What Happens When Social Trust Collapses? | Peter Atwater

29:06Demetri Kofinas:Younger people are looking for action and excitement. I remember when 9-11 happened, I was 20 years old. I was scared. I was living in New York City. I was worried about chemical attacks on the subways. But at the same time, I remember sitting around with my dorm mates in October, the month after the attacks, or maybe late September, when we got back to campus at NYU, and we were like, man, this is kind of exciting. And we were scared to say it, but we remember feeling like this was kind of exciting. And so what worries me especially, and this is the question, is it especially concerning to you that it's the younger people that are especially dispossessed of opportunities and wealth because it's young people that tend to lead revolutions.

29:49Yeah. I think that you've touched on a great point. When you have nothing to lose, youth is a factor. And appreciate too, they have a longer future ahead of them. So older people will resign themselves to the reality. Younger people will say, I now need to change the future to be what I need it to be. And it's compelling. It's at times irrational. But for a generation that has felt corralled, that has been so compliant and now questions to what end? That the impetus to take control is, I think, enormous. And you have issues of generational wealth, generational power. I have long felt, Dimitri, that there is a young, unknown grassroots leader out there who can speak authentically from a position at the bottom, who has enormous potential to unite left and right at the bottom to say, hey, we've been screwed by both sides.

31:08And this is different to me than the populist figures that we've seen so far, who I see in many cases as nothing more than predatory figures who are using those at the bottoms as a means to an end as props in their bigger plan. But if you get yourself an authentic grassroots leader who can speak about a truth that resonates, that will be a game changer. And not just in the United States. I think that changes the situation in Hungary. I think it changes it in Turkey. I think it could dramatically reshape things in China. Because we have a generation, we see this in the CEO suites, we see this in Congress, that hasn't passed the baton.

31:57They've said, you're not experienced enough. We have way too many excuses. It's like, guys, older people, myself included, it's time to leave the stage. There is a generation that we either cede control to or who will take control. And I look at the leadership of both our political parties. I look at businesses and other organizations. We've done a dreadful job of not only passing the baton, but preparing those who would receive the baton to know how to behave. So they're going to figure this out on their own. And it's going to be awkward and at times ugly, but there's a huge baton pass that's about to occur.

32:44you know peter on that it's so fascinating you bring that up i was watching this morning some clips of the the new york debates with cuomo and memdani and as i hear you talking about that you know memdani is is the perfect example of this right some guy who's come out of nowhere he's young he's got some wild ideas but he's resonating with people and a lot of that feels to me and i'm demetra i'd be curious to get your thoughts on this because you're in the middle of it. I'm not. I've been immersed in it the way you have. But it feels to me from a distance as though people are attaching themselves to him partially because of the ideas, but partially because, to your point, Peter, he's just young and fresh and he's not of that generation.

33:26And I watched a little clip last night with Cuomo was berating him and saying, you haven't done anything, you haven't had a job, you haven't blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And basically almost making that case for him, thinking he's dressing him down, but actually saying to the people exactly what you said. Here's your guy. He's not tainted with the old system. He's not this generation. So I'm fascinated to hear you say that. And I'd be curious to hear both your thoughts on that and whether there's any symbology in what's happening in this race in New York at the moment. Yeah, I think that that race is incredibly symbolic because you have in Cuomo a dynastic system.

34:03His father, it's sort of like Jeb Bush. 100%.

34:08Demetri Kofinas:Jeb Bush. 100%. I was going to say the same thing. And so he's an easy target in a situation like this. My issue with Mondami is he's not authentic from the bottom. Here's a guy who has lived a very privileged life. He resonates, but I think even he is vulnerable to somebody who has grown up in a poor part of town who has built standing among those at the bottom in a true grassroots community-based leadership process. I'm curious, Demetri, because you are. You're in the center of it. Yeah. So I don't want to suggest that I have been following this very closely, but yes, I am geographically affected.

34:55Demetri Kofinas:And I am attuned to some of the ideas that I think are bad, like increasing the amount of rent control departments or moving them from rent control to rent stabilized. I don't know what the exact policy proposal there is, but it's essentially price controls, some version of price controls for food. I think those are really bad ideas for obvious reasons that we can all understand. So there's one other point about the New York election. So in this point about advertising for the other side, this message that the wealthy of New York will leave is fuel for those at the bottom. Because mobility is a privilege that only those at the top have.

35:37And it's really irritating. You go to flyover country, It is one of the things that angers people who are tethered to geography is the nomadic nature of those at the top. They come, they go, they bring business, they take business, but we stay. We have to stay. And so one of the things that I'm really interested in seeing is the importance of place. and a need for a mutual community where we in the real world know each other, have each other's backs, location matters again. And I sense some of that as I was listening to your conversation with Roger. To me, it's fascinating that at the bottom of Mood in the early 1980s, The show that was most popular was Cheers.

36:41And the song that begins is Where Everybody Knows My Name. And there's a huge want for that today. And I think that in all of this will be a return to really important personal relationships that happen not online, but that happen hand in hand in community as we build it. I don't know if it'll be churches or community groups, but there is a rebuilding that needs to take place in the real world.

