 This is the OGM weekly call, Open Global Mind weekly call for Thursday, April 18th, 2024. I'm looking for the AI summary that Zoom has elegantly hidden from me at this point. So I don't know if we'll have an AI summary for this call because I'll have to look for it separately. And we are back, I would love to go back and revisit the topic we were on last week, just last week, which was broadly about trauma, also about the Gaza situation and the mess, the mess there and the humanitarian mess there, whatever mix of those things that we're comfortable with. And I think I was interested in figuring out, giving us a moment to sit and think, but starting with the question for each of you, if you'll take a moment, I'll give us a minute, can we write into the chat, what is the most important question around trauma for you? And it could be, hey, we are over-diagnosing trauma, we're way too overspent on this thing. It could be, hey, trauma is more pervasive than we think and we under-report it and don't deal with it properly and it's the way out. It could be, gosh, there's really other things that are more important. It could be any number of things that have to do with the topic, but I'd love to figure out what are your core questions? What is the most important thing around this topic for each of you? So let's take a moment and I will write the question into the chat and we'll go quiet for a little bit until everybody's had a chance to put something in. Don't wait to put something in the chat, just go ahead and hit return whenever you're done. So the question I'm asking everyone to answer in the chat, silently for a moment, is what is the most important aspect of trauma to you? And this might be a very personal thing, like how do I get through personal trauma? Might be the most important thing about trauma to you, but what, and take a moment to phrase this any way you think will work for a conversation for communicating what you mean by it, please. Ready, steady go. Go ahead, Doug, you're muted. Trauma is a reaction to an event or a trend. Isn't the core event itself? That sounds fine. Trauma is a response, absolutely. So if you'll figure out how that fits into your worldview and add it to the room, that'd be great. Carl, thanks for joining. We are taking a moment quietly and answering in the chat, what is the most important aspect of trauma to you? I'll wait for another little bit and then I think I'll ask Eric to jump in, but then I'm gonna read all the replies out into the room just so we can pause with each of them. But let me wait for a second while, a few of you are still, hey, Stuart, we're all quiet because we're now, I've asked everybody to answer a question in the chat and the question is, what is the most important aspect of trauma to you? I will be reading those back into the room shortly, so you'll catch up with the ones you've missed in the chat, or you are, thanks Stuart. Dave, we are quietly answering a question in the chat and I'm about to go back and read them back in. What is the most important aspect of trauma to you? And let me go to Eric and then I will read the responses back. Yeah, hi, everybody. I wasn't here last week, so let me just give you my overview of what I believe trauma is. I think in the popular media, they tend to focus on the big major traumas like veterans coming home, but there are so many minor traumas that we go through in our lives. And I think it's mostly related to unexpected changes in our lifestyle, major changes and major events and stress. And I did have therapy for trauma from a previous relationship and I went through EMDR with paddles and that helped, but it is a process of adjustment to a new lifestyle or way of life. And I guess my therapist told me that with COVID, everybody is going to have trauma because being locked down, such a major change of lifestyle and now trying to get back and reintegrate, I'm finding that it is a bit overwhelming to me even though I do get out and I am doing new things like teaching children music, which is wonderful, but then I need to retreat back to that isolation for my sanity it seems that, so it's like a rubber band until I get more comfortable with fully participating in society. And I guess there's all kinds of fears that are still out there. But I think I have moved a lot of things into a virtual space. So for example, I'm connected with Sam Han with GCC and I've become interested in Douglas Englebart's work talking with him about that. And he's very excited that somebody else is interested in it. So yeah, so we got to look at the bright side and avoid a lot of the negative stuff that the world throws at us, but we have to recognize, yeah, like what happened in Israel is major trauma and those people are going to deal with it and the Arab side too, they're gonna have generations of trauma. So yeah, let's just breathe in and take our time looking at this. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. That's a lovely, lovely way to start us down this road and thanks also for sharing personally like that. Means a lot. And I'm happy we were at a place you're comfortable being and it's lovely to have you here. So Eric had written for me, I'm still dealing with the trauma that began with COVID isolation. I've changed my lifestyle and attitudes have still impacted my life. I did have therapy for trauma after my previous relationship ended, which he just talked about. Stacey wrote, what are the necessary steps that we have to take as a society understanding that most people carry some level of unresolved trauma? Do you wanna add anything to that? I love the question. When it's my turn, I'll start from there because I do have a lot of stuff, thanks. Okay, so let me go read back through and then open up the queue because I was kind of gonna pause at everybody and it makes sense to just for me to go through all of them and come back. So Kevin had surgery for the first time this week. So my body's always done what I told it to with surgery for the first time in my life this week. For the first time, my body is not doing what my mind knows it can do but can't just now for reasons that are not clear to my limbic brain, ow. And then you posted a couple, excuse me, you posted a couple of times after which I'll come back to as well. In fact, then you said, hidden trauma that I wasn't aware of is the problem. It impacts and distorts actions and reactions. Then I wrote, I'm concerned that trauma is more widespread than we admit it is, but at the same time we're diluting its meaning. So my wish is that we harness our understanding of trauma better to use it as a key component for the way forward. Kevin also wrote, true for me class, I was not encouraged as a big boy to acknowledge trauma which I think is a really big important thing. It's a bunch of people who were taught. My mom, for example, Eric, when you said, trauma is what happens to people in war, that was my mom. And my mom, I'm quite sure, had a whole bunch of unresolved trauma that haunted her as her mind started to go the last five years of her life. So a whole bunch of nightmares and other strange behaviors crept in as her ability to control reality and perception weakened. Anyway, then Judy writes, trauma is a word that encourages denial. Might we ask ourselves and others what is most upsetting or challenging for you? How do we support one another in noting and addressing trauma and addressing trauma? Kevin again, trauma is a loss of control for my body I used to have today. Patty writes, is it possible to move treatment for trauma into collective healing spaces or group healing modalities as opposed to the more traditional isolated silent experiences we have in individual therapy? Which, while important and necessary, also tends to be widely inaccessible to the majority of the population. Just try using the healthcare system to get mental health, just try. The whole thing is written very poorly. Patty, I had a housemates, when I lived in New York and worked for Esther, I had housemates, the youngest of whom whose mother owned our big flat was into RC, re-evaluation co-counseling. Which, seen from one lens, is a really, really nice way of peer counseling. Seen from other perspectives sounds a little bit like a cult. And it sometimes gets dropped into the cult bin. But what I saw was really powerful including, I sat in one session and one of the things they do is they give everybody like five minutes with the floor so that they can stand in front of everybody and be heard and nobody will judge them for anything. 