2025 & 2026: Perspectives & Plans

Welcome to Living between Worlds for December 17, 2025. This is the last session of our sixth year of these conversations for possibility about how might we live in this time between worlds with courage and dignity and power. Going to try. I'd like to do a little bit of polling this time. It's something we haven't done in a long time but might help us get some berries. What we're going to do today. Too many screens, my friends. Hang on. So we're going to talk today about where we've been in particular in this last year, but maybe over the longer stretch of these calls, where we are now and how these conversations have affected you and where we might go in 2026. That's sort of the general plan here. So let me ask you first, you see a QR code on the screen. If you hit that with your phone, it'll take you into the poll and we'll do. We got about four or five, six questions queued up over the course of the next 90 minutes. 30% of you here for the first time, half of you a couple of times, a quarter of you have been here for many and that's great. I'm going to stop that now for a moment as I've, as I've looked across all our conversations in 2025 and this, this is they. As I've looked over this list, my AIs and I found a pattern in it. And we'd say that we've been focused on one big challenge, which is how do we stay clear headed and effective when everything around us is shifting? Over the course of the year, we looked at why the familiar stories about business and sustainability and problem solving no longer match the world that we're actually living in. We explored how AI is changing our self of control and possibility and what leadership might look like when no one can see the whole picture. We talked about good perplexity, the kind of grounded curiosity that keeps us from freezing when things get confusing. We dug into the pressures on democracy. We learned from living systems how resilience really works. We traced how purpose can guide action when conditions keep changing. We studied how small steady acts can influence much larger systems. And over the six years we have cultivated a place to find our footing, to find it together in a fast moving world and offer a place to think and breathe and practice better ways of navigating what's ahead. I have a picture of what this looks like here somewhere. Yes. Okay, let's go there. So it looks something like this. So some of you have been here and will probably recognize yourself in there. For some of you, this is going to be like a new. Huh. What's going on here? Tell me how, how has this been for you this year? What themes have stood out? What really calls to you? What's affected you? And let me pop the poll up again and ask you this. What topics have been most compelling? Yeah. What has been really helpful for me is this is pretty much the only place I can go to where that has both a deep ecological perspective and a deeply democratic perspective in a time where both of those things are seriously threatened at the federal level and also globally. I find that this is a place of peace for me and also a place where my thought and brain gets really stimulated and look forward to it every month. And I think the only one I missed was last month when I was on the other side of the world and it was three o' clock in the morning where I was. Although some people have done that, I know they have. But I do like to sleep. I only get six hours at night. I'm not going to wake up at 3am it also would not have been very kind to my wife who was sharing the hotel room. Well, there you go. David Morse. Hi. Yeah, I think the subtle influence is, well, one, it's the most recent, but also I can't go back to most of the things that we talked about and say this is, this is what happened. This is what I thought. Now I could go back over my notes, but I haven't done that. But I think that the subtle influence I'm just aware of. Yeah, that, yeah, I suspect it. It's both because it's my video seems to not be on. Is that true? Both because it's most recent, but also because that's been an unstated theme throughout. Yeah. Thank you. Take a moment and wander through this. George hi. Hello. This is, this is the only regular zoom that I'm on. And to have it once a month and have, have it go on for so long, this is a touchstone for me. The, the conversation is always good and always interesting and I get something out of it. So going back through Covid, this has still been a place for me where I can talk with other people who have some of the same kinds of ideas. How's it affected you? George? Well, unlike, unlike you, who doesn't need any new projects, I still wish that there was something that we were doing together, whether consistently or amorphously through which we could affect the wider world. But the conversation is good enough. The companionship is Good enough for me at this point in time. Well, I would invite you and really anybody else who's so moved to propose projects or explore together with people offline about just doing that because there's a remarkable community that has emerged here. Thank you for that. Monica, welcome. Hi. Thank you for calling on me. And I'm very happy to be here today. Today. I got a call this morning from the school system. There's. There. This is Rufio. That since there's been power outages that the Vancouver school system is going to be closed. And that means also. That also means daycare. He is with me today. Say hi, Rufio. Say hi. Say hi. He's trying to play with the mouse right now. But I was invited here last month by my friend Heather and I, I trust this woman with every fiber of my being. I, ever since she, like, I thought I didn't have courage before her. I thought I, like my voice was just supposed to be, you know, called on when, you know, people called on me. But when Heather spoke up at a meeting that we were at one time for the port or something to do with the city, she said, no, wait a minute. You know, she was, instead of adapting to the energy in the room, she, in the room, she influenced the energy in the room and she influenced me to be more brave. And she's been such a safe space since then and to just let me be myself and with no judgments. And she just gave me so much strength. And so then when she invited me to this meeting, I was like, I gotta go. I gotta see what it's all about. And it just, it was another safe space that opened up where I could be myself, where I could say my truth and be with like minded humans that feel there's something not okay and that we're coming together and learning from each other. And then through that, I told it to my friend Tina and I was like, you gotta come to this space. Because she was also another safe space too. And I'm like, you've got to come to this space. And so she also is able to join us too. And so I'm just, it's just, it's a beautiful. Oops, there's my kiddo touching the, his, the laptop with his foot. And so it's, it's just, it's growing. It's growing beautifully and I love it. And I'm going to let someone else share now because his feet are everywhere. Monica, thank you for coming. Thank you for coming back and thank you for inviting your friends. I'll Invite everybody. Please bring other people with you, people who share your perspective and also people who don't. Let's mix it up some. Monica. Thank you. Dan. Welcome. Thank