 This is the OGM weekly call of March 24th, 2022. And it's kind of a weird moment and I was just reflecting on it because we are, we're not quite post pandemic pandemic is still outdoors pandemic may never go away pandemic may become endemic, who knows, there's lots of interesting things to say about that. But it feels like Putin's attack on Ukraine and Biden State of the Union and his responses, and a bunch of other things are creating some sort of new space that we're in some kind of new, new zone, not quite sure what it is or how to describe it. But I'll pause for a second. Oh, Pete, thank you. I forgot I remember the recording now is like like five minutes ago I was like in this time I'm going to remember to enable the transcript. But there we are. And so it's just saying that it feels like we're at some transition point and then this morning I read and Helen Peterson's newsletter which I subscribed to. She used to work at Buzzfeed she and Charlie Ward cell who writes a tech column, our partners, and they both are beautiful writers so they're worth, worth kind of reading, and her column is about the shift or the change or what's going on, and it points to a points to a column. Let me see, let me actually just share my brain for a second because I've started annotating it this morning. I'm going to use call, and then basically, I had a thought. So that there's kind of we're kind of at some kind of interesting tipping point at this point and here's bless you. There was an article that that happened when Putin launched this assault on Ukraine which was Putin's invasion of Russia's invasion of Ukraine changes everything and changes everything is like sort of sensationalist speaking and who knows what. But it kind of rang a bell for me because I've been tracking kind of the mood or the state or something like that. And I already had this, this thought about Putin's inability to just blitzkrieg Ukraine and take it over. This is the Biden State of the Union where some Republicans were actually applauding and contributing and a bunch of other things because before that, before that I have a thought where the Coronavirus plus black lives matter plus the Boogaloo equals the perfect storm is this the start of meltdown. And you'll see I have a lot of things under here I was like oh my God this feels like a really horrible time. I'm at this, at this dot now as COVID, the New York Times on the cover of their website every day has yesterday's new infections in the US and deaths, and the deaths number just kept standing under 2000, then it was above 1000, and it slipped under 1000. And I was able sort of to breathe it differently when I saw the number slip under 1000 dead per day, which is still a lot of humans being hurt by this thing. So, so I'm feeling like we've, we've slipped into some different moment. And I'm wondering if anybody else is feeling that and how it goes, etc, etc. And let's just sort of start, start with whoever would like to pick up from there. And then see where it takes us. Gilbert you want to talk about ground she. Yeah, I've been, I've been feeling what you've been describing Jerry since the beginning of the pandemic. Excuse me a couple years ago I started calling calling this living between worlds. This is just the mood that I felt. And some of you know I've been hosting a monthly conversation around that theme. And Gromshire, at least this is this X translation of Gromshire kind of gives a shape to that, you know, it's clear that something is dying, at least the poll, at least the poll, the, the, the post World War two global order is that deck is getting shuffled very, very strongly. We know there's something new is coming it could be ugly, it could be great, it more likely will be a strange mix of good and bad, but the ability to predict feels shattered. And I've just given up my, you know, long time tendency to try to predict what's coming to take on a much lighter approach to be able to listen and anticipate and dance with what's coming knowing that it's going to be really, really messy. And all the dimensions that you talked about and many more you didn't mention climate very much, but notable in the first week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the IPCC released its latest report, which said, Holy shit this is even worse than we thought, etc, you know, elaborate words to that effect, and it blipped in the mainstream media and then vanished in this inability to hold more than one subject in line at a time or deal with complex thoughts and anyway it was just gone. And yet this is the found existential persist long past whatever settlement happens in Europe. And yet there it wasn't. Biden in his State of the Union started to, you know, started to hint at climate and climate responses. McKibben and various others had encouraged him to make that a cornerstone of the State of the Union speech tying it to the to the to the to the Putin war and the need for energy independence from Putin and Saudi Arabia and so forth and he stepped back from that he had like you said he had Republicans applauding him. He had various bipartisan notes and he could have dropped a climate note and forced the Republicans to apply. He would have knocked them in for whatever calculations they decided not to do it as team decided not to do that. So yeah, a perfect storm is kind of too happy a term to use for this. But there we are. I think the pandemic. My assumption. Excuse me is that you're right that this is more of a pandemic era than a pandemic. The circumstances that give rise to this pandemic are unchanged. You know, global trade human human human nature interface wild animal trade immune suppression and global population toxic environment behind it all which nobody seems to speak about. You know so there's no reason to think that there won't be more pandemic distrust of government breakdown of public health coordination system socially. There's no reason to trust that that won't happen again. You know on on the bright side, the, for all of its flaws to COVID response was remarkable. The level of the momentum and the level of international coordination, though flawed was quite stunning. You look at the response of the Russian invasion the level of international coordination absolutely stunning. Some people are afraid of that they see that as the imposition of the will of somebody on all the rest of us but you know what what happens in crises and messes. Something, you know, things move things move and things move quickly and so I'm really. I'm really struck by the ground she coach I think was exactly 100 years ago this year I'm not totally sure kind of track that down. Because we're in this soup where. In the disorder new things can potentially emerge very quickly that's good and bad. We don't know. There's, you know, we've had the thread that Neil and others were doing on the group chat oh hi April and see you there in the car. So, how, how people interpret and act in the face of their calculation, you know, if you're, are you doing, do you think we're doing do you think we're not we're doing what do you do. If you don't think we're doing what do you do. How do you live in this and so I'm just sort of immersed in those questions all the time. The conversations of people at various levels ranging from these kind of general chats to much more directed. You know, trying to build a fund that's aimed at a piece of the puzzle to try to move a piece of the puzzle and that may be all that any of us can do is you know is is move, you know, is move the pieces where we're moved to move. And then share across these different interests about what, you know, what are we doing how do we support each other where the synergies. And that's one of the opportunities I know there's been a lot of discussion about sense making. I'm, I'm sort of agnostic on sense making I don't think there's a lot of sense to be made right now and I think that's a good that's a grasping for something that is not within reach. So I'm, I'm sort of immune. It's like sense making seems to be trending these things which is not at all surprising given the mess. And I think my rambling meter went off a little while ago. But great. Thanks. Thanks, Gil. Stuart, and then I want to mix a little something else into the conversation. Great. So, yeah, shout out, April and Merrily nice to see you both here. I didn't dig into it about the pandemic just saying, well, it looks like it's going to be seasonal kind of like the flu, in some sense and we'll deal with it in that way and I guess the barometer for that is probably going to be, you know, how flooded ERs are and how, you know, how much, how many ventilators that people are on. I wanted to speak to the broader phenomenon that that that Gil was just referencing. We can no longer rely on government. It's just too big. It's like turning around a battleship. It's just absolutely massive and especially the dissonance in the US with one side pulling one way and other side pulling the other way. And these idiots just can't seem to, you know, start rowing in the same direction about the global challenges we have. When I'm sensing is a bubbling up. And I think that the bubbling up is going to pull governments in the right way. And the situation in Ukraine and Russia is just begging for some kind of planetary governance, absolutely begging. It's