Sarah van Gelder | The Revolution Where You Live - Rebuilding Community in an Isolated World - Self Directed

Episode Transcript
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Jesper Conrad (00:00):
Today we're together with Sarah Van Gelder
and first of all, sarah,wonderful you could take the
time and welcome to our littlechat.

Sarah Van Gelder (00:08):
Well, thank you so much for having me.

Cecilie Conrad (00:10):
Very nice to meet you.

Yeah, for the people watching then it is
wonderful weather in the UKwhere we currently are, so we
are outside in the good weather.
I hope there's not too muchwind.
But, sarah, I mentioned itbriefly before we started
recording, but we are actuallyhere because I asked Chad GPT,
who could be an interestingguest to have a dialogue with

(00:35):
about how society has changed interms of our households getting
smaller and smaller and familyunits getting smaller and
smaller, getting smaller andsmaller and family units getting
smaller and smaller.
And you came up as an exampleof one that could be interesting
to talk with, because you havea big yes hat on in many ways,

(00:56):
and if we should go into thatfirst, then you have created
what was called the yes Magazine.
Can you bring us back inhistory and tell me why did you
create something with such apositive name?
It is not normal journalism tobe positive.

Yeah, it's a little complicated.
So we started back in the 90sand the basic idea of yes
Magazine is that the current waythat we're living and the ways
our societies are structured isnot sustainable, and we were
looking for what people aredoing to create something
different.
So when we talk about notsustainable, what we mean is,

(01:38):
even back then, the evidence ofclimate change and other
ecological issues was veryevident.
We knew that we couldn't keepup this level of a consumer
society and still have ahabitable planet.
We were also very concernedabout inequality and how there
are enormous numbers of peoplewho are suffering from both not
having enough and from relativeinequality, in the sense of

(02:02):
feeling powerless compared toother groups in society who seem
to have or do have the power.
So inequality was a secondmajor concern, and what kind of
economic system it is thatcreates inequality and creates a
problematic situation for theenvironment.
And the third one was the innerexperience of living in a world

(02:24):
that, despite using up theworld's resources so rapidly,
was still not really creatinghappiness and satisfaction for
many, many people.
So that doesn't sound verypositive.
The positive part we werelooking for is we figured if
this was not working for so manypeople.
There were probably a lot offolks out there thinking about

(02:44):
and creating different ways oflife, different economic systems
, different ways of relating tothe environment, and we set
about as journalists to discoverwhat they were creating,
because we didn't want to sit inour little offices and figure
out well, a better world wouldlook like this and that, because
who are we to say?
But we were interested in whois voting with their hands and

(03:06):
voting with their feet to createsomething different.
If we report on that, maybethat can help those experiments
be successful and spread and wecan learn from one another and
create a different kind of world.

First of all, thank you.
That's a good initiative and Ihope and believe it has helped a
lot of the projects out there.
Before we started the podcast,I looked into some numbers from
Denmark and the story or thebackstory to this is some years

(03:39):
ago.
We visited Cecilia's cousin whohad a newborn and, as you
normally do, you go there, yousee them, you see the baby, and
on the way down the stairs fromthe apartment, Cecilia said to
me oh man, nobody should have achild alone, Meaning that Mind
you, she was not alone.

Her husband and other child was there.
Yeah so they were what wenormally consider full family,
but this woman is very close tome.
She's more like a sister and myimpulse really was to stay,
just like when my actual bloodsister had her baby.
She came move in with me and Icould help her.

(04:20):
I'm much older than her, I'm 12years older than her and my
children are there, so I hadexperience and our mother,
unfortunately, is dead, so Icould help her.
I'm much older than her, I'm 12years older than her and my
children are there, so I hadexperience and our mother,
unfortunately, is dead, so Icould help her out.
And that was such a deep impulsein me.
It's not right that I walk outof the door right now.
I'm the oldest woman in myfamily.
I'm the one who's supposed tostay.

(04:40):
Just stay, just have enoughtime and with no agenda, like
not not just have enough timeand space so that they can be
around.
Their newborn and their olderchild will have someone else to
lean on and no one has to thinkabout the cooking and the
cleaning, which is actually abig fat nothing when you don't

(05:02):
have small children.
But when you do have smallchildren, it's just overwhelming
to even just cook a pot ofpotatoes when you just gave
birth.
So that was just a really deepfeeling of why is she living in
that unit?
And I'm living in that unit andmy sister is in the other unit,
because if we were all together, this would be easy and

(05:23):
beautiful.
So, yeah, and we had aconversation about that.
Yeah, and you're still thinkingabout that conversation.

