This is the open global mind weekly community call on Thursday, September 7, 2023. We're going to pick up where we were two weeks ago, talking about models and theories of collapse and reconstruction or revitalization. Let me turn on the subtitles. Good. And good, and I'm interested in any feedback on the call two weeks ago for those of us who were on the call two weeks ago. So we can maybe do a little ranging for where we are and what's up. I'm interested in having people here. That would be good.  So it's good. Matt, thanks for joining us. What is your location on the globe? I am about an hour outside New York City. Oh, cool. Good to see you. Awesome. Awesome, awesome. Gil, I know that I know that we, at the end of the call two weeks ago, I think a bunch of us were pretty jazzed with where we were pointing and a little flooded by too much info and not enough structure on the info and maybe just slowing things down a little bit. At least that's my take can go ahead. I thought I saw Ken about to speak. Actually, he's moving to a place where he can speak without interrupting people around him. No, he's moving to receive radiation from the sun. I was turning off my Bose sound doc, which was across the room where all of the sound was coming out of instead of my headphones and I didn't think my wife needed to hear our conversations. Ah, perfect. Good morning. Evening afternoon wherever you might be. Exactly. Yay, Rob. Good to see you. Hello. Cool. Anybody with thoughts for the thoughts on last week, two weeks ago our call when we started this topic. Yeah, I can say it's this is related. I just this week we completed Oliver stones on 12th history United States which playing watch one episode or a few days because it's really tough going. And there's a there's a huge as Eisenhower warned it's the military industrial congressional university corporate complex that is hell bent on exploiting everything and I and I really have no idea how to disarm that mentality. And I literally mean disarmed because United States has gone way beyond anything the Romans or the British Empire did in terms of mucking around in other countries and we're the most heavily armed presence on the planet and there's in 2012 I think we sold 80% of the world's armaments and that's an awful lot of money and awful lot of power to try and say hey you know we need to be more ecologically sensible here because people are making huge amounts of money and gathering a lot of power in building our in creating and bombing the hell out of things so it's just it layered on a that another layer of complexity of it's not just about ecology and waking up and it's about how do we disarm ourselves to recognize that the enemy is us as Bogo said, it ain't somebody else it's it's us collectively we we need to figure out a way where we can not think that we need to be strong by bombing people but we need to be strong by helping people. I love what you're coming up but wouldn't the Roman Empire and the Mongol Empire and Alexander the great empire and all those others be larger than what the US has sort of tried to do other than the US is multiple underhanded attempts to undermine governments around the world but but are you saying that we have undermined more governments around the world than anybody ever did. And, well, maybe not named the neighbor did but when in watching the show, you know he uses the old school maps of just showing boom boom these countries lighting up and all the places we have gone into and destroyed governments and and installed and left behind you know like okay there were 4000 US trips killed in Iraq, but there were 250 to a million civilians killed I mean that just as like to me is is bordering on something I don't have a word for in terms of a pathology. So that's just something's been on my mind since since finishing this series of a day. Thanks. There's a book I just put the title in the chat overthrow America's century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq. And it talks about all the times the US has gone in and overthrown other countries governments because we didn't like them starting with Queen Kamehameha in Hawaii. Doug then Gil. Sorry, Doug see then Gil. Yeah. It strikes me I've been reading a lot of political theory, and in particular the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and some of 20. And what strikes me is that the issue in the world usually is who has sovereignty. That is who has the power to change things. In the world we have today. There is no sovereignty. There's nobody who has the authority to really change things. This is probably is Russia and China have some structures where the top has a lot of power, but it's hardly universal. So it seems to me that climate change which is the title, the topic requires a global reaction. And we have no authority that can create a global reaction. Let me slow down what you said because you said nobody has sovereignty, but then you went to explain it in a way that I think meant nobody has the power to make global changes that might change the global situation because plenty of people appear to have sovereignty locally.  That's why I said that Russia and China come the closest to having actual sovereignty. So by sovereignty you mean a vast overwhelming majority capacity to do stuff. The power to actually do things in Rome, the Senate had the authority. No question they elected who the emperor emperor was they elected the heads of the military. They had real sovereignty. Yeah, there was no constitution. So they could change any laws they wanted we're bound in by a constitution, which makes it a fairly possible to change things. Interestingly, our constitution doesn't bind us all that tightly it appears. And I read some interesting things recently about how mutable is the Constitution shouldn't it be evolving more than it has as times change and so forth and that's a separate conversation from this one. Thank you Doug thanks for explaining. Well, the Constitution very intentionally had shock absorbers built into a to to to damp the rate of change. And you can argue whether there's too much damping, but you don't want to have something it can oscillate wildly you want to have some degree of that and that's soon. We can argue about that for a long time. The Roman Senate had authority until people killed other people, which is one of the ways that power is exercised. Where's that going here to to Ken's point. You know, 80% of the armaments in the world come from us so good. Some percentage of the other come from our allies. And then of course China and Russia have their own businesses. But I've long felt that the two primary exports of the United States are weapons and culture. We used to say Hollywood, but now it's more than that. And of course technology is another piece of that which interpenetrates with the culture story but that's what we do as a as a national business to Doug's point, which is a really, really important. You know, how does where where does change driven from there is no single global authority like a king or an emperor. There is the United Nations which for all of its weaknesses has done things, you know that has done things that have worked like the Montreal protocol and others. The climate protocols are much more mixed bag, because where was it. Give me a second to find the quote. The tour said recently, not here it is. In down to earth and tour said if we still had any doubts on this point the pseudo controversy over the climate suffices to dispel them, there is no evidence that any major corporation has spent a penny to produce ignorance about the climate suffices both son, but denying the climatic mutation is another matter entirely financing floods in ignorance on the part of the public is such a precious commodity that it justifies immense investments. So, you know, the struggle for global authority is in conflict with the struggle for global financial agenda, hegemony and the financialization of everything. It's a real given that we try to come together in various forms to come to agreement on various things with contending forces that are becoming more and more and more polar polarized I guess is the word for that. So, yeah, we, you know, we, we don't have an emperor. We have a flawed consensus based system and what we try to do is build enough agreement among the various players to find to a mass enough power to compel some action. And, you know, for me, one of the key indicators is the ratio of lobbyists to Congress people in the United States, which was something like, you know, two or three to one. In the early 1970s, it is something like I forget 70 or 200 to one now. What, which is one of the ways in which the Constitution could flexes like changing the representational scheme to better adapt to a growing population, etc, etc. Well, the constitutional compromise of the, you know, to two senators per state meant one thing when there were 13 states of relatively similar size. In the Gulf of California, Montana makes absolutely no sense. But this is the challenge. I mean, you have to have people vote against their self interest to change that. Just like we have to have Congress vote against itself interest to reinstall citizen to overturn citizens United case and limit the flow of legalized bribery, the people who are being bribed have to vote against being bribed. I think it was Lawrence Lessig, who offered to run for president in 2016 or the election before promising that he would be a single issue candidate what he would do is revoke citizens United and then resign as president and someone else would be appointed or his vice president would pick up or something like that. No place. How did he do it went nowhere. Yeah, but that was an interesting idea. Yeah. But I mean, that's, you know, that's the political landscape and so you know my question to Doug and what I've asked you this before is is absent. The alien spaceship landing and imposing a new sense of order on his clock to brought a Nikto and all that stuff. Kind of two questions what is what does it look like and to is how do we get there. You have to stand very still when you say that you'll say what you have to stand very still when still when you say that. When I say the clock to be I don't have the, I don't have uniform on either. But you know, you know, the, the, the hope for a. This is, this is some of why Trump is so effective as people want a strong leader, and I understand your desire for that, but we could just as easily get a Trump or a Putin as a gore or a Thunberg as the, you know, commander, you know, ultimate commander. So that's it. I'll stop. And I'm going to, I'm going to be heading out. I'm going to switch to walking mode in a little while. You see my face disappear. Thank you. Thank you. Other, other takes anyone sort of need of the conversation want to just jump in around your thoughts on collapse and read renewal. Well, I could jump in. And this is particular. This isn't the big collapse in renewal. This is in response to, you know, sort of the last five comments. There's, we, we have actually. Elon Musk made an interesting analogy in a very old interview that Karen Swisher read podcast in which he described government as a very large boat with a very small rudder. And this is a good analogy. And, and, and, you know, that you could, you could go on to describe his as a. You know, speed boat with a turbo jet or something. But the idea is this. We have stratified urgency.  