Yeah. That sounded good. I don't think I've I've saw that before. Yeah. That's a great it's a great creative studio. Okay. So I'm very happy to be sharing this time with all of you, and I really appreciate your spending your time, a very precious commodity. And I thought that we could just spend just a couple more minutes if we're waiting for people to see if you had any questions or what's alive for you or what you might be hoping for today. Maybe just a brief, I'm interested in this. I'm interested in that. If you're holding something, just just give it a shout out. And if not, then, yeah, then then we we can we can start with a presentation.

Yeah.

I don't know if you saw my hollow series where I talk about the modern concept of progress and how we have to be careful because language is really tricky, and we define progress as more complex. We define it as faster, more technological. And therefore, when we see life getting more complex and more technological, we say we're progressing. So there's almost a tautological thing happening here. And so we also define progress as what's in the future. So it's very hard for us to see things that worked really well in the past and see us as regressing from that. This is a modern very modern western mindset. So this notion of progress didn't appear until the axial age about 2,000 ago. So first of all, it's a really good question because we can frame it both in terms of language and historically. But what do I think as progress? So I have this, like, little phrase that has been with me for a long time, and it comes from a line in a book by Louis Zukovsky in this poem called a, and it's like a 700 page poem. And this one little line says, the sum total of things does not vary. And so that's an interesting way to look at universal energy or universal change and say, well, the sum total does not vary. Let's just put that as a placeholder. The other thing I wanna put as a placeholder as I circling around your question is this conversation with Tyson Young Caporta. And he says, you know, in his Aboriginal culture, they don't have this notion of progress. And instead, he used the word of increase. Now when I speak to students about that, I say, well, what does that mean? You'll they notice that it's very hard for them to think of what that means without putting in there the notion of progress. So what could an Aboriginal notion of increase mean if it doesn't mean progress? And in his book and I haven't have never seen him unpack this, You know? But when he's saying it, he's trying to transmit what he means. And so I wrote a chapter for perspective of press coming out with a book, this summer. And I use this as what does increase mean? What what is how can I give you the sense of increase without progress? And so I use a couple of different metaphors. Like, I say the way frost increases the flavor in the fruit, the way frost concentrates the flavors in the grapes, for example, in wine making or the way trouble enriches conversation. Right? Like, do you see, like, trouble is not necessarily progress, but when you're kind of working something out in conversation, trouble increases, right, the conversation in this way. And then another way is to think of the way pressure increases the carbon. Right? Makes it a diamond. So you don't you find that the word increase, we don't want to have quantities removed or added, but something has increased itself. So I would say that that's very close to what I would call success or, you know, if you if you fail and you learn something, something's been increased. And you could also use Christopher Alexander to, you know, in the right direction is what makes more life. Right? What makes more life? What has more life, what makes more life, what creates more potential for life, I would say is also, yeah, is also and life in general, I would say those are all phrases that resonate with with a metric I would use for preferred futures. If I'm going to steer a community toward preferred futures, there are always multiple. What are the kinds of metrics am I am I trying to work with?

And I would say also that when you have this metric, this internal metric, If you understand it correctly, it should resolve the the future investment versus the present moment dichotomy. Most other metrics, there is this paradox or this tension between, do we take care of it now or do we invest in the future, You know, ignore these consequences because we invest in the future or vice versa. And I think this notion of what has more life, there's a certain type of metric toward preferred futures that doesn't discount the present. You see them as they kinda slot in there in resonance. It's both the best for now and the best for the future. So I think that yeah. A certain approach to I think what if if you're responding to a situation what has more life in the moment, then it it's it's a question that's all inclusive of present and future. So yeah. So that's how I would look at that question. So and I and I like this framing, steering a community toward preferred futures. You know, you can't just hit the nail on the head. Those are gonna whichever one becomes a stepping stone is part of how it unfolds. But this notion of have having some clarity on what a preferred future is and have some shared understanding of that, I think, is really essential. Is there any follow-up to that? It's a pretty cool question.

What's our time frame here? I forgot I forgot what

Uh-huh. Okay.

