 Oh, wow, they got they got this this morning, you know, this is like really good lettuce, really good avocado really good bread and so it's taken off. The avocado spectrum right in the spectrum. Yes, they have they have. And like all the places around here, you know, the two guys doing the sandwiches are Hispanic. You know, the crew of six and a very, very small shop. And it's just come in get your thing go outside and then of course they're, they wouldn't it wouldn't work without the parklet. They've got this huge overflow space. It's still here from the pandemic. And I guess the city is saying, Okay, you're going to have to pay for those or take them down and, you know, they could easily pay for their parking. They're making a fortune. Love that. Thank you. That was a very nice start to a call that might be about worry. Yeah, I was this is a, you know, bad joke. I was not worried about the topic this morning. Oh, worry that's too bad we don't have the bandwidth to deliver the coffee. Right. That would be great. That could be a new zoom feature. Well, we have to go through the whole hologramic stage. I'm worried that an avocado sandwich costs $13. Oh, that's Saturday on Chestnut on Chestnut Street in San Francisco. That is, you can easily pay more and get less. That must be very good bread and olive oil and whatever. Yeah, they just, they engineered it. It's a very limited menu, but you know, it's just going to be better. And so of course they're mobbed. Thanks, John. This is the open global mind call for Thursday, March 28, 2024. We alternate between check-in and topic calls last week was check-in, so this week is topic. I propose the topic of worry and trying to give lots of different kinds of spin to worry because worry isn't just one thing. I don't think worry is potentially all consuming phenomenon, but also worry can be energizing. It can motivate people. If you're not worried enough, you may not get up and go do something. Although worry may be the wrong word. Is it concern? Is it panic? The boundaries between those things I think are difficult and clumsy. John, go ahead. Okay, so yeah, I thought about this for 10 minutes. That's about enough. So there's the rational version, which we might call an index of concern. Where is something on your index of concern? And if you're thinking slowly and carefully enough to recognize that you have an index of concern, okay, then you're not worried. As in you're not anxious. You're not in a dysfunctional, you don't have dysfunctional concern. But if you're able to rank them like that, that's informative. That's kind of like, so what are you most quote-unquote worried about? What are you most concerned about? That was one of my dad's favorite questions at dinner. What is your prime concern? And then there's this thing of, I noticed as soon as I did my index of concern, I was very highly dependent on sort of my sense of my own competence and my sense of possible contribution and also my sense of incompetence and inability to contribute. So in other words, I might be concerned about the Brazilian jungle. I'm concerned about the ocean. I'm concerned about coal. I'm concerned about methane. But as you move across these different areas, I recognize right away that, you know, there are other people who know a lot more about these things than I do and also are closer to them. So it's kind of like, where is it on my index of concern? And how do I feel about the gracefulness or effectiveness with which I've delegated or outsourced that concern to people I trust and count on? Just some initial observations. Okay. Thanks, John. I like especially that last thing you said about delegating your concern to people you trust is lovely. And I think is a piece of what I think the future of democracy might look like. So thanks for that. Thanks for that opening salvo. Stuart Gill, Mike. I can't remember the title of the book or the name of the guy who wrote it, but one of the things that informs me on this topic was the notion of the difference between tension and stress. And tension is something that pulls you forward, tension, torsion, something that pulls you forward, which is a good thing. It's a good energy. And then at some point in the continuum, it flips over into stress, which makes us not as resourceful as functional as we might like to be. So I've always held that and like that configuration. Yeah, Kevin wrote in a message that, you know, and I just looked at the beginning, you know, worry is a great waste of time that it really is, because, you know, it's the amazing phenomenon of the craziness that we human beings have the capacity to create in our own minds and pure speculation. I used to have an ongoing tension between my late wife and myself. I had a pretty optimistic view of things always working out. And maybe he's a function of my own upbringing and the context that I that I that I lived my early years. And she had the opposite view because of the context in which she came up. So just a few other thoughts in my mind about, you know, what I worry about. And I have to say, I'm coming off two experiences one reading the parable of the sewer, which I highly recommend to everybody. And the follow up which I haven't read yet. But just there was the most amazing graphic depiction of where we might head as a as a country slash as a species in it in a dystopian universe. And yeah, I have a little bit of worry about that. But not anything that that groups me and keeps me from, you know, doing my best to live the best life but it's an amazing to me, graphic depiction of where we could end up on in a dystopian landscape. I worry a little bit about whether or not I'm going to be alive when climate catastrophe really hits. And I think that's about all I kind of worry about but I don't I don't dwell on it. Somehow I have moved my own thinking and consciousness and way in the world of keeping myself occupied with, you know, what I can do by way of contribution right now so I don't, I don't worry too much. I, the only thing I think about, and that's a that's a really good as I articulate this worry is something that I think is a negative phenomenon, but thinking about what you might do. I think is a much more useful term. I've spoken. You have spoken, and it is registered. Yeah, I'm, I'm worried about this conversation. Excellent. It's worry all the way down. No, it's, it's, it's actually not I'm curious before I say I have to say I'm curious what how did this come to be the topic. To be frank, it was Doug see always coming in and saying we're not worried enough about climate change and focused enough on the topic and I thought, in other ways and other conversations worry has been coming up for me. And I thought why don't we just focus on that for a second and see what we can do with it productively. Okay. Okay. All right, let me go. Okay, so. Like I said, I was I was worried as soon as I heard the topic I got less worried when John said index of concern because I think that gets closer to the matter. And we use a lot of words in this. We use a lot of words in this realm and have many different meanings, officially and many different meanings subjectively to each of us. And so that's why it's just a really messy kind of conversation to have. And so when I think about worry, I think it's not, you know, it's, it's not the same as concern. But it's related. It's not the same as care, which is related. It's not the same as pay attention to think about matters to me and so forth. So I think, you know, worry is much more of an epiphenomenon and at the core of it, I think is cares like what do I care about what matters to me. What do I pay attention to and then with that I can think I can worry. I can be in action. I can be strategic. I can ignore. There's lots of things I can do with it, but worry seems at the periphery at the core is what do we care about what we pay attention to and then with that attention. I have an I have an assessment like things are not going the way that I want them to be. And then maybe I worry, or maybe I talk with people or maybe I set a plan in motion or maybe I take action or maybe I reassess my assessment. So, you know, go and edit as worry feels really not powerful to me. And speaking of stress, stress ain't bad either. Stress is how systems grow, you know, if I'm if I'm working out in the gym, I'm actually tearing muscles. Right. As part of the process of growing new muscle. So, enormous amount of subjectivity in this conversation. I'm not sure how we move through that, but that's where I am to the moment. Who's next. Thanks, Gil. So, are you am I inferring correctly that you might be saying that when we detect that we are worried we should just reframe it into one of the more positive things you're talking about. No, I'm saying we should examine it. Okay. And, you know, I'm not positive negative is the right way to look at it either. But we're worried is a funny thing. People get trapped in worry. It's a there's a there's a loop that happens. I've observed I'm you can tell I'm paying attention a lot towards these days and including my own internal conversation and one of the