Look forward to an inspirational conversation with the spirit of Buckminster Fuller and the practical programs and ideas of Robert and his guest Daniel Matalon. Daniel is the founder of Is There Enough, a provocative new conversation about the intersection of survival economics and social justice.
Psycho-Politics, and what Buckminster Fuller called the world game, relate to very complex existential issues that Robert and Daniel make accessible. It is centered around our human responsibility to make the world work for 100% of humanity. The world is dysfunctional, but what would it mean to have the opposite of that, which is optimal functioning? The Is There Enough campaign innovated by Daniel is meant to inspire humanity and bring us to a more contemplative and practical place. If real wealth is survival and choice over time, how do we build that? Only by agreement. How do we not have to go to war and create that expansion? It is a very simple and elusive idea that both Robert and Daniel’s work attest to.
Mentioned in this episode
Daniel Matalon
Is There Enough
Impact Launchpad
The Global Bridge Foundation
Note: Below, you’ll find timecodes for specific sections of the podcast. To get the most value out of the podcast, I encourage you to listen to the complete episode. However, there are times when you want to skip ahead or repeat a particular section. By clicking on the timecode, you’ll be able to jump to that specific section of the podcast
Transcript
Announcer: (00:00)
The Missing Conversation, Episode 64.
Daniel Matalon: (00:03)
Even though we’re known as the “Is There Enough campaign,” but the not enough confrontation simply boils down to what are you gonna do about it? If there’s not enough justice, if there’s not enough water, if there’s not enough compassion, what are we going to do about it?
Announcer: (00:18)
On this podcast, we will propose critical new strategies to address world issues, including homelessness, immigration, amongst several others, and making a connection to how our individual psychology contributes and can help transform the dangers that we face. We will break from traditional thinking. As we look at our challenges from a freer and more independent point of view, your host Robert Strock has had 45 years of experience as a psychotherapist author and humanitarian, and has developed a unique approach to communication, contemplation and inquiry born from working on his own challenges.
Robert Strock: (00:57)
A very warm welcome again to The Missing Conversation where we address the most pressing issues that the world’s facing today and where we look for the most practical, inspiring programs, innovative ideas, and people to support survival on our planet. Today, we’re gonna talk to one of the rare people in the world that has taken a mutually loved humanitarian, we both had the same hero from 50 years ago, Buckminster Fuller, and he has come forward with an inspirational continuity of Bucky’s work and applying it to our world that so badly needs this or something like this to survive. And I say that again, it’s so important that we aren’t in denial, that it’s gonna require something like what Daniel is talking about and for all of us to get engaged. So please don’t listen to this passively, listen to this from the point of view of how can I get involved, whether it’s with Daniel’s program or something that’s really going to give our planet a better chance to survive. Daniel and I have spent several hours sharing about his approach and my approach, and I’m very eager to expand that and share Daniel with you all as his passion and intelligence being applied to the world situation is something that we can all contemplate and perhaps be a part of. His invitation is to everyone that is eager to consider an approach to literally turn our troubled world around. Daniel Matalon is the founder of “#Is There Enough,” a provocative new conversation about the intersection of survival economics and social justice?
Robert Strock: (02:54)
He’s also the co-founder of Impact Launchpad, a UK based venture studio for social impact, incubation and development. Writing from a book, a conversation and a unique social research experiment that has taken him to 22 countries. Daniel is asserting that human’s biggest existential threat is not climate change, tribalism or inequality, but our inability to make agreement with each other. And I say that again, our inability to make agreement with each other at the level we require to address our challenges, his upcoming book or title. The First Agreement is an historical and future-leading look at economics, scarcity, and survival that suggests that our drivers of incentive can be measurably built around human beings at the center of our economics, rather than the assets and resources we measure them by today. Daniel, a very warm welcome, and I’m thrilled to be able to share with you today and bring, at the center, our profound, deep, longstanding, mutual love for Buckminster Fuller. Mr. Fuller, as we call him Bucky, as many people call him Bucky, who we both believe is the greatest humanitarian mentor that’s happened during our lifetime. So Daniel, welcome to the show.