37:16Demetri Kofinas:So let's talk about that too. Let me tie off some comments I wanted to make in response to Grant's question. So first of all, I just want to agree with you. The Jeb Bush-Trump comparison is an obvious one that came to me as well, as is the comparison, sorry, the Jeb Bush and Andrew Cuomo. And the Trump-Mandani comparison is also, to my opinion, an obvious one, because they were both dressed down for not having experience. They were both said to be people also from wealthy families. But what I would also say too, and I don't know if Mandani's wealthy family is certainly not on the scale of Trump, but what are they, upper class or something like that?

37:53Demetri Kofinas:But to your point about that being a negative, I don't agree with that either. Because FDR came from a wealthy family and he led the peaceful revolution out of the Great Depression, establishing a new economic and political order that lasted, what, 40, 50 years in the United States. So I don't know that that is the issue. I think it's also very interesting, and this is a somewhat sort of hazy observation, but I do think that what's also happening is that one way to interpret what's going on in America today is that we're trying to coalesce around a story that fits. We're trying on different hats and we're trying to decide which one fits.

38:34Demetri Kofinas:And part of a good story also requires scapegoating. And I think that we're also in the process of looking for scapegoats. Boomers are an example of a scapegoat. There's also scapegoating going on in the Israel-Palestine debate. There's something that I think, I don't know if it was Grant and I that recently talked about this, or it was actually, I think, in a recent episode with Cameron Bihari, where you see this with the Israel-Palestine debate on both the left and right, on the American right. You see it more aligning with the scapegoating of the deep state and the international conspiracy.

39:04Demetri Kofinas:And then on the left, you see it as part of the white colonization and perpetrator, victim. And in my opinion, it's all part of this. If you think about the larger sort of archetypical structure, it is us trying to establish a new narrative that works to create a political consensus. To go to your observation about community, I totally agree with this. You brought up financial nihilism earlier. And I think actually one of the things that I saw in those early days, whether it was with crypto or later with meme stocks, was that in addition to this embrace of meaninglessness when it came to price discovery, there was also a deep search for community.

39:47Demetri Kofinas:And there was a desire to... Tesla's a great example of this. People that were invested in Tesla stock weren't just invested in Tesla stock because they were hoping to get rich. They were also investing because they wanted to be part of a community. And that speaks, I think, to themes that we've explored on this podcast most recently with Roger. And then the real question for me in that observation is, is there a meaningful difference, a substantive difference, between an online community and a physical community, or can people substitute one for the other? And you have guys like who I've mentioned on the podcast before, who's also been on the podcast before, Balaji Srinivasan, who wrote The Network State, which was a very influential book.

40:22Demetri Kofinas:I don't know if it still is, or if the concept is still influential in the crypto space, but there are those who push the idea that the future can be one of networked communities that are so powerful and so fulfilling that they can substitute and control the underlying physical networks and worlds. I don't agree with that. I actually believe that there is now more than ever a need for real physical embodied communities. So yeah, that's my response to you. I agree. And that's a very powerful vector. And I think you've seen that in the Trump movement. What was one of Trump's superpower? His ability to convene crowds of enthusiastic supporters.

41:00Demetri Kofinas:It doesn't matter if they were the biggest crowds the world has ever seen. They were big enough and they were excited enough and they were in themselves of movement. So yeah, I agree. I think the evidence is clear that that's what's going on, or one of the things that's going on. Yeah. One of the things I tell my freshmen the first day of class is if you don't have somebody who will go with you at two o 'clock in the morning to the emergency room, you need to find that person. You need to find people in the real world who will be there in a crisis because nobody online is going to be with you in a crisis.

41:39And when we are in that lower left-hand corner, tangibility, immediacy, proximity, demand real person-to-person relationships. Because you can't coalesce in a true way outside of a physical crowd. Ask a comedian. They need an audience. You need real people in the room. And your point about the Trump rallies is exactly right. You see this in sports. You need, it's a completely different experience being in the stadium than watching the game at home. And so there is something, there's a secret sauce in physical relationships with a shared purpose. and I think all of these online communities have been wonderful surrogates, but as mood falls, we will need to come together in person.

42:47Demetri Kofinas:Can I add one more thing here? And this is not well thought out, but I was at a Q &A last night moderated by John Borthwick where Karen Howe, the author of a book, I forget the name of Karen's book. She was on the show. It was a great book. It was about open AI and what's going on in artificial intelligence. And she's unusually smart as a journalist. I mean, she wrote for MIT Technology Review, The Atlantic, and Wall Street Journal, and she understands technology very well. And there was a point in which they discussed this intersection between what's going on with AI and also capitalism. They didn't use this term, but I would describe it as late stage capitalism or metastatically financialized capitalism.

