TrueLife - Chuck Metz Jr - YES! A Quantum Song of Love

Episode Date: November 19, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Ladies and Gentlemen, parents, grandparents, and all who cherish the boundless curiosity of children, let’s extend a warm welcome to a remarkable author and thinker, Chuck Metz Jr. In a world where innocence often faces the complexities of life, Chuck’s book, “YES! A Quantum Tale of Love,” resonates as a quantum song of positivity, blending fundamental physics with a message that transcends cultural boundaries. As a historian delving into the intersections of science and humanity, Chuck invites us to embark on a dialogue with our children about existence, love, and the shared challenges we navigate in our diverse world. Join us in exploring the profound ideas within the pages of Chuck Metz Jr.’s work, fostering a common thought-space for the questions that shape the minds of our future.https://my-yes.org/www.cwmetz.comhttp://linkedin.com/in/chuckmetz One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. It's Friday. It looks like we made it. Sun is shining, the birds are singing, and I hope the wind is actually.

your back. I have got a warm gust of wonderfulness headed your way with this show. The one and only Chuck Meds Jr., creator of the Balance the Triangle newsletter, member of the Grey Swan Guild, a historian by training, his passion for science and its impact upon human behavior involves him in a project examining the intersection of contemporary science and its challenges to human culture and growth. He can be found on LinkedIn where he curates information and hosts discussions under the tagline, this random sense of wonder. We're going to talk about the yes project, and I'm sure we're going to find ourselves on some tangents. Chuck, awesome. Thank you for being here today. How are you? It's always a delight talking with you. I just find it fun and

engaging and nice to be simpato on so many things. So just it's a joy, George. I could I couldn't agree more. And you and I, before starting this wonderful conversation with the audience, we were talking, and you had mentioned something along the lines of love being the only transformative force. Maybe we can pick up there. Maybe you can refresh the audience's memory with the conversation we just had. Okay. For me, and this is very personal, it's both philosophical, experiential,

and personal. Until I see differently, until I hear differently, I'm convinced that there's only one tremendous transformative force throughout life, throughout the universe, throughout entropy, throughout whatever you want to say, and that has to do with love.

Certainly my own experience, I've watched love transform people from lesser versions of themselves, if you will, to greater versions of themselves. I've seen it expand people. I've seen people find acceptance. I've seen people begin to care about other people. So it's more than a social relationship between a species that likes group social behavior. It's transformative at the core of our being.

So for me, love is essentially the end all, the be all. Many quotes around it, many things over the centuries, but certainly kicking and screaming quite often, I've been led to that you are loved. Okay. You can love others. Okay. And so forth and so on.

That's simplifying it a little bit. But I do seriously think, folks, love is the only thing that heals. broken people and broken societies. And it's tough to do. Where would you put suffering in there? Would suffering be a transformative force as well? It is, but it's, I think, again, love is a stronger force. Suffering, there are many forces that are transformative, both affirmative and nihilistic. I think love trumps all forces. You cannot necessarily undo it. undo, certainly the past. You cannot undo experience, but you can certainly change or you can be changed in response. And it doesn't mean that it changes even the exterior. It may or may not.

But all of our life is perceived through this small couple of pounds of gray matter. And all of it is processed inside in that vast nebulous swirl of neurons that just do their thing along with other things. And we have the choice of the galaxy we want to build within our head. And for me, love is the one thing that can make a great universe inside your head. And then from there, individually, from person to person to person, it transforms. I've seen it. But certainly it does not in a polyana sort of way take away from the fact that there's much suffering and many horrible things in the world.

And of course, I grew up in the hippie generation, and I loved seeing flowers stuck into gun barrels. And I loved seeing flower children. And actually, I've been rehashing some of that and looking at some of the old folks from the days when we were young. And it's very strange to see all of us gray and old remembering. Certainly, it was an interesting time. And it certainly helped form me. But many of the things form that as far as love goes. But it's transformative.

Yeah. It's interesting to think about. Sometimes I look at suffering as a component of love, you know, which is, it may seem weird on the, on the surface. surface, but sometimes when you suffer, that's when you find love. That's when you find self-love. That's when you find out who really loves you. That's when you find out what's important. And so maybe it's a component to understanding what true love is. It's sometimes the facade falls away when you're suffering and the light of love can shine in. But it's interesting

to think about the universality of love, which I think is something that, you know, is something that translates maybe like maybe not the same words through and through but that idea is something that permeates all cultures there's a there's a phrase i love uh to use that word uh in that weak way we always say when we love something that's not deep uh it says i may hurt you but i will not harm you and there is hurt and there is harm and certainly hurt if you want to be dualistic is a part of love. You can't know beauty if you don't see ugly, I suppose. You can't know love if you don't see non-love.

Just like with Dot, you can't know is unless there's not is. So I would want, I guess, any suffering I go through to be, it may hurt, but ultimately, at least from my frame of reference, it won't harm. But then there we're getting very deeply into personal beliefs that I don't want to go too deeply into a narrow individualistic view. But I think there is a difference for me. It's more than semantic between hurt and harm. So you bring up Dot.

I think this is a good spot to begin to introduce the Yes Project. Maybe you can maybe you can give us an overall idea of what who Dot is, what the Yes. project is and how it fits into balance the triangle. Okay. Yeah. Balance the triangle is my current study effort and effort to put some things out there. Looking at the relationship between the rather infamous quote by the biologist E. Wilson, who says the main problems that we have as human beings is that we have paleolithic

emotions, we have media evil institutions, and we have godlike technology. And there's a disconnect between the two of them. Now, the disconnect is we're cognitively smarter than we are emotionally intelligent. So we spend all kinds of time, whether we're in corporations doing emotional intelligence test, whether this and that and that and that, we go on and on about it. And sometimes we blather about it. And yes, we need to be more emotionally intelligent. What I do in balance the triangle is look at, okay, why are emotions so difficult to harness? Because that's kind of a raw, if you want to be evil or bad, that's kind of a raw first level. Well, I just am. It gets worse when you then cognitively take it and maliciously begin to implement strategies to be bad. So there's

many levels with it. But emotions are hard to harness. And from an evolutionary standpoint, ostensibly, they're there because they help to survive. They're quicker than cognition. They allowed us to do mental shortcuts. They allow us to exist in realities that have danger for us. So we have emotions and we have many other things from our evolutionary beginnings, which is, I guess why one of the subjects I really, really like lately is I've been exploring evolutionary psychology, which is so interesting because it's broad and covers many, many things, but by the same token, academics also often think of it as people being dilettons in many fields. but I like big pictures.