Daniel Matalon: (04:30)
Thank you, Robert, you know, being on The Missing Conversation couldn’t be more apt as a generality because I think there’s certain kinds of conversation we need to be having that we’re not, and I see that you are displaying the demonstration of how important that is. And of course, for us to speak about our mutual love of Buckminster Fuller, and the concept of the world game, and what part we have to play in it–it’s really a great opportunity to delve into that with you of all people.
Robert Strock: (04:58)
Yeah. And, and when you mention world game, I get a goose pimple rush. I just have such a profound heart connection to Bucky and the world game. And we’ll get into that. And I know you do too, really. You are the first person that I’ve run into that has the same feeling about Bucky and what he has to share with the world today. And being very likely the leading visionary that can support our world to survive. So, I’d like to start off briefly giving a summary of psycho-politics because you embody, in your work embodies, what the essence of psycho-politics is, but I want our listeners to really understand what context we’re putting this in. So psycho-politics really starts with the understanding that it’s perfectly natural for all of us to want to take care of our families, those that we love while we’re living and our will, and to put our money with our family.
Robert Strock: (05:58)
However, we’re at a time where it’s so obvious that the world is in jeopardy. We’re taking a look in psycho-politics at, are we gonna survive, if people that have wealth, don’t give a larger percentage of their money, both to the poor in the world and to all the environmental issues and connecting issues that the world needs, that’s really etched out in world game? Are we gonna survive in answers? No, we’re not going to. So, this is an appeal to you that are listening to really consider your situation. And whether you’re, if you don’t have money, then it’s volunteering, then it’s voting. Then it’s a whole bunch of other issues. But if you do have money, it’s taking a consideration of, does it make sense to support your children when they won’t have a planet to live on? You know, is that really supporting your children?
Robert Strock: (06:51)
So, step one of psycho-politics is really looking at our relationship to money and our children, and doesn’t it make sense to consider giving a percentage of that to the world and the world situation. And number two is really the same thing with energy. And I can intersperse either one of those two, where doesn’t it make sense to give our energy. In addition to those that we love most that are in our family, but also to give a growing percentage of energy toward the world and the world situation, the impoverished, and all the ways that we can provide for a range of options that we’ll be going into today to support the world. And then the third element of psycho-politics is recognizing that we need to ask the balance, what is the balance between how much we give to our families in money and energy and how much we give to the world and fall in love with the question, because we recognize it’s about love and it’s about love.
Robert Strock: (07:51)
It’s about love for the family, and it’s about love beyond the family. And so being able to be in that questioning for the rest of our lives, and especially for people that are young who are gonna be facing this for a longer period of time, it’s great to get a young start and an early start. So I’d like to go from there to ask you Daniel, to explain what the world game is. And as I said, we both have such a, a love for it, but I’d love to hear your way that you would express what, what world game is to you.
