absurd wisdom
What lies beyond understanding? Beyond certainty? Listen in to conversations between a.m. bhatt and colleagues, confidants, and important thinkers as they tackle questions both timely and timeless, and chat about maintaining your humanity in an ever-evolving world.
You can find a.m. on Instagram and Substack at @absurdwisdom. We are produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE (@dae.community on Instagram and online at mydae.org).
absurd wisdom
Engagement Needs a New Domain, Steel Hammers with Velvet Gloves, and "Gifted" Means That You Have a Gift to Give
Delve into profound discussions led by a.m. bhatt on humanity, intrinsic motivation, systemic change, and societal values. Explore the importance of engaging with inner passion, individual giftedness, and aligning personal growth with societal needs. The episode highlights the challenges of initiating meaningful conversations, measuring productivity, and the quest for meaningful engagement beyond compliance.
You can find a.m. on Instagram and TikTok at @absurdwisdom. We are produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE (@dae.community on Instagram and online at mydae.org).
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.
You can contact us at daepresents@mydae.org.
No, is to be within a specific discipline, a specific world, a specific reality to know is extremely useful for getting things done within that particular discipline or world or reality to be an effective doctor or a pastry chef or a financial analyst. There's much that is critical to know, but knowing by its nature is bounded by, and in fact reinforcing of, the reality within which it occurs. For 25 years, I've worked with executives in large organizations, grad students, tech entrepreneurs, religious leaders, and no doubt my toughest client, myself. I'm developing the capacity to explore what lies beyond knowing, beyond certainty at a practical level. This work is required for things like innovation, but more importantly, I found that this inquiry is critical for maintaining one's humanity. Oh, and if you're generous enough to be listening to these conversations, I respectfully submit that at any point, if you feel you understand what I'm saying, you're not listening deeply enough. I'm a.m. bhatt. Welcome to Absurd Wisdom. And for today's conversation, we are continuing the ongoing series with Ben Heller, CTO of Driver Technologies. Let's jump right in. I mean, I've had one topic that I've been figuring out how to frame up. To not lose what I, what I'm trying to point to, but not be, you know, triggering in the conversation on some, some legitimately and rightfully sensitive areas. So let me see if I can do it live on a mic. So the best analogy I got is this one. And then I'll start with this maybe instead of, you know, naming the thing first. You know, concussions in football are a real thing. And long term damage and, and mental health issues and, you know, incidents of, of players engaging in extreme acts of violence that are directly attributable to repeated brain trauma are a real thing. And if you bring up like it's, it's March right now, you open up a conversation about concussions and football and the need to really, you know, kind of take a more humane approach to, you might get some listening. You get some people say, ah, shut up, come on. It's a sport they choose to play. Right. But for the most part, you likely get some listening. Try opening up that conversation the week before the Superbowl. Nobody wants to hear it. Like not only do they not want to hear it. Right. And so this thing That is about not a, it's, it's a, it's at a, at a, at an order higher than the game, right? It is in a domain outside of the game. It involves the game, but it's in a domain outside the game. It's about, you know, sort of just basic humanity and, and, and yeah. But you try to have that conversation, Super Bowl week, man, you, you, you get framed as an idiot. As a snowflake, as a, you know, what, pick your thing, right? And the only question people entertain is, what side you rooting for? So here's the sensitive part of it. You know, for quite some time now the most extreme example of this is what's happening in Palestine. And really, you know, the conversation I'm wanting to have is not about the situation. acknowledging of the, you know, complexity and, and, and I can very much see, you know, perspectives of the rightness and wrongness of one side or the other. Right. I have a particular opinion on it. Right. But the level of intolerance for any sort of conversation in the last year and more and more as we go along. For the equivalent of the concussion conversation for the conversation about just basic humanity, and it's not about what side you're on. And I get what side you're on matters. Not just because it's your opinion. I mean, it could matter in the sense of right and wrong, right? The equivalence I have is sort of like, Like, I don't know if you could do this anymore. There was a time where you could be a conscientious objector in World War II, be a conscientious objector and say, but I will go to, go into battle and I'll be a medic. Like, Right, like I acknowledge the thing is happening. I acknowledge there's the thing we need to do, you know, World War II We yes, we do need to go over and support the Allied forces but I am at a Committed to a game that's at a higher order. And so I want to play that higher order game in the context of this Lower order and I will acknowledge necessary perhaps game But it's a game