43:27Demetri Kofinas:And I feel like the political economic modes of organization, as well as the psycho-spiritual modes of organization, are no longer fulfilling. They've either sort of collapsed or have been neglected in the psycho-spiritual or in the case of modern capitalism. I mean, Grant and I were kind of going back and forth on this earlier, or he texted me about it and I actually offered my views on something somewhat separate, which was this. I feel like capitalism today is broken. And it's hard for someone like me or like us to really talk about because at least I'll speak for me personally, I've benefited from this world of financial nihilism, materially speaking.

44:08Demetri Kofinas:I've benefited from asset price appreciation. And asset price appreciation that really in some really obvious cases doesn't align with what's best for the economy or for people. And so I feel like this is something that needs to be addressed and it's going to be addressed one way or the other. And if it isn't addressed constructively, we're going to get some kind of socialist revolution. So that's one thing. And then I think for a while to bring it to the psycho-spiritual, you were hearing people like Elon Musk say, well, maybe human beings are just here to bootstrap AI. And we got to a point where it was like, well, who are we building this economy for?

44:44Demetri Kofinas:Who are we building the society for? What are we building this world for? Is it just to make it easier for machines to run? So there's a kind of cult of the cult of financial capitalism, and then this cult of efficiency and productivity, and just like everything is about becoming more and more like machines. And I feel like this is also part of the story that both of these approaches that have been running in parallel are hitting up against the wall. They're no longer working. and where we don't quite have the language to talk about in the case of capitalism. We do have the words from the progressive era about monopoly and price fixing and anti-competition, but that's not what's happening in today's capitalism.

45:22Demetri Kofinas:We have data capture and surveillance by these very large technology platforms that are increasingly steering and controlling people's behavior and their thoughts surreptitiously. And then we've got this cultish, hyper-materialist in the philosophical sense, atheistic, transhumanist cult led by these same sorts of people. And the vision of the future is like, yeah, we're just going to create more stuff. And then AI is going to make your life easier. And ultimately, we're just giving birth to the next species. And the reality is most people are like, fuck that. That doesn't resonate. You guys are sick.

45:59Demetri Kofinas:And I think there's consensus that's developed as an antipole to that. And it feels like there's an opportunity there for that to either be a constructive solution where those of us that have a stake in the future can help steer it in a positive direction, or if we can't collaborate, that there's going to be some kind of really awful revolution and that's going to be really bad for folks like us. Yeah. I refer to it as Caligulon capitalism. There's a grotesque, a morality to it. We're gambling and everything. We're betting on everything. No, we've lost our moral compass. And increasingly, to your point, Dimitri, there's a tone deafness among those at the top who have lost any connectivity with the real world.

46:49And they do not appreciate the consequences of what they envision to the vast majority of people around the world who at this point are wondering how they eat, how they get healthcare, that the contrast in wants, you've got one group who's at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of need and the other who are questioning basic security. And the gap in wealth is such that you would hope those at the top would say, you know what? It's in our best interest to facilitate greater growth at the bottom. Instead, they're looking for every means to de-jobify the workplace.

47:40Demetri Kofinas:You know, someplace where I saw this recently, I mean, Grant knows this, and I've talked about it with our genius community. I recently actually had sinus surgery, but I've been dealing with a bunch of stuff in part as a result of this. And I've had to interface with the US healthcare system meaningfully for the first time since I had brain surgery in 2013. And the situation has gotten significantly worse. And sitting in the waiting rooms, you can see the condition that most people are in. And this is New York, right? This is not middle America. Obesity has risen noticeably in the waiting room.

48:11Demetri Kofinas:People are really sick. They're really ill. And the reason I bring this up is because it's an area where... I mean, The reality is when you talk about the elites at the top of Maslow's hierarchy, I feel like I'm not Hillary Clinton, but I feel like all my needs are met. I never have to feel like I have to wait in line to get something done. I pretty much live my life the way I want. I have a really great life. But in this particular situation, I was kind of stuck like everybody else and it kind of hit me. I was like, it has gotten worse since COVID, right? Because folks like me don't even have to go to the office.

48:43Demetri Kofinas:I work remotely. I can work wherever I want. my life's gotten noticeably better. And then to go into this one situation and see actually, actually it looks like things have gotten much worse. And I do feel like, and one of my concerns is that I, along with others that I criticize, are actually oblivious to what's coming. The situation is much worse than we think. And that just like in other previous countries where we've seen revolutions, I'm not saying we're going to see a political revolution like we saw in the Soviet Union or whatever, but simply stating that things are much worse than we realize.

49:14Demetri Kofinas:and that when your life is the way that ours looks like, you don't see it coming. Yeah. Go to a hospital in Kentucky and sit in the waiting room and realize that the vast majority of Americans have intense powerlessness. And more than that, they have no voice. To me, there's a missing element in Maslow's hierarchy. And I would start at the bottom with voice and the ability to be heard. Because until I can be heard, I can't be safe. I won't be fed. I won't be healed. And what the greatest source of vulnerability I see today is voicelessness. And this is where I go back to, there is an enormous swath of America, of other countries that is looking for an authentic voice.

