 This is the OGM weekly call, the check-in call on Thursday, April 27th, 2023. We are gathered here, dearly beloved, we are gathered here to celebrate the world and all its strangeness and all the different ways in which we are interacting with it. And apparently, Doug Carmichael has a birthday today. A little bird is telling me. So, Doug, you're 29? 29, I think, by a fact, multiplied by a three. Excellent. I'm 86, I can't believe it. That is crazy and wonderful. Happy birthday, heartfelt, heartfelt birthday wishes from us. Thank you for being here. We are in check-in mode, and Doug is just back from a trip to Montenegro, and I just learned moments ago that he's going to move there for a while. So, since we are in check-in mode, maybe Doug, you'd be a great person to sort of take us in to do a bit of a bit of check-in. And I will step aside and we can do the use your hand to step in for the check-ins. I won't pass the floor. Take a, take a beat or a breath or a pause before you check in so that we have a chance to kind of process what everybody's saying. Everybody's gone once, so please don't respond to what's being said during the check-in round. When everybody's kind of gone once, then I'll step back in and play traffic cop for the conversation, and we can go from there. But Doug, if you'll, if you'll take us in, that would be lovely. I'm somewhat reluctant, but I will. What's been on my mind other than moving to Montenegro, which is probably the last big adventure of my life, and I'm really looking forward to it, but it's filled with crises, which is why I'm going there. So my check-in, what I've been thinking about is, is this group another example of climate denial. And if we weren't doing climate denial, what will we talk about? Questions like, what do we do with the remaining time? And how much remaining time do we have? So I'm going to stop there. And Gil, I can't tell if you're pausing just to pause, but the pause is welcome. You have your hand up and the floor is yours. I'm pausing just to pause. Thank you. And the cue to us that you're, that you got that is you unmute yourself but don't start speaking yet, but that's totally fine. I just couldn't see you because your video is not on. Got it. Thank you. I'll do that. So, yeah, thank you, Doug, for that gentle lead-in. I'm thinking a lot these days about climate denial and poisoning of the planet denial and fascism denial. It's a cheery little morning themes. But I'm, I'm not liking the trends I'm seeing or the reactions that we're mounting to them. And so this is an interest for me an interesting background of deep concern against my usual, you know, glasses have full perspective on things. The background on this is a COVID has finally visited our household Jane and I have had both had very mild cases. So that's good. But what has struck me about it is not not so much the physical symptoms but the mental, you know, energy flag focus down. And, you know, much more reactive to things than driving forward with, with, with focus and, you know, and, and so in the midst of it I wonder is that just like, you know, is that a passing phenomenon that will fade with this disease or is that a new phase for me in my life. So again, there's another there's another glasses not have full perspective on a complex situation. I'll just say one more thing on the poisoning of something Jane and I've been talking about a lot and from, you know, from ecological perspective and medical perspective, it seems that we're in a very, very bad game. You know, kicking kicking the supports out from under everything that matters with little recognition of that and, you know, and it's a mystery about how that gets shifted if it does get shifted. So, that's where I am I will, the focus will return the, you know, my fighting spirit will return but looking for I'm puzzling about where to stand in the midst of this phase and human history, and how to contribute, and how to do it in a way that keeps body and so on this household and on that sherry note, I will pass the silent stick. Yeah, what comes to mind is a French guy. I don't know if he's still alive, but some 10 years back, he was a survivor of the Nazi occupation in France and not experienced this entire horrible Second World War era, missed all its implications and so on and listening to this horrible stuff. And he was writing a little book saying time to be outraged. And, and it really captured me because that's was just about the time that I started to get into sustainability issues I had taken the course with Jeffrey Sachs at Columbia and MIT and stuff and I'm thinking which is crazy. What is this here, right. And the idea that, you know, you have to be outraged in order to express the emotion that is needed to communicate what you need to say. This whole idea of politeness and you can see it now. You know, I was listening yesterday to this young trans lady in Montana, who is just so incredibly articulate and so touching in the way that she reached out. You know, but there is a recording by the young Turks that showed her speech on the floor of the Montana legislator. It's just, it's close your way and then they kicked out, you know, and, and so the, the, this, this madness that, that is, that is creeping us, you know, in people deeply understand and know that something is like really off, right. I mean, Florida, California is under water, Mississippi, where for Delta is flooding. I mean, there's around the world, you know, there's so much stuff happening. And so you feel it physically feel it my wife can't even talk about it anymore because she's just so anxious now. But then on the other hand, you know, I went to a meeting yesterday in bands on, there was a clean tech, you know, the organization of people who are working in the in the space of building, you know, clean energy systems solar systems and all of this. No one from food and agriculture presence. And so I'm not continuing trying to explain that one thirds of global emissions are caused by the way we go and raise our foot and consume food. Now, and you can't get enough energy into this field to understand that this is really true. This is really happening right and guess what. They, they are food shortages building up around the world. And it's going to hit us it's going to hit us unprepared and really hard, because we can't talk about it. And there comes a point where you don't want to cause offense. It's like what happened to know those two plaque legislators in representatives in Tennessee and this trans girl in in Montana you speak up and they kick you out. You know, but so there has to be a point of, of expressing yourself is an intensity, right, that rings through. And I think this group here is professional people who are articulate now and who have the ability to express complex thoughts in ways that hits through. They have an obligation to speak up. Well, and I think this is what duck is referring to and what I totally emphasize, you know, so we need to have conversations. And with the amazing challenge that our generation is facing here. And, and literally, I mean I took my very first course University of Illinois introduction to sustainability. I wrote a paper. And, and the professor organized a round table after because that's one of the things that was the first class, you see Illinois organized on on Coursera. And he goes, yeah, I mean there's nothing you can do, you know, you can just talk about it and explain it. And it's just like my God, how can you run towards a wall and know you're going to clash into it. You just keep running. And it has to be a point where you go whoa, you know, maybe need to slow this thing down, and then maybe shift course. So we avoid this wall and maybe we can swing by it, you know. And yes, so I mean I just I'm just so distressed now it's I'm trying to be calm and rational and find ways around the, the barriers to know that that's that prevent people from listening. Now, even with the tech guys yesterday, you know, water specialist, well do you realize that he and the high desert 86% of the water is used by agriculture. So all