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Do you solve a conflict with justice or forgiveness? Moving beyond polarization with Jacob Wolf Lefton
36 Plays2 months ago
Jacob Wolf Lefton is a theatre and film actor, as well as a peacebuilding advocate. We spoke to him about how communities can dismantle conflict by engaging with listening and humility to discern what we can collectively agree upon. We also discuss the ways in which digital innovation can aid or abet conflict transformation and personal development work.
Themes in this episode:
- Conflict transformation
- Convincing vs listening
- Identity and belonging
- inclusion and exclusion
- speaking up + speaking out
- democracy + climate crisis
- purpose through and beyond work
Show Notes:
- Jacob Wolf Lefton - An American actor in Berlin playing male and non-binary roles
- Build Up - We transform conflicts in the digital age
- Ontological Design
- The Commons - How to use social media for depolarization around race and politics
- Michael Chekhov Acting Technique - Concentration, imagination, incarnation
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Peacebuilding and Activism
00:00:11
Speaker
At its core, peacebuilding is about how do we manage conflict? How do we move people to step out of conflict together? but When you engage in a political conversation from an activist point of view, you have this this activist mentality where you have a set of values that if they're not met, you can end up discounting the person.
00:00:32
Speaker
Peacebuilding, for better or worse, tries not to do that. They may have committed a crime against humanity, but that doesn't change the fact that they're human in this community and they live here and we have to engage with them on some level as a human being, otherwise there can be no connection.
00:00:50
Speaker
And so it really challenges us to figure out, well, what the shared values?
Techno Spiritual Crossings Podcast Introduction
00:00:59
Speaker
um Welcome to another episode of Techno Spiritual Crossings. I'm your host, Peter Wolff, and I'm joined by my podcast team, Emily Monti and Karthik Iyengar.
00:01:13
Speaker
Hi. Hello. The podcast is a way for us to discuss how we want to be human in the 21st century by talking to people committed to personal change and social evolution.
00:01:26
Speaker
Today, our guest is Jacob Lefton. Jacob comes to us through one of our teammates here, Emily. And I thought, Emily, you could kick us off by just saying why you wanted to have him on the show.
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, sure Jacob is an actor I know who also works as a peace builder and activist. And I find his approach just in life is always very slow and measured and taking into consideration a lot of different perspectives. so I felt like for what we want to get into on on the podcast, it would be interesting to talk to him.
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. This slowness is especially relevant in the current state of the world where we're constantly forced to pick sides and decide and like engage in this whole us versus them mentality. So it kind of helps to listen to insights from a person who has worked on the ground with real problems and real real repercussions.
00:02:31
Speaker
So yeah, happy to talk to Jacob. I'm excited to get into the the conversation with Jacob.
Identity and Peacebuilding
00:02:38
Speaker
One of the ways we do that with Jacob and every guest that comes on the show is to kick things off with a question, who are you right now?
00:02:46
Speaker
And it's just a provocative question that lets somebody consider who they are in the moment, what they've been doing, ah which then leads us into more of the conversation. So we're going to start out asking this of Jacob.
00:03:03
Speaker
Great, let's do it.
00:03:20
Speaker
right now. I just came from an intensive acting course, so my kind of predominant identity today is that of an actor.
00:03:32
Speaker
But I'm also a peacebuilding practitioner. I practice peacebuilding in a small way. What I do, I think it's it's it's a pretty niche thing at the moment, but it's within the world and it's it's a very active role. And then there's a lot of other things surrounding that as like ah just a creative person and a facilitator, a supporter of other people's creative projects and of other people in general.
00:04:01
Speaker
I think that would be who who I am aside from, you know, all of these like physical identities of being an American, living in Berlin sort of struggling with what does that mean now?
Peace Work vs Conflict Resolution
00:04:13
Speaker
One of my pieces of writing is about what happens when you travel away from home for some time and then you return and home has changed in ways that you don't feel you've changed but maybe you have I think this this question of who I am there are beacons but there's always movement and travel in between those those beacons Yeah, I want to ask you this question because it's it's been a burning question for me ever since learning about the work that you do in peace building.
00:04:43
Speaker
as ah As a facilitator and and a coach, I deal lot in this world of of conflict. Yeah. And I'm really just curious how you and answer this question. like What is, in your opinion, the difference between peace work and conflict resolution?
