Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss the 2023 documentary Join or Die, which is currently airing on Netflix, and takes a look at the surprising importance of participating in clubs or groups and social. Social groups and activities in maintaining a democratic society and how the decline in community engagement may have us all on the edge of.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys and joining me today is a man who's always ready to hit you with some surprising content. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to show us your grand national experimental today?
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Yes, only today.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Only today. Only today, not tomorrow.
Yep. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, we ask that you subscribe and hit like and. And so forth on your on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps to show out recording on November 26, 2024. And we continue our streaming the Line streaming between the Line series today and take a look at the documentary film Join or Die, which started streaming this fall in Netflix, although it was. It was created in 2023. It's directed by Pete and Rebecca Davis. And Join or Die introduces us to Robert, or Bob, as they refer to him a lot of times, Putnam, and his findings on how important people's participation in social clubs and activities and groups collectively, how important that is to maintaining a healthy democratic society, and how Americans in mid 20th century America had very high levels of this and also how the big decline that's been observed over the past few decades, it must be reversed or we die. If you follow the hyperbole of the title of the documentary.
So Tunde, what stood out to you most in the, in the film, you know, Join or Die, and in Bob Putnam's research, you went to this, this idea that being involved in groups and clubs and what would you know, he had, he had the book, you know, Bowling Alone, talking about bowling leagues and how that stuff is really good for the health of a person and the health of a nation.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, there's several things that stood out, which I know we'll discuss today, but I think that the biggest thing for me was standout was this idea and the concept of what he called social capital, which, you know, he didn't invent what she rightfully admitted it had been used prior to his use of it. But this idea that in a way that I understood it is like social capital is kind of the glue that has been unrecognized, I think, by academia and by kind of just our society as a whole. But it's something that.
It's like the fact that it's been diminishing. I think most of us, especially people, let's say over a certain age, you know, let's say over 35 or 40, that have been around long enough to experience some of the changes.
It's like something we can all feel. And once it's explained to you in a way that the documentary explained it in terms of social capital, this idea of human connections as, let's say, manifested in our societies, let's say in the last hundred, two hundred years in maybe social groups, clubs, organizations, things like that, that the diminishing of that environment and that ecosystem for us as individuals at the interpersonal level is something that we all kind of, I think, feel. It's this uneasy feeling that most of us have in our society, but we haven't been able to put a word or kind of like identify it. And I feel like that was the biggest thing for me out of the documentary was the identification of social capital as actual capital. Just like, you know, infrastructure.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Putting in that frame. Yeah, you know, that frame of like. Because that's an economic concept that we're familiar with, but putting it in the frame of, you know. No, no, that, that's. That's good. I mean, to me, man, this was very eye opening for me because I never realized or looked at joining a club as being something more than just, you know, like an individual type of thing. Like, for me right now I'm involved in a lot of little League stuff with my kids, but I never looked at that in the context of. The context of a civil type of thing. I could see it was good for my kids and development and socialization and. And learning how to compete and learning how to play and win and lose and all these kind of skills that are very helpful for a developing person, you know, but I never realized, you know, just in the documentary talks about, you know, the Rotary Club and Kiwanis and all things like signs I've seen driving around, you know, cities and towns, but I never looked at those. And it just. Oh, yeah, that's something that I guess people do, you know, or people have done. So I never thought of it as something more, you know, something as part of like a civic type of thing that you could be doing. That that's a part of your engagement with the community that has effects beyond just, oh, well, that's for you. If you, if you don't. If you move to a new town and don't have any friends, then that's a good Way to go meet people or something like that. But beyond any of that, it can be something more than that. And, and there was a fundamental question, I think that was raised in the documentary and talking about like, well, could this is what we're doing here in terms of a, a society, you know, a, A government of the people type of thing. You know, like a thing where it's not, we're not here because we're forced to be here and it's. Are we all in this together? You know, are we in, are we doing this, you know, this community together or this city together or this state together? Are we trying to collectively solve our problems, you know, through democratic means and so forth, or we all just kind of lone wolfing it, going to the loan, passing each other in, in the, in the hallway. But you know, like it's not a collective enterprise. And I think that right now we have