And a lot of these issues that, that get raised. I had some firsthand kind as a number of us, I'm sure at firsthand contact with the military industrial complex, including the people inside it who were trying to move as well and as carefully as they could. Away from weapons and turn that energy into something that actually would help defend the country, but do it by responding to climate change or do it by responding to education or some other kind of thing. You know, there's a, there's a debate that will go on longer than we have time for about the relative effectiveness or ineffectiveness of that strategy. And, you know, I'm kind of at this point, I'm sure there's other people besides David Snowden who've talked about this strategy where you realize you're kind of in chaos. You know, there's some arguments about that and that therefore your, your large scale programmatic policy. You're not going to be able to implement it and it's might be unwise given given the chaotic conditions and what you need to do is do kind of measured experimental interventions that will produce. Produce a hope for change, but also produce data on the relative effectiveness of what it is you're trying. And that's how I kind of look at these, these collapse scenarios. They are frighteningly realistic. It doesn't really matter whether the guy we're reading, Neil, you know, whether his 20 year generation thing is accurate or not, you know, it's easy to shoot down, it's easy to find holes in these theories. My question about any collapse theory is what, what does it give us to look for now that could be helpful. For instance, in the case of that, that cycle generation theory, I would say instead of what he has quoted as saying is like, it'll all turn out all right. I would say no, no, no, what's that, what's that characteristic that you identified for the generation that comes back comes next and fixes thing. And let's find those people who have those characteristics, whatever generation they're in, and let's get them going together, you know, on some project, you know. So that's, that's a lot of loose ends there that I was trying to tie together, but I'll stop at this point. Thank you. Appreciate it. Let's do it. Yeah, call me arrogant because I arrived late and didn't hear the comments but I just wanted to comment on the phenomenal phenomena. The cyclical, the cyclical nature of things. I realized that when I was writing about conflict, that we move from conflict to collaboration, it seems to be a human phenomenon. And, you know, the stock market goes up and then it goes down. A meteor hit planet Earth, all the dinosaurs were destroyed. Living systems came back. I don't think that's real consoling if you're in the down cycle where shit is hitting the fan before things start to turn around. So in some ways it's not any consolation, but it might be a consolation as a mental construct to know that things are bad today. But, you know, if we keep tilting it windmills, they just might turn around in some form later on. And I've noticed that a lot of the writing about, you know, the disaster of climate change and some of the planning for the other poly crisis we face, it all seems to say, are we planning to head things off or are we planning to rebuild after? Which to me, you know, is just an indication is that there isn't after. And we can think about, you know, what that might look like and how to facilitate it. At least that's my that's my two cents and it's great to see Kevin and Doug's hands up because I'm sure they'll have something wise to say. Thank you. Kevin, go ahead. Yeah, you know, I'm getting further involved with different groups who are trying to get legal status for rivers or a town to have status around the river. And I just put a link into a town in Pennsylvania that after 10 years has won and gotten that there was a company that was based there that wanted to put its toxic fracking mess into something below the groundwater. And there would be no leakage and they fought and now the company has said, okay, we will, we'll put a bubble around it. We will we will protect that. And the number of court cases has tripled in the last five years around that. Working with Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund wrote the law for the country of Ecuador that two weeks ago, use that law to stop mining in the rainforest. You know, the thing about legal status is really interesting. Because corporations are legal fiction and people are have personhood and and but the river doesn't. So, you know, if I hit Jerry, he can sue me if I do damage to a company he can sue me. Our regulations say this is how much you can damage the river. And with rights the river can say no you can't damage. Let's just say me as as much a person as a corporation. And so you can, you know, you can actually stop that and it's a, it's creating. It's happening all over the country. And again it's it's this incremental stuff that Roberta Kaplan did with the LVT laws and Ruth Bader Ginsburg did with women's rights and finding places that women could get a checking account and then women could get a land deed and women could sign a loan note. And none of those things became a big cause to live as Roe v. Wade did.  And I think it's, it's there are now some precedents of action that are pretty interesting. Kevin, just to stay for a second on personhood for rivers, personhood for nature is I think the broader umbrella. And I'm curious about rivers as the client here because it was nature just too broad and vague. And is rivers like some kind of special lever, because they have special properties in this dilemma. Yeah, it's it's the emotional resonance, you know, sometimes it can be a wetland that everybody cares about, you know, it's it's it's where could you have some emotion next to a piece of nature in in Ecuador, it was a broad rights of nature. But so you use whatever will work. We've already got a group caring about and identifying with this one river. So that's what we're doing there. And you have to have a town or city who then gets a bill of rights essentially to because right now a town cannot stop a corporation that the see that the state allows to pollute or do anything there. And so they're saying, you know, you cannot transport toxic waste. And so it's it's just, you know, incremental grinding a polycentric incremental grind to change things as it was with civil rights, women's rights and LGBTQ rights. Thank you. It's like, you know, it depends on what what what do people resonate with, you know, before I go to Doug anyone else with strong feelings or thoughts or intuitions about personhood for nature and how this how it plays in the conversation. Doug see the floor is yours. Well just to respond to that it's interesting. You know, when they have rivers. When they tend to flood do we just let them do that is that part of giving the vote of the river. I want to come in. There's a person did that you would have recourse so you know I mean it's that's not a real serious question I'm sure. There are so many good progressive projects around regeneration in one form or another going on in the world today all over the place. The problem is almost all those projects increase economic activity not replace it. So, they contribute to climate change by contributing to CO2. I think that's a place where we're stuck we just do not have a handle on how to lower economic activity, which is what we need. Back to the point about sovereignty. The Roman Senate had sovereignty it was not in a single person, although often there was an emperor but they had to deal through the Senate. We don't have any organization which has sovereignty in the world now, except possibly Russia and China. Doug I want to come back to your premise about lowering economic activity. And you've been you've mentioned it many times over time here in the call and I'm wondering what have you discovered what models are there about how this works because there's a, there's plenty of models. There are models certainly of how economies work and how different kinds of resources or money flow through economies. There are growth models there are other kinds of things. Have you seen anyone model out the cessation of economic activity as a way to go about, you know, as a viable future of any sort. I think so it sounds to a naive listener it sounds like you're saying we should all go grow grow veggies in our backyard and stop buying anything and stop traveling stop doing everything just cease and make food or something like that. Because then there'd be very little economic activity. And I don't think that's an appealing future or even a potentially viable future for most naive listeners. So I want to figure out, how do I get from from your thesis to something that feels tangible, useful and even doable. And whoever. The basic point is we can't do that. There is no plan to do it. What do you mean we're up against them is we're going to have breaking systems. And that's going to force change, but it's not going to be voluntary or democratic. So when you ask us, when you say all the solutions are not viable because they cause more economic activity, you're, you're effectively selling against any and all attempts to resolve the problem that other people are coming up with, because I think where we are as we're not going to come up with any solution along the line that you're thinking about. We're going to be dealing with collapse, which is going to force change. And the collapse is going to be not universal it's going to be episodic here and there. Like we're seeing that parts of the world are ceasing to be economically viable in their agriculture, because of temperature. That's the model we're going to be coping with. So I think what I'm asking is, should your focus then be something like Jim Bandel's focus on deep adaptation since you, you it sounds like you're assuming we ain't going to take any drastic measures like this so we're heading right toward the cliff the wall the waterfall whatever you want to call it. And, and in that case, I think what you want is as good an adaptation to these horrible circumstances that are likely coming as possible, am I wrong. Yes. Where am I wrong, you're not wrong. You're, you're right. We don't know what that looks like. Instead of telling us to cease all economic activity why don't you just jump on Jim Bandel's bandwagon and help us all learn how to adapt better. I think I'm asking, I'm asking, I'm asking you to slow down your, your, your the thing you bring into this conversation often which is we need to stop all economic activity, all remedies to try to. First, you first you say, often, we should be paying attention only to climate change it is the problem of our era if we don't deal with it, all really bad things happen. Then you say, and the way to do that is to not cause any more economic activity because that's the problem. And then I'm left hanging. And I'm trying to figure out how to not be hanging at the end of your argument. Well, notice I haven't said all economic activity I'm saying that projects to correct climate change are economically inducing projects, almost all of them. So that's just to be conscious of that, that what we're doing in terms of trying to correct the system is creating new economic activity, replacing old in many cases, but in ways that are very stimulating to CO2. And I think we're stuck. I mean, that's, I don't know what the adaptation really looks like. I don't think anybody really does because it's so it's going to be kind of random. Well, Jim has a pretty big following I've not read a lot of his work but I've met him I know him. He's an interesting young guy