Educating for the 'Long Now' - A Conversation with Homa Tavangar

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

What does it mean to be in community? And I don't think most of us alive today have really experienced that in a whole and authentic way. So there's this magic to doing work that's relational and not transactional.

Hi everyone, thanks for joining me. My name is Tim Logan and the podcast is brought to you in partnership with Notosh. I had such a joyous conversation this week with the amazing Homer Tavanga. We explored the idea of sacredness in schools, how we might think about the long now of education, not just the hustle for material success. And whose stories are being heard and who's unheard in our communities. Homer is an incredible educator and leader. She is the co-founder of the Oneness Lab with Eric Dozier, where she helps schools and companies go deeper than diversity, as well as the Big Questions Institute, where, with her co-founder Will Richardson, she leads professional learning opportunities to build capacity and design the future with fearless inquiry. You can find out more about Homer's work in the show notes with links to her books and other writing and resources.

Hi, Tim.

Hi, Hema.

It's a great pleasure to finally meet you after many years of kind of being in similar networks. And I know the amazing work that you and Will, Will Richardson, do at the Big Questions Institute. And I've had Will on the podcast previously, so I'm just so happy to be able to finally get a chance to chat with you.

Thanks so much, Tim. I am really happy to finally meet you.

Yeah, great. So, all right, let's, we're not gonna start small, but let's go big.

Let's do it. Let's do it.

What is sacred? Big questions, right? Like I know you and Will specialize in big questions, so, and I know you've been playing with this idea of what is sacred as you're working with schools. And I, I'm fascinated by this idea as well. So yeah, I, I'd love to kind of just put that out there. Why is it such an important question and how are you seeing schools respond to that question?

Great. Yeah. Love that we're diving into the big questions. So let me just back up and put that question into a little bit of context. So shortly after pandemic lockdowns, Will and I, in our work with schools around the world, noticed that there were certain questions that were just constantly rising to the top that were really important, maybe not in like the traditional way that they might be asked. So for example, so many questions around diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, belonging. We called the question that really pointed to that as who is unheard and also thought it was really important to look at power. But before we got into any of those other questions, like what is learning, are we connected, we realized that in many places they were sort of losing the plot. So strategic planning might be happening, lots of investment in, you know, whatever the new shiny object for teaching and learning might be, But at its base, is there a shared agreement of what's the most important? What is our purpose? What matters the most?

Yeah.

And it came down to the question of what is sacred? We do get a little pushback sometimes, people saying that sounds religious, and we don't mean that at all in this question. Everyone can think about what is sacred in terms of like the core of the word sacred comes from the heart, right?

Yeah.

And what matters most? What is purpose? And so around the world, we probably have, I don't know, thousands of Padlets with hundreds of responses on each one where we've asked parents, students, teachers, leaders, board members, community members, what is sacred about this school? And what we've found now is that it's almost turned into like a social psychology question, a sociology question. Where we kind of know what people are gonna say now, whether it's an— our joke is like from Columbus, Ohio to Colombo, Sri Lanka, British Columbia and Colombia, South America, all of those places we've asked and many in between, what is sacred? It always comes down to the same things, relationship, connections, something around joy, something around play, activity, nature. Creativity, you know, it's learning, but in a way that touches on something like critical thinking and curiosity. And then we never hear what is not sacred. We never see grades, standardized test scores, tests, homework, technology. So it's like all the stuff. And, and we don't say only like sacred, we say what matters most, What do you hope remains when you return? And let's say in 20 years. So that touches on something we've been doing a lot of work on is futures work, imagining the future of school and unlocking and unsticking imagination. So that what is sacred really does help us, you know, some people might call it a North Star. It points to where we are and where we want to go.

Yeah.

You know, throughout, at the beginning of the pandemic, there was an essay from Arundhati Roy in the Financial Times about the pandemic as a portal. And we still use the metaphor of a portal a lot, that we are sort of living in this liminal, in-between time, between stories. And the portal idea helps us think about what are we carrying with us through the portal? And really importantly, what are we leaving behind? So asking your community what is sacred is a way to ask, what do we leave behind and what do we carry with us? So if relationship, connection, joy, play, belonging— that's another one. Always we hear belonging. It's a reflection of inclusion, equity, always. So what do you do to make those a reality? I love it.

