256-Reimagining Systems for a Sustainable Future

What if aligning our societal structures with natural systems holds the key to a more harmonious world? Join me for a fascinating conversation with Anne Riley, an author whose diverse career spans from high tech to chicken processing, as we explore her unique insights into the human ecosystem. Anne shares how her latest book, inspired by the likes of Michael Rothschild and Charles Darwin, proposes the "idea sphere" theory, blending biology with societal laws to promote individual choice and minimize harm. Together, we delve into her groundbreaking views on evolving our legal systems and the natural alignment of democracy with human behavior.

As we navigate the complexities of modern society, Anne and I tackle pressing issues like healthcare reform and the influential power of technology. We critically examine the role of media and its impact on generational communication, advocating for a shift towards responsible discourse and collaboration. Our conversation also highlights the pressing need for action against climate change, emphasizing the importance of shifting mindsets towards sustainability and equity. Anne challenges us to reconsider the balance of power within our political systems, all while maintaining a hopeful outlook for a more united future.

From exploring gender stereotypes in literature to envisioning a society that embraces diverse perspectives, this episode offers a thought-provoking journey into the possibilities of harmonious human coexistence. Whether discussing the ethics of corporate practices or the potential for a brighter future, Anne’s insights remind us of the power of collaboration and critical thinking. Tune in to discover how embracing "The Human Idea" could lead to transformative changes across all industries, fostering a world where choice and minimal harm go hand in hand.

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Chapters

• 0:13 Exploring the Human Ecosystem
• 16:19 Promoting Individual Choice While Minimizing Harm
• 24:46 Rethinking Healthcare and Education
• 33:50 Navigating the Impact of Technology
• 43:22 Addressing Technology and Social Inequality
• 56:18 Exploring Hope for Humanity's Future
• 1:03:56 Evaluating Democracy and Government Balance
• 1:17:06 The Human Idea in All Industries
• 1:21:46 Gender Stereotypes in Literature
• 1:25:54 Climate Action and Political Reform
• 1:37:58 Promoting Engagement and Gratitude

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:13

hello, welcome to politically high tech with your host, elias. This episode's entertainment, if you want to call it that, or inf infotainment, whatever you frame it, it doesn't matter to me, as long as you're engaged and paying attention or cursing me out, you know, through the other side or loving me, which would be better, but I don't always expect that as a person with a realist and pragmatic mindset. But it's okay, you're tuning in, that's all I care about. So this episode's entertainment slash guest is going to be ann riley, and I'm just gonna say right now this is not her first time writing a book. Okay, if you're gonna think that you'll be thoroughly debunked, just check her website.

Speaker 1: 0:59

This she wrote several books. There's multiple genres, by the way, so she's not one trick pony. There's one comedy, one, a romance. This one's more scientifically political. If that makes sense to you, she'll break that down further. It's her book, not mine. I am just a consumer, just like you, especially when you get the book right. So we do that before we get to all that good stuff. I want my audiences to get an idea of who you are, anne Wiley. And, yeah, just introduce who you are to my listeners and viewers. Who the heck is Anne Wiley. Who is this lovely lady?

Speaker 2: 1:39

Well, first of all, thank you, elias, for having me on. I have a little bit of a cold, so forgive my voice. But thank you for having me on and for talking to me about this because it is kind of an unusual book and I am really excited to share about it. About me, I am the 11th of 12 children 11th of 12 children and I grew up. I was born on the West Coast in Washington State and then moved to the Midwest when I was in junior high and went to high school and college here in the Midwest and then moved back to Portland, oregon, for 35 years where we had our kids and kind of had our lives. And now I'm back in the Midwest. We have elderly parents, so we're taking care of them right now.

Speaker 2: 2:29

My background is in business, believe it or not, so I have a lot of. I have an MBA degree in accounting, so I have a lot of background in lots of different businesses. I've worked in high tech, I've worked in banking, I've worked in, basically, chicken processing that was my first job out of school at a manufacturing plant. So I learned a lot in all of these different areas. But one thing that I've always wanted to know through all my life is how we fit in the world, how do we make sense in the world, why I learned about evolution really early, even though I went to Catholic school. I don't know how that happened, but I did. And ever since I've tried to figure out how humans and animals fit and why we're the same and why we're different. And everything I've ever read in life is sort of been I put into two buckets like yep, this makes sense or no. That just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2: 3:30

And in 1990, I read a book by Michael Rothschild called Bionomics and he made the effort of putting biological systems and economic systems in line together. Oh my gosh, it made so much sense. But I came away from that book thinking that well, if economic systems link up to biological systems, shouldn't humans link up to biological systems? And yet I kind of expected somebody to write this book in like the next two years after that, which was like in the 1990s, and nobody ever did. But that's where I got hung up for years and years and years thinking about how we actually fit, because we do fit. But I just didn't understand why, until I kind of wrestled it into what I think makes sense and came up with my theory of the human ecosystem, which I call the idea sphere. So that's the the bio you heard.

Speaker 1: 4:29

This is the. We're gonna get a little deeper to. What the heck does she mean by idea sphere? What is this weird idea? What is she talking about? She's trying to be the next charles darwin. Well, that's what her influence, by the way. I looked that up and I was already making those connections right away, especially the competition, survival of the fittest, the best genetics you know survives and you multiply and all of that good stuff. But that's that's the one. That's sad. That's the only science, science book that I read that actually fascinated me, because I don't know. This is why certain animals, especially those who are dapped or stronger, you know they get, they get to, you know thrive and multiply, and while the ones that don't well, they eventually washed away. That's just putting it very nicely.

Speaker 2: 5:14

Yes. Well, I would say that if Charles Darwin knew about cells and genetics, he would have come up with the theory I came up with. In fact, when he wrote the Descent of man, he wrote that, you know, people inherited their values, like goodness and morality. We would inherit those, just like we would inherit genes, because you know, or inherit every other trait, and because he didn't understand about cells, and he didn't understand how it all worked, and and he so his assumption was that as time went on, humans would become more and more and more moral. Well, that didn't happen, because it doesn't work that way. But I'm convinced that if Charles Darwin knew about DNA and RNA, he would have figured out how humans work. But the idea sphere is in fact the extension of what he would have figured out how humans work, but the idea sphere is in fact the extension of what he would have come up with, I think. And it's the human ecosystem and what I, you know, if you look at how the natural system works, at the base of every life form is DNA, and the DNA is just your set of instructions that allow you to live, and it's been honed after billions and billions of years of evolution. So when you're born, you have a set of genes that allow you to live, but inside your DNA is inside these cells, and your body is made up of 35 trillion cells. You're not a body, you're a thing made of 35 trillion cells, and that's a very important concept. The only living thing in this world is cells, and each cell has its DNA and you know, and your body, they're all the same. So that means your body has all the same instructions so they can all work together. So that means your body has all the same instructions, so they can all work together. And then from a cell we've created tissues and organs and then bodies. Well, that same structure holds through for humans, but at the base of our humanity and our idea sphere is not DNA, but it's a human idea. In our idea sphere is not DNA, but it's a human idea.

Speaker 2: 7:30

Humans can create ideas and they are not physical, but they are the things that we can then use to put into some form that then they have a life of their own. For instance, I can write a book about ideas and then, once that book is out in the world, other people can use that book to extend the thinking about that concept, just like I use Charles Darwin's book about evolution, the Origin of Species, to write my book. So things. Once we have ideas and we can put them into a form outside our bodies, they have a life of their own. No other animal can do this. We are the only ones. A few animals can make nests, but they can't make a skyscraper.

Speaker 2: 8:15

But we can make all kinds of different things, and not only that. But once we learn to talk, we learn to write, and then we learn to create radio, and then we learn to create TV, and then now we have computers. That's a string of evolution of ideas about communicating that has a life of its own that people then tap into and create and become part of. So what I'm saying is that, based on ideas, our people are like cells in the body. They implement those ideas, and our institutions are groups of people who implement ideas, and societies are groups of people who coexist and live together. So the structures are the same, but they work on something different. One starts with DNA and one starts with an idea.

Speaker 1: 9:07

This is why this is going to be scientific and political. She's already creating that bridge for you, at least that foundation of the bridge. Run on it, because I don't know if I'm going to strengthen it or I'm going to blow it up, and of course it's metaphorical. I'll say that's a tire ass for blowing up the bridge. I'll be quiet. You're not paying attention, you're just finding any little reason just to click me and just shame me, make me look crazy.

Speaker 2: 9:32

Which is fine.

Speaker 1: 9:33

Look, which is fine, you just bring me more audience. Okay, that's all. It works the opposite. Especially if you're doing good, it will translate. Eventually, hopefully, they will pick up the good part of the idea sphere and I love how you break that down, because ideas are good. Oh, we all, we know that.

