Maurice Gaston - Mentorship

On this episode we speak to software developer and my own creative partner (and inspiration for this podcast) Maurice Gaston about mentorship. How do we do it? How does it differ from leadership or management or coaching? When do we feel comfortable in the role? And much, much more.

Recommended content from this episode

Web series
Developing Philly

Events
BarCamp Philly

TV
Ted Lasso

Video
The Anti-Disney Messages of… Disney Movies

Our intro and outro music is "Humbug" by Crowander

Transcript

(Transcript courtesy Louise Boydon)

David Dylan Thomas

Welcome everybody to another edition of “Lately, I've been thinking about…”. I'm your host, David Dylan Thomas calling in from Media, Pennsylvania, formerly home to the Lenni-Lenape people. 

Today I have a very special guest who – in no small way – I'd say as the inspiration for this podcast. This is who I had in mind when I originally conceived it. This someone who I know we will have difficulty keeping this to an hour – this is someone who I know I can just start talking to about any topic and we will go on in varied directions for hours and hours and hours. Many conversations I've had with this person I've been like, oh, I wish we’d made that into a podcast.

So finally, he's here, ladies and gentlemen, Maurice Gaston. I call him Mo and Maurice, introduce yourself and tell the folks what you get up to. 

Maurice Gaston

Wow! Well, I'm not sure that that introduction is actually…the jury's out for me on whether or not that introduction is actually a cautionary tale?

David Dylan Thomas

It can be both!

Maurice Gaston

Wow, so one of things that I'm up to I’ve been up to for a while is I’m a software developer. That does not define what I'm up to, I mean, David knows, I certainly have been doing quite a few things outside of that whenever I can. I like to think of myself as creative enough to be somewhat varied, also bored enough to be somewhat varied in the kinds of things that I do. So, there's a little bit of like he and I have done web series together, we've done some community planning together with BarCamp. There’s stuff in there. I’d like to think I’m a half not-so-terrible photographer, I dabble with bad music.

David Dylan Thomas

Cinematographer. That’s right, you’ve done the music for all of our web series too.

Maurice Gaston

Yeah, I have. Again, I caution people, don't go out with your expectations too high! And then, you know, we take requests!

David Dylan Thomas

We kind of do though! So, Mo and I made this web series called ‘Developing Philly’ and on the strength of that, we were asked to co-run BarCamp Philly. This amazing event, if I do say so myself, in Philadelphia. It's this un-conference, I’ll put a link in the show notes – and that was not the plan when we made the web series, “Gee, I hope they ask us to run this institution of Philadelphia events.” But so, in that sense we do take requests! 

Maurice Gaston

Yeah. It's true! And I think one of the things that we do fairly well is try to be sensitive to the communities that we sort of getting gauged in with.

David Dylan Thomas

Yeah.

Maurice Gaston

And to that I should note – whether or not this makes it into the final podcast – that being because I've been COVID-ised, that does not mean actually having COVID, that just means that affected by a global pandemic, I have a duty to return to some semblance of attention because BarCamp has been lapsed for a little bit.

So, I don't know exactly what that means in terms of the sort of immediate future of BarCamp, but it means that I’ve got to get back and take a look at it. I should also mention there are a number of also absolutely wonderful community minded people who were helping us run this, who we went through a process of actually trying to desperately recruit, to ask them to be on board. They're all great. They also take a great deal of both credit and ownership for this institution that should continue. So, I’ve got some phone calls to make!

David Dylan Thomas

I feel like with all this buildup we should explain. So BarCamp is an institution. It's an un-conference that was created in the 2000 and ermm…I think the first one was in San Francisco maybe, but the basic idea is you show up at the event space. There's usually some kind of big board that has times along one side and rooms along another. And then you just get a bunch of index cards and just with Sharpies and just write down, “I want to talk about knitting” and you put that up and whatever time and space you want, and, “I want to talk about CSS” and you put that up and then within like an hour, if you're lucky, it usually takes even less time than that, the entire events schedules there and we now have a conference.

 The conference has been created in real time by the people who are attending. So, it's this great democratic approach to conferences which we embraced. BarCamp had been going for a minute before we got there but then we were asked to run it. It was sort of like on the one hand, I was like, “okay, this is going to be hard, but the other hand, I don't want anyone else to do this.”

I highly recommend you come to BarCamp Philly if, and when, it returns and we're all pulling for y'all because it does take a tremendous effort. If there was one in your town, I highly recommend, or if you want to start one in your town.

Maurice Gaston

Right, right. That's the other sort of subtext, you could do this.

David Dylan Thomas

Yeah, yeah. I think I said, you could do bar BarCamp in an alley if you wanted. 

Maurice Gaston

That’s right. No reason to wait on us crazy folks.

David Dylan Thomas

So, all that buildup to ask, and I will note for our listeners, we had an audio malfunction just a second ago so if Mo sounds different now that is why, because we had to switch inputs. 

But Mo, tell us, what have you been thinking about lately?

Maurice Gaston

I'll tell you the thing I told you before. I don't know! Slightly different emphasis than the first time. If he ever does release the sort of outtakes from this, then you'll be able to know the difference.

No, I mean, that's not really fair. One of the things that I've been realizing is that something that has been predicated mostly because of work or because of the things that are sort of changing at work, is true of some of the things that have been doing outside of work, sort of on automatic, like on autopilot.

That has a lot to do with being, oh God, you say this the wrong way and it's going to sound maybe a little big headed – and there's no hubris here at all, honestly but I’ve been thinking an awful lot about mentorship, both receiving and sort of giving mentorship. But that in the context of what it means to sort of coach. That's because I've been asked to do that almost at an official level work with the teams that I'm sort of technical lead for and stuff.

People have put me in the position of having to recognize that this is something that I do, and really lauding me for it, which feels very uncomfortable. I know people who are currently doing it as a function of their sort of passion and job and work and spend a lot of time actually thinking about what that means and would probably be really mad at somebody saying like, “oh, I just do it. I can't help it.”

But I'm also freely willing to acknowledge that I may or may not do it well in every case. And it's definitely a learning curve associated with it, but I've been thinking an awful lot about what it means.

I had a really good conversation with a distinguished engineer at the company I worked for. We were talking about the typical problem with people who follow the sort of individual contributor path in a tech organization. Often you get to a point where there's a fork in the road, and a lot of old school companies will tell you, well, in order to proceed with your career, you have to consider actually managing people and push people into technical people and to management positions.

They may or may not have any love for, or really facility with what management means in the large part, because sometimes a lot of these companies don't have a really good definition or schooling or any kind of help with people learning what real management is or define it poorly.

