Sacred Lessons in Masculinity, AI, and Democracy (with Mike de la Rocha)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, hello, hello, Hello, it's Baratunde and welcome back to
How the Citizen I am recordingists on Wednesday, June third,
twenty twenty six. And he it's been a minute. I
haven't dropped into you since I brought the good General
Stanley Mcrystal with me, And since then, the US has

(00:24):
decided to us it up, really really doubling down on
some themes that are not serving all of us. But
there's other ways to be and we're going to talk
about that right now. So I've been traveling intellectually, physically.
I've been on stages, I've been on planes. I've been
helping carry a book into being about a much older

(00:47):
idea of democracy. And I've been gathering conversations that I
could bring to you, and what you're about to hear
is one of them. Many of us are told that
to be a man, to be a nation, to be strong,
you've got to hold it all together, yourself, in dependence, control,

(01:12):
go it alone. But what if the other, older, truer
story was exactly the opposite. What if our strength was
never merely in standing apart, but in how we hold
each other, not apart from right A part of It's

(01:36):
a line I learned making America outdoors and it applies
to everything. This ground truth is what my brother Mike
Dela Rocha, and I uncover in explore in this podcast
Sacred Lessons. This is Mike's podcast, but I'm carrying it
here because we did it together. We recorded this together

(01:59):
live at the BOOST conference right here in my adopted
hometown of Palm Springs, California. We talk in masculinity, America's
founding story, AI, the Great Law of Peace, and what
changes when you put women and care at the center
of how we govern ourselves. Now, before we drop you

(02:22):
into this beautiful conversation, I need one thing from you.
I need you to try to attend a virtual event. Tuesday,
June ninth, five pm Pacific, eight pm Eastern ME and
Valerie Corps are hosting a virtual gathering gathering called Declaring Interdependence.

(02:43):
We will be featuring two incredible Indigenous elders, Jose Barretro
Gudgie Berrero Cook, who are a part of this work,
a part of the book that I mentioned. The book
is American Indigenous Democracy, a Call for Interdependence. So, if
you've been feeling like this big, awkward Birthday Party of America.

(03:04):
This two hundred and fiftieth. Nothing to celebrate here, Think differently.
I'm inviting you to find the reason for celebration, and
that is there are deeper practices of democracy. There was
a deeper invitation to principles that is still available. The
book American Indigenous Democracy is all about that, and this

(03:27):
event is all about elevating that book and giving us
something to hold on to as we hold to each other.
So the show notes got the link for that event,
the book American Indigenous Democracy dot com. Bring somebody with
you to it. Right now, here's me and Mike.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
What are the cycles fathers down, that son left?

Speaker 1 (03:55):
What if being a man was holding it all together?
I'm learning how to let go.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
This is a space whom to find the power to
heal and transform.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
I'm Mike Dela Rocha. Welcome to Sacred Lessons.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Before we ever learn what it means to be a man,
we're already living inside a story about it.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Welcome to Sacred Lessons.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
I'm Mike Dela Rocha, and today I'm honored to be
at the Booze Conference, the largest global convening for after
school expanded learning and in and out of school time
professionals to sit with someone whose work lives at the
intersection of storytelling, technology, and humanity. My dear dear brother
Baritune nee Thurston, through his work with How To Citizen

(04:41):
Life of Machines and American Indigenous Democracy A Call for Interdependence,
a new book that Baritune wrote the forward two, he
asks us a number of powerful questions. Can a I
help us become more human? Will AI be the end
of us? And can the wisdom of Native American ways

(05:03):
of living be applied as an alternative to our present
political dilemmas. At a time when fear and control the
foundation of America's story continues to be written into our laws, policies,
and culture, will it also be written into the technology
of the future.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Because the code, the.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Data, and the algorithms behind AI are not neutral, They're
being built by the same frameworks have always defined power.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Together, we're going to.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Explore what parts of the old story of America are
being carried forward and what agency we have to rewrite
the story of AI and of our collective humanity.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
My dear brother Barton Day, rather than Michael, what's up?

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well, before I jump in, It's been a long time coming.
I said it earlier on the stage, but I want
to reiterate. I talked to my partner Rap before I
got on, and just wanting to just share how much
I am grateful and appreciative of not only your presence
in my life, but your presence in our life. You

(06:14):
make me a better person. You push me in such
inspiring ways to remember who I am and who we are.
Your expansive heart and curiosity to unpack the wisdom of
the land and of our ancestors to allow us to
have a path forward is truly beautiful. And you're one

(06:36):
of those people that can do.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
Comedy, sketches, PBS specials, books, podcasts, whatever medium is going
to reach the heart of folks that need to be
reminded of their sacredness.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
You do, and I love you. I thank you for
being a part of this.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
We had an amazing opening talk, so I know something
magical will happen here.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, But before we.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Begin, I just want to say thank you for being
on the podcast.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Brother Mike. Thank you for having me, and thank you
for creating this. Thank you for this book, the sacred
offering of these sacred lessons, and for the space you make.
I've listened to a bunch of the dialogues you've had,
and sometimes more than dialogues, trialogues or quadriloge how you
know how it works. Math will be mathing. But I
think you're doing a really good service to elevate how

(07:24):
we talk about this and lead with the heart. So
thank you for bringing me into the circle. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Well, it's one of my favorite storytellers. I want to
jump in. July fourth is coming up. It's the big
birthday bash of this experiment called the United States of America.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Big awkward birthday party.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Awkward birthday party, but it's also an opportunity to reflect
on and to reimagine the future. You've been in this conversation,
but I want to like focus specifically around this idea
of masculinity in manhood and how the idea of even
those concepts was part of the fore founding these quote

(08:01):
unquote found me documents.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah. Yeah, So I grew up in the Nation's capital.
I was raised by my mother there. I got the
official story, I got the backstory from mama, and in
my adult life, I've been essentially fulfilling an assignment that
my mother gave me. Come up with the system we
live under after democracy and capitalism have failed. I was twelve.

(08:23):
It was a lot to put on a kid's shoulders,
so I didn't do it then, but it animated a
lot of my life. It was a seed that she planned.
A lot of community has nurtured and watered it over
the years. So a lot of what I perceive has
been gifted to me, sometimes painfully, sometimes beautifully by the
lessons that that life tends to offer this founding story,

(08:44):
and what's been missing is a really rich opportunity to
how the citizen work we've done in americaw doors work
we've done have gotten me closer, but nothing has quite
scratched the surface like the story that was here before
white people got here. And I think there's one way
to understand what the United States of America is is

(09:06):
to see it as a story. So I like to
start there and try to move quickly. You can see
it as land, You can see it as a political project.
You can see it as a business and a venture.
It is all of those things. You can see it
as bodies and people and activity. I think what binds
it and what defines it is the story of it.

