Live from the Toronto Basecamp

Transcript

Transcribed by machine from the recording.

Scott Chris, this is the first time we've ever recorded the Atlas Project in person.

Chris In person, face-to-face. The first time we met was, I guess, now almost 48 hours ago. Not quite. Not quite two days. That was a neat moment. I didn't realize that you're as short as you are.

Scott I thought you were exactly as tall.

It's very much like, I could speculate your height.

Chris You know, a lot of things seem to be, I seem to be fit for, like I can wear, you know, jeans off the rack and it's like they were made for me. I'm the type of a lot of, the one thing is long arms. I can't wear, I can't have any dress shirts off the rack because it just looks so... So embarrassingly, the arms are just sticking out.

Scott I have the same problem, short-wise, with dress shirts. I usually need the shorter sleeve. But I have the... I think my jacket's shoulder size is like 10 inches bigger than my waist size.

Chris So it's like... Yeah, I know, that's strange. But, you know, so the other great thing about us... That's strange. Your energy in person, I mean, it really is, it's the same person as... It's just three-dimensional. I know, here we are yesterday, we had this amazing... This is Basecamp.

Scott How do you like the metaphor? I think it works. It's fantastic.

Chris And then it's not a summit, right? We're not at the top of the... We're not anywhere near the top of the kind of big challenges that the world needs to look at and take on. But a lot of people... So you're saying this is not a mountaintop experience.

Scott And even if you have something... I feel like, because I've spent time in religious culture, people talk about retreats and it was a mountaintop experience. So...

Chris I like the metaphor of a basecamp. I mean, I've never been to, you know, like an Everest basecamp. That'd be interesting to see, but I can imagine that there is a... Thank you. So, since we're all on this same journey, why don't we meet up and see what happens? Yeah, and it was people from – so it was like 100 and – It was about – I think – I didn't do a count on – I think it was probably about 110 people who showed up. At the highest point, there were about 125 that were going to come, and then last minute, a few people joined, a few people stepped away. It was about 110.

Scott Yeah, and of all walks of life, I mean, like, people were from all over the world.

Chris It was a diverse room.

Scott It was very diverse. It's interesting because several people remarked the diversity, you know, common on a lot is age. I mean, it was racially very diverse. I mean, like, would you say, like, 40% of the room was non-Anglo, non-white?

Chris Yeah, yeah, it was very diverse. I mean, there was black, white. There were, you know, you're somewhere in... You're brown, beige. Yeah, yeah, you're beige. And then, of course, we're in Canada, so Aboriginal, Native North American. Yeah, many different sort of immigrant communities represented Latin America.

Scott Gender-wise, and then age. I mean, there were really, at every table, there were people that were from 20s to 60s, 70s.

Chris The oldest guy in the room was, yeah, 85, 86 years old, and the youngest woman, I think, was about 21. So the idea was, if we're going to provoke one another, then diversity is supposed to be a great way to do that. So let's try to be consciously very diverse. But actually, when it came to bringing the room together, I didn't pay attention to the diversity statistic. I really just looked for...

Scott We'll take a selfie of it too.

Chris You take a selfie, I'll take a sip. Surprise, surprise, the hotel Wi-Fi is not strong enough.

Scott So we're recording this podcast. But, you know, so I, I mean, I came here to hang out with you, do a little podcasting and be present for the thing you were.

Chris And I really appreciate you making the trip, man.

Scott But it was, everybody did that. Like in the sense of you cast, you cast a vision out there and people came and then really enjoyed each other. But you, this is interesting. You, you birthed something that I think is pretty remarkable. You got 110 people or whatever to come together and talk about big ideas. And they all liked each other with relative, there was relative comedy in the room. Hmm. Hmm. And people could communicate. They actually enjoyed it. All those things, diversity, the communication, there's just not things that happen every day.

Chris It's funny because one of my friends in a moment of total blunt honesty went, so why did you come to this? And he said, well, Chris asked me to. And I couldn't, it seemed too hard to come up with a good reason not to go. You know, you get asked to come up with good reasons not to go. It's kind of hard to come up with good reasons. I guess I just have to go.

Scott This is, by the way, the number one thing I say to people in religious contexts. If you want to grow a religious organization, just ask people to come to a service or an event. That's interesting. But that's the most powerful thing because you have to consciously say no. Or the best thing you can do is a yes, no, yes. Yes, I'd love to. No, I can't come this year. But yes, I'll come in the future. We all win the yes, no, yes. But unless you yes, no, yes somebody really well, you'll just show up. And then if it's a higher loyalty thing because you're a really compelling person and I think a lot of people like how you think about the world and part of what they enjoy about your friendship. It's almost like there's a risk in saying no.

Chris Thanks for watching! And so it was like we had the edge at our event. That's how they can eat you. The soft edge. Exactly. That's Gordon Sinclair. Nice. We had Nobel laureates in the room. We had a couple of billionaires, multi-billionaires in the room. Not that money, but sometimes money talks. We had a couple of really, really important academics, some serious entrepreneurs, some serious philanthropists, some great academics, a couple of The most celebrated journalists in the country were in the room. And a lot of people who I think are going to be those leaders that we look back at and say, oh my God, I mean, they've really helped society to take the next step. And so I think that worked. The room was amazing. In terms of what we achieved together, that was, I think, more experimental.