just essential at this point in time. And I realize that I said planetary governance and I said bubbling up. So, so pretty much almost in the same paragraph. Yes. So, so there's as to echo Gil, there is no sense making in the traditional sense. Although, you know, there's a lot of people trying to make things work. I, you know, I shout out to Neil Davidson. I hope everybody dug into what he was pointing at, because I thought it was a wonderful articulation of what's needed right now. Thank you. So let me take a little penny step back. The topic for today came from Eric who posted on matter most about this moment and used flux with caps and I'm like, Oh, that's nice. And, and, and there's a there's a funny little book that's right over my shoulder here in my new little corner to do things. And author of said book is has joined us for today. And, and, and flux happens to be about your mindset for how to cope with change which I think is sort of central for the conversation, but also parm jit, who has been a regular here introduced me to merrily Adams who has also joined us. And merrily is the author of change your questions change your life. And she and I have had a couple conversations lately which have been wonderful, and is in the same realm of things and is has a change model that is really useful so I think that that we should sort of fold those ingredients into the conversation that soon and, and then see where this all takes us but it feels like it feels like some mental focus on dealing with this moment would be useful all around and we've had several, we've approached this in several different ways on the list on on the mailing list and then this is funny and April. April DM me that merrily is also published with with bear Taylor which I didn't realize. So I had no idea you're so you're both BK authors which is really, really cool. Hi merrily. It's nice to see you. We've known each other for a couple years. Merrily I don't know if you know that Jerry is my husband. No, I didn't. There we go. Yeah, I am like we're in the same house right now and all the rest and I've been many of these people. Dave Doug Stuart knows Pete like I see many, many familiar faces here that I haven't seen in a long time so hi everybody. And then I see some new faces to and merrily I just assumed you've been joining these calls and I was like oh that's awesome. Yeah, just to connect a couple dots there. Anyway, I'm excited to listen to everybody and greetings all. Thanks. And I'm wondering April, do you want to reporting for just a second, not on, not on the content of flux and approaching to change but just how you're feeling in the moment, just just like. Are you feeling a shift or not a shift anything like that just just your reflections on what's up for you now. I'll try to keep it brief. Yes, I'm feeling a shift. I can't say that I'm feeling it in one direction or another, and people continue to ask me like, go I think a little bit to your point like what's next what's next what's next. And I'm kind of like that there's just more of everything and not more in like a necessarily a quantitative sense. There's, there's just more of more ways to do everything. There's more reason to be hopeful. There's more reason to be anxious. There's, there are more ways to earn income than ever before in terms of like future of work stuff. And there are more reasons to be concerned about the inequities that could be exacerbated. There's more, you know, and so, you know, I love Gil, the way that I'm introducing flux pretty much in every in every talk I give in some way is just the messiness of it all. And the fact that we, we have this word change or flux but change that we, we treat like it's one thing. It's one word. And like, we all assume that there's a kind of, there's change. It's like, no, there are so many different kinds of changes that we love and we hate and we embrace and we struggle with and that excite us and that completely unravel us and like, blah. So let's get beyond talking about it like change and also let's get beyond some of the naval gazing conversations potential that's there. So I'm sensing a shift, but it's against this backdrop of the messiness. I would say also as some of you know, this year I am laser laser laser focused on taking flux global. The last year was English, and technically the global launch in English, but we're now up Jerry knows this I'm very excited we're now up to 12 foreign languages so the book is the book turns seven months old today. And so we've got 12 languages, which in total reach more than half of the global population in their native language. So, I'm really excited about that. And I share this simply because the shift that we're seeing I can't say that I can comment on it yet globally, but thus far what I see is that shift isn't playing out the same way everywhere for sure. And that's related to a lot of dynamics. Are you living in an individualist society or a collectivist society. Are you. I don't want to say man or woman or he she day sort of are you young or old. I think when we look to the future and how much future do you have at stake. Right. I think one of the things that I'm really trying to track and you'll not predict but just listen and observe. And so I think that there to when I say, do I see a shift, yes, but it's, it's not one shift. And it's not a collective, I don't, I don't see that it's a collective dis ease. I see that it's a collective, it's a, it's a, it's a spectrum of people going like, mmm. It's not the same as it was. I have this funny feeling Jerry to your point this funny feeling in my stomach, and I don't really know what to do with it. So pause there for now, but yeah. Thanks April. Merrily I'd love to just give you the floor for where we are in the conversation and then I'd love to pass to Eric just to riff on what gave you the spark for for suggesting this. Merrily go ahead. There's so much. Oh, am I on mute. Yes, we can hear you just fine. Like six streams of conversations in my head. Excellent. But, but obviously we're living inside of massive uncertainty. And I was just looking at a book by Richard war. It's called the wisdom pattern order disorder and reorder. And I think that's a good description. It's, but it's too neat. But because this is also very, very, very, very, very messy. I do think that living with that being not comfortable but at least patient with uncertainty is absolutely vital for our individual and collective well being. And I think the only thing, not the only thing, but the thing that can really ground skillfully, that can ground us there is being in inquiry moment by moment by moment by moment. What now, who am I what am I bringing to it what am I seeing what am I not seeing. What are other seeing. And for reasons that are not explicable to me right now. I'm, I'm focusing on that moment that I saw on the news yesterday, when the in Judge Browns, Jackson's hearings, when one of the senators was really being pretty abusive, and said, Well, you don't expect me to believe that do you. And she said, it was so beautiful she said, Yes, Senator, I do. And I thought that was such a beautiful moment of with so much that went into it that allowed her the dignity and the groundedness to say that in front of gazillions of people. Yes, Senator, I do. I tell the truth. I just thought that was beautiful. I love that thank you and I miss, I miss that part. During the testimony I cut only a couple pieces. If nobody's watched Cory Booker. When he spoke to her, you must that I just, I just I just pasted. It was just, just beautiful. Like, I would wake up and listen to that every morning for a while. It was so inspiring and so beautiful. You know, just to saying I'm not going to let anybody steal my joy was was was one thing but it was just so rich with so many other things in there. So, thanks Merly and, and how we respond to stimuli really matters. There are so many different lives, and there's plenty of traditions from, you know, take not Han and Buddhism and everything else that that go very directly and yoga that go really directly into how we respond to stimuli. And that's kind of this moment requires us to dig into those capacities. Eric. So I guess this is just a personal experience that I've been going through. And so like since February, I've started getting out a bit more. I joined a gym, and I've been exercising more I've lost weight and all that so all that stuff is a lot for me, in addition to although I can't listen to the news or whatever. Now, so I'm starting to see it in other areas of life like this past Sunday, after two years of mostly isolation, my synagogue had a huge Purim service, everybody back in the synagogue dressed up in costumes, not needing masks, it's optional. And it's just shocking that where it's all over, like the mentality covid's over. And, but it could come back anytime that we know, but still adjusting to that state of mind. And then things like okay, things that were online are now in person, like this event in April where I'm presenting my vintage computers. So, I'm trying to adjust because I did have a benefit of slowing down when covid started working from home adjusting to that, not driving everywhere. And I'm trying to find the right balance for myself. Now I have April's book, I've read a bit of it. There are certain times