Gamifying the Apocalypse: Climate Prep, Zombie Games, and Mutual Aid (w/Charlotte Binns)

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Share your interests and aspirations and Groucho's curators will hand assemble a real dinner club for you. You meet twice a month in order to establish some lasting friendships. Groucho takes care of all the logistics. The thing I like is that it was built by artists, not tech pros. People who wanted to recreate what they got from artist's residencies, curated intentionally and with time and space to connect. That's how the founders met their own best collaborators, friends, and even life partners. So check out mygroucho.club/teamhuman for 50% off the first month. That's mygroucho.club/teamhuman. Find the others. Hey, Charlotte. Hi. Welcome. It's fun to have you a neighbor, friend, and fellow adventurer in the new moment. For those of you who don't know her, which may be some of you, Charlotte Bins is a director of sustainability for the village of Irvington. Yes, the village of Irvington. Gosh, you just did stuff like a climate vulnerability assessment and adaptation plan for the village. And as a regular person, I would look at that and go, "Oh, she does this little job for this little village." And they made this little plan for this little thing for vulnerability assessment and adaptation plan. So you look at it from the outside and you're worried about climate change and the Amazon and the thing. And you go, "Oh, it's nice." But it's more than just nice. I think so. Yeah. So first, let's start with something micro. Like this thing. What was the climate vulnerability assessment and adaptation plan for Irvington? And then, why does that matter? Yeah, so we work with state programs that provide guide posts and templates and tools that help you understand how your region fits into bigger regions. And they really help municipalities to create programs like this. It is a process of assessing our assets and vulnerabilities first. So you figure out what are your natural resources that you need to protect that might be vulnerable. We have a really big forest, for example, which didn't used to be a fear of fire hazards. But now, with these droughts, we're having and the increasing temperatures, now suddenly that's a concern. Landslide didn't used to be a concern. Now, it is with the incredible precipitation amounts that we're having. So figuring out what our assets and vulnerabilities are also in terms of the people who are the vulnerable populations, which are the regions that are going to be cut off when it rains a lot that will not be able to exit because the roads are going to be too flooded. Every village has its own particulars. Like with what, what do you say that you take like a map and a bunch of people sit around a table and go, "Oh, look, this over here might be a problem for. " I mean, it's years and years in the works. So there's a hazard mitigation plan that the county oversaw, which has chapters for each municipality, and that goes into great detail that's mapping all kinds of things. We have an extensive flood map report that we put together. And our culverts and pipes are, you know, 100 years old. They're designed for much smaller amounts of rain than we have now. So yes, we're mapping these things out. We're doing workshops with the public. We're doing surveys so that they can tell us. Like it turns out the old people really feel like it's too hot on Main Street. There aren't enough trees. They cook. And it's a steep hill. You know, we talked to department heads who can tell you the nitty gritty of what happens when things go down. So there's a whole process to figuring it out. I think one of the most useful processes was an analysis of our village policies and plans for gaps. So understanding, you know, that we didn't have an evacuation plan in our emergency preparedness preparations in our emergency plan. So figuring out that certain policies could be enacted that would help us be ready. And mostly I will say I've been preparing for climate scenarios, extreme emergency events that are climate related. However, I have to say now it suddenly pivoting feels completely relevant to preparing for ice agents to come in democratic meltdown. And so there's a lot of other kinds of like what's happening in Minneapolis right now is really incredible. Right economic unrest. Yeah, mutual aid. We're looking after each other. We're bringing food to people who are afraid to leave their houses because they can't, you know, they're scared of going to school. You know, I mean, there's very real applications for the kind of prepared preparations we're doing for the kind of neighborhood networks we're building. When you and Irvington do this to the other, it's just tarry town do it to the other towns do it. Does it spread? Yeah, I mean, interestingly, there is a whole analysis of how there's a lot of federal preparations for emergencies. And then there's individuals, you know, they go get the doomsdayers, they go back as you say, but there's sort of a missing layer of education and outreach on the middle level, which is the community and municipal level, which is arguably the most important level actually. Because when you see what happens in emergencies and the fire department and police department have told me this directly, but it's also just a point of fact, they will not