This Interview Will Not Be Televised: Thoughts on Moving Forward in a World Gone Mad

I did my first podcast this morning after nearly a two year hiatus. Parts of it were beautiful — deep conversation about what it is to live in a world in transition, how we make it through the crazy times we are living in and how we find our way not back to a world that we once knew, but into a world that is evolved beyond our current structures.

Somewhere along the way, everything went South. Afterwards, I spent some time trying to decide if I said the wrong thing (it’s so easy to go there). I spent some time feeling unseen by the person who I was talking to who wanted to get back to the safer world that they experienced in their childhood. And then I got inspired to speak out even when I felt silenced.

No matter how many times I tried to explain that I didn’t experience the 80s with the same level of safety as they did and that a return didn’t really make sense to me - that experience was denied and counter exampled. If you’ve ever been mansplained you’ll probably know just what I felt. Yes, men do it to other men all the time.

So I thought I would share some of the interesting bits and pieces that I think might help people get through this time of troubles.

Our current experience of the world is more complex and interconnected that we’ve ever experienced before.

We used to joke that we the distance between Kevin Bacon and any other actor was six people. Now, with the more interconnected world filtered through social media, that number has decreased to three. We are literally twice as close to everyone - and their problems - than we were thirty years ago.

The old stories that gave us hope - the spiritual traditions that taught peace and love - have taken extremist turns to violence, hatred and intolerance. I keep looking for the turn the other cheek, love your neighbor teachings in the mega churches. I’m not sure who they are following but it’s rarely the loving, compassionate God that Jesus seemed to preach.

The technology is overwhelming us. We simply can’t keep up with the speed that we are being asked to adopt and incorporate new technology in our lives.

And hanging above all of this is climate chaos that feels like its too big to wrap our heads around.

We can list dozens of other ways that the world feels like it is speeding up but you get the point. The times are a changing - and mostly too fast for comfort.

You’ll have to take a breath and try a little thought experiment to see if this is true for you.

But I think that most of the people that I know can see that there is some pretty awful things going on particularly in America not to mention a lot of other places around the world.

There is something in us that knows this that knows that what we are witnessing is a parody of humanity - vultures performing concern as they pick over the bones of those that they leave in their wake.

For many of us we have come to our line in the sand where we just know that we can’t participate. There’s something in is us that has woken up - that knows that denial is not enough.

That is actively working for the good of other people.

We’ve seen that during the incursion in Minneapolis. We’ve seen that in the massive protests that have happened on No Kings Day. We’ve seen that as we start to connect more deeply with our friends and our neighbors.

The story that is emerging out of the collapse of so many of our systems is grounded in connection, care for each other and protection of the planet. Everywhere I look there are things to be inspired by but the noise that is being broadcast so loudly right now is designed to drown out hope.

The fact that a new, more hopeful story is emerging is not a reason for us to rest. No one is coming to save us. We have to work together to create the world that we would rather live in.

We can’t wait to act because every moment that we wait another person gets abused, incarcerated unjustly or even murdered.

But in order to create something different, we have to be something different.

In the business world that I have often found myself working in, right now there is a cult of scalability. We need to get bigger and louder to create change. But bigger and louder is what we’ve been doing since the Industrial Revolution and it’s brought us to the chaos we are currently living in - isolated, afraid and disconnected. A lot of well meaning people are looking for the message that will change people’s minds. That will force them to act.

But here’s the thing - shouting louder is not going to help anyone get moving faster. The people who think that a marketing campaign could get people to love the earth or take care of other people are missing the fact that for many of us - our nervous systems have been hijacked. We feel alone, isolated and frozen. We can’t even hear the words - they come across like Charlie Brown’s teacher on the loudspeaker (blah, blah, blah, blah) because there is no space to receive them.

So when people are frozen, we have to create pockets of belonging that allow them to feel safe. We can do this in a million different ways but the easiest, fastest way is to simply see each other - to sit in the mud with others while they find their belonging. (Thank you Simon Sinek for this beautiful phrase.)

That doesn’t mean that we stop all the powerful actions we are doing in the meantime. It means that we can do two things at the same time.

It also doesn’t mean that we have to wait forever. Humans are surprisingly resilient. We can find our sense of safe enough and belonging pretty quickly. But until we do, everything that we do is likely to come out of a shortsighted survival imperative that will just recreate the problems we already have or create new ones.

I was listening to my friend, Dr. Gary Salyer on a podcast the other day talk about how we have become a more avoidant culture - he is an attachment expert that I am constantly learning new things from. In the interview, he said that when you engage an avoidant you either become avoidant or you become anxious.

If you get avoidant, you want to sit out the fight. A lot of us have felt this desire to withdraw and just get away from it all. This is especially easy when you are feeling alone like you have to do everything on your own.

If you feel anxious, you start spinning in your head, doomscrolling on social media because maybe knowing what’s going on will make you feel better, feeling afraid all the time. I get this one. I spent most of 2016 to 2020 checking to see if we were in a war every morning when I woke up. (Apparently I was a few years too early on that one.)

We can’t get through either of these experiences alone. We need community to support us. Sometimes I’ll carry the water and sometimes I’ll need to rest. We can share the burden and do incredible things together.

It’s okay for you to have an experience that is different than mine.

It’s not okay for you to deny the truth of my experience because it wasn’t yours.

It’s also not okay to deny history, facts and data. So if you had an experience that’s different than mine and there’s data that suggests that there were wider currents going on, its useful to hold that data in context.

In this particularly case, I heard an argument that I’ve heard many times before - that the 80s were safer than now. When I brought up that was true for some people - particularly straight white men - and that women, trans folks, gay folks, black folks, latino folks, native peoples, the natural world - might not have felt so safe back them my experience didn’t factor into the picture. In fact, the response was yes, for certain people it was bad but “generally” it was safer. When I did a quick search after the call attempting to qualify the people who were not generally safe it was around 65% of the US population.

In fairness, I was challenging a cherished notion that many people have - that we can somehow go back to a mysterious Edenic world where everything was calmer and better. But that world did not exist for everyone in equal proportion. Personally, I would rather see us evolve into greater equity instead of collapse into a world that never really fit a lot of us.

The invitation is not to deny anyone’s experience but rather to hold them in tension - two things can be true at the same time.

When we listen to people who have had little to no power, we will see this clearly. It is not enough to move back to a world where some people had enough and a lot of people didn’t, we have to move towards a world that allows for a place at the table for all people.

I don’t have all the answers. The problems we are facing are complex. Complex situations require complex (but elegant) “solutions.” I put solutions in quotes because we don’t need a solution as much as we need to step into larger ways of thinking and being where the problems are not built into the system.

There are amazing examples of people taking care of each other, of choosing compassion over fear, of prioritizing equity over greed - all over the world. I am inspired by so many people doing great things every day.

I don’t think we are suffering from a lack of ideas that will move us forward but rather the inability to slow down for a few moments, allow ourselves to be present to other humans, to know what it is to build organizations and movements that are co-created. It won’t come from the old models or the old ways of thinking - or perhaps it requires to go back to even older ways of connecting with each other, ourselves and the land. In the end, I am hopeful that humanity can move through this transition and land somewhere that is worth living for us all.

Want to chat?

I really do like having these conversations. I think deeply about these questions and work widely with people who are creating a better world. If you would like to have me on your podcast to explore these ideas please send me a message. Our conversations matter.