Speaker 2: 9:52

Well, and that's that's the point where, as in nature, the cell has no choice but to follow the DNA instructions. We, as humans, we don't work the same way. We have what I call the human superpower is choice, and so we get to choose which ideas we want to follow. They don't have to be good, they don't have to be bad. An idea lives because it's accepted, not because it's good or bad or because it's right or wrong. So we have ideas that have come from thousands and thousands of years ago, like religion, where it's not necessarily true, but it was accepted. And because it was accepted it still exists today. And this is something that makes humans amazing and dangerous, because we can implement very bad ideas for many, many years and not even know they're bad ideas for many, many years and not even know they're bad. You know, and this is what makes human civilization a very much a double-edged sword, in my view.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Oh yeah, it is, and I actually agree with that because I always could say humans, they're intelligently, wacky people, just to put it nicely. Because let's see what good ideas, computers, we could store large information in there. We could document history or even make it engaging with CGI and all of that. And you know, of course we could add a little. You know we add some bluff in there. Not all history is true. We add some bluff in there to make the story interesting. So I'm mixing the good and the bad ideas for you Do. I believe history should be documented. Of course it's a very good tool because no animal could document. You know, a dog could never document you know, a final lineage of his or her own family. No, the human could do that for the dog.

Speaker 2: 11:38

Yeah, yeah, but the dog can't do that for itself.

Speaker 2: 11:58

Yeah, we could do that, but not the dog and your physical construction there ready to go. So you're a full person in the ecosystem, but you have zero ideas, which means that everything you learn to become part of the idea sphere is given to you by others and then learn on your own as you get old enough. When you finally learn the language and learn how to think, you start developing your own ways to get information right. So we never get a full picture. And I think this is one of the reasons why we're so divided today is there's so much information out there and people can choose to select and self-select little bits of information and parts of information and they can have completely different viewpoints about how the world works or how it ought to work. And this is, I think, getting to be a really big problem because we don't have a commonality. When we had less information available to us back in the day, when there was newspapers and maybe some magazines and books and we had teachers teaching in schoolhouses everywhere, people kind of got the same ideas, but not today, you know, we are just exploded with information and I think there's so much I don't even think we're aware that we are siloed in our limited idea sets that make it really hard to be unified people. And one of the things that I want to address and I do address in my book is how do we come up with a way to unify all people in one basic idea?

Speaker 2: 13:44

Like cells, living things, they all are designed to survive. They are instructed to survive. That's what their DNA and they didn't get instructed by, like teaching. It's just that only survivors ever survive. All the cells and the animals that didn't quite work in the environment have died out and what we're left with is survival. So survival is the thing that life does, but we are humans. We get to choose, and we have to choose our goals. We don't have to choose survival. We, you know, we can choose money. We can choose time. We can choose being a good painter. We can choose you, you know all kinds of different things, but we have to choose, and that is something very different than life forms before us so obviously, I summarize all this, so feel free to chime in and correct, because I'll make sure I understand your idea.

Speaker 1: 14:38

We're all very well. So okay, dna very binary. It doesn't do what it's instructed, it dies. So if it does what it's told, it lives. It's very simple, but the idea is fear.

Speaker 1: 14:57

There's so much ways a human can survive and die. Let's be quite honest. So there's a lot more. I hate to use this, but I'm going to use it anyway. Fifty shades of gray of complexity compared to DNA. Dna is black and white. You win, you lose, you survive. You survive, you die. I could create, I don't know. Let me just use a ridiculous example just for ideas. A ridiculous example just, uh, for ideas, for I don't know I could create a a dress for a cisgender man, with skirts and all that.

Speaker 1: 15:31

You know I could. I could actually do that. It's all. This is history, oh no, but that's for a woman, no, no, no, it's for you. Sir, here, go, go, go, wear this dress. Look if. If he wears it, that's up to him. I really don't care. He wants to do drag, that's his lifestyle. As long as he's not harming anybody and you do point that out very clearly. That's the point where I want to make sure the listeners and viewers understand as long as he's not harming anybody. That part I perfectly agree with. You're not getting an argument out of me, unless it's like the last resort self-defense. That's probably the only exception, otherwise I'm with you.

Speaker 2: 16:05

Um, I'm with you completely well, and even your body has an army right that protects it from invaders. So self-defense is a is an allowable thing, but you make a really good point, which is and I you know I said this thing is there. Is there an idea in which we could all, as humans, agree on, that is, at the very foundation upon which we live, the foundation of our idea sphere, that would allow us to live, coexist, peacefully? And what I think is that you have to take the two main things that nature does. One is they work together, so they well, I should say it this way way they allow each of their cells to do their jobs with, without interference, and they can't harm each other. Those are the only rules, so, and humans have the superpower of choice. So what I came up with is the main idea that humans all across the world should be able to agree on is that you should be able to do what you want, maximize your choice, but you can never harm anybody else in the meantime. So when you form a government, you form a government that is for the good of the people, right, and the good of the people. You're always trying to maximize their choices and minimize harm.

Speaker 2: 17:26

So you would make laws that would. Where there's potential harm, you would regulate and make laws. Where there's no harm, you would allow that behavior to go. So if you look at, I look at like gay marriage, it's like gay marriage doesn't hurt anybody. I mean there's two people getting married, it doesn't hurt anybody. So that should be allowed Absolutely. Abortion is the one that's a little more tricky because up until viability that fetus can't survive without the mom. So it becomes the mom's choice survive without the mom. So it becomes the mom's choice After viability, where a fetus can survive. Then there's a dual choice and laws should reflect those two realities. And I would say that in my opinion you would maximize the choice of the woman before viability and maximize the choice of both after viability. But that's how I see the world, where you maximize choice for people but minimize harm.

Speaker 1: 18:34

Well, I know some of some of your listeners of yours are pretty upset with that comment. You know there's a comment section. It's public therapy express your opinions. You're going to be criticized or you might be praised absolutely, you know so there's a comment section express it, express it. Look, people could say things that you don't like. Okay, there's a lot of ideas I don't like, but I tolerate.

Speaker 1: 19:00

It's called being a grown-up okay right, right, you know you don't have to like them, you have to say, oh, and really, he's a hero, she's my savior. No, no, that fake crap, okay, just no. Just, if you're gonna disagree, at least be intelligent or add some weight into it. That's why I recommend but for the this is for you, the listeners, reviewers. You know there's a comment section. If you want to express your frustration, go crazy. Yes, I don't cancel you. You too. Might you blame you too, not me, because I believe in first amendment.

Speaker 2: 19:31

Okay, as much as, with the exception of, obviously, death threats and all that other stuff well, right, because those, those I mean to my point, those those pass into the harm level. Um, again, what we're trying to do is allow people to live their lives the way they choose to, without harming others. And you know there's a lot of places where I'm pretty controversial. Another place, I believe, is that because guns have the potential to harm people, they need to be regulated. Now, you can regulate them in many ways. One way you can do it is in the private sector, by just having people get insurance for their gun and as soon as you put insurance, insurance is designed to assess risk in a marketplace, right, and a higher risk is a higher price, right. That's what you would do, what you would do. So if, if you're a gun owner and you have maybe a teenage uh chill, children, teenage children at home who are in the hormonal years, um, the the insurance company may say you got to lock those up. If you don't lock those guns up, your premium goes sky high. That's a that to regulate guns.

Speaker 2: 20:47

So there are also, you know, you can ban guns, which I don't agree with, because when you ban guns, all you do is create a black market and that doesn't really do anything. So you know you got to be smart about what you're trying to do, which is prevent the harm. You don't really want people not to have guns. You want to not have shootings of children. That's what we're trying to get to. So you have to figure out the right tools to use to make sure that you're allowing people to have guns but preventing that potential for harm of innocent people. And those things are hard. There's no question that they're very hard problems to solve, but I think this approach might be helpful in dealing with some of these problems.

Speaker 1: 21:33

The insurance companies are going to love you right now.

Speaker 2: 21:37

They're going to say, yeah, more money, more money, more money, and at the same time, I'm also a believer in taking insurance, health insurance away except for only catastrophic health insurance, and taking it away from all the well, the well-being care, because we've put so much profit in the system and we are not handling it. So it's not a one size fits all. In some cases, insurance is a great thing. In some cases, insurance is a great thing. It's great for catastrophic health care, where you have people who are dealing with heart failure or you know strokes or cancer. Then you know you have a wide pool of people who pay into the insurance pool, but only a few people get it. But right now our pools are so wide because we're covering every little thing. You know a cough or a cold, you know, or whatever.

Speaker 2: 22:33

But what you do instead, I would say, is that the government says OK, what we're going to do, americans, we're going to give you a $10,000 bank account that is set aside for wellness care and for your normal health care. You don't have to use the account. But what you have to do is you use it to pay cash to your doctors and you go and call your doctor and you see which one's going to give you the better deal. You don't think prices will go down. Prices will go down because everybody is playing with cash that they have to be careful for and whatever cash they don't use, they get to carry over for the next year. These are kinds of ideas that look about how do you give people health care but don't incent the profit making that is everywhere in the system which needs to be reduced.

Speaker 1: 23:21

I don't know what health care reform it needs to be done. It needs to be done like decades ago in my opinion. I want to to get back to the gun thing, because he oh no, no, just real quick, because I think I want to add a few things. I think for gun owners too, they should be a mandatory training in education on how to use guns and, of course, if you had insurance, if you had mandatory training, your premium goes down.

Speaker 2: 23:42

If you refuse the training, your premium premium goes down. If you refuse the training, your premium goes up. See, it's a very easy vehicle to basically price the risk into the existence of a gun in the world.

Speaker 1: 23:57

So don't worry, white ringers, your guns are not being taken away. Don't take away my gun. I'm very responsible.

