#4 The Only Way Out Is Through—Living with grace, calm and power in a VUCA World | Call #4

You. Welcome everybody, to the fourth call in this series. I know a lot of you. Not all of you. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Gil Friend. I'm CEO of Natural Logic Incorporated, a strategy firm that works with companies and cities to build powerful and profitable and resilient strategies for a very uncertain future. The reason that we're doing these calls, why I've invited you together now these four times, is because we're adrift in a broken world. Some of you who were on the earlier call saw this graph before Gene. Let's have the first slide. Next one. So you remember that we showed this chart. This is a picture of where we are now. You've seen this graph before. You know, the black line is the exponential growth. Whether you think of that as growth in Covid cases or the hockey stick of the Silicon Valley startup, or the expectations of, what, Wall Street. There's this phenomenon of growth upon growth. The red line is more familiar from biology. This is the sigmoid curve, or the S curve, sometimes called logistics curve, which shows how populations live and die in the real world. Growth that looks exponential for a while, then constrained by resources or predation or something else. The rising curve flattens out. Or perhaps it flattens out more based on your actions. This is the graph for Covid. This is the graph for climate as well. Go to the next slide. And you know, we've seen these trends around us, very differential responses. You see rising?

Not yet. I'll text you.

Okay. You see the rising and falling of trends in many countries and not in others, based on the actions that are taken and how early they're taken. Same question with climate. Do we yield predatory delay and wait and figure that we can fix it later, but it's much harder to fix later. Next graph, please. And so here we are. You know, we have the choice in both cases between business as usual and prevention and precaution. And it's a tough thing because, you know, if we're successful, certainly with the disease, people will say, see, it wasn't so bad. We overreacted. But that curve is only bending down because we are reacting powerfully and timely, at least in some cases. I'm coming to you from California, where the curve is relatively flat, where there's coordinated action across state agencies and county agencies, not the chaos that we see coming out of Washington. So, Gene, take the slides down. Let's go face to face for most of the rest of the time here. So while Covid. While Covid grips our minds, the climate Crisis is looming not far behind. They seem different on their face, but they share common roots, common dynamics and possibly climate strategies. What's more intriguing to me now is that they both reflect a blindness to living systems, to the dynamics and the distinctions of systems, and the failure of management systems to reflect and dance with the physical and biological reality that we are enmeshed in. A blindness to what my colleague Chauncey Bell calls the financialization of everything in these days of late capitalism. A blindness to the nature of power, a blindness to the shredding of what Doris Lessing called the substance of we feeling and a sense of commitment to the solidarity of Terrans on the planet we call Terra. In our prior calls, we've explored the parallels between these crises and lessons of the vast planetary experiment that we're running on ourselves and the priorities of urgent political action. So here we are, adrift in a broken world, and yet there are huge opportunities to bring something new forth, to bring forth something new. Let me say that in English. There are specific strategies that we can. Look, we'll talk more about that. Mostly what we're seeing though, is fierce arguments, politicized arguments about virology and epidemiology and pandemic management, supported by a stunning lack of data and grounding of those arguments, and less visibly. But I think we all feel this is a sense of innovation and an emergence of this sense of collaboration and substance that we feeling of people working together, sensing something that's possible here. We talked about last week, last time, that in Great Britain Only 9% of the people population wants to return to pre Covid. So we're here in a sense of profound wondering of what's coming at us, what might be next, what might be possible, how do we contribute to the shift in the futures that are coming at us? And so the invitation to these calls about how to live with grace and calm and power rather than panic and resignation and helplessness in this Vuca world. I've said Vuca a number of times. I haven't unpacked. Did anybody know what that stands for? Just raise your hand. Gene will pop your mic open. Is that Karen? Karen Brown? Jean. Karen, just open your mic. We seem to be having challenge here. Can you hear me yourself? There you go. Yes, go ahead.

Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

There you go. Comes out of. Comes out of training of fighter pilots. If you think yourself in a jet traveling at the speed of sound, with other jets around you, with you and other jets around you, chasing you, that's the world that you're in. How do you develop a capacity in your body, not just in your checklist, but in your body to respond in a world like that? We are living in that kind of world. How do we cultivate in ourselves, in our bodies, not just in our thinking, the ways to live effectively and powerfully in this world. So Gil, Gil, can this is my declaration who you want? Gil, this is Gene. Can I interrupt you a minute? Is everyone seeing Jill? Gil's video is choppy, so your video I'm seeing choppy, so I think I'll stop your video and so that we can hear you better. Let's do that. We can try it again later. Okay? Okay.

