Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:06 Well, I, I think one of the challenges to, to where you're going with that is that when, when we enter into a dialogue, a, a true honest dialogue, we need to put our titles and our individual control factors behind us. You know, a president of a growing organization should be able to sit down with the brand new installer and get their perspectives on things mm-hmm <affirmative> and, and, and talk about the, what, why, how the business, you know, but, but that doesn't happen anymore. Cause you know, all becomes the focal point. And so in our consulting world together, how many times did I work with individuals that would ask us to do something, you know, for the government to move it forward, you know, to modernize. And then as you went down that path as consultants and did the objective analysis, talk to people, look at best practices and future technology elements, et cetera, et cetera, and put together an objective plan to, to achieve what you're asked to do.
Speaker 1 00:01:12 And then you present it to the individual that contracts you to do that. And they say, oh, well we can't do it that way because of X, Y, and Z mm-hmm <affirmative>. In other words, you're out of our box, you know, and, and you have to be able to do what we actually do within our box. And then the consultant response would be, but the box is the problem, right? But the box is reality, you know? And so you wind up again going around and around circles, spending tons of time and money to come back to the same place over and over again with maybe minor baby steps forward, but you could not do anything really fundamentally changing in, in, in, in that contractual environment. Uh, which basically meant that we as taxpayers are spending $10 for 50 cents worth of progress. And again, why is that? Because even at that level, dialogue could not occur. Honest, open, reasonable dialogue could not occur because of preexisting MAs uh, processes, culture, and, and most importantly control
Speaker 2 00:02:14 Mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. You know, you, you're sort of fond of saying the third, third of our lives, right? <laugh> we got daughters who are in their first jobs and, you know, growing to leadership positions, another generation that's gonna lead. There's another generation behind us. That's leading and ours are behind them. They're gonna lead. And we worry about what conditions will be like, how bad can this get,
Speaker 1 00:02:36 Right.
Speaker 2 00:02:37 Its pretty bad. Now how bad can this get? And I wonder thinking about systems theory to get into systems theory, but it makes me frames a question for me, which is in systems systems can take some number of impacts before and absorb them, right? You can pollute a stream, certain amount or lake you the air. You can, you can, you can, financial systems can absorb systems, can absorb some things until one more. And then they flip, right? And they could be some very substantially traumatic effects within the system. And everyone's like, what the hell just happened all of a sudden one day? Well it wasn't one day it was increments of impacts on the system that added up that nobody was watching where people were saying, Hey, watch this and other ones were going, it's fine. It's working fine. And then one day it all changes. What happens in our country. If the, if the system, how extreme could we keep getting before something flips before something cataclysmic happens?
Speaker 1 00:03:43 Sure, sure. We're seeing that right now. It just takes something that's on everybody's mind right now the price of gas, the price of gas is the end result of a plethora of factors that created the problem. And those factors didn't happen yesterday. Those factors have been coming on for many, many years now. And to your point a little here a little there, okay, well we'll make this adjustment and yada yada yada, and then all of a sudden you get to that one point and things flip. And now, you know, if you will say, oh look a year and a half ago when Trump was in office, you know, gas was less than $2 gallon, you know? And now look at it a year less, a little over a year later it's two and a half, three times that that must be Biden. And then Biden administration, Jed signed you.
Speaker 1 00:04:29 And I will say, oh no, it's Putin's problem. He did it. You know, you know, and, and again, you, you devolve into this sling arrows thing. Yeah. While everybody Ising about how we go to put food on the table and put gas our car at the same time. And they say, well, we all just need to move to electric cars. Yeah, that's the fix. Okay. All right. Great. A, not everybody has 55, 60, $70,000 sitting around to buy an electric car. But B more importantly, even if we all were in acquire electric cars tomorrow, the whole all would come to the stands jail, especially in the states because our electrical infrastructure will not support right. That added load on the current grid. You know, so what the administration society wants to be an overnight fix is really something that is gonna take years to affect. We did not get into the problem that we have today with the price of oil overnight, we are not gonna fix the problem with a gallon of gas overnight either.
Speaker 1 00:05:28 And it's not gonna be without pain or without cost or without inconvenience to do so. And that cost pain and inconvenience is tremendously exacerbated by the fact that we have not had that is dialogue over the last 8, 10, 20 years as this was slowly coming together. Now, if we continue to not have that dialogue, it continuously airs each other. What could be fixed or at least improved in a matter of years, maybe could take extra longer. Cause instead of posting on the real problem we're posting on who's right. And who's wrong and who's gonna fry as a result. Right?