Speaker 2: 24:03

No, I don't want to, and I talked to actually a lot of gun owners who are like, oh, I would buy insurance, you know. And then I've talked to some who are like, nope, it's my right, I don't want to buy insurance. I'm like, well, we have to do something. I don't want to take your gun away, I just want to price risk into the market some way.

Speaker 1: 24:26

You know, that's just one theory. Yeah, no, I think. Yeah, nothing is good. These look, these are good ideas. Politicians hope you listen. I don't care if you're the left, right or even independent or some crazy third party. Take this idea, put it to the campaign somewhere. Here's some ideas. I don't even care you take it, don't even give me credit. I just want good ideas to be spread out. And then now I want to transition to the health care. I think you said some interesting things about health care as as well. Um, because I think, um, it definitely needs to be reformed. I think it's too much money and we gain very little great impact from it okay.

Speaker 1: 24:57

We pay more than an average developed nation and they're getting better care, which is all risk because it's for profit. You know, the main thing is profit, that's the priority, not people, not for health.

Speaker 2: 25:11

So you know, I, and not only that but because hospitals are non-profits.

Speaker 2: 25:15

A lot of for-profit companies are buying them up and shielding their income or their profits inside them so that they don't get covered or so that they get protected from taxation, which is kind of a a rotten thing to do, but you know that's what they do. So I there are so many areas I have to write up. I have to write up a whole thing on healthcare, but my ideas are sort of just preliminary and sort of, you know, like I said, the first one is to remove the insurance part. Only for the catastrophic part of health care where you need to assess your risk of getting these diseases and covering people for the risk. That's what insurance is for this other part it should be removed. That's what insurance is for this other part it should be removed. And all of these, especially the middlemen from you know, there's pharmacies and then there's a lot of these middle distributors who make so much profit that I think we should really raise the tax rates on highly profitable companies so that there's no incentive for them to I don't know just to at least to put the money back into the system. I think, if nothing else, but it's a very difficult system, I think, the way you do it right now is to put competition back into the wellness part of it and make doctors, make pharmacies, make pharmaceuticals compete for your business.

Speaker 2: 26:52

If I have a cold, I go to the doctor. I say, how much are you going to charge me for a visit? And they say, well, we have to charge your insurance. No, no, no, no, no. How much are you going to charge me? I'm going to come in and pay out of my government funded cash. How much are you going to charge? Is it going to be the $250 that you? You know you now they charge. No, it's going to be 50, because they know I can go to the next guy over and compete, and they don't have to do any paperwork, they don't have to do anything. Same thing which, which medicine do you want? Which one can you get for the good price? Who's going to compete? That's where you need to do it. We have to squeeze the profits out of the system that the insurance companies are inflating and these insurance companies are putting doctor groups together. Where there are these big groups, that then they don't compete with each other and they don't compete with each other.

Speaker 1: 27:49

This is the wrong way to do healthcare and we see it in low quality care at very high prices, and I absolutely agree. You're not getting an argument from me on that one. I mean I've leaned further left on general when it comes to healthcare because just about how profiting and all this privatizing, I think it does damage. I think for schools it's definitely better, I will agree with that, like you know, I, you know for a school thing real, I'll say privatizing competition, schools I think that there there is more incentive for that in my opinion. But the privatization of hospitals, all that it's been uh, it's the.

Speaker 1: 28:20

The results have not been great, right, and especially that the pandemic just revealed how screwed up the health care system is across the country. There's no more dramatics. We have evidence, you know, and I just hope people can get together. Republicans, you hear a little bit of your good idea. Free market competition, right there. Free market with the government dollar, come on, we got to at least agree with some of it. I want the moderates, at least the moderate Republicans, to join in this one.

Speaker 2: 28:52

All right. Well, yeah, I think again, the idea is how do you maximize the choice of people while minimizing the harm, or, in this case, getting them the best health care. That is the way you minimize harm here, and each problem has a different set of characteristics, and so the solutions are going to look different. For instance, you mentioned education. So to me, education right now is government run and owned, and to me, I think that is a very bad way to do education, because education is the key for people to get the ideas, so that they can live in the idea sphere right, and what we need to do is make sure that, right now, I think we do a lot of. We actually do less because we don't compete. You know, I think, if teachers are the experts on what works in the school, and what I think we should do is the government should mandate the sort of things that they want to accomplish. You know that we want kids to learn civics, which I think is really important, because that's how we learn to coexist, but also and not just reading and writing arithmetic, but, yeah, because that's how we learn to coexist, but also and not just reading and writing arithmetic, but yeah, maybe we want to learn how to coexist together. There's a whole bunch of things we should learn.

Speaker 2: 30:11

The government's job, as in any coordinating system, is to tell you what the rules are and to enforce those rules. But they don't what they do like. That's what a body does. When you have your 35 trillion cells in your body, it's run by your brain and your neural system and the brain says, basically, you guys get to do what you want, but you have to do. You can't hurt each other and you have to do your job right. And they all your 35 trillion cells work together to keep you going every day. That's pretty impressive. Well, that's what our government should be run like. We should say here's what you need to do, go do it. And then there's a feedback loop that says here's what works and here's what doesn't, but here's what we should keep doing, and you strive to get better and better and better. It's a continuous improvement loop.

Speaker 2: 31:04

But instead of the government mandating it, they just get bureaucratic and sluggish, and that doesn't help us educate people. So again, I'm like more of a left, leaner in how I perceive things, but to me, this is where I think we're losing our children, because we're not letting the experts educate them. But it's not about having religion in schools necessarily. It's about teaching robustly what the choices are that kids need to know is available to them. We should teach them about all the different things them. We should teach them about all the different things. There's gardening and engineering, and shop and electronics, as well as cooking and sewing. Boys and girls it doesn't matter. All of these things are information that children then put together and they can create patterns and they can create the best adult they're going to be, and that's what I think our society should be doing.

Speaker 1: 32:08

Yeah, I like to add this it's a great idea. I just want to add more into it. Definitely budgeting and all that, especially getting to adulthood. Definitely add some I don't know life classes or something. I don't know what grade you want to start. That's where the debate gets interesting. I will go as far to say at least at minimum I'll put it was probably 11th grade, maybe even sooner. We could debate sooner. I disagree with later, but you know.

Speaker 2: 32:36

Well, I think that actually learning how to live in the ideas fair should start at preschool and go all the way through 12th grade. But the level at which you teach will change as children get older, so you might not touch on government until they're maybe in fifth or sixth grade, because that's not when it is. But you can still talk about civility, about not harming each other. What does it mean not to harm each other? Do when you call somebody a bad name, is that harm? You know what happens. How do we deal with these things? And if you teach these kids from a young age how to think about these things and deal with them, I think we will have better adults no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 33:50

Defending the foundation and left is more about how they deal with the nuances and the details.

Speaker 1: 33:54

That's how they both generally think and I give shouts. Michael anderson, right there. He's a great political analysis and I follow him. I don't follow the CNNs and the Fox News those crazy people. They want you to go mad. That's a bad ideas for you. Stop paying attention to those folks, okay. But anyways, I want to get back to the school thing.

Speaker 1: 34:17

I like what you said. Actually, I'm going to take what you said. You see, this is me being moldy, taking better ideas. Okay, I like ideas. How about ego? What's about my ego? I'm going to throw her out and not care. I don't even have this interview. Okay, forget this interview. Okay, if I want to please my ego, forget this interview. This interview never existed, okay. But I'm about ideas. Okay, I Ideas. Okay, I like ideas, good ideas, and I like how you break it down. At different stages, they learn about life. I think that's brilliant. That's better than what I could come up with. If it was ego-driven, I'd say, ah, anna's crazy. She don't know what she's talking about. These kids are not going to learn. They're stupid. That's ego-driven response.

Speaker 2: 34:56

Right no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 35:28

Right, we're brothers and sisters but we don't really talk to each other. I'm busy playing my video game, my game console. You're busy watching. I'm gonna use a female stereotype. You watch, you know love romance on tv okay, got it so you know we're silent, whatever.

Speaker 1: 35:44

We don't really talk. We don't even um interact. Even though mom and dad has jackets for dinner, eyes roll. I ain't doing idea, because I love being in my own little world, right, you love being in your little world and we don't really talk. We just continue to be on smartphones right to watch your program through the smartphone. I, I continue to watch mine and the parents. They're a bit like either.

Speaker 2: 36:05

They're busy, right, yeah, they're busy.

Speaker 1: 36:07

Yeah, you know that's even better. Yeah, they're busy, they don't even pay attention. So I think all this busyness, fast pace, being addicted to the screens, I think played a major role into that, because we just have too much access to information. But what we are lacking access to is wisdom, critical thinking. Right, right, you know, and you know he did such a piece on social media, which I think it was actually interesting. Uh, you know, unless you want to get a little bit into that, that's entirely up to you. But I'm gonna just say that I think social media is both, I say, a double edged sword. It's great for getting messages really, really quick, the fastest, most engaging way possible. However, misinformation spreads very, very quickly and even bad ideas can be spread very, very quickly.

Speaker 2: 36:52

It's a perfectly great vehicle for that yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:54

So, for example, I'm going to criticize TikTok, even though I became more sort of you know, I said yeah, I tolerate tiktok. I think tiktok should be in the market because it's a, it's a choice. And look we, we know, you know chinese spineless and all that. People, people gotta learn how to be responsible. We can't be baby in the middle. Before I had the opposite. It should be totally banned because chinese spineless. But the market loves it, I mean, and it does help small business. See, that's a good part.