It's so simple.

And informative.

It is, it is, but it's also deep and important, right? Like, I mean, as the word deep gets thrown around, whatever, but there's something kind of profound because you're cutting, as you say, right? You're cutting to the heart of the things that matter. And I think that's really important, particularly now, like, as you said, given the swirling craziness of post-pandemic climate emergency, you know, all of the things that we're dealing with. But I think I've, I was watching, I don't know if you've seen Bayo Akomolafe's short film called The Opening.

I know about him, but I don't know if I've seen it.

Okay.

I was watching that a couple of days ago and it really interesting cuz I hadn't heard you talk about the portal before, but there's definite resonance, the similarity of like this thing opening up, right? Yes. And then obviously Zach Stein I've had on the podcast.

Yes.

The Time Between Worlds, right? And I think, and Vanessa Andriotti's coming on, you know, Hospicing Modernity. There's a lot of, there's a lot of there's a lot of conversations around this liminal space. Yes. Right. As you say.

Yes.

And it's really hard for people who are in institutions doing the work, right?

Yeah.

To kind of see the wood for the trees or, you know, whatever, to coin a phrase, right? To, to kind of really cut to the heart of in those moments when it's really challenging out there, what do we, as you say, wanna take with us? And I, so I really think that's important, but I, I like the fact that you're asking the sacred question, cuz it's not— I hear the religious connotation and I've had similar conversations with others, but I think there's something really important that we're being asked right now to really— and with AI and all those things, like really hone in on, yeah, what is it that we as human beings need? How do we need to respond together right now? And what I'm— I also was interested to hear you say is that the universality of those things, Right?

Yeah.

Because I'm particularly interested in the role of context and how things like live in particular, very local contexts. So it's interesting to hear the kind of the, the broad universality of some of those things. So how do you, do you see them show up differently in like Columbus, Ohio versus Colombo, Sri Lanka? Like, is there a difference culturally in, in some of the ways those show up or, yeah, I'm just interested in the kind of the local and the global thing happening.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, you would think, and there are another metaphor that comes up universally that I ask all the time. So I have done many years of work around global citizenship and what that means in a deeper way. And I have a way of thinking about being a citizen of the world. A global citizen means that you are being a friend to the whole human race. And there's a lot to unpack there. But one way to, you know, unpacking the way we think about friendship. So I've also done thousands and thousands of conversations to ask different groups, what is your definition of a friend? And that's also universal. Everybody says loyal, kind, caring. They got your back. They help you out. Yeah. Eventually they say it's fun. We have— we laugh together, we enjoy. So it's interesting. That's another one. It's so universal, even to the point of the order in which the words are given. I can almost predict the order of what is sacred about schools and the order of what it means to be a friend. Things that are different might be the way that we see creativity, the way that we imagine, like, one thing that's really different around the world and, and generationally very different, the way we define trust, for example. So I see trust around the world has really broken down. So there are certain— it's also kind of universal, like there's incredibly fractured trust in school communities. Yeah. But then what is sacred can be a way to rebuild trust because it kind of elevates our vision to something bigger than the thing that's on fire right now, and it helps us solve what's on fire. So in truth, the Padlet from Columbus, Ohio, Medellín, Colombia, or Colombo, Sri Lanka, I don't know if it would be obvious which one was which. Maybe the Columbus, Ohio might have a little more about athletics, maybe, you know, but true, but it's about play and activity and after-school enriching activities, you know, if you go to the root of why that matters. But no, they're pretty universal.

Interesting.

No, that is— yeah, it is interesting. It's also interesting, the connection with the school concept, because it's like, it's almost jarring thinking about what is sacred about a school, because particularly now with everybody questioning— and you and Will as well— questioning the concept of school, right? It's kind of interesting putting those two things together, because what do you do with that then? Like, what's the next move? Once you've really thought about what do you want to take with you, like, okay, what does this mean for this kind of institution of school?

