March 7, 2024 • 53 mins
The conversation delves into the concept of ownership and stewardship in society, exploring the implications of lacking a sense of ownership and responsibility for the collective space and values in a community. It highlights the need for individuals to operate like owners, taking accountability for the well-being of their environment and fostering a sense of stewardship and compassion. The dialogue examines how economic influences and transactional behaviors can impede the development of ownership and stewardship in society.
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.
(01:33):
I'm a.m.
bhatt.
Welcome to Absurd Wisdom.
And for today's conversation, weare continuing the ongoing
series with Ben Heller, CTO ofDriver Technologies.
Let's jump right in.
a.m. (01:44):
I just went to pick up lunch.
And on the way back, I justlike, it's something I've
noticed a lot recently, but.
But like there was a visceralsort of.
demonstration but you know, Theacross the country here.
The post COVID economic.
You know, bottom falling out fora bunch of people and, you know,
are unhoused population hasgrown exponentially in the
right.
And I'm walking down.
(02:05):
It's 1130 in the morning.
And I'm walking through theheart of Yale, the Starbucks on
the corner.
There are Atticus's right.
That is like belly of the beastout in front of Starbucks.
Just three guys, homeless.
Smoking meth, like out in theopen, just like one's lighting
the thing for the other.
I'm assuming it's meth.
It might've been crack.
I don't know if that's aroundanymore, but there's, you know,
And people are walking by andkids are coming in and out of
(02:28):
the Starbucks.
And.
Like I actually know is, youknow, but I, I.
I know a lot of unhoused peoplewho are hanging out downtown.
Every single day.
Walking around, you know, two orthree times a day.
You just get to know people andeven those folks.
And and I don't know these threeand every week there's two or
three new and, you know, And sothe, the thing that struck me
about that.
(02:49):
Was not, oh my God.
There's people.
There's people smoking method.
And like, I wasn't like, youknow it was everybody else.
Hmm.
Just how quickly they justhabituated to here.
That's what's going on here.
In the middle of Yale.
And nobody's like, I don't know.
Nobody, I forget about help oroutrage or any of those
reactions.
It's just, yeah.
That's what's happening.
And We've talked a lot about thesort of acceleration of things.
(03:11):
And our inability to keep up.
And what struck me as aquestion, not as an insight or a
thought, even just a questionis.
Are we.
Accelerating people's ability.
Dysfunctional ability.
To just habituate.
They're just tuned out to justkind of like.
You know, do you have a ghost?
Okay.
This is the last time I'll have,but have you ever gone skydiving
by chance?
Ben (03:30):
Never actually gone sky.me.
So
a.m. (03:32):
on the list though.
First time I went, it was tandemthing, right?
Yeah.
And I had, what's called awhiteout.
Right.
So white out is, is, is lady toa blackout.
But a white out is you'retotally awakened conscious.
But there's so much sensoryinput that your brain.
And so you don't black out.
You're not, you're notunconscious, but you go through
this thing, which all thewhite.is again, your brain just
says, Nope, no longerprocessing.
And that's a straw.
(03:53):
Maybe that's summarizes athought.
I had a, the inquiry that gotopened as I'm walking by these
guys and noticing what's goingon is, is everybody in the state
of collective whiteout?
And are we going to justcontinue to stay in a state of
collective whiteout where peopleare walking around and moving
around conscious, but there isso much that it just whoop just,
it just be awareness, just shutdown.
Ben (04:12):
Sicca topic.
Ah, Not a good topic.
Yeah.
But it's a worthy topic for, forcontemplation.
And it's going to take me asecond to kind of pull on the
thread and.
And stretch it out a bit.
But ultimately right.
It's.
When you see something.
That is bothersome to you, or atleast requires processing.
It's easier to summon the energyto carve it out and ignore it,
(04:38):
put on the blinders and walk bythan it is to go through the
process of.
What am I seeing?
Is it bothersome to me?
Is it harmful to the people whoare engaging in the activity?
Is it harmful to anyone else?
What do I do about it?
In this particular case, isthere anything to do about it?
What do I do about it?
Systemically?
(04:59):
Is there something that I needto, like, isn't an opinion to
form and a plan of action thatneeds to take place and all of
that.
You kind of very quickly do themath and go, I can't right now.
I don't, I don't have theability to form all of those
opinions and gain confidence inthem and then develop an action
plan.
(05:20):
But hopefully what someone isdoing, and this is unknowable is
having walked by in whiteoutmode.
Then.
Take and reflect on that.
Like we're doing now and say,Well, That was a notable moment
in my day.
If this is happening every day,what am I going to do the next
time?
I see this, what is my plan ofaction?
(05:41):
And, you know, it's, it's hardwhen it comes to something like
this.
Cause this is also a I think anurban reflex.
I lived in New York city for alot of years and you're kind of
taught to ignore things.
It's, it's a manner of, youknow, Urban survival in a way
where it's like, if it doesn'tinvolve me step away, because
getting in, if I get involved ineverything, then I'm never going
(06:04):
to get to where I'm going,because there's so many things
that are happening that areworthy of that level of
contemplation.
New humans, a little differentthan New York city.
New Haven is a community at theend, at least to me.
Right.
a.m. (06:17):
It's a college campus.
We have a big part of downtownis basically a college campus
and one of the premier collegecampuses.
Ben (06:22):
All right.
Yeah.
And, and so, you know, we'lltake, let's take the specific
case that you brought up andactually like, see if we can
pull it apart.
And I'd be really curious to seewhere we, where we end up in
terms of how we feel about itand what is, what is the action
to take, if any.
And, you know, with, with open.
Drug use, right?
There's immediately thedisambiguation between are these
(06:45):
people.
Partying and having a good time.
Or are they engaging in behaviorthat is destructive either
self-destructive or causing themto be destructive towards others
and the people around them?
I think that's kind of thefirst.
The first judgment call to bemade in that process.
If you saw the same group ofthree people sitting and.
(07:06):
Brown bagging, you know,drinking, drinking a 40.
Would you have the, exactly thesame reaction versus someone
smoking crack smoking math.
Or would it be.
Other shades of nuance there.
a.m. (07:18):
Yeah.
I so, so for me, Ben, itactually wasn't about the
specific thing they were doing.
It's the.
Again, I'm there three times aday, right?
I've never seen that sort ofthing out in the open.
And so the fact that it happens.
And there's zero response to it.
All right.
And so I've put that now.
Thing aside.
(07:38):
And just everything.
Right.
That that, that.
Something really critical, justshifts.
And we're just like, Got to goand get my latte.
Yeah, right.
And I'm with you on all of thissort of like yeah.
New York.
I mean, there was.
It's all sorts of things thatyou just walk in sector.
One of the hallmarks of a newYorker as you're just kind of
like.
Now unbothered by the.
You know So it wasn't a specificthing that just catalyzed a
(07:59):
thought it's more broad social.
Like we, you know, again, we'vetalked about this a lot.
It is, it is.
There's just so much change,fundamental change day to day.
And we're just kind of walkingpast it.
But, so I want to just say thatto clarify, you know, kind of
more, you know, the broaderthing I'm actually trying to
point to.
In your question now If thethree of them were sitting there
drinking a 40.
In that context, right on thecorner at Starbucks at 1130 in
(08:21):
the morning, it would besimilar.
Right.
Because that's not the normthere.
Right.
You wouldn't do, you know,people wouldn't do that.
People wouldn't be quote unquoteallowed to do that.
In.
The heart again, across thestreet from Yale art gallery,
basically.
And so I'm not suggesting theyshouldn't be allowed to do that.
I'm just asking, it's such ashift.
Right.
And even somebody sitting theredrinking would be such a shift.
(08:42):
And yet.
It's just yep.
Shit just keeps
Ben (08:44):
changing.
Yes.
I, I like this.
This is, I think for me gettingat some, some of the meat of it.
Setting aside, you know, what'sprohibited versus what's
allowed.
Cause I think that's a lessinteresting conversation then
what's normal versus not normal.
To some extent.
A lot of my attitude towardsculture and society is wanting
(09:05):
to encourage the not normal.
Right.
So again, I'm going to keeppresenting, I'm going to throw a
hypothetical statute, right?
So now it's not three peoplesitting around drinking forties.
It's three people skateboarding,right?
Maybe they look like punks.
Yeah.
Where where's the line at whichkind of the like cultural
transgressive.
This is something that you wantto celebrate.
(09:29):
Versus something where you saylike, this is actually a problem
for our community and the factthat we're ignoring it.
Day in day out.
It means that we're on aslippery slope.
And I think.
You know, it does come down tothis idea of.
But it is something beingexplored or enriched or is it
just destructive?
Is it just tearing things down?
a.m. (09:48):
So I'm pointing to a third option, right?
So you're saying celebrate itor, you know, Stop it right.
And I'm suggesting that peopleare just disassociated from it.
All right.
Ben (09:58):
I get, so I agree.
My my sense is.
You're disassociated from itbecause you've implicitly chosen
the latter option of your you'recondemning it, but you don't
have the mental space to figureout why and how and what you're
going to do about it.
Therefore, the only thing youreally can do is ignore it.
(10:18):
And in, so doing, it's kind ofthe worst version of condemning
it.
The type of condemnation that.
You know, doesn't really, you'renot putting any skin in the
game.
You're not saying this is thesociety I want to live in, and
this is why you're not puttingthose reasons forward.
You're not dedicating time orenergy towards creating it.
And yet, you know, you're notcelebrating it.
(10:40):
So you're just kinda.
Yeah.
a.m. (10:43):
Yeah.
Yeah.
In that micro case, you're not,you're not helping the
individual who likely is in somestate of addiction, certainly in
some state of economicdeprivation.
You're not helping theneighborhood.
You're not.
I mean community, any of that?
Yeah.
So, yes, that is the phenomenonpointing to, but now at scale,
Right.
Technology advances.
The.
There's a, there's a film rightnow.
I have yet to see it, but I knowlike, you know, the.
(11:05):
Probably more than I should,because I'd like to know things
about building a zone ofinterest.
Have you heard about zone ofinterest?
Have you seen
Ben (11:10):
it?
I haven't seen it yet.
But it's been much discussed.
Yeah.
a.m. (11:13):
And do you know how blizzard made that film?
No.
There are, there is no film crewanywhere with the actors E.
He hid cameras and microphonesin their living spaces.
They knew, obviously, right.
And now it's just engaged withmundane day-to-day activities.
While living next door to, Ithink it's Auschwitz.
Yeah, next door to aconcentration camp.
(11:34):
Yeah.
And he's capturing.
You know, from, from whatever Iheard about it again.
Have yet to see it and no toomuch as I hate knowing stuff
about film, but but he'scapturing this sort of just the,
the bay now day to day, sort ofnumbed out existence.
People will engage in.
Well, tuning out.
What's going on.
Right.
And, and in when they, I thinkthey won the BAFTA the best
film.
I'm pretty sure that's what itwasn't in that speech.
(11:55):
He said, yeah, you.
No, this, this, this film isabout right now and what's
happening in the middle east,right?
For whatever side you come downon that.
What I find is most peopleactually don't come down on a
side.
They're just tuned out to it.
Not because they're not aware ofit.
Not because they're not worriedabout it.
You know, if they pause andthink about it, but like walking
by the guy, smoking a meth onthe street.
It's just.
(12:15):
Tune it out.
Ben (12:16):
It feels a little bit akin to.
You know, you're driving on ahighway and you see that
somebody has a flat tire on theside of the road.
If you're driving too fast.
Yeah.
You don't stop.
Right.
You go up.
Wow.
I was driving so fast.
I can't, I can't pull over andhelp that person, but some
someone else will.
And eventually, maybe there issomebody who sees it slows down
(12:37):
and helps the person on the sideof the road.
But how many people are going togo by going up?
I was going too fast.
I was in the left lane.
I don't know, you know, there'sother resources for them.
They'll all.
They'll.
You know, call a tow truck.
There'll be fine.
And it's always easier to kindof pass the buck.
And it's just, I think what youobserved.
Was an entire society in one.
(13:00):
Space collectively.
Passing the buck.
And they're not being a responseto it.
Meaning like there's, there'snobody who's stepping in and
saying.
Well, these are three people whoneed help in some way.
So what's what is there?
What's that being passed to whenyou ignore and say, well,
(13:20):
there's the some other carsgoing to slow down.
You know, what are we, what arewe implying?
Are we implying that somebodyelse is going to step up and
say, Hey fellows like.
Are you okay?
Do you need something right now?
What can I do for you?
Is that the right response?
Is that what they actually needfrom a stranger, from a
passer-by right?
Is it, is there a, a publicservice of somebody who.
(13:44):
It is their responsibility totake care of the people that we
live with who need.
Help.
So, what do we actually knowwhat that's being passed to?
And I think the answer is wedon't, we just kind of assume
vaguely that like someone else.
We'll do it, but we don't knowwhether it's a person
organization, part of the citygovernment.
(14:06):
Who is it?
Yeah.
