Ep 192 - Critical Thinking Is Absolutely Essential For Achieving Modern Success - One World in a New World - Apocalyptic Chats

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Namaste and in Lockets and welcome to this episode of One
World in a New World. I'm your host, Zen Benefiel.
And this week's guest is Anshar Seraphim.
He is a high stakes negotiation trainer, business analyst,
psychology specialist and VP of critical thinking at the Octopus

(00:21):
movement, which is where we met.He is also the Chief of
Cognitive and Behavioral design at Haystack.
So we're going to have an amazing conversation.
This gentleman is one of the most intelligent people I've
ever heard speak. You're going to have a blast.
I will too. Stick with us.
We'll be right back. Explore the thoughtless sphere.

(00:42):
Embark on a life changing journey of self discovery.
Embrace harmony with self, with others, with first One world in
a new world. Zen Benefield skillfully ignites
conversations, guiding guests toreveal personal journeys and
perspectives. Electives listeners are inspired
to seek knowledge and find wisdom in their own lives.

(01:05):
Join this transformative journeyas we navigate the depth of
human experience. And Shar, it's so great to have
you here. My experience of you has just
been, it's really opened my eyesto what more is capable of how
people can communicate and the the depths of their thinking and

(01:25):
articulation. And I'm honored to have you here
with us today. Thanks for coming well.
Thanks for having me. It was just a cool opportunity
to have a conversation since, you know, we were both
connecting in the octopus movement, so I welcome that.
And being one of the chief officers, I, I'm honored that we

(01:47):
can have that. So as you know, the the
conversations that we have for One World are centered around
being able to bridge the inner and the outer.
We're bereft of having those conversations that expose the
inner to others because inherently when we do it, it's
rough, chunky, sounds way out and wacky.

(02:09):
And we're often, you know, thought of as being weird or
insane or crazy and given a stiff arm as as a result of
that. Well, that's uncomfortable and
it shuts us down. We don't talk about that.
So now we're at a time critical in this history of our planetary
civilization where we've got to make a shift.
And this is kind of what the octopus movement is doing.

(02:33):
They're drawing out the neurodiverse in order to discuss
things in different ways that haven't been addressed yet.
And, and I really think that that's an imperative in this
real use of diversity, not the DEI stuff that we're seeing is

(02:54):
more what they call it quota filling.
So that being said, when you first began, and I know you
entered this world with some extra challenges, gifts that
made you into who you are today,what did you experience and what

(03:15):
was it like? And I know that you had talked
me to me about the Serif Wharf. The Sapir Whorf hypothesis,
Yeah. Sapir Whorf hypothesis I I told
myself I didn't want to forget that.
What do they do? I I sort of forgot it and
interesting how you can tell yourself something even though

(03:37):
you don't want to do it and you end up doing it right an.
Example of cognitive dissonance.Yeah, well mine doesn't pay
attention to do or do not. It just pays attention to the
topic word subject matter, right.
So how did it begin with you? I, I, I know you were non verbal
to begin with, but what was thatlike?
And, and how did it help you to then, you know, acclimate a

(04:01):
little differently and, and riseto this really intelligent young
man that I'm speaking with now? Well I I was about 75% non
verbal until age 11. I was raised in a, in a house
with two music teachers in it. So and I, and then I had sensory
processing disorders. So I, I could never understand

(04:23):
why, you know, with, with all the lessons going on in the
background constantly and you could never escape it.
Why it, it caused me so many physical problems, you know,
'cause I, I turned out that I have synesthesia.
And so when I hear sounds, I actually feel them on my body.

(04:43):
It's one of the reasons actuallythat I wear like these tight
garments. I mean, my, my, my whole
wardrobe is all exactly the samebecause I, I found some, some
clothes that actually hug onto my body and, and can kind of
attenuate some of those sensations.
But one of the things I learned early on is that one of the
reasons that I was non verbal isthat my own voice was, was

(05:06):
causing me sensory issues. I had to learn how to speak an
octave and a half higher than myactual speaking voice to to be
able to tolerate my own voice. So that was a problem.
And then once I got into school,I realized that I had a number
and like graphene synesthesia, Iwould I would see shapes and
colors when I thought about numbers.

(05:27):
The methods that other people would teach me to try to do
mathematics never made any senseto me.
I would do things my own way andI would always get the right
answer, but it caused a lot of problems with my instructors.
I can relate. I had the same problem.
You know, where's your work? I did it in my head.
No, you didn't. And yeah, so I had those
frustrations. I also came from that age and

(05:50):
that generation in the in the 80s before we started passing
out diagnosis like slips of paper.
So, you know, I didn't actually get an autism diagnosis until I
was 19 and I went to join the military and, you know, the
median age of diagnosis now is 4years old.
So to me, to try to think of howdifferent my life would be if if
I would have learned that about myself, you know, a decade and a

(06:11):
half earlier. So that's just prompting naggy
in. But had a had an attachment to
the way that words sounded, the way that words looked.
And so because I wasn't engagingin the use of a social
vocabulary 'cause I didn't have any friends, my relationship
with language was so strange. And I, I had this experience

(06:34):
where, you know, I would use words and because they weren't
common parlance, people have no idea what I was talking about.
It's just, it was alphabet soup to them.
And, and so I, I had to learn early on that the, the working
vocabulary of people was actually much smaller than I
thought it was. You know, I didn't have the
social exposure to know better. So a lot of social problems from

(06:56):
that too, 'cause people would have presumed that I was being
condescending or, you know, because I would stop to define
words because I was uncertain ifif people knew them that then
that may become A cause come across as imperious.
Or if I was like, it'd been like, like I was denigrating
their intelligence somehow because I explained.
Some educator, you know, that that I was kind of the same as

(07:19):
you, didn't have quite the challenges younger.
However, my mother was an English and lit teacher and dad
was a tool and die maker machinist.
And both of them played music. Dad played the thlugelhorn
cornette. Mom played oboe clarinet and
sang in a choir, taught music for a while, Found out that that

(07:40):
wasn't her, you know, dealing with a classroom full of, you
know, music was it's not her thing.
And yet there was this encouragement of vocabulary
development, right? They were on me, you know,
they'd use words in in context and say that, you know, you
understand what I meant. And if I didn't, then I had to

(08:02):
go look it up in the dictionary,right?
And so you develop this huge vocabulary.
Yours developed a little differently.
But how do you use that when you're talking to normal people?
The words that you use, they don't understand.
Then when you do stop to you seeit in their eyes, right?
So you stop to explain the word you just used and then you get

(08:24):
that kind of response like you mentioned.
Right, cuz then at that point you're engaging completely anasm
and then people are accusing youof wanting lexaphanticism and
you're using all this sesquipedalian language and it's
all completely incomprehensible.And yeah, no, I, I totally
understand. But I, so I went through that
journey and when I got to my 20s, I'd, oh, I'd had probably

(08:44):
maybe 50 autistic special interests by that point where I
just kind of deep, deep dove into something and just let it
consume me. And I asked myself kind of an
interesting question 'cause I, Iread Carl Sagan's the the
Dragons of Eden. If you've never read it, I'd
really recommend it. He really, I guess, to, to give
a, give a synopsis. He, he talks about, you know,

(09:06):
if, if we go off of the premise that an evolutionary model
brought rose to gave, gave rise to human consciousness, that
what kinds of interesting thingsmight we be able to say about
human consciousness? Then if an evolutionary paradigm
is responsible, you know, what neurophysiological differences
are there, what differences in cognition, you know, 'cause our,

(09:28):
our experience on that, you know, the clock of the universe
as human beings is just in thoselast few minutes on the, on the
clock, you know, speck on a speck, on a speck, tiny, tiny
blue dot. And So what, what might, that
might effects might, might that have on things like bias?
What effects might it have on, on our psychology and our, our
way to recognize the humanness of other people on empathy on.