that I will not participate in at that level But I will participate at a higher level, which is, you know, the level of humanity. That conversation is not possible these days on any issue. On any fucking issue. It's whose colors you're wearing. Whose banner you're flying. Whose team you're rooting for. And any meta conversation about things that are timeless, to go back to how you and I first started in conversations, timeless and timely. Any attempt to introduce a conversation about things that are timeless and about, broadly about humanity gets met with certain, very specific kind of animus from, from both sides. And again, let's take it out of that very, I don't even know what to say about the situation that I started with and take it to any aspect of public discourse right now. Thank you. There's no tolerance for the meta conversation for timeless for for opening up and acknowledging and caring for the things that are Again I can't find a better word for it than at a higher order than the Conflict itself than the discussion itself than the super bowl itself So that that's been on my mind a lot For months and more and more acute As we move along And as we enter, specifically what's, what's, what's brought it Even more into the foreground for me is again. I've talked about this like I've spent I have like beautifully navigated for 25 years working on really, really, really big things totally in the background, just invisible. You know, it's great. And now with this thing, there's no, you know, I can't write. And so I got to do press and PR and all this shit and and increasingly. I find we are, you know, it, it, it feels like we're about to start being invited more and more into public discourse on some issues. I feel compelled to be more public in some of these issues. The, you know, the, the, the Dalio report and 119, 000 disengaged, 18 to 14 to 26 year olds thing is just. There's so much I feel compelled to say about that publicly, right? And and so, so this is on my mind around, you know can, how can I have that converse the conversation I'm wanting to have that isn't about, are you on the side of fixing the schools or burying the schools and going with a new model, fixing government's relationship or, or, or, you know, changing or fixing corporate America's relationship to, or, you know, like. I get it. Those are legitimate battles in conversation, but that's not what I want to talk about. So anyway, I'll stop there. I think I've laid out the territory probably a little too well. Give me a chance to respond.
Ben:No, this is great. It's a, I don't think I know our listenership well enough to know. what would make them angrier, a conversation about football or a conversation about the Middle East, but maybe we'll take a third,
a.m.:this conversation
Ben:about education and public discourse and the ability to have a healthy conversation about anything. Whether regardless of the topic,
a.m.:you know, our audience, I'd say Middle East. Sadly in the country, probably Superbowl.
Ben:That was my suspicion. But you know, there is a point at which I think you enter into the public sphere enough that people begin asking you questions that expect you to come down on one side or the other of these kinds of difficult polemics. And the question is, is like, Do you need to, just because someone asks the question, do you have an obligation to answer it in that way? And as an educator, can your answer be, well, our job is to create a generation of people who are going to take that question and acknowledge that question and then break it apart Sides that are not right and wrong and to see it in a multifaceted Detailed way and actually by in some ways dodging the question recrafting the question re engaging with it seriously, but on a different axis is that actually a demonstration of the methodology that you'd expect like the product of someone who's gone through DAE To, to deploy when asked something that is really, truly leading, right. It's leading you to say something that's going to get a rise out of someone. If you, if you say black or white, half of the people in the room are going to, you know. began to you know throw their hands up and up or but if you you come in and say Well, you don't maybe purple, maybe gray than that kind of upsets everyone a little bit because it's not catering to their their worldview of right and wrong. So. but it at least starts the conversation. And so the question is how do you actually do that? How do you respond in a form of discourse that's acceptable, that feels like a continuation and a response and not a sidestep.
a.m.:My response to black and white though, where I'm trying to navigate, and this is like, so we're like doing live, I'll share an anecdote that happened about you shared one about somebody listening to the podcast. I'll share one with you a little later, but What I'm real time trying to figure out, Ben not figure out just, just what I'm sitting with is my response to black and white. I don't want to get to purple or pink or gray. My response to black and white, I want to get to sweet and sour, right? Like I want to point to a different domain. I don't want to point to new, to other options within the domain, because I think the work is in another domain. The issue of 119, 000 disengaged kids isn't in the domain of curriculum. job opportunities, economics, all those are important, but that's not where I want to have the conversation because I don't think that's where the actual leverage is.
Ben:So where do you want to have the conversation?