80% of the people will start crying. Because we are so unaccustomed to being heard without judgment. We are so, it just does not happen in our lives. So given that moment, everybody just, the emotions just started coming out. It was really, really interesting. So I'm on board with your question a lot. John, who is Zoom user is John Kelly. Trauma is fairly universal and can be caused by externally minor events or things like war, violence, racism, et cetera. Key personal issue is it's nearly impossible to see outside or get beyond the personal effects of trauma with professional assistance. That's really interesting and saddening. I have a huge collection of people who seem to be very, very good at dealing with trauma in my brain from Gabor Maté and Bessel van der Kolk and a bunch of others. Steve Levine, I think is another one. There's a bunch of people who are really excellent at trauma but I don't know that we've conquered it or figured out exactly how to deal with it but I think that's an interesting thing for us to maybe share. And then Kevin again, meaning that the bodily control and all that will come back. Pete's question is how might we keep societal trauma which accrues from individual trauma, family trauma all the way up to civilizational trauma from creating irrational, disproportionate and unfair social institutions? Love that. Totally agree. Pete fits wonderfully with the stuff I'm working on like now. Karl writes that it's a core part of empathy that is part of the human condition everyone is dealing with trauma. Absolutely. Stuart writes how past trauma impacts current realities personally, communally and globally. Doug writes people don't like change. Trauma is extreme change. So trauma is on a spectrum. And then Eric talks about I tried RC many years ago and it was a nice experience but I had to leave it after a while. I can sort of understand that. So thank you for that. That was really helpful and interesting. I'm happy to hear from anybody who would like to expand on what they wrote or take us in any of those directions. Stacy, please. Yes. So I apologize in advance for maybe generalizing a little bit or not being as tactful as I can be but I'm gonna try to make a few points in as quick as time as possible. Sounds great. And neither Ken nor Gil are on the call so nobody will question you about the word we if you happen to use the word we. I might. Okay, good. Last week when I knew we were gonna be talking about trauma I wasn't feeling that well either also going for surgery. So I know how Kevin feels and it is a strange kind of physical trauma. But anyway, I wasn't gonna come to the call. I wasn't feeling great. And to be honest, I have spent a lot of time talking about trauma like for 30 years and I've been witness to people's personal trauma. And when I go to a group I wanna hear from their expertise. And I don't really think of OGM as like with the exception of a few people I didn't wanna hear about people talking about other people's traumas. That's not really that interesting to me. But when Gil sent the letter about Israel I was like, you know what? I really wanna be there for that. That being said, one of the conversations that come up that I hope at some point we do talk about is how some people take trauma and turn it into something really wonderful while other people turn it into something that traumatizes more people. And that's something I hope we will discuss on another call. What I do wanna say though is that without a doubt the most meaningful thing that happened on the call was Ken's reading of his poem. And I say that and I wish he was here but I'm sure he'll see the recording. So here's where the generalizations come in. Women have been doing this for a while. We found our courage, we found our voices. We knew we'd be making ourselves more vulnerable by sharing and we did it anyway. And sometimes it hurt us even worse but still we did it. Right now, men need to be the ones sharing, becoming vulnerable and doing it. And it's a little bit easier now than it was, let's say 10 years ago. I mean, I remember John Boehner crying. I look now and I hear Trump and his biggest thing to mock people is how this one came to him crying. It's still very difficult for men to do it but men need to do the heavy lifting now. And that means they need to come together collectively sort of I think what Patty is alluding to because I don't see this as a separate mental health issue. That's wrong separating it into like making it something that unhealthy people have to go and do is not the way to do this. This has to be a normalization of something that happens to all of us. And I think that by men doing it together it becomes an easier lift. Whether we like it or not, men are mostly in power and behind a lot of the decisions happening, causing the wars, causing all of these things. I've been listening to some younger men in whether they be in the MAGA movements or whatever. What I hear is horrifying. And again, I think about people that join gangs. I mean all, again, I'll probably start to ramble so I'm gonna stop and I'm gonna leave it by saying as a society we need to find a way to heal. I don't wanna make it just about men but I'm gonna say it's gonna have to come from men now. Women will be there to support you. We've shown you how to do it but you guys gotta do it. And I think that the other thing I wanna say is that we've been talking about empathy and I've been seeing some memes go around how by reading fiction you gain empathy. I think I gained a lot of my empathy as a kid watching TV, like TV shows and seeing experiences that way. And I watch a lot of TED talks that I think help to increase empathy but the problem is the people that need to see those things or read those things aren't the ones watching or reading. So how do we incorporate into a system and it's gonna have to be the educational system or a way that brings people to the stage for some other reason to watch? How do we get people that wouldn't normally hear these stories or watch these stories to be in the audience or to be participating because we need to figure out how to do that. And that's my two or three cents. Thank you. And thank you Ken for doing that. Yeah, me too. Ken wrote me a note that said he has a client appointment so he won't be able to make today's call so I don't have to kill make it at all. And I loved Ken's poem last week and I misunderstood. I thought he was actually reading someone else's poem and he straightened that out afterward and I was very glad he did. So thank you for remembering that Stacey and Patty take your time whenever you'd like to step in. Thank you Stacey. A couple of things that came up for me as Stacey was sharing that feel that they felt really present to me recently as I continued to think about the topic of trauma and how to address it from a wider more collective space rather than these individual spaces. I think what feels important to name at least for me personally is the role that social cost has in let's say specifically the context of Stacey sharing like what would it look like for men to be more vulnerable to a note more, to express more, to share more, to start doing something. I think that's the language that Stacey used and you can correct