It Could Happen Here - Community & Hierarchy of Needs Ft. Saint Andrew

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

St. Andrew leads a discussion on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the differences between Self and Community Actualization. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast.

I'm Robert Evans. Sovi, is that it? Unfortunately, I'm so sorry. Great, alright. I just apologize really quick because that's a lot to take in. No, that was a good introduction. That was a good introduction. We got across the gist of what's happening. Who else is here with you, Robert? That's a great question. Is Garrison here?ist of what's happening. Who else is here with you, Robert? That's a great question.

Is Garrison here? Yeah. I think they are here. Is Chris here? I think he's here. Is St. Andrew here? I am indeed. Excellent.

Why don't you take over and do my job for me? That sounds great. Awesome. Actually. Good idea. Fantastic. Hey, what's happening, everybody? I am St. Andrew. Actually. Good idea. Fantastic. Hey, what's happening, everybody? I am St. Andrew.

Back to guest host yet again. Last time we spoke about, you know, soft climate change denial and continuing the theme of me talking about whatever I want to talk about as per contractual obligation. talking about whatever I want to talk about as per contractual obligation um today I wanted to explore a concept that I brought up on my recent videos um self and community actualization yeah right so first we need to get in some context of course um I mean when most people hear self actualization they probably think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs the famous pyramid that management staff tend to use

and hang up in their offices and such Los Angeles yoga ladies the context in which I've heard self-actualization the most yeah that whole goop kind of vibe. But yeah, so self-actualization, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the old psych 101 stuff.

I mean, it's traditionally represented as a pyramid, but it was never how Maslow himself actually depicted it. It was actually something that later interpreters of his work ran with and popularized um and so that as a result of that pyramid there are a lot of you know critiques of maslow's theory that don't quite engage with his theory but rather engage with like interpretations of his theory by other people but um you know i think it's still an interesting way to depict human needs and i think it's a good launching point to start thinking about and start discussing you know human needs um where y'all think y'all are on the pyramid right now, just for

posterity's sake. Oh, right up on the tippy top. Oh, for real. I've been very lucky to do exactly what I want to do for a living most of my life, and now I own goats, so it doesn't get any

better than that. Yes, including one absolute unit. Yeah, he's fucking massive. He's a chunky buddy. What about Garen? I really don't know. I don't spend too much time thinking about models like this,

especially around my own goals and where I see myself. But I don't know i mean i'm i'm doing like i'm i'm i'm relatively stable with my like actual physical needs um so i guess yeah just trying to figure out what i actually want out of life like a lot of younger people do i guess right right so i guess that's more on the um esteem or yeah more self-actualization side of things yeah yeah let's start like that line and it's harder because you can say like well within the context of like what is possible i'm i'm i'm where i want to be and i'm doing stuff that i i i want to be doing but also everything's feels like a

disaster around me all the time because yeah the times i'm in which makes it difficult to be as right i was about to say is anybody really on the safety needs category of of the pyramid i mean some people like absolutely yeah but like in this group i mean yeah like we we are right there's like a weird there's like a weird disassociation between what's actually going on and what we know could be going around on in like the larger sphere that's fair yeah yeah that's a very good way of thinking about it is like yeah my immediate needs are met. Am I very concerned that large chunks of the places I love will be unlivable and that we're kind of staring in the face of a variety of calamities that could make everything worse for me and everybody I care about? Absolutely. But I can't do anything about that right now. The other thing I was going to point out is that with the physio needs, that includes sleep.

Oh, yeah. Once we get to that. Now you're talking about being the sun shining down on the pyramid and who gets up there, you know? The sleep scientists have had their pockets in big bed for far too long. That's right. Apologies, Andrew. Please go ahead.