Thank you.

Perceived. Gail, go ahead. Thank you, Gene. So my declaration to you all and to my clients and to my broader tribes, is to bring these tribes together and explore this way of living and see what we can learn from each other and develop together and bring forward into the worlds that we're all living in. Because like I think most of you, I belong to multiple worlds. You know, my professional Persona is as a strategy consultant to large corporations, as a chief sustainability officer of a Citi, as an advisor to entrepreneurs, as a coach to people at all those levels, and also in the world of activists and solutionaries and regenerates, as we seem to like to call ourselves these days. And of course the overlap between those. Because there are people who live in multiple of those worlds. Probably all of us live and live and belong to different kinds of groups. And so I found great value in the cross pollination between those worlds. That's where the work that I've done has been. And there's also the tension of shifting roles and shifting costumes, if you will, and Persona as we move between the different world that we live in, meeting the norms, the expectations that people have of us in our different roles. Really importantly, listening to the cares and concerns that people have and not seeing people just as typecast into the role or organization they're in. But as a human being with an interior life and relationships and things they care deeply about that we are often blind to. So part of this experiment that we're running together is to explore what there is to learn together and to listen to the voices that are both explicit and within each of us. So just to conclude the introduction, we are, we're in a vuca world with regard to both Covid and climate, and let's say just to make the point clearly with regard to the human economy. And we're seeing science being done on the fly. We're Seeing remarkable openness to drastic change. There are things on the table now, policy moves on the table that were inconceivable a year ago or certainly two years ago. We're also seeing fierce resistance, most pronounced in the United States, in contrast to many other countries in the world. We're seeing the impact of predatory delay, as I said, and almost unnoticed, a different mood about things like universal healthcare, like universal Basic Income, like the usual showstopper that we get whenever a creative idea comes up of how are you going to pay for that? Well, we're seeing a different mood in the assessments now about what's needed in our lives together on this tissue thin film of life coating this 8,000 mile diameter ball of rock hurtling through space at 18,000 miles an hour, our common spaceship. So my question to you for starters.

Is what's your mood in the midst of all this?

Mood is optimistic, positive, but of course also very scared that other countries are not, or as a society we're not dealing with crisis and the climate change as a complete understanding of what we need to change.

Let me stay with you for a moment. You know, mood, as I said, is this kind of characteristic state that you're in. You know, it's like what you feel when you wake up in the morning sometimes or what's with you during the day. But the secret is that behind every mood is an assessment of your circumstance of the world. What's the assessment that's behind your mood of optimism?

The assessment is that there is a lot of, there is a lot of possibilities and hope, but we really need to get down to business in doing this right. Because it could easily also just end up continuing the bad way it was. And that will.

They're doing it right as you're saying Norway and some countries are doing with regard to Covid, but hardly anybody is doing with regard to climate.

Yeah. And not when it comes to biodiversity understanding of the whole.

Okay, thank you, Nils. Gene, who's next?

Sandra. Sandra Bayer.

What's your mood, Sandra?

Yeah, my mood is also, along with what Nils and Alexander said, my mood is one of optimism. And the reason for it, Gil, is that I think underlying the tragedy of what's happening and the, you know, the really sad things that are happening to so many people is the opportunity to change. And I think what Alexander said, Gil, I don't know if you heard it was about building trust again. And I think it's rebuilding it. And I think the opportunity for us is to figure out what those steps are. How will we do that? Especially in the United States. I'm in Washington, D.C. i mean, we have no confidence in our leaders. So without that leadership, how do we gain confidence to change, whether it's climate or going back into work, going back into play? I mean, I think there's a huge, huge opportunity and we better start acting on it now because it's gonna. If Covid is with us for decades, which I believe it will be the ramifications of it, I think we need to take action pretty quickly. Thank you.

So, Sandra, what are the, what are the circles that you travel in?

I work with cities for a living, so I've been talking to a lot of city leaders. I also work with the Edison Electric Institute. So we're looking at electrification, we're looking at clean water, we're looking globally at what's going on in urban spaces.

Gil.

