The World in Crisis

Welcome to Wabi Sabi, the art of imperfection. And I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's the moon. I don't know if it's like something spinning around the world. I don't know what's happening, but both Jim and I were just having the discussion. Jim threw out the topic. I'm like, wow, were you reading my mind? Cause this is exactly the same conversation I was having with my wife. Then I'm thinking about, which is, I don't know. I don't know how do you frame this, Jim, but I think it's almost like I want to title this. The world is in crisis. And was like, and that's where it is.

Yeah, I think that's, that's a pretty accurate response here. And interestingly, look, I think, you know, we were just talking about this just a moment ago, just to, guess, discuss why this had come up. And I think in this last week, I, I'm not so much, I've been suck it in or drawn into a whole lot of commentary, but I'm finding it very hard to detach.

Yeah, so tell me about where do you would you come from it?

from aspects, matter where I go, you know, I was just saying to you before Lawrence, you know, years ago, even if there was a world war, it was horrific. You wouldn't hear anything. And then you'd get in a letter. It looks like I'm really sorry. This has happened and life could go on and you had these events, whereas now it just feels like it's a constant drama show. It's a constant thriller. Things are going on. There's a lot of moving and shaking and no matter where you go, you're, there's this one drama and another drama. And we were just talking about. the scenarios in, the U S recently where I just can't make sense of it. I can't make sense of, it's not designed to be a political statement, right and wrong, left, right, whatever. It's just a case of how did we get here? How does this possible and where do we go to next? So I thought we'd open it up in that context to, discuss, you know, how do you make sense? Like if you, if you've got a eight year old kid, who comes and asks you something. And as an adult, what do you say now compared to what you might've said 30 years ago?

Yeah, and that's the key element, right? Like 30 years ago, ah when something, anything like this happened, know, majority of the people will be outraged um and anger and not really be, even though they may not like the person that this happened to or the side that this happened to or whatever, but you'll be outraged because it goes against, I don't know, some sort of moral fiber or some sort of cultural. thing that you had or a thought or viewpoint or belief. I think we had this, I don't know, maybe again, I'm not an expert in this. I'm just sort of talking through my feelings, which is like we all had this collective belief of how a good society should run. I think that's probably the best way to put it, right? We had this collective belief. But yet, like now I'm confused because even in the same school, let's say, you know, of parents, There's a sense of that I get it's like, even in a small room of 10 people, I don't know how anybody thinks. It's almost like each one of them could be so polarizing. if I almost are living in this world where I don't wanna say anything because I don't wanna be the guy to drop this bomb grenade into this room. And then that kind of creates like this massive divide based on your belief. But I wouldn't have known the belief if it was. kind of depending on what anybody says until I dropped it. And I feel like we don't have that sense of collectiveness as much as we did before, where it was almost like certain things were just like outside of, like if it happened, it was to be way outside of our core beliefs and that would be wrong. I guess it's almost like, guess simplifying is like we knew, or at least we thought we knew what was right and wrong, where now the lines are so blurred. And if you make a one wrong step and if you don't believe in what they didn't and the strength and power that they have of cancellation or the threat of cancellation now creates like this, I just don't want to say anything.

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think there's people who the first immediate response is, is it is cancellation. So if you have a view and a statement, like years ago, university used to be the place where you go to expand your horizons, expand your thinking, you know, um, go out and look at contrary points of view and, and, and see what happens. And now it's like, it's almost going to reverse where it's not celebrated. It's not celebrated. You have a different perspective and view. And either you have to get very aggressive to defend that, to get extreme, or you get isolated straight away. So there's no tolerance. And I find that that's a really disconcerting thing where you can actually say, where does it, where does it resort to? And it generally will go to violence and populism and extremism. That's generally what it will happen because there's, there's, I guess there's no uh process whereby you're processing and getting a consistent. Um, resolution in this where people can see the pathway it's so open to interpretation. Like, you know, it's contentious one, but I just, I don't know. think we should talk about it. You know, we're talking about the scenario in Minnesota and, um, irrespective of what your, um, political affiliations are. One of the greatest frauds it's ever been, um, basically conducted on, the country. Uh, had totally different perspectives and, and, and, uh, views depending on what political party someone's are. People were outraged. Other people were like, Oh yeah, that's not bad. That's not that bad. And they're not making a big deal about it. And I just, I'm confused to be honest.

