Episode 3: Humans, Not Systems: Looking To Ourselves for Change

What happens when the systems and institutions we depend on start to fail us? In this episode, Norma Wong and guests Nan Stoops and Executive Producer Naʻalehu Anthony explore an important question: can struggling systems continue to deliver? And, if institutions stop working, do we fix the system, or look elsewhere?

From potholes and policy works to the power of simple things, this conversation cuts through the noise of politics and polarization to ask something more fundamental: what can we do at this particular moment? 

P.S. Stay for a Buzz Lightyear reference and a nod to Seattle Mariners fans-people who know a thing or two about loyalty through the long haul!

Visit us at thehorizonstory.com, subscribe on Substack, watch on YouTube, and listen wherever you get your podcasts. If this conversation resonated with you, share it with someone who is ready to hear it. To keep this work going, become a supporter of the show!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Okay, friends, here we are. We are really used to being in a formula of things in which, in order to change things, we just take the rules as they are and we either break them or we fix them or we reform them. And it depends on what side of the ideological scale we happen to be, but that's how we think about our agency. But in facing and fixing the many problems, international, national, local, the full plethora of problems. Why won't it work if we just choose more benevolent rules, benevolent rulers, the rights that we hope to have? Why won't it work just to do that? You know, we're in a cycle right now. We're in a cycle around the ways in which the various ideologies essentially just converge within the arenas that we call politics or government, or even uh corporate interests or non-government interests. And we basically just look at well, what does ex what exists and how do we change it? And that is where we stand. We know this path. We know this path and we're used to it. Whether or not we're the people who make the rule or whether we're the people who break the rule, it doesn't matter that much. We know this path. So why won't it work? What is it about this moment that means that it won't work? We have this fixation which has built up over long periods of time, decades even, where we have become good explainers of the systems as they exist, of the processes that we know, of the institutions that we know, and whether or not you're someone on the inside or someone on the outside, or just a regular citizen figuring out what the, you know, you know, expletive deleted, what is it about it that isn't going right? And you say, why don't they fix that? And when they say fix it, what are we talking about? We're saying, well, why doesn't the system work for us? And then we'll try to define whatever that system is and also who is the us. And when you say us, there will inevitably be the other, right? There's us and then there are the other people, the other beings, the other countries, the other states, the other team, whatever it is. And we will say, well, why won't the system work for us? And we'll be locked into the notion that certainly that system can deliver for us, and we have a notion of how it is that we're going to fix it. And we'll go directly to the rules and the processes. The rules and the process. You know processes? Processes are that thing whereby you say, well, for example, well, are you a cook or are you a baker? So the process of baking is different than the process of cooking, but there still are processes associated with it. And a thing that is common among both baking and cooking is you have to have the right ingredients. This I'm explaining to you if your form of cooking is to buy two bags from Trader Joe's, empty it out into your container, and pull the dressing out and just mix it up. So even in that case, which I wouldn't call cooking, my grandmother wouldn't call cooking, my great-great-grandmother wouldn't call cooking, even if you happen to call that cooking, cooking, there are ingredients. And so, therefore, there's the process, at least, of getting that ingredient and making it available to yourself, opening it up and putting it together. So we have a process for everything. We're kind of wired in that way, and we have come to rely on the process and on changing that process and being involved in that process as the way in which we would get things done and the ways in which we would change things if we want them to be changed. Okay, that's the way it is. But is it working? I don't think so. And I have a hunch that if you're still listening, you don't think so either. So, we'll be right back to talk about this some more. So, systems and processes. This is pretty wonky kind of talk. And you know, here I will readily confess that for most of my life, uh, that's what I've been. And I think once you're a policy wonk, you really can't take off that clothes. It's like a it's like a thing that you get up in the morning and you think about. For those of you who don't know what a policy wonk is, is that if you drive down the street and uh the street, let's say, you know, has a lot of potholes, then a thing that you think about, you think about automatically, not only that, why isn't someone fixing the potholes, you immediately have in your mind which part of the government is responsible for that. And you start to think about whether or not that pothole has been here for a long time, whether or not it's about a maintenance issue, whether it's about the materials that are being used. You begin to actually think about how long it's going to take, how much it's gonna cost, and not only this road, but the many roads, and your mind just begins to put all of that together. And that's what it would be to be a policy wong. It's actually very inconvenient because anything that you look at, you think of it in that way. If you go into the grocery store and you're going down and you begin to see that, you know, your favorite uh condiment, you know, pick your favorite condiment, your mustard, your relish, your uh, you know, your shoyu, you know, your uh uh Worcester sauce, however it is that you pronounce that thing, whatever your favorite condiment happens to be, and it's not there. And uh your mind begins to put together the notion of why it's not there and what it would take to get there, and in this case, a supply line, right? So you begin to actually like think about all of the people and all of the ways in which uh uh different kinds of processes and companies and institutions, and is it is it a matter of your favorite condiment disappearing because of supply? Is there something with the producer? Is it a shortage of ingredient? You know, is it like the artificial mustard seeds, you know, uh are not growing that year? Or, you know, whatever the case may be, your mind begins to put all of that