things that I've shifted over the last few years is dropping the notion of ruminating about something. Because, you know, what's a ruminant ruminant just an animal keeps bringing stuff up out of one of its stomachs into another. It's like cycling this biological process over and over again. I find reflecting to be much more alive for me than ruminating feels less trapped feels less like has more openness and more possibility. So I'm thinking a lot about about words that that sort of close opportunity and words that open opportunity. That's one of the metrics that I'm using. Thank you. Yeah. I'm bugsy. Please. So, word worry to me carries a sort of anticipation of maybe something bad is going to happen. Maybe not. So there's a probability that goes along with the word. I looked it up and etymology online. And what's interesting is the word worry comes from the old German barred, which is to strangle. There is a deeper meaning in worry. And I think when we use the word worry, we feel that deeper possibility. And the thought can put in the chat. A piece of definition etymology also from very and which goes back to the very good to strangle or old Norse Virgil rope. Very interesting. I didn't know it. It had a connection back to strangling. So that's interesting and worrisome. Wait, that was recursive class, please. Yeah, very to me doesn't add up with climate change and the issues we are facing. I would say that falls into the area of fear. Do you have to distinguish between am I worried or am I or do I fear about this happening? And I just recall that I'm watching the three body problem. Probably everybody is on this and the aliens have come to the conclusion that you cannot partner with humanity because humanity you can't trust. Right, so we fear people we can't trust because that behavior is unpredictable. Right, so to me fear is a better way to look at it where you can vary all day long about all kinds of things. It's just a meaningless in the context of the importance of what we are facing here to me very is almost a paralyzing right I mean you worry and but how does this lead to action how does this how does this drive motivate you to to actually act. And so I come at this sort of elementally and sort of pick up exactly where class which is worry sort of maps to and speaks to safety. And and that's that's elementally that's earth. So, in the face of a lack of earth, in the face of a lack of something, providing a sense of safety a sense of holding a sense of predictability reliability. So, in the face of instability, worry is alive as an energetic expression of fear. Worry is sort of fear light. And, and gill your in your share. My sense was you were sort of putting in a in the category of a flavor of activity or engagement. And I think I distinguish it that things that are emotionally trigger triggered or triggering on a different level. And the parsing and distinguishing of flavors of things nouns, which is all about air it's about thinking it's about intellectual orientation and relationship is different than when somebody's triggered when somebody's in feeling. So that's my, my two cents. Mike, could I jump ahead of you for a moment to respond to that. Yeah, I appreciate that Doug and but I guess I'm not inclined to distinguish between the thinking and the feeling because it's both happening in the body. And I'm listening to this through the framework of mood. Which Flores and the gang would describe and can help me out here from drift if I'm going off target would describe as sort of a pervasive orientation to the future. You know, interpretation that you're already living in before you even have your thoughts or feelings about something. And, you know, so. We're calling worry, which we might call anxiety is a kind of is a kind of, you know. There are people who are worried before their feet even hit the floor when they wake up and sort of the state that they're living in that's a feeling say it's physiological state it's thought state it's all those things and the moods are always tangled with with interpretations of what's going on. What's happening what something means what I care about and so forth so examining that tangle. I'm finding is enormously productive. And it's physical physiological emotional intellectual experiential, you know, historical. Am I worried because of what I'm facing today or am I worried because I've been worried for, you know, for decades in my life because of what happened to me when I was a kid or whatever. Examining that and untangling tangle to me seems to afford some opportunities for action and movement and shift. So, I am with that skill. Mike, only, only half jokingly reminded me of an old joke, which is, you know, about the Jewish Catholic High School. It's our lady of perpetual guilt. Mike, I'm not sure how I said, but you'll tell me later maybe. That's why I'm an Episcopalian. We took all the Catholic ritual and left them with all the guilt. I love the Breitbart hierarchy of fear. And I love this topic because I do think worry and and fear drive so much of the politics here in Washington. I initially thought, okay, I like that. I like that hierarchy, you know, concern, care, worry, fear. You might add panic, even there, but a one dimensional plot doesn't do it. I learned when I was a consultant that you have to explain everything in a two by two matrix. So maybe we need the level of emotional impact going that way. And then we need proportionality. You know, I would agree that we should be pretty emotional about the loss of our, our planet. I put nuclear war up there too. You know, we should not just be concerned. We should probably be fearful. But when I hear the word worry though, I think of those things that are, you know, we're, we're pretty concerned. We're up there on the emotion, but we're often this is the disproportionate axis where we're often out here worrying about something that isn't all that serious. So the plastic in the ocean might be one of those at least from what we know now, having a continent size chunk of trash floating in the middle of the Pacific is a bad thing but it ain't nuclear war. So I do think we need to always ask, you know, what, what are the odds. Another good example that people go to the beach and they ruin their vacation because they are so worried that there might be a shark out there. Much more likely to die of mosquito bites in the world right there's a lot of snake bites. Jellyfish. What's that jellyfish. Yeah, well they don't die from jellyfish usually but it is it is just because it's so emotional. In Washington, it is sad that so often it is the fear and the worry that drives politics. I'm just the opposite my my worry is always, you know, what's going to happen if we don't do something. My fear is that if we don't deploy artificial intelligence. Hundreds of thousands or millions of people will die because we don't have better medicine or better ways to manage our government programs. But the fear is always that that nightmare that really bad thing that could happen. And I pray and hope that someday we'll be able to flip, flip this and I don't know, don't know what we could do to do it, but maybe we start by just saying, let's talk about worrying about inaction. Let's talk about the fear of not accomplishing something. Again, particularly here in Washington. Everything is biased towards status quo log jam. The house right now, right. If the House of Representatives continues on its current track. It's going to pass about 20% as many bills as normal. It's kind of important like saving Ukraine, NATO and the free world. I mean, let's let's get. So the first first episode in seven different episodes that I could probably interject in this topic. Thank you very much and and thank you, Doug Breitbart for inspiring a two by two matrix that explains everything. And I will say that I'm realizing more and more in this conversation that the worry and fear being used in political sphere as a big motivator for this conversation as well. And that when we can keep people fearful, they are more easily manipulated. They have fewer mental options. They have less short term memory. A whole bunch of our system shut down when we're in fear and worry is kind of a low grade cycle and open loop of fear that's running in the background all the time. So if I can keep you worried about something I can keep you from thinking productively about other things. So I think there's a piece of the dynamic that I find interestingly dangerous there. Well, thanks everyone. I think this is a very useful conversation for me. When I first read Jerry's email. I again started to worry and I'm happy that early on in this call. We try to define worry as a label or a flag to call our attention to something or something we want to be more concerned about than perhaps we are. So I'm also with you when you say it's more relevant to use something I'm concerned about or something I'm attentive to, and something I'm worried about. Yet, of course, well, might you just brought up a number of mega things which we could be worried about. But I want to ramble on a bit about something more