(highlight:: We Tend to Focus Too Much on Individual Optimization v.s. Optimization of Groups
Summary:
The focus on individual optimization through personal health and well-being is important but often leads to a neglect of interpersonal software and group optimization.
It is essential to understand how to coordinate and collaborate as a community, interrupt victimhood culture, establish boundaries while deepening relationships, notice competing commitments, manage polarities, and address complex wicked problems. By collectively uploading software that includes these tools and models, we can effectively tackle issues and achieve better outcomes.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Biohacking 101 to start with, right, which is sleep more, move often, eat well, practice gratitude, make love, get outside, sunlight, all the obvious, obvious stuff that's hyper Commodified and sensationalized. But on the other hand, don't skip it, don't make it more complicated than it needs to be, and you definitely don't need to buy a bunch of shit to get it done. But do that. And then you kind of go from once I have my personal self system, more or less optimized, or at least doing solidly. Now, what are the software? What's the interpersonal software that we need to be running to not get wrapped around the axle? Because most of the time, and most of us these days are focused on individual optimization. So I'm crushing it, right? I'm doing all the hacks and I've got my ice baths and I've got my infrared and I've got my ure ring and I'm doing all those things, right? But then we run smack dam into the wall of how on earth do we coordinate and collaborate as tribal monkeys? And then you get into all the power games, you get into all the passive aggressive stuff, you all get into all the differences of opinions and the breakdowns in agreed upon modes of discourse. Like, how do we even collectively agree to talk about the things that we're getting bogged down in? So that's the other element that we teach, which is just, what are the half dozen or so tools and models, you know, a to interrupt victimhood culture and endless tribal politics? How do you actually say no? This is Bill Yurie's work at the Harvard negotiation project. How do you actually say no and establish and reaffirm boundaries while deepening versus threatening relationships? How do you notice competing commitments, which is like Bob Keegan's work at Harvard's adult school of development? Like, hey, we say we want to change, but we also have this homeostatic system that doesn't want to change. And why is that? And let's understand what those are. Polarity's management where you're like, oh, binary solutions, we pretty much all solve for everything we're facing today that's worth either getting paid for or fixing on behalf Of humanity is a complex wicked problem, right? And none of them submit to binary solutions. So Democrat versus Republican, is it all moral failings that the poor are poor as the Republicans would hold? Or is it all social structures? Right? And you know, and we need to address systems. The answer is obviously it's a balance between both. And if you ignore one at the expense of the other, you'll always get partial and ineffective solutions, just simple things like that, that you're like, oh, once we sort of upload that Software collectively together, we can have, it's basically like the Vygotsky and scaffolding.)
- Time 0:18:54
- behavior_change, systemic_change, collective_competence, collective_intelligence, coordination, group_dynamics, collaboration, cognitive_scaffolding, snipddont-post,

(highlight:: Providing Mental Scaffolding and Tools Drastically Increases Human Cognitive Performance
Summary:
Scaffolding people's experiences with tools like mind mapping can raise their performance above their innate capacities.
Studies have shown up to a 40% increase in cognitive capacity when individuals are taught and encouraged to use tools for problem-solving and understanding. This highlights the significant role of tools in enhancing human cognitive performance, akin to how a computer is described as a 'bicycle for the mind' by Steve Jobs.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So but Kotzky was this Russian educational theorist, right? And he and his whole notion was, if you scaffold people's experiences, so just training wheels, right, basically, you can raise the level of their capacity and their performance above And beyond their innate capacities. So mutual friend of Danglish Marktemberg, who's in Jordan Hall's, and I was Zack Stein, as a Harvard psychologist, very thoughtful guy. And he was working with an organization, his whole dissertation was on standardized testing and how whacked it is, right? And how the inequities it bakes into the system and that kind of thing. And they did studies where they would have somebody, you know, fundamentally on an intelligence or cognitive capacity assessment, right, makes sense of your life, makes sense of The world, makes sense of this word problem, whatever it would be. And then, you know, and then someone would score, you know, a 60% or a three out of five on a Leica scale, right? But then they would teach them how to mind map, right, a tool scaffolding, right? And they'd say, okay, so now everything you just said there, now hit the like draw connections, draw bubbles, draw dotted lines, like, sort and establish the relationship here about What you were thinking, and then retested them. And they would score a five out of five. So there's sort of up to this 40% swing in someone's intelligence or cognitive capacity, just based on did you give them a tool, right? It's like Steve Jobs saying, you know, that a computer is like a bicycle for the mind, right? And you're like, oh, okay. So how many bicycles for our minds, right? Can we share and create such that we can all pedal faster?)
