Video: Value & Civilisation | Forrest Landry, O.G. Rose, Michel Bauwens, Tim Adalin (The Commons Series) (DocDrop)

00:00:01

[Music] the heart of the inquiry at least as I'm proposing it and we'll see where we go wants to relate with the heart of

00:00:15

what matters of what value is of what value creation is now beginning that so broadly as I was just saying well valuable to who you who are we talking about we're talking from the perspective

00:00:29

of culture from nature what matters to an ecology that can support a complexity of Life over what time Horizon for psyche for me

00:00:40

for you there's a tremendous amount of perspectives that we can bring to bear on this there is part of this inquiry that was initially framed in terms of political economy one

00:00:54

of the first classes I took at University when I was sort of 1819 it was uh politic iCal science course and the book The Textbook or one of them was titled how the world Works which was an

00:01:06

ambitious title and from that perspective the world worked according to a certain analysis of economics and then some sort of argument about whether

00:01:18

it was a realist interpretation of international relations or maybe it had some liberalism very little in the way of psychology very little of relating to what matters at all and what are we here

00:01:30

for who do we want to be and maybe who we are in some sense more fundamental to that what is the nature of creativity and so one other aspect to

00:01:43

this inquiry I suppose wants to be mindful of how an important aspect of our Global political world our global economic World talks about value

00:01:56

Exchange in terms of let's say GDP this is some measure of attempting to get at the value exchanged in a system but perhaps we all might

00:02:09

agree it's woefully incomplete for instance you know there might be in there the penalty someone pays to a credit card company that's part of GDP but where is the value being

00:02:22

created right and how can we together create and understand and the world and participate in a world that might value more effectively but again

00:02:35

for what and so something in here is the nature of the inquiry I'm here with Forest Landry who's a remarkable generalist thinker is a Craftsman and a

00:02:48

philosopher of the the deepest caliber and likewise OG Rose Daniel Garner you know Young perhaps by a

00:03:01

decade or two but someone I've known to be a truly remarkable thinker and Michelle as well a a civilizational theorist and um and rightfully so I have

00:03:14

tremendous respect for the breadth of your scholarship and understanding of how it is that societies have come to value and how civilizations have transitioned over many

00:03:26

centuries and so that's the opening there thank you for for listening to that and the opening question is just to yourself forest and it's a broad one and uh how do you think about what

00:03:40

matters how do you think about value in the context of what I brought forth and what are you sensing is the heart of the inquiry that's coming from me here well it is a broad question um I

00:03:53

hear underneath this a sense of meaningfulness what is Meaningful what does the notion of meaningfulness even mean how do we relate to the notion of meaningfulness and this is a it is a

00:04:05

broad question in the sense that it it's it's it's connected to a fairly abstract concept of of meaningfulness itself um in in a certain sense to start from a sort of U maybe metaphysical

00:04:17

perspective I think of it as a relationship between three Worlds at least one of which has subjective components um so in effect it's kind of like you know I might say something you

00:04:28

know I in my subjective context use some statement in a language to convey something to you that you would understand in your subjective context and so in this sense we could think about communication of meaning as as as

00:04:42

a very general process um in terms of what the notion of meaningfulness is itself in relation to I do think about value I do think about purpose and this notion of

00:04:55

meaningfulness is being connected to both value and to purpose so there's a kind of functional component and there's a kind of symbolic or maybe even a sacred component um we might have for example

00:05:07

the notion of sacredness as being like the epitome or the the maximum or the totality of all meaningfulness or that which is the most meaningful um so in a sense when you're when I when I hear the question um you

00:05:19

know what is meaningfulness I can refer to the abstract notion but then we can basically say well what is Meaningful and and at this point you know you're you're you're mentioning the the relativity question meaningful to who and under what

00:05:32

circumstances um and again starting from a somewhat metaphysical premise I think about well in so far as there is there some subjectiveness associated with the notion of meaningfulness inherently then

00:05:43

I think meaningfulness in relation to life and in this sense we immediately encounter the idea that all life is Meaningful and all meaningfulness is alive and that this is something that we

00:05:56

need to take seriously we need to really like acknowledge that to actually like integrate that into our uh methods of understanding and our our comprehension of reality in the universe and so in

00:06:08

this sense uh again thinking about it from a fa abstract point of view I think a lot about uh the relationship between the subjective and the objective and how that is an embodiment of meaningfulness regardless of what kind of uh

00:06:20

subjectivity or objectivity we may be referring to and so this sense of connection or relationship or dialogue or process is essentially being the sort of fundamental the interaction between the subjective as being the basis for

00:06:32

both the beingness of the subjective and the interaction uh the beingness of the subjective and the objective primarily that that in effect uh it it therefore is actually a very good question to start with because in this sense we can

00:06:45

start thinking about Connections to from say surface self to deep self or from self to world as I've alluded to already and also as you mentioned um between

00:06:58

self and other you know you know what are our our relationships and so you know you mentioned economic process um and I think of this as essentially being an element of of what we might think of as

00:07:09

Choice process so in effect when when when thinking about um you know purchase of goods and services you know obviously the choic is involved in that but but but that ultimately we're we're really

00:07:22

talking about how do we make good choices how do we make wise choices or in the sense that you asked how do we make meaningful choices and what is the nature of of of making a meaningful Choice um particularly in the sense of

00:07:35

that relationship being itself uh something which is has has a realness to it has the notion of of a real nature um so in this sense it's it's not just choice that we're thinking about

00:07:46

it's also the notion of of change and of causation and that if I really want to Grapple with the notion of choice change and causation essentially to to be in direct relationship with the process of

00:07:59

the real itself um then then in effect fact I want to know the nature of the essential nature of choice changing causation I want to I want to in a sense grapple with the meaningfulness of those terms uh both as abstractions and as

00:08:11

embodied realities so in in in this specific sense um you know it's not just an economic question it's also a sort of governance one like how do we make choices together what is the community

00:08:23

process that we collectively make choices and are those choices adequately wise to preserve the well-being of the relationships that we are in effect entangled with in other words is it the

00:08:35

case that our life is supporting life and that which doesn't support life won't continue to live and so in this particular sense we have a a real notion

00:08:47

here of of of upholding life and meaningfulness in in a very deep way in a very integrated way um and in this sense I'm not being it it might seem like I'm holding a certain agnosticism with respect to the

00:09:01

notion of of of of the meaningfulness of life but actually I'm not I'm I'm basically saying life is Meaningful and that in effect we we we want to really be in recognition of that

00:09:12

in in the deepest possible sense um that that that in in some in some senses that that that we're really trying to make meaningful choices in the sense of choices that increase the quality of life inre increase the the quality of

00:09:27

thriving this uh both for ourselves and for the people that we touch and the world that we live in um past present and future um and and in this sense that's that's you know an appreciation of the past an appreciation of the

00:09:40

present and appreciation of the potential of the future so in in in a lot of ways to to to to Really uh explore these Concepts has has something that that has been

00:09:52

something that I've personally found uh particularly meaningful in so far as it has clarified for me the very nature nature of what it means to make good choices and how to think about that ethically and to really understand the

00:10:04

relationship between these principles and the practices that emerge from them and to some extent it's it's important for us to sort of recognize the connections between these principles and

00:10:16

these practices specifically because as as things change in the world and the laws and cultural norms that we have all been accustomed to have uh increasingly

00:10:28

become less and less relevant less and less meaningful for the kinds of lives that we notice that we want to be a part of that in effect we we we then have to in effect let go of the preconceptions

00:10:40

of how we think about things ought to be and come back down to the to the reality of the principles and the practices that that enable life to actually Thrive and so in this sense um I I find

00:10:53

myself finding that these questions on one hand may seem really abstract but in another respect touch on the very deepest levels of what it is to live well and fully and in that sense it's sort of a

00:11:06

deep Tantra it's a it's a it's a it's an incredibly deep way of thinking about and and being with the the sort of substance of one's life and relationships again not just uh with

00:11:18

one's own sort of spirit but also with the with the Deep of the world and and and and the the well-being of the other and other including other people other cultures other lives I mean

00:11:31

animals and so on so so in this sense um I I don't know on one hand these things like I said may seem really abstract but in another sense they they touch on on a lot that is of value um yes when we when we think about

00:11:46

meaningfulness and the meaningfulness of life I'm I'm I'm acknowledging the fact that there is effectively billions of years of evolutionary process that have attuned our lives and capacities in Exquisite sensitivity to to to this

00:11:59

world and that there is something there which is uh not easily replaced and that therefore needs protecting right well thank you Forest thank you very

00:12:10

much yes on the one hand I appreciate that language that attempts to speak with breadth as well as depth can be

00:12:23

taken as abstract and yet in this case we're speaking about something profoundly intimate and perhaps abstraction is necessary to speak on

00:12:35

intimacy and a certain sense it is it's it's it's this kind of ironic thing we we I notice that these are things in the sense that we're talking about the relationship

00:12:48

between the subjective and object it's not the objective it's this objective and it's not the subjective it's my personal subjective and and in this sense it's like it's actually as embodied as it

00:13:00

gets and this is this is as is is is really not abstract at all it's it's it's the to to to fully Encompass is is to essentially hit all ranges of scale and process

00:13:14

simultaneously yes I understand I understand I feel that very much so thank you now there's a few different ways I could

00:13:26

potentially point this and so I'll see about just opening the space a little bit and see if I can discern if anything wants to come through perhaps if no one's chomping at

00:13:39

the bit particularly I might ask Michelle because I think it would be interesting to introduce at an early stage how you think about the notion of the commons this is something I've

00:13:52

spoken to Forest about this will be tagged as part of an ongoing series which situates the commons quite centrally because I think it's a very important notion you know certainly we

00:14:04

could speak about it in the context of political economy but we could also speak about it in terms of language and this this profound story and

00:14:17

entanglement of life and relationships which constitutes us that in some sense we participate in know each other through and yet can

00:14:29

forget all too quickly it seems so how do you think about the commons Michelle in relation to some of what's been discussed so far right thank you um well if if you

00:14:44

allow me I just want to say few words about value first um so you know I I also struggled with that notion of value and so I remember reading a 800

00:14:58

page book by David Graber the late David Graber and after reading 800 pages I still didn't know what value was and actually his conclusion is that really

00:15:11

nobody knows what value is so you know after add 800 pages I was really frustrated that he didn't give me a clear answer um so one of the ways I I I deal with it

00:15:26

is um you know by uh also distinguishing material and immaterial value so or you know could say subjective objective would be another way uh to say it and so

00:15:39

and to view it historically um and so broadly the way I see it and I you know of course I I could be wrong is that um you know in the let's say the

00:15:51

kinship based organization of of human life um and the spirituality that was belonging to it there was no difference between material and immaterial it was

00:16:05

like a unified animistic everything had life everything had Soul uh and there wasn't a big difference made between you know those different facets of life and then when

00:16:18

the higher religions came with higher I mean you know the the kind of world religions we are accustomed to that came with the urban uh craft agre Aran um

00:16:30

mode of organiz organizing life I think we started to make a split and to actually value the immaterial more than the material and and I think that has to be understood because we we now are in

00:16:43

the opposite right so what that meant was that life was in service of the Transcendent and so um even you know like a feudal Lord it wasn't his property it was the property of the

00:16:55

lineage and he had responsib ibility to grow and expand the the lineage the property of the of his lineage not his own personal material interest I think

00:17:08

that's very important that you know that life and meaning was oriented to towards that other thing uh that was not not day-to-day uh material survival but to be in touch with this kind of you know

00:17:22

Transcendent immaterial Value World and then of course we shifted and I think that's the world is ending now which is we we shifted towards privileging material value and so the whole you know

00:17:37

political economy of capital uh is to make everything a commodity including the immaterial and and so we are now in a in a world where that

00:17:49

is kind of breaking down and exacerbating at the same time because you know something that is dying usually like clings to life and so they there's this burst of commodifying everything