So, of course, I'm drawn to it. But evolutionary psychology talks about emotions and human wiring and what it brings to the table. And we bring it with us whether we recognize it or not. So the balance of the triangle project is how can we become more smart from an emotional and a human wiring standpoint, individually. And then as we do that collectively, how can we take that and transform institutions so that they're not reflections of the earlier medieval and earlier ethics, whether it just be strong alpha male led, strong alpha female lead, the whole way we are wired again. And I think I talked about that before on here, but the project looks at that. And the reason it becomes so important right now is we used to have clubs. Then we had knives and spears.

And then we had other ways of hurting ourselves. But now we have not only nuclear things, but with the digital world evolving as passages, we have ways to control each other and hurt each other that are godlike if you want to go. there and rather than certainly we can be beneficially godlike but we tend to prove over many many cultures and decades that we tend to be malevolent godlike part of us so even if it's a subset of us a small subset with godlike technologies can overwhelm the majority so it's a problem so balance the triangle looks at how can we use our technology to advance, in dots words, is versus not is, affirmative versus nihilistic.

So where yes fits into that is I've not given up talking to adults. So I still work there and educate. But who's the future, children of the future. And it's so hard to stare into a four-year-old's eyes. And they ask questions that are so obvious. and we can't answer them. Daddy, why do we kill each other? Well, I want to say because we're stupid primates.

But what am I going to say? You know, you don't want to say, I don't know. So I've been thinking, what can I do that's part of balance of triangle, that's a subsection of the project that might leave something behind when I put breathing and reach younger people. So I have envisioned a series of books that blend science and philosophy. Of course, I'm going to pick a philosophy, and people are going to argue with that philosophy.

They're going to want them to put their own philosophy with it. But here's what I would say, I'm picking a human philosophy that I'm trying to be so, fundamental basic that it's under the thing of culture it's human because cultures are a layer atop what we come to the table with as evolutionary paleolithic folks we are one human race we are one species cultures lay atop that so the intent is to look for a common human philosophy that we could all agree on. And then we can go to our cultures and make it flower in many beautiful and different ways.

Well, one thing it seems to me that we can say for sure is that existence is better than non-existence. Is as better than not is. We agree on that. We agree on a number of other things. But for now, I kept it very simple. so that in the Yes series, folks from religious and secular and other backgrounds can look at it and say, okay, yeah, I can agree with that part of it. Then they can teach their children how to affirm their culture, how to affirm the things that are good and how to combat the things that the children don't even know the word that's nihilistic, that is destructive. So that's kind of the Yes project in a heartbeat.

First volume takes quantum physics and blends quantum physics at a high level and talks about the basic in a very high level kind of way. Other volumes are going to move from there, whether it be chemistry, whether it be biology, whether it be psychology, whether it be psychology, whether it be psychology, whatever, but the intent will be at the end of X number of volumes that we can say, okay, I've looked, had an overview of sciences and other things, and through it all, runs the thread of affirmation. No solutions necessarily in the book, though in the book, because George, I know you've read it, you see that part of it offers things that children can do. So that when they stare up at us and they're sitting in our lap and they say, well, I took care of a little bird today. It fell out of its nest and I put it back.

We can affirm that action as a loving action. And we don't necessarily have to answer other than the child may say, well, why don't we go do this, Daddy? And we may squirm a little bit at going to do something they want to do. but children have a way of looking at the world with a realistic look, and they haven't yet been compromised in their cognition. So that's it in a very short feel. I love it. I did have a chance to read it.

And the first thing that my daughter said is I read the title, we sat down to the kitchen table and we had looked at it, and she goes, wait, Dad, is this a book or is it a song? because of the title. And we had a nice little chuckle about it. I'm like, I don't know. Should we try to sing it? Let's try to sing it and see if it comes out as a song.

You know, so right off the bat, for me and my family, it invited a playful moment, which I think is always a great sign of what's to come. You know, and I, there were parts where we tried to sing it, and we had fun doing it, you know. And on some ways, you can think of the creation of the world as a vivid vibration of music. You know, and so I kind of go up on tangents like that, but we had a discussion about that.

And one thing that I really liked about it amongst many is that the same way culture is layered on to people, I think our creation myths are layered onto this. Maybe that has to do with culture as well. And I like the way in which multiple creation mythologies were kind of put into the soup right there. So everyone could kind of see it and layer that in there. It kind of gave a nice all-around idea of what the Egyptians thought, what the Greeks thought. And then it kind of ties together with this idea of what is nothingness? And these are giant epistemological questions, you know, and they're put into a fun way where you and your kids can talk about it. So the beginning part, maybe we can start there in the beginning.

Like that was the first part that really kind of grabbed my attention. How did that come to be? Were you sitting aside? of being like, hmm, how do I introduce the different sort of creation stories to children? Like, how did you tackle that beast? I wanted to talk philosophically. Right. At a level, children might be able to understand.

Children are not a two-dimensional surface film plays reflecting back the world. They think they come to conclusions and they're able to understand things if they're put into language that they can understand. Of course, from my background as a historian, I've studied civilizations from Neolithic times and then I've studied paleolithic stuff, but I've studied various civilizations. My own personal background is the study of many, many, many civilizations. And all of them do things and look at things from human perspective. And they're fundamental. What is? What isn't?

Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? Why does this hurt? Why does this feel good? All these questions are answered. again, you look behind it and it's human. Now, I remember when I was working on my master's, we had a discussion in one class, whatever,

and I said, and they disagreed with me, and I'm okay with that. I said, you put Genghis Khan, you put Nero, you put Machiavelli, you put any number of people in this room together. I said, I do not care what you tell me about their cultural differences. And yes, they will think differently. Underneath at all, we are evolutionary paleolithic hominids who have large brains, and we do things a certain way. Now, that is so fundamental and so basic that that gets lost.

because we don't live at the hominid level. We live at the cultural level. And so, you know, certainly in today's fractured world, why does left and right fight? Why do conservatives and liberals fight? It's not because they're hominids that feel this. It's a cultural, cultural thing. But beneath it, it's the same drivers. I want to take care of my family. I want to have a relationship with a small group. I need to show you deference. How do I do that? I don't want to show you deference.

I want to be king. All the things we wrestle with transcend all cultures. So I want in this series of books to look at us again as a human race. And if we can concentrate on our humanity, maybe we can at least ameliorate a little bit. bit, this tribalistic thing we have, which again is another layer above. And if we can't do it as humans, maybe I can leave a little bit for children to have a different way to look. And excuse me, so that's kind of how those creation myths, if you will, came into being. It is interesting

in creation myths that I selected three, but they also, talk about void and darkness and nothingness and chaos and whatever again there you see the primate brain which is predisposed to put order on things and the the idea of disorder is terrible because with disorder you don't know if that leopard's about to jump through the tree at you you don't know if that mammoth what it's doing. So we want order. And so in our myths, we tend to think of disorder and chaos as being a very primitive thing. And I have found that to be true across many, many cultures. And to me, it's an interesting fact that I think ultimately comes from the structure of human brain. But I don't know. It's a learning thing. I'm always eating crow in various ways

and changing some opinions, but certain fundamentals seem to transcend that. What do you think is the relationship between disorder and disease? Or disease? Well, disease, the funny thing about disease, its order as well.