So I think there's so much to do that could change the way our planet works, especially regarding renewable energy.

Of course. Yeah. And so what's the mood that you're sensing amongst the people that you're speaking with?

I think they're anxious. There's an anxiety level that is not diminishing, especially, I mean, I'm in the US Although I have global clients. So I think that people, depending on the efficacy of the actions that the populations have taken, have different levels of anxiety. But nobody's feeling confident, nobody's feeling like, oh, I know what's going to happen and how I can prepare for it.

So let me ask you the question again then. What's the assessment that you speculate lies behind the moods that you're sensing from the people you're speaking?

I think the assessment is that we've got to take action. We can't, you know, each of us in isolation. I mean, your call is one of several that I join where I feel like there's a huge sense of new collaboration, not the same old, same old. You know, what is that ecosystem of collaborators that can really make change happen. So thank you for that.

Thank you. You bet. Gene, who's next?

Alaina Leonard, would you like to share?

Yes. Can you unmute me?

You're unmuted. Elena, hi.

Right, hi. From Toronto, where we're not doing quite as badly. But my mood is frustration because the politicians and other leaders are so focused on putting out fires that I don't think that they are actually able to look up, see long term or the implications for climate change. And my perspective is from the perspective of cybernetics and systems thinking. And we're getting a real lesson in systems thinking, in that how everything is so interconnected and how that can bring us fragility as well as strength.

Well, we're getting a lesson in what happens with the labor lack of systems thinking also.

Yes, that too.

I mean, we're really seeing the limits of mechanistic reductionist approaches of. Let me fix this one thing, not realizing how it affects these nine other things. Cascading.

Yes, very much so.

And who are you in conversation with these days?

Well, there's a group from the International Society for Systems Science. There's a group I'm involved with here that is focused on the environment with respect to water and the protection of water, and also with the American Society for Cybernetics.

And what's the mood that you're sensing among those people?

Basically wanting to roll our sleeves up and try and get something out there that we can start working on, but it's a little hard because we're all at home.

Well, but we can be in communication with each other.

We can.

One thing that's surprising to me about all this is how much of what we do, even when we're together in offices, is in the conversations that we have with each other. And the conversations can happen any medium. It's different, you know, there's less bandwidth. We don't have pheromones, we don't have sounds and smells. But we can create, as we always do as humans, create worlds in the conversations that we have with each other, you know, with the requests and promises that we make to each other.

Very true. It's all about conversation.

Yeah. And so the mood, the name that I get to, the mood that you described is the mood of resolution, of resolve, a commitment to make something happen. Of course, the question is what? But thank you for that, Jean. Let's take another one or two more. Thank you, Elena.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Gene. Who you got next?

Hi, can you hear me? I'm unmuted. Yes. Yeah. So my mood is. I'm Alicef Aruja. I'm in Malta in the Mediterranean. My mood is, I would say, uncomfortable and disengaged because I'm not involved in any projects that are helping the environment or social justice or anything. That's because of my personal choices. I'm working on that. And uncertain and pessimistic, I would say, about the situation in general, because I think it's quite possible that once a vaccine is found, you know, we'll just go back to the same old politics and look at fossil fuels, you know, as a solution to getting out of the economic problems. It's quite possible.

Yeah. I'll tell you my concern is not that we go back to politics as usual, but we stay stuck in politics as usual now. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Amos White.

Thanks. I'm pretty radically optimistic.

Hey.

Hi, Gil. Thanks, Gene. Pretty radically optimistic on. On what's going on. It's difficult being inside to acknowledge that it's difficult for everyone and what's going on, even hearing people on hate to say both sides of the fence, just acknowledging their own experience. The deniers who actually still really do believe a lot of this is not happening. They don't see the death, they don't see the order of magnitude of, of to really connect with what's going on. And I think that's. It's both tragic. It reminds me of the Vietnam War when yes, I was a child, but I remember my mom pointing out to us how horrible it was seeing kids come back in coffins with flags over top of the coffins at airports. And they would show their faces on the bottom of the screen of the newscast and she would point out, notice how 9 out of 10 of the kids in Columbus, Ohio, where I grew up, were all black. And it didn't make sense to me. But 20 years later in college, it starts to show you who is involved in what conflicts and who is most impacted. And now that I'm looking at things now, not only the disproportionate impact of what's going on, but also people who don't make the connection for not just for black and brown communities that one specific example, but just in the larger context are because it doesn't impact them. They can maintain a very conservative and or denial worldview about what's going on versus a lot of other of us who have a more optimistic or not optimistic, but have a different wrong. Sorry to say that, a different point of view to acknowledge the reality and.