Yeah, I'm confused because it's almost like how quickly people make judgment without actually knowing the facts. So for whoever's not listening and don't know what's going on in Minnesota, there's obviously there's two major things that's going on. There's ICE removing people that are illegal immigrants. So that's one thing. That's already a politically hot topic there. But another topic that was kind of underneath all of this was this YouTuber, 23-year-old YouTuber. who I believe was a Mormon, right, who goes in there. He's been doing like sort of independent journalism for quite some time now, for like over a hundred weeks or something. So it wasn't like his first hurrah, but you know, his first one that got, you know, gone viral. And he went in there and discovered like, you know, along with a couple of investigators as well, who's been in there, who's been investigating for quite some time, who's a bit older, he's an older gentleman, like probably in the 60s. And he went in there and basically, show that there's massive, like I'm talking massive amounts of fraud uh in Minnesota. No, again, allegedly, right? So let's just talk about it, allegedly. The key thing that I think shocks us both is not that they're, well, first of all, the fraud itself was shocking, know, but assuming that's true, right? We don't know if that's true, so we can't, we can be shocked at how did they even get that far? But number two, what I was shocked about is more about the reaction, right? The reaction of the counter, which means Instead of going, oh my god, we definitely need to look into this, they almost adamantly defended the position and tried to spin it to racism, he was a white supremacist, and just tried to almost going, don't look here, but look over here, immediately. And I found that fascinating because it's like, you would think, you know,

Yep.

If let's change the subject for a second, like just say if I got diagnosed with cancer and I can most healthiest person, I'm like, no, no, don't worry. But what about this? Like I'm trying to like forget about the cancer, right? And point out that something else or look, look, but my pinky is the one that's really, really bad though. You know, like, and it's like, what are we talking about here? Like, why are we avoiding the thing that is glaring in our face to maybe dig a little bit deeper to see if this is true or not?

Hmm.

And that's what's kind of weird, right? It's weird for me. And the speculation right now is that there is so much fraud and it's the people who are defending it is part of the fraud. And that's why they're defending it so adamantly, which, I mean, that seems to paint a pretty interesting picture.

Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's an old saying along the lines of, know, um, never expect someone who benefits from an outcome or a fraud to talk it down or something along the lines of two, to find the fault with the system that they're direct beneficiaries of. And I, I'm, I'm aghast. really am. I, I, could make no sense for me. I was talking about it with our family to just go, what, what does that do? Like if you've got so much fraud in there, what about all these social services? that can't get funded. know, you just got to drive along the road in the U S or, or the UK and they're just potholes everywhere. And, I think as a society, you'll go, where's the money going? Where's the money going? And I read, and I know it's probably a bit U S centric here, but I read a bill this week that, um, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California has, has basically introduced a bill to say, won't give you, um Uh, the, you know, the auditing process has vetted the, when someone who goes, where'd the $20 billion go? He's actually put a bill to go, you won't find out. So how is that transparent? How is that? Like if I was living in California, I get the hell out of there because I'm basically going, what am I? I'm perpetuating this process. You're taking money. There's no accountability of looking after society and you want to tax even further. How does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I have.

Yes. Oh, and they want to tax the billionaire tax, right? They want to pass that law. I don't know if you heard about that. It's like, it's not, are, remember, we're just trying to tax billionaires, right? Or whoever it doesn't matter, because it only starts with billionaires and then it's going to go to the, you know, the a hundred millionaires and it's going to come down. They want to start that process. But to think about like, you, they're going to want to tax these people who've already taxed already taxable dollars, right? Like, so you already paid your taxes for it already. And they're to tax based on each year on what that valuation is.

Yeah, yeah.

So if they own the stock in the company, it's like, oh, if that company had a big year, right? It was like, oh, now we're going to tax you on the, even though you haven't sold it, right? Most of us get taxed if we sold the company. Yeah. How is that even like, wow, what are you even thinking? And, but if you think about Minnesota, small state, right? If this is happening there, man, I don't even want to, like, can you imagine the speculation of what's going on in other states? Like, especially in California?

Hmm. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's the unrealized gains. Unrealized gains is what they're actually doing. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Like the palisades, I know I'm known people, I actually know several people who had their homes burnt down in the palisades and that was over a year ago. Do you know that there's only one building that's actually building in the palisades right now one year later and that building, that's building had their approval before the fire. So for a whole entire year, nothing has happened.

Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought Portugal was slow, right? But nothing's happened.

Yeah. Yeah. That is, that is phenomenal. And, and, and it is hard. Like, I mean, you, you know, Lawrence, by virtue, I mean, we're, we're considered in terms of what we put out in, in public, but you know, like, you know, you know, that that is going to be what you and I've just said is potentially, oh, we're, um, we're conspiracy theorists, you know, but, but it's about asking questions, man. It's just about going, how is this allowed to happen? And Like I was saying to you, how do I make sense if I'm trying to explain this to, um, little Johnny, my kid, Hey, don't steal. It's not good to lie and take things that aren't yours when it's happening on a grand scale. Uh, and just in this, um, right or wrong, know, um, just in the last, two or three weeks, we've had some massive events. We've had, uh, us going to Venezuela. Um, they're currently talking about, um, Greenland, right? Um, there's massive EU, uh, pushback against it as having military presence, moving to Greenland to defend that we've had the whole, um, food table turned upside down, um, compared to what we've had mercury removed from all vaccines. And that's happened in the last four weeks. Right. And so any, yeah. And as well as the Minnesota, um, that's what I'm basically saying is.

It's insane. And there's so many good things, but yeah.

