Kimberly Spencer (00:00:00) - It is my favorite month of the year. It is nonprofit November on the Crown Yourself podcast. What does that mean? It means that this November, which is the giving and gratitude season, I am bringing to you a nonprofit leader or CEO who I just resonate with their message, with what they're doing in the world, with how they're serving and showing up with their cause, with how they are doing some phenomenal work and doing putting good into the world. Now, you know that as an entrepreneur, I believe that our businesses can be vessels of conscious capitalism. It is our businesses as small business owners and medium-sized business owners. And even for those of you who are very large business owners, those businesses are what is making this world's economy go around. And it is the love heart and service of these amazing nonprofits that I'm going to be bringing to you every week, this month, in November, to show and use some amazing new causes, or maybe new perspectives about causes that you maybe haven't thought about.
Kimberly Spencer (00:01:12) - And if it feels aligned, I want to encourage you in this season of giving, to open your hearts and possibly your pocketbooks to support these nonprofits if it feels aligned. The first nonprofit that we have is Common Ground Campus. Common Ground Campus was co-founded by my friend. The work that Common Ground is doing. I could not think of a more important one to kick off right now, at this time in our history, in our world, with everything that's going on and the divisiveness in this world, than common ground, because what common ground does differently is it does not bring campuses together for a debate. They're not debating right versus left, Democrat versus Republican. They are trying to find some form of common ground and the power of perspective and unity that can come when we find that common ground and bridge the divide. Because here's the thing divide and conquer has been a tactic that has been used in war, and we are currently in a war of our consciousness, a war of our minds. Thus, if we can elevate our consciousness to a place of finding unity where we can agree to disagree sometimes, and this does not mean agree to disagree, this means finding some common ground some awareness, and some perspective that comes when you bridge that gap between what you think you know.
Kimberly Spencer (00:02:49) - And what you know you know and what others think they know and what others know they know because all we have is perspective. And if we can find a common ground of shared perspective, then we have a path to move forward. Otherwise, we are pitted against each other. Fighting side versus side. And we see that now more than ever in our world. And it's scary, quite frankly, as a mother, I look at it and it scares me why I am so honored to bring Brent Hamachek and his work with Common Ground Campus, because at a grassroots level, being able to do this work and find a way to bridge the divide, it uplifts our consciousness as humans beyond the tactics of divide and conquer that have been used in war and used in our media and used all around the world. Like you look at it, if you look at the world through this lens, you will see how many ways divide and conquer is being used. But I really, truly believe as conscious leaders and as humans, we have far more in common than we have in division.
Kimberly Spencer (00:04:03) - And when we can find that common ground and we can find that unity, that's how we'll start to find peace and a way forward where no more children are getting harmed. That is how we can find a way of peace and a way of unity, where we can move forward together in love and at least mutual respect for each other's humanity. And so with that, I am honored to bring you Brent Hammock. Welcome to the Crown Yourself podcast, where together we build your empire and transform your subconscious stories about what's possible for your business, body, and life. I'm your host, Kimberly Spencer, founder of Crown Yourself, and I'm a master mindset coach, best-selling author, and TEDx speaker, known to my clients as a game changer. Each week you get the conscious leadership strategies you need to help you reign with courage, clarity, and confidence so that you too can make the income and impact you deserve. Imagine this podcast as your royal invitation to step into your full potential and reign in your divine purpose. Your sovereignty starts here and your reign is now brand.
Kimberly Spencer (00:05:14) - I could not think of a more needed reason for Common Ground than right now. In this time and in human history, what is Common Ground Campus and what is it that you do?
Brent Hamachek (00:05:31) - So well, first of all, thanks for having me as a guest. Really appreciate it. Your support of what we've been doing has been noticeable and exceptional and greatly appreciated. So Common Ground Campus is a unique sort of program where what we do is we go to a high school or college campus where the students identify for us an issue that's causing division on campus, sort of a broad topic. For example, this November, we're doing an event at Hope College in Michigan, and the students have asked us to come in and deal with topics under the heading of diversity, equity, and inclusion, something all Americans are quite familiar with today. What we do is we round up students with them on stage in front of their peers with the camera rolling, there are differing political views, and we have them take turns identifying some particular concern that they have that falls under that topic heading.