Speaker 2 00:06:10 That's true. There's nothing that we're gonna do in our lives. And the public's fear that doesn't know vault trade offs. So if we want less dependence on anything or if maybe even less dependence, isn't the question maybe should be, what are the trade offs we're willing to accept? So if we have, we're not gonna produce everything ourselves in, in a self-sustaining way, that's not practical. So that we'll be, we will buy some things from other places. What's the, what's the advantages and risks of that,
Speaker 1 00:06:40 Right?
Speaker 2 00:06:41 Uh, you know, if, if, if we're gonna produce more, let's just stay on the oil topic, produce more here in the states. What are the environmental risks? Not that we don't talk about that, but what happens is the conversation is not very illuminating to me,
Speaker 1 00:06:55 Right?
Speaker 2 00:06:56 If the environmental let's say no and the, and the ones who want the production, who have a lot to gain by financially say, you're communists, it doesn't help me. So there're always trade offs. What's the, what's, let's have a conversation about the trade offs, what can be done to what degree of safety, like health environment safety with what of certainty? And where's the gray area. Let's talk. I mean, I, I want to know that I'd like to talk. I'd like to hear that conversation. I'd like to weigh in on that, but not the conversation that you highlighted now, the one we're having now, isn't helpful. The one we're having now doesn't illuminate anything. It doesn't teach us anything about what we should do next. We just keep having the same,
Speaker 1 00:07:40 But we have, we have a very short term fickle mentality here, and I think worldwide, but especially the United States, we want it now and we want it easy and we want it fast. You know, again, getting back to the adult education days, you know, we talked about faster, better, cheaper, and that's like the triple constraint. And, and, and in, you know, uh, project management management. Yeah. You, you can't have one or two without the other, you know? And so ironically, one of the things in the citrus PLA platform that I was looking at today, one of their primary points and it's right here is long term solutions. I'll read it directly. It says even when politically unpopular or centrist parties should always attempt to take a long term view of any issue, let's take getting, getting back to the gas station again. What, what, what is the knee jerk today coming out? You know? Oh, oh, well, you know, we're just gonna go down, down south and talk to our friend Mick Maduro, right? Yeah. Well, you know, president Maduro is the guy that we tried to destroy a right wrong, or otherwise only a few months ago when it was politically correct to do so, but now that Putin's war quote, okay. You know, has put the kibosh on cheap gas, which is in and of itself, you know, totally it's
Speaker 2 00:08:53 Right, right,
Speaker 1 00:08:54 Right. You know? Right. You know, um, but now, now we're just gonna pivot and go back to another enemy of the state, you know, a year ago and, and make them our friend again, because that's a quick solution to a bad problem. I know how about to your point, we look at a middle ground and forget the green new deal and forget to using oil for everything. Let's get to the middle and say, okay, we know long term, we need everybody. That's got gray outta rubbing together, knows that we should not be belching, EO card sauce and Cal farts and all that. And, you know, without, without some sort of longer term plan to mitigate those things for the bigger picture of climate change and economic certainties, et cetera, et cetera. But everybody, the folks says, let's find something we can implement within 30 days. You know, this is wrong, you know, should we move to electric vehicles or some new type of technology for our transportation needs? Absolutely. Can we do it in 30 days? Absolutely not. And to have that level of dialogue that says, we need to do just brings you into that circula
Speaker 2 00:09:58 Equation. Yeah. You just get with on,
Speaker 1 00:09:59 And again, the key points is none of these things that we need to fix right now are gonna be able to be done without cost in terms of financial, emotional infrastructure, like pain. We're going to have to go through some rough times, not the least of which is paying four or five, $6 a gallon for gas for the near term future in order to get from here to there and survive in the process. Right.
Speaker 2 00:10:23 So I'm always thinking, what can I do as an individual conversation with each other is good. We've engaged in conversation with others, mostly through some social media platforms. So you're engaged in a, in the dialogue. I mean, I think that's, I think that's what need to be done. You've been beaten the, the debt drum for a long time. It's just a message I've known you've been delivering for, I don't know, 10 years
Speaker 1 00:10:45 <laugh> yeah. At least. Yeah. Right. It's funny, you know, on Facebook, you get these memory things pop up and then it, things pops up when I'm talking about the national debt, you know, 6, 7, 8 years ago saying, how can we sustain this? This is impossible. And now I look at it today. And even, even I who tend the, my focused baby too much on that is I'm going, how did we get here? And furthermore, how the world did we ever not you and I, but our children, to your point. Yeah. Gonna get out of this mess while the first step is to quit using the term deficit to start using the term debt, you know, and
Speaker 2 00:11:20 Reframe the hell. I,
Speaker 1 00:11:21 Yeah, I got a credit card deficit, just like you do <laugh> but it's the debt that's gonna make us or break us. Right.