50:18And once that voice is found, the coalescence will be immediate and impactful. Peter, let me ask, when we look at the really big picture, it feels as though humanity has a cyclical nature to it. We make the same mistakes, and we look at Strauss and Howe theory, and there's plenty of examples of how we just go round and round. And we're at that point now where all the stories have died from the depression and all those years, and so we're making those same mistakes again. But it feels to me that confidence, it may or may not be cyclical. I don't know. I'd be curious if your thoughts are not. But it feels like it just oscillates along the middle of that big turning circle.

51:01So I'm curious as to when the cycle aligns with the oscillations, that the way that the broader cycle of humanity interacts with confidence and whether one leads the other or triggers the other. I'm curious as to the relationship between those two. To me, there's no question that there are cycles of confidence. And you can see them really clearly in things like the Dow gold ratio, which I think is probably the best measure of cyclical confidence that we have. But there are, to your point, these ordinary cycles. And then I do think there are bigger cycles. And I think that the turn of the millennium marked the peak of an enormous cycle.

51:49And I don't think we've yet experienced the low associated with that. What we're seeing are the natural divisions that come from it, the natural impatience, the natural desire for isolationism, for tangibility. Because the network became too big, too complex, too interdependent, too hyper-efficient. And now there needs to be a period of retrenchment. because it became a super tall skyscraper that wobbles too much. And now we need to bring it down, to rebuild it, to strengthen its core in order to grow again. I've heard one word mentioned once in this conversation, which surprises me because it always feels like it should be mentioned more.

52:42But I remember at the time, Peter, back in 2020, you and I were talking about COVID and what an important event it was. But I'd love to understand now with five years in the rearview mirror, how you now categorize COVID in terms of its importance and in terms of the shifts that it precipitated in confidence and mood. Some shifts that may have recovered, but many I would imagine that are still way off their regular axis because of COVID. To me, the two biggest consequences of COVID, I think, is societal blindness. COVID enabled people or maybe forced people to not see others' experience. And so those at the top and the bottom no longer saw each other.

53:42no longer had a reason to interact in person. So the stories between those at the top and the bottom evaporated and instead were replaced by this enormous, what I think of as Downton Abbey system where things just magically started to appear. So food, you just didn't need to go out. And so that exacerbates the blindness. If I don't have to go to the store, I don't have to see the people around me. I don't have to experience and overhear what's going on in the real world. I think our level of connection post-COVID is like 20 % of what it was before COVID. we've institutionalized isolationism at a very local level.

54:45And that's really troubling to me because nobody needs to experience the life of others. And so it was interesting to me, Dimitri, your point that the only place we ever intersect is either in the emergency room of a doctor's office or maybe the subway, but even that. Our interaction on a true socioeconomic band is very limited today. And even at sports, you have this proliferation of luxury boxes surrounding those below. So I think we have institutionalized the velvet rope economy to a point that's really poised. It blinds us to the fragility below.

55:41Demetri Kofinas:Is that your term, velvet rope economy? No, there's a book by a New York Times columnist. Ross Douthat? No. Well, in any case, I'd never heard that before. That really captures it. That's right. Yeah. It destroyed me the other day when I saw that Delta expects to earn more from premium seats in corporate accounts than from economy class ticket holders next year. That to me is devastating. Yeah. The airlines themselves have created, besides the fact that they've tried to be more efficient and increase the number of different types of options they have available order to squeeze more out of each flight, they have reconstituted the seating chart in a way that I think captures or reflects some of the social stratification.

56:31Demetri Kofinas:Because I don't know what percentage of passengers on an airplane are economy, but economy seats today are on what they were in the 1980s. It's a miserable experience flying economy. On the other hand, the seats at the front are - Magnificent in some cases. Yeah. Yeah. I'm waiting to the point where we now have two boarding gates because we - We do. You didn't know that? So JFK, this is the thing. And again, this goes back to my point about how I feel this, that I'm losing touch. JFK for Delta passengers has its own special entrance. I don't know if it's only true for international flights, but we often have to take international flights.

57:11Demetri Kofinas:You literally go into a different area. It feels like you're checking into a hotel. It's amazing. You don't even have to go through the special, the first class velvet rope area. You literally don't even have to see anybody. You have a different experience. You're treated like a different person. And it very much feels, Peter, like a velvet rope economy. It feels like social stratification. It feels like aristocracy. And when you live that way, you have no reason to want to go and go through the normal lines because you're going to be stuck in some crazy line forever. The airport security people are horrible.

57:45Demetri Kofinas:And it's like, at what point is that not going to work? The stratification will make nothing workable in a democracy. The democracy won't function. And also the meritocratic nature of social and military service also is not going to work when basically you have a permanent class of military people who come from the lowest rungs of society, who you send out to patrol the empire in order to maintain the inflows of capital and patronage to sustain the asset price bubble that sustains your lifestyle. And that's where we're at. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, we can agree or disagree with the draft, but what it did was to put people from every socioeconomic class together for a purpose that was shared and it broke down those barriers.