00:18:01

but I think it actually points to a certain kind of vending of this this period and so the shift that I see is a shift towards

00:18:14

contribution and impact so we are moving from a value form that is based on scarcity like something that you need to make and you need resources to make it and then you need to to

00:18:28

evaluate the worth of of of these uh scares resources um and and to a world viiew like if you look at accounting where everything is seen from like am I either

00:18:43

individually or collectively as a corporate entity am I making more profit am I growing my capital and the kind of blindness to you know to the

00:18:55

ecosystemic other uh and and so because that is not working anymore because we are overusing overshooting uh destroying you know the

00:19:06

human and ecological health of the planet so we are facing this shift and so contribution and so I'm I'm coming to the comments just a minute um so

00:19:19

contribution and impact is everything what cannot be measured by by commodity and that we are not trying to find a way to either bring that in or to actually completely

00:19:31

shift um you know how we evalue so we are now in a chaotic intercession um between something that we know is no longer working and

00:19:43

something that we're yearning for but don't really quite know how to how to achieve so I think this is where we are so what do the commons have to do with

00:19:55

this so I think that about five ,000 years ago you know we could discuss exactly when that that shift happened but let's just say 5,000 years ago so we shifted from this kind of kinship

00:20:08

based uh to craft agrarian civilization so an arrangement between the urban and the rural around Agriculture and Mining and making stuff to create these complex societies that

00:20:22

were run by markets and states and these are essentially extractive institutions so we decided that value was something that we extracted from

00:20:34

nature uh and we build institutions that are based on either Conquest like the state or you know like exploitation I I think we can use

00:20:47

that term uh you know from the material world getting more useful things and maximizing those useful things so that's a value form

00:20:59

that changes over time as well but that's a really basic like civilizational value form an orientation towards the world where the human uh you know is looking at the world as a resource to a certain degree

00:21:12

and and and and using that resource and but there's always been the counter the counter to this and this is where the common comes in so you have the extractive

00:21:25

impulse and you have the protective and regenerative impulse and so until capitalism we always buil both like we we had an extractive impulse and institutions that

00:21:39

were doing the extraction and that were creating you know Empires and all of that and then we had at the same time in the countryside we had very strong Comm that we

00:21:50

recognized even by the warrior class the Priestly class you know the the the idea that Society had both was a very important thing and that

00:22:03

is I think what what the political economy of capitalism has at least in the first phase destroyed thinking that the extraction should be like

00:22:14

Universal um and that treating everything as a commodity you know would automatically lead to to positive outcomes and so okay so this is one thing then then the next thing to to

00:22:27

bring in is time and the idea of Cycles so I've been working quite a bit on the notion of Cycles recently I've been trying to make sense of all the people talking about cycles and I I have you know after maybe two years of thinking

00:22:41

about it a pretty good idea of how they fit with each other and you know maybe if you want to talk about this I I could do but I I'll leave it there for the moment so the idea is that we in in our history we had

00:22:54

these spirits of ascending extractive moments where you know the empires grow the societies grow and automatically

00:23:07

overuse their resource base and then the and the commons tend to but they provide good services for their core population and so the commons tend to die out and then periods where the extractive

00:23:21

institutions are in a descending phase people start losing trust in those institutions and then they revive their their comments and paradoxically this is the moment

00:23:34

where we are is that that local Dynamic is no longer working so that Dynamic of you know going up and down with the commons is no longer working because we now have

00:23:46

Global overshoot we have Global extraction um and so this brings me to the way I formulate this that we need to move to this cosmol local paradigm right so this is actually a new phase of

00:24:00

civilization so if you temporize it you know I would say 5,000 years ago we move from kinship to Market States and I think now we're moving to something else

00:24:11

in this so in which we need to rethink and reestablish a logic that is both an equilibrium with non-human beings and and and the web of

00:24:25

life and and you know nature whatever you want to call it but also amongst ourselves right we we need to both find peace with with the natural world of you know of course we are ourselves

00:24:39

completely part of it but also kind of separate from it in in certain uh real ways but also between ourselves because what we can see today is that both are

00:24:51

in disequilibrium it's other words the people are not happy anymore so we are in an age of like social dislocation and protest and um so these things are very much

00:25:04

linked to each other I I hope I didn't ramble too much but anyway so this is this is where we think we are and and so to come back to my cyclus and close my reasoning I think we are in a period

00:25:17

where every cycle is like converging to crisis the 50e conative cycle the 100 Year generational cycle the war and had Gonic cycle the

00:25:30

500 year halflife cycle which some somebody called George Meli calls the learning algorithm 16 generation algorithm the 10,000 years cycle that

00:25:42

Spangler and T identifying civilization uh so all of these Cycles are you know coming at at at a point and every cycle has its agenda now

00:25:56

I know it's weird to say that that you know do this cycle have like agency I think they do in a certain way because you know life is withm like day

00:26:06

and night the the moon cycle you know the Earth around the Sun these are these I think these These are also agents you know in some way they have causality and so I think that what we

00:26:20

call Cycles actually does have you know unbeknownst to us uh has actually real causality and so we by knowing the

00:26:33

different Logics of these Cycles we have more agency ourselves it's to the degree that we know our determinisms that we can actually understand our real freedom and to the

00:26:46

degree that we don't know those determinisms we may think we are free but we actually are you know PL thingss of these larger forces okay I I'll I'll stop here

00:26:59

can I jump in momentarily although I'm actually really looking forward to hearing Daniel's voice but I feel the I feel the option uh Michael our meeting has been overdue thank you Tim for for bringing us together I've I've known of

00:27:12

of your presence in this space for some time uh and it's actually surprising to me that we haven't spoken sooner yes um I I I'm I'm wanting to speak briefly to you spe specifically to help connect our

00:27:26

work so in other words words to um say I hear you and first of all to provide bridges of language that allow for some of the thinking that I've been engaged with to connect to the thinking that you

00:27:39

are engaged with so that we can see each other a little better uh part of it is me learning your language and also part of it is is me connecting my language to your language so that you have the option to to to use those tools if if if

00:27:51

that is helpful to you uh especially because I I feel uh significantly the uh frustration and the patience that you have to read an 800 page book and not come to a satisfying answer and and and

00:28:04

and feeling the impulse of of of of wanting to to to put something in that space that would be of more utility to you than than than the the effort that you were were not rewarded so in this

00:28:16

sense um when I think about value um one of the languages that I've learned to use in this space is the language of actuality and potentiality another language that I've used to learn to that I've learned to

00:28:29

use in this space is the language of embodied versus virtual to which you have already added the language of scale local versus global or perhaps cosmological as I'm I'm hearing you

00:28:41

speak of it and I think that these six sort of ordinations of value right these three dimensions of of virtual versus embodied right when we talk about virtual Capital we're talking about uh

00:28:55

numbers in a bank account um or tokens of exchange like these little green pieces of paper these are abstractions they're not actual value in the sense of of of something like a person's health or you know that pile of truck sitting

00:29:09

over there right you know embodied values are are things like our bodies the trees the the roads the the the vehicles that we use the airplanes and so on right so in effect there's there's

00:29:20

there's a sense of being able to distinguish between virtual value and embodied value and to know when and where we losing coherency in one to gain in the other uh so for example many of

00:29:32

the problems you refer to not working in so I want to now clarify what do we mean by that there's a sense in which we we take a tree out of the woods right we decontextualize it um we take the log we cut it up in the boards and we make

00:29:46

furniture so we take the decontextualized thing and we turn into a piece of furniture that we then sell that's now going from embodied thing an actual physical tree an actual physical

00:29:56

pile of wood lum number uh a chair now all of a sudden to a number right that chair was worth you know a few hundred bucks um if it's a custommade chair it's it's definitely worth that so so in

00:30:08

effect there's a sense in which the embodiment has been replaced with an abstraction and the abstraction goes into a bank account gets added to a bunch more similar abstractions and it becomes an accumulation and the um the

00:30:22

the the the time complexity of the tree and the woods as part of the ecosystem is is is measured in Giga PAB bits per second at an absolute minimum in other words the amount of information it's

00:30:34

involved and making a good choice as far as a tree in the woods is concerned is is is requiring scientific notation of at least 10 to the 22 and probably 10 to the 32 um you know complexity lines of code necessary to describe the

00:30:48

situation giving a complete physical description of a log a pile of wood or a chair is still relatively a lot of information probably 10 to the six maybe 10 the nine bits of information depending upon how thorough you want to

00:30:59

be but by the time you go to abstraction you're now replacing it with a 32-bit number and when it goes into bank account you're talking fractions of a bit still represented and so if we're thinking that in making choices around the

00:31:12

well-being of the world that we would want to be as informed as possible we've replaced a highly coherent networked multi-level interaction in an embodied ecosystem with a highly abstracted

00:31:26

number in a bank account at something like 30 orders of magnitude loss of information relevant to making a good choice that's the problem and so in this particular sense it's it's important for

00:31:38

us to keep track of not just transitions of scale but transitions of embodiment versus virtual um or actual versus potential right we went from actual complexity

00:31:49

represented in the embod to Virtual complexity representative bank account but the bank account number doesn't represent very much information at all and the coherency of that although it's something that the bank is of great interest to highly maintain uh in order

00:32:03

to you know have the economic system still work because if those numbers changed arbitrarily people wouldn't trust the system anymore so in this sense uh We've traded a lot of embodied virtual actuality and

00:32:17

potentiality for essentially I sorry an embodied thing to a to a virtual thing that that is a lot less and and and so in effect to to be focused on the actual and to let go of

00:32:29

the potential we can see what is but to have Vision about what could be is at least as important as what is because if we don't protect the potential eventually we run out of potentials and

00:32:43

we have only the not so good actuals and so in this particular sense the modern economic system is very very good at optimizing for the current quarter and not at all good at

00:32:54

optimizing for the next 250 years certainly not the next several hundred thousand years and so when we're we're thinking about epocal time and you've referred to this indirectly in your in your thing on

00:33:08

one hand we can basically say well Mastery of living well and fully meant that in the state of nature 100 thousand years ago Humanity learned to live in the cycle and flow of change and if we're saying that the real is that which

00:33:21

is at once Choice change and causation then at least in that sense if you look at the earliest indigenous religions and we look at the earliest uh Dynamics associated with how to live well and

00:33:32

fully uh Zen and Hinduism and you know all of the the the earliest the aads the stuff in Sanskrit literally there's there's a notion here of dynamic living living in contact with nature in an

00:33:45

embodied and direct way with full cognizance of how to flow with that to perceive everything without filter and then to express without hesitation and so when we're thinking

00:33:58

about what happened say 5,000 years ago or 15,000 years ago fire the plow farming food collection um monotheism uh single state actors single

00:34:10

currency and this this sort of movement from tribal embodiment to nation states uh city states of one sort or another that in this particular thing there were adaptations made that although um we

00:34:23

learned to work with causation really really well and affect the totality of what is science and technology is science being the knowledge of causation and Technology being the application of causation that we have in effect

00:34:36

developed a Mastery of causation which has at one hand separated us from nature but in another hand has given us a massive facility to deal with the world but what got us

00:34:48

here will not get us there and so in this specific sense to really be very specific about things like the firmy Paradox and what it would actually mean for the species to survive

00:35:01

for the next 1500 years or 15,000 years or for this planet to still be here given certain modes of existential risk which most people don't know about there's a there's a there's a high level of concern for us to make very very

00:35:13

skillful choices and that in effect to have Mastery of choic making is of a completely different order than the kind of Mastery that would be associated with

00:35:25

anything to do with causation and then entirely the modern critique and almost everything about postmodern philosophy modern philosophy effectively being the embodiment of causation taken

00:35:38

to its Max the notion of system and bureaucracy and the methodology of government and education more or less all defined in ways that effectively optimize causal process because at one point that was a