And some preferred futures. What I'm gonna do here then is run through this rather quickly. And what it is is a model. We call them source code models or my new company soon to be launched, hopefully, is called the concentrator codes. So it's a way of looking at complex systems through fundamental principles similar to generative functions, if you know Daniel Schmattenberger's work. So this is a way to get some bare bones so we can design we and have some clarity around what we're designing for. And, yeah, it all starts with a triangle. And the triangle is I'm going to represent in this triangle something called self determination theory. This model connects the micro of the individual to the macro of the culture to the super macro of the institutions, and that's what we'll try to get through all of this, just by a presentation. I'm not gonna explain it. I'll just show you, some ways we work with this kind of material. So self determination theory is, pretty well established, and it's actually so fundamental. You see it everywhere. You see it in Snowden's anthropoclexity. People use different words. But, basically, from self determination theory, there's three aspects of being a human. Now what I mean by that is that we're both singular and plural beings. Right? So one aspect is our autonomy. And our autonomy means, am you know, am I a self moved mover? How autonomous I am means, do I understand my own needs and wants? Do I act on them without subconscious drives? Do am I self authoring? That's a word you see in integral theory. So to what extent I'm autonomous depends upon how self reliant I am. Do I know myself very well? Am I aware of my own internal processes? So this is this is a one aspect of being human, but we also have relationality. Now relationality is the capacity to be in relation with others. It could be humans. Let's just make it humans here. And relationality, we have to understand, is is not just to be in relation, but the capacity is how many ways can I be in relation to you? So can I be your leader? Can I be your follower? Can I agree with you? Can I disagree with you? Can Can I be beside you? Can I be behind you? The the more ways in which I can be in relation relation with with others is a measure of how my capacity for relationality. Okay? So autonomy, self move mover, do I'm a self aware, relationality that I can engage or or organize or participate with you in many different ways. So I'm not hooked on having to be the leader or the enabler or whatever. I'm I'm really have a multiple intelligence in this area. And the last part is agency. Agency has to do with action in the world. So do I can I achieve my goals in the real world? Can I actually produce from my own motivations the work that I wanna do? Can I manifest my hopes and desires? As you see, it's very interesting because the more I can be in relationship with you, the more I can get help. You can help me be active in the world. But they also have a certain they they can work synergistically. The more autonomous more autonomous I am, the less hung up of about what role I'm going to play when I'm in relationship to you. The more relationality I have, the more I can get, you know, 50 people from the neighborhood to help me with my bake sale. And so and also the more autonomous I am, the more agentic I can be very clear on my goals and choices. But there's also attention. We automatically spot the tension between autonomy and relationality. We automatically spot the tension between relationality and agency, and that is, you know, you have to get everybody on board. So why don't I just do it myself? So sometimes relationality can can create a lag in agency. And the tension in autonomy and agency is every time we try to go and do something in the world, the world kicks us back. And so we feel a little less autonomous, so we discover something about ourselves. Right? So one of the one of the things about when you're modeling real complex processes that are alive is that you will see there's always complex feed loops. Right? So they can both support each other or and there's a natural tension. So just like the brain has both it has positive it it inhibits and excites. And some of the exciting parts inhibit other things that inhibit other things, so there's a net excitation. All systems that you're building have to have complex feed loops in order for them to be real, in order for them to match the natural world. So this is something that we would really want to pay attention to. So that's and and, of course, that's looking at it from the viewpoint of one person. But if we have two per people and they are working together, this person has their autonomy, this person has their level of autonomy, their relationship has to work itself out, and then what gets done is emergent based upon

