 This is the OGM call for June 16th, 2022. Turn on the transcript as well. There we go. We are on the rhythm where this week we have a topic to choose. We have a couple on the air as you see from the email I sent around. Doug, if you'd like to explain what you were thinking last week when it came out, what would be the topic? Sorry, two weeks ago. When it's not like a topic for this call out, that would be a great place to begin. Sure. The one qualification I'll make at the top. Is that. What I'm, what I'm going to be speaking to is not a thing. So we're, we're, you know, we're going to be talking about objectification and. This is really. Sort of not that. If that's conceivable. It's entirely conceivable. So I, I've basically been immersed for the last five years and. Human generativity, like how do we co-create together. And. Got to that question. On the basis that all the stuff we see out the window that. That. Everybody here has spoken to the need for change. For transformation of a replacement of her. Or healing or fixing or curing. All of that was created by us. And so maybe if I looked at how we create. As a species. On a fundamentals basis. Then that would be a good starting place and service to figuring out. How we can do that differently. Like how we can change the way. We actually relate to each other and relate to co-creating. Because if we continue to do what we've always done. And you know, all the quotes, right? We're going to continue to generate what we've been generating. So. What that ended up surfacing was the idea that. Before. Everybody tends to start with what the it is that we're working on. And. That's what came out of a lot of conversation. With a couple of people was. That that's sort of chapter. Three or four in the creative process. It's not the beginning of the story. And. That before you get to the it. The ingredients to make whatever soup is going to be made. The first thing is if. Are you and I aligned. On a values level. Like the way we want to relate to each other and co-creating. The way we want. Our creation. To. Come into manifestation. And on a values level. From a starting place and alignment standpoint. And by the way, this doesn't head into Richard Barrett territory. So. It's not about the luminous lists of infinite slices and shades of. Variations on. Like it's not an objectification of values. It's, you know. Like what are the internalized embodied felt sense held. Energetic orientations. To how we do us, how I do me, how I relate to others. And how I would have them relate to me. Sort of the golden mute golden rule level. Value stuff. And so that was sort of one bookmark. And. A process of. Delanguaging. Unlearning. Cleaning slate. It took 18 months. To get to that. As a, like that first ingredient. And then. On the other end of the generative. Frame. It's. On a purpose level. What's the it. That we're creating. In service to who. Like what's the value contribution in service to who and, and for what reason. And the inquiry being, are we also aligned on that? Which actually came up as a question in the previous two sessions. Like what's the it. And the current paradigm. Prevailing pattern. Is competitive. So it's like a bloody red ocean feeding frenzy of. Whose it wins. Can I convince all of you to get on board with my it. And. And if the it isn't addressed at the top. It's an alignment and agreement. Sort of that everybody's on board. With why they're here and what they're doing. Working in service to. Then. The feeding frenzy thing happens. And nothing gets manifested. So that was five years. In, in a group. Of four hours a week evolved into four to our sessions. Eight hours a week. Unable to produce anything because of competition of who wins. So. If you get as far as the values. Alignment. And you're able to sort of get arms around. A purpose for why. A group of people have come together to co-create. So. Where does the creation happen? Like if you really unpack and strip things down, like how do things come into manifestation? And. So that is a phenomena of. The present moment. Like this meeting. Is currently being in fact, co-created moment to moment by all of the people that are present at the moment. Like that's the moment of manifestation. And. The concept of. Working. From nothing or working from a blank, a true blank slate. Isn't as much about. Knowledge or. Subject matter or practice or technique or solution development or process. What is the orientation and mindset on a presencing basis. Of the people that are co-creating together. And. If everybody comes. Packing. Everything in their individual rear view mirrors. That is a direct hit to. Because it takes energy. And attention. To carry all that stuff and hold it. So my thinking about my pet. Constructive salvation for the world. Right now this minute here or am I present and in the movement. Looking, listening, taking in processing and. And. And receiving. What's in the field. So that has to do with the rear view mirror being brought in. The other sort of. Favorite dynamic of current paradigm is. Projecting into the future. Like the God of. I'm going to project into the future as if I actually have the ability. To. Make reality conform to converge with and meet my projection. The fundamental greatest single most delusionary. Like construct of mankind. Like the fact that we have a brain and can do that. Doesn't mean. Like that it actually helps. Bestly plans of mice and men. Nine out of 10 times. So that's the reality when you get to that projected future point, there's no resemblance to the reality that was projected. So that sort of seems like a. A fool's errand. If you keep doing that, you never end up confronting the actual picture you envision manifesting or creating. So present moment. Blank slate empty. Starting from empty, whatever they it is. It's really the idea of. Letting go of your rear view mirror, your baggage, your stuff. Leaving that at the door. Letting go of the orientation that says we have to project. We have to create a target. We have to create an output. We have to create a noun. Fixed thing on the back end. Up front. If you eliminate. Bringing the past and if you eliminate bringing projection. Need for projection. And you settle into the idea of present moment. The operating question becomes from a complete present moment place. What's needed. Now. Now, if you have the values thing. Locked. And you have the shared purpose. That's not books and volumes. That's like literally a really simple short suite statement. Then with those two things referenced and everybody oriented based on those. What's needed now, and that's the beginning. Like that's, that's the generative moment blank slate, like inquiry. And, and working from emergence. And that's really it. I'm sorry for the length of that, but that's sort of the. The Gestalt anyway. That's a great intro. And I think you got a lot of us provoked in a bunch of different ways, which I would like to tap into right now. So who would like to. Jump in. I like to ask Doug, if you can put that into a simple question. And now with all that background and context, can you just ask a simple question that would get us all thinking about how to engage with your point. Well, the first question is. Because this is, I usually never get past the first question, which is everybody down with leaving their baggage at the door. And, and you know, what the answer universally has always been, at least one out of N number of people has always been somebody who after a lot of back and forth and tussle, ultimately says, no, I'm not. And it's sort of better to clear that at the front end and go, okay, I guess we're not doing this. Then it is to spend, you know, five years. And, and a lot of time and effort getting to the fact that you're not going to be able to transcend. On a collective basis, transcend each person's individual attachments. So what would be the next question? So hypothetically, if everybody said, okay, I'll do that. And by the way, it provokes all sorts of stuff internally for people. So it's only for whatever a period, you know, like 90 minutes, like you can have it all, you know, like you can have it all back at the end. It's forever. It's not banishing or invalidating it. It's not judging you. That's not saying that shout not. Or any of that. Like, So if everybody were game to do that. Then the next question would be. What's what is the, what is the, what is the, what is the, what's what is the, an expression of collective purpose? Why are we. Each individually here. In service to what's the, what's the. The driver. What's the, the. The energetic. The energetic reason that, that gets me up in the morning. That is bigger than me is not about my self