Things are happening so rapidly. talk about AI implementation. And even if you go, I'm going to try and find the truth of this. You go down these rabbit holes where you don't, you have to authenticate. You have to have a masters in, in research to be able to get the validity of the initial source, as opposed to a fake news or AI generate. It gets tricky and tricky to actually do your own research.

It's very, very difficult. And I think this is why like being an investor, for example, is very challenging because like you can imagine all these events have political um and financial ramifications in the stock market and the way, you know, um things like gold, silver, Bitcoin, all these things are the markets are, you know, that are going up and down um because we really don't know where, where, where everything's going. And, you know, let's talk about, you you said about Greenland and I know, also Venezuela, like Those are such if you dive, I mean, I've been looking into that a little bit. I don't really know too much, but, know, I just want to kind of follow through. But now that it's gone through and you look at it, you're like, oh, there's a lot of wonderful. What I can see is there's a lot of geopolitical things that are much that the board is much bigger than you can imagine. Like what we're looking at is almost like, oh, no, they just went in there and grabbed the prime minister or the president or whatever, and his wife and then kidnapped them. Right. And But people say, it's for the oil. that's the first thing I thought, OK, they must be going after the oil. But there's also a lot of political things that at play when you start to think about the US trying to gain back control. And this is just one narrative, trying to gain back control of the um North America and the Northern Hemisphere region. And securely, because a lot of Venezuela, a lot of the oil was being shipped to Russia and China, which is their adversary. adversaries, right. And so which means that they, you know, if you're, which means that they can have a lot of infiltration, and they are direct striking distance to us, um if they ever got control of Venezuela. And so, you know, forget about the, you know, the drugs, and then forget about the oil for quick second, but it's just almost like from a geopolitical strategic positioning, um it is very important to have influence or at least somewhat sort of control of Venezuela or any regions in this in this area. So is Greenland, right? It's the shipping lanes of Greenland because the ice is melting. The geographical location of Greenland has uh tons of strategy from a World uh War III perspective. Like if you start thinking like in that bigger, broader chess game in that region, you start seeing things differently rather than the narrative that they're trying to feed you, right? And I think that's something that kind of consider and I can see why, which then lends itself. I've been listening to something else like by US going after Venezuela and possibly Greenland, it's kind of setting up for China to take over Taiwan without America's fight, right? Because if China can justify, go, well, if you're doing that, then we're going to do this, and there's nothing they can do about it. But it's because that's a strategic move for China to have Taiwan back in their fold rather than having a US-centric in Taiwan. And I think that's an interesting political kind of, you know,

Pretty much. Yeah. Pretty much.

way of looking at things in terms of coastlines and protection um with all the things that are so much attention that's going on. yeah, so I mean, that's something to kind of think about regards to the geo product, which again, I'm not an expert in, I'm just listening to these people and going, wow, I'm pointing this out mostly because I didn't know, I didn't think about the bigger ramification. We kind of see stories in isolation, but when you start to look at the bigger picture, and you look at expand 10, 20 years down the road, what does that landscape look like? You're kind of thinking in those bigger chess game pieces rather than playing checkers.

Yeah. And, and no one knows, like you're only led to understand what you have access to. And it depends on who you're sourcing your information from. And I am under no illusion that I have a bias. have a belief there's specific things that I'm looking for. Uh, I try to challenge and find a counter a perspective as much as possible, but some things that I just looked at this and, know, I just don't make, doesn't make sense to me, but you know, who I thought out of, out of I mean, it's actually important. How is it relevant to the rank and file person? Well, if you're suddenly working out going, how come the cost of my goods have gone up so significantly or what can I find a house that's anywhere near what I can afford or Hey, petrol prices are now have dived in the U S why is that possible? Yeah. You know, if you understand how it's going on or silver, you know, like whenever there's uncertainty, you're to get flock to hard money, like gold and silver, those kinds of assets. I've got, I don't remember. coins from 1960s in Australia. used to have, um, uh, they used to, know, the 50 cent coins, which are kind of, uh, they've got multiple edges. Well, they made mistakes and they ran ones that was circular in the 1960s, 50 cent pieces. Now I've got those, um, like pristine condition, um, uncirculated from 1960 something. Uh, I got them in a vault and, um, they're 80 % silver.

Huh. They're going up in value.

All right. So I can look at this and go, yeah, I can look at this and go, well, they've gone up 150 % this, um, this year. That's awesome. Lucky me. Yeah. But at what cost is because there's so G L a political risk and no one knows what's going on. That's why that's happening. And I think that I'm certainly more aware of it as I've gotten older and I don't know whether it's, I'm getting more concerned by it or whether it's just, I'm taking more of a better

Yeah.

broad understanding of life and world and cause and effect, which is, that's, that's where I have to look at and go, what, is this important to you now? Is it, is it the world that your kids are going to inherit that you want to make sure is, is better place than when you were there or that that's what I've got to keep filtering through my mind.

