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398: Lt. General Paul Van Riper USMC, part 2: A Marine Versus Coffee
Rip committed to avoid waste through coffee, which he describes as harder than he thought.
Wait a minute. A three-star Marine Corps general is describing not using coffee cartridges as hard? In the Millennium Challenge we talked about in our first conversation he led a team taking on the best of the entire US war machine and won. How hard can coffee be?
That's the point of this podcast. Personal change doesn't depend on calories burned, monetary costs, and so on. It depends on our hearts and minds, which depend on our stories, beliefs, images, and so on. It's as easy or hard as we believe.
Another main point of this podcast is to empower you to change our beliefs, stories, and images. While a belief may make something as materially simple as changing how you make coffee seem impossibly difficult, recognizing that our belief is the issue puts resolving the
problem under our control. We don't have to accept that belief. We can change it.
That's why I value Viktor Frankl and people like him so much. He turned living in Auschwitz into including experiencing love and bliss. What he can do, we can.
Rip shares how he saw the situation before starting, how it ended up harder than expected, then he got to work on himself and his views, and you'll hear the results, as I heard more positive than he would have predicted.
Systemic change begins with personal transformation. If you think the change will end with a few coffee cartridges, you're missing how systemic change happens. Among other things, now there's a Marine Corps three-star General who concerns himself with household waste and sees it as something to enjoy and look forward to. He presents it as decreasing feelings of guilt, taking responsibility, enjoying results. You'll hear that talking about responsibility and personal growth leads naturally to personal and professional growth at the highest levels of the military, about policy, strategy, campaigns, operations, and tactics.
He shared preparing reading Von Clausewitz's On War. I almost can't believe the wisdom and experience I got to hear. This conversation helped prompt me reading the strategy works he described as well as valuing writing about sustainability. Beyond my blog, I'm working on my book and seeing how it reveals the core, as he described. I remember watching a video biography of President John Adams. After he was President a scene showing him fixing shingles on his roof. I thought of how human we all are, whatever our status, whatever importance we give ourselves. As JFK said, in the end we are all mortal. We share the same air, land, and water.
We can view changes as obligations, chores, sacrifice, and burden---hardships for us. Focusing inwardly on ourselves characterizes depression. By contrast, we can view stewardship of nature as connecting us to others. Little improves how we feel more than acting in service of others. That's leadership. Even if we want to get ahead and think we have to do for ourselves, acting in service of others responsibly is leadership. If I want to get ahead it works. If I want more happiness itworks. If you prefer seeing stewardship as a burden keeping you from your career, that's your choice.
Rip shared otherwise, as I heard it.
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798: Nick Romeo: The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy
57:13|Regular listeners and readers of my podcast and blog know I grew up with parents who helped form a grocery buying group which folded into a food co-op. Different co-ops work differently, but the general idea is that shoppers co-own the business. There's less motivation to stock doof and more to source local, fresh produce and keep money in the community. While we still shopped at supermarkets, we favored the co-op for having greater selection of produce that was fresher and tasted better. It was such a part of my childhood that I make sure to belong to a co-op today.Many people today see co-ops as luxuries or privileged, which seems bizarre to me since they did it because they didn't have much time or money and had three children to feed. I also see them as not capitalist, communist, or representing any particular political or economic system. They're just people shopping together.Nick Romeo's book title refers to Margaret Thatcher saying there was no alternative. Quoting Wikipedia:"There is no alternative" is a political slogan originally arguing that liberal capitalism is the only viable system. At the turn of the 21st century the TINA rhetoric became closely tied to neoliberalism, and its traits of liberalization and marketization. Politicians used it to justify policies of fiscal conservatism and austerity.In a speech to the Conservative Women's Conference on 21 May 1980, Thatcher appealed to the notion saying, "We have to get our production and our earnings into balance. There's no easy popularity in what we are proposing but it is fundamentally sound. Yet I believe people accept there's no real alternative." Later in the speech, she returned to the theme: "What's the alternative? To go on as we were before? All that leads to is higher spending. And that means more taxes, more borrowing, higher interest rates more inflation, more unemployment."I grew up knowing plenty of alternatives to what other people couldn't imagine alternatives to. Nick's book treats plenty of alternative systems that work. I found the book while researching Mondragon by way of his New Yorker article How Mondragon Became the World’s Largest Co-Op: In Spain, an industrial-sized conglomerate owned by its workers suggests an alternative future for capitalism.Beyond the details of particular alternatives like co-ops, purpose trusts, letting citizens make crucial budget decisions, job guarantee programs, and so on, his book undermines the belief that no alternatives exist. Unquestioned beliefs are a big part of culture. Sustainability is full of them. They show a failure of imagination and promote it too.Nick's book reverses that course.Nick's home pageNick's articles at the New Yorker
797. 797: Alden Wicker, part 2: Try and Try Again: E-biking in Vermont
39:24||Ep. 797Many people think sustainability requires fixing everything or else we'll collapse. The Spodek Method creates a mindset shift followed by continual improvement, not, as they might hope, a mindset shift followed by perfection.Alden has had her electronic bike in Vermont for some time but hasn't ridden it. She's used doing the Spodek Method as her excuse to ride it, but it's taken time. This time she used it and you'll hear both how she got it working as well as the challenges. As tends to happen with acting on sustainability, even the challenges end up rewarding.
796. 796: Jack Spencer, part 3: Authenticity on Acting on Sustainability (also Project 2025)
44:45||Ep. 796We start by talking about the internal challenges Jack felt about acting to do something he wouldn't have otherwise. He cares about the environment and lives accordingly. Still, he wouldn't have done what he committed to when we spoke. Does that mean what we would do is inauthentic?Then we talk about nuclear and other policy issues. Heritage's Project 2025 came up so he shared some back story the news doesn't cover about it.Then we return to acting. On my suggestion, he invites me to visit and fish. I see this call as the beginning of meaningful collaboration and friendship based on a different approach to sustainability than I've seen in mainstream environmentalism.