interest and not about my, my identity. About me in service to. The larger. We, if you would, the larger. Context and species planet biome and the rest of it. Is that a statement that we could evolve? A couple of sentences that everybody would be like, yeah. I'm down with that. This reminds me. A story from my own life. When I was in the fourth grade. I got the idea that unicorns were the coolest thing in the world. And I drew pictures of unicorns on cards. And before the school started, I put one on every desk. In my class. And I watched people come in thinking they were going to get it. Did that not happen. And I was crushed. I'm sorry. Can you leave that baggage of the door, Doug? Yeah. Leave the unicorns outside the door. Yeah. Yeah. Doug, I just want to be clear. Like one person can cancel the field trip for everybody. Right. That's what you're saying. Like one person. Wow. That seems really pretty stupid. And there's a, there's a reason for that. Because and, and. Complete projection on my part. It's my belief. But, but it's mine. Which is that like. It's all of us are none of us. Like whatever you're letting the recalcitrant stop any collective. Well, you're letting the recalcitrant stop any collective action. Well, from, from a, you should hire out to businesses to encrust their bureaucracies. What they're already doing. Well, from a practical standpoint, isn't that sort of like. The reality. That's what you're saying. Like, if, if, if, if, if some are not, if some aren't on board, then you're sort of doomed. You're asking for a hundred percent consensus. I mean, there was a little bit on the list about definitions of consensus. You're sort of requiring that everybody agree. There's. It sounds like that's what you're doing. There's a little bit of a difference. The difference is that the consensus idea. Is about. Agreement. To the it. Agreement to. Concrete like consensus comes up in that governance. Mean territory. In that decision-making mean territory. And I'm not. I'm not all of us are none of us. I'm not all of us are. In a projective way. In that projective way. I'm more coming at it from a reductionist orientation of. If even within this number of people in this moment of time, it is impossible for everybody on an internalized imbibing. Fully sensed. Fully felt. Fully felt. Fully felt. Fully felt. So yeah. Like. I resonate and I'm in alignment with that. Then. I. You know, I don't think it bodes well for the prognosis. So I'm starting with the beginning of. Is that idea possible? Like, can we even get that far? Kevin, are you done with what you were saying? I just think you're, you're, you're setting up a protocol to get metastasized and replicate. Don't mention in every, in every clutch point. I think it's a really disastrous idea. What's the alternative, Kevin? Well, you know, that sometimes minority voices are not right. There has to be a, you know, you can't let one recalcitrant stop collective action on climate change in your community. Cause they don't want to build a rainbow. We're building rain gardens in black families. You know, you can't let one person who's against the good things stop what most everybody wants. I mean, you know, this is like, you know, get the, get the bricks, the golden chair. It just seems incredibly bad to me. I mean, that's, I'm just, that's just, I may not be seeing what you're picturing, but that's how I can imagine it. So let's, let's find our way to what Doug means. Let me go for a second and then press the Florida Wendy. A couple of things I wanted to say. One is, I think you're asking us to be extremely present and to let go of things that might keep us from being present and to ask what is really needed in the moment. And you could have started with that and I would have been like, I'm cool with that. But you've gone a bunch of places that are really complicated for a bunch of us. And I think I have an instinct you're talking to a crowd that's way down the road you're talking about, but you're talking about to us as if we're not like, I know you're not going to come this way and so forth. And I'm resisting that. I'm fighting myself fighting that a little bit. One of my beliefs is that you've got to know how the sausage was made and you have to have some ideas about what the future is going to be. And then you have to let go of them to come back into beginner's mind and be present. But that, but to me. The reason we're as fucked up as we are is that a bunch of clever people out of the world had plans for the future and successfully drove them through society in ways that are extremely dysfunctional that we don't know how to neutralize. And so the idea that, that working on the future and having a plan for the future is, is useless. Doesn't, doesn't engage in my head. But again, I can drop plants and I can be present. And like, I think I'm reasonably skilled at, at just being present and responding to what's happening, you know, in the moment. Second thing is if you're trying to get everybody to agree on a thing, which seems to be an important part of the process you're recommending, how do you avoid that thing from becoming like motherhood and apple pie statements, like we're just looking out for the betterment of humanity or if humanity is a virus on the planet, the betterment of the planet. And then like, I think many people could agree to that, but boy, it's a watered down statement that doesn't mean a lot. Doesn't mean anything. Maybe what you're suggesting is a process for helping people decide to opt out of a group. Like, Oh, this group seems to be really interested in designing better subways for the world. And I'm subways to just not my thing. So I'm going to leave, I'm going to exit now and go find a group that whose purpose is more centered on what I'm interested in. That's interesting in some way. And then at some point I wanted to pass the floor to Stacy, because she has spent many, many hours in a group called GCC, which I think a couple other people have been involved in, which feels to me like it's coming at things in very much this way. And I'm unclear has, has like, like, what's happened there. I would love kind of a check-in in some sense on that. So these are some of the complexities that Doug, that you've popped in my head. And if you'd like to reply to those, go ahead and then I'll pass to Wendy or I'll go straight to Wendy. Um, my there, there's zero projection that I'm attached. I have no attachments. In relation to what I'm speaking to. Um, and there's no projections on anybody else. In terms of a state of being or level of consciousness or awareness or present moment, not present or any of that. I don't, um, I don't bring any of that. Your statements didn't sound like that. Your statements didn't sound that way. You said things like in any group, somebody always eject and that's projecting on to us that we're just going to barf on their idea. I mean, like, it felt like you had some assumptions about what was going on. Yeah, I, nothing projective. I mean that those statements were just from past experience. That, that, um, there's always been a lot of triggerings. And a lot of things, um, experienced as, as part of what I've, I've expressed. That I didn't say. So the, the, um, I'll leave it there, but I, I, um, for my experience, uh, I think that was a lot of work. I think that was a lot of work. I think that was a lot of work. Transcending all of the reflexive stuff. And shedding all of the attachments. Were no. Easy feet. Like it was a huge. Uh, Were a man of work to. Get above those things to get past them. What is apparently takes many years. Yeah. I mean, it's a non-trivial exercise. Yeah. Um, Wendy. Yeah. I just want to, before I comment, I just wanted to speak to the comments in the chat that are saying, what are we talking about? And I'm disoriented. And so I don't, I, I'm happy to, I want to contribute something and add onto it before I do that. Maybe someone could maybe Jerry or Doug, you could just try to encapsulate where this began for, especially for those who came in as you were speaking and didn't catch the very beginning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought you were going to do the summarizing. Darn it. Who would you want me to, I will. You want me to take a stab at it. I'm happy to. If you'll take a stab, that'd be great. Sure. Um, I'm going to say it in a completely different way. In hopes that that actually really helps add to what we're talking about. Um, Many of the systems that we currently have are broken. If not all of them. And, and I'm talking about the systems. That are broken. That are broken. That are broken. That are broken. Necessarily, right? So as we approach this next wave. Of humanity. We need