(09:29):
And so you have people from Europe come here and
under the sort of umbrella of a certain story that
they thought gave them license to impose that story on
the people who are already here, to snatch people up
from where they belonged and bring them here to work
for free. So we're descendants of that story, me and you.

(09:52):
All kinds of mixes of those stories run through many
of us. So no one's just super simple. But I
think what has gone unchallenged is the inadequacy of that
story and the original first people here. And every land
has some first people, but the people indigenous to Hear

(10:13):
have been living in a very beautiful democratic way and
still continue to do so, many of them, and one
nation one said a nations in particular, the whole of
Nashone Confederacy have been practicing and living under something called
the Great Law of Peace. And I've come to some
of this nowge very late in my life, from forty
eight years old. I was about forty five when I

(10:34):
found out about this is very late for somebody who's
very proudly woke. We all have more waking to do,
and so everything's a learning opportunity. Let's shame more opportunity
and What is amazing about the principles of their democracy
is that one of the first is that women are
at the center of government. And they made an invitation

(10:58):
this confederacy to the found to live more like them,
to live under their great tree at peace. It was
partially accepted, but mostly exploited. Mostly the founders are like,
thank you so very much for keeping e asses alive.
And if you just kind of get yourself out the way,
we're gonna take all your stuff, We're gonna take all
your land, We're gonna take what's left to your people.
We're gonna abuse. And there was this narrative that got

(11:23):
planted in their heads that was not at all in
respect of woman, of mother, of a story of care.
There was instead an elevation of a story of dominance
and control, backed by fear justified by religion to excuse

(11:44):
what is obviously unacceptable behavior and behavior that is against
the tenets of life. So that's a clash of culture
at a very deep level. What is the role of
people in caring for each other and the natural world.
What is the role of women in playing a part
in that? So I'm not an expert on this, I'm

(12:06):
a student of it as I'm sharing my learning along
the way with you, as i want to kind of
ratchet down any sense of super expertise, but immense This
has left an immense impression on me because the story
that brought a lot of Europeans here, the justified religious
story that came from the Vatican, was a doctrine, the

(12:29):
doctrine of discovery, and this was a papal bull It's
an edict from on high that says finders keepers and
if somebody's already there, they don't count, you can do
to them what you will in the name of God,
the Father, and the Crown. And that unleashed people who

(12:53):
had themselves been broken and suffering, limping through the Middle
Ages and the plague and all the stuff Europe had
to deal with, and inflicting that illness and that subhuman
idea onto the rest of the planet. So we got
hundreds of years of a story and then it culminates

(13:13):
in a version in this land with those colonists and
settlers who create this project that we're living in now.
And there was a lot of enlightenment, there's a lot
of brilliance, a lot of good ideas, but one of
the clashes was that the men who put themselves at
the head of the table to define this country didn't
see a space for the women. And there are many

(13:35):
stories of colonial euro descended women who found themselves on
a trail landing in some indigenous community and were like,
I like it here. I'm staying. These are the most
free people I've ever seen. These are the most free women.
These women speak, they hold the ceremony, They determine when

(13:58):
the nation goes to war or not. This is a very,
very very different story than women as property. Women just
to be a vessel for children who are also property,
to work the land, which is also property. And so
the world view that says, no, everything is alive. We

(14:19):
are a part of nature. We govern with nature. Women
is at the center of that governance. We govern for
a very long time. Horizon that has landed in a
lot of everyone's bodies, men and women and those who
are neither. But that story has resonated for centuries now
and we have I think we're being forced with an

(14:43):
opportunity to unwind it, and some are clenching harder, more fear, more, control,
more dominance. Let's rip the earth open harder, Let's burn
methane to power machines, to strip us of our humanity more,
let's subjugate women even more. That is a reaction to

(15:04):
this feeling of loss and of control that's happening. And
then there is another reaction, which is we are one.
Let's work with the natural world. Let's love first rather
than fear first. Let's see ourselves as a part of
all of this and reconnect with this part of ourselves
that's been severed. But that severing of the feminine is

(15:28):
something that we're all paying for and something that we
have a beautiful chance to stop. Stop doing that. Let's
as something else, which is something old and I think
more true. It's reminded me.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
I had the great honor last week to interview Anna Tubbs,
and incredible black writer whose book just came out and
everyone should buy it. It's called The Race What American
patriarchy has hidden from us, And in that she talks
about you know, I think the thing that's really amazing

(16:02):
with the book that you have coming out, it's pre contact.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
It's these ways of being and ways of.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Relationship that were ages probably thousands of years before the
slave ships came over.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
And Anna's book starts with.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
The founding of the documents, and even like John Adam's
wife saying, hey, Abigail, women exist.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
A reminder hell, because it was very.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Clear that it was for white, straight land owning men,
and that everything from the structures to the policies to
everything was literally going to be indoctrinated with that philosophy.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is this book. I want
to update the language a little bit because you're being generous,
but I need to shift it. I'm not coming out
with a book. Yeah, the book you wrote the forward for. Yes,
the book, the book that I was invited to write
the forward for. It's called American and Indigenous Democracy, a
Call for Interdependence, and you can find out more about

(17:05):
it at American in American Indigenous Democracy dot com. So
it's available for pre order. It fully drops June fifteenth,
in time for the Big Acua Birthday party. It's a
great birthday gift for America. And it is a gift.
That is the point that when the Europeans arrived here,
they were welcomed as they have been in almost every

(17:27):
place they've landed. Alter Roa what we call Australia, the
whole continent of Africa, to some continent in India, peoples
who love life generally like, hey, that's a different form
of life I'm not familiar with. Come on down, let's hang,
let me help you not die. Right. That is like
the general welcoming energy. It's not always but overwhelmingly a

(17:48):
welcoming story. And so that invitation was formerly made many
times and is being made again. The man who edited
this book, Jose Borero, is a Tino Cuba and he
is a longtime activist, journalist, spiritualist who was intimately familiar
with indigenous communities all over Turtle Island, North and South America.

