Welcome to Cloudlandia Ep111: The Black Plague, Roman Empire, and COVID-19
In today's episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we discuss some intriguing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our lives and businesses.
We explore the shift to virtual platforms like Zoom and the concept of "Cloudlandia," drawing comparisons to changes brought about by historical pandemics. Dan and I consider opportunities that can emerge from unexpected times.
Our discussion ranges from societal shifts driven by technologies in the past to possibilities of the future.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan.
Dan: Do you realize that the recordings of everything we say are being analyzed right now at the National Security Agency?
Dean: I bet that's true, don't doubt this for a minute.
Dan: It's the best part of their week.
Dean: Hey guys, they're back Down the road. That's funny.
Dan: They don't think it's funny.
Dean: Oh man. Well, how are you after our absence last week?
Dan: Yeah, yeah, it's been great. You know things are company-wise. It's our best year ever, top line and bottom line, oh look at you Congratulations. That's exciting. Given where we were two, three years ago, this feels good. That was a long time underwater, yeah boy, oh boy.
Dean: Me too, I mean. Much like you, the majority of a lot of my income came from live events, like during my break through the blue 20 events and stuff like that. So yeah, it's weird, I'm just talking about it the other day that you know what was kind of this last year. It's almost coming up on 2021, 22 to almost four full years, right, yeah?
Dan: next.
Dean: If you think 20 was when it started, right. So yeah, almost all yeah, here almost all of 2023. But I look at the last three, it's been a blur. This last seems like just yesterday. We were in Phoenix at the Free Zone Summit.
Dan: At the Boulder, yeah, at the Boulder, it wasn't shut down.
Dean: But I think what was really, what really threw me off was we nobody knew how long this was going to last and every I just felt like, okay, well, we'll just kind of flatten the curve, this will go out through the summer and then by the fall we'll be back and everything should be fine, but I'm sure you were thinking that same thing and then, as soon as we flattened the curve, then we kept getting the new you know the new waves, and that went on, like you know, three, three or four times. So weird.
Dan: So let me ask you a question what's the biggest idea you've had? Only because you went through what happened over the last three years, three, four years.
Dean: I think the whole idea of Cloudlandia really formed then. Because that when I realized that the key is that we could just as easily gather in Cloudlandia and that I shifted everything from being kind of a mainland in-person business to being 80% mainland in-person, 20% on the phone or otherwise, and that was a big realization, and now realize, like I really I haven't been North of I4, interstate 4. I've been North of I4 in four years. I haven't had to. I've 100% migrated to Cloudlandia with invitations and you know people coming to. If they want to spend time in the mainland they come to. But so that was a big that was a big shift.
And we're back now to. So I'm back now, you know, revenue wise, back to pre-COVID days, you know. But then we got. You know, I think that the future is a hybrid, you know, I think there's still lots of mainland opportunities, I think, that line of thinking, that realization of mainland in Cloudlandia, and you know the roles of each.
Dan: You know it's really interesting. I did a lot of in-person workshops because I was doing the 10 times program beforehand, but this year I'll do 64 coaching sessions. Okay.
Dean: Live days, you mean.
Dan: Well, live events, so they're not days, sorry. So I'll do 64 this year, and only eight of them will be in person.
Dean: Oh, okay, that's what I was saying, that's what I meant. So you're counting like connector calls Connector.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Okay, yeah. And the thing about it I think are a nice suite. Those are two hours. Two hours yeah.
Dan: Yeah, those are the perfect suite spot. Yeah, and it was forced upon us only because we had no. There's nothing as decisive as no alternative, absolutely.
Dean: Yeah, I hear you, I'm really excited.
Dan: But once we created this alternative when we came back to full-time, I mean, the company as a whole is back to full-time live sessions, yeah, and. But we've added these two-hour sessions, which were only possible because our clients at nightbase got on to Zoom willingly or not, they got on to Zoom. And it was so useful creating these little two-hour sessions. That's a huge plus, that's a huge gain for us to have them and they're an entity into themselves. You know they have their own value and would not have gone there for two reasons.
One there was no reason to. And secondly, there was no, there was no ability to, but we acquired this capability because of what happened. I was reading the history of the plague, which was not a single thing. It was a series. Of this is I'm talking about the 1200s and 13-legs, right, yeah? On the Black Plague and it hit in the early part of. It hit worse in England of all the European countries and got hit worse. And England was a feudal country. They had warlords and they had serfs.