a new way to go about solving problems. I think everybody in this room probably is on board with that piece. What I hear Doug talking about is how do we go about doing that? And for those of us that are. You know, You know, You know, You know, You know, We're doing it differently. We have noticed that there are. Trip ups. Right. That, that pull us back into the old systems that pull us back into the old ways of thinking and that pull us back into the old core beliefs that we all come in with. And Doug was pointing out from what I got. And what I and I agree. That. That pull us back into the old systems that we all come in with. That pull us back into the old systems that we all come in with. That pull us. Those can look like so many different things. This can look like what we've learned as a child, what we believe in the myths that we absorbed. The culture of a company. What we hope for our future, what we hope for our children. How much money we have or don't have like all these things become triggers. When we get triggered, we tend to pull on the thread of that new thing and pull it back into our own story and then voice it from the perspective of our own story. Thus derailing. The conversation from where it was going to where we need it to go in that moment. And so we anchor it back down into whatever. Whatever baggage. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's a, that's a process. I think we all do all the time. It's how we learn. But if we can't be in spaces where we are, where we can stay for long enough outside our own agenda. To discover what that thing is that we're trying to co-create. Well, it'll never, it'll never happen. Not never, but like it, then it comes in and tiny little pieces we can barely grab onto instead of something fully formed. So the conversations that are most valuable to me. Are the one I've experienced this personally. I've had the experience of these kinds of conversations over and over again. Is when the people in the room can put it aside for the entirety of the conversation. Are now most curious about the thing that can emerge. So I may be adding in something from my own experience. Totally fine. I may even go on a small little tangent, but it's. All the time thinking about how can I do that. How can I contribute on to listening so deeply to what's being contributed by other people. And then trying to add one more thing that helps grow it forward. Instead of drawing it back. And the, and the feeling of that is almost more important. The process of that is on because inside of that process, anything can be said. And the conversation can go anywhere. And if it's not, Triggered someone bringing that in can even be an important piece. The goal of everyone is moving the conversation forward and not getting so triggered that the conversation becomes about solely about them. Or solely dragged down by their baggage. So that's. That's the summary. I would get it. Thanks for taking a swing at that. That's awesome. Yeah. And assuming that helped. I'll just add on what I was going to say before. I think that one of the major shifts for me. And most of the conversations that I've had around trying to create space for this. Is an understanding that what we're. Doing is. Again, I think Doug touched on it. I just kind of want to come at it from a slightly different angle. Is that we're not. We're not. Trying to create. A thing, right? We're not trying to, we're not. We're not trying to reach a particular goal. It doesn't mean we can't have a goal in mind, but we, we need to not be attached to that goal. Because what happens so often is the conversational lead, say halfway there. And I'm talking about conversation over months. Or even in one, I suppose, lead halfway there. And because you've gotten halfway there, you can now see more. And all of a sudden you take a step back. And if you can't let go of the original goal, you'll never take the right hand turn that was intended for you all along. And I think most of us have that experience in life. We can look back at moments where we're like, we went halfway down this path, worked for this place. It was horrible. But then from there, I got to the thing that I loved, right? So sometimes we're, we're drawn towards something that is the end point is not the goal. The path. To it is the goal. And then we turn or we, right? And we need to be able to be flexible in that way. So what we're committing to isn't the goal. What we're committing to is the process. It's a way of being with each other. And it's the process. And we haven't, as humans, I believe haven't talked about the process very much. So it doesn't give us a lot of language. But I can tell you, it's a lot of verbs. And it's a lot of sense making. And it's a lot of vibe. And it's, and there are people who have documented it. And my experience of the best version of that. And I'm sure there are others. Is the Winfinity framework. Because that's what, that's what they've been worked. That's exactly what they're doing. The framework. Is not a thing. It's a process. That everyone's going on committing to this. Practicing this process. And it's one of the few spaces that, that I know of where people can actually practice it together. And one of the, one of the qualifications is kind of a wrong word, but one of the preambles to being a part of, of the Winfinity inquiry cluster is that you need to be able to leave your baggage at the door. So I think that's a good idea. I think that covers it. Thanks for letting me talk for so long. Hope that was helpful. Thanks, Wendy. Totally was. Pete. Thanks Doug. Thanks, Wendy. I'm not sure I'm completely contextualized. So I'm not sure if this is, if what I'm thinking. Ads or, or. I don't know. Is maybe part of a different conversation, but I feel like Doug, what you're talking about is our, our groups of people working together. Who are each fairly self-actualized, maybe not completely, but reasonably so. And. And so they have a lot of reflexiveness about their participation in a group. And certainly the folks here and the folks each of us tends to work with are going to be folks like that. But I also want to observe. As a. Amateur sociologist or anthropologist or something like that. And I am completely an amateur at it. But. But everybody has a, you know, you know, I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist or something like that. And I am completely an amateur at it, but. But everybody has to do it. This some, some extent. Um, I think a lot of human activity. And psychology and stuff like that. Is at a, at a somewhat more. Human animal. Perspective than, you know, human homo rationalism, rational, or something like that. Many people and even, you know, even me and probably some of you make decisions not based on. You know, how mission aligned is my engagement with these other folks. And. And for me, I think what, what you talked through. I've certainly seen in my life where. If you. If you don't talk about how you're going to work together when the going gets tough, especially when you have a challenge when, when you need to change direction or when there's an external force that, that pushes really hard on the group, you know, what's going to happen. So in my life, that's being married and being in a startup. Which are kind of similar actually in an odd way. But a good marriage. That's going to last decades is, is one where you've had the tough, a bunch of tough conversations at the beginning. You know, so, so what happens if I get hit by a bus and I'm a vegetable, you know, are you going to be with me or not? What happens, you know, if I go to see now and I'm like 1% there, are you still going to love the 1% while you have 99% of bullshit, you know, or whatever, right? Startups is kind of the same thing, right? It feels easy to go, Hey, let's build this product that would do wonders for the world. And, and you find yourself a year or two later or three years later, you know, okay, we've run out of funding. And we've been going on fumes for six months and we can deliver the product in another six or 12 months, but we're going to be running on fumes the rest of it. You know, I was willing to market to my house. Weren't you, you know, what, what do you mean that, you know, you're tired of this and you want to, you want to go home and stop playing ball. I need you to, to finish the product. And I thought we were in it together, right? And even more, I've been in more stressful. That's, that's an easy stressful situation compared to some of the ones that I've been in, in a startup, right? A, a time we were in a startup. We hired in a couple young kids who ended up deciding that they were going to overthrow the company and take, take over the