00:05:01
Speaker
Everyone has the possibility to access to become a peacebuilder. I would say that peacebuilding is holding conflict resolution with inside of it. Also, it's touching on reconciliation and transitional justice as well.
Community Healing and Shared Values
00:05:17
Speaker
and At its core, peacebuilding is about how do we manage conflict? How do we move people to step out of conflict together? So a lot of peacebuilding happens after the guns get put down.
00:05:29
Speaker
Just because people have stopped shooting at each other doesn't mean there's necessarily peace. If you have military force who's disarmed and they reintegrate with the community, you suddenly have perpetrators and victims living side by side sharing a community, how do you begin ah healing process in there? How do you begin a process of reestablishing community values that can be shared?
00:05:53
Speaker
And that would be a peace building process as well. There are so many different communities, so many different worldviews. Everybody's located somewhere different in their, in their point of view. More generally, like what, what do you find to be the most effective means to build like trust and relationship when stepping into a local community?
00:06:15
Speaker
conflict zone to do peace building. On my team, we have a couple of people who are absolutely master facilitators and and they know from 20 years of experience really how to hold this type of space.
00:06:27
Speaker
And I would say really one of the core things in it is is empathy of kind of viewing people as equal. to you, but really respecting them as people and and taking them in as full people.
00:06:41
Speaker
But in the corner that we work in, it's very, very important that um the processes are very locally driven rather than internationally driven. So we're not coming in as an international organization and saying, we're going to intervene in this because we see a problem.
00:06:58
Speaker
What we do is we say, who is working in this space already and how can we support them? So when we look at violent conflict, we look for the seeds of peace that are already there.
00:07:12
Speaker
People... in the worst situations are still trying to go to the market, they're still trying to get their children educated, they're still going to um religious services and and just trying to have a life. And so what are the structures of the community that are that are creating those those values, those poles that people are coming together around that still try to maintain a social cohesion?
00:07:36
Speaker
And how can we make those more robust, stronger, and and more flexible based on the pressures that are coming at them? And so it's less about less about us.
00:07:47
Speaker
We're not doing hard work. It's more about how can we support the work that people there are doing. In...
Conflict Transformation and Systems Focus
00:07:56
Speaker
peacebuilding, the current way of talking about instead of conflict resolution, the words that they use is conflict transformation, because the focus has gone from how what are the factors around conflict that we can solve to what are the factors and patterns and systems within the community structures and the social structures. And so there's been an evolution within the peace building field about but how does this turn into ah process of building a lasting peace that can be sustained.
00:08:27
Speaker
the The concept has broadened from sort of the traditional conflict resolution tools to being even this broader systems process. So in this in this particular case, am understanding correctly that you or the organization would intervene in situations in which there isn't necessarily a ah strong conflict at the moment? There's just there's motivation or there's a need to add peace building?
00:08:55
Speaker
There are factors that that one can take as as warning flags for conflict. And we're looking at polarization, political polarization as a warning flag for conflict, because basically what's happening in places like Europe, the UK, the United States is there's becoming less and less shared language, shared understanding. This is a warning flag in many conflict contexts for hate crimes and further violence.
00:09:23
Speaker
And so in some of our work, we're engaging in conversations around political polarization online in the United States. And we're looking to shift that work also to La Catalan in Spain and UK, Northern Ireland maybe, to see if we can help get a handle on the digital space of and our digital identities and how that impacts our personal identities and our community formation processes.
00:09:52
Speaker
I would consider this as a kind of a preemptive process. There's this field that I've been investigating a little bit called ontological design.
Technology's Role in Peacebuilding
00:10:02
Speaker
Even before handheld digital technologies, before the internet, humans have been designing things.
00:10:09
Speaker
And in the process, those things design us back. Just think of the car yeah and all the things that we've built around the car and how it's changed our cities and how it changed that we, you know, it's like walking out the street is different today than it was 300 years ago.
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah. And same with digital technologies, whatever we design, is going to design us back. Is this the effect that we want? Is this the this the outcome that is beneficial or is it not beneficial so that we can go back and and redesign and redesign?
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I like this way that you talk about being aware of it in the design process. And in the peacebuilding process, you you go through do-no-harm evaluation. You sort of look at what are the ways that this might cause harm.
