Not not yet, but give me a link in it soon. I'll be You look in the chat. There we go. Oh, perfect Paul Smith on Star Trek. No, there's a character in the new generation That's awesome. Wow I wonder if he sued over IP rights for or he probably he's probably getting a royalty for the use of his name. I'm sure Um, so this is the ogm check and call on thursday may 26 2022 So much going on Eric do you want to start us off or you just took a bite of yogurt, but do you want to start off with I'll wait I'll wait for my turn. Let other people go Oh, but I mean your turn could be right this minute since you were already kind of like in motion I'm gonna do a show and tell so I'd rather other people go and then when people are The news is too depressing. So when you get too depressed come back to me. Well, excellent. Okay. Good. I like that very much. Thank you Mr. Caron's are nice to see you sounds like you've been busy. I do want to kick us off and bring us up to date with what you've been up to Basically cleaning the house I Let's see At the Internet archive There's been a shift in our team and so I basically been taking more responsibility and Handling a lot of the things that this team member used to do so That's kind of settled down now. So here I am back There's an interesting Email I sent to Jerry. I don't know if everybody knows Bob Stein, but early CD-ROM interactive developer and designer and He's working on tapestries to Basically create a more visual way of looking at web objects So instead of having a link you have the object right next to the You know, you can basically see either a book or a video or You know some kind of snippets Right next to it and kind of have a more visual way of going through a story quite phone and Yeah, just trying to keep the Internet archive serving books videos and Other stuff looks like my screen has frozen for me at least but you are frozen and quite the action figure sort of gesture though I like it I Look like you're applying a judo chop to an invader And overwhelming them see if this works Going going going no it doesn't I can't start video again. Oh man. That is weird, huh? Oh Anyway, that's that's my check-in. I'm here to listen and certainly there's Large annoyance that people are killing people all over the world tonight but I'm thankful that Nobody's doing it near me, but Boy, this is kind of an annoying Situation and yeah, I don't need any guns today. Thank goodness. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you Let's go Doug Carl Stacy Well, I don't quite know what's on my mind. I've been struggling with a group of economists Who see the hockey stick and they say oh opportunity to invest and The climate people look at the same graph the exponential growth and say suicide And there's not a dialogue between the two I Think there's been some complaint in the emails about Schmackenburgers not making any proposals as to what to do But his main proposal is let's look at the way we think Because thinking has to be part of the solution if there's to be one and One of the obvious things is that people are still holding on to the idea that Responding to climate change is a business opportunity But all new startups use energy QED so that's my check in right now. I'll probably have more later, but Thank you Um, I think QED gill that because all startups use energy. No, no, I know. I know what means Jerry I just don't know what Doug is asserting is demonstrated. Oh, I was trying to explain the assertion not QED, but oh, sorry Go ahead Doug. So what I was trying to assert is that startups themselves are of the necessity energy users So they cut our in contradictions of the needs of cutting co2 So we're at a real jam and it's going to take some real creativity to get out of it if we possibly can To me it looks unlikely But that just has to heighten our energy or intuition or creativity or empathy Thanks, darling Let's go Carl Stacy Stewart Hey Carl Hey, yeah, so well one line of thought I've been having was I Don't know if you're from I think I might have even posted it In a previous meeting but Ray Anderson the founder of interface carpets. He had You know the Ted talk about the business logic of sustainability and he talks about the earlicks Equation for environmental impact which is population times the fluence times technology and then he talks about we need he talks about needing to like a t2 to be in the denominator and things and it kind of all gets It Basically the the hockey sticks you're talking about it's like the finance people want to take the denominator to zero so they get their Type of thing but that that's making the system so fragile. I mean, it's manifesting in Supply chain crisis We in the name of like just in time. It's been like we've removed Albra redundant redundancy. There's robustness we don't we have multiple single points of failure and Stuff so it seems like the pandemic has been a very nice example of that I mean as supply chains got shattered things broke a lot everywhere. So Yeah, I never never did I haven't Really done no time to look at any studies But I mean the air system shut down for a week back and as a result of 9-eleven. What was the propagation of That wave that just wiped how many companies got totally wiped out because they didn't have the air System for a week let alone what we've been going through two years ago. So That's one part of it as far as activities going on. I've been Working a lot with the international Society for the system sciences. They've got a their annual conference coming up in July. So one of my primary Mentors is doing a series of three workshops There it turns out talking to several the people there's Several that have been using the brain Software so I'm actually looking at developing a I triple S brain It's gonna be one of my projects of the next sweet. Who's who's your mentor there? I'm William William E Smith Odii.com is his website So yeah, he's got this whole appreciation influence and control Framework it's about Purpose and power and yeah, it's just Yeah Meeting him like 20 years ago. It's really like the whole the whole basis for my Sensemaking is like either recognizing or Intuiting This power relationships among Among things so it's usually three or nine Component systems Frameworks and stuff Um, can you say a little more he wrote a book called the creative power transforming ourselves organizations in our world? I have not read it, but Can you say a little do you remember something about his relationship to power or how he explains? Oh? Yeah, I guess it's The way I usually Try to sum it up at least introduce it to people is that there's The control power is what most people think of power and it's like power over but then there's the influence power cooperative power and That's about like power with and then there's Appreciation which is like a power for and it's really really People have a lot of problems with purpose and stuff because it's got religious connotations But I kind of it's that authentic commitment to your purpose is what generates your sphere of influence We have that term and then it's like your sphere of appreciation And if all the other things he hadn't done he's actually taught he's been tying things to color too so you can actually go through and get a Just based on your color preferences, you'll get like this whole profile of your power Relationships and stuff so interesting. Yeah Thank you Gil do you want to talk a little bit about? control coordination or is that a good I'm all tangent Small tangent. Well a Norbert wiener in this is book cybernetics what 1948 or 47 or something like that Define cybernetics as a science of communication and control and I forget the whole rest of the subtitle Limit machines and living things and I've always thought that coordination was a better word than control there Because control implies a hierarchical structural thing. It's absent In living systems and you know arguably should be absent in human systems So I just reacted to that in the a c a s is a new New term for me or the new model of appreciation appreciation influence and control And so I just you know triggered The word swap for me in my head The other thing I'll say here is that I just I Carl I appreciate the Reference back to I triple s I have an early career path that was deep into cybernetics and system science PhD that I never did And a lot of influence from Stafford beer and various others. So Thanks for the reminder. I'm gonna go poke over there. So what's going on? Also, um, Pete if you want to jump in a lot of what you and jordan are working on and talking about is coordination among Distributed sovereigns and how that plays out Um, yeah working on it. Okay. Good check. Um, you know actually, uh now that you mentioned it Jordan and I are actually going to do a working session At at least the first working session next week sometime Um, so if you're interested in sovereigns decentralization and coordination Federation, um, thanks skill I'll be putting up a A time poll Some somewhere in the metaproject space Um Uh today probably and gill. I'll make sure to to let you know about that too. Thank you Pete. Awesome. Thanks Pete Um, Eric, you were just putting in the chat about the connections episodes And I it was my intention to do a watch party together at some point and just do a pop-up call Where we just sit and watch the episode together and maybe hit pause now and then And do some weaving and connecting and and composting and and so forth So let me let me figure out when that works, but I'd love to do that. That just yeah, just to comment about rubber It's uh, they show the mac the british raincoat and the impact that had You mean the macintosh the yeah the rubberized Like the the song penny lane the the banker never wears a mac Oh I didn't