795. 795: Lorraine Smith, part 1: Leaving mainstream "sustainability" to pursue actual sustainability
01:17:35||Ep. 795Lorraine is one of the few people I know who saw mainstream sustainability efforts for what they are: ineffective and often counterproductive but self-congratulatory. I call most of them "stepping on the gas, thinking it's the brake, wanting congratulations."Unlike most others, once she saw their counterproductivity, if not outright lies, she left. She works to promote an "economy in service of life." I think it's easy to see that our current global economy is not serving life. The amount of life on earth is decreasing.Lorraine shares her history of ramping up on mainstream sustainability, her disillusionment, her acting by her values to exit, and her finding what to do. We also commiserate on the challenges we face in living by different cultures than mainstream. It's hard. We face headwinds every day, even from people who want to help us; especially from people trying to help us, like people who claim to be environmentalist but don't change culture or themselves.
794. 794: Lorna Davis, part 3: Before taking the sustainability leadership workshop
53:53||Ep. 794Lorna first appeared on this podcast in 2021. We became friends and remained so, though we challenge each other, as you'll hear in this conversation. We don't try to. Just things about the other annoy us. But how much we respect and learn from each other outshines that annoyance.Lorna knew about the Spodek Method and workshops for years. I don't know why she didn't join one until now, but something clicked and she decided to. I think meeting Evelyn led her to see the technique appealed to people like her and unlike me; that acting as much as I do on sustainability didn't result from a quirk of mine.In this episode, she shares her views, concerns, and thoughts about the workshop and how it might affect her and her relationships. We plan to record another conversation after she finishes the workshop. If you haven't thought about taking it, learn more about it here, then compare how you feel about taking it with what Lorna expresses.I don't know about you, but I'm curious how she'll experience it. Have I overpromised? Is there something quirky about me leading me to unique or unusual results?Don't forget to come back to listen to her experience after taking the workshop.
793. 793: Nick Loris, part 1.5: Heartwarming nature, family, and fatherhood
49:47||Ep. 793People I talk to on the political left who care about the environment see people on the political right as opponents to defeat. When I share that I talk to people from Heritage Foundation, where Nick worked, they sound skeptical at best, more commonly incredulous and fearful.In this episode, you'll hear heartwarming stories of Nick's childhood with his father, then Nick today finding a way to manifest what he experienced then. You'll also hear he just got married, so I predict the commitment he made in this episode helps contribute to his growing family life.I'm starting to find it hard to believe people see others as opponents regarding the environment and sustainability. Treating them that way makes things adversarial. I wish they'd stop. Let's see if working together, practicing sustainability leadership, such as with the Spodek Method, helps us work together to solve our environmental problems more effectively.
792. 792: Travis Fisher, part 2: The spirit that America was founded on, Cato, and sustainability
01:16:20||Ep. 792We recorded this conversation just after the election. We talked about it, especially Travis's and the Cato Institute's views. One of his main views is that the US puts too much executive authority in the president. I'm alsoWe shared our concerns about the Inflation Reduction Act coming from different standpoints, but agreeing with each other.Our main conversation was about approaching sustainability from a view of freedom, not coercion or imposing values. I share my view thatIf you think living more sustainably makes people’s lives worse, you have to become a better dictator.If you think living more sustainably improves people’s lives, you learn to become a better marketer, entrepreneur, or leader.Travis agrees on the problems with top-down coercion and we took off from there.My interview in Washington Square Park where the interviewer tried to rile me up.My post: If you think living more sustainably makes people’s lives worse, you have to become a better dictator. If you think living more sustainably improves people’s lives, you learn to become a better marketer, entrepreneur, or leader.
791. 791: Sustainability Leadership Is a Performance Art
01:06:59||Ep. 791I'm following up my recent solo post, 790: Talking to a guy injecting on the sidewalk, with another extemporaneous one. This one is also with a former podcast guest and fellow teacher of our sustainability leadership workshop, Evelyn Wallace.This episode gives an inside view of how I develop ideas in our entrepreneurial team. In particular, I share a few insights into what I offer in the workshops. I've long known to avoid facts, numbers, and lecture. I avoid convincing, cajoling, and coercing, which I call bludgeoning. Most sustainability work I know of go in those directions.I've long seen leadership as a performance art. We learn to practice arts through practicing the basics, which is why my books Leadership Step by Step and Initiative teach through experiential learning: practicing the basics.Our sustainability leadership workshops teach the basics of sustainability leadership. As with any skill or art, mastering it creates freedom to express oneself, as well as liberation, fun, self-expression, self-awareness, and other skills that make life transcendent.
790. 790: Talking to a guy injecting on the sidewalk
47:59||Ep. 790On a beautiful sunny Saturday, 9:50am, I was walking to Washington Square Park to charge my battery and talk at 10am to my friend Dan McPherson (he's been on the podcast, where he shared about his heart attack at age 46 the week before we recorded). I saw the guy in the picture injecting. I asked if I could take his picture and a brief conversation ensued.Instead of my planned conversation with Dan, we recorded my experience and thoughts about the conversation with the guy injecting on the sidewalk. I haven't edited anything. I recorded with just my headphone microphone so sorry about the audio quality, but I think you'll be able to understand us fine.I also didn't prepare. I'm not speaking from notes or even more than a few minutes to reflect. You'll get to hear my thoughts raw.As it happens, Dan is about a third of the way through my book, Sustainability Simplified. It came up in conversation, so you'll get to hear the impressions of someone who has read it. Only at the very end of the call did I think to text Dan the pictures, so listen to the end to hear his thoughts on the book.