But even when it's defined well, even when there's actually resources to sort of help you how to do it, there's an awful lot of difficulty with that technical perspective turning into something that's less about contributing code or a code acumen or even mentoring in the process of being a better technical contributor to something where you actually have to care about the sort of wherewithal and growth of the people under you in a way that's disconnected from their specific technical skills.

He was struggling with it because he's great. He's wonderful and he does an awful lot of what I would consider good management for the people that he actually leads, but he also tries to broaden that and to have impact across the company and he realizes he doesn't scale. 

So, there's this struggle with, even if you're comfortable that you're not a manager and you still are looking for ways that you can contribute back to the communities that you're in, how do you amplify that impact? He was struck with the notion that in large part, what he's been doing is coaching and mentoring. 

Even though there's a limit to how much of you to go around for something like that, that has a lot of interesting avenues outside of just one-on-one when you set it up right.  I think that him walking down that path with me, the struggles he was going under really crystallized for me exactly where and when I engage in that behavior and what it can mean if done right. And how much further, I guess, in this journey, I have to go in order to be able to think that I'm actually doing it right. 

It's amazing. It's been difficult to articulate, but I think it's really interesting to sort of dig deep into what does it mean when you're actually mentoring someone or coaching someone? Well, I'll stop right there.

David Dylan Thomas

I think it's interesting, the context you're bringing it up in is a management context, right. So, I'm curious in your experience, what is the difference between managing and mentoring?

Maurice Gaston

Yeah, I mean, I'm just sort of getting there, right? I can't say that I've spent a large part of my career managing people, but I feel like people have been trying to put me in that position for a while and leaning into those things that they identify as sort of managerial, when I would say it's a little bit more like, well, I'm just really coaching people or I'm really sort of trying to mentor them in the right direction. 

I think a lot of that has to do with, people perceive that someone who is able to help another person become more confident and to make more decisions and hopefully better decisions in their day to day are helping them in a sort of managerial way. You're growing them in some fashion. 

You don't really think about it this way very often, there's a reason why we use the word “coach” differently than “mentor”, I think, or “manager.” It’s not just because of sports, but in a way, it is because sports, right. But a lot of the stuff that both coaches do and managers do, good coaches and good managers do, can be the same around making sure that the people on your team are fulfilling are being fulfilled by fulfilling that role, and can perform well usually in concert with others. 

And since the zeitgeist has changed for work and we're not in search of the perfect individual worker, as much as we used to be anymore, this whole notion that you really have to do everything in teams now, at least in my corner of the technical world, that need for a coach, that need for somebody to go through and make sure that the team is doing well seems to be greater.

Management in my company tends to try and do that through really helping the individuals so that they can help figure out where they belong in the team, etc. It's not as clear cut as with a sports team where you might have positions and people actually play a certain position.

I wish there were a goalie on my team. Somebody I could always depend on to catch that thing. I don't care what the height of the people on my team are. I'm not shuffling them around based on height or something else like that.

David Dylan Thomas

You can't know their height, it's virtual! Every time I go to an in real life event and people are seeing each other for the first time, it's always like, “Oh my God, you're taller than I thought you were!”

Maurice Gaston

I'm always more like, “you have more depth than I thought” No, that's terrible. That's another thing, that's a whole another thing, not to wander off into crazy side conversations, but being virtual has been really, really weird on managing and running teams. Particularly now that we're back to some sort of hybrid level where some people are going into the office and some people aren't going to the office.

And even when they're in the office, I spoke with today, he's like, “my team is completely virtual, so why the heck am I here? Where do I want to be on Zoom? At home or in the office?” and it’s true. We get a lot of that and we have to avoid an awful lot of like pitfalls of sort of hybrid behavior, which can include things like how do I make sure that I'm treating the people who I only see on a screen with the same kind of reverence and attention and focus as I do the person who stops by my desk?

David Dylan Thomas

And to a certain degree you can’t. My version of that is giving presentations and for the most part, my presentations are all virtual or are all in person. Occasionally though I'm doing these hybrid ones where there are people attending via Zoom and there are people physically there and I have to work overtime and kind of over share for the people on Zoom. So if we're doing a Q&A, I'll go to the Zoom folks first to sort of reflect like, you are here, you are present, we care about you. But even with that, there is a disconnect that just isn't there if you're in the room.

Maurice Gaston

Yeah, you probably remember, as a function of BarCamp, we were talking to Wharton about some of their presentations, but the classroom spaces, they worked really, really hard to get the virtual presence within it and apparently there's this thing where in some of the rooms the virtual class can be projected onto the back or one screens in the back of the regular presentation room so that the presenter can actually point at someone in the audience who's in another location. If the person local turns and looks, they can see them.

David Dylan Thomas

Wow!

Maurice Gaston

So, you really are bringing the virtual people into your space, and I think that's the missing piece. No Zoom hybrid team is really, unless you're in like some crazy conference setup like Cisco uber-tech room where you get that sort of wraparound or TVs or whatever, and everybody has a camera on the room so that everybody can see everybody. That's really what it is. You may be interacting conscientiously with both sets of groups of people, but do they get tainted by it?

David Dylan Thomas

And that's a huge issue. Like how long before we just get to like the Tupac holograms for everybody?

Maurice Gaston

Wouldn't that be great. That would be great! I've always wanted it to look like Tupac! 

David Dylan Thomas

That'd be awesome. If software could only make you look like Tupac!

Maurice Gaston

Exactly, it takes all of the D&I considerations out of it, right? Tupac Dave, what do you think?

David Dylan Thomas

Well…

Maurice Gaston

I hate to say it, somehow – I know we're going even further down some crazy rabbit hole – but somehow, I bet you, we would find a way to other people. Even in a room full of Tupacs.

David Dylan Thomas

Oh, absolutely. When I was a kid, I don't know how I came to this insight, but I'm convinced it's true, I was convinced that even if everyone were the same color, the same gender, like literally just clones, we would still find a way to fuck each other over because there's always going to be a need for it – or not even a need, but like an advantage to it.

It's always going to be easier for you to steal your shit than to ask you nicely for it. So, if I can concoct an excuse, it's like, “well, yeah, we look exactly like, but you're 10 feet to the left and we all know the left sucks. So I'm going to take a show now!” 

Maurice Gaston

It’s funny how many small little jabs at that we've had, through sort of our cultural history. And yet we still like, that's uncovering some really deep down fucked up shit about human behavior, human tendency. And yet we still sort of we get confronted with it and we're still like, “no, that's not us. Oh, I didn't see that Star Trek episode”

David Dylan Thomas

Racism finds a way. So going back to the managerial thing, so I'm curious then.  Like when I think about the difference between management and mentoring, I think about it also in terms of just like the mentor is kind of accountable to the mentee. In a way the manager is accountable to the person they're managing especially if you look at the statistic that when people leave jobs, 90% of the time, it's because of bad management. But the person being managed is also accountable to the manager.