It has its own order. Right. What we call disease, the actual organisms who are doing the thing would call order and prosperity. So it's a frame of reference. And we're imposing our own morality on that.

And that's okay. Yeah. That's okay. I don't like cancer. I don't want to see cancer cells proliferate within me, the host, because I value my host more than I value the cancerous cells. But that's a very, there's religions also address that. and in their own way.

So it's a frame of reference, but underline that, if you will, I think if you will look at is versus not is, and I'm trying to make that the simplest mantra possible, then you can define disease. Is it increasing affirmation, or is it tending towards something nihilistic? And then we get to choose,

well, the annihilation of cancer cells, is an okay annihilation, the annihilation of death, those kinds of things. So yeah, disease is actually fairly ordered, in my opinion. Yeah. I'm always interested in the way words can be broken down or be looked at in different ways. Like that, you know, sometimes I like it, like dis-ease. And then you start looking at all the people that may find themselves in poor health. their life definitely isn't easy, you know, and how much of this dis-ease, how much of this disorder, you know,

led to this problem of dis-ease or disease. It's interesting. There's a, there's a thread there. I'm not sure it thoroughly connects, but it's fun to investigate and pull on those threads, which, as I'm doing that now, I'm thinking of is versus not is. In some ways, until you spoke a second ago, I never saw that as a framework to fundamentally look through the other lens to it and be like, yeah, is this a good thing or is this a bad thing? You know, it's interesting to take it from that angle. How did you boil it down to that? Is that just the foundation of the easiest one you come up with for someone to grasp is versus not is?

That is the simplest way I created that as I guess the mantra. It's not a new thing, of course. It's just a reiteration of the concept. But I thought that that would boil down and become something fun and simple and easy to say for a child that could help him determine, him or her, determine whether something is good or bad. I tried very hard not to use the words good or bad. I want to give good and bad the opportunity to be defined by the culture. But underneath it, then the culture can say, is this increasing order or is this towards an idolize?

Because we can all tend to agree for the most part, whether we speak it out loud or whether it's politically correct, all the various things. People tend to at a pragmatic level, look at a culture and say, well, that culture is kind of bad in what it does overall. And we say this and this and this in the West and they say this and this and this in the East. If you boil it down, they're pretty much the same once you get beneath the cultural level. We tend to have some broad agreement as humans on what's good and what's bad. And they're simple and fundamental. But as part of the balance of the triangle, why is it we can't do it?

Why must we keep attacking our neighbors and trying to take their land and this and that? Well, there's reasons for it. Most of them explanatory and can be dealt with. That's a long, long, long conversation. I'm trying to get five to 12-year-olds who think not about the negatives. They're going to see that every day on the television. They see it every day with what their parents worry about. I want them to think the positive side of it.

What can I do? Why should I do it? What can I do? Why should I do it? Why am I dealing with this bully like this at school? Why should my father and I not go do this? And they think. Children think.

It's interesting that you chose that age range from five to 12. With a lot of the cultures and history that you've studied, is there a certain age range where you think the cultural imprinting is the heaviest and a time to influence it? I personal opinion right now based on partly cognitive things that I've studied and thought about, but some of it just experience. Those of us that have had children and raised children see a huge difference in our preteen children and our teenage children. And cultures across time and space have identified and dealt with that. certainly we're imprinted with our cultural values by the time I would think that we're 12ish or so and then what makes them very complicated is the hormones kick in

and we become adults and then everything's become much more hormonal driven for a while because we're captives of the need to what I just call the need to breed we're held captive by that genetic imperative that you don't get to kind of rest from again until you get older. So prior to 12, I say five only because my children started asking questions at three and four. But, you know, we tend to start any schooling we're going to do around the five to six-year-old range because I think cultures as a rule have kind of understood that children begin to be able to process in a cognitive way of that.

Now, interestingly, we were talking about the medieval period before this began. Interestingly, when you look at the paintings in that, you see children who are little miniature adults and they're kind of invisible and they're not thought of as either developmental or growing. They're just kind of beneath the surface until they hit their coming of age. So not all civilizations have appreciated children.

They've been labor. Of course, we had them as labor during the Industrial Revolution. I mean, how crazy is that? You know, let's just breed our own race of serfs. Yeah. But anyway. Yeah. You know, it's sometimes I wonder, you know, just looking back, not even that long ago,

things seem pretty barbaric. And to those people, them looking back, things seem pretty barbaric. So if the best predictor of future behavior is past relevant behavior, I'm sure that the next generation is going to look back on us and like, you guys did what?

That's kind of barbaric. It's weird to see that pattern, right? It's to be hoped that we are on some sort of evolutionary growth path as a species. Of course, and balance the triangle, the thing is, are we going to get past this youthfulness we're at now to the next stage?

That's what makes that kind of critical. Yeah, it begs the question. If we can see in our child's life and in our own life being held captive by hormonal forces, what does that mean in the grand scheme of the human lineage? Like, are we at an age where we're being held captive by a bigger force that we don't thoroughly understand. Are we going through our own adolescence as a species on some level? I think you can make the case for that. I think you can make a case for it. I've seen any number of cases about that. Are we adolescent? I tend to feel as a species we are somewhat. The only thing I see

tremendously different, at least since the Neolithic period, which is, you know, 12,000 years ago, very, very recent. It's a blip in time. We, and in what I'm looking at, seem to be essentially human all through our Neolithic. If you look at a Neolithic farmer, he's probably not that different from, you know, a, farmer today. His mental world's going to be different. He's going to see magic different. His cognition is going to be different. But we seem to be what we were. That being said, adolescent.

So here's where I was going with that. What's different in the last 12,000 years is technology. Technology that allows us to expand our control. of things. It's as if, if we were to make up a civilization, let's say that your coming of age ceremony is you were given, for one of a better word,

some sort of gun, ray gun, let's say. This ray gun has a capacity to shoot and kill and do all kinds of things. Before you have the ray gun, you're one thing. After you have the ray gun, you're another. So, before that period, you treat the child certain ways, you teach it, you treat it other ways,

after that period, it's now adult and just as dangerous as any other adult. In some ways, our technology now, if you want to use the adolescent metaphor or us, we're at that cuss. We've got enough stuff now that we're very dangerous to ourselves. And the sad part of that, for me, sad's an appropriate word. The sad part of that is we have the way to be the other as well. Create a hugely better world. We could do that today. We have the resources.

