125: Jack Stewart | What I Learned When I Turned Off the Internet: Real Life Begins

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Jesper Conrad: 0:10

Today we are together with Jack Stewart, and Jack is one of those guys I really love to talk to because he is using his wonderful brain. He set things in motion in my brain.

Cecilie Conrad: 0:25

You quote Jack quite often.

Jesper Conrad: 0:28

I actually quote Jack quite often.

Jack Stewart: 0:31

What's the quote?

Jesper Conrad: 0:32

Give me one of the quotes that go around I will give you the quote as I have interpreted it, so it might be like totally correct, Okay you paraphrase. I paraphrase it, yes, but let's take a quick welcome. Welcome, jack.

Cecilie Conrad: 0:49

Good to see you, hi, thanks for having me.

Jesper Conrad: 0:53

What I'm telling people is that you turned off the internet and one of the things you saw in your own life was that the internet it could be podcast, it could be YouTube, it could be social media had become a social appetite suppressant. And when you turned it off, then what happened was that you realized that there were times in your life where you earlier had filled up your social appetite by watching YouTube, being online, doing stuff that when you turned it off, you realized, hey, those moments need to be filled. And there one of the things you said is that you actually went around knocking on the neighbor's door and was like, hey, you want to come out and play, and yeah, that has meant a lot to me. It's a funny thing isn't it?

Jack Stewart: 1:44

because on the face of it it's a bad thing that it caused to tell you off the internet, which is loneliness. You know I, I disconnected from people and so, if you think about it like that, it's kind of a strange thing to speak of positively because, you know I, I removed something from my life and then I had appetite for it and then I built up that thing in my life. So it's a net neutral question mark, but that only works if the relationships that I had before are worth an equal amount of the relationships I have now, if you see what I mean. So I had 10 friends on the Internet. Got rid of the 10 friends. Now I have 10 friends in real life.

Jack Stewart: 2:25

The problem is that I didn't actually have 10 friends on the Internet. They were admirers. Well, that's the way I you know know. As you know, you guys probably have a similar thing. You have lots of people listening to the podcast and they but they're not your friends. They from a distance, like what you have to say or or in some way, yeah, like admiring rather than trusting you closely. So let me, can I, can I ask you, how do you think about that? Do you think about. That is like a social adjacent thing, people who are listening to your podcast.

Cecilie Conrad: 3:00

No, I actually don't, and I also have noticed I just wrote something about it today for the blog. 15 years ago, when I started blogging, my blog was a more social space and a space for discussion and the space for exploring, where the readers would share their thoughts and and in the whole thread of comments there would be a continuum of what I would write something and then we would have a conversation about it and everyone would come out smarter. Now I don't don't hear from my readers almost at all If I explicitly write in the text that that hurts me, that I feel lonely, that I feel I'm speaking to a void though I can see in the statistics I have readers that this change that has happened in the intimate, that people don't respond and engage, it hurts me and it makes it harder for me to share. And we have the same thing going on with the podcast that only we have a lot of listeners. We can see that on the statistics, but we very, very rarely hear from them.

Cecilie Conrad: 4:13

And you know if you have something you're thinking or want to ask or want to talk about, or if it had an effect or whatever, you know we're doing this for free, spending our time trying to make the world a better place by sharing all kinds of just different perspectives on mainstream. It's nice to know that there is someone on the other side. So the answer to your question is no, this is not a social. It's social because you and I and my husband we all three are having a real conversation, though we're using this media of the internet to have the conversation. We're having a real conversation, that's the social part, but besides that we're doing it. Real conversation, that's the social part, but besides that, we're doing it because we think I think there's some voices that needs to be heard exactly and I also am quite egoistic in my choice of guests.

Jesper Conrad: 5:09

Sometimes in talking to you it makes me happy. And also there's someone who has written a book and I can be like, oh, I have some questions for that person and then having a podcast is a good excuse for me getting to talk to them. Yeah, and the most profound effect it has on me making the podcast is that, a I get to have a good conversation. B I get to play with a lot of fun tools. I like to edit, I like to make images and I all these things I find interesting and it's it nurtures my, my playfulness and my lust for exploration and learning new tools and new stuff.

Jesper Conrad: 5:54

But then it is most often, or the last thing I really enjoy getting out of it is that it is some of the more deep conversations I have in my life. I'm trying to move this outside of the podcast, also taking a subject, talking with a friend about it. But often everyday life can be not superficial, but it's not the same trying to go deep into a subject that I would like to try more in real life, and then it lingers for me. I have last week I mentioned you in a dialogue and I mentioned how you had seen the effect of the internet on on you and so so it stays with me and I really really like that do you think that?

