Uncommon Courage

The Know Show – theme: do we really have free will? with Andrew Bryant

November 27, 2021 Andrea T Edwards Episode 30
Uncommon Courage
The Know Show – theme: do we really have free will? with Andrew Bryant
Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to The Know Show. This week we’ll be joined by Andrew Bryant, a global executive leadership coach, advisor to C-Suite leaders, author and keynote speaker on self-leadership. The concept of free will has been discussed and challenged through the centuries. It’s at the heart of our religions, a central element in how our societies run, and it’s also critical in how our technology is (or isn’t) designed to ensure this idea is honored. But is it something we really have, or is it just an idea we hold onto, even if it is not true? We’re going deep. 

The Know Show is a Livestream held every Friday, where Andrea T Edwards, Tim Wade and Joe Augustin review the news that’s getting everyone’s attention, as well as perhaps what requires our attention. We’ll talk about what it means to us, the world and we hope to inspire great conversations on the news that matters to all of us. 

The Know Show is based on Andrea T Edwards Weekend Reads, which get published every Saturday on andreatedwards.com, and covers the climate crisis, Covid 19, topical moments in the world, global politics, business, social issues and passion/humor/history. Join us. 

#TheKnowShow #UncommonCourage

To get in touch with me, all of my contact details are here https://linktr.ee/andreatedwards

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar

Unknown:

Welcome to the no show. My name is Andrea Edwards. My name is Joe Augustine. And my name is Tim Wade, and you're in a show for the end of the week to find out what's been going on in the world. And to get in the know, and we're going to have some news articles covered and some interesting discussion. We have a special guest, Andrea. We do we do, indeed. Who wants to introduce him? I think we all know him. Okay, you go first, and I'll fill in the gaps. All right, here he is all the way from Portugal. Early in the morning, Mr. Andrew. Brian, welcome. Well, thank you very much. Miss Sousa mas Andrea Edwards, and Joel Gustin and Mr. Tim Wade. Look called. Well, well, firstly, it is 7am in the morning, and according to my computer, it's nine degrees outside. And so yes, I am. As my as a friend Frederick heron, the Swede says there is no cold weather just inappropriate clothing. These are these are words of people who live in cold countries. These are words that people can see that the least. So here's the thing, right? I can put on a jumper and and feel warm. In Singapore. You can take all your clothes off and still be sweaty. I'm having visualisation problems. Yeah, yeah. So am I. But Andrew, no, it's really great to have you here. So Andrew is known as an expert on self leadership. You published a book, you've got a new book coming up soon. You're also a coach to the C suite. Do you want to just give us a bit of a quick introduction to what you do and what you care about? Yeah, well, that's, it's interesting. I went to a an event last night, which, for you guys, there were I think there are about 120 people in somebody's very posh garage that was full of Mercedes and Ferraris, etc. And it was a sort of a business networking lot of startup people. And because you get asked what you do, and I'm, uh, I guess, you know, I always used to think I was a speaker and a coach, but I doing so much writing at the moment that, you know, I thought, well, I felt like saying, Well, today, I'm going to introduce myself as a writer. But at the heart of what I do, is, I guess driven by my values of transformation, ownership and impact. And I discovered these values. Some time ago, when I did a survey of my clients. And they said, that's what they saw that I did. Transformation is I'm all about creating change, ownership. I'm all about getting people to take ownership of their own lives, and impact making a difference. And so what wakes me up in the morning is waking other people up that they have the opportunity to change, take ownership and make a difference. Yes. I like that toy. Yeah, well, I was looking for ROI, but return on investment, but instead, try instead. You can't do IoT. Why, boy? That's a bit late for me to be a toy boy, Joe, and I think for you, too. Make it interesting again. A problem we've got at the show today. I don't know what it is. Let me see if my technology Yeah, that's it. It's its fault. Yeah. All right. All right. Do you want to new? Yeah. Do you want to kick up, kick it off and get into the news that really struck a chord this week? Yeah, let's do it, man. What people don't realize is that I'm doing all of the production in the background, as well as doing the bulk of the reading. But anyway, telling anyone to, yeah, no, well, first on my head, so thanks for that. Anyway, this is a story that's been building. We started talking about it last week. And then of course, was the disappearance of the tennis star ping Schweiz. If I'm saying that incorrectly, I apologize. We've seen some of the we started to see the tennis greats, speak up and some of the tennis Association's but then earlier this week, in my news periphery was talk of boycotting the Beijing Olympics, and I didn't really pay attention to it for a few days. And then I started looking into it. And of course, it's been linked to this kidnapping or disappearance of pink schwag then read an article and the title is in please do look out for the weekend rates. It's called a re a regime that ducks athletes is not fit to host the Olympics and if really goes into a lot of detail of the history of this happening, including obviously talking about Jack Ma. It also talks about how the author himself or herself account member, if it's male or female, has experienced intimidation of talking against the Chinese authorities. He he claims that China's reckless criminal conduct in the in the disappearance of the tennis star, who absolutely requires a tough response, and that's what we haven't seen so far. And so, I don't know about you guys, but I've just been sort of reading this and sort of all the different angles of it. And I just keep asking myself, what will the Chinese do you know, which way will they go, and there's, you know, there's the obvious path of, we'll all breathe a sigh of relief, or there's the other path where, really, we're going to go down those those roads again. But But I also think it's a, it's a real example, the West ever has never really understood Asia, especially north Asia, and even places like Singapore, where governments are informal, longer term. So these governments, they plan for the long term, it's not short term, like the West. And there's obviously a goal the Chinese government are working towards, and I doubt we'll ever will understand that to what actually happens. China is one of these countries that I've been an observer on, but I definitely don't claim claim to be an expert. But one thing I've always read and understood is, every time throughout history, when China takes its eye off the domestic ball that loses the control of the country, they've got a seventh of the world's population. And as long as they don't take their eye off the ball, the citizens will always be their priority. And regardless of anything that external, you know, like the US says, right. So in recent weeks, we've talked about how it's been closing off to the world. We've also talked about how younger influences are speaking out on behalf of the Beijing government, and they do a great job, there's a lot of rewards, if they fail, there's, it's not so many rewards. But another story on China this week, there's a song called fragile. I don't know if you guys saw it, it's a viral pop song. And it's, it's mocking the so called Little pinks. And this is a term which refers to young nationalists who rushed to the defense of the Chinese government on the internet, which is something we're seeing rise. So an interesting time, I think, where, where does China go next? And obviously, if we if we do, if there is a boycott of the Olympics, that's obviously going to create a result one way or another, and not necessarily in the right way. I mean, what do you guys, what do you guys think you paying attention to China? Well, I don't I don't pay attention to it, I guess, you know, anything in that kind of way. Like, like, you know, I watch what the next move is gonna be. But I do, I do think about what they would do and how they would how they would how they will behave in their own interests. Right. Yeah. I mean, so China's got a, China's got a thing that they are looking out for. They're looking out for, for their long term growth as well. And they do have a huge, huge economy on on their hands, they have such a large population to answer to, not to answer to but but actually to kind of, kind of manage. So I think that's what they tend to do. Right. And so when you have someone like someone who, who pops up in terms of pop culture in terms of popularity, in terms of whatever they do recognize the threat that is in terms of that bigger story of control, you know, China is, as much as people look at China and think of it as a draconian a very, very kind of like hard, you know, way of doing things. It is actually strangles isn't sound strange, as I say, but it actually is soft power on a large scale. You know, yeah, they try. They, they they work very hard. I mean, this, China's base very much in terms of in terms of what it was like, you know, it's based very much on what was done in Singapore, I mean, that the modeling, you know, was done a lot like like that. I think in the early days, they looked at Singapore. And so how Singapore did a few things. And I think they picked up a few, a few, a few pointers there. Except that with China, they had to use bigger levers. So I, you know, I wouldn't even put a label on China. I would, I would generalize it a lot more from a power and influence perspective. If we look at history, totalitarian governments have been the norm. It's only in our short lifetimes and the lifetimes of our parents that we expected open free democracies to be the norm. But if you look down the telescope of history in reverse control of the population was the norm. And to Joe's point about no one individual means nothing to a totalitarian government. And the danger of giving people too much freedom and voice for that government can be seen in in disasters of democracy when it's not well managed. Or we can we can see the Americans toppling dictatorships. And yet those dictatorships whilst engaged in horrific crimes against a certain individuals actually kept the economy stable. You can you can look at it, you know, Iraq after Saddam was toppled you look at Libya, after Gaddafi was to I mean, Libya was actually quite a paradise unless you were obviously on Gaddafi hitlist. You look at Beirut as the Paris of the of the Middle East, and now it's Rubble. So actually having a strong government has huge benefits. And people are prepared to turn a blind eye to individual dissidents for a larger level of comfort. Most people go about their lives not thinking about China or the government, we see what's happening in terms of a swing to the right in lots of countries like Turkey, like America. And, you know, when I anybody any expat that first lands in Singapore, things like this is awfully controlled, I'm not allowed to chew gum and, and I can I can't do this, I can't do that. And then they suddenly go, Well, hang on a moment. There's very little crime. I don't see homeless people on the streets, the the, the transportation works, I could basically eat my food off the seat of the train, because nobody's eating their food off the seat of the train. And so fine for doing that. Of course, yes, I find pretty big. And it took to some extent it to some extent, it's, it's a level of control. I remember first, first arriving first arriving in Asia, spending some time in Singapore, then I'm going across the border to Malaysia, and reading the Star newspaper, and I'm reading the Star newspaper, and it's full of murder and rape or Thailand, Malaysia is a terrible country, and I come back to Singapore, I go, this is incredible. All just happens across the border. And somebody said, they just don't report it here. So So, which is which is untrue, by the way? Out of Singapore, now, I can say that right? I was doing I was I was doing research. I was trying to do research to try and write a story about murders in Singapore. I couldn't find enough cases. I mean, it could be from lack of lack of reporting, but it's gonna be awfully hard to not have a murder recorded. Yeah. Yes. So you're gonna, you're gonna set me off on a tangent. The point I want to make is, is you know, a tennis star has gone missing. And it's tragic. You know, abducting a woman, bad abducting a woman who has visibility very bad. Disappearing, right. In the end? Well, we can't say our interpretation of it. Right. Okay. Right. So person disappeared, bad, you know, anybody losing something? I mean, it's, it's tragic on a human level. But the point about, you know, the point that I guess I'm taking from Joe is a matter of scale, right? I mean, people disappear, and are disappeared, you know, rendition extreme rendition. Is is happening and has always happened. So I guess the point is, I'm not just going to beat up on trainer, I think this is a question that we have to have as, as sentient beings is, you know, what price the government that we live under? Right? What is it costing us? What's the trade off? For some economics, ability and social stability? Because it depends on whether you see that, you know, the control versus individual freedom. For me, it's a big, it's much bigger philosophical question, unless, you know, that individual. And absolutely, we should say and hold people responsible for the disappearance of citizens as much as we can. But China's not the first to do this. And it's not the only one that's doing it today. And I suppose it's to me, it's not even it's not even this her story. It has story has attracted this sort of attention. That previous stories haven't really come few weeks ago, I shared with you guys. An article on Jack Jack Ma has been sent again. And apparently though there's been a lot of conversation with him and the authorities of what his role is going to be in the future of China. And it looks like he's going to be helping to With the education of the children of China, right? It's so it's not a criticism of China, because, like you said, it happens everywhere, you know, countries like Indonesia, the West goes in, takes over, and actually destroys the foundation of the country and makes it even more corrupt than it was before. And, you know, this idea that we're right, and they're wrong. But in recent weeks, we've been sort of monitoring a lot of what's going on in China and wondering, Where is China going now, because in a world that requires unity, to face the biggest challenge that we face, we look like we're breaking up into different parts where we're not talking to each other anymore. And so my concern with China is the sense of isolation that I feel is brewing in the country. They're isolating from everybody else. And like, I don't think we can afford for that to happen. But there's a lot of reasons why it has happened, right. I mean, you know, look at, you know, look at Japan for a large part of history, which was xenophobic, and isolationist and, you know, for years that the walls were up. You know, China, is kind of big enough to be a world unto itself. And if it, and your point being is, you know, they live on, you know, they live on a planet, with lots of others, but they are such a big part of that, you know, is the mindset of the ruling party, you know, we don't care because we've got our piece, we've got a piece of the pie, and they don't see themselves global. And and if you know, and painting them as the painting them as the bad person or, you know, the bad, the bad child in the playground, isn't actually helpful. So yes, I mean, if we look at recent history, there is definitely a swing to nationalism. Globally, we tried globalization, from an economic perspective, we didn't do it very well. It benefited the rich. You know, it was great that we could get our products shipped easy everywhere. People are feeling the pain of that when their Amazon takes a while to come or, you know, I had to pay premiums to get a container to move my stuff from Singapore to Portugal. But for the nationalism, how it's it's, it's this concept of going back to tribalism, and nationalism is just tribalism on steroids. So yeah, it's terrifying. Is that the peace, the epiphany that the, the mythologist, Joseph Campbell said we should have all had was December 24 1968, when Apollo eight comes around the moon, and we get that amazing vista of what's called Earthrise, where you see the surface of the moon, and you see the the Earth rising above, onto the horizon, this blue green planet hanging in this vista of space, and every religion on the planet has a very upward orientation to their god or gods. And so for the first time in human history, we literally got a God's eye view of our planet. And I love I mean, I'm interpreting what, what Joseph Campbell said, and I phrase it this way that we should have had up on December 24 1968, when I was seven years old. You know, this is one tribe, one planet one future. But if you Let's track the history from 68, we went, we went the opposite direction, didn't wait. Kennedy, who was fairly open to international relationships was assassinated. And we've devolved into two dictator States ever since. Yeah. So I'm afraid that I'm somewhat optimistic at the moment of the trajectory of nationalism. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, with the rising number of potential refugees, it's that's not a it's not a good sign either. So moving south of China into Myanma obviously, there was the earlier this year, what do they do? Thank you. Yeah, my blank brain anyway. Whipping whipping, I think was last week or even the week before we were talking about supply chains, especially in the fashion industry. And basically, yeah, how devastating they've been and, and there's been a big movement for a lot of the Western brands to take the the factories basically out of out of Asia, Vietnam, Cambodia, those sort of countries and moved it into Eastern Europe, mainly due to the pandemic might change. But in my Anmar, there was a really interesting article in boss that I, again recommend everyone read. And basically what's happening is the management of these garment factories, reporting their members, their employees To the janta. And so these people have been picked up arrested and shot 90% of these people are women. They've unionized in the last 10 years. And they don't want to go back to the patriarchy of military rule. So there's fashion brands that are still operating in these countries include companies like mango, h&m, best seller westward, some of them I don't even know the brands. But it's, it's, it's a story of women's rights, huge suffering, their working conditions in the these, these sort of countries are appalling. The women have been on their knees since the pandemic started the economic crisis it's followed. But again, we've talked about it before, just really want to encourage people, when you buy a brand, you've got to look into the whole story of the brand, and they're not taking responsibility for the supply chain, which isn't just the dignity of the workers in the supply chain. It's also how the environment is traded, then we've got to stop buying from these brands, because, you know, the fat the fast fashion industry, you know, we want it, they're making it and we've gotten stopped wanting it because it's part of the reason that we're destroying the stability of our planet. Well, Andrea, my Andrea. So for anybody who doesn't know me, I'm, I'm married to an Andrea, not an Andrea lucky man. I am a lucky man I am. So yeah, I mean, so is it Carl, what's his name, Carl, something a designer, you know, he was you know, he made their logo, she, she loves his stuff, but won't buy it. And she says, because, you know, because he was abusive and misogynistic to women. And, you know, we were in a store and she was just such a shame. He's an a hall, because I love this stuff. But I won't buy on principles. So you know, having having just said I'm pessimistic about naturalism, I'm, I'm, I'm optimistic about the power of human choice. When when it's money when when it costs a company or enough, they pay attention. You know, whether it's United Airlines and the broken guitar, when the guy makes a video, and that goes viral, and they, you know, it made a difference. So eventually, companies will, will run respond to large movements of people moving away from them. But just on Myanmar, again, speaking to Andrea, yesterday, we have a helper, who we had in Singapore is from Myanmar. And when we left Singapore, we couldn't send her home to Myanmar, because of the yonder, there were no flights. So she's with us in which she's with us here, her son 15, went to visit a friend. But of course, was coming home and left just a bit late. And it was after the curfew and spent two weeks in prison. And thankfully, you know, has been returned safely. But after a very traumatic experience. Houses in her village have been set on fire. And you're not reading very much, and about me and mine. And Ray said, why aren't we reading anything about me and my son, because very few journalists able to report out of there. And if it's not, immediately on the front page of the news, people forget about large parts of the world, you Andrea Edwards, are fairly unique in how broadly you care and inform yourself about parts we tend to think about, well, you know, do they have the product I want in my local supermarket, rather than where did it come from and who has been impacted? So kudos to you for bringing that to everybody's attention? I just think, you know, there's 500, factories, garment factories making stuff and we know that, that people aren't being traded, right. So we have to do we have to work harder, we have to work harder to understand where what we buy comes from, and, and what level of suffering. So human dignity is a really big thing for me. You know, we were talking about it a few weeks ago, last week, I can't remember but the way that the the garment workers have been treated since the pandemic kicked off, they've basically been dumped and abandoned. And those companies will come back and we'll keep buying from them. And they don't they don't suffer any cost. And yeah, I just, we have built a society that's all about turning a blind eye to the suffering that exists within our societies, towards humans, in our societies, but towards all life on Earth. And if we don't get that message and our role in it, then we don't have a chance of overcoming the crisis that the world faces, not just from a pandemic perspective, but from the climate crisis perspective. So it's time for us to wake up, you know, the problem I think, that we face is this is about engagement as well. So the company If a company wants to do some good, it has to sort of remain engaged. And like what's happening, what I saw on the article about the Myanmar was, the problem for me was companies were pulling out of the situations like that. So they did they become disengaged from the situation. And therefore, they would stop having any kind of influence at all, you know, I think if they remained in there, and were to, I think if the world was a little bit patient, in a sense, say, Okay, there's a problem, and we want to hear how you're going to fix it, that would be a better way for things to be done, instead of the Kancil culture that we seem to have. It's like, you know, you're doing this, you're involved with this, oh, you can't be a friend of that person. You know, and then so that the safest thing is to just excise yourself from that situation. Whereas I think what we can try and do, which is I don't think the world has the patience for it is to try and therapy is, you know, to try and fix it, you know, but we don't seem to have that kind of patience for it. I mean, you know, ironically, it's, it's a it's a, it's almost like consumerism applied to behavior. But I think it's very much linked to a What's the agenda? What's the goal? What's the purpose, I mean, everything's just now come full circle back to the China missing person. It's, it's like you're boycotting the Olympics is canceled culture on a big scale, basically sporting events. And and it harms the athletes who have been training for four years, over something that is clearly political. I mean, so it's a tragic. I mean, USA, USA Today reported on the 23rd of September this year, that the USA guy just did a quick search number of missing persons in the USA in 2020. And they said, FBI reports 540,000 missing people in the USA, of which 340,000 were juveniles. And so on Andrews point, we're talking about one person in China, tragic as it is. And I know, it's linked, obviously, to the fact that she complained about sexual harassment from a government official. And therefore the question is, is the government a doctor, because she spoke out against the government made government of bad, therefore abduct the problem, and the problem goes away. And then everybody's going, oh, you know, we're thinking about boycotting X, Y and Zed, whereas it would be in China's perfect right to go USA, you've got 540,000 people missing? How about you go and sort that out before you point fingers at us? So this is the missing people argument, the correct argument, because I'm sure for every country, there's a percentage of people or a number of people that are missing. You know, we know that a lot of the children have been abducted and sold into the into the sex slave trade. Right. But political abduction, political silencing, for speaking out because it was against the Vapi. Right. Is that acceptable? You know, did you know a woman who was sexually harassed by the second most powerful person in China, the message that she doesn't have the right to speak up about that, and that he can get away with it? In the time of v2, right, this is a this is a bigger issue than abducted. But what you were talking about missing people? Because, you know, if it goes to that, then why did America allow their president to be the president? Not the current problem? That's what I mean. So it's just it's, it's still what's the agenda? There's an I'm I'm not saying it's acceptable. I don't think it's acceptable. And the fact that that's happened is wrong in everything else. It's just that they, I would expect outrage. Why should the outrage come from? Should it come from every human? Should it come from the Chinese people? Should they be outraged and voicing their outrage? Are they too scared to voice their outrage? Therefore, the American America has to be the outrage police on behalf of the world now? I mean, I and and then at the same at the same time, so I keep I keep coming back to what is the agenda? What is what is really behind the, in one sense, what's behind the finger pointing? What is the what is the purpose because we've just seen, and we're in such an environment of distrust anyway, that we need a bad guy, we need a scapegoat. We need somebody to blame. And so it's, it's like if I can blame somebody else for stuff and everyone's looking at that. I can get away with whatever it is I'm doing. And I'm just in this confused state of not being able to trust anything. Yep. And no, it's not it's not even that conscious. It's unconscious. If I it's just basic human nature that if I can have be outraged about the behavior of somebody else, it makes makes me feel good and ignore, you know, all the things that I'm doing wrong. You're absolutely right. I mean, it's, you know, it's it's way back to transactional analysis. I'm okay. Because you're not okay. So yeah, it's absolutely projection. So no, I think I think the finger and for America to be the outrage police unfortunately they've lost the moral authority right to be the outraged police right with Guantanamo Bay and and, you know, number 45 and Roger Ailes running Fox views and the abuse that went on there, you know, China, China can clearly point to the fact that things are terrible in the West. I mean, with with January six rioters, you know, turning up in Eastern Europe and bolstering Bella roofs by saying, Well, you know, Belarus isn't bad. I mean, what's going on there it's horrific in Belarus. And there's a January six idiot, right saying hi, you know, I'm being chased down by the by the American government. So I'm seeking asylum in Belarus Belarus. I see we're not so bad. Yeah, so you Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so. Yeah. Okay. So going back to the euro teamed up to bring up I forgot to bring up the original reason why this all started was because she claimed that the VP M are correct. Because they paid I've seen VP written it doesn't mean it is sexually harassed her and now she's been silenced. Right. So it's a it's a women's issue. It's a quality issue. And equality is a big part of the of the global discussion right now, quality slipped back by a generation, the ability for women to speak up the ability for women to feel safe. So there's a lot of different reasons. So is it? So is it an anti China issue? I mean, the people that spoke up when American they were the tennis legends who come from all over the world? Who, who basically said, we need to we need to demand some some repercussions here. So I don't know whether no links that you know, what's going on in China? What's been going on around China at the moment, it all sort of comes together. So yeah, it's, I think it's good. What you what we've discussed here is it's not a simple answer. And that's the key thing about news all the time. It's never simple. It's never straightforward. It's never necessarily what you're reading. Right. Andrew? I think, unfortunately, this is such a conflated issue. Your the issue is should a woman be able to speak up against sexual abuse? Absolutely, yes, that's unequivocal because, you know, using power to to create some kind of sexual gratification for an individual and male and female or vice versa. It's clearly wrong. It has been going on since the dawn of time. And And thankfully, you know, there's there's a voice against that. And so it's it's irrelevant where geographically that happened. The women should be safe to say this is not okay. That opens the door to a whole other argument where the pendulum has swung completely other way. So men are terrified to say do anything compliment women? I mean, you know, I have lunch with Yeah, I know, travel around the world compliment. You know, I'm terrified to compliment a woman on how she looks in any way shape or form. I'm trying to go okay, I need to say I mean, I've complimented you today on your insight and and passion for the news and for justice a rather than saying you're looking lovely today because it's dangerous, the latter right to personify, and yet everybody likes a compliment. So the world's gone mad on that. But yeah, I think I think the pendulum of you know me too, that it is not okay