What has 2020 revealed to you?

Transcript

Transcribed by machine from the recording.

Scott Chris, hey, how are you?

Chris Hey, Scott. I'm on my typical Basecamp high. I love that we can just sort of manufacture a drug called good conversation for ourselves and all kind of take it collectively for an hour. It was really, really good.

Scott Yeah, I really had a great experience. And it was funny because you and I were in the same group, which I don't.

Chris Yeah, I can't get away from you.

Scott By the way, for our listeners that haven't been to Basecamp or don't know what it is, it's a group that is really centered around deep questions and conversation. We convene monthly and tackle a big question. This month's question was, what has 2020 revealed to you? We talked about just the nature of this strange year and what you've learned and what's revealed. I loved our group's conversation. It was really exhilarating. And you did a great job moderating the broader group. So what we do, just to summarize real quickly, is we come in and there's a few minutes of framing the conversation. And then we just go right into kind of small groups for 35, 40 minutes, depending on the given month. And then we kind of go back and use different kind of technology to do word maps and things like that and talk about what we learned. And it was just great.

Chris Yeah, I think, well, you know, I really liked the question that we gathered around. I mean, it felt like absolutely. I mean, if you're not getting together, Having done a bit of the work of thinking for ourselves of what meaning am I going to make out of this year? What does it actually mean, the stuff that has happened? Then I think we're kind of, maybe it's too strong to say at the mercy of, but I think we're vulnerable to the whole industry of people who are going to be making sense of 2020 for us in 2021. I think human nature being what it is, We'll determine that what 2020 teaches us is that they are right and that the agenda that they want to pursue is the ones that we have to pursue because of what happened in 2020. And I think we need to have our own sense of a center about which of those messages we're going to support and which of them we're going to push back on.

Because no, it didn't mean that. Or yeah, you're right, it did mean that. So we're about to step into, I think, a fierce competition for framing the year that we're finishing. And that's why I felt it was really important for all of us to give ourselves that chance with other people to frame it for ourselves.

Scott Yeah, it's so interesting because even Part of the thing we talked about in our group was how controlling language is, right? And even this idea that, I think you're right, there's a fierce competition. That's even interesting, right? It frames things so adversarially, which I think is true. I mean, I think there is a kind of adversarial nature around telling stories, like who's gonna, because if you tell the story, there's kind of control in this life. But something you said in our time that I was really, I thought was right on target was this tension between organizational life and organic reality and how we're often trying to sort of impose organizational structures on organic reality, right? And sometimes, I mean, sometimes that's helpful in a garden, right? Sometimes you put up an inorganic stricture in a tomato plant or something to help it grow. Good analogy, yeah.

But that doesn't make it grow, right? The things that makes it grow are all organic. It's sunlight, it's water, it's dirt, it's living stuff, right? At best, the organizational stuff, the mechanistic kind of stuff, at best, at best, can kind of serve the organic.

Chris To bounce off of that, I think a lot of people had the experience this year of confronting these things that we did. The organization needs that. I don't need it. It's the organization that needs it, like going into the office each day in order to be seen to be working. I don't need that, but the organization does, so I have to do it. And that's the kind of stuff, some of the stuff that got challenged this year. We say, well, okay, if we can't do that, then you're right. You don't need to do it. It's the organization that needed it. But if we can say, well, that's impossible, actually, it can still get by. It has to learn to, you know, how do we kind of coordinate in a different way? But I think a lot of people going into 2021 and, you know, in certain parts of the economy, this has received wisdom, like they're never going to go back to a five day a week. Thank you very much.

is organized to serve, not the ultimate purpose that we care about, but just organized to serve the things that we've set up and now have become Unquestioned. So on this point of why it's important to reflect upon it, 2021, I think a lot of workplaces are going to try to re-establish the order, re-establish the organization that they had lost. And some are going to challenge that and hold back from doing so. What's going to make the difference between those that do slip back into the past and those that do kind of reorder into a different way? I think the difference is going to be how aware the people in that group are that the past didn't have to be that way.

Scott Yeah, and one of the things I think that you brought up also in our conversation today that I was really struck by is the difference between – I mean, technology doesn't drive culture, right? That basically we could have been doing Basecamps monthly. We had all the technology to do it. Right, right. We could have been doing it. Yeah, that's what's amazing to me. It's such a great thing, right? We were doing it once a year basically. And if you had the resources to get there, it was great. I've been to one, the one in Toronto, and there was a second one in London. But that's what's interesting, right? Why didn't we think to do monthly Basecamps and start a Basecamp Facebook group and do all these things? It was something that we were kind of thrown into a situation. Heidegger talks about that thrownness, right? You're kind of thrown into a situation. You're finite. You're there. You're in this context. But the gift of that thrownness is we're thrown into this thing and we're like, oh my gosh. We could gather monthly. And then in between gatherings, people could talk on Facebook. And you could build little coalitions and collaborative circles within the group. And you make all these new friends. And people call me.

