 This is the OGM weekly call on Thursday, August 24th, 2023. It is very nice to see you all. Today we have a mission, which I will explain in a moment when a few more people have shown up. But we've got Ken, we've got Kevin, we've got Klaus, we've got Pay, we've got Stacy, we are on a roll. And today we're going to be more purposeful than our often wandering into collapse and doom conversations. I, we put it upon ourselves two weeks ago to do some homework and look at the literature around both collapse and renewal revival revitalization. I think that the preponderance of work that we were pointing to is doom-ish, crisis-ish, and what causes civilizational collapse. But I'm eager to see where we go and very, very open to suggestions for how to frame the conversation where to go. And what we might do. I'm also really interested in having artifacts left and made available. I'm hearing some ambient noise from somebody's open mic. And I'm really eager to hear, Kevin, it might be noise near you, it might be Rosalie. Because your little rectangle just lit up for me, thank you. So the idea of where do we put our notes? How do we annotate? What do we do? Kevin on the list this morning said, hey, should we separate these books into categories and all that? We could tag them up. We could do a bunch of things. So Pete moved the documents out of the Google Doc. He sort of deprecated the Google Doc we started with and moved them into a web page, which is just a markdown file, but also a spreadsheet. Pete is not on the call yet. I'm thinking and hoping he will join us because he will be happy to see what's going on here. So let me pause for a second and see anybody's thoughts before we dive in and how you'd like to go about doing this. One question. I added a couple books on the spreadsheet and I'm wondering when they will be updated to the Google Doc list of books. It's a very good question that only one human being can answer. And he's not here. And he's not in the call right yet. So as soon as Pete shows up, we'll ask him. But thank you. Thanks for adding books. That's a great thing. Ken, go ahead. I'm just going to say if you want to add books, please go to the sheet, add them, and then Pete will go through and drop them into the matter most while. And we will put links to both of those in the chat here. I'm just sort of. And keep up with the format and please provide a link to the Goodread site so that people can see reviews of it. That would also be very helpful so Pete doesn't have to go out and do that. Cool. Any other thoughts, any other questions, any other ponderings before we have one. I've been working a lot with this idea of facticity, which is facticity is what we assess to be not open to change. And then we make these assessments on what's not open to change and that determines our mood of there's a possibility here or there's possibilities closed off. And when it comes to collapse on climate. Facticity is very, very hard to nail down because you can find all kinds of predictions that say, oh my God, it's terrible you can thank people saying, it's not a problem at all you can thank people saying it is a problem but it's not as bad as you think it is so it's really challenging to figure out, where do you land in terms of what you're going to consider to be valid so in my world look for what we call grounded assessment someone can back up with some data but we have to recognize that we're working with such complexity that no one knows. So it's really important as we look at things to recognize if I make an assessment that things are too far gone and there's no point. Then that's going to predisose me to certain moods of resentment and resignation and why should I bother versus somebody who looks at it and says oh my gosh it's really serious but there's things we can do. We're in the mood of wonder and ambition of what can we do, and that's going to affect the way they interact with the future and create the future with themselves so I just wanted to frame that as we really don't know but there is this thing about how we decide. It's really important and so maybe as you're looking through this list on this call. Can you consider what you're taking to be true as this is not open to change and what you're taking to be true of this is actually changeable and we can work with it. I'm Ken I think that's really important as we walk in here I'm mindful that I recently caught up a little bit with Esther Dyson which made me think about her dad Freeman Dyson, who is a known skeptic of the current approaches toward climate change debate and he's been pretty controversial if he was pretty pretty controversial about that. And partly he was saying we don't actually understand the mechanisms that are that are under foot here that we're busy talking about and making big decisions about. And I can't paraphrase really his his approaches and it would be interesting also as one of our things to sort of tackle and try to synthesize his approaches to to the question. As soon as we take something as non negotiable as soon as we've ground as soon as we lock something in place in our heads. As Ken said, it changes our approach to everything it also might make us much harder to negotiate with or argue with or whatever else. And some of those points are absolutely worth sticking on like should there be slavery. I'm pretty sure that shouldn't be up for the states. I don't think that there should be like 13 American states that have slavery and then the rest that don't because that should just be a states issue. That seems completely ridiculous to me. And, and I'm setting aside the question of wage slavery and people who can't get out from under the situations that they're in which seems sometimes very much like slavery. Kevin. I just want to note that there are three out of 12 people here who are female and that's a rarely high percentage and I want to acknowledge that and make sure that they are represented in voices when the the guys talk so much. Thank you for that Kevin I rule our imbalances and I'm grateful that we're a little bit tippy toward maybe rebalancing someday here. And I'm going to be looking for who would like to talk and so forth. Let's let's try to use the raised that Google sorry the zoom raised hand here for stepping into the conversation, which will make it easy for me that way I don't miss people. But let's go that way, Mike. Just real quickly. In regard to our gender imbalance I'm also working on the age imbalance and my daughter Lizzie who's 26 has promised to try to join she's very interested in today's topic because she's doing a master's in environment and health. She's tied up for at least the next half hour but she'll she might drop in unexpectedly, and make sure you ask her about this amazing German website with little videos that provide primers on everything from how the immune system works to what is ozone depletion to. These are exceptionally well produced for five minute videos and she she turned me up. Is this courts kazakh. It's courts because that it is so cool. And she will be not surprised to know that you already know all about it. So it goes, you know. It's lovely and I also love there's many I think I think resources around this would be really good to share around as well and we, we have, there are many people who are really good science explainers and other kinds of folks who are doing this work so the we're sort of it's interesting we're kind of defaulting toward books we have a collection of books because bookie books are what Western culture does to say this is what I mean and this is important, where these days. So much of our culture is moving in people who have good explainers and that turns out to be mostly I think explainer videos, whether on tiktok YouTube or insta reels or whatever, but, but, but the way opinions are being shaped is shifting tremendously and some, some online celebrities have larger followers ships than major news media have readers, or viewers, and then best selling authors have readers, which is really really interesting to me Stacy. And I just wanted to add to that one more point. This also turned me on to an incredible article on how the world is being run by grown up theater kids, which has reinforcing your point about how the way we present is really important. I'll put a link to the article. Thank you very much. Yeah, and I just wanted to connect what Mike was saying about primer videos to what you were saying, and also point out a slight difference between primer and explainer. Because I think to have the primer, and to encourage the open questioning of things, because when too much information is given, it stifles or directs the way the questions are asked. And so let me just briefly state, I can speak freely now, but I'm down visiting a friend of many years who lost her husband, who's a MAGA person. And I'm under added stress right now because she has a very, very MAGA religious friend staying with us. And with yesterday's events of Tucker on it's just been difficult, but I've been trying to have conversations without going into I don't want to derail the conversation. Let me