Yeah, one thing that it means, which has really been powerful, is that many educators and leaders in education say, well, the parents are not going to tell— like, if we make these certain changes, our parents will be really angry, they will not agree. But I almost think we need to respect each other more, be a little less us versus them. We're so entrenched in polarity that it's like we just are ready for a fight. When we have paused, and you're kind of slowing down some of these automatic processes, which I think is necessary in a time between worlds, you must take time to reflect, to have that sort of meta conversation across all your stakeholders, bring them to the table and listen to what is most important. And then you realize actually we can start from a shared space. And I don't think in the frenzy of like standardized test schedules that is really happening. And what we see is distinguishing like leaders that one last, who have sanity, who are doing better inside, they are kind of pausing to have more of these conversations and they are acknowledging like the contexts, you know, these challenging contexts that are impacting everything from the behavior challenges of kids and behavior challenges of parents, you know, and lots of AI and, you know, all these pressures. It's sort of like coming back to, okay, what matters most? What's most important? Remember what we said? We're going to work on this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it also then leads, I suppose, because I know one of your other questions is what is success? So it almost immediately starts rolling into, okay, well, if these are the things we really care about and that we matter, really cuts to the heart of what we want, what does success mean in relation to that?

Yes. So I, I'll just say on our website at bigquestions.institute, The 9 Big Questions Schools Must Answer So They Don't Go Back to Normal Because Normal Wasn't That Great to Begin With book, that's the title, is available as a free download. That's our version 1 of the book. And version, I don't know if it's 2.0 or 3.0, which is still contained in about 100 different files in our Google Drive, but we do have now 11 questions. So the 2 new questions are very connected to each other. What is your story and what is success? And so success, when you look at everything a school does, tells a story. What's on their website, what is in the newsletter, what are the signs on the walls, what are, you know, all of this, it's conveying a story of success.

Yeah.

So we ask, you know, in the context, like, what is sacred? You know, people say another thing is relationships, connection is We want our kids to be happy, and success can be found in many different ways. Yet the story of success that your school might be telling is not the story that you aspire to. It's not the story that reflects what you think is sacred. It's a story of scores and where our kids go into college. We never see college admission in what is sacred. That's another one. You never see Harvard. Harvard and the Ivy League are not sacred.

Sorry, Harvard. Yeah.

Yeah. And people know that. And people know that. But why are we still telling that story, that this is what we're proud of? Is there something else, especially if we acknowledge this time between worlds, that would define where we need to go as a civilization, as a community?

Exactly.

So that rethinking success is actually something we're doing a lot of work on It's a slightly different way of doing strategic planning. And this one of the questions that keeps emerging is what is our culture of success and how do we, you know, it's creating a new culture if you're gonna redefine success.

It's fascinating, isn't it? Because the magnitude of the questions have just grown, right? Right. That I think is just, it's so important that all of us kind of recognize it's like those, yeah, they were important questions, right? In terms of life success. But somehow the, just the gravity and the magnitude of the things that we need to ask and answer now is different. And I think there's also a humility that's required there. Cuz you know, in terms of, for example, Margaret Mead talks about the prefigurative culture, right? Uh, which I think Will's referenced her a lot. But that idea that actually the adults don't know the answers to those big questions, right? And so it's like we need the humility to say to and with the young people, like, we've got to figure this out together in community, right? Because it's really a different landscape out there. And I think that's—

and that has really big implications on like, what is the role and the expectation of being a teacher today?

Absolutely. Yeah.

And then in my own learning, something that I enjoy sharing about is, especially since the pandemic and since the, you know, resurgence of interest on racial justice, especially all over the world, I think it's really important for all of us, if you're over 40 years old, let's say, to have an under-30 mentor. So if what Margaret Mead really does hold true, that young people say you were never young today, How would you know what that means? It's been a very important part of my learning process. It has shaken many of my own assumptions. And speaking of humility, it's very humbling also. Like, there are topics that I'm hired as an expert on that until I talk to someone under 30, I absolutely cannot go in as, you know, like an expert on intercultural competence and lots of things that have to do with culture, inclusion, belonging. I have my generational and other identity blinders on myself.

