2.9 Living Between Worlds — Moods, Messes, and…
Gil Friend leads a conversation about living with grace during 2021's crises: COVID, democracy, climate. Participants share practices like chanting and gardening, debate ESG and capitalism, and discuss how to build coalitions and sustain action when everything feels broken.
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Welcome everybody. Thank you for being here. This is the ninth call in the second year of series that I'm calling Living Between Worlds. For those of you here for the first time, this is the last session of what's been a two year discussion exploring how we might live with grace and dignity and power in this time between worlds that challenges us to be present and effective and people moving with agency in a time of enormous disruption. What I've mentioned Before, Antonio Gramsci 100 years ago called the time of monsters. I'll start the conversation with 15 or 20 minutes of reflections. What I'm seeing now, what I am feeling and moving in now. And then we'll open up the room to your perspectives. We're recording this call. You're also welcome. In fact, I encourage you to use the chat both to add ideas and communicate with each other. Share your contact information. If you'd like to do that, we will post the video to YouTube after the call. We will not post the chat. So if you want to save the chat, it's on you. To save it, use the three dots in the lower right hand corner corner of your chat screen. If the norms for this call, if you want to speak, please use the zoom clicker under the reactions button to raise your hand. I'll try to take people in sequence. Please be respectful of time because there'll be a lot of people who have a lot to say and we want to give ample room for that. There you go. So what a year this has been. My God. It started with a failed but ongoing insurrection. It's winding up with a failed but ongoing climate summit. Democracy under challenge, certainly in the United States, but not only a year of continued Covid mishigahs. It's a technical term, some of you know it, but 800,000Americans dead. One third of the dead are nursing home residents. Just kind of give a window into the breakdowns that we're living in. Millions dead around the world. Africa still largely unvaccinated. While we argue here about vax or not, mask or not, boosters are not under 5% in Africa, which for me is emblematic, indicative of the kind of larger problems that we're living in. Intriguingly to me, where's the highest rate of vaccination in the United States? The lowest is among whites and blacks. The highest rate is among Native Americans, where somehow people incredibly somehow maintain a sense of we feeling a sense of community and responsibility perhaps for each other's. Let me quickly review the road we've traveled in these conversations in 2020 we started off focusing on Covid and climate change and speculating about the similarities in the crises and the trends and the shapes of the curves that we're seeing, curves of exponential growth and sigmoid leveling out. And that was before we saw the inter, you know, the repeatedly spiky nature of the COVID We, you know, we speculated about the possibility of the world coming together and dealing with adequate speed and scope and scale with the pandemic. We did see speed. We've seen unprecedented vaccine development, incredible rollout in many countries. We never suspected the denier, the power of the deniers. And you know, I look back and think, if people will deny a pandemic, how much more so around climate, which is invisible and distant for the most part, You know, we. Jacobin magazine had a piece last week talking about the moral failure of vaccine profiteering and how the profit motive has been in the way of vaccine rollout. Which brings my mind back to conversation we had earlier this year about the structural defects of capitalism, which is the thing we'll return to again and again. But most striking for me about the last year and the entry into what Fernando Flores calls the pandemic era is how fiercely we still argue over just what's so, not even about what to do about it, which of course we will argue about. But what's the reality on the ground? We can't even seem to agree on that. This year, in 2020, we've explored the many dimensions of power. We've attacked the all too common disdain among progressives, disdain and ambivalence around power. We've talked about the structural defects of capitalism. I hyphenate the word. That's a work in progress for me. We probe the economism that is tangled with capitalism. I think Hazel Henderson gets credit for that word, the belief system where economics is at the heart of everything, relatively recent invention in human history. And we talked about the crippling reductionism that's at the heart of the modern world and most of the messes that we're looking at. We talked about the mysteries of systems change, the difference between problems and messes, which we'll return to again today. We talked about some important four letter words, most notably in that conversation, fear and hope. But there are others. Last month we talked about the progress, lack of progress and perhaps inevitable disappointment of the COP26 climate summit. And through it all, we're reflecting on the challenge of living, to use our subtitle with gracing dignity and power. In the midst of what I will call a Battle for the story of the world. We see this now in, you know, in the abortion rights coming to a head in the Supreme Court, which for me, that story and the story about race and a number of others feel like people trying to recreate, recreate the narrative in the 1950s, here in the 2000s, trying to move back into a story that we thought we've abandoned, move past, or at least started to move past. And while we battle over laws and legal interpretations and budgets and executive orders and corporate practices and so forth, this pervasive cultural narrative of who we are as people and with each other lives behind it all. And that's something that. Well, that's part of the conversation about change. How does change happen? We're between worlds, but new worlds don't just happen. We participate in that process. We bring them into being with our actions and our inactions and our words, which after all, are a kind of action, very particular sort. It's not that it's magic. It's not like you say things and abracadabra, things happen, although there is. There is magic. Neighbor Abrams, author of the Spell of the Sensuous, had a fascinating interview recently called the Ecology of Magic, and I'll try to put the link in the chat a little bit later on. So it's not magic, but it's about how we coordinate with others, how we construct the filters through which we perceive and interpret the world and act, the interpretations that we have of the sensory data that we perceive and the stories that we construct with ourselves and with each other, the requests that we make of each other, the promises or commitments that we make of each other at the scale of individual relationships, family relationships, cultural and political relationships in the world in mass numbers, and frankly, the conversations that I have with myself in my own mind, which are subject to these same, same matter of interpretations and commitments that I draw from that. For me, in particular, reflecting on this last year and absorbing the last couple of weeks, the reason that I don't lay out an annual agenda for this program is because things are moving so fast. I have a theme, and the theme evolves in the final days as events of the world land in me. Two things that are really front of mind for me right now. One is the rapid penetration of esg, environmental, social and governance factors and investment into the world of investment. Now, I think $15 trillion of assets under management through some kind of ESG filter, which is supposed to be a representative of concerns for sustainability and climate stability and justice and equity and so forth. But what's notable now is that as it becomes more and more widespread, there's a rising critique, not just from the periphery, but from the practitioners about the. About the very usefulness and integrity and meaning of that whole way of looking at enterprise. A lot of people are calling bullshit on what has been seen as a very powerful rising trend. And the other striking critique is about capitalism. We're seeing capitalism being questioned from surprise. It's always been questioned. We're seeing a question from surprising quarters, from the heart of capitalism, from billionaires, from large asset managers, from policy people. Bob Kutner had a beautiful piece in the last couple of years days been a columnist for the New Republic and many others for many years. And he it's sort of. Sort of a long confessional saying I've identified as left