Speaker 1: 37:22

One of them convinced me, changed my mind on that. He proved statistics that TikTok was actually helping small business and I was like, yeah, see, that's my heart. Oh, you got me good there, you got me right there, dang it. Then my mind was changed Before I was agreeing with anyone else's ban TikTok. Basically, I says ban TikTok. They say I'm going to ban TikTok. You see, libertarians, your problem is you don't know how to convince me. You sound crazy when you talk sometimes. Anything should be allowed, okay, so pornography should be allowed on children's TV? I don't think so.

Speaker 2: 37:52

Right right.

Speaker 1: 37:53

That one, I would argue. I'm not even a parent, but I do have experience taking care of kids. Right, used to help my mom, you know, with the daycare center. So I know what's that about. But um, I was going to say, you know, that's a problem, that's a problem with the libertarians. Some of them just sound crazy. They say, oh, let anything be. No, no, no, no, don't let anything be okay, so let anything be.

Speaker 1: 38:20

means like, okay, I'll just go to Ann Riley's house and go shoot her. You just said, let anything be. You just said that. You just said that, or Anne Riley could just come up with a rocket launcher, and you know, and it shoot down a government building. Yeah great.

Speaker 2: 38:33

Yeah, I'd probably make it be a dud. I just I'm so, so capable technologically, but no, I think that's what you're making the point is, the point is we have all of these innovations and humans are amazing at innovation but we also run fast before we know the consequences. And I think there are some huge consequences to our children. Like, just like you say in the example where these kids, I mean they're growing up with screens. Now, you've grown up, probably, with screens. I didn't, I didn't get. I mean internet didn't come, you know, into being until my kids were in high school. So I've lived a full life of reading and critical thinking and two channels on TV and you know three channels on the radio that everybody played at the beach. You could hear it all over because it was only one channel. You know, that's, that's, that's how I grew up, but. But so I've had to.

Speaker 2: 39:33

I really had a chance to see how it changes and, like you said you would use the word fractures people into their areas, which is, on one hand, you want kids to be able to find out what's of interest to them and pursue it, but on the other hand, you want them to have a basis of information, a foundation of information so that when they make those choices they're good choices for them and that they feel they're good choices for them. And sometimes we just haven't. We haven't hit that, we don't. I don't even think we're addressing that issue right now. But and and there's, you know tears solution about what do we do? And we, we do it. We, we put the, we put the toys down and chat and start asking each other questions and start talking, and that's going to require people to understand why that would be useful to do and if a family isn't going to see that as useful.

Speaker 1: 40:32

They're not going to do it, right, yeah, unfortunately.

Speaker 2: 40:34

So part of what I'm trying to do is get people to understand why creating ideas and being knowledgeable about the world is so useful to themselves and to their future. And it doesn't disinclude, it doesn't exclude social media, it puts it in its proper place. I mean, I use social media but it doesn't run me. I run it, I drive my life, I drive the parts. Doesn't live. It doesn't run me, I run it, I drive my life, I drive the parts of my life. They don't drive me. And that's the distinguishing characteristic of a person who creates their ability to think in the world and to create their ideas and choose which ones to live by. So go ahead.

Speaker 1: 41:22

Oh yeah, no, no, no, that was good, it's good. You say a lot of valuable stuff. That's why I just let you keep going and going and going.

Speaker 1: 41:27

And I don't want to interrupt because it's good, just great stuff. We'll make sure people are listening to you. Okay, I was going to add a little bit of things Me. I remember I was at the tail end of not having a screen. I'll say my grade school computer, few channels. Yeah, I was at. Yeah, I was at that tail end of it by the time I hit to middle school. Definitely more screens, computers got better.

Speaker 1: 41:51

You know, 10 channels became 100 channels right I I saw as I go, went to different school stages. I saw technology advance. That's how I see my life. High school is when I started seeing heavy screening.

Speaker 2: 42:04

Right.

Speaker 1: 42:07

When I was, of course, smaller. Very little screens, Very little we just used it as a call and all that.

Speaker 2: 42:14

Yeah, when did you have phones that became, you know, like when everybody goes into class and sits down, they open up their phones and look at their phones. You know, was that something that happened in high school for you, or was that still too early?

Speaker 1: 42:30

I would say yeah. I would say yeah, it was high school that started happening. It was definitely high school, because middle school that was very rare, it was was like the richest, most spoiled people would have it, only because they go. Oh, and then when we were kids, that was definitely not allowed.

Speaker 2: 42:48

So yeah, I mean my kids like yeah in high school. How do you think that changed the, the culture of you and your friends and your and your school? Did it change at all, or can?

Speaker 1: 43:03

you tell I mean, no, I could easily tell, because we was definitely more distracted with the screens, we had more access entertainment and we were sneaking, you know, watching some, or even pornographic stuff. I'm just being brutally honest, right and we were definitely more. We was definitely more distracted. We wasn't paying attention to school as much I mean me. I tried to discipline myself, but being disciplined became harder for me personally right personal became hard because entertainment was just becoming more ubiquitous right right, I could just pull out as a phone.

Speaker 1: 43:34

You know, even though phones were kind of limited, it was still at that ending of cell phone, very beginning of smartphone stages, sidekick was a thing. Oh yes, I'm aging myself. Sidekick, remember those little thing. Yeah, that was like the yeah, sidekick. Yeah, that's when you know. Of course, internet was more limited.

Speaker 1: 43:52

The same was far more limited, but I started seeing distraction kicked in and people were talking to each other less and it was talking to people who they don't know yet. They much further away. They were more interested in them than someone who was close to these problems were starting to creep in, but I was at the beginning like high school was like that beginning of that transition when I started to notice that right, right, yeah, and it made it hard. It was harder for the teacher, to you know, to try to wrangle attention and all that Right.

Speaker 2: 44:23

And it's hard enough in high school, I think. But do you think the bans, the current bans of phone use in high schools, is a good thing?

Speaker 1: 44:32

I don't. I try not to agree with ban of anything, because what if they need to make that emergency phone call and you know it could be the mom or family member that's either real sick or, even worse, dead? God forbid, um, and I look it's, it's very, it's very hard. I want to say, yes, I'm very mixed. I just think, well, I don't know, it's it's hard.

Speaker 2: 44:57

I would ask the question is where is the harm occurring at school with social media and your phones? It's this distraction, right? So the kids are getting a double negative whammy. They get, one, they're distracted with this stuff, and two, they're not paying attention to the stuff they should learn, right? So that is a harm for their future.

Speaker 2: 45:26

And so if you put, if you say it's not like you never get a phone, you get a phone when you get out of school, you get a phone at lunchtime or something you know, whatever. But what school is saying is while you're here, we need your attention and so we're going to do this. To me that is a sensible approach. Now there are vehicles by which emergency calls can be made, obviously the way they used to be made. When I was a kid, we got a phone call to school and somebody would bring down the slip or call Susie out of class and say you got to call home on the slip, or call, you know, suzy out of class and say you gotta call home, you know, or whatever it. We did this for years without a phone. So to me, the harm is that you're reducing a child's ability to succeed, and so having a band like that makes sense to me right, I mean, I mean like I said, I mean deep down inside.

Speaker 1: 46:21

I say yes because yeah, it's distracting, and not just in the classroom setting. Even there, let's just put even more on the broad setting. Crossing the street right, being glued to that phone watching something funny on youtube? Wham, the car hits the person.

Speaker 1: 46:38

Right right right, you know I look I'm for penalizing drivers who get distracted with screens. By the way, I'm like, I'm like Draconic on that one. I said, oh yeah, that person was get the penalty and then some more because that idiot decided to get distracted with smartphone while driving, knowing he and she could potentially kill someone for being irresponsible. So that one I'm draconic. I don't even care, I'm radical, far left or far, I don't even care what position it is, I'm for it because people need to be responsible Responsibility. Freedom comes from responsibility. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 47:16

Well, regulation to prevent harm is something I've seen phones that have the ability to say oh, I see that you're driving, oh, they turn off. You know they just don't. They just turn off until you're done driving, you know, which is a great thing. Then you're just not distracted at all by it. You know, because I can't even listen I mean, I can't even listen to the radio when I drive, that's how picky I am't even listen to the radio when I drive, that's how picky I am about my ability to focus, and that's a little too much for most people. But you can set again. If your goal is to prevent harm, you can set really good rules to prevent the harm and you're not preventing them from having a phone. You're preventing them from potentially harming somebody while using a phone in a car, which is a very different thing, you know I should use that approach to say, yeah, but that's, that's the way I'm going about it, even with the school thing.

Speaker 1: 48:15

I mean, for me, I mean some, some of them have already done it and, um, some schools have already done it and I personally think it's a good thing. I don't care about the kids, you know, going through their hissy fits. That's their problem. They are too addicted to that thing and they need to learn how to talk with others because we are social beings. That's another thing that I mean. Animals have their socializing, but they do it just for the core purpose of survival. That's it you survive or die, while us we do it for more than that. Of course, this is to survive, but also to share ideas our friendships and all.

Speaker 2: 48:52

Well, we are super collaborators.