(09:51):
And I found that fascinating. And so, you know, I, I've gone
so much in my life not understanding other people and
I, I thought maybe that was the bridge that might do it, that
maybe I could synthesize with the way that I think a
fundamentalist. A lot of Burrows.
Yeah, yeah. And but when I did that, you

(10:14):
know, I made the the normal missteps that people do when
they're neurodiversion. I tried masking.
I I tried just emulating the behavior of other people, but
with context blindness. And I realized what a lot of
people do when they go through that process that you feel a a
sense of imposter syndrome in your relationships because
you're, you're emulating that behavior, but it's not native to

(10:35):
you. And so when?
You're never really fully authentic.
There's always a part of you youfeel like you're withholding,
and it feels. False, right And.
It just, it hurts. And when you do finally get
those relationships that you're dying for, then you, you have
this feeling that if you were your actual self, that they
wouldn't exist. And therefore the premise of,

(10:55):
you know, perceiving that it's been turned into self sabotage.
So I I learned the wrong way to do things first, but.
I think we all do. Well, it's been a process of
failing upward and I think having respect for my failures
and what I've learned from them and, you know, after I went
through that journey. Failing upwards 'cause we're all
you know we have this 70 thousand thoughts a day, right?

(11:17):
3/4 if not more are all self deprecating because we fail down
instead of fail up. We.
Well, and then actually that ties into what Sakin was saying
too, because if if you go off ofthe evolutionary paradigm for
our thoughts, your brain actually has a lot of great

(11:39):
reasons to hold on to negative experiences more than positive
ones. You know, psychologists
disagree. It's anywhere from 5 to 50 times
the privacy with negative experiences.
So in the significant emotional events, right?
Right. And it's, it's about, it's why
for reprocessing, too. Why?
Why we'll lie awake at 2:30 in the morning thinking about that
job interview that didn't go well two decades ago.

(12:01):
We reprocess those negative emotions because it's, it's
predilected for survival. You know, if a lion chases
chases us up a tree, the brain wants to remember that.
So the next time you're in that situation, you know what to do.
But the problem is, is that thatcreates a funhouse mirror
narrative for the human psyche. We develop imposter syndrome
because we only remember our failures with real clarity and

(12:23):
the. Habitual acts are not those that
empower, they're those that disempower.
So I, I think going through thatwhole process has been really
constructive for me. It did definitely change the way
that I look at failure. There's an anthropological
context there too. I, there's a, there's this
liminal phase we go through. I think the best metaphor I've

(12:44):
been able to relate it through is, is that when you're watching
a child stumble and the process of learning to walk, we, you
know, we smile to ourselves watching that stumbling because
we know where that process is going.
But once we move into adulthood,we change the way that we look
at failure. We don't see failure as the
absolutely necessary thing that it that needs to exist in order
to acquire skill, that no personacquired a skill without failing

(13:07):
to acquire it. And instead we learned to
denigrate failure and to, to, you know, have so many emotional
feelings about it that we can't use it to, to draw upon in order
to succeed. And then also, I just want to
mention, I actually, I, I smoke when I'm talking because I visit
the synesthesia, it keeps me from smelling and tasting
things. So when we're talking about

(13:28):
different topics, like let's say, talking about my childhood,
if I, if I don't have something suppressing my sense of taste
and smell, my brain just goes absolutely wild.
So I, I sometimes I use like mentholated cough drops, but
those aren't really good for, for video conversations, You
know, I'll start clicking thingsagainst my teeth and all of
that. So just this is a solution that
works for me. I know that I know that there is

(13:50):
a social, social view of smokingin general, but I'm just just to
give a little qualifier there. I appreciate that and I
understand the reasoning too, probably more so than than most
because we all have things that we do that help us manage
functionality better. And so I appreciate that and

(14:12):
thanks for revealing that too. Now as you were doing your deep
dives and I can fully appreciatethe obsession on one thing at a
time to find out 'cause you're seeking knowledge, right?
You want to know the curiosity is there.
How do you see that relating to your view of the norm in the

(14:37):
public experience right now? It it seems that there's an
uptick slightly since COVID withthe sequestration and the
ability to self examine. Some took it, some didn't.
How do you see that reflecting and and how you see this

(14:59):
evolutionary emergence? Well, I mean there's a
multimodal answer there. I think I I'll kind of touch a
little bit. We'll we'll Lily pad for a few
different things. This will be fun.
One, one thing that struck me isthat all of the people who were,
you know, talking about the changes that need to happen in

(15:21):
education, there is this presumption that is it is far
too difficult to change a systemafter it's already in place and
you have to just keep on trying.You can't toss that system.
You have to just keep on workingon the system and trying to make
little changes. And yet when COVID happened, we
all just snapped our fingers andwe all moved to online
classrooms and changed everything all at once.
And it is strange to me, especially after writing the

(15:44):
octopus papers, octopus movements paper on education,
that people will say that. And I'm big on cognitive
dissonance. I like pointing it out.
You know, there's so many clear things that we could be doing
to, to do better with our education system.
But, and we can recognize that that COVID is an, you know, the
global pandemic, it's an emergency and we can just snap
our fingers and make a change. And yet, you know what 54% of

(16:07):
Americans read at a 6th grade level.
We can't see that as a reason toan emergency, to an emergency,
an emergency emergency. It's, it's silly to me that we
could snap our fingers like thatand make changes and recognize
that that's an emergency. But that the huge problems that
we have with literacy and, and critical thinking and, and all

(16:28):
that, that that's not an emergency and that we can't just
snap our fingers the same way. It shows that there is a
dissonance there, that it's moreabout.
Absolutely. I had the same type of
experience and I I really wishedI'd have been on that in the
think tank on that because in myin the 90s I taught high school,
several different locations, special Ed, self-contained

(16:53):
special Ed, full charge of two different charter schools and
teaching at a residential treatment center.
So I saw probably every educational environment 1 might
be able to and saw what was missing and ended up writing a
business plan for my second master's degree on holistic

(17:15):
educational village that focusedon mind, body, spirit, planet
and cosmos relationships. Because as we get older, we
realize, oh, these are important.
We find in the rabbit holes thatwe seek, right?
We find these systems that are applicable that have been
ignored because of the prevalentbelief system.

(17:40):
And so now as these are being explored and discovered, we're
especially when we're older, we recognize the significance and
the value of them. Yet we're not.
Like you say, we're not revamping the educational system
to include those. Now, my wife was born and raised

(18:01):
in Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg.
She was taken through their educational system as pianist
and became a piano pedagogue. Their system was designed so
that at five years old there wasan assessment of attitude,
aptitude, skill set, and then they built their education plan
from there. That is so simply

(18:27):
commonsensical. Well, right.
And it's, it's, it's all about the cognitive dissonance too.
Like the, the idea that we're using more and more standardized
tests, but then in study centersaround the, you know, the United
States, for example, we're teaching kids how to cover up
the question and eliminate, you know, certain answers.
And the the idea that you're literally teaching a method to

(18:47):
circumvent the method that's being used to test you.
Instead of true education, whichis to draw out.
That should demonstrate that it's not working, but it
doesn't. And it's, it's silly.
It's, it's cognitive dissonance.And so that's personally pad
right. Another is, is that there's this
incredible opportunity when everyone has to take this time
to withdraw, to work on the self.