together. And it's a very inconvenient thing if you're a policy wonk, because anything that you see, you notice how all of that works. And a thing that you also see is how all of that is beginning to not work. So when there is a more universal collapse, not just a matter of your particular condiment or that one street, when you begin to notice that the streets, the grocery store, your doctors having trouble, your the uh rules are not being applied in the same way, you cannot reach the person or any person if you call up a government office. Uh, you you get a strange kind of a recording that sends you to five different places. And all five different places, there's no human that is there. There's just another recording that says, if you want this and you want that, that you press this and you press that, and you press it, and then it says, it tells you again to go and press it. And all of this begins to pile up and pile up. And you notice that it's from the smallest thing to the biggest thing, from the tiniest thing to whether or not there is a disagreement between two countries, and the only thing that happens is they try to get their perfect message to the press, and they measure their success and their non-success by whether or not what it is they say is exactly printed by the press, and they call that a success, but that doesn't mean that what it is that they happen to be needing to work out with each other actually gets worked out. Then you begin to notice okay, something else is happening here, and that's the situation that we're in. So even the best systems, the best processes, the institutions that we happen to have grown up with or have relied upon or counted upon, they're just frankly struggling these days. They're struggling in trying to do what they were designed to do, and what they were designed to do was not intended to be the world that we are in right now. So let's just take fixing the road. Okay. When they say fixing the road, they did not intend that there would be hundred-year storms that would now take place every four or five years. They did not put their road maintenance schedule based on that. They did not build up a Department of Transportation that would be built on that. They did not get state funding or federal funding or the combination of that based on that kind of phenomena. They didn't get the materials that would be able to last long and durably if there was going to be a major storm every few months, every few years. Because after all, it used to be called a hundred-year storm. But the hundred-year storm is now every few years. And every few years doesn't mean it's going to be the same every few years. And so that department of transportation, whether it's a local department or a state department or the federal department of transportation, would have to go through a whole series of ways in which they would have to figure out how do you still maintain streets if you're going to have that type of a weather phenomena? And it would be about the materials and about the contracts and about how many people you would have, whether you'd have to engineer it differently, whether or not those materials are going to be available, where would those materials be available from? Will they be available locally or internationally? If they're internationally, will they be with countries that you are friendly with or not friendly with? How much will the tariffs add to that? Are the tariffs included in your cost of production? Are people not working in that field anymore? Do you have to bring them in from some other place? Were those people, the people that will still live in the place that you are living in if the costs are getting so high? And everything is getting more and more complex, more difficult to figure out. And as that is occurring, as ever-expanding problems that need require more flexibility, the question is can something that is called a system deliver? And would say, even if it wanted to, it's struggling. It's just struggling. Okay, so that's the first point. That's the first point. Here's the second point. Let's say that there's a war about the condiments. There are the people who actually believe that the condiments that you like are uh good for you. They include things that not only you like, but they're good for you. But there are people actually who disagree with that. And they think that not only are the ingredients not good for you, but there's a conspiracy involved in terms of whether or not that's what your ketchup is made up. Oh, ketchup for some people, ketchup for other people, and some people call it a tomato relish. Take your pick. So let's take even that. Okay? Let's say there's a controversy about what it's called, and let's say it's become polarized and political. So many things, and I, of course, am just trying to add a little levity here, talking about condiments. But you know, many things have become quite polarized these days. The kinds of cars that people would agree with and not agree with, what they're powered by, whether or not a car that is a hybrid or an electric car is actually unpatriotic or not. Or if it's patriotic to do that, then whose patriotism are you talking about? Would it be this kind of a patriot or that kind of a patriot? And in a polarized state of affairs that arises to people being angry or fearful, and to have the anger or fear fuel the polarization, then no system can deliver into that. You can't deliver because nothing will be stable. And there's an interesting thing. People who work for systems and institutions, wherever they happen to be: national, local, in the bank, in the church, in your neighborhood organization, in a radical organization or a conservative organization, if you're in any kind of an entity, you like things to be stable. That's how you like them. So if you're in a radical organization, you only want your radical ideas to be the ones that are talked about, espoused, that written about. Those will be the things in the books, those are things that would not be in the books. You don't want that to be in the new spirit. You want it to be stable. You want it to be exactly what it is that you might expect. And because of that, when things are polarized, then what happens is there's a lot of flux. There's a lot of pushing here and there. There's a lot of people trying to prove up that they are whatever it is that they say that they are. And there's not much elasticity, there's not much margin. Even a small error will be blown up and will be litigated. And no system can deliver, no matter what it is you intend that system to deliver. No system can deliver when things are so unstable. So even if it wanted to, that polarized state of affairs adds to the instability, which is adds to the complexity which adds to not being able to deliver. And that is where we are. So we'll be back. We'll be back in a few minutes. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