The impact of it and to have.

A sense of urgency. But in terms of optimistic. Well, I was going to say in terms of optimistic to highlight that, to get to the point is that it's that we've been so sequestered that we are now coming through this grieving period or some are entering into it, but we're coming out of this and some will come through this grieving period and we'll be looking for hope, we're going to be looking for our independence, but we've also gone through a period of forced due to nature, forced reflection and this settledness that we've had to pay attention to. What's going on, not just with ourselves in the human community, but I just got off another phone call where we're talking about the jackrabbits that nobody even knew existed on our island here of Alameda that are coming out in droves on the far side where they used to be X number of decades ago. So people are making a connection to the earth that the smoke emergencies didn't do and that Australia didn't do for them. They're starting to make that connection. And I think the more we can connect, if you will, natural solutions, whether it's planting a tree, which our initiative does, we're trying to get people to focus and bring them into the conversation by actually planting trees. Something simple that they can do. But I think that's our opportunity and there's going to be no better time to strike than when these hate to say it. The stay in place orders are lifted.

Let me jump in here. I like what you said about enforced reflection. That's the phrase that's going to stay with me after this call. Have you been in conversation with folks who are not of your mind, who are not engaged in the things you're engaged in or aren't expressing the concerns that you're expressing, who might be holding political, different political views than you? Have you been engaged in conversation with folks, not listening to them on the telly, but actually talking to folks?

Yeah. Yeah. It's more difficult to have structured conversations, meaning meaningful conversation where there's a rapport. It's more an attack and then it's more defense with compassion.

So what's the mood that you're observing.

On their side or in them?

What is the mood you're observing in them?

Yeah, you talk about a microscope.

Give me one word.

It's, it's just, it's just, it's, it is patent disbelief and it's, it's, it's disbelief and it's disbelief and I know what it's predicated upon, which means they, they're actually choosing and actually believe that it's not TR.

Amos. Now let's hold off on the story. I'm trying to do something here. Not a lot of people to engage.

Go ahead, go ahead.

I'm looking for what you said their mood is. What's your mood in conversation with them?

With them?

Yeah.

Trying to maintain my self balance because I believe that's what all this is about. I'm trying to maintain balance and to be open as much as I am trying to be informative.

Can I put words in your mouth? So you're feeling off balance in these conversations?

Oh, no, no, no, just the opposite. I'm trying to consciously in life and more so in these conversations be balanced and not be normally attacking, dominating and trying to push my point based on some self righteous notion, whether it's proved on science or not. I'm trying to give space emotionally for them to come in.

So what's the assessment that you're making in those conversations?

Assessment of the person or assessment of the conversation in flight?

Either way. Either way I assert that you're making an assessment.

Oh, indubitably.

We do that all the time, right?

Yeah, yeah. More so I'm testing them. You're absolutely correct. More so I'm trying. I know, I know what I know. But I'm also trying to understand what I don't know and what I'm actually testing for. And just even holding a conversation, like I'm calling this conversation with you, I'm listening and I'm actually listening to see what are what. How do they really feel about what? Do they really feel something about the aspect of what's going on? Sorry about that light there. Or are they actually feeling something? What are you know, is it tied to something else? Whether seriously, whether it's a childhood trauma and a belief there and you hear certain things come out in conversation and they tie it to other observable events and whatever it is they're listening to in the news or other conversations they're having with their friends. Oh, it's the same as like with Hillary. And I'm like, wait, how are you going with Hillary? Why are you tying it to that? Are you just parroting something you heard on Fox News?

Let me stop you here because you're actually giving me a perfect segue to the next point of the call. So thank you for that. Okay, good.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Go ahead yourself back again. So, you know, Amos just talked about listening in these conversations and trying to listen behind the words. What it is that's motivating people, what their concerns are, what it is that they care about, how does that show up in the words that they're actually speaking? So I want to take us into breakout groups. Just a sound check. Can people hear me okay or have I frozen again?

No, you're okay.

