Is the World Getting Better? or Worse?

Speaker: Vince Klassen

Have you ever noticed how two people can look at the exact same world and come to completely different conclusions about it?

One sees everything falling apart.
Another sees slow progress.

And both are absolutely convinced they’re the ones seeing reality clearly.

In this talk we’re going to explore how the stories we believe about the world quietly shape our emotions, our relationships, and the way we show up every day.

Because when we don’t understand why certain stories pull us in – and why others make us angry or defensive – those hidden forces can start steering our lives without us even noticing. They can leave us anxious, cynical, disconnected from the people we love, and fighting battles that never seem to end.

Join us as we look at the stories of our spiritual ancestors and use them as a mirror—revealing the unconscious Parts inside us that quietly pull the strings and sometimes drive our lives into trainwrecks.

When we begin to see what’s happening beneath the surface, something shifts. We gain the ability to respond instead of react, to understand each other better, and to stop letting those unseen Undercurrents quietly wreck the things that matter most.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Okay, let's get going here. It's always weird to transition out of a coffee break, but that's okay. And I'm gonna take you all to a very dark place. I'm gonna take you out of that, but I need to get you here first, so with apologies. Uh has anyone heard of the doomsday clock? Doomsday clock about just under two months ago, uh January 27th, they put up their newest. This is from the Atomic Society, so it's scientists working on this clock, but it's not a scientific device. It's a bunch of people who are doing research and saying, what do we think, how do we think the world is going right now? How do we think we're doing? And how close are we to the end? To the zombie apocalypse, to the annihilation. And they officially put the numbers. Can you put the next slide up? This is a graph of the. If you look at it, here's where we are right here. It's officially 85 seconds to midnight, which is when they think that the world is gonna end. It's officially the worst they've ever indicated the world is at. We're the closest to the end, according to these people we've ever been. Well, that's a bright and cheery, isn't it? Now, just to put this into perspective, when they dropped the or testing hydrogen, or sorry, when they started testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere of the States and USSR, it wasn't this bad, according to these scientists. During the next war, which is uh throw it up there for me, Esmond, so I can remember which one it is. Is this the Vietnam War? Vietnam War. Still not the worst it's ever been. 9-11. COVID. We lost 7 million people to COVID. The doomsday clock still wasn't as bad as it is today. That's a bit sobering, isn't it? And I told you I'm not gonna leave you here, but I need you to sit here for a minute. Because how we feel about that is gonna tell us a lot about what's going on inside of us. The undercurrents. The unconscious parts that are sucking us down, taking us over, dragging us under. We've all felt that, haven't we? Whatever unconscious part you and I hold, we can feel it pulling us under. I was saying to my wife just this week, my parts have been spicy lately. They have not been happy. And I've had times this last month where more than often they're pulling me under. I'm struggling. I have to pull away, be by myself, it hurts my partner. As we look at this, and we ask ourselves, what are our undercurrents? Now, to get here, we've talked about a bunch of different things. We talked about this whole idea of unconscious parts. Now, I used a quote from a writer in the Bible named Paul. He has this great line that he says. Can you throw it there for me, as man? He says, I don't understand my own actions, for I don't, for I don't do what I should, but I do the very thing I hate. Anyone feeling some resonance with Paul on that one? He says this. I can feel something deep inside of me trying to keep me doing the things I don't want to do. For as long as we've been writing about our lives, we've been writing about these undercurrents, these things that pull us down, suck us in, take us over. We've been calling these unconscious parts. The parts of us that, again, they're they live in that undercurrent, and all of a sudden it's kind of like something happens, and that part grabs you and drags you underneath the water, and all of a sudden you're doing all the things you didn't want to do. You know, you're not doing the things you should be doing. And the question we've been asking, or I guess maybe we I'm gonna assume on you all. The question I've been obsessed with that I'm trying to get you all to ask, is how do we see those unconscious parts so that they don't suck us under? We looked at Immunity to Change. It's a book written about 30 years ago. Brilliant book. He uses different language, but it's he's talking about parts. And he has this whole matrix that he has. Can you throw up there for me, Esmond? And he says, we have these unconscious parts. The question the question we have to ask is, what do our parts, what beliefs do those