when I reach something and it's like, oh, it's like, I don't haven't thought that way, like, what if I lost everything? Like, how would I handle life? And so it's a challenge. I like that there's a roadmap, it's just, maybe if there was a workbook or group that that might help me more, but you've hit on a nerve. So, thanks. Thank you. And, and I think each of us is experiencing moments like that, in particular, like just last Friday, maybe it was, when I was, because already in Portland masks were optional indoors, but more than the majority of people were still wearing masks, only a few people were unmasked. And I think last Friday is when I noticed that in the places I inhabit, people were starting to unmask, it was like the masks were coming off and you could suddenly see people's faces and I wanted to print up t-shirts that said, I love seeing your smile, you know, and get those out or something like that. It was transformative and concerning in the same breath. Stuart, did you want to jump in? No, I was just going to remark on the masks about how slow people are sometimes to change in the sense that, you know, yeah, you can take your masks off, but a lot of people are still wearing masks and I wondered if it's because of health concerns, or if it's just because people get used to and habituated to certain behaviors and they don't change readily. Well, I think partly it's that viruses don't turn on and off on a switch and there's a lot of people watching what's happening with, you know, the Omicron variants that are out. If you live in Hong Kong right this minute, it's just really, really shitty, like Hong Kong is having and what's happening is their elders were mostly unvaccinated, as opposed to other countries, other islands like New Zealand where their families were heavily vaccinated and, you know, coronavirus the latest variant is wiping out the elder population at a dreadful, like a horrifying rate right now, right now. And Pete's wife Joanne has her eyes and ears and other sensors on those streams and keeps up on this kind of thing. So, so unmasking seems premature to people who are seeing those kinds of things happen around the world and are still worried, because everybody's got exhaustion from from what's going on. Go ahead, Pete. Thanks Jay. The whole COVID thing is super confusing and super weird. From from my perspective and Joanne's perspective my wife, we're unmasking way too soon. And society is kind of with it on cleaning air. We could be sending so I, you know, sending kids back to school we should still be wearing masks. Every classroom should have a Corsi Rosenthal box, you know, basically. And to do anything else seems crazy. So, maybe that's conservative to conservative to extreme or something like that, but people are still dying be to is ravaging other countries. Some of our experts say that we had, because of the US, the way we had the BA one surge we're not going to really have a BA two surge, but it's still a damaging disease and, and especially now that we've kind of mostly Hong Kong is people are dying from from COVID BA two. Since we've mostly kind of like cut down the desk. The thing to worry about still is long COVID. And it's, it's pretty serious it's, you know, it doesn't happen to everybody but it happens to a significant number of folks. So the medical people join and I watch are going okay so, you know, we kind of made it through kind of, but we're going to have to adapt our healthcare system to manage long term, long term effects of COVID organ disease, heart disease, vascular disease, dementia all that kind of stuff. So, I. So take, take, you know, take it how you will join and I are going to be wearing masks for a couple more months at least. And I kind of think that it's not really going to even out for a couple years. And there was this moment last July where there was a week where we were like, oh good things are letting up. And then Delta showed up and slammed everybody but for just that little moment everybody looked up and thought oh good we're going to be able to relent and back out of this thing. And then, you know, two years is a long time. April has a calendric memory so she was actually the last couple weeks was stepping through her travels just before lockdown two years ago. And today I was here today I was there this was happening. And we were both concerned because she had taken a trip to Asia to give some talks and so forth and was on her way back. And in Asia, it was masks everywhere she was being read, you know, at the door on her way out of the hotel back in the hotel whatever, and came home a bit early because all this was happening. But in that, you know, she hits the airport in in in Europe, and then in the US and nobody asked her where she's been or how long or there's just like no concern nothing going on, and just reliving that those moments of early, early pandemic were, were super interesting and scary. So what do we do with this moment? Shimon, you're a psychologist, what would you recommend for us? I'm actually a psychiatrist. Good point. You could, you could medicate. Are you saying we should take pills? Well, if you want to, there's a medication actually an antidepressant, fluoxetine, flu, fluoxetine, luvox, that seems to have been beneficial. I'm just listening. I mean, I am sort of like in the same situation. Sometimes too much information is not that good. Yesterday, I actually did go for a walk with a friend of mine who was a physician. And for the first time I felt some of the feelings people described, walking someplace, not masked, because there weren't that many people but then feeling uncomfortable with it. So we check our local county data every morning or a couple of times a week, just to see, you know, like the frequency, because I agree with what people were talking about before, in terms of how the government handled it. And then we nationalize everything. And some of the media also like internationalizes the data. But for me, what's important is what's happening locally. And I mentioned I was a psychiatrist because at the beginning of COVID, I was still working in the hospital. So I was rounding on patients, talking to people having, you know, like neurological and psychiatric side effects of the Medicaid of COVID before the vaccine. And it was really, really scary. I mean, you know, I would, you know, wear, you know, to, you know, masks and you know, it was pretty scary for a lot of people. And I agree. I mean, a lot of people sort of like, burnt out in the hospital setting. Since I've been retired, I've been pretty much following with my wife staying at home as much as possible. But as I said yesterday, I started going out. For me, actually, what keeps me going, and I agree with what Merilee said in terms of being able to deal with uncertainty, that's like a designation of being healthy. But for me also is being passionate and focused on something. So recently, I've been really trying to understand, not, you know, someone mentioned about government, not doing what they're supposed to do, really spending and focusing my time on how to make government function better. In my thinking, the worst thing that we're facing right now is people distrust of government. And I think it's up to everyone who can, to try to make government work better. What I'm doing right now is actually, right this minute actually, is focusing on the CDC. As you know, in 2016, they issued guidelines of opiate use with pain. And that was a very, very corrupt process as a result of which these guidelines get implemented. And there's good evidence that tens of thousands of people may have died as a result of having their medication stop and winding up with needing to use fentanyl and things of that kind. And now they're the same kind of group within CDC is working on creating new guidelines. So what my interest is as a citizen, how can we engage in making government function better. And that's what I'm working on. I'm actually working with Gene Bellinger, and we're creating a kumo map of all the different relationships that led to the COVID, to the guidelines, the opiate guidelines, and all the different organizations that are involved, all the research that has been showing the devastation that the guideline caused. And talking about COVID in 2020, right when the pandemic was starting in Asia, I started tracking what the CDC was doing. And in fact, in January of 2020, the CDC had a series of press conferences talking about COVID. And what intrigues me is why did the media not continue following that, you know, what seems to me to be a very important issue or problem. Why didn't they follow up on it until essentially March 23, which now essentially is two years exactly to the date where everyone started freaking out, where hospitals knew about it, you know, like agencies knew about it in January. So what was it about that period of time and what was it about the media that did not allow us to get ready for it a lot sooner. So that's what I'm working on. So it just gives me purpose. I don't focus so much on the immediacy of whether I can get COVID or not, but give me direction. Yeah, thank you, Shimon. Thanks a lot. And I want to use some of what you said to kind of tip us forward into, I guess, optimism, which is part of this funny moment we're in feels like moment of dramatic sort of