liberal for all my life and I think I need to stop talking about that and talk about socialism as we do, because capitalism is failing in ways that I assert are deeper than what most people talk about. So some things have changed for me in this last year, and I want to ask you a similar question in a moment. I'm settling, settling into a sense of profound disruption, anticipation of profound disruption as the landscape of the rest of my life, and I would argue the rest of yours, which will be longer than mine. You know, I'm. I'm less willing to euphemize about the roots of both modern capitalism, late capitalism, as some call it, and the relationship of the modern world with the living world for a long time. Most of you know me through my work in sustainability, working with corporates and governments and trying to encourage a better relationship with the living world. Treat it nicer, be less cruel, take better care of it. And I'm coming to understand that the challenge is not that. It's whether or not we choose to belong to the living world and what it might look like if we lived and operated our institutions as though we were parts of a living world, not managers of it. I've invested most of my career in helping the world of business and capital learn from the world of living beings and to reinvent the world of business in order to better protect the world, the living world. And there's been great progress. There's been enormous technological progress. There's everything from the rapid uptake of renewables to regenerative ag and so much more. But the inadequacy is overwhelming. The inadequacy of everything that we're doing is overwhelming as we dismantle the living world that supports and sustains everything that we hold dear. In this blind extractive game that we're in. And more striking is, even more striking is our failure to grasp that. Not just to change and act, but to really grasp it. Jane and I were talking recently about evil, and she said, for her, the definition of evil is willful blindness and cruelty. And we're in that as a civilization and many of us as individual people. So for me, the gloves are off. What that means for how I earn a living is less clear and a mystery that I'm in right now. But those are some of the things that have changed for me. Let me ask you what has changed for you this year in what you pay attention to, perhaps in how you interpret what you're observing, in the moods that you find yourself in, in the commitments that you're making to yourself as well as to other people, and in your sense of possibility. Let's start there. I've got a couple of more questions, but let's let this cook for a while and see where we go over to you. Again. Use the link at the underneath the reactions button. Raise your hand and I'll call on you more or less in order. And it's fine if we take a couple of minutes and just silence together and let this cook. Doc, I'll get to you in just a minute and dawn will be next and then Don. Okay. Doc hall, please. Thanks, Gail. And for a long time, I've felt that the best we were doing was not anywhere nearly good enough, and that somehow, some way, we had to change the social narrative, change what we're trying to do. From how much can we get by with and still have a modern type economy to what must we do to make sure that nature takes care of us? There's a profound difference, and I have not found a way to persuade very many people of that. I present the idea and the response is huh. And then within 30 seconds, we're back to thinking as usual. So I'm open to what do we do about that? Thank you, Doc. Don, Need you to unmute. Don? Yes. Thank you. So, first of all, I just want to say, Gil, thank you for your complete authenticity and vulnerability in what you're sharing. I just honor. That's what we need. Thank you so much for starting us that way. We live. There's a harshness that is blatantly in front of us at times. We need to move into gentleness, and our words, our language, can be harsh and is missing some of the fine essence that we really would like to bring forward. So I've been including chanting and sounding in my practice and practices as an individual. And then when I hold small, intimate groups, that there's a. That there's. I often use Joseph Rael's book, Being in Vibration. He gives sound to chant. And it's a different vibration. We need a different vibration on our planet right now. And so I go with that. I offer that. And Charles Eisenstein, who wrote the More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, along with Thich Nhat Hanh, they often use the word interbeing. I think it was originated from Thich Nhat, of course, but interbeing, looking deeply, and we've talked about this on this program, but looking deeply and taking any. Anything and saying, how did it get in my hand and take it back and back and back. And seeing those interconnections can give us a new way of observing the world. I think it's an easy practice for other people to understand. Like, I've done this. You know, like, just take something you're wearing. Where. Where did your boots come from? It's not just the store, you know, back and back. And it's a realization for people. So I offer that as a way to reframe culture. Thank you. Yeah. On this last one, where did your boots come from? Nora Bateson asked the lovely question about, question yourself, whether anything she's wearing is not the product of exploitation and extraction. And I've tried that out in audiences and, you know, it's a very uncomfortable question because in a room of 500 people, one person will say, nothing I'm wearing is that one. I'm gonna guess nobody on this call. And so putting us in place in the physical world and in the systems that we care about and talk about and decry about and look at how we fit in them. This pretty. So, yeah, thank you for that. John Ballard. Yes. Hello, Gil and everybody. Wishing you all a happy holy days and nights in your personal lives. I've been feeling kind of embarrassingly happy about my own life this year. I've been in R D for three and a half decades, and it feels like that's over. Like things have shifted and taken off. I'm the cultural architect and acting CFO of two really inspiring companies, and that feels like the role that I have aspired to. So I'm doing the work that I have planned on and imagined for many years. So I'm feeling very, very grateful. I like the acronym for. For Covid. Clarifying our visions in detail. And I feel that I'm sort of amazed that it took this long for the business as usual that I sort of don't think anything's really changed. I think the only thing that's changed is we can see behind the curtain of the actual way the permanent war has been carried out really since World War II and you know, for the last century. So I'm, I'm actually grateful for the transparency that's occurring to things that I've been observing for decades. So I'm, I'm. That's sort of a weird position to be in. And then, and then the whole way that I. Two of my very closest friends who I respect their brilliance the most and have been allies of mine, both they and their wives both got Covid, both were not that all were not vaccinated and a local GP prescribed Ivermectin for both of the, for them, all of them. In one case, Peter said he was basically felt like he was going to die that day and felt better within 90 minutes. And the COVID was gone in a week. So all four of them swear that the Ivermectin saved them. And yet no major pharmacy will fulfill an Ivermectin prescription even though it's actually prescribed for mites and other kinds of things for people all the time. So this, this removal of something that at least appears to be working for some people very well from availability is, is, is, is very troubling, troubling to me and my, my long term friend Jack Travis, I'm sure some of you know, is calling it the scamdemic. So I don't know what's going on there, but I think it's not what it appears and I'm just trying to stay safe in my own and limit my risks in an unknown situation where the narrative is very contradictory from all the different things I'm seeing. So I don't really know what's going on, but I have decided not to get my booster this point. So that's kind of a few things. And Gil, thank you so much for creating this space of reflection and opportunity to be with the vuca. Blessings everybody. John, thank you. And I'm not going to take us into a discussion about epidemiology and vaccine technology. We could spend the whole time on that. We're not going to go there. But I do want to pick up with what you said about your Covid acronym of clarifying our vision in detail, which for me echoes the question that Doc hall started with is how do we move the conversation to what do we do to get by? To what must we do to Be vital and thrive. The one thing I feel compelled to do is to start hosting meetings