 This is the OGM weekly call on Thursday October 13 Thursday the 13th just almost Friday the 13th but not quite. Not that I'm superstitious or anything. But Europe is different like what's up with that. Who made Europe so different. I mean, we do call it the old world. Hello. Thank you very much. It was funky to be away. No, I was in Romania right next door I was in Romania for the first week and then Lithuania for the next week I didn't hit all the other anions but it was tempted. But there's a lot. Between the anias and the ovas. There's like a lot and never mind the stands. Both the Balkans and the Baltic. That's true. Running through the bees and I was surprised how far it was to get from Romania up to Lithuania like like I had to do three hops I had to travel most of a day to get from Bucharest to conus. Conus is the second largest city in Lithuania so I landed in Vilnius and my host picked me up and we drove the hour back to conus kind of thing. But it was really interesting to be among humans because the first event I went to was unfinished 22 in Bucharest. It was a 10 year old conference that used to occupy a national museum and somehow they convinced the museum to let them come in and take over and they used to just like run run crazy in the museum and do all kinds of cool stuff. And I never attended that in person. They asked me to speak virtually two years ago for 2020 and I love that and I did a I recorded a video talk which they then presented blah blah blah. So this year they were like hey we're back live but we're not at the old venue we're at a new venue and they basically took over the grounds of a building and some other interesting objects that belong to the University of Bucharest. And it they were sort of a white a really nice old white building that they repurposed each room one room was a tea room one room was actually in the back was a little auditorium so they they made like yoga and panels back there and then was a almost a church like name with a with a stained glass back and they put a baby grand in front of that and they had Dan Jones who's the founder of the modern love column in the New York Times he was there all week. And he would choose from among the stories in the modern love column and have a man and a woman read those in front of the baby grand with a bunch of people just sitting on the ground crowded around. And then he would also ask for volunteers to come up and sort of do some interaction around love stories and all that kind of stuff that's really really cool. But the first people I meet and unfinished are three Brazilians, one of whom goes by my cool. What's up being our itinerant guitar singing host to tours us walking through the grounds, because in the middle of these grounds is a little kind of a forest, which apparently was just a ticket of craft beforehand and they cleaned it up and they put fire pits and chairs and little orbs so at night the whole forest kind of glowed warmly. And it was delightful. And then there was a greenhouse in the back which as I show up a couple days before the event starts, they're busy still repairing glass panels and in the greenhouse. And then that turns into a beautiful venue and so on and so forth and they had an outdoor stage. And then the next two Brazilians the next two people I meet are a young duo, a brother and sister duo who are singers songwriters Instagram stars tick tock stars who manage modern media better than anybody I've seen ever like met in person. And he has a really sharp stutter. He's a rapper, and when he's rapping. It's smooth as butter and really fast and really beautiful and when you talk with him. He's delightful and sincere and has a very sharp stutter. And that was like my intro to the whole thing. And then all these people started saying this brain thing you're doing is amazing and I opened my laptop and look like a geek next to these extremely cool people. Through us an extremely cool clothes. And so that was kind of cool. And then I did office hours for two hours each day with my brain, something I suggested to the organizers and they were like sounds great. So they just put me in a room with a flat panel and some chairs, and we ended up having people sitting on the ground and asking great questions and that was just like completely awesome so so unfinished was was way wicked cool. And then I went from there to Lithuania to a completely different event that was more like attending a UNESCO meeting. And that was fun fun as well, and getting to know Lithuania was really cool. But, and the talks I did were both originals, and fit together in an interesting way, and the first one was recorded and will be posted online and I can't wait for that. The second one wasn't recorded at all. And so I kind of want to expand it and rerecord it. Because on the second one I just made a bunch of assertions I said that my first couple slides were, here's the TLDR of what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you the whole speech now just speaking through the assertions then I'm going to go back to the first one and then build the argument and show like why why I think this, and I've got I can. I can get links to the to the slide decks in Google slides and share those into the into the conversation. Anyway, that's kind of that's kind of my check in. And it's really nice to be back and sort of strange to be back. Because when you travel like home looks different. And you realize what I was alluding to with my question. Yeah. Yeah. It changes your home a bit, right. And it changes how you treat home or how you think of home or where you what you want to do with home or all those kinds of things. And I met some extraordinary people. There was one guy at the end. So let me just unfinished 22 off center. So I'm going to connect that. And there was one performer. Who I got to talk to a bit just one on one. And I'll show you what he does. Here's him just solo. I'll put this link in our chat. Here's him just solo. He wields a drum machine with his foot and a guitar and has a little Madonna mic on. And he can he can make a crowd into a beautiful circle of love. Like, like, he was just this master of getting everybody's like singing and jumping in and moving around him and coming in closer and then going back and then whatever. And I'm like, I hope we're post pandemic damage because everybody's up really close and personal but but it was beautiful. He's just so confident and powerful doing the thing he does. And he was sort of one of the performers were like that. Yeah, apparently when stutterers sing. They can the stutter can go away it's really, really interesting. Super interesting. Anyway, any thoughts questions. Any other things about about the trip. I'll just unsolicitedly the talk I gave this year. What I did was, I really liked the keynote I did two years ago which is called the trust is the only way forward. So this year's theme was off center. And so what I did for this year's talk was I said I want to tell you how I got the backstory how I got the thesis for my 2020 talk. So one of my talk I did a here's a two minute summary of what I said in 2020. I got there because I discovered I had all these contrarian heroes who were off center. And so I told the story of five of my contrarian heroes, and then went into the rest of it and sort of dug in how I got to design from trust, how I got to realize that we stopped trusting people. And it was really nice to sort of tell the backstory and some semi official format, because it's really important to the formulation of everything I, I believe in, and the theme and format of the event made really nice room for that. And I'll ask someone to check in and in the meantime I'll go find the Google Docs slides for the two decks the two, the two decks that I created. In fact, they're on my now page right now so if you go to, if you go here, I built a wiki page for the trip where I put. Certainly I put the unfinished slide deck there I'm not sure I put the other slide deck there I should do that I should add that. But if you follow that trail you can you can locate the deck. So why don't we go. Doug, they're being only one Doug on the call at this moment which is unusual. Why don't we go. Doug Grace class. I can do that. Well, the thing I wanted to bring back in actually had to do with picking up a thread from the previous session. And I was describing having separated contributing serving, providing value in other in some context or other to others from meeting needs and dropping the transactional frame around that that is sort of the rule of the land. And when, when, when meeting my needs is shifted into a unitary thing, not as part of a transactional frame. It opens up all sorts of interesting facets and dimensions. That has to do with not just needs but receiving. And the distinction definition. The difference between what's a need and a want, which sort of speaks to the heart of. There's enough for everybody. Why do we have all these pockets and populations subject to scarcity. Clearly, folks that have well transcended needs are going to need to give up some for folks that are on the needs not met list to sort of catch up. And, and a couple of people sort of went to the needs receiving and on the needs side, and invoking the sort of philanthropy label and association. I'm blank. I don't know why I'm blanking on the underlying word for what drives a philanthropic thing. Anyone that wants to help can you talk about when the word agenda came up. No, not agenda. Altruism was it. Well, yes, thank