(19:09):
And so many people avoided that opportunity.
That was an opportunity to be able to work on personal
development, to learn a new language, to re evaluate the way
that you're communicating with people to to check your ability
to to engage in empathy with people to there.
There was so much that people could have done with that time
and yet at the same time people,all people did was was focus on
distraction and. Well in France, France gave

(19:33):
Netflix away for free so that people could sit home and binge
watch. Yeah, that's that's a cultural
thing there too. So there's that moment.
However, those are the kinds of things that happened as a
result. To continue the distraction,
let's say. Right.
I was more saying it's a cultural thing in that that
we're we have a propensity to, we have a propensity to be

(19:56):
permissive of, of these lackadaisically involved
behaviors That that we, we surround ourselves with friend
groups, with people who make us more comfortable being ourselves
instead of different people thatare different versions of the
people that we want to be. There's there's so many
different ways that we could approach authenticity from from
like a Kierkegaard in the standpoint.

(20:18):
Did you find that in your explorations that you sought at
some point began seeking people that challenged you to
understand more it? My dad told me that he was
growing up. He was so irritated because he
kept saying, wow, you know, you're hanging out with the
wrong people. Finds people that challenge you

(20:39):
and hang out with them. Unfortunately, because of my own
level of intelligence, they weren't available.
Well, there's a lack of community too, Like with one of
the other things about the neurodiversion experiences is
being able to, to connect with other people who have those
different similar experiences, to be able to draw on a social
body of knowledge to develop those social relationships.

(21:01):
And that's when, when one out of44 people's got autism, that's,
that's difficult. It's difficult to, to see that
that's even something that you need.
So that that was certainly an aspect I think another Lily pad
to touch on during that time period.
And this is just this is just myopinion, but it definitely

(21:23):
showed us that this idea of having to go to work and work a
nine to five job, that that wasn't necessarily the way that
things needed to be. You know that we had to have
less investment and under the auspices of physical locations
that we were able to to take allof these jobs that we assumed
what we need to go and check in on a time.
Card, it's a prevalent system that's been implemented for a

(21:44):
long time and and it's been profitable for those in charge
of it. It's just the hegemonic
encounter. Hegemonic.
Can I agree with that? I just, I think it's, I think
it's important because it servesas an actual real life example
for people who might question those ideas.
So that's why I'm touching on it.
I think it caused us to start having uncomfortable
conversations with our loved ones and start addressing

(22:04):
communication issues. Everything from from separation
and divorce rates, you know, changed depression.
Social isolation obviously was awas a factor.
People had to recognize that interconnectedness and and being
able to be in social groups is actual need, that it wasn't just
something that, you know, softerscience, that it actually had a

(22:26):
physiological effect on well-being.
Sure. So there's just there's so many
multimodal aspects of that answer that you could touch on.
We could probably spend the whole hour touching on that.
That's just a few cornerstones, but hopefully that that starts
to give an answer. Well, maybe in the future we can
have a further conversation about it and actually affect
something. So in this leapfrogging across

(22:52):
the Lily pads, what did you findwas evidence, if you will, and
let me preference this. So it seems that there's a
natural system with built into us that we haven't discovered
except in recent times we've begun to understand quantum

(23:15):
relationships. Sure.
And. We haven't really extended that
into OK, what's that really meanon on a biophysical level?
And how do we I know we're Valentina Monroe in a Russian
academician put a put out her dissertation called the global
unique global mutation in humanity.

(23:37):
It gets so excited. I'm going to talk fast, right,
slow the fuck down. So in that presentation, she
shares that in the 10 years of research that she had done
showing the discoveries in science that we are actually
genetically evolving toward a higher level of consciousness.

(24:00):
Yeah, and that, and that being around other people has multiple
epigenetic and, and psychological and and
neurophysiological changes on usas well.
But there's a reason that you can't just raise a baby with no
touch and have it survive that, you know, there's so there's so
much, there's so much there to unpack, but there is definitely
a an important effect there. And I I think that personal

(24:25):
acknowledgement, but I this would be another little path.
But you know, I think another thing about.
I'm all I'm all about leapfrogging and tangentialism
is my life. Bufo Bufo.
So, you know, moving along on the little toad hop, I think
that another aspect that we could touch on is that the, the

(24:49):
bio mechanism of empathy, that going through Sagan's lens,
let's just say that that perspective is correct.
I'm not, I'm not here to make any assertions about anyone's
reality. But let's just say for a moment
we accept that premise, the ideathat if, if let's say 2 tribes
of primates split up, that this tribe has to care about its own
survival more than this tribe, that that's not the head,

(25:12):
doesn't have that object permanence.
It's right in front of it that there is a, an other ring that
happens that we have our own little community of the people
that we see and interact with everyday and we attribute
humanness to them. And then the people who are
outside of our immediate sphere,who don't have that object
permanence. We, we intrinsically from a
biological perspective is that it's like filtering.

(25:33):
We, we care less about their survival.
We care less about their agency,about their experience than we
do our own. Because the truth is, is if we
all woke up every morning and had to process the experiences,
suffering and journey of every single human being on the
planet, we would all be crying into our breakfast cereal.
So there is a bio mechanism there that protects us from
that, but it also disconnects US.

(25:54):
And I, I think that there's thisphenomenon in the United States
where you have celebrities and they, you know, they go off to
another country and all of a sudden those people become real.
They start interacting with themone-on-one and actually
attribute real humanness to them.
And then they all come back and they all want to adopt babies
from every country and become UNhumanitarian ambassadors because
all of a sudden, big, big aha light bulb moment.

(26:15):
These are actual people and their brain can finally
recognize it. I there is a need, I think as a
global community for us to assign some type of compensatory
effect to be able to overcome that biological limitation
because many of the systems thatwe have in our brain and our
body for that, our predilectionsfor survival do keep us from

(26:37):
seeing truth. You know, if I'm looking at what
I see with my eyes, I'm not actually seeing that.
I'm seeing what the, the reflection of that.
It's what light is coming off ofit.
I got the absorption band spectrum and then I have
different physiological differences in my eye from the
next person who's next to me anddifferent numbers of cones and
rods. We don't actually see the same
color even though we're all pointing at the same thing and
calling it red. You know, my my body has this

(26:59):
experience of being still in this room even though I'm
hurtling through, you know, a spiral arm Galaxy at 10s of.
Thousands miles an hour spinningon the Earth and you know, but
who knows how fast through the solar center?
And your and your brain has to ignore that information for you
to move on with your day-to-day life.
Yet there's this natural order, patterns, rhythms, cycles within

(27:24):
that the spiraling, and we take no notice of that natural
structure in forming our world. Right, right.
And that's, I feel like that wasanother thing that happened
with, with COVID, another Lily pad is that for a moment, we

(27:45):
started to acknowledge a global community.
We started to get on Zoom calls to reconnect with one another.
We started, you know, having more contacts outside of our
immediate local range because that became less important when
hanging out with other people. And those are the kinds of
things that need to happen in order for us to circumvent this,

(28:05):
this, this echo chamber that we've been in where
globalization just, it just becomes this, this abstract
concept, and to actually start having thoughts and feelings
that are in accord with that. When you would think the natural
logical path in this evolutionary process would be to
realize, you know, we're no longer futile, you know, we're

(28:28):
no longer, you know, territorial.
We're national, we're global, right?
We're we share one planet, even though we're trying to fight
over the territory. Have we not learned that yet?
Obviously we haven't. It seems like we're in that
process where it could actually happen though.