who got really really angry about all this stuff, the way you were angry about this stuff. So following your logic from a moment ago, it seems like a useful thing you could propose or find and promote is a metric for economic activity that helps remediate climate change, and it's, and it's carbon effects basically let me let me back up. I made the mistake of replacing politics with economics. Economics is the way we make decisions in this society. And by its very nature, it's not systemic across the whole society, it's only the people who have money. And that's part of where we're stuck. I'm unclear that I agree with the statement economics is how we make decisions in the society. Anyone else want to be before I go to Stuart and Kevin unless. Okay, let me let me go to let me go Stuart then Kevin. Yeah, and this is in response to everything that's been being said nothing, nothing new. And Jerry, I'll push back on the notion that, you know, it's politics and not economics. It's all economics. You know, just look at Citizens United and how we live with a Congress that, you know, because the Supreme Court is legalized bribery. It's all economics that's driving the politics. It's, it's, it's behind it. And it's just present. And I think that that's not just true for the US system. I think that there's a level of truth that that's, that's always present, maybe not in the social democracies of Europe as much, but it certainly is here, you know, in the US. So there's these notions of of cyclical legal change and economic activity. But they're all very, very related. We had great social change as a result of legal activity in the 1960s and 70s. But the mindsets of people weren't changed. You know, there was a legislative solution. Unfortunately, so many lawyers are involved in decision making and in the politics of the US, but they didn't change the mindsets of people. And guess what? We're seeing all of this rear, it's ugly head today again. So it was never really solved by legislation. Legal change is slow. Okay. I think it's great that that there's a, you know, a foothold, a crack in the ice that that and I read with joy when Kevin reported that in his post the other day. It's a certainly a step in the in the right direction in terms of hanging in through the cyclical changes. I think what's really important is to recognize that all the tilting of windmills that we're doing is not going to have likely impact in our lifetime. But maybe it will in the longer road. Just like I talked about. Changes, not creating mindset changes. The same thing is true of economic activity. You know, historically we've had these kinship societies, maybe they were not as great as we think they were, but at least people persisted for millennials. You know, is our all our technical advancement and economic activity and wealth and the comfort we live in a good thing. Yeah, for those of us who have read the benefits of it, but is it good for long term quote health of this biosphere and supporting future generations certainly, you know, Native Americans would say absolutely not. So, here we are in an interesting moment of fulcrum in time. So, one of the main mindsets around economic activity would be the critical piece to understand how we got to this particular place. Ken you did a beautiful analysis of it I haven't seen the final product yet in terms of how we how we got to the place of burning fossil fuels, but I'm sure that something similar could be done about the economic systems we developed that are the basic frame of everybody's mindset when they look at all kinds of social phenomenon, you know, even the people who are advocating great change, analyze it in terms of profit loss and try to squeeze it into an economic model. And I don't know if that's really a viable solution for the long term. So that's my two cents. Thanks Stuart and you started with the contrast of economics versus politics, which for me is a bit of a red herring because picking one of the other, picking one of the other changes your priorities, a lot. If you say the problem is economic and you head towards the thing you said at the end, then what we need is economic incentives and politics be damned. And if we think the problem is politics, then what we need is to screw, you know, fix a fix free speech, etc. I don't know I think that's almost a dog chasing its tail because those are a series of problems. You stepped out of the queue I'd love to. I thought I was in the queue I lowered my hand. There is a movement to reduce economic activity it's D growth. Right. And I got real excited somewhere around the turn of the year or so about D growth and read the books spent an hour and a half for six weeks every morning researching it. And then discovered it had a hard edge. If you're in D growth you believed in it and there was no periphery there was no next concentric circle of people entering. And that the idea of D growth is so anti American in American culture that it was not ever going to work and so I just stopped because it makes sense just like true cost accounting has always made sense since Herman daily, cooked it up at the Yale forestry school where you include externalities but people don't do it so I stopped research. It's a really good thing and and it, and it, it is not the frame that will work. That's all. Dammit. Yeah, so I totally agree with Stuart that the challenge is to is to change mindsets. You still see on LinkedIn and social media, people passionately arguing against climate science and rejecting the idea that there is an inherent problem. It's caused by our economic activity, and you can see I mean for example, the food industry fighting with Mexico which wants to outlaw the use of glyphosate and GMO corn. It's not because of the destructive nature it has not just on the soil, but also in human health and we are willing to engage our political machine to intimidate Mexico, you know to take that off the chart and convert where if if there was a willing to do that this would be a wonderful opportunity to change the types of crops we're calling here and move into organic sustainable practices but rather than that, we fight in the political spectrum. So, don't quite agree with stuck you know that that every economic activity will lead to to or every mitigation activity will lead to to more polluting activity. And the great example I think he is direct air capture. Now the US government your Biden administration just allocated something like $1.7 billion for direct air capture technology which is complete nonsense. We have zero chance of making an impact that's even measurable where soil recarbonization is readily available and we know it works and it has multiple beneficial impacts on the entire biosphere. So why don't we talk about soil why don't we give 1.7 billion dollars to to advance the the the soil recarbonization project instead. So it in this is completely mindset 12 right there is still a rejection to accept the science and to accept not the reality of of where we're heading and and so how to how to how to change that you know these still competing forces in the political system where people just absolutely insist that it ain't so now when you you can get on discussions with people who seem to have a professional background and well educated and all of this. They're stubbornly absolutely reject and refuse the idea that climate is something to to really be concerned about. So I don't know how to change that because it is driven by the corporate mindset that drives 90% of our media. Let's change the pace of the conversation a little bit so please take a pause or take your time coming into the conversation. I was, I was sitting at my desk and imagining if I had a shot sitting across a table from the CEO of one of the three largest global oil companies, and I had a moment to pitch. And what occurred to me is, if it was possible to step out of the polarized frame and the judgment free and to reorient around economics and repurpose of economics by its own rules in its own frame. And sort of reorient and redirect it. Not in how it does economics but in what activity what actions it actually is doing that is the source of its profit. So, if oil companies, I mean, would there be immediate short term, like huge capital need and demand. Yeah. But oil companies were to shift their business model. And instead of being rooted in oil, its extraction its sale and its consumption to being in the business of remediating the effects of fossil fuels on a global level. And distribution of renewables, sort of retool repurpose. Like, there's a lot of money to be made in that because there's a lot of work to do. Recycling plastics, truly recycling plastics, not the version of collecting and then then going one fills separating and going live. So, like recycling plastics, a lot of money in that. And pipelines redistributing hydrogen instead of fossil fuels and distilleries repurposed into whatever they could or should be repurposed into to produce whatever they should be producing in service to regenerative and survivable thriveable. I'll stop there on oil companies so what about the military. Like armies in the military are designed for what. Well, I mean right now for killing and for projection insertion of power and control authority. They happen to be really organized, really structured, really effective and really productive at doing things. The Army Corps of Engineers has done some of the most extraordinary constructions on the planet in staggeringly short periods of time in service to solving huge challenges. And instead of killing providing support providing security under girding and and and executing aid and delivery of meeting needs and all of that. So, I think it's a lack of imagination. But if we could like get out of the polarized frame and get out of the this instead of that, the or construct, which is irreconcilable irrefutable into Doug's point. It's resolvable. So, in the face of where the path we're on is collapse, but if economics could be sort of turned around 100. It could still be profitable but where it's generating its profit and how it's already the industrial military complex in service to reconstructing and and restoring and serving massive populations in need. As a generator force and capacity with tremendous resource. So, I, I just throw that out as a, like, for shits and giggles. Complete. I think your proposal is more serious than shits and giggles, and I appreciate it. And I think many of us are trying to think how do we flip some of these equations or dynamics or forces and be a terrific thing a little jujitsu on market forces or political forces or political forces would be awesome. Just, just very quickly. It's in some ways it's about the legal structure and what corporations are mandated to do generally to I was I was doing some research this is 20 years ago about before the pandemic and when they were talking about bird flu is that I was doing some research about responses to activity like that and and and found out that IBM for example, it's got a huge huge disaster recovery arm of the organization that had extraordinary things all over the world in terms of, you know, providing technology when technology falls apart all as part of their, you know, giving. There's a mindset shift. Love that. Can they rescue servers when they're flooded with pool water. They can do anything Jerry for human I love that. And then Carl and please take your time stepping in. And when you speak just if you'll keep your hand up while you speak because when you remove your hand if