just say that where I've been able to connect with her and her husband and have good conversations have been around food and pharmaceuticals, but part of what need needed to happen was really bringing things down to the very, very, very basic level. Even when she brought, so she was watching Tucker yesterday with her earbuds and my other friend said well what'd you learn. And she said, I didn't know we sold the Panama Canal for $1 and I noticed in myself. I just didn't even, I wasn't even able to take the time and think of the right way to redirect that conversation. I just was so triggered, didn't even know how you know an immediate. My point is, when you're watching a primer where you're not expected to really have any answers yet. And it's really encouraged that you ask the next basic question, just in opening up different possibilities new questions arise. And I think that's what's really, really important, there's not enough space between basic and expert. So that, yeah, that's my point. Thank you. Stacy, I think that's a really important point you're making and Wendy Elford who is doesn't come to the Thursday calls very much but she's on the Monday calls a lot and she's lovely uses a thing called clean language, which is a kind of, I'm going to paraphrase it sadly it's sort of an interviewing technique or a questioning technique that tries to not bias the questions by heading by heading in toward what the person you're asking about says it, but and she used it with me with an interview recently. And I felt it felt like a dog chasing its tail a little bit because it was very sort of, it also felt like using the Eliza program way back when it's like, oh okay so you're so your mom used to lock you in the closet how do you feel about your mom locking you in the closet was a little, a little bit about the cycle, but it was an interesting technique for doing what you're asking about Stacy which is trying not to inject the interviewers bias or blocks or whatever into the interview. So I appreciate that. Mr living. Thank you Mr mitchell ski brother living. And a brief anecdote, and it's, you know, books versus the way current information's coming out. So a classic example, I think would be the debate last night and the Indian candidate was kind of pontificating through most of his presentation. And that I remember writing my first book. And one day I got extremely excited, because in the process of writing with a really good editorial team behind me. I got extremely excited about how much I was learning, and I didn't really care I remember saying to myself, I don't care if this book ever gets published. I'm learning so much from this process of really digging in and having to clarify words and ground assessments and doing additional research. And that is one of the things that's missing in the universe that we are in today, because it's all moving so fast sometimes too fast. The missing piece around that is the dialogue, where we learn where we explore ideas where we connect with people who've got different viewpoints. My, my two cents I guess I'm, I'm thank you, thank you Judith and I guess I'm, I'm supporting Ken in terms of grounded assessments or, you know, which is a world that I know something about. In part also the, the world of evidence. Thanks to you're welcome. We've got Gill you made it into the room I'm pleased. And I've not seen Pete I pinged Pete elsewhere and don't know if he's going to make it to join us. We shall see. And it's maybe the moment to start in on the conversation. The way I was thinking of doing it was asking anyone to choose one of the works on the list and represented to us just brief us on it a little bit and say, Given this book. Here is a framing that might be useful and here's kind of how I responded to it or think about it or how it affected my thinking something of that order might work. So happy to start forever. Thank you. I, you know, I'll start with Meg Wheatley's latest book who we choose to be, which I was pleased to see on the list. Second edition is much richer and deeper than the first edition. And just by way of brief background I've known Meg for over 25 years we share a publisher. And in her background is both systems theory and organizational consulting. And those two things I think are important. The systems theory piece perhaps even more than the organizational consulting but they're there, they're handed glove. She traveled around the world for 35 years as a, as a, you know, person of the 60s, thinking that we can change this, we can fix this, we can create a world where liberal democracy flourishes where humanity human values are present. And after doing that for 35 or 40 years, working in government, working in for profit, working in nonprofit, working in spiritual communities. She just concluded that there are too many vectors pointing in the wrong direction, and that the system can't support itself. And, you know, grounded her assessments in what she saw in the world and in the previous writings about collapse, many of which are cited in the literature list that we looked at. And so, essentially, she has adopted the philosophy at a core level of Chogan Trumpka and Pema Chogan was her mentor for many years. And it's the notion of the spiritual warrior. And essentially what this book promotes is collapse will happen. Who do you choose to be the title of the book. What identity do you want to assume as we're moving towards collapse of some kind. We don't know what that looks like exactly. On occasion, Meg will turn into Nostradamus and make a prediction that she doesn't broadcast, but she'll make it to close folks. And so that's essentially what the book is about. And in my interpretation, it's kind of like, okay, you know, there are forms of collapse that are coming. I mean, an example it's interesting Jerry when you when you talked about the debate about climate change. And I think about, for example, the, you know, the US Congress, things are just so dysfunctional that there can't even be a real dialogue about it. And whatever any one side does the other side uses as a as a as a as a hammering block in terms of its, its own politics. But there's, there's no dialogue. It's funny. I was just thinking this morning about connecting with a friend of mine who's intimate a colleague intimately involved with with the Washington community, and saying, you know, Ira, is there any hope. I said to him so many times, you know, I'd love to engage. And he said, there's, there's, there's no hope. There's there's there's there's no hope at all. So, essentially, Meg's book is is about and and and it's, it's got a lot of detail it's got a lot of grounding about who do you choose to be going forward. Do you want to be someone who, if things collapse and get real bad, turn into the beast nature of human beings, or do you want to carry that human spirit and be a spiritual warrior. And essentially the message is that at times of crisis historically, the spiritual warriors arise. There is a Hebrew piece of mythology about a group called the Lamid Vovniks, the Lamid Vovniks. It was beautifully articulated in a book that was originally published in French, that there are 36 human beings which is a function of 18, which is a function of high which stands for living in the in Hebrew lexicon that hold up the world in terms of spiritual foundation. And if they collapse the world kind of falls apart so it's similar to that the spiritual warriors arise and carry carry humanity and the human dignity of being a human being forward. So, there will be something after collapse, whatever that might look like, what collapse will look like we don't know. But in the meantime, we continue to do our good work, whatever that happens to be. And this perspective certainly has sustained me over the last seven or eight years of working intimately with the warrior community. So that's what I have to say about that. Stuart, thank you. Two things. One, thank you for sharing at the end, how you have dealt with this I think us sharing our stories of how we cope and how we manage and how we frame our heads is really important. And second before turning to Kevin I'd like to know if anyone else wants to say things about that book who do you want to be so that we can stay on the book for just a moment longer and see what what we know about it collectively. Oh, yeah, one more one more thing Jerry. I actually just finished. I'm working on a project called the thoughtful citizen handbook, which is a global piece and Meg is contributing to that what's it take to be a thoughtful citizen going forward. And so she sent me, she sent me the her manuscript which was filled with art, and I just cut out all the art took the, the introduction, and the conclusion, and turned it into a piece that she's now going to edit down from 4000 words to 3000 words. So, yeah. Judy, over to you. I just wanted to add, and I haven't read the book, but something I've been doing for probably 30 years is kind of fundamentally asking myself, almost daily, who do I want to be what do I want to do, what's important to do. I wanted to get a really positive reflection