The cozy industrial complex is the problem. It's fine. I was just going to say something else. I was going to say that, you know, the pyramid, as we are discovering in this conversation doesn't really accurately map out you know needs and human psychology really because i mean not just because our brains aren't shaped like pyramids but also because at any point in time we can be straddling multiple um sections and parts of the needs so for example we could all be breathing air and drinking water and having our food and stuff met right now um and you know you might be like really respected

and stuff in your field um and you might have a certain a good sense of self-esteem and stuff but then at the same time you know you're not in a safe place yeah or you may be dealing with like a debilitating health condition or you may be lacking certain resources that you need to like thrive right so and then or maybe you know you have your food water shelter sleep all that and you know you're secure, you know, you have your food, water, shelter, sleep, all that. And, you know, you're secure and you have what you need and whatever, but you have no friends. You know, you have no intimacy, no family, no sense of connection with other people. So you're kind of like living in this bubble, just floating through life. You know, I i mean your bubble is

safe it has what you need but there's now that social aspect yeah and um i think what's interesting about this is because as we start to talk about maslow's hierarchy of needs we start to see the structural and societal impact on you know our psychology and on our needs right because if you want to talk about our safety needs for example or let's get straight to the to the bottom to the basic if we want to talk about our physiological needs water is now a packaged and commodified product right food is something that is inaccessible to many. Not because we don't have enough food, but because the distribution of it to meet the needs of all is not what's prioritized under capitalism, right? There are a lot of people who are lacking in shelter, you know, and a lot of people are sleep deprived by the systems we're living in yep and same thing with safety you know um we are faced literally threatened by climate change and

you know we are atomized from our relationships and stuff because so much of us so many of us have to work so hard you know every day five days a week or more eight hours or more per day and it really just strips us of our social connections and with our sd needs we're sort of stripped of that by you know these commercial messages that we get about like you're not this unless you have this and bye bye bye kind of thing right and in self-actualization isn't even really a thought for a lot of people because they're still busy trying to reach all those other things um or they don't even have the time to think about how they can become who they are um and we

we get into that a bit more later on in this discussion but they don't really have the time or the sense to think about that because they've been so restricted by their circumstances right and on top of that restricted by like the messages that they would have gotten you know whether it be in the school system or through ads or whatever the case may be so i think looking at the pyramid of course it's incomplete and there is issues with it, but it does illuminate some interesting things that we're dealing with right now. I mean, yeah, it definitely is easier to self-actualize

and have esteem once your needs are met, but I think definitely there's an ability to jump around, especially when you have large-scale depression and alienation and disassociation like it's a weird weird sense where you can kind of hop around the pyramid quite quite often even if you have certain things met this doesn't necessarily mean you have something you know above or below yeah like i i've met i when it comes to like actual people that I associate with, all of whom are folks who have to work in order to live, I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about happiness in terms of self-actualization. It's always in terms of when I get my student loans paid off, when I'm able to take care of this health problem that I have, like when I have enough money, it's basically everything boils down to for most people when I have enough money to not be as suffering as much from this specific thing or to not be scared about not having enough money, which is. I think more what I get from people when they're talking about like aspirational goals then i would like to do

this thing that that fulfills me as a person um yeah yeah yeah yes it's like so like any kind of actual self-actualization becomes this not just a luxury but a luxury that's just unimaginable yeah exactly exactly some people can't even imagine i know people who have just basically given up on like ever being able to repay their loans right like they've just resigned themselves to like this is my life now for all eternity this is this is it you know and i can't blame them who can really blame them when that is the reality you know for a lot of people taking themselves out of debt is not possible. Even if they did get a whole bunch of the money or able to like pay off a bit more per month.

You know, they still have interest rates. They're just like so widely exploitative that they're basically serfs for the rest of their lives. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, Modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season

digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists

in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show.

I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it of course we had to have that brief moment of damn the system sucks as is typical on it could happen here but um

i want to shift our attention now to another society and another culture that has approached this human needs and human psychology and human society thing differently. lately is that Abraham Maslow he was actually partially inspired to develop his theory by his stay with the Sikh Sikh of Blackfoot and I went into some of the details on the video on my channel rethinking Maslow's hierarchy of needs so I go a bit more in there but basically what he discovers, what I get to in that video is that, well, firstly, some cultures view us as being born self-actualized, right? Like the Siksika Blackfoot. Yeah, and that's the Blackfoot, just for a little bit of context, are an indigenous people. I think Confederation is how they tend to refer to themselves. And like Montana, I think Idaho. Ubu to Canada as well.

