May 23, 2024 • 41 mins
This episode wanders through the intriguing world of innovation's 'fuzzy dust' and the our age's 'okay-ness deficit.' It delves into the compelling tale of Master Wilburn Burchette, whose transition from a musician to a psychic unfolds amidst his homemade guitars. As we reflect on "the internet" and it's contentious role in society, discussions pivot to 'out of the ooze' moments of digital withdrawal and the profound 'digital abyss,' prompting a reevaluation of our online habits and their effects on genuine human connections.
You can find a.m. on Instagram and TikTok at @absurdwisdom. We are produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE (@dae.community on Instagram and online at mydae.org).
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.
You can contact us at daepresents@mydae.org.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ben (01:44):
You know, I, I occasionally collect.
Little pebbles come across mypath and I put them in my pocket
for these conversations becauseI know, I know you're good for
it, basically yeah, I was I wasreading an article about Master
Wilburn Burchett, which I don'tknow if that's a name either of
you have ever heard.
a.m. (02:05):
I mean, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a dude to hang
out and have a, have a, have
Ben (02:10):
a
a.m. (02:10):
stout with, you know.
Ben (02:11):
And he's, he's a relatively, relatively reclusive
person.
Musician who recordedprolifically in the 70s, you
know, like seven albums,something like that, and he
built his own guitars and playedon his own instruments and his.
Music had a overlap with somesense of spirituality and the
(02:32):
occult.
His albums were titled likeguitar, grimoire and music for
transcendental meditation.
And I wouldn't really recommendit for any kind of meditation.
You know, it sounds sort of likewater dropping from the inside
of a cave overlaid with Horrormovie soundtrack, it's it's
(03:07):
stimulating.
And in any case, he dropped offthe face of the earth and became
a, a psychic after that andstopped making music
a.m. (03:14):
as one does,
Ben (03:15):
as one does.
a.m. (03:16):
I'm just looking up as you talk a, he died recently and B
he, he missed his calling as aOrson Wells impersonator.
Ben (03:22):
Yeah, he, he has the look for sure.
And maybe, maybe the volatility.
Oh, wow.
And someone tracked him down andactually did an interview.
He didn't really want to talkabout his music for a long time.
And he was talking about hisyears as a, as a psychic medium
and all the things that hepredicted, he claimed that the
predicted the fall of the Sovietunion and some other events, and
(03:44):
he says, the one thing that hedidn't predict was the internet.
He never saw it coming and hiscriticism of the internet.
And this is, this is sort ofwhat I wanted to tee up was that
it destroys without replacing.
a.m. (04:00):
Interesting.
Ben (04:01):
And my first reaction to that was bullshit.
The internet's constantlycreating, we're creating new
things all the time.
It's like water flows into thevoids and.
But the more I've sat with it,the more I can start seeing
where he's coming from in thatstatement.
I'm really curious what your,you know, first, second and
(04:21):
third reactions are to that.
Cause this is someone who's, Ithink, fairly thoughtful.
a.m. (04:28):
My first reaction to it is something that, that, that, that
sort of been an arc for me.
You know, I, I, I spent thefirst Decade, decade and a half
of my career really pushing inagain, did innovation work,
right?
So pushing in on getting thisconversation about individual,
like our premise was leadershipis an art form, right?
That it's an act, a unique actof self expression by this
person or this group of peopleat this time in this place, et
(04:50):
cetera.
And and so really pushing in on,on the, on the kind of, you
know, Two things.
A, the kind of centrality ofindividual voice and vision or
collective.
But this particular, you know,group as a necessity for making,
right?
Whether that was in, you know,pharmaceutical industry or
painting or, you know what Imean?
Just this really dig in.
And then the second thing wasthe, the, the necessity to
(05:15):
disintermediate.
even things that work well, liketo, you know, bring Shiva energy
to the thing and just fuckingblow it up because that's also
required for it.
And then, you know, so this isgoing to get to the, and then
like in the early two thousands,like professionally, I can
pinpoint not that this causedit, but like, like, like if I
had to place a flag, it would bea theory.
(05:35):
You Otto Scharmer, Betty SueFlowers, and that crew released
this thing, Theory U.
And that like the decadefollowing that is this tidal
wave of practitioners and selfhelp books and all these things
about individual and, you know,individual voice and individual
in parallel with the internetand social media and, and, and
pushing you, your perspective,your idea, your entrepreneurial
(05:59):
adventure, your, your, your,your, your, your, right.
And pushing them.
Breaks it down.
Break down the old, break down,right?
And so this, that's the firstplace I go to when you, when
you, when you I'm forgetting hisname already.
I just couldn't see his facenow.
That, that face is not going toleave me.
It's such a compelling, he's gotsuch a compelling look and
energy.
What was his name?
It's a Master Wilburn Bruchette.
Master Wilburn Bruchette.
What's, what did, did, did hismother name him master?
(06:20):
Or is that something he justgave himself later?
Cause I love it.
I'm going to go ahead and assumethat he, he gave himself that
title.
Yes.
I love it.
That's the first place I went tois that I kind of agree that
it's the internet and then allthe things that spawned is this
energy of break it, right?
Break ideas, break institutions,break, break, break, break,
break, break, break.
(06:41):
And then what?
entrepreneur, fuzzy dust, go,you know?
And so that, that's where I,that's my first reaction.
When, when, when I hear, when Ihear that I, I, I kind of feel
like in, you know, in a, in a,in a, in a, in an important way,
it's kind of accurate.
It, it's encouraged us to, youknow, to break everything
because we get access tosnippets of reasons why, like
(07:02):
there's no thing that in and ofitself is perfected, right?
And so now with access to morestuff, we see, oh, well this is
why this doesn't work and thisis why that doesn't work.
So that's the first place to go.
I'll pause there.
Ben (07:11):
Yeah.
And I, I had a thoughtyesterday, I was in New York and
this is the first time that I'vereally been struck by this and
I'm going to try to formulatethis thought without it just
seeming like, you know, grumpyguy yells at cloud.
But it was on the subway.
a.m. (07:25):
That's my corner.
Yeah.
Ben (07:26):
I'll let you take that stance.
And, and I mean, truly, Someoutrageous percentage of people
waiting for a train, for the 4train down from Grand Central,
were staring at their phones.
On the platform On the train andyeah, I've been to New York a
lot over the last five years,even more in the last 10 years.
(07:47):
And I'd never really been hit bythis before.
Maybe there was some criticalmass where it flipped over from
70 percent to something thatfelt overwhelming, but truly no
one was interacting.
And everybody was in their ownindividual space, which I get
it.
It's a survival mechanism in acity, but you're, you're
(08:09):
surrounded by humanity.
And yet you're stripping everypossibility of connecting with
anyone, even in the small waysthat you can.
That are meaningless, you know,the first thing I feel like that
got taken away was Used to beable to see what someone was
reading on the subway by lookingat the cover of their book Yeah,
(08:29):
and there's tiny littleconnections.
It's like I've read that.
Oh, it looks interesting andthen it got switched to Kindles
and then switched to phones andNow we kind of have our own
worlds that we carry around withus and you know, we're
constantly lamenting You Ourrelationship with phones, but
what we did with the internet iswe created something so
(08:51):
addictive, so all consuming thatfor me, what I feel like it's
actually destroyed is ourrelationships with, with each
other, like healthy, normalhuman relationships in the sense
that we are not leavingourselves open.
We're closing those doors.
We're creating a safe spacethat's isolated.
(09:11):
We've kind of, you know, drawnthat circle and says, don't,
don't cross this, this border.
This is the world I've createdfor myself.
It lives in my phone.
I'm connected to other humansthrough the internet, and I'm
not open to new experience.
a.m. (09:25):
What's hitting me, Ben, I have not thought of it this way,
what's hitting me in what youjust said is You know, the, the
early language around it and thelanguage still today is digital
highway, right?
It implies it's a means togetting somewhere, but actually
what we've created isdestination.
It's a place to be not a vehicleto get somewhere.
Ben (09:39):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It, you know, it suddenly feelslike, I don't know when the last
time you saw the Pixar film WALLE, but there's a cruise ship.
On Wally and everybody has bigrecliner chairs with a screen
and kind of a big gulp, you knowAnd they just they they don't
have to Interact with any of theother passengers because they're
(10:00):
just going around on theirlittle island And it really
bummed me out, man I, I see amarket opportunity for get your
exercise in all you.
But, you know, I, I just, Iwonder what the trickle down
effects of that are going to bethat, that persistent lack of,
of connection and who knowswhether that's a like pandemic
hangover or if it's acombination of technology and,
(10:25):
and this little inflection pointin culture.
But yeah, I, I'm suddenly seeingwhat the world looks like.
10 years out and it doesn'treally follow in a direction
that I'm enthusiastic about.
But on the flip side, we've nowput ourselves in such a, such a
confined space with ourrelationship with, yeah, I'm
(10:47):
going to say the internet, butthere's devices involved,
there's lots of components to itthat.
I don't know if you've noticedthis and I find myself actually
feeling this way on occasion.
And as how I know, I need toreally pull myself back out out
of the ooze is you get a littledopamine hit, not from
interacting with the technology,but from ignoring it.