Daniel Matalon: (08:26)
Indeed, my approach to this very complex existential issue that you’re throwing out on the table, which is very overwhelming to any of us as individuals, is that we have a little bit of a pop conversation that we can develop around our human responsibility, to the concept of the world game, which is very simply how to make the world work for a hundred percent of humanity. There are some conditions that Buckminster Fuller put to that, which was in the shortest time possible through spontaneous collaboration, uh, without ecological offense or harm to anyone. We stumbled onto a way to open that conversation with a simple little question called, “Is there enough?” And we really did stumble onto it and pursuing other issues of alignment and agreement, we were looking for some big major ambitions, which I know that you’re familiar with now. Um, and the spillover of uttering that, and I believe the first time I ever uttered it in a group of people, I think it was outta frustration,
Daniel Matalon: (09:28)
and I think I said, isn’t there enough? {Laugh} to which like the whole room kind of gasped in some way. There was some sort of moment that took place, and my life changed very rapidly in a matter of weeks. And in a matter of months, I was traveling all over the world having this conversation. Buckminster Fuller is not really regarded as the linguist that he was; he’s known for a lot of other great things. He had 50 predictions for the year 2049. Of those, 50 came true. We got really close on the 50th, which was ending world hunger. And he made up words when he felt it necessary to do that that didn’t exist in the language, combined words with contractions, all of that. For Bucky it’s out there, uh, you’re very familiar with that. And so when he chose the words, “How to make the world work for a hundred percent of humanity,” I think the emphasis is really on work, As a psychologist,
Daniel Matalon: (10:21)
I’m sure you have much more to say about this than I would about the dysfunction in our world. And what does it mean to actually have the opposite, which is function. You know, Bucky also said “You don’t change a reality by fighting it, you replace it with something else that makes it obsolete.” So what do we replace dysfunction with? And I would humbly submit, let’s just define what function is. And for us, we look at it as making more wealth, made more available for more people. And of course that brings us to having to define what wealth is. And I don’t know that Bucky’s definition of wealth is the definition of wealth, but I think we ought to be questioning and arguing what wealth is because it’s certainly not money. Money’s a great invention. I don’t think money is evil or you know, a bad thing,
Daniel Matalon: (11:11)
I think it’s a great evolution that it exists. It’s just that what we’ve done to interpret it, we’ve put it into a war model rather than a world model. And to answer your question fully, the world game is about replacing our war games at the heart of it, right? I think if Bucky were here, he would say, you can’t play war without playing a war game, and you can’t play a world that works without playing a world that works game. So we are responding to that professionally. Is there enough conversations responding to it individually, and stimulating through the question some responsibility that we all have a part to play in playing the world game.
Robert : (11:53)
So maybe give us a couple of examples of, is there enough, and how that really can resonate to humanity to bring us to a more contemplative place and a more practical place.
Daniel Matalon: (12:04)
It’s so interesting. A question that you posed right at the heart of this, cause I did mention to you this was sort of accidental. And one of the things we found: 22 countries that I traveled in, to thousands of hours of conversation asking people, the question of “is there enough?”, and we’ve never had two people answered the same. The answer is as unique as a fingerprint because in asking the question of is there enough, of course there’s some things there aren’t enough of and there’s things that are way too much of like, I think we could say there’s enough hate in the world, for example, and maybe there’s not enough compassion. Do we have enough water or do we have a scarcity of water in certain places that cause war, even though there’s an availability of water, technologically available for every human being on this planet in a way we can afford.
Daniel Matalon: (12:47)
And so I think the, the demonstration of this, that over time we evolved, is that when you have the conversation of, “is there enough,” which allows you to more accurately determine really what there’s not enough of. It inevitably brings us to the subject that is to your and my heart, which is that the world runs on agreement. Wealth is not as Bucky would define wealth as survival over time. My translation of Bucky, to call it “survival over time,” he had a longer definition than that. But if, if real wealth is survival and choice over time, how do you build that? Only by agreement, you might have to go to war in conflict first, but let’s not escape that after every war, every postwar has been where our greatest expansion of justice and wealth has been. Bucky was asking in his way, do we have to go to war in order to have that expansion? Or can we skip the war? And as I would say, go right to agreement, that’s a very simple and very elusive idea as your work of course has attested to for many years.
Robert Strock: (13:58)
Yeah. One of, one of the things that I’d like to isolate is what Bucky did before the age of computers. When I was at, in college, he had numbers of universities that would do research projects of how much water do you have? How much of this kind of mineral do you have? How much technology do you have? How much manpower do you have? And he would combine all of the world’s resources and say, well, okay, how could we transport that? Where is the need greatest in the country? And if we had cooperation of everybody working together, how long would it take for the whole world to be equal to the upper middle class of the United States? And he figured it out through 30 or 40 universities of which I was one of, that it would take three years for the whole world to be living in the class of the upper middle class. The whole world, if they cooperated and, and decided that that was a priority.
Robert Strock: (14:50)
And he knew, knew that no one was gonna listen to him for 50 years. So he had the brilliance and the realism that it was gonna require the threat to survival before anyone was really gonna be disrupted from the typical ideas of wealth and success and living in our own little mythic realities, not really caring about the planet deeply in a way that doesn’t mean we didn’t theoretically care about the planet, but we weren’t gonna give our money and time and energy to the planet. And so, he really brought it down to very concrete things that were researched all over the world. Imagine what he could have done if he had the access to a centralized computer, let alone something like artificial intelligence.