Brent Hamachek (00:06:34) - Right. And so then instead of debating something about the concern or issue or want that they raise through moderated discussion, we have other students on the panel ask them questions, offer ideas, and suggestions, say where they're coming from, ultimately all working towards finding a way to solve and address, address and solve. I should say not good with word apologies to address and then all the concerns that that first student raised. In other words, to find common ground. Though we do not debate issues, there's no debating allowed. The audience is told before an event starts that if they hear anybody say the words you're wrong on stage, they're supposed to make the buzzer sound in unison. And so far, by the way, many events and we've not yet had the audience have to make a buzzer sound. So guess the admonishment at the beginning works. But it's been very interesting and very successful. The one last thing I'll say before I allow the next question is that what's really fascinating in my role as the moderator of these is to realize, as you're listening in real time on stage, these kids going back and forth.
Brent Hamachek (00:07:54) - I can hear that they've found common ground. Right? So ultimately I'll say, look, I've heard this, this, this, and this from each of you. If we did this, would all of you be able to agree on a way to address the student's concerns? It went all four heads. Not, of course. And we found common ground. What's interesting is I can see it listening to them. They don't realize they're finding agreement as it's happening. There's something instructive on that on a larger scale for us to, realize in society, that perhaps civilization needs a moderator.
Kimberly Spencer (00:08:34) - Perhaps civilization does need a moderator because I saw it in my coaching practice when Mike before my clients had a breakthrough. I know that they're having the breakthrough and the realization before they're having it, and I can see that they're starting to piece the pieces together, and there's something to be said for that and deep listening skills, I think we are. We've been so conditioned to, you know. Promote having a voice.
Kimberly Spencer (00:09:06) - But are we having listening ears as well? So how did you come to listen so deeply so that you can find that unity?
Brent Hamachek (00:09:17) - Well, a big part of it comes from desire in general. And then some of it comes from specific background and what I'll call inadvertent training. Perhaps I'm an accidental tourist in my own life. But first of all, with regard to the commitment in the vision for it, to my partner Felicia Blackjack, who really is the mastermind behind creating the program and making it work and all of those things. She and I share this sort of passion that it's time to move beyond serving red meat to one side or another in this world of politics. And it's time to, as we say in recovery, it's time to become part of the solution. And so we like to say, the two of us that, you know, for a long time were involved in a fight for saving the country, and now we're simply involved in a fight to save humanity. So we've dodged the obligation.
Brent Hamachek (00:10:17) - We've taken the obligation up. And not so we have the commitment to this, and we believe that it's important to do it. And when you believe it's important, you have commitment. A funny thing happens. You get all sorts of energy ideas and you find ways to sort of make it work. And so from the inspiration, a little bit of success in terms of specifics, and my own background in training, I've been doing turnaround work as part of my business consulting now for over 23 years. And, you know, all turnaround engagements are always they always start the same way. Doesn't matter the industry, you know, you get the top people of the company in the room on the first day. Sometimes they're lawyers and accountants and other people too. And basically, you know, I'd sit at the head of the table and say, look, folks, I know you're all scared and worried. Everybody's at each other's throats here. But if we don't walk out of this room in an hour or so with a plan that we can agree on and execute, you're not going to make payroll next week.
Brent Hamachek (00:11:16) - If you don't make payroll next week, it's game over. And so you're going out of business. And so my thought process in terms of what we're doing, it's a metaphor and perhaps literal, you know America going out of business. And so having had the skill set developed over such a long time in working with troubled companies and trying to find ways to have agreeable paths forward, that has helped me in the role of being a moderator because it's the same thing, right? It's just, you know, on some level, this is nothing more than behavioral psychology. Nothing said anything more than behavioral psychology and reality.
Kimberly Spencer (00:12:00) - I've seen the facilitation that you have and some of the videos, and it's really beautiful seeing the students engage. You know what the Greeks used to do, which is Socratic dialogue. And I think we've lost the art of conversation because of so much division. How can we start facilitating in our own lives the art of Socratic dialogue and having a conversation, even with opposing perspectives?
Brent Hamachek (00:12:32) - So along the way, one of the unintended consequences of the Common Ground campus program is that it inspired my friend, as she's known, a rowdy crowd, a real name, to want to write a book on and create a 12 step program for Americans to get through this political mess that we have.