I talk with a Canadian retired guy all the time. I talk to this brilliant woman who's in health care in Toronto. And she just calls me one afternoon. To continue the kind of Basecamp experience, to sort of imagine, have real conversation. I mean, that's a beautiful thing, but it's a thing that we... How did that elude us, that we could do that?

Chris So, a couple of things there. One is the value of conversation. Which maybe is easier to really feel this year. Maybe more so than other years where your life is, you know, whatever work you do, it's full of people. And the distinction between, the last thing you need on the weekend is to talk to more people. You know, often you feel exhausted by life. And you need to retreat and recover by yourself because you're always surrounded by people.

Scott That is spoken like a true introvert.

Chris Yeah, yeah.

Scott Because I'm an extrovert. You can never have enough. Yeah, I could never have enough people.

Chris Whereas for me, I crave it. And now that I can't have any, I mean, these have always been restorative events for me each month, just preparing for and then experiencing conversation. So I think one reason we didn't do it before is that we're all trapped in the way things are done. And until we were forced to do it, it just didn't occur to us. And I honestly did feel like, you know, like Basecamp 2020 ended up being a string of these conversations and getting better and better at how do we do that and how do we bring new people in. And in the end, I think it's better than what it otherwise would have been, which would have been, you know, we were thinking back in the beginning of the year, it was either going to be, you know, in New York To sort of consolidate the people who had been to the first two. And we had those plans in place or it was going to be in Asia to kind of expand. And it would have been enormous work and enormously interesting.

And I think not nearly as profound a learning experience because we would have spent most of our energy You know, if you will, creating the space and getting there. And we would have done much less of the real stuff, which is the conversation. And it's in getting together, having conversations, iterating it, experiencing it, that we figured out how do you do that? So we learned a lot more because we had kind of more time to do the core work, even if it was virtual.

Scott Yeah, it's interesting because this question, what has 2020 revealed? I mean, to me, one of the things it's revealed is someone that's in the United States right now, where we had, we reported, I think yesterday, 286,000 COVID cases. That's just unfathomable. I mean, I remember talking to you during the summer and just kind of even online and offline and talking to you about 70,000 cases and not being able to believe that. And now, I mean, at 286,000 cases, I mean, it's revealed like how hard it is for people to, I think to... They react to something where nature throws us this massive curveball. In the United States, it's not rocket science how you could curb this. They've curbed it in Australia, they've curbed it in New Zealand. There's a lot of countries that have far fewer resources than the United States, and yet we are just being decimated by this thing. I wonder how much of that is just... Our inability to kind of adapt and tell ourselves a new story.

Chris So, you know, we've been talking about this for a while and I guess the blunt question is, you know, what has 2020 revealed about human nature? And I think in two directions. One, I think about How quickly we can adapt and take as normal new death. Like, oh yeah, the number of cases, and the number's really bad, and I go about my life. I mean, there's something almost... I think it really does confront us with how I mean, maybe that's just human nature, right? I didn't die. You're still here, Scott. So, you know, if somebody you love died from COVID, then it was much more real to you than if it's just a number or a statistic. And I don't know if this experience has changed that for anyone.

Scott I had a really arresting conversation the other day with a friend who's an evangelical Protestant minister and... Did you guys walk into a bar together? We did not. We did not. Although I just gave a talk... That'd be a really specific joke. Well, I just did do a talk with this group of Democrats and... In Alabama, virtually, with a rabbi. And they did bill it as a rabbi and a minister walking to a bar. But we just talked about the holidays and politics and election blues and stuff. But this guy was talking. So I asked him a few weeks ago what his church was doing in midst of COVID. And he said, and they're pretty conservative folks. I think basically the entirety of his congregation are Republicans. And He said they're worshiping indoors, no social distancing, no masks. Well, a couple weeks later, he and his wife both get COVID.

And I was talking about this experience, and then he calls me complaining about how the governor of Pennsylvania has shut down all indoor dining, all pubs, all that sort of stuff, and how fascist it sounds. And I'm thinking, this is amazing. You got COVID, right? He knows someone in his congregation that's died of COVID, and he's still kind of looking at these restrictions as authoritarian and excessive, and it's just, I mean, that's what's interesting, because I think, and I'm not necessarily picking on him specifically, because I think on any given thing, people can deceive themselves, right? People, like all of us, Take risks, break rules. We all do these things. So I'm not singling him out as somehow particularly deluded. But it is interesting, though, because that's what I think a lot of social scientists... And other analysts were saying, well, what's going to happen is the more people get affected by this,

the more they'll change their view of it. But then you have these stories of people dying and on their deathbed saying COVID's a hoax and they're dying of COVID here in the States. And I'm just, I mean, that boggles the mind.