Yeah, up in Canada. Yeah, kind of like Idaho, Montana, and parts of Canada. Like that's Blackfoot territory. There were also, Maslow spent time with them. L. Ron Hubbard lied about having spent a lot of time with the Blackfoot. So, fun fact there. I didn't know that. Oh, yes. There's a lot of Scientology lore I have yet to catch up on.

Yeah. As a model, self-actualization is essentially self-fulfillment, right? The tendency for the individual to become more and more what one is and to become everything that one is capable of becoming. So it's like fulfilling your potential as a person, as a partner, as a parent, as a talent, as an artist, as a whatever. Just fulfilling your potential as a person right but to say that we are born self-actualized um that framing more looks to seeing us each as born in the world with a spark of divinity because of course this is tied into their spirituality um born with a

spark of divinity and with a great purpose embedded in us and what self-actualization is linked to in these cultures inextricably linked to that is is community actualization right so community actualization is a concept that places the actualized individual in the context of community so instead of just upholding the individual alone which maslow's hierarchy has been critiqued for sort of doing community actualization incorporates the web of relationships that supports each of us as individuals basically it recognizes that we cannot be self-actualized solely as individuals if there's not like a broader, a broader web that is supporting us. We're not islands

standing alone. Yeah, we were touching on that point a bit previous, but less eloquently. It's much easier to have the ability to actualize your

goals into actions when you are less alienated and you have and you have all these other things around around a community yeah exactly it is that i think like the lack of community self-actualization is is kind of what we were talking about in terms of like yeah things are seem things are great for me in as much as things are great in the system we live in, but I don't feel that. Yeah, you can look aside and you're like, everything's actually really bad. I'm just kind of in my little bubble

and I'm trying to expand my bubble to be around and help more people, but it can be overwhelming sometimes. Yeah, I mean, it's only so much one person could do and that's kind of the whole point of community right our community supports our basic needs and basically equips us to manifest our purpose so it would the community would be there to for example and we could get into this a bit more design a model of education that supports us in expressing our unique gifts right another part of the six-seeker blackfoot philosophy involves cultural perpetuity where there's an important consideration of those who came before and those who are coming

after seven generations forward and seven generations backward as i had it explained to me forward and seven generations backward as i had it explained to me so that is something that i think would have been useful when it came to discussions of um you know climate change and it's very relevant now because we are seeing the older generations basically chugging and being like you know um well it's gen z's problem now y'all could take care of it y'all the future kids all right all that yeah when they basically on the download saying fuck them kids you know yeah wait can i say that or yes oh yeah yeah yeah no you can always say fuck them kids i say that to garrison all the time without all right yeah yeah but speaking of kids um i think we could compare and contrast basically how childhood is approached in our society versus how it would be approached in a

society that values community actualization um i mean and i'm just speaking from my experience here of course you're free to talk about your own um i from like primary school and stuff i remember it constantly feeling like i had to compete with my fellow um classmates i mean you know i was friendly and stuff with everybody and stuff but since i was like usually at or close to the top of my class i always felt this kind of pressure to just beat them out and continue to be the best gifted kid ever you know so there was a sense of like constant competition with others that wasn't really balanced out with a kind of um collaborative sort of approach to like basically training us from like an early age to learn to cooperate and work with people as

people and as comrades, you know. Although, comrade is a weird way to put it. But yeah. I just remember there was a sense of sort of atomization that undergirded that sort of educational approach. I feel like that's pretty universal in a lot of parts of our modern world. We definitely really embed that sense of competition into very young kids,

whether that be in school or wherever. Because yeah, that was definitely my experience, even in private school in canada a long time ago and i know that's that's a thing across you know across the ocean as well on on the other side of the pond yeah welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters,

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season

digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand

what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel.