00:35:51

good thing but it is no longer a good thing because it is a tool a single tool applied at which point gets overused and one tool cannot fix all problems and no matter how much you know about causation it cannot tell you the least

00:36:06

thing about how to make a good choice technology can tell you what you can do but it cannot tell you what you ought to do and the enlightenment that basically replaced an awareness of value in the sense of embodied value of cultural

00:36:19

values of the kind of things we might have thought of as religious Notions of what means to live a good life in a transcendent sense or what even means to live a good life in the embodied hedonistic sense that that regardless of

00:36:32

of of those perspectives that in some actual sense that the guidance says to what was meaningful or worthwhile to choose for with respect to based to was thrown out to the degree that those religious

00:36:45

systems didn't provide explanatory power with respect to causal systems but they sure as heck did give us guidance as to what was worth choosing and what sort of basis of choice would actually be meaningful and

00:36:56

therefore valued in some real sense whether it be Transcendent imminent or omniscient and so in this particular sense it is therefore clear that we need to become much more skillful in making choices and the

00:37:09

causal processes that have been so useful to building the world that we live in today will not help us to navigate the kinds of existential crisis or the sorts of civilization crisis or to actually create a

00:37:23

world that has the capacity for conscious sustainable evolution actually and so in in this specific sense there is a a a very very deep need to apprehend the nature of choice change

00:37:36

and causation as they are in themselves and that anything less than this is insufficient that in effect we cannot solve the firmy Paradox and address the

00:37:49

issue associated with is it the case that modern technological societies can long endure unless we have actually encompassed something that Evolution could not have prepared us for making good choices in the context of

00:38:02

Technology because technology can amplify the capacity for transactional process and it can especially amplify the capacity for power relationships which is what we're calling

00:38:15

politics but what it cannot do is amplify our capacity to care that is something we must do ourselves and in effect there's a sense here that knowledge and

00:38:27

understanding and the Dynamics of how we hold care how we are Discerning and how we are attuned with one another so that we can actually truly sense what is worth Discerning about and how we can actually connect with one another deeply

00:38:39

enough at a local scale so we can actually tune into what does it mean to live well and fully at this moment in this context right now and that that would be the kind of choices that have the level of linkage

00:38:52

at the level of connection to self to world and to other which can actually make a difference thank you Forest thank you well I am here going to point things

00:39:08

over towards yourself Daniel and there's many many different ways in and knowing you you're more than capable of finding the way in on your own so I'll leave

00:39:22

that open to you and if you'd like me to raise anything in particular because there's a few different Pathways of potential I see for a bit of fun here that would work quite nicely I can so

00:39:35

where are you at how you feeling well where I'm at is in the presence of wonderful individuals on a lovely evening in Virginia and I am glad to be here first Mel Forest I have to salute

00:39:47

you both of you have done very serious work on very real issues that a lot of people like to avoid such as what does an organization actually look like in govern governance or what does the supply chain and price mechanisms look

00:39:59

like there's a lot of tendency to know we ought to be talking about that in philosophy circles to the Lial web but we'll get that tomorrow and tomorrow never comes so I salute you both for taking those on Because unless we take

00:40:11

those on um we cannot get to that actual embodied place where value can be found so I appreciate that very much I very much like what Forest just said some ways that I think about uh value uh I'll

00:40:23

go on that is I think about the difference between Val and utility and I think about how one of the problems today is precisely because the political and the economic have been conflated we can't think either and thus we can't

00:40:35

think a difference between utility and value I know Mr Landry makes an emphasis on the idea that we can't think either subjects or objects unless we think from the relation between subjects or objects that identity has to follow from relation the problem is that today

00:40:48

political politics is basically the management of the economy so it's really not that distinct from the economy so we can't even really think think what politics is and likewise we can't even think what economics is because it's not distinct from the polus and so then the

00:41:02

problem is without that distinction that makes the possible of relation we can't think difference to think identity and then we can't identify the difference between utility and value and so this is a problem because I know Forest will

00:41:15

speak about um the difference between um Power um uh exchange uh transaction I believe and care as three kind of modes that we can go through basically impossible to think care if we

00:41:29

don't have a meaningful distinction between politics and economics and if care is on what so much rides today we are in trouble also I think this speaks to the value of a Commons because the commons is a space that has a defense of

00:41:41

a different kind of logican story than what is given by the political and the economics and I know you've said before that basically we can't than new paradigms unless we can think new Logics well there's no space for thinking new Logics ah so then we can't even think

00:41:54

the logic we're in that's the the irony without difference you can't even think the logic that you are in and so we don't even know what political economics is hardly even know what economics is uh

00:42:06

because it is basically like um it the example that comes to mind that is you you have to make whenever you think of this topic is the David Foster Wallace story of the fish and water fishes are coming along the older fish says to the

00:42:18

younger water's warm today boys and the old guy goes by and the fish look at each other and like what the heck is water uh because if that's all your always in then you don't even know the thing that you're in so we don't even know what an economy is we basically

00:42:32

think that an economy is what bestows your direction in life as opposed to what provides the um perhaps resources and utilities to realize a value that you have chosen for yourself that has not been bestowed upon you by the

00:42:44

economic system but we have not thought that um and we don't even realize we need to think that well we really do now for all the reasons that Forest put out which will require a distinction between

00:42:58

the political and the economic now I will frame this in the difference between value and utility to use my language I also appreciated Forest the thinking um about matching up the languages between different philosophers

00:43:10

I think that skill right there or taking the time to do that does not happen enough in Lial web conversations so they can't go anywhere and that right there is an actually a skill of care that actually makes possible the political

00:43:24

and political discourse and thus a space of the comments that without you can't then discuss what values we should use the utility of the economy to try to condition and realize so if we cannot

00:43:35

share language then we cannot share life so I appreciate that effort but anyway on the difference between utility and value one of the things that I try to uh get this in my head about is imagine you have two shirts and they're exactly the

00:43:48

same uh exactly the same and I say hey that one I you know you come along you look at him and say oh they're two shirts they have what the same utility value if you grant it to me but then I tell you that shirt was made by my

00:44:02

grandmother suddenly it has something beyond the utility what exactly does it have though where does that come from there's suddenly a value there that I know about because I have a relation to

00:44:16

that shirt because I have a relation to the person who made that shirt that then adds something to that shirt that is not reducible to the utility now if grandma gave me a mouse trap that was kind of

00:44:28

useless and maybe it even had some leftover peanut butter on it it might have some value but H it's not I'm not going to keep that but the shirt because the utility is something I can wear and it has a certain value to it it stands

00:44:39

out to me more so than the shirt Matthew um recently in a talk said there there's almost a sense in which the um shirt that comes off the assembly line doesn't even exist compared to the identical

00:44:51

shirt that was made by your grandma that quality of meaning gives it a certain Radiance of existence another term that comes to mind is Aura of Walter Benjamin where he says in a world where you can see photographs of the Mona Lisa and

00:45:05

Walker Percy talks about this as well when you can see pictures of these things before you visit the Mona Lisa it loses a bit of the aura there is something about the oneof Oneness that makes it stand out in a particularity

00:45:17

that is hard to put into words but you absolutely know it when you see it it's hard to describe why the shirt made by your grandmother is special but you know it what you see it and I like how you're in your book forested on the imminent

00:45:29

metaphysics there's this notion that metaphysics is radically um concrete and radically Abstract at the same time I think value can be like that as well the value of that shirt is radically concrete you absolutely know it's there

00:45:42

but then if someone tries to explain to you why and how do you defend it it's kind of difficult you say well it was my grandmother's oh well why does that matter to you because I loved her well why did you love it you can keep on going like well okay just just I told you it's valuable okay just take take my

00:45:55

word for it um the problem is today if I say to you um there's a difference between the identical sweaters one made by Grandma the one that was not made my grandma it's actually difficult today to think that difference in a world where

00:46:08

there is no difference between the political and the economic part of the reason why we're in such trouble is because thinking that difference is hard to think now and thinking that difference even matters is hard to think

00:46:20

now because our thinking is so backgrounded by Logics of exchange and transaction and power so when you start talking about Logics of care I kind of get a sense what that's talking about

00:46:32

but come on guys can you pay the bills we know at the end of the day it just matters if you pay the bills right but you see the issue is in people's lives at the end of the day the thing that they care about that's meaningful to

00:46:44

them are stuff like that sweater that was made by Grandma not the sweater that maybe keeps them a little bit warmer in the winner no no no no the one they really really like is the one that was given to them by grandma because there is something there

00:46:56

that has a vibrancy of existence that is not found in the other thing that makes it seem like it exists more to you and this is my point basically the problem that has happened in economics in my opinion is

00:47:09

that we have not actually addressed what is demand we have treated demand as if it is this flea floating entity that is out there that you can just stimulate so my critique of like w canian economics for example will go on we talk about

00:47:21

creating demand but really what we're talking about is stimulating Demand by creating certain infrastructure by creating certain sort of goods that will then stimulate demand the problem is you can only stimulate demand so much before

00:47:33

the economy starts to enter into slow growth so but here's the problem the only way you know how to create demand is to stimulate demand so then you expand the reign of what can be commodified so that there's more possibility of people demanding these

00:47:46

other things and the logic of capitalism has to spread because you don't know how to create demand you don't know how to train people to choose and to want things beyond what their external

00:47:57

environment stimulates them to want so all economic now this is a very giant claim I'm making but basically because economics has not asked the question what is demand it's been able to assume demand which for a lot of human history

00:48:09

you can kind of get away with because you know if people don't have food if you offer food well you know you want food because your biological systems would make them naturally demand that but the more and more you move into advanced economies the more and more it

00:48:22

is not given what people should demand because it is not so much link to their biological systems well then you have to tell them what to demand you have to teach them what to demand and who gets to do that the market the power the

00:48:35

politics and so it trains people to see the world in terms of that which they can demand and therefore you will have growth according to that demand here's the problem the very things then we want

00:48:48

in demand alienate us they are not things we care about and gradually and slowly the things we demand become empty to us and then you start getting the what meaning crisis nihilism boredom there's this great mystery in capitalism

00:49:01

called the Great stagnation people like Tyler con will talk about this Kan was talking about this a long time ago where there's something about the growth of Economics that begins to slow with time also you could argue that you start to see people not really seeing

00:49:13

significance in the things that they could do well yes because the only logic of creating demand that we have is to make demand something that istim externally stimulated upon people and gradually and slowly that loses its

00:49:26

titilation because we have not asked the question of how do you create demand because that would ultimately be the question of how do we care how do we choose what we care about as opposed to

00:49:38

have it bestowed upon us oh man well now you're talking stuff like virtue now you're talking stuff about like training how we use our time and you're almost are you going to reintroduce metaphysics into the conception of the human being is necessary for us to interact

00:49:52

practically because otherwise util utility becomes reductionist and kills us all it's almost like you're going to do that it's almost like the Ancients had a connection between virtue and value because they understood those went together oh my gosh so what has happened

00:50:06

is we're at the end of the ability to treat utility and and value as simil and we now have to understand that there is a distinction and this is where I think the political can come back because right now there's basically we've all

00:50:19

given up on politics right let's be honest it's hard not to have given up on politics except you Saints like Mel who go in and try to make it happen and force thinking organizations so but most of us it's hard to think politics but

00:50:32

what if instead of instead of politics being the management of the laws of regulation for the systems of utility we instead made it the discourse of how exactly do we make phenomenon like that

00:50:44

sweater that my grandma made how do we make the world a place where things have Aura what is the balance between utility and commment so that the things I experience are not reducible to utility use but have a certain Aura to them well

00:50:58

that would require multiple Logics therefore spaces of comments therefore spaces of the polus so that you can think Vision basically I've been reading there is a great um political thinker um Sheldon Roland w l i n who talked a lot

00:51:12

about the need for politics to be about Vision he was a teville scholar and different things like that well basically if you don't have a meaningful distinction between utility and value it's impossible to think what that even means anymore by Vision we regain

