Tag Archives: equality

100% Asshole Free

If you’re familiar with me or craft beer (or maybe both?) you may be familiar with the phrase, “The brewing industry is 99% asshole free”. This quote became famous when Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery published his book “Brewing Up a Business”. This book was an inspiration to my brewery and a big part of the craft beer explosion.

The quote suggests that the beer business is more cooperative than competitive. It turns out this is not true. Like any business, breweries compete with each other. And as the number of breweries increased, so did the number of assholes. In the end, Sam’s quote is not true, and there are as many assholes in the craft brewing business as there are anywhere.

Surely you have assholes in your life. Maybe a boss or coworker. Maybe a family member. Maybe your president. What’s crazy is that these jerks seemed to be more loved than hated a lot of times. How did they get to be the boss in the first place?

In fact, in our white patriarchal plutocratic world being an asshole seems like a requirement. Many people in power are admired for their assholery. 

This makes me wonder how much we are all complicit in these assholes’ success because we enable it.

Now, I get it. Many people are not in the position to refuse an asshole. When they are in positions of power over us, there is little we can do that doesn’t harm ourselves. We lose jobs, relationships, and money if we rebel against their poor behavior.

But enablers and complicit behavior don’t help drive assholes extinct. 

Have you ever thought about a time when there were no assholes? I often think (perhaps naively) that we didn’t have a lot of assholes until we had social hierarchies. Depending on when that began (and we’ll never know), there may have been a time when social groups had mechanisms to PREVENT assholes from gaining power rather than ENABLING them. 

In fact, I will suggest here that shame was one of these mechanisms. Shame is a terrible thing, and I have shared about this here and here. But shame evolved for some reason. I think groups of humans, and maybe other primates, used shame to call out and DISABLE poor behavior. So when our ancestors acted like assholes, they got kicked out of the tribe. The asshole genes were selected against, in an evolutionary sense.

As our societies modernized and became more numerous the asshole reduction behaviors have been forgotten. Most assholes needed to get punched in the mouth or otherwise publicly shamed but were not. I think some elements of modernity, including social hierarchies, power, land ownership, and money, created artificial evolutionary selection pressures FOR assholery.

In this episode I talk more about why it is critical we reverse this trend and rid ourselves of the assholes in our lives.

Please tell your friends about Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom, my blog, podcast, or videos. It’s not easy to find this kind of content. We appreciate it.

Podcast audio stream:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/530563/13789818

YouTube video:

https://youtu.be/HzTMxb1tzyg

The Thing Capitalism Gets Wrong (KEW Episode 143)

Lately, I’ve been wondering about capitalism and competition. As I have mentioned in other episodes (links below), competition only occurs when resources are limited. Also, capitalism requires competition to protect consumers from monopolies. While I argue in older episodes that this protective feature often doesn’t work, the fact remains that capitalism requires competition.

That competition is a requirement of capitalism is critical BECAUSE competition only occurs when resources are limited. 

When there are plenty of resources, there is no reason to compete. Evolution works the same way. Organisms will opt to avoid competition at all costs, at least at the species level, and will only compete if there are no other options. In fact, speciation results from niche diversification associated with this avoidance.

In other words, when two species share a similar niche and require similar resources, they will not compete until those resources are limited (i.e., not enough to meet the demands of both species). When resources become limited, the species will look for other resources. As a result, their niches will change and one or two new species can form. This is how evolution works. It is natural law.

When thinking about natural law and capitalism, then, I can’t help but wonder why humans would design such a system. Why would capitalism require resources to be limited? Or, asked a different way, what is the result of this requirement if, perhaps, it was not understood a priori? It’s more probably an oversight than an evil plan.

When resources are required to remain limited, inequality happens. There will be haves and have-nots. I wonder if this is what led to things like the caste system, kings and paupers, masters and slaves, and the rulers and peasants. These systems are common to nearly all, if not all, modern human societies.

In this episode, I ponder what would happen if we altered capitalism to be more egalitarian. This is the beginning of a developing idea so please forgive the incompleteness of my ramblings. 

Episode 143 podcast audio: 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/530563/13630336

Episode 143 YouTube video:

https://youtu.be/9uT6kPuEPIo

Links to older episodes about similar issues:

https://chrisburcher.com/2021/01/22/kew-episode-39-the-growth-fallacy/
https://chrisburcher.com/2021/03/26/kew-episode-44-unnatural-selection/
https://chrisburcher.com/2022/04/29/rugged-individualism-or-unified-connection-kew-episode-95-cooperation-vs-competition/
https://chrisburcher.com/2023/05/04/nature-knows-best-episode-123/

Episodes 117-119 about how sexual reproduction replaced asexual reproduction can be found here.