in terms of centering for each day, and whatever it is that's surfacing in that temporal period, in terms of, you know, what can I influence how could I influence, how could I encourage discussion those kinds of things. Just wanted to share it as a practice. Thank you very much. Mr. Jones. A book that I posted there is how wealth rules the world and it's not your typical anti capitalist polemic. There are a lot of those. And by the community environmental legal defense by the guy that I've gotten to know named Ben price, and it's how corporate personhood arose, you know, through this Dylan rule that led a railroad override the ordinances in a municipality. It became a premise, and there's privilege property and personal property and wealth and corporations got to rule those things. But he's also deconstructing that in, you know, probably 60 or 70 cities and townships around the country, and they're asserting township rights to stop tracking or this to stop the transport of toxic waste. And sometimes they, it works that they get enough action around them and that something gets stopped and Ecuador, which is adopted this more holy, holy than any other country. They just stopped mining. Yesterday, I think it was, but it's, it's, we're looking to see if we can be a part of that in Western North Carolina around black mountain and our swanola river. But it's a really, it's a movement kind of book and and he sees his work in line with Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And you just get lots of small decisions that change the debate all over the place or what's her name that finally got marriage done. I actually have dinner with and you know, Ginsburg said, Rosie Wade was really a strategic mistake. He gave them something to aim at. She did things like made it legal for women to have checkbooks and made it legal for women to have a mortgage and to own title and lots of little things that nobody took aim at, and they're doing a lot of those kinds of things. Some of them are holding up and some of them, you know, in one of the most active places, it's, they've tried 10 times to get it past the states push them down and now the town has made it impossible for them to do a petition like that again. And I was talking to him about essentially towns have dependent status to states and you can't stop somebody doing something in your city or town that is legal in the state. And I was saying, this is a lot like the Marshall trilogy that led Native Americans to be dependent nation status and the way reservations and towns have the same legal status as in relation to corporation so I really, really recommended and he's doing webinars on each chapter of the book. The next one is in a couple weeks about cities and towns as colonies. It's pretty interesting, I think. Thanks Kevin I just looked it up the kid that Kindle version is on sale for $2 and 60 cents ish or something like that so I recommend recommend going there. I really appreciate it. Anyone else know of the book and want to comment on it. Gil, you have to find them unmute button first there you go on different technologies yeah what was Kevin what was the name of that book again. It's on the spreadsheet that is linked but it's how wealth rules the world by band. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I think the notion of lots of little things they can't take aim on is really fascinating and powerful and I say that as somebody who tends to be drawn to the big things. And part of the response that you know that Stewart and mega articulating is to kind of calm down. Slow down take a deep breath. Look at what's available here within my reach. What can I do that moves things I just want to I just want to say an endorsement of next book I'm in the middle of reading it now. I'm in the first edition so I don't know what the difference is with the second hour. But it's deep and wise. And and how to say this, you know this as I as I interpret the spiritual warrior discipline it's to it's to go into the heart of the battle. With that regard to whether it's a win or lose battle it's the thing to do now and it's I've been reading some of the ancient Greek tragedies and people are talking about about a tragic view of the world I mean I've, I'm 74 I came of age in the 50s and 60s and 70s on a trajectory of progressive progress and human history and I sort of lived in the story that that was the trajectory of the future. When in fact human history is a lot more ups and downs and bumps and gains and, you know, sort of struggling is not the right word I'm sort of I'm sort of dancing with the possibility of accepting that as a reality of the human experience that it rises and falls and we've had some fortunate times and there will be setbacks as we're seeing and there will be progress in the future. And, you know, kind of taking the long view. The catastrophes that we are facing are are are local in time. You know they're not geological in time. Life on the planet doesn't die from climate change. Human civilization shifts dramatically maybe. It's a little rambly, but the book is is deeply valuable encourage people to read it and I'm going to also post something. Not now I'm on phone and headed to a doctor's appointment. But a very interesting view of how we are captured both left and right how we are captured by our narratives and how and how that capture blinds us to looking with really discerning eye that what we're facing. So, thank you guys. I look forward to that post. I wanted to add. I wanted to add, I put regulatory capture in the chat which is just one of really many big issues we're popping open here because the book Kevin recommended a corporate personhood is one of the many different ways that capitalism has managed to rest sort of put society into a into a hammerlock and we it's a hammerlock that a lot of places can't get out of I remember when when the baby bells sort of when AT&T was broken up and split into the baby bells the hope was that that act would actually lead toward better competition in communications blah blah blah across the country what happened was the baby bells shrank back into one or two players. They got reconstituted as a duopoly and that's kind of the world that we're still living in. And they have a lot of lawyers and I thought that municipal broadband would be a simple easy cheap thing that every town and city in the country would go implement because maintaining just TCP IP connectivity over wireless ain't that hard or expensive. If you're if that's what you're trying to do not any other fancy business, and they managed to pass laws that made it almost impossible in many municipalities. They had a two year window to try to do mini broadband and if they failed then there was no recourse they gave up the right to do so forever. And then there was interference for those two years so that nothing happened, etc etc and a bunch of people like Sasha Meinrath and a few others basically tried to fight those battles. Fleshman I think and a couple of freshmen and a couple others went there as well. And we see this everywhere and we don't notice it or pay attention to it or seem to say that much about it and there's a lot of literature about it as well go ahead go. Yeah it turns out that capitalists don't believe in capitalism. Which is really strange. I mean capitalism when it works properly gives you monopoly rents which are the best kind of rents if you go read the read the old literature and economics. Like you want monopoly rents and to do that you have to do illegitimate things. And the way the capitalism works for a long time now is to privatize profits and socialize risks and skew the market. Just on the broadband thing John Farrell at Institute for Local Self-reliance has been fierce on this for decades ILSR.org has done a lot of pioneering work on local control. David Morris who was co-founder with me and Neil Selman back 100 years ago did a book on neighborhood power with Carl Hess. It was an interesting story in himself Carl was a conservative was Barry Goldwater speechwriter and fled from that world and became more of a libertarian socialist later in his life. The neighborhood power book is another one seminal about this kind of work that Kevin's talking about. If I can add one thing. I used to have the actually have the first web based legislative monitoring system which was in Mississippi because that was you. Yeah, yeah well it was because Mississippi was five years by an Arkansas technology adoption and I didn't buy the hundred thousand dollar deck alphas but I had a complete system. So I had regulatory appointments legislative monitoring court opinions and I talked to the lobbyist and it doesn't really matter we'll beat him in regulations. We send you know five MBAs with with sharp teeth into all the regulatory hearings that they can't go to and we continue to have this how can I keep up with regulations just there is no way they don't publish that calendar. And you can't make it that transparent. I can make court opinions transparent and make appointments transparent I can make legislation transparent, but regulations you had to go and