We have the money. We have the social structures. But certain things hold it back. Some of it is emotional. I would say, if you look at the art. I think you saw the article I did in the uncertainty book. I did. I did do a little article there about how things evolve over periods and that underneath the cultures, again, we're all the same.

So the drives that drive us now are the same as the drives that drove Egyptians to build the pyramids or drove medieval. We just have more capacity to do harm than we used to have. And maybe we won't destroy ourselves, but certainly with what I see of, especially in neuroscience, some of the things going on in the neuroscience community, the ability to control minds, the ability to control freedom, the ultimate control would be to control will and volition. And that's what we tend to do as a species. I can put you in a cage and you can't do what you want to do and I can control you. I can put you in a feudal serfdom and I can control you where you can refine it to such a degree as we've seen in science fiction movies and that.

I can put a button on the side of your head and you're going to think what I want you to think. You're going to do what I want you to do. And certainly many religious traditions, there's a lot to be. said about free will and that's another discussion about free will is certainly one of the definitive things that defines the ability to have agency in something that's another discussion as well it's interesting you brought up for those that are listening you have were co-authored and co-created another book called uncertainty with the gray swan guild and lots of other great authors in there.

And in some ways, did you use, it seems to me, on some level, you were able to incorporate some of the ideas of uncertainty into the Yes project. Was that a conscious thing or did that just kind of carry over? The thing there, the relationship is that I brought into uncertainty this whole framework of where I'm at right now, what I'm working with. so that I gave it a specific futures spin and look because that's what they wanted to do. And I dealt specifically with uncertainty. So in that case, yes, I made this fit their framework.

But certainly I would have been the odd guy out. It's certainly different than I'm definitely not a futures forecaster. or any of the professionals, I guess, I'm the tolerated old guy with a beard. I can see the echoes, though, in yes. When we talk about creation myths and, you know, I like it a lot. I think that teaching,

maybe on some level, we condition the idea of living with unsighted, certainty out of children, but the sooner they can become familiarized with uncertainty, with within reason. I mean, they need to have a structured in their life. But when they can begin to develop a relationship with uncertainty, I think it makes for a more balanced life later. You know, it's a very difficult concept to struggle with.

Even as an adult, when you're forced with it, when you're faced with uncertainty, like, it can really trap you in the past or trap you in the future, you know, with anxiety or oppression. but it's a powerful relationship there. It is, and I like the point you were bringing up about uncertainty as a bellwether of of childhood development, cognitive development, because, how to say this without appearing, whatever word, I want to use. We know people who are certain of everything. And we know people who are certain of nothing.

And many people have made the distinction between uncertainty and the ability to handle uncertainty being a bellwether of one type of development and the ability to be dogmatic and be very, very, very, certain the bellwether of another. I think I've said that very gently. I think uncertainties a good thing. As a species, we try because the thing, again, that I alluded to, I think in my article there, is we don't like uncertainty, and everybody knows that, that certainly wrote in that book. We don't as humans like it. we look for certainty and often to our detriment as you allude to how many people do we know myself included having done this will stay in a job that is just not good for us because the ability to find another job is tough and uncertain and what I get may be worse than what I have and that

is very paleolithic in our wiring the inability to give up something we have because of the uncertainty of the future. That is a human, very human defining part of who we are under all cultures. So back to your point, again, which I like, because I hadn't thought of it in quite that way. Yes, part of acculturation is building certain cultural certainies into the child. Yeah. And in some ways that's what stifles growth, you know, when you, it becomes dogmatic in some ways. Yeah. It does. It does. Uh-huh. Yeah, I know where you're coming from. I, again, and here's the thing, I would say, what I'm learning. Love is the transformative. How do I love someone radically different from me? Well, I will if they will, if they will let me and if they will let me live and agree to pursue my way as long as I'm not harming

others, et cetera, et cetera. But within the bell curve of human psychology, there's a large number of people with very strong certainties that don't allow that. And from that comes much pain. Yeah. So to your point again, yeah, let children have a little bit of uncertainty. That's a healthy thing. When writing this book, you and I had spoken a little bit before and you said you had envisioned the book being read or shared between a parent reading to their kid or a teacher reading to their kid. That's an interesting angle to write from. What, what how did that come about? What does that mean that you wrote that book with that in mind? I wrote that because when it comes to philosophy and meaning and all those very strong things that we wrestle with,

a child cannot, should not have to look at that alone, because our minds are echo chambers. And whatever little bit of cognition the child has or experience it has is going to be magnified within that little skull. And the child should have some wisdom, I think, especially at a young age. So I think for these particular subjects, I found in my mind's eye that it needed that conversation back and forth because the child is going to say,

well, I don't know. What does this mean? What does this mean? And the parent may or may not know, but they can discuss it if they're willing to because they're hard concepts. The book is, of course, the first half is, well, no, the first little bit is introducing philosophy, and then we have the science of quantum physics. And we use the quantum physics as a storytelling metaphor for the larger philosophical picture. And then the action items, if you will, what you can do is kind of, of course, how it's done. And I think that this subject, I've said that, can be read alone by a child when i say that i think more you know an intelligent 11 or 12 year old uh can probably wrestle with some of those the thing i like about it so far with this first volume is it's the same messages as you would give an adult and actually the language is simple enough

that a lot of adults can read it and think about it and they can wrestle individually with with it. So I'm hoping that maybe we get a two-fer here. We get adults who begin to wrestle with some of these existential questions as they teach their children. So maybe the children then, as the fresh imprints grow up a little differently and the adults begin to think about, well, why do I do this? So I think, and I can't put totally into words. But I don't see it being useful to a small child to be read by themselves. So I loved when you told me you read it with your daughter. You're the first person I've talked to yet, who has actually sat down and read it.

And I thought it was gray. How old is your daughter? Are you willing to say? Ten. And see, 10, what an appropriate time to sit and have a discussion between you, who thinks about all these things and has some valid good advice to give and a 10-year-old who's questioning and on the cuss of becoming an adult. So, yeah, I think it's best done as a collaboration. But we'll see if that bears out. That was in my head, and we'll see if that turns out to be a wrong

mental model or not, but I think it has more validity together. Me too. And I think you should continue to push on it. Like when I, the, the way, because you had mentioned that, that your intention was to read it together, like it allowed me to see it in the framework of co-creation. And I don't know that I've really thought about that before, but reading that intention and maybe, you know, maybe something is happening in the world, but I was like, yeah, now we can co-create our ideas together. You know, and it does. It has some exercises in there where if I'm reading it out loud, I can stop and pause.