Scott Thank you for having me. Meaning, purpose, and identity. Platforms. Citizenship.

Chris Yeah, platforms was a big... Education was a big one. Wealth, health, philanthropy.

Scott And then people moved tables. They migrated.

Chris They could. It was interesting. So we tried to do a lot of things, right? But yeah, step one, we thought, let's strip out the speechifying. Because in the world we live in today, we can watch that on YouTube. Or if we're going to do a speech, record it. We can all watch it beforehand. We can record this podcast. We could do... Yeah, we don't... When we have 110 of us in the room for seven hours, let's not waste time all sitting silently looking at a screen. I mean, how stupid is that, right? I mean, it just seems like a titanic waste. I did a kind of quick back of the napkin. I figured that there was about $2 million of human capital in the room one day, right? In terms of like what you'd pay to get everyone to show up in a room. I feel like you're lowballing it. Yeah, probably. But let's say it's five. Would you pay $5 million to bring people into a room and then put them in front of a television set?

Scott And then Afghanistan. I mean, all these, God, he was like, I'm like, wow, you just couldn't stay over in the hot spots. And then he does this thing, what's it? Better Place. Better Place, where he's trying to work on citizenship and what is, and you guys were all talking about a different kind of platform that served citizens, that served everybody, as opposed to something controlled always by a certain small group of interests. Like, how would I have, what would it be like to have a platform that actually, where people had a sense of ownership?

Chris I thought that was one of the big ideas that got brought into the room and that the room helped to make stronger this idea that should some platforms be a public good? And if they were a public good, would that help to solve or at least would that present differently some of the things that we really struggle with now with platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn and stuff like around data privacy? And around sort of foreign interference and fake news. Like if it was a publicly administered platform, would we be able to do some of these things differently? Give citizens a different set of rights and responsibilities than these things being privately owned platforms? And I think that the answer is probably yes. And it's really interesting that At an architectural level, they put something together.

Scott Thank you very much.

Chris I think that's going to be one of the big ones that people continue to work on and figure out. How might we do this? Because you're right. I mean, the fact that people in that room got to the point of talking, how would this be governed, tells you that people thought this is something, like we're already starting to think about how we might do this. And, you know, could there be a governance framework where it's not owned by the private sector users of the platform, it's not controlled by the government, but there is some kind of shared governance framework where no one entity can determine what changes happen to the platform. We're going to hear a lot more about that idea. And that was just one example. I mean, there were a few big, big ideas that came out around the room. The citizenship table was talking about kind of a global Peace Corps.

So would there be some kind of, and I guess you could use the word platform again, but more like a program that youth 18 to 30 could participate in where they would, you know, do something that helps to develop a global notion of citizenship. A very bold and provocative direct response to populism and nationalism.

Scott I'm not a globalist.

Chris No, exactly.

Scott I'm a nationalist.

Chris So, exactly, right? And do we, so do we accept that that's right?

Scott Can we just say, like, what is it, the something of Zion, the original anti-Semitic track of, like, the early 20th century, like, when people are like, well, the nationalist globalist, it's so anti-Semitism, I mean, it's old school, it's old school anti-Semitism. Let's just say, I mean, it is just, it's a, I mean, it's not a dog whistle, it's a siren, which, like, I mean, yeah. I love what that guy Gillum said in the debate with the guy DeSantis, the guy who was running against in Florida the government. He said, I'm not saying he's a racist. I'm saying the racists think he's a racist. But that's true. It's very interesting when there's... We love that Trump's doing it. I would be worried if somebody said, Scott and Chris, we love what they're doing, and we think it's advancing our interests, and it was a white nationalist social media. I would not be into that. I'd be not into it.

Chris And yet, yeah, that's interesting.

Scott If Alex Stern liked what we were doing, I would peace be upon him.

Chris So, you know, it's interesting. So, you know, people were asking me, so, like, what's the deal here? The original idea was, I think it would be great for us to get some of us together. The ambition has been growing now as, you know, people respond to that and say, yeah, I think so too. And now, you know, I so desperately want to try to crack this puzzle of how do we bring You know, I call it pathfinders, you know, people who are really, really feel compelled by the question of, you know, how do we make a different and more beautiful world? How do we bring these people together? And they're a diverse group. We've got different views of sort of what the mountain is and what's the right way up it.

Scott How do we come together and... I like that you chose beauty, too, because the moment we, if you could say a just world or a equitable world where we could... It's divisive.

Chris So I love that you've gone down this track and that you picked up on that because that was, so, you know, I was thinking before this event, I've got to think about what is my mantra? What actually is a kind of phrase for what I think is a common purpose for, you know, not just 100 people in the room, but for a lot of people.

Scott And it couldn't be, hey, hoser.

Chris Well, I mean, it could be.

Scott That's a bad Canadian joke.

Chris That's so American. Well, what are the other things that Americans say about Canadians? I mean, it's been a while since I've sort of talked about Canadians with American friends.

Scott I love it. Well, let's talk later about my thoughts on Canada.

Chris Okay.

Scott Because I feel like I'm a huge fan.

Chris Okay, so let's come back to that. But what I wanted to say was... Yeah, so my mantra is, I think that an awful lot of us want to consciously, courageously give birth to a different and more beautiful world. And, you know, how and why, a lot of, I feel that within that broad statement, I think a lot of us can find meaning and purpose.