me if I'm wrong there. I think it would be unrealistic to expect that until we see wider societal modeling of what that could look like. And I think that I get the sense just in my lived experience that the men that I interact with there is a one for that and desire for that and a need for that. I see men in my own community coming together in spaces to create that which has been an amazing and beautiful thing to witness. And as I survey that specific cohort I'm able to see that each of those men had or I've heard them tell me they've had mentors who have modeled what it looks like to be able to share with vulnerability and to be able to express in way that historically aren't let's say propped up by mainstream social media the movies we watch, the TV shows that we watch and aren't encouraged, right? And or even as Stacey shared in many instances they can be vilified and condemned and shamed. And so I think it would be just an important piece of this conversation as a whole to me feels like just acknowledging the cost of what we stand we've perceived ourselves to we might lose if we do move forward into even just trauma healing internal or into this kind of deeper emotional work there is a real cost to that or at least there could be a perceived cost to that that I think does act as a limitation sometimes for those who might be on the edge of exploring that space but I don't really know how to engage more deeply. So I think that that came up for me but especially I just want to acknowledge that this is just my opinion but the social cost for men publicly and let's just say publicly exploring what that looks like with other men too has seemed to me like it's a really big risk. And it can be a big risk in let's say a room of men if one men risks that kind of vulnerability that is that can be a real risk for safety and also how that man is perceived among others. So I just want to name that that's a really complex dynamic that I feel needs to be addressed at a higher level before we can expect this kind of societal change which I agree with you Stacey I think is about most importance and the timing is feels urgent. I think something that also came up for me I think this might have been Jerry's share and Jerry maybe this wasn't what you were alluding to but I'm really present too I feel like the semantics of this conversation can be a big limitation how I think it was Judy who expressed maybe even just using the word trauma can be a real barrier to people exploring and engaging with this conversation because it can so and understandly so immediately activate this like defense denial which is a protected mechanism, right? So how can we is this a matter of changing the language used so that we can have this conversation more effectively? I thought about this a lot myself I thought about the possibility of calling just like swapping out the word trauma something like nervous system disruptor or nervous system distressor just something that's a little more clinical and less just holds less charge and stigma just to be able to have these conversations people cut the pad conversations with people who maybe partake in the the MAGA side of this conversation and just shut off the moment that trauma is the word trauma's introduced into the room I have to go at 940s about 10 minutes so thanks for letting me speak and get some time and I think I feel complete with that Thanks Patty My friend Charles Warren whom some of you in the room know pre-pandemic started a mental health startup I'll remember what it is in a second I'll look it up in my brain but he knew that he couldn't call it mental health or depression counseling or anything like that so he framed it as mental fitness which was genius and it was a combination of six in-person sessions and an app and basically his co-founder there was a falling out that meant the things that didn't keep going on but I thought it was just like really beautifully and elegantly framed to sidestep and then step into sidestep but not avoid some words that might cause people who could really use the help to not show up and start using the tools and processes so I appreciate that a lot and then I'll put a couple I've done a little bit of it in the chat but I wanna make more explicit maybe something of what you and Stacey were just talking about which is like toxic masculinity, the manosphere what's happening to men these days and whether it's stoicism or other kinds of things there's a whole series of Joe Rogany kind of movements that are and in fact all of MAGA tries to be sort of explicitly stereotypically nasty male dominant male in practice and in approach and I find it a horrible I grew up it's very weird I grew up ashamed of men my dad was not a reason for this my dad was a great dad like taught me a bunch of stuff he and my mom never sorted things up particularly well but my dad wasn't the cause for this it was fat boys it was everybody who was an asshole and who was an asshole from testosterone or something I don't know what it was but I grew up not liking that part of my gender and so that's kind of weird but there's this whole I've lost my train of thought a little bit oh the manosphere and there's an appropriation of an expansion of and a superheating of these elements by I think the far right because it's really working politically and a piece of what's important to me also that I didn't put into my statements earlier is the weaponization of trauma as an instrument of aggression in the political sphere and the socio-emotional sphere and it's been done very, very effectively to the point where a decade ago the far rights complaint against the left was that everybody on the left were snowflakes for being so emotional and so and I remembered one more thing I wanted to add which is that it feels like this to me is maps into one of my models for how progress actually happens which is that on social issues, for example we hit a big change, something happens somebody passes a law that gay marriage is okay or somebody allows women to vote oh my God women, why should they vote there's no way they could like make good decisions no, no, no we're gonna give them the vote and then there's backlash over and over and over again but it's like a ratchet mechanism and the backlash happens but then if society is doing okay the general trend is, you know the long arc of history bends towards justice I think it's actually sort of true it's just that the backlash is miserable and sometimes really devastating and I think we're going through a period of that right now where the things we're talking about are actually being used as techniques in the arena of debate and conflict and society and they're being used I will add extremely effectively and one of the things I would love to know is how do you diffuse that from happening how do you pop that bubble how do you pour water on that fire how do you, you know and maybe they're out as compassion maybe it's something else I'm not entirely clear and certainly Biden doesn't seem to have figured that one out I'm Stuart then Carl please Yeah, so Jerry I think when you open you pointed directly at the problem the idea that the friend of yours had to use euphemisms to talk about what is such an intricate part of being human slash we're all born with these biological machines and they don't come with a manual and part of living is learning how to operate your particular machine and it's filled with biochemical reactions that are not quote rational all the time and you have to learn how to operate it just as much as you have to operate it physically and go to doctors to take care of mechanical and physical injuries the mental functioning which is such an amazing and key part we need to learn how to operate it how it works I think there's a huge amount of incredible fear on the part of men fear of women fear of matriarchy that's why women have been held down for such