drifted into the space where many of us look at this kind of like we're all individuals, you know, operating, you know, we're, we're all planets circling a c solar system, but we're not part of the same dance, so to speak. And you know, that's difficult because, you know, we're in a multiracial democracy, which not only hasn't really been done, but hasn't really even been tried before in history. And so how can we. The question specifically that was asked was how can we feel like, and behave like we're part of a larger community and a larger project if we don't all look the same? Which apparently, you know, if you look throughout time, it's easier to do that then. And this is the type of thing that has been able to do that. And if you look at multiracial, but can go back in history and then this was a multi ethnic mo. Multinational democracy before even all of the racial aspects of it were able to even get onto the same level, you know, from a legal standpoint. And so it was the Irish and the Italians and you know, the, the, the, the, the British and you, all these people that in the old country might not have been cool, but were able to come here and be able to put something together and build something together collectively. And you see the kind of mechanisms that would do that because it doesn't happen on its own. And I'll kick it back, but one other thing, I'll say, what was it? What was specifically mentioned was that you can design the best governmental system in the world. You know, you could design just the greatest system, but that itself won't get you all the way there. You need more, you need buy in. As with anything I think of, you know, I always think of sports teams with this type of thing. And it's like you need buy in. You have the greatest schemes or whatever, but you need people to buy in to each other and to what everybody's trying to do collectively in order for you to get at least the sum of the parts, you know, And a lot of times if you get a lot of that, you can get more than the sum of the parts.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think I want to come back to what you alluded to near the end of your statements there about the governmental side, because I think we should definitely discuss his studies from his time in Italy. I think that was pretty interesting. But just to finish up where you were on before, that is really the idea of a story. And, you know, like you're saying what you're talking about is a shared story. And I've come to appreciate that more and more just through the things we've discussed on the show and other learning I've done. And I mean, we've talked about a lot of things even in the history of our show, like, let's say the Lost Cause, Right. It was a story about the Civil War. And, you know, you and I, from a cultural perspective, may have been on, let's say, the tribe that was on the losing end of that discussion. Right. The real story about the south, slave slavery.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: That kind of history and the success of reconstruction and the lies that were told about it afterwards, unfortunately, you know, what I realize now is that as much as you and I culturally may have been not on the good receiving end of that agreement, let's say, culturally, of the country saying this is a story we'll agree to and let's move forward.
The reality is at the time that probably was necessary for the country not to actually fracture and become two countries. And it's the same, which I've learned to appreciate religion more that it doesn't. It's not necessarily about taking it literally, but religion was necessary for large groups of humans to do things together, you know, like build pyramids and build cathedrals in the Middle Ages and all that stuff.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: So the point back to the documentary, he makes the point that half of group activities, you know, social activities and volunteering, half of it is religious based, you know, now, you know, or, you know, historically through or just a story.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: Like, those are great ways. Well, the story is more nexus, though, in terms of the actual together.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: But the Kiwanis clubs The Rotary clubs, all that. Like, I'm a member of a Masonic lodge. And you know what I realized in watching the documentary, because they showed a little bit of a lodge activity, what you learn in those organizations is how to behave. And I don't mean that as a joke. What I mean is we, like. I feel like we saw it after Covid with all the videos about Karen's in the airport and all this stuff, like people lack, you know, have forgotten how to behave socially in public with other people. And when you're a member of these organizations, whether it's Rotary, Kiwanis, Masons, your church, whatever it is, there's. There's a certain way of behaving in these organizations. There's a certain hierarchy. There's leadership, there's people that are in the flock. There's. There's a certain relationship between leadership and the flock. And there's. And there's rules of engagement within those or within those organizations that loosely mirror the kind of rules of engagement of our greater society. So I think that by having these smaller micro societies, let's call them, if we can call them that, the collective, most of us, there's a. And you use this term well, in a lot of discussion, the critical mass of our population generally has an understanding of how to behave with others. And I feel like what I realized with this social capital stuff and this documentary and then also our experiences, let's say, through the pandemic and post pandemic is we kind of. We've lost that. You know, this. Yeah, yeah, this, this hyper. And they talked about it a bit, this hyper individualism culture paired with social media and the Internet. And then I think the final nail in the coffin was the pandemic. Just forcing people into isolation.
