Meeting th Other: Living in the Present, Gender, and Sustainablity with Rieki Crins #9

Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith. And welcome to another edition of Redefining Tomorrow. It is here where we take on topics of discussion that help to redefine your future, redefine how we might live on this planet, or any other form of redefining you might consider. I've grown up with a kind of quote of mine that I've lived by is that you can't fix yesterday, you can only create tomorrow. Here we're going to be redefining tomorrow, and we're going to do that by bringing up this topic. Meeting the other, living in the present, comma, gender, comma, sustainability. Again, meeting the other, living in the present, gender and sustainability. And we have with us today Ricky Krinz. Did I say that correctly?

Yes.

Okay, perfect. How are you today, Ricky?

Oh, thank you, David. I'm fine. Yeah, I'm a bit tired. But maybe the summer blues or something, I don't know.

Well, right now in the Netherlands, it's what, 5 in the afternoon?

4 in the afternoon?

4 in the Afternoon. So I think we'll be fine. You'll have plenty of time to wrestle afterwards. So Ricky's background is she's a cultural anthropologist. She has studied gender and sustainability in Bhutan, traveled the world, very involved in sustainability, very involved in all sorts of topics that I think you're going to enjoy listening to today because I'm excited to learn from her. So, Ricky, do you have an outline for us to follow? If you can give me those. I'm assuming you do.

Yes, I do. So about meeting the other, what do I mean with that?

No, no, no. I need the outline first.

I need the.

So if you can give me the outline and then we'll go into the points.

That's the outline. What do I mean?

Meeting the other is number one.

Meeting the other is number one. Number two. What do I mean with that?

Okay, hold on. You were going quickly then. What do I mean by that? Number three.

How much other is the other?

How much is the other? Number four.

What does living in the present mean?

Present mean.

And then I have gender. Yeah. And then the three points related to gender. That's religion, modernity and post modernity.

Modernity and post modernity.

And then we come to sustainability.

Sustainability.

What does that mean? Okay, what does it mean today?

Yeah.

And what could it be in regards of the future?

Okay. Are there any others?

No. And then it's all coming together.

Okay. Okay. So I am. This is an interesting outline. I'm. I'm interested to hear this come together. So let's start with the first one meeting the other. Let's go from there.

Okay, with meeting the other. So as you know, I'm an anthropologist and you study the other, the other culture. It can be a tribe, it can be a group of people in a city, like for example, in America. It could be a society like living in a project or you know, the elderly. But I am a cultural anthropologist and I studied the people of Bhutan and I did a postmodern way of anthropology. That means that you are, it's not so much about measurements, but it's more qualitative research that means you have conversations with other people, the other cultures, and then you take a very responsible and reflective position. So because you look into the fact that I come from a, I'm highly educated, come from a Western background, I'm going to this complete different culture in the Himalayas where people are still living in the European medieval times and with a different set of belief system, completely different culture. So you have to take responsibility in that sense. So, and then, you know, being the other meeting the other, there's two, there's an energy.

Let me, let me go back then. Before you go to the next point is when you say you take a reflective position, what does that mean?

That it means that you have to be aware of where you come from and how you look at this culture, these people, and that you have to be aware of your assumptions of your whole being and you know, the culture where you come from by looking at the other culture. So you take, if you look at, for example, if you go back to the first anthropologist, they came out of colonialism and it has to do with power structures. You know, they were looking at the colonial, wild tribal people of Africa. And there was always a judgment, judgmental. Description. And we have to be aware of that. I mean, I was trained to be aware of that. But you cannot be. And you know, we learned also that you have, that research has to be objective, which is not possible because these are human humanistic research and it has to be with human. You cannot be objective. You bring yourself. So you have to be aware of your own set of tools, so to say how you look at these other people. And if you, for example, I can give you a lot of examples in that way by going to, you know, I lived in the, for half year in a remote, remote village, a 12 hours walk from the all weather road, the road where cars can drive on in Bhutan. And I came in a complete medieval society where most people, where even Buddhism, which is the state religion of Bhutan, was not Celebrated, but much more animism. And I lived with the shaman. And to give you the example, the first months that I was there, I was in a completely culture shock. Although I traveled before, I traveled a lot and I lived in other cultures. But you know, to be, to have to survive in a society that is equal to 200 years ago in Europe, where nothing was from the 20th century, where people didn't have money, where they live completely with nature and from nature, that was quite, you know, that was quite a shock. And, and also these people in the village, they had no clue where I came from. And so you have to deal then with this complete different environment. And.

That really, I guess the reason I brought it up is the term reflective position sounds like a. It sounds like an almost inappropriate terminology. I don't know if you created it, but it sounds inappropriate because you're entering into this environment. And I would. If you're an anthropologist, you might be reflective to compare contrast. But if you're entering into complete. To understand, you really have to not even be reflective. You have to try to omit as much as possible to say where do they come from? More than you are reflective on yourself. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense. But it's, but it's very important to reflect also on yourself in the sense you're there. And you have to be aware where you come from and what you're doing there and that you are open towards the fact that you are from a different culture and a different world, looking at that other world.

Okay, so it's a more of a, I guess a self reflect, a self understanding. A self understanding of where your judgments come from and who you are and maybe possibly why you have them would be one of those means of understanding them. The other is to just say, I will try to be them and try to. Oh yeah, going native. Okay. Okay. So that's why the terminology reflective position sounds more like a study than it does a letting go.

It's just taking responsibility. Also about your presumptions. Okay, because there is. Because I was one of the first Westerners and also probably one of the last who lived for half year in that society. And so you, you start with a responsibility towards why you're there and what you also the research you're doing.

So in your case, you probably through that reflectiveness are also saying in this definition, I want to make sure I don't change their culture because of what I bring.

Of course, you're not allowed to. That's an absolute no go area, which is Also difficult, but yeah, and. Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Yeah.

Okay. So now I just wanted to get the definition. So you were. You were talking about living in this medieval society, Buddhism, there were no. There was no money. There was. You lived by nature. Okay.

Yeah. And then you learn, you know, you come in a society where there are no clocks. Every day is the same. The people eat the same food three times a day. They wear the same clothes every day. They don't wash. And for us, then I realized that we are so used to different days, evenings, weekends. If that's not existence, it's very strange to experience that and that you have no breakfast, there's no lunch, there's dinner. Yes, you have breakfast, lunch and dinner, but all the meals are the same. You have the rice with curries and tea. That's it.

Every day?

Every day. Yes. Even the people look the same.

So how, when you. When you walked in and you have to put aside your. Where you come from, which is an understanding. I think anybody who's going to be studying a culture would already make that assumption, understand that that's part of the role. At what point did you feel. How long did it take? Two days, three days, five days, where you said, oh, my God, that there is. It is the same tone. It is the same life every single day. And now I have to look forward to that.

Yes. You realize that in a way, that I got letters once in a month, I got some letters that there was one man in the village who walked through the province town to collect mail, and he mainly went for messages from the chief, and he came back with the letters. And then people asked me, what are you doing in the weekend? And I had to laugh very loud. And so I just realized, a few weeks, I said, oh, my God, this every day is the same. And if I asked somebody, because then some people in the village, and I had a very bad translator, but he could translate a little bit. There were some festivals because of the yearly. They had yearly. Every house had a yearly festival. And that was to attract a good spirit and to make sure that they had a good rice harvest. And so that was the only celebration they had. And if I asked, for example, my landlady, where I live with, when is the puja, as they call the big chuku, the festival, they said, nabanatza, the time after tomorrow. So there was no time indicator. And only the astrologer would say, oh, according to my calculations, tomorrow will be a good time. So then the day after there was then the festival. So it was all very sudden and at the moment. So when the moment was right, they started to do the things they wanted to do.

So, so my, my. I'm traveling in my own head to the cultures that I visited. This is definitely more remote and a different lifestyle. When you, when you realize this, that it would be the same. When you realize that there was no weekend and you didn't, can you remember the thoughts that went through your mind? And I'll give you an example, but I don't want you to use this, but I might. If I stayed here, I would never have these holidays, or I never have. Or was it more like, wow, this is enlightening. So what went through your mind? Can you travel back in time to that moment? That letter, that, that question where you said, oh, no, no.

The moment that I realized and everything came together was a moment that I had a translator, because I had several translators, but there were boys from the capital and they were from well to do Bhutanese and they studied in India, so they came to help me. But for them, even living in a village was too ethnic, so to say they didn't like it. It was too simple life. And then one day I was smoking at that time, and I was giving my translator a cigarette and he said, no, I don't smoke. Okay. Then we were cooking and he said, do you put cheese in the curry? And he said, no, I don't put cheese in the curry. Two minutes later I saw him putting cheese in the curry. And also after the meal he asked me for cigarettes. So I said to him, oh, this is strange, I thought you were smoking. He said, no, at the moment when you asked me, I didn't smoke. And I said, oh, it was also with the cheese. And he said, yes, at the moment you asked me, I didn't put cheese in a curry. But later I had to put the cheese. And then suddenly everything was click, click, click, click, click, falling together. And then I thought, oh my God, these people are really live in the present. Because I cannot talk about the future. I cannot talk about the past. They say talking about the past that would bring bad spirits and it brings bad. So you don't talk about the past and of the futures they don't know because it's only the astrologer who decides when or what happens. And you know, so.

So I understand that. What I want to do is I want to feel, I want to hear as you, if you can, what. When you have this. Oh my God, they live in the present. That. But what introspection did you have? Did you start to feel overwhelmed? Did you feel, wow, this is amazing. Did you feel, I don't even know how to think that way. What went through your mind even more so deeper down?

Oh, for me it was because in the 90s you had this new age movement and a lot was many gurus and all kind of, you know, spiritual people were saying that we in the Western world had to live way more in the present and in the moment. And that was, oh, my God, this is what it means to live in the present. And that's be every moment. You just, you know, you just exist and future and past doesn't matter. And then I realized, okay, this is how it feels, this is what it is. And then I was very practical and I thought, oh, my God, it doesn't work in a modern way. I have to write my report, I have to do a lot of things, so I cannot put that off. So it was really sort of, wow, I know what that means. But also I saw the limitations of it.

