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Gen Z Values and Identity
831 Plays1 year ago
We can't talk about culture without exploring values and identity. Episode 43 features a discussion with Sam LaCrosse, author of the book, Values Economics: The Study of Identity, where we explore how Gen Z thinks about and expresses identity. We also dive into how we, among all generations, can hold more productive spaces for our own identities and to interact with others who hold different identities and perspectives than our own.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Hashtag Gen Z'
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to hashtag Gen Z. I'm your host, Megan Grace.
00:00:18
Speaker
Hello and welcome
Values and Identity in Gen Z Culture
00:00:19
Speaker
back, this is episode 43 of hashtag Gen Z. In this episode we are exploring the nuances of values and identity. As we think about cohort culture this season and the concept of culture in general, values are central to how we understand a culture.
00:00:34
Speaker
values communicate what we're about and what we prioritize. Values are an articulation of who we are and what we want to be. In our most recent study, Corey and I found that shared values is the most important factor for Gen Z when it comes to making a friend. And this is also true for how they feel about starting romantic relationships.
00:00:53
Speaker
Further, we've consistently found that Gen Z places a great priority on authenticity and acceptance, which in essence stems back to their desire for values alignment and expression of who you are.
Meet Sam LaCrosse: Author and Thinker
00:01:06
Speaker
My guest this episode is Sam LaCrosse. The press kit he provided says he's a nobody who hasn't done anything amazing. He's not extraordinary or impressive. He's just an ordinary guy from Cleveland, Ohio who lives an ordinary life in Austin, Texas. So I'll be the first to tell you Sam is somebody. He's someone who wrote a book, Values Economics, The Study of Identity. He also writes blogs on don'treadthisblog.com and hosts Don't Listen to This podcast.
00:01:31
Speaker
Sam is the CEO and founder of Don't Do This, LLC, a company that makes no money. And he's a board member of Thrive Living Corporation and an ambassador for RallyCap Sports. Please help me in welcoming Sam LaCrosse to the podcast.
00:01:46
Speaker
I'm
Sam's Journey and Writing Process
00:01:47
Speaker
so excited to be joined today for this conversation with my guest, Sam LaCrosse. Sam, thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited to be able to learn with you and about your story and really some of the great work that you've been doing. But for some of our listeners, why don't you introduce yourself and share a little bit about your story, what it is that you do and kind of the journey of how you got to where you are today.
00:02:07
Speaker
Sure. Well, first of all, thank you, Megan, so much for having me. I really appreciate it and the ability to be on your platform. And I think a good place to start is kind of where it all started, which for me was in a suburb called Avon, Ohio, right outside of Cleveland. And so I went and grew up outside of there, a pretty normal childhood, a pretty nucleic family structure, two parents, two siblings, a dog. Most of the time, my grandparents were near a lot of aunts and uncles that were near. And so really family and values were very, very important to me growing up. And so I kind of really,
00:02:34
Speaker
went in that type of an environment and went to college down in Columbus, Ohio for four years, moved out to Boston for a year for an entry-level position at the company I currently work at, and then moved out to Austin, Texas, where I currently live in May of 2021, or currently live, excuse me.
00:02:48
Speaker
in May of 2021 where I'm doing the same job and where I finished up my book, Value Economics, which is I think why we're talking right now. And so in my spare time when I'm not working in my day job, I am an author of my first book, Value Economics, which was released in June of this year. And I also have a podcast, don't listen to this podcast, and I have a blog, don't read this blog.com that keeps me pretty occupied outside of work. And so that's kind of where generally everything usually collides for me.
00:03:14
Speaker
That's awesome. So, um, you sound like a very similar to me where you're like, what's your job? Well, it's like, what time of day are you talking to me at? Uh, cause I have that, like that job and then I have like the other jobs I do. Um, but I think it keeps life pretty interesting and spicy and you've listed lived in some really cool cities. Like I think at least the colo between Columbus, Austin and Boston, it's gotta be like, and all of those are my top 10. I have not been to Avon, Ohio. I apologize. Um, but.