company, right? That smart Stanford kids, by the way, and the whole interesting story. But anyway, it literally got to the point where they were like carting out servers and IP and stuff like that. And we were sleeping in front of the door and the police were involved and, you know, threats of lawsuits and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, you look at your partner and you go, are you still, are you still with me? Or is this where, you know, we didn't have the discussions, the deep discussions to self actualize together to, to make it, right? But, but there's a different way that, that people work in, on mass, which is, I'm, I'm going to join your group. I'm going to follow your leadership. As long as you kind of make me feel self actualized, fulfilled, even though I'm not necessarily self actualized or fulfilled. So cults, especially some of the ways that people are religions together. It's not necessarily because they believe the mission alignment. It's because that, hey, we get to all be in a cult together. And I think that's kind of crazy. But hey, I can be in community with you. And we can be in community together. And we are following a way that, that makes me feel complete. Right. It's kind of like a replacement for self actualization. You know, I don't know how to self actualize, but if I'm at least feeling good about where I am, it's kind of like a replacement for self actualization. You know, I don't know how to self actualize, but if I'm at least feeling good about where I am, even if I don't really believe in the mission, I feel good, you know, and that's good enough for, for many people and many social situations and many interactions. Right. So I just want to, I guess the, the summary of what I wanted to say is that, yeah, there are situations and people who are going to try to do something difficult. And, and if they have the difficult conversations about how we're going to do that together up front, they're likely to stay together through difficult times. But then there are like big chunks of our lives where it's not, there's a, it's a two level thing where the mission alignment is one thing and the community and community involvement and the needs and desires I have to be, you know, a, a participating human in a community are actually solved not at all in relationship to the mission. It's just in relationship to how can I keep this many people together and, you know, either do something positive or do something negative, you know, and the cult leader might, might be doing it for the good of a mission and they might be doing it just to flee somebody and make billions of dollars or, you know, or whatever. Right. So just, just a way of, of kind of, I guess putting that, the whole conversation about that in, in maybe a larger conversation where why do we do what we do? Why do we get together and do things? And is it always about accomplishing something or is it just, I just need to be a human with other humans? Thanks. Thanks, Pete. Mr. Cronza. Thanks. Thanks Pete and Wendy and all the participants. Doug, I say this with love when I dropped into the conversation, I'm kind of going, what is this wishy-washy new age double talk? I'm like, what's going on here? I don't know. Maybe I'm basically, I put on my relentlessly accepting listen thing and type in what you're saying and just listen. And it brings up the training I'm going through for healing from trauma. It's called traumatic incident reduction. And a woman with a foundation in South Africa who basically tries to do this work among boys from the Congo who've been kidnapped and forced into fighting for something they don't believe in. And they escape and boy, they have trauma worse than mine. And the training has gone on permanently. And yes, we're training how to listen and we're training how to create a safe space so that someone can process through language the feelings from the amygdala, get them into the frontal cortex and move them to the hippocampus and so be released from wordless anxiety. People have dropped out because the training took too long. I don't believe that a Bohmian conversation or the consensus process or nonviolent communication can be achieved without a training step and Doug Engelbart and his famous HLAM T humans with technology under training. And so this commitment to a kind of yes, we share a context that context is in development. We're not out of the same place. We're going to get triggered and we're going to deal with these things as they come up because of commitment to something that's like a cult but isn't a cult. And it's a both and human and rational human animal. I love that notion and rational animal thing. And the paradox that I have coming from work at the Internet Archive is trying to get Ken Homer in to basically say, look, let's have some training on how to communicate and have conversations about goals. And one guy says, hey, we don't need that. We're great. We don't have any problems here. There's your one guy. And that's fine. And he derailed the process and other people were not able to engage in conflict with him because they didn't have the training. And so, yeah, I don't know about a lot of the language that you used but conflict exists. And boy, do we have tools and training that we weren't given by our community or schools or parents. And I'm calling it in my own head a paradox of training. How do we basically say I know that I'm not perfect in my communication and in my listening in these aspects. I am taking a particular training right now to heal other people's trauma and I have to as a listener and I have to trust that these other people are taking their training seriously so that I might heal. And God damn it, I want to heal and it hasn't happened since January and I'm kind of frustrated here. Well, it might not even be the right training because I'm finding that CPTSD is more my seems to be more than, you know, the trauma that say boy in the Congo had. And I don't know how to, you know, the thing that got everybody in training in my experience was the consensus process of the rainbow coalition and they had, you know, to basically protest the yellow canyon and many affinity groups they were trained how to create an affinity group how to train in the consensus process how to pick somebody to represent the affinity group in a larger group and of that larger group get a representative to get to the national group and, you know, it was a 35 page pamphlet that got printed and sent to everybody who wanted to join the abalone alliance. I that's the only time I've ever seen that type of thing work but certainly, you know, schools do training schools do indoctrination and maybe not hitting the other kid not bullying sometimes that works sometimes it doesn't anyway if there's a training and it's actually not going to take six months to hours a night. Once a week I'm interested in what that is certainly Bomi and conversations have been mentioned many times by many people around the Engelbart group that's here in the Bay Area Wendy or comments are fine Mark, thank you so much I just want to offer us a little moment of silence to sit with what you just brought into the room just let's go quiet for a second then we'll go to Wendy in a little bit we can do a few deep breaths Wendy please you know there's so so before I make my comment I just want to say that what I was making an effort to do right there is sense into what was being said and leave a space in my mind in my heart for what would be the next best thing to contribute to the conversation which may have been different than what I was what I raised my hand for and allowing that shift to take place because of what Mark contributed yeah I feel there's so yeah there's so much hurt there's so much suffering doesn't it comes in many forms right little and big we are there's no doubt this is not you know this is not philosophical and when I say we are in a mental health crisis and we have been for a long time and I don't think it comes into mainstream conversation very often because it's complicated because people don't really know what to do about it because it's the result it's a symptom of so many of the broken systems right and so it doesn't have just one solution if it did I think we would have solved it already and I think we see it most clearly in our youth who are struggling with wanting to create a new world and seeing it more clearly than those of us who are older and have lived with the systems for longer and are more embedded in them and they're coming with fresh eyes and they're coming with fresh hearts and they're coming with fresh minds and fresh ears and they're going what and they don't always have the agency or the articulation