I love that. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things I'm really grateful for with the work with Festival of Hope, because we're interacting with a lot of young people in all sorts of ways and working directly with young people and collaborating with young people in schools to create these spaces. And it, yeah, there's a whole bunch of learning. It's really, really rich. Yeah.

And we always do a lot of like guiding coalitions when schools are doing, you know, some of the systemic academic and institution-wide work. And we always want to bring students to the table. That's part of answering who is unheard. But in one school that we worked with, they called the students their truth squad. So we always like, they're the truth squad. They are going to tell truth that might be uncomfortable and we must hear.

Yeah, interesting. And I'd love to then shift because one of the questions I wanted to ask you was about your portrait of an ancestor because I think that really kind of flows from what we've been talking about, about what success is and what story is and Harvard, you know, it's like we've gotta move beyond this idea of a portrait of a graduate into a portrait, as you've been saying, portrait of an ancestor. And I think there's something really powerful there, both in timeframe that we're thinking about and working with, but also in like, what does it mean to be successful in relation to the vision that we have? So yeah, perhaps you could just say a little bit about that process.

So Will and I had been reading The Good Ancestor by Roman Rozsás. Snippets.

Yeah, I don't know how to say his name either. He's coming on the podcast in a few months.

Oh, fantastic. So, you know, reading about the good ancestor, thinking about the long now, we've been doing a lot of work around imagination and helping groups use various imagination infrastructures, which we find completely exciting and, you know, unsticking our minds and just trying to develop the All of us have atrophy in our imagination. So if we can, you know, do whatever we can with the parameters to open it up. So one of the parameters is time and the Long Now Foundation and many indigenous cultures that are thinking about 7 generations and lots of longer term thinking that is really civilizational if we are in this time between worlds. Is so, you know, at minimum it's useful and it's, it is impactful. It's a way of practicing moral imagination. That's one of the infrastructures. And so we were thinking about many, especially U.S. schools or schools inspired by U.S. systems. They are, you know, really working diligently, earnestly, sincerely to create a portrait of a graduate. And we looked at dozens of these, and it kind of feels a little like you're throwing darts at a wall at words, and it could be interchangeable, like a bunch of words would be just fine, or an AI could generate it. And then even more important than that, what the Portrait of a Graduate— we think the bar is low. It's getting, you know, all these resources, all this time and energy is to get you into a university, a student into university or their first job. Like, what is a graduate? It's just the beginning of a lifelong learning journey. And so we kind of think the bar is low. If we were to raise the bar, it's not only that we want our students to think about themselves as good ancestors. So what are the qualities we want them to have if they will be good ancestors. And think about the problems they care about solving, their purpose in life. I mean, those are even ways to address the mental health crisis. You know, it's this crisis of not mattering. It's this crisis of doing work that's not sacred. So it's all connected. So it's how can our students be good ancestors, not just good graduates, which is also zero-sum, super competitive, and a very different vision of success, but also how as a school community might we be good ancestors together. So the decisions we make about our carbon footprint as a school, about who and why someone serves on the board, about the leadership choices that we make. If we are to be good ancestors, that might shift the priorities. And so this is just beginning, but we've, we're floating idea and it's really fascinating to see just like with the, when we floated the 9 Big Questions at first, there are some schools that just take this 'cause we're just offering a lot of this for free.

Yeah.

They're just taking it and they're running with it. And we're just seeing like there are some now that are saying, let's have a conversation as a community about the portrait of an ancestor. Or another example of something that's come out of it that's sort of started as a thought exercise but now it's getting really practical is inspired by some cities around the world, some companies around the world that are putting nature as a board member or a CEO, nature at the table. So one example of thinking about you know, really unsticking your mind and practicing imagination and thinking of the long now and being a good ancestor is what if nature was one of your sitting board members? What would change? Let's explore that a little. And that involves collective imagination, moral imagination, and radical imagination. I couldn't think of the third one. Radical imagination is sort of just getting to the root and thinking about if nature was a member of your board, kind of does some of this. And so now a couple schools that we've had some contact with, they've actually floated the idea. I think they're going to have nature on their board. It has the potential to shift the entire school culture.