They had peasants, the king was warlord and there were lesser warlords, but each of them had their serf universe around them, and these were the worker bees. They did all the work and the plague was an equal opportunity killer. It killed from top to bottom. There was no class in England that was immune to the plague, because it was infectious, because they intermingled all the time. Everybody was densely populated and it was so devastating that a lot of estates just folded up, a lot of warlord estates folded up because they didn't have workers. They didn't have workers. They had lost so many workers. So what happened is that the workers realized suddenly that they had a value, in other words, that you can't run the place without us. And so they started wandering the field to the highest buyer, the person who would pay them the most and give them the best deal. So in history.
it's probably the biggest shift of servants becoming three agents and where they went off the land and they went into the towns. They went into the city and they became hired workers. But they could name their price, because if they didn't like the price, they could go to somebody else and say would you offer me a higher price? And what happened is that the merchant classes suddenly became more important than the landed aristocrats.
Okay, because they had business coming in. Where the land has one economic system, it's the crops. And they just decided you know, I couldn't do that. But previous to the plague they were condemned to the land, they were condemned to their occupation. They were condemned to the land, they didn't move. But after the plague they did. And so England which got hit the worst I think they had five plagues in a period of 50 or 60 years and all equally devastating. But they gained the most of the country because they got rid of serfdom in the 1200s where, for example, by comparison, in Russia it didn't happen until the beginning of the 20th century and Germany didn't happen until 1850. Okay, and it was just because of the peculiar geography and the peculiar density of the British population. And then they started talking about rights. They started talking about individual rights and everything along with employment, and freedom follows money.
But I was just thinking about that, what it must have been like the year before the first plague and the year after the fifth plague. What had happened to people's lives back then?
Dean: I mean it's so fascinating to me, Dan, because I remember in college and high school Western civ classes were like get through that and write your Gordon Rule essay and we've gone with it. And here it wasn't really like figuring out of the supply to you. To me as a college kid, that's what you're thinking, but now it's. The thing that fascinates me is this whole history of Western civilization, of how we kind of came into this thing. There's a funny meme going around on TikTok right now where women ask their husbands or boyfriends or whatever how often do you think about the Roman Empire? The meme is to turn your camera on and just ask your husband or whatever how often do you think about the Roman Empire? And it's pretty interesting because the answers that they're giving like a lot of them, are think about it all the time and you think about how much it came from. You know, came from.
Dan: And they didn't know, and the way they didn't know. Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly. That's what are they thinking? About they're thinking about the Roman Empire. That's the Roman Empire. Now, that shocks me actually.
Dean: But you strike me as a guy who often thinks about the Roman Empire, you know.
Dan: Yeah, I do.
Dean: Not many people, dan, I don't know anybody else to have a conversation that starts up. You know I've been thinking about the Black Plague lately. Yeah, only here, welcome to the Blue Land, because you hear such a conversation, that is you know, we just had about five.
Dan: We just had about five tripwires at the National Security Agency. But if we didn't know, that the majority of husbands were thinking about the Roman Empire you know, it's kind of like when have we been? We didn't pick up on this Right. What's that mean?
Dean: Yeah, but you know the interests that they were giving was. You know one? A couple of the guys were engineers and they constantly thinking about you know the. Roman Empire thinking about others are the one guy's. They was a martial artist. Thinking about the Roman, you know gladiators and Like constantly thinking about all things. The Rome, you know and it's funny because you're, you know. You look at your Euclid, you know yeah, I'm before the Roman your foundational thing.
Dan: Right, exactly, but I mean, I mean actually if there was any Civilization that benefited from Euclid, it was the Romans. They were great builders.
Yeah, you know, yeah, and all that depended upon the books of Euclid, every everything that they did. Yeah, well, it's an interesting thing. You know, I have a constant belief that human nature is a constant in the. I mean, we tend to think that people are radically different because of the means that they use at one particular era of you know history from another side that well, that that means they were really different people, and I said I don't think they are. I think they have a constant.
You know they have a constant motivation to kind of utilize whatever they have available to them, and Oftentimes that requires that they have to create an entirely new structures and new processes, and and so the so you know, I don't feel, you know like I was born in the 40s, I lived, you know, I was conscious beginning in the 50s and my sense is that, as far as how people were, you know what human nature was, I don't see much of a difference.
I certainly don't see it in myself, you know, I just sample of one feel any different.
Dean: I Think I still.
Dan: I'm very much in touch who I was when I was eight years old.
