https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=JHpcEFweejA
Welcome everyone to another voices with Reveki. I want to introduce you to somebody who is becoming increasingly important to me and my work and my community. And his name is Ryan Barton. And so welcome, Ryan. And why don’t you begin by introducing yourself and telling a little bit about your background and how you came to my work and then we’ll just take it from there. Yeah, thank you, John. It’s a joy to be here with you and have this conversation. So I’m an entrepreneur fundamentally, but I am really drawn to the intersection between the way of wisdom and work and business. So I lead a tech services firm that I founded when I was 20. And all throughout that time, I would say that I founded the company for two reasons. One was to really serve people well through work. And I saw early the potential of work to create resources and environments that could help people and draw giftings out. And the other, quite frankly, was to solve inner peace. I thought if I could be successful enough, and I get enough accolades and wealth and all of these things, and I could actually be worthy of belonging and I could and that that side didn’t work out so well. And so the intersection that I’m drawn to, or as you know, Frederick Beekner would say, where my deep gladness in the world’s deep hunger meet, is this intersection between the way of wisdom and the working world. And I seek to lead business from the deepest best philosophy that I can making decisions of care and discipline and building environments that help people to grow in wisdom. And that I believe that work can actually afford an awakening and call people into transformation. And then I also look the other way at the intersection and say, how can I bring organizational scaling and expertise and the sort of practical guidance of wisdom into excuse me, of business into the way of wisdom and how into scaling organizations there? Right, right. Well, we’re going to get into both of those directions in depth. But first, I maybe you could talk a little bit about because you reached out to me and how you came upon my work and and then why you felt appropriate to reach out to me. Yeah. And John, it would be remiss if I just carried on without first expressing such a well of gratitude that is within me for you and for your work, for your personal example, for the voice of the sage that you have become for me and for so many. And just for your work, it’s been life giving and transformational for me. And it’s been really, really wonderful. I would say that I had an upbringing that had some real resonance with stories that you shared of your upbringing in a fundamentalist home with a lot of weight around the way that I related to belief systems and created a very tortured relationship with the truth, you might say. And that carried through me. And marrying a good woman started to open that up and experience love and transform. And then and then I had a real moment where the inner journey beckoned. I believe you have a real good quote behind you. The only journey is the one within. And that really that really beckoned for me when I heard a podcast years ago from a therapist who started to describe how our neurology works and then really get into attachment theory. And when he described anxious and building attachment, I was driving. And I remember the moment vividly. And I was like, I had never before had someone articulate what it felt like to be me on a daily basis. I had never. And at that moment, I just sort of separation happened where I saw that there wasn’t just Ryan Barton with all these flaws that were native to me. But there was me and there was cognition. There was emotional patterning for my interpretation of my environment. And then there was actually a path that was beckoning that could change that. And that awareness, my cognition really started to change my life dramatically. And I was able to get into a really wonderful therapy that was attachment therapy and a narrative informed trauma care that really has you engage in the stories of your upbringing. And and I realized through this and the freedom that I was getting that I was starting to live in a new mode. Right. I was living as a body instead of someone inhabiting a body. Wow. Wow. Yeah, it was powerful, powerful. And as and I was also creating a fundamentally new relationship with the truth. And I was beginning to realize how rationality and analysis with a community of whole people and a of caring people, I should say, and a deep emotional connection to the truth created this embodied reason that was giving me a new way in the world and a new way of identifying truth. Wow. And so into that place, I said, OK, I need more of both of these. I need more of living as a body and more of how to live in the world with this new embodied reason with the truth. And I don’t know how to get there. And I remember standing in the kitchen talking to my wife and I said, I’m frustrated because I can see the way I need to do this. I can see the path beckoning. And what I want to do is actually learn. And I said to her, I need to become much more trained in psychology and neuroscience and history and anthropology and philosophy. I missed a couple. I missed linguistics and information processing. And I said, and I need to build this path of living practically in this sort of bottom up way with the truth. And then I need to come back to this intersection of this Christian faith that I inherited and figure out how to intersect and how to actually live and then help people with this. And I was discouraged because I said, this is going to take me 30 years and I’m not smart. And I can’t this is not a project that can do on my own. And into that place of longing and somewhat despair drops awakening from the meaning crisis and voices with her vacay and your dialogue to Jonathan Pagio and the introduction to meditation and circling in the logos and this community. And I mean, talk about an unbelievable gift in that place. Wow. And I can like the fire in you and the life in you is so beautiful. So thank you. So, first of all, thank you for sharing that. And I’m deeply appreciative of the fact that my work was transformative for you and came out of Kairos, it sounds like in your life. Yes. And then I take it that you through the series also started to realize that this situation was not unique to you. But there’s many people are facing sort of a shared Kairos around this. And so did this start to. Like inform how you try to think about your your work and you know, because you get this whole way of