or the understanding to create something new until we see like you know those voices of of that are coming for that are popping out whether it was about climate change or about gun legislation or whatever that it just they just gifted I would say gifted genius type children that are genius around social acuity and emotional intelligence that are ready to take on that kind of lead oh my gosh at such a young age we need that times you know a million people I do think we're out there I think what we're talking about is the reason why facilitation is so important why can homers work and Stacy's work and Doug's I'm sure like anybody that's had that's been in a position where they've had to create this kind of space or they've had to explain it to someone else or you know there's so many approaches and yet it still tends to be viewed as we've created such such a wall between science and spirituality that there's immediate judgment about spiritual things and it's a shame because those two things when we're talking about life not talking about trying to understand something that we're seeing in front of I mean science has it's oh my god it's done amazing things but these two need to come back together in ways that are reasoning and are sensing come and both have a place in informing where we're going next it's not a one or the other in my opinion it's a both and it's a merging of it's not just the male energy or the female energy we're asked we're being asked to merge them it's not just science or spirituality we're being asked to merge and it's not just academics you know ivory tower or main street we're being asked to merge them we're being asked to listen to all of it because it's only through listening to all of it that we're going to come up with the next thing that's going to work for all of it because it needs to work for all of it because and I think this is where Doug was going before when he was like you know it's either all or nothing it's not that the room the conversation in the room needs to be all or nothing but eventually the solutions how they ripple out need to be all or nothing because we won't get across the finish line unless we do it together and those leading can be a certain set of people for sure but we need to make sure it's not just 10 people that cross the line Wendy thank you I will point out that there's a business model behind what you just said the Templeton Prize awards a million dollars to one person I think annually who contributes to the unification of science and spirituality so we could we could roll the dice on that one how about that and I'm not saying that all the trivial is what you just said I think that that work is really important and it's interesting that it's even rewarded somewhere that's the fact that it's rewarded enhances it I would say Templeton is the founder of the Templeton fund one of the original sort of mutual funds one of the big ones Stacy then Doug so this is hard because it really goes against everything that we've just been saying and I had my hand up before and then I put it down because by the time we got to me the energy had shifted and it wasn't the right time in place but so I've spent almost four and a half years with Doug in that group eight hours a week and so I think I can do this because actually under Doug's leadership he kind of empowered me to do my own thing and so I'm blending this new way of being by making this decision to take this shift so what I want to say is the reason I now spend most of my time here is because the people in this group are at a different level so this conversation isn't necessarily like what they would need like they like it's a different group of people and so the reason I want to shift this conversation is I actually did have something that I wanted to bring up for this level of awareness that I think is important and it is also a hard conversation and I'm glad Wendy's here because I know she'll support me but it's a question that I had actually spoken to Jerry about and the question was how do we change diversity because if we had more diversity some of these things that we're talking about would actually happen organically just by getting things would naturally start happening differently and so I wanted to offer just a new term and it's called intellectual chivalry and it's the idea that opening the door is not enough it's about allowing people to walk in first and I was thinking about like David Dawn of Everything and how the first person is the one you know like David Graber's name was really familiar to me David Wengrow not so much and I was thinking of how many people have partners who are female and who often do they mention their partners first in their work and that's what I was coming in with so I just wanted to throw that out because it seemed to me that and maybe I was wrong but it seemed in the beginning that some people were a little bit bothered by I don't know the level of conversation maybe I'm reading it wrong and maybe I'm being too blunt I will stop talking but that's it and I think I'm going to start a new group and it's going to be elephants and bulls because I want to discuss the elephants in the room and I'm sort of like a bull in a china shop sometimes you could just open a china shop there's going to be a lot of glass on the floor exactly the shard factory open it like a mosaic studio next door and it will be beautiful artwork exactly a for profit emergency room perfect April and I visited April and I did a trip to Cuba to speak at a small conference and we went to a place called Fusterville which is an hour and a half drive out of Havana and it's started by an artist named Fuster it is now run by his son named Fuster and basically he mosaic first his house and then much of the neighborhood and like you sort of do a tour of this thing and when you visit they ask that you bring some tiles so I went to local there's three or four really nice tile places across the Willamette and they have like an extras whatever you call it room and I got some beautiful beautiful tiles took them and you know I guess they break them and add them in and it's something like that but it was really it was very interesting of the community work of art that started out as one person's manic obsession Doug then Wendy you're muted Wendy I wanted to pick up the thread and maybe shift the contextualization a little bit so that the idea of the intellectual and the spiritual and those being two different things and part of the part of the shift and transformation in the way of being and orienting and co-creating is very much about reintegrating and remembering our you know our own humanity as human beings that we're living beings and that we're living beings while we're doing and those aren't two separate things and they were sort of cleaved apart going back to Newton and Descartes and a bunch of other folks but in fact we are whole beings all the time and Western culture has done everything in its power to either kill or beat out of us the human part and the getting arms around all of the dimensions of co-creating together the living dimensions the emotional dimensions the energetic dimensions all of the facets of us while doing isn't it isn't complicated but at the same time it isn't easy to get to with all of the imprinting and all of the all of the all of the imposed belief systems and constraints, traumas and and hurts and fears of the world we're living in and it is possible I'm just going to sort of state it but it is possible to deal with all of those facets as part of an integrated integrative creative process the shifts required have mostly to do with time have mostly to do with creating space and slowing down and when triggers happen recognizing those as part of integrative to and valuable for the generative endeavor the creative endeavor that they're not about a person problem and the train's got to run on time we don't have time to deal with that it's if somebody's triggered first of all in being triggered they just left the team because their whole energy turned inward and that's a hit to the collective generative potential so having integrated a value which says somebody is triggered for whatever the reason that's the whole group's responsibility that's the whole group's order of priority and so the connection to present moment and what's needed is a constant shift and constantly changing dynamic and developing the alacrity and the flexibility and the openness to shifting response to those needs as part of the generative flow has to do with that sort of foundational orientation of everybody to that idea and we actually have a lot of examples of this working this operating in our in present moment reality it's found in