a.m.:I created this little short video, the 119 K commission. They formed this commission. It's, it's a bunch of mayors from around Connecticut all the cities basically. And then the co CEO of the Dalio foundation formed this commission, had their first meeting last week. And one of them had asked if I, if I would, you know, they were taking like public just statements and just ideas and thoughts and, you know, whatever, again, just kicking the thing off. And one of them asked if I, if I would come and I couldn't, I had a previous commitment, but I created this little video. And So I'll, I'll respond to you what I said in the video. Engagement for a human being, let's say, let's stick with these 119 kids 19, 000 kids. Engagement doesn't look like, Okay, we have to figure out how to convince them that they can have meaningful careers. Engagement doesn't look like we have to help convince them that they can be, you know, productive parts of society and feel good about themselves. Engagement doesn't, mean we have to convince them that they're smart enough or good enough to be in computer science or manufacturing or whatever, right? Engagement doesn't mean we have to provide them financial resources to be able to get to and from, you know, development programs, all of those things are critical and absolutely must get worked on. But if that's all you do, you do not get engagement, you get compliance. Because the reward for compliance, at a certain point, you'll get a, you'll hit a tipping point where the reward for compliance is high enough that the person will say, okay, cool, I'll do it. That is not engagement. That is not motivation. That is compliance. And at a certain point, that'll burn out. And it says in the video, and if you want reference point of that, look at corporate America the last century. You know, we can incent you to keep paying attention and keep showing up. That is not engagement. That is not motivation. Engagement is only one thing. It is intrinsic. Engagement is I'm engaged with myself. I am engaged as an individual human being alive on this planet with a sense of why I'm here and how I want to him have an impact and how I want to live. From that place now choosing a career skill set, all these things. Yes. You know, so it's not do one or the other, but if you only do these other things, these extrinsic incentives for being engaged the best you're going to get is compliance and you're going to, you know do high fives and celebrations because you'll get the compliance short term and you'll say, look, we did it. We won. We fixed it and you will have fixed it for a period of time. And again, see corporate America for cycles of remediation on things like this. But what you will have actually have done longterm is you will have made the problem worse because at a certain point, the incentives aren't enough and the disengagement actually deepens.
Ben:So how do you measure engagement, which is, is a far, far more subjective measure of success. And, you know, we're not particularly good culturally or institutionally at polling and a broad audience for, for something that's really a kind of personal measure of motivation, right? If I'm, if I'm engaged on a topic, I could be engaged for a moment, I could be disengaged the next moment, but what we can rather measure instead of the actual engagement is the knock on effects of the engagement. You know, what did, what was produced, what was generated, what are, what are the artifacts that kind of came out of engagement and then how do you deduce that engagement actually As a result of the things that you can observe more directly than the engagement itself.
a.m.:Yeah. And so, so this is it though. A lot of the things you're pointing to from your aren't engagement there, they're byproducts of, and they are more easily measured. It's, it's like we've got a lamp in the room here.
Ben:Yeah.
a.m.:It's plugged in or it's not. Right now it can be plugged in and it's not giving off any light. It's not transacting, but that sucker is plugged in. It's ready. And when you flip it on, it's like, and then you measure it and you say, Oh, it's working, but it was working before you flipped on the light because it's plugged in. This is a phenomenon pointing to with human beings, right? These kids are not plugged in to themselves though, to the, to the, to the source of, of themselves that would have them light up when now they go and encounter this piece of curriculum, this job opportunity, this, et cetera. Right? Yeah. That's, that's what I'm pointing to.
Ben:I'm gonna zoom out for a minute'cause this is touching on something I was thinking about a bit this week, which is, you know, the extent to which people believe in themselves as being important and fulfilling an important function. It came to me in the, in the course of participating in a, a workshop in ai up in Hartford, and it was actually fabulous. Great speakers. I learned a lot, but what I saw and most of the talks was people grappling with and coming to terms with the ways in which these tools are going to make them more or less relevant And I saw a concern that the personal relevancy of everybody in the room as a ongoing force felt like that was diminishing, like everything that they'd done up until now is really just become part of the training set. And someone who is better and faster with these tools will come and use those tools. To achieve more than they ever could. You know, the people say, well, you know, AI is not coming for your job. Someone who knows how to use AI is right. But that also leads to this kind of, well, who is that someone who knows how to use AI, why does it matter? Well, that's a person who is comfortable with the rapid acceleration of productivity. And that's what we're actually talking about. Sometimes that's exciting. And people see that as very exciting. We can be more productive in spaces. We don't have to waste so much time with boilerplate or tasks that, you know, we could actually spend more of our day out engaging with ourselves genuinely because all of the cruft is taken care of by this new type of automation tool, but it also represents a rapid acceleration. And if you're not okay with that acceleration. And you also see the ability to do things the long way, the slow way, going away and being replaced by other people who are more willing to use those tools to engage in that endless snowball effect. Where do you see yourself worth? If you're 16 right now, and you're looking at the next 25 years of your life, your working life, where do you see yourself fitting into that? Do you embrace being part of that rapid acceleration and say, all right, well, I just got to gear up for this, or do you have, do you struggle to see what your self worth is? And I think if you're really listening to a lot of the hype cycle, it can be, it can be hard to feel like there's a place for you where you can contribute and be valuable. And I see why engagement in the face of that might be actually at an all time low. And, you know, we need kind of a cycle of people seeing these tools put to use and realizing, no, this isn't maybe the sea change that I thought it was going to be, or it is that, but there's still room for this other thing. And for us to like empirically actually hold this new technology and this new way of, of doing things. In our hands for a moment and to feel its impact because right now there's just a lot of for lack of a better word, just dread about what the future is going to hold, especially for somebody at the beginning of their careers.