And
Scott (14:08):
did you get the sense that there was just indifference
to what was happening or justthe lack of understanding?
a.m. (14:13):
I felt like they were invisible, man.
Like they were at the door therenext to the door.
And people were walking in andout and it's just not something
you would see again, this is notabout, oh my God, what's
happening to our city.
Right.
Just.
To clarify, right.
And.
Like I said, I know a lot of thefolks down there and these guys,
I didn't know.
Not that I likely would havesaid anything if, if they were
one of the folks that I knew,you know, there's a certain.
(14:34):
Yeah.
But no, to get back to yourquestion, it.
It was just, just like they mayas well been standing there.
You.
Drinking a Cola.
And again, it wasn't the act.
It was the fact that the act wassuch a square wave change from
what you'd expect on thatcorner.
And that everybody's just sortof.
I love the analogy of thehighway, right?
Because if you connect it toprevious conversations, we are
(14:57):
in a state of, so my, you.
My ongoing kind of drum.
I like to beat.
I'll I'll achievement,achievement, productivity,
achievement productivity.
And, you know, we on-ramp kidsto this conversation at the age
of 12.
You know, or DHS seven, maybe.
We on-ramp them to the highwayand immediately pushed them to
the left lane.
And we've got a lot of peopledriving on autopilot, going
(15:18):
really, really fast.
And missing all the, you know,roadside accidents.
Many, if not, most of whom werefolks.
Who are driving really fast onautopilot?
It's some version of, or theywere around others who were
driving really fast on autopilotand they were just collateral
damage.
You know, or they were part ofsystems.
That we're driving on autopilot.
(15:39):
You know in the fast lane andthey're collateral damage.
Yeah.
I don't know what to make off X.
This is very, this is ahalf-hour old, but it just, it
just, it just, this, the.
The tuned out, this really,really
Ben (15:49):
struck me.
I think there's also a sense ofnot knowing, not knowing what to
do.
I'm really trying to get towhere, like what.
What would I have done?
Almost certainly what I actuallywould have done, had to happen
today is walk in.
Get my latte and then walk out.
But what would I have liked tohave done is sort of the more
interesting question.
And, you know, we're not reallywell-prepared.
(16:12):
Two.
Engage with people who actunpredictably.
And I think we're, we're taughtfrom a young age that drug users
are inclined to actunpredictably, which can
certainly be true.
What probably I would have likedto say if I felt that it was
unusual or if they were somehowhurting the people around them
(16:32):
would have been.
Hey fellows.
Do you have a place that you cango right now?
Is there a, is there a placethat you can go?
And if the answer is no, wedon't have a place that we can
go.
Solve that problem.
Because I suspect the answerwould have been no, there's not
a safe place outside of thepublic.
Otherwise, what it was couldhave been potentially a bit of
(16:56):
an act of defiance.
If the answer is, well, we dohave a place, but we've chosen
this place.
Sure because we're actuallytesting the theory that this is,
or isn't normal, you know, inthe heart of, of Yale.
a.m. (17:08):
Yeah.
I I'm, I'm blessed, interestedin, in, in, in sort of how to
intervene on that one.
Hmm, right then I am.
I'm less interested in them thanI am in, in the folks walking in
and out.
Because, and again, I don't, I'mnot in anyone's head obviously.
And so I don't know what's goingon, but, you know, I stood there
in the corner, you know, Sevenfeet away pretending to be
looking at my phone.
(17:28):
So I could just observe thething for, you know, at least
just a couple, three, fourminutes.
Hmm.
And what I saw is again, I wantto get back to let people wait
it out.
You know, people disassociate,like it's not like I didn't see
any nonverbals that were like,oh shit, no, I don't want to get
involved in that because of mybad.
I just don't like it.
Invisible.
You know, That's the part of itthat I'm keyed in on?
(17:48):
Not what should somebody havedone or not done?
But the fact that it, it, it Itmay as well, been a
hallucination for me, given thereaction of, of of the lack of
reaction or even lack of what Iperceived in the non-verbals.
As even awareness.
Ben (18:03):
I'm going to take your arm and twist it a little bit on
this one.
Not just cause I think it's.
Not necessarily.
I think for, in order to focuson the people who are having the
wideout experience.
Yeah.
There has to be.
Something that registers foreach person.
To allow them to process thisand to see it and react to it.
(18:25):
And to have a reaction.
And for that reaction to involvean action.
And that to me, I think remainsworking backwards from what do
you do?
Because it can't just be 10people standing around, you
know, the Yale art galleryscreaming and holding their
heads that something onnormally.
Unnatural or not normal ashappening.
(18:46):
They can't run away inhysterics, but nor can they like
condemn these people and, andact irrationally towards them.
And so I think in order toprocess it.
You do have to work backwardsfrom a sense of action, a little
bit.
From the
a.m. (19:03):
bystanders.
I agree with you in principle,but what I'm pointing to the
event is.
The possibility.
So I agree with you.
You'd have to notice it to havea reaction one way or the other,
even to choose to ignore it.
What I'm suggesting is thatpeople literally didn't see it.
You know, interesting.
Walking around.
So whited out.
That I will not take in any nonthreatening.
It's like the fight flightfreeze.
(19:24):
Like there's a permanent stateof not, they're not, they're
not, they're not there.
Because for, and again, I'mreaching here in this one
situation.
Because I'm looking at somethingmore broadly in society right
now where.
We don't even see it.
Because we are so in a walkingaround in a state of whiteout.
Ben (19:42):
Okay.
So I love this.
Thanks for clarifying that.
I think for me, I have adifferent assumption, which is
that everyone saw it.
And felt it.
And then everyone whoexperienced that as carrying
around a little ball ofdiscomfort for the rest of their
day or rest of their week.
That they're not processing.
And they're either it leakingout in different ways or they're
(20:05):
processing it obliquely, butthat they're really not dealing
with it, but that they arecarrying it around.
I guess it's a less cynical viewthan someone being like a very
kind of Aldous Huxley ask.
Like, do you truly didn't seeit.
a.m. (20:18):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So.
I think I'm aligned with you,but I want to go on.
I calibrate one thing.
So when you say, you know,they're carrying it around, are
they aware that they're carryingit around or is it just another
thing?
Ben (20:28):
I don't think it's
a.m. (20:29):
a gallstone.
So this, so this is what I'mpointing to, right.
Like, of course they saw it interms of visual, right?
Yeah.
But it immediately gets pushedin, in the same way.
Like when.
That's the whole point ofwedding out versus blacking out.
Right.
It's not that your eyes are nolonger taking in information.
It's not that your brain is no.
Oh, your ears are no longertaking a sound.
It's that immediately you are.
(20:49):
Pushing it.
I would have awareness.
You're pushing it
Ben (20:52):
somewhere.
We got, we got there.
We got, we got there.
Yes.
Why it's worth doing this?
Scott (20:57):
Yeah.
So you think a default state isjust don't get involved.
Don't get involved.
Don't get involved is kind oflike the repeating mantra in
people's heads or it's just,
a.m. (21:05):
it's not don't get involved.
I think it is like, Again, whathappens in the whiteout is
you're overloaded in informationthat you you've surpassed the
ability to process, right.
When you're falling.
You know, from, from 9,000 feet,At that speed and you lose all
sense of perspective and like,it should.
The brain can't process anymore.
(21:25):
And such as that, No more.
The stuff's going in.
But the processing is like,Nope, we're not going to, you
know, process it anymore.
So it's just numbed out state.
Where you just.
You're kind of there, but notreally right.
The sound you don't hearanymore.
The visual just becomes justthis one.
Just.
It's just like a white sort oflike, just.
You know, bleached out image ofthe ground, kind of, sort of
(21:47):
what's the experience.
But the sound went away,everything right?
And so it's not even like, don'tdeal with it.
Don't it just like.
We're full.
You, you can, you can come in.
But, but you're not gettingserved.
Right, right.
Ben (21:58):
Here's my hot take on this, which is, it's not like we're
walking around at 10% of whiteoutstate and we suddenly see a
couple of people doing drugs ona street corner, and we go to a
hundred, you can't processinformation.
I'd suspect that to continuewith this analogy, we're
actually at like 92% of thetime.
Yes.
And we see something that putsus over and we go, oh, I can't.
(22:22):
That's it.
You know, I we're optimizing ourlives to be so full that we're
not leaving room for anyinformation that comes to us by
surprise.
And that I think goes for morethan something that's kind of
bothersome to us.
It could be things that arejoyful.
I mean, this is like truly,we're not like stopping and
(22:42):
smelling the roses.
Right.
And I think this is an extensionof that, except it's, it's,
there's a good case to talkabout in the sense of, okay,
this is something that very,very obviously could occupy that
final 10%.
But there's, that's really,that's really the trouble.
And when we do that, it means wedon't have time to acknowledge.
(23:02):
Other people.
Other people are more often thannot the source of something that
is going to bring us joy.
Bring us sorrow.
Drive us to action.
Make us actually stop pivot,turn our heads and engage in
something that wasn't on ourlist today.
And I read this story with mythree-year-old.
They have frog and toad.
It's kind of a beloved childstory.
(23:22):
And there's one where toad makesa list of all the things he's
going to do.
And he goes and starts runningdown the items on the list, and
then he loses the list.
And he doesn't go and pursue thelist as his blowing away,
because going to catches listwasn't on his list and therefore
he's incapable of going toretrieve his list.
And those were a little bit likethat.
(23:44):
I think when we operate at that,that 90% baseline.
So it's really the question of,well, can.
Can we peel it back?
You know, how do you identifythe people as you're walking
around, who are actually at at50% or 20% who aren't
overflowing already, who are,who are willing and able to
process additional informationthat comes in unexpectedly?
(24:06):
And how do you, how do you evenknow from your own internal kind
of barometer?
Where are you at at anyparticular moment?
That's a much more complicated.
I'm a complicated topic, Ithink.
a.m. (24:17):
Yeah.
And I'll take, I'll take theconversation.
Into the other side of whatyou're, what, you're, what
you're asking.
But, but the 92% thing.
Yes.
That's again, that, that.
That's that's where I'm pointingto is a book to walking around
fully saturated.
And, and, and this mechanism ofjust, you know, not, they're
not, they're not there eventhough they, they see it, but it
just doesn't, it doesn'tregister.
(24:38):
It doesn't process in the waythat it might have.
But I'll take the other side ofwhat you asked for on how do you
identify a 50%.
I think.
And, you know, this was in themoment I'm kind of connecting
dots here.
I think one of the consequencesof being perpetually at 92%.
Is a high level of receptivityto fundamentalism.
Ideological fundamentalismpolitical fundamentalism,
(24:58):
religious and unknowns, becausewhat.
What a fundamental isperspective in any category
provide you.
It's very simple, black andwhite.
Way to process everything.
And so if you're massivelysaturated in this area, right,
you're near white outstate atall times.
And somebody comes along andsays, yep, very simple.
Here's good.
Here's bad.
Plug and play on everything.
That becomes a certain kind ofdefense mechanism.
(25:20):
That, that you take on that.
That helps you just quicklyengage with these things.
Ben (25:24):
Hmm.
You don't have to think about itbecause there's something else
telling you what to think aboutit.
Yeah.
Or you can at least deduce froma set of rules, kind of how to,
how it should follow.
a.m. (25:33):
And, you know, we know I I'm I'm.
At best.
I won't even say I was gonna saya loose historian, but that's
even I'm I'm you know, I gotsome, I got some straight bits
of knowledge.
I picked up on.
But, but, but there is aphenomena of, of a fascist
receipt regimes.
Following on from states ofextreme uncertainty,
(25:54):
unpredictability and proceedscarcity.
Where no one quite knows.
You know, a, everything is bad,but B nobody quite knows how to
filter stuff.
And someone comes along andsays, no worries.
This is black.
This is white.
This is good.
This is bad.
Okay.
Okay.
Feel better?
Cool.
Let's move on now.
Right.
In small communities and large,you know And I kind of feel like
(26:16):
that's where we are in theworld.
Bad.
Scott (26:18):
Do you feel like the pandemic exacerbated that?
Cause it kind of started this.
a.m. (26:22):
like, like.
It accelerated some things thatwere already like la,la, la, la,
la, I don't want to hear aboutit.
Like.
Is the whole government of giantconspiracy.
Like it.
The COVID and the end of theTrump era.
Exploded this notion.
That the government had a bunchof lizard.
Pedophile deep state deep, likeall AGLC exploded that right.
(26:44):
It exploded.
It exploded.
At a whole bunch of things.
So I distrust of science, justtrust a business.
It exploded all that.
And then introduced a whole new.
Thing to saturate ourselveswith.
Holy shit at any given moment,something I can't see can wipe
out.
Two three, 10% of thepopulation.
And oh shit.
I don't have to worry aboutbombs after worry about people
in labs in, in, you know, inother countries.
(27:05):
Or.
You know, in Tulsa or in what,you know what I mean?
So, yeah, I think it's just,it's so rapidly excelled.