Jack Stewart: 6:48

what would it take? So you mentioned, for example, that you like having these long, um, deeper, uh, sort of intentional chats with people. What do you think it would take for you to cultivate that face-to-face with people?

Jesper Conrad: 7:04

I think it needs a format. I hope and believe that the, the coming of ai, will make people want reality more. We are in Denmark, here inside the next month giving three or four talks for free, but the goal is not us talking for an hour, but it is that we choose some subject we try to go deep in before so we have some thoughts on a subject we actually want to share. But what I look most forward to with that is the facilitating of the meeting. Yeah, that people show up because there's someone's putting themselves out there and saying, hey, I've thought about this, let me share it.

Jack Stewart: 7:51

Yes, so one of the things that I did when I got rid of the internet to fill up this space in my life was I made a book club, a writing club, and like I call a salon, like it in the 1800s in france, like a conference almost thing. So. So book club is obvious an interesting book, we'll talk about it. Writing club you do half an hour of writing Now you bring it and you read your piece of writing and this is creative writing stuff and you get feedback. But the conference is really scratching an itch and that is like.

Jack Stewart: 8:30

So I have five or six people who come twice a year and some of them fly in so it's kind of getting pretty important for us and give a talk, like a half an hour talk. They're all researchers apart from me I'm the layman, but I organize it, so it doesn't count. So a researcher in town planning she comes, a researcher in biblical studies, a researcher in Arabic and Muslim studies, a researcher in philosophy and a psychologist, and they all come in and give like here's 20 minutes of something that I'm really interested in at the moment and we talk about it.

Cecilie Conrad: 9:14

And this has been such an invaluable thing in my life who do you need to know to get a ticket to that evening?

Jack Stewart: 9:22

well, you have to give a talk of 20 minutes or something you're interested and then you can definitely be part of it. And I think people have a barrier of thinking. That's going to be cringy to ask someone. To ask just a friend, like if you're not into the whole research, academic thing, to just ask like, look poor people, let's really get dive into a subject. I'm no good at biology, I'm just interested and so let's do something about it. So it's almost like I have kind of like a pancast. But I'm like guys, I either we do this by letters or I fly a pigeon over or you'll have to come twice a year.

Jack Stewart: 9:58

And I think actually if I was talking to these guys on whatsapp every day or every week, I probably wouldn't be doing this, because on whatsapp it would be scratching the itch or that's not the right, it would be an appetite suppressant. So it be like it wouldn't be quite as good quality as this conference I'm doing right now. We would have a little chat oh, what are you interested in at the moment? We wouldn't really get into it. But now that I'm not doing that and I can't have those chats, and once a week I might do an email, but it's really not the same, because I feel like I really need some thoughts from Hans. You know, it's been six months, we haven't had a good chat, and so now we need to organize this thing, and so it's a bigger thing than it would be.

Cecilie Conrad: 11:23

That makes a lot of sense. I'm sitting on a point here which is I think you, my husband, you have a lot of very deep conversations and you made this point even before we met Jack Some years ago. You said I don't like chit-chatting, I like talking with people, I want meaningful conversations. That's a long time ago. You put that.

Cecilie Conrad: 11:47

You put a list on the fridge of five things that were really important to you and it was actually number one and it was not a prioritized list yeah but it was a list of the five most important things in your life and and well, the obvious health, and you know me and the kids were on, but so were my top five passions from yeah, you want get all the rich conversations with people and doing the podcast is part of that. But you also are the one to in a in a cozy social setting, that we, we're very social in real life, all the time, to the point of social marathon. But you are the one to say, oh yeah it's for those listening.

Cecilie Conrad: 12:31

Jesper is now sobbing no, but you're the one to say to people you know are your parents alive? And if the answer is yes, what's your relation with them these days? How do you feel about your parents? Or, if it's no, you know what happened and how did you get over it? You ask those questions, you know that start a real conversation.

Jesper Conrad: 12:56

It would be really, really boring to me if I didn't.