(11:08):
If there's a time where I feelmyself reaching for my cell
phone to pull it out and insteadI make a conscious choice.
To leave it there, to set itdown.
I actually get a rush, like aphysical rush.
I can feel it coursing throughmy body of, Hey, I did a thing.
I ignored it.
(11:28):
And you feel suddenly liberatedor empowered because of that
moment where you, you overrodeyour kind of default connection
to this thing.
And suddenly you look up and thespace around you is a little
brighter.
You can see the paint in thewalls.
You can see the light comingthrough the windows.
And it's, that's actually thething that kind of gives me
(11:50):
hope.
It feels like the way out, thatsuddenly we're gonna find more
joy in the escape from theaddiction than we find in the
addiction itself.
a.m. (12:00):
Do think that that's true at scale?
Ben (12:02):
It might require generational change in order to
become true.
And I don't know if it's goingto happen with Gen Z.
Yeah, I was, I was talking to acolleague who has a 19 year old
and you know, we're, We're bothfilm buffs and for me watching
watching a movie is like youwant to put everything away.
(12:23):
It's an escape It's a time toreally focus and become absorbed
and he says this 19 year oldwatches things with his phone as
a companion It kind of is withhim through the journey of
watching a movie Which meansthat it's actually a shared
experience not between him andthe film but between him the
film the context his phoneprovides, the information he can
(12:44):
look up instantly, the opinionsof his friends.
And that's a completelydifferent way of consuming that
than sitting in a dark theateralone as an escape from, you
know, everyday life or just asan immerse, immersive
experience.
And so I, I have to feel likewhatever comes after that
generation has that connectionto that device is going to be a
(13:06):
whiplash.
a.m. (13:07):
Well, it, it, it may be actually I didn't watch it, but
I caught the highlights.
You saw the keynote OpenAI's
Ben (13:12):
I drove, drove back from New York city last night and had
a conversation with it.
So
a.m. (13:17):
now, now four, Oh, it may sort of, sort of negate the need
to interact with technology andobviously the phone gets, we've
already got the humane deviceand a couple of other devices
are like wearable.
in essence, right.
AI devices.
Right.
And so if you get a thing downsmall enough, maybe it's in my
watch and you know, and it's allvoice engaged that may, sort of
(13:40):
negate the desire to be lost inyour phone.
But are you actually no longerlost in your phone?
Right.
Ben (13:46):
Yeah, maybe.
I mean, you know, this is goingto come across as the peak of
irony as someone who's yammeringaway on a recorded podcast.
But one of my ongoing dailygoals in life is to just shut
the fuck up.
a.m. (14:00):
Yeah.
Ben (14:01):
You know, just stop talking And I, you know, anything that I
can encourage is that maybeit's, it has its time and place,
but it's not, it's not myprimary goal.
a.m. (14:10):
Yep.
Yeah.
I, I I, I am really finding acertain level of one of the
things that's.
Current for me is, is, isrealization of a certain kind of
exhaustion.
Both, like it's, it's beenliterally since my 20s since
I've led a, A system whoseintention was to grow, right?
Because of the need here, likewe gotta grow because the need
is like, you know, not becausethere's any desire to grow.
(14:31):
Sadly, there's a need to grow.
But also because of what I'vesaid, you know, endless times,
like I spent my careerconsciously loving being one of
the men behind the curtains,right?
Like advisor work, you don'thave to.
And this is a lot of publicspeaking, a lot, just more out
than this.
And Yeah, this is what you'resaying is just so present for
you said it much more succinctlyas his desire to just shut the
fuck up to just sit.
We were recording with Kyley andSam a couple episodes ago.
(14:55):
And you know, we're, we'retalking about this about just,
you know, the glory of a, of aSaturday afternoon after the
market, I cook a little and thenI just sit on the couch.
There's no TV.
There's no music.
Maybe there's a cup of tea.
What are you doing?
I'm sitting here.
Are you planning something?
No, I'm sitting here.
I'm not meditating.
I'm not, I'm just here, makingno noise, listening to no noise.
(15:19):
Yeah.
And so this, this, this wearableAI, whatever winds up being
right, it doesn't, it doesn't,it doesn't negate that.
It just gives you a morestreamlined, seamless object
free way to still engage withall the noise.
Ben (15:32):
Yeah.
I mean, it has the benefit ofdoing an endless amount of
instantaneous, silentprocessing, but human beings
can't do that.
And so what it's encouraging usto do potentially is not
actually process our thoughts,but instead speak them
instantaneously without sittingwith them.
(15:53):
And you know, that's that's animportant thing to be able to do
is to sit with it and listen toit.
I guess to tie this notion ofattention time into yet another
Piece of content.
I hate that word content.
It's it's like thing, you know,it's like when you Yeah, man I'm
gonna i'm brainwashed to use itbut a film I watched a movie
(16:14):
called Wavelength by directorMike Snow.
He's an experimental filmmakerand This was done in 1967 and
effectively it's a fixed cameraup in the corner of what looks
like a large loft apartment in acity somewhere.
And you realize it's a slowlyzooming in and it is about a 45
(16:35):
minute long movie it starts witha snippet of Strawberry Fields
Forever played over a radio It'skind of barely distinguishable
and then stops quickly and asit's zooming There's flashes of
daytime nighttime yellow blueKind of edited in a way where
you feel there's a human behindit And throughout the course it
(16:58):
zooms in slowly and you don'tknow where it's going You don't
know what the focal point is orwhere the destination is And
eventually you go from seeingthe interior of the room to the
light and the focus slowlychanges and you can see out the
windows.
You can see the buildings acrossthe street.
You can see that there's thisexteriority to it, but the zoom
(17:19):
is relentless, right?
It moves forward always at alltimes.
And eventually a kind of highpitched drone starts, and if
you're, if you're a don't touchthat remote kind of viewer, it
becomes loud and irritating andreally rattles you.
And eventually you realize it'spicking a focus of, well, I'm
(17:40):
not going to spoil it because,you know, people, listeners can
watch.
But something In the distanceand it really kind of sucks you
in and one of the the beautiesof Anything that really is
trying to play with yourattention like this is it
completely adjusts your notionof time?
You are you become captive tothat?
(18:02):
To its concept of how the clockticks forward.
You know, there's, there's lotsof movies that do this and songs
that do this.
I mean, art does just does thisin general to us.
It creates an alternative senseof time and given the pace of
modern life.
Often, and I think the specialones, are slower.
(18:24):
They're not accelerating.
They're really hitting thebrakes.
And this does that in a dramaticway.
And if you give it yourattention, where you're not
pulling out your phone, you'renot looking around, you're not
taking a bathroom break, youjust absorb it for 45 minutes,
It creates almost an alteredstate of consciousness.
I mean, really you finish thisand you wonder like you have to
(18:47):
blink and figure out where youare at the end.
And that's, that's really,really special.
And what I'd love to see fromthe internet, the things we
create, the things we build,instead of trying to accelerate,
to try to play with time.
In that same manner to findthings that are creating these
(19:08):
distortions, that stretchinstead of compress.
And that's, that's I think,different than saying we all
have to slow down.
Right, right, right, right,right.
I mean, really actually playingwith our concept of time and our
perception of it.
a.m. (19:21):
Interesting.
I, I'm not sure what, what I,what, what I want to add to
that.
I mean, it's, it's, it's areally interesting notion.
I, I, where my, you know.
Where my thinking immediatelywent to is, is the impossibility
of what you're saying at scale,right?
I think, I think, and, and, youknow you and I both live lives,
despite the fact that you'reworking on big global issues I
think we both live lives thatare like, very localized and
(19:44):
not, you know, not, you know,Well, unconcerned, but not in,
in, in the sense of apathy, butunconcerned with, you know, the
world in the sense of impacting,right?
Ben (19:53):
The world will come and go.
a.m. (19:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Exactly.
Exactly.
It's interesting.
I, I am we had a great year atDAE and we had Relatively
invisible to the world, and evento the most of the students, I
think.
We had a lot of really bigmistakes in hindsight.
And one of them was not playingenough.
(20:15):
Behind the, you know, the thingbecause again, there's such an
urgency and such a request from,from the world for us to kind of
expand that we were trying tofigure out how to systematize
some things and bring just more,you know, management rigor to
the backroom thing.
And so, so we need to get into alot less of that.
That's context for what Iactually want to say is I've
been talking to Kyley a lotabout how next year and we've
(20:36):
already got some things in play.
Really, really, really goingback to loosening up and for the
kids, again, not in a way that'svisible to anybody other than me
who's like got, you know, andKyley who's got like such a long
term view on this thing Thekinds of experiences and
inquiries that you're pointingto around, you know, stretching
(20:56):
time, right?
Like, like ways to, you know,interventions and, and, and
invitations to stretch time.
We did so much of that in theearly couple of years.
And then this past year was somuch of it became like a luxury.
And I've really been sittingwith, with, you know, how do we
bring in new experiences and newpeople.
I am increasingly concerned, I'malways concerned about are we
(21:17):
doing enough to not just getkids ready for the tech world,
and you know, that stuff'sgreat, we're great at it, you
know it's what the funders andeverybody likes to see in terms
of these crazy projects thesekids, crazy projects this year,
man, really crazy projects thatthese kids are doing.
