We are in a time where complex systems are breaking down without our society, and yet we are looking at these problems with an overly simplistic and reductionist lens that is causing us to fail to recognize what the problems we face actually are. Engaging the spirit of creating a set of solutions and societal design that is advantageous for all would be key.
To do this it’s important we become aware of our bias, ideologies and adopt a more complex problem solving frame as the nature of our systems, humans and nature is all complex.
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Transcript
Joe Martino: Welcome to another episode of the Collective Evolution podcast. here we’re going to continue our exploration into some of these deeper, themes and various concepts and frames of looking at things as we explore this question of how do we create, ah, a more thriving world, for example. And, you know, we’re going to be talking today about probably one of my favorite subjects or set of.
Joe Martino: Subjects as they all kind of relate.
Joe Martino: To each other, that I’ve loved.
Joe Martino: Exploring over the last 15 or 20 years.
Joe Martino: And it relates to this idea of.
Joe Martino: Interconnection and complexity and systems, as.
Joe Martino: Well as, you know, sort of what birthed out of that for me was a bit of a pathway to change. and when we talk about that, we’ll go back to a project that, we started way back in 2010 that, some of you might remember, but has, been sort of on the back burner for quite a while. But this is, I think, one of the most important subjects because we’re looking at, as a society, a breakdown of so many things happening in our world. and our world and the systems.
Joe Martino: We have are actually complex systems.
Joe Martino: And as these complex systems break down, we seek solutions and we want to know what’s going on. But oftentimes we have a very simplistic or reductionist view, of our complex systems, thinking that there’s something where you.
Joe Martino: Can change one thing and the whole.
Joe Martino: Thing will just, you know, fix itself. And this frame of looking at things is not solving the problems because we’re missing not only the complex understanding of our systems, but that the nature of.
Joe Martino: Our systems as a whole and the.
Joe Martino: Worldviews that drive them are actually not producing a world that we are trying to create. It’s limited to producing exactly what it is producing. And, the more we begin to.
Joe Martino: Understand the nature of our systems and.
Joe Martino: How we need to change the way we look at them, the more we.
Joe Martino: Can clearly define the problems that we do have and thus bring about the solutions.
Joe Martino: So by talking about this, we are.
Joe Martino: In essence creating a frame of mind.
Joe Martino: A frame of being that allows us to define our issues much more clearly, such that we can actually solve them, as opposed to a poorly defined problem that we’re not solving, with the solutions that we create.
Joe Martino: So that’s kind of what the importance.
Joe Martino: Of these topics are. And I want to talk about this, initially with a bit of a example. It’s a story that actually happened real life at a Mastermind. I was at business, Mastermind. It was a great event. Lots, of Great people there. And, we were sitting around a campfire at one point and somebody asked me about, you know, the future collective evolution. And this had to have been in maybe 2017, maybe 2018. And, you know, they’re asking me my thoughts, hey, what are you going.
Joe Martino: To do moving forward?
Joe Martino: What’s your big vision? You know, what’s this, that, whatever. And I can’t remember the exact conversation, but I responded with something as simple as, you know, I hope there is a time where collective evolution is not needed. And what I meant by that, and that sort of had a little bit of a, you know, taken aback reaction from the audience.
Joe Martino: What, I meant by that was.
Joe Martino: That I wanted to see a time where the purpose of what I created.
Joe Martino: So I created collective evolution to solve a problem.
Joe Martino: Well, technically to address many problems, but, you know, one of them was creating better communication, better dialogue amongst people, improving the way we navigate the news and information landscape, that is improving sense making. another one was to sort of.
Joe Martino: Reframe or reexamine some of our worldviews.
Joe Martino: And bring in this question of personal transformation. Like, there was a lot of different pieces to the puzzle, but generally I wanted to ignite these conversations.
Joe Martino: That was the purpose, to ignite these conversations within people.
Joe Martino: And then maybe others would pick up.
Joe Martino: On the various types of conversations that we were igniting and create more specific solutions for each one of these things.
Joe Martino: And if there came a time where we didn’t need to ignite these conversations anymore either, collective evolution would cease to be, that is, it, would solve.
Joe Martino: The problem because we were focused on solving the problem. That was our goal. Solving the problem of let’s ignite these conversations are not ignited.
Joe Martino: Let’s ignite them.
Joe Martino: Right? And if that was done, then collective.
Joe Martino: Evolution’S purpose would be done.
Joe Martino: Or you would take collective evolution and you would change it to do something.
Joe Martino: Totally different, to solve a new problem or a new, set of challenges that we face, right? To explore a new set of ideas. And the key there was this world.
Joe Martino: View, I guess, or this feeling that.
Joe Martino: I had, which was that when you create something, you shouldn’t be, you know, focused on just maintaining it and making.
Joe Martino: Sure that it stays forever and making sure that it lives forever and making.
Joe Martino: Sure that we justify its necessity. Constantly, constantly, constantly. But more so, are we actually trying to solve something? And if we are, let’s go and tackle that and do that. And when it’s time to move on, it’s time to move on. And this is an important concept as we go into this because we have to have that level of really looking.
Joe Martino: At what is the purpose of what we’re doing in our society and what the systems are.
Joe Martino: And are they actually, when we set.
Joe Martino: Up solutions within our system right now.
Joe Martino: Are we setting them up to solve things, or are we setting them up.