Cecilie Conrad: 12:59

You and I both read that book right now, and we keep bringing up that conversation with everyone. You know what do you think about this problem and how do you handle it. And so we just both read the book Superstimulated. It's a Danish author, so we just both read the book Superstimulated. It's a Danish author. So in our language the title is Creatures of Habit, which is and the core hypothesis is around the concept of super stimuli how we can hack our own biology, how we are being basically manipulated by well, whatever some other interests than maybe the best ones, by hacking our instincts. And this can be done on animals as well as humans. And he's writing, he wrote this book about it. It was really a page turner. It took me like three days to read it because I couldn't stop reading.

Jesper Conrad: 13:50

We will put the link in the show notes and recommend it for your book club. Couldn't stop reading.

Cecilie Conrad: 13:54

We will put the link in the show notes and recommend it for your book club. Same book, but we do bring up these conversations. I feel like I have them also all the time, but mostly around children, unschooling, freedom, all these things. People want to talk to me about these things. So it's just when you say that you need that, not that I don't need the podcast for this, but you are doing it in real life.

Jesper Conrad: 14:17

I am all the time but I love the connection there is when people are together around listening to a subject and the talks that comes afterward. Like that is how we met you. We gave a short talk on our world schooling thing at HIF and you came over and chatted with us afterwards and that was for me bigger than giving the talk. It was a bit of deeper dialogue than me standing and sharing. But someone needs to go there and arrange, someone needs to go there and share, and that is a thing I've been wanting to do, besides a podcast, in real life more and more. And it's one of the subjects we will take up to do at our forthcoming what we call World School Village, which is where people come and find an Airbnb or whatever that suits them, and then during that month we will do some conference part as well, because we miss this wisdom sharing or sharing of a subject that can be the focal point for a dialogue that day.

Jack Stewart: 15:34

Wisdom sharing. That made me think of around the bonfire. You know, it's been there away for thousands of years. Someone has a really good story to tell and everyone huddles around to hear it. I wonder, I suppose, like in Athens or something, it'd be the Parthenon or some sort of like what would be the equivalent of a podcast before books.

Cecilie Conrad: 16:01

It's a deep human nature and that's actually one of the points of this book. Jesper and I just read both of us and also another book. I suppose I talked about it on previous podcasts with you, because I was very fascinated by the book Stolen Focus. I read it a year and a half ago. This fact that the fact that we're overly stimulated, that you know, you call it a social Appetite suppressant.

Cecilie Conrad: 16:29

Appetite suppressant. Maybe it's also or not, maybe it's very much an intellectual appetite suppressant. The internet, it's so bad that it freaks me out. To be honest, the people can't read any longer. They think something is long. They tell me oh, you're writing so long things. It's like page and page. I tested it. It takes not page and page and I've tested it. It takes about 10 minutes to read a block of post. That's not a long time, it's not a long time.

Jack Stewart: 17:02

It's not the place. Don't you think that the architecture, when you step into a room, the architecture kind of wants you to do something. It wants in a church, it wants you to look up. Or in a library, it kind of wants you to do something. It wants in a church, it wants you to look up. Or in a library, it kind of wants you to get a good library. It wants you to go into the nooks to settle down with a book. Or in a farmhouse, it wants you to go to the hearth or the kitchen. You know places want you to do things. And I just wonder if the digital architecture that is most prevalent on the internet, I wonder if it wants you to look at the, the highlight, the headlines rather than read for 10 minutes. So I I wonder if you're fighting against the actual architecture, that, as it were, the infrastructure that you are putting your work into.

Cecilie Conrad: 18:36

But I think I am, but I also think we all well, all the rest of us who are not Jack Stewart, completely off the internet. We're fighting against the way it works.

Jack Stewart: 18:49

How suppressive, oppressive and how anti-human does the internet have to get for you to say that you know what this is just like an abusive. This is a like an abusive partner or something that it's like you can take enough from it and yes, he's helping me by doing this and that, but how abusive does it have to get for you to say no well, I think I've said no to quite the extent.

Cecilie Conrad: 19:17

I don't spend a lot of time on the internet. I don't spend a lot of time on my phone or my computer. I just notice that it's becoming increasingly complicated to spend time on my devices without being distracted by the device itself, the way it works. We just got a new iPhone, jesper and I. We bought new iPhones and I noticed that the basic setting could be an update, could be the new phone, I don't know. There's this button on the side. I can press it and then the screen goes black.

Cecilie Conrad: 19:53

So when I'm done with what I'm doing, I'm turning it off. I can't see anything. But with this new setting it didn't turn off, it just got a little more discreet and I was like you're kidding me. You know it just wants my attention. I've got all notifications off, nothing. You know I choose what I'm doing. I think I've got it to quite a large extent down that it's not hacking me as such. I just noticed that I have to be more and more aware of how I navigate that architecture, because it's like being in a mall looking for the only bookshop you know and among all the other bullshit that I don't need, and it's a big mall and there's a lot of flashing lights and noise and smells and things on sale.