other people have their hand up your square goes disappears into the crowd and it's easier to see you when you're sort of up high. So just as a as a protocol on mute but leave that hand up for a bit until you're done talking please. I did my hand up. However, I've noticed that in this later version of zoom, it tends to after a few seconds say we're going to lower your hand for you so I jump around a mind of my fault. Yeah, thanks. Thanks Doug, very much thinking along the lines I've been thinking of. I think we need to rethink our fundamental assumptions around economics. And, you know, we have an economic ordering to our society, which is based on the earth is inert as something to be exploited and used and, you know, and I think that's, that's a completely wrong way that the whole paradigm is destructive. So, rather than, and I don't think it's possible to fix from inside where we are. I think it's going to be that we need to need a whole new cough. And as I just wrote the plex that there will be some elements of what we're currently dealing with but the real challenging thinking is going to come from the margins and from places we don't expect it which means those who are defending the status quo will resist tremendously. But as long as we think that it's okay to destroy life support systems, in terms of it's profitable. That's a self terminating system and it might terminate a lot more than just one self it might terminate billions of cells. So, I don't know how to get there. I don't know what it looks like. I think there's a lot of wisdom to be gained and looking at many first nations. People yes skill I'm talking we as in human beings here us humans. I think there's tremendous amount of wisdom to be gained from studying. I don't think that's sufficient, but it's, it's a starting place when we see ourselves as a part of nature, rather than apart from nature, then our, our way of, of approaching the world of being in the world shifts dramatically. And I don't know how to make that. I don't know where the leverage point is for that but I'm really quite encouraged to see how widely this idea is spreading. You know, there's there's a lot of people talking about it might not be in the mainstream but in the, in the alternate stream. There's tremendous amount of chatter on the web about this. So, thank you. So, I'm encouraged there. And I think it's going to be a rough ride. I think there's probably going to be an awful lot of radical discontinuities that could disrupt the entire system. A couple of things that I personally think about our one, the Puritan streak in this country, which says you can't give anybody who doesn't deserve something that they don't deserve has to be gotten rid of that's got to be, you know, it's it's very problematic. Two, I think quality shifts to, if we build things to last for thousands, tens of thousands of years, you know, what's the infrastructure humanity needs to survive. For the long term, and devote ourselves to caring for the whole, rather than individuals, those are a couple of things that are that are going to be the Gospels prosperity Jesus wants you to be rich. Amen, brother. Jesus wants you to be rich. So, so I think there's actually a lot of a lot of, I don't want to use your resources. A lot of sources of wisdom and information and knowledge and understanding. I think understanding is different than knowledge. And because when you understand something, it doesn't matter how much you know about it, you know, you, it's a, as, as Max Nief says it's, it's, it's, understanding and knowledge exist on separate shores and require separate piloting and an understanding that we are of the earth, And that if we, as Chief Seattle says, whatever befalls the sons and daughters of whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. So if we start treating Gaia as a living organism as a source of all life, and attending to bio mimicry, you know, and like, here's how evolution handles the problem of energy and mobility and whatnot, then there's, there's tremendous things we can learn. But it's going to be very, very challenging in terms of making that shift, given how many people are invested in the old system, and yet we know from history that when you reach a tipping point things look just fine on Monday and then at midnight. And the clock strikes and suddenly you're in a whole new world and things look very different. And we might be two minutes to midnight. Who knows. Thanks. Well, off to you, but please take your time. Every time somebody says something there's about three things that pop up. Yeah, it just was going through. I'm going to work on revising a playlist that I have to share YouTube playlist, but I'm good.  I'm probably point I might be the point of 4 and I don't know how many times I get counted and stuff, but Ray Anderson, that's my two primary visionaries Doug Englebard and William E Smith. They, they inspired me coming up with the term paradigm leaps. And this Ray Anderson is like the prime example really. He's there was a, I mean, it's a classic story. It's like, I was cleaning out a storeroom in general sources administration with all old equipment I opened. This was probably about 2007. And I opened up this box and there's a bunch of VHS tapes of, of Joe Morvic, the, the commissioner of the public building service interviewing Ray Anderson. 2002. And I was able to discover it on archive.org and downloaded it and then uploaded it to my YouTube, but he, I've got the visionary saying, you know, there's something beyond sustainability. He talks about me like sustainability is do know more harm. And we need to get to restorative. We need to get to helping the planet heal. In fact, that's not even far enough. So I've got, I've come up with catalytic leaps is the name I want from for the company and it's like, we need to be catalytic. We need to help the planet heal faster and stuff. So it's kind of like the rudder and Bucky Fuller with with the trim tab kind of thing, but it's like leveraging the lever. I mean, so taking it to another level. So there's this amazing video. It's only four minutes long. He boils. It was a Swedish doctor looking at childhood cancer and it really boils down to like four principles of sustainability, the natural step framework and that's really underlying a lot of Ray Anderson's work.  If you go to any hotel or any office building, you'll notice it's square carpet tiles, and it's interface carpet, and it's, they actually developed a carpet as a service model really it's like the carpet wears out they come pick it up they feed it back into the process. They lay down new carpet for you and they use no new oil for almost for over 10 years now. Carpet making business. I mean, is there a more petrochemical intensive thing than making nylon and stuff. So this is one piece of it. Another thing I ran across is the do I like with being working on my academic research and stuff everything is now do I have to have that in their references and I was looking at their site, and there's a new human digital group so this might actually be the so this might actually be part of the solution to deal with what's going on in Hollywood because there's basically a D a D li is could be that people have a D li and that's the back to be the basis for reimbursement for type of thing fascinating it's like, could a river have a D li is the D li a person. Can you explain a D li Carl. It's the yeah post a link to the site I found it looking actually at the D li organization but what does it stand for. It's like the ISBN number on steroids. Do I. Yeah. Okay I was hearing D li. D li is a digital object identifier I think. Yeah. Yeah, digital object. And to that as well. My apologies I was mishearing you in two different ways. So, um, well another thing I've found post I've shared it with Doug years ago to be and stuff but there's the Koji people down in Columbia and they there's a movie the Luna and stuff but their, their message to the world is you must protect the rivers. I mean, if we, if, if the earth is a living is a living system, the rivers are like our capillaries for our blood, our bloodstream the rain forests are our lungs. I mean, so yeah, so there's a couple of things there. I just ran across it literally I mean it's hard to believe it's been around for a long time but there's actually a whole evidence based policy making effort in at the federal level and stuff so I'll be writing up more about that to share next week. But I mean it's evident right what a concept that you're actually basing policy and evidence and stuff so those are some of the things that you're been giving me some, some hope I'm also going to post a link to. We've had a group in DC, back 15, 20 years ago now called golden fleece, and it was the organizational storytelling community, and basically one of the things we had done was organize the Smithsonian storytelling weekend so I'm looking to try to see if we can rekindle that to have an event next summer but I'll post a link to marry Alice Arthur she has a TED talk that's really amazing and stuff she's just one of when we got Steve Denning who's done a lot of work for. He's written a number of books and a lot of articles and Forbes, he takes IBM to task for their for their maximizing stakeholder value. It's not about that IBM it's about market shares. You can have a total crack project product. And if you're first to market, it's latched on. Yeah, these companies, you know, one monopoly leverage to get another monopoly. I mean, it's been that's been going on for almost 30 years now. So that that's a main part of the problem and I'll close with. I mentioned it before but Tuesday the 12th is going to be the release of Marjorie Kelly's book on wealth supremacy. And she's another one that people need to add to the list. And she's a lovely dynamic speaker, etc. And, you know, still kicking I think she lives in Berkeley or Oakland. She was, she's not been associated with that democracy collaborative group to so that that's an amazing group that needs the needs more exploration and conversation within this community to I get overwhelmed though I mean I have 15,000 unread messages from like it's just the band I just do not have the bandwidth to deal with it's 1700, it's 1700 conversations I turn on conversation threads, and it's like over 1700 conversations. They told us to produce a quantity. I'll, I'll try to do a better job of that. So, with that up and pass it on to Stuart. Thanks Carl. Yeah. Two thoughts one. Along with Marjorie Kelly's new book. There's a new Rolling Stone out selling Rolling Stones album that's going to come out on the 20th of October. I watched the video of the first single that was reduced and that it's kind of kind of cool to see what what they've done with technology in terms of how the old Rolling Stones are presented. But more, more akin to the topic that we're talking about. I facilitated a half day, half a day of the annual retreat for the Sonoma County employees yesterday. Now, admittedly, it's a bubble here in Northern California there's no question about it, but I was just so engaged and positively enthused by the value set that I saw demonstrated the level of engagement in terms of learning in that context. You know, I don't know what that means in terms of the action. But it kind of goes to the, the idea that I don't remember who it was it was talking about but that's okay because these conversations kind of have one voice in some sense. The power of the military to do great things. You know, unfortunately it have all of the right wing civil