These last four to six yearsrapidly accelerated All of this
shit.
Scott (27:15):
Interesting.
You say that because it feelslike.
The conspiracy theoryevangelists are the ones that
are more likely to see what'snot there and ignore what is
there.
Like you're saying.
You're in whiteout from what'shappening in front of you.
So you've reached behind that.
To say like, well, what's thecause of it.
It's this, these people arethis.
(27:36):
Institute
a.m. (27:37):
the way I would articulate Scott is it's not that they're
seeing, what's not there.
It's, they're applying.
They're very simple.
Filter to everything.
Whatever happens.
Oh yeah.
That's because X, what are the,oh yeah.
That's because X right.
It's just very simple.
A way to now filter everythingthat happens.
That does provide, I'm sure acertain amount of psychological
comfort.
(27:57):
You know, this is good.
This is bad.
And you move on.
By the way.
Just a digression because we'vegone to three episodes of that.
My bashing, either Trump orMusk.
If there is a deep state.
If there is this cabal ofpeople.
Running things in thisnefarious, you know, Pedophilic.
Whatever, maybe the lizardpeople actually write it.
(28:18):
If that, if you're in thatgroup, Can you imagine?
A better person.
To be at the.
Vanguard.
Oh, dismantling us then DonaldTrump.
Can you, can you imagine a morelike perfect.
It's like being the mob.
And hearing, oh shit, the DAthey're appointing a new DA
cause they're getting seriousabout dismantling us.
(28:40):
And then the point, the guythat's like, oh shit, man.
He's he's into the bookies forof the half a million and these
down at the brothel every otherweek and like, fine.
Great.
I don't get, like, I getpeople's conspiracy theories.
I get it.
But I I'm baffled by themthinking.
That Trump is not like a godsendfor the conspiracies.
For the, for the people runningthe conspiracy, you know what
(29:01):
they're worried about?
If they exist, like they wouldlove the fact that Trump's ahead
of it.
Like, it's just, it's insane.
Anyway.
All right.
Back back to our regularcommerce.
And then
Scott (29:09):
compensation
Ben (29:09):
there.
Well, I mean, I think yeah, to.
To circle back to the sense of.
Humanity.
And to what extent, this isencouraging people to be in
white outstate to the worldaround them, and to also be
looking for these invisibleforces that may or may not exist
that are.
You know, causing damage in waysthat are unseen and unheard.
(29:31):
There was this burst of humanitytowards the end of the pandemic
and during the pandemic ofpeople singing from their
balconies and this.
Need to connect with people, youknow, after a year, plus in many
cases of people wearing masks,not getting to see people smile.
There's.
There's this very positive, Ithink need for human connection.
(29:53):
And it's hard to reconcile thatwith this like really
precipitous decline and likelong-term.
What it seems to be as trust.
Yeah.
It's like we need each other.
We missed each other, but we nolonger trust each other.
Yeah.
And that's resulting in somevery weird interactions.
(30:14):
And I do think to bring it toyour example of CME, as people
engage in activity that isunusual for the place that it
was in.
I think it comes down to trust.
If you trust that those peopleare not going to harm you.
You can engage with them.
It doesn't matter what they'redoing, right?
Yeah.
You can you trust them?
(30:35):
And they presumably trust you tonot call the police to not.
You know, insult them to respectthem as, as human beings, but
there's been a breakdown intrust.
And when you don't trustsomebody, what's the easiest
thing to do stay away.
Right, right.
And so that's where we're allkind of taking these paths of,
of isolation, because we saw atwork, we saw that we could do
(30:58):
it.
You know what?
You can just ignore all theirother people stay six feet apart
forever.
I put on our, put on our masksand whatever form it takes.
And you know, you don't have tobe wearing one to be wearing
one, I think is sort of the, thelesson.
And, you know, just live atrustless existence.
And so we're starting to see it.
I think what society looks likeas that becomes
(31:20):
institutionalized in some ways,
a.m. (31:22):
I like the, the, the generous but yet still.
Honest A take on this thismorning.
Thing, which is people aren'twhited out there.
They're there like.
Yeah, this is.
You know, Like I don't, I don't,I wish they weren't doing that.
For their own health, as well asfor the community.
And.
Like.
This is where they are and whoam I to.
(31:45):
You know, I try to do whatever,you know, I there's nothing I
can do positive for them.
And who am I to, you know, messwith them.
I like that reading and I, and Iwould, you know, my, my biases.
I would love to.
Get on board that actually.
I agree with you that, that thatis another.
Post COVID event.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I'd love to get on boardwith, with the idea that, that,
that, that is a stronger wavethan the other wave that I'm
(32:08):
pointing to.
Around numbing out.
I liked that reading of, of, ofthe 1130 event.
Ben (32:13):
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's turning thecynicism dial kind of up or down
depending on what thetemperature of the room is, but.
a.m. (32:20):
Yeah, cynicism is very underrated.
Earned cynicism is underrated.
You know, blind cynicism and nogood.
But yeah, I hear ya.
I hear ya.
And it is.
You know, that, that, thatcommunity down there, the kind
of Yale student community thatis.
90% of who's walking around inthe middle of the day like this.
Right.
It's it's For all of the sort ofnegativity in town that pops up
(32:41):
outside of the Yale about Yale.
And about Yalies and their senseof, you know, all those cliches,
right.
The vast majority of myexperiences with young people
downtown.
In public spaces is not justlike pleasant, but, but very
often interesting, like in avery, you know, like, like
hopeful way.
Yeah, I'm the guy who just, Italk to everybody and I'm, you
know, I'm having a coffee with aguy who's, you know, kind of,
(33:03):
kind of.
Panhandling and I'm I'm.
Budding in, on conversations ofYalies that you know G cafe or
whatever.
So I could kind of talk toeverybody and, and There is
certainly there is more of whatyou're pointing to in terms of
a.
I don't know, more of an, of a,of a.
Open-hearted awareness of, ofthings then.
Might've been you know, 20 yearsago, or certainly when I was,
you know, An undergrad.
Ben (33:24):
Yeah.
It's a.
I do think the mentality seemsto be changing.
You know, I, I can't reallyspeak to the reality of it on
the ground, but it seems like alot of universities in big
cities.
For awhile, we're cultivating abit of a us versus them.
Yeah, attitude.
I think now that there's a bitmore of an awareness of these
(33:46):
schools, wherever they areexisting in the actual world and
not being as confined to the.
The physical gates.
That that high at all of thestudent quads and you know,
there for awhile, a lot of the.
Great American institutions thatare the, like literally the
elite institutions in thecountry.
(34:07):
We're sending a lot of people topublic service roles, you know,
coming out of the sixties andseventies, it was fairly common
to go into some type of publicservice to.
You want to affect change in theworld?
And I think generally there wasa wave of that change at a
certain point.
It started becoming more lawyersthan people traveling abroad.
(34:28):
I'm trying to.
And it seems like there's adoubling back of that.
And I don't know if that postpandemic has, has changed at
all, but when I speak to peoplewho are kind of the.
Generation younger than myself.
Almost everybody has these very,very strong, like social impact
motivations.
(34:49):
And that's not something that Iwould have identified in my, in
my own generation.
I think that was sort of there.
You know, they.
Product of the like Clinton eraeconomic boom was like, ah, you
know what, we're going to getgood shoulder pads and, you
know, get a top tier law job andlike that.
That's great.
Not knocking it, but it's beena, it's been a tonal shift from
(35:10):
generation to generation.
I do think it is rubber bandingback towards public service.
It's all be interesting to seewhat the impact of that is.
5 10, 15 years from now.
And if it changes the dynamic ofwhat, what you saw on the street
corner today, Yeah.
a.m. (35:25):
I would be too.
It's just, just to share thelove.
I, I the, the, you know, One ofthe few people that I would be
like, yeah, That kind of believethat.
If we found out they were infact alien lizard overlords
would in fact be bill Clinton.
And, and his buddy Al gore, whodid a brilliant job of
rebranding himself with theclimate thing, but holy shit, is
that guy responsible for somenasty stuff?
Yeah.
So just, just to do.
(35:45):
Let's y'all think it's onlyDonny and Elon that
Scott (35:48):
Plenty to go.
Ben (35:49):
Yeah.
Well opportunity hater.
Scott (35:51):
So.
I would posit this theory, letme know what you think about
this.
I think what he witnessed todaywas a secondary effect of the
housing crisis.
Not only because they wereunhoused probably, but because
in, when I grew up in new Haven,Nineties, late eighties, early
nineties, you go two blocks inany direction off campus.
There were plenty crack houses.
(36:11):
Places to do that.
You know, behavior that was,that were ignored by you know,
most of the establishment,including the police around, as
long as they're out of sight, wedon't have to worry about the
addiction being a thing that,you know, affects us on campus.
So in the fact that it's like,well, this is where we are.
Yeah.
The effect of you know, All the,all the crack houses were mowed
(36:32):
down in high-rises were put intheir place.
Right.
Kind of thing.
Yeah.
Ben (36:35):
So, I mean, what is the, what's the remedy?
I, this, I know I'm, I'm.
Keep pushing the conversationback towards kind of action, but
in, in service of taking newHaven, trying to have.
Some majority of the houses notbe crack houses off.
The borders of downtown and tohave a city that feels safe to
(36:56):
everybody, but to also haveproper pouncing and services for
people who couldn't otherwisefind it.
It's a really, it's a trickybalance without doing the thing
that I think is equally ascriticized, which is pushing
everything to the marginscontinuously out from the
center.
And so, you know, there, therehas to be some type of
(37:17):
well-integrated option insidethe city that acknowledges the
nature of.
The diverse nature of new Haven,which is not entirely Yale.
And it's also not entirely, youknow, Drug addicts.
Right.
But it's, it's a complicated.
And so how to do that withoutjust saying out.
Which is a lot of, of city'sanswer is it'll somehow go out.
(37:40):
The nature of out alwayschanges.
You know, To really fix it.
There has to be something thatsays, Nope.
And, and that's, that's thetrick.
Scott (37:49):
Most of the Americans who used to be what we call in the
middle-class, you know, when wewere growing up have been.
Elevated socially to.
Being able to afford largehouses in the suburbs or push
down.
And don't have that generationalnet worth.
That is, you know, and if theydo it is tied up in real estate.
It's, you know, we, we live offthe value of the properties that
(38:11):
we own and.
All, you know, I feel like a lotof the laws that are enforced
are to, you know, preserveproperty ownership.
They're not really to preserveorder.
As we think of it, like.
Seeing as what am saw today.
So, how do we.
I think, you know, the easiestway to.
To do that is to create moreaffordable housing, but it's
(38:32):
easy to say that out loud.
And you try to put it intopractice.
Nobody builds houses.
If they're not going to make aprofit off of, you know, that's
the nobody builds.
Affordable and.
Connecticut.
Has I think it's 10% affordablehousing threshold that they're
looking for in most places andout of 169 towns, I think maybe
like 10 actually hit 10% ofaffordable housing.
(38:54):
And the rest of them, just putup these clues, exclusionary
zoning to.
You know, make it so peoplearen't doing drugs on the
sidewalk in front of Starbucks,like where they live.
You know, that kind of thing.
So it's a, it's a weird selfpreserving model.
And I don't really know ifthere's a solution.
Outside of.
Just basically higher taxationof, you know, higher incomes and
a lowering of property tax.
(39:16):
Burdens on folks who already ownexisting housing and might be an
a.
Lower.
You know, middle-class orworking, you know, working poor,
which is Funny.
The description of a car.
Whole group of people.
You know, as opposed to theunhoused wears really unworking
poor, you know, like, so.
Th the way we stratify thesethings is really challenging to
(39:38):
undo.
And I think it really.
Yeah, high level needs to be.
Looked at, in the sense ofreally what you were saying,
helping one at a time.
You know, what can we do to getyou someplace where you can have
a big, good baseline?
That's it.
It's a lot of work in.
Non-profits.
You know, try the best that theycan to.
Help those folks, but they'rejust.
(39:59):
Understand under resourceunderfunded to be able to do it.
You know, I think.
Being able to lay the foundationearly for folks who might be in
need is the challenge toovercome first, you know, one at
a time.
One at a time.
Ben (40:12):
Yeah.
I mean.
I think I see.
I am sort of Wyatt.
From the very beginning, youwere pushing back against night.
Forget, forget about the actionpiece.
Because the action piece doessort of follow naturally.
In a way.
If you remove the, the whiteout.
Threshold from everybody, right?
It's like, you're never, you'renever going to even get to
(40:33):
action if you can't acknowledgethe problem directly and put a
name to it.
And that's that's the trickypiece is.
It's almost like, well, we wantto talk about.
What would we do?
It's a chicken or the eggproblem.
Like, I'm not going toacknowledge that until I figure
out what I'm going to do aboutit.
It doesn't serve me to have areaction to this, unless I know
(40:54):
what that reaction leads to.
So I'm going to figure that outfirst.
But then you never figure thatout and therefore you never end
up having a reaction.
You don't create space.