Yeah, and I think because most of us have this, and I still have this kind of viewpoint, right, with that we measure everything by the dollar that we are kind of spending in or living in, right? So if you're in Australia, for example, you'd be in an Australian dollar, US, US, whatever, euros and euros, right? So which means like, yeah, you notice that things are, you you might see it from two points of view. One, you're seeing one of like, wow, my wage is getting better. Like I'm earning more or I might be, you my investments are getting more, right? So you kind of look at it that way. like, yeah, that's winning. But then, not really taking account, everything else is more expensive, right? The house that you bought now is more expensive than it was five years ago. So therefore like your whatever gone, whatever your investment has gone up, not necessarily, might actually in comparison might not have gone up as much as the inflation of your house that you have to go buy now, which is then you don't actually have the money. So it's interesting how everything kind of works in that tandem. But what you're saying that all these things that are happening around the world does have a massive impact on,

Yeah. Yeah.

on the companies, on inflation, on the money we spent, and also a lot of things around the world in terms of property, where you want to go, where you want to live, travel expenses, oil, all these things are all kind of tied together. And they're all part of the all-entire one system. But we just don't see it because we kind of focus on the things that we're most interested in usually.

Yeah. And it's been said for a longest time, obviously that cash, particularly that that gives us a level of quote unquote security, but you're actually going back radically and you're going back big time. And particularly after, you know, 2008, and particularly after the pandemic, where there was a lot of central bank printing of a lot of money, those, those basically supply into the system, but that caused this huge upsurge in asset prices, know, homes. cetera. And a lot of people got caught out. So here's someone who's trying to follow the conventional pathway to building a life of security for them and the family. Suddenly they've just been priced out because of external factors, geopolitical factors that were outside of their control. And I think that that's, know, I, I definitely the whole save your way to financial independence as a model just doesn't, doesn't work. know, there's really hardworking people who buy into the system of doing that. They're just, they're not able to get ahead in any way, shape or form because life is just going past them. that's, that's the part where I just go education has to be, people need to understand this. This is really important. They need to understand and have a good understanding of um basically money and world events and how they influence either to govern their decision making.

Hmm. And there's so many things that already that's very challenging to kind of think about because there's so many things, right? And if you're not interested in it, it actually makes it harder. I was not. mean, I usually just like love to just focus on my life. Don't need to worry about the world. I just want to do my thing. And, and then that's the live life. I tend to see have, uh, tend to have lived, but I don't know if it's because I'm getting older and now I'm starting to like watch more news for whatever, even though I know it's not really good for me. And so it's a challenging then, you know, dilemma, you know, that we're kind of in.

Yeah.

to kind of get lost in the world that we can't really make an influence on. But you have to be aware of it to make certain choices that may affect you in terms of your investments and your moves. But at the same time, also feel like, because we asked the very first question, which was, how did we get here? And I can't help, but the thing that we got here, most of it is actually due to the prevalence and the way culture is around social media. and spread of information so quickly has really kind of perpetuated some of these ideals, ideologies that are in society at this moment in time. And I will say this one thing, is I was listening to this interview of a CIA operative. I don't even know why I was interested, I was just fascinated by that interview. And then talking about PSYOPs and we are... most likely living in a, not in a matrix, but literally living in the cultural world. What do I see on television and what these, people are acting? You're like, yeah, you weren't born that way. Like there's gotta be have some indoctrination of some sort to, you know, to make that. And, you know, the argument is that there's China, Russia, I know it seems like such a conservative, like they are infiltrating, you know, the youth and changing their minds and going against and creating the civil war so that they can just, Americans just focus on themselves while.

Yeah.

you know, other countries are focused on prospering. I know that seems so ridiculous, right? Even the word conspiracy theory, by the way, was made up, right? The word to kind of, not to debunk them, is more just to kind of make them kind of kooky kind of stuff. But most of it's actually true, yeah.

Mmm. It's the power of language. It's the power of language, you know, in, in, in any time you want to segregate a group, you use a term, a word, you know, a racism term, anytime you now say anything about anybody, you're being racist. And it's like, no, I'm not. I'm actually calling it out. Uh, whether it's, but, that, that it's almost like a hard stop to actually go, no, I'm not, you can't go anywhere because you by nature, I remember during the pandemic. Lawrence, I actually had, I can't remember. I'd made a statement somewhere and someone by virtue of their life experiences, uh, took me to task and it wasn't a particularly inflammatory comment that I made, but they took exception because of the history. go, listen, man, no offense. I meant offense, help me understand. Help me understand this. Cause I don't understand this, but totally blocked, totally, um, shut out. And so how do you move from that? Like if, if, if. Back in the day, if someone had said something to me that I took exception to, I let them know, I'd give them a right of reply. I'd give them an opportunity to go, okay. You know, I'm upset at you explained it and at least hopefully walk away from a scenario after I've defused and let my, know, basically the frustration clear to go, okay, what did I learn out of that? But right now it's like, you can't just go, don't like what I see. So I'm just going to block it out. That's totally avoidant avoiding the scenario. It's like walking around with blinders on your. on your, on your eyes and he's going, no, no, no, I don't want to look at it. It's really immature and childish. And I think that's the part that really annoys me because we can't move forward when we've got that as a model.

