Say kids, what time is that? [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] The future is coming on. It's coming on. It's coming on. It's coming on. It's coming on. It's coming on. And it's coming on to you from Port Townsend, Washington, today. Mrs. Future and I are on the road. And we're visiting some friends and colleagues and making the world a better place. Jim and Cassie Ruff. Did you go by Cassie Ruff, Ms. Furman? No, I don't. No, I'm so sorry. I should have asked you how you want to be called over there. But we know you got married. It's Sandra. OK. Yes. That's Cassie Furman. Cassie Furman. Well, welcome Cassie. I was so happy when Jim introduced me to Cassie because I knew that his life was miraculously just in heaven. Once again, you know, because Cassie is so wonderful. And the more I get to know her, the more facets of her wonderfulness I get to experience. So Cassie, why don't you give people the really quick overview so they can appreciate a few salient moments? Well, I'm not sure how much of my wonderfulness is going to go through the radio waves. So a lot of it is just the visual. And that's not true either. I worked for the past 20 years in child abuse neglect prevention on a national level. And so that's been my professional interest and working with very vulnerable families, people with loved ones with disabilities or aging and related medical problems. So that's been my work advocating for caregivers, young children and adults. The reason Jim is so exciting to me is because I've realized that so often the things we try to do as helpers were hindered. The best possible people in the world doing really good work to help children and families are often doing horrible things. And usually it's because we're embedded in a system that makes it very difficult for us to truly be helpful to each other. I met Jim. Jim's thing was about systems change, perked up my ears right away. And that's how I became interested. Right. Yeah. And so we're going to be delving into that a lot during the show of how Jim had really been a very huge voice in affecting the way that groups of people think about problem solving. His contributions have been recognized by some very enlightened people in our world. And I personally have been very inspired by the work of the dynamic facilitation that Jim has taught to a great number of people around the world. And his treasured dream of creating a global wisdom council to solve the most difficult problems in the world. And it's a process that we're going to be really describing for everybody today. I wanted to read you the chat GPT understanding of what your work and see if you agree with it. It's a good time for you. Okay. I think that might be a good place to start with this. Yeah. Yeah. Are you going to do a live one or are you going to do the one that we already did? I do the one we started so you have a little bit of thinking about it a little bit. Hey, this is a good introduction for Jim describing his own process after the AIs interpreted for us. Here we go. The wisdom council process developed by Jim Ruff is a transformative approach to decision making that emphasizes collective wisdom and authentic dialogue. Could we stop for just a minute? Yes. Because I know that that sentence has two misleading description collective words. Collective wisdom. And I believe that if you look in your text to Jim, there is a better version of that sentence that is more accurate. So if you just go into your text chat and start there with the introduction to Jim, it will be a little bit more accurate than chat GPT, which did an admirable job, but it happened to pick a couple of words that Jim particularly has spent a lot of time trying to explain to people the distinction between what he's doing and the way it's being described right there. Yes. The distinction between decision making and choice creating and distinction between dialogue and choice creating. Dialogue has a meaning that's really specific and decision making has a meaning. And it seems to me that if we stay with those meanings, we'll lose the essence of what it does. Well, it distorts it because it gets people to think that it's something that they've been doing in boardrooms or something that they do before they take a vote or something like that. And I agree with you that it really does not accurately represent the transformative nature of the process to describe it that way. So how did you do Al? Thank you. I thought it was from your I've had a process developed by Jim Ruff is a transformative approach to solving impossible problems impossible that emphasizes collective wisdom and authentic airing of problematic issues and complex perspectives. How's that? Nice. Yeah. You agree with that? I like it. I don't like to or to agree, but yes. He agrees with everything except the agree. Yeah. In this process, a diverse group of individuals typically selected randomly from a community of participants are invited together to address a specific issue or challenge. Like in Santa Cruz, it was the rail trail issue. Should this be rail road or should it be for bicycles and people? Right. That was a one time event. So we call it a wisdom council, but we're really wanting to think about a wisdom council process that's ongoing as a way to transform the system. In other words, if that was ongoing, that process, then Santa Cruz would be choosing all kinds of different things differently with more people involved. So it could be a regular way of solving a problem. A regular way. You're solving the problems of building community at the same time and achieving breakthrough solutions so we can't really anticipate. Yeah. Yeah. Well, to get people to do that, I guess is the challenge. It's got to be fun enough. Well, that's the idea. Yeah. If you know Rick and Grossey, maybe you know him, but he always has at the bottom of his emails, the big change agent throws a better party. I think that's his cool. Yeah. It throws him up right here. Yeah. I'd say we resemble that remark. Yeah. It's important. I agree. I'm rather good of a party than a city council meeting. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But when it went, it was, it did taught the first seminar to Tom and I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I was a little bit older than Tom. I think they sent you Jim right away. They sent me Jim right away. Wow. He looked interesting to me. I had two other dates in the interim. Then I met Jim and he immediately went out to lunch. He pulls out paper and pencil and started drawing pictures of squares, triangles, and circles. He began explaining... Is it an ESP test or what? Well, no, he was talking about systems. And of course, as I said, I was very interested in changing the child welfare system. I would like to abolish it and start from scratch. That's always been a big interest of mine. Jim began talking about how we are stuck in certain systems that prevent us from making the changes that need to be made in the world to make it a better place. The triangle system he talks about is an autocratic system where we have a king or a dictator or some governing board. Top down hierarchy. Top down hierarchy that lords it over us. Our role is to allegiance to that. We're subject to the rules. Subject to the rules. The intelligence from the top. I don't know about you, but I don't think that's a very good idea. Yeah. Kind of works the opposite of the way my brain works. Well, it's supposed to be government of the people by the people. It's a collaborative intelligence. That's my preference. Well, I've always thought you could count on people's contrariness much more than their cooperation. So you put them in a top down hierarchy and you know there's going to be some rebels. And if you have a strong enough hierarchy, those rebels are in big trouble. Oh, yeah. Off with their heads. Yeah, that's worse. So we transformed. What really got me excited is I love the Constitution of the United States. I'm so impressed by it. And Jim talked about how at the Constitutional Convention, these people got together and came up with now the people who got together. White, many. Male. Only a hundred books to their library, but they thought that was all the knowledge in the world that you needed to know. However, despite those limitations, they came up with a really good system for the time with a lot of problems. But within that system still, we are trapped. And it isn't necessarily the system that's working for what we are facing today, especially at the global level. So that was his square. The triangle was the autocratic system. The square was the Constitution. The set of rules we live by. Much better than the triangle. And then he talked about the circle system. And the circle system is where we have a genuine representation, random representation of we the people who are a reflection who gathered together using the dynamic facilitation process. Can you give me an example? Like, for example, if you apply that circle idea to like solving the welfare problem? We the people. How can we the people think about welfare? One, randomly select folks so we don't have, well, I'm representing the social workers of America. And I'm representing the Democratic Party. And I'm representing the, no, we have random selection of people representing themselves. And they are us. That's pretty profound right there. A couple of days or more grappling through a facilitated process about all of the issues and they're going to uncover things that we haven't thought about. And all of the unintended consequences of the systems. They're not necessarily going to come up with an answer, but they will come up with a unified set of ideas that we may not have thought of. So it's rather than coming up with a binary approach, we're going to vote, we're going to vote for this law or that law. And that way is for sure somebody is not happy about it. They're going to see the universe of possibilities. And people come up with them. We have to trust in and I believe in the collective intelligence of folks if properly facilitated in the right context. So trust, I would say that's a really important word that is being bandied about as a failure of our current system and something that people are scrambling to try and re-establish. And here you are using it as just an innate inherent part of this process of having a wisdom council process. Yeah, it's interesting. I've