Daniel Matalon: (15:32)
It’s such a fascinating testament in what you’re saying to his specificity of measurement, right? Because idealism is not normally associated with that. It’s sort of high-flying ideas, and wouldn’t it be great if everybody held hands and sing kumbaya. And you know, he, as a Naval engineer, you know, brought that specificity to it. Many people think he was an architect because of the geodesic dome. But I think it used to say on the Buckminster Fuller Institute website, I could have invented flying shoes instead of a geodesic dome. I was just studying how the universe works, you know. And I think that the thing that bothered me about the world game, that I couldn’t quite put together for many years until recently, was his reference to spontaneous collaboration. Because he was talking about something that would exist outside of our 150 nation states at the time that he was referring to.
Daniel Matalon: (16:23)
And all that we’ve stumbled onto, if it’s of any contribution, is that certain kinds of conversation will lead us to conflict. And certain kinds of conversation will lead us tendency towards finding agreement inside conflict. Is there enough conversation has inevitably led to that because if you get to the question of what there’s not enough of, we’re really the not enough campaign, even though we’re known as the, is there enough campaign. But the not enough confrontation simply boils down to what are you gonna do about it? If there’s not enough justice, if there’s not enough water, if there’s not enough compassion, what are we going to do about it? If you ask, what are we gonna do about it? We’ve tested this without the, is there enough question before it, it’s not the same effect. But opening up the question with, is there enough? And inevitably getting to that “what are we gonna do about it” question, allows us to say to the individual we’re doing this social research with–and that’s really what we are as a social research campaign. More than anything else is, wouldn’t you agree that at this point, we’re either gonna take it or make it. We’re either gonna go to conflict in war, or we’re gonna figure out a way to make agreement.
Daniel Matalon: (17:32)
And to that end, we’ve created various experiences around this conversation. Some that are self-paced like in a survey we have on our, IsThereEnough.org website, but mostly real conversation people are having day-to-day where people are examining what “enough” is. And for some reason it seems to be building a bridge of collaboration that wasn’t there before.
Robert Strock: (17:56)
Yeah. I’ve I have found in my conversations with people when I ask questions, like, is there enough water? Is there enough air? Is there, is there enough love? Is there enough cooperation? Is there enough communication between countries? Is there enough communication between political parties? And then the individuals see, “oh, I can contribute to that.” And as you’re listening to what we’re talking about, see how you can have conversations, you can ask, “is there enough,” with your friends? This can be adding an inspirational element to any friendship, any relationship that you have. So I’d like you to give a sense of what platforms you’re going to be bringing this forward to so people could join you on those platforms.
Daniel Matalon: (18:43)
And I think one in particular that you’re pointing to, as we take the deliberate vagueness of, “is there enough” for people to fill in for themselves as we’ve been referring to. Our 2.0 conversation is to take that lens of “enoughness” and apply it to these specifics. And where we’re doing that, uh, first is on Clubhouse, which we’re treating like a, almost like a, a podcast radio series with audience interaction. We have a study guide for each event that we do. And they’re focused on, is there enough this, or is there enough that. Obviously you look at things like water and land and we’re bringing experts together for that. Is there enough food? You know, the things you would expect. But our first conversation is, “Is there enough truth.” Because you really can’t have democracy, freedom, and justice without clarifying that issue. And the next one is, “Is there enough courage?” Where I learned about Buckminster Fuller was from the incredible social entrepreneurial academy that “Money and You” became, that started by Bobby DePorter and Marshall Thurber carried on by Robert Kiyosaki and, and DC Cordova and, and has trained hundreds of thousands of graduates around the world.