be at your house. They will be at the scene of the fire or whatever the event is securing the roads, putting out bigger issues, addressing bigger issues. And so it is always the neighbors looking after each other. And that's really what we have to build and fortify in preparation. Right. Yeah. And Sandy, I remember that it was this big hurricane that came. We, I guess it was sandy when we lost power and all that. It was us. We were digging our neighbor's houses out of mud, you know, because the FEMA people, I guess they were like, you know, it almost for an apartment lot, taking names of people to reimburse them for their broken water heaters. I remember that too. And Red Cross was nowhere to be found. And it was a bunch of kids on Twitter who were figuring out how to bring supply and medication and food to people on the 14th floor of these projects that elevators weren't working. And I mean, that was incredible. In New York, it was the old Occupy Networks from Occupy Wall Street, but reactivated. Yes. Yes. So I want to jump back to original question about why this is important more than just from my little village. I mean, from my point of view, I've tried to work on environmental solutions at scale and it can be incredibly disheartening. I feel like the local, the local regional focus is increasingly where we have control. And where we can actually see an impact with our work. And at the same time, we're building relationships that just make life better. I just wrote this whole post about, you know, the age of loneliness that we're living in. And the more we feel isolated and fearful, the more divided we are, the more manipulatable we are, the more we can be manipulated. And the less cohesion we have, the less resilience we have. So actually, this is so essential coming from the ground up that each community has these ties and connections so that we can't be so easily divided and manipulated and conquered. Right. And it makes life better. You know, we're just happier when you look at these blue zone communities that where everybody's living forever, they have incredible community cohesion. Right. And it's, I guess, some of it's just practical, right? Like so in a smart assessment, sort of a, or even a mutual aid assessment of your community, you figure out like who has stuff and who needs stuff, I guess, pretty basically. And so yes, we haven't even talked about that. So part of my adaptation work. So first I described the climate vulnerability assessment. Now the next stage is the adaptation work. And that involves, you know, securing our forest from, you know, whatever ecosystem collapse. There's so many reasons that our ecosystems are being clobbered. So stewarding that. Also doing neighborhood work where we go into each community and help them map out, you know, their communication channels. A lot of groups, neighborhoods already have a WhatsApp group or a Facebook group or a text chain. Some of them are completely dark. So we help them set that up. The ones that are already established, we make sure that every house in this, we first of all, we clarify what with the map, you know, we've mapped out like what neighborhoods are which so people know. And if anybody's getting left out, we make sure they're included in one of these communication hubs. That is the beginning of creating this kind of coherence and resilience. And you look at the tragedies that have happened historically, all kinds of climate events. And it's really definitely the neighborhoods that have some cohesion around a church group. or an environmental conservation committee where they're super active or a community gardens or there's so many kinds of hubs that give them a huge head start when it comes to coordinating in response to emergencies and knowing each other, already having a relationship and looking after each other. So we're very much about bolstering the block parties and bringing the police to the block parties, bringing the environmental people who can talk about what it means to put solar on the roof and all this other stuff. But the main point is that the neighbors are getting to build relationships with each other and map out who can't get down the stairs when the power goes out, which house might have kids at home alone, which have creating like a phone tree for communications when things happen and buddy systems. Some people are not gonna be on any of those digital platforms, who's looking after that old lady, making sure that someone is responsible for each house and then maybe even exchanging emergency contact information. For example, right, we were at this thing, you were presenting at this metacrisis event out in Bushwick and I remember you talking about this, you know about who's responsible for that old woman who can't get down the stairs, 'cause we know if there's a blackout, someone, and they know who it is, who's going over to her house. - Yeah, it's very grounding to feel like you are actually in the community of people who care about each other. - Right. - The antithesis of the story were always hearing about each man to her himself and doggy dog and all this. I mean, this is why my favorite book is this Red Carb-Bregman book, "Humankind, a Hopeful History," which really to me proves the point that we are not self-as-gene first and foremost, that we are first and foremost, collaborative people who will