personal. Triggered as I said by, by your choice of topic Jerry because there are lots of things I'm attentive to, and they're both within my sphere of influence and outside my sphere of influence. And usually I try to focus on the former and maybe stretch it if I can the things that I may be able to influence. Even combine things that are within or outside my sphere of influence to try to experiment with the world and things I can say or do, which might help other people pay attention or pay more attention to something. But my basic question is, am I not concerned enough? Am I not worried enough to really try to do something that matters? How can I know that? And I, well, I leave that as an open question and maybe others can talk about how can you know if you are worried enough or concerned enough or attentive enough to. I want to comment on Mike and redefining worry as worry about inaction I do like that very much. So the question perhaps morphs for me is to am I doing something that is what I'm doing enough. And I think that's a more constructive question at least for me personally. The last thought that came into my mind about worrying or worrying enough or doing things enough was the immediate image of the picture of Dorian Gray, which probably you all know and Dorian Gray goes and lives his own libertine existence. And it doesn't show on his portrait and it doesn't show on him, but then at one time he's down at the crossroads, and it does. So I'm wondering, can we see in our own face reflected in the mirror reflected in the eyes of others. We're doing something and if we're doing enough. End of Rambo. Thanks Hank. I'm Carl over to you and let's take our time stepping into the conversation so we have a little more time to process so feel free to pause before. Thanks. I guess as far as like nuances of worry and things I've always kind of thought a very individual a lot is just intuition. I guess it could be or it could be based on past fears but then a lot of times it's like unfounded you weren't. Things didn't turn out as bad as you were. You thought they'd be so that's one of the distinctions I make there. Then, yeah, that will mean that we are doing something like the last couple of comments about like what's in your sphere of influence and and about action like there's a kind of a systems intelligence and stuff and we we also have the single cause single effect kind of thing that one of the things I've been working on is with a systems intelligence it's recognizing trying to recognize some of the unintended consequences as they start happening and realizing you need to be taking corrective actions to because it's like oh I've got the solution and then it's like people flash onto that and shift and then last thing like whenever I want to hear worry. 60 minutes did a story. The initial thing was about the sea gypsies but then they did a follow up and they refer to them then it's the Moken people but they got notoriety because that nobody. They didn't lose anybody in the tsunami and they all have they had the oral tradition if the C refit receives rapidly get the high ground and then there were other things with they were out on the water to move as far away from land as you can get. Kind of thing but this French anthropologist who had been living with them for years he's like they have no word. They have no words in their language for when or want or worry. And I looked at my dad and I was like if you don't have a word for when and what you don't need a word for word. That's cool. Thanks Carl. So one of the things I've learned in 20 years of Qigong practice with my teacher is that the number eight figures very prominently in Chinese philosophy. Because it's four pairs of two, which is much better than a two by two matrix. It's top and bottom left and right front and back inside now. So when you have a have a those four pairs you can say, what is this standing on what is what's supporting it. What's underneath it. What's its aspiration where's it going what's it what's it leading towards it go going high. What's behind it what's its history. What's in front of what's its future. What's inside of it what's it trying to bring out of the world what's outside of what's what's actually manifesting the world. What's on the left and right which are getting and yang what's the feminine aspect feminine and mask on aspects. I don't mean to argue with it, Mike, I do understand as consultant and I've seen so many two by two matrices and I know that they're very effective in business but business has destroyed the world. The way we're doing business is destroying the planet so to me that's not very effective they work for that that thing and in the words of Wendell Berry it's solving for one thing where you drain the entire system to raise one value up really high and you produce amounts of things like the green revolution, but at the cost of the entire system. So I think I would personally like to see two by two matrices thrown out and I'd like to see people start working with wars for a pair of twos, but I just laid out there because I think it's a far more effective. It's way more complex. It requires a lot more time. Much deeper understanding, but I think it might lead us into a different place from what you might find ourselves. Us us being we being humans who are attempting to solve the mega masses and the, the meta masses that were involved in. It might provide us a lot more agency and a lot more effectiveness than two by two matrices, which I think we're mostly over simplified things. But it's not something I worry about. With regard to worry, my own personal take on it is in this comes to the dialogue. You know, he says, look, I don't worry. There's things I know I can do things about and I put my effort into that and I do what I can about them and the things that I can't have agency with I don't worry about I don't I don't think about them and it goes back to the serenity prayer of grant me the serenity to accept that which I can change. And the courage to change which I can and or to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the wisdom to see what I can change and, and, you know, it's been a long time since I've worked the steps but you know, it's like we need to have a reframe on this I think. And in reading. John hates book the happiness hypothesis he talks about people who have won the cortical lottery. And those are the folks who they don't have a lot of worry, a lot of anxiety, you know, they get along and the world just fine. But there are people out there who have all kinds of chemical and hormone balances and they need more than thinking to get out of their worry and their anxiety, and they're very much trapped in things. And we have a massive, you know, public epidemic of mental illness out there. And it's touched my life in several ways I have people in my life, probably in my family about definitely I have dementia going on in my family but other things that I've discovered years. And this is very real and it doesn't lend itself to to just saying I'm going to adopt this particular framework of thinking, you know, it's, it's a social and emotional and relational pandemic, all of its own. And there's no simple answer to that. So, I don't worry about that either I just when it comes when it faces me, I do what I can. And two years ago, my dear, dear friend of 20 years had a complete breakdown she is bipolar and her medication got messed up and I honestly had no idea to do I'm good with difficult people, but man, this was way out of my league. And I have to call in professional people to help. So, you know, it's, it's, there's a lot of things that we have to be aware of here. So if I worry about anything is it's oversimplifying things. And instead of saying, you know what, this is really complex. Let's sit with it for a long time and really inquire and pull it apart and see what's in there and think, you know, what do we know and what do other people know and who's figured out a way to handle risk, because the experts are clearly not working very well they're not serving us. And we have a extremely dysfunctional government that's, you know, as Mike has pointed out, they're not addressing the real concerns of that I and many other people have. End of my round. Thank you for listening. Thank you for that can be on your own case. There was something that that clicked earlier. The idea that that the worry and the subject of or the about being somehow linked and worry as emotional response emotional reaction trigger and guilt this is sort of looping back to your, your last year. They've, they've actually proven clinically that the heart reacts and responds to incoming faster than the brain in the face of threat or incoming whatever that it's actually a faster uptake and, you know, fundamentally emotional response is part of a sensing mechanism that's not intellectual. It's, it's autonomic when we're triggered into a feeling we're triggered into a feeling. The feeling is response reaction sense felt information upon which, you know, everything else then responds, like the thought response to threat is a secondary it's not