What to do when nothing works. With Wise and Witty Pros, Zen Master and Indigenous Strategist Norma Wong reflects on this question and more in her acclaimed first book, When No Thing Works. Norma weaves poetry, storytelling, and meditation, inviting us to imagine a horizon of possibility beyond crisis. Hard copy and audiobook available now. Shopbookshop.com and support your local bookstore.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Aloha, welcome back. We have here uh my two friends, uh Lehu and Nan, help us to understand this particular situation and what we should do about it. So, Nan, you've had some time to think about it. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Well, okay, I've been thinking a lot about the Artemis II. And, you know, we're about a week since it returned to Earth, and um have really been pondering the comments from the crew after they landed. And I was just like thinking about for everything that those folks knew when they took off. Um, I don't think they knew how they would feel when they saw the earth from all those 400,000 kilometers away. And what they said about the responsibility that they felt for the planet, the love that they had for Earth, the um the deep um sense of actually what's possible for humans. Um, I was really moved by that. And I think you've, you know, you've spent time talking about literally the gravity of the earth. And so, you know, big question, but what what will it take for us to, like the crew of the Artemis, escape that gravity and see the potential for what we could do here?

SPEAKER_04 21:29

This is why Nan should be on the show because I was just gonna ask you about the potholes.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

I have something to say about those too, but later.

SPEAKER_04 21:36

Later, after the gravity.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're kind of related though, right? Don't you think?

SPEAKER_04 21:41

Say more.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Okay. So it's like oh we actually literally are counting on the same kind of mechanisms to like escape the gravity of Earth to go around the moon and travel for 700,000 miles as we. are to fix the potholes. It's like it it requires us to understand what we want to do and then to go about doing it. So it's, you know, when I say, you know, like nothing is no thing is working, we still sent four people into space. Right? But something did go wrong. A few things did go wrong, right? The most significant of which is the toilet didn't work. Now, the toilet didn't work. Okay? It's like, you know, the pothole, right? It's like a mundane thing. I think that's worse than potholes. Oh yeah it's much, much worse, much worse because there's a four of you, you're in space, there's no place to go, and you know the toilet's not working. And in lots of ways, then what is it that they needed to do? Four people needed to figure it out. Now they had a lot of other people who were uh paying attention who were focusing on making sure that everything would go as right as it could. So there's a lot of focus that was going on purposeful focus which is to say that it wouldn't have worked if they traveled all of that time and they weren't able to go okay right okay so right therefore right even though my guess is a lot more systems approach went to all of the other kinds of things eventually some humans needed to step up to the plate and figure it out and then they all needed together to make it work. And as it turned out one of the things they needed to do was to turn the vessel so that that part that they believed was frozen right would face the sun and therefore get unfrozen. I'm sure it's more complicated than that but it kind of boiled down to something like that.