in my living room with my neighbors. Oh, that's a good thing for. It's a good thing to do, especially for folks who have neighbors who may not agree with them on things. That kind of conversation across the gulfs may be one of the most radical acts of this time. But to get back to clarifying our vision in detail and Doc's point, I had a conversation yesterday with an energy company that I'm advising, doing really good work in the realm of renewable energy, making a mark and struggling with. How to put this without reaching confidential with how the reasonable steps that they can take today, given their resources and given the market and the incremental moves they can make today clearly don't get them to where they want to get, to which having a massive impact on the energy systems of the planet and the well being of human beings on the planet. The steps, the pathway from the reasonable steps to where we need to go is just not clear. And most of their focus, like most companies, has been on what can we do this year and maybe think about next year? And I propose to the board that they peel off a little bit of time from a few people to look at what it is they are really committed to. What is the world they want to see? What's their vision for the company? If capital was not a constraint, for example, if they could raise hundreds of millions of dollars instead of millions or tens of millions of dollars, what might they do? If the apparent constraints were removed, what might they do? What would it look like? Some of you have heard me talk about the reverse engineering of the Apollo mission in the 1960s, where NASA set the clear goal or had the goal set by President Kennedy to land a man on the moon within 10 years and bring him back alive. A part of the clip that's not always included, but it's important. And the mission did not exist at the time of the announcement. It had to be invented. And it was invented in part by standing in the imagined success 10 years out and asking what happened last year? What did we do in the in year nine that enabled year ten? What did we have to do in year eight that enabled year nine? And so I raised this idea with this board and people lit up and I got a call an hour later saying we're meeting tomorrow to talk about this. Can you be there? So Doc, I think something about the must can be energizing and empowering. And the question is, how do we invite people in a way that's appealing and seductive into a very different kind of conversation than most of us live our lives in. You know, we're mostly living in problem solving, and problem solving focuses us down to the pieces. There's a problem, there's a solution, there's a broken gear. I replaced the gear. But messes, which are multifaceted, highly complex, highly interdependent. I was on a call before this, talking with a person whose mother is in an attendant care facility and not being well cared for. And it was a cascade over an hour of breakdown after breakdown and what passes for the medical care system in the United States today. It's not a problem, it's a mess. It has, you know, has dimensions inside that institution, dimensions in the insurance system and the regulatory system, in the pharmaceutical system, in what we have come to expect of each other, how our families treat each other. Now, in Asian countries, elderly people don't go to attending care facilities very commonly. They mostly are cared for at home, and care comes to them. So big cultural differences over the decades. So it may be that one of the steps to take when we're thinking about addressing messes, not just solving problems, is to ask that question, doc, in your terms of what must we do or what would we love? What would animate us? What would feel like the world that we choose to live in? You know, Jane asked this morning, what would. What would institutions look like in an ecological civilization? And that may be an unfamiliar term to some of you. Jeremy Lentz got a book by that title. More surprisingly, the Chinese Communist party, I think 10 years ago established that as a national commitment for China. Doesn't get talked about very much in the West. What's that mean? What might that look like? What might the world we want look like? And what if we designed from there as well as the kind of more day to day, step by step that we need to do in practical terms. So let me stop there. I'll go to Catherine and then Amos and then Alan and Felix. Oh, thank you, Phil, very much for Gil, for holding the session and for your astute insights as well. I have long ago given up trying to figure out what is right or wrong about the. The big issues that people talk about and use my own discernment. And it took me a long time to figure out what I was discerning, actually, as strange as that may feel. But I discovered that what I use as a measure for making decisions is what brings life, what fosters life, what creates the ability of life to thrive. And I think for me that is what the big shift that's happened in the last few years is, the shift from sustainability to regeneration to really starting to think about how to make things better. What would better look like? Not just sufficient, not just not doing bad things, not just not depleting, but if we really wanted things to thrive, what would that look like? And for me, that's in myself. It's in my relationships with the individuals and the people that I work with. It's in companies I work with and for, and it's with my city. So being politically active, that shift is exciting, has energy and gives direction. It doesn't give specifics, but we do know we can trust ourselves to know when we're joyful or when we're depressed. When what you do makes you happy, that's really a good measure. That's really a good measure. I would shift it a little bit in the spirit of Gabriel Grant's work to say not just what makes me happy, but what makes me feel me. What makes me feel fully present and alive, which is not always happy. Sometimes it's fierce. That's true. I would agree with that. Sometimes it's, you know, gun strapped on and doing battles. Sometimes it's, you know, it's, it's, it's collapsing in a puddle of tears. But the measure of being real. So, but let me ask you, how does this show up? A couple of examples of how this shows up in your life and world. What is shifting from the sustainability, fix it mentality to the regenerative? What brings life mentality? What, what, what shows up differently? One or two examples. One of the big things that I've been talking about a lot, because I think it's a key, is how do we reconnect to the planet? Most of us love the planet, would say we love nature and all that kind of stuff, but we don't really have an understanding. If you'll forgive me, I want. Let me just. Let me stop you for a moment because I want to ask you for something different. So it's a specific example of what shows up in action or an interaction. I'm actually getting there. I'm actually getting there. So in order to reconnect to the planet, gardening, it's such a simple thing, but we all have earthworms that we're connected to. If we paid attention to those earthworms and whether they're skinny or whether they're fat and took a proactive stance to make them fat, to figure out what that is and to look, to have our hands in the dirt to pay attention to what earth we have around us and become sensitive to that. In the chat somebody was talking about the. The use of indigenous wisdom. And that is exactly what it is. The connection that they have is so profound. When you listen to how they speak of the planet, when you listen to how they talk about their relations, all their relations, all their kin, there is such a heartfelt connection and most of us have so lost that. And that for me is what it means to think about thriving. When you're sensitive to the life around you, then you're sensitive to the pain that other life forms are feeling and will choose not to do those things, to even stand up for them, because it's not appropriate to create pain in that kind of way. We're so focused on profit and productivity and making stuff and that kind of thing, we forget about life. We forget about the real things that are around us that need to exist and need to be carried forward. Thank you. I need to move on. I've got a couple of other hands up here, so thank you. Amos White, please. Oh, thank you. I thought you were going to yawn there. Yeah, I just wanted to give thumbs up to what Doc said. And it has to do with how he changed the focus of the narrative, which is very indigenous and very the same focus that a lot of black and brown people indigenously have, which is to focus on nature and to center nature first, not only in priority, but as the point and purpose. A non anthropomorphic orientation, if you will, but a planet first, nature first. If, as our indigenous brothers and sisters