the primary is like there's a thread is felt before it's recognized or identified. And I think another sort of orientation toward this is my power authority agency ability to fill in the blank extends to my skin. The only thing I truly have authority control self determination of is me. What I say what I do, how I act, how I behave, how I contribute what I create. So, for me, that that thing about the surrendering prayer, which was sort of a perfect tea up here. I don't have control about anything beyond my skin. I do have control over my contribution to reality moment to moment, and whether my contribution is in service to or not, whether it's contributive positive and adding a value or subtracting or destructive. So, in, in that orientation and frame, there isn't anything external to me that controls or defines my response. It's 100% on me. In terms of how I choose to respond to whatever's happening or coming. The fact of those things existing aren't a source of fear. If something triggers fear in me. What's that what's what's going on there is is in internal inquiry first before I get to, like them what I'm going to do in response for the relationship to. So, I just wanted to add those pieces to. Thank you so much. Eric, then Mike, then Kevin. Thanks everybody. On Jerry's recommendation I watched the movie hyper normalization last night. And it came from watching another video where he mentioned that so I mean I have some kind of associative trails through videos and so it was showing. And some of the things I didn't know growing up in the 80s there were things happening with Gaddafi and that I didn't really follow and now I'm learning what was really going on in the government and how we've been lied to and continue being lied to. So, what are we supposed to trust in this environment and how do we carve out our little lives and with all this knowing that all this is going on. So, but I'm trying to figure out like what what I can practically do because I've basically carved out my own life. It's going to be good work synagogue, starting to teach music to kids and little things like that so. I just want to mention that I posted in the neo book on matter most some ideas I have for using technology from the mid 90s multi user dungeons, where, if we want to prototype how to present ideas in a sequence, but in a branching way. Yeah, Muds and moves. I did several videos on my YouTube channel about it. So, um, yes, I just wanted to mention that if anybody wants I could give a demo at any time. Thanks. Thank you. I can go about five different ways here. Some very useful comments about dealing with fear and worry. I'm also of the Dalai Lama school and the Serenity prayer school. Although the problem again in Washington is when people have fear, and they don't see something that they can do about it. You don't get action. You get speeches. And sometimes the speeches actually feed the fear. But the usual tendency is to take a topic that seems so hard and put it on the shelf or let somebody else take care of it. And again this is this is something we have to find an answer to because if we aren't as afraid of not doing something. As we are of, you know, something wrong going happening because we have taken action if they're fearful about our decisions. And as a result make no decision. We're going to be in a much worse place. I do have to say though I'm very, very, very happy that I was trained as an geologist as an undergraduate in geophysics. And one thing I learned is how to do triangular plots. So you can easily chart three factors at the same time. And a lot of these were developed for pathology and understanding minerals. So a granite would be if this was quartz and this corner was feldspar and this corner was plagioclase, you know, you could put a point in there and you would express those three coordinates. And what's cool is that you can actually kind of do a three dimension, a four dimensional plot and show how as a lava is cooling or that the composition will change. The magma will change. I mean, so you get you there are some pretty cool ways to plot how the world is that aren't just two dimensional. The other reason I'm so glad I was trained as a geologist is because you do learn to think in million year and even billion year timeframes. And for me that's the best anecdote for worry. I worry about a lot of little things and particularly, you know, I worry that I forget to take care of something, or I let someone down and that that that and yet at the same time, thinking about how in a million years or a thousand years or two years, I probably won't be condemned. So that that's another way to put it in context, you know, you take the, you take the probability of something bad happen, you multiply it by the consequence, and then you somehow factor in how long of an impact. Your mistake will have. But I, my last thought is that I am really upset the average age of this call is well over 50. I have a wonderful 26 year old daughter who I've been trying to recruit she has conflicts quite often, but I think we would learn a great deal about worry and the sources of worry from people in the 20 to 35 year old age frame. Some of them would be the same worries we have climate change. But, for instance, but a lot of the anxiety that is reported among teenagers and 20 year olds is is not related to social media, although that gets the blame. It's related to the fact that some of the relatives in my family here in Washington. When they were in first grade. There was a sniper running around shooting the people. And every school was locked down we had volunteer parent brigades walking the perimeter of the school. I mean, just before that, 911. I had to pick up my daughter at daycare because it was a government building and there was shouting over the intercom, you know, evacuate the building immediately. These kind of things have impact and now, and all the shooting drills that kids go through with blanks, these kind of get people on edge. And then they read about what's going on in the world and particularly the climate change is a message that's been delivered very strong to kids. And again, they're not being told that there's hope. They're being told that you're doomed. I think we have to somehow turn around to the hope and solutions that can give people a reason to believe and I, as much as I'm going to vote Democrat down the line I'm not hearing the Democrats talk much about hope and vision. And I, Obama did. In some cases he delivered, but I'm not. I, I, I'm desperately looking for just a few good senators. Rant over. You and that's all. Thanks Mike. I learned about the nerdfighters gang sign from Lizzie. I think was it this or was it this forgetting anyway, and nerdfighting nerdfighteria is Hank and John greens, young people's network to go cause positive change in the world. It's not fighting. It's not fighting nerds. It's nerd fighting world. I was just going back to my favorite triangle diagram. It's nerd geek dork. And you can take a test to determine where you plot on that. The most important thing of all those to be proud of whatever you are, and be as geeky as possible so that that's the, that's the motto for all of us. I love that being a geek only got somewhat cool. That's a long time in the cellar. Well, cosmopolitan explained that seven years ago with a cover story that said geek is chic and showed the salary for computer scientists and Mr. Jones. So we've sort of said, you know, not worry. Serenity prayer. Let me up our cognitive collective. Better than that. I've heard some things that are kind of interesting, you know, not two by two is their reductive. But I don't know. Is this can we do more than this? Sounds great. You want to take us there. No, I don't know what to do. I mean, you know, I do what I do. We're teaching folks how to act local in our community about things they care about. But, you know, that's just what I do. I'm for anything. I've never been a baseline for anything. So, I don't know. I mean, if therefore do what I guess, you know, do what locally where you have influence locally is where you have influence. Can you say a little bit more what you mean? I mean, one of the one of the exits from this topic is, hey, let's actually just be positive and go do stuff where we have influence. That's a very reasonable approach for worry reduction and benefit improvement. Maybe the call could have a check in where you say what you did with your influence last week that made your the people around you better. Maybe just, you know, where you have actually done something rather than, you know, nobody's talking about climate change, you know, which is the worst thing I ever hear on this call. Myself, that's my perspective on things. And, you know, there's there's there is a bunch of doom scrolling that happens on this call. Not all by multiple people. So we just show what you've done this week, you know, make make some small thing of accountability. You know, I there's a bakery near us. And it's a really great bakery. He's just opened up as a bakery, but he's been delivering stuff everywhere. He's the best chocolate