 discussion being swamped by the AI discussion? I would say yes. I think the AI policy debate is such a waste of time right now and such a distraction. This is the OGM call for Thursday, June 1st, 2023. Conversation obviously already in progress. So, Mike, I've never heard of the declaration and it was just a year ago. Yeah, and as I say, they got about 62 countries to be part of it. It was on the side of the summit of democracies. Which got a little more attention, but most of the attention was bad attention because people were asking why some of the countries invited, qualified as democracies. Yeah. May you live in interesting times? Can I just say that? We certainly do. We are living the curse. Digital policy is a growth industry. And possibly a lifetime employment, although that seems like an oxymoron phrase now too. Cool. I'm I'm I'm feeling the Jones for just diving into a salon style squishy discussion around these topics sounds great to me. If somebody doesn't isn't intrigued to suggest a different path to us, but we can go to a check in around next week. It feels like there's a whole bunch of this stuff that's hot and we might be able to, I don't know, I'm just feeling optimistic, take a look at it and sort of range it, frame it so that we don't ignore the dangers, but we also don't get sucked into them. The vortex and the maelstrom and ignore all the other stuff that's possible. Sound OK? Sounds reasonable. OK, and I wish the women of OGM would be showing up right around this time. I'm missing. I'm feeling the imbalance. That's a recruiting failure on our part. Koyane Scatzi, life out of balance. Actually, I wanted to read a poem. I'm on the poem of the day thing. This morning's poem was by Audrey Lord and is is actually really kind of really topical. So the poem that I was interested in reading is titled a litany for survival by Audrey Lord. I'll put a link in the chat right now so you can follow along if you feel like it. But let me just read that as an opening for a call. A litany for survival by Audrey Lord. For those of us who live at the shoreline, standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone. For those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice, who love in doorways, coming and going in the hours between dawns, looking inward and outward at once before and after, seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children's mouths. So their dreams will not reflect the death of ours. For those of us who were imprinted with fear, like a faint line in the center of our foreheads, learning to be afraid with our mother's milk for by this weapon, this illusion of some safety to be found, the heavy-footed hope to silence us for all of us. This instant and this triumph, we were never meant to survive. And when the sun rises, we are afraid. It might not remain when the sun sets. We are afraid it might not rise in the morning. When our stomachs are full, we are afraid of indigestion. When our stomachs are empty, we're afraid we may never eat again. When we are loved, we are afraid love will vanish. When we are alone, we are afraid love will never return. And when we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive. Which seemed oddly apropos. Well chosen, Jerry, thank you. The serendipity in the world chose this one for me. And I turns out I already had it in my brain. I already had it marked as a possible poem to share, but it showed up in the stream. And Lorde is a really interesting character. I would love to know more about her. Thanks for posting that brief bio, Pete. Mr. Cronza. Um, our I should keep the hand raised, I guess. Our reactions to this encouraged aloud or reactions to the poem or to the topic. Yes. Oh, man. Go crazy. I have just been learning about something called CPTSD, your complex post traumatic stress. Basically, when growing up in. Um. A situation where, you know, there's basically constant stress, especially in childhood. And. The poem kind of speaks to that a bit. And. The survival mechanisms get in developmental, the nervous system in the brain, they develop differently from a child who's raised in a safe environment. And so, you know, hypersensitivity and too much adrenaline is something that, you know, I could do as my check in, you know, I haven't been focused on the world has been focused on, you know, the. Whoever I am to basically say, ah, you know, I'm kind of been healing and hit like, OK, I'm surviving, but I'm not driving. And, you know, I've been through a crisis. I'm kind of out of the crisis, but I'm still in community, relationship, world, national, international crises. And it's kind of like, huh, I want this world to thrive, not to survive. And and, you know, I had a wonderful conversation about. What we're doing here. And yes, we're talking with each other. But are we a community? And what does that mean to become a community? You know, I I would love to talk to each of one of you, each one of you, per se, like an hour a week. But is that a community? And, you know, but kind of like, where are we going with this? And should I be here? You know, that's that's that's a question I'm asking. Thank you for the poem. I love Audre Lorde. I love Adrian Rich. I love any number of of modern poets, as well as William Blake and love Sue and, you know, this poetry can change the world. But I see a lot of ignorance and rejection of. Of the figurative, as opposed to the quote, unquote, rational and objective. And that, you know, false choice. You can either one or the other. You can either be a poet or a scientist. That just doesn't work. I remember I've been make this very short and I'll do you this as my check in. Going to Xerox Park and meeting one of my heroes and trying to become an artist with working with Xerox Park. And he asked me what kind of art I did. I said, well, I'm a poet. I didn't say I was an erotic poet, because that would have been just ridiculously, but I've never seen someone's face go from admiration to discuss so quickly. And he turned and walked away. Damn, damn. And so, you know, I've been to a lot of art and science groups. But anyway, I apparently have infected maxillary sinus and need surgery. So I don't have any symptoms. But apparently if you leave it untreated, it could lead to blindness or meningitis and brain or poetry or poetry. But, you know, brain and brain infection, you know, it's a chronic infection. Damn. Hurray for health. Hurray for, you know, Western medicine. Apparently this is not going to be treated with acupuncture or or anything. But yeah, I wish I could say that, you know, I'm going to go to a D web camp and I'm involved in this, you know, idea for basically making the internet a less creepy and more human place. But no, I'm at home and kind of on a leave of absence, just kind of focusing on moving from surviving to thriving. How do I how do I get back to some kind of contribution? What am I able to contribute and where? Is the place I'm working right now the right place? Anyway, thanks for listening and thanks for letting me reflect on the poem. Thanks for the poem. Thanks, Mark. Two quick comments before I pass to Stuart. One is thank you very much for pointing out the nesting of traumas and how as you deal with your own personal world of of just disorders or whatever else and then step back into the world and look up again, there's just a series of nested traumas. You get welcomed by outside, which is just it's a drag. But but we're I think a thing that attracts us to these conversations is that we're concerned about these traumas in lots of different ways. But we have a deep sense not only that there's these traumas around us, but that there's a path out. I think I think partly we're here because we're optimistic, which takes me to the a quick second thing, which is my favorite model of community, which I learned from Scott Peck back at a workshop a long time ago. I just posted a link to the description and Peck. And this is really stuck in my head. Peck says most communities are in what he calls pseudo community. They think they're a community and you could name them as a community. They're they're a particular congregation or they're jeep drivers or