a.m.:Underlying that Ben for me, those, the, the, the sort of, you know background assumption of, of the fact that my worth is connected to. My productivity, my output and, and you know, I need to upgrade my skills so I can keep being productive because if I not, I don't exist. That's the disease. This is where you might talk about like wanting to have meta conversations. Like I say that to policy people or to a corporation or to a large foundation. They're like, yeah, that's cool. Well, thanks for coming by. Well, you know, like, because there's no, you know they, they, they don't know how to act on that. They don't know how to, or they actually going to take it differently. They want to act on that. They want things they can act on because again, they're part of the same trance of what's the productive next thing to do. And again, that's not an argument against when we, oversimplify here because just for the purposes of, of, of, of, you know, getting to a point, but Like we are hunter gatherers, right? Like the three of us, you know, likely the males were going out and, and killing the, you know, the mammoth, right? The three of us go out and you like, reliably are the best hunter. Right? Like, like 50, there's three of us, but like 60, 70 percent of the time when somebody kills something, it's you, right? Back in the village, what's going to happen is you're gonna get fed more. Right? Not as a reward, but because it is in our collective interest that you should be the healthiest. We're not going to be left to starve, but you are going to get fed more and better cuts. And that that's actually collective good, right? Where it gets weird is then you start to think, yeah, yeah, I'm fed more. I also maybe should have a special house. And that rock over there, if you carved it in my image, You know, like that might be cool, right? That's where we get weird. And we have the society we have now, but my point is that, that even then productivity mattered for the collective good, but neither Scott or I would be devalued as part of the community. Our identities were not tied to that productivity. We were part of the collective in a, in a, in a certain story. And so the thing now, and then when it started to get weird and might have gotten weird and day two, right? I don't know. I wasn't around, but it's certainly weird. Now is when those two things are collapsed. My inherent value as part of the community is separate. And as an individual being in this story is separate and apart from my productivity value, which is also critical for our survival. And should be acknowledged through more meat for you because you're the better survivor you know hunter. So you're gonna make sure you're the healthiest, right? We've collapsed those two things and, and radically collapsed them in the last hundred years. I just so excited. We've been doing it, you know, for quite some time, last hundred years, we have so accelerated that where there is no distinction between my value worth existence and my productivity output. And it's, it's. It's fucking barbaric, you know? And then you throw on it everything you're saying of, Okay, everybody, you're 42, you gotta reset. You gotta learn all new things so that you can still have worth as a human being.
Ben:For me, there's a bunch of kind of fuzzy bits in and around productivity, you know, productivity on behalf of something like nebulous and unjustified is, is what I think of when I think of productivity as you're using it, but to play a little bit of a language game, there's aspects of productivity that border on exploration and discovery where you're, you're unlocking. And it's not for the sense of like a manic, let's, let's make sure we stay on the merry go round, but really because there is a sense of progress that is innate in the idea of us wanting to reach the next rock. But we don't have to do that as fast as possible or as efficiently as possible. And so kind of playing these two games of not wanting to be fully stationary, to want to engage in exploration and discovery, to reach out and see what the potential is, and then pull back and engage with it at a pace that works for us, that finds value in the action. I think that's how you keep people engaged. Because as long as you're feeling like engagement and meaning is derived from being the most productive, which I think is an assumption. A lot of people leave school with or enter the workplace with is if I'm the most productive, I will derive the most satisfaction out of this. I'll receive the most praise. And therefore that's how I'm going to Measure myself at every, every stage. And there's some distant goal that it's never really well defined. That is the point at which, well, I'll do that. And then maybe I'll chill out. That's when I will have reached stability or I will have reached some point at which I can let go of this idea, you know, for me I think of like lawyers trying to make partner, for example. Well, guess what? Like once you make partner, you're responsible for the success of the whole firm. Do you think that's the point at which you sit back and relax? I don't think so. Right. And so you, you have this deeply ingrained kind of need for that feedback loop and it becomes the only way, you know, So the question is convincing people early on in the process who are coming out of earlier stages of their education or personal development to believe in progress and believe in their own capability to achieve progress, but without doing it in a kind of a hollow, repetitive, externally demanding way. Okay.