(18:11):
And he married into the Holdnnershone, the Mohawk nation. So
he comes through it by way of many decades of study,
of practice and of love, and he and his fellow
elders welcomed a bunch of us younger people and really
modeling the same thing. Okay, we have some outsiders who
are expressing some curiosity. They seem a little lost. That's

(18:32):
who we were, and let's help him out. And they're
doing it because of the status of the Earth, which
is way out of balance, and that we all go
where the planet goes. So they see it as this opportunity.
So there's just a little more context for what this
book is. The people who are in it are all
indigenous elders. Some are no longer with us in this realm.

(18:54):
Others are just coming up and putting these principles into practice.
And that's the invitation is to put these into practice,
not to become Don't do that. Don't don't show up
to your nearest indigenous government meeting that you were not
a part of and be like, I'm in what do
I know me? But instead try to embody the universality

(19:17):
of these practices.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Can you can you share their very specific practices? Can
you share what those are?

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah? And and and principles. Really the practice is something
we all got to figure out, but the principles are
very clear. Number One women at the center of governance?
Was that actually the number one it is? Or they
probably don't have a linear thing. I'm thinking that, No,
that's that's that's a good question. That's a good question
as I have been encouraged to spread this and share this. Uh,

(19:49):
that is the first one that has been told to me.
And then the forward we ran it past, not just
Jose but Louise Hearn who's a clan mother in the
Mohawk name of Michelle Shinandoah. There's a lot of voices
and they're like, that's the first one, right, mother is law.
That's what clanmother Luis Hearne would has and will continue

(20:10):
to say. So I'll start with that. And given the
topic of our discussion, it is the most important because
it is the most contrary to what we've inherited that
really isn't working out so well. Women at the center
of government is one of the five, and I think
the first of the five. A reciprocal relationship with nature,
you know, reciprocal relationship. Seven generation thinking, as in the

(20:34):
decisions you make now you must account for seven generations
from now, and that is a common principle of many
different indigenous communities. It's not strictly holding that peace is
the highest calling of government. Peace not property peace and
peace has a requirement of justice to be achieved that ultimately,

(20:59):
and John Mohawk is really the spirit of this book.
He was a Seneca scholar who is among the greatest thinkers,
representing among the greatest political thinking that this land has
ever produced. And he's no longer with us in this realm,
but a lot of his words are and he does
it some really good breakdowns of that one where the
point of the system of government is to prevent people

(21:22):
from abusing one another. And then the fifth is that
the law itself is aligned with life and is sacred,
like there is there is a sacredness, hey, sacred lessons,
there is a ritual, there is something more than cold
calculation and analysis. There's something more than visible. There's something

(21:45):
else going on. And so those principles they live inside
of something called the Great Law of Peace. And that
Great Law of Peace was brought to a bunch of
warring nations by someone known as the Peacemaker, because the
these nations were at each other's throats that there was
so much violence between them, involving innocence and children and

(22:07):
situations we know of today and have known throughout our
own history, and so to soothe that, to calm that down,
a new way of being had to be brought into
the fold. And so the Peacemaker worked across these nations
to get them all to agree in This is pre contact.
This is very much pre contact, which is intense. It

(22:29):
complicates the story of just like oh yeah, before white
people showed up. It was all good people be people
in you know, Africans were doing dirt to Africans before
any Europeans showed up. Indigenous folks on this land, we're
doing dirt to each other before any European showed up. Europeans,
before they were enmeshed in their own empire, were indigenous.

(22:52):
They lived in tribes, they were close to the land.
They have you know, festivals that aligned with the stars
and the plants. And we all have this in US.
We all have that in US too. We have peace
in US and we have the capacity for war in US.
So that is the stack, right, that's the set, that's

(23:15):
the box set of principles that undergird the Great Law
of Peace. The way the Holding No. Shone Confederacy has moved,
and what they offered to the founders and what they
continue to practice and to attempt. And there's a really
humbling you know, in the US story and documentation, there's
so much good. There's so much good. A more perfect union, right,

(23:39):
that's humility in that, not a perfect union, a more
perfect union. We're striving, man, we're striving. And I think
in this particular indigenous form of government, what has popped
to me. What my wife Elizabeth pointed out as she's
going through it is like they say, like you're never
going to achieve it, but you pursue it, you try.

(24:02):
And I think if we're going to try, we might
as well set an appropriate goal. And the goals we
have set for ourselves right now to own and control
and dominate are unworthy of us. The goal to belong
and to honor and to appreciate that feels better. It
feels better, and it can be a really hard transition

(24:24):
for those of us deeply invested in that old story
because we feel like we might be losing ourselves too,
and I know earlier.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
And then one of the principles that you're talking about
is this relationship that we as human beings have not
just with the landing with each other, but with the unseen,
with the ancestral, the spiritual.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
World, whatever verbis you want to use.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
But I wonder if you can unpack that a little
bit more, because when we're talking about the Founding Documents,
it's a road map, but it's written with a particular
framework in mind, and that framework is all about the
material consumption and ownership of land and people. If you're

(25:11):
even seen as a person. But how does the world
of spirit come into this conversation?

Speaker 1 (25:18):
I will this is this is a unique opportunity. It
is a unique opportunity. I'm feeling excited to share what
I've been learning that I think has some universal appeal.
I'm feeling cautious and nervous not to try to speak
on behalf of so I just want to put that
out there so you understand. Any hesitation is me trying

(25:40):
to calibrate and and do this well, and do this
right and not claim shit or even just like even
just for you. Yeah, So for me, there is more
than what we can see. I grew up with a

(26:01):
mother who practiced many different forms of spirituality. She escaped
the Baptist Church as a kid, with its entirely eurocentric
view and hierarchical view of life and human worth and
no view of value for animal and plant worth. And
she went through a path of Buddhism, path of Taoism

(26:24):
and the eaching. And I've gone to different ceremonies, if
I've gone to pow wows with my mom when she
was alive, because she was on this quest and this
exploration knowing that there's something else available to us. And
I think I'm here because of people who believed in
things that they couldn't see, like their own freedom day
to day. There is some version of faith that has

(26:47):
powered many people, and I am a consequence of that power,
and I carry some of that myself. So I think,
in the contradiction of story, the people who showed up
here a bit broken, very hungry. We're looking for their

(27:09):
own safety, We're looking for their own perch and place
in the world. They were trying to improve their lot.
There's a lot of seeking. They're trying to honor their God,
and some of them figured out better ways to do it.
But overall, the story that they got handed just so
damn tiny, and it had a vast disrespect for I

(27:36):
remember reading this book White Trash, the four hundred year
history of like poor white people in America, and it
lays out Thomas Jefferson's view that the highest calling you
know is to be a yaleman farmer, to take your
applot of land and make it productive. Because a forest