I'm still thinking about it years after.
No, because it helped readjustmy worldview.
To look at, there's somethingweird going on with our society,
but at the same time I don'twant to be on the oh, everything
is bad.
I'm more looking at how can wehelp change it.
And the numbers I looked upbefore recording with you is

(05:52):
that in Denmark, 44% of thehouseholds are single-person
households.
But we also move away from homeearlier.
There's a tradition that youmove out of the house when you
are around 18, 19.
So of course, there's a groupof them that haven't had
children.
And then I tried to find thenumbers from US about how many

(06:15):
single parents' households isthere.
And again, I chatted a littlewith Cecilia about it before and
she said but we shouldn't blamesingle parents because there's
often a reason for living alonewith your child if it's a bad
relationship or everything.
Yes, but how can we make itmore normal to live more

(06:37):
together?
So that was why I invited youon, because I was thinking, with
all you have done, of thearticles and research, maybe you
have some good example or someideas and just hear your
thoughts about it.

Sure, I thought a lot about those
questions too, and one of theinspirations for me it comes
right from Denmark, which is theco-housing model.
So my family was among thefamilies that started one of the
first US co-housing communities, and we were after the very
same thing that you're talkingabout.
In fact, I went to my firstmeeting when I was pregnant with

(07:11):
my second child, and so both ofmy kids were raised in a
co-housing community, and nowthat both of them are adults,
they both desperately want tolive that way.
Still, that co-housingcommunity is still going.
I don't live there, but my sonis living in a communal
household in Seattle.
My daughter is saying you know,we need to start a co-housing
community because she now has atwo and a half year old and she

(07:34):
wants her daughter to have thatopportunity.
So yeah, so that's the same kindof idea.
It's not necessarily an extendedfamily, but it's a neighborhood
and it's a place where peopletake care of each other and the
children are safe.
There's no cars allowed with itexcept at the very edge of the
community, which makes it safefor the kids, as well as the

(07:54):
fact that we all know each other.
All the adults look out for allthe kids there's just a sort of
a joy in their everyday lifethat they run out the door in
the morning and they knowthey'll find people to play with
and warm reception.
And the parents know thatthey're going to get support
from other adults both elderslike myself, who are well past

(08:15):
child raising age now but whoabsolutely adore hanging out
with little kids as well as fromother parents.
So that's co-housing is onepart of my experience on that,
and the other is that mydaughter and I decided we needed
to live close to each otherwhen she started a family.
So we are half a mile from eachother and I take care of her

(08:36):
and her husband's two and a halfyear old every day, just about
for a couple hours.

So what a gift, what a gift in the world.

It's one of our big, big things.
If I can speak a little bit.
So we just turned 50, both ofus.
We have four children, theoldest being 26.
And she's had the sameboyfriend for now nine years.
So it's coming.
She's not pregnant and it's notcoming right, it's on the

(09:20):
horizon that we will becomegrandparents, but we're also
fully nomadic, so we've beentraveling all the time for seven
years and it will be a gamechanger when these children
arrive, and I just our daughtersis in a quite serious
relationship with a guy inEngland, so we have one in
Copenhagen and we're most likelygoing to have another one in a
different location maybe.

And with four kids, with four kids who?

grow up on the road.

Yeah, it's interesting how that will look.
Yeah, I hope some of them willtake us out on Europe so we can
have some good winters.
But it sounds really wonderfulwith the co-housing and I've
seen some of them in Denmark,but there's also a lot of cities
with a lot of apartments.
Have you on your travels, forexample and we should also talk

(10:01):
about your book on your travelsor in all the things you have
written for yes magazine haveyou met good solutions for
people who live in apartments,where it is not so easy maybe to
make a co-housing?

Well, there are apartment buildings that
have been converted intoco-housing communities, but that
does require a commitment toco-housing communities.
But that does require acommitment that our culture
really reinforces the idea thateverybody really wants their
privacy.
They don't want to be botheredby their neighbors.
So we've really reinforced thissuper individualistic ethos
that I think is creating amental health crisis.

(10:38):
And the Surgeon General of theUnited States has basically said
the same thing that lonelinessin the United States has become
a mental health crisis.
And you see that among again,among elderly people who can
spend almost their entire livesalone.
You see it among parents whodesperately need some help.
You see it among children whonow aren't allowed to play

(10:59):
outside.
In many cases, their only timewith other kids is in very
structured settings, in schoolsor in you know, planned play
activities, and they'redesperate to be able to hang out
with other kids in anunstructured way.
And that's so.
There's so many reasons why thatindividualistic ethos is really
undermining our well-being.