But you know, that's not myjuice.
It's not why this place is here.
And so I, I, I grow increasinglyconcerned as the world moves,
(21:38):
you know, forward faster andfaster and more and more and
more about are we keeping up onthat side?
And I'm really in an inquiryright now for next year.
Really concerned about for nextyear, concerned in a good way
about, you know, how do we Offermany more kind of provocations
and invitations to the kidsoutside of the tech curriculum.
And, and so I'm just processingwhat you're saying.
I, I, I love the essence of whatyou're saying.
(21:59):
I'm trying to process it in thecontext of, so how do we, how do
we, how do we create invitationsfor students around, you know,
things that have them stretchtime?
Cause they are so pressured, notfrom us, but like in life.
Ben (22:10):
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's not easy.
It's both the age that they'reat and the age that they're
living in.
You know, if I, if I knew whatit looked like, I would have
built it by now, but I thinkthat's part of the, part of the
joy of it.
And it comes back to a term thatyou use, which is play.
You know, you can, we think ofplay, I think in the sense of
frivolousness, like I'm going toplay with this thing, like I'm
(22:32):
going to futz with it.
I'm going to tinker with it, butit's not that play should be a
sense of.
really active discovery andtrying things that are risky.
Like play should be risky ifplays structured and safe, it's
not really play.
Right.
And if you have, if you have thenervous parents standing over
(22:52):
you saying, well, if you don'tlearn this skill, you're not
going to pass an interview oryou have to, you know, talk
about the order of complexity ofa bubble sort.
And so you got to learn this.
You got to, you know, set thataside.
That information is there and isthere to everybody.
And so the question is for youand your students, like, how do
you come out of this experiencewith something that's unique and
(23:16):
that can't be learned elsewhere?
That's not part of anothertrajectory that they're going to
intersect with.
You can always, you can alwaysturn into that lane.
Of knowledge acquisition andskill building in a really
structured way like that'sthat's there Right.
So what's outside that you youcan't otherwise learn And then
(23:37):
how do you create the space?
Where you kind of hold court andsome people get it and some
people don't and as aninstitution You're okay with the
fact that some people aren'tgoing to receive that And that's
all right, because you knowwhat, they've got all this other
stuff and there's still usefulskills being acquired here, but
(23:58):
then some people are going tohave an experience that they
never even knew existed becausethey discovered that sense of
play.
They took that risk.
Something got on unlocked inthem.
I had a trip to Nashvillerecently and I got out and for
one evening got to see somemusic and came home and was
watching an interview with aguitarist that I, I got to see.
(24:20):
And I was talking about practiceand how he became so virtuosic
and he said, well, you do it,you just do it.
And sometimes it's sort of likethese little morsels that come
to you and you kind of, you,you.
Come to understand the intervalat which those morsels are
delivered, and you understandthat there's gonna be gaps
(24:42):
between them.
Sometimes you come up dry, youpractice for two hours, nothing.
Nothing.
And then, oh, okay, I got alittle bite, and that bite's
enough to keep you going.
And then, completely bysurprise, you get, you get the
whole pie, all at once.
And you never know when that'sgoing to come down, you don't
see it coming, but you, youparticipate in the activity
(25:07):
because you know of thepotential of getting that whole
pie.
And I love the way that he wasdescribing it because he's also
doing it with a deep Nashvilletwang that I can't emulate and
won't for, for fear of insultinganyone.
But boy, I mean, that, that tome is an experience that I think
translates well outside therealm of practicing anything or
(25:29):
music.
It's just, it's universal.
a.m. (25:31):
Yeah, The word I'd add to the, you know, to to the
conversation there is discovery,right?
Like what you're pointing tothen leads to actual discovery
as opposed to getting to thepredefined destination or even
getting to the, you know,predefined broad territory.
I don't know what thedestination is, but the
territory, right?
And even that is not, you know,not, not where the, where the,
where the big opportunities are,where the big juice is, where,
(25:51):
where human beings can reallycome alive.
It is through the kind of playyou're talking about, just, just
a discovery, the thing that youcould not possibly have
predicted, known, et cetera, inadvance.
You allow it to find you, youknow, you don't go looking for
it, but you create theconditions in which you allow it
to find you.
And then all of a sudden you getthis download of this whole
thing.
Holy shit.
Look at this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(26:11):
Yeah, this, this, and, and thishas obviously been like a career
long thing for me, right?
This, this issues of art andplay and, and, you know.
There is this sort of binaryunderstanding of, of either it's
kind of frivolity, it's, it's,you know, this inconsequential
thing, it's, you know, the thingyou do on the side, or even,
even when, you know, peoplerevere it, it's still, you know,
(26:31):
Divorced from humanity for me.
It's like, Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That's that's what you do whenyou cultivated yourself Or
that's what you that's what acivilization does once it
achieves economic, right?
and all of that like it's To me,it's fun what you're talking
about with play the way you talkabout play discovery what I
would consider art It is centralto being human.
It is actually one of the thingsthat is absolutely central to be
(26:52):
human Economic transactions arenot central to being human But,
you know, but I think this thingthat we call art, that I call
art which is not, you know, theout of the artifact, the thing,
this thing of play, this thingof, you know but that is
actually a big part of ournatural state is to discover,
you know, and to be discoveredin this act of really rigorous
engagement with the thing.
Ben (27:13):
I do wonder sometimes if, if calibrating.
The amount of these types ofexperiences in our lives is a
little akin to having a balanceddiet of actual food.
You know, every once in a whileI'll go a long period and I
realize, I'm probably justterribly iron deficient right
now.
Yeah.
And you don't really realize ituntil it's a problem.
(27:35):
And you can kind of, you know,recalibrate if you're paying
attention.
But sometimes you just go like,why don't I feel like shit?
I'm tired all the time, youknow, and suddenly go, I'm like
lacking this really essentialvitamin and, and there's
definitely this balance toexperience where if you approach
everything in a structured waywith no play, with no discovery,
(27:57):
You're nutrient deficient andyou know, you're probably acting
in ways that are not ideal foryou, the people around you.
Suddenly you get that nutrientand everything, everything slots
in.
It feels clearer and brighter.
And if it is, you're really,it's, I mean, there's no test
for that, right?
How do you, how do you wake upand go, Oh, I need like 10
(28:18):
percent more play today.
If you're even looking at itlike that, it's probably the
wrong way to hold it.
So,
a.m. (28:24):
yeah.
It's actually worse than, than,than the way you framed it Ben,
because we're going back to the,the, the master's observation
about the internet just breakingthings and, and not replacing
them.
If you find yourself in asociety that's constantly
feeding you, Things to consumethat iron deficiency before you
can even get to discovery of it.
(28:45):
You're going to have anunderstanding of symptoms.
I'm tired.
I'm groggy.
Cool.
Coffee, sugar.
This hack, that hack, thisright.
And I'm never even going todiscover what the actual
deficiency is.
I'm going to do a variety ofthings to treat the symptoms
that have me feel like, yeah, Ifixed it.
Right.
Because I'm just being bombardedwith, and then in, you know, An
(29:05):
hour, a week, a month, a year,when that thing no longer works
because my body's adjusted andnow I'm even in a more iron
depleted state and I feel evenworse, it's okay.
The internet's going to bring mea thousand new miracle sort of
remedies for my symptoms, right?
So it's even worse.
It's even worse than, than thekind of lack of plain discovery.
There's a an emphasis on whatare the symptoms of, and then
(29:28):
what can you do about thosesymptoms?
I
Ben (29:29):
have to believe in the purity of the medium, though.
You know, I think it's, it comesto our use of it, and the way
that we've defined it, and thesystems that we've built that
make it easier to go in acertain direction than another
one.
But the idea of the internetisn't something that I would
rail against in a vacuum.
(29:51):
Obviously, I've dedicated mylife to trying to find, you
know, meaningful ways to affectsociety and affect change
through that.
And I, I don't think I've nailedit or even really gotten close
yet.
But if I didn't think that therewas promise in the medium.
I wouldn't even be doing it Andso that's, that's kind of the
question is like, how do youtake this, this thing, this
(30:12):
river and, and say like, well,you know, we built boats, but
I'm not really sure that boatsare kind of the right way to, to
interact with this.
Maybe we should just be waitingin it.
And, and what does that actuallylook like now?
That's really, there may be asense of necessary destruction.
Where you actually don't blamethe internet for destroying more
(30:34):
than it creates, but you say,you know what, actually, we need
to destroy a lot of the systemswe've built that, you know,
created this scaffolding we'renow standing on and get back to
just standing in the damn water,get our feet wet for a little
bit and then figure out where togo next and without the hubris
of assuming that, well, thistime we're going to get it
right.
Like maybe you bake in the ideaof.
(30:56):
Every once in a while we need torecalibrate this thing.
a.m. (30:59):
Well to to extend your your metaphor into perhaps a
silly place but to you knowBring it back to my curve
ongoing theme
Ben (31:06):
silly is not allowed here.