SPEAKER_04 24:15

Okay so humans were required to figure it out and humans were required to have purposeful action in order to solve the problem irrespective of the entire process and system so they didn't say well let's call the manufacturer you know for example right I mean I mean I think there's like there's another piece here that's like well because when you're talking about about systems not working what we're really talking about are bureaucracies that can't keep up with the way that the world is changing right now whether it's changing from the climate perspective or the political perspective or any of the changes that are taking place that bureaucracy can't keep up and NASA is actually a great place to start in terms of like measuring bureaucracies right they had to take all of this technology that um you know that our our our calculator has more computing power uh than than the space shuttle did or or when they went to the moon and they had to figure it out right and we've also seen that that bureaucracy NASA be upended by SpaceX. It's like well how much does it cost per pound to put uh you know cargo into space via SpaceX when you can reuse the boosters versus NASA and so NASA has had to reinvent itself to stay relevant right and so maybe there's like a follow-up question here which is like well did the Artemis and and does this this uh this venture back to the moon then I don't know if fix is the right word but certainly uh say to people that that the bureaucracy that is NASA still relevant and what does that tell us about the the the city bureaucracy that has to fix the potholes in a time of more rain than what we would see every hundred years?

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Yeah so it it's and there would be this questioning period right where actually the question of uh whether or not you can and what would it take right and what is it that you give up and what is it that you gain and singular purpose would still have to be there. So for example we could basic they could basically have said and there was that conversation should the United States really still be in the business in the purpose of exploring space? Right right I mean like you had to go through that question.

SPEAKER_04 26:49

Or does the industry that is the space industry as a third party private industry do it better?

SPEAKER_01 26:57

That's right and I think that's still proving itself out right because and here's a reason why because space industry actually has a different purpose in other words a purpose that they have is they have a purpose to make money. So they have the right they need to actually show profit with respect to whatever it is that they're doing in addition to whatever exploration is going on. And by the way the people pick up the tap. So we we all pay for it. Whether or not by the way it's in other words would space industry exist if the people didn't still have the goal of space exploration right could they only make it by virtue of uh space commercial uh space space tourism for example right could they make a go of it or space internet which might be the largest IPO we've ever seen but yeah I mean I think your point is your point is valuable but even space internet right yeah they still have to be they still have to a a thing called an internet still has to exist and a thing called the internet sits in the realm of somewhere in between the uh the commons and uh and and and business right it's it's it kind of sits in there right so we see all these things arising right and the question about whether or not uh um they're going to be able to hold together one of the things that we have to be clear about when people basically say well uh and I think it's a reasonable question to ask if they could send four people around the moon travel 700 000 miles why can't we feed people keep them sheltered and fix the potholes? Right right why why can't we do those things?

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Okay so um you use the word commons and would you make the distinctions between the commons small private industry uh which I think would include maybe nonprofits um systems and then large governmental systems maybe like NASA and other you know the big ones okay so any of those things could be in relationship to the commons but are not the commons okay so the commons would be that which everyone is in enjoyment and accessing together.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