you. Hi, Gil. Yeah, I haven't been to that many of these. My son recommended that I start attending them. And I think you. You spoke many years ago or was involved in a project with the, with the Green MBA program here in Sonoma county, and. But I've been involved in a lot of other things my whole life relative to environment and social insight and governance and finance. But what I find here when I come here is I put down systemic insight because I think this, this process that you've initiated, Gil, it kind of fills in a lot of the gaps and makes a connectivity between all of the other work I. I have been doing and am doing. In fact, I might even put some links regarding, especially the Design School for Regenerating Earth. I don't know if you're familiar with that yet, but I am. By all means, put it in the chat. Okay. I'll definitely be aware of it. We're doing local hub, you know, bioregional hub development around California. So I'm actively involved in that from Sonoma county as well as East Bay. Yeah. So thanks for doing this. Thanks for being here. Fernando, Hello. I have to be. I have to say that I regret I haven't been here more often. It always slips for some reason, which I regret. But anyway, addressing your question, I have a. I have a. I have a secret tip for you about that, Fernando. The phone doesn't beep. That's the problem. I forget. Well, the registration, it's on your calendar. Okay. No, it goes for the calendar. But the thing is, like, I have the computer and the phone connected to the same speaker. Sometimes I forget to disconnect the Bluetooth and the phone doesn't beep and I sleep. Gotcha. Anyway, Anyway, you're set. Addressing the subject. I think the most important, and I really regret having missed that subject session, is about societal risk because everything else is very important. But if we don't fix this first, we will never fix the rest. And we can see across the world that societies across the spectrum, they are compromised. It's not an American problem, it's not an European problem, it's not an Asian problem, maybe less in Asia, actually. But we live in a society of reaction, not reflection, and that contaminates everything else. So no matter what we discuss, that is the sound path to move on. But people are not thinking, people are not reflecting, people are reacting. Often to things that make no sense or are not even true. And that's, that's something that we should analyze. Why this is happening. Well, we know why and, but this needs to be tackled and it's not in the discussion. And it has a lot to do with the way that social media is organized. Thank you for that, Fernando. I appreciate that. And put, put those thoughts into the poll, if you would, so they show up on the screen. I'll share that with you all in a few minutes. Heather, welcome. Glad you're here today. So for me, I don't know how many of these I've, I've been to. It feels like bathing in hope and joy and love to sit in on these monthly gatherings and to realize that all the people who show up in little boxes here are connected to I don't know how many other networks beyond and that, that all, all over beautiful things are happening and there is, there's reason to be optimistic and not despairing. So you all give me hope, joy and love. So thank you very much. Thank you for bringing yours. You know, I'm really struck. I keep running into people who say nobody's talking about X and here we are and lots and lots of people I know are talking about these things. Or I run into people who say nobody's doing anything about. But you know, we and our networks and our networks, networks know thousands of people who are doing things about. And for me, what's always been part of my theory of change is making those things visible so that, you know, if you can, if you can see something happening, you can't say it doesn't exist. If it exists, you can't say it's impossible. So shining light on the wide range of creation initiatives around the world has always been part of the game for me. So thank you for raising that. Anybody else, any other votes on what topics were most compelling to you this year? Here's what you're saying so far. And the way this works is that the more, the more votes for any words happen, the words get bigger. So the spread looks pretty even right now, which is fine, but that's sort of where we are at the moment. Well, let me ask you this. What's changed for you this year? What's changed in your mood, in your commitments, in your actions? Maybe that's connected to the conversations we've had, maybe other reasons. Linda? I don't know what the color coding is. I think it's random. I think the main thing operating here is size of words. I'm guessing that you're not the same person you were in January. I don't know how you could be given the year we've gone through. So what's changed? David will come to you in just a moment. So I see many of you are typing emotions. I'd invite you to unpack that more specifically if you care to. And not just the emotions that move in and out, but the, the moods that are kind of sitting there behind them that are changing more slow, like climate compared to weather. Tell me about your climate, not just your weather, Linda, if you say, yep, protesting in the chat, that's fine, but it doesn't affect the word cloud. And reminder. If you can't access the cloud, you can either shoot the QR code on the screen or there's a URL in the upper left of the screen that you can. That'll get you to. David, did you still want to speak? David Witzel, your hands come down. Misunderstood the format. I thought you were looking for people to talk. Well, I am now, so go ahead. I put in less optimism, but it really is driven by Washington, and the rapidity of change in Washington has just been astounding. So I don't know if you guys saw that. The. They've announced they want to close down the NC in Colorado now because of. It'll help reduce what they call it climate fanaticism. Fanaticism. Yeah, something like that. The national center for Atmospheric Research, major scientific resource of the United States and the world. Yeah. I'm struck that there's less optimism is on the screen and more optimism is on the screen. Anybody want to say anything about that? Shel? Yeah, I was the one who put more optimism, and that is because I think in the last six weeks, the tide is beginning to turn. Certainly, you know, the slam of January, February, March was, was brutal and not a time for optimism. So taking the year as a whole, things are awful. But looking at where we were a week into this administration, where we are now, I'm very optimistic. I think that Trump will not serve out his full term. Sooner or later, some line will be crossed and somebody will invoke either the 25th Amendment or impeachment, or he'll simply drop dead of a heart attack. We all know that his diet is terrible, his health is poor, his stamina is poor. But I'm more optimistic about the power of people that have changed the narrative. I think no Kings were remarkably effective. Those two huge demonstrations and the one that wasn't called no kings, that was earlier in the year. I think a lot of people are studying people like Daniel Hunter and Erica Chenoweth and figuring out how to resist and the creativity and the resistance. I love it. I mean, people dressing up as frogs in Portland and people just all sorts of, of actions