look on the bulletin board and they kept it from being digitized. So they beat them at regulations. Also before going to Stuart and Mike I wanted to add in a link I put in the chat to thought in my brain about historic cycles. There are many, many, many different theories about cycles and types of cycles there also innovation cycles. A lot of Paris talks about technological surges in her book technological revolutions and financial capital. There are there's the fourth turning, which is the Strauss and how generational theory. Steve Bannon is a big fan of the fourth turning theory because he thinks that we're in a cycle now where if he can accelerate the destruction of most of the economies and political systems then he gets to design their successor states, which is what he would what I think his big project is a foot. So I think that some of these notions of historic cycles are really important in the conversation about change and how to cause or stop change. So I will go to Stuart and then Mike and since we're going really quickly, feel free to take your time stepping into the conversation. I will defer to Mike who needs to get out of here quickly. I had a real quick point to insert I'm going to be in a car and going to be hard to comment. I was interested that the book 1771 BC the year civilization collapsed was on the list. I have not read the book but I have watched about an hour of a YouTube lecture by the author. And it's absolutely fascinating and for me it answered a question, which is, how does climate change completely disrupt society. I mean, the usual model I think is, okay, people at the bottom and start starving. That leads to conflict within the society. But the story from 1771 BC 1177 Oh 1177 right I'm sorry. The way there was that it climate change triggered mass migration, and the literature in these different areas around the Mediterranean was full of these stories of the, the invaders the outsiders you know all these people showed up, who were from some other Mediterranean, nobody knew where they came from but they, they were in their civilization was in crisis they had no food. So they, and this just rippled, and it's a little bit of an exaggeration to say that civilization collapsed. But there was just mass disruption that that really set back progress for for not just decades but probably centuries. There were a lot of civilizations that had well established government structures and infrastructure and boom. So I don't know if I can recommend the book but an hour of the video would be well worth your time. Although the thing that comes back from watching that is things are damn, damn fragile. Back then, they didn't know how to fine tune everything right they didn't have MBAs who could trim to there was no fat. So they always had excess capacity. But even with the excess capacity when subject to climate crisis and mass migration of people with with weapons. It did not last. So anyway, thank you Stuart for letting me chime in I will try to join you from the car. And I hope we continue this discussion and I hope we continue collecting these books although every time I see these lists I start thinking I need to live forever, just to keep up immortality is a thing, or just not a real thing. I'll also see you, see you, see you on my phone. Thanks Mike. Has anyone else read the book 1177 BC or watch the video that would like to comment. Yeah, I read the book. I found it really interesting. I mean it's, there was many more matriarchies before these invaders came, and they just didn't know how to respond. They had not seen the kind of ruthlessness that these folks had and they were used to sort of a lot of incremental warfare that would move things a little bit and these were like, you know, shock is Zulu kinds of folks, you know, burn the village south of and take the moment and children and there's like, they never they just, they didn't know what to do. One of the big problems in history seems to be that pacifist groups don't survive assaults from violent groups and violent groups win and then destroy everything and it's very hard to, it's very hard to turn yourself into a puffer fish or a porcupine, or, or a poisonous toad or whatever so that, you know, when somebody tries to eat you they have to spit you out that we haven't figured out how to do that as civilizations. They were just used to that kind of warfare. Yep. On that note I put in the chat a book called the parable of the tribes by Andrew Schmuckler it's about 20 or 30 years old but it, but it goes into exactly that question of how, how do you prevent the most aggressive from dominating. And it's not, it's not an encouraging read. Thank you that didn't realize that was, I've got it in my brain but I didn't realize it was so on topic that way. Very much. Yeah. Anyone else want to talk about 1177 or just want to come into the little dialogue going on in negotiating theory. The mantra is, if you're, if you are a puffer fish, you know, negotiating with someone who's aggressive. You better figure that out quickly and change your tactic, because otherwise you'll get eaten alive. It just the way the way the world seems to be working. There are also like little critters that eat the stingers of larger critters and then become poisonous themselves. There's a whole bunch of interesting strategies in nature to be undesirable or scary or something there's, there's just sort of camouflage defense mechanisms like having a big eye what looks like a big eye on your fin, so that you look like a bigger face than you really are but but there are other other sort of ways that you become really undesirable and I just, I puzzled on that a little bit. The book walk away has an interesting thesis that hey when somebody nasty or the new shows up you just walk away and leave them your settlement which they will then destroy, but that sci fi future presupposes that you have 3D printing and the ability to extract water and energy from just about anywhere you go. So you can rebuild your village with an in fact it'll be better because you save the plans in the cloud, and you've been improving the plans as you thought about them and as you use the space, so you can go instantiate something even cooler. It's a nice thought but we don't have the technologies to support the actual activity of the rebuilds in that sense. Stuart did you want to add something else into the conversation or a different book. It's not it's not a different book I wanted to make a few comments. So, in terms of the book that Kevin was talking about about capitalism. I pondered a lot, you know, what what drives politics is economics, or does economics drive politics or does politics drive economics. And I think it's, it's that economics is driving politics. And that's the, that's that's the universe that we're in today. We're in great trouble. You can have all these wonderful theories, but the economics is what's behind it. At least that's my personal experience working in the legal system and getting disillusioned. I could tell many, many stories. Like, you know, Kevin told stories about the lack of access to the legislative process. I can talk about strange happenings down in the litigation process. I just wanted to throw that throw that in the tragedy of today's world, I think, in the negotiating realm. Because yes, everything is cyclical Jerry you should have the cycle of resolution to your to your brain we can do that kind of offline. I realized in the in the little microcosm of divorce mediation that I was working in, and taking that and interpolated that to the larger world. The fighting never really gets anything resolved, because it just perpetuates another battle, the next battle, because of the psychological and emotional aspects of quote getting even. When have you seen that cycle broken. Say in your divorce mediation work. Oh, when people come to resolution, when they actually get down into some heartfelt dialogue about, you know, what's going on and what has happened. The tragedy, I think, in the in the larger world and I'm looking at the US Congress is that people are not engaged in any kind of dialogue. There's nobody facilitating a much deeper and richer dialogue, because in the meantime, the interests, the real interests of people are not being addressed and taken care of, and we've devolved into tribal warfare. There, there, there it is, when I say either devolved, or we have not been able to get beyond tribal warfare into a different mindset the transformation of the of the human being and how they're able to act. I mean, and that's part of the, the philosophy that Meg Wheely is actually articulating, which I came to a long time ago. Brief comment. Brief comment. Jane's theory, I'm not sure her historical basis of this was that Gingrich in the 1990s, broke the social relationships between congressional families, changing the schedule, meeting schedule to house so that folks couldn't hang out with each other on weekends. And then the kids and their wives and actually have a social matrix within which to have a different kind of conversation and how intentional that was, I don't know, but that