say, if water is life and air is sacred, then that's where we start. If we are to support them as a priority from either scheduled DEI perspective or Jedi perspective or environmental justice perspective, then we have to do that. And you'll find that we're actually having to change the way we address and apply ESG and or invest in such strategies as either they benefit corporations in their missions and applications from an environmental standpoint, but it has a greater benefit first and foremost for nature, which we derive benefits from. That has been shown again first in nature or even within trees, with the separate ecosystem services which provide us life with air or air filtration, or in catching rain water, or in recharging or making the ground more porous and recharging, if you will, our water tables. So there's. There's much to be not learned. But I think to now draw that orientation into action Skills knows I want to do. I think that because of this crisis and the sense of time from what I'm getting and what scientists say we actually have and for what the order of magnitude of impact of these environmental events are having on our human lives. Yes, Iowa, the person who's calling in from here are living the impact as we will and are living here on the coast but elsewhere around the world. I think as I am rapidly doing in most of my conversations, are pushing past advocacy and the pensiveness of speculation or postulation of what could we do next. We have the solutions. The question is how do we either our individually selves act? As I put in the chat, you know personally, what can you do? Well, if it's in regards to the environment, go plant a tree. Second, if it's with regards to energy, if you own a house, install a heat pump, buy an ev, trade in your car, commute, what can you do to help your planet? If we're centering that first and then collectively think of from a system standpoint, since this forum is specifically more systems oriented in its discussion, I think knowing that we are acting, how then can we draw that and acting by centering nature, how can we then draw that back into this discussion once we first know that we ourselves are are holding ourselves accountable as opposed to talking of the principles that we espouse are we hold such high esteem within, but are we applying them ourselves? Amos, thank you for that. For people who are not familiar that one great compendium of what to do is the Project Drawdown series of books and websites. If you don't know that, check that out. Amos, thank you. Alan Haber and then Felix. Hello Gil and everyone. Generally I'm in a pretty up and positive perspective. I became an activist when I started college 5067 years ago. I pretty much maintained a straight ahead view at this point though I'm very distressed. The right wing forces in America put them around Trump and January 6th seem to be planning a subversion of such democratic system as we have, making very dubious that a next election could actually elect anything more progressive than themselves and future. The next article in the Atlantic Monthly and Salon described this attempt to take over the political system and I'm very distressed with the persistent lack of courage in my Jewish compatriots, landsmen and women in tolerating the outrageous behavior of the Israeli Zionist government in their settlement policies, in their murdering of Palestinians and they're ignoring international law and that people are just complicit in their silence when there should be outrage. And we live in a war system for thousands of years and that is a System change that we need name the system was an early call of the students for democratic society and I think it is called a war system. Full spectrum dominance is a principle that guides the Pentagon from the top of space to the bottom of the ocean. And the bioweapon research that probably produced this pandemic, scamdemic, pandemic. Whatever we are experiencing is part of the mentality that they could even think of enhancing the effectiveness of this virus whether, whatever it did. And we need to envision what is the system in a system sense. And, and it is something around full spectrum cooperation around the reclaiming of the commons, that space of love and caring and engagement with the life system. And as the common is under siege by the enclosures, as it has been since it was first made a matter of history back in 1215 in the Magna Carta, we are now in the ultimate enclosure where these exploiters and extractors have drawn from the most ancient life system and the depth of the earth the fuel to fuel their corporate development and has enclosed the entire life system in a suffocating climate. And there is virtually no focus capacity to rein in this corporate menace. And we are in the final enclosure suffocating. The life system is very discouraging and whether about Israel or whether it's about the fossil fuels or the climate thing, I need to see a much stronger view of how we organize with some clear principles to gather us into more of a political force in this world beyond a most engaging always conversation distress from my corner of the world. I'm intrigued, Alan, that you started off by saying that your mood is kind of up and you've maintained an upbeat mood throughout and the circumstances you're describing aren't any different than what they've been through the entire period of this trajectory that you're describing. So it's interesting to me that you. We talked about, we had just talked about. What was the phrase? Clarifying. Clarifying our vision in detail, talking about what we must have, talking about what the world we want might look like. And what you've done eloquently is recount for us a list of characteristics of the mess which I don't know how it landed for anybody else. For me it landed heavy, depressing. You brought me into your depression. It didn't open up for me. Well, what do I do with this? How do I think about this in a way that provides some opening where the. Where are the points of action that Amos was talking about? What makes the story seductive so that the neighbors that. Who was it Someone was talking about bringing their neighbors over for dinner, run screaming from the room, never to return again. But say, God, I really want to talk with you more about this. I think that's been a challenge for folks like us, for left movements, for example, environmental movements, for that matter. Are we doing a good enough job at enrolling our fellow citizens, neighbors, immigrants, friends and so forth in finding common purpose in this? Because the thing, you know, the thing you talked about about the capture and dismantling of democracy that we are maybe on the doorstep of anybody. Remember the 2016 election? You know, I remember the nail biting as the results were coming in that night. Remember what the election results were? Donald Trump, 25 point something percent of the electorate. Hillary Clinton, 25 point something percent of the elect. Not voting, about 49% of the electorate. That's where the future lies is do people step out in despair? Do people engage at whatever level they do in centering nature, centering human relationships, equity and justice, a vision of the world we want and working together to bring that world into being? That's where I go with what you've offered, Alan. Thank you for the provocation on that, Felix. And then I might start calling on people who knows. Thanks. So some things I've been talking about for the last year or two, two have been coming together that kind of make me feel like I'm a little, I can make a difference these days. So the first thing I put in the chat was don't look up the new movie by Adam McKay about climate change, the first real movie about living in truth and climate. It's in theaters now. I put the link to that. It's on Netflix, starts ridiculously on Christmas Eve. But get have an in person party with your friends on 26th of December to watch that movie. So first two things about understanding the world that we live in. The first is Alex Steffen talking about how the world we think we live in no longer exists and the implications of that. It's really eye opening. And his book the Snap Forward isn't out, but he's I'll have a link to this substack where he writes and podcasts about it. And so there's that. And. Don't look up in terms of action. Third act is finally launching Bill McKibben's new organization for intergenerational cooperation between us and young people. And I've been having a lot of zoom calls with fundraising calls with elected officials and with organizations. What I see is everybody agreeing the democracy crisis, whatever we think is the most important issue, the democracy crisis is in front of all those things because if we lose 22, we lose 24, and it's inconceivable. And I kind of find an almost fatalistic sense from elected