look after each other and who will rise to the occasion when the shit hits the fat. - Right, then we will, and so then what you're doing is just really the preconditions so that when we are called to rise, we have the ability to rise. - Exactly. - Even simple as when you were saying, the part that it got to me that just, I don't know why it hit me, where you're just like, who's got a chainsaw? - Yeah. - You know, "Quix Europe" is kind of in the country. - Yeah, we're gonna need to take down some, some felled trees. - Right, but knowing in advance, it was like, it was so simple. It was like, who has a kind of made me think of my drill thing. It's like, who's got a chainsaw? - And we need a generator. - Who's got a generator? - That's a big one. - Right, for people to charge theirself, or increasing the, yeah, right. But also like, dehumidifiers and air purifiers, I mean, you know, the number of stories of people sitting around, like 10 families sitting around one air purifier because of, you know, smoke from fires. You know, from like, you know, they were smoked from Canada last time. That just affected all of us. - Right. - Suddenly, these are premium on air purifiers or dehumidifiers when your house is flooded, you know. These things become valuable. - Right. And I guess on some level, you can just do it in your community and not worry if other, because there's up to other communities to do it in theirs. But how do you see the kind of, the sort of lateral modeling, the equivalent of scale? How does that happen in this sort of more sideways organization? - Yeah. - Replicability, I mean, sharing the knowledge, you know. I mean, there's a lot of-- - And there's networks of that. - There are, yeah, increasingly. I was just reading about this place in Kingston, the GoodWorks Institute, I think it's called, and that they bring together leaders from different communities to share their resources and do exactly that. - What tech take it the way, it can also give it back. Think about it. We've handed our social lives over to platforms designed to keep us clicking, not connecting. Turns human relationships into follower accounts and reaction metrics. Our new favorite sponsor, Groucho, is a corrective. Founded by artists who wanna flip the script. Instead of atomizing us like a social network, they connect people in real life. Human curators place you in a local club with people who complement your interests and your journey. Share evenings out with your club twice a month until real connections take hold. Then, the people at Groucho place you into a new hand-assembled club for the social fabric to grow. Groucho wasn't built by tech bros, but artists who wanted to recreate the serendipity of their own art residencies, where they found lifelong collaborators, friends, even life partners. So come on, team human. Let's find the others. Go to mygroucho.club/teamhuman for 50% off the first month. The obstacle, which is also the opportunity and any of this stuff. Like when you go local and you're gonna, okay, so I meet your neighbors, who's got this, who's got that, who's gonna help, who's gonna take care of that. It kind of requires an ability that seems to be lacking in a lot of us today, which is to be able to actually meet and talk to your neighbor person. That it's almost like, what do we do? We need to do like psychotherapy first before we can-- People have stopped socializing. It's really sad. I mean, from more and more isolation screens, the pandemic, we're just getting, it's this codified isolation at this point. And it really takes a bit of courage to step out of your comfort zone. I mean, I know people who do it, and myself included, we're always the ones inviting people over for dinner and it doesn't necessarily feel like, it's reciprocated that much because a lot of people just aren't doing that. I think, and that what's this quote, that to have a friend, you need to be one, right? Like someone's got to start bridging the divide and helping make people feel comfortable and safe and have some fun together. But it's a different way of moving through the world, different way of looking at one's town, particularly in the suburbs. I mean, I looked at the suburbs as sort of these bedroom communities and anything social. That'll happen in the city. And then I go in and with all these straits or whatever I call them. These people in their little houses that you almost don't want to interact because they're neighbors. You're going to screw up their lawn. Or you have the wrong car in the garage or in front of the house. It's like to break down those walls or maybe it's mutual need that does it. Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways, right? As a quintessential community organizer, I'm always looking for pathways. And I have organized the EV club that gets a certain group of people together who'd love to talk about their cars and parade around on Earth Day with their cars and paint them and stuff. And then we have the community gardens group who are all about gardening and sharing their produce tips and whatever. And you have the conservation groups which are the people who come and volunteer at events to make sure that waste is diverted and sorted properly. And we all have, and there's green drinks. And there's obviously church groups and whatever. So many affinity groups, which helps. It's not just the content, it's the form. Yeah, there's so many pathways. It's the fact that you've gone out in a vine cutting squad that now you know each other and you've created some community fabric. And for me, I mean, I have a tight group of people who are ecosystem stewards. You know, yes, we spend a lot of weekends in the woods cutting down invasives and planting native trees and figuring out grants and figuring out how we can make sure to take care of our dying ecosystems. Yeah. And dance is another one for me, big one. That's how I found a lot of my closest friends, ecstatic dance groups. And diverse groups, community groups, age wise, and every other way are the ones that are the most resilient. I mean, it's like a diverse forest as opposed to a monocrop, right? Like take on different pests or onslaughts or whatever it is. And you have different, you know, you'll have an engineer in there and you'll have a nurse in there and you'll have different skill sets that make the cohesive group more robust. Right. And then you can, I mean, and I don't think it's too grandiose to say, well, if we make our social lives more diverse and inclusive, then the ecosystem will become more diverse. I mean, it's like everything, everything becomes everything at that point. Appreciation for diversity. And the other major obvious avenue I should mention is political, right? I mean, joining a political campaign is a great way to meet forward leaning people who are, you know, making things happen. And the camaraderie and hilarity of canvassing and putting up flyers. Or like what I did in Brooklyn is participatory budgeting, which to me is an awesome exercise in democracy where in this case of Brooklyn, it was a city council member put aside a million dollars of discretionary funds and the community gets to say how the money gets spent. This is a very basic idea that can be applied in any municipality. And people really come out for it. And then they find out that like, I didn't know that public school didn't have working bathrooms, you know, oh my god, whatever it might be. And then the whole community organizes around winning these campaigns through PB and through that, they learn about, you know, what does it mean to work with the department of parks and education and, you know, what are the realities of executing on this kind of thing? And in the end, you can't help but to be more sympathetic towards the politicians who are, you know, sweating over this stuff all the time. It's so easy to be critical of the, you know, especially in these small municipalities are beloved trustees and mayor who are spending half of 20 hours a week for basically for free doing all this hard labor. And everyone just loves to criticize them. But like get involved and you'll see what it means to execute on these things and to take responsibility for these things and you will absolutely find a deep community that way. Right. It's like we don't necessarily need to reinvent the citizens' assemblies, movement or something in order to. No, right. These mechanisms are there. You're preparing for what's coming work. You talk about three pathways, right, through the converging crises. Basically, we, what, we ignore it. And it's clobbered. Well, we continue as business as usual, kind of, you know, there's a lot of this still going on out there. Uh-uh. Yeah, right and probably I'll die. It'll be fine. Right. The second one is this panic one, right? Well the second one is No, a planetary level, you know, which is the scaled solution which which you know I know that's where most people go like oh, you're cute little town like we need to think that scale right but at the same time You know, you can spend your whole life working on something that Trump just completely undermined and throw on all the funding for and and shut down Right, you know the atmospheric institute and Boulder, you know, whatever might be like a single pointed scaled solution It's gonna be brittle by nature. Yeah, and so C Option C is really community coherence focused. It's where you can have a tangible impact and You can create these relationships that are also good for your own internal resilience Right, I know that you also talk about about gratitude Which is an interesting one, you know, especially in hard times, but how how gratitude brings you know resilience and responsibility and and rebellion Yeah, it's a sort of I consider it an act of rebellion to feel grateful, right? Because Everything tells us how can you I mean, that's like you should feel guilty not grateful, right? How dare you feel grateful? You're so privileged and entitled or whatever. No, that's not the case at all in my opinion Gratitude is recognizing how much we have already that we don't need so much more and and that is some that's subservient by itself, right? So we're not on this need cycle. Oh, it's meeting always meeting. No, I am content as I am That's taking back agency again And that gives us power which gives us the ability to help look after other people Right, and I guess I mean, but can you do it under any circumstance or can we only do it? We accept that we're privileged enough To be okay in this moment I mean, we are most definitely still in the time of abundance. I don't know how much longer that's going to last but but to be Not savoring and feeling grateful for what we have now is just I mean What I wrote in