So the closest thing we might have uh in uh the spaces that we're in right now would be like a public park or like a baseball field okay so all right a baseball field for the American pastime might be considered an icon of the commons Nan Stoops do you have something to say about that my work is done here okay now you have to actually show people what it is you're wearing go ahead okay do you get a good shot of that okay all right baseball wonk baseball says mariners okay home team okay and what's the difference between a baseball wonk and a policy wonk not much actually when you were talking about uh the potholes uh you know I would I would see that through the lens of what happens when there's a pothole or a divot on the field how does that affect a ground ball what what does it mean if that ball is hit with topspin or back spin what will happen and okay how do we fix how does the grounds crew take care of that pothole same questions about resourcing you know human power all of that I thought you were going to say the mariners were in a pothole okay too soon too soon it's too steady steady steady okay so so here's the thing right you just described what is universal about wonk right so not necessarily policy wonk but wonk so you can have a baseball wonk policy wonk uh a TV production wonk TV production navigation wonk wonk navigation navigation polynesian navigation wonk you could things like that okay so wonks right have a role in terms of uh the deep observation that might be necessary when things are working or not working and how do you interface with that in order to make things work okay and if you are a wonk with a purpose then you won't actually say well the way we do it is to actually uh let's just improve the process right you wouldn't say that right what you do is like well what do we need to get done and how do we need to get it done and you would pay attention to that whatever means may be necessary and that's kind of the the human quality we need right now to sit in the comments.

SPEAKER_04 32:30

So can I ask a question about that which I think pertains to this idea of what are the um uh the the containers or jurisdictions at which all of these things need to get solved for right so that even if we recap a little bit you've been talking about uh how things are collapsing faster than we can build them back up using the systems that we have at our disposal right now right the the bureaucracy and so then and you just kind of like nibbled at the corner of it saying like okay well we need some to do some different things but like what are the what are the answers to um the the potholes what are the answers to the supply chain disruptions and I don't say that in a way where like you can just like tell us the answer right now these are you know the pothole in Seattle is different than the pothole in Hawaii and the system that is supposed to fix the pothole are different but we can acknowledge that the systems are broken so then what then becomes the large lift set of solutions that we might have available to us so first you have to actually set aside the notion that the way that you do it is that uh you you you just double down on what you're doing right now.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

In other words we have to acknowledge the changing conditions require us to think differently and if you're going to think differently then you have to build a different kind of vessel in order to do it and you have to just do it differently. So whatever the manual happened to say about uh you know if you are at a certain altitude and the toilet breaks I can guarantee you right that they could not just go back to the manual and basically say well okay let's follow the directions in the manual they had to rely on deep expertise that people would have around different things probably multidisciplinary kinds of things and that's how every single problem in outer space has had to be resolved right every single problem with any of the the various um vessels that have been in space whatever exploration that we're in once you get to a particular kind of a uh like a separation between you and all the apparatuses you now have to combine human ingenuity reaching into the experience of human ingenuity to figure out things in ways that they've never been figured out before and that's not tinkering at the edges you know it's really upending everything right it's it and just relying on deep experience but that sounds expensive even for bottles. Well it might actually be cheaper okay it might be cheaper right here here's here's why okay here's why it might be cheaper okay it's because there's nothing actually more expensive than the redundancies that we have built into systems. Right? It's like all of the things that you you end up saying you have to do you have to meet about you have to do this and this before you do this and then you do this and that and you do it very in a very linear way very linear way okay right and it is frequently less time consuming to leap towards just the purpose and the ingenuity okay because one of the most expensive aspects of everything is time. Sure right okay so leaping forward beyond the boundaries of like the things that like we can't afford to spend 10 years to realize that it's broken.

unknown 36:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

That's time we can't get back. That's time we can't get back. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

I have a question about doubling down. Okay. Okay so I think last episode we were talking about the pandemic and kind of the collapse around that and um I I I feel like since then I've seen a doubling down almost in a doubling back kind of way. And um with the current collapse that we're in um and the the the fact of how exponents work I think there's there's a way in which people are actually uh quadrupling down now. Okay Nan is showing off her math now she used the word exponents which is the root word of exponential go ahead which is I'm sure as these episodes unfold um you will be exploring the exponential potential right of of change and transform transformation so it's just a seed to plant. Thank you um but what like what are we to do um to to kind of uh shift away from that it's like an innate tendency to double down quadruple down like a an instinctive kind of compulsory kind of thing so what are we to do?