know that was in there. I totally forgotten these episodes So I need and and some people were motivated by atlas shrugged some people were motivated by call sagan I was motivated by the connection series. So it's very it's like central to my notion of There's a good book out there that talks about adjacencies Synchronicities and a third kind of thing that are sort of the accidents of history Um, I'm forgetting what it is. I'll see if I can find it, but uh, it's pretty interesting Let's go back to the queue stacey steward gill Thinking which direction I want to go I think I'm going to go back to what dug said about the maybe we need to re-examine how we think And I'm going to put a couple of people on the spot because I think that it would be really nice And I know that wendy and dug both have a busy couple of weeks But I think a call to just examine how people think which is what hazel henderson was trying to draw the connection between the economy the fact that finance and technology has a large concentration of The adolescent male mind If we could have a discussion about that I think it would be very helpful and to connect it over to like this call Like wendy's on it now, but you guys when I came on it was all men And you're talking about star trek which is wonderful But I can't really relate to it So even when we're thought thinking about having like pop-up calls about something There are certain things that bring more people in like music for example a certain song or many songs everybody would come with their own Or if it were movies or like i'm not saying that there's something wrong with picking One call to do a pop-up on but i'm saying be conscious of the fact That anybody watching the call in the first place is predisposed to being there And i'm just suggesting that Well again, what i'm suggesting is what I started with a call that I would love to have dug and wendy Actually leading. I think gill you might enjoy being there stew I definitely want to be there and anybody else But I kind of want to put you on this spot to actually do that Because if we don't again especially like when eric's talking about the bankers especially in relation to how People in technology and business which is all of you guys How we think and who you're surrounded with and you know, that's not I don't I'm not pointing the finger at anybody Every one of us have to become aware of our own unconscious biases, but I think if we do it together it could be Very productive for many reasons and I am complete Thanks, sissy There's exercises you can take on line even to poke at unconscious biases and things like that And we clearly go ahead season I just want to stress the importance of doing it together as a group Not anybody can go and figure out what it is They want to figure out but there's something in the process of doing things together And having honest conversations about those topics. Yes Um, just just to push a little bit. Uh, who's going to organize that call? Well, I don't know Doug. Are you going to take me up on my off my uh prompt? Well, I like it but then as Somebody said the next two weeks for me are just totally booked. So it would have to be after But my thought is that most thinking about thinking Keeps western civilization as the default background And I think we've got to go further than that Um, Schmacktenburger is helping. I think the Graeber book is an incredible contribution Uh, I've been pretty deep in Chinese studies And learning classical Chinese because it's a different way of thinking But I don't know how to share that in a group conversation yet Well, I'm going to push back though because it was your words that said maybe we need to re-examine how we think And I'm going to offer the suggestion Of going back to Hazel Henderson Before schmacktenburger saying what she already said because she already said it So why the need to bring in something new? Let's go back to there. Like why is that voice ignored? so In in in my first book getting to resolution Which came after practicing will offer 10 years I was trying to unpack What I observed in 10 years and couldn't participate in and it was all the right wrong fault blame Win-lose kinds of thinking that led to no place because they didn't really solve problems So stacey, I'm happy to work on this with you because I think it's kind of, you know, the critical thing The absolute critical thing. How do we converse with each other? How do we allow wise people to get together Converse and see what emerges out of that something that I call third body. It's something more than either Or and people need to be in a in a place of kind of emotional intelligence They need to not be advocating and they need to see what can emerge as a as a As a solution without having a point of view in some ways. So happy to work on that So most of you if if you set up a meeting time in the afternoon next week I probably couldn't get there and would appreciate it I'm good with that. I'll send out a when to meet Great and I'm going to be offline for the next couple of days. So Her next week. Hey, it's the memorial day weekend's coming up. So, hey, there we are and and there's actually like the ability to move around and Things are kind of slowly reopening. It's very strange um Let me just say uh that uh, I knew Hazel Henderson and her husband Ellen K Who was a fund manager? Which gave her the income to do some of what she did in florida I didn't find it radical enough Doug, who do you find radical enough if anyone? I would have well at the moment Uh, I would start with schmacktenberger, but I wouldn't stop there But I'd have to think about it. And if we have a conversation, I'll rack my brain and come up with More people not many And if you if you would think about schmacktenberger where because the opus is so vast It's hard to know what you're pointing to. Uh, I sent out. I think the the new one Um, uh, I'll I'll send it again as a link So it occurs to me that Many many many many different and often brilliant people have been trying to shift the way we see ourselves Though we see the earth All those kinds of things and I can I can point to sort of dozens that I've been collecting up over the years and also from what was just said um That the sweet spot for each of us of what is just far enough outside our horizon that will believe it or go with it And just far outside enough our horizon that it will pull us into a new way of seeing our being is probably kind of different um, and so we might cluster in different places or whatever and I'm interested in the collection Of ways of shifting how we see and how those things kind of play together so that everybody can find their way to the one that Hooks them and pulls them allows them To consider the possibility of pondering the notion that they might change some behavior or some other kind of thing because The kinds of questions we're asking people to to do Are normally the things that happen only during transformational crisis where the economy is wiped out and then you must do something else or where There's been some movement that shifts the way everything is done And all the assumptions that happen and early industrial Society is kind of an example of that being foisted on people not through crisis But but through just the the sheer mechanisms of law and and effort and and sort of enterprise. I'll say I guess But but I think Sharing our collections of what's just right and what causes that what provokes that change or maybe telling our stories Of what caused me to start seeing differently Would be really useful And and not just among ourselves but posting those out in the public view So that other people can bump into those stories and be inspired and say oh, oh that sounds good I think I'll read some Stafford beer or some Hazel Henderson or some Mary Catherine Bateson or whoever so and and and It's it's fun to stir the soup and talk about these sorts of things But it's frustrating and I think Johan's post to the list was really interesting It's like it's it's it's like brain candy or crack to sit and make citations and great have great metaphors But how do we actually at least Share these things out more than we do And and second how do we act on them more or make them more actionable in different ways? So let's go Stuart Gill Hank Yeah, um, thanks gerry just to pick up on on what you were saying Um, as I kind of look under rocks and on top of mountains looking for What some of the keys are for the for the for the huge challenges we're all facing um, it seems that everybody is saying That the biggest challenge is how human beings can operate in a different way um And so for you know for the past 40 years I've had this strange vision of Of humanity on a conveyor belt and a bell jar comes down And somebody gongs the bell jar and people come out on the other side able to You know function in the kind of society that we all might like to live in And and Everybody has identified that as the problem, but nobody seems to know exactly how to do it So I don't have an answer, but that's that's the conundrum and maybe if some of us gather together We can figure out some of those pieces that will Change the way people think and and as a result of changing how they think how they act um My check-in very quickly is that uh, thank Goodness that there are people like steve curin better work in the world who aren't afraid to just you know shout out That the emperor has no clothes when it's time for Something to happen Thanks, I'm glad the word cybernetics came up because it reminded me of The first book I ever bought in my life I remember as a high school senior asking my father to write a check to buy maxwell malts's psycho cybernetics which is one of One of the first and early books about the importance of how we think so it's