Speaker 2: 48:54

We, I mean our greatest ability is our ability to communicate, and when we can communicate, we can collaborate. So communication is really key to human survival, and the way we collaborate and the way we do ideas is how we get resources. That's how we get our jobs right. So what we really are saying is we want kids to maximize their opportunities of learning so that they can get a good job when they get out, when they can have a good, satisfying life when they get out of school and go become an adult on their own. That should be the goal of our government and it should be the goal of every.

Speaker 2: 49:35

There's all kinds of in nature. I call them the coordinating mechanisms. But in a family, your parents are the coordinators. In an institution, the management is the coordinator. And in your state, whether it's a state or a federal government, it's the government that's the coordinator. And if each of these have in mind that children or you should maximize the choices and minimize the harm of your citizenry, whatever that is, then I think we'll be better off. And that's what I'm trying to show people and show them what that practically looks like.

Speaker 1: 50:15

Oh yeah, and people. I don't care if you like her now to be honest, I hope you do. Though If I'm going to be quite honest, I'm just going to speak more from the heart. I hope you do, because she's spread some good ideas and come on, I promise to bring more female or woman guests. I've been doing that. I'm fulfilling that bringing more Really be real diversity, not just talk diversity. I'm tired of that Just talk diversity and just not even follow through. I'm trying to be real diverse. I've been diverse, I could say, practically since I was as young as I could practically remember Probably middle school. I started realizing that racism was a very, very dumb idea. I could just stand on that proudly, no problem. I don't care if a person tries to justify racism as a dumb idea. I don't care if you're white or black. Well, I think you get it.

Speaker 2: 51:11

It's an idea. It's an idea that people have accepted that is not valid in any way. Nature has no need for racism and it doesn't exist in nature. It's a human constructed idea that has done nothing but fracture and divide and hurt people, and it needs to stop. But how do we do it?

Speaker 2: 51:36

We do it by treating all people as humans, all people as having the right to maximize their choices and minimize harm, and I think one of the things we have to really face right now is there's such a huge inequality of opportunity that we, as a government, the government, should address, and that means that people who have you know I am tired of reading these things that says well, based on the zip code you're born in, that will tell you how much money you're going to make.

Speaker 2: 52:07

Well, that just means our system is broken. You know, we need to put money into these areas where, if there's not safe housing, we need to make safe housing. Where there's not enough food, we need to provide food and we need to take the profits from these wealthy corporations and these wealthy individuals and turn it back into making the formative years of our citizens have better opportunities to become the best citizens they can be, and I just think we're way out of whack, which means we're going to have to spend some time getting it back into whack, but once we do, I think we can live a very I think it can be a very peaceful and coexisting society.

Speaker 1: 52:55

Oh, you know, to your point.

Speaker 2: 52:56

That is probably a little Pollyannish, but there I am.

Speaker 1: 53:00

Okay, so good idea in my opinion. I don't care if it's cheesy Pollyannish, but there I am. Okay, so a good idea in my opinion. I don't care if it's cheesy Pollyannish, whatever People need to hear it. You know we need to. In some ways we've got to go back because this income-widening gap has been going on aggressively for the past five, over five decades. Okay, yes, at least you know. Some of you would dare say six decades. Whatever, some of you would dare say six decades, whatever the point is, we've been just widening that wealth inequality and it continues to exacerbate. That part is no argument with me. I totally agree with that and all real data and people who are honest about it will agree with that. So people say oh no, these people are just dumb, dumb and lazy.

Speaker 2: 53:42

Well, historically, if you look back in the 40s and 50s, the maximum tax rate for corporations at the very highest level was 91 percent. That's compared to 36 percent today. So, or 39 percent, excuse me, 36% today. So, or 39%, excuse me. But what happened is that high tax rate funded robust education. It funded more money for schools, more money for roads. It funded everything and this huge middle class, and we were stable because we had a huge middle class and we were stable because we had a huge middle class.

Speaker 2: 54:19

In 1986, and I remember when he did it Ronald Reagan cut the tax rates. All it just switched. We became a debtor nation for the first time ever and we people became. They began to treat businesses as as chips that could be traded back and forth because they were just made. It's like well, this is how you use them to change your tax status and everything, and all of a sudden, not paying your taxes became a good thing. And you know, it's just that we have gone on that track ever since and we haven't politically been able to raise taxes again, partly because those people got so rich that they've bought off all the politicians. They've lobbied all the politicians to not change the rules back, and I think that's one of the things that we should do.

Speaker 2: 55:12

And I have a big section of my book about taxation and how it you if, if a body taxed government? Uh, if a body taxed its cells like we taxed in this country, the body would be dead. It just doesn't work. It's a bad situation. The way a body works is every cell gives a little bit of its energy up to the, the brain and says here, here's what you need, and the neurons get fed just like everybody else. So nobody ever keeps any excess. If there's excess, every cell gets a little bit of the excess. If there's even more excess, you know, then we start having larger hips or larger waists or heart disease, because we're all storing too much stuff. But nature does not allow some cells to hoard resources and starve other cells in a body. Your body would be dead. But we do that all the time.

Speaker 2: 56:18

And the reason why we're seeing so much, I think, disruption in our society is because we have this unnatural state that we're living in and it is not helpful and not good. I mean, when Walmart hires people and pays them only up to the rate where they can then get SNAP benefits and they won't pay them more and they won't give them enough hours to pay them. Well, because they are basically subsidizing the money that they could make from the company by the government. How good is that? How socially responsible is that? That's horrible, but that's what they do. So if I were, you know, the government, I'd tax the hell out of Walmart. It's like you're making all these profits. We'll tax them and we'll send that money back to people who need it.

Speaker 1: 57:16

I'll throw Amazon in there as well, because ooh, oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 57:20

Amazon makes it into the book.

Speaker 1: 57:22

It's called big mama's on in the book yeah, oh, you get a funny name for that one. I was not gonna say anything about that was. I was gonna have to find out what I was. Oh, they don't say amazon, that's a no, figure it out. Figure it out. Be able to create, use a creative part of your brain there you go there you go.

Speaker 1: 57:40

Hey, that was you, that was you being creative. I was like at that part okay, this is getting from just good to grace, okay, that's definitely getting interesting. They went for yeah, put up with this foundation to. Oh, now it's getting good. So, oh, it's all right. Now you're adding the intricate parts that make it enriching.

Speaker 2: 58:02

Now, right, right, well, but those parts would not make sense unless you start, because frequently I will go back and say if nature did this, it would not work, because of all these things you now know. And that's why we really have to examine humans, because we're of nature, but we're not just like nature, and so we always have to adjust for the fact that we are going to do things a little bit differently, and that makes it harder. I mean, if we were just animals without a brain, we'd just be in part of the world like everything else, and there would be no difference. But we're not and we've turned a corner, and now we just haven't dealt with it really well in some cases, so that doesn't mean, we can't keep trying.

Speaker 1: 58:53

Yeah, and that actually brings up just to the other question. We'll see conversation. I think this is probably one of the most conversational, flowing podcast episodes, which I actually love because I just think it was a lot to talk about. I said, eh, I don't want to just cycle with questions and all that. If I don't come up with different styles to make it good, I'm going to go with it. I'm not praying to the question gods, oh, give me the best questions. No, I'm not praying to the question gods, oh, give me the best questions. No, I'm just going to pick whatever style I think is best. I switch it up every now and then because I just think, no, no, no, she could talk. Okay, I know she could talk.

Speaker 2: 59:31

Unfortunately I can't.

Speaker 1: 59:33

No, that's good. Oh, the podcast is amazing. The podcast is great. Maybe other environments maybe, but I'm not in your life, that part is none of my business, it's not harming me, so I'm just going to mind my own right there. I'm just going to mind. No comment, no judgment, no opinion, right there. So now the question is do you really think it's hope for humanity to change, or are we just going to be obliterated with the idea of fear? Just go back to nature.

Speaker 2: 1:00:04

That is such a good question. Of course the Pollyanna in me says, of course we can learn this. The practical side of me says it. I think what will happen is we will continue on this route of being a double-edged sword and I think we will have a lot of big problems in the future. I think we will destroy our climate to a point where many, many, many people will die and I think we will be left with a smaller subset of human beings. You know, at one point, um in the earth's history, a long, long long time ago, um, I think humans got down to like two or 3000 people on one Island somewhere and and that was it. But they managed to survive and come all the way back.

Speaker 2: 1:01:02

So I I just don't see people really understanding the change that needs to be done and understanding that we can make the world a better place. I think there's just so much of a mindset of I want mine, I want more, I want. You know, I don't care if there's pollution, I don't care if all the plankton dies and then we end up dying too. You know, I think that that's just a very short-sighted view, because people are worried about their job and feeding the kids and you know all the other things, and I get it, and feeding the kids and all the other things, and I get it.

Speaker 2: 1:01:42

But I think we really, if we're going to have a chance, we need to make some big changes and they don't have to be big, they have to be mindset changes. First, you have to have a vision of where you want to go. I think a lot of the problems today is everybody's talking about well, this policy or this policy. We have to change our mindset to be one of more tolerant of each other and tolerant of the other living things on this earth and figure out how to work with that and become part of the earth and not trying to dominate it so much. And I don't know that we will. I hope we do, but I'm not as optimistic as I wish I were. Let me put it that way.