Maybe in the next volumes, it would be epic to have a quiz or like, you know, something. Okay, dad do this. Kid do this. Now compare the answers because I think you can really, if she can take her puzzle piece and I can take mine and have our individuals, then we put it together, I think that's one further step in this co-creating of ideas, but I think it could be a whole genre of books like co-creation stories. And that invites the parent. The fact that it's written in there, I think really calls to the parent like, hey, sit down and read this with them. You know, sometimes we need that

gentle nudge, whether we're a child or we're an adult. Oh, this is a group thing. Oh, yeah. I guess I I should have known that, but I didn't know. But I like that idea of co-creation there. And that's the this the first time it came to my mind was when I when I saw that there. And that's why I was curious, like, how that came up to be. It's, it's interesting. That was my intent. I did not use that word, but I love your use of that word. Because think about it now, as far as co-creation,

you sitting down and talking with your daughter, as far as co-creation, when the child has grown, if they're going to be another Gandhi, if they're going to be another Martin Luther King, if they're going to be whatever, much of that comes from their ideation inside, but much of that comes from upbringing and culture. And so, yes, you're building, as we said earlier,

culturally, you're building in the larger context, but co-creation is an even finer concept of one-on-one co-creating together at a family level. But more than that, how many sayings talk about the infinity in one person and all that that child can become? And if two together can help co-create this ethos into a child, then that's what I'm hoping for. and I love I'm going to borrow your word I love that I've not thought of it in terms of co-creation

yeah and uh so I love it I love it that's good George that's real good and so I see it as a bigger picture too like I like on some level that idea is what's needed to override the the the cultural imprinting like that has giant rammer A generation of children that learn to co-create are a generation of children that build bridges. You know what I mean? Like that's coming together here. Like, hey, look at this. Just a few changes of the semantics over here.

And all of a sudden, the picture expands out. It's like, let's take the blinders off now. Now we're all working together. Look at that. And if we're doing that proactively at a younger level, then it augments. the spontaneous things, like we talked about earlier, in the 60s, the whole hippie flower child, peace and love and all of that. That was, it just sprang up from various sources, but it was a different ethos than what the prevailing society had at the time. And what if we were doing that younger and more proactively?

So that's one of my hopes. Yeah. So which is one reason I can push the book without feeling like I normally do. I'm not a hawker. I'm not a PR kind of fellow. So I always have difficulty in promoting things. This I'm able to distance myself a little bit from that because I'm trying to promote a message and something. And so, you know, is

is better than not is the mantra. And then if you want to say the high five sign is yes. In that font and in that, but that exclamation point, that's the symbol. And that's what I'll be using throughout. But yeah, I would like to see it. I'm not so young and naive is to see going huge or who knows but i can't leave it behind and somebody like you and like others is going to run with it and you know maybe more than one gandhi in a generation we might surprise ourselves

with we just have 15 gondis all at once uh promoting peace and other things i don't know It's a lovely task for me to kind of think about as something I can give some time to do now. Yeah. It's still in process and my thinking, because it is when I did it, it was, while it's a natural evolution of what I'm doing and balance the triangle, It's one of those things, those ideas that just kind of pop into your head and kind of brewed for a little bit. And suddenly, I didn't anticipate this. Certainly a few months ago, I wasn't even thinking about this. But now the idea won't let go of me.

It's sort of like planting an acorn so that your children can sit under the protection of the oak tree. And it's interesting that you, it's a more than, I like the idea it's a project. I like the idea that it's a movement. I like the idea that it's continuing to evolve. Sometimes when people put something out, it seems like this one stop thing. Okay, here's the message. But much like the science, it's never settled. So as the story always going.

That does allow for someone else to pick it up and run with it. And it gets back to that idea of, hey, let's start this thing. Let's get the ball rolling and then see where it goes. But that to me speaks volumes of where we are as a society, when people like yourself are putting works out there for people to run with. That sort of idea about something is, at least in my life, it wasn't really thought of too much. At least I didn't think of it.

It was like, I'm going to put this thing out for me. But now it's like, I'm going to put this out here for people to help move forward. I think that's a beautiful, it speaks of growth. It speaks of co-creation. It speaks of a project, the yes project. Was it a movement in your mind when the idea popped into your mind? Yes, in many ways. Again, I had to wrestle with the thing I've wrestled with is keeping it at a level that people can pick it up in a variety of cultures and with a variety of thinking styles.

I want to keep it human, and then you can take the human. certainly in my head it's more than a book it's more than a series of books it's movement's a bit of a grandiose word but maybe it's a movement maybe it's it's certainly non-original it's it's a reflection of what we tried to do across many cultures and times this is another expression of the universe, if you will, is, is better than not is. This is my particular flavor on it. And yeah, I'd love to see it go many places and not only that, but develop uniqueness as different people do things with it.

But I don't know. We'll see. Well, you know, on Amazon things, you're constantly fighting the algorithm. So as I told my wife, I said, I'm going to put it out there. It doesn't matter. I'll do the next one and the next one.

And if it sells 10, if it sells 100, they're going to be out there. And all I need, if we want to say I, all we need is for a couple of children to be moved. because as a species, we look at leaders and we tend to want to find those people and elevate them. The bell curve is not going to produce a million of them, but it just has to get into the hands of a good parent and a good child. And as you said, again, I'm loving that word co-create.

Let them co-create together in that universe within that child's head, something. I mean, I think in a different sort of way, one of the youngsters that impacted me over the last five years a lot was Greta Toonberg with her youthful movement for climate change. Look what a youngster did out of what was in her head and her compassion and her caring. and she did something just a youngster youngsters can do so much and uh we need some good youngsters right now we need something because um i'm not even going to go there but boy we could we could get some youth into some of the things we do instead of everything we do being now done by old people. We need some youth again.

Yeah. I'm reminded of the world of storytelling. You know, when you look back to the ancient Greeks or the Homeric verses or even some indigenous people where they would gather around and tell stories or even when you went to sixth grade camp, you'd go to the camp and they would tell ghost stories and stuff like this. You know, I really think that in some levels,

It's a great, like, stories are just the fundamental way in which we retain information that stays with us forever. Maybe you could talk about your influence on storytelling and, like, what do you think about storytelling and how is it, how has it influenced your life? Number one, to your point, storytelling is imperative in the way we process knowledge. We, again, we're wired from our earliest times to react to storytelling. telling to like the hero, to like the strong, especially, whoops, the strong person. So it's fundamental. And so therefore, when you watch a PowerPoint at a business meeting and it's a bunch of facts, you go away, not caring.