Speaker 2 00:11:27 I know though, over the course of the pandemic, you got frustrated. I think you got frustrated with the dialogue, with what was out there. Sure. And it was just so tedious and it was so ISF and became stressful and you didn't even wanna weigh into something in a reasonable way because it, you felt like it was pointless. We're through that. You know, the kinds of things you're saying today, I think are the ways a lot of people are thinking, and maybe not voicing enough, or maybe there's no coverage of what we're voicing. You know, if you're, oathkeeper, you're a proud boy and you, you, you do something, you get coverage.
Speaker 1 00:12:05 Right.
Speaker 2 00:12:05 You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1 00:12:06 Uh, streams, these streams get
Speaker 2 00:12:08 Coverage. Yeah. If you're right. If, if you're, if you're gonna occupy something where you get coverage,
Speaker 1 00:12:14 Right.
Speaker 2 00:12:15 So maybe there's a lot of people having the conversation, you and I are having that has been getting coverage. So it doesn't, we don't hear it. Doesn't sound like that's part of the, what American citizens are talking about, what maybe it is, but to the point you just made of what do we, when is this going? How bad could this get hows? How how's any, anybody gonna recover, whether it's us or the generation behind us, or the generation is behind them, which our kids, how people are gonna recover from this what's what do you see your role in it? What are you trying to do?
Speaker 1 00:12:45 Well, I, I think to begin with we myself, but the bigger picture need to stop the politicization of the, of, of everything. Right? And to your point about the pandemic, my frustration, I think a lot of America's frustration is it became a political football more than a medical crisis in a lot of ways. And in the middle of that, we've got other crises the same way, you know, a year, year and a half ago, two years ago, people were right and burning down buildings and all that, you know, and all, but that's okay because they're just, they're disenfranchised and they're, they're emotional and they're sad. And then, you know, the next thing, the pendulum swings, and we've got insurrection at the white house and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the folks becomes those tactical issues. When the question should be, did we get here?
Speaker 1 00:13:36 Why, why is any of this positive or productive for humanity and the United States of America, right. You know, how do we get back to a point to where we realize that we all bleed red? We all have good days in bad days. You know, we all have days where our chain looks better than others, yada Y yada, uh, things that really matter and, and, and remove the politicization of, of the left or right. Extremes as the focal points and could, and begin to focus on the things that really matter, not just for today, but for five years, 10 years from now, not for your future or my future, but for our children's future and their children's future, the long view once again. And if doesn't what you're about to say, or do doesn't pass the smell test using that as a, as, as the common denominator, maybe you need to shut up and think about it a little bit.
Speaker 1 00:14:30 So like, you know, in the work world, when we would get emotionally wrapped around the actual about one of those projects or whatnot, and you it's far off, you would write one of these lit emails, you know, spousing your opinions and white and blah, blah, blah. And what I learned early on was put that in your dress folder, go take a night off, watch little TV, have dinner, come back next day, read again. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, it makes some adjustments to it because when we lead with our emotions, we're not being our best selves, you know?
Speaker 2 00:15:00 Yeah. We're not even, we're not even delivering our best message in the best way. We probably could say some things better that would get the message across. And so not to back off of the, what you think and feel, but how you present it can get in the way, your own message.
Speaker 1 00:15:14 Yeah. It opened yourself up to the fact that what you feel today might be, you know, a little bit manipulated by, uh, what's going on in your personal life or what's happening in the world or whatnot in, in a near term fashion, the long term objective reality that will enable us to move forward. You know,
Speaker 2 00:15:36 I, I heard when I was a kid, I don't know if it's true or not. I heard when I was a kid that in American Indians or an Indian tribe, wouldn't make a decision without I recall it being about the environment. Wouldn't make a decision without thinking about how that would affect seven generations. <affirmative>
Speaker 1 00:15:52 Right. Like,
Speaker 2 00:15:52 Damn,
Speaker 1 00:15:54 Mm-hmm <affirmative>
Speaker 2 00:15:54 You can't think that far ahead, but it just makes you shift your perspective,
Speaker 1 00:15:58 Right? Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:15:59 Does. I think that's the thing that bothered me most about the pandemic. I understand it's your body. And I understand that you should be able to decide what you put in your body. There's a point there, I think is a valid
Speaker 1 00:16:09 Point.