(28:49):
Well, I think it gave us a peek.It gave us a peek that that you
and I are not necessarily so separate that in fact we might
be just hands pushing up different pieces of the same
blanket and looking at one another.
And that that our individuation may be the lie that our senses
are telling us. And I, it's not that I, I think

(29:09):
that it's truth, right? It's just, there has to be a
suspension of, of disbelief for a moment to try to consider a
different viewpoints on reality.You know, consider for a second
that it is evolutionarily supported that we all have an
individual identity, that we arenot all just variations and

(29:32):
distances between molecules, between you and I, and that it's
not just two different pieces ofthe same universe talking with
one another. That we are individuals because
that's what allows us to make natural selection decisions.
But that doesn't necessarily mean it's truth.
Well, yes and no. And, and the reason I say that
more the yes part is that historically we had this in the

(29:54):
in our prelim, the the Vedas revealed that we're all divine
threads, part of the tapestry, right?
Incarnate, connected to the one source, whatever you want to
call it, and still individuated and capable of God
consciousness. Well, what's that mean?
What I believe it to mean? And I'm open for, you know,

(30:19):
whatever is. Debate.
Debate. Potatoes.
Yes. Yeah, potatoes, potatoes,
tomatoes, tomatoes. That individuated thread has
access to the specifics in an infinite intelligently way for

(30:40):
the individual to ask questions and get feedback and find their
thread in that tapestry now or or OK.
The flip perspective. Maybe Consciousness is the
illusion. Maybe the the conscious mind,
that temporary state of your brain that allows you to have

(31:01):
consciousness right now is a temporary state of the brain.
And when you wake up on your pillow tomorrow, that's actually
a different consciousness. And it's drawing on the
chemically and physiologically stored memories in your body.
And it has the perception of a singular narrative, but it's
actually a different person Stepping off of the transporter
pack. The the idea that we can take a

(31:23):
few different perspectives and think about them.
That's one of the problems today, I think, is that there is
a there is a culture. We've developed a culture of of
finger pointing and no dialogue.And we haven't figured out that,
oh, if I'm pointing a finger, I got three of them coming back at
me, so I better be paying attention.

(31:45):
And it's, it's the idea of beingable to, to listen to people
that you disagree with and not just hit the block or the ignore
button. You know, one of the downsides
of that COVID culture and it gotus even more into social media.
And all of that is there, there is a desire to keep the online
space into this thing that's just this, this happy, fun place
for entertainment. And when we, we come across

(32:07):
opinions that we don't like, we just have to hit a button to
kill dialogue. And we're going to have to have
a lot of dialogue if we want to be able to, to enact change.
So I, I did see that as a negative trend.
You know, I, I tried listening to like a radio show
broadcasters from like 50 years ago.
And you have all these differentpeople from different walks of
life and they all have a radically different opinions

(32:29):
about things. And they all sat and patiently
listened to one another's point of view say, well, well, you
know, I disagree with you on this, but I agree with you on
that. And the idea that you could meet
someone who has a viewpoint thatyou vehemently disagree with,
even from a from a moral and ethical standpoint, but that
that person could also have knowledge of one thing that
could completely change your life that they do differently.

(32:50):
But you would have to listen long enough to that point of
view that you disagree with to be able to hear that part.
And the. Listening and the questions
right? To be able to ask the critical
questions without attachment to the answers and just be
available. You might learn something.
And that takes us to our lastly PAD, which is to reference your
question. I think that there is an

(33:12):
epistemological need to be able to separate information from
knowledge. And that the more access that
we've gotten to AI and the Internet that it is, it is
wounded our ability to critically think.
That we find enough people who agree with our perspective, no
matter how rare our perspective may be, that we can stay in our
silos of thought and, and not question ourselves and learn how

(33:35):
to critically evaluate information and account for our
own biases. And, you know, I think the, the
metaphor that I've used in the past that people relate to the
most is you could go to sleep watching The History Channel and
have an incredible dream where you were woman in 17th century
England and you know your, your name and you know your, your

(33:59):
husband's name and you know yourkids name and remember the
house. And, and then when you wake up,
you write all this experience down in the dream journal.
And then maybe five years later,you have this opportunity to go
to Europe and you're still curious about it 'cause you had
this really intense dream. And you go there and sure
enough, there's the house, there's the, you know, the
headstones with the kids and headstone of your spouse.

(34:19):
And you'll go the rest of your life believing in reincarnation
because you fell asleep watchingThe History Channel, that your
input colored your experience. And then you had your own
confirmation bias. And then you had an experience
that was so profound that it caused you to make emotional
decisions and insert that into your cognition.
And then instead of learning howto question your own
experiences, that led you down arabbit hole where you're no

(34:43):
longer able to hear a conflicting point of view
because you believe you found the truth.
And you know, being open to thattoo.
The. Day, you know, we in our long in
our marathon, It's you know what?
What question do you ask yourself?
And you know, invariably it's like, am I crazy?

(35:03):
It's such a dark word, marathon.I always think about that
person, like falling over and dying at the end of running that
distance to deliver the message.And everyone says, oh, I'm
running a marathon. Oh no, you didn't.
You're still here. Well, it was wonderful and you
know, experience and by saying that he asked that question and

(35:24):
and I had to say it. Am I crazy?
Because by asking that question,it allows me to move beyond my
own perceptions, even perspective of which brings the
perceptions. Because your perspective
changes, your perceptions automatically change.

(35:47):
It's given me the ability to question my truth to the point
of everything sacred and nothingsacred.
Difference between a belief and an idea and it's.
And then there's the experience.OK, so that's the experience
that you have, whether it's validated by others or simply

(36:07):
yourself and your own awareness of that truth for you in the
moment. It gives the opportunity to
begin to explore other possibilities and and look for
other connections that might suit you better.
A resonance thing, the quantum physics, the quantum
entanglement or the physiological level with others

(36:29):
that draw you and you draw them.You know, the new phrase is what
you seek is seeking you kind of thing.
And it's kind of like, I see it as almost a tesseract where
you're throwing your intention to find out in front of you.
And then, you know, the quantum world says, OK, here's here's

(36:52):
our query. Let's put something together and
feed it back, right? And this is kind of a constant
motion that we have that we don't really recognize how well
we create our realities as a result.
With the self too. I mean, when you study
psychology, you learn this narrative.
Famous psychologist, he had thisexperience where he had like a

(37:15):
nanny and he remembered someone trying to like abduct him and
the nanny saved him and the parents gave, gave the nanny a
gold watch and he had this wholedefining experience.
And then like 30 years later, she came back and gave the watch
back and apologized because it didn't actually happen.
It was a fish story. But because he had that

(37:37):
immersion in that narrative whenhe was younger, his brain
fabricated the memories. You know, I, I have a friend who
was yeah. And it, it creates source
amnesia and it can create problems of identity.
And the idea that the things that you think you know to be
true, that that memory is not necessarily an accurate order of

(37:58):
events, that you have to have a suspension of your own belief as
well in in real time. Effects in the present moment?
Are you able to disassociate from all of that and be present
enough to be aware and conversant in that environment
that you're in now, also withoutany provocation of what fears or

(38:24):
concerns you might have about the future?
And that's, that's why I think that it's that whole belief
versus identity thing, that the knowledge that as a human being,
the things that you are most sure are true may be a result of
your brain taking your bias and changing your experience.
And that experientially it's true.