for men to use power to demand sex. I think that's a given I mean, I don't think you you know, that that's, that's a morality that goes back to you know, stone tablets, you know, the Sumerian you know, the Sumerians, some 3000 years ago, you know, we're talking about equality and that that shouldn't happen. So I think human morals say it's not okay. human drivers, you know, people are not thinking with their brain and not thinking, equality. When they do that they they justify it to themselves. So calling it out, whether it's in China, whether it's in America, whether it's in Singapore, whether it's in Belarus, wherever it's wrong. So that's issue number one. Issue number two, again, is nationalist governments controlling their populations. If you let people, if you don't organize people, individual power groups will organize them for you. So there's a payoff. How do you the other how do you redress it economically? If you punish if everybody leaves me Anmar right, then how are those people employed? I think you know, the the advocacy organizations who have political clout can do it Ben and Jerry's in the EU in Australia, when they said we will not serve two scoops of the same flavor ice cream until gay marriage is allowed in Australia. I thought it was kind of I think that was kind of cool. It says, you know, we can literally call because it's ice cream but and organizations taking a stand Starbucks closing its doors and saying, Okay, we need to do a diversity training for every member of staff in the US, because we screwed up royally by calling the cops on a couple of black guys waiting for a friend in a Starbucks. So organizations, in some way, taking a stand will be awesome. And they're taxed. So they can take a stand. So they can enter into politics. So, so they contribute to the community, they, as long as they paid to x. I mean, that's another issue about organizations, companies paying their fair share of taxes, if they're contributing the organization, they should have a voice. And I think that would be because, you know, you know, money talks, Bs walks, right? So follow the money, if it costs an organization, the cost of country enough, they will change their laws. Yeah, we just got a comment from someone I can't see who's written it about saying they disagree with the idea that China is isolationist. And so in the last few weeks, we've just been talking about some of the news that's been breaking some of the activities that China has been doing that appears that they're closing their borders more and more in very much more anti Western. So is it isolationism? We're not sure yet. So there's a lot of change going on in China. But should we move on to the environment? Actually, can I just make one comment on that comment? It's a fair comment to say that they may not be isolationist. Because like I think Andrew was talking about China operates on a hundreds of years scale, rather than, you know, Microsoft's four year or quarterly reporting. And so they seem to think that way. And as a result, their whole what is a Belt and Road Initiative seems to suggest the opposite of isolationism. That is expansionism on a massive global scale, where it's pulling back from the established powers of the West and building power independent in Yeah, basically, its independence and not subservience to Western ideology and Western ways of doing business and politicking. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. All right. I know you want to go to the environment, but I'm so but again, history, you know, for for most of recorded history, the power has been in the East. I mean, China is a 5000 year old. Society, whereas, you know, America was discovered in the 1600s. Right, and it's only risen to power, you know. So, again, our perspective of the west or Europe should be the center of power is actually very narrow from from a scale of human recorded history. We're just returning the pendulum back that way. So whether that the difference between isolationist and contraction, earnest versus expansionist, I think they are, I think they are China centric, we are doing the right thing for our economy and our people, because that's the job of a government. Right, because we don't have a world government. So a government is that their purpose is to look after their country and their people. Okay, you're welcome back in China again, now. Yeah. But if you've also been if you look back through history, I don't know if so, there's two books I think everyone should read. One is guns, germs and steel. And I read Jared Diamond. And the other one is why the worse why the West rules for now. Have you have you guys read vice vice for either of those books? I've done we haven't. Thanks for the reminder again. Yes. The sacred history of the world as well. But why the West rules for now? Guns, Germs and steals. And what do I secret? Well, don't worry about that one. Yeah, those first two. Because what they do is they go back all the way through history all the way through human history and then move forward and how we evolve and how we change and, of course China's had Moments of leadership in the world, but it's not. But then they've had times when they've closed doors and you know, in the Brits turned up in the IBM was started, you know, it's screw china big time. So it's not, it's not as straightforward as I think what you've just said, Andrew, it's quite complicated throughout history. And you know, and there's obviously a lot of places that don't even exist anymore who, you know, who were leading, who've led the world for long periods of time. So, but I think that's another thing that keeps coming through is people don't, they haven't spent time with history. They don't understand history, we see history repeating itself right now. And people don't have the ability to stand back and say, Oh, that's very similar to that. And whoa, that's happened before. And when that happens, this happens. And that's not good. Do we want to do that. And so it's like, we're running towards these, these crises that are very obvious to anyone who's been studying history. And we just kind of do the same mistakes over again. And we've got the climate crisis in the in the myths, which I think I think Andrew was saying was talking about pendulum swinging, because it is history repeating itself. And it is just power shifting and Roman Empire. And now at the moment, we're in the the decline and fall of the US Empire, it seems. And, and that power is shifting somewhere else. And it's sort of, you know, hanging on, but still, it's got its tentacles everywhere, but China's rising, Russia is sort of sleeping, and Europe, rebranding, the power is all about how you harness energy, all the great powers, it never goes from north or south or south to north, it always goes from east or west or west to east. Because the build to build a stable power base, it needs a stable environment where you can grow food. So you can feed your people so you can grow. Right. And if you look at the predictions for China in the next 2030 4050 years, 2100 it's not looking good for the environment in China. So you know, we've got all these predictions from the climate perspective. And then we've got all these political movements happening now. And I don't they don't, they're not merging together for me, you know, if China wants to really like China is going to become an unlivable country. But the majority of it, a lot of the big, the big food, the droughts, which are going to result in famine, massive parts of China are going to be impacted. So what's going to happen, then? How does China prepare for that? Are they going to become the migrants when the Himalayan melt, the Himalayas melt, you know, which they've already passed the tipping point. And so the water can't come down into that part of China, which, you know, so many people that farmers rely on? What's going to happen to China that, you know, well, I looked at it this way, in terms of what I thought China was trying to do for quite a while was to engage and be friendly, and to be nice, and to have everyone except them, and I think they didn't do that in an insincere way. You know, I think it was very much a bid by them to do that. But I, I do think there's a there's a, there's a lot to be said about what rejection feels like. Because I think China has been rejected, you know, China's been that person who's been the neighbor has brought the pious has been saying, Hello, sending your birthday cards and doing all the stuff and you know, it's been doing a lot of stuff trying to be nice. And then when it comes to who's the bad guy, China, you know, so it's, it's, that's, that's, I think that's part of the problem is it's a it's a rejection of the grand scale. And I think like human beings, if you get rejected enough, you go, like, you know what, I can do this myself, screw you all. And it changes the tone. So I think that's what happened. China got rejected to the point we got, like, you know, what, I don't know. We don't need you anyway. So let's, let's just forget all this stuff. And I know how it is. I mean, I think we've been there in our lives as well, right? Something goes from like, I'm trying to be nice about this. And you're just an asshole. So you know what? Yeah. Or you're not invited to the Christmas party? You know? Yeah. Yeah. global scale. Absolutely. And, you know, like, if you're playing politics with, with China, you got to play a different game. And they've been bringing the same politics that, you know, Eastern, Eastern west of Europe have been playing and they've applied it to China and China have said, No, I mean, the whole saving face thing, you know, it's like, it's yeah. I'm with you. I think there's a it's all part of the, I don't think the West truly understands Asia, and I don't think it ever has, and I don't think it's ever tried to, and I think that's part of the problem we're facing today. So I'm not I mean, I totally understand the way the Chinese are reacting. Alright, let's look at the environment. So the first thing I want to say to everyone is, please, please, please, please, please read an article with the title 10 ways to confront the climate crisis without losing hope it's published in The Guardian, it will be in my weekend reads it is a brilliant piece. The Guardian is doing a whole series of how we're going to get the world back on track. And it's one of them. And it's absolutely fantastic. Obviously, today is Black Friday. Are you guys shopping? Correct? There is no, but Yep, I've been I've been selling out recommendations as well. Unfortunately, a discounted discount. Yes, I know. I can get it and there's buy what you need. We all we all need things, right. It's the buying what you don't need. So there's an article this guy in New York, I don't need a TV, but I'll probably get one if there's a good deal going. It's the buying for the sake of it. It's buying because you know there's a discount, right? If that's part of the problem, but in the UK, there's the there's the largest boycott, boycott boycott ever planned by independent retailers is happening. They literally switching their websites off. So I think this I mean, I've been talking about this for a long time I've been posting up on, I got sick of seeing the celebration of the number every year. And then a couple of years ago, I said, When are we going to stop celebrating this? I think it was Singles Day. Because it's a problem. It's a big problem. Another another piece that came out the some activists have filed a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Council. Because basically kids are saying they don't want to have children. And so they're saying that member nations have supported unsustainable population growth that is dangerously warming the planet. So they're basically, you know, trying to make countries accountable. But, you know, my children have not gotten to the age where they've connected the dots of saying, I'm not going to have children. But I know that they will get to that point. They still they still dream of having kids. If any of you guys have any of your kids ever say to you they know that it's not going to have children. I'm 25 Yeah, obviously you're not you're not the youngest. Well, my daughter just turned 16 My daughter Tasha has just turned 16 Oh, am I muted? No, you're honestly Hello. Hello. Can you hear me? Hello, hello. Am I on mute? I never think Oh, okay. Well, if I find I find a bit. My jerky. Okay. Yeah, I think somebody else speak but I'm just gonna say like, if you can hear me, my daughter, Tasha a year ago said I'm not having kids because I want to bring them into our world that's dying. Yeah. And how did that conversation go? Like, is she heartbroken? Was it a hard conversation for you to have, she was very proud. It was, um, it was ever? Well, I mean, just the sense of, you know, the lack of hope. But she was very flat and very pragmatic about it as like, you know, this is a generation that's sort of coming in and going, Oh, yeah. Well, the world's coming to an end, and we're living at the end of it. And it was like, This is the reality. And so no, she, she wasn't emotional. She was has been very pragmatic. It doesn't make sense. I mean, well, she changed her mind. Now my son wants to have, you know, a football team of kids. So very different. So to Pepsi, different personalities. But yeah, I mean, I was very surprised to realize that a 15 year old had come to that conclusion. Yeah, well, apparently. I mean, it's been it's been brewing for a long time. That's around the world down in especially in the wealthier countries. People younger people are basically saying this and eco anxiety is it's built into this. You know, if I was if I was of the age of having children today, I wouldn't I know that, I would say like, there's no way I would do that. Because I can see very clearly what's coming, but I think it's something we've got to get ready for and, you know, mental health in young people, as well, all linked around the environment is, is a huge issue. Suicide rates are up, you know, anxiety, depression, all of that stuff. And it's, it's a tough time to be a kid for a lot of reasons going through the pandemic. Certainly hasn't helped. So then other good news, Portugal's now the fourth country in the EU to step away from coal. It's officially turned it off. And it looks like Germany Schultz. That's why he's freezing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well done. Portugal and Germany show us he's gonna be he's gonna be replacing Merkel. It looks like they're coming forward with some really good ideas including stopping finishing call. One final article that in the in the guardian. Did you guys see George Monbiot this last week since cop 26 Did you see him crying on national television? He was very emotional after cop 26 for the future of his children, you know, they got a lot of attention. But anyway, he said I've always enjoyed reading. And he's written this article called filthy business who will stop Britain's illegal waste dumping mafia. Now, we've talked about the waste mafia in previous live shows, as well as some podcasts, you, Tim. And this is obviously the British story. And it's horrendous what's happening. But this is happening all over the world. And of course, in the developing world, it also includes waste being shipped in from, from wealthy countries, in the mix, the waste, the waste situation is out of control, the penalties on the people on the people who are committing these environmental crimes are tiny. There's no reason to stop. And it's happening everywhere. So I would definitely recommend that and I would look into the situation in whichever country you're