But you never create that space,therefore you never
acknowledged.
It just kind of endlessly loopsinto this sense of there's
always a prerequisite.
For me too.
To be doing something whichboils down to stop making
(41:16):
excuses.
Right.
Right.
Like either, either you care oryou don't.
I think that's sort of the, theeasy way to, to sum this up and
it's maybe.
Maybe people don't care.
And maybe they only care whenthere's a threshold.
Of this.
And where, what is thatthreshold for you?
Well, it's probably for mostpeople.
When they can no longer give himthe door to get their coffee.
(41:37):
Right when it, it interrupts theflow of what they were going to
do.
That's just part of thevibration of what drives them.
Through their day.
And suddenly when that vibrationgets interrupted and it becomes
a nuisance, then it's like, Wegot to do something about this,
and it's only at the point atwhich it interrupts, interrupts
(41:59):
you.
It's.
Now it's not about them.
It's not about helping.
It's not about the community.
It's about you and you beingbothered.
And you know, not to say that.
The why matters if the outcomeis good for everyone.
But it does sort of seem like adevolution.
And In our ability to connectwith each other.
(42:22):
And to just to effect changewithout it being the result of
our personal inconvenience.
And then see that I'm dialingthe cynic cynical knob all the
way back up again.
Now, just to.
Can you see what it feels like?
a.m. (42:35):
We'll trade rolls here and I'm going to dial it all the way
in the other direction.
And, and move away from this.
Right.
There's there's There's thisnotion we've used in, in
organizations and in startupsand I've heard in a variety of
places.
For me, it came from this, this,this.
This incident, my grandfather,but this idea of operate like an
owner.
If your view.
I heard some version of this andlike a startup, right.
Probably like an owner.
You see something needs doing,do it operate as if you own the
(42:58):
place, right.
And in a startup, you canactually, you, you know, you do
have a certain amount ofownership potentially, right.
Some kind of shares, right.
I've talked in the past about,you know, kind of human beings
were born into cultureshistorically in the last couple
of hundred years, pretty muchanywhere on the planet.
You're born into an economy,right.
If you're born into a culture,you're born into a tribe.
Group an indigenous name.
You're an owner.
You know, the land and the birdsand the Buffalo and the river.
(43:22):
And the stories and all that.
You're an owner.
Like, that's just your newoperate.
Like you're an owner.
If you're born into an economy,you don't own shit.
Even the stuff you own, youdon't own.
And so when people don't operatelike owners, you get things
like, like the phenomenon thismorning.
All right.
Where it's like, that's not myproblem.
Long started referring to me.
That's.
It's not my problem.
It's not my intent.
No, nothing negative, but that'snot like, you know, I don't own
(43:45):
this place.
Somebody who owns this placewill take care of it.
As long as it doesn't interferewith me.
Right.
Scott (43:50):
So that means if they were diagonally across the
street.
Right at the entrance to thegallery.
Yeah.
It probably would have beentaken care of.
a.m. (43:56):
We take care of, right?
Yeah.
Like, I, I guess the Starbucksowners don't care.
I guess the police don't care ifI don't know whatever.
But I'm not the owner now.
My job.
Yeah.
It would be beyond the, not myjob.
I'm not the owner.
I don't have accountability forthis.
I'm not part of this, right.
And the society invites that.
Ben (44:12):
I mean, this is when people talk about feeling
disenfranchised.
You know, it sort of, it goesbeyond a sense of.
Who's city.
Is it right?
Is it our city collectively?
Is it someone else's city?
Is it.
The university city.
Yeah, it's not, it's none ofthose.
And it's all of those.
Right.
And how do you piece togetherkind of ownership?
And I think that New Haven has alot of, a lot of trouble with
(44:33):
this because there is.
Unequal, literal ownership ofthe real estate in the city.
And so it's, it's always easy tokind of say like, oh, this isn't
really my turf.
It's somebody else's and youpass the buck and it kinda just
gets passed around until it getsback to you again.
And nothing's really, nothing'sreally changed.
(44:54):
Yeah.
So, I mean, we'll what.
And when do you start saying theopposite street corner by the
gallery?
It's like, oh, okay.
Well, that's, that'sinteresting, but I thought you
were about to say, what wouldit, what would happen if it was
the opposite street corneracross from DAE.
Right.
Like, this is actually a moreinteresting block.
Not that it would still not beout of place, but.
a.m. (45:13):
You walk right down right now and likely see it in.
In front of our place.
It is.
A regular, this, you.
You know, this block is.
Yeah.
Ben (45:20):
And I mean, but that's, we're talking, we're not talking
mile away now.
We're talking a two minute walkaway from where you were.
Yup.
Yup.
Yup.
I mean that's that is that'sseveral different communities.
Not just within the same city,but like a couple of block
radius that have different,entirely different definitions
of what's expected or acceptable
Scott (45:42):
There's like eight or 10 of the city blocks have.
This built-in turnover becauseit's undergrads and grad
students and stuff.
So there's accountability asthis, like with them, but it's
not any one person kind ofthing.
The administration has alsolike.
You know, doing their best todiscourage those folks from
going outside of the two orthree city block radius of where
(46:04):
they live.
a.m. (46:04):
When I say own though.
I don't mean who owns thebuilding?
Again, that that, that that'sborn into an economy frame.
Right?
Scott (46:12):
Sense of a responsibility to the.
a.m. (46:14):
So, so here's, here's what it'll tell you that my
grandfather's story.
Cause I have big kind of almost.
We'll be almost clarify it.
So like for the stories grew uplike, like third world, poor, no
plumbing, but.
You know, the whole deal, right?
My grandfather worked for therailroad.
He had this, you know, sort ofbasically a conductor.
And that's how we actually hadhousing.
That's a little kind of, you.
400 square foot place at allthis lived in was, was that was
part.
(46:35):
He got that and he got a littletiny, you know, salary.
Once a month though, he wouldbring my sister and I bag of
candy.
That was like, though.
In essence, the equipmentequivalent to Skittles Smarties.
British Smarties.
So there were knockoff Smarties,basically in India, like Indian
branded, you know, knockoff,Smarties.
And it was one time I was.
Right before I left one of thefew kind of like, you know,
Clear memories I have of, of,of, of that era.
(46:56):
I am.
We get really pissed off at thesix year old seven year old kid.
Like why can't I have a moon?
Like, why don't we have to waitthis.
You know, this whole thing.
And my grandfather, who's justlike this, just this.
This crazy gift of a humanbeing.
It's as well.
I mean all the candies, yours.
So, no it's been, but, butthere's only like, you know, 30
pieces in here.
He said no, I don't mean that.
He said all of the candies,yours.
(47:16):
And what do you mean?
Like all the candy on.
In the stores.
Well, let's go get it then.
You don't need it right now.
You have this.
We've got tomorrow.
Isn't well, I mean, if you needit.
You'll have it.
And like, yeah.
I don't know what the, you know,six, seven years old, you.
Yeah.
And then he's like, Everythingalready belongs to you.
Like every bit, everything yousee when you walk around, it's
already yours.
(47:36):
And whenever you need it, you'regoing to have it.
And there's only one I'mparaphrasing, you know, in
translating from Gujarati.
Right.
And there's only one thingthough that that comes with that
is you're responsible for all ofit.
Just like in the house.
You got your clothes though.
Those are yours.
And you're responsible fortaking care of them.
Like all of this is.
And whenever you need it, you'regoing to have it.
And you just got to take care ofit.
Right.
(47:56):
I've heard that story, you know,in different ways from other
places.
And so, you know, later in life,I realize he picked that up
somewhere, you know, from somebook or some, you know from his
upbringing and whatever the hellit was, but that's what I mean
by ownership.
I don't mean transactionalownership.
I don't mean like this buildingis mine or this coffee shop.
I don't know.
That's not what I mean.
I mean, ownership when you're,if you're born into a culture.
(48:17):
You have ownership.
Not of the things, but ofreality of the other people.
Like you're an owner.
Right.
That's what I'm pointing to ismissing in when you're pointing
to an economy.
And that's what I'm going to dowith people walking around.
They don't have a sense ofownership, not meaning they
don't have a deed to somethingor a set of keys or any of that.
But the sense of this is mine.
(48:39):
Everybody's walking around.
A stranger in a foreign land.
Ben (48:43):
I sense that.
That nature of literal economicownership.
It's chipping away at the senseof stewardship, which is really
what, what you're talking aboutis to be, to be a steward.
It's sort of says, well, I'mgoing to take ownership over
this, but maybe not soleownership.
(49:04):
It's a shared stewardship withwhoever else.
Just call it a stoop.
I'm going to sweep the stoopwhen the stoop is dirty.
I'm not going to be the onlyperson to sweep the stoop.
Somebody else might sweep thestoop when it's dirty too, but
together, this stoop is going tostay well-tended to.
And that's a commitment thatwe're making, even though
neither of us literally legallyown the stoop.
(49:26):
And.
But a lot of times the legaldefinition you got, I'm like, I
don't want to get in trouble.
I don't know who owns this.
Right.
I'm not going to do anythingbecause it's not really mine.
Maybe they like it swept in aparticular type of way.
It's easier for me to just notdo it, even though obviously the
stupid needs to be swept.
I don't know, maybe it's this,there wish that it's not.
(49:47):
And so you just kind of set itaside.
Yeah.
And that's where we're actuallyafraid to engage because that
engagement is a reflection ofour values that maybe we like
clean stoops and swept stoops.
And we don't like to have dirtor garbage accumulated on them.
And that's, that's what I think.
But.
Maybe, maybe I'm nervous thatsomebody else wants it
(50:09):
differently.
So I don't want to.
Put myself out there take thatrisk, that my sense of
stewardship conflicts withsomebody else's.
And so I think.
There's these swirlinginfluences of.
Of excuses and I think fear andthe lack of trust and
compassion.
That result in everybody kind ofengaging in their own bubbles
(50:33):
that travel through space.
But not actually being stewardsof the space.
I think that's sort of what yousaw.
This morning is nobody was asteward of that space to say,
this is where I like to get mycoffee.
This is strange.
It's unusual for this.
What do we do?
Hey, everybody else who getstheir coffee here, let's take a
minute.
(50:53):
And, and.
Have a conversation about this.
a.m. (50:55):
Nobody owned that space.
Everyone was transacting.
And as long as my transactions.
Carry forward.
It is what it is.
Right.
Ben (51:02):
I think that's this kind of that's a sad.
That makes me feel sad.
Visceral level.
Kind of sad right now to thinkof.
An unowned space.
And own the space fuels.
Feels comforting.
The idea of a space that has asteward that is being
maintained.
And, you know, when you end upwith something that is it's
(51:23):
effectively.
Unopened, even if it'sliterally.
That's, that's not like a, it'sa lacking in.
And human character.
a.m. (51:32):
And owned.
You know, for, for, for, for the12 of you listening.
Hi, Joan.
You know, carries a certain,like it has an economic sort of,
you know, Grounding isintimidate.
I mean, owned in the sense.
I think we're all saying thesame thing, but I want to say it
out loud, owned a sense of likeyou own your kids.
Right.
You own your kids, but that'snot a possession.
It's not an asset.
It's not a right.
(51:52):
There's.
There's a stewardship, but it'seven bigger than that.
Right?
Transactions andtransactionalism inherently
subvert.
It's a paradox becausetransactions and
transactionalism are necessary.
But they inherently subvert.
This thing I'm pointing toaround ownership and they
subvert humanity, right?
And all economies do that.
And by economies, I don't justmean like capitalism and, you
(52:15):
know, whatever.
I mean like, like right now we,we have scheduled time.
And, and at whatever it is, I'veone 30 or two o'clock or
whatever.
I don't have my calendar for me,but yeah, two o'clock somebody
else has my time.
Right.
That's an economy.
It's an economy of time.
And it'll invite me to, like, wecan at 1 55, have a really.
Beautiful thing happening.
(52:36):
Right where you're sharingsomething that is like, Hey.
And my alarm goes off.
And I was like, I got to get theKyley.
In that economy of time willinvite me out of my humanity
here.
We'll invite me out of having anownership of this experience.
Ben (52:50):
I forgive you.
a.m. (52:51):
Yeah.
That's not happening.
But I'm saying you should.
I'm just thinking about thevalue economies by
transactional.
I mean, At all scales of thefair, right?
Yeah.
And so going to get the cup ofcoffee.
That microtransaction and myfocus on that transaction
invites me out of ownership forthe space I'm walking through.
Yeah.
And the awareness I need tobring to every moment.
And the remain owner while Itransact.
(53:14):
Hm, versus just transacting iswork that we do not do any more
in the world, but was central tothe work you did.
If you got born into a culture.
Thank you for listening toAbsurd Wisdom.
This is A.
M.
Bott, and you know,conversation, real human
conversation never actuallyends, but episodes of podcasts
need to.
So we're going to end here.
You can connect with me onInstagram and TikTok at, at
(53:37):
Absurd Wisdom.