libertarians you know pushing back on that for their own political reasons without a level of real pragmatism because we need large institutions who can do good things. That's all I wanted to share. Oh, and this notion of and thank you, Carl, for for going back to the notion of rivers. There's something so incredibly spiritual about the power and presence of rivers as the macro to the micro systems that that keep us alive and enable us to breathe. Rivers are really interesting. We used to live in Noe Valley in San Francisco and the mission district is just below and at some point I remember some artist as a piece of installation, environmental installation art, painted on a few of the streets, the course of one of the rivers that used to cut through the mission district in blue in water color. And it was really interesting because you'd see this odd shape, and it was kind of let off under a building and there's plenty of places there's a park near me in Portland called Tanner Springs Park, because there was a spring that originated in the hills over to my left and came through this neighborhood and then passed a couple of little tanneries that used to, you know, litter the area, and it is now a cute little eco park of a tiny block in size. And it just has a hint that there used to be a spring there. And then if you've read Jim McPhee or John McPhee or Cadillac Desert or anything like that about trying to tame rivers, and the results of those kinds of efforts. It's craziness, what we do and what we've tried to do it. And now there's a huge movement to undamn rivers because the US Army Corps of Engineers went so haywire. They were basically in competition with Cadillac Desert's plot is that the US Army Corps of Engineers were in competition with what was the other organization, another government organization, I'll figure it out and put it in the chat. I'm kind of trying to outdo each other for pork projects that Congress people would like because there's nothing like a big construction project in your district to employ people and do whatever. And then, all this stuff creates the socialist water system in the United States where water which is pretty expensive to get the people is given to them for very little money, and drain the aquifers and screws up the rivers and all that. So, sorry, there's just this whole rats nest of issues around water and rivers and Klaus I know has been really focused on water as a simple entry point to the regenerative economy and regenerative agriculture and I kind of agree a lot on that. And water is endlessly fascinating source to go ahead. No, that's okay. No years ago I had a great conversation with a guy who was a tribal chief, but also had a MBA and a law degree from Harvard, and he talked about his his kind of prophetic vision for the future that when we start to run out of fresh water. There's a high percentage of fresh water that's on Native American lands.  No, no, you know, there you go. Years ago, not that long ago in the early 2000s I lived up on on golf links road near the freeway and in Oakland, and I had a creek that ran through the back of my yard. And it was amazing when we had a lot of rain because the creek creek drain five canyons, and it would be literally an amazing whitewater rumbling scenario. One day I had a mechanic doing some repair work on a garage door who said, yeah, way back when when I was a kid, which was 7080 years ago, my father used to tell me stories about he used to go salmon fishing in these particular creeks. There are photos of fishermen with salmon as tall as they are. They used to be some mega fish swimming around. We got rid of all the mega. So the last piece is a wonderful scene from the movie out of Africa. When Meryl Streep has planted all these coffee crops and there's a great deal of rain and her native assistant sister. Man, this river want to go to Mombasa. Don't want to go where you want to send it. All that. Ken, please, at your own pace. And thanks for the extra breath. Along these lines, I just read a book. A few months ago called water always wins surviving and thriving in an age of drought and deluge Erica guys she's locally in San Francisco Bay area writer. Slow water is the future. We have covered the earth with so much concrete and culverted streams and like they're the ability of the earth to absorb water and have it percolate is so important. I recently saw a great little short video of a watershed somewhere in I think it's in Arizona, where these people have put in over 2000 rock dams and they're not, you know, they don't dam up in big, big reservoirs behind them. They allow water to flow slowly and it percolates and then the very next watershed over is in tremendous drought and yet this particular watershed because of all these rock dams is supporting an abundance of life that requires water. One of the things I got from this book is people who study water they call dams gray infrastructure and they talk about dams and levees. There are a few kinds of levees. Those that have broken, and those that are going to break levees never, ever survive. They always end up breaking. And I love the idea of water always wins because she's like, you know, the planet is a water planet and it's going to do what it does but we have sucked up so much water. And now it's, it's coming down in places in, in quantities that are completely overwhelming our infrastructure. Look at the flooding in Vermont earlier this year and what's just happened in somewhere in Europe, Turkey, Greece, Greece and Turkey, right. Spain. And there's major rivers in the, in the, in the world now that no longer reach the ocean, because they've been so drained. Water is certainly one of the big key elements that has to be considered of how to, if we're going to restore guy has ability to generate life by support. Water is going to be absolutely critical to that how do we ensure that water gets to where it needs to go and gets there slowly. And I know I wish we had Paul Crafell in this caucus he's another great guy when it comes to water I mean he's just done so much. And so, I don't hear a lot of people talking about water as as and water is life with no water there's no life. Anyway, a couple thoughts. Sorry one quick thing. There's actually people now who are doing gorilla beavering where they're, they're bringing beavers into watersheds, surreptitiously, and the beavers are great at slowing water down. And I, I think I read this I, I'm not entirely sure it's true but beavers build dams because they hate the sound of running water. So they, they, you know, they're kind of slowing it down but I don't know if that's true or not I just read that somewhere. You could Greek havoc on people's golf courses that way. It should be fine with me. Yeah. Let's start with Bedminster. You know, there are some dynamics around water that just, that just seem to be so obvious. When you, when you look at the mechanics of it. So, one thing that industrial agriculture does, you know, by the application of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides and so on, is it tries out the soil. Because it harms the soil microbiome. So it disrupts the cycle, you know, of photosynthesis, sequestering nitrogen carbon into into its root systems and then distributes it there. So roughly 25% of the greenhouse gases of the carbon in the atmosphere has actually been released from the soil, because of farming practices. So when the soil tries out when when the soil microorganisms get get harmed, then it releases its carbon, but then it also loses its capacity to hold on to water. So for every 1% and this is now a number that is has gone all over the place for every 1% of soil organic matter. So it can hold an additional 20,000 gallons of water per acre. So when you, when you think that healthy soil holds between 4% and 10% of soil organic matter, I mean organic soil, that's a ton of water. I mean, these are, when you think of California alone, if California, California's farmers were to add 1% of soil organic matter by changing their practices, they would sequester something like 1.5 million acre feet of water. Forget about building more dams and all of this. But there is another phenomenon that's associated with this is called the small rain, the small water cycle. When soil is saturated with water, you have a process that's called evapotranspiration. So water evaporates and creates a local rain cycle. So about 40% of rain is actually coming from this evapotranspiration cycle, the hydrological cycle that sits in place. So when you now think that we have depleted millions of acres of farmland across the, I mean, look at California, but Arizona and even Oregon, any way you look, you have these millions of acres of open soil in a farmland that's completely dry. So that disrupts the rain cycle in ways that we just haven't really understood or accepted. So even scientists fail to acknowledge this phenomenon here. So the focusing on water in that sense of healing the soil back to health so it can absorb and hold water seems to be the most immediate solution. Water is such a thing as a solution, but the most immediate mitigation practice to restore a semblance of normalcy to our weather patterns. And so I have, I mean, I have not had any any pushback on that, you know, putting that out with groups that are focused on climate science. So it seems to be, it seems to be the most logic engagement, you know, because 80% like in the high desert 86% of water is used by farmers. So it seems to be the most logical thing to focus on agriculture and shift out of these industrial chemically intensive practices. We're getting near the end of today's call and I just wanted to see a couple things around how we're going about this and what we might do next. I love this topic. I think we're just sort of slowly thinking into it. I think we've slowed down only a tiny bit we haven't slowed down that much. I'm interested in being a little bit more. I don't know exactly what words to put around it.  But I think why don't we in two weeks do this again, same topic and go a little deeper do more research, pick pick a couple of books and let's let's slow down and talk about Marjorie Kelly's new book or or whichever of these. So that's one thought. Second thought is I'm really interested in the revitalization side of this so there's a piece of me that's fascinated by models of doom and how does civilizations collapse and I'm going to do a little bit of homework on that myself. But I'm really more intrigued compelled and desirious of working on the revitalization piece of it. And Klaus has found his way toward water and it's a thing that really I love as well, but also soil fertility. And it seems like, and I put in the chat a little moment ago, water principles plus soil fertility. And I'm just describing the basic, the basic insights behind regenerative agriculture or something like that. But I know the permaculture was a movement a couple of decades ago and it got some people but it felt like it was about farming and growing food, I think to a lot of people, where taming water and collaborating with water, not harnessing water as the Army Corps of Engineers did, but learning to collaborate with water the way Paul Crafell tries to sort of advocate for as Ken was pointing to in the chat is important but there are some generalizable principles from such work, and then improving soil fertility as a side objective you don't.   