social issues

Looking for bridges in views about the second Trump administration. I'm currently aware of four views:

• This is the worst thing ever, I'm terrified
• This is the best thing ever, I'm thrilled
• I don't pay attention to politics, so far my life feels exactly the same
• Some of the changes seem pretty cool so far, but we'll see

Where are the middle grounds? I want to know how to build bridges in my personal connections when politics comes up these days.

Looking for bridges in views about the second Trump administration. I'm currently aware of four views:

• This is the worst thing ever, I'm terrified
• This is the best thing ever, I'm thrilled
• I don't pay attention to politics, so far my life feels exactly the same
• Some of the changes seem pretty cool so far, but we'll see

Where are the middle grounds? I want to know how to build bridges in my personal connections when politics comes up these days.

Great charts on polarization and echo-chambers in the USA. Six-Chart Sunday – Where You Sit Is Where You Stand - by some guy named Bruce Mehlman on Substack

• 90% of Republicans approved of President Trump’s job performance mid-April (~85 days in), tied for the highest own party approval at this point in the term per Hart Research. 

• Much partisan difference in approval of / confidence in presidents results from getting news from different sources

• We wildly mis-estimate the views of those in the other party. As a result of partisan media, online echo-chambers, and demagogic politicians in both parties, we have very inaccurate understandings of the viewpoints of those on the other side. 

hey wait, did we do better? Whew, today was a whirlwind! We'd love to know

• Did you have a favorite part of today?
• Did you gain any insights today?
• Is there anything we didn't talk about that we "should" have?

Please comment below!

For reference - all AMA threads and livestream recordings are available from the original schedule links found here: https://uptrusting.com/hey-wait

We have the option to see everything in your life as collaborative; we are scared to say this because we don't want to victim-blame but we're also scared of the possibilities and transcendence that opens up.  

OK I’ve tried talking about this before and it always feels impossible, but it also feels super important, so here goes, relatively uncensored (meaning super philosophical, my apologies and hope some of you enjoy!):

“We have the option to see everything in your life as collaborative”

1. The nature of the universe is co-constructed / nondual: I think “experience” and “reality” are fundamentally intertwined; you can’t talk about a world out-there without a subjectivity talking about it (experiencing) and you can’t have an experiencing without a world out there (reality). In other words, subject and object (consciousness and matter) are one interpenetrated thingy. When I say “reality” I really mean “reality-experience” and when I say “experience” I really mean  “experience-reality.” Sometimes I just say “Life.”
   
   I mean this in a very extreme way.
   
   Not collapsing to the outer (materialism): This is not “there’s a pre-existing world out there, and many different pre-existing subjective views on it” which is the common way of understanding pluralism. That framing still fundamentally separates the outer world from the inner, and presumes a kind of self-existence of the outer without consciousness, which I think is basically epistemologically untenable. We simply can’t know if that’s possible, ever, because every thought- or real- experiment we do will always be known, by us, inside of a conscious experience.
   
   Not collapsing to the inner (idealism): This is also not “there’s no world out there, just constructs,” which I see as incoherently self-defeating: where do the constructs exist? We’re just hiding the fact that we presume constructs are objectively existing prior to that statement, and then declaring nothing inherently exists. It also doesn’t jive with out lived experience that there seem to be “things” like the laws of physics that are outside of our ability to simply construct a new meaning around. Perhaps the laws of physics are mutable, but we’d still be left with a meta-physics claim, like the one I’m making:
   
   The inner and outer, the consciousness and matter, fundamentally coexist as one occurrence. This is what I’m referring to as “life” in the title of this post.
   
   

1. From this claim I think another follows that there’s a (possibly) inviolable metaphysics of correspondence between the interpretation and world-out-there, a “mirror” to the (obvious to almost all adults) correspondence between the world-out-there and interpretation: eg I can reinterpret the experience of stubbing my toe, but I can’t reinterpret the existence of the table leg I stubbed it on. The most obvious inverse correspondence is that I can use my reinterpretation to change the outer world: let’s say I consider stubbing my toe a lesson, and what I learn from that lesson is that I want to move the location of my table. Now I move my table.
   
   You can probably see where I’m going with this.
   