You can find DAE on Instagram atdae.
community or online at mydae.
org.
Absurd Wisdom is produced anddistributed by DAE Presents, the
production arm of DAE, and we'llbe back with more Conversation
Beyond Understanding nextThursday.
I'm a.m.
bhatt.
Welcome to Absurd Wisdom.
And for today's conversation, weare continuing the ongoing
series with Ben Heller, CTO ofDriver Technologies.
Let's jump right in.
a.m. (01:44):
I just went to pick up lunch.
And on the way back, I justlike, it's something I've
noticed a lot recently, but.
But like there was a visceralsort of.
demonstration but you know, Theacross the country here.
The post COVID economic.
You know, bottom falling out fora bunch of people and, you know,
are unhoused population hasgrown exponentially in the
right.
And I'm walking down.
(02:05):
It's 1130 in the morning.
And I'm walking through theheart of Yale, the Starbucks on
the corner.
There are Atticus's right.
That is like belly of the beastout in front of Starbucks.
Just three guys, homeless.
Smoking meth, like out in theopen, just like one's lighting
the thing for the other.
I'm assuming it's meth.
It might've been crack.
I don't know if that's aroundanymore, but there's, you know,
And people are walking by andkids are coming in and out of
(02:28):
the Starbucks.
And.
Like I actually know is, youknow, but I, I.
I know a lot of unhoused peoplewho are hanging out downtown.
Every single day.
Walking around, you know, two orthree times a day.
You just get to know people andeven those folks.
And and I don't know these threeand every week there's two or
three new and, you know, And sothe, the thing that struck me
about that.
(02:49):
Was not, oh my God.
There's people.
There's people smoking method.
And like, I wasn't like, youknow it was everybody else.
Hmm.
Just how quickly they justhabituated to here.
That's what's going on here.
In the middle of Yale.
And nobody's like, I don't know.
Nobody, I forget about help oroutrage or any of those
reactions.
It's just, yeah.
That's what's happening.
And We've talked a lot about thesort of acceleration of things.
(03:11):
And our inability to keep up.
And what struck me as aquestion, not as an insight or a
thought, even just a questionis.
Are we.
Accelerating people's ability.
Dysfunctional ability.
To just habituate.
They're just tuned out to justkind of like.
You know, do you have a ghost?
Okay.
This is the last time I'll have,but have you ever gone skydiving
by chance?
Ben (03:30):
Never actually gone sky.me.
So
a.m. (03:32):
on the list though.
First time I went, it was tandemthing, right?
Yeah.
And I had, what's called awhiteout.
Right.
So white out is, is, is lady toa blackout.
But a white out is you'retotally awakened conscious.
But there's so much sensoryinput that your brain.
And so you don't black out.
You're not, you're notunconscious, but you go through
this thing, which all thewhite.is again, your brain just
says, Nope, no longerprocessing.
And that's a straw.
(03:53):
Maybe that's summarizes athought.
I had a, the inquiry that gotopened as I'm walking by these
guys and noticing what's goingon is, is everybody in the state
of collective whiteout?
And are we going to justcontinue to stay in a state of
collective whiteout where peopleare walking around and moving
around conscious, but there isso much that it just whoop just,
it just be awareness, just shutdown.
Ben (04:12):
Sicca topic.
Ah, Not a good topic.
Yeah.
But it's a worthy topic for, forcontemplation.
And it's going to take me asecond to kind of pull on the
thread and.
And stretch it out a bit.
But ultimately right.
It's.
When you see something.
That is bothersome to you, or atleast requires processing.
It's easier to summon the energyto carve it out and ignore it,
(04:38):
put on the blinders and walk bythan it is to go through the
process of.
What am I seeing?
Is it bothersome to me?
Is it harmful to the people whoare engaging in the activity?
Is it harmful to anyone else?
What do I do about it?
In this particular case, isthere anything to do about it?
What do I do about it?
Systemically?
(04:59):
Is there something that I needto, like, isn't an opinion to
form and a plan of action thatneeds to take place and all of
that.
You kind of very quickly do themath and go, I can't right now.
I don't, I don't have theability to form all of those
opinions and gain confidence inthem and then develop an action
plan.
(05:20):
But hopefully what someone isdoing, and this is unknowable is
having walked by in whiteoutmode.
Then.
Take and reflect on that.
Like we're doing now and say,Well, That was a notable moment
in my day.
If this is happening every day,what am I going to do the next
time?
I see this, what is my plan ofaction?
(05:41):
And, you know, it's, it's hardwhen it comes to something like
this.
Cause this is also a I think anurban reflex.
I lived in New York city for alot of years and you're kind of
taught to ignore things.
It's, it's a manner of, youknow, Urban survival in a way
where it's like, if it doesn'tinvolve me step away, because
getting in, if I get involved ineverything, then I'm never going
(06:04):
to get to where I'm going,because there's so many things
that are happening that areworthy of that level of
contemplation.
New humans, a little differentthan New York city.
New Haven is a community at theend, at least to me.
Right.
a.m. (06:17):
It's a college campus.
We have a big part of downtownis basically a college campus
and one of the premier collegecampuses.
Ben (06:22):
All right.
Yeah.
And, and so, you know, we'lltake, let's take the specific
case that you brought up andactually like, see if we can
pull it apart.
And I'd be really curious to seewhere we, where we end up in
terms of how we feel about itand what is, what is the action
to take, if any.
And, you know, with, with open.
Drug use, right?
There's immediately thedisambiguation between are these
(06:45):
people.
Partying and having a good time.
Or are they engaging in behaviorthat is destructive either
self-destructive or causing themto be destructive towards others
and the people around them?
I think that's kind of thefirst.
The first judgment call to bemade in that process.
If you saw the same group ofthree people sitting and.
(07:06):
Brown bagging, you know,drinking, drinking a 40.
Would you have the, exactly thesame reaction versus someone
smoking crack smoking math.
Or would it be.
Other shades of nuance there.
a.m. (07:18):
Yeah.
I so, so for me, Ben, itactually wasn't about the
specific thing they were doing.
It's the.
Again, I'm there three times aday, right?
I've never seen that sort ofthing out in the open.
And so the fact that it happens.
And there's zero response to it.
All right.
And so I've put that now.
Thing aside.
(07:38):
And just everything.
Right.
That that, that.
Something really critical, justshifts.
And we're just like, Got to goand get my latte.
Yeah, right.
And I'm with you on all of thissort of like yeah.
New York.
I mean, there was.
It's all sorts of things thatyou just walk in sector.
One of the hallmarks of a newYorker as you're just kind of
like.
Now unbothered by the.
You know So it wasn't a specificthing that just catalyzed a
(07:59):
thought it's more broad social.
Like we, you know, again, we'vetalked about this a lot.
It is, it is.
There's just so much change,fundamental change day to day.
And we're just kind of walkingpast it.
But, so I want to just say thatto clarify, you know, kind of
more, you know, the broaderthing I'm actually trying to
point to.
In your question now If thethree of them were sitting there
drinking a 40.
In that context, right on thecorner at Starbucks at 1130 in
(08:21):
the morning, it would besimilar.
Right.
Because that's not the normthere.
Right.
You wouldn't do, you know,people wouldn't do that.
People wouldn't be quote unquoteallowed to do that.
In.
The heart again, across thestreet from Yale art gallery,
basically.
And so I'm not suggesting theyshouldn't be allowed to do that.
I'm just asking, it's such ashift.
Right.
And even somebody sitting theredrinking would be such a shift.
(08:42):
And yet.
It's just yep.
Shit just keeps
Ben (08:44):
changing.
Yes.
I, I like this.
This is, I think for me gettingat some, some of the meat of it.
Setting aside, you know, what'sprohibited versus what's
allowed.
Cause I think that's a lessinteresting conversation then
what's normal versus not normal.
To some extent.
A lot of my attitude towardsculture and society is wanting
(09:05):
to encourage the not normal.
Right.
So again, I'm going to keeppresenting, I'm going to throw a
hypothetical statute, right?
So now it's not three peoplesitting around drinking forties.
It's three people skateboarding,right?
Maybe they look like punks.
Yeah.
Where where's the line at whichkind of the like cultural
transgressive.
This is something that you wantto celebrate.
(09:29):
Versus something where you saylike, this is actually a problem
for our community and the factthat we're ignoring it.
Day in day out.
It means that we're on aslippery slope.
And I think.
You know, it does come down tothis idea of.
But it is something beingexplored or enriched or is it
just destructive?
Is it just tearing things down?
a.m. (09:48):
So I'm pointing to a third option, right?
So you're saying celebrate itor, you know, Stop it right.
And I'm suggesting that peopleare just disassociated from it.
All right.
Ben (09:58):
I get, so I agree.
My my sense is.
You're disassociated from itbecause you've implicitly chosen
the latter option of your you'recondemning it, but you don't
have the mental space to figureout why and how and what you're
going to do about it.
Therefore, the only thing youreally can do is ignore it.
(10:18):
And in, so doing, it's kind ofthe worst version of condemning
it.
The type of condemnation that.
You know, doesn't really, you'renot putting any skin in the
game.
You're not saying this is thesociety I want to live in, and
this is why you're not puttingthose reasons forward.
You're not dedicating time orenergy towards creating it.
And yet, you know, you're notcelebrating it.
(10:40):
So you're just kinda.
Yeah.
a.m. (10:43):
Yeah.
Yeah.
In that micro case, you're not,you're not helping the
individual who likely is in somestate of addiction, certainly in
some state of economicdeprivation.
You're not helping theneighborhood.
You're not.
I mean community, any of that?
Yeah.
So, yes, that is the phenomenonpointing to, but now at scale,
Right.
Technology advances.
The.
There's a, there's a film rightnow.
I have yet to see it, but I knowlike, you know, the.
(11:05):
Probably more than I should,because I'd like to know things
about building a zone ofinterest.
Have you heard about zone ofinterest?
Have you seen
Ben (11:10):
it?
I haven't seen it yet.
But it's been much discussed.
Yeah.
a.m. (11:13):
And do you know how blizzard made that film?
No.
There are, there is no film crewanywhere with the actors E.
He hid cameras and microphonesin their living spaces.
They knew, obviously, right.
And now it's just engaged withmundane day-to-day activities.
While living next door to, Ithink it's Auschwitz.
Yeah, next door to aconcentration camp.
(11:34):
Yeah.
And he's capturing.
You know, from, from whatever Iheard about it again.
Have yet to see it and no toomuch as I hate knowing stuff
about film, but but he'scapturing this sort of just the,
the bay now day to day, sort ofnumbed out existence.
People will engage in.
Well, tuning out.
What's going on.
Right.
And, and in when they, I thinkthey won the BAFTA the best
film.
I'm pretty sure that's what itwasn't in that speech.
(11:55):
He said, yeah, you.
No, this, this, this film isabout right now and what's
happening in the middle east,right?
For whatever side you come downon that.
What I find is most peopleactually don't come down on a
side.
They're just tuned out to it.
Not because they're not aware ofit.
Not because they're not worriedabout it.
You know, if they pause andthink about it, but like walking
by the guy, smoking a meth onthe street.
It's just.
(12:15):
Tune it out.
Ben (12:16):
It feels a little bit akin to.
You know, you're driving on ahighway and you see that
somebody has a flat tire on theside of the road.
If you're driving too fast.
Yeah.
You don't stop.
Right.
You go up.
Wow.
I was driving so fast.
I can't, I can't pull over andhelp that person, but some
someone else will.
And eventually, maybe there issomebody who sees it slows down
(12:37):
and helps the person on the sideof the road.
But how many people are going togo by going up?
I was going too fast.
I was in the left lane.
I don't know, you know, there'sother resources for them.
They'll all.
They'll.
You know, call a tow truck.
There'll be fine.
And it's always easier to kindof pass the buck.
And it's just, I think what youobserved.
Was an entire society in one.
(13:00):
Space collectively.
Passing the buck.
And they're not being a responseto it.
Meaning like there's, there'snobody who's stepping in and
saying.
Well, these are three people whoneed help in some way.
So what's what is there?
What's that being passed to whenyou ignore and say, well,
(13:20):
there's the some other carsgoing to slow down.
You know, what are we, what arewe implying?
Are we implying that somebodyelse is going to step up and
say, Hey fellows like.
Are you okay?
Do you need something right now?
What can I do for you?
Is that the right response?
Is that what they actually needfrom a stranger, from a
passer-by right?
Is it, is there a, a publicservice of somebody who.
(13:44):
It is their responsibility totake care of the people that we
live with who need.
Help.
So, what do we actually knowwhat that's being passed to?
And I think the answer is wedon't, we just kind of assume
vaguely that like someone else.
We'll do it, but we don't knowwhether it's a person
organization, part of the citygovernment.
(14:06):
Who is it?
Yeah.
And
Scott (14:08):
did you get the sense that there was just indifference
to what was happening or justthe lack of understanding?
a.m. (14:13):
I felt like they were invisible, man.
Like they were at the door therenext to the door.