And I think that improving our environments and our food systems and all that is kind of like that it's like, if we can help people learn some practices and learn some measures and we can really help decentralize this and this stuff is happening it's just happening lots of places, but it's not well organized or understood. And I think one way we might be a little helpful is in helping organize and understand it and class maybe that's a this is a bend or an angle to put on the neobook that we're writing on Mondays if anybody would like to join us. So Stuart and Klaus and I are having a lovely time talking about sort of the neobooks and the, the quick first book that we're working on is Klaus's creation alongside a collaboration partner known as chat GBT. And writing about how, how we might manage some of these things so so this this might be a thing to think about in the context of the neobook. I'm interested in us maybe focusing on these kinds of things. And if anybody wants to find someone who's got a really nice framework and a great set of theories. You know there's there's donut economics out there there's a, there are 100 things like donut economics that I've curated into my brain. None of them yet has taken over the world the way predatory capitalism made the world over the last 100 years. And all of them, most of them are trying to be the antidote to predatory capitalism because they have all got really all start with really good critiques of capitalism and look how it's breaking things. I'm trying to figure trying to figure some of those things out. Gil there's a there's a neobook group on matter most and there's a call in my zoom every Monday at 1030 Pacific. I'm going to check to make sure I've got the time right. Yes, we started 1030 Pacific so you're welcome to join us. Thanks for your research and laundries. Have you come across anything that's anyone was really looking at at all of the systems and how they link together.  It's got impact or consequences. Have you have you seen anything like that. And then to some huge thinkers, they tend to then narrow and have a thesis or a focus that makes them seem like less integrative thinkers, you know but but Hunter and Amory Loven's both now separated but but they're both really big thinkers they think big picture. Saul Griffith says electrify everything and he tries to take a monster big picture approach toward energy in the world, and how that works. There's sort of a bunch of other people who take large scale systems wipes at this and I would have to sort of, and you're, you're provoking me to go look at the collections of people like this that I've that I've got, and see who you know who would I recommend and happy to hear from anybody else who you think the best sort of the best thinkers on this way are. I would wager that the Chinese Central Committee is doing that as well. Yeah, little, little known in the West, but China adopted three or four or five year plans ago, a commitment to an ecological civilization, which is, you know, what we might think of China currently aside is kind of a remarkable document of people diving and read that it's an attempt to both come. There are a lot of people who do big complex system maps of connecting everything to everything but translating that into effective action. You know, on the spectrum of all the way to what Doug see is talking about is pretty rare. So, I know we're close to time so I want to respond in particular Jerry to some of the things that you were just saying. Water and soil is the heart of the story. What you say when you talk about water and soils you're talking about the basis of all life everywhere. Simply put, so that's how important it is. You said soil fertility not as the core focus but as the side effect I think that's backwards I think soil fertility is the core focus food production is the side effect. Wendell Barry used to talk about that the culture of agriculture was to was to cultivate soil and human community and by the way produce food. We go at it as let's produce food and everything else is a side effect. So there's some food for thought. You, you wondered about the pace of the conversation. Maybe we need more beavers. Like that. And if I could share screen for just a moment. I like that. Go for it. My, my friend and former partner bill read from Regenesis in New Mexico has been one of the leaders in this in the regenerative work for a long time and the organization is Regenesis and their, their approach to doing development projects with communities on land is to ask the question of what does this land want to be. They spend a lot of time just hanging out walking the land trying to get a feel for what the native expression of that place is and here's one example from a talk he and I did at SRI and the Rockies years ago. This was some very arid land in the American Southwest. Scrub you can see scrub. No water. And what they did was start to build some check dams like you see are the stones on the screen to slow the flow of the limited water they actually they came on this because they drilled cores in this very arid land and found the 10 feet down. There was indication of rich organic matter.  So they built check jams and did a number of other things and wound up with open flowing water year round. Growth of vegetation. Ken has told us the story about the person who walks upstream and and put the pebble in one place in a stream to change the course of the water downstream so there's very small actions that can have very profound effects. I mean, sorry, I got to take this down so I can see my notes. The. I think a lot of what we're talking about here is how we becomes we. There are. You know, can can planted this burn my saddle last year and just build not it will not let me go to mix metaphors very badly. But the many ways that we talk about we seems a very important piece here and a lot of what we're talking about is the weave that initiates. I think that's a very important question putting down the pebble Ray Anderson's Emma raise, raise theory of change was to do this work at interface and then share it as widely as he could he spent the last 10 or 15 years years of his life, just flying around meeting with every CEO he could meet with to say here's what we've done and here's how it's worked and isn't this attractive and you might want to try it. And so, you know, so the question of how, how the limited we the, the, the, you know, the, the thousands or millions of circles around the world like us who are having these conversations. And how that spreads and propagates and infects, not just other communities but legislators and boardrooms and so forth. When some of the we are attached to a very limited notion of what we is. So it's a question of how norms change. And how expectations change and how people sense of what's possible changes and how people sense of what they want and demand changes. And that's the other way that I think that the big decisions happen is, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's the clot to barato Nick to. And, or there is the just the norms are different. The story I keep going back to because it was one that I, you know, experience in my lifetime was growing up in a world where drinking and driving was cool. And being able to hold your liquor and not fall down was cool and macho and da da da da da. And when a bunch of mothers got together whose daughters had been killed by drunk drivers and created mothers against drunk driving and mounted a national campaign to shift the norms and make it not cool but you know distasteful and horrible. And, you know, drunk driving still happens and we still have laws against it and people still die from it. But it's no longer cool. In most parts of the culture. It's, it's shunned and they're, you know, and bartenders will take people's keys and the norms changed. And in that case, it didn't happen from top down it happened from bottom up. We're going to need both but you know, I'm sure I'm coming away from this call with the question of how does we become we. Thank you go. We are at the end of our time. A poetic thing to throw in. I do but I noticed Carl had his hand up and then took it down did you want to say something Carl. Thank you. I just wanted to say also in response to Gil. Great spiritual teacher who was a former internist, whose name all of a sudden, I just blanked on, wrote a wonderful book Richard Moss, m o s s, the eye that is we, the eye that is we, which I need to go back and, and, we, a great book script, I studied with Richard is remarkable teacher son and I son and I, Gil. Carl, please. Yeah, I'm not sure if I did say anything. Well, I mean, that there were some people they went to from GSA they've gone to China as a advanced visit to when Obama was going there. They got taken on a tour, China built an entire city for 10 million people, complete IPV infrastructure, high speed rate rail coming in. All this stuff. Then we started seeing our call about things were starting to collapse. Because I think they were actually doing an experiment to see how fast they could build a city like that. They had no intention of anyone ever living and stuff that's, that's great. I mean, how much concrete is kind of is kind of using is one thing and then the other thing is my pet peeve with with the whole climate science people is they're staying in the denier frame. Human caused climate change is not is the is the issue we don't need to be bringing that up, we should eliminate that qualifier it's about the science it's about taking collective action and focus on the science when you blame humans that just reinforces the deniers in saying that they don't know how many groups I post money pythons argument clinic to but it really needs to be considered that we need to focus on the science it's the collective actions that we need to be taking and not getting out of this blame game because there's not we can't go back and change the industrialization from World War two, which has caused the issue but it does at this point does we got all the co2 and stuff it doesn't really matter how it got there. That surpassed some costs we need to get to solutions. That's my grant for the day. Well with that passionate commentary will go to Kim for a poem to take us out. Thanks Carl. You appreciate the passion Carl and I share it. Here yeah. So I think I'll turn to Mary Oliver today. And since we've been talking about water and land. And Turtle Island is a name that many indigenous people have for North America will go to the turtle. The turtle breaks from the blue black skin of the water. Dragging her shell with its mossy scoots across the shallows and through the rushes and over the mud flats to the uprise to the yellow sand to dig with her ungainly feet, a nest and hunker there spewing her white eggs down into the darkness. And you think of her patience, her fortitude, her determination to complete what she was born to do. And then you realize a greater thing. She doesn't consider what she was born to do. She's only filled with an old blind wish. It isn't even hers, but came to her in the rain or the soft wind, which is a gate through which her life keeps walking. She can't see herself apart from the rest of the world, or a world from what she must do every spring. Crawling up the high hill, luminous under the sand that has packed against her skin. She doesn't dream. She knows she's a part of the pond she lives in. The tall trees are her children. The birds that swim above her are tied to her by an unbreakable string. Thank you very much. See everybody next week for a check in ish call and then in two weeks we'll pick this theme back up and head back in. Thanks everybody.