00:10:59
Speaker
And how would we use that or use that understanding to attempt to minimize things that would divide us and lift up the things that would connect us?
00:11:12
Speaker
For many years, ah basically, we've we've looked at technology as a tool, a value neutral tool. You know, people can use it for positive creative purposes and people can use it for negative and destructive purposes.
00:11:25
Speaker
And we think that it is a tool that if you bring a certain intention to it and like a human centered design approach and a peace building methodology, you can use it to help create peace.
00:11:38
Speaker
It's great as a tool to facilitate people coming together to do the actual peace building. It would be wonderful if it was just simple as we can just design this technology for good rather than something destructive.
00:11:51
Speaker
But there's more to it than that, because whenever we engage with technology, we're going to also have an impact on ourselves with how we work with it. So with this idea, we can also look at, okay, if we're trying to use this technology tool in order to to do something, it's not just what would the impact of the tool be in a superficial level, it's what...
00:12:15
Speaker
Are we taking advantage of an addiction that people have? And if so, how do we keep that in mind that we're not reinforcing something negative?
Understanding Peace and Its Contexts
00:12:25
Speaker
We're still driving ahead, trying to innovate, trying to figure out how to innovate, but keeping in mind that this is happening and it will continue to happen. And we just have to put it in our process and be aware of it.
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah. No, thank you for adding that. I'm also curious because in researching the work a little bit, I noticed these distinctions between justice and forgiveness as a possibility. What kind of outcomes are really being sought?
00:12:54
Speaker
Yeah. I think the basic question around outcomes is what is peace? I think every person has ah personal view of what peace means for them.
00:13:06
Speaker
And so the outcomes for peace, to me, are what we collectively can agree on would be peace. In certain contexts, the word peace is used as it's weaponized.
00:13:18
Speaker
I would say weaponized. Maybe that's a harsh... way to say it, but a government would say, we want peace. And activists would march with signs that say, we don't want the peace of the graveyards.
00:13:29
Speaker
So it's this word that can be used. But we talk about kind of peaceful relations and social cohesion. And it's really about In that process, in that community, what what is the the context and so what does peace mean here? Does it mean that we stop shooting at each other?
00:13:47
Speaker
or does it mean that there's a justice and or for forgiveness process that goes on? Does it mean that services are being provided to communities that have been marginalized?
00:13:59
Speaker
So it's really dependent on… Yeah. like understanding what's going on with the stakeholders. Yes. In a more digital environment where you're doing a digital intervention, what you talked about before, polarization.
Digital Tools for Dialogue
00:14:12
Speaker
We're still working through, um we've done a pilot program and we have scaled it up into this project that we call the Commons.
00:14:20
Speaker
Essentially what we do is we we serve ads on Facebook, for example, that ask a provocative question border and immigration are difficult topics in the United States, what would you say to a loved one to help them understand your point of view on this?
00:14:38
Speaker
Or do you feel like you're being heard by people who disagree with you? And then people respond and usually they respond with some sort of ideological statement into it.
00:14:50
Speaker
And we have trained facilitators whose training is to engage with the person and have ah conversation, but a respectful conversation around the issues and lead them toward a place of reflecting on the way that they're holding that conversation and asking if they want to have a better conversation.
00:15:10
Speaker
And then introducing more tools for having better conversations, for depolarizing, essentially. And so the idea that we're looking at it is it is this intervention is a mini coaching process where we model by doing. We give people one positive process.
00:15:29
Speaker
of having a respectful conversation online so that hopefully they can start to feel, oh, that was nice. I want to have that experience again. It was less off-putting than other experiences.
00:15:41
Speaker
This is the idea in it. And that really depends on what is their experience of this issue and what do they think is respectful and how do we begin to have the reflection on it.
00:15:54
Speaker
You're describing it as ah as like a pilot project, so you're just beginning to do this work and to see what the results are. Any feedback so far about how it's going and how you might take it further?
00:16:05
Speaker
I'm on the technical side. I'm not a facilitator in the project, so I've built the data tools that are helping us to understand the inputs that we're getting. And we're just finishing the interventions and we have an evaluation phase coming up. So I don't have any particular findings, but what I can say is there have been a lot of deep conversations, a lot of very interesting conversations, a lot of intense and challenging conversations.