We don't do silly
a.m. (31:08):
Perhaps what's needed is an acknowledgement that We have
gotten to a place collectivelyto be affluent enough to give
everybody their own pair of damnwaders So they don't have to
worry about getting wet And nowwe can let them all go play
around in the water and some ofthem may in fact wind up with
boats and some may not and someright, but it is again for me,
the central sort of blindnessin, in, in, in the world is we
(31:30):
made it like we made it, youknow, 200, 000 years we fucking
made it.
Nobody knows what to do withthemselves, you know after
making it.
You know and and collectively wemade it and we're just not we're
just like dysfunctional becausewe're still we're we're We're
playing a game that was criticalWhen there wasn't enough There's
enough now.
We know how to have enough.
(31:51):
We don't know what the fuck todo with ourselves to me That is
essential if we could figurethat one out Everything else
falls into place.
Ben (31:57):
Oh, there's certainly enough.
We might we may still have adistribution problem.
Yeah Fair to go, right?
a.m. (32:02):
That's my point.
We haven't acknowledged thatYeah.
And so we still keep hoardingand we still keep, you know,
ussing othering all that.
I only worry about other and thedanger of other when I think I'm
unsafe.
When I'm, you know, kind ofwhispered in my ear that, that
what I have is going to go awayand what I like as opposed to,
and, and, and that I becomeseven worse when what's whispered
(32:26):
in my other ear is, yeah, butwhat if you had two cars?
Yeah, but what if you had a.
Electric Tesla, pickup truck,and what if you can go to Tahiti
and what, right?
And so I get these two voiceswhispering in my ear constantly,
and then it keeps us in a, in a,in a, you know, pre industrial
state psychologically aroundfear for survival, as opposed to
(32:46):
whispering on the ears, dude, wemade it.
We just got to get everybodywaders and we know how to do
that.
And then whispering my other eararound, you don't need seven
pair of waders.
What you need is to like feelthe grass under your feet.
What you need is to spend timeworking on that relationship
with your son.
What you need, like these arethe things you need.
(33:06):
Not, you know, the pickup truckor the whatever, right?
To me that, that, I mean, maybeit's idealistic, maybe it's
whatever, but that to me is thecentral ill of, of, of the era
that I got to live in, which isthat, was that, you know,
collectively we have enough andnobody realizes it, and so we're
all still kind of clawing atthings, and some are better than
others at clawing.
And some have amounted, haveamassed so much, it makes it
(33:29):
easier for them to claw more.
And it just feels like a, such asilly game.
It's, it's, it's like playingMonopoly and the game is over
and people are still grabbingat, at, at, at greenhouses.
They're like, dude, the game's,what are you, you know?
Let's, let's, let's have cakenow.
How do you know what I mean?
Ben (33:45):
I guess the question, the following question, I don't
really know if this is a genuineconcern or just a hypothetical,
but either way I'll oppose it isonce you have enough and you
say, all right, well, we'regoing to, we're going to now
divide this up a thousand ways.
How do you avoid being, youknow, I guess I, I think of the
song, right?
Little boxes on the hillside,little boxes made of tiki tac.
(34:07):
It's how do you prevent thatcookie cutter approach of
everyone having enough whereenough is defined as the same.
That's that's an interestinginflection.
I think
a.m. (34:16):
yeah, so for me the enough thing isn't about a sort of
quantified Like okay, everyone'sgoing to get 1.
2, you know cars on everywhatever, you know This amount
of salary that and it's up.
This is psychological enough,right?
The work is on psychologicalsense of enough Yeah, and then
I've consistently found thathealthy people like people who
are content with themselves likelegitimately comfortable in
(34:39):
their skin.
They might have a, you know,like predisposition for really
appreciating wine and they'regoing to spend the money on the
wine, but they're not going togo chasing 17 other things that
they have no connection to, butthat somehow is just filling a
hole.
They're going to find the thingthat's actually natural
expression for them.
And yeah, they may wellaccumulate more of that thing
than anything else.
(35:00):
But they're not going to be inthis blind sort of just chase,
right?
That's more for me.
What I'm pointing to aroundenough, the individual sense of
it's cool.
I I'm okay.
When I tell the kids day onehere, I'm oh, you're okay.
That's what I'm talking about.
We're not enough.
No, absolutely.
It won't work.
90 hours building an app.
Go for it, man.
That's great.
But come from a place of, I'malready okay.
(35:20):
That's the yield that I'mpointing to.
Nobody feels like they're okay.
Nobody feels comfortable intheir skin.
Other than those who are playingthe just as bad game of I'm
okay.
You know,
Ben (35:33):
I've learned firsthand you can't, you can't build your way
to, okay.
You can't code your way to okay.
You can't, you can't do itthrough credentials or, you
know, it's just, it's not goingto happen.
That's an endless chase, right?
a.m. (35:47):
But that's the society.
Yeah.
That's what we tell kids to telladults.
Okay.
You have to degree your way tookay, you have to job your way
to okay, you have to house yourway to okay, you have to
prestige your way to okay, youhave to, it's all these things,
right?
And that's exactly what I'mtelling you.
If you can have folks be okay,then they're not chasing for the
sake of chasing.
And again, if you may well havea legitimate, whether it's
(36:08):
biological, whatever it is.
Passion for some, you know,expensive thing that you're
actually going to engage withthe, you know, the master and
his, I'm going to keep justcalling him the master.
Like I would imagine he probablyspent a lot of money on those
guitars and the equipment andall that.
Right.
But that's like in the path ofwhat his expression is.
Great.
He doesn't have to have the sameamount as everyone else.
Right.
That cookie cutter kind ofthing.
(36:29):
It's just authentic.
Ben (36:31):
Is that the the grading system at DAE every day?
You say, are you okay?
a.m. (36:35):
Every day when they come in and, and again, we, we, so we
talked to faculty about thisbecause it could get rote, but
there's a huddle and in thehuddle is who wants to check in
who, and the graduates are kindof, who are you today?
And then it's blockers who'sexperiencing blockers.
I didn't get enough sleep lastnight.
I did like all the ways, likejust to get out there that this
(36:57):
is just who I am today.
And then the kind of thing inthe culture is cool.
That's okay.
All right.
So every single day starts withthat.
And sometimes you can just getmechanical and we got to then
bring faculty back together andsay, Hey, okay, folks, this, we
just did a checklist of, of, ofhuddle.
No good.
What's going on?
And usually it's an indicator ofwhat we do for ourselves.
(37:19):
Right.
But we sort of fall into, andthis is part of what happened
this year.
There'll be a pick.
Anybody else is we got a littletoo mechanical and stuff, some
stuff like this for, for ahandful of reasons ultimately
all my responsibility becauseI'm responsible for the place.
But we got to mechanical and towhatever, but, but yes, that is
how we start the days.
Ben (37:38):
I mean, that, that's getting to something, I think
pretty interesting, which is theidea of.
Bringing your whole self tosomething that you're engaged in
and letting you can take thatand Attach that to anything but
in particular in professionalenvironments.
I think for a long time it wasseen as keeping a professional
distance was the thing you weresupposed to do, right?
(37:58):
That was responsible sayingdon't don't get to know your
employees too Well, cuz one dayyou might have to fire them.
Well, I I think it's started toturn over and maybe I just feel
this way because this is how Ifeel and I think it encourages
the people around me to do thesame is you bring your whole
self to whatever you're doingbecause I don't want to leave
who I am at the door for Sixseven eight ten hours a day It
(38:24):
doesn't make sense to livewithout yourself for that long
And if you bring your whole selfother people can acknowledge it
and suddenly there's context toit for all sorts of behaviors,
thoughts, goals, you know, itjust makes more sense.
Otherwise, you're just like,you're talking to this weird,
like stripped facsimile of aperson that has, you have no
(38:44):
idea what's actually going on intheir lives.
a.m. (38:46):
And, and the, and the paradoxical then balance becomes
like with the kids, right?
I'll just use cool.
That's who you are today.
And.
This shit's got to get done onyour project because you said
this is what the next stage is,right?
And so now it becomes not like,Oh, okay, you've had this
happen.
So let's just, you know, we'regoing to eat Cheetos and lay on
the couch.
It becomes in the context of whoyou are today.
(39:07):
What's the best way to approachthis, right?
And it may be slowing downprogress and picking it up
later, but, but it's not justignore it.
If that becomes the dynamicthing around the education
process is cool.
So who you are today working onthis project, what gets done on
the project, as opposed to theproject is what it is and who I
am doesn't matter, right?
(39:27):
The kids, the reason we do itevery day is it's not that cool.
You're okay today.
We never have to check in again.
Every single day.
fucking day, you are somebodydifferent.
And in the workplace, we don'thave the the usual sort of
excuses for it are reasons,rationales, really intelligent
rationales.
We don't have the resources andthe capabilities to do this kind
(39:47):
of practice every day at scale.
We open ourselves up to legalliabilities if we ask too many
personal questions about peoplein the world with all this
nonsense, right.
That is in part real, but it'snot, you know, organization
suffers from the sameenoughness, blindness as a
society and individuals as awhole do.
Like we don't have enough time.
We don't have enough resources.
Of course you do.
(40:08):
In fact, to go back to yourthing you raised previously, if
you engage in certain regularpractices, you'll make time.
You'll actually stretch time ifyou shift the way you engage
with human beings in theworkplace.