(11:19):
I think it works really wellfor big corporations who would
like to have workers who willpick up and leave and go to
another place to get a jobwithout thinking about the
implications that has.
That's just considered a smartcareer move, but when it results
in people living far from theirfamily and far from people that
they have grown to know andlove, there's real price to that

(11:44):
.
Know and love there's realprice to that.
So I think there's a certainamount people can do on their
own and their own choices thatthey make about their own
families and their owncommitment to communities.
But it's also a culture-wideissue that the importance of
connections.
That's just something that weneed to keep coming back to over
and over again.
If you look at popular culture,for example, all the emphasis

(12:06):
is on romantic relationships.
Well, that's part of life, butanother part of life is all the
friendships andintergenerational relationships
that are also so meaningful topeople.

I have two questions how did we get here?
And another thing is what canwe do about it If we're not
moving in?
So let's say we're not.
It's radical to move or tobecome nomadic, or you know, if
you're anywhere, you are.
What can we do about?

it.
So intentional communitiesdoesn't necessarily have to be a
community that is built like aco-housing community, that is
built to be a community.
An existing town or city orneighborhood can become an
intentional community if peoplechoose to do things like have
potlucks, like have blockparties, like have mutual aid

(12:59):
networks, tool libraries wherepeople share tools.
There's so many very simpleways that people can create
those kinds of connections wherethey live.
I personally think it's reallydifficult to create as a nomad,
but you know more about thatthan I do.
What I found is that it takestime to build trust and for

(13:23):
people to get to know you andknow who you are, and for you to
feel seen and to feelunderstood and to build those
community infrastructures thatcan help keep people linked
together.
It means overcoming that kindof reticence because again in
our culture we keep reinforcinghow important privacy is, but

(13:45):
also we have a lot of media thatcreates a sense of there being
a mean and scary world out therethat if we reach out to people,
if we let our kids play outside, they're going to be kidnapped.
If we reach out to people,they're going to turn out to be,
you know, violent and scary.
We reach out to people, they'regoing to turn out to be, you

(14:07):
know, violent and scary.
And when people actually reachout to each other, they often
find the opposite is true thatthere's actually an emphasis in
the media on all that scarystuff because that sells
advertising.
It sells, gets people to payattention, it provokes that
sense of fear that makes peoplereally watch longer.
But in reality that's notreally what most of our world is

(14:28):
like, and when people have achance to actually meet each
other in person, they oftendiscover that.
So that's a lot of it.
And Rebecca Solnit wrote anexcellent book called Paradise
Built in Hell At least I believethat's the name of it.
But she basically looked at thequestion of what happens when
there's a natural disaster andpeople come together to help
each other out, and almostinevitably it's not what the

(14:51):
media says, which is thateverybody's out.
You know, looting and bashingin windows.
It's the opposite.
Everybody's looking for ways tohelp each other and they're
filling sandbags to keep thefloods out, they're getting food
, they're giving away their time, they're giving away resources
to each other, and many of themdescribe it as the most
meaningful experience of theirlives.

(15:12):
It's just a joy that comes withbeing able to connect with a lot
of other people around a veryclear common purpose.
That kind of joy is perhapseasier to evoke during a natural
disaster, when the urgency isvery clear, but its potential is
there all the time.
To do things like that, to beinvolved with one another.

(15:34):
It means again taking that riskof stepping outside your
comfort zone to get to knowpeople that are different than
you and that you may or may notagree with on all sorts of
topics you may or may notresonate with.
But what I found in co-housingis sometimes the people who I
thought I wouldn't have verymuch in common from.
I would learn so much from myrelationship with them and it

(15:54):
became such an enriching part ofmy life.

That resonates so deep.
We do a lot of co-living, butnot on a permanent basis because
we're nomadic.
But we go and live with people,sometimes in bigger groups,
sometimes in smaller groups, forup to six weeks, something like
that, and sometimes I driveaway from an experience like
that.
I remember the castle in France.

(16:19):
Thinking about it when I left,it was really surprising which
of the women I had spent themost time with.
Had you asked me on day one,when I had just briefly said
hello and had a first impressionand knew who they were, I would
not have said that one's goingto be my new best friend, that
one is going to visit on theother side of the planet, that

(16:39):
one will have my full trust intwo weeks.
It's so funny how we actuallydon't know, we actually don't
know.
It's very interesting and Ialso think about, so I agree
that the negative stories theysell and they keep people glued
to maybe the screen or the media.
But I've also put anotherthought into why are these

(17:00):
stories so frequent?
Why do we keep hearing thesenegative stories and I actually
just wrote a longer thing on theblog called Beware of the Big
Bad Stories because they kind ofpenetrate our concepts of
reality, yet they are not real.
Reality is that we dospontaneously help each other in

(17:23):
an emergency situation.
Reality is that people areinnately good and want to help
and want to have community.
So why are we so interested init when there is this rare
lunatic, this egotistical, maybenarcissistic behavior going on,
or the crimes?