the, you know, energy you have is a focus on 14% of the problem. If you saw some say it's all half of it now you have achieved a 7% reduction. It's not going to cut it. So, so it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's not a good time. I'll go. I like the notion. Think globally, act locally. I think about that a lot. And I've been dealing with. I think it's called an adjustment disorder, where as basically as far as I can understand it. The parents were immigrants were born in America of immigrant parents, and they were raised to be gems. And they were. They needed to be a diamond. And maybe I shone for a while, but it was too much pressure. And, you know, in my 60s, you know, turning 60. I broke expecting myself to be perfect. Now, I think that happens with a lot of immigrant families. So, I've had to slow down rather than speed up. And I've developed mantra center. Check inputs. Check outputs. Consider before making an emotional expression. As I have here in the past, because emotional expression is especially strong ones have consequences. Emotions are real. Feelings are real. Not just feelings. They are probably close to the bedrock of a reality in some way. There's an ontology of emotion and feeling. So I've been reconsidering the way I'm expressing myself and thinking about whether I should write rather than speak. And how to do that. And basically how I go about doing that, whether I do it for free or whether I try to make some money from that because I've been doing it for free. Been experimenting on Facebook and using Facebook as a chat app using Facebook as a place for curation. I basically invite everybody to check out my public feed on Facebook. And I've been doing some ranting. But lately I've been doing more, I guess, poetic stuff. I was lucky that a friend gave me a ticket to the. Our Hooli Records awards and benefit ceremony. I saw an amazing blues musician whose name I forget. Santiago Jimenez and Dave Alvin. And I made some recordings on the phone. This amazing. It's called Samsung. S 23 ultra. And it's just astounding what kinds of recordings can make. So I'm finding out that I'm positive. Not in terms of AIDS. Hopefully. And I wonder about, you know, with the throat. You know, and I'm going to get checked out for. A salvage cancer. But, you know, if it comes up, I'll deal with it. So I'm trying to balance the positivity and negativity. And expressing myself with certain intensity. That is more calm, more clear. And more inviting for people to actually listen rather than go, oh man, Mark's too loud. I'm trying to balance the positivity and positivity on which I have been. And finding that I've been my own worst enemy. That I've internalized a lot of repression. A lot of that has come from my parents internalizing a lot of repression. My mother always used to say her mother. Said. Never. Ask for help. Because then people will have an advantage over you. And they will manipulate. Because we all need each other. You know, I did we stand divided we fall. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. I just want to say I'm in some physical pain. So if you notice anything in my demeanor, it's just, just pain in my back. Yeah, as I was listening to Doug and Gil speak, especially when Gil was talking about feeling that the supports were not there. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. What's really on my mind. My concern is that as things get worse. There's going to be a lot of people experiencing emotional distress. And that we're not equipped to handle things now. But we are really going to be in bad shape. As time goes on. And I keep thinking about the guns that are out there. We're not going to be in good shape with each other. And I accidentally wound up on a call on Sunday. I thought I was going to part two of a workshop. And I wound up on a call. It was called spiritual inclusion. It was a wonderful call. And the person leading it asked for us to think about the last time we were in a political conversation with somebody that we didn't want to talk about. And I had just had one with a very close friend of mine. The only person that's in my life still. That is totally on the other end of the spectrum. And it was really. It really taught me something. And I spend a lot of time thinking about the way I react to people. But I realized that my impatience with her. And my wanting to just like her fear was just so ridiculous in my mind that I was just like, I couldn't. She's so trapped in like the right wing narrative in this particular case. She had brought up the fact that children are being mutilated. She was, you know, That was what was in her mind. But instead of me being able to realize that in her mind, based on what she was hearing, she needed to help these poor innocent children. I couldn't hear that because I was too much. Like, stop, you're, you're destroying our country. My point is that those of us that maybe are a little bit more emotionally balanced and recognize more where we are, we're going to have to work extra hard to keep ourselves in check and figure out a better way to listen to people that do not feel like we do. Because there's a reason there's a, they're avoiding things. And then there's the bad actors that are making it even harder to get onto the same page. But I guess my message is we need to start finding ways to build in those support systems. And, you know, it starts with relationships. And just building those relationships. Thank you. A few people who've joined us since I explained the check-in protocol. We're using the zoom hand to step into the queue, take a pause before you check in. Please check in only once during the check-in round. And then we'll pick up a general conversation. So I'll check in. A lot of things are up of attention these days. Some other high level of abstraction like the oracy lab that I've been organizing six week session with six people about the question, why are we so stupid? And is there a difference between being stupid, being dumb, being ignorant, and being a fool? But I'll pass on that for a moment. I'm also very interested in whether this moment in terms of social and social paradigms relates to another word from the ancient Greek, metanoia, whether, for some reason, Western society is stricken with what Native American have called the wetiko, a kind of soul sickness, a mind virus. But I'll try to write about that last, Kairos, metanoia, and metiko for the next bi-weekly session so something more practical on my mind at the moment. In 10 days I'll be flying to Amman in Jordan to help facilitate an innovation camp about how to enhance collaboration across nine cultures that share an inland sea, the Mediterranean, about innovations in non-conventional water use under a hot Mediterranean sun and what can make those innovations endure, become sustainable practice. We'll have 50 to 60 people from nine national cultures, a number of prototypes were developed last winter in Tunis, but they remain paper prototypes and I've taken upon myself the challenge of helping support 50 to 60 people from nine national cultures with no real history of good collaboration to take prototypes from paper and decides on concrete steps to realize them in practice. So to me that links back to the beginning of the conversation as well about climate change and climate denial. I'll find out of which people in those nine cultures are not looking up, are looking away, and which people are actually committed to do something about innovation and water use in very hot Mediterranean cultures. So that's on my mind at the moment. It's interesting that everybody is kind of in this situation. I've been going through a lot with my personal situation and where I'll be living and things. That's kind of two extremes, but I'm trying to focus actually more on the positive. And some of the trying to put perspective on things, I think it was the tofflers with the third wave, whatever were they talked about. I guess the premise is in a nutshell is that the communications technology has enabled like the next wave and things so like writing, it's