Right?
kind of notion of practices,because everything you were
speaking about previously to meis, is about having long term
practices that then yield these,you know, the discovery that
(40:29):
yield, you know, all, all ofthese things we seem to be
looking for.
But there's no sort of habitualway to get there.
You know, habit and practice arevery, very separate.
I'm not sure how I got on thisthread from what you said, but,
but, but, but I'm, I'm way downit
You know, I, I occasionally collect.
Little pebbles come across mypath and I put them in my pocket
for these conversations becauseI know, I know you're good for
it, basically yeah, I was I wasreading an article about Master
Wilburn Burchett, which I don'tknow if that's a name either of
you have ever heard.
a.m. (02:05):
I mean, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a dude to hang
out and have a, have a, have
Ben (02:10):
a
a.m. (02:10):
stout with, you know.
Ben (02:11):
And he's, he's a relatively, relatively reclusive
person.
Musician who recordedprolifically in the 70s, you
know, like seven albums,something like that, and he
built his own guitars and playedon his own instruments and his.
Music had a overlap with somesense of spirituality and the
(02:32):
occult.
His albums were titled likeguitar, grimoire and music for
transcendental meditation.
And I wouldn't really recommendit for any kind of meditation.
You know, it sounds sort of likewater dropping from the inside
of a cave overlaid with Horrormovie soundtrack, it's it's
(03:07):
stimulating.
And in any case, he dropped offthe face of the earth and became
a, a psychic after that andstopped making music
a.m. (03:14):
as one does,
Ben (03:15):
as one does.
a.m. (03:16):
I'm just looking up as you talk a, he died recently and B
he, he missed his calling as aOrson Wells impersonator.
Ben (03:22):
Yeah, he, he has the look for sure.
And maybe, maybe the volatility.
Oh, wow.
And someone tracked him down andactually did an interview.
He didn't really want to talkabout his music for a long time.
And he was talking about hisyears as a, as a psychic medium
and all the things that hepredicted, he claimed that the
predicted the fall of the Sovietunion and some other events, and
(03:44):
he says, the one thing that hedidn't predict was the internet.
He never saw it coming and hiscriticism of the internet.
And this is, this is sort ofwhat I wanted to tee up was that
it destroys without replacing.
a.m. (04:00):
Interesting.
Ben (04:01):
And my first reaction to that was bullshit.
The internet's constantlycreating, we're creating new
things all the time.
It's like water flows into thevoids and.
But the more I've sat with it,the more I can start seeing
where he's coming from in thatstatement.
I'm really curious what your,you know, first, second and
(04:21):
third reactions are to that.
Cause this is someone who's, Ithink, fairly thoughtful.
a.m. (04:28):
My first reaction to it is something that, that, that, that
sort of been an arc for me.
You know, I, I, I spent thefirst Decade, decade and a half
of my career really pushing inagain, did innovation work,
right?
So pushing in on getting thisconversation about individual,
like our premise was leadershipis an art form, right?
That it's an act, a unique actof self expression by this
person or this group of peopleat this time in this place, et
(04:50):
cetera.
And and so really pushing in on,on the, on the kind of, you
know, Two things.
A, the kind of centrality ofindividual voice and vision or
collective.
But this particular, you know,group as a necessity for making,
right?
Whether that was in, you know,pharmaceutical industry or
painting or, you know what Imean?
Just this really dig in.
And then the second thing wasthe, the, the necessity to
(05:15):
disintermediate.
even things that work well, liketo, you know, bring Shiva energy
to the thing and just fuckingblow it up because that's also
required for it.
And then, you know, so this isgoing to get to the, and then
like in the early two thousands,like professionally, I can
pinpoint not that this causedit, but like, like, like if I
had to place a flag, it would bea theory.
(05:35):
You Otto Scharmer, Betty SueFlowers, and that crew released
this thing, Theory U.
And that like the decadefollowing that is this tidal
wave of practitioners and selfhelp books and all these things
about individual and, you know,individual voice and individual
in parallel with the internetand social media and, and, and
pushing you, your perspective,your idea, your entrepreneurial
(05:59):
adventure, your, your, your,your, your, your, right.
And pushing them.
Breaks it down.
Break down the old, break down,right?
And so this, that's the firstplace I go to when you, when
you, when you I'm forgetting hisname already.
I just couldn't see his facenow.
That, that face is not going toleave me.
It's such a compelling, he's gotsuch a compelling look and
energy.
What was his name?
It's a Master Wilburn Bruchette.
Master Wilburn Bruchette.
What's, what did, did, did hismother name him master?
(06:20):
Or is that something he justgave himself later?
Cause I love it.
I'm going to go ahead and assumethat he, he gave himself that
title.
Yes.
I love it.
That's the first place I went tois that I kind of agree that
it's the internet and then allthe things that spawned is this
energy of break it, right?
Break ideas, break institutions,break, break, break, break,
break, break, break.
(06:41):
And then what?
entrepreneur, fuzzy dust, go,you know?
And so that, that's where I,that's my first reaction.
When, when, when I hear, when Ihear that I, I, I kind of feel
like in, you know, in a, in a,in a, in a, in an important way,
it's kind of accurate.
It, it's encouraged us to, youknow, to break everything
because we get access tosnippets of reasons why, like
(07:02):
there's no thing that in and ofitself is perfected, right?
And so now with access to morestuff, we see, oh, well this is
why this doesn't work and thisis why that doesn't work.
So that's the first place to go.
I'll pause there.
Ben (07:11):
Yeah.
And I, I had a thoughtyesterday, I was in New York and
this is the first time that I'vereally been struck by this and
I'm going to try to formulatethis thought without it just
seeming like, you know, grumpyguy yells at cloud.
But it was on the subway.
a.m. (07:25):
That's my corner.
Yeah.
Ben (07:26):
I'll let you take that stance.
And, and I mean, truly, Someoutrageous percentage of people
waiting for a train, for the 4train down from Grand Central,
were staring at their phones.
On the platform On the train andyeah, I've been to New York a
lot over the last five years,even more in the last 10 years.
(07:47):
And I'd never really been hit bythis before.
Maybe there was some criticalmass where it flipped over from
70 percent to something thatfelt overwhelming, but truly no
one was interacting.
And everybody was in their ownindividual space, which I get
it.
It's a survival mechanism in acity, but you're, you're
(08:09):
surrounded by humanity.
And yet you're stripping everypossibility of connecting with
anyone, even in the small waysthat you can.
That are meaningless, you know,the first thing I feel like that
got taken away was Used to beable to see what someone was
reading on the subway by lookingat the cover of their book Yeah,
(08:29):
and there's tiny littleconnections.
It's like I've read that.
Oh, it looks interesting andthen it got switched to Kindles
and then switched to phones andNow we kind of have our own
worlds that we carry around withus and you know, we're
constantly lamenting You Ourrelationship with phones, but
what we did with the internet iswe created something so
(08:51):
addictive, so all consuming thatfor me, what I feel like it's
actually destroyed is ourrelationships with, with each
other, like healthy, normalhuman relationships in the sense
that we are not leavingourselves open.
We're closing those doors.
We're creating a safe spacethat's isolated.
(09:11):
We've kind of, you know, drawnthat circle and says, don't,
don't cross this, this border.
This is the world I've createdfor myself.
It lives in my phone.
I'm connected to other humansthrough the internet, and I'm
not open to new experience.
a.m. (09:25):
What's hitting me, Ben, I have not thought of it this way,
what's hitting me in what youjust said is You know, the, the
early language around it and thelanguage still today is digital
highway, right?
It implies it's a means togetting somewhere, but actually
what we've created isdestination.
It's a place to be not a vehicleto get somewhere.
Ben (09:39):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It, you know, it suddenly feelslike, I don't know when the last
time you saw the Pixar film WALLE, but there's a cruise ship.
On Wally and everybody has bigrecliner chairs with a screen
and kind of a big gulp, you knowAnd they just they they don't
have to Interact with any of theother passengers because they're
(10:00):
just going around on theirlittle island And it really
bummed me out, man I, I see amarket opportunity for get your
exercise in all you.
But, you know, I, I just, Iwonder what the trickle down
effects of that are going to bethat, that persistent lack of,
of connection and who knowswhether that's a like pandemic
hangover or if it's acombination of technology and,
(10:25):
and this little inflection pointin culture.
But yeah, I, I'm suddenly seeingwhat the world looks like.
10 years out and it doesn'treally follow in a direction
that I'm enthusiastic about.
But on the flip side, we've nowput ourselves in such a, such a
confined space with ourrelationship with, yeah, I'm
(10:47):
going to say the internet, butthere's devices involved,
there's lots of components to itthat.
I don't know if you've noticedthis and I find myself actually
feeling this way on occasion.
And as how I know, I need toreally pull myself back out out
of the ooze is you get a littledopamine hit, not from
interacting with the technology,but from ignoring it.
(11:08):
If there's a time where I feelmyself reaching for my cell
phone to pull it out and insteadI make a conscious choice.
To leave it there, to set itdown.
I actually get a rush, like aphysical rush.
I can feel it coursing throughmy body of, Hey, I did a thing.
I ignored it.
(11:28):
And you feel suddenly liberatedor empowered because of that
moment where you, you overrodeyour kind of default connection
to this thing.