only been in a few dynamically, I haven't been in a wisdom council, but I've been in a few dynamically facilitated groups where there's not trust initially. But as we begin to realize that anyone can say anything in a safe environment and we can express our emotions and Jim uses the term "vasuviate" or "purgs." Shout out everything you're worried about and angry about and concerned about and it's still safe. What's interesting is everyone in the room suddenly realizes, "Oh, of course, that's right. That's a good idea." And then what about this? "Oh, yeah, well that could work if we mix these two together." So we begin to see this array of potential solutions. Now that wisdom council meets and does grapple with the welfare situation. For example, it's not going to change overnight the system. We're not going to suddenly have legislators going out saying, "We're changing the laws." However, it begins a conversation. And I think Jim would be the better person to talk about that. Sure, sure. Because we talk about a wisdom council process. It's not something that just happens once to solve one problem. Because as soon as we solve one problem, you know there are going to be other things, but they're going to be unintended. So if you have a new tool to handle any problems that are coming along next, that would be helpful. Yeah. And it needs to keep going and the conversation can't end with the wisdom council. It has to continue with the audience, the in-person audience who hears the presentation of the council, the virtual audience, the people in television, the media. We need the conversation to keep going so that people are thinking about all of the issues. That's my bet. That's good introduction. Yeah. Wonderful, Cassie. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. How about that, Jim? I always wait for him to correct me. It's like, "Can I say that right?" Did you say it right, Jim? Your wife did it right. It's really good. I feel like I can get hit by a bus now. Oh, my goodness. Wait a minute. You can be hit by a bus. That means your life's work is in good hands. Is that what you mean? Exactly. Exactly. But I'll be back on silver singles. No, I'm sorry. No, bus hitting for you, friend. Please, stay alert. So what did you think when you were showing her these processes, the circles and the triangles? Was she really interested in that? Well, it turns out she really was. And she signed up for a seminar. Not taught by me, but taught by... Marina. Marina. Barbara. Marcus. Marcus in Ashland and then Karina later. Oh, okay. So she went to two seminars, three-day seminars. Well, that was what she wanted to do. And came back all charged up and she keeps claiming she's not going to be a dynamic facilitator, but I love the fact that she can talk about this stuff. Yeah, that's pretty cool. But they... Don't want to be in the hot seat, huh? And you can't read my writing. And that's important. Oh, yeah. I know facilitators do have to be able to show what they're doing on the whiteboard in front of the group that is discussing the issue. And that is so important. That written word of what the people are saying is critical. So you can reflect on it? Yes, for us to reflect on. So everyone puts their perspectives up in writing in front of everyone to see and everyone can see each other's... Yeah, that sounds tame. What we really want is almost provoke people to...they don't just put out what they want. We're trying to get them to just say something with passion, with the passion that they really feel. Get the passion going. Yeah. And the kind of thing that you would normally not say in a group because you feel like you might be attacked. Exactly. And so you actually fish for that. We want that. We don't want to define the problem first. We want to start where their energy is. Yeah. And the energy is often... That's what they're paying attention to right now is get some going. That's right. Often it starts with a solution. They have some solution in their back pocket that they're just waiting for the end of the meeting to bring forward. And no, we want to bring it out now. That's what they're thinking. And so we bring that out now. That's often where the energy starts. Sixty percent of the time, maybe. Other times it's fear about the issue or anger at the other person in the chair over across the way or wherever that energy is going to guide us rather than the logical steps that we decide beforehand. Yeah. And so we facilitate... D.E.E.E.E.E. stands up and says, "We'll start the meeting often by... Tell us the first thing... talk to me about welfare. Who here has fired up about it?" And then have them just... I'd say their point of view. Say their point of view. And we capture it usually in four charts. Often it comes out with concerns or data. Just writing the other... The facts of the situation. Yeah, they don't have to be real facts. They just have to seem like facts to the person speaking. Oh, okay. It's okay. Important. Yeah, important issues. We call it data. Yeah. So they're just saying what they think is happening and then they talk their concerns. And then they... So at some point you turn to the... Say, "Okay, so you're Zara the world. What do you do about it?" Well, you do now that you know about it. Solution. Yeah. And they usually... whatever they say at that point, they're vulnerable. So they're going to start talking. This is something you can't usually say. So you're going to say it and they need to be protected because somebody in the other chair is going to go, "That's a stupid guy." What we think, you can't do that because... So, but what we're doing is holding space for that person to finish their thought. And then we want to capture the energy that was evoked in that other person across the way and have them get a chance to say, "Okay, so what's your concern that's articulate that and what's your answer behind that? What would you do?" And so we're really kind of having the end of the meeting at the beginning. Oh, right. Right now. So we're just going to lay out our cards right on the table and the whole time the D effort, the facilitator, dynamic facilitator is holding space so that everybody's always safe. We always have a space for their remarks, which could be data or concerns or solutions. Or sometimes there's an awakening, "Oh, we're not even talking about the real problem here." There's a problem statement, what we're working on changes to. You know, someone asked me, "Well, how do you stop their anger? How do you deal with these... because people will get angry when you talk about hot topics. We don't want to stop their anger. We don't have ground rules like, "Well, you must sit quietly and wait your turn." And you must repress your emotions. That is not part of it. However, it is important that if someone is expressing extreme anger, we want to hear, "I hear a concern. What is your concern? I want to make sure that we capture the concern that you're angry about." And if they are yelling, for example, at someone across the room and I was in a room when that happened, the facilitator stands in front of them and says, "Tell me. Tell me what it is that you're angry about. You just said, you know, I heard you say that that was the dumbest thing you'd ever heard in your life. I want you to tell me why. What are your concerns about that?" And it works. You are no longer directing anger at an individual. And generally, they're directing anger because they don't feel that they have necessarily been heard or that the other person's idea might contradict theirs, but we're collecting it. And we're not saying, "You can't say that. We just want to hear it." And that becomes like a puzzle that we're solving together. At some point, people just relax about this and they trust what comes up for them out of their unconscious. And that's where now we can start solving impossible seeming problems because that's how it happens. That's our creativity coming out now. And it's a group collective creativity. Mm-hmm. Wonderful. Listen, I think this is a good point to just realize we've given a nice opening description for people and we need to go to a little station break and then we'll come back and pick up where we left off. We have Jim Ruff and Cassandra Furman and our wonderful conversation about the opportunity to create a global wisdom council. 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When you eat at Charlie Hong Kong, you eat healthy food and it's delicious. Charlie Hong Kong, Santa Cruz. [Music] Okay, are you ready to solve all the world's problems? Do you want me to solve your own home issues? Well, I'm ready to find out how. I mean, it is a process and problems are a little bit ubiquitous. There's always a new one. Yeah, our big problems related to little problems, Jim. Absolutely. Yeah, hold on, we're going to get you louder here. So your own microcosm is related to the macrocosm of the world. Well, that's true too, the way you're thinking about it. I think that is true in some regard, but I don't think it's true that love is the answer. Something's missing there? Something's missing there. To me, there's an image that I have of everybody on the deck of the Titanic, you know, and we're headed for an iceberg, and we all sort of know it. We kind of nod when we talk about things, and then people are talking about relationships and whole hands and sing the right songs and take care of the homeless over there. That group. And recycle your plastic bags. There's got to be some recognition that there are levels of problems, and the deck of the Titanic is one level, and we need to do that stuff. We need to care for the person that is in need and so forth. We need to do a lifeboat over here. But if we can get a few people that understand what's going on and go up top and steer the damn ship away from this, then we can do some. Sir, we're approaching a iceberg. So let me think. Would this be an example of a wisdom council if we had a random selection process and on a single day, we seeded every one of the representatives in the United States. We had a lot of representatives in the United Nations with someone who was randomly selected from a call for participation. No, that's something different. That wouldn't work. Well, no, that's not what we're after. We don't give a shit. Don't fuss. No fussing. It's okay with me. The current leaders in power elite and, quote, decision makers are not what we're