Brent Hamachek (00:12:55) - And she was kind enough to select me to work on the project with her that as we do this interview, that manuscript is finished and will be in the press soon. So what do we do to make this happen? The first step is to acknowledge that as Americans, we have an addiction our lives become unmanageable, and what we're addicted to is conflict. Our brains are actually craving it now, or neuropathy for it. And in large part. Not exclusively, but certainly it's been facilitated by social media. There's no question about that because it has become extraordinarily easy to hate in the third person. We can hate those. And that's why we can hate them from the comfort of our own bed. We don't even have to get out of bed. We can pick up our phone, hold it in our hand, go on Facebook or acts or Instagram or TikTok or wherever we want to go. And we can hate on people we've never met, and it can feel quite stimulating to do that.
Brent Hamachek (00:14:02) - And so it is, of course, harder to hate people in the first person when you're actually hating the person in front of you. This should put what the Common Ground Camp program tries to get at by having personal, live on-stage engagements between kids of opposing viewpoints. So the first step in having these kinds of conversations is to acknowledge the fact. That we'd become addicted to conflict and the Socratic method. He's one quick point on that. I know we're going to cover all sorts of ground here. One of the things that I suggest to people is the simple transposition of two common words in the English language. Two, two letter words start to move from using the words it is to is it? Just the replacement. The reversal of those two words used together can change everything about the nature of how you engage with somebody. Because when you move from the declarative to the interrogative, you drop defenses. The fight or flight response in someone else sits still and perhaps they can actually listen, engage, and think as they answer instead of argue as they respond.
Brent Hamachek (00:15:25) - Right? So try to reverse it and is it? And see what that little parlor trick might do for you in your social engagements.
Kimberly Spencer (00:15:36) - Oh, I love that linguistic tic because I get very linguistically nerdy. Yeah. And I think when we as humans and I've seen this consistently as we have a desire. And a fear of being wrong. And it's like it's like if we're wrong, that strips away a piece of our identity. And that's why people hold so deeply to their beliefs, to their political beliefs or their religious beliefs, to their national beliefs, do so because they are so desperately scared of being wrong. Ryan in Philippi. That's brilliant. But the only way that you can grow is to be wrong. About who you have been is to be wrong in some way. The only way to to growth. So how do we? Chart, of course, to find those spaces that are okay to explore. And I hesitate to say safe. But because safety is an illusion, but the safety within our own beliefs and identity.
Kimberly Spencer (00:16:52) - Because sometimes there are some more deeply held beliefs that we are like, no, not ready to look at that one yet, but we can deal with a small one and start to shake the frame on that, those perspectives.
Brent Hamachek (00:17:07) - Right. So, boy, you uncover with your statement just a lot of important stuff, to use a technical term. So if you thought most people are familiar with the term cognitive dissonance, but they don't necessarily know where it came from and where it came from was in the 1950s, there were a couple of psychologists, and sociologists who had an opportunity to study a doomsday cult, who had predicted the end of the world that was based here in Chicago, led by a woman, and aliens were going to come and invaded destroy Earth. But if you were ready the day before, they would lift you up and rescue you, and you'd be saved from the destruction. So there are all kinds of folks that sold all their worldly possessions, but their jobs and other things and join this cult.
Brent Hamachek (00:18:03) - And these researchers were allowed access to the cult. And what they discovered in the name of the book where you can find us. By the way, not only is the bookstore I'm trying, it's even audible you can. Which shocked me when I learned of it, went to look for it, and thought, wow, I have to go to an antique bookstore or an old library. Now it's on Amazon, like $9. But anyway, it's called When Prophecy Fails. And what did they learn? They learned that when all of these people had sold all of their wares and put all their commitment into this when the spaceship didn't come to rescue them, and when the world didn't end, as they thought, what did they do? They doubled down. We had the timing right. It's still going to happen. They couldn't cope with the idea that they had invested so much of their beliefs and actions into this, that it was wrong. They couldn't do it. So instead of saying, wow, we really messed up and destroyed our lives, we'd better put things back together.
Brent Hamachek (00:19:03) - Now, just the opposite. And so these folks coined the term to explain this cognitive dissonance. We have tons of that in America today. And so it is so difficult. You know, we have a wonderful expression and recovery where we say, you can't save your face and your ass at the same time. And so lots of folks are concerned with saving their face, and there's lots of cognitive dissonance and more evidence somebody might be presented with with regard to what truth might be. The more they find a way to construct a position that allows them to save face for their original position. The greatest example of this, perhaps in all of Western civilization, is fresh. Actually, there's been in all of Western civilization. There are two. I'll leave the first one. It's two. Controversial, although the more recent one is controversial as well. And that is what we saw happen with the pandemic and the vaccines and treatment. So we know now, we know we have verified science that a disease was always treatable and B, the vaccines do damage.