cookies in town. And you can find him and he's got people in there and stuff. But it's not really much of a store. And so I went and bought my weekly chocolate cookie and I had to pay cash because he often can't get his little thing working. I left $3 behind for somebody else. So like I paid, I paid a chocolate cookie forward, you know, just something like that, where, you know, we individually have done collectively something. And, you know, we could peak and put it on to a thing that says the small local plex things that that everybody did. I don't know something like that some accountability to actually do something rather than circle journey. It's not that I don't like, you know, check ins and circle trucks. You have just described the format for next week's check in, which I appreciate. So let's do that. No leagering. Okay, right. Yeah, thank you. And then I think we should all be focused on that. Can I just jump in for a second real quick. Yes, Stacy, please. I just suggest that if you don't want to do it that way that you could bring something that you saw somebody else do as well. Because, again, we're our own little, you know, sector here I would really love I mean I see things happening all the time. And if we could share some of those we realize how much this is really happening. It would. I mean, for me, it makes me feel more positive when I realize that little things are happening everywhere, and it might help spread some ideas and things like that. Kevin, I don't know how you feel about that I'm I'm mixed because I think I think I think I would like to keep the stories quite personal that we tell. And also Stacy, when you tell us that you sat with somebody and listen to them and engaged in philosophical friendly discourse in a safe manner and all that. That's like a great contribution to that story. Like that that that was your mitzvah for for the week. No, no bombs with that whatsoever. And I think you're doing that a lot all the time. So, I don't know how any how does anybody else feel about that. Yeah, I just, I'm going to just say one more thing. Sometimes. And again, this isn't been this isn't a very popular thing to say but sometimes I feel like it just sounds very self serving. And even like in the beginning when this wasn't on on the recording, listening to the $13 avocado sandwich. It made me so sad because I know how many people it would be a hardship for just to even buy their family of four that $13 avocado sandwich. And it's like, it just feels like there's such a disconnect between like people that are in this call they're listening to the call, and just the hundreds of people that I walk among every day. And I don't know, I just don't know how to bridge that gap. You worried about it. I'm concerned about it. I don't worry about it because there's no point. Excellent. Thank you. Jerry took my hand down. I was following Kevin. Great. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. First, the story from the world. I saw a thing online this week of a restaurant that has a bulletin board filled with receipts pinned to the bulletin board. And somebody came in and asked what it was. And what it is is that somebody is the people buy their own meal and they buy another meal and the receipt gets stuck up on the board. And if somebody comes in hungry, they pull up one of those receipts. There's an old practice in Italy called a suspended coffee or cafe so special. That's exactly it. Yes. So there's that. You asked Kevin how about a baseline, but Kevin, you know, showed us the baseline. Kevin, you care about stuff and you do stuff about it. And what you do about it is you talk with people about it and find some common association of something you can do together about it. And you rinse and repeat and have done that many times. And I think that's a good baseline for this conversation. And the physiology of the thing. I stuck this in the chat, but I want to say it again, if we take any of us and wire us up to various physiological sensors, breathing rate, heart rate, electric, you know, like, you know, galvanic skin response and so forth. And expose us to something that is fearful. And do the same wiring and expose us to something that is, let's call it positive, exciting enthusiasm, generating physiologically. The readouts are exactly the same. Fear and excitement are physiologically identical. The difference is in how we interpret the physiological signals. And I think that's pertinent to this whole conversation that we're having. Does excitement trigger cortisol release? I mean, are they really, are they really identical because sometimes you, you have a shot of, of neurochemicals that are very different. I think when you're happy from when you're sad or fearful or excited. I'm not sure that they're identical. We'll have to, we'll have to dig out proof. That's my understanding of it. And, you know, maybe identical is too strong a word, but I guess the point is, is that there is a. There's, there's, there's, there's physiological response and there's interpretation of that response. Yes, it's really, it's complicated. That's for sure. And, and in the, in, and, and a body can learn. And so what martial artists do, this is what musicians do. Body can learn different interpretations and options in response to, to, to, to physical provocation. It's one of the 1st, I'm sure you know this from Ikea. One of the 1st things we learned to do is to not be, is to find. Physiological responses that let us not be afraid of somebody coming at us with a big stick. We have a joke in the dojo, which is the 1st rule of Aikido is don't get hit. Yeah, but, but the 1st thing I learned in Aikido was it was, it was with Terry Dobson sensei and the practice was somebody to punch you in the stomach very slowly. So you're not going to get hurt. But the native physiological response was to suck in your gut and freeze your breathing and therefore be unable to move freely. And so the 1st lesson was to relax and turn in what to turn away from the blow and have full body capacity and calm and groundedness and ability to move. And so that's the kind of mini version in my life of what I said about physiological and wiring your body up. But that, that difference between the sensation and the interpretation, I think is key to this whole conversation we're having. Thank you. I've spoken. Yeah, thank you. I think there's another element to this and I come back to what crater was saying, you know, the world is on fire, but we don't act like it. And we really don't act in ways that is in any way. Relatable to the environmental, social, any kind of name it crisis around us. The good part is that you can you can they are they are pockets that are emerging of people who are really wanting to come together and acting in unison to just to just really engage change at scale. And it is, it is fun and amazing to see that. But rather than worry, how do you translate very interaction? And then how do you pick whatever your skill set is, whatever you are good at to help somebody who is helping somebody, right? Don't focus on you solving the problem, help solve somebody's problem, know who is working on an on an issue that has components that need to be assisted with. But I mean, there are so many opportunities to do that. But we are paralyzed. I mean, we're just talking. So, so that's, and there are some real ways to to get up and get going and engage, but we are just, we're just not moving. We're talking about very. So. I think it's doing no and sort of echo Kevin's comments here. And I think, class, you're also digging right into the middle of the topic that I was aiming at, right? You know, if the world is a aid, we don't have to agree in the ways the world is on fire, but do we think that there are emergencies going on? And why aren't we acting like it? And this is Greta Thunberg's message. Almost for me in a nutshell, which is, hey, you're handing us a terrible earth adults. Why aren't you acting as if it really is important? So, how do we harness that energy to do something positive instead of worrying about it? Carl, please. You know, kind of another aspect to what Kevin was saying, too, is when I was doing research a couple years ago, I have to go back and check. But I mean, we have all this talk about microaggressions and stuff that I've tried to engage people at my schools, like you're, you're like, that's almost like encouraging what you don't want to have happen. I think that's kind of part of this. And I did a search for microinclusions and 99% of the stuff, over 99% of the stuff was like, it's imperfection in diamonds is called a microinclusion and stuff. There was one paper from Brazil in Portuguese that was using microinclusion the way I was thinking of it. But as a little example, well, we're in DC, so it's international. And it's like, I do not use the term African American because we got diplomats from, you know, I'm all over the world and stuff. I had a coffee shop, a block from the World Bank block from the cross the street from the IMF and stuff. I had, I had a black man was probably mid 60s he insisted on buying me a cup of coffee because