really interesting, you know Here we are 55 almost 60 years later and that same word Just just popped up um One of the big keys is listening Is is is is needing to really listen to each other So I I I think I'm bordering my thinking lately has been bordering on you know, um Spending the rest of my life as a as a poet and a philosopher Who knows Jerry said who who might some of them be so I've had a moment to think and I I'll come up with two People who I think are radical enough But it also shows the problem because I don't know how They communicate very well One is an amazing guy pietrem sarocan Who was head of sociology at harvard for many years? Who has the theory that human culture shifts between the phase of being materialist and being spiritualist? And that shift drives History and is pretty deep I find him pretty amazing To read but it's a heavy slog the other one Is and there we go see We could go back to that another one is even further out and that's a French scholar of chinese thought Name One of these things slipped my mind Julian is his last name j-u-l-l-i-e-n and he wrote a wonderful book called in praise Yeah, Francois and he wrote a wonderful book called in praise of blandness And the idea is the west focuses too much on the thing and loses the background and the chinese Tried to think of what is the background with everything so One way to do it is to keep our concepts bland So that the periphery is still open to us It's an amazing he's an amazing writer Um, thank you that was really helpful And pete beat me to the title um Wendy then class Oh, it's there it goes. Sorry. Yep. It was mute was struggling. Yeah. I was able to pause for a minute. Hi everyone Stacey, thank you so much for bringing up Bringing this up and framing it and kind of putting the press request into the group. Um I I don't know I got to pull back some of the thoughts so many rich things I think I've been shared and I appreciate Actually all the contributions Made so far to this, you know, how do we create change? I think one of the things that's missing that I learned along the way from the science is Really change can it's important to remember that change can happen in three ways, right? We can change our behavior Like we could practice a new behavior for 30 days create a habit right and That's one way to change things and then that changes sometimes the way we think and the way we feel about something Because we're forcing ourselves to do it for 30 days in a row Another thing is to think differently Which is one of the things that's been brought up here in this conversation today Like if we can present somebody with different facts Maybe they'll understand something or see a different perspective and then they'll change the behavior and change how they feel about it But there's also the third one which is Change how people feel about it Which is where stories come in and where inspiration comes in and where art comes in and where Pulling forward or as people have mentioned right a crisis happens and we go. Whoa like we got to do something I would prefer and I think this is what's been said I would prefer to create change that is calling people forward Then waiting for a crisis and hoping that that creates enough momentum to create change, right? And I think we've been in a world where information has been available. I'm not sure that's the the The missing piece anymore, right? We can organize it better. We can share it better Oh, yes for sure and we've gotten more data driven and less Knowledge and wisdom driven sure so all of that can be made better For sure And I think some of the pieces that are missing actually is helping people understand that they have they have control over changing first of all the kind of growth mindset kind of thing and that also feeling has is a propeller for change Then the last thing I want to add here is that change happens best as an invitation So people when they're invited, I think Jerry you made mention of like being it or someone did it being at your leading edge Like where's your as an individual your leading edge and what are you interested in learning more about when it's shoved on you Like hey, you know all this stuff. The next best thing is for you to learn this People generally resist even if it's in their best interest So the greatest change and from all the studies You know kind of point all point to this too that the greatest change comes from someone choosing that they want the change So how do we encourage that change? But through again, I think through the other two areas that I mentioned that really don't get a lot of focus And then how do we also provide easily the next best step for that person to take? So if they say to themselves I really want to understand black lives matter more. Let's say right and then and that's Unbeknownst to them, but that's going to lead them down a path where they actually contribute and become an activist Let's just use that as an example But if they say that and they don't know where to go for more information Then there's a lot of friction for them and what might have taken Six months for them to walk that path maybe takes six years Right so speeding up that process by providing people with the information At the right time and place for them not for us, but for them, right? I think is the key here Then a week I think everything everyone's contributed is is is right on and I think it's complicated And I think it's a whole system and I think it deserves much more than a conversation, right and and as you know onboarding, you know groups somebody mentioned Emotional intelligence, I think is super important here because you have to at least be able to have some distance from things in order to consider changing I all those things right come into play and there's so many different tools and ways to do that We don't talk about it enough So I want to make a brief comment here I think that everybody could change their opinion and things would still keep going badly Because so much structure is held in institutions And we have no way to leverage into them And I I wanted to pause after what Wendy just said because you put a lot of things on the table that are that are Meaty and weighty and let's just take a second and come back in Wendy right as you started talking I went and fetched a link and was going to put it in the chat And then as you as you kept talking you you were sort of saying what I was Pointing to so I'll paste it in right now I watched the video last night A father who was being interviewed by Anderson Cooper I don't know if everybody watched it and I'm going to give away the plot of the clip which is accidental But really moving which is he's a first responder goes to the school Uh and starts triaging kids coming out of the school injured and here's from a little girl Who is okay, but covered in blood that her best friend was killed and then her best friend's name turns out to be his daughter And the clip is really moving and things like that sometimes Sometimes move a few people also and and Wendy what you said about art really matters I think this is the reason poets often exist Is that they're hoping to move the needle On how we perceive things and what we see and say and how we feel and even even sometimes whether we feel And then second thing I wanted to add sorry class and Michael be right with you Was that maybe this there's a simple process here? What did I write listen? Listening inviting and helping Just going to somebody and listening deeply so that they are heard because we are in an epidemic of not listening Then inviting them to try something that's a little different a little new but useful to them not just inviting them to something Useless but different but inviting them into some some new process and I for me one of the greatest social Changed levers is somebody sort of like you who you know and trust at least a bit taking you by the hand to try something new That's a gigantic change lever that that's how so many new things happen And then helping but only helping when requested and not coming in and saying I'm from the government that I'm here to help The nine most terrifying words as Reagan put it although I disagree entirely with why and how he was saying it But but you know like that And Hank and others are totally agree about David white David white is somehow tapping into a Register that really works on these sorts of issues um class than Michael Yeah, so I'm starting there's the thought that information Unless it is placed into context is really not very helpful And the reason why we're liking why we like to listen to schmackenberger is because he provides context to the information that he summarizes And the other thing is like this so I'm I'm As you know, I'm in the food and agriculture world Which you know when you look at the Hierarchy of needs is the foundation of any society, you know the moment that Food collapses society collapses you will have chaos which is what we see unfolding right now because the latest Thought on on Newton's strategy is to strangle the food supply creates a catastrophe in North Africa which will create a wave of refugees moving into Europe so the the just the Idea, you know of thinking in such ways is so alien And so medieval in many ways. We can't even comprehend that someone would would would think that way or do that, right? But so I'm I'm trying to place information into context. So I'm working with the serocup right now on the series of webinars um, and we have fourth in four forged an alliance with a number of NGOs Like kiss the ground like world coalition and ensac and so on um, and we're working on Developing an understanding of how bad it really is But then also highlighting it what we can do about it. And so as I'm starting to structure the