Jesper Conrad: 20:44

I think it's a very interesting question how abusive does it have to be before we can turn it off or at least be in control of it? Today I was actually just out trying to look for an old school clock, because I have taken a new tool in my fight against being seduced by the internet, which is no phone. In the bedroom I have my Kindle, I read, and that is wonderful. But then I realized that some mornings I can be like oh, what's the time? I don't know what time it's, maybe I need to do stuff, maybe I have a meeting soon, and then I walk into the other room to look at my phone to see the clock. So I actually just need like an analog clock and I was out looking for that in a second-hand shop today because time is still relevant, because we have arrangements and dialogue with other people.

Cecilie Conrad: 21:38

So can I ask you, is the analog alarm clock so extinct that they're not even in the thrift stores?

Jesper Conrad: 21:50

There was none. That's amazing. There was no clocks in the thrift stores?

Cecilie Conrad: 21:52

There was none. That's amazing.

Jesper Conrad: 21:52

There was no clocks in the thrift store.

Jack Stewart: 21:56

Really. Yeah, there's a couple of things I've had to buy, I mean, apart from paper maps and the dumb phone, but the typewriter, that's been an interesting one, because sometimes I do writing for various things. But I had a big project recently. It was 40 pages. So I had project recently when it was 40 pages. So I had to write this thing with 40 pages.

Jack Stewart: 22:15

But when you write a thing and you want it to be good enough to sell you, there's it's not just 40 pages, it's 40 page draft, and then one word, and then like 50 on every page you know there's 15 words that need to be changed, and then there's that's the next draft, and then you have to do the next, and then on the next draft there's four words that need to be changed, and then two, and then I'll flip back to eight and then one word on the last one and then you know you've got six drafts.

Jack Stewart: 22:41

So that's six, nine, forty maybe not quite that much, but it was a lot.

Jack Stewart: 22:46

It's a lot, but it was really good because it changed the way I thought about the whole page. Like I had to think about the whole page as a piece, if you see what I mean, because this is a piece of paper that I can't just take one thing out of. This is a whole print that I have to think about how this works as a page and I have to be much more carefully about. I have to think much more carefully about selecting words and I have to think much more carefully about selecting words. So it was good and there was much more note-taking on a piece of paper, like just with a pen, to think about structure of the page and thinking through how could I phrase this. Yeah, it was definitely giving me some extra muscle in a part of my brain that I hadn't used before when all of my all of my university work was on a laptop. So I hadn't. I've never done this before when I was a typewriter so this is one of the things.

Cecilie Conrad: 23:41

I think I'm a bit older than you and this is one of the things I think is a great improvement, great improvement where I love my computer. My first computer obviously wasn't on the internet because I had it more or less before there was such a thing as internet for the public, but just the fact that you could do text editing. I did the typewriting I learned. I took typewriting in school when I was something like 14.

Cecilie Conrad: 24:07

Hours I've put into all that you know rewriting the page and all the things, the fact I still work with pen and paper. I can't. I even have pen and paper next to the computer right now. I have to. There's something different for the brain with pen and paper. I structure my work with pen and paper, I plan it with pen and paper. I sometimes need to even print and comment with pen and paper. But the fact that I can write the actual text and make mistakes and edit and move things around without having to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, I find that that is one of the reasons I'm not getting rid of my computer. I think it's great, great and I think we need to look at how well I'm not trying to change your opinion, but I think I need to look at how is the computer a great help and what's getting in the way of me using it only as a great help and a great tool and not as a distraction?

Jack Stewart: 25:06

Yeah, that's good.

Jesper Conrad: 25:07

That's good thinking. What inspired me what you said, jack, was the amount of time you put into the words you worked with, and sometimes when you have a computer and just can edit it, it goes very fast and you don't put the same hours of thinking into it. Cecilia sometimes says that writing is the greatest form of thinking. I don't know if it's a quote from somewhere, I can't remember, but that it's a really good way to structure your thoughts.

Cecilie Conrad: 25:41

It organizes my mind to write and I enjoy writing on the computer. I'll just say it again it's a great improvement in my life that I can do it that way. I enjoy that For some, some things. There are a few things I still want to write by hand and I cannot find a tool that will help me on the computer. So I do both is?