in. Because we have a waste crisis of unbelievable proportions everywhere on this planet. And just that makes me sad for the future for our children. All right, that's the environment stuff today. I am appalled with the dumping but it you know, it goes back to values again, it goes back to so that one is, is valuing material prosperity over over a conscious decision to care for a place. You know, this is like it is I don't care. Just show me the money. Yeah. And we've, I, I really do think we've done it to ourselves over over a decade, we've just said, Show me the money to the point where we had a movie where the guy was shouting show me the money. And we're all going that's awesome. And we gave him an Academy Award. And so it's like, an ever had a good movie since though. So let's be fair about that. Yeah. What about kangaroo Jack? Okay, that was I'm sorry, I that needs to be edited, or else I won't be allowed back into Australia. But I don't say that one shocking shocking. I only got only I couldn't get past the preview. So the the Yeah, I, we have a we have a values problem. We haven't we have an erosion, we have a systematic erosion of some sort of set of values. And we will argue this philosophically to the point where we can undo it. But I think that's part of the reason why we've got now crap like this has probably been happening for millennia. But you know, we are seeing it and it's getting worse. And we are a we are a dump and by culture we you know, with, with with with weekends like this, which was the original, the origination of your question, I suppose. We don't have to repair the thing. You know, if I'm uncomfortable, I just throw out a mattress, buy a new one get a big TV. Yeah, you know, change the channel from the things that matter? Yeah, so I'm in a. So in Phuket, right? It's been sharp for nearly two years. And there's a whole bunch of hotels you have not opened up yet. And they may never open up again. And as you drive through the really heavy tourist areas, you can see these walls of air conditioning units that are all completely rusted. And you know that inside every single hotel room, there's a mattress, and furniture that's basically probably covered in mold. Because there's been no air circulated in those rooms at all. And so what we're trying to do is find out what's going to happen to that. Because if you're going to put pick up all those mattresses and just put them in, put them in the incinerator and burn them. I mean, they pull the plastic, the full of fabric, the full metal, they're full of all sorts of stuff. But what's gonna happen to the air conditioning standards and rusted and won't be able to be repaired, and masses of this all over Asia, right? All over the tropical regions of the world that just been shut. So what's going to happen to all this stuff? Are we just going to dump it in big burning piles? Or are we going to say, wait a minute, what do we do about it? How do we how can we take the metals out of a mattress and read make sure they've been reused? How can we you know, and those bigger those bigger conversations that the destruction that has been caused just in the last few years that I I don't see a lot of thinking about what how do we do this in a sustainable way. And you know, in the UK, I was reading a surface for series your surface against series is an organization right? So the whoever treats the water plants and these government bodies. They've been releasing sewage into into the water, not not into the ocean into the rivers. Way over like what they're supposed to. They're only supposed to do it during major weather events. And the fines are so small, there's no incentive for them to change their ways. You know, there's no accountability Yeah, that's bizarre. Well, I mean, you're going to, you're going to push one of my hot buttons, which is any government that allows lobbyists is is going to be in trouble because when it's cheaper to pay a lobbyists to own a politician than to pay the fine for doing the right thing. We we see the results. I mean, we're from the since you're talking about movies Tim, you know, Erin Brockovich, you know, the, the lawyer's assistant that, you know, raised issues about chemical dumping, right. And that's still an issue as long as it you know, as long as it's cheaper to to dump it, then to treat it. And as long as we're not funneling some of that money into the creativity that transforms it, I mean, you need to get Frederick on the show and talk about the creativity around recycling, but it also is the economics around recycling. to Tim's point, it's all about, you know, it's following the money if it's if it's cheaper to pay a bribe, or pay off a politician, which, as far as I'm concerned, lobbying is bribing. Then this is the kind of behavior yet and often we, you know, we get the government that we deserve, because if we can elect these people, and we elect them, but they're not accountable to the electorate, and then they're in, they're accountable to where they're getting their money from, then this is the result that you're going to get. So you have to go back to cause Yes, dumping is bad. But yes, they make a lot of money. So they have no accountability. So bingo, this is what you get. Yeah, totally well into rubbish dump, which, which reminded me there's another article this week, which talks about in Australia, the amount of bullying tactics that are being used against environment, activists. And it did you guys say that I shared it last night. It's It's shocking to you know, what's going on, in the government's name, to silence voices, you know, young people are being jailed for 12 months. And that's the equivalent jail time if series. That was the guy standing it stopping the goal, the coal mining, you will stab me? Yeah. And you're like, you know, the Australia I grew up in I know, we've all lived in Australia, right? Do you Australia grew up I grew up in just feels like such a long way away. You know, David Lim sort of mentioned something about it the other day, and I said, I grew up when I grew up, Australia felt like a kind country. And, you know, now it feels like a mean country. You know, and I don't think Australians and mean, but I think the culture is becoming the way it treats refugees, you know, the, all of it, but the way they training the environment activists, it's just it's time it's time for, like, we've got to wake up, you know, this, this is happening. It's like Australia's pretending, pretending the government's pretending in the mining companies are pretending it's not going to happen. This is happening. So let's, let's just this is lead from the front rather than be from behind, which is actually going to destroy the economy that you're on the side. You know, there's, you know, what we, you know, Timika fest, obviously, just gonna throw in a possible expensive solution. And the possible expensive solution is, maybe when we elect governments, is, maybe when we elect governments, governments should say, here are the 24 referendums that we're planning to have over the next two to four years. Because I know that I know, that sounds like social media governance, government. But yeah, it would be interesting that the people, because we don't really have a say, we ever say between two alternatives, usually, that are pretty much the same level of crap. I mean, it seems to be that way. And, and I think I think we what would you be interested in imagine the debates that would happen over selecting the referendum items, people would actually be listening or deciding possibly polarizing issues. But and this might be a very naive approach, but it would be a very interesting approach that that possibly would make the population pay attention because every month or two, they would need to get up and and vote. And at least it would be in the news. Sorry, Andrew, go ahead. Oh, no, no, I mean, you've I've been triggered on both of those issues. So So allow me allow me to be in allow me to be allow me to you raised me both rights very important points. So, I gotta pay. Tim is $10 Good. You're right on that one. Here we go. This would this would trigger Andrew. Firstly, Andrea, you know, you know, I'm a fan of those honest government ads, which is a YouTube channel. Yeah, they are, they are just brilliant a calling out the Australian Government in terms of the corruption to the coal industry, etc. So again, we're back to my top button of lobbyists. Tim, you know, your referendum idea. I agree and disagree with from this perspective. I agree that people need to wake up and take ownership of the governments that they elect, they, you know, people abdicate their responsibility and then complain afterwards, you would pay attention to your town planning, if they were going to build a sewage plant across the road from your house. Right. So you would attend a town hall meeting, etc. Aristotle said democracy was the worst form of government except for all the others. No, actually, I think that was Winston Churchill. But Aristotle was not a fan of democracy. Because democracy requires that you have the intelligence to vote. Now, you know, I still hold a British passport. And of course, Brexit was a referendum where people didn't know what they were voting for. They were making an emotional decision about immigration. Brexit was never about immigration. And, you know, the now living in Portugal, I wish we the UK hadn't left the EU. Because people didn't understand the issues. And now, you know, they said, Oh, I didn't realize all these problems would happen, empty shells. A more expensive petrol Q's everywhere. I just didn't want there to be more foreigners, right. So people don't understand the issues. People should understand the issues, which is what the purpose of this show is about, people should be lobbying their member of parliament, they should be informed about what's happening, and they should take responsibility for the sake of their children. So everybody should have to take a driving license before they drive a car. Possibly people should have a parenting license before they have children. But they definitely should inform them themselves before they go to the voting booths. And they don't do that, do they? Because they don't have free will, because they vote for the party that their parents voted for most of the time, which is the reason that I've nicely segue to the point I want you to talk about today. Yeah, nice. I like you what you just said is they they don't have free? Will they actually what you what you said, though, is they have free will, but they choose to abdicate it. Well, well, very good. If you picked up what you heard me say what I'm about to share with you. It's a paradox. It absolutely is a paradox is need to inform ourselves, what is the choices that I'm making? Right? Because just before we go into the free world, because we do want to focus on that. But there's other things right, when we talk about that, it's media, and social media, and the information bias that and the algorithms that you are, you know, like I know, a lot of people who voted for Brexit and told me their reasons. And I just feel annoyed that my children have lost their opportunity to be able to freely move across Europe, in the in the future that so uncertain, from a land base. Having having more choices is good for them. So I feel annoyed about that. But the other thing is, I think from a demographic perspective, we're getting to the end of the boomers being very dominant in voting. We're not at the end of it yet. But I think I think we need to drop the the voting age to 12. Because this is this is the future for the children that way that we're fighting for. And I think we need more children with the right to vote, and it will completely up in politics completely, because so much of the what they do is geared towards the people that they know are guaranteed to vote in historically that has been them as as a dominant group. So I'm all for dropping the vote. And in Scotland, they've dropped it to 16 I think they're looking at dropping it to 16 in Germany, but I think we need to go down to 12 High School High School and that they should be able to vote. That is interesting. And I find that I find that interested in America might have to drop to five because I've seen that. Are You Smarter Than a fifth grader? There's an argument isn't fifth grade 12 Though no fifth graders not five years old, my friend. Oh, watch these people struggle 11th Everybody's 11 So yeah, you're quite right, Andrew. But I do I do think that that they the bricks it argument against constant referenda. Because Brexit was a one off, and everything piled into it, xenophobia being one of them. So if it was a constant thing where it became a, like if Britain had another referendum now, because of the disaster of Brexit, I think a lot more people will go, Okay, this time, I'm going to just really think about it. Also, also enough people have died since Brexit, since the actual vote, that because the percentage, the percentage was so close enough people have died since that actually it wouldn't go through yet. By the time it was actually enacted. Enough people had already died. And obviously we've had COVID Since So, yeah, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, that that was a wake up call Trump. Hopefully, that was a wake up call, you know, because, you know, we're going to keep going down this path. But alright, let's move into chi, because I'm really looking forward to the, to our freewill discussion. But COVID has been big this week, right. So we all woke up to the news that there's a new strain in Africa, officially. So far, I've seen 22 confirmed cases, it's been described as the worst one we've seen so far. And has the potential to evade immunity. I think like we've we've said before, we always be very, don't panic when you hear these things, for for a mutation to become a global crisis, so many things need to happen. And there's been ones worse than delta that just haven't taken off. So we don't know if this is going to take off. England's already closed down a bunch of countries in Africa. And but it's definitely very different to the one that emerged. So on the other side, you know, there's a lot more conversations around mandates, Austria is looking at putting a vaccine vaccination mandate, people are absolutely opposed to mandates. You know, like, we don't want to have these variants that basically wipe us all out. Because just because we keep we keep allowing these COVID to run around in our societies. mandates might be the only way out. But it's so we want to talk about that. But, you know, we're seeing the protests in Australia, we're seeing protests across Europe. I've seen people on social media saying, Yeah, we're rising, we're rising, you know, and it's like, you don't really 90% of Melburnians 90% of Melburnians have been double vaccinated. 