The One You Feed - Peter Block: Freeing Yourself from Consumer Culture

Episode Date: December 13, 2017

Peter Block pursues the big questions in his life. What does that mean? Well, after listening to this episode, you'll know and I'll bet you'll do it, too. Peter has such a way with words that when he chooses them and puts them together, deep, profound wisdom is conveyed. It may be 4 words he speaks, but the truth behind them humans have experienced since the beginning of time. In this episode, he introduces you to perspectives on the free market consumer ideology that will set you free. Does it sound like I'm overpromising? You be the judge. (Hint: I'm not).Please Support The Show with a Donation Peter Block is an author, consultant and citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio. His work is about empowerment, stewardship, chosen accountability, and the reconciliation of community.Peter is the author of several best selling books. The most widely known being Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used.  In addition, he has published Community: The Structure of Belonging, The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, and The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What MattersThe books are about ways to create workplaces and communities that work for all. They offer an alternative to the patriarchal beliefs that dominate our culture. His work is to bring change into the world through consent and connectedness rather than through mandate and force.He is a partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops designed by Peter to build the skills outlined in his books. He received a Masters Degree in Industrial Administration from Yale University in 1963; he performed his undergraduate work at the University of Kansas.Peter serves on the Boards of Directors of Cincinnati Classical Public Radio; Elementz, a Hip Hop center for urban youth; and LivePerson, a provider of online engagement solutions. He is on the Advisory Board for the Festival in the Workplace Institute, Bahamas. He is the first Distinguished Consultant-in-Residence at Xavier University. With other volunteers in Cincinnati, Peter began A Small Group, whose work is to create a new community narrative and to bring his work on civic engagement into being.His latest book is called: An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer CultureIn This Interview, Peter Block and I Discuss...The Wolf ParableHis book, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture"I shop, therefore I am"The 4 pillars of the free market consumer ideology under which we live: Scarcity, Certainty, Perfection, and PrivatisationIf we believe in scarcity, then it's "I win, You loose" or "You win, I lose"The scarcity mindset is a lieWe are drawn to leaders who give us the feeling of certainty"A high control civilization"The longing for perfection, or "Is something wrong with me?"Privatisation, or the implementation of Scarcity, Certainty, and PerfectionPrivatisation says that you cannot trust the collectiveIn order to live the first 3 pillars, it's me vs the governmentPerhaps, rather than happiness, freedom, and meaning are the pointThe importance of having a purposeHave we rendered our youth and the elderly purposeless?The problem with consumerism is that no matter how much you have, it's never enoughThe creation of modernismNeighborliness and CovenantHis book, The Answer to How is YesThat questions bring us together and answers alienate usThat sadness isn't a problem to be solved, rather, part of being humanIf someone can convince you that something is wrong with you, they have control over youPlease Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Questions bring us together. Answers alienate us. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to

make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor? What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Peter Block, a leading consultant and best-selling author whose work is about empowerment, stewardship, chosen accountability, and the reconciliation of community. He's a partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops designed by Peter to build the skills outlined in his books. He received a master's degree in industrial administration from Yale in 1963

and has received national awards for outstanding contributions in the field of training and development, including the American Society for Training and Development Award for Distinguished Contributions, the Association for Quality and Participation President's Award, and Training Magazine HRD Hall of Fame. His new book is An Other Kingdom, Departing the Consumer Culture. If you're getting value out of this show, please go to oneufeed.net slash support and make a donation. This will ensure that all 185 episodes that are in the archive will remain free and that the show is here for other people who need it. Some other ways that you can support

us is if you're interested in the book that we're discussing on today's episode, go to oneyoufeed.net and find the episode that we're talking about. There will be links to all of the author's books. And if you buy them through there, it's the same price to you, but we get a small amount. Also, you can go to oneyoufeednet slash book, and I have a reading list there. OneYouFeed.net slash shop, and you can buy t-shirts, mugs, and other things. And finally, OneYouFeed.net slash Facebook, which is where our Facebook group is, and you can interact with other listeners of the show and get support in feeding your good wolf.

Thanks again for listening. And here's the interview with Peter Block. Hi, Peter. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm happy to have you on. Your most recent book is called An Other Kingdom, Departing the Consumer Culture. And so we will get into that in great detail here in just a couple minutes, but let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson, and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.

