4/17/2021
Today I had the privilege of being invited on to the Becoming Human Podcast with Wil Nelsen. He’s a very interesting character who hosts an audio log of people living diverse experiences. He interjects a wonderful amount of practical philosophy into his conversations, and is a delight to talk to. We’re both into rock climbing and jiu jitsu, in fact he’s interviewed a few of my coaches as well! Nathan Orchard, Phil Schwatz, and Stephan Strauch of 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu in Portland and Seattle. This is a long one, and worth the time. It was fun to wax philosophical. He had a great idea of “physical education dollars” where a kid could get a voucher from the school to participate in an activity somewhere else in the community that might not be offered at the school. I got to learn how his experience as a behavioral technician was informed by his Jiu jitsu practice.
Transcript:
Wil nelsen 0:00
So how do you say your name? keevin? Or kivar?
keevin bybee 0:02
keevin?
Wil nelsen 0:03
keevin? All right, cool. So your general practice doctor,
keevin bybee 0:08
correct family practice primary care, we say womb to tomb, and I even deliver babies.
Wil nelsen 0:14
Oh, that’s awesome. So you must get to develop a relationship with your patients then like, through everything, right? It’s,
keevin bybee 0:22
it’s a very neat privilege to have a lens on, like see being the very first person to lay eyes on somebody’s scalp as it’s coming out of a vagina and helping people through very trying times in their lives when they’re suffering physically, emotionally, or spiritually as well as, you know, the high points when somebody loses 20 pounds, and then they’re like, Oh, my God, my knee doesn’t hurt anymore. And then also, seeing people on their last days is humbling, and a privilege. And so yeah, that’s it. As far as ways to put food on the table, I, you know, I feel pretty lucky to have this job.
Wil nelsen 1:05
What is being a doctor mean to you?
keevin bybee 1:11
Lots of different things. You know, I went into medicine, after being an engineer for about five years, and realizing that I didn’t want to be my boss, I wasn’t passionate about making microchips and wanting to use my brain in a way that might help people live a better life. And so I was really attracted to primary care and family medicine. That’s what my dad did. So using the skills and information and problem solving aspects to help people navigate, you know, through life in a slightly more graceful way, I guess. And, you know, the family medicine, you know, medicine in general, but family medicine, especially, like I said, it’s womb, to him, it’s a little bit of everything, it’s the first person you go see, when you’re, you’re sick to go find out if you need to see a specialist and being able to know your limits, and be humble and ask for help when you need to, but having enough confidence to take care of things, and like I said, basically just help people navigate their life a little bit more gracefully, given the fact that, you know, we weren’t born with intuitive knowledge of our bodies, you know, like, if, you know, if nobody had shown you, you know, a drawing of your internal organs, we wouldn’t know we have them. Right. And so that’s why we need a relationship with a physician who knows these things, so that they can help piece together like why I’m feeling this way, either emotionally or physically with what’s going on in my life.
Wil nelsen 2:53
And even as like, your primary care doctor, you then differ, like the the niche issues to a specialist, right? 100%.
keevin bybee 3:03
So I’m a jack of all trades, master of none. In one sense, my job is to go normal, not normal. I know what this is, I don’t know what this is, and get somebody the help they need. Because there’s a lot of things that I can manage. And it doesn’t make sense for everybody who has nonspecific chest pain to go see a cardiologist, right? So they come see me, and then I can go, Oh, no, this is rib pain. This isn’t heart pain. But if it is heart pain, I can send you to the cardiologist. And so having a first layer to know which specialist to go to, is really important.
Wil nelsen 3:40
And how important is it for you to develop a relationship with your patients?
keevin bybee 3:45
I mean, it’s everything. I mean, it’s certainly one of my challenges. I’m a very rigid linear person, and a lot of us aren’t. But when we think about what helps people live the longest, you know, wear your seatbelt don’t smoke, try to eat, you know, fewer simple carbohydrates. Those are people have ingrained habits that took 20 years to build, and it doesn’t get fixed in a 15 minute visit with somebody. And so having that time and being patient, and knowing who they are, so that you can present information in a way that makes sense to them so that they recognize that there is a way that they can make change in a way that feels good to them. And it just just takes time. I mean, if anybody’s had a family member, they know that it it’s not easy sometimes to even get your family members to see the way you look at the world, right.
Wil nelsen 4:45
How do you how do you reconcile when you’re not necessarily as a doctor but just maybe in life and maybe more as a parent? But how do you reconcile when someone wins when you want someone to see the see things The way that you see them, or to take impart taking the wisdom you’re trying to impart. And it is conflicts with their current worldview, or, or what they want to do.
keevin bybee 5:11
Oh, man, I can tell you what I do. And like, in retrospect, I know that it’s not great. Like so many people, I’m sure. And like, if you just give people the information, and you tell them what the facts are, there’ll be like, oh, obviously, you’re right, I’m going to do that thing. But in my better moments, you need to know where somebody is at, you know, in one sense, physically, and another sense, emotionally, socially, or historically. So that
Unknown Speaker 5:48
you,
keevin bybee 5:51
like I said, before, you you know, just telling somebody the facts in typically doesn’t work, you need to make something salient for somebody and by salient, how is it that they find it important? And
Wil nelsen 6:06
because people because people, everyone wants to live, yes, and everybody wants to improve or maintain their quality of life?
keevin bybee 6:15
Correct. And I guess the way I would frame it is, we’re, the human being is very complex, the way I think about it is, we are a smattering of survival mechanisms that may or may not play well with each other on the inside. One of those survival mechanisms is a voice called the self that says, You’re a unified thing. And so you should just feel one way about the world. And therefore it gets confusing when we have wants and desires that conflict internally. So recognizing that where, you know, you’ve got the desire to stay alive for the long term. But on some level, the desire to stay alive is coupled with the desire to eat. And on some level, the desire to eat sweet things, was really important to some of our ancestors in the evolutionary chain. And so that hasn’t been overwritten. And so while we can want to live for a long time and feel 21 all the time, some of our bazer, like, more basil, on survival mechanisms don’t jive with that. And so getting somebody to the place where they can recognize that they aren’t just one homogenous, unified survival mechanism where a bunch of different survival mechanisms and telling them that in their language, you know, both in a literal sense, what language they speak as their mother tongue. And in another sense, the specific words we use in any given language, so that it makes sense to them, is always the challenge. It makes sense. They’re just always
Wil nelsen 7:58
I think about a lot with, I used to work with kiddos with like, emotional behavioral disorders. And sometimes I would get like these, like, I get confused, because it was like recess work, and eat. And like, mainly, all the kids wanted to do was recess. And what I thought was interesting about recess was in recess, we could only do a handful of things. We could play tag, we could run, we could play games, right? In all the games you like, you improve with the game, and everybody is competing in the game to win, right? I mean, for the most part, or you’re competing with yourself, right? And you’re improving over time. And my thought was, well, that is that are my question is Is, is since you’re you have an aversion to learning, right, or least in this environment, it appears so. So let’s, let’s go outside, and let’s play and theoretically should never get bored. But in the sense, like, if we’re going to run running around the loop shouldn’t be enough. You shouldn’t want to run faster, or you shouldn’t want to be able to run easier. But the minute you ask that you’re bored, and you want to expand the game, have run out, change the game, but expand the game of running, then that’s basically getting back into that learning cycle that you’re rejecting earlier. So why would you in this scenario, naturally, play, play, play, and then ask for challenge and then to you know, to put yourself into that challenge, or push yourself a little more and confront challenge. And then here when I had asked you to confront challenge, you want to sit and you don’t want to do anything you want to play? So I’m very confused.
keevin bybee 9:39
Well, so back to salience like what is it that the human brain finds important? How does what somebody is externally asking me to do relate to what my nervous system isn’t intuitively telling me that’s important? You know, so much Our society is really at odds with you know, how we evolved for the largest part of our, you know, evolution as you know, Homo sapiens sapiens, we’ve been Homo sapiens sapiens for call it 150,000 years. For the majority of that time, like up until 10,000 years ago, we lived in hunter gatherer groups of 150 people. So the Dunbar’s number, if anybody’s interested, it’s worth looking into. And so now we’re in a society where we have specific demands of people to get them to be productive adults, quote, as fast as possible, so that we can get as much food into as many bellies as fast as possible. You know, we can get into the the whys and how we’ve lost touch with meaning. But most young brains still expect to be on the African savannas. And we have taken the fish out of water, and we’re demanding thing, things of them that don’t jive with what their intuitive bodies want. And you know, and then, for any given thing, why do we get bored, like any activity has a halflife on it, we start something. And it’s almost as like, there’s a timer that goes off in our brain. And that’s just like a neurological thing. And everybody, like, you start a timer, and it’s different for every activity, call it 90 minutes, and then 90 minutes later, that timer goes off, you’re like, Okay, now I’m bored, I want to do something new. And that’s great. Because otherwise, we do the same thing forever until we ran around in circles and died. Otherwise, we wouldn’t learn anything. I don’t know if that makes any sense. So
Wil nelsen 11:25
that does make complete sense. Yeah. And that’s where we would get in there, it would oftentimes, it was weird, because if you’re in like the scenario, where as the teacher, right, or even like a behavior attack, right, your job is behavior to keep him safe teacher is to deliver teaching material, but the behavior interferes with the delivery of the teacher material, teaching material. And then you realize that the teacher and student are in a dynamic to where it’s like I need to deliver material, and you need to consume the material so that we meet this deadline. But all of that is in the name of the only way that they were able to manage to track progress. Mm hmm. And so you found that no one had any ill intent. But it was just for a lack of understanding and how to be effective in this in how to be effective, and how to be able to track that effectiveness. Yeah, sure. And I thought it was interesting with the kiddos, because you would oftentimes have like a teacher getting more and more escalated, because of them not meeting their expectation, and then the student getting more and more escalated, because there was more and more pressure to be able to do the activity. And you get to the point to where I feel like both the people are actually experiencing some level of social, you know, an unhealthy social dynamic. And I realize that both adult and child probably don’t have very healthy social habits and routines. And these were adults, that, that were like, you know, professional adults who are teachers, and I didn’t realize I broke the veil for me that adults are teachers are adults and adults are people. And I never realized that when I was a kid, like at all. And I realized that Oh, there’s like some adults who, like maybe you didn’t learn how maybe you were aggressive, you know, and when you want in something, you were really aggressive about it. And I realize that Oh, there’s some people who like, go into adulthood, never learning how to manage that and internalize that. And then you see how it plays out. And you see, like most 80% of the people or 20% of the people are accounting for 80% of the effectiveness in these in this kind of environment that was very probably unique to the environment. But what I’ve seen in like mental health, it’s my mom, she works with people who have mental disabilities in the state of Washington. And she’s she doesn’t work just with adults that have mental disabilities, she works their company specifically works with adults who can’t afford, like private care. And so she works in that area. And I was working in a school that was a public school. So if you were kicked out of the standard school, and then kicked out of alternative school, or in your own independent education plan, you get put to this school. And that’s what I read this as public education as well. And I realized that Oh, well. There’s an odd trend that I saw. And the same thing the moms would sees in her work is that most of the people who fulfill these roles, there’s all different kinds of ways to be a teacher. There’s all different kinds of ways to be a caregiver for people who are adults who are mentally disabled. But the people who are fulfilling these roles are like, the like the people who have the lowest skills out of the whole group. And I always thought it was interesting that I found that in my experience, and then her experience, and you almost find that as a common thing. I think we’re like the people who are at most risk are getting serviced by the people who are struggling the most.