(27:57):
is out there making air for you to breathe, not enough,
providing food for you to eat, provide medicines for you
to heal. Is not enough. It only counts if it's money. Oh,
it's so sad. It's so sad. And for me, I've

(28:18):
been on this journey of being in the very tangible
world of technology and political argumentation and some activism, and
then being in the very physical, nature rich world of
being on canoes and hiking with some of the people
who do it the deepest. And my own childhood experience
is being brought back to me through some of that

(28:39):
experience of making just making the America Outdoors Show, the
Hope in the Water Show on PBS. There's so much
more and there's so much more to be gained by
giving of ourselves to communal membership with life rather than
private ownership of life. It's seeing ourselves as peers and partners,

(29:03):
not having a paternalistic and a property centric attitude towards
the rest of life. And that for me is very
beautiful and it's really hard. It's I can say the
words great, but then day to day what does that mean?
You know? And then how does that undo some of
my own coding and programming to to try to appreciate everything,

(29:27):
to try to just notice life. I find myself I
don't kill as many bugs as I used to like,
I really don't. I really don't because I have a
second thought, sometimes a third thought. And I live here
in Palm Springs, and I've learned we have a moth season.
So I see a moth in the house, I'm like,

(29:49):
they're gonna eat all the food, burrow through all the clothes. Mothbat.
We're now we're on opposite sides here. It's man versus
Often I'm representing all of men, so I have to
stand for my species, at least for my textiles. And
it's not that simple. Like, and I've learned that the moths,
the ones that I hear it primarily it's a seasonal thing.

(30:13):
And then I bother with me. They're just attracted to
the light color on the walls. They don't even eat
clothes or burrow into food. So now I'm just like,
what's up? You know? I see some crawley thing, and
instead of smashing it, like can I get it out
and put it back outside? You probably lost. How would

(30:34):
I feel if I was just having like fields of
gold and then one day just roll up into this cold,
right angle riddled place. It's totally unnatural. And then my
last moment is like pressure on my head before the splack. No,
I'd rather just be returned home. So let me help
you get back home. And when it comes to the ground,
squirrels burrowing under my foundation, we're working it out. We're

(30:57):
working it out. I have encouraged the ale of hawks
to tend to that. For me, it's not outsourcing, you know,
it's just it's letting nature be nature. Well, let me
ask you this.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
You're teasing out this truth I would argue of interdependence, right, Yeah.
The hardest thing about interdependence is because this structure the
society has this hood one to think it's us versus them,
and it's either me, you're with me or against me.

(31:29):
And you've said this a few times today that the
men that were populating the slave ships that came to
these lands were often broken men, similar to I would
argue broken men and positions of power now, both in
government and both in technology and AI. And the hard

(31:55):
part for me is I don't want to start to
cancel and dismiss these broke, broken men because that's not
going to get to the root cause of this all.
And so I wonder, in this exploration.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
And remembering and relearning.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
These texts and these philosophies how your relationship to these
broken men the oftentimes are just mirrors for ourselves, because
I myself am a broken man in certain moments when
I have to like look at myself and be like,
don't do that, dude, Like you know the consequence that's

(32:30):
also your childhood wound that's coming to surface. So how
have you shifted or have you even shifted? And how
you see that narrative?

Speaker 1 (32:39):
It's a shift in progress. And you know, I've been
with my wife for over a decade now and we
have we've learned so much from each other. And one
of the things that she has given me an opportunity
to learn about myself is my responses. And we met

(33:00):
in twenty fourteen that we've we've got some time in
and there's just certain things that are a reaction. I
have a reaction. I interpret a word or a tone
or a moment in a way that assigns threat, that
assigns judgment, that assigns attack to me. And So because

(33:27):
this particular pattern, and I think many couples have this,
I'm not saying sharing anything unique or talking out of school,
Like if you're in a relationship, probably has this kind
of dynamic parent child can have it as well as siblings.
But the beauty of being in relationship long enough is
that if the pattern keeps presenting, you start experimenting with
different ways of engaging with it. And so I'm like,

(33:48):
what if I just slowed down and these ideas are
not just like I have brilliant new insights. It's like
she's suggested some of these things to me. I've had
support through counseling and other modes. But if I could
instead of assuming that this person who I know loves
me is out to get me, like, maybe that's the leap.

(34:10):
Maybe my assignment of attack value or judgment value to
her motive is me and that's not her at all.
So can I move in slow motion? Can I take
a breath before I open my mouth and wonder? Why
might she be sharing this that isn't to get on

(34:32):
my nerves? Right? Could there be any other reasons why
she's doing Yeah? What might those reasons be? Bearising They?
Oh because she cares, Oh because she knows you're capable
of doing something differently. Oh, because the way you're showing
up doesn't feel good to her. So there's a dynamic
at play here that is awesome, and it's exhausting, and

(34:55):
it's really slow. And when I think about the men
who are in formal positions of power, who have run
away from those opportunities, who've had deeper scarring maybe than
I have, and have deeper pools of resource to deal
with it, I'm like, Oh, I'm sad and I'm mad

(35:15):
at the same time. I'm sad and I'm mad at
the same time. And I want for them and I
need for them. I think we need for them to
be healed, to reconcile, to take that breath, to slow down,
to not see all of us as their enemy or
their property, which is equally dehumanizing and distancing, and to

(35:40):
see us as connected. And then that requires me to
see them as connected to me, which I don't love
but I know to be true. So when you're holding
some that you know to be true and it feels
very inconvenient, what do you do with that whole both?

