 And oops, cancel. And let me turn the transcript on as well. Okay, so I was just telling Klaus that I had lunch with a really interesting fellow last week who is more conservative than all three of us. And we really, he's also very pragmatic CEO type and wants like efficiency or effectiveness to be the rule, not, you know. And one of the things he said pretty early on was, if you go look at the number of cops shooting black men, it's actually really low compared to black-on-black shootings, which is a super high number. And I'm like, oh, head wants to explode. But then we also, we went into nuclear power, we went into a bunch of other kinds of topics and climate change. He was also like, he thinks MAGA is horrible and just destroying the right. But one of his really good questions was, if the right is so horrible and so out of touch with the mainstream population when you look at polls, why are the Democrats holding onto a razor thin majority in the house or the, like, why are they not overwhelmingly the party in power? What is up with that? And he says, part of his diagnostic is the Democrats suck. The Democrats are really badly broken and he's interested in what ways they're broken and how to fix them and all that. So all these things came tumbling out and all in an hour and a half lunch, just north of the Columbia River. In fact, sort of overlooking the Columbia River was pretty nice. There's a part of Vancouver where they built up the waterfront nicely and there's a bunch of restaurants. And so I've offered him to slow the conversation down. I'm just reading some of his replies this morning. And he's very happy to engage and explain his logic which I need and want and like. Like that's really important for me in any of these discourses. I also realized that in our Thursday calls and within OGM, we're almost reflexively lefty most of the time. And we've kind of barfed out people who didn't sort of fit our notions of how we were doing things in a couple of different ways. And I'm really interested in being able to have a conversation in that middle ground because it turns out that like 30% of the country is firmly locked into MAGA Trump. Trump is the flawed messenger from God. Some 30% of the country is like firmly at the opposite end although it isn't nearly as opposite because I don't think that the far left is anything like the far right these days. But in the middle lies this great mass of people who are looking for something to do, say, follow, vote for, agree with that works. And I think they'd like a better life for their kids. There's a whole bunch of like things that we all have in common. And our reflexes in how to respond don't take us in the right place. And I'll say one more thing then I'll shut up for a second because I wanna go back into our normal conversation. But the US responses to COVID were in many ways self-defeating in the sense that they weren't open research, open questions, hey, we acknowledge and realize that you may have reasons to not trust Big Pharma. So we're gonna go out of our way to be open and do this. It's like, nah, a lot of stuff was kind of mandates or near mandates or actual mandates. And then a lot of stuff was behind the curtain that we didn't sort of get to see how the sausage was made. So who trusts it? And I think one of our remedies is transparency. I don't think it's by far the only remedy. And I think transparency rapidly devolves into way too many things to answer and way too many questions asked and way too much data to look at and all of that. But maybe we can proxy it out to people we trust on different sub-issues who actually track those issues and understand the dynamics of each of those places. And then we can sort of have champions in each of these sub-questions kind of competed with each other. I'm on a mailing list where Amory Lovens and Carl Page kind of went at it on nuclear energy. And Amory Lovens is a known nukes under any situation. It's not economically reasonable. It's not anything. And Carl Page is like nukes have a lower accident rate than everything else. They are immediate clean renewable energy. And as my new friend Scott from lunch said, renewable solar and wind, there's a thing called the duck curve in energy which basically says that renewables are never where you want them, when you want them. When there's peak demand on the grid is when the sun goes down. And unless you have fabulous batteries, if you don't eat energy when you make it, and I don't know what the lag factor is, but if you don't sort of use energy as you produce it, it goes away. And we don't have good batteries and all the answers for batteries out there more or less suck. And we're not gonna store everything in lithium ion batteries or in everybody's Tesla. So like way too many really good questions, they come back to how we're writing and what we're doing and the big questions we wanna answer, I think they do a lot. And I'd like to go back in to sort of the origin and goals of OGM and treat some of this as discourse to slow down and map out and contrast and compare and to see if we can't sort out a couple of these things. Sorry, all of that was lurking in my head apparently. Yeah, there is actually a major pivot in the conversations. You know, I have this slide deck where the introductory is there basically two major levels you can pull. One is energy, one is photosynthesis. So I've been saying this for like six years now. I've had this in my slide deck. And photosynthesis is basically land use issues. I mean, in a broad context whether that's forestry or whatever. But then when you think that 80% of water globally is used for agriculture and that brings out a natural prioritization. We can focus on trees and which is super important but 80% is used for agriculture and trees are being cut down for agriculture. So then comes this what is now I listened yesterday to a very esoteric discussion by physicists, very high level. I mean, I had a really hard time following it but they were debating the role of water and how little we know about how water really impacts the global climate. Oh, interesting. And it's now contradicting established climate science in ways that was not anticipated. And it's based on actual observation. They're now saying that our models cannot fully explain this but we see in observations where this thing is going, right? And so- Do you have a link to the video still? No, I would have to dig it up. It would, I'm just streaming through stuff on this was just one of those things. But when you think about the intuition of freshwater into the ocean streams, for example is actually causing the meridian distribution to collapse because freshwater sits on top of saltwater. It prevents the normal curve to go for water to get into colder zones to absorb more cold. Saltwater can absorb more cold before it freezes. And so no, hold me to trying to explain this but there are basically two factors that impact the Gulf Stream function. One is the Arctic ice cover which energizes the water and the other one is the content of freshwater to saltwater. And so what everyone completely underestimated was the impact of trillions of gallons of water melting from glaciers all over the globe, freshwater, right? And that is now, it is already causing a measurable slowdown of the Gulf Stream. And there are, I mean, I've seen one report that saying this could collapse by 2025 because I sent up, there is one video that I sent actually to OGM and everywhere. This science guy really explaining in great detail how this all works. And he's saying there is a gradual decline in speed in velocity of the stream, but there comes a point where this could actually just boom, drop, right? And the consequences would be absolutely catastrophic, global climate impact. So that's one thing. And the other thing is which I