Does Pursuing Our Passions Mean We Are in Crisis? It seems in life whenever we decide to actively pursue our dreams or child-like passions, we are labeled as having a crisis.

A mid-life crisis, an existential crisis, a post divorce crisis, postpartum crisis.

Why is this? Is it because going for what we love threatens other people?

Or is it because it takes a crisis to wake us up to how we are living in complacency. From there, we can begin to move forward and live authentically?

I would love to know your thoughts as I ponder a newsletter post on this topic.

AMA with Ali Beiner. Wednesday 2/4 at 11:00 AM CT

Kainos host Alexander Beiner exploring cultural sensemaking around psychedelics, popular culture, philosophy, psychology, alternative economics, and spirituality.

AMA with Ali Beiner. Wednesday 2/4 at 11:00 AM CT

Kainos host Alexander Beiner exploring cultural sensemaking around psychedelics, popular culture, philosophy, psychology, alternative economics, and spirituality.

If this platform is built on trust, then I vow to show up as I am — open, honest, and real. Will I fail this test or flourish? Let’s find out.

Help. I've been contemplating non-violence and us-vs-them and many people I admire here say that's the way to go. The Texas Supreme Court just ruled that judges can deny gay couples marriages today. 

Help. Please tell me how to grieve. I never see you guys hate online. Is it weird that I don't feel loved when I just see silence on these issues?

Seeing ourselves and our culture in Charlie Kirk. When I first heard about the murder I didn't know how big of a lightning rod it was going to be. Then my friend Kageni challenged me to write about the Charlie Kirk event “from an integral perspective,”* and I’ve learned to listen to her challenges, even when I'm feeling scared or inadequate (like this one). (For those who don't have the context, I apologize).

Also, in writing about this human being as an object of our cultural fascination, I've necessarily moved past the well of human grief and empathy. Forgive my insensitivities, oversimplifications (mapping rather than territory-ing), many omissions, forgive if I strayed from my lane, and may we continuously reclaim our shadows to create a more loving world.

I. We are projecting so much onto Charlie Kirk that says more about us than the real tragedies. This is normal—to quote Valerie Daniel “You can't breathe without getting projected on.” But it keeps us from confronting the raw realities of grief, powerlessness, the horror and unpredictability of life, the darkness and violence in humanity. And the irony—cruel or helpful, depending on your view—is that whatever we’re unwilling to face in ourselves is destined to repeat itself.

So let’s reclaim these projections, for our personal peace, and to prevent future tragedies. All the negative and positive stuff we project onto Kirk, onto culture, onto whoever we deem the other. Eg: If I can’t stand the celebrations, I’m probably hiding from my own schadenfreude, likely hiding how deeply I’m ashamed of my desire for power and holding others accountable. Or I’m unwilling to be tender with myself when I think I'm a victim, leading to over-responsibility: exhausting for me and enabling to others.

Loving like this is fierce. I call it forgiveness. It demands the courage to challenge deep rooted beliefs we use to orient to the world, and stay present in the resistance.

II. There are at least three distinct conversations happening at once:

1. Murder is always a tragedy, including Kirk’s.

2. Kirk's complicated character. His views are taken out of context but even so were offensive and scary to many people.
   
   How do we stay present with that fear and offense? But also the way he inspired so many good things in people, including the kind of integrity and service in young men this his murderer lacked? How do we wrestle with views that appear to span the gamut from traditional christian conservative (amber) to modern defenses of free speech (orange) to post-conventional institutional critiques (green)?

3. Celebrations of his murder are vastly overrepresented online, but are part of a feedback loop that leads to more fracturing, which leads to individuals like Kirk’s killer making specific horrific unethical choices, which keeps the loop going.
   
   (Eg: his success was somewhat a reaction to the increasing cultural power of the radical left (operating from amber/ethnocentric structure despite progressive (Green) language), which is now getting amplified, which will amplify another conservative voice, which will lead to more assassinations).
   
   How can we re-align the system if we don't see we are it? Reclaiming our projections is a necessary first step if we’re highly triggered, because (a) systematically reconstructing our intersubjective meaning-making capacity demands intertribal coordination, and (b) it shows us where our actual power lies.