that you couldn't have imagined a year ago are taking place. And I think we'll see a lot more reinventions of new techniques by the time this term is out. We'll probably have gotten Gene Sharp's list of 100 and the 100 that were added to it up to around 500. So I have 200, 100 were added to it. So it's an exciting time in that way. We still have a ton of work to do and people are being hurt by this administration and it's God awful. But I think the people are beginning to realize that it's up to us. It's up to each one of us and they're acting. Yeah, thanks, Shell. I think part of the, part of the, intention of the onslaught after, after them coming into office with, you know, Project 25 was on the table, everybody knew it was in there. People weren't quite, you know, maybe didn't believe that would happen. But these guys hit the ground running not only to move fast and things, but to reduce all of us to sputtering apoplexy, like, you know, you know, incredulous, unbelieving, frozen in the upset. And that's not what's called for. What's called for is what you're talking about. And if you look at what's happened this year, you know, they have lost, I think something like 80% of the court cases that have been brought against them. Someone may know the better number on that. They've lost 90% of the elections in November. There's activity all over the country by the thousands. Rachel Maddow on every Monday evening on MSNOW does a 20 minute round the country roundup of citizen action. Some of them performative, some of them really effective in terms of what they're doing. So yeah, all of that. I tend not to go to optimism or pessimism because I am a futurist who's given up trying to predict the future. I'm much more interested in changing the future and rather than trying to predict where it's going. So what do we do that's effective both for our own well being and for impact in the world? That's sort of how I orient to that. LINDA and then GEORGE and then I have a next question. Yes, thank you. I agree with you. I see the protesting and Then I. Oh, I'm sorry. I see the depressed, and then I see the optimistic. And I'm a person that has participated in the protests, and I live in Texas, so it's read where I am. I'm in Collin county, north of Dallas. What's really been interesting is I'm standing side by side with independents and Republicans who don't like the direction of the country. I'm talking to people who've voted for Trump and they don't like here in Texas, they were, you know, QAnon and all of this voted for Trump. They're not happy with what's going on, and they're attending their first protests. And I think it's really powerful because when I go to these protests, actually play my singing bowls, I don't bring signs. So I'll have these people come up and they're like, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, they're talking about what's going on, and I'm like a sounding board, and I have an opinion about everything, but I'll be like the sounding board. And I'm lightly playing my singing bowls, and I'm listening to people. And so I think it's an interesting time because it's creating community that we might not have had. Another thing I might say about the optimism in depression is it's a scary time. So as we make advances, I fear for Trump's next move. Yeah, plenty to be afraid of, for sure. Linda, you've joined us just recently, so just to let you know, one of the themes that has threaded through this year and prior years really has been about how do we listen to each other across the apparent divides, you know, and it's really easy to say maga bad, you know, woke bad. Not going to talk to them, rule them out of my life. But in fact, what you're. What you're. What I'm hearing and what you're saying is that there. There are a lot of things that people care about that we have, that we care about in common, you know, even if we have different ways of talking about it and different positions that we take on it. But there's fundamental things that are really common concerns. What's helped me society. And that becomes a way to. For, you know, for bridge to open up. Yeah. One of the things that helped is I did ACLU training, you know, like, just as a security measure, learning how to listen to other people. You know, if you get. Because sometimes we get counter protesters. So how do we handle that? And that has opened up conversations. Great, great. And you know, practical things like what do you do if vice knocks on your door? There's, you know, there's handbooks for things like that. I just want to mention before I forget, a number of people have referenced the gene sharp 198 or 183 or whatever his list. I want to commend to your attention the book on tyranny by Timothy Snyder, professor formerly at Yale, now at University of Toronto, 20 guidelines or 21 guidelines for the 21st century. I think it's subtitled. But it's a handbook and it's a, and it's a pocketbook. It's made the size to fit in the pocket of your blue jeans. You can have it with you. Always worth reading and maybe worth us talking about in a future call. George, back to you. And then I got another question for you all. I just wanted to pick up on, on your mentioning of how the Trump people hit the ground running. Well, the, the opposition hit the ground running as well. You can, you can look at what Mark Elias had been has done with democracy docket and a whole bunch of constitutional lawyers as soon as they saw Project 2025 started, started working is my impression of what's going on. If you didn't see it last Friday night, Rachel Maddow did a town hall on Ms. Now with Tim Snyder and with local organizers in Chicago and also there in Chicago as soon as they saw the election. I forget the name of the guy who is the one who started doing whistling, taking whistles out and teaching people how to do that. They started organizing and teaching people what to do in case ICE comes and building up a network of support from election day onwards. So, you know, they hit the ground running and they made a lot of dust and then we hit the ground running and we didn't raise any dust at all. We just did the work. Yep. And it's worth remembering that you know, what you see on the mainstream media and what you see in your social media feeds is not a complete picture of the world. So. So before I go to the next poll question. What, what what? Any impressions? What do you all see on this word cloud that speaks to you? Anything else you want to say about that? Anybody? Fernando, Need you to open your mic. Fernando, sorry for that, I forgot. Yeah, well, I was saying that it's in red. It reads obviously motions. We discussed that less optimism. And I think this is significant because in fact, when we look around, despite of the signs that were debated now we don't really have grounds for optimism because you look at the situation in Europe, for instance, and it's, I wouldn't say chaotic, but getting there, and the relation between United States and Europe, it's terrible. And you cannot go on like that. But if there is a silver lining here, and obviously the Trump administration has a lot of responsibility on many of the things that are happening now, is that maybe it could be used as an example. People start to understand that probably democracy in the United States needs a revision, because it's not normal that the president can do