The fact that he was able to make something of himself despite all of the obstacles that were in his way despite all of the people saying You're never gonna make it in aviation. He didn't care He wanted to he wanted to do what he wanted to do which was be in the flying world and he made that happen Colonel Walter Watson, Jr. He was the first and only African-American crew member for the SR 71 He got to meet him and his wife and he really spent you know quality time talking to us about his life and his career in the Air Force getting to capture the stories of people like Walt. That's amazing He told us about watching movies when he was a kid and learning so much about airplanes and doing model airplanes and just he was so into it And I think that's really cool because not everybody grows up knowing what they want to do But he did and he he knew that he had to work hard to overcome his reading struggles So the fact that he was able to do that and do so well in college is really amazing And he's he's such an inspiration to to folks who come from Backgrounds where they have to overcome adversity whether it be racial struggles or education struggles He was able to overcome that and he successfully became a commissioned officer in the Air Force He started out in maintenance and then he was able to because he was so wanted to work with aviation He was able to become a navigator even at the very very beginning of his Air Force career He was able to overcome the fact that he wasn't in the career field that he specifically set out to do But he was able to make his way into that and he did that through Extreme perseverance and just working so hard to make his name known that he wanted to be an aviation I would love to be able to live up to his legacy. I think that you know, I'm an intelligence officer I work with aviators all the time So his legacy is just remarkable and I would love to be able to live up to that in my my Air Force career personally But also just as a person being a good person


For so long, living in America, we didn't have anything to do with Africa. We didn't know anything about Africa. Other than what they showed us in movies, you know, you had Tarzan swinging through the trees and, you know, riding on an elephant, come to save the downtrodden people. And pictures of black pots with black people in them with a bone in their nose. So if this is the kind of picture that you painted for me, would you want to come to Africa? I don't hear nothing about no Africa. And especially when they're saying we're not African, we're colored, we've been Negroes, we've been croons, we've been jiggaboos. We've had so many names.  So that's all right up to a point. But black is a color. It does not describe an ethnic group. So then we were, as, you know, the level of consciousness began to rise, then we became African-American. Well, there were still people that didn't, don't call me an African. I mean, I had a young man, I called him an African, he wanted to fight. And my thing was, but we are African, disprove to me that I am not an African. Grandma, you see, like, I'm so happy that you brought this up. And I want to ask you this question, because even my classmate when I was back in China had a classmate who nearly fought with me because I called him an African. And even the videos that I do, a lot of people comment that, hey, stop calling us Africans. We are not African, we are Israelis or something. You've been in Ghana, and you've lived in America. What are you going to tell people who don't see themselves as an African or, you know, some of them even are ashamed to claim being an African. I know Africans that were born in Africa, but when they go out of Africa, they don't want to be called Africans. That's all. That's all. Do you have any message for such people? One of the analogies that I use when people tell me that they're not African is that I say, you know, let me give you an example. I have an almond tree and I have a coconut tree. The nut germinates when it hits the ground and it grows. When it grows, does it grow to be an almond tree or a coconut tree? Almond tree. It's an almond tree. Exactly. So when they took our ancestors out of those slave forts and dungeons and took them to the Americas, when did they become an American? They didn't. I mean, America's and the slave trade's primary mission was to yank Africa out of our souls, out of our whole being, so that we would be nothing. So many of us living in America and other colonized countries, we were not allowed to think or say African.  I'm an African. So when I explain that to people, my thing is that you're still an African. You're an African that was born in America. I'm an African that was born in America. You're an African that was born in Ghana. He's an African that was born in Kenya, but we are still African people and we can't get away from that. It's like some brother told me that he was a Jamaican.  That's a Jamaican who's living in America. I was like, okay, you know, why? Listen, the Italian is the Italian is the Italian. He's still Italian. The Jew is the Jew is the Jew. He's still a Jew. So why is it totally impossible for us to remain to be who it is that we are African people? And we need to take a look at the very glorious history of us as African people. We were not always slaves. And that's the other thing. People talk about slaves. They did not take slaves out of Africa. They enslaved us and took us out of here. That's a big difference. You know, people make, oh, yeah, they took the slaves.  They didn't come here to our farms and find us slaves. They didn't come into our markets and find us as slaves. They enslaved us and took us away, but we're still African. So my message to anybody is that we should be proud of who it is that we are. You know, let's say, well, you know, African people are so great. Well, y'all didn't do that. You didn't do this. You didn't do that. Well, we don't have what white folks have.  Okay, we don't have that. We have to fight harder. We have to work harder. We have to be better in order to get along, in order to survive. We have to be better. So let us be better as proud, proud African people, because that's who we are. We are highly melanated gifts from the Most High, from the universe. And we need to take the time to honor those ancestors, because those ancestors got something for us. They do take care of us. So from today, if you're Jamaican, just get to know that you're an African born in Jamaica. I think I'll do a T-shirt about this, like being an African born in America, being an African born in the UK. I think I need to print T-shirt and I'll give you the shout out of you bringing this initiative. Thank you so much.