   If I don’t have access to the interpretation that toe-stubbing is a lesson-opportunity, maybe I’m less likely to move the table, or change my walking patterns, or whatever. (Yes there’s another failure mode in thinking the lessons are always only internal lessons, but that’s recapping the “collapsing to the inner” mentioned above, so already covered I think). Having the lesson-frame changes the way we encounter and react to adversity, even as small as toe-stubbing. Any given frame changes the way we encounter and react to all that we experience, because they’re interpenetratingly one thing.
   
   

2. “Everything in my life is collaborative” is one of the interpretation-choices we all have; and it is causative in the same way “stubbing my toe is a lesson” is causative. I think this is a pragmatic statement of fact; here’s the value-laden one:
   
   Seeing everything that happens as collaborative is very good way to live, and results in greater well-being.
   
   It puts us in flow with what’s happening rather than resistance; it has us take self-responsibility for “what now” and keeps us close to where our actual power is (meaning making, as Frank said yesterday); all of this leads to a better experience regardless of your values and regardless of your life circumstances.
   

“we are scared to say this because we don't want to victim-blame”

This feels very un-politically-correct to talk about because people immediately try to apply it to others. They misinterpret it to mean, “If someone has a shitty experience it’s their fault.” 

This is a mistake!

(1) I’m not using it to talk about others.
(2) The capacity to do something now doesn’t imply the capacity to have done something in the past.
(3) I’m definitely not saying it’s fair.

The statement is about everything in your life, not everyone’s life. The mistake at a philosophical level is trying to make it an “out there” proposition, instead of remembering the entanglement of inner-and-outer.

This clarification is super important because to the extent what I’m saying is true, it’s a huge, underutilized technology in well-being improvement available to you in your life, but it remains unavailable to you if you think that using it means you have to blame other people for their circumstances. Don’t do that! Not necessary! For personal use only! (Even when I apply these ideas in coaching sessions, and we teach them in The Relateful Coaching School, it’s always first from a place of asking questions, finding attunement.)

“but we're also scared of the possibilities and transcendence that opens up”

The other most common block to trying on this perspective is that we’re terrified of being this powerful: 

• What if we don’t use it responsibly? (Then you’d have the chance to see that as collaborative, taking the results as feedback)

• What if we can’t use it well? (There’s no standard—that’s an unnecessary imposition we make up in our heads; and I don’t know if there’s an end either, so we’re always growing in capacity, if we want to) 

• Does this mean it’s our fault if we don’t have a good experience? (no, remember that would be collapsing the outer to the inner)

And we’re terrified at facing the reality of how deeply interconnected we are. 

This means the “I” that I think I am really is indistinguishable from the entire world, which calls into the question the nature of that I. This is a scary thing to face, in my experience. Luckily, as far as I can tell the nature of reality-experience is holonic—transcendence always comes with including. So yes, I am much much bigger than whatever concept I make of myself, but that bigness doesn’t erase the concept or the me, it simply contextualizes it in something much grander. Which ironically, gives us a lot more room for self-expression, play, and surrendering into embracing the whole human experience with all of it’s complexity, suffering, and joy.

#DeepTakes 

American aristocracy could learn some things from the old world. A big American founding myth is that we eliminated the aristocracy from our government, but the real American innovation is making it much easier to join the aristocracy starting as an outsider. 

Sure, great. A little closer to meritocracy, one hopes. 

But governance is complex enough that you’d ideally want to be trained from birth to do it. Programs of similar intensity to olympic training, for example. 

That was a potential upside of the previous method. You had a limited set of preselected kids who were almost certainly going to rule one day, so you could put them through the training to do so. It often worked pretty well.

Now anyone who is good at twitter can ostensibly rule without knowing anything about how to do it. 

Remember Boaty McBoatface? Our current timeline is the spiritual equivalent of running an internet poll to determine who is in charge of a nuclear reactor. Except orders of magnitudes more reckless and dangerous than that. 

 We need a better synthesis. 

#DeepTakes

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.

Oppress me. Is it possible? Can you oppress me right now?

Context:
The guy I’m dating (Ken) had said he was frustrated with the Austin School District teachers that he’s teaching Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to because they were all giving wrong answers to the question, Who is the oppressor in your classroom? According to Ken, and apparently according to the book the teachers had been assigned to read, the oppressor in a classroom is the teacher.

Last night I was telling my friend Arun about it and he said Oppress me! Right now!

All of this post is rooted in my discomfort with the premise that all teachers are oppressors in their classrooms. I can see the roots of truth of it, but making that its own conclusion point looks wildly flawed to me.