information Just some numbers are hit us and we all know that we have a water problem, right? The corn crop the way that corn is being corn in the u.s. It's on land the size of california, you know over 100 Million acres It's using 5.6 cubic miles of water torn from the colorado river torn out of the oca rala aquifer which is being used beyond its replenishment rate Which is going to run try probably within most of our lifetimes Is completely insane and that that is used now 40 percent is used for biofuel Another 40 percent is used for animal feeds then about 10 percent is used for hydrogenated corn syrup It's not used to feed people now They make I published an article on linked and that had over 6 000 hits On it and and over 60 people And these are all professional people from within the industry and I get You know someone from ccl calling me and saying you can't do this by alienating the industry, you know, we are We're going to have people turn against us. They won't cooperate and I'm thinking they're not going to cooperate no matter what you do so the The and this is what schmachtenberger is doing in the financial sector and duck is seeing it, right? I mean the insanity of our financial system Uh, that that drives, you know, a cold in places where you can't have any more growth Well, the same is in the food system Now the answer is obviously we need to decentralize the food system because soil is a hyper local issue You have to restore soil back to health as a first step if you want to have a Handled on climate change at all, you know, because that if you want to get, uh Uh Carbon back out of the atmosphere the only place to really put it at scale is in the soil But now you look at our oceans are collapsing What no one is paying attention to is that two-thirds of oxygen is coming out of the oceans We have removed more than 50 percent of biomass from the oceans You know in the last 100 years Because we're fishing the oceans out. Well, you have that same cycle You know of of fish basically eating and then pooping bio mass out and which fertilizes the the phytoplankton which generates the oxygen in the oceans well over The word is that about 90 percent of coral reefs will be bleached out by 2050 So so we are running, you know ice white shut into this catastrophe ahead of us That is really quite imminent And you can't get people to focus. You know, you can't get now and and but but So so where we are right now. I mean when I'm Steering towards this The farm bill in the united states is d1 communications tool that directs billions of dollars into Into the food sector farm and food sector and it's moving it into the wrong direction So we're mobilizing attention to that bill which is up in 2023 To point out the insanity of what we're doing here and educate as many people as we can on it And when you think about the way that the american political system is organized, it's brilliant, right? It's just it's just lost its way, but it's brilliant because You have a local representative who is supposed to bring your local concerns To washington and then fight for it so that you get resources brought to your local community That is then going to solve these major issues whether you need to build a bridge or whether you need to You know protect the forest or waterway or whatever, you know in our represented electives Our elected representatives are instead doing all kinds of idiotic things, but they don't focus on your local problems, right? so to We need to become practical, right? I mean we need to have Actual solutions that you can actually that only fit into your local community and it has to be hyper local So we have to think global act local kind of of buzzword But to me, it is so enormously frustrating. Do you realize we put 8.7 million tons of synthetic nitrogen on soil? Synthetic nitrogen is made from natural gas, right? So it's a huge component of the fossil fuel industry 8.7 million tons of nitrogen which doesn't bind with the soil. It's just sprayed onto the top So when it rains or when you irrigate the field it runs off Sinks into the groundwater it runs into rivers Causes enormous algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico around florida Lake Erie, you name it And and you have communities who are being impacted by this their water system shuts down They're supposed to upgrade their water system so it can fill the nitrogen out of it out of your drinking water Costing incredible amounts of money. So why does a local community not go up in arms? demanding that the farmer reduce their input of nitrogen or do what we all know steps they can take You know to to ward off the runoff and so on. So that's You know, that's that's the Where where I think systems thinking needs to be deployed in practical ways You know where you see cause and effect and do something about it Sorry long read class, thank you. Uh guild briefly then to michael Uh quick question to everybody one word answer. What's your mood right now? Um, daisy, can you translate that to a word or do you want to gesture gill? Um, yeah, I'd like a word How about a word in the chat everybody type one word in the chat listening to claus. What's the mood? What's your mood? hopeful after that interesting Roll michael you and I are just resonating you will talk, okay Thanks gill, uh michael then dug and claus if you could put your hand down yeah um What I was going to say is actually I was on the thread that wendy had had raised But it does relate to what claus was saying in one way and that is that The there's a fourth way of of change happening And that's compulsory change I mean there may be more than four, but you know, I didn't I did not hear the change that is forced upon people and to uh To what dug and Doug brought up verbally and Pete emphasized in the chat there's I I think The reason that people's opinions can change, you know following Uh, you know what what wendy was saying, but Things cannot change Is the expectation of compulsory change that you know Are our sense that like the majority of people can be pro-choice or can be pro-gun control and change Does not happen out of the the the change of mind the change of mind has been accomplished The opinions have been, you know, and individually enough people are being the change of you know, tolerant and and accepting of a woman's dominion over her own body and that, you know People should not carry guns around and use them indiscriminately, you know, it's like The the change of one of the three types that that wendy says happens And the sense of utility on everybody's part that That doesn't make any difference, you know, this isn't going to change until change is made compulsory And you know, we would all say that the idea of government compulsion to do something against your Will and philosophy that violates your sense of your own freedom In a general way is wrong but compulsory change is the only change that Americans anyway, you know expect to make a difference and and don't do much If it's not happening except, you know Be sad and complain and feel frustrated and futile and and and like what what class was saying, you know the the change that's necessary as a compulsory change from above and Granted that the compulsion may be economic and but it's still You know Top-down change rather than a bottom-up.  I just wanted to put that out there and See if we could talk around that um Thanks, Michael and in the spirit maybe of optimism and possibly confusion I think all of the above like I would like to try to move change in all these different directions as long as These changes don't neutralize one another Meaning if they're coherent in some way and start moving us toward a better regime Let's try doing top-down. Let's try doing bottom-up. Let's try doing social movements. Let's try art. Let's try everything Um, let's just keep going Doug Hank Wendy So I think that the problem for us is that the change that we need will never be popular This group and myself tend to be democratic to the core Like in conversation and participation and consensus But it just might not work And so we're in a the problem that that The bulk of the population will actually resist The things that must happen So how are those things going to happen? There's some models Mussolini, for example started as a great progressive A very interested in community and education and families When he ran into resistance he turned increasingly authoritarian That's a probable future for us Can we work hard enough To have a more centralized approach to the needs To the acts that we need In a way that would be less destructive of the culture Thanks Doug Hank Ben-Wendy Yeah A bit about change and in the sphere of checking in Uh, if you want to change the futures Of society and civilization You've got to address young people And you've got to address the people who teach young people So what's on my mind? Next week I'll be going for five days To Stockholm where from the second to the fifth And there's the Stockholm plus 50 activities Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the UNEP And on the fifth is world environment day and during my time there there'll be a number of Activities workshops dedicated dinners with school children and with their teachers and with decision makers And uh, what's going to happen is there has been a program for the last three months Uh, I'll put the link in the in the chat of uh, Swedish school teacher going around To, uh, 10 different Swedish cities and working with the schools there Uh, in order to help the children explore what they really think About, uh, climate change, uh, hunger in the world, and a number of the issues relating to the sustainable development goals Working with the children and working with their teachers. Those results will be, uh, Uh, publicized