So was it, this could happen in a matter of three seconds. I mean, you can travel through this. When you realize that were you more likely, did you say to yourself, I want to experience more of this, or did you jump immediately to, this is not practical, it doesn't work, I have to do my report. Were you at conflict with yourself?

Yes, because I, you know, the only thing I had with me from my world was my watch. And I was obsessed with my watch because, you know, that was. That gave me a bit stability because without that watch, I was lost. Because then I was living with a shaman who was driving me crazy because I made so many mistakes in the house. I really offended the deities and she was always angry with me. And then, you know, you are in that strange environment. So, yeah, it was a bit. It was a lot to digest. And the first month I was really. I cried my eyes out. It was just so hard being in a complete alien society, you know that. Yeah. And then the watch was the thing that kept me. Yeah.

So why didn't you, at the moment you felt this? Or maybe let me ask it a different way, because the way I ask it is important. Did you consider at that moment, instead of to falling away from it, I have to write my report, I have to do this, I have to. To fall into it, take off your watch and say, I'm going to live it.

That I did a month. Yeah, after a month.

Okay, so you eventually got to that point. You eventually got to that point, but you were holding onto the watch as a Means of. In your mind, I'm saying civilization, modern day contemporary living. Okay, interesting.

After a month, I completely. And then I saw the changes. I saw the people look different because there were Mongolian features. So in the beginning, it was also alien. And after a while, I didn't see anymore that they were Mongolian. To me, they looked European. I liked the food. I couldn't wash because there are no bathrooms. You go in the jungle. So I got used not washing myself because the people don't wash. They're from Tibetan culture. And because of the bugs, the dirt protects you against all the fleas and the bugs, etc. And so then I saw that the whole world was changing and I could see. Yeah, I could. And I started to love being in the village and really appreciated that I was there and that I was experiencing an incredible unique way of life.

Tom Cruise was in the movie, and I'm trying to think of it with where he went to the Japanese society. Yes. And there was that moment where he transitioned, which it sounds like you went through, where you. You had to cross over. And I love this statement that you saw them differently. Because when I was in Hong Kong, you'd always hear the. The Hong Kongese or the Asian groups would say, all you Westerners look alike. And like, I'm blonde. One person is blonde, I'm brown. How do you see that? And I remember sitting down with Hazel, who was my first friend in Hong Kong. And it was very early on because I lived not in the expat area, but in the local area. I wanted to get to know the local. And I said to her, can you do me a favor? And she looked at me kind of strange. And I said, can you tell me how you would give a police report? And she looked at me and she said, oh, what I would do is I would say, they're one eyelid, two eyelids, three eyelids, round faces. Right. And I looked at her and I said, you see eyelids? And she said, oh, yeah, no, we definitely could define somebody. One eyelid is good, two eyelid is okay. No, eyelid is not as good. Now, that's her perception. But she. I realized that because of black hair being ubiquitous, you can't say blonde 172 and a certain way just shape. So they defined it by eyelids, shape of nose. And I then immediately jumped to their language. Their language has very tonal, under very minute tonal understanding. Well, their eye. Their eyes actually see that too. So it sounds like you went through that, which is an amazing experience to realize that.

Yeah. And I saw for example, there was one family, they all looked the same and they were. They were very slim. Slim, finely built. And it was next door there was another family that very broad built, you know, big bones. So we call them big bones and small bones, which is also a reflection of the Bhutanese use for. To pinpoint a certain person or he's big boned or he's small boned. So to give like.

Like the police report, you would say they're big boned or small. How did you transition to being in the present using the same type of words where the. Do you put cheese in it? No. Did you or did you transition to being in the present with them?

Yeah, I have to go with the flow to do the good research because for us it was very important. For me, I was doing research on the social organization in the traditional irrigation agriculture. So the people, they grow rice and they live off the rice and they have ancient old rice and very delicious rice. And I try to. For example, I wanted to know if there was ever a famine in. But I couldn't ask that because they didn't talk about the past.

Right. Because that was bad. That was taboo.

Yeah. So you talk, you become creative. And so I tried to. And I had to work with translators because there was no dictionary at that time. There's nothing. So that you ask from can, does his grandmother ever have hunger or did they ever had. Didn't have enough rice to eat things like that. So you have to be. But it turned out it was a very fertile area and they never. But as far as I knew, experienced, you know, bad harvest and they only had to work four months a year to have enough food for. To cover the whole year because the forest, they went into the forest to collect spices and vegetables and they had a small home garden to grow chilies because all Bhutanese are crazy about chilies. So in that regard, I talked also to the astrologer because he was the one who decided when certain things needed to happen. For example, I said to the messenger, the one man in the village was a messenger and I asked him, so if there's a village meeting or an important meeting, if he could call me. And he said yes, sure. So Ben and he called me in the middle of the night. So Ricky, Ricky meeting. So the whole village was together at his house in the middle of the night because the astrologers that this is a good time. So it was just go with the flow, basically.

But there wasn't a meeting scheduled. He woke up in the moment and said, time for a Meeting.

Yeah, he was looking at it in the evening and he said tonight is a good time. So you know that that was how it went. And also I had a lot of problems because I went in once in three weeks I walked to Punaka, which is a 12 hours hike. And Puneg is a small town and some Dutch development workers were living there. So I went there to take a shower, to eat some bread, you know, and to talk. It was very important to talk to people who knew where I was. Because that was. You needed that. I mean, my soul needed that. But I traveled on a Friday and that was taboo because Friday was not good. So the villagers were very upset that I was traveling on a Friday. So later on I adjusted that. And so this kind of things all the time.

So I've got three questions, we'll try to answer them. And they came in a flurry. And you kind of hit them in all different ways. Number one. And I'll come back to them. Number one, what you started to touch on why you were there. So the hypothesis of your study. So that I can get. You were there for rice, it sounds like. So I'd like to hear that. The second is the astrologer sounds like he or she, I'm assuming was a he is. He's allowed to live a little bit in the future because he talks about having a meeting later. So there is some context, the future. So he can. And then how did they know it was a Friday? So. Because there's no calendar and every day is the same. So if you could hit on number one, what was your hypothesis? Number two, why does he allow to think of the future? And number three, how did they even know it was a Friday?

Oh, the days they had names. Monday was also called after the moon, after the. That's from the Buddhist calendar. So they used that. So they knew that.

Okay, so they had.

Yeah.

So how did they plan? Because it sounds like you said they can't think about the future, but this one guy, he's got access to the future.

Yeah, he has a time schedule with the days of the planets. And he's looking at the planets and. Which was. And it's the Chinese zodiac they also use. So he said, okay, but it's not. It's always within 24 hours, you know, very short period of time. It was, for example, one day I looked out of my window and I saw something standing on a grass field. So I looked, I went there, I looked at it. It turned out to be a dead body in the fetus position. And I thought, oh my God, what's this? So I was asking in the village and it turned out that an old lama who was living in one of the houses died and they took him out. And then, for example, the astrologer says the time that it's right to take the body out of the house and also he has to decide the time when the body is carried to Punakha, to the dzong, the temple, to be cremated. So and actually in the end, the body was there for three, four days in the heat and people were guiding it because of animals, you know, a lot of wild animals. And then the astrologer says now is the right time to bring it. So it was always for a very short period of time. It's not like next week or something? No, it's, it's within one day. Yeah, that was mostly the case.

So before we get into your hypothesis, have you ever asked this question and researched it? When did we move from. As creatures, when did we move from being in the moment, in this type of orientation, which I would assume thousands of years ago was very common, to being able or wanting to predict the future?

Yeah, that. Never know.

Think about. That's an interesting question. At some point a society, somebody had to say there is a value in knowing tomorrow as a, as a culture. If we know tomorrow, we can do a better job with today.

Assumptively have to do with also like if you look, if you look at The Roman times, 2,000, 3,000 years ago, they had time.

Right.

Because I think it has to do also with the market.

So how my. More my. It's, it's one of those research type questions. When did, when did societies like the Bhutanese that lived in other parts of the world, at what point did they transition from being in the present to.

The accumulation of wealth? In the Indus Valley, when Buddha came into being for the first time with the invention of the plow, they accumulate assets, you know, like, and the cities started to develop. And with that also people started to become greedy because when they had for the first time they could build up wealth. So if you had a lot of fields and you had a lot of harvest, you could sell that. And with that you, you know, the market is developing and with that you have a measurement system which is in wealth and which is in time. So that's related to each other. So if you have an agricultural society or gathers, how it's called gatherer and hunter.

Gatherer.

Gatherers, they eat everything, there is hardly any accumulation. They, they live from nature, very closely related to N what I found, the beauty of it, there is also no judgment and there is no value. That's why the gender relations, for example, and all, all sentient beings are regarded as equal because there's no value connected to it.

Okay. So I might even after I'm done look this up because it's an. There had to have been a time, and I understand what you're saying, but someplace on the planet or it could have happened simultaneously. Human beings as a creature recognized time. And it's a recognition that if the society doesn't think that way, something has to alter that belief and creating the markets. I understand. So where, where in the world was this something that happened in the Middle East? Is this something that happened in India? Is this something that happened in China? I don't know. It's just a question that came to.

Mind because I know how Buddhism came into being, that it had to do with the Indus Valley, which had the highest civilization on the planet. You know, Mohendaro Harappa in what's now Pakistan. Highly, highly developed societies which. And also Mesopotamia, they had clocks and they had a fully functioning market society because, you know, because if you live with nature, nature dictates you when to start with the sewing, when to start plumbing the fields, because you need to. Which is the whole organic way of doing things. So that's organic, 100% organic. Getting away from the industrialized way of doing things so that you plan it.