90%. Right. So the maximum of 10% of the people who are rising, it's not a dominant sort of force. So kind of a bit over that. But where in Europe projecting 700,000 more deaths by March next year. The anti vaxxers People in Germany is saying they're plunging Germany into a death spiral. So we've seen protests in France, where the anti vaxxers have been beaten up by people with sticks, because they're so annoyed with him for being out there protesting. Let me let me a tenant, be laughing at that one. But the way you said it was humorous, I'm sorry. The topic is serious to you, you. You delivered it in a humorous way. I'm sorry. Well, sometimes you got to have a smile, right? Lavinia read a really great pace, because she's got the Singapore in the German context, and she was published in Channel NewsAsia, you get a chance to have a read. And so there was this, she said, a couple of things that I love. But if the palette pandemic has taught us anything, it's not to get too cocky about any wins. It rarely lasts for long. No one country is facing it. And it's just like, amen. Something we've been saying all along. And this has happened is Germany's now passed 100,000 deaths. And the Health Minister stated this week, Germans will be vaccinated, cured or dead after winter. So because Germany still in the sort of low 70s, from a vaccination rate, right. So I don't know, you know, we've been talking about this for a long time. A, you know, the logical, obvious choices, we say, right, we're going to do this, and we all do it. And we all do it. At the same time. When we get to the end of this. This is going to go on for a couple years, I saw a video, a couple of kids talking to us from the future from six years from now. And they were talking about COVID. And basically saying you guys took away our childhood, you know, and I watched it, and I think those kids were right. If we don't get this right, in six years from now, those kids will be saying we took away their childhood. Because that's why that's why viruses work. Right. Okay. I mean, my my, my comment on when you lead with, you know, this new variant in Africa. My thought was, what a shock. I mean, you know, we vaccinated ourselves and everybody avoided helping Africa and Africa didn't seem to help themselves. But yep. And, and we've been we've been saying this on the show since the start of the show. Is and before it's, you got to vaccinate the world. You can't vaccinate yourself, and, you know, cross your fingers. So, and they've places in the world that they, they, it's too expensive for them to get a test kit, too expensive them for, for them to try. It's too scary for them to go to the hospital to say that they've got something. So we just got to sending people to help them. But at the same time when you do that, in all the all the corruption, everything else that makes it a bit more challenging. And the profit profiteering from it makes it a lot more challenging. But it's, it's, it's like, it's frustrating. And then to go to the end of your comment, where the children are saying you've taken away a childhood. I get it, but I don't buy it. And, and I don't buy it for two reasons. One is, I remember going to boarding school and people like oh my gosh, he grew up in Malaysia, what was that? Like? You know, and I was like, it was what it was, and I got nothing, I got nothing to really compare it with it was my childhood. So I'm not gonna blame someone for taking away my childhood. Because I grew up in Malaysia. It's my child. He went, he went chopped up by friends, you know, like, you know, you think right, so six years for so a teenager from the age of 12 to the age of 18. If their schooling is constantly interrupted, and they can't go to school, and they have to do homeschooling for long, long periods of time, right? They're not going to build the friendships, and they're not going to build the social connections that you know, you're normally making those years if we, if we do that to our kids, when they when there is a path where we don't have to do that to our kids, I think, yeah, well, there's, there's the other side to it. The other side to it is, for the first time in decades, we've got a chance to instill the values of the parent to the children without the blind leading the blind, unless the parents don't have any values to instill to the children. So again, there's another side. But there's another side to this, that I think is really important that we don't, we don't ignore it, our children will still be educated. The vast majority of children in the world cannot be educated with COVID Running rampage, because they don't have access to the technology. So not only are we going to give our children a very different upbringing, which will, which will harm them if you know social connections are important, right? But a large percentage of the world's population will have the opportunity for an education. So we go backwards again. Yep, we've got you know, it's like the environment. We've got to do it for the kids. Right. Okay, you want the key there was about you know, if compared to right, it's always the thing about a monkey brain, we're always we're always unhappy. We're always angry because of the monkey monkey brain, we're comparing it to another situation another alternative. And on behalf of monkeys, yeah, okay. Well, any mammalian brain, I mean, so we, we look at that and compare it and we go, like, what a terrible thing, if we compare it to the usual life, and also thinking about it in terms of what life used to be, like, when we were, let's say, I actually was, I was thinking about this particular topic, and I thought, kids get born in Siberia, and they're in different, you know, obviously, the different kind of environment than then then we are and they have a childhood, kids get born into war torn Lebanon, you know, and they have a childhood as well. And I think the problem is, what we have right now is the over connection of the world, you know, the world is connected so much that I can have, you know, I can literally be enjoying my cup of coffee, and I can go online to go, oh, shit, that's a better one over there. You know, that's, that's really what's happening in our in our world, we have, which is why I think, you know, I like making making a full turn round to the China story earlier today, right? We're talking about that as well. We can't imagine perhaps how life in China is good, or what they enjoy, you know, but they have a different kind of environment that they're exposed to on a daily basis as well. And they have a different way of reference a different reference, right. And so maybe they are referencing a life that was a lot more draconian, a lot less free, a lot worse. And so for them, the life that they've got right now, as a result of what's going on with the China machine moving forward is pretty good. And there are a bunch of people who want to spoil it, you know, for them. So I think, yeah, it depends. It depends. Which social media you've been cruising because I think then you'll decide that you've had your childhood stolen. But I'm with Tim on this if parents are as used as opportunity right now and you're like, well, thanks for that. Thanks. COVID you, you've made us spend more time together, we played more board games than ever. And I can't remember having more cruises. Yes, causing more environmental problem. But yeah, but again, but again, we speak from a place of privilege, like, Absolutely. Absolutely. My children, you know, but the amount of girls that have dropped out of education in the last two years, not good, you know, so, you know, when we speak only from a place of privilege, and I totally agree with you that, you know, there's such a different lens from so many different angles. And we always need to remember that, but yeah, but this, there is a lot of suffering. Alright, should we should we move on to our theme? Did Andrew want to say something? Because there was seven bazillion triggers going off? And I saw triggers happening everywhere? Nope, you're all good? Well, he's fine. Wow. And look, I mean, I don't think it was a bazillion. But there was several conflated topics there from, you know, we went from a new African variant to the economics of vaccinating the world, we'd already talked about nationalism, you know, the challenges global problems that are being addressed on a national level, of course, there are going to be new variants. And to your point, in really surprise, there's a new variant, they're going to be multiple new variants. And then we got two children, which of course gets a motive. Because I'm currently separated from two of my children, I can't just jump on a plane and visit them because of COVID restrictions. And, and they are, you know, they have been homeschooled for the last two years, they are going to school in Australia, starting in January, providing they get there and it doesn't get shut down and the school stay open. And they are so looking forward to that socialization aspect. But also terrified of it, it goes, you know, because bullying exists. And so there, they'll have socialization, but also the challenge of that. So I like your point, Tim, you know, it is what it is, what about kids that grew up during, you know, in the countryside, in the Second World War? Because they were evacuated from the London Blitz? Did they survive? Yes, I guess so. So it is perspective, it was a huge dump of perspective, Andrea and to hard, break it all down into pieces. But as a father, you know, I have been concerned about the socialization of my, my children, because of COVID. But I am speaking from a position of privilege, as you said, so there you go. That was my summary, Tim, thanks for thanks for roping me in on that one. But yes, I did have similar response. We do we do cover a lot of different topics, you know, we've got sort of core themes, but there's, no I'm not. I'm strapping myself in that as well. Alright, so this week's theme is the concept of free will. And this should be an interesting one. And, you know, I was raised in the Catholic Church, I have left completely old religion, but it's obviously a topic that has been discussed and challenged through the centuries, and it's certainly been part of my life. It's at the heart of our religions is that it's central to our societies. You know, if somebody just desires to murder somebody that cannot be arrested before they murder someone, because they need to be given the space for free will to actually commit the murder, which I always found a really interesting idea. But anyway, also taken from a technological perspective, I've met quite a few thought leaders who talk about free will, from how we design our technology to to ensure the idea is honored. So it's a big topic. It's a big idea. And, Andrew, I'm going to hand it over to you teach us. Okay, well, okay, so firstly, what I'm going to share with you is is a paradox, realizing that self leadership is my topic, and inherent to self leadership is the ability to lead oneself. So it is being at choice point. The question is, how much choice we have when we're making a choice? Is it our choice? Is it a program choice from church, state, parents, teaching, you know, your point about giving, giving children a vote of 12, and I'm thinking where they're going to vote for Beyonce or for a Kardashian, because they have more influence over them. But here's what's happening in psychology. And in neuroscience, there is a huge body of evidence that says we are not as much in the driver's seat as we think we are. And the simple example is that if I reach for my cup of coffee in front of me, which unfortunately, mine is empty, Joe, you've still got yours. But the interesting thing is that if we wire somebody up and monitor brain activity, what is now clearly evidenced is that the motor neurons that fired that caused our muscles to reach out for the coffee happened before our awareness that we needed a sip of coffee or that we were going to have a sip of coffee. And we make up a narrative after the event. So to Steve Jobs, we join the dots backwards. We, as human beings, rationalize everything that we do. And assume I did that cause and lots of psychological experiments, when they have primed or seeded a group of people and then ask them, Why did you do that? They will give a reason very rationally. So we say I'm doing this because at cause effect brain says, I'm doing this because I chose, but we know simple nudge psychology, we can get somebody to do something, and it's completely out of their awareness. And, and then they say, oh, no, but I had freewill, I made that choice. But the evidence is, clearly they are rationalizing the choice after the fact. So there is a chain of events that happens from our birth, even before our birth, that we have this algorithm of our DNA. And we're all dealt from DNA, a pack of cards, right? It's how the cards you're dealt. In poker, you know, the best hand to be dealt is two aces, but it might not get any better. If you're if you're delta two and a seven and Texas Hold'em, it's the worst two things to be dealt, because you can't make a straight. And yet people have won the world's poker championship with two and seven. But we are all of us on this show have won the DNA lottery, in that we're able to articulate, we've had an education, which again, is winning the lottery having education, right. So we've got brains, the work the process that enables us to be educated, and yet a huge part of the population are dumb as a bag of bricks. Now, that is politically incorrect to say, but it's a fact, there is an IQ test that the US military take gives gives applicants and it knows below a certain IQ level, there's nothing they can do. They can't even train them to fire a weapon and they won't admit them. Right 25% of inmates within the US Federal system are below this IQ and or have some level of traumatic brain damage, which means that their impulse control is not sufficient to make the decision. So we've if we evaluate human choice, and we assume that all humans are equally intelligent, have the same DNA won the DNA lottery from that have education, access to health care, parental love, then we're making we're making an assumption we know serial killers likely had very bad upgrade brings. We know child abusers often were the the children of child abusers and alcoholics are the children of alcoholics. And so how much actual freewill do we have at any one point? And that's a question that do we have none. Right? And certain people would say, well, even my conversation with you right now has been programmed. But the interesting paradox from a self leadership perspective is the moment you will realize you don't have as much free will as your door, Jeff, you then have to wake up and say, How am I going to make this choice? You know, I have to do the research. Am I making it? Because am I voting for a political party? Because my parents did, am I following a soccer team? Because my parents did. And I am I framed and you know, you remember my TED talk from 2016? Andrew, you like the fact that we are all framed from birth. But the moment we realize we're in a frame, we get an opportunity to say, intentionally change the causation of events. Our conversation today, the four of us together and whoever's watching the show, if we make a decision at this point that we're going to change things, we do change the court change the causal events moving forwards. So we have choice, but it's not free. Right? And we have to work to step back from the frame. And the example that I use when I'm coaching people around this concept is imagine a dance floor. Imagine it's a high school dance, perhaps and you're dancing with a partner. What's your level of awareness, your level awareness is your own feet, and you're you know where your partner is. And you've got some familiarity with the people around you. Right? You're hearing the music, but you can't see the band or the DJ. But you have that. Now, there's a concept that many have heard of, which is the balcony view, which we could zoom out to the balcony. And we could look down at the dance floor, we could see ourselves dancing, we could see our partner and now we can see the band or the DJ. And we can see the people standing around the edge of the dance floor and the people queuing up at the bar and the people are completely disengaged and we can recognize the the the pattern of the dancing But that's not enough. We have to zoom out again to