officials that that's going to happen. And, and the one thing at this point I've concluded the only thing that can change that is a coalescing of large independent social movements. Last Sunday's New York Times editorial Giant editorial concluded that as well. And I think it could happen in time to save democracy. I'm working on a project that I call Youth and Truth to the Rescue for what we could do in the next six months. And so I think that right now, intergenerational action on the democracy crisis is kind of needs to be our top priority. And I hope people will come together about that. I have an idea for a campaign for that, and I'd love to talk to anybody about it. Yes, thank you for that. You talked about despair in the face of the attack on democracy, of like, it's all over. We hear that from people in the climate space also, it's too late. We're doomed. Nothing can be done. To me, that kind of despair is an ultimate expression of privilege. You know, how dare people think they can predict the future and think they know what will happen and think they know what's worth engaging in or not. You know, there's an old teaching, it shows up in many traditions. I know it from the Jewish tradition, but it's there in Sufi and it's there in Africa. And the Jewish telling of it is that somebody is going out, or a great rabbi is going out to plant a tree. He's got the sapling in his hand, said it to plant the tree. And somebody runs up and says, rabbi, Rabbi, the Messiah is coming down the street right now. What do you do? You plant the tree first and then you go meet the Messiah. You don't drop the tree. And, you know, many cultures have that version of it. So there's, there's, you know, whatever the odds are, there's work to be done. Now, to your comment, Felix, about citizen movements. Rebecca Solnit reposted something also from the Times a couple years ago. I'm sorry, I don't have the person's name here. I'll see if I can find it. But this writer talked about saying, we're not resistance. We are a revolutionary river bringing together streams of effort from many different quarters, coming together in a flow of great creative force. Not just trying to stop what's bad, but trying to create again what we want. SHEL thank you for correcting my backward title, and thank you, Jane, for raising it. From Democracy. From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp is one of the handbooks of this kind of work, translated into dozens of countries, looking at how people have brought down dictatorships, sometimes in a matter of days or weeks, sometimes in months or years. But it's a compendium of dozens upon dozens of strategies available for citizen action at various levels. It's something we are not at that point yet, but it's something worth reading and studying and thinking about now about where are the points of action, the locuses of connection that can start to turn this beast in some ways. It's late because we face Republican opposition that spent the last 40 years designing and implementing a strategy grassroots on up to lock in state legislatures that sell election rules and assign districts and lock in the courts. And so we are late in the story, but, you know, what is there to do other than to do what needs to be done, where we are, with what we have? Amy, you've been trying to get your hand up. It's not coming on screen, but let me make you next here, please. Amy Gallant, hi. Thanks, Gilbert. What I was going to say came up earlier, but I think you just mentioned it again, is that there's a way that what we can do is to actually do the things that we say matter. I think that a lot of people look at our generation or whatever, of, oh, we've got all these ideas and strategies and plans, but then we're not doing them. Like, you know, if it matters, like, I think, I don't remember, was it Amos said, like, if it matters to you to have clean energy, then put solar on your house, like, or just shut the F up, you know what I mean? Like, like you got to actually, like, do the things that you say you want to have in the world in order for them to be in the world and whether that's climate or agriculture or water or, you know, election stuff. And, and I think that, you know, in, in the areas where we do that and then we talk about it with people, then people get excited about it, you know, and, and then more people will do it. But if everybody's like, oh, we should do this and we should do that and we should do that, but you're not actually showing by doing it, then, like, you know, I think that's why a lot of, a lot of our generation gets ignored. So that's all I wanted to say, like, just to draw those connections. Thank you for that. I think this is a, you know, a long standing challenge for social movements. You know, how do you shift from engaging people through shame and blame and criticism and exhortation to engaging people through invitation and inspiration and what Flores call seduction? What makes somebody want to play? What makes somebody want look, you know, changing behavior, when you talk about putting solar on your roof, that's something that's not available to everybody. A lot of the things that we do relatively well off people on this call are not available to everybody. And I don't know about you, but looking just at my life as an individual or my life with Jane as a household, we got all sorts of things we want to do that we don't do. Changing habits as human beings is not a simple thing to do. For me, myself, for me with her, for our block, for our extended family, for our city of 130,000 people, for the company that you work in of 100 people or 10,000 people. It's not easy to change. And yet it happens. Remarkable thing. It's like it's impossible even, yet it gets done. So what's that about? And how do we invite people into the possibility of that game, not as, you know, not as. Not as shame, but as an invitation to what Gene Russell calls thriveability. Gene, you've been waving your fingers about. Can I call on you? Okay. I was just responding in the twinkle fingers, totally agreeing with the. Being mindful of shame, because that's a particular thing I've been thinking about this year and the way that shame gets played as a card to get us to do things I can look at. I've been interested in this kind of work. What can I do in my own personal life? My whole life? I was born in 72 and my family was recycling, living out in the country. And it's just like my whole life has been enmeshed in doing these things. And I feel like, why aren't we doing more at the company level, at the national level? Because my changing away from plastic bags has not made enough of a dent on the universe. How do we go to inspiration so that we can connect together to do something really transformational? I feel really blocked about it. I've been working on this stuff for a long time. I think, like many of you feel like something's not working about this whole thing. And I've been really inspired this year by reading the David Graeber David Wengro book, the dawn of Everything. I'd heard the word schismogenesis before, but it hadn't sunk in. In the way that it's sinking in this year in the like. And I'd heard Zizek say something about how the left is creating the right, but there's something in reading this book that is making me realize what am I doing that's creating the very thing that I'm fighting against? And what is a way of being in the world that changes that dynamic, that it's like the more radical I become, am I creating the radical energy that's opposing me? And what do I do to change my way of being, not just my doing, but my being, to mitigate against that, that energy and will that shift things? And so I'm sitting in that inquiry this year of, like, how can I be differently? Because, you know, I've got. The house I live in now has solar panels on the roof. The neighbor's house has a living roof. We're growing our own food. Like, there's a Tesla battery in the house. There's a Tesla battery and a Tesla car in the driveway, like doing all of those things. And it's still, it's. It's nowhere, nowhere near enough. What is it that we can. How can we be differently? And so that's. That's the inquiry I'm in for thrivability right now. Thanks for calling on me, Gil. Yeah, you bet. Thank you, David and Ken, I'll go to you in just a second. I just want to echo. Gene mentioned the book the dawn of Everything by David Graber and David Wengrow. I'm about third of the way through it. I've mentioned it before, and it's. It's utterly remarkable and I think a deeply, deeply important book for this time. I encourage you to get it and read it. We'll probably spend a bunch of time in that book together next year. I'm not quite sure what the form of that is, but it's for me, one of the most profoundly affecting things about it is that it's just an eye opener into the possibility of human