parts have? I don't know about you. But when I look at that and I think, what beliefs do my unconscious parts have? I don't get a whole lot of answers. Because they're unconscious. And so even when I brought that up, I thought, yeah, wouldn't it be great to know our beliefs what my what my unconscious parts' beliefs have? And now some of them I've no, I know. If you have an avoidant attachment style, if you know what that is, we've talked about that years ago. I have a very avoidant attachment style. That means I have an unconscious part, well, mostly unconscious. I can see him swimming around down there. He kind of lives like right here, and he's like waiting. Anytime I feel neglected, he pounces and he just like throws me for a loop. Now, I never learned this, but my counselor taught me this. That part has a belief that says no one is going to take care of me. No one. I have to take care of myself. And it makes me self-reliant, it makes me very good at certain things in my life, not super healthy. Instead of asking for help to deal with those parts of my life, I don't. And when that one takes over, man, I'm looking at my wife and she's looking at me like it's not good. I turtle, I get cranky, I'm my brain is such in a bad place. I never learned the belief of that part until I talked with somebody who knew more than me. If you have an anxious attachment style, your belief is everyone's gonna leave. I'm too much, no one can deal with me, right? You have those, that's the belief of that part. And when you feel somebody pulling away, even somebody you're having a conversation and they turn their body a little bit, that part will flare up and be like, we have to, we have to get away, we have to get away. Or when you know the beliefs of your parts, you can see them in action. How do you make the unconscious parts conscious? How do you figure out their beliefs? I've been obsessed with this. At first, I thought I could just talk about parts and then say, just figure out the beliefs, and y'all just figure it out. Well, clearly I haven't, so that didn't work very well. So then I talked about something a bit more, but then I realized, wait a second, in some senses we can see our beliefs in action, our unconscious parts. We can see them by their beliefs. When when when when you ask me, will the world take care of me? The belief of my unconscious parts will answer and say no. You gotta take care of yourself. Then I can go the other way. If I can figure out the stories that resonate with me, I can use those to go back and find my unconscious parts, the undercurrents. That's what this series is designed to do for you. It's designed to help you see your unconscious parts by seeing what stories you resonate with. Now let me show you how it works. We talked about this last week, but let me show you how it works. There is three creation stories in our tradition in the Bible. Three creation stories. Two of them are together, one's in another book. First one is kind of it's about chaos. Chaos to order. That's the first story. Seems to be a good one. Second one is about Adam and Eve. Anyone heard Adam and Eve? You know the characters. It's actually kind of about Adam and Eve, but it's more than that. It's about a world that's perfect. Utopia. It's the Garden of Eden. Food is plentiful. Animals like you. You know, you're sitting there like having a cup of orange juice, petting a tiger. It's just like, this is just normal. Right? How are you doing, buddy? He's like, oh, I'm good. I'm not sure how that works because the tiger would have to eat something alive. I'm not sure how it works. Again, it's not literal, I don't think. If you're a literalist, that's fine. You can be. To me, this is just a story that tries to set up something else. And the story goes like this: we have perfection. The world is perfect. And then the character god basically dangles a little apple in front of them and says, You can have everything you want in the garden but this. Now, if someone tells you you can have anything in the garden but this, what are you thinking about right now? This. What are you obsessed with? This. There's a scholar, uh Rollins. Uh, what's his name? I want to say Pete Rollins. I was gonna say Henry Rollins. That's the wrong genre. Pete Rollins says, When you make something taboo, you become obsessed. You can't let go of it. And in the story, we have this fruit, and it's like you cannot eat, you have anything else in the world but this fruit. So, what do they do? They eat the fruit, right? What would I do? I'd eat the fruit. I think the point of the story is this. The world started perfect. And then this is our current state. Now, I believe this was written probably not at the start of time. This was written during the time when the people who are reading it were living in hell. They've been taken over, all their best and brightest had been moved to a different country. They've been indoctrinated in a different tradition, a different culture. Think worst case scenario, relocation, uh, refugee camp. That's what they're living in. And this is what they wrote to describe their world. Can you throw it up for me, Esmond? We looked at this the other day. Remember, at the beginning, we're all friendly. You're petting the tiger. The tiger's just friendly. Now, humans and snakes are