One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So I will start with a dream. So I always had

this dream that I'm on a dark street late at night and some people are coming up behind me aiming to my direction, men, and I'm scared. It's always a panicky kind of dream. And so I asked a friend of mine about this dream and he said, what do you think they wanted? I asked a friend of mine about this dream. He said, what do you think they wanted? I said, I think they wanted to destroy me, rob me, kill me. Then I thought for a minute and I said, is there another way of thinking, which never occurred to me? He said, yeah, perhaps they wanted to be seen.

That shifted for me that what I thought was danger. When I feared the wolf at the door, maybe the wolf was just hungry he's not after me and so that parable tells me that even though it was a dark night and there is a shadow side to all of us the way we see that shadow interpret that shadow is the nature of our transformation. And so my work has been trying to reconstruct how I see and how the world sees these dark characters looming in the distance. And every cynic and every time you lose faith, you always have evidence to prove it. But the evidence never includes your choice of how you see the world. It's like people say to me, you push my button.

And I heard someone say, yeah, but I didn't install it. What you're trying to do with your theme here of the wolf is to reconstruct the nature of the button in which how I respond to the world, honoring the dark side. button in which how i respond to the world honoring the dark side honoring in this book the idea of pharaoh the idea we're all caught up in slavery all this stuff but then how i see the world is decisive it's called context and so to me that parable so this is one thought. It's asking for a shift in context. The other thing, it's very individualistic. It says your life, my son or my grandson, will be determined by how you show up in the world. And we have very few parables of how we show up in the world. Excellent. That's a long answer to a question you didn't ask.

No, I certainly asked. So thank you for the answer. So let's start off and talk about the book. And in the book, you say we have a dominant cultural narrative, best described as the free market consumer ideology. So talk me through what are you trying to say when you say that? I'm saying we're living in a world that assumes as true that upward mobility is the point. It assumes as true that expanding businesses, taking things to scale is the way nature is. the way nature is. And the dominant narrative has caused me to be ambitious, individualistic, all right, competitive, and to think I am defined by my average annual income. Every parent says to the child, I want you to be happy. What they really mean is I want you to be happy. What they really mean is I want you to do well.

So when I'm dependent on you in my later years, you're up for it. And so we've monetized our experience. We've commercialized our transaction. The marketplace used to be a Saturday morning occurrence where people came together to be together. And then they bought and sold stuff, know because they it sustained them now the marketplace is headline news we've elected a president whose major accomplishment is his wealth this is economic prowess his toughness and so that's we're trying to so we're trying to i try to describe it gently all right and but the belief that my well-being is somehow defined by my uh economic my ability

to shop and i'm part of that i love the notion I shop, therefore I am. So that is our kind of the consumer ideology that we live under. And you say that that free market consumer ideology has four pillars to it. You talk about scarcity, certainty, perfection, and privatization. So let's spend a couple minutes on each of those and explain for the listeners what's so bad about that approach. Because the way you described it, on one hand, there's a part of me, I've read the book, and I go, well, yeah, I get it. On the other hand, it's like that is the dominant cultural paradigm.

So what's the problem? The problem is that if we believe that we don't have enough scarcity, then we decide that I win, you lose, you win, I lose. And that's framed in the first grade when I'm told that we're going to grade you on a normal curve. grade when I'm told that we're going to grade you on a normal curve. And so my job is to compete with my classmates. Until I went to the first grade, I thought learning was fun. So the problem with that is it alienates us from each other.

All these mindsets create a deep sense of isolation. So in my workplace, I think I'm in competition with the person next to me and so the scarcity mindset is a lie there is enough whenever there's a crisis you know the day-to-day is we're poor we owe too much but when there's a crisis we have all the money we need when it's time to bail out the world, all the money. So it tells me that in my town, Cincinnati, there's an enormous amount of money. So why do I act as if there's not? In the world, there's an enormous amount of food. So why are we marketing hunger?

And so that's the scarcity thing. The certainty is the appeal of a totalitarian world the reason high control leaders are in the ascendance these days is because we're afraid of the future we think it should be predictable so anybody who runs for office any leader of any organization, any talk show host who offers certainty has a magnetic appeal. And yet, if you look at your own life, most of the time, you didn't know what the hell was going on. None of us work in a field that we studied. So the idea is to ask every child, what do you want to be when you grow up? The honest answer was, I don't know and I don't care.