In a way, I feel like the mentee is not accountable to the mentor and that feels like a significant difference. There's not like a business relationship per se. And that feels to me like a key difference between like the mentor-management relationship.

Maurice Gaston

I think you're right. Although the few structured mentoring circumstances that I've been involved in, and then maybe this is just anecdotal because maybe it's the things that have been specific to me, but they always try to frame it that like you should make your mentees on the hook for something. Like some sort of interaction bar or some sort of feedback. Even if it is just, “you need to set up the meetings with me. I'm available to you. You need to tell me when you want to talk or what you might want to”, some level of accountability. Because I think that’s the thing, that's that they want to avoid is that it is unilateral, mentorship becomes this thing where people talk at you. 

It's really supposed to be a dialogue where the mentee can benefit from the experience of the mentor. I think the implication is it's supposed to be pull. That you pull from the mentor those things that can help you to grow, but that the mentor doesn't isn't necessarily on the hook to get to know you all so well that they could just sort of – this isn't like an analyst or your therapist. They're not there necessarily to get to know you so well, they can be like, “oh, Dave, you're just doing that thing again.”

Maybe they'll notice those patterns, maybe that kind of stuff, but it really is about reaching out and taking advantage of the mentors’ experience and maybe to some degree how empathic they might be around what you're going through and give you some perspective.

I don't think you get that without it being sort of more pull than push, because otherwise I think it becomes really, really, I don't know, talking down at people?

David Dylan Thomas

Then it becomes sort of a drill Sergeant relationship.

Maurice Gaston

And ironically, I think that management, as I see a lot of people wanting to redefine management, servant leadership level of management. You’re right, I think that there definitely is that mutual sort of agreed buy-in. You both are sort of beholden to the other, in some respects, but I see it moving more in the direction of mentorship.

Are the managers really just there to like, well, I don’t know, I've heard advice to the effect that managers are basically there to evaluate, to sense and to try and amplify good patterns and remove bad patterns. Mostly they're there at the behest or in the capacity of trying to help elevate and amplify their employees.

If that's the case, that sounds really like it's on the edge or inching towards what mentorship is all about. Again, it's pull. As an individual contributor, I need, as a member of a team I need and the managers there to say, “what do you need? How can I help? How can I remove barriers for you? How can I help you work with the team?” Sometimes those barriers are teammates. Sometimes those barriers are the managers!

David Dylan Thomas

It's interesting too, because when I think of management versus mentorship. To me, a mentor, it's interesting to talk about pull because to me, when I think of mentorship, I think of guidance. I'm thinking very much of a Yoda. That's kind of the picture of my head, Yoda was strict and all, but he was guiding Luke. I think you're right; removing bad habits, about unlearning and learning like all of that. Whereas when I think of management, I do think more of that drill sergeant. It's not guidance, it’s orders, it's marching orders.

I agree, we are in some spheres moving towards a more empathetic form of leadership, and that's actually the other question I wanted to ask you, if there are these fuzzy distinctions between management and mentorship, what is the difference between say leadership and mentorship?

Maurice Gaston

Yeah, that's really good. Something you said about Yoda, makes me think that there’s a whole other wrinkle that we need to get into around facets, but let me save that for after leadership.

So, I am beginning – and you know, it's just us talking – so a lot of this is coming obviously from, you know, just where my head is at right now and it's not meant to necessarily represent the best practice of any of these disciplines that we're actually talking about per se. I'm fumbling around trying to figure all of this out too.

My understanding right now about leadership is that it is about vision. It is about setting a, I mean, it’s in the name, you want people to follow you. It doesn't necessarily have to be about you, they're following something. And so, it's about setting a vision that is hopefully both challenging and attainable. You want to guide people forward to something. I think that managers don't necessarily have to have that mandate, but I think all good leaders do.

If you're defining your manager as a leader, a people leader, then yeah, that's a piece of what your manager's going to have to do for you. Manager – I mean, it's a terrible title because it implies that you're like, “Well, I've got to manage you.”

David Dylan Thomas

And it implies that people need to be managed. You can’t leave them on their own. They're just running around like idiots, but it's like, “Well, you need to be managed. You need to be corralled.”

Maurice Gaston

It’s a super top-down pedantic…

David Dylan Thomas

These hierarchical relationships don't seem to mesh well with where we're moving, some of us are moving as a more collectivist, empathetic, sincere society. The hierarchical structures seem opposed to that and yet there is benefit in good management. There is benefit in mentorship, there's benefit in good leadership. And I feel us starting to negotiate those terms.

Maurice Gaston

This gets back to what I was talking about, like with facets. We're labeling and trying to fill the buckets of these labels with things that have both been historically true, but maybe are becoming more true.

Servant leadership, I think, is an imperfect, but laudable movement towards trying to redefine what’s owed and the power of disparity in that leadership dynamic. It's trying to say like, “I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing this for you. And so, if I'm doing it for you, then I am a servant to your needs in some literal sense and therefore I have a duty and that duty should be expressed.”

I think management styles leaning towards more certain leadership models is just a way to try and approach breaking down that dictatorial, be it a very sort of predictable, mean, that's the thing about old school management is that it was meant to introduce a certain amount of predictability to the process of leading people.

You have a whole system of measurement and definitions and labeling all in the service of basically saying, “I make widgets. I want the widgets to come out the same because once I actually do that, I can commoditize them and I can optimize the process around it. And if the people are of the final question mark in that equation, then they need to be managed so that I can get my widgets.” 

I think we're realizing that most of the work that we're doing the widget stuff is like the easy part, the creative discovery, the paradigm shifting the entrepreneurial aspect of it, all of that really requires people who are able to really grow and think and learn, learn from their mistakes, make mistakes early, wash, rinse, repeat.

That doesn't happen as predictably, as I think the old school management style would have thought, and so we need a new style.

David Dylan Thomas

Yeah, I think what we're running into, because I always bring it back to this, you're trying to tie all this nice contained still on mentorship and management and I'm like, what about Trump.

I can't help but think that the hierarchical management style we're used to seeing. I can't say it comes from, because I don't have a historical evolution to point to, but I can say it very closely resembles militaristic forms of organization, slavery forms of organization, industrial forms of organization, where it's like one person at the lead controlling what are essentially things that make other things and do other things.