the rafters or we need to take a, a drone view and look down at ourselves on the balcony, looking down at the dance floor and ask ourselves, but what judgments are we making? Am I? Are they good dancers? Are they bad dancers? Are they good people? Are they bad people? What is the history that I have with these people that are awareness that our very observation is already colored. And on a day to day basis, we don't get that much time for mindfulness and reflection on the decisions that we are making. The paradox is we need to make choice. And yet we have already been programmed for a huge number of choices. There you go. That's my teaching entry. No, no, it's a really interesting idea. So the idea that our programming, actually, until we until we are capable of stepping out on programming, we can't exercise free will basically, give us some direct. Yeah, he's ended up very nicely summed it up very nicely. Yeah. It is. It's a I've never thought about it that way. But it absolutely makes sense to me, Tim, I'm very curious to hear what you think. So my summary of what Andrew said, By the way, I really like what you said, Andrew, I summary of what you said is we have freewill. Well, I love I love the we have the choice, but it's not free. I mean, I yeah, that's, that's really nice. But let's go back to the term free will. So we have free will, but it is. But we're not consciously activating it. We are allowing ourselves in a sense we're allowing ourselves to, to go with the algorithm. Yeah. We're inside of the frame, right? Yeah, a lot of those things are culturally, culturally addressed. And what we basically do, and the way our mind works is, is we get all this information come in, and we process it based on a number of filters. And those filters are learned from school, from culture, from religion, from television, from the media, from people around us, and brothers and sisters, and you know, where you're born and that sort of experience whatever it is. And we we have those filters, just to be able to make sense of information coming in faster. Once we determine what something means we operate by that what Andrew is, what Andrew is saying is that there's actually a step prior to that, it seems that that some of these, perhaps those things that are firing, in order for us, because we're about to take that cup of coffee, is because of those, possibly, because those filters are picking up senses. And somehow. But, but, but where we're letting those filters operate ourselves. And it sounds to me like what Andrew is saying is we need a sense of awareness that we have filters, and then a sense of exploration, to understand our filters. And then to ask ourselves, are those filters? The filters I want to be running my life? And do I want to change the programming to get a different result? Can I can I can I just add one more thought because you just reminded me when you were talking about the coffee example and the neurons and then measuring the brain for activity, right. So I wouldn't I did a leadership course with Deepak Chopra a few years ago. And he said you there are more decision decision making neurons in the heart than there are in the brain. And I thought that was a really interesting idea. Because we always presume that our thoughts our thinking comes from our brain. Whereas, you know, when you sort of said that, maybe it's not the fact that the brain acted after the fact maybe the decision made was made somewhere else. You know, and that's part of, we don't understand that we don't understand like, maybe it was the stomach or the tongue. Maybe that was where the decision was made. Right. Okay. Well, much as I will hold back my perspectives on Deepak. Look, here's the thing, you know, what did you What did your mother eat during pregnancy is going to affect your taste buds? Right? So if you're, if your mother ate spicy food during during pregnancy, you're much more likely to enjoy spicy food. If you're if your mother ate sweet things, while you're in utero, that's going to actually affect your sweet tooth. Right? You know, we look at you know, go to an American theme park and see obese people with obese children. But was the was was it started even you know, was the chain of events started before. Now whether these people can step out of that cycle is tricky. Do we make decisions with the gut? Well, Dr. Candace pert, author of the book Molecules of Emotion, the woman who felt she was robbed of a Nobel Prize, because she was a woman who discovered endorphins are feel good chemicals discovered feel good receptors in the gut. So actually, it's much more likely that you make a decision with your gut than your heart. There are very little decision making. The heart is of course impacted by the vagus nerve, which comes straight down from the brain. So I would go for the gut than I would with the heart, if you're going to look for an atom, but it is it is an entire genetic makeup, we are coded way before birth. In utero, and again, you know, to a biblical comment, and here's one for Tim, you know, the sins of the fathers shall be manifested unto seven generations, right. So we are also living out some level of of heritage as well. So the legacy of our decisions that we're talking about on this show, will will go forwards for a number of generations. Hopefully, there are those generations, the plan is around long enough for us to have seven generations. So yeah, Tim, you're absolutely right. But the actual term freewill is just debunked in science. Whereas choice is now you could say that they are romantics? Well, they're replaceable terms. But you know, in science now that there are general in psychology and neuroscience, they're making that distinction between the two things. All right. So, so when, when we, I mean, when we think about, what we would like to obviously encourage people to do is to get themselves to the point where they, they, they have freewill, they're back in control of their life, they move outside the frame, and they build well, but even then you can build your own frame. But how do people do that? Like, you know what I mean, for me, self awareness. So understanding your emotions, not being in control of your emotions, not letting your emotions being control of you, especially the negative ones. Or even the positive ones, right? If you if it's too controlling, but self awareness, being understanding yourself how you feel, how you think, why you think it, where it came from, getting rid of rid of the ideas that were given to you that don't necessarily reflect the way you think, to me, that's a really critical part of aging. From your perspective, you know, how do people surviving? Well, I think I think we can forgive ourselves so much more, right? Yeah. Yeah, the, my wife, Andrea, is fond of saying, Well, hey, you know, self leadership yourself, which is hilarious, because, you know, I've written two books on self leadership. And does that make me immune to being triggered? Of course not. You've seen me getting triggered a couple of times that, yeah, and there were certain things that triggered me. And when I when I started my own journey of self awareness and self discovery, and started talking about self leadership, where did a lot of this come from? And one of my sisters said years ago, she said, Well, you just being dad, and I'm like, Oh, my God, you know, I am just duplicating my dad's hands. Right? When when, you know, I first started dating Andrea, and we sat down for dinner, and her daughter joined, you know, I reached for the food and start eating and she goes, Oh, no, you can't eat till everybody served. And I'm like, Yeah, but my dad did. You know, I pay for the food. I put the food on the man of the house. I eat first I was like, yeah, how you know? And she said, Well, you're not Shrek. And I'm like, Well, yeah, actually, maybe, you know, I got the ball hit and live in a swamp, you know, simple programs, right? You know, how do you sit down and eat dinner as a family? And But recognizing where did that come from your own being dad? You know, I inherited that from dad or, you know, or why didn't I pick up mums? Empathy, right, I chose to model out my father. So I think we can be a bit kinder on ourselves and go, Okay, if I behave a certain way, you know, it's not all my fault, right? I got delta set of cards, I got some DNA I got, I got the education I have. And so I can be kind of myself up until now, but not make an excuse making fault going forward. And I think this is the key point. Yeah. It's a personal ownership of this. This is the deck of cards I got dealt. But uh, how am I going to play the moving forwards? And once you've had Yeah, yeah. So you're gonna be option of blame. You're looking at you're looking at blame. Don't allow yourself. Yeah. Because yourself. For others, right. When you talk about blindness yourself or others, like I'm not dead. Yeah, but it wasn't dad's fault. How he was either, right? He was he just, you've got to go back a generation and say, Well, how was my dad impacted? And if you know if you met my grandfather Making rest in peace. You know, he was an incredible dictator of the family. And I can tell you some stories about how that impacted me. But it's I can be counted on myself but not blame. Right? There was a wonderful book called Sham, which stood for self help actualization movement. It was written by a journalist. It was a really nice Azuay of people like Deepak and Oprah and Tony Robbins. And it's basically the American principle of, you know, everybody can be successful, everybody can be successful, it's the American dream, work hard enough, and you can be successful. That's what Tony is telling you. And Oprah is telling you, but if you're not successful, Oh, we lost with the wind, we lose. Hosts, they, so if you're not success, if you're not successful, then you're a victim. And therefore you can blame your father that you're the son and daughter of an alcoholic or an abuser, etc. So there was this nice paradox that you got out of jail free either way, you know, you can make it. Now the point being is not everybody will make it to be successful. The reality is that the education system isn't fair. There's another wonderful book called The hypocrisy of merit, that, you know, not everybody gets into an Ivy League university, right? It depends if your parents already went there, and if you could buy yourself a place or you could buy yourself the ability to pass the PSAT scores, which is eminently studied double four, it was put there to, to make it fair. So if you're, you know, if you're a person of color, or Asian, you're less likely to get into these Ivy League schools, because of various subtle criteria. So life is not fair. Right? I'm just saying, Andrea, not everybody has the opportunity to be successful, right? If you're born in a middle class family, and you've got education and health care, you know, you can be a Margaret Thatcher and get to a university and then, you know, become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, right. And so her mindset her program is, I worked hard, and so therefore everybody can work hard and get to the top. Well, if you're born in a ghetto, or a favela, working hard isn't going to make any difference because you're never going to get into an Ivy League school. You're never going to get that education. You don't have to healthcare. And Malcolm Gladwell, his point, you know, you won't be programmed with the entitlement that you should. And so it isn't fair. Those people and to tell people that is fair, that it's a meritocratic world. Barack Obama's and you know, meritocracy, it's all about freedom. And yet he filled his cabinet with people who were Harvard graduates who had already had the cards dealt that they were there. So there is no meritocracy here. And the people who are feeling left out of that, who don't win the DNA lottery, the educational lottery, the middle class upbringing lottery, they are feeling very disenfranchised, and they vote for these nationalistic leaders who say, I will sort it out. Believe me. Yeah, I but meritocracy could be its conditional meritocracy. It sounds like it's meritocracy. Meritocracy seems to be reasonable to a degree. But you need to have, there's a lot of conditions for you to get selected onto that panel, for example, onto that cabinet. You know, you had to have them you had to eat, you needed the opportunity. And I guess where were, what your sounds like, what I'm hearing is, a lot of people aren't getting the opportunity to have the education to be able to display the ability to have that merit to get selected. So there are several pathways that I just closed. Yeah. So firstly, they don't even know that they have that opportunity. It's, you know, it's not offered to them getting an education, you always, you know, there's a great story, the first, you know, the first person in a family to get a degree, right in a minute changes the dynamic of the family because they were working class family or even, you know, they were below the poverty line, or they were the wrong caste system, you know, in certain countries. The problem is, is the self fulfilling prophecy that those people that get to university happens. I mean, Singapore has, you know, was built on a meritocracy and Joe might want to speak to this, you know, Lee Kuan Yew said, you know, we're gonna be meritocratic, work hard, we'll send you off to university. And so a whole bunch of kids were sent off and, and got scholarships and went to the best universities and came back into Singapore. But of course, as they had children, they for they educated their children made sure their children got into the right schools. And then you've got it. You're starting to get a stratification of the Singapore society, the educated, highly educated scholars and the children of those scholars and the top schools becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that their children will also and therefore you will get an uneven distribution of education across in a small little environment like Singapore. So, so generation generationally that sort of starts to change, right. But then, you know, but then I look at a country like Thailand where, you know, the education of the children that that happens, right? There's a national education system, like we're seeing in a lot of parts of Asia, that just focus on educating the children is a very high thing. But you know, that's a really interesting example. Joe, what's your what's your take on that? Because I think that's an interesting perspective. Well, I think there's one, there's a thing about that whole, I was thinking about the whole thing about much choice again, and free will run I think, Singapore, if anything suffers, and might be the wrong word to use there. But we've been giving, we've been given these choices to succeed as it like most of the choices you can make in Singapore are going to lead you towards success. Because they've been designed that way. So I actually very much like the idea of what what is being set up in terms of what expectations are, where people are likely to head, you know, just thinking about like, like for the kids, when they when they grew up here in Singapore, you and you make your choices. It's very hard to fall back, you know, it actually is likely that you will fall forward in some way. And if you are, if you have the guidance and mentorship along the way as well, it kind of will lead you to it. So Singapore is a really remarkable place in terms of having been designed for success. And it's and it's not, you know, huge Beth's I'm not saying that nobody, nobody fails in Singapore. I mean, it's very much, you know, you can you can fall