Jack Stewart: 26:01

is most of your writing for blogs or journals that go online or that sort of thing, or is it like well, I'm also in the process of writing two actual books and a cookbook.

Cecilie Conrad: 26:11

so three books, okay. So I also do even longer format.

Jack Stewart: 26:16

Will that be printed like an old-fashioned book?

Cecilie Conrad: 26:19

When I'm done, yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 26:22

I would like to dive into the subject of community spaces and some of the other things you, before the recording, set that you were looking into. So what are you doing, jack, with all that time you have gotten by dropping the internet?

Jack Stewart: 26:38

My end goal is to set up some sort of community farm, residential monastery, education center thing, education center thing, and so I'm doing some research into how common pool resources work and how common pool resources can be best governed. So a common pool resource is a resource that a community has in common, that nobody owns, that is not privately owned, not owned by the government, like the ocean or like a community garden. I'm interested in how do we set up these spaces where everyone gets a piece of the pie, everyone's happy, and there are no like in a community garden. Nobody takes the tomato. Nobody, no one person takes all the tomatoes. Because this is, you know, some call this the tragedy of the commons where in a community garden, there's always going to be someone who is going to take more because, because human nature is that you're going to be greedy and so you're going to want to take all the tomatoes and then nobody else has tomatoes. Part of the reason I'm interested in this, not only because it will feed into my in my future plan farm thing, but also, in a way, the life and the earth is a community resource. So maybe trying to figure out the principles by which we can govern a community garden will help us think about the principles by which we can govern the world, or ourselves or something, or maybe even families.

Jack Stewart: 28:10

My friend is doing research into town planning. She's in the salon, she's in the Jack conference and she's she put me onto someone who is her intellectual hero, eleanor Ostrom. And Eleanor Ostrom wrote governing the commons and it won the Nobel prize a couple of decades ago and it's blowing my mind. She basically did lots of research in empirically, not just theoretically, but in common pool resource institutions that actually exist and have existed for a long time. What are the principles, what are the characteristics of these longstanding common pool resource institutions that work and have worked for a long time? And so clear boundaries about withdrawal of resources is one of them. Collective choice about the rules is another.

Jack Stewart: 29:11

I could go into easy conflict resolution easy, quick, rapid access to conflict resolution that you don't have to go to like HR, you don't have to call the police, you can start small with a conflict resolution. I can go into more, but to me it's blowing my mind because us hippies I don't know, maybe not you guys, I don't know how you've grown up, hippie or not but us hippies have always said that I've always liked to think that we could organize ourselves without private ownership, with less of a at least at least less of a dependence on private ownership and less of a dependence on the government. And it's always been sort of airy-fairy and Eleanor Ostrom comes along and says yes, these are the characteristics you need for your institution to work like that if you want it to last. And so it's a good, like she's a real scientific thinker. It's been helping me ground my, my wishy-washy hippie isms.

Jesper Conrad: 30:17

Cool and two questions. First a short one when is the next Jack conference taking place?

Jack Stewart: 30:30

Next one is, uh believe, next month, july Cool.

Cecilie Conrad: 30:38

We need to have a conversation about that, Jack, because we will actually be on the island in July.

Jack Stewart: 30:44

Really, you'll be in Brennan.

Jesper Conrad: 30:47

Yeah we will come to FN.

Cecilie Conrad: 30:49

Yeah, we'll see you there.

Jesper Conrad: 30:51

Yeah, let's talk, yeah. The second question is so going from researching to being fascinated by, to learning through your research, adjusting some of your former beliefs, going from there to making it happen to what is your next first step?

Jack Stewart: 31:15

so next step is more personal research into these communities that are doing this sort of thing. So I've had some experience governing common institutions. But so, basically, in a in a few weeks time, I'm going to go on a trip and go go around various communities who are doing this Not necessarily longstanding one that's longstanding and I'm going to do interviews on what do you have common? Do you have clear boundaries, do you have congruence with local conditions? Do you have these things, and how does it work for you? Is it working? And really, what I'm most interested in is trying to ask what happens when you're really angry at someone, what happens when there's someone in this community that you feel like isn't doing what they need to do or is causing loads of problems, or what happens with the conflict resolution. So, anyway, next step is to try and figure out real life, me step into and live with for a little bit. These community residential like permaculture-y type places.