opening up and that’s how you describe it. Right. This opening up in this new way and you’re sharing that with others and others. Other people need to see that way, if I can get some pretentious. But but that’s I think it’s fair enough in this in this dialogue. Yeah. And so did that sort of draw you into trying to think like, how can I bridge between these two large domains of my life? Very much. And I think, you know, if we rewind for a moment, I’ve been searching for decades of how to do business well, like how that business and money can be tools that afford us a good life. And I’ve gotten fairly deep into the business community, looking for the best that the business world had to offer and thinking with that. And I immediately as I encountered your work and began to see, you know, you provide such a grammar and tools as well as I think of framing historical and philosophical framing that’s provided me access to be able to read philosophers directly. I mean, you’ve completely blown up my reading list, right? Like, it’s very challenging. My bookshelves are crammed with books that I need to read. And but it is it’s provided a lens with the world. And I think a real invitation to a clear thinking, to a discipline of embodied reason that’s frankly breathed life into philosophy. You know, I used to find trying to read Plato is very sort of dry. And now it’s this embodied rich experience where I feel like I’m dialoguing with a virtue as I do it in a very embodied way. And so that those tools and that foundation then provided what feels like the missing pieces for me and what I’ve been seeking, which is a right philosophy of work and business that actually is bridging that gap to say, how can we look at our work in an appropriate and healthy way and how can we build business and systems up to structures of capitalism that’s actually focused on the true, the good and the beautiful? And then, of course, it’s also provided a lens as I looked at the challenges of the young people coming into the workplace, the people that we interact with, our clients, especially in these last couple of years since Covid, where you can just see the meaning crisis, you can see and feel the fray in people’s lives. And it’s tragic. And as a leader, there’s only so much you can do. And I’m like, to really help people, I’ve got to find something else that can help scale that solves this. Right. That’s very powerful. So so like, take your time with it. Like, what is your thinking about that two way bridge you’re trying to build? Like, please take care and take time and articulate it. Let’s I’m really I want to I want to get the fullness of of what what you’re doing as you try to build this two way bridge. Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, I think that the sort of easier side first is the how do we bring the business procedural skills to those who are engaged in solving the meaning crisis? Right. That’s that’s one of the main reasons I reached out to you. Do you need resources? Do you need people to help you scaled? What like what’s starting up around you? I’ve been so intrigued by because how can we use you know, there’s there’s proven paths of how to scale organizations. That’s a bit of a science at this point. Those are very, very clear skills. How do we bring that and what can I offer in that? I mean, this is just look, I have my own background and perspective and skills and whatever I can do to further that I want to do. And I want to make sure these two domains are talking and very drawn to that intersection. Right. Right. And so what about the other direction? Yes, it seems that that might be more problematic, especially given sort of the polarized attitude towards capitalism. Yes, right now. And right. And right. The it’s it’s predominance, but also the fact that in many ways it’s at least culturally precarious. I don’t mean it’s going to collapse economically, but as seen as a fundamental good, that’s now in serious question. So it’s really, really it’s yeah, it’s it’s at the sort of almost pivot point, it feels like. So what does that? Thank you. What does the other arrow look like? Yeah, it does. And I think that, you know, work and our structures around work can be powerful contributors to the solution to both the meaning crisis and the crisis. Yet as they’re currently configured in our society, the majority of that is contributing to both. And I think that’s very clear. And it’s been a real grief to me to see how many people spend their lives working in ways that are that are harmful to themselves and harmful to the world around. And it generates resources, but that it’s actually degrading them. It’s a it’s a real grief. And I think it’s also something that any business leader will resonate with that some of the most meaningful parts of work is the times where you get to mentor someone, where you get to do something really good or you get to help a client. And you know, you’ve done something that really matters. So there’s this tremendous latent power, but it’s very it’s very complicated. It’s very tricky to parse this out and actually say, how do we get this relate these relationships right? And it wasn’t until some of the grammar and the tools that you provided that I got something that at least for me, it works. And I’m really interested in what you think of this. OK, please. So I think of this in terms of a hierarchy, just in terms of some terms definition first. So, you know, at the bottom, if we think of work and what work is, which we’ll get to and careers, which is essentially work over time, optimized for certain outcome that generates money, which is a resource that we need it, that we have a relationship with and that that’s done within businesses, which are these transgenerational organizations, right? This collection of processes and historical knowledge and ways of essentially harnessing distributed cognition for a specific purpose and mission. And that all of that together works within an economic system, within the bounds of law for capitalism, that it sort of flows up and down or individual choices impact capitalism and the capitalist structure impacts are the choices that we have and the way that we think about them. Right. Right. Right. Fair enough. Yeah, that’s that’s beautiful. You know, you you have pointed out in the research on video games how there are sort of three orders to video games, right? The narrative, the normological and what we call the norm of the need to grow and transcend oneself and still. And it struck me when you shared that that that’s a really helpful framework for business, because I think up and down