negotiation of these these sets these individual sets. So, for example, if if I want to move the couch and my but I can't do it myself and my husband doesn't wanna move the couch and what's happening is I'm thinking, you know, he never works for me, doesn't wanna do this, and he's thinking, oh, she's just a word. Her mother's coming. What's at stake here is our sense of who we are in this relationship. Right? So I could who's gonna win this? Or am I gonna be the what do we call it? The pussy whipped man? Or am I gonna be the little pouches and nag? So our autonomy is at stake as we negotiate this relationality. And if that can come into coherence, then the outcome, does the couch get moved or moved or not moved, is emergent. And the outcome then fixes retrospectively our identity in the moment. So this is I'm going very fast, but this is a very rich way to look at emergence and what goes on in human systems in order to negotiate an emergent outcome. So working with this, we can do the simple model. We can do a lot of things with it. And that is I wanna look at this model from go away. I wanna look at this model, sorry, from a different way. When I look at this relationship between autonomy and relationality, I see that this is the spectrum that I wanna call trust. And what I mean there is when you first, like, have a relationship, like, with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, And, you know, at first, you're deep into this relationship and you lose all your autonomy and you make you want the your girlfriend to call you up every day and you ritualize everything. You have to go out to dinner together. And so you're very heavily down in this sector, right, at first. But then the more you trust each other, the more you move across the spectrum. So the same with kids. You know? You don't give them the keys to the car until until you can trust them, and then you have them you slowly roll out more and more autonomy. When your child is young, it's the mother child or the parent child relationships highly structured. And then so trust is this a spectrum across relationality and autonomy. So it's how much range, how how how much can that stretch so that you can be your own self and we still feel in relationship. It doesn't threaten the relationship. So this is actually the trust spectrum. Okay? Now between relationality and agency, this is the power fulcrum. And I don't have enough a lot of time to go into this one, but, basically, when you negotiate negotiating relationality and agency, you go negotiating your needs and wants over your skills and resources. Right? Let me just your skills and resources. So everyone's power is their skills and resources divided by their needs and wants. This is what the power equation is. Now what's interesting about this is that we are very go good at increasing our power by increasing and developing our skills and increasing our resources, but we're too often forget that we can gain a lot of power by decreasing our needs and wants. In any kind of negotiation, if you decrease your needs and wants, you will be experienced as more powerful. Okay? So if this is one person's power equation and then the other person has another power equation, then the power of fulcrum will be the asymmetry between my power equation and your power equation. So that if you have a lot more skills and resources than I do, but I don't care, then I reduce my needs and wants. And so we have this you'll find and so this this is the better way to do this is to say this. So so needs and wants and skills and resources on both sides of the equation, and it's the power fulcrum between two people. So I'm just that one's less easy to understand, but this is just a quick presentation. So this is trust, and this is the power of fulcrum. And what this is between autonomy and agency is what is called the action threshold. And this is like a staircase. So I wanna be autonomous, so I don't wanna work in the world. And then I reach a threshold so I can go ahead and work in the world. And then I get pushed back because I fail. I come back. I center myself again. I work on my on my autonomy. I reorient it, and then I try again. There's a threshold and a step like, experience of getting better and better at, achieving these things. So those are the action thresholds. This is all, all mapped out in my work. But then just to finish, that's on the from self determination theory, we have the individual capacities. And then when we add it to a group, we have trust, powerful quorum, and action thresholds. And now let's look at it at a at a macro scale. At the macro scale, what you have if you have, trust here, power here, and action here, thresholds At the level of society, we see that all of these actually become institutionalized in every culture. So the function the the institution that establishes trust in a society is the governance or government. The institution that creates action thresholds in every society is the economy, and the purpose of the economy is to lower the action threshold. So if you think of every financial instrument ever developed, like a credit card or even even, currency, its function is to lower the action threshold. Right? So every economy is the institution that lowers the action threshold. Every governance, its function is to increase trust in the system, so lower the action threshold, increase trust. And the and and every culture has some kind of a social welfare system, and the purpose of the social welfare is to decrease the power asymmetry in the culture. Okay? So, and we know power asymmetry is and how do we do that? We increase skills and resources and distribute them fairly, and we decrease needs and wants, then this makes a healthy society. Okay? Now one last thing. What happens is this this system has very complex feed loops, which we should expect if it's an accurate model of institutions and cultures. We noticed that it's a model of the individual, a small group or collective collaboration at the level of culture, and we see, yes, every culture has institutionalized this. It's emergent from these properties. Now here's the kicker, and here's the thing that we have to solve. Oh, by the way, I wanted to say one of the problems in The United States is that the government our government has not been able to create trust. We have a failed social welfare system, and every intervention goes to lowering the action threshold. That's the only action logics The US has. Right? So everything gets off kilter, and I'll show you why if people just understood this and designed for this, you could understand culture. Here's the problem. As let's say the government is doing something good and it's increasing trust. Okay? As trust increases, the action thresholds go down. As we talked before, if I trust my kid, then he can act autonomously. And so this yeah. So trust increases, the action thresholds go down. As the action thresholds go down, people with more skill start to stratify above people with less skill. Right? This is like, you know, the problem with, you know, Piketty's critique of capitalism. People with more money get more money. So even if you all started equal, because there's inherent asymmetry in the system, then as the action thresholds lower, the this is the measure of the power asymmetry is gonna stretch like a string. This is a fundamental principle of complex systems. It's not because the man you know? I mean, of course, it gets in our in our minds in these kind of distorted ways, but it's a fundamental property of teams, for example. And so what happens as the power asymmetry starts to stretch its capacity, it self organizes a criticality, and the trust comes out of the system. You've all known teams where, like, they're really getting going, really getting going, and then all of a sudden, there's a group that starts to become more expert. And what do the other people do? They start to play politics. No. I think we should have consensus. Right? This is a natural reaction to adjust the power asymmetry in the system. And so what you need to do is before this criticality crashes and now your trust is going down, your action thresholds are way too high so you over regulate, you overprescribe, you over everything, What you wanna do is you need to jump in and be very creative about managing the power asymmetry in the system, and this is where education and social welfare and really good ideas come into play. And so it turns out that that's almost the only intervention that we have to do. The rest is kind of like a two cycle engine that can be churning on its own. So that's my little thing, and, yeah, I hope you hope you enjoyed