Okay, very good. Thank you, Doug. So at the end of the last call, I invited you all to do an exercise. Between then and now. I invited you to listen to your conversation. Kind of a little, you know, little witness on your shoulder listening to your conversation. Both your Conversations with other people, your conversations with yourself, and to notice what you observe about the mood, as we've been modeling just now, about the assessments that you're making, because there's always an assessment behind the mood. There's always an evaluation and interpretation. Not that that's a bad thing, that's a human thing. We do that inevitably. And so observing your conversation with others and yourselves, observe what assessments you make, observe what assertions you're making in your conversations, which is different than assessments. An assessment is an interpretation. It's subjective. An assertion is something that is testable. So, for example, I could say, it's hot here in this car where I'm sitting, but somebody else could be sitting in the same car and say, no, it's not. It's cold. There's no resolution of that. I could say that it's 78.2 degrees in this car, and we can verify whether that's true or not. So when we speak, we do a mix of these things. Interpretive, subjective assessments and assertions of things that are testable and provable. So I ask you to observe that as well. And so, Ching, can you put up the breakout slide? So we're going to, with the help of Zoom's magic, we're going to you all into breakout groups. You'll be three in a group. We're going to ask you to select one of you as the timekeeper. We'll also assist with the timekeeping. I think not that slide.

There's the breakout slide showing.

Okay, if you guys are sitting. So we'll ask you to 2 and 3. Take 2 minutes total to yourselves, to each other, however you choose. And then we'll take each of you take four minutes each to reflect on these questions. What did you listen? What did you hear? What did you observe in these conversations, both with other people and interior yourself? What assessments and assertions and declarations did you observe? What insights may have appeared and what potential has this disclosed for you? So we'll do that for about 20 minutes. Any questions about the exercise, and can.

You add the questions to the chat so that we can be mindful of what they have?

I suggest you jot them down on paper, because in the breakouts, you won't be able to see the main chat things about Zoom, and we'll figure out how to handle that better next time. Hill's audio is too low. Sorry, Javine, is this any better?

Now we don't see anything.

Nothing.

Can you hear me?

We can't see any screen.

Okay, so.

Gino, over To you.

What's happening with our slides?

I took the slide down.

Oh, yeah, put it back up, please. If you would break up, Gail, maybe you could just recap really quickly what.

The three questions were.

I will, while that's filling up. So two minutes total to introduce yourself to each other. Four minutes each with these questions. What did you observe in your conversations, both with other people and yourself? What moods? What assessments are being made? What assertions are being made? What declarations are being made? Okay. What insights have you had in these observations, and what potential does this disclose for you? That, or as near as you can, we'll try to pop these questions into the messages to the breakout groups. The slide is useless. The slide is unmeaningful. Sorry, it's not working. I'll apologize.

It's the aspect.

Just jot this down. What did you observe in your conversation with others and yourself? What assessment and assertions and declarations did you observe? What insights appeared and what has this disclosed for you? Take 20 minutes to breakout groups. We'll come back together and discuss. Okay, Gene, take us away.

So how is the breakout supposed to happen?

Yeah, no one's explained how to break out. We have to adapt on the fly here, guys. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me? This is Gene. Yeah, I'm putting you in breakout groups. You'll be in groups of three, and that will take me just a minute to do that. You'll be in groups of three or four. So. Okay, I'm creating those rooms now. Once this notice comes up, you will have to choose to enter a breakout room.

This is a zoom feature.

Okay. All the rooms should be opening now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm in the middle of a.

Meeting now, but.

Can we talk on Monday?

Thank you. Bye bye.

It. Okay, welcome back, everybody. I hope that was enriching for you. Please mute your mic. You've had your mics on during the break.

Gil, you've got to be louder than that. Gail, you got to be louder.

Okay.

Yeah, we lost to you, guy. I'm not hearing anything. No, me neither.

That's because Gil dropped off. Dropped off. You'll have to log back in.

He's coming back in. He's still on.

I'm back in. I got thrown out, but I'm back in. Can you hear me? Okay, now that's a bit better. Okay, let me do something. I'm gonna go out of video and fix the audio. So while I'm doing that, I hope that was an enriching process for you all, what I'd ask you to do now is ask for some volunteers to share. Either share what you shared in your breakout or share what you observed in the conversation with your colleagues. Gene, raise your hands folks, and Gene will call on you in turn. We'll have about 15 or 20 minutes for this.