Scott And if somebody rejects the different part, right, you could just say, look, the minute you use is and ought language, this is this way and it ought to be that way. You've already said you want it different. The moment you use is-and-ought language, you're talking metaphysics, good, evil, the truth of the good. It's just a quick grammatical move, but you've already moved into metaphysics and truth with a capital T when you say is-and-ought, right? Your odd is beautiful. We could argue around the periphery about what those... But it was remarkable how much centrist... Not centrist in a political or ideologically, but how there were centers in all these tables in the discussion.

Chris So I want to now bounce off on a big tangent and bring this back to U.S. political discourse. Because how I got to that as a mantra, I was thinking about this word beauty because watching the US midterms, for me, I had an epiphany, which was, okay, I think I figured out what the campaign slogan needs to be for the Democrat contender in 2020. And if anybody from DNC is listening to this, I think that your campaign slogan needs to be America the Beautiful. So here's why. One, there are very few sort of tropes in American culture left that are not divisive. And I think that's one of them. Two, if you're a Democrat, it references the diversity of the Democratic caucus and the progressiveness of the Democratic agenda without explicitly referring to either one. Because both diversity and progressive are, in the US context, extremely divisive terms. So you got to avoid that.

How many is that? Two. Three, I think that it makes whatever Trump and the administration does ugly in contrast without having to mention it and makes it very difficult. I mean, it also highlights whatever corruption and stuff that comes up in the Trump administration and re-magnifies the wrongness of that. And then, you know, depending who the Democratic contender is at like a crude level, and we know that a lot of politics is just crude and ugly. If it's someone who is attractive and charismatic, then it amplifies the ugliness of Donald Trump.

Scott What if it's someone that's charismatic and unattractive, like Bernie Sanders? America the beautiful. But I'm not talking about a Pons store-bought, a generic brand. You can use a generic skin moisturizer. It's just as beautiful.

Chris Maybe, maybe. I'm going to work on my Sanders. That was a really bad Sanders. I was like Donald Trump trying to do a Sanders impersonation.

Scott My best Larry David's best line. Larry David was like, I don't even have a super pack. I don't even have a backpack. I carry all my things like a college professor.

Like, this is, I think, part of what is in the American ideal, like, diversity, like, this new kind of forging together for immigrants and ideas. And, I mean, I was listening to a Center Right podcast from Commentary Magazine after the synagogue shooting in Squirrel Hill. John Podhorowitz, who hosts the podcast, is a center-right, kind of never-Trump guy on MSNBC all the time. He read, movingly, Washington's letter to a synagogue, and he visited Massachusetts. And it was just so moving. It was beautiful. There's something about America that is...

Chris Thank you very much. But I think that we all feel compelled by the possibility of a more beautiful world. And if there is that possibility, then we kind of want to be part of getting there somehow.

Scott And do you think on one level, right? When you think of Plato or something, you think of the structure of the Republic or books like that where you... The true, the good, and the beautiful, right? It's almost like also programmatically, we figure out what's true, and then you figure out... Now we know what's good. Then we know what's good, the values theory, and then aesthetics come from that. Maybe in this culture, you start with what's beautiful, work back to the good, and truth is the end game, not the foundational presupposition or something. We start with aesthetics and work backwards.

Chris I wonder if that's... Dude, that's deep. Clink glasses, man. Because maybe that is the path to truth in the postmodern moment.

Scott Yeah, no, it's... I mean, yeah. Hans von Balthasar is the guy, my guy.

Chris Because... Hey, that is deep. We got to... We should do a podcast about that.

Scott Truly Good and Beautiful. Because... I love reading them. Yeah, yeah, you do. So, let me just ask you this question as a friend. So, I love your book, The Road to Discovery.

Chris I've still got to get the next book out.

Scott I'm so glad we turned the Facebook off for this.

Chris Because I feel like it's nice. People don't see what you're doing right now.

Scott No, I'm just saying, I just realized it's easier to talk to you a little bit, like, when I know... Because you haven't done this a lot. Yeah. In person. We've never done this in person.

Chris It should be intimate.

Scott It's like an arranged marriage. That's right. So... How much did the Age of Discovery book... You told the story about Don coming up to you.

Chris Where do we... How do we know that? That was honestly... I love Don. Don is great. I'm a huge Don guy. I feel like... I don't know. My experience... I haven't had many moments like that where you do have a kind of... He comes up to you at a book reading or a book event, right? He comes up to me. It was here in Toronto. It was about two years ago. There are serious people, thoughtful people. It's like U of T. It's the smart shop of deep thinkers at the U of T. It's like being a Harvard fellow. Harvard MBA. It was a real honor to be invited there and a really fascinating room. Hey, with that kind of enthusiasm, I loved your book. And he emphasized book. Can I ask you a question? And just as I told the story yesterday at the event, I really thought he was going to ask for an autograph or something. So I'm already getting out my pen. And he says, I want to know, are you really committed to actually doing the things that you say we need to do in this book?

