This Sustainable Life

I consider leadership a performance art and the environment the most beautiful thing around. Abbey and I talked about beauty, art, performance, teaching, technique, craft, and everything that goes into mastery.She has little experience with burpees. I have little with painting, but we connected on mastery. I think I can safely say we both look forward to our next conversation. Just after stopping recording we both commented on how much we enjoyed connecting on what underlies all fields amenable to mastery.Abbey has painted a painting daily since 2007. As someone who has done burpee-based calisthenics and written blog posts daily for nearly as long, I couldn't wait to talk to Abbey about the personal growth, community, connection, self-awareness, self-expression, and so on that come from a daily practice.I learned about her from podcast guest Seth Godin's book Linchpin, but watching her videos (links below) showed me the beauty of her work. More than that beauty, I enjoyed watching her connections with people learning art from her.Do you want to make an activity you care about a pillar of your life? Why care about classics and masters? Listen to Abbey.Abbey's home pageAbbey's video pageAbbey's thoughts on painting video Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I discuss the connection between perceiving lack of variety in food made from scratch and feeling miserable and bored under lockdown, despite having access to all the world's art, music, literature, and culture ever recorded and more material abundance than kings only a few generations ago, despite our material abundance being only slightly less than a few months ago.Here are the notes I read from for this episode:Yesterday recorded episode with Rob and my stepfatherTalked about food variety, said mine lacked varietyOnly tried three timesPeople always see theirs as varied, others as notPeople say I don't like Chinese or Indian, billions, huge varietyI see McDonald's and Taco Bell as sameCount Chocula versus Froot LoopsI made something with broccoli versus zucchini or cauliflower as differentI see industrial food as the salt, sugar, fat, convenience treatmentAdd sugar versus add salt, people see as different, but to me corn flakes and Fritos are basically the sameSupermarket carries same things year-round. Seems like variety because at any given moment lots of choicesBut once the prime pleasure becomes salt, sugar, fat, convenience, same to me.Because there's the raw flavor, which can differ, but we've reduced that variety to monocrops so only a few varieties of mango here, despite abundance in nature, and zero radishes for most peopleTo me variety among apples is huge, which I cherishGerman beer law -> abundance and just local ingredients is huge compared to their fourPeople lived since dawn of our species on local ingredientsWhen did we become so entitled that we should get anything we want whenever, wherever?What's so bad about not having berries every damn day?A farmer nearby wants to provide food for me and youInstead a large part of your money goes to Saudi Arabia for fuel, Madison Avenue for advertising, Wall Street for finance, and Venezuela for farmer now not feeding their peopleSo my parents, who have lived here for over a decade, say there's nothing available local this time of yearIt's like someone who played loud music their whole lives to deaf saying there's no bird songsThe human aspect is important to me. I would probably eat meat, which until just before this time of year would be our option, and we'd cherish it, not take it for granted and ship from all over the worldThen treat with salt, sugar, fat, convenienceSo no, I don't consider Filet-o-Fish as different than a burger, nor Taco Bell as different from McDonald's, Olive Garden, etcThey all treat the raw ingredients as commodities.I want to treat them as a painter treats paints on a palette or a musician treats notes on a scale. A piano has 88 keys. A trumpet three valves.No variety?Let's get to bigger picture.I've also come to see our educational system as equally tone deafSome will see history as completely different subject than economicsOr even humanities as different than scienceEven there, most humanities people will see math and physics similarMost science will see history and philosophy as similarTo me, if they all teach the same skills of reading, listening, taking notes, analyzing how they teach to analyze, but not to learn their own values and create own skills, teaching the same complianceThat most Americans or people in East and West, when confronted with new problem, can't helpMandela, in prison 27 years, lived more free in 10x10 foot cell with forced labor than people today.How do I know? Because he created his happiness despite few raw ingredients, yet people today with much more comfort, convenience, and variety feel depressed and bored.I learn from Thoreau, who lived off the land. Read Walden and Civil Disobedience. People today miss the point by saying he interacted with people. He found that being put in jail for not paying taxes to avoidsupporting slavery and an unjust war made him more free.People who emerge from our educational system learn dependence, not independence. Rob complains about system and as best I can