(36:01):
And it doesn't mean that I'm out here blithely rooting
for you know, Elon Musk, for example, and nor am
I sacrificing myself to try to change him. I'm not
trying to expose myself to his particular line of fire
or what have you. But it also means I'm not
I'm going to try to do to him what I

(36:22):
see him doing to others and belittling and berating and
dehumanizing and objectifying. And I think that we all who
want the better world have to start creating it before
we get there. And that involves how we approach, how
we even conceptualize of, and what we assign to with

(36:43):
our language, these people who seem so hell bent on
undermining us and life by extension, and that's.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Very very very very very HARDH Well, I'm gonna I'm
gonna jump in this because you mentioned the first trillionaire
in human history, and these same men have a lot
of the same frameworks, if not the same frameworks, as
those are wrote the founding documents of this country. But

(37:15):
now we're getting into this time of AI and radical
shifts in relationships, and what I'm seeing this aspect of
fear men having a fear. I'm losing control. I'm losing
the control because my job is being eliminated because of AI.
I'm losing control because I can now no longer provide

(37:37):
or protect for my family.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
These these these.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
Definitions traditional forms of masculinity. But with it AI coming
there is great peril potentially and great opportunity. But when
it comes to men and what AI is doing to disrupt,
because I was even having this conversation, like you can
assign a gender to AI now, right, like and so,

(38:03):
and a lot of men are lonely, don't know how
to talk to other people they're interested in, So therefore
they feel safer in the virtual reality that could be
a bot that they name and they provide because they're
controlling yet again, because this is this fear of not
having control.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
That makes sense, It absolutely makes sense. There's so much
in that might. One thing that comes to mind is
the men who until this moment thought they had control,
the ones who owned property, the one who had money
in the bank, the ones who work in tech or

(38:41):
used to, because they fail to recognize the truth. They
failed to understand the assignment that we're all connected. What
happens to one of us eventually happens to all of us.
And so you're okay with the displacement, the disruption to
beanization for them, you're okay with it for those women,

(39:03):
or for those immigrants, and for those brown people or
for those folks who eat that food that smells different
than anything that you understand, so you call it weird,
who speak that language that you don't understand, so you
call it weird. You're okay with dismissal of all that,
You're okay with capture of all of that to feed
the machine you're making. But when that machine starts to

(39:23):
eat you, now you see the problem because you feel
the problem directly, and now you want somebody to save
your job. You want somebody to help you out. It's
the opioid crisis all over again. It's oh, black kids dying,
Brown kids dying, poor people dying from overdose, addiction, whatever,
white people start all now it needs compassion. And so

(39:46):
these men want help and don't know how to ask
because who taught them how to ask for help? The
world showed them you don't need help. You're the alpha,
you're the omega, you're the man. And so it's a
trap like they are held as captive by the story

(40:07):
as the rest of us have been. Their cells look different, right,
Some of the cells have bugattis in them, but you're
still in the cell. Some of them had a lot
of zeros in their bank, account. But you're still in
the cell. You're still a prisoner of a lie. And
so a beautiful and painful part of this moment is
that many men are being forced to wake up. You

(40:30):
thought Eli was your savior. He's coming to eat you.
He's coming to put a methane factory to power his
rock AI thing that he called Mecha Hitler, Right, he's
cool with it. He's cool with the thing calling itself mecha,
is cool with Nazi salutes. He's coming for you too,
Like you're not no one special, And even the men

(40:52):
who think they're at the very top, you know, the
most like aiable job. I could think of CEO, what
do you do? Ooh bro run a movie office space?
Like what would you say you do here? Like I
want Claude or Chat to pull up on Sam right,

(41:12):
to pull up on these guys. But what would you
say you do here? Because by my reckoning, I'm doing
the work and you're taking a meeting. You know who
can take a meeting? I'm taking thirty right now. I
don't need to sleep. You're sleeping. What are you doing? Right?
Your brain is slow, you're bound by your meat body.
What are you doing? So they're they're creating, and it's

(41:34):
there's something historic and poetic and artistic and tragic about
a person who creates the mode of their own destruction
and thinks of it as triumph, like you reaching for
a trophy and you're grabbing a chain. They just don't

(41:55):
know it yet. Somebody should probably tell them, but they
have after then they will find out. And the sadness
is that a lot of us will find out as
collateral damage. So that was experience. It's all of it. Frankenstein.
It is especially Frankenstein, which a woman wrote Mary Shelley,

(42:17):
like you don't have to dig that LRD to figure
it out. All these guys they always take the wrong
lessons from fiction. They always see it as a roadmap
instead of a warning. Right, these are cautionary tails, not
business plans. There should be a difference. So I am
hopeful for these men and for us that the speed

(42:39):
of this change is going to disrupt so much that
we can't hold onto the old thing anymore. That we've
got to anchor into something deeper and more true, That
what comes from one comes for all, that we're stronger together,
that there is no me and you, there's just us
and we that that is going and not because of

(43:00):
a sense of threat. I mean that's one thing. An
alien invasion brings people together. We've seen all the movies,
you read the books. That could be the case. An
AI alien could emerge that really binds us together, and
Terminator becomes a documentary like that could be a thing,
or was it already a documentary? But I think the
other thing that could happen for us is you named

(43:21):
really compassionately. Men who don't know how to interact, don't
have the practice, feel more comfortable connecting with a chatbot
versus a flesh and bone, meat based human breathing person.
I get that, And a lot of the men who
are creating these technologies are also not. Like they didn't

(43:45):
choose their brokenness. They didn't choose their inadequacies. I have
my own. I didn't choose it. It's just something we're
born with. And so we're all on some kind of spectrum,
and so some of them have been gifted with superpowers
and super resources to play out with their own shortcomings
for all of us to live inside of. And I

(44:06):
don't think that's how it is supposed to go. I
think they deserve compassion. I think we should hope for
them the best. And I think there is a role
for this technology to help us all learn how to
connect with ourselves, learn how to connect with each other.
So I see possibility and promise in AI, forcing us
to be inspired, forcing us to dig deeper. Okay, if

(44:29):
writing emails fast isn't my competitive advantage, if building a
PowerPoint slide isn't the thing or whatever, why am I here?
If making money isn't the thing, then why am I here?
And could we set a goal to create a society

(44:49):
where people had time. I met a school teacher yesterday,
Mike Taubman. He's written up in the New York Times.
He teaches in Newark, New Jersey, and Uncommon charter schools
and he has a couple of courses that bring AI
into the high school and one of them, the bulk
of the course, it's a looping thing. I think it's
three week loops. And these high school kids ask themselves

(45:15):
what they like, what they want, who they are, what
they enjoy, how different parts of school and life make
them feel. No, just just first, just them, just like
who am I? Who gets to do that? We're so

(45:37):
busy jumping through the hoops we're so busy living up
to an image of what we think we're supposed to
be that we don't take the time to find out
who we actually are. And so he's got these kids
running reps on practicing, and then they get to play
out the character and they do it, and they use
technology and they build a LinkedIn profile as that, and
they try to find the mentor in the space, and

(46:00):
they talk to a chatbot and get feedback on their plan.
And so it's a human AI human in the middle
and at the edge, with a teacher, adult with the kids,
not just your alone. And you're a room ashamed at
night for sixteen hours straight going back and forth with
a chatbot or a sex bot, right, or a Nazi bot,

(46:23):
or all of those three things rolled into one, Right,
that's not healthy. But if you're doing it in community,
with your peers, with your teacher, with yourself, if you're
given the space. Doctor Arviel Epps is someone we had
on Life with Machine Show. She's spent a lot of
time studying the impact of technology on young people and
algorithmic AI on young people's sense of self, especially kids

(46:46):
of color. And all these filters, all these beauty hacks
built into the app platforms. It's really devastating to a
young person's sense of their own value. Well, obviously i'm
not pretty. I need that filter to be pretty, and
that filter they're all pushing in a certain direction, a
certain definition of beauty and worth and value. The greatest

(47:07):
protection against that that doctor Ebs found wasn't a talking
to from parents saying no, you're good enough, you're smart enough,
and you're beautiful. It was a deeper thing. It was
reminding these kids who they are building up their self knowledge?
What is your culture? What is your food? Where do
you live? Who lived there before? What is your language?