Daniel Matalon: (19:57)
Uh, we always used to say in that workshop, if we understood the essence of courage, there was nothing else we really needed to learn as teacher trainers of that program that I was, uh, 25 years ago. And I think that if we look around the world, when we propose great ideas, people always go, well, it’d be great if you could get everybody to agree. To which we say, “Well, how about if you join us and help us, if you think it’s a big job,” and, and no one listening to this should underestimate the power of an individual using their life in a particularly demonstrative way. That was a conscious intention of Buckminster Fullers was to make his life an experiment, but also a demonstration to the rest of us.
Robert Strock: (20:40)
Yeah. And your emphasis on the individual who’s ever listening to it. That means you, you have the power, you have the opportunity to be a part of the conversation and more. And this can be an utterly inspirational conversation. Now, my experience, you mentioned me being a psychotherapist, which I’ve been for 50 years is that one of the biggest holes in humanity is an emptiness because we live so disconnected in general from the greater world. So is there enough connection? Is there enough openness between you and me? Is there, is there enough openness between you and me talking about our potential to find meaning in life? All of those kinds of questions are just delicious, and they’re salivating. And so, I think that for you who are listening to take this as personally as possible, and not just be listening to Daniel and I. Neither Daniel or I are that interested in ourselves relative to you. And so we’re really, really saying, take this in, consider this, consider this question: You’d have your own unique, “is there enough” some things, and you get to be the architect of that.
Daniel Matalon: (21:51)
I do want to emphasize something about what you’re saying about the individual. We have very specific ideas in our professional work, in our work with, “is there enough,” which is a nonprofit, you know, a labor of love. Um, these are our answers to the call of the world game. What are yours? How do you create more choice around you? Cause choice is what raise the standard of living. And we can economically measure that. And it isn’t always to be fair to those who don’t feel that they can make an impact on the world. Sometimes it’s on your world. You know, making the world work for a hundred percent of humanity also includes making the world work for a hundred percent of your own world. Your tribes, your family, all of that has a hundred percentness to that as well that we shouldn’t skip past. Because I’m reporting to you, Robert, that we never expected this pop conversation of the world game to look at a hundred percent of humanity, Spaceship Earth, all these wonderful things to have such a personal effect.
Daniel Matalon: (22:52)
That’s probably not as much a surprise to you given your work, but one of the most startling things, and this is around the world, people would come back to this conversation of “is there enough,” with “am I enough,” followed closely by “are we enough?” Which inevitably gets us onto the “we” ship rather than the “me” ship in a way that doesn’t have to really proselytize that. Because I believe as an amateur student anthropologist, which I sometimes like to think of myself, I think we evolved our brains with a distinctly important group of humanity that is completely self-centered that we think of as selfish, and maybe have reasons and justifications to call it objectively selfish. But I think that makes an inadvertent war between those that are self-oriented and those that are societal-oriented. We clearly have evolved those two sorts of orientations for a reason. And I just wanna make sure that as we go forward, those of us who are looking to play the world game, that we’re inclusive of those who may not even get the idea of the world game, because they’re part of it too.
Robert Strock: (24:00)
Yeah. I think we both recognize that we’re not trying to hit a guilt button or a should button in people. We’re looking to possibly touch a part of our hearts that sees I can be part of the healing. And one of the things I love most about what you’re presenting is you’re focusing on the positive potential of agreement and that how fundamental agreement is. You know, we look at something like Putin invading Ukraine, and what would the world agreement be? How many people will we let die or be raped or be, how many innocencents events before the rest of the world can come to an agreement? Is there enough agreements in the world to have peace? Is there enough agreement in the world to lessen the danger for nuclear war? And so the focus on agreement is a big part of what you are really talking about.
Robert Strock: (24:54)
And there are plenty of skeptics that can tear apart and say, oh, this isn’t realistic. This isn’t gonna happen, et cetera, et cetera. But what we’re really asking for is an open mind and a recognition. Yes, it may require more of a tragedy, like a nuclear event or more of global warming before individuals will take this personally and recognize it may not be out of idealism that we do it, It may be out of just facing reality. You know, when we look back at “Imagine,” and John Lennon singing it, it was an idealistic song of the world becoming one. Now we’re in a situation it’s no longer idealistic, it’s realistic, it’s grounded, it’s a necessity, but we still don’t want it to come from guilt. It needs to come from a place that says, you know what, I can see that this makes sense to me, I’m drawn to this. So we’re looking to appeal to people’s hearts.