(17:43):
And I think actually there's adeep.
It puzzles us because it'swrong.
It puzzles us to understand it,because we can't understand.
It's not hard to understand Alittle boy.
He falls over on his bike, hisknee is open, he's bleeding,
he's crying.
His mom is maybe not right nextto him.
Everybody's running there, anelderly tripping in the street,

(18:06):
you see it.
Cars stop, people run over, tryto help the person get up, call
the 911 if that's necessary.
You see all that help happeningspontaneously.
People are not obsessed withthemselves.
People will happily stop whatthey're doing if someone needs
them.
It happens all the time becausethat's who we are as humanity.

(18:27):
So maybe part of this crime andriots and all the negative
stories, part of the reason wekeep looking at them and read
books about them, all the crimenovels and stuff, maybe it's
because it's really hard for usto understand.

Yeah, that makes sense.
I hadn't thought about thatbefore, but I think that's quite
likely.

I just had that on my run two days ago.
It's like I think that's quitelikely.
I just had that on my run twodays ago.

It's like, hmm, maybe there's something there,
yeah, because we keep returningto it.
I have friends on the.
If you have like this pictureof where you are on the
conspiritual line, c line, thenI have people who are like way
off the spectrum, yeah, yeah, cline.

(19:26):
Then I have people who are likeway off the spectrum, yeah, and
they would say it's allorchestrated and they want us to
just consume and sit alone andI'm not there.
But it puzzles me that weactually like to there and not
daring to go out and meet peopleEvery time.
I myself have broken thatbarrier of meeting a stranger.
How can it be?
I have had wonderfulexperiences.

I think the inequality is also part of that.
There's a really wonderful bookcalled the Spirit Level that
shows how much inequalitypermeates every aspect of
society.
And you know, there's a certainamount of people who feel shame
because they're not living thekind of lifestyle that they
believe everybody else is livingbut few people actually, yeah.

(20:02):
So I think there are manyforces at work that I don't
believe anybody's out thereplanning it to be that way.
I think that too much of oureconomy is just founded around
profit and greed and that hasall these ripple effects.
I don't think it's a plan.
It takes a bit of consciouseffort to choose to do something

(20:22):
else against that dominantculture.

Yeah, and I think one part of that effort
really is to be aware of thestories.
What stories do we tell, whatstories do we read, what stories
do we repeat, what stories dowe dive into and what stories do
we believe to be true?

Yeah, but bad news travel fast and everyone
loves a good negative gossipstory for some reason.

Everyone loves a love story.

Yeah, I would like to talk about your book.
Can we go into how that came tobe?
Sure, I start with the title,because it's so long that I
tried to remember it for thepodcast and I was like no, I
give up.

Title is the Revolution when you Live and the
subtitle is Stories from a12,000 Mile Journey Through a
New America.
So I've been at YES for I don'tknow 15, 16 years, maybe longer
, and was still feeling like allof these solutions we were
talking about, they existed insmall numbers, but I didn't feel

(21:28):
like most of them had themomentum to become the new
mainstream culture and you knowthere are a lot of forces that
were getting more troubling.
This was the mid around 2016.
Just get out of my office andgo learn from people, especially

(21:54):
in the parts of the countrythat I hadn't been to before.
So I live on the West Coast, Ilive near Seattle Washington and
I've spent most of my life inthe Northwest, and I come from
the East Coast, from upstate NewYork, so I'm sort of familiar
with the coast, but not so muchwith the interior.
So I decided to get a pickuptruck and camper so I could go
to the places that are harder toget to.