No, it's really fascinating as a, as a, to hear communities responding, but also just as a thought experiment because I think there are so many challenges with that. So I, so two things, two different directions. One is I've had a really interesting problem with the Portrait of the Graduate because it turns school into a manufacturing industry. You know, there's all the industrial, like deeper into the industrial mind. There's all that, right? Like it's very, it's a very done metaphor about education.

Yeah.

But what the portrait of the graduate is effectively is just a bunch of specifications of this thing that we are manufacturing, right? It's like you're pre-predicting your outcomes. You're just, you're just producing product, right? And there's no life in that really in terms of who are the young people, what's the community, what's the emergent. Dynamics that are happening, you're presetting your end product outcomes, then I think you're really, there's an urge of control in that, which is a real problem. I think a real problem because it, again, it's just us, us as in humans and our hubris saying, actually, we can control the outcomes of life. It's like, no, we can't.

It limits us. Well, and it, it sort of, you know, it limits us so much on our creativity, on our potential.

Yeah.

And so no wonder we're limited in our problem solving.

Exactly. And that's the other direction my mind was going in, in terms of when you open up that space in terms of the time, the constraint of time, and you think about the long now, which I just think is such a great phrase, it generates more possibility by definition almost, right? Because it does some of that work of what you were saying about slowing down with the sacred. It's almost equivalent to slowing down because you're just opening up space. It's like there's much more abundance in that because it's not suddenly everybody's competing in a rush over the scarce resources that we're all fighting for. It's like, oh, hold on, if we're talking about 7 generations worth of life, think about all the unbelievable abundant possibility in that space and how do you work with that, right?

Yeah. And honestly, right now, like we've done this, let's say with a whole school community, including students. When we start to think about maybe 7 generations, or, or maybe even like, we'll say a lot of schools might have 3 and 4-year-olds. They are the graduates in 2038 or 2039. And let's think about that. Let's think about what we want school to look like for them because we can picture those children today. And let's think about them. And I will say at First, when we start this work with a lot of, including young people, the imagination is really limited. The way, like, you have been talking to a lot of people and your brain is sort of swirling in lots of directions, so you're able to like pick this up. You're exercising those muscles a little bit more. A lot of people have never ever thought this far. And so the most their imagination is doing is like, something good we have now times 3. You know, it's nothing different. It's nothing outlandish. It's just more of that nice thing that we have. And that's not what we're talking about. Or a lot of young people, it's apocalyptic, it's burning, it's dystopian. And that is what they're being fed in other people's imaginations. They haven't really had an opportunity, especially if you're in a sort of industrial regime school, to practice a lot of imagination. So their imagination is like, how do I get from a B to an A? You know, as opposed to just turning it upside down and flipping the roof off.

I can imagine that it potentially brings up a lot also emotionally, you know, the kind of— so there's a holding Exactly. Yeah. Uncomfortable, but also a holding of the space that is required because you're asking for people to really go into some kind of visioning that they might not, as you say, have developed the muscles around. And yeah, and that could actually throw up some really interesting but challenging things personally, which is, it's, yeah, an interesting and good.

It does. And it also, you know, so we have to also acknowledge if the majority of youth today have climate anxiety, for example, when you ask them without any prep, let's imagine 15 years from now, that can be a source of great anxiety. So the need to back up and to think about like what it means to be a good ancestor and the different mindsets required. And maybe it's some deep dive into some indigenous, even spiritual cultures.

Yeah.

But then we wanna think about what's the irresistible future? That you can't wait, that you want to live in. Yeah. Very rarely has anyone had a chance to deep dive and think about the irresistible future. So, and there are traditions of even like Afrofuturism or other, you know, genres that touch on an irresistible future. So it is a little bit of stepping back and acknowledging that because Yeah. What's in a lot of people's mind about the future is not somewhere they want to go.