you, sir. Actually, you were the one that popped to mind when I, when I sort of hit on why is in this frame it not about all truth that all truism carries in it. A whole bunch of cultural stuff that's rooted in a separation. Gathering between those that are altruistic and implicitly can afford to be. And those who are receiving the benefit of that altruism and a whole bunch of connotative stuff about their station in life their circumstance the reason they have need that is met being met by the altruist. But reason for being able to be altruistic kind of sticks out for me because I've been in situations where extremely poor people do extremely altruistic things who you would think have no, no resources or capacity and yet the most generous people I've met are extremely poor. And also, and also they give more of their own worth in so doing than wealthy people do. And the, what I'm, what I'm sort of calling into question is calling that altruism. So are you trying to examine altruism and say is that the right word. Correct. Yeah, and, and the whole cultural package around that being the name for somebody who responds to a need. They see. If we're all connected and we're all, you know, part of the same pun same source same everything. That's not. It's what you do. It's not it's not out for it's it's not. It's without veneer. And, and so that was really, it was living for me because I've had people invoke the altruistic meme and the philanthropic me in response and not I haven't had why those aren't it in my orientation of frame and frame needs, meeting somebody's needs or being on the receiving end of somebody meeting your needs. That it's, it's the other side of that. If, if disconnected from quid pro quo if disconnected from receiving in exchange for is simply that person's way of serving contributing period. It's not transactional. And it's not, you know, like really trying to blank sheet paper and shed all of the current prevailing orientations and embedded associations. And so I just, I wanted to share that because it was a, I could, you know, I felt like I could finally explain the difference, the distinction, which isn't easy to get to. Unless you sort of cut bait from the transactional stuff and look at needs as in relation to, you know, as a standalone. And what's the new way of relating to needs and the meeting thereof. So that's, that's, that's for me. Doug, from all of that, could you summarize. Okay. I said raise this hand earlier, but that's a good question just before class so do you want to do a TLDR yourself Doug. I'm sorry. What was the ask for you summarize. So, we re re re re orienting and can re contextualizing the needs. As a, as an energetic center of gravity in reality and in the universe is sort of foundational to or informs how we solve the challenges we're trying to meet by taking it out of the frame of judgment or the frame of the loaded stuff of getting something for nothing. Right, like all there's a whole bunch of stuff that could be unpacked and, and identified as not invited to the party going forward if we're going to relate differently and newly to solving the inequities and imbalances. Yeah, I think the term we used was reciprocal altruism, the reciprocity and altruism basically as a survival tool, because and just going back to the dawn of everything you know that people have to be able to trust each other to trust one another. And that's helping someone in need is just a reflex within a cool. And if we could expand that reflex to also function between coops, then that would be, you know, a very helpful way of going forward. But it's this idea of almost a radical reciprocal altruism in order to to solve issues that that meeting our collective. Feel strongly about this and so Doug I'm aware of two things as you're talking one is that you are expressing that there's some freight or baggage associated with altruism that has to do with mental accounting or bookkeeping, and that is a way of policy questions where conservatives are like, Why should I pay taxes for someone else to get something that I, I didn't fucking cause, and why am I paying taxes anyway. And so you didn't make those explicit that I'm just trying to bring those into the conversation because I think that's why you're asking the question is like, we're trying to figure out which words are better to describe that dynamic. So that maybe people can have their needs fulfilled without there being this bookkeeping and this sense of guilt or debt or obligation or any other sort of thing. Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Dr. Whitzel, please jump in. Hey, yeah, so so many different things popped up Doug but you're using a few buttons I wanted to point out the link to Atlas hugged, which I've never heard of. Now and I'm like, Oh, this is brilliant. Go ahead. I mean, it's really pretty awful. But it's kind of a hoot. Yeah, it's awful. It's horrible, but, but, but it's got a few like really interesting ideas and right I mean one Doug is that idea that if you're, if you go from if your framework is the humanity as an organism versus you individuals as the entity of decision making, then it no longer is altruism when you're helping the organism, right, you get rid of the content of altruism, because all internalized and I think that's the problem I've had is like you know I keep saying what, why don't we optimize for some social value right that's clearly what we ought to be doing is optimizing for social value but that's just not built into any of our, our economics, and then, and then the other piece I just wanted to stick in because I thought it was really interesting and I kind of Googled around and haven't found a lot about it, but he talks to the very end of the book that if you notice that he talked about adaptive fictions. And like that we have he argues that we have new fictions in society that are actually evolutionarily adaptive. They're helpful fiction, we lied ourselves but it's useful. And, you know, I think religion probably falls into that category in some ways. He was saying he was using the example of when you take the oath. You know I swear on the I swear on my God that I will tell the truth is like well the God's a fiction but truth is a real thing kind of you know. I think we do these kind of and I was and I've been wondering about solar punk as like a fiction that would drive our adaptation in a, you know, coherent way so, but I just I am not seeing a lot of literature about this adaptive fiction thing so, you know, it's not I think it's much out there as I kind of expected it to be. Thanks Dave. Mark. And lower hand. Well, thanks, thanks Doug. A couple things come to mind. I'm Mrs Hickey lives next door, an older woman, and yesterday she was trying to back out and there was a big construction truck, keeping her from traffic when she backs out of her garage so I walked out of the street and looked both ways and put a thumbs up. She saw the thumbs up. She backed out safely and kept on going. And brought to mind, you know, the Jane Jacobs book the death and life of great American cities and basically the nature of formal informal relationships. If you live in a big city and you know at the bottom of your brownstone is a grocer and the grocer sees your kid all the time. The grocery is going to like watch over the kid because he's familiar with the kid, the kid knows him. If he you know runs into the street the grocery is going to like, you know, see something step out in front of a car and say you know look out. It's this natural human nature to, you know, have relationships where, you know, these things form without words without without a kind of conscious. It's an involuntary process where we care for each other, and trying to put a label on it strikes me as weird. You know, I, I, you know, love kind of this conceptual exploration but I must say, I'm lost. And I'd love Doug for you to come up with a one sentence kind of, you know, what they call it. When you're in an elevator and you're giving a pitch, like elevator pitch called elevator pitch. Yeah, that's strange, strangely appropriate thing. Wondering, you know, what, what that is, I must say I'm still lost but thank you. I cherish the exploration. It looks like my internet's gone. Your internet is thinking a bit. If I can throw in one thing that might be relevant Doug tell me if I'm zero zeroing in closer than I'll go right back to the queue. In the book the gift talks about gifts and part of what I remember from the gift was that for some people gifts involve mental accounting, where I gave something to you so so you owe me something of equal value back kind of and we were like, you know, how much was it worth and so on and so forth. And it says that in traditional societies very often gifts are meant to circulate, they go through the society and the gifts are sort of boundary objects that were stories are told around the gifts and he talks about the coolerings in the South Pacific among Islanders who travel great deal, you know, great distances over open ocean to go visit and then exchange bracelets for the men and necklaces for the women or something like that. And that tells the story of what happened while I had this object in the culture. And when Native Americans gave objects to the settlers they expected those objects to come back with stories. And instead those objects went into museums, you know, for Queen Victoria or Elizabeth or whoever, I guess Elizabeth, and we're never seen again. And so there was this break of how gifts were even seen and the valuation of these