00:03:42
Speaker
The other three sounds like a great place to live, especially for the phase of life that you're in. And you mentioned you wrote a book. Congratulations. I've been there. It is some people, and I don't, from a fellow author, did you find that sometimes it's a lonely process, like an unexpectedly lonely process?
00:03:58
Speaker
Oh, very much so. Very much so. Because I don't know what your process is like. I'm actually curious to kind of ask you about it. But I hardly told any I didn't let anyone read my book other than my editor. I sent only the introduction to a couple of people just to kind of give people a little bit of a taste.
00:04:13
Speaker
So basically, I think people knew kind of generally what I was going to talk about, and I kind of, you know, mentioned things in passing to people. But I didn't let anyone read it fully through like my parents got it slapped in the face, everyone else got it slapped in the face as soon as they read it. And then that's kind of how I wanted it to be because I wanted to go out with a bang and kind of see really what people thought of it when they read it really, really raw.
00:04:33
Speaker
and they only got really a taste of what was to come. So it was a very lonely process because I truly did not know how people were going to receive it, how my publisher was going to receive it, how my editors were going to receive it. And I kind of, there were a lot of days where I was like, you know, geez, I might be really onto the wrong thing here, but I don't think I was. And I think that I was kind of a very fortunate person where I was able to put a message out there that a lot of people seem to be receptive to. So I'm very blessed in that sense.
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, my process is certainly different. I do social demography and I have to write about like history and stats all at once. And so that in itself, there's not many people that like get excited about that. And luckily I get to co-author. So I do have someone I talk with stuff about, but I am such an extrovert in the sense that I actually have to like process out loud sometimes. So I will be
00:05:22
Speaker
in the depths of it. And I haven't had to write a book since I've been married my husband, but we're on the process of starting that. Um, and he even knows just when I'm doing normal research, let alone writing a book research that I'm like, if I find something interesting, I'm like, you will not believe what I learned today. And he's like, great. I got a booklet in.
00:05:39
Speaker
Because this girl is going to tell me something that is going to take 20 minutes to explain. But I find it to be lonely because I am such an external processor that not talking about it to people or to talk too much about it with people. People are like, can you stop talking about your book and just go write it? But let's talk about it. So let's talk about your book, Value Economics, The Study of Identity. It's in the title. I'm very intrigued.
00:06:05
Speaker
Tell me a
Exploring 'Values Economics' with Sam
00:06:06
Speaker
little bit more. What, if you could boil it down, what is this book about? Why do people need to read it? Yes. So basically my sales pitch of the book is that, and I don't know if I've said this a lot publicly on the podcast I've been on, is that this is the book you need to read before you read any self help book ever. And so the reason that you need to read this book before you read any other self help book ever is primarily for two reasons. Firstly, how are you supposed to know how to help yourself if you don't know who you are in the first place?
00:06:33
Speaker
And two, when you answer that question, you need to bridge a gap on how to get there. So what gets you to that piece of kind of where you need to be in life and how do you need to improve and become a better person? And I thought that was a very, very interesting piece and I was very, very big on values growing up to what I said earlier. My family was very much very strong together. My dad was very, my parents I would say in general, my father especially was very, very big on preaching
00:06:56
Speaker
family values, I would say, you know, kind of what we generally look for as lacrosse is what we kind of have in terms of getting our message out there and getting our stuff out there as a family and as a unit and everything. And that was a message that was always very resonant to me throughout my childhood. But when I dug into the concept itself, it was kind of so self evident to me that I almost really didn't know how to define it. And the way I kind of say to other people is that, you know, if I asked an normal average person how to define a circle,
00:07:23
Speaker
they probably couldn't really give me a straight definition of what a circle is unless they kind of know what a circle looks like, what kind of purpose, what things look like circles, whatever it was. So I kind of had to dig in more to what an actual value was and how to really dig into that. And so I had a bunch of things where I beta tested it on my blog in the first part of 2020 and right before COVID and all the craziness hit during that year. And so I was testing it out and testing it out and testing it out. And I created a bunch of quote unquote chapters of my book in which it would eventually become value economics.