like there are four millennia to transfer from hunter gatherers to farmers and then the printing press helps spark the industrial revolution over three centuries. And then in the lifetime of in the past 100 years, I mean we've probably had four or five apocleships and technology and that gives me hope is that we have groups like this that we can be meeting on soon and anyone in the world can be talking with anybody else in the world in real time and English has kind of become I guess the official first or second language just about everybody. So that people can communicate complex ideas and things. With all the groups I've been part of the one thing that is encouraging is there's just there's there is a lot of synergy going on. And I've since I took a sabbatical from my doctoral program I've been getting quite involved in the international society for the system sciences and there are some really amazing things going on where we're going back and we're looking to build the systems literacy curriculum and things and then I mean the society is amazing and almost all the people are almost all the members are Professor Emeriti they got their PhDs with people I mean it goes back to like the Macy conferences and things such as an amazing group and how can so my one of my main things is how can we get Gen Z engaging with the content you know with that content and things. And so yeah I'll try to inject some hope into things and hopefully my home situation will be set on the next couple weeks here. I just thought I'd drop in and mention a project I'm starting. That's well it's a continuation of other projects so it may sound familiar. I'm doing a video series on contentious issues and exploring the evidence on both sides of it and then having a kind of competition to have people bring up kind of missed evidence in that first analysis and giving them you know small prizes of $100 gift cards for the best pro and con evidence and then as a community kind of drawing a conclusion mathematically based on those that evidence and exploring and see how it goes like that. The first topic is going to be is my diet challenge. I think it's going to be killing me about whether the keto way of eating increases your chance of heart disease inside keto that something I was interested in. So yeah if anyone, if that tickles anyone's fancy then get in touch either you know future topics or that specific question. Yeah so in the project right now it's evidence explorers and we'll do a video so that's that's kind of project idea so reach out if that sounds interesting. Can anyone change your mind other than you and if that is true would it make any sense whatsoever for me to try. And I think it's going to be a good idea to do exactly what makes the most amount of sense to them in the context of the moment based on their current understanding. Then isn't the best that I can possibly do to provoke thought though trying to figure out how to do that without making people defensive because as soon as someone becomes defensive it's going to be said in the seven habits seek first to understand them to be understood. So if if you do something that makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever is it because of something you don't understand or because of something I don't understand. I think that where are you in the context you're in I would be doing the same thing you're doing. I look for ways to ask better questions and I will keep doing that. I have things are sort of being meshed and crossed over in the chat. It's lovely. So Monday I had a outpatient procedure where I was put under general anesthesia and in my life history in 1983 my dad went in and I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital for elective kidney stone surgery not what I had at all but he died that night and so there was a tiny bit of anxiety that I managed to mostly skirt but every now and then sort of showed up for me but I had a I was feeling sort of a strong sense of my mortality and a bunch of other things and now I'm just I'm feeling great. Everything's gone really well and now I'm feeling really great. So I'm just going to tell you guys about the pressure and anxiety of the world and the things that are happening. This morning I happened to have watched a short clip of Alexandria or Casio Cortes speaking I think on the steps of the house about the Republican bill that was just passed to basically present a budget alternative for the debt ceiling And I don't know if that kind of anger is right, but I have a thought in my brain that says Democrats aren't getting pissed enough. And Republicans are really good at the theater of outrage and at outrage politics. They're really really good at it that is their primary tool going into 2027. And there's another piece of me that just wants to stand somewhere on a rooftop and yell, Why are we fighting to keep the US from becoming the Handmaid's Tale when the urgencies that Doug is pointing us toward at the start of this check and are sitting right there in front of us. And a whole series of other things truly could use our collective collaborative friendly attention. And how is it that this that our world is being sort of carted away from in front of us. As we're sitting here and I'm and my my quest with us here partly is to figure out how to be open minded enough to hear other people the way Stacy was just describing. And how to be present to see what is possible and what the other side is thinking the way Jean just presented. I mean like like everything we're talking about here sort of touches the attempts to figure out how to make our way through because if we can't start collaborating at some higher level. We are driving the bus off the cliff and earlier I put millennialism in a quest with a question mark in the chat because there's some subset of the population that believes that in fact, accelerating the rapture and the end of times is a way to go and they are very intentionally like making sure the bus goes faster off the cliff and is burning brighter as it as it drives off and that's a little disturbing to me as well. So, so unfortunately I tend to boil that down to trust into the battle of ideas. And I think this this this Titanic battle of ideas is central to what's happening to us with us and around us, and the sphere of idea sharing and acceleration has been super conducted in the last 20 years. Through social media through all of the technologies that we are using right now to communicate. And we need to figure out how to make it work in our humanities favor instead of against us. And I will end by saying that I am. I think this is my state for the last 20 years. It's a long term, cynic or pessimist and a long term optimist, meaning, I think, like, it gets ugly and one of the things that that AOC says is, it's always darkest just before the dawn. This is, these are the last gasp of a dying movement. Those are, I'm nearly quoting her there. She's right, I think that that basically there's a Titanic reactionary movement that's trying to keep the world from changing and failing, but it's doing everything possible, everything it knows how to do with incredible force and funding to try to make those changes from happening. So, sometimes I'm strangely even though I think my tone is pessimistic I'm feeling optimistic. And john if you want to jump in if you can raise your hand on your on your on your device that'll work or just step in because I know that you're in motion. Okay, thank you. I'll step in am I unblocked. Yeah, you can hear me right. Well, for the last four sounds like you're having. I mean, not that you have trivial conversations other times, heavy day. So, I'm torn between just kind of like with what the last four or five people were saying, and dropping in kind of like a semi news bulletin that has some implications for this. And I will drop it in because I think it does have some implication it is in the nature of a, of a new Z, you know, affect anything. I'm, there's going to be a thing called D web in June. There's going to be a point in the D web, where they turn off. I mean, I mean, it's