sort of serendipitously discovered to my surprise, scientists not really looking at this, we have literally tried out millions of square miles of farmland with the application of chemicals because when you put synthetic nitrogen and pesticides into the soil, it kills the soil microbiome. The soil microbiome, when it gets damaged releases carbon. So 25% of the carbon in the atmosphere is actually attributed to soil to come from soil. Now, soil releasing its carbon, 25% of what's up there. So that's one thing. But the more important thing is when soil dries out it disrupts the hydrologic cycle because about 60% of local rain actually comes from the interchange between local evaporation, trans-vaporation it's called. So you have the local evaporation from soil that goes up and then comes back down and that happens multiple times. When the soil is dry, then you're creating an accelerating effect of that. And that's when you have prolonged periods of droughts and then you have storm systems coming in and you have soil that is compacted and can't hold. It can't even absorb the water. It just runs off and takes top soil with it. And that's exactly what we are observing now on a global level everywhere where industrial agriculture has been practiced on a wide scale. So there's actually at this immediacy it's more important to focus on water and the restoration of water tables and water sheds. Now then it is on energy because energy there's only so much you can do and it's not going to solve the problem. You know, we could be energy neutral tomorrow and continue farming the way we do and it would push us way beyond any boundary we could any threshold we could handle. So that's why this focus on agriculture and food systems is really gaining traction now. But it is as disruptive in the food system as it is in the energy sector. So now, I mean, think about all the mechanics and garages and gas stations that have serviced combustion engines for a more than a century and then all of a sudden just wants to go away. Now in food is the same thing. I mean, all of this. In 1910, all those people were blacksmiths and horse couriers and you know, et cetera. Like there was a period around 1910 where that flipped before and all of a sudden these new couriers just opened up and now we're going to go through another period like that and we're not doing anything to make it better. Yeah, and so, and I'm sorry for I had a little disruption but I was listening to everything that was being said. And this is like going from the macrocosm that Jerry was talking about to the microcosm that Klaus was talking about in terms of details, okay? And what's not happening, unfortunately, is real conversation to try to come up with wise solutions. And it's all devolved into the politics of right, wrong, right, left, win, lose, fault, blame, commercial versus non-commercial. And the real discussions never seem to happen. I mean, the U.S. Congress I think is that or they don't happen at the level that needs to happen today so that we can have an informed electorate and so that people can get real evidence and the idea of how people get pigeonholed, it's shameful. At some level it really is shameful and at some level it really is. How stupid are we? We're supposed to be intelligent beings and yet we're acting like absolute idiots. We have an epidemic of stupidity. It's just all around. We've got all this knowledge and all this wisdom and in some ways, no pun intended, it's being trumped by power and money. Which is the story of humanity in one sense. Yeah, but the critical piece I think at this moment in time is that the consequences could be so dire. OK? The consequences could be so dire in terms of wiping out the species in some sense. And on both sides, both sides are screaming about existential risk. On the far left, what you just said, it's basically we could wipe out the planet. And on the far right, our cultures are being wiped out. We are in existential risk as a people, as a civilization. That's happening. Thanks, Klaus. Thanks, Lilink. Yeah, it is in particular that focuses on we need to talk about water in the context of climate change. So that resonated really well. But the challenge, so my partner contacted Nestle saying, can we do some work for you? And they came back basically saying, what could you possibly want to do? So I sent them the extracts from my videos. Basically saying the challenges farmers are facing to shift into regenerative practices and its impact on food systems. And so for the industry, you take Nestle, Cargill, I mean, there is just only a handful of companies, really. They have totally logged in on the centralized supply chain, monocropping practices that only work if you deal with genetically designed seeds that can withstand the application of heavy doses of herbicides and insecticides and fed with synthetic nitrogen, make this natural gas. It's an insanity to base a global food system on that because all of the ingredients they have to use, like phosphates and so on, are finite. Phosphates, so how long can this possibly go on? But for them to change now means that they would have to decentralize the supply chain and it breaks down the entire system. I mean, it's really as invasive as is the energy transition getting out of the combustion engine for the energy sector. But it resonates at a much deeper level with people because food is a lot more understandable and closer and connecting food with chemical contamination and disease and nutrient deficiency and watershed damage and all of that is much easier to convey to a broader audience and you don't have to talk about climate change in that context. My, just as an aside, and I think this could be a little bit of an example of what I was just speaking to, a cousin visited on Friday and his son, who was in his early 30s, is a brilliant computer scientist and he just went to work for a startup. And this is just mind blowing. One of what the startup was doing in terms of application in the agricultural center class, they invented some kind of a machine technology combined with farming equipment that would actually be able to detect which individual plant was being invaded by a species and needed some kind of a pesticide. And it would only put pesticide on that individual plant in an entire field. So it was kind of like a combination tractor, pesticide dispenser, and computer technology going through the foes in the field. You've heard of this. Oh, yeah, there is another technology in development that uses lasers. And it's just sap, you know, is a laser. I mean, but I mean, let's face it, how is this going to feed 8 billion people? I mean, the sheer volume of product we're talking about when you have square miles of fields. These are, I mean, techno-treams that it's much easier to get rid of weeds by putting a cover crop on it and rotating your crop that prevents weeds from forming in the first place. Because these mono crops, they're putting the same crop into the ground over and over, meaning that pests attack those and become better at attacking these crops, which means they have to up the lethal dose. And this is where the commercial enterprise and making money kind of trumps what the wise thing to do would be at more of a global level. And how can we regulate, promote this? I think it comes down to communication. So I advanced the Neo-book a little bit here if I can share the screen for a moment. So here's where we left off the last slide. This is from coming back, sorry. This is so the spiral of human organizational development, this second chapter here. And so we had engaging minds, changing menus, performing our relationship with food, so going through the crisis of the industrial food system, food as a cultural element, and then engaging the general public-espiral dynamic support. And then