Joe Martino: So that someone can justify that? We keep needing them over and over.
Joe Martino: And over again because we need to.
Joe Martino: Have jobs over and over and
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Joe Martino: over.
Joe Martino: Again because we build an egoic structure.
Joe Martino: Sometimes around our ideas that we need to justify it over and over and over again.
Joe Martino: But we’re not actually solving what we’re seeking to solve. So this is, hugely important as we, as we discuss this moving forward.
Joe Martino: And so we see within that there’s.
Joe Martino: This subject of a cultural enlightenment. to some extent that needs to occur, as if we’re going to be.
Joe Martino: Changing the way we view things and.
Joe Martino: We’Re going to be looking at things in a societal, way where we need to solve some of the systems and some of the structures that we have. and we have a society, we have a culture that engages in a particular way with how we decide to.
Joe Martino: Engage in politics, how we decide to.
Joe Martino: Engage in something like education or something like academics or science or whatever, all these different fields that we’re all engaged within. If we’re going to have a new frame, a new worldview through which how we’re going to look at these things, then this needs to happen at a cultural level.
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: We need to culturally begin to discuss what we’re going to discuss today, which is, you know, understanding our systems on a deeper level, understanding the complexity.
Joe Martino: Involved and having the desire of really.
Joe Martino: Solving problems as opposed to the desire of, I just want my side to win, or my political sphere, to win or whatever it might be. We need a cultural change, a cultural enlightenment. These discussions need to happen at a cultural level, at a deeper level. And so, you know, really this is.
Joe Martino: About not just this podcast helping to.
Joe Martino: Do that, but many other podcasts and other people’s work that are seeking to do the same thing, is ultimately looking at producing this cultural change. So it’s not just a small group of people talking about this, but many, many people in our culture talking about.
Joe Martino: This and sort of shifting and changing.
Joe Martino: And seeding, the way we view our world is a really important part of this process. So, I want to say here again, as we talk about our systems, the systems around us are not set.
Joe Martino: Up for us to thrive.
Joe Martino: I think I mentioned that in one of the previous episodes. That when you really take a close look, our systems are meant for economic growth. They’re meant for, you know, sort of this, this constant pursuit of more, more, more, more, more.
Joe Martino: The nature of the systems itself, whether it’s capitalism and the way we build.
Joe Martino: Everything out of that, it’s set up to do that.
Joe Martino: It’s set up to incentivize that.
Joe Martino: It’s not set up to produce a thriving individual. It’s set up to incentivize the destruction of people.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: For, for the economy, the destruction of our commons, which is something like nature for the economy.
Joe Martino: And even when we try and insert.
Joe Martino: Solutions like, well, you know, that company.
Joe Martino: Isn’T allowed to go and hurt the environment that way. They’re trying to find a workaround to.
Joe Martino: That loophole, because they’re incentivized to do so. They’re, sorry, they’re trying to find a workaround to that, regulation because they’re.
Joe Martino: They’Re incentivized to make more and more money.
Joe Martino: And in fact, the system pushes them that they need to make more and more money.
Joe Martino: So we’re finding ways. The nature of our system is let’s find ways to get around the regulations.
Joe Martino: That we set up to protect the environment because it’s not really economically viable to continue to do things under such tight regulations.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: So this is in essence getting into understanding that the nature of our systems.
Joe Martino: Is not setting up the world to thrive. It’s not just about corruption, it’s not.
Joe Martino: Just about evil people or, you know, a bad cabal per se, but that it’s about looking at the underlying nature.
Joe Martino: Of our systems and the worldview that.
Joe Martino: Drives them and kind of getting to this level of understanding what needs to go on. Like I mentioned at the beginning, when we begin to understand how things actually function and the interconnected relationships that are going on back and forth, we begin to clearly see that this is what.
Joe Martino: The problem is, or here is what the set of problems are. Let’s now talk about the solutions.
Joe Martino: Because what’s happening is as people are beginning to notice in a big way that there is something seriously wrong with.
Joe Martino: The underlying nature of our systems.
Joe Martino: And there is a deep meaning crisis.
Joe Martino: That is being produced as a result.
Joe Martino: And people are not thriving, people are not doing well. There’s increase in mental, challenges. There’s, there’s just, there’s stuff all over the place that is happening.
Joe Martino: People are not thriving.
Joe Martino: And as this continues to happen, we’re.
Joe Martino: Seeing complex systems, which is what our world is, break down and they’re breaking down into so much polarization, into so.
Joe Martino: Many issues, exposing the various underlying, sort of challenges that we have in navigating our world.
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: We want to be very black and.
Joe Martino: White in our thinking. We want to be very tribal in our thinking.
Joe Martino: And these are producing these issues. So we ultimately need to begin to kind of understand what’s happening. Because there’s this felt sense that something.
Joe Martino: Deep needs to change.
Joe Martino: And when you start looking really closely at it and you start really getting.
Joe Martino: A magnifying glass and looking at the.
Joe Martino: Nature of our challenges, you start seeing.
Joe Martino: All this interconnectedness, all this complexity.
Joe Martino: But you also begin to see that it’s likely the case that our systems.
Joe Martino: The entirety of our systems need an.
Joe Martino: Overhaul, need a very big change. Because they’re not producing a, state where we’re going to be, you know.
Joe Martino: Around in a meaningful way, say, 50.
Joe Martino: 100 years from now. And I’m not just talking about, like.
