Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Bridging The Communication Divide in America


Note:
This message came out of a long Facebook Messenger group thread that was started before election night. As the discussion moved along, it became clear that none of what we were talking about would go anywhere unless the two sides had open lines of communication or, possibly, a safe middle ground where they could share ideas and information. Shane's message is what finally moved me to propose something, i.e. actually attempt to work on the problem.

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” -- Hunter S. Thompson. 

Some thoughts and a proposal 

by Lee Chazen


We are in a strange time. There was an election in the U.S. that, as of this writing, has still not resolved peacefully. So many things have gone askew in the last several years. Yet, this can also be a great time for creatives, thinkers and problem solvers to step up. That’s why I’m writing to you. I have an idea of what we can do.

There is a huge communication problem. It is everywhere. Between people with different identities, groups, cultures, nations, haves, have-nots, political entities and on and on. We don’t have what I think Daniel Schactenburger recently referred to as an “information commons” or words to that effect. We don’t all go to the same sources for information.

Coming from a background in academic debate (high school, college, and coaching) I know that half of a debate can often just be about the criterion -- or having a clear understanding of what it is the two sides are debating about. If they do get to that sweet spot, it’s a fantastic debate! If they don’t, the judge will usually give them poor marks for having a lack of “clash.” One side is talking apples. The other side is talking oranges. It’s damn confusing! The problem we are having in America right now is that we don’t even know what the topic is or how to approach it. We are having a hard time even asking the right questions. And, even if we have the right questions, we don’t know how to ask them, how to frame them or the kind of language to use.

What are we talking about? What are the facts? Where did we get those facts? There seems to be less discussion around that and more discussion about the thing or trigger that just set us off.

That brings me to what I’m working on and why I’d like to invite you to a Zoom call.

I started a group about four years ago called GliderCell -- that emerged out of discussions with Ed Mulder. We both had ideas in the field of “emergence” and “self organizing systems.” l thought the group could be some kind of consultancy, solving problems in education, business or government. We would design frameworks, games or projects in order to make these systems more productive, engaging and democratic.

But, it’s a hard sell. People don’t know they need this kind of thing until they first understand the underlying concepts and WHY they work so well.

And, there’s an even bigger problem than this. There are people who have a great analysis of society and all its various malfunctions, but are not able to communicate this in plain language. Or, they can't seem to communicate the message to the right people -- whether they are in politics and business, where these things are sorely needed. I mean, absolutely needed!!

What if we were to strengthen this consultancy by bringing in top thinkers, educators, former journalists and “explainers” to help us get out of the mess we are in? Disinformation, poor educational models and not understanding how to critically examine information got us into this mess. An effective group can get us out of this.

If you would like to have a discussion around this, we will put together a Zoom call. Just leave your contact information in the comments section so that we can invite you.





Friday, April 24, 2020

Episode 3. Shelter in Place: An Audio Journal by Lee Chazen

More thoughts, ideas and stories to give your mind something to do during the global lockdown. On Episode 3, you will get answers to these and other questions... perhaps. 
  • A bathysphere? Really? 
  • Why do we need themes and formats? Some of our brains are more like hyperlinking systems. 
  • What is consilience? 
  • Why do we have to be one type of person? 
  • Can a cello player be an MMA fighter? 
  • Why isn’t there an olympics for people who can think and do athletic things? 
  • What happens when a comedy routine dies. Can you turn jokes into public service announcements? 
  • Why does someone yell “dead ball” at a basketball game?
  • Will I perform with Carrot Top? 
  • Why did the folks in Hollywood tell me to go back to something real? 
  • The interview to work for a U.S. Senator. Is there a question they can ask you that will get you to sabotage the interview? 
  • Do musicians have a secret code for complimenting each other during a performance? 
  • How did an eye dropper ruin the musical career of a french horn player? 
Website
Blog
Facebook Group

Special thanks to Dune Thomas. He is a great person to bounce ideas off of, as well as a superb comedic bantering partner. Dune helped with sound engineering and gave me special privileges in the podcast booth, a.k.a. "the bathysphere."

Royalty free music from Fesliyan Studios.
Content and Artwork by Lee Chazen and
 GliderCell

Note to audio distributors: Please DO NOT add this audio content to the Youtube Content ID System. I have used background music which is owned by FesliyanStudios.



Episode 2. Shelter in Place: An Audio Journal by Lee Chazen


In Episode Two: 
  • Is that guy talking to someone?
  • 50 million people all playing the same note.
  • Pressurized cabins?
  • Share your idea. 
  • Walking around was already awkward. 
  • Heterosexual is not always sexual. 
  • What is the protocol for shaking hands with a naked dude?
  • Is Piper gender neutral?
  • Can we crowdsource the science of Covid-19? 
  • A pandemic game show -- but, seriously. 
  • The Barbizon School of Modeling in the NCAA Tournament.
  • An idea of a conversation app. 
Website
Blog
Facebook Group

Special thanks to Dune Thomas. He is a great person to bounce ideas off of, as well as a superb comedic bantering partner. Dune helped with sound engineering and gave me special privileges in the podcast booth, a.k.a. "the bathysphere."