Yeah, that's true. And it, that also makes me think of Zach again. I was actually interacting with Will online yesterday about hope and the concept of hope and his— Zach Stein talks about post-tragic hope. And I think that idea of kind of, because burying your head in the sand is also not an option, right? Well, maybe it is an option for some people, but, but I think there is a looking at the future with really a kind of open possibility, open heart about it's gonna get pretty tough. Like, yeah, really. So it's like looking at that possible future, which is challenging, but also then saying, I'm still gonna kind of work towards an irresistible future, even despite the possibility of a really quite a challenging future that, that doesn't give me, it really constrains many of my current choices. Around material possessions or, you know, all those kinds of things.

I think that's also like one more of, you know, reason number 4,879 of why we need to listen to women from the Global South, Black women, people like Mariame Kaba who says hope is a discipline. You know, it's a practice, it's rooted in practice and discipline. Adrienne Maree Brown and my favorite, Ruha Benjamin, who just has a new book out on Imagination: A Manifesto. And I highly recommend her recent TED Talk, which is, you know, thinking about— we imagine, you know, living on Mars and being a space tourist, but we cannot imagine solving the problem of the unhoused in our immediate neighborhood. Yeah, that's a crisis of imagination and will. That's a crisis of will, lowercase w, that we have the ability and the resource. Where are we spending our imagination and who are we listening to? So I think that's really important in like the reading list of futures and imagination to ensure that you're getting those different perspectives of people who have been experiencing great harm and difficulty, and yet their imagination is flourishing. There's so much that can point to possibility.

No, and I, I mean, that's one of the things I, I wanted to ask you about, because I know you do a lot of work around decolonizing knowledge and thinking about, as you said earlier, you know, who is unheard. And I think there's something really important there about some of the the monoculture of imagination is almost the product of this kind of control-based, reductive, eurocentric framing in a way, right? Like, of course there's, there's a huge amount of imagination and deep ideas there too, but I just think if that's framed as the only path towards future progress, which in, you know, it has been historically in many ways, that's a very limited version of what's possible. And so I think, yeah, there's a really interesting connection with how do you do that work and to bring more voices in to open up the space.

We're really missing out. We're really missing out.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think that, you know, Mr. Rogers says, look for the helpers. Who are the helpers? Where is a lot of the hope around the world in terms of solutions? I don't find it in Elon Musk. But I do find it in a lot of people who, you know, we don't all know who they are, doing incredible work in communities around the world, including like some of the places where we think that place is, is the biggest, you know, the Congo, that's the biggest mess I can imagine. But there is, you know, there, it's hard to say, like, I do think those are like points of promise and activism. In those community-building efforts that are happening around the world. And, you know, there are a lot of authors and foundations and groups that are trying to point them out, but they're not making a lot of headlines.

But I would also say there's an interesting trap and danger in that as well of kind of there's potentially an exploitative move of people thinking, how do we think about those communities where it's working and then find out the secret thing that they're doing so we can use that over here? And actually, I think there's something really important that, that we don't allow that to happen. So I mean, I suppose the question that came to mind was, yeah, in those kind of institutional spaces like schools, what is the work of trying to understand when you, if you think about decolonizing knowledge or decolonizing curriculum, You know, where do you think we can work with young people in really generative ways that avoid some of those kind of traps of co-optation? And I don't know, there's dangers there, I think.

Yeah. Sort of, what do they call that? Like victim porn.

Exactly. Yeah.

Well, I mean, it also, it's like, who's at the table and who's deciding some of this and for what reason? And so when you look around the table and you look at the leadership team and who's deciding curriculum or based on whose choices and what communication and what relationship that you're in, I think there are many opportunities to learn from communities that have been marginalized and unheard locally. Like, look around to your own local community. So it's near or far. And I always say that in terms of global citizenship as well. It isn't just— Oh, let's go help those poor people far away. Like, that's trap number one.

Yeah.

But, and, you know, some people could call this like entrepreneurial thinking, being alert to needs that are around you and being very aware of who is unheard in your local community. I mean, I was in Switzerland recently and that was a significant issue. So it's like it can be anywhere. Where we are listening to, we are in relationship with, we are building relationship with communities and populations around us who, for whatever reason, you know, are not in privileged positions. So I think there are a lot of traps in appropriating and all of that. And I think there has been so much learned about how to avoid that, And a lot of it just has to do with who are you listening to? What are you reading? How much work are you doing yourself?