Joe Martino: Climate, change or anything. I’m talking about really look at the nature of what is degrading the quality.
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Joe Martino: Of life, the quality of our mental state and all these sorts of things. The polarity, the, push towards potentially more war. You know, how long before the quality.
Joe Martino: Of life all over the place is. Is really not that great.
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: and that’s kind of why there’s.
Joe Martino: This need to look at the entirety of the systems.
Joe Martino: And people who are taking the time to look at that are starting to understand that, yes, our systems need an overhaul.
Joe Martino: And we’ve been talking about this for.
Joe Martino: A very long time. I know a lot of other people have been talking about this. Even people before, you know, we ever started collective evolution had been talking about this in books. And Buckminster Fuller was really big on these ideas. This is all over the place, right?
Joe Martino: This is not a new idea.
Joe Martino: There’s nothing novel that I’m sharing here. but there are different ways of looking at.
Joe Martino: At it and framing it.
Joe Martino: And one of those ways is actually one of the deep challenges that we have right now. Is the fact that the Great Reset and Klaus Schwab, right in this whole discussion has sort of come along. And in some ways, I think this sort of 1%, if you will, or this very powerful elite group of people around the world. Are actually trying to hijack this conversation.
Joe Martino: Of new system and new societal design and pull it away from grassroots and.
Joe Martino: Independent thinkers and bring it into, this very sort of, again, sort of controlling authoritative technocratic worldview that is trying to frame the conversation around we.
Joe Martino: Know what’s best we know that this deep change in our system needs to.
Joe Martino: Happen, and we’re going to do it for you. And we’re going to kind of tell you what it’s going to look like and where it’s going to go. And the reality of the situation is you’re going to find out that as you explore this question a lot more, what a lot of people like myself and others out there who are having.
Joe Martino: These ideas and are talking about these.
Joe Martino: Ideas are going to say things that.
Joe Martino: Are going to sound a little bit similar to, like what Klaus Schwab and.
Joe Martino: The Great Reset and what these guys are saying. Because they’re, in my view, to some extent, they’re trying to hijack the conversation.
Joe Martino: For their own interests and their own agendas.
Joe Martino: And by nature of what we’re talking about here, it’s going to sound similar. And it’s going to be important for us again to be able to dive into this complexity, to be able to dive into nuance and be able to hold different perspectives and understand where one might lead versus where another might lead versus just saying, well, if you’re talking about redesigning society, you sound like Klaus AH Schwab, you sound like the Grace.
Joe Martino: Reset, therefore you’re bad, and we’re going to throw you out.
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: And that’s a lot of what is happening in our world right now is.
Joe Martino: This very black and white thinking that is not leading us, anywhere meaningful.
Joe Martino: And I do believe that it’s upon us as a citizenry to understand what’s.
Joe Martino: Happening and we be the ones to engage with creating this new world and then not just leave it up to.
Joe Martino: Hey, I voted, therefore I’ve done something meaningful.
Joe Martino: No, no, how do we actually engage? How do we actually be part of this?
Joe Martino: And if we don’t begin adopting an.
Joe Martino: Understanding of what’s going on within our.
Joe Martino: World and improving our ability to understand these complex situations.
Joe Martino: And I’m not saying you need to understand the entirety of the world, but.
Joe Martino: Just being able to understand the principles.
Joe Martino: Of looking at things from a more complex manner. I think we’re going to be.
Joe Martino: Guided towards something that isn’t ideally the.
Joe Martino: World that, that we want. So we have to move out of this simplistic thinking, start developing a little bit more of a, of a complex understanding of what’s going on and move forward there. so let’s start defining some key terms here. looking at, for example, complicated systems versus complex systems. So a complicated system is something like a car, right? This is a sum of parts that, that creates a Whole. And when you, for example, take a.
Joe Martino: Spark plug out of a car, you.
Joe Martino: Know that it’s going to stop working, the engine is going to stop firing. You have a pretty good idea of exactly what’s going to happen if you remove a spark plug from a car.
Joe Martino: And many of the parts within a.
Joe Martino: Car, you know what’s going to happen when you take something out versus a complex system is something where it’s a.
Joe Martino: Whole, but it’s not necessarily just a.
Joe Martino: Sum of parts, it’s a hole that.
Joe Martino: It’S much harder to understand.
Joe Martino: It’s much less, predictable of what.
Joe Martino: Would happen if you remove one part.
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: So nature, for example, is a complex system.
Joe Martino: The nature of our, of our entire.
Joe Martino: societal systems are complex.
Joe Martino: Human beings are complex systems.
Joe Martino: Our bodies, right? And what this essentially means, like if you were to take, for example, squirrels out of a forest, what exactly what.
Joe Martino: Will happen to that forest?
Joe Martino: What will happen in one year, two years, three years, four years, five years?
Joe Martino: We don’t really know. We know that there might be some.
Joe Martino: Disruption of the food chain and you might be able to, you know, sort of scratch your head and make some estimations of what would happen, but you don’t really know what’s going to happen to anything from the insects to the other animals, to the food sources, to the plant life, to the soil. You could have, over the course of five or 10 years, something you could.
Joe Martino: Never have predicted by removing a single element.
Joe Martino: And that’s because it’s a complex system that is much more difficult to, navigate and diagnose what’s going on.
Joe Martino: Right now.