I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,

as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now

and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives.

I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. We are back. That doesn't sound like us. Are we? Are we really back? Sorry, it's 10am. Robert. Alright, so one way to look at

childhood and education and stuff in a society that would value community actualization. What sort of things do you guys think we would be seeing in that sort of society? What sort of approaches do you think would be embedded from an early age? I'm trying to put it into words. So kind of one of the things, I'm currently in a living situation, right, where I'm working with a group of people on a chunk of land, and so every week we do projects on it to make it better, which is tremendously satisfying.

And I think in a society where that kind of self-actualization like you've been talking about was more common, kids would feel that way about doing things that improve their community, like that, that that that take care of the people around them that make, you know, wherever they live a better place to live like that would be that would be in the same way that like i go out each weekend thinking that will be a fun thing to do uh to like to improve the place that i'm living i think that would be kind of um a common feeling like that would be a common activity as a kid to go engage in projects like that yeah and i mean we already see children doing that right except they do it in Minecraft. Yes, yes. Like the impulse is being directed somewhere currently. This isn't a thing you have to, this isn't a thing you have to like splice into kids' little brains to make them want to do it. Kids love making shit. and you sort of facilitate that like they are very a lot of them i can't really generalize because i know some kids were like oh you do what you how to do i want to stay in my corner but there are a lot of kids as well who would be like very very willing to be helpful you know they

really like they just adore being a helper and being someone who can support whether it be in the kitchen you know with like a little broom or whatever sweeping whatever the case may be so it's like kids don't want to be part of a community you know because we are social animals um it's just that right now it's directed at like minecraft servers or whatever yeah yeah i think one of the things that I would really focus on, because this is just kind of in my experience, is teaching young kids how to cook and then having them cook or at least help cook food for other people. I think it's a really great kind of skill to learn, but also it does this weird thing to your brain when you do that. It's like you get very happy when you cook food for for other people yeah and i think it's it's a really good kind of emotional impulse to give kids is like hey this is you can make people feel good by doing things for them um and because that makes

you feel good and it makes them feel good and then that really builds that whole sense of community so yeah i gottaates selflessness. Yeah, yeah. Some kids could be a little egomaniac. But both selflessness, but it also teaches you to do stuff for yourself as well, right? It's a good skill to also be self-sustaining. So I think that's why I really enjoy teaching kids cooking.

I used to be a culinary instructor because I'm really just passionate about that specific thing. Yeah. I mean, for me personally, I develop an aneurysm whenever anyone's in the kitchen with me. Yes. There is definitely moments where there's too many people in a kitchen that is frustrating. But if you do it right, you can get a 13-year-old cooking you an entire really, really nice holiday dinner, which is what I was doing when I was 13. I was cooking all of the holiday dinners for my entire family because I wanted to learn cooking. So it's definitely possible if you're a parent and you want less time in the kitchen, teach your kid how to cook. I come from a family of child cooks.

I remember this one time, I think I was making a carrot cake with my mom. I was used to licking my fingers when you make that cookie cookie dough and stuff yeah but i lick my fingers when the when i crack the egg oh oh boy and she was like stop you can't do that you know so i just remember that was one of the experiences in the kitchen it really stood out to me a lot of other lessons lessons will be learned about bacteria it's a holistic learning experience

you get to learn how to use knives, you get to learn about heat there's a lot of good lessons you can learn inside science, safety, chemistry all mixed in there even math absolutely

fractions, it's one of the only times i use fractions is in cooking and baking yeah i mean as embarrassing as it is i i use google when i want to convert measurements still but i mean it's just there it's more convenient but yeah i absolutely agree that example you know like the use of like cooking lessons and that sort of thing to support um to support like kids self-actualization and also like community actualization because of my experience the thing i default to is different versions of like the youth liberation argument but because of how people have been writing that term on twitter right now i don't want to talk about it because it's been causing a lot of like really dumb fighting about what that term actually means and who coined it and like that kind of stuff