that piece is I imagine future Charlotte reaching back to present-day Charlotte and shaking me you know like wake up Wake up look at what you have right now cherish every moment spread the love You know, it's like you know like Emily and our town going back of you on one day You just tell my mother how much I love it But there is that you know, but there is and and to me it just gives me so much more capacity That's the important thing right like it gives it makes me a better community leader. I know that's the hard part That's our but maybe it's my upbringing, but it's like That's a hard part to to grok, but I know it's true if I'm breathing if I've meditated if I've done yoga I am so much more available to my students or to my work or to anything that's coming then I feel like I should be in a state of worry and and that that's that's that's if that's compassion you can be empathetic to people who are feeling Overwhelmed and worried, but I don't think that perpetuating it is necessarily helpful Right A guilt is another way to give away our power guilt and shame Right, we got to be done with that Right except the truly shameless are despicable too. Yeah, right well When I'm writing I'm thinking about the heroic martyrs who take on too much responsibility. I'm not writing this for Trump Right This is not a like get out of prison right right? This is just the people who are no this is for people who are feeling beaten down By taking on the whole weight of the world and our you know martyrs I feel like they're dying on the cross their catatonic the paralyzed they're overwhelmed and I'm trying articulate ways to regain agency and power so that we can actually Rise up to the occasion for the bigger battles to come Yeah, it's funny at it was a delusion and illusion a mistake uh missed that that I was making and if people listen to old episodes of team human everyone to my law have like an artist on This is like in yeah 2015-26 and have someone on and I would say gosh, you know you just are hanging out playing guitar Connecting I feel so guilty You know just doing my art just doing my thing and they would always be like oh man you gotta do your art You gotta do your thing that's part of the Yeah, and the more you do it the more When if you do it really with heart and so it ends up being the service, you know it it yes 100% I'm gonna say that even though I've been a total doomsday or catastrophizing about everything for a long time climate stuff Primarily, but now lots more um I am also at the same time happier than I've ever been in my life more resourced and and I say unequivocally That that makes me able to give back more Because I and my kids are happier like Everyone in my community around me can see it and feel it that I have more joy to give Right what's the what's the rule against? Experiencing joy even in hard times That is a power trip that's to keep you down You know, I mean this is what I'm saying we need to do away with Right and the past of that I guess is what mortgous community more just being with people looking at people's eyes having dances Definitely much more deep connection with other humans Getting off packaged food. I don't know Yes, I'm definitely a total snob about what I put in my body Yeah, protect your gut bio Yes, all those things I go for a walk every day and out in nature if I possibly can you know, yeah And some of it so simple though Just makes me feel calm I'm not a meditator. I tried. I can't just sit still and two ADHD And so fine, so I need to dance and walk okay I think it's stop beating myself up for being a terrible meditator You know like, come on What does work? I'm also very pragmatic right? I'm fine. Yeah I know it's so tricky. It's so tricky, but then it's so easy. So I guess part of what I part of the job I think if we're Spokespeople for this approach is to Encourage people to be okay with making small differences That is real that you can like sit at home watch MS now whatever it is and see all these horrible things for three hours And no more about the horrible things through the latest Epstein tape or whatever Thing or you could go next door and see if that old person needs anything or Go into your town and there's there's People without shoes, you know, there's yeah, I mean the simple thing like what we're doing Is I'm working with the church and a retired engineer who's gonna help me build a free food pantry just because it's clear that the food and secure issue is becoming is growing and This is a discrete way for people to come and take food from pantry that isn't you know so public and doesn't involve a giant operational administrative hurdle and so yeah like what a cool project to you know, Rally a few people around and and this is the thing You find the different strategies that are gonna bring different people out, you know, whether it's like Emergency preparedness, you know some people come out for that some people come out for the climate talks some people come out for the food pantry Some people come out for the zombie games, you know game of buying things is the best, you know So zombie game work such as zombie game for the environment? You know, it's part of my climate adaptation because you know those these things one thing bleeds into the other here You know, right? I'm doing adaptation work is preparing emergency preparing for climate catastrophes and