FLASHBACK! KEW Episode 3: Gaming the System

Is the playing field unequal? I many ways I think it is. When we discriminate each other we shift from equality to inequality. When some people have advantages others do not we create hierarchies.

Some of this is unavoidable. Some of this is unfair. Some of this can be very benign and have little consequence.

But some discrimination can have massive consequences.

Racism

Sexism

Hell, stereotyping itself can have massive consequences depending on what is at stake.

My point in making this episode is to point out discrimination that leads to

MASSIVELY

DIFFERENT

OPPORTUNITY

And one of my favorite examples are tax loopholes.

You have to be able to afford savvy CPAs and lawyers to take advantage of these ‘incentives’. They simply are not available to most of the regular folks.

Much more in this episode and you can find the podcast and YouTube links here: https://chrisburcher.com/2020/05/08/episode-3-gaming-the-system/

Originally released May 8, 2020.

https://chrisburcher.com/2020/05/08/episode-3-gaming-the-system/

https://videopress.com/v/AMfVXim5?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata

KEW Episode 58: Fix the Broken System

https://videopress.com/v/Xb9q0G4n?preloadContent=metadata

In this episode I cover two main points:

  1. Millions of people have no interest in the Are vs Should Problem because they can’t meet their basic human needs for things like food, clean water, and safe shelter.
  2. These problems can only be fixed if we live more in the Are and less in the Should.

There are no two ways about it, I believe that we need to be more Are, and less Should. I am even starting to believe that the world’s biggest problems can only be solved by people who realize their full ‘Are’ potential. It seems imperative that we learn to develop our Are potential and to shun the Shoulds. Being in our Ares is what is going to fuel the creativity necessary to move forward as a species and solve our most pressing issues.

And, sure, some people already live more in their Are who have invented awesome things like rocket ships an iPhones, but many of these amazing inventions don’t mean much to a lot of people on Earth. I think much of the industrialization and consumerism we see today is fueled by the Should and not the Are.

Similarly, many people do not have the food, water, and shelter necessary to even ponder the Are vs Should Problem. I realize my white privilege is what allows me to even ask whether I am the person I AM or the person I feel like I SHOULD BE. I get that. Not everyone has that luxury. But we all deserve it. We’re all born to be who we Are, but our circumstances and opportunities available dictate whether we have luxury time to ponder such things. And the solutions to these food, water, and shelter problems is going to be found by someones’ (or many someone’s) Are.

Every person on earth deserves to have their needs met. We deserve to have food, clean water, safety, community, and all of the other basic needs. We also deserve to wonder and to be curious. We deserve to have the choice about whether we thrive or survive. We deserve the chance to be who we Are.

So I feel a sense of urgency around the Are vs Should Problem. We need more of us to think. To learn. To create. To figure out. But to do these things we need to allow ourselves to bIf more of us learned how to minimize the Shoulds, we would make more discoveries, invent more useful items, and more quickly solve the world’s most pressing problems.

Obviously this means that we, as individuals, need to work on this – and I promise, I will develop a “how-to” in the not-too-distant future, but we also need to pave the way for everyone else.

Think about it. We can put people on the moon. Entrepreneurs go to ‘space’ for fun. Most of us have the internet in our pockets. Don’t tell me we can’t figure out how to take care of each other. To give each other the opportunity to be who we Are.

Full podcast audio download here: https://pdcn.co/e/https://chtbl.com/track/CGDA9D/www.buzzsprout.com/530563/9012436-kew-episode-58-fix-the-broken-system.mp3?download=true

or please subscribe to Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Stitcher, etc.

Full YouTube video on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/czX5R-FPwTA

Preview KEW Episode 58: Fix the Broken System

https://videopress.com/v/fNRSTSLu?preloadContent=metadata

Twenty years of training and working as an Ecologist and Evolutionary Biologist means I see everything as a system of interacting parts. I really can’t see the trees for the forest. When I look at a part, I see the system to which it belongs. It’s a curse.