Yeah.

And so there's also this really important thread from personal to wider cultural, civilizational. And, you know, it's always like the idea that changed individuals change organizations because organizations are made up of individuals. So there has to be that coherence between the personal work that you're doing and who is unheard. Again, I keep going back to that. What kind of learning we're doing, but not isolated from institutional and systemic. So that's what's hard about this. It's complex. There isn't a silver bullet that you do this one thing. And if anything, we've learned a silver bullet is possibly more harmful. For example, out of the blue, you have an incident at your school, and people say, we need to have an implicit bias training, out of the blue. Well, there's a lot of research that says implicit bias training on its own is actually more likely to cause much more harm than— it's hard to say than doing nothing. The hope is that you do something, but you need to look at it systemically. Relationally, and if you just are reacting to incidents that happen, this is going to create this sort of dysfunctional cycle. Let's hire a consultant. Let's just do an implicit bias training and be on our way and get back to the way we did things, the old way we've always done it. That will definitely create more harm. So it's hard to say like the one thing. It's not the one thing. It's really an ecosystem. You look at it the way you would look at how an ecosystem functions.

Exactly.

I mean, that's the word, right? Definitely the systemic for me is the thing that keeps coming up recently. But I also would reflect on the fact that it kind of brings us back to the sacred stuff that you were talking about at the beginning, right? Because you, you reorient around those things that really are more timeless and go to the heart of as you say, just what matters, the relationships. And that's where the systemic work is done, is in those relationships. But it's difficult— it's not difficult, it's impossible to intervene in that systemic approach and just suddenly like do the thing that's going to solve the thing, which is just not going to work.

Yeah. And I just want to say, like, just touching on something that keeps coming up in my work is this balance of kind of like, oh, let's go back to the things that are sacred or like old-fashioned. Let's just go back to basics. That's actually not what asking the question, what is sacred, leads us to. It does not take us back. There are universal, these foundational relational connection, but we have gotten so far away from that that that is actually becomes new. It feels completely new. And so in the context of a lot of conversation around diversity, equity, inclusion, I wanna bring that topic in. We see that this idea of belonging and community and relationship are sacred. So it doesn't have to be polarizing, and it is not shaming, but it is something that it really is a sense of abundance and possibility. So in that sense, it's very exciting when you unleash like the genius of your community because you're hearing more voices. And you're coming with this humble posture of learning, and all these pieces fit together. So I really kind of see this as the 2.0 of the DEI work. What does it mean to be in community? And I don't think most of us alive today have really experienced that in a whole and authentic way. So it's very potentially exciting to see your school as a vehicle for community building and that learning is a really core part of who you are as you build a community.

Love it. Yeah, because, and in a way it takes us then back to the long now because that can't be rushed, right? That thing that you've just described can't be rushed. You can pretend to do it, but then you fall back into the performative cultures of success that you, we were talking about. And I think that's really important that people recognize that the work, that work takes time by definition, and it calls on it. Like, I completely agree with you that it's not going backwards to some romantic past. This is qualitatively different now. It's like doing it in the context of AI and it's doing it in the context of the Anthropocene and all the things that we know about. It can't be about romanticizing indigenous ways of being, right? It has to be about learning from that, but also thinking about how does, yeah, as you say, how does that integrate with the science? Or how does that, what's the synthesizing evolution of those kinds of ideas together?

Yeah. It's so much more creative and like you really are throwing your whole heart into this work. You know, it's not simply an assignment or an intellectual exercise. And I think that's a huge transition that Western culture in a lot of ways has kind of separated us in that way. And so that is an example of— it's a little bit of decolonized approaches because you are drawing from the ways that things are done in many other places. So I find that to be so exciting.

Yeah, me too. Me too, but hard, right? And hard and uncomfortable because you are asking people to show up in a way that they feel really uncomfortable about, for good reason. Like, I mean, I do too sometimes, right? In those kinds of— it's like, it's really confronting. And that means that therefore it comes back, I think, partly to the time it takes to be sensitive to the— we're not rushing these things, but we're also just honoring that, that this is really uncomfortable for a lot of people. And that's okay. Like, there's ways to do it that holds the discomfort and not try and turn everybody into the person who's going to be openly reflecting all the time in the community because some people just feel really threatened.