I got off the train. Does any author actually, I mean, you know, you kind of, you write it because you love the ideas and then you think about, yeah, what does it mean for action? Because that's what you do in a book. But was I committed to doing these things? Holy shit. Like, dude. But I actually, you know, I look back now, I feel so fortunate. I actually don't think it happens very often that we're really confronted in life with, you know, basically, are you an authentic person? So here you've written a book. You've said all these things publicly. You've got all these people reading it. Is it for our entertainment? Or do you stand behind these words? Or not, and, you know, and I'm kind of, you know, I'm not congruent, right? I'm writing, and it's great, and people enjoy it, but

it's not, I'm not committed to what I'm writing, and I'm not trying to practice what I publish. And Don was just such, he's such a compelling man that I thought, you know what? I'm going to see where this goes.

Scott Yeah, community. I mean, there's something about, like, he...

Chris And he had ideas. And if you are really committed, and that was the other next step, if you're really committed to actually doing some of these things, then I think I can help you because I've been on a 25-year journey to try to do some of this stuff. And I've got some people around me and some processes around me, and we think that we've got some ideas. And if you're interested in that, and he just invites, right? If you are interested in that, then I would love to share some of this with you. Okay, and here we are.

Scott I need to give Don a call. He's going to say to me, Scott, I like your energy. I'm making a pass right now. But write something I hate to discover.

Chris No, but Don, I mean... He was pretty exhausted by the end of yesterday.

Scott What's interesting, though, is that moment, right? People often say you should do this or do that. First off, you said he invited. He didn't...

Chris He didn't say you should do this. He asked, so where are you at? I'm interested.

Scott Yeah, so it's descriptive, not prescriptive. It was an invitation. Totally.

Chris And if I had said, well, then you would have just moved on.

Scott You said something so meaningful, too, about Field of Dreams.

Chris That just came to me in the moment.

Scott I love that movie.

Chris Boy, it's time to see that one again.

Scott I cry every time at the end, no matter how many times I see it. That and The Wrath of Khan, when Spock dies. I always cry when Spock dies.

Chris Oh, when they cut a hand to the glass?

Scott Yeah. I have been... And always shall be your friend.

Chris I love that shit. And then William Shatner tries to do the Vulcan solution. He can't quite do it. What did you think about in the reboot when, I guess it was number two, I forget what the name of the film was, but they had, you know, it was kind of like Rathacon.

Scott They switched, yeah.

Chris And they switched the roles and it was Kirk that died and it was Spock on the outside.

Scott It was pretty cool. For me, that was the best part of that. I was into it. I was way into it. Like, was way into it. Yeah. The only thing is, like, I feel like Ricardo Montalban, I'm a big Cumberbatch.

Chris Benedict Cumberbatch?

Scott Yeah, like Cumberbatch.

Chris Cumberbatch?

Scott I love him, but it's big shoes to fall.

Chris Yeah, yeah. Ricardo Montalban was sort of larger than life, right? Yeah. And the amazing thing is that he was, because Wrath of Khan was... After Fantasy Island. There was, yeah, like in the original series.

Scott Yeah, well, he did that space, he did all the Spanish action. He did Fantasy Island. After that, he was, I love that. I could, if you turn, if we put Rathacon on right now, I could prove it to you. You're going to cry? If we turned the volume down, I could say all the lines of the film. With 90, 95% accuracy.

Chris Wow, okay, I can't compete with that. But I love the ending scene. And I did love it.

Scott Our shields will be useless. Sauce for the goose, Mr. Savick. The odds will be equal. Like when they go into Mitara Nebula and no one's shields work. Okay, you're right.

Chris I do remember that. And then like Z plus whatever degrees, right?

Scott Oh, when he goes up.

Chris That's like Age of Discovery stuff.

Scott That's Age of Discovery stuff, right?

Chris There's a whole other dimension we can play in.

Scott Okay, so this is where we're bringing it all back. So part of like these conversations, the value is like, do you hear how hot I'm coming through the headphones? No, it's fine. Am I going to turn my voice down? You keep adjusting it. I think it's okay. Yeah, I'm adjusting, because I have a weird voice. So basically, for people who haven't seen The Wrath of Khan, Kirk's nemesis, who was like a super being from the post-Spockalyptic genetic engineering era, he's really smart. He can figure out how to read technical manual space. Spock says, he's intelligent, but not experienced. His patterns indicate two-dimensional thinking. And Kirk's just like, all of a sudden, Kirk gets his mojo back. And he's like, all right, C minus 80 degrees. Like the Valkyrie song. But basically, he's like, well, Khan only sees things on a chessboard, like backward, forward. I can go up and down.

And so this is this moment where being in the moment And it's also not – it's interesting because it's not future or past. I mean it's not a historically prejudicial thing or anything. It's just like Kirk sees the whole board. And that's why – part of the reason that you get a group of people like this together, right? Like you see more of the board.

Chris You do see – so that's interesting. I mean like what did people take away?

Scott We got all of that at Arathica.

Chris So I've been doing a lot of – I mean, Star Trek has many lessons for many people in many walks of life. There's no question. I was doing a lot of, you know, kind of getting some preliminary feedback from today. And, you know, everyone had a great time. And then the question is, you know, what could we have done differently and what could we have done better? And you realize it's actually, it's really hard to think about how do you move the conversation to a new place? I think at a minimum, everybody made some amazing contacts and it's hard to predict where those things go. A few great ideas that people will probably take forward and who knows where those things will go. I think everybody was really engaged and even if you came to a place where, well, yeah, we know that's the solution and everybody knows it's the solution.