And suddenly you look up and thespace around you is a little
brighter.
You can see the paint in thewalls.
You can see the light comingthrough the windows.
And it's, that's actually thething that kind of gives me
(11:50):
hope.
It feels like the way out, thatsuddenly we're gonna find more
joy in the escape from theaddiction than we find in the
addiction itself.
a.m. (12:00):
Do think that that's true at scale?
Ben (12:02):
It might require generational change in order to
become true.
And I don't know if it's goingto happen with Gen Z.
Yeah, I was, I was talking to acolleague who has a 19 year old
and you know, we're, We're bothfilm buffs and for me watching
watching a movie is like youwant to put everything away.
(12:23):
It's an escape It's a time toreally focus and become absorbed
and he says this 19 year oldwatches things with his phone as
a companion It kind of is withhim through the journey of
watching a movie Which meansthat it's actually a shared
experience not between him andthe film but between him the
film the context his phoneprovides, the information he can
(12:44):
look up instantly, the opinionsof his friends.
And that's a completelydifferent way of consuming that
than sitting in a dark theateralone as an escape from, you
know, everyday life or just asan immerse, immersive
experience.
And so I, I have to feel likewhatever comes after that
generation has that connectionto that device is going to be a
(13:06):
whiplash.
a.m. (13:07):
Well, it, it, it may be actually I didn't watch it, but
I caught the highlights.
You saw the keynote OpenAI's
Ben (13:12):
I drove, drove back from New York city last night and had
a conversation with it.
So
a.m. (13:17):
now, now four, Oh, it may sort of, sort of negate the need
to interact with technology andobviously the phone gets, we've
already got the humane deviceand a couple of other devices
are like wearable.
in essence, right.
AI devices.
Right.
And so if you get a thing downsmall enough, maybe it's in my
watch and you know, and it's allvoice engaged that may, sort of
(13:40):
negate the desire to be lost inyour phone.
But are you actually no longerlost in your phone?
Right.
Ben (13:46):
Yeah, maybe.
I mean, you know, this is goingto come across as the peak of
irony as someone who's yammeringaway on a recorded podcast.
But one of my ongoing dailygoals in life is to just shut
the fuck up.
a.m. (14:00):
Yeah.
Ben (14:01):
You know, just stop talking And I, you know, anything that I
can encourage is that maybeit's, it has its time and place,
but it's not, it's not myprimary goal.
a.m. (14:10):
Yep.
Yeah.
I, I I, I am really finding acertain level of one of the
things that's.
Current for me is, is, isrealization of a certain kind of
exhaustion.
Both, like it's, it's beenliterally since my 20s since
I've led a, A system whoseintention was to grow, right?
Because of the need here, likewe gotta grow because the need
is like, you know, not becausethere's any desire to grow.
(14:31):
Sadly, there's a need to grow.
But also because of what I'vesaid, you know, endless times,
like I spent my careerconsciously loving being one of
the men behind the curtains,right?
Like advisor work, you don'thave to.
And this is a lot of publicspeaking, a lot, just more out
than this.
And Yeah, this is what you'resaying is just so present for
you said it much more succinctlyas his desire to just shut the
fuck up to just sit.
We were recording with Kyley andSam a couple episodes ago.
(14:55):
And you know, we're, we'retalking about this about just,
you know, the glory of a, of aSaturday afternoon after the
market, I cook a little and thenI just sit on the couch.
There's no TV.
There's no music.
Maybe there's a cup of tea.
What are you doing?
I'm sitting here.
Are you planning something?
No, I'm sitting here.
I'm not meditating.
I'm not, I'm just here, makingno noise, listening to no noise.
(15:19):
Yeah.
And so this, this, this wearableAI, whatever winds up being
right, it doesn't, it doesn't,it doesn't negate that.
It just gives you a morestreamlined, seamless object
free way to still engage withall the noise.
Ben (15:32):
Yeah.
I mean, it has the benefit ofdoing an endless amount of
instantaneous, silentprocessing, but human beings
can't do that.
And so what it's encouraging usto do potentially is not
actually process our thoughts,but instead speak them
instantaneously without sittingwith them.
(15:53):
And you know, that's that's animportant thing to be able to do
is to sit with it and listen toit.
I guess to tie this notion ofattention time into yet another
Piece of content.
I hate that word content.
It's it's like thing, you know,it's like when you Yeah, man I'm
gonna i'm brainwashed to use itbut a film I watched a movie
(16:14):
called Wavelength by directorMike Snow.
He's an experimental filmmakerand This was done in 1967 and
effectively it's a fixed cameraup in the corner of what looks
like a large loft apartment in acity somewhere.
And you realize it's a slowlyzooming in and it is about a 45
(16:35):
minute long movie it starts witha snippet of Strawberry Fields
Forever played over a radio It'skind of barely distinguishable
and then stops quickly and asit's zooming There's flashes of
daytime nighttime yellow blueKind of edited in a way where
you feel there's a human behindit And throughout the course it
(16:58):
zooms in slowly and you don'tknow where it's going You don't
know what the focal point is orwhere the destination is And
eventually you go from seeingthe interior of the room to the
light and the focus slowlychanges and you can see out the
windows.
You can see the buildings acrossthe street.
You can see that there's thisexteriority to it, but the zoom
(17:19):
is relentless, right?
It moves forward always at alltimes.
And eventually a kind of highpitched drone starts, and if
you're, if you're a don't touchthat remote kind of viewer, it
becomes loud and irritating andreally rattles you.
And eventually you realize it'spicking a focus of, well, I'm
(17:40):
not going to spoil it because,you know, people, listeners can
watch.
But something In the distanceand it really kind of sucks you
in and one of the the beautiesof Anything that really is
trying to play with yourattention like this is it
completely adjusts your notionof time?
You are you become captive tothat?
(18:02):
To its concept of how the clockticks forward.
You know, there's, there's lotsof movies that do this and songs
that do this.
I mean, art does just does thisin general to us.
It creates an alternative senseof time and given the pace of
modern life.
Often, and I think the specialones, are slower.
(18:24):
They're not accelerating.
They're really hitting thebrakes.
And this does that in a dramaticway.
And if you give it yourattention, where you're not
pulling out your phone, you'renot looking around, you're not
taking a bathroom break, youjust absorb it for 45 minutes,
It creates almost an alteredstate of consciousness.
I mean, really you finish thisand you wonder like you have to
(18:47):
blink and figure out where youare at the end.
And that's, that's really,really special.
And what I'd love to see fromthe internet, the things we
create, the things we build,instead of trying to accelerate,
to try to play with time.
In that same manner to findthings that are creating these
(19:08):
distortions, that stretchinstead of compress.
And that's, that's I think,different than saying we all
have to slow down.
Right, right, right, right,right.
I mean, really actually playingwith our concept of time and our
perception of it.
a.m. (19:21):
Interesting.
I, I'm not sure what, what I,what, what I want to add to
that.
I mean, it's, it's, it's areally interesting notion.
I, I, where my, you know.
Where my thinking immediatelywent to is, is the impossibility
of what you're saying at scale,right?
I think, I think, and, and, youknow you and I both live lives,
despite the fact that you'reworking on big global issues I
think we both live lives thatare like, very localized and
(19:44):
not, you know, not, you know,Well, unconcerned, but not in,
in, in the sense of apathy, butunconcerned with, you know, the
world in the sense of impacting,right?
Ben (19:53):
The world will come and go.
a.m. (19:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Exactly.
Exactly.
It's interesting.
I, I am we had a great year atDAE and we had Relatively
invisible to the world, and evento the most of the students, I
think.
We had a lot of really bigmistakes in hindsight.
And one of them was not playingenough.
(20:15):
Behind the, you know, the thingbecause again, there's such an
urgency and such a request from,from the world for us to kind of
expand that we were trying tofigure out how to systematize
some things and bring just more,you know, management rigor to
the backroom thing.
And so, so we need to get into alot less of that.
That's context for what Iactually want to say is I've
been talking to Kyley a lotabout how next year and we've
(20:36):
already got some things in play.
Really, really, really goingback to loosening up and for the
kids, again, not in a way that'svisible to anybody other than me
who's like got, you know, andKyley who's got like such a long
term view on this thing Thekinds of experiences and
inquiries that you're pointingto around, you know, stretching
(20:56):
time, right?
Like, like ways to, you know,interventions and, and, and
invitations to stretch time.
We did so much of that in theearly couple of years.
And then this past year was somuch of it became like a luxury.
And I've really been sittingwith, with, you know, how do we
bring in new experiences and newpeople.
I am increasingly concerned, I'malways concerned about are we
(21:17):
doing enough to not just getkids ready for the tech world,
and you know, that stuff'sgreat, we're great at it, you
know it's what the funders andeverybody likes to see in terms
of these crazy projects thesekids, crazy projects this year,
man, really crazy projects thatthese kids are doing.
But you know, that's not myjuice.
It's not why this place is here.
And so I, I, I grow increasinglyconcerned as the world moves,
(21:38):
you know, forward faster andfaster and more and more and
more about are we keeping up onthat side?
And I'm really in an inquiryright now for next year.