00:51:26

and we start asking the question what are the conditions that a society needs to meet so that phenomenon have an aura like my grandmother's shirt so that I

00:51:38

see something in them beyond the utility value of which I am able to see because I condition myself to have the virtue or the character to be so able to perceive

00:51:50

that valuable that is not redu reducible to the utility and suddenly you have a robust political life that's something like the gymnasium of the ability to experience value as such to be able to fight off capturing logic that reduce

00:52:03

everything to utility so I think if we can make this separation and then I'll pass it on here if we can actually again separate the political and the economic therefore have a relation to even identify what they are then we can also

00:52:17

begin to separate a difference between value and utility and I also note there has never in the history of it now this is a giant claim I'm happy to EXP B upon funny enough in the history of capitalism there has actually never been a capitalism that has not relied on a

00:52:31

space outside of capitalism to make it possible Ivan IL calls it Shadow work G mlsky calls it the rhetoric of innovation it's just that through time capitalism is more and more pretended like that other sphere doesn't exist

00:52:43

which has led to all sorts of pathologies and problems happy to discuss about this I think it's important reality of economic history um the more you know that the more we need a political Space by which to discuss value so so that it's possible to

00:52:56

experience the world as existing in the same way that M Grandma's sweater is existing because it gives off an aura that cannot be reduced to the utility but is more concrete than the utility and that's what we need to regain the

00:53:10

concretion of value and aura that we have lost because we are not able to think that diversity and difference I would respond again if that's an offer

00:53:26

I'm delighted to hear you speak it's great to meet you um it's it's uh so so in effect in the same sort of sense that I did just a moment ago and and and and I appreciate you're appreciating the the

00:53:38

linkage of languages uh obviously I would I would love to extend the same to you as well um and in this sense uh one of the things that that I notice uh

00:53:51

first of all aside from you know feeling the the bones of of what you're speaking to and and agreeing with quite a lot of it is therefore to again try to give you some tools that that I have found to be useful to navigate the kinds of

00:54:04

distinctions that you're that you're describing right so for instance um in the same sort of way that I hear uh like when you when you said um we can't give a reason for why we care about my relationship with Grandma right you

00:54:16

can't give a reason for love right there's no reason for it it's just true and the fact that it's irrational is part of the reason why it is Meaningful because if it was for a reason if I had a utility for grandmother and that was

00:54:30

the only relationship I had with her then you know the utility is not her it's just you know essentially a proxy for her and at that particular point you can throw Grandma away keep the utility well that's not caring for

00:54:43

the person it's not caring for the relationship okay um if I love you because of such and such a reason and that's not really love so the fact of it being irrational is part of the reason why we care

00:54:55

um I hear really strongly the sort of Distinction that you're making between economic process and political process um I experienc this as akin to the distinction between the necessity of

00:55:08

there being a distinction between religion and state that there should be a a distinction between Marketplace and state and that in effect we really actually want to have a kind of checks and balances between all three of these

00:55:22

and that keeping them as distinct magisteria is absolutely essential for us to even have a coherent conversation about any of this so I fully support that point um in in this sort of sense

00:55:34

we basically say that um if we just look at economic process by itself economic process isn't a problem except when it begins to go out of bounds it tries to do things well outside of the scope

00:55:46

which it has get what utility right and so in effect there's a sense here in which we're saying hey there's a thing where we noticed that healthy systems in nature have have gaussian distributions and yet what we're actually seeing in the economic system is this power law

00:55:59

distribution and that is the inequality associated with the power law distribution that has limited our degrees of freedom particularly in the area of potentiality and creativity of integrating all of the knowledge and wisdom that's actually there for us to

00:56:12

navigate the future we actually need to be a part of and so in this particular sense there's a there's a recognition that the excesses of Market process want to be constrained by what I would call

00:56:24

governance process process not government not politics but governance but as far as I'm concerned the notion of politics is a part of that and so in this particular sense I feel my view to be compatible with yours completely um

00:56:35

or rather that in effect we just agree with one another it's not even really a needing to to spell it out per se but but in effect that that that that it is actually a good idea to have governance

00:56:47

process constrain the excesses of Market process but then we basically say well where does the governance get the Val value system from to decide how exactly to implement those constraints and that

00:56:59

comes back to community it comes back to what we would normally think of as maybe being religious values although I don't really want to think of religious values per se in the Transcendent sense I'm just basically noticing that every religion is a community and every

00:57:12

Community has a value system of some sort or another whether it's written down and explicit or not there's always some moral code with every group of people you put a bunch of people in a room you leave them for there for a little while and cultural norms will

00:57:25

emerge and whatever those cultural norms are those are the kinds of things which are the choic making basis the value basis upon which the governance in this sense is going to basis its constraints

00:57:37

on the market system and then you basically say well how is it that we notice that the value systems of that community of people don't get completely out of whack as may happen with certain varieties of transcendental religions

00:57:50

that become Cults like where is it that there's a grounding of the values system in the actual embodiment of the world well in some senses your value systems in an embodied sense need to connect back to the actual reality of the world

00:58:04

which means does your philosophy work I mean you can have all of this Grand political or some religious philosophy but it doesn't make practical sense in the business economy then basically I'm just going to say you're full of [ __ ]

00:58:16

right you know to use the technical term right to actually speak a word that is a little bit forbidden because sometimes there are times where people have value systems that are completely out of touch with reality so in the same sense Market

00:58:29

systems should be a check on community value systems Community value systems should be a check on governance process and governance process should be a check on on economic process and oh by the way this sort of checks and balances thing

00:58:42

is just exactly the kind of stuff that we would normally expect to see in any natural organic system and it just works and it wants to work in that way and this isn't a checks and balances that's within the governance it's a transg

00:58:56

governance economic value communitybased checks and balances system right in the same way that the dynamic that is internal to the governance process of some sort of checks and balances between

00:59:08

whatever we call Executive function whatever we call leg legislative function whatever we call judicial function whatever those terms mean how those things relate to one another the microcosm of that wants to be the macrocosm of how the world works and

00:59:21

vice versa and that basically anything else is a kind of insanity essentially so so so in this sense I really get with you the idea that we need a distinction between Market process and governance process

00:59:35

much the same way we've already enshrined a kind of distinction between value-based process and governance process and that all three of these in a sense need to have coexistence with one another as distinct and separable and

00:59:50

non-interchangeable which as you may recognize is an axiomatic assertion and it is actually a triple and subject to the rules of the axioms themselves and that's not arbitrary right there there's

01:00:02

a dynamic of axtion 2 and the way in sequencing this is Flowing so so in this sense I guess you could say that that that what I'm I'm basically trying to do by pointing out things like love doesn't have a reason and that there's a checks

01:00:15

and balances here and the distinctions you're pointing out are essential to being able to even understand how to cognate around these kinds of things and basically showing you how the metaphysics connects to what you already observed and in that particular way

01:00:27

maybe this gives you some tools to sharpen the insights you already have to be able to put in the language some of the things you already know um another thing that comes up that is connected to that which felt very uh very preent you

01:00:40

mentioned um hey by the way we have this sort of utilitarian thing but if you look really carefully if you look really deep you notice that every utilitarian system somewhere along the way comes back to a virtue ethics comes back to a

01:00:53

value ethics and that nowhere is it actually the case that you have a fully independent ungrounded utilitarianism that every version of utilitarian even consequentialism is effectively going to

01:01:06

come back to some sort of virtue ethics and virtue ethics is about Value Point Blank period And so in effect you know if we're actually going to think about these things clearly we really want to notice the difference between

01:01:18

consequentialism you know the sort of legalistic den notion system and and on Ultimate kind value system because if we don't have Clarity around that we really don't know what we're talking about and can't actually make good choices about

01:01:30

any of these things and so in effect there's yet another level here which is you know so first of all if you want articles where I actually show those connections explicitly on the point of view of firsthand metaphysics with no

01:01:42

reference to anything other than the terms themselves right this isn't a historical treaties you've already mentioned if you dig into historical stuff you'll notice it's there too right but rather than waiting through all all

01:01:54

of that stuff can we just see it as it is right now yes of course we can got to dig a little bit it's not the easiest thing it's a little bit abstract but it does actually make sense for us to recognize that hey do I want to replace

01:02:06

the entire world with robots no that's a hell no thank you because basically there's no virtue ethics at all in any of it right somewhere along the way we've actually got to get to the point of recognizing that you cannot replace

01:02:17

Choice with causation that's again just a metaphysical truth which brings me to I think maybe last point of Correspondence which I heard really strongly between what you were asserting and some of the things that I've also come to believe and feel really strongly

01:02:31

which may be uh again a way of clarifying some of the things we're saying it's really important for us to distinguish between want need and desire right we're talking about economic process and you're saying

01:02:43

stimulating you know um economic process I hear you basically saying well there they're trying to create wants but actually that's empty right because satisfying wants is only

01:02:57

good for things outside of yourself needs are completely different and you can try to untangle people in the basis of need you can try to implement some sort of extortion either you do what I

01:03:09

want or I will extort from you the capacity to survive or the capacity to reproduce maybe I will try to stimulate that by getting you to want to go on vacation to survive experience enjoyment

01:03:21

or whatever or you know be creative or reproduce in some sense I.E have families Family Values all of a sudden become sexuality becomes a wonderful mechanism by which to create marketing campaigns but all of that is to

01:03:34

stimulate wants not actually to satisfy needs right and to some extent what ends up happening is is that the whole conversation effectively completely lets go of whatever desire and Care was about in the first place because Care by the

01:03:48

way is something other than just satisfying wants or just satisfying needs if we're going to actually have a conversation about politics and to talk about values in some sense or another there really isn't a lot of negotiation

01:04:01

around what values are I'm sorry what needs are and there's not really going to be a lot of negotiation around what wants are the place where we meet is where our passions are where we breathe together right conspiracy to breathe

01:04:13

together is effectively a language that points literally to the notion of that that when we think in terms of passion when we think in terms of Desire that it can become our desires not just my

01:04:24

desires not just your desires but our desires the community's desires the world's desires life's desires right what is the desire of life it is to

01:04:35

live right really simple and in effect there's a sense here in which if we're if we're really searching for the relationship between Simplicity Clarity and complexity or Simplicity complexity and Clarity if I put it in the right

01:04:49

order then in effect what happens is that we start to notice that we need to make distinctions as you mentioned between economic process and political process and what is effectively Community process to the point that we're

01:05:02

upholding all three of those really well rather than neglecting Community completely we need to be able to distinguish between want need and desire so that we can even enable our conversation to be about desire rather

01:05:15

than getting sidetracked into wants or needs which by the way is a complete showstopper as far as conversations are concerned and that we can actually start to make choices that will make sense relative to what actually

01:05:28

matters because we have a consciousness of that now we can meet there and so in in this specific sense I'm I'm I'm mentioning these these Notions these languages these sorts of ways of

01:05:40

thinking so that I guess you could see that there's coherence between what is essentially uh the underlying metaphysics and and and and the kinds of Notions that you have you've been bringing out the same as I'm trying to

01:05:52

do uh for for you Michael is to is to basically by talking about these sort of aonic Cycles to to connect back to some of the things that you're noticing and pointing out in the sort of fractal sense as being like hey these are things

01:06:06

that are actually going on your intuition is tuning into something your intellect is noticing something and here's a set of languages and tools which allows us to essentially clarify how to actually put those into structured language so that these all

01:06:19

points all four of us can effectively be saying well actually this is what we're noticing and it's like the we're all seeing it more or less from different points of view but it's one creature and the more that we can connect the notes the more that we can

01:06:32

recognize that it's one creature and we're not actually speaking different languages although to some extent it might seem that way we're actually pointing to one truth and this is uh I I don't know just

01:06:46

how I'm sort of noticing it so far at this moment thank you Forest thank you so we've been speaking for about an hour and a quarter I am curious I am curious