fall below the cracks. But I think there's a way that that a lot of decisions are made, which are based on the 80% rule. I think they try to they try to make it such that it works for about about 80% and we work on that broader scale. And because you're looking at the idea of 80% and not the best 5% or 10% be the focus is much less on exceptionalism. But meritocracy, meritocracy means you get to qualified to be within this this strata, you need to you need to still earn your earn your keep you don't automatically, you know, get to take part or enjoy the the privileges of membership, so to speak. Hmm, interesting. But you just made it you just made my case for lack of free will. Because I'm I guess, John McAfee will. Yeah, so you absolutely made my case for lack of free will, because it is designed. You know, I mean, I remember a very, if was a Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which I was, you know, forced to read as a teenager where, you know, a world was stratified into alpha betas and deltas, right, everybody had their role in society. And there's John Savage, this individual that grew up outside of society outside of the drug control. You know, Anis neath the tightest population that was massively compliant for work together. So Singapore works if you fall within these parameters. But what's the price that the society pays is, is a lack of creativity, and diversity. And if you if you were born outside of the accepted norms of behavior, and your sexual orientation and political views, you're in deep trouble, because you don't have equal opportunity, then? I mean, one of the things that really made me chuckle when I first came to Singapore was I had an interview to do some work for the media authority. And I didn't really do my research very well, before I went to the meeting, I made an assumption. And I discovered in the meeting that they are the censor for media in Singapore, and then I understood that they were the sensor and that they needed some leadership development and so on. But they said, no, no, we were not only the sensor, we're in charge of creativity. And I went well, I mean, that is really, really clever, right? Because we were going to censor you at source, because you were not letting creativity. You know, Edward de Bono would would would have an absolute fit in terms of thinking hats, because they're immediately going to the Black Hat before you've had the white hat of creativity or the green out of creativity. I never forget which one it is. So it was that. Do you remember what year that was? Approximately? I was quite a while ago. I was one. I mean, I was in Singapore for 17 years. I left this year. So I mean, I think there would have been 2004 2005 So it was quite a while ago. They might have changed since then. I think I think it's really important to give credit to Singapore for changing so much on that front, like, because I got there in 2003, I think. Yeah. And, you know, it was different than to to to the country now, it was very, very different nothing come, you know, it's completely out of luck. Yeah. But you know, to the micro, you know, we can cycle all the way back to China right now, is, you know, why was some of those draconian concepts in place? Because you need it, you know, if you read Lee Kuan us autobiography, you know, he had to manage a population, and some really great decisions were made, but at some of the expense of creativity and diversity. Yeah. And so that's, that's the, that's the payoff there. We as as children of the systems that we grow up in, right, what are the you asked me for things to, to change? Right, one, of course, is being aware, reading, of course, opens your mind. And travel, of course, opens the mind something that's very difficult to do. And, you know, to travel in a way that you're not, you know, staying in five star hotels and hanging out with other people have exactly the same culture, but go live with people in the countries that you visit, I, Kevin, and his nomadic mindset, you know, going living in an Earth in Mongolia, or, you know, going traveling with a tribe in Namibia, you know, see how other human beings perceive. You know, we go live in Germany and understand how the Germans think about immigration, go spend time or travel. And you know, this is in your book, of course, you know, common carriage travel, change the way you saw the world that it got you out, you're traveling as a single woman, open your mind to your Catholic upbringing, the programming that you had, and you said, Hang on a moment, that doesn't work for me. And I need to step back from the frame. And that takes a great deal of courage. Because the moment we step out of our comfort frame of the politics of our parents, or the religious affiliation, and say, I have to make my own choice about this, you know, I can, what religion does nicely is it packages morality and behavior for people and says, This is how you're going to feel okay? This is makes you feel okay, these are the bad people. But when you have to choose, what's my value, what's my moral code? How an AI because of value helps you resolve an ambiguity, right? Oh, I could take this and nobody's gonna, nobody's going to see me do it. So why don't I do it? Or everybody else is doing this? Or I could, you know, I could buy a big screen TV and dump it. And is that in one TV isn't gonna make any difference? These value questions. When you have to make those choices yourself, it takes a lot of effort. And it assumes that you have some level of economic stability to do that. If you're just worried about feeding yourself and your children and finding a roof over your head, then do you necessarily Are you going to be that luxurious. So that comes back to my freewill argument. There's a lot of thing. Now it's great. This, this isn't an answer. Like, I don't care if people are religious or not, like, whatever you want to do. But I don't have to say, when I decided I was going to reject all of my religion. I had to take the leap of faith. Because I take paradox. Yeah, exactly. But I had to take the leap of faith. And I've talked to a lot of people who couldn't do it. And they were too scared of what might happen because of all the fee that was wrapped up in in the education I got not everybody gets right. There was all this fee, if I did this, I would go to hell, if I did this, I'd go to hell, that sort of messaging that I grew up with, right. And, yeah, I ended up having to say, one day, I'm going to take the leap of faith and let's see what happens, you know, and nothing happened. It's great. So that was good for me. But that that was how I kinda had to do it. But no bombs, no bolt of lightning for you then. No, because, you know, like, you know, my mom's very religious wrote me have arguments about it all the time. But, to me, religion, for me today is be the kindest person I can possibly be in the world and do the, to do as much good as I can. And if that's, you know, if I'm doing that, then surely if there's a God, I don't need to be aligned to a name or an association, which Catholicism feels like that to me, you know. So, so, I mean, I just, you know, I would I just see for me from a from a behavioral self leadership perspective, it is. Religion is a frame an interesting piece of research that Dr. Anna khazana and I did when we, when we wrote the what ended up being the 2012 book on self leadership is that we actually included religious affiliation and practice into our research on self leadership. And we interestingly found an upside down bell curve And the interesting thing is that the people had high self leadership with those that had consciously committed to their religion. I, one of my good friends has a PhD in theology, and it's an emotional intelligence coach. And he has massive self leadership and is massively, you know, religious from that perspective, because he's thought about it, he studied it, he understands it. So he's up on the high curve there. And then as you say, rejection takes a lot of courage. True atheists, interestingly, survey in the US showed that atheists knew more about the Bible than professed Christians, because you have to read it to reject it. And so, to actually take the decision to be not agnostic, I don't know because that's easy. agnostics in the middle, right? Oh, I don't know. Yeah, agnostic, because I'm not an atheist. Right? Yeah. Well, you don't know. But you say you're on the up curb. If you've gone beyond the the ambivalence, I don't know, because atheists have fully rejected people like Ricky Gervais, or, or Chris Hitchens. You know, I mean, Chris Hitchens was an absolute crusade, you know, he wrote a book, why God is not great. So, but that takes a lot of courage to absolutely reject it. So, most people, my problem with Judge is he, so I, I reflect, I reject the story that I've been told. That's what I reject right? There. There is, there is so much that's unexplainable, you know, in the universe, that I am not arrogant enough to think that I understand it all. But I feel I've always felt the story of being taught from a religious perspective is far too small. I stone, how enormously fantastical, the universities and the possibilities and the possibilities within us within our Earth, but but the greater thing, so that's why I'm not an atheist. And I'm not a believer. I, I don't think we've fully understood the story. Well, there's there's another term, which is an agnostic, igino, St. Ik an agnostic is not in saying, Okay, we're going to have this discussion. Because and this is I didn't really want to go here with freewill. But an agnostic says, Well, if we're going to discuss this, please define the terms. All right. And, you know, universe, you know, God, all of these things are, you know, within each of them, you can't have a discussion with anybody. Because there as you say, there's a narrative behind. You're not it to people who even profess to have the same religion, go to the same church, synagogue or mosque are not actually representing the same God because it's their internal representation of that. So it's impossible to have a right or wrong discussion about that. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. None of us. I mean, the beauty of it is, is that we know so much more about how the will the the world is put together, the universe is put together. And if we're reading religious texts that that predate geography, for instance, there was no understanding that there was, you know, the United States of America or hadn't been discovered at the point that most of these texts were written. So they weren't written from a perspective of revealing universal knowledge. They were written from a perspective of understanding their current reality. And that's all we can do, we can understand the universe to the point that we have that reality. And there's wonderful people who push the boundaries on that thought experiments. Like, you know, Mr. Einstein said, If I'm riding my motorcycle at the speed of light, and I turn on the headlights, what happens? And the new brain explodes? Because you can't answer the question. Right? so fabulous that the human consciousness is pushing that. But your question to me it was okay, if there is no free will. Right. And to Tim, I know, you know, we have to make choices. And how do we make those choices? Stephen Covey said, you know, we need a compass, we need a value system. And if you adopt that value system, from your religious upbringing, and it works for you, and I'm absolutely fine, but if it works for you, and it doesn't, and here's the global perspective, and it doesn't make you better than anybody else. Right, because then the problem comes with arrogance is thinking that you're better than other people and people who profess to belong to one tribe, whether it's Manchester United vs. Manchester City versus another, right? Anybody who belongs to a tribe that you know, or, you know, Catholic versus Protestant or Methodist versus Mormon, you know, the moment you belong to one tribe, the natural human element is that I'm therefore better than the others because I wear this jersey and that's from football team to religious team. And that's a lot of the problem that we you have on this show in terms of solving global problems, is we go back to this Tribal Wars, Joe says this monkey brain of looking after me and mine. Yeah. What percentage of the brain do we use? It's pretty low. Do you guys? Nobody knows. Right? No, no, the point is that, that to answer that question, you would have to know what full capacity is. Right. So that classic, we only use 5% of it is sort of a very strange number, because 5% of what we don't know what it's actually capable of yet. So it was more from the point of we don't use much of our brain, right. And I mean, study of brains is what a lot of a lot of our brain is happening. We don't know about it. So. So firstly, the concept of monkey brain is, is somewhat dated. And even, you know, left and right hemisphere is somewhat dated, there are whole bunches of the brain that seems that seems to be working, you know, on their own, right. They're doing different things simultaneously. So neuroscience is really pushing the boundaries on that. What's interesting is consciousness, as opposed to the brain. Your experience of listening to me and me of listening to you feel feels seamless. I woke up this morning, and I didn't have to think who am I? Alright, and and it's many years since I woke up, and I asked, Where am I, but but I didn't have to ask who I was, you know, this, my consciousness kicked in, I knew my name. I knew where I was coming from, what my values were, what my outcomes were. And I knew I was going to be on this show. Right? So my consciousness feels seamless. And this is an absolute mystery to neuroscience, because there's whole parts of my brain that are operating and doing different things that I'm completely unaware of, and you're unaware of yours. And yet we have this experience of consciousness. So back to agnosticism, we have to define the terms, are we defining the brain? Or are we defining consciousness? Because to your point about is it in the heart? Or is it in the God? Maybe it's something else? Yeah. Yeah. And I suppose that's the ultimate point is, don't ever be arrogant enough to think you've got all the answers, because you cuz you haven't. Because it's the deal. It's the deal. Scott Adams talked about the Dilbert Principle, and I love Scott Adams, and Dilbert because, you know, they engineer in his cubicle and the funny things that he did with his boss, but the Dilbert Principle is that, you know, don't learn anything new. Because if you learn new things, the percentage of what you know, versus the percentage of what you don't know, goes down. So the more you learn, the stupider you become, that's the Dilbert Principle. So yeah, but we're not going to encourage people not to learn because that would be stupid. All right. Let's wrap it up. Day one, one thing before we wrap it up. And and that is, in that entire conversation, you didn't really hear from Joe or me. And sorry about that. And my and my, no, that's okay. And my my, so I just want to say that my perspective doesn't necessarily agree with you guys. Because I'm very, I'm Christian. And I made a conscious choice to, and I, I grew up with a Christian frame, but not not in a Muslim country, but not with a very hard Christian frame. And what I've had to do in my life is go and discover it. So I've actually made a choice to immerse in and just then you might have noticed me slightly distracted. I just remembered that I had till I had two minutes to submit an assignment to a theological college that I needed to