Speaker 1: 1:02:33

Well, no worries, you're joining the Tumulun Club with me, because I just think this is why things could happen. It is actually pretty similar to yours. I think we could hit a point that we just hit two, I don't know. You already said two or three thousand people. I'm just a little more slightly optimistic, which I'm shocked. Maybe we have about twelve hundred readable pairs that we're going to reset said, and then we the to abide. But I just think humanity needs a lesson, because we, you know, I, I'm more of a spiritualist, not exactly religious kind of thing. Religion is like the bad version, the controlled, manipulative version of it. But you talk about that in your book. It's an idea um sphere, and I, I think religion has been overly, um, what's the word? Marketable, let's just say, and manipulated.

Speaker 2: 1:03:24

Well, it's been an idea, that's been accepted for a long time, and you know we train our children young, and so it hasn't died out.

Speaker 1: 1:03:34

No, it's not going to die out anytime soon too, the way it's going. I mean, even though I'm not an atheist either, because I think that's too arrogant. But you know, to each his own. I'm not going to hate you if you're an atheist or you believe in, I don't know, the purple elephant, god. Whatever it's your choice. I just think it's about my pay grade.

Speaker 2: 1:03:56

I mean, when you talk about energy and the universe, there's so much we don't know. There's so much we don't know. There's so much we, as humans and living on this earth, we are designed to be on this earth. I mean, we have eyes that see this particular sun's light, we have ears that pick up the sounds of this earth Outside. We just don't know, and so, rather than worry about it, I accept what it is out there, but I'm not going to. I don't know, I don't have enough information to know, so I just leave it out there for its own. I think it can take care of itself, okay well, that's fair enough.

Speaker 1: 1:04:35

Is that opinion harming you, trolls? I'm not. I'm talking to the viewers here. Or is it harming you? Her opinions, her ideas, fears harming you?

Speaker 2: 1:04:47

you know, I don't think it can harm people, okay if they don't. If they don't like. See, there's a difference between harm is like a physical damage or reputational damage or financial damage. If you just don't like something, that's just an opinion and you know, we just deal with it. We're like, okay, you don't have to agree, that's okay you know, it's all fine, it is okay for people to have opinions that differ.

Speaker 1: 1:05:11

Of course. Of course. That's what a rational human being would say, but a communist dictator, on the other hand, no, okay, oh yeah it differs.

Speaker 2: 1:05:29

Okay, oh yeah, I did the first. You're going to die? Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, those are again. Communist dictatorships are things that are forms of government that are there to keep the state surviving, not the people, and that's why the difference in democracy is for the good of the people and a communist government or a authoritarian government is for the good of the people and a communist government or a authoritarian government is for the good of the state, and that is never going to work. It doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 1:05:48

And I'm going to quote you, at least loosely in paraphrasing it, that nature would choose democracy.

Speaker 2: 1:05:55

Yes, nature has chosen democracy in that all your cells work together to keep every cell alive, which is democracy, and to keep the society or the body alive. That's the definition of democracy. The only difference is they don't vote, they just do it. You know, and the difference we had is you look at our history. It's taken us a long time, thousands of years, to get to where democracy was a concept. And even now people are like, well, that's not really that normal of a thing. It's actually the most natural one. It's just an idea that took a long time to bubble up, because kings and authoritarian rulers were the norm back in the day, when strength ruled rather than ideas and royal dnas, which is another idea concept.

Speaker 1: 1:06:47

Yeah, you know I put that in quotes because you know they have a dna. You know we put the royal label because you know they're the chosen ones right there are the rule, and that said, that said that I'm happy that america's does have that kind of thing. Just imagine, you know, rather it was a clinton or a trump family. Just keep ruling, all cases make an offspring, so we keep on ruling. This country, I, america, would have been falling apart very, very quickly yeah, yeah, it's.

Speaker 2: 1:07:19

that's not a democracy, and that's the thing is our democracy is based on our choice to to be a democracy. It's. It's a superpower of choice. Election is like the major superpower of choice that we have to choose our leaders. This such a dichotomy where you have people who are choosing. On one hand, you know a person who is more on the authoritarian side and a person who's more on the you know, I would say, more of the traditional democracy side, and to me it doesn't seem like it should be close. But I think the fact that I think underlying this is that people assume our democracy is solid, that it exists like a foundation in the ground that will be there even if you change to a more authoritarian person. And it's not. It's not that stable. It's based on the people who make their choices every day. And I just think that I mean, I just it's just really interesting to me how that's going to impact, how it's going to play out.

Speaker 1: 1:08:33

Well, let's hope the checks and balances really take care of that. That's all I'm going to say, because you know this is the problem with so many people and I have to start correcting them. I mean, even just open my mouth. The president has a lot of power but doesn't have all the power. There's checks and balances, there's a Supreme Court that stops the president for doing some things. There's a Senate and the House that could go against the president and there's even that kind of government at the state level and local level as well. That's why I'm against one party having a super majority, because I think that's how I check the balances withers down. I don't care if it's Democrat or Republican. I believe in the balanced government. Either it's a 49-51 or 55-45. It's low in balance, fine, they could fight for that. That could change between both parties, but we have something like an 80-20, 90-10. No, that's a problem, and I could criticize New York City government. That thing is easily 85% Democrat and 15 percent republican.

Speaker 2: 1:09:33

No, there's an imbalance there right, okay, and what happens when you have that imbalance is again, that's where that the uh, the the advantages of competition, of innovation and diversity. They go away because you have one party not competing, so they don't have to be answerable to anybody. That doesn't work. So you're, you make a really valid point that having that, uh, a balancing checkpoint, um is, is really important. Uh, I, I think some of our, some of our systems are, some of our structures are a little bit um, I think I, I I advocate for what I call the evaluation branch, which is a new branch where I think that we really need to examine our government and determine whether they're actually following the constitution.

Speaker 2: 1:10:28

You know we don't right now. We don't do that very often unless somebody brings up something that says this is unconstitutional and the justice system decides to take it up. But let's say, you know, you make a law that says it's OK to discriminate against black people and we've had laws on the books that do this. We don't have any way to look back and say, to evaluate the government's actions and say, no, you're not following the Constitution, and that's something I think we're missing and I think our founding fathers didn't even think we needed that because we were all on the same page, and I think that's something we need today that we didn't need 250 years ago.

Speaker 1: 1:11:10

I just think, and I just think it's lack of education that eventually causes deterioration. I mean, you come with the best plan ever, because you know ideas fear as unstable. I like the word chaotic because it is chaotic because bad ideas can flourish. Unfortunately, because, just like you said, it has to be accepted among the masses. That's all it takes. Okay, I think women should stay home, cook, take care of the kid. You know, that's just as an example. Okay, majority of men agrees, even some of the women. They agree. Yeah, let's put even women in there. They agree okay, 70, 30. The only one that objected was a few men and, of of course, majority of the women. Okay, that's been accepted. Okay, women stay home. Okay, there's a scrutiny against Latino people. Okay, all the other races raised their hands up. You know, this is hypothetical. Of course, this is not real. Thank goodness this is not real. This is. You know, this is just very, very silly fiction.

Speaker 2: 1:12:08

I mean, that's how we got some Jim Crow laws in. You know, in the South, after the Civil War, we said, oh well, we have to, we have to do this, ok, we'll put poll taxes in and we'll do this so that people can't vote, and we won't do this. And nobody said well, there wasn't a vehicle by which we could say that's not constitutional and we need a branch. That's actually, I think, focused on, again, constitutionality. When you asked that, you said okay, you know, women have to stay home and raise the kids. My poor kids would die because I can't cook, but that's a different story. But again, if the goal of your country is to maximize choice and minimize harm, then that law doesn't meet the bill, it doesn't meet the requirement because you're minimizing the choice or narrowing the choice of some people, the women and you can't do it, you know. That's why this kind of mindset is so important is because it allows you to say wait a second, where is the choice, where's the harm? What are we doing here? You can't do that.

Speaker 1: 1:13:20

Yeah, Make sure the evaluation board is very independent as well. Let's just be absolutely clear, because I don't want partisanship. The D and the R's even certain I's because certain. I's are very deceiving. No, just make sure it's nonpartisan.

Speaker 2: 1:13:37

Well, I think it should be a lottery of citizens, and they have a job where they're trained for jury duty, but it's a five-year job and they have one year of training on what it means to be constitutional and then they have a five-year job. It rolls over every couple years. You have different people come on the board and off, but it needs to be a citizen, a citizen run or a citizen um, kind of position that is not subject to any partisan nature, because it won't work.

Speaker 1: 1:14:12

It won't work that way or, and if it is partisan, it's going to have to represent all kinds of political food points. If they insist on that. That's the alternative route to this, and I'll be getting a Democrat, getting a Republican, getting an Independent, getting people, the moderates of either side, whatever you have, even the Green Party, even Libertarian. I even throw them in there If you could find them. I say case by case because it's yeah, because I think partisanship has done a lot of damage to this country and definitely ignorance of civics has done a lot of damage to this country.

Speaker 2: 1:14:47

I think I agree with you.

Speaker 1: 1:14:49

I don't care if you lean left or right. It's not about that. It's about saving America.

Speaker 2: 1:14:54

Right.