Speaker 2 00:16:09 Sure. You also have some response of people around you who are outside your decision, but could be affected by your decision. None of us are gonna get in the car today and decide it's my car. It's my rights. I don't need to stop at that stop sign. That's right there. It says 25 miles an hour in this residential district. I fucked out, I gotta get to the, I gotta get to Wawa. I'm doing 50. We don't do that.
Speaker 1 00:16:31 Right.
Speaker 2 00:16:32 You some larger sense of, we give up some absolute freedoms for a better social, for a better societal right. Result and outcome and condition. I think that what you're saying is let's, if we stop politicizing everything, we could have that a little bigger take on things a little bit broader perspective. And maybe that maybe that shifts the dialogue.
Speaker 1 00:16:55 Absolutely. I mean, and then, and we have to peel that onion in a long way in order to get to it. But what you're talking about, there are two factors, first self importance, which we've talked about here today. I MYOP focus on what my individual needs are versus the needs of the big picture. And secondly, very importantly, trust trust in the system, trust in the vaccine makers trust in the politics, getting back to, yeah, that's the dialogue of Fs and as versus Fs, the science in that particular case, right? Fauci doesn't really matter when your relative is in the hospital, gasping for air, do they, we, we have to look at a bigger picture. We have to open ourselves up to the fact that prejudice is inevitable. Like we've talked about here today. Mm-hmm <affirmative> but prejudice is not a destination. Prejudice is an evolving journey. And if we open ourselves up individually to knowledge, ideas, perspectives that differ from our current perspective in prejudice, then we evolve our perspective in prejudice. Yeah. But if we shut ourselves off to being staunch, proud boys, or staunch green, new deal or staunch black lives matter, you narrow your focus to the point of where you are this in the bigger picture of coming together and evolving as a society. And that's what we've lost right now. I think
Speaker 2 00:18:15 Because I do think black lives matter. I do think if you have been in generations of, if you're white and, and, and maybe not educated and, uh, working class, and you've been in generations of a decrease singer, declining quality of life,
Speaker 1 00:18:31 Uhhuh <affirmative>
Speaker 2 00:18:32 That matters. I think if you, I think those things matter, but man, the way we're talking about 'em just doesn't help with any of 'em. Not
Speaker 1 00:18:40 At all. It makes it worse. Yeah. It makes it worse because now the dialogue is in that particular is subject matter. Is, does the black kid individual feel the way they do it cause of their repression and control against them? Or does, do they feel that way because they wanna leg up on everybody else in the world, you know? And, and that's, it doesn't work that way. Yeah. You know, it just, and, and, and we are not helping ourselves on the left or the right or in the middle by sustaining this type of divisive of, uh, conversation that we're having in these areas today. We've got to open ourselves up to the bigger picture or else
Speaker 2 00:19:17 For myself. One of the things I, I, I started the podcast six months ago is mostly for business reasons. I'm rebranding a practice and the podcast goes with what the practice is gonna be, but I didn't need, the podcast has to be about business issues or workplace issues or projects, or, you know, the idea of, I see what you mean, being that epiphany. That aha moment when I go, oh, then I see what you're I see what you mean.
Speaker 1 00:19:43 Right.
Speaker 2 00:19:43 Cause that shifts perspective
Speaker 1 00:19:46 Surely.
Speaker 2 00:19:47 Um, and so I wanted, I also wanted some of the episodes to be about no on work things. I, I, I'm trying, still trying to think about what I could do that would actually be useful in what we're talk in, in our country, in our society. Mm-hmm <affirmative> That I could do at my age that maybe make something better because the people behind us, like you said before, were just digging the hole deeper, not just financially, socially, politically, right?
Speaker 1 00:20:12 Every
Speaker 2 00:20:12 Way we're digging it deeper. And, and the people behind us have to climb out of it and I'm thinking, what can I do to help with that? And maybe that's why I was asking you specifically about when you change the conversation with somebody, how do you hear it go? I'm thinking maybe my contribution might be maybe try to try to change the conversation. I'd be, I'd be, it'd be fun to have some folks on the, on an episode who political views different from mine to have that open kind of dialogue that we're, that you and I talk about that we try to have just to see how it goes. Sure, sure. I'm not trying to drive it any outcome. I'm not trying to convince you that the border wall is good or bad. That's not the point.