a long time because guys are absolutely afraid of the power of women and they are and until we learn how to develop real partnerships society will not quite be correct I'm feeling a little bit of deja vu listening to the conversation slash we've been over this so many many many many times before and it's a question of will and intention of educating men as part of their coming of age I don't know I went to the Robert Blime Michael Mead men's Mendocino workshops in the late 80s you know 1990 it's 35 years ago the notion of the need to do this has been around for such a long time and yet for some reason I don't know maybe it's maybe it's mass media the notion of social stereotypes perpetuates itself as opposed to the idea of metrosexual males becoming a much more dominant factor but emotional and social social learning is something that's taking place in high schools at this point in time I think younger generations are much more attuned to what it is that we're talking about so maybe there is some something to look forward to in the future as male role models start to shift we made a fucking mess as leaders we have just we have just created a fucking mess we started all these wars I think it's built in the biology in terms of projectiles and crap like that that's all I wanna say Thanks Stuart Carl the floor is yours Well so many so many things I guess with part of when Stuart was just saying stuff and part of it is men are men fear that if women get power that they'll act like men and in general like if you look at the history it's like whoever's been the oppressed turn around in our seem to be even worse I mean the Puritans I mean you can go back you know centuries and one you know something like that part of it just a little bit like with Jerry definitely college the entire pile of land fraternity at Wayne and Mary was high school wrestlers from when I talk about the biggest group of jerks you can find Yeah I'll post a link I've done it probably dozens of times already this year in multiple things but there's a was a great interview that talks about how trauma and resilience cross generations and one of the things is about rituals and I think it's part part of it's getting people into into groups like this where they can you have they we have this process we've developed I think the Quaker kind of silence and actually pausing it's been one of the most powerful parts of the evolution since I've joined the group and things and then I posted a link already but I guess well you, Pete and Judith attended my 99th birthday Engelbart's 99th birthday celebration I've got a lot of things going on and I posted a link of to like all the videos I've collected there was a huge event in twenty two thousand eight for the 40th anniversary of this demo SRI International in Stanford actually it reconciled enough to honor that but it was I mean there's been a lot of and that kind of ties into this too I mean there's a lot of animosity between groups overpower and because it was Stanford Research Institute is where Doug worked and things so I could ramble on responding to various things but I'll stop there Thanks, Carol Are you coming? Yeah, thanks, I'll be quick and then I just got to pop right off just to quick point to the conversation around dynamics between men and women and men holding women down because men are afraid of women's power I think that I don't say this to to be contrarian I'm getting a notification from Zoom to lower my hand Don't worry about it Not to be not to be contrarian just to express that like as a female it feels really clear to me or if a female body citizen it feels really clear to me that what we're in that conversation we're not talking about one side being wrong once I being right we're talking I think to me what feels like the more upstream place to address and explore that topic is how both cohorts have been taught to manage their personal power and I think that when when we both cohorts get really clear on what it's like to manage power from the personal power like power with and power rather than power over because women have been have been trained and vaccinated into a power over expression of power as well we just it just tends to tends to generalization express a little differently and you know so we hear and we see especially in media this is super prevalent the archetype or the trope of the manipulative female right or the female who uses her her womb her fertility to empower or power over men right in any means so like we've we've I don't know I just I feel I have a lot of thoughts about this but I think the conversation is so much more complex than men doing women wrong and while that's that's very present in a very real part of the conversation there's there's just so much more depth to this and I just I really personally feel like it's time to steer away from the you know men powering over and then are the problem I think that is the perpetuation of a very old conversation that actually does not support the collective empowerment of all and I will end with that thank you all I got to have but I will talk to you all so maybe I might be able to join the call if my call is short so sorry you have to bounce thank you for that um Doug C maybe what men are afraid of about women becoming powerful is the loss of the feminine in our lives the softness the beauty thinking of the shift from skirts to pants maybe we're losing something really critical end of thought I don't find women having power means they are not beautiful or can be soft I'm not sure soft is a virtue here so I'm confused a little bit I think powerful women are really beautiful so Doug I I'm hearing I'm hearing sort of a gender charge in what you said that um isn't resonating for me you want to say more okay um Stacy I need to take a breath because take a take a deep breath go for it I can tell you how many times early on in my life I've been insulted and the the charge that was thrown at me was you want to be a man so to hear that is like it kind of blows my mind a little bit but um but going to but but let's say that that's a real fear because it kind of ties into where I wanted to pick up on what you were talking about Jerry which going back to this maga movement and how they've been able to utilize I mean here's the thing I think many people that are drawn there do have unresolved trauma and I think there is a large amount of fear there that they are covering up and in some way they're looking towards this powerful figure that's going to protect them in I mean this is anecdotal but in the people that I speak to they have lots of walls built up around them many of them I know I know they have good hearts I knew them when they weren't like this I've seen the change and these are people that if they got too close to their own pain they would just break so instead they build up these shells and these walls and they just want to be angry and somehow when you're feeling angry you feel more powerful so when you ask how do we counteract that the problem is when a normal person a regular person encounters somebody some kind of energy that's coming at them of course we're going to become defensive and so the energy we push out to them is also like attacking which then confirms whatever fear they have so it's like we would have to be so strong in ourselves that instead of doing exactly what they're afraid of which is to attack we'd have to actually be able to take a step back which is really hard to do unless you're really stable in yourself because it's like dealing with a child having a tantrum so that's the only thing I wanted to say I'm not suggesting that's what we should do I mean sometimes at least for me the answer is don't even engage if I don't have a lot of bandwidth I won't even have the conversation with the person because I can only go for so long before I'm going to want to punch them in the face and that's not a good thing