Really concerned about for nextyear, concerned in a good way
about, you know, how do we Offermany more kind of provocations
and invitations to the kidsoutside of the tech curriculum.
And, and so I'm just processingwhat you're saying.
I, I, I love the essence of whatyou're saying.
(21:59):
I'm trying to process it in thecontext of, so how do we, how do
we, how do we create invitationsfor students around, you know,
things that have them stretchtime?
Cause they are so pressured, notfrom us, but like in life.
Ben (22:10):
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's not easy.
It's both the age that they'reat and the age that they're
living in.
You know, if I, if I knew whatit looked like, I would have
built it by now, but I thinkthat's part of the, part of the
joy of it.
And it comes back to a term thatyou use, which is play.
You know, you can, we think ofplay, I think in the sense of
frivolousness, like I'm going toplay with this thing, like I'm
(22:32):
going to futz with it.
I'm going to tinker with it, butit's not that play should be a
sense of.
really active discovery andtrying things that are risky.
Like play should be risky ifplays structured and safe, it's
not really play.
Right.
And if you have, if you have thenervous parents standing over
(22:52):
you saying, well, if you don'tlearn this skill, you're not
going to pass an interview oryou have to, you know, talk
about the order of complexity ofa bubble sort.
And so you got to learn this.
You got to, you know, set thataside.
That information is there and isthere to everybody.
And so the question is for youand your students, like, how do
you come out of this experiencewith something that's unique and
(23:16):
that can't be learned elsewhere?
That's not part of anothertrajectory that they're going to
intersect with.
You can always, you can alwaysturn into that lane.
Of knowledge acquisition andskill building in a really
structured way like that'sthat's there Right.
So what's outside that you youcan't otherwise learn And then
(23:37):
how do you create the space?
Where you kind of hold court andsome people get it and some
people don't and as aninstitution You're okay with the
fact that some people aren'tgoing to receive that And that's
all right, because you knowwhat, they've got all this other
stuff and there's still usefulskills being acquired here, but
(23:58):
then some people are going tohave an experience that they
never even knew existed becausethey discovered that sense of
play.
They took that risk.
Something got on unlocked inthem.
I had a trip to Nashvillerecently and I got out and for
one evening got to see somemusic and came home and was
watching an interview with aguitarist that I, I got to see.
(24:20):
And I was talking about practiceand how he became so virtuosic
and he said, well, you do it,you just do it.
And sometimes it's sort of likethese little morsels that come
to you and you kind of, you,you.
Come to understand the intervalat which those morsels are
delivered, and you understandthat there's gonna be gaps
(24:42):
between them.
Sometimes you come up dry, youpractice for two hours, nothing.
Nothing.
And then, oh, okay, I got alittle bite, and that bite's
enough to keep you going.
And then, completely bysurprise, you get, you get the
whole pie, all at once.
And you never know when that'sgoing to come down, you don't
see it coming, but you, youparticipate in the activity
(25:07):
because you know of thepotential of getting that whole
pie.
And I love the way that he wasdescribing it because he's also
doing it with a deep Nashvilletwang that I can't emulate and
won't for, for fear of insultinganyone.
But boy, I mean, that, that tome is an experience that I think
translates well outside therealm of practicing anything or
(25:29):
music.
It's just, it's universal.
a.m. (25:31):
Yeah, The word I'd add to the, you know, to to the
conversation there is discovery,right?
Like what you're pointing tothen leads to actual discovery
as opposed to getting to thepredefined destination or even
getting to the, you know,predefined broad territory.
I don't know what thedestination is, but the
territory, right?
And even that is not, you know,not, not where the, where the,
where the big opportunities are,where the big juice is, where,
(25:51):
where human beings can reallycome alive.
It is through the kind of playyou're talking about, just, just
a discovery, the thing that youcould not possibly have
predicted, known, et cetera, inadvance.
You allow it to find you, youknow, you don't go looking for
it, but you create theconditions in which you allow it
to find you.
And then all of a sudden you getthis download of this whole
thing.
Holy shit.
Look at this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(26:11):
Yeah, this, this, and, and thishas obviously been like a career
long thing for me, right?
This, this issues of art andplay and, and, you know.
There is this sort of binaryunderstanding of, of either it's
kind of frivolity, it's, it's,you know, this inconsequential
thing, it's, you know, the thingyou do on the side, or even,
even when, you know, peoplerevere it, it's still, you know,
(26:31):
Divorced from humanity for me.
It's like, Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That's that's what you do whenyou cultivated yourself Or
that's what you that's what acivilization does once it
achieves economic, right?
and all of that like it's To me,it's fun what you're talking
about with play the way you talkabout play discovery what I
would consider art It is centralto being human.
It is actually one of the thingsthat is absolutely central to be
(26:52):
human Economic transactions arenot central to being human But,
you know, but I think this thingthat we call art, that I call
art which is not, you know, theout of the artifact, the thing,
this thing of play, this thingof, you know but that is
actually a big part of ournatural state is to discover,
you know, and to be discoveredin this act of really rigorous
engagement with the thing.
Ben (27:13):
I do wonder sometimes if, if calibrating.
The amount of these types ofexperiences in our lives is a
little akin to having a balanceddiet of actual food.
You know, every once in a whileI'll go a long period and I
realize, I'm probably justterribly iron deficient right
now.
Yeah.
And you don't really realize ituntil it's a problem.
(27:35):
And you can kind of, you know,recalibrate if you're paying
attention.
But sometimes you just go like,why don't I feel like shit?
I'm tired all the time, youknow, and suddenly go, I'm like
lacking this really essentialvitamin and, and there's
definitely this balance toexperience where if you approach
everything in a structured waywith no play, with no discovery,
(27:57):
You're nutrient deficient andyou know, you're probably acting
in ways that are not ideal foryou, the people around you.
Suddenly you get that nutrientand everything, everything slots
in.
It feels clearer and brighter.
And if it is, you're really,it's, I mean, there's no test
for that, right?
How do you, how do you wake upand go, Oh, I need like 10
(28:18):
percent more play today.
If you're even looking at itlike that, it's probably the
wrong way to hold it.
So,
a.m. (28:24):
yeah.
It's actually worse than, than,than the way you framed it Ben,
because we're going back to the,the, the master's observation
about the internet just breakingthings and, and not replacing
them.
If you find yourself in asociety that's constantly
feeding you, Things to consumethat iron deficiency before you
can even get to discovery of it.
(28:45):
You're going to have anunderstanding of symptoms.
I'm tired.
I'm groggy.
Cool.
Coffee, sugar.
This hack, that hack, thisright.
And I'm never even going todiscover what the actual
deficiency is.
I'm going to do a variety ofthings to treat the symptoms
that have me feel like, yeah, Ifixed it.
Right.
Because I'm just being bombardedwith, and then in, you know, An
(29:05):
hour, a week, a month, a year,when that thing no longer works
because my body's adjusted andnow I'm even in a more iron
depleted state and I feel evenworse, it's okay.
The internet's going to bring mea thousand new miracle sort of
remedies for my symptoms, right?
So it's even worse.
It's even worse than, than thekind of lack of plain discovery.
There's a an emphasis on whatare the symptoms of, and then
(29:28):
what can you do about thosesymptoms?
I
Ben (29:29):
have to believe in the purity of the medium, though.
You know, I think it's, it comesto our use of it, and the way
that we've defined it, and thesystems that we've built that
make it easier to go in acertain direction than another
one.
But the idea of the internetisn't something that I would
rail against in a vacuum.
(29:51):
Obviously, I've dedicated mylife to trying to find, you
know, meaningful ways to affectsociety and affect change
through that.
And I, I don't think I've nailedit or even really gotten close
yet.
But if I didn't think that therewas promise in the medium.
I wouldn't even be doing it Andso that's, that's kind of the
question is like, how do youtake this, this thing, this
(30:12):
river and, and say like, well,you know, we built boats, but
I'm not really sure that boatsare kind of the right way to, to
interact with this.
Maybe we should just be waitingin it.
And, and what does that actuallylook like now?
That's really, there may be asense of necessary destruction.
Where you actually don't blamethe internet for destroying more
(30:34):
than it creates, but you say,you know what, actually, we need
to destroy a lot of the systemswe've built that, you know,
created this scaffolding we'renow standing on and get back to
just standing in the damn water,get our feet wet for a little
bit and then figure out where togo next and without the hubris
of assuming that, well, thistime we're going to get it
right.
Like maybe you bake in the ideaof.
(30:56):
Every once in a while we need torecalibrate this thing.
a.m. (30:59):
Well to to extend your your metaphor into perhaps a
silly place but to you knowBring it back to my curve
ongoing theme
Ben (31:06):
silly is not allowed here.
We don't do silly
a.m. (31:08):
Perhaps what's needed is an acknowledgement that We have
gotten to a place collectivelyto be affluent enough to give
everybody their own pair of damnwaders So they don't have to
worry about getting wet And nowwe can let them all go play
around in the water and some ofthem may in fact wind up with
boats and some may not and someright, but it is again for me,
the central sort of blindnessin, in, in, in the world is we
(31:30):
made it like we made it, youknow, 200, 000 years we fucking
made it.
Nobody knows what to do withthemselves, you know after
making it.