00:07:52
Speaker
And I stumbled upon the idea that it could be a book about six or seven chapters in, and all I needed to do was get that through line. And you're an author, so you kind of know this through line that ties everything together rather than making it all chunky and disjointed and everything like that. And the through line I chose to pick was identity.
00:08:08
Speaker
And I think identity is probably the most hot button issue in our culture right now from a lot of perspectives, like who are we, what should we identify with, who do we identify with, all those other things. And my solution to that problem was by using values to form your individual identity, which will then assimilate you into a group identity that is based on those common shared values.
00:08:28
Speaker
So, I thought that it was very, very important to find out who you are and how to help yourself based on who you are as an individual person. And then that would trickle into other aspects of your life. And the economics portion was interesting because we need, I think, rules and models and principles to kind of guide our decision making and our processes to kind of get where we want to get. And a reliable model that I found was actually kind of the inspiration for my first blog post was, excuse me, were the models of economics.
00:08:56
Speaker
And so like supply and demand curves and different other things where there's charts and visuals and things you can look at and things you can reference and everything else. And so the way I chose to discuss how to build out your value system and how to interact with that value system in the world was by choosing basically a bunch of rules and laws and kind of comparing them to how values work in my estimation, how we kind of use those to interact with other people.
00:09:17
Speaker
That was how those three things converged in order to get people to hopefully be able to better force their individual identities and better show them off to the world in a way that's constructive for them. Absolutely. I'm very excited to read it with more depth and pull my nuggets out of it. I think that is such an important concept. I do a lot of organizational development consulting in my, quote, nine-to-five job.
00:09:40
Speaker
And it's all intertwined of like the concept of values, especially within higher education. That's the space that I live in. A lot of students, a lot of institutions of higher education, college campuses, and this exploration of who we are. And I love that you said that it's a kind of a controversial topic. Like identity is, in my mind, it's not controversial. It's just you show up and it's who you are. But I think it's the identities that people hold that sometimes are
00:10:09
Speaker
That is where things start to get controversial, which I think that your perspective is very needed in today's conversation around this exploration, that identity is ultimately, it is personal.
Gen Z's Belief and Identity Complexities
00:10:21
Speaker
Um, and then that interaction with society is another piece of that. But, uh, really, I mean, you've talked about what it's about, but what motivated you? Like, what was your aha moment? What inspired you to say, I need to write this book. I'm the person to write this book. And this is the message like that I need to share with people. What, do you have a moment of recollection when you knew that this was the thing you needed to do?
00:10:43
Speaker
I do, I have a specific moment and then I kind of have another separate timeline that kind of intertwine in a lot of different ways. So the initial kind of thing that really jump started my brain around this topic was a conversation I had with my mom in the summer of 2019. And so I was talking with her kind of just, and my mom was a very intelligent person. And so we were kind of having a really kind of more, not like a, you know, Dostoyevsky deep conversation, but it's a pretty deep conversation about some stuff where we were just kind of tossing ideas back and forth around stuff. And we came upon the subject of belief
00:11:11
Speaker
And my mom just casually threw out a comment where she was like, well, Sam, your generation really doesn't believe in anything. And I was like, well, one thing, well, that's kind of harsh. But then the other thing was like, well, is that harshness warranted? Is there some truth to that, what she just said? And I wanted to explore that issue. And I thought that at the end of the day, she was probably more right than not in a lot of cases when you look at our culture. And I think that in a very, very different context, I saw that what was, and when I came to that epiphany about the identity piece and tying the identity piece
00:11:40
Speaker
into your values. That was like in the peak, I would say craziness of what 2020 was where people were saying like, you're part of this group. I'm part of this group. I don't want to be associated with this. I am all of this. This is who I am. This is not who I am. And so I just kind of looked around and at the madness and I basically said like, this is probably very, very destructive in a lot of cases because we're getting to a point where we're never really not humanizing anyone anymore. We're really kind of saying that these people are a certain type of person
00:12:09
Speaker
when that could be only to your point a fashion or a faction of who they are as a person. And that person like you are you are not just a whatever group you want to call yourself. Your name is Megan, you like this, you kind of have this part of your personality. And I think that in order to devolve you in a sense and kind of saying you are only this one thing without layering that in that nuance does it immense disservice to you as an individual and you as a person.