whatever he wants, because that's basically what he's doing, and he can destabilize the whole world just because he had a whim in the morning. And there is an example that it's not the most important, obviously, but I think it's symbolic, which is the wing of the White House that he just destroyed in Europe. That would never happen. If that happened, there will be either a revolution, the guy will be dismissed, something will happen. It just couldn't be done. Hey, in the United States, that would never happen either. Except that it did. No, but it did. So, so I think the, the balance and checks in the way the, the American democracies run, they should be revised because this is an example of what, you know, this, this is happening. So something is not working. So hopefully this is an example to see that the democracy must be revised. And what happens when people like him get into power? Then there's always the question, Fernando, revised by whom? So it takes political power, which takes organizing, which takes all the things we've been talking about. It takes all civic power. It's the most important power of them all. And that's why we've been talking about everything from Gene Sharp to subtle influence. The. You know, it strikes me that the, the American political system and the checks and balances system was designed with the presumption that people would adhere to the norms. They didn't design for somebody completely stepping out of the game. You know, like you have a basketball gaming game going on. It's got rules and it's got referees, and it's not designed for somebody coming onto the field with a motorcycle. It's just not designed for that. So what do you do? And somebody says, I'm going to play a really different game here than you're all playing. So that's part of the mess that we're in. Anyhow, thank you for your comments. I'd like to hear from some of you about what may have changed from you in terms of your commitments in the world or what you're doing in the World again, not just because of these calls, but in the course of this year, what, if anything, has shifted for you. In terms of commitments and actions. I'm gonna ask you to hold. I want to call on some other people first, if you don't mind. Sarah, welcome. Haven't seen you for a while. I know. Hi, Gail. Yes, and I haven't been able to be that many over the next year. And I think it was when we connected wherever we were recently in the last few months in June that I got more aware of your activities here. But I put the more anxious, less optimism. But I think one of the things that I've been moved to do is more mutual aid. I think that the mutual aid is a real key of, you know, taking some kind of action. And that's been what some of my concern about that many of the folks that I see protesting are 35 and older, you know, or 30 and older, you know, where are the 20 somethings? Where are the late teens? And we have. I noticed you had one participant who was in Vancouver and I'm in Portland, Oregon, and I was happy to hear some of the high schoolers protesting against ICE and some of our local times. But I think that's for me, one of the things that's going to be really impactful is to get more active locally with my community. Unfortunately, I'm gone a lot of times. My daughter and family are in Vermont right now, so I've been gone a lot. But mutual aid I think is something that's going to give me more hope, you know, just helping people. So thank you, Heather and then Peter and then Betsy. I would say the same thing, that because of some health circumstances, my whole life had to change because I couldn't see well enough to drive. So my whole world changed. But mutual aid is where I actually could still work because people would come pick me up and take me places. We started a Victory food garden project that Monica has been managing to provide fresh vegetables for homeless people. And so, yeah, mutual aid also I'm more relaxed about the future because if it's true, if the Hopi prophecy is true, then everything we're experiencing right now is prophesied like a thousand or so years ago. I just know enough to be dangerous about all this indigenous prophecy stuff. But you know, it could be that there's no way to avoid the collapse of the structures of colonial capitalism that we've created in the empire building age. And so I've just decided to relax into collapse and say, well, okay, here we go. There's no way. But. But you haven't relaxed into collapse and despair. You relax into collapse and mutual aid. Right. Really different. Okay, fair enough. You know, a sidebar before I go to Peter and Betsy. You done, Heather? Yes. Yeah, I've been. For the last couple of years, I've been in a study group reading the teachings of a rabbi named Colonymus Shapiro, who was the rabbi of the Warsaw ghetto in the 1940s. And we're reading a book of his weekly homilies as the. As the world closes in and as you know, like a third, a third, and then a half, and then three quarters of the Jewish population of Warsaw disappears, Taken off to work camps, and he's continuing to teach, and family members are getting killed. He's continuing to teach. He's eventually taken away to a death camp and eventually killed. But before that happened, he gathered all of his lectures, all of his written lectures and put them into milk cans, which were buried. And in 1946, out of the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto, as Warsaw was rebuilding, these were found and sent to Jerusalem and eventually published in a book. And obviously, long story there, but today, in our last session about this, I can't do the whole story, but the story comes to a point where somebody says, what's the greatest thing that he taught? He said he taught children while it worked for children. He said, remember, the greatest thing in the world is to do somebody else a kindness. And one of his students is rescued from a death camp and is talking about, even there, the greatest thing to do. Even in the midst of a concentration campus, there's infinite opportunities to be kind to somebody else. And that resonated as a central teaching of this wise man who had been through things unimaginably worse than what we're going through now, although not impossible. Peter and then Betsy. Hello, Gil. Some of the things that you and I have both been involved in a little bit is really getting established on a couple of university campuses. We've been working at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, next year at Carbondale, to bring Bucky Fuller's sustainability work into the university as a curriculum, essentially asking the question, how do you provide a sustainable world for everybody? In a quick fashion. That's the essence of the curriculum, and that's where Bucky wanted. It was on the university campus within all the different departments. And so we've really activated that on the Edwardsville campus with that Fuller Dome event that we did. And there's now a really engaged, activated community there. And Bucky spent a lot of time at Carbondale and we're going to be doing that activation over the April 1 day, five days that will be there next year. And if we create a good enough model, that's our goal, is to create a model for what that would look like as a curriculum on campus as we'd like to see others do the same. Great. Peter, could you put some links in the chat