seems to be one of the pivot points in the in the collapse of dialogue in the US government. Yeah, and people people needed to go back to their districts and fundraise on weekends, and they left their families back and they're in their districts so. There's a little bit of evidence collected on this thesis of James. These are all articles that point to how Gingrich basically and then he came into office in 1994 speaker the house. That was the gingrich revolution which luckily did not last very long, but he changed everything. And he made it so that if you were seen talking to the enemy to Democrats, you would not get funding for your primary and being primaried is everybody's fear like politicians, Republican congressman don't Congress critters don't fear general elections they fear primaries. And they need lots of money for primaries because money is speech. Thank you citizens united. There's all these things that are sort of built up here. And Gingrich is echoing Kevin Jones here or vice versa because there's a bunch of very small moves below the radar can't see them can't fight them but cumulatively they produce an enormous shift in the culture. Congress. Yeah, my friend, I read chalice who I alluded to before is on the ground in DC for many, many years. And he just validated that from his experience and observation, that is exactly what what went on. I want to switch to Michael and ask you to step in whenever you'd like and then I'm going to point out that Kalia is very nicely putting positive things in the chat like hey we should use beavers as models for how to construct things. I want to draw you into the conversation Kalia, and also urge all of us to point to some of the, some of the books and media that are about restoration, revivification, revitalization, whatever all the positives are here. So first, Michael, then Stacy. Before I say what I was going to say, I want to appreciate that that Kalia is is like thinking very big, and, and I loved, though. I'm not sure that probably pushing people's buttons for like, you know, how can we re channel MBS is insatiable desire for world acceptance and money. I mean, his money, and this is, he doesn't have an insatiable desire for money because he's got plenty of money but yeah, what I was going to mention was actually something that resonated for me out of, I think, I think Jerry, you might have been talking about broadband, public broadband and and the, you know, what seems like it should have been the inevitable move to broadband as as a public and I'm really wondering, I've been wondering this for a while around just digital selfhood in general and the degree to which it's been appropriated muzzle suffocated in in various ways that you know people are not able to own their digital that to deny access to deny digital access to every citizen. At this point is 10 amount to denying them both the right to speech and the right to receive the speech of others, and that there seems like there's potentially a very originalist friendly partisan argument to that effect. And, you know, I don't know what lawyers who are interested in this kind of thing, we all know, but you know building that case seems like a crucial thing right now. It's, you know, it's funny that the radio spectrum, which is mentioned I think, which is much less important to this at this point is a publicly owned thing not that the government hasn't sold off, you know swaths of it. But the ability to digitally connect is is almost completely privatized. And that is just so crucial to all of us at this point. So yeah, anybody who's interested in pursuing that love to talk to. Thanks, Michael, love to hear other thoughts on that. Yeah, exactly. Anyone else on that on that thread. It'll circle back I'm sure. Stacy, please. I just really wanted to quickly confirm that you know I told you about the MAGA couple that I spent time with and I wanted to say that two nights earlier. We really had a good conversation and we actually agreed on many things. It took work on my part but it made a big difference and this morning she couldn't wait to have breakfast with me. So it does make a difference. I just wanted to say that. Thank you. And the conversations you're having like that are super super important. Yeah, but I don't want to do them anymore. Really, they're a little exhausting. I don't know what I'll tell you the want the I thought we were safe until I realized I thought I was talking to somebody who was like a MAGA who was now looking for a new candidate. So I said something and I think I had called a Donald grifter and her face changed and I said, are you being sarcastic and she goes, no, and when I found out that she really believes everything he said, then like I told my other friend that is the family. If I can't convince her that he's a liar. That's at the foundation of everything else because all the media is all polluted based on that there's nowhere to go. I can't. So it's too stressful. But that that setting in her head was created by humans influencing her in lots of interesting ways. It wasn't natural and if you scroll back some period of time she didn't have that in her head to what didn't have that belief. So it got put there or made there or created there. And I don't mean that she wasn't actively involved in the creation of it that it was an implant, but rather that there was this interesting mechanism whereby she now believes that thing. And I share your frustrations Daisy, but there's got to be some way of like popping the bubble releasing the dam, breaking the flood cracking that reality or that image. So for my friend, yes, because we've already got in there where she's actually very insightful she actually was honest enough to say. If I, if I change my thinking my whole worldview explodes and I'm not ready for that. And that was very insightful. And then we had some other very deep talks where she said, I do know you're right but she's tuned out like she keeps saying I'm not. I don't have opinions and I keep saying you do. But for this other woman. It's too big. It's like even when I said Google it. Oh no I don't Google anything. I was like well just Google to, you know, because I had said things she was like, I never heard any of those I said we'll look it up. Again, it was a nice conversation. It's too far gone. It's, it's just too much it's in, and she's also very Christian person so her information is, it's too big is the best I could say it's all deep state. Everything is deep state, there's no place to go. I'll just that one last thing here and then I'll see if Khalia would like to step in. Sorry about that. It's hard. I need a break. You're actually doing the work that is the reason we're holding this conversation. Right. So, so we're sitting here talking about books and issues but if nobody's willing to open a book or look at or listen to an issue then we ain't going to get any place anyway. And the thing I wanted to add to what you're saying is that it feels to me like so much of the battle right now is over identity. And I'm trying to puzzle through more what I mean by that and what what the implications are, but when somebody has to give up a belief system that is now integral to their identity, because all their friends believe it because they've stood on it for so long and made enemies along the way and lost. They've sacrificed a lot of things because of this belief system. And these are very difficult to change there once it once it's welded to who you think you are. That's really hard and you need some break with who you think you are to get there. And maybe it's still a cyber. I don't know. Can I have you slip some ketamine in her coffee and her morning coffee. I'm just saying, maybe that's not a good thing. Stuart quick thought. Yeah quick. Jerry I just want to validate what you said about this notion of identity in areas like this a friend of mine has written a most beautiful article about it Elizabeth Bader. And it's the, she calls it the IDR cycle. And it's how we get psychologically attached to that identity and giving up that identity is almost like a little bit of a death. That's what it that's what it feels like. The other thought I had Stacy as you were speaking, it takes infinite patients, infinite patients, and okay. Come at it with with a scintilla of adversarialness in your being as opposed to love, you're not going any place. That's got to be the overriding emotion. You can't say you're wrong. And the last thought is people latch on to an autograph like Trump or or others, when they're living in a place of resignation. And they just want to hang their hat on to something, as opposed to thinking through things themselves, and they swallow it whole hog that somebody's going to save them. I could just I want to add a point because I think this is important because even my one friend said about this other friend another group that I think is being left out. So this, again, this is acknowledged by my friend that this woman once Trump came into the picture is not really the brightest woman, but all of a sudden she feels very smart. She feels like she knows things that other people