a.m.:And what do we offer? 99. 9 percent of workers is hollow externally defined way. Right? That's, this is the challenge because, the God is efficiency, right? And so shut up and do your job. Now, we have a much kinder and gentler approach to it through decades of. Putting, you know, layers of velvet gloves on the, on the steel hammer, but it's still a steel hammer. You know, we say the right things. We position it the right way and we do these job enrichment things, but it's the same fucking hammer, right? And, and it's not even, you know, the productivity is very specific. It's output, right? It's not exploration. It's not, it's output. How many did you put out? Did they hit at the right time? And where they have sufficient quality, right? Again, important going out and killing that mammoth important if we're going to live. So not like we should throw that away. We can't, we don't survive, but it's, you know, again, we always kind of, for me, I always come back to, you know, kind of foundational principles, which is, again, we don't live in a story anymore. And so when all there is, is that economy to live in. Human being withers. It's a miracle. It's a fucking miracle to me that a 16 year old is willing to get out of bed given, given what they're told about the world and how absolutely non stop with the internet and social media how absolutely non stop the messaging is about the world It's a miracle they get out of bed. And you're talking about, Oh my God, they're disengaged. Of course they're fucking disengaged. What are you talking about? Of course, employees are disengaged. Of course, you know,
Ben:Now, since I always threatened to turn this into a film club, I, you know, this is, this is something that we've been trying to figure out how to articulate for, for decades, and we've been broadly aware of it. And it reminded of the Kurosawa film, Ikiru.
a.m.:My favorite film of all time. Have we talked about this?
Ben:I don't, we have not. No. It's literally
a.m.:my favorite film of all time.
Ben:All right. That's I might've guessed you know, do you want to summarize it for, for those at home? You know,
a.m.:I mean, sure it's an aging bureaucrat who finds out he has cancer and does what people do. He first tries, you know. hitting on women and I've never hit on enough women and maybe that'll be it. And then he tries booze and he tries, you know, and the punchline of it is there are these women in this, you know, little kind of corner town next to a bridge whose kids have nowhere to play. And this bureaucrat pushes and pushes the system and oversteps his bounds and gets that damn park approved. And he dies happy. Because he knows kids are going to play in the park.
Ben:We should we'll put a little spoiler alert before we tee that one up, but it's a, it's a wonderful film. It's a really moving film. It's, it's also one of my, one of my favorite movies. And it, it, it sort of captures the spirit, I think of what you're talking about of someone's lifelong sense of productivity and engagement being entirely defined by compliance. And then suddenly having kind of a end of life outburst of realizing that the way that he felt he'd been compliant and productive. It wasn't actually achieving positive change in, in his neighborhood and where he lived and for the people around him. And then he did it. You know, he, he has this moment where he, he breaks out of that mold and the sadness from it comes from it being kind of too little, too late in some ways. But it's a very reflective, film and I don't think there's too many people who watch it. And. Go to work the next day. It's a real watch a movie and call in sick kind of experience. And it really, I think, hits on exactly, exactly what you're talking about, is this is someone who found engagement and took his whole life to be able to do it. So how do we help people who otherwise, for lack of that, are going to head towards compliance because they don't know any better and the world around them is going to tell them that they're doing a good job. And if they don't have confidence, you know, in their own internal definition of that, which frankly, it's really difficult to have that type of, confidence, you're going to go through the route that is kind of culturally validated for what it means to do a good job and to expect anybody in their teens. Or really at any age to have this unrelenting confidence in the, their own vision of what it means to, to do good. It's not really a reasonable expectation. You know, there's sort of the rare person who, who has that and followed that.
a.m.:As always Ben, I appreciate these conversations. Because now we're at the, this is the conversation I want to have with the government and with school districts and with, you know, there's a, there's a line from a Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian writer, philosopher, poet. So the man who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit begins to understand the meaning of life, right? That we have built a society. On my fulfilling my egoic needs, my, just feeding my face, feeding my, my bank account, feeding my, just me, that's cool. You know, we like food. We got lunch here. We're going to have it a little bit, you know, we like experiences. I like, I like being able to afford the criterion channel so I can watch Ikiru whenever I want, you know? But I've just, when we, when we used to run the MAOL and so many of the MAOL principles are embedded in DAE, because they've just been, you know, the masters in leadership that Mel and I ran for, for many years you have to do a breakthrough project and a breakthrough had four elements to it. A, it's impossible. It's not hard. It's not difficult. It is from, from, you know, in the context of where you are today, it is impossible. There's no way to do it within current reality. Second, it has to be bigger than your self interest. It can include your self interest, but it inherently must be bigger than your self interest. I'll leave you dangling on three and four for the audience, but I have consistently found that human beings don't become fully sort of awake and engaged and living until they're, they've attached themselves. They surrendered to something bigger than themselves. Not at the sacrifice of themselves. Martyrdom is just as toxic as, as, as living just for your ego, right? Because martyrdom is just another form of, of egoic behavior. So not at the sacrifice of yourself, but, but at work on something bigger than yourself, something that can't get done in your lifetime, but you're only going to be able to put some bricks onto. Which again, Ikiru, right? That, that little part, bigger than himself, he will not live to see what the value of that is. We offer no one, certainly not kids, an invitation to work on things bigger than themselves, than their own self interest. That's considered like, like non profit work, and you do that if you don't care about money. Or, you know, you're, you're a snowflake or a, you know, whatever we want to characterize these things, right? But I think it is fundamental nutritional context for a human being to have access to that. And it's why we start with students. Ground zero is day one, week one, month one is what's the impact you want to have in the world? Not what do you want to get for yourself, but what do you see in the world? That you'd love to be able to say, I helped that be better, I helped that move forward, I helped that, right? And then, and, and you want to make a billion dollars out of it, awesome. You want to make, right? That, that, that comes later, right? But that's the conversation I'm wanting to have with these people is to say your, your entire frame of reference. We'll keep ensuring disengagement and the best you'll do is get situational compliance. Feel like you won and in another generation it'll be even worse. It's been getting worse every single generation since World War II. Despite all the progress and all the new tools and all the new gadgets and all the new everything, every successive generation is more and more burned out, disengaged, and confused.