being. They dismantle the commonly held stories of human history of either rising from noble savages to our wonderfully problematic state of today, or descending from that, or rising from primitive into an advanced society. And they say no. In fact, human experience has been widely varied, highly experimental, not just over the 8,000 or so years of civilization, but the 50 or 1,000 so years of what now. Is the archaeological record showing much more deliberation and agency in the human experience. Not agriculture overtaking everything, but cultures going into and out of agriculture, perhaps seasonally, perhaps over history, political sophistication, including the assertion that the European Enlightenment was sourced out of conversation with what we call Native American, what they call American philosophers and statesmen from the Algonquin and Lakota and other nations. So remarkable book commended to you is really good holiday reading. David Schoenberg Thanks, Gil. I'd like to take this discussion the next step by saying that I've been on a very difficult journey this past year in going down the rabbit hole and attempting to keep an epistemological continuity so that I don't go off half cocked. I have come to think that the left right division is essentially a false one. And I for one am very concerned about what I see as a rising tide of censorship and authoritarianism on the left. I now feel closer to people on the right. Oddly enough, for the very first time in my life, I watched a speech by Senator Ron Johnson in the Senate that was extraordinary in talking about, hey, with all other medicine we get second opinions. Why is there only one opinion allowed in America today? So I am aware of the fact that powerful forces have engaged in a psychological operation upon the peoples of the United States and the world, a coordinated operation to create a climate of fear. What this has resulted in is a form of cult, otherwise known as mass formation. Some of us are less involved in that distortion than others. But the article that I put in the chat by Paul Kingsman north does a stunning job of taking these issues apart and giving us access to understanding these different strands of being. And so again, I feel alienated from my I've spent my life on the left. I feel alienated from what I'm hearing on the left. I think they've basically totally fallen for a propaganda campaign. That's a tough statement, but I believe that I can back it up. Just want to encourage a broader perspective here in terms of recognizing that people on the right, people on the left, each can carry truth. There's far too much Trump derangement syndrome that prevents us from being able to listen to people on the right. David, thank you for that. I've talked about Converse a number of times over this series about conversations across the Gulf. And I may have mentioned to you a relatively new friend of mine, a Trump Republican supply side economist, and we're different in so many ways and we've become actually dear friends who disagree on some things and agree on some things and are actually learning from each other. So I'm with you on that. I think there are a number of people on this call who are Doing that kind of bridging work and conversation without getting into the. Let me just say, I don't want to get into the whole details again of the medical story, but I'll say two things. One is that in our household, we are very much not locked into medical orthodoxy. We have alternative views and alternative opinions and alternative practices. I've also done a lot of reading into the scientific literature on both the traditional and the controversial approaches to Covid. And Ron Johnson is not somebody I'm going to take medical advice from, but we each make our choices about that. Ken, Homer, David, thanks for what you offered, Ken. Thanks, Gilbert. Can you all hear me? All right, so this is a little bit like being on a Jerry call, where there's so much that goes by, and I'm trying to track back to what was said before. I want to go back to this idea about shaming and blaming and what happens with that. I just spent the last six months talking to 963 people about diversity and inclusion in a global financial services firm. And I've come to recognize that the work is whatever's in front of me, whoever I'm talking to. And. And in those that nearly a thousand people, there were a lot of people who were really curious, like, what are microaggressions? I don't understand that. What does that mean? And why should I be ashamed if I'm trying to compliment somebody? And I eventually worked up a kind of a little spiel in explaining it of, we all are born into a home where we learn what's appropriate, and that becomes our unconscious. We're told how to talk to people, what you don't say, what you do say, and that becomes our autopilot. That's our unconscious. And then we get out in the world. We work with other people who come from different backgrounds, and their background and ours clash unconsciously when we say or do something that we think is appropriate. They say, oh, you're actually on my foot here, and this is not working. And to be generous of spirit and on the one side of recognizing that people are generally coming from a good place, they may have a hard time that day because they're very stressed about something, but the majority of folks are not there to try and cause you harm. It's not to say that there aren't people that are like that, but the majority that you run into are pretty good. And then also recognizing if you're a person of color or a woman coming from an underrepresented or marginalized community, speaking up takes tremendous carries A tremendous risk, and so recognizing the courage for that. So there's got to be both sides coming together. And one of the things I found really useful is people would say, you know, can I call out non inclusive behavior? And I got this a few years ago for some younger people in life who gave me the distinction between calling out and calling in. And calling out is to point out something in a way that makes the person feel blamed, makes them feel wrong, makes them feel shamed, and that reinforces the behavior you're trying to change. Because once you're on the defensive, it's really hard to learn, it's really hard to change because you're now invested in maintaining your identity as to who you are and you feel unfairly attacked. Calling in is to say, you know, we all have a joint commitment to being more inclusive here, and the behavior you're engaging in is not showing up as inclusive. Can you look at that? What is it you want to say that you feel is important to state, even if you don't say it skillfully? And then how can you align that with being inclusive? You know, I'd like you to take responsibility. I want you to be. Feel free to speak, but do it in a way that doesn't exclude other people, that allows them to be in the conversation in a responsible, adult way, and that's calling in. And I think that's one of the things that's changed for me this year is I'm getting much, much more focused on how do I call people in to a shared concern. If they say they're concerned about something and I see their behaviors on the line, rather than shame them and blame them, how can I ask them? So I'm seeing a little disconnect. How can we, you know, how can I invite you into this thing? And the other thing I want to say is I'm really getting curious about what we mean by when we say we. Who is the we? Because I hear we tossed around and there's so many different versions of we, and it leads to a lot of great misunderstandings. So trying to get really clear when I say we. We as in me, we as in my cohort, we as in my country, my community, my nation, my world. This is really. Thank you for that, David. This is really important of who is the we that we're speaking about? Thank you. Thank you. Really important question, and it's a mystery. And we're loose and sloppy about it. And I'll find people in the same paragraph use we in three different ways, and it gets really hard to track. I appreciate both the richness and the way you just offered what you offered. And I love the calling out versus calling in distinction. But you said calling in, like everybody agrees on inclusivity, but that may not always be true. You talked about shared concerns. How do you call in when the shared concerns are not evident or not obvious or not acknowledged as shared concerns, which I think is maybe descriptive of the kind of mood we're in this country right now. I would assert that there actually are shared concerns, but that's not what we're paying attention to in this instance. It's a company that has stated our goal is to build an inclusive culture so they have a shared commitment to that. I get that. So within that game you had that boundary condition, but out at the grocery store or the town meeting