talking about. No, you didn't hear what I said. I said that we just have a random selection of people chosen to sit in their seats for a day. Oh, I did not hear what you said. That was better. That's a different thing, though. But to me, that's keeping the elite structure and just having random people there. And so that's a nice thing, maybe. But what if that random collection of people was considering the agenda items that that body was looking at that day? We don't want to take a random group and put them in the context of decision making, which there's nothing we can do. If we put perfect people, they're almost- Well, are you sure that it's an- because what comes out of the United Nations are called initiatives. And initiatives are basically proposals that the representatives take back to their governing bodies. Right. So you're trying to influence the governing bodies? Well, I'm just trying to have a conversation about the relationship of the wisdom council and the conversation about how to solve big problems in the world that's being had by people in positions of authority. In my mind, they don't have those conversations. They just have conversations about proposed legislation or- You end basically drafts letters and then they send them out and hope somebody does something. There isn't any global governance. There's just this pretense of the global governance. But I like your idea of a conversation about what really matters. There's a quality of thinking that I call choice-creating, choice-creating, that is the missing quality of conversation. When we get random people and we can dynamically facilitate them, they- to face impossible seeming issues, they come out with common sense. It's glorious. They're very excited. They've come up with new perspectives and they present not to the leaders. They present to the people. What we want is the whole system of people to be in one conversation that is in the spirit of choice-creating. And then we can look around the virtual room and realize, "Oh, this is we, the people. There's no higher authority than this." We can set up a true global governance structure if we want. But if just a few of us, the few that I'm talking about going up the Titanic stairway to the steering mechanism, you have just a few of us convene this whole system global conversation among us all that's in a high quality choice-creating where we come up with unified understandings about what the problem is and unified sense of truth about what's happening, so we're overturning the media silos, for instance. So if I'm understanding you correctly, then in our society, the Titanic would be the Constitution and our economics also. Yeah. So we need to steer the culture and steer the Constitution a little bit. Well, the Constitution is phenomenal for its time. It's just absolutely the mind-boggling, it's great. It's an upgrade, updated. But yeah, but it assumes that we're all independent actors and you just go into your locality and you make your judgment. You're given a couple of options, him or him in this case, and then you use your judgment and you vote. And supposedly that's going to make a difference. I don't think my vote has ever counted. It gets counted, but maybe it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter in the way it's structured. Yeah. There's no thinking process involved. I mean, the quality of thinking is this argument. Yes or no, or that one or this one. It's an argument. So there's kind of a disconnect between the quality of conversation that you might have with your peers and the actual effect that it has on the outcome. That's true too. Yeah, that is right. Yeah. But it's not a real democracy in your opinion. But we have lots of maybe small group conversations that are of high quality. But there's lots of effort to bring the red team and the blue team together in the room. And you know, my experience as a red team doesn't want to show up in that. Choice creating sounds like the creative space, right? Where you're thinking about new options or looking at what are options for our situation. Yes, but it's not about options. It's about co-creating the choice. In other words, decision making is about options. And you weigh your... Well, but making up the options though. How about that process? Well, that would be in the old system. Yes. We make up options and then we... Then we choose... Yeah, well, we decide. There's a bunch of possible kinds of talking that could happen before we do decision making. We can have a dialogue and we can have deliberation and maybe a brainstorm where we create options. You have a PowerPoint. And have a PowerPoint, whatever. There's all kinds of this stuff. But then the whole thing is boils down to a decision. Your decision about your vote and we add up the numbers and then we think somehow that we've thought. We've done thinking collectively. We haven't. So there's a better choice than choice. Well, that's... Then voting as the final... Yes, well, I mean voting is fine to have, but it shouldn't be our primary way. As well as voting, how would this be structured? What we do is we randomly select just a few people, 12 to 16 people. Yeah. And we're talking nation now, I guess. So they would be from the nation or it could be global. Same for just 12 to 16 people. And then you and I, without anybody's permission, have created a legitimate symbol of all of us. And then we put them in a room with a dynamic facilitator for just two days, three days maybe. And they come out with their arms reaching for the sky pumped. Because they looked at some awful problem like climate change or the border policy or whatever. And they have reached a unified viewpoint. Oh, I have a good idea that you stimulated here is we have a jury duty system. Maybe what we would have is a wisdom council system where every Saturday there's a wisdom council system. And every Saturday a random group is selected to participate in it for the weekend. Well, I was thinking monthly, but that's cool. That's cool. I like that. Look, I don't know. I mean, you asked the people in the jury system. I'm sure they said they had to play pulling teeth to get people to go to jury duty. It's no fun. It's not a part of democracy that we, which are, do they enjoyed it? Right? Yeah, you enjoyed it. Okay. Well, that's not for everybody. Well, I know in Austria, they, where two states have adopted the wisdom council process as the way they do business in governance. You mean government business? Yeah. And not exactly the way Jim envisaged it. He would prefer to pull the government out of it, let the government listen and hear what the people really have to say and make good decisions as a result. But in Austria and in two of the states, they've built it into their system. They do have to randomly select a lot of people and many of them refuse, but I think it's about 30 percent and better not quote me on that, but we could get the numbers. But they send letters to the citizens and say you've been selected. They bring them in. And I did want to say something back to Sun's point about how about at the United Nations. We replaced those with the randomly selected people. One of the things I would like to see, one, is the facilitation would need to occur in such a way that it would be really a choice creating conversation. And I do want all the representatives to hear it, along with all of the people to hear it and to continue engaging in a conversation. In Austria, one of the things that really struck me listening to a D.F. or a dynamic facilitator in Austria who was involved in one project and a politician went up to him and said, "Thank God the Wisdom Council came up with that idea. That's a great idea. I would have never been able to pull that off and actually implement it." Or say it. Or say it. If it weren't for the citizens, this council coming up with this idea. It was the common sense idea. It was the right idea. I would have been thrown out of office if I had even uttered it. And so we do want the policymakers and the decision makers to listen to the representation of the people. Wow. Sure. But that, in fact, that example was that I remember, I think it was in the Syrian refugees when they were coming over the border in Austria. It wasn't Council met on the refugee problem. There were a couple of incidents that were really pivotal, I know. One guy had a neighbor who was an immigrant and the other guy said, "Well, my family was immigrant when they came." Something like that. So the Wisdom Council said, "We want those people. We want those people. We need those people." And then they listed a whole bunch of criteria and they said, "Of course, we want to maintain our culture. We don't want to have that swamped. So we want them to learn German. We want them to..." And they listed five or six things. And when they were done and they presented now the difficulty with the Wisdom Council process in Austria is that it was put on by the government and they really speak to the government. They don't speak to the citizens. It was wonderful. The one time I watched it, it was on a Friday afternoon, and all the people in the government stopped what they're doing, and they walk into the other room, into their forum, and they sit at tables. Well, they have a speaker, I guess, and then a Wisdom Council steps up and speaks and says, "Here's the issue we gave the Wisdom Council, and they're now going to tell you what they came up with." And so they all have these 12 or 14, well, they do 25 or something, but they all say what their unified voice is. And then politicians then all visited tables, and they're in the blue team, red team. They have actually three or four different parties, you know. So they all talk in a different spirit, and that's the point of the Wisdom Council process, is that we want the spirit of the conversation to be in the public and to be in the spirit of choice-creating. Wow, it sounds so fresh. I mean, it sounds like it's making government fun again. Yeah. We'll throw the biggest party, okay? It's really making the public alive again. There's a way the people so that government then is secondary, not primary. Is this like unity through choice-creating? It is. It's always a unified view. We've done it hundreds of times. You think, oh no, there's these polar opposites, how could they possibly... But the polar opposites are a requirement of our system. That's the way it works. That's our