Speaker 1: 1:14:55

You know, and I'll go further than the so-called Republican Party on that one, yeah, and I even go 1A, even more than all of them as well, because they try to push a bill that's going to make what essentially Jewish people like the Supreme Privileged Group. I said no, no, no. That means you're putting everybody else down. There's already hate crimes, which I'm fine with. They'll say, oh, this person was motivated by anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, all the other isms that they could think of. I'm fine with that. In the beginning I thought it was a little ridiculous, but it is needed because there's still, sadly, people that carry racism as if it's an indisputable fact and come on as evolved, intelligent people like we are here. Yes, I'm going to brag about us here. We know racism is a stupid, obsolete idea, but sadly there are fringe people that believe in it like it is irresistible.

Speaker 2: 1:16:02

There are people who accept this idea, and as long as there are people who accept the idea and they you know, again we have to assess whether we need to create laws that prevent harm from people who think that it's okay to act on a racist belief and harm somebody. That's not okay, it's just not okay. So that's where you draw the line. It's your government is there to make sure your citizens aren't harmed All citizens, not some all.

Speaker 1: 1:16:33

Yes, exactly, I could have said it better myself. All right, to be honest, we could easily go for hours on this.

Speaker 2: 1:16:42

We could.

Speaker 1: 1:16:44

But you know, listeners, I think you got enough, because this is we're just scratching a little bit of the ground here, okay, right. So, listeners of viewers, get that book. Okay, I command you. Yes, I command you. I don't care, I don't care, that's November 19th.

Speaker 2: 1:17:06

Uh, the human idea, and it's going to be everywhere. You know you can get it, of course, on Amazon, but at most local stores or wherever I'd. I'd love it if you got it and if you drop me a note. I have a website called thehumanideacom. Drop me a note and tell me what you think. I'd love your input, good or bad. It really does help me to understand where people are coming from. That's really important to me.

Speaker 1: 1:17:34

And this is why I don't see it. A lot of sites, I think more sites need to do is fill that survey out too. Give it some input.

Speaker 1: 1:17:41

Give some input on what you think. Is Anne optimistic? Is Anne crazy? Or she's on to something, or she's brilliant. Put whatever opinion you have in there. Okay, so far I think she's great to something, or she's brilliant. Whatever opinion you have, I've been there. Okay, so far, I think she's great. Okay, that was just my host opinion and I'm just being very, very coarse, authentic when I say that, because it's been a great conversation. I even got a better idea about how to educate the young to teenagehood, about learning life and stuff. See, that's a mold right there that I was open to because it was at a preliminary stage, and now I say it's more of the mature stages it's actually getting there right see.

Speaker 1: 1:18:19

That's why it's good to talk to different people some people could strength the ideas, your own ideas, as a oh, this is a good idea, you got the foundation, but sometimes you need, you know, the, you know like little details or designs or extra accessories just to make it hot attractive and coherent.

Speaker 2: 1:18:38

Yeah, one of my hopes is that people who are real experts in their fields can use this mindset of maximizing choice and minimizing harm to come up with better solutions in their fields. Whether you're in police work or social work, or homelessness or whatever, I think that there are people. If you use this sort of mindset of how do we maximize choice and minimize harm, how do we make this work? I would love to hear what those people have to say using this mindset, because they're the experts, they're the ones who have the solutions and they're the ones that I would love to hear from and see how they would make the world a better place given this, this idea of the ideasphere yeah, because she's called all kinds of experts.

Speaker 1: 1:19:21

Come on, you can't be more inclusive than this. You can't be more inclusive than this. Okay, look, she's asking for police workers. You know psychiatists. Who knows even bankers? Yes, you bankers should be criticized, but come on in.

Speaker 2: 1:19:38

Well. I was a banker once, so I get it, I know.

Speaker 1: 1:19:42

A pharmacist. Yes, she does a lot of jobs. So you know she even dealt with factory work, which you know is normally very male-dominated I think still male-dominated for the most part because it's very hands-on. And you know, I think still male-dominated for the most part is very hands-on and you gotta grind and be dirty in the most literal and even metaphorical cases to get the work done. She's done a bunch of jobs. She's not just here. You know she may look like a Karen Sturgert type, also stay home and cook and all that. But no, you'd be dead wrong. She'd debunk that immediately. You'd be debunked. It has your own bad idea sphere Using that as a judge, sure?

Speaker 2: 1:20:21

Right, I do have a part in my book where I talk about the pie story. In my fiction book the protagonist, Sarah, admits to being a bad cook, which was sort of an autobiographical part, and they talk about cooking. And it's very funny, I think, because mostly it was because, oh yeah, I'm a bad cook.

Speaker 1: 1:20:46

She has a sense of humor too. So there you go, that's a plus right there. That's a plus in this podcast. Well, you know, I don't mind insulting myself, you know, um, it's just just for fun because, like I like, if you have great self-esteem, you know, you just tickle and laugh, you know? And, like I said, this is not her first book at all. Okay, this is an upcoming book and it got um, of course, we just referred to this a little bit nature's case for democracy, dina.

Speaker 2: 1:21:13

Oh, that's nice yeah, that's the fiction one with all the humor in it and that one sort of has a Socratic dialogue of this theory. And I think that's actually from what I've seen is women like that book better and men like the nonfiction, the Human Idea book, better.

Speaker 1: 1:21:32

From just my short kind of survey of responses, that's, that's what I've seen the most yeah, I'm definitely going to be supporting that of survey even more, because I, you know, I it. It has been true too. When they track what men tend to read, we tend to be more non-fiction stuff, like the romance, the romance in the fairytales. I say, women are crazy, you know. A few of you are okay, a few of you are, I don't care, but women gravitate towards more the romance and the fiction.

Speaker 2: 1:22:05

Or just the story, just the stories. They want to know what happened to a character, and so that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 1: 1:22:11

Yeah, women do have that insatiable curiosity, especially that particular curiosity.

Speaker 2: 1:22:15

So it was like women were like I want to find out what happens to the character. And the men were like just get to the theory, you know. It was like oh, I need to write you a new book.

Speaker 1: 1:22:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that stuff. I'm definitely a stereotypical male on that, Even at times when I read it again, maybe the feminist on a kick is like I don't know what happened to this character. That got all the details right. What do you mean by this reference and all that? But yeah, for the most part, I will support the gender stereotype when it comes to the book.

Speaker 2: 1:22:48

It's okay, I just want the idea out there, so I did one for everybody.

Speaker 1: 1:22:53

Hey, you pay attention to your audience, right, so that that's the point. So, rather, you're a male, female author doesn't matter, as long as you're sensitive towards your audience, you, you know you're going to be successful. Maybe just say, ah, forget the men, that was when right, for women, it's fine, you know, just uh, just make sure you're really marketing aggressively or towards that, you know it's okay, there's this niche, is everyone?

Speaker 1: 1:23:18

if you want to care towards a certain um, I don't know, even if I've got to go, even extra niche, middle-aged women, okay, well, you get rid of the, you know, get rid of stuff that young women would like. Okay, you know um thing, you know things like that. It's fine. But you know, I I think to a broad appeal brings you to quicker success. That's at least my opinion. I'm not an expert, so you can feel free to dunk on me, I'll be okay. I know my place.

Speaker 2: 1:23:45

No dunking required. I like the input. It's really important. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:23:49

Yeah, oh yeah, I'm sorry, just for me. I can handle it, but yeah, so she's got something for you. She's got something for you, men and women, and that's the thing I want to pay attention to. You know, mine is a little more male-dominated, but I'm happy that I'm always paying attention because I'm pretending this isn't me. I don't know A frat boy podcast with all the you. You know all the crude humor. You know I enjoy it is.

Speaker 2: 1:24:18

I just ruined your whole credibility just because this was not frat boy, this was not.

Speaker 1: 1:24:23

Oh, that's fine, that's perfectly fine. I I was aware of the risk. There was no risk for me. I just say I want to bring more women on because I'm not making this into a frat, a frat boy. I don't know where it's coming. I just say I want to bring more women on because I'm not making this into a frat, a frat boy. I don't know crude humor, sexual jokes. You know all that crazy, all that crazy stuff, or or just you know actual host yeah really delightful host.

Speaker 1: 1:24:45

I really appreciate it yeah, no, no, I'm just trying. I'm just trying to get to ideas how to heal america.

Speaker 1: 1:24:51

That's my point yeah and this is that you know. I think this is one idea how to do it, and I'm open to more ideas as well. It doesn't have to be the only one, but I think, if a lot of work together, it's some kind of miraculous unison. Great, me and Anne were crazy for having a doom and gloom perspective, and I want to be wrong. I want to be wrong. Being wrong is good in this situation.

Speaker 2: 1:25:16

Me too, I want to be wrong. Being wrong is good in this situation. Me too, I really want to be wrong about that. And you know, I am starting to see this, this sort of upswell of there's a lot of people talking about coexistence and natural sustainability and a lot of things going in this direction. I just don't know, as things, how a movement happens is. It gets to a tipping point and then, oh, everybody sort of is like oh yeah, that's the thing to do, and the question is, when is the tipping point going to come? I think it will come. I'm just not sure when and if it will be too late in the process.

Speaker 2: 1:25:54

Humans tend to be very late about things that are hard, that they don't want to do or they don't want to face, and I think that is very typical in this situation, because I mean, when I was a kid, I remember learning about global warming and climate change when I was little. So, oops, excuse me, oops, thank you. Sorry, I turned on my Siri for some reason, but I've known about climate change since I've been 10 years old and I'm 65 now, so this is not something we've been doing. We are getting more and more aware, but this is the amount of awareness I had when I was 10. So I'm a little disappointed that we're not moving faster and being more responsible about this.