But we lie. We give us the feeling. And to me, the longing for certainty is the basis for a high control world, high control organization. The media now has got five organizations that run the media. And it's not that liberal. media now is that five organizations that run the media you know and it's not that liberal all of these are forms of modern concession okay is the world that way do i need certainty is there not enough uh is there something wrong with me so the longing for perfection says that god created me but he made a mistake in this case.

And so the wish to be perfect is the wish to be God. And so we're always, you know, high standards, goals, stuff like that. And so all of these conspire or work together to chip away at our freedom, chip away at our humanity, our ability to connect with each other. Those are big costs. And then the last one is the privatization piece. Well, the privatization is the implementation plan of the first three. It says that you cannot trust a collective.

Anything with CO starting a cooperative communal is dangerous. And so it says that in order to live the life of the first three, I have to argue against government. I have to argue against the common good. In 1620 or something, the King of England privatized the commons. And so the common land meant I could sustain myself. When they put a fence around the common land, the common good, all of a sudden I had to move to the city and get a job. So the privatization is the action step. it's the belief that the public sector the communal

sector uh communal interest land trust common good tragedy the commons by james harden in 1969 has been refuted and he refuted it but he says if you hold land in common, you'll destroy the land. And so to me, it's been the way of rationalizing my longing for certainty, my wish to be perfect. And so we have to question whether the private sector, the private life, the life I lead alone in my home with an automatic garage door open, is really in my interest. And it's a tough one because these are all deep beliefs. It's not in our interest because it's not working, because people are generally less and less happy in life, that there's a greater sense of meaninglessness and isolation, and that we're suffering from that?

Yes. And it's not about being happy. It's about having financial and relational control over my life so you know there's economics to have happiness is a kind of a funny promise because everything else offers says happiness is the point maybe meaning is the point maybe having a purpose is the point maybe the problem about our exact anxiety about our youth is not that they're young people maybe the problem is we've rendered them useless and maybe they need a purpose maybe when we house the elderly in warehouses of comfort maybe loneliness is what kills them not old age and so i think it's deeply isolating

and uh makes us deeply, makes us support leaders regardless. And it's not about being left or right or anything like that. And so I think it's about, it's a search for meaning. Victor Frankl was in a concentration camp. So he was not living in a high consumerism. And he found meaning in the fact that he chose to breathe, and he realized he had control over his own sense of freedom, even though he couldn't move.

So I think it's about freedom and meaning. Right, he had realized he had control over his own reaction. On a similar note, I was watching something the other day and saw, I never say his name right, Eli? Eli Weisel. Weisel, thank you. Chris, edit that out so I sound smart. You have to be a Jew to be able to pronounce that.

Are you Jewish? No, I'm not. That's why I can't do it. Now you are. I just brought you in. Anyway, I saw him. Chris, edit that out too. Well, no, it's good.

I'm now belonging. Elie Wiesel. I heard him say something near the end of his life, which was, always think higher and feel deeper. And that just sort of, when I think of concentration camps, he came to mind. And I just thought that was such a beautiful phrase. It is. When I think of concentration camps, he came to mind, and I just thought that was such a beautiful phrase. It is, and with respect to consumerism, it's an experience against thinking higher and feeling deeper.

Yeah. Because the promise of consumerism is that no matter how much you have, it's not enough. Yep. Now, do you think that that is a tendency in us that has been exacerbated by consumerism or that it's been created by consumerism? Because it does seem to be a human condition to a certain degree to want more, to always sort of think, well, what's the next thing? Or do you really think that that's more of a modern creation? What's the next thing? Or do you really think that that's more of a modern creation? I think it's the creation of modernism. Because before modernism, before the 1600s when it all began,

people found the earth sacred. They found history compelling, tradition compelling, the circle form compelling. They couldn't imagine changing their status in life. And so i think it is a product of modernism it's not anywhere near our nature now it doesn't mean our nature doesn't have a dark side and a greedy side and a violent side and a disobedient side i mean adam and eve made that point but i don't think it's in our nature to want more than I have. I think in the absence of a memory and affection for a place and be surrounded by people that even though I don't get along with, I know we're going to take care of each other. Then more is a corruption of my nature.