but that's kind of where i default to in terms of like what self-actualization could be in a community setting youth liberation is one of those things uh i'm really passionate about um and i honestly don't know who coined it or what discourse is happening about it right now but it definitely um informs my approach and ends up influencing like a lot of the things that i discuss like whenever i talk about like an issue or whatever in society, a lot of times it really boils down or starts from an early age. It starts through the education system or is fostered there or incubated there. So I think a lot more discussion should be happening about the place of young people and the education system and stuff um alongside of course all the other struggles and discussions and discourses about struggles we've

been having yeah i'm trying to view like anarchistic like liberatory frameworks it's like trying to achieve that self-actualization and to some degree like the like esteem level and then also like the community and belonging level um even if you don't have all of your physical needs met all the time is how these types of frameworks can be can almost just like jump around that and be like despite me not having all of these base needs met if i if i have like a radical model of the world i can still try to achieve that type of freedom because i can work outside the box to get it um yeah and i think that that that's kind of what i was i was trying to get at this at least on you know like like a like whether it be like a youth lib framework or just like general

like radical anarchism in general yeah and i mean parts of thinking outside the box involves you know looking at other people who have thought outside the box who have reinvented and reconsidered and sort of transformed their approach to things like education and child care and really all the aspects of society that we take for granted as you know just be in a certain way you know um when we talk about things like education and childhood and the place that plays in uh community actualization i tend to think a lot about you know know, all the things we can do to not fit into capitalist modes, you know, to really facilitate folks' potential, not just through the cooking classes, for example,

but even through, you know, workshops and field trips. I mean, field trips now are just kind of like this thing that, you know, kids go to from time to time and they have to walk in a single file line and all these different things. But what I envision when I think of learning is something more akin to less restriction to just the four walls of a classroom

and more the whole world is your classroom. The whole world is a place where you can explore and you can roam and you can develop yourself without all these barriers and controls that we place on kids that end up suffocating their imagination of what things can be. And I mean, when you have that sort of educational model where you know the youth are able to explore different avenues and direct their own education routes you know you also end up which is what has happened in education models that we've seen throughout many

different cultures of the world you see that it facilitates relationships with community members right and everybody benefits because you have for example wasn't exactly something like apprenticeships and you have you know for example people getting support from the kids in the kitchen or you know in the workshop or in library or whatever the case may be and not only the kids developing their skills but they're also developing relationships with different members of the community with different backgrounds with different experiences and it really serves almost as i see it as a way to guard against this sort of style of parenting

where we've seen popularized lately where the child is basically the exclusive property of the parent and you can't tell anybody how to raise their child and the parent always knows best and that kind of approach

I think it's a good antidote to that because the child may be exposed to a lot more of life and of people always knows best and that kind of approach i think it's a good antidote to that because the child being exposed to a lot more of life and of people um i think that to me um is the sort of youth liberation route that i see uh developing it requires of course a total transformation but you know no proposal can really be approached in isolation. Yeah, and it's easier to achieve when you're around other... It's easier to achieve if you are already in a community where these things can be fostered,

then it's a lot less of a lofty goal. Yeah. I think that there's a kind of interesting, I don't know if case study is the right word, but there's part of Italy that had a really, really long-running anarchist education experiment. And so they were basically able to sort of reform local school systems. And it worked, but they produced a bunch of really good schools and you know the

schools are based on sort of like cooperative learning etc etc and you know i mean the model still exists today but and you know it's like yeah they made some of the best schools in europe but the society around them didn't change and so sort of bizarrely they ended up making these schools that like produced you know They're very good schools. They produce extremely good students, but then they also produce an extremely well-educated and good capitalist cadre, basically. And so I think there's a sort of...