And people were walking in andout and it's just not something
you would see again, this is notabout, oh my God, what's
happening to our city.
Right.
Just.
To clarify, right.
And.
Like I said, I know a lot of thefolks down there and these guys,
I didn't know.
Not that I likely would havesaid anything if, if they were
one of the folks that I knew,you know, there's a certain.
(14:34):
Yeah.
But no, to get back to yourquestion, it.
It was just, just like they mayas well been standing there.
You.
Drinking a Cola.
And again, it wasn't the act.
It was the fact that the act wassuch a square wave change from
what you'd expect on thatcorner.
And that everybody's just sortof.
I love the analogy of thehighway, right?
Because if you connect it toprevious conversations, we are
(14:57):
in a state of, so my, you.
My ongoing kind of drum.
I like to beat.
I'll I'll achievement,achievement, productivity,
achievement productivity.
And, you know, we on-ramp kidsto this conversation at the age
of 12.
You know, or DHS seven, maybe.
We on-ramp them to the highwayand immediately pushed them to
the left lane.
And we've got a lot of peopledriving on autopilot, going
(15:18):
really, really fast.
And missing all the, you know,roadside accidents.
Many, if not, most of whom werefolks.
Who are driving really fast onautopilot?
It's some version of, or theywere around others who were
driving really fast on autopilotand they were just collateral
damage.
You know, or they were part ofsystems.
That we're driving on autopilot.
(15:39):
You know in the fast lane andthey're collateral damage.
Yeah.
I don't know what to make off X.
This is very, this is ahalf-hour old, but it just, it
just, it just, this, the.
The tuned out, this really,really
Ben (15:49):
struck me.
I think there's also a sense ofnot knowing, not knowing what to
do.
I'm really trying to get towhere, like what.
What would I have done?
Almost certainly what I actuallywould have done, had to happen
today is walk in.
Get my latte and then walk out.
But what would I have liked tohave done is sort of the more
interesting question.
And, you know, we're not reallywell-prepared.
(16:12):
Two.
Engage with people who actunpredictably.
And I think we're, we're taughtfrom a young age that drug users
are inclined to actunpredictably, which can
certainly be true.
What probably I would have likedto say if I felt that it was
unusual or if they were somehowhurting the people around them
(16:32):
would have been.
Hey fellows.
Do you have a place that you cango right now?
Is there a, is there a placethat you can go?
And if the answer is no, wedon't have a place that we can
go.
Solve that problem.
Because I suspect the answerwould have been no, there's not
a safe place outside of thepublic.
Otherwise, what it was couldhave been potentially a bit of
(16:56):
an act of defiance.
If the answer is, well, we dohave a place, but we've chosen
this place.
Sure because we're actuallytesting the theory that this is,
or isn't normal, you know, inthe heart of, of Yale.
a.m. (17:08):
Yeah.
I I'm, I'm blessed, interestedin, in, in, in sort of how to
intervene on that one.
Hmm, right then I am.
I'm less interested in them thanI am in, in the folks walking in
and out.
Because, and again, I don't, I'mnot in anyone's head obviously.
And so I don't know what's goingon, but, you know, I stood there
in the corner, you know, Sevenfeet away pretending to be
looking at my phone.
(17:28):
So I could just observe thething for, you know, at least
just a couple, three, fourminutes.
Hmm.
And what I saw is again, I wantto get back to let people wait
it out.
You know, people disassociate,like it's not like I didn't see
any nonverbals that were like,oh shit, no, I don't want to get
involved in that because of mybad.
I just don't like it.
Invisible.
You know, That's the part of itthat I'm keyed in on?
(17:48):
Not what should somebody havedone or not done?
But the fact that it, it, it Itmay as well, been a
hallucination for me, given thereaction of, of of the lack of
reaction or even lack of what Iperceived in the non-verbals.
As even awareness.
Ben (18:03):
I'm going to take your arm and twist it a little bit on
this one.
Not just cause I think it's.
Not necessarily.
I think for, in order to focuson the people who are having the
wideout experience.
Yeah.
There has to be.
Something that registers foreach person.
To allow them to process thisand to see it and react to it.
(18:25):
And to have a reaction.
And for that reaction to involvean action.
And that to me, I think remainsworking backwards from what do
you do?
Because it can't just be 10people standing around, you
know, the Yale art galleryscreaming and holding their
heads that something onnormally.
Unnatural or not normal ashappening.
(18:46):
They can't run away inhysterics, but nor can they like
condemn these people and, andact irrationally towards them.
And so I think in order toprocess it.
You do have to work backwardsfrom a sense of action, a little
bit.
From the
a.m. (19:03):
bystanders.
I agree with you in principle,but what I'm pointing to the
event is.
The possibility.
So I agree with you.
You'd have to notice it to havea reaction one way or the other,
even to choose to ignore it.
What I'm suggesting is thatpeople literally didn't see it.
You know, interesting.
Walking around.
So whited out.
That I will not take in any nonthreatening.
It's like the fight flightfreeze.
(19:24):
Like there's a permanent stateof not, they're not, they're
not, they're not there.
Because for, and again, I'mreaching here in this one
situation.
Because I'm looking at somethingmore broadly in society right
now where.
We don't even see it.
Because we are so in a walkingaround in a state of whiteout.
Ben (19:42):
Okay.
So I love this.
Thanks for clarifying that.
I think for me, I have adifferent assumption, which is
that everyone saw it.
And felt it.
And then everyone whoexperienced that as carrying
around a little ball ofdiscomfort for the rest of their
day or rest of their week.
That they're not processing.
And they're either it leakingout in different ways or they're
(20:05):
processing it obliquely, butthat they're really not dealing
with it, but that they arecarrying it around.
I guess it's a less cynical viewthan someone being like a very
kind of Aldous Huxley ask.
Like, do you truly didn't seeit.
a.m. (20:18):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So.
I think I'm aligned with you,but I want to go on.
I calibrate one thing.
So when you say, you know,they're carrying it around, are
they aware that they're carryingit around or is it just another
thing?
Ben (20:28):
I don't think it's
a.m. (20:29):
a gallstone.
So this, so this is what I'mpointing to, right.
Like, of course they saw it interms of visual, right?
Yeah.
But it immediately gets pushedin, in the same way.
Like when.
That's the whole point ofwedding out versus blacking out.
Right.
It's not that your eyes are nolonger taking in information.
It's not that your brain is no.
Oh, your ears are no longertaking a sound.
It's that immediately you are.
(20:49):
Pushing it.
I would have awareness.
You're pushing it
Ben (20:52):
somewhere.
We got, we got there.
We got, we got there.
Yes.
Why it's worth doing this?
Scott (20:57):
Yeah.
So you think a default state isjust don't get involved.
Don't get involved.
Don't get involved is kind oflike the repeating mantra in
people's heads or it's just,
a.m. (21:05):
it's not don't get involved.
I think it is like, Again, whathappens in the whiteout is
you're overloaded in informationthat you you've surpassed the
ability to process, right.
When you're falling.
You know, from, from 9,000 feet,At that speed and you lose all
sense of perspective and like,it should.
The brain can't process anymore.
(21:25):
And such as that, No more.
The stuff's going in.
But the processing is like,Nope, we're not going to, you
know, process it anymore.
So it's just numbed out state.
Where you just.
You're kind of there, but notreally right.
The sound you don't hearanymore.
The visual just becomes justthis one.
Just.
It's just like a white sort oflike, just.
You know, bleached out image ofthe ground, kind of, sort of
(21:47):
what's the experience.
But the sound went away,everything right?
And so it's not even like, don'tdeal with it.
Don't it just like.
We're full.
You, you can, you can come in.
But, but you're not gettingserved.
Right, right.
Ben (21:58):
Here's my hot take on this, which is, it's not like we're
walking around at 10% of whiteoutstate and we suddenly see a
couple of people doing drugs ona street corner, and we go to a
hundred, you can't processinformation.
I'd suspect that to continuewith this analogy, we're
actually at like 92% of thetime.
Yes.
And we see something that putsus over and we go, oh, I can't.
(22:22):
That's it.
You know, I we're optimizing ourlives to be so full that we're
not leaving room for anyinformation that comes to us by
surprise.
And that I think goes for morethan something that's kind of
bothersome to us.
It could be things that arejoyful.
I mean, this is like truly,we're not like stopping and
(22:42):
smelling the roses.
Right.
And I think this is an extensionof that, except it's, it's,
there's a good case to talkabout in the sense of, okay,
this is something that very,very obviously could occupy that
final 10%.
But there's, that's really,that's really the trouble.
And when we do that, it means wedon't have time to acknowledge.
(23:02):
Other people.
Other people are more often thannot the source of something that
is going to bring us joy.
Bring us sorrow.
Drive us to action.
Make us actually stop pivot,turn our heads and engage in
something that wasn't on ourlist today.
And I read this story with mythree-year-old.
They have frog and toad.
It's kind of a beloved childstory.
(23:22):
And there's one where toad makesa list of all the things he's
going to do.
And he goes and starts runningdown the items on the list, and
then he loses the list.
And he doesn't go and pursue thelist as his blowing away,
because going to catches listwasn't on his list and therefore
he's incapable of going toretrieve his list.
And those were a little bit likethat.
(23:44):
I think when we operate at that,that 90% baseline.
So it's really the question of,well, can.
Can we peel it back?
You know, how do you identifythe people as you're walking
around, who are actually at at50% or 20% who aren't
overflowing already, who are,who are willing and able to
process additional informationthat comes in unexpectedly?
(24:06):
And how do you, how do you evenknow from your own internal kind
of barometer?
Where are you at at anyparticular moment?
That's a much more complicated.
I'm a complicated topic, Ithink.
a.m. (24:17):
Yeah.
And I'll take, I'll take theconversation.
Into the other side of whatyou're, what, you're, what
you're asking.
But, but the 92% thing.
Yes.
That's again, that, that.
That's that's where I'm pointingto is a book to walking around
fully saturated.
And, and, and this mechanism ofjust, you know, not, they're
not, they're not there eventhough they, they see it, but it
just doesn't, it doesn'tregister.
(24:38):
It doesn't process in the waythat it might have.
But I'll take the other side ofwhat you asked for on how do you
identify a 50%.
I think.
And, you know, this was in themoment I'm kind of connecting
dots here.
I think one of the consequencesof being perpetually at 92%.
Is a high level of receptivityto fundamentalism.
Ideological fundamentalismpolitical fundamentalism,
(24:58):
religious and unknowns, becausewhat.
What a fundamental isperspective in any category
provide you.
It's very simple, black andwhite.
Way to process everything.
And so if you're massivelysaturated in this area, right,
you're near white outstate atall times.
And somebody comes along andsays, yep, very simple.
Here's good.
Here's bad.
Plug and play on everything.
That becomes a certain kind ofdefense mechanism.
(25:20):
That, that you take on that.
That helps you just quicklyengage with these things.
Ben (25:24):
Hmm.
You don't have to think about itbecause there's something else
telling you what to think aboutit.
Yeah.
Or you can at least deduce froma set of rules, kind of how to,
how it should follow.
a.m. (25:33):
And, you know, we know I I'm I'm.
At best.
I won't even say I was gonna saya loose historian, but that's
even I'm I'm you know, I gotsome, I got some straight bits
of knowledge.
I picked up on.
But, but, but there is aphenomena of, of a fascist
receipt regimes.
Following on from states ofextreme uncertainty,
(25:54):
unpredictability and proceedscarcity.
Where no one quite knows.
You know, a, everything is bad,but B nobody quite knows how to
filter stuff.
And someone comes along andsays, no worries.
This is black.
This is white.
This is good.
This is bad.
Okay.
Okay.
Feel better?
Cool.
Let's move on now.
Right.
In small communities and large,you know And I kind of feel like
(26:16):
that's where we are in theworld.
Bad.
Scott (26:18):
Do you feel like the pandemic exacerbated that?
Cause it kind of started this.
a.m. (26:22):
like, like.
It accelerated some things thatwere already like la,la, la, la,
la, I don't want to hear aboutit.
Like.
Is the whole government of giantconspiracy.
Like it.
The COVID and the end of theTrump era.
Exploded this notion.
That the government had a bunchof lizard.
Pedophile deep state deep, likeall AGLC exploded that right.
(26:44):
It exploded.
It exploded.
At a whole bunch of things.
So I distrust of science, justtrust a business.
It exploded all that.
And then introduced a whole new.
Thing to saturate ourselveswith.
Holy shit at any given moment,something I can't see can wipe
out.
Two three, 10% of thepopulation.
And oh shit.
I don't have to worry aboutbombs after worry about people
in labs in, in, you know, inother countries.
(27:05):
Or.
You know, in Tulsa or in what,you know what I mean?
So, yeah, I think it's just,it's so rapidly excelled.
These last four to six yearsrapidly accelerated All of this
shit.
Scott (27:15):
Interesting.
You say that because it feelslike.
The conspiracy theoryevangelists are the ones that
are more likely to see what'snot there and ignore what is
there.