But if you tell that same thing in a story, it means a lot. So part of yes is to do that. Storytelling for me has been impactful. It's been a major part. of my thinking now yeah I love fiction yeah I love fiction yeah I love stories I tend to as far as my personal reference because of the way I'm wired I guess I love stories that blend the best of best of storytelling and that our futures oriented, which probably seems obvious having talked to me. I just find that compelling. I find stories that make me weak compelling. I only watch a few of them

because life's hard enough and I don't need to fill myself with sadness. But Always those stories, at least for me, have had that human component, that hero, that person transcending, whatever they're transcending, to become, to be and achieve. And we're worried that way because think about it, we've had, you and I haven't had this discussion, but we've had discussions. If AI starts writing all our stories, will we care? Well, we will only relate if AI can make the stories very human with heroes and emotion and all of that because we don't much get into stories of the ant that transformed its world and fixed the hive and went out and did battle against the black ants and the red ants. We just don't care. we're very species cognizant. So for AI to write our stories for us,

it's going to have to pretend to be a primate. But that being said, the value in storytelling is two or threefold in what I think. Number one, it relates to us at our most basic fundamental evolutionary wiring. and therefore it speaks deeply to us at levels we can't always verbalize. Second thing is we live within a universe that appears linear.

Time appears to flow one way. Things seem to be causal and sequential. And that's what we're used to. So we're going to tell stories in the same frame. Of course, philosophers, some have said that our existence itself is just a story that whether it's a hologram, whether it's whatever, but that there's no actuality to the causality. Boy, that's a tongue twister.

Yeah, right. Actuality to the causality. Because we're experiencing discrete moments and then our brains wire them together into a story. Whatever the rationale for all of that is, It is how we think. It is how we process the quote unquote real. And it's how we interpret. So when or if we change, again, philosophies and religions have different things to think about as to whether a consciousness continues and so forth.

But if we just want to be rhetorical for a moment, if it continues, it will depend, of course, upon how it's embodied within any kind of structure. But what will storytelling have to say to a different kind of sentience than this? I remember the first time I saw someone say that a consciousness embodied in a computer would go insane. And the point was that we are more than just cognition in our mind. we are the sensory parts of our body, our physicality, that intersects with the world. And without that, there is. So one thing I think people have trouble with thinking about consciousness, transcending death, is, well, without a body and without physicality, what uses it?

It wouldn't be human, et cetera, et cetera. But we don't know. Yeah. There's so much we don't know. So storytelling is intrinsic to us as human beings. I think I've rattled enough about that. Yeah, well, it's a, it's a wonderful topic and it's deep. And on some level, I think we're weaving a news story.

And I always ask people these questions because I'm like trying to get hints. Like I wonder what they think about that. Sometimes I look at my life. I've begun to take on this idea that's been very helpful. And I want to show this technique with people is that look at your life like a story. Where are you at in your story? And I've, I've recently come to this. this idea. You know, I used to, when I first came upon the idea, I was like, okay, yeah, I am

the main character in the story, and I'm trying to get the author's attention. As a few years ago, or even about a year ago, I realized, wait a minute, these are all the main characters, and I can reach out to all of them, and I can play their parts, and like, now I can co-create with them. And like, in some ways in my mind, maybe it's where I'm at in my life, or maybe the events is happening to me, but I feel as if this chapter is done and now we're creating this new story. But it's very empowering to see this third perspective of like, just look at yourself as a character in a story. You have to sit with it for a little while, but it becomes a very fun exercise to do. Do you see your life as a story? I can't help but because I'm wired

to do that. So yes, I do. And I assigned meeting to various parts of it in my own personal story. As I tell my children that I have a section called The Lost Decade. And that's just part of my story. But there's a form of journaling, I believe. Have you ever, when you're thinking about your story, have you ever when you either journal or do whatever instead of using first person I use third person? It's very interesting to write about yourself and say, he went to the store today, he did this, he did that. It takes you out of it and it gives you not so much a God's eye. It gives you a very different perspective on your day and on what you achieved and what you wanted to achieve. I've tried

that a few times and it's been almost disturbing at times. Why? I don't know. I don't know because if it wasn't, I guess I would still be doing it. Right. You know, but I mean, like right now, well, he had this interview with George and they click and they had fun and they enjoyed talking. And, oh, his earphones fell off the thing and busted in his computer. And, you know, you put it into third person and it changes things. So it's an interesting exercise to do. If you've not done it, I would say give it a try and see what it does. I bet you that can be very effective.

Yeah, I bet you it could be very effective in a mental health practice, you know, for someone who's trying to integrate traumas or something like that. Writing in the third person would probably be a great way to change your perspective on it and, you know, not have to face the traumatic action in a way that's super, confrontational. You might be able to just shift your focus enough by writing about it in a third person. You know, I think for all I know, that that's one of their techniques, they may do that. I don't know. I don't either, but they should. Sounds amazing. But I remember the first time I tried it, I, it was a long, long time ago, but I can't remember. It was disconcerting and it bothered me.

And I can't totally put my finger on it, though I can start to speculate about, well, consciousness. And I, and well, where am I in that? You know, the eye of us, of who we are consciousness, because it takes out that I. And suddenly, well, did I disappear? No, that's just me doing that. Well, what about the me who rides along inside this body? It does something interesting to our thinking.

And I haven't put my finger totally on it because I haven't thought about it in a long time. So now I'm going to think about it again. I toyed around a little bit with like the idea of automatic writing where you just sit down and like just start writing stuff and I found that to be a pretty a fun and enlightening exercise in some ways just to you know write out let's just sit down and start writing and see what happens and at first I'm like nothing's going to happen but it does like you can just start writing things and like sometimes it makes a lot of sense sometimes you have to

ascribe the meaning to it but there's there's such a powerful connection between writing and thinking that is really the more you do it the more it strengthens your things. thought. It's almost like your brain or your body is giving your brain permission to think about it in some sort of way. There's a weird body-mind connection there. Well, there is, and the automatic writing is somewhat akin to, I can vouch from experience that, at least as far as my writing style, when I do fiction, I don't know what the character is going to do. I sit down to start writing. They do it. I've heard people say that. heard many people talk about it until the first time I experienced it I thought well that's bizarre nah it's what I never know I may think I know and I may start out but at the end of the day they've gone in a direction almost as if they have a life of their own it's very interesting and I suspect some of that comes from it has a tie to what you're talking about that brooding

beneath our consciousness are many currents of subconscious thinking and unprocessed things and that those come out as well. So it's an interesting thing. Almost like green. You're putting dreams to paper. Yeah. Yeah. I heard I spoke with the gentleman yesterday who brought up the word co-creation again. He explained it as, you know, when something is riding through you and he used that he says like that's that's you and the spirit or whatever whatever you want to ascribe to the the muse the spirit you know whatever you want to use it's you being the channel through which you're co-creating with the world or the universe I thought that was a really wonderful way to put it and then he's like you know people get caught up when they think they control it like

that's when you get writers block is when you think you control that which is flowing through you it's like you shut it off in some ways you know but when you open up and you always and you allow the things to pour out of you, you're also allowing things to fill you. And it's just, it's a, I really enjoyed the way he described it. I was like, oh, that's a great way to put it. Because people who have written have felt that before. And it's difficult to put it into the language. What is that? Like, I sit down and I'm inspired and this thing happens. Like, it's, it's wonderful in so many ways. And you're awful. You're creating it with your creation. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of related a little bit.