about how people can access that, the April events and so forth? That would be great. Sure. Thank you. Hi, Betsy. Hi, Gil. Hi, everybody. Pardon my hoarse voice and my weird glasses. I just had cataract surgery. This is my first time joining in a long time. Right, Gil? I think the last time it was when we still lived in Austin. Happy to be back in the Bay Area. I've written this down almost every month in my, you know, calendar. Just, you know, busy, busy. But I am feeling so overwhelmed with such a mix of emotions that I said this is, I remember this group. They really made sense. So I'm really happy to be back and hope to continue to come. What I had a big shift last year which maybe some of you can relate to. For those who don't know. 20 seconds. Background is CBS Radio left because I couldn't get environmental news on have been a self funded content creator on All Shades of Green. I interviewed the solutionaries like many of you in this room and that's where I get my, my, my grounding and my inspiration and my information. So been doing it on platforms in a small way. Decided. Turned 70. And so in August, 5,000 interviews. That's enough. I'm going to just write my book about how my former broadcast news industry completely dropped the ball. Media malpractice, uncovering climate. And four things happened. One, became a grandmother. Adorable two year old. Two. And I started this when my daughter was two. She'll be two. She is two. And then Trump 2.0. And then we were lucky enough to go to Antarctica and seeing the glaciers melting in front of me, gorgeous as it was, haunting as it was, I started having just a lot of cognitive dissonance. And then January when the fires hit and then he was inaugurated. I was a basket case. I was on my kitchen floor about 10ft away. I couldn't get up. I was just like, this is too fucking crazy. I decided to do a YouTube channel, Code Green for the conversations for the future we want and our kids deserve. So I'm back at it. If any of you want to pitch me. I'm just looking for leaders in their area of expertise and activism. And by I think what you said earlier today, Gil, that it's about showing what's working. That's exactly why I started doing this 28 years ago. Amplify and scale what's working because there's so many solutions and solutionaries out there. But we have to support independent content creators because corporate media is not covering these issues. Government's not saving us. They're taking us the wrong direction fast. And people need to know the truth. And I tell the truth. Connect dots most don't see. Focus on solutions. So I just want to put out a call if anybody agrees that if we don't bring the public along, we're never going to make it. To me, it's sort of obvious and that's what's fueled me, my passion. But everybody invests in tech. What about media that informs, inspires? Okay, enough. But that I really went from. I'm not going to do any more. One more thing, Betsy. Links in the chat, please. Oh, thank you. Link your YouTube channel and link to how people can pitch you. Thank you. God bless you. And very timely since your old stomping grounds at CBS is very much in the news right now. Oh, my God. Don't even get me started. I won't even get you started. Okay. Too much is too much. Just enough. Here we are. Let me. Let me branch another question. A, a not complete list. They're going to be two questions kind of on this theme. But let's start with this one. These are some of the major themes we've been talking about this last year. You can vote twice, I think. Where would you like to focus next year among these. And this is not a vote that will determine. This is an advisory to us and you as we discuss and shape where we go. Just kind of want to get a sense of where we are. Let's see, we got 11 of you have voted so far. It's only a third of you have voted. So I'm going to keep this going for a while. While you're doing this, I want to call on some David's. David Grass up. You posted something in the chat. You want to say more about that? No pressure, but if you'd like to, sure. So I think I have a peculiar relationship to this group. Like, I ran into Gil personally and he said, like, why are you doing? Why are you such a regular attendee? And I looked at him, said, I don't really know. And yet here you are. And yet here I am. It just keeps showing up. And I do have other things to do and particularly today, but it occurred to me and was salient enough for me to post that there's quite a diversity over decades and geographies and types of people and issue in our group about simply organizing, like listening to people wondering what is the right next step to do in community or with this client or whatever, and listening to them and trying to figure out a plan for change. And there's quite a lot of accumulated experience. Now I have a pet hypothesis which resurfaced in the pet point of view, which is that people are far more crazy than we realize and that we look at poll data and they're lumped into segments and everything. But every poll you'll see in the United States, 20% of people believe completely bonkers stuff. I mean, and I'll happily amplify on that to kick off any session on this with some poll data. And it's a very rich experience which is not actually shared in media that I ever see, just as the experience of actually going to a demonstration is very rarely shared in a meaningful way. So those are interests that I have that I think might overlap with things in the group. And I'm curious about what other people here have learned who've worked on this much harder. And it occurred to me, because Gil is leading this, that the comparison to organizational change within a structured hierarchy typically is perhaps very different and that people are on very good behavior and suppress their deviant, non conformist and strange and inconsistent beliefs more so. That's my two cents. Sounds like George is the perfect, more knowledgeable person to follow my comment, but I'm not telling you what to do, Gilbert. Thank you, David. Appreciate it. George. Yeah, just to follow up on that, I get a certain amount of pleasure and fear out of a little note that we don't think of often enough. At least a third of the people in the United States and probably around the world are not interested in politics and don't follow the news, right? So those of us who are engaged in politics, right, left, right, so forth and so on, we, we may not even be the majority. So that there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on, some of which is crazy. And I think that, you know, for me, I saw my first murder on television when I was 13 years old, right, Jack Ruby. Right. And we've never dealt with that and we haven't dealt with any of the other formative experiences that, that give us this ptsd, this craziness that we have since then, and that's over 60 years. But you know, George, this is, we're in the world we're in. Yeah, definitely. You know, and 20%, you know, don't care about politics, and 50% don't vote. And half of everybody is below average, kind of by definition. Yeah. And, you know, maybe it's fine that a lot of people don't vote, because then those of us who do sway more. But, you know, we can. I. Somewhere, somewhere along the way, over the past 76 years, I just. I. I learned to not complain about how the world is because it's what it is. You