- Time 0:21:26
- competence, performance, cognitive_capacity, cognitive_scaffolding, intelligence, tools, snipdpost-queue,

(highlight:: Source of the Meaning Crisis: Contradictions Between Societal Progress and Global Crises
Summary:
The current societal malaise and victimhood culture are attributed to a complex interplay of factors, including a disconnection from the positives of societal progress and the simultaneous awareness of global crises like climate change.
The author explains that while the world is objectively getting better, the incessant exposure to negative news triggers hyper-vigilance and threat response, leading to a cognitive dissonance between feeling alive and needing to practice triage. This contradictory experience fosters a sense of confusion and psychological distress in individuals, creating a state of being 'crazy making.'
Transcript:
Speaker 2
You because you wrote a book recently called recapture the Rapture, which is trying to address the seeming sort of psychological ills of our society. Can you try and sort of summarize what your thesis is on why it seems like victimhood culture has become so dominant? Disconnection, general malaise people are having, is it, is it a function of, you know, fear of the future? We've been hearing, you know, doom and gloom from climate change and all these other growing risks? Or is it something more fundamental going on inside a psychologically that is giving rise to this? I mean, I think without a doubt, like, what on earth is going wrong these days? And why are so many people sad, suffering, disconnected?
Speaker 1
I think that's just a massive, multi-variable situation. But one of the things that I mentioned in that book was just things are getting exponentially better, and things are getting exponentially worse at the very same time. And trying to map to intersecting, contradicting, overlapping, exponential curves. Confusing. Back as the imagination. I mean, with the whole three-body problem in physics, which I know you must be deeply aware of, everybody, it's very hard to be like sun and moon and stars, you know, like you get you. Panotales, ah! Yeah, and we are eight billion bodies, all with volition, you know, and pesky human nature. So trying to map what is going on as things are simultaneously Stephen Pinker and Hans Rosling, and all the lot of like, if it bleeds, it leads, you've been massively misled. The world is safer, better, cheaper, more prosperous than it's ever been. Ta-da. And you're like, oh, thank God. And then you click over to polar bears and, you know, throw it to Glacier and all of these things, you're like, oh, no, which is it? Right. So as we have that initial experience, which naturally triggers hyper-vigilance and threat response, oh, shit. Right? Are we coming alive? All this wonderful stuff. My own personal life, my personal growth, my relationships, my career, where am I coming alive? That's the inquiry I'm in. Or are we staying alive? And I need to be practicing triage, right? And in a threat response and toggling back and forth between those two is crazy making.)
- Time 0:22:57
- meaning_crisis, existential_risks, global_crises, societal_progress, snipdpost-queue,

(highlight:: The Erosion of Meaning 1.0 and Meaning 2.0
Summary:
The erosion of traditional sources of meaning, such as organized religion, has led to a shift towards a modern rational, liberal scientific experience known as Meaning 2.0.
However, this transition is also facing challenges, particularly amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as institutions and authorities that were once trusted sources of information have come under scrutiny and led to a widespread disbelief in shared truth claims.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Who do I turn to for advice as to what's going on and what should we do? And that's where we kind of then hop over to the meaning crisis. So if you've got kind of a poly crisis or whatever word you want to use for a whole bunch of things are going, you know, are going into the critical red zone from geopolitics to macroeconomics To ecology to, you know, you name it, all of those things are happening. And at the same time, we've had a concurrent collapse of the pillows of truth that we used to look to, which, you know, I loosely just call meaning 1.0, which would be organized religion, Which for 99% of all the human history was where you look to do. Who am I? Where am I from? What is this thing about how ought I act and who are we? And that's collapsed in the last 50 years, quite solidly to the point where, you know, now as most people are familiar, Pew Research Foundation and lots of others have found that, you Know, I don't belong to anything. I'm spiritual, but not religious is now the largest and the fastest growing category, which when you think of you might just be like, oh, yeah, no, okay, sure, that's fine. But then you think back to all of human history, what did it mean if I had identified as spiritual but not religious, I would have been a heretic and apostate, a pagan, and I would have been Run out of town, burned at the stake, thrown in the prison, whatever it would have been, it would have been a death sentence. So it's super unusual that we've just broken with lineage tradition, lineage wisdom traditions of our culture and tribe. So that's step one. But we've been doing that for a while. And