all of those orders from our daily work up to capitalism, there is a narrative, there’s a story that we believe about them, about their importance, about the role, about the history and where they come from. There’s also a normological order. There are ways that you get ahead. There are policies and procedures and jobs and and ways that the systems work. And then there’s ability for us to actually grow, to grow, whether that’s directly in our career, grow in our skills or grow for real transformation. And my hope and goal is that if we can connect all three of those to reality as closely as possible, so that the narrative of work and business and capitalism is connected to what is actually true and that our normological structures within business are connected to something that is based on actual reality. And you see the antithesis of this in a mid-market company where people have to play politics to get ahead and nobody actually speaks the truth and everybody has to be a yes man. And it’s like, oh, this is an alternate reality where people are being warped and shaped in who they are in order to fit something that’s not real and then that we can actually provide environments that afford for genuine transformation and growth. What do you think of that that structure? I think that’s I think that’s really good. Does that structure help to clarify the problem that you alluded to and that you’re now mentioning in a particular case, which is why is it not like this? And you’re describing sort of the best it could be. Yes. And you’ve indicated it’s often far from the best. Yes. I like this formulation that you provided. Does it help to make clear the nature of why we are all use your language? So we are why in general, the business world is disconnected from reality. Yes. Yes. Great. Great question. I think so. And I think we have to pause and come at this from a different angle. So. The. The eye versus the eye, thou can be helpful here, which is that within business, we are generating money, which we have a relationship from the having mode to this that there are mechanisms and tools so that we generate resources from an eye at perspective. Right. But within this, we also have people that we must maintain an eye that. Right. I mean, let’s let’s agree with Kant that people must never be the means alone. The ends as well as the means. Right. And and that we must always have an eye that with people. It is morally wrong to have an eye it with people. Fair. Yes. Fair enough. Totally. And and so in capitalism, in business, what I think happens is that we confuse these and that within these structures, we end up with an eye it towards the whole thing. Think of the term human resources. Right. Like the people are resources for the business. And the highest success definition that we have is profit and the manufacturer of capital, manufacture goods and services that generate capital. And so then we end up with an eye it towards the whole structure instead of parsing the eye, thou and the eye it within it. OK, OK, OK. And so I believe that we need to be very, very clear that within our our within everything we do within business and capitalism, that all of this must be in service to the good, that we have an eye, thou to being itself, if we could say, and an eye, thou to people and to nature. And that all of our activities and everything we do within those three orders must be something that’s within service to that and that we very, very carefully maintain a subsidiarity relationship, a relationship of being subsidiary to virtue, to the good from each of these orders and to reality and to the eye, thou. This is a powerful vision. I guess what I would ask now, Ryan, is, I mean, if you like, I work with other people like Tom Morgan and Tim Bishop are also trying to do this. And so I believe in, you know, the convergent plausibility of what you’re proposing. Now, these different people. But I guess what I keep asking all of them, and I’ll ask you, is it sounds like that’s the kind of argument like you couldn’t convince somebody of that by going in and making sort of a business economic argument to them. That if you go in on that frame, yes, like what? Yes. So you first have to move them to a frame other than that, in which this argument can land for them. Right. And so what is it that what is it we can do to make that initial move of fundamental framing? Yes. That makes sense. Yes. You. Yes. So, you know, I’m I’ve sort of first been concerned with, do we get this view right? Right. Can we get this this precision right? And then how do we communicate with that? And I think that you’re right that you can’t make an economic appeal for this. And that, to me, is the heart of the argument, which is that when we make an economic appeal, we are showing what is actually at the top of the hierarchy of value. That’s right. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve read, John, that are about doing business well, conscious capitalism, you know, the B court movement, the business for social responsibility, book after book. And invariably, they say all these wonderful things about love, about care, about doing the right thing, about higher purpose. And the catch is always and it’s the best way to build long term shareholder value. And I want to throw the book down in frustration every time they do that. You are proving that you are keeping mammon at the top of your hierarchy of value. And the whole point of this is that money and business are only effective when they are not at the top of the hierarchy of value, when they are in service to something that’s higher. Right. And so that that appeal is the tell. And that is the thing that I think that we have to go after. And I think that the way that we make that appeal is through actually appealing to the way that people are in life overall. I think that there’s a great segregation of the way that we live and work and life. Think of the common phrase work life balance. Like, what are they on a seesaw? You have your work in your life. Like, no, this is work life relationship. Work is a dynamic part of who you are and how you interact with the world. And I love to appeal to people to their funeral. What do you want spoken about at your funeral? Do you really want your quarterly earnings and the rapacious business tactics that you used spoken about at your funeral? And I find that most people actually resonate with desiring to do good in the world, to transform and to be the best of themselves. And they want their work to be meaningful. They just don’t necessarily see how to do that. And the norm within business is