Brent Hamachek (00:20:17) - And yet what do we have from those who insisted otherwise? We have a tripling down. On the insistence that no, the vaccine worked and there was no way to treat the disease. These are just ridiculous, right? But for those folks, the spaceship didn't come. And since the spaceship didn't come, they must find a way to say that the spaceship will come still. Because they can't be wrong.
Kimberly Spencer (00:20:47) - Yeah. I think if we look at so much of society there is hope for the spaceship. Very much so. And the fears of that not showing up and the doubling down. And I think now more than ever, we're seeing doubling and tripling down on beliefs even when facts to the contrary. So looking at that, isn't that a lot of emotionalism? Isn't that like when our emotions supersede our logic and like what something is right there in front of us and our face as evidence and then beliefs to counter that evidence that is based in and rooted in emotion? So when emotions trump our thoughts and cognitive reasoning, how do we find common ground emotionally?
Brent Hamachek (00:21:41) - Well, it's a wonderful question.
Brent Hamachek (00:21:42) - You and I met at an Atlas Society event, you know, dedicated to the 20th-century mother or caretaker of the reason I ran and Objectivism and this need for rational thought over emotional thought. Uh, and it is, quite frankly, simply a matter of discipline. And it's an extraordinarily difficult discipline and seemingly harder for people to enact. You know, the ready, aim, fire is rational and fire ready. The aim is emotional and emotion is really properly used. It's a very human thing and we ought not to run from it. And we ought to embrace that and love it, but it ought to be sort of lubricant for reason, but not a substitute. And people are extremely emotional these days, and they're very visceral responses. And in part through that way, because they're looking to be that way because they're addicted to conflict. They want that mean conflict. Confrontation. Those are emotional things, right? A rational disagreement leads to questions, answers, thought discussion, counterpoints, and counterpoints.
Brent Hamachek (00:23:03) - Emotional confrontation, though, leads to a fight and we want the fight and we look for it. And one of the things I've argued for a long time, and that we point out in this upcoming book that I mentioned. What we've done now is as individuals. And I'm going to use an example, and I think your audience will be able to relate to this. It is this quest that we have for purity and conformity and orthodoxy and its conformity and purity and orthodoxy to what our own belief. Here's a hypothetical example that is not at all hypothetical in your audience. Every member of your audience will know somebody was within the last year of their life. They've seen this exact thing happen. They'll all know, let's say the two folks run into each other on the street. Let's say they're both pro-choice, a big controversial issue in America today. And as they talk, they're meeting with each other and they find out they're both pro-choice and they're quite excited. Right. And then one of them have them to mention as they're talking, you know, but you know, this the thing at the end of pregnancy near the final days where they do this, what they call a partial-birth abortion and the baby's partly born and the life ceasing, which, you know, I can't go along with that.
Brent Hamachek (00:24:28) - By the way, as I use this example, I'm making no value judgment here at all. I could have picked anything. What happens with the other person? The other person? One says, oh, well then you're not really one of us, are you? You don't really support what we believe. You're a false flag. You're a plant. You're gaslighting the movement. You are really pro-choice. What's happened here? Well, what's happened is that in their near universal agreement on the fundamental principles of being pro-choice versus pro-life. There's one area of disagreement, and that other person will stay on that as an opportunity to hate the other person, to criticize him, that you're not real. Why? Why would we do that? We fundamentally agreed with them on almost everything here. Well, will you do it? Because it's our chance to have conflict. We're taking it. We're looking for it. And if you are not pure, if you do not conform to what I think if you are not orthodox on an issue, I will find a way to condemn you.
Brent Hamachek (00:25:36) - Not a way to say, well, wow, we're pretty close. We should be able to work together on this.
Kimberly Spencer (00:25:41) - Okay. Yeah. My husband brought up this comedian from I think he's from the 70s since he's a bit older than I am. He was. And I'll leave the link in the description because I'm totally going to butcher the ending. So just watch it, watch it, and watch the buildup. And it's like, oh, or I'm a Christian. Oh, I'm a Christian too. And these two people meet on the San Francisco Bridge, and then they're there and it's, oh, what denomination are you in? I'm on this too. And oh, what? I'm the denomination. You can listen to nominations. I'm that too. And then I'm the denomination from the doctrine of this thing. Oh, I'm that too. And that I believe this. And so they get so granular and so granular into the beliefs. And she goes, wait, you're the belief system of 1854. And I pushed him off the bridge.