When you try to translate that to, “we're going to start caring about people as human beings”, it doesn't fit well. I feel like part of the reason we're fumbling is we don't have a go-to metaphor for what it's feels like to be in a work context where we are all in some form contributing to some greater financial goal, but we're not doing it in a way that is about hierarchy.

Maurice Gaston

I mean, we do, we have two slightly diverged models. One of them is really represented by a facet I was going to try and get to, but it's education and sports.

David Dylan Thomas

Okay. Go on!

Maurice Gaston

I mean, so let's talk about teachers by the way. And what are teachers though? In many ways, shapes or forms, teachers aren't necessarily trying to lead us to something specific. You could say they want to teach this particular subject and that’s their goal and then their vision for the student is “you will learn this stuff by the end of the semester” and that's great for tactical, but strategically teachers are trying to better the people that they're teaching through knowledge.

Maybe I should be really careful how I say that because it's really better to their knowledge through teaching. There's this sort of understood that people are better off well-educated than not and so if your goal is to come out, spit out educated people, but it, but it's very much hierarchical, right? 

There's an order to the way that that's actually going. And yet they owe the duty to the students, understand that most teachers are extraordinarily empathic, and understand how difficult certain things might be and that their role is there to serve the students, not to serve their own well, I mean, some teachers serve their own ego, but there's always an exception, a terrible, horrible, life scarring exception. 

But that's the thing that I think teaching embodies, even if I I'm hardly mangling how a teacher would define themselves. That's just sort of one of the things that I actually see about what teaching can be like, even though it's hierarchical, it still represents a more in-tune and empathic path.

And sports, I mean, sports. Sports are sports.  I won't be that guy who is mostly a sports ball kind of guy. Even though I grew up season tickets football and played team sports all through my school years and stuff like that. But there's something about that and having to have that connection amongst the team, having to work together, accomplishing things, etc. 

Yes, the coach is super important. Yes, even the team captain, depending on what your team might be really important, but ultimately, they're not nearly as dictatorial when the ball hits the field as you might think in a hierarchical sense. 

David Dylan Thomas

It’s funny because so first of all, for those of you who are not into sports, sports is what they do on Ted Lasso! But it's funny when you mentioned that, so Ted Lasso, which if you haven't seen it, you should absolutely see it. Have you?

Maurice Gaston

Oh, yes. Football is life!

David Dylan Thomas. 

Football is life, right! So, Ted Lasso, when it came out, there were a hundred think pieces about how Ted Lasso, the character embodies great management, great leadership. I'm connecting, literally as I’m talking about this, I'm connecting those dots between part of what's facilitating that is he's doing it in a sports context, that it is critical to the success of the team that the individual players also be successful, both as skilled athletes, but as human beings.

He gets that and he nurtures that, he's highly empathetic, but all of that fits. All of that works. And it's no coincidence that that's happening in a sports context. It could happen in a tech team context, but it would be a little more heavy lifting, and it's not that they don't talk about things like profit, they talk about things like money, very much on the show, but it's sort of like the context for like a tech team or the staff at Walmart it’s much more transactional. There's a few more steps to get to where it’s really getting to, no that is better if the people in the Amazon factory actually have their humanity.

Maurice Gaston

I won't deflate Ted Lasso’s satirical elements, but it's so much more open and – how shall I say – authentic in some ways, most of the time we see that actually done in all of the other contexts that you talk about, there have been shows that talk about what it's like to work in a big sort of Walmart store and it's satire, and it has very human stories, but it's satire.

David Dylan Thomas

It is clear that the environment is against them and will always be against it. It's the walking dead, the environment is against them. It's just with big corporations instead of zombies.

Maurice Gaston

Somehow now I want to see the mashup between the office and the walking dead.

David Dylan Thomas

Oh my God. So Ramiro did do a found-footage, zombie movie, but it was not like that. I think that would be amazing!

Maurice Gaston

I would watch it! I'm zombied out and I would still watch it.

David Dylan Thomas

I would watch it even more if it was from the zombies’ point of view. If it was the zombies giving those looks to camera when one of the others obviously does something stupid.

Maurice Gaston

That's right. Trying to eat the brains out of a mannequin or something.

David Dylan Thomas

And it's like, that's the way they were in life and they're still acting the same…this thing writes itself. The rest of this podcast can be used to be a pitch session. Let's break the story.

Maurice Gaston

Is there any way to have people electronically sign your podcast beforehand with NDA’s?

David Dylan Thomas

Actually, we’re joking but Kevin Smith made an entire movie. It was called Tusk and the whole thing was pitched over a series of podcasts from this podcast between him and Scott. They were just talking about it and it eventually became, “oh no, let's actually make this.”

I don't know when in there, I think it was because no one wanted to make the Walrus movie so why does he have to worry about anyone stealing that?

Maurice Gaston

There may be something to that!

David Dylan Thomas

But there is precedent for just hashing out an idea in a podcast.

Maurice Gaston

Sort of like how The Martian was written sort of except not in writing, but mostly podcast. And, wow, it'd be great to get the feedback though in the comments.

David Dylan Thomas

Yeah.

Maurice Gaston

I fear that it will mostly be the comments like, “who is this guy?” But we'll see. So I think we do have some semblance, but I think to, to your point, and the whole, why hasn't Ted Lasso put it in a different context. I think in many ways, this different way of looking at what it means, looking at what it means to help manage or lead or coach people within contexts other than sports and education, that's a real paradigm shift for people. I think that that's been the thing that's made it sort of the blind spot and why it seems like such an ill fit when we apply it, well, it's a troublesome fit when we apply it to the work setting.

I mean, there's books and books and books of people basically saying like, “Ooh, look at me! This is a way to make this happen.” I love that the sort of religious metaphor of everybody holding a piece of a broken mirror to explain all the different world's religions. 

In some ways all these self-help books are kind of the same thing. We took a big giant mirror that is the human experience and broke it into a kajilion pieces. Everybody’s holding up a piece of going like, “This is central, so important!” And, and you know, it echoes and I think it makes some sense to the people that are willing to actually entertain it.

But it's always a tough shoe horn fight to get it into your space. How's it going to transform my workplace and how am I going to get everybody on board? Boy, I could really use somebody who could sell this vision to my company, a real leader.

It's challenging. It really is. But my personal journey right now is about trying to see how I have been slowly sort of surreptitiously leaning into these aspects of my own personality that for reasons have been growing in strength over the years and because of certain types of reinforcement and people just saying stuff, I've been learning an awful lot about that that's how I operate. Sort of looking around and going like, well, okay, if that's the case, then do I need to be in a different place? Do I need to be doing different stuff, different work, in essence? 

Because of course, like every individual contributor at a big tech organization, at some point, I faced the same kinds of forks in the road, because we haven't defined it in any other way.