Okay. Marianne Grossman.

Hi. We had an interesting conversation from Oregon, Toronto and Silicon Valley and talking about the kind of gap between people who are taking assistance view and have a scientific education and possibly more liberal politics and are.

Approach to.

The pandemic and those who are not. And obviously that translates into addressing other systemic issues like climate change, that if there are people who are committed to anti science, then it's hard to get them to support the kind of changes that we need. And I appreciated that observations that people were making in our conversation and the guideline to kind of make distinctions between our assessments, declarations, observations and insights was it, it was interesting to have that in the background while we were listening to each other. One of the most important things I think was looking at all the broken systems that have been revealed that how fragile our system is and healthcare and many other systems just really on the brink of collapse. And that was masked before we had this epidemic to kind of unmask it.

Thank you. Christina Olson.

So it'll be noisy, so I'll just really, really quickly. We talked about a lot of things, but one thing that noticed was both of the people in my conversation, we were covering Vancouver, San Jose, California and Cambridge, Mass. But both, both of them have a martial arts background. So then we were very, very briefly at the end talking about martial arts sort of being the, a redirection, sort of an assessment of what you're carrying with you and the energies and then a redirection of that, sort of a leverage point to see opportunities. So I just wanted to flag that.

Thank you. John Duvall.

Hi. Yeah, thank you. I was with Stuart and Bruce, three white males living in the Bay Area of California, which is funny, two of which had two of whom had roots in New York City in the early years. So anyway, our conversation I think revolved around hope and hopelessness. At least two of the three of us expressed a certain amount of fatalism and hopelessness about our situation. And yet we said that doesn't really impact our activism or our willingness to continue working and benefit of the greater good. We were also all, I think, pretty tuned into a lot of the same sources of information.

Let me interrupt you there for just.

A second, if I could. So when you're Talking about hope and hopelessness.

That's a mood. Those are two moves.

We all recognize them all. We're all in and out of them all the time in our lives and especially now. But on the theory that there's an.

Assessment like lying behind that move, what is giving rise to the.

What is giving rise to this?

What are the assessments that say hopeless.

Or the assessment that say hopeful?

The assessment is still hearing me.

Yes.

I think, you know, all of us are fairly conversant with the science behind climate change and fossil fuel depletion.

This.

John, is muted.

Did I get muted again? Somehow.

Somehow you did. We hear you now. Keep going.

Okay, well, I think that our assessments involve among the three of us a pretty deep understanding of the science of climate change and fossil fuel depletion. And therefore, you know, we don't see anything on the horizon that even resembles anything that might really be called a solution to these problems with the growing population of the world and maldistribution of resources and economic means and so on.

So.

But we also agreed that our sense of hopelessness hasn't limited our willingness to continue to be activist and continue to reach out and try to.

Speak our.

Truth to our audiences, whichever those are. And so, you know, even things like Buddhist teachings about life and death were invoked and things like that. So yeah, so if either Stuart or Bruce wants to jump in and expand on what I just said, I'd welcome that. Thank you.

Thank you, John. David Schronbren. David?

Yes, thank you. Alexander and I had a really productive discussion. It turns out that both of us.

Live between.

Two worlds politically.

He.

Deals with both environmentalists and hard right individuals and I myself do collaborative work with anti tax groups in my environment work. And I have been wondering for some time now what the hell do libertarians think when they reject having masks and reject staying home? You know, I just, I truly don't get it. And one thing that came up that I thought was quite profound was that. Each people in either polarity tends to feel very threatened and they want to be surrounded by people that think just the way they think and will lash out immediately at something different, very much like an autoimmune reaction or an immune reaction to an invading toxin or invading cell. And so it was fascinating for me to realize, well, it seems like it's necessary to address this sense of being threatened and you know, intentionally not be threatening and attempt to bring somebody over because there's a lack of trust in each of the sides. I think that's probably a nice capsule.

David, for The folks you're speaking with who won't wear masks, et cetera, what's your sense of what they're deeply concerned.

About.

What'S driving that?

What I got is that they have such a hyper focus on my personhood, my choice, that they don't recognize the connection to a larger society in which they both can influence and be influenced. I believe that there is a missing felt sense of connection that is.

At the heart of this.

Okay. Interesting that some, you know, a number of people have talked about an expanded sense of connection. Other people are feeling a real lack of connection. Yeah.