Jesper Conrad: 32:24

I would recommend and highlight one of the former projects I've been involved with, which is Gaia Education, that have created four great books on both the economic side of it, the worldview, the social aspect and one more Earlier. I could it all by. I was helping with the marketing and the organizing and had a short stint as the interim CEO for them when they needed that. What is interesting is that they talk about that. These ecovillages are more or less living laboratories who are exploring new ways of living and working together and a lot of them is actually writing down, analyzing, looking at how it has been done is actually writing down, analyzing, looking at how it has been done. Then Gaia Education have collected a lot of this knowledge into those, the Gaia Education curriculum which people can take and dive into. I would recommend you to look at it.

Jesper Conrad: 33:24

Ross Jackson, who is the philanthropist who gave a lot of money to Gaia Education during many years I've worked with him in Denmark fantastic, inspiring man. He said something about the ecovillages. He said that the ecovillages that were for something ended up being the longstanding where people had connected around being against. They ran out of steam at some point and I mentioned this because you mentioned the counterculture and I can feel it in myself that the anger against the current society can be there. I can feel that there's so much wrong with how people live and the way society is and how people are in this everyday. Nine to five, but that power will run out, so we will stand longer, being for than against. That's a great point.

Jack Stewart: 34:23

Yeah, I should keep that in mind.

Cecilie Conrad: 34:25

I can't help but think about. So Jesper, who actually has a lot of meaningful conversations, has been handing out a little pamphlet in the community where we're actually living right now four families together for the month. Someone wrote a doctorate and then you always write the short version, just 25 pages, and he's been printing old-fashioned printing and handing out because I think he wants to discuss the points. So I'm currently reading it and it's on the Scandinavian concept of hygge, which is, you know, there's the book and all the things, and the Danes are very proud of their hygge concept. But this is a more intellectual and critical way of thinking about what is this and how is it and when?

Cecilie Conrad: 35:13

You, when you said that you're researching how to have these communal things. I mean, we're very good at communal things because we do community all the time and I've put a lot of thought into what makes it work and and what sometimes can be harder. And then I'm reading this fugge thing and one of the things there is about the concept of hygge is the concept of equality, that we're all equal and one of the norms inside of the concept of hygge is that everyone, everyone, have equal space. So a thing that would ruin the hygge, the cozy space of hanging out together in a good way would be someone taking center stage all the time.

Cecilie Conrad: 35:59

That would be hygge, because everyone, you have to step up and be part of it. You can't just sit in the corner and do your own thing that would be read a book or watch your phone or whatever. You have to be present for the moment of being together, so you are contributing with your presence, but at the same time, you cannot be the one to talk all the time and especially you cannot be the one to talk all the time about yourself. That would ruin it.

Cecilie Conrad: 36:28

And I think this concept, this way of sharing time, we grow into it. This is something you learn from your parents. It's something you learn while growing up. Your parents will teach you this is not the moment to read your comic book, because we are together and this is a moment that's supposed to be a shared presence, which is part of the concept of hygge. And if you have a child who tends to talk a lot or share a lot of his or her own stories, then you also take that child down a little bit and say, hey, maybe make space for your siblings to speak now. Or thank you for sharing, please hold back to speak now. Thank you for sharing, please hold back.

Cecilie Conrad: 37:49

And I think this is actually special, not for the Danes, but for the people who can do this, and hygge is one way of just one word and one way of holding this sort of space. For those who can do this, having community is easier because we are used to showing up for shared presence, which I think is the basis of of a respect. Because I think, I actually do think, that if I share a garden with someone, a group of families, and someone takes all the tomatoes and I come and I want tomatoes in my salad that day and there are no red tomatoes come, you know, I can only see green tomatoes. I'm like what happened? I actually do think that that person clearing the plant probably needed the tomatoes more than me that day. Okay, if I can't trust that, I do not want to be part of that community.

Jack Stewart: 38:54

If you can't trust that person, so this is if all the people that are in your community you otherwise trust. So you come to the garden already trusting these people.

Cecilie Conrad: 39:09

Yes, otherwise I wouldn't put my labor in there, but I think I would trust them because we were doing this together on the basis of doing it together and I'm rambling about Hugel because I come from a culture of a very egalitarian, a very we want to have Hugel time. You know. We want, want to be this.

Jack Stewart: 39:32

this is a gold standard of our national identity so what part of what I want to explore is whether there is, whether you can create trustworthy participants through that culture about trust and how you create it.