don't know. And that is making her feel very powerful. Now she believes she's doing God's work. So that also ties back into, you know, she feels like she's a spiritual warrior. So that there's a whole nother conversation to be had around that. Great conversation. Really important. Kalea you've been trying patiently to step into the conversation I think for a little bit. I would love to invite you in. I wasn't trying to say anything, but I've been chatting in the chat. Yes. I saw you I saw you unmute a couple times. I think, like, for me, I was, I was feeling very upset about the state of the world. And I went to a watershed restoration workshop in the Sierra foothills put on by my friends. And they were working. They spent 18 months on the land before they did anything really like living there. They had 80 acres and then they brought in bulldozers and sort of block because there was a stream stream running through it but it had sort of ended up with a really deep gully instead of the water spreading out so they like really thoughtfully addressed I'm sorry. Really thoughtfully like change the flow of that stream to have the water spread out more during when the water anyways apparently it's been a great success I haven't been back there since they did it but the other thing was really stewarding the forests. So, half of the challenge with wildfires in California is global warming, a significant portion is just our complete failure to steward the forests. And I really saw that they showed us like a part, you know, a set of, you know, I don't know how big like, you know, 50 meters by like 50 meters chunk that they'd really gone and like cut down all the pine trees, they'd mulch them and put them on to like they hadn't removed them completely they just were like, indigenous people didn't let pine trees grow they're like weeds of the forest they suck up a lot of water they're super flammable. They have really great ladders up to the canopy. And so, before we showed up 150 years ago. There was active land management for 10,000 years. And we've left the forest alone. And we're like, Oh my God they're burning up. And I actually think we could really address forest fires in California if we did some sort of like work, you know, WPA thing and got millions of children, you know, young people between the ages of 18 and 25 out into the forest and dealt with them properly. And then continued to do that with people living on the land, the fact that we've pushed, you know, people are in cities and we're not taking care of the land is a significant problem and I also think, this kind of, like, sort of belief that industrial civilization solutions to draw down are enough is ridiculous. We should also be thinking really big about grassland restoration and places of the world with abundant grasslands that have been deprecated. The last ice age was caused by grassland growth. Right, so I want to live on a planet that's cooler by the end of my lifetime, and the current dominant public narratives don't have a cooler planet for 250 years. And I just don't think it's good enough. So anyway, that's my, my two cents and I, I may have to go to talk to the person who just called me so. Kalia, thank you really very much. I want there's a bunch of literature about what you just said one of my favorite books is called the biggest estate on earth by Bill Gammage. And part of what he says is, hey, if he says aboriginal tribes which have been on the land in Australia possibly as long as 50,000 years, certainly 30,000 years managed the landscape. And they as they walked around they did stuff that made it easier to eat and live, even though we think of Australia as like maybe one of the least hospitable continents they actually made it really work. So the first week shows up and if you read the diaries of the first Europeans landing on the shores there, they write in their diaries gosh, you ride your horse through the woods and it's it's like a gentleman's garden in England, there's an apple up here there's a gourd down there, and they think this is a natural occurrence they think the locals are lazy, because when they see somebody fishing, what the what the person is doing is, they're putting a couple stones at the bottom of the weir, which is just a bunch of big stones that are trapped in the river. They block the bottom of and they leave, you leave the weir open all year long, you only block the bottom just when the fish are going to run, then you put stones in the bottom you wait for this weir to fill up with fish and then you get step in there, and you like reach the fish out to your buddy on the shore and then you smoke them salt them do whatever you're going to do and you have protein for a long time, etc etc. And they, they, they completely misunderstood what happened and then worse, they brought sheep, which are not native to Australia and they let sheep loose on the landscape and the she went the sheep went out and basically ate everything that the Aboriginal groups had planned and done. And I'm exaggerating, I think maybe only a little, but it's crazy how much we knew, and how much we've destroyed it so braiding sweetgrass is a bunch of other books Tyson your Gaporta sand talk are the ones we've been pointing to in these conversations. But these are what I find really interesting is that the this little collection of books that I'm talking about now are our stories of collapse and renewal baked into one, except backwards. Stories of how renewal worked and what we knew about how to renew ourselves, and then how we broke that and killed our, you know, practically killed ourselves, while civilizing the people in the landscape. And that's the story of human history, largely unfortunately. So, I'm interested in how we derive from all these things, positive stories and uplift and renewal and clearly I love your wish that in our lifetimes that these trends turned around. The momentum of something as big as a planet will carry us through current trends really pretty far is the unfortunate thing, but I don't know how unfortunate that needs to be. And there's a thought in my brain that this year is a particular that there's been a thought about climate change will bring extreme weather along along. And I thought this year that 2023 seems like an extreme extreme weather year. It's not quite named that. But the kinds of incidents we're seeing now and are likely to see more of might convince a few people might not. One of the good things about the weather events is that they seem to be equal opportunity assailers. You can't be rich enough to sort of escape, you know, the outcomes of your city being coated in smoke because Canada's been ablaze since early spring. Remarkably things like that. Sorry to go on and on here but I'm catching up on the chat a little bit Stuart added his cycle of resolution from I think you're one of the chapters of his book. And I think that's Stuart. And can you haven't jumped in and I know that you a lot you hold a lot of these books and a lot of these ideas in your, in your head and soul as well and I'm wondering if you'd like to step in. Well, there's so much to choose from. Thank you. You just said you need to go. Go ahead. There's so much to choose from I'm not quite sure where to start I guess. I read the wizard the wizard and the prophet a couple years ago. And that was a remarkable book I knew nothing of either the two scientists and our Norman Borlaug or vote for these votes first name William vote I think so. William vote yes. Yeah, the the the prophet was William vote was kind of the founder of the modern environmental movement. And he's like you know earth has a carrying capacity issue and we are headed for breaking that very quickly. And Borlaug won a Nobel Prize he's basically the guy behind the Green Revolution. There's the jury is still definitely out on whether the Green Revolution was a good thing or not because while it did allow us to feed millions of people and and therefore we had a huge population explosion. It came in an exorbitant exorbitant ecological cost. The prompted man to write this book was he had a daughter and he said you know by the time my daughter is an adult was going to be 10 billion people on the planet. How can we feed and support 10 billion people, and he did a really deep dive. And his book is, that's like 600 pages so there's all kinds of stuff in there, and he paints. He leaves it up to the reader to decide there's no you know this going to be this way or that way. He makes a really good case for collapse and he makes a really good case for how we might invent our way out of some things but probably it's going to be pretty good. And that's kind of where I come down to talk earlier about, you know, Stuart mentioned how he gets through it. I have days where I get really depressed you know this summer was very hard with all the fires and the heat and stuff and I was like, wow, we're just we're, we're, we're frying, and I don't know that we can turn the heat down. And then I have, I have, you know, come out of this like okay well doesn't matter whether we can or not I still am here I have to do whatever