https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=y9hRsEB2foM
John Vervecky and Sean Coyne have together authored a new book, Mentoring the Machines. It’s a book about artificial intelligence and the path forward that further develops the arguments of how to align artificial intelligence to human flourishing, and it sets those arguments into beautiful and accessible writing. Welcome everyone to another episode of Voices with Vervecky. I expect this one is going to be one that just crackles and pops, and I’m really excited about it. These are two gentlemen who are effuse with creativity and in powerful and exciting ways, and then we’re going to have the two of them together, Kevin Bowers and Ethan Tia. And so I’m really looking forward to this. Now we’ve been talking a little bit about a document that was prepared ahead of time. We’re not going to try and follow that as a script. I think that would seem to thwart what we actually want to talk about. But the topic we’re going to investigate and hopefully get into dialogos about is the relationship between creativity and wisdom. Now, in one sense, if one brings up the question, what is creativity and wisdom? One has sort of a trivial answer. Well, creativity just means insight, and there are, of course, longstanding connections between wise people and insight. And so I’m going to ask both Kevin and Ethan first to introduce themselves at length, and then we’re going to take up that challenge in a Socratically collaborative manner. So why don’t we start with you, Kevin? Sure. So nice to be here once again. My two new friends on the other side of the screen. Pleased to be with you. Yeah, so creativity and has been a long, long riff in my life, and it’s brought me to feel very grateful for the sort of opportunities that’s afforded me. And my career has been as a teacher, and luckily I had some sort of epiphanies with creativity as a younger man and I just had this urge to, I knew that there was something in this type of consciousness that was valuable for learning and for building community. And, yeah, I had the, I had the, I had the good insight somewhere in my 19s and 20s to sort of really pursue it and figure out ways to operationalize it in a learning space. So I spent a lot of time, I eventually got my masters in this, I studied John Dewey pretty seriously about artists experience and how to utilize creativity to create schema and learning in an environment. And more recently, and it was John really that sort of added a new layer to my intrigue, which was that it’s not just learning, but it’s wisdom cultivation that there’s this way in which playing with this creativity for all these years is a, is a mechanism for fittedness. It’s a way of sort of connecting yourself with the world and with joy and with others and creating belonging, because I’ve seen this in the spaces that I’ve been lucky enough to sort of to teach and to play in. And so the last couple of years really have been really exciting for me as I’ve sort of, I’ve turned a new leaf and seen more potentiality and John’s language and insights have been really, really provocative for me and really life-affirming and, and it’s sort of given me some new energy. And so that’s a compliment, John. Yeah, so that lands me on your podcast and proud to be here. Oh, and by the way, it also introduced me to Ethan. So I saw Ethan and you talk way back, the first one, and I thought, man, this guy, because there was so much correlation between what I’m feeling and he’s also an educator and a trainer, and I’m just like, man, this guy is kicking and I just, I often get this sort of like warm sort of like, I’m being fed and I’m motivated forward and Ethan had, and I literally just wrote him immediately after when I was still high on it. And you got back to me just as quickly. We’ve gotten to know each other quite well, man. I have a real big part in my heart for Ethan at this point. We’ve talked, got to be 10 times now. And anyway, so you’re building community, John, through your, through your work that’s quite meaningful, certainly in my heart. Thank you, Kevin. That was really touching. And Kevin has been on Voices of the Reveille and I’ll put a link to that previous video. And now I’m going to turn things over to Ethan so that he can say a little bit about himself and how he’s intersected with my work and with Kevin. Hi. Yeah, great to be back again. I think this is the fourth time now that we’re doing this. And yeah, it’s really interesting because I find that something has been orbiting around my space. This word that’s come up since the first time we talked, John, about consilience and how to get the humanities and the sciences to really speak together. And of course, Greg and Rikas also organized the Consilience Conference a couple of weeks ago. So that’s been floating around quite a lot. And so I feel really grateful to have a conversation with like all three of us. And I think like that consilience is a kind of guiding force in this conversation and made it decent. As a practice researcher, primarily in the field of performance, it’s always been participatory for me. And I’ve never known why I never understood that language. And John, you gave the vocabulary for that. So now turning the attention as I step out, you know, and trying to broaden the scope of my career, starting to look at the process of that. So the process of participation, what happens inside that. It’s like this, but also in the room, how it transcends into the cultural space, what’s functioning on the phenomenological level. All of those things are very alive. And just as you were speaking, Kevin, the word that stuck out, we spoke about it last night as well, like the sense of fittedness, like fittedness and attunement, those two things. It just find, I think I’ve told you this also in like an email or like we talked about it before, that there is a technical definition for creativity. And it goes something like the novel reconfiguration of elements within the environment. That’s part one. And the second part is the part that really sticks out to me as being very gelled in with insight is that it’s novel reconfigurations of elements in the environment, which reveal patterns of how we are connected into the world, something like that. And so that really opened up, I think, quite a lot of discussion, especially not just with you, Kevin, also, but with like other creators that I’ve been speaking to in the space. There is something about coherence that is so fundamental to creativity and a sense of revelation that’s kind of got me excited about what we’re going to be talking about today. So that’s where I’m at. Excellent. And I will put links to Ethan’s previous videos also in the notes to this video. So we have a topic that we’re going to play around with and lots of other topics are going to come up in connection. So there’s two that have come up already that are really interesting. One is deep connections between creativity and conciliance. And another one is the connection between creativity and fittedness. Both of these, of course, pique my interest to a very high degree. The fittedness, of course, brings in ideas about relevance, realization and optimal grip and religio and ratio religio. And then the conciliance, Ethan mentioned the, I think, really excellent conference that Greg and we just put together. And I was privileged to be the keynote speaker there. And I was talking about something that is germane to the second point that Ethan made was that conciliance will require a notion of self-transcendence that is not just psychological, but epistemological and ontological that as we engage in acts of self-transcendence, those will be not only psychological improvement, but they’ll be world disclosing in some important way. And that the possibility of doing that, nevertheless, within a extended naturalistic framework means we could get conciliance between the sciences and the arts or the humanities and the sciences or between the subjective and the objective or however we want to lay that down. So I’m very, very interested in that proposal. And you both were pointing towards there’s more to, right, there’s more to creativity than just having an insight. There’s this idea of it connects us to the world in a way that discloses something about the world and refits us to the world. I’m hearing that and you’re both nodding. And so why is that relevant to wisdom? Yeah. Well, this notion of fittedness that creativity affords is sort of, can we translate it, I think, into like a stance in the world, like a way that you are sort of, you know, you’re trying to get out of the way of the world. And that you have a certain posture that’s loose and ready, that there’s a practice sort of soft focus to the kinds of experiences that are going to be random, right? I mean, there’s going to be there’s going to be shit flying at you. And how sort of suited are you for change? And how prepared are you for that flow? And so I’m very intrigued with the idea that the practice of creativity and I started to use that as a way of thinking about the world and the way that I think about it. And so I’m very intrigued with the idea that the practice of creativity and I started to use that word more like people use it for meditation or yoga, like the practice of creativity. Yeah, yeah. And as a thing that does that, that it sort of, it practices you in a mindset that is fluid, that what’s got flow in it. It’s improvisational, it’s prepared for the novelty, it enjoys these things, right? It, it, it had, it thrives in those things. So, if wisdom can be some kind of combination of thriving in an environment that is dynamic, then I think a practice and creativity is apt. So, let me make sure I understand the proposal which I really like it’s very tasty. First of all, let’s come, we’ll come back to this at some point because both of you know I’ve been doing a lot of work on ritual ritual practice. Yeah. And that sounds like it will be pertinent at some point but the first is I like this idea of practices of creativity that properly shape our stance our comportment towards the world, so that we can deal with. I don’t know if I can use this word, Kevin, but if it doesn’t land, tell me but something like, right. The combination of the world’s ill-defined in this, its complexity, and its capacity for emergence, make it, it throws uncertainty at us not risk, risk is negative outcomes that we can manage by calculating their probabilities, uncertainty is, we can’t say what it’s going to be. So, we can’t calculate or manage for it or prepare for it in any direct management sense but that doesn’t mean we are just bereft of what to do. We can properly cultivate a capacity to evolve our fittedness to a world that is in this kind of radical flux. First of all, does that land for you, Kevin, does that? That was perfect. Yeah, that feels like what I said but better. So, that’s good. Okay, so I’m going to pause for a second and see what, what Ethan, what Ethan means from that or what, what comes alive in Ethan when he hears that. Yeah, that was really beautiful. What I got was kind of, was a kind of image so it’s almost like a pie chart, there is like certainty and like a small sliver. And then there is risk which we definitely don’t want to get to and that might, may or may not be as big of a sliver but it has, it kind of blends in with certainty. So, there’s something about certain risk, I know that thing is wrong, I want to stay away from it. Most of that is uncertain. Yes. And so, it feels to me like what creativity has a tendency to allow us to do is to reach into the unknown part of the landscape and go like sifting almost like what, what is going to be risky in this space? What’s not? So, it kind of helps to make the unknown more known, whether for better or for worse. But then something really interesting happens here where you use the word posture, which I’ve written down here, Kevin, I think there’s something, there’s something that extends out of that. It feels like the more that we reach into the unknown, find the known, pass them out, it starts to coalesce into a set of affordances and we can call that something of an identity. And so, I’m trying to follow the line of your argument, Kevin, where there is like posture, there is the practice of change or the experience participatory, perspectival change that creates a kind of flow between identities. So, there is this set of affordances in a certain way, I can explore that creativity helps me to do that, it coalesce to an identity. Then as I keep doing that, that identity starts to grow or shift or I create new ones over time. And then we can shift between those rather dynamically depending on the context and the situation. And so, I’m thinking of, I’m proposing in a sense that creativity is something less about an isolated task focused thing or task focused process, and more of a transformational process that guides us between identities and the affordances that they give us in different contexts, something like that. And so, Ethan, just to draw you out a little bit more, and how does that tie into wisdom? Is that ability that you just described to like to transform, transform one’s ability, you’re invoking some kind of self-transcendence in a real way. Yes. How does that fit with wisdom in your mind? So, in my mind is that there was something that was written in the Google Doc, which, again, so it’s very early in the morning. Around finding optimal attunement to an identity. Optimal attunement and assumption of an identity. The sentence I think is the authentic, authenticity is a properly attuned assumption of identity. Yes. Yeah. And so, being able to recognize, okay, what is required here at this point, at this moment, that’s going to help me to interact with this environment in the most optimal way and tuning that, that identity in a context sensitive adaptive manner. Across the repository that might exist, feels to me like, that’s where we start to get groundedly wise, and I feel that creativity is a key part in that process to get there. How’s that landing with the room? Well, first of all, we’re doing what we should be doing. We’re reducing and drawing out, which is really good. Aaron, I feel like it’s starting to gain a bit of momentum, which is always very tasty. So, I heard you extended Kevin’s proposal, and you’ve introduced the dimension of self-transcendence, transformation, and the idea that the creativity is not fitting us to the world in a way that does not place demands on us. That fittedness to a world that is really uncertain isn’t a mechanical fittedness. We also have to transcend our identity in an important way in order to realize that, and that takes us even deeper into the domain of wisdom, because presumably what wisdom involves is not just the acquisition of sort of fittedness skills, but the appropriate through line of identities. Such that we can keep doing that, to make it as simple as possible, and that gets us into questions about character. And so I’m going to pose a question back, which is, okay, so what is it in creativity that doesn’t lead to the fragmentation of the individual? Why is it not? I mean, surely it’s possible that when as people throw themselves into radical uncertainty and open their identity up for change, they could fragment. They could fall into, you know, various kinds of self deceptive self destructive spirals. In fact, you know, we can plausibly think of actual cases where this occurs. So is this a danger in creativity, or is this a malforming of creativity? First of all, does the question land as a real question? Yeah, I think it does. I mean, there’s, there are pitfalls to, well, just being conscious, really, I suppose. And I do think that this sort of, Ethan sort of bringing out these, these almost personas, right, that we can enter these these perspectives that we can move through. And I see them again is like different stances, given different environmental, you know, the, the flux of reality requires various postures to to fit in. I would say that a, a well sort of practiced creative, a person practiced in creativity that’s been sort of tailored towards good living and wisdom, is that it’s not just about the creativity that’s been sort of tailored towards good living and wisdom would be practiced at the movement itself would be practiced at the perspectival shifting and have tried it out playfully, imaginally, would have sort of language for it would have costuming for it, you know, would would be adept at this maneuver. But I think you would be. There’s the word that comes up, we talked about yesterday, but authenticity. So I feel that part of your concern or your your sort of your launching of a concern is like, do we lose our authenticity. When we, if we were to fragment ourselves so much like which is the real. Am I right, john, that that’s a potential. I mean, the word authenticity is one of the most equivocal in our culture right now. I mean, one means being true to your true self, and I’m very hesitant around that notion, there’s a height of garriott notion where authenticity means to properly realize one’s mortality. And that, and that has to do with the, you know, that we are perpetually vulnerable and infinitude. And so, maybe a different word, I’m looking for is, is something like there’s, there’s an integrity to being an agent to to your agency that that if you fragment that too much. You lose agency. Now, what I what I’m hearing you saying, Kevin, and maybe this is premature, but I’m hearing you saying something like, well, you don’t just randomly carcophony your way into the uncertain you somehow thread a through line. That’s a practice through line. Yeah, you’ve practiced through lining if we could. That’s right. That’s what I’m kind of getting. Yeah, that’s right. But that, but that, but that doesn’t just, it’s, it’s, it’s not only a through line into the world. It’s also a through line between the various persona and roles. Yes, I heard you saying you could practice at the movement and I heard sort of the weaving the through lining of these. So they aren’t a carcophony they’re more like a melody. Yes, personas and roles, and that there’s a kind of deep conformity between that the inner through lining and the outer through lining through lining is that. Is that am I hearing you correct. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that that play that when you’re doing this with your hands. Yeah, that’s, that’s the thing. The dance, the, you know, the the gracefulness and the The joyfulness of being able to sustain Once self in a changing world in in those in those ways that you can jump into different domains and have Sort of What’s the word for that like a dexterity of self in in these various places and it’s a practice dexterity and when you have dexterity you enjoy dexterity like it’s it’s the through line itself. Yeah. That you’re attuned to like it’s, it’s the and creativity has that right like we touched on this on our last conversation john where there’s this like it’s you’re following this thing this through line through and all and the material is of truth and beauty that you know is at the end and it’s that ride that is the good right is the the movement itself and I would say that the most The best parts of my life and experience is that I’m not the only one who’s following this thing. I’m following this thing. I’m following this thing. I’m following this thing. And I think that the most The best parts of my life and experience are are akin to that right that there I’ve made big decisions in my life that felt Soft and right and you know they weren’t they weren’t banging my head against the wall. I wasn’t doing one of these trying to get there. I I had Posture I had acquired the materials and the people that I love around me and the the The actions that I was taking in the way that I was taking them fitted that moment and And the best parts of life happened And I do give a lot of credit to Having spent lucky time being able to be creative, you know having this sort of luxury of Being able to have played with creativity for so long that that helped give me that kind of dexterity of of conforming to the to the world and not losing my shit as as the world changed So So look Just to gather again together what we’re doing logos right I’m hearing This idea of Practices in the ritual sense of creativity Help us To Crew line within and without so that we can bring grace to the confrontation with uncertainty. You should make t shirts. That’s good. That’s too long for a t shirt. But but it sounds like that’s landing with you. I’m I mean I’m losing some of the the the multi dimensionality of what you said, but I’m trying to get it into a place where I want to now pass it back to Ethan and see what he does with it. Yeah, there is something in the quality of this movement this grace, which is when we’re When we’re talking about this weaving this through lining a lot of words falling into that sense of a kind of like fluidity coming back to something that you had mentioned earlier, Kevin and That very important point in your question, John, which you had made explicit was the integrity of character. So creativity is not Well, let’s go via negativa on this one. So creativity seems less to be about let’s just come up with something new and cool. It has to have picked up certain remnants from its journey dropped off parts that might have been misconstrued or maybe just As part of the evolution is kind of, you know, fallen out of fashion a little bit and then bring in those new things. And so that threading is almost like It’s almost like a constant A constant process of Higher order adaptation that’s moving through it, you know, and so Ah, this is the part where it feels more in line with the integrity idea that Creativity seems to require that time to build up that integrity. It’s not an individual instance. It’s not an individual instance. It’s kind of like how we grew up listening to a band and the band might have five albums and they might sound very different from the first to the last one. But there’s always something in there that we can, in a sense, hold on to and stay true to, I suppose, in that sense of the word. I want to return, try and tie this back into John’s original question, which is how does it not fracture the individual because that is my primary concern. And I think here it’s very important to mark a difference which I’m seeing between a persona and an identity and with a persona being something that is constructed from the outside As at least I have to constantly clear up this slight misunderstanding around acting. It’s not just putting, it’s not about putting on a persona in the sense I’m looking at myself from the outside and want to fit myself as an external I. An identity is internally born out. We might not even have a sense of what it looks like from the outside. In fact, I think that’s hardly ever the case. It’s more about trying to internally fix an issue or trying internally get more adapted to the world that the identity forms as a byproduct. And that’s for me what separates it from a persona. So if the process of this adaptation is constantly being presented through the identity, constantly being presented to me through higher order problems. This problem wasn’t there six months ago. I haven’t played a round of a saxophone yet. For example, I might do that now this time. And it keeps layering. Then I feel like that through line process starts to build on itself. That’s how I’m feeling it. Answering the question sort of. Let me make sure I understand you because this is a very interesting proposal. So you’re distinguishing identity formation from persona adoption. Where when you’re playing well with the mask, the persona mask you, whereas identity that is something that emerges. And there’s a sense in which. Are you saying that your identity starts to get disclosed to you as you start to realize the identity of the through line that’s taking place within the creativity? I’m trying to get how it brings identity and creativity together. It’s something like that. It’s something like that. Maybe if I give an example, it would be more clear. So you can’t be a dad by watching family sitcoms on TV and then adopting the persona of the dad. In fact, most of the time, I think that would go quite terribly. And also that that’s not your kid. So there might be some similarities, but you want to interact with the kid and try and figure out, OK, well, what’s this kid’s problem today on a Tuesday afternoon? And so that is a very unique situation. Now, as we all know, kids might say the dumbest things like I remember, John, you said this once. One of your sons came up and said, I have a backwards camera in my head. Yes. It’s like that’s very unique. And I want I really want to draw this to draw this into salience here. It’s like that the ability to interact with that very unique proposal is a creative act in and of itself. How am I going to navigate that metaphor? And this happens instance after instance, day after day, until maybe they go off to college. I don’t know. But that’s the thing that forms the identity of John as a dad. I see. I see. That John, right? As opposed to going as opposed to if you if you look at a picture of a sitcom dad and go like, well, that’s the kind of dad that I want to be. You know. Yeah. So is that does that clear it up a little bit? Yeah, it does. So instead of trying to match yourself to some external mask, what you’re doing is you’re actually sort of emerging an identity as it takes shape between all these different instances of where you’re trying to fit your identity. Instances of where you’re trying to fit yourself to the world in a particular way. So I become a dad by here’s a creative instance of fitting myself to a son. Here’s another creative instance. Here’s another. And there’s a melody that’s now going through them. And then I start to catch the melody and start to participate in it. Did I understand you correctly? Yes. Yes. It’s like playing with Lego blocks. Yes. Well, except the Lego box are dynamic and they morph and they constrain each other’s fittedness in a constantly changing way. So and and what you’re what I hear both of you saying is that this this ability right? We can train this evolve ability where we’re not evolving a trait where even we’re sort of evolving our capacity to evolve. Right? Right. So which right. So and that creativity can’t as a ritual practice can help us cultivate that. And then that is important for a wise person, because a wise person is somebody that needs to be able to. Insightfully interact with many different situations that have a lot of uncertainty within them. That was a long sentence, but does that landing as a way of trying to gather the arguments? Yes, yes, yes. It’s exciting. Yeah, that’s good. That feels right. So for me, I mean, this is interesting because and I and gentlemen, don’t let me get too excited. This is very much what you know what I and Chris and and Guy and Taylor we talk about when we when you catch the logos and follow the logos in deal logos. Yes. Right. That you that you move from scripts, probability scripts, right? Sort of chat chat, GPT four or whatever probability scripts for what’s the next word. And it’s we have to remember that they even have to throw randomness in temperature in order to give it a human like feel because they’re trying to they’re trying to hack something that’s you know, presumably still a bug for them, but it’s a feature for us. And so there’s a sense in which you move from that. And so there’s a sense in which you move from that. You you you move from the the the dead handed habit of the script until you get just what you’re what you both been talking about. You get that sense of this identity and a co-identification and the fittingness and the being shaped in the fires of uncertainty. of the script until you get just what you’ve both been talking about. You get that sense of this identity and the co-identification and the fittingness and the being shaped in the fires of uncertainty. And that’s the logos in the logos. Yeah, and it it starts to move towards this intelligibility stuff that you’ve taught me, because that’s the nature of nature is got the same kind of flux to it. You know, and what are we doing? We’re attuning ourselves to the creative nature of nature. Like, yeah, I think I think there’s a very. I guess I can say is that it feels intuitive to me that nature itself and the ways that bees find their flowers and water flows down a river and a conversation evolves and I fall in love and the way I love my dog. I mean, these things are are are on the same plane. And that another word that you taught me was sort of contact epistemology, this idea that we’re conforming. Yeah, yeah. Forming to the way in which. The world is the truth, right? We’re getting closer to the truth, so I feel that palpably when I’m in a moment of grace, a moment of like my my the materials of my the constructed self that I’m bringing to this moment is in. Right, fittedness to the space and I’m in a flow state. I can see variables in a social space and in a in a in a in a wooded space. And I feel I’m moving it properly. I talk to it properly. And that feels like a kind of a transcendence towards conforming to. A higher truth than was available before I got into a flow state. I’m getting closer when in flow. Yeah. And just note the resonances between proper, appropriate and proportioned. And yeah, it’s definitely a conformity, right? But notice it’s not a conformity so much of trying to. You don’t have the content ahead of time or there wouldn’t be real uncertainty. But what you’re what you’re saying is there’s a kind of crust. Right. And that’s that you can stay true to because there is a fundamental conformity of the deep grammar between cognition and the mind. And I’ve been arguing that I argued that at Consilience, I argued that in Ralston and other places, I argued that after Socrates. Right. And so that to me makes sense. It’s almost like there’s a there’s a deep relationship. It’s almost like when we are when we put ourselves into this state. Of the deepest blocks that we disclose the shared logos, I’m thinking here of Heraclitus and the notion that there’s a flux of things, but there’s a logos that’s that’s making it so it’s not a cacophony, that notion and the fire catches. And it’s that it’s that sort of idea that when we get into this allowing our mind to flow the way the world does, yes, is what allows us to, I think. I think it’s what gives it I’ll use this like confidence, but I want to really play on Fidesz faith, you know, conforming faith, faith with we it’s I’m not trying to invoke a religious term here, neither am I trying to exclude it, but there’s this like we can trust that although we don’t know how the content is going to show out, the conformity will always be realizable for us if we’re willing to go as deep as we can into the flux. That’s what I’m trying to say. Something that’s really come up for me, just as you were talking, John, I think this one, I really don’t want to let go of this this sense of the revelation of what’s being disclosed implies that that was something already there. And this comes back to how you started the sentence. First of all, which is that the which is that it’s naturally how nature works. So that again implies that we are somehow not able to see that there is some. I suppose, obscurity that’s happening and what creativity seems to be doing is going like that. It’s kind of opening us to be able to see what was already there. Now, this is really fascinating to me because it’s it’s starting to feel more and more that creativity is something that is so in so it’s very first principle. It feels very, very first principle in the way that our cognition interacts with the environment. And so we have been bouncing this question back and forth, Kevin, around why is it that people seem to say they feel like they’re not creative? I’ve heard that a lot. And so that’s that’s something which for me gives me a lot of hope hearing this because it’s it’s opening up the idea, at least that this question is moot. It doesn’t exist. Everyone is creative. But when we’re trying to do the weaving or trying to maneuver through the unknown, there is implicit in that also this sense of procedure and procedure requires practice. Yeah. So how are we? Well, let’s see if I can coalesce this into a question. How do we? How do we integrate? Procedural practice of creativity with the character development integrity. Well, well, I think you raised a good point. There’s a matter of self-interpretation that’s at work that can be problematic. That’s what I heard you saying. I’m not I’m not creative. That’s a self-identification. And that is in some way problematic. And then what I’m what I what’s coming up for me is, well, the given what we’ve been saying, it’s not just a problematic of who we are, it’s a problematic of how we’re conceiving of creativity. We’ve been talking about creativity in a way that I think, you know, the Bible was trying to get at, but we tend to and the Bible is also partially responsible for this, we try and we tend to think of creativity on the model of. Artifact making. Making a table. Right. Right. There’s a classic example, right. And we’re not talking about that. We’re not. I’m not. I’m not saying people can’t be they can’t realize creativity in making a table. They can. But the point is not the act. The point is whether or not it’s doing what we’ve been talking about here. And if you understand creativity as the making of an artifact, then, of course, you start to subject yourself to notions of expertise. Right. Well, I can’t do it because look what the carpenter can do. Yep. Right. Now, the thing is, expertise only the problem also with expertise is we use it in a completely equivocal fashion. Sometimes we mean it like what what what the carpenter is or what the tennis player is, and sometimes we mean it as a synonym, just Bill is really good at it. Right. That’s what all the word expertise means. So that’s a vacuous use. I’m not talking about that use. I’m talking about when somebody says, well, the carpenter can make a much better table than I am. Therefore, I’m not creative. Right. And look at look at Peter. He can paint pictures much better than I am. So I’m not creative. Right. And what I want to say about this and this is comes right out of Plato, because Plato will involve will invoke the technique metaphor technique, the making the procedure. And I’m getting to your point, Ethan. And yet he will throw it away when he talks about wisdom. Rootstik has an excellent book on this, an art and technique and wisdom in Plato. And the reason for that is what we’re really that’s why I made that distinction between evolving a trait and evolving of all of availability. Right. The expert can create what’s called a small world. A small world is one in which the problems are largely well defined. The risks are known and there is not a radical amount of novelty through emergence in that domain. So it’s reasonable for somebody to become an expert in tennis. It’s reasonable for somebody to come an expert in making tables. It’s not reasonable for somebody to become an expert in creativity in the way we’re talking about it, that that because we’re not talking about something that fits a domain, we’re talking about something, right, that opens you up to the large world, the uncertain world, the world with emergence and complexity and ill definiteness. And you can’t be an expert. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t practice. And that’s what I’m trying to make an argument of how we have to pull these things apart in order to answer your question, Ethan. It’s people as long as people are carrying the maker of artifacts expertise model, they will consider this as themselves not creative. But that’s precisely because they have mistaken and think about that word, mistaken creativity in the wrong way. And this is something that Plato keeps hammering on. But the thing he’s hammering on about, and this is so resonant, he says, but that’s how wisdom is. Wisdom is not an expertise. If you make it an expertise, then you fundamentally mistaken it. You want to have the competence of the expert. And that’s what that’s how he’s challenging the focus. But it’s not an expertise precisely because it’s what but it’s exactly what we’re talking about with creativity now. Sorry, that was a long answer. I was trying to make a very careful argument about answering your question. Can I just check if I’ve understood it correctly, because I hear what you’re what you’re articulating is something that I think has been plaguing artists for a long time, which is that the expertise, the expertise insofar as you very eloquently put it, is very much more what we would call product oriented. And it manifests itself as such, whereas creativity is more process is a process. So we are trying to make a process oriented argument. But we’re falling into what we’re at least we’re trying to make sure that we’re very, very precise about not falling into the gap where we treat creativity, the process as a product to refine. That’s right. Yes. And what I’m trying to say exactly. And that and then consonant with that is to not confuse creativity with expertise or wisdom with expertise. And I think insofar as every human being has a capacity. For self transcending relevance, realization or catching and following the logos, given our previous argument, every human being is fundamentally creative in a way in which they can’t say, oh, I’m not creative. That’s that’s that’s the point I’m trying to make. Does that resonate with what you said about product and process? Yes. Yes, perfectly. Yeah. Sorry, Kevin, you want to say something? Yeah, it. There’s another sort of like angle that comes up a lot, like the idea of being an artist is one of these sort of like. Impediments to creativity, right, people see artists and they think, oh, I’m not that I’ll never I’ll never be Miles Davis, so. You know, there’s a sort of like a shrug of the shoulders. I’m not the gifted, you know, creative artist. Flock or, you know, that’s not my genetic makeup or it’s not how my life has gone. So creativity is just not going to be part of who and what I am. I can’t build an identity out of creativity. Those artists get to do that. And I’ve had that conversation and there’s a real yearning and almost a sadness when people sort of have defined themselves that tightly, right, that I’m not an artist and it’s as if the container of artistry also is holding the container of creativity. And they haven’t done this thing that you just so well articulated. You’re separating them and just saying creativity is not art creation. It’s not the it’s not the creation of the artifact. It is the. Engagement with the world with. With certain mindsets, certain qualities, certain stances, certain joys and certain flows that. Brings meaning to life and engagement and that confoundment of those two things, I think, is a real. It’s created a lot of sadness, I think, for a lot of people. I’ve come up with the metaphor before that I felt resonated and I’m curious if it resonates with you. Like this idea that we’ve sort of separated ourselves from nature, you know, this this idea that nature’s out there and here we are stuck in this sort of you know, separated deeply and your meaning crisis did a nice job at really labeling that and like how far we are. And I feel that like I feel that having, you know, a Western dude far away and like the idea of me being nature is something I have to actively remind myself of. And that distance. Is similar to the distance that we do with creativity and art like we put art, we put art on a wall in a museum, in the bar, in the on the stage. And it’s like I sit there and look at it like I look at a beautiful lake or a beautiful tree and it’s an it’s an other. It’s not me and it’s inspiring and beautiful. And it’s something that I might care about, but I’m not of. And I would like in both those domains to make a shift. And I think the meaning crisis would be well served by language and practice that could close. Is it closing or opening that gap to make us to make us know that we are nature and to know that we are creative? Ironically, as I’m doing this, I’m realize, well, nature is creative. So there’s this there there might be the through line in the in the center there. Is that is that landing is? Yeah. And I hear you making a positive specific proposal about what you’ve just said, which is can we shift creativity off the production of artifacts, art and onto the process of the cultivation of wisdom, where is there available and then it’s then available to everyone at all time. And no one should ever claim to be an expert in wisdom. I mean, an expert in being wise. I mean, people can study the theories of wisdom and get that kind of scientific expertise, but I’m putting that aside. That’s not what I’m talking about. So people don’t misunderstand me. I’m talking about I mean, it’s a ridiculous thing to. Well, I’m I’m, you know, I I I’m the most beautiful example of wisdom. Like you just saying that it’s a performance. It’s a performance. It’s a performance of contradiction. Anybody who would utter that is giving you tons of evidence that they are not, in fact, a wise individual. Right. And so, yeah, I think that that I’m very excited about this positive proposal, because, like I said, this proposal that I’m hearing is so converges with Plato’s proposal about how we should understand wisdom and why we can only love it. Why we can only love it. We can never be gods. We can always only love it. And in the same way you’re I think you’re you’re you’re saying, well, like when we properly understand creativity, everybody’s creative and everybody can. Engage in that creativity as a way of cultivating. Wisdom, I think that’s an amazing and powerful proposal. Because then the issue doesn’t matter, are you an artist or not? The issue is, are you becoming are you becoming wiser and more virtuous or not? Right. And even the word wisdom might sort of like freak some people out. But how about just are you becoming more well? Are you becoming more in tune? Are you more like this is where we started this conversation. Are you able to move in and out of randomness with grace? Are you able to negotiate this complex space with dexterity and lightness? Now, you might say that that would be an instance of wisdom, someone who’s able to do it. Labels as you know, art is a label and it’s got its its pitfalls. And I think wisdom also has its pitfalls. Like when I talk to people just randomly like, oh, what are you into? And I’ll mention, you know, I’ve been really digging into wisdom lately and creativity, and I’ve been watching this guy, Vervecky. And, you know, it’s a tough conversation. Like it’s a it’s you know what I mean? It it has a hard time. I’m finding I have to. Yes, I have to. What do I have to do? I’m trying to fit myself, right? I guess I’m doing it again, right? I’m sitting in a social space and I’m realizing that’s not going to be the right language to fit into this social moment. But simultaneously, I feel. That it’s such an important, rich part of my life that to not share it would be foolhardy and sad, right? So I’m trying to find. Avenues of sort of, yeah, ease into those conversations and wisdom is not the first word out of my mouth anymore because of that. No, it nor should it be. And this is the same Plato said that, too. I mean, we’ve come to a place. How have we come to this place where that term is so we’re so alienated from it that invoking it causes, you know, like it almost causes an aporia just to use the word, right? Yeah. It’s like, so, I mean, I think you’re right. I’m not going to stop talking about it because. Oh, no, please don’t. Yeah. No, no, and I knew you weren’t asked me to, but I would recommend to people who are doing the. Doing the kind of thing you’re talking about, Kevin, talk the way you were just talking and exemplify wisdom. Don’t talk, don’t name it, exemplify it, exemplify it and use the other language you were using about the discerning of the through line and the ability to attune to the creativity in the world so that you can conform to people will get all of that. That’s right. Get exactly right. And creativity, if I might make a pitch for it, the creativity is a word that doesn’t have that if you can separate it from art, like we’re not making art here. But the idea of being creative is. Has a lot of. Stallions for people, it’s really motivating, it’s it’s it’s it’s catchy. Yeah, it’s it’s exciting. It’s it’s doesn’t seem that far away. Like they might say that I’m not creative, but. It’s a yearning for it in a way they’re not. Oh, I wish I was wise. They’re not doing that, but they’re but they are feeling. This bliss of being near creativity and to have a moment where you can have you can surprise yourself a little bit and have a giggle and, you know, like these little moments are very easy to catch because we’re so adept at it. Right. We’re so good at this as human beings. Like it doesn’t take much to have a moment that is joyful and surprising and that we could label as creativity and that we could then sort of. Once labeled, we could sort of. Conceive of it as practice, conceive of it as habitually possible to enter this flow state more often to make it to make it. Something that people would want to do and. I kind of see my. I hope that I can sort of. Offer this, you know, in creativity workshops and just sort of talking about it. And as a teacher, I do this. Creating spaces where that happens. A lot, you know, and it’s like, and it’s just sort of happening and it’s like now you’re in it and there’s belonging has occurred. Engagement has incurred, has occurred. You’ve surprised yourself. So you’ve transcended the dull sort of like status quo of yourself. And you’re like you’re you’re flitting up here. It’s like, pay attention. That’s a new you. And it’s obviously given you some I could see it on your face like you’re joyous. Don’t we want to. Revisit and habitually revisit and own that place. That’s not intimidating to people in the way that wisdom cultivation gives. Sure. It is not. Sorry, John, I want to I want to pick up on something that you’ve just said, Kevin, which I thought is really important. This is habitual practice for me. This aspect of it as a as a fellow educator, the fact that somebody can do this and hit that point of possibility, move it into a space of plausibility that things can be constantly done. A place of probability is like, oh, now I can test how often I can get there and then get to the fluency of something like perform ability, being able to get there quite consistently. Great alliteration, by the way, that was great. I’m a poet, they say. But to use another alliteration that is present in our space, it feels to me like creativity is well, properly tuned relevance, realization at will. And what I would say about that is like, is this sense of, you know, we keep talking around this idea, you can find the world in a grain of sand. It’s the habitual practice thing is being able to train yourself to look at that grain of sand until the world discloses itself to you. And you can choose to do that whenever you want. Any grain of sand is OK. Any shirt, any color, any item, any whatsoever. All of those available, but just because it’s available doesn’t mean that I let it take my attention willy nilly and be distracted and reactionary to everything. Is that, you know, like Jackson Pollock comes to mind, the man chose his colors. He chose his colors. He chose the size of his canvas. People choose their instrument. And so it’s almost as if it funnels through. I’m going to constrain my relevance realization until it affords me this opening. OK, I see everybody nodding. This is great. Well, in the morning, yeah, I want to thank you for being here so early in the morning. You’re accommodating my schedule, which I really appreciate, Ethan. So I wanted to pick up on both something Kevin said and what you said, Ethan. I think it picks up on both of those. And then they’ll allow me to get a question back. Yeah, wisdom is to intimidating creativity, although there’s a way I can talk to people that does take with them very quickly. I often if I say I’m setting wisdom, they do what you talked about, Kevin. But when I say, well, I’m studying how people to deceive themselves and get fall prey to bullshit, then they’re interested. Yes. And they’re very, very interested because they’re not thinking of it as sitting on top of a mountain pronouncing semi obscure words while chimes are ringing in the background or something like that. Instead, what they’re realizing is, oh, no, this is what I mean when I say wisdom isn’t optional, that overcoming self-deception is really crucial. And Ethan, you just invoked it at the end there. You were talking about like, but I, you know, doing that, you know, doing this relevance realization at will. Is it Greenhouse who says magic is the ability to alter consciousness at will? Right. Right. Right. And so if consciousness has to do with salience, landscaping, it overlaps with your proposal. And the problem there, right, of course, is, like you said, but that doesn’t mean we give in to the cacophony. We’ve been always careful to say, no, no, we’re not doing cacophony. We’re finding a through line. We’re not. And so putting this putting this together, the question emerges. And this is where the connection to wisdom needs to be clarified, solidified. How do we make sure that this process we’ve been talking about isn’t falling into isn’t becoming rife with self deceptive. Self destructive behavior and, you know, and not to lean too heavily onto the romantic tradition because it can’t support very much weight, at least the decadent version that we have. I’m aware that there are great thinkers within the romantic tradition. But, you know, there is there’s always been a concern. And Plato brings this up, right? He talks about how the poets are ultimately filled with a divine madness, right, and this proposal. Now, I think that is too much of a romantic trope that the artist is the is the mad genius and all that crazy crap. I’m trying to pluck the kernel out of this, which is if you’re starting to open yourself up in the way we’ve been talking about, right. And, Ethan, you were invoking it yet, but there has to be something that’s stabilizing that so that this just doesn’t give in to, you know, a cacophony of self deceptive bullshit. I know a lot of people who think they’re creative and they show me their poetry and I go. Yeah, because I know from long like, you know, I don’t consider myself a great poet or anything like that, but the people who read my poetry find it good, whatever that means. But what I’m trying to get at is I had to write a lot of bad poetry for a very long time and I had to be able to recognize that I was writing bad poetry in order to become more genuinely creative. So I know from experience that there is a proclivity and temptation to self deception within those who pursue creativity. Now, I know you both have responses to it. That’s why I’m posing it as a question to you. Kevin, do you mind if I if I just come in on this first? So, John, I think that when you are when you are articulating this example, you know, OK, I heard you say that I know plenty of people who think that they’re creative, but they’re actually kind of like. I want to push back on that a little bit and slightly because I think that, or at least in my experience, I’ve met people who think they are artists and I actually but they are actually creative people. And I’m trying to call back to what Kevin was articulating earlier, which is that we have to pass out creativity from artistry, right, to call oneself an artist, to assume an identity, an identity which would be normally imposed from the external. And why I say that is because like what moves something, what moves a poem that you write or a song that you write, Kevin, from the realm of what I’m calling the textual, what moves away from being an artifact into art itself is the subjective experience. So one cannot call oneself an artist in the same one cannot in the same way one cannot call oneself wise. Now, if I’m going to lean on this as a foundation and say, and I think it’s constant with what we’ve been discussing this entire time, which is that creativity seems to be a baseline upon which artistry has the potential to emerge upon meeting with the world, in this case, a social environment, then you earn the name of artist. OK, good for you. Right. Then the point that I’m that I’m wanting to kind of like tease out this this kernel is if I could lean on the Jackson Pollock example from earlier, what are the constraints that we’re putting on and how does that lead to wisdom? Let me see if this lands with the room. If Pollock’s going to choose his paints, then what if our paints are virtues? So I want to have a little bit of honesty on this canvas. I want to have a little bit of, you know, benevolence, some rectitude. I mean, I wrote the paper on this for my masters. It was a it was a paper on what is it called? The cognitive science of wisdom towards a practical framework of facilitation and actor training. So I made a case I made a case for this that if the canvas that we are painting on is life, the paints are virtues that I want to go, OK, let’s be creative and say, I want to be honest about how I’m feeling at the moment and I can go. I feel kind of nervous because I’m at the edge of my thinking or I can go. I notice that my words are stuttering a little bit. I’m kind of slowing down. I’m feeling a little bit breathless. I really want to take my time. And I almost feel like I’m a ship and I don’t I can’t quite tell if the storm is coming. That’s what I’m trying to. Exemplify. Does that make sense? Yes, it does, but I’m going to push back on your pushback. Like both virtue and virtuosity are not the same thing as just doing something novel that you happen to like. That’s what I was trying to get at. Similarly, like a virtue, a virtue is like I think Aristotle’s right. Virtue is is the virtuosity of steering between excess and deficit. Right. It’s not creative to just come into a room and sort of smash it with a hammer. Maybe it is, but I’m just saying I’m trying to use a relatively non controversial example, right. And all you’re doing is just sort of destroying and causing chaos. Right. That’s that, you know, neither neither is it creativity. Right. To just mechanically repeat your habits without challenging them. I’m trying. Do you see there’s so this is in the insight, like in the insight literature, even in the creativity literature within cognitive science, right. It’s like it’s not just novelty. It’s not even novelty that you like. It’s novelty that isn’t somehow appropriate. I mean, I want to hold you both to the commitment to fittedness, right. So there’s lots I could do with when I’m trying to be creative in poetry that doesn’t do the fittedness. I know there’s a tension and I’m asking us to explore it. There’s a sense in which we all have this underlying relevance realization capacity. But there are also the moments of magic that Kevin’s been talking about. And there is an important difference there. And there’s something in if we’re going to we’re going to recommend practicing to people, we have to do what you said. We have like, what are the constraints that allow for the virtual engineering of the virtuosity? So people don’t careen into the gutters, but keep finding the through line. That’s my pushback. Yes. And and I want to integrate these two. This this dialectic, I suppose. Right. Which is that what you’re articulating is that the novelty is not just whatever is out there, but is actually founded on self-reflection, is founded on the lower order and what novel relative to that lower order. So we can move to a higher order. Have I understood that? I think it’s right, except I would say it’s not just self-reflection. It’s also reflection on the world. It’s also reflection on other people. I would properly call it wonder in the sense that is different from curiosity. And I think I think we make artifacts to answer our curiosity, but we get involved in creativity when we are engaged in wonder. And that’s and wisdom begins in wonder. That’s what I’m trying to invoke. I’m trying to invoke like, like. I want to I want to know, because here’s my concern, I guess I’ll put it as a concern, then I want to hear what Kevin has to say. If there’s no way in which what we’re talking about can help with problems of self-deception, then it will fail for me a fundamental. Requirement for it to be helping in the cultivation of virtue and wisdom. That’s I’ll put it as boldly as that. OK. Well, one thing that’s coming to mind is that creativity is not. There’s many hats to it. And one of the hats is sort of a judge hat where you step outside of the flow of that sort of fiery part of the creative process and you can practice this dialogically, you know, sort of step outside and look at what you. Where you are, what you’re doing, you could you could do it physically with the poem. And. Having had the so I guess what I’ll do is I’ll sort of exact from a practical experience of writing a poem and then consider it as a. Maybe an analogy to doing the same thing with one’s bullshit detectors and pitfalls in one’s own life. So you you write a poem and you’re in the flow and it’s feeling good. And you’re so high on yourself and you might get a little bit of the ego buzz because the flow was cool and it felt right. If I’m going to be your teacher and we’re going to be talking about creativity, I’m very proud of you at this moment, this is great. But we ain’t done. That was one hat. That was one. Expression and the complexity of what this creative process is going to have, I’m going to say, put that away for now, let’s do something else for a while. Let’s come back to it with a judge. Framing and it’s it’s got a different. Stance, it’s got a different attitude and it and it and it reads it maybe in tandem with an editor like like it might be with someone else, like really prodding, really pushing, and you have to have this discipline of finding another purchase and probably several purchases in and around your creativity that have a different voice, have a different agenda and that those things are equally relevant and important. And I’ll do the exact jump now. We can do this with our lives, right? We can we can we can be doing stuff and feeling really good. You’re falling in love and it’s like, and then probably not a bad idea, man, in the in the flux of an infatuation to sort of like. Not see her for a day or two and talk with a buddy. And, you know, maybe write your journal. Yeah. Am I losing myself? Is this a pattern I’ve been in before? Do I just fall in love and then get hurt and screwed up? And do I know, is am I here before? And can I talk to a community member, a friend, a parent? And, you know. You know, you’re you’re good at doing this, John, right? Like, yeah, let me let me change my frame on this. And creativity is a frame shifting game. And it is a constant biological play. So the. If we’re going to make a practice of creativity, that language is really important and it’s and. And because it’s being wedded in my consciousness now with virtue and with the true and the good and the beautiful, like those that language is. I think, you know, has enough pedigree that it should be it should be part of of the practice, right? And that. So we can have some sort of. These purchases outside of ourself, the dialogical practice of accessing different versions of ourselves can be. Practiced themselves, trained to look for true, good and beautiful, trained to sniff out self-deception and bullshit and in community, we do it all the time. Like a really good say, the film the film program that I teach is called Studio LC. And the concept of the studio is what I really like. And I talk about explicitly and I I sort of bring to mind what a studio might be like if you were like an art studio and everybody’s working on a canvas. What’s that called when it’s on a tripod there? Easel or something like that. And you get to walk around like so other people are seeing your art. You’re seeing other people’s art. There’s a model up front. You’ve got 13, 25 different versions of of expression that are going on. And in a studio, you get to see it all. Right. It’s not an it’s not a. Yeah. It’s not an it’s not a. Yeah, I know. It’s not a mono experience. It’s a it’s a it’s a communal experience. And we can help each other. Steer out of bullshit, I think, and I think we need each other. We need our dialogical sort of language to be attuned to bullshit. We need to. Practice like listening to our guts in our hearts, right? Like if we’re if we’re approaching some kind of bullshit, you should. I think you can train yourself to be like, oh, I’ve had that feeling before. Like I like I recognize the telltale, right? Yeah. We give that stuff language, we give it. Concern and we give it language, we give it fellowship. Yeah, so I’m feeling that to answer your question, we have to access. More parts of creativity than just the. The initial flux and infatuation and flow, like there’s other parts to this game that need attention and. Ernest. Practice. What a beautiful answer. Oh, thank you. I ask, can I ask a clarifying question? Yeah, sure. Because you are you are very beautifully articulating and invoking this like identity shifting part of it and wearing different hats, right? So running off of John’s earlier point about integrity, because that seems to have been a through line running throughout this conversation. Is it do you also? Is there any indication that when they’re moving from the creator identity to the judge identity, that there are some that bullshit detector is actually still consistent, are they both are both hats equally invested in being aware of potential bullshit and staying away from that? No, I think I think they’re very different. I think I think. I think the so this is going to get a bit confounding, but these are this is the language that I stole from a guy named Roger Van Ouch in his book, a whack upside the head. It was very helpful to me early when I was teaching creativity and he had the artist, the explorer, the artist, the judge and the warrior, which were four hats and stances in the world. The artist is, in my estimation, the one that is in full flight. Practicing getting into the flow state, joyful romp, and the judge is not invited to that experience. You you you get good at being. Monolithic in your attention in a creative, in say, when you’re being the artist. And in that moment, you’re just going to let bullshit in. Like, you’re just going to like you’re going to like that’s going to be part of the. Part of the joy of it is going to be. A giddy ride. But you give equal attention to the judge and the artist isn’t allowed in with the judges. So when the judge you attune yourself and I’ve been writing long enough that it’s like I can have a real joyful romp of an artist moment. And then I come back to it with my judge pen and I was bullshit. You know, it was it was lame. Like I my all of my expectation of how awesome that moment was can be deflated when the judge comes in. I can see that. Yeah, it’s a. It feels I would be embarrassed to show it. Right. So that’s good. Right. That that’s I think that to partially answer John’s concern, right, is like we we. Are capable of bullshitting ourselves. We are. We get exuberant in ways that are unfitted, but we don’t have to rest there like that’s that’s just that was just one party. You know what? Enjoy some bullshit, you know, while while it’s happening, but recognize that there’s going to be some temperance. There’s going to be there’s going to be a time to get a different purchase on that thing. And that can be practiced. And again, I think that is acceptable into living. So you there’s basically like you’re exemplifying an evolutionary model, right? Creativity isn’t just the variation, it’s also the selection. Yes, that then constrains the future variation that then and this I think this is what you were trying to do to some degree, Ethan, with your funneling. Right. And then maybe what what it is, is there’s a higher order. Ability, which would be evolve ability as opposed to the evolution of a trait, which is people can get attuned to that rhythm very well, yes, they can catch the rhythm very, very well. Gentlemen, I think we’re going to need to draw it to a close or we’re going to get too long, but we’re going to have to continue this. This was wonderful. And the three of us form, I think, a wonderful triangle for getting the logos, the way things were bouncing around and sparking and then catching was really wonderful. So I’m just going to where we’re not ending this, we’re just closing it off so it doesn’t get too long and we’ll pick this up again. And I’ve done it all. And I want to just thank both of you. And if you could briefly, I like to give my guests a final word. Maybe we’ll start the other way around with you first, Ethan. Just sort of what parting words after this? Would you like to leave with the with the viewers? I like to look at a blade of grass for as long as I can. Until it changes the way I see. That’s very cool. Kevin, get some Walt Whitman in there. Yeah, I just I just want to sort of express gratitude for this community that I’ve been fairly new for me. It feels like I’ve been. It’s nice at this age to sort of like feel reinvigorated like this. It feels like a chapter, you know, and and it’s very. I’m. They’re exciting and I’m full of gratitude for what the other people that I’ve met and for the I’ve been doing a lot of writing in and around this stuff, and I think there’s probably a book in me now and, you know, there’s. Yeah, it’s for kind of and so for the two of you have been a big part of that. So so thank you. And I would also, I guess, make a pitch to the to the broader world. Anybody listening to this? I, as I’ve just expressed, I’m keen on on this corner of the Internet, I guess they saw the the the the practices, ecologies of practices that are evolving around this space. I sort of would like to make an invitation. We’ll put my I have an email address that’s sort of like designed for this space. So it’s not just my normal email, but I’ll check it routinely after this. I made so many nice contacts by having done that last time on your on this show. And so, yeah, I just an invitation to the world. If any of this notion of creativity and wisdom creation, it doesn’t have to be creativity, just sort of a notion of living and thriving and connecting. If you see some. Um, coherence and some vibrations between the kinds of words that are spoken here and how you’d like to spend some time and steer our lives together, I would love to hear from you. And I look forward to that. Thank you, Kevin. Everyone should know both Ethan and Kevin are going to are already partnering with and are going to be doing things for the Vervecky Foundation. There’s some workshops in the works. Yes, intended. And and so this is the beginning of an I hope an ongoing relationship. So it’s been great. My friends, thank you very, very much. I touch my heart. Thanks, guys.