But you probably, by the end of the day, you understand that solution with new depth. So it's like kind of the Z dimension. Like you've, yeah, the chessboard really isn't any different, but we've seen it from more angles now. And so I kind of come to it with a deeper understanding. But I do have some questions for myself about, you know, and first time experiment. So you kind of run the basic experiment and it kind of, it's the baseline. I do have some questions about how do we really get to the hard conversations, you know, the difficult questions.

Scott Like harder than should JJ Abrams have flipped the roles with Kirk and Spock?

Chris Because I feel like that's a hard... That's a hard question. But, you know, like, well, and I wasn't, you know, it's hard to be in every conversation at once. But I remember, you know, at the... So one of the tables was Rethinking Cities, and it kind of had this existential crisis, this group of, you know, every table was at least 10 people who know their shit.

Scott And we're going to release a podcast. It's going to be a Basecamp podcast, so stay tuned. It's going to be released very soon. So I captured some conversations with some of these people, and one of the guys that was in that group, Lawrence.

Chris Oh, was that the Cities table?

Scott Yeah, and he's like a VP of a major global electric company. And he's, I mean, he was so, like, he's, you know, this guy controls energy.

Chris Like, I mean, he's... He's a real mover and a shaker, yeah.

Scott And he was so impressed with that conversation.

Chris And it was great. It was great. And it was also really difficult. So like, let's let, you know, you get tremendously, sorry, am I talking too loud?

Scott No, I'm talking, I talk too loud.

Chris You get tremendously capable people together and they know their stuff and they know the domain and they also see it from a different angle. And I remember the cities table was kind of split at a, almost like an ideological level, wondering sort of, you know, is the future about making big cities more livable? Genesis chapter 11, dude. Is that how we do it?

Scott No, I'm just saying that this is the issue in the Bible, like Tower of Babel. Everybody gathers, and they try to make a tower to heaven, and the Lord says, well, these people are fucking the earth up. It's better to spread them out for a while.

Chris To say, no, you're all here together, now you've got to go into separate little places.

Scott But then the Bible always keeps the New Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible, the prophets, and in the book of Revelation, the vision is every tongue, tribe, and nation together.

Chris It comes together.

Scott Yeah, so it's not a permanent...

Chris So my point was just like as a sociologist, almost like putting on a sociologist hat. It was so interesting to go around the room yesterday.

Scott Do you notice I talk less passionately about the Bible than Star Trek? I feel like I can get passionate about the Bible. That's interesting. I'm more into the Bible.

Chris There is a whole kind of religion around Star Trek, sure. I'm into it. It's kind of like, yeah, okay. Oh, I can do that too. I talk my day anyway. But, you know, when you get to deep questions like that, like, is the future urban or is that the future that we need to change? People get uncomfortable because immediately it becomes, well, if we're going to question that, then what value, like, then are we saying that everything that we're doing is somehow wrong or part of the problem? Like, where do we go? It's such a...

Scott But don't you feel like the point of your book, Age of Discovery, is that a renaissance period inevitably brings those questions because it's incredibly furtive and creative, but it's also creation and destruction at the same time. It's apocalyptic. If we're not in those conversations, we're not realizing the landscape.

Chris I feel like, so for me, the book was really about working through, I firmly believe that the biggest task that we've got in front of us right now is that kind of at the level of consciousness in terms of how do we think about and make sense of the world now, the world of health, wealth, of education, of law, of citizenship, of cities, of technology. And there is some future in which we think about all these things very differently, like the Copernican revolutions. And how do we make them? I mean, so yesterday that first gathering is about basically me saying, I think we need to make these Copernican revolutions. I think that the more beautiful world is on the other side, these big revolutions. But honestly, I don't know how we make those things happen. I think that getting people together who share a calling to reach that new world... is a great first start. But what do we do once we come together? I'm still more at the questioning stage than knowing the answers.

Scott I was thinking as you were saying that, I was thinking, well, of course, but we know the most. But every... In the 14th century, they knew the most at the time. And there was more interconnectivity. Or the 16th century, rather. We always... When these periods happen, generally, they happen when you know the most. And yet...

Chris Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott That just increases what you don't know.

Chris Yeah, and what's interesting is, so these Copernican revolutions, it's, you know, the answer is simple, but that simplicity is on the other side of the complexity. And so I think one of the big challenges in the world today, in almost any domain, and we can think about U.S. politics makes it very clear, is, you know, we need to abhor simplicity on this side of complexity. And we need to crave simplicity on the other side of complexity. Which say, right now, we need to hang with the difficult problems. And there is some kind of aha flip where we're like, oh, that's how it all makes sense.

Scott But if we try to simplify before the- I marry people for a living. I do weddings. That might be my new premarital counseling thing. That's good. Is that good? You should go and get a gig in the Church of England. Maybe we could build a religion around this.

Chris Fantastic.

Scott I always say that. I feel like it's easier to build a cult, especially now. Charles Manson and other people, they didn't have the internet.

Chris A cult tries to create simplicity on this side of complexity. So does the politics of fear, by the way. Thank you very much. And people are going to reshape the way the world is now. And the only question is who and how and who wins and who loses. And so that for me is the conscious and courageous part. They're recognizing that we do live in a fluid moment. And so I say in the book, a renaissance moment is a contest for humanity's future just when the stakes are highest.

Scott It's a fantastic book.