a hacker intensive invent, you know, there's a whole hacker room. There's high speed fiber, you know, coming in there. But Friday night, they're going to have a big ceremony and they're going to throw a big theatrical shift switch. And they're going to turn off the internet. And they're going to turn on a mesh net and Holo chain, which are proto successors to the internet. And they're not only going to do a technical, what comes after the internet, but they're going to do a content, what comes after, you know, centralized corporations running things the way they do now. And I have the thankless task. I mean, it strikes me it's funny. But also, I'm not at all surprised why they picked me to do this. I'm supposed to come up with the manual backup for when the attempt to do an open exploration through digital sense making. If it breaks if it fails, I have to have the manual one ready with the cards, the pens, and the process, you know, to kind of pull it out. So talk about mixed feelings, you know, I, I said, you know, five years from now we'll look back and we'll say we're so glad we did. We experimented with digital sense making. I was being honest, but I was also trying to earn the trust of the Holo people because I know they're suspicious of people who are deeply analog as I am. But I meant it. I hope it succeeds. And of course, you know, they're talking about things like tinder like swipes between topics proposed by people who want to have a kind of a conversation. I'm going to lots of tinder like swipes. And a part of me just went, as soon as I heard that. Another part of me said, well, John, you know, that's you. You got in the spirit of experimentation, you got to let them do it. You got to see if it works see what comes out. Have an alternative ready. But see what happens. Here we are we're going into a brave new world. So, if any of that is interesting to you all. The D web is currently has lots of vacancies. If people are interested in going there. And also, I mean, I'm very much aware that what I'm talking about on the surface might seem to have nothing to do with the last five presenters. But I think it does in the sense that it's, it's all part of the toolkit. It's part of the toolkit we're trying to build so that what your guide you guys are all warning about what I'm warning about sometimes. So that it doesn't happen or so that it happens in a way that is more merciful to those who are going to be much more victims of what happens. Thank you. Thank you, John. I have, as we've been moving through check in and conversation I've been struck by a couple of different impressions that I don't know that I'll be able to name really clearly, but I'll do my best. The first is just noticing that what many of us, the lens through which many of us are seeing the current state of affairs and how to show up to the state of affairs is through the, what's what sounds to me like a problem solution intervention. And I get the sense that, that might not be how the change we're looking for happens. I don't, I don't know that I can suggest an alternative I don't know what an alternative would look like I think that's what feels that lens the problem with the situation lens feels most accessible to me, but I get the sense there's something deeper, and there's a different way to show up to the state of affairs that might be more effective but I don't know what that is just a sense I'm getting. And it feels like it's tied into this other thing which is that I just keep being struck by this can, it's a concern that, you know, the problems we are facing. It's, it's not that I hope it's not that humankind is not evolved enough to show up to the problems that we're facing like we just don't we're just not equipped with the biological hardware to navigate this degree of overwhelm and stress and also manipulation that I think a lot of us are being inundated with. I like to think that I'm wrong, I don't think that's true for everyone. But if, if that is the, if that might be the case for the, for many. You know what are, what does intervention look like what does support look like. I love what Stacy was saying earlier about this kind of looming sense of like, oh no no as you know as she considers the implications of just the lack of emotional to be available to those who are privileged enough now to, you know, pay for it and find out what's that going to look like when things are less accessible what's it going to look like when, you know, whatever this future that is unraveling unravels and that's not, what's what's what's that going to look like and so yeah I don't I think in all this I'm also struck by my own. I'm really checking myself in, you know, if we've been I feel like the topic of denial has been inadvertently coming up throughout the conversation and my my belief my lens is that, you know, we denial is, you know, I don't think it's always, I don't think it's often like it's something we default to when we don't have adequate emotional inner emotional resource to support holding the difficult or challenging possibility that we're denying right and so I think what's bringing up for me is like oh man where am I still not equipped emotionally you know inner inner resource enough to equip myself to really be with and hold different possibilities in my own life, and you know the question of when am I really moving into dysregulated fear that might not be productive, rather than really being able to hold and consider okay like what's what's realistic for for me. Whatever is opening up and I don't really know how to say to say that the way I want to say it so I think I'll I'll stop there but I think I feel complete with that those are just the thoughts I've been having throughout check in. Thank you patty. I wanted to talk a little bit about denial to and and his background in the last few minutes is the time that's been coming for a few weeks that roofers are on the roof right above me, working on tiles. I think my noise counseling Mike will do an okay job of letting you hear me, but I have an impending sense of doom because of people walking on the roof and nails being pulled and things cluttering around. So it's pretty cool, pretty cool experience. The. So I hear from our wise elders, Doug and class. Again, that we can expect our food system to fail a couple years dramatically. And thinking about that a little bit as as we do in these calls. I think that I want now that I realize, and I'm not sure that I'm not sure who would want this. David Weinberg and I have had a conversation on the OGM list, we've had a couple conversations on the OGM list where I am curious and in a way that many people aren't or more want to analyze systems and in ways people don't or something. Anyway, I realized thinking about the collapse of the food system that I'm doing with that topic, the same thing that I've experienced and probably many of us have experienced when I have a health problem. It's kind of icky and squishy and and painful and you know so it's like, I could go to the doctor, but, or I could go to the dentist, but I'm really afraid it's going to be painful when I go to the doctor. I'm going to find out something horrible. It's going to be worse than it is now if I kind of just sit here and and deal with the pain. Maybe I can stretch it out for another couple weeks and go. I don't like it, but at least I don't know how bad it could be right. And of course at some point it gets so bad or more likely I guess my, my life partner says, you know, you really need to get that checked out just go. And you go and you know, just in the act of starting to go it's like okay, you know this is a rational thing it's a human thing I can get through it other people have gotten through it. You hear the good news or the bad news, maybe from the doctor, but then they say, but here's the treatment plan or here's the thing that we can do or here's here's the steps it's going to go through or you know sometimes it's, it's going to be a long slog for a couple months, but you'll start to get better. So, instead of hearing the food system is going to fail