system that works. They thought it was a good idea at the time. It's the only second balance, right? It was a great system. And it got us away from the divine right of kings, and you know, it put the center of we the people in the individual, as opposed to in the king, telling the individuals what to do. But if you took something like the US Constitution and you wanted to do a Wisdom Council on that, does it scale to that level? Oh sure. This is superior to the Constitution. In other words, I'm serious. Do you know people who have done great at the Constitution? Will you replace it? Well, they might not. They might just make changes. There's all kinds of things wrong with the Constitution. So they could easily say, "Chris is crazy. These Supreme Court judges that are appointed in this way, instead of by judicial people, they're appointed in political environment. They're going to go to an electoral college. They're going to slap their heads when they get in there and start talking creatively and saying, "This is nuts. Who would set this up?" We can't have three parties like they do in Europe because we don't have proportional representation. Yeah. We might say, "Well, we should have rank order voting and proportional representation. We should make these changes." But the Wisdom Council is not recommending anything to anybody. It's just saying what we are all thinking and then it's a reflection to the larger system, to the people. And then the people are saying, "Am I saying that? Am I saying that?" They get into small groups and talk. And the usual response is, "Hell yes. What the hell? That's what we need to be doing." And so here's a very fast way to get a near unified, I don't know how fast, maybe three or four cycles. Or four cycles, or could be needing more than one side. Yeah, start paying attention and things like that. But here's a quick way to get a unified voice of we the people, which they had in 1789 to set up the concept. Well, there were fewer people because we the people could fit in the same room, basically. Well, it wasn't good at them. But it was really, they thought they were conflicted, but they had a unifying voice because George Washington held space. Yeah, you're saying George Washington was the guy that held the space creator. He was the space creator. And the wisdom council process could be the space creator today. So we could have a we the people today. But a true we the people. Not just white slavery. Oh yeah, we need everybody. We need everybody. We need everybody. We need everybody. No. I just have to always remind them. I didn't do a great job. But for the time, you have a barber marks Hubbard. Oh sure. Yeah. And she had this invention that she was thinking of called her Earth situation room. Oh yeah. You know, where ideally everything that she wanted to pay attention to about the planet could be seen in one view. Yeah. It's kind of like a sports betting center in Las Vegas. But I'm wondering, have you thought of what the ideal environment might be for one of your dynamic facilitation wisdom council? What would be the solution small? What would it look like? Well, I think it has to be just one is going to be in one location and then next time it's going to be in another location. So all over the planet. So what about the building itself and the structure? Lightning. Big streams. I'm going to tell you what you're thinking technology. Yeah. What's your dream? What would you like to see if you can have one of my dreams is we did a wisdom. I did somebody. My turn the handler in the end did a wisdom council. And there were three towns around the old concentration camp of Mount 1000, which is in Austria. Yeah. It was a death camp. One of the towns is named Malthausen. And they held a wisdom council there about what to do with the camp. It's right there. It's a huge tourist attraction. And yet people are angry at the people that live there. Right. I mean, it's hard for them to have that be the center of town. It's a thing of being the thing. Yeah. So they held a wisdom council. Yeah. And it's on. You can read. You can watch Martina talk about it on our website, wisedemocracy.org. She said that first of all, the young people that were randomly selected said, nobody's ever talked about this. This is the first time I've ever heard anybody talk about this. And then it's really neat because they came up with their answer was, we need to make this a learning center, a global learning center. And our children need to be the teachers of what's happening here. They need to become the teachers. So my image is the first wisdom council would be maybe in Malthausen. Wow. Where the children can teach. And the children can be there as the help conveners, help convene the first wisdom council. Mm-hmm. Anyway, that's-- And then we bring you in with the cameras and the screens for the whole world to see. Because we want the whole world then to join in with their neighbors and friends and continue the conversations. Yeah. Well, I guess there's transformation from the profane to the sacred. Yeah. How much have you kept up with seven minutes till the top of the hour? Okay. But how much have you kept up with social media and how the inventions with the new communications can work with this process? Well, that's a big question, Mrs. Future. I know, I'm not trying to cut it short. I'm just trying to open a panel. Yeah. I don't know how to do that. I really don't. It's not your thing, right? It's not your thing. You're more in person. Yeah. You like to be with real flesh and blood people in space. So you feel that in the room is where it all happens? I'll tell you one thing. Yes, I do. Dynamic facilitation. Connection. I know that can-- Well, it can reliably evoke the spirit of choice creating as opposed to decision making in a small group face to face. I know that we can do that. But when it's online, I have no idea how to do that. I don't know. I mean, people are paying attention. Like we were laughing earlier. They're paying attention to the ball game. They're not really in the room. But I can't tell. And so it's just, to me, we need to use the social networking in ways that I can't even envisage. But I don't know-- I just know I have to rely on that. Yeah, honestly, the group mind idea, which is really a big topic and how to be able to work with the audience. And how to be able to work together collaboratively. And the whole COVID thing forced us into Zoom. Yeah. And we all have that kind of literacy now. And it seems like it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to capitalize on that and move it forward to not just having seminars but actually having group sessions online and see what might work there. Yeah, that way I think that could work is-- Yeah. There's circles. The wisdom council is just 12 to 16 people. Yeah. They walk on stage and they present to a live audience, hopefully with broadcast media there. And the live audience would be populated with celebrities, especially. We want the outside world to be paying attention to what Taylor Swift and Matt Damon are thinking about climate change and how they respond to the wisdom council process. Yeah, yeah. And then the larger ongoing wisdom council process, the larger conversation can be done, I think, on Zoom. And with different technology. What comes to mind is one of the things on Zoom is that you have breakout rooms. So you can have a general gathering and then you can break out into randomized collections or specific. And they're smaller groups. And then come back together again later. A few people all see each other on screen and engage each other and probably take turns. But it's great. We need to do that globally. It has to be one ongoing global choice creating conversation that I think would be a great thing. I think would transform our society. It's something that the global family is interested in. I don't know what's going on in Israel right now. Perfect. Yeah. This is about solving problems. And it's about the process of solving problems making immense changes also. In other words, when we all work together in a creative collaborative way, we love the people we're talking to. It's really awesome. And the system gets transformed because there's a new ultimate authority. We can look around the virtual room and realize, oh, a unified view of all of us. There's no higher authority than that. So it's really us. And then we can make changes at the Constitution or say that was a nice one. Let's do another one. Or I mean, we have a way to think. We even begin to tackle such issues. Begin to tackle issues. That's right. You know, the people who love American democracy and who really invest their lives in trying to make it work and make it successful, they do things like get out the vote. It's a big campaign to get as many people as possible excited about the process and get everybody to participate. What kind of ad would you put out for people to participate in this endeavor? I think that people are starving. They're thirsting after this conversation that we are not having. There is no wise, meaningful conversation about these issues where we all contribute and we reach unified voice. So if we grant you that, how would we turn the tide on that? I think putting the conversation in place with celebrities, I think people would, they don't want to be a part of it. I really do. I'm kind of thinking of like these posters with great colors that show the excitement that's possible. Maybe something that says we, the people. There are some questions that we don't have the answers to. We know it should happen. We believe it should happen. We want people to get out the vote. That's part of democracy. It's not all of democracy. It's part of it. We want that all to happen. But we're just a few people and we need more minds. Hey, we need more choices created. Choice creators. I like to make choices. Thank you, Cassie. We're down to the last two minutes of our first hour and Cassie's going to be leaving us and Jim's going to be staying on. We're going to go into the future with you, Jim. We're going to take some. Oh, rats. I have to stay behind in the past. But that's okay. I'll join you in the future. We'll hold space for you, Cassie. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Cassie, for being here. That's very awesome. Saving my ass a couple times. We're still live. No cussing. That actually, I think that works. Is ass cussing? I don't know. I know. Hey, everybody. I'm going to be back after you get some local news and a few more sponsor ads and maybe a few national perspectives. Enjoy the break. Yeah, you guys are doing a great job. I was teaching this seminar on dynamic facilitation and it was really about how to solve impossible to solve problems. But people were coming from different parts of the country and even the world. So they would work on societal issues and have breakthroughs. And so I was holding these breakthroughs and they were going back to their jobs. I was holding all these insights that these people had and they came together for me one night about how this could, how they could all work. All these insights could fit together. To me, this is so common sensical. It has to happen. I'm just jumping on every opportunity I can get it. Thank you. What time is that? It was pretty funny that this future I couldn't have made that up. I'm trying to keep you guys laughing. What were you thinking? I wasn't thinking. I was just punching buttons. Hey, welcome back everyone. Welcome back, Bobby. Hey, Bobby. Can we hear you there? Yeah. Alright. Larry, good. And welcome back, Jim. Yeah. Alright, I got a couple questions from the audience here. Gabby says, "Please ask Jim. It's nice to think of using Zoom and stuff, but there's a massive part of the population that can't participate that way because of the digital divide. How would you help bridge the digital divide if you given the chance to shape our democratic future?" Okay, good question. And I might, again, not be the best person to ask for this. But in my mind, I've done a lot of fishbowl type dynamic facilitation. You mean fishbowl like, what does that mean? It means small groups of people. Yeah, you put a small group of people working on stuff. And other people then are watching. There's too many people to get them in the group. Oh, okay. And sometimes we'll leave a couple of extra chairs. But when you're doing dynamic facilitation, the people are talking from the heart and they're talking about what they really care about. And they're working on this issue. And all the issues are coming up that are normally in a big fight. Yeah. But they're now coming up as just data and information that we're going to... So there's no emotional charge on it. There's plenty of emotional charge, but it's not directed in the same way. It's just... It's not triggered. Yeah, you don't get triggered. You're all looking at this map of how we all feel and what we all think. And what's happening is that the audience or whoever's not in the fishbowl, they're involved. They want to be in those chairs. They want to be talking. They have all kinds of ideas too. And so that's what we're doing is we're drawing on that. That we're setting up a context where everybody's not in the fishbowl. And they are getting a chance, we're not going to let them in the room to see that part, but we're going to... When the Wisdom Council gets on stage, they do three things. They say, "Okay, here's..." Yeah, I didn't know what was going on. I got this call from this people and I said, "No, I don't want to answer that." And then I got at somebody knocking on the door. In other words, I was randomly selected to be part of 16 people globally. You know, I'm going to go to that. Sure. They're going to pay my per diem or whatever. I get to go to London or whatever it is. It could be much fun as March Madness. Is that right? So anyway, yeah, even we might even pull some people away from March Madness. They'll bring it with them. They'll be looking at it as the Wisdom Council is presented. So anyway, the dynamic facilitation is resonant. It's resonant. So when we put it out there as a thing that's happening, first of all, and we're always working with everybody because we randomly select a symbol. Anybody. Yeah. Anybody. And they come together and that's a symbol of everybody. And then they go into a room and they come out with a unified view. Now we've really got a symbol of everybody. Now they're speaking as one and the audience and they're representing you. In other words, they are me. That's me talking. And when I hear it, it triggers all kinds of stuff. I want to say, "Oh, well, first I'll say finally we're talking." But secondly, I'll say, "Yeah, but they forgot about this and they forgot about that and they forgot." "Well, how come they didn't do this?" And I disagree with that and blah, blah, blah. But what we want to do is have that layer of all of us also as much as possible be in the spirit of choice creating. Yeah. Choice creating is the unity. That's what brings us together. Creating the many creates the one. It does. It does. It does. The Pluribus Unum is the Latin for that. We're setting it up in a way that we're always dealing with everybody, even though everybody might not yet be involved. And each time somebody comments on it, even time you say, "Yeah, yeah, they talked and they came up with this. I don't know what they were thinking." Whatever. You're in the conversation. That's what we want. We want people in the conversation. And it would be great if presumably there'll be another wisdom council local in the community where they show the video and then everybody goes into small groups and talks or something. We want everybody involved and we want to structure something that has everybody involved. A lot of my thinking was that if we could get the employees of Google or the employees of Microsoft or the employees of to turn on, they all have committees that are worried about global warming. They're all smart people that could do that kind of thinking and pull it all together. If we could just turn on those committees, that would be what we want right there. Oh, interesting. This is why I began, I was taking a note here. Well, I think Microsoft has got some kind of, the company offers you the opportunity to work for a nonprofit at full pay for a week a year. You're talking about corporations that are trying to create some kind of participation in the solution. Yes. And they have groups that meet and the companies, a lot of times, offer them the opportunity to work for nonprofits. Well, I think if they gave them a week to work on a bunch of Google employees that were really excited about this, to work for a week in the nonprofit arena, they would help us figure out how to do that. No, they figure out how white corporations run, we the people government more than the people. Do they help with that problem? I think that's resonant. Choice greeting is a resonant process. Everybody wants to be in that conversation because we're finally talking about the big issues that we're doing it in a meaningful way. We're hearing these diverse voices and I've got a diverse voice too. I want to speak. We're relying on that. And then we're also relying on the way we give the charge. The wisdom council is sharing their story. They share who I am, where I came from. We share the story of how the group, the wisdom council came up with their conclusions and then what they came up with. And the story is really important in carrying forward the spirit of choice creating to the larger system. Because now you're not just agreeing and disagreeing with something. You're building on the story. And then we have other things that convey the spirit of choice creating from the small group to the larger system. So what is it that prevents the small group from being biased or having special interest? I don't see how you'd have a special interest. We are randomly selecting people. That means you represent you. And if there's a North Korean dictator in the background saying, "Oh, we're going to influence this guy." But we're not doing a yes/no voting discussion decision. We're doing choice creating. So it's really evident when somebody's being inauthentic right away. How is this any different from the ward system in Chicago and Philly or special interest groups? This question. Oh, that was a question. I don't know what that is really. You see, the thing is, is what we want to get away from our system is a battle of special interests. That's what we've structured. Well, everyone is going to represent whatever their interests are. Right. And there's a battle. Yeah. And then somebody wins and the other guys lose. But they're going to get revenge next time. There's a better option than this battle is causing a fight. Well, you're saying that battle is going to continue, but here's something else. Yeah, you need to. But it becomes a game. In other words, when I play basketball, I'm in the battle. I want to win. I say that as though I still play basketball. Well, the March Madness. Yeah, the March Madness. They want to win. And they have referees. It's a win-win, really, because everybody, even the losers, are winning because there's some place outside the game. In other words, life is not just that yes, no game. So the players are actually doing it for the audience. Well, that's true too. That's right. And they're doing it for themselves. Losing is just one step in my development. It's part of what we do. It's not a life or death situation. Why did I forget? So when we have a game, which is what the founders of the US set up, a game like structure, here are the rules for how we make laws. And then here are the rules for how the economy works, operating within the laws. Yeah. It's a set of games. But there's no outside of the game where we all go have beer together. There's no saying, "Okay, that was fun. How are we doing?" There's no "we the people." And that's the missing piece. It's another layer of a system that connects us all that's missing, right? And it's the ultimate authority. Maybe it's just forming. Maybe it's just forming. Maybe it's still early. It will form without little intentionality. I don't see how without a national wisdom council process. I don't see how that could happen because everything else happens within the structure. Just normal conversations. It affects our lives in so many ways. The Constitution and the way it teaches us how to think, how to talk, how we even aspire to talk. We're trying to be more rational, you see, and our emotions come out sideways. The thing that comes up for everybody is how does this ubiquitous conversation that includes everyone jive with something that has to be centrally organized and seated and facilitated? Like how is it both the public, we the people, everyone everywhere, and just these