58:31And, you know, talking to my father-in-law and my dad, there's a sense of respect for the skills of others that is no longer present. It's funny, guys, that the airline thing is interesting because the flip side of that, which I saw, and then I read an article about it recently, and I forget which publication. But you look at the airline lounge, which used to be a privilege. You know, it was a first-class lounge or whatever it was now. and now I was walking through an airport and I was on a traffic behind two guys and they had just come out of one of the lounges and they were bitching and moaning man everyone's allowed in the lounge these days you know everyone who's got a credit card now can get into the lounge so it's weird that on that side of things it's not democratization because it's another money grab but there has been a noticeable shift in throwing a bone to people and say well we'll let you in the lounge kind of thing.

59:26I found that very interesting. It's also true for cars.

59:30Demetri Kofinas:It used to be that 30 years ago, if you had a Mercedes or you had a BMW, you were rich. You were probably a doctor, you were probably a lawyer. You were probably somebody that was creating some level of real tangible economic wealth. That's the other thing that today you could be wealthy. It's more possible to be wealthy today or more likely to be wealthy today without having done anything or contributed anything to the real economy. And that's part of the capitalist side of the equation. We were talking about this earlier, the consumer aspects of capitalism have become a bigger part of people's meaning-making process so that branding and the brand experience itself has come to fill more and more of people's sense of identity and satisfy their personal aspirations or ambitions.

1:00:10Demetri Kofinas:You see this with luxury car brands like Mercedes, for example, who have sought to monetize that brand by expanding their touch points to appeal to wider audiences as the demand for that kind of aspirational consumer experience has grown because something else on a much deeper level is missing. But I think a lot of that is interest rates. Again, 86 % of car purchases in the UK are financed now. Same in the United States. It's up that number. It's a similar number of loans or leases. But we have twice as many models over$100 ,000 than we do below$30 ,000. The average car price in America is$50 ,000.

1:00:53Even the wealthy aren't sitting on $50 ,000 of disposable. So they're going to lease, they're going to do whatever. But those who are in the best position to do something about the plight of those at the bottom seem at best indifferent. And I worry that their increasing tone deafness and unwillingness to deal with it is going to lead people to the streets because at some point folks are going to have enough. And you look at these delinquencies on cars and it's not going to be long before you see people who can't get to work because their car has been repossessed and then they can't eat. And it's a terrible spiral for those at the bottom.

1:01:42And it is a bipartisan spiral. This is not a left or right. This is, you know, our biggest problems are top to bottom. And it frustrates me to see those on both sides seemingly more interested in defeating the other, not realizing their own vulnerability to this. So Peter, the leaders, the autocrats, the people who emerge from this mood shift and are kind of thrust into the spotlight to do something about it, they then tend to drive the next change of mood. And we're right in the middle of that now. You know, there's a very, very small window right at the beginning where they're driven into power.

1:02:25They've got a small window to do something about it before they end up essentially getting captured by the system and realizing, hey, I'm in power now. I'm going to get mine. Is it possible to turn that back? Is it possible that the next election, the next person who comes through takes us back? Or do we have to carry on down this path and go through to get there? Because through suggests what you're talking about there, you know, some kind of apocalyptic meltdown of people in the streets. Is there a way back from a mood perspective or do we need to go through? Yeah, I think Demetri picked a good example to look at an FDR.

1:03:04Now, timing was good for him. I mean, he did come in towards the apocalyptic point. But what was so vital was his impatience to addressing the plight of those at the bottom. And what has been so fascinating to me in this second administration of President Trump is that he campaigned on one theme and yet has behaved in another. his initial themes were all about domestic policy. And yet, if you look at where he's traveled, where his focus is, it's all been on an international stage. And I can't think of a place where those at the bottom would least wish him to be. they want him in West Virginia.

1:04:04They want him in Kentucky. And I'm really befuddled. We're not seeing the rallies. The contrast to me is really striking. And this whole thing with the gilded ballroom, it's not a political statement. Again, I can't think of a worse symbol at a time when those at the bottom are struggling.

1:04:29Demetri Kofinas:Is this the thing that's happening on the east wing of the White House? Yeah. What exactly is that that's happening? Because I don't know. They're building a$300 million gold ballroom. And you can see the transformation of the Oval Office. Every time I watch a clip, there's another piece of gold something. And I think it's lost on the new administration what that's saying to those at the bottom. It's also those types of symbolic things are very worrisome. Yes. Just to be clear, I'm as blunt on the left as I am on the run. So this is not a choosing sides. Yeah, yeah. Though, and sure, and the Beltway consensus that has held power for the last however long is responsible for all sorts of wrongdoings.

1:05:16Demetri Kofinas:But this administration is in a class of its own in terms of its corruption, in terms of its public facing outwardly unapologetic corruption, which is a very different type of corruption than the kind you do in secret, where you can do as much as you can get away with, that people won't catch you. But what we're going through is a reestablishment of norms and a public defacing of the values that many people may have skirted, but that we had all agreed were things to aspire to. And I think it's symbolmatic of the invulnerability that those of the top now feel. That in every dimension of their life, they are untouchable.