in a couple years, and me going, yeah, well I'm going to keep having a fun time while, while it lasts and then I guess I'll deal with that shit later. I would really like to understand, I would, I would like to have kind of an expert analysis of here's what's going to happen as the food system fails, rather than just ignoring it, or saying it's going to happen sooner or later but I don't care. And I think maybe I'm different than some people so and I'm sure some people won't wouldn't like this. But, you know, how is that going to happen, who's going to be affected, who's going to be affected when how fast is it going to happen. What are the, what are the signs of the kind of the hurricane cloud coming, you know, and the weather seems like it's getting better so we're okay right and it's like no that's just a sign that things are going to get much more worse soon or whatever it is right. I don't know if the GM community, and maybe particularly are since doing Marley project is a locus for that or would be interested in that. But it seems like something that I haven't seen talked about, and I would like to know more. And then I would like to help others watch for the signals of the impending doom you know it's like okay so I get that you don't want to deal with your impacted molar or something like that and here's what's going to happen as it gets worse and you know when it keeps getting worse. Here's what you can do to remediate it rather than just continue to ignore it. I would like that kind of analysis kind of, you know, system diagram and explanation of this is probably what's going to happen and here's, you know, here's the off ramps to making it better and and how dramatically worse they are as you march down the path of ignoring it. So I think this is something we're pretty well into the climate change changes, and it's been interesting and frustrating and scary watching the climate scientists continue to get more loud and more vocal. And, and then we're starting to see climate change happen and, and I, one of the reactions for climate change or, or food system collapse or anything like that these big existential challenges. One of the things, especially in the climate change scenario that was really difficult for me was listening to people say, we must fix this. Because I get why a climate scientist or a food systems person would say we must fix this, but it's like, I think we're not going to fix it, or I think we're going to fix it imperfectly or I think it's going to get fixed and fits and spurts, you know, over the course of descent into chaos. So in for just for me as a reaction to, we must fix this, I would much rather hear, here's what's going to happen here are the ways to fix it here the choices we can make and when we expect to be able to have to make them or, you know, move to the next set of the next tranche of choices. The, the, we must fix this expression to me always sounds like a stopping place is like, well no, we don't have to fix it, rather than a dialogue about how we're going to fix it. So, maybe, maybe having had the experience of the climate change, you know, lack of response. Maybe we can do a better as, as we can see problems with the food system. And instead of saying we have to fix this, it's like, we don't have to fix it, but it's, here's the choices that we're making and or and not making if we don't make a choice it's like, you know, choosing that path. And as we continue down these pathways the branches and, you know, we'll do what we do, but wouldn't it be better if we made good choices, rather than bad choices. When you wouldn't you want your kids and your grandkids and your great grandkids to live in a world where you started to make choices towards health. In the same way that you go to the doctor finally and start the process of healing rather than the process of hiding. Thanks. There's a couple people who haven't checked in for the first round. And you're welcome to pass but if anybody wants to complete the check in please do so now. Scott dive on it. You can raise your hand so we can see you in the upper left or you can just start talking. Sorry, I always lose the button. I wish it was a way to have the raise hand button be visible all the time. Okay, so I bumped into a phrase Sunday. And I'm going to ask all of you if you know the source because I went on a little rabbit hole. And you guys are very quick to throw sources in the chat. You're very well connected with the information of the world. I think. And so I'm wondering if you might know where this came from because I went down a little rabbit hole and I couldn't. I couldn't find it I found it in a couple old blog posts in a weird book that was self published and anyway, the phrase is reality is undefeated. And this hit me like a lightning when I read it, because they thought well yeah of course it is. You can, you can have a model in your brain of what it should be what you think it is what it ought to be what we need to do what we can do what we should try what we have to do. It is undefeated. It always wins is not. It's an interesting model it's an interesting phrasing but the, the, the idea behind it is that it just. It just is products fail relationships go sideways, you bump into things that you weren't expecting you try something and it doesn't go quite like you thought. Well, of course. It has to work, given reality and so what's included in reality well you have, you know, obviously all the sciences, which are best guess, and constantly updated of what reality is. It isn't that reality has to change that the science has to change. Well, what about religions and different political angles and that's all part of reality because as a social organization, a social group that's, it's all part of it. You can't take it out or say, this doesn't exist, because it exists, exists because it's, we can talk about it. It's there. So, reality, nature bats last, that's great. Yeah, so I'm going to have to scroll back up in the chat because I wasn't looking but it just seemed like a phrase I thought why have I not heard this before. Because it to some of the comments earlier about clouds saying why are we going towards the wall, when we can see the wall, or Pete saying, we don't have to fix it. We could ignore it and let it do whatever it does maybe that's the wrong approach who knows, but reality will continue on, no matter what we do. And it will judge. I'm going to use that word it will judge what we do. It will, it will say okay well what you tried was ineffective because your model was wrong. And you missed something. So anyway, I just thought it was very significant little phrase, and I was really surprised I hadn't heard it before so thank you for all this I'm going to go scroll back up and see all these great comments. I'm exposing myself to some South American thinkers in the last month or so started with Gil sending me an article on centipede seer which is thinking with feeling and feeling with thinking and I've been reading Manfred Max Neef. And I'm really recognizing that my mind has been colonized. And it's very hard to get out of a colonized mind. It's really challenging. Ideas pop up and it's like wow that's really radical and it's actually radical in the true sense of going to the root of things. A lot of the most creative thinking and rigorous thinking that I've seen is coming out of people who are refusing to succumb to the neoliberal economic paradigm and ordering of life and saying we need, you know we share one planet with many different worlds. And there's a very focused very powerful movement to create one world of we're going to organize the planet around neoliberal economics and we're just going to, you know, take whatever we need. Going all the way back to bacon torture nature to get her secrets out of her and, you know, I get tough shit. And there's huge resistance in many, many countries to this and so I really like Max Neef. He makes this distinction that our economics today have become, what does he say they've created math, they've created models that are mathematically attracted but completely