I don't believe that. I have a friend who's a nun. And so we do a lot of my nature. I don't believe that. I have a friend who's a nun. And so we do a lot of work trying to end poverty. And I looked at her after a conference about ending poverty. And I said, Monica, wait a second. You chose poverty. What's going on here? She says, the reason I chose poverty

is because in exchange for my choice was community that i knew no matter what i did no matter how productive i was or how spiritual i was that this was a group of people that would care for me for the rest of my life and that's as much my nature as wanting more. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging.

Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead.

It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the solutions that you talk about, there's two words that are woven through the book as potential solutions or other approaches, right? And one is neighborliness, and the other is covenant. So let's start off with neighborliness. What is neighborliness? And how is that different than community, which is a pretty common word that's used these days? Is it the same thing? Or are we talking about something different? I think they're cousins. Neighborliness is wider. Community is my sense of connection, my feeling of belonging and participation. Neighborliness is about the economy. It's

about where I take my identity, how I raise my family. The product of neighborliness and And community is to raise a child, to provide livelihood, to keep me safe, to help me age, to welcome the stranger. So neighborliness more is to the point. It's more powerful, even though nobody, including me, understands it. But I think there's something in that word. It says it's a way of being together. Where community is a little bit overused. And when something becomes popular, then you have to be a little nervous. But community also, you know, it's kind of interchangeable. But I think neighborliness is what the Jews discovered in the wilderness. is what the Jews discovered in the wilderness.

And so I think if I feel a sense, if I live in a culture or context of neighborliness, then I know I'm within walking distance of all the things I thought I had to drive to, which is my health, my job, my children in the right school, my ability to shop. And so it's an expression of locality. And it has, in my mind, only in my mind, it has an economic core. And that's why the consumerism is the dominant narrative.

Neighborliness is an alternative future. I think we're headed that way anyway. The jobs are disappearing. Come on. We're not going to bring industry back to America. If we do, it'll be a $500 million tax benefit. It'll be a $300 million business with four people working there. Yeah, I tend to agree with you.

million dollar business with four people working there yeah i tend to agree with you i don't think that both the nature of globalization and the nature of technology points to a lot of job creation it points to almost the opposite and that's the neighborliness to me means that you and i will construct a livelihood together based on our interdependence. Back to the wolf story. It's not just confronting my greed or confronting my choice to seek generosity. It's what we create together, and we can create a livelihood together. And I'll end up, in the end, borrowing sugar from you again instead of going to a convenience store. Sugar's not good for you.

I can't help you there, Peter. But come over for some whole grain flour. Flour? Well, that's not good for me. I want a flour-free diet. All right, let's exchange vegetables. Yes, vegetables. I think we can all agree on that. So talk to me about covenant.

So the question is the distinction between covenant and uh to me contract so contract defines our relationship as quid pro quo what are you going to do for me here's what i'm going to do for you and to have a good contract it has to be timely but specific we know what it's a predictable way of being together. And most of the world, most of the culture believes in a contractual way of committing. And what's in it for me? You know, all these T-shirts for you, what's in it for me? All the feeding of, you know, faith creating prosperity.

It's like we're going to contract with god if i do this you this so all of that makes the commodifies me makes me an instrument exchange the word covenant means i'm going to make you a promise and i have no idea what the hell's going to happen so covenant has an element of faith that replaces exchange and so the covenants relationship with god it has a faith dimension to it but it's much more demanding contracts are easy i can change my mind anytime i want and let you off the hook or if i don't if it doesn't work out i say well you let me down covenant there's no out no back door and so it's an expression of my capacity as a free and human being to decide what i'm committing to with no expectation of return it's not dependent on anyone else. So it's a covenantal relationship. It has to do with fidelity. It doesn't have to do with delivery or performance.