Most jobs are really hard, by the way. Yeah. And what was interesting to me is that the teachers that I worked with and the other staff, a lot of them I’m trying to be careful because this is no pet a story. But a lot of them didn’t have a recreation and really didn’t have a physical recreation. I think it’s really important when people are trying to assault you and hurt us to have a good physical recreation, you know. But the whole narrative and lifestyle was, you know, there was no meaning, like you go to work, because it’s oftentimes it’s a paycheck. But the way that it was talked about, there wasn’t anything extra done, to be able to improve the place, it was just keeping it up. And the lifestyle outside of the workplace. There was nobody there who had a thing they were looking forward to. And so I came in there and I was doing jujitsu. And I realized, like, when I would have confrontation, that it was a lot like grappling not in the sense that I am, you know, playing with someone, it was near the stress, of grappling, and all of the practice that I got in grappling and exposure to combat, it allowed me to be calm in these scenarios, and come from a place of stability. When I had someone who just give me a black guy. And the people that I worked with, though, they were never subjected to that level of you know, stress, especially positive stress. So when they were putting those scenarios, they were fighting a fight or flight state as well. And I thought to myself, why in the hell else would you want to like, put yourself in a, you know, why would you want to fight with people anyways? Who would have fun with that? And it’s like, well, if you roughhouse, though roughhousing, is adjacent to this, like violence, you know, it’s like it’s play. And it’s a way to playfully be aggressive. And it was weird, because I go through all this, and I worked with the most violent kid in the school and in the area. And like, you know, it sucked because it was hard for me to connect with him. But those escalations, those are pretty manageable to deal with. But I thought it was interesting, because they would give me praise the staff. And then I was able to connect with the students, we go on recess, and I play with them. I always love playing kids, you know, I love playing go to a trampoline park and you play. So I, I got, they were needing people, they specifically for males, because most of the students are male. But I was trained in jujitsu. So I’m like, dude, my best friend, he needs a job. I’ve been trying to convince jujitsu people to do this for a long time. Because I’m like, these adults are like, Nah, I don’t feel comfortable being around these adults. When these kids are asking me I don’t feel comfortable with the kids either. But like, the adults, hi, they signed up for this job. It’s different such these kids got trauma, right? If you got trauma, right. And so I’m like, well, maybe I can, like help improve this place. Instead of leaving, and going to go find somewhere else, it’s a little more pleasant to work with, not because the kids knew what I was signing up with, but the people that I’m working with. And so I eventually convinced one of my best friends to join. And he joins. And I realized that oh, my God, he connects to these kids so much. And like this aggressive, this doesn’t like shut them off. He redirects it into not actual physical play. But he reacts it into a playful energy. And I was as weird because everyone was associated this like roughness as like a threat, immediate distance. And those kids would just shut down. And I watched how my friend would interact with him. And it was just so interesting. And the relationship with like, you know, the threat of violence, and aggression was a lot different. And so I brought in another friend, and she did jujitsu. And she started working. And it was interesting, because they were very held in high regard and their ability to connect with the children. And to be able to, to be calm. So whenever these children need to be escorted, because they’re being violent, and someone needed to, you know, to grab them. Not using jujitsu techniques, but using the proof techniques, they would always be called stuff that was so interesting, I’d look at how they conduct themselves. They’d be playing with the children. And when children are escalated, they become a police officer come in and try and hire one of the people. And you know, and I think about those things a lot like these people are these people are no different than my co workers, my other co workers. That’s not that’s not the message. They’re the exact same thing but what’s different. They do jujitsu That’s weird. I don’t know what you think of that. But
keevin bybee 19:37
so much of what you said I can ramble on a million different tangents. There’s so you know, integrating
Wil nelsen 19:47
all of one of the the lady who was doing it, she was she was in a domestic violence relationship, and she even like, left that relationship and had to go into hiding under domestic violence place got through the The other end maintains a relationship with that guy, no domestic violence, no aggression, nothing, none of that, and then went to go and work there and then be in those situations and got into jujitsu, cuz she was like, Hey, I think I could figure out how to like, keep my try to keep myself a little more safe. And then she joined into this work and work with kiddos and some 300 pounds in this tall, but learning to do all of that to keep her saying that was really cool. Sorry.
keevin bybee 20:24
Yeah, it’s inspiring to hear when people are able to do that kind of stuff. I mean, so first with, you know, physicality I, I always like the there’s a concept of, you know, tickling, as a way that nature built into us a way to physically connect with each other and teach ourselves are vulnerable places. And through a number of mechanisms in society, we have lost the ability to have healthy, consensual, respectful boundaries, around playful touch. And you know, there’s many, many legitimate reasons for that, because a lot of people are doing a lot of illegitimate, non consensual touch. So that being said, you know, we’ve lost the ability to do it in a healthy way. And you know, that’s why jujitsu is amazing. And like you said, I think part of the reason why those people did so well, in those scenarios you mentioned is like, I can put my frames up, I can take a breath, wait for them to move and hip out? And, you know, try again. So, I mean, I think that that mindset is absolutely critical to so many aspects in life. And you mentioned how a lot of the the teachers are, they’re trying to meet expectations that are put on them that really may not be expectations, that serve the interests of those children, you know, again, misaligned incentives and unforeseen consequences of for of not really well thought out intentions, and so they’re probably under resourced. And like you mentioned, again, for some reason, we in society have decided to elevate people who make bets to the highest levels of the financial system, and Hello, 2008. And then yet, somehow, we underfunded teachers, it’s insane to me that the average teacher salaries somewhere like, you know, below $70,000 a year, instead of like a professional salary that I make as a physician, like upwards of a couple $100,000. Like, like, I want a $250,000 salary for the person who’s teaching my six year old. So like, just on so many levels, we as a society are not funding the people who are taking care of our most vulnerable, and then you add on the fact that we as a society, have this weird relationship with just general physical activity and physical health. So I mean, so many things you touch on, like the people, they’re there, they’re under resourced, they are not well compensated, they are dealing with people who are coming from a challenging situation, they don’t necessarily have a healthy relationship to their body, which is something that we could teach in school, you know, like, there’s no reason like, we can’t actually teach, you know, what, the physical therapy concepts and actual athletic training to 710 12 year old and
Wil nelsen 23:25
that’s what I was wondering, too, because even in that environment, I’m like, here’s all of these resources, and they’re just not there just to connect the dots. And it was like, well, you find a lot of the kids are in foster care. So they’re getting, it’s the same thing. It’s like bureaucracy, in that in that realm, all on the sides, meaning that I can only do is like, not me, but anyone at any of these places can only do what’s legally approved. And like, if you do like any of the things that has to do with physicality that is so far from being okay, in those kinds of environments. And I don’t even mean from the, the, the tickling, and the touch or anything like that. And not even just rough play, even just like lifting weights, is especially kids with an IEP is so hard to get because when you find people who have like, been violent, and it’s like, Hey, we need to get heavy stuff, so we can help them work on their aggression. And like, it’s oftentimes it’s just No, no, no, no. And it’s like, because that’s very risky. And it’s
keevin bybee 24:21
Yeah, a an overabundance of misplaced conservatism, because we don’t understand it. So if we don’t understand it, know, instead of maybe doing a little bit of research, pumping some resources into figuring out what are some healthy ways to help these people. And so once again, we’re just not doing the research to find out healthy ways to serve these people. And as a default, we have to be hyper conservative and overly safe, which only ends up hurting things. I have one for you just as an offhand But what happens if you have The system that was like, that was like food stamps. But it was for youth. And instead of food, they were able to go and spend it on the transportation and the membership fee to be able to do any of the form of available recreation that you know, as long as it’s been, like not approved as specific, but
Wil nelsen 25:21
you name the recreation, and they go to the Google business up, it’s there. It’s like an approved thing, as long as it’s not like furry ism. And it’s like, What’s that, and you know what I mean, but like, wide open in that way, and allowing them the power to be able to like, engage and stretch. And it’s like, what do you want to do? And that like, creates an incentive structure that is large, because I kept going back. And it’s like, you want to do math and reading, right? Well, like, if you found one passion that encapsulates all of that, I don’t care what passion you choose, like the hardest thing that I’m not sure if you’ve ever done like a kickboxing class, the hardest thing for me was, I didn’t realize like counting. And doing and striking at the same time is really difficult or even lifting weights and doing like, if you’re going to do something to 50. And you got to do something physically intense, I have a really hard time of being focused and counting all the way up to 15. I never knew that was hard. And you can I can give that to those kids were literally counting to 10 is challenge. But you once it gets boring, you know, you could add that physical element, these children are often aggressive. And usually the response to the aggression is is that you need to de escalate and stop them. And as opposed to like, Well, why don’t we redirect the aggression. And the thing in schools, least this the school system that I was in, I never saw any ways to redirect aggression. We tried with like, here’s a mat and hit the mat. But there’s a thing that I found with rough play that I was really confused about, because there’s a lot of kids foster care. I’d have even some kids who were with older, like that older, older boys in their house and some boy and like way older, like late teens, they get beat up all the time, this kid would come there and he tried to fight you every day, go home, get off the bus, run and hide and wait for people to come around and look for the look around the whole thing and come out and throw rocks and start beating you up. And like that was like, ah, violent and evil and like, like literally people would think that and I guess you know, every day like you can kind of get to that conclusion. But if you reframe it, like we honest with you, that’s exactly what I like to do in jujitsu. But I like to have this dynamic with someone where I want to try to get you and I work my body up a lot to where my heart’s pounding, and I have all this adrenaline going. And I’m with you. Like, I mean, dance like this might be some like a static dance that can get me there. Like, there’s some things that mirror that. But all of the things that I’ve never found, found an approved way to replicate that in that institution. And I still don’t, because that’s your right, all the things that you’d have to cross to get there. Like our brilliant approach could be really inappropriate and very dicey. In jujitsu To me, it’s taught me how to set physical boundaries and what they were when I was a kid, for women, and for people, really people in general, to be honest, is that my respecting you physically was keeping a distance. Unless I know, without a reasonable doubt that you want me to come in. And it’s like, I really got to know that I assume that you want me far away from you. And that feeds in anxiety and all these other things, right? And like, it almost make it harder in my relationship with women, because it’d be a lot of anxiety coming up to touch her. And then when I like, like, oh, she’ll let me do that. Right. And that’s, that didn’t seem that healthy either. But when I do jujitsu, and I found out that like, in jujitsu, something is really weird to me that there’s two things if you’re a big man, and you’re going at the small one, this is just one example. But it happens to everyone in every angle, and every way, you’re going this woman and she’s gonna do moves. And you’re balancing two things, which one is is not is trying to eliminate some of the strengths so that they can be technical, and also not patronizing and letting people do things. And it’s, that’s such a hard thing to teach somebody. And it’s a hard thing to impose on yourself and not allow yourself to screw that up a few times. But in jujitsu, it’s okay. It’s okay to a little It’s okay. As long as you in the environment responds appropriately. If you’re like, Fuck you, you just you know, you’re not good enough. That’s, that’s where it’s wrong. I didn’t even know that I
thought that
doing it was the bad part. I didn’t realize that it was how I communicated. If you were to tell me Hey, that was like you’re using a lot of your weight on there and I wasn’t able to work my moves. I didn’t know that we’re allowed to get there. jujitsu took me to do that, you know?
keevin bybee 30:02
Yeah, it’s like, it’s, it’s great. It’s a protocol and a, an environment and a vocabulary for consensual touch, you know, most white belts are going to go in and they’re the instructor or some well seasoned, wider blue belts gonna take most of the first timers so that they, you know, can feel out the spiciness. And then as they determine it safe, they’ll get to roll with more and more people. And then you learn the vocabulary. And you are gradually exposed to different people and body types. So that you learn how to adapt to different body types. Because again, the point with any one individual role is not to get as many submissions as possible, because as a, you know, six foot to 200 pound guy, I could get a lot of submissions by just squashing people. But the point is to learn jujitsu in a vocabulary. And as you get better at it, and you learn other people’s bodies, then you get to the point where it’s the the improvised dance in a way, where you each have an agreement about what’s okay and what’s not okay. And sometimes, it’s, you know, you have to say up front and be like, Hey, I’m working on this, hey, you’re icy, you’re this rank. And other times, it’s already taken for granted, because you have established that relationship over previous roles. So, yeah, 100% and it just, it takes time, it takes patience, and you know, you don’t just jump into it, either.