Reproductive rights. I have a really hard time understanding why folks support stripping reproductive rights before we’ve tackled better support for children and families in the US.

From my perspective, the better we can support children, mothers, and families more broadly, the less we’ll actually have unplanned pregnancies.

It just seems wise to really take care of those that are alive right now and try to improve their lives.

Reproductive rights. I have a really hard time understanding why folks support stripping reproductive rights before we’ve tackled better support for children and families in the US.

From my perspective, the better we can support children, mothers, and families more broadly, the less we’ll actually have unplanned pregnancies.

It just seems wise to really take care of those that are alive right now and try to improve their lives.

The Diplomat is amazing. The Netflix show, The Diplomat is amazing. I love it – it ticks all of my boxes for suspense, romance, intrigue, and things I can’t name.

Did you see it, did you like it?

I’m watching A Discovery of Witches and also enjoying that, but both Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches and Interview with a Vampire are sadly proving unwatchable.
Love to hear what you’re watching and loving

We need new gender categories, while preserving the distinctness of "man" and "woman". I don’t mind using different pronouns—I’m happy to love someone with whatever language they prefer.

But I’d like to propose that deconstructing traditional genders is not only unnecessary, it’s harmful.

Not necessary

• It’s not necessary because we’re free to create as many new genders as we’d like, while preserving the standard ones.

• This is the transcend and include approach, as far as I can tell. The current approaches I’ve seen are either all transcend (reject the historical categories) or all include (reject the creativity and proof-by-existence of new genders).

• I believe this will better honor the person who was misassigned a gender at birth, because their life experience is very different from someone who was assigned the gender they identify with. Eg: if I’m a trans-woman, I didn’t grow up with all the social pressures of being a woman, or going through a menstrual cycle, or whatever; I grew up feeling like a woman but getting the social pressures of being a man, going through the hormonal changes associated with male-body-ness. Which is a totally unique experience, that I will find more belonging and support from other people like me, not from trad-females.

Harmful

• It’s harmful because the people who want acceptance into the traditional category are never going to get it. Eg: If i’m a trans-woman, I was assigned male at birth, and I probably have some male parts and hormones and stuff, so when I try to identify as a woman and join in those discussions and groups that are for women I’m likely to always feel outside, different, and to a certain group of cis-women, threatening.

• This further divides society and polarizes certain populations against including the reality of the trans-experience, which then polarizes the trans-supporters, which begets the vicious cycle.

• Sex differentiation started around 1.2 billion years, so the male-female experience has ancient roots that are in our bodies and impacting us every single second. Denying this altogether is destroying massive chesterotn fences— denies tons of wisdom that is passed down not only culturally over the past 200,000 years, but instinctually for a billion.

What about bathrooms and sports?

Instead we can just have single stall bathrooms and locker-rooms. Or trad-male, trad-female, and a third for whoever of whatever gender, which is much larger than the trad lockerrooms and bathrooms. We can have a third category of sports—all gender. We’re creative, we’re growing, we have plenty of people to populate them and who will want to win, why stick with a binary?

I’m sure I’m missing something, and I apologize to the new-gendered people who I’m sure I’ve insulted or missed somehow. But, leaning in to potentially contentious convo…

Trump is going to be President (again). The assassination attempt is definitely helping propel Trump to the presidency (aka the belief that God is ordaining Trump to be president, thus saved him from harm), though Elon Musk’s immediate endorsement after the assassination attempt (and $45 mil per month committed pledge to his election) has probably done even more to cement this election than the bullet. I was totally missing the tech community’s massive upset over Biden admin’s stance on AI regulation and crackdowns on acquisitions by big tech. Somehow, I thought everyone was alarmed about AI. It’s much more complex than I realized.

Both candidates are too fucking old to be president. One is a crazy and too old. The other is selfish and even more too old.

Eyes opened, looking at four years of dramatic course correction (is that the right word…correction?) I believe life is trustable and I wonder if I’ll be alive to see the good that will come from this huge swing. Feeling a need to distance myself, emotionally, get out a bowl of popcorn, to watch the show, trusting something…

We need new gender categories, while preserving the distinctness of "man" and "woman". I don’t mind using different pronouns—I’m happy to love someone with whatever language they prefer.

But I’d like to propose that deconstructing traditional genders is not only unnecessary, it’s harmful.