just the tyranny of the procedural. What works? How does it work for making money? I mean, forget the tyranny of the propositional we have in the rest of the post-Cartesian culture in work. It is the tyranny of the procedural, John. It’s what works is all that matters. Yes. Yes. And I love your your coining of that. You mentioned that to me before, that in addition to the cultural tyranny of the procedure, the work culture has the tyranny of the. Sorry. In addition to the cultural tyranny of the propositional work, culture has the tyranny of the procedural. I think any one of the levels can exercise a tyranny over the others. And this is a platonic notion. So I think that’s powerful. So let me let me make sure I’m getting you. So the idea is to make appeal not to what money gives us. So Leo Farrar and I were in the chapter we wrote on wisdom. We talked about the three M’s to make a good life. One is morality, which we’ve already. But the problem is we can’t get people into the moral frame by the typical business language, if I can put it that way. Right. Another one is mastery. And that that that that doesn’t have to mean dominance. It can as well. But it just means the like a masterpiece. It means the ability to manipulate the world to satisfy our needs. Right. So if you’re like in a war torn world and you don’t have mastery, you don’t care as much about morality. And the third thing, which is meaning in life, because like Maslow’s hierarchy, Aristotle, like you’ve got like if I’m if I’m impoverished, getting out of poverty is like paramount. And then, of course, you’ve got Susan Wolf and others and myself and making arguments that then there’s this third thing, meaning in life, which is not reduce. Not none of these are reducible to the other two. And we’ve tried we keep trying to make the other two reducible. But what we have to realize is there’s a triangulation of tonus, of of creative tension between them that we can never relax. And what I hear you say is, well, what I’m going to do is right. We’ve got people like caught, like almost like in a gravity well in the mastery corner of the triangle. The right in that vertex. Right. And and what I’ll do is I’ll pull them on meaning in life. And then once they’re out of that, then it’s possible to point them towards the moral claim that we’re making. How does that how does that sound to you as an argument? I think that’s beautifully said. I mean, I think my own desire would be to pull them towards meaning and morality. And both make that simultaneous. Yes. Yeah, I think that’s beautifully said. And I think, you know, I can rely on my own experience. You know, I I lead a business. It’s only 85 people, but there’s a lot of people that we interact with and clients in business community. And and I get to walk with people who are building their careers, whether they’re new in it or they’re senior leaders. And and I’ve seen that we all long for our work to be a harmonious wash with the world where we are actually doing good in the world. And it is helping us to grow and that it is affording us a chance for deeper meaning and it is homing us within our community. And our bodies and in the world and that we’re it is helping us to be more virtuous. And I and I see I’ve seen great transformation as people engage in this and then inviting them into wisdom practices, inviting them into seeing a new lens. And we have people seek out our company because we’re very bold about our philosophy. We’re very clear about, look, you come here if you want to serve people well and that we believe that work and business and technology are ways of serving genuine human flourishing and that that’s what we’re about. And I see the residents, I see people hungry for this. And so I think there is a growing hunger for an answer to this. And this doesn’t mean that, like, oh, you have to go and live in some indigent way. I mean, I mean, the reality is, do you know what people need in order to grow in their careers? They need wisdom. They need perspective. They need skills. They need understanding. They don’t just need knowledge or some narrow set. They they need wisdom. And so anything that can also provide them wisdom also provides them growth in their career. So, I mean, in this vision, you’re articulating, it’s very powerful. And I I’m not an economist or even a historian of economy. My friend Dan Schiappi is is is is educating himself on that, himself on that and teaching me about it. But one thing is like this seems to be trying to get back to something that was sort of reversed with Reagan. Right. So one standard trope, I don’t know if it’s true, I’m not an economist or historian, but seems plausible from the outside looking in that we went from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism. And so we gave up the idea of, you know, a corporation or a business, its responsibilities and relationships. Yes. But the only obligation it had was to the shareholders. And it sounds to me like you’re trying to challenge that vision. And then I wonder, well, clearly you’re having success. So it’s it’s not utopic or pie in the sky or anything like that. But I wonder, do you bump up against that? You know, because Reagan was a while ago, we’ve had a couple of generations. Right. Yes. Like, well, my only responsibility is to my shareholders or my only responsibility is to my partners or something like that. Look, I feel a little bit like Don Quixote talking here because, you know, these are this is a monstrous giant that we’re talking about. And the momentum of this is accelerating rapidly, but it’s not working. It’s fraying. I mean, I think there’s more and more awareness of how this this viewpoint of capitalism that we have culturally is is not healthy. And, you know, we don’t have time to go into the full history of this. But I think if we rewind a little, yes, there, you know, go back to Reagan and and maybe even earlier to Milton Friedman in 1970, when he said that, you know, the purpose of the business is to maximize return for shareholders. And that became sort of the common purpose. And since then, we’ve had all of these economic tools, these financial instruments that have accelerated that more and more. So that first really impacted the public markets, where they saw themselves less as stewards and more as sort of mechanical wizards in some way to maximize shareholder value. But then you see the rise of private equity where 1980 Reagan’s elected. Raises two billion dollars into private equity in the year. And this year, it’s over a trillion dollars being raised and being pumped, pumped into small and medium business that’s changed the whole mindset towards how do owners and shareholders maximize their return? And the equity game is a completely different game. I mean, I get invited into that game all the time as a business owner. When I go to conferences, I feel completely like the odd man out because everything is about how do you play the equity game? But that game is thinning out and it’s degrading businesses. It’s turning them more and more into thin mechanistic entities that are focused on the bottom line at all costs. And we’re seeing that’s contributing to the environmental crisis. It’s contributed to the meaning crisis. It’s taking people away from their meaningful jobs. And it’s interesting even to see how like entrepreneurs who operate their business often go the other way because they make decisions from an embodied perspective. They actually have some participatory relationship with their employees, with their community. So when they make decisions, they rarely are making it solely on this. But once you start to separate ownership, ownership and control go together. And when ownership and control is in a sky rise in New York City, making decisions on a spreadsheet, it completely changes the character of the business. And so we’re seeing businesses longevity is going down. Businesses are lasting less long because they’re being sold, acquired, merged. They’re being treated as assets. Right. And I imagine that this thinning and shortening of the longevity is creating a kind of domicile for the people that are actually at work inside these businesses. Well said. We had a we had a peer in the industry who got bought out a couple of years ago, and a number of their staff came to work for us. And there was this sense of loss for them, because once they were bought, the culture fell apart. Everything changed. It just felt like the company they loved and had built disappeared. And this happens over and over again. And it’s it is a sense of losing of the home. And there’s also an increasing sense of losing the fullness of who you are as a person and the depth of appreciation for beauty, the time for nature, the time off. You know, there’s a fascinating story of Andrew Carnegie, right? One of the original titans to take this further back in history that he wrote when he was in his early 30s and making enough money that in two years and paraphrasing, you know, I’ll basically be able to get all my affairs and make enough money. And that in two years, I must get out. And he wanted to go study literature and writing at Oxford. And he said, for if I don’t, the continual focus on the making of money and the growing of this, I fear will degrade me beyond all hope of return. Oh, and that just takes me back when I read that, because that’s what I see. And I witness in myself that this path pulls us. And there is and please don’t get me wrong. I am not at all arguing that capitalism is wrong or evil or that work isn’t good. I believe I have a very high view of work. I believe that work there’s a reason that work was in this ancient story of Genesis. It was in the Garden of Eden before the fall. And it’s in the New Jerusalem after the resurrection, right? Like there’s work on both sides of that very high view of work, the high view of capitalism is the only system that works to generate resources. But it skews towards certain virtues and all of its proponents say, look at all the virtues you have to have to make money. And it’s true. But you must continue to consider all of the virtues and the fullness of humanity. And so we must move from this capitalism of a subtle destruction where we’re ignoring the externalities, ignoring the impact on ourselves and the lack of the the the domicide that we’re creating and the destruction of the environment and move towards a capitalism of becoming a capitalism that’s actually recognizing the fullness of who we are and is aligning to that. Now, the only way I think we can do that is we have to have something more powerful than this, as democracy and capitalism kind of go together. And I think I’ve heard you argue that essentially in order to have democracy and hold it, you must have not just an educated populace, but people who are actually growing in wisdom and able to hold this responsibility and be moral. Right. And I would make the exact same argument for capitalism, that we need something bigger that’s over it, that that forms us and shapes us, that can give a right place down in the hierarchy for capitalism. It’s my understanding that that was actually Adam Smith’s original vision. Yes. And that that that side of his vision has been lost. So are you the voice of one crying in the wilderness or are there other people that are coming to the same recognition as you are? Like, is a community forming around what you’re talking about? Or are you do you feel like, like I said, that you’re yes, wake, wake up the zombie crowd or something like that? Yes. So it’s a great question. And partly why I was so looking forward to this conversation is because I’m really curious even the names that you’ve mentioned to people that you’re talking to about this. I’m eager to get with more folks who are working on this and to find what community is working just because I’m able to find them doesn’t mean there isn’t a community growing. There’s certainly an unease growing and I’m seeing different answers, but I reject the regulation answer. You know, the capitalism is evil and we just need to regulate. And I reject the sort of capitalism is good and we just need to serve a higher purpose and say, well, what higher purpose? Who’s who’s showing that? Right. And how are we doing this? Right. Right. Right. And so I’m I’m seeking that community and I’m interested even for any listeners in this of, you know, like reach out to me. I’m interested in anyone who this resonates with that it’s helpful or is working on this because I don’t think that I’m alone and yet I’m looking for people. You know, in the business community, this kind of thinking hasn’t penetrated very deeply. You know, Brene Brown, which I’m not in any mean to be pejorative about her. I think she’s wonderful. But, you know, Brene Brown is about as deep as has penetrated anything in the business world like her talk on shame and vulnerability. That’s as much as anyone in the business world that I can find has sort of stepped outside of the typical business authors and thinkers. And so I’m seeking to say, how do we bridge this ancient thinking and this rich tradition that goes back, that thinks about work and bring that into our practical decision making, because we need guides, business leaders. We’re busy. We need guides to say, how do I actually make a decision that serves the good that isn’t just for the procedural, for the sake of money, but actually serves the good in the practical day to day? Right, right. Well, like I said, I think the I will definitely connect you up with these people. Thank you. I will also appeal to anybody watching this to to reach out to Ryan. You can leave a comment here and Ryan can check the comments as he wants to see if people are reaching out. But I guess I guess I also would would say, like, in addition to waking, trying to get people to realize the zombification that is happening to their lives, the domicile, the meaning crisis, and like you said, it’s it’s getting worse and it’s getting worse more more rapidly. Wonder also to the degree to which you can make people realize that the tyranny of the procedural, like the tyranny of the propositional, is in a deep sense illusory because you can’t separate the procedural from the perspectival and the participatory. And there is like there are there is no no wisdom option. There is no no philosophy option. Philosophy in the sense of the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. And there is no there is no no framework option. Right. Like so I’m just doing business. I bet you’re not like I really I really bet you aren’t like that. I really bet that there’s all kinds of unconscious stuff and implicit philosophical ideas and cultural cognitive grammar that is actually at work and that you’re implementing in a certain way. And you because it is completely transparent to you. The lenses of your glasses, you think that there’s nothing there but what you’re looking at. But consider the possibility of stepping back and seeing if you can become aware of what is actually driving all of this. All right. What’s driving your behavior? What’s driving? Right. Well, you know, making more money. Yes. But why? Right. And what does that mean to you? And you were very honest at the very beginning. And it’s one of the traits I like about you a lot. You just you said, you know, I was doing this because I was hoping that success would, you know, alleviate all of this internal distress that was a leftover from the fact that I had been traumatized by a sort of fundamentalist version of Christianity. And, you know, and, you know, I think we’ve had, you know, at least since Weber, we’ve had arguments that, you know, people are pursuing capitalism because of X or Y that they’re not aware of. Now, that’s not to deny that they’re not also trying to acquire money and wealth. I’m not denying that. But I’m wondering if another thing to do with people is to get them to realize there’s a lot more going on here than just the profit motive, because they are human beings that have perspectival and participatory lives. They are cultural, historical people that come in with a cultural cognitive grammar. Right. They do under they do work according to, you know, the authority of certain kinds of worldviews, et cetera. Yes. I was wondering if that’s also something you can do to get people to step back and see that they’re not only acquiring profit, they’re acting out worldviews and they’re acting out identities that may not actually be ones they would want to consciously identify with or consciously support. Well said. Yeah, it’s so interesting, isn’t it, that we think of work as transactional. We’re trading time for money when it is transjective. Would that be a fair way to say it? I mean, we’re assigned roles and assuming roles, and we have this reciprocal we’re being shaped, we’re shaping the world. I mean, it’s dramatically influential in our lives. Yeah, I mean, and for sure. I mean, people’s career identities impact on their other identities, and people are often going into certain environments. Right. And this is also the case for why people go into academic environments. So I’m not I’m not this is impjorative towards people going into, you know, business environments. They’re going or government positions. But people go into those largely because they are trying to find a particular set of conditions and they’re trying to avoid another particular set of conditions. And then. Well, you did something right. You stepped back deeply and profoundly. You went into, you know, deep therapy and deep reflection about this. And not because your business had failed, but because you had succeeded. Right. Because you had succeeded, which is which is like such an important move. And what I’m trying to forgive me, I’m trying to just work this out with you. Yeah, please. But this is good. Yeah. Is like, how can we get other people to that place where they step back and take a look? Yes. Right. The framing and what’s what are the other things going on? And then that might connect them also to the, you know, to the maybe only partially acknowledged. Yes. It means this with me. And then that might be a way of opening them up to. Yes. For moral questions. Yes. Yes. I so well said, I think that, you know, we have so much anxiety in work and so much frustration and desire for fulfillment and work is carrying so much of our identity that it isn’t meant to carry, that it creates a lot of psychological challenges and emotional challenges for for most of us in the working world. And how do we use that to draw people into the journey within, into the path of wisdom? How do we and how do we? How do we do that Socratic dialogue you’re referring to, where we can ask people and poke and dig down into why are you really doing this? Yes. With the kind of language that’s resonant in the business community, because I can’t say, hey, there’s a tyranny of the procedural to anyone outside the Jamaican community. And so how do we find the right language? Yeah. How do we draw people from, you know, high school and McDonald’s job up through CEO and investors into this that that changes and looks at their own sense of anxiety, alienation and absurdity and says there’s a path here that work can be harmonious in. How do we help those who are already on that path to actually let their career be a vocation that is connected to the deep philosophy and the morality that they have? And, you know, if I could if I could like wave a magic wand, I would make this neoplatonic path of wisdom very accessible to everyone. Yes. And I would create the language that’s resonant for everyone in the working world. And I would create a practical decision making guide that said, hey, look, when you’re selling a business, here’s the practical things to consider from a philosophy. And here’s actually and I would develop the personal ability to have the presence that could create a poria and then be surrounding all of that to draw these things together. Now, can I do that? I have absolutely no idea. But I can be a part of a conversation. I can carry the water bottles for somebody who can do that. I’m happy. I think you’ll be part of the conversation. But. Well, again, maybe a small step. So one of the other places where people place the burdens that used to be carried by God and philosophy and wisdom is their romantic lives. Yes. And I’ve had quite a bit of it. Success. Getting people to realize that the romantic lives can’t bear that. Yes. By getting them to step back and think more deeply about. Oh, I like that. Love. Right. That’s open up and get outside of the singular term and the singular thought and the singular place. And no, no, no. You right. We and you know, in addition to erotic love, you need phyla. You need a gap. Right. In addition to friendship, you need fellowship. Right. And so I tried to I tried to. I’m trying. It hasn’t stopped. I shouldn’t be speaking the past tense. I’m trying to get people to not, you know, I feel like there’s this inverted pyramid that’s right on sitting on the romantic relationships and romantic relationships are trying to and then right. And they can’t bear that. And then when they break, the people break in a profound way. But instead, well, but wait, let’s look right. Well, let’s let’s step back. Yes. And not that not not denigrate romantic relationships. Yes. Let’s talk about the phenomena of love. And then let’s open it up and the stuff about reciprocal opening and the kinds of love and how can we practice intimacies other than sexual or friendship, intimacies, dialogical intimacies, fellowship, intimacies. And that was that. And I can’t say like, I mean, what I did is I foresaw all of this and I planned it out because I am so brilliant. What happened is I sort of followed the Socratic logos and this unfolded and grew as a way. And then what I’m asking you. Is there something analogous we can do right? Do with us? Can we stop trying to make work carry so much? And then what is it in there? Right. That’s analogous to the way love is in the romantic. Well, yes, because we open that up and extend it out. Maybe that’s also another strategy. Oh, I think that’s brilliant. I think that’s so insightful. And and I’ve heard you talk on on romantic love many times, and it is so powerful the way that you do it and the way you just did it here. And I think there it is very analogous because, look, one of the unfortunate challenges of being a business leader is you have to fire people and even, you know, care and performance are actually something that have to be done together. And that means that there are standards in a working environment, which side note is why kids stay when people refer to their culture as family or their employees as family, because you don’t fire your kids and you do have to fire people. There are standards of performance. But when you fire someone. You see, it is one of the most gutting things that can happen in someone’s life. I mean, it is incredibly destabilizing. It is incredibly identity wrenching. And I think those moments are the clearest moments that I have of that inverted pyramid that you refer to. And how do we go to that space and begin, like you say, to open that up so that it can hold a new story, so that it actually creates the space for the the logos to draw them into a new and truer story? Right, right. That’s a very powerful challenge, I think. I hope that I can help you with that. I mean, because it seems to me that that project. Like I’m seeing two or three things that interrelated project, waking people up to meaning, getting people to notice the lensing. And then next, you know, doing something about the inverted, placing all of God and history and culture on work on their work and opening that up. Yeah, I want to help you more. Thank you. With those three, because I mean, that’s got to be part of any. Responsible and responsive. Attempt to ameliorate the meeting crisis, it has to be. People are spending most of their waking hours at work, right. And if that and you know, and this is something that Tim Bishop an argument he’s made to me and, you know, convincingly so. Tom Morgan is is doing something similar with that. And so there’s more and more people that I am trying and Andrew, I can’t remember Andrew’s last name. Oh, right now. And you have been talking. So I’m talking to a whole bunch of people I’m going to put you in contact with and try and get this like and I think what we’re doing here is good. Articulating these three, I don’t know what to call them strategies, maybe. Right. Three strategies of awakening, I think, is a very preliminary but good first step about what can what can we do so we can so there’s four the four strategies, the three we’ve mentioned. And then the fourth is try to get you like into a community of people and grow that community talking so we can get some very powerful collective intelligence on, you know, these strategies, articulating the development, finding other ones that might be missing. I don’t think the list is exhaustive. It’s just I hope it’s exemplary, though. I think that needs to be done right now. I agree. I appreciate that. And one of the reasons that I was still looking forward to this conversation was to be to see how this resonated with you and how you saw it and if you saw it the same. And this is really encouraging. And then to hope to begin to have these conversations in a community and to do real dialogs on this and to say, how do we extend this? And then and then how do we make practical tools and practical guides and practical like widgets that can embed in a business community for reasons that, you know, HR directors already have like, oh, I need to fix retention and people are burnt out and like, OK, well, we can do this. But this thing is actually part of drawing somebody and telling the true story. Yes. So now I want to we were maybe in the last five or ten minutes we have. I do have a hard out at 11. So then I want to express a concern, please. So case studies are helpful because they may consider it’s concrete. So I’ve watched the way mindfulness and the mindfulness resolution revolution and a way of mindfulness was supposed to be taking off the lenses, waking you up to wisdom. Right. Right. But I’ve watched the way mindfulness has been taken into the business community. And, you know, and I’ve published scientifically on this. I mean, I published it in journals and other people have. And it’s been transformed into mick mindfulness. I forget the author who coined that, I think, very powerful term. It’s been its dimensionality has been reduced. And its tea loss has been crippled. And it is largely now being used manipulatively. So as the basic idea is, how can we keep people from burning out and being discontented so we can continue to work them the way we work them? And that’s part of the critique. That’s not my critique. Yes. Right. And so my concern is there’s an example of something. Well, first of all, there was an entire ecology of practices and we carved out one little blob from it and then we reduced it and reduced it. So I think you can see the concern I’m worried about. I’m worried about the business world’s capacity. And I’m giving you an actual case. Right. So it’s not just a hypothetical. This really happened. It’s a capacity to do this trivialization and truncation and trivialization to the point where it actually it would be better if they had not gotten involved with mindfulness at all. I can honestly say that because the problem is that because of the impact of the business world, that is now the growing majority of how people understand mindfulness. And then it blinds them to the transformative power and the provocative challenge. Of a life of mindfulness. Yes, I think that challenge is very well stated and very apropos. I mean, you know, business has an incredible ability to monetize anything and to take any asset and actually turn it into a function of the mechanistic engine for producing an increase in increase of capital. And this can’t do that. I mean, that would be devastating if this added more fuel to the very problems. Yes. And and it eroded the very solution. And and so, yeah, I take that very seriously. And I and I take that seriously in all the conversations that I have. I often get asked to speak on how do you have retention and great recruiting at Mainstay? And I say, well, look, because we’re not focused on that as our outcome, because you want recruiting and retention to serve the bottom line. And there’s a manipulative bottom line here. We need recruiting and retention because we’re actually doing something good. And we’re drawing the right people. Like there’s a reframing that we must be consistent with. But I think the only real way to protect them, this is to build a community around it. You know, I would love to see peer groups of business leaders grow that hold each other accountable and challenge each other as we’re in the trenches, leading and making decisions. I don’t see any other way to do it. Right. Right. So that be very clear. Everything we articulate has to have this hook of here’s why we do it. And here’s what you have to watch for. So whatever communication we’re designing through this, it has a built in. Here’s why. And here’s how this could be monetized that we don’t want you to do. Like, and that we’re actually very, very upfront with it. Right. Right. Good, because, you know, there’s there’s a lot of short term success racing to the lowest common denominator kind of thing. Yes. So, Ryan, this is the first of where are going to be many conversations. And many of you are probably realizing that Ryan and I are beginning to work together on a more comprehensive basis. And at some point, we’re going to do a reversal. We’re going to do a voices with Reveke where Ryan is going to question me. And I’m looking forward to that a lot. Me too. But this one is drawing to a close. And I always like Ryan to give. My guests the opportunity for a last word, it doesn’t have to be summative. It can be, if you wish, but any sort of parting word you want to leave with people. Thanks, John. I think I will end with a quick story, which is that I found circling in dialogos with you and Guy to be really, really powerful. And I really would love your whole community like there should be eight thousand people at every one of those sessions. I mean, you take everyone on a journey up a mountain and, you know, it starts with building the team and then equipping and then teaching at every stage until you at the end, you’re at this point and then you realize, well, I can return to the summit again and again on my own. I mean, it just is powerful. And I had a dialogo session in this summer’s circling dialogos. It was just me and one of the participant and she was really wonderful. And I said, look, I’m working on this thing. We’re supposed to do this on a virtue, but I’m trying to figure out, is there a mode of work that is itself a virtue? Is there a type of work that could be a virtue? Could we do it on that? And she was like, sure. And we ended up having this really wonderful dialogos where I was we were able to see together that no work isn’t a virtue. It’s it’s like a servant of the virtues. It’s a conduit between us and the world. And we saw this vision of it sort of filled with junk and crud between us and the world that was like degrading our our our life, our ecology. And then there was this sense of like, well, what virtue is this connected to? And we really had the sense and you’ll you’ll appreciate this, that that was like every virtue sort of showed up in the room and began speaking to us about a vision of work and about how work is meant to serve the virtues, being service to the virtues, to grow virtue within us and within the world. And we had this sense of this panoply of virtues and this sort of like drawing oneness behind them. And at the end of it, I had this profound sense of the virtues turning to me and saying, so will you help? Oh, wow. Will you help? And and it’s from that a couple of months ago that I said, well, I got to at least put some things on paper and reach out to John and do something with this because I want to respond to that metanoia moment. And so I share that because I think everyone should go to circling and dialogos. It’s one of the most powerful experiences and encounters. I would prefer to call it. And because that’s what I’m trying to do here. And I think anyone in your community who could help me be responsible to that, that has any resonance with this, anything that you can do, John, or what you see in this. I want to be responsible to that. Well, thank you, Ryan. Like I said, we are obviously going to talk again and ongoing. We are forming an ongoing and living relationship, which is becoming increasingly important to me. And so I thank you for that. I’m glad you reached out. It’s already been helping me a lot. And I look forward to our next reversing voices with Ravik. Me too. Thanks, John. This was just an absolute joy. And you are so generous and kind. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Ryan.