tell spends his time in solitude trying to find how someone is causing his problems rather than appreciating nature that no matter how we try to dominate it, will never go away nor be weaker than us.With zero evidence constructs a world view that Chinese labs were trying to hurt him. Mandela learned to relate with and help the people imprisoning him, realizing the problem wasn't the people, but the systemPeople make themselves depressed, despondent, angry, and such unable to apply their compliance and analysis to understand a situation beyond what school taught.Victor Frankl lived a life of more happiness and bliss in Auschwitz, or Jean-Dominique Bauby, the guy from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly who suffured a stroke that led to him devoid of voluntary control of any muscles except his left eyelid and who wrote a book that became a bestseller and a movie that won awards, He did it by connecting with the people around him.They lived more variety and happiness than people today who want to riot when they only have access to all the food in the world, all the world's knowledge, video to anyone and everyone, all the art, music, literature, movies, ever recordedAs well as the tools for themselves to recreate those works or even make their ownSo go ahead and call my bowl of cereal one day with a bartlett pear and the next with an anjou pear lacking variety while your Wheatiesdifferent than your Spaghetti-os, which I see as the sameWhile you complain, plan to riot against people suggesting you live with slightly less material abundance than yesterday, by your own prideful boasting greater than kings of only a few generations ago, and sink into depression and rageMiss out on seeing that the same process happens with travel as with food. Just as they industrialize food to produce what superficially looks like variety but beneath the surface is monotony, people's actual experience of Italy versus China have become as different as different sections of Disney World, while they can't see the nuance between going on a bike camping trip versus spending a week to learn bike mechanics. Or they can't see that spending a week on a meditation retreat might change their lives more, despite probably less emissions, than crossing another item off a bucket list that is actually less photogenic than the million pictures on the net, that they degrade by going and also degrade where they came from.Or even as my stepfather describes meeting the people or the land in faraway places, while missing out that his very own childhood createdthe same results by going places on foot, miss out that the variety and diversity of people is everywhere.My greatest recent vacation was the day, just to see if I could, I got on my rowing machine and rowed a marathon---that is 26.2 miles.You would say I didn't leave my apartment and with disdain say I missed seeing Macchu Piccu or some other thing beyond my physical horizon, while I found myself, physically, emotionally, and made myself more able, more creative, less needy, physically, emotionally,intellectually.It wasn't just a day but a journey, since a month earlier I had rowed half a marathon for the first time, that feat a couple months after seeing people do it during the crossfit games, which I found researching a guest on my show who won the crossfit games after winning a gold medal in the Olympics, whom I met from another guest on the podcast from several months earlier who had won the Americas Cup, whom I met from learning to sail, which I learned to cross the Atlantic because I challenged myself not to pollute by not flying.While most Americans seem unable to put two and two together to see the opportunity to create the joy, happiness, bliss, community, andconnection that someone the Nazis tortured, that Apartheid tortured, and whose stroke deprived of voluntary control created.You think they're dead. Some of you probably think they're dead white males, as one entitled student described my heroes including Mandela, MLK, and Gandhi. I find them more alive than probably you find alive most of your Facebook connections including possibly your spouse, as Rob tells me many people are looking to divorce as they meet their partners more.So go help bankrupt your local farmers, saying they can't provide you with food in the winter and help support despotic regimes and a system making more despotic regimes, lying to yourself that you aren't contributing to itAnd lament that after the vaccine everything will return to normal despite connecting with people around you more, as the guy I mentioned to Rob that my step-father and I talked to yesterday told of finally learning that his son was languishing in school, but flourished when his own father actually spent time with him.His father said he wouldn't go back to the old way.He could have learned about his son any time. Why didn't he? He was busy. He had time for things not his son but not his son.Compliance-based education may have resulted in a child getting an A, but not knowing his father, or rather knowing his father doesn't have time for him but does put him in a place that bores him.Teaching below him more likely led to him getting a low grade, not high, less factual understanding which nobody cares about