sort of meeting the crisis of the industrial food system, the in conclusion here, then food as a cultural element. We put in a summary on that. Then did I, yeah. So bottom up responses, mixed approaches, and then conclusion. And then I brought this down to the next level. And it says about communicating insights in a course of actions throughout the spiral. Now I thought that the information was probably consolidated enough to get to that. And what I asked chat GPT to do here is use the letter to a Hindu from Tolstoy as a baseline to gauge human, the natural tendencies of our species. So what is saying then, the interplay of morality and selfishness, because we live in this tension, right? We have the evolutionary perception, understanding of morality, but then we're also selfish. And those two things are always in interplay. And when selfishness becomes too strong, then morality is being violated. And when morality takes precedence, it may violate our selfish interests. So it says, so the chat GPT is saying, our species, it's particularly interesting when applied to the current food crisis. Individuals must strive to live according to more laws. And that collective change can only happen when individual hearts change first. Now he also hints, referring to Tolstoy here, I should say, it also hints at our natural inclinations towards self-centeredness, which often at odds with the spiritual idea. Given these parameters, our evolutionary selfish traits as a species and the innate moral principles that also dwell within us, let's examine a course of action most likely to succeed in the United States. So you would have community engagement and education, which is bottom up, appeals to the selfishness and so on. Then you have federal and state regulations coming top down. And then you have economic incentives, which is top down and bottom up. Then you have public and private partnerships, collaboration between government bodies and corporate stakeholders. This alliance serves the self-interest of corporations and also fulfills a moral obligation to protect natural resources. And that, obviously, balances completely out of work here. And then social and moral appeal, launching a campaign that appeals to the ethical and spiritual sensibilities of the population, tying in religious, moral, and patriotic themes. This addresses the evolutionary principles of morality, urging individuals to look beyond their selfish interests for the greater good, aligning with the ideas espoused in all major religions and philosophies. And then the conclusion would be balancing centralized governance and community-driven efforts is key, not the way to navigate the waters between selfish and moral inclinations inherent in the nature of our species is to appeal to both. Present solutions in a way that they seem to benefit the individual or local community, first and foremost, but frame these benefits within a larger ethical narrative. This could be our best shot at implementing a sustainable transformation. It even talks like I do, doesn't it? This could be our best shot at implementing a sustainable transformation of our food systems in the United States, a tactic that recognizes our complex human nature, both its flaws and its profound capabilities for good. So chat GPT 4.0 confidence rating, I would give it an 80% confidence level to this approach understanding the societal dynamics are complex and ever-changing. But I believe it's an effective path that incorporates Tolstoyan principles with modern challenges. And also with a kind of a skeptical slash negative view of human nature as being selfish, just sort of that's one of the working assumptions of that generated scenario. Yes. Yeah. So the question that arises in my mind, and I think you've articulated, either you or chat GPT has articulated this in a lovely way, Klaus. And I agree. I ask the live questions, you know. Well, yeah. But the output depends upon the questions, OK? You know, Gigo, the principle here. Garbage in, garbage out. Good stuff in, good stuff out. So yes, and what's the practical path to actually get something like the wisdom result implemented? So I asked that question, too. And it goes here. So engaging the general public. And so now we're going into spiral dynamics. And so understanding, so it goes beige. You know, the beige is the like, those focused on immediate survival and basic needs. Those are indigenous people, completely uneducated people. I mean, it's just like the base of society. And so it's emphasized how sustainable farming ensures the long-term availability of essential food supplies can provide immediate affordable access to nutritious food. Then you go into purple, tribalistic. Those are really small parts of the US society. You know, they're very marginal. But those are the strong community bonds and traditions. Highlight how traditional farming methods align with community values and ancestral wisdom. Then is red. Red would be the Trump era, the Marga world. So those seeking power, individualism, and status showcase how choosing sustainable organic foods is a status symbol of being informed and responsible. Then blue, this is the Mike Pence crowd. Those driven by order, law, and moral codes know they were the religious riot. Not just the riot, but I mean, religious people in general align sustainable food practices with religious or ethical principles. Then you have orange, the achievements, motivated by success, innovation, material rewards, demonstrate how sustainable practices in food contribute to economic growth, personal health. Then you have green, which is the Sarah Club, communitarian. And then you have yellow, integrative, which should be where OGM wants to be. Those seeking to understand and integrate various systems, provide comprehensive information on how sustainable food choices impact all aspects of life and society. And then you have turquoise, aspirational. For most of us, those seeking the interconnectedness of our life. So that's basically the next level to twill down on, because now you would have to, I would start with red, actually. I would ignore beige and purple because the political influence of those groups is marginal. The most impactful group politically is orange, actually. The loudest is red and blue. But so here one could structure, for example, red and communication strategy directly aimed at mugger voters, mugger crowd. So what captures them? And then this blue would be the religious crowd. So you're using, and each one of these colors really has its own language. They're using unique metaphors that play within this segment and vocabulary. So that's how far I got it. I have found your new tagline. I put it in the chat, make agriculture great again. You know, if it could actually work, I don't think it's a terrible idea. Call it the new MAGA. You might want to go by makeagriculturegreatagain.com just in case or .org. Yeah, because coming into this with something that is common ground is a very good idea, in particular, as different people who are party to the conversation are suffering from droughts or crop failures or weather or whatever. Yeah. Now, the piece that you just read through to us is sort of analytic. Do you want the Neo book, the quick first book to feel like an analysis of what's going on and a set of recommendations for what to do or is this the tone you want in the written work that's published? Like the thinking that you just described to us, I'm on board for, I'm not clear whether that's the method or tone that we want in the book and you're the lead author of the book. So it's kind of up to you. This is stuff you have to let percolate for a while. But I mean, sort of big picture, what I'm thinking is, remember when we first started out, we had this little play, The Story of Soil that resonated instantly. I posted it at