other catastrophes And so yes, we are I've had several Homosexuality and Red Cross come and give lectures on preparedness measures and We have the zombie game where people Basically, they had to play for a month in their own neighborhood map out all the things I was saying earlier Like get everybody's contact information figure out your plans etc And they got points for doing these various tasks and then it's in the theoretically for zombie apocalypse Yeah, yeah, but obviously for real Yeah, and then at the end we all meet up at this church for a giant zombie game and the teenagers get community service hours for volunteering And they dress up as zombies and they chase everyone around and teams do things like in neighborhood teams, right? You have to figure out how to work with your neighbors To like assemble the go-bag from scattered across the room before the zombies get you, you know, that's cool So yeah, right so it was it you used zombie apocalypse as a kind of a Get way to gamify Yes, and that brought a completely different demographic out, right? So like There's so many ways that you can connect with people and you'll get different people for different strategies You know, and there's fantastic like a treasure hunt Apps that you can use that you know gamify everything, you know Like go to these community events and find the pollinator garden and take a picture of it and you know little ways to Engage, you know sneak in some spinach Yeah, so the fun thing about the way you talk about things is a lot of times I have guests who either They do the very practical thing in the world and then they can't think about the ideas or they're just way up in ideas based And it's like great and they've read all this philosophers and stuff, but it's like Are you doing anything and it's like oh, I guess people maybe read it and then they interpret it and then they do something You've got this kind of the two pieces are integrated in a way where each of your eat it's like yeah You're doing ecstatic dance, but not I mean maybe yes just to do ecstatic dance, but it's so integrated with You know the the interpersonal skill development totally and in fact I'm just making a new bridge out of that which I'm so excited about I'm relaunching my local ecstatic dance. This one is for women It's a little bit longer and it's gonna start with the listening circle, which to me is another major focal point for community coherence and emergency planning. So it turns out that if you develop authentic listening skills, which is to say primarily that you sit and listen to somebody without giving advice, without interjecting, you really and you can mirror back a bit of what they're saying at the end, but it's a particular skill set that not enough people have and that is very impactful when you allow people to properly share in this way. People can go very deep very quickly. And if you practice this after an emergency, after an event, after some kind of catastrophe, you lessen the chances of them having PTSD significantly. Just that moment when they're most frazzled, if they don't feel so isolated, if they don't feel so out of control, you really, really can have a huge impact for a much longer period of time in their life. But this is the kind of thing I want everybody to learn these skills and I want to do it by way of these listening circles, which again, has this added benefit of creating relationships that make life better where we get to know each other more deeply. So I'm going to do that in this dance thing. And to me, it's kind of a benevolent loop, right? Like if you're working on sustainability and resilience, you're getting people out to whether it's a listening circle or ecosystem stewardship, you're building the relationships that then create more resilience because the more close knit the community is, the better they will fare. Right. It's funny, you know, before the, or the night of the elections, the last elections, I was supposed to be leading something at the CX, this nightclub in town, or I decided to structure it like a Quaker town meeting just to see what would happen. And people just shared what they were feeling, no judgment, no nothing, what their hopes, what their concerns. And I got emails for weeks later saying, you know, that night really helped me be more resilient for all the stuff that's happened over these months. Let them. So it's a way of kind of, just you anchor it a little differently in a feed on the ground. I'm embedded in a community way. Giving people a chance to feel seen and heard, you know, and I mean, listening circles really have been very successful and are most famous for when there's been any kind of racial, disparity issue, misunderstand, or lack of understanding tension. And then it really is incredibly effective for people to just speak their piece and for other people to understand them suddenly in a new light in a new way that it's hard to do with our normal banter. Right. And you create this space for that. And actually my last piece I was writing about intentional communities and how they so often fail. And a very large part of that is not having enough protocol around communication and conflict repair. And so this kind of strategy or technology is fundamental. Right. That's interesting. You did kind of a survey of a whole lot of the intentional communities because what is only like 