Dean: Yeah, me too. Yeah, I think about that a lot like that, because I have been and we've had conversations about the reflection on. You know, I think you know we've had to be the ages your 22 years older. Than me that you've had a whole mother. You know generation of, you know the experience from 1944 to 1966 with the pretty. That's a pretty, yeah, that's a lot of happen. You know, yeah.
Yeah, and I look at the. You know the 22 years from 1966 to 88 were really. I marked 1988 as basically the end of the analog life. You know that that the beginning of the digital live, and though digital stuff kind of start happening in 70s, there was a real practical here. We started getting real practical applications of digital stuff. But that first 22 years of my life was Really analog and I'm thankful that I had that experience, because I think there's something you know to that. I don't know whether it, I don't know practically, whether what we you know the fondness that I feel for either Nostalgic or you know, but it was a different, it was a different world.
Dan: It was a very different world yeah. Yeah, well, going on that book, the, you know the big change you know, yeah, from the book, wonderful book that you sent me, which I consume. You know the. I was born right at the payoff period of the first 50 years.
Dean: You know yeah.
Dan: That's it. Yeah and you know I've been talking to people decades older than myself who had gone through the real huge impact of the you know, the cars, the electricity, the you know light everywhere. You know movies, radio, movies, radio and the beginning of television. You know that and you know, you know I mean. I remember People gathering in rooms to watch this thing called television. You know, I remember you know it was like a big event.
Dean: We just got our television.
Dan: come on over, we're going to have a buffet dinner and we're all going to sit around and watch our.
Dean: TV dinners and jiffy pop popcorn, yeah, yeah.
Dan: It was rudimentary, I mean, but the big thing about it was it had a liveliness to it because the Programs were not recorded, they were live. No, everything was still live. And you know and think about where we are now. That Live TV. Well, first of all, I don't watch it in the heaven for a while. But I think a lot of people just said why should they schedule when I get to watch what I want?
Dean: Well, it seems a little undignified.
Dan: Yeah, it seems it seems feudal Feudal in both senses of the word.
Dean: Yeah, what a feudal way of doing what I want to watch, you know, but you think about that was largely there was no change between the way you were watching television in 1948 and the way you were watching television in 1988. It was really the main. It was still as Scheduled you had to be yeah, you had maybe one more.
Dan: You had maybe one more channel, you know I went to. Cnn start. Well then you had the cable. Yeah, that's what I mean.
Dean: At the 80s you had more options for it. Yeah, but it wasn't until it wasn't until the late 80s that you had more option. I mean, the VCR brought a synchronicity and, yeah, freed you from at least you could shoot, gave you choice and Detached from the scheduling of it. But nobody could figure out how to Record stuff. Yeah it was a look.
You know, 90% of the VCRs were still flashing 12 yeah, you know nobody can even program the clock for it, let alone Learn how to record Programs. You know so mostly. You had Blockbuster to go and give yourself some Choice, but that took from 1948 to 1988 to get to that point. And that big middle, that big Golden plateau, that I think that's a good term for it. Right, is that golden?
Dan: plateau of.
0:18:39 - Dean:
All of those things being in place. That happened in the big change. All those things you mentioned electric and on radio, tv, movies, flight, automobile, all of those things climb, climb, exponential improvement to 1950. And then we had that golden plateau where there wasn't much innovation on those things but it was really settled into a much improved life and life style Because of those things. You know now every I had electricity, air conditioning, telephone, car in the driveway, pv in the living room. You know All of those things were. That was like the basic, that was the basic amenity package for American life circa 1950 to 1980, you know, yeah, and that's bathroom bathroom is where there was no bath and no shower.
Dan:Yeah, right exactly.
Dean: Very funny that the thing now and this is where I firmly believe that period from 1975 to two-week years of AI, a couple more years to develop, with that same sort of climbing, climbing, exponential improvement in things. But I think that we're approaching level golden plateau, where the next thing is going to be settled into the benefits of using all the things that we have now, of really settling into those utilization of this new baseline, like every home. Now it's interesting that the basic amenity package for life now includes some sort of a smart phone, access to the internet and streaming smart television service. So all of that as the baseline package, though for the digital plateau here.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: It's pretty exciting.
Dan: Yeah, and I feel that, and I think that World Affairs are dictating that this is now going to be the only thing available for people to do, because my feeling is that COVID delivered a first stunning blow to both your ability and your desire to travel. I think people are much more at home or stay in place today than they were four years ago around the world. I'm not just in North America, but in the whole world.