David Dylan Thomas

Yeah. And I’ve had kinda that too, and the places I've worked, I've been lucky enough to work at some places that have tried to make a third path of like, you just get better at what you do. It’s funny too, I think about, like if you're in a band, if you're The Edge in U2 and you're just really going to play on the guitar, at no point are there like, “Okay, you've been playing the guitar for a while too much. I think you need to manage some other guitarists.” It's like, no, just keep getting better at being The Edge.

Granted U2 doesn't have to scale to be 50 rock bands. It's one rock band, but still, it's just sort of this interesting dichotomy between how we think about what is valuable for someone who's good at something to do with their time over time when they're in a performance aspect, versus when they're in a corporate aspect.

Maurice Gaston

Yeah, actually, that's fascinating to me that whole, I'm trying to remember…I watched a little sort of promotional interview with the woman who is Japanese Breakfast. She's really starting to take off at this point. Wonderful, wonderful artist and she had an opportunity that was part promotion, but also like a really good opportunity to be flown off to this recording studio in - I don't know if it was Bali. I forget where it was. It was somewhere out of the country and record at this fantastic recording studio, and then I'm gonna go back and everything. And I'm like, you know, nobody is coming to me and saying, “Hey, I like what you do. I like what you code. Why don't you fly out over here and code from here?” This is not a thing that's actually going to happen. That'd be awesome. 

David Dylan Thomas

I don’t even know that would be invalid because in theory that recording artists could record, if it's a concert you have to go to a certain place, but it was just recording you can theoretically record from everywhere. But like artistically, we understand that different places have different energy and like, “oh, this is where David Bowie recorded Low in Berlin.” So, I don't know that it's invalid to say you would code differently in Berlin than you would in downtown Philly?

Maurice Gaston

And I'm sure I would, everything from my lunch choices influencing my energy level to the people I meet and the perspectives that I might gain while I'm actually there just because of that change in venue, but we don't value it, is the important part. It's probably just as valid, but nobody's going, “That's going to get me a couple of points in Nasdaq. Stock value is going to skyrocket, took Mo to Berlin.” I don't think that's gonna work.

David Dylan Thomas

I mean, and that's obviously where I feel like is the disconnect that simple? Like capitalism. I don't think there's been a single episode this season where it hasn’t come up. It was capitalism all along. 

That doesn't sort of enter the picture, but at the same time, I am seeing the shift towards, is that the problem. Can you have empathetic capitalism? Is that kind of like the round shape of the square hole?

It’s sort of like saying, “Hey, being nice in capitalism, kiss”, And…I don't know.

Maurice Gaston

And if that's not, then what are we doing? Why the move towards this more empathetic way of like actually, I mean, there is no, this is like moonlighting, right? If the two leads in this romcom aren't going to get together, why are we even doing this?

David Dylan Thomas

It’s an interesting moment, so I'll give you an example of like how this plays out in my head. There's a video essay I watched about Disney and how Disney villains back in the day – Disney movie villains – back in the day were generally royalty or royalty adjacent. So, the evil step-mom, the evil queen, whoever. 

Over time, the villains become more capitalist. So, the evil circus manager, performer, whatever, in Dumbo, who's almost a stand in for Bob Iger. It becomes increasingly transparent.

However, the business model of Disney doesn't change that whole time. And in fact, it only becomes more capitalist over time and some of the things that Disney executives are doing are super transparently similar to things that Disney villains are doing. 

And it’s this disconnect and the people making the essay were saying like, it's interesting, on the one hand they're making these bad guys, the bad guys because that is sort of the consciousness right now is that corporate is evil and it's reflecting the times and it's easy to sell Cruella Deville or the bad guy in Cruella or bad woman in Cruella as the villain because it's corporate, it's evil. We get that right.

So, it is a monetary decision. You will make more money making capitalism in the villain than you will make royalty the villain. At the same time, you were training your audience to hate you. You were teaching the peasants how to make guillotines. It's this weird thing where it's like, is that sustainable? Where does that go? Because then those same people, I'm not saying this is a one to one, but those same people go to get jobs and they're like, “I don't want you to treat me like Michael Keaton in Dumbo. I deserve better than this, the movies I grew up with said I deserve a living wage.” And it's like, “Oh, who taught you that? Oh crap, we did.”

Maurice Gaston

Exactly. Well, I mean, I guess though, I guess the trick is to be on the slippery slope, but not lose control. There's nothing that says that a company treating its employees well, and being empathetic towards their growth and fulfillment as employees, is anathema to making money, at least on the surface. But at some level you do open a couple of doors to things like, “Well, it's great to get the kudos, my manager is always telling me what I'm doing really well and blah, blah, blah and I have fulfilling work and everything like that. I could use a little bit more money though.”

There's always that open door to the, “as long as I'm asking for thing, for you to remove roadblocks in my path, how about you remove my like a lack of ability to pay for a better mortgage”, or even what we're seeing today, this whole, “I want to work from home forever, but I still want to be a part of it.”

If you're part of a really big organization, let's say you're part of an Amazon and you're the kind of guy who does coding, kind of woman who does coding and kind of anyone who does coding and you want to stay home. Yet Amazon has spent a lot of money on campuses that are giving you all these perks and are great places to work in theory.

They're left with this decision to make. “Okay, you want to work from home. Let's just say, we entertain that notion for a moment. What do we do with these buildings? Do we just sort of like, get rid of them? What's the physical problem? How do we solve that?” Those are things that start to eventually get sticky for companies.

Do we keep moping? I mean, I'm sure all the employees like the idea that, there's a headquarters and there's a place that they could go. They don't want to necessarily feel trapped in their homes, but at the same time, is it worth the money to keep that opportunity open for them, knowing that a lot of them are basically gonna say like, “Yeah, yeah, I'm good. I'm good at home. That's fine.”

David Dylan Thomas

I think that as far as the campuses go, I'm wondering if we're going to start to see a lot of those things just get sold, to the Chinese, to other corporations that actually need physical space to work. Just because of the upkeep. I know a pharmaceutical companies with huge campuses 40 miles north of where I am in Pennsylvania and I know nobody's been in those buildings for a year or two now but they still got to pay rent. So, it's like they’ve got to be considering it, just cut losses and just sell it off. Let that become someone else's problem. 

But deeper than that is the social, you're absolutely right, corporations are notorious for co-opting revolution. That's like their stock and trade. And what I wonder is sort of like, well, what's the point of no return that you've actually gone so far that you can't co-opt it?

I'm thinking about a movie where like the Avengers unionize. It's like shit, because even the nice corporations hate unions. Even the corporations that are in all other ways, they're not even for profit, they're for purpose corporations, even they hate unions.