Like you're saying.
You're in whiteout from what'shappening in front of you.
So you've reached behind that.
To say like, well, what's thecause of it.
It's this, these people arethis.
(27:36):
Institute
a.m. (27:37):
the way I would articulate Scott is it's not that they're
seeing, what's not there.
It's, they're applying.
They're very simple.
Filter to everything.
Whatever happens.
Oh yeah.
That's because X, what are the,oh yeah.
That's because X right.
It's just very simple.
A way to now filter everythingthat happens.
That does provide, I'm sure acertain amount of psychological
comfort.
(27:57):
You know, this is good.
This is bad.
And you move on.
By the way.
Just a digression because we'vegone to three episodes of that.
My bashing, either Trump orMusk.
If there is a deep state.
If there is this cabal ofpeople.
Running things in thisnefarious, you know, Pedophilic.
Whatever, maybe the lizardpeople actually write it.
(28:18):
If that, if you're in thatgroup, Can you imagine?
A better person.
To be at the.
Vanguard.
Oh, dismantling us then DonaldTrump.
Can you, can you imagine a morelike perfect.
It's like being the mob.
And hearing, oh shit, the DAthey're appointing a new DA
cause they're getting seriousabout dismantling us.
(28:40):
And then the point, the guythat's like, oh shit, man.
He's he's into the bookies forof the half a million and these
down at the brothel every otherweek and like, fine.
Great.
I don't get, like, I getpeople's conspiracy theories.
I get it.
But I I'm baffled by themthinking.
That Trump is not like a godsendfor the conspiracies.
For the, for the people runningthe conspiracy, you know what
(29:01):
they're worried about?
If they exist, like they wouldlove the fact that Trump's ahead
of it.
Like, it's just, it's insane.
Anyway.
All right.
Back back to our regularcommerce.
And then
Scott (29:09):
compensation
Ben (29:09):
there.
Well, I mean, I think yeah, to.
To circle back to the sense of.
Humanity.
And to what extent, this isencouraging people to be in
white outstate to the worldaround them, and to also be
looking for these invisibleforces that may or may not exist
that are.
You know, causing damage in waysthat are unseen and unheard.
(29:31):
There was this burst of humanitytowards the end of the pandemic
and during the pandemic ofpeople singing from their
balconies and this.
Need to connect with people, youknow, after a year, plus in many
cases of people wearing masks,not getting to see people smile.
There's.
There's this very positive, Ithink need for human connection.
(29:53):
And it's hard to reconcile thatwith this like really
precipitous decline and likelong-term.
What it seems to be as trust.
Yeah.
It's like we need each other.
We missed each other, but we nolonger trust each other.
Yeah.
And that's resulting in somevery weird interactions.
(30:14):
And I do think to bring it toyour example of CME, as people
engage in activity that isunusual for the place that it
was in.
I think it comes down to trust.
If you trust that those peopleare not going to harm you.
You can engage with them.
It doesn't matter what they'redoing, right?
Yeah.
You can you trust them?
(30:35):
And they presumably trust you tonot call the police to not.
You know, insult them to respectthem as, as human beings, but
there's been a breakdown intrust.
And when you don't trustsomebody, what's the easiest
thing to do stay away.
Right, right.
And so that's where we're allkind of taking these paths of,
of isolation, because we saw atwork, we saw that we could do
(30:58):
it.
You know what?
You can just ignore all theirother people stay six feet apart
forever.
I put on our, put on our masksand whatever form it takes.
And you know, you don't have tobe wearing one to be wearing
one, I think is sort of the, thelesson.
And, you know, just live atrustless existence.
And so we're starting to see it.
I think what society looks likeas that becomes
(31:20):
institutionalized in some ways,
a.m. (31:22):
I like the, the, the generous but yet still.
Honest A take on this thismorning.
Thing, which is people aren'twhited out there.
They're there like.
Yeah, this is.
You know, Like I don't, I don't,I wish they weren't doing that.
For their own health, as well asfor the community.
And.
Like.
This is where they are and whoam I to.
(31:45):
You know, I try to do whatever,you know, I there's nothing I
can do positive for them.
And who am I to, you know, messwith them.
I like that reading and I, and Iwould, you know, my, my biases.
I would love to.
Get on board that actually.
I agree with you that, that thatis another.
Post COVID event.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I'd love to get on boardwith, with the idea that, that,
that, that is a stronger wavethan the other wave that I'm
(32:08):
pointing to.
Around numbing out.
I liked that reading of, of, ofthe 1130 event.
Ben (32:13):
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's turning thecynicism dial kind of up or down
depending on what thetemperature of the room is, but.
a.m. (32:20):
Yeah, cynicism is very underrated.
Earned cynicism is underrated.
You know, blind cynicism and nogood.
But yeah, I hear ya.
I hear ya.
And it is.
You know, that, that, thatcommunity down there, the kind
of Yale student community thatis.
90% of who's walking around inthe middle of the day like this.
Right.
It's it's For all of the sort ofnegativity in town that pops up
(32:41):
outside of the Yale about Yale.
And about Yalies and their senseof, you know, all those cliches,
right.
The vast majority of myexperiences with young people
downtown.
In public spaces is not justlike pleasant, but, but very
often interesting, like in avery, you know, like, like
hopeful way.
Yeah, I'm the guy who just, Italk to everybody and I'm, you
know, I'm having a coffee with aguy who's, you know, kind of,
(33:03):
kind of.
Panhandling and I'm I'm.
Budding in, on conversations ofYalies that you know G cafe or
whatever.
So I could kind of talk toeverybody and, and There is
certainly there is more of whatyou're pointing to in terms of
a.
I don't know, more of an, of a,of a.
Open-hearted awareness of, ofthings then.
Might've been you know, 20 yearsago, or certainly when I was,
you know, An undergrad.
Ben (33:24):
Yeah.
It's a.
I do think the mentality seemsto be changing.
You know, I, I can't reallyspeak to the reality of it on
the ground, but it seems like alot of universities in big
cities.
For awhile, we're cultivating abit of a us versus them.
Yeah, attitude.
I think now that there's a bitmore of an awareness of these
(33:46):
schools, wherever they areexisting in the actual world and
not being as confined to the.
The physical gates.
That that high at all of thestudent quads and you know,
there for awhile, a lot of the.
Great American institutions thatare the, like literally the
elite institutions in thecountry.
(34:07):
We're sending a lot of people topublic service roles, you know,
coming out of the sixties andseventies, it was fairly common
to go into some type of publicservice to.
You want to affect change in theworld?
And I think generally there wasa wave of that change at a
certain point.
It started becoming more lawyersthan people traveling abroad.
(34:28):
I'm trying to.
And it seems like there's adoubling back of that.
And I don't know if that postpandemic has, has changed at
all, but when I speak to peoplewho are kind of the.
Generation younger than myself.
Almost everybody has these very,very strong, like social impact
motivations.
(34:49):
And that's not something that Iwould have identified in my, in
my own generation.
I think that was sort of there.
You know, they.
Product of the like Clinton eraeconomic boom was like, ah, you
know what, we're going to getgood shoulder pads and, you
know, get a top tier law job andlike that.
That's great.
Not knocking it, but it's beena, it's been a tonal shift from
(35:10):
generation to generation.
I do think it is rubber bandingback towards public service.
It's all be interesting to seewhat the impact of that is.
5 10, 15 years from now.
And if it changes the dynamic ofwhat, what you saw on the street
corner today, Yeah.
a.m. (35:25):
I would be too.
It's just, just to share thelove.
I, I the, the, you know, One ofthe few people that I would be
like, yeah, That kind of believethat.
If we found out they were infact alien lizard overlords
would in fact be bill Clinton.
And, and his buddy Al gore, whodid a brilliant job of
rebranding himself with theclimate thing, but holy shit, is
that guy responsible for somenasty stuff?
Yeah.
So just, just to do.
(35:45):
Let's y'all think it's onlyDonny and Elon that
Scott (35:48):
Plenty to go.
Ben (35:49):
Yeah.
Well opportunity hater.
Scott (35:51):
So.
I would posit this theory, letme know what you think about
this.
I think what he witnessed todaywas a secondary effect of the
housing crisis.
Not only because they wereunhoused probably, but because
in, when I grew up in new Haven,Nineties, late eighties, early
nineties, you go two blocks inany direction off campus.
There were plenty crack houses.
(36:11):
Places to do that.
You know, behavior that was,that were ignored by you know,
most of the establishment,including the police around, as
long as they're out of sight, wedon't have to worry about the
addiction being a thing that,you know, affects us on campus.
So in the fact that it's like,well, this is where we are.
Yeah.
The effect of you know, All the,all the crack houses were mowed
(36:32):
down in high-rises were put intheir place.
Right.
Kind of thing.
Yeah.
Ben (36:35):
So, I mean, what is the, what's the remedy?
I, this, I know I'm, I'm.
Keep pushing the conversationback towards kind of action, but
in, in service of taking newHaven, trying to have.
Some majority of the houses notbe crack houses off.
The borders of downtown and tohave a city that feels safe to
(36:56):
everybody, but to also haveproper pouncing and services for
people who couldn't otherwisefind it.
It's a really, it's a trickybalance without doing the thing
that I think is equally ascriticized, which is pushing
everything to the marginscontinuously out from the
center.
And so, you know, there, therehas to be some type of
(37:17):
well-integrated option insidethe city that acknowledges the
nature of.
The diverse nature of new Haven,which is not entirely Yale.
And it's also not entirely, youknow, Drug addicts.
Right.
But it's, it's a complicated.
And so how to do that withoutjust saying out.
Which is a lot of, of city'sanswer is it'll somehow go out.
(37:40):
The nature of out alwayschanges.
You know, To really fix it.
There has to be something thatsays, Nope.
And, and that's, that's thetrick.
Scott (37:49):
Most of the Americans who used to be what we call in the
middle-class, you know, when wewere growing up have been.
Elevated socially to.
Being able to afford largehouses in the suburbs or push
down.
And don't have that generationalnet worth.
That is, you know, and if theydo it is tied up in real estate.
It's, you know, we, we live offthe value of the properties that
(38:11):
we own and.
All, you know, I feel like a lotof the laws that are enforced
are to, you know, preserveproperty ownership.
They're not really to preserveorder.
As we think of it, like.
Seeing as what am saw today.
So, how do we.
I think, you know, the easiestway to.
To do that is to create moreaffordable housing, but it's
(38:32):
easy to say that out loud.
And you try to put it intopractice.
Nobody builds houses.
If they're not going to make aprofit off of, you know, that's
the nobody builds.
Affordable and.
Connecticut.
Has I think it's 10% affordablehousing threshold that they're
looking for in most places andout of 169 towns, I think maybe
like 10 actually hit 10% ofaffordable housing.
(38:54):
And the rest of them, just putup these clues, exclusionary
zoning to.
You know, make it so peoplearen't doing drugs on the
sidewalk in front of Starbucks,like where they live.
You know, that kind of thing.
So it's a, it's a weird selfpreserving model.
And I don't really know ifthere's a solution.
Outside of.
Just basically higher taxationof, you know, higher incomes and
a lowering of property tax.
(39:16):
Burdens on folks who already ownexisting housing and might be an
a.
Lower.
You know, middle-class orworking, you know, working poor,
which is Funny.
The description of a car.
Whole group of people.
You know, as opposed to theunhoused wears really unworking
poor, you know, like, so.
Th the way we stratify thesethings is really challenging to
(39:38):
undo.
And I think it really.
Yeah, high level needs to be.
Looked at, in the sense ofreally what you were saying,
helping one at a time.
You know, what can we do to getyou someplace where you can have
a big, good baseline?
That's it.
It's a lot of work in.
Non-profits.
You know, try the best that theycan to.
Help those folks, but they'rejust.
(39:59):
Understand under resourceunderfunded to be able to do it.
You know, I think.
Being able to lay the foundationearly for folks who might be in
need is the challenge toovercome first, you know, one at
a time.
One at a time.
Ben (40:12):
Yeah.
I mean.
I think I see.
I am sort of Wyatt.
From the very beginning, youwere pushing back against night.
Forget, forget about the actionpiece.
Because the action piece doessort of follow naturally.
In a way.
If you remove the, the whiteout.
Threshold from everybody, right?
It's like, you're never, you'renever going to even get to
(40:33):
action if you can't acknowledgethe problem directly and put a
name to it.
And that's that's the trickypiece is.
It's almost like, well, we wantto talk about.
What would we do?
It's a chicken or the eggproblem.
Like, I'm not going toacknowledge that until I figure
out what I'm going to do aboutit.
It doesn't serve me to have areaction to this, unless I know
(40:54):
what that reaction leads to.
So I'm going to figure that outfirst.
But then you never figure thatout and therefore you never end
up having a reaction.
You don't create space.
But you never create that space,therefore you never
acknowledged.
It just kind of endlessly loopsinto this sense of there's
always a prerequisite.
For me too.
To be doing something whichboils down to stop making
(41:16):
excuses.