1:06:03Demetri Kofinas:It's interesting you say that. Is that right? I don't know if that's true. Actually, I think politicians feel more vulnerable today. Look at the political prosecutions that are occurring, that have occurred, that are occurring. I mean, that occurred also against even Donald Trump. I mean, they went after Trump. What actually feels like it's happening is that there's been a risk reassessment. And this is actually something that I was speaking about in a recent episode, that we're talking about it geopolitically in terms of how there's a new security order emerging, whether it's in the Middle East, whether it's in Europe, as countries reassess what they're willing to tolerate, whether it was Russia tolerating Ukraine on its border, a Western oriented Ukraine, whether it's Israel tolerating living in this tenuous sort of equilibrium with the Iranians, it feels like actually the gloves are coming increasingly off.

1:06:51Demetri Kofinas:And as one side has weaponized the legal system against the other, the other has decided to do against them. And the only way to really protect yourself is to grab more power, is to go for it. And I feel like that's actually what we're seeing today. But the consequences is that those with power feel invulnerable and put others in a position of being either victims or beneficiaries of that power. Right. That's very scary though, the way we just sort of came to that idea, right? Which is like, the only way I'm safe is to grab more power. What does that incentivize? It incentivize a move towards centralization, autocracy.

1:07:27Demetri Kofinas:That's very scary. But this is not just a US phenomenon. There are a few good men. There are a dozen of these folks around the globe. We can look at Saudi, we can look at Israel, we can look at Hungary, we can look at Turkey. We have all of these gentlemen, you can look increasingly at India. That suggests that we're in the stress center? That those people are in the stress center? No. They are in the launch pad. They are in the launch pad. They have control. They have control? That's interesting. I mean, it feels like they're trying to grab control, but it feels like the base environment is one of stress.

1:08:07Demetri Kofinas:And again, I am not trying to hijack your framework here and explain it back to you, Peter. No, no, no. But I mean, to me, and I'll just leave it there and I'd love for Grant to ask questions. It feels like the underlying environment is one of stress and that people are trying to grab control because they're feeling increasingly stressed and whether or not they can maintain it and get to a place where they can feel that kind of confidence is another question. But I feel like that underlying stress environment is a feature of the times for me. The nature of these men is such that they will never feel like they have enough control.

1:08:39It's fascinating how we've ended up here from where we began to just this point a short while ago. We're talking about FDR. And we keep coming back to the politicians. We keep coming back to the leaders. This idea of mood and confidence, Peter, which is probably, one would imagine, more important on a societal level, but we keep getting dragged back to talking about how important it is at the very, very top for these few leaders in that attempt to safeguard themselves and hang on to power. I wonder, going back to FDR, at the time, obviously in the 1930s, politics was not necessarily a means to become wealthy.

1:09:20It was an enterprise you went into when you were already wealthy and you wanted to give something back. And now politics has become a way to get fabulously wealthy because not only the opportunities there, but to your earlier point, the fact that the grift is now out in the open, you know, this whole thing for Dimitri and I think we were both radicalized by the Trump meme coin on the eve of his inauguration. That was not my radicalizing event, certainly. But coming back to this idea of going through or back, it feels as though, because the nature of politics has changed and politics in and of itself is now a means to an end, it's a means to get rich.

1:09:57I don't see how you find another FDR that can take us back. I think we have to keep going down this track until the whole thing, to your point, everybody's out in the streets and we completely reinvent this whole thing. But from a point of there has to be a transfer of wealth as we've identified, it doesn't feel like it's going to go peacefully to me because the people that have wealth have the means and the motivation to take more of it. So every single thing I hear in every discussion I have reinforces my worst case scenario that this ultimately almost has to be a violent seizure and a violent redressing of the balance because everything we've said so far, no one's going to give up what they've got.

1:10:40No one's going to stop pursuing more voluntarily. No, you need the courageous, empowering leader. The one who says, I want less in order to give you more. And that rather than trying to position him or herself at the center, behaves much more like the coach on the sidelines. that it's truly about empowering others and propelling others to success. And that's a leadership model that we are devoid of today. It doesn't exist in the corporate structures. It doesn't exist in politics. We have a star-centric leadership system today. But those at the bottom will ultimately take power. But I would encourage you to look at somebody like Zelensky, because his combination of empathy and empowering is changing not just Ukraine, but they're transforming how battles are fought.

1:11:56I mean, if you think about what's happening in drone warfare there, it's truly about empowering at a micro level others to figure it out. You know, how do you do this? And the grassroots building that's gone on in weaponry there, I think is emblematic of what can happen when those who are hopeless realize I have no choice but to figure this out and to work together with those around me to defeat my enemy. It's creative. It's realistic. I mean, it's a really interesting thing. And this is a guy that nobody thought would succeed. I mean, the brutal press that he got when he was a candidate, but he has a lot of the elements of the kinds of leaders that we'll see.