Ben:So how do you turn that around?
a.m.:Fuck if I know, this is what's keeping me up. I'm trying to figure out even how to introduce the conversation that doesn't sound like, oh, that's nice. Where's your beggar's bowl we can drop a few coins into? This is lovely. Everyone, isn't that lovely. Oh my god, that's great. Okay, now we're gonna get on to the work part of the meeting. Like, I'm trying to figure out just to have the fucking conversation so it doesn't just get, you know, turned into that. Because this is a very practical concern I'm pointing to. I'm not pointing to philosophy or, you know, do good, whatever. I'm talking about real, practical, that through decades of experience we've learned, works and has an impact, right? And I'm trying to figure out even how to have the conversation, let alone, what do you do, you know? At scale I know what to do you put ten people in front of us I know what to do. We know what to do I mean the sense of the I'm not know what to do, but but we can engage with that, right? At the scale of the state the country the world, you know, I Don't know. I'm again. I'm just trying to figure out how to have the conversation publicly
Ben:The first step is I think Having these conversations and having it not be that token gesture having it not be well, we'll fund you just enough to allow you to run the experiment so that we can say that we supported something alternative in air quotes, which is another form of sort of compliance is showing, making a show of having tried differently while being very much tied to whatever system has become the status quo. You know, most of the people with the money to support something that could be described as alternative education or alternative culture. to, to, to have it because they succeeded in the current system. And so it's very difficult to say, well, I'm going to work against the system that rewarded me. And actually, you know, dismantle it. Even though it's what I know and what I'm comfortable with, because the reality of it, it's not, it's not the same thing as saying, Hey. We're, we're, we're asking you to make a sacrifice. You know, if you're taking somebody who has a particular vision of the world and you're saying, I want you to support this other way of functioning, that's actually going to be terrifying. It's going to be scary and destabilizing. It's not just asking somebody to take a risk or to try something different or a change in perspective. It's actually, it's. It's going to be emotional and involve some amount of existential shift in terms of what that person's legacy is and contributions have been and how that's going to fit into the future. And some of, sometimes these like paradigm shifts happen and we just can't stop them. So you have to embrace it. I think that's what we're experiencing with the kind of AI shift that we're seeing now. But what you're kind of articulating is we need a different one on a different axis in a different space and it's not happening on its own. So how do we actually start, like start the landslide, start tearing away the supports so that it becomes inevitable. And so people feel that motion and say, you know what, I have to go with this. I have to find a way to get through the discomfort. And these two things are working against each other, they're at odds. And so either you have to do it with no funding and no support, and it has to come completely from the outside, which isn't unheard of, or you have to find some truly, you know, exceptional ways to see that something alternative can be supported by mainstream culture and education.
a.m.:Yes.
Ben:Good luck.
a.m.:That's exactly what I'm sitting here with. I was like, fuck, you know, like, so yeah,
Scott:I was looking at the the 119K commission website and looking at the mission and stuff and it, it designates 119, 000 at risk or disconnected or the words that are used. Yeah. Yeah. To me, at risk means that there's some sort of, you know, investment that can be made at a bigger level, you know, maybe into the families of these kids to make sure that they have support systems in place indirectly or directly and disconnected. But then you scroll down to the plan and it's like. Basically saying, get them diplomas and get them jobs, like you were saying, like, you know, we'll just use the same thinking that we've always used, but that's why we're here in the first place. So I think, you know, the conversation needs to be not, you know, what, but why, like, why are they, why is there nothing for them to latch onto? Why is there, feel like there's no out, there's no reward, you know, for them to try. There's no intrinsic motivation at all. So it's, it's interesting to see how it comes out and, you know, the Dalio Foundation has some money they could start the ball rolling is that, is that too much of an ask?