Dean: That geography does come into place, right, like your position, your outpost, your mainland outpost to Cloudlandia, like I think about I've just been watching you know, with just a perplexing. I can't even imagine what it's like to be living in Israel right now, like that entire, or Ukraine I mean you think about these things how insulated we are right now from the reality.
Dan: Well, like there's one aspect. You know, israel comparatively has a very small population. That's why the equivalent of what happened with the first 24 to 48 hours was way beyond what 9-11 did to the United States.
Dean: Absolutely yeah.
Dan: Yeah, because it's the equivalent of 40,000, you know if you compare. Israeli population of the US. You know, the US's population is 45 times bigger than Israel.
So the 3,000 out of 40, you know, 45 times it's significant, but it's, you know, it's not that big, it's like 40,000, I mean, if you wanted to translate it, it's like, you know, it's like 40 to 50,000 people have died. But the other thing is the call up to war, because it is a declared war. They've moved 300,000 working-age people into the military, now their full-time military. So what's that do to the economy?
you know what's you know, and so my sense is that Israel, which is a very advanced technological country, is now going to go through an amazing period of artificial intelligence, dealt with everything that moves in their economy.
Dean: Yeah, I mean when you amplify too, especially the proximity to it. When you look at the, you know it might be a 145th of the population, but it's also, you know, a hundredth or less of the geographic area of the. United States, you know.
Dan: Yeah, it's basically New Jersey you know, I mean the land area of New Jersey is about equal to and they're comparable yeah, yeah and when you look at that and you realize that's not like even in Ukraine.
Dean: As you know the size of the Ukraine, if you're you know kind of there's a place to distance from what's going on the eastern border of Ukraine. If you're on the western side you're kind of a little bit insulated from it. But you know, it's just. It's amazing to me, dan. I can't even imagine.
Dan: Yeah, well, you know actually my experience of this because I was, you know, technically in a war zone when I was in South Korea.
Dean: I was going to say you were in a war zone. Yeah.
Dan: Well, south Korea, and we were maybe a hundred miles from the DMZ, okay, uh-huh, but you were conscious and we had five alerts in the year and a half that I was there and that meant there was an incursion on the DMZ, the demilitarized zone.
I can tell you the demilitarized zone is very militarized, you know, and so there would be, you know, a squad of American troops or the other UN troops would be ambushed. You know they would ambush, and immediately the country you know, and this was the military, the US Park, you know 40, 45,000, and then you had.
You know you had other troops, the Turks, the Turkish. The Turks had a big contingent there, but immediately you knew what to do, you would do that. So in Israel they've had the rocket attacks now going back seven or eight years. Okay, and they immediately the sirens go off. Everybody knows what to do. So there I was, that the closer you are to the danger, the less scary it seems, because it's normal, you've normalized anything. And three or four days, you've normalized the situation. Okay, you've normalized it.
Seeing it from a distance, you know you're imagining what that situation would do to the Four Seasons, right, yeah?
Dean: I'm sitting like I'm in my courtyard right now and it's just, it's the perfect temperature. It's so quiet, you know, because there's nothing around me. I just can't even imagine if bombs started landing or somebody started running through the neighborhood.
Dan: Yeah, but on the other hand, I mean, you've been there for decades, you know in the area and you have. You know what? Two, three hurricane alerts a year.
Dean: Well, people in people in Toronto.
Dan: I mean a hurricane for people in Toronto, oh yeah. You know, actually almost the entire what I would say. The the water overflow situation in Toronto was hugely created because of a hurricane in the 1950s that killed 200 people in Toronto because of sudden rushing water in parts of the city where people were caught. It was like a riptide.
You know it was like a riptide and they had to reconfigure their entire drainage system. You know when heavy rains and everything like that. So that's an example, you know, an example of someplace that doesn't have this kind of situation. When they get a big one, they have to rethink everything. You know. And but the type of a situation we had in Toronto in 1953, I wasn't here, but as a matter of fact, I'm not here today, I'm in Chicago.
Dean: But just talking about it.
Dan: You know I try to get some distance between me and any potential problem, but you know I mean it's a violation of normal and in Israel, my feeling when I was there it's been about two and a half weeks in Israel and I got a sense that everybody knew what to do with trouble. Okay, they knew what to do with. There was a kibbutz that we visited and these people had been in Gaza, that they had lived in Gaza before it was given back to the Palestinians 2005, 2006, I think it might have been somewhere around there and they were talking. The woman said that there was the start of trouble had started and there were bombings and there were shootings and she had three kids and they went out the front door and she heard the bombs, she heard the shooting and they all came rushing back in and they said they're shooting in the streets and she said, well, go out the back.