divorced from reality. And he actually got a PhD at Cal Berkeley was teaching economics and when Reagan came along he said oh man this trickle down stuff this is not going to work and the whole if you're going to keep the IMF from the World Bank in place it's never going to work. So he went back to Chile. And he realized when he was in working in impoverished villages that nothing that he had learned in economics in the in the western model was useful to people who are hungry and poor. And so he developed an entirely different way of approaching economics and he makes this distinction between needs and satisfies. And there are nine basic needs that that we all have protection affection participation, what not. And then there's four domains of each of those there's being doing having an interacting and satisfies change over time. So the way in which we get our needs satisfied changes from culture to culture and time to time. And it's just it's a really fantastic look it's very very much deeper than anything I've seen. And it hurts my brain to look at it it's like wow this is very very I read this guy and he's, I call him really nutrient dense it's like a truffle I'll read a page I have to set it aside think about it go back and reread it. But it's just stretching my mind in some very interesting ways I can't fully articulate it because I'm still just exposing myself for the first time trying to absorb this and digest it. But I really, yeah, thanks there's some I can put some links in Wikipedia as a great page on his needs and satisfies. And yes and he was very involved in the natural step. So this is just what's going on in my head and I'm, I don't know yet how to apply it, but I just find that it's so refreshing to have a very well thought out very rigorous background of a completely different economic paradigm to the one I brought up inside of, and it's giving me a lot of hope. I, because my last name is Homer I always have had to know something about mythology. And what I've discovered a myth myths and stories is that whenever it looks like the bad guys just about to grab the brass ring. The Hobbit, the least among us comes up and goes, No, not going to let that happen. And that is, that is the, the myth that keeps reinventing itself, you know, humans always bring ourselves to the brink and then somehow something happens now, not saying civilization will collapse not saying things are going to, you know, be pretty dicey. If we all woke up tomorrow fully enlightened there's enough inertia in the system to keep the suffering going for a long time but I find, personally, although it's very hard because like, similar to Jerry I'm a short term pessimist, a long term optimist and an intermediate term pessimist I often find myself thinking about what's going to happen in 30 or 50 or 100 years and and it was grim and that just sits right in front of me and makes it hard to see what to do next and I'm like I have to push that back so that my general optimism can, can be there can, you know, come to the four. It's a daily challenge, but story and the re sacralizing of the world of seeing the world as alive and related, I think is the only thing that's going to allow humanity, the chance for long term survival, because if we keep treating it like it's in or if we keep treating it like it's it has no life. If we de story it if we drive the spirits out of it, then we don't relate to it as that which brought us forth, we see it as we got plopped down here on top of it, instead of emerging from it. And so this is this is the, the slow simmering transformation going on inside of me as I read all this stuff and pretty interesting so I just recommend anybody who's interested I can, I can send you links there's really good stuff out there to challenge or you're thinking around how to organize societies on an economic paradigm that actually allows for the thriving of life. And this is what I'm not seeing in a lot of people who are saying we need to do economics. So, it's just check out Max, Steve, and check out center pins here, and especially thinking and feeling Centipan Centipan son on Latia thinking and feeling with the earth. I think it's it's a pathway to a much better participation in life. Thank you. I think most everybody's checked in. I've not raised your hand now, but everybody feel free to jump in and discuss. Go ahead Doug. Then Jean, I would like to follow up on Pete's comment, looking in a way what's the analytic method that might help us go forward. Two conversations with groups in the first we're talking about who will do what and when will they do it. That turns out to stimulate a lot of imagination but also a lot of conflict. So it's not a terrific method. The one that's more successful is working with the Institute for new economic thinking we've been looking at plausible scenarios. To take a scenario say is this plausible, for example, can the electric grid that we the fossil fuel regime we have to be replaced with an electric grid. They're good reasons that that scenario fails. The three scenarios we've been working with our first super tech technical acceleration everywhere, using the internet to manage the world's resources and jobs. And all that you can. It's a kind of Silicon Valley wet dream that we could use the technology to solve the problems. The second scenario is radical localization as things break down local groups form around the resources that they have. Obviously some places can't do that which is going to be too bad. But those that can could try. That's the second scenario. The third scenario, which is kind of obvious is that we aren't going to do anything of significance to deal with climate change. That's the scenario. So looking at them are they plausible or not has led to a really good discussion without acrimony and without the conflict. Somehow having three possibilities going simultaneously cuts down the conflict level of the discussion and gets people more imaginative. And part of the task is to break through our conventional opinion to see that things are so bad that we have to have a freer kind of imagination to possibly cope with what's going on and getting to imagination is the goal. Thank you, Doug. This morning, I read the Amanda Palmer post from Ted that just finished that David Weinberger posted to the OGM list, which was fun and interesting and Amanda Palmer is one of those humans I look at as a person who lives life absolutely out to the fullest just falling down to the crowd in the mosh pit sort of thing that she does and she's really extraordinary in so many ways. And she says she's as part of this as part of this thing she's talking about She quotes a lot of the people that she hears talk during Ted and these are all things that are going to be released in the next few weeks as new Ted talks and so forth and there was one that really stood out for me when it was about pain. There's apparently a speaker on pain who says what you feel is mostly what you expect to feel. And this sort of couples up with me with suffering is optional. Another piece of wisdom and a bunch of other observations that our perceptions and expectations truly shape our self-experience of anything. And that involves what is your frame of mind going into it that involves how much fear and anxiety do you have about it that involves are you catastrophizing or are you optimizing are you looking up or are you looking down. I'm really interested in that aspect of how we handle change. And that takes me over to plans are worthless but planning is is key or important time for getting the exact quote and that's Eisenhower and a bunch of other people who said something like that. And the idea that practice together, being resilient or creative or whatever else is really key. And Pete, I would love to see a plan for how this might roll out but but my feeling is that things are going to break in a really unpredictable and strange And there's a marriage there somewhere in between of if we have tried a whole bunch of things and been creative really often in a lot of ways then when things break unpredictably we