then you had the Sam Harris's and Christopher Hitchens and those folks, the new atheists who a decade or more ago were saying sort of tap dancing on the grave of the death of the church. And they're like, good riddance to bad rubbish, superstitious clap trap, opiate of the masses, all of that kind of thing. And here we're all going to move into what is nominally meaning 2.0, which is basically just the modern rational, liberal scientific experience. Am I an enemy capital L liberal, not lefty democrat liberal, right? And just that sense of reason, empiricism, scientific method, rule of law, all of those things. Yes, all the enlightenment values. But that's been taking a beating as well lately. And it sort of went into overdrive during the COVID years, right, the whole epistemic collapse of weight. You know, the Ivy League schools, half of them have been in the tank for pay to play, you know, kid placement. Oh, shit, you can't even trust those guys. The Lancet is in the tank for some super shady publications that they rush to judgment. What's going on with the CDC, International and NGO organization, WHO, can we really trust them? You've seen the shattering, looking at the banks, looking at McKinsey, looking at Goldman, all of these folks getting caught with their hands in the kijo, all of these folks clearly Going above and beyond following the science, which created this totally understandable backlash in both the far left and all right, where you now have these entire spun up cottage Industries of saying, we've been sold a bill of goods and we can't trust anything. Any authority is saying to us, so now we're going to do our own research and make stuff up and then fragmented into the echo chambers of cheap to publish. You know, basically everybody's got their own public access TV station now. And so, unsurprisingly, the quality and the consistency of any shared truth claims have gone out the window.)
- Time 0:25:12
- moral_foundationsbeliefs, ethical_culture, meaning_crisis,

(highlight:: Culture Wars: Centralization v.s. Decentralization and Infinite v.s. Finite Games
Summary:
The culture wars are driven by the tension between centralization and decentralization as two forms of societal structure, each trying to dominate how things are done.
Additionally, the conflict is characterized as a battle for the future direction of humanity: whether to level up into playing an infinite game where all humans are equal and entitled to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, or to descend into finite tribal win-lose dynamics. This distinction recontextualizes opposing groups, like the Proud Boys and Antifa, as playing finite games, whereas stepping up into collectively figuring out the infinite game places them on the same team.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
Your friend Jordan, he, I remember what he tweeted a year ago that really resonated me. He's like, everyone's talking about its left versus right, conservative versus liberal, et cetera. He's like, no, no, no, no, the real generator of these culture wars is the tension between centralization and decentralization itself as two sort of forms of societal structure. That's where this is, this is where the, this conflict is coming from. It's these two forms of governance themselves trying to find a way to either coexist and, and, well, not trying to coexist, trying to both dominate how things are done. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, I can for sure see the truth and what he's pointing out there. For me, it's a, it's a similar delineation, but slightly different, which is my sense is that we're waging there, there's a literally sort of a pitched battle for the future direction Of humanity, which is, can we level up into playing an infinite game where sort of, you know, all humans are created equal and entitled to, right? Life limiting the suit of happiness in our, the objective is fundamentally carrying on the enlightenment experiment with, you know, tweaks, modifications, upgrades, true ups, You know, truth and reconciliation, whatever needs to happen, but still fundamentally that project versus the smash and grab down into finite tribal win-lose dynamics. And in that way, right, you get the, let's just take sort of the proud boys on one side as like militarized, alt-right and, and Tifa as militarized far left, right? And they, not surprisingly, would think they are sworn enemies of each other. But if you actually bucket them as, oh, you're all playing finite game, win-lose, tribal, right? Versus us stepping up into collectively figuring out the infinite game, you're actually on the same team.)
- Time 0:28:35
- centralization, decentralization, finite_games, infinite_games,

(highlight:: What are Finite and Infinite Games?
Summary:
A finite game is a win-lose game where the goal is to optimize within the boundaries of the game and end the game by winning.
An infinite game aims to continue playing indefinitely, including as many people as possible. It aligns with the modern Western democratic project, focusing on fostering innovation, creating safety nets, providing education, and lifting people up.
However, in practice, the ideal may be disrupted by rent-seeking behaviors and individuals attempting to manipulate outcomes.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
Can you give a definition of finite and infinite games?