01:07:02

Michelle how you are relating to this there's a few places I would quite like to move things to but they may or may not be possible in this conversation it might need another I think there would

01:07:15

be some real uh perhaps value and utility in considering and I I would like to share some of the the pragmatics of my own

01:07:27

journey in let's say relating to the Endeavor toward opening up communication that can appreciate much of what you've just laid out all three of

01:07:40

you and there are some needs for that process to undergo for instance a space that enables it or at least some context

01:07:54

we can share in and a certain amount of time as just two Basics but we could also speak about the regulation of nervous systems we could speak about needs at a whole bunch of levels in terms of the individuals and communities

01:08:07

who found their way into that process and if you happen to bump into someone at a time that doesn't make sense for them to engage in the kind of opening and contemplative process that might

01:08:20

allow their desires to come to the for and be well met right in an appropriate uh dance toward a right kind of friendship and relating which requires a certain vulnerability we don't want to

01:08:34

expose people into that process there's a delicacy and a sensitivity to enabling let's say transformative exchange and if we are to relate with

01:08:45

that process of well on one hand can be seen as a kind of mutual education although granted some people in their in their time and in place are capable are necessary let's say for for the

01:08:57

appropriate teaching it's still the case that we are speaking about a tremendous quantity of people who are

01:09:09

involved in perpetuating the systems we're a part of and at this point we can recognize many challenges associated

01:09:23

with building the contexts and supporting the kind of contexts that are capable truly of cultivating on the one hand the kind of

01:09:37

relationships friendships in some crucial sense that from my perspective are in in an important sense constitutive of the learning environment

01:09:49

necessary to actually um choose together what we what we want to be and I've spent a lot of time in that space I've spent a lot of time in

01:10:02

the real embodied Endeavor toward building and creating and inviting in that way and so I would like to sort of let listeners know that there is a very real sense in which from each of our

01:10:16

perspectives this can be grounded in Forest has already alluded to you know principles and practices but this can very much and I think ought at some point be grounded in real living stories

01:10:29

of our actual lives and efforts to engage in society and the various difficulties and challenges Associated along the way I've spent a tremendous

01:10:41

amount of time in conversation with Daniel about for instance the prospects of what it is to build the type of whether we want to talk about it

01:10:53

in terms of of organization or school or artistic environment is you speak about things in terms of the language of religion this is an important category that's being brought to bear not as something that is to be flippantly

01:11:06

created but certainly the kind of Dynamics associated with the formation of attention and the cultivation of attention information

01:11:18

that we' associated with we'd associate with large group processes right that are seeking to be bastions of of enabling Collective care all right and and well treatment of individuals what a

01:11:31

tremendous perfect example hey what a tremendously traumatic thing to even mention in many contexts right and so to even get to the point where we can let's say use words that might distinguish

01:11:43

things with some clarity it turns out that many of those words actually are um can be themselves profound barriers to continuing a particular kind of exchange

01:11:55

we're actually needing to meet in a very different way we're needing a tremendous amount of time for processing of various things to be able fully to share our desires um

01:12:08

with each other in life and we could say more things about that so I just like to share a little bit of that as sort of an an Impulse toward a certain kind of grounding and just to make the

01:12:20

recognition that that is something which is in real living attempt but I'm curious to hear from you Michelle because well I'm just wondering

01:12:32

how you relate to this in general I suppose there's no real other way to ask it than that yeah well you know I I I think that I'm probably uh the most

01:12:43

old-fashioned uh in this um uh in this discussion in the sense that I know I'm really a product of kind of like a

01:12:57

post-marxist uh thinking um you know for example I think about political economy and you know fully aware of the distinction but you know the 19th century when people were talking about political economy is because they saw

01:13:10

the distinction because they thought economics you know should be an expression of collective choice and not something that's that stands on its own right that is what is happening now it's like the economic

01:13:24

is the only rationality that we that we recognize so I I think in terms of you know okay I could be wrong but I I think maybe both of you you're really think in

01:13:36

terms of like first principles you know metaphysical distinctions and I I think this is absolutely necessary and I'm probably not so good at that what I focus on is pretty much more

01:13:49

like the collective field of the political economy and you know how how do we change this whole Machinery in which we have to operate because our

01:14:00

our I think you will both recognize this that you know the our capacity to achieve some of these things that we want is very much determined by the hall

01:14:12

in which we are right and so to to a large degree my my thinking is like like what what is the subject of change you know like like marks with the proletarian you know and so I I've been

01:14:26

pretty much thinking still in those terms of like how do we change this whole body of the world um and I guess maybe the originality of my

01:14:40

Approach is that I that I see the common as a real institution uh like not just a concept but actually a real institution that can change our world right and

01:14:54

so precisely because I I had been like a failed revolutionary in my youth I thought oh I I don't want to think anymore in terms of like this is what we should be doing and this is you know no I I wanted to see what people were

01:15:07

actually doing and so that's how I came with this notion of seed forms right where um so seed forms so my my thinking and and is very much similar to what you

01:15:20

were doing I'm also very much conceptual but I I take the concept from the practice of all these human groups without are trying to change what what you're thinking about like there's an enormous amount of people engaged in

01:15:34

trying to change their life how they they find meaning and how they can survive with their families and especially because we're in a time of Crisis they are Reinventing right so I

01:15:48

think this is what's maybe a bit like the contrast between our approaches but I think they're entirely complimentary uh so for example right now uh so and and you know my story Tim

01:16:02

you know I was cancelled in 2018 and that was like a huge thing for me that was like a really disturbing uh event in my life where you know I was like at the top of my I mean I was I've never been

01:16:14

very famous in the whole world but like in in my mil I was like at the top of my game in a way and you know I was Trav I was doing conferences a week a year you know traveling five to seven months a

01:16:27

year visiting all these communities in the whole world and then suddenly um you know part of my community turned against me around identity politics right and suddenly

01:16:39

like I I lost my audience and I lost my subject like where's the subject of change uh was like a real issue for me and uh I end up right now I I end up

01:16:55

working for a uh you know what some people call a cordi nation uh so I I work for the uh for two two outfits one that I think Forest will know is I I'm a

01:17:08

contractor to the civilization Research Institute and you know I try to combine their work on existential risk with my insights of reading you know all these civilizational theorists so like how

01:17:22

this how does the existential risk story fit in the civilization story that's kind of where where what I'm doing with them and then separately from this I'm I'm working on with the global Chinese

01:17:35

commments and I I find it fascinating and so you have to remember I worked for the government in Ecuador trying to do a common transition plan at a very high level didn't work I I I think the work

01:17:49

was valuable and gave a lot of insights but but in terms of you know like the the catastrophe of politics today is that like you you can't do anything at those levels um then I worked for a

01:18:03

city um and luckily at the city level even though you know the mayor who who commissioned the work actually got a heart attack and got replaced the you know it was my work was

01:18:17

based on really linking up all these Urban provisioning Commons oriented provisioning systems that were emerging uh so that was a bit more more useful in Practical terms but now I'm I'm I'm working on

01:18:30

this like really self-created cosmol local community and I I think it's fascinating how these people are reshaping the world and I'm not saying they're right or you know

01:18:43

this is the solution but they're definitely engaging uh so these are Chinese people and you know there's a lot of things around crypto that are no longer

01:18:56

legal in China so they you know they want to keep working on on their dreams and their desires and so they're creating a network of places where so they can basically work

01:19:09

outside the country and then still be connected to their families and their life uh and it's it's uh you know Mainland Taiwan Chinese from from all over the world it's very interesting are

01:19:23

they they from a kind of new translocal community based on their common culture being open to others like me who are not Chinese but still wanting basically to you know like they want to reinvent

01:19:36

their Chinese identity like what does it mean to be Chinese today in This Global World right where you're both Chinese but you're so interconnected like you know these

01:19:49

people are just like us like they totally modernized they totally know what's happening you know we hear about the Chinese World believe me like everything is just like

01:20:00

flowing you know if you want to know you know you know every everybody in the whole world is listening to K-pop basically you know this there's no wall that can stop that

01:20:12

and so so so that's kind of my interest is and so what one of the things they're doing and just to explain this is so this is a Network right and what is the network doing they're creating

01:20:27

comments like gitcoin alone has spent $8 million dollars to fund their common infrastructure so things that are not in the short-term interest of any economic

01:20:39

agent that is participating in the network but that is you know useful for everybody in the network and so that is to me is really interesting to see how

01:20:53

uh so the way I see the process is you have a relatively stable system that is becoming dysfunctional losing legitimacy losing functionality people have to leave the

01:21:05

system to survive and then they're experimenting with things that no longer have the logic of the dysfunctional Society but represent In seed form a potentiality

01:21:18

you know they're trying to actualize these potentialities to use the language I think of of forest um and uh so for me that's fascinating

01:21:31

because it's h something call and I think it you know um self- infrastructure right so what what these people are doing is self infrastructuring and they're building

01:21:43

infrastructures that correspond to their values so they're doing that what forest and and maybe Daniel is saying which is you know they're they're putting their first principles what they

01:21:56

desire from Life they're embodying this in their infostructures right that and and then you know there's a lot of you know as a old Lefty there's a lot I can critique in this and I you know I'm not

01:22:10

always comfortable with uh all of the choices they make and so I kind of mapped out this you know these these four worlds which I think we are building at the same time

01:22:23

and and that are competing right and they all have to do with how do we connect the old world of the physical Geographic governance of you know

01:22:35

geographically based nation states how do we connect that to the new Trans local community building that no longer has to take into account necessarily that

01:22:48

geographical linkage right so we we are now in an age where we creating these coordinations where people are creating Collective projects that are no longer bound to their Geographic embodiment but

01:23:03

to their spiritual Affinity um and and so uh yeah I think I kind of lost my thread in but I I think this is equally interesting right so

01:23:17

thinking about first principles rethinking every everything like showing that we have Freedom right that we could actually reorganize the world and this is not utopian it has happened many

01:23:30

times before I think this is you know like a lot of people think we can't do anything we can't change anything but you know you look at human history that's the only thing that there is is

01:23:41

change and and periodic overhauls either of the whole system or or the elites that that are changing so yeah so I just wanted to say that I think that's

01:23:53

complimentary but this is also very important is to look at what people are actually doing and how how they are translating you know these spiritual changes that they are feeling into

01:24:07

actually embodied infrastructures uh and creating like new Logics of life and value already now they're not waiting for like the big you know the Big Red

01:24:21

Dawn they are changing their lives as we speak you know interfacing with this the reality and and and putting their dreams in that reality and then see

01:24:34

experimentally how far they can go and I think this is fascinating and so I'm trying to building a language around the Comm based on the language that these communities are effectively using and

01:24:46

I'm trying to put them together in something more coherent yes I hear you thank you Daniel it looked like you made a no to

01:24:57

speak well I was just going to say I I enjoyed all of that and what Forest said as well so a few things come to mind um you know first off what I would love to do is increase the probability that more people can even think to do the thing

01:25:11

that you're talking about Mel because the more people that is involved the more diversity of experimentation you would occur and one of the big things that I think is really hurting us is basically the associ ition of

01:25:23

intellectual in good use of time as doing that of which is plugging into something with a preset end and that can be grounded and the reason for this is you know we're talking a lot about and I

01:25:35

actually really agree with you on this point that 19th century like in the Scottish Enlightenment you could you know Adam Smith seems to be both a sociologist and an economist call Marsh Ricardo Etc so forth these distinctions now between um you know they they

01:25:49

greatly understood these distinctions and now we don't and we're smarter I guess right uh so um so I I agree with that point that you that you've made um and this is why also like it cannot be

01:26:01

overstated that Adam Smith writes the theory of moral sentiments before The Wealth of Nations The Wealth of Nations is what follows from a theory of motivation that is tied into grounded relations with a ground like with a concrete Community also I do a whole lot