might be actually much better at coping with them and turning them into something golden and something better. And I think none of us are prepared for things to break so badly that we're in a position where creativity flies out the window. I will say that I was part of a poverty simulation once where they had turned the basement of an apartment building into a slum where you were you were put into families and handed some newspaper and some water with flour and asked to paste together bags out of the house and try to sell the bags to merchants in order to make enough money for food and shelter, and it ran in little cycles and it was all sort of simulated. But at some point like the merchant would come over you try to be negotiating and they would grab your stack of bags you would just like work real fast to make, and say these are shitty bags tear them up and throw them in the air. And I realized really quickly that the pressure of just trying to figure things out in the near term drives out. Most opportunities for thinking creatively doing anything interesting, the luxuries we have just have time of facing our experiences go away real fast. I've been known for a long time that people who live in very difficult situations. I could not survive in their situation for very long they're really smart they're working everything they know how to work. These are not dumb people these are people trapped by circumstances whom we ought to be helping escape the circumstances. And I'm wondering several sort of topics far from where I started but, but I feel like when we approach this what we expect to happen and how we look at it is really massively important to the outcomes we will experience, even in that direct sense of what you. What you, what you get is what you, what you feel is mostly what you expect to feel. Thank you Jerry. The weekends are difficult because so many things happen in two weeks. So, yesterday I talked with Jack Park, a lovely friend is going through some difficulties with his health, as am I. And boy did we connect. I love Jack Park. Jerry, people who live in difficult situations I'd like to talk about that. I'm going to talk about something. And I'm going to make an observation from personal experience. And it's heavy, and it's deep. So I'll try to be calm. But I'll say that this is not a criticism, but an inquiry, but I want to point an observation I've made, you talk about the food system. I posted above, and I'll try to post it again. Not sure if I can do that. Those farm workers last week tonight with john Oliver, talking about my people, the people who basically are from California, or, you know, the area, the bio region that we are in Mexico, California. And how we have strawberries, which Mexican farm workers call the back breaking fruit. We have salad. How we have organic vegetables. And who pays for them, and how they're paid, and who's exploited. So we talk about the food system but we don't talk about the people. Sorry about the emotion. I'm going to reregulate center. What am I inputting. I'm seeing people on a screen. What am I outputting. What is my reaction or do I have a executive system response. And I'm saying, I don't want to make close wrong. Close is doing great work, but I am not hearing in my observation about my people. I'm hearing about blacks, I'm hearing about Jews, all the time. And I'm not hearing about Mexican farm workers about immigrants from this land about Native Americans who include native Mexican Americans. You know, people, you know, the Indians that my heritage comes from. And I wonder about that. It's like, why did I forget about that for many, many years, when my parents were immigrants, and came legally to this country. My grandfather was a placero on my mother's side. And he worked picking lemons for some guests. And he worked really hard. And raised my parents to be better than him. And that was a lot of pressure. And they raised me to be better than them. That was too much pressure. Why, why didn't they teach me Spanish because they didn't want me to be discriminated against, because their knuckles were hit with a ruler by the nuns, if they spoke Spanish in America. And why are we not seeing the humans in the food system? Why are we talking about planetary scale? Why are we talking about systemic scale about business about capitalism? When people, real people are suffering. Thank you for listening. This is not a criticism. I love Klaus and when he does, it's an inquiry into what I haven't seen. Until now, until seeing John Oliver's excellent presentation about the food system and the people in it. Why are we not seeing the people? Why did, let me put it in a me language. Why did I with my mother's in my youth and living in Santa Maria going to Guadalupe, which is a beautiful town west of Santa Maria. And, you know, the farm workers, the strike, the great, the great growers, you know, the pickets against Safeway. This was part of my youth. And I didn't remember that until a day or two ago, three days ago, whenever I saw the Oliver thing, I think it comes out on Sunday night, something like that. Why hadn't I seen the real human cost of the food we eat that I eat that we all take for granted. This is something that affects me deeply. And again, no, not a criticism. It's an observation. And it sparks me with passion to inquire into my own blindness. And maybe I can use that my own blindness. The passionate story of that to inspire you to look with imagination at maybe what we're all not seeing, because we're just used to going to the store. And some strawberries that somebody's back has been in pain for years, because that's the only way to feed their kids. I really appreciate you listening to this. And I hope the meaning comes through the information that I'm giving. And that leads to understanding cooperation, coordination, and a different perspective perspective is worth 10 IQ points. No, it's worth 100 IQ points. I'm looking at the perspective like, oh my God, my people. Wow, how did I forget that. Thank you again for listening. Thank you very much. Scott then costs and then we're getting close to the end of our call. I'm going to get back to something that I don't know several months ago, I said, you know, I love it when we ask questions of each other to clarify something that was said. I've been waiting to ask this and Doug just kind of opened the door with, with a way to do that. So Doug, your, your comment about plausible scenarios and using that as an analytic method. I think that's very interesting, especially encountered to the, who will do what and how will they do it kind of model. And you offered up three possible scenarios and the second one was radical localization, which is something you've been talking about for quite a while, about, we have to live where the food is, or we have to grow our food where, where we live, one of the other and wondering if you could just talk for a minute about parts of the plausible scenario of radical localization that happened during your conversations. Is that possible to summarize, I don't know. No, there are threads that emerge. For example, with radical localization the problem is that successful groups will be the target of unsuccessful groups. That's part of the difficulty with that scenario. Somebody mentioned the guns, there are too many guns around and they're going to get used. And what I thought is that in, I mean, if you start with the localization scenario as people have face to face relationships and kind of primitive democracy. What could spoil that from happening. And certainly that people bring their character to any possible solution. One of the things that will happen quickly is people trying to reassert property rights over the stuff in their local community. They will bring to the discussion the model that people owning things is the only possible future. So that has to be overcome by the necessity of cooperating together. There's so many aspects to this it with radical localization. You run into the problem of, for example, tools, you use hose to work the land. What do you do when the hose