Oh, and I think it's also, you know, to that point, I remember feeling that way, you know, during that COVID era as well. And it's just like, I can't help but feel is that because our attention span is so short, right? We are not consuming information in a detailed manner. And so over the last 30 years, we're consuming shorter and shorter attention span. based on like something you read quickly, you automatically confirm your bias. and you basically already made a uh judgment based on how it's written. So depending on who you're listening to, right? So I guarantee you, if you look at a CNN headline versus a Fox headline of the same thing, it's going to, like just in the words, it's going to skew one way or the other. And so if you are one way or the other listening to Fox or CNN, you're going to take it for the face value of

Different perspective.

and then all of a sudden you already have made a commentary on that particular thing, even though you didn't actually go into depth of figuring out exactly what you were saying or what you were actually really, or what the incident happened or how it happened. Because you never actually spent the time to dig a little deeper. You just take the headline and go, did you see what happened over here in Minnesota? Right? You just make a statement. Like, oh my God, this is what's happened. Not realizing like certain things were there in the depth that that occurred. So I think a wonder of that has actually created more of this sort of mob mentality or this thought process because we don't have time. We've got so much stuff to do. We don't have time to investigate any of these claims. And it's just so easy. I remember I was playing paddle and I don't know what happened. think Trump did something, right? Like, I don't know. Trump always does something every single week and he did something. then and then the comment was like, oh, like. He saw something on the headlines on the TV or something goes, and it was like, Oh, what does Trump up to? Like, he just made an assumption that it was a bad move, but it was actually a really good move. I can't remember exactly what the thing it was actually like, no, no, no, he's doing this because of that. And then I can see in his face was because he already had a judgment. He was like, Oh, really? Oh, I'm like, okay. I didn't, I thought that cause I thought it was just Trump and therefore, therefore he must have done, you know, X. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's what's happening. Like for, you know, Trump is such a polarizing figure. makes.

Hmm. I was going to discount it. Yeah. Yeah.

Like that's a perfect example of how that can occur, no matter what he does, it's wrong, right? To a certain group of people. But that could be applied to other things though, right? That could be applied to no different than, you know, in our own profession, you know, whereas there is a left or right. Because as long as they said that, that means it's wrong, right? And you can apply that to most things. You know, example, you know, even like a, you know, chiropractors versus medical, right? Is anything of a medical stuff like, oh, yeah, you know, immediately you almost make that judgment. I know I was guilty of that too. Right? It's almost like, oh, because they're a medicine, they must be wrong as Western medicine, right? They're not inside out kind of thinking. And I think that that type of attitude does society a disservice because it's really not allowing us to really think through issues and we're making judgment. And then when we do say something, we rally behind people who believe in us. So therefore now creates this echo chamber and really don't have that conversation. You're absolutely right. 20 years ago, we would have had a conversation. Now, I might still not agree with you, Jim, right?

Yeah.

But we can walk away still going with respect for each other that we're still going to have a conversation. Nowadays, it's almost like, I don't want to talk to you because you're obviously the other side and I don't even want to hear what you think. in order for you to believe what you believe, you must be X. so therefore, yeah. this how this discord is crazy. I find it's ridiculous.

this, this, and this, and this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. And it's perpetuated, as you said, by your algorithm and what you see and you get fed more of that and you constantly reinforces that. So if you're going to get an event, you're going to get the perspective of the people who you're affiliated with. that risk event, you know, I'm not sure if you've ever seen on Netflix, there was a show called how to get away with murder. Did you ever watch that? um

I watched the first season, I think.

Okay. All right. So it's not talking to you about, but what I loved about what that show did is it showed you a situation and it showed you the end. Right. And then what the outcome and the start, and then what happens was you, you kind of like you led down through one character and you're going, maybe, maybe they're responsible. And you allows your mind to run through the whole scenario from start to end. And if with every episode, it was giving you a little bit snippet, but then every now and again, it'll give you a perspective from another character. And you go, Oh, I hadn't factored that in. hadn't, and I find that fascinating because as society, don't do that. We don't do that. go from starting point to end point and go, that's the way it is. And when we come up against someone who's got a totally different perspective, a different angle, like even what happened in Minnesota recently, we've got the ice agents and you've got footage on one news view, showing it from one view. And the other one showing you totally different. go, Whoa, okay. Which one's right. And so, and, and.

Yes.

Media are phenomenal manipulators of that. And you only have to look back through history and look at the themes of who the enemies were in popular culture and videos. It's the Russians. It's the Koreans. It's the Saudi, like depending on what narrative and I'll go, well, how is that influencing people if they've been doing it in popular culture for a long time? What makes you think it's not happening now? And they all concept of there are puppeteers and there are puppets.