melting and reshaping of the institutions, the assumptions, the spirit of the moment, a series of different things I think are very plastic right now, and very reshapeable. And I'm wondering how we might take advantage of this or if any of us are approaching this moment in that spirit of, hey, there's, you know, there's trust has been undermined intentionally for the last decade hard before that but for the last decade has become a major weapon in the arsenal of political parties, trust in science trust in journalism trust in elections trust in the other trust in almost like civilization itself. And so we've had an interesting chat here in the chat about you know government who needs government government government's got to be fixed. And all of that trust in government has been actively undermined and the CDC early on did things that were not that trustworthy and not really didn't really help, you know, help the situation much at all. So, who's leaning in and what does that mean. I want to insert something. I really love the question how do we live in this moment, because it takes into account. What do we do in this moment, but more fundamentally who do we be in this moment. And I think we all have a need and a responsibility for managing ourselves, managing our state managing our mindsets managing who we're being, because out of that everything else grows. And the cool thing about that is, we all have agency over ourselves. So, if we begin standing there, then who we be and what we do, and how we take in and consume and put out changes everything. And Stuart will know because he's working on a project with me on thoughtful citizenship. And the basis, I mean the beginning of it is managing yourself so that you can manage to be in even very difficult conversations and situations and still hold your center. Because without that nothing we do is going to hold up over or endure. So, I throw that on the table for conversation. I love that. There's also the inquiry Institute has put out something on thoughtful citizenship. You know, but oh that's you that's right. I'm just discovering that in my brain we discovering it thank you. Stuart, over to you. Also a BK author. Yeah, I just wanted to mention that, you know, punctuate that it all starts with the individual, even a Neil Davidson proposal yesterday or offering yesterday. You know he articulated that it starts with the individual, but the first thought I had Jerry when you mentioned the word optimism was, you know, we need to define that what do we mean by optimism, optimistic that we're not all fine and we're going to go back to the way it was before all of the global issues. No, the optimism for me is that it's a it's a it's a great time of learning. And as we all know learning, learning creates endorphins in the system. And so, you know, we're learning our way through how to be different in this world, how to remake institutions and how to reorganize society. In a sense, it's a it's an absolutely wonderful opportunity for those of us that continue to live and living may be very, very different as we move into the future. My internet was completely down for, you know, 24 hours, including my cable TV. All right. I was just starting to relish the quiet when they fixed it. It was just an unbelievably and wonderful meditational state and then they fixed it. And you could turn it off story. But we don't we don't keep our hand off that knob. Right. Thanks to her. I'm wondering if the focus on the individual is part of the too much focus on the individual problem that we have in Western civilization. We're not putting the effort into learning about our institutions. We're not putting the effort into understanding the history that brings us to this moment. As a concrete example, the stuff that's going on between Russia and the Ukraine has a history. For example, there was a coup in the Ukraine in 2014 that took out a pro-Soviet government that had been elected and put in a kind of fake government sponsored by the US. Nobody seems to know that history. And it just points to the fact that, you know, as an individual, that it's not a very strong leverage point for how society works. We have to be careful. It's not an either or at all. Yeah, I was hearing or definitely not. It's really, who do I be such that I can do and contribute and think as broadly as possible, and then choose some leveraged actions with whomever. Just just to add to to Doug's historical fact about Ukraine and Russia, I remember reading that at some moment in time around 2014, Russia wanted to join NATO. They rejected. Yeah, that's interesting. Anybody who runs deep on on sort of Ukraine Belarus Russia on these topics because I thought Yanukovych was put in power and he was a Russian puppet. And he had been pushed out by the Euro Maidan protests and the Ukrainian Revolution. So I have a slightly different understanding of how those things went down. So let's go Gil Claus and back to Doug. So before you go I'm trying to get my hand down and it's not taking on when I click on lower the hand. Ah, you know what, this is, oh, you got it done. I was about to lower it because I'm the host I can lower your hand but you found it. Klaus I think it's you. No, it's me. Oh good skill. Yeah, you took your hand. Yeah. So it's complicated kids. You know, it's not either or and we're and we're wired either or a black white good bad this that. And in particular our mediators have a very hard time dealing with complexity where there's you know, pluses and minuses on both sides of the story. And if you follow the Ukraine story over the course of a month or a year or eight years or 10 years or 30 years or 100 years could vary different stories. And there's a lovely animated map on YouTube. Sorry, showing the European boundaries over the last 1000 years. I really encourage people to have a look at it because it's like it's not the picture that we grew up with it's not the last 70 we're in a 70 year very anomalous period in human history that we know that we're coming to the end of here. I think it's been there was a period when the Lithuania Empire was bigger than Russia. You know, little tiny pipsqueak Baltic state Lithuania encompassed, you know, most of Poland chunks of Russia chunks of the Austrian Empire chunks of Romania. These things are very have been very malleable and so what is national identity in the face of this big question. There was a Putin gave a speech a couple of weeks ago and the basic coverage in the Western press or in the American press these was this was a deranged speech. And if you read it. It's not deranged. I mean it's, I think it's deeply wrong and dangerous and bad in many ways but it's coherent that reflects a geopolitical historical analysis that has some grounding. Peter Zion on the geopolitics of Europe and Asia and Central Asia. See Alexander do do get as the kind of source point for a lot of Putin's perspective on Russian Empire and Russian identity point beings that you can't, you can't win by just demonizing your enemy you have to understand your military leaders deeply understand that political leaders and certainly even less media leaders seem to not So, you know, George Kennan who was the architect of the US containment policy said in I think 1997 that pushing NATO eastward is a huge error. How could it don't do this. This is a guy who is not a fan of Soviet Union or Russia this is of course after Soviet Union. William Perry who is the Secretary of Defense under Clinton in the 90s apparently was close to resigning over US and NATO expansion policy because of the strategic dangers of that. So, you know, there are reasons that Putin could be upset. There's no understanding of Russian security concerns you you stand in the Kremlin and look west, and there are no natural barriers for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles. It's an indefensible Western border on the other hand, Putin is operating off of this, this historically constructed fantasy of Russian Empire Russian identity of the Russian Empire. And, and where this where this comes down to real life challenge which you see every day is that NATO and United States are grappling with what are the defenses against this guy that do not trigger him into nuclear escalation. And it's, you know, it's one of those things that makes me glad that I'm not in political leadership because I don't know how you deal with that question. There's an incalculable risk with enormous consequences and we're right in the middle of that one. And so many of the narratives, like some of the ones you just just put on the table, dictate action or create the sort of web of assumptions and this whole idea of NATO membership is one of them. Okay, a couple days ago I watched the 20 is president or premier. Basically say hey, Vladimir, you should ask yourself why all these border countries want to join NATO, like want to have been trying to join NATO like you should really ask yourself because we don't trust you you are a kleptocracy we don't want to be drawn into your circle kind of thing. And then half the people in these countries would have voted otherwise and would have you know faced East so it's it's really really complicated. And in the, you know, media political over simplification environment that we live in you have Republicans yelling at Biden for why aren't you