III. Reclaiming our projections through collective dream analysis (sociosomnia).

What if we see America’s reaction to him like a dream that we can interpret? Here’s one view: our culture is in a tizzy around free speech. We seem to both love it and be so terrified of it that we want to cancel and “kill” it. We’re trying to find orientation and values in the chaos of a post-truth world but we don’t yet know how to say “yes, all these points of view are valid (green) but some are more valuable, relevant, and true in this context than others (teal)."

#TTT
---
*The spirit of "from an integral perspective" in this context is making sense of competing claims to truth without demonizing anyone, but being willing to take a stand for goodness and values. To paraphrase integral grandpappa Ken Wilber, if we assume no one is smart enough to be 100% wrong, then how to we stitch together a coherent sense of what’s happening from all the partial truths and fragmented perspectives? In this particular post I’m relying a lot on adult developmental psychology, but the overall theory has a variety of other helpful meta-frames for understanding how seemingly totally different values relate.

"You know, there are 13 ways of doing anything. 11 of them will work. Just pick one and do it.”. Dennis Hightower, who at the time was head of Disney International.

He asked me why I wasn’t doing something, and I responded by explaining the pros and cons of two different ways of doing it. Thoughtfully, he replied “You know, there are 13 ways of doing anything. 11 of them will work. Just pick one and do it.”

The best Founders avoid over-analyzing. At a startup, you don’t have time — and the result will most likely be marginal. Pick a way and do it. Be consistently decisive.

"Why did our friends stop posting on social media? | BBC Global". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN4MNdCAnWA  <-- the first 30 seconds speaks directly to why we think UpTrust is desirable for individuals.

#whyUpTrust 

Am I hiding? I have mixed feeling on posting on this new social media platform UpTrust. I've never been much of a writer, or I've been afraid to share myself. I usually only post to entertain myself, in this way, my writing hasn't evolved to consider the other.

Wanting to help with the LA fires. Write posts in my head often and do not actually write them. There is some block on having a good idea and believing it's worth sharing and then not actually sharing it.  Liked the intro here on uptrust: "What's Good.."  and it inspired me to write even though it's not feeling like it's a response to what is good.  Let me try.  What is good - having ideas, thoughts, suggestions. 

Right now wanting to ask our county and city officials to organize something for residents to participate in clean up. Specifically along the ocean.  The good is that i'm not alone in this craving to help and the importance we feel in keeping the ocean clean.  Surprised to find friends who don't like sand or getting wet caring bout this issue as well. There is no way to go there, the military will not let you pass thru.  it seems like a warzone, completely blocked off to all of us who want to help.  Some how wishing this wasn't just an idea and was something city officials were actively working on.  How to use the funding to provide protective gear for citizens with trucks to go to the area and get as much off the beach as possible.  Know thousands or more would show up.  Maybe we need rsepirators and of course gloves (most of us have the basics like gloves and masks). I have a hazmat suit passed along from my aunt in Maui who got these supplies from fema after the fire there.  So there would be some costs for that supplies, but there would be so much free labor.  Sure liability and safety protocols and awareness of what is possible.  But if the governor can suspend red tape for rebuilds, how bout suspend red tape for volunteer clean up.

As i type this, i feel my heart racing. The powerlessness. Who can i reach? Actually a friend asked me to reach out to her friend on the Malibu city council and suggest these ideas.  That was a few hours ago.  Instead of getting this idea to Haylin.  Hearing Forest talk bout posting on fb, i can feel the fear in my body as well. AND this is just about volunteers, but the powerlessness. 

What's good? The idea is good. The desire to share, help is good. The freeze to share is what i'm facing and glad to have shared this here. Thank you. 

What more do you want seeing in the world. Jordan just asked What do you want to see more of in the world.