few people that are sitting in the chairs for the weekend? It's the few people one time and then it's the few people the next time and then it's the few people the next time. So it's really the whole process. It's the process. And the conversation that we're talking about is not those people so much. That's just where we can guarantee choice-creating. But the real conversation we're after is the whole system conversation, which has now finally a way to happen and a way to articulate our conclusions. So instead of just being the recipient of government policy and then talking about it and grumbling about it because nobody asked us and it's not what we would choose and we can't do anything about it anyway, instead we have a different dynamic where a great idea bubbled up and we read it in the wisdom council news and the wisdom council news was then taken to a few meetings where people picked up on it and ran with it. Yeah, what I think happens is that the wisdom council speaks and most, I mean we randomly selected people and they reached a unified, excited perspective. So most everybody's going to say, "Yeah, let's do that." But there's politicians out there and corporate leaders and experts. We want them in the conversation too and we're all saying yes. And then out of that comes not only the collective choice that we're making that can be reached, like, "Hey, this is what's really going on with climate change and this is the strategic direction we need to deal with it," but in distributed ways. So it's collective and distributed both. We come up with an answer that we're all saying and then every one of us has something going on that we can all participate in that. It adds meaning to our lives. One nonprofit can say, "Yeah, that's what we do. We can help you do that." And the corporations say, "Okay, now we get the word. We're not going to be doing what oil companies say when everybody says, "I just read the news yesterday, I think, that the oil leaders said, "Oh, it'll be forever before we ever get rid of oil." Well, I think if the wisdom council spoke... You could change fast, huh? You could change fast. Yeah. Yeah. This is the part that scares me because now I'm saying something in the political right now that somebody might fight against. Well, my opinions are opinions. In fact, when I was pondering, as you were speaking about it, I wanted to insert a word to this conversation, see where it fits, the idea of the town square or the commons. And how do those words evoke the wisdom council? Well, we did one of the very first experiments, wisdom council experiments, I call. Maybe this doesn't answer your question. I don't know what I like it. Was in Pleasantville, New York, and it was really the one person that just convened this. She had some influence with the city council. So here it was to the city council. And the issue was, I don't remember what the beginning issue was. They chose an issue to give to them. What can we do or something like that? And the wisdom council came with the conclusion that we're not a real town. We're a bedroom community for New York City. And we want to become a real town. It was kind of like Pinocchio. And there were three things they said we could do. One is we could create a central commons. We need to not have the kids leave town every weekend. We need to create a place for the kids. And maybe this building, we had an architect there. And he said this building could be the place. Make a fun place for the kids. And the third one was we need to move the train station out of the center of town. So the cars aren't clogging in the middle of town. There's train station and all the cars and all the people who are leaving town are not in the middle of town. It's a way for the people of the town, in this case Pleasantville, to say we want a community center. We want a commons. And how do we make that happen? So just having the idea of having a commons leads to the phenomenon of groups of people hanging out and the groups of people hanging out can have a facilitated discussion or a facilitated process for considering solving problems. That was one person Nancy Rosenoff did that. The other thing when you raise the point of the commons is to me the central reason why everything's changed. Our system, our situation has changed so that our system can't work. And basically it's the tragedy of the commons, which is where we have shared resources all around. And every corporation is trying to export their costs. They're trying to steal from the commons really. And people are just everything I throw out in the garbage as an example of feeding the commons or putting pollutants into the air or whatever. And before we reach the carrying capacity of the commons, the commons can manage a lot of that. It can replenish itself. But when it finally reaches its carrying capacity, we're no longer independent. We are interdependent. And our system was made for us as independent actors out there. And now we're in a phase of life, which always happens for every species, every living system. We're now interdependent. Everything you do, you burn your trash in your backyard, it affects all of us. Have you seen this applied by nature in other contexts? Yes, this is how nature works. It's every living system has a life curve. And usually it has to do with it grows and fills its capacity and then starts taking away from the commons, if you will. And then the carrying capacity of the commons gets diminished. So the more... That's the tragedy part. Well, the tragedy part is the... We're going to trash everything and destroy it. So once we're in this interdependent set of relationships, now we can't have the kind of game like, we can't do game anymore as our basis for how we do things. You win if you get more exponential growth in your profits and you win in your profits. We can't do that anymore. We have to shift to a conversation, a creative collaborative conversation of us all. And where we come up with wise, thoughtful, meaningful answers that are the best we can come up with and then the people can start working on those. Come together on that. I just want to address the issue of people in the room because I know that your life's work, you've been at this for decades and that over the last two or three decades, there's been an absolute revolution in the way that we communicate with each other. And we still have a lot to discover about that, but it's so important to your work that people experience each other in an authentic, interactive, personal way. And that's what a lot of the structure of the dynamic facilitation depends on is people in the room, people being encouraged or probed to really feel safe and say the things that are hard to say and have those difficult conversations. And to put that in a drawing on a whiteboard so that it becomes common knowledge, the participation of people and the passion of being in the room together is a very important part of the process, especially since people were driven behind the screen since COVID, there's been a radical shift in the way that people are congregating. I'm sure you're aware of that. And I'm sure that as an older person, you're not on the front edge of embracing that technology. I know I'm not. I'm kind of minimalist in the social media. I may read it right now and then, but I'm certainly not feeling like my life revolves around it. You spell "luddite"? Well, I actually feel excited. I know. You don't have to defend yourself. There are always going to be people who paint, even though we have photography, there are always going to be people who are face to face people, even though we have everyone able to podcast their own interviews. There's just something about the physical vibration of people talking to people. And so the question that I have for you is how are you feeling about the intrusion of the technology into this process that you've cultivated? Keyword intrusion. Yeah. In that particular loaded statement. I'm still at the place of just trying to use whatever I can get my hands on, but I wish I had a 18-year-old sitting in my shoulder telling me what's going on because I don't. Sometimes Alan tells me, I mean, a few times I've been here. You and Alan have helped me understand about these AI-cure-fursing. It's a problem in the AI-cure. Just today, you showed me some videos of this humanoid robot, AI, and I got it that he could recognize... Figure one. Is that what it's called? That's the name of the robot that we showed. He could recognize fruit, and he could recognize that they were saying things and could pick up the fruit and hand it when he wants something. Can we do that? And I realized... And I realized that if he could recognize feelings, well, that goes a long way to... Maybe we could have one of those robots have maybe one of their apps be dynamic facilitation and help people deal with all kinds of problems that they have. Yeah, your dynamic facilitation robot. Yeah. So I mean, I want to grab these technologies if possible, but as soon as I get it into my consciousness, it's like it's too big for me to handle. Well, that's why the graphic novel comes in. That one too. Yeah, you're going to do the story. Oh, there's a question from the audience here. Okay, we'll take the question and then we'll go to our break and then we'll be back. Yes. The question involves your fishbowl analogy. You say you want everyone involved, but then we're supposed to transmit info from the fishbowl to others. How is that different from any other kind of top-down approach? Oh, interesting question. Thank you. Yeah, to me, I was mentioning the fishbowl because of the resonance that I wanted to point to. That it's exciting for people to not actually be chosen and they're talking and they're feeling... Hopefully what happens in the wisdom council process is that they would go into small groups or that they would just talk to their friends or they would watch this in their church environment or in their tavern or something and then talk. That's the hope. And we know that we're going to get a large percentage of people saying yes to this. A lot of people just say, "Yeah, of course. This is great." And then they start adding. Now, that's one wisdom council. Then we go to the next wisdom council. So there's a conversation that's continuing. A set of ideas have been laid down. And you can write letters to the editor. The way I think about it is that if you're