Speaker 1 00:20:52 Right. As a matter of fact, that's the antithesis of the point because that's how we've gotten to where we are today. You know, I'm gonna come and discuss this with you and I'm gonna tell you why I'm right. And why you should listen to me and change your perspective, right? Yeah, no, we've come full circle on the right.
Speaker 2 00:21:06 You, you know, the saying agree to disagree. And I was talking to someone yesterday, Mika cross, and she's a federal workplace expert. And, and we were in a, in, in our prep that she used this phrase that we didn't even capture in the episode. And I felt I really regretted it. Not just agree to disagree, agree to how we're going to disagree. It's like, okay, that's pretty cool. That's actually well, and also
Speaker 1 00:21:31 Absolutely. And also agree to disagree as an incomplete sentence. Let's agree to disagree today, but continue the dialogue because, and continuing the dialogue that disagreement will become smaller and smaller, you know, but we don't go there.
Speaker 2 00:21:48 You know? And that's my thought about, I've used the definition of what does it mean to be on the same page I've used the definition of agreeing to take the next step comma together. That's how I'm using a definition of it's it's it's it's provisional. It's, it's almost, uh, checking it with people because I don't, I think that leaves some things out, but I'm trying to capture partly trying to capture what you just said, which is, okay. What if you and I were talking about the community affairs and the grounds and the budget for the community, right? Where we're talking about a political issue, we're talking about business issue. We might see something differently. That's normal,
Speaker 1 00:22:23 Right? It's healthy.
Speaker 2 00:22:25 It's supposed to be. And so if we have a conversation that says, well, damn, why don't we do a couple things to check out maybe our assumptions or our beliefs or our biases. And then we'll go do them together, come back and tell and learn and see what, what have we learned? What happened? Right. Take, yeah. Agreeing enough to take the next step together. I like your point about don't just stop with, to disagree. We're disagreeing. What's the next step. So that's always one of the questions I'd like to ask too about on the, on the podcast is getting on the same page. Isn't the outcome of everything we do. What if you can't, what if you don't what do you do then?
Speaker 1 00:23:03 Right, right. Look, we're never all gonna be on the same page. That's as ridiculous as where we are today in the Divi world, <laugh> the, the value of humanity and the intelligence that, you know, whether it, it was mud rubbing together or God given doesn't matter. The fact that these humans can agree to disagree and continue that intelligent conversation, as we've talked about, let's just use the Ukraine to close this off right now. People say, well, uh, you know, Putin is engaging Ukraine like this because he's worried because NATO's right on his doorstep and they don't trust it. They think that they're being like, well, that's wrong NATO. NATO's a totally defensive organization. And we would never do that, blah, blah, blah. Well then let me ask you a question. How would we feel if Russia were to build a huge military installation right outside of a van Cuba right now <laugh> which by the way, didn't happen, we almost fought a nuclear war on back in the sixties and the Kennedy administration. Right. For that very purpose. And we set the same thing. We can't have Russian missiles, 90 miles off our coast, you know, so what we need to work on again, is that trust factor with, with, with the Russian regime. Now, whether it puts a megalomaniac or not is a different subject entirely, but it gets back to dialogue again, where we talk about, well, why would you feel that way? And what can I do to help you understand that those feelings might be misplaced or misaligned that we can together advance our humanity, you know? Yep.
Speaker 2 00:24:30 Good point. Let's leave it at that. Thank you, my friend. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 00:24:33 Absolutely. Anytime,
Speaker 2 00:24:35 Always good con we've had many of these conversations. That'll be good. Record one. There's always enlightening to me and, uh, inspiring. And I like the principles that we try to live to and you get beat down. So you need some inspiration to aspire to them again.
Speaker 1 00:24:50 And the way to keep from getting beat down is to continue the dialogue. That's that's my philosophy. Anyhow, you
Speaker 2 00:24:55 Know, well said, well said my friend. All right,
Speaker 1 00:24:57 Everybody take care. Great day.
Speaker 2 00:24:59 You too. Bye bye. Right,
Speaker 1 00:25:01 Bye.
Speaker 2 00:25:02 And that's how we see at my friends. I'm gonna thank Dan for recording. Today's O you can find it at, I see what you mean.casto.com. Plus all the usual places, send questions and suggestions through an app. Subscribe and give me a five star rating unless you can't. In which case, let me know why enjoy me next week. When we take another look at how to get on the same page and stay there, unless we shouldn't.