the Sierra Club and I'd instantly had two or three people who wanted to make this a child's play for Sunday school and so on. And I haven't followed up on it actually. I'm like, so underwater here. But there was this instant emotional response to that, right? So we would have to now go into color-specific messaging. And I think the most important color, actually, I mean, the important colors are red, blue, and orange, you know. I mean, red because they're so easily manipulated and so not comprehending what this really is. So they're very trust-focused now. So they want to believe someone, to telling them the right thing. And obviously, those waters are highly polluted now and so to cut into something that penetrates and avoids, you know, the being attacked, that would probably, I mean, that would require some thought. You know, how do you get there? Blue, I mean, blue is a call to faith in the stewardship principle of our relationship with the natural world. That seems to be the most logical thing to talk with blue. Orange is just rational, you know, cold facts. And even a punch. And orange doesn't buy climate change because there are too many moving parts and none of it seems to make really sense and it's too disruptive. And, you know, so they're just not convinced. And the climate models and so on is all, I mean, the stunning part is that people are really willing to take 40%, 50% chances of being wrong, right? When it comes to existential issues. So I think here the important part is to, I followed a debate that just totally pissed me off. I mean, it was one of those congressional folks, so it was a hearing in Congress. You had this Republican argue, well, what if you are 2% wrong and we do all this stuff, right? Would you be willing to take a 2% chance? And it was about terrorism or something like this. Well, what do you consider the chance you're wrong on a percentage basis? And where is your threshold? Because we're talking about the end of the world as we know it. And so if you are wrong, 10%, 20%, it's not OK. So you would have to engage in a really, in like a lockdown logic argument with that quote. And then Queen, you just have to make sure that don't bounce off the wall and run over the cliff somewhere because they're just around with their heads cut off. Two things, have you seen Oppenheimer? So there's that scene where, oh, what's his name? The military guy basically says, what are the odds of us destroying the earth? And he's like, well, nearly zero. Nearly zero? What would you like? Zero would be great. And then separately on the blue layer, another new friend is a big fan of Christopher Hitchens. So I've been watching a bunch of Christopher Hitchens videos online. And oh my god, does he do a phenomenal job, unfortunately, destroying religions. Like saying, religions can do what they want. And I think one of the little clips I found was a guy from the audience saying, why do you want to take away from people this thing that seems to satisfy 90% of mankind, et cetera, et cetera? And Hitchens is like, get this straight. I'm not trying to take it away. I'm saying, don't force it on me. And it doesn't make any sense. But I'm not trying to get rid of it. It's just Hitchens is incredibly articulate and knowledgeable about all the counter arguments within the faiths. He can go chapter and verse about the Bible, the Quran, and other sorts of things in ways where you're like, ah, crap. OK, so he did his homework. Yeah, I actually did that also. But I used Bill Maher instead of Hitchens as something. I so prefer Hitchens. Someone who debunks, because I don't know Hitchens. Oh, I'll send you a couple of links. How about that? Because Maher makes me a little queasy. I'm not sure he knows this stuff. But let me just send you a link to Christopher Hitchens in my brain under which you will find a whole bunch of video clips. So if you follow this link, you will just watch a couple of the videos that are under that thought. And you'll get a taste for Hitchens and his devastating logic. I mean, he's really economical with words. It's quite astonishing. And I don't think that Hitchens approaches the way to win hearts and minds at all. I'm just really impressed with his ability to take apart a situation and say, hey, look at it this way, and to articulate a very reasonable comeback. And to be extremely aware of all of the attacks on his position and to be able to disarm them really well, he is like an Aikido black belt of rhetoric. OK. And I'm bringing Aikido here because Aikido is very much about disarming the attacker. It's not about brutalizing the attacker like other martial arts. Yeah, I was doing karate for much of my life. Oh, really? I didn't know that. And I had friends. Actually, we had a huge Buddha club in my hometown in Bispann, like over 1,000 members. And they were teaching Judo, Jujitsu, Aikido, Kendall. That was huge. And karate. And we did Shodokan karate. And so I transitioned. You had to start in Judo for six months. But I hate to cut on the ground all the time. Yeah. And get headaches from falling. And then I did Aikido for a little bit. And then I ended up in karate. So I became third German champion in middleweight karate. I didn't know that. That's awesome. And then I came to the US. I started to tinker around a little bit more. And I worked in Seattle. And there was a 50-quay black belt world champion had a club up there, Shido. So I said, I got to see this guy. So I went and went back to practice. And then he wanted me to join a tournament. So I got to this tournament. My wife watches me. She goes, we're done. You are going to stop right now. I can't just see you go to work with a black eye. This is insane. But then I shifted into yoga instead. Oh, that's really funny. How long ago was that incident? Oh, well, I mean, I was like 32, 33 years old. So now I'm 73 so a long time. OK, 40 years ago. More than half your life ago. That's amazing. It's a great story. Thank you. I didn't know that. I'm still doing aikido. I go every week like four times. Well, one of my best friends stuck with aikido. And I kept doing karate. And then he, at one point in time, over one too many beers, confided in me that he considers karate really mentally challenged. And the really smart people are going into aikido instead. You're not my friend anymore yet. I know. They're very different. It's funny. Ardojo also does kenpo, which is a striking art and was invented by an American as a modification of a bunch of karate and other kinds of arts. And I did a couple of kenpo classes. And kenpo is pretty much the precise opposite of aikido, where aikido would catch an arm and go with the energy and neutralize the attacker. Kenpo would block it and then put their elbow through the person's nose. And I'm like, I didn't like this contrary violent energy going through me at all. So I don't do the kenpo classes. I just like the people. And I realized that in an actual fight with anybody, I would be dust pretty quickly. Because anyone far enough advanced of any of these martial arts who knows what they're doing can dust you in a second. Yeah. Yeah, maybe I had a violent nature. I don't know. So I'm proposing aikido as a metaphoric approach to our books in the sense of blending with existing energy and then either neutralizing or shaping it and taking it in a direction that's more productive, which is all aikido wants to do. aikido is supposed to be a peacemaking art. And O'Sensei, the founder, wrote a book about peacemaking. That was his goal, even though he'd fought in the Mentri in war and all that kind of stuff. That may be probably as a result of his having fought in those wars. Yeah, I think that's a good mindset. That's a good mindset, energy to be in. Klaus, one of the other thoughts that I had listening is how do you integrate the different