Jesper Conrad: 39:51

There's an interesting point, linguistic point, in the thesis or the piece of paper he wrote about Hygge and we will link it in the show notes. It's in English and it's quite interesting. What he mentions is that the word trust have a linguistic root together with the Danish word trust, and trust is meaning comfort, to give comfort to someone. If someone is sad, I would trust them and it made me think about if the relationship with these two words originally were that you trusted someone who gave you trust, you trusted someone who gave you comfort. So can you have a community where you, being comforted by another person, would maybe create the feelings inside of you where you give trust to them? I believe trust is something you give. It is not something you can demand. Trust is given and it's given on the base of some kind of exchange. Why have you made me trust you?

Jack Stewart: 41:20

But if they haven't earned your trust, that's the end of the community garden.

Cecilie Conrad: 41:25

Yes.

Jack Stewart: 41:26

Yes, maybe.

Cecilie Conrad: 41:29

I'll buy my own tornado plot.

Jack Stewart: 41:35

I think you're right and I'm interested in how you might set up a community garden that can not withstand but can make the untrustworthy people trustworthy.

Jesper Conrad: 41:48

I just will go out and make everyone sad, and then I will comfort them afterwards and then they will trust me. Yeah, there you go.

Cecilie Conrad: 41:55

So I was rambling about hygge, because it's a cultural trait and it's not unique to Scandinavia we just have this word and because I was actually thinking what you need is citizens, participants who have grown up with unconditional love, who do not have an ego that has been under pressure their entire life, because the ego under pressure will try to well, will be very vulnerable to the problem of greed. It has to do with upbringing. That's why I'm talking before in the Hugo talk about how you're taught in big and little ways by your parents and by your extended family growing up, how to participate in an egalitarian way of sharing time and space, and that means it's a cultural thing, it's a deeply personal thing, and I think the only way to educate participants, trustworthy participants for a community garden, is to face it inside yourself. Do not try to teach everyone else how to be, but be that person and also be that person who can handle an empty tomato plant or someone not showing up that's quite a nourishing thing to hear actually be the person.

Jack Stewart: 43:28

And I can't teach, I can't tell someone how to be or I can't demand trust, I just have to be.

Cecilie Conrad: 43:34

I give trust and be trustworthy and also never do anything you don't want to do. That sounds very egoistic or how do you say it in english? Egocentric. Don't do things if you don't want to do them. I mean, it can be so self-righteous to be the guy to broom the pathway to the garden because you think it should be very nice and cleared of leaves every day, and then you get so annoyed when the other people don't do it all the other days. You know, do the things that you think makes sense to do, that you want to do. That gives you happiness and joy, and and if, if the community garden doesn't do that, then you're going to have to leave it.

Cecilie Conrad: 44:18

This putting in work, expecting other people to put in the same work or an equal work, is, I don't know. I mean I have a few friends who are actually communists good old-fashioned communists and they mean I have a few friends who are actually communists good old fashioned communists and they, well, I admire it. I don't agree with it, but I admire it and they still say the thing that was in the original texts that we could have communism. The problem is the people is not educated for communism, and it is a little bit the same thing I'm saying here, with the growing up with unconditional love, not growing up with an ego under pressure, everyone being ready for community, everyone being ready for that empty tomato plant or for feeling I think I'm putting in more than my.

Cecilie Conrad: 45:07

You know, if we just do the math I'm doing more work than I should. Are you open for that? Are you doing the work that you enjoy doing and are you happy to contribute? You know, maybe some of the members of the community garden just had a baby or have a mom who just got cancer, or you know they thought they could put in eight hours a week but they actually can only stretch it to five. Or they work half as fast as you, but they do work. They do. I mean, give what you can give and take what you need.

Jack Stewart: 45:39

I find it interesting, though, that Eleanor Ostrom she did her work in poker research over various decades over various cultures and so like all the continents nearly and she didn't find that it was some cultures who or so far it wasn't. The common characteristics of successful, successfully governed common core resources was not those who are culturally brought up to not have an ego and to love and to be ready to leave the tomatoes. It was something about the way the it was governed. It was something about the organization, which sounds pretty cold when we're talking about these things. But before reading ellis ellen ostrom, I would totally agree with you that those things seem like those would be the marks of a community garden that would last a long time. But it seems to me that she found that even if you do have an ego and you're really hurt from your childhood and you don't love and you're not ready to leave the tomatoes, common pool resources can still work under some circumstances.

Cecilie Conrad: 46:54

It probably can, and I'm probably not smarter than someone who researched it and won a Nobel Prize. I'm not trying to claim that at all. I'm just saying it wouldn't work for me.