(47:29):
What are the dance moves? Armed them with self knowledge,
and that acts as a shield, an inoculation against the
infectious harm of a norm imposed on you from on
high that's ultimately designed for you to just see yourself
as a consumer to buy more shit. So that's great.

(47:52):
So then the question is, well, how do we bolster
people's sense of self knowledge? How do we help people
find themselves? And that can happen and with or without technology,
But it's not necessary that technology that disables that just
on its own, it won't. We have to choose it

(48:14):
so I hear this.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
We're at a moment a radical This is like if
you are alive in like the beginning of the Industrial revolution.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
Yeah, this is that.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
And how everything completely I don't want to say almost overnight,
but radically rapidly change your relationship, to work, your relationship
to your partner, to the land, to each other. We're
in that same, similar, parallel universe. The difference is, like
you said earlier, there's another population that's being born, and

(48:44):
that is an artificial population. And so I'm wonder like,
how do we hold this tension of the an bold
like you just said, like reminding us of our self worth,
our cultural medicines, our traditions, our practices are the human
is doing helping us remember that, but then also using
the machines to maybe get more clarity. But how do

(49:07):
we hold this straddle this line between the and and the.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
Both with great difficulty, I think and humility. There's no
one answer, there's no one way. I don't have it,
and no one does and no one ever will. And
we're not in a historical moment of quite any kind

(49:31):
that we've had before. But there are some that rhyme
we know that moving together gives us more strength and
moving alone. So we do this stuff in community. I
think it's generally true that an extreme and out of
direction is never the healthiest. Right. Extreme sustained for too
long throw the systems out of balance. That leads to
too much fire or not enough. It leads to too

(49:53):
much water or not enough. It can lead to too
much of one human trade or activity or outcome, or
not enough in terms of resource, in terms of time spent,
in terms of anything you might choose to measure. So
just some respect for probably some middle ground here that
we need to find. I think about I think about ingredients,

(50:16):
like a little formulation, and I'll try to see if
I can find something tangible to ground this, because this
whole field and this whole moment can get very philosophical instantly,
and then it becomes like, oh, a thought experiment. But
people already are finding themselves in challenging situations. Parents are
having trouble relating to their kids, kids are having trouble

(50:38):
relating to each other. Employees and employers workers with each other.
Like it's all happening so so so fast. And that's
the other distinguishing characteristics besides the voice and the face
and the sort of population level of this AI is
the speed of it. The formulation is this asian is

(51:00):
a very popular term that people want to celebrate with AI.
It can increase human agency. I think it's important for
us to be clear about what that truly means. Agency
has sold by industry is simply the ability to do more.
It's more skills, more capability, upskill, become AI literate, learn

(51:21):
to use these tools to do more with less right
become a better human machine. They don't call it that.
I'm calling it that. It's one dimensional. It's just along
like an X axis. The other axis is power agency
and you know this from a political context like that
means a lot, but it can mean having the power

(51:43):
to shape the conditions in which you deploy those capabilities
at all. And for me, power means choice, do I
or don't I at all? If I do what kind
of AI? Like? Let's get more specific, which large language model?
But maybe not a large language model. Maybe there's a
small language model. Maybe there's not a language model. AI

(52:05):
is actually way bigger than is being sold. So choice
which requires information control? Can I actually set the terms
of engagement? Do I know what the terms are? Can
I alter them? Community? Can I do this with others?
And so as we approach and try to get to
and create a good future, I think it's really helpful

(52:27):
to practice answering do I have, how does this affect
my capabilities? What choices do I have? What amount of
control do I have? With whom? Do I have? All
these things? And if we can apply that in any moment,
then that works in a sit down conversation, It works
with you and your kids. All right, So you're dealing
with this thing. That's great. Huh where did this come from?

(52:47):
Did you have a choice? Do you feel like you
had a choice? Who else are you engaging with this?
What is this doing to your skills? Do you think
it's enhancing them or maybe it's atrophying them. Maybe we're
losing some skills And are we okay with losing some skills?
I've lost a lot of arithmetic skills thanks to the calculator,
generally okay with that? Do I want to lose my
cognitive skills, my emotional skills? And what? Yeah? So that's

(53:13):
a way that I'm thinking about this. The other is
if we do the inventory of ourselves and identify where
we feel weak, where we feel under informed or under capable,
we could do that. As an individual, I'm working on
my finances right now. I've never felt very strong on

(53:35):
the bookkeeping and the management and investing and what do
you do with what do you do with money? I
got a fancy degree, but what do we do with
money is not a part of how what I did
to get it? What do I do in this relationship
with that relationship as an employer, as a husband, as
an uncle? And then if I approach these systems with
that question of how can I be better at that?

(53:57):
As opposed to how do you do everything I do faster?
That's different? And then if I can apply that, if
we can apply that, what could our what is our
city not good at? What is our government? What is
our nonprofit? What is our school? What is our camp organization?
What's our group chat? You know? Not good at? Then

(54:17):
how can we work together to improve it? And maybe
how can we apply technology to help us improve that?
But it's setting the goals, doing the inventory, working with
the technology potentially and with other humans, and then looking
back and like, okay, did we get there? Or are
we just waking up every day feeling behind Because somebody

(54:40):
else set the goal for us, and they keep shoving
a new thing every day, and that is not a
world that we should be trying to create.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Well, before we get to this last segment, I want
to ask, because this is the most concentration of wealth
that we've ever scene, like the stratification of resources, and
there's more folks that have less than have more in
this particular moment in time, what do you tell a

(55:11):
young person who seen all this changing going on, is like,
the only way that I can have a future is
if I subscribe to the trap, the lie, the myth
that I got to be the alpha male, that I
got to control everything around me, that everything around me,
including the land and a person, is for my benefit.