I was the first white man who ever helped door open for man. So that type of stuff. There was also a study that women like just walk down the middle of the sidewalk and how many men wouldn't get it would literally bump into them or not move. And DC is also a great place for this because we've got all these trees that are like so a sidewalk will go from where to maybe even three people can walk by side by side to like all some people have to squeeze town and walk, and I just stand to the side and you know, let if there's, you know, if there's a woman or women come in the other direction and things so I mean little things like that, and things as an example for what we're talking about. It's just, yeah, I mean, that whole thing about I mean, what do we encourage him to have happening thinking positively about things. So yeah, I'll have to go back and do a search for micro inclusion and see if anybody's using it as an alternative. Thanks, Carl. You're reminding me of a domain that I bought years ago, since we're talking so much about I key to in this call, which is up keto.com. I coined the term up keto by taking I keto and its principles and blending it with upward spiral or uplift. And the theme of I keto is, what would a practice look like, where your intention is to improve everything you touch. And now often you have that intention but you screw things up so you have to be a little cautious about it but but what does that practice look like and what would you include in there, for example. And that's, I think that's the opposite of worrying that's that's sort of coming into the world with positive intentions and trying to see how to be helpful. I now have two wonderful words to carry in my brain, that can find room. I think you've mentioned keto before but I really have to go check out what you met. I haven't put much there is kind of a placeholder site I would love if anybody feels like collaborating on it it's on a Google site it's really easy to co edit I would love to sort of do something with somebody on it so we could make a play date. It reminds me very much of my favorite book when I was in eighth grade which was Voltaire's Candid. And I've said it before I'm a cyber libertarian techno optimist Democrat. And sometimes I get close to cyber utopian. But I also understand the reason to be pessimistic. The great thing about Voltaire is it's a struggle between optimism and pessimism and the very end the final final sentence says, let's just cultivate our garden. So he rejects rosy glasses. He rejects gloom. And he says, we can do our thing here in our little piece of Eden and make life better. And I do think the way to get there is something that that Carl called a micro inclusion. But again I'm trained as a geologist and that has a really important geological definition so I would propose micro climb micro kindness. Because you really only get four syllables and if you want to have a world changing buzzword you only get four syllables so micro kindness. And I do think that the world would be so much better. My daughter went to Christopher Newport University for undergrad. And the norm. It's not really dictated but it's it's the norm is you will always open the door for the person behind you. I mean the people claim that they have have gone to school and gone months without opening the door, because that somebody was always around and open the door for them. The irony is that it's a very rather conservative school and that it pulls from southeastern and southwestern Virginia. And I think a lot of people do through the ritual of opening the door for others start thinking beyond their clan. And that that is the most important thing we can do. One other thought Jerry for format I love the linger protocol that we have here the 30 seconds, 60 seconds to let it all sink in. I run another forum. And we have a rule because we've spent so much time getting into the doom scrolling and sharing our latest worries and pointing out the stupidity of the world. The protocol that says you can't sign off the call, unless you give us 20 seconds of optimism. Give us a reason for hope and that's my favorite Twitter hashtag now I use reason for hope. As a way just to force myself to at least once a day, put out something that I like that gives me reason to think the world will be a better place. Maybe I'm not telling you how to run your call but it would be kind of fun to maybe you don't, don't have to say it maybe we just, you know, type it in the in the chat that here's an article. Here's, here's a reason that I smiled, you know that that kind of thing because I, I, any new Indian a call about the end of the world with a little optimism is a good idea. That is a good thing. Thanks Mike, maybe we'll do a round before and heads to a poem, and we can go out with that and a poem. I subscribed to poetry comms poem of the day and this morning's was really excellent that will pull somebody to it in the chat. Let's do it. I think that we need to be a little careful about hope. Because it can be a drug that is not contributory in a certain way except it, you know, elevates a mood for a moment, kind of like sex. Let's do things one. I have a wonderment about about our process. I mean it's a wonderful intellectual discussion. We are all very very smart, and people are sharing stuff in the chat. But what happens is, we're not in dialogue, except for Jerry. Jerry's the only one I guess, because you're the king here, who engages in a little dialogue by commenting on some of the thoughts that people arise. So I wanted to, I wanted to, you know, pick up on what Klaus said four people ago. And that I think is a piece that's missing. I don't know the answer to that. It's just something that popped up in my mind. But when Klaus talks about concern about whether he is in a place to make his best contribution, I just wanted to personalize that and say, Yeah, that's what I think about as a piece of worry. Am I engaged in projects and stuff where I'm using my best skills, whatever they might be, or at least I think they might be in terms of making a contribution. When you were talking about Congress before Mike, all I could think of was that most of the congressmen are, I shouldn't say most. There are many people in Congress who are reflective of the culture that we are in, which is an individualized personalized achievement culture. And I remember Doug Carmichael saying quite some time ago in this conversation that he went to learn Chinese, because he wanted to understand how that culture functions in a way that's different than our culture, the much more collectivist notion. And just some food for thought about those things. Thanks, Stuart. On the dialogue here, I know that I jumped in a lot as sort of moderators prerogatives or host prerogative or something like that to do a whole bunch. I feel like we are responding to each other a lot and like there's this interesting kind of braiding that happens during the call where we'll refer back a couple, a couple minutes to somebody else's thing and then elaborate on or be motivated by or respond to or things like that. I think we did that a bunch. We're not in a circle where everybody's equal, but that that's a strange format for Zoom, I think. You know, I'm hearing what you're saying. I'm just trying to figure out how to improve that. Great. Thanks. I'll comments on that welcome from anybody even send me an email offline or if you want to change the process. Thanks. Doug C. So my first hope is that we can understand what is happening to us. And with that understanding with that hope. It may or may not lead to action. That seems to be like a pretty complete set of structures for thinking about the future. When you say more about we can understand what's happening to us. Yeah. Historically, where are we sociologically, how are we structured. In terms of issues, how is our technology failing and supporting us. Things like that. But even how did we get here is a really complicated question. It's a delightful and complicated question. I hope and I work out of them almost every day to understand more of the history that got us here. I'm going to pick up on one piece of that because I think it's a hidden controversy. As Mike mentioned, I think was the first one to mention Ukraine. And the view that we have to win in Ukraine, which to me goes against the history, which is that the US promised not to expand NATO, and then we went ahead and did it, causing a lot of trouble. Can we talk at that level of granularity. My hope is we can. That's one of the arguments people make that the Ukraine war shouldn't be backed and it's been in. We haven't talked about it a whole heck of a lot on OGM calls, but we haven't gone to Ukraine a lot on OGM calls. But that's not a forbidden topic and discourse about Ukraine. It's just a one that I personally disagree with violently, not violently vehemently. We're not avoiding topics like that. I mean, it's part of the Israel Palestine. Long history, really difficult situation, plenty of interesting approaches to what's going on there. I have a there's a sub-stack I follow called beyond intractability