, it may be a little intense. It sounds like it's going to be 24 hours, 48 hours of OGM check-ins. We're all supposed to share something we're crazy about that doesn't have to do with our work and, you know, how many of you will there be there? It looks like about 40. Cool. We're actually hanging out in a private school in Berkeley. They're just taking over the school for the weekend. Sleeping on, you know, bringing sleeping bags and camp mats and. Who camp for Canadians sounds like flannel camp, right? Mike, I'm in Berkeley, so if you want an escape from those folks who have a few minutes, want to grab a cup or go for a walk, let me know. Well, what's your, what's your morning look like? Cause I was planning to be on camera. Which day? Tomorrow. Oh, not. Sorry. Okay. Well, I'm also available. Little after lunch. Tomorrow. Let's take it off. Yeah. If you can send me your, your text. Mark, Carl, I'm sorry, Mike. I'm just going to send you my, my phone number and you can text me there. Thanks. I knew I knew I needed to get on this call. Yeah, there we go. Mark, Carl, would you like to check in before we close out in a few minutes? I'm not hearing you. It doesn't look like you muted, but I can't hear you. That duck is back. I have the problem that I needed to check in with a Napier discussion. I realized I probably have some personal stories about Napier that the people in the group didn't have. For example, at one point Napier hired my son. When he was 16 to do some more project work for GBN. And that became a glue between the three of us. That have lots of impact. Nice. Did you want to check in Doug while you're here? I kind of thought I did, but maybe I didn't. It wasn't a long time ago. Yeah, sorry. You did actually, but. Well, it gets full from these calls. Hard to track everything. I guess that the two stories are that I'm in Montenegro on the Adriatic. On purpose and that is living in Northern California. I felt fairly remote from climate change effects and conversations. And I think this part of the world is going to get hit really hard this summer. With water problems, temperature problems and maybe even food problems. And I wanted to be closer to the conversations in a kind of anthropological way. So I've put myself here, I don't know for how long 90 days, maybe even more. To experience this. And it's already paid off a lot by providing me with images that I would never have thought of, which is time for another story. And another time. The other part of the check in. Might be my continual puzzlement over how people think about climate change. Or don't think about it. Or think about it and don't talk. And I come down to, you know, the US historically is a problem solving society. That's what we think we're good at. And we're not doing it hardly anything to frame climate change as a problem to solve. And I'm really curious about that. Did you want to reveal yourself to us and say anything? Okay, Mark, can you speak now as your computer accepting your voice? They're working now. Yes, it is working now. Yeah. Again, condolences to Mike. It's hard to lose people. And one of the things about climate change in California. With all the growth. I'm anticipating some wildfires. Oh yeah. Yeah, so. It's a super bloom out. It's beautiful. There's this gorgeous. Flowers and I'm noticing lots of insects. When I grew up in. The Imperial Valley when there was a lot of vegetation. There came a lot of insects as well. And, you know, predators and. And basically, you know, all of nature kind of is exploding. So I'm kind of hoping that we don't get covered in pesticides. I'm calling all the insects that are going to be coming out for. The biological party. Unfortunately, the. All the grass and underbrush that's going to be growing up and. Well, we will see. Doug, I'm sorry, Gil, go ahead. Yeah. I'm remembering Mark was at a conference some years ago. About California futures and a panel with. An executive from Cal fire and executive from the real estate industry and executive from the insurance industry. They were talking about how the two prior years had been the fiercest fire seasons. At least in recent memory of not in California history. And. Came Q and a and the question that I asked was like, if that was the, if that, what the last two years or what's your plan for this year and next year. And so help me God, they said, the plan is to hope that it's not as bad. And of course, you know, wrong. So anyway, that's all we should go, we should go deep on that one. I would remind that hope is not a plan. Yeah. Yeah. Open power before you go to go back and listen to the recording. Yeah. All right, well that brings us to time. Thank you all for showing up today and your patience. Is there a poem. You know, because I've been moderating I didn't have time to look through my, my poems so I have to give you one from memory. Okay, this is Roka and I've probably read I've probably offered this before but you know I only have a few in memory so this is called the winged energy of delight and it does. It does relate to today's calls in many way to topics on today's column anyway so just as the winged energy of delight carried you over many chasms early on. Now, raise high the daringly imagined arch holding up the astounding bridges. Miracle does not lie only in the amazing living through and defeat of danger. Miracle becomes miracle in the clear light of achievement that is earned in the world. Working with things is not hubris when building associations beyond words for denser and denser the pattern becomes and being carried along is no longer enough. So, take your well discipline strengths and stretch them between two opposing poles, because inside the human heart is where God learns. We show a great week. It's lovely to see you today. Have fun. Bye bye. Have a great day.