Yeah, I completely get it. Not saying that you're wrong. Maybe it's the Pakistanis. Let's go back to that other last question. We never discussed this. What was the intent of you going in to the Bhutanese? Because you started to talk about it, looking at the rice and their harvest and what was your hypothesis going into this whole.

No, we needed. I was at my last year of my end of my master's degree study for anthropology. And normally with anthropology you have to go for three to six months to a place to do research. Depends on your topic. I was doing cultural anthropology and I wanted to go to a non western society and live with people and see how they lived. So one day I got this letter from the university. They were looking for anthropologists to go to student anthropology to Bhutan. And at that time nobody knew anything about Bhutan. There was no Internet, it was 89. And when I got this letter I said, wow, this is a great opportunity to do real old fashioned field work. Yeah.

So really be careful what you wish for.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I wrote and they chose me. And we were six students Three irrigation engineer students and three anthropology students, students, because I had to do the social part of the research. And there was another girl from the agricultural university who was doing the technical agricultural study. So together we were doing this research.

So there were actually six of you that entered into this community? All of us.

No, we were sent to three different communities because Bhutan was looking for ways to see how they could improve the rice yields. And so they had. Or it was horrible. They hired this professor from the. Actually an engineer from the Agricultural University in the Hague, in Wageningen here in the Netherlands, and he wrote a paper and policy paper that was based on a highly developed society, like in Italy, the PO Delta. So it was absolutely not usable for a traditional society, small scale, like in Bhutan. So we really completely shred. And it was from the green revolution time, mind you, you know, with all the pesticides and fungicides and all the stuff. And we saw how these people lived with their ancient old ways and they never had any problems. So that was really a clash. And so we didn't follow that guideline. So we made our own and made that as a very important that the Bhutanese government should keep on looking at these traditional societies, because that was the way to go and not, you know, with all the poison and all that stuff.

So the hypothesis, more or less that you were going into there, the objective was to how do we improve the rice yields using or maintaining the societal belief, structure and norms so that we preserve that and still create this yield.

Yes, because we had talks also with the village head. He got, from the Ministry of Agriculture, he got the miracle seeds. So that was rice seeds that you can have three cups instead of one. But with this miracle seed, you had to use pesticides, fungicides, what's called these chemicals that you put that. The Bhutanese call it medicine, this chemicals that you have to use. Then the rice, when the rice is ripe, you have to harvest it. You cannot thrash it with your feet. The local seeds you can trash at your feet. You need a machine and the machine needs. Needs kerosene. So you have to buy. You need money to buy the kerosene, which you have to bring for 12 hours, walk on a horse to the village. I mean, and then they said, the rice doesn't taste. We get heartburn from it. So I think, oh, my God, yeah, no, this is a disaster. So we said, no, if you want to go that route, these are not the villages to do that, you know, because first you have to put a decent road where you can go by car. You know, it was completely non, but we learned a lot about real sustainability.

It's interesting that you're bringing this up today because just yesterday, and I know for anybody who's listening, I don't know anything about where the conversation is going to go and anything about the topic when we start. So let me come back to you. Just yesterday I was speaking with Lori, who's my wife and we were talking about a few different topics and one of them was David, why do you take a contrarian perspective and in certain areas. And one of the item two items that I brought up, the first one was we have to be careful how any society looks at any other society and brings those norms or those beliefs in. And one of that, the examples that I used was that Monsanto had gone to India and I don't know all the truth this. So this is the stories that I have heard. And they brought a rice that was not self propagating. So the Indians pulled out their rice and put or their crops and put in seeds that didn't self germinate. And what happened was the industrial complex forced them to every year buy new seeds instead of being able to use the seeds over again. And that was my final nail in the coffin to her, to this discussion about why do I take these perspectives and where it came from was we had just seen on the news that in the United States the Chinese consulate was burning items because they were being kicked out of Houston. And I said my comment to her was this is propaganda. And she looked at me like why are you taking this position? I said look, they are given 72 hours to leave. They are allowed to take their trucks, they're not going to be searched. What would be the reason to burn something if you can take it out? And I said probably it wasn't to hide secret papers because they were not going to be searched. The reason they were probably burning it is they just said let me just scan it and get rid of it so we don't have to take it with us. That was probably all it was because Houston is not the place to. If you're really looking for security, you do New York City, you San Francisco, there's a Boston console, there's a bunch of others that are much stronger. Why would you do this? I said I wasn't trying to be anti American, nor was I trying to be anti Chinese. What I was trying to do was to some degree understand the other.

Yeah, exactly, yeah, you burn.

I said if Americans were in another country and they said you have 72 hours to leave. They'd say, okay, what do we burn? What do we get rid of and what are we going to take with us? It wasn't a matter of we're going to burn the secret documents because this already scanned. They could have sent them over and it was, it was just a context of understanding. So I appreciate this whole miracle seeds and it's. To me it's interesting that just yesterday night this topic came up. So now I understand the hypothesis, which helps me to understand why you were there, which helps me to understand the intention. I didn't know why you showed up in Bhutan. Like, okay, I want to go live with the society. I hate it and I'm crying all the time, but I still don't leave. So that helps. You had to be there. Okay, so we have meeting the other. What do I mean by that? Which I think we're covering to a lot, a large degree. This third point and if you have anything else to bring up on those two, that's great, you can add that. Are we done with those or do we go to this next point? How much other is the other?

Yes, that's, that's is. Yeah, that was my last. The last evening that I was in the village. I mean it was a tremendous adventure being in the village with all the crazy stuff that happened to me. I mean really, I wrote a book, it's in my book. But I was really thinking, how are they so different than where I come from? And my conclusion was no, there was jealousy in the village. There was also kind of greed, but in a different way than in the west. There was. Yeah. Actually I felt so much at home that I could to be because the society there remind me very much of the village where I came from in the south of Holland. I grew up in a small village in the south of Holland, mainly agricultural and there were so many similarities and so that, that, so I realized, oh my God, they're not that different. They have maybe different clothes, they ate different food. End we all the same in a sense, you know, as humans. So that is. Yeah, that was my conclusion. Basically the.

When I'm talking to individuals, when we do, and we're going to cover a little bit, we're not really talking about race, but we talked about other topics. I often will say to individuals when I walk down the street, my eyes see what your eyes see. Maybe different color, different how we interpret it, but I don't really see myself until my hand and my, my melatonin level is in display. But we all see the Same thing, more or less. We have an interpretation of it, but we are the same. We need as one. There's a guy by the name of Chris Roofer. He owns a company, started a company called Morningstar Packaging. Very short story. I, sitting at a pool, he comes over, he says, david, humans have needed food, water, shelter, transportation, communication and entertainment since the beginning of time. What's the difference? And my answer was, it's the technology. We do apply to it. So we apply technology to food, water, shelter, transportation, communication, entertainment. That's what we do. Otherwise, we're the same. We need to. Those. Those. Those necessities to be able to survive. So my take from what you just said or what I'd like to ask you from, that is, we're all the same. So now, when you've traveled to other parts of the world, how do you feel or how have you interpreted or how. Or have you used this, this Bhutan experience?

Yeah, it's. It's basically the same in. In a way, you know, that even, you know, I traveled quite a bit in Africa, and a lot of white people who go to Africa, they. They come into a shock because then you realize you're the only white person and everybody is black. So it's a bit of the same. The same thing that happens to you, but after a while you get adjusted and you don't see the color anymore. And you see that people have different hair structures and that people from Malawi, they have a different color than people from Mozambique. And, you know, you distinct the all different people like, like you have in Europe. And so, so, yeah, so in a sense.

Have you, have you used it. Have you used this background in meetings or in discussions? Have you used it to help influence policy? Because this experience so far, and I know there's a lot more that we'll cover, would be something that you could interject into a meeting, you could use it to influence. And let me give you an example. And then you could give me. When someone says to me, well, that's the way it is, Bangladesh or whatever. And I'll say to them, without even getting into an argument, I'll say, have you ever been to Bangladesh? No, no, no. But I've read a lot about it. I didn't ask you that. So you've never been there. Have you been to Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea? No, no, no, no. Okay, so now I understand where you're coming from. You are making interpretations from where you live as to their living. And what it does is it changes the conversation. So my question is, do you Use this experience as a means to explore, open up other people's minds to see how any culture has their own belief structures and differences.

Mm, absolutely.

How. How have you used that?

Not really, because it's difficult to use that. You know, I wouldn't.

Yeah, no, not really, because I'm listening to you. And at times my body kind of reacted to like, wow, I've. I've been in meetings in China or in countries where nobody in the room looks like me. Nobody. They don't even translate to my language. And while the west will say, well, this culture or that culture, the east doesn't often say those words. I don't hear it.

No, that's true.

I do not hear that discriminatory type view. Well, I was the only one in the room like this. Well, that's not an acceptable way. You go walk into a meeting, there are 25. There's. Let's say there's 25 Japanese people or there's 10 Hong Kongese and five Chinese. You don't walk in and say, well, see, I'm the token, I'm the difference. You walk in and you just are you. And I feel that that's something that I do share with individuals. And I would say that the west has more trouble allowing that to be.

But the Bhutanese, they have a word for outsiders, white outsiders, they. It tulips. They call it tulips. And they. So to them, all the chilips are the same, you know.

But do they. Do the Bhutanese have a word for an Asian who comes in, like when I say not a Bhutanese, but a Japanese, Korean, Chinese, do they have that term for them too?

No. No. Then they call the Chinese or Thai or. But only for the Westerners, they call chilips.

So what you just did is you more or less proved that same point is that this whole group called Westerners has gotten a name for them because of how they come into society, where the East. What I experienced and what I learned is that there are no words for that. You don't discuss it. You're in. You are a person in the meeting. You might be known as coming from another country. Oh, that person comes from this country. Oh, they're. But they don't have the same level of discussion that it appears they do.