Jack Stewart: 47:05

Really.

Cecilie Conrad: 47:07

In all, I'm very humble. I know I'm one of what nine billion trillion a lot of. I would personally not participate if I did not trust people.

Jack Stewart: 47:19

But maybe you wouldn't. You don't trust Period you don't trust. There are some people that you work with, or you have some sort of back and forth with, or you're next to, or there are some people in your life that you don't trust, but the relationship just works anyway.

Jesper Conrad: 47:41

I, per default, also trust people, but when I see where the words come from, then it also comes from a time where you didn't live in so big a society, so you knew the people in your local village, where we have grown in such a way that, oh man, I just yesterday considered how it is to go into a supermarket. How many people do I meet going into a supermarket I have no relationship with, I haven't seen them before and most likely I will never see them again, and that makes me need to have some sort of fence around myself as a person to be present there, where I just find myself and I'm walking past people I'm ignoring all the time because I don't know them, I do not want to know them, I just want to get the next stuff on my shopping list so I can get the hell out and get back home.

Jack Stewart: 48:43

So let me just quick fire. Why do you not trust those people randomly in the supermarket? It's not a joke question.

Jesper Conrad: 48:48

I'm not saying I don't trust them. I'm saying that I think that we have come, our societies and the amount of people have come so big that when we go to a supermarket, end up ignoring people to protect ourselves and our sanity. Because are you crazy the amount of interactions you would have going to the supermarket if you were to honor the meeting with everyone?

Cecilie Conrad: 49:16

I think your point if I'm guessing, you're just saying that in some sort of historical context you would live your entire life surrounded by people you knew, yeah, and you grew up with them. You know who they are.

Jesper Conrad: 49:31

And the words are from them. There are no real foreigners and the words stem from back. Knew, yeah, and you grew up with them. You know who they are and the words are from them.

Cecilie Conrad: 49:32

There are no real foreigners and the words stem from back then.

Jesper Conrad: 49:36

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say.

Cecilie Conrad: 49:39

The word trust. Yeah, and trust.

Jesper Conrad: 49:41

Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 49:41

Which both are about relationships, which means you have a stable relationship. Somehow you know that person that you trust and that person will also be able to give you that comfort when you are hurt. But I just want to say I'm not against the modern world, I love it. I have friends from all continents and I would not have met them without the internet. I love traveling, I love going to new places, I love meeting new people, I like big crowds, I like gatherings, I like throwing myself and including my family into communities of people we don't know and trusting it, trusting the process, surrendering to it, learning from it, learning who we are.

Cecilie Conrad: 50:26

When we realize what are our trigger points, when do I get annoyed? And why do I get annoyed? Because maybe it's about my culture and the you know the connotated meanings these behaviors would have had where I come from. But maybe these people are from a different culture and maybe even the language. I just had a conversation today with an American about the language around being proud of your children, where I tend to not say that that I'm proud of my children because I would kind of own them or own their achievements or have some sort of I mean, I didn't write the books in plural our daughter had published.

Jesper Conrad: 51:12

Our daughter had published a lot of books.

Cecilie Conrad: 51:13

And lots of people have asked me are you proud of that? And I'm like I didn't write the books. I'm not proud of that, but I think the words don't really translate from start to proud.

Jesper Conrad: 51:24

My fascination comes with that words, when they originated, were originated in a context that is no longer there, and we use the words in a way today where we maybe don't consider where they came from and what the word actually covered. But we should round up, jack, if you, based on what you have read the projects you are on, should give people a little nugget of things they could look into from the book, what would it be?

Jack Stewart: 51:58

It's a tough read, though I think the thing that stays with me is that the most common solution we have traditionally brought to the table for the problem of toxic members of a community that are messing everything up is to privatize. Common pool resource communities is to privatize. So everything's about money and it's owned by one person, and that one person's doing it for money or it's government regulation. And Eleanor Ostrom gives me hope that organizing ourselves where we have we as a community, whether it's a fishery or it's just a family or it's just two people that we can have easy access to conflict resolution. That we can give clear boundaries Just me and you can give clear boundaries about this common space. That we can change ourselves, regardless of what money says and regardless of what the government says. We can change things to make it more congruent with our local conditions. That we can change the rules. You know we can build this ourselves from the ground up. This is the hope that this gives me well then, I agree with it.

Jesper Conrad: 53:21

That's a good hope that's a wonderful place to end today's conversation, gag it's been a pleasure it's been a pleasure, like always.