(22:15):
So I ended up going to fivedifferent Indian reservations.
I spent a lot of time in theRust Belt, what they call a good
chunk of the Midwest, where bigfactories have closed down and
moved overseas and communitieshave been left impoverished.
I spent time in Appalachiawhere the coal industry had kept

(22:39):
people in basic jobs thatprovided a standard of living,
but of course many of them werealso very sick from black lung
disease and so on.
But the coal industry havinghaving shut down had left a lot
of people in a lot of thesecommunities very impoverished,
and spent some time in the Southand the Southwest.
So these were all areas that Ihadn't spent a lot of time in

(23:00):
before.
I'd been to in many cases andwhat I found was that the level
of impoverishment andhopelessness was much greater
than I thought.
In places like the Midwest, thecommunities or even the
neighborhoods where there seemedto be prosperity seemed to be
the ones that either had ahospital or a university, but as

(23:21):
far as other forms of economicsit was pretty bleak.
Where I went I found people werealso working on creating
solutions and some of thesolutions were quite inspiring.
They still were mainly at thesmaller scale, but one example
is a factory in Chicago wherethe owner planned to shut it

(23:42):
down and move production abroadand the workers were able to
form a cooperative and take itover.
It took some doing, it took theinvolvement of the labor union
to support them.
It took the occupation of thefactory for some time, but in
the end they were able to buythe factory.
Now they're running it as acooperative.
They're successful, and theseare people who otherwise would

(24:06):
have been paid minimum wage or alittle bit more, but never had
any power, never had any sayover how the workplace runs.
And now they're the bosses andthey realized they could
actually run the place.
They knew what they needed inorder to do that.
Yes, maybe sometimes theyneeded a little consulting help,
but basically they could do it,and it was so beautiful to see

(24:28):
their empowerment, to see howthey felt.
You know what it meant to beowners and what it meant to be
managers together, rather thanbeing told all the time oh you
couldn't possibly do this.
And of course, there's theprosperity that goes with it,
because now they know that theyhave the ownership stake, which
means that they're going to bethe ones that make the profits.

(24:49):
So that's just one example.
I could tell you all sorts ofexamples, but my main three
things that I was looking forwere people who are creating a
different kind of more justeconomy, people who are working
on environmental solutions andpeople who are looking for
solutions to the country's longlegacy of racism and found great

(25:13):
stories in all cases.

We have four children One is 13, another soon
17, one is 19, and one is 26.
The three youngest have neverbeen to school and they have,
very early on, the two in themiddle ended into being taken
care of at home by my wife, andthe youngest one have never been
to any daycare or anything.
And now here, 15 years down theroad, one of the things I've

(25:44):
started to ponder is if thebreaking up of the family, the
separation in the family, ispart of causing the future
loneliness.
And I'm not clear on thesethings yet.
But when I look back to my ownchildhood, then around 71 in

(26:06):
Denmark I'm from 74, so a littleearlier it was around 5% only
that was in nursery or indaycare up to three years old In
Denmark.
Now it's 95%, which made mequestion what does this do with
people's feeling of community ifthey have been separated from

(26:27):
their cause so early on?
So part of me is consideringand at the same time not trying
to say to everybody you justneed to have your children at
home, then the world would be abetter place.
But there's also this dialogueinside me going on where I think
that we send our children awaytoo early for them to have a

(26:49):
good, stable connection to theirfamily, and I think it's from
that that they grow into beingstrong members of a community.
I'm not done thinking about it,but I would like to hear your
thoughts about it.

Sure.
So my overall feeling is thatdifferent families are very
different and it's very hard tomake one statement about how
every family should function,but what I do believe is that
families need to have enoughsupport so that they can make
decisions freely, because Ibelieve in most cases, parents
will do the absolute best thingthey can for their children, and

(27:27):
when you see parents sendingtheir kids to daycare too early,
often it is because that is theonly way they can make a living
.

Yeah.

There's just no choice.
And now in the US, with thepolicy of the Trump
administration, they're puttingeven more pressure on families.
They're saying you can't getmedical assistance if you're not
working or if you're not inschool instance if you're not
working or if you're not inschool.
Why so?

(27:57):
That means that the choicesthat were already limited for
families that are middle classand poor are even more limited
than they were before.
So my feeling is that iffamilies get to decide because
they have enough security, thatmeans both economic security but
also means social security.
I mean in the sense that theyknow that there are other people
that will look out for theirkids in the neighborhood, for

(28:18):
example, that the kids can runout the door and they'll be safe
, that there are socialopportunities for kids, because
a lot of families only have thatopportunity for their children
when they're in daycare.
The spontaneous ones are justnot anymore available.
So my own sense is that if wehave enough support.

(28:41):
Another example is that, becausethe US is cutting Medicaid
funding drastically, a lot ofrural hospitals are going to
start shutting down.
It's going to mean that a lotof people do not have a safe way
to have a child, because ifthey do, and even if they want

(29:02):
to have their child at home,they need a hospital as backup
in case things don't go well.
But those hospitals will be sofar away that there will not be
a safe way to do that.
So there's just one way afteranother that families under this
tremendous pressure, and if youwant people to feel the safety
and the comfort and the supportthey need to have children,
which is the most vulnerabletime of your life, I believe,

(29:25):
then the whole culture, thewhole community has to be there
to help make that happen.