So Stacey when is your book coming out? I don't know Can Zoom write it for me? Can the transcripts write it for me? I've been waiting for AI to help me out but We're getting close to that or your course your course or something like that I mean really yes I'm agreeing a lot with where you're coming from on that and it's funny sometimes the best the best way to counter something is not to object to it and push back it's to actually accept it and then see what happens and then go with it and if accepting it doesn't mean you personal harm it just means listening to something that whatever that you might not want to hear that's okay but sometimes the other side just needs to be heard they need to get the words out and feel like the other person heard the words this is one thing I really like about nonviolent communication the worst named most interesting kind of peacemaking process I know of which is it asks each participant to paraphrase back to the other what they heard the other say and the act of doing so has this really salutary effect on the one hand it tells the other person I heard you well enough that I can at least paraphrase it and tell you back what you said in a way that you're like yeah that's roughly what I said and then the act of my saying what the person I don't like or have a debate with the act of my thinking through their position and saying it back to them softens me to their position somewhat as well and lather rinse repeat that has I think it has a good effect overall but we need more of these things I love that in some schools they teach nonviolent communication in like kindergarten or first grade and I read an article long ago about like two first graders who had a fight on the playground pulled over a third one and then they sat in the corner doing NBC so that's pretty cool we need we need a lot of that very cool Carl please well I think some of the I mean I think some of our comments are like I'm not going to speak necessarily for anybody else but I mean listening to comments I think we were trying to explain kind of what or some ideas of why things are the way they are but this Doug Breitbart usually I mean it's about being in the present and and then going forward and what how can we do things better and then back to the topic I mean I'm I'm a victim of World War II and I'm born in Chicago my grandparents had a fight and my grandmother decided to go visit her mom mom's 70th birthday in 1939 so they got stuck over in the war when they found out at the end of the war when they found out my mom was bilingual they had they brought a naïve 15-year-old Catholic girl into have to translate for stuff so my mom was devastated from that and the impact of that so when I just see when I see what's I mean the all these all the kids and you crimp in and now Gaza and it just goes back and forth and who's retaliating against who I mean if you could go back centuries and stuff I mean it just I don't know how I don't know how we get break this horrible cycle but yeah that's I look at the situation with Putin in Ukraine and I I don't think Putin is in the middle of a group of people trying to do this I think Putin and I don't think he's doing it single-handedly but he has managed to somehow and train all of the upper society and power structure of Russia to go suck up the flower of their youth and send them in the battle to die brutally horribly which is going to cause fresh new trauma which will trickle through multiple generations et cetera et cetera fresh new trauma at a scale that is very hard to imagine or understand um so so I look at that and I'm like how do how do we stop this thing from happening it's just really important that that this not happen and unfortunately the best answer right this minute is to send more weapons into the zone that's just horrifying Kevin please you're going to need to unmute however or you won't hear you properly yes so I just wanted to say that you know I come from a family of real strong women and I'll tell a brief story about my grandmother to say the nature of my fear of women my grandmother was a bookkeeper at a furniture store from south hayward and she realized there was a pattern of the store giving really good pensions but fire finding people to fire when they were 64 and nobody got it and so she backdated her birthday about six or seven years ahead of it and then went in and said hey I'm 65 no you're 64 he says no I'm 65 oh well what you did as a crime he said no I've documented you know six cases of your fraud and you pay me my pension or I will deliver you over to the DA and so mind blowing yeah yeah and she she had plotted it and hadn't said a word till that day mind blowing I've been bolstered by strong and brilliant women and helping men with you know issues of anger management and irresponsibility so I have no problem of women being in control what I really hate seeing is when a woman is in control and the guy that she's in control of knows that she's treating him with contempt and I think that's what I would fear of women you know right now the women around me don't they're in charge but they don't treat me with contempt they respect what I do losing respect along with them being in control would be what I would fear that something would happen and they wouldn't see the exchange like that anymore I've had that with some younger black women who have just decided that there is no good ally and some of the older black women are not working with them and can't afford to work with them because of how they sort of get well-meaning white guys to come in and just chop them up and so you know it's it's it it can happen in some markets in some places with some people so that's what I would fear thanks I'm really specific thanks Kevin that's a mind-blowing story I just posted a research paper that says basically hey guys matriarchies are not the opposite of patriarchy because I think one reason men fear women coming to power is like holy shit if women have power and they did to us what we've done to them we are all fucked and matriarchies are about more egalitarianism Kevin you're muted I don't know if you're trying to talk to us good I guess you're not and so we don't we don't understand what egalitarian kind of leadership often even looks like we don't we don't have a taste for it so we think our only options are communism or or capitalism and democracy and that like that brew is very potent and toxic students yeah so on the masculine feminine thing I just wanted to say it's an interesting phenomenon that I've had the privilege of being with powerful women powerful accomplished women all my life my first wife was from matriarchy and in the 60s during the women's movement she was kind of non-plussed by it it was like what I mean this is you know well we don't need any of this we we we have been equal or in charge for multiple generations and so the idea of women's liberation was it was just nothing two I wanted to speak Ken and Ken's voice and I think we've got a lot of we going on a lot of we that that is not all kinds of generalizations and the third thing perhaps to bring the conversation away from the the gender dialogue is that one of the concerns I and others have about trauma is its relationship to what I'll call identity politics slash people take their trauma and that becomes their primary identity and so they live in deficit and I think that that is really really harmful thing you know I don't say this glibly and I say it glibly it's kind of a little bit of get over it is what we need and it's it's perhaps a a phenomenon of how fortunate we all are that folks can dwell on their past peace if we have time on Rita a poem on resilience a little bit later in the conversation thanks Stuart I think the thing you just brought into the conversation could be the topic of a whole call although I don't know that we have the patience for it given that we've been