or, you know, or the warriors game, how do you do that? When the shared concerns aren't obvious or seem to be really absent? How does what you're talking about play out in that arena? Could you speculate on that a little bit? I think one of the things that comes up in like I go to town meetings pretty regularly. Civility, people want to engage in civil discourse. They don't like it when people start yelling and screaming and being really disruptive. I think that's a. I'm speaking strictly myself, I think that the majority of people prefer civil discourse and they really freak out when people start, you know, shouting and disrupting and they don't know how to handle it. So they go into fight, flight, freeze response. So one of the things that I would do is ahead of time, before that erupts, I'd set some container, some boundaries. And one way I do that with people is I am a middle aged heterosexual white male. I cannot walk into a room full of people of color and women and multi generational and say, here's the ground rules, or I just put a big target on myself. So I will ask people, I'd like you to think about times when you've been engaged in conversations with people who have really different views of yours. Where it was successful and what allowed that to happen and have the group generate what? Well, one is respect, one is honesty, one is silence, One is allowing diverse opinions to arise and not feeling the need to argue them. Let them generate those rules and those principles and say, are we willing in this group to adhere to this? And when something arises that's problematic, can we look at this list and pull that in and make that happen? Because if you don't set some context at the outset, you're going to be in real trouble once that stuff starts showing up. And if you have, when it arises, you can say, okay, so what do we want to do about this? We're seeing something that we don't have on the list. How do we want to handle this now? Throw it back to the group? That's how I would do. May not be you who could raise that question, depending on the group, but somebody needs to invite that conversation. How do we want this to proceed? Thank you. Very good. Elena Leonard, thanks for waiting. No problem. I'd like to mention two things. One is to honor the memory of a friend, Rosemary Betchler, who was one of the founding editors of Open Democracy, with whom I worked on at least a half a dozen centigrations, which is a non hierarchical group process. And she was on the left, but she was totally committed to giving voice to everyone in a respectful manner and to getting people in the room so that they would see each other as human beings as well as people who, you know, held certain positions. And I think that that is something that's much needed. And I'd also like to mention a book that I'm reading now that I probably should have read five years ago called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer. Remarkable book. Yes. And basically what that is putting forward is something that I have been experiencing because the thing that's made this whole Covid episode bearable is the fact that I can go on hikes with friends in the many parks and ravines around Toronto. And she presents something where it basically comes down to a love of nature and connection and relationship that isn't just among humans, but among every living thing. And I just like to celebrate that, too. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. The lesson of reciprocity in relationship in that book is just. It's a powerful gift. What was, for me, commended to you. So let me ask you this. Whether out of this conversation or out of the conversations we've been having over the course of the year, what. What moods are available to you in the face of the wicked messes, in the face of this, you know, seemingly overwhelming and unchangeable, and it's all, you know, it's all over conversation we talked about before. What moods do you find yourself in that are nourishing for you? What moods could you cultivate that would be nourishing for you? That would give you a glimpse of what I've called grace and dignity and power in the face of a deeply uncertain time? Lena, is your hand still up for that. Okay, let that down, Yang. I'll go to you then. Thank you. Yeah. The place where I find myself in the best mood is in the visions of the two companies that I work in where both companies are dedicated. In one case, restoring a million acres of old growth redwood forest is the mission of the company and the purpose of the company. In another, bringing heart centered relationships to families and small groups and businesses. And that's where I the clarifying our vision in detail. When I'm in common cause with colleagues with a vision of how in the case of foreverredwood.com, ecology and economy synergize to bring back the old growth trees which will never come back in the current standard practices, even the sustainable sustainable practices. So living in and working with colleagues to create something that transcends all of this and demonstrates the magic of life and the possibilities of people collaborating. That's where my mood is the best for me. You hang out a lot in the mood of possibility. Yeah, it's a 7 characteristic on the enneagram. It works for me. Okay, anybody else? Thanks. Yeah, I can speak. I kind of go between oh, we are so fucked and we may be fucked, but we'll find a way through it and how to find a way through it. We're on the edge of an extinction level abyss and we could well go down. And then I also think, no we won't. We're made of sturdy stuff. We will not go down. But everything we know might be taken from us and we'll have to be. I can't imagining living 100 or 1,000 years from now. It could be a completely different world. We may be back in some kind of hunter gatherer era. We might be in some kind of solar punk future, I really don't know. So I just find myself, you know, taking long walks in nature and hanging out with trees and doing my qigong practice to stay connected to some sense of. Of resilience and sense of resources for myself. And I know you a little bit, so I know there's also some determination in there. I didn't come this far through all the shit I've gone through to be taken out now, I hope. Yeah, yeah. I mean my translation of that is that we may go down, but we're going down fighting. It's way too early to surrender on any of this. Carolyn, welcome. I want to celebrate the artists and especially musicians this afternoon. Tom Morello, who's doing a 12 week gig at the New York Times wrote about protest music and I want to celebrate artists of all stripes, whether it's braiding sweetgrass and Robin Kimmerer's gorgeous work, but especially musicians in this time movies, the things that give us a periscope on a possible future. The ones who sing us into walking together, the ones who sing the lullabies in the relentless storm so that the children can sleep and the parents can sandbag. I celebrate the artists and it's maybe the only place that I think Grace can knock and have the door truly opened. I wanted to say one other thing about where at least those cross cultural conversations, cross view conversations are happening. I think it's easiest to say no together with people that you agree that there's something that you want to say no to. In Iowa, the environmentalists who are keenly concerned about climate change are making common cause with the QAnon, the rightest wing of the rightest wing landowners and farmers in Iowa to stop carbon capture pipelines and carbon capture that will and storage that will only prolong the fossil fuel industry. It's really easy to get together with people who do not agree on something. And the way that we reframe it is that what we really want is a good future for future generations, a healthy and livable state. And I'm speaking to you from Iowa, which is the most ecologically damaged state in the union, and yet we were able to make common cause with some other people. We don't share taste in music, but we do share the ability to say no, which is an early word that a lot of us learned it too, and still get to employ with some glee some of these struggles. It's much harder to say yes. And one of my reflections on this particular group is that it's the struggle to say yes that we're trying to find ways to do across so many differences, so many different worldviews, so many different perspectives on whether it's individual change or whether it's collective change, whether it's democracy, whether it's climate, what, whatever it is. Saying yes is a much harder proposition than saying no. But I enjoy winning at saying no when the ideas are really bad. Carolyn, I love this. This is a gift. I really love it. You know, trying to get people to say yes. It's always, well, yes, but. But what about this? What about that? There's all these, you