whatever. But really, when push comes to shove, most of them would just leave. And the thing that causes communities to fall into communities, he calls chaos, which is the second step, which means some incident happens that drops the community into chaos and they have a bunch of choices to make them leave, which is like there was there was no community. Gosh, there was nothing here, a point. Somebody to just lead like, ah, this is really uncomfortable or the third stage that he describes in his path to authentic community is emptiness or emptying. And it's it's not quite group therapy, but it's very much like, man, when you went to go kill that bee, my heart was in my throat because I'm a nonviolent person and I like to save insects. And that was that really got me angry and then we were off to the races. But as as people in the in the in the group start to relate what what start to empty themselves of some preconceptions and biases, you then might get to authentic community, which is the fourth stage. And what I what I kind of like, but what scares me about the model is that it seems to suppose that authentic communities are all hardened by fire. They all need trials by fire. And I'm unclear that OGM has had trials by fire. We've certainly held the mirror up a bunch. I don't know that we've solved the things when we've held the mirror up. We've had a couple of incidents here and there that were hard on us, but not forging kind of incidents. And we haven't created a lot, but we've created some things. And any of you who've been on the myriad sort of ancillary connected conversations, I feel like we're making progress, but not everybody feels like we're making progress. And I think that might be a piece of it as well. So anyway, I offer up the Peck's Community Building. He started the Foundation for Community Encouragement, which was kind of the host for for that definition of community with that off to Stuart and Mike, Ben Stacey. Yeah, so thanks, Jerry, a few a few related thoughts. One, art versus science. Thinking about the highest level of science, it's all artistry. Think Einstein as a as a kind of a classic example in terms of where his thinking went to and his his spiritual pronouncements later in life. Two, Scott Peck, the road less traveled. Most people get the quote wrong. Most people think of the quote as many are called fewer chosen. No, the actual quote is many are called few choose. I remember having the realization at one point in my life that one of the reasons that I was felt so challenged was because I chose to follow a spiritual slash out of the box path in my life and it was, you know, out of the normal out of the normal kind of societal conventions. So many are called few choose. And the idea of choosing has got something to do with what Mark raised, the notion of Prama. If you think about, you know, epigenetics, it's not just the trauma of childhood, but it's the trauma of the environment that we're living in. And I think we're all living in a PTSD world right now. It's just part of the fabric of where we are. So you've got to pick and choose what it is that creates an island of sanity for yourself. And I think the potential saving grace of the world is to have all these little islands of sanity of which there are many thousands percolating all around the world to start to populate, to start to attract and in some ways to start to become an alternative society to what is going on in traditional spheres, which obviously are not working and are leading us over a cliff. I've spoken. Thanks, Stuart. Thanks for saying a lot in a very short time, Stuart. I just had a few few things to to share and a few questions to ask. First off, thank you to those of you who are on the pregame show and gave me feedback on the declaration for the future of the Internet. That's one community. There's a whole bunch of policy wonks who are trying to make the Internet more people centric. Another community is meeting next week in Costa Rica and also online. That's a four day gathering of the rights con group. And this is a conference that's been going on for at least eight or nine years. Usually it's held every other year in the Bay Area, but they move to Canada when Trump's visa restrictions made it tough for some of these people to get into the States. And the the the other community that I'm very involved in is the Internet Governance Forum, but my question for the group is. Communities are great because they connect people to each other. So even if, you know, all of us don't meet more than every week or two, I can call up Jerry. I can call up others of you and get get advice and we can build on that. But the real power is when we leverage the rest of our communities to do things. And unfortunately, I see a lot of communities, particularly ones that are involved in Internet policy, who who aren't inclusive, you know, they're kind of we are the self appointed community and the rights con community is a good example of, you know, we are the people who spend 100 percent of our days thinking about protecting freedom and fighting censorship and internet shutdowns and surveillance online. And they they don't see beyond their worldview. And I'm I'm sensitive to this with rights con, because I've been to a couple of the meetings and I would sometimes be the devil's advocate and stand up and say, well, you know, that's very ideal of you to say that every company should spend twice as much money as they do today to meet your needs. But have you considered the other needs they're trying to reach and the other things that money could be spent on, whether it's connecting more people or providing better cybersecurity? You know, why is your need so worthy? And they get really upset when you do that. So my question for the group is whether you've been in communities that that do feel that they have some exclusive. Right to be heard and that, you know, they don't need to reach out to those people that they don't want to hear from. And I'm not saying all the rights con people are like that. And it's the people who are broadest and, you know, most involved and most influential know the value of reaching out. But there are within many communities, people who don't want don't want to be open to other ideas that they oppose. So any thoughts on how to be a diplomat and push open doors for communities that don't want to actually listen to others? And also, if anybody has any thoughts after reading the declaration for the future of the Internet, I'd welcome that too. Thanks, Mike. And if anybody's got responses to Mike, just step into the queue, please. Stacy, whenever you want to step in. Thank you, Mike, just in response to your question, I would say we should leave that as a question and start that as a fresh thread. I just have a few related thoughts. Home is where your heart is. Wherever you go, there you are. John Kabat's in fear resides in the amygdala. So I forgot who was talking. Stuart, I think, was talking about the islands of sanity. So I see myself more as a butterfly, so I think about lily pads. So the lily pads are where I jump from step to step. And those are my communities or islands of sanity with people that I've decided I resonate with. And that's how I can move to where there's more or less resonance depending on where I need to go. And I'm not sure if that makes sense, but you're welcome to ask me questions, maybe at another time. And the last thing I'll point out is that leaving is a flight response. And that's not necessarily a bad or a good thing. It just is. And thank you, I'm complete. Well, no, I'm never complete, but I finished my thought. Well, there we go. Yeah. Doug, whenever you want to step in, but take your time. Doug, which one? Oh, sorry, Doug C, because I just realized Doug B is on the call. Thanks for noticing. OK, and I've got a plane flying overhead. So it's hard to hear me. But sometimes the history of words tells us something really important. And the word community, the co, we all know is good, but the immune part comes from an old, old root for to move. So it seems to me that people that move together have a better chance of being a community than those who just gather in