Here’s my quick response:

Want the change makers in the world, the people who are interested and engaging in the world of issues, where they see a wrong and dedicate their time and resources to right those wrongs (such as: environmental issues, politics, social issues, etc). My big wanting to see in the world is a shift in all these groups to refocus from what seems to be the norm of sound the alarm bells, stress us out with news of the wrongness (as they see it), as if the culprits will change because they have seen teh horrors of their ways. Would love to see this SHIFT to focusing on what is good, what can be done in the good light and highlighting those who are already doing good for change in this world. This shift would be amazing. And seeing in this exercise of writing - may not be that easy to share a vision for a positive future.

For example, with environmental groups searching for funding or new members or policy changing on capitol hill, to see their focus from negatives (what is real now) to focus on positives, if any happening now and what will be the positive outcome if we listen to this change maker (the vision of future if things were to go in their direction).

We lack a collective vision of a possible future of wild green grass, pastures, blue rivers and lakes, blue skies. The simple things of thriving ecologies and brining native species of plants back to our world. But it is as if we are all addicted to the sensationalism of the horrors of our reality.

WORDING this wanting is very challenging. Can see how easy it is to discuss problems and wanting to solve them, versus discussing solutions and enrolling others in seeing the possible future of goodness that motivates the change. This is in contrast to how the world seems to me. The groups who are active in policy change, eco change, social change, seem to chant the negative, ask us to look at the sad animals and the devastation and would love more of the focus on what good is happening and what could be the future if we stay the good course (the group, individual is promoting).

What's good about Trump? I don't follow (American national) politics a ton, but I know Trump is an incredibly divisive figure who just got convicted of 34 felony counts, while still being favored as the Republican candidate for the next presidential race.

 What's good about him, what he's done, and his policies? For example, less death in foreign wars—even the biased ChatGPT admits:

Trump's foreign policy led to fewer foreign deaths due to a reduction in large-scale military engagements, and his administration did not initiate new large-scale wars or military interventions—a significant departure from previous administrations that engaged in extensive military campaigns, such as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Coaching at Amber level of development. Hey! If you have coached someone at Amber, what do you expect can be accomplished? What do you hope for and what is your approach? In my experience they are not able to self-reflect, don’t get metaphors, and see their beliefs as rigid rather than flexible. If you’ve worked with Amber, can you share what you see and how you do it? <3

fact checking: fentanyl situation. how are folks receiving Vance’s claim that Kamala Harris’ border policy allowed more fentanyl into the country?

i don’t know much about this topic

Current Session "instructions" (Feb 26): Converse, and see if nudges happen. nudges 

We launched a system where the AI bots can automatically detect intervention points. We need you to make a bunch of comments and new posts to see if they'll engage. So this week we're asking you to engage a bunch, if you can!

It's a little rudimentary at the moment so sometimes you'll get multiple bots responding on multiple posts. We'd love your feedback on which ones you like, don't, when it seemed to miss the spot, anything else you notice. 

Thanks and love yall

J (and the UpTrust team)
p.s. this week I'm at an investor meeting so dara will be with you

# [Optional Zoom](https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86795216050?pwd=TllxSzYrTFFXTW5LRmg3WUQrT04vdz09) with Jordan and Dara at least, for faces, questions, help, etc:

My therapist says... if you have a disorder (I’d call this an undesired response + occurring regularly), don’t apply any strategies, any self-regulating methods to meet the stimulus. Don’t try to lower the fear. Any safety strategies will likely keep it in place.

When you do any kind of method you tell your nervous system this is truly dangerous. You need to show your primitive brain that this isn’t dangerous: I don’t have to do anything.

…

This feels so right in me. What a relief actually!

It feels related to what Jordan said earlier, that naming safety creates feelings of unsafety, making us more aware of what could go wrong.

Similarly, naming trauma encourages people to feel into their traumas, leading to distress…creating the opposite of what is intended.

Showing up to a disorder with a strategy is like an invitation to experience more of it.

What do you guys think?

UpTrust Aug 15 Updates. New Hire: Dara!

We hired Dara Harmon! Her job will continue to evolve but in many ways she’s building the growth and revenue pipelines. Despite the intensity of starting with a five day hackathon in a foreign country, and the wild complexity and uncertainty of the tasks at hand, she’s hit the ground running. We’re pumped to have you on the team Dara!