(55:36):
So I have to be the Elon, I have to
be the Peter Teal. What do you tell that young person.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
Elon Musk is a miserable person. I'm not saying this
as a judgment of his character. I'm saying this as
an observation of how he has described his own life.
He lives a miserable life. He sleeps at the office,
he's on planes all the time, He's up all night
posting on social media. He's managing thousands of people and

(56:09):
billions of dollars. He's not happy. He has everything in
the world and nothing at the same time. He is
not a role model. He is not a goal and
I'm not a billionaire. I wouldn't want to be one.
Is mass stressed well, people trying to kill you, people
trying to steal from you, people judging you, people think

(56:30):
they know you. Is a high stress lifestyle. On the
best of days, you really want that. I would encourage
a young person who's looking up to an Elon Musk
to look at Elon Musk, look at his eyes, look
at his skin, look at how he moves in his body,
look at the patterns of his life, the sleep patterns,

(56:52):
the parental patterns, the employer patterns, the political patterns, and
just write down what you see, and then look at
the words you wrote down and ask, is that what
I want to be? Slow it down, Slow it down.
It's very easy for us to accept imposed role models
due to default settings. But the system is broken, and

(57:15):
to the same young person, like you know, the system's
broke and everything's literally on fire around us. And so
someone thriving in a broken system, is that a sign
that that's the path for you, or is it challenging
that system. I think the accumulation of things is a

(57:37):
poisonous concept. And it's easy for me to say because
I have enough things myself. Right, I eat and I
don't worry about where the next meal is coming from.
I have enough clothes that they always smell good. Right,
I have a bed that I can reliably return to
at the end of the day. So if you really
don't have those things, you're in a different situation. And
I'm reminded of a doomsday prepper show years and years ago,

(58:01):
and I don't indulge in the show, but I was
watching it this one time, and one episode had a
contrasting response to the doomsday prepping. On the one hand,
in this corner, you had Chad, Right, he's got his tattoos,
he's got his container ships, he's got his canned foods,
he's built a bunker, he's got turrets, he's got all

(58:23):
the AMMO and all the guns, and all the barbed
wire and all the walls. And he's all alone, trying
to protect all of this by himself. His planning for
the apocalypse is to be miserable, to be alone and

(58:44):
always on watch and never trusting. Head on a swivel
muzzle out and up. Chad's going to age. Chad's gonna age.
And if Chad slips one moment, it's over and all
those goods and all those bullets go to someone just
like Chad, who was slightly more prepared and exploited and opening.

(59:08):
In the same episode, there was a woman, a New
England woman who said, not really good at guns, it's
not my thing. Wasn't trained in gun fu, didn't watch
John Wick, good at growing things. Kathy over there, she's
good at making clothes. Darryl he's good at fixing machines,

(59:32):
and Donnie he's going to cook him. I think I
planned for the apocalypse with my neighbors. And she started
running totally different types of drills, not target practice, community practice. Okay,
let's meet, let's talk about let's do a skills inventory
as opposed to a guns and AMMO inventory, and then

(59:55):
just the knowledge of who knows how to do what
maid everybody in the network stronger. And if one of
them slipped, the others didn't exploit them, they caught them,
they held them. And I know, I know one hundred
percent that's the only sustainable way forward. You might be

(01:00:18):
able to hoard your way into an elevated and secure
position for a moment, but you will hold yourself together
with others for much longer over the course of the
long run. Every freaking time. That's what history really shows us.
The dictators, the autocrats, the oligarchs. Read to the end

(01:00:40):
of the story. How does it end for them? Saddam
died in a hole, Kadafi's ripped apart by his own people.
Folks find themselves falling out of buildings all over Moscow.
It's not a happy ending. It's a miserable life. And
ultimately all that angst and all that inequality. If you

(01:01:02):
don't give it an outlet, the people they find an
outlet for it. It's usually targeted that those folks who
thought they could have it all and realize they ain't
got shit at the literal end of the day, they
die with nothing like wish to South Sage. It's just

(01:01:25):
more fun with others also, who wants to just like Gray,
it's the end of the world, and you got your
bunker and you've watched like you've reached the end of Netflix.
Now what well, what are you gonna do like it'd
be better to be with other people. You can make
up new games, you know, you can sing songs to
each other, you could joke about each other, you could
build crafts, and you could start a society again or

(01:01:48):
create a better version of the one you're already in.
And that is the moment, that's the choice we have.
We're celebrating a declaration of independence. Okay, do we need
more independence right now? Do we need more single play
solo thinking I would submit The answer is no. I'm
offering and many others are the next two to fifty project.

(01:02:08):
There's a unity campaign. There's all kinds of folks promoting
this concept and have for the past one hundred years.
A declaration of interdependence. That's what's going to get us
through this time, and that is what's going to set
up the time that we deserve, the one that we
haven't quite reached, but we can still take hold of
if we hold on to each other.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Well, with that being said, I want to get into
what we call the sacred five ooh, which is at
the end of every episode. I just asked five questions. Okay,
you answering a word or a sentence, a word there's
gonna be a challenge, right But this is because practically speaking,
we we shared a lot right now. And for folks

(01:02:56):
who are listening, the one thing I always want folks
to take away is that the macro lives within the micro,
that what's happening out there is embodied in our own
personal bodies that are connected to each other. And so
I had all these other questions, but I think you're
gonna see I'm in the sacred right. So the first question, Okay,

(01:03:17):
name three things that make you feel safe, connected and whole.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Safe connected, hole hugs, immersion and water. Wind. At the

(01:03:42):
most stressful moments in my time in college, I would
get on my bike ride along the river to force
the feeling of wind and I felt helped by it.
Safe and connected, beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
What song, book or prayer brings you back home to herself?

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
Wooo. I don't know the words, but I can hear it.
M Patapata by Miry Mkiva. That song was my mom's jam.

(01:04:26):
It brings my mother into the room. It brings freedom
songs into the room. I watched Sarah Fina as a
musical as a child. I saw Mandela in person at
the DC Convention Center when he finally got free of
that prison on Robin Island, And uh yeah, it's just

(01:04:49):
this rooted rhythmic. True. Miry mckiba is like a prophet.
So that song patapata, that's my mom. What's your mom's
names so you can bring her into the convo? Ari Anita,
Lorraine Thurston, it's Lorraine Thurston. All right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
What's one daily ritual or practice that grounds you?