a place together. And it's an interesting thought about whether a community is about place or about people. So Moonus, which is part of the root, is a gift, duty or service, money. And it comes from May, which is to exchange, mix or bind. I'm just going to do a really brief screen share because I agree with you, dog. Etymologies are hugely important. And so here's communication, municipalities, remuneration, communists and community. Here's community, but Moonus goes back to May, which is proto-Indo-European to exchange, mix or bind. So I think there's interesting takes on the shape of the word and its meaning for us. And Ken just posted an etymology as well. Etymology online. Thanks, Klaus, whenever you want to step in. Yeah, I think the maybe other way of looking at forming community is based on shared intentions. Because I mean, as you know, I'm working in the regenerative agriculture, what we call in our movement. And I had an interesting experience going to the Al Gore climate reality training camp and became a certified climate partner there. And to my surprise, Al Gore didn't have anything to say about land-based solutions or about agriculture, which just blew me away. So I engaged with the group and I got onto a mailing list that includes all the chapter leaders in North America. And they're very, very gracious in engaging with me. And I shared with them, you know, the whales is already all working on bomb-related issues, on issues related to regenerative agriculture, working with farmers, working with markets and so on. And these are all links that didn't activate here, but these are all links leading to what these groups are working on and the declarations they have made. And the amazing thing here really is that the Kista Crowns organization has partnered with the American Sustainable Business Network and consolidated dozens of NGOs who never talked to each other to arrive at an aligned policy. You know, what are the core issues that need to be addressed in order to change the trajectory of our engagement with nature? And that is huge because the food system is obviously enormous. So I'm giving a presentation to them on Saturday about the basic needs to shift and change. And so what I really want to emphasize and stimulate is let's have our intentions aligned. And intentions are based on a shared understanding of the information, the shared acceptance of what is the science, what is the reality, and so on. So I really think community is based on intentions more so than anything else I could think of. Because once you have passionate intentions, then you're more willing to listen. You're more willing to engage and put yourself aside. So that at least has been my observation. And so we'll keep moving forward because you're really dealing with two worlds. You know, there's the industrial sector. And BlackRock just came out announcing that 90% of their shareholders are pushing back on including sustainability and environment and social issues into their investment strategies. That's a second trillion dollar fund. And then, you know, so they step world of profit maximization and short-term thinking. And then there's this increasing alertness in many parts of the population who feel exposed to risk and a future that is increasingly challenged. And so these two forces are colliding in ways that is really historically unique. Because in most any other country in the world, it would get suppressed. And here, the expressions are free. But the actions are still not inhibited. So anyway, so random thoughts. Good random thoughts, Klaus. I just want to step in for a sec. One of the things that leaps out at me from what you're saying is how the right and the far right have created sort of laser-like collimation of energy. So what makes laser light cut through things and normal light not is a phenomenon of the alignment and amplification of light waves. And so it was called being on message or message management back in the day. And Newt Gingrich kind of imposed this discipline. And if you stepped away from the messages that were being circulated on the far right, you would not get funded for your next primary. You would basically get dumped out of the party. And they did this in a way that led to a whole lot of legislative victories, even though they often represented minority positions if you were to take a big vote across the country. And that's still happening right now. And progressives and scientists and others, except for on a couple issues like, hey, climate change is really happening. Look, we all signed this thing. But progressives have, and by the way, these are thorny, wicked problems that we're all facing. But we all have so many different alternatives and so many different initiatives that that collimation doesn't really happen. And one of the things I'm really interested in, see if Mike had to leave at the half hour. One of the things that I'm really interested in is, is it possible to preserve the diversity of efforts and opinions, but somehow create a collimation of energies in the middle so that the same force is felt in the public sphere for efforts to get things done. Because there are so many different initiatives, some of which are, well, we should have cows on the land. No, we shouldn't. Cows are terrible. Cows make methane. We should have nuclear, thorium reactors, pebble bed reactors. No, we shouldn't. Nuclear is terrible. It costs, you know, too much for everything. I'm in a whole bunch of these battles on mailing lists around different groups all the time. Happens constantly. And these are incredibly smart people. These are world authorities on the subjects who can't seem to agree on things. And I think my question to this group and in general is, not can we resolve those questions definitively and settle those dammit? And the people who disagree about cows just back down, but rather, can we find a way to bundle up and augment our collective energies and try everything and use some kind of experience, experimental data-driven method to work our way towards solving these different things, which are difficult, dangerous, interrelated, and messy? And I don't know that that's possible, but I'm looking for that. I'm looking for the thing that causes the energy to connect up. And so I love movements. I love, I think movements are really interesting, because movements sometimes pick up a whole lot of steam. Occupy came out of nowhere, shut things down for a while. I got a lot of attention, and then dissolved. And I don't think it dissolved entirely. I think Occupy caused a bunch of these groups to get together and get to know each other and start to collaborate in ways that they haven't been collaborating for. That's a plus. But so many big issues. Yeah, I think we should focus on people who disagree about Karl's Mark. That's the key. Doug B. Porter is yours whenever you'd like. Well, I'm sorry, Mike had to leave, but it's really in response to his request. And I've experienced that silo effect for the last seven years. And I'd love to, it's actually not a meta level. It's more of a proto level. I'd like to drop below the fray of all of the silos and all of the attachments to sort of a different center of inquiry, which is what's the consciousness question. All of the silos and all of the solution searching and all of the fray around data and around technology and around coming up with manifestos and laws and rules and codifications are all nouns. It's all about things that are by definition fixed and static. The whole IP tradition in Western law is about a fixed representation, something that's written in locked in stone and then owned and protected. And the shift in orientation, the shift in awareness and consciousness, just to sort of lean toward an indigenous or an indigenous reference is toward verbs, toward the dynamics and the flows in reality, by and between everything. So it's not just a human-centric question. It's how do we, with this thing sitting on our shoulders, relate and orient everything in front of us, whether it's problems or whether it's dynamics or whatever it is, good, bad, or indifferent. And it's sort of like God gave us this higher level cognitive