objects and all of that language and those assumptions. And I think, Doug you're trying to question those assumptions which I like a lot. And the more we start to mechanize and measure and valorize those exchanges, and make them more explicit the more we fuck up the natural sort of exchange of need and care that exists in a good community which is hopefully done more or less effortlessly although sometimes it takes it's very effortful sometimes it takes a lot of work to fix what's what's broken for somebody. Yeah, but is the gift. Does that build your argument sort of. Yeah, it's, it's, it's part and parcel, same, same sort of trying to get out from under the carry and programming and imprint of these things. So this obviously touches on the work that I'm doing is priceless, which is much more about meeting these, and about recording, not so much what was given and how it was given, but you know, knowing who has a physical source plate is empty and how far food travels but sort of the minimum viable thing. And then it's saying that I think is necessary for scaling is something like knowing who and that could be by community or by individual or whatever, who basically is decent. Like, who can you trust for what like you can trust these people to be generous with their food and you can be those that trust these people to give good advice and you can trust those people to show up but they don't have much to share but they'll show up and help out. And so that kind of sense of, it's like a reputation for being a decent human being it's not a reputation necessarily for how much you can give is just like okay this guy shows up he's you know he's got a bad back and he just kind of sits and watches the kids and talks about stories. He's giving the best he can. And so his reputation is great. You know, and, and you can call him to when you're chopping wood he won't chop any woods but he'll read stories to the children. And so that kind of understanding of fairness is really what's needed to scale. And what I talk a lot about is why are we measuring money is just a proxy right so that's in that. I wanted to relate to what Jerry said about like without guilt and without a feeling of meeting to, you know, a feeling of obligation, but I think it's just the opposite. And so science and sign rights about that in this book, so I couldn't cannot but the idea that you will feel that you should say it forward or do your best, or give it back if you have a chance or pass it around and tell your story in the case of what Jerry told there is a sense of obligation. It's not guilt but it's a sense of obligation and that sense of obligation is what binds us to other people. And I come to this thing and you know, there's an obligation to share of my knowledge. It's just, you know, if somebody came here and never participated, it would be weird. There should be a sense of obligation. So, that's the other one and then the other one about adaptive fiction I wanted to mention to David that actually Brett Weinstein talks about this about he says that things that are factually incorrect, but figuratively correct. And he talks about them as religions and traditions and he tells the story about how he was in Jamaica or something and he used to pass by these kids who were, who would play together. And one day he got the hiccups and they're like, okay, well, what you do is you like, you like get, you know, you go to like spit a huge gob into your hand and then you put it on your head like that and then your hiccups go away. And he's been talking to them for a while so he does it and sure enough the hiccups go away. He's like, I don't know if they were just playing with me because it's clearly the choking up all that stuff is what did it not the sticking it on your head, or whether that's really a myth that goes around, you know, like part of, and part of the myth is true. And part of the myth is, and so it's sort of figuratively true if you act as if it were true. But if you behave as if it were true, then you have a higher sense of survival, a way of, you know, a higher, higher level of survival and you coach your rules or like that to like apparently that works. So, yeah, that's me. That's my response to that conversation. Great. If you have any links to this notion of things that are factually not necessarily functional or accurate, but, but, but work, I would love that because I was just sort of Googling around a little bit would love something to point to a little bit more but thank you. John and Gil. Okay. Wow. A lot of really good interesting stuff coming in here. Check in, check in too. Yeah, right. I, I really like that notion of, it's not transactional in the accounting sense but it is accumulative in that sense of, well, who's who's really good for what, you know, in the community exchange. And also, a little footnote. I believe the subtitle of the gift is the erotic life of property. And if that my memory and Jerry's nodding his head so yes, and that ought to be a clue right there that you know think about how much trouble we have managing eroticism and transfer to, you know, some of the complexity of our exchanges. I mean, that's a maybe a pessimistic thought but you know, it's there. I've seen some documentaries of people Westerners, Westerners who had sort of rigid religious points of view, and maybe had money or didn't have money. And then they went and they started hanging out in, in underdeveloped communities, and they basically got their minds blown, you know, and, and they, and you, then you see them talking, and they're talking about well how we do this now and what are we how are you going to realize they've gone completely post transactional, you realize, you know, it's like it just comes across like, whoa, wow, you know, and I've had a little bit of that, you know, if you if you if you go to an event that is multi day, and it has some kind of ritual that happens to you you know you get you say wow you know my mind I mean I haven't been to Burning Man but I hear that the whole thing about the note no buying and selling you know is a big part of what happens. I've been in other events like that where something like that happens. On the other side or as a as a constraint to thinking about this kind of transition. It would be a good thing I mean I would recommend anybody who we could get who we could talk into having one of those experiences would have a nice footnote, at least in their, in their material life about wow you know I spent some time and I was post material post transaction whatever you know and it felt kind of good, but the, the fear that you encounter among even generous people we have a in our neighborhood we have like we have a homeless person who we've adopted, we, you know, give stuff to, and he's there all time and you know he's got us he's got a station he's got one thing, and he nits, and he's in a wheelchair, and you know we gave him a, we gave him like a like a wheelchair like a walker and a bunch of things, but there's this containment aspect, there's this idea that it's not unlimited. I'm not going to be in this situation where it's just me or a few of us and a whole bunch of them show up, and it were just overwhelmed, you know, and I sense that that fear that whole build a border wall thing is way out of proportion. The United States way way out of proportion. And there's also a lot of reverse jokes you could tell about how Mexicans actually work harder than, than Anglos, and they're true, but putting that aside you know what, there is something to the, to the idea that if we could somehow hit like if we had a quasi Scandinavian social net, and I hear it's breaking down but you know, let's give it the benefit of doubt if we had a quasi Scandinavian social net. So I know, yes, there are definite needs and yes some of those needs are deep emotional, spiritual, and I'm, I might be called upon to support someone in that but it's not unlimited, and they're not going to starve, you know, that would change a lot. I think that would, I think there's a lot of people who are, you know, I'm, I'm really bothered by homelessness I'm really troubled I'd like to help. And I feel overwhelmed, because there's so many, there's so many tents there's so many things and it just I don't see the end of it, you know, so something to think about something to work into our design. Conclusions. Okay. Thanks, John. And some of our conversations have been around a link I put in the chat a little earlier which is what platforms might we use in OGM and metaproject and everything else to track flows of value. And you know that that's an open question for us like what does what does our platform look like going forward and grace is kind of working on that as well. So, there's practical software implications for some of this stuff as well. Mr friend. Mr Mikulski welcome back. Thank you. So this is a very rich conversation for me and I'm really grateful to all of you for stirring up a lot of stuff in me so thank you for that. John the erotic life property provokes me but I'm not sure if I like it or don't. Let me let me weave back to a couple of things here. I'll start at the end john you talked about maybe the Scandinavian is John still here. John just took a phone call so he I saw him pick up his smart device and have to wander off. I wasn't smart enough to see that. Maybe the Scandinavian network social network is breaking down but we're living in a world where the world is breaking down. You know, story yesterday 69% of animals gone in the last like 50 years