And I have observed for a long time, I have thought that Republicanism is, is a, is a birth defect that in which one emerges into the world with no affective connection to others.

Well, and that's, you know, I think it's clear that's true of some Republicans and very not true of others. So there's part of the opportunity for us.

As a quick generalization.

Yeah, well, and it's easy to do that. And that's one of the places we trip up, where all of us on all sides trip up by making quick assumptions about the others. I talked last week or last call about a relatively new friend of mine who died in the world, Republican, in fact, a conservative Republican, and heartful and thoughtful, and we have conversations together that frankly, neither of us have with anybody else, and they generate something new. Now, I'm not saying that it's common or universal, but I've had that experience and it gives me sense of possibility. Could I cultivate more conversations like that? Could we cultivate more conversations like that? Because one of my assumptions in all this, some of you have heard me share this story, is that when you can get people together, whether two, over coffee or zoom, or in a living room or over zoom, or as we used to do in large groups together, and can get past the positions, the declared political positions that we each live in, and start to peel the onion of what's the concern behind that position and what's the concern behind that? Concern about what's the concern behind that. It's like the Toyota 5 wise process, their total quality system. Remarkably, in situation after situation after situation, we find at the bottom of the stack common concerns, very different senses of what's about them. Hang on, David. Very different senses of how to move in the world to resolve those concerns, very different strategies about how to take care of those concerns, but yet a very common sense of concerns. And that's one of the places where I draw some real solace. And sense of possibility. David, thank you. Let's. Let me go on. Take one more person. Thanks very much for sharing. Yeah. Why don't you put it in the chat? Okay. Everybody can see it. Get it there. Thank you, David. Jean, you got one more keyed up. William Elbring. Hi, William.

Hi. Had it. Had a lively conversation with our breakout. I want to get this notion out there because I think it's important. I have been in conversation with many friends, most of whom tend to agree with me. And what I have realized ever more clearly, because of the COVID viruses here, we have a threat which will kill you dead and one that demands a certain high level, a high percentage of agreement from the population or will keep the virus going. We can't even get past the COVID deniers. We can't even persuade the relatively small percentage of people to get with the program and see how their behavior affects the entire herd. So once I tumbled to that, I realized, whoo, we just. We have a real political challenge in front of us. And I don't think we're. I don't think our current strategy is working very well. At least it hasn't for the last 30 or 40 years.

Everybody who will. I would go further than that. I would say that we have a real social and cultural challenge as well as a political challenge. You know, there's a focus now on getting Trump and his gang out of office in November. Let's say we succeed with that. I hope we do. And I'll have something to say about in just a moment. But even if we do that, we have a country that's torn apart.

True.

And people who see the world differently and who can't even speak to each other. And so that's another part of the challenge that. That I'm trying to bring us to here. I'm sorry to cut you off. I need to move on.

That's right.

In eight minutes. But thank you for raising that.

Yeah.

Let me do one sentence. One of the challenges that's ahead of us. One sentence.

Let me do one more sentence. We can't expect to achieve the results we're seeking by doing the same thing. Harder.

There you go.

Thank you.