the next week. There'll be dedicated dinners with school children and decision makers Uh, we're also going to launch a series of conversations about mid-century which I wrote briefly about in around the the Plex In order to carry on in a very international way The kind of multi-generational conversations between children in different countries and elders and decision makers in different countries To try to get the voices and the choices of people and especially young people heard So that's another way to change the future Help children understand what it is that they want in the future Love that. Thank you, Hank. And um, I Harbour great optimism about the new generations The young generations that are in I think, uh, and I think they're multimodal Meaning it's sort of hard to generalize but I see in the youngest generation a bunch of young people who are incredibly smart and activated And like really in the world and understand Kind of better than I do the way things might work and are working on them And then there's a whole bunch that are completely disaffected and tuned out and really don't care and are trying to figure out how to avoid The rat race and how to avoid the, uh, unfair and broken systems and all that and just step outside step off the conveyor belt Or the the carousel and then there's a bunch of other sort of modalities And maybe at some point we should have a conversation about about young people. Uh, and in particular how to help them um Wendy Yeah, thanks. So Uh, thanks Hank too for for that update. It's it's inspiring to hear what you're working on And I kind of want to talk about that for a second and also in reply to what Michael added in, you know, the inspiration I'm going to add on here that you know being inspired by stories of people doing amazing things Um has been shown to Make people feel like they have a role to play in that maybe there's something that they can contribute And that it's not just the people we hold up on a pedestal or the people in government Who are capable of creating change and doing important things and so while I agree that Lots of important change happens top down and there are definitely changes that need to happen That could happen fastest if somebody from the top said Hey, this is what we're doing now. Whether you like it or not. This is where we're going I think that the systems are so broken to a certain degree That uh, the change also has to come from bottom up and that's also been said so I just want to point out in in light of that framing that So much so many good things are happening There are so many people doing great things in the past of course We have lots of examples from our own history about movements that have risen up but I think what's what's Frustrating sometimes about thinking about those is we don't really have control over them I think it feels like they just pop up right just happens This catalytic moment happens and all of a sudden a movement starts but actually 10 or 15 years of Groundwork was done by the leaders who ended up Leading that movement in the moment that was the catalytic tipping point So and that move that those leaders are already doing that work towards these things We just don't hear about them because it's not exciting. It's not World altering yet, right there Everybody in this room is one of those people right doing things not because we're being told we have to But because we see a need and we're trying to step forward And we are so not alone and the fact that those stories don't get shared Can be disheartening because this work is hard. We don't always know where we're going We don't definitely don't have support from above We're trying to give each other support from the side There's not a lot of it doesn't feel like there's momentum but but The things that I try to read not Inside the news but outside of the news. There are some great magazines like Optimist and yes, which while they have some political leanings But what I like of them and like of any source that gives me Stories about people doing amazing things right stories about people creating rooftop gardens because more food is needed Right or stories about while their impact might be small from the scale that we know needs change needs to happen It still inspires people that they can do something in their own community That piece is missing right now on a larger scale because it's not newsworthy and it doesn't capture advertising dollars So it's generally not shared but again to me this goes back to that, you know propelling motivation The stories we have to tell are plentiful and they would be super motivating for people to Know about on the from the bottom up people who are thinking about doing things and this goes back to the youth as well Right. I think there's a lot of people who would do something if they felt like they had They knew what the next step could be And people are busy too. Not everybody can dedicate their their full time and attention to any one of these issues Let alone all of them together together in a systems way. So just wanted to throw all that in. Thanks Thanks, Wendy um Michael Thanks, Wendy and and uh, I am totally behind what you're saying and was behind what you were saying at the beginning and Only want to wanted to you know talk about the lack of motivation to to follow You know exactly the prescription you're saying on the part of too many people There's this just this despair that Doesn't matter can't can't can't change enough and and obviously good things are happening when people do take action And I was realizing as you were saying that that um One of the one of the and with some of the examples that have been brought up in the chat Ironically when Markets have an effect on an issue um, and you know thinking about things like um smoking Organic foods um race Race issues women's issues a lot a lot of things that that can be addressed by who you patronize and who you don't patronize um More meaningful action has been taken extra governmentally by you know kind of grassroots efforts to to move markets and and change behaviors and I realized that gun control and abortion rights are two issues where Markets can't move them. I mean if money could move the gun issue Then you know Bloomberg's efforts would have been a lot more effective because he's certainly devoted a lot of his lot of money to fighting on this issue And there's nobody I mean all the people who are opposed to the way guns are regulated already Are not you know members of the nra and sending their dues there or or like paying gun manufacturers So I'm just it it makes me curious, you know, how we how we differentiate and delineate the issues on which um, we can move Move behaviors without governmental information intervention and where We absolutely need compulsory behavior To make the change that we want to see. I mean in some cases we can be the change in some cases we need to see the change So, yeah, just wanted to throw that out Thanks, Michael. I go ahead Stacey. Yeah, just real quick. I want to just offer the possibility of change from above Not coming directly at the issue. So for example, I know that gun clubs require You to be a member of the nra I know a lot of really responsible gun owners So if the rule if the law was that you can't require membership To something else then that's a way of hitting it from a different angle just an example Thank you Um, the nra's annual meeting starts tomorrow. I think in houston uh, ironically And it will be really interesting to hear what all the conservatives who plan on making a big spectacle of themselves at this event are going to say Guns are not allowed at the nra meeting. Right exactly. That was just what I was going to say also So Isn't that strange All the good guys with guns to protect themselves Stuart the floor is yours Unless that was what you're going to join now. No, no, I was going to I was just going to mention I don't know. I think it may have been you jerry who who mentioned that You know musilini started off as a as a as a liberal democratic kind of activist and ended up Um, uh How we ended up but the idea of you know, a benevolent dictator of some kind some wise myth Here that that we think about Who is is is uh is trusted by many Somehow that comes up as an opportunity for me Or a possibility. Yeah, um, hiller Was elected and ran against democracy.  