Software communities? I know there's there's a community that's trying to build the Tyran Collective.

trying to build I did this presentation, and I said, oh, now you coders. Don't go and try to code this. It's a natural process of human systems. But the train collectives trying to code with it, I think, on hollow. But most of you most of it's used right now for agile coaches in in understanding for example, understanding why a team falls apart and they used to be really innovative, and now they kinda slogged down into, like, everybody wants consensus and why there's a rhythm to that. And it also helps people understand that that their teams you know, you you can't you can't, for example, in a complex system, only add in positive feed loops. I'll give you an example. You can't teach antiracism year after year after year and solve it down the line because the feedback loops will fork, and you'll get more racists. It's okay. You can't have a system with only positive feed loops. They're they are going to fork in complex systems. So if you're creating code, if you're creating governance, if you're creating, you know, smart governance, you have to code into your protocols, a way to handle, the that the feed loops are gonna fork or else this the the virtual system is not rich enough to match the requisite variety in the human system. So that's way over you know, I'm just putting that into code is is way over my capacity, but it's definitely something to to think about. Yeah. You can't just iterate one feedback loop over and over again before it by it'll it will catastrophically bifurcate in a complex holistic system interdependent system.

Yeah. So did you wanna add that power? I that where the power becomes more asymmetric or just those two things?

That's an interesting question. You know, this is a model or a heuristic. It has no causal it it doesn't claim any causal causal mechanisms. You know? Like, why do people trust each other? Why do people have are autonomous? I mean, what so it what it does what the purpose of it is help clarify what's happening in the system. Right? So we know when what's the definition of trust? You know, I did all this really fast. We go through you can go through a trust exercise. And then what is the definition of power? We didn't start there. I just showed the model. And what is the definition of action threshold? And that is just how fast you can get into action. And then what we notice is that the more trust there's in the system, the lower the action threshold is. Right? So in agile, for example, in sociocracy, you can move from consensus to consent. That is a move that requires more trust in the system. It's just it's just what is. I'm trying to take reality and kinda say, can I abstract from it something that I such that I can get clarity around some fundamental principles? I guess there could be societies. I don't think there are any, but you could imagine aliens where the more trust in the system is, the more they hang out and get stoned and don't do anything. And that could be the way we are, but it doesn't seem like you know? So it's just a kind of a heuristic that helps us get through the complexity of all the detail and see, well, what's happening? You know? What's the what's the fundamental source code in which we can then yeah, we can help ourselves, you know, like integral theory. I don't know if you know integral theory, but it's just a map. So it it shortens the conversation because you can say, no. No. No. No. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking merely right lower right hand quadrant stuff. So this is what the model is for. It has no x it has no causal implications to it. You could read self determination theory and then go to the biology and see some, you know, causality around that. But it I could go further. It's also a model for self organization in all any complex system. So why do we self organize? We self organize to task demand of of we self organize so we can lower the task demand the to lower the energy load of any task demand. Right? So when I'm born, I can't feed myself. I self organize with my mother. It lowers the energy load of the task demand. We have psychological, task demands that we self organize with. We have physical task demands that we self organize with. And then you can see that these three pillars of self organization, actually, they're in in I mean, it's not anthropocentric, but you see that there's a a very similar use of this in terms of the the way energy propagates, for example, through an ecology. So it can get that deep, and then once you get there, you can start to overlay causal mechanisms. But I start with self determination theory.