Wil nelsen 31:36
No. And that’s something that you realize that you could spend like a whole lifetime, trying to learn this thing and be self motivated to learn it. Because I have you when I was doing the thing with the kiddos and the the actual program that they put you through the right response training. Okay. When you go and like hands on with children, we would do that. And then we would retrain that, yeah. We would do the training. And the first time that I did the training, it’s, it’s reasonable within a workplace, I would say that, especially this kind of workplace where I’m getting, you know, not minimum wage, but I’m not getting paid a bunch of money. They hire me on and they train me for like, say, like, less than less than two weeks. Imagine if you were to go. And if I were to give you jujitsu training in two weeks an hour to like any kind of street fight out there, you’ll be able to keep yourself safe and your opponents. And it’s like, like, so I get lighter
keevin bybee 32:43
than no jujitsu, but certainly not two weeks.
Wil nelsen 32:46
And so I do that with the two weeks and the training is like, I don’t know, if you’re not for engineering, and not for being a doctor, maybe I’m assuming a lot though. But I don’t think I am the training, there’s very much like we were gonna run through this, this is boring anyways. And it really is like, I don’t like I wouldn’t just show up there to go to the training. I don’t wouldn’t go out of my way to do that. Like, if I didn’t have the job, right. This isn’t something that’s not just entertaining. I’m just not not even disciplined to get into it, and the way that it’s built and presented. It’s not even that way. Even the actors, they even make fun of where it’s like there’s an actor and they play situational. Like, oh, yeah, he just got hired in this and it’s like, really bad. Um, so I’ll do that for two weeks. And then I go into the hands on with the children. And then it’s like, when you go to do the recertification, because this is from top down, because this is you need to get recertified. It’s gonna go hands on with somebody so that you can improve your ability, and you can make sure that you understand and be safe. So you don’t fall out of training. Two weeks a year that that takes in to do anything in jujitsu that would have you have you ever went rock climbing? And have you ever done anything for two weeks out of the year, and call yourself just sufficient enough to be able to even participate in rock climbing in like a casual basis?
keevin bybee 34:07
Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s like those corporate trainings you saw in the office where you just have to click through a video and answer some questions. And you know, somebody, some bureaucrat somewhere decided to check their boxes. And again, it comes back to under resourcing the most valuable people. And so I don’t
Wil nelsen 34:24
know if I want to take a job that I have to show up to a not a jujitsu class but a right response class every day. I’m not saying that. I’m not saying it’s not just the under-resourced. Do you see the way that it’s like, okay, some reason if you didn’t, you don’t pay me. I’m going to do, I’m going to pay to go to jujitsu. But the things that I get into jujitsu are immensely helpful in the conflict with the children. Yeah, in the right responses. pretty helpful too. Yeah, are really helpful, but you would you have to pay me to go through them. In fact, not even you have to pay me, it’s you have to pay me a lot and make it really easy for me. And that’s how it is for most people, because most of the time, I’m gonna give you the thing. Yeah, for not didn’t happen for the right response. But it happened for my forklift training. They gave me all the answers. There’s like, here you go. And the most of the time people don’t value any training period for I’ve never seen anybody value a training period for work outside of like these special interests. Like if you’re going to be a climbing guide, or if you’re going to do jujitsu and you want to be a jujitsu teacher competitor. Is it like that for medical school? People like learning and wanting to practice?
keevin bybee 35:45
Well, I mean, you’re paying, you know, $70,000 a year to learn something. Yeah, exactly. So,
Wil nelsen 35:53
you know, it’s my guess herniation, though,
keevin bybee 35:56
what, right? So, you know, and what’s the fine line between, you know, what you do to not starve every day, and some people are lucky enough to combine that with something that they would do, even if they didn’t get paid to do it. So so there’s that there’s a spectrum in between of how much you love something and how much you’re, you know, you would do it to not get paid? And how much you have to put up with it. Because it’s the one thing that you can do in the moment to not starve.
Wil nelsen 36:22
But if you’re if you’re doing a job, yeah, where the skills adjacent are a recreation, I feel like you can game the system to incentivize people who recreate Oh, to do that. That’s what I’m saying. Yeah, that comes back
keevin bybee 36:37
to like educational theory in general, like, how do we make the the the information that we think is important salient, so that it is so much fun that you can’t help but want to learn it? And you know, that’s what we should do for most everything. You know, a lot of people say that we are watering down education by making it edutainment. And to some degree there is that but that’s not to say that just because it’s fun, it also isn’t learning. And the there’s just a lot of momentum into this is the way we’ve always done things. This is how you learn to do your reading, writing, arithmetic, rather than, you know, approaching each person where they are finding out where they want to go, and what they want to learn and presenting them the information in such a way that it’s so enticing, that they just can’t help but learn it. Because it’s fun. And, I mean, does that kind of does. And
Wil nelsen 37:35
as a role model to what I found is in these scenarios, coming at it from that perspective, you have people where when you notice certain kind of traits are interested in students, you’re actually able to connect the dots, because it’s like, Hey, I noticed you are really into like you like to run and I can present the running ideas of play, because I run to school every day, or I go and run on the weekends. And like I’m a real runner person, like
keevin bybee 37:59
you’re I am. That’s why it’s so important to have a mentor who the student can identify with on some level. And sometimes it’s, you know, age, gender, skin color, sometimes it’s by activity. And so yeah, having something that the student knows that the mentor has, has a similar identification and or interest and that therefore they can work as a partner, and present the information to the learner so that they’ll want to do it. And then instead, a lot of the times, what happens is, we have a prescribed way that we have to do something that children act out and have a misbehavior. And one thing that I’m really trying to train into myself is every misbehavior is really an unmet need. And so instead of calling these kids misbehaving kids finding out like why as I’m the adult here, why can’t What is it? What is it that I’m missing that I can’t see their unmet need? And so much of the time, we’re focusing on why they don’t do what we want them to do, and not why we don’t see their unmet need. There’s this really cool guy called john vagy. He’s got an amazing YouTube series, but he had a quote that says, The good parents, or the good caretakers of the parents who said, not how is this child relevant to me? But how am I relevant to this child? How am I relevant to helping this child develop a sense of regulation and the ability to pursue long term pursue long term goals and happiness? Right, so changing that perspective for the child is misbehaving to this child has has an unmet need and how am I relevant to that unmet need? Hmm,
Wil nelsen 39:53
that makes sense. And that almost like flips it flips it on its head and it makes you focus on what you can do right? As opposed to all the things that you can’t or that they’re not doing
keevin bybee 40:03
exactly make sense, exactly.
Wil nelsen 40:05
Would it be fair to look at like, like mental growth, the same way that you would like, like physical, physical growth to where I think it’s almost within anything, right? If you’re gonna lift things, or if you’re gonna, like, if you can’t balance and you’re like, Oh, I don’t want to get on a roller skates because I can’t balance it’s like, well, no, you got to start on the roller skates hold on to a support. So you, you know, you add a little balance. And then over time, you get more confident and then you can take away the support. And now you can be on something that you could not have been like is Do you find that that’s like a general principle in life.
keevin bybee 40:38
100%. So I heard you mentioned in a few of your other conversations that you have a mindfulness or kind of a meditation, breathing practice. So I do too, for the last few years. And I have been as fidgety skeptic for the longest time. And it was, once somebody presented it to me, and this is what I tried to do to present it to my patients now is, this is like push ups for your focus. We in the narrow sense, but as an example, that I think illustrates the principle, when we’re trying to harness or sharpen our attention. People have this mistaken belief that you should just be able to make your mind go blank and is anybody who’s ever attempted to sit for more than five seconds that you find that shatters pretty quickly. But instead of, you know, getting down on yourself and saying, goddamnit, I can’t make my mind go blank, what is the same thing meditation is stupid. And giving yourself negative one point, if instead, every time you notice that next thought coming in, or you notice that your butt’s uncomfortable, or you realize that your postures off, or you’re worried about what’s going to happen tomorrow you go, Oh, thank you for telling me that something may not be perfect. But for just five minutes, I’m going to breathe. And then two seconds later that next thought pops up and you’re like, thank you. That’s a distraction. But right now, I’m just breathing. And give yourself a point for every time you notice you’re distracted. You know, you totally flip the script. And then you get your your you’re noticing just how uncontrolled of our own mind we are. And that we can do push ups for your focus. And just like there’s exposure therapy for people with phobias and histories of trauma. So, yeah, and then the next question inevitably is, okay, so where do you start, you know, if you want to deadlift, 500 pounds, you don’t pick up 500 pounds, you start off with the bar or just learning how to hinge at the hips. And then also, the point is, is why do we have to deadlift isn’t the point to just be strong and have balance? What if somebody prefers to do yoga or Pilates and so just being open minded about the ways in which we approach not just physical exercise, but mental and spiritual and emotional growth? But yeah, it’s a exposure and repetition and added stress and inappropriate way. Yeah, does that
Wil nelsen 43:10
yeah, that does think of this with with physical fitness, though, if you so are, when New Year’s passes, people generally want to be healthy, and the majority of people will sign up for a gym membership. And then come February, the majority of people will not be on the gym membership. And you often see this narrative of like, you know, I want to be healthy and I want to get and I want to exercise and it’s you won’t see a majority following through the consistency right. And I’ve been in that same predicament myself.
keevin bybee 43:39
And I was like, you’re human.