Coming out of that isn't that easy for us. You know, most people still want to be like, alone. And. And they found now a community online, which is artificial. Right. It's not the real.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: It mimics some pieces of it, but it doesn't provide.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Yeah, not the whole thing.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: I. That stood out to me as well, though, the piece about how. Teaching you how to behave. Because there are several ways you can look at being a member of a group in this context as being beneficial to you individually and to your. Your. The people around you, so to speak. One they talked about is just strength and numbers and strength and organizing. Organizing people and numbers of people. You can get things done, you know, like, whether it be in any kind of society, just you by yourself. You know, animals, you know, they. Predators hunt in Groups, you know, like a lot of times. And so you can just get more done if there's more people working together. And so the strength in numbers, the strength in the organization of those numbers, but also the piece of the practice, you know, like I said, for me, I get my kids involved in things, and the point of that is it's very intentional. And it's like, okay, I want to make sure that they're socialized in a way in terms of how to interact, how to deal when you have the bully in the group and how to, okay, well, you need to then have your own group that makes you guys not a target of that and. Or just different things like that. Or when you have. When you don't get your way, you know how to behave, you know how to. How to go about that. And so I look at that as lessons that you gotta learn. As a kid, what I didn't think about until I was seeing this was that, okay, well, those are things you have to practice ongoing in your life. It's not like you learn it and then you just have it, and then that's just it. You. Those things you. You can get out of practice with that. You can get. Those muscles can get atrophied in as far as. Okay, well. And that's, I think, what we did see with the pandemic or with January 6th or anything like that. It's like, okay, well, I didn't get my way. Well, I can't just be cool about that and figure out, okay, in the next round, I'm going to do something about this. Like, no, I got to go. If it pandemic, I got to go hit somebody in the head, you know, and this is like, well, hold you. What? Like, just because you didn't get your way or because that person didn't do what you wanted them to do, you know, it's like, that's not a reason to go hit them in the head. You know, generally speaking, you know, again, not outlier behavior would always be that. But so the fact that we need practice in this kind of stuff, and that's helpful for us. And then thirdly, very beneficial is just the companionship, you know, and then not just strengthen numbers, strengthen. Strengthen organization, but just something goes wrong in your life, it's nice to have other people that, you know, are. And other obligations, things that you, I gotta go do this or I gotta go do that. And then when I'm there, I'm supported, you know, and everything like that. So these connections, you know, I think these are all things that I think are very easy for us to, to, to not think about, you know, on a regular basis and so forth. And, and, but when put in front of us, it, it's like, oh, yeah, I get it. I, I, that's why this, is this the way, or that's why, or that's the benefit that it's like the wisdom of the past, so to speak, that you see when it comes out. So I did want to ask you though, like, this information, you know, like the, the Bowling Alone book that Putnam wrote and all this. And then also just a lot of that he was speaking, he went to the White House under Bill Clinton and all this, like this guy was, was somebody, you know, and his information was getting out there back in the 90s, you know, but the trends that he talked about have continued and even gotten worse. So do you make anything of that in particular? I mean, obviously the conditions, you know, that matters, that was touched on a little bit, but just kind of, you know, like the warning sign was 30 years ago, but we're still on the same road, the track ends, you know, and all that. So what do you make of that?
[00:14:41] Speaker B: No, I think, you know, unfortunately it's, it's very sobering in the direction we're going with technology because as I'm watching a documentary, I couldn't help but be reminded of the book we read for a show several months ago, earlier this year, called Amusing Ourselves to Death, which talked about the television being kind of a game changer in society moving forward. And the idea was that eventually, like, the television is not going to move towards where culture was at the time of the television, you know, being invented and all that, that culture would follow the television and entertainment. And I can't help but think that it kind of manifests itself by having, you know, not to get into, you know, political stuff. Right. But, but we had Hulk Hogan introducing, you know, the next president of the United States at a convention. And I just felt like, yeah, that's like the ultimate meld of entertainment and politics, for example. And now here we are post the 90s, we began to have environments that create, were, you know, created in our society from tech, you know, due to technology that allowed us to become more isolated. And we discussed it. You know, by the early 2000s, everybody had a laptop, and then it became an iPad by 2010, and it was Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and the ability to really silo oneself and kind of have a world curated for you. That feels good in one way. But then we noticed the offshoot, once the studies started coming out by, let's say, the late 2000 teens in the recent years, the amount of depression, the rise in suicides, the rise in drug abuse, the whole psychological issues of fear of missing out