I can I get determined again to, you know, work with compassion and have a view of, no matter what, I'm going to do what I can. And it's, it's, it's a, it's a schizophrenic existence you know I really want to believe that we're going to be there we're going to get through the worst of it and avoid the we're going to get through avoid the worst of it. And I'm not convinced of that. So I have to balance in my head what I, what I take in and that's my read a lot of poetry. It's, it's a great antidote to all of the, the heavy stuff. So, there's a few other books in there I also read sound talk and breeding sweet grass. And on students recommendation I picked up restoring the kinship worldview although I haven't started that yet. I think coming out of my world ontological coaching we talk about, there's one planet and there are many, there's as many worlds as our people. So each have our own world and some of them are very small worlds and some of the very large, you know, the, the go to any country you're in a different world, people have a completely different world view. And it's worldviews that create worlds. And I think that we've, we humans, us humans, because I know Gil's going to say who's us who's we us humans, us modern humans as weird humans as global North humans. We have really gotten away from the recognition that we are of the earth we come out of the earth and we think we're above it and we think we're separate from it we think we can do whatever we want to it. And now we're learning very, very rapidly that that's having enormous consequences. And will it be enough to restore the kinship world will be enough to begin to act as if we are related to everything. I hope so, I don't know. How do you get 8 billion people to make this enormous shift. I think it's certainly possible, you know, the advertising industry, the PR industry have mastered, and we were just talking this earlier, how to make people believe things, especially people who are not curious people who will just accept stuff. So what if all that, instead of turning it towards political ones. If that was all turned towards. How can humans survive and flourish in the future, you know, we can certainly use all those those technologies of persuasion to shift people's behavior at scale. But what it's going to take to make that happen is a question I don't have the answer to. Thanks. Thank you. So I have a tiny thought or quibble with myself. It fascinates me how we have a book called the decline and fall of the Roman Empire by given. That's an extraordinary history of the complexities, especially the interpersonal complexities of what a collapse looks like. And I know almost nobody who's read it, and I can't figure out why. And the thought. Thanks to Judy you're muted. I shouldn't just interject but it to most people it probably sounds like ancient history, and they're not into ancient history. They don't realize it's deeper than that. Doug, I'm wondering what your pantheon of books on these topics is if you had to name a half dozen things to go look at around this separate from garden world politics. What would those be. I think what's fundamental is Joseph Tainter is the collapse of complex societies, because he lays out the mechanisms of how collapse happens. Basically, as societies get more complex, the maintenance costs go up more rapidly than the productivity of the society. And that continues until the complexity is beyond repair. He also adds in that the problem is that the elites in a society on the infrastructure that's why they are the elites. And when the infrastructure gets in trouble, instead of trying to repair it. They work it to pull wealth, wealth out. Hastening the collapse of the society. I think we can see those things going on now. I think the fall of the Roman Empire is just an amazing story. I'm reading it in parallel to Toinby's study of history, which is a study of the fates of the 23 known societies that he can identify. What Toinby gets is the dynamics of large populations interacting with each other. The decline and what Gibbons Decline and Fall does is talk about the interpersonal relations among leadership across generations. And the three together make an incredible read. I would hardly mean that part of the problem is that we're getting such an outflow tsunami of writing that it's hard to know what to focus on we're all reading different things and not talking with each other about what we're reading. Hence this call, by the by, and it's not just books and reading, it's all this other media that has larger reach than the books ever got. Yeah, I don't know how well we're doing with this call. I have my questions about it. How might we improve it. There's a narrow order focus on collapse in its literature. So many comments are strained for a full field. Well, we that's essential. This could also be call number one in a short series where we do that where you'd like to slow things down and go a little deeper. Some of these things like the books you just described kind of beg for systems modeling and things like that and I'm relatively sure that somebody out there who understands systems modeling has tried to do the modeling of the collapse of civilizations in different ways. That would be interesting to see. There's there's you know, this is an endless books are by themselves modeling very serious modeling efforts. Exactly, except they're, they're pros on on pages on dead trees. I'm really interested in looking at the models because some of the, some of the people who've done really brilliant models were wrong about some of the logics, or some of their assumptions were proven wrong later by whatever I mean a techno utopians would say yeah yeah yeah those assumptions are all wrong because we can we can fix this with science, which I'm very skeptical of. But, but they're these things are not poured in concrete, at least not in my head. Stuart. Yeah, one of the things that Meg does in her book, because she's a systems theorist is she takes tater's observations about collapse of systems and literally, little bit looks at the US and the world, and talks about how we are just. We're just there in every single point that he articulates and to you can that would be the grounding or evidence in some ways of her current thesis. Is anyone else having trouble with their chat when anybody screen shares in particular me as Michael is talking about in the chat. Because that's a new one to me I've never had that problem. It goes full screen instantly takes over everything and then all I do is hit escape, and it puts it right back down to a little window. I've been doing that for years. And you are using zoom in full screen is that correct. I am using zoom in in a small window on a Macintosh. That's right. And what happens is as soon as someone screen shares and it doesn't matter if it's on this call or another call, it instantly goes full window, and I just reflexively hit escape after doing this for about three years. Anybody please take over the screen and screen share because I'm quite sure that my, my screen will only the screen share will only happen inside of the limited window, where I'm watching all of you right now in gallery view. Yeah, so can just shared screen I see the your thumbnails on the right my chat is intact on the right. The screen share is on the left. For me it did not change the window. So what what I usually have to do now is get rid of the chat so that I can get larger, whatever somebody is screen sharing so I can read text, but it's my choice to turn the chat on and off. And I don't know. I mean, what what Scott was saying happened for me, just now, where the, when the screen share happened was it was a Ken who was sharing. The screen share happened. Initially, I saw the larger screen share with still thumbnails of everybody next to it, but without me touching my screen or mouse or anything, it then went to full screen, squeezing the chat off, but now that I know the escape trick. I know how to get out of it. But I have a feeling it's a setting on your system or on your zoom that's that's happening because my never goes full screen and then comes back. Are you on a Mac or PC or a I, Jerry, I, I think it may be that it's usually you that are sharing certainly in these calls. So it doesn't happen for you. But it would happen for others that it happens to but all the now that I have the escape key. I'll, I'll know to do that. Yeah, but this is why I'm asking everybody if this is a common problem because I've never had that happen. I've been getting it just the last week or so it's when people stop sharing zoom goes to one third, it goes to like the middle third of the screen and stuff, or it's weird. But I will be my past week or so so it must have been like something with their last up their last upgrade. Yeah, well that's a mystery it's a mystery wrapped in an enigma. And we will keep an eye on it and I will send a I will raise a red flag when I'm about to do a screen share so that you can mind your chat I don't want to blow away stuff you're trying to notate that's for sure. I do not lose anything in the chat I've been in