They do. And in Thailand they call falang. So we had a meeting, for example, a Thai would say, oh, we had a meeting with five Thai and one falang, not saying English or American or Italian, whatever, falafel, outsider. And I had some problems with that later. On because of the. It was sheer racism towards white people and friends of my Bhutanese friends, young people, I said that to them, listen, it's not nice what you're doing. So to you all the Westerners are falang. And you call me a falang as if I'm one of a big group but I'm here for such a long time and then you, you discriminate, you say oh, they do this, they do that and yeah, but that's how we do it. Yeah, but it's, it's not correct. It's not right.

Yeah, but think about it, where did they learn that from?

Yeah, of course. Yes.

So you're saying it's not correct as well.

It's very much. I said every human being on this planet is a racist.

Everyone There's a perceptional side. Yes, absolutely. I agree. We all have our own doctrines that we listen by. However you just did it also you said they had an, they had a name for this group. And it's again interesting because I hear that more in. In Hong Kong used to be it would be Guilo.

Yeah.

White faced and. But they didn't say, they'd say oh Japanese, oh Korean, oh Filipino. They had a name for those countries because I don't think they had that same. The imperialism possibly was an influence in this, the colonia, the expansion of the British Empire. And it came in that these were outsiders who came in and put their opinion or their way of life on others where and I'm not trying to be make a statement about a culture, I'm trying to define what the is that. But you brought it up and I'm thinking, wow, I felt this, I felt not the same way because when I was a minority, I mean I'd stand in groups, I would tell people there's a million people around me and I'm alone. And they say what do you mean? I'd say I'd be standing in a crowd and the crowd would be I'm 188, which is 6 2. I'm 188 and I'm standing in a crowd and all you see are the tops of blackheads. Because in the area that I was in in one they were much, much shorter Asian population. And I was alone because no one could speak to me. But yet no one looked over and said oh my God. And I didn't, I didn't make it a point. I just went on over with so interesting. I try to use it getting back, I try to use it as a means of helping individuals in any society understand that the perspective might be valuable if it was changed. And that's how, when I was asking the question, I didn't know how you use it, but I would tell a story like this and say I was in a meeting. Half there was Hong Kongese, Japanese and Chinese, and they refused to translate in English. It wasn't worth that. And I could have complained, I'm an American or I speak English. But what I did is I got someone next to me who spoke all three languages, and I said, could you fill me in some? And we went through this two hour meeting, presentation after presentation after presentation. He tried to fill me in, but I could figure out because of my time and what was being said and pointed to. And I waited till one point and I said, can I ask a question? And they all looked at me surprised, like, how do you even know what's going on?

Wonderful.

And the one question was something to the effect of, with everything you've said, I don't see how what you're doing there in this particular will impact us here in this side. There's no correlation. And I said it in with moving the word correlation. I used a more common word. And they spoke in their language, all of them, for about 10 minutes. And then they all packed up and left. The deal was over. It was done. It was done because what I had asked was the question that they could not answer. But I didn't complain. I didn't think of myself as the token. I was a member of the group and I had to. I had to figure it out.

Mm.

So cool. This is interesting. I like the. I like the journey. So you realize how much other is the other. So we're the same. Anything else on being the other is the other.

Yes, in the sense that, you know, like, being the other. What? I realized that they were very other in regards to the gender relations and sexuality and. Yeah. How they live with nature, but that's a different topic. But for example, when I first was in the village, there was a festival in one of the houses, and there was a very handsome man who spoke three words of English. And so I was very close with the children because children, they learned. They learned us the language, you know, they pointed out that everything named it. And then so I went to Fuba's choku, this festival, and there was a lot of alcohol. They make agha. It's like very strong sake. They make it from rice. And so everybody was quite drunk. And then Fuba came to me and he said, I saw you like children Bhutanese children. And I said yes. And he said why don't you try me?

What?

And then I realized that most women, almost all the households in the village, the women had children from different men and that they don't use family names. They give a child a name which can be called after the day it was born that means Friday or Monday or Tuesday or when they a little bit older they go with the child to a lama and then the llama give a name. So it can be Karma, Pem or Fuba, all religious meanings. And sometimes the whole village has the same name and they don't have family names. So that makes it very complicated to praise somebody.

Okay.

But it's also very interesting in a sense that first of all the women they take lovers. So when they're pregnant that's fine, they're happy with the children. But the father is an invaluable work asset. So he has and he takes care of the baby, he washes them, he cooks. I mean there was hardly any labor division what you see in South Asia a lot. So men were chipping in and they were quite scared if the woman fall out of love with them because then they have to leave and go back to the mother. And it's goes with a lot of lost of face. So these women had also the assets belong to the wife to the woman, she's the head of the household. Inheritance goes from mother to daughter. And in that society the people prefer girls because girls are regarded as more responsible. They take better care of their parents, they don't leave the house and you know, they're just. Yeah, it's a matrilineal society. So the inheritance goes from mother to daughter and women have a strong position. So that was.

Well if, if there I'm. I'm taking guess and you can do they use a birth control method.

They were asking me, they had heard because there was a basic health unit at that time in Bhutan there was not really a hospital. They started with basic health units and they gave out and it was also the beginning of the AIDS epidemy. So they were giving out condoms and anti baby pill. So they were asking me about if I could give them the bring them if I go to the capital. Once in those six months I went to the capital Thimphu and they asked me to bring anti conception pills. So I did that and no, but that was a big problem because a lot of women had syphilis and Hyunoria and they didn't know when the basic health units came. That's once A month they gave antibiotics because. But they don't understand the time concept of taking pills three times a day and that 10 days in a row they take it and when they feel better, they stop. So a lot of these women, they were, they couldn't take any antibiotics anymore. And as you know, in those days they were heavily pushing this antibiotics, especially in developing countries. So that was a big issue. Yeah, and because of the bad hygiene as well, because people hardly wash. So you can imagine.

So going to the question, let's assume it was pre this time frame. You said the woman would take on, take find a mate or a person. They, if they went, did they say now I'm looking because I've age. And then the man would then stay with them or did they have multiple partners?

No, not multiple, but the man would stay with them and they had a sports called night hunting. So a young chap, let's say 18 years old, he sees a girl he likes a lot. So he looks in the house where he. Which house she lives because the houses didn't have glass windows, they had wooden shutters. So at night he would go. And the whole family sleeps in one room on the floor. So it was like a game to go at night and then to make sure that you end up with the girl because you could also end up with the mother. So it was dark, you know, that was. Everybody was always joking about it. But that was. Yeah, that was a custom that happened a lot. But it was almost getting to. It was not really that kosher. I heard also stories of there was a lot of rape. That was the other side of the coin. So that is the difference between a society like a Muslim society and a society that has a high level of gender equality. That often rape is happening much more than in a Muslim society because protected.

Okay, so what's before. Because I think that'll get into the gender and all of that. Let's answer this question because it's a. I'm going to say it's a topical question, but I think it's been topical for a very long time. What does living in the present mean?

You mean to go back down to where we started?

Well, no, but you know, you have number four, what does living in the present mean? You've gave me an example of present, but now at this point I'm saying, okay, I understand it, but what you experienced it, you had to convert to living in the present to be able to live in the society. What does it mean? What is your interpretation of that?

Yeah, living in the Present mean to me, and as I experience this in Bhutan, was that especially in this village, that first of all the power structures are not really there. I mean, later on I discovered they're there, but. But they're not like we, as we see it here in the west or related to wealth in the sense of money. And that all has to do with the living in the present. Because the highest cause of being was nature. And even Buddhism, the state religion, was not celebrated as much as, for example, in the capital Thimphu, but in a village it was. Nature was the highest good. That was the true religion. And that is closely related to living in the present. Because the all present is the nature. And you live with the seasons and with how it comes, how it comes day by day and when. And they know the right day for the most important actions that people have to take is when to start with cleaning the irrigations channel and when to start plowing the fields and starting to plant the seedlings. And so it's all related to nature. And they see how nature evolves through the year when it's the right time. And especially the women, they were very strong in that because the shamans, they knew when it was the right time to start with the plowing. Even if the astrologer would say, tomorrow will be the good day, a woman could say, no, it's not a good day, because I can see it that it's not the right time. So it's a holistic concept which brings the gender relations, which are also. There's not a judgment to what a woman owed to be like this or a woman has to behave like that. No, the women were free and they could take partners whenever they wanted. They had babies and they celebrated the babies. The girls were. They were very happy to have girls. They were happy to have boys. So it was a holistic concept, as I saw it, that I think, okay, it's all related. Like we in the west, we make it, we have this. It's all fragmented because we have a judgmental way of looking at things. We are judgmental towards time, we are judgmental towards the gender relations towards women, men, etc. And how we live with nature. Because nature is now too much. You know, the garden is the beautiful metaphor for that. So to have nature, but not too much, you know, in a sense. So we want to control it all. I think maybe that's the right word. And in Bhutan, they didn't control it because they were controlled by nature, which is the God. We are just the highest force.

So in that's how they did it. When you transitioned, when you started to move like our Tom Cruise did, when you started to move towards living their world as close as you could, being a Westerner, did it feel different to you? Did you experience experience? And I don't know how it could be described, but I've got to believe something has to have felt different to you as a human being.

Although I was in a strange environment, I never felt lonely. Although I couldn't talk with the people very well because I didn't speak the language, I didn't have a translator. Most of the time I didn't have a translator. So I had only the last month. So I observed a lot, I wrote a lot. And the last month I had a very good translator. And I checked everything that I saw. And I learned that being just being there is the most powerful way of doing research because you don't ask stupid questions and you go with the flow and you. You just become part of that society. And it felt like home. I felt at home. And so, yeah, that was. Yeah, if you surrender to it, it was. Yeah, I felt very much accepted and being part of that.