Joe Martino: Humans are looking at our societal structures as a complicated
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Joe Martino: system where you can just go and touch one part and fix it and nothing’s going to happen. Downline versus our societal system is a complex system. We need to start understanding that you can’t just fix one thing over here and expect that you’re not going to break a few things over here. And we saw this a lot with, COVID 19 and lockdowns and how, you know, people were.
Joe Martino: We had this reductionist world view of.
Joe Martino: Obsessing over reducing cases, reducing cases, reducing cases, reducing cases, reducing cases. And we saw this over and over and over again. And so we not only built a whole population to accept this idea of lockdowns, but you even had experts thinking it was a good idea, regardless of so many, you know, experts trying to say, hey, I don’t know if, you know, lockdowns are a great idea given.
Joe Martino: This nature of this virus or given.
Joe Martino: The nature of this pandemic, we might.
Joe Martino: Actually create a lot more problems downstream.
Joe Martino: Within our complex system than we realize. And of course, that’s what we’re seeing happening, right?
Joe Martino: We’re seeing huge amounts of damages that.
Joe Martino: Are happening, you know, down the line that will probably happen from years or, for years moving forward. And the damages that occurred there are likely going to be much worse and probably are much worse than what occurred, with COVID 19. And what probably would have occurred had we had just done focus, protection, and not necessarily, you know, these harsh lockdowns.
Joe Martino: And so here’s an example that’s very recent, that’s very new, that we just.
Joe Martino: Saw, where understanding the complexity of.
Joe Martino: A system and not just your political.
Joe Martino: Worldview, if your political worldview is, I believe in freedom. I, you know, I don’t want to, have lockdowns because we should. We deserve to be free. Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you.
Joe Martino: Have a clear understanding of the complexity of a system and how different actions.
Joe Martino: Are going to go on. It just means that you have a.
Joe Martino: Belief system about how freedom should look. And yes, you might have been right about freedom in this particular case, producing.
Joe Martino: A bit of a better outcome. But what about the next time?
Joe Martino: What about a future instance or something.
Joe Martino: That happens down the road where things are a little bit different?
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: It’s important that we take a step back and we get out of ideologies and into kind of understanding at a more, I would say, mature level what is actually going on, in our world. and this kind of includes the.
Joe Martino: Discussion at the end of the day.
Joe Martino: Of why lockdowns, you know, why did we have, potentially the suppression of treatments and all these sorts of things. When we talk about COVID is getting.
Joe Martino: Back into incentive structures, Right. Our systems around us and why they need an overhaul is because they’re incentivized.
Joe Martino: To sort of produce destructive or bad behavior.
Joe Martino: There’s a lot of incentive there.
Joe Martino: Now, it doesn’t necessarily mean that every pharmaceutical company is somehow, you know, unknowingly.
Joe Martino: I’m saying this isn’t 100%. Sometimes people are doing things, taking actions.
Joe Martino: Not knowing what the intended, what the consequences will be.
Joe Martino: Downline.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: Sometimes they’re just so focused on, okay, you know, this is what we’re supposed.
Joe Martino: To do, because this, this is what’s.
Joe Martino: Going to make us money.
Joe Martino: And they don’t see what’s going to occur. And then when they see what occurs.
Joe Martino: They’Re like, well, there’s not a good incentive for us to actually fix the problem because it’s actually cheaper for us to just pay a lawsuit than it is for us to pull this drug off the market.
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: So in a lot of cases, there’s incentive structures built within our economy,
Joe Martino: Within our societal systems that are producing bad behavior, that are producing things that we don’t necessarily desire.
Joe Martino: But companies can’t easily not join those incentives because if they decide, you know what, that may not be the best thing to do, they start finding out.
Joe Martino: Very, very quickly that they can’t compete.
Joe Martino: In the marketplace very easily because somebody.
Joe Martino: Else will go and take the incentive and do that.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: They will follow in on what the game of the system is allowing them to build from.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: Like if they’re able to build off of doing things that are not the greatest, then you’re at a disadvantage by.
Joe Martino: Not playing that game. And we see this a lot with social media.
Joe Martino: Social media began as this beautiful place to connect and do different things. And that’s kind of the vision that we have of it.
Joe Martino: And you could see that, hey, this was a great place.
Joe Martino: I remember when Facebook first started and how useful it was for our business and how much, we gained in terms of connecting with people all around.
Joe Martino: The world and bringing different ideas and different discussions.
Joe Martino: But then we started to see that, well, they brought in personalization, engines, they brought in, this idea of advertising.
Joe Martino: And when the advertising came in, the incentive structure was now to make more money.
Joe Martino: And so the companies were now incentivized to keep people, on the platform.
Joe Martino: And when you mix in the personalization, now all of a sudden the company.
Joe Martino: Is like, well, if I personalize, I.
Joe Martino: Get people addicted to the platform and they keep going down this rabbit hole. So that starts to break down sense making.
Joe Martino: But at the same time, I’m now getting so clear on the data of who this person is so that I.
Joe Martino: Can sell them to their eyeballs to an advertiser. So now the money, the incentive struct.
Joe Martino: Of that social media engine is actually
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Joe Martino: producing a situation where the person is.
Joe Martino: Now going deeper and deeper and deeper into bias.
Joe Martino: And they’re going deeper and deeper into sort of, the self affirming,
Joe Martino: Bits of content that are constantly just.
Joe Martino: Reaffirming how they feel.