break that break down. How do we manufacture new ones. If your blue jeans wear out, where do new ones come from. We don't have the local technologies to do those replacements so it's very difficult to look at. A radical localization scenario that's not amplified by other possibilities. We certainly have the feeling that in fact all three scenarios can happen at the same time. That's the most plausible. But for analytic purposes, it's worthwhile taking each one and poking it. You know, is this plausible, could this possibly happen. And if the reasons why it can't, let's find them. In part because it's ridiculous to put energy into potential solutions that are we already know enough to know we're not going to work. Replacing the fossil fuel world with an electric grid world is not possible. The amount of materials and the cost of those materials is towards the project. Anyway, I'm not answering your question directly except to say that there are many threads that come up. And part of what's been great about that is everybody in the group we've got eight people who were doing this. Agree on the conclusions that are emerging about what's what there's the agreement in the group is very high. We don't rehash old material people have the integrity to remember the parts of the conversation we've already had. So it's working extremely well and sort of off the record the effort now is how do we take this into the whole line that structure. Perfect. Thank you very much. That gave me everything I was hoping that the richness of that conversation was capsized very well. Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to respond to mark. So, and also linking in with stuff was just saying, I don't see anything radical about localization right this the food system needs to be decentralized, not radicalized. So how do you go about this and how and actually the opportunity to make change is in a market segment that is unattractive and neglected by the general industry so people of low income. You're talking about food deserts for example, there are some 30 40 million Americans living in food deserts have no access to a store within within reach. That's that offers fresh food, because simply it's not profitable for the big retailers to operate in there it's too dangerous. So they don't have the purchasing power and so on. So, the opportunity really is to engage with the sector of the of the economy that is struggling so small farmers entry level farmers independent farmers right. And then when you get into this, and you try to, to understand the market forces that govern them, you realize that they are stuck in a regulatory frame that prevents them from accessing markets. For example, no they can sell meat because you know you have to jump small kinds of foods to get USDA certification. And but yet meat is is the the most profitable part of selling food is make a whole lot more money, selling chicken then selling a carrot. So, the, the, the, when, when, and this is what I'm really trying to get into right now, even in my own community here in Oregon. No, to help people understand and see that we are really handicapping. And, and sort of, and sort of casting in poverty now by not allowing people to feed themselves to call their own food. Now, and to process their own food may preserve it can it pickle it, you know, and and be able to sell it. You know, as you know, I mean I worked for a food wholesaler in and I had teams in 30 countries who were teams of analysts because we were doing like market segmentation strategies and stuff like that market research. Every country in the world you go to the post country to the Vietnam China, you know, India. There's no problem accessing food, because everybody has some outside stand, you know, and and they can sell their food. And we have sterilized the food system here in the US where you can't do that. Right. So, making these changes. First of all, touches our own empathy, right, because we want to help. And then also, it also stabilizes the segment of the population, because, you know, food bottom of the pyramid, right. And so it's food and shelter. So, so by, by opening up by by educating and informing the legislative process, people of good intentions. And then we can, we can soften change, you know, into the process, it doesn't have to be conflict. You know, and, and that's. And so once you have this vision, you know, where food is is, first of all, environmental damage, you know, water and so on, but also personal health. And the other foundation did a study some four years ago, where they, the outcome was we're spending roughly $1 trillion on subsidized underpriced food. Then we're spending $1 trillion to repair the environmental damage cost by raising it. Then we're spending $1 trillion on fixing the health game pack of serving a nutritionally deficient diet. So the, the, the, there is, there is so much we can do to stabilize society to, to, to, to secure the base, right, because when people become desperate because food gets too expensive or unavailable and so on. And that is a sure recipe for, for, for problems. So Mark, there is total emphasis, you know, on, on dealing with people who are in this, in this frame and in this, in this work. But it may not come through when we talk about this in systems thinking and, you know, and project management and so on. Thank you class. I have a feeling that Ken Homer is late for his 930 call but is waiting because he has a poem for us, perhaps this is just me thinking Mark, if you will allow Ken to read the poem and depart. I will pass the floor to you. You're psychic Jerry. This has been a tough one I've been going back and forth listen to this coughing or what what poems going to fit here so I think I have one. This is called gravity's law by real car. How surely gravity is law, strong as notion current takes hold of the smallest thing and pulls it to the heart of the world. Each thing, each stone, blossom, child is held in place. Only we in our arrogance push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrender to the earth's intelligence, we could rise up rooted like trees. We got to read that again. If we surrender to the earth's intelligence, we could rise up rooted like trees. Instead, we entangle ourselves and knots of our own making and struggle lonely and confused. So, like children, we begin again to learn the things, learn from the things because they are in God's heart. They have never left him. This is what things can teach us to fall patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. See you all next week. Thank you, Ken. Thank you. Former B. Mr. Karanza. Yeah, thank you. A bunch of people just dropped off the call because they had to bounce. Oh dear. Again, I'm going to try to make an observation and not a criticism, but an inquiry. So close. We're still recording. Have you picked lettuce? Have you. You know, done organic farming with your hands, as opposed to look at the systems. That's kind of my point, you got to do both and you got to be, be, you know, touch the soil. And maybe class has, I don't know. I don't hear him saying that I don't hear him saying, I've walked a mile in the farm worker shoes. Rather than I've walked a mile. At the level of where I can make a lot of money, which is as a consultant. It's not a criticism. I don't want to make class wrong. And I feel it's really difficult to deal with the emotions of care. I just want to leave with this, you know, again, I was told very healing thing about the problems I'm going through. Mark. The cousins had cousins wife. We love twice as strong. And then we, when we lose, we've hurt twice as strong. That's who we are. I wouldn't change that. I wouldn't change that. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Mark. I think a nice way to end this call would just be to sit for what you just said. And everybody drop off as you, as you wish. Well, good luck with your dad's place and everything. I wish you, I hope everything goes very smoothly. Yeah. Yeah, it's like all the pieces are on the table now. Sounds like some progress. Be well. Thanks. Thanks.