And yes, on a different level, I understand that. I want to go a little bit deeper if I can. And you could tell me if it's too far internally. Did you almost feel as if. I'm trying to find out what you are feeling more and I don't want to give you an answer. I'm trying to stay away from giving an answer, but I'm having trouble giving that question. So did you feel like, wow, this is so much better than the way or I really miss my clock, my time, my experiences, the clothing, the tea, the coffee that I have in Holland, or did you. You. Oh, wow. And I don't. The nirvana moment. I'm trying to avoid this convoluted perspective.

The first month I had all that, you know, that I missed the food, but that went away after a month. I loved the local food. I didn't miss the coffee. I drank the butter tea and became, you know, really adjusted to. But I also realized deep down, this is not the society that I was. I haven't been born in, and it's not to be for a long period of time. I was there for a certain period of time to do research. I knew that. And also the spirituality that was there. You know, the people, they do the whole day. They do pujas and rituals and appeasing the gods and. And that gets on your nerves after a while, you know, I became Very down to earth. And I thought, I cannot go into that. It was amazing, interesting. I mean, I saw shamans, an old woman with a hunchback and who walked very steeped over and she danced in trance and she changed into a completely person. Different person. She could stand up straight. She became a different voice. I mean, crazy stuff, unbelievable. But to keep my sanity, I stayed away from it. I watched it, I looked at it and I was amazed. But didn't go too deep into that. So it was not realistic. I mean, I enjoyed being there and I saw the value of it and I missed it. I still miss.

That was going to be my next question. Do you sometimes miss. Because I'm back on the present. Do you miss that presence you were able to achieve?

Inner peace. Yes, inner peace. The quietness, the deep quietness. You know, what people did in the evening, sitting together and singing and just the simple life and the nature and the beauty and. Yeah, but the other side is that also death was there all the time. So because people got bitten by huge cobras and because of bad hygiene, a lot of children died early. And that's the other side of it. But, you know, and that is what I also later on, when I was doing my PhD, I was looking into all in the old philosophers and actually Marx wrote about it, you know, the ideal society. And his early work is beautiful. And he described exactly the society as I lived in. And I thought, oh my God. Because the people were very content. They were. Inner peace was there. And. Yeah, I mean, when, you know, seeing what's going on in the world now, then, my God. Yeah, I miss it.

Yeah, it's this whole. It's a. I. I don't know if it's a bigger topic today than it's been for history, but this present moment, meaning. And one of the things that I've done since I've. Since I first got my first mobile phone. So we're going back to the 1980s. I spent $3,500 on a Motorola pocket phone us at the time. And when I got it, part of the cost was when you made a call, you made. You had a fee. And when you had an incoming call, you paid for a fee too. It was both ways. And I remember getting my phone and when I got it, people were saying, can I have your number? Can I have your number? You have a phone? I said, no, no, I don't give out my number. Yes, but you have a phone. I said, call my office and my office will call me. And what do you mean? I Said if you need me, call the office. And the office would call me because I didn't want to be interrupted by this daily occurrence. And the first month I remember my friends were Getting bills in 1980s of US$800, US$1,000, oh yes, a lot of money. And they said how much was yours? I said it was $26. How? I said, well, they'd call the office and the office would say David is not available. They'd take down what it was important if it was. They'd call me and say, you need to call X. I took close my phone and I'd go over to a normal phone and I'd make a phone call. Over the next 30 years, I never gave out my phone number except to very few people. So it was so limited that if my phone would ring I'd say oh, that's my wife. And they'd say how do you know it's your wife? Because she has my number. Very few people have my number and the only one really calls me is my wife. And they were shocked. Until we got caller ID in the 2000s, late 2000, no one had my phone number and it allowed me to not to have that peace. I don't have any notifications on my computer, I don't have any notifications on my phone. I never have it on vibrate or ring because I want that present moment capability. And so that's why I was asking you has it filtered into your life? Are you using it today? Do you miss it?

Yes, I miss it a lot. I, you know, after that I went often. I went back to Bhutan for all different reasons and then I could, sometimes I feel it. But I went to a region where they had the same. And the food, I love the food as well and but this deep that I went just specially to a valley just to listen to the sound of silence. I mean this deep silence that's so healing, that's so wonderful. And you know, and yeah, that, that I love that tremendously. When I go also in Italy when I was in Molise, that's an agricultural area, you smell the wood you smell. And it always reminds me of Bhutan. And then. Oh yeah, I think this is the. In German they say Heil Welt when the world is still whole, you know. Whole. Yeah, that is, that's very, yeah.

As I'm listening to you, I'm trying to indoctrinate and say how can I improve some of that one? Most meetings that I schedule, I schedule for two hours, even if it's only Scheduled for half an hour. Well, how can you do that? I said, because I want to be present. I don't want to be concerned about the next call.

And if the call exactly the same. I always take time. I never rush into things. And if, you know, and you can do that, you know, it's just a matter of mindset.

And that's why I love what you've been saying, because it really is about a completely different orientation to the everyday moment.

Yeah. And, you know, sometimes I clash a lot with people and I don't care about it. Robert is very different and he makes me very nervous because he is out there. He's a New Yorker. You know, always, if I have to go to New York, I'm suffering. I'm suffering so much because it's so loud, it's so aggressive and oh, yeah, no, it's not my place.

But there's a friend of mine who runs a company called Engine, and he ran the Asia Pacific region and he moved to New York and he said New York is the most ruthless city that he's ever worked in. And we were standing. I taught at NYU for 12 years, and we were right around the corner from the building having a wine. And he said, and he shares stories. He said, I've never felt anything like it as of here. I don't have that issue in New York. I don't have it anywhere in the world. But this idea of being peace with yourself, I think is interesting that you even live with a person who has a completely different perspective on that moment. Let's get on to this gender then.

Next.

This, this gender, religion, modernity, post modernity. Explain what you were going to go into there.

Yeah, Just to go back to the village and the general relations, you see this, the high level of freedom. And then also later on, I saw many Bhutanese women, even if they have children, if they could, they go to study abroad and they leave the children with their families. And, you know, in the west it wouldn't happen that easily. A woman who has a baby just say, okay, I'm going to study for three years in Columbia University in New York and I leave my child with my parents. That's frowned upon. So, but in Bhutan, it's very normal. So overall, because these gender relations were very fascinating to me when I saw what. I saw what was going on in the village. And at that time, I don't know if you ever heard of that, of the eco feminist movement. It came from Berkeley. Vadana, Shiva Merchant. There was a whole bunch of women in the early 90s, they started this ecofeminist movement and they stated that actually destruction of the Earth. But Rachel Carson, you know, and the Silent Spring destruction of the earth is because of the imbalance in the gender relations because the feminine stands for Mother Earth and the men, they are, you know, they are the sky, basically, which is in the dualistic way of looking at things spiritually, but that the men are not so close to the earth and that's why the men are more inclined to, you know, for destruction of the planet.

Do you believe this?

At that time I believed it, but not anymore. And the ecofeminism movement is over. But in Bhutan, I could relate with Bhutan and what I saw the experience with Pachamama in so South America and with all the nature religions, they have the same concepts. So that was basically the eco feminist movement. But, you know, it was a very big impression about this general relation also because they didn't have family names and they didn't care. The men, they were so caring for the babies, they didn't care if they were not the biological father. And that has to do with the reincarnation concept because although in the village there was Buddhism was not so predominant, but they still believe. If I asked people about Buddhism, to them it was karma and reincarnation. So it was more important to get a better karma, to be incarnated into a better life and to be a farmer. They saw that being a farmer was not considered very auspicious because when you work on the field you kill a lot of bugs and that's not good for your karma. So but that's already going to a more developed way of doing things. This was the belief system in the capital and people who had some level of schooling or the monks who went to monasteries, they had a complete different view also of women. So that gave me even more stronger way that this, this village that, my God, this hardly, Hardly exists anymore in the world of this traditional equal gender equality. So then I saw, you know, you see, you have this traditional society where mostly the women were shamans. This is also very rare in the Buddhist society of a Tibetan cultural society because in Tibet, those Buddhist schools, they have wiped away all the female shamans and also all the female professionals, so to say, who could heal and who could, you know, go in trance and communicate with the deities. So if the official religion, and I call an official religion of five official religions, that's written down religions as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. So all these five religions, they have given the women an inferior position for Whatever reason. So they were scared of women, basically. I think so. And in the village that was not the case. And there was no, as I said, their nature was the highest cause, the highest God, so to say. So religion came in and they already pushed the women aside. And then modernity came in. And that this modernity came in with schooling. Because after I left the village in 1990, the king, the fourth king of Bhutan, brought schools to all remote villages. And before that, when I was living there, all the kids didn't go to school. They learned, they lived on the farm and when they were 12 years old, they had to help with the cows and with pigs and etc. So that for the women who had a lot of work to do, that was very important assets and labor force, because there was a shortage of labor force. So now these kids are going to school, they come. And often they had teachers who are trained in India and they had their belief system already that women were less. And they started to indoctrinate these kids already, you know, at school levels with their school books. Then in 1999, TV came in Bhutan. Before, they didn't have TV or Internet or whatever. So in 1999, that came in with soap operas from India. And you know, in India, the position of women is not as. It is not very strong. So that was trickling in. And then in postmodern society, you have that's now. And then you have a complete different way. But still the women are overburdened. Because what happens now in Bhutan is that although these kids have all went to schools and they go work in companies or not companies, but like in simple hotels or in shops. And so, yeah, they've been abused, they got pregnant, they get early children. And even tourism comes in. I heard a lot of young, young girls who had old men from America, they wanted to get them to come to America and promised them all kinds of stuff. So you see through 20 years, basically. And I could see the changes of the position of women going from this strong, beautiful society into, you know, a dependent position within society where they have no choice, where they get raped, where they being abused, etc. In different ways. I mean, I pictured it a little bit black, but that would happen.

So I want to explore the transition and I think I'm trying to come up with the best way to do this to get a different understanding. Could you. And I know you're not Bhutanese, but could you try to give me how a woman, back in the time before the. This Indian transition, what would a woman see Of a man? And what would a woman see of a woman? And then do the same thing. What does a man see of himself and what does a man see of a woman pre this cultural exchange?