Yes. Yeah, it's funny. was watching that actually during that time of that shooting, I did watch both sides and it was fascinating because like both sides would claim it is very evident what was happening. and it's like, and depending on which news channel, whether it be CNN or Fox, in this case, say you can like CNN is going to say like she was clearly avoiding and just trying to, you know, get away from the situation. Whereas Fox is like, this is ramming the officer. And the answer is like somewhere in between.

Mm-hmm. oh Yeah.

Right? It's, I can see both sides. It wasn't so clear. It looks clear enough. But to me, it's like there was, there was this, there was, was this moment of poor decision, right? And, and a quick decision that had to be made. And I can see from both sides, if I was the cop, like you already had your gun, like, yeah, if something that happened, like you remember people like she should have shot the tire. Are you kidding me? Like, like, what's, is half a second to make a decision. You're going to

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Split second. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, wait a second. I'll just wait. We're not in the movies. It's not like we are. It's not John Wick here to be able to kind of wait that moment to be able to be aiming at a tire. So I mean, I see that post perspective. There's an actual series that is really good to talk about your point, which is I think it's called The Playlist. And it's about the founder of Spotify. And it's like a four or six part series. And it exactly is that. Like episode one.

Okay, yep.

Sorry, yeah, I think episode one is from the founders perspective. know, things, certain things go on. And then in episode two, it doesn't repeat the thing, but certain obviously scenes are similar, but you see it from the artist's point of view. Then you see it from the record labor point of view. And so it was really interesting to kind of see how Spotify got started, but from a different perspective, you would see it from a different light. And I thought that was a very powerful way of demonstrating different perspective. every single... thing that we talked have talked about here has that element that each perspective is going to be challenged or can see it from their point of view. But if we're the whole point is that we're not opening dialogue to have that conversation. We're in trouble as a society. You know.

Hmm. Yep. I agree. I agree. Sorry. I was going to say out of all of this, um, Lawrence, you know, when we're going to look at world leaders and I think you're right. Social media is, I think poor leadership is a factor as well too, because, and we can call it and without being, um, uh, uh, basically charged of being a sexist, but it's, it's my legal that's, that's doing this, right? It's like, you look around where most of the conflict is it's my legal. I, in all of this, and I don't know enough about her politics. reckon the biggest ninja out of all of them was, um, the, the presidential candidate Machado, um, from Venezuela, the lady who won the Nobel peace prize and dedicated to Trump that worked into his, she's an absolute ninja. All right. Um, she got, she, she was, that is, that is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. That's a, that's a master move because.

The subtle, the god into the ego.

She's now on the world stage. She's got someone who, um, who basically she's got it. She didn't have to fight. She used intellect. And that to me, it was like genius, brilliant, you know, now I don't know anything enough about that, but I just look at that as a move and go, wow, I'm impressed. You know, because women wouldn't do that. Women wouldn't do and lead the way we're being led right now.

Yeah.

Uh, I strongly believe that. And I believe in a very meritocratic society. And I know a lot of people will bash up against it and say, women don't have an opportunity. And I get it. And I told, I can't change that, but I can advocate for the best person being in charge. And for my style in that scenario, that was, that wasn't, um, minimizing a dimming a lights. was just a real strategic move to get into position to influence some of the most powerful people in the world. And to me that, that, you know, I, I was impressed by that. So I just thought I'd comment on it.

Yeah, so I think, so the devil's advocate argument on that, is the challenge oh of that also, sure, I agree with the male ego thing, right? And I agree with a lot of situations because of terrible leadership and terrible uh ego then being bruised. But the other side of that too as well is that I feel like every side will have that. If it's all female or more female leaders, right, I think it will lead to something completely different. I don't know the stat here specifically, but I believe most of the Ivy League schools or most universities are 52 % female leaders right now. Right? And not saying that that's the cause of what's actually happening in American universities, but it does create a different circumstances. You might win on something, but then you lose on something else. this is not, I mean, we're using male and female here. I'm not saying that that's the thing, but we're just saying anything. It could be, I mean, uh look at it could be race, it could be a race thing, right? So like, for example, uh you know, I believe from the, again, this is, I'm not an expert here. So I don't know why I'm talking, I be talking about this thing. But I do, from what I read is that, you know, several American universities, right, to create the DEI uh emissions, they had to lower certain standards to allow more um minorities to kind of come through, which means that someone's got to lose out. And who's going to lose out? Actually, a lot of Asians lost out. right, because they were the ones who were getting higher marks to get into Harvard. before, but in order to let this minority come through, that other minority had to been reduced, right, to allow them to ensure that because only 100 spaces, there's only 100 spaces, if you're gonna exactly right. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I'm I'm not even commenting on that one saying though, it's like every plus will have its negative and we but it's about then that will have its consequential circumstances. And I think that what we've got to remember is that

It's a different type of discrimination. It's a different type of discrimination.