more aggressive against food and of course, you know, a month ago they were in favor of that's, you know, water under the bridge. So it's easy to posture, but you know, I would love to see a no fly zone to keep Russian planes out of there but if the no fly zone triggers a nuclear exchange. You know, I'm shopping for period if you think about if I should shop for iodine pills. Just, you know, small investment at a small amount of risk mitigation on a very unlikely possibility. But where else do I have agency in this thing. Well I think the, the use by date on iodine pills is probably pretty far away so you might as well buy a couple right. Yeah, it's not like they're going to age out on your shelf. I'm class than steward. Yeah, the Deutsche Welle not a German podcasting system is putting in some some pretty solid reporting I posted a documentary there which they developed a war unfolding this struggle for Ukraine that has a historic perspective of what is happening here that relationship and how Russians think how Ukrainians think about their relationship, but there's one episode that really hit home with me was a young couple. They have a middle class smart looking people, husband wife, maybe in their 30s, having a child in their arms, and they have to separate at the border. They were on their way they were at the Polish border and men between 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave they have to go and take up arms. You can see the shock on their faces they were completely shocked, right, because they've a decade ripped out of a world that we live in. And all of a sudden there was a bomb that ripped their building apart and they are condominium that they have saved up for and able to establish sort of an upper middle class lifestyle was gone was gone had vanished. And they had to split up. So the wife and the child know baby had to had had to leave they had to separate and he had to turn around go back and join the military and you could see how traumatized they were. And so that actually hit me because I've been traumatized for years. Since I started looking with my my my first experience 10 years ago. I took a course on university on course era introduction to sustainability, and I actually wrote in an article that got invited by the professor later into a round table discussion, are we insane, because you look at this data. And I mean it's just, it's just ridiculously easy to understand where these 20 lines are heading. So we are on a trajectory right that leads us into a destination where we don't want to be I mean it's just so obvious right and you can't get it across. I mean, maybe that was that was like this bomb just ripped my place apart and I'm in shock right and I've been in shock for 10 years, trying to figure out where where you go with this. But that's really, you know, I think what is happening to us is that the environmental catastrophe that is unfolding around us is a slow motions thing and we can't come to grips with it. Anybody living in the Ukraine being encircled by the Russian army right should have raised some alarms. I mean clearly, you know, a cost. I mean, a lot of people in fact my son was working for Krameli which is their programming team is located into Ukraine. They pulled all their people out three weeks before anything happened and transferred them into Poland because how can you accept this kind of risk. So it's this how can we tolerate this kind of risk and pretend everything is normal. It's not normal. You know, this time we're living in is not normal and we're heading into a future that if we stay on this trajectory is going to be tragic. You muted Jerry. I just noticed that newly mistake sorry. Thank you class I really appreciate that. Thank you because I went to follow the link to the video that class and put earlier in the chat and muted myself so it wouldn't play and then I forgot. So, there we are. Stuart then angry. Yeah, I just wanted to pick up on on on something that Gil said about, you know, the edge of not precipitating a nuclear war. If you're in the diplomatic core. And what that raises for me on the other side is, you know, how long do we let ourself be held hostage by someone who's acting in a way that's just totally unhousebroken in terms of human civilization, you know, exemplified by the story that class just told. This also shows that we've got, you know, these, these international institutions that have no teeth, the International Criminal Court in the United Nations. Just again, raising the need that after, you know, because at some time, this will be a solution, it may be, it may be a doctor strange love solution. We don't, we don't, we don't know that, you know, we're talking about iodine pills in this conversation. And here we are in a, in a to quote a phrase in an extraordinary state of flux. Certainly. Exactly. And, and there's a mental, there's a big difference between iodine pills and where will we hide. And gosh, there's a moment here where we could reinvent governance and mutual aid and wealth as grace put in front of us a couple months ago and a bunch of other things. And people are working full time on those sorts of efforts. I'm angry. Well, you know, it's interesting. When everyone is talking about the situation we're in right now with, and why it happened, whether it was NATO encroaching or some kind of diplomatic issue or a puppet government not being in Ukraine and I would just like to add that. I think I've heard from my very small anecdotal sampling of living in Estonia that I feel like right now the biggest thing is that Russia has realized that the economies around it are an existential threat to Russia, because Ukraine had an incredible tech industry plowing ahead as entrepreneurial as any other country I've seen. You have Estonia Latvia the Baltics, you know with this incredible economic machine that makes Russia look like, you know, something out of the dark ages. There is there is an entrepreneurial scene in Russia as well. But it's not in the typical Western model for the most part. So I think I'm not sure that it was necessarily anything that we could have prevented in some ways because the way Russia saw that this encroachment of economic, you know, prosperity in these countries these former Soviet republics really is just a threat to them to the way he runs this right. And so, you know how do we deal with that because the New World Order, what I see is that Russia is the way that he runs it is an old model that no longer works and it's a last grab to say hey we still have some relevance in this New World Order, and he does not anymore, whether this is the last gas, we don't know, he could still have another few chapters to eke out this horrible thing, or this could be the end of it, and I hope it is. So, yeah, what do we do at this stage, we can't stop, you know, this pressure this all these pressures on on Russia, because the world is changing and, and, and that's going away. Even China's got a model now where they have a middle class, and they're part of the world, more than Russia, and China's in such a, China's in such a weird position right now, I mean, really, with what's going on there with the pandemic and the way they're locking down that's a whole nother thing that's messed up their model but anyway those were just some of my thoughts as I was listening to people. Yeah, thank you. And if you're Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, you are worried sick about all this, because there's a giant power that formerly looked really formidable parked right next door. Doug. The economy that you describe on the western edge of Russia is the same economy that's causing the problems with climate change. It's high energy high push through and creating inequality. So the, the nexus of problems that we're in is just incredibly complex. I think efforts to try and change one thing at a time fail, because as soon as you try and change one thing you wrap against all the others. In that kind of existential moment, what do you do. My own feeling is actually things have to fall apart a little bit more before they could be put back together. And that means decided going through an extremely painful phase. And the question is how far do things have to fall apart before they reshape. The question about climate change is like how much destruction needs to happen before people actually pick up an act is, you know, do we have to lose large chunks of place or population or food systems before people will treat it as more of an emergency, and we're facing a whole series of emergencies concurrently right now. And I don't want to, you know, because, because climate change functions in, in, in form of tipping points. And once you once you cross that tipping point there's no going back. You know, so for example, when you go online, you look at the doomsday glacier, you know, that's, that's a real thing. This glacier could actually collapse within the next five six is projected to collapse within the next five to six years. If that happens, all bets are off because the introduction of so much fresh water into the Gulf Stream circulatory system could bring that to a halt and dramatically change the global climate system. And there are risk factors out there where, you know, you wait for all of that to happen and then act. It's done. It's too late and