something like 80% of insect life gone in the last 50 years. We're at the tail end of a 500 year interval and 50 some odd thousand years of history of human history, where we're we're extracting this shit at living systems. And so, lots and lots of break down and having a conversation inside of that is a kind of distorted conversation about what is human and what is human potential and human nature. Doug my TLDR on your TLDR about altruism is that it's about transactions, we are we are trapped in this story of everything being transaction because we live in the capitalist matrix we look at everything including the living world is though it's transactional look you could say that a rose is gorgeous for transactional reasons because it attracts pollinators. But you know, when when gazelles are raising the serengeti and and and and impacting soil structure by their hooves through no intention at all is that transactional or is that just the workings of the system. That has evolved to mutual interdependence and benefit. I'm struck by reminded. When we talk about altruism the Doris lessings concept of the substance of we feeling with pervades the shakasta trilogy which you haven't you haven't got to go back and dig that out. I don't feel an obligation in this group and I welcome people who come here week after week and never say a word. I don't have any, any sense that they're obligated to open their mouths at all, because they go into live their lives and whatever ways they do. But for me richer than a notion of obligation is a notion of belonging. And I've been living a lot lately in the question of what might it be like. If we acted as though we actually belong to the living world and belong to each other, not took care of it, but belong to it what happens then. And I know, you know, the passing this week of Bruno mature. Who, who waxed the bell equipment and profoundly and provocatively about this stuff but you know what if what would it, what would it be like we landed on earth and we're Terence among all the other terrestrials how would we be what would we do. Also notable this week the MacArthur fellowships were announced yesterday and Robin wall camera astoundingly to one of the recipients Robin is the author of reading sweet grass many of you know she's a botanist State University of New York and elder in the Potawatomi tribe. And the onondaga region of the northeast of Turtle Island, and is a profound and eloquent and insightful. Story carrier. For this perspective. And so to, you know, to the notion of adaptive fiction day but thank you for that I'm thinking of adaptive systems and adaptive fiction is part of that. And it's not a matter of, you know, whether stories are true or not some things are true even if they're not true. You know, and some things are not true even if they're true. And we, as human beings we are stories all the way down. What we are what we do we're in stories and interpretations all the time and maybe we have some little bit of choice in which stories we choose to inhabit. So we choose stories we choose to share and how we do that and how we weave the substance of we feeling through story. Thank you. Thanks, Bill. I wanted to follow in some of what you were saying, and goes back to my quest and my whole thing with the word consumer 30 years ago. And one of the things I realized is that consumerization of our lives involves a series of separations. We become separated from nature. We become individualistic to express our individualism by buying Nike instead of Puma or Adidas etc etc Ford versus Mercedes. We're separated from each other we're separated from meaning and purpose we're separated from actual construction of things from the making of the things because we're just supposed to buy them. We stop buying them everything falls apart, and a piece of the solution to consumers is consumerism and consumer is Asian, which are different but related things for me is to re perceive our interdependence to come back into being parts of nature that that can actually work harmoniously and we've managed to obliterate all the thinking systems or at least obscure and squish and push underground, all the thinking systems that say that. Hey, actually, here are the instructions for living in community on the commons and if you do this if you do these kinds of things it all works out pretty well. And, and, and, and Gil my fear is that we are prisoners of a series of stories and narratives that are bullshit narratives this is partly what my talk in in count us in Lithuania was exactly about. We're in a titanic battle of the narratives in our heads, and how that's a real problem because many of these narratives were intentionally constructed to create power structures for decades if not centuries. And they're very resistant to change, they do not like being tipped or tilted and once they get power they're very good, they're very effective at wiping out. People who disagree. And one of the reasons I prized my contrarians is that many of them were saying things that were very heretical within their fields and got ostracized or pushed aside in their fields, because they were they were sort of providing this like pin toward the bubble of poorly held belief systems in their disciplines, and that my over generalization of their beliefs is that, Hey, in my discipline, I realized one day that we lost faith in humans. We designed a bunch of institutions and norms and systems that are coercive and that force us to do certain things when in fact, if you start to design from trust, the opposite happens and you get abundance and you get reconnection and community and you get cheaper solutions to the hard problems, and you get all these other kinds of things. So sorry so this conversation feel very central sort of entangled in my own belief systems over time. There's a couple more things on that the, the bullshit stories, yes, are intentionally propagated to support power they also emerge, quote naturally, out of power structures. So there's both an intentional and unintentional component to them, we're, we're, we're locked we're in a battle for the story of the world. For me the larger frame of this whole conversation, you know, it's a struggle of which story dominates when it's, it might be a good time to go back and reread some marks or have an even more importantly reread rereads and Frederick Engels, who wrote with some eloquence about this stuff and about the relationship humans and nature, and the process of the commoditization, and therefore marketization and transaction was Asian of everything. Commodification, yes, yes, commodification and commoditization are related but different commodification is when you take something that didn't used to have a price on it. And you, and you make sure every piece of it has a price and people have to pay for this thing that was seen as free before, and commoditization is when you make a whole bunch of them really cheaply. So we're talking about modification. Thank you for the correction there. One of the things that one of the many things that struck me out of the dawn of everything but when that really resonates and lives with me was is when is someone putting Condi and rock the, the philosopher states of the, what's the name of the tribe. That was the guy had no sonny. Sonny. Yeah, thank you. And he's talking with the Jesuits in America about life in Europe and he's just absolutely astonished. And this is true of folks who went to Europe and came back just absolutely astonished that you have people lying in the street starving. And he says because here, we would just feed them. And it wasn't altruism. It was just what you did. So, something about that about what you did it's not like who you, I mean, yes grace in the modern world with with with very distant relationships I have to figure out who I can trust but if I'm in a in a tribe living with the same hundred people forever. You know, that gets sorted out pretty much. Yeah, so anyway, very rich territory for me as you can tell. The last thing I want to say is that I'm, you talk to her about the challenge of tracking flows of value in this network. I'm very concerned about tracking flows of value. I think I think that might be a fundamentally wrong headed and dangerous approach for us to focus on. I understand why we do in the world we're in, because we all have to eat. And I understand the notion of limits, you know, if we're all of us in a lifeboat sailing in the sea, drifting in the sea and we come across somebody clinging to an or will bring her aboard. And we'll bring the second one aboard but at some point we have to say, no, sorry, we can't because all of us will go down. And that's a tough one. And it's full of interpretation class your point about the whoever said about the border wall it was there's different stories about capacity. Because we're living in a very abstract situation, not the concrete, you know, life and death right in front of your eyes, most of us fortunate. Thank you for letting me around. Mark. Thanks. I have a, I guess perennial contribution. Basically, looking at the, not the allegory but the analogy between capitalism as a cost of everything and the price of nothing. But basically, this framing system that distorts the reality of human life. And analogizing that with the notion of narrative, the notion of stories, where if we take stories as something that overwhelms what Jerry said, which was institutions norms and systems. That stories are very valuable to, you know, maintaining these institution norms and systems