Joe Martino: But you’re also hijacking people’s consciousness through usually emotion and drama and virality so.
Joe Martino: That they actually get into a physiological state where they become addicted to the platform itself. So you’re creating all these downline aspects of bad health, of bad mental states, of bad sense making. In exchange for the social media engine.
Joe Martino: To make money off advertisers. So the incentive structure of our system produced that end result of an entire society of people that are hijacked by.
Joe Martino: Social media and who don’t know what’s going on in the world because they’re so stuck on social media engines giving.
Joe Martino: Them the same piece of information over.
Joe Martino: And over and over again to keep up their bias that breaks down communication, more polarization.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: So what do we see there? We saw that you think generally we think that the issue is, oh, well, you know, it’s just that, or it’s. It’s just this one thing over here, or people are just dumb, or people are just this. Or people are just. We have all these, like, singular ideas that we might throw at the problem.
Joe Martino: Social media companies are just evil.
Joe Martino: But really what’s going on is the.
Joe Martino: Social media company was incentivized by the system as a whole. And if they didn’t do that, another.
Joe Martino: Social media engine would, and their social.
Joe Martino: Media engine would become irrelevant.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: So you now have this race to the bottom dynamic, and there’s an article on collective evolution, that I wrote.
Joe Martino: About, this race to the bottom dynamic.
Joe Martino: Which is really just this idea that.
Joe Martino: The incentive structures of our system are.
Joe Martino: Kind of encouraging all of these different.
Joe Martino: Businesses in whatever industry to produce the cheapest of cheapest of cheaper product so.
Joe Martino: That they can compete the best in the marketplace.
Joe Martino: Because if they’re not going to produce.
Joe Martino: The cheapest product and create the biggest margin, then somebody else will. And there’s very few, like, industries that can sort of rely on this sort of triple bottom line where you can, you can say, hey, you know, I can care about this, care about, I can care about, my bottom line. I can care about the profit, and I can care about the sort of the quality of the product. So that the quality of the product is good for the people, but also good for the environment.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: It’s very difficult for a company to do that in a lot of industries.
Joe Martino: So they have to compete. So the race to the bottom is.
Joe Martino: This idea of how do I create the most dominant monopolizing structure? Because if I don’t do it, someone.
Joe Martino: Else will, and then when they do it, they will have a power over me and be able to dominate me in the marketplace. The nature of our systems are producing that dynamic. How do we expect a better world? If the nature of our systems are literally incentivizing companies to produce that dynamic, they’re incentivized to hijack our consciousness they’re incentivized to make us polarized against each other. They’re incentivized to break down sense making.
Joe Martino: And then we have all these problems in society and we go, ah, well, it’s, it’s just fake news, right? It’s not, it’s not fake news. It’s literal. It’s the literal incentive structure of our system. So we have to begin to understand.
Joe Martino: Things on this level. What, what happened there as we went through these examples was looking at the interconnected nature of what our systems and.
Joe Martino: The complexity of our systems and what.
Joe Martino: The incentive structures are and what they’re producing. So instead of it just being, well, it’s the Democrats fault or it’s the.
Joe Martino: Republicans fault or it’s, you know, the.
Joe Martino: Evil cabal’s fault or it’s this or.
Joe Martino: Whatever it is, it’s.
Joe Martino: No, this is the world that we’re living in.
Joe Martino: It’s, it’s designed to create this issue. and this is, this is a very, very important thing, to sort of understand and if you were to look at it from the standpoint of, you know, do powerful, what you might call elite figures, do they.
Joe Martino: Do they enjoy this?
Joe Martino: Do they, do they enjoy the idea?
Joe Martino: Do they, do they gain from the.
Joe Martino: Idea that the populace is generally uninformed, divided, believing all these different ideas.
Joe Martino: They don’t really understand the underlying nature.
Joe Martino: They have very simplistic views of what’s going on in the world and they.
Joe Martino: They don’t take the time to look.
Joe Martino: At the complexity of what’s actually taking place.
Joe Martino: Do they benefit from that?
Joe Martino: Well, of course, because, because it’s harder to see where the issues are when.
Joe Martino: You’Re keeping people on a surface level, simplistic view of what’s going on.
Joe Martino: So when a alternative media source is yanking you into this, you know, this, you know what, hey, this is the Republican perspective on this particular issue. But you think, well, hey, I’m watching alternative media and you know, it’s better. But no, you’re actually just being hijacked.
Joe Martino: By now a different ideology and it’s, we’re not actually getting to the core.
Joe Martino: Of what the issue is.
Joe Martino: We’re actually just seeing it from a different simplistic lens.
Joe Martino: And so at the end of the day, we need to begin to adopt.
Joe Martino: This more complex problem solving framework where if we want to clearly define the.
Joe Martino: Problems that exist, we need to be.
Joe Martino: Open to exploring on this level and.
Joe Martino: Avoid jumping to conclusions so much and just being a little bit more intentional.
Joe Martino: About how we go about things, because if we don’t sort of define.
Joe Martino: The problem clearly, as mentioned before, we’re.
Joe Martino: Going to create solutions that appear
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Joe Martino: to.
Joe Martino: Solve the problem, but because the problem.
Joe Martino: Wasn’T defined clearly, we’re actually solving the, we’re creating solutions, we’re spending time and energy creating solutions without actually understanding what the problem is.