(38:45):
Like in a, in a deterministic universe, let's say free will is
an experience. If you have blindness to all the
information that's making up your decisions, you still
experience free will. Sure.
You know, just like I experienced color, even though
color is an abstraction that doesn't really exist either.
So I think that the more that you learn, the less you realize,

(39:06):
you know, and one of the things that gives me the most respect
about people is people who are able to suspend their certitude
and listen. And, and that's something that
is of critical importance in an information age where the, the
amount of information that we're, we have to
epistemologically separate gets larger and larger.
Why Critical thinking is the skill that we need to teach kids

(39:28):
now. Yeah, that's the other national
deficit, right? Because the ability to ask the
right questions is what allows us to use AI the best.
And if we can't teach that skillto kids, then they're not going
to be able to function in a rolewith AI because they're just
going to give it a service levelenough question that they're
just going to find a statement that already agrees with it,
with what they thought. And that's a danger too.
You know today's kids are. Just the layers, even without

(39:50):
AI, as you and I experienced it in younger need less because it
wasn't you know, computers weren't even around then the the
queries, the the the questions, the curiosity, the OK, I've got
this information. What about this OK, that
information is supplied now. OK, that leads to other, you
know, more questions where? You and what do I know about the

(40:11):
source and the reliability and the significant figures of that
information and how how much of my data should rely on that?
And I critical thinking skills need an overhaul in general, but
not being able to, to use a gooduse case examples and give them
to kids and then also allow themto collaborate with other people
that are different than them. Those are some of the major

(40:32):
conclusions that I was able to take from a lot of our input on
the paper. And I had the, the, the honor
of, of being on a teacher podcast after I composed that
and gets asked some questions by, by the educational
community, which was really cool.
And then I also had the distincthonor of speaking at the, the
United Nations about, at the autism awareness event about my

(40:54):
experience with autism. That was really great.
So I, I think that getting to hear these other narratives and
being able to listen to different points of view, you
know, we all can maybe on a service level agree that that's
a good thing. But when it comes to listening
to different points of view on the things that we were most
passionate about, that could be hard for some people.
And that's another one of those elements of cognitive dissonance
that I try to fight. How do you see that being fought

(41:19):
best? Not the behavior, but we're
we're exposing it and nurturing it to grow, right?
Behavior find find the kinds of behaviors that you personally
need to engage in to be able to get the most out of that, and
then come up with a plan to be able to put those behaviors in
place and you'll be better for it.

(41:40):
The the ability to self engineeris incredible in this day and
age. And the but the people who use
it, the the percentage is so small.
It's it's it's like, well. We're still you know I'm the
boomer, you're ex, right? I can't.
I can't really relate to any of that because I didn't even have

(42:02):
friends until I was 25. S to assume that I have a
generational tie to a particularculture.
I don't even have a gender association because of my lack
of involvement in the social paradigm.
Yeah, but OK, so at any rate, age, maturity availability when
I was younger didn't have it still had the ability to inquire

(42:24):
and develop that critical thing.My parents, you know, gifted or
cursed as I may be, as a result,taught me how to ask good
questions and how to follow a line of thinking and and
exploded into the however it needed to be in order to find
what information was available at that time and be as clear and

(42:49):
concise and complete. Did you ever get exposure to the
GATE program when you were younger?
No, see, I grew up in a very small town, was tested early.
My parents never told me the results until my 30s and
consequently didn't know what todo with me.

(43:10):
There were no gifted programs, anything like that.
I just didn't have it available.Now, had they informed me of my
intelligence level when I was younger, I might have had a
little different perspective andused that differently.
Instead of playing around and goofing off and still making

(43:30):
grades, being a stellar athlete and all that kind of stuff.
That was part of who I was. But there was still this piece
that was missing, right, that wasn't fully utilized.
And and then you have the OK, well, things are as they were.
Everything's perfect. I didn't need to know it then
because you know, later in life it would.

(43:53):
I'd still find out that I'm ableto have conversations with guys
like you. Well, my, my journey was just so
unexpected. I, you know, because I, I went
through that whole process of self development.
I've been studying psychology now for 22 years and I never in
a million years expected that I would be relating any of that

(44:14):
process to anyone else. It was just for me, you know, it
was because I was isolated, because I was alone, because I
didn't have friendships, becauseI, I'm, I'm mourned the, the
lack of ability to have friendships and to interact with
others and understand psychosocial dynamics.
And so when I moved into my 30s and I, I started teaching, apply
behavioral psychology and, and apply cognitive neuroscience to

(44:36):
people, that was so unexpected for me.
I mean, that I, I literally taught in the engagement ring
industry in the Pacific Northwest.
I, I taught engagement ring sales people how to better
connect to their, to their clients, their customer base.
I, I got to speak at, to C suites at Tesla as part of an
event for, for executives about communication.

(44:58):
And at one point I was put in charge of a, of a neuromarketing
team with like 5 PhDs below me. One, one in psychopharmacology
and the other is in, in cognitive and applied
neuroscience. And you know, it was three
months into that before they asked me.
You know, that's a really fantastic perspective.
Where did you get your PhD from?And I'm like, I don't even have
a Community College degree. You know, the, the piece of

(45:20):
paper was never important to me.You know, I've been doing this
for 2 1/2 decades and that they they had absolutely no idea.
So I think the way that we acquire.
Do you think education is more to to make us job worthy because
the curiosity ought to? Be But does it though?
You know, I mean, we, we don't even teach kids how to balance a

(45:41):
checkbook and pay their taxes. Are we preparing them for life?
Not with the current educationalsystem, no.
It prepares them to go to work. It hasn't prepared them to
think. It doesn't prepare them to
develop relationships. It other than the cursory, you
know, social team norms and things like that, it doesn't
teach them skills as to how to love and be loved.

(46:05):
Right. I learned more on my debate team
that I apply in my day-to-day life than I did ever from
anything I learned in high school.
I think that there is this, thisreal problem that we have today
where people come out of higher education and they get their
piece of paper and they say, thank God, that's over.
And, and the whole point is to, to get us excited about learning

(46:26):
and to be able to inform our journey the rest of the way.
You know, the, I wrote about this, the, the death of the
Penny University, you know, it used to be that you go to coffee
shops and, and places around like a place of higher learning,
like a university, and you couldsit down as a member of the
public and, and listen to great minds debate ideas.
And then you could learn so muchfrom that whole process.
And now so much of learning is just siloed and it's.

(46:52):
Well, yeah. And, and these are the side.
There's a couple of things that you just reminded me of and one
of them in my second master's inorganizational management, one
of the classes now, I was there to build the Spectrum Academy.
That was the name of the, the village or school to build that
plan. I was there on my own dime.