01:26:14

in David hum and if you take my word for it one of the reasons why you have David Hume coming along and saying that you can arrive from ought from is is because he wants to establish that you can only arrive at ought from suchness live sentimental experience what he's very

01:26:26

concerned about is abstract philosophical concepts of what a thing is that then some King from the distance can tell people what they ought to do because he can identify it David hume's entire project is ultimately the

01:26:38

eradication of all autonomous rationalities rationalities that operate with any without any reference to something outside of them because he believes that leads to basically what I call autocannibalism it's where

01:26:50

rationality eats itself when moral ity does not have to ascribe to sentiment and empathy then it becomes a theory that actually becomes tyrannical and so David Hume is about moving from isness to suchness and basically we all need to

01:27:02

be about moving from isness to suchness because you get all sorts of troubles so I I really agree with that point um in order to open new categories of how people think it is not a matter of giving them new content necessarily but

01:27:15

it's like the medium is the message we learned from mlan right you know the medium of how people think is a big deal so something I like to talk about is something that Neil Postman brought out on teaching in a subversive act where he

01:27:26

pointed out that because the classroom in its structure teaches you that a smart person is good at trivia we do not think about intelligence as the exploration of topics that we don't know of ahead of time so what ends up

01:27:38

happening is you have kids that go through school and are led to believe that the smart kid is the one who knows the answers quickest to a question that someone already knows the answer to and if you know that answer you're smart so

01:27:51

what end up happening is you get a subconscious Association of an intellectual act being the naming of an answer that somebody knows and then those people over there who are doing creative work or philosophy they're not

01:28:03

very smart because the medium here tells me that what it means to be smart is to be good at trivia but here's the problem that means being smart sets you up to just plug into the system as opposed to what if intellectual what if the

01:28:16

classroom in its structure taught you that what is intelligent is say hosting a conversation do we know what we're going to talk about we have a topic but we don't actually know where we're going to end up and also critically you learn the possibility of community without say

01:28:30

a transcendental grounding like a you know like after the death of God it's the idea that you can't have an objective transcendental grounding for reality well we see right here that relation seems to be able to keep something afloat we see right here that

01:28:42

an exchange of information seems to make things afloat so what you start to move is to the possibility of community on terms of relation which would speak to Mr Lance work and the movement of a

01:28:54

conversation with a non preset end and the ability to keep that flowing is almost like magic but it does make possible the forming of community and then a community can be the Practical enactment of that movement of

01:29:07

information that we are no longer Associated to think is not an intelligent use of time because we've moved beyond the medium of the classroom that makes us associate being smart with trivia so I think one of the number one

01:29:18

things we have to do is transform the subconscious ass assciation people have with being smart or being educated with being able to answer trivia and moving into the direction of being able to

01:29:30

engage in experimentation in different ways of doing things and keeping it afloat by the negotiation and conversation of the community so that would open up the ability of people to even think engaging in community like

01:29:43

you're describing Mel in as being a rational and intelligent opportunity because we have these subconscious associations that makes it difficult to even think doing that kind of thing so I would be all about breaking and

01:29:56

transforming the classroom structure from a trivia structure where the medium is the message to one that would push us in the direction of thinking experimentally because that would also lead you into things like tactile knowledge you because you'd have to go

01:30:08

to the community and try things those are the other things we teach people that a smart guy is someone who's good at we teach people that abstract knowledge is best knowledge like questions abstracted from contexts and if you have answers that can apply to

01:30:21

questions that time that's kind of the highest form of knowledge no one ever directly says that but the medium creates that impression right and so if we can break down those associations I

01:30:31

think we open up people to actually one being conditioned to engage in the polus in the political because they can engage in the conversation because the key point is if you've been taught that you

01:30:44

need to have a confirmation of the right answer from a teacher well that would mean you could only do politics and the political Discord if at the end of the day there's some strong man or authority that's going to be able to tell you that

01:30:56

yes that was the right answer you said all the right things part of the political project so you don't have an association of engaging an intellectual life that can move you beyond the need of an ultimate Authority and so the

01:31:09

polist then is in trouble because it's conditioned to rationally look for that confirmation which then would need an authority figure right but then of course the question that Forest got out and I'll close on this that I think is a million dooll question question is what

01:31:22

are the grounds of authority today because if you have a governance where do you get Authority from right because if you don't believe in God or you don't have a transcendental grounding where does it come from I think we have to think about um Authority in terms of

01:31:36

those of whom know what are the conditions that need to be met to create an experience of the aura or value of which then means knows how to bring about an Attunement to a certain quality

01:31:47

of interaction that then everyone sees the value in so to make an example when everyone sees Beauty do we ask does that have authority the mere apprehension and this speaks to the voice craft that Force got it when we all experience

01:32:01

something profoundly beautiful it in the apprehension has a certain Authority it in the apprehension has an authority likewise when you have a conversation and you go that's a good conversation there is an authority in that goodness

01:32:15

that is not arbitrary but becomes from the quality of the interaction itself so for me because I do a lot Hegel which I promise you I won't get into I'll resist it but there's a question in Hegel of

01:32:27

can you have a philosophy that is not presuppositional looking for Givens and grounds and is more of what I call inter suppositional where the legitimization of the philosophy and this I think speaks to Forest points on relations as

01:32:40

primary can it come from a certain relation which every relation is also a conditioning and if it is possible to have a certain discussion of how we condition things to apprehend something

01:32:53

so for example if I go into one of the communities that Mel is talking about and I am able to apprehend a practical quality of life that in it's very Concrete in that apprehension that is

01:33:04

much closer to my grandmother's sweater that she made having order than the stuff off the assembly line then that concrete apprehension because apprehension is concrete you freaking freaking apprehended that's the

01:33:17

authority and I would say this community is thus functional this community is thus functional in the fullest sense not a reductionist sense that breaks everything down into utility but that's going to require a certain ability to

01:33:30

trust our own apprehensions our own senses of quality our own ability to create those conditions and the thing is what and to close on this for most of History we really haven't had to develop

01:33:44

that ability to trust ourselves so much because the preacher told us we could or the politician told we we could but after what you you know the death of God if you grant that kind of notion from n which by the way from n is not merely

01:33:57

the death of God it's also the death of all sources of values bestowed unto you from something outside of you he talks about science utilitarianism nationalism all these things as bestowed to organize

01:34:10

your choic making and if you are aligned with you can trust your own processes of apprehension well to talk about the death of God then is to talk about the death of beasto centric ism a world

01:34:22

where your organizing principles for choices and decision-making is bestowed to you by something external you now have to be responsible for it and condition yourself to handle that responsibility oh and by the way do it

01:34:35

in a manner that is not egotistical and shuts everyone else down because you could do all of that by what atomizing and leaving everyone behind and that's actually what people are doing that's the problem like you have this massive

01:34:47

movement in the western world where you have the loss of beasto centric ISM so so then how do we get shared intelligibility to so I understand you that's really hard I haven't been trained to talk with people I have a

01:34:59

subconscious Association of utility as a good use of time this doesn't seem like it would pay money to learn how to interact with people so it' be irrational to do it and thus we Define rationality in terms of what is leading

01:35:11

to our dehumanization and loss of care what we have to do is regain a sense that rationality entails care that you're not actually human rational in a fullest sense without care but that's

01:35:24

going to require us owning our own ability to apprehend and to trust those apprehensions so when I walk into one of Mel's communities or the different ones and try these different experiments and I apprehend a certain aura or quality of

01:35:38

Engagement I say yes there's a value here that I then trust that judgment because then I can choose that community and trust that choice and now I've engaged in the choice that is necessary

01:35:50

for the horizon of care can I say a little little thing um and again you know I'm I'm more sociological in my Approach but so I I

01:36:03

think that what we suffer from in this world is a loss of the existence of organic intellectuals so you know very broadly I think historically intellectuals were

01:36:15

the service of power right you have the clergy they're actually intellectuals in traditional societies and you know they're at the service of the society as a whole trying to moralize the Warriors

01:36:27

and and and everything and create an orderly society and then in the 19th century where we create this proletariat so we we exclude people from the system you know and and they're they di when

01:36:39

they 35 on average until the 1850s we create a new kind of organic intellectuals because the labor movement is able to fund itself through fraternity ities mutualities and all all

01:36:53

kinds of social Commons and so you you get a type of person that is intellectualized but is at the service of the people and this has died so for me this is a like a sociological catastrophe is

01:37:07

that with the kind of disappearance of Labor culture from you know the 70s onwards we we completely lost this kind of people that that are intellectualized

01:37:20

but are a service of less intellectualized people and and I I think this is we need to recreate this this is has to be recreated and in my very modest way that's what I'm trying to do with these Network Nations I'm

01:37:34

trying to be at the service uh with my skills to people who you know very smart but usually there's Engineers so they know engineering they know Game Theory

01:37:46

and also in economics and that's pretty much it that's how they are you know trained right and it's you know they do we what they have

01:37:59

they do beautiful things but it's very hard for them to actually realize that you know there's other visions that are equally legitimate and so anyway I'm I'm trying to

01:38:12

open their their their minds to to you know to a broader uh less mechanistic way of looking at at world and I just want to give an example to finish which I really

01:38:24

like so there is this uh St Joseph the Worker um I it's in the US I don't know exactly where it is so there's a group called new po they're like Conservative Christian democrats following the social

01:38:38

doctrine of the Catholic church so they're recreating craft schools but they're teaching them high philosophy so as as they are learning plumbing and construction they're reading thas AAS

01:38:50

and this to me like that sinks to me I I don't know why but I feel like this is where we have to go right not not like dumbing down people because this is what neoliberalism is doing is like oh you

01:39:02

don't need philosophy it's it's abstract let's go back to you know just learning skills uh no no no I think we need fully rounded people including workingclass people and crafts people that have know

01:39:16

how to make things well but also know how to think well and that integration I think is kind of future and then just to say Daniel I think you're a good example right you are you embed in the

01:39:29

land right so I think we need an education where we have these layers recreated developmentally where you're embodied in the land so I think you know kids should be involved in make

01:39:41

may maybe even making their own food in the school to to re fully realize what it is you know to make food that makes thatu but also think well right and and

01:39:54

because right now we're in this anti-intellectual uh moment which is a catastrophe people are people are regressing uh you know I I think it's eventually getting better but in this

01:40:07

descending and chaotic phase we we are facing a terrible regression U of thinking and and feeling which is very very very dangerous in the short

01:40:19

ter as the actual representative crafts person intellect coming from non-institutional organization I'm probably the best possible example of what you're asking

01:40:32

for is currently living and in this particular sense I have a few observations to make one is that I agree with almost everything you said um but I also notice that my

01:40:44

particular intellectual process actually has a Heritage it's not a Heritage from the institution it's a Heritage from the guilt and that in effect it's not so much that I'm basically as an individual

01:40:56

and intellectual it's that as a as a guild Craftsman I'm an intellectual in other words that there's a small community of people I.E this little group it's basically a family around a tradition and that in effect there's

01:41:09

there's there's a woodworking tradition there's a blacksmithing tradition and that these these things are in service to the community so in effect rather than thinking about being in relationship to an institution or even

01:41:21

trying to be an individual as an intellectual it's the guild itself as a service relationship to the community that it is a part of and then in this particular sense um what I'm hearing in

01:41:34

all of this is is this very strong emphasis on community and that if we're going to if we're going to actually balance the relationship between nature humanity and technology that in effect

01:41:46

we need to actually focus on how do we do Humanity right how do we do the commons right and in this particular sense The Guild is in service to the commons and yeah there is a person that is maybe a focus

01:41:58

of a guild that has essentially the best embodiment of those skills at that particular time but it's a Heritage thing that they pass on it's a torch that's passed and so in this particular sense I'm I'm I'm very much advocating

01:42:10

that uh we we start thinking about as as has been mentioned by Daniel U different ways of thinking about educational process and different ways of holding how we hold uh the relationships of of of just how