function. It was a gun in the hands of a bandit. And the focus and preoccupation with solving things with us as the source of the solution and solving things centering exclusively in the mental body, which is abstraction, which is intellectual, but is also not reality, they're constructions. And they're constructions of our making. So if we could somehow shift weight from a thing-oriented, intellectual-oriented, solution-oriented, sourced from us-oriented to a sensing feeling being more balanced mix across all five bodies, across all of our sensorial capacities, but also in acknowledgement recognition of everything being interconnected in reality, everything affects everything else in a dynamic, living way, that consciousness shift would make a big difference. In order to do that, and this is the 3,000-pound gorilla in the species, in order to do that, it means a sort of global letting go and releasing of attachments to our constructions, to our solutions, to our intellectualizations, our abstractions, our things. Because if I'm busy filling my attentional band with my own baby, my own construction, my own salvation for the world, I don't have any receiving capacity to tune into others, nor to tune into the rest of the living biome and planet that we are living on. I'm really in a box of my own making. So I'm just to sort of walk on the wild side. I'm suggesting that maybe instead of staying in the abstraction rabbit hole of our species, that maybe if we got really practical, solution-oriented in what would affect our actual relationship with the reality around us, what would it take to achieve a quantum consciousness shift from where we are, if this is where we are, to here? And I would argue, and the reason it is sort of rising up, is because the indigenous, which is what here represents, never lost connect with the living interconnectedness of everything. And their consultation and all of their decision-making response to their experience of their world is to source what's OK and what isn't. It's really a binary kind of thing. The Kogis is an indigenous tribe. Whenever they make a decision or whenever they are confronted with whatever in the operating of their community, they turn to an oracle and an oracle turns to a cup of water and reads bubbles and whatever. But whatever channel the oracles tuning into, they go, yes, that's an alignment with source. It's good to go, or they say no. And if it's a no, then that governs. That's it. And their references to reality, that's really what's going on there. They're referencing, but a very complete awareness and consciousness, the reality there is, and a sensing feeling into consequences of what they may or may not be about to do. It's a really fundamental, primitive, simple calculus when you shift to that awareness and orientation. And with that, I'm complete. I apologize for the long for that. Is it possible to make a direct comment or should I just wait in line and comment on Doug's later? I'm happy to do that. I'm torn. If you can remember what it is and stay in the queue, let's go queue. And I think that'll work out fine, because Kevin's been patient for a while. So let's stick with the queue and just make a note to yourself in the chat or wherever else that'll work out fine. Thanks for asking, Mark. Kevin, whatever you want to step in. Yeah, I posted in the group of my comments to our Tourism Development Authority here in Asheville, where there's been a group that's trying to get. It's a crazy thing. Our industry is growing so much that the 6% occupancy tax has grown from 18 million to 40 million in the last four years. And it's governed by nine people who worked in the tourism industry and then one representative from the county and one from the city. And the only restrictions are that it promote tourism. So they can actually channel it to the things up their venues, especially if it equals heads and beds, which is the metric of their tax. And so we got this local and private bill through the legislature of the state that lets 16.5% go for the good of the community. And there's a group that's had a really good campaign. Oddly enough, there's a really efficient group here called the Democratic Socialists. Their chapter is really efficient. And then the food and beverage workers are really good about things. And so there were 40 of us yesterday at their meeting and we sat through 56 minutes of their meeting and then they said, well, we have four minutes left. Well, one of you like to speak and our organizers said, no, we've sat through your long meeting with 20 minutes from consultants about bad feasibility, he didn't say that. Can you listen to us? And they did. And I was the one who spoke about the business case for affordable housing because people aren't showing up to work and there's high turnover and all those things. But the food and beverage work has spoke up really well. And we're feeling pretty confident that we might get about 7 million for affordable housing and that carve out and that one service worker will be on the board of the Lyft Fund, which is the carve out fund. And then separately I've been working on this, I mentioned here this farm to table watershed fund where we just, we have money for the first two loans. And these are zero interest loans like Kiva, but for local farms, similar to what slow money is doing in their Bitcoin. And we're gonna do it through benefit dinners at local restaurants for the farms that they brag about sourcing from. And the restaurants are okay with that, they can do that. And so we're gonna do the engagement there. And then we've got a thing hooked in where there'll be a little table tent on the table so that the diners who are part of your meal is being donated to the farm that will keep your free range or Rugalik on your plate. And then you can also give to a group called Equal Plates that buy at market and serve these organic meals to places where people can afford it. So senior centers and headstarts and schools and poor neighborhoods and stuff. And one of the things I've seen repeatedly is that if you hit up kind of your farm to table eco-liberal with guilt at the point of consumption, they will typically give to for folks who can't afford what they, what they're doing. And so anyway, we got the funding to launch that yesterday. Well, yesterday. So anyway, we're gonna launch and see how it works. But there's a real divide between the farm to table folks and the folks who can't afford it. And so we're trying to bridge that along with giving this low-cost funding. So anyway, both of those happened in the last few days. Yeah, it's pretty decent. That's fabulous, Kevin. And thank you for telling us about it. So Kevin's story and sharing was a great example of an island of sanity. Where people are doing some sane things. So it's a wonderful kind of bridge in the sense of what Doug was talking about, about a shift in consciousness. In 1993, I wrote an article called Silver Foxes in the Art of Resolution. It was published in the California State Bar Journal. And it was about the ideal of people coming together with disparate viewpoints and being able to engage in dialogue and come up with some rational solution to address a real life problem. And unfortunately, some of the PTSD we live in is a result of the legal culture becoming litigious in the US and exporting that around the whole world. And it's so far from the kinship indigenous ways of dealing with problems and justice and criminality. But we've created this huge us versus them winning at all costs, right, wrong, fault, blame and it's at the foundation of all ills. There's no dialogue. Our media perpetuates this because it sells, you know? Arguetainment sells. So that's kind of at a core level of why there's no real dialogue between human beings solving real problems. When I was doing a lot more work with individuals in the area of resolving conflict, the first thing I did was address the human aspect of the relationship before moving into addressing the practical kind of business aspects of it. And when you get people down into their own emotion, the human capacity of loving, of compassion, if you provide the container in which