but they're not at the center. And looking at life and looking at the self as a narrative is a false model. And I really have to, you know, repeat and point this out when it when it comes up as such a strong. Hmm. A tractor that we neglect things like I talk truth. Now I don't have to be in a story to talk truth. I just talk truth. It's not based on a story. It's not in service of a story. It's simply a norm or a ethic or a, you know, learning that when I tell lies. I'm lying to myself. And this is harmful. It's not a story. It's a reality. I don't get off that soapbox, but I will continue to attempt to make that point clearly because it worries me. And I, you know, in my studies of semiotics. There are many relations of meaning and communication that are pre human at the, you know, how animals communicate they don't communicate with stories. Not at all. And yet they do. There is that wackle dance. Huh. There is that wackle dance. There is that wackle dance is that through there is a tree in blue. That's that is a indexical reference. Yeah. I'm just teasing her of course. You know, wiggle your butt. Move your ass and your mind will follow. Um, Gil, can you hold off for a second? I just didn't want to say that one man's indexical reference to another man's story. There we go. I must protest against that because of research where, you know, there's a story is made up of many different things. And I don't think you can, how do you say, devolve a story into a finger where, you know, don't look at my finger, look where it points. That's not a story. So this is a philosophical can of worms we can open in a moment. Dave doesn't visit us visit us very often and he's about to have to drop off. And we've only made it through two people in the queue. So I would love to see what's on Dave's mind for a moment. Hey, Jerry, thanks. I mean, I've gotten to contribute already. And this has been a really fun. Let's see what's on my mind. I mean, from this conversation, there's been a whole series of things around kind of economics that I've been pondering. And I feel like I've, I got like in my learning over the last, you know, a couple of years it's been like this realization that economics as you know, physical law isn't accurate. But economics as modular modules of algorithms and stuff that are helpful to understand what's going on is useful. And that the market is and trade right are very central to our kind of current modern versions of these modules of economics so we keep creating markets as a as a design but I think Jerry that you know the inverse of designing for trust is that with a market you have to design for scarcity markets only work when you have scarcity. I'm unclear about that. Yeah, try it. Try. No, I mean, so open source software is it scarce. Not in the market. What do you mean. It's not in a market. Of course it's in a market, you can go buy markets above it. You can go buy you can you can go pay for people to use open source software to make that but that's because their time is scarce. They're time literally is scarce there really is a market around open source software is they're not the software itself is not in a market software itself is pretty seems to be in the market. It supports markets. Right. This open source software itself is about. It's more complicated than scarcity equals markets. I balk when I hear that. Well, anyway, so the test I think that you could be is if you are if your answer is design a market. Check yourself to see if you're creating artificial scarcity. Totally agree with that. And I went to work and where they teach you that scarcity equals value, which is a hidden a hidden language hidden way of saying, and where there isn't scarcity you should go create some artificial scarcity because only then is there a marketplace and only then can you make our exorbitant profits and the best kind of profits are monopoly rents so why don't you go ahead and try to do that. Yeah, and that's I mean it's just taking me 60 years to figure that out you figured it out. But to me that was a realization that, oh, I use markets as a tool kind of intellectual tool, but they have a hole and be careful when you use them. Well, totally shifting gears the other thing that I've been thinking about it back to your stuff is I've been running out in Boston so I've been talking a lot with Sue about Berkman. And, and one of the things I've been trying to, I've been thinking and I've been working with this global regeneration co lab which is supposed to be pure to pure support for change makers. And the question is kind of what does it mean to support change makers right and in Berkman I think they have a similar context of thinking, how do they support their fellows and what kinds of services you offer and how you create community. I feel like we've, you know, over the last 20 or 30 years kind of let slide a whole bunch of critical technologies around collaboration around trust building around information sharing, and you're still holding the flag kind of. But you know you're, you're, but like, you know, like, I keep wanting to point at Jerry's retreats as the, you know, as a model that we ought to be using or, or I loved your email today where you were doing the, you're going to do shared, you know, shared watching of the hearings and the stuff like I mean Berkman should be doing stuff like that right. I mean they should just make it as part of their kind of free easy community stuff. Anyway, I would love to have more kind of options and things. And they're in a very interesting position because they're, you know, a target. So how do you do it in a situation where you're still keeping people safe and you know. And if you're too large you become a target and if you're too large you sometimes ossify, and these are designing questions that are high in my mind right now it's like what, what do you, what, how do you design a lightweight organization that has a lot of impact but doesn't do doesn't have those problems. And it's so interesting to like in their cases like they really don't, you don't have to never worry about competition. Right. I mean they're fucking Harvard, they've already got all the smart people they already know the rich people. You know, that isn't the point anymore so it should be an abundance creating engine, but like what's our advice for how people want to create an event that's and I would, you know, 20 years ago I would have said, I don't know create a wiki but like we've been doing this stuff around wikis don't seem to work. I believe the Harvard, Harvard abundance creation engine is aimed only at the endowment, but that's just me. Well but, but as a center right I mean don't look at you know take, take, tear apart the organization and look at the thread. Right. So there are chunks of Harvard that are not doing that right. So you don't have to could could choose to not do that I suppose. Yeah. And ironically, MIT is one of the birthplaces of open, open, open content and open courseware and all those kinds of things and I'm, I'm reminded of a study that they did with the faculty when they were trying to redesign MIT in the early days of the 2000s. And they were about to go do an online school with, you know fees and all the things you would assume. And then they went back and looked at the raw data of the interviews and to a person the faculty had said no, our mission is to educate the world that to create open stuff so so out of that was born open courseware, which is awesome and genius they made a good profit out of so when they sold it and and by the way so one of my big questions is how do you make a profit while feeding the comments. If we're not going to throw capitalism overboard then we have to heal it. And part of healing it is harnessing it to create abundance and commons instead of depletion and, you know, sequestration and waste. And I'm not yet. Pardon. Profit is waste. Is it. If I have extra on my body we call it fat or cancer profit is waste. What if that profit is just money floating around in the system that you can then repurpose to something which would create more value in the system. What if that's a way of seeing profit. Acorns aren't waste. Right. Most of them never give rise to another oak tree. Some of them feed pigs. Right. Right, but, but that's the point like why is that system producing profit. But a part of it isn't money is just a proxy for something it isn't a thing. Right. Right, but we live in we live way deep layers nested deep into a series of mental assumptions that we've been that we're sort of brought into the top of this call by Doug's questions about the role of money profit all those kinds of things. So Grace, can you see. Is there a capitalist world without profits, probably not. Because that does that pencil out somehow is there is there a form of capitalism that doesn't believe in profits. This is very weird and new system. Yes. I'm just, I'm just, I'm asking the question about what are we fixing it. We've only had for a couple hundred years, it's just, we're evolving out of it. Why would we save it what's so great about it. I think only because it's very hard in the middle of it to see it banishing and being replaced by some, some other thing it's really like most people can't imagine. I think there are such forgetful and so ignorant of history that what condo the condo critique of Europe is totally alien to us and we're like, no, there's no other ways to make like things work right. You must have. You must have the imagination isn't an excuse for not doing something. Totally