00:16:32
Speaker
One of the things that we did find Very interesting. We found that the facilitators themselves report extremely great changes of sort of depolarizing in themselves.
00:16:46
Speaker
And we attribute this to the fact that they're practicing this constantly. It doesn't necessarily shift their political views, but it shifts their... how they engage with those political views.
00:16:59
Speaker
And then I think there's one distinction to point out, which is that this is peacebuilding and activism are different. And so when you engage in a political conversation from an activist point of view, you have this this activist mentality where you have a set of values that if they're not met, they're you can end up discounting the person or saying, if this person is not with us on climate, they're against us. If this person is for this political candidate, then they're for fascism.
00:17:32
Speaker
And peace building, for better or worse, tries not to do that. And it says this person may be for this political candidate. They may be someone who you could see it as they may have committed a crime against humanity.
00:17:48
Speaker
But that doesn't change the fact that they're human in this community and they live here and We have to engage with them on some level as a human being, otherwise there can be no connection.
00:17:59
Speaker
And so it really challenges us to figure out, well, what are the shared values? How do we access that space rather than saying, this person is unsavable or this person is only savable if they agree with me?
00:18:15
Speaker
I've certainly been on a few in a few discussions on Facebook And was puzzled why i couldn't might come to terms with these people that I call my friends. And I think you just really pointed it out.
00:18:29
Speaker
I was being somebody for peace and i even said so. And my friends were being activists. and actually saying things like, where there's no time left for peace going right to okay, that's polarizing. All right. Yeah. It's just like, there's, it's a self for me, it's a self challenging process because I am,
00:18:52
Speaker
personally very polarized. I'm very much of an activist mindset. And so there's a constant self-reflection. I want to respond in this particular way of shouting that person down or, you know, slapping him my moral position on the table immediately and trying to just shut down that conversation. There's no possible way we can have this. This is the only way.
00:19:19
Speaker
have to take a step back. take a moment, sort of reframe and think of, okay, well, how do i help that person feel that I hear them on a fundamental level so that we can have a respectful moment?
00:19:37
Speaker
You know, they're not going to feel heard if they express an opinion and I just say, you're wrong. Like, boom. And that's totally about the intention that you're bringing. If the intention is that I'm here,
00:19:51
Speaker
so that this person can be heard. Yeah. Versus like, I'm here to convince that this view of this person has is not right. It's unjust. It's a shift in focus.
00:20:04
Speaker
And then there's a layer, there's a next layer, right? If that person can feel heard in that conversation, then maybe they will be willing to engage in that conversation. And then you have the process of how do we help them hear other people.
00:20:18
Speaker
It's a constant dance.
Cultural Sensitivity in Peacebuilding
00:20:20
Speaker
It's very interesting because I've been involved in this Chekhov program. And so Chekhov is really about sort of building self-awareness so that you can meet the world in a way.
00:20:32
Speaker
It's a very, very simple description of it. But the idea is important because we had exercise that comes from one of his lectures about love in our theater. In it, he gives a set of practices where you practice you start the practice by doing nice deeds for people to hold the door, take out the trash, or or just clean up or something. This seems a bit superficial. But eventually, you move through having an awareness of when people are having conversations and they say, iy What is actually happening when they say I? Are they listening to the other person when they say I, in my opinion? And I think, have they actually listened to the other person?
00:21:12
Speaker
And then the final step in this is having the the awareness and and being actively aware that everyone has what he calls a higher self and a lower self, where the lower self is sort of what takes us through our day and pays our bills and goes to work and does all these normal things. But the higher self is kind of this connection with the world and our philosophical and and sort of soul-like part of ourselves.
00:21:37
Speaker
And so in this practice, you're constantly, you know, doing these small tasks, small nice things for people. But you're also constantly reflecting on when people are talking from a position of why and my, are they listening? And so then it's a self-reflection of, am I listening when I use these words?
00:21:58
Speaker
And then there's that reflection of looking at people and trying to see everybody as you understand yourself as this complex individual who has multiple things going on in your soul and your your wants and your dreams and your needs essentially yeah i'd like to have an extended conversation about that especially the use of the use of language and
00:22:24
Speaker
like the way that our minds where our brains work and how that either it keeps us out of it or draws us into relationship with other people. I'm just coming back to the theme of techno spiritual. Yeah. How do you deal with issues of faith and religion in the projects that you work on?