If we go back to the community aspect of this, it's like, yeah, there's a sense of which even if you have... You get some form of self-actualization you get some form of sort of you know communal and cooperative like education for children and stuff like that the the whole society has to move with it or otherwise you just wind up sort of feeding the beast more effectively yeah yeah i mean that is that you you also see that kind of problem with like the we work guys right the uh adam newman and and and uh the the two co-founders of that came out of an adam's case akibitz in israel which you know started with

from kind of socialist foundations and the other founder had grown up in like a commune in rural oregon uh and they both wound up making like this ultra capitalist real estate company so yeah if you it's it's you know there's a lot that's said and there's there's a lot of value in kind of like carving out sections of of culture uh for the things you believe in to try to um shelter from the storm. But yeah, as you were kind of noting, Chris, it does also just wind up kind of reinforcing the dominant social system if there's not a kind of more basic upheaval of the way things work. Yeah, if there's no political philosophy undergirding it

and there's no, you know, political philosophy undergirding it, and there's no connection with, you know, broader social movements and sort of confederation with other projects, you know, it could very easily be co-opted, you know, in isolation. And I guess that's, you know, like that's what happened to self-actualization as a concept for the most part, is that it got taken over by kind of weird grifters and yeah like self-care yeah yeah and take these concepts and just sort of twist it

and transform it into you know capitalist ends it's even something like like with there's been some interesting discussions happening you know capitalist ends it's even something like um like with there's been some interesting discussions happening surrounding like luxury and what luxury means around certain um within certain circles on twitter um and kim um kimberly foster from for harriet excellent youtube channel um she mentioned that to her at least in this long but really good video she spoke about how luxury to her was basically um you know finding the ability to rest when you need to rest and to be able to be supported um whereas luxury now well luxury as by popular understanding is more so about

consumption and consumerism so even when you have something where like and this is specific to um the black experience of course because for a long time, you know, Black women have been expected to like toil and labor and support not only their communities but also, you know, during the era of slavery, also, you know, their white masters and that kind of thing. There was a push for the Black women luxury movement to sort of reclaim, you know, a space for Black women to just be able to enjoy themselves and, you know, be themselves. But that quickly became something that was just like, you know, just get the bag. Just the sort of hyper-capitalist, hyper-consumerist, bougie kind of approach to luxury, where the original roots of the movement,

which was about finding rest, was sort of lost. And I mean, that's a bit of a tangent, so I'll try to connect that back to what we're saying. I think when it comes to things like rest and the ability to rest, I think that that can only really be found in community and if there is a lack of community support to you know pick up the slack when you need to rest and you need to revive

yourself and you just need to recharge um barring that of course rich people can pay for a sort of a full community in the sense of having you know nannies and maids and butlers and tutors and all these people to basically support their lifestyles and support their freedoms but most people lack that and so i think part of self-actualization, as you were mentioning earlier, is the ability to rest. And I see that as linked with community, if that makes sense. on anti-work and how anti-work is a lot more feasible if you are in a community support network and you have people to rely on. And definitely self-actualization as the ability

to just rest when you want to is a very powerful thing and very enticing. And that definitely plays into the whole anti-work idea, I guess. Yeah. And I mean, to connect the anti-work thing to just general unionization and striking efforts, right? Like I was seeing people calling for a general strike the other day um as if we haven't learned a lesson but um they were calling for that but what they were not realizing was that without these structures in place to support striking efforts it's not gonna

be enough you know if people cannot support themselves and their families the strike cannot last you know it's only with this community and with the community coming together to support people can they you know not just fight for the rights in the striking and unionization context but also you know to be able to find leisure to find rest as with the you know anti-work discussion and so sort of turn this to a discussion on organizing more generally um you know we are at the end of the day a very communal ape and if we were to just focus on ourselves as individuals, I think as capitalism in its antisocial nature expects us to, I think we would all suffer as a result. not just to uplift ourselves, but also to enrich the worlds of those around us and to cultivate the community that, as we support, they will support us.