(47:15):
This was University of Phoenix and on ground and the rest of
the class was there on corporateDimes to build their resume and,
and, you know, travel up and most of them getting tuition
reimbursement, right. So they were having problems
with me asking questions beyond the text and going into areas

(47:37):
that they weren't familiar with that so much so that several of
them, a group I guess, went to the teacher and the instructor
and the instructor came to me. And I'm like, OK, So I waited
for a moment in class one night to kind of say, look, guys, you
don't understand why I'm here. Maybe you'll understand If you

(47:59):
understood why I'm here. You won't have such resistance
to the questions that I asked because I'm and.
Information's not here to be worshipped.
You have to bring a certain barefoot of reference to the
process process of learning. But once I revealed that I had
several come up. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize,
you know, however, you know, they assume that everybody's

(48:19):
there for the same purpose. And then with the other thing
that I wanted to mention, the silos is you, I, I, I love to
mitigate silos. I, I want to eliminate them as
possible. I love D Hawk's work with Visa
initially and and how that chaotic organizational
development that occurred with planetary citizens.

(48:43):
We took the spiral dynamics model which morphed into the Co
creation wheel 12 sectors of society.
And so we're proposing to break down those 12 sectors and get
people of stature in each one ofthose that are pioneers to start
talking to each other. I want to do some panel
discussions with them and ask these questions and see.

(49:06):
How? They are already working
together. If they are, if they're not, how
they might and what can happen in possibility to create a
holistic system that actually works for everybody.
Now that's a long term vision that may never happen.
The pieces are there. There's a.

(49:29):
As a goal, it's great, even if you never actually achieve it,
that working toward that goal, you're going to do so many
phenomenal things that it doesn't matter if you achieve it
or not. Yeah.
I agree it's already happening. These kind of conversations are
a part of that. I wanted to build a reservoir,
if you will, of information thatthen could be queried.

(49:51):
And the three books that I have on the 1st 3 years are 8 pieces
of eight categories of information, how each guest
responded. And then the ending chapter is
the golden threads throughout them all, which is really
Nuggets that we can take and usefor the future.

(50:14):
And then also, you know, for theplanetary citizens plan things,
you know, when do you find that when you put your attention,
intention and interaction towardthings that liminal space
becomes much wider? I'll speak honestly.

(50:34):
When I put my intention into things, it blows them up.
So. Because I'm, I'm a very critical
thinker and I I don't operate off of the presumption that any
of the facts that anyone has reached that point so far are
actual facts. So you tell me with the

(50:57):
beginner's mind. Yeah, I I question everything.
And when you start to question everything, it's same thing
happens that happened to Socrates.
People start realizing that they've just been repeating
this, the same basic prayer every day as opposed to actually
knowing where those thoughts or beliefs come from.
And there, there is a OK, so in my, in my work, right?

(51:22):
I work, I work with companies and individuals and I I teach
them how understanding psychology in the brain allows
them to better affect their own behaviors, but also to be able
to better reach their audiences,to accomplish goals like public
relations, advertising, all of that.
Well, it it's the inner outer bridge.
Right. And you know, like, for example,
and I won't, I won't say their name, but I, I, at one point I

(51:44):
worked with a, with an energy company in Italy.
And there is a, they went into it looking for some feedback.
And what they didn't realize is that they were in such siloed
thinking as engineers as that, as that personality type, that
they presumed that just having the facts and figures and data

(52:07):
would be enough to convince all of the people in their audience
to be able to switch to them as a power company.
And not all people operate that way.
Engineers do so, you know, sometimes people forget that the
people who need their good or service the most are the people
that are least like them. Sure, and and how often do we
really? We know about the three the

(52:28):
auditory, kinesthetic, visual, right?
Gartner brought out multiple intelligences in 1982.
We still don't use those. I wrote that paper too,
Rethinking Intelligence for the Octopus Movement.
One of the things that I did in one of the charter schools, I
created multiple intelligence learning centers.
Nobody had ever done that before.

(52:49):
And it was like, OK, well, this makes sense.
You got it, you use it or don't.And if you've got that kind of
activity, observable behaviors in learning styles that you can
then attenuate and even accentuate, those kinds of

(53:13):
things ought to be standard practice in classrooms, in my
opinion. And why they're not?
My point is that when you're youfunction like I do like I play
with and deconstruct systems andquestion systems to better
understand them and refine them.Right.
People don't always respond positively to that process.

(53:34):
We usually don't. I got booted out of the
aerospace industry because I wanted to introduce
interpersonal skills classes because they came to me and
asked me what I was doing. That made my work at the top of
their charts and I never even thought about it.
I just like I normally do. I literally get a surge of

(53:54):
anxiety when someone asks me a question because I know that 99%
of the time that person's not ready for my answer.
And that's the problem. But the the honest answer to
your question is, is that when Iwhen I apply my focus on
something, when I get involved in something, when I care about
something, I have a tendency to blow it up.

(54:16):
OK, let me ask you the question.Same question, a little
differently. When you become interested in
something that you want to explore, do you find that your
focus of attention and intentionand interactions then bring a

(54:38):
collective of resources into focus, or at least visibility?
Only after I've destroyed it. So, but when, when I was
studying like mechatronics and electrical engineering, they
kept on doing this old tired thing of trying to explain

(55:00):
everything is water pressure andplumbing.
And I, I could not get them to stop.
And I, the reason I couldn't getthem to stop is that the people
that we're teaching didn't know it any other way.
And it's, so I, I had to go to the chemistry professor, really
sweet lady from, from Africa wasvery patient with all of my
questions. And I, I had to understand all

(55:21):
of the intermolecular collisionsand I had to understand valence
electron shells and why, why conductivity happened the way
that it did and why there are, are some substances that change
their band configuration at different temperatures and have
paradoxical reactions to things like heat, like tungsten.
I, I had to be able to ask all of those questions so that I
could go back into that mechatronics class and ace it.
And until I did that, I was failing it because the way that

(55:45):
they were trying to transmit theinformation was so simplistic
and so surface level and so aimed at people that are not
like me that I literally couldn't get what I needed in
order to become passionate aboutit.
And so I've, I've learned that Iwhen I see a snapshot of
something, I have to completely retreat from that presentation

(56:06):
because so many people are attached to that paradigm and
make my own and then rebuild it from scratch in order to
actually understand what's goingon.
And then to be able to advance with it and not people don't
respond positively to it. That don't really makes sense to
be able to disambiguate and dissect and make sense of it all

(56:29):
from the beginning. And you can't do that.
And, and especially for someone with your level of intelligence,
the kind of questions that you ask because of the intricacies
that you're, you've developed with your critical thinking and,
and it's natural for you. It's just breathing as

(56:51):
breathing, Yeah. And I don't, I don't realize
that it's going to cause the problems that it does.
I. End up We never do, because we.
Disrupt her and I don't need. To be just wanting to help,
right? I'm not trying to be that person
who's looking over the shoulder at their friend's suicide note
and being like, you misspelled useless.
I'm not trying to be that person.
But I when I care, that's what my brain does is it dissects

(57:17):
details and people can't respondpositively to it.
So I've had to learn that the, the world has a certain reaction
to the way that I think. And I, I've had to develop a
sense of humor and I've had to, I've had to learn to take a deep
breath and to recognize different emotional states in
other people and to try. To do things with us.

(57:37):
Yeah. Would say, well, you got to fit
in. And this is what we're taught.
And so we change ourselves. We've become codependent.
We've become these shells of beings in order to feed other
people's imagination of what we ought to be.
And instead of that, how do you see in these efforts, like with

(58:00):
the octopus movement, planetary citizens, others?
How do you see this shift towardacknowledging the diversity in
greater ways to where it's actually valued?
So there is A and this is is an answer to your question.