00:22:45
Speaker
It's a highly polarizing topic. Yeah. Well, this is difficult for me to answer because I consider myself non-religious person.
00:22:56
Speaker
Although i would say that I have a personal spirituality. ah want to include that too. want to include the perspective that spirituality, faith, religion, or all kinds on a spectrum.
00:23:10
Speaker
Yeah. In a way, I would say it's deeply intertwined. Many, many communities in the world have deep religious practices. And so just engaging with these communities to understand that the way that they live is also informed by faith is important.
00:23:29
Speaker
In some places, it's less important. present and in other places it's more present. And in some places, the presence of the religious identity is part of the conflict itself. In many, many situations, religion becomes an identity within that conflict.
00:23:48
Speaker
Even if the roots of the conflict are elsewhere, religion, because it's part of an identity, gets wrapped into it. if we're doing work in a conservative or religiously conservative area, like in a Muslim area, for example, then there are ways that you have to dress that are more respectful. Like you're not showing lots of skin and women tend have bit more sort of strict structures. And as a man, you have to be sort of aware of this because in some of these
00:24:21
Speaker
communities, men can't actually touch women without the family relations and such. And so there you have to have this awareness just on this sort of how how, what is the cultural sensitivity? How do people act? You have to make space for prayer if they pray during the day.
00:24:40
Speaker
We were doing some work with Syrians and And one of the the translators for us was a Palestinian man, and it came out that I have a Jewish background, and I've never been to Israel. i have no connection to Israel, but you know we had a long conversation about this, about this identity and about his frustration with Israel and and how Jewish identity gets wrapped up in that. And he basically said, you know if we'd been in a different place three years ago, this would be a completely different conversation from where he was as a person.
00:25:11
Speaker
and the work that he's done to try to come to understand it. So there's no there are some of these conflicts that are identity and religious conflicts that are pushed together. And you may think, you know, I'm coming at this from an outside, impassionate point of view, and then all of a sudden you're blindsided, or something catches you of like, oh, wait, no, this is a very personal identity of mine, even if I don't think it's a religious identity.
00:25:36
Speaker
I'm part of a community regardless of if I think I am someone else might see me as part of that. And so I have a responsibility to have a respectful conversation around it, have a respectful cultural sensitivity to the other people.
00:25:51
Speaker
So that's at one level. there's the yeah There's the cultural sensitivity. And I appreciate that you brought this this thing about identities being projected onto you as a somehow religious, even though you don't identify as such. Yeah.
00:26:07
Speaker
I wouldn't even say religious. There is a cultural identity and religious identity have for so long been so intermingled that it's impossible to escape.
00:26:17
Speaker
I'm curious if you've noticed in some of the projects that you've worked on if there's an effort to to move beyond these these very strong personal identities.
00:26:28
Speaker
I know a lot of the work that I'm doing in terms of social evolution is that we look beyond kind of our core personal identifications as ah being true.
00:26:42
Speaker
kind of coming back to this question, who are you right now? Looking for other more... more momentary, more identities of that come in the moment of grace?
00:26:56
Speaker
i I don't know. um i don't think so. And I also don't think necessarily we we have to or want to, because I think the work that we do really tries to look at people as multifaceted people.
00:27:12
Speaker
individuals. And so, for example, the work that we're doing in the United States, When we talk about it, we talk about bringing like a multi-partial approach to it.
00:27:25
Speaker
So respecting that people have deep cultural identities and deep roots into their culture and that those are very important to them. and not like i definitely don't want to take people out of that.
00:27:39
Speaker
In fact, is there a way that we can embrace that? so that we gain a more colorful and more fruitful engagement. I have a question in myself that asks if I if i was to try to ask a some a peace builder working in a local context,
00:28:00
Speaker
to step out of their personal identity or to step away from that that deep cultural identity, would I compromise their connection to their community? And is that appropriate for me to ask of them?