You mean how a man and a woman in a. In a traditional society?

Well, no, in their society. So if you had a woman, and we go back to the time that you were there, when a woman looked at herself, how did she see or feel herself to be that essence? And how did she look as at a man, if the best way you can. And then how does a man. How would a man look at himself? And how would a man look at a woman?

Yeah, they had what I noticed that they gave me, for example, they gave me a Bhutanese name was Nam Ga. And Namgyeom means sky dancer. It's a kandroma. And the women see. They saw each other themselves like sky dancers, like angels with a lot of power. You know, not an angel like in Christianity or Cassini, but a sky dancer. A woman is a kandroma. It's a powerful woman who. Because women have, as I said, they were regarded as quite strong, as being responsible. They could give birth. Yeah, women were celebrated and men were often looked as. Yeah, they were important for workforce. So they were strong. So I cannot, you know, I don't. I cannot. In the village. Yeah, that's difficult to answer because I just can give description about. Yeah, the women regarded each other as kandromas, as sky dancers with a lot of power. But men were seen. Yeah, don't laugh. But more as sexual objects.

And I'm not laughing because this is exactly what I'm trying to. To discover how you would articulate how they would look at each other. So. Yes.

Talking about sex all the time and then talking about the private parts of everybody in the village.

So men have been doing this for a very long time.

Yeah, so that was. And it was the entertainment also, you know.

But did women. There's women's sexuality at that time, again, pre the Western brought in from India, were women more open about sexuality? Not more open. Were women open about sexuality? Was their conversation different?

Yes. Oh. Afterwards in the village, they were talking about sex all the time. And when, you know, there were hot springs close by, so we used to go to the hot springs and. And women who didn't. Who had children, could be. The breasts could be bare breasts were not considered as erotic. And so it was all very relaxed. And they have also phallus symbols everywhere. And also naked women used as phallus symbols as protection against evil. Evil spirits. And also vaginas carved out also to put on the wall to protect against. They use this. Yeah. As protection against evil. And the phallus, I think it was.

The Cambodians have a very sexual vagina penis.

It's all over the world. Pompeii. It's. It's everywhere, the phalluses. And it's a very old Tantric, I believe it's. It's from India, the Tantra. And it goes about duality, you know, and that you need both to. And the philosophy is to bring those both together. Then you hold. Which is of course, beautiful and very old. So that was. And that completely. I mean, the phalluses are still now in modern time. Bhutan, they still have it, but it's very different to become a tourist attraction. And I know that the Bhutanese are very prude and especially the women are very prudent. So that changed a lot.

So if I was to draw a picture, I would say that a woman pre this time was a woman who believed that her essence was of the protection or of the earth, that the role was extremely important. As childbearing. They were confident in their femininity, sexuality, but it wasn't an overriding part of their behavior. Yet the discussion of the belief or the. The openness to sexual behaviors and thoughts was not abnormal. And that their per. And there's probably that they believe that they could educate themselves in their own way. They were very present in the moment when they looked at men. They saw men as an objective tool, someone who can deliver and perform for sustainability of their family and work. The fields. That they were an integral part, but it wasn't a subset. They weren't lower than them, they were just different. And if I was to take the opposite, the man looked at the woman and said, this woman is important to our society. This woman has value. She delivers babies, she takes care of, she does her role. Mine is to make sure she is happy too. And that I have and can. On a religious level, on a sub level, I do the. I participate equally in the household, the family, the orientation and that it's a shame not to have done it properly. And yet at the same time, they felt strong because they were men. And so that they had their own belief that they were the sky, that they were the sky or they were. They had their own orientation so that they had a confidence too. So it wasn't demeaning whatever position you had. It's just that you had a position and you lived it and you lived it in the moment. Did I kind of say that, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Completely right. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

I could have gone more, but I just figured that was enough because I was trying to get my mind around it. And now we. If we were to do that same scenario, you would probably. I would probably be able to use more contemporary. It's a very tough one because we have countries like Norway which are more open and. Or the Icelandic culture.

Viking. Viking society.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. I didn't even think about that way, but I went to Iceland in Norway. So the woman was the battlefield woman also. She participated, she took. She was strong. And then I can go all the way to the extreme and I won't name countries in this, but there are plenty of them where the woman is subservient and they have less value. As you just talked about. And you gave the example of Indians.

So.

You felt amazing experiencing this.

Yeah. I mean, for South Asian society, that this survived. Unbelievable. Because in Tibet, as I said, it used to be the same thing, but because of the Gluppa school, of the Dalai Lama, they were so political and they wiped away. And they were all, this monastery is full of men. And it was a very male society and they didn't want. And then these belief systems came in. Now, for example, in Bhutan, the people believe that a woman has to incarnate nine times as a man to be able to reach enlightened as a woman. You cannot reach enlightenment as a practicing nun. And I interviewed nuns, young nuns in Bhutan, and I almost cried with them. How they look at women, you know, they said, yeah, we are dirty. We have this menstruation and we are. We cannot do higher teachings because we're not allowed to. We cannot do meditation. They basically were servants for the monks. And I think, oh, my God, you know, where did it go wrong here? This is terrible. And so in the nunneries, there were basically places where orphanage children, girls went to. And so completely different story. I mean, that contrast was so huge.

So as an anthropologist and help me with this. I'm jumping in my head, I have this imagery of the life in Africa and the emergence of humans, the Homo sapiens, the way we know them today, as they start to expand into the rest of the world. If you were to. Did this cultural, this gender divide equally distribute itself and then propagate that the man was the winner in this game, or was it there were just sex? Some went this way and they said that women are equal. And some went another way and said that women aren't. And they just. Over time, one tended to Propagate and win or one I don't. Win is a very bad word. One tended to dominate over the other. Is that what happened?

You know, Japan was. It's a feminine country because the mother goddess. Yeah, they have a mother goddess, the sun. And the emperor is basically the highest shaman. He has also the initiation of a shaman by the sun goddess, you know.

Yes.

And in Africa, certain countries, they have, they have the same as in Bhutan, strong gender relationships. And even where women marry women, if a woman cannot have children and she's well to do and she needs offsprings, she marries a woman and the woman can have a lover. And the children that come out of that relation are regarded the children of this woman. So all they, you know, there's a lot of everything, you know, existed but with modernity coming in and the religions first, the five religion as, you know, women losing it, you know, they. Because it was all men who wrote down the holy books.

Why didn't women write holy books?

Anthropologically, access to writing it was.

But if they were, if they were even. If they were even. Let's take Bhutan. If they were even collectively over the years, what propensity made it that the men decided to write, not the women?

No, I mean, I'm going back in how the religions came into being. The five big religions, when they started to write down these holy books, it was all done by men. Because at that time the men were the scholars. Women had no access to be scarce.

That had to have already. So what you're telling me is that the evolution got to a point where men had started to dominate and do their thing and then at some point the men decided to write something. So it's much, much further down the evolutionary path before you saw this huge divide of men and women and then you saw the religion enter into it.

Yeah, you know, this society in Bhutan was, because it's in the Himalayas and it's in the valleys, it was isolated from, from the rest of the world for many centuries. That's why this little society could stay the same as it was as now, you know, with the Yanomami Indians in the Amazonas, who are, you know, now only exposed, recently exposed to the modern world. And that was the same with Bhutan. So I was also, you know, researching why. When did women lose it?

You know, that's what, that's more or less what I'm getting to. When.

Yeah. And then I started, for example in Japan, it was. The women had also a very strong position. But then the writing came from China and the men started to be the writers?

Did they start to be the writers or did they desire to be the writers?

They started. They had access to the writing skills.

But why didn't the women, if they were equipped equal. That's. That's kind of my question. Why?

Because when they oral tradition, you know, it's very hard to break that.

You know what I mean is that you have this Japanese mother culture. You have the Japanese with the mother was strong. And then writing comes where they're even. Why did the men take up the writing and the women were even at that time? Why didn't the women take up the writing?

Yeah, things happen.

That's an anthropological answer. That's what I'm not that it could. Maybe it could change a perspective of somebody listening or even to myself. I'm kind of curious as to why when they were even did it divest. Because they were. It couldn't be because they were stronger because the women still had this as the mother goddess and the Yanamamo and all those other cultures, the women were strong. So what made them not say I want to learn the writing so that I could also be.

Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting question, but difficult to find an answer to.

Okay, but it's a solid question. Something had to have happened on a global scale. On a global scale. It had to mean that in all of these women dominated societies or women equal societies.

But doesn't it start with. How can I call it the holy men, like Buddha for example. Buddha, you know, started to walk around and get his insights and then started to teach. And his followers were mainly men and he was not very in favor of women because again women have menstruation they regarded as not clean and all that. So they couldn't be fully ordained as monks. And so these fully ordained monks started to write down the teachings of the Buddha. It's the same with Jesus. He had his apostle apostles and all men and they started to write down.

So but I've got this interpretation then little different is potentially men and when they were equal were more susceptible to group think and being in being group think oriented because they may be hunted together. They had to do things as packs to survive. Potentially that group became stronger because of their collectiveness. Where the. I'm making this up but I'm trying to figure it out. I'm honestly here in the present. Figuring it out is potentially the women in the society didn't have that collective need. So therefore when the men rose, the women did not. And they wrote.

That's a good point. Very Very good point. Yeah, well said. But now we have a problem.

Okay.

If you look at the Hinduism, yeah. It's a completely different story. Because if, I don't know, have you ever been to Kajurao with all the erotic temples and the Kama Sutra and all that?

Is that in the very north? No, I've not been. Is that in the very north?

It's close. It's between. It's not far from, you know, where the Ganga is and what's this town where people go to die and they burn it?

Yeah, yeah. I've not been to that part of India. No.