Kimberly Spencer (00:26:29) - Right. And yes, that is the desire for the level of purity in our belief systems, that if somebody doesn't believe exactly every single little thing that we believe, then suddenly there's no common ground. And that's what there's something in our linguistic programming when, when I've taught this to companies that we go when you chunk up, you get agreement. So when you go into concepts and ideation and theory and what I call the ism, so like the transportation and ism, and suddenly it's like it's a broader concept, but the more granular and specific and detailed you get, the less agreement you have in general. So with the people's need for conflict and also our need for specificity, our addiction to conflict, and our need for specificity, how do we juggle both without completely feeling alienated and alone, that we're the only ones? I think also the common problem that we have, because of the need for conflict and because of this chunking down thought process to like granulated specificity, that suddenly now we're met with the other problem, which is mass loneliness and mental health, a mental health crisis.
Kimberly Spencer (00:27:57) - In this trifecta of a problem.
Brent Hamachek (00:28:01) - Right. So interesting. You just momentarily locked my brain because you put so much in it. It just backfired. This idea that we're addicted to conflict and this thing that we're finding with the way humans now in 21st century America are behaving towards one another. And we've already talked about this, this sort of quest for purity, as I call it, and the fact that we're looking for reasons to disagree with people so that we can kick in our addiction. Right. So when I was drinking, I was always looking for a reason as to why I needed to have the next drink. They were not terribly difficult to find. So I was always able to find one and was able to find a way to be in conflict with people. You bring up that great little Canadian story about Christianity. So there's there's nothing new about humans doing this. Christianity may be the single greatest historical example of it that's ever existed, from its very early days and disputes between Paul and Peter right up through the present time.
Brent Hamachek (00:29:11) - And of course, all the different splits and disagreements over the last 2000-plus years. Great example of it. But this isn't the only problem. Another problem is he talked about the mental health issue. We are an American people these days, and I get quite harsh on this. My metaphorical term is I just say this is not Sparta. And people will say, well, Sparta ultimately failed. And I'll say, yeah, it did, but it had a pretty good run. You know what I mean by saying we're not Sparta is we're not terribly tough. Oh, we're angry and belligerent. But that's not a sign of strength. That's actually, of course, the sign of just the opposite. So we're petulant children who get angry and yell and scream and hate people, but who have skins that are so intent. And insides that are so sort of weak and vulnerable. So a bad combination. And I think it comes in, I was staying with a friend at breakfast the other day.
Brent Hamachek (00:30:22) - We were talking about all the issues facing America, all the different problems. And I said, you know, I think if somebody forced me to use only one word to describe everything that's wrong with the country, first of all, I wouldn't want to do it because it's not that simple. But if I had to, it was a gun at my head. The word I would use is opulence. And we sit in a time unseen, not just in all of human history, but anywhere else in the world. A man might not have ever been meant to be this physically comfortable. Because when we're this physically comfortable, it does not seem to bring out the best in us. It seems to generate just the worst in us because we have the time and the means and we have no consequence, right? And so think we're fighting some really big demons and trying to take the song, the first of which is just general awareness of what I just said.
Kimberly Spencer (00:31:22) - Hey. I love that because there's a big difference between opulence and abundance.
Kimberly Spencer (00:31:29) - I know that Peter Diamandis is a mentor of mine, and he is the one who introduced me to the Atlas Society and Jags. The CEO has been a member of the A360 mastermind and has been a friend of mine. And so the belief system that is ingrained in that mastermind of people, brilliant people who are seeking to build a world of abundance is amazing because abundance sounds so great in theory, and it can be. But the difference between abundance and opulence, and I think abundance has to be rooted in some form of personal responsibility and taking ownership of your life, your actions or habits, yourself, and then individuation in order to then produce exponential abundance versus the exponential opulence that has been given to us as Americans. I do think we definitely take it for granted because we have such a degree and a level of comfort. I mean, we can order food with a push of a button. We don't have to get out of the chair to argue with someone. We have the safety of a screen protecting us through the words that we use.