and everybody showing their best selves online. So, you know, the person looking at it feels depressed because they feel that their life is not going anywhere when they're seeing everyone else on vacation and driving nice cars. So I think that what we've walked ourselves into unintentionally with this technology is just maybe a whole new way to watch ourselves and how we deal with all this and process it from an emotional and psychological level. And what we're able to look back to. Your point you just made is look back and say, oh, wow, all this stuff actually mattered. Just like going out to your local community, going bowling with a team and a group, going to your church, going to being part of a civic organization, showing up to your city's council meeting and to see what they're doing in your city. All that stuff matters, you know, and it not only matters for the cohesiveness of our culture and our society, but it appears to matter for us as individuals. Like, it makes us happy, makes us fulfilled, all that kind of stuff.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: And the things that have replaced it, to your point, the things that have replaced it may seem like the same thing or seem similar. Social media may seem like you're in a group, but it does. It's not fulfilling in the same way. It's artificial. It's what we've learned.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: Like aspartame versus sugar.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: It's not the real thing. You kind of know it, right. You taste a Diet Coke and it's just like, yeah, this ain't the same thing, you know, and you think you're.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Getting ahead, you know, you think you're like, oh, I've outsmarted my body. And it's like, oh, no, this thing causes cancer. You know, so, you know, but I, I think that, like, you raised a good point, you know, in terms of how the recent technology or the, the developments in technology, not just recently, but just developments in technology. And to me, like, sometimes I think about this and I've thought about this, you know, just whether it be as a parent or just, you know, as an adult. And it's always like, well, man, what did people used to do with themselves with all. Like, we have all these, you know, we have, you go back cable TV, we got this TV running 100 something channels all the time. Or, you know, and that's old, you know, that, that. That shows my age, me saying that. But now it's like streaming. You can hop up, you know, pop up and watch anything, you know, at any point. YouTube, you know, like, you can watch so much stuff. Like, what did people do before they had all these options to do stuff all the time, you know, like, that are just. You can sit at home and do.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: Sat around like, well, yo, they were.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: They were doing stuff like this, bowling clubs and all that kind of stuff. They were. And so it was. It this. These were forms. It wasn't just that people were like, hmm, you know what? I want to be a good citizen. Let me go join this club. It's like, yo, I don't have anything to do, so, hey, let me go chill with these guys.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: Like, remember this?
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Picnics. Exactly, Exactly.
If that was the solution to. I mean, and it had other. It had other benefits, but that was a solution to a boredom problem that we just don't have anymore. And so, you know, like, television, and it was specifically said in the documentary, television became the most, you know, the most popular form of entertainment, you know, as opposed to a bowling league or, you know, anything like that. So I think that the technology kind of replaced the need or, you know, filled the need, so to speak, with amusing. I mean, and it. It's not lost on me that the book we keep referencing was called Amusing Ourselves to Death, and now we're doing Join or Die. You know, it's a lot of.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: There's a lot of hyperbole with these things.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: At least I hope it's hyperbole, but it's the thing. But also what was mentioned, hold on.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: We're all going to die at some point.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: So just, you know, it's not really an alternative ultimately, but nonetheless, it's what you do while you're here. But it was mentioned briefly and I wanted more on it, but I understand why they couldn't give us more on it. But also just in terms of the way society is organized and kind of the priorities of society, they were like, because people have to have time. And now I just went on and how we're using all our time on streaming and social media now, but nonetheless also works good. If you're working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, both parents, you won't have the time to do this kind of stuff. Also, because by the time you do get home, you do want more passive entertainment.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: You do want to.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: As opposed to go, okay, let me go to this PTA meeting or let me go do this bowling club. It's like, yo, man, I'm tired. I've been working. I've been, you know, I've been trafficked four day, four hours a day. Then I got 50 hours to work. You know, I'm not trying to go home. And then I got to go to this, this bowling club that's going to have me out, you know, yada, yada, yada. Then I got to get up the next morning. So we have to also make sure that we have time. And that's where I mean. And it was, it was, you know, peppered in a couple of times, like, yo, the people who want a more hierarchical society and don't want active participation from the masses maybe want to move society to more of a scenario where people don't have time for this stuff because it wasn't lost on them the cyclical nature that this, the rise in group activity and the health of the democracy came at the end of the gold of the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age, where you have, you know, wealth concentration like, like now and people working themselves to death and, you know, not being able to get ahead because of the way the system is set up and the tax code and the wealthy just get to get all the spoils and then coming once, once people got it went a direction to get a handle on that and make sure that the spoils of society were shared more broadly. Then you had this happen and then now it's not a coincidence probably that as we go more into another Gilded Age, that this type of participation. Is it a chicken or egg, though? You know, it's kind of the question.