perspectives from the different colors? How do you talk about that as a means of analysis, as a way to look at things? I mean, how do you frame it? How do you make the transition to put that context in a different ways of looking at it? And then how do we ultimately make decisions about what would be the best way to move forward? Those two questions. Yeah. Well, the technical term for this is target group marketing. Very common approach done all the time. You define a customer group. That actually was my job in working for Metro Cashion Carry in these teams in 30 countries is a corporate head of target group marketing. So we would take a customer group that had, let's say, take out pizza shops or grocery stores attached to gas stations. I mean, it's a very specificity, but you had to have enough customers of that type in a region. And then we would go in and so my team of analysts would go and talk with these customers, ask them if they can take an assessment of their needs. So we would take inventory, go into their walking coolers and store rooms and look at their buying receipts. And we would give them money for it or whatever. But we would take a total inventory of who they are and what they do. And then we would say, so do you need delivery or do you go shopping yourself and what do you prefer? So we would look at the habits that united these groups. And then we would develop a summary. And first of all, we develop training materials with over 6,000 salespeople in the field. So we would develop very narrow market specific approaches because even in Germany, Berlin is different than Hamburg. I mean, Berlin had a huge influx of Turkish populations and that was not the case in Hamburg. So you would go to sort of local and regional representations and train your sales force. This is who these people are. This is how you find them. This is how you talk to them. And then we would talk with operations saying, OK, there are some service requirements you need to adapt to, let's say, the payment structures or way to order and so on. And then we would talk to procurement and say, OK, you need to change your pack sizes here or we need to introduce a couple of items that are not on the shelf right now. So that's target market specific action. And so I see this very similar here. You develop a group that is profiled, sufficiently narrow but not so narrow that you miss it. I mean, so it's sufficiently narrow in ways that categorizes fairly accurately how these folks think. So when you take, for example, a Christian, let's say, self-professed religious people. It doesn't have to just be Christian. You can be Muslims, whatever. So they are living in a certain world of they're looking at the world through very specific classes. So their vision is quite aligned in how they interpret the world around them. And then when you do that for each color, and they are really generalities, and this is the power of the spiral dynamics because it frames the most common personality traits that you see in these Copics. Also understanding that people are oftentimes in multiple colors and that different colors light up depending on stress factors and external influence factors. But most commonly, this Christian person lives in this reality. So then, and I see this constantly, particularly when politicians want to talk and so on, they fail to connect with the reality perception of their audience. Yeah, they're not really communicating because they have no audience centricity about what they're conveying. Yeah, I just want to say that Jimmy Carter in particular, but Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, all three of them could quote chapter and verse of the Bible, taught Sunday school, were very sturdy, even if Clinton in particular didn't live his life that way very much, but they really tried to address. And it was Jimmy Carter who opened the door for evangelicals to embrace Nixon afterward, or sorry, Nixon was before, but to go toward Reagan. Jimmy Carter opened the door for religious people to connect politics and religion more than they had before. It's weird, but Carter was a totally credible religious person, completely credible. And I don't understand how that never worked in the favor of fixing the world somehow. Yeah, one of the other things that I'm thinking is, this approach could be used for whatever subject matter where I happen to be talking about, to reach different audiences. And I think that's the closest goal in writing this section, exactly. Yeah, it doesn't have to be about farming. It could be about so many different critical pieces. Yeah. And Klaus, in the spirit of Neo books, as you write or edit the GPT-generated texts around the section on spiral dynamics, you might want to think about what Stuart just said in the sense of there might be an explanatory nugget right in the middle that says, here's how this system works and here's what's going on, that could be reused in other contexts than this particular book's thesis about soil, water, and agriculture. And then after, when you start implementing, then all the implementation will be specific to this domain because it has to be given what this book is about. But there could be a middle nugget or two that are very reusable as clean explanations of why this framework is useful in contexts like this. Yeah, it becomes part of our editorial policy. Yeah. If I could put something right here before I go into food, is that where that would fit? Yes, exactly. And just, hey, what is this spiral dynamics thing and why is it useful? Just a paragraph or two like that would be great right here. And then those would be reusable. Yeah. By the way, I don't know exactly what the relationship is. I know they're associated close between spiral dynamics and auto-sharmer and theory U. But I don't know if anybody saw the free theory U course that auto-sharmer is offering that I posted in the OGM listserv this morning. So I've been with auto-sharmer's course this a minute first came out, 2016, 17, something like this when they started. And I've taken it twice. And I became a member of the Bresenzing Institute that he has set up. I connected the Palouse region there with the auto-sharmer's Bresenzing workshop. And I actually did a one minute TikTok to help them apply for it. No, I'm fascinated by the auto-sharmer theory of social change. And it completely fits in. And auto-sharmer will be the first one to agree here. It needs to be combined with spiral dynamics because the whole point of theory U is to take a problem, let's say, or a deep-seated issue and run it through the iceberg model as a first step to explore its connectedness and its interrelations and dependencies and then from there dig deeper and deeper through social inter-place to align people's understanding of what this really is down to an area of called Bresenzing. So at the bottom of the U is Bresenzing. That means we are all now understanding the same issue. We know and accept what we're dealing with. And then you move up from there into crystallizing, crystallizing meaning where do we need to go? And then you go into prototyping and actualizing. So now it's a fascinating, particularly for me having been in project management so much of my life. I thought it was just an amazing way to look at project management. I love that. I'm looking through my brain and I found a place where spiral dynamics and theory U might overlap a bunch, which is the four fields of conversation, talking nice, talking tough, reflective dialogue and generative type dialogue. Because it feels like it kind of moves up the spiral somewhat and there may be other places. But I wonder if there's anybody out there who has sort of more formally done the comparison or even tried to implement something that combines the two theories. So they don't call it spiral dynamics, but they