So, that would be this thing where like Disney has gone off the deep end. Like, Stark Industries has a union now, what the hell?

Maurice Gaston

There’s very definite money pragmatic reasons why big industry doesn't like having unions. I get it. There are tendencies within units, the sort of process of unionization, the way that currently practice it, put it that way, where there's a tipping point. They start out actually being really supportive of making sure that the employees get their due and can negotiate fairly with big, powerful entities that normally an individual can't negotiate with. So very protective, I think, sorry, this is all sort of economic theory by opinion, but I believe serve a purpose.

But then there's that point at which we've all sort of seen, a union can get to a point where if mismanaged or if it gets too big or if it becomes too concerned with its own perpetuation, that it ceases to be completely concerned with serving the constituents and has this sort of split duty concerned with serving itself one way or the other, whether it's criminal or just negligent or even innocent.

I can see a big organization being like, “Oh, I don't want, let's just be nice to our people and then they won't have to unionize, let's do all the right stuff and they won't have to unionize” and somebody can still come along in that sort of framework and be like, “Yeah, but I still don't know that I have guarantees. You’re nice, but I don't know that I have a guarantee. I need a guarantee. I need that certitude. So, I'm going to start asking the unions to come in.” And most of that, I mean, if it's really that level of like, I just need a better trust mechanism, that's probably not a climate where a union is going to sweep in and actually get a lot of support in and take over in an environment where the people are already being treated well. But you could see even the companies that treat people well they're like, “You should trust us. We're doing all the right stuff!”

David Dylan Thomas

They take it personally.

Maurice Gaston

It’s like I’m wounded, where does that personal level of like, “Dude, I'm with you!”

David Dylan Thomas

When I think about that, it's sort of like the folks who put together CRISPR, the gene editing software, like having a bioethicist on their team and they had one other team from day one. I don't know if it was an argument or not, but that was a part of the team was embedded.

And it’s sort of like it’s saying, “We're being nice to you. Why do you need a union?” It's like saying, “We're inventing this gene editing software, but we're cool people. We're not going to fuck it up. We're not going to do anything bad. We're nice. We don't need anyone who's an expert in being nice to come in and tell us how to be nice – we were born nice, come on!”

Maurice Gaston

I have the wonderful and scary experience of having gone to an AI conference at NYU that was being held both by some of the technical departments there in computer science, but also by the philosophy department. And of course, you're talking about AI, so it's only interesting if you're talking about the real troubling things about AI. If artificial general intelligence is invented and it's like, “Hey man, this is great. How can I help you?” Then there's nothing to talk about.

David Dylan Thomas

It’s like, “I'm gonna help you score some weed, dude. Let's chill out. Where's my weed AI?”

Maurice Gaston

Right! It's not an interesting discussion, philosophers are like, “Yawn, I'm going to go over here and talk about why we exist, just leave me alone, call me when you need me.” But of course, they were focusing on like the paper clip problem all of the different individual issues that mount up as you start talking about artificial intelligence, that, of course there are people in the audience, people from industry, and there were a couple people there from big companies that I won't name because they could be listening to your podcast, who were like, “Listen, we're working on this whole thing, but we got this.”

Almost quite literally after being somewhat quietly specifically called out as, “We're really worried about big companies just sort of going off and doing their own thing and they should be more open source and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” You get a couple people going like, “well, no, it's cool. We got this.”

The tenor of the audience. I mean, it's crazy, but they have a point, right? Like why should we trust you, I guess is where that goes? Even though nothing terrible has happened, there has not been a robot apocalypse that I’m aware of.

David Dylan Thomas

I do want to return to sort of the mentor journey now, is this something that you sought, like, “I want to be a mentor” or was it more like, “Oh wait, I guess I'm a mentor, now I need to figure out what that is.”

Maurice Gaston

Well, it’s the label. It's the recognition from people, because I have a lot of people sort of asking me professionally, “Where do you see yourself? Where do you want to go? What are you doing? What excites you?”

I'll go through the whole rigamarole while trying to do the song and dance. That means I don't necessarily have to shift over to the stereotype and say like, “I guess I need to be a manager now or, no, I always want to continue to code...please stop trying to define me!”

But anyway, I'm having a good time anyway. As they start to ask you questions, invariably, you will get people who will volunteer something that they see about you or your success or your personality or the things that make you strong in some way as a means to maybe nudge you in a given direction, or to suggest that those skills could be used or better used one way versus the other.

I kept running into people who were saying like, “But dude, you do this thing.” And I'm like, “Well, yeah, I do that thing because I'm part of the team and I want people to do well…”

But they were like, “No, but you really do this thing as opposed to like your other teammates who are just interested in a job, well done, clap their hands, go home at the end of the day and you're like giving people notes on what went right in that meeting or that kind of stuff.”

And I'm like, “Well, yeah.” And there's always easy answers, like, “Well I'm really into process, or I've been doing scrum for so long that the team is as important to me...” But having people trying to identify those specific traits meant they aren't always really super nuanced about it.

The first thing they want to do is put a label on it and when you're faced with that label more than a few times, you start to go like, Well, all right. So, I guess I can see those things in me that they think echo this trope. So, what do I do about that? Is it real? And more importantly, is it something that I enjoy? Just because it’s knee jerk, that doesn't necessarily mean I want to make my life about it. I might have a real problem. I need to get that addressed rather than it being something that becomes a passion for me. 

No, as it turns out I find that I can define a certain amount of satisfaction and joy and fulfillment out of helping people to do it the right way or to maybe put a different spin or add a perspective to where they are, where they're going, or what they're doing. More than it just being a propensity for being a busy body or a know it all, which I definitely have some of that DNA. 

When I think about it and when I try and practice it and be really sensitive about it and honest with myself about it, it’s also a little bit of I'm getting a little endorphin rush when people do better or work or feel better.

Then you start comparing it with things. What's it feel to really finish and check in a good bit of code and have it PR’ed by your peers and make it into the code base. That's a rush. That's cool. I made something, how’s that compare to really helping the team get something across the finish line as a team, where you may not have put a single line of code in there? Does that feel as good? Better?

David Dylan Thomas

Better one better two!

Maurice Gaston

Right, that starts the exploration. Trying to listen and being critical about it and then maybe reaching a point where I understand that that might be true, but then realizing exactly how far I have to go in order to be really good at something like that it starts to make you realize that if this is something that I – not, if you, or some other person – if I were to pursue this, there are things that I very definitely have to do. And now internally, it turns from being a question that I have to answer because it's the stereotypical fork in the road for my business and all of my peers asking, to, well, dude, you're having this conversation with yourself. What do you want to do about it? 