the middle of typing you've screen shared, it pops up. When it goes back, whatever I was typing is still there I don't lose it so it, you know, it does come back for me. But the screen share does go full screen for you can it does, even if I'm in a different application, it interrupts just pops over and so suddenly it's there. So, mine doesn't do that. Why is that. My screen share is only within the constrained window, and I have, I have zoom, not full screen because that's why I asked if if you guys are full screening zoom, because if you have zoom set to full screen then whenever somebody screen shares it probably will pop to full screen. If you make zoom a window slightly smaller than your full screen which is what I do. That might change it I don't know. If you're in full screen if you've got the little green button clicked and you've gone full screen and zoom, that might be a piece of it. I'm not in full screen. Just to clarify Jerry also this is not the only call that that happens on. Yeah, and it's so I. And it happened it happened when can just screen shared. No, which, which was interesting. That was fine. So. Okay, so I'm going to let me screen share for a second and see if it destroys everybody screens. How's that. Chad is gone. Chad's gone. Damn. Okay, I'm going to see if zoom has any trouble, any, any fixes for this. That's only when the person leading the call does it to take attention away from people writing in the chat so that the leader has the attention. It happens on other calls only when that would be terrible user interface design I would like I would I would definitely not. It doesn't mean it's not the case. That's that's true. That's true. Anyway, if anybody finds any hints on that let us know next week. Ken is this. Judy you want to talk but you're also having breakfast or lunch, go ahead you're muted. Just like when I'm watching on a tablet. If you, if I were, if you were only getting a partial of the screen share I wouldn't be able to read it. So it may be something to consider in terms of the size of the screen you're using. Thank you. And Ken has a poem and has asked me to screen share something. While he reads the phone. Immediately after this conversation about how my screen sharing is annoying. But hey, I'm nothing if not amenable to going along with that. So why don't I do the screen share and the fact that we can't chat will be a plus now because we have to be mindful and pay attention to the poem. All right, I am returning once again to one of my favorite poets Vistava Zimborska. This is called Google's two monkeys which is the painting you see on the screen before you. This is what I see in my dreams about final exams. Two monkeys chain to the floor. Sit on the windowsill. The sky behind them flutters. The sea is taking its bath. The exam is history of mankind. I stammer and hedge. One monkey stares and listens with mocking to stain. The other seems to be dreaming away. But when it's clear, I don't know what to say. He prompts me the gentle clinking of his chain. Thank you so much. Thank you. And Stuart has a poem as well, which is relevant to the conversation. We would love to hear it. You're muted though. Thank you. Excited to read the poem. It's called mission. All right. And I think it addresses some of the underlying choices about what it is that we're doing each one of us individually on the planet. Mission, your purpose, vision, mission, there yet or in decision. A plan, a time of birth for your life on earth. Each has noble work from that discover worth engage with clear intention, life and another dimension. Discover what's inside flight plan waiting to guide sits dormant till awake when engaged fills your plate. Time digs at your core, find what you're here for more clarity with each decision, trust answers and revision distractions of many forms. Look inside for your norm. Keep peeling, pairing detail, ears open, read the email. When keys arrive for bliss, unlock with a kiss, live with purpose and a vision, honor dreamscape of your mission. Thank you. If anybody would like to put a ribbon on the call after those two poems please do if not maybe we wrap this call and I would ask that we consider how to improve this conversation. I think we should come back to this conversation. This is a lovely topic we've opened. Let's see how we can improve the online resources. We can talk through this so that we sink deeper into a particular piece of it. Doug if you want to help us frame like that like a conversation around civilizational collapse and how it happens. Maybe a comparison of a couple models from from different, you know, different people's perspectives. Jared Diamond wrote a book titled collapse is a couple collapse is unfortunately a good genre of literature. Maybe something like that, but let's talk on the matter most around the on the ogm list. Anybody with anything else any other thoughts. Yeah, that's true. Now I was just going to, I was just going to punctuate when you said Jerry about, you know, with all of the tilting and windmills and machinations and many conversations over the years. I think this, this conversations is the essence of where we, we seem to be right now. It's a critical conversation. And if you're in some ways it's going to sound a little arrogant maybe but if you're not in this conversation get your head out of your butt. It's where it's where we are. I think what Stacy was reporting to us is that it's hard even to get to this conversation. It's just hard to open the topic hard to get to a place where you can have, have these things go by. I took my coaching course they assigned me a media fast, which was really unfair because they gave me 10 books and said you can't read them. But when I fast, yeah, I know it's terrible. I broke my fast after six months the first book I'd read was Irving Elome's existential psychotherapy. And I've seen remember talking about this recently I don't know if it was on this call or not but basically says you know there are times in people's lives usually when that someone near to them dies. And then existential door opens and all of a sudden it's like oh my God we got to face this, but very few people can dwell in that space for very long. It's just too much. And now we are all facing this huge existential crisis and I think that's, I don't blame people for denial I don't blame people for running away it's really, really tough. And Micah's newsletter yesterday talking about Andrew Boyd's book, you know, interviewed Joanna Masian said, people don't want facts they want hope they will get there we're emotionally driven creatures. And when you said Jared diamonds book on collapse I tried to read that and I got so depressed, I was like, I need some freaking cyanide here you know take me out of this I can't take it and the same thing with endgame. He's out here and there's some books out there about collapse that are just, there's such downers. And I'm not saying that it's there aren't things to be very upset about and concerned about and there are real existential things here but personally, I can't read people who's, who's premise is that we're all doomed and all you can do is you know hope for for crying on to some level of survival I need a little bit more. Hey, you know we may be we may be going down on the Titanic, but at least we're listening to good music and drink a good wine or something you know there's not to be some kind of, even though it's terrible, you can still enjoy every moment you can still find things to smile about you can still, you know, live a very full life and do your best and know that it won't be enough. But as a Torah says you're not expected to complete the work but you're not allowed to shirk it either. Derek Jensen. Yes, that's the man he's just. God, if you want to kill yourself, but you don't have the courage start to read that book you'll find the courage. Damn. Okay, okay, somebody needs to say something on a slightly funny note or talk about puppies and kittens just for a moment because I can't end on Derek Jensen as a cue to suicide. Mr. Moran, please. So, I wrote it in the chat. I'm going to say, I think it was Kevin was talking about some story about trying to get announcements through the government to the people who need them and that sort of thing and it just reminded me of the first guide to the galaxy where earth is destroyed to make way for a new hyperspace bypass and everyone on earth here's the announcement 10 minutes before it happens. And they said, look, we followed all the procedures we posted it on the bullets and board several light years away. You guys have to take an interest in your. So, that always made me chuckle, but I love that. Yeah, the answers are in science fiction. Adams's advice to writers later was never, never destroy the earth in the first page of your novel. If you visit a link somebody actually tested Stephen Wright's thing about putting a humidifier dehumidifier in the same room. That's good. Thank you. Okay, I think I think that was the perfect note to wrap our call. Thank you very much for your patience and contributions. See you on the inner tubes. Thank you.