If the world had right and wrong and that's it and that just makes everything, if that was as easy as that, I think we were living at this utopian society. But we don't. There's no way we can do that simply because that no matter what we choose, there's gonna be a consequence. And I think ideally from society's point of view, we need to kind of look at is what kind of consequence are we willing to live with? You might make a right choice in the moment, but what's the downward consequences of that, right? What are the challenges of that? And I think we don't think because we live in such a short burst of gratification, we don't think that long-term effects, we don't usually think that far ahead on how that's going to actually impact us. And you can do that from the smallest thing, right? Like if you don't show up to the gym, are you going to gain weight today? Probably not. But if you don't show up to the gym today, what does that mean for tomorrow? Will you have the same motivation to show up tomorrow? Maybe not like now the probability of two days in a row will lead to most likely three days in a row Doesn't mean you won't ever go back, but it's just these these are like the certain circumstances, right? So everything every decision we make will have a downward consequences the downstream consequences I think we don't think long and hard about that and it's going back to the investment part, right? The reason why most people are successfully in financially wealthy is because they were savers and they were Investors like they invested at the right time when they're young They have this mindset, but people, most of us like, I'd rather buy this new iPhone than save that money, right? And again, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it depends on, you want instant gratification or do you want it for a long-term gratification? And every individual is going to be challenged by that decision almost every day.

Yeah. You know, it makes me reflect back fondly in the time when my kids were four and eight instead of 26 and 30. Uh, and you know, that were the times where, know, I, know, the biggest problem I had was a staying in bed, uh, a sleeping in, you know, I take you to school and those kinds of things. And while you're going through that, feels like I'm never going to, um, Never get it through this. I'll never get a good night's sleep ever again. And there's that sense of permanence that, that doesn't, doesn't last. But yeah, I found myself lamenting and thinking back to those eight, that age of innocence, where even my world was a lot less complicated. Certainly there's a lot of benefits that I have that I, that I'm exceptionally grateful for. I don't want to sound ungrateful to those, but I do yearn for those moments. And sometimes it's You know, how do you know you're going through an amazing period, you know, and, you know, going, being in the right place at the right time and knowing it and knowing that this is the golden age. This is a wonderful period. This is enjoy it, but you don't have that perspective to look back at the time and go, this is actually really magical. Cause we're conditioned to think that all great things have to happen other than, you know, the struggle of your kids and growing up to me, I just look back now and, um, I, I love it. And part of me goes, did I just wish that time away because I was hoping it would be simpler. Um, and now I'm entering a world where, know, my kids will inherit the world, so to speak after I'm gone. And is that a totally different reality for them when they have kids? So that's, that's where a lot of my thinking has been going. They're the consequences that I, that you talk about that, that, that have begun to remember.

Yeah. You know, so it's funny as you address that I realized that, you know, one of the reasons why we sort of feel this way right now is because we have been focusing on, on it in our own lives or just watching what we're watching. And, and this is where a perfect moment of like balance comes into play, right? Because if you focus on something, I mean, let's face it, you and I can't change that change any of this, what we've been talking about, right? It's like, we're not, we're not, we're not influential.

Hmm, nothing.

enough or have the being. And so really this falls into the bucket of non-controllable. And so this is just the world that we live Now, it doesn't mean though we shouldn't think about it or understand it so that we can actually apply it to our lives where we have full control over. I think these are lessons that we can learn. This is why we're even spending this amount of time talking about this, right? It's not about like worrying about it and then being sad about it. It's about worrying about it and trying to understand where it came from and seeing if we can extract some learning from it.

Thank

so that we can apply it to other parts of our lives so that we can actually go to live a simpler, complicated life. And the balance of this, what I saying, is that I think we do live in a, as much as the pessimistic viewpoint we talked about today, I believe you and I also agree that we're living in such the most magical time in the world in terms of abundance and the opportunity that's available and we're already halfway through our life. And so like, the opportunities our kids are going to have is just so unreal compared to what the opportunities I had. And I thought we had a pretty good damn opportunity with with the invention of the computer and the internet, you know, all happening. And where it is like we thought my god, like, wow, are we lucky, but now I think our kids are 10x or lucky. Because the world in five years time and 10 to 10 years time is going to be a world that we don't even recognize. And so

Hmm. Yeah.