No, out the back, wow and the reason is, I mean, they had already rehearsed it, but they had to go to school.
Dean: Yeah, go help the back.
Dan: Okay, yeah, she said well just go out, just go out. They had a back gate and no, there was a back route and everything like that so what it says is that having something like this happened was the normal part of their experience Right, yeah, that's just and they were all tacking every.
We were up at the Lebanese border and we just visited this community. That's the furthest northern, most Israeli settlement town. You know, it's not big, you know, a couple hundred people. Everybody was packing, everybody had a six-quat, you know. And so funny because there was a UN troop between them and the Whoever was on the other side of the border and and he said aren't you scared? He says I'll tell you who's scared, as the UN people, they're really scared. Okay, because we kind of believe that they favor the Terrorists. You know, our belief is that the UN protects the terrorists, you know. But if you went to the northern, above the border and you asked the Lebanese, they said we feel that the UN Favors the Israelis. You know, uh-huh.
So I said if trouble starts off, who gets shot first? I? He says, well, the UN troops. And he says I even got a guy on the shoot.
Dean: Oh my goodness I've got a guy I know the guy right Normalizing no I don't know how to yeah no, normal is normal.
Dan: Yeah, we're great normalizing species. Humans are a normalizing species. You know that.
Dean: Reminded me of. There was a cartoon where the, the Cheap dog and the wolf were, you know, clocking in for their job. Today, fred, they ask each other at the clock in, and then they did work. He tried to steal the sheep and he tried and foil them.
Dan: You know, yeah what'd you do last time? What'd you do tonight? Last night, you?
Dean: know, you know what are you gonna do what?
Dan: what are you gonna do today? Oh, you know the usual, yeah. And so people, you know you, you know real, realize that we were standing in line. We came through the Toronto security yesterday and and if you were, if you had nexus or you had what's the general term for nexus is where they yeah, yeah. I get global entry. I just look, you know, and they're really. The Machines are really sophisticated.
Use, come up the machine yeah it has an arrow going upwards and said look into the camera. And I looked into the camera and there was about a five seconds. Say your identity, you know, you're confirmed. Yeah, and see the an art, you know. And that's become normal. Yeah, but in the not because we find business class and we have nexus and the other thing people were having to take off their shoes. Okay, yeah, this is 2024, and they have to take off their shoes to go through, you know, to go through the machine and and I said this was because one guy, one guy.
Yeah, 25 years he was fine from London to New York and he was trying to detonate his shoes.
And and he was a clutch, and so they caught him and they took him away, and immediately, because of one guy not two in two different situations, but one guy in one situation he had immediately. Everybody has to take off their shoes. It's just one guy. You know why don't you have a little area where you have to walk across? You know it's on the floor and it can detect explosives you know, and it's a trapdoor, so they immediately drop you into the. The cleaner, the cleaner who was that?
Dean: Land security right, yeah, yeah who was that guy?
Dan: I said we'll never know. We'll never know. Yeah, but it's interesting and you know it's a pain, you know, and that's why we have nexus and that's why we've adapted cloudland via Bypass. You know, the machine knows me.
Yeah, that's it's really important is that the machine knows you. Yeah, but there's a thing about normalizing, you know, and but my feeling you know the famous, you know it's the adaptation curve, you know it's a yeah, you know it starts at one end, then there's a big bulge and then it goes down the other end my sense is that people's ability to normalize is unequal. I think you and I are pretty fast to normalize.
Dean: I think the two of us and that and it's a reward for being a DD you think, yeah, I think so too, you're probably right.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting thought. Lon, lon, quick start, lon, quick start a DD. I think you normalize really fast. You know, I normalize really fast yeah. I remember it was Friday, the 13th of March, when I was in Chicago, and it's funny because Friday was the 13th. This is.
Sunday, but we're talking, yeah, and, and I was coaching a workshop, but it was about 60% of what its normal numbers were. You know, I think we normally had 50 and I think we had maybe 30. And then when we got together After the workshop, before Babs and I went home to flew back home to Toronto, she says we've had a powwow all the leadership in the company and we've decided we're gonna have to close down All workshops for three months. Okay, it's March, we're gonna close down all workshops until, because we're people just aren't going to be showing up and I need to put the word out that we're not gonna do it that time and.
I was tired, I'd done four workshops a week, and so we went to the airport, we got on the plane and I'm Halfway home and I said zoom, we're gonna switch over to zoom. This is the opportunity switch over, zoom. And I hit the ground the next morning. Well, it was Saturday, but by Monday I said okay, what will it take to turn everything we do 100% into zoom? Yeah, yeah.