Not necessary

• It’s not necessary because we’re free to create as many new genders as we’d like, while preserving the standard ones.

• This is the transcend and include approach, as far as I can tell. The current approaches I’ve seen are either all transcend (reject the historical categories) or all include (reject the creativity and proof-by-existence of new genders).

• I believe this will better honor the person who was misassigned a gender at birth, because their life experience is very different from someone who was assigned the gender they identify with. Eg: if I’m a trans-woman, I didn’t grow up with all the social pressures of being a woman, or going through a menstrual cycle, or whatever; I grew up feeling like a woman but getting the social pressures of being a man, going through the hormonal changes associated with male-body-ness. Which is a totally unique experience, that I will find more belonging and support from other people like me, not from trad-females.

Harmful

• It’s harmful because the people who want acceptance into the traditional category are never going to get it. Eg: If i’m a trans-woman, I was assigned male at birth, and I probably have some male parts and hormones and stuff, so when I try to identify as a woman and join in those discussions and groups that are for women I’m likely to always feel outside, different, and to a certain group of cis-women, threatening.

• This further divides society and polarizes certain populations against including the reality of the trans-experience, which then polarizes the trans-supporters, which begets the vicious cycle.

• Sex differentiation started around 1.2 billion years, so the male-female experience has ancient roots that are in our bodies and impacting us every single second. Denying this altogether is destroying massive chesterotn fences— denies tons of wisdom that is passed down not only culturally over the past 200,000 years, but instinctually for a billion.

What about bathrooms and sports?

Instead we can just have single stall bathrooms and locker-rooms. Or trad-male, trad-female, and a third for whoever of whatever gender, which is much larger than the trad lockerrooms and bathrooms. We can have a third category of sports—all gender. We’re creative, we’re growing, we have plenty of people to populate them and who will want to win, why stick with a binary?

I’m sure I’m missing something, and I apologize to the new-gendered people who I’m sure I’ve insulted or missed somehow. But, leaning in to potentially contentious convo…

We need new gender categories, while preserving the distinctness of "man" and "woman". I don’t mind using different pronouns—I’m happy to love someone with whatever language they prefer.

But I’d like to propose that deconstructing traditional genders is not only unnecessary, it’s harmful.

Not necessary

• It’s not necessary because we’re free to create as many new genders as we’d like, while preserving the standard ones.

• This is the transcend and include approach, as far as I can tell. The current approaches I’ve seen are either all transcend (reject the historical categories) or all include (reject the creativity and proof-by-existence of new genders).

• I believe this will better honor the person who was misassigned a gender at birth, because their life experience is very different from someone who was assigned the gender they identify with. Eg: if I’m a trans-woman, I didn’t grow up with all the social pressures of being a woman, or going through a menstrual cycle, or whatever; I grew up feeling like a woman but getting the social pressures of being a man, going through the hormonal changes associated with male-body-ness. Which is a totally unique experience, that I will find more belonging and support from other people like me, not from trad-females.

Harmful

• It’s harmful because the people who want acceptance into the traditional category are never going to get it. Eg: If i’m a trans-woman, I was assigned male at birth, and I probably have some male parts and hormones and stuff, so when I try to identify as a woman and join in those discussions and groups that are for women I’m likely to always feel outside, different, and to a certain group of cis-women, threatening.

• This further divides society and polarizes certain populations against including the reality of the trans-experience, which then polarizes the trans-supporters, which begets the vicious cycle.

• Sex differentiation started around 1.2 billion years, so the male-female experience has ancient roots that are in our bodies and impacting us every single second. Denying this altogether is destroying massive chesterotn fences— denies tons of wisdom that is passed down not only culturally over the past 200,000 years, but instinctually for a billion.

What about bathrooms and sports?

Instead we can just have single stall bathrooms and locker-rooms. Or trad-male, trad-female, and a third for whoever of whatever gender, which is much larger than the trad lockerrooms and bathrooms. We can have a third category of sports—all gender. We’re creative, we’re growing, we have plenty of people to populate them and who will want to win, why stick with a binary?

I’m sure I’m missing something, and I apologize to the new-gendered people who I’m sure I’ve insulted or missed somehow. But, leaning in to potentially contentious convo…

We need new gender categories, while preserving the distinctness of "man" and "woman". I don’t mind using different pronouns—I’m happy to love someone with whatever language they prefer.