Chris I'm out of power. Where am I? I'm still speaking, am I? I understand those words much better now than when I wrote them two and a half years ago. And I guess going full circle back to Dawn, that's because I met a person who basically challenged me to understand what you've written. Don is at a stage of life, there I can, where, and he's a wonderful, Don is great at metaphor and naming things. He believes in the power of naming things. So he names his, his current role, he's the chief storyteller. He is consciously in a storytelling role. And so he has nothing but time for people that want to get some storytelling from him. And I've certainly learned that... This shit is also biblical.

Scott It's so... You should get Don on a podcast is what you should do. I'm getting Don on give and take.

Chris Get Don on give and take, yeah.

Scott Just make it a long episode.

Chris So Don talks, I like to tell people, he talks in chapters, right? And if you've got the time to listen to a chapter of Don, it's such rich, good stuff. If you've only got time for a page, then don't call him.

Scott I mean, you like that though, right?

Chris Well, I understand that. And I think part of it is living on four continents, living in cultures where English is not a first language. Living in Canada, you learn to be a good listener. And you learn to be a patient listener, I think.

Scott Do you miss Canada now that you're in London?

Chris I guess I do. I mean, there's such an easy familiarity about being back in Canada. But I've also, I mean, I've lived abroad since, I mean, it's been about 15 years now. And so I, you know, I literally have Canadian DNA, but I also care and am interested in the lives of, you know, many people who are not Canadian. I care about what's happening to my friends in China as Xi Jinping and all the politics there is really changing what their personal spaces look like or their freedom to do business or to be creatives. I care about my friends in Australia and what's happening. I mean, the immigration debate is so divisive. I care about my friends in Europe. You know, where nationalism, I care about sort of my roots in Poland, where the government is very, very anti-immigrant, almost anti-EU, or at least we want a new EU on different terms. I care about what's happening with you, right?

Scott I was wondering when you got to me, and that was last. I was like, is he going to mention me?

Chris I mean, surely a big part of the purpose is, you know, kind of, I think Einstein kind of, you know, said it best that we need to sort of broaden our circle of concern. And for me, that's not in some kind of universal sense. It's about having a wider set of particulars that you care about.

Scott But that is universal also in the sense of...

Chris Well, yeah.

Scott But that's great because universal in the sense of – one sense of universal could be at the expense of the particular. It's like let's get to universal by widening the particulars. I'm saying that because I'm reading a lot of Hegel right now.

Chris Yeah, well, and a lot of people are plagiarizing Hegel and using it as their own these days. But I think – I'm referencing it. That's because you know it. I don't know it as well. Most people don't read it.

Scott Cornel West taught me Hegel.

Chris But who's Cornel West? And we need to be somewhere because... He's repeating Chesterton.

Scott I quoted Chesterton to our server tonight.

Chris And I just feel that you did, which she had no idea what you were talking about.

Scott But that's his argument against Kipling.

Chris Well, I just feel like all these people who say, but, you know, we can't live as universalists because we are particular. And I'm like, well, you don't really get the point. I mean, yes... We discover universal values through our experience of the particular.

Scott Hegel says sometimes logic contradictions are problems, but sometimes the contradictions actually get you to a new ontology, and so you don't... So basically, Hegel thinks certain contradictions need to redefine metaphysics.

Chris So one thing we're going to have to do over the next year as Rebase, so the Renaissance Basecamps continue, is what is the... Not Freebase, it's Rebase. Rebase. Freebase is something different. But what is the technology for Copernican revolutions in people's heads? And what you said about... What did you say about... The contradictions leads to a new ontology.

Scott Yeah, I mean, like most philosophers think that logic determines metaphysics. But like Kant, it's a classic thing. Antinomy is like, well, is the universe infinite or finite? Like in these things. But I mean, Hegel thinks sometimes that the contradictions need to redefine metaphysics. So we got to wrap this up. Ish.

Chris Can we wrap it up on... Let's talk a bit about your experiences of Canada, though. I want to hear a bit about that.

Scott I'm so pro-Canada.

Chris Really? I'm so into it. And it's not just the cannabis?

Scott I haven't had no cannabis when I was here.

Chris Okay, you know it's legal now. You can't take it back over the border, but you can... What would I do?

Scott Could I have some? What would I do?

Chris I'd go to a... So, you know, because I live in the UK, so I don't know exactly how it works, but I think that there are now licensed retailers. You've got to find a dispensary, and you can buy... Could I call Don and do it with Don? You know, I would be intrigued. I would be intrigued by that. But I think... And you can get... And the big thing about the industry now is it's not just smoking joints, right? It's...

Scott I like the vibe. So let me just say, I feel like our Saturday Night Live sketch comedy stuff version of Canada is true. People are just nicer here. They're just nicer. Getting out of a train, even if they're in a hurry, they're nicer. They're not rude. That's nice. I feel like people are... I'm in Toronto, so I'm getting the polish, but it's just so clean and nice.

Chris Toronto's a clean city.

Scott Yeah, and there's just something, like, and also, this is a city that's as diverse as, almost as, like, New York City.

Chris I mean, it's one of the most diverse cities on Earth, yeah.

Scott And there's a sense in which, even this bartender today we were talking about, and she votes irregularly. She doesn't know if Trudeau's term limited it. But she was a voter, like, and probably in her mid-twenties, and she was proud of the diversity. Like, there's something... And Ben Roswell said this in a podcast forthcoming.