Chris So, you know, I guess that's another thing that, you know, 2020 has revealed with a really stark case that We are still probably too skewed to think of humanity as rational beings. I think that 2020 has revealed that we really need to Be aware of the different levels and layers of how we make sense of our reality. And yeah, that mental, rational layer is a part of it, but only a part. And how you belong, the group that you belong to, The emotions that you respond to, your own sense of self in the world, all of these things are there and they're real. And the only way to pretend them away is if everybody pretends them away. But if there's someone or there's a group of people who play a different game, suddenly you have to take as real the reality that Rational experience and logical consistency isn't enough to get everybody to think the same way or to do the same thing.

And no more stark experiment than what's happened in the United States this year. It couldn't be more plain, the kind of scientific reality So, that's kind of, that's the best that, you know, that science and nature has got. And that wasn't good enough to get everybody to say that, yeah, this, we agree, this is true.

Scott Yeah, there's a therapist and author, his name's Paul Tripp, and he has this great line in one of his books. He says, in his experience, most people in crisis don't need information, they need imagination. And I think that's so right, because we, in the midst of this pandemic, we have, it's not as though we are information starved. I mean, there's things we don't know about this virus, and it's still, There are things that are kind of confounding about it, but we know a lot of stuff, right? We know a lot of stuff. But the problem is most, it's not information we need, it's imagination. It's an ability to see ourselves differently. In the United States, it's probably an ability to see ourselves a little more collectively, to say, like, I was talking with a friend from Australia yesterday, a dear friend, and she's lived in the States for years, she's moving back. And she was just saying, well, Australians just, They can just kind of put up with being inconvenienced and stuff for long periods of time. And so she's like, you know, her husband has moved back ahead of her because his dad passed away and he had to like settle affairs of the state and stuff. But he's like, he's hugging people. There's basically like no COVID in Australia or like New Zealand. And it's not as though they have very similar conditions. I mean, They're a little more sparsely populated, but there's no reason in the United States we couldn't...

Get the same kind of results. But we just can't imagine it. It's not for lack of information. It's not because every day you go on the news, it's COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. It's imagination about telling a different story or experiencing our social reality differently, which is just really hard to do.

Chris It really is. I mean, it's also, it's almost mind-blowing to try to... Explain why, because it's everything coming together. I mean, how we have all responded to this year and sort of made sense of it. You know, it has to do with the structure of media and how we get information about the world and also whose imaginings we are listening to or not. And I think it also has to do with kind of The structure of power. I'm venturing out on a limb here, so give me some rope. There may be something about the US system and other presidential systems where if you've got a very strong populist leader, they They can do a lot to scare other leaders in the system to parrot their perspective. Because I've got a kind of independent authority and a population of people behind me that I can either make for you or against you. And you see that very plainly in what Trump is doing in the US politics. In parliamentary systems, like in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, if...

If enough people just in the party don't like the approach the leader is taking, they just remove him as leader. He can't go and say like, hey, you can't remove me. I was elected into office. Like, no, you weren't. We just had an internal party vote and we decided that you're no longer in charge. We're going to put somebody else in charge. So my point is they have internally such a strong check on the leader. That the leader kind of always needs to be looking at kind of the coalition within the party, and you can never scare them as much. As the president can. So it kind of leads to, I think in part, just a bit more compromise in the conversation. And I think, you know, with something like this pandemic, it's hard in, you know, I think of like the British political system here to really deny the science.

Because you've got enough people who are also elected in your party, who are getting all sorts of angry calls, and they want something done about it. So that's a bit of a tangent. But I think that there's probably a lot... about how different countries have gone in response to this that can be explained by how power is set up in their society.

Scott I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I think that's totally right. The other thing that I think you have in kind of a Westminster Parliament sort of system, which you have kind of in Canada or the UK, is Someone like Donald Trump's not going to get elected because you have to be an MP, right, generally, to be prime minister, right? So you have to kind of work yourself through the party ranks. And there's a kind of vetting process that takes place, right? So it's very difficult in that kind of system. For a populace to come in completely outside the system and get to the highest office of the land, you have a kind of screening process. And then also when the prime minister is picking the ministers for the government and who's going to be foreign minister and home secretary or defense minister, he or she also has to pick from people that have been vetted.