a.m.:I listen, it's an important sort of thing. And I found myself saying this a lot. I haven't met the, met the bad guy. You know what I mean? I haven't met the bad guy. Like the Dalio folks seem really genuine, like genuine. The politicians seem genuine. The school administrators, God knows, seem genuine. Like, I haven't met anybody who's like, no, no, no, no, we're going to keep this a problem. Like, quite the opposite. Like, I've met people fairly consistent. I've met a couple of opportunistic folks. There's one guy who wanted to, sort of leverage our business to get access for his business and nonsense. But, but, but the people in, in, in power and control at the steering wheels. I haven't met the bad guy, or the bad woman, or the bad human. I, I think it's, it's a deeper problem. I think it's our world view, it's our, it's the sort of, you know, the operating system that we're, that we're moving from is, is, is the challenge, you know. There's, there's this you know, I'm an org psychologist by formal training, although I never use this stuff, right, but you know. You know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And there are other models of this, right? Well, that, that peer, he never drew that pyramid that was like, like idiot consultants that came after him, needed something to sell. Right. And so what, what it's that, and a couple of the theories that have been misrepresented have led people to believe is that, that these things are sequential. If we get you fed and then get you housed and then get you in a productive job, then. You can become altruistic or self actualized or transcend or these things, right? It is not a sequence, right? I've talked about my own life. Like grew up without indoor plumbing, you know, outdoor latrines, barely any electricity. Our hygiene needs, right? The, the, in the psychological terms, right? The psychological hygiene needs, safety, et cetera. We're not met. The higher order needs absolutely were. Right. I knew who I was. I knew where I belonged. I loved the world. I loved being alive as a product of the relationships I was in, mainly my grandfather. And so, so one of the things I can see to do is practical in terms of having this conversation is to try to separate, although I've tried this in the past, you know, it still leads to, you know, sort of confused looks is to try to separate this, the sequence. So we can give these kids, and we should give these kids and their families economic support and access. A thousand percent yes, right? That will not lead to the higher order stuff. It is neither a prerequisite to the higher order stuff. You can start working on the higher order stuff even before that if you wanted to. You shouldn't. We're a wealthy nation by God. We should be providing people with basic food, housing, and, you know that sort of thing, but, but one is not the prerequisite for the other. And one absolutely doesn't guarantee the other lots of wealthy people walking around with no sense of purpose, no self actualization, certainly no sense of ego transcendence, right? And so part, part of what, what I'm toying with is, is, you know, how do I frame the conversation to separate these two things out? But yes, you should do these transactional things to provide the basic foundational psychological hygiene needs of safety and, you know, all this. But there's a wholly separate track and that wholly separate track is where engagement lives. These other things aren't about engagement. They're about survival and they're critical and again, it's, it's barbaric that anybody, you know, can't feed themselves given how affluent this society is. And we should be working on them a thousand percent. But, but it's separate from what you're talking about when you say engagement and you want kids engaged, right? So.
Ben:I had a long conversation with a friend who I think I should just name, you should check out his work. His name is Michael Pope. He's working on a multimedia semi autobiographical piece called Cinematica. And, you know, we were talking about what it means to work on something like that and how you're driven to work on a multi year long project. He's been, he's been on this for, I think, almost a decade now. And he described it and I felt very affirming of similar feelings I've had of existing on pure light, on pure energy, emanating from inside him to the point where he felt that he could be sustained on that light and work on this project. and was so driven to work on it that he was actually partially consuming himself in the act of creation and that he was willing to do that because he was so driven to create. And I remember these early feelings of being, being a teenager and my mind latching on to certain things and realizing, Oh, this is it. This is something that I need to know. I need it to be inside me and part of me and I need to engage with it because it's just curious. Like I can't imagine not grappling with this. And when I talk to people who are learning how to program and be engineers and are interested in computers, I remember the feeling of like, I'm going to sit at my desk for 20 hours straight. And I just need to know this. I need to slurp it all up every last bit. And that went like so fast. I mean, it felt like seconds and it was that, I think that's the type of engagement that's real. And, you know, you step away from that, obviously that's not all the time, right? That's just every once in a while you have these bursts where you just have to integrate something into yourself. And I'd love to sit down with every teenager. and say like, you may not have felt this yet, but someday you will. And let's explore everything that you love to try to find what is the closest feeling you've had to this. How do we get you to feel this? Because whatever you feel this way about is the thing that we should give you more of. We should help you explore this. We should create fertile territory for it. And for some reason, like, that's not the question we ask. Like, I love, I love music. I was a very serious classical musician growing up and practiced a lot, but it was practice in the vein of compliance. Later in my life, I quit playing classical music and picked up other instruments. And I experienced for the first time that same like inner light level drive where like I had to learn how to play guitar. I had to, I found one that a friend wasn't using under a bed and I would stay up all night long playing. And I just needed to know more and more and to feel that. And I realized that for years, I had been playing music, but it never felt that about music, even though my identity was as a musician, that was who I was. And finally it circled back around to having that level of growth and that feeling of that thing. And, and to me, that's really what you're talking about. It's like, how do we and I'm not advocating for like manic behavior and not sleeping and, and whatnot. Like there is the, there is a healthy way to approach this, but the idea of being feeling like you, you are driven to consume something like that, whatever it is and to make it part of you is is I think. Really what you're getting at.