00:12:34
Speaker
And I think that that, you know, that kind of mindset in our culture is really, really a damaging one for a lot of people, regardless of what that identity group is. And I think that in order to combat that, we need to start looking at people as individuals again. And I think this was mainly just a, at the end of the day, it was a call to return to individualism and to respecting people as those individual people. Yeah. And I think that that in itself, like the respect for individualism that can sometimes be misconstrued.
00:13:02
Speaker
by older generations, no shame at them, is a bad thing. But some would say, I actually respect this whole human in front of me. I look at this as an individual human, and that's not, individualism is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you pair individualism, again, the respect for individuals, with the recognition that individuals operate in a society. So we wouldn't have a society if we weren't a collective community of people.
00:13:26
Speaker
And what makes, I would say, our community and society so rich is that all of these people are different. Like, that's what makes life so exciting. But to recognize that individualism, I might even challenge your mom. Don't tell her I said that. That I'm going to challenge your mother that I've never met. She seems lovely.
00:13:42
Speaker
I challenge my mom all the time. She'll be the first person to say that. But she says that your generation doesn't believe in anything. But maybe your belief in itself is that you respect individualism and that your beliefs might just be different. And so these undercurrent is respecting an individual. That is the belief. But what each person believes can differ, which I think is very interesting, but also didn't mean to get so meta on that one.
00:14:12
Speaker
But am I correct in this idea that we sometimes forget that
00:14:20
Speaker
people have this nuance to their identity. And there's so many different elements of how a person is, how they show up that we forget to see all of the different nuances because I would bet that there's an element of filtering. Like we live in a world where we have to filter through so much stimulation, like so much stimulation to be able to understand and really get to know someone quickly. We almost have to throw out all of our identity at them to say, make your decision about me. I don't know. Did you explore that in your book?
00:14:49
Speaker
I did, I did, a lot actually, because I think that actually is one of the cruxes of the main issue and the main problem, which basically is saying that in order to really see someone as a whole individual person, you really can't filter out what you want to, because when you do filter out, you kind of only see what you want to see, which might not be what that person actually is. And if you only see that person as either a net positive or a net negative compared to how you see them as a person,
00:15:16
Speaker
You could be missing out on a lot of other really, really cool and badass things. And that was kind of really, those are really kind of just, you know, and I think that's a shame when you kind of only see a person in one way, but then you have a lot of other things that, you know, could be really cool. Like maybe this person that you just think you automatically despise because they like a certain person and the culture or a certain musician or whatever you want to say, but they're also a really cool painter and you like what they paint. Like that's kind of cool.
00:15:42
Speaker
And you might want to see what all that other stuff or maybe they treat their parents very respectfully or they look after their grandparents or they do something else or they're helping a friend that's going through a rough time or something like that. You don't know those things unless you choose to see those things. So I think this collective agreement that people have to come to possess with a lot of these issues that a lot of people see are, you know, it is damaging, I think. And I think that it was more in a sense of taking down those walls.
00:16:08
Speaker
and seeing a person as their holistic identity, not just a fraction of whoever they choose to see them as in that particular moment. Yeah. So this is giving me, do you watch the show The Good Place?