dwelling on trauma for a while I wish we did because I think it's really important and I think it's a it's a very big piece of the current political melee is this idea of identity politics and I meant to say earlier that me too and Black Lives Matter and a bunch of movements like that were actually the voicings of trauma in attempts to redress the trauma which in large measure failed to have any traction also the the guns movement the anti-guns movement all of those all of those you know Marjorie Stonem-Douglas and the kids the kids out of there all of those are responses to trauma and and I don't mean social trauma somebody called me a bad name trauma I mean horrible trauma rape murder you know being shot while and being killed while in custody a whole bunch of really really really bad you know great a trauma and my more conservative friend is like progressives are just positioning they're sort of posturing to be in favor of all these things but they just kind of move from the flavor of the month to the next flavor of the month and then they don't really mean it and my own take on it is actually no I think these things are sincere it's just that progressives don't lack progressives lack the tools to actually make any progress on these issues and the other side has done a supreme job of suppressing any sort of the idea that after this many mass murders we don't have any gun laws really to speak of in the country shocks and stuns me and and I don't understand it and the mere presence of guns causes guns gun accidents funny that right the mere presence of guns actually leads to more suicides a bunch of other sorts of things sorry in some sense trauma is just so pervasive in American society and cruelty is so taken for granted here that would be unacceptable in other countries that it breaks my heart Judy I think that am I unmuted I never remember yes you are you are this is a complicated topic and I don't know if I can articulate it appropriately but trauma itself is a very loaded word which has distinct and rather different meanings to different people based on their own personal and family structure and all types of other experiences and at the heart of it it's to address trauma I think we need to somehow significantly increase self-awareness and other awareness and an openness to not be judgmental because as soon as you start judging it polarizes people entrench and they also will deny having a sensitivity issue almost universally so somehow our culture needs to in my opinion become first self-aware and self-responsible because you certainly shouldn't be criticizing other people how they're managing themselves if you aren't managing yourself with a high level of awareness and noticing what hooks you what causes you to stiffen up I mean there's all kinds of body cues but unless you pay attention to them you'll just let them hook you and drive you where you don't want to go and so I think it's impossible to impose awareness on other people or to support their trauma unless they're willing to share it and kind of comb through it a bit and sometimes a gentle observation does a lot more than anything else just you look tired today or you look you look like something's bugging you a little bit but I don't want to intrude and more than 50% of the time they'll say wow you're absolutely right and then they'll say something about what's going on but if we don't talk about it and don't first acknowledge it in ourselves to be self-aware it won't do any good to talk about it with other people because we'll be coming from a guarded self-serving position and this gets kind of psychological but I think there's a lot of things that are traumatic that are everyday occurrences that we just ignore because they aren't what we see as the big traumas and somehow I don't know if I'm making any sense but I just think self-examination and kind other awareness are key dimensions of trying to address trauma and if you've done that then you can think about larger scale trauma and whether there's some potential to organize to address it in a more systematic way Judy you're making a lot of sense I appreciate your sensitivity to the word trauma and I think a piece of our conversation was about how approaching somebody and saying what about your trauma is triggering to them and we'll probably turn them off if not trauma what do we call this and how do we bring this dynamic into the conversation without alienating people and also without skirting the issue entirely my word is uneasy okay maybe I'm picking up on something that isn't real but you look a little uneasy today and they're free to deny it which is of course they're right anyway but they might just share it and they'll typically tip toe in they'll just say wow you're kind of observant and yeah I had a fight with my daughter this morning or whatever it was that triggered them that particular day and again it's more constructive passive listening that in my experience offers the most help and it sounds like in your professional career you had several moments like this oh sure yeah but it helped being married to a psychiatrist good good who was the most least intrusive person I've ever met amazing it was uh yeah he was he had the art and sensitivity to observe deeply and hardly ever asked a question unless it was a maybe it wasn't even a maybe you want to think about it I'll give you an example the best one he ever did with me was when I was in grad school and finishing my dissertation and stressing out about whether I was ever going to really get done and I must have sounded depressed and enough on the phone that he said something and he said well you know what would be so terrible if you didn't finish and I thought about it and I thought well my parents would be really disappointed and he said so you think they'd rather have you kill yourself than not finish and I went well no of course not but it completely shifted my point of view without in any way criticizing or judging or other things like that and I was blessed to have this man in my life and the good news is since I had him in my life for 30 plus years a lot of it's internalized now so every day it's like oh dick would ask me this question or dick would say this and the angriest I ever saw him get was standing across the room from me and I was doing something he called perseverating which I didn't even know was a word at the time and he'd go that's enough and that was it and that was so out of character for him that had caught my attention so but I would wish that everyone has someone like that in their life or the opportunity to be that someone to other people and in my mind that's the biggest thing we could do to address drama is to be kind to other people let's rest with that for a moment thank you that's a lovely place to pause hey Mike you've stepped into a whirlwind conversation about trauma we went back to last week's topic I started out with a question for everyone to type into the chat about what is the most important question about trauma for you what should we be sort of exploring and asking we've gone really interesting places so glad I joined just in time to hear those last comments yeah because I was actually just thinking about that how how lucky I am to have that that special person and how all of us should have I really agree Stuart yeah and picking up on on what Judy just shared about being kinder is also not being so dumb how can we how can we all learn to be a little bit smarter I mean right now as I observe you know people are just doing stupid shit all the time it's just it's absolutely amazing how you know that the stupid stuff people do I don't know it's you know it's not like what were you thinking it's what are you thinking are you thinking that was what I was going to say next Mike and it's just the people aren't thinking there's a constant level of reaction and you know what I said earlier about operating