1:12:53Demetri Kofinas:It's so interesting hearing you talk, Peter, because I exist in two different worlds or try to take in different information environments. Because today, in today's world, people really live in, they can really live in their own realities. And this would come as a shock to a lot of people to hear you say this, because there's a lot of people in America that think Russia is winning this war, despite the fact that they've lost over 100 ,000 souls in Ukraine with a population that is below the replacement rate. And there's a view among lots of people in America that Zelensky is this sort of tyrant in Ukraine.

1:13:27Demetri Kofinas:And the question I have for you is, first of all, are you aware of this? Are you aware of these two very different realities with respect to how people view, whether it's the war in Ukraine, whether it's Israel Palestine, whether it's all these things, whether it's Charlie Kirk. I mean, actually Andrew Schultz, the comedian who has apparently a very successful podcast that I confess I don't listen to, but he was on Joe Rogan, which I used to listen to. I find Joe Rogan also boring these days. I find it's like basically non-experts interviewing non-experts about things that neither of them know anything about.

1:13:56Demetri Kofinas:But Schultz was actually really intelligent on this point. And he talked about how social media and the digital world flattens people and it turns them into just these small caricatures And that Charlie Kirk's assassination was a really great example of that because you had one part of the spectrum that was like, this person was this church going, God loving, blah, blah, blah. And then you had family man, blah, blah, blah. And then you had the other side of the spectrum that was like, this guy was a kind of white supremacist, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't feel any empathy for him or his family or his kids, and the world's better off without them.

1:14:34Demetri Kofinas:And it seems like whatever... We haven't even talked about this today, and God help us if we open this can of worms. But all these problems that we've identified today, we've talked about, we're attempting to deal with them while we have essentially a lobotomized brain. We are not functioning coherently as society because in part to go back to this thing about power, AI, capitalism, tech, big tech, you've got this community of tech oligarchs and quasi-capitalist whatever that have created platforms with economics whose malignancies we don't have the language to describe. I mean, Shoshana Zuboff gave us that language when she wrote The Age of Surveillance Capitalism or began to give us that language.

1:15:19Demetri Kofinas:But we haven't fully armed ourselves with the language to describe what's happening to us. And we're sort of falling through this vortex at the same time as all these other things are happening. And that is just terrifying. And I have tried on my show to raise awareness about that. It hasn't really resonated in part, I think, because the systems of communication have been hijacked. Yeah. Your examples are perfect for the metaphor I use these days, which is today on social media, we paint only with a roller and only using black or white paint. There is no middle. There is no nuance. It's either A or B.

1:16:03And if you're a reasonable person, you're now being put in a really difficult place of having to hold ice cold and boiling hot at the same time. Because to concede that it's either A or B is, I just can't, you know, the world is nuanced. So Peter, look, before we wrap up, as people kind of sit at home and process this, and I'm kind of processing it on the fly, and it's given me so much to think about, I've had the benefit of talking to you about mood and confidence a lot. And so I have a, I feel a better than average understanding of your framework and the importance of it. And I still remember the first time we met and the light bulbs that went off in my head when we started talking about this.

1:16:54So for the people that are perhaps new to this work and new to the way you think about the world, give them some practical ways in which they can react to the world around them, to try and avoid getting too swept up in this, some things to look for in terms of understanding shifts, not just in the collective mood, but perhaps in their own mood and their own positioning in that quadrant. Just give perhaps some practical advice for people that are listening to this and trying to process it. Yeah. If I had to give folks a simple arithmetic equation, It would be that confidence equals action and equals story.

1:17:38That how you feel is driving what you do and the stories you tell yourself and others. So be really careful with your stories. because we can latch onto them, believing them to be truths that then lead us to make poor decisions and to behave incorrectly. At the same time, appreciate that that equation works for everyone else. So when you're watching the news and the stories that you're being bombarded with, appreciate that they are being curated to mirror your mood. And that our news delivery system, our story system today, is a series of deliberate echo chambers that are trying to capture you and to keep your mood in a place that often is irritable and objectionable so that that's what keeps your attention.

1:18:56And I think we need to be very careful with the stories that we take in and to appreciate that the black or white we are being served is with intent to drive what we do and how we feel. The technology exists for me to manipulate you relentlessly. The other thing I would say, and this is the best way I know to deal with stress, is service with others for others. get out into the real world, doing something that benefits others, and hopefully do it with people that you wouldn't otherwise sit next to, stand next to. Go work in a food bank if you're a Republican with a group of Democrats. Do it with a group of Democrats if you're a Republican.

1:19:55But to realize that today we have far more in common than we have, it's different. And that these human connections are vital to sustaining us in these moments. I think that we would all be far less in the stress center if we stop trying to take in this relentless feed of information go for the facts, not the stories. Tell your own stories on the facts that you uncover. Don't rely on others to be feeding you the facts today. Beautifully put. I can't think of a better way to wrap this conversation up. D? Nope.