have a

I would say, you know, it'd be interesting to characterize different countries on whether or not their bias is in one of those one or the other of those.

other words, what's the go to move in in in different countries? And so, for example, in Cuba. Right? Cuba's very conservative around lowering action thresholds. They're very they're they're they're very or the Quakers. They're very conservative about the ramifications of lowering action thresholds because you get big differences in power asymmetry. So what they do, for example, is they they have a lot of doctors in Cuba. They spend a lot of time educating doctors. So then there's not a lot of power asymmetry between doctors as a professional class and other and other. And hence, you go there, and they don't have modern cars. And they you know? And people go there, and they say, oh, it's a ruined country, because there's there's a sense of, yeah, of of they kinda understand that the Amish are the same way. They kinda understand that lowering action thresholds comes with its own own consequences. And so culture at large, all of these those three institutions are everywhere, but the balance in how they they understand the roles of the institutions are different in in different in in different, I would you know, cultures maybe, but a lot of this is they they they're dealing with the experience they have, and they're responding accordingly. It'd be interesting to see you know, you could get all researched up and see if the actual autonomy of these individuals is different. Like, does it really is it emergent from could could you make a case that people in some cultures are more autonomous, like I or more agentic and that's why it happens? I don't I don't I don't know. It'd be interesting to make that case. But we have you have to be careful because you just yeah. I don't wanna I it's I was gonna get too geeky there. But so that's how you would use it. It'd be interesting to look at it across different cultures and and different types of government. And yeah.

I wouldn't say steady state. I would say it's more like, you know, heart math. The heart is the best heart rhythm is a steady irregularity because I think that it's it's kinda like the panarchy cycle in ecology. The the the the ecological the ecology has to go through certain phases and then replenish itself. And so it's not that it's not to keep something there's no optimum line. The question is, given that we're gonna go through this, then what is our response? And to can we understand this as, yeah, here we are yet again, we're at this stage. And then what is our response to keep the ball roll rolling, to keep the game going, to keep you know, and you see this in all cultures. Like, you don't want no government makes it illegal for someone to start a company and get so big and good at it that they that they dominate it. But then you have the, you know, antitrust laws, which means but then once that happens, we gotta roll this through. But you don't wanna say, ugh. Every time someone starts a company and they're really good at it, then they make a lot of money and they have a lot too much power. So let's people shouldn't start start companies. You know? You you you go the point is is that you're gonna go through these cycles and these rhythms. And given that, can then we how do we work with the system that has has this rhythm and so that we can steer toward preferred futures. You know? And that will be different in different countries. You know? What do you could say, well, we wanna have really low action threshold and low power asymmetry. So we're gonna, like, just put all kinds of interventions into giving skills and resources to people and on and on and on and on. Even still, you'll find that there's a natural push pull pull there. You know? So, yeah, I I think that it's just to be able to we have to be careful not we we need to optimize for flow in through the system and also understanding. You know, people understood that these are system properties and not that, like, power asymmetry. You know, it's a question of, for example, equity versus equal opportunity. Right? Like, you can't the the system has to wobble or else it dies. Right? And so but the question is then how do you deal with that? How do you anticipate it? How do you keep injecting that portion of what the system needs? I mean, you we could have a a culture we could have such a a sophisticated surveillance culture of of, you know, no transgression and no trust that the action thresholds go way down. Nobody wants to start anything. Nobody does anything. I mean, think of Romania. Right? Pre Soviet Union. There was there's no industry. There's there's no innovation. So, yeah, just kind of understanding that all of these have to have their their part in the system, and and they emerge naturally in cultures anyways. But, what is the role? What is what is this group's response? Some groups, you know, some groups are just, like, clutchy. They think it's safe to have consensus, and, you know, that's their response. But they actually don't have any trust in that. You know? They have very it's a very low trust environment. Consensus is a very low trust environment that blows people's minds. Like, they're all feely feely, and they think they have, like, a good thing going, but it's very low trust environment. Yeah. So