their own being their own machine I mean that's some of the stuff that needs to happen in in our educational process that people really need to learn how to be socialized you know to live among people or as a as a wonderful consulting partner of mine used to say some people are just not housebroken and I'll leave it at that I want to play with word education because we've brought it up a couple times here we need to educate men to do blank we you know we need to educate kids to understand social emotional learning etc etc and I I agree but I disagree in the following way I'm not sure this is about education in the sense of what you learn in the classroom and how you teach it from a text kind of thing I think this is a matter of socialization and learning and for me learning teaching and schooling and education are very different things and the word I like in that crowd is learning I think learning happens through interaction and I think a piece of what we've blown a piece of what we've messed up is that we've lost a lot of the interactions that we had in the interdependencies that we had that let us understand that we were valuable that let us understand that even however tiny we were we had a role in society that people cared for us we've done like all those things we've we've many of them we've broken and we've broken them kind of in modernist societies and in more in big cities than out in rural places and one of the things that I think rural folk marvel at is how broken society seems to them in the other places that aren't like them because they take care of the elderly they you know they do they do a bunch of things that a society kind of does that's one one role that churches have or any kind of religious organization is they bring people together to take care of take care of the crowd of the group it's very interesting that way and then mentioning churches brings me to a point I wanted to bring up way earlier in this conversation but didn't make sense to put in it doesn't make that much sense right now but I just want to say it before out of time on this call which is that it really strikes me that a major piece of Judaism and Christianity is the telling and retelling of trauma stories major major piece of the the crucifixion the and you know the all the stories that are told as part of the core of the canon of at least both of those and I'm not familiar enough with Islam to know I know that Islam means surrender and there's a whole different sort of ways of looking at it but those are the three Abrahamic religions but certainly of the two of the ones that I'm more familiar with the retelling of trauma is and and why happy Passover like like an happy Easter I'm sorry we're celebrating the crucifix oh we're celebrating I guess the resurrection okay I'm still a little confused so what effect does that have on people in these religions that trauma is so central to the story that they're all agreed to and does that have an influence in the dynamics that we're talking about I mean I can only speak for myself I can only speak for myself yeah there was a short period of time where I did go to temple and I know for me hearing those stories always tapped into we will survive together so but I guess that depends on who the leader is and what they're drawing upon yeah you know Pete said something last week when he was talking about where the where the DNA of you know the part that survived and when when you were saying that Pete all I kept thinking is that means that we all carry that recessive gene for that for that kind sensitive wonderful part and if we just harnessed it and united it how powerful we would be well they agree and and I think it's obvious it seems like it's a source of frustration for some of us too we can't play along with the conquistador kind of mindset it's like what are we even doing why would we do that there's a bunch of thinking about intergenerational trauma talks about how trauma affects gene expression that's a big core part of the theory of intergenerational trauma is that different genes can be activated by external events thereby causing different consequences for the same genetic material like like it can actually affect the structure of the self I find that really really interesting because we tend to think of genetic change as very slow change but the gene expression theory seems to say well yeah kind of a lot of stuff can happen more quickly than we think it does and in a more in a more profound way than we think it does and I tread into these waters very lightly because I am no life scientist at all Eric yeah hi so growing up in Judaism I recognize that a lot of it is about the socialization of how kids are taught and how parents bring them to things so like a lot of my growing up expending Sundays with my father at pool club and hearing the men in the sauna room making jokes and all kinds of attitudes and I felt something was wrong at that time that the way they talked about women or attitudes about like their ethnic jokes and in a way that that was a way for them to connect to bond as men and because they grew up in that so I mean the stories are there for a reason to teach history to get the kids questioning what happened why do we do this so Passover is a time for kids to ask all the questions why are we drinking wine why are we eating matzah and all that but there's more I mean I've been to play to like Orthodox rabbis and the kids are absolutely in awe of the father figure and the father runs the the mother does all the work but the father runs the dinner table essentially and and there's that authority so we're all growing up differently and we bring what we we bring all that into our adult lives and it's how to how does it affect us like when we leave home for the first time go to college and oh you know we're going to get trapped in cults or groups that I mean that that's such a critical time leaving the family and an interesting thing there's a Hasidic someone who grew up Hasidic who is teaching physics online on YouTube in Yiddish to reach people who are still in that Hasidic community and it's fascinating how he's come to a new understanding how he can accept the laws of physics with his teaching reconcile that somehow yeah so yeah it's a lot about upbringing but also nurture thanks Eric I love the Yiddish physics teaching yeah I'll find it Carl please yeah I'm posting some links to it but well I've heard Peter Gable talk at a network for spiritual progressives conference here in DC back in 2006 and inspired me to put together a playlist which I had actually burned out to custom CDs digital vinyl verbatim had these digital vinyls that I made it look like little 45s I don't know if you ever saw those but I actually handed one to to Rabbi Lerner near the end and I made a YouTube playlist out of it so I'll post that as well and Peter Gable's last book was I think it was his last book he fortunately passed about a year and a half ago now but it's the desire for mutual recognition and so I'm putting a couple links into those you mentioned it last week also I had connected to my brain already had it it's relevant for almost every conversation I've been in since October 7th it seems like so yeah it's funny when I think on an OGM call long ago I talked about part of my personal philosophy which is I went hunting around for what are good instructions for life and I wound up with Thich Nhat Hanh's deep listening and loving speech that if we start with deep listening and loving speech lots of good things cascade out of that because then other people get heard deep listening means acknowledgement of the other it means a whole bunch of things like that and loving speech means start with kindness assume good intent it means a whole bunch of things like that as well so I would I would crank those into the instructions for mankind and ignore the the 10 commandments for example which are