Kimberly Spencer (00:32:43) - And yet words. Words can still pierce the other person on the other side of the screen. It takes a pretty resilient skin to start to build that because it still hurts. So the opulence of that comfort and sitting in that comfort, and I think abundance has to be rooted in some form of discomfort, of seeing how can things be better? Versus opulence is sort of an acceptance of staying in the comfort zone without any growth.
Brent Hamachek (00:33:12) - Yeah. And so from this great position of comfort. Again, I don't I don't think that it brings out the best in us. What it does do is it affords people the luxury, of simply being able to say and do whatever it is they feel like saying and doing really without much consequence. There's a proliferation out now and it's again, social media. It's not it's not causative per se or exclusively, it's partly causative and that it's partly a tool. And so there's sort of like an interaction that's going on. Right. So there's no question that social media use has caused some of this.
Brent Hamachek (00:33:57) - On the other hand, it's people using social media. So we can't say that they didn't cause it also. Right. So but here's something that's interesting. So I'm very old. Your 1970s references. They work with me quite well. I grew up in a time when we were surrounded by World War Two veterans, and one of the things that I came to learn and understand, I had family members who had served in World War Two, and I learned some stories about what a couple of them did, and it was really quite extraordinary. I learned it from other close relatives, but then there were other people I know who had served in World War Two, who told all kinds of stories. These other relatives I had, told very few. One of the things I learned from veterans over time was that the ones who really saw serious action, the ones who really did something heroic, incredible, whatever it was, they didn't usually talk about it. But the ones who maybe had been stationed, say, stateside, working in the well, gosh, they would regale you with stories.
Brent Hamachek (00:35:11) - Right. And so the lesson from that is that the ones who really had seen and done, the ones who knew in their own high. What they'd accomplished, what they'd been part of. They didn't feel the need to elaborate on that. But others were on the periphery of it, or they went to great lengths to elaborate and perhaps even invent. And that's what we see today, happening with people on social media. Truly, truly, truly thoughtful, intelligent people who are rational in their behavior, who have taken the time to learn and understand and know issues. They don't engage the way the vast amount of the populace does because those people have actually served time in the world of action and ideas while the other people were just working in the past. And so we see a lot of this behavior coming out by people who just want to say things, fight, tell stories, and tell you why they're wrong and all of this sort of thing. I think there's a connection there.
Kimberly Spencer (00:36:22) - So how do we find common ground? What's the second step in recovery in order to really grow out of this addiction to conflict and to build our discomfort muscle in a way?
Brent Hamachek (00:36:39) - Right. Well, you have to have the willingness to turn yourself over to rational thought. First principles and get yourself back to the idea of really realizing that our national life has now become unmanageable because of this addiction to conflict. And so now it's time to step back from that and say, what are we missing? We are missing rational thought. We are missing an understanding of what it means, and what it was supposed to mean to actually be an American. And. And when I say that it's not jingoistic, in fact, it's just the opposite. People associate, you know, I'm an American or, you know, I'm proud of my country that makes it sound like it's jingoistic. It isn't if you're saying it the right way, because if you say it the right way, what you're saying is our founding fathers, who studied everyone from Plato forward, took a look because they were learned people and they were read well read. And they were they understood the ideas and understand they were coming right out of the light.
Brent Hamachek (00:37:54) - And so they took the very best of humanity's ideas up until that point, in terms of different systems of government that had been tried and failed had some success. Different ideas about man's nature, good or bad, and different ideas about how man is meant to live with maximum amounts of individual liberty and freedom, or with tight control and oversight. Right. They took all of this. They took 2000 years worth of stuff, empirical and theoretical, and they've put it together to design a system to keep us as free as we could be, while protecting us from our own nature, to want to go after one another. And people in this country need to have some appreciation of that. One of the things we point out in the book is the extraordinarily tough debate, that argument that took place between our founding fathers on virtually everything. And the question we ask is, I mean, they disagree on fundamental stuff. The question we ask in the book and it's rhetorical, is do you think that the people in America today could form a new country? The answer's no.
Brent Hamachek (00:39:16) - We couldn't do it. We wouldn't be able to get through the differences that our founding fathers had. I mean, they were back and forth. Right. Federalists and the Anti-Federalists arguing with one another. They had serious issues, and they weren't talking about reforming a system. They were talking about creating one from scratch and they figured it out. We can't agree on how to fix the border. We already have a border. We already have a system. We can't agree on how to fix that, let alone construct anything. And this is how we devolve.