Or even says all the right things. So I tell you, I get hired to speak in places and to talk about these things. And I have messed up a number of times in front of large numbers of people thinking about these ideas. One of the recent— I have multiple, but one of the recent, I would say I conveyed this. It was like, I failed in doing X. I'm not a failure, but I did, I failed. And one of the reasons for that is I tried to rush a conversation because we had, you know, it's like, okay, we have 90 minutes, we have to get through all of this material. That was mistake number 1. And so I rushed setting up contextually something we were going to do around the Long Now. That was rooted in Seven Generations, that was rooted in the portrait of an ancestor. And the irony of the situation is that I had to hurry in how I introduced it so we would have time to do the activity. And so I learned a huge lesson that doesn't work that way. And then I did own up to it. I sent a communication to the community because then I was going to work with them the next day. And I said, yeah, I messed up. But the beauty of what happened is that people who were aware of what I did called me in. So we had a really fruitful conversation that was very honest and very hard. They actually first called me out that I had not set up the conversation properly and that just like expect that this road is fraught. We're all learning. Nobody gave us a rulebook on how to, let's say, decolonize knowledge or how to respect the ancestors and be a good ancestor. I really don't know how. I'm really trying to learn. So I was called out, then I was called in, and I like to say then we called up. And by calling up, I did communicate to the community what had happened so that it wouldn't create like a mysterious secret that some people know what's going on and others are sort of making rumors. And then we learned and we grew, and I said, I didn't do it right, and I thank you for calling me out on this and teaching me. And, um, it was, uh, it was probably one of the most powerful learning experiences I've had in the last 12 months. Yeah, yeah.

No, I mean, I firstly, I really appreciate you sharing it because I think That exact description of the kinds of ways we get it wrong is so important to put out there because often some of this work feels like eggshells, right? You, you so careful with what you say that you, cuz you don't wanna say the wrong thing that you end up not saying anything or you say something very generic and there's not, it's not really from the heart. So I think it's really important to say that, yeah, we're, of course we're gonna get it wrong. And again, even just saying that is a, is a cliché. But actually just giving examples of the way this did go wrong, but actually how do we respond, how we respond in community when the thing goes wrong is more important.

Yeah, exactly. And just be ready. Like, you think you're gonna get it perfect? Yeah, no, you think you're gonna get belonging and equity and inclusion perfect? You're not if you're earnest about it and sincere.

So, but I think the thing that I, that makes me think is like, think about how many times you get it wrong with your closest person, right? Like with your spouse or you're with your children or like, how often do you get it wrong there, right? It's just work to constantly respond and be with relationship.

I often think of it, it's the means, it's how you solve the problem, and it's the solution. It's where you want to end up. So there's this magic to doing work that's relational and not transactional. And there's a quote that I love from the Bahá'í Writings that says, when you think of person as your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, or as your child, your difficulties will vanish and you will know what to do. And that is so— it's been really like a guide for me in being— it's not that you have to be my family member, but it means like if we come up to a really difficult situation and we fail in the first attempt, I'm not gonna say, okay, I'm done, we're done. It's like if my child is sick, I go to the first pharmacy and they don't have the medication. I'm not gonna say, okay, I tried, we're done. I am gonna get so creative to find a solution. Nothing is gonna stop me. Yeah. We will find a way and I'm not gonna give up. That's where the creativity comes from relation. And connection. So that's been a real guide for me, is like how you lead relationally and not transactionally. And catch yourself. Are you issuing a statement from your school because you think you're supposed to, or are you issuing a statement because it's rooted in work that you've done? And wait, don't issue the statement until you've talked to enough people, you've learned many voices are contributing to it, it's like, slow it down, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. And it's coming from a place of love ultimately. I mean, you know, you wanna get right down to something sacred, right?

That's the force.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh, thank you, Homa. This is, yeah, it's a lovely conversation. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Really wonderful to talk to you.

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