Joe Martino: And so it becomes a non solution at the end of the day. And as I mentioned, we see this.
Joe Martino: A lot in the alternative media world where, well, we’re alternative media, therefore we’re.
Joe Martino: Independent, therefore we pulled the corporate money out of media. Well, the issue is not corporate money and media.
Joe Martino: The issue is corporate money and media bad sense making. you know, sort of the, the desire to maintain and control a political narrative, right? These are all of the problems that make up a media company that’s not focused on pure sense making.
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: And so you could be an independent media or you could create alternative media and say, well, we solved the problem by creating alternative media, but you’re still.
Joe Martino: Producing or still contributing to the bad sense making because you failed to understand.
Joe Martino: That by still being highly political and.
Joe Martino: Allowing those politics to choose your stories.
Joe Martino: And to, you know, choose certain.
Joe Martino: Facts and leave out other facts.
Joe Martino: Like you can, you can take a set of facts and you can take.
Joe Martino: Some and leave some out and pull some of these facts out of context and create a narrative that sounds great.
Joe Martino: And say, well, I operated entirely off.
Joe Martino: Of facts, but it’s like, yeah, but.
Joe Martino: You didn’t tell the whole story, so.
Joe Martino: You didn’t actually inform the person about.
Joe Martino: The entirety of the situation. You used your political lens to cherry pick your facts so that you can.
Joe Martino: Create a factual story that actually misleads people.
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: And so this is why I say sense making has to be the underlying sort of understanding. If we’re not truly making sense of what’s going on in our world, we’re not solving our media issue. We’re not solving our, information landscape problem.
Joe Martino: So you have to pull the politics.
Joe Martino: You have to pull this stuff out of the media to solve the problem. so that would be a good.
Joe Martino: Example of how we can get to some solutions there.
Joe Martino: you know, there’s an article I wrote, as we talk about interconnection here, there’s an article I wrote, that I want to share something from just very, very briefly here. and it’s, the article title is.
Joe Martino: A New Worldview is emerging that can change our entire perspective on reality.
Joe Martino: And I kind of, this is a little bit more what we’re going to talk about in an upcoming episode, but I wanted to sort of touch on it here a little bit because.
Joe Martino: This idea of complexity and complex systems also comes with this more.
Joe Martino: I, want to say a word that has a greater sense of spirit within it.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: and what I mean by that is it’s this word called interconnectedness. And I want to share a quick paragraph from, the article.
Joe Martino: Within first nations communities, they embrace the idea of interconnectedness via a term, all my relations. This connects them to their families, communities, ancestors and future descendants, the land and all plant and animal life. Even within this worldview, these cultures exhibit a scientific understanding of the earth, whether cycles of seasons, medicinal and food sources, harvesting and creating everything they need from nature’s abundance. What am I sharing here within this.
Joe Martino: Particular piece as it relates to this spirit of interconnectedness is that as we begin to expand and we start understanding.
Joe Martino: The complexity of our systems, we also have to understand what is our relationship to all the other natural parts of.
Joe Martino: Life and how we are interconnected in a fundamental way between everything from our material systems to the, you know, the relationship we have with each other and how much we really do impact each other in so many ways that we.
Joe Martino: May not realize until we internalize this idea of interconnectedness within our worldview.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: And when we do that, we begin to look at the way we interact with each other completely differently, the way we interact with our natural, environment completely differently. And if we have this idea of.
Joe Martino: Interconnectedness so deep and innate within our.
Joe Martino: Being that we, we can sense and.
Joe Martino: Feel that connection, it’s not just cognitive.
Joe Martino: But it’s, it’s, it’s physiological.
Joe Martino: It’s something that is even non material.
Joe Martino: When we start to develop that, it.
Joe Martino: Starts to change the way we feel.
Joe Martino: About the decisions that we make and we think more deeply about the choices that we’re making because we have this sense that a small choice has a.
Joe Martino: Deep impact in a lot of different ways. And it just gets us to slow.
Joe Martino: Down, to think about things a little bit more deeply, be a little more intentional. And it can feel really overwhelming.
Joe Martino: All the things that I’ve said and.
Joe Martino: This idea of interconnected.
Joe Martino: Oh my.
Joe Martino: Every choice I make is going to impact something it’s not meant to necessarily.
Joe Martino: Feel and be that way, although it.
Joe Martino: Might initially feel that way when you first think about this idea of thinking about things in this way. But the idea is that when we.
Joe Martino: Begin to explore ideas on this level.
Joe Martino: Right, we’re going to find that balance. We’re Going to find where, you know, it’s, it’s. It becomes like, almost too much to.
Joe Martino: Think about it, obsessive to think about.
Joe Martino: It, versus, you know, kind of understanding how an action I take
00:30:00
Joe Martino: over here to pollute, you know, something there, might actually run downstream and affect this entire community’s drinking water.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: It’s just this idea of, of I.
Joe Martino: Make a decision for me and my.
Joe Martino: Individual self and opening it up to say, yeah, but how does that potentially affect other people?
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: And it just becomes a little bit more of a guiding force in our.
Joe Martino: Cultural enlightenment that, that needs to occur here.
Joe Martino: That’s kind of the argument I’m making a little bit here, is that.
Joe Martino: This has to become a bit of a cultural change.
Joe Martino: And so we’re wrapping this up here. I just want to briefly talk about a pathway to change and the project that we started way back in 2010 that we kind of put on the back burner, some of you may remember it, called the SHIFT Project. And the idea was, how do we.