00:16:22
Speaker
Um, okay. It's, it's quite funny and I'll summarize it really quickly, but it was reminding me. So it's about the afterlife. It's an, a secular take on what happens to us after we die. Um, and it's not a secret. There's a point system is what they, they agree. And throughout a few seasons, they find out the point system is rigged.
00:16:39
Speaker
because being a human is hard, right? And it's just exactly to that that the factions of human life, like the layers of human life, like we can be one way, but we have all these other components of us and all of that has to be factored into the equation.
00:16:55
Speaker
that we can't just be taken off of one set of behaviors or actions, right? We have to suffer, not suffer consequence, but we have to understand there's consequence to our actions. But the complexity, I think, of being a human is what we're trying to minimize when we, as we've kind of identified filtering out of identity, like when we try to filter and kind of shuffle away the people that are different than us or alike us and bringing them into the fold.
00:17:22
Speaker
It kind of gave me this mindset of kind of the undercurrent of the good places that being a human is hard. Navigating society is hard. Being a good person is hard sometimes.
00:17:32
Speaker
And
Empathy, Tolerance, and Boundaries in Gen Z
00:17:33
Speaker
we have to respect that the full richness of being a human is difficult, especially in today's day and age. And I think that probably what you found is something that many people are saying, mm-hmm, yep, I totally go. Like when we do the whole filtering of identity, we filter out parts of the person and we don't see them as the whole person. So first, thank you for doing that important work and teaching us all about that. Let's turn a little bit and talk about Gen Z. You know, I love to talk about Gen Z, right?
00:18:00
Speaker
What's something that through your exploration of understanding values, understanding identity, which are two things that we find in our research, shared values and identity and expression are incredibly important to this generation. So what do you think, what are some things that you've learned maybe from a Gen Z lens through the work that you did to write this book and the work that you can continue to do?
00:18:24
Speaker
I think it's to what you just said is that they really do care a lot. And there's a lot of, I think, empathy with this generation. I think they're very, very caring about a lot of other different types of people who, and I think that was actually in the introduction of my book, I basically lay out what I said was every generation previously. So my family, excuse me, has been in America for four different generations.
00:18:45
Speaker
And each of them kind of had a very, very fatal flaw with their kind of society in terms of basically this group didn't like, let's just say it was the civil rights movement, then it was, you know, let's just say feminism, then it was gay rights, then it was a bunch of other things. And now with this generation, we are, I think by a myriad of metrics, the most accepting, the most generous, the most tolerant generation that's basically ever lived in America and probably in the world, I would argue in a lot of ways.
00:19:09
Speaker
But the problem with that is that we really don't have anything to replace it with. So we've been so tolerant with other people that we've become very tolerant with ourselves in that kind of a sense. So we're so empathetic towards ourselves and we're so empathetic towards other people that we have forgotten that we do need to draw lines in the sand in some ways and we do need to place rocks down to build our churches proverbially. I know we talked about the good place earlier and that's kind of a different lens on it.
00:19:34
Speaker
You know, we have, we've just kind of, I think, forgotten or put that to the wayside and how to do that for good intentions, by the way, and I want to emphasize that. But I think that we have a lot of people in Gen Z and younger people who are coming up and saying, like,
00:19:49
Speaker
If I say one thing that maybe could rub somebody the wrong way or something, I am automatically doing an injustice into them, which is not true. If you do not mean to do an injustice onto a person, it just could be your opinion about something or the way you see the world or the way you do something else. And so there's this great quote by a man I highly admire named Jason Wilson, where he said, people have gotten so used to walking on eggshells that they'll walk through life making no sound.
00:20:16
Speaker
And I think that's where our generation is headed in a lot of ways because I think a lot of the people in Gen Z and especially the younger folks, they want to make an impact in the world. They want to see society change for the better. They want to see more people at the table and people included in everything. But the paradox of that is that if you aren't willing to beat down the doors and kind of get to where you want to be in a way that is very contrite with how you are as a person and as we are as a generation and our identity, then that's never going to happen.