call it they have this social theater kind of thing where social Bresenzing theater. Yeah, that's where that happens, because in the social Bresenzing theater you accept that people come from different places. They live, they are perceiving differently. And then so to move everyone to the same understanding is being done through this social Bresenzing theater, which involves dancing and meditation. So that's how this is incorporated. Cool. Super interesting. Thank you. I'd totally forgotten that I'd ever put social Bresenzing theater in my brain, which I did in 2013, apparently. It's just connecting the dots, really. It's all out there. Yep. The truth is out there. Oh, wait, that comes from the wrong TV show. So just to bring you up to date on where our conversation has taken me in my thinking, when I sat down to start to do a little bit more writing about the little fable or fantasy or piece of science fiction for the future, the first thing that popped up was, oh, OK. So as people implement some of the ideas I suggest and using my models for agreement, what's the agreement that all of these people that come together? What do they come up with? And that's the next piece of writing that I will do, that piece of fantasy about how they come together and how they reach some form of consensus agreement about moving the world forward in a different way. That's cool. Yeah. And that will actually be fun to do. But the COU school would argue that the starting point is to align intentions. So you come from this problem. You move down into iceberg model. Then you move into the social presencing to combine people coming from different walks of life, different education, different beliefs, and so on. But they're all joined by a common intention. Yeah. And the common intention here, beautiful. And I would articulate that in the following way. When you take any problem, if you choke up big enough, you can usually come to a shared intention. So the shared intention here is, how do we not let the species go over a cliff on its current trajectory? And the intention is, we're here to fix this. We're here to see what we can do as an intelligent group, subgroup of the species, to prevent us from going over the cliff. But yeah, an important piece to articulate. Yeah. I had Jerry, I would say, even with the same OGM, we're not necessarily aligned around climate change. What is it? How does it work? What are the key influence factors? And how would you pull the most, the biggest level that's out there? And what is it? Well, that's why I was sort of bringing in my conversations with this fellow Scott and his sort of opinions on it. And then that caused me to go out and look at a bunch of things to try to understand Amory Loven's objections to nuclear and a bunch of other things. And none of this is posted any place, especially clearly. And I have one little excerpt that I've put in my brain that is from a private mailing list that I'm on, that Amory Loven's and Carl Page are both on. And Carl Page is Larry Page's brother. Larry Page is the co-founder of Google. I've met Carl Page before a couple of times. He's really, really interested in a bunch of stuff, very earnestly, but he's also a proponent for nuclear now. And also what Scott recommended was to watch the documentary Nuclear Now by, what's his name, the guy who did Oliver Stone. Apparently, Nuclear Now is really good. And another big component of nuclear as a pragmatic solution for right now is Stewart Brand. So there's a bunch of people out there who were saying, no, no, no, we need to do nukes. We can do small, fast, controllable, non-dangerous nukes. Here's the technology, let's go do a lot of that because, but there's no, and this is the sumper. There's no place where these things are easily and clearly described, where they are annotatable by people who object or want to clarify or want to discuss, where they are clearly explained in simple models by science popularizers or other people, et cetera. I'm really interested in that thing. Where do we put things? Right now where we put things is the internet and YouTube videos. So let me go back a second because Jerry, what you're pointing to to me is the example of Einstein's mantra, that the thinking that's got us here is not gonna get us to a solution. And the thinking of most people is one of advocacy and being right. And people not realizing that they may have a little piece of the solution, but they don't have the whole solution. And in conversation with others, they're not really, not really, really open to influence. By what they hear. Because they're advocating for their position. And it really, this was in the Zen calendar mantra for yesterday said, it's a, yeah. Good, good though that works. Oscar Wilde, I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real. I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real. My interpretation of that for purpose of this discussion is that we see through our own filters. And sometimes we're totally blind to a different reality of what could be present in a certain situation. Okay, but we see the world through our own filters. I'm also informed by the brilliance of in her work with conflict resolution, Angelus Arian. Hmm, I love her. Fourfold way, I always use this in teaching, fourfold way, and I'll translate in a minute, my translation, show up, pay attention, tell your truth, don't be attached to outcome. Show up is be present to have a real conversation. Pay attention is really listen to what's being said. Okay, show up, pay attention, tell your truth but recognize that there are multiple truths and don't be attached to outcome means don't be an advocate but be open to influence by what you hear. Wow, that's a really interesting point. I never thought about that. I need to rethink my entire thesis based upon what you just said so that we can, in collaboration, come up with a solution that might be even better than any one person said. So this notion of no nukes versus nukes, well, it's black and white thinking, you know? There might be situations where nukes are the best thing. Just throw that out as an example from what we're talking about. Stuart, thank you for reminding me about her. I love Angela Serian, by the way, and have the fourfold way but haven't really fully read it but did annotate the fourfold way and brief here which I should probably rephrase as the four principles of the fourfold way which I'll do right now. But to me, it's a brilliant mantra for being in real dialogue. Hmm? Absolutely. And what the thing I wanted to add also to what you're saying is that the listening thing is far more important than most people realize because most people stay in advocacy because they haven't unloaded the advocacy from their brain. And until and unless they get that out of their head and know that the other person has heard it, they're gonna stay on that horse. And they will be hard to dissuade, to dismount and relax and do something else. Now, once they feel like they've been sort of heard and absorbed, and if good questions come back or if there's engagement, then they're engaged. And we don't realize this a lot. So when said a long time ago, I coined the term dual log which is a two concurrent monologues. Beautiful. But also, and I thought you were gonna go here but what you just said also speaks to the idea of even one person stepping off of their advocacy role, meaning they're just throwing out the information that they know and that they understand. But their mindset isn't one of advocacy. Their mindset is one of wisdom thinking to generate levels of wise thinking, wise outcomes, not my outcome. Klaus, back to what you're saying a moment ago about red, blue, orange being the most salient layers of spiral dynamics for this book and for this activity, which sounds like right to me. So