Daniel Matalon: (25:51)
And let me reinforce you’re saying. It’s a great business opportunity to take problems of the scale we’re talking about and make any sort of dent in it. It’s a massive business opportunity for those who think in those terms. So, as I said, there’s a lot of doorways to this conversation, no matter what your drivers are. The debate as to whether we’re living in an existential event or not, which to me is no debate at all, we are, but there are people who debate whether we are or not. And I have conversations with those people deliberately on social media, in other places where I can encounter people who think differently than I do. And I have been successful at going, whether you agree with what’s happening or not, or you think it’s basically the, the winds of climate or whatever you wanna imagine that it is, there’s a hell of a business opportunity in cleaning up this planet.
Daniel Matalon: (26:42)
So I think there are lots of bridges we’re overlooking and I do want to emphasize this issue of agreement. Agreement is a ledger; I think what Bucky’s ledger of wealth was really about. And when we look at just what happened historically in the United States with the passage of the recent bill, where, you know, Joe Manchin put his name on that. Moving forward 20 years from now, he is gonna be known as the guy who made the agreement on climate change. He’s not gonna be known as the guy who stuck it out up to this point, because that’s the ledger that we really measure wealth by.
Robert Strock: (27:20)
Yeah, really well said. Can you give us a very simple description of the business opportunity, maybe tie in a little bit of impact investing, so people have a little bit of a concept, but not so complicated that those of us that don’t have complex business minds wouldn’t understand. Because it’s important to see the groundedness, because you’re not just talking about an abstraction here. You’re talking about a very concrete business plan, as well as energy and emotional plan.
Daniel Matalon: (27:52)
Yeah, I would like to say about the concept of social impact investing. We called it social entrepreneurship 25 years ago, and we had this movement of ESG in between and basically about how can we combine profit and purpose in a way that makes the world work for a hundred percent of humanity, or as close to that as we can get. In preparing a lecture, six-hour lecture, I have for some business students in Europe coming up, the very first line of my talk to them is, I ask them a question as you would expect of me. And I say, what do you think we’re gonna call impact investing in the future? And I take my answers and I go, I think we’re just gonna call it investing. I think what we’re figuring out is that the costs that are not necessarily measured on the dollar balance sheet, but are measured on the human survival balance sheet, are a part of our decision making.
Daniel Matalon: (28:40)
We have one of your previous guests, of course, as an expert on that, and I was listening to him, and he talked about return on impact, not just return on investment, right? It’s not just profit, but also purpose. So in our case, we’re looking at how can that whole industry of social impact investing be more popularly understood, cuz that really matters not just the money. And secondly, how we can fuel capital, much more capital, to those pursuits. So you wanted a very specific example. We estimate that there’s three and a half trillion dollars of deficit, in the spending has already been estimated by experts to be needed to fulfill the sustainable development goals. The United Nations, the 17 categories we created in only 2015 has been very successful as a public-private partnership. So our question is, is why is that three and a half trillion dollars missing?
Daniel Matalon: (29:35)
Does the planet not have three and a half trillion dollars? There’s more than seven quadrillion of wealth on this planet before we start mining asteroids. So there’s not a lack of wealth and capital, but there’s a lack of agreement about how to unlock it. And part of the art of agreement is beginning to ask the right questions, even when we don’t know the right answers yet. Like, “is there enough,” is a pretty good one on a general basis, but we actually ask, “well, how do we come up with that three and a half trillion that’s missing?” We have some answers you might have some and some others might, but asking the right question is critically important. Not just how do we make social impact bigger or more successful. But specifically, as Bucky would measure, let’s put a number on what that human infrastructure spending needs to be and invest in it. And we do have a Clubhouse coming up called, “Is there enough investment in humanity?” That’s about this very purpose.