An example is when I worked for a state environmental agency. I absolutely needed my manager to explain to me how my position fit in to the larger system (the agency). I needed to understand how the system worked, at least on a cursory level, to really understand what my job was. Even at one of my first jobs delivering pizza, it wasn’t until I had participated in the whole life cycle of phone order to ticket to cooking to delivery to balancing the drawer at the end of the night that the whole thing made sense and that I had a sense of purpose.

In the context of the Are vs. Should problem, the ‘system’ (and this could be many things, but here I mean American capitalism as an example) is waaaay to skewed toward the Should to the point that the Ares are steadily losing value. In this scenario, it becomes extra difficult to develop our Ares when the deck is stacked against it.

But more than that, the global system leaves too many people unable to even ponder the Are vs Should Problem. If you don’t have enough food, shelter, and medicine to keep you safe and healthy, you have no need to ponder life’s more philosophical problems. You care not for the Should nor the Are, as you are too busy trying not to die. This, I suggest, is a problem with the system that can potentially be solved by getting everyone more in their Are.

In other words, we need to look upstream at how the larger system works, and how it impedes our progress, to make it possible for us to change.

Full Episode this Friday right here at KEW www.chrisburcher.com

KEW Curiosity series interview: Paul Gadola

One of my greatest character flaws is being resistant to people. When I meet new people I often assume they won’t like the ‘real me’ and this often prevents me from developing deep relationships. Sometimes this is protective, because some people might ridicule you or react negatively to who you really are. But the worst result from this type of approach is not giving people a chance. I’m not sure I did that with Paul, but when we first met I didn’t see the potential friendship because I was in my protective bubble – and that’s on me.

Fortunately for me, Paul reached out to me and we have developed a friendship which has grown easily and effortlessly. And I owe him a debt of gratitude for initiating that and sort of pushing through any walls I might have had up. This is the first lesson Paul taught me. I guess the lesson there is to be open to the world rather than closed off. To believe that the world wants and needs your unique vision and that it’s your responsibility to share it.

Paul Gadola owns a CrossFit gym (www.ironmountain.fitness) and his wife owns a healthy meals business (www.sunmealprep.com) so they literally embody the mind/body/spirit mantra, living it every day. Paul’s messages are so well informed, well thought out, and COMPLETE that it’s hard not to learn something from his videos and messages. His instagram offers so much to the spiritual thinker you will have plenty to chew on for weeks. And it’s hard to argue with how he has compiled so many viewpoints, so many belief systems, and so much diversity in his messages. He seems to have filtered out all the junk and come up with a holistic, all-inclusive organization of a way to approach enlightenment for our species.

Though I had a few issues during recording, we were able to capture a lot of Paul’s wisdom in this Episode and there is a lot here to help us all grow and understand ourselves better. I strongly urge you to check out his instagram series or his facebook page to go deeper into what he is offering. And maybe send him some encouragement to package all of this into a book or something;)

Full Podcast audio here: https://pdcn.co/e/https://chtbl.com/track/CGDA9D/www.buzzsprout.com/530563/7514887-kew-curiosity-one-paul-gadola-interview.mp3?blob_id=33018568&download=true or via your favorite podcast listening app.

Full Video here: https://youtu.be/WkEuFewSmM4

Preview: KEW Curiosity Series: Paul Gadola

This week I’ll release the first in a series of interviews about Curiosity starting with my buddy and spiritual confidante, Paul Gadola. Paul lives in my hometown, and though we didn’t really know each other well for several years, we have bonded over our similar paths. Paul has a wealth of Knowledge (and Experience and Wisdom) about all things spiritual and is currently writing a book to share his unique vision. Fortunately he also shares his messages on instagram and facebook and following him will inspire you. There is much to learn from his inclusive approach to spirituality and I’m honored he was open to sharing with us in this series debut.

If you have listened to any of my solo episodes, you already know how Paul has influenced my thinking. One of my favorites is, ‘We all think we’re right’. Just hearing Paul verbalize this statement has softened the way I look at other people in my life – which has been especially helpful during these divisive times. Paul just has that way about him. He is the most peaceful, kind, and ‘chilled out’ dude I’ve met in my adult life and we all can learn a lot from him. Here’s a preview of what’s coming this Friday.

Episode preview here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=572120573746640

Paul owns Iron Mountain Crossfit gym and his wife, Shelley, runs Sunmeal Prep offering healthy prepared meals. Together they truly embody the mind/body/spirit holistic approach to living a good life – something for us all to aspire to.