know, imperfections in the yes, spend all our time arguing about, but no to that, much easier to get behind. So. So I like that a lot. You're reminding me of the great Bernice Reagan. I've shared this with you guys before, who said this is golly, 35 years ago, Bernice said, if you're in a coalition and you're not deeply uncomfortable all the time with who else is in the coalition with you, your coalition is too small. Building a coalition to make change is not about having the same taste of music or going out to dinner together or being best friends. It's about coming together for, for common purpose, a shared concern to Ken's words, despite all the other differences. And if it starts with a no, that's a pretty cool way at it. Thank you for that. David, can I jump in for one second on that? Yeah, Ken. David, would you hold on for just a second? Thank you. Yeah. What you just said there about building a coalition, I think it was on an open global mind call where somebody was saying if you are not experiencing genuine fear, fear and tremendous anxiety in building your coalition, you do not have the right people in your coalition. You need to be talking to folks who really rile you up and you're like, holy shit, I have no idea how I'm going to work with this person. You figure that out. You have a real coalition. If it's all the people who think the same way you do, it's just a click. There you go. Thank you, David. Yeah, I want to build a little bit more on coalition politics and say that I'm still reflecting on a conversation I had a couple years ago with a political scientist friend of mine who pointed out out to me that the environmental movement has not learned from the Negro civil rights movement at its most successful phases, how many different approaches, tactics and organizations are needed to mobilize around different sub goals and reframings of things. So if you look at the full span from having the right music to go with events, making sure there's a female rewarding the black female female on Star Trek to much more substantive things about getting nice white church ladies in New England to really organize, to write lots and lots of letters to Congress people, you know, liberal Republicans back when that existed, as well as Democrats in the northern states. There's just this full panoply. There are very big differences between the older church based civil rights movement and the younger, more SNCC types. What they did and the variety of organizations needed for coalition politics. There isn't that sense of diversity. I think Americans seem very hooked on. They want to only be with good people. And I just want to really drive home. I don't know whether you need to be deeply uncomfortable, but you need to like be practical, just minimize future regrets. Have we done enough, probably not going to work. But have we? You know, I want to be in a situation in the future where I look back and says, yeah, I was pretty creative. I put my strengths were this. I work with those people. We tried these tactics. It did work a little bit. Didn't work a bit. Little bit. You know, just a very practical orientation around the diversity of tactics while remembering the big picture and the big picture personally is minimizing future regrets. But you have to focus on practical things, not authentic expression of your best self in every minute of your life with the most perfect people in the most enlightened possible way, using the least plaque. Like, keep your optimization function on the important stuff. Thank you. It seems to me that one thing that the larger movement needs is clear conflict resolution approaches. The number of conflicts that have destroyed organizations or taken down major leaders this year has been formidable. And I think that as difficult as coalitions are, given the changing world, with the rampant systemic racism, with all of the issues that we're facing, that without conflict resolution mechanism, those vast differences really can tear us apart and destroy. Destroy organizations, destroy lives. And we have a lot of work to do. Yeah, it's a funny thing. We expect other people to be flawless. Yeah, I will say, though, we expect other people to cut us slack when we're not flawless. A little lopsided, David. I think we're cutting too much slack in our society towards people who make stuff up for a bad reason, are caught, and then still retain their positions of influence as reporters of information rather than fiction. And there seems to be very few costs associated with that. I mean, there's a lot of respect for Senator Romney, for example, who just made stuff up for months in 2012. Just more than that. We have right now, we have criminal activity in the previous government and we'll see if it gets prosecuted or not, see if there's consequences for that or not. We're at time. We could obviously go on longer. Let me just wrap up with a couple of thoughts and we'll continue next month. David, to your point about, you know, whether I'm. Whether I'm out there to be with people who look like me, think like me, like the same kind of music, et cetera, or whether I'm out there to make change in the world around things that I care about is a really important question. And the way that I've for a long time asked my clients at some point in the relationship, just ask, what are you really here to do? And you know, it's one I could ask that of my neighbor. But I can also ask that of an executive in a corporation who has a surface answer, but there's a deeper personal answer. And it's a question for a company as well. What's, you know, it's actually a powerful business strategy question. Are you here to sell this particular kind of widget? Are you here to maximize return to shareholders? Or are you here to have an impact, make a dent in the universe in some kind of way? And that's a question in these personal conversations as well. It's part of the shared context that Ken was talking about. Why are we here? What are we trying to do? There's something, you know, it's just in, in Iowa, it's to stop that pipeline. That's enough to start with. But having that clear is important. There have been a number of books mentioned on this call. I just want to repeat some and add a couple of others. The dawn of Everything, of course, Regeneration, Paul Hawken, Net Positive, Paul Polman and Andrew Winston. Which is a corporate beyond sustainability focused breakthrough book. We've mentioned Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy. Ray Dalio, the legendary investor, has just come out with a book called Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order. And this is an enormously successful mega capitalist who's made us, who's been studying long term multi century historic trends and the disruption in world orders that we are, he would argue, are in now. And on a kind of a different note, Rebecca Solnit just published a book called Orwell's Roses, which touches back, Carolyn, to what you were saying about the artists. And in an interview she did the other time, she was mentioning that, you know, there was a time, well, Orwell was an enthusiastic gardener and people on the left would attack him by saying flowers. That's so bourgeois. Well, no, sources of joy and life and the uplift of spirit and wholeness are not to be excluded anywhere. Because here's the thing, we actually don't know how change happens. We don't know what moves somebody from one state of being to another. And sometimes it might be a flower or a piece of music or an argument in a meeting or a confrontation with mortality or what have you. We don't know. And so, yeah, we need to avail ourselves of the full range of strategies. And for ourselves, I come back again and again to something that I learned from Fernando Flores in this last couple of years. A mood that he calls emotional fortitude. Or maybe it's his daughter Gloria who calls it that, which is how do I find a way to stand in myself in my commitments, in the things that I care about in the face of tumult and terror and deep worry sometimes but not be aware, not deny them, not be Pollyannish about them but somehow be present to what's so and present to I'm just being here, unable to predict what's going to happen next for good or ill. No, you look back at the last two years, 10 years, 40 years our history is filled with utterly unpredictable surprises. And so for the folks who say oh we're doomed, I say well maybe, but I don't know what if what might be possible here? How do I face each day with calm and resolution and a kind of fierce love that maybe opens possibilities and at minimum lets me get through that day and the next year and the next with some grace and dignity and power. So thank you all for being here. Happy holidays, happy New Year, happy whatever you celebrate and we'll see you next year. The tentative plan is to continue on the third.