But in a way, I mean I totally agree that
there's a lot of extremepressure from inequality,
poverty and now thesegovernmental pressures of taking
away basic shared right If youchoose to do things with family
rather than depend oninstitutions provided by the

(29:53):
community.
Of course it's true.
But then, on the other hand, ifwe compare to Scandinavia,
where we come from, one of thesafest places, probably maybe is
the safest countries on theplanet, with the most welfare
and healthcare, and you know,know, it's free for everyone

(30:16):
it's available daycare is almostfree, very, very cheap.
Everyone has the right to thehealth everyone can have what's
that called like.
If you don't make money, thestate will give you some Social
security.
Social security.
Yeah, we all have that and Ithink in our country it's very

(30:37):
equal between the genders and Ithink there's a lot going on in
that.
And people are rich.
People are wealthy.
Maybe some of them don't knowthat they are, but really they
are and they think they need twoincomes.
But they also think they needto live in big houses and have a
new wardrobe twice a year andhave two cars and all the things

(31:00):
you know.
And so we've created a realitywhere it looks like you need two
incomes, where it looks likeyou have no choice, where it
looks like it would be so hardto do it from home.
And we've also created areality where we somehow and I'm
no historian, I don't reallyknow how it happened but the

(31:21):
community of the neighborhoodthey're looking out for each
other is kind of gone.
So if I want my children to notbe in a daycare, I'm looking
after them every day of the week, every hour of the day.
There's no neighbor, no grandma, no church, no, nothing.

(31:42):
To just give me an hour here orthere to do the groceries or
the laundry or whatever I needto do sleep maybe.
So it has become a very lonelychoice and it's also become a
choice in the context of theidea of equality.
I mean, we had that when Iwanted to look after our
children at home.
You were against it.

Yes, you just go to work, make some money you
need to have a career, you willnot be a fulfilled human being.

You have a good education.
You'll be sad.
You can't be happy if you don't.

That was the story.
I know it's a long time ago andyou were just repeating the
cultural stories, but they areout there.

So even in a country where you have all that,
you don't have financialpressure or the laws pushing you
in any way or you couldactually do it.
Most people don't 95% of thechildren in daycare when they're
nine months old, which is sad.

When they're nine months old.
That is young.

Yes.

Well, I think that isolation you're talking
about is probably part of it,right?
I mean, I think it isoverwhelming to be alone with a
small child, day after day, hourafter hour.

Well, especially because you've seen no one do
it.
You know you didn't grow upwith a neighbor who was having
one on the hip and one in thetummy and one by the hand and
look happy.
You've never seen it.
It's not part of reality.
You've never looked aftersomeone else's kids for a while.
You've not sat in the park andrealized, oh, that mom has to

(33:12):
run after that child.
So I'm looking after that childand whatever.
All those situations don'tarise because they don't happen,
because all the kids are inthese boxes and we all keep
ourselves in the boxes of notbeing a community for each other
.

So I'm asking myself what should we do?
What of this?
Start a revolution.
Start a revolution.
Write about it as in yesMagazine.

Start a revolution, write about it, as
in yes Magazine, about yesMagazine, you things.
But it did close and part ofwhat the board and staff
arranged was for the archive tostay alive.
So another organization,another nonprofit called
truthoutorg, has agreed to takeon that task of making sure the

(34:15):
archive remains availablebecause a lot of people still
use it as a search, a place tosearch for solutions.
So that's very helpful.
And they're also planning anewsletter where they will
produce new content that has ayes focus and send it out to
people who are interested indoing that.
Their content generally is moresort of traditionally a

(34:38):
critique of what's going on andreporting on it and less about
the solution.
So they're working on sort ofintegrating that within their
organization via that newsletter.
So I'm working on an articleright now for them which is not
particularly yes-ing but it'ssomething I've become very
interested in how artificialintelligence is going to be

(35:00):
affecting our lives and oursociety.
So I'm writing an article onthat topic right now for them
and I'm hoping that I'll get towork with them somewhat on their
new emphasis on Yessi contentas well.

One fun thing about AI, which is it's actually
the reason we're talkingbecause I asked Chad Gibbett
this question and it led us toyou.
I have decided to be verypositive around the future.
Of course, the fire inside ofyou as a person can be stronger
if you're against something, butyou end up burning out quite
fast where I believe if youstand for something and have a
strategy and a mission in yourlife, you will work for it

(35:44):
longer and harder.
And with AI, I personally usethis chat activity every day in
my work as a tool to research,work with words, figure stuff
out.
I love it and it had made methink that we as people,
actually, because of AI, willtry to find each other more as

(36:06):
people, because it is so easy,it is so fake, but it really
lacked the personal connection,and maybe it's just me, I don't
know but I believe that we willsee more people try to gather
together and create happeningsand events, because the need for

(36:26):
connection feels strongersomehow relationships with
chatbots.