agree. Totally agree. If I make if you want example, please crazy for make if you want example. Water rights throughout the United States have been allocated about 100 years ago. Okay. So you have farmers today who are sitting on water rights that they're using to flood their fields to go out for the ship to China and Saudi Arabia. So now you're going to tell these guys to walk away from the water rights. And, and see what happens conversely what they're doing in California they're paying farmers to surrender their water to share their water rights, but they're paying them to make to make good for the loss. And, and, and life goes on. So, to, to, to make radical changes in this in this environment and frame and saying profit needs to go away that this utopia is not going to happen in time to make any change at all. You know, for us to, to move forward here. Again, lack of imagination right I think it's not that capitalism is going to end tomorrow. But if you don't know where you where you're going you don't know whether you've taken a step in the right direction or whether you're just going around in circles. Totally agree having some imagination about what that looks like helps you make a step in the right direction. I really stimulate that imagination because that's that's part of my puzzle to it's like, nobody can imagine alternate forms of staying alive and being happy on the planet. And, and so every now and then you know. This room is statistically at the little tail end of the distribution. It's basically at the we scale end of distribution is where change comes from, you know, never, you know, never doubt that a group of well mean, you know, like, it doesn't have to be everybody. It's, you know, it's one at a time. And, and somebody has somebody has to take, take step outside of get out of the matrix of all of these. But that's if if if we're trapped and that's what it is and that's the only way and these are the only choices and all of that stuff. And my experience is really getting outside of all of that. And, and that's not easy on an individual basis. Like to try to actually fight out from under all of that and get to a true blank sheet of paper starting clean. Like, that's a really powerful start. And if somebody gives utterance to something that's birthed from that place that just the existing frame wouldn't even allow to be thought or entertained or were played with. On an actual basis, then, you know, we're playing the past forward. And then nothing's going to change, we're going to go extinct. Well, there's that. Stacy then class. I remember a story where a high school teacher had his class go back to the situation of the Titanic. And they were able to figure out how they could have saved all of these lives and sometimes I think if we were to go back and look at certain ideas that went bad but started out right. And if we could go back and say well what would have happened if we did this and play it out what would have happened if we did that and play it out. And then to Doug's point of starting with a blank slate. I think I said this to class the other day is what I was talking about is that I've never seen anybody sit with a blank, you know, like starting with a blank slate and draw out a design of how everyone how would work out with no losers, you know, like we're always looking to take power away from the existing power structures but with no way of fitting them into the program. So that's all I wanted to share. Thanks to see Yeah, I mean the thing is that we're living inside a complex adaptive system and you can't just stop it and then say okay let's start over or let's do something dramatically different. And, and this this last week has been. It's been really hard for me and for others here is a shared I shared this book on the thread I don't know if you saw it but there are some I mean this video here there's some wonderful conversations in there. I'm actually saying that I'm grieving because I know that this is not that we are, we are moving into times that are very unpredictable and traumatic. Right. And then I just happened to do a talk for gene school from the systems thinking network. Right. Let me see if I can pull that one up. But the, the, I developed this thing really for gene but then I ended up using it in a bunch of other places. And that was really that that was really to explain why we should be using no community food systems and so on and so on but in the process of explaining I'm used some old files from 2018. I developed a training class for citizen climate lobby business climate leaders, and I looked at slides that I had set up in 2018. And, and you see they are still relevant today and nothing happened, right, was we're talking about this eliminate profit or I mean we're talking about exotic stuff. When, when, when literally we are right in front of this iceberg that we're raising towards. And there is just no simple easy way around this thing. So, so we, we, we have, and I mean when you and I explained this in the video when you just look at our carbon budget in 2018. Now we had 196 or so gigatons of carbon left in the carbon budget, which is a composite of all the climate models out there. In the same year we use 37 gigatons and push them into the atmosphere. Right so today's 2022 nothing has happened except about the consumption has still increased. So we have basically used up the carbon budget no one's talking about it. And the idea of the carbon budget was for scientists to say, we think we can load this much carbon in the atmosphere before this thing may spin out of control and we don't know what this is going to do. So that's where we are today so this video here when you listen into just even the first two or three conversations because coming to terms, right that we are heading into a future within the next few months, but the global food supply is down by 25% global food supplies down by 25%. So the Europeans are freaking out because they're looking at mass migrations out of Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, no countries that can't afford to feed their population anymore. Even Israel is down 46% of grains imported into Israel come from the Ukraine. So even Israel has an issue here trying to sort itself out. So you have the urgency of this moment, but it's not reflected in our conversations. Thanks. Kind of going back to address what Stacy said I just want to really quickly screen share my presentation and count us just a couple bits of it. So this is what I, here's the deck I just put a link to this deck in our chat, but I basically said here's here, here are my assertions the social contract is being involuntary and renegotiated human history is a struggle over the joystick and the cockpit. Alas emotion and membership Trump reason most of the time facts don't change people's minds narratives are the primary weapons in this battle and we are in a titanic battle over the narratives in our heads by the way this is my amateur theory of history we always have been. So what's a better narrative. Then I'm like, I can't really answer this without going a little deeper because we are now drowning in the information torrent spoke a little bit about stocks and flows. The platform and publishing models love flows and addiction and they hate stocks and we'll do anything sort of break stocks. This makes us amnesic and amnesia makes us easy to spin. And then I talked a little bit about my use of the brain, and I said remember emotion and membership from reason most of the time. There's trust and sense making which I talked about at the end of the presentation, but then I said, Let me go. Hi questions, recent complications assertions narratives. So I then basically had a list of narratives that you would all recognize across human history. So here's a bunch of narratives with a white man's Burton the communist manifesto miles cultural evolution the New Deal the iron curtain drama theory let's say fair economics. The Washington consensus the Quran the Bible, Reaganomics and then, and Stacy this is more toward what you said, these are narratives that lost that I wish it won. So the great law of peace from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. There's traces of it in the American Constitution, but boy they had a good thing going they'd sort of figured out a lot of things about how to run society. Anarchism got written into into into history as like chaos terror, but anarchists as far as I can tell in the many different flavor the Baskin Robbins flavors of anarchism. We're very busy trying to figure out how humans can collaborate with each other to create a society that works. And they're so dangerous because they say we don't actually need a large socialist machine or a big capitalist thing because those will eat us. Look you here there's a different way to do it. So today is a land value tax Owen, Robert Owen is the founder of socialism, but Owen is more interesting, and then you may have some that you wish it won. And I'm really interested in what this list list looks like for other people. But I just wanted to put that up, because, because there's a whole bunch of highly functional narratives that didn't make it that that, you know, got very, very efficiently marginalized or even demonized. You as we managed to demonize not just communism but also socialism, never mind anarchism, all those things are terrible, terrible things. And yet when you look at the stats of who's happiest in the world it's the social democracies of northern Europe. Thank you so much, which