Kimberly Spencer (00:39:55) - One of the things I love is the example of the Founding Fathers is Lin-Manuel Miranda's research into Hamilton as he was creating it, and he said the debates were like, that's why he structured them as like gangster raps in the musical, which I thought was brilliant and a brilliant reference because they were that hardcore. They would print and not print retractions and they would viscerally go after each other in debate. And since Common Ground doesn't focus on debate.
Kimberly Spencer (00:40:33) - Debate to me is like when it's approached in. I don't like to say the right way, but when it's approached in a way that presents growth comes from iron sharpening iron. But it seems like now the debate is just divisiveness. Let's let's polarize each other as much as possible. Let's fight so that I can attract the people who are attracted to my side. They attract the people who are on their side. And it creates that polarity and divisiveness where it's not sharpening, it's just dividing even deeper and making the roots and neural pathways in our country even deeper. So how do we structure finding a way to debate that where we can disagree on ideas? But also find that that common ground that actually produces growth.
Brent Hamachek (00:41:32) - Right. Well, it all starts with the willingness to listen in this open, constructive way. So let's pretend so well there are a number of ways to combat this my my brain is always a little circuitous and it's crowded. So bear with me. Let's talk about what a debate is like today on campus.
Brent Hamachek (00:41:56) - A debate today is typically some student group will bring in two experts from two different sides of an issue. And what they do is they fill the auditorium and they might have half the students on one side supporting one and half supporting the other. Right. And so then what do the two people do? They stand up on stage and they argue with each other for an hour. Sometimes it's comical. In part, they make fun of each other. Maybe sometimes it gets quite heated. All within the audience, though at the end they will tell you to buy one and then they'll go out in the courtyard, and get in a fight with each other. Now let's take our program and drop it in before that debate takes place on campus. Here's what we're trying to do. So we have an event where students get on stage and instead of debating things, they say, well, here's what I think is a race problem on campus at the University of Georgia. And they share a problem. They see it in the students' hall and they say, well, yeah, okay, so I understand.
Brent Hamachek (00:43:01) - Tell me more about why you think that way. Okay. Got it. Wow. I haven't seen that before. Thought about it that way. But maybe we could do this. And we go around and we solve the problem. So let's say we did that on Tuesday. And let's say then that everybody in the audience for that event on Tuesday goes to a debate on Thursday. And they watched the same thing I just described at the beginning. Our hope for this is and my hope is that when they watch the debate on Thursday, they take it in as spectators differently than they would have because of Tuesday. So what we're just trying to do is institute a method of stepping back for a minute. Am just listening, thinking. I know what I thought about this when I came in. Doesn't mean I'm right or wrong, does it? But I'm going to listen to what I hear. Kimberly, one of the most instructive comments that Phyllis gets after we do one of these and she interviews people in the audience, she will ask them the question.
Brent Hamachek (00:44:05) - She'll say, do you think differently about this issue than you did before the event tonight? And invariably, the answer she gets is a form of, yeah, yeah, I do like, you know, the other side. They made some really good points. And you know, I never thought of that before. So this is what we're trying to do. We're trying to change the Thursday night perception of argument. Because the Tuesday night experience of watching problems being solved.
Kimberly Spencer (00:44:34) - And do you have a system that you've kind of worked out on how to create some level of common ground and immunity? I mean, there's the facilitation, there's the moderation that you do from your years of experience. But if you were to teach how to do what you do to others, what would be that process?
Brent Hamachek (00:45:01) - Well, it's interesting that you ask that question. So a few years ago, and I'm actually planning to drag this back out. Your question might inspire me, before this podcast airs, to actually republish this and make it a link.
Brent Hamachek (00:45:21) - But a number of years ago, I posted a piece on what's taking place in terms of the breakdown in individual communication. It followed an original piece of political theory, had written about why the nation was divided and how that happened, and the team structure we have. So then I broke it down at the individual level. Here's what I can tell you shortly. A quick answer to this. Here's what I would urge people to recognize. Urge them to recognize. But most people go into a discussion anymore on an issue. With sort of this belligerent set of ideas that they know what's right. The other guys don't know. They know what the facts are. The other guys don't know I'm right. They're wrong. Right. And they have that attitude going in. I want you to imagine two perfect, perfected humans who decide they want to have a conversation about their disagreement on any issue. It doesn't matter what it is. Pick whatever you want, and they say they're going to do it in three days.