And I don't know which philosopher this was. Gosh, this was back, I think, during my graduate school days. Someone was really wrestling with their identity and with all these philosophical questions. And they were asking themselves inside, well, who am I? And they heard distinctly inside, who wants to know? And I remember my hair stood up and I just looked at whatever book I was reading. And I thought of that many times since. You know, who am I in?

And I've not had an interior of always say who wants to know. But if that ever happens, I don't know what I would do. But there is something to be said about, yeah, we are multifaceted. And I saw something the other day that if you split brains a certain way, that fragments, I don't know where this came from, still retain total consciousness and total identity in disparate pieces. I don't know whether that's true or not, but it was an interesting thought. You know, where does the I identity of myself reside? Is it just the conflation of the various parts doing their thing?

That Hawaii identity is a fascinating concept. It really is. I suspect there's a non-locality portion that we don't thoroughly understand. I can go a long ways with that. There's a non-locality. Well, they're starting to impact a little bit with their thinking about quantum entanglement, having to do with consciousness. So maybe I'm entangled with the better version of myself in another universe,

or maybe all the stories of health. and of afterlife have to do with entanglement and things. Again, there's so much we don't know. Yeah. Yeah, it's so exciting to think about it. And I, tying it back to the Yes Project on some level, I think that what's beginning to happen is that we're giving the next generation the tools to conquer uncharted territory.

That's beautiful to think about. But I think getting the, you know, going back to the first part of the book, getting these different ideas. But more than that, getting the underlying idea of is, is better than not is. Getting some common ground for people to stand on. I think that's the foundation of which you can begin to build, because you can't even build anything. If you can't have a foundation to stand on, right? And I agree. That's certainly my thinking.

what can we agree upon? Yeah, we can agree upon that. So if I'm a Republican to use American language, I can agree that you as a hated Democrat or however people want to factionalize themselves, you are better than not having you. But really, what we're saying is existence is better than the preferable.

The latest thing I saw that I really like as far as quantum physics goes, there's some thinking that the Big Bang is not just the linear thing we think it is currently, that of course it's been floated, that there could have been multiple Bing Bangs and oscillations and all this. And I forget which physicist it was.

It was a lady, I believe, and there's talk around, an eternal existing quantum foam. And for various reasons, singularities can pop out of that and create universes. Whatever the truths or non-truths of the particulars of that, which are still too far out to discern, the idea behind it is again resurfacing, oh, something might be eternal.

And that's the thing that's interesting. Oh, we're thinking about, oh, something's eternal again. So I find that I'm processing that thought as we philosophically think about eternal versus non-eternal. But when, so is versus not is has to do with whatever the eternity is. Certainly, it could be said that is this thought better than not is. And then all of creation that comes after whatever singularities or whatever is that struggle to see is better than not is. Because all of it is fighting entropy. Some people will say it doesn't matter because it's all going to be not is at the end.

But then I just read another nice little philosophical piece about life is the only thing that takes briefly entropy in the universe and goes against the grain of what the universe is doing for a while. And perhaps at some point life can succeed in overcoming entropy. So in one sense, is as better than not is, is a cry of life stating existence is better than entropy and nothing. And so in some regards, the preciousness of life is that for that brief millisecond that life exists, it's declaring that the general negative nothingness is surpassed. And therefore, when we teach children, is better than not is, we're teaching life is better. And you see it in that book there. Life is better than non-life.

People are better than no people. Mountains are better than no mountains. All of it, if you will, a... a challenge, if you will, from life against entropy and in your face is is better than the entropy that you are declaring. So there's some some of that in there in ways that I'm still thinking about. That's, it's, I like the way you described it there. And why shouldn't that be a rallying call for everyone? Like life is better. Like we all, and we're all part of it. Like, what if we what if we saw it that way?

Like, what if we saw ourselves as life instead of this incredible, individualistic shard of life? You know, like, I'm a little bit more blue than you, you know?

Or like, what if we are just life? Like, like that just seems like such a beautiful rallying cry. Like, let's beat entropy. Come on. We can do it.

It is the rallying cry. It's the rallying cry of life that is as better. And traditions have put it, Of course, if you look within the Judeo-Christian tradition, that's essentially what God says. It's good. Life is good. It's saying it's better. And so part of, at least in that particular stream of thought, part of any kind of afterlife or whatever, is declaring that is going to continue and defeat entropy because is is is better than not.

is so you know that's part of the challenge of any singularity bubble is that life is better than nothing lots of places we can go here with some interesting philosophy but the nice thing is yeah these are discussions you can have with your 10 year old yeah i know it might be interesting to have like a group chat with like read the book with kids and an adult like in a setting you know in like a communal setting. And then this could really give way to, I could see reading it and then shutting it and telling a story. You know what I mean?

Like, let's pause right here for a moment. You know, this is a great jump off point? Does anybody have a story they want to share on this? Like, it could really be some cool segues there. Because I can say,

this is my is story. This is my challenge of life against nihilism. Certainly, I think it is, would be very apropos. in those settings, in school settings. I'm not naive enough to think that things of this nature will become a school curriculum. But certainly adults together could do a wonderful job with this,

not just the parent. It's a discussion worth having at all levels with all people. All cultures, all human beings, if we're going to survive, So many things we're challenged by right now. And let's try to do it with our children. You're at a perfect. You have a child at the perfect age for doing this.

Yeah, it's hard for me to believe my children now are all in their 40s. I can't believe it. Wow. Wow. Because, I mean, next month I turn 70, which I'm a very young 70, mentally and all that, and I can't believe it. But sometimes my body lets me know, oh, yeah, you're 70. But I still see my children, as all parents do, is still 15.

And try not to treat them that way. But I wish, personally, we did have these discussions in different ways. but it would have been nice to have sat down with something like this and had these discussions a little more proactively rather than just randomly as the moments brought them. Even though I think the effects, I'm very proud of my children and what they're accomplishing, but I would have liked to have had this back when I was raising children.