00:20:45
Speaker
I think it's a bit of a reckoning with that, but I think the empathy with Gen Z is good. But I also think we need to balance that with kind of standing for, I would say, and forthrightly for something as an individual first, and then movements will arise out of that where they can stand together collectively to make a decision on something that will affect the society positively going in the future. So I love that take of
00:21:11
Speaker
this, that empathy is the undercurrent, right? Empathy is the thing that has helped identity expression values be a part of it. Um, and this is kind of my next question or like, is it potentially misunderstood? So you're absolutely right. Every time we look at something around Gen Z, they're like, they are empathetic to all heck.
00:21:27
Speaker
They're compassionate. They love everyone. They want to take care of people. That's not a bad thing. But when we are overly empathetic and we are potentially overly compassionate, are you saying in some cases potentially might conform to that to the point where we don't let diversity of thought and we don't encourage
00:21:47
Speaker
discourse that is actually still very incredibly important. Is that like a correct assumption that I'm taking from a little bit of your message? Yes, yes, absolutely. And I think that, you know, sacrificing everything at the altar of absolute tolerance is a very, very big mistake. And I'll tell you why, because if you elected, let's just say like you have the most tolerant, quote unquote, tolerant personnel of Gen Z say, I place tolerance is the highest virtue on my on my list of values or whichever.
00:22:17
Speaker
And then to that, I would kind of say, like, okay, are you tolerant of people being racists? Like, are you tolerant of people being, you know, discriminatory to other people? Are you tolerant of that? They would say, well, no, no, no, no, I'm not tolerant of those people. I'm not tolerant of those people. I'm like, well, okay, you just said that you're tolerant of everybody. So you have to, it comes down to the fact that you do have to put your foot down on some type of an issue. And I think that was where, and that is where Gen Z, I think, can improve a little bit is by saying that
00:22:43
Speaker
Even though you can be very, very open and accepting and kind of just be open to all people kind of coming into your life or however you want to receive it, you also have to say that there are things that you do not tolerate and that you do not do. So maybe that thing is something else or something, whichever. But it is kind of what you were saying earlier that it can descend into a kind of a group thinky malaise where a lot of people just kind of sink into something that really isn't all that permanent or all that real.
00:23:11
Speaker
I think that can be very, very dangerous because it can lead to a lot of decay in a lot of different areas, which is never a good thing.
Justice, Fairness, and Accountability in Gen Z
00:23:18
Speaker
I think that you've really helped me think about when Gen Z says they desire authenticity. I think some people misunderstand that to be that they want you to be exactly who you are all the time without consequence.
00:23:35
Speaker
And I don't want to say consequence like, Oh, you're going to go to jail if you're yourself. No, if you do need to be able to speak your mind, but if your, your mind or your opinion is harmful or hurtful, you have to be accepting that like, maybe you might, someone might push back on that.
00:23:50
Speaker
or there might be a disagreement in that. So if you're allowed to say that, but you're also allowed to recognize that you might get pushback and someone might call you a mean name because whatever you said was potentially damaging, hurtful, harmful, and people are allowed to respond in a way to say, that's harmful to me. And you're allowed to say, sorry for causing that harm.
00:24:11
Speaker
and move on. I think that something I've observed, and this is not intended, again, I'm never going to put a dig at Gen Z. I always look at what is opportunity in the bright spot, is that we have, again, this huge generation with such a big heart for empathy, wanting people to feel included, wanting people to be who they are. But there is this kind of, and I see it in the work that I do with students, I see it with administrators, I see it with young people navigating the workplace. Disagreement, like an avoidance of disagreement and
00:24:40
Speaker
I would say difficult conversations because what you mentioned, like the tolerance, the acceptance,
00:24:48
Speaker
There has to be that balance because if we're walking around just wanting to accept everyone, I'm not saying don't, no, no, no, don't like, don't exclude people, that's different. But you can still be loving, accepting and empathetic while also having a disagreement with someone. You have to actually, for a productive conflict to take place, you have to be empathetic and compassionate to the other person. If you're not, that's not a productive discourse conversation. That's not a productive disagreement. That is just you yelling your opinion.