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Can I ask a clarifying do you mean like like double down to like hold the bureaucracy and hold the system in place rather than like let it go and do something else holding our ground yeah you know yeah so uh so a good amount of that is uh fear right uh so there's actual fear involved uh and uh it's not it's not like uh ill meaning right it's it's so frequently you have people who are good and earnest people and essentially then given it anything that begins to shake wildly you hold on to that which you know okay that's why I believe that this is largely a human problem not a strategy problem a human problem not a policy problem right it's a human problem not a construction problem okay it's it's that you have to actually interrupt that way in which we instinctively hold on to things and essentially be more conscious in terms of what's needed and we have to understand that a lot of people are not going to be able to do that. So this isn't about making everybody agree that that's the case it's really about seeing whether you can get enough people who have enough curiosity enough urgency enough desire enough willingness right to let go of the things that you know and move into that which you don't so Artemis right okay all right to break the boundaries of human gravity right of not human gravity but nature's gravity okay it's you had four humans who have a lot of experience and so there's all kinds of ways in which they know that it's possible and all of that but you still there would be that part of it okay that would have to be there that would be willing right to not have that which could be the impossible be the possible right okay and you'd have to double down double down in that way all along the way so not every human could work at NASA and it would not be useful to put people at NASA who uh weren't willing to take chances but weren't willing to take chances and and put all the things in place so that you would mitigate risk at the same time exactly the same time right you take chances and you mitigate risk at the same time those kind of qualities take certain kinds of people to do certain kind of jobs certain kind of purposes okay and they uh wouldn't work as well if they were uh clerks at a grocery store it wouldn't be that right so it's like who are gonna be the explorers at this moment with both feet on the ground and that's kind of what we're looking for to infinity and beyond.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

To infinity and beyond to quote a famous person that we will include in our credits uh thank you very much uh we're gonna take a really short break and then close thank you what to do when no thing works with wise and witty pros Zen master and indigenous strategist Norma Wong reflects on this question and more in her acclaimed first book When Nothing Works Norma weaves poetry storytelling and meditation inviting us to imagine a horizon of possibility beyond crisis hard copy and audiobook available now shop bookshop.com and support your local bookstore okay everyone um before we close Roma Wong can I ask you one more question sure Nan stoops what's your question okay at this point what should what should our listeners be um thinking about and what what could they do?

SPEAKER_01 42:54

Okay so assuming that they are uh not astronauts right it's that you're talking about ordinary people so ordinary people need to have this notion that if you're living in extraordinary times if you pay attention to ordinary things then many things will be possible okay so let me just let me just give you an example okay so an example is uh my sister uh Brenda and I um so my sister and I were removing a like a portable air conditioning unit out of our house okay and removing the portable air conditioning out of our house and finding a way to either get rid of it or to find a new home and it took the two of us it was actually very heavy and as we were there on the staircase and we were struggling for a little bit I hear like this yelling from across the street okay I said what Wait, wait, wait, stop. And Brenda and I look around, trying to figure out who they're talking to. And as it turns out, it was our neighbors, and they were talking to us. And, you know, and now I'm like, do they think that we're stealing the air conditioner unit? Is that what's happening? They're new neighbors, so maybe they don't know that we are people who are their neighbors. And is this what's going on? There's jumbled thoughts going through my mind.

SPEAKER_04 44:28

Two seniors might be robbing the house in Kalihi. It could happen.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

It could happen. It could happen. It could happen. That we would do it in broad daylight, not too smart, but it could happen. Okay, so so here's the deal, right? They like they scaled the wall from their yard to ours, ran across the street to assist bringing it down, right? There were two ordinary people at that moment doing an extraordinary thing, which apparently counts these days, which is can we pay attention to what is needed? And could we ask ourselves, well, what can I do at this particular moment? Right? And then whatever it is that we think we can do, that we step into it. Okay. And so, you know, we use the word commons in this last section. And what we're really saying is, can we use common sense as common people to understand that between us we can help to infill if we see ourselves not as just individual people, but people who are in relationship with each other to do simple things. And if we count on the systems to do more and more of the simple things for us, and we become reliant on that, and we lose the muscle to be able to help each other, then we add to the collapse.