Oh yeah, it's amazing. So in India was a different story, but as we know that the Aryans were a warrior people, warrior castes, and they were very male dominated. But the female, they had a very strong, open, also sexual relationship. And it's also Mother India and this whole feminine part is very strong there. But for some reason something went wrong during the evolution and women lost it. And some say it's because of the Muslim invasion. I don't believe that something else happened before and I don't know what because India is a very strong feminine country and even the men, even if they don't know it, they don't know it, but they are and they have very caring. And all this philosophy is there, but for some reason it went wrong. And you know, I cannot put my finger on it.

My language say something changed. It might not have been what wrong, because that's an interpretation.

I look at that as a women.

I understand that and I'm trying to make it neutral. For if again, I have these conversations with my wife, my wife will sometimes say, why do you do that? And I say, if you're not pragmatic, if you're not aware of what the situation really is with bringing and trying to take out the bias, you can't solve it. You could understand the bias and how it fits into it, but you can't solve it if you already bring bias in. You have to say, where did it come from? And that's what I was trying to do with the other Orient. Where did it come from? So in this case, yes, the, the Indian culture does have strong women. And somehow I'm always confused as to how the male dominations fits into it.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I cannot. And even if, you know, I traveled a lot in India, I love India deep, deeply. But I'm also disturbed about. And I know a lot of Indian men and I find it so strange that there's this. But I think because of the now they have this strict marriage. Young guy cannot have sex and has to marry. So they're so sexually oppressed. I think that's the reason why it erupts once in a while and it goes into the wrong direction.

So sexual oppression is always going to cause somebody to eventually. So let's jump into the sustainability where I understand where we've gotten to. How does sustainability fit into this picture?

As I said before, that in the village, nature was the highest cause. Not Buddhism or not a God or something. It was nature because everything, everything around in the village, the streams, the rocks, the trees, the air, was all inhabited by deities. And you are not allowed to take or do something without first paying respect and asking if you are allowed to use that. And that that went early morning when they got up, it was first doing, burning incense, do the prayers. They had also abodes pieces of land which they used for the rice cultivation. But after three, four years, they left it and they were the abodes of the gods. You're not allowed to touch it for three, four years. So it was a very interesting way of ecology awareness, how to keep the.

System going, how to keep the land fertile to allow it to regenerate.

Yeah. And that was all over. And then again, you know, coming back to the gender and to the time that it was, everything was respected. Everything. And for example. Yeah, also when what I wanted to say, if they, for example, if a family wanted to build a house, they would go to three places where they would think the house would be good. They would take a little piece of earth from that place and also from the other two places. And then they went to a shaman to ask if they could talk to the deities, which place would be good to build a house. And. And that was also with sickness. And it was again, the women wore shamans. And so it was. Yeah. And then, you know, and nature fed them enough to stay alive. So there was an abundance of vegetables, of spices, cinnamon, Sichuan pepper that grew all in the wild. And just this all respect to nature. That was so incredible experience for me that I think, oh, my God, if the world could do that, you know, if he could live like that. Oh, you need some creativity.

It's interesting because if it's. It might not be a respect for nature. And to follow me on this, it could be that individuals realize the flaws of doing certain things. So they built into their structure. You have to honor nature. But it wasn't really honoring nature. It was honoring a God. So we, we called it a God so that we could leave it for three years or humans created an artificial environment that allowed a system to create balance.

Yeah. Very well said. Wow. Amazing.

Thank you.

Yeah, you really put it in a complete difference. For years it got stuck into my head. So it becomes, you know, it's chiseled as a way, but you chisel the way. It's fantastic. I love it.

Thank you. I'm glad I can be helpful. See, I'm the male in that picture and I've got a use. I've got a use and to bring that to contemporary society. And that's the redefining tomorrow. The reason I jumped on it is because if we assume that, again, being pragmatic, being very clear, if we assume that it was a love of nature, then we'd have to teach everybody to love nature and therefore we would get there. I don't think that's possible. 7.5 billion people. Loving nature means different things to different people. For example, some people believe that an animal should be eaten, and some believe an animal should not be. Some people believe that it's okay to fish because the world will. And some people believe God will take care of them. So you cannot use an artificial construct. If we did. Fast forward to today. If we are looking to create a balance, we have to find balances in 195 different countries or different classifications. If we used avatars for groups, we'd have to find a way that that balance survives the natural order of the way in which the world needs to be able to thrive.

Exactly, yeah.

And that's the challenge. I just pulled up and this is not to pick on. I don't try to do this in that construct or that perspective. Space.com just had a Satellites are uncovering widespread illegal fishing in the Pacific Ocean. And they were showing how these ships, primarily Chinese, are bringing in this one ship, 176,000 tons of Pacific squid. These ships in this North Korean waters. But then they also talked about how There are about 3,000 North Korean ships fishing illegally in Russian waters. Their society in Asia, at least on the Asia Pacific region, fish is a huge part of their diet. So you cannot go to a culture and say, you can't have fish. Now, that's not going to work. But especially if it comes from another country, meaning, let's say it's Germany or it's Brazil saying you can't fish. That will not be acceptable. So it's creating that construct, like the Bhutanese, that a balance can be created so that everyone thrives and maybe the death, the disease and those elements that the world today doesn't have. It's having it with COVID With 80 million new individuals, positive net gain every year onto this planet has created that imbalance that. That formula doesn't work the same way.

Mm.

Does that make sense?

Yes. And it's, it's what I see in Europe, what's happening more. More and more people become vegetarian or even vegan and there's much more awareness now and it takes it slowly, but it's coming, it's coming. And yeah, I don't know if it's.

Coming because there are 420 million European. 430. 40, 50 somewhere in there. Europeans and they're an aging population and they. You'll lose 50 to 70, 50 million, I think elderly in the next 15 years. Russia's going to lose 30 million people. China will lose. They have 450 million people who are. 330 million people are elderly. But still their consumption levels are extremely, extremely high.

Yeah.

And I don't. So you could do it in one place, but 70% of the world's population lives in Azer. 70%.

And they are going through also that they become better lives. So they're going to eat more meat and more richer food and etc. Yeah.

So that balance is a challenge. So, yeah, on the sustainability side, it's interesting that you had brought it for circa that way and I appreciate that a lot because I now was able to look at it from the Bhutanese level when it. So what is your on bullet point seven? What does it mean for today? Everything you've taught me so far. What does it mean for today or in regards to the future? You can do both.

Yeah. As we would be said before, to take this in consideration and as a kind of a guideline in a way that there is, you know, that we had a way of living in a way that was. Yeah. Not being judgmental about creation, you know, about humans or animals, and see it as a part of the whole holistic part and that we have would be nice to be. To be aware of that and take that much more into daily life and into policies that have been made. And yeah, it's a tough one.

So 7.5 billion people on this planet already. Well, from what I've learned, not my calculations, what I've learned is we'll have 10 billion people within the next 40 years. So the question is what you just what you've just said, I kind of push back on. I don't believe that humans are going to understand this balance.

No, I mean to Be honest. Me neither.

Okay. No, that's the reason I say I don't believe they are. So how.

How.

And just telling. I think that anybody listening to this program is going to find pieces of discussion which are exciting and interesting. Some might be pro one space or another. I don't want to pick topics. Some people might say, wow, I never thought of it that way. Which is exactly what we want to happen. Yet taking this and saying we could take the Bhutanese and move them that construct forward and share it and say that they're going to change. I don't. It's not going to hit 7.5 billion. So how you had to have thought about it. How do you see making this world improving how we live on this planet? With what you've learned. How do you. What do you. What is your. If you don't see it happening, what could we do?

I see first I have to go back to Bhutan and I saw in 1990, as I said, it was still a very traditional society with no TV and hardly any money and use. It was still barter, et cetera. In those 20 years, they made all the mistakes that we have made in the last hundred years. So they also want to have two cars and they want to have four mobile phones and they want to have. So humans are all the same as I said earlier. And also we cannot make a museum out of that country. And they made also. They have also huge problems with the corruption that's going on there, you name it. So it's not absolutely. I'm not saying it's a better country than any other that I want to make very clear because Bhutan has this image that it's Gross National Happiness. It's all propaganda, it's all lie, it's not true. So to set that so that gives me, yeah. Bit of a dark vision on the future. Yeah, I don't know. I absolutely. At the moment I'm very negative about the future of humankind. I mean. And on the other hand, I'm also optimistic in a way. We have a lot of smart people and we can turn it around if you really want. And yeah, then I have to refer to the work my husband does so, you know, to convince the financial sector to put the money in ways that's beneficial for the planet and for the humans and etc. Yeah, but I'm not very optimistic.

I'm laughing. And for those of you listening, if you heard the laughing, it is because I just found out today that she. That you are married. Ricky is married to Robert, who I interviewed yesterday, so I didn't know this until today, which was a surprise. His take was almost the same. And it's a. I think if we are to solve the challenges, you have to define what challenges are balanced and in the foundation that we have. And I'm not going to go into all the details like I didn't do with Robert, is the world has taken an approach in the sustainability movement to a large degree that we have to be reductive, we can't have, we can't use, we shouldn't do. And the challenge is when you do that just within your own family, your children, your spouse, your community, that doesn't work. Someone will fight you just because that's who they are by nature. We're going to fight you anyway. And then if you take 7.5 billion people, we're going to have that. The only way is to show a hopeful outcome and a hopeful that they won't have to reduce. And the challenge that I see in this Asia Pacific region, especially because it is now developing at a faster pace that the desires of the propaganda which I deem anything from a Bollywood movie to a Hollywood movie to the lifestyle, the rich and famous, all of that from any culture, shows people that they should have more and they can live this happy lifestyle. So it's a very difficult pushback. And I think that we have to, in our approaches think of a forward moving so that we can maintain the lifestyle that we have and still thrive. So for example, this is one that I use, the founder or the one of the creators of Siri did some math, was an interesting thing that I read that he had put together and I have spoken to him since is that when you take one selfie and you post it on Facebook, Instagram or any type of social media contract, what happens is you have to, the power has to go through all the cables, millions of millions of kilometers or miles. It has to then go through servers that need energy and then they get posted. Just one photograph takes three takes the power that is necessary to run three 20 watt light bulbs for an hour. For an hour.