00:25:17
Speaker
And I think that's an area that sometimes it's a hard line to walk. There's an opportunity to grow and develop. I think as a society, we all need to get better about productive conflict. But I think especially for young people in this phase of life, it is the
00:25:35
Speaker
we're learning the important social skills like that's regardless of generation this age range is when we learn our important social skills and if we are so to one side of the pendulum of like no disagreement you know the eggshells as you said you don't make a noise i love that i love that parable or not that parable but that um that idiom around it it really does i think speak to where a lot of us are at right now um in society but
00:25:59
Speaker
I always have one question for you. I feel like we could sit and have this conversation for like three hours, which I love. Maybe we'll have to do a part two. But what I always ask my guests, and I know that you see this from a lens because of the work that you're doing.
00:26:15
Speaker
and kind of amplifying this. But what's your favorite thing about your Gen Z peers? I know you're surrounded by them, but what's your favorite thing about your generation? We talked about two things that could be considered misunderstood or potentially things that could be a problem. I don't see them as a problem. But what's your favorite? Let's leave on a high note.
00:26:33
Speaker
Well, I don't know if this is going to be a high note or not, but I think that Gen Z has their eyes open in terms of they do push back on a lot of, not necessarily I would say so, maybe the tolerance portion is more, I would say they're more tolerant towards their generation, but I think our generation is very skeptical towards a lot of things in the world that other generations were previously unable to call out.
00:26:57
Speaker
So, we are, you know, and I think that might actually speak to the point of tolerance because when you see someone being mean to someone else, they are not going to take that very lightly and just turn the other cheek and whatever. They're going to say, no, this is wrong and I feel like I need to speak up for this type of person. So, I think the word I'm looking for is that we have a strong sense of justice about a lot of things and that can be taken a lot of different ways and that word is kind of taken in a lot of different contexts.
00:27:22
Speaker
Overall, there is a very, very strong sense of people that want a very, very just world, a truly just world in a lot of ways. We want to make sure that people are treated fairly and equally in a lot of ways. Like I said, that can be perverted in different ways and thrown to different extremes, whatever have you. I do think that's a very admirable quality to have if we use it right. I think that was a really big revelation I had with myself when I was writing this book and when I do a lot of my blogs and my podcasts and my other things that I do is that
00:27:51
Speaker
I was pointing this out to my friend a couple of months ago. I'm an Enneagram eight and apparently Enneagram eights are very, very justice focused. And I never really thought about that because I always thought about justice in a very, very, in that kind of way whacked out form in terms of how a lot of people use the word nowadays. But after analyzing it, I think it's true. And I think that's what I admire a lot about people in my generation is that they want to see people live in a just and fair society. And I think it's a very, very admirable trait that a lot of people have.
00:28:20
Speaker
And I think that maybe this should have just been the episode about misunderstandings about Gen Z because you've really gotten down into the depths of some of these things. I think that people perceive justice as like, and you will go to jail. In reality, it's just if you do something that warrants a consequence or a reaction, it should be met with a response, right? And so I think that is sometimes the misunderstanding around their desire for justice comes from going back to that
00:28:50
Speaker
really innate desire for authenticity. And if you really think about boiling that down, it's wanting people to act in accordance with the values that they said that they have and treating people fairly.
00:29:04
Speaker
And when those things are not aligned, that there should be some sort of response or reaction to that. And I think that that is something that I'm really now starting to think about it differently. Thank you for helping me think a little bit more differently about this, that authenticity is not just like show up and be yourself, like free spirit kind of thing.