this is the unique challenge that we have now is to be able to, to work in in an anticipatory stance. Right, that's, we have never been able as a species we have never been able to do that. And so there's, there is no answer that I would have for that. But as this as has happened a number of times in this conversation, people are pulling at both ends. I think it's all going on at the same time. And that's where the conditioning of the human being to be able to navigate in this context is going to be so important otherwise we will all as individuals and as a social system, implode into a dystopian context. And then a comment on climate. I think we ought to all systematically start saying climate crisis, rather than climate change, because the word change kinds of lulls us into what like April was talking. Oh, change. No, it's not that. So I'd like to bring in what is the role of disinformation. And then behind that, who is doing it with what kind of thinking, and for what purposes because that's a lot what's keeping people in the, the kind of fake comfort. One of the things that I'm marveling at is how good Putin and circan and his lieutenants and his fear were at misinformation, like really like world class and there's a thought in my brain that says, we are already in a nonlinear war, just stimulated by a documentary about hyper normalization that Adam Curtis did back in 2016. And I watched hyper normalization and Adam Curtis has lots of editorial commentary. He feels very strongly about things but he's a BBC documentarian who finds really interesting footage in BBC archives around the world. And he assembled this story that that was plausible to me that that, hey, World War three is already happening it's a it's a it's a psychological war because nonlinear war is cheaper than bullets and bombs. And that's a thought I'd had years ago, and that Putin has just lived out counterintuitively because he's now expending bullets bombs and lives at a rate that is shocking with no forward progress. And, and how did how did somebody who's such a master of nonlinear war misinformation fucked us up so royally, like like really how did how did it happen so badly. And so one of the sources of misinformation is there but there's plenty of others because this art of flooding the zone. There's a bunch of terms for this has been passed around. There's a lot of people who've learned how to do this professionally like little sub industries to to manage to to create impressions or do grass. It even goes back to sort of great fake, what's it called astroturfing, you know fake grassroots. So grassroots things are interesting we love grassroots movements. So people learned how to astroturf which was fake grassroots movements that goes back to consumer mass marketing in the, you know, web 2.0 era. It's a common thing so all these things are kind of related their technologies are related. All those kinds of things. Anybody else on misinformation, malinformation, disinformation in its role. I throw in one last word about this was pointing out that Putin is caught in a previous time and he's fighting a war from previous time. I've noticed that militarily he's likewise doing things that come from previous time. That's what he grew up with and that's what he thinks is still effective. And what I don't know. I think he's also suffering. This is just superficial from reading what's out there but I think he's also suffering from the kleptocracy and corruption that he sprouted as a country, because for example they developed encrypted radio communication devices that failed. So there are people in the field don't have protected communications they're busy using cell phones using whatever the hell they can to talk and we're getting these recordings that are embarrassing, you know, that are humiliating actually in different ways. Isn't he exposing how weak they really are. This war should not be going this way if under any circumstance. Absolutely, unbelievably vulnerable is what they're showing it's it's it's crazy. It's crazy because this was a power that everybody feared that has suddenly been shown to be naked and vulnerable, which is super interesting. And this may be why that we end up in a nuclear war because he cannot lose, he cannot lose in terms of his own psyche there's no, there is no exit ramp I don't think. So, that's why I find my own thinking, going to, you know, going on the attack, which is just crazy making for me that that that that this is where my mindset is going preemptive strikes and things like that. I was doing some research about the difference in the areas and how they might play out which is just, I can't believe it. It's an effort and my entire life's work. Here we are. And here we are, I know, Mike, I'm, you have, Julian, see you have to, you have to bounce I think, Mike, I'm sorry that you have your own call parallel to the last hour we had because we could have used you Mike is at the Carnegie and Darwin for world peace. And we've been sort of growth industry right now, growth industry job, job international piece that there's, there's no, no, no lack of a need for it. Exactly. But yeah, I'm sorry I missed the fun I can catch up later. That's, that's all right. Thank you. I would, I would recommend I mean this is self promotion or promotion of our organization but some of the content that my colleagues around the world have been publishing on Ukraine and particularly the ripple effects. You know how it's being seen in other parts of the world and what the impacts could be when food prices go through the roof. There's a lot of really good stuff coming out of Carnegie endowment so are there. Are there particular individuals you recommend, can you sort of feed a couple things into the chat. A couple yeah the nuclear folks are some of the best in the world. And so that's something that would be very interesting. The analysis of what China is trying to do as they try to, you know, kind of go between the US and Russia, and then the Indians as well this is all, it's all fascinating, but I'll put a few things out. I love that. Thank you. I go. Yeah, thanks. Naked Jerry is only partly naked. He's still got more nukes than anybody. And we suspect a willingness to use them. So there's that Stuart Stuart shit changes. I mean, like, this is, this is, this is meta and important to this conversation because you talk about, you know, the, I forget your exact words but the, you know, the way that you live your entire life the values and concerns you've lived your entire life and we are all of a sudden in a very different set of concerns with very different perspectives and parameters I mean I grew up, you know I remember standing with my dad in 1962 in Times Square calling for nuclear disarmament. You know, I grew up under that shadow thought it was over. There we go. The thing about authoritarianism Ingrid I liked the thought that it's on the run but it looks like it's also not on the run. Because many folks including G and MBS and others see this as a confrontation of authoritarianism and democracy which they will argue is a more effective and efficient system. And this plays in addition to the kleptocracy that Jerry was talking about is the is the fundamental cybernetic defect of authoritarian systems so the lack requisite variety. You know, they can't get enough information, timely and accurate information because if you bring bad news to the king you get your tongue cut out or your head cut off. And so Putin for whatever his own psychological makeup is, is in an information bubble of his own construction. It may be one of the factors that drives bad military strategy. You need diversity not as a matter of justice and dignity but for requisite variety and decision making. And it's interesting you remove trust from the equation. As Putin is systematically been doing from the government as he suspects everybody, and you destroy all the needed channels for innovation communication coordination, everything else look like they just go away. So you and April could do a whole series of books with single word titles. Sounds good. Doug than Eric. Eric's nice to see you. I find myself trying to think about the history of how we got here. And I'm drawn to the fact that we live on the hockey stick that went with population and energy, feeding off of each other, creating a much larger population. That's a cause background. But the interesting question to me is what was the culture that led to the hockey stick. And is that culture still operative and still causing our problems. Can you say more about that place. Well, humanity actually did pretty well living on the surface of the earth until it moved towards coal and oil. And the history of that's pretty complicated as to why that happened. One view is that it was economic efficiency, but another view is that shifting to coal. Made it easier for corporations to move around and control their workers. That's a really interesting idea. You know, I just think that that the, the culture that we're in, which is fairly materialistic coming probably from the Greeks is part of our problem. We know much more about things than we do about people. And it's causing us tremendous problems because you try and maximize around things and not maximize around people and you get the kind of culture that we're in. In against the grain, James