some indigenous tribes you know the kogis don't have a word for enemy they don't have a concept of anybody or anything being separate being a part being adverse everything and everybody's part of the same whole we're all connected all the tropeism around that always sort of is unfortunate to me in the invoking of it but the truth of the matter is it's true and it's in the creating separation creating difference creating distance creating alienation that our current reality is is falling under its own weight so you were share earlier about it's in the way that we're oriented and approach these things that I'm sort of speaking to advocating for and the shift in the way of that has to do with orientation to the collective purpose in such a way so that the group has the openness sensing awareness responsiveness to everything that emerges in real time moment to moment it's an individual with a trigger or whether it's change of plans folks or whether it's a moving target or whether it's a whole new circumstantial frame that drops on everybody's head that's the reality that we're living in nothing's fixed nothing repeats nothing recurs that's reality and our coming to terms with that letting go of our projection that we can control that and shifting into a in response to as part of would be certainly us doing us very differently I'm imagining that there's an alternate reality plane where this same group of people is collected in a Silicon Valley startup which is about to have an IPO just kidding Wendy then Doug see I'm in that same space where I feel like there's so much to share and so I need a minute to figure out what the best next thing is there's a lovely practice I'm forgetting who it's from but before jumping into a conversation or before applying to take a breath so I love how you talk about Doug how you talk about the space and what it feels like and what we're doing together and I think it cannot be overstated so I'm going to state it again about the need for community healing when you bring a community together if one person is going through something the typical response that now is like this person is dragging us down do we need to deal with this now and yet that is every time that has happened for me even if my brain goes there my heart knows now the pattern of having gone through that process and everyone in the room having learned from the process and when it's been led by other people whether I've been workshops or something and went oh that's just between those two people over there but the facilitator of the workshop has done a fabulous job of bringing it back into the room so everyone can talk about it it's so rich and the best part isn't the resolution to me although that's fabulous the best part is the connection we all feel to each other after the resolution whether a person spoke up about the issue or not didn't matter there's a vibe in the room that now has shifted and creates a deepening awareness that I can bring my whole self and if part of that self is hurting there are people here who will listen and care so now I'm willing to take more risk I'm willing to learn I'm willing to stretch I'm willing to grow much of this doesn't happen in education so where you know we were talking before right it's in chat some people putting like why doesn't this why don't we learn these things in education because it's uncomfortable because we need to take risk because we need to be comfortable with not knowing the answer education's not designed that way right now I have the information I'm the teacher you're the student the information flows one way maybe occasionally if I'm advanced teacher I'll allow the information flow the other way but really you have to get to a right answer right it's just even the teachers who are well meaning and actually already get all this stuff so I tried to create shifts within the educational system oh my gosh it's a tight I mean I knew it before going in that it was a Titanic but giving people actual tools that work inside of education and helping them understand how do you do it so hard so hard it's such a different way of being and then the money comes in and the testing comes in and it washes away everything that was just done right so it is not an understanding it is a way of being different and the system it's it's such a systemic kind of shifting right so if one it's like the family dynamic thing if one person in the family dynamics ever everyone feels and goes whoa what's that even if the shift was for the better right the whole system needs to also shift or then what you have is you're putting so much weight on one or two or 10 or 100 people to to create to model the shift for everyone else I can't hold that up and do their job and have a life like it's too much so the more we can all shift together and this goes back to the community healing piece we shift together then we rise I want to bring that in with what Stacy was saying about diversity I think it's so critical and the sense I get and the reason why I keep coming to these spaces even though I'm often one of the few or only women in the room is because there is something different happening here and because there's a general acknowledgement in my mind that not everybody has the time or privilege to have these conversations so that's already self-selective and I'm not judgy about any of that except that we're missing out it's more an awareness right it's not a judgy except thing it's more of awareness that we're missing out on a lot of potential learning for ourselves because these people are not in the room my theory on why they're not in the room and why I don't enter rooms sometimes which is informing that theory is because there's not enough listening I'm just going to boil it down until like it's bare there's not enough pause there's not enough listening so that if the energy needs to shift like Stacy was pointing out before if I am going to contribute something that's shifting the energy I if I'm a conscientious mindful person I'm going to do that mindfully I'm not just going to toss something in the room that makes everybody go whoa like that where did that come from because that's not that's just that seems like trying to have power over the conversation all I want the conversation to go here now is the way it feels to me even if that's not the way it's perceived by other people so I'm trying to as I was saying before conversations going in a particular direction even if it's not a direction I would choose I'm trying to add to it not subverted into a conversation that I want to have about something else now sometimes valuable right if I think conversations going in a completely wrong direction or completely disagree I'm not saying I'm holding back I'm saying I'm trying to help the room grow together that's what I'm trying to do and that can be best done by adding little pieces onto what's already been offered not offering up a like another complete right so I'm waiting for a shift for a moment to go ah this is the right next thing to say yes I want to say it here so shifting it in that way and it's not always the right time and entire conversations can go and I think we've all had this where I didn't say that thing but that's okay but if that happens over and over and over and over again those voices never never enter the room so unless we all learn to pause and listen more there will be less opportunity for those shifts and I think when the door is open those people it's not that they don't feel welcome like our hearts aren't open as if there's no space for what they want to talk about if that helps discern it a bit yeah Thank you Wendy Doug C Well a difficult conversation in many ways I find that in the words integrative and generative a certain pressure towards conformity I like being in groups where being an outlier is totally okay either be one or live with others who are I think it's really important we're not going to go forward with everybody in agreement as to what we're doing but they can acquiesce to a group wisdom that it's okay to move in that direction and the thought Can I just reply to that for a sec I think that's such an important contribution so let me see if I can repeat it back I'm really holding on to it because I feel like these are two slightly different holding on to two slightly different approaches and so what you were just saying is you would you appreciate being being able to come into spaces where you can you know you can really be yourself and you can contribute whatever needs to be contributed even if that is a topic that maybe maybe it's pushing people stretching people did I hear that right so I would not use the word self I think it appears to be foundational and it's actually a