very strange but that's another conversation uh Stuart yeah um and some of the great wisdom around is simple and and we forget it as I as I'm thinking about an audience as well as participating in this call I think about the you know the brilliance of um a victor frockland and man's search for meaning you know that between the taking in of information and how we respond to it in that instance is how we express it where we express our own humanity and if we could learn to make choices around more human responses we would all be um a lot better off um and I also wanted to um to to uh to recognize Peter Gabel Peter wrote an endorsement for one of my books the book of agreement um aside from his work with to come Peter was also the um president or leader of of of um the new law school which is a very progressive law school in San Francisco but Peter wrote an endorsement for the book of agreement that literally made me cry um not figuratively but literally because I felt so seen and understood by what it was that he wrote it makes me choke up a little bit now even even thinking about that and I just answered a comment one of the most helpful suggestions that I learned from my husband was can you tell me a little more curiosity is one of the really useful paths in it's I think it's a part of deep listening it's like can you can you say more about that I can you help can you help me see your point of view can you help me understand it better any of those kinds of questions are really generative useful questions patty welcome back thanks and um just the name after um well Stuart was sharing what occurred to me was Stuart when you were sharing about the the power of this um you said peter gable was his name yes writing this really moving forward for for your book and how you felt so um you you felt so seen and understood it just struck me that I mean in my own experience it seems like that's something I craved and it seems like many other human diameter also uh craving that an equal measure and it seems to me maybe one of the barriers of um navigating and moving forward in this time where the the perceived cost of actually seeing and understanding someone can be so high especially when their worldview their perception of how the world works might be so different and perhaps challenging to another's um that seems like a big obstacle right so we have this this I mean what feels like a deeply innate human need and the system that has been orchestrated I would say very effectively to make meeting that need um seem to be so costly for so many totally totally agree go ahead Stuart let me actually read before Stacey goes let me read the endorsement because it please thank you I think what peter said was Levine begins from the premise that the purpose of agreement is to build a bridge to the other and to realize your common aspiration for connection writ large this idea would revolutionize the study and practice of law and help to realize that our spiritual nature as social beings in pursuit of mutual uh affirmation love that thank you now Stacey were you going to jump in I was I so thank you for reading that and that's wonderful I don't want it to seem like my common is directly related to that because it's the other side of it we'll sort that out because what I wanted to to also share is that keep in mind that what that does is excuse us to what we want to be seen for and that ties into this whole fiat lens and what success is and what's valuable so there's I just wanted to throw in some other factors that play in because we're systems thinkers here so I just wanted to bring in some other pieces can you say a tiny bit more about what you want to be seen for this is about identity about how others judge us see us what which piece of that are you tugging on so I think I think we all want to be seen for the value that we bring to the world I think that's pretty clear we don't necessarily want to be seen for the places that were vulnerable you know that's something that we want to hide that's the park that's covered with shame or what whatever it is although sometimes there's so much value in being able to reveal that and so much healing can happen as a result of revealing that because other people have those same things and they can learn that by recognizing that these are common things that we have that's one piece of what I would say but there's a lot of things but that you know let me stick with one thanks Stacy um anyone else with some closing thoughts we've got only a couple minutes left I have a poem for us if we want to go out with it Stuart you mentioned you had a a proposed poem as well if you wanted to read that one in I will follow you but any other thoughts as we get toward the end of this call before we go to poetry good and it feels unless somebody wants to go back to some of the specific topics like identity politics and trauma and all that kind of stuff I think we might have talked our way through this one for now I don't feel compelled to go back to it next week or the week after right now which doesn't mean I don't think this is incredibly urgent and it's something we need to like do more of focus on more but I'm aware of the time and space that we have here and how we how we deviate up some so with that I will ask Stuart to read his poems great so it's called resilience and I think resilience is the way we um keep stepping beyond um whatever impact trauma um has had on our our lives resilience demons of consciousness defy intention renders you spineless in a dimension cancel self-confident energy of being blindfolds vision relegates seeing surly monster seems without end enveloping demanding you bend progress halted actions stop life is molasses you want to drop will it end this bottomless pit will you surface intact with wit in this chasm been here before daunting passage not what you came for helping endure seeing the end resilience elevates it is a friend or deal ends finally turn lessons prevail so much to learn life not for the meager or weak nor the faint hearted acting like sheep listen to voices follow your heart let life come unfolding as art cultivate wisdom be kind to friends here with compassion serve make amends be patient humble no worry about trends take joy and ours connected to friends thanks Stuart um and here's a link to the poem I'd like to read in which is by K Ryan one of my favorite poets and it's titled least action is it vision or the lack that brings me back to the principle of least action by which in one branch of rabbinical thought the world might become the kingdom of peace not through the tumult and destruction necessary for a new start but by adjusting little parts a little bit maybe turn that cup a quarter inch or scoot up that bench it imagines an incremental resurrection a radiant body puzzled out through tinkering with the fit of what's available as though what is is right already but a skew it is tempting for any person who would like to love what she can do love that should I read it again thanks um I love it too it's it's beautiful least action by K Ryan is it vision or the lack that brings me back to the principle of least action by which in one branch of rabbinical thought the world might become the kingdom of peace not through the tumult and destruction necessary for a new start but by adjusting little parts a little bit maybe turn that cup a quarter inch or scoot up that bench it imagines an incremental resurrection a radiant body puzzled out through tinkering with the fit of what's available as though what is is right already but a skew it is tempting for any person who would like to love what she can do that's okay I really think that's that that is okay it's fabulous yeah thank you all um thank you for a wonderful call really appreciate our time together thanks for showing up with your hearts and your stories and all this good stuff thank you thank you bye thank you