know, we. This is the hand we've been dealt. How do we play the hand that's much more. More interesting to me? Well, I. I don't want you to read what I said as a complaint. Okay? It's just. This is what it is. This is. This is part of the. This is part of the cards that we can see on the table. There are a lot of people who are turned off by politics and turned off by society, and we have to recognize that. Yeah, yeah. This is an unusual group of people here. This is not representative of the United States in this moment, but here we are. Okay, let's go to one more question. Actually, there's a dozen of like a third of you have not responded to this one yet. Last chance. Let me give you a couple more seconds to do that. If you want to weigh in here, we have 36 people in the room and 24 have voted, which is better than the US average. You probably need to allow mail in. Yeah, but it had to be postmarked by yesterday. Okay, let's go to another word cloud topics you'd like us to explore and. Or particular conversation partners you'd like us to invite. We've obviously, you know, those of you who've been here many times know that we often have a conversation starter as. As a guest and a focus point. Not always, but we sometimes do that. So please, you know, use the QR code or the link in the upper left and offer your suggestions here. And while that's happening, Maria, welcome. Maria. Bang. Yeah. Hey, thank you. If I dare to try to express what I'm think, thinking. But having worked for a very long time in the field of environment and democracy in. In Sweden, in the UN system. But what I think is urgent is to get sight of how we understand ourselves, each other, and the world. And because, you know, when. When we think we know how the world works, we cannot meet the world anew. And there's also this old quote that it wasn't Einstein, but probably an iteration from something he Said that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we had when we created them. And yet we go like, aha, this makes sense. And then we keep running and haven't changed a thing about how we think and how we understand ourselves or the world. And. And I think we really need to change how we see the world. And for that to happen, we have to change ourselves as well. And. Yeah, so. So I'm wondering, like, how do we stay open to seeing the world with new eyes? Because otherwise we'll keep repeating the same patterns that give rise to the effects that we're trying to combat. Maria, in your experience, how have you seen that happen, either in your own life or in the lives of people around you? But. But absolutely in my own life. And I worked for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency for. For ages. And in. In the un And. And we just keep running and not reflecting over. So we're like an er. And people are coming in with broken legs all the time. And we're trying to fix these. We're experts at fixing broken legs, but no one stops to ask, like, why are people. Why. How come. Why are people breaking legs all the time? How come our ways of living and being in the world are causing these effects? That deeper question we're not asking, and our way of understanding ourselves, the individualistic worldview or, like, view ourselves that we have, but also how we understand the world, is really, I think, what is giving rise to these effects. And if we just try to combat the effects or think that it's about actions, we need to change the actions. It's just a distraction. We're continuing in even higher speed towards the abyss, in a sense, and that time to reflect and learn and unlearn together. Right. So let me invite you to a difficult task. If you could put what you said into two or three words into the poll so it shows up on the word cloud, that would be helpful. We've also got what you've said recorded, and I'll very much take it to heart. I'll try. Who else? Dave Whitzell. You had your hand up a long time ago. Can I come back to you? Well, we talked about it. Really, though, was the. It was. It was my, you know, depression of 2025. Yeah, yeah. The. The topics. And I mean, I kind of feel like my thinking is. Has been moving over the last year or two, which is kind of gratifying, given that I'm still old. But I would, you know, I'd love kind of an increasing focus on bioregionalism and and kind of place based coordination and, and I'm interested maybe in pursuing some of like Lynn's comments about regeneration and board. Well, maybe Lynn would be a good person to have join and talk to. I know she's doing this great video series on LinkedIn that I'm finding really stimulating. So I know a couple of ideas to throw out there. You're talking about Lynn McDonnell. You're talking about. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so David, put these ideas into the, into the map, please. Thank you. Who else got something to offer here? It could be to the topic of this slide or more generally about what we've been talking about or could be talking about a lot of people off camera here. This is the time when I would call on you, but I can't call on you if I can't see you. If I call on you. You can pass, but Mike Dupy, I'm going to call on you. It's on your mind, man. I'm not sure this is. I think I. Can you hear me? Yes, Yes. I think I attended one of these earlier in the year and had to jump like 30 minutes in. So I am not as well grounded in these. And I guess I'm really focused on myself right now for reasons that you understand, Gil, based on conversations we've had. Yes. So that's kind of where I'm at, is. Trying to step into my own shoes, understand what's important to me, where I can contribute and find a way to make that real in the world versus serving someone else's agenda or just sort of showing up as a, as a hired gun. And so I'm still, I'm still working through all that. And so when I, I think in one of the earlier, one of the first ones, I was focused on things that were around agency and personal leadership and things like that. So, so that's, you know, I guess that's where I'm at. I. And I'll just say, and this isn't a. This truly isn't judgment. I was surprised. I was take. I was surprised by how much time we've spent talking about. Like a lot of this call has sounded like a political organizing call. And I get why it just. That surprised me. And I'm, and I'm. And I'm processing that in, in real time. So I don't know. I don't know that any of that is very helpful, but that's where my head's at. Yeah. Thank you. No, it is helpful and thank you for that. And if you'll. If you look back at the map, which I can't show at the same time. Political agency has been one of the themes for sure that we've talked about this year, but far from the only one. You know, I mean, we were into regenerative agriculture and many other things. So yeah, I would invite you to consider and you don't. You can put it on the map if you want or tell me offline later what, you know, what you would find it worthwhile to talk about in a group of people like this. Because guess what, Your personal journey, you're not the only one having that personal journey right now. So that's an open invitation for you. Again, no pressure. Yeah, if I can just add on to that. I end up feeling, when I bring it up, I end up feeling various, various places when I have recently, almost apologetic because everybody else seems so very other focused