Chris Okay, I can't wait to hear it. I haven't heard it yet.

Scott Yeah, I mean, Ben, you were talking about, like, there is an inclusive choice. And I think, man, I mean, like, this is the... So if America is this hardy kind of dream, like, pioneering, like, there's this sort of, like, slow and steady wins the race kind of thing, like... Like, you want Steve Jobs to have been Bill Gates, right? Like, you love that Mac, right? So you wish the guy that made it lived like Bill Gates. Bill Gates made, like, less sexy computers and stuff like that, but he was just this great, like, philanthropist and human. And Steve Jobs made beautiful and great computers and was a shitty person. And so, like... And we're all both people, right?

Chris We're all... So what you're saying, then... I don't know why, but that is totally a widely socialized trope within Canadian society, and at least certainly within Canadian sort of business society, that we're just not, and I think within government, that like innovation is a problem. Productivity growth is a problem. And we got to figure out how to up our game and be more entrepreneurial and more like, you know, Steve Jobs and kind of, you know, bold is beautiful and be the radicals and, you know, all of that great stuff. I don't know if that's true. I mean, I haven't lived in my country for the last many years. And so I kind of have a bit of an outsider. I'm an insider and an outsider at the same time, which is a fun, critical place to be, to be able to kind of just have questions, have conscious questions about my own place where I belong. What are we and how are we and where can we go?

And I said this at... At the event yesterday, I did have a hunch that if I'm going to try to help build a global ecosystem of people who are kind of compelled by this idea of giving birth to a different and more beautiful world, then I want that ecosystem to have some Canadian DNA. Because whether it's earned or unearned, I think that we do have...

Scott It's very American.

Chris Well, it does have Canadian DNA. I mean, here we are in Toronto.

Scott I'm all in on the Canadian DNA.

Chris You're okay. You're welcome.

Scott I want more Canadian DNA.

Chris Is that some kind of kinky reference?

Scott It's funny, because on SyFy, exactly. On SyFy, all of the post-apocalyptic things, like Continuum and all this stuff, the head of the world, dystopian world, is never L.A. or New York. It's Vancouver.

Chris I think it has to do with the film rights. What do you mean by that?

Scott Martin Buber, I-Thou vs. I-It. We want to be seen as thou's, not its. I don't want to be an object. I want to be a subject. Also, we're in a complex world with Uber drivers and concierge people and pagoda owners and everything. We can't have an intimate relationship or even an interpersonal warmness with everybody. But there's something about Canada. From my perspective, there's a little more thou-ness. Now, the service is slower.

Chris Oh boy.

Scott You got to ratchet down your expectations. But I'd be willing to pay that cost for the thouness, you know, most days, you know, but other days, you know. But there's something about the I thouness here that I like that people, that maybe it's passive-aggressive and everybody just hate, you know, repress everything. But there is a public good that I like the thouness. I would like a little more thouness. But also, you get it in the Southeast United States or something, but you get it here with a little less racism.

Chris Which is a nice thing.

Scott It's nice. You always want to say, can you hold the racism? You don't want to say, can I have a little extra racism?

Chris I do have to get off this because I want to go and visit the lovely couple who donated the meditation bell that we used, which I broke. So that's what I need to go on to next. I want to go. And they were lovely about it.

Scott I feel like you're the only person that experiences me that way. When I say stuff like that, I feel like I'm so... Sorry. I feel like I'm so American and so loud... No, you are American. ...that I say these things and no one... But something about you, I say these things and you're like, it's the joint moment. I feel like people think, I'm not that deep.

Chris I'm not a deep person. No, but so the difference is I am easily impressed. It's not that you're that deep, it's I'm that shallow. But I am curious, and if I can ask you one last question about your experiences of Canada. Is part of what's going right in Canada just that it's easier here? I don't know. Like, we don't have a southern border where, you know, there is a lot of illegal immigration, for example. We don't have the same scale of population, right? So is... Yeah, America's... I wonder, is it harder to build a civil society? Like, I don't mean... I mean, a civil society in America than in Canada?

Scott Maybe, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think, like, we were talking at dinner, like, about immigration. So, like, my brother-in-law, who might listen to this, Drew, I love you. He and I agree on very little politically, and he would say the same thing. I mean, I love the guy. I love the guy. He's fantastic. He would probably come to this. He's a traveler. He's... He loves big ideas. It took us two minutes to solve the immigration problem. Like, you know, drinking a bottle of wine. We're just like, well, you just do visas, travel. And we're totally opposite sides of the political spectrum. But you actually agree on that issue. Yeah. So it's a wedge issue, right? Because we're so big and diverse in America. Democrats don't want it solved because they think the more diverse we get, we'll get more voters. And Republicans don't want it solved because...

The business interests like it and also it rallies the disenfranchised working class white voter. And so you could solve it in a minute, right? Like just imprison any business, you know, or first offense, you go to jail and lose your business. There'd be no more illegal immigration, which there's not an immigration crisis. Immigration is down in America.

Chris It's a convenient political hot potato.

Scott So these are the things that America is weird politically. It's a hard thing to govern, I think. And I don't know. Maybe we're too big to succeed.

Chris I don't know if you saw it in the New York Times a few days ago. There was a two-part piece on how to reform American democracy. Did you see this?