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Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Bruce Gulland. And I'm Liz Wade. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live. Isidore Charters stands on a beautiful hill in the country of Canada. He looks out at the fields of grass. He sees mountains in the distance. Charter's hair is now grey. But he remembers many happy days on these hills. When he was a child, he ran over the grass and climbed trees. But when he was young, nobody called him Isidore Charters. The only name he knew was Yenemo Sitsa. His family called him Yummo. But one sad day, officials took Yummo away. They placed him in a government school far away from his family. And they called him Isidore Charters. Officials took Charters away from everything he knew. And it has taken him many years to find peace and recover from this hurt. Today's Spotlight is on Isidore Charters and his story of faith and healing. Charters is a member of the Okanagan and Thompson tribes. These are two of Canada's first nations, the native people who lived in Canada before Europeans arrived. Charters' ancestors had lived in the hill country of western Canada for thousands of years. As a child, Charters loved his tribe. And he loved living on their land. But when he was six years old, his life changed. One morning a truck came to his home. Officials took Charters and his brothers. They put the boys in the truck.  All the children were from First Nations tribes. And the government was placing them in government managed residential schools, far from their homes. The Canadian government threatened the native parents. If they did not send their children to the residential school, the government would send the parents to prison. This is a common story for many First Nations tribe members in Canada. From 1876 to 1996, the Canadian government forced 150,000 First Nations children to attend residential schools. The goal of these schools was to force native children to become part of the majority culture. School officials worked to rid Canada of First Nations culture. You can hear more about these schools in an earlier spotlight program called Truth and Reconciliation for Canada. Charters lived at a residential school managed by the Catholic Church. When he arrived, a nun told him that his name was not Yomo. This female religious worker told him that his English name was Isidore Charters. And from then on, she said that he must only be Isidore Charters. The nuns told Charters that native culture was evil. They said that he needed to forget the ways of his tribe. And they did not let him speak his tribal language. Charters told the Chilliwack Progress News Organization, They took away who I was, my language, my traditions, my culture. One of the nuns at the school was very kind to Charters. She talked about the love of God and her Christian faith. At times, Charters said he could feel God even at the school. Over time, Charters struggled with the idea of becoming a Christian. The school was managed by Christian leaders that did not respect him or his culture. But he believed strongly in God, and he wanted to become a saint, a holy person of the Christian Church. So, one day he got on his knees, he placed his back toward the school, and his face toward the grass of the fields. He told God that he wanted to become a saint. Charters told Spotlight, God was there. We were talking. He was talking to me, and I knew he was there. But very soon after that, Charters stopped believing in God. He experienced a terrible tragedy. A worker at the school began to molest him.  Charters became very angry at the worker and at God. He began using art to express his pain and anger. He made pictures of snakes coming out of people's mouths and pictures with knives and blood. After a short time, Charters began to drink alcohol. He thought alcohol would help get rid of his pain. By the time he was 12 years old, Charters was an alcoholic. He could no longer control his use of alcohol. As an adult, Charters recognized that he needed to stop drinking. After many years, he decided to seek help. He looked to God and his native culture. Members of other tribes helped him. They prayed with him and encouraged him. This time was very healing for Charters. He came to recognize that he did not have to give up his culture to be a Christian. And he did not have to stop being a Christian to honor his culture. Charters believes that God was speaking to his first nation's people all through their history. He thinks that their beliefs prepared them to hear the message of Jesus. He told Spotlight, Our people already knew there was a special person on the earth. That is why it is easy for them to believe in Jesus. After he stopped drinking, Charters went to art school. Today, he uses art to express the healing he has experienced, instead of only pain and anger. He paints pictures of first nation stories that he remembers from his childhood. Charters also believes that there needs to be healing between the larger Canadian and first nation's cultures. So Charters proposed an idea to help share his story and encourage healing. He decided to carve a totem pole. Totem poles are important in the native culture of Western Canada. A totem pole is a tall piece of wood. An artist uses sharp tools to carve pictures and symbols into the pole. These pictures tell a story. Charters decided that he would carve a totem pole that told the story of his healing. And he wanted other people to help him carve it. So Charters travelled to schools, universities, churches and public places. He told his story and then he invited people to help him. He gave them sharp tools to carve. Then they could be a part of the healing. Not just Charters' healing, but Canada's healing. When the healing pole was finished, Charters took it to the residential school where he lived, the school in Kamloops. This particular school was one of the largest residential schools in Canada. The pole was permanently placed in the ground. When it was installed, the community held a celebration to honour the totem pole. The community performed a First Nations power dance. Then they prayed together. And the very place that caused so much pain can now be a place of hope for the future. Have you ever seen art help in the process of healing? Do you think hope for the future is possible in all harmful situations? Tell us what you think. You can email us at contact at spotlightenglish.com You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The writer of this program was Jennifer Hawkins. The producer was Michio Ozaki. The voices you heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program again and read it on the internet at www.spotlightenglish.com. This program is called Isidore Charters The Healing Pole. Visit our website to download our free official app for Android and Apple devices. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye.


On behalf of the American people, I want to thank the members of both parties in the House of Representatives for today's or may today's victory possible. This was a hard choice for many of them, especially in an election year. But when it came to the test, a bipartisan majority bit the bullet and voted for the revenue increases and spending cuts we so urgently need to get deficits and interest rates down and Americans back to work. This vote does not mark the end of the crusade to get our country's economy moving again, but it is an important milestone. Over the last 18 months, we've cut inflation in half. The interest rates are coming down. The latest economic indicators are pointing in the right direction. It hasn't been easy, and I fully appreciate what has been like for millions of Americans who have borne the brunt of this recession and resisted the political calls for quick fixes. We must keep our faith with their patience, their courage, and their resolve. Our duty is clear. We have to keep government spending and deficits moving downward so that prosperity and economic growth can move up. And I pledge my cooperation with the Congress in the days ahead to work tirelessly for these vital objectives. Let me also add a word to those who voted against this measure. Honorable men and women can honestly disagree. They can also leave their disagreements behind them and work together once the issue has been settled by free and open voting. It will take the best efforts of us all to keep the American economy on the road to recovery. Let's leave our differences behind us and all of us get on with the nation's business and economic recovery that will mean more jobs and more opportunity for all of our people. Thank you. Why did you see it as such a squiggly? You had a pretty good marker. Well I have to tell you that right down to the wire there was no one predicting anything but that it would be that close. There were, I know in my own calls and meetings with Congressmen of both parties on this, there were a great many who very frankly stated that they were still in the process of making up their minds so you didn't have a definite commitment on them. That's why there were conflicting reports coming as to which side might be ahead in this. Are you concerned that you will lose conservative support out of all of this? No, not at all because I think there's been a wrong perception. It was made evident the other night after I went on the air and explained this program and immediately afterward in certain surveys that were made and telephone checks that were made it was amazing how many people had totally misunderstood the program or the bill and once they understood it that they said this now made them able to support it. The first thing was we have to think of the economic recovery program as not only just a separate bill that was passed last year, it is this entire ongoing package just as our tax cuts are spread over several years, so are the spending cuts with the idea that each year we would come back in with more that we had to do and therefore to even have referred to this as a tax increase I think was wrong because it was an adjustment of the tax cut that was passed last year and which still continues on in the coming years and the truth of the matter is that even with this past the tax cut over the next three years will amount to $335 billion for the people. Next year they will double the gain that they have already made in their personal fortunes because of the tax cut. I think that there was a perception in the part of some and an alarm that this represented some kind of change in philosophy it does not. I still believe in the combination of incentive tax cuts that will increase productivity in this country and cuts reductions in spending and so I don't think it will hurt the movement at all. Some of the polls that have come out indicate that a majority of Americans oppose this tax increase bill. Are you concerned that by the time election day rolls around and some of these explanations have worn away that all people will remember things like the 8-cent cigarette tax increase? I think what they are going to see and what is going to happen that they are going to be thinking about is I think the economy is going to continue to improve. I think that a failure to have passed this would have been a setback to the improvement of the economy. I think we would have seen probably interest rates going back up and a stagnation of and yet all the indices that we have now are supportive of the idea that things are getting better. You don't think this is going to? No, I don't think it is going to hurt anyone in November frankly. Do you think the Senate is going to be easier than the House Mr. President? Well, I don't know but I think there we are going to see a bipartisan demonstration also. Don't talk like that. You know as an old sports announcer I have to tell you that if a no-hitter is being pitched you never mention that during the game or you will jinx the pitcher. So no, I think this is, there have been a lot of people working on this and it was a great team effort on both sides.  You bet. I'd like to please thank you.


I am so with you, David, I, that's that. Let's create that right now. I'm going to set the attention focus that by the year of 2024 2024, the mainstream conversation is going to be what frequency. Did you do today? How did you up regulate your frequency today? Did you make sure you recharge your frequency today?   What people in your family are so sick?  Can we rise above the dumbness of that please and elevate to how did you optimize? David, how are you feeling so good? I want to feel as good as you. How do I do that? That's the conversation.