problem I'm more in the Buddha sense that consciousness is like an onion and you peel it down to the point where there's nothing left so I think what I want to be saying is it's okay to have not always it okay but it's essential to have differences remain in the group conversation because we don't know what kind of fire and friction we might need next and to narrow it down to a shared integrative view just feels to me oppressive yes right so you're saying allowing for the diversity in the room is super important that not trying to always find like the end goal isn't consensus the end goal is appreciating all the perspectives is that a good way to notice the difference between allow and appreciate I want to go to the appreciation of difference the fact that we don't think the same is really critical for the my own development and fewer for yours and allow has a kind of parental supervision quality like I'm giving you permission to put your perspective in I'm allowing it I'm the one I'll shut up for a minute while you say what you have to say then I'll go back to what I was saying okay thank you I appreciate the clarification I think the nuance I would like to add here is that for people that are used to and I'm one of these people who in certain spaces I'm in control of creating the environment in the room and so for people who are used to or had experience creating those spaces I know I'm not shy about speaking up what I'm trying to allow space for is the person that might be a little more shy about sharing right that that the assumption that if we create welcoming space that those people will share I think is not fully codified he's not fully true I think that's a beginning point but I don't think that's the ending point to allowing all the perspectives to be shared and when I try I play a little mental game with myself you know if there was an opportunity to go say be a lone person in a community that I'm not used to being a part of would I go and would I sit and just listen answers no then why are we expecting other people to do that in our spaces who feel like they're not this is not their usual space to be in why would they so I play that game of what would make me feel welcome to go to another space that is of a community or a culture or an event or something that that isn't typically the groups that I go to and what would make me feel welcome walking into that space let me give an example from something that's just happened in the last couple of days as many of you know I work with the Institute for New Economic Thinking as a kind of strategy consultant and my drive for the last year has been to try and create a conversation where economists talk seriously about climate change and it's been very hard because they can't put it in differential equations so it doesn't exist so we created a group to try and talk about this and it was people really with all the stuff that you guys know the tension when people really disagree and don't know how to voice that disagreement so we used a method which was we meet once a week we start the meeting there are about 10 people going that the idea is to go around the circle and each person say what's been on their mind about climate change in the last week that they think is most worthy of a conversation who would like to go first somebody volunteers they say they then pass the talking stick which is virtual because we're in zoom to somebody else and they go by the time you've gone around the room you have a lot of new differences and what's really what's happened in the group is shifting to an appreciation and a kind of love of being in the group as people have been able to talk about their difficult perceptions without any pressure to bring them into a consensus and the shift in the group has been quite remarkable and it's allowed us now to move on to a new level of discussion about what's going on and letting people say first what's been on their mind means what's been on their mind before that joined the group and feel the group pressure each person then everybody in the group has heard themselves in the group which is always a barrier people don't get to hear their own voice they don't really feel like they're there yet so it was just a way very fruitful way of handling differences and it turned out to be extremely fruitful Mark thank you for timing me of a facilitator's tool or technique it's a we're a little close to the end of our call but it's a good moment to say everybody who's been participating in the conversation please step back for a second or anybody who hasn't had any airtime please feel free to jump in I've been active in the chat but I've so far only spoken once so I'm going to grab the mic C.L. Microfino I think and looking back I got involved I still remember the day I read the Atene reader article on dialogue in 1989 about David Ballum and Krishna Murthy and I was like this sounds really cool and I've been dabbling in that for over 30 years now and I recognize my own progress and growth and the practice we need shared practices I have been sharing in the practice of dialogue now for a very long time and so I have some skill with it someone who's never had that they can show up here and they're going to be like I don't know how to even be in this group and they may be they might hide out or they might say things that embarrass themselves I'm also very aware that for this particular group there have been a lot of people myself included I don't ever have this anymore but when I first got here I was like holy shit there's all these wicked smart people here who have a right to be here and I've heard several people say they're intimidated by the level of intellect in this collective room so I think we need to be really aware of that and if we're going to become a more diverse group it is incumbent upon each of us to reach out and talk to other people and say I really think you could be a great asset, a great addition to this group of voice communities come in and listen a few times so what are we doing and not doing that is in the way of bringing in more diversity age diversity, gender diversity whatever diversity you care to put on it so that's on us you know I love everybody here I have benefited so much from listening to you all and being in conversation with you all and I would really like to see us make more efforts I actually think I was the one who invited Claudie, maybe Mark also invited her at the same time but I did invite her and I invited a few other people and they show up and they leave so there's another thing why do people come for a couple of times and that show up if we want to get serious about that those are some ideas that prohibit people from leaving can you actually change someone on zoom the universal gesture for manacle don't we need womanacles there's a reason they're called manacles yes it rhymes with that other manly thing class, then Michael, then Gil I'm really struggling with this conversation trying to connect and I think Doug just helped me referencing his experience with the discussion group that he has I mean it doesn't really matter how well educated and how smart we are all struggling with our emotional context our life experiences and emotions and fears, anxieties and hopes and what have you I think my focus has been on translating what we are discussing at one level to making it practical in other ways to help people who are stuck in whatever ways because of the information world they're embedded in and the prejudices and opinions and so on and change the conversation in ways that some may consider manipulative but in other ways it's really finding an entry way into what is acceptable in form of information in form of a different perspective on reality so I mean one practical example that we're just starting into climate change is like a no-go zone when you are talking in political circles it has been completely destroyed as a consensus building topic so me working in agriculture food and agriculture if you shift your focus to water and I just posted some items in this regard if you shift your focus to water I was in a meeting with the American Sustainable Business Network and I'm on their advisory group for the fund bill discussion and we decided and somebody made a presentation saying that 98% of the American public is concerned about water whether that's whether you live on the beach in Florida and you have the beach full of dead fish and you can't get into the water because it's contaminated or whether you live along Lake Erie or whether you live in a city in California and your water wells try up because the farmers are in the aquifers below input wells water is an emotional connection for everyone and so if we start to explain