I and we have clients today who we haven't seen Since early 2020, who still haven't made the adjustment right. Yeah, I think they can't normalize and what it?
Dean: was. I think that when I first started doing zoom I Was doing, I was trying to do the same thing as the break through blueprint, but by zoom, like three days, same thing. We're just, instead of being in the boardroom, you're in your home, you know, and I think we realized about Zoom fatigue kind of thing. It's sitting three days in zoom Full day is a long with a big ass, and I think that you and I both have come to the realization that like two hours more frequently is the is a better Two hours is the right amount of time and I found this beautiful time zone From three o'clock to five o'clock Eastern time.
He gets me. I go to Hawaii on one end, even to the you know, this side of Australia where it's six am, you know, at three pm in the afternoon, all the way to Lichtenstein on the other end where it's, you know, ten o'clock at night. That Swap of the Western world is really what's available in yeah, and. Yeah, that's our.
Dan: Yeah, our stretches from Pakistan, Well, stretches from Mumbai, because Mumbai is further to the east and Pakistan to New Zealand, and I'm just saying people who show up for zoom cults. You know the? Yeah, yeah yeah and everything. Yeah, lichtenstein, that's really interesting.
Dean: Do whites, do well often they're husbands.
Dan: That's perfect. Nsa that's a money laundering. We have the very first space.
Dean: So I started doing this specific like I do a lead conversion workshop and a lead generation workshop, which are four sessions specifically about that micro topic, two hours each four weeks in a row and the very first one that I did. We had someone from Hawaii and Lichtenstein and all points in between. It was really the perfect thing.
Dan: Yeah, I mean we adjusted throughout the day depending on our, you know. I mean I'll have six free zones, six free zone, two hour free zone.
Dean: I'd love quarter.
Dan: Connector calls are amazing and if they're big you know they have a lot of people they take on one quality, and if they're like a handful of people, they take on another quality. They're different for you. You don't have to have breakout groups if you have five people, you know, because the group is the breakout group, yeah, and everything like that. But I think this we're in for one of those periods and I agree with your thesis that we've had sort of a 50 year move to the new game period of history.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: And I think the politics and the economics of the end of the 50 years are radically different than the politics and the economics where you started the 50 years. That would have been true from 1950, from 1900 to 1950.
Dean: And that was something. Let's talk about that for a minute, because there might be some clues into what happened.
Dan: Well, there were no empire in the 1900, the whole world was organized according to empires. There were six or seven major empires by 1950. They were all gone. All those empires had gone away. Okay, I mean, great Britain still retained a global reach that used to be their empire, but it was now called the Commonwealth. Okay, and it wasn't British troops being stationed in those places.
Dean: You, know it was this that they.
Dan: What held it together was British law and British political structures, and English language and the pound, you know the.
Dean: I mean franchise basically. It was a franchise, ideological, political.
Dan: Yeah, and the US changed the least of all those countries. I mean from a lifestyle standpoint. It changed a lot of technological, but it's basic structure and process of how the country is run stayed exactly the same. It was the Constitution in 1900. And it was the Constitution in 1950 and then 2020. And it was designed as a franchise nation right from the beginning, because each of the states is like a little fractal copy of the federal government, you know so and each of the states gets to adjust to the way that they deem important.
You know, it's, it's everything. So I think, of all the people on the planet who have had to change the least over the last 50 years, I think Americans are the number one.
Dean: You say well, what do you mean?
Dan: I mean I had to do this and I had to do this and I said, yeah, that's yours, you know, I bet you have more conveniences, you have more comfort, you have more capabilities, but I would say your day to day life is not that much different, because it's so there's a guy on YouTube who has a channel where for years he's branched off into other areas now, but his main thing was, as a solo guy, just going with a GoPro camera to explore former Soviet territory and right
Dean: it was just the guy on YouTube. His channel is called Bald and Bankrupt oh the guy. But he goes around and he gives you. He just goes and sees, like what is life like in Uzbekistan right now? You know like he goes and tours the areas and he's fascinated by the you know, soviet mosaics and the all the remnants of, you know grander times for Soviet it's all ruined, it's all ruined, absolutely.
And so you see the day in a life of people because he goes and sort of, he speaks Russian well enough to get by.
Dan: Get along.