And I don't say that because I wrote it. I just wish something like this had been available. So, and maybe it was, and I just didn't know. Maybe part of it, maybe part of it is getting to manifest it so other people can do it. So like a younger version of you or a different version of you has the resource to do. Do you have grandkids? It seems like you should have grandkids that are right around that age. Well, I would normally, and it's always so funny when some of my more conservative friends will say, well, people meet me and they say, well, do you have grandkids?

grandchildren and always say no. Well, again, because we're all human and we come from that background, their faces always drop and they go, I'm so sorry. And I go, why? Why? But yes, I wouldn't mind, but by the same token, my children are more than likely not going to have children for a variety of reasons. And that's okay. The line ends here. but children are more than just your blood and your breeding as I found out a long time ago. So I have other grandchildren. They're just not biological and spread in different places. You got one over here.

Normally be probably a great grandparent by now. But you know, the nice thing about that is I'll never be called grandpa. I have been called grandpa, but not my biological. But you do feel younger when you don't have grandchildren and great-grandchildren looking up at you as old-bearded one. I still feel basically a contemporary with my children, which is interesting. So it is a little bit of a different dynamic. Yeah. Yeah, indeed.

Indeed it is. And yeah, I like the, what about, do you have any ideas for what the next book is going to start digging into? Have you gone down that road? If I kind of mapped out the maybe you could talk a little bit about without spoiling it. Like is there a way you can give us some. I have several in mind. And at first I was going to go a little bit more evolutionary psychology. And as I thought about my, nope, too soon, too soon.

Going to have to build up to that. Now I'm thinking about the next one, just as this one had quantum physics, Oh, well, that's dealing with the subatomic. Okay. What's the next level at which you deal with things? That's at generally the atomic level, and that's generally chemistry. So I'm thinking about the next one being around chemistry. I like it.

And I'm beginning to think about that and look at how. And then, of course, if you're going to do chemistry, then from chemistry, what's next? Biology. See, I'm giving this away. Somebody's going to run and write it, and it won't matter. because I'm not trying to be the bestseller. But I am thinking about the sciences. And I wouldn't have thought this until the last four years.

And I say this, this will betray me a little bit. But I am so blown away as a child of the 60s with the understanding of how valuable science is and the science methodology to have people culturally, not trust science and not believe science. the thing of the last four years around COVID and all that about science and not believing science, I didn't have the mental ability to handle it first. It sideswiped me.

I went, how could somebody not believe science? Well, I've thought about it since, and I can see how. I was so stunned by that that part of yes is also to, you know, continue the tradition of science. Science is one of the great things we have. And you blend science and philosophy. So I won't go on that too far, but I was absolutely stunned by the number of people I've met since who don't trust science. Now, obviously, it's not that they don't trust science. Right.

They don't trust the paleolithic manipulations that primates do with science. Right, right. That's the thing. So, but, you know, that's a discussion that's hard to have with folks. So again, teach children, science is okay. You know, let's let's let's not throw science away, but let's understand that much of the harm that we do, we do to ourselves. It's not what we think. And we do it for a broady reasons as we wrestle with and balance the triangle.

So all woven together at some point, if I have time, before I pass, I'll do sort of an adult book around the whole balance of triangle initiative. And that was going to be the next thing I did, but that's now been replaced by the Yes project. I feel very strongly about reaching out to kids now first and then doing that. Yeah, I think that that's where the change happens is the breadcrumbs for the children to follow or the, the nutrients for them to consume. You know what I mean? Yeah.

It's fascinating. Chuck, I love our conversations. They go way too fast. They do. You know, it's like sitting down with an old friend and being like, so what do you think about this? You know, I really enjoy them. And I'm looking forward to talking more about this book. I'm sure we could probably talk more often off here, but I would love to discuss some more

ideas that you have on it. But before I let you go, I'm sorry. Yeah, I was going to say, I'm always open to that. We can talk anytime. Before we go, let me do say one thing. Unless something changes, I'll be one of the authors on the Grace Swan Guild's book festival on December 8. So that's from 8 to 8, Eastern Standard Time.

There'll be 12 different folks talking about different. things I've written. So I will be addressing this then. We might put up, the thing that's going to support this is there's a website I created called my hyphen yes.org. It's in the book there that you have. If folks want to follow and keep up with where this is going,

and if they want to help give energy to this, subscribe at that website to follow that blog. It's in a blog format. It's more than a blog. But that's the place where I'm going to be dumping anything having to do with yes.

So I just wanted to put that out there. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about the Grey Swan Guild event coming up. Are there some other authors on there? What is this event? The Grey Swan Guild, this will be their second book festival.

festival. The Grace Juan Guild is my chosen tribe because they're just marvelous what they do. And one of the things they're doing is a book festival. And in this book festival, each person has 45 minutes to talk about their book. And they're going to be futures based. And I'll be the strange fellow out probably again. Because I'm going to be talking about yes. And I still haven't formatted exactly what I'm going to do. But I'm going to read through. yes out loud again and see how long it is. And I think I could potentially read it without hurrying in 15 minutes. And then we could talk about it for a bit and leave it open to audience discussion, that kind of thing. So that's coming up. The festival is December the 8th. If you go to LinkedIn, go to grace swan guild.org, I believe it is. And I can send you the link. Yeah, I'll put in the show notes. But as far as your audience is on LinkedIn is where I follow Grace Juan Gild. They have their own website.

There are 8,000 members strong right now. It was started during the pandemic with just a handful of people. And in some four or five years, it's gone from, you know, 15, 20 people to 8,000. It is a group of professional futurist, consultants, academics, people who, want to, who look at the future, try to see what's coming, evaluate, think. They have a consulting arm, and then they have the arm that's the guild where all of us are trying to do good in our own way to the world. I like them, as I told them one time, I said, you guys are like men's on steroids. You guys just go and do.

So I like them a lot. So I have limited organizations I work with because I don't have time. So the guild is where I give my time and my writing. And then a handful of folks I talk with, of which you're one of my favorite, George. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, the feeling is mutual.

and it's people should check out grace one they have an incredible people there obviously and the work they're doing is it's actually doing something you know they have a lot of momentum behind them and it's looking forward to seeing the other authors and yourself up there as well and seeing how the yes project continues to unfold and you know you've had two books out in like the last year so next year are you going to plan on having four you're just going to double it every year I'm planning for the nice thing about these children's book is They're short, fairly quick and easy to produce. I plan to do in 2024.

I would like to do four. We'll see. We'll see. I'm rushing against entropy myself. I'm having to hurry. Well, hang on briefly afterwards. I'll speak to you afterwards, but to all the people that are tuning in today. whether you're listening in your truck or your car or whether you're watching it live with us

or you're playing it back. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Go down to the show notes, check it out the Yes Project. Read it with your kid. It's a really great opportunity to co-create and begin seeing the world in a different way. So that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us. Aloha.