at war with each other, each trying to kill the other. Our relationship with animals is a constant struggle. Women have tremendous pain giving birth, often losing their lives to bring new life. Couples, power struggle. Getting food from the ground is hard. The very ground fights us. We work our whole lives just trying to survive until we take our last breath and we're buried in the very ground that seems to hate us. The world was perfect and utopia. Now it's here. It's crap. It sucks. And if we draw a line between this and this, where does it take us? You see, I think this story gets us to ask a very important question. What shape is the world in right now? And which direction is it going from here? That's the question I want to use to help you figure out the undercurrents in your life. Because how you answer that question will tell you something about your inner life. It will tell you about which parts are freaking out and which parts are calm right now. How you answer that, what stories you connect with will help you see the deep parts of you. Now, before I do, I'm gonna try and bend your mind. To do this exercise, here's what you have to do. When you answer that question, you have to understand something. Have to. Let me try and say that softer. I encourage you strongly to understand something. You have picked a story. This is not fact. This is a story that your brain or some unconscious part of your brain is attached to. If you see this as fact, you will have to fight this with every person who disagrees with you. If your brain says the world is going to hell in a handbasket and we're about 10 seconds to everyone getting killed, and your partner walks and says, Isn't the world getting better these days? You literally have to try and kill them because you're like, I cannot let you live this way. You cannot speak to me this way. I have the right facts. You are wrong. Anyone have seen that in play? This feeling that no, no, no, this isn't a story I connect to. This is factuality, and I have to make you believe it. I have to make you see it. The ninja move and the move that this whole series is based on. And if you can do this move, I'm telling you, so much in your life will be easier. If you let go of the factuality of my answer and you realize it's a story that an unconscious part of me is connected to. If you can do that, everything changes. You don't have to yell at your colleague. You don't have to go online and post a bunch of stuff to say this is factual. You may make the same decisions you make, but they're made in a different feeling. It's not I must and it must change the world. It's no, this resonates with me, and I understand why. Because the unconscious parts are conscious, and you can understand my unconscious parts like a certain story. If you're saying, but Vince, these are facts. Okay, I understand. Try this as a mental a mental game. Just for a minute. Look at the story that you hold as a story and see what happens. Now, this is probably the part of this the message where I should be really nice. And you'll miss Jeff on this. Jeff would always be really nice at this point. So I'm gonna actually poke the bear for a little while. So I'm gonna try and make you guys feel even more. I'm gonna list a bunch of facts about the state of the world. These are all factual statements on both sides. Your goal is not to say, Vince, this is true or not true. Your goal is to say, which facts freak me out and which facts do I connect to? Because they're all facts. Again, we're looking to see what unconscious part grabs onto which facts, which answers the question, is the world getting worse or better? Okay, I'm gonna get Esmond to help me here. Esmond, can you throw up the first one for me? Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, Venezuela. Let's start with the world is getting worse, shall we? I've seen more wars in my lifetime than I thought I ever would see. And I grew up in the Cold War era. There's more military conflicts that's been started in the last little while than I ever thought I would see. Next one. Ever recorded. Next one, Esmond. Global polarization is accelerating. There's more people against other people. There's more sectarianism. There's more us against them. When we talk about our spiritual moral, there's more things getting driving us down that model than ever before. Now remember, your goal here is to not pay attention to if this is factual or not. Your goal is to remember or think, wait a second, do I resonate with that or do I hate that? Is there a part of me that goes, yes, that is true. That is how I always have felt. Or is there a part going, okay, but Vince, you're not, but what about this? But you're not seeing this. As a way to see what our unconscious parts are connected to. Can you show me the next one, Esmond? Water's becoming a weapon. Wow, I didn't even realize this until some of the Ukraine or the Iraq war stuff. Many, many countries in the Middle East are completely dependent on desalinization. You can blow up a desalinization plant very quickly. Water's being weaponized in this world. Water. It's brutal. Next one. Africa. More legitimate governments are being overthrown. More hostile parties taking over. Not caring about humans, just caring about what's good for them. Next one, Esmond. Global economic