Is it all negative? No, I don't think so. It's just that I think that there is a balance out there and depending on how, where you want to focus and put your energy towards is going to how you feel. And I think the reason why we, and I want to just preface this, right? Cause I think the reason why we spoke about all these things is because just try to get an understanding so that we don't repeat the same mistakes or we don't repeat these in a mistake to ensure that our world is peaceful and our world is full of um positive and energy that we can actually control and actually influence. for better, at least our own better environment that we live in. I think that that's how I can summarize it. I don't know about you.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. It's, it's, it's, know, for it's just passing commentary on what's top of our minds and how that impacts, but I agree with you. I wouldn't change my life. Right. Cause I, I've worked very hard to get to the point where it's an actual fact. was talking to someone I hadn't spoken to for a while back from Australia as a chiropractor colleague. went, how did what do you just look like you just travel, eat good food and, um, talk a whole lot of crap on online and I'll go, well, yeah, that's probably it. That's what, that's what I'm doing, but it's a, it's a life by design. I, and I intentionally moved towards that and had to take some steps to incorporate and do that. But yeah, I, I, I'm super grateful for it. I totally acknowledge that. Um, I can't do what I do now. I couldn't, I should say do that 10 years ago. Uh, it wouldn't have been possible for a whole lot of limitations. So I, I sit in gratitude and You know, know a while ago we did this uh podcast interval on AI and how that's going to impact on uh the impact in the short term on potential job changes and rediscovering of new industries. uh Elon has been talking about it and a guy called Jeff Booth has been talking a lot about this as well too. And they took about, they don't talk about universal base income. They talk about universal high income where they basically said, because

Mm-hmm. Hmm.

of the efficiencies that AI is going to drive, the net cost of most things is going to go almost to zero or just energy. So fundamentally you will have people who have more money, more resources to actually explore what it is that they want to do. And then we're potentially going to have another challenge in society, which is the one of purpose, you know, where there's like, okay, you, if you don't have to do anything, um, what are you going to spend your time with? So that's a totally different thing that probably our kids will have to worry about.

Oh god. They're going to protest.

Yeah, we want something to do. want something meaningful for the do, but you know, like that's it's just like for, for, for every argument, there's a counter argument. There's the, okay, jobs will go. Okay, great. And I, I believe that the implementation we're going through this period where there's the die off reaction, the old models, the old frames are old constructs are basically deconstructing and going. And then a new form and a new situation is coming out of that. But we're in that period where we're changing one paradigm to another and it's unsettling and it's disconcerting and there's chaos and there's argument and there's anger to be able to get that new form. So that's, that's the visionary part of me that sees that that holds the intention of something like that coming down the pike.

Yeah, and it happens to all of us, right? And I think that it's just because we're so stuck in our ways that we don't want to change. And when it happens to us, it's obviously not ideal. And this is why I think another reason why it's so important for us to kind of talk about these things and think about these things, because when you start seeing it, you can possibly see the potential future that's just ahead of you, right? And then that allows you to really be able to maybe

Hmm.

make adjustments along the way to kind of know that, oh, like, I can see that this might be the end of this, that you might want to start picking up some skills in other areas. Because let's face it, like when the cars came in, I mean, look at all what happened to all the horses and all the people who took care of the horses, who fed the horses who train the horses and you know, I mean, like all of those people, like, you know, you're not thinking about them, are you right? Like, no, we thought about like, I think about all the events within cars and allows us to go like, you're not thinking about the horses, right? Because we are, we're more the

Yeah, the ferry is, yeah.

After Effects, like we, got the benefits from that. And, you know, airplanes were probably the same to do with trains, like the people who did the railways and, you know, building a trains and stuff like so all of these things have advancements. But if it's affecting, yeah, it's scary. It's scary that we're to lose all the people who who are trained and have certain skill sets. um However, there's going to be new skills and new um things are going to come that we don't even know. And that's that's the That's the exciting part. But if you're not going to be able to foresee that, if you're not on top of things, if you just kind of go tradition, I'm like, okay, my dad was always this and I'm to be doing that. That's, that's scary. I think that would be a very, very scary move. But if you can sort of understand the world of where possibly just seeing what's going to happen, you can kind of somewhat predict where the head world is heading. Maybe you have a chance to kind of choose something that's more, that's still more relevant.

Yep. And we've got a hard, uh, close Lawrence. I'm going to finish up by basically saying that, uh, it's in keeping with the theme, the art of imperfection, because fundamentally there's a lot of change and, and no one has certainty at the moment about where things are, where they're going, what they look like. We by no means are political experts. are two guys who have families who have doing some things and just putting our thoughts on, on. record to, but to, guess, to talk about what potentially may be going on for other people and to confirm that you're not probably the only person that are thinking that. Um, but like you just said, Lawrence, how do you use what's going on to improve? How do you, you either the effect or you actually riding that wave. And to my mind, it's about being proactive and, and taking control as opposed to being the effect of, of situations. So that's really how I wanted to finish up my.

That was perfect ending and I'm the same, similar to me. I'm trying to navigate my head of like trying to understand the world and what's happening and also just understanding human psychology of how this is happening and why it's happening and trying to understand how people are thinking because it's going to continue. And it's, it's interesting to see where it's going to go. And hence I think it's a topic for us to kind of explore. It's worth exploring because people that are out there are the people that you serve most likely and the people you see on a daily basis and uh understanding that as a psychological point of view rather than sides you get to understand different people's perspective which will then I believe have better communication because you can kind of see it from their perspective. So I hope this has been helpful viewpoint on what's going on in the world. We'd love to kind of hear from you. Until the next episode we'll talk to you soon. Take care.