There were people being killed or like it was a really messy messy era plus the great depression Um, and and so he was like just leave things to me and and things will turn around and then they did And the whole country was like rah rah This dude's got the secret sauce Uh, I'm not sure it was hoping change the platform. Yeah Um class And then back to yeah, yeah, there is actually Another way that has opened up to influence The public here and that's through the algorithms of social media and there's a debate going on about this and i'm just Putting in in the chat this Conversation on big think And so when you because when you change the algorithms, um, then you can bring information prioritized information That encourages different ways of thinking so right now the algorithms are optimized towards money towards eyeballs towards clicks and towards, uh What is the most profitable thing which is to excite people and to really uh create Create more more silos than than we had before but you can also do the opposite So when you have a guy like Elon Musk wanting to buy twitter, um That is amazingly worrisome because at the same time he now wants to be a republican He doesn't come across as a mature person who has really thoughts for what he wants to accomplish That that's beyond you know his fantasies of space exploration so so beyond What you what you would want is a benign force controlling these media platforms or Focusing on on disclosing these algorithms to make to make To have a conversation around these algorithms to assure that That people get a balanced view on things like down control on abortion and so on Instead or so doing the opposite of Creating silos is to is to make transparent that you are in a silo and that there are other ways to think And that would be a peaceful Potential right? I mean that would be something we can do without killing each other without having big fights And and I wish we could put more attention You know to how this amazingly powerful which is essentially the most sophisticated propaganda network You know of our time how can how that can be shifted into something constructive Just realized I was muted class a really really really tiny note about media sharing and all that I think if memory serves When you share links and you share a bunch of youtube links you're sharing links with a timestamp in them I think without meaning to So you'll if you'll see your youtube link in the chat it ends with ampersand t equals 607 seconds And when you're sharing the youtube link Don't click start at x because then my brain when you send me a link in the middle of a video My brain says oh, there's something important that starts right here because claus wants me to look here And it's confusing and then I actually have to remove the timestamp to save the link in my brain Etc. So if you could clean up the tail end of the link it'll be less confusing for recipients of the videos unless you intend Like listen to this clip right here that then then you're directing us to a spot. Does that make sense? I actually do intend most of the time. I didn't this time for this one Interesting.  Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you Um, so we still have a queue. So let's go gill hank pete Well, yeah, let me let me get my bearings on the queue here So I entered this call in the mood of grief and despair Reacting to the news of the world In this moment and felt very opened up and lifted up by the first, I don't know 15 20 minutes of the conversation Um, and not so much now. I'm feeling very frustrated not just with claus's agriculture rant But the the nature of the conversation. So let me let me try to Do this in a way that contributes something to us First of all big big endorsement of what what wendy's last rant about change, you know, it seemed to me for a long time We I think a couple things one is that we don't know very much about change and how change really happens We have lots and lots of speculation And lots of experimentation and lots of opinions about it, but it's a big mystery for us I'm partial To wendy's perspective and I confess it as a partiality and I think there's a there's a there's a process that humans often go through When confronting a challenge and you know first saying well, it's always been this way This is how humans are this has been forever and then we learn no no I actually hasn't always been this way things have changed this this appeared at some point in time Things were different before the graver and wengro book is a powerhouse for breaking that open And then we say well things never change and then we say well this particular thing can't change Then we think well, I can't do anything about making a change or Maybe I could but I don't know what to do And so that's back to you know to to wendy's point when when when paul hawken Came out with a college of commerce in 1990s was giving lots of talks And he said that inevitably after every talk people would come up to him and say what should I do? And that was one of the things that generated You know for him and for us and others, you know building resources that say to people here's what you can do Where you are in your situation Kenneth bolding Said years ago that existence is proof of the possible You know if I can show you that something exists. You can't say it's impossible anymore. And so that that that The practice of sharing the stories about things that are working or things that have changed things to think to improve It's an enormous piece of the generation of that sense of possibility Yeah, the The mainstream media can't tell the stories that we're interested in hearing and it's probably just as well they can't because if the You know if the work of the Highlander Center In training civil rights activists 10 years before rosa park sat down on the bus had been in the mainstream press that thing would have been quashed And it was better that it appeared to be a person who was frustrated one day and just said I've had it I won't do it anymore Built a better story For the mainstream Then a story of activists quietly working away building a capability for movement. Although that's the kind of story that folks like us may might need For me, that's been a big part of my work since all the way back to institute for local self-reliance is highlighting stuff that is different and that's working That inspires people seduces people invites them in and then provides them the tools of how to do it themselves And how to do it better and then share those stories Um, but it's you know, it's not a mainstream conversation and probably shouldn't be We've had a lot of conversation about thinking In this call and my friend Fernando floris or remember once in conversation with somebody who was saying Person was saying well, I think that's in such and Fernando said you're not thinking and you know, you can see the guys back up But it wasn't that kind of an attack. He said you're not thinking thinking is something happening to you Thinking is something arising in you not as a deliberative rational process But something that's emergent in your being and Fernando's fond of saying that we think of ourselves as rational beings But we're not or at least not mostly we're we're biological beings And emotional beings and historical beings shaped by all of those things and shaping each other in conversation and that For me is a really important insight because so much of what we do. I mean we on this call we in the progressive movements are To truck we try to prove the case we bury people with data We've talked this on this call about we need more information and more access to information And I really question whether information is what changes people And whether more information changes people faster, but we are awash in information Well, at least to wash in data And that may not be the most meaningful angle klaus you talked about the real importance of context And then you said things like 5.6 million tons of this. I have no idea what that means And i'm knowledgeable about that issue, but I don't know 5.6 million is a lot or little I don't know if it's a big percentage of something or a small percentage I don't know if it's bigger than it used to be or smaller than it used to be I don't know how it's trending over time. We throw numbers around without context And that's just one of the ways that we get not contextual I think we are contextualizing this in the webinar. That's the whole point I'm just I'm just developing a script And you have to then explain it, you know, and that's what we're doing in the webinar format That's great. You know, the reason I asked the question about mood is that for me My mood and listening to you and I'm I'm I'm deeply Committed to the subject that you're in I support your work I've been paying attention to your the concerns you're talking about for better part of 50 years I felt beaten down by what you presented And so there for me that was not an effective way of engaging the issue And I suspect that for a lot of people it's not the question is where you know, where are the access points? Where are the doorways? Where's something that that gets someone's attention and snaps them out of their their background despair Into something that they can move on and we need to get a lot better at that and I think you know thinking about thinking Is is is one of the places that were challenged there was talk about listening and I think to me that's really key We talk a lot about how can we how can we shape our communications to be more persuasive of other people? But it might be better to think about how can we listen more deeply to other people who are not like us And understand what it is that they care about really not what they say Not what their position is not what their argument is but what motivates them in that Because only there do we find possible points of common access And you know in in political terms We're obviously in a real crisis in this country in many dimensions and speaking about top down We're about to get top down on Roe v. Wade in this next month So I don't know if I like top down so much it depends on who's there Um Yes in political dimensions We either get to motivate our base and beat the other guys and hold power for as long as we do Or we get to change people's perspectives and people's actions and that only happens by listening to each other Doug said at one point that You know in talking about top down I think you said something to Doug about like most people don't agree and but you know If you look at gun control 80 to 90 of the american population wants wants realistic gun control You look at abortion rights 70 some odd percent supports abortion rights It's not that people don't it's that the people you know the people who don't are extremely well organized Tied in with with structures of power tied in with money But there is a latent availability let's say Of people moving into action about things that we care about together. So for me, that's an important place to build To build the story Doug talked about in investing in The new and this is a particular concern to me because that's been a focus of my work both with large corporates historically And now working