Not for nothing, I'm talking a lot from my specific sort of employment context and the business context, because that eats up an awful lot of my day. That's where I spend most of my hours is at work.

But honestly, if I look back, we started talking about some of the stuff that we've done together and the projects we've been involved in and I look back at the majority of them that I'm proud of, they've almost entirely been about adding to the conversation or community that I've been a part of, which while not necessarily mentorship in a strict sense, certainly is still in that same vein of us all moving forward. Maybe teaching a little, maybe it’s more the teaching than the coaching. Maybe in some instances it was more of the coaching than the mentoring, but all still sort of similar vibes with similar endorphin rushes around the completion, right?

David Dylan Thomas

Yeah. And I don't think I'm too far out of line in saying that there's a decent degree to which you've been a mentor for me. I mean, when we worked together on Developing Philly, which was, for our listeners who might not know, I mean, like 800 people saw it on YouTube, so I'd be shocked if everyone did…

Maurice Gaston

You probably have more people listening to your podcast!

David Dylan Thomas

But it was a web series about kind of the rise of the Philly tech scene. Like I was sort of like, I don't know why I always had this picture of like me as Neil Tennant and you as the other guy from Pet Shop Boys, I can’t think of his name. But like, because even we went to the premiere of the trailer, I was all in a suit and you were in a t-shirt and jeans and you're like the guy behind doing the DJ stuff doing all the technical shit and getting everything organized and I was like the posh guy in the front sort of like “I want it to be the vision of the thing.” But I learned so much honestly about just organizing, I learned Agile working on, because we tried to use Agile methodologies to make that a web series. And I learned all about that from you.

Just like how to think and how to be expansive and sort of how to challenge me on my filmmaking and just like all of that stuff. I think that's what makes our creative and friend relationships so rich.  I would be remiss to say there wasn't a decent amount of mentorship. I feel on that then to our creative endeavors out of all of them in particular, I feel like if I say so myself, we were mentors to all of the people we brought into the organizing team, to get them to a point where they were ready. 

Our friend, our mutual friend, Brian was an organizer, co-organizer for a while and then when I basically, after about two, three years, it was like, okay, I'm gonna move on from this, I felt like I was consciously grooming him to take my place.

But I think that also there is that inherent element, especially when you're organizing a team and you're not going to stay forever, there's inherently some degree of planning for the future. You are sort of consciously or unconsciously, like, “I'm gonna make sure you know how to do this, this and this just in case. Just in case tomorrow I’m not there. I'm just going to show you. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.”

Maurice Gaston

One of the things that I, so thank you, first of all. Gosh. I mean, I definitely feel it was one of the better collaborations specifically talking about Developing Philly, one of the better collaborations I've ever been involved in for the reasons that have a lot to do with the sort of openness associated with it.

So I don't know whether or not I was feeling like a mentor at every turn, but certainly I think we were able to basically grow creatively together in a way that I think, you may think that organization might've been my superpower per se, but I definitely fed off of the vision that you had to want to do it and grew an awful lot in terms of how to structure something that was inherently not a narrative into narrative storytelling. That was aces. You all should run out and just watch a series now. It's great.

David Dylan Thomas

I'll put a link in the notes. We're going to get to 801, I tell you now!

Maurice Gaston

To talk about that whole like passing the torch level and the whatever, I mean, that goes back to the seesaw that we were talking about earlier. What does it mean to be a mentor versus manager and stuff like that? You want to hire people who, I mean, there's the old saw that you want to hire people who are actually smarter than you and whether or not they're actually technically smarter than you or not is less the issue.

You want people who are elastic enough that by the time you are done imparting those things that you think are important either about the job, about themselves, about the potential for growth both for themselves and within the role that they're embodying, that you leave them at a better place than they started.

I can't help but see the parallels there between someone who's trying to mentor and somebody who's trying to manage if management is done right.

David Dylan Thomas

Right. I almost want to use like a caretaker metaphor. When you say about leave them better than you found it I think of that like our relationship to nature, like idealized, let us leave this earth better and no one would call that managing nature, if anything it's the opposite, but that does, I think feed a little into that service version of leadership or of management, just to sort of say, “my role here is to nurture what is here inherently”, and that I like, as just a way of being, rather than this more dominator, colonialist, “I will conquer the land and I can do what I want.”

It's this much more – and I use the term indigenous here, because this is mostly where I've seen this as a core concept. I'm going to assume that this universe is right and good, and that the people born into it belong there and already have all this wonderfulness in them. And my job is to basically stand the fuck back and make sure it's able to come, sure curate the environment, such that it's able to come out and thrive to its maximum.

I feel like that now that's what’s the fine point on it. I feel like that is the core political, philosophical fight of our time. Is this a world where it is about dominating and excluding and carving out a very particular vision of what should be and making it that way? On one end of the spectrum, and on the other end of the spectrum, is it about no, we need to bring everything in and let things flow in and give them and support them as much as humanly possible to give them the ability to thrive. 

Obviously, there's lots of nuance in between, but when I look at what happens in the news, that just seems crystal clear that there are two completely different ways of thinking about the world that are very much in conflict right now.

Maurice Gaston

Yeah, and I wonder, this is super idle, but I wonder at this point about the drivers for those two different things, because it's easy to see FOMO and fear driving, even though that means fear that the world that you had wanted to live in is passing.

So, that sort of conservatism aspect of like the strict definition of conservatism, right. I want to keep it. This is good. It's right here. Let's just stop, stop moving forward. The other being not to lean into too heavily oppositionally optimistic ways of labeling it, but like the things that drive the sort of more open way might be about, well, in some senses, maybe dissatisfaction, maybe – I'm trying to use words that aren't going to paint me as being too skewed in one direction versus the other. 

David Dylan Thomas

But why not? I know which side I’d prefer!

Maurice Gaston

I would say things like open and afraid, because it's all about change one way or the other. The avoidance of, or the embracing of change. So, it does make me wonder, what are the automatic things that are going on in our heads when we hew to one version of that universe versus the other version of the universe. We wouldn't know which version we’re hewing to.

David Dylan Thomas

Right. Like, I think that's where it gets really messed up because I can be like, “Oh yeah, it's always wrong to punch people unless they're a Nazi.” Where am I compromising? Am I compromising – this is a whole other topic and we should wrap up, but am I compromising based on, it's sort of fairness versus justice.

That’s what I've been thinking about lately. It's the fairness versus justice thing of like, well, we need to treat everybody equal and letting “opportunity” be the thing that is equally available, and once that is equally available, clap, clap, clap. We're done. There is no history. There is only the fairness of the now. 