Who are also in the system. Whereas in the United States, that's not true at all. I mean, you could... Heck, I mean, you could pick the person that founded McDonald's or whatever as your secretary. I mean, if the Senate will confirm them. I mean, you know, so I do think the power thing, power and also, I mean, I think one of the things that's great about the United States is it's incredibly entrepreneurial and it's got this free-spiritedness to experiment, which is great. I mean, you know, there are wonderful links to that. I think in a pandemic, it's lethal because people are just so libertarian. Even people that are on the left are pretty libertarian because it can't just be all Republicans. That are causing all this increase in these case numbers. It's our whole society. I mean, I talk with friends all the time candidly about what rules do you bring? What exceptions do you make? I mean, look, we all... Because so much of the stuff is virtue signaling, right? So if you're a liberal, you want to be seen with your mask on, right? You want to be... And yet, I know liberals that do things that are... They're sitting closer in an outdoor restaurant than six feet. They're doing other things, right? But you want to put your mask on because your virtues signal to everybody that you're not one of the ignoramuses that are causing the problem. But I mean, I think there's something about all of us in the States that are contributing to this really lethal reality. But it's just interesting. My experience in Basecamp today is you have a bunch of people asking good questions, listening.

And I think when you do practices like that, you become a better storyteller. You understand stories more and you tell stories better. And I think that's what we need here. In the midst of 2020 and what it's revealed is we need better storytellers here that can tell a story that would allow our country around. I mean, the two big things that happened in 2020, I think, in the United States, it's the pandemic and then also the George Floyd murder by the police and all the racial unrest that came out as a result of it. And both things have struck me as crying out for a better story, for a story that could unify us more, that could get us to take each other's well-being more seriously. And take public health more seriously and equity more seriously. So I think we need better conversation and better storytelling. And I just think, and as I say that, what's everybody doing? Watching cable news, which is anti-conversational and anti-storytelling or anti-redemptive storytelling. I mean, Fox News tells a good story. It's just not a healthy story.

Chris Speaking of healthy story, pizza is here, so I'm going to have to peel off soon. How is pizza in London? It's diverse. I mean, I know it's not, you know, Americans, you guys do pizza with total abandon.

Scott I just don't imagine anybody in London ordering pizza.

Chris Yeah, no, we've got some of that stuff too. But, you know, this point about storytelling and And I think you're right. What 2020 has revealed to me is how important it is for us to recover some lost arts, listening, conversation, learning from one another. You know, we have so quickly turned ourselves into audiences, you know, clustered around fame or the promise of simplicity or clarity or anger. And it's just, That kind of left us really struggling to make meaning together, to appreciate the power of story. So in my small group conversation today at Basecamp, Someone talked about, well, it kind of emerged as sort of a theme that, and we were kind of in a group talking about, you know, well, you were there, nature and ecology, and it was interesting how many of the remarks were about how, you know, these kind of personal encounters with the importance of nature to our lives. Um, through this year, like the, the need for parks and, and to swim in the ocean and to, you know, rest our back against a tree or to feel the dirt between our toes, that there is something restorative in these, um, very personal encounters with, with nature. And it just made me think like, wow, you know, so much of the wisdom that is possible to accumulate through 2020 is, is, is kind of bottom up. This is what it means.

And I think all of our media and our power structures and all of it just makes it so hard for us to come at meaning any other way, in a bottom-up way, in a kind of like, wow, I've had the same experience, Scott. I guess that's what's real. Unless we actively do something to recover it, because all of the forces seem to be to simplify top-down, bigger and bigger audiences competing for How big of a parade can you get at the head of?

Scott I think this is the value and beauty of Basecamp. It's a conversational culture. It's funny because as I was reflecting on it today, if you've never been a camper and if you're a listener, please become a camper. Please come to Basecamp. You're necessary. Your voice is needed. We need you and you're going to love it. If you like this podcast, you're going to love it. You do a really good job of framing in the beginning what the conversational culture is. It's funny because most of the people that are there have these values. They're not adversarial with regard to the values, but yet we still have to rehearse them because it's so hard. We're going to go over... I'm a guy that hosts a conversational podcast. I'm a pretty good listener, a pretty good question asker. I need to hear it every single time. And it's great.

And then the beauty of the payoff is you get this group, like our small group today, which people were really generous. Everybody was listening. I don't think people were tuned out. And it was beautiful. And we talked about fractals. So there you go.

Chris Yeah, it was great. Thank you, Scott, for all of the conversations that you've made possible this year. It's kept me sane, so I don't underestimate the importance and just impact you've had on my well-being. Oh, no, the feeling's mutual. And just try to make sense of it together.

Scott No, the feeling's mutual, my friend.

Chris Let's do it again soon.

Scott All right, thank you so much.

Chris All right, take care. Have a good weekend.