and I mean that in a complimentary way. Everybody else is very focused on society and they're, they're, they're looking out to see how they make the world a better place. And I feel like I'm this selfish little creature here trying to figure out my own little spot in the world. And so it is helpful. Almost invariably what happens is what you just said, which is two or three people kind of do a one to one chat and say, hey, me too. So maybe there's, I'll think about what to throw into the poll on this topic. Yeah, yeah, thank you. And if you ever have a chance to go back and look at the archives, I'll put the link there in a moment. You'll see that there's been, there's been quite a lot of personal over the course of this year and prior years because you know, guess what? Each of us, each of us come to the strategic or the business or the personal or the political through a personal lens, through our own lived experience in that. So, yeah, it's an interesting place for us to explore, I think. So. Thank you for raising that. David's curious about licensing reach and what that means. If whoever put that in might want to explain that either in the chat or live, that would be great. And Fernando and Monica, before I come to you, Elena Leonard, anything you'd like to share today? Well, the most powerful thing I've done recently is I attended the film Nuremberg, which is extremely well done. But it also is very scary because there are so many parallels to 1930s Germany that are happening in the United States, particularly with respect to the demonization of anyone who's Muslim, especially Somalis. And it was just very Chilling to see the patterns being repeated. And the other thing is that Canada still doesn't want to be the 51st state. I think he's forgotten about that. Document, which I don't know if he's even read. Certainly talks about making the whole Western hemisphere a vassal States of the United States. Yeah, vassal states for sure. And I'm quite sure he hasn't read it. Fail reports. He doesn't read things. But the people who wrote it read it and wrote it very carefully, very intentionally, and that's worth being nervous about. Any particular people you'd like us to have on as conversation partners, open to your suggestions? And while you're thinking about that and adding names there, we'll go to Fernando and then Monica. And let me ask you, we're coming into our last quarter hour, so be succinct. So we have. I'm going to be very brief and I will send a link about this. Well, I was the one who wrote Licensing Reach because I believe that every profession that has social impact needs a license. The police needs a license, A lawyer needs a license. Even a priest needs a license. But to have reach on social media, there is no license, no accountability. And I believe that we should start thinking about that because everybody, it's not about censorship. It's about reach because the algorithm permeates scandal disruption, not real content. And I think people cannot just have reach without having accountability. So nutshell, this is it. Okay. And I'll put. I'll put a link to something I did about that. Great, great. Thank you. Monica. Hi. Yes, I had my camera off because I'm juggling. It's actually on. So we see, we see your. Your pal behind you. It's okay. Yeah, I had it off because pal behind me was all everywhere. But now it's on and you can see what's been going on. So I wanted to share something that popped in my head when the woman was. Was talking before and you said, like, can you, like, make that into, like, three words or something? There's this episode podcast called the Great Simplification. And one of the podcast episodes is Reimagining Ourselves at the End of the World with a Samantha Sweetwater. And in it, Nate asks her, you know, how can we shift, you know, perspectives? And her response was like, rather than using the word shift, she prefers to use the word yeast instead, suggesting the idea of nurturing and allowing growth rather than just shifting. So I just wanted to say that very succinctly. Thank you. Thank you. Great. So I see just two people Named on. Three people named on here. One of whom I'm pretty sure we're not going to be able to get hold of. But who else would you like to be in conversation with? Who else is. Who else really affected you, provoked you, shaken you, inspired you, Moved you. Who'd you just like to have a beer with or a walk while you're thinking? Robert Girling, welcome. Good to see you. So I put in something which maybe is worth looking at, and that was the. The yes campaign in Chile, which was what led to the end of a law, the dictatorship of Finisher, and was a grassroots movement. And certainly a lot of inspiring things came out of that that might be relevant here. Okay, I don't see it on the screen, so please stick it on there, if you would. I put it in. In the chat. In the poll. I think you put it in the chat, but I'd love to have it on the. On. On. In the poll. I put it in the poll. Oh, you did? Well, I don't know. I tried to. Okay. And. And, and Jean, same for you. And David. Gross up. Yeah. Put names on the screen so other people can see them there. Alistair, hi. Yes, I put in. Turn your volume up, please. Can you hear me? Is this better? Yes. Now we got you. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So I put in Jim Rat. The important thing about him is that he's. I agree with him on most things, not on everything. And he's a technical person, a business person as well. He's interested very much in consciousness and. Yeah. So, yes, people like that, you know, that's not just people who I already agree with on just about everything. Who's gonna. So do you wanna. Do you want to talk to more people that you agree with or more people that you disagree with? What would you like? What would you prefer? I guess I need to reach out more to people who I. People who I respect and disagree with on some important things. For me, I'm finding great value in conversations where one or the other person says, you know, I've never thought of it that way before. For me, that's. That's a jewel in a conversation. And sometimes, I mean, I love it when I say something and they say that. It's always been one of my metrics with my clients in my strategy work, because that's like, you know, that for me is a marker of milestone. But I'm discovering that it works both ways too. And somebody says something that I did not expect, that I did not think, that I did not believe in, that I Didn't have the story that they have, and I find myself open to it. It's a remarkable and rich moment out of which something new can happen. So that's why I keep asking that kind of question. I don't know why some people are saying you're putting names in that are not showing up. I'm not sure why that's happening. I think they're starting to show up. Maybe there's a delay. Don't know. But thank you for doing that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Actually, we got. We got somebody on the call who is slated for an episode next year, and Peter Yovski. I wonder if you want to say anything at this point. Not to put you on the spot, Peter, but I'm gonna put you on the spot. I know what. What has really shown up for me here is that there are so many people without whom I might really fully ally. My focus is on what I perceive to be the progressive social unraveling of our