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: No, it's a good one. And as you're saying, it makes me realize he had stats like the society's trust in government, for example. So like you say he found that the inflection point was 1960, when trust started to go down, and by the early 2000s, it had really cratered to below 25%. So you're right. When kind of in the New Deal era, let's say from the 30s to the 60s, the trust was a lot higher. Like 75% of the public trusted the government. And so I just think that, you know, because there's a lot I know that we won't get into. Like, I'd recommend everyone to watch the documentary not only for what we're talking about, but like his studies.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: Yeah, we're trying to increase awareness. We're not doing like a book report where you can be like, okay, yeah, now I feel like I've seen it. Like, no, we're just not putting it out there. But we gotta get about his studies in Italy, though. But go ahead, go ahead.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: No, but that's what I was gonna get at is the studies. And that's actually where I was going. The studies in Italy were very interesting. And that's what I mean, we're not gonna be able to break down each study and we don't have, obviously, the ability to show you the charts he showed and all that, but just the idea that. So he went to Italy and it seems like the 1970s, I think, and.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Let me set it up real quick. Let me set it up.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: So what Italy did, like he's looking, he's a researcher, he's trying to study stuff. So what Italy did in this time period was they changed their government system to, to distribute power from Rome, from the, the nation's capital, to send more power to the individual provinces around the country. And then not all power. I mean, it's still a nation, but then they wanted more, you know, kind of like what we have with federalism here, where they had more power in the states as well. And so each state, though, was then going to set up and you know, how they were going to do their voting and all that. Like they had all their different ways of doing things. So he looked at that as like a lab, basically, and said, okay, well, I can look at basically based on the characteristics of these states, how, how good are they at producing democratic outcomes and, and having a healthy democratic system or how, how good are they from keeping corruption out and things like that. And so he went to. He wouldn't move there to study this because he saw this, this kind of breaking apart. And I shouldn't determine as that this kind of redistribution of power as an opportunity to see how different factors he was looking at things like education, wealth, you know, all that kind of stuff, how that stuff would matter in the functioning of the, of the democratic approach to the government. To the, to the government.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And, and so no, and I appreciate the setup because it's very important. I would have forgotten to say that early part about that. The fact that the country of Italy made a decision and you're right, that's what he said. That will be his petri dish on this because, like, all these different.
I was going to say fiefdoms, but municipalities, the more modern way. Yeah. That they're getting all this at the same time. So.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: And they. All those different characteristics, you know, about them inherently.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: And, and basically that's what really can. That's why I said, you know, to watch the documentary, you'll get more of also the visuals and some of the stuff that stats. But basically it came down to those with a higher social capital, to your point, were more horizontal, more democratic, things like that. The ones with less social capital, less people out there mingling and interacting, ended up being more vertical, being more authoritarian, top down. And once a place was authoritarian for a certain period of time, then the public became apathetic and kind of felt like, well, what's the point of participating? We can't do anything anyway. So it's, it's. And again, this is what I'm saying, it's fascinating, all this research just in general, because it's almost like with the, you know, just to go on a huge tangent here, but you'll get it when I come back. Like the Hubble telescope, right, Sorry, the James Webb telescope. Let me say the newer.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, you're showing your age, man.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I am showing my age.
Yeah. The Hubble used to be new, but the James Webb telescope, because of its ability to observe the universe in a different way than we've ever been able to, is now having us kind of reinterpret actually the way we understood potentially things like the Big Bang and all that. And I think that the ability for us as humanity now and to research, you know, kind of things that have happened along the way and to look back and say what is actually important in terms of how we tick as human beings.
And I think. And one thing that they did allude to in the documentary that goes along with what I'm saying is how academia spent so much time, especially early to mid 20th century, focusing on things like IQ, which of course are important. I'm not going to diminish the importance of trying to make sure that, you know, measure people's intelligence levels. But this idea that we said, okay, well, we got to then replicate then how to teach to people with their very high IQs because they're going to make society better and we want it to be like that. But what happens is just because you're very smart as an engineer or a doctor again, doesn't mean that you're empathetic, doesn't mean you're creative, doesn't mean a lot of things. And so again, this social capital to me is like the. That part of our discussion in our society and how it's. How we think it should be made up that we totally missed. I don't think we forgot it. I just think we didn't really appreciate that it existed in that way until someone.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: I think there's evidence that we did. I think there was evidence that we did. And I'll say, I'm sure. Let me, let me, let me throw something at you. Let me throw something at you. The reason, I think there's evidence that there was an understanding that existed in certain parts of society and it, but it's something that's forgotten now. And by the way, this is the argument that the, like real conservatives make is just that, hey, if you change things too fast, you're not, you're not always going to be aware of all of the things under the surface on why things work the way that they work right now. So just be careful. Not, this isn't, I'm not talking reactionary politics that we see today, but like just the true conservatives, it's like, hey, status quo. Let's just have a little difference towards that. This is the basis of that. And, but the reason I, I came away, I was first like, oh, man. Yeah. This is not, this is knowledge that humanity might not have had before. But I think segregation and the zeal that people pursued segregation suggests that at least they, they knew, you know, like, for example, segregationists knew that people intermingling together, people being a part of the same groups, because remember, people at that time, we can't have race mixing. And not like. And they were adamant about this in ways that now might seem like, geez, what's, what's the big deal? You know, like. But it's like, oh, you know that if you have this, if people start interacting together and start doing stuff together, then they're going to start bonding together and start seeing commonality in one another and not. It's easy to turn to hate one another.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: We could translate that into the hostility against DEI today. Right. The same. You're right.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: Possibly, possibly.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Because people recognize that. Yeah.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: I'm just saying directly though, like you. The hostility towards the idea of race mixing that we saw, you know, in the past, I think suggests that they understood that social, that interaction and social groups and people interacting together would bring people together because their, their goal, the people, they were trying to keep people from coming together. So, you know, again, when your enemy or the person who you're against, your adversary takes something and makes that very important to accomplish their goal, then you usually might want to look at that and say, okay, well, they must think that that would be helpful to Michael, you know, but. All right, so. But that was a caveat.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: I just want to divide and conquer.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right, yeah, for sure, for sure. I thought the concept of generalized reciprocity was very important with this. And then that was something like once they got all this information and they distilled it all down. And what that is basically is that when you have these groups and people know each other and all that kind of stuff, a lot of times with people, you know, it's like, okay, well I know somebody, I'm not going to screw them over because then when they have a chance to screw me over, they'll screw, screw me over. And basically when with so with, with the large amount of community engagement, what he has observed is that you'll have that concept expand to the whole community. It's like, well, I don't want to screw over people in my community because they probably as part of some group that'll know somebody and then that I'm going to have this whole enemy, these group of people that are like oh, that no, I screwed this person over and they're going to treat me different. So I just better be cool, generally speaking towards everybody around me because you know, like any of these people could, could be a part of some group that then everybody's going to be side eyeing me. So that to me was significant because the freeloader problem is always, is a problem that all societies have to try to deal with. And so that kind of solves the freeloader problem in a way that isn't like oppressive. It's just like you're creating these high expectations and everybody feels it internally and wants to be their best self because they never know kind of who's watching, so to speak. But going back to the Italy piece, the uncivic areas where corruption is the norm, I've always wondered, and I'm kicking back after this because we want to get the final thoughts, but I've always wondered why in certain parts of the world or country or even now, why are people categorically not opposed to corruption or self dealing? Like hey, I'm going to, I control the government and I'm going to use the government to pay myself all this money. And it's like, well, hold up. I've never understood why people aren't categorically opposed to that. Now people always call it out when somebody they disagree with does it. But I'm saying categorically, meaning you call it out even when somebody you agree with does it. Like, yo man, we can't have that. And this was the answer to me because it's like, okay, once you have these areas without the, the the social and the community engagement. And then they become, as you pointed out, more hierarchical and everything like that and more removed from the levers of power where it's just like, it doesn't matter what I do. I'm just going to. That helped me understand that apathy on why we can see, you know, you see it now, like it's like, wow, we're getting all these systems set up that are pure self dealing systems and nobody's or a lot of people aren't like, hey, we can't have all these people that control the levers of the, of the money then also having all these government contracts, like we can't do that. But I see now how that happens. So yeah, but just any, any final thoughts that you want to wrap out or anything before we get out of here?
[00:31:27] Speaker B: I mean, the one area I also thought was very interesting was when he alluded to the idea of like social mobility really is reflected on whether people of lower income, middle income and higher income actually are able to assimilate within the culture or not. And that for me was actually interesting because anecdotally I lived in Australia for almost five years in the 90s. And even last time I went back was 2015. And it just going back in 2015 after so many years because I probably hadn't been back since 09, I think.
And having just lived in the United States and being American was an interesting reminder because my friend lived in a very nice neighborhood who I was staying with in 2015 that was one mile from the Sydney Harbor Bridge, which is, you know, nice part of town at the time. His house was valued around 3 million in 2015. And I would go walking every day and literally right up the street was a public housing building that was about, you know, 20 stories high, maybe 15 stories. And I remember talking to him about it because it just stood out to me that, wow, there's like basically a project building in the middle of this nice neighborhood. And so I was just, I was just talking, I'm like, hey man, like I forgot that this, you know, Australia did it like this, where they had public housing in a mix of regular kind of suburban neighborhoods and stuff. And I was like, you know, do you guys ever get worried about like, you know, crime and all that? And he was like, nah man, what are you talking about? What. Long story short, just for now, what I realized and learned and was reminded in dealing with just over there was it's interesting, the people in the housing project and the public housing raised their standards. They didn't have graffiti on the wall, they didn't have broken windows and all that. They kind of raised themselves to behave like the suburban community. And what I found is the people in the houses next to the building, they weren't scared of poor people. And it reminded me that no, in the United States the word you use, segregation is correct. And here, not necessarily racial segregation.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: Good point.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: Yeah. We have class segregation and you have highways. Like we're down here in South Florida I95, where we just drive from Fort Lauderdale to Miami. There's walls at the side of each high of the highway, so we can't even see the neighborhoods on the street. So I can go from my nice neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale, drive down to Miami, go. You know, I never really touch the lower class community and all that if I don't want to. Right. I gotta actually get off the highway, go to a gas station in the ghetto and say, okay, now, now I see how other people live. And so that to me was a reminder in there too. That and I think we're very far away from ever trying something like that in the United States because culturally we're just not, you know, we are scared of the other in this country.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: We got to join more groups, man. Apparently.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's what I mean, a lot of that is class based. And one of the things I always felt that could help us, but again, I'm not President United States. To suggest this would be something like national service. Like some countries do that if we had after high school at age 18, kids going to the military or Peace Corps, they got to serve the country somehow. Like you're saying, that would flatten, at least starting a new generation where they all got to be in boot camp, in the barracks and all that. Whether you're rich, poor, black, white, whatever. Everybody's getting the kind of same experience and they're getting a shared story about the nation. Right. They're getting. They're getting invigorated military patriotism.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Yeah, no, you're talking military Peace Corps. But it could be broad. It could be Habitat for Humanity. It could be like all types of things where we say all this stuff we need to do around the country. Yeah, we could do that. I mean, I think it's good, but that would solve problems, but it would also bring people together and see a common struggle more. I think that the economic point is an excellent point though, because you hear that from time to time where people say, oh, we need mixed income kind of housing developments type of thing. And people are like, oh, no, People react to that like you're talking about you need to bring Martians in and. Yeah, but the point being is that, yeah, like places where they have a better handle on this or they would, you know, it looks like they have a better handle and term from a cohesion standpoint, that's the kinds of things they do. It's intentional to bring people, make sure people are seed, humanity in each other and all that type of stuff. And I think that's the underlying point here, is that as we go more isolated and alone, you know, and then like you said, you go, you can go from home to some high rise downtown Miami and it's like I don't see any, any of the outside. Like I'm, it's just like I might as well, you know, be on a train of one where everything blacked out. I don't see what's going on at all. Like that kind of isolation ultimately. And if you, if, when I say it like this, it sounds like, of course, but that kind of isolation makes it difficult for us to build something collectively, you know, and so, so, yeah, I mean, I think that for that, for that reason and for all the reasons, I mean, it's definitely something that's worth checking out, you know, the documentary. And so, you know, and our goal here again wasn't to tell you all about it, but more so some, some pieces just kind of sprinkle in here, some things that stood out, but definitely we would recommend check it out and also, you know, check us out, you know, next time we come out or anything like that. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, Send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keats.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: I'm tuned over Atlanta.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to.