You know and and collectively wemade it and we're just not we're
just like dysfunctional becausewe're still we're we're We're
playing a game that was criticalWhen there wasn't enough There's
enough now.
We know how to have enough.
(31:51):
We don't know what the fuck todo with ourselves to me That is
essential if we could figurethat one out Everything else
falls into place.
Ben (31:57):
Oh, there's certainly enough.
We might we may still have adistribution problem.
Yeah Fair to go, right?
a.m. (32:02):
That's my point.
We haven't acknowledged thatYeah.
And so we still keep hoardingand we still keep, you know,
ussing othering all that.
I only worry about other and thedanger of other when I think I'm
unsafe.
When I'm, you know, kind ofwhispered in my ear that, that
what I have is going to go awayand what I like as opposed to,
and, and, and that I becomeseven worse when what's whispered
(32:26):
in my other ear is, yeah, butwhat if you had two cars?
Yeah, but what if you had a.
Electric Tesla, pickup truck,and what if you can go to Tahiti
and what, right?
And so I get these two voiceswhispering in my ear constantly,
and then it keeps us in a, in a,in a, you know, pre industrial
state psychologically aroundfear for survival, as opposed to
(32:46):
whispering on the ears, dude, wemade it.
We just got to get everybodywaders and we know how to do
that.
And then whispering my other eararound, you don't need seven
pair of waders.
What you need is to like feelthe grass under your feet.
What you need is to spend timeworking on that relationship
with your son.
What you need, like these arethe things you need.
(33:06):
Not, you know, the pickup truckor the whatever, right?
To me that, that, I mean, maybeit's idealistic, maybe it's
whatever, but that to me is thecentral ill of, of, of the era
that I got to live in, which isthat, was that, you know,
collectively we have enough andnobody realizes it, and so we're
all still kind of clawing atthings, and some are better than
others at clawing.
And some have amounted, haveamassed so much, it makes it
(33:29):
easier for them to claw more.
And it just feels like a, such asilly game.
It's, it's, it's like playingMonopoly and the game is over
and people are still grabbingat, at, at, at greenhouses.
They're like, dude, the game's,what are you, you know?
Let's, let's, let's have cakenow.
How do you know what I mean?
Ben (33:45):
I guess the question, the following question, I don't
really know if this is a genuineconcern or just a hypothetical,
but either way I'll oppose it isonce you have enough and you
say, all right, well, we'regoing to, we're going to now
divide this up a thousand ways.
How do you avoid being, youknow, I guess I, I think of the
song, right?
Little boxes on the hillside,little boxes made of tiki tac.
(34:07):
It's how do you prevent thatcookie cutter approach of
everyone having enough whereenough is defined as the same.
That's that's an interestinginflection.
I think
a.m. (34:16):
yeah, so for me the enough thing isn't about a sort of
quantified Like okay, everyone'sgoing to get 1.
2, you know cars on everywhatever, you know This amount
of salary that and it's up.
This is psychological enough,right?
The work is on psychologicalsense of enough Yeah, and then
I've consistently found thathealthy people like people who
are content with themselves likelegitimately comfortable in
(34:39):
their skin.
They might have a, you know,like predisposition for really
appreciating wine and they'regoing to spend the money on the
wine, but they're not going togo chasing 17 other things that
they have no connection to, butthat somehow is just filling a
hole.
They're going to find the thingthat's actually natural
expression for them.
And yeah, they may wellaccumulate more of that thing
than anything else.
(35:00):
But they're not going to be inthis blind sort of just chase,
right?
That's more for me.
What I'm pointing to aroundenough, the individual sense of
it's cool.
I I'm okay.
When I tell the kids day onehere, I'm oh, you're okay.
That's what I'm talking about.
We're not enough.
No, absolutely.
It won't work.
90 hours building an app.
Go for it, man.
That's great.
But come from a place of, I'malready okay.
(35:20):
That's the yield that I'mpointing to.
Nobody feels like they're okay.
Nobody feels comfortable intheir skin.
Other than those who are playingthe just as bad game of I'm
okay.
You know,
Ben (35:33):
I've learned firsthand you can't, you can't build your way
to, okay.
You can't code your way to okay.
You can't, you can't do itthrough credentials or, you
know, it's just, it's not goingto happen.
That's an endless chase, right?
a.m. (35:47):
But that's the society.
Yeah.
That's what we tell kids to telladults.
Okay.
You have to degree your way tookay, you have to job your way
to okay, you have to house yourway to okay, you have to
prestige your way to okay, youhave to, it's all these things,
right?
And that's exactly what I'mtelling you.
If you can have folks be okay,then they're not chasing for the
sake of chasing.
And again, if you may well havea legitimate, whether it's
(36:08):
biological, whatever it is.
Passion for some, you know,expensive thing that you're
actually going to engage withthe, you know, the master and
his, I'm going to keep justcalling him the master.
Like I would imagine he probablyspent a lot of money on those
guitars and the equipment andall that.
Right.
But that's like in the path ofwhat his expression is.
Great.
He doesn't have to have the sameamount as everyone else.
Right.
That cookie cutter kind ofthing.
(36:29):
It's just authentic.
Ben (36:31):
Is that the the grading system at DAE every day?
You say, are you okay?
a.m. (36:35):
Every day when they come in and, and again, we, we, so we
talked to faculty about thisbecause it could get rote, but
there's a huddle and in thehuddle is who wants to check in
who, and the graduates are kindof, who are you today?
And then it's blockers who'sexperiencing blockers.
I didn't get enough sleep lastnight.
I did like all the ways, likejust to get out there that this
(36:57):
is just who I am today.
And then the kind of thing inthe culture is cool.
That's okay.
All right.
So every single day starts withthat.
And sometimes you can just getmechanical and we got to then
bring faculty back together andsay, Hey, okay, folks, this, we
just did a checklist of, of, ofhuddle.
No good.
What's going on?
And usually it's an indicator ofwhat we do for ourselves.
(37:19):
Right.
But we sort of fall into, andthis is part of what happened
this year.
There'll be a pick.
Anybody else is we got a littletoo mechanical and stuff, some
stuff like this for, for ahandful of reasons ultimately
all my responsibility becauseI'm responsible for the place.
But we got to mechanical and towhatever, but, but yes, that is
how we start the days.
Ben (37:38):
I mean, that, that's getting to something, I think
pretty interesting, which is theidea of.
Bringing your whole self tosomething that you're engaged in
and letting you can take thatand Attach that to anything but
in particular in professionalenvironments.
I think for a long time it wasseen as keeping a professional
distance was the thing you weresupposed to do, right?
(37:58):
That was responsible sayingdon't don't get to know your
employees too Well, cuz one dayyou might have to fire them.
Well, I I think it's started toturn over and maybe I just feel
this way because this is how Ifeel and I think it encourages
the people around me to do thesame is you bring your whole
self to whatever you're doingbecause I don't want to leave
who I am at the door for Sixseven eight ten hours a day It
(38:24):
doesn't make sense to livewithout yourself for that long
And if you bring your whole selfother people can acknowledge it
and suddenly there's context toit for all sorts of behaviors,
thoughts, goals, you know, itjust makes more sense.
Otherwise, you're just like,you're talking to this weird,
like stripped facsimile of aperson that has, you have no
(38:44):
idea what's actually going on intheir lives.
a.m. (38:46):
And, and the, and the paradoxical then balance becomes
like with the kids, right?
I'll just use cool.
That's who you are today.
And.
This shit's got to get done onyour project because you said
this is what the next stage is,right?
And so now it becomes not like,Oh, okay, you've had this
happen.
So let's just, you know, we'regoing to eat Cheetos and lay on
the couch.
It becomes in the context of whoyou are today.
(39:07):
What's the best way to approachthis, right?
And it may be slowing downprogress and picking it up
later, but, but it's not justignore it.
If that becomes the dynamicthing around the education
process is cool.
So who you are today working onthis project, what gets done on
the project, as opposed to theproject is what it is and who I
am doesn't matter, right?
(39:27):
The kids, the reason we do itevery day is it's not that cool.
You're okay today.
We never have to check in again.
Every single day.
fucking day, you are somebodydifferent.
And in the workplace, we don'thave the the usual sort of
excuses for it are reasons,rationales, really intelligent
rationales.
We don't have the resources andthe capabilities to do this kind
(39:47):
of practice every day at scale.
We open ourselves up to legalliabilities if we ask too many
personal questions about peoplein the world with all this
nonsense, right.
That is in part real, but it'snot, you know, organization
suffers from the sameenoughness, blindness as a
society and individuals as awhole do.
Like we don't have enough time.
We don't have enough resources.
Of course you do.
(40:08):
In fact, to go back to yourthing you raised previously, if
you engage in certain regularpractices, you'll make time.
You'll actually stretch time ifyou shift the way you engage
with human beings in theworkplace.
Right?
kind of notion of practices,because everything you were
speaking about previously to meis, is about having long term
practices that then yield these,you know, the discovery that
(40:29):
yield, you know, all, all ofthese things we seem to be
looking for.
But there's no sort of habitualway to get there.
You know, habit and practice arevery, very separate.
I'm not sure how I got on thisthread from what you said, but,
but, but, but I'm, I'm way downit
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