Yeah. In some really high I was talking to a coach the other day. In some really high, like, risk, high reward, teams, the trust is so high that, like, if if somebody advocates three times in a row and everybody else thinks it's a bad idea, they're allowed to do it. I mean, they're just like, well, maybe it'll fail. But, you know, there's just there's just a lot of trust that that everybody's working at the edge and, you know, and and what does Elon Musk said? You know? He doesn't he doesn't he he he gently punishes failure, and he heavily punishes the lack of innovation. Right? So, yeah, it's different. Like, what's your preferred future? What's the situation you're in? What's the right rhythm and balance of these things for you? And noticing also that you can't, as your situation, your conditions, and things change look. Elon Musk, one of the things he did when he first started is he decided not to make rockets out of graphite or whatever, titanium. I forget what it is, but out of steel. And he found a way to found a certain kind of steel that doesn't expand the joints when it gets hot. Hence, their the rockets were really cheap to make or, you know, really cheap to make. So his plan was they would solve, like, 95% of the problem and send it up and and launch it. And this is why all his early rockets a lot of his great percentage of his early rockets crashed because they they could afford to get real data from real rockets versus trying to spend all this time simulating because they were building inexpensive rockets. Right? So this then then he started sending people to space. Right? The his whole different you know, he wasn't first, he lowered the action threshold and he right? Now there's it's a different game when you send, like, people up there. You're not gonna say, well, like, where do we get we wanna get real data, see if you die. We'll monitor your time of death. No. So

No. So it's you know, you have to it's context specific. And yeah. And and, of course, this is helpful because if you have this language, then people can say people are still hooked and lowering the action threshold can say, wait. We gotta stand back. The context changed. We, you know, we we we need to relook this and reboot the system. So, yeah, it's not a prescriptive model. It doesn't say it only it only hinges on what's your context and what futures are you what

Yes. So it's very Daoist. But, for example, I used to be in landscape construction, design build, and salespeople would we worked for, like, Henry Kissinger and Oscar de la Renta and Scott Rubin. I mean, we built, like, fantastic properties here in Northwest Connecticut. And so every once in a while and I did all the contract estimating. So every once in a while, the salesperson would come and with this beautiful drawing and, like, I had to you know, estimate it out and and and I would say, be careful. You want this job more than he does. You know what I mean? Because you're a designer. You want the job, which means when you go to negotiate the price, you're gonna get beat up. And these people, these executives at the top of their a list in New York are really good at smelling this. You know? And so if you're like, well, that's that's I don't know what to say. That's that's what it is. And your vibe is unwilling to walk away from it. You have a lot more power. Same thing once I was in a position where I was running a company. It was a start up, same landscape, construction. I'd taken the job, moved from New York City to take the job because I wanted equity in a company, and I was never gonna get it in the other company. And this the owner knew this. And at a certain point, we started doing really well, and I thought, he's not gonna get me equity. I just knew he wasn't because now, like, he was really greedy, making a lot of money. But because I was the business manager, I knew how much money he made, how much may you know, I knew all the financials. So I was making $85,000 a year. I wanted a $180,000 a year. Right? So I really just went through this process of, like, you know, I didn't I didn't wanna feel needy. I had to, like, be prepared because he was a real bully. If he threw me out, I had to just be, like, stoic and come in and blah blah blah blah. These are the numbers. If I push too hard, he would have a fit and fired me. You know? And so I had no leverage over him. But that I mean, you could say that is is a skill to lower your needs and wants. But the other thing in terms of cultural, like, when you come from this place, you know, Daoism is, like, literally, if you're gonna kill me, and I'm like, whatever. You know, there's a story of the Daoist samurai meets the guy, does not have a fight, and his teacher says, don't do anything. And the samurai goes to, like and the and the guy doesn't do anything, and the samurai because he doesn't care if he lives or something. But and then one last story is from this from this orientation, when you see people on Occupy Wall Street or these kids, like, give me free education. Give me this. Give me that. Like, the people in Wall Street, they just laugh because they have no power. They're they're they're completely disempowered. Give me give me give me give me. You know? Give me free education. It's completely disempowered position to negotiate from.

for for

All. Have a great day.