Dean: Yeah, and he'd be friends he'd be friends, locals and gets invited into their homes. And you know, you just see like what? What an amazing contrast to life in America. You know a capitalism life, then life after you know communism, where capitalism hasn't fully sunk in, even though it's an option, it hasn't sunk in. You know, in that way, and how desolate you know it's. The landscape is just bleak. You know, I mean everything is in this and and the roads and the infrastructure and everything is just crumbling and the bar resilient, I guess, in a way, right, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of. They're living normal life. Not I wouldn't say normal, but I mean normal. To that normal, no, normal, they consider it normal. They consider it normal. Yeah, yeah, normal life, yeah yeah, yeah, the.
Dan: there was an article I read about twin sisters born in Germany, born before the wall went up, so this would be and, and one of them said, you know, we've got to get out. And they were. You know, they were young, very young at that time. And so the one with a lot of initiative did it and she was leaving behind her twin sister, who she was unusually close to, that close to, and she moved to the West Germany and other sister stayed in East Germany and they would correspond and they're under, you know, under very difficult conditions. They were able to visit with each other.
The sister in East Germany couldn't go to the West but there was provisions that, you know, families could reunite for half a day or something like that. So, anyway, and then then the sister, who was, you know, more motivated, then got a chance to move to the United States and she moved to Iowa. Okay, and at a certain point, when the wall fell, you know, which was 1989, the sister, they made this. It took a year to plan it and everything else, just practically, because the sister in Germany just wasn't used to going anywhere.
And they finally they flew to. She flew to Chicago and then to Iowa, and so they picked her up at the airport and she they were just driving from the airport to wherever the woman lived in Iowa the now American sister and they were going through just a normal supper and she said you're taking me through the wealthy section, Now you take.
And they said this isn't the wealthy session, this is just no, this is just, this is just the way everything normal, yeah this is normal and that more or less paralyzed the sister because she had no mental structure to take in that this was just the way that Americans lived.
And then they went to a supermarket, you know which was probably the land size of two football fields, you know, and just a normal, super, nothing special. I mean, yeah, and so they walked in, they says we've got a lot of shopping to do and everything. And she says, well, is there anything I can do? And she says, well, look about the aisles there, you see. You know, there's aisles one through 20, and just go to aisle number 11 and just turn the corner, you know, and take string with you, so he or lead, lead, bread, breadcrumbs, and so she says, but we're looking for corn flakes, some, of course, like. So anyway, and they agree, and they're both punctual, they're German. And so she says you know, in 20 minutes let's just meet right back here. And so the American sister is there, but the German sister, the East German sister, isn't. So she goes down to aisle 11 and her sister is right where the corn flakes were standing, mute.
You know just looking at the corn flakes and she said there's 10 different kinds of corn flakes. How can I possibly choose? And she said I just grab one of them. And she said I can't comprehend. How do you make decisions here? How do you make? Decisions yeah yeah, it's a collision of two normals.
Dean: Yes, you want. I mean Lupa talked about that coming to. America and going to the grocery store as you know like going just seeing all the things that were available. It's amazing. It's really interesting to hear her talk about her awakening to capitalism you know like as a because she came to America at 18, you know, or you know 20, I guess she was 20.
Dan: And yeah seeing having her life Anying. Other siblings followed her yeah.
Dean: Oh, she brought everybody, yeah, everybody over, but that yeah, she just well, I think, I think you have a different level of well, she's really the you know she's the.
Dan: You know the great exhibit here of someone, the adaptation curve, you know. I mean she just like it was like when she had the chance. She didn't miss the chance to get out.
Dean: But what I?
Dan: remember most about her story because we were out to dinner a couple of times at the last free zone in Palm.
Dean: Beach.
Dan: And what I remember most was that the person who most protected their rather odd family in the Ukraine in Ukraine, was a KGB agent.
Dean: Oh yeah.
Dan: And you know so you know everything. You know what makes people normal is who they're connected to. You know what, who, are you?
connected to, and you know, the more you're connected to people who have wider perspective than have greater capabilities, I think it's the faster you're able to adapt. Agreed, I think that's what I mean, since I talk to you all the time. What am I going to do? Wying about COVID? Yeah, I mean, regardless how I'm picking, you know, I've got a certain status to get to maintain. You know, reputation to maintain, yeah, yeah.
Dean: I love it. I think the interesting thing, about MacCamp. We to think about this week is this in the context of the golden plateau that we're reaching here, and how to thrive in that golden Well, I think things are going to fall down, you know my my military money, energy, labor and transport you know, I think things are definitely.