are nice functional versions of what socialism ish looks like. They benefit from neocolonialism. I'm a Nordic, I love what they do there, but they have this huge advantage, either they've got their Norway and they have a lot of oil, or they've been investing around the world and doing a great job of sucking the profits back home. And that's a lovely conversation to have elsewhere but like Denmark is Denmark guilty of those things. I mean, I'm like they really have colonies they didn't they were. They said neo neo economic colonialism, the banks and the, particularly the banks have just done a great job of investing wisely and and in many cases, developing countries are on the other side of the equation. So first of all, I want to welcome Naomi, so I invited. Yes, thank you for the first hour she had another obligation. Oh hi. Yeah, thank you grace. I'm just so I'm, I'm a developer, a software developer for iPhone apps and have a an agricultural background I studied at UBC agroecology was going to get into a niche of like animal feed sustainable animal feed, especially for fish. Which was like going to be insect protein but after starting a master's program in the Netherlands I was going to Wagner. I decided I was kind of against this kind of centralized mass production for yeah I want to help the farmers so yeah I've joined here grace invited me to join you. We're not in the tech field which is more also really interesting to see what people are actually doing like with people who are not in tech. Yeah, just here to learn from you all thank you for letting me be here. Naomi thanks for joining us and grace thanks for welcoming Naomi into the room I was I was going to do something but I hadn't quite figured that out. I just said welcome. It really wasn't that hard was it. It wasn't really a big challenge. So, I guess what I want to say is there's like this kind of push right now in the industry to do more and also in this calm call to do more. And when I look around there's a real, I think there's actually a gap in the way that people speak about the problem, depending on where they are in the continuum of imagining what to do next. And so, like do you give myself in clouds were very and Doug also, we kind of at least have our toes into and sometimes a lot more than our toes into what are we up to next. And there's a certain tone to that discussion that is very different. And it feels like there's almost like. And it's not just in this conversation on this call but I'm seeing another call as well. And I have people kind of going, oh, boy, we're in this big problem we have to explain the big problem. And like no sense Jerry like that whole list of things we didn't do and the regrets from the past is in that category. And the book it's really difficult to change things. And but how are you going to imagine that and I feel like, you know, like what do we do. I think that even within this group to take people who have done a good job of figuring out where the problem is and get their toes over that line to, hey, how about you join somebody else's project or what is the action you're going to take to sort of just avoid avoiding because I think that even in this call, we're kind of starting to transition into that new world and that avoid avoidness is pulling back the people who already got their toes over the line. I'm not sensing that same energy that you just described but others might be jumping if you are. Those of us who are leaning in heavily and have large projects are like storming storming the walls kind of thing. And I agree with you entirely that it would be nice if more of a sorted ourselves into your into the different projects and said, Oh, this this resonates with my life energy and calling and let's go. Totally agree with that. But I'm not sure I'm feeling a retraction or a pullback run or avoidness, which is a new word for me. Yeah, the, how do our friend is when when when people think alike or understand the situation alike, then they react accordingly within the context of their resources ability, you know, environment. And I mean in the conversation we had the engines workshop there was a there was an author of some personality testing and management consulting and we talked about the difficulty to penetrate people's awareness and and find acceptance to very uncomfortable issues like climate crisis and environmental decay and all of those things. And it's extremely difficult to do but see to me. When you look at conversations and I mean in a lot of workshops, listening listening in and being active. We don't seem to have reached a level of understanding of how much trouble we're actually in. Yeah, so so this this video that I posted now about this living in a in a dying world. There are some really deep reflections of this is really bad. I mean we are in some really bad times and we're moving into something where we need cohesion within society. And what we do instead is fighting with one another right I mean it's all over the place, domestically internationally and so on. And it's a reflection of the crisis, but it's the crisis is overwhelming us now in the way that we're acting and reacting. And even when you think about our conversation today, right, is there really a reflection of when deep caca, I mean this is really bad. And so what can I do individually within my circumstances, my sphere of influence to change that. And that whole discussion about altruism reciprocal altruism or whichever way you know we want to frame it I posted a webinar that's coming. That's coming on nine years there's mutual aid in the great unraveling right so when you, when you dial in to to to where we really are you find a lot of people thinking deeply about you know how do we protect ourselves how do we. Secure our, our, our neighborhood now for once working hyper local and so that's, I find response here in Oregon right now I got invited to workshops with Oregon State University and Oregon State extensions, and they created this big cope of members from USDA and FSA and so on and farmers now debating, what are we going to do, because we're running out of water we can't call food the way we used to, where are we going with this. And so these, these discussions are not as steep as I think they need to be at this point you know to really, to really embrace this enormously dangerous time we're experiencing. So do people just need to be across a certain threshold, where they're like, oh crap, I better do something. Things are grim, or do they need to achieve some kind of full light bulb goes on moment like is there. I worry that agreement on the nature and scope and depth of the problem is itself wicked problem and might be impossible. And I'm wondering, how do we just get enough people motivated to tip into. This is not business as usual I've got to do something really big. It's not necessarily big. You know, what I was saying is, we all have our own individual context, some of us have a little bit more reach than others but everyone can be conscious in how my individual behavior impacts the comments. And there are things anybody really can do once you understand that. I feel and then Naomi I'd love to hear more about your fight to find funders and sorry Grace you can jump into. I just wanted to say that I think it's unfair to and inappropriate to think that we got to get more people's conversation. Most people are not in an emotional place in life where they can handle the conversation. Oh my God, we're all going to die. And that was always true. It's been true since the moment we are but most people cannot emotionally handle the level of conversation about how bad the situation is. And I think it's not our job to bring them into that when people are ready they'll be there and I love what class is doing on this local level look. I'm not going to have to show you the whole picture but how about you just grow a few peppers. Yeah, I'm great said some of what I was going to say I don't think our job Jerry is to try to bring more people into this awareness of the seriousness of things I think that's going to quite take care of itself. Not fast enough but that will happen. And I think more more of our job is to ready. Where do they turn when they realize that. The, you know, the, the VCs, the policymakers, the owners, the politicians, etc. and our neighbors where do folks turn when they realize they need to turn in some other direction and where they're headed. I'm not convincing anybody. And I like the reframing of we don't need to move people past some mark we just need to get people engaged in doing something that's useful. In your self description you talked about trying to help farmers small farmers. And I think that is a noble and quixotic endeavor, because the system is so rigged against small farmers. I've got a bunch of thoughts in my brain about that. I feel so much sympathy for small farmers. And I'm wondering if you just want to share a little bit more about how hard it is to find funding or any other aspect of that of that quest because because you're, you're totally on the right thing. And it's painful to hear that it's so hard. Yeah, definitely so my journey has been so I'll start at, I'm 29 right and I've been having this dream to actually start my own farming project for about six years. I continued to, you know, try to go into the places where I could make the connections to make this kind of dream happen. And five years and working in corporate projects mostly like huge corporate projects taking high salaries as a software engineer