where they've been doing beautiful deep dives into the Israel Palestine situation and a bunch of other things, including way too long reading lists of fabulous posts about the situation from very different perspectives and they're really good about at least from my perspective, including lots of different perspectives like that. So let me back up for a second. One of the things that I'd love to do more of, I'd love us to do more of, I'd love to do more of personally is to make more visible or explicit our belief systems and narratives about how we got here and what's going on. So that we can compare and contrast them and make them available to others. I remember meeting somebody years ago and we started talking about the Mongol invasions and I had learned somewhere that when the Chinese built the Great Wall of China, that kind of blunted the Mongol attacks, even though the Mongols actually took over China for a long time. But at first they bounced off the wall and then started invading Europe. They went west. And then the person I was just talking to was, he knew a lot about it and he had a complimentary story. I've now forgotten because we were standing in a lobby and I wasn't note-taking. And he said, oh yeah, and then this happened and then this happened. And I was like, I just love this, an interfolding of what we think happened and why we think it happens and how people intervened and all of that. And in part as fodder for our conversations about what to do next and what influence can we possibly have. Because sometimes the influence is a movement or a thing that happened. I'm watching a biopic about Byrd Rustin, titled Rustin on Netflix. It's really good. It's really, really good. And I didn't know much about Byrd Rustin and he was a flamboyant, fabulous character who kind of invented the March on Washington. And then it pulled off a phenomenal thing in the middle of really difficult times. So sorry to run for a bit longer than I meant to, but I'm interested in us. The reason for Open Global Mind as a thought, as a concept is how do we make more visible these things we believe, even if they're wrong, is so that we might compare notes with other people and learn that they're improvable and figure out what to do. And I may be wrong in that we don't need to figure out the big map of what to do. I'm not trying to be complete about it and say we need a systems diagram that explains all the world's problems and what their causes are. I'm not trying to say that at all, because we'll never do anything productive if we try to spend all our time doing that. But I think that those things are important because that's how we align actions. That's how we get people on board with, oh, oh, oh, I see your perspective. Okay, so if we both did this thing, we'll be able to help each other even though we disagree. That's the place I want to get to somehow. Kevin, are you talking to us? If you are, you're muted. Oh, Kevin is on a different call. Sorry, I'm just seeing his lips moving. Doug, did you want to step back in or should I go to Ken? Well, I do sort of because you talk so long on top of what I said that what I said, I got kind of lost. The key is that I hope to understand what's happening to us. I think that's a pretty good place to be. The problem with worry, worry is about what might happen. If it is happening, worry is a still response. If it is happening, you have to be mobilized to either run or engage. End of thought. Ken, please. I have a lot of stuff on the table here. Thanks, Doug. I think understanding where we are is really important. Understanding how we got here might be a lot harder because there's so many, so many things somebody once said the cause of everything is everything. And so where do you draw the boundary around that and what what's useful and what takes you out too far afield is an open question I have an answer to. Jerry, thanks. I, you know, I spent a decade helping to design and propagate the World Cafe and one of the principles is make the collective knowledge visible. And that's one thing that's missing on these calls. We don't have any visuals. We don't have any grass here and we can do very simple stuff. If you look at David Sibbot's book, visual meetings, for example, just having a board of post it's and questioning is saying, here are things that we agree upon here are things that are open questions here are things that we're struggling with. Here's how we define we. And I want to go back to two things one is what what Kevin said, and Kevin's gone, but I often feel intimidated by Kevin because he does all these amazing things like wow that's just. You know, I sit and talk to maybe one or two people and and thank you for, you know, Stacy for your input and Jerry for a just, you know, talking to one person and helping them through something is actually doing something very good it is making a difference and you know I forget that because I tend to feel like I'm not doing enough. And this time ourselves in knots a lot in this ongoing conversation about, we're not doing enough, you know, the world's on fire, we're not acting the way as if it is. I disagree. The world is on fire, very, very much so. And personally, I took a program about 12 years ago now called Brazilian neighborhoods where we went on a low carbon diet. And I eliminated 30,000 pounds of CO2 from my household, which I have kept up, you know, I made certain changes, and it's something that we can do there's a book out there on how to do this. You know, I no longer we've devices plugged in overnight. I unplugged them. There's a little vampires that suck energy and, you know, you have 300 million phones sucking energy out of charging up overnight. That's a lot on the grid. There's a very simple things you can do that that make a contribution. Now, you know, if we want to change role we need a place to stand we need leverage and it's very hard to find that sometimes. And I hear us talk a lot about aspirations and worries and there's a third thing which is, what are things we're ambivalent about, you know, I have the means to buy an electric vehicle, but it would require my laying out a lot of money. And my car is fully paid for and it drives well and I keep it maintained, but it's an internal combustion and so it is contributing to to CO2 cycle to global warming. I feel very ambivalent about that. I embedded in a system where it's really hard financially for someone like me to lay out the money and get a, you know, an electric car, even though I know that would be a net positive in terms of not putting out so much CO2. Well, gills, you know, I don't know. I have ambivalence about this. I also have ambivalence about, I don't, I do eat meat, but I only eat grass fed, locally raised organic meat because I can buy that at my farmers market, which is a much lower footprint than a feedlot. I don't buy beef at Costco, but there's people that do and they're embedded in these huge systems and we're not going to change their dietary habits overnight until there is a collapse which class is very informed about how close we are to that. So how do we, how do we start to untie these knots, make them visible so we can say, okay, we've kind of pulled these apart, we can, we can see what those are. And now we can get to what's underneath that, because I think we talked about so much complexity without something to reflect back where we've been what we've agreed upon the things that are challenging us. We just keep spinning around in some ways that are not very effective and I'd like us to find a way to move forward on this. Thank you. We're getting near the end of our time so I'm going to ask Klaus and Carl to end with 20 seconds of something optimistic. When they are done talking and probably will be around the time for Ken and they end at home. Go ahead. It's fun a different poem. It's not an optimistic poem. Oh shoot. I can do it. Yeah, so my observation is that for whatever reason we have an incredible disconnect between the engineering of systems and a top level understanding and vision of systems. So let me give you an example. I've been bouncing around with John Foley from Project Alldown for, I don't know, two years. Trying to convince him to look at food and agriculture as a core contributor. So they have the sustainability development goals and it's like, I don't know, 12 points or so that apply to food in some way or shape. And then structured is a systemic perspective on how does this even work? It's a complex system. And so finally he came to turn around and in fact this week is coming out with the conclusion that we have to full force charge into the food system because that's the only short term viable solution. And then he goes, it's going to be easy. I'm going, this is the most insane statement to make, right? Because to change the food system means you have to disrupt trillion dollar economy markets. You have to disrupt the fast food business, the processed food business, the biofuel sector. This is going to be a massive undertaking. And so there is this disconnect where, and I see it in a lot of NGOs and so on. And even within companies where