Scott, it's a brilliant book. It's kind of like a precursor to the dawn of everything. I love it. Yep. And against the grain is fabulous and he basically says, why are grains so important around the world do not as like potatoes are more nutritious than grains. Why are grains important a they ripen at the same time so we have harvest festivals they grow above ground so you can tell who's growing it and how much is growing it they store well and they're very transportable with some minimal rodents and rot taxes. Basically, civilized humans who were cooked in China they talked about the cooked and uncooked people, the cooked were the ones they've civilized into cities civilized people could then be taxed and the whole thing works out really well so so then it turns out that people who were dependent on grains and eating mostly grain based diets inside the cities had vitamin deficiencies and nutritional deficiencies and their skeletons look worse than the people who were outside eating a variety of things because they understood the landscape. And so there's, there's lots of really, really interesting writings and thinking about the transition from the old way of being into some new industrial or other way or agricultural way of being, you know civilization in air quotes. All of which feeds our beliefs today about what's possible what we want to try to do what what a new optimal system might look like etc etc because if we think that life used to be nasty brutish and short and we were all starving and hungry on the tundra and fighting each other all the time. Then, there's nothing we can learn from that era that matters. If we don't think that there's possibly a lot we can learn from and we can question ourselves why did we let coal and grain sort of shift our world so dramatically. And in what ways can we mitigate change do whatever. Anyway, these are these are juicy lovely complicated issues that that are relevant because they form this background sort of set of forces that influence all of us in our choices about what to believe what not to believe what to try to do. I'm Eric. I was looking for some, some slide from that I will show it later because it's too good, not to show directly. And it's about dictatorship. I am. There's so many layers like that. The whole escalation towards nuclear war. I don't know. He's a bit off put in so he might do weird things he's packed in a corner that's true. But he's also very tactical person and the only reason why he would use nuclear war is if he doesn't want to admit that he's one and he wants to lose then everything, including all human life. In that case it doesn't make sense for him to do it. He wants to win he wants to stay in power. He wants to stay in his position and he uses these nuclear arms as a strong arm thing he he's strong arms everyone into submission not to get involved in the war in Ukraine. He's a very tactical way in a very successful way for him to do that. And the fact that nobody can read him is maybe also very good tactic from his end. He has been isolated he's is circle of in of advisors advisors has shrunk. And that's actually what is also on the slide. It's like a woman talking about dictatorship all over the world and was that there's syncopates people talking the truth for him that as he wants to hear it. And then giving him the lies that made him make make wrong decisions that he made now. So he's basically a personalized dictator. He's a personalized personal. Yeah, I don't know. But he, I think from his position. It's weird to imagine how he can think now and what he can still do but I think he will do everything he can to still steer towards winning somehow. Unless he's any is backed into a corner like he can't control the information. And definitely, right now it's still 80% or something of the population that believe in him or something, but that's difficult to read statistics. But once that information bubble is going to burst. That's maybe when we have to start getting worried. Yes. Before that, I don't think it's a wise decision for him technically but if he's completely losing his mind maybe there's something completely irrational yet. But then still it's a chain of comment that still has to follow and then I've read somewhere that it's like a 5050 chance if people follow through an action like that like there was a Russian guy who stopped us in the Cold War. Before he made a decision by himself as saying no to a decision in command. Yeah, it's weird to read into that. But also, and yet another part is how cynical is this war. It's not a question. It's not a statement. It's a question. And so this debate on how much responsibility does NATO have how much responsibility does the US have. And of course it's all about those proxy wars and how Afghanistan Vietnam that those kind of wars were examples also for like US. Once, once country joins NATO, they put a lot of missiles in that country and then that's actually true. The US is everywhere. It's also around China, every country around China has missile bases. So it has a pointer from his perspective, I can understand that he feels threatened. I think we invade Ukraine as far as we know right now because Ukraine would have not joined the NATO soon. And now they're sure to join the NATO so that's I'm not sure that I'm not sure that I'm not sure they're definitely going to join that's I think that's one of the negotiating chips on the table should there be a peace agreement. It's like, yeah, okay, no, yeah, true but Finland is joining and Sweden is joining. I think there's like 20 things that happened that are the opposite of what Putin expected to happen. He doesn't care about NATO. Putin cares about a successful, prospering democracy right over the border. That's what he cares about. Having people watch that develop. It's the same reason he's, he's squashed Belarus. And tell jikestani I mean not to jikestan cousin makes it but what makes you say he doesn't care about NATO. That's not his, that's not his negotiation that's not what he really wants. We can give him that he wants on NATO. So these are all different perspectives on the problem, which and I'm really happy to have various perspectives on the problem. And also I'll add a note which is, we talked a little bit about Alexander Dugan and there's this whole thing called Eurasianism, which is like Mother Russia and all that, and it could be that that's all just cover talk. Right, that it could be that the narrative of re establishing Mother Russia and Eurasianism makes a really nice cover for, hey, I can't actually have a functional democracy next door I need to find an excuse to go attack them. And, and whether these things are, or it could be that he's actually been, you know, I find it very funny that Putin is like the last syllable and Rasputin. Anybody remember Rasputin. Like, isn't that weird. I find that really kind of scary weird. The other thing not discount is the importance of the Orthodox Church, which is where it was just kind of what I'm folding in here which is like, maybe his brain was eating Rasputin style by this mythical mother Russia. So the Kievan roots are the birthplace of the Russian sort of people and ethos and Kievan is from Kiev. So this is the beating heart, the beating heart of Mother Russia kind of beats in Ukraine in some strange way. Yeah, but then it goes back to Viking warlords who seated the Kievan roots so that's exactly the trail is crazy. But the reason why I think he believes his own craziness is also because that's a general thing what dictators do in their personalized role, but also because of the weirdness of the things that he does. He had this show where on television, there wasn't, he was in this shirtless on top of a horse. The shirtless. It looks so weird, but that only makes sense if he really believes that he is this kind of hero that carries the, that carries his, his country forward. Otherwise, I do that. Do that crazy thing. I know. I'll shut up there because there's plenty more I can say. Yeah, but Mike, I am interested by your point but you begin with a certainty that I don't, I don't think you can really know that for sure. Unless unless he, unless he really is convinced he's losing and he is now hiring execution squads to go out and kill deserters from the Russian army he's actually sending in people who will kill the deserters and make sure that everybody stays in line. But as I say, the only way he would care about NATO is if he realizes he's losing and as a negotiation ploy. He says, Oh, okay, well if you. That would get a fine, but his real objective doesn't have to do with NATO and and and if, if, if he's still moving in and and NATO and the US and everybody said okay well we guarantee in blood, we're going to sign this will never let Ukraine in NATO, he would still keep moving. As long as he has the advantage he's going to keep Mike what he wants to crush democracy and the economy of Ukraine. Mike what's your sense of the most likely end game in this morning. Syria. Say more. You know, five more cities turned to dust like Aleppo and grows me. That's not that's not in game that's interim then what. Syria is not an in his in his series still doing it. There's some analysts who say that, despite the media coverage that talks about indiscriminate Russian bombing the Russian Air Force has actually been