with small and medium-sized companies and in climate transformation Um, um, I don't know if Doug's suggesting that we not invest in anything new Um, I think the more important challenge is how do we choose those investments? I mean, yeah, it takes energy to do anything I could do I could use less energy if I sit at home with my lights off and eat nothing But I don't think it'll be a very effective change agent doing that Um, maybe you're more getting at things like embodied energy and embodied carbon And you know, maybe I shouldn't go out and buy a new electric vehicle right now Maybe I should keep my 16 year old Prius running For a longer time to not invest in new steel and new rubber and new electronics to make a new car Given what the energy payback of that energy investment might be but we do need to reinvent the industrial infrastructure in this planet We need to do it fast There's good news and bad news. We are you know, we are in a mess and the trends are trending wrong and like I think Wendy and Stacy said earlier, there's enormous innovation happening at very wide scale and very high speed and not fast enough granted but but there it is so You know, we we we have a challenge of we have a spectrum that includes compulsion and includes persuasion and includes seduction And includes teaching by example and includes hand holding hands and helping And I guess that's some of the meat of of our meta project, which I'm not still not completely sure what that is One other thing, yeah, the other thing it's peripheral so I'll hold it for now That's it. Uh, so, you know, so for me, I'm I'm in this question all the time of how can I be most effective? How can I contribute something meaningful that both is enriching? You know that enriches the possibilities of transformation And is satisfying in my own life and I'm focusing on a particular In terms of my work focusing on a particular piece of the map, which is transforming Middle market companies the picks and shovels not the new inventions But the things that have to be in place for the world to work differently And in the background of that I'm immersed in the conversations We're immersed in and the news and all the rest and just the last thing here is that In our house, we used to at the end of the day flip on the news and make dinner and clean up and have two or three hours of news And we've shut that down And we'll maybe watch one show or maybe a half the show or maybe just, you know, just scan the New York Times online Uh, but we we're finding it extremely destructive personally to be immersed Minute by minute hour by hour in the stories Um Clause very briefly we have May come back to context one more time. What I was saying is we're using over eight million tons of nitrogen liquid nitrogen, right? So if you live in florida and your beach is just washed up with dead fish Now and or if you are on Lake Erie and you're being asked to put more money onto your Property insurance or your property taxes because we need to upgrade the water system to remove nitrogen out of it That is directly linked to these eight million tons of nitrogen that are being put on the field So it has to be hyper local. You have to have a hyper local understanding of of cause and effect Right, then you can then you can intelligently and people get upset then I I can't believe living in florida You know and as and you'll Right of dead so on and water you can't get into your into your beach and so on Not knowing that this is washing down the Mississippi river delta, right? That's what I'm suggesting is the story that you just told Which is compelling Is much more powerful if you don't say 8.6 million tons Just a suggestion might want to try that out. There's there's the whole rest of the story is strong. That's a distraction for me um And pete is next we have um, so we we're not clearly not going to make it through the queue But let's try hank and pete and eric. I think we'll start with you maybe next time because you have show and talent We don't have time for that, but Hank did you want to jump back in? Yeah, I'll be I'll be really short I started this call similar to the way gilded with grief of despair as you said From what's happening in the ukraine to especially what's happening or what have just happened in texas with the school shootings And I must say these calls really lift my spirits They make me and especially today have made me hopeful and creative And I think if we and I mean the big week can't make a difference Doing something that matters in the world who else can I mean, I'm a believer in rapid prototyping and learning by doing and testing your good ideas and practice and I think there are a lot of people on this call who are doing that and Going back to what was said a lot a long time ago in this call Telling each other about it and posting it on different matter most channels We lift everybody's spirits instead of just talking about Uh, the the the things that seem to be beyond our control So these calls they feed my imagination. They brought in my thinking Today 20 or 30 new perspectives for me to look at So thanks for reminding me of this key message. We're not alone Um, thank you. I find our calls a nutrient rich medium as well. I really appreciate that Um, Pete do you want to jump in? Um, I do please Thanks, Hank. That was that was beautiful and and um, I feel that way too. Um These these calls are a special high point in my week as I know they are for lots of us um I'm going to stick with the grief and despair a little bit not because that's kind of where I am overall but the the texas shooting after A fairly local one about an hour and a half away from where we live After the buffalo one It it kind of accumulates and hits hard and and then you have this weird double bind thing where it's like I want to feel grief but You know structurally it doesn't make any difference and then I don't know it gets it gets all weird And then it's like well, I'll just put my grief aside and it's like why are you putting grief aside? And then there's bigger problems in the world so, uh I I love that we talked about better thinking I think that's really important and I don't want to distract any of any of you from that And I also want to kind of come back to the thing that I always talked about which is hyperscale social structures So it's not just people's opinions and it's not just the the opinions of people in Institutions or the leaders of the institutions or it's not even the leaders of big movements all of those things We see from the bottom up As individual participants and so we think that individual participants have agency I believe there's something bigger as well, which is kind of a virus that has you know, propagated through um propagated on the top of It's it's kind of like a parasite on on humanity um such that that hyper you know various hyperscale social structures exist and we believe that we have a lot more control than I think we do of those and so Along with trying to do the right thing Um, you can't just try to do the right thing with everybody You actually have to deconstruct or reconstruct those hyperscale social structures, which As as people have said, you know, the the reason we don't have gun control is not because most people don't want gun control In the u.s. It's because of us a weird social structure that keeps us locked into them This is um, it's been fun reading the dawn of everything In in a book club and one of the big stories is that many cultures many, you know thousands of years and many cultures around the world Came to this part where you could choose to have inequalities power inequalities and things like that opportunity inequalities and they they purposely um consciously decided not to they consciously keep poking holes in that and In our society, which we've which until I started reading the book We've ended up in this this tilted situation where we've got this inequality And we think that's the only way that we could ever be and also that that's the pinnacle of human evolution The fact that we've got, you know, a thousand people running the world thousand billionaires running the world It's not it's not a fact of nature. It's it's a weird mind virus on top of humanity that lives and and and and I you know, I don't have any ill will towards it. It's a natural Kind of wonderfully constructed thing in nature just the way viruses are but But it's also not serving humanity and it's not humans that decided to have that thing it's a emergent property of uh, the sociality of you know Thousands and millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions and billions of humans over time it's it's an emergent property of that and so Along with everything else. We have to redo that I have a small hope It's not really the reason i'm doing it even but I have a small hope that focusing on small-scale sovereigns In federation federation is the way to do that. It resonates a lot with what claus says about hyperlocal solutions, so I hope that is kind of a way that will evolve ourselves into a better future um I wanted to hit real quick stacy's not coming directly at the issue. I happen to I don't have that the paper in hand it's been out of you know, this is a 10 or 15 or 20 year ago thing but But I was really surprised to read about how tobacco control came around smoking control came around with the reason we don't smoke indoors um was Not a few people saying, you know, we shall not smoke indoors It was actually a bunch of jiu-jitsu moves Leveraging different different social structures so that we could make a change and it was it was purposely designed that way It was people knowing what they were doing. So in california what they did is they said, hey There's calosha that that has laws The ability to regulate workplaces