1:20:44Demetri Kofinas:It was wonderful getting to chat with you again, Peter. I appreciate the opportunity. As I said, I worry less about the uncertainty as I do just how powerless people feel today. And I'll share that the most difficult paragraph in my book for me to write was the one where I said, and I don't know the exact words, but ultimately, it is our choice to remain in the passenger seat. That we can blame others for putting us there, and there are lots of reasons we got there, but it is our choice to remain. And I think that folks need to realize that it is our choice societally, not just in the United States, but elsewhere, to remain in the passenger seat.

1:21:33And I keep wondering at what point do folks say, I've had enough? Yeah, it feels like it's coming. It feels like it's coming. Well, Peter, look, this has been fascinating. Thank you so much for doing it. Thank you both very much. Thank you, Peter. Well, there you have it, Dee. As always, every conversation I've ever had with Peter over the years, and we've had many, has been just so interesting. I always leave conversations with him with so much stuff spinning around my head, and this one's no different.

1:21:57Demetri Kofinas:Yeah, this was fun. What's fun about these conversations in general is that they're more free range, not to use a poultry term. You guys have the word free range over in the UK? We do. We do. Free range chicken. We range pretty widely. And I find it in some sense inspiring because it allows us to explore ideas that aren't as originally, again, for me, bounded by the outline that I have in my head. And it was also interesting, there was a moment in the conversation, you might remember this, where we were talking about control and power. And for me, it was a bit of an aha moment that the dynamic is such that in order to have, though Peter made the point that the folks that are attracted to this type of power can never have enough control, but that the underlying environment is such that people's confidence in the legal system protecting them against political persecutions is on the decline.

1:22:55Demetri Kofinas:And so the best way to protect yourself is to grab more power, that it isn't just about power in order to do the things you want. It's suggests an incentive structure that would drive towards centralization of authority. Yeah. And this idea of do unto others before they do unto you is, I mean, we've seen it, right? We saw it with the lawfare unleashed on Trump. We've seen it with Trump coming back at people now he's back in power. Comey, yeah. Comey's a perfect example, John Bolton and others. So it feels like we're at the start of that particular cycle, not the end. So I don't know where it goes.

1:23:29The other thing that's been fascinating for me in all these conversations is each one of them has contained light and darkness. There have been dark subjects that we've talked about and potentially dire outcomes. And there've also been hopeful points made about community and last conversation with Roger about a return to kind of spirituality and faith. And it's amazing how this whole pivot embraces every single part of every spectrum available and just trying to put it all together and focus on the right things and try and understand the way these things are shifting. It's been, I mean, I find it very challenging, but these conversations are a massive help for me.

1:24:08Demetri Kofinas:You know what? We should do a 100-year pivot event or some kind of, like, I can already see, the audience can't see your eyes, but I'm like, I can already see that Grant's thinking, oh God, not one more thing that I have to do. No, not at all. Grant's schedule is probably packed with like 30 trips all over the world. No, no, no, on the country. His interviews and his speaking gigs. But I was at this really great talk, like I mentioned last night with John and Karen, whose book, it came through, by the way, it's Empire of AI. And it was at one of CUNY's conference halls on 365 Fifth Avenue. And it was gorgeous.

1:24:44Demetri Kofinas:I used to put on events in New York. So I know the venues. And this is a fantastic venue. It's right by Grand Central, right by Penn Station, really great venue. And it's been a while since I did something like that, big big 200 to 300 person event space with a Q &A. And I wonder, maybe we should talk about this. Because talking about community, people love this new series. They'll get to meet us. They'll get to participate in one of these onstage Q &As and meet other people who are in this audience of ours for whom this show and this subject is resonating. Yeah. I think it's a great idea. It's a great idea.

1:25:17We will definitely talk about that. Which I think when the best time to do it is, I guess, It's a new year, new start. We'll have to talk about it. We'll have to figure it out.

1:25:24Demetri Kofinas:Yep, we're going to get a bunch of emails about this now. Confirmation emails from people. You've unleashed the beast now, Dimitri. You've opened the cage. At least people know that this isn't rehearsed now. We're just talking about this off the top of our heads as we go. But that's great. I think it's a great idea. Well, look, thanks to Peter Atwater for joining us. You can find out more about what he does if you go to his website, peteratwater.com. That's one T in Peter and one T in Atwater. Well, two T's in Atwater, but not next to each other. I've probably made that more confusing than easy, but no.

1:25:52And Peter's book, The Confidence Map, you can find on Amazon everywhere else if you haven't read it already. I cannot recommend it hardly enough. It's an easy read. It's a fairly short read and it will change the way you think about an awful lot of things. So again, thanks to Peter for joining us. We'll be back, Dee, with another conversation in the not too distant future, I suspect. But in the meantime, I guess all that's left is to thank everybody for listening. Thank you.

1:26:12Demetri Kofinas:Thanks for listening, everyone. If you want to listen in on the rest of today's conversation, head over to hiddenforces.io slash subscribe and join our premium feed. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, you can also do that through our subscriber page. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by Stylianos Nicolaou. For more episodes, you can check out our website at hiddenforces.io. You You can follow me on Twitter at Kofinas, and you can email me at info at hiddenforces.io. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.