growth is slowing and inequality is deepening. Next one. Oh yeah, for the first time in decades, life expectancy first in the United States, but it seems like it's gonna go across the world. People are living a shorter amount than before. Is the world what's the shape of the world? And is it getting better? Or worse? Can you feel which of these facts resonate? Because if you think the world's getting better, this is you can't you can't hear this. You have to deny all those facts, right? It's like I cannot deal with that. That's not good. Now to throw you all bone, I'm gonna poke the other side of the room now. Can we switch to the other side, Esmond? Global life expectancy is more than doubled since 1990 to 2020, I believe. Doubled. From 32 to what would that be? 64? I think it's even a little bit more than that. This is across the world. In 30 years, life expectancy has doubled. Well, that feels nice for all of us who like the positive side. Next one, Esmond. Child mortality has been cut in half. I saw these numbers, same thing, 30 years. It was 93 children died per thousand. It's half that now. In 30 years. It's incredible. Next one. Extreme poverty is nearly half what it was. That one blows me away. I remember growing up, and it was like we're gonna lose half our world to poverty. And it's half. Next one. Literacy has gone from elite to near universal. 12% in the early 1900s to 87% of kids are educated. And the next one I think is literacy, boys and girls go to school equally. In fact, girls have now taken over in upper schooling. More girls across the world are getting higher-level education than boys. Growing up, that was completely in unequal. Boys were getting educated, girls not. We've actually we still support a school in Kenya where we're trying to make this shift to be a supporter of that. But again, around the world, when you look at the averages, it's incredibly positive. Can you tell which story my unconscious? Parts like. Did I do the other side justice? Probably not. Because I love this side. What's the next one, Esmond? Refugees are returning home at record rates. 1.6 million people in 2024 went home. That's incredible. Next one. Solar and wind have overtaken fossil fuels in Europe to producing energy. Is that the last one, Esmer? Is there one more? One more. Global inflation is cooling. Which side do you like more? Which side does your unconscious parts connect with more? Everything on that list is factual. The difference is what are the unconscious parts inside of your brain saying? That's right. Pay attention to that. Ignore that. Deny that. Okay, but Vince didn't pay attention to all this over here. But what about that? The goal is not to figure out the facts. The goal is to figure out what store you connect with. Can you feel the undercurrents a little bit more now that I poked a bit? During COVID, I got together with some friends. They told me about a brother. Yeah, small world. One of my old running partners works for a company that makes canned meals. It's kind of like bunker food. Like if you're gonna have a bunker and you're gonna live there for a year, you buy the food from them. It's like cans of like pure protein and like canned, I don't even know what it is, but it's like mystery meat number three and like protein powder number two. It's like you can live on this stuff. It's not actually living, but you like you probably won't die. It's like that kind of food. And and my friend told me he's like, my brother bought enough food for him, his two children, and his wife for an entire year and built a room downstairs and filled it with this food so when the doomsday clock got to zero from COVID, they would be able to live. Now, if you're in the if your brain, if your unconscious parts are saying, I see the world as bad and getting worse, does that decision make sense? Yes. That's literally the smartest thing you could have done. Now, if this is a factual conversation, that person needs to justify why they spent, I can't even remember how much it was, I think$10,000 or tens of thousands of dollars. They have to justify that and say, no, no, no, but the world is going well, look at COVID, look at what's going on in this world. This only makes sense, and you need to do it too. But if they're able to go, you know what? I have unconscious parts inside of me, just like Paul. I have this force inside of me that sees the world as bad and getting worse. So to make that part feel comfortable, I spend$10,000 and build a bunker in my basement. Makes complete sense to me. Do you need to do it? No. Once you can make the unconscious conscious, you don't have to force the world around you to do what you believe. And for the people who are on the other side of saying, no, no, no, the world might be a little bit bad, but look at the trajectory, it's going up. Why would you spend all that money on food in a bunker? Look at the facts. If you understand that, no, I've chosen those facts out of all of them. I've chosen that story because I have an unconscious part inside of me. You look at somebody who built a bunker and you go, oh, good for them. I hope that feels good for them. I spend my money on dirt bike parts that I literally break every week. Could you think of a dumber way to spend money? Nope. Now, let's look for a second. You can already