do a PDF and upload. So I just did that. So excuse me for going off and doing something from a theological perspective. But I, I, I don't think I think we had a discussion about about choice. I don't think we had a discussion, theological discussion about freewill at all. But that's okay. We just use the term freewill. And maybe they got some people thinking, and we looked at a biological, psychological and possibly philosophical perspective on it. We didn't really look at a theological perspective, we did discuss why a cup of why Andrea at least rejected the the religion, that she was presented, and made a conscious choice to do that, but we didn't really investigate why others may accept it. So I just wanted to mention all of that, that it wasn't necessarily a very rounded one. And I have it in next to me when I was going to refer to it in case we got to that a paper I had written for my theology class, which talked about an element of freewill as part of my defending argument with regard To predestination versus free will and the constraints with regards to free will and wide various things. And but we didn't really get so far that that was okay. Because we didn't really go down that theological line, which is probably good, right? Because, you know, which is probably good because people struggle with one way or another, they struggle with it, right. And I used my example of religion, but I wasn't really commenting on religion, because it was my experience. Right? And here's my decision. But then you've made an active decision in the opposite direction, which Yeah, we don't really have the balance side, but and I'm not here to proselytize or evangelize. But because I because what I'm enjoying about the path that I'm on, is the argument is the different perspectives of the argument. It's like, how, how do you deal with that paradox? Or conundrum? Or, or contradiction, or? Or whatever it is so and well, I find that contrary, well, I didn't go down that one. I think we introduced I wasn't going, I wasn't going to do the religion, one because and I understand your faith. From a self leadership perspective, as I said, you're on one end of that upside down bell curve is that you've made an active decision to your faith. And as I said, I fully respect that and I see you as a self leader from from that point. But within religious itself, there's a paradox of freewill if God is omnipotent, omnipresent, already knows what you're going to do. What choice did you have, in terms of what you were going to do? Right. And so that's always that I get one that was, that was the paper that I wrote. And I exactly example of I have the all powerful ability to pick up a ball at any time of the day. But when I go and play football, I, I choose not to pick up the bonus. I'm the goalkeeper, i don't i i play by the rules that I've either made or agreed to. And that there's a whole other discussion of that one. And there's all i government and from that perspective, I'd be happy to have it. But I don't think to me, it's it's a it's a shame you've given up drinking, because for me, that is a two bottle of wine argument, right? That's definitely a two bottle of wine at that one. Alright, so I could host you guys in a podcast, we have a good chat. But we're obviously got overtime, even more than usual. So I've decided to skip the last one. What's keeping you distracted at the moment that people could watch listen to read anything? Yes, definitely share this. Alright. I have been totally geeking out on videos by James Hoffman. And so James Hoffman has two F's and two ends. And it is only because and I find it hysterical, because we started talking about Black Friday. And then we gave examples of triggers with regards to picking up a cup of coffee and, and synapses and, and all these sorts of things. It's this guy, once the barista of the year something rather in 2017, or wherever it was in Tokyo or something like that. And he does, he's very lovely. Like, we're going to investigate which ones of these coffee machines is the best coffee machine for you to buy. And so I'd be going nuts on frickin coffee machines and grinders, and everything else. And I now have them. I'm sorry, this is gonna disgust you, Andrea, I have them coming from various parts of the world on aeroplanes. Because I was hoping I would even wait a Friday to source the cheapest everything that I could possibly find. Although I did I, I stopped short of the grinders coming from somewhere in Singapore, the the coffee machines coming from Australia. And just for those watching who are interested in what my final decision was, I wanted to limit myself to about$1,000 for the whole setup. I ended up buying a Breville Bambino Plus Pro Plus and the Breville smart grinder Pro, because I I wanted great coffee and I wanted to be playing with it, but I didn't want to play too much. So that was my that was my thing. But I've been loving my wife thinks I'm insane. Like I'm going down to this. They sort of like flow through channeling, understanding, channeling and pressurized, you know, porta filters and all this sort of stuff, but I've been enjoying it. And now that I'm older, I don't care anymore about videos. Okay. All right. I've been watching a series called it's a new series, I think it's called animals on Netflix. And it looks at dogs, cats, octopus, this mammals and it's it's a beautiful, beautiful show. You know, a lot of the animal shows they sort of show them in their environment and hunting and stuff. What this does is it shows the connection between animals and shows the heart of the community, and I think it helps you fall in love with the animals more I think the world needs to fall in love with animals and understand that they've got a heart too. So for anyone, you know, if you've got a dog cats whenever I would definitely recommend watching animals like their compassion and stuff like that. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Andrew? Well, I've been, you know, I've got a deadline for my new book, my new leadership book coming out in first quarter of next year. And I have to finish off my book for December 1. So I have been pretty focused on that. And so I'm sorry. But when I walk to the beach, I do I do my walks to the beach, I have discovered a remote beach that doesn't have a direct route. Walking from my place, there's a big valley. And I found one way down to this beach. But it's very muddy and bit of a climb. And I've been trying to find a different route. So I check Google Maps and I take off and then get lost. And that's kind of my where my wife is terrified. She goes, Well, what did you actually what something happened to you? How will anybody find you and I was like, hand off, even though he doesn't need to and make a movie about himself. Ouch. Oh, shut down. But that's, to me, that's a distraction. You've moved to a new country, and you just got it. It's a beautiful distraction. Yeah. Joe, well, boringly, I've been distracted by trading. So I'm putting the work some of the new skills that I've learned from, from a mentor of mine, I am trying to not only use the skills but also to keep thinking of myself as someone who didn't have these skills before and trying to teach them to somebody else. So it's a it's a, it's trading with a view on making a course out of it to help people, you know, really have some outsized returns. It's a whole different paradigm in terms of how to look at look at trading. So yeah, that's that's really been distracting me distract me all the time. In fact, while we've been talking as well, has been a chart that's moving up and down right in front of me. Getting assignments you're trading. JJ is to be interesting. Now, it's all about the charting. Like she is still interesting, Jim. Well, we need to speak about some other sort of trading that because of the Black Friday weekend, remember that? Absolutely. That's I mean, I can I, you know, I, I've got to go and do some LinkedIn posts to promote my Black Friday sales of my online programs. So that's what I'll be doing as soon as we get off here. Just Just picture me punching you in the face, right. Even getting on the back of the theme. Like I'm seeing all these people doing as my Black Friday sale, I'm like, stop it still be negative, it's a negative for me, you go to black Friday's black leadership.com. Just don't call it a Black Friday sale. If you want to offer a discount offer a discount, just don't associate it with mass consumerism just don't because it's a it's a negative. And there's a lot of people who feel like that, you might not see it, you might not feel it. But for me, I'm a communications person, right. The last thing you should be doing should be tying yourself to that. It is it is a trend on the decline. It doesn't. The consumers might not have gotten the message. But the message is that it is a trend on the decline that needs to decline as quickly as possible. It's a very negative thing to hang your hat on. And I just really, please take my advice, do not use those terms. offer a discount, I'm gonna go for Black Friday sale. Just Andrew dude, do two and a B test it? No, it's not that. Yeah, I agree with you. It's negative. And you know, mine, I have a you know, I have a I have a marketing team. And as what they, you know, I my free will is like, you know, this is what they wanted to do. This is what they got excited about. And, you know, somebody somebody has to pay for. Somebody has to pay for my wine and cheese in Portugal. So, yes. Go straight to Cyber Monday. Yeah. All Singles Day. Right. So you got three options coming up. But yeah, I have my wife, my wife won't be worried if I'm doing something for Singles Day. She's like, No. How about self leadership Tuesday? Self leadership Tuesday. I should have got you guys in terms of brainstorming my marketing a lot. Thank you. We're the marketing team. It's a consciousness thing that we were talking about earlier, right? We don't even think about it. We should think about it. And there are a lot of people in the world who are thinking about this stuff from a negative perspective. So you say A B tested message. It's not about a B testing the message. There is a very a growing population in the world that offended by it. Okay, and if you want to offend, go for it. But I get upset. Ricky Gervais says just because you're offended doesn't mean you're right. But in this case, thank you for your insight. Thank you for your insight. And I hadn't thought about that one. It's a brand. It's a brand linked to mass consumerism, mass consumerism is the problem we're paying for is one of the problems are facing from environment perspective. Right. But you know, what you're selling? Alright, yeah. Just want to make people away, like, you know, I just want to make people aware, there are a growing movement out there, who are who is offended. It's not their Ricky Gervais sort of response. It's, it's wrong in our eyes. And we're in a we're in a world that is this. When you're when you're so invested in what's going on in the world, from an environment perspective, and, and the waste crisis and all that sort of stuff. So much of the world jars with what you say, and an everyday I'm on LinkedIn, it's just jars with me the way people talk. You know, we're in the middle of pandemic, people are talking about rubbish, right? And it's constant. And it's a real battle for people who are paying attention. But for some something like this are all these big holidays and big, super saving super sales days. Just don't go near him. That's my advice. So okay, but he, but I wanted a coffee machine. That's fine, but I figured that somebody was gonna go stupid and discount it. That's fine. So I waited till today, and I did it. That's fine. I'm not I'm not talking about spending. Andrew has to go. Yeah, if you need to buy something, you need to buy something, right? It's not about that. Anyway, we're gonna we're gonna go. Vulture. I'm not a consumer vulture sitting there to get the thing. I'm buying the thing that I'm waiting economically to buy the thing I want, because somebody is gonna discount it under the sale. not immediate, but somebody is going to discount the thing. I appreciate them discounting it. I don't think they're an idiot. I retract that statement immediately. And I went by, I won't buy anything for today. I won't. That's my way of saying I don't agree with this. Right. Okay. I bet but I'm not criticizing anyone who does. It's not about that. I make my stand you make you know, we all do we all we you do you I'll do me, right. But it's all part of the bigger message that we need to be getting. We so as what we do today, is impacting our children's future. So our decisions impact their future. I agree. I took the you know, I agree with you on that on that. But I think we do label things that don't need to be labeled and get offended by things we don't need to get offended about. For example, I was I read a post yesterday that somebody was saying, you know, Singapore, stop frickin talking. Stop celebrating Thanksgiving. It's, it's, it's a horrible thing. And I'm like, and I went to Thanksgiving dinner, and I was telling the guy, you know, he was Thanksgiving, you you run a business about giving, actually, you should turn it into that. And then then I'm like, Why? Why? Why? Oh, because of something that happened 40 years ago, and we're now rewriting Well, no, we're not rewriting. We're saying that it means that but it doesn't mean that to so many people, it means family getting together. And then somebody is deciding to get offended by it. And I'm just like, Okay, well then. And I wrote in my response, which I don't know, if I've lost or been canceled or anything. But I wrote in my response, then I demand that everybody don't celebrate their birthday, because somebody died on that day. And and somebody is going to be upset by it. Because it's, it's almost getting to the point of ridiculous sensitivity. Now we shouldn't be we should be getting angry at stuff that we're talking about, about, about injustice on a global scale like this and stuff that is happening today. And, and then it's and, and stuff that we need to avoid. And if we're going to get caught up in smoke screens have have to keep us away from the bigger agenda that needs to happen because we're getting petty on labeling stuff and getting offended left, right and center to the point where we can't take any action and compliment how good somebody looks. Andrew, you do great today, by the way. It's, it's, it's like it's ridiculous. It's getting to we need to be we need to channel our anger to quality areas. And if we did that we would make a bigger movement. Yes, I totally agree. Why is so much wasted time I saw the Thanksgiving post I couldn't care less. It doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not an American. So it's not something I'm ever going to celebrate. But you know, I wish all my friends in America Happy Thanksgiving. Sales thing is a whole different thing, right? Yeah, what I'm labeling example. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, we've had Andrew you must be interesting shuffle. Your father Andrew, thank you so much. We didn't have a choice going to Andrew. You really wanted me anyway. Right. So thanks so much for joining. Where do I send the invoice? Sorry, okay, no. No grading. All right. Hey, love you guys. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. And you enjoyed the rest of your evening. I've got a busy Black Friday. I mean, I'm Friday, the night. Nice to see you again. Make sure the Black Friday discount and always say goodbye to everyone. Thank you. We'll see you next week. And yeah, cheers. Have a great weekend. See ya