Speaker 1: 1:26:50

I think that's definitely a valid concern, for sure, because of course I learned about I mean, of course, you know, I'm, of course I'm like practically half your age, but I learned about this when I was like six or seven. But we treat it as oh got to protect the earth, do all this.

Speaker 1: 1:27:08

You know they made it more kid-friendly and all that, and of course as you get older, they got to, you know, the whole climate change and catastrophe and all that. And, of course, as you go older, they got to the whole climate change and catastrophe and all those consequences.

Speaker 2: 1:27:16

And that's a good thing to do when you're a six-year-old. The problem is is when you're 36, it's time for us to make some big changes, and we're still treating it like it's an educational problem and not an actual problem.

Speaker 1: 1:27:31

Yep, that's a good way to put it. Yeah, naturalist education? Yeah, because I mean me. I didn't really care. If you talked to me as a teenager about climate change, I would have just said leave me alone, I don't care. But as I got older, I started thinking about, honestly, we need to take care of this because we could all potentially die if we don't get this together. If we don't get this acting. We will get our act together.

Speaker 2: 1:27:58

Okay, we just right, and it requires political courage, uh, of adults who have learned these things, and we don't have that political courage today. Nobody has it. I mean, I think this biden administration did some stuff, uh, which was good, but this is a worldwide problem. We need to get the world together, and I think the world you know the Kyoto Treaty and all these things. We've really tried hard, but not very In the sense that the United States is still polluting and China is still polluting at the levels that are just unsustainable for human life and in 100 years. So what you know, maybe we should get going on this, guys, but it hasn't happened yet.

Speaker 1: 1:28:46

We should got going with this decades ago. If I'm going to be brutally honest, Decades ago we would have been. You know, clean energy would have been the norm by now If you were really, really serious about it. I think markets should be um friendly towards it. You know I like the government, so I think they're a start, but definitely have markets push for clean energy well it's awesome, it is possible.

Speaker 1: 1:29:06

We can't do it. It's just, yeah, it's just political courage and just even just people curse, forget just politics. Let's just, let's just have the people do it. Because I think if you make it political and of course you're gonna get like one group's like, oh, this is just a green scam. You want to, you want to make this green problem by taking your other green, the green you work hard for.

Speaker 2: 1:29:26

You know right, but as long as gas and oil are cheap and people are geared towards profit, profit, you know, profit maximization they won't do it. They won't do it because it's expensive to make the turn, but it will save lives in the end. But we have to make that work, and that means that something besides profit needs to step in the way of the priority system, and that is something that that we just are not doing. We're not making it happen. That's the only group that can do that as the government, who can come in and say oh no, you know, if you use solar power, we will give you this benefit or we will not. You know, if you use gas and oil, we'll tax you up the wazoooo. You know, and that's just the way it's going to be. Um and so change.

Speaker 1: 1:30:16

But we don't do that, you know, we don't do that yeah, corporations are such a big obstacle that you have to deal with.

Speaker 1: 1:30:23

Corporations definitely are such a big obstacle, that's a lot of something bringing up to it, right and you know, and it's not about being left or right, it's just we. We gotta see the problem for what it is and, and hopefully, god willing, more politicians who are brave I don't care who you are or D, it doesn't matter, just start going after this. Some Republicans that can't stand corporations, some Democrats that can't stand them either. They coalesce, start pushing back against it. Get rid of money, start your dark money out of politics. That's one of the few things I agree progressively with the general.

Speaker 2: 1:30:54

Well, I do believe that all money should be all institutional money, should be out of politics completely, and even private money should be limited to like $10,000 a person and that's it, and none of these big and none of this outside the government, outside the election, none of these PACs, nothing. It's like if your body ran that way you'd be dead, and you know it's not like the heart cell goes over to the brain and says, hey, pump some good blood my way so that I can, you know, so that I can I can, you know, be better. Or the heart I guess it'd be the other way and say and then the heart would say brain, give me this good blood and then I'll give you such great ideas. No, you'd be dead because the kidneys over there are not getting the stuff he needs and so you're dead. But we do that all the time.

Speaker 2: 1:31:42

We have companies go in and say give us the law we need, and they pollute or they make all kinds of problems occur and they get away with it. And it's legal, you know, and that is the wrong way to do it, and that's where government has been infected by money in elections and money in government, and they should all be gone, and that doesn't mean you don't get feedback from these companies, because you need to know what works and what doesn't. But what you don't do is send resources to the government. The government is ruled by one thing, and that is whether they do the good of the people or not. And if they don't do the good of the people, they should be voted out, and if they do, they get to stay in.

Speaker 1: 1:32:28

But that's a very, very strong part of my book talks about but I'll add reasonable term limits as well, because we still, because we need fresh ideas after a while. You know, for example, you know this pot issue was great in the 80s but now it's a different era. Ok, we need some new East Newburgh. Of course, keep some of the some of the ones I've done great. Just make sure they're not going too crazy. You know things like that Find a balance?

Speaker 2: 1:32:57

The question is the reasonable nature. In Oregon we had a term limit law where after three terms the representatives had to leave, and what happened is it just became a free for all of people who didn't know anything about government and it was like what happened. So reasonable means, I think, that your point about it being a reasonable term limit you want to keep enough institutional knowledge and how things work so that at least it works, but you still need the new ideas to come in and people to say, oh, we got to do things a different way. So I agree with you, but it needs to be really carefully done.

Speaker 1: 1:33:39

No, I agree, I am fair, I'm a big fan of incremental change, you know, except for, except for energy. I think that that thing we need to, you know, speed that up as soon as possible, with the exception of energy and things like that, because it's become a big problem. But in terms of government, incremental change is right for the best. Um, yeah, I just like to say, okay, throw out all the 60 plus year olds. No, you need to keep some of the 60 plus year olds, especially those who could still do the job and still right you know, have the will of the people and mind and heart right

Speaker 1: 1:34:11

you know, and then definitely you know we need some bad me, some of the young, some some middle-aged. Just make sure the House representative is really the House representatives, not over-representing one population and distorting a bunch of policies. Okay, you want a law for cows? Okay, only one person wants that, but yet the policies represent that one rich person. For cow Okay, cow protection, you cannot kill the cow. Oh, you're starving to death? Oh well, go get something else to eat. You know things like that? Okay, because that billionaire funded that politician to protect the cows so the rich person could get all the cows for himself and the family. Something like that. Oh, I just came up with an example on the fly. You don't want something like that. Something like that, that's crazy. You want something that could benefit, you know, as much people as possible, that's it.

Speaker 1: 1:34:59

I mean I could keep going on. I mean you we talk so much, so much good stuff, so much you know really fun. Yeah, no.

Speaker 2: 1:35:14

I enjoyed it too. Before we wrap this up, anything else you want to add, no, just that. What I want people to come away with is this idea that you can live your life this way of maximizing your choice and minimizing harm to others in your personal life. And I live this way and it's just so much easier to live this way. It's just an easier, happier life, and it's just so much easier to live this way. It's just an easier, happier life, and I think that if you see it work inside your life, it's not hard to find, you know, to start advocating for institutions to work this way and governments to work this way. So I encourage people to try it.

Speaker 1: 1:35:48

It's a very easy concept and I've been very surprised at how much better, more quality, how much more of a positive quality there is in my life because of this attitude right and ideally, you know, I will say, of course, pragmatically, limit harm to strictest, strictest thing, with the exception of self-defense and all that craziness, um, but don't harm others, okay, just do, you know, be responsible. You're better than that. Okay, now let me be the encouraging responsible adult, instead of bashing you and encourage you to express your venom and anger, which is OK, you know, you get out of your system, but you also going to be criticized for it. Listen to viewers, because you put your opinion out there and once you put it out there, it's open to praise and criticism.

Speaker 2: 1:36:47

Exactly, exactly, and that's why you know you do it, I mean I do it, and you know you do it, I mean I do it, and I want actually to hear what people have to say. But if somebody is going to personally attack me, then it's like, well, that just doesn't help me because I don't know what to do with that.

Speaker 1: 1:37:10

So it's not going to change how I live my life, but you know. But thank you for sharing, I guess. Well, what a good therapy session for that, for that person. God help you. Yes, I'm going to say like that God help you. Anyways, you know what they say If you don't have naysayers, that means you ain't doing much. But if you got naysayers and some haters, you're doing the right thing. You're roughing some feathers.

Speaker 2: 1:37:31

I don't expect people to agree, especially because this idea seems kind of unusual for people. They get kind of caught off guard with it a little bit and to me it seems very natural once I figured it out. But it wasn't easy to figure out. So I get there's a leap that people have to, kind of they have to cross a bridge someplace and go oh, maybe that is a look at things and that's hard. And if you want to's hard, if you want to, great, if you don't want to, okay, that's okay too.

Speaker 1: 1:37:58

All right, for my tough and resilient listeners and viewers. You've been through this audio conversation. Of course it's to placate to your haters a bit Onslaught. All I'm going to say is this right you, let me review, you share, like, subscribe. So from wherever you're listening or watching this podcast, you have a blessed day, afternoon or night or night.

Speaker 2: 1:38:34

That's great. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this.