see I prefer the positive answer, right? I have unconscious parts inside of me that prefer the feeling that the world is getting better. Let's just try. Anyone have a feeling parts inside of you that are like, I'm liking the positive? Or am I literally the only one in here? Nice. Put them up high and proud. Come on, people. We're on the right team, right? Now, why do we hold this? I'll tell you why I hold it. And I don't know yours, but I'll let you do this work yourself. The feeling of the world going down makes me demotivated like nothing else. People who are realists, pessimists, the most demotivating mindset I could possibly think of. And it's worse than that. When I feel like the world is going down, whatever it is, it's going down, I feel powerless to fix it. And I freaking hate that feeling. Like with a bloody passion. That part inside of me needs it to be positive. I can't live with the negative. It just feels like it's crushing my soul when I'm not conscious of it. Now, how many people, and I know I did this as a binary, but how many people are on the negative side like, look at the world closet and like it is bad and getting worse? Just throw up your hands for a second. Yeah. I know I created a binary, but like there's some facts out there that are pretty strong. Why do you hold that view? In fact, she built this entire series. She helped me understand something I never saw because when we first got together, we had a constant fight. Honey, look how good this is going. She's like, but what about this? But but look how good it's going. But what about this? We were stuck in factuality, and I was constantly arguing. We didn't understand it until one day, I don't even know what happened. I don't know why I asked you this question. But I was like, why are you always so negative? Right? Again, she's ninja level because that sounds really accusatory, and it super is, not my most skillful. She said, I hate the feeling of having hope and then not having it come through. I hate the feeling of getting my hopes up, and then whatever I had my hopes up with doesn't happen. She's like, I hate that feeling. And the light switch clicked on for me. Oh, you're demotivated by the feeling of my hopes not having coming true. I'm demotivated by the feeling of it's not going up. She's just protecting herself from a feeling she doesn't like, feeling of like uh lack of success, feeling like her hopes didn't get met. I'm trying to figure out how to not feel powerless in the moment. We were arguing over something else. We're arguing over facts. But what I realized then is no, no, no, I have a story that I'm attached to that I need her to buy into so that I can feel okay and I don't feel powerless. She's on the other side, much nicer than I am, going, I can't go there. Because if my hopes go up and then it doesn't come through, that'll crush me. Can you see how wise these stories are? How well they manage the feelings that we don't want to feel. Now, when I'm rested and I've had a sandwich and I've done some self-care and I got dirt biking. Now, when we talk, I can hear her. The world is bad and getting worse. It's her just dealing with a feeling she doesn't want to feel. And I don't have that feeling of, I need you to be positive so that I don't have to feel the feelings I don't want to feel. I'm like, oh hey, babe. Yeah, totally. Put my arm around her. Sometimes in my head, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna give you something that's gonna blow away that hope so far, like it's gonna be so awesome that you never even got your head around it. That might be my own way of dealing with life. But how many of you can feel that negative side? The world is bad and getting worse. You can feel an unconscious part underneath pulling at you. It impacts how you behave, it impacts how you interact with the people you love, the people around you. It makes you have to have an argument you don't want to have, or pull yourself away from people you actually love. Can you see how the stories you're connected with that you feel attached to tell you something about the undercurrents of your life? And we don't do it just as an academic exercise. We do this work so we can be in the world fully connected to the people around us, not dragged under by our unconscious parts, not having fights that we don't need to have, not creating boundaries against people that we truly love, but able to see other humans and their unconscious parts just like we have and go, oh, that's what you're doing, or in my case, oh, that's why I'm freaking out right now. That's why I'm like, I have to have it this way. It has to be here. So that we can now live with choice. I can choose to buy a bunker full of food because it makes me feel good. And I have the money. When it's unconscious, I have to buy the bunker of food. And you have to believe in this too. May we be a people, a community, with deep awareness of our unconscious parts and what's motivating it so that we can live in love with people for whatever reason that don't believe the same pieces that we do. May we see their unconscious parts and learn to navigate them with skill and love. That's what my wife taught me. And on my best days, I can pull it off. May this next week be some of your best days. Have a great week, everybody. Take care.