that arises, people are just absolutely amazing. But, you know, most people are not working in that arena and that's kind of the essential place that I think we need to learn how to go to. And I say learn because it's a conscious choice of moving into that space and operating in that way. I want to give another shout out to what Kevin's doing, which sounds like actual community. And then certainly, you know, all politics is local, which everybody generalizes. I don't think all politics is local. But it starts there in terms of, you know, actually being a citizen with actual face-to-face contact with people. Thank you, Kevin, for what you're doing. It's a really good, really nice thing that I heard from you. I've posted in the chat, I'll kind of go up to it. Doug, I'm often confused by what you say. Now, I'm happy to be passionately confused about it and engage, not a criticism, just kind of an inquiry. Still scrolling up here, Doug said in alignment with Source and talked about indigenous people. Now, as somebody with possible Aztec or Toltec heritage and, you know, our Super Bowl was basically chopping off 3,000 to 10,000 heads and putting them on stone poles, I really mistrust, if not distrust, indigenous wisdom. It's kind of in my blood. Like, you know, to do divination, you take a stone knife, you know, somebody on mushrooms or peyote, you cut their heart out, you hold it up to the sun. We don't do that. That's not indigenous, you know, wisdom that has moved into our current civilization. I think there's a good reason for that. And it's really, it raises my, I hate to say this bullshit meter, because it pegs it when I hear about indigenous wisdom because, you know, they drove many large mammals to extinction easily. But one of the big things was our construction's not reality. I mean, we could say that the dollar is a construction and it basically occupies, you know, this chunk of our brains and is growing bigger and bigger and bigger, as well as advertising and everything that comes with, you know, this construction. But we can also say that language is construction and continues to be a construction, continues to be a process. So I'm very passionately confused. What is unreal about constructions? Because we are here in a construction. I'm looking at a reality one pixel deep. My voice is being converted into digital stuff over a wire. It's going out to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, what, 13, 14 people. And then in the recording, it'll go out to how many different people who watch the recording and it might last, outlast my lifetime. What I'm saying right now, somebody's ability to hear what's unreal about that. Thank you. And, you know, I don't want to derail the conversation, but I want to make that really interesting point in a, I don't know, philosophical or even artistic or objective reality reasoning way. We as humans build tools and as do the indigenous people. And I don't know, you know, you said, you know, is this box of my own making in alignment with source in the indigenous way, different from say, what the Amish or Mennonites do and say, do we want this in our community and choosing together at a particularly small scale? Whereas I don't have any control if, you know, you guys use the internet or not, I could refuse to use the internet, but maybe I can't anymore. Can I actually live without a cell phone anymore when people are moving things off of, you know, I'm, you know, I'm losing local stores, you know, fries was like my nerd temple and it's gone. Radio shock gone. I can't get a capacitor without using a keyboard and it irks me. Thank you. Actually I can. I can drive to Menlo Park or a wonderful electronic store in, I forget. Electronics Plus and Centerfell. Yeah, or it could go there. I don't know that one. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Sorry for a link. Not at all, Mark. And thank you for opening a lot of bountiful questions and you open one in particular about indigenous ways of knowing, which I am a big fan of, which is a huge topic and which would make a delightful topic for a future OGM call. I think that maybe we should just drop that into our schedule and say, hey, let's go address this and figure out what we think and what we mean by this because I think that's great. And then Doug brought in the question of gosh, we could try to rationalize our way through this and solve problems and talk about nouns or we could talk about relationships and connections and consciousness and find some other way to find this pollination that I sort of, I'm asking about. And I think that's an interesting topic for a future call as well. It's like, hey, we are Western critters very much raised in the tradition of we'll science the shit out of this. And that doesn't always work very well. So Stacey, whenever you feel like stepping in. Yeah, thank you. Well, I'm glad Mark mentioned the phone because I haven't had one in about a week. And in some ways it's good, I don't want one but well actually before I go there I wanna just channel a little bit of Ken into a new dimension because instead of who is this we that we're talking about I'd like to ask who is our? Because I keep hearing our and I don't know. Okay, need for technology. Okay, right now without my phone the biggest problem that I'm having is finding my keys and my eyeglasses which I just ordered new ones, new eyeglasses this morning after I got back from the farmer's market and had my coffee and Stacey, who is our? That's for Stacey to know. Mark was just taking notes from what you're saying. Yeah, no, I'm just, thank you, Mark. So anyway, but here's what's really important because this is my community. So who is our, I'm here, so right now I'm part of our what I really need that if I had a phone I could do it in a second with my eyes closed but I don't, just very simple. I need technology, I need the simplest thing the kind of keypad you have on your door where you just punch in the numbers to get in. It's so basic, so easy. I haven't been able to reach out to any of you to say can you get me something just for my building just for my apartment as a prototype? I have so much ready to go in so many different directions but I need somebody to work with. Everything else is all in place. And who is it? Somebody here asked, oh, Barry, all right, Barry's not here but he always brings up the question do you eat to live or live to eat? Thank goodness I live to eat because I love eating and I have been eating so underflight. So with that I'll stop please if somebody could just, just very basic. Dot, dot, dot, dot. And by the way, I have the banks that I could see from my window. Well, not the banks, the major companies that I can see right from my window are M&T Bank, Verizon, I have Orange and Rockland. I have everything here, please. I don't wanna, I can't tell you how many times I've gotten locked out of my house. That genuinely has been my biggest problem getting locked out of my own home. So please help me, I really am complete now for today. Thanks, Tacey. Thank you. I didn't hear, I tried to listen but I didn't hear the exact ask for help. The ask is if you can set me up with a security system for my home to put in a basic security keypad for my house. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Oh, I do have another question. Is anybody going to that Costa Rica thing that Mike talked about? Because I have somebody that has a place there. Nobody, okay. Well, if you hear of anybody, please, they, I can be reached through email. I can be reached through Facebook Messenger. That's it for now. Cool. Thanks, Tacey. Thank you. So where does this put us? Maybe people who haven't checked in yet, Sean, Michael? We're sort of not doing check-ins but be happy to hear from people who haven't spoken yet. Yeah, we're not, I didn't start us off in a check-in round. I just started us off on a topic. We're freewheeling a little bit but it would be lovely for anybody who's been participating to step back and anybody who hasn't had a chance to talk to step in if they want to. Process question. Yes. There was a woman who was interested in this discussion, I said, this would be a check-in thing. And she said, I got a sort for today, I'm not gonna show up. But are we still kind of alternating back and forth? We sort of are, except we're slightly varying from schedule. And I was gonna talk about that with the group as well, like what we want to do with our time. Cause we went through some really interesting conversations about that, I think two calls back. So we might test that out. I can't just come in this late and I can't tell what the topic is. Can you refresh the topic for us, please? So we started in, it's funny, we haven't really stuck to the topic that much. We started in on the pretty large and growing debate about AI is going to kill us and all those kinds of things. Like the swirling eddies of what are the effects of and how do we manage all this excitement about gender to the AI? That's where we started. And we clearly haven't stuck to that. So I thank you. So I'm quiet. If anybody else would like to step in, go ahead, Ken. I'm just gonna say I'm looking at what we mean, we, Kimusabi, and I think of that in terms of AI. We will have AI soon. And who is we when we have an inorganic life form? I mean, our midst changes the dynamic quite a bit. If anyone is interested, I can give you a copy of James Lovelock's latest book, his last book, Overseen, where he talks a lot about AI and what he calls cyborgs and the future of life on the planet. It's an amazingly powerful roots. It's relatively short, it's very accessible. I learned a lot about earth science. And he says the project for both humans and artificial intelligence or what he calls cyborgs will be keeping the planet cool. Because if we go above 50 degrees centigrade, it's game over for everything. And that ties to a whole bunch of stuff together. So if you want a copy, just ping me and I'll be going to send you one. It looks like I haven't finished reading it. I just kind of dipped in a little bit, but it looks really interesting and useful. So thanks, Ken. Klaus, whenever you would like to. Yeah, I'm, I don't think AI is going to kill us. I think nature, if anything kills us, it will be the natural world. So when you listen in to the oceans acidifying and warming and challenging its capacity to produce oxygen, for example, that's a big deal. And so AI is a tool that we could be using to come together and find out, find ways to protect ourselves. But I think we are completely parking by what is actually really an existential challenge. It's not AI. I mean, it's really all a relationship with the natural world. And I'm continuously baffled, because I'm so immersed in this and my algorithms are channeling all the science data and it's just like overwhelming, nasty, negative stuff all day long. But we're really in a really bad spot. And I had a conversation yesterday with the local climate tech meeting here. And these are all folks working on different aspects of technology related to climate issues, energy systems, agricultural systems and so on. And I finally felt compelled to say, are you aware of a very basic statistic? We are trying 1.8 times the regenerative capacity of the planet. And that is expressed in, we are overthrowing the aquaverse, the rivers are running dry because we are overthrowing that, the soil is depleted, which means we are disturbing the water cycles, the oceans acidifying. So there is a drawdown of minerals and resources, fish stocks, for example, we are pulling fish out faster than they can reproduce. So 90% of global fish stocks are in stages of collapse. So all of that combined adds up to 1.8 times. And there is a website, it's called overshootday.org, where you can look up and they're tracking this stuff. Well, if you take 8 billion people and divide this by 1.8, that's 4.4. That means the carrying capacity based on current consumption patterns, that's 4.4 billion people. Now, if you apply a best-in-diet and lifestyle to that, that now comes down to something like 3 billion people. I mean, just process that for a moment. So we are falling down the ecological capital of the planet while we are increasing our demand on it currently, which is why drawdown is this big, the idea behind drawdown is the drawing down, which means we are accelerating exponentially towards a state of collapse in the natural world. That's just basic math, right? I mean, that's just, and it's, my wife is telling me shut up, I can't take it anymore kind of thing. And you really don't wanna hear that, but that's where we are at, you know? And so AI, you know, I mean, yeah, lots of issues with AI, but the core problem is we could use it as a tool to help people understand, right? To make the information digestible, palatable and so on. Instead, we're focusing on can you weaponize it and what can you do with it to make the world a bigger mess than it is? So I'm sorry, just my disturbing tendency to continuously dwell on looking into a future that is just amazingly scary to me. Boss, thank you. I was in a conversation yesterday where I was like, we were well on our way towards destroying ourselves before this generated AI stuff showed up. And then Rai shrugs and we moved on. Doug, did you have a quick comment on that? Not too quick, but maybe fairly quick. I'll try that to be short. Picking up on what Klaus was saying, I did a painting a few weeks ago that I've been unwilling to mention. And it shows a big red brick building with a big entranceway and a line of people waiting to get in. And on the top of the building in big bronze letters, it says Federal Suicide Center. And I'm thinking that yesterday was in a conversation about the dangers of starvation. And are we in a world where we have to figure out how to end ourselves? That was definitely not a light comment. Thanks, Doug. Sean, what do you want to step in? I'm just a quick response to Doug first. I'm a Canadian and there's considerable debate going on in Canada at the moment around the medically assisted intentional death, what is it called? Made, M-A-I-D, but basically state assisted suicide. And there is evidence that people are falling off the end of the economic diving board are finding themselves drawn to made as a solution for their turmoil. We'd just like to say hello again. It's been a while, a long while, since I've participated in these calls. And when I did, it was not enough in dying. Thank you. I'm going to have at the very least a summer of sufficient calm to be able to participate with a bit more vigor. And so I would just like to say hello again and introduce myself as a developer a software developer who is working very vigorously on attempted to construct basically scalable sense-making technology with a strong orientation towards scalability. Where I mean, not so much software scalability as rather the scalability of participation of many humans which is the real issue in challenge, I would submit. And anyway, so just a gentle hello for the moment. And yeah, I'd be delighted to communicate with anyone who is interested in such pursuits. Alan, thank you. Pete just typed into the chat what I was about to sort of say to you. I think we have some conversations that were what your quest is would fit beautifully. And we should do that. Thank you. Thanks for rejoining. Really appreciate it. Mr. Caronza, whenever you like. Sean, I think you and Jerry were at a what's it, virtual memex meetup about a year and a half ago or so. Associated with the archive? I'm sorry? Associated with the archive? With whom? Sorry, our archive. Yeah, yes. Yeah, I- Oh, archive. Were you seated in the basement of the archive or some such thing? Yes, it's what is it called? The church, the temple. The crypt, what's it called? The science temple. It was the Sunday school area where the kids would go while the adults who basically never got Western healthcare were slowly dying and leaving the church to other uses. So there's one way basically we can refuse Western medicine or not afford it or basically go haul in in Western medicine and let it, i-etrogenic is a wonderful term about basically how healing can basically kill. But I just wanted to point out our friend, Jonathan Swift and his modest proposal. Also our friend, Thomas Malthus. I wonder about war and