Dan: I can sense that things are slowing down. Like you know, the predictions in the high tech industry everything's going to get bigger and better, and that's you know, it's a straight upward line. Yeah but I too in infinity, and I says I don't think so, I think the mouth. Things really slowed down when they hit 1950. Oh, you know, I remember it as being a fairly tranquil period of 1950s, 1960s.
You know, I agree, that's what I mean is very until you were born, and then, of course, things started to get in line and things shifted Right. Yeah, but I know I agree with you 100%.
Dean: That was a. You know that all of that leveled into a stage of, you know, a plateauing of advancement. I mean, it wasn't, it was. You know, all those things you read about in the big change, those things were revolutionary. I mean, so all these baby boomers born into this plateau, that plateau, really didn't know a world before those big things, before electricity, television, all television, air conditioning, cars, roads, all of that. And then they grew up in brand new schools all the way up. You know the whole thing.
Dan: Whole new neighborhoods. You know, they grew up in whole new neighborhoods, yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, I think we're into that period again. I think we're going to you know go. And I was thinking that when people say bold things like cars, use an example of cars, of classic old time cars. You don't notice many classical cars that were produced too much after the fifties up until the eighties, you know right.
You really to pick up on the late forties the forts were beautiful, the Chevy's were beautiful, the Lincoln's were beautiful and everything else, and they are saved because they didn't really they stylized, they certainly did not approve. I can think of only maybe two cars. I'm not a car guy, so your thing, but you know, and one is the Chevy Corvette which has maintained a certain classic look for 70 years, and the other one is the Camaro, both the Chevy and the Camaro, the Camaro is you know, is a hot car, but I can't think of any other.
you know again, I'm not a car person, so I'm basing my confidence on ignorance here. But anyway, but the big thing is, but the fort thirties and forties is just full of these old classic cars. You know, and I think it was a high design period and you know, and I mean we certainly don't save any technology that much from that period of time. You know well it was not over. Tonight I've got, I still got my 19 Motorola television and oh, yeah, no exactly Six, six inches.
And you know and everything like that. You know, nobody does that, but they do have radios from the forties. You know, people do have radios from the thirties and forties, you know, yeah, yeah, anyway. So how would we sum up today? Because we've shot through an hour and record time. I can't believe it.
Dean: Well, I think my reflection right now is really going to be, I think, drawing the parallel, looking at who and what were the conditions for thriving in the period from the fifties to the eighties, you know, and on that, on the back of all of that advancement, and I think, if we're going to start doing some guessing and betting about what's going to thrive in the next 25 years, you know that we've reached this thing and I'm going to let it ride out to 20 as the peak of the plateau kind of, and see that period from, I think the period from 25 to 50, that 25 years is going to be.
There's going to be a lot of parallels, I think, yeah, yeah, my sense is.
Dan: I can just end with one little example from a 10 times connector I had. On Friday I was in a break up with three people. One of them was a marketer, one of them was a podcaster, and I'm just. The other one was an online educational company two women and a man and half their sharing was the progress they've made with AI during 2023. Okay, yeah.
And I was very struck by their reports because they just talked about it and they were just talking normally about something that literally did not exist before November 30th last year.
Dean: Okay, yeah.
Dan: They were just talking as well. We're doing this with AI, we're doing this with AI, we're doing this with AI, and it was like yeah, we're saying, yeah, and we did this, we're doing this with electricity. We're doing this with electricity Right, right, exactly. And now I said I've gotten a keen insight just by your reports. Today you're sharing that this is what's going on in tens, hundreds of millions of places right now, and it's all subsurface, it's all below the surface. Okay.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And they're not talking about it as a big thing, they're just talking about it as a normal thing.
Dean: Right. That's why I say by if we that and I think that's going to be expanded that if we that, by then this to 2025, that by then it's going to be, everybody's going to have a sense of what this is. You know, I think you're absolutely right Like we're literally just a year into AI.
Dan: Yeah, I mean that's, I can see the report. I can just see the reports that are being written about our conversation today at the NSA. Oh, my goodness, people say we've got to have a meeting, we've got to have a meeting.
Dean: They're on, they're on.
Dan: They're not onto us. They're onto things that we didn't know about. Yeah, and what was the Roman Empire anyway? Is that an empire we should be paying attention to? Do we have contacts with Alrighty?
Dean: Dean. Yeah, all right, I'll be here next week. I think I am. I'll be back in Toronto.
Dan: I'll certainly be. I'll be in a position. Perfect, I will talk to you then. Thanks, dean, bye, Okay.