Robert Strock: (30:28)
Beautiful. So we only have a little bit of time left. So I want a couple brief answers to a couple of things that I know are central for you, that you’re signing up a hundred million people. Could you express briefly what that is, so people that are interested can find that.
Daniel Matalon: (30:45)
Sure on our website, IsThereEnough.org, you’ll see several references to a demonstration of humanity, which we label as “The fuller treaty of humanity,” deliberately to play on Bucky, but also a fuller treaty of humanity that is not based on war, but based on an evolutionary choice that every individual makes saying I come from 70,000 years of war, but I myself am making a treaty with myself and my future, and with all of humanity, that I’m just gonna do the best I can to make agreement over war and conflict. And there is some precedent for this. Uh, there is a last, uh, living Nuremberg prosecutor by the name of Benjamin Ferencz, you may have seen the documentary, some of you listening called “Prosecuting Evil,” about his history and the sum of his life. The man who put crimes against humanity into law in the Nuremberg Trials says that what replaces war is law.
Daniel Matalon: (31:47)
And we’re simply saying that agreement is an everyman’s law. Uh, five year olds can make agreements with each other. I’ve actually facilitated that conversation with a kindergarten class when I was challenged to do that. And we’re simply saying that if eventually a hundred million people decide to make this commitment, the ripple effect on the culture would make it very hard for despots to arrive into leadership on an international or a national basis from a culture that’s built around agreement as a value, not just a destination or a transaction or something I’m trying to get for myself. But if we can all make agreement a human value, then we have a chance to survive.
Robert Strock: (32:29)
Yeah, it makes me think of two things, uh, that the public may or may not know about. There’s a song called Only Love by Jordan Smith. And one of the lines is “have we forgotten that only love is enough, and if love is looking, we are enough.” It’s so profound and so beautiful. I would encourage all the listeners to look up that song. The second thing was out of Game of Thrones, where one of the Kings was being criticized by all of his warriors saying, no, no, you can’t go and join this other person to fight the big battle because if their father killed all of our family and, and they were so evil, we’ve lost your brother, your sister, this, that. And he said, I will not hold responsible the daughter or the son for the sins of their father. And I realized, oh my God, this is exactly what hasn’t been able to happen. Every country holds onto the prior sins and can’t move because they consider them the enemy because of prior history. And I think one of the big features is realizing that the leaders of almost every country, as well as political party, is holding onto fixed ideas of the past and can’t let go to look at agreements that are necessary for world survival.
Daniel Matalon: (33:51)
There’s a central debate to this conversation that comes up as to whether human beings have power. We obviously asserted in this conversation that human human beings, provided they’re able to create agreement and collaboration, that’s the condition of that, um, have immense power. During the Arab Spring, the phrase that Wael Ghonim shouted out was “The people have more power than the people in power.” This is critical that everybody listening to this recognizes whatever wild idea you have to make the world better is only an agreement or a few thousand away. And this treaty that we’re proposing is the last treaty that humanity ever needs to sign. The first one that’s ever been signed by humans, not nations. We believe that it makes humanity more human. Not coming from the avenue of building up compassion, collaboration from a place of sort of emotional cognizance of the connectedness we all have that I believe you and I, and many people listening to this would have.
Daniel Matalon: (34:54)
But for all of those that don’t perceive that, that don’t perceive the connection that we all have with each other, it works on an individual level as well to say, “wouldn’t my life be better tomorrow, if there was more agreement happening, what do I do to do that?” “How on earth do I become better at agreement each day?” And so, what the treaty says is I’m making a commitment with my life to do as much agreement as I possibly can. I can’t really fail at a best efforts commitment like that. And the second paragraph–so it’s like a one paragraph constitution of humanity–and the second paragraph just simply says, what right I have to sign this, which is, I don’t have to be a nation, a diplomat, an NGO, I am a human being God dammit, excuse me.
Daniel Matalon: (35:37)
I am able to, to assert this for myself just as Bucky did, when he asserted with his life, what one man can do. That’s what the treaty establishes. But I also just feel it’s important for your audience to know, uh, we will issue that signing in an NFT as well. So people have a keepsake of their role in helping make this work. And if people hear this conversation and wanna support us, but still need to know more before they’d sign a commitment like that, please follow our social media as everybody would come on a show like this and say, but in this case, following our social media really signals to the world that we have an audience that’s building. That’s something you can do in just a couple of minutes on our website.