Royalty free music from Fesliyan Studios.
Content and Artwork by Lee Chazen and
 GliderCell

Note to audio distributors: Please DO NOT add this audio content to the Youtube Content ID System. I have used background music which is owned by FesliyanStudios.

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Episode 1. Shelter in Place: An Audio Journal by Lee Chazen

It started off as an experiment. I was walking around a local park early one morning and started recording some notes into my phone. Sometimes I do that to remember good ideas. The further I went, the more the ideas and stories started to flow. It felt like this might just be a good routine to get into during the whole lockdown.

So, I decided to keep it going.

Then I wondered what would happen if I just didn't care if others listened in. I mean, I might stumble onto something funny... or interesting or maybe something that others were also thinking about. As Hunter S. Thompson would say, "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." And, I started to think that maybe this thing that we're going through -- the whole "shelter in place," might just be time for creative people -- people with ideas or "edgy" thoughts or even bizarre stories to step up... maybe entertain people or inspire some kind of action. I mean, these are unusual times, so why not?

And, that's how this started.

The first two recordings were just on my phone. I did what I could to improve the sound. Then, I switched to a professional mic... so the recordings do get better over time.

The first episode includes the following. 
  1. What is HikeStorming?
  2. Dealing with isolation
  3. What you can do to make use of this solitary time.
  4. Stranded on top of Mt. Tallac, near Lake Tahoe
  5. Anxiety and getting psychosomatic while listening to the news
  6. Video chatting
  7. Retreating into tribalism
  8. Unseen opportunities
  9. A call for creativity and ideas
  10. An idea for homeschooling based on game-based learning
Website
Blog
Facebook Group

Special thanks to Dune Thomas. He is a great person to bounce ideas off of, as well as a superb comedic bantering partner. Dune helped with sound engineering and gave me special privileges in the podcast booth, a.k.a. "the bathysphere."

Royalty free music from Fesliyan Studios.
Content and Artwork by Lee Chazen and
 GliderCell

Note to audio distributors: Please DO NOT add this audio content to the Youtube Content ID System. I have used background music which is owned by FesliyanStudios.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Genius on a Fool's Errand: Elon Musk's Mission to Mars

Dune read this to me the other night and I thought....wow, someone needed to say this. Someone needed to point out that we are looking outward at a time when we need to be examining ourselves. Without saying any more, here is Dune's take on Elon Musk's mission to Mars. 

Genius on a Fool's Errand: Elon Musk's Mission to Mars

By Dune Thomas

Imagine, life on Mars. What would this look like? If you really peer into it, it's about as depressing as you can fathom. To escape the extreme temperatures and reduce the constant exposure to dangerous levels of radiation, you'd spend your entire life there locked indoors.
The desire to make life happen outside of earth is fine-- but it is not much different than trying to get a human heart to keep living outside the body... to what end? A lung or kidney or heart suspended in some plastic box of fluid and electrodes... as if the rest of the body were just extra parts. It's a testament to the disconnect between us and reality that we so easily think of ourselves as so separate from the Earth.
So much genius and talent directed towards a goal that, frankly, appears as an abject denial of what is most human. By all means, play with your billion dollar toys. But don't do it when your house is burning down. The world needs us to repair the damage we have done to the environment. Instead, we look to some other rock in space, as if the Earth were no more than a lifeless object we can discard in exchange for another lifeless object. This mentality is the poison. Every world we inhabit will become lifeless and dead so long as we continue this narcissistic fascination with our own cleverness.
Getting someone to Mars isn't going to solve shit. The destruction of our planet is not the result of too little technology. The problem is a psychological, social one. Taking humanity to Mars isn't going to solve anything-- you're not escaping your problems or the challenges of humanity, you're exporting them to Mars!
Please: STOP. Turn around. Your fixation to escape this world and discover another is a result of your refusal to travel to the one place that matters: inward. It is the last place most people ever look or want to go. But until we go there, we will meet this life with dissatisfaction. We will treat the Earth like a dead, disconnected, empty resource we can take from in order to distract ourselves from the dead, disconnected, empty sense of self we identify with. Please, stop. Look closer.
You're not the dead, lifeless matter that's leftover when your body sputters away its final breath. You're the animating force that made it get up and dance in the first place. And it doesn't end at your skin. It permeates everything, knows no boundaries, and sets every spinning planet and exploding star into motion. When you spend all your time looking outward, and none of it looking inward, you cannot recognize that they are the same thing. So hold still and discover yourself. Discover what is more fundamental than the endless stream of input rushing in through your 5 senses. Behind it all is the vast deep of consciousness, taking in every experience in unwavering silence. Make contact with the heart and soul of your existence.
Before you seek to colonize new worlds, inhabit the one you're already on.