Joe Martino: Paint a picture of a world that’s possible? When we start looking at human potential.
Joe Martino: When we start looking at what technologies.
Joe Martino: Are available and that are out there.
Joe Martino: And they’re really fascinating. when we start looking at the, nature of. If we start changing our worldview, how.
Joe Martino: Could the world look like if we were to redesign society and redesign systems with a deeper understanding of who we.
Joe Martino: Are as people physiologically, but even, you know, within, you know, how we.
Joe Martino: Want to relate to each other, how.
Joe Martino: We want to relate to Earth, Right. If we were to design a new world, what would that look like? And then, oh, you could say, okay, well, that’s cool. Here’s like a cool vision of what things could be like. Well, here’s where we’re at now.
Joe Martino: And how do we create a bridge to move there?
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: So that’s what the purpose of the SHIFT Project was, to kind of create this, you know, some playful, fluid visions.
Joe Martino: Of what was possible in the future to inspire people towards seeing possibility.
Joe Martino: And then, and then at the same time, hold this understanding of what our.
Joe Martino: Current world is and the system, the.
Joe Martino: Complex systems view of understanding what the problems are. Because if we don’t understand what the actual, deeper problems are within our society at the moment, we’re going to create.
Joe Martino: A future world that is, doesn’t really address.
Joe Martino: Because remember, we talked about this idea of if we don’t clearly define the problem, we will create solutions that don’t.
Joe Martino: Really solve everything until we clearly define the problem.
Joe Martino: So, so by this Exploration of our.
Joe Martino: Current world and understanding and seeing all the breakdowns that are occurring, the corruption coming to the surface and people understanding.
Joe Martino: All this stuff and this big awakening of sorts that’s happening is the moment.
Joe Martino: Is the phase of us beginning to.
Joe Martino: Open up to understanding what the nature of our system really is, what’s going on and how to define what some of the problems are in a complex way so that we can then go about creating a new world moving forward. And that’s kind of what the SHIFT project was. Now of course within that there’s things that we need to begin to accept because I see a lot of activists, see a lot of different people sort of struggling with, you know, how do I create an absolute decision on what’s happening given that we have existing systems.
Joe Martino: And we have these future systems and.
Joe Martino: I don’t want to reinforce the existing system. So how do I, how do I.
Joe Martino: Create the future world now?
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: And this kind of goes into a bit of an understanding of, of we need short term and long term solutions that we’re playing with as well as.
Joe Martino: In system and out system solutions that we’re playing with.
Joe Martino: So in the short term, you know, there might be something that really needs.
Joe Martino: Our engagement and addressing right now that.
Joe Martino: Might utilize the existing systems a little bit. but that it’s, it’s, it’s kind of framed within a long term game, a long term plan to move away from these systems. So for example, it’s almost impossible to.
Joe Martino: Fully exit our current social media landscape.
Joe Martino: Because if you want to reach people, I mean social media, like it or not, most of the big social media landscapes, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google, right. Most of these, they’re the digital town square, right? They’re where people go to discuss things.
Joe Martino: And where you can reach people. You could go to some of these.
Joe Martino: Smaller social media engines out there and have a great experience. We have a private social media site for our membership and it’s fantastic, I love it. But it’s important for me to share.
Joe Martino: My message still on Facebook and on.
Joe Martino: Twitter and on YouTube because we’re drawing in more people, more voices to these.
Joe Martino: Types of discussions through utilizing those public town squares. So in the short term I
Joe Martino: Utilize those in system solutions to produce a long term solution down the line.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: And this is, that’s just a, one minor example of playing with this idea.
Joe Martino: Of short term, long term solutions, holding.
Joe Martino: Them both at the same time and knowing where your energy is sort of.
Joe Martino: Playing into a short term solution and a long term solution and not getting.
Joe Martino: Too Absolutist about, well, I have to.
Joe Martino: Choose one and only one and you.
Joe Martino: Know, because then we become paralyzed.
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: And that’s oftentimes what happens with a lot of people is like, I’ll never.
Joe Martino: Use Facebook or I will never use.
Joe Martino: YouTube or I will never use it as a.
Joe Martino: Okay.
Joe Martino: But then you might find that you can no longer communicate and discuss with people depending on what your industry is like. For me, in the industry, of content creation and everything that I’m doing with collective evolution and the pulse, if I don’t use social media, it becomes,
00:35:00
Joe Martino: I’m in trouble. Like I can’t, I can’t reach people. So it’s really important. and then of course in system, out system, it’s the same sort of idea. There are some, there are some times where we’re going to have to use the system to do some usually short term things and then there are times where we have to really think.
Joe Martino: Outside the system and create parallel systems, especially for long term things or even.
Joe Martino: In the short term utilizing out system, solutions. And of course it gets a lot easier to sort of explore these things when we get into specific examples which we will in future episodes. But the idea is here there’s complexity.
Joe Martino: In understanding and there’s nuance in understanding how to think about things with these concepts in mind.
Joe Martino: another key concept in the pathway to Change is really looking at this necessity for having an educated populace, so a population, when we talk about the cultural enlightenment aspect of this, it’s having a population that is educated on understanding what is going on in our world and not having these really political, really black and white, my side versus your side points of view. That is not going to help us.