But what that neglects, obviously, is power. Both its history and it's present. And if you neglect those, you don't really solve anything, you actually just perpetuate the power. So that I think is when I think about am I really being open-minded? As soon as I apply that lens of power, I'm like, hell yeah, I want to offer that job to HBCU graduates first. I don't give a fuck. That makes perfect sense to me. That's not reverse racism. That's an oxymoron. If you can reverse racism, I'd be very impressed, that that would be a real feat!

Maurice Gaston

I would applaud the audacity and I don't even know how you did that, but well done!

David Dylan Thomas

Were there are aliens involved? I don’t know how that happened!

Maurice Gaston

Ah, mirror universe, I see!

David Dylan Thomas

Exactly. I'll try that. I've tried everything else.

Maurice Gaston

But yeah, I mean obviously we’re fairly well aligned on a personal level for all of that stuff, but it really does make me wonder, because of course there's the notion that the – sort of tired notion at this point – that even the villain is the hero of their own story.

People feel like they are somewhat justified, but what is really driving whether they know it or not? And how do I avoid in being so sure and having that certitude that like, obviously the way that we think is much more laudable than somebody driven by fear.

What's driving me? Is there a fear that I'm also running from while I pat myself on the back for doing all of the things? To some degree you nailed it, I fear that we go back to days when I could be property.

David Dylan Thomas

So, for context, both Mo and I are black, and I’ve got to tell you right now, like when they started talking about Roe V Wade, and again, for context, I don't know when this is going to come out, it's May 18th, 2022. So, two, three weeks ago, the Roe V Wade decision got leaked essentially and all things being equal it will be overturned in a few weeks from now. I have to say it is a non-zero probability in my mind that somehow someway you actually get back to, “actually in these cases, constitution says black people can be property again.” If you could overturn Roe V. Wade, I don't say it's a slam dunk, but it's not as many chess steps as you might think. So, I'm like, oh shit. But that…so first off, thoughts?

Maurice Gaston

Well, I think we better step on the gas on this replacement theory thing.

David Dylan Thomas

Oh my God, this is the thing where one in three adult Americans are down with replacement theory. I'm like, that's part of the reason why I'm like, okay, this isn't as farfetched as I thought, what the fuck?

Maurice Gaston

We should step on the gas, man, because you know, we're already creeping up! But no, right and that's the sort of thing that I think when I think of the… (dog howls) …even Peanut is concerned! Peanut or probably somebody at the door. Ironically, it's somebody canvassing for labor unions!

David Dylan Thomas

Did you invite them up to join the podcast?

Maurice Gaston

I probably should, but I think that that probably their supervisor would probably get mad.

David Dylan Thomas

Bring the supervisor on too, let's do this! So we were talking about slavery coming back. Well, let me let you finish your point. 

Maurice Gaston

Wow. So I'm against it! 

David Dylan Thomas

Let’s make that clear! So, agreed.

Maurice Gaston

I just think it's really odd to be, even when I think about how much I like the arc of the moral universe bending its way, and I like to think of myself as being progressive and wanting the changes that I support to reflect that and how that's good for everybody. And I want curb cuts on a social and political and economic level and blah, blah, blah…How much of all of that is just fuel for the bus that drives me away from slavery?

David Dylan Thomas

Preach! I almost don't care where it's going.

Maurice Gaston

Well, I mean, and that's where you see shades of this sort of different levels of commitment to progressivism in all of its different facets. Some people just want it and you could almost make a horrible parallel to the number of people who are sort of single-issue voters who are like, but now that we were talking about Roe V Wade, I don't care what kind of crazy I voted into office, as long as it saves those unborn babies.

David Dylan Thomas

Right, and I grew up in an evangelical household and I can guarantee you that would have been the case. I even have to ashamedly say I was one of those people. I was 14, so I couldn't vote, but at the time I was brought in and it took some time for me to see how fucked up that was. But I can absolutely from experience tell you that is a mindset people can get into and get into hard.

Maurice Gaston

Yeah, for sure. I'm just worried that I’ve got one of those in the back of my head, that's pushing me forward that I think is much more justifiable? You have to acknowledge that that's in part because that's what I think. Is it fear-driven? Is it just rational? 

David Dylan Thomas

I can tell you one thing, because I think about that a lot too, and I think there's two things. One is, that's why we need other people.

Maurice Gaston

Yeah, bingo.

David Dylan Thomas

We need other people in our lives because we can't see. I mean, that's my whole thing, bias. One of the cures for bias is other people's bias. People who are not like me, people have different lived experiences, like their bias can counter my bias and maybe we go back to the mirror so we can get our mirrors like all lined up and get them to actually see what's there. 

But the thing I've been thinking about more recently, and this is through therapy and any number of incidents is this idea of acknowledging your own self-worth. I think that I've been recently trying to just, and again, two or three other podcasts worth of material here, but the TLDR is I've recently started trying to actively in my own head say, I am worthy.

I have found this has a profound impact on my thought process. One thing that I didn't expect is that it actually makes me more generous and more willing to help other people, because the inevitable conclusion of “I am worthy, maybe that guy is worthy too. And maybe that woman's worthy, maybe this person's worthy.”

And it all just kind like, it's easier for me to feel empathy. It's easier for me to see other people as worthy if I see myself as worthy and I thought it would be the opposite. I thought it would be like, well, I'm hot shit, but everybody else sucks! And actually, and this is only my experience, in my experience actually, it's kind of the opposite is happening, but it also helps me cut through, or it gives me at least another input for, am I just talking out of my ass or do I truly believe what I believe? And is that a fair just approach that isn't basically purely self-gratifying? Because a lot of that self-gratifying behavior I suspect is coming from this place if I don't feel worthy, so I’ve got to accumulate all this wealth and all this social capital to make that feel worthy.

Maurice Gaston

Yeah, I got you. That's big. Yeah, man. I agree. I think that you fill yourself up and then you're able to sort of make room for other people. I think it's a big, huge part of being a better human being for other people in addition to yourself. Come from a place of strength for yourself and stand up for yourself. Man, you're pretty good at this whole bias thing, you ever think of a podcast about it?

David Dylan Thomas

Maybe I'll make a book? But who has the time?

Maurice Gaston

Well, and on that note, you mentioned the time.

David Dylan Thomas

Yeah. It has been great talking to you. I gotta say this is not the sci-fi inflicted conversation I expected.

Maurice Gaston

I got a little singularity in there, but yeah!

David Dylan Thomas

Okay. Yeah, I like that, that's a running joke that our conversation has always have at least one mention of the similarity. But thank you so much. This has been great!

For the “Lately I've been thinking about…” podcast, I'm David Dylan Thomas, and we will see you next time!