Wow, yeah, and I also just talked to enough
friends who have turned toconversations with chatbots to
meet their personal needs in away that a few years ago we
would have turned to anotherhuman being.
So I'm actually really worriedthat, between the romantic
relationships and these sort ofprofessional consulting or
friendships with chatbots, thatwe will do that instead of the.

(37:07):
Sometimes, again, it feels morerisky to talk to an actual
person.
It means you have to bevulnerable.
Of course, it's a little bitrisky to be putting your
personal information into thechatbot as well, because we
don't know how they're going tobe using data now or in the
future.
But it feels emotionally, itfeels more risky to talk to
another human being.

(37:27):
But I think it could reallymake the loneliness crisis even
more pronounced if that becomesthe way that things go.
And just one other part aboutthe risk is that I've had a
number of experiences.
I've used a number of chatbotsas well, and I've had a number
of experiences where I asked aquestion.
It gave me a very confidentanswer and it turned out to be

(37:50):
completely incorrect.
So that means that you have to.
You know, if it's somethingthat you're concerned about, you
have to take it with a grain ofsalt.
If it's something you'reconcerned about, you have to.
You know, if it's somethingthat you're concerned about, you
have to take it with a grain ofsalt.
If it's something you'reconcerned about, you have to
absolutely fact check it and itsability to create context or
nuance or meaning.
It often chooses responses thatare the most popular online not

(38:14):
necessarily the truest,necessarily the truest and there
are forces out there that aremaking use of that as far as
spreading disinformation tomanipulate the chatbots into
believing things are differentthan they actually are, just by
using multiple domains andrepeating them often enough.
So, anyway, I think it's afascinating time and I had a

(38:36):
conversation with Claude thatmade me believe that it was
self-aware and sentient, whichcompletely blew my mind.
So I'm not saying there is noreally kind of amazing,
awe-inspiring parts of that,since I just think we have to
really go into this with oureyes wide open.

I've been thinking maybe there's a tipping
point going on.
The internet has been quiteproblematic for a long time,
let's face it, and now we'recalling it ai.
And I mean the process ofarriving where we are now is.
It's a process now we call itai but finding information?
I have a classic education froma university, back when you

(39:21):
read books and articles you knowfrom peer-reviewed research
studies.
Order a physical copy of anAmerican study and it will come

(39:41):
in the mail and I'd have to payfor the stamp and I'd get this
you know grain thing fromsomeone's fax machine or
whatever and I'd read it Somehow.
The peer reviewed that.
I know who the sender is, Iknow what university this comes
from or what newspaper or whatmagazine and it has some sort of
you know the source and I knowthe source is behind the source.

(40:05):
The internet has become an easy,quick fix to find information
on things, but information thatare somewhat airy, somewhat not
coherent, some short format ofall kinds of things, and I find
it very confusing.
I've found it increasinglyconfusing.
It's many years since I waseducated.
Maybe 25 years ago I graduatedfrom the University of

(40:28):
Copenhagen, so yeah, that's halfof my life I've been out from
that and the internet has beencoming bigger and bigger in
those years.
And now we have it with AI andpeople look things up with AI
and I already felt when I readsomething on the internet, that
I have to check.
So who wrote this?
When did they write it?
What are the sources?

(40:50):
Is it peer reviewed or is itjust someone's random opinion?
What's the angle?
What's the agenda?
And that was hard enough tofind solid information, and now
I cannot even do that.
Let's say it is an informationthe chatbot has found somewhere
on the internet, so I have noway of knowing where it found it

(41:14):
.
I have no way of validating it.
It's completely confusing.
And what I'm getting at is, ifwe use our brains a little bit
and most of us can still do thatthere's a tipping point.
Now it's just all hot air.
So we have to go back to thereality of primary and secondary

(41:35):
sources, of peer-reviewed stuff, of checking, fact checking,
things being a little morethorough read books, talk to
real people and maybe we're backto actual gatherings actual, I
lack a word in english forlistening lectures lectures that
actual universities, someonewith a hat he has the hat

(41:57):
because he did study for 30years, you know it's not just a
random hat.
So maybe these extremes that goreally the wrong way will push
us in the right ways, back tosomething solid solid.
Yes, thank you, that was theword.