Wil nelsen 43:40
Yeah, exactly. Well, I found it interesting though, when I got into martial arts and in rock climbing, that okay, more martial arts and kickboxing. So I want to do I really like to do kickboxing I love doing jujitsu kickboxing, I get gassed out quite a bit. So I was like, I was really interested in Well, how do I get faster? Or how do I go for a lot longer. And then I started to research like different kinds of running because I knew that I need to do improve my, my, my cardio, my cardiovascular system, and for its intensity and, or power and endurance. Right. Then I when I was a kid, and I did football, I hated running. I started getting into Cameron Haynes, and like learning all about him to Joe Rogan, and all that stuff. And I was on trail running school. And I did trail running, and I liked it a lot more. I kept being consistent more with it. But I was more excited about the cardiovascular gains for my kickbox. In fact, I quit smoking, without much effort because I thought, well, if I didn’t smoke, I’d be able to like, you know, get more get in like I was really motivated that way. And because I did that it went from being this physical chore, to it being a way to access greater pleasure and greater joy and all of a sudden community support to because you know, you’re, you’re doing it and then it becomes part of it. Because when you start taking, going past people you started with whatever it all feeds into itself. And then they say, but it’s interesting that was my whole goal was was fitness and health or No, I don’t think you should work out to work out. But I did notice that if you have a sedentary life, in the future, you could have a lot of chronic pain. And that could seem to impede in the quality of life. So right now, it might not, I might not have to work out. And I have to work out really hard. But for the quality of my life, it’d be a good idea to do that, just for the sake of it. I’m not very successful, and I’m not very happy. But when I found out things that I obsessed over, and that I love, ways of play, and that for some reason exercise, my relationship with exercise changed. And then I became obsessed. And I would do i do yoga, I go running, I go rock climbing and like there now there just doesn’t seem to be enough time or enough, like, I need to sleep because I got to recover. And those are the same well, so I don’t. And I find that Yeah, I don’t know what you think of that a
keevin bybee 46:14
lot of different things will also the same will. One thing that I’ve learned in the last few years is that same will that same any anybody you know, this the self, the eye is a story, the brain tells itself to try to make a continuous story of the body and the experiences that the brain lives in. And but there’s there’s a, there’s nothing inside of you that is constantly the same. So if you tried to point to where you are, there, there’s nothing that you could point to so you should the EU is the the neurologic story that your brain is telling itself that it’s updated with each new synapse that fire so just to take a step back and go Okay, so then I can be flexible with what I am, because I’m getting updated, like literally every synapse, and so I don’t have to be rigidly held. That being said, one of those survival stories I mentioned earlier is a voice that says you’re the same person you used to be. But that’s just another story. So
Unknown Speaker 47:22
I’m holding the back of the head a lot.
keevin bybee 47:24
So but but you know, we can honor that and go Okay, that’s just part of me is this voice. And intellectually I can say that it you know, I’m, I’m updating myself all the time. And then. So one of the stories I can tell myself is my best friend is me five years from now. And sometimes it’s really hard to tell that story when the the, the nicotine, dopamine story is screaming in your ear. And for some people, it’s, I don’t mean to say it was easy, but it is intuitive is recognizing that man, like if I want to be able to go five rounds, five, five minute rounds, I’m going to need to up my cardio, which means I’m going to need to run and if I’m going to do that I really got to quit the cigarettes and and the salience clicks and and you’re making friends with yourself from five years from now. And then to backtrack to the john Verve a key story like who was the adult or and maybe it was plural adults or people in your life over time are the things that you’ve accumulated that told you or showed you how to plan for that long term goal. So then, then, that long term goal pops up in your brain is one of those thoughts that is just as loud is the the nicotine. And you know, there’s a lot of things that go into that some people are neurologically wired to be like, long term planners and some people aren’t. And just you add up a bunch of little things that can tip the scale one way or the other. So if we can, you know, set people up more often in an environment where they, if they were going to be on the margins, where their long term planning might get overridden by nicotine, that they would have a few more skills to override the nicotine instead. So I hope there was a coherent thought
Wil nelsen 49:20
and there it makes sense. Yeah. There. So when you if you were to have an adult, right, and you were to look at the adults life choices, and they were to come to you with some kind of problem, right? Maybe physical problem, maybe diabetes, right. And they’re, and you know, it’s the way that they’re eating their diet. They don’t want to change. And so
keevin bybee 49:47
they want something to change. They want the pain to change, but it’s really hard for them to do some of the lifestyle changes that are going to make the pain go away. And so, you know, I can tell you what I do in an ideal world and I can tell You what I’m forced to do by the constraints of the way we live in today. And you would the Elm clinic, couple that you would talk to Oh, yeah, they were an interesting group. And I love what they’re trying to do. And so how do we make it scale where we can give people a life coach. And so there’s habits, like I said, that take 10 2030 4050 years to develop, and they just don’t melt overnight. So if we can pony up as a society, and for somebody with chronic pain due to diabetic neuropathy, or arthritis due to overweight, if we can give somebody a life coach, and not just like a 30 minute phone call every other week, but like, you know, spend a couple hours with them every day for a period of, you know, several weeks, you know, then you can make change. You know, what, what the specific prescription is, I’m sure is very individual dependent. Yeah. And you know, that’s going to cost a lot of money. So I’m not saying, you know, let’s jump on that chip. I mean, I would love to, like robots are going to be doing everything. And we’re going to actually, this is, if you prefer a quick side tangent, like, so let’s be honest, here, the robots are coming, like. So we’re going to have a lot of physical material resources. And the way that we distribute money right now, is not well suited to the fact that robots are going to be doing all of the hard manual labor, which is right now how we usually assign somebody value in life is how much physical labor Are you turning from soil into somebody else’s food or material circumstances that’s going to be done by the robots, let’s be honest, and we can be behind the curve and let Jeff Bezos own all the robots and make all the money and let all of us live in the slums. Or we can do something different. You know, I don’t, we don’t have to get into the weeds of universal basic income. But this also touches on what you mentioned before about the kids and having like the bookstore bucks, or the healthy foods store bucks, or the going to the gym bucks, we can give people something like a universal basic income, like food stamps for specific activities that we as a society think we should promote. So just a broad concept, right? So if we are if robots are going to do all the nasty work, well, what are we going to do, we’re going to take care of each other man, we’re gonna go out and we’re going to be each other’s life coaches, for people who were dealt a bad hand in the deck of life or in the in the card game of life. So, so under an ideal circumstances, we’d have enough life coaches to help the adult who’s got to unlearn a lot of resources in the real world. You know, I get somebody to come in every week, every two weeks, and I spend 2030 minutes with them. And I kind of chip away at some of the ways that they’ve been going about life or ways that they think about themselves. And in my better moments, I don’t try to guilt trip them and develop better moments. I don’t let my own ego and the fact that, you know, they’re hurting people get in the way of, they’re not listening to me, because I’m smart, and they’re stupid. So I definitely have that voice. I’m human too. And then my better moments, I get over myself. And I’m like, Yeah, it sounds like you’re going through a hard time. And this isn’t going to be easy. And I don’t have a great solution for you. But you got to spend time with them. weeks after weeks after weeks, and you chip away at things 15 and 20 minutes at a time.
Wil nelsen 53:04
Though those hard moments, I was thinking about someone recently who was talking about people, I don’t know, they’re like not to get into like the political aspect of it. I don’t care too much. But there’s that the lady who was like, I don’t want a vaccine. And then she got Coronavirus, and a bunch of CO morbidities. jus, like, die and he’s like, Oh, I want a vaccine. That guy’s like, these idiots. And I see people do that all the time. And like the climbing community might be familiar with it. I think, at least for me. Now, I’ve seen this a lot. Or it’s like these idiots this like this other that’s like dumb and like, you know, makes all these poor choices. And they’re really harsh. And like, there’s also this, like, God, such foolish like assholes and then bring crampons up there any of these kinds of things, people who even risk their own life. And like, there’s like some kind of like ability to like shit on them because they risk their own life. And usually, in these climate incidents, they’re even brought, like, how dare they put SAR into that scenario. And what I get to is, is like, you have every right to make the decisions that if you make decisions that you die, and you regret that that’s a predicament that someone goes through in their life, I’m not going to be a dick and compound it. But also like, that is part of life like you can might make decisions that will get you killed, and you might regret it in the very last moments of your life. That’s part of it. Like, even me, you know, I might wind up in that same scenario, in some bias that I didn’t account for. Just because in this realm, you know, I’m so I’m not gonna be like, Oh, you’re fucking idiot. Like, it’s like, oh, wow, they’re struggling. And I’m not gonna go on the over sympathetic, where it’s like, oh my gosh, it’s like, oh, no, life’s like, you know, I could be caring, not overly sympathetic and not unduly sympathetic, but I see people happening as Coronavirus, and then the political thing happens. I see that all the time where it’s like people are like eating their own tail. No, it’s
keevin bybee 55:00
heartbreaking. It’s it’s, it’s really heartbreaking because there’s people that are suffering, and they are lashing out at legitimately bad circumstances. And a lot of the PR around it is unfortunate. And it’s driving away people on the margins, into the camps that are only going to calcify even further the things we’re trying to change. I don’t have the right answer. And I certainly don’t want to tell people how to talk about things, it’s but I feel it’s challenging because hurting people hurt people on both sides of the aisle. And but what it comes down to is we weren’t given great survival skills, is a kid and, you know, is to the same degree that that person on the mountain got hurt, and it doesn’t make sense to shit on them. What we need to do is how do we learn from this and take the lessons forward so that fewer people don’t bring their crampons next time? How do we intervene in this cycle of pain so that fewer children end up in a spot where they’re either going to be victims, or they’re going to be victimizers, and that’s, I think that’s where we want to shift the focus, not so much on blaming any individual for what they did or what they failed to do, but acknowledging that they’re human, and they’re going to have, there’s going to be costs that they might have to pay as an individual, but really focusing on how we as a society can learn from that and make sure that there’s like 20%, fewer those people in the next generation. Yeah,
Wil nelsen 56:41
and that’s because that’s where I get to with adults specifically, you can’t, you can almost get to a point with someone where it’s like, you would have to force their hand. And I don’t want to ever force anyone’s hand. But with children, I can always get to the point to where there’s the that learning and that onboarding phase, where they’re like, they’re consuming all their sponges, and people who are suffering or make or in indecision, our perfect role models and mentors in the opposite way. And without them, it would all be imagined. So that I think there’s an opportunity there to learn to learn from those because I deal with like, like my, you know, My son, his mom, she’s a, she goes to She’s a former alcoholic, and she struggled with addiction throughout like this whole life up till now, and then could be in and out of it in the future, which I’d hope not, it’s like, a few months in. But then my dad says, I grew up kind of a similar thing where he come in and out all the time, but with like math and stuff, and you hope and hope that those people change. But the best thing that I could do is, is like me as a, or as a parent is to be able to inform the youth, and then hope that that adult in their own time because they have that freedom of choice. I believe in that. And I have a real hard time with that sometimes, because there’s some ways that that implicates my community that like if your freedom of choice if you’re should you use drugs next to my school, okay, if you can’t use drugs next to my school, where should you use drugs in my community? And like, if you use drugs, they’re like, Are you allowed to sleep there? If you’re not allowed to sleep there, then were you allowed to sleep my community? Does it have to be in the house or not? If it has to be in the house? Do I have to put your mouse and like, so all all those things, and with adults is very confusing with children. It’s like, no, someone has to be responsible for the care, and they have to care for the child and you have to have an education. So I can work with that. And I can allow these adults in the room to be able to come to their own conclusions and protect me and everyone else in the community and even them
keevin bybee 58:44
100% because, you know, in the United States, some people might say to a fault, like we value individual freedom, but I mean, I think there’s a tremendous value there. And it certainly has its cost. And I just like you said, and I think that’s a great way to frame it. If we take care of those kids and really resource those kids then it unloads that emotional burden of I can’t live in adults life for them, and I really don’t want to, like you know, forcefully shove them into one place or another. I mean, short of like, true safety concerns. Yeah. And but if we can take care of our kids, then I think it really helps ease that moral qualms. Right.