Contract is about performance. And as soon as you claim a person is a performer, you've stolen their humanity. That I'm only good for what i can produce when monica said i know i'm part of a community even and we got some sisters that do nothing okay so in the contractual world out you go you know come on in the covenantal world i don't care if you do nothing i will do what I can to help you with your life. And so that's the distinction. And that's existing in every relationship that really matters. If you have parents or children, if you have cousins and family and friendship,

it's not conditional on their performance. That's not friendship. That's a deal. So it's a powerful concept that we've shrunken by limiting it to a biblical context. You're talking about covenant. We're talking about community. You know, what you just said there is, you know, what mother, father, children, you know, we honor that relationship regardless. There's also, you actually use the phrase in the book that there's a shadow side of community, that there's a shadow side of this sort of thing. So let's talk about that because I think it's important to hear both sides of that. Me too. Without the shadow side, it's wishful thinking.

It's Pollyanna. The wolf is at the door. And at times, community can be tribal, controlling. It's expressed in the general culture as like-mindedness. I want to be with like-minded people. In the general culture, it's expressed as a fear of the stranger. And so if my community, if our relationship is based as an against the other, against the stranger, and there's a part of me that wants to be on the winning side

and you know that's the that's the other side of the world and so there is in some communities we have the best community in the world except for those people okay from section eight housing that moved into three houses these three houses and they're littering the ground and I think well if you're such a great community why don't you find out who these people are why don't you clean up after them, why don't you welcome them to your social events, to your house

but there is a part of me that's just afraid I was born a friend of mine says we're wounded at the moment of birth by humanity. Eve ate the apple. What's that about? She wasn't that hungry. And so there's a part of me that is terrified of existence. I'm afraid of my freedom. That's what I think the fear is. I'm afraid of my loneliness. It frightens me, actually.

I think, okay, I was given birth. What do I owe for that? How am I doing? And so I think the fear is a measure of our humanity to be afraid. And so how do I deal with the fear? Well, I hold on. I try to be right. I try to look good.

I want a life that I can edit and take out the bad parts you know not just a program and so you have to acknowledge in jungian terms it's the shadow side he swallowed the snake what kind of meal was that that he took the darkness of the snake and took it inside of me said for me to be whole i I have to embrace the shadow side. I have to, and all the mythology that he talks about is really about saying until you acknowledge. The process is that once I own my own self-centeredness, my own isolation, it loses control over me. It's in the denial of the shadow, in the denial of the dark, greedy wolf, that it owns me, and I become it in a masked and convoluted form. And so that parable, the answer is it's not just what you choose to see, but both are true.

Otherwise, you end up with a TV sitcom as an expression of life. So let's change directions a little bit. I want to talk about another book of yours, which has just a wonderful title that I'll just ask you to expound just on the title itself, which is The Answer to How is Yes. What are you getting at there? answer to how is yes. What are you getting at there? What I'm getting at is that as soon as somebody says, how are we going to do this? How much does it cost? How long does it take? I know they don't care at all about what we're talking about. And so having lived, become a system person, a corporate person, all of that that it seems the argument against possibility was always framed in the question of practicality oh it takes too long where is it working people who

run large institutions are the most cautious people in the world if you can't provide them with a predictable world and so it was the end of a chapter of a book I wrote on stewardship. And the publisher says, why don't you write a book about this? And so, you know, when anybody makes a suggestion, you have to resist it for four or five years. But then to me, the how question destroys our faith in each other. destroys our faith in each other as if the only thing that matters is how long how much how predictable and so i just kind of felt that it was to work it was a it was a anthem to people working in large organizations to say give up your ambition and do something useful and meaningful without leaving. And don't be seduced by the practical.

You know, people accused me of being an idealist, which is a major flaw. But now when they say you're too idealistic, I say, thank you. I haven't dried up yet. Yeah, you've got a line from that work that says, I haven't dried up yet. Yeah, you've got a line from that work that says, transformation comes more from pursuing profound questions than seeking practical answers. And it reminds me of, you know, the show we cover this area a lot, but the old Rilke quote about, you know, living the questions themselves.

Don't seek answers, but live in the questions themselves. Questions bring us together. Answers alienate us. And so every time you or I have an answer, we think we know what's best for each other. And that's colonialism. I know what's best for you. And so it's an argument in the question we honor the mystery and unpredictability of a life and to live in the question

is to be frustrated and anxious as a human condition and the question that grabbed me I don't know if I had that yet when I wrote that book what's the question that if you had an answer to would set you free? And somebody asked me that 20 years ago, and I thought, good question.