Robert : (36:20)
So just to finish up, let people know what an NFT is just in case they, don’t
Daniel Matalon: (36:24)
Sure. An NFT is a non-fungible token, and it’s a record of ownership of something unique. As far as we know, this is the first legislative effort. If you’re willing to call us that or merely social research, if you want to dismiss that part, uh, of, of a hundred million people. And so the NFT is a record of somebody signing that commitment on a particular date and time and in a particular sequence. And we think in, you know, 20, 30 years, it might be quite a prized keepsake.
Robert : (36:54)
So two last things before we sign off, one is when we met, I was just finishing my version of international agreements for world survival, and the necessity for having a international consortium of agreements that would be an extension of the United nations that would agree to things like how many people will we like get killed before the world would decide are we gonna trade with this country anymore? Are we going to intervene militarily? If so, how, how are we gonna lessen the nuclear danger, et cetera. Lastly, I wanna end with highlighting what you said. I may have slightly misquoted you, but I’m sure the meaning is right. What you said about the definition of wealth as being world survival. Tweak me if I didn’t, if I missed that in some way that that’s a definition of wealth, I would say is a perfect definition. And then world survival and thriving, I think is such a incredible definition. So I’ll give you the last word before we sign off.
Daniel Matalon: (37:52)
Since we’ve spent purposefully so much focus on Bucky and his definitions, he defined wealth as “Your standard of living multiplied by how many days you can sustain that standard of living,” period. I just shortened it to “Survival over time.” And then if you have survival handled, it’s about choice. In fact, I would say that what makes an agreement versus an alignment, cuz they’re kind of the same, but they are different like colors on a spectrum, are the terms and conditions we choose to exercise together, even in agreement with myself. But an agreement with myself or with others is an exercise of choice. When we have more wealth, it’s exhibited by more choice, whether it’s in the form of money, cuz I can choose better restaurants to go to tonight. Or whether it’s on the fact that I have places around the world that I can now go where people give me a home without having to pay for it because they like spending time with me.
Daniel Matalon: (38:49)
That’s just as much wealth, too. And I think that if we educated our young about what wealth is, maybe better definitions than the one we have today, by the way. But if we can focus on what wealth is and monetize that, we can do the opposite of what our parents’ generation did, which was a mass cash to win the game and then buy wealth with it, which always had collateral effects and damage. But if we do it the way that Bucky was proposing, we can be very wealthy financially, economically in every way possible, but do it in a way that’s also sustainable.
Robert : (39:25)
So in a certain way, we’re talking about having a monopoly game where the winner is everyone and everyone survives and has a chance to thrive. So Daniel, it’s really a joy to have a like heart and minded spirit. And I want everyone to know that your proposal is extremely practical in terms of going for including business and the trillions of dollars that are necessary to really make a fundamental change. So I encourage everyone–I’ve signed up–I encourage everyone to sign up as a beginning point and to enter into these conversations and to take a look at Clubhouse and really see what a great option is to really get involved, and to see a different perspective of what our life is really about. So Daniel, why don’t you really make it clear how people can be in touch with you?
Daniel Matalon: (40:21)
They just go to IsThereEnough.org. Look at the links on there that relate to the treaty and the survey that we have that makes our argument, our case as to why humanity needs one. And the place where people can be actively involved is in our Clubhouse conversations, which debut in September. And they can join our club and be notified of all the particular topics we’re taking on and they can participate in the conversation over on Clubhouse.
Robert : (40:47)
Daniel, thanks so much for being on our show. It’s, it’s great to be with you, and it’s great to include our dearest Bucky as part of our conversation.
Daniel Matalon: (40:55)
Thank you, Robert, for paying what is only scarce left in the world, which is human attention to such an important topic that really puts tools in people’s hands to make their life work the world better. Thank you.
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