Aussie Hackathon 🦘

The team is currently in Australia doing the aforementioned five day hackathon. This is our seventh hackathon since officially incorporating a little over a year ago. We’re totally distributed most of the time so these are fun and important for the team, plus these have historically been turning points and creative hotbeds for us. We also have a few critical team members like Blake and Marcello that aren’t full time, except on these Hacks, so these are precious for tapping in to our full collective capacity. We’re hitting up a ton of critical stuff and we’ve still got another day and a half. So far we’ve addressed:

• image uploading (starting in the next couple of days you’ll be able to update your avatar);
• reconsidering the math on topic-scoring and group scores
• updating and mathematizing the bridging scores
• implementing an everyone score so you can compare your personal trust score with the group (should be live in the next couple of days);
• reconsidering the name (we’ve got a lot of crazy brainstorms and some decent ones),
• Ads. This is a huge piece that Pete has been particularly focused on and is coming together nicely. Most of the team is working on the conceptual pieces as I type this.
• growth strategy
• a good bit of culture and personal self-reflection and updates. For the first time the vast majority of the team attended a full day relateful workshop that Dave organized with a few local Brisbanites. It was an awesome way to kick off our hackathon and we might make this a new tradition
• a bunch of conceptual discussions on minutiae that matter for example how do we determine what content is read, and what isn’t?
• a lot of fixing bugs and backend stuff, like our CI/CD pipeline
• and a lot of crazy ideas about making the world a better place, most of which are too crazy or complicated to mention in this overview.

Ads

In the same way we believe social media and online discussion can meet it’s potential to actually increase collective intelligence in the world and contribute to individual and social well-being, we believe that there’s a way to do ads that makes ads actually awesome—some of the content you most look forward to. Obviously this already happens: a lot of the Deadpool and Wolverine ads were viral, hilarious, hi quality content on their own; imagine if the incentives were set up such that this was the norm, rather than an outlier?

Bridging

Bridging content for UpTrust is part of the secret sauce we haven’t implemented yet—in it’s first iteration we’re simply algorithmically identifying content that helps synthesize opposing views relative to a given person, and then promoting that more (which iteratingly makes it more valuable so people start to optimize for it, instead of optimizing for attention grabbing via engagement, which doesn’t get weight in uptrust). In Tommy’s first pass, without even including tag-voting, he identified 90 pieces of bridging content (some posts, some comments) out of 1,234 pieces of total content—7%! We think this is a pretty awesome stat for our group since we’re not even putting our thumb on the scale yet by promoting this content, or asking for it directly (which we have cool plans to do). (consider what the internet average is—almost certainly 10x lower, probably much lower in some cases)

Here’s Us

Coming Soon

You’ll see a bunch of new visual updates over the next few weeks and months, like this one

The Relateful Company should embrace more job titles. We’re under-appreciating orange.

We’ve included the green critiques, like the classic:

What gets measured gets managed — even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so - V. F. Ridgway, 1956

But we need to embrace more healthy competition, striving for excellence, even rankings.

one way we can do this is to make more liberal use of titles, and brag on people. @Valerie Daniel is the MANAGING DIRECTOR, and we should have her listed as such in emails and things

What else is healthy orange and how can we transclude it?
What do we already do that is already healthy orange?

Working out & Cortisol, Which exercise method is best? Many conflicting perspectives (often research-backed) exist on the best ways to keep your body healthy.

Do HIIT for cardiovascular health, it’s the best thing for your heart

Do LISS, it’s best for longevity

Don’t do HIIT if you’re stressed out and already have elevated cortisol, as it will elevate your cortisol more, especially if you’re a woman

Focus on slow flowing movements because it’s what our bodies are meant for

Women should lift heavy, it’s the best way to build muscle and protect bone density

Women should do exercise like pilates to build long, lean bodies and keep exercise core focused

These are some of the things I’ve heard across various platforms…Huberman, Attia, My traditional Chinese Medicine dr, and random coaches that I’ve worked with.

What are your beliefs about staying active? Whose ideas do you subscribe to the most? What’s your workout routine?