00:28:13
Speaker
I don't have an answer to it, but that's the question that I'm left with based on on my approach to this. I guess this is where I'm coming from transformational work. Sometimes other possibilities of life or other possibilities of identification come into, into being into possibility.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah. So this is, I think more where I was, was coming from, but I appreciate your response and I agree with you. And that point about you saying like then separating somebody from their community is definitely not a,
00:28:43
Speaker
Doesn't seem like a right way to go. I have just a ah slight further reflection on this. I don't know if it's exactly related, but it is a further reflection. and We have queer members of our team.
00:28:58
Speaker
And there are many places in the world where being queer is not acceptable. And so there is a portion of their identity that they have a choice to hide or not engage with, or they have a choice to just not go there.
00:29:13
Speaker
right um But then in some parts of the world, there are peace builders who also have queer identities, for example, where they can do peace-building work in their community, but if they embrace their queer identity, they suddenly have no more connection to their community because the community will cast them out.
00:29:35
Speaker
So there's, in some cases, some really difficult challenges in terms of what um what types of identity you're embracing and and and bringing in. Or if they start to really engage in, if they're engaging in a local level, but then they start to really go and do stuff internationally and show up at international events, then they're not in their community anymore and they're not doing that work in the community. And so by taking on a different identity as a different type of peace builder,
00:30:07
Speaker
It changes the work that they're doing and able to do. Yeah, there's many facets to ourselves and how we use them in the the work is really important. Thank you so much for like being in the conversation.
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, my mind is going now.
Polarization and Peacebuilding Experiences
00:30:23
Speaker
I feel really...
00:30:34
Speaker
I
00:30:41
Speaker
really enjoyed this episode with Jacob. We covered so many different things. One of the things that is... that is really coming up in my mind because it's something that I've been working on thinking about in my own writing, this topic of polarization. When Jacob starts talking about that in terms of peace building, that he's looking, you know, as part of his toolkit for signs or warning flags, that an intervention is is necessary. And polarization is what one of the things that he mentioned.
00:31:10
Speaker
When polarization happens, then like a shared narrative is really breaking down and social cohesion. is breaking down. One of the most interesting parts was um when Jacob said that he could observe a change in how the facilitators were polarized.
00:31:29
Speaker
It gives me a lot of hope that polarization is reversible. It's not something that we're stuck with. Right. So talking about the toolkit that he spoke about, I think it includes like things like reframing and so on. I think you can like effectively like unconditioned people from their polarized beings and to people who are more empathetic and accepting of other people's views and opinions.
00:31:54
Speaker
Yeah. I thought an interesting thing that he said was the facilitators themselves became depolarized by practicing the methods that they had learned. And the idea was a mini coaching session for the person that they're talking to,
00:32:09
Speaker
but It really is, it really brings up the importance of practicing and repetition. We want kind of quick fix solutions for everything, but it takes time and practice and continuing the practice to make depolarization, among other things, or to make peace happen for that matter.
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I'm a coach. I teach coaching. And one of the things that is most difficult for people is to just to come in with their opinion because they know how to do things.
Neutrality and Empathy in Peacebuilding
00:32:42
Speaker
It really is challenging to take a different approach. So practice definitely helps. But knowing like why... Why it's going to make a difference is another thing in coaching.
00:32:56
Speaker
This idea of coming in with an intervention and trying to be the most neutral party in the room. Because when I'm doing that well, other people feel more invited to give whatever perspective, whatever opinion that they have.
00:33:16
Speaker
I thought when Jacob talked about the difference between, i mean, now I've got to correct myself here, the difference between peace building and activism, they're not the same thing, ah that which kind of speaks to what you're saying. Peace building is all about listening and making the other person feel heard and not coming in with, I have an opinion, it's the right one, and if you don't share it you're bad This especially becomes relevant because we often choose to engage with people who have the same beliefs as us.
00:33:48
Speaker
And one of the things that he kind of emphasizes on is not feeling, not making the other person feel alienated. And that's one way to build lasting peace.
00:33:59
Speaker
Again, it's all coming from a place of empathy where, as you said, Peter, you it's very important to make others feel safe. And I guess like that was a good takeaway for me. In the way that I live my life, I would also really want to talk to people who are not similar to me.
00:34:15
Speaker
and what they believe and what they think is right or wrong.
00:34:21
Speaker
And I feel like it also connects to what he was talking about in acting and the Chekhov exercises. Is there an i here or is there a we? And how can we find the we ah within within what we're doing and not just speak from and focus on the I?
00:34:40
Speaker
I mean, it's always nice and all to talk about these things where you're sitting sitting in a cozy room. like when Just eating chips. heating chips and Drinking tea. And things are not breaking down in front of you, right?
00:34:55
Speaker
Yeah, but is it even possible to let go of the I the self and your ego when you're surrounded by like war right? Or people who want to actively harm you?
00:35:08
Speaker
And how then do you like move beyond your primal fight or flight instincts and dress respond in a way that allows you to behave with love? In a way that doesn't alienate you from your own community because responding with love, i mean to someone you hate, is also like saying no to your community and people who believe otherwise. That's really hard.
00:35:31
Speaker
i think that's what I think that's what most of us believe, that we need to belong. And so that means adopting the the beliefs of the people that i belong to that community.
00:35:43
Speaker
And it is incredibly courageous to actually... when it's so easy to choose a side, because that's what we're kind of being led to do, to say, I'm not choosing a side, I'm choosing to stand for something else.
00:36:00
Speaker
I'm choosing to show up in a place that I am standing for peace or peace building. What is that? That it's a transformation. You know, what I hear in that is that in order for that transformation to take place,
00:36:16
Speaker
some new perspective needs to be heard. Yeah.
00:36:23
Speaker
Talking about those perspectives is quite interesting because, i mean, just referencing the previous point that you made, I think you're often told what to believe.
00:36:34
Speaker
And by being told what to believe, you forget do see and sense. and And can you behave in a way that allows you to behave with sensitivity, both to the people that belong to your community and the people that don't?
00:36:48
Speaker
it It seems particularly relevant that that we're talking about this now. We recorded this with Jacob quite a long time ago, long before... We were in the midst of a war in the Middle East, seeing thousands, tens of thousands of people dying in Gaza.
00:37:06
Speaker
And the war in Ukraine. And the war in Ukraine. um But bringing in these actual real conflicts and how it polarizes people, not not only in the conflict zones, but actually all over the world, and thinking how we can have sensitivity to other people's perspectives on these issues,
00:37:26
Speaker
even now from wherever we're sitting. It also kind of shines a light on the nuances of being a third party arbiter a situation where you're not really welcome.
00:37:39
Speaker
I mean, I think Jacob speaks about how it's important to have like local influence and like local communities supporting the change that you want to drive. And i think I think it takes a lot of tact and skill to actually make everyone feel it hard And when it is achieved, I think, that's the other thing I've been thinking about, is that it's achieved, maybe a transformation has been achieved, something that's lasting, but I don't think it's permanent.
00:38:09
Speaker
I think it's still temporary, because coming back to our theme, people keep changing and circumstances keep changing, and so we always have to be responsive to to what's happening.
00:38:21
Speaker
Even if we achieve a peace, We can expect that some future ah event is going to change what we agreed to And then we need to keep having these conversations to come back into agreement.
00:38:35
Speaker
It's a practice. It's a practice. Yeah, and it's also like, it's very hard for us to shake this whole zero-sum mentality where we feel like someone else has to lose if we have to win or like party in question has to win.
00:38:52
Speaker
I think if we kind of frame our interactions like both globally and internationally and also like on a day-to-day basis to be more positive sum, I guess that's one way to build lasting peace
Technology and Social Media Impact
00:39:07
Speaker
because If you have like enough resources and if you have like enough equality in society, the chances of having like um strife decreases significantly.
00:39:20
Speaker
and So yeah, that's something that we can aspire to as humans. I think that's that's a good message of hope. The more we can achieve equality, the more we can um be building towards a lasting peace.
00:39:37
Speaker
And staying in practice, as you mentioned before, what is the action that's possible here and now? And no matter what the circumstance, how can I just show up in a room and change the listening in the room so that people feel welcome to say what they feel?
00:39:56
Speaker
What do you think are the technology implications of this? Did we even speak about that? How does this relate to techno-spiritual chorusing? and jacob Jacob talked about that. One of the projects that he's working on is online intervention because the manipulation of social media has definitely been something now that we've all lived through. And this is the pilot project, which I'm sure has evolved since then, that he was referring to.