01:42:23

these choices are even being made like who to teach what and how that's taught I specifically liked uh a few things that that you mentioned one was this I mean then I'm I'm still speaking to to you Michael one was this let's

01:42:37

observe what people actually value not what they talk about what they actually do um I really love that emphasis and I and I and I and I wanted to add to it a particular uh kind of uh thing that I

01:42:49

noticed that that when with it it's like yeah of course I absolutely want to pay attention to what people do because it's at the embodiment level of what they do that I can really learn what their values are if I want to know what the human is if we're saying to to to Really

01:43:03

balance the relationship between nature and Technology through Humanity then in effect I need to account for the actuality of what The Human Condition really is but if I want to reach for the Divine I need to go through the animal

01:43:15

to get to it we all have an animal nature we all have a divine nature but in order to be fully human I have to know both the animal and the Divine the the Angel and the demon combined in the human and in this particular sense

01:43:27

there's a there's a sort of you know reaffirmation of what is the psychology what is the sociology what is the anthropology what is actually happening in real context on the ground that

01:43:39

allows us to know that these are the things that people really care about and to affirm the care to notice the care and so in this particular sense I I I think that um again you might not know

01:43:51

my work very well but um a lot of what I'm really focused on is Community Development process um so in effect how do we create Healthy Communities what does that even mean what do we mean by a healthy person what do we mean by a

01:44:03

healthy family what do we mean by a healthy Community what do we mean by a healthy planet right there's a there's a sense here in which to to have a knowledge and articulation of that is on one hand a deeply anthropological

01:44:15

question a deeply psychological question in order to really tune into these kinds of things we have to be willing to ask things like what are the fundamental instincts that drive human behavior right the choices that we make right we have instincts for

01:44:29

social process we have instincts for survival process and we have instincts for procreation what might be called sexual process and then in effect that these primary drivers of of of our choic

01:44:42

making to some extent want to be accounted for in a good way they're not wrong by themselves they only become wrong when when people manipulate them as in you will only belong to this social group or this Commons if you uh

01:44:56

follow these particular rules right in the sense it becomes essentially belongingness I.E the the idea that our deep Instinct for wanting to be social is in effect going to become leverag to

01:45:08

some person's power and so in this particular sense it's like not only do I want to be deeply Discerning about the instincts that I have and how they make choices and how that influences how our community comes together in the relationship we have with each other the

01:45:22

kinds of commitments we make and the kinds of conversational processes that we're engaged in right so in effect if I'm noticing that agreements in community depend upon

01:45:33

relationships as they must always ultimately because even a contractual thing is going to be held up by a court system a court system is a collection of relationships it's agreements and relationships but underneath every

01:45:47

relationship is a sequence of communication events and then in effect the network of relationships supports the relationship of agreements the structure and network of agreements is held by the network of relationships but

01:45:59

it itself is held by the relationship of communication acts and so when haras is talking about communication and communicative process he's basically getting down to the root of what does it mean to actually create healthy

01:46:10

relationships is the skill of creating clear communication which to some extent basically is referring back to you know the the sort of things that we might be is is what is the basis of our social process what is the basis of our

01:46:23

instinctual process how are we actually human together how do we live together and so to some extent in order to facilitate this it's really important to be able to distinguish between institutional process and Community

01:46:37

process you mentioned the commons which by the way I'm delighted to hear right because there really needs to be some scale between the individual and the entire faring world right the internet basically if I publish something it's

01:46:50

Pres presumed to be available to 8 billion people and if it's private if I have a password behind it it's presumed to be available to maybe half a dozen people if I'm very careful and I share passwords with them right but really

01:47:02

what I want to do is I want to have a community level of of connection right to keep it local in the sense of we do sense making together and that and this is referring to something that Daniel was mentioning was is that hey by the

01:47:14

way you know when we're thinking about this this process we're not just going to go directly from what is to what ought to be to some extent we need to go through this intermediate phase this deep sensing phase right you have this

01:47:26

this this artificial dilemma between um thinking things through those kind of analysis paralysis point of view the sort of utilitarian calculus which as Daniel mentioned quite well is completely ungrounded without some

01:47:39

relationship to something outside of itself right some actual value in the embodied sense that you're referring to then then in effect there's a there's there's a notion that the soundness is supporting the validity and that

01:47:51

together we can actually think about something that that that would in fact be a good choice that our communication process becomes a way in which we sense together not just think together that we

01:48:02

feel together and that through clear thinking and Discerning awareness of feeling that then we can act well right like the the the relationship between the good the true and the

01:48:16

Beautiful which Daniel alluded to is is actually a thing the authority of of the community the authority of the choice that the community makes comes through not just the clear thinking but the Deep

01:48:29

sensing so that then the action becomes something that is fully reified through I can think through it clearly and I all of my whole self my inner child my my adult wise self the parents the person

01:48:42

that loves to play basketball that all of these parts of myself basically say hell yeah to that choice and then we choose together in that particular sense this is where the authority comes from it's essentially in the communicative

01:48:55

process it's in the relationships that that's what makes the agreement that's where Authority is so in this particular sense what I'm basically describing is is that the commons and the the way in which we hold the commons is the

01:49:08

communication process the relational process and then the agreements that form in that Commons that's what we're talking about when we say the commons and so in effect what works for the commons well you know some sort of one size fits all educational model is

01:49:21

certainly not going to work right we need something that's a little bit more adaptive and works a little bit more at the scale we're talking about so now we're back to the sort of Guild way of thinking and similarly if I'm saying okay well we're looking at these sort of

01:49:33

three instincts as being the basis of choice well wait a minute now we've got okay so how do people have relationships well let's see there's relationships of care there's relationships of transaction there's relationships of power and I sure as hell better know

01:49:46

which one is which because if I'm in communication with you and you're organizing it from a transactional perspective but I'm organizing it from a care-based perspective I'm probably going to lose in the sense that the communicative context that we're in just

01:49:59

as mismatched on the other hand if you're in a transactional relationship with me but I'm in a power relationship with respect to you you're going to basically be the loser because you didn't discern that effectively you weren't given the

01:50:10

choice I'm commanding you to do something right and in effect if I have the capacity to do that then in effect what I've done is I've I've taken a causal process some conditional things some agreement and I've used it to manipulate the situation so that you

01:50:23

don't have choice and I do that's what weaponization is so in this particular sense if we're if we're wanting to enable communities to choose well together we're wanting to enable them to communicate well with them together

01:50:35

which basically means that they need to be more Discerning about what kind of relationship are they actually in right if it's going to be an Institutional context the notion of institution is

01:50:47

fundamentally hierarchal and fundamentally transactional but a community is based upon relationships of care and these are not the same and as a person who has taken this philosophy and

01:50:59

by the way I would be probably pretty confident to say that of all the philosophers that I've ever known especially in the modern times especially in the western world that I may be the only one who has actually tested his philosophy in a real business

01:51:13

in the real world and actually put it on the ground and subjected it to the most demanding and stringent tests of which anybody could conceive which is does it work in reality okay does it work with

01:51:26

real people does it work in actual communities and if the answer to that question is I don't know because I haven't tried it yet then basically I'm just going to say well then you don't know because you haven't tried it yet but in this particular sense I'm going

01:51:38

to tell you flat out that I have tried it and I can tell you that an institution and a community are not not isomorphic with one another they are distinct um I'm going to basically contest one one thing that you said way

01:51:51

early on Michael which is in a early part of the conversation you use the word institution when I know you meant community and so therefore I would ask know the difference right because in this particular sense if we build more

01:52:04

institutions if we build more systems we're creating more conditional structures which is more causation which is more of the kinds of things that we've already deployed to the maximum extent possible in the world and what

01:52:16

got us here won't get us there what we need to be in the future is a higher skillfulness and capacity of choice so that we can actually choose wisdom Health well-being basically survival

01:52:29

procreation and social process that actually works and so in effect we need to understand those essential natures and if we use the wrong tools we'll end up with not so good results because we weren't conscientious enough to have

01:52:41

really paid attention to the essence of what's actually happening so in this particular sense I would say yeah I am a hell yes to basically Community formation culture formation which I sense is at the center of where you're thinking about all these particular

01:52:53

things and when you bring it down to actual practice you're doing the right stuff so in this particular sense I don't actually have any complaints but I'm therefore noticing the language as basically being a tool by which we can do what we're doing even

01:53:06

better so Daniel I'm now back to you what's that I just I just wanna just clarify and maybe this can be a separate discussion but I do think that we need institutions so that community saying

01:53:20

the institutions are bad right but I agree they're different I but I also think that that it it can be done only with community that we need some level of Institutions some some things can

01:53:33

only be done with institutions and some things can agree we agree and and can another here here's where I think we would also agree right the world is full of Institutions there's not that many

01:53:45

communities the communities it used to be the case go back to the Middle Ages and business I.E Marketplace would happen on maybe a Sunday once a month right but

01:53:57

now marketplac is everything in community happens in the context of marketplace maybe whereas it used to be the marketplace commercialism happened in the context of community the the balance is way off we need to get more

01:54:09

Community process okay all right so Daniel I first of all there's there's there's a lot of things that you remarked on although I'm realizing we're getting close to time I probably won't actually get to mention very many of

01:54:23

them at all that's too bad um but but in this particular sense I do think that there are some things that uh you and I have a lot to talk about that is very strong areas of agreement um I love that you're

01:54:36

basically pulling in all of these different areas of philosophy and showing how they're relevant to what's going on today and I hear specifically your interest in focus on community as well and and again there's there's a

01:54:47

there's a sort of response we don't want to get into analysis paralysis and we don't want to be subjecting ourselves to an action bias and by the way it's not an either or there is this third poll

01:55:00

which is this deep sensing thing and that if we get really really clear about what are the kinds of dynamics of relationship that in effect we can actually make better choices about these kinds of things

01:55:12

um again just in the acknowledgement of time I'm going to stop here but on the other hand i' I'd actually like to to to go back listen to some of the things that you had spoken to again and to and to start to show some of the things that

01:55:25

I've been working on weave into some of the things that you're already doing so that you can find some support there uh because there there are a couple of places for example where I noticed that like there's there's there's again a

01:55:39

sort of historical thing but if we're going to pull it into the present and make it something that people can actually see today as relevant right now um then in effect we're going to want to clear connect some of these threads together and clear up a few pieces but I

01:55:52

think I'm going to stop with that just now other than to just again acknowledge the the sense in which I hear that you're holding Community as well and to you know just really point to these again these sort of underlying dynamics that that that that I think are holding

01:56:05

the threads of what we're we're talking about together no delightful and Daniel yes um I am aware

01:56:15

that we should look to begin to wrap up up um and so let me just say a couple things I I will pass it back over to you Forest we've shared so many hours in conversation Daniel and I that I I can

01:56:29

almost guarantee that about 10 minutes of absolute gold is about to come forth from Daniel but that it it will very much be leading into a next conversation and so i' just like to I just like to

01:56:42

say um that you know it was certainly my intention in bringing you guys together that we have a few more conversations if that is desired if if you're willing um I'm

01:56:57

I'm confident that at least a few of you are it's probably more on yourself forest in terms of your availability and I'd also like to do the next one with the invitations open to a number of the voice craft Network to

01:57:10

attend and then to ask some questions be present for some questions at the end Daniel's been a participant in the voice craft Community for a number of years now and Michelle has um recently joined sort of about four or five months ago um

01:57:24

there is in fact in the context of this being brought together a a real living embodiment of actually much that is being discussed like a genuine attempt to essentially bootstrap the kind of

01:57:37

well many things at once um and so I I don't know how aware you are of that forest and it would be worthwhile I think saying some things in between now and then about that because we have sort

01:57:50

of a living example of a sort of cosmol local project here that sort of centers the criticality of communication and relationship across thinking feeling you name it you with with people at varying