Wil nelsen 59:28
Yeah, I think so too.
keevin bybee 59:29
I mean, that’s if you’ll permit me a quick insertion I mean, that’s why you know, as a family doctor, what so you know, a I’ve, I’ve had a lot of luck dealt to me and it’s, I’m very grateful for my parents and where I’ve where I’ve come from, and, you know, as much as bad people who have gotten bad luck didn’t earn where they’re at. I certainly haven’t earned where I’m at other than being able to recognize opportunities and take advantage of them and try to not hurt people. In the process and so now I’m at the spot where? How can we feed forward? Some of this luck and to process the vicarious traumas I see from some of the patients that I’ve seen in my clinic, like, you know, why don’t we, again, as a society pony up and make something like our local public school, a 24, seven, triage, and then robustly fund and resource mental health and social working, keep those at the school, so we don’t have to pull kids out of school to go to their therapist, the therapist is already there. And then we can’t kick kids out of school for being behaviorally disturbed, because their therapist is already there, and our teachers are already helping to co regulate kids. So yeah,
Wil nelsen 1:00:48
that’s, and I think it’d be really interesting to be able to, on top of that, take your all your recreationalists in your own community and overlay that as a, you know, framework within the school systems for not just a professional life, but also, you know, for I guess hobbies would be the word or recreation, whatever it is, because like I like you said, one thing that you said is interesting is like, we have a specialization, you have like your doctor, right? But like, that doesn’t cover all your basis. And in terms of personal development, it doesn’t. That’s kind of what I was talking about jujitsu earlier. And even like, you know, if you had like recreation box or anything like that, there’s like a amount of character development that comes from recreation. And you said even earlier, when it’s like, you know, maybe it’s not lifting, but it’s yoga. That’s exactly my point is where you’re able to have a thing where, you know, I like what I like, will likes what I like, and I’m going to go do that. And if you guys are interested in taking, seeking mentorship, and learning this thing, then you can spend that and I can make more of a living off of that and bring what I’m interested in what I’m passionate. And when you come into my doors after you’re done with your general education, or whatever, I am the most passionate were the top 10 passionate people in this whole community on this.
keevin bybee 1:02:06
Somehow it seems like we might be able to merge like a social good with somewhat of a market system. Yeah, no, I feel 100%. Like, that’s such an interesting way to do that. Because you’ve got specialists who already know how to do a thing. And you can’t bring all of that into the schools. But if you can, like at least have the schools kind of be have these things around the satellite of the school and have a smorgasbord or a palette of options for the kid to choose from rather than today. In gym, we’re doing basketball or dodgeball if we really want to make certain kids so
Wil nelsen 1:02:42
that’s what I had with like, so a thing I brought one in, he was like, well, there’s YMCA when I found out when YMCA is I don’t know what it’s like here in Portland. But we’re where I was at. It’s like, they have they in a bigger town. They have like trailblazers and stuff, but where I’m at, it’s just the pool in the gym. And I my son’s not allowed to do weightlifting, because he’s too young. But then I redo all the research and I find that
keevin bybee 1:03:08
yeah, that the conservatives and like we said before exactly and
Wil nelsen 1:03:12
like and you even find that the by the way if you got kids that are prepubescent, any developments that you make pre pubescent Lee, you, you you while you’re a doctor, so but you, you get those those benefits, and then they exponentially grow from there. And it’s like, it’s almost like kicked in testosterone in some way to where you keep those benefits you’ve accrued throughout your
keevin bybee 1:03:34
whole life. Once again, another tied to physical, intellectual, mental life, like you look at a five year old, how long does it take them to pick up a second language instantaneously? How long does it take me is a 30 year old fucking the rest of my goddamn life zactly. So like the same one, I just tend to tie into that point that you teach kids how to do something young, and their nervous system is just wired for it.
Wil nelsen 1:03:54
Yeah, even climbing is like a really good example. Because now you have children who are able to, you know, meet adults almost in their climbing ability to know that actually, in fact, they can. And you know, and it’s like, you see, like, a 10 year old, I think I forget what her name was, but she was like climbing 513 514 and it’s like, Whoa, and whatever she gets out of that, you know, psychologically and emotionally I can only imagine, you know, and the thing is, with the it almost seems though, like volun having something that’s meaningful to you and voluntary. Though that seems like it’s intrinsically important. And I don’t mean for everything, but at least something. And it’s like, that’s something that I wrestled with, like what’s the meaning of life? And I really think that’s like, the modern way to frame that or, like, on the kids level is like, you know, what do you what do you want to do? Like, and I don’t, when I was a kid, I didn’t have the opportunity. I grew up in a place where I didn’t have all of like those things. I basically did BMX and I got really into BMX, my dad has a bike team, we would explore the whole West Coast race. Get all these like, you know, trophies and stuff. And then I didn’t have any of that. And I didn’t have a peer group to identify with. And I started getting really into drugs and like, you just doing a lot of crazy stuff and having kids when I was really young. And I seen what that was like when I didn’t have that peer group. And I didn’t have a sense of meaning and purpose in my life, or a place that I belong outside of my family structure. Everything fell out from under me. And then I could only imagine that with like, what I was telling you about running earlier, I found out by the way, that trail running doesn’t just do it for me. If I can go off trail or over like some technical like a steep thing. That’s what I’m really excited at least once in the running, so I have something to look forward to. But if it’s like flat on the road, or a flat trail, I quit sometimes, and I get in my head about it. But I realized that instead of just saying no matter what, you will succeed, we’ll make it and you’ll do your goal. I was like, how can I set myself up for success and to thrive. And so I found that, like on this there’s an adventure race in Alaska, where you have to go from point A to point B and you can’t use any vehicles, but you can use foot skis, packraft, maybe bike and in there’s like no roads, and there’s like rivers you got across, like, figure it out. Ah, that’s just like so much fun. And like I was trying to do like the run around St. Helens. And that was a course it’s all planned out for you as Candace. She does like the big foot two hundreds and stuff. So she puts this went on. And I had so much trouble doing that. And I thought that I’m just terrible. I put all the training in blah, blah, blah. And I realized that like
Unknown Speaker 1:06:39
hospital, oh,
Unknown Speaker 1:06:43
Doctor, baby. Yeah, I
Wil nelsen 1:06:45
just learned that if I could set myself up to success and thrive. And that that is such a unique scenario in which you would want to push yourself, athletically, or maybe do something uncomfortable. I guess that’s what I would say just uncomfortable. And it took me not, it’s not just running that did it. For me, it was so like, sometimes I could run into it. But that would be to look forward to that weekend when I finally get to do the way I wanted to run. And so like even if I could, it wasn’t from telling myself you need to run, you need to run more. You know, this is why I couldn’t just trick myself and convince myself, I found a way to set it up. So that I craved it. And if you took it away from me because I had appointments or anything like that, that would be difficult for me to deal with. And like in so that’s where I find like I love what you talked about. Were giving the person the freedom to be able to figure out in which way do they want to? What kind of recreation or what kind of way Do they want to push themselves physically, you know, emotionally and mentally to, and there’s so many things in our society, I don’t think you have to confine that too much. I think we can find it more than we need to.
keevin bybee 1:08:10
Exactly. And that’s the beauty of being in 2021 with, you know, YouTube. And so my dad is like the kind of guy that’s been like reading books and learning at a college level. Like since he got out of medical school, like just reads and fucking reads and then reads and reads. And they get scary what to think what he would have been like if he had YouTube and Wikipedia at his fingertips. 13 right. So this is why I’m super stoked and very optimistic for the kids coming up today is if we can give them the tools on how to curate their information experience. Like what is it that they’re not going to know? And what activity are they not going to have access to a just speaking for myself? You know, like if I had instead of having my high school football coach from middle of nowhere, Iowa teach me how to weight lift when I was 16 instead had some of the best calisthenics teachers tell me how to actually use my body and rehab and I wouldn’t be 40 and in fucking pain today. I Well, maybe I would, because I’m still I still like to overdo it. But you know what, Yeah, I know. Exactly. And, and it’s great. I love to hear how you like no, you’re like know how to push your limits in a healthy way. And, and in a way that is engaging, and it’s exciting to think that we can give that to more people, right?
Wil nelsen 1:09:37
And it’s trying to figure out different ways to make that accessible because what I find is is like that narrative is really important. In in the sense that when I if we were to go out running and I have all these, you know, certain expectations, I might never be able to access a different version of running that would actually ignite me you know, in light Because when I was a kid, like, even further stretches like I would it’s a beautiful, you know, spring almost summer like day, I can’t even see clouds out here,
Unknown Speaker 1:10:08
I would change,
Wil nelsen 1:10:10
I would have been I know, right, I would have been inside of my house, getting really high and playing video games all day when I was a kid, and it was like, and that’s exactly what I wanted to be doing. But what I do in a in a very Actually, I’m gonna try to be as honest as I can. And I said, it sounds a little bit contrived. I mean, that meaning that I don’t think I’m coming from a place where I’m trying to prove anything, I think I’m being honest, is that the highs and the highs that I’ve experienced, probably because of the lows two, are more intense and nourishing than when I did play the video games. And I don’t know if that’s a developmental thing. Or if it’s because of how intense these experiences are. Because, like fighting in an abstract video game is like one thing, but doing like jujitsu and learning to build up all that and get into the intensity of you know, years of practice. It’s like a whole nother thing. It’s, it’s like isn’t as deep in it as you can get in video games now only now pale in comparison to that to what my son’s like, why don’t you want to play this? Oh, that’s it is as an adult. It’s not even that video games suck. It’s that I’ve found things that have like, connected me with me in a deeper and fulfilling way. And so now when I engage with video games, it’s like, it feels like on a lower line. It doesn’t connect with me like that. And it’s not because video games are less important to me. It’s that I realized that there is a greater importance out there. Hmm. Yeah,
keevin bybee 1:11:52
great insight. I love where you’re going with there. And the What an interesting thing about you know, video games especially is you know, what makes them so engaging, especially in today’s world where there are so many people are disempowered, like, we don’t have a lot of avenues for people to explore themselves and develop meaning. You know, the, the college loan crisis is just like a really easy example of how I go to college get a job. Well, we all see how much bullshit that is now and what a video games provide. They provide rules, they provide a chance for advancement, and they provide a sense of meaning. And when you then are able to step out of that and find meaning and advancement in things that exist in you know, if this is indeed the real world, that that simulated world becomes a little less salient again. And so
Wil nelsen 1:12:56
if you were ever like famous Listen, I think about their kid and they’re like, Oh, I’m concerned kid plays Minecraft. One thing that I had like a lot of Minecraft so all they do is like, oh, someone put it in a funny thing with like, caps. Like, Oh, you want a cat? Let’s be weird to tell my kid I see you’re making some really cool structures over there. Listen, I don’t want you to be doing that anymore. I want you to go and it’s like, oh, yeah, they are like, if you take away like the video game label of it, you see what they’re doing on a very general terms in this like creating and if they’re playing online with people, this community driven socializing, all these things, but what I found in in in Minecraft, I like to take my son backpacking, okay, and backpacking, I find that especially if you get into foraging for like mushrooms, and then you get into wildlife, maybe if you maybe do a little hunting, but we’ll just stick with foraging. That’s like, you know, Where’s Waldo. It’s like, the whole thing. It makes it interesting because you walk along and you’re looking for things to try to put together like evidence to find, you know, maybe some mushrooms, and you got to identify it. So it’s, you know, you’re safe, and you know, it’s Morales, and then you get the Morales, and it tastes amazing. And you got to hike and do all these things. For for a kid, I tried to introduce a kid to that, and they like that. But the it’s, it’s usually overwhelming. Because there’s a lot going on, and I can make it Oh, let’s just go forward gene. Oh, let’s just go back back. Right. And sometimes that’s even a lot going on, because maybe it’s too boring. Right? Maybe that’s overwhelming too much space. And so and it’s also to go backpacking, maybe most families can only do that a few times a year. But Minecraft is adjacent to backpack In my opinion, because if my son and I were to go off and we’re gonna go and do our own resources and everything, we’re going on a literal adventure. And like him and I are having to go get a reset. We’re having to do a lot of the basic things you’re doing back looking for things, you know, putting a plan together, working together. I feel like if he was interested in more Minecraft than fortnight, then you know, bang, bang, bang shooting. Maybe I should take him back back. But if he’s interested in more fortnight Also more jujitsu. Because you see, we’re like this in the abstract realm, there is immediate parallels to every kind of game. Because a game is just an abstract representation of whatever it is that we do in real life, or whatever recreation we can do in real life. And then I’d say recreation is an abstraction is a pretend version of whatever real thing we might have once had to do in life. And so I reel it back to like, oh, what kind of games does my son like? And then I could look at the real world activities I can introduce them to. And when he gets overwhelmed with backpacking, I’m like, just playing Minecraft. That’s okay. Wait,
keevin bybee 1:15:40
yeah, exactly. That I that was beautifully put. I hadn’t made that connection, either. But, I mean, definitely, the layers of abstraction are need to keep in mind. And again, if they’re doing something we don’t like, what is their unmet need? And how white we meet that need in a way that also feels good to us? Or should I check myself and make sure I’m just not getting upset at them? Because if I have some on examined baggage myself, that’s
Wil nelsen 1:16:07
and that’s exactly what I think because I meet a lot of parents, ah, stupid YouTube, ah, dumb video games. And I’m just like, and I like think of that. And then I look at my own self. And I reflect. And I remember, because I was the kid who was playing video games when I was younger, because I grew up in them 26 like, and I’m just like, you know, I’m like, your, this is like one of the families they’re like, on their outside guy that they go and talk about, and they’re like, talk to their kid like that. And I’m just like, like thinking in my head, you know, it was like your kid, but even more when I was younger, right? Isn’t that interesting. And then I reflected on my Vizio, my son. What I found, though, also was, you know, when I was doing the video game thing, I played a game called Final Fantasy. And he had to read a lot. In Final Fantasy, I would do book reports at the time. And for some reason, like, during that time, my life, I like to read the book. And so I’d go to Cliff Notes to find all the ways to cheat through it, and stuff. And I didn’t, I love Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy was actually the thing that taught me how to read really well. And even during the time when I was supposed to be focusing on the school, putting off the school playing the game, but that reading that was required there gave me access to my English was just kept, kept accelerating forward. And it really helped later on in my life. And I saw that those things, were helping me, you know, build skills that were pertinent and relative to actual life, you know, of course, too much of anything can be destructive, but that’s a different conversation. And I think it’s more important for the person to have a realization, and then a conversation if they’ve taken something too far.
keevin bybee 1:17:46
Yeah. You know, you bring up another neat point. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this book called The diamond age by an author Neil Stevenson. It’s a sci fi book. Oh, it’s super cool. So the basic premise is, they come up with a, the subtext is a young lady’s primmer. And it’s imagine an iPad that could take an illiterate person to reading through picture stories. And then, once you learn to read, you can literally do anything. So this, this book teaches a young street urchin how to read how to program how to do math, how to do martial arts, because like, the through through gamification, and like, it’s not technically inconceivable, right? And so how can we, you know, maybe if instead of dumping trillions of dollars into like, different technologies that we can use to bomb brown people for oil? What if we decided to turn the iPad into something that could turn illiterate people into literate people in any frickin language? Right?
Wil nelsen 1:18:48
That would be wild, and then exponentially that would help everything else around them.
keevin bybee 1:18:53
So instead of dropping bombs, you just drop iPads? Yeah. Grab the parachutes in my pads down, learn to read, right? Yeah.
Wil nelsen 1:19:02
When you have. So if you if someone were to have a person, or or, or Yeah, I guess person, adult or a kid, and they were going through like, you know, their own form of trauma or their life felt very disorganized and they’re looking for some, some something like some direction is there any kind of advice that you give to somebody who’s like, just looking for at least one one step to take in the right direction that’s very personal. Or at least how you recommend that other person be supporting to someone like that in their life. You know,
keevin bybee 1:19:38
you’re you are hurting right now. And you’re hurt is legitimate, you feel the way you feel, and you’re not making it up. And the bad things that happened to you are not your fault and I may not have the answer right now, but I am here to sit with you. And if you feel comfortable sharing your story, and if you’re comfortable, perhaps allowing me to suggest somebody else to talk to who is much better at listening than I am.
Wil nelsen 1:20:27
Yeah, that Yeah, to have someone to talk to. That’s what helps so much is to have somebody to be able to just to listen, right.
keevin bybee 1:20:35
And we’re so many people are conditioned, or we’re never given the vocabulary to share appropriately. So my wife is Italian. And so like, recognizing that stereotypes are just that, but just for the sake of illustration, she’s a woman, she’s Italian. And she knows how to talk. She has an intense, tight relationship with, you know, a dozen other women and they talk about parenting, and life, and, you know, sex and all the things that make life difficult and things that they can do to help each other out and think about that. I talk about sci fi and movies and exercise with my friends. I don’t talk nearly enough about my shortcomings as a dad and how I can learn from other dads how to be a better dad, and this isn’t Mom, dad thing, but just as an illustration, because that’s, I’m speaking to you from my experience. And then, you know, extrapolate that the other day, I had a patient who he has really bad heart failure, and therefore he can’t move very well. So he is I hesitate to use the word depressed, but just so somebody has something to think about, then he’s over eating, and now his knees hurt. And he then because his knees hurt, he’s moving less. And so there’s a bunch of vicious cycles, stacking up on top of each other. And I was like, Hey, listen, I know that what you’re going through is hard. And sometimes we need to tell our story to somebody else to come up with some practical life skills. I even tried to present this is like, maybe you should see a health coach. He’s like, just No, I’m like, What do you mean, just No, no, I’m not going to talk about this with anybody else. And so this was not one of my finer moments, I took that personally, like, he’s not going to listen to me, because he doesn’t like me as a person, you know, in retrospect, and then two minutes later, when I apologize to him for being a little less sensitive about it. I tried to guilt trip him into seeing a therapist, it doesn’t work, by the way. So I apologized right afterwards. And then, but just as an example of how many people were not given the tools to talk about themselves to themselves, let alone another person. And so God, I don’t know, if I had a point there other than just recognizing that sometimes it’s really hard just because we weren’t given the tools to talk about it.
Wil nelsen 1:22:56
Yeah, I feel like talking about it is probably one of the most important things. I I’ll go into that with my my former coach, how we had a falling out, because they split up. And then I slept with his ex girlfriend, and we’re working in the office together. And like, he talked to me prior to that, it’s like, I don’t think this is I don’t want you to do that kind of thing. Because that’s like, Hey, don’t don’t do anything with her, you know, because we’re friends. And like, I’m, I don’t I think that would be not okay, I didn’t ask because I was thinking about that. My whole thing is, is like I really like when I can have a relationship with the opposite sex, especially somebody who is might be very physically persuasive. Right, very attractive. But to be able to have a friendship, and to be able to build the relationship as a friend. Because I feel like that is a skill to be able to have the discipline to put off any kind of like your, if you’re attracted to someone, and in your friendship, or your romantic interest in your platonic relationship are two different things. And I feel like, like I look at almost sometimes I wonder if people who were like shawls and stuff like that, for like, for like Muslim culture, if historically, men for some reason were originally not to be able to or not the to be imposed, to have self control, or even the self control was a philosophical thing. That was understood. And so then it were to be imposed on to another person. And then looking at now how high level of self control like what you were, we even talked about trying to teach us how, how much of a high level we have developed with that. Right? And I believe that it’s good to practice things like that to improve because you can improve on many things. And so I that was what that was, and I was very confident in that in the sense that I had no ulterior motives and I was celibate for five years too. So I, that goes forward and she becomes she’s, I’m supposed to teach her how to do sales. So she moves into my office. Now we’re an office, it’s the size of this in an enclosed space, and it’s just her and I. And there were, she would do some things that were She sounds weak, because if I said, it doesn’t sound like I could, like, be making that up, but she said, she’d seduce me. And then I go along with it. But in my head, I would go back and forth, I’d have that there was a part to me, I was like, Hey, you shouldn’t be doing this, because this person doesn’t think it’s okay. And then I’d wrestle with Well, now, other people would, you know, and the thing that I thought is, you should go and talk to somebody. And I’m like, No, I’m not gonna go talk to somebody. Because if I talk to somebody, I’ve asked friends, to tell me, this is a terrible idea. It’s all like not. And so anyways, that is just exacerbated, and I and I wound, and I wound out. And then I would side with that the worst part of myself in that sense, because I really wanted to do jujitsu, my son really liked to jujitsu there with the guy disagreed with that part. But all those other things were important in my friendship is important. So I folded on those values. But if I were to talk to somebody about it, I would have been able to get that perspective. And I would have been able to work it out and be honest with myself. And then I found myself contradicting my values later on. And I always thought, Well, what could you what could you have done there? Because I didn’t want this to happen. The she basically we had a we had sex. And then the next day, she told him, because it was they had a really weird relationship. And so he got really angry. And they I wasn’t allowed at the gym every day, my son was allowed to jujitsu his favorite thing. And I’m like, Oh, no. And I was just reflecting on that. Because like, I genuinely was celibate, in my genuine plan was that and that’s how I felt about her is that I that was a real friend, because I never want to be I’ve been cheated on my whole life. I’ve never cheated on anybody. I never wanted to be that person. And I kinda was that person. So I’m like, how did you change there? So one thing that I learned is that if I’m ever going through a hard time, the first thing that I do is, is I go and I talk to somebody about it. Because the weirdest thing is, is whatever thoughts come up into my own head, maybe this is what it’s like, for like all of Germany. Because not everyone in Germany, who is committing all those atrocities must have been a vile human being.
But maybe this is exactly something that could happen, a little push, a little push, a little push, no check ins with consensus reality. And I convinced myself that this is appropriate, okay. And then I realized that that’s not my worldview, and I regret all of that. And I think about that a lot. And that’s my biggest thing with my son is like, just please like, I don’t care what you decide to do. I care that you communicate with me, right? Because you could tell me and you could tell me you’re doing math, like, but the consequences of not telling me and doing math are a lot worse than me knowing that you’re doing that.
keevin bybee 1:28:08
Yeah, and, you know, making sure that they on a subconscious intuitive level, know that those channels are open, it’s one thing to say those words, but have we put in the work, so that our kid, their first instinct is to share it. And then and that’s tough, and I’m learning how to do that better with my first son, you know, in my attempt to help him avoid some of my own pitfalls. I’ve been pretty, pretty hard on him, and it’s coming back to bite me. But it’s good, because I’m taking that as an opportunity to reflect and I’ve, you know, I’m in, I’m in therapy for that personally, and just then, you know, it would kill me to have my son do something and feel that he wasn’t safe to come talk to me. The
Wil nelsen 1:28:54
pitfalls are what I was talking about death earlier and people with crampons is because we get so caught up in trying to alleviate people from the potential reality of downward spiraling or dying, that we end up doing some really fucked up things to those people or to those groups of people in the name of that. And then we become tyranny as a result of progress.
keevin bybee 1:29:15
Right, in the name of progress even right,
Wil nelsen 1:29:18
and you think everything that you’re doing is all in the name of your ultimate good dude, I’m
keevin bybee 1:29:22
sure Hitler’s thought he was the good guy. And
Wil nelsen 1:29:24
that’s what I think about a lot in that sense, because I like I say, a lot of the things that I do with my son, when I explicitly lay out how he’s going to do and how it’s going to be done. Obviously, not taking out the trash, but like, you know, caps and how he’s going to operate his life and his values. It’s just, just stet corruption just sneaks right in there. Um,
keevin bybee 1:29:47
well, so you mentioned that like telling your son how it’s going to be done. So there’s a great book by this woman called Alison gopnik called the gardener and the carpenter. Ooh. So in terms of caregiving for Children, you know, you don’t measure twice and cut once on your child, right? You’re, there’s something that’s going to grow. And if you have control over anything at all, what very little control we do have is the environment in which they might grow through. And so really trying to shift, and for me, this is very, very difficult because I’m very much a linear kind of rigid person, how can I cultivate a place for my kid to grow into the person he’s going to grow into regardless, and as opposed to trying to force him into something that is my plan, and not his.
Wil nelsen 1:30:38
And I think that’s what you do with people in general. And that’s what we talked about the exercise thing, and then also teaching people how to pursue a quality life. And how it’s, it’s rife with issues when you explicitly lay it out for them. And then I just get into the quandary where it’s like, you know, I see sometimes with like school boards and stuff, and they have like, the best interests, and it seems that the more people are involved in the more thinking think tanks that are involved, it becomes more and more disconnected from the actual children itself, and more and more ideological. And like, for on whatever it could be raised, it could be it could be even how bullying is taken care of fully ideological, and you see that the people who are setting these things aren’t actually bumping in to the boundaries. And that’s why I say like someone who is I find that with the Gracie combatives. Right, is very interesting with how they deal with bullying. And like how jujitsu in relationship to bullying. Right? I think that’s an amazing thing. You know, and I even think that in terms of domestic violence, to where as like you continually empowering the individual to find more ways to preserve their own safety, and to move more towards their sense of meaning and, and to improve their life a little bit more in the way they want to, and it’d be hard to say, well, oh, everything is gonna go to hell in a handbasket. Because, like, how do you improve things for the worse, like, I don’t, if that, if that makes sense. Like, you have a thing with kids. And it’s like, if I just let you do, and this is important, it’s not necessarily whatever you want. But if I just let you on guided, right, then like, you’re just gonna chase all your nascent, there’s this like,
keevin bybee 1:32:12
you definitely put the like, when you go bowling, you know, the first time you go bowling, you definitely put the bumper plates out so that the they don’t gutter ball every time and they can learn
Wil nelsen 1:32:24
how to drill, you know, you don’t make the drill before you go and throw the ball.
keevin bybee 1:32:28
It’s not no damage. And it’s not a rigid prescription. Right. It’s, it’s, it’s it’s a balance, and it’s dynamic. And it’s tough. And a lot of our intuitions are not well suited. A lot of the ways that we were parented, we’re not well suited. Have you heard of this podcast? hardcore history? Yeah. So he, he does a side show called hardcore history of denim, and there was one called suffer the children. And that he basically laid out the point that if you consider everything that was considered good parenting up until, I don’t know, call it 1980. By post 1980 standards was basically child abuse. So if you imagine that literally every single person who has ever been alive, up until then still through 1980, and even today is the product of child abuse, we are an entire civilization, that is the product of child abuse, and so so are in our intuitions are sufficiently good for surviving on the African savannas, at enough rate to replace the age at which we die. We don’t know what our internal organs are, we don’t know how our brain works. And if we just rely on our intuitions, we’re going to keep like digging holes for ourselves. But we can learn how our brain works. We can learn how our body works, we can learn how we work socially, we can, you know, come up with scientific boundaries about what are the conditions under which circumstances, people will end up acting in certain ways, both good and bad. And, you know, I use those terms pretty loosely, but just for the sake of, you know, illustration, we can we can set boundaries, scientifically, to get behaviors that we think are good, and I don’t mean to make us all automatons, but I’m valuing the subjective experience here. We can take reports on people’s subjective experience, include that in the data, and, you know, get to a point where we’re, we’re using subjective experience as the objective function in some optimization program of the human project. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah,
Wil nelsen 1:34:47
absolutely. And I think that’s the thing that we have, that’s often missing because right now, our institution like the school institution, mainly covers the objective experience and then the industrial demands of society. Right, and everything else is just completely skips over. But then again, that’s where I thought like in Idaho, it was interesting. I had like if you if you had a family, because your family teaches you about like philosophy, right, and they give you the the emotional intelligence, coping skills, how to orientate themselves in the world to some degree. And I thought that when I was in Idaho, because I didn’t really have very much of that, that, well, this, the school should provide some of that, right. And this is where I was thinking about, though, with having the that free market from your, the your community members is that I thought the school should be part of that. And then I thought it was interesting as from a parent’s standpoint, that people oscillate between two things. And it’s like, it’s the nuclear family, and then the full trust in the institution. And so what I what I found, though, is is that if you were to have this so in so far, the current institution that we have, is insufficient, in its full scope. And the the one thing that I found is real is the golden mean, where if you know, you try to guess what’s in the jet, like in the jar, jelly beans, and then everybody and everybody, like, tries to guess, and nobody’s really right. But if you add them all up and divide them by how many people are there averages to write about the right answer? What’s the nuclear family that works pretty well? Pretty well, because, right, because that’s how that works. The average of the nuclear family works pretty well. But it does not account for all of the traumas and the extremes. But the institution doesn’t act like that, as they are set up now. In even if you were to create like the like school boards and things like that, the way that those those ideas are generated and the way that people participate in that. I don’t think it’s consistent with the with the needs of people in the community. I think there’s something that isn’t the nuclear family, and something that isn’t the educational institution that is missing in there. What I found interesting about jujitsu gyms, but it wasn’t Jiu Jitsu, I think it was about a person having their own business, and you have the freedom to be able to sign up and go or not. And if they don’t, if they do something illegal, you can call the cops on them. But they don’t have to operate in the strict rigidity of their, their thing like gymnastics kind of does, because they can’t do parkour, I guess, because they insurance is shit. So he’s, that’s where the school kind of sometimes gets to. And in how I see it as when you do like, how am I how am I think how programs are developed in these recreations compared to how programs are developed in an institution seems very limiting that the institution side, and it doesn’t seem to be very adaptable to the individual. And from the family point of view, you could see it as the state, it always gets, often gets perceived as the state and is more state control. But with more private institution in the state, providing people to be able to allocate their funds in the private institution, I think it empowers your community members, and empowers adults who want to participate, to be able to set up shop, to vie for the available dollars that are around for the community members. And then I think it gets put off from this is the state trying to put more control because I was like, wouldn’t that be weird if the state taught all the kids what’s right and wrong? You know what I mean? It’s like, and I’m not that way. But like, if I’m just taking that frame of mind,
keevin bybee 1:38:39
there’s certainly a risk there. And we can see historical examples of how that’s gone awry. But I mean, you know, I’m a huge fan of Andrew Yang, and not to make it super political, but he’s one of the few people that like, actually think. But that’s his point is that you put money in from the bottom, and then people will use it within the community in a very independence and liberty minded way. So 100%, I resonate very highly with what you’re talking about. And so that, you know, the this and then the balance between like some institution, either state school or whatever, and the nuclear family in one sense. I mean, the nuclear family is another one of those relatively new institutions like again, so Dunbar’s number like that, for the vast majority of our evolutionary time period is homosapiens. We lived in 150. Person hunter gatherer group, so our brain and real quick to set some context here. If you look at all of the primates, and especially the higher primates, chimps, bonobos, gorillas, the size of their cerebral cortex by volume is directly correlated with the maximum size of their tribe. And if you quote if you extrapolate that to human beings and the size of the cortex, On this graph, it’s about 150. People. If you look at archaeological and anthropological data on hunter gatherers, they almost always top out at 150 people. Then when you look at a lot of major organizations in human institutions, the centurion, the army company, 100 150 people, so there’s a reason for this, our brain is capable of knowing intimately, well, 150 people, we now live in cities that are vast beyond that. So it gets very easy to dehumanize each other, because we’re beyond our Dunbar’s number. And that’s what happens is we dehumanize each other. Once there, there were 150 people removed from any individual. And so the nuclear family is a byproduct of agriculture. And so once we had patriarchal we needed to keep women like owned by the man so that we knew that the child that came out of the woman was with high probability due to the sperm that came from the dude so that he can pass on his land to the next person. That’s an all by that’s a byproduct of agriculture. So that’s the birth of the nuclear family when in fact, children were literally raised by the community like in the in the industrious hunter gatherer group. So how can we leverage that neurological fact, with with today’s society, and so we like the nuclear family is kind of important. It’s a useful adaptation, I don’t want to destroy it by any means. But just recognizing that it’s just one way to do things. And it’s so that we can be flexible. And again, just acknowledge what we are neurologically, we can leverage that information to organize ourselves and a little bit more enlightened way.
Wil nelsen 1:41:34
That’s interesting, because I even found that when you start getting to the point to where your community is disconnected from the educational community, or your local educational communities, especially when people are, are attending that community, then I could see where a lot of that gets shut off. And that is very much the state. Or if we’re to remove all the things that would be like if you were to have a tribe, and then your child to go off to the other tribe, of unknown values, and unknown, you know what I mean, and they are imposing all their things on there. And it has nothing to do with the nuclear family. But I could see where if it’s like getting taught at what would neurologically feel like another community. And by that principle, and all the things that might be of that other community, because that’s so many different unknowns, and now they’re raising their own. Yeah, child in that sense. And then you feel that disconnection, because I get this thing, even now, when people talk about the state, I always found it interesting that in terms of education, really, how much of your, of your understanding of the world do you actually imprint upon your child, especially when they go off into school? And I don’t mean that, like, well, we should do more of that, and the government should do so that institutions should do less of that. I just mean that, like, I think about this now, as an adult, how do I cope with anxiety and all these other things, I’m having conversations with my 16 year old mom about this, and things that I’m like, she’s learning from me, and I’m learning from her. And more than like, peer to peer, right? She didn’t, she’s learning some of the things that I’ve struggled with for a while, and I didn’t get help with I can talk to my son about that. And I we’ve introspective conversations with my son, and I’ve inspected conversations, but all three of us even, um, I say that my mom was never involved in any of that kind of stuff. And the people, maybe it was the demographic I was in, they weren’t really involved with that with their kiddos. And it was mainly you know, like relaxing with the kids and then from from your work and then from your learning. And that was to the extent of it, by the time you’re no you’re in like elementary school, getting to sixth grade and middle school and high school, and then all that kind of falls away. And I feel like when you get into the like, interactions and your kids do things, it’s like a teenager, right? It’s like I feel like that that teacher student relationship I feel like it disintegrates far before they become an adult. And it’s not anything to do with school or anything like that. I feel like the relationship what it’s like it feels like by the time you’re five you know and then there’s no like implicit teaching roles that can take and I know we talked about like, you’re going to be grounded in you got to treat your sister I got to do your chores and stuff but I’m think I’m talking like stoicism and like you know, lifestyle all of these things and like religion and stuff like that. It just doesn’t feel like or maybe I just didn’t get that in my friends didn’t get that that there was a lot of attention put that as like parents it’s like oh, you’re five you know or like you’re six you know most of the works done I just got to make sure you’re safe and you’re not partying or whatever right but I’ve realized now like there’s there’s a lot of shit there’s philosophy there’s like and to connect with my son as he gets older is like Oh, you’re able to climb now you like to do jujitsu? What’s competing like to you? How do you deal with compete like, you know what I mean? Like the weekend we spend going out into the unknown if it’s my I prefer to unknown or his, and then gathering some information and learning and grow. We’re still learning and growing and playing all the time. And I think I’m going to do that for the rest of my life. But I’ve never had that my mom. And that’s not something that my peers have had most of their parents, there are exceptions.
keevin bybee 1:45:16
Yeah, well, and it’s beautiful to see that in spite of not having it, you know how important it is to give to your son and giving him the vocabulary and the practice. So imagine, like, how he’s going to be able to pay it forward to the next generation, right? Isn’t that so exciting to see that it
Wil nelsen 1:45:37
really isn’t that way. And I get really stoked about it. Because I can already see the different relationships with his friends and stuff like Yeah, and it’s, and that’s a progress mind. I guess, even in the moment, I’m really happy that when I get to go and jump on the trampoline, and have them, teach all those kids how to do Bulldog, and I get really excited, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, when you’re on all fours. And like in like tabletop position, and they’re standing, you got to trip them. And every person you trip, they got to get on all fours and trip them. And it’s like a takedown drill. But it’s again, it’s a full on game. And this these kids like you could I pull their leg and I’m like, Listen, if you pull their leg a trip, they’re going to be fine or champion who cares, your parents are there, it’s fine. And we do that. And then they get really into it. And then I’m like creating this memory. And I’ve like, I’ve deeply connected with these kids. Exactly. Let’s
keevin bybee 1:46:24
play. Because that’s what’s salient to them now. That’s they’re they’re making a connection, that safe, fun, intensity, you know, dad, or who your relationship to the other kids on the trampoline, right? That you’re you’re you’re setting that foundation for those future hard moments when, you know, Dear God, your kid says, Hey, Dad, you know what happened when you were 17? Yeah, exactly.
Wil nelsen 1:46:50
So
keevin bybee 1:46:51
or maybe avoiding it, because you had those moments, right? To come back a couple minutes, you had mentioned something about how there was a, you know, like the lack of, you know, relationship between teacher and students. So there’s another guy I’d love to turn you on to. His name is Zack Stein. He’s kind of like, I guess, educational theorist. And so, you know, you talked about how the disconnection from local community to school is, has a lot of problems. And so, again, so what is it that sets humans apart? It’s our capacity to transmit information across generations. That’s civilization, what is civilization, the inner transmission, intergenerational transmission of information? What is education? The intergenerational transmission of education? What is civilization? If not, education? Why is it that like, education is among the most lowest funded civilizational projects. So just just to set that thing, and then he one of his big things is teacherly authority, and I’m totally going to do butcher it if I try to explain it, but it’s, if you google Zack Stein and teacherly authority is just a wealth of like, moments you like, Whoa, moments. And so you just had mentioned a couple things that I thought might resonate with you if you have time to look at it offline. Yeah,
Wil nelsen 1:48:18
I’m gonna go check that out. That sounds great man, uh, teacherly authority.
keevin bybee 1:48:22
He did, because you know, it’s that because it is an authority and you know, it’s not like a strict discipline and terian It’s a special kind of authority. It teacherly authority. So he did a real good job of he allocates it quite well. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, sure,
Wil nelsen 1:48:38
I’ll make sure to include those in the show notes, too. I think that’ll be really cool. Um, yeah, it’s a teacher. It’s interesting, even when I see like, some parents, and they volunteer, and I saw an interesting thing that I realized that I have one of my son’s friends, their parents bought their parent volunteers. And like, she’s really, like, active in that way. But a lot of it manifests is like volunteering to help out the teacher. And I was asking her about some things of like, you know, why don’t you do some interest based learning? And like, you know, like, take some take any of these kinds of concepts introduced? And she’s like, I’m not a specialist on that. What do you mean? And I realized that in that in that environment there where she’s, you know, assisting the teacher and stuff. She had a realizations tangent, that the teacher was actually having trouble with her own son. This is like a third grade, second grade teacher, because her son was being physical and not wanting to do work in the sons like he, you know, in first grade or kindergarten, she’s like, I don’t know what to do. And they got to relate on that. But I don’t, I wish that there were more of a platform for that relationship to further propagate as opposed to showing up and volunteering and doing your paperwork, but to and that’s where I hoped the funding, not just like, here’s a higher dollar amount. But like, I wish there was ways for me to be engaged in the school and actually get paid that way, but not fulfill these roles, but fulfill the intermediary between, you know, like children and teacher. And that way. And because I talked to her, and I talked to her about creating these learning plans and stuff, and she doesn’t seem very confident in presenting information to her child. And I thought that that was really odd. Because in an educational situation, I never had a representation that I had to be a specialist on anything to introduce it to my son. And I didn’t get that from the teachers at all. I got that it was almost more like how you are in the sense of a doctor, where it’s like, here’s all these specialists Let me take you to them. Let me figure out if like, you’re genuinely actually interested in this, and now let’s commit and go and do that. But for some reason that volunteering didn’t extend that further, she just seemed kind of at a loss. But yeah,
keevin bybee 1:51:01
yeah, I guess I don’t know much to say on that. I have, unfortunately, haven’t been as involved in my kids school. only so many, so many hours in the day. That’s,
Wil nelsen 1:51:12
that’s one thing that I struggle with, too. Because my whole life’s around that in the sense that like, I like crippling poverty in that way. But it Well, it’s because I’ve put everything above that and just live like as small on my means, as I as I can. But I reflect and she’s a single parent, or not a single parent, she’s there to parent to family household. And she’s a stay at home mom. And like I said in the way that I find myself in this predisposition to like want to do these things with these kids, and want to expose them and draw those connections. And then relate with somebody else and realize that, like, she couldn’t really relate to me in that way. I guess I’m like, at a loss for those words, because I get involved in the school system, and I see the people who are involved. And that’s still not really working out in the way that I thought it would.
keevin bybee 1:52:03
What I mean, you know, so you’re also the kind of person that has a podcast with a bunch of interesting people. So I mean, you’re in a really cool position, and, you know, not to what’s the way it is, you know, no matter how you say it, I’m going to come off sounding like a snob. But, you know, I I’m boggled by how few people read sci fi, and consider, like, the trajectory of how what we’re doing now might relate to, you know, the future be at 100 or 1000 years from now. And so, I don’t know if that resonates with you, like, you know, you, you, you’re it’s really cool that you you see how important it is to connect kids with activities. And you know, you’re motivated to do that and other people who are superficially in a similar role to you are just kind of showing up and punching the numbers is that kind of what I’m
Wil nelsen 1:52:57
all about what it is, and
keevin bybee 1:52:59
yeah, I feel the same way. Trying to talk to people about you know, even something as practical is something like universal basic income, like the robots are coming like how does this not obvious to everyone else that the future in the next 20 years is going to be so drastically different than what we know it today? And and also, I don’t know what that means, other than to resonate with kind of what you’re saying
Wil nelsen 1:53:25
it does, because I
kind of found myself at a loss for a moment there but you completely put me back on track because even when you and this isn’t a denigration to that person at all, I really do respect that person. But even when you do have that availability of time because I’m basically like in the same situation now being you know, unemployed even from in because of the whole school situation with Coronavirus, so I’m at home with my son, you know, the whole thing with his education and stuff, support him with his education that maintain my house too. But there’s no level of like, no getting on the level and playing. It’s just seems like like if you were to go to a rock climbing gym and and take the kids to go climbing. If you were to go on recess at school, if you were to go on a trampoline. It’s always like here, here you go. You can go and play and then I will supervise and then opens time. Let’s go. And that’s like 80% of the relationships from adult to children. I’ve seen I’ve seen that throughout my whole life. Yeah. And I really don’t know how to reconcile with that. And the only reason why I do anything different isn’t because of like getting snobbery, but it’s because it’s just so boring. Otherwise, you know, yeah, and like so and I just didn’t understand that. And those people are, I love those people and I love I love parents. Those are nice people. Their kids are kind of struggling. And some of that I wonder if it’s some of that disconnect from not having that relationship built through play.
keevin bybee 1:54:52
Yeah, most of it most likely, you know, what is their unmet need? What are their struggles that I don’t see? And And, you know, what is it that they’re like super focused on that I’m totally blind to, and I’m gonna get smacked in the butt because I’m not seeing that they’re already paying attention to. I can say that now, and I’m certainly not that graceful in most of my day. But no,
Wil nelsen 1:55:14
I’m not either. Oh, is there something that you get when given your your professional role and just life in general? Have you ever had a hard time actually listening to somebody without trying to interject a
advice all the time, because I always thought, like, if you tell me some terrible listener, and it’s like,
he tell me something, and it’s particularly tragic. It’s hard. At first I thought I’d be doing a really, I would be doing the best I could to support you by giving you as many recommendations and like, my opinion, and whatever I can, that’s helpful. And then I realize that it’s really hard to just not talk and listen, and to, like, bear all of that, like, you know, like, in horrible feelings.
keevin bybee 1:56:10
For what it’s worth, I think I’m getting better at it. It’s a deliberate practice, coming back to what we had talked about earlier, if I was going to give somebody advice and saying, You’re hurting. And, and I’m here for you, and being able to sit with the silence when you know, they are in medical school. And in residency, they we do, it’s not like a course, but like, practice on how to break bad news. And the one of the major steps is, is say, the bad news. And then you just shut up, and you sit there and make that pregnant pause. And you know, if it’s long and awkward, it’s long and awkward, and letting them be inviting way, making sure the other person knows that it’s safe to talk when they feel ready. And so many people aren’t in a place where they need or want or could even listen to advice and so, but being in the presence of another, another human being who sees your suffering, and holds it in compassion without judgment, does most of the work. And, you know, why is it that we talk mostly to quiet down our own discomfort with somebody else’s discomfort? Right? And so like, I hear you, I’m here for you.
Wil nelsen 1:57:37
That’s a very challenging thing to do.
keevin bybee 1:57:39
Oh, like I said, I’m not good at I can say these words.
Wil nelsen 1:57:41
And the funny thing is, is depending on how you act, some things might even look good from the outset, or look like you know, you’re doing it. Yeah, you get rewarded for it. Yeah,
keevin bybee 1:57:55
we are we, you know, the another part of the problem with medicine is I’m paid by the widget, I’m paid by how much I do. I’m not paid by the patient outcome. And so you can take that on a number of levels, but for what it’s worth.
Wil nelsen 1:58:09
And as an as a person, your own self, there’s a part of you that has to work within that, because you couldn’t do anything at all. Otherwise,
keevin bybee 1:58:20
yeah. So we’re, we’re constrained, I still have to make a paycheck. And I still have to meet the requirements in my clinic and do things in a way that satisfies patient confidentiality and safety is set by my professional board. But at the same time, I can be honest about the limitations and in the appropriate context, to have conversations about the ways that I think it might be better and through through that it’ll change incrementally. So yeah, we’re absolutely constrained but that doesn’t mean we have to eat it hook line and sinker either.
Wil nelsen 1:59:03
Yeah, exactly. Is there? Is there any where people can find out about your podcasts?
keevin bybee 1:59:08
I would love it. If people would check out one school project.com there’s, you can reach it at one school project 20 473 65. At Gmail, there’s a Facebook page. And if you go to anchor like Google anchor and one school project, you’ll you’ll find it there. I’m would love to connect, and there’s comment section on each of my posts. So I I’m looking for feedback I’m looking to learn. Like I said, I’m a doctor. Dammit, Jim. I’m a doctor, not an educator. And so I want people who actually know what the fuck is going on to help me I just can’t sit with my vicarious trauma anymore. When that seems like there’s so much low hanging fruit out there that we can change.
Wil nelsen 1:59:53
Yeah, and I love what you’re doing and anything that I can do to support it.
keevin bybee 1:59:57
Well, I appreciate your conversation, man. You’re I’ve really loved the conversations you’ve been having. And I’m just tickled pink that you had me on
Wil nelsen 2:00:04
and I’m happy to talk to you man. Thank you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai