The Mindful Activist Episode 1, part 1 – Officer Chris Mason
Matt: All right, so we are recording on Zoom, and we’re streaming this up to YouTube. I could stop this, that would — So YouTube is getting something and it says one person’s watching. That might be me.
Chris: Woo! All right!
Matt: Okay, uhm, should we go ahead and pretend this is how — I mean you can hear me enough to sort of like, think we can get by?
Chris: Yes. Yes, actually, if I close my eyes and don’t look at the video —
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: — it’s probably a lot easier and less confusing.
Matt: [Laughs]
Chris: Although I’ll look a little peculiar [crosstalk].
Matt: [Laughs] I mean, I could uhm, what else could I do? I could — that’s too bad that the video, that your bandwidth — I think we’re going to blame that on your bandwidth. You’re using just your cell phone, right? And so —
Chris: You’ll blame that on me?
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: Good.
Matt: So I think — ‘cos I can see YouTube is getting the video.
Chris: Sure.
Matt: It’s getting that all right, so I assume Zoom is doing okay.
Chris: All right. It’s getting better.
Matt: Okay. All right, should we, uhm, shall I share this on Facebook in case anyone wants to watch? As the last —
[Laughter]Chris: That I leave up to you. You have complete control.
Matt: Yeah. I did tell somebody I would share the link. What I’m going to do is, I’m going to share the Zoom link, ‘cos that’ll be the most fun for someone to join.
Chris: So they could watch this scintillating conversation as it happens.
Matt: They actually could join it if they use the Zoom link.
Chris: So they could muscle in on the conversation.
Matt: Yeah, but I’m the host. I control over whether or not they, you know, we kick them out, or mute them, or whatever.
Chris: [Laughs]
Matt: And actually I posted the Zoom link on to Twitter, so technically anyone in the world could, you know —
Chris: Any of your followers.
Matt: Well, yeah, anyone that notices it on.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: All right, so —
Chris: How many followers do you have on Twitter?
Matt: Not many.
Chris: Okay.
Matt: There, I posted the link and then we can edit it, so say something like —
Chris: You’re very dark.
Matt: Yeah. I could turn the light on.
Chris: Like you’re in a shadowy room. I can just see your disembodied face.
Matt: Really?
Chris: With nothing around.
Matt: [Laughs]
Chris: With a weird sort of halo effect from your microphone.
Matt: [Laughs]
Chris: Like some sort of Dark Angel.
Matt: [Laughs] Okay, [typing] first test live broadcast of our podcast The Mindful Activist happening now. Two ways to watch from. That’s done — and then, uhm, another link I should do. 9:15, that’s not too bad for a late start, although officially we still haven’t really started.
Chris: Right.
[Laughter]Chris: Unless this is just the nature of the interview.
Matt: No, no. I actually do want us to — oh, hey! How’s it going? Someone just joined us.
Chris: Excellent. Oh yea, I see another dot. There’s another dot.
Matt: [Laughs] His name is H, but he left.
Chris: He left.
Matt: [Laughs]
Chris: That was like a fly-by.
Matt: That was pretty wild though. Look, I mean, I guess that’s from Twitter. Someone just joined in.
Chris: Yeah, he buzzed the tower.
Matt: Yeah. Well, that was an experience. Someone just joined, I mean — all right, how do I — I’m going brain dead here. I’m going to share this other video. Okay, I think I found it.
Chris: Great. You’re coming through really smooth now.
Matt: Sweet. May be that fly-by visitor was the key. He blocked the passages [laughs] unblocked.
Chris: I think you just need to not move around so much.
Matt: Okay. Ready, I’m — this is it. I’m going to post this link. May be I’ll extend it to the couple of the five people on Facebook I told about this, I’ll send them the link also.
Chris: Okay.
Matt: And then we’ll officially start the interview and I’ll stop [laughs] the technical stuff, which is totally distracting. [Unintelligible 00:06:25] send a text message about them. Can I do that?
[Pause]Matt: So I didn’t go as smart not to promote this to like, everyone, because this is a little bit like a rough start.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: Okay. All right, we’re going to call that, that’s enough technical work and a little bit of sharing and we are broadcasting and we’re recording. All right, so, we’re going to begin. So I’m going to do a little intro. Ready? Hey out there, this is Matt Ready, the host of The Mindful Activist Podcast. This is our first live episode, and with me today is Christopher Mason. Thank you for being here today, Chris.
Chris: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Matt: Why don’t you introduce yourself? How would you like to introduce yourself to our vast audience?
Chris: [Laughs] Well I think you just did such a comprehensive joke, there really isn’t much for me to add to that.
Matt: [Laughs] Yes, your name is Christopher —
Chris: These people probably have a very clear sense of who I am and what I stand for.
Matt: [Laughs] Do you, I mean, would you — you want me to introduce you —
[Laughter]Matt: Or you could just — how would you want it? I mean you can, you know, we sort of talked about this in our last interview on air together, although also on this show, how you would want to be introduced to an audience of random viewers?
Chris: [Laughs] Yeah, I think if you just start talking about me and then I’ll interrupt as you go and fill in some of the blanks.
Matt: Okay. All right. Well, so it is great having Chris here today. Chris is a really old friend of mine. He’s very very old, as you can see, ages bad.
[Laugher]Matt: We met at the University of Maryland, in Carlsbad, Maryland.
Chris: Also true.
Matt: Yes. We were both Philosophy Majors and —
Chris: Some of us more than others, though.
Matt: Oh, you’re saying between us, one of us was more the philosopher than the other?
[Laughter]Matt: Is that what you’re saying?
Chris: No, I think we were both pretty committed. [unintelligible 00:09:30].
Matt: Yeah. That was our — absolutely.
Chris: Yeah [unintelligible 00:09:35] bones.
Matt: And you entered college as a Philosophy Major, is that right?
Chris: Yes.
Matt: And I entered as a Mechanical Engineering Major.
Chris: Right. So you’re a combat.
Matt: Yes. And we became bosom buddies in college and we explored life and went through school during that one year at University of Maryland and then the next year back at the University of Bristol, where there was an exchange program, and you were doing your final year, and I did my third year of college there. And —
Chris: We had adventures together, glorious adventures.
Matt: Many adventures.
Chris: Exploring the dark underbelly of Bristol.
Matt: Yeah, yeah. And we travelled around Europe, and down to the Keys together, and then eventually, you know, both graduated and sort of like went off on our different ways for many years, and you lived in a community and eventually you became a police officer in a small town in Vermont.
Chris: I did. Yes.
Matt: And you had your own TV show, Local-access TV show, just like Wayne’s World.
[Laughter]Chris: Very similar. It’s muddled on Wayne’s World actually. That’s what I based it on.
Matt: Yeah.
[Laughter]Chris: Called Middlebury [unintelligible 00:11:18].
Matt: Yes.
Chris: I left my hippie days behind me, cut my hair, gave up my career as a professional artist and moved to Vermont, became a police officer.
Matt: Yeah. And how’s that going for you?
Chris: It’s going great. I’m loving it. Wonderful. [Laughs] I love being a police officer.
Matt: Is there a lot of violent crime in the small town where you live?
Chris: There’s really very little crime at all, so I would say almost no violent crime. A little bit here and there, but a very very tiny amount, and crime in general, a very very low rate of crime. Middlebury is a very small town, it has about six and a half thousand people in Middlebury.
Matt: Well, there’s only one question that I’ve considered standard for this show.
[Laugher]Chris: Okay, so this could be a very brief interview.
Matt: Well, that question it, you know, it’s a launching point. Depends on —
Chris: The question is, what is your favorite color?
[Laughter]Matt: Might as well, you brought that up. You have a favorite color?
Chris: Purple. Definitely purple.
Matt: Mine too, it is. Okay, I didn’t actually know that. Okay. The question that I’ve asked in all previous interviews is, do you consider yourself an activist?
Chris: Sort of. I consider myself a revolutionary.
Matt: Really? Well that’s a step up from activist, I would say.
Chris: Yeah, may be so.
Matt: So why do you — can you expand on that? Why do you consider yourself a revolutionary?
Chris: I believe joy is a revolutionary act, and I’m a very joyful person. I’m very happy.
Matt: So in just pursuing joy, as sort of the purpose of your life, that’s why you consider yourself revolutionary?
Chris: Absolutely.
Matt: So you’re not saying in terms of social revolution of major power structures in the world, that’s not your — that’s not a focus of yours.
Chris: No. No, I’ve very deliberately decided not to focus upon that.
Matt: And why is that?
Chris: Because I don’t feel like I have the insight to be able to affect change in a reliably positive manner.
[Distant chatter]Matt: Wow, so yeah, another person just jumped in for a second.
Chris: I heard that.
[Laughter]Chris: So I feel like I, you know, I have some ideas, I have a sense of what an enlightened political system might be, but I am aware that it’s such a complicated thing that I can’t possibly have complete insight, and my notions of what constitute a positive political system may themselves be flawed. So in trying to affect change on that level, I might very well have a negative impact on the world. So I don’t feel a tremendous amount of confidence that if I dedicated myself to that, the outcome would be positive, whereas if I dedicate myself to personal happiness, there’s a lot greater chance that the impact will be positive. It’s a lot more reliable.
Matt: So you’re hesitant to be at all a sort of puppet master for what goes on in the world, ‘cos you don’t have confidence, you really know what to do, what to change, so that the world would be a better place.
Chris: Correct. Yes. I’m not really an idealistic person in that sense.
Matt: In what sense?
Chris: In the sense of affecting change on a macroscopic level, impacting world politics or even national politics.
Matt: Because you — well, that’s because you just don’t — it’s not because you don’t care, or do not care, what happens on a macroscopic scale like that.
Chris: I would say that I care, that it affects me, but things that are closer to me, things that are more immediate, impact me far more. So I choose to focus my energies on those things. So it’s a fairly abstract sense of caring, so it doesn’t have the immediacy and the vigor of my tangible relationships, and my connections in the community in which I live.
Matt: Yeah, it’s a topic that I sort of think about all the time, the pursuit of personal happiness in our, sort of, the microcosm of our individual life versus pursuing anything to do with trying to make the world a better place. ‘Cos there really are, there are very different spheres of life, and I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last three years, more than I ever have before in my life, sort of like spent a lot of energy focused on trying to think how can we change the world in a way to make it better, and it takes a lot of attention away from — it can take a lot of attention away from your personal joy, personal happiness, to focus on such big things, and a large part of myself, I don’t feel — I don’t feel like my personal happiness is tied to the state of the world. I don’t have much problem to, you know, separating those two things.
Chris: Yeah. It seems to me so often idealism is rendered ironic through politics.
Matt: What do you mean by that?
Chris: When there’s a passionate, fairly rigid sense of how things should be and a country, a group of people works towards that end and they’re successful, it seems that often the consequences are, in many ways, the opposite of what they were ostensibly struggling to achieve.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: So there’ll be a struggle for freedom and liberty, and the consequences will be oppression.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: Some very violent form of cleansing, brutality.
Matt: Yeah, I mean, my perspective on the people that make big efforts to try to lead movements to really change their countries over the course of history, they get caught up in the power they gain through trying to change their country, change the state of things, and then really just sort of get addicted to having the power over what decisions are made about resources and situations they don’t — and may be also they just didn’t — no one’s ever really known how to implement a government that was not prone to oppression. May be they’ve just never really been — no one’s really never, you know — Socrates, he had the theory of the, or Plato had the theory of the philosopher can’t [unintelligible 00:20:31] you just need to put in power incredibly wise person or people, that’s the solution.
Chris: Sure.
Matt: Then there never has seemed to work. It’s not how power works.
[Laughter]Chris: Right. Well, I think idealism itself is toxic.
Matt: Idealism is toxic?
Chris: Yes. The notion that you absolutely know what is right, what is fundamentally correct, and that fused with the desire to impose it upon the world, I think it is a toxic thing.
Matt: Yeah, there’s nothing, you know, I mean there’s lots of self-righteous people in the world but activists, very self-righteous in their idealism, and I think it like, it can really hold up activists from working together because they have — they’re very fixated on their own ideas of what is right, what is best, and what is most important. I mean, [unintelligible 00:21:43], occupying movement, or facilitating general assemblies, it’s a lot of people with a good heart, everyone basically knows they want, you know, they want to reduce oppression in the world and make things more fair, but people have different priorities and it’s very tricky facilitating and helping groups like that come together so they can do — make any sort of action that’s productive.
Chris: I think one of the big problems is that our model, the framework that we have for making sense of issues, and political systems even, is very — it works upon a polarized model, an adversarial model, so typically you have two competing systems of thought, of politics, whatever it might be, and they’re struggling together for ascendancy. And that model is fundamentally oppressive, where one has power over the other. So often when there’s a movement for social change, it accepts that model in some sense, so the struggle is to combat oppression but the goal is to, in a sense, become the oppressor, and I don’t think it’s stated in those terms, you know, [unintelligible 00:23:15] a massive reduction, but I think when people approach it, approach an issue or a struggle, whatever it might be, it’s perceived on some level in those terms, because those are the mental frameworks that we’ve inherited from the enlightenment pretty much, from our modernist mode of thought. So it’s one or the other. There’s a dichotomy there, and even if you replace the power, the structure goes unchallenged. The fundamental structure goes unchallenged. It’s hard to perceive, it’s hard to even conceive of a struggle that doesn’t in some sense follow that model that doesn’t accept that framework on some level, because it’s just so basic, so ubiquitous.
Matt: Well, and we’ve talked about this a bit before ‘cos you’re one of the few people I’ve talked at length with about the projects that I’m working on here, that this podcast really only exists to help, sort of support that project, the Global Consensus Project. So why don’t we like pivot a little bit and talk a little bit about that, and then I’ll get, sort of get your feedback, your thoughts on its potential or lack thereof, or whatever.
[Laughter]Chris: Sure.
Matt: So, one thing I’m learning which I guess you probably are well aware of, when you are the host it is very tricky to be focused on the conversation and also pay attention to other stuff, like any other stuff about the show.
Chris: Absolutely.
Matt: Like the cool stuff. [Laughs] I mean, oh man, I do not have enough brain power to — I mean, we actually have had a few people who were watching, and they’ve sent me a few messages, so I don’t think they’re watching anymore, but cool people who at least gave you a thought and watched us.
[Laughter]Chris: That’s because you ignored them.
Matt: Well, the way this is supposed to work. Let me at least — this is my theory of how these shows, at least some shows, are going to work. So this is not intended to be just you and me, or me and one or two people having a conversation and that being the show. That could be one type of show, but the more exciting form of the show that I’m — all this technical setup is for, is for potentially an audio-video experience that could potentially have hundreds of thousands of people participating, and it is, I think — I mean, technically I have it set up right now, this could still to 1000 people. It would need a — and the way it would do that — I don’t know, should I explain that? I don’t know if you really care. If there were some geeks watching. But it could do it video wise, ‘cos we’re using this Zoom software. Now, this room, the Zoom chat software that we’re using is, you know, free account and anyone can create a free account, and with the free account you can host a videoconference like this with up to 50 people. And I actually shared the link on Twitter and on Facebook, and so that’s why people have been dropping in. Technically up to 50 people could be in this videoconference. So that’s one way that this scales up, it’s just — now but there’s limits to what you can do with a bunch of people on video, limits as to how well you can communicate with that group of people. And so the Global Consensus Project that I’ve been working on is, how do you scale up so that you have an egalitarian meeting where everyone participating is as equal as possible? How do you scale that up beyond 20 or 30 people? ‘Cos as a — a consensus facilitator can do pretty well with 20 to 30 people, facilitating a very egalitarian consensus meeting, but it doesn’t really go above that. And so, this Zoom software is just sort of the one audio, it’s the audio-video sort of tool we could use to support that. But the software that I’ve designed at the Global Consensus Project is made to give a more meaningful way — or to give a viable way to interact with thousands of people at once. So we could potentially be speaking to them and the mass of people could be responding to us. And I know I’ve shown this to you before, but I’m going to share my screen and show it a little bit to—and I don’t know how well you’ll be able to see it—so we’ll see. You’re on an iPhone, you don’t have a desktop, so let’s see how well you can follow this. All right? [Typing] I won’t do this too long.
Chris: Just let me know if you want me to just stop talking [laughs].
Matt: Well, do you — I mean, are you —
[Loud music]Matt: Sorry.
[Laughter]Matt: Well, let’s see. Do you feel like you know enough about the project to comment on it as I’m like pulling it up?
Chris: Well, probably not, but that doesn’t necessarily —
[Loud music]Matt: Sorry again. All right, that won’t happen again.
[Laughter]Matt: All right. Are you seeing it? Are you seeing the screen?
Chris: Sure. I can see a screen.
Matt: All right.
Chris: There’s lots of information on it, but it’s way too small for me to read.
Matt: Right. May be you’ll get the gist of what they’re looking at here.
Chris: Did you just stop playing the banjo?
[Laughter]Matt: No, I’m having the darn technical thing again, ‘cos now it’s like there’s what you’re seeing and there is what — I’ve got to change this. Stop sharing — share the — I did the wrong screen. In order to keep our YouTube audience involved I have to share a different screen.
Chris: Okay.
Matt: Otherwise, they’re left out, even though there is no YouTube audience.
Chris: Right [laughs].
Matt: All right. So basically what we’re looking at is, in theory, if we could be doing this show and if our goal was to facilitate a conversation between us and a massive audience of any size, they could be using this interface—which I designed—to interact with us. In theory we could — any number of people could be logged in here and we could set the topic of the conversation, and that’s in this window over here on the left. You set the topic, and this topic right now is “Unleash the fury” but not really much for conversation topic, but —
Chris: That’s the topic of this conversation? “Unleash the fury”?
[Laughter]Matt: No, of this one on the screen.
Chris: Oh, okay.
Matt: In the — so the way that the software is sort of designed, it’s sort of like topics or nodes in a network, and they are sort of threaded [laughs]. Let me see if I can bring it up, that’ll make more sense. So I’m going into The Mindful Activist’s node, and the only topic — the first topic in there is “Ask me anything,” which is just for The Mindful Activist podcast, anyone could ask any question and so — I don’t know if you’re able to — are you able to see this at all?
Chris: I can see it, but it’s way too small for me to read it.
Matt: Okay.
Chris: But you can get a general structure of it.
Matt: And that’s fine. For now that’s really — that works. So imagine if there were a ton of people in here, they could be posting questions, and the questions you post down here or like — who is this guy?
Chris: [Laughs]
Matt: People can post questions or these could be responses to a question, and people can vote up and down on these in real time, and we’d be able to see that as one sort of way that this mob of viewers could be interacting, they could be making statements and voting up statements. That would be one sort of reflection. Oh, your free meeting will end in 10 minutes. Upgrade to a paid account. That’s something I’ve got to keep in mind. They have a 40 minute limit to these —
[Laughter]Matt: Stay with free. So I might have to like stop me and restart it.
Chris: Okay.
[Laughter]Matt: And then—I’ll just finish the little tour of the interface as it is now—and then while we are speaking, our video could be here in the middle screen, and then people can sparkle up, sparkle down and raise their hand down here. There’s a chat window for just the masses of people to just sort of, to be able to chat about things that aren’t like specifically tied to the focused topic. And then down here in the right is a — this is a place for video responses, so if people actually are capable of it, it’s not that tricky to — they can actually record a video of what they have to say and upload it to YouTube, they could actually paste the video response here. And again, thousands of people could do that simultaneously and you can vote up and down video responses, so that would be another way for us to sort of get from a mass of people, see what video responses they find most interesting. So anyway, it probably sounds a little chaotic, but all of this is to sort of replicate the amount of power that you have when you have face to face with like people, they have a certain ability to do stuff, to interact and to express themselves, so I’m trying to give people a way to express themselves and whereas facilitating a meaningful way to understand what the masses of people participating are actually thinking, so they can help shape the discussion and move the people to making decisions they want to make. Did that make any sense?
Chris: Absolutely.
Matt: Right [laughs].
Chris: For sure.
Matt: All right. I’m going to have to practice that, you know.
[Laughter]Matt: Okay, so we have this seven-minute countdown on the timer for the free session. We could just stop the meeting and restart it. I don’t think there’s any problem with that. You’re game to do that?
Chris: Sure. It works for me.
Matt: All right, so I’m going to send you a new link. I’m going to stop this meeting and send you a new link. All right?
Chris: Okay.
[Recording ends]The Mindful Activist 08-26-2016 – Part 2- Officer Mason
Chris Mason: … It is global. We went through a massive series of changes [unintelligible 00:00:13] moving away from a hierarchical feudal system of government in the West, in Europe principally, and that involved changes on a lot of different levels, there were a lot of different facets to that. So some of them were political, there were — some were epistemological, changes in science, in how we think about the world, there were political changes, medical changes, economic changes, move to capitalism. So it was a complete revolution in how society is structured and how we think about the world, and I think we are experiencing a revolution that in many respects is similar to that. It has the same scope and magnitude as that. A post-modern revolution in how we think, how we communicate, and in how structures exist. I think we’re a little behind, I mean there’s going to be some catching up in terms of political stuff, because those frameworks are a little more monolithic, there’s a lot more structure there. But in terms of how people think, how perceive themselves, their sense of identity, we’re moving away from the individualism of the enlightenment more towards I think a communitarian model. People are more and more starting to think of themselves as global citizens as well, and I think a large part of that are these revolutions within communications, how we connect with people. Sure, we still have relationships with the people around us, we still are connected intimately with family members, so that that planned system, if you like, is still a part of who we are for the most part, and we exist within communities, we have work communities, and such and such, but a lot of the communication that we do, a lot of the connection that we’re experiencing now is broader than that. I think it’s tremendously exciting, so in that sense I think there’s massive potential for change, at an astoundingly fundamental level. So it’s not just a shift in who has the power, it’s a shift in our very conception of power, and the nature of power itself. So I see that, it’s like there plainly seems to be occurring fairly rapidly, so even within the space of my lifetime, even within the last few decades there have been massive transformations.
Matt Ready: So what are some specific examples of where you’re seeing this new type of revolution, this communitarian type of revolution?
Chris Mason: [Laughs] I think just in terms of how we communicate and interact, and how we think of ourselves, how our sense of personal identity, it seems far broader now. When I talk to young people in particular—I work with young people a great deal—it’s very much about their place in the world, and they perceive themselves having a place in the world, so it’s not just about the little community or the specific, you know, job goals and ambitions, and such, they’re thinking about the impact that they’re going to have upon the world and what they want the world to look like. That wasn’t the case when I was growing up. I mean, there were a few people who were outwardly focused like that, but I wasn’t and most of the people that I interacted with weren’t. So it seems like there’s been a pretty radical shift in that respect. If you’re asking me how it’s changed in terms of like politically, the impact that it’s had politically, I’m not — I think that it’s impacted those structures a little less than it’s impacted thought processes, but even in that respect I see there are some big changes that have occurred. Bernie Sanders, his candidacy for the presidency would be a prime example of that, you know, the idea of somebody who is explicitly a socialist running for the highest office in the U.S.A. is a pretty miraculous thing, that he gained the support that he did. I know he wasn’t successful but —
Matt Ready: He was incredibly successful. He just didn’t win.
Chris Mason: Right.
[Laughter]Chris Mason: Successful in the sense of winning, yes.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Chris Mason: There are many other ways to measure success and that’s what I’m saying, that perceived in respect of those things, it was astounding. For somebody who grew up in the 80s, that’s just — it’s nothing short of miraculous.
Matt Ready: Yeah. Yes, it’s strange times. I mean, I think Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are signs of something strange in the air. There’s thirst for change from the populous, and the disenfranchised populous who are growing to just recognize they are not in control of the two major political parties in the country that these are. These two political parties that control politics are controlled by power brokers in those parties and the networks of people that support those power brokers. Yes, we’re in for interesting times in the next — it would be very interesting — I wonder if they will like continue, if you know, the next round of presidential elections will we have like — will happen again or we slide back into have these main stream establishment candidates.
Chris Mason: Yes. I don’t know. I mean one of the things that strikes me is that, when I was growing up back in the 80s going through high school and into college, relativism was a fairly fringe notion, so the idea that — the ideas that we have, the views of right and wrong that we have, and true and false even, so thinking of it epistemological terms as well as kind of moral, political terms, the notion that those ideas might not be absolutely true, or that there might not even be an absolute truth attainable within those fields was a pretty radical notion and it did not have a tremendous amount of mainstream support, but talking to people now, there’s tremendous support for that to the point where it is almost the accepted reality, you know. When I talk to young people now it’s almost a given that — you’re leaving?
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I’m like, oh, I’m falling asleep.
[Laughter]Chris Mason: So they will say, well of course, you know, that’s just my opinion and I know that, you know, that’s my truth, that’s my reality. I hear people saying that sort of thing a great deal and the fact that that has become such an established way of thinking of reality, that’s pretty remarkable. That is a revolution right there, that that notion has become so mainstream. It’s been a part of philosophy for a long time, through the existentialist movement and the post-modern movement, but that people generally are saying that and accepting that is fresh and it’s remarkable.
Matt Ready: What notion?
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I’m serious, like —
Chris Mason: That their ideas are relative, that they are not absolutely true. That there’s an element of subjectivity.
Matt Ready: Yeah, but it doesn’t help when you’re trying to facilitate this recognition of relativity, relative truth, certainly muddies the water sometimes, you know, and makes people — I mean like anything that muddies the water with trying to establish some sort of common truth, it just makes things more challenging and it sort of like, it forces you to try to challenge people to be more enlightened about what is true and what they want, what they need.
Chris Mason: It’s enormously challenging, and I think in many ways it’s terrifying. I think that is what we’re seeing in Trump. He’s really tapping into that. So Trump is not a contradiction of that, Trump is a symptom of that. I think there are a lot of people who really don’t like him and really craves a simpler kind of black and white perspective. They want that to be the reality, and less and less is it the narrative of life, of modern life.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Chris Mason: So getting back to your platform, your kind of communications platform, you know, I see that as a part of that. It’s exciting because it’s kind of tapping into that. It’s allowing people to communicate in a fairly fresh way on mass.
Matt Ready: Yeah, I think it’ll be interesting. It’ll be an interesting experiment if and when we take an attempt at doing something with any sort of significant audience. We did do an event with like 15 to 20 people in there, but the platform didn’t do everything it does now. It was really just sort of a technical test [crosstalk] so I have not yet attempted to facilitate any number of people with it.
Chris Mason: Yeah. So we’ve talked a few times actually about your metaphor, if you like, a way to symbolize what it is, and to me, I’ve been thinking about it a little bit, and to me it seems very much like a mind —
Matt Ready: A mind.
Chris Mason: — so the way that it functions, yeah, you’re talking about it in terms of having nodes, so that image of a mind, of having these kind of areas that are getting excited, that are becoming warm and the connections between them, and the fact that it has an organic flavor to it, you can’t just be reduced to a collection of mechanical impulses, and the ideas within the mind are created through that interaction, through that participation of the various nodes.
Matt Ready: I think you’re right. I think a mind is definitely, probably the best metaphor. As you know, I was going with the hive, and another one that I played around with is collective, but there is not really a great — I mean you only have one metaphor that you use for a group of people of any size in which everyone is equal, totally equal in power, and they work together in a very positive harmonious way. I mean, there’s team, you said community was one idea you threw out there, a mind. I mean a mind is not how you refer to a group of individuals, but I think you’re right in terms — I’ve called it The Hive Mind.
[Laughter]Chris Mason: One of the problems, and we talked a little bit about this, is that most of the metaphors that are out there, the associations, the images, the iconography that’s out there with respect to this, is embedded, it’s rooted in a culture of individualism. And what you’re trying to do, what you’re trying to achieve and put together is contrary to that, it’s a contradiction of that. So all of the positive metaphors have been kind of co-opted by that culture, the culture of individualism, and all of the metaphors for collective process have been sullied, they’ve been tarnished. So all of the images that we have, all of the images that have been presented to us through your science fiction books, and movies, and even political discourse to some extent, those communitarian ventures have been presented in this topic manner, so generally when you think of a whole group of individuals acting harmoniously towards the common good, there’s almost an element of horror movie to that, just because it’s been presented in such a negative way for so long. So it’s tough to find really positive associations, it’s hard to find positive iconography to something like that. You almost have to create it fresh, because it is something fresh that in some sense is dramatically counter-cultural.
Matt Ready: So do you think — I mean we haven’t done really significant promotion or networking with this, and currently I am a little bit entrenched in The Hive, using the word hive for what I’m doing. That’s the domain we have, hive1.net, in addition to the globalconsensusproject.org, which is a long word. Do you feel like we need to pivot to a different metaphor? Or can we go with Hive1 until — I mean, I could go with Hive1 until I build up some level of community interest, and let them help pick a different one, you know, just let The Hive pick a new name, a new word.
[Laughter]Chris Mason: Sure.
Matt Ready: Because you said The Hive metaphor, you felt it was a big turnoff. I’ve had other people sort of be like turned off by it, but I need to replace it with something. If I’m going to let go of it, I have to have something, and I have to be able to get a domain that works for whatever, so if we run with mind, I mean mind wouldn’t be available.
Chris Mason: The Global Neural Net.
Matt Ready: That’s a pretty big word.
Chris Mason: [Laughs] It is.
Matt Ready: I’m not opposed, I mean, that’s not bad. I didn’t want to call it human, you know, human something because I feel like that’s a little speciest, or specist, you know?
[Laughter]Chris Mason: My daughter would be very upset with you.
Matt Ready: [Laughs] Yeah.
Chris Mason: Discriminating against dogs and such.
Matt Ready: Well, you know, I just think there could be other conscious beings, computers could become conscious, or there could be other — I was trying to stay away from human centric language.
Chris Mason: Right.
Matt Ready: What do you think? Do you think it’s urgent to leave The Hive metaphor?
Chris Mason: Well, I think hive has some positive associations. I think it maybe requires a little bit of re-branding, so I’m not necessarily rejecting hive but just being conscious moving forward of some of the associations that people have with it. But I don’t think there is a good alternative. That’s the problem. You’re having to create it, so maybe you’re the person that creates the association, well, not you, but what it is you’re doing, what it is you’re a part of.
Matt Ready: And if we — so we’ll go with the hive word. So say there is a hive, a human hive that is created, that is not an oppressive hive, it’s a collective of conscious beings in which you are able to — when you participate in it, you’re fully able to express yourself in whatever manner you see fit, yet you are able to tap into this mass collective of conscious beings and work together in really interesting and creative ways. My question was going to be, does that like peak your interest as something you would be interested in participating in or connecting to? I’m not sure it’s easy to answer that without more specific sort of examples of what types of experiences you could have participating in this. I think there’s a huge spectrum of things you could be doing, like collaborative story-telling. I think there’s a lot of fun, just blatantly fun things you could be doing, like we learned from social media, you know, there’s lots of fun things you can do with social media, we could play games, we could write stories, and we could do that in this Hive platform. Ultimately, my hope is that we learn how to use it to control our collective power in interesting ways. I’m also sort of like brainstorming like things that will draw people in to just experience it, and test it, and learn about it.
Chris Mason: Sure. Well, I think there’s a sense in which I don’t really need the specifics. If you think of communication, there are a lot of pragmatic motives for engaging in communication, there’s a lot of things we try to accomplish in a tangible sense through communication and emotions as well, but one of the most basic things that we do through communication is connect with people. It’s a form of relationship, and any communication, kind of face to face in person communication is a form of relationship. It might be abusive, but assuming that it’s not, assuming that it’s not abusive, that it’s not oppressive in some way, then it is the most kind of raw fundamental way in which we connect with people along with kind of physical touch, and it’s far more common place than that, there aren’t that many people that we physically interact with, but there’d be a lot of people that we communicate with. So when we communicate with people it’s an expansion of who we are, we’re making a part of who we are visible to somebody else, and they’re making a part of themselves visible to us, so there’s an exchange of personhood that is taking place there, an expansion of both the people that are involved in that process. So it’s an incredibly powerful and impactful and potentially very beautiful thing, communication, and the notion that that could be expanded and that we could do that on mass, with a massive quantity of people, is tremendously exciting. It’s sort of fresh territory in a way ‘cos for so long communication has been about person to person, looking at the body language, assessing all those subtle cues, the inflection, the [unintelligible 00:22:58] one on one communication, and this is trying to capture some aspects of that, kind of the essence of that but with an entirely new model. So it’s challenging and it’s exciting, and if it can do that, if it is successful in doing that, then that’s wonderful. So how people use it in a sense, sure it’s relevant and to some extent inform how excited I get about participating in it, but there’s a sense in which just structurally it’s attractive just in terms of what it may offer.
Matt Ready: Awesome. It’s so refreshing to hear positive feedback [laughs] about the concept. It’s amazing how much negative feedback you can get when you share ideas, specially like really outside the box ideas with people, and there’s something about the internet. There’s something about sharing ideas on the internet that I think has changed the nature of what it’s like to be a human. It’s like, back in the day you would have a crazy idea, you’d be sharing it face to face with people, and you would get face to face feedback. When you’re face to face with someone there’s things that prevent you from really really being a jerk and really ripping apart a person’s idea. But even then, the internet takes it to a whole new level, not only it takes away some of that face to face but there’s an anonymity on the internet and so it’s just like the dark side of humanity, when you share like a video on YouTube or you share something, it’s like any joke could be made, no matter how inappropriate, there’ll be someone out there who will make the joke, even if it’s really rude or off color, if they are under the shield of anonymity. Anyways, it’s a bit of a tangent to what you’re saying.
[Laughter]Chris Mason: I don’t think it’s really a tangent. I think it’s rooted in a lot of the same issues. It’s such a sudden thing this revolution in communication and how we communicate. With young people, again, a great deal of who they are, their personal identity and their relationships is electronically mediated, and there’s a lot of criticism of that particularly from older people in my generation. People are very dismissive of it. They go, “They don’t have the communication skills, they’re not gaining those communication skills, it’s so shallow, it’s no substitute for actual physical communication.” I don’t think that’s the case. I think there is a richness to it, and a potential to it that is not generally appreciated by these people that critique it. But it’s hard, there are all sorts of challenges connected to it that anonymity being one [unintelligible 00:26:50], you know, how do we not be mean to each other when we’re interacting from behind that veil? How do we send the subtle cues? How do we substitute for those physical cues that we’re usually getting when we’re interacting physically? How do we do that without the physicality? And we’re working that out. It’s a process, so there is definitely some painful aspects to it and people are just vicious online in ways that they wouldn’t be personally.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Chris Mason: But I think that’s the nature of it, and it’s evolving. And we will, we will figure that out. But then technology will evolve and we’ll be faced with fresh challenges, but the idea that it should just be forgotten, be eliminated, and we should not explore it because there are these challenges, just seems like the most rank form of cowardice and narrowsidedness imaginable.
Matt Ready: Yeah. It’s unusual for an old person like yourself to be so open-minded about the digital generation and people glued to their smartphones. That’s not the normal thing that’s expressed by a person like yourself.
[Laughter]Chris Mason: I think there’s an amazing untapped potential there. I think that every grandparent should get a Snapchat account, and that would be a phenomenal way for grandparents to keep in touch with their grandchildren.
Matt Ready: Oh yes.
Chris Mason: And very effective. There’s amazing power there if we would embrace it, and potential for intimacy in connection, if only we would embrace it.
Matt Ready: Yeah. Dual situation: you sparked two different threads that I could’ve pursued and I’m letting them both go.
[Laughter]Chris Mason: Kind of a — two paths in the forest kind of situation?
Matt Ready: Yeah, and I literally —
Chris Mason: And you took neither.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I took neither. I mean they’re both like interesting-ish, but I’m trying to be —
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I’m just now, you know, it’s part of my attempt to be more a mindful communicator as just because I have a thought, I could say that is interesting, I’m not necessarily going to say it. I’m trying to be selective and careful. Let me share with you one thing I sort of envisioned that could happen. It’s a bit of a tangent again, or not.
[Pause]Matt Ready: I guess this is why when you start, you really — this is why people have plans when they go into —
[Laughter]Matt Ready: They have a plan of what you want to talk about, so you feel like you’ve accomplished [crosstalk].
Chris Mason: And they have questions for the person that they’re interviewing.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Yup. Well, you and I we’ve just been good at winging it, but those were situations where you were the interviewer, so you kind of owned the stage, so the weight of responsibility was on your shoulders. Here it’s like, there’s a shift of weight onto me in addition to the ridiculous amount of technical stuff that I’ve put on top of the — doing for this [unintelligible 00:31:15].
Chris Mason: [Laughs]
Matt Ready: So would you be interested in sort of co-hosting an attempted facilitation of an audience, some sort of — that thing was made to be interactive with the audience trying to get people to use The Hive software platform to communicate with us. Would you be interested in doing something like that?
Chris Mason: Sure. Yeah, I think that would be exciting.
Matt Ready: Yeah. I have a number of ideas that could be really interesting and fun, and part of it is, you know, attracting. You have to attract people to the event. I could run a few of those ideas by you, in fact we could use The Hive software, or I could list the different ideas and—I don’t know if I showed you this part—they are threaded, so once you have an idea listed, you can click on it and go into that idea and then explore that further. Kind of like a mind map, you’ve ever seen a mind map [unintelligible 00:32:38] like that?
Chris Mason: Yes.
Matt Ready: So that’s how the names in the platform work, so it’s each idea can go to more ideas, so we could attempt to use that, or we could just talk and bring up ideas.
Chris Mason: [Laughs] Sure.
Matt Ready: At some point I have to bite the bullet and actually say we’re going to have a show or an event, and I have to like, invite or promote it, to actually try to get a number of people in there using it. I have this hesitance to like use my friend network. I’d rather have a hundred of people that I don’t know from around the world or something in there and sort of get it cranking before friends drop in, ‘cos — does it make any sense?
Chris Mason: Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense.
Matt Ready: All right. Well, we’ve been going, we’re at an hour and 18, so I’ll probably edit this down to 15 minutes of quality content.
[Laughter]Chris Mason: The nuggets.
Matt Ready: The nuggets. But this is great, I really –Well, I don’t know if this was great ‘cos there was so much just relying on me, but this is our third actual recorded episode interview that we’ve done together over the last several years, and I haven’t actually watched the first one. I don’t think I have a recording of that, and it’s not still online.
Chris Mason: I can find it for you.
Matt Ready: Yeah. I think if you can put that online, or just send it to me or something, I’ll put it online. That’ll be fun. So, thank you so much. We’ll wrap it up here if that’s all right with you. Christopher Mason, you are very very generous in putting up with the technical difficulties of this, and you are always an interesting person to talk to. I feel like we can go to pretty much in so many different directions that it’s a bit overwhelming the different topics we could go into. Thank you so much, and your feedback has been very helpful on this project. I’m definitely going to enlist your help for future episodes and events. Is there anything you want to say to the world? Do you have any like website or Twitter accounts that you’d like to share out there for the vast audience?
Chris Mason: [Laughs]
Matt Ready: Is there anything like that? [Laughs]
Chris Mason: No, nothing exactly like that, no blog or presence in that respect. I mean, I have the shows, the interviews, but they mostly have a local flavor, so I’m not sure they would be that compelling for a general audience outside of the Middlebury. I have an [unintelligible 00:35:59] and Facebook page and a Twitter account.
Matt Ready: All right, so people find you fascinating. Officer Mason, on Twitter and Facebook, and Middlebury Five O is the show, the cable-access show.
Chris Mason: That’s right [laughs].
Matt Ready: All right.
Chris Mason: It’s been a pleasure, thanks so much for having me on as your inaugural guest.
[Laughs]Matt Ready: Yes, well, inaugural live shared guest, yes. I’ve done a few interviews, but I haven’t shared them. Awesome, thank you so much. And everyone out there, thank you for watching and feel free to visit the globalconsensusproject.org or hive1.net to learn more about the project behind this podcast. So we’ll call that, that’s a cut officially from the show.
Chris Mason: [Laughs]
Matt Ready: And nobody is watching anything that we’re doing, so —
[Laughter]Matt Ready: So we can just talk. It is so weird trying to talk when you’re aware of the potential pressure of other eyes listening to us.
Chris Mason: Yeah.
Matt Ready: How much does that affect you?
Chris Mason: It’s definitely an acquired skill. It’s a little bit like when you’re reading out loud—I don’t know if you’ve done a lot of reading out loud—I read to Jennifer [unintelligible 00:37:34] quite a bit, but you don’t read the part that you’re focusing on, you focus on the words that are a sentence or two ahead, so you’re reading — the words that are coming out of your mouth are what you remember reading a little while before, and that’s how you avoid screwing it up. If you’re doing that, you’re looking at the grammar that’s coming up ahead, so you can modulate your speech, you know that it’s building up towards a question so intonation is correct. So you always, your mind is focused ahead of what’s coming out of your mouth. And interviewing somebody is a little bit like that. So after listening to a person speaking and you’re processing what they’re speaking, your mind is not really focusing on that, it’s moving towards framing questions and moving the conversation in different directions, so it’s like an art. You’ve got to have one part focused very much on the moment and what’s happening, but there’s another part of you that is actively kind of planning and thinking about what’s coming up next, and it’s hard to — it can be very challenging to do that. It’s a simultaneous kind of a thing.
Matt Ready: It’s interesting. It’s a totally different mental skill than facilitating a group.
Chris Mason: Oh yeah.
Matt Ready: And so it’s in a way a challenge to set myself up to think of trying to combine the two, of being like interacting and facilitating a mass audience while also interviewing someone or having a conversation with someone. That might not be the best thing to try to do [laughs]. It might be better to make the event a facilitating the audience event, and so even if you’re here with me, you’re co-facilitating, so we are not thinking about what we’re saying to each other, we’re both focused on the audience and we’re not talking to each other, we’re talking to the audience, and we’re seeing what they say, and seeing their reactions and asking questions, and we’re asking questions of them, and may be using the software or using just YouTube, we could actually let them share a video and talk to us.
Chris Mason: Right. You’re having a conversation, like if you sit down and you actually have a conversation with someone face to face, that’s typically something that engages almost the entirety of yourself.
Matt Ready: If you’re present. [Laughs]
Chris Mason: Yes, you are pouring yourself into that interaction, so there are distractions as things going on, and your mind may wander and you start thinking about the dishes you have to wash or some obligation at work, or something like that, but a huge amount of who you are is focused upon interacting with that person. It’s very consuming. So having a conversation with someone that has the appearance of that, like you’re fully engaged, but structurally there’s a whole part of you that is not, that is focused upon something else entirely that’s going on simultaneously or is going to be happening in the future, is very difficult. It’s not what conversation usually is. It’s something entirely different. So I think you’re right, that if just having an interview, interviewing someone just in itself, like in the studio, that is challenging. That is really difficult to do effectively so that it looks like a good conversation, has the feel of a conversation, right? [Unintelligible 00:41:59] you’re trying to do that, you’re trying to interview some and use all those skills where you’re thinking ahead to what questions you’re going to be asked and monitoring the way the conversation is evolving. You’re doing all of that, you’re trying to do all of that that I did in the studio, but on top of that, you’re also in control — you’re doing all the production as well, so that’s like adding everything that Jenifer was doing into the mix, and putting that on your shoulders. And the technical stuff that you’re doing actually involves kind of feedback potentially from other people that are out there, so in a sense it’s way more complex than what Jennifer’s doing. That may be a little too much for one mind to be able to process all at once, and what’s probably going to happen is that you’re just not going to be able to effectively interview people because you have all this other stuff that is intruding, and not allowing you to focus on the conversation, or focus on where you want to take the conversation.
Matt Ready: Yeah. I mean if I had nothing to do with any sort of technical thing or audience, and I was just interviewing, that would be a challenging task to do that well.
Chris Mason: Right. It is.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Chris Mason: But if I had to do Jennifer’s job at the same time as doing what I do in the studio — not that I am like a star interviewer or anything like that, but it would be completely chaotic. It really wouldn’t be a show it would be so choppy. It wouldn’t do justice to my guests, so it just wouldn’t work.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Chris Mason: So I wonder if you need to rethink the interview format or rethink production, like either you need to find some way to take you out of the production, or some way to not be interviewing somebody while that process is going on. Either way I think would work, but it’s too much probably.
Matt Ready: Well, I mean, that is one of the ideas that I definitely played with, is take me out of the interviewer role and have someone else be the host, and they could be rotating guest hosts, or there could be a panel, I mean it would be very easy to use software like this to make a panel of four or five people even, and just have — I mean also if I may get four or five people and I’m not the facilitator, I could potentially be doing all the technical stuff: but I’m not in charge of the conversation, you know, the silence that happens is not now something that demands me to do something about it, you know.
Chris Mason: Sure.
Matt Ready: But even just taking me off camera and I would be really focused on the audience and seeing — what I mean, a podcast, a show, has a different purpose than some of the stuff I want to do with The Hive’s software, I mean the interacting, facilitating the audience, that’s a different type of event, and so it could be, I just need to actually try to do some of the types of events that I designed the software for.
Chris Mason: Yeah, I mean I’m not talking about The Hive thing, but even just interacting with YouTube and having the potential there for people to give feedback as the show’s being broadcast, or potentially join the conversation. It’s hard to imagine you being able to process that and coordinate that in a way that works really smooth and seamless. It’s like it’s always going to be a little bit choppy.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Chris Mason: I know I wouldn’t be able to do it. I would not be able to juggle all those things simultaneously. May be there are people out there who have those skills, but that’s not me. Maybe you would acquire those skills if you did it a lot, maybe you get better and better at it and eventually it would be really smooth and seamless.
Matt Ready: Yeah. Well, this was a pretty crazy experiment. I mean, even just the fact that I made this an open room and shared it and we had that random guy drop in, you know [laughs], it’s like we’re talking in a public space and anyone can pop in, and I think actually twice people popped in on us.
Chris Mason: Yeah.
Matt Ready: But then, that was kind of weird. I don’t know if that was really helpful.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: It was funny.
Chris Mason: Yeah. They left pretty quick. I wonder if it was even intentional, like kind of knew what they were doing or…
Matt Ready: I think maybe, I would expect the person, the guy that dropped in, wasn’t hoping to be like the third person. If he was like the fifteenth person, then he would have like slipped in and, you know, but when he saw “I’m part of a — I’m a third wheel here,” he’s like —
Chris Mason: Yeah. Probably just wanted to take an anonymous kind of little glimpse.
Matt Ready: Yeah, and that’s kind of some of the beauty of what you can do with this Zoom software, it is like creating these audio-video rooms and people could be dropping in and out, and going from conversation to conversation. Pretty powerful stuff. It’d be really interesting.
Chris Mason: Yeah. So I’ve got to get ready for work.
Matt Ready: All right. Thank you so much.
Chris Mason: Going to get some lunch, and clean up.
Matt Ready: Great talking to you, even though most of it was under the strangle hold of the interview situation [laughs]
Chris Mason: [Laughs] That’s fun. Anytime.
Matt Ready: All right.
Chris Mason: If there’s a time where you have a bunch of specific topics I could wire in on that too, you know, it could be a little more — a little less broad as well, I’m open to that.
Matt Ready: Oh yeah. I think I’ll do more planning and have a direction for it to go, especially if I’m going to still be the technical everything, that would help.
Chris Mason: Yes, I think so.
Matt Ready: My next question is this: now talk while I do all this stuff.
[Laughter]Chris Mason: All right. Love you Matt.
Matt Ready: All right, love you too. Talk to you later.
Chris Mason: Bye.
Matt Ready: Bye.