(58:24):
It's just it's going to build up.
OK, I get it. You, you, you've got to hold the
runway before the take off, right?
Right. So, so forgive, forgive the
landing strip, sure. But if you were, let's say you
were medically obese, not, you know, let's say you literally
had a tumor on your pituitary, whatever, whatever condition,
right? Had absolutely nothing to do

(58:46):
with you as a person. The the social metric has people
looking at you and assuming thatwhat they see is a result of
certain characteristics that they assign to you as a person.
And what I've learned from what I've learned from being
neurodivergent is that my my symptoms are mistaken for

(59:11):
character traits that my like when someone tries to relate an
emotion to me and I try to reciprocate by trying to come up
with an experience that I've hadthat helps me relate to that,
that's me trying to engage in empathy.
But to them, they just see me talking about myself.
I've changed the subject to myself.
I'm self involved. I'm narcissistic.

(59:32):
And I get the same reflection and why, you know, all we're
doing is trying to connect with the other person and share our
connection to what they just said and what it means to us to
create a deeper bond, not createseparation.
The the human mistake is to presume that other people
function the way that we do that.
If, if, since they're doing something, if we were doing that

(59:56):
thing, we would be doing it for this reason.
So that means that's why they'redoing it right and.
So I, I've spent my whole life with people assuming that I'm
being condescending or assuming that I'm a jerk or, you know,
thinking that I'm an asshole or,and I already have so many
social challenges to already start a notch down and have
people assign those character traits to my symptoms.

(01:00:18):
And it's, I think the easiest metaphor I could use is if you
had a friend who was in a wheelchair and they didn't offer
to help you move, you wouldn't take that personally.
But if you had a friend with ADHD who forgets your birthday,
you will attack your friendship with them because of that.
Because if if you did that, thatwould mean you didn't care.

(01:00:40):
And it I think that is a reflection on the basic problem
of internalized processing with people with their egos, is that
there is this presumption that everyone else in the world is a
clone stamp of them and that their behavior is a direct
reflection of their intention. And that's just not true.
But that's that's a beginning building block of that problem

(01:01:03):
and the the ability to recognizethat non linear thinkers
approach things from different methods for so many different
reasons. It's not just because of
neurodiversity. It could be multidisciplinary.
You know, if you have a person who used to work in biomedical
engineering and then then they used to design, you know, ovens

(01:01:25):
for kilns, for ceramics, for pottery, and then maybe they
were worked as a chemist and didyou know, low sugar reactions in
a lab when that person finally decides to take a cooking class,
the way that they bake a cake might be completely different
from the way that you would think to bake a cake.
And that's because of they're, they're drawing on all that

(01:01:45):
individualized knowledge and experience to do something a
different way. That's that's a version of non
linear thinking. Sure.
Why Transformational coaching, which I do, takes advantage of
that. It says, look, OK, you've got
this skill set, this aptitude, this, this bucket of you, right?

(01:02:07):
That's been applied to things that were at least paying bills
for a while and, and making you somewhat happy.
However, you've lost that pleasure and you're looking for
something new. So let's look at how these the
skill set can apply to somethingthat actually fulfills a passion
that you have towards something that you're interested in and.

(01:02:32):
You see the corporate world, they're like, oh, you know,
we're, we're aligned. And so, oh, you don't believe in
diversity then you know, there'sthere's this issue, right?
You go into a corporate world and they want everyone to use a
singular approach and that that's alignment and that being
aligned toward a common purpose and functioning.

(01:02:54):
Is our process. Don't question it.
We've developed it for the last 20 years and it's worked well.
And my way of being involved in a process is to deconstruct it
and question it. So does that mean that I'm a
jerk, that I'm a dissenter, thatI'm that I'm not a team player,
that I'm all of these characteristics are then of
being assigned to me just because I'm trying to engage in

(01:03:14):
the very thing that they're asking me to?
That is a fundamental problem. It's a fundamental problem.
And the experience I, you know, I have personal reference to
that. I did my best.
They asked me to do something. I put my best foot forward,
which was far more than anyone in the department.
Evidently, you know, I didn't know.

(01:03:34):
And yet because of that, I became a target, even though I
was doing my best to be a company person and help the
vision and mission actually get done and in ways that were
truncating time frames, making suppliers happy, making end

(01:03:58):
clients or end users much more happy because of the service
they were getting. And so, you know, when they came
to me, I said and asked me what I was doing.
You know, this is kind of funny because here's 2 supervisors
walking up to my cubicle. What are they coming for
normally, right? They're going to chew your ass
for something. Well, it's yeah, 1-2,

(01:04:20):
definitely. And they saw a look at my face
and they're like, relax, you're doing things great.
And that's what we want to find out.
How are you doing this? Because we don't get it.
I'm the youngest person in the department.
I'm 26 years old, $7,000,000 a month in shipments and 800
partners. And I'm like, you know, juggling

(01:04:40):
this stuff around like it was nothing and getting people to do
things that nobody else could, particularly by paying attention
to the assholes and say, hey, how can I help you do something
for in your job, right And. We rush to judgement instead of
asking about process. That's an easy thing that we

(01:05:01):
could do. But I think something else that
we could do that real real diversity and inclusion and real
respect for for non linear thinking is giving a space for
everyone to share how their process is different.
I've learned to self advocate asan autistic person to let people
know I have sensory issues, to let them know I might info dump

(01:05:23):
to let them know that if I couldcritically deconstruct something
that has nothing to do with them.
But if we if we had a basic social interaction where we both
open up by talking about how we're different as people, then
there is no need for that. There, there is no need for
because we've already made the space.
Because that means you've got tobe vulnerable and people don't
necessarily want to share what they think you are going to use

(01:05:46):
against them, right, Which goes back to what you said earlier.
Now how do we, how do you suggest that that activity, that
those silos are mitigated as we move forward?
Are there ways to do that that could be implemented and?

(01:06:12):
It can be done for the Socratic method, but only if people are
not offended by the fact that you're asking questions.
If if it's OK for me to say all right, imagine that you're a
person who's not an engineer, who doesn't deal with numbers
and figures very well and isn't convinced by them, who is more
affected by human experience, who is more affected by human

(01:06:34):
faces, is more affected by theirsense of community.
For trust, assume that you're that person.
What kind of website would that person need in order to convince
them to use your product? If you can ask the right
questions, then you can give someone a cognitive reframe and
you can pull them out of their rut.

(01:06:55):
But you have to be able to ask questions.
And if they're not willing to entertain questions because of
the suspension of certitude and the suspension of disbelief,
then that there's your problem. Sure.
And you have to ask the questionand listen authentically.
You can't just ask the questionsto lead them through a process
to get to a result that you're wanting to have happen because

(01:07:18):
there's no consideration of the other in that.
It's like having two people thatare in a challenge, right?
It's it's like the toxic listening culture we created in
the 80s and 90s where we're like, yeah, you know,
regurgitate part of their statement, smile, nod, you know,
show that you're engaged. No, that's a terrible way to
listen. You know, the way to listen is
to listen to that what that person has to say well enough

(01:07:43):
that you can give it back to them and have them agree with it
before you start in on your whatyou have to say.
If you if you can satisfy to them that you actually
understand everything it is thatthey're trying to say and why
they're saying it and the process they use to acquire that
position, then why wouldn't theytake a moment and start

(01:08:04):
listening to yours? But it requires that olive
branch. And patience too, you know, the
the moving slow to move fast. These things take time.
And with the deadlines and commitments usual, you know,
management systems don't allow for the time and space necessary

(01:08:27):
to have these kinds of discussions and relationship
building processes. But it's important in
relationships as well. Absolutely, you know, because I,
I think that the, this semiotic blindness is what nails people
because people will use words like love or happiness or joy or
fulfillment or, you know, these incredibly important concepts,

(01:08:49):
but they just, they whitewash over it with a brush and they
don't actually take the time to understand.
Well, what does that word mean to you?
They'll they'll be so attached to disagreeing with your
definition because of their own definition that they won't make
the space and time to understandyour definition.
And and that's a problem becauseit just means you're used.
You're both using different words for for different things.