anyway, and shoved down learning experientially value, meaning, and purpose, connection, family, ability, creativity, initiative, and what makes life abundant.Now he has less, but he's finding more, he's creating more.He says, as you have the capacity to, that he would have changed earlier, had he known.Reverting back to before means you are passively accepting the compliance and impotence that supports those regimes, keeps you stupid however vaunted your degrees and able to regurgitate information but not tell the difference between radish varieties to where you call salads with two different varieties lacking varietyAnd you would have reacted as I would on mentioning putting pears in cereal, that I won't because pears' flavors are so nuanced and delicate that I would rather eat my oats plain in order to savor the pearsExcept when they're in peak season and so abundant and cheap that I feel richer than a king when I indulge in them, appreciating the abundance of nature, not the scarcity of soul in your supermarkets and convenience restaurants, however crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, and your prepared restaurant meals full of pleasure bereft of feeling.Now watch your farmer sell his land and pay some Saudi prince while you make yourself powerless to love and spend time with your child when restrictions decrease and you can do what you want.Go complain and use your compliant, entitled dependence to turn greater material abundance and prosperity into emptiness of meaning and purpose and feel superior to my walking four miles to meet a guy in person who can tell me where my local farmers will sell me a rutabaga you wouldn't deign to eat as it lacks variety, while my life overflows with abundance of meaning, purpose, sensory delight, and even amid this tirade love.I have to admit as I write and speak the word love that I'm hit with humility, what little I have, that my poor rhetoric and reflection haveled to a tone accusatory and condescending.Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm fooling myself. But I'm sharing not to put down but to invite you to try, not sample or visit, but sincerely, authentically, and genuinely try to live this way for a while.Maybe start with food. For a week or two go for nothing packaged, no added salt, sugar, fat, nothing made extra convenient. Cook everything from scratch, maybe more than a week or two, until you master it, which may take months and will make you as sore as someone using muscles for the first time in their lives, but when strengthened will enable you to achieve more than ever.I predict you'll wish you had earlier, that you'll connect with your world, community, and family more than you thought possible, that you'llopen yourself to learning, growing, and connecting.If after you master local foods you return to Cracker Barrel, please teach me why, because I'll have something to learn from you.I predict instead you'll want to share what you've learned with others, and you'll be able to do the greatest thing anyone can about our environmental problems, greater than not flying, greater than avoiding packaging, greatest of all: you can lead others---people, communities, corporations, and governments -- to love, honor, and steward nature, which includes us. Hosted on Acast. 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If you measure an interaction with someone by how much it affects and improves your life, my conversation with Julian was profound. Why? His conversation led me to start meditating regularly---something I've considered for year but never implemented, until the morning after our conversation.Longtime listeners know I've meditated for nearly 15 years. I've chosen infrequent deep dives---5-10-day retreats with no reading, writing, phone, internet, or talking---finding that I've gotten most of the value of daily practice from my other sidchas. The morning after our conversation, I started and have kept going since. I credit Julian's conversation.I met Julian after hearing an episode of his podcast featuring Wen-Jay Ying, an entrepreneur who founded one of the CSAs I get my vegetables from in New York. I learned more about his podcast: he hosts well-known guests to speak about the environment and human views on it. He focuses on emotions, leadership, action, authenticity. He also does solo episodes sharing his thoughts. He coaches on leadership.In other words, he works similarly to me. His voice is different, though, so you'll hear from Julian a different approach to similar topics. One of my first observations from his talking was on the speed of my thinking, which could be more relaxed. I predict Julian will get you thinking too.I recommend listening to my appearing on his podcast.Talking to Julian put me in a different frame than usual, more introspective. I'm not sure if it's coincidence so soon after my Springsteen episode and my episode with my mom, or maybe an effect of the global lockdown. It's led me thinking more openly of the lockdown as an opportunity, not to detract from the experiences of people in pain, dying, or risking their health for others who are.What might come of our time locked down?What will happen on its own?What won't happen unless we take responsibility?How can we serve others?