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Was this the turning point when presidential politics took a weird turn, leading us to Donald Trump?

Strange But True Stories From The 1988 Presidential Campaign.

Part Two of Gary Hart’s Run For President. 
Sacramento, California, USA January 27, 2020

February 3rd marks the beginning of the Presidential Primary Season when the first voters in Iowa begin assembling for the Iowa Caucuses. Thirty two years ago, two young political science graduates went out to Iowa from California to work for presidential hopeful Gary Hart in what would be “part two” of his campaign for president. Could they make a difference? Would Hart be able to recover from the scandal with Donna Rice? Would this one time presumptive Democratic Party hopeful surge to popularity like he did in 1984 or are there no second chances in American government and politics? Outside Chance by Lee Chazen takes us on a whirlwind tour in this "Inspirational, entertaining, fast-moving, insider's view of the campaign trail."*

There were several driving forces that got Chazen to write the book. The first was disappointment and anger after reading the November, 2018 issue of The Atlantic where James Fallows wrote an article titled “Was Gary Hart Set Up?” He would rediscover the painful fact that he had discovered back in 1988 -- that a career of study, good ideas and service can be nullified by one scandalous story. Making it worse was the idea that it was a setup.

The second thing was that there was another side to this story that was not being told -- that there is a lot of activity beneath the surface that no one knows about -- ideas, policies, thinkers, idealists -- people who make great sacrifices on behalf of someone they believe in and that there are solutions that never see the light of day because of dirty and disgusting political practices. 

Lastly, there was a second part to Gary Hart’s campaign after his six month break from the campaign trail that is rarely if ever documented - not mentioned in Matt Bai’s book All the Truth is Out and not portrayed in the movie The Front Runner, starring Hugh Jackman. 

One of the last of the true intellectuals to run for President, a scholar who understood and often quoted the Founding Fathers, Hart toured the country, rolled up his sleeves and gave lectures across the country. Chazen wanted to write a story that recaptured the spirit and imagination of this campaign - something that would also push ideas and strategies into the present. 

Lee Chazen is an educator and content developer who does consulting work under the name GliderCell. A former high school social studies teacher, Lee’s primary focus is in applying his research in self-organizing systems to education, politics and society. He is also a musician and Young Artist competition winner (on French Horn), founder of Global Challenge (a game-based social studies project) and HikeStorming - a method for getting people to think and brainstorm better through hiking.

Outside Chance is available on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/2RyIbKi and the Google Play Store: http://bit.ly/37DN5va




If you would like more information about Outside Chance, or to schedule an interview or presentation, please contact Lee at lee@glidercell.com

Background Information and Links 



*Amazon reviewer

Monday, January 06, 2020

Understanding and Valuing The Liberal Arts


I Went to a fascinating Meetup last night hosted by a local TED discussion group. The topic was reinventing liberal arts. I couldn't help but get angry as I realized how valuable a liberal arts education is and just how far we've gone away from understanding the value of a well rounded person in our society. I went home from this and started rewriting my LinkedIn profile. I mean, imagine if we were allowed to truly show who we were and what we were capable of, aside from these narrow areas of focus. I started working on it, but the first few lines sounded more like a blog post. 

The point I wanted to make was that, sadly, we live in a world of specificity. It serves a purpose and we do need experts in such areas as medicine, law, technology, journalism, finance, engineering and education. But what, if anything, is said about the person who can merge ideas together to form something new, who can bring in aspects of all areas of their interests and knowledge to form a new product or system or type of organization or method? What is said about the person who can look at a room filled with different people and different perspectives and find the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts or the idea that will effectively merge things together to form a better solution? 

The world of standardized tests and content memorization has served us well to a point. But, now we are living in a time talked about by Daniel Pink in his book A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. It is an age of conceptual thinking, and there ought to be a way to represent this on our resumes or LinkedIn profiles. I'm sad, somewhat, because Pink wrote about this in 2005 and I was really hoping we would be there by now - that we would value a liberal arts education more and appreciate people like this in our workforce. 



Thursday, December 12, 2019

Content By GliderCell

GliderCell is currently running a Holiday Special through January 15th.

40 % Off The Regular Rate For All Content! Sign up here:   https://www.glidercell.com/


Thursday, December 05, 2019

The Enlightened Worldview Project Slideshow



The Enlightened Worldview Project's mission is to promote societal understanding and inner awareness. The group will be working with a community of writers and thought leaders on a book about how our worldviews are constructed. Through the book, blog posts, public discussions and a podcast series, the organization hopes to improve communication, relationships and our public discourse.

Brandon Norgaard, founder of the project, brought me on board to work on content, narrative, infographics and other educational materials. I'm thankful for the opportunity to have worked on something that could really make a difference.

For more information about EWP, visit their website at http://enlightenedworldview.com/.

If you would like help with your writing project, please contact me at theglidercell@gmail.com. I can help you with all forms of web and social media content, research, reports and slideshow presentations.