Good transition. And that's why we're here. So, you know, so it takes us to the question of what do we do at levels of our individual lives, our communities, our cities, the companies that we work for, perhaps run, the investments that we make, how do we start or continue or strengthen our ability to live our values in powerful and effective ways in all these Realms that we're in. On the theme of the conversations we've been having having. I know that, you know, a lot of us don't have relationships with people on the, quote, other side or don't have opportunities to be in those conversations. But one opportunity we do have is to, is to listen to other media sources, to read broadly. You know, most of us, most of the time talk with people like William said, who tend to agree with us. But exposing ourselves to broader experiences and listening deeply, listening not to the position or the attitude, but to the concerns behind it is one of the doors that I think opens things up here, you know, for each of us individually as a place to start. Obviously, we can vote our values not just in the elections, but every day. Every time we drop a dollar on the counter. Well, there used to be counters. Now it's a click on a screen. Every time we spend a buck. We're voting, you know, and we're voting for a future. So we need to do that in all those realms. Listen for cares and opportunities in our conversations with other people. Watch your mood, Lisa, I'm sorry I don't have time to call on you now, but Lisa Friedman spoke about the rapid changeability of mood that she's noticing. I think many of us live there. But she also talked about beginning almost every conversation, including with your clients, by asking people, what's the world you want? A number of you have talked about this desire, this sense now that something is possible, this desire for something different. And that's an opening to have in a conversation with anybody, even people who you think differ from you strongly but may surprise you. And it's a powerful opening to find something like that substance of we feeling that we've talked about before. Gene, would you bring up the slide of me my offer to you? We've now had four of these calls. I know some of you have been on all of them, some have joined for the first time. But this is something that I've been hosting since the middle of March as a contribution into the mess that we're living in. Go forward one, please. There we go. So I'm going to continue to host these calls. These are large open calls. They're approximately bi weekly. They will continue to be free. We're obviously still learning how to do these, both technically but also organizationally. So I invite you to continue to participate in these conversations if they're valuable and meaningful for you. And I would invite you to invite other people who you think would be a contribution, invite you to invite other people who you think would be a contribution or benefit by participating. Don't blast these out to your list. I request that you make one to one invitations so that we are together our filters about who comes in to this conversation and can share in these benefit by participating. Don't blast these out to your list. I request that you make one to one meaningful way. Second, I've talked in prior calls about some reading to do together. I've mentioned in particular the book down to Earth by Bruno Latour and Democratic Action, Entrepreneurship and Solidarity by Spinoza and Floris and Dreyfus. I'm going to start some deep reading groups. These will probably meet weekly for an hour. They'll be small so that we have a lot the time for a high level of participation, probably 10 to 20 people. And I'll invite you to financially contribute at a level that you think is appropriate to help support me in this process going forward that will be starting shortly. We're cooking on some thematic discussion groups that will dive more deeply into specific areas of activity and strategy, perhaps business policy and the being questions that we're looking at here. Size to be determined Again, a voluntary set your own rate offering there. Jean, Next slide please. Coming in the future, probably we're developing courses that will have a continuity over a period of time, a podcast in development, bringing on other hosts, and hopefully building an online community so we can be in discussion between these calls. And as always, I offer individual coaching both to people and to teams, strategic advisory services to companies and organizations, and a growing set of tools in collaboration with Daniel Aronson at Value Test, Martin Momros at Sustain Online in Finland and others. So those are all coming. Next slide please. Jean, I've made some offers. I want to make requests of you as well and we'll talk more about requests and offers and promises in coming weeks. We'll be sending out a survey this afternoon. Please watch for that if you can give us your feedback. Your comments help us shape future calls. Almost a quarter of you responded last time, which is a stunning response rate and so watch for that. I'd really appreciate and value your observations on this call and how to make them more productive and fruitful for you. I see that Sandra just posted contact information in the chat. If you want to be in touch with each other individually, please put yourselves in there now. We'll also be looking for people to join the team to help us produce future events of this sort. It's a lot of work. Surprisingly today technically was not what I wanted it to be because of some unforeseen circumstances, but we would very much welcome having a team that could build this out into a substantial ongoing platform that serves all of us. And last slide, Jean, please. And then going forward, please, if you don't already follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook to see my thinking in between these calls. If you're not already on the Natural logic mailing list, natlogic.com you can join there. And that will be one of the places where we'll announce these calls in the future. Although all of you who have participated will get a direct email from me as well. Here you have the links for the two books that I mentioned. Gene's gonna put these in the chat so you can take them away there. You can save the chat reminder by clicking the three dots at the lower right hand corner of the chat screen. We've talked a bit about politics today. I want to point you again to past blue victory. A very cogent strategy about how we win top of the ticket to the bottom of the ticket. White House, Senate, Congress, state Houses, governorships and so forth. With a list of websites of action points where you can step in and whether you have all the time in the world. Just five minutes a week can do something meaningful. Last but not least, an immediate concern is that my wife Jane just brought my attention this morning. There's an effort to get emergency funding to the Postal Service so that there will be funding to enable vote by mail in October, November in the event that we can't vote physically by then. This is critically important. Please have a look there and support that if you are able to. So you have this in the chat. We're right about at 1:30. I want to thank everybody on the go back on my video here for a moment. Thank everybody for your participation and your thoughtfulness in this call and of course for everything that you're doing in the world. We need each other in this and for our own sustenance and to build that sense of we feeling in the world to enable us to build the world we want. Thank you so much. I'll see you next time.