10% of them succeed? Yeah. Or even less. Yeah. You know, when you would think, but I guess quite because people don't get a lot of that percentage is just communities that never managed to buy the land or get the money together. So like the, you know, bit of a caveat to that crazy statistic. Right. And so we're up and running. It's not quite so terrible. Well, that's something. But you do have really solid examples of communities that like Earth Haven, which I visited in Nashville, which you know was a sort of 1980s crowd that got a certain amount of momentum with their initial ethics and ideology and then got stuck with this dysfunction where everybody was annoyed with each other all the time. And then a new flood of younger people came in and brought in different communication protocols and it changed everything. It just like the, it had another evolutionary bump and the community is much more successful as a result. So really impactful. I mean, it can happen, although I mean some of the, I don't want to mention names because I don't want to curse any of them, but some of the really long standing intentional communities are under threat now. Yeah. And it seems like it's almost a generational thing like the original generation of hippies or 70 people, 70s people, whatever. So an important part of it is making sure that there's enough influx of new people and young people and generational mix. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's hard to do if you've become too much like a cult, you know, or too solid, cystic, then young people don't want to. Right. And that's always the tension if you go to what can be called the lifeboat community concept, which is Daniel Christian Wall wrote that because he used to live at Fintern, which is in Scotland, which is one of those quintessential old communities. And now he doesn't anymore. I keep reading about people who lived in these communities and then no longer do. And it's like, why? What's going on there? And I think there's a little bit of this being this sort of counter culture group. It's this, you know, a little bit of a bubble in terms of who's there. I mean, to my point earlier about the diversity being really important in your community and having, you know, people you wouldn't necessarily create an intentional community with, but who bring different things to bear and together you create more resilience. So this is my focus now. I mean, I debate this with my friend all the time, you know, should we go join a community, create a community or, you know, figure out how to make it work in our own community. And, you know, that's where the real work is. Most of us live in regular communities, right? Like how do we bring the logic there? Right. And there's two ways to leverage privilege, you know. One is to use it to get out, you know, even in the muskie and way. You know, to get to Mars or upload your consciousness. Yeah. You know, in this kind of in this kind of an escapism as well. Right. Right. I mean, and I guess I said, if things were really, really, really bad, and this is the way to, you know, keep my child alive, I probably would resort to almost anything, you know, and go try to use whatever I have. Get to Iceland or New Zealand or whatever, you know, or Greenland or whatever the next America is going to be, right? But I'm thinking about, you know, the 1960s when when Timothy Leary, you know, came up with the slogan, find the others, you know, which is what I use for team human. What he meant at the time was kind of that. Like minded people. Find the other like minded people and create your millbrook, your community of cool, weird, whatever. And now I really take it to me in the ops, find the others is find the others. You know, right. The not you others. The not you others, right? Right. And it told you meaning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but it sets the thing. Otherwise, you don't really have community. That's right. I mean, in like family, you know, I mean, every family's got its dysfunction and there's always a person who sucks all the energy out of the room and there's the alcohol like and whatever it is, right? Like that is part of humanity. Yeah. And if we're not addressing that and recognizing that, then we're maybe just escaping. Right. And that's where even and I love them and I thank them for doing it. But even the environmentalists and the activists who are working at scale or exclusively at scale, some of them are doing that to avoid the nitty gritty local thing. I mean, I feel like 1% of us could be up doing that scaled environmental, build the website and the other 99% of us really are serving better just doing the thing. It just feels real to me, you know, I mean, this up there in the sky stuff can feel like pie in this guy sometimes and it feels like, you know, it has no legs and it can just get knocked over. And you know, like this is in the ground, you know, this is real. Yeah. Yeah, it's a ground. I mean, it's what I always talk about. It's a ground. It's not the figure. It's not the image on it. It might never get on TV. You might never get on TV or another podcast. Right. Just yours. Right. Right. Well, this is team humans. I wear different. But right, it's like it doesn't, I mean, but that's the whole point. I mean, and I say this in the in the most complimentary of ways, if they forget who you