very much held back and reserved the bombing is much more selective it's ugly and worse and Mario pulled in other places but not the vastness of the carpet bombing like they did in the left. The thing though is that the, the artillery. Which is less accurate. Yeah, and and I mean it's yeah it's very clear that they're not knocking out the electric grid they mean the internet they need the cellular system because otherwise they can't communicate. Well, but you know if they really wanted to have total war they would at least make sure there's no water and no electricity to large parts of the of the country and they haven't done cyber attacks, which could have done that without weaponry. They thought they were going to wall sin and take over they didn't want to have to rebuild everything because that's expensive. They've already done $100 billion in damage or more. But I agree, but but they are definitely targeting civilians, but it's a terrorism ploy. But Mike, if you see if you see the end game as a lepo, then you see that NATO is not going to do anything to stop them. So you're saying, unless he starts using chemical weapons or biological weapons. And then there is a possibility of a humanitarian no flies on. And that's something where they say okay guys, you know there's large parts of the country that are now running out of food, and particularly medicine. I mean that's Putin is going to kill 10s of thousands of Ukrainians who are, you know, seniors, dependent upon insulin. I mean that's happening already. So at some level, you've got a madman on the loose. You've got a madman on the loose. If you've got someone acting like that in a state in a city in the US, you go pick them up and you lock them up. Or we vote them in or we vote them into office. Either one of those and that's, that's the absurdity of this situation in some way. And the way he's just holding everyone hostage, because of the nuclear threat. Well, he may not be mad. There is the madman diplomacy. I mean, Nixon did this Nixon would make sure that the Russians overheard him telling Kissinger. You know, it's just time that we knew Kanoi, and suddenly the Russian intelligence services would tell their friends in Moscow who would tell their friends in Hanoi that the president is totally bonkers you'd better be a little more flexible at the negotiating table. But just to kill X number of people, the way he's doing that. In my lexicon, there is a madman loose. I mean, he's an evil, cruel person who has done this in Georgia, in Chechnya, in Syria, and is now playing the same playbook. But again, mad or evil, I mean, you take your choice. Mad's an interpretation, you know, clearly he's a bully. And what do you do with the bully, you know, you let the bully bully you and you let the bully bully you and at some point you say I'm going to stop the bully from bullying me which unless somebody stops the bully the bully keeps on bullying. But there is a risk because the bully may, you know, may beat you. Well, the best thing you do is you really somehow harm the bullies friends and supporters, which we're doing. Very well. We're not doing enough to Belarus though. I mean that's that's where we really work and that which we can't. Well, China's not China's China's really trying to walk between me and they aren't sending weapons in. That's a good lesson that I'm sorry. Thank you. Ingrid was trying to step in a little earlier and then I'd love to take our last couple minutes to look up a little bit and to step out of the, is he a lunatic and what's he going to do next into what the opportunities are and we're almost at the end of our call and Ingrid I might have misinterpreted I thought I saw you wanting to step in. I just want to quickly say that what he's doing is he's holding all of the civilians hostage there and they're starving to death, and no one's doing anything because if NATO intervenes does no fly or anything we're in a world war. So that can't be done unless there is some attack on a NATO country or a missile over fire so we're really in a predicament where it's difficult to do a lot of things. Yeah. I appreciate that a lot. Yeah. Let's take a breath. And we have only a few minutes left in our time together. And anybody who would like to offer something forward looking, please step in. Or if you have a poem you'd like to read or anything else. I was going to say watch Dr. strange love tonight. I had a few of us are starting a reading circle for dawn of everything I put a couple links and in town. I want to do that. Not a poem Jerry by post this in the channel. From string sir got it to my garage said all that happens is the cause of all that happens causes are numberless. The idea of a sole cause is an illusion. I find somehow I don't know why I find some comfort in that these days. It's interesting and we've been we've been having lots of conversations about sense making and how that works, which we'll get back to. I find I find that moving the potential causes and forces around in my head and in places and you know on documents is really useful. Just to sort out, oh wait a minute, you know that this whole train of thought is really huge and I've been forgetting about it. Like what Mike put on the table which is putting just doesn't want you know a healthy democracy next door that that's interesting to me to to have those things in play. I'm of the mind that we need to decentralize the economy as much as possible and convey local control. Where that where that is practical and where that makes sense now starting with the food system stuff but starting with social services have have centralized support structures but localized control. Because the economy is way beyond in complexity for any kind of centralized solution. As we can clearly see in in environmental issues but it's also the social social economic conditions are so different, even within a country certainly like the US. So it has to it has to move to local and then empower people to help themselves protect themselves. I don't I don't see any, any centralized local solution to to any, to any of our issues. And as Homer would ask if he were here. Who, who is we. When we say we who we're referring to we say I'm referring to those saying enough to wanting to protect yourself and looking for this collective well being. And this is what the point that was raised earlier you know we have to shift focus away from us as individuals and our individual center here and think about it in terms of the social network we're embedded within and make sure that stays healthy and and and in good shape. Michael. Actually, picking up on something plus was saying and, and also heartening back to during the early part of the call I was not. I didn't have a great connection. So I missed some stuff, but one thing I did hear was Stuart poking fun at himself a bit about in one sentence, saying something about world and, you know, forces bubbling up from the decentralized masses in use word decentralized but but I think at the risk of being labeled something of a techno utopian by saying so. There is something in looking at in New York during Hurricane Sandy, one of the most dynamic disaster responses was from the network of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which was this kind of network that was just in position to respond to things in a way that hierarchical forces were not and made a lot of good stuff happen and ended up being worked with and depended on by some of the more, you know, conventional governmental apparatus, whatever the word is. And I do think that there's a potential for a world government to bubble up from the decentralized, you know, just just, you know the membrane of, of all of our, you know, all of our systems are not necessarily all the same we're not going to have a majoritarian, you know, rule of the world, but you know certain things are going to be more important and in certain localities and certain regions, and populations to put themselves in a position where their connection is so great that they're in a position to virtually disregard the, the nations, the, you know, authorities above them is a goal worth, at least examining. So, yeah. My thought. Michael thank you that's a beautiful. That's a beautiful thought to leave us with I really appreciate that. Oh, and Stuart just posted the poem of the day number 24, which we can all read and then I'll close down the call. Actually, do you want to read it to a story. You're muted. Sure. Thank you for asking. It's called breakthrough. And it's today's poem on a personal verge step forward exhibit nerve world not a frightening place opportunity to express grace tears shed war roar with laughter focus on a compelling after learn lessons source of wisdom grow from beauty in them. We all need absolution preparing for a next solution. Never perfect at times cruel, sometimes caviar, sometimes gruel, nearing breakthroughs you need will come a year's bring more greed, have enough to meet needs have more time to good deeds. Beyond the problem mindset. See what's here, and yet challenge for one and all learn. Think, no need fall, essential surround us here, potential bliss, little fear, live in a grateful way. Count blessings, sit and pray. Thank you very, very much. And thank you all for this great conversation and for being here. Thanks everyone. Bye for now.