Joe Martino: Sort of define problems and move forward more clearly. That’s just us fighting with each other.
Joe Martino: About our different ideologies. And so we have to now look.
Joe Martino: At like we all enjoy rights to some extent, right?
Joe Martino: And we, we enjoy you know, being able to do certain things. Like for example you, you drive a car. But you know, having a right to do something, it comes usually with the responsibility, of doing it in a particular way.
Joe Martino: And, and it’s, and if you were.
Joe Martino: To just have responsibilities per se, like you know, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re responsible with having to do this, but you.
Joe Martino: Have no right to do these things over here.
Joe Martino: You know, you’re in essence sort of a servant, right? You’re, you have things that you have.
Joe Martino: To do that you’re responsible for that.
Joe Martino: You have to get done, but you have no right to anything.
Joe Martino: Right?
Joe Martino: This was, this was like this for many, many people back in the day. but when people began to get rights, there’s this need for responsibilities is still there, right? So if we have the right to drive a car, we’re responsible for driving.
Joe Martino: It well and learning how to drive.
Joe Martino: It properly and being taught how to play within the confines of doing so within our society so that we don’t be destructive towards each other. So with the rights comes the responsibilities. And when we’re talking about an educated populace and we’re talking about, let’s say, something like the right to vote, then we, we should be responsible with our education so that we know what we’re actually voting on and we know that.
Joe Martino: The implications of our vote or we.
Joe Martino: Know how our system is functioning such that when we choose to vote, we’re not just voting down party lines or we’re not just voting down ideologies. We’re, we’re voting down, you know, a particular understanding of what is actually going on. So we are becoming more and more.
Joe Martino: Responsible not to look at our leaders.
Joe Martino: Not to look at our elected officials. That system is broken.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: We’re more responsible as a citizenry to take responsibility for the state of our world and to sort of get on board and to start understanding and learning this stuff, a little bit more deeply. even if it’s just a little.
Joe Martino: Piece, we’re all going to take little pieces to this. But if we all have the same spirit behind it, if the spirit behind.
Joe Martino: Our exploration is the stuff that I’m.
Joe Martino: Talking about here and is the stuff.
Joe Martino: That we’ve talked about in previous episodes.
Joe Martino: which again, it’s not an ideology.
Joe Martino: It’S just principles, just basic principles. If the spirit of these things is present, we will move forward in a.
Joe Martino: More meaningful and peaceful way.
Joe Martino: But if we start going back into.
Joe Martino: All of the old world ways of thinking in the old world, world.
Joe Martino: Views, we’re going to just continue warring with each other, over and over again. So at the end of the day, we’re in a situation where everything that’s occurring is occurring.
Joe Martino: That’s acting as an evolutionary pressure for us to move forward.
Joe Martino: And this is an important part to all of this.
Joe Martino: That evolutionary pressure is not just us looking at our external systems, but looking.
Joe Martino: Back at ourselves and saying with all the things that we talked about, what is, what sort of characteristics of a.
Joe Martino: Human being need to be on board.
Joe Martino: For us to be able to embrace the world in this way to be able to correct our biases and to be able to correct our tribal thinking and to be able to look at it and say, wait a minute, where.
Joe Martino: Am I closing off? Because I’m just choosing to close off.
Joe Martino: Versus, you know, and being sort of willfully ignorant of what’s happening around me versus how do I just open up and really just let the truth be the truth and see where our sense making and our spirit of finding synthesis takes us.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: this is. We need what from the previous episode.
Joe Martino: This embodiment piece on board.
Joe Martino: We need this spirit of curiosity, this.
Joe Martino: This regulation within our nervous system that allows us to be curious again, that.
Joe Martino: Allows us to be, you know, sort of willing to connect, wanting to.
Joe Martino: Connect, wanting to move towards this spirit.
Joe Martino: Of synthesis versus kind of just allowing ourselves to be high strung, stressed out, polarized by social media, hijacked emotionally by social media, hijacked by our ideologies.
Joe Martino: And just holding on, holding on, holding on, hold, holding on.
Joe Martino: Right.
Joe Martino: If we’re going to be like that.
Joe Martino: And that’s going to be the state.
Joe Martino: Of our body and the state of.
Joe Martino: Our being, then
00:40:00
Joe Martino: it’s going to be really hard to do a lot of the things that we talked about. But by taking time to slow down, becoming embodied again, getting that presence going, you know, getting back into the state of curiosity, we’re going to be able to play with this stuff little by little as we go a lot more easily. So the personal transformation piece to all of this is crucial. Anywho, that’s it, that’s all. I went over time a little bit here on this one again, but I think this is an important one. I still feel like we just scratched the surface, didn’t really get too deeply into a lot of the stuff that I would love to talk about here, but, I wanted to just create this sort of bite sized piece and we’ll continue in future episodes. Thanks so much for tuning in. Be sure to share this podcast with, somebody you think would be interested and we’ll catch you next time. Well, that’s it, that’s all. I hope you enjoyed the show. As always, I want to thank the members of the Explore Lounge who are helping us to continue doing this work. If you want to support this podcast and all of the work we do here at the Pulse and Collective Evolution.
Joe Martino: Consider becoming a member of our Explorer Lounge.
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Joe Martino: Get, but you’re directly supporting our dedicated.
Joe Martino: Team here at Collective Evolution and the Pulse.
Joe Martino: Visit Explore Lounge one.
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