SPEAKER_04 46:21

Can I repeat that back to you? Because I think like uh when you use the word commons, what I think about is like actually the word community. And there's like, you know, in in where you live, your community is still intact. There's like these guys recognize that, you know, there's these two sisters struggling with this thing, and that their their neighbor, even if they're new neighbors, they understand that they have an obligation to you, not because the law or the policy said so, but because you're neighbors. And that then therefore they want to make sure that you folks are okay, because if you folks aren't okay, then the community's not okay.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

Yeah, they did it as a very natural thing, yeah, which allowed us to do the natural thing, which would be hey, you guys need a portable air conditioner. Right? And then everything's solved. We don't have to go and find a place for it. We cannot go, you know, do all those types of things. And he asked the one question that would make sense, right? The one question, does it still work? Okay, okay, it still works. Okay, all right. Then between us, we have solved for a thing, and I may say minor, but these things actually multiply right hundreds and hundreds of times per day in many, many ways. And then if they don't get tended to, they arise into bigger problems. So that's what it would mean in small ways to meet this particular moment, just looking out for each other, right, seeing what it is that we can do, and in some ways it's like accepting that the things that we may have taken for granted in the past, we now have to pay attention to, and that there are things that were successes in the past that cannot perform for us right now. So it's like that's another thing we can do, right? Is to accept the notion of the conditions that we're in, but not accept that there is nothing to do about it. Okay, right? It says those things, accept and not accept, right? So as rapid changes occur and we have more rapid demands, can we rapidly ask the question well, what are the four or five simple things we can do every day that will actually ease the way and make it more possible? And it comes down to that.

SPEAKER_04 49:08

I want I want to thank you for doing that, Nora, to like break it down to that, because there's like, you know, we talked about everything from bottles to you know outer space today, and and yet all of those point towards like what is it that we can do? And how is it that we can, um whether it's being better neighbors or uh think about this idea that this is not uh something new, actually. The generations before us did this again and again and again. And maybe we took a pause in some places in terms of how that fit together. But really, uh being in community and being in the commons together is a really important piece of the puzzle when we're talking about how we move forward in in the sets of circumstances that we have now.

SPEAKER_01 49:58

Absolutely, absolutely. Now, you know, I know that there are uh many of you who are new to this particular community. I'm new to your community. And we would like to open the door with respect to how it is that we might help to be in relationship with each other. Uh uh, not not dating, no dating, just relationship with respect to. Did I hear something?

SPEAKER_04 50:27

Did you hear something? The control was laughing.

SPEAKER_01 50:29

Okay, the control. I think it was Sarah. Okay, so you folks might not have heard it, but I said the word.

SPEAKER_04 50:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

And people just like, you know, it's because they know me.

SPEAKER_04 50:38

When was the last time you're on a date?

SPEAKER_01 50:40

Oh boy. Let's go to close. Okay, it's been decades. All right, so so here's the deal. Relationship means we're interested in the questions that you might have that we might help answer. And also, what do you think? What are you thinking about? What's your inquiry? What brings you to this particular podcast? Uh, we say that with uh a lot of gratitude and curiosity. So please send those in to hello at thehorizonstory.com. Okay, that's hello at thehorizonstory.com. Thank you so much. Much aloha. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_04 51:21

Aloha.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Aloha, mahalo, aloha. The Horizon Story Podcast was produced by Sarah Demarest de Rivera and Bryson Ho, hosted and written by me, Executive Producer Na'alehu Anthony, Associate Producer Scott Nine, featuring Nan Stoops, for Collective Acceleration Kelly Miller, for OEV TV, Ken Sato, Wesley Kealoha, Courtney Leong, Jeff Lee, and Ivy Lagadlag. For Paakai Communications, Jamila Silver, Diana Hahn, Pearl Tilley, and Christine Matsuda, Hair and Makeup by Chris Jose. Mahalo to the place of my birth, ancestors, teachers, collaborators and friends, Rosie Abrium for the support, and Todge James for the encouragement. The Horizon Story is brought to you by OEVTV, copyright held by Collective Acceleration. Follow us on social at The Horizon Story. Questions to Hello at the HorizonStory.com. Visit us where you find your favorite podcasts or at thehorizonstory.com.