Yeah, I read that too. Amazing.

So if you have a person who says, I'm sustainability, I'm socially responsible, I'm doing this. And they posted 20 pictures today and there are new clothing each time, we're not going to be able to take that away. So our solutions have to be additive, not subtractive in terms of the time frame that we have.

But David, may I ask you something?

Sure, absolutely.

How is it possible that the last 50 years, especially after the Second World War. If I compare with Europe and probably America, never before have so many people had the chance to go to school and to have higher education. And we have access to now, you know, your laptop and you have the whole library of the world on your lap. And there's so much stupidity in the world, I cannot put my head around it. You know, what's going on in America now and even in Europe, the democracies don't work anymore. And it's overall stupidity what I see. I mean how is that possible?

So I'll try to give an answer. Let's not say that I'm an expert in this, but I'll give you some of my thoughts. First of all, we have to be careful using the word, the word Noah, just because of clarity, if you didn't do anything wrong. We use the word democracy just like the word socialism is used out of context all the time. When a community shares in building, developing or sustaining so something and they all contribute in that is a form of a social enterprise. It doesn't matter what it's fitting under, it still is a social construct. So you have to just understand that there's liberal democracies, there's different type of democracy. Just like people. Individuals confuse capitalism, which is a form of economics, with politics. Such as. Well, they're communists. No, you could be a communist and an unbelievable capitalist. And the example that I would give is who what country stood up to take advantage of the pandemic when it came to capitalism. And that's China, all of the mask manufacturing, all the vendor, that's capitalism. So we have to be careful not to confuse them. So what you're asking though is that.

You see on social media that people don't know anymore what the Nazi party in the second World War is. The National Socialist, they call it left wing. I couldn't believe it that they.

So these. I would argue that the world has become so complex in terms of information information feed to an individual that the individual cannot rise. I would say not the individual. It's very difficult for individuals to rise high enough to see the interconnectivity of it because not everybody's wired that way. For example, someone really might love doing landscaping. I told you I was, I was trimming trees and I was up 20ft yesterday, just 7 meters. Not everybody wants to get up on top of a tree and spend hours cutting down tree branches. But some people love it is their passionate is their life. And if you were to ask them to travel, let's say they lived in Lithuania and you say, would you like to go to Cambodia? No, I really have. Don't have an interest in that. But going to Cambodia would give them a perspective. The challenge is we don't have that mind capability to absorb everything and delineate, I'd say secondarily our educational systems. And there are many. India has challenges with fresh water and has challenges with serving fresh water to their people. Let's just say that that's one of the first things you do in a society. And their educational system is challenged. Chinese is rote memory. A lot of that based upon their structure. Americans is. Everybody learns a little bit different about something. So they always. There's a conflict which is. Helps America. So if you go around the world and I could do other countries, I use big ones, big countries. So that it's easy to get your mind around. Is that our educational system is failing us in our understanding of the interconnectivity of everything. Because we've gone to siloed thinking.

Yeah.

So we teach mathematics, but we don't teach that. Our everything in our lives has a mathematical component to it. So in English we don't do that interconnectivity teaching. And it's very difficult to answer your question. I'm trying to answer it in a way that gives a few points and I should break.

I completely understand what you're saying and I think you're right. I think we're just overwhelmed. Most people just overwhelm with all the information that's there. Everybody can put anything what they want on whatever. So yeah, there's a lot of confusion.

We're overwhelmed and we're not able to discern which is real and not because we're not taught that. We're not taught to question that way. And then we're also sold on ways of life that look happier, that looks better. And you. I know because of yesterday's conversation and I know, Robert, is that you're around some very, very, very wealthy people. And I am, I've. I've been in the same environment and I don't find that they're always happier.

Oh, no, no.

And we know that, we know that, but it's not professed that way. It is demonstratively put out into the media. The pictures, the imagery, the thoughts. That is more. That having that more means more. And if you go to my, my Instagram, I haven't put up in about eight months. But if you read below, not. But if you do read below my pictures, every one of them has stories. And in those stories, you'll find that the majority of them had to do with. With being in the moment. They had to do with learning about somebody, not about the building. I don't care about the buildings that much. I'm not a big history buff, but I always learn about the person I'm with and the tours that I'm on or the places that I go. And I don't know if we do a good job as parents, as societies, as institutions to show that commonality. And I can't even think of once in my entire education that that happened. I just can't. I can't think of a time where in any class where someone said, let's read a book from Denmark. Let's read a book from Russia. Let's read a book from New Guinea. Okay, let's go to the next class. We're in another. We're in chemistry. I don't hear well. Look at what the. The Korean scientists created, or look at what these Israelis created or look at what the Argentinians created.

We have that in Europe very strongly. Yeah, yeah. We're much more exposed to different countries. Different. Yeah, yeah.

You're exposed for a different reason. Europe is the same size as America. America, more or less. There's some differences, but let's use that. If you took America and put it on top, America is 50 different countries, but they tend to have the same laws, the same regulations, the same across the board. So you go to another state, you. But if you live in Bratislava, Slovakia, you go an hour in each direction, you're in another country with a new construct, new taxes, new laws or whatever. So. So you have to learn to live that way. Yet. If I went to somebody from Estonia and asked them about Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Japan, Korea, they wouldn't give me. Be able to give me answers. And that's what I'm talking about. A really, truly global understanding. And we just don't do that. We just don't. Don't do it anywhere in the world.

That's true.

You know more about the governments of the United States Senate Congress president and so do the people in Vietnam than some Americans.

Oh, yes. And I had some amazing discussions in India, in villages with people, you know, with Indians who are so knowledgeable about the world. That. That was amazing. But, you know, you don't have that in America when you go to North Carolina or.

And I'm not picking. We have to be careful because it's not. The challenge is everybody goes to America because we're Visible. I don't think the Germans know much about Vietnamese politics. And I don't think the Germans or the Swiss or the Italians know much about how the government of Korea works or Indonesia.

So, I mean, really basic things like, oh, you're from. From the, from the Netherlands or is the Netherlands the capital of Brussels? Things like that.

And I, I can go to China and I can go to countries in Asia and ask that same question. And they couldn't answer it either. We have to be very careful.

The society, America, much more in line with Europe. You know that most of them come from Europe to begin with. Yeah.

But that I grew. I'm Jewish. My parents. There's a long story to how we got out. My father got out and they didn't teach any German. I'm half German. I was not taught any German in the household. Why? Because we left Germany.

Yeah.

So again, we have to be very careful when we're talking about different societies because I have found beautiful, wonderful people, people everywhere in the world. Mine was about education. Education is governance. The government determines the education to fulfill its governmental needs everywhere in the world. So the question becomes, you ask, the question is, how where did this come from? And mine is, I believe, again, only my opinion, that the way in which we educate anywhere in the world, not just America, Americans, anywhere in the world, is that there is always a leaning or an omission or a prejudice that is passed on where we're not learning about the oceans and balance this way, we probably should. We are not learning about the benefits of certain other types of governance or economic systems so that we can make. Or that individuals growing up can make better decisions. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

It's very difficult to take out the bias. Americans, trust me, being an American, no matter where you go, you get that I've gotten around that because I've worked in probably 40 different countries and I can walk in and I have a different take and it's. It's acceptable. That's not to say that when a French person walks in, I mean, I could tell you around the world, they don't have a. It's not, oh, can't wait for the French to come. So we have to be careful of how we solve this challenge. And so this was, this was very good. I appreciate your, your honesty at the end and throughout. And I, and I liked hearing the story of Bhutan in a way that helps, I think is useful in, and will be useful to others. So I do definitely appreciate.

Oh, thank you.

I hope you had a good Time, too.

Yes, wonderful. No, no, it's really very nice and very enlightening and. Yeah. And also your view on things. That's wonderful. You know, just because I'm quite alone in my field. And so it's wonderful to see fresh intake and, you know, that you also be able to smash my prejudice, which is very important.

Well, my hope is that with this program, individuals will redefine tomorrow. They'll make new decisions like you will, you will possibly take out and do. And because of our project Moonhunt foundation and what we're trying to do, this, there's two podcasts, there's the Age of Infinite, which is our space oriented for a different group. And then there's redefining tomorrow. And I do believe there's going to be a collision between the both of them, which will be positive and it will help us to move into the age of infinite, infinite possibilities and infinite resources. And it's going to take people like yourself, people like Robert, people like the other guests. We've had amazing guests on both programs that can help shape this future. So, again, thank you. Thank you very much for being willing to take the time into putting up with some of my thoughts during the program.

It was a pleasure.

Thank you so much for all of you out there. For both of us, thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen and, and we. I hope that you learned something today that will make a difference in your life and the lives of others. In essence, you can help redefine tomorrow. Ricky, is there a best way to connect with you?

Oh, they can, Yeah. I can give my email.

Sure.

That's Ricky.

And I will spell it because you. Because in Europe, up the I and the E often are the same. So when the name was given re, it's R I E K I at.

@. For email @. Yep. TBLI.org okay.

Rickybli.org and again, it's R I E K I@tbli.org and I've never had to do that. But before the conversation, what happened was I was asking to confirm the spelling and it was given in a way which was European, which took me off in a different language.

Yeah, I have all that problem.

That's okay. That's fine. We're here to help each other. So for all of you, always remember, you can't fix yesterday. You can only create tomorrow. And if you'd like to connect with me, it's davidavidgoldsmith.com Instagram is mrdavidgoldsmith. Haven't posted in a while, but there are a lot of stories on there. If you're interested, you can connect me via Twitter @DavidGoldsmith, LinkedIn and Facebook. You'll see my picture. I appreciate everybody taking the time to learn today. So with that said, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening.