As we've looked at, humanity is a pivotal moment. We have now amassed such great technological power that we risk our own long-term survival. Alongside this power we still subscribe to an economic system that has us exploiting and polluting our planet. This pivotal moment is made more precarious still, by a different kind of pollution. Not of our environment, but of our public discourse. Just as our ecology is under threat, so too is truth
and our ability to communicate.

Truth is becoming harder to grasp, trust is becoming harder to establish, and tribalism and hostility are rife. Nothing is true and everything is possible. So, when you think about it, as humans we only really have two tools at our disposal. We have conversation and we have violence. And that's it. Communication is all that stands between us and complete societal breakdown. But, now, if individuals and groups are only speaking at one another rather than to one another... with all this mistrust, and impatience and outrage, surely humanity's position becomes even more precarious still. I mean, our prospects certainly don't improve, the more untrusting and hostile society becomes.

In 2016, Oxford dictionaries declared 'post-truth' to be their international word of the year. With an abundance of fake news and shamelessly deceitful politicians and public figures, truth was becoming harder and harder to grasp. In the same year the World Values Survey asked the question: "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted?" In nearly every country the majority of people thought that most other people could not be trusted. For decades there has been a decline in social engagement, social connectedness, and social trust. In the 21st century we seem to be losing our trust in the media, in governments, and even in each other. I can't get this image out of my head at the moment of like, a thousand couples pristine in ball gowns and tuxedos waltzing mindlessly and nonchalantly, just off of the Earth. It just feels like we're all so involved in our own little dance, that sort of minutiae of our own tribal warfare, you know, our political allegiances, that we've just got no idea about the bigger the picture. We can't see the broader perspective. We don't realize the direction that our dance is taking us in.

I wanted to begin the song with the most bewildering opening statement ever. I wanted to immediately challenge the listeners sense of truth and reality. So the confusion and absurdity that stems from the singer of the song, surely the main authority on the song itself, asserting that the song that he is singing

3:08

does just that and has far lower recidivism rates. Offending behavior can often be left behind when a hand is held out with compassion. So remember: treating someone with a complete lack of respect and civility, that's the very thing that will harden that person's beliefs further. Whereas if you treat them with patience and curiosity and compassion, that can even undo a lifetime of learnt hate.

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When you offer someone an alternative to ignorance, tribal anger and hatred, they often take it. So at the moment in our Dreamer's Hotel, it does feel like all the rooms are vacant. It does feel like we're all trapped outside in our confrontations and arguments, losing our patience. But if we can renovate and populate this hotel and begin spreading compassion, and compassion spreads easily -- it's contagious -- , then we will be in a far better position to face the great unknown, you know?

26:01

To address the ecological and existential challenges that humanity faces. Karen Armstrong, the great religious historian says, as does Martha Nussbaum the great philosopher, as does Charles Darwin the great evolutionary biologist, as does his holiness the Dalai Lama the great practitioner... they all say compassion is the answer. You know? It's our strongest instinct and source of community, and so I think we need to get out of this ideology of self-interest and get to an ideology of compassion. And I would add, you know, we're doing a lot of work on awe.

26:39

And awe is very similar, you know. People find awe in music. At your concerts Rou, I'm sure you've seen it out in the audience, you know, and it probably gives you goosebumps thinking about it. Visual art, nature, human goodness... Awe leads us to transcend tribalism. And we've got good data on that, so we have to go back to these these deep tendencies that the ideology of self-interest has masked, and then I would add something we've been talking about, Rou, which is, I mean, economic inequality is bad news.

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You know, it has undermined our sense of common cause in the United States.Increasingly so Europe or England, right? So those things we can work on and build into our hotel and the rooms of the hotel. And the rooms of your hotel should be rooms devoted to compassion and awe and pluralism and equality, and we'll do a little bit better in this game.

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We must offer the alternative. The alternative to self-interest. To hate. To hostility and division. We must practice, encourage and stoke compassion, patience and curiosity. These mindsets are pivotal to humanity achieving a more sustainable and stable future. And we can all do our part as individuals, but even more essential is the need to rectify our economic system. This is what we'll look at in episode four.

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there in small groups, right? 15 - 20 people...40 people... And it was a perilous time for our species. So we evolved deeply tribal tendencies to bond, and huddle, and protect each other and identify.

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And you know, it always strikes me: one of the great examples of this is sports fans, you know? And like English football fans, when I lived in England a couple of years, I would look at like, fans of Nottingham Forest and I was like: "Wow man, these guys will kill for a football team.. It's a game!" You know? And they're not alone, you know? It's all over. So it's deep.

16:20

You know, we live in a very polarized time, politically, and I don't think this is good for any of our nations or for, you know, for the world as a whole. It does seem that we've created these tools with social media. And there are ways that they are amplifying bad behavior and incentivizing it, rewarding it, and this experiment has been run extremely quickly with very little, you know, chance to react. Log on to any of our mass communication platforms; be that Twitter, Facebook, or whatever your hatred spreader of choice is currently, even for just 30 seconds and you'll likely be flooded with all manner of heated arguments and surrounded by frothing, splattering, fury addicts. It's like, online we stick our fingers in our ears and we just scream at each other.

17:13

If true love supposedly blossoms without regard to what the recipient of our love looks like, then hatred is something that seems to be blossoming without any regard to what the recipient of our hatred says. Social media appears to reinforce, or turbo boost our own tribal nature, because online we all live in our own echo chambers. Now, we all know about echo chambers. Now these are places where we have our own views and opinions

17:40

been cut dramatically. Wages have stagnated. Job insecurity has increased. Inequality has increased to obscene levels. And higher education and owning a house has become unobtainable for most people. So people feel vulnerable. And then it isn't a surprise that in these precarious times people begin to turn to their their groups for social support. For a sense of safety, belonging, connection, self-worth... and to feel an accepted part of something bigger than themselves.

11:41

So we cling desperately to the groups that we're part of. You know, be that ideological groups, sports teams, groups we grew up part of due to our race, our culture, our religion. And what happens is toxic tribalism increases. So this also begins to explain why we're so quick to attack each other. Anything that even slightly threatens our group's integrity must be taken down, because in these precarious times where our self-worth is taking a battering from every possible angle, our groups are everything to us, whether we know it or not. So they must be protected at all costs.

12:22

Therefore incivility and hostility rise as well. It's all connected. I mean, I think everyone's noticed that there's been kind of a deterioration. I mean, this is now, what's really interesting is that it's a topic of news that there's been a deterioration in our ability to report the news and to discuss the news without, you know, calling each other names and going crazy. From our positions of bias and our different standpoints, you know, we're throwing kind of word bombs and verbal attacks at each other. And that's what the information space is now. You know, the conversation can't keep up.

The conversation doesn't work anymore and, in fact, not even that it's not just keeping up, it's breaking down. For the first time in the U.S., the majority of both Democrats and Republicans now don't just have an unfavourable view of the other side, but a very unfavourable one. The animosity, according to the Pew Research Center, is so severe that almost half of both Republicans and Democrats claim that the other party's policies actually threaten the nation.

We thought: what better way to get Rou in the mood? And in the interest of being completely stereotypical, we're going to make him drink Stella.

13:40

Are you guys happy? Fucking hell man... Stella? Well now the fucking party starts!