Speaker 1
Sure. I mean, that's James Kars' original terminology, sweet, you know, fun and interesting little book. He was a theologian and a philosopher, but basically a finite game is win-lose and it's sort of you're optimizing to win or lose, presumably to win, within the boundaries of the game, Right? And your goal is to end the game by winning. And the infinite game is, the intention is largely to continue playing indefinitely and to include as many people in the play as possible. And that's fundamentally the modern Western democratic project. How do we, how do we incent income and innovation, but also tax, you know, that productivity to create a safety net? How do we create education and programs and rebates and incentives in order to hopefully inspire and lift people up? Now, that is always, that sounds wonderful in the abstract and on a drawing board, it never ends up that way. You have rent-seeking behaviours, you have all sorts of people coming in to put their thumbs on the scale, right? But that is the game.)
- Time 0:30:37
- finite_games, infinite_games,

(highlight:: Incentives and Justifications to "Defect" in Society, Similar to Pluralistic Ignorance
Summary:
Moloch is described as something beyond capitalism or market incentives, originating from ancient Babylonian mythopoetic concepts.
It represents the notion that if someone is likely to do something harmful, it might as well be oneself to avoid being left behind. This mindset justifies behavior by assuming the presence of sociopaths or psychopaths.
This leads individuals to act in self-defense and engage in selfish, short-term actions, causing a coordination problem that prevents them from working for the long-term good.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
Do you have a similar definition of Moloch? Because we've talked about this a little bit before, how would you define it?
Speaker 1
No, I think that's a solid working definition. It feels like it often gets conflated with capitalism or markets and market incentives. And it does feel like we're talking mythopoetically, so we kind of have license, right? But it feels like it's something almost bigger than that. It may well be that in its current expression, market capitalist dynamics are one of its most obvious places to see it in action. But it is something, in some respects, what's the spooky or sinister part? Because this goes back to Ginsburg and everybody else, and the ancient Babylonian stuff. But basically, the multipolar trap notion, which is kind of a subset of all this, which is sort of if there's almost certain likelihood that someone is going to do the shitty thing, then It might as well be me. Because otherwise, I'm the patty, right?
Speaker 2
I get left behind. My company fails. Yeah.
Speaker 1
So if it's someone violating tax law or environmental regulation, or who's going to fish the, who's going to collapse the last fishery or chop down the last redwood, if it's definitely Going to happen, it might as well be me and mine. And I think that what that does is it basically indexes that we are now going to justify our behavior based on the near certain likelihood that there are sociopaths or psychopaths in The mix.
Speaker 2
That's essentially making ourselves yes.
Speaker 1
And there doesn't actually have to be a psychopath in the mix to incent all of us to act like one is and claim self-defense. So that to me is almost the essence of my life, the fact that then that's the sinister evil party. Like, how the fuck did we get into this pickle? I thought we were halfway decent humans. And the reality is, is I just have to suspect it's like that game, Muffy or whatever. I just have to suspect that someone in the room is a killer.
Speaker 2
And then I will act like one in order not to be killed. Yeah. But Moloch is in essence, it's a coordination problem. It's getting everyone to agree to not do the selfish short term thing for the good of the long term whole, even though it puts them at a short term risk, essentially short term disadvantage.)
- Time 0:32:14
- coordination_failures, perverse_incentives, pluralistic_ignorance, tragedy_of_the_commons,

(highlight:: Positive Moral Behavior of Individuals Hinges On The Current Level of Resource Abundance
Summary:
Can training make people resilient to seeking peak experiences?
The skeptical side argues that seeking interesting or peak states may not correlate with moral and ethical behavior. However, the optimistic side suggests that people behave better when in a place of abundance and compassionate care.
The question arises regarding win-win vs win-lose games and navigating through this landscape.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
Is there a way to sort of like inculcate that into people's minds and nervous system so that they can stay more resilient to that through training essentially?
Speaker 1
I mean, I'd love to be able to say yes to that. I'm massively under-convinced. I'm not convinced that simply seeking interesting or peak states necessarily has a one to one or even one to three or seven correlation with development of moral and ethical behavior. And in fact, particularly in the extended psychedelic renaissance, Burning Man, transformational culture, Tulum, Ibiza, circuit, you can actually make us fairly strong case that It has fuck all to do right with what people, the states that people are seeking. So that's the sort of, that's the skeptical side of it. The optimistic side is if people are in a place of abundance, safety, security, concern, your connection and compassionate care, yeah, I think we behave better. Right. So if we are under-resourced, then that's going to lead to more reactive, more trauma-informed behavior. And if our tanks are full, right, we potentially have a little bit less clutch and grab and a little bit more willingness to share. But that sort of brings us to that question as to whether or not win-win games are possible, desirable, etc. Versus win-lose games. And how do we kind of find our way through that landscape?)
- Time 0:34:34
- moral_behavior, resource_scarcity,

(highlight:: Transitioning Society to Win-Win Games Requires Setting Up "Fairer" Win-Lose Games
Summary:
Transitioning society to a win-win game requires understanding that the current structure is fundamentally a win-lose game.
To achieve a win-win situation, society needs to create a surplus of energy so that individuals can afford to be generous and play for the long term. However, in situations where survival is at stake, such as in money, power, or sex games, it's crucial to treat the losers better and redesign the game so that they don't lose as much.
This involves being decent to them, providing off ramps, and offering opponents a golden bridge to retreat across.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
So can we or even should we be trying to transition society from what is fundamentally a win-lose game into an omniwin win-win game?
Speaker 1
Aspirationally, win-win, where we all get to expand and, you know, expand the game, play for as long as possible, include as many as people as possible, is, you know, in a nutshell, the Enlightenment experiment, right? Bug it up and bastardize along the way, but still, I think, really viable and worth protecting. But I think paradoxically, in order to get there sooner, we actually need to figure out how to play win-lose games better, right? So rather than paying lips service to the ideals of win-win, but when push comes to shove, everybody's got the knives out, right? And you can see this in utopian counter-cultural communities. We're all one-love, we're like, but who's going to get the nice house? Who's going to get the lot? Who's banging the leader? Who's going to get the money? All those things, right? All those things happen. And they happen because at the deepest structure of biological life forms, it's one-up, one-down, it's life or death, eat or be eaten, right? And that's not to say that is the only option we have is not to get old Jordan Peterson, the about lobsters and things like that. It's just to say that is a deep root structure. And so my sense is that we earn the opportunity to play collaborative win-win games when there is basically a surplus or abundance of energy in the system, right? But if it comes down to vital thresholds, right, and either I live or die based on whether I get that next energy credit photon or calorie, right? Then it is elbows out and that's okay because you could say, oh, well, win-win, we have to expand our consciousness. We have to level up. You can't solve the problem, the level that created it, all those kinds of things. And they're like, yeah, and that's fine if I as an individual get in touch with my inner saint or Bodhisattva. I say, I say, in fact, my life is no different than your life. I am you. We are all one. Here's my lunch, right? That's beautiful individual sainthood, but that mother becomes a martyr. She chooses that, becomes a murderer if she says, yeah, and my kid too for the stranger for the strange kid halfway around the world, right? So we can have an individual mutation of consciousness where we're like, I'm willing to sacrifice myself for a win-win or so that the least of my brothers and sisters can eat. But we tend not to be willing or able to do that to our offspring or descendants that violates a deeper level of code. So you're sort of like, okay, so what does it like to play win-lose games and actually commit not that win-win because that only works with a surplus of energy. Then we can afford to be generous. Then we can play for the long term. But when it comes down to true binary, down to survival, and by the way, all the games people play, that famous book in the 60s, that Pop Psych transactional Analysis book was basically Like, here's all the games. There's money games, there's power games, there's sex games, and certainly money powers, social status or all versions of survival. If I lose my social status on the outcast on my tribe, it's a social death, potentially a real death. If I don't have enough money, those are energy credits and coin of the realm. Sex is if I lose in the sexual politics game, I don't get to reproduce and effectively, even if I live, my gene, my downline dies. So all of those are still expressions of binary life death games. So the question is, how do we treat the losers better? So how do we redesign the game so that the losers don't lose so much? Yes, and or you're decent to them, and or you provide off ramps, you defy the whole classic thing. And what the world was is defeat with dignity. How do you offer? Provide your opponent with a golden bridge to retreat across.)
- Time 0:36:03
- capitalism, competition, market_economics, regenerative_economics, win-lose_games, win-win_games,

(highlight:: Upholding the Spirit of Win-Lose Games Through Healthy Cultural Shaming
Summary:
The speaker proposes the use of healthy cultural shaming as a means of maintaining a balance between competition and ecological/humanitarian impacts.