But I’d like to propose that deconstructing traditional genders is not only unnecessary, it’s harmful.

Not necessary

• It’s not necessary because we’re free to create as many new genders as we’d like, while preserving the standard ones.

• This is the transcend and include approach, as far as I can tell. The current approaches I’ve seen are either all transcend (reject the historical categories) or all include (reject the creativity and proof-by-existence of new genders).

• I believe this will better honor the person who was misassigned a gender at birth, because their life experience is very different from someone who was assigned the gender they identify with. Eg: if I’m a trans-woman, I didn’t grow up with all the social pressures of being a woman, or going through a menstrual cycle, or whatever; I grew up feeling like a woman but getting the social pressures of being a man, going through the hormonal changes associated with male-body-ness. Which is a totally unique experience, that I will find more belonging and support from other people like me, not from trad-females.

Harmful

• It’s harmful because the people who want acceptance into the traditional category are never going to get it. Eg: If i’m a trans-woman, I was assigned male at birth, and I probably have some male parts and hormones and stuff, so when I try to identify as a woman and join in those discussions and groups that are for women I’m likely to always feel outside, different, and to a certain group of cis-women, threatening.

• This further divides society and polarizes certain populations against including the reality of the trans-experience, which then polarizes the trans-supporters, which begets the vicious cycle.

• Sex differentiation started around 1.2 billion years, so the male-female experience has ancient roots that are in our bodies and impacting us every single second. Denying this altogether is destroying massive chesterotn fences— denies tons of wisdom that is passed down not only culturally over the past 200,000 years, but instinctually for a billion.

What about bathrooms and sports?

Instead we can just have single stall bathrooms and locker-rooms. Or trad-male, trad-female, and a third for whoever of whatever gender, which is much larger than the trad lockerrooms and bathrooms. We can have a third category of sports—all gender. We’re creative, we’re growing, we have plenty of people to populate them and who will want to win, why stick with a binary?

I’m sure I’m missing something, and I apologize to the new-gendered people who I’m sure I’ve insulted or missed somehow. But, leaning in to potentially contentious convo…

We need new gender categories, while preserving the distinctness of "man" and "woman". I don’t mind using different pronouns—I’m happy to love someone with whatever language they prefer.

But I’d like to propose that deconstructing traditional genders is not only unnecessary, it’s harmful.

Not necessary

• It’s not necessary because we’re free to create as many new genders as we’d like, while preserving the standard ones.

• This is the transcend and include approach, as far as I can tell. The current approaches I’ve seen are either all transcend (reject the historical categories) or all include (reject the creativity and proof-by-existence of new genders).

• I believe this will better honor the person who was misassigned a gender at birth, because their life experience is very different from someone who was assigned the gender they identify with. Eg: if I’m a trans-woman, I didn’t grow up with all the social pressures of being a woman, or going through a menstrual cycle, or whatever; I grew up feeling like a woman but getting the social pressures of being a man, going through the hormonal changes associated with male-body-ness. Which is a totally unique experience, that I will find more belonging and support from other people like me, not from trad-females.

Harmful

• It’s harmful because the people who want acceptance into the traditional category are never going to get it. Eg: If i’m a trans-woman, I was assigned male at birth, and I probably have some male parts and hormones and stuff, so when I try to identify as a woman and join in those discussions and groups that are for women I’m likely to always feel outside, different, and to a certain group of cis-women, threatening.

• This further divides society and polarizes certain populations against including the reality of the trans-experience, which then polarizes the trans-supporters, which begets the vicious cycle.

• Sex differentiation started around 1.2 billion years, so the male-female experience has ancient roots that are in our bodies and impacting us every single second. Denying this altogether is destroying massive chesterotn fences— denies tons of wisdom that is passed down not only culturally over the past 200,000 years, but instinctually for a billion.

What about bathrooms and sports?

Instead we can just have single stall bathrooms and locker-rooms. Or trad-male, trad-female, and a third for whoever of whatever gender, which is much larger than the trad lockerrooms and bathrooms. We can have a third category of sports—all gender. We’re creative, we’re growing, we have plenty of people to populate them and who will want to win, why stick with a binary?

I’m sure I’m missing something, and I apologize to the new-gendered people who I’m sure I’ve insulted or missed somehow. But, leaning in to potentially contentious convo…