Scott I didn't.

Chris And it was really interesting. So you should check it out. So they talked about that the number of seats in the House of Representatives hasn't increased since like 1911. And they did some modeling. I forget the details of how, but basically if we increase the number of seats to 500 and something, you would end up with far more diversity of representation in what today are solidly red states or blue states.

Scott And you could still keep the Senate.

Chris It would still protect... Right, but the House would much more accurately be the People's House, i.e. representing sort of population size and relative population size. And I thought, now that's... So, you know, we talk about Copernican revolutions. I feel like that's the kind of stuff that we need to get better at being conscious of. All of these struggles that we have, to what extent have we created them ourselves by outdated systems? And where do we need to do more systems thinking in order to design away some of these lingering problems? And we'll have new problems in the new system, but at least... That's Hegel. Everybody thinks Hegel... So I've got to reread my Hegel.

Scott Everybody thinks Hegel is the thesis, antithesis, synthesis...

Chris That's interesting. No, but it would be interesting to have like a philosophy table.

Scott We'd have to get real philosophers.

Chris Well, dude, I mean, did you see that room?

Scott We could get a few real philosophers.

Chris We can get real. We can get some serious. We'll get like Alan de Botton.

Scott If we get Tabat in Cornel West.

Chris And Cornel West in the room. And then the question is what we need to work on. And, you know, don't get me wrong. What about entertainment? So, you know, Basecamp Toronto was, for me, a resounding success.

Scott Only resounding? I thought it was more than resounding.

Chris It was so much more than what I originally intended it to be. It was awesome. And it was actually, for me, so successful that I can now look at it and be so critical about, wow, I mean, now the ambition is, okay, how do we get to the new world? And now the question, the problem is, how do you bring people together in a way that we start to... And so I believe that we can get 10 brilliant philosophers together. But the question is, how do we bring them together? And what is the kind of dialogue technology? Excuse me. What is the dialogue technology that gets them out of what is their, you know, their practice mode, which is, here's my philosophical system, and I know yours. And so, you know, let's play chess. And my favorite opening is, you know, E4, and you're going to respond with like King's Gambit, you know, and... We have to get out of those fixed, because philosophers have them too. Get out of that and just be, at some level, creatively talking about these issues.

Scott T.S. Eliot says that philosophers design systems with explanations. And this is the problem with prescription and description. He says, like, I'd rather have a descriptive thing always than a prescription, because description is open to... That's so interesting. Some pre-Socratic say it's a problem. Why is it a problem? We all know we have a duality of continuity and discontinuity with what we think is something soul-like or spirit-like. But why is it a problem? The minute you say it's a problem, we prejudice... I'm a big... Can I just make a conclusion? I'm a huge candidate guy.

Chris Great. No, I got to say two more things now. Well, one more thing. So this description versus prescription is interesting.

Scott That's the DNA of the whole thing.

Chris Because I think it's fundamental. I was at a get-together on Friday with kind of a subgroup of people, and we were talking about how... So what are we going to do?

Scott By that, you mean a subgroup, not a subgroup, like sexually or... Exactly.

Chris No, it was a sexual subgroup of people.

Scott That's right. Or you're not doing genocide.

Chris But... And what we were saying, I'm not going to pick that one up. What we were saying is, you know, sharing experiences. Do you need a moment? No, I laughed off camera. Okay, okay. Sharing experiences is always helpful. Sharing advice. It's always problematic. And it's actually descriptive, prescriptive, experiences versus advice. So it works at a very simple level as well, that these are two fundamental categories of communication. And there is, somewhat ironically, maybe more value in being descriptive, in sharing experiences, than in being prescriptive.

So it's all connected because this is kind of at the dumbest level of it. So I do a lot of public speaking now. You're very good at it. Oh, thank you.

Scott I first researched your book when... Oh, did you like stalk me online or something?

Chris I did. Okay. There's some old stuff. I love your TED Talks. I'm quite... That now comes the denouement, and I'm supposed to kind of tell you so what and be prescriptive. I'm not actually sure that I'm helping when I do that. I mean, that's what we do, and we give some keynote speech. If you don't do it, then that's the obvious critique you get. Oh, where was the so what? But I actually think that that's the part that we all need to own. And maybe to close, so going back to that get-together yesterday. So we got 110 of us. We had these amazing conversations. So what? Maybe that's the question we all have to answer for ourselves.

Scott I feel like the so what is the relationships and the connection. Because once you get everybody plugged in... There were some of me.

Chris I met most of those people in the room.

Scott But that was meant to be rhetorical. The so what was...

Chris Yeah, no, no, you're right.

Scott Say that again. I'll step on that.

Chris What did I say? Oh, no, but, you know, so I wonder if, you know, so going back to yesterday and that gathering and, you know, you kind of went, so what? We had all these amazing people together. It's been a great day. We had all these conversations. So what? And for some reason, we look to somebody else. To answer that question for us, to prescribe. And probably the biggest kind of mindset shift is to recognize that no, no, no, no, no. We have to stop asking that question of other people. It's the question we're supposed to be asking of ourselves.

Scott To be continued.

Chris To be continued. That was awesome. And dude, I mean, it's so great to do this in person.

Scott I would love if we could do this all the time.

Chris Yeah, yeah. You'll have to come to London. I love it. Bring the travel kit.