maybe what the book does is it says, here are all the different layers and how they work. And we're just gonna play out three of them which seem like the most important ones and then go deeper into those three colors, those three layers and play out some kind of strategy or approach or even have a vignette or a short story or an 800 word blog post length thing that goes fully in that direction, in that mode of speaking with that approach. That would be really interesting because it would exemplify what you're talking about really nicely and it would then put it in the book. And you don't need then to do all layers. And I think doing all layers would be too much. It would also distract from the important ones. So I really liked the idea of just doing the three in more depth. Yeah. Does that work for you? Yeah, hold on. I think that's, let me just, so what we were saying is, so I will lay in here, probably an extract from the summary of Spiral Dynamics. What is it? How does it work? And then coming to the end of it, so this is, hold on, we can take this out and say it's done. And then we could continue here talking in color. Yeah. But narrowing it down to just the three layers, right? Yeah. So I would, I'm just for myself. Yeah, sure. So talking in color and then I would start out by saying idiosyncrasies, I guess that's what I meant to say. Yes. And world view. These are still explanations of red. And what I'm suggesting here is play this out as the story of red, like tell the story. If you're going to explain, and I think you probably need some explanation, but what I'm saying is, run through the scenario that the book presents through the lens of Spiral Dynamics for each of these colors, like tell me what that story actually is, propose one. So question, okay? Yes. And I missed many a meeting and you guys may have talked about this and maybe not, right? As a matter of editorial policy, okay? What is the purpose of the Neo book? Is it to move people to action? Is it to inform in a broad way? What's- So a Neo book could be any kind of book. It could be a persuasive book. It could be drama. It could be a play. It could be anything. Okay. The conceits behind the Neo book are several. One is that books are these sort of static souvenirs. Books are kind of inert and there's snapshots of a lively community at a point in time. And what's really interesting is the lively community and all the information contained in the book loosened into the world and made useful for people who want to act on what the book is about. And books don't do any of that. Books are basically little prisons for words is the conceit. And also that many things that are written very well in books could be reused in other books that don't have the same ending or that are about a different topic. So when the Spiral Dynamics module in the book that Klaus is writing is a really perfect example because I can easily imagine a book that has the same first four chapters and then instead of Spiral Dynamics it posits or uses a different framework for and here's how we might approach doing this. And those would be parallel volumes in a series that says, hey, this series is about fixing the earth except we're gonna put a series of different lenses on what to do about it. And you could see that. And that would be like a really nice use of Neo books as a collection. And then the module explaining Spiral Dynamics could be used in a different series or in a different book about some other topic entirely not about fixing the world but about interpersonal relationships or team dynamics or whatever. And so this composability is like the second great virtue I think of Neo books is that if you author for composability then you wind up having a series of linked nuggets that make up a lot of different books and a lot of different ideas. And by the way, you may not have to read every chapter of every book you run into because a lot of them are gonna start sharing some chapters and you'll be like, yep, I don't have to read chapter four. I already read that it was in the last book and that should not be a terrible thing. That should be a great thing. Yes, okay. Okay. So that's kind of where we're going and to me books are souvenirs. They're just snapshots in time. I am sort of over the book. Yep, absolutely. Do I change the title a little bit here? It sounds, you'll find the right title once you sort of generate the thing but does it make sense what I was saying? I just want you to ask chat GBT to generate an 800 word essay in the framing of read answering the question about all the generative ag stuff that's in the book, in the outline so far. So if you can sort of as much as you can cue it with the framing of the book, what is the actual essay that you post or publish to people who think in red? And that goes there. And then same exact topic except now you're talking to blue and just do exactly the same exercise and then same for orange. And I think that the difference between the three I have a funny feeling is going to be really, really interesting. And Stuart, if this doesn't sound good to you I'll also like leap in. But I'm just saying that the more operational the more hands-on the book appears especially late in the book which is where we are I think the better. And then you're not being proscriptive but you're being descriptive if I use those words, right? Yeah. Yeah, so maybe this direction here. Yeah. And not just about our connection with the biosphere but about what actions to take what to do and why. And what to do and why is important because the why GPT will be clever enough to connect the why to the color. And the why is going to change dramatically given the color that we're in. It'll be interesting to see how that comes up. Yeah. Yeah. I'm willing to bet that the answers your 800 word essays are substantially different because I can imagine that you would open with a different thing for each color. You're opening salvo that the thing you say to get interest would be different if you do someone in red, blue or orange. Very different. Yeah, I mean, I actually had to modify the, where are we? Are you looking for zoom? Are you looking for actually good? I actually had to modify this question several times. Yes. So here's the question I asked. Yeah. So you might want to copy much of this question except now ask for advice around that question. What is the answer for a red audience? Yeah. For a spiral dynamics red audience. Yeah. That should yield something pretty interesting. So when you get back the results from chat GPT, what do you do with them? Well, I edited it. I have to edit it. Okay. All right. Thank you. And so the way this book is going, I think chat GPT will get credit as a co-author. I mean, I think that like Reed Hoffman just published a book where chat GPT is his co-author on purpose. He did it really fast. That's great. And I think that's totally fine and clear because then it's like, yep, we asked questions of the global intelligence. It answered back. We edited those results along with our words and here it is. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as we all know, at least to me, one of the most difficult pieces of writing something is getting that first draft out. And if chat GPT can do a credible job with it, there you go. That's a pretty standard approach now, Stuart. I mean, the students are using it, lawyers are using it to pick out the first draft and then you realize you missed out on the question or you put the comment the wrong place. And so then you redo that and then you still have to edit it. Yeah, of course. But you're getting to like 70%, 60, 70% of what you're trying to say. Now it's amazing. I don't know if I told you guys this last week or before but a guy named Sammy and I, he's a Finn who lives in Melbourne. He and I are trying to stand up a community for ethical cyborgs. And we asked, he did most of the prompt engineering. He asked chat GPT to come up with what should we name this community and what should the tagline be? And then to riff on that in a couple of different ways and we have a hundred choices that are really interesting, 50 of which are things I would never have imagined sort of putting in the mix. And so our creative space for thinking through what to call this community is much larger than we could have made it, which I really, really appreciate. Yeah, I mean, it's a tool, you know? I was, when PCs came out, I was a hotel GM at the time, actually working for harsh investment for Harold Schnitzer. And I thought I've had a crazy life. But I was bought, I mean, I was managing this hotel and I got bought and so I bought myself an Apple 2 Plus 64K memory and I put, I put Lotus 1.2.3 on it. And I loaded up the entire hotel budget. And my boss came in in the afternoon and made all kinds of changes. You know, you have these big sheets there, right? And it, I mean, it would have taken you hours to recalculate the scene. Then we went out for dinner. Well, I went up and inserted the changes and we printed it in for breakfast. I gave him a new printout. He just about fell off his chair, you know? And that immediately got me promoted to be the tech guru for harsh investment. Of course. And so then I started working at the Klamath was sold in Berkeley in America. No way. So here's Schnitzer properties, which was harsh investments. So I'm gonna say harsh alumni, which is what I do. And I'm gonna attach you to it. Oh, I don't say, oh, you're attaching me to it. I mean, I was... You're a harsh alumni. And I'm gonna connect this to alumni, which is alumni. Watch this of everything. Yeah, I mean, he let me, I could buy anything I wanted, you know, in computer. He actually put PCs on everybody's desk. He was so enamored with this playing what if games, you know, that allowed you to, these press sheets allowed you to do. And what year is this class? Okay, so that was 1981, something like this, 82, yeah. I've been digging through, I'm melting boxes of my archives and all that. And I've been running into things from that vintage. And it's super, super interesting. And I'm getting old enough that I'm finding dot matrix printed, print up letters that I sent, right? And it's like, ah, I know exactly when, I know exactly where that was and what that device was. Oh my God, that was... I was working at AT&T from 81 to 86. Didn't know that. In the marketing department. There you go. When PCs first started to pop up in, you know, on desktops. Wow. The thing that pops to mind was, you know, when I left, when I decided to leave, so I bought an AT&T computer, you know, I don't know, 30, 40% employee discount computer printer. And when it arrives, the warranty is 30 days. Wow. Wow. And I've said, that's brutal. That's just awful. 30 days. That's crazy. Oh, well, memories. Yeah, exactly. I know, it's very funny. Well, we all go back that far. I mean, I remember the first bi-directional dot matrix printer. I was sitting in front of this thing for half an hour. I was just like, yeah. Oh man. I still have my Mac classic upstairs. I don't know what to do with it. I have one of the classics that has all the names of the original team written. Their signatures are inside the case. I just have no idea who wants it or, you know, I don't think it's valuable, but I don't wanna just dump it. Yeah, what an extraordinary experience I had. I mean, it was when corporations were still doing huge amounts of training. I had the equivalent of an MBA, a grounding in technology, and then sales training. State of the art sales training. The last exercise was a three-week in-residence sales school in Denver, I remember. And if you didn't pass the sales case, you were out of a job. You got fired. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's a lot of pressure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people did get fired. I mean, it was just, you know, they had actors playing senior executives and organizations and you had to make the sale as part of a sales team. Yeah. That sounds pretty brutal. Yeah, it was. Get it to your attention. And I went to a Wharton and I did the management simulation game and my team won that year. And I found the paper we turned in, which I printed on my dot matrix spinner, so. So, all right, you went to Wharton that year. So do you remember right across from City Hall the clothespin building in Philadelphia? I think so, yeah. Big, big artifact. Every new building had to have an external piece of art. A big piece of art, yeah. That's where I worked for AT&T. Oh, okay. The clothespin building was, the clothespin was an Oldenburg statue? Oldenburg sculpture? Classic? Could have been. Could have been. But it was right opposite City Halls, like 15th and Market in Philadelphia. Oh, God. Who created the Philly Clubs of Oldenburg? That's him, yeah. Cool. Ah, the good old days. And we have so much tech now. It's crazy and we still can't solve these problems. Yeah, it's just making stuff more complicated than it needs to be. Yeah, yeah. And like Levi Strauss, the suppliers are making lots of money along the way. Cool. What do we want to queue up for next week? I think we're making really nice progress. And Stuart, let us know when you sort of had a rethink and want to regenerate or re-edit or re-whatever your manuscript, because the goal is to do this multiple times in different ways and to figure out how to make a regular routine of making new books. And if you're interested, I know you have links to some known publishers yourself. No, absolutely. Mm-hmm. And Klaus, I don't know if you know, but Stuart is part of the reason that April is with Baird Kehler. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yep, yep. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. One of the fun connections. Yeah. April is on the Camino right now. She is one week in on a three-week trip. Yesterday's hike was really, really hard and it poured rain. You know, I saw her newsletter reporting that. Yeah. And I got momentarily jealous of that trek. She's carrying a pretty heavy pack because she has a computer and all her valuable electronics are on her back. Wow. Her back's pretty heavy. Pretty heavy, yeah. And she's got luggage that there's a group that moves her one bag forward to the next place the next day. So she's not carrying everything, but still her pack pack is too heavy. Yeah. So I did a few years ago. It was a quote, quote, El Camino-like experience at a little pilgrimage that David White, the poet, did. Oh, sweet. Through Tuscany. Oh. But he equated part of it and he's got a bunch of poems about, you know, his experience with El Camino. Oh, fabulous. Yeah. Yeah. As a matter of fact, one of the things that I remember from one of his poems is that when you finish whatever that means, you're supposed to leave something behind. I think it was his niece who chose... You left his niece behind? You know, his niece chose to leave her shoes behind when she had been done with the trek. Yeah. He writes about that. That's cool. You also get a certificate and you get that at the beginning and then they put stamps in your passport, basically along the way. You get a seashell because that's one of the icons of the Camino. It's an interesting thing. See you all next week and in between and other calls. Yeah. It is, if it means anything, it is Labor Day next Monday. That's right. My God. Mm-hmm. Crazy. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's where he started. I can't be any better than that. So that's work. I know. That's where he started the call, was like, ah, it looks like fall is coming. Yeah. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you. See you soon. Yeah. Bye-bye.