(01:09:09):
Now I'm sure you probably had some relationships with HR
departments and that nature, right?
So in one of my mini hats was was on the board of directors
for then the American Society for Training and Development,
Arizona chapter, right. And in the process of that we've

(01:09:33):
put together some conferences and one in particular called the
shift challenging challenge to change, removing limitations,
liabilities and excuses in the workplace.
And during that I had conversations with a bunch of

(01:09:54):
different CL, OS and Chief Learning officers for.
You say reducing excuses. Yeah.
And so the the whole so. People aren't allowed to explain
themselves. No, no, no.
This was to give them accountability and
responsibility to explain themselves, not offer excuses

(01:10:17):
for their ineptitudes. Ah, I see.
OK, OK. So it it was designed to build a
better unit if you will. Sorry, I, I heard, I, what I
heard was, is, is talking about excuses and when someone's
adversarial with you, they'll take any explanation that you
have for what's going on as an excuse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not that kind of thing.

(01:10:39):
However, great catch. So in this and, and talk with
Clos, this was during the time where 2008, right, 2009 market
crash, the HR departments were gutted as a result when the
training development areas of companies and corporations are

(01:11:03):
intrinsically the most importantthat they're not given that
value because they're seen as anintangible expense.
Why do you think that? I mean, you kind of explained
that and how did we shift that? I think the first step is

(01:11:28):
getting people to acknowledge what they feel they know to be
true, and to ask them if there is any other explanation other
than the one that they think is most probable that could result
in exactly the same answers. I think that gets people out of
their first box because I think getting people into behavioral

(01:11:49):
change is incredibly difficult if they they're so convinced
that they found the truth that they're not willing to consider
other options. So.
Unless you have a national or aninternational pandemic and you
know which to disguise behavior.Mod program, right?
Right. Forced forced cognitive.
Reframing, right, right, right. But if if let's say you know,

(01:12:11):
let's say you know about individuated consciousness.
If I say to you, OK, what are some of the other possibilities
that might give you exactly the same results in your experience,
but the system is actually different but the output looks

(01:12:32):
the same, is is that the only conclusion that you can make
from the data that you're seeing?
Or are there less likely conclusions, maybe in your mind
that could also explain it? Perfect example.
I was at a science cafe with oneof Lawrence Krauss's Tasmania.
And then we were talking about the God particle, right?
And so my question was, you know, is it possible that with

(01:12:57):
two protons ramming at near lightspeed and that the
explosion wouldn't cause a particle, it would cause a RIP
in the fabric. And you saw that RIP repairing
and read it as the decay of a particle.
And I got deer in the headlights.
Nobody. Ever asked that question?

(01:13:17):
Right, right. And that's being able to 1st
accept that there are different possible explanations for what
you're observing as truth. That's the first step to being
able to consider a different point of view.
And I think it also gets people out of a mindset of having a
position and instead gets them into a mindset of having an

(01:13:39):
observation. And it's if you can create that
kind of cognitive reframe, then you can continue that that
process to to start getting themto see that other people have
positions that may result in thesame data, but are actually
different interpretations. That that there is more than one

(01:13:59):
possible way to explain things. And that being able to consider
those different possibilities doesn't necessarily negate their
position. If anything, it could strengthen
them by getting to hear those different points of view and
understanding why some people believe differently.
And then whatever the topic is, then you can actually start to
talk about, well, OK, well, for people who have this approach or

(01:14:21):
this understanding of the data, you know, how do you create an
inclusive program that addressesboth of those points of view?
Like, that's when you start to get people to widen their lens a
little bit more because you're acknowledging their position,
but also getting them to acknowledge that it's not the
only position that's valid. Because people get caught up in

(01:14:41):
this whole net of right and wrong.
And if you think you're still inthe room that you're in right
now, you're all ready, you know?Nothing is nothing is good or
bad. It's how we think that makes it
so. I mean, that's that's, that's an
extension of a few different schools of philosophy.

(01:15:02):
I mean, you could even take thatall the way back to DCART if you
wanted to, but that that we put into cart before the horse.
But yes, yes, yes. But I think that, yeah, yeah, I,
I think that's the best answer to your question, is getting
people to cognitively reframe. I think that's the first step.

(01:15:24):
I think cognitive reframing is what gets people kicked out of
their limbic brain and gets themup into their cognitive
functions and actually gets themto the point where they're not
just emotionally holding on withtheir talons into whatever they
think. Truth is, if you can't kick them
up into the higher brain, out ofthe middle or the lower brain,
you're not going to have much ofa conversation.
You're just going to bark at each other.

(01:15:44):
Right. Oh man, this has been just an
amazing conversation. I loved it.
I totally could spend hours withyou just hanging out and then
chatting, right? Long forms, long enough and you
know the we're not a Joe Rogan and I don't think people listen
that long anyway. Is there something that you feel

(01:16:10):
imperative that could offer someindividual release or relief in
what is coming for people to consider in this emergence of a
new normal? I think asking more questions of

(01:16:35):
the people that are closest to us about how they see the world
differently and how it affects the way that they think and
feel, because those are the people that we get the most
exposure to, the people inside of our families, inside of our
close friend groups. So if you can't learn to apply
and the least likely to run right, those are the people that
you have the ability to get the most practice with.

(01:16:59):
And it's it's not that I think that that let's say Myers Briggs
or the NEA Graham system or you know what Myers Briggs was a
bunch of statisticians trying tore encapsulate, you know, union
archetypes or you know, you can you can get it all of that.
But let's say someone takes a personality test, your brother,
your sister, your mother, your father, whatever.
And you can recognize the differences in the way that you

(01:17:21):
organize information, process information, experience the
world and start asking some interesting questions about how
might that affect their decisionmaking process.
And can you see why they have a different opinion than you do
about something, anything simple?
If you can start thinking in that direction.
And it's with someone that you interact with all the time.

(01:17:43):
So this is a, a clear benefit, right?
Because if you can better understand the, the motivations
and the decisions and the emotions of that person, it is
going to change your relationship with that person.
Try it there first. If you can do that with the
people that are closest to you, then that actually starts the
set of behaviors and questions and thoughts that might allow

(01:18:05):
you to be able to push that to an outside sphere.
And that's the way that it'll be.
Impactful realm to practice in one. 100 percent, 100%.
Awesome. And so this has been just
freaking amazing. I loved every moment of it.
Hope you did too and I thank you.
Oh of course absolutely I'm I'm a little tired.

(01:18:26):
I've been in meetings for about 7 hours today, but it was
definitely worth it. Thank you and Namaste.
And in La Quech, thanks for sticking with us for this
episode of One World in a New World.
I'm Zen Benefiel, your host. And for myself and Anne Sharth,
thank you so much and I'll see you next time.

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Ep 192 - Critical Thinking Is Absolutely Essential For Achieving Modern Success

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep 192 - Critical Thinking Is Absolutely Essential For Achieving Modern Success