---Julian hosting me on Greenplanet BlueplanetJulian hosting food entrepreneur and friend Wen-Jay Ying Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The quote you just heard was Rhonda's description how showing people how to cook the way I showed them could save time and money for people to enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables.After Rhonda and my first conversation, I recommend watching the video of my going to the Bronx for the group Rhonda assembled at a church for me to demonstrate cooking my famous no-packaging vegetable stew.This conversation came shortly after that potluck. Rhonda and I share hear how that event went. One woman said you couldn't cook that way up there, but then everyone else said it was possible. Rhonda knew everyone there, so listen to our episode to hear her read.Rhonda sounded to me upbeat about her Bronx community finding value in learning this way to cook from scratch. She says the transition takes time, but that once started, the transition would happen.On a personal level, I feel vindicated from people repeatedly evaluating my suggestions that this style of cooking could help people by my identity---or rather their perception of it---instead of how it could help people and communities.There's no question that different neighborhoods have different access to food versus doof. My questions to youDo you accept that difference?Do you consider it fair?What are you doing to change it?I don't think we have to accept it. I'm helping change it. I'm helping reverse the trend of doof producers extracting money from communities with less defense to their manipulations. They claim to offer convenience but make people dependent, creating lifestyles to spend less time with family to work at low wages.I recommend you help this process instead of sustaining what McDonald's and Starbucks are doing---perpetuating poor health and impoverishing people and communities.Rhonda and I have become friends, over vegetables. She met my mom, I met her son and community. Food brings people together---in my experience, more when you meet the farmers and prepare fruits and vegetables from scratch.Episode 319: Avoid doofEpisode 320: Confronting doof Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode starts off strong with Jethro's matter-of-fact description of riding a bike in minus 40 degree weather. He's a principal going to school, but could be talking about radical mountain biking. I don't remember my principal being this badass. I don't remember anyone talking about activity like this so understated. I wouldn't be able to hold myself back as he does.Tell me if you don't laugh when he talks about what the cold does to his tires. You'll notice we recorded a long time ago when we talk about Greta Thunberg.Listen to the end, especially after he talks about his daughter, where we get into what actions like these are about. It's about meaning and purpose and living an intentional life of those things---how accessible those things are, yet today's world makes it easier to live passively, losing meaning.I learn from every guest, but Jethro led me to some new places. He came to me with this commitment, from listening to other guests. Unpacking that clause, ". . . then what I do doesn't matter" hit me listening to him. If a clean environment means something to you and you say things including the phrase, " . . .what I do doesn't matter . . ." about something meaningful---first, it does matter. Where we are now is the result of people's behavior.Second this is your chance to create meaning in an area of importance. You don't have to ride a bike in Fairbanks, but what can you do?Everyone talks about what they can't do. Well Jethro---a regular guy---rode his bike to work every day, including in -40 degree weather. What can you do? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This pandemic continues to reveal new aspects of relationships—or rather spending time with people does. I think we used to spend more time with people, not mediated by the internet or distracted by screens and other powered things.I shared a new analogy in my conversation with my mom that several people liked. I found that my stewardship contrasting with my mom and step-father's wanting to live like they always have reminded me of the 70s television show All in the Family.For those who don't remember it, the show garnered huge audiences and stellar reviews. From Wikipedia's page on itAll in the Family is an American television series that ran for nine seasons, from 1971, to 1979.The show revolves around the life of a working-class father and his family. It broke ground on issues previously considered unsuitable for a U.S. network television comedy, such as racism, antisemitism, infidelity, homosexuality, women's liberation, rape, religion, miscarriages, abortion, breast cancer, the Vietnam War, menopause, and impotence [note not the environment]. Through these controversial issues, the series became one of television's most influential comedy shows, bringing dramatic moments and realistic, topical conflicts.All in the Family is often regarded in the United States as one of the greatest television series in history. Following a lackluster first season, the show soon became the most watched show in the US during summer reruns and afterwards ranked number one in the yearly Nielsen ratings from 1971 to 1976. It became the first television series to reach the milestone of having topped the Nielsen ratings for five consecutive years. The episode "Sammy's Visit" was ranked number 13 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. TV Guide ranked it as the number four comedy. Bravo named Archie Bunker, TV's greatest character of all time. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked it the fourth-best written TV series ever.Characters:Archie Bunker: Frequently called a "lovable bigot", Archie was an assertively prejudiced blue-collar worker. A World War II veteran, Archie longs for better times when people sharing his viewpoint were in charge, as evidenced by the nostalgic theme song "Those Were the Days". Despite his bigotry, he is portrayed as loving and decent, as well as a man who is simply struggling to adapt to the constantly changing world, rather than someone motivated by hateful racism or prejudice. His ignorance and stubbornness seem to cause his malapropism-filled arguments to self-destructHis foil wasMichael "Meathead" Stivic: Gloria's Polish-American hippie husband is part of the counterculture of the 1960s. While good-hearted and well-meaning, he constantly spars with Archie, and is equally stubborn, although his moral views are generally presented as being more ethical and his logic somewhat sounder. He is the most-educated person in the household, a fact which gives him a self-assured arrogance. He has intellectual belief in progressive social values.So a major part of America saw the clash between a racist, sexist, bigot and an intellectual, more considered egalitarian. It worked in part because the two lived in a house together, leading America to see the values of two generations clash.Looking back and even in that time, I think people recognized that Archie's views were unfair. He was racist and sexist, but you couldn't blame him. He was living values that made sense to him his whole life. A wife lived at home. He grew up in a white neighborhood. He fought to defend these ways and live in peace. Now these young people were undermining that peace. Why couldn't everyone just live how they used to when life worked? Those were the days.My episode with my mom Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leadership means choosing and deciding for yourself and for others. To lead effectively, it helps to know how you choose and what happens in your heart and mind when you choose---that is, how your intellect and emotions interact in the decision-making process.This episode refines and adds an element to a model by a guest of this podcast, Jonathan Haidt, for how we decide. I describe his model---you may know it, about the rider on the elephant, which contrasts with a common model of a charioteer with horses. Then I describe how our world differs from the world where his model applies. His model still works as long as we're in a benign environment.My model adds a different part of our minds from emotion and intellect. We live in a world where other people try to motivate us to do what they want, not always to help us. People get us to associate sugar-water with happiness or jeans with sex. They actively do it. The elephant isn't choosing among benign options as it did in our ancestors' world, little constructed by humans.I present a model where our emotions are like an ox with a ring through its nose with people around it tugging at the ring.That's the start of the model. I describe it more in the audio.A short video description of Jonathan Haidt's elephant and rider modelJonathan Haidt talking about the model Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our second recorded conversation covered Rob's experience with separating his recycling.The first time we met we meant to record but ended up speaking for three hours, partly meeting as person-to-person and also talking about what people in this country with differing political views probably used to but don't any more. We also ate my famous no-packaging vegetable stew---a delicious way to minimize polluting.The second time we recorded, but also spoke a good hour first. In other words, despite Rob supporting Donald Trump and my opposing, we're communicating a lot---in the style of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. We don't plan to keep talking unrecorded, but we start and next thing you know we've covered a lot.As you'll hear at the end of this conversation, we're talking about continuing our conversation in other media. Since recording, those conversations have happened, covering issues only comedians do, but seriously. Check out my blog for those conversations.I find it refreshing to continue to learn his perspective and to air out a few views. I hope to learn how to help conservatives who value clean air, land, and water but who don't live by those values following my model for leadership---to help people do what they wanted to but haven't figured out how.I'm curious where his environmental challenge will go. He may stop, but I suspect something will linger. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many of us are struggling living in lockdown.Nelson Mandela has inspired me in many ways. Going beyond subsisting in captivity, he emerged from 27 years imprisoned on Robben Island---South Africa's Alcatraz---to become President.Today's episode shares part of what I believe helped him, which I believe can help us. First, he endured 27 years. We're only a few months in, and not in a small cement prison cell with a bucket for a toilet.More, he practiced daily habits. We can too. I describe his in this episode, I hope in ways we can learn from.Here are a couple quotes I read in the recording, both from his autobiography:“I attempted to follow my old boxing routine of doing roadwork and muscle-building from Monday through Thursday and then resting for the next three days. On Monday through Thursday, I would do stationary running in my cell in the morning for up to forty-five minutes. I would also perform one hundred fingertip push-ups, two hundred sit-ups, fifty deep knee-bends, and various other calisthenics.”“I awoke on the day of my release after only a few hours’ sleep at 4:30am. February 11 was a cloudless, end-of-summer Cape Town day. I did a shortened version of my usual exercise regimen, washed, and ate breakfast. … As so often happens in life, the momentousness of an occasion is lost in the welter of a thousand details.”For more on Mandela and daily habits, see my post, Nelson Mandela on sidchas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A great joy of podcast success is talking to people who changed your life. I read John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man about ten years ago. I couldn't put it down---as much from the writing as the stories and content. It led me to see the world differently, especially government, corporations, America, money, what my taxes support, politics. It recalled Upton Sinclair and Henry Thoreau.He is about to release a new book, Touching the Jaguar. He's written several books on shamanism, his experiences relevant to shamanism from before his economic hit man path, how the worlds interact, bringing them together, and showing how they are relevant today---including during a virus.If you're here just after I posted it, listen for the workshop he's offering April 29th.On a personal note, I hope you share what happened with me listening to him. I thought of the fears I've been facing lately, for example sharing my past on this podcast, if you listened to my episode Bruce Springsteen inspired to start talking about Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll. I can't imagine I'm the only one holding back from facing a fear and acting on it that I know it's time for.John talked about changing perception and things that might sound small, like tweeting or emailing companies about actions of theirs you don't like. Almost everyone I talk to says little things like that don't make a difference so they don't act. They're letting their beliefs limit them---what they do, how they live.As I understood John, he's saying that those beliefs and actions build on each other. They did with George Washington, as he describes. They did with everyone who made a difference.I recommend listening with the question in mind: What am I perceiving that I could perceive differently?John's announcement for his workshop:Dear Friends,When I wrote Touching the Jaguar, I had no idea that the coronavirus was on the way. However, it seems now as though the jaguar was reaching out to touch all of us, because when you order the book, you also receive a free workshop that is perfect for this time of crises and opportunities. I didn’t know about the virus, but I did know that our world is in trouble.A shaman in the Ecuadorian Andes with the wonderful name, Maria Juana, was asked by a participant on one of my trips, “How do we save the earth?” Maria Juana laughed. “The earth’s not in danger. We humans are. We’re causing problems for all species. If we get to be too much of a nuisance, Mother Earth will just shake us off, like so many fleas.” She pointed up at the mountain that hovers over her home. “Twenty years ago, that volcano was covered with a big glacier. The glacier’s gone now. Mother Earth is twitching. She’s demanding that we listen.”I think about that whenever some place in the world is struck by a hurricane, earthquake, fires, or another “once in one hundred years event” that now happens every year or so. The earth is twitching.This virus is the biggest twitch yet. It impacts everyone on the planet. It’s time to reexamine who we are as individuals and as a species. This workshop is all about that. It’s about transformation – yours and the world’s. The book won’t be in stores or delivered from online vendors until June 16. However, because we are facing the coronavirus and other crises now, I want to offer you a jumpstart before the end of this month on techniques for transforming your fears into actions to change your life and the world. Although normally $297, this workshop is yours free when you order Touching the Jaguar. In addition, you will receive two other bonuses, as described at https://touchingthejaguarbook.comI look forward to joining you at the workshop and hanging out with you and the rest of this powerful, magical, life-changing Touching the Jaguar Community. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.