the deep dive into what is happening to our water and why is it so problematic you can connect with people and you surround, you circumvent the entire debate that has been laid out to basically do any kind of activity on climate change and the reason I'm saying that is that the way we understand things, the way we inform each other is really we're really in the matrix here and this is an active engagement this is not an adipitous, now there are people who are really laying in information for reasons because the public is being guided and manipulated in what we call consensus building or consensus opinions in ways that we don't even really notice even very smart people, very well educated people don't notice how the information is structured in ways that guides your opinions so then you have to come there with this and this is really where you have to get into this matrix and think in ways that can help people and I was in a meeting where Adison was speaking and she was just a gust in my opinion that we need to counter manipulate because she just thought there was a horrible idea but then I'm thinking if you're in a war and we are in an information war then how do you defend and how do you push and manipulate in ways that are constructive so anyway I leave it at that we're all painfully winding our way into trying to understand reality dealing with it, trying to figure out how we can intervene in ways that are constructive and positive and not get overwhelmed by all the hopelessness that you see when you look at our reality and just my way of coping is just to be active, to just fight and look at it as a fight really. Thanks class, Michael Gil. It's a great conversation at the risk of repeating something that I said before just with regard to diversity in this group I think one of the most productive things I found is to make to be present at in other groups where each of us or any of us would be in the minority in some way and listen and participate and establish connection and trust and it's still going to be hard for any one person at a time to join this very homogeneous group and we might want to think about ways that we as a group can join with another group either in the way of inviting having the deference and respect for another group to invite that group to speak to us and for us to listen and question as opposed to invited individuals to come and be at the periphery first listening to us shifting the dynamic I don't think it's going to come so easily from the one-off invitation but that's just one point and I think it's very possible and it might be one of those format things where just like we're now switching between the check-in meeting and the subject meeting that maybe a third meeting is the shut up and listen to someone else meeting and then have the Q&A so that people can be different than us or younger than us or more color than us or more women dominated us or not from North America North America can come in as the centerpiece and hear from us as respectful questioners so yeah a perennial problem for us and I think that's a good approach and if any of us have any ideas on which communities to invite in that would be a great thing to share in we can figure that out Gil, you may have the last word here today although I'll pass the mic back to Doug after you. Okay, a few words, thank you everybody I don't come to this group with any purpose or certainly not a project. I come here because thinking seems to happen sometimes or at least new thoughts show up in me as some kind of outcome of these conversations I'm grateful for that I I've been active in the chat but a couple of words here as my teacher Ken Homer tells me humans fall into this blurring often we use we in many different contexts and layers throughout our lives but even in the same conversation and it gets a little sloppy and I think that's something we might want to attend to a bit you know to the conversation about training a while ago it's really it's fascinating that we expect training for all sorts of things I mean if you're gonna be a doctor an airline pilot or an opera singer or all sorts of things you train to do that but we think that you don't train to be a human you just are who you are and that's the more authentic things to be whatever comes out of you without preparing yourself for how you want to live and how you want to be and I think there's a really interesting conversation to have there even without explicit training we have training by acculturation and that's that's been a theme throughout the conversation here somebody talked about western civilization you know doggedly pursuing whatever agenda and it's not an actor there's not a thing with a mind and an intention that does that and yet you know here we are all of us the effect of that I wonder whether our own acculturation here is a barrier to the diversity that we all seem to seek it's not just that we all have classes and we're all of a similar hue but we have similar orientation similar concerns and the kinds of things that we are seeking from a conversation may not be very attractive to a lot of other people I don't know if that's good or bad but I can imagine inviting people who would come here and look around and say no thanks not for me and so can a commitment to diversity be a barrier to diversity I very much like Michael's idea of consciously putting ourselves in situations where we are the minority that's happened to me in my life very rarely and it's been striking when I realized it really the eye opening and heart opening so I appreciate that conversation and last thing has anyone come across bias declarations a progressive socially mindful PR firm that I know is now putting bias declarations on all their work and it strikes me as a profoundly weird thing to say hey we have biases which is sort of tautological obviously don't we all it doesn't say we are dealing with our biases in these ways which is which I've seen on some academic bias declarations but which is an example of the of the potential weirdness of where our commitments take us I was on a call a couple of days ago with Joanna Macy and Jonathan somebody Galvin your name kind of say again yes thank you Ken which was an opportunity to enter the grief work around climate and I personally found it very strange I think attractive to certain people very much not attractive to certain people and for me part of the strange was a profoundly ungrounded conversation about the science of climate and when I questioned it when I asked for a source of documenting one of the statements that was made somebody said well you know in your heart what's going on to me directly I thought how fascinating like what if what's in my heart is different than what's in your heart you know and what if our hearts have different sensibilities about what the temperature is in the world so I'm this is not the note I wanted to end on but I'm in a bit of frustration at the acculturation that's happening among our ilk and how powerful it is and how inviting it is to enrich this conversation that we're seeking so I'll stop there thanks Gil and I'm very grateful to all of you yeah thank you same here much to think about from this call Doug what if anything would you like to leave us with in particular if I can sharpen the question what short advice would you give us for how to keep improving what we're trying to do I don't know about advice like I'm not I'm not constitutionally oriented that way but I am hugely grateful and appreciative the degree to which everybody stayed in the water like you know and that's sort of an example model like experiential frame of what it's like to start in zero and feel sense into present moment and provide the space for everything that showed up and there was a massive amount that showed up and it's just very rich and hugely appreciative for me to have have that happen thank you who was jumping in I thought I heard a voice were you going to jump in no I'm just reading I was laughing I'm just no sorry I'm just going to wrap up on the chat now that we've got bias statements in the chat cool thank you this has been really rich I just pasted my notes so far in my brain from this call if you want to follow it and I just synchronized so you'll get everything I just put in super rich and interesting so copying some of the bias statement links and we are off with just a moment of silence and drop off as you wish to I will leave when I leave I will leave the room open so if somebody wanted to stay the rest of the day and stay in silence that would be fine but let's go into silence and just drop off when you are so moved thank you I'll go I'll see you at four Jerry I gotta run yeah thanks guys great call thanks bye bye