so I could save my own capital when five years into that I realize okay and this is going to take me like 15 years so I need to find another way. Yeah, five years into that I decided to go to Wageningen so I could get respect from the like environmental scientific community. And then talking to a lot I spent a year there almost and talking to students there that also was like 30,000 students all studying environmental subjects. Pretty much and like all of them are saying they just want to live on a farm but Unilever is the biggest sponsor at Wageningen and pretty much they all end up going to huge biotech companies and working or working for P&G and Seriously. Yeah, and it's just getting worse and worse and worse there. And like now also talking to you, I'm more in the Dutch life here and talking even to conservation enthusiasts and that are Dutch like when they when I speak about Wageningen to them they also have the same opinion I mean just last week I went to an event about a bunch of doctorate students that were given land like empty lots in Amsterdam and other neighboring areas, but by the Dutch government to do like community rewilding projects where they would involve the community and they increased biodiversity by like 40% in 10 months one of them. But still convincing the government that it's worth a permanent rewilding is like impossible. The response one of them got was like oh this is a parking lot for a festival that happens two weeks per year so sorry we'll give you another It's like, but we want to create a relationship to the land and we want to involve a commute like it needs to be a permanent thing but they're all struggling to just I mean the Netherlands has a has a shortage of land we all know that but it's just like crazy to hear that everybody is struggling to really communicate how important it is to the people who are the ones giving us the funding for all these projects right. Yeah, I've been struggling with that in the tech industry as well like there's the whole refi region movement happening, but still you know like talking to VCs, they say there's like 30 trillion and impact funding available for impact projects and it's like pretty much philanthropic funding. But when I talk to VCs, they're like well what they don't use KPI, but they want some other like metric for return of investment I'm like I thought it's philanthropic. You know, and then they also say you need to have a pilot project first because I want to go to Kenya I'm trying to move to Kenya soon. And I have a community there from helping organize a defi conference. And there's just a lot of opportunity for like decent digitizing decentralized structures for farmers which would really help them. But even there is that you know talking to VCs in Europe they don't want to give me money to do a farm in Kenya like why don't you do it in Europe. It's like, I don't know how to get through you know it's and talking to everyone else it's the same struggle. So, yeah. Thank you very much. Two things. One, I think that the amounts of money you're talking about that this sector could use are not giant amounts of money and certainly not in comparison with what a biotech start up what to eat for anybody else this is not. This is not huge pools of investment needed. And second, have you smelled or seen anywhere in the corners alternate sources of funding that look interesting or useful or good, whether it's individual philanthropists who give it am or alternate forms of crowdfunding or whatnot like like where else. How else can the sector be stood up. Yeah, it's tricky I mean I think also grace and I are both experimenting and exploring a lot different avenues I mean I've applied for grants from different foundations that are Web three protocol foundations. It's just, I think it's the language I don't know communicating the language to the business people because they don't conservationists are also saying, Hey, even from the community. Like if they say in biodiversity was increased it means nothing to them. And yeah you have to just they said the more effective way to communicate it was using very very simple language like it's healthy and it's good for the community I don't know. Have you have you checked in with your local soil and water conservation district. No, because I don't plan to stay in the Netherlands so I'm not trying to really I guess the deep here and I've been going to conferences all over Europe. But if you're trying to start a farm, but if you're trying to get money for a farm, your local soil and water conservation district is the go to place to connect you with funding sources and USDA has a number of funding available for startup farmers. That's actually a big topic right now for USDA getting into. So that would be your first place to check in with. The US did the 300 million package. Forget the $300 million package that just put $20 billion into the title to conservation programs of the farm bill. And part of that, the title to is helping startup farmers with seed money, you know with know how to sign these and things like that. You might want to connect. Can you send me the link to that please. Yeah. I want to involve young people right I mean this is the biggest argument I have. I want to, there's so many young people in Kenya, especially to write that we have the physical capacity to do this kind of work. So. So some, some piece of this is storytelling, like better storytelling to wake people up and get people to see what's going on here but but it's complicated. Yeah, that's an arc in itself. Yeah, exactly, exactly. We've got our 90 minutes. Let's take a couple more points of view and and maybe wrap this call Doug. Um, so at the center of all of this is this phenomenon of how to reawaken people like period. And reawakening people does not necessarily require reawakening them to how bad it is. Actually, reawakening people is by and possibilities approaches narratives, you know, it's, it's a function of who where in what context. And, you know, it's sort of the difference between loving somebody and loving somebody unconditionally. And you can love somebody the way you want to. Or you can love somebody unconditionally which is figuring out the way in which they want to be loved. And those are two radically different things. And it does not require, in my mind, it doesn't require somebody be awakened to have to understand or acknowledge or recognize or be terrified by all of the things we are in order for them to be awakened into action into being energized into being shifted. How can I serve or how can I help. And that happens all the time. Natural disasters like they're all sorts of things that push that button. And so I, this is, I'll make this as quick as possible. So my wife got a book key job working for a while. And the owner is third generation way over his head businesses underwater but has a huge asset brings any young guy who's done it before got screwed and is ready to do it all over again. And I'm talking to the young guy about like you can do this and this and this and he's got it. And I said, and the owner doesn't have to understand any other. You don't have to relate to him as the one who has to make decisions or even be involved. You just need to be transparent about what you're doing and make him feel safe and taken care of. And then go ahead and do what you need to do. And I think that that focusing on the human being dimension of people and what activates them and what increases their fear and their isolation and their safety and protection devices and all of that stuff. Like those dynamics have a seat at this table. It's sort of forgotten and left out or ignored completely. And I'm there. I'm like that's where I'm like trying to crack those nuts get insights and figure things out and break up the preconceived imprinted logical learned requirements that if they only understood what I understand they would like none of that is true. Like, it's not our speed, it's not the way our species works. It just isn't. So, I'm done sorry for the energy, the energy of that. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. That seems to be a good rest spot for this conversation, I think. I appreciate all of your heartfelt presences. And wish it weren't all little rectangles of zoom all the time. Was excited to see what happens when humans meet in person. When I was at the event in Bucharest, which is pretty amazing. I'm very, very different to wander around and bump into people and just sort of sit down next to somebody, you know, while trying to figure out how to reach over everybody and grab some food off the communal food table. Et cetera, et cetera. So, Gil, I don't know when the next retreat is I said it's in my head but got to sort out a couple other things first but thank you. So thank you all and I will see you all next Thursday anybody who wants to join on watching the hearing I'm going to be over on the OGM town square channel on matter most I may stand this zoom back up, but I haven't done so yet but I certainly want to co watch with other people and see what's up. So, that's a 10 o'clock right that starts at 10 and a little under half hour, I know, and it might be the last show might be there might be their curtain call I don't know I don't know what they have up but they've committed to and by the end of the year, and I don't understand all the rest of it so. Thanks everybody. Persevere. And Naomi thanks for joining us really nice to have you here. Yeah, I'll continue to come back thank you for having me. Hope that. Bye.