a.m.:Yeah, man. It's, it's, the ego can never be filled. It is forever hungry. But if you make yourself food for something bigger than you, you get transformed. And yeah, the guitar or whatever it is. And we just don't, I would say Ben the first part of what you said, you're talking to a teenager, maybe you haven't experienced this yet. They have. It was never named for them. They might've had it brushed away. And so they brushed it away, but every human being before the age of five, before the age of three, whatever, they haven't done what we insist upon in this society, which is put it into the right box that has a linear path, right? Nothing wrong with the right box and linear path. But, but that becomes, again, we get the thing backwards. That becomes the prerequisite too. But that inner feeling, that sense of, Oh, I'm alive and can have this sort of impact. And when I do, my place in things makes sense. The kid experiences that two, three, four months, I don't know, right? It's there. It's human. And we are sad and disengaged because that part of us, it's human has no fucking place to go anymore. And of course we're disengaged.
Ben:And to your point about, sort of, planting a tree under your shade, you're never going to sit. Like, not everybody is going to have this experience with the same thing in the same way. But once you've had that experience, it sort of becomes your gift. To the people around you to show them what it might be like and, and let them share in that, in a, in a way that gives them access to it.
a.m.:We have gifted it's another thing I used to do talks on. We should probably start putting. I've got so much shit I've got to put out into the more of the public, I guess, space to help, you know with clients is great, man, you know, even with students, the way I'd work with students is, it's like three years, four years, five years, and it's just in relationship and you can kind of build these things, you know, versus sound bites and papers and all that, right? But there is, there's a bank of stuff and maybe there's, it is worthwhile just, just documenting it and, and which is kind of maybe what we're doing here with these, with these podcasts. We've got gifted backwards. When we tell somebody they're gifted, what we, what we mean, what we say to them is, oh, you were given a gift. Use it well. That's backwards. Gifted means that I have a gift to give. Every human being is gifted. We don't let people unwrap the package. And so they don't figure out what, and once you figure out the way in which you're gifted, not the thing you were given, but the thing you've got to give away. Once you figure that out, life just gets simple because you have an unlimited, you got a Santa Claus bag of that thing. And once you figure it out, see it, appreciate it, value it. You're going to channel that shit. At the Starbucks when you order coffee and in whatever thing you're doing for money and in you're just, you're just, that's just not going to stop. And now I get my place in the universe, but we make it about what you got. Again, ego, we make it about the, you're special. This is the special thing you got, as opposed to this is the unique thing. Everyone has their unique thing that you're supposed to give away because you have infinite quantities of it.
Ben:I love that. You didn't just come up with that on the spot, right?
a.m.:No, that's another distinction that we, you know, that I've played with over the years of people.
Ben:I mean, that really, to me, is the core of everything we've been circling here. If, for people listening, if you can't tell, we go into these. Pretty cold. And sometimes it takes us a hot minute to really figure out where, where's the juicy center of the conversation. And I think we, you sort of brought us there and I love once I realized we've arrived, kind of visualizing like, what is the shape of this thing? How did, do we just wind in a spiral towards the middle? Did we go straight for it? Did we meander off the page and come back again? I think that's kind of the beauty of. So I'm gonna be really short and kind of go over the topic of, of the conversation itself. But as you were saying that, you know, I, I didn't know that that's what you're gonna bring up. We don't have notes here. It just felt deeply, deeply right to me. And parts of these conversations change how I go and live the rest of my, my day or my life, and my relations to people and other conversations I have. So I'm always grateful for when something like that lands. You know, the only thing I'd change is maybe support your local roasters. Don't go to Starbucks.
a.m.:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I never go to Starbucks. I don't know why I said that. Yeah.
Ben:But I just gotta give you a little bit of shit. You, you're too spot on sometimes.
a.m.:I just, yeah. I just, I just, I just, when I picked up lunch, I thought I swung by Willoughbys, one of our local roasters and, you know, got a cup.
Ben:There you go. Great.