there is this idea you can just wish things into reality, right? Which are from an engineering perspective completely unrealistic. And so how do you connect this? Now their companies look at boring, right? I mean they're separated from their engineering talent and now the CEO just got booted up. But that's one example where companies who lose that connection to the baseline product start veering off into weird things. I mean how did we end up building billion dollar factories to fermented meat? I mean for kind of an insanity is that, right? This is not as, I mean, so the misunderstanding of engineering knowledge, engineering input, right? That creates the misallocation of precious money that we, this is like a one shot opportunity we have right now. Because once that money is spent and you allocate it to build a whole bunch of factories to do fermented meats, you have screwed up the system, right? And the more money you spend that way, the worse it gets to fix it. So to pull that back and this is what I'm working on is to make the system transparent in its most structured and fundamental way. And it's really not that, I mean it's, I mean for me it's just like not complicated because I mean I've come through the base of the industry starting as a chef basically, right? And then to see people make assumptions of what you could be doing to fix this, which are so absurd, you know, that you don't even know where to start engaging. That is just really right now an enormous challenge. So I see USDA, I see the Biden administration in their attempt to assist and then, okay, if I want to end with 20 seconds something really positive. Oh, you remember it. I was about to prompt you with that. That's fabulous. I just signed up with 34 farmers in the Paloos who have an average of 3,500 acres of land. They are regenerative farmers and we're building a consortium that connects them with the market. So we have one lady who has a SNAPtivist. She has a consumer packaged goods company. She has got a 3 million dollar grant from the government to build linkages to the farmer. And me, I mean my partner and I, we want to provide an infrastructure where they can talk and where they can connect. And here I need help because I need an IT base that can just put us into a whole different, into a whole different platform of communication there. So that's awesome. I'm amazingly looking forward to this. My partner is in the biofuel sector. Now I'm in the food system. This is going to be fun. Well done class. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Carl, then Michael, then Ken. Well, it's, I've been getting more into dissertation mode again. I mean, I posted a link to Bill Smith's work. He really transformed a lot of the culture at World Bank to move towards stakeholder engagement and things. Years ago and then Gingelbart. Pretty much anybody who's talked with me, I mentioned him all the time, but it's really intriguing the Carnegie Foundation for advancement and teaching this Carnegie Foundation. They really bought into. Well, it really integrating Engelbart's networked improvement communities with, with Deming and. Total quality improvement and continuous. Improvements and stuff into all improvement science and they just had their conferences past week in San Diego and. There are 14 dissertations that I have found that have networked improvement communities and titles. That's what I, that's the little nucleus of things I'm focusing on to take a look at. And I think, I mean, Engelbart and his group in the mid 60s from 62 when he did his proposal till 9 December 1968 when he showed the mouse hypertext. Video conferencing and stuff is lab really generated a positive feedback loop of innovation. That's kind of what I come up with as the, as a thing. So be like Doug. Be like Doug. Thanks, Carl. Mike, we syllables it works. Good to see you all have been here in a while. I just want to say, along the lines of, you know, something that's been mentioned earlier about opening doors. I give myself the, the micro mission of respectfully opening doors for people, regardless of their age gender race ability. A while back and it's led to some really moving and reflective micro acknowledgments. And particularly with young men and most particularly with young black men. And I really recommend it. It's it, it just spreads good in the world and it makes people look at each other differently. So, that's all. Thank you. If I can add one more micro act saying thank you to the guy in the restroom at the airport or wherever who's cleaning the bathroom. I did yesterday. Clearly this happens once every three months. Pick up trash that you see on the street. I learned that from a seven year old many years ago. Did I do a quick add to the thank yous. Please. Jane spent a lot of time in hospital in 2017. And, you know, in your hospital room, there's that whiteboard that has a name of your doctor, your nurse, the, you know, the, the, the CTA and so forth. But every day, several times a day, a janitorial person would come to empty the trash or the bedpan or mop the floor and Jane would always say hello to them and ask them what their name was. And how they're doing and tell them thank you for being the front line of the sanitation and, you know, that was keeping her alive and thanking them for what they're doing. And these people were deeply moved and said, you know, I've been working here for 30 years and no one has ever said thank you to me. No, think about that. Think about the opportunity to the simple thank you means to somebody. Ken, over to you. Along those lines, every time I go through a checkout line, I always say, how are you to the person at the cashier. It was the cashier. And I've had several say, wow, thank you for asking. I'll say, don't people ask. And I've been told, maybe one in 50. So just a simple, hi, how are you doing today? How's your day going? How's life here at Trader Joe's, you know, and people really respond amazingly to this. And these simple acts of kindness are really the glue that holds culture together. So, originally on this call, you know, I try to come in from my poetry library as something for this call and when you talk about worry I was going to read Gary Snyder is why truck drivers rise earlier than students of Zen, which is not a very optimistic poem, but then Jerry said, are we going to close it up to some so I'm going to actually read something that I wrote which is not something I do very often. This is this is my thanksgiving. Thanks from 2020 because, you know, we were in the middle of a pandemic lockdown and isolated and so in a world where many are without shelter, I am grateful for my home. In a world where many are starving. I'm grateful for my food each day. In a world where many are succumbing to the pandemic. I'm grateful for my health. In a world where many are financially distressed. I'm grateful for the work I've had. In a world where many are despairing. I am grateful for the strength to carry on in a world where many are unguided. I am grateful for my teachers in a world where many are choosing ignorance. I am grateful for my daily learning in a world where many are let us stray by misinformation. I'm grateful for my discernment in a world where many are polarized by politics. I am grateful for my equity in a world where many are weeping. I'm grateful for my laughter in a world where many are lost. I am grateful for my sense of meaning and direction. In a world where many are cynical. I am grateful for my sense of wonder and curiosity. In a world where many are disconnected. I am grateful to be part of an ancestral line. In a world where many are isolated. I am grateful for the communities where I belong, of which GM is one. In a world where many are inflated. I am grateful to have been humbled. In a world where many are hateful. I am grateful to those who have taught me to love. In a world where many are afraid. I am grateful for my courage. In a world where many are stuck. I'm grateful for my fluidity. In a world where many are lonely. I am grateful for my friends. In a world where many are unloved. I am grateful for my wife. In a world where many see horrors. I am grateful for the beauty I see around me. me. In a world where many are empty, I am grateful to feel so fulfilled. In a world where many are crippled by life's wounds, I am grateful to still be standing. And in a world where many are unhappy, I'm grateful just to be alive. Thank you, Ken. That's terrible. Yeah, I have it in a PDF that I can post to Mattermost in the OGM West. Cool. And beyond that, and I put that on Facebook, because that's the most resident poem you've ever read, and you've done a lot of powerful poems. Okay. Yeah, post it, baby, Ken. You can post it anywhere you like. I have my name on it. It says PDF. It's a nice picture, and I'd be grateful for the sharing. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. It was so appropriate. Thank you. Cool. Thanks, Ken. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Amen. Thank you all. Ciao. Till next week. I would love to hitchhike on it. Yeah. In my line, may I use my gratitude for them.