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
Meditation twenty minutes at a time, two times a day.
That's the plan. The reality is I probably had about
forty five percent completion rate, but it's it's it's in
the calendar and it's on my mind even if I
don't engage in it. That's the ritual. I'm in the

(01:05:32):
same boat, so grace, Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
What's one small action that listeners can take on their
healing journey?

Speaker 4 (01:05:42):
Oh small, I'm gonna go about as small as you
can get one day.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Decide that every person you encounter you look them in
the eye. Make eye contact. Small thing, it's reconnecting. Why
is it so powerful about the eye. It's a window
into the soul. I didn't make that up, but I
think it's true. I think it's also an active choice

(01:06:16):
to engage with the hear and now and the living,
and disengage from the glowing rectangles in our hands. The
supercomputers who walk around with that are literally programmed to
take our attention. Attention is a form of power. Whatever
we give our attention to, we give our power to.
So if we give our attention to another person and

(01:06:39):
to their eyes, that's an exchange. If you're both doing it,
you feel something. It doesn't have to be like fall
in love with a stranger. It's just you're acknowledging humanity.
You're acknowledging life. And there are too many moments, too
much news, too much information that has us heads down,
not connecting on the human to human level. And I

(01:07:02):
think if we want to rebuild democracy and make a
healthier society, that's always in the beginning two. It's a
pair that becomes four, that becomes eight, that becomes it
continues to grow.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Last question, what's a one line blessing or quote that
inspires you?

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
M Jose Barrero, editor of the forthcoming book American Indigenous Democracy,
A call for interdependence. Everything he says is inspirational and
a blessing. He described a principle of indigenouity that rings

(01:07:54):
true regardless of specific land or tradition. That everything wants
to be a preciate it everything, and so if you
can carry that, Appreciate the four directions as he described it.
Appreciate the two leggeds and the four leggeds and the
wing it. Appreciate your partners, Appreciate the person you don't know.

(01:08:16):
Appreciate this table and this microphone and this other microphone
and these clothes. That there's an exponential, infinite web of
appreciation which makes all of this possible. There's hands behind it,
there's energy behind that, there's food and fuel. So to

(01:08:37):
appreciate everything is to acknowledge the connection of everything. And
it's humbling even as it places us at the center,
because we're the ones doing the appreciating. It's this radically
simple concept, and it undermines and replaces the tiny story

(01:08:58):
with an infinitely large one.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Oh, my dear dear friend, when you were talking about
the eyes, I was thinking about the men that I'm
blessed to be in relationship with that are part of
the Dina Heels Men's Circle. We've worked about a little
bit more than about one hundred and fifty men predominantly
black and brown men. Most lost their homes in the

(01:09:23):
fire and Alta Dina and a big shout out to
Yancey Cummins. He made us do this exercise where men
had to look each other in the eye for ninety seconds,
and how uncomfortable that made us men feel. I'll just
speak for myself, how uncomfortable I felt because I am

(01:09:44):
conditioned to not look at people in the eye, let
alone a man, and conditioned not to look at a
man because for some reason, that would take my manhood away,
because I might get emotional because I'm looking at someone
that is a reflection of myself and maybe I don't
love myself enough, but that person is showing me that
it's possible or maybe this will be some type of

(01:10:09):
romantic thing. And I start going in tangents and I
realized in that moment was that is the power of
the eyes and community, because you get to appreciate and
see each other, like really see each other. And I
want to appreciate you. I want to look at you
in the eye. I want to appreciate you. I want

(01:10:32):
to just really really because in this moment, there was
so much you unpacked, untangled, and it wasn't it was
our collective story. You always are reminding me, Mike, I
wrote a forward. I'm still a student. I'm learning this.
This is ancestral wisdom. This is stuff that's all of
our customs have never been written books. I've been orally
passed down at least the most ancient texts. And whoever's

(01:10:54):
hand is writing those scriptures or those words, whatever biases
that person has, comes out in the text.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
But you can't hide spirit.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
And I just want you to know how incredibly grateful
I us are for your ability to take these co
very huge concepts and break them down into digestible ways
so that we can write a different story for the
next two hundred and fifty years, and that those of

(01:11:26):
us men that are trying to be better people, that
may have trauma and wounds and pain that we don't
know how to uncover. If I can look into the
eyes of a Baratunde and I say that with all
the love and respect I have, bro because you are
unique and special, but you're also just like every other
man that may be broken or maybe healing. And the

(01:11:48):
thing about this is that we are mirrors of each other,
even the ones that are hoarding and stealing and robbing
and killing us. At some point I have to look
them in the eye enough for them to see their
own humanity and that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
It's connected to us.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
And so at the bottom of my heart, I thank
you for this conversation. I thank you for your life's work.
I think, Elizabeth, I thank your mother. I think all
the people have come before that dreamed enough for some
beautiful man. They bear Toun, they Thurston to breathe the
same air that we are all breathing. So thank you
for your work, thank you for your gifts. And I'm

(01:12:26):
just really hopeful that this unfolding story of America will
start with the unfolding of the story of each and
every one of us seeing our divine connection to each other.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
Thank you, Thank you, my brother, beautiful, beautiful way I
am cool.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
Sacred Lessons is a production My Heart's Michael through it
our podcast network, Sacred Lessons Media, and.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
The Prince Group.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
For more of your favorite shows, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
All right, all right, that was Mike, Dela Rocha and
me on Sacred Lessons. Please go subscribe to rate and review,
follow whatever the new verbs are with podcasting, do that
to his show. He's doing some sacred work and I'm
gonna just offer quick follow ups reminders. The book that

(01:13:22):
we keep circling is American Indigenous Democracy, a call for Interdependence.
I was invited to write the forward. I am humbled
by that and a bit overwhelmed by it. Please find
that book at American Indigenous Democracy dot com and please
join me and Valerie and a bunch of like minded,

(01:13:43):
beautiful people on Tuesday, June ninth for declaring interdependence. Link
is in the show notes. I'd love to see and
feel you there now. Next up in this feed, I'm
gonna give you a little preview John Alexander. He's the homie.
We've done a lot of collaborating together, including a year
ago with a series of how to citizens' stories. He

(01:14:06):
is going to be taken to Ted's Democracy stage in Philadelphia,
and I've got a special treat to try to lift
him into that event from his podcast how to Save Democracy.
So stay tuned. We're going to try to keep this
feed a little more active, and I will bring you
the good news and good words from wherever I can,

(01:14:28):
even if it's not in a strictly original sit down
in a studio podcast conversation. Peace literally

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