00:40:19
Speaker
And yeah, we have a lot of we have a lot of things to to face in terms of the undue influence that social media can have on our and our beliefs due to the advent of you know bots and any other sorts of things that can just create personalities that we can kind of buy into, be influenced into making a choice that maybe isn't the best for everyone.
00:40:47
Speaker
Is there anything that you do personally to be less polarized when you're faced with uncomfortable situations or people that you don't want to engage with, let's say?
00:40:58
Speaker
Honestly, i think i tend to change the subject a little bit, but maybe a way to reframe that is to say, like finding the connection, finding the things that we do share rather than talking so much and focusing so much on the things that we don't share.
00:41:16
Speaker
one of is there is there a Is there a circumstance that you can think of, Karthik?
00:41:23
Speaker
i was I was having several conversations with friends around the whole Israel-Palestinian show, and I think it can be a very polarizing topic because any side you pick is going to draw you fire from the other side. you know In the end, I think ultimately we can kind of agree on like certain fundamental things about all of us being humans and the value of human life in general um as soon as we start like forgetting those basic things and like we start forgetting to agree on agree on making each other's life livable then there's a problem so in that case how do you how do you reframe the conversation where you make people not feel attacked just for
00:42:07
Speaker
just for being conditioned according to their own religion or beliefs. And I think that begins by listening first, listening to fears and listening to why people feel the way they feel.
00:42:18
Speaker
Because fear is what drives most of this, right? Like everything.
Personal Growth and Mindful Engagement
00:42:22
Speaker
the The only way to like deal with all of this to understand the true nature of fear and what makes you hide or hate,
00:42:29
Speaker
I think that's something that we can all hopefully really walk away with is the ah power of, of our listening and I think jumping to the solution and jumping in to try to change somebody's mind or somebody's opinion is just kind of adding more fuel to the fire. It's just like what can we do is only suspend our own judgments so that I can actually just listen.
00:42:55
Speaker
Listen under the fire, under the pressure of something that I probably am disagreeing with and that that's not easy to do. But if I want to come into connection with somebody, it's what I have to do.
00:43:10
Speaker
I think this also goes back to some some vague references of being mindful that that Jacob mentioned with respect to like putting some distance between your thoughts and what you end up saying or the way that you end up reacting.
00:43:27
Speaker
Like you said, it's really hard to like pull yourself away from the situation and realize what you're doing and then do it as a deliberate act, right? Yeah, so again, practice might definitely help here.
00:43:40
Speaker
I think on a personal level, we've all experienced that, right? Like your impulsive reactions to to threat or your impulsive reaction to fear is always, it's it's extreme, whereas it might need not need to be that extreme in order to obtain a good outcome.
00:44:01
Speaker
As people, as creatures of society that we love conflict and we love drama and we love um all of the the color and flavor that that that it creates and that's why we love to eat it up so much. And then we want to add our own you know color and fire to the to the drama. And then it's like, I think at a certain point we also have to understand that it's kind of the way that we're programmed to live.
00:44:27
Speaker
And it is a choice to say, am I going to live any differently than this? And I think people that do this work are making a courageous choice. it's It's not an easy path.
00:44:41
Speaker
And it's maybe not intuitive in some way. Especially when you don't belong or when you're not local or when you don't have a horse in the race.
00:44:51
Speaker
Yeah, it is quite commendable.
00:44:55
Speaker
Yeah, we could go down and talk about like history over the past hundred years. And i think Jacob's bringing this conversation into today.
00:45:06
Speaker
the same issues are still with us today and they will probably continue to be with us in terms of conflict and i wanting peace. Yet at the same time, we're really good at just repeating the past.
00:45:23
Speaker
But I think that's also kind of why we're we're doing the podcast because we do believe that people can evolve and change and that we don't have to repeat all the same patterns of the past.
00:45:34
Speaker
So do we all feel like we've had some um hope, belonging and action in this yeah conversation today? Definitely.
00:45:48
Speaker
Then maybe we should wrap this up. Let's wrap it up. Bye-bye.
00:45:56
Speaker
Today's podcast was produced and edited by Emily Monti, Karthik Iyengar, and me, Peter Wolff. Original music by Heston Mims. This has been Techno Spiritual Crossings.
00:46:08
Speaker
Thank you for listening.
00:46:13
Speaker
you