the one person in the planet that thinks, "Oh, wait a minute. I'm an expert in this and this is stupid. We can't do this." You're the one person. There's only one out there. Now the world turns and is interested in you. They want to hear your voice because you have a different voice. We're all here saying one thing and we're in that spirit of choice creating. So we're excited that somebody has a different point of view. A new choice. It's a new possibility. So to make things even better, we can make more wiser choice. Now, in normal conversation, if you're the one person, you can easily be excluded. We finally get agreement from these other people and we're okay. We can do it. Neutralize that person. Neutralize that person. So it's a different thing. It's really a change in your mindset to be in the spirit of choice creating that we're setting up a real legitimate conversation with all of us that has the ultimate authority. If all of us look around the virtual room and we realize we're saying the same thing, there is no higher authority than that. Collaborative choice creation. All right, let's take a moment out here and do our duty. Local audience. Okay. Santa Cruz boys. Collaborative. Listen to this. We'd appreciate it. Yes, and hang tight. And here we go. The votes are in. Jeff Ben here from back nine Grill and Bar at the easy off past tempo exit. We are so proud of our food and our service and your votes. Back nine has been voted. Santa Cruz County's best burger and best happy hour in the good times. You've heard me talking about our house ground burgers. It's time for you to come and try one so you can taste the juicy difference and what makes our happy hour the best. You have to come and experience it yourself. 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You never get a set of monthly fee rx.com. You never get a set of monthly fee rx.com. You never get a set of monthly fee rx.com. You never get a set of monthly fee rx.com. You never get a set of monthly fee rx. Okay welcome back to the show we're talking to Jim Ruff on Democracy 2.0 I guess you might call it. The Winston Council process. And the website is wise democracy.org. Where you can see examples of wise democracy councils in action. Yeah. Yeah. Like I mentioned, Martina talking about Mount Thousand for instance and stuff like that. Yeah. So how do we deal with this conflict between the persons of our country and the corporations who are now person hoods as well and they have different interests than we do. Yeah. Are they invited to the wisdom councils? Yeah. And they are mostly serving their investors and may or may not be you. Yeah. Well that's of course the only reason why they're considered people is because of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is a craziness. It's just gone crazy. How could you possibly call corporations persons? It turns out we know that Tom Hartman discovered that it wasn't even really the Supreme Court that did that. It was the clerk of the Supreme Court that titled the conclusion that corporate personhood. Really? This was in the 1800s. Wow. Yeah. In the 1800s. The clerk of the Supreme Court put in the title that had been turned and they were corporations who were persons who had. But then the subsequent Supreme Courts verified it and it became a claim. Do you know that became the role of the law? Land. You know in the era of AI it's really spooky. I'm actually calling corporations the immortals. And if they're treated equally under the law as those of us who are born and die, then over time the laws will naturally accrue to their favor because they'll still be around pushing their interests while we come and go. That's beautiful. I love that. But the corporation is a system that has its own, I mean it's designed to trash the planet. I mean it's your job as a... To keep expanding. To keep exponential growth. They call it ego because it's expanded growth obligation. Obligation. So they're like pigs. They don't know how to stop eating. Yeah, they can't. Their job is to minimize costs and maximize profits. And they do a lot of social... There's no incentive towards integrity or honesty or... There's fake integrity. Respectable. Yeah, I mean you're right. Life and sense. The only incentive is a marketing strategy to seem that way. So do you think that they need to be included in the wisdom council process? No, no, not at all. What we're going to do is randomly select actual people from, I believe, the global population must happen soon. I think what happens is that we... The whole idea of the corporate personhood is just lunacy. And this last Citizens United was incredible. It's basically saying what used to be bribery and illegal, clearly. Oh, that's free speech now, you know? This is crazy for a society to be making choices like this. Yeah, I guess so. But how do we deal with corporate dominance? Well, so here's how you do it. The wisdom... You name the problem. I promise you and we're going to have the wisdom council process. So that we want to balance business with the problem. Yeah, so there's a we that starts talking. And the first level is the Supreme Court will begin to get it. That we the people of 1789 is not who the we the people we need to listen to. 2024. It's got to be 2024, 2025. There's going to be a change in who the Supreme Court listens to for one thing. And then once there's a legitimate we the people, then we can start making common sense choices. About obviously we don't want to have a choice between two 80 plus year old men as our presidential candidates. For the second time in four years. And obviously we don't want people to be in in Supreme Court choices being chosen by partisan battles. Politics comes in. That's crazy to us. So here's the in my mind. This is a slam dunk. How we in the process of corporate dominance with the corporations start serving life instead of profits directly. We can reward for for supporting life as well as profits. Or however we do it. I'm not sure what the answers was supposed to be the third bottom line and the fourth bottom line. Yeah, but that's all. That's all just. Just far. Yeah. Just good ideas. Yeah. The structure is for them to make profits. Well, to build shareholder value is what they're really doing. So, you know, there's a lot of that changing. There's a lot of question about whether or not we should change the idea of the economy itself or the idea of money. This is how to transform the economy. You don't have capitalism if you have a way that people. If you have a shared understanding of what's needed and what we're all doing, then, oh, this is a different kind of economic system. We're not doing Marxism. We're not doing socialism. We're not doing a capitalism. We're doing something new. It's a. I call it cebism. Cebism. Cebism. Cebism. Cebism. I like it. Cebism. It's a different economic system. It's a different one of the months. What is Cebism? Is this existed before? No. Well, it exists in every family, I think. It exists around the Thanksgiving dinner case. So, the microcosm of the family can reflect the macrocosm of the government? It isn't about the government. It's about us. It's about the conversation that unifies the people. It's always us. It's always us. It's us in a heartfelt, creative, collaborative conversation that respects everyone, where we're coming up with answers that are shared, that we're excited about. We're following our passions. And a lot of the passions are around fear right now, but it transforms into challenge. And once you start in choice-creating, the fear becomes challenge. It's exciting that we're making headway and it changes the media. The media now is what's kind of like, and we're war two. They used to celebrate that we're winning. We're getting somewhere. We're making headway. Of course, we don't do that now. Nobody pays attention to that. So, we set up a shared vision and now we've got a way to have a shared vision. We can't do a shared vision now because as soon as Biden says he's president, as soon as he says something, the red team rolls their eyes. As soon as- Well, I think part of the idea is also that the Internet has perceived, well, I think of it more as an exone nervous system that's connecting us all up on- Yes. Level that biology is really in charge here and is driving us into a new level of organization for our species. Some kind of superorganism that we don't understand yet, but it will affect everything that we're talking about. And it will be driven more by biological principles than by anything that we've used so far. And we probably, if we thought and think about it, what we're doing so far is probably has biological elements to it. I'm thinking the military, for example, would be like the immune system for any living organism. The blood supply system would be the transportation system. Those of us in media would be the nervous system. But what else could it be? I mean, if we're dreaming for it, would it be nicer to know that it's biology and not some group of- I think the economy would be the ATP, the Krebs cycle energy system. The Krebs cycle? Yeah. It's like an emergency of life. Yeah, so biological metaphors for understanding evolution is something I'm curious about. Well, I think that's what we're talking about, really. Our current system's toast. Now, what's needed isn't to fix the current system in my mind. It's to facilitate the transformation, the evolution. To the next step. To the next step. You know what happened? We have a similar thing like this in the computer world with the evolution of the Pentium processor. It used to be called the Pentium chip. Then it became the Pentium Pro, Pentium Moolei. We had Pentium II. And then that was the end of that architecture. There was so much crammed on. It was like the island of Manhattan just crammed with lots of stuff. There's just more and more room. So the engineers had to come with something entirely different so that we'd continue to expand our computing power. And you know what they came up with? The dual chips. Well, you know, where they had two processors and one. But that required a whole new infrastructure to support dual processing as opposed to a single process. And if we're going to go to a new infrastructure for our world, our species, our species are, you know, in a sense. What is that? Is that require a changing in the fundamental architecture or what? Yes. And this is what the wisdom council, let me