And so I spent the last years of my life trying to say, what is the question? If I had an answer to it, would give me the freedom that i've been longing for lately it's it's dawning on me i'm getting close to the question but that question has animated my search for freedom what i realized for myself is i felt that somehow because i was born i owed something that in the delivery room at my birth, an invoice was delivered to me. And it was, what have you done to justify the fact you had given a life? And so my question is to someone, you, God, have I done enough yet? And I got the question.

I just don't have the answer. That reminds me of Leonard Cohen. In a book about songwriters, he said something to that extent about how he rewrites lyrics so many, so many times. how he rewrites lyrics so many, so many times. And this idea of redeeming the day was such a big thing to him. There was a sense of, I mean, I guess covenant, right, in a way there. And I feel that all the time, that somehow to be given a life, which I didn't even request, I don't think, unless you talk to James Hillman, but I don't think. Hillman thinks james hillman but i don't think okay hillman thinks you've got a little daemon up there to put you in the right place

before you're born but i i think that's a great question is and redemption is not out of guilt it's out of our humanity and our sense that uh i don't know i have to kind of humanity and a sense that uh i don't know i have to kind of honor the fact that we've been given each other in our life and uh leonard cohen is a great example i saw him interviewed once and she said you know some of your songs are just breathtakingly profound and everything where is that place you go to to create suzanne or hallelujah and he says i don't know if i knew where it was i'd go there more often you know listeners of the show have heard this 30 times but he is the he was the number one guest i wanted to have on the show which it never it never worked out unfortunately but at least we have his his legacy and he started as a wealthy montreal poet yeah and then he went to the village

and became lincoln yep so we're near the end of time but i want to wrap up with something that i read in an interview you did somewhere and you were talking about how at some juncture in your life, there was a teacher of yours or a mentor of yours who sort of gave you the idea that the fact that you might be sad sometimes or anxious sometimes or that you would have negative feelings wasn't a problem to be solved, but was actually just part of being human. I remember the moment. I can tell you what the room looked like. All right. I can tell you where I sat.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk

gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really?

That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the auditorium.

So this is Peter Kestenbaum. And I was in Stockholm doing a little workshop on something I was doing. So I thought, oh, it's a general session. I'll sit in. And he gets up there and he says, your anxiety, your loneliness, your sense of imperfection, the alienated part of your life means you're a human being. He wrote a book called The Vitality of Death. And I heard him talk for 20 minutes.

And I said, whoops. Because up until then, I was trying to get it right, and so I walked up to him, and I said, where do you live, and he says, I live in San Jose. I said, can I come and see you? He says, yeah, and so that was a huge turning point that all the things I thought were wrong with me, my loneliness, my anxiety, my wish for more, all of that. He said, this is the nature of being human. It turned everything around. Now, it's taken me a lifetime to get it, you know, but I think that's the point. So the point is that the world of certainty, consumer consumerism tells us in some way that there's something wrong with us so if you can convince me of my deficiencies you own me every performance

review ever done all right every church every whatever it says there's something you're born in sin really and uh that means, I got more to work on. Well, can you help me work on it? Of course I can, because I love you. Okay. So this is the fabric of defending against our freedom. And so that was a big shift in my life, is to realize I'm not crazy. There's nothing wrong with me.

And I'm not crazy. There's nothing wrong with me. And I'm not alone. And it's kind of got me through a lot. Even though I proceeded to mess things up on a consistent basis, it just didn't, I didn't draw conclusions about my failures. Yeah, I think it's Krishnamurti sort of taking this conversation all the way back to the beginning and the idea of you know the culture that we live in you know krishnamurti said something to the effect of to be to be well adjusted in a profoundly sick society is not a sign of health right to be insane or sane and insane that's a huge insight beautiful and uh where do you find that? See, I want to find that in the Saturday morning marketplace.

I don't want to have to go to yoga like I did tonight to learn that. I want that to be the part of the fabric of our economic system. The fabric not only of our churches, but what we do on weekends. You're bringing that into the world with your care and your questions. And I really appreciate that. Well, thank you so much. And thank you for taking the time to come on. As I said earlier, the book is called

An Other Kingdom. And we will have links in the show notes to where you can find that book and other things from Peter. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Thanks, Eric. Okay. Bye. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.