They draw an example from Northern New Mexico to illustrate how social norms and healthy cultural shaming were used to regulate flock size, thus ensuring the sustainability of common resources. Furthermore, the speaker advocates for distinguishing between guilt, which is seen as destructive, and shame, which is viewed as an essential tool for governance and correction when individuals transgress their tribe's norms.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You know, or just scorched earth competition and the scene, you know, right in the same thing with Walmart squeezing out mom and pop hardware shops or whatever it would be like, is there A place where enough is enough? Is there a place where we've won, right? But we are still allowing for the ecology and the humanity for variance to persist versus winner takes all winner takes everything.
Speaker 2
What's your leading contender for the way to do that? Is it just better regulations? You know, because clearly social norms don't always hold true. You know, most 99% of people don't, you know, when someone waves the white flag, they go, okay, I've won, you've lost, great, and that's it. But there's that 1% that will just for the sake of it, you know, it's very rare in nature, but you get the cat that does torture its animal, you know, it's prey before it dies. It seems like social norms will not be sufficient to just prevent those from continually happening, even though they're so damaging when they do.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, I mean, this is just a tiny cut at it, right? This is infinitely complex. I would say tops down and bottoms up. Bottoms up, I think that we need to actually re-institute the notion of healthy cultural shaming. Because, and I came across, there was a really interesting, but called enchantment and exploitation, and it was basically a story, a very detailed analysis of Northern New Mexico, Sheep herding, and then cattle raising in like the late 19th century. And basically, the Hispanic communities that have been there for ages, for centuries since original Spanish settlement were sheep and goat herders. And then you kind of had the Eastern East Coast capital backed cowboys and ranchers with the barbed wire and all the range wars, like who got to fence in what stuff and claim the commons, Right? And the idea was that in the Hispanic sheep community, sheep herding communities, there was a natural checks and balances. If one guy got greedy and started growing his flock and all those things, but everybody was still, you know, they had to migrate their various flocks through the same valleys and same Watersheds and this kind of stuff, they would get teased, they'd get ribbed like, Hey, what are you getting a little greedy, getting a little Gordito over there, but he like what you Doing or the aunties and the mothers and the grandmothers would kind of weigh in and there would just be this social calibration, right, of what was good for the commons, right? And I think Brene Brown has maybe used these terms exactly opposite than the way I've come to understand them, but my distinction between guilt, right, which is I am unworthy, right, Or bad, we definitely want to minimize guilt. But shame, I have transgressed the norms of my tribe, right, is actually an essential tool of governance and correction from Dunbar. Yeah, I use them the other way around as well, actually. Okay, so yeah, however we would want to do it, the idea of one of them is useful and one of them is very destructive. Yes, a natural check and balance when I've transgressed the norms of my tribe, that's important, right? And we've diminished that in the whole, you know, no fat shaming, no selection, we know to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the things that we've said these days lately. But the actual thing is like shame is an essential corrective when somebody gets overly agentic, egocentric, and extractive, right?)
- Time 0:41:07
- cultural_shaming, win-lose_games,

(highlight:: Having Grace For the Present Time and Letting Go of a Bleak Future That Has Not Yet Happened
Summary:
The weight of urgent responsibility and the fear of a bleak future can lead to burnout, but imagining a terminal diagnosis can bring about a sense of freedom and courage.
Despite the potential for a bleak future, there are still beautiful moments to be cherished in the present. It is essential to celebrate life, bear witness to the beauty of existence, and keep the world in balance through small yet profound actions.
Leaving space for grace and dreaming a way through the unknown are crucial.
The Stockdale paradox highlights the importance of being ruthlessly realistic about short-term realities while remaining relentlessly optimistic about long-term possibilities.