00:29:23
Speaker
If you're going to say you are this way and espouse this value, then we're going to hold you to it. It's almost like an accountability piece, which I don't think it's a bad thing that young people are keeping us accountable personally. I don't either. I mean, someone's got to do it. So I think that, you know, a lot of people are very
00:29:39
Speaker
skeptical and they're very focused on kind of getting accountability from people when they feel that it's that it's deserved and what's not deserved I think that they should Gen Z should realize that as well and I think that was something we need to do better at personally as a generation but I do think that justice is a good thing when applied correctly and I think the Gen Z has a lot of it in bunches.
00:29:57
Speaker
Yeah.
Sam LaCrosse's Work: A Deep Dive
00:29:58
Speaker
Well, I'm in Enneagram 7. I don't know what it says about us for justice, but we don't like the uncomfy, as I call it. So, we're just trying to live our best lives and I do a pretty good job. But, Sam, thank you so much for learning with me and sharing today. I know that the listeners will have, I'm sure they're going to want to buy your book. I'm building directly where most people buy books.
00:30:20
Speaker
is either Amazon, but check out your local bookstores and all the places you can buy books. But if you will want to keep up with your other work, I know you mentioned you have a blog and a podcast, please take this opportunity to plug where people can follow along with your work. And I will make sure to include it in the show notes, but I want to give you a chance to shout yourself out.
00:30:37
Speaker
Sure. Well, thank you, Megan. And it's funny, the girl that told me, my friend who was a girl that told me that was, she's also an Indian gram seven. So that's actually very funny. And so my blog is, don'treadthisblog.com. My podcast is, don't listen to this podcast available on Spotify, Apple podcasts, all other major podcasting platforms.
00:30:54
Speaker
The book is Value Economics, The Study of Identity. It came out in June of this year. It was featured in Forbes, two-time number one Amazon bestseller in two different categories. And my social media, my Instagram is at realsamlax, R-E-A-L-S-A-M-L-A-X. And I am Sam Lacrosse on LinkedIn if you're of the more professional type. I'm on all the places and I will be sure to share that with everyone. Great marketing. Don't read this book and don't listen to this podcast. It's the first thing that you do when you see a sign that says don't touch.
00:31:24
Speaker
Exactly. I'm the worst at that. They're like, do not touch fragile. I'm like, how fragile? How fragile though? That's human exploration, though. Well, thank you so much for being here. It's been an absolute delight to spend time with you, and I'm excited to share this with everyone. Thank you, Megan. I very much appreciate it. I appreciate you having me.
00:31:43
Speaker
I want to thank Sam for sharing such important insights. Sometimes the topic we think we know a lot about or hear a lot about actually requires us to sit back and think a little bit harder about it to dig deeper.
00:31:56
Speaker
I can see this to be true with the work that Sam is doing by encouraging us to think differently and deeper about things like our value, identity, and how we interact with others, especially those from who we are different. I encourage you to not only live your truth in who you are, but hold space for others to do so. Even if you don't agree with him or see eye to eye, to achieve the empathy Sam shared about means being empathetic to those we are different than as much as we are as alike.
00:32:24
Speaker
Be sure you get a copy of Sam's book, Value Economics, The Study of Identity. You can also follow along on his blog, don'treadthisblog.com, and listen to his podcast, Don't Listen to This Podcast. Beautiful branding, honestly. And finally, thank you for tuning into this episode. As always, if you enjoyed this conversation, please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps other interested listeners find the show and see if it's a good fit for them.
00:32:51
Speaker
We're nearing the end of this season and our exploration of cohort culture, but you know, the fun never really stops for long. So if there's something you really want to learn about, I'll happily help make that happen. Please reach out via my website, meganmgrace.com or on social media. You can find me at Megan M. Grace to share any of your questions or suggestions you have. Thank you again for stopping by for this episode. Let's continue this conversation and we'll chat soon.