are when this is over, but remember, oh, I can do something on my commute. That's the point. You know, it's like, it really is. Totally. A hundred percent. Yeah, go talk to your neighbors. Go talk to your neighbors right now. Really? Why not? That's why I was saying it. But I don't know how monolocks come up with an excuse. Go to your neighbor and say you've got a borrow and you're making a cake. You got a borrow and egg. Yeah. Even if you've got an egg, just go and say, can I borrow an egg? But that's why these programs help. Like a lot of people are just nervous and uncomfortable, right? Like the first thing about creating community is having your rules about why you're getting together and what people can expect. And so, okay, so we're all going to meet on this block to talk about emergency planning. Right. And we're setting an expectation here. So people don't have to be worried about social discomfort or whatever. Like this is what we're going to do. We're going to make this easy for everyone to gather. Right. Especially in the able for some food in. Right. In the age when people have so many problems with consent, that's kind of what it is because it's not just consent. You know, may I touch you there? It's the consent of, what are we doing here? Are we friends? Are we working on a thing? Are you going to ask me something? Right. Exactly. What are the expectations here? Right. So you create a container. And it's got utility and that helps people feel like, okay, I can justify this time because everyone's so busy all the time. Right. There's something done or it's good for my children. Right. We're going to dig a hole. You know? Whatever. Yeah. That is good. It's like just finding excuses to do the work. You know? It's just that the work, I don't mean that the problem's not big, but it's like, but that the work for so many of us can start at least so small. You know? It's, it's, it's, but then things come, right? Yeah. The magic is like, what emerges from that? Like, I didn't know that this person was an engineer and he's retiring in six months and he's trying to figure out what he's going to do next. Well, God, if I got some opportunities for you. Right. Let me put you to work. Cool. Cool stuff. And for me, it's always figuring out like what are people's passions? How do they feel like they would be most, you know, invigorated and. and productive, or how do they feel like, what would make them feel like they're contributing significantly, and then tapping that. Okay, I don't have anything for you right now, but then a year later something comes up, like, oh, that person, they'd be perfect for this. And then to your point earlier, then they feel so special and valuable and purposeful. So it's finding those synergies. I interview everyone to understand what they're passionate about and what their background is, and what they might like to see and do, and then wait for synergy. And then it's an opportunity to catalyze them. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a core part of community organizing is some of it's just a waiting game. It's doing your research, lining things up, and then when there's a new superintendent in the school, great, all those green things we wanted to do in the school, hit the ground running. Right. You know, grab a hold of that opportunity. We're ready with our project 2027s. Yeah. But many of them, many little ones, are actually a big book. Yeah. But you see, it's that in some ways, it's the smallest, beautiful. But then even that just becomes another meme. You know, it's just the lived experience of being the change is so available to people. Yeah. I think it's also just modeling it, right? For our kids and for our other friends in the community, and being an example of a more realized human being. Because what is it we're going for with all of this? I mean, we can be running around like headless chickens with some big scale solution and just be a hot mess inside. You know, and I don't know how much of an example that really is setting. Right. You know, we want to create a new paradigm. We want to create a new model. And that model has to have healthier communication and more evolved humans who understand what it means to have their own agency, power, joy, connection. Right. This is the world we want to create, right? What comes next, not more of the same? Right. I mean, even just breathing in front of your child. It's a great example. Right. Taking a moment in it. And I'm not necessarily the best example of this. I'm respirating. When you're feeling completely triggered and stressed, like, okay, I have a choice here. React normal way or take a minute. Take a minute. Yeah. Yeah. I'll breathe with you anytime. Charlotte bins your substack, I guess, is the main way to see those last, those three articles. What was that called? No, that was all on LinkedIn. That was all on LinkedIn. Yeah. Come to the e-bins for more of these pieces. And to get inspired, I would say, and to inspire, to conspire with the others where you live. That nothing is too little to get really big inside. All right. Support Team Human if you can too. Go to teamhuman.fm and click on support. Team Human is produced by Joshua Chapdlin. Edited by Luke Robert Mason. I am Douglas Rushkopf. And you've been on Team Human. Our last best hope for peeps. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]