Although the current global situation is complex and challenging, maintaining a thread of hope and resilience is crucial as we navigate an uncertain future.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I've noticed this in a lot of our colleagues and friends that the people I know that are sort of quote unquote fighting the good fight, right? They're out there in the front and in the public. They're out there drawing attention to critical issues, those kinds of things. They're often getting kind of spun up and burned out themselves, right? It's a lot to hold and to hold the urgency and the responsibility is more than most of our psyches and nervous systems can handle, right? And I thought, good Lord, if I had a terminal diagnosis, right? Like if I knew I had a year to live the classic kind of thought experiment, how would I act? And then the simple answer is that for most of us, we would be more free, we would be more courageous, we would be more truthful, we'd be more heartfelt, we'd be more adventurous, we'd Do all the things, right? Yeah, it's hard more. Yeah, it's hard to have lots and bucket lists and you name it, right? And I thought, okay, well, let's say that 30 years from now, we really are in that totally bleak wheels off situation. But I look out my window today and it's actually pretty beautiful. The sun is still coming up, the moon is setting, there's waves to be surf, there's powder skiing to be had, there's music to listen to or share, there's people, there's loved ones in our Lives. If we pissed away these days, ringing our hands about what might yet be but isn't, I mean, it's the old Mark Twain thing, it's like an old man and I've experienced a great many sorrows, Only some of which actually ever happened, you know, we're kind of in that neck of the woods and I sort of felt like, okay, so the simplest is for me, it's almost the hospice tour of the world And life, like about six months ago, I just kind of sat down the super intense urgency that I had been feeling for several years, including the writing of that last book where I was, you Know, like always looking for the solution, always looking for the way through, right? Where was the gap? Where was the seam and the clean, you know, climbing that crazy mountain that would go and that we can make it through? Because every single one of them that I tracked pinched out and it was almost always maulic, right? It was like, you basically, his fingerprints are everywhere where you're like, oh, fuck, that's hypothetically possible, but we're just not going to do it, are we? We're not going to do it because of a perverse incentives, we're not going to do it because if greed or, you know, all of the things, you're just like, fucking goddamn, why? We could, right? We absolutely could, but the statistically my gut sense on are we going to incredibly low given current conditions. So step one was like feed the holy, like celebrate life, shame on us while there is still goodness, truth and beauty in abundance, right? Not to be sucking the matter out of life and not to be putting those memories in the bank. And at the same time, we can never give up hoping because if we give up hope, then that adjacent possibility can never happen, like for certainness, nails in the coffin, if we just go into Despair and cynicism or even just hedonism, like fuck it while the room burns, you know, while room burns, I'm just going to party. Like those are unconscionable decisions. So can we use our feeding of the holy, the idea of like, I'm going to bear witness to the glory of creation, right? And the absolute heart-rending poinency of this human experience. Can I use that, right? In some tiny, small, you know, insignificant, but profound way, rich, really keep the world on its on its axis, right? As most indigenous cultures did, we pray, we make these offerings, we do these things so that the sun keeps rising, right? So that the rain keeps falling so that the crops grow, like can we participate in the wonder of that creative cycle while we are fortunate enough to still have that opportunity and choice. And then oh, by the way, leave space for grace, right? Because it has always happened that way. And funnily enough, this is this was also you've all just mentioned he type something maybe just about AI like a month ago. And he said, we have forever, all of human history, all of human civilization and culture is living in someone else's dream. You know, free markets was a concept, you know, like the democracy, civil rights, everything that we take as the mimetic norms of our reality someone dreamed them first. So the leaving space for grace is and how can we dream a way through that we cannot see from here? We cannot, because I at least I can't, I've looked, right? And most of the people I look up to have been looking. And if you really behind closed doors sit down with most of those folks, it's far grimmer than even the headlines encapsulate, right? But the reality is, is we are still amazingly adaptive, cunning little monkeys with opposable thumbs and brilliant prefrontal cortexes. So, so we can't see from here, what adaptations, what permutations, what mutations will happen around the bend. And this goes back to, you know, Jim Stockdale is Admiral Stockdale. He was the highest ranking POW in Vietnam. And he actually went on to be a vice presidential candidate at one point. But his the Stockdale paradox was he noticed that in those North Vietnamese POW camps that the pessimists didn't live, because they were like, ah, I'm fucked. You know, sure enough, they snuffed it. But the really interesting insight was the optimist didn't live either. Because what happened is they'd be like, we're going to get the boys home for Christmas or Easter or July the 4th. And those dates would come and go. And then they would just collapse, that they would lose all ability to maintain hope after their hope redemption came and went. And he said the paradox was the people who survived were ruthlessly realistic about short-term realities, while remaining relentlessly optimistic about the long-term possibility. I don't know when we're going to get out, but we're going to go home. Right. And that is to me, it's sort of all of us right now. We don't like would like we are in a massive, intersecting, chaotic and complex, tight spot. Right. And it's it's it's the confluence of every intentional and unintentional quality of our civilization to date. And we're just huddling off the cliff. No skid marks. Now, whether or not we can figure out how to turn into chitty, chitty bang bang, you know, and sprout wings or turn into a boat or do something else we can't see from here. And I wouldn't give it super long odds. We may just get subject into the trash compactor of history. Right. But it is on us. It's incumbent on us to maintain a thread of hope and resilience.)