And I mean, as we of empathy and that sort of thing um i think our organizing efforts would as a result be a lot more powerful be a lot more potent um be a lot more enriching and a lot more imaginative potent, be a lot more enriching, and a lot more imaginative. So unless any of you have anything else to say, to sort of bring this to a close, I just want to leave us with some food for thought in terms of how we can incorporate community actualization in action right because it's one thing to say oh it'd be wonderful to have a community to support you and that kind of thing but you know um a lot of people are pretty isolated and stuff right now um so i guess i actually put it into sort of a five-stage kind of uh

approach starting with firstly facilitating collective belonging among diverse groups right so we want to look at bringing people together. Obviously, they would have different backgrounds and different needs, different ones, different personalities, but bring people together, whether it be at work or on the block or at school or whatever the case may be, just for a cookout or for a lime

or any kind of party or interaction obviously depending on where you are that may that may not be the safest thing to do um considering covid and everything but to just bring people together not even necessarily to proselytize to them about anarchism or socialism or whatever but at the very least start connecting the nodes and start connecting the different parts that can eventually come together to become something greater you know i mean you don't need to wait for a calamity this sort of thing to happen but of course we have seen as well where natural disasters have brought communities together that weren't together before um i think however it'd be better to like

not wait for that kind of thing to happen and to just you know bring people together from now start some conversations get things going right and then from there you want to be facilitating solidarity in struggle. So whether it's material or emotional solidarity in struggle i think that is another crucial part in you know building community and incorporating eventually community actualization because what that does is it shows others that i have your back and you know others to see that they can have mine as well. It helps to build that sense of trust.

You also want to cultivate a sense of community pride and a sense of being able to rely on community networks. We spoke about mutual aid networks, but also things like skill shares or workshops or um material support you know if somebody needs food being able to support for them to know that they have people they can go to to support them in their time of need that is powerful you know not many people forget that Not many people forget the time that they were at their most dire point. And their community stepped up to support them.

If you want to see an insurrection in our lifetimes, you don't start guns blazing. You start with a creative food. You start with a creative food. You start with a helping hand. You start with money if people need it. And then from there, you get into the realm of community achievements where your community is collectively able to celebrate the things that we've accomplished together you know whether it be establishing a community garden that is able to supplement people's um fresh produce supply

or whether it be that you know communities come together and they've fixed something that was broken on the street or even that they've come together and were able to train people with like some really helpful skills where they're now able to support themselves and bring other things to the table as well and then from there i think that sort of approach would foster fulfillment in community and prefigures community actualization. Yeah, I mean, and this is all, it's a big topic. And it's a much bigger topic than just like, what changes do you want to make around the edges? Like what things should people advocate for?

Or even just like advocating that the system be torn down like as as was kind of evident when you asked how could we build uh a a community in which like kids feel more self-actualization from engaging in the community um and there was that kind of blank moment the the when you actually talking talk about like reconfiguring society at such a fundamental level um it's it's a big topic um and it's it's one that i think it's important to introduce to people the idea that like hey we really ought to be we really got to figure this this out this is this is important to like everything we we say we believe answering this question is going to be key. And it's it's it's a tough one. So I don't know.

I think sometimes people come into episodes we do on stuff like this, like looking for, OK, well, how are you, what's your suggestion for how to do that? And at the moment, like I agree with the, how imperative this is. But in terms of actionable stuff, it's, this is a big open ended question in my head. question in my head. I mean, I think Andrew laid out a lot of the stuff that we've talked about, both within our own community groups, in terms of the things, in terms of connecting nodes and all the steps that we can do to have there be more connecting branches of the tree and how to strengthen those. i think that it's it's a good yeah it's like we can't we don't know what your community is like or what your what your situation is all we can really say is here's the broad things that that you can try or have worked for other people in the past and then based on what your situation is, you can apply those pluggables.

Yeah, you want to plug your pluggables, St. Andrew? Yes, of course. Well, you can follow me on Twitter at underscore St. Drew, and of course on YouTube, St. Andrewism. Check out my stuff. I have the video on rethinking Maslow's hierarchy of needs

and some other fun practices, see things as well. So check it out, check it out. And stay thinking about stuff. Yeah. Thinking is good.

Yeah. Thinking is good. It could happen here as a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com sources thanks for listening. by the most terrifying legends and lords of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.