01:58:03

levels of um let's say Readiness to engage in the kind of metaphysical deliberation that might be here but at the same time is trying to hold to a standard that welcomes that kind of deliberation and can actually do so but

01:58:18

at the same time recognizes that for the majority of people entering the context certainly at the local level for instance we held an event about about you know current happenings with respect

01:58:29

to War and what have you the um nature of meeting and the delicate footsteps toward the possibility of community in such contexts is of course undergoing you know the necessity of a

01:58:44

very different kind of exchange and um and we're sort of trying to link these worlds and in that sense open up the possibility of connecting a diversity of voices who can support the strengthening

01:58:58

of the capacity to participate in relationship in the kind of context we're speaking about which in is inherently something quite transitional you mentioned the point about the analysis Paralysis on the one

01:59:11

hand and then also too much of an action bias to me all of this is rather Complicated by the transitionary times we're in and that you know speaking on behalf of myself and the

01:59:24

responsibilities I have to people I love and and friends and and peers and the commons more broadly it's um for all the aspiration and all the dedication over

01:59:35

many years not as a part-time thing uh you know I've mentioned on many occasions the tremendous inadequacy um that I have to actually bring to bear what seem to me absolutely

01:59:49

necessities of being in concrete address with the with the Dynamics we're discussing uh and yet those inadequacies are in some sense the leading edges of the very things that are important to

02:00:02

bring into relationship and I think that some of those things will be voiced by people who are able to sort of listen to this and then participate in a final part but of

02:00:14

course there's only so much time on the channel and so you know there's tremendous complexities to all of this um I think it's worth knowing that and for people listening and for people viewing and speaking directly to those

02:00:26

of you who have been in conversations with Daniel and I for a long time around number of these things I think it's worth you know it's worth affirming that there are real efforts here being made

02:00:40

and in that sense actually the possibility of of genuine discussion of strategy forest and I understand that plays a certain role in how you think about the relation ship between culture and vision I would be so bold to say is

02:00:53

we're not here speaking into the void if you get my meaning and that there are in fact relationships and contexts that are capable of being in discussion being in conversation about these types of things

02:01:06

certainly I've got plans because I must because this conversation will end and I have things to do in order to return and create the conditions for it to happen again and so you know inade in some

02:01:19

sense though those plans may be I still must make them as must we all and so here we are in the middle of all of that and um I'd just like to pass it over uh to Daniel I know you've got some things

02:01:31

to share um in closing and then we'll open it up to each of you as well to share some things in closing too so thank you well delightful I appreciate everything you said for us Mel this has

02:01:44

been wonderful and there is that lurking pricing problem that we have going on we've got very good generally figuring out how to have pricing systems and the uh distribution of limited resources

02:01:55

when it comes to utility matters of scarcity but how in the world do you price the value of someone who gives you new eyes or the ability to apprehend to beauty or to participate in a community in a new way and that seems to be what

02:02:09

we have to figure to price so for example we need to create systems of economically supporting people that are able to um make you better at attuning to reality or conditioning to reality or

02:02:21

capable of care and basically we've if uh to make a giant claim we've almost in a sense reach the end of when we can socioeconomically get away with not having good ways to

02:02:34

price environments that are able to help you condition and attune to reality in good ways so the example I like to make because there's this interesting question um that forest was getting at we're talking about beauty and kind of

02:02:46

authority and apprehension um so Arn Barfield has this lovely example where he where he asks you know is a rainbow real does a rainbow exist and you go well of course it exists you say well

02:02:58

you know doesn't I mean it's kind of weird right he said it's very interesting in order to experience a rainbow you have to have certain conditions it has to be raining there has to be sunny you have to be standing in a certain place but it's not a

02:03:11

hallucination because other people could see it too if they meet those conditions right and then you apprehend a rainbow philosophy is gaining the abilities of knowing how to create the conditions of

02:03:23

seeing things like rainbows which are things you can only experience under what certain conditions critically I think friendship is like that and let us note that in Aristotle a good political system is one that is bounded by

02:03:36

friendship but what in the world is friendship friendship is very strange it is some sort of experience between people that is a consequence of a certain condition and Attunement that they meet that makes something appear

02:03:47

like a rainbow that is there there but not there in the same way that a tree is there and so what's the value of that how do you value that how do you make that sustainable well one of the reasons

02:03:59

I'm so big at removing and transforming the medium of school is because to even think about valuing or pricing or making economically sustainable something like voice craft would require people to not

02:04:11

have the subconscious Association of the only things worth giving money to being that in the realm of utility versus the the ability to condition apprehending certain experiences of reality there may be

02:04:24

something here looking into the future where there seems to be in order to get some of the communities that Mel is putting forth of the value of the the commons one would need to read something like the work of forest Landry or go through the practices of voice craft

02:04:37

might we imagine a world where people begin to see sort of an interconnectedness between these different values where if I want to participate in Mel then I need to go through voice craft and be familiar with Forest there may be some sort of pro

02:04:50

like some sort of pricing system that can be put forth to sort of speak to a process of conditioning that make people capable of experiencing a quality of reality that will change how they carry

02:05:02

themselves in the world but it's kind of like a rainbow so you have to meet certain conditions but these are the places where you can meet those conditions so there may be something like that one has to think in order to this great pressing economic question

02:05:15

that is lurking because we haven't really figured out how to do it um basically in the past what churches would do is be like hey because churches would impact how you see they had an offering plate and God told you to give

02:05:26

10% so even if you didn't quite understand because you didn't have the metaphysics of force to know that it was changing your apprehension you still did it and had your apprehend changing and you made it sustainable but it was all by chance almost it wasn't directly

02:05:39

intentional you didn't know what you were doing in a way right well now we have to know what we're doing but that means we have to directly understand the reality of conditionalism and Attunement to then

02:05:52

Finance those places where that becomes possible but one of the reasons I big on the education reform is because it's almost impossible now for us to even think that category of attuning and conditioning when the only activities of

02:06:06

the brain is to be good at trivia that's the problem School creates the subconscious Association that what the brain exists to do is to answer trivia questions or to plug into pre-existing systems but if you remove that assoc

02:06:18

iation and suddenly the brain turns into a bit more like an instrument that can be attuned to certain musics to make possible certain musics at otherwise couldn't be and if there were more people that did that then you could have a community that's Authority comes from

02:06:32

the music of the friendship that arises between those people and that is the kind of authority that is required today the experience of the rainbow oh that guy knew what we needed to do to see the rainbow well he's got Authority then

02:06:45

thus you have hierarchy but it's it's in service like forest was saying the com it's in service The Guild is a wonderful example because guilds are tied to what skills but the funny thing is there is a

02:06:57

skill in knowing the conditions of experiencing a rainbow of knowing how to attune the instrument to experience the music the people who know those skills who are able to gift you with the steps you need to take to participate in the

02:07:09

action that makes you so attuned those are the people that have hierarchy but it's a hierarchy for others not for power not for transaction and it's a kind of bless hierarchy cuz I sure am glad there are people in this world that

02:07:22

that know how to meet that conditioning because otherwise I would never and so there's a blessed net in that Authority that comes from that and it's an authority that is derived not from a power or from a threat but from a

02:07:35

quality of experience that is only possible because of the training of that guilt so the question becomes that is opened on how these things might be priced how these things might be allocated there may be things of putting together these different communities so

02:07:48

people can train one another and attune one another for what the others are doing there might be ways to do this but the first step for all that to be possible is conversations like this between people such as this so I'm glad

02:07:59

we had this opportunity it's been a pleasure thank you thank you Daniel Michelle would you have any closing remarks to make um well not not really because I you know I think we already

02:08:15

spoke almost two hours and I I think uh it's taxing the attention of uh our listeners but notice how we back at the discussion from the beginning I I think it's uh really interesting how Daniel

02:08:28

made the loop back to what is value and how value is expressed yeah I think it's essential and and uh you know I haven't cracked the nut either even though right now this year is a good year for me but

02:08:42

um you know like the long-term you know survival of people like us uh uh if we're not Guild members making uh you know Furniture uh it's it's a real problem

02:08:55

and I think there's a real real crisis of intellectuality coming you know Peter Pagani says that you know culture is thermodynamic so the ability to create this complex system with so many people

02:09:08

doing symbolic work uh has been a function of of our overshoot and as we you know rationalize our thermodynamic usage in the coming

02:09:21

years and you know I I think someone formulated it very well we are moving from a technosphere which is which is an immature technosphere because it cannot live in balance with the biosphere and

02:09:33

we need to move to Major technosphere which can live in balance with the biosphere um we risk really um there's a big issue of

02:09:46

survival of intellect ual work and you know politically speaking uh I think we're about to go through a big pivot with a new ruling class that's coming

02:09:58

out of the you know right-wing populist movements they're going to be Savage with universities um they're gonna stop funding Arts they're gonna stop funding culture because why would they fund

02:10:11

people who are against them you know that's that's basically the way that uh they're thinking right now and so there's going to be a huge Crisis coming of people who used to make a

02:10:23

living from their brains you know and and are going to to be kicked out of these institutions so this is going to be a really big issue coming is like how do

02:10:36

we fund people dedicated to non-material meaning as we've always been doing like we've always funded clergy and stuff right so it we but so I don't think we

02:10:49

actually have the solution yet for the coming era of how we're going to do this so just uh reinforcing Daniel's uh point at the end that we we need to work on

02:11:01

this thank you Michelle Forest please don't feel the strain of having to bring final conclusion to everything given our time remaining but it' be lovely to hear from you in

02:11:13

closing thank you um I actually find myself a little bit in disagreement slightly in the sense that it's not going to be about I I I personally find myself

02:11:27

resistant to the idea of thinking about it in terms of numeric pricing methodologies there are other ways to achieve objective process that serve the same function of

02:11:39

providing strong basis for Collective action and Collective choic making process there's there's ways to do distributed governance and distrib red economics such that it becomes more ecological rather than economic and

02:11:53

those those those series of Transitions and how to think about that is something which I can I can articulate but it would take time and I'm not going to try to do it now in in this particular sense I noticed that if I if I try to model

02:12:06

our future based upon game Dynamics or narrative or anything else that shifts the direction towards competition and away from cooperation that the phase change that's a associated with such

02:12:19

subtle metrics are uh enormously consequential and so in effect there's a there's there's there's a need here for for me to at least mention that there are alternative

02:12:30

ways of thinking about it that don't yield vulnerability to command and control systems that to to the kind of conditionalization that effectively would be disabling to community level

02:12:43

Choice with the level of wisdom necessary to actually affect the future that we could all be a part of so there's there's some very specific things that would need to be articulated in this space in order to clarify all

02:12:54

that uh which maybe we can do some next time in regards to the overall process I'm glad that I was a part of this conversation I'm aware of the social

02:13:07

political uh aspects that that Michael is alluding to and I'm aware of the um sort of situational circumstances of do I have the kinds of relationships in my life that would that would be supportive under the circumstances where it all

02:13:20

comes crashing down it wouldn't matter how much gold I had in the bank if power goes out so in this sense there's a there's there's a notion here that uh we really do at some point or another need

02:13:32

to get back to the relational process and the communicative process in order to understand where value really lies and um as someone who has uh some

02:13:43

deficiencies as we all do um then then in effect I I I recognize that even I have a lot to learn in that space um so so in this sense I'm I'm just basically going to close that along with many other conversations that have been had

02:13:57

that uh you know again there's there's there's there's motion forward in at least comparing notes to the degree that we've been able to do do so in this time beautiful well thank you Forest I

02:14:11

won't say too much more other than I will be in touch and hopefully we can have another one of these conversations so there we are yeah thank thank you Tim for you know arranging this it's uh it's

02:14:26

really great to learn from Daniel and U forest and yeah thank you for holding this space and you know not just now but like over quite a few years already yeah

02:14:40

awesome agreed on that thank you Tim this has been wonderful thank you all right guys I'll see you next time

02:14:50

[Music] appr