- Time 0:55:00
- snipdpostedtwitter, adjacent_possible, hope, imagined_orders, social_constructs, complexity, existential_crises, global_crises, snipdpostedfacebook,
- [note::- What a beautiful way of looking at our seemingly dire situation.

• Funny how the speaker mentioned the "Adjacent Possible" - just learned of that concept via Simplifying Complexity.]

(highlight:: Big Questions About the Meaning of Life Are Not Yours to Solve: Turn to Your Elders
Summary:
Young Capote discusses how indigenous thinking can provide answers to profound questions about life, the universe, and death, contrasting it with the Western obsession with solving these 'pretentious' questions independently.
He emphasizes the importance of seeking answers from elders, ancestors, gods, rituals, and worship, suggesting that the hubris of attempting to solve these questions independently is characteristic of Western culture.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You know, Tyson, young Capote, he's an aberration, an Aboriginal scholar. He's like, how indigenous thinking can save the world. In fact, if you're asking for another book, I would say, Sand Talk. Sand Talk. Sand Talk. Yeah. And he said something and this goes back to that seven generations idea, but he says, you know, sort of, you know, playfully, it was sort of like you Westerners, right? You're just you're wrapped around the axle of all these childish questions, like, who are we? And what's the universe and what's the meaning of life and where do we go when we die and all these things? These are things that any young person in any intact tradition would already know, understand, and trust the answers to those questions. Like the idea, this goes back to the potted plants thing that we're all sort of isolated and fragmented and trying to figure this out for ourselves by ourselves, he's like, those are Ludicrously pretentious questions to presume you're just going to take on and solve for yourself. You know, like the answers are in our elders, the answers are in our ancestors, the answers are in our gods and rituals and worship. This is who we are. This is the way the world works. This is why we're here. This is where we go. This is where we came from, you know, and just that idea that that's a sort of almost adolescent hubris that we can and ought to figure that shit out from scratch. Because I think it's fascinating. I'm just I just heard that a few weeks ago and I'm still like percolating on the implications.)
- Time 1:18:09
- elderhood, intergenerational_learning, knowledge_transfer, meaning, wisdom,

What's Your Minimum Viable Philosophy (MVP?
Summary:
The speaker emphasizes uncertainty about the existence of a bigger picture or a divine being, despite having profound non-ordinary experiences.
They identify as an agnostic Gnostic, acknowledging the ineffable truth while being unsure of its implications. Their minimum viable philosophy is to believe in a universe with more goodness, truth, and beauty, guiding their actions towards that ideal, despite not claiming it as validated truth.
They express a willingness to be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed if their beliefs are proven wrong.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
What's my minimum viable philosophy? Right. That gets me through the night. And to me, I don't know. And I'm not sure any of us can, but I'm pretty certain I haven't yet figured out with any declarative certainty whether there is a bigger picture, whether there is, you know, the goddess Is alive and magic is a foot, whether all of these things. And that's not to say I haven't had life changing, shaping and informing profound non ordinary experiences I have and I do. But epistemically, where they live and what that means about larger orders or truth claims, I don't know. I'm an agnostic, Gnostic, right? I've had the experience, the undeniable truth of effing the ineffable, right? And I have no fucking idea what the implications are of that. So for me, the MVP, my minimum viable philosophy is just I choose to believe, and this is I'm willing to like double click on this, like this is where I end fact based assertions or evidentiary Argument, I choose to believe that a universe with a little more goodness, truth and beauty in it is better than a universe with a little less. And then that gives me all I need to know to act and to act in hopefully a direction that more aligns with that. I'm not saying that is the truth of it. I'm not saying that is validated or stamped, you know, by a higher power. I'm just I choose to believe that feels rightish. And it's enough to govern all my actions from here. And if now, if it turned out that like I crossed the play of the gates, and I get a little pat on the head like, Oh, Jamie, you were such a sweetheart, you tried you tried and you struggled And you did this all alone and you never prayed to all of us. We were just sitting here ready to cheer you on. It would have been so much fucking easier if you just relaxed and realized you were on rails. And I would have gone up, stone me, right? The joke's on me. But for me, it's enough to get out of bed. Right. And I take that I would rather be pleasantly surprised than gutted when I went to lean on something that wasn't there.)
- Time 1:22:06
- meaning, philosophy, purpose,