time as we focus more and more of our energy and attention and ability on getting things done and inadvertently, perhaps, neglect living together, how we are in creating a we as we drift together in the vast mysteriousness of being, with the pretense that we understand what's going on. Thank you. Peter speaks to what I think Maria was saying earlier. Yes. About the beginner's mind about thinking that we know and we don't know. Maria, can I see your hand up again, please? I think when I've been kind of peeling in this, that Peter also spoke to. I think how we understand each other and how we think that we work and you work and the world works. There is a need to revisit that kind of idea of how we work in that individualistic worldview that I think that I have. I know what I'm thinking, how much I actually have my sort of independence from others in ways of thinking or being or acting or understanding the world. When we are actually constantly, in every moment, sort of emerging out of our meeting, where we're, like, layers of what's happened in the past and, like, what is allowed. How can I be when I'm with you? And who can you be when you're with me? What Nora Bateson speaks about. But that really opens up to me to understand that we are actually constantly emerging and. And the world is also emerging and unfolding between us. And I think we really need to better understand how we shape each other or form each other, influence each other. It's like we're growing in each other. We are each other's soil. And we're locking each other in, into growing in a certain way. But we can also actually set each other free to be in a different way if we would understand each other and ourselves differently. And that would also allow the world to be formed or to grow into something different than what we have today. Beautifully said. Thank you. Jeff. Hi. Hi Gil. What Maria had previously said and then what she just kind of reflecting what she was just saying just now as well and what Peter Yavkovsky was just saying just now. You know, I, some time ago I watched the movie by Andre Tarkovsky called Andre Rubalov. I'd seen it many years ago and I watched it again and it's attempting to give an impression of the medieval world, Russian Orthodox world, where Andre Ruble off was, you know, was painting icons for the church. And I thought about how, you know, that medieval world that existed prior to the. We call the Renaissance and so forth. There's no way I will would be able to understand or experiencing it. And I thought about what is my world? See, we, we grow up right within the framework of the paradigm of the culture that we're raised in. And we just sort of adopt mostly just natural to adopt that paradigm that we grow up in. And today what is the paradigm? And I've been thinking about that and I, I think about the history. I'm was born in the United States, I'm an American. And I think about how I, I was raised up in this, this river of the American United, the American tradition, you know, that we capsulize in things like the Protestant ethic. And then later after World War II, like becoming a Dale Carnegie person or think positive and be better and all these kinds of things. And. But most powerfully in terms of Western civilization, I think about how we're products of the industrial age. What does that mean? To me? Likely, somewhat somehow we have the. We think of things in terms of process, we think in terms of mass production, we think in terms of being cogs in a. Some kind of process. We identify with special being having specialized, specialized tasks, specialized skills, specialized distinctions about everything. And that's the huge. In a way the, the flow of that river that somehow has to be. I think, I wonder how it can be interrupted. You know, the whole capitalism flow of Wall street and industrialization and mechanization and how that influences us as people. And now going into robotics and AI and all this. What, what is the. What is the being that's being formed by the culture and how to somehow have the ability to. What Like Maria, I think was. I was saying to you, we. We treat broken legs, but we don't look at the source of those broken legs. What is those broken legs? What's. What's happening that there's so many broken legs. And I just think we need to. To try and have some kind of a better realization observing ourselves and all that in all this mess that we're in. Yeah. So thank. Thank you for that, Chef. That's really resonating for me of, you know, how we interrupt the river when it's a torrent. The broken leg metaphor. Sometimes, bro, you. The broken leg is better. Procedures in the hospital. Sometimes it's getting a traffic light on the corner near the school. Peter. Thank you, Jeff. Underline what Maria and Jeff just said, but also phrase it as perhaps we can recognize and really participate in the emergence of the self. The self does not exist like existing. We are emergent beings. And it could be that we can learn to take that track and open a new reality completely in recognizing that we are emergent and that the world follows our emergence. And that's, I guess, more poetry, like, evocative now than prescriptive, but I feel that track calling. Can you find it? I love it and would love to talk with you about it, at least you and I, if not with all of us, because the question of the self, for me is very connected with the question of agency and effective action that we're talking about here a lot. And it's also connected a lot with the conversation about identity, which has been a big part of the dialogue, at least in this country in recent years. And. And also it's connected indirectly or maybe even very directly to the question of power. Yep, yep. And as we've said from way back in the beginning of these calls, power is a really messy conversation. For those of us who slant progressive, I'll say that there's an aversion to power that has done damage on the left out of a confusion between power over and power to. And you may have noticed that's a theme that we've had all the way through this stuff. So, yeah, there's that. Just a couple minutes left. Any final thoughts from anybody? Please put stuff into the poll if you haven't done that yet, or vote for people already there if you'd like to. Glenn, I think you have the distance prize today. Any words of wisdom you want to share from the Baltics? I. I can. I have sympathy for the. For the. The views of people that are frustrated, but we have our own focus here. In, in the Baltics with Greenland with pharma companies, with wind companies and it's, it's, it's quite different. The rise of the right is of course sweeping through Europe. So we have our focus on, on other issues and I, I don't want to take that focus away. I think everybody's been, been wonderful in sharing the views today. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Katie. First time here. You've asked if this is the last. This is the last for this year. We meet the third Wednesday of every month. The next one is January 21st. Got that on screen now. And let me just thank you all for being here today, for being who you are, for what you do in the world, for the presence and commitment that you bring to everything. And and I we always like to end with a reminder from our friend Brandy Carlisle. You can dance in a hurricane but only if you're standing in the eye.