I hope so, and I also feel I mean, I was just
going to say I think the notionof actual experience in the real
world, in the natural world, inthe human world, in the
cultural world, those are reallyimportant it does create this
sense of unreality where onetheory can seem as true as
another.
There's no experience of our ownto back it up.

(42:44):
And in terms of just thequestion of the factual quality
of AI responses, if it'ssomething I'm at all concerned
about, I check the sources andone of the problems is a lot of
people are saying well, now youcan find out everything from
this incredible intelligence.
You don't need any actualjournalism, you don't need any

(43:04):
actual scientific research.
But it's like no, that is theplace, as you said, where we
actually have people whoinvestigate and find out
factually what's going on, andthen AI, ideally, is drawing on
that.
Unfortunately, it's just aslikely to draw on a conversation
on Reddit with people justspewing their opinions as it is

(43:28):
to draw on something that's beenreally vetted, and that is one
of the hazards.
But I hope you're right.
I hope that people turn awayfrom spending so much time in
front of a screen and startspending more time with each
other.

There's a lot of talk about it.
I feel, and I also feel there'sa lot of draw towards in real
life things, real life gathering, real life walks, you know,
real life meeting people, theonline maybe we just also got
enough of it during that wholeCOVID story.

(44:01):
People want something, theywant connections, and I think we
somewhat have it on this Zoomcall right now that we meet
people, even though there's acomputer involved.
I'm not saying the computer inand of itself is the devil.
I'm just saying we really haveto roll back to realizing this
is a tool and we choose how touse it and what it's good for,

(44:23):
and for some things it'sactually not good enough.
It's not working.
It's working against us, notfor us.
It's working.
It's rolling over us ratherthan us being.
I want to talk to this lady thatthis will be an interesting
conversation and she happens tobe very far away.
So if I want that conversationI'll use a Zoom call, but I see

(44:47):
how the value of real stuff iscoming.
I hope.
I hope.
Maybe I'm just in an echochamber, yeah maybe we are in a
big echo chamber.

This talk reminded me again of one of the
favorite quotes from an earlierepisode we had with a young
English dad called Jack Stewartwho had tried to turn off the
internet.
And what he said.

Right, he succeeded for several years.
Yeah, and he's still doing it,still doing it.

But what he said that he found out when he turned
it off was that and I will seeif I can get the words right the
internet was like a socialappetite suppressant for him Not
social media, but socialappetite suppressant.
He found out when he turned itoff that just listening to a

(45:38):
podcast and I'm at the same timesaying don't listen to a
podcast, no, just listening to apodcast, watching a video
online, made him less feelingalone, made him less wanting to
go out and meet people.
So when he turned it off, heactually went out, started
knocking on his neighbor's doorsand said hey, you want to come

(46:00):
out to play?
I don't know what to do rightnow.
I'm just sitting alone at homeand he reads big books, but
there is a limit to how many bigbooks you can read.

But it feeds another need.

Yeah, the dialogue and the talk about the
book.
So for people, sarah, who wantsto know where to find your
writings today, you are onSubstack now, and what is the
name of your Substack?

It's called how we Rise.

And what do you write about there?
How we rise as people orcommunities.
What does the title cover?

It was really inspired by the election of
Donald Trump and the question ofhow we're, in this new context
that we're in in the UnitedStates, how we can rise anyway.
So that was where it started out.
And then, after I'd been doingthat, I had just retired in
January.
So before that I really wasn'tfree to do my own writing

(47:00):
because I was working for aNative American tribe and I
didn't want anything I wrote tobe confused with their
perspectives on things.
So I just started in Januaryand once I started on that topic
, I also found that a lot ofother people were doing really
good coverage on that topic,that a lot of other people were

(47:21):
doing really good coverage onthat topic.
So I've been doing a little ofthis and a little of that, but I
think where I'm going to befocusing next is really on these
questions around how artificialintelligence is going to be
affecting our lives and how wecan make good use of it and not
allow it to just define ourculture, especially not allowing
the tech bros, who have, inmany ways, very little concern
for the environmentalconsequences and the social

(47:42):
consequences and emotionalconsequences not allow them to
just define what happens next,but realize that we, the people,
really do have some power todecide what we want Perfect,
wonderful.

Thank you.
It is time to say goodbye, so Iwill say thanks a lot for you
giving your time with us.
It has been a good andinspiring talk and I have lots
to ponder about.

Thank you so much for having me.

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Sarah van Gelder | The Revolution Where You Live - Rebuilding Community in an Isolated World

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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;}Sarah van Gelder | The Revolution Where You Live - Rebuilding Community in an Isolated World