Plague, starvation, famine, the Four Horsemen. Klaus, we might be in luck with very quick depopulation and demographics, the carrying capacity either it will hopefully recover. Look on the bright side. That was the play, Mrs. Lincoln. There's some dark humor and I'm asking myself the question and I've studied AI since 1984 before and it's gone through many changes and the definition of AI is what we don't know how to do yet. Everything else is engineering now but certainly the wealth and power disparities the people are able to afford AI and Bill Joy's notion about desktop pandemic being created. I heard a wonderful thing this morning about older people who basically, can you say America was better or the life was better, way back when? And it wasn't better so much as different where there were different risks. Your risks were kind of known risks and now we have a lot of unknown risks and a lot of uncertainty causing a lot of angst and even more, what was the thing in the 50s where people were in a death of a salesman where people were kind of dissociated from society associated from what Doug Breibart was saying, reality. What is reality when you're selling widgets and working for worldwide widgets and you got a green widget and your widget with tailpins and it's all bullshit? That's a great question. I don't know what to answer. Not so much random musings but there is this notion where in AI the people with the largest computers win and many people have talked about this because of the chemo and possibly age of chemo brain. I forget names very quickly or easily. Apparently that's common as we age but the big guy with the dreadlocks who plays lots of instruments. You're one of them. Thank you. He really talks very much about AI is taking what humans do. It's searching through all this data that they slurp in that we've created and it makes very, very subtle and really important mistakes and people like the Chinese and the Russians don't mind in rumor, letting AI run things without a human in the loop to kind of say, okay, AI proposes this, let us decide whether this makes sense or not. Let's just have AI do it. It's cheaper. That scares the heck out of me and I don't know when Klaus was speaking about the soil and the real difficulties of planetary warming if there's a distinction without a difference because things that are incredibly complex like the electricity distribution network, the grid. I mean, there are so many things like traffic and the economy that are just so far beyond both human and AI control that the effects of positive feedback are really existential risks that we can't quantify. And that old saw what you can control, what you can't control. When it comes to planetary level issues, the stuff that we can't control, I'm not sure how we deal with that in spiritual connection with the earth, with each other. And I just wanna say, yeah, what Ken said that we have to share with like non-human life in a way or technological life, it's not life, it's certainly not life. When we use life as a metaphor, but it's certainly not life. And that's a much deeper discussion. And welcome to Gil, it's just about him. And he's Fathom's partner. Thank you, both Fathom five, my father lives, bye-bye. That's right, about whatever you like. There you go. Everybody want some good news? Yeah, yeah, please, Dish. I mean, are you guys sure? Because I'm never sure. I could totally go for it. Because it gets awful, awful bleak around here. And I'm a believer that you can either look at the bleakness and say, let's just, might as well just go down and it all. And like, really? I don't know, I'm not in favor of that. So I had something happen last week. It was completely unexpected, but it ties back to what I think was going on when this group was originally formed, the concept of drip, drip, drip. Just keep putting things out there. Repetition, repetition, repetition needs to reputation. And I made something a couple of years ago, three years ago maybe. I called it the play pledge. And it was just me saying, hey, we should play more. We should be more playful. I think that people underestimate the value of that. And yet, if you look at what people do with their spare time, that's what a lot of them do. They're looking for the point when they can play, play more. I also look at play as an interaction between people. It's not a game on a table. It's, there's an invitation, there's an acceptance. There's a set of constraints, there's an intent. It's uncertain and there's some skill involved. So that's what I look at when I think about play and what games are. So what happened was that's been sitting out there for a couple of years with Mary Apeep. And I got an email from a woman in Mexico City who is part of a group called Teach for Mexico in Seneca, Mexico. And she said, I found this. I would like to translate it into Spanish because it perfectly particulates the posture that we would like to have our students and teachers act out. And I was flattered, floored, of course I said yes. And I asked, tell you what, you translate it and because I'm a designer, I will make it into graphics with your logo and colors in the formats that you want. You know, tell me what works for you. Slide, poster, social media, post, whatever. So I ended up having a conversation with them to talk about it. Where a number of my other philosophies resonated. And wow, all I did was put a positive, I thought, hopeful message on a little web page and now I'm connected with an organization in Mexico City that is going to use that to help add to the educational environment of children who may not even have formal school opportunities. I mean, they even serve the Mayan population. And I thought, you know what? Maybe if we had some things because we're all very bright people and we all have had hope at one point that things can be better. We've often provided as like Kevin has done so often, here's what I've done and here's how it's working and here's where it's not working, but here's how it's working. Maybe if we had more things like that, we could get some footholds, make some progress and not feel like it's just a cliff ahead. So that was inspiring and I thought I would share it and it's just getting started and I'm excited about it. Thank you for the invitation to play. I don't know whenever you'd like, but you will, there you go. Yeah, two things, you know, an imminent disaster which seems to be a favorite topic of this group and I see imminent disaster here, I see imminent disaster here. Oh my God, this is another reason to be afraid. I almost wanna leave this group when that becomes the chorus. I remember reminded of the older sister of a friend of mine and she's been fixing bank software for about 30 years and it's written in COBOL and Fortran and she doesn't know how it works and no one will let her figure out how it works, you just have to keep it running. And the people who it's lightly documented by scores of programmers years and years ago and yet she's retiring and there's no one else to do that but it hasn't blown up yet, you know? And it seems like that's a real imminent disaster and we've avoided it, you know? So I firmly believe that, you know, the times are too late and the situation is too dire to be anything other than firmly hopeful and that's where I go. And I, you know, when people wanna talk about all these reasons to another reason for despair, oh my God, I found another reason for despair it's like, you know, I just, I'm looking for my earplugs, you know? Because, you know, it's too late to be anything other than firmly hopeful. Yeah, it's hitting the fan, you know? It's been hitting the fan for a while though, you know? We've been doing things that are, you know, the highly clear, we're not really good, you know? And a lot of things happened then, you know, there were six colonies in the U.S. where you could not preach that Exodus meant let my people come out of fire. You know, it's been hitting the fan for a while, you know? So just show the fuck up and stop despairing. That's all I gotta say. Thank you for the kick in the seat, Kevin. You just made it yourself, Ken. All the way, that's too harsh. But, you know, we really don't have time for fucking despair all the goddamn time. You know, despair is an infection. Yeah, so Scott, thanks for the great story. That's a wonderful example of a piece of an island of sanity. I couldn't agree more, Kevin. There's no time for despair. Yeah, there's a lot of things pointing to collapse, but who knows what's gonna happen? Remember Y2K? Anybody here remember Y2K? So that's an example. So do what you can, where you are with what you have. I mean, that's the mantra that's been kind of driving me. All of us in some ways are doing good work in the world, whatever it happens to be, and just keep doing that good work with the mindset of, who knows where this is all going? Nobody knows. So let's do the best we can with what we have, where we are in the little projects, in the little islands of sanity that we're trying to create. My two cents. I think we could make a quick comment on that about Y2K. Y2K was not a disaster because billions of dollars and millions of person hours were spent making sure it wouldn't be a disaster. It wasn't something we could just, oh, let's not worry about it. It was something that people really focused on and did a lot about. So a lot of people say, oh, Y2K never came to pass as an example of something people worried about that we shouldn't worry about, but it really was something that demanded a lot of action and got a lot of action. Thanks, Ken. And I just want to comment on the DOOM dynamic, which is, I think the emphasis and return emphasis on DOOM is that just going about business as usual and doing the best we can and adapting as best we can isn't, in fact, going to be enough. We need to take some dramatic actions. And when Greta Thunberg asks us to go on a war footing about this, she means that economies around the world were changed overnight in order to fight wars and we're happy to do that for wars. We're just not happy to do that when our futures are at stake. And it's really hard to convince people to make those kinds of drastic changes. And Doug is trying to say, hey, all activity creates carbon. We need to shut down, that's a gigantic ask. And how to get that level of change, that degree of change to happen is I think one of the reasons why the conversation keeps just drifting emotionally southward. If that's not biased, I don't know. Can you say south anymore? Doug, let me put you in the queue after Gil. So Mark, then Gil, then Doug. I wonder, having had like a week-long depressive episode, I had to have a molar pulled about the evolutionary purpose of despair. And yeah, I'm not sure that despair is a predisposition. I'm not sure that despair is a predisposition. It's a predecision that we've got a way to basically kind of say, I can't deal. This is something I can't control. So I'm going to let it go. It's all panaceas are poison, basically saying, I don't have time for despair. I got time for despair. I don't have time for despair. I don't have time for despair. I'm not sure that despair is a predisposition, predisposition to action. I'm not sure that despair is a predisposition. I don't have time for despair. I got time for despair. Despair is part of my life right now. Sorry. But my question was not to, or what I was trying to say about AI and the planet, is not to be a doomsayer, but to kind of say, how do I deal with this? How do we deal with this? And I'm sorry if it came across as something that felt like doomsaying, because, you know, we all interpret things in a different way, but I don't want to give up on despair yet. I kind of, I'm kind of here in grieving. And, you know, it's, it's a personal thing mainly, but basically, you know, my own crisis of grieving is over, feels like. But, you know, I still got to live. I still got to, you know, go to the doctor, get some surgery. And yet there's all this environment around me. You know, the environment is, you know, AI, the new environment is, you know, cell phones and, and maybe bananas are going to go extinct. You know, I mean, there's all kinds of different things going on. And here we are as, you know, 10, 12, 13 people together. Talking. And where do we go from here? It's kind of the theme that I'm kind of doing. And I salute Kevin for actually doing stuff in the community, which when I was healthy, I actually did. I actually love doing that. And I find that, you know, San Francisco is a better place for the kinds of community work that happens here all the time. Carnival was last weekend. And Los Vandals, I mean, people came up from all over the world to celebrate and be together out in the fog. Unfortunately, wasn't that saying, but don't want to be a doomsayer and don't want to come across as one. If that's something that triggered. Thanks. Just if I could say one quick comment. Doomsayer versus telling the truth. That's an important distinction. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we've got so many scientists talking about where we are in terms of on the edge of things. So, you know, the idea of. Either chicken little running around, you know, the sky is falling or walking around with our head ups or butts. I don't think either one of those perspectives is of great value. Two quick comments. And if he has a poem for us, I'd love to hear it. We also have kill and Doug C in the queue. But also I was thinking, why don't we just alternate formats for the GM calls and on one set of weeks, we'll all start with a chorus of doom, doom and some crying. And then on the alternate weeks, we'll start with laughter and joke telling. Good. All right. That's great. Yes, I do have a poem. This is from a book of luminous things and anthology of an anthology of poetry by Shesla Mishlo. And this is a poem called the heart of Hercules. Lying under the stars in the summer night late, while the autumn constellations climb the sky. As the cluster of Hercules falls down the west, I put the telescope by and watch Deneb move towards the zenith. My body is asleep. Only my eyes and brain are awake. The stars stand around me like gold eyes. I can no longer tell where I begin and leave off the faint breeze in the dark pines and the invisible grass, the tipping earth, storming stars have an eye that sees itself. Have a great week, people. See you next week. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Bill, then Doug C is going to have the final word and we'll wrap the call. Yeah. Sorry to come late, but I'm fascinated by what I walked into. Mark grief strikes me is really important. And this culture doesn't like it and tries to medicate it. And, you know, I think grief is really different than depression. And grief is real. So there's that. What you described as the despair of there's nothing I can do so I'm going to let it go doesn't strike me as despair. That strikes me as serenity. And maybe a sense of wonder of like, I don't know. Let's see what happens next. The question that wrote a question that roast me I came in the middle of Kevin's wonderful rant there. The question that it raises for me is who is served by despair. And particularly who is served by the propagation of despair. You know, who benefits from despair being cultivated in us the kind of despair that leads to inaction, not to letting go of certain things. And, you know, as Kevin said, getting the fuck on with it. With other things. Greta's not living in despair. She's, you know, she's freaked out by the danger. But she's not surrendering to despair. I like that model. And Kevin, I'm going to quote you. Once again. About chemical, whatever you'd like. I think that the issue is how do you liberate radical imagination for coping with a crisis. And not facing the crisis in its full dimension is not helpful to getting the radical kind of imagination we need. I found that the painting that I described really liberated me because I took something that was deep, put it out. And then immediately I could start thinking about, okay, what do we do? And things have come from that. So anyway, that's my thought. Off for the day. I appreciate that. And I think that was a good tip upward. At the end of our conversation today. Thanks everybody. I appreciate your presence very much. And see you on the intertubes.