Second-hand smoke is a workplace safety issue So we can just you know assert that second-hand smoke is something that calosha has say over And they didn't have to get broad agreement again Amongst all the cal all the politicians and stuff like that. It was kind of a jiu-jitsu move a leverage a trim tab move Okay, so they they outlawed smoking in workplaces just as a workplace safety issue And then they went from there and kept doing those kinds of of jiu-jitsu moves until There wasn't smoking indoors and then you know, and then they were able to leverage into Getting taxes on cigarettes and tobacco so that they could pay for public campaigns Anti-smoking campaigns and stuff like that and that that movement continued to kind of multiply across the u.s out of that That california effort So not not direct directly coming at the issue but finding some trim tabs and continuing after them And it was literally years and different scales of groups operating on in different political environments One of the interesting one was bars Bars were like dude if you know, so the the first rule was you can't smoke in bars because it's somebody's workplace barton a bar keeps workplace And the the bar owners were like that's going to kill our you know Everybody comes to drink and smoke and we can't have that And so they actually had to cut a deal kind of a balanced deal where you could have you know smoking a non-smoking section in bars and that was a essentially a loss towards the forward momentum of the the project but they absorbed that as a way to keep going That meant if the bar owners could be compromised with then the rest of the the rules could stand so um I have thoughts about gun control. Um, the the thing that I want I I think it's crazy that We have the the gun control situation we do and it's again this hyperscale social structure thing that lets us You know maintain that control over a bunch of people who don't really want it. Um The the I I think I the way I would fix it is with economics. Um, you just Have liability insurance on guns the same way that you have liability insurance on cars or other dangerous things and When somebody gets killed by a gun, they you know, their family gets a couple million dollars literally um Not that that's a compensation for the loss of a loved one, but It's a strong signal towards you know When there's insurance vendors who are losing money on Pay payouts for desks, then they're going to start to leverage the system back and say look we need we need more control of this Um, I don't like that solution. I think it's a sucky solution But I think it's also one that's reasonably compatible with the way that the us thinks So the the other thing that I think about the the thing that that pisses me off You know, I I have the the grief about individual humans losing their lives and and the the ripples that causes throughout their whole family's thing Separately from that the thing that pisses me off is the people who kind of could make a change The politicians who could make a change offer their thoughts and prayers, right? And then they they talk about well That person was crazy or why did they do it or blah blah blah, right? And this is kind of a misdirection. I think the the the way I wish we could talk about the gun situation is I used to think that oh it was somebody going crazy and shooting up a bunch of places And now I think I've switched that I live in a society that has decided that it's acceptable. It's acceptable losses to you know, kind of randomly pick You know 5 10 20 30 people In some random place who don't deserve to get shot up at all and get shot.  It's this Industry a gun industry and you know interlocking set of power structures and politics and stuff like that That has decided to preserve itself even though we don't want it to And the cost of that is literally random shootings. It's just it's just math kind of you know, and so then I feel like if we could tell that story rather than Oh, it's a shame that somebody went crazy or you know, young men sometimes get lost or whatever, you know It's like we bought this, you know, and this is the cost of it the the roving, you know, band of some crazy Male kid with a gun is going to be the the instrument of the sacrifice that we make to have that, you know institution so in kind of this is I read something by the the always wonderful, uh, Cory doctor wrote recently.   It's the it's the pedestrian why would a pedestrian walk in front of a car and so Same thing with uh, he he picks a couple other ones. Um It it helped me remember that we get these big powerful institutions or were conglomerates and they make a blame on individual individuals instead of themselves and That's the the story that gets sold and the story that we end up believing, you know It the so then in texas Much of the u.s. Believes that it was A lone wolf who's probably crazy who you know, and it's not the fault of the big conglomerate so I think we should look more at those big conglomerates and the the multiplex structure that they they, um economic and political power and and whatever And and see those rather than buy the bullshit story that they saw us Thanks Wow Pete that's awesome A couple things I just wanted to add and then I wanted to actually read a poem to take us out Uh, I just learned yesterday about the protection of lawful commerce in arms act 2005 PLCAA Which basically absolves arms manufacturers from liability And so it's that's a that's an intimate part of the conversation about hey How do we flip that around? We probably have to scrub that act So that's one thing and then I posted in the chat another thing that I read Ann Helen Peterson had a really good post yesterday about we're living in sort of a permanent minority Rule and what does that look like and I think one of the people she quoted I think it was her was Bill O'Reilly after the vagus massacre who said Massacres are just one of the price are the price of freedom and it's like I was just ready to explode after that So I would love to read this more I subscribed to the poetry Where'd it go um Poetry foundations poem of the day and this mornings was one of the more challenging poems for me And it was beautiful. So I just would like to read it to take us out of the call and I will share screen Here's the link to it, but I'm going to share screen as I read it because I think it helps to see it and absorb it that way. So So here is Is time is queer and memory is trans and my hands hurt in the cold then By Raquel Salas Rivera There are ways to hold pain like night follows day not knowing how tomorrow went down It hurts like never when the always is now The now the time won't allow There is no manner of tomorrow nor shape of today Only like always having to leave from and toward the futures could be In order to never more see the sea And if forever proves me wrong It'll hurt with the hurt of before the before It'll have to take me along All the never enough of why and therefore Life has given me much to believe but more is the doubt that undid what I know for Like night follows day The pleasure is sure of forever beginning once more And I have to say that when I hit the three times I've read this every time I hit It'll hurt with the hurt of before the before I almost start to cry It's somehow it gets me right so that place at that moment. So Thank you very much It's been a great call and Gil I did post the link to the poem in the chat. So Thanks everybody. Let's be careful out there and let's uh figure out how to pull the levers and make all these changes actually happen And let's help each other do that. Thanks


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Civil society groups, local and international, have been observing the Governor and the State House of Assembly elections. Issues of voter turnout, insecurity and unpreparedness, electoral violence were raised during a briefing with the media in Abuja. In some places, there seem to be low voter turnout. In other places, there is large voter turnout. And I think this will depend on the number of people. We don't want to make any conjectures yet about the reasons, about the deviation, other than to make the very general one that it depends on local dynamics. In most of the political it is also very obvious that they are calling for help. And in some instances, we are also seeing some of the security agencies posted at the polling unit are trying to just let go because of the safety of their own safety. It is a, you know, that passion, that drive that we had, we saw during the presidential election seems not really there this time around, you know. And probably people have got the solution, people are scared, or that element of distrust, you know, is now coming back. Yaga Africa received 15 confirmed reports of voter turnout across eight states. In Sarke Moodu Puli Unit 016 in Ghia De Luku government area of Pauji, PDP agents have been cited for depriving a great deal of voters with a thousand naira. The group also advised on security arrangements for voters and need for security agencies to sit up. We have gone through this over and over again. So we need to say what we think needs to be done. We don't want to get to a point where we will then have a special security agency for election. Our security agencies are all deployed from the DSS to the police who are in charge of election, to the military, Navy, Air Force. They are on civil defense, road safety, all of them, NCDC, they are all deployed for this election. Customs and all of that. So they are all deployed for this election. So if we have all our security agencies deployed for the election, it's about the coordination, it's about the security agencies being neutral and being responsive. They also made recommendations for future elections in the country.