Right.
Right.
Like either, either you care oryou don't.
I think that's sort of the, theeasy way to, to sum this up and
it's maybe.
Maybe people don't care.
And maybe they only care whenthere's a threshold.
Of this.
And where, what is thatthreshold for you?
Well, it's probably for mostpeople.
When they can no longer give himthe door to get their coffee.
(41:37):
Right when it, it interrupts theflow of what they were going to
do.
That's just part of thevibration of what drives them.
Through their day.
And suddenly when that vibrationgets interrupted and it becomes
a nuisance, then it's like, Wegot to do something about this,
and it's only at the point atwhich it interrupts, interrupts
(41:59):
you.
It's.
Now it's not about them.
It's not about helping.
It's not about the community.
It's about you and you beingbothered.
And you know, not to say that.
The why matters if the outcomeis good for everyone.
But it does sort of seem like adevolution.
And In our ability to connectwith each other.
(42:22):
And to just to effect changewithout it being the result of
our personal inconvenience.
And then see that I'm dialingthe cynic cynical knob all the
way back up again.
Now, just to.
Can you see what it feels like?
a.m. (42:35):
We'll trade rolls here and I'm going to dial it all the way
in the other direction.
And, and move away from this.
Right.
There's there's There's thisnotion we've used in, in
organizations and in startupsand I've heard in a variety of
places.
For me, it came from this, this,this.
This incident, my grandfather,but this idea of operate like an
owner.
If your view.
I heard some version of this andlike a startup, right.
Probably like an owner.
You see something needs doing,do it operate as if you own the
(42:58):
place, right.
And in a startup, you canactually, you, you know, you do
have a certain amount ofownership potentially, right.
Some kind of shares, right.
I've talked in the past about,you know, kind of human beings
were born into cultureshistorically in the last couple
of hundred years, pretty muchanywhere on the planet.
You're born into an economy,right.
If you're born into a culture,you're born into a tribe.
Group an indigenous name.
You're an owner.
You know, the land and the birdsand the Buffalo and the river.
(43:22):
And the stories and all that.
You're an owner.
Like, that's just your newoperate.
Like you're an owner.
If you're born into an economy,you don't own shit.
Even the stuff you own, youdon't own.
And so when people don't operatelike owners, you get things
like, like the phenomenon thismorning.
All right.
Where it's like, that's not myproblem.
Long started referring to me.
That's.
It's not my problem.
It's not my intent.
No, nothing negative, but that'snot like, you know, I don't own
(43:45):
this place.
Somebody who owns this placewill take care of it.
As long as it doesn't interferewith me.
Right.
Scott (43:50):
So that means if they were diagonally across the
street.
Right at the entrance to thegallery.
Yeah.
It probably would have beentaken care of.
a.m. (43:56):
We take care of, right?
Yeah.
Like, I, I guess the Starbucksowners don't care.
I guess the police don't care ifI don't know whatever.
But I'm not the owner now.
My job.
Yeah.
It would be beyond the, not myjob.
I'm not the owner.
I don't have accountability forthis.
I'm not part of this, right.
And the society invites that.
Ben (44:12):
I mean, this is when people talk about feeling
disenfranchised.
You know, it sort of, it goesbeyond a sense of.
Who's city.
Is it right?
Is it our city collectively?
Is it someone else's city?
Is it.
The university city.
Yeah, it's not, it's none ofthose.
And it's all of those.
Right.
And how do you piece togetherkind of ownership?
And I think that New Haven has alot of, a lot of trouble with
(44:33):
this because there is.
Unequal, literal ownership ofthe real estate in the city.
And so it's, it's always easy tokind of say like, oh, this isn't
really my turf.
It's somebody else's and youpass the buck and it kinda just
gets passed around until it getsback to you again.
And nothing's really, nothing'sreally changed.
(44:54):
Yeah.
So, I mean, we'll what.
And when do you start saying theopposite street corner by the
gallery?
It's like, oh, okay.
Well, that's, that'sinteresting, but I thought you
were about to say, what wouldit, what would happen if it was
the opposite street corneracross from DAE.
Right.
Like, this is actually a moreinteresting block.
Not that it would still not beout of place, but.
a.m. (45:13):
You walk right down right now and likely see it in.
In front of our place.
It is.
A regular, this, you.
You know, this block is.
Yeah.
Ben (45:20):
And I mean, but that's, we're talking, we're not talking
mile away now.
We're talking a two minute walkaway from where you were.
Yup.
Yup.
Yup.
I mean that's that is that'sseveral different communities.
Not just within the same city,but like a couple of block
radius that have different,entirely different definitions
of what's expected or acceptable
Scott (45:42):
There's like eight or 10 of the city blocks have.
This built-in turnover becauseit's undergrads and grad
students and stuff.
So there's accountability asthis, like with them, but it's
not any one person kind ofthing.
The administration has alsolike.
You know, doing their best todiscourage those folks from
going outside of the two orthree city block radius of where
(46:04):
they live.
a.m. (46:04):
When I say own though.
I don't mean who owns thebuilding?
Again, that that, that that'sborn into an economy frame.
Right?
Scott (46:12):
Sense of a responsibility to the.
a.m. (46:14):
So, so here's, here's what it'll tell you that my
grandfather's story.
Cause I have big kind of almost.
We'll be almost clarify it.
So like for the stories grew uplike, like third world, poor, no
plumbing, but.
You know, the whole deal, right?
My grandfather worked for therailroad.
He had this, you know, sort ofbasically a conductor.
And that's how we actually hadhousing.
That's a little kind of, you.
400 square foot place at allthis lived in was, was that was
part.
(46:35):
He got that and he got a littletiny, you know, salary.
Once a month though, he wouldbring my sister and I bag of
candy.
That was like, though.
In essence, the equipmentequivalent to Skittles Smarties.
British Smarties.
So there were knockoff Smarties,basically in India, like Indian
branded, you know, knockoff,Smarties.
And it was one time I was.
Right before I left one of thefew kind of like, you know,
Clear memories I have of, of,of, of that era.
(46:56):
I am.
We get really pissed off at thesix year old seven year old kid.
Like why can't I have a moon?
Like, why don't we have to waitthis.
You know, this whole thing.
And my grandfather, who's justlike this, just this.
This crazy gift of a humanbeing.
It's as well.
I mean all the candies, yours.
So, no it's been, but, butthere's only like, you know, 30
pieces in here.
He said no, I don't mean that.
He said all of the candies,yours.
(47:16):
And what do you mean?
Like all the candy on.
In the stores.
Well, let's go get it then.
You don't need it right now.
You have this.
We've got tomorrow.
Isn't well, I mean, if you needit.
You'll have it.
And like, yeah.
I don't know what the, you know,six, seven years old, you.
Yeah.
And then he's like, Everythingalready belongs to you.
Like every bit, everything yousee when you walk around, it's
already yours.
(47:36):
And whenever you need it, you'regoing to have it.
And there's only one I'mparaphrasing, you know, in
translating from Gujarati.
Right.
And there's only one thingthough that that comes with that
is you're responsible for all ofit.
Just like in the house.
You got your clothes though.
Those are yours.
And you're responsible fortaking care of them.
Like all of this is.
And whenever you need it, you'regoing to have it.
And you just got to take care ofit.
Right.
(47:56):
I've heard that story, you know,in different ways from other
places.
And so, you know, later in life,I realize he picked that up
somewhere, you know, from somebook or some, you know from his
upbringing and whatever the hellit was, but that's what I mean
by ownership.
I don't mean transactionalownership.
I don't mean like this buildingis mine or this coffee shop.
I don't know.
That's not what I mean.
I mean, ownership when you're,if you're born into a culture.
(48:17):
You have ownership.
Not of the things, but ofreality of the other people.
Like you're an owner.
Right.
That's what I'm pointing to ismissing in when you're pointing
to an economy.
And that's what I'm going to dowith people walking around.
They don't have a sense ofownership, not meaning they
don't have a deed to somethingor a set of keys or any of that.
But the sense of this is mine.
(48:39):
Everybody's walking around.
A stranger in a foreign land.
Ben (48:43):
I sense that.
That nature of literal economicownership.
It's chipping away at the senseof stewardship, which is really
what, what you're talking aboutis to be, to be a steward.
It's sort of says, well, I'mgoing to take ownership over
this, but maybe not soleownership.
(49:04):
It's a shared stewardship withwhoever else.
Just call it a stoop.
I'm going to sweep the stoopwhen the stoop is dirty.
I'm not going to be the onlyperson to sweep the stoop.
Somebody else might sweep thestoop when it's dirty too, but
together, this stoop is going tostay well-tended to.
And that's a commitment thatwe're making, even though
neither of us literally legallyown the stoop.
(49:26):
And.
But a lot of times the legaldefinition you got, I'm like, I
don't want to get in trouble.
I don't know who owns this.
Right.
I'm not going to do anythingbecause it's not really mine.
Maybe they like it swept in aparticular type of way.
It's easier for me to just notdo it, even though obviously the
stupid needs to be swept.
I don't know, maybe it's this,there wish that it's not.
(49:47):
And so you just kind of set itaside.
Yeah.
And that's where we're actuallyafraid to engage because that
engagement is a reflection ofour values that maybe we like
clean stoops and swept stoops.
And we don't like to have dirtor garbage accumulated on them.
And that's, that's what I think.
But.
Maybe, maybe I'm nervous thatsomebody else wants it
(50:09):
differently.
So I don't want to.
Put myself out there take thatrisk, that my sense of
stewardship conflicts withsomebody else's.
And so I think.
There's these swirlinginfluences of.
Of excuses and I think fear andthe lack of trust and
compassion.
That result in everybody kind ofengaging in their own bubbles
(50:33):
that travel through space.
But not actually being stewardsof the space.
I think that's sort of what yousaw.
This morning is nobody was asteward of that space to say,
this is where I like to get mycoffee.
This is strange.
It's unusual for this.
What do we do?
Hey, everybody else who getstheir coffee here, let's take a
minute.
(50:53):
And, and.
Have a conversation about this.
a.m. (50:55):
Nobody owned that space.
Everyone was transacting.
And as long as my transactions.
Carry forward.
It is what it is.
Right.
Ben (51:02):
I think that's this kind of that's a sad.
That makes me feel sad.
Visceral level.
Kind of sad right now to thinkof.
An unowned space.
And own the space fuels.
Feels comforting.
The idea of a space that has asteward that is being
maintained.
And, you know, when you end upwith something that is it's
(51:23):
effectively.
Unopened, even if it'sliterally.
That's, that's not like a, it'sa lacking in.
And human character.
a.m. (51:32):
And owned.
You know, for, for, for, for the12 of you listening.
Hi, Joan.
You know, carries a certain,like it has an economic sort of,
you know, Grounding isintimidate.
I mean, owned in the sense.
I think we're all saying thesame thing, but I want to say it
out loud, owned a sense of likeyou own your kids.
Right.
You own your kids, but that'snot a possession.
It's not an asset.
It's not a right.
(51:52):
There's.
There's a stewardship, but it'seven bigger than that.
Right?
Transactions andtransactionalism inherently
subvert.
It's a paradox becausetransactions and
transactionalism are necessary.
But they inherently subvert.
This thing I'm pointing toaround ownership and they
subvert humanity, right?
And all economies do that.
And by economies, I don't justmean like capitalism and, you
(52:15):
know, whatever.
I mean like, like right now we,we have scheduled time.
And, and at whatever it is, I'veone 30 or two o'clock or
whatever.
I don't have my calendar for me,but yeah, two o'clock somebody
else has my time.
Right.
That's an economy.
It's an economy of time.
And it'll invite me to, like, wecan at 1 55, have a really.
Beautiful thing happening.
(52:36):
Right where you're sharingsomething that is like, Hey.
And my alarm goes off.
And I was like, I got to get theKyley.
In that economy of time willinvite me out of my humanity
here.
We'll invite me out of having anownership of this experience.
Ben (52:50):
I forgive you.
a.m. (52:51):
Yeah.
That's not happening.
But I'm saying you should.
I'm just thinking about thevalue economies by
transactional.
I mean, At all scales of thefair, right?
Yeah.
And so going to get the cup ofcoffee.
That microtransaction and myfocus on that transaction
invites me out of ownership forthe space I'm walking through.
Yeah.
And the awareness I need tobring to every moment.
And the remain owner while Itransact.
(53:14):
Hm, versus just transacting iswork that we do not do any more
in the world, but was central tothe work you did.
If you got born into a culture.
Thank you for listening toAbsurd Wisdom.
This is A.
M.
Bott, and you know,conversation, real human
conversation never actuallyends, but episodes of podcasts
need to.
So we're going to end here.
You can connect with me onInstagram and TikTok at, at
(53:37):
Absurd Wisdom.
You can find DAE on Instagram atdae.
community or online at mydae.
org.
Absurd Wisdom is produced anddistributed by DAE Presents, the
production arm of DAE, and we'llbe back with more Conversation
Beyond Understanding nextThursday.
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