riff a little bit. Because this is about transforming the system. You were talking about the Pentium processor. Okay. So we have capitalism. We have what we call democracy, but everybody knows it's not democracy. It's sort of called it a democratic republic, if you will. We have those as our system. That's our system. But there's no thinking in that. It's just we are all on an embedded in a mechanical kind of structure. We're already established. We're not creating new choices. Yes. We're embedded in a mechanical structure and we're making decisions. We have a process for making decisions, but we can't do the big thinking that we need to do collectively. And the wisdom council process provides, here's the safety element. We're not making any changes at all to anything. We're just adding the missing conversation that is the circle. So we're going from the triangle to the box to the circle. And so we now have the missing conversation and that is the ultimate authority. We'll finally get to the place. We'll just have these wisdom councils and eventually realize, wait a minute, we're all in unified perspective here. And that is a structural change. Yeah. It's not a religion. I think it's spiritual. I wouldn't say it's a religion. What we're doing is we're evoking the spiritual process in each of us. It's an experience too. It's not something you can just describe it all actually. But when everyone gets together and creates new choice together that everyone enjoys and gets soft on in a way that it feels great and it feels that's connected in unity. And it came from that deep place of what's best for everybody and what's God telling me to do in a way. Yeah. And the living and following your process and figuring this out together and it creates that connection, that feeling of magic. Yes. And just that connection, that feeling of connection to me, we're so divided now. There's so blue, red divisions, people talking civil war. Hello, all we need to do is start facing these problems in a way that's collaborative and respectful and creative. That's what we need. And we become a we instead of not a we, the Republicans in a we, the Democrats, but a we, the people striving for what's best for everybody and including everybody. To me, that's what we're trying to do. And I think it's really, really possible to do that certainly at the national level. And I think at the global level and the global level is the one that's desperate because we have existential problems for humanity and the solving them can't be done at the US level. There's a question in about what does it take to be a dynamic facilitator and what does that involve? It's a great. Yeah. Thank you. Is there a certain kind of person that I have to have certain qualities that I didn't used to think so, but I do now. Yeah. Like they have to be able to tune into the emotional. They really do. They have to have done some inner work, I think, honestly, but there's a lot of sensing into the big picture also of what's going on right now in the room and besides their own thoughts and emotions. You can put your own stuff away. I'm really good at that. I think people are good at that. They can just take their own thinking and say, Oh, heck, that's not me now. I'm just a good performer. I was able to play the crowd. No, we're not playing the crowd. We're not playing the crowd. We're actually not saying to the person speak and we're trying to understand what they're really trying to say. We're looking beyond what they're saying to what they really want to say and then as much as I call it, reflection instead of reflection. That's good. So we write up there what they're really and the person is usually grateful. Oh my God. Yes, that's what that's perfect. They felt like they've been heard. They've been heard. Not only that, they've been heard, they're saying something important and it's up there with everything else. And a lot of the dynamic facilitation too is we have four charts on the wall. One is data. So we just put whatever sounds like data, concerns. That's where people's emotions often go. The concerns. And the concerns and solutions. So what people think is their solution. I don't call it solution. And then the fourth is problem statements. So we have four charts on the wall and whatever anybody says, we got a place for it. And we're going to steer it as much as possible to the solutions. Or sometimes the dynamic facilitator realizes, oh, we're not even talking about the problem we started with anymore. We have a new problem statement. And so we have to go and rush up to the problem statement and say, okay, it seems like you were talking about this at the beginning. Now you're talking about a different problem. Let's write that up as how do we solve the system? All right. So we've got problems. We've got data. Problem statement. Problem statement. Data, concerns and solutions. These are the categories that emerged through this process. So the effort has to fair it out what these are. And it's kind of helping people. A lot of times people say things as though I'm just just an idea of thought, you want to help them say, you're really saying a solution here. Let's just pop that in the solution. Well, here I can give you an example. I think I ran this by breakfast. What about the idea of getting an AI to actually become a facilitator of the global waste process? A process. Robot first. Now let's get you a figure one and maybe an optimist. Where would you put that on the chart? That's a GBT 5.5. Somebody else might say, oh my God, that would be terrifying because they would take over the world or something. And so all of a sudden they start talking about that and then we'd have a new problem statement. The AI in charge would also have a command of 250 different voices. So I tune an age person and speak to the voice. And an infinite number of avatar actors. Which they'll most understand what I'm saying. That's great. It would kind of freaky at first when you get used to it. Somebody that has a dozen voices. I really appreciate the questions that have come from the audience. Yeah, well, that's another one. Thank you. Thank God for the penny. It made me rich today. No. Thanks, man. Yeah, he says, "Sustain dialogue by the Kettering Institute looks at this but with warring nations and over long-term mediation. Same kind of principle but everyone gets to voice their thoughts without interruption." Yes, no, that's true. But it's not choice-creating. It's what? Kettering. No. Kettering does is building to decision-making. They want to do deliberation and then decision-making. Yeah, everybody gets to talk but nobody has to listen. Yes. Well, that's true, actually. And then there's a vote at the end usually of how that shapes up. There's a lot of making our current system better and I celebrate that. That's good, of course. But- You're trying to fill in the missing part. I'm trying to fill in the missing part that will transform the system because our system really can't work. We are interdependent now. She says, "No, they have to listen." Oh, I was joking. Is she here? No. That's good. Yeah. That's good. Yeah, that's good here. Our system is cool. Let's face it, I think it was one of the greatest innovations in history. Yeah, that was far. It was in constitution. And I think there were heroic figures involved in that. I think George Washington was just mind-boggling. Well, the dynamic facilitator maybe has to be a bit like George Washington, holding the space. You got to hold it. Yeah, we have to hold it. So everyone can be heard. And hold the space for others can be heard and feel like they've been heard. That's what the space is. The original random participant, right? Okay, I'll stay for two rounds, but then I'm out of here. A bit like James Madison, you know, he was the one that had to really convene the constitutional convention period. Madison? Madison, yeah, he's just so cool. And then after the convention, they had ratifying conventions, okay? The constitutional convention knew that they couldn't just turn it over to the legislators because they would mess it all up. And we said, we were ratifying conventions separately. And then after that, the ratifying conventions came, it was the people talking that came up with the most important part of the Constitution. Bill of Rights. Bill of Rights. All that happened afterwards. Yeah. So then James Madison said, I promise I'll do something, but he had to get elected. So once he got elected, he crafted and made sure those amendments got added because everybody else have forgotten about it. So it was really cool, I think. And he was a one term president, right? I can't remember. I think so. Yeah. But he was a hero to a man. All that happens was no Adams. Adams. Adams. Adams. Yeah. How about Ben Franklin? Did you like him? I love this guy. Ben Franklin. He was so cool. Just on and on. Let's face it. A lot of these guys were geniuses and I'm running into geniuses all the time. I figured out that everybody is actually a genius. It's just that they're alive. Well, they don't have the venue. They don't know how to bring forward that genius. Creating the space for them to get them to express themselves. I really, we had an opportunity to listen to a guy named Tom Crook. Anyway, people can do miraculous things. Well, we've got a minute left, so let's let people know where they can find out more. Thank you. Interesting. Yes. Okay. The website wisedemocracy.org. Wisedemocracy.org. And that's... Yes. And money is huge for us. If we can get some money, we can start some of this stuff. So I wish you would... It's a good idea. This really is a labor of love for you for your life. It's for my whole life. And we haven't really received... Once we received $25,000 and then $10,000, which was really cool because Ned Crosby, who invented the citizen jury process, died and left us $10,000. Wow. And of course he was rich, but thank you, Ned. Yeah. Really cool. Well, thank you, Jim. It's been a wonderful conversation. I hope people feel really inspired. I know I do. Me too. Thank you. We'll check back with you in the future and much luck with the Center for Wise Democracy and the convening of a global wisdom council. Yeah, process. Process. Yes. I seem to be a verb. It's fucking full, I would say. Thanks. Everybody in the audience for the questions. Bobby, Al, Cassie, Gabs, Billy. Yeah. You guys are great. Good luck with that flat tire, Billy.