Brent Hamachek (00:46:28) - Three days from now, they spend the next three days, both of them, studying the facts that relate to the issue. Facts are interesting things. We'll use the words you and I like. They are objective. They exist. There's a limited number of facts on any particular anything. There's a limited number of facts. So when the people come back together three days later and they sit down, here's what these two perfected individuals fully intended to have a rational conversation. Here's what we can know for certainty is that in their search for the facts, one of them will have found facts the other one didn't find, and vice versa. Each of them will have found some of the same facts. And each of them will have not found some facts at all. That means that every single time we engage with another human being, our conversations with them over any particular issue are imperfect. Imperfect. By definition, in default, they can never be perfect. And if we could simply realize that whenever we sit with somebody, I know some facts.
Brent Hamachek (00:47:49) - They don't. They know some facts I don't. And there are a bunch of facts that neither one of us knows, that it in itself will give us the humility we need to be able to talk to them in a more constructive way.
Kimberly Spencer (00:48:09) - You just said one of my favorite values, which is the humility of being able to put aside our pride and see through that lens that we don't know it all. And it's like it's the Dunning-Kruger effect that was studied, that the person who was in the room with things they know it all, is probably the one who knows the least.
Brent Hamachek (00:48:32) - Right? Right now there's a great old song from the group. Since we're using old references, The Men Without Hats, somebody who remembers them from the seven days of the 80s, had a song called I Like and Said I like when they talk real loud, try to tell you all they know and with the inference meaning just the opposite. One more thing if I could, with regard to this communication piece that's so important that we just talked about the fact that we can't know all the facts when we talk to someone, and that's important.
Brent Hamachek (00:49:06) - Here's the other thing. We have to be cognizant of it. And if people can just do this along with the facts piece, they'll improve their communication skills with others overnight. We all. We have an expression that says there are two sides to everything. Sounds good. It's it's drivel. Of course, the reason it's dribble is because there's actually an infinite number of sides. Or I should say there are about 8 billion because sides to things. What it really means. Yes. Perspectives. So every single human being that takes a look at a situation in a set of facts is looking at it from their own very unique perspective. I had a political science professor. First year of college. We were sitting at a big giant rectangular table in a room, and he had us pull out a piece of paper and draw the table exactly as we saw it. And we all did that. And then we all. He took our pictures and the old days. He stuck them with tape up on the board. What did we see? We all drew the same table and no two pictures looked alike because our perspective in looking at that table was different based on where we were sitting.
Brent Hamachek (00:50:22) - We have to recognize our perspective, which is our life experience, where we grew up, how we were raised, the town we lived in, the school we went to, and the friends we have. That perspective impacts how we see things, and more importantly, it impacts the way everybody else around us sees the same thing. And to disregard that. Is to eliminate our ability to effectively communicate with people because they don't draw the table the same way we do, and we need to have that recognition. And then that's perspective is okay, that's where we're sitting, right? And that's our life and that's given to us. So we have our perspective. The other part though is bias. And bias is what we have to do. Bias is sort of the cataract on perspective. It clouds the vision. So I have my perspective. That's okay. To my wife. I can't apologize for the life I've lived and where I'm at. This is how I'm looking at things. But now bias comes in. It clouds the vision.
Brent Hamachek (00:51:28) - And so we have to be willing to look at our biases that distort the view we have from the perspective that we've come to, that you'll communicate better.
Kimberly Spencer (00:51:40) - Our biases formed.
Brent Hamachek (00:51:42) - Well, bias. You know, you think about it, it is really nothing more than a result of inductive logic. So some biases are good. We have a bias that tells us that if we step immediately in front of a high-speed train, will be immediately killed. We know this because tens of thousands of people, over time, have stepped in front of high-speed trains, and universally, they all died. So a buyers can be good, but it is inductive logic, taking many examples of different data points and drawing them down into a hypothesis. Right that you could then test by stopping in front of the train if you like. Here's the danger of bias. Bias. Inductive logic will also tell you that if you encounter a section with a delayed light and the light goes finely from red to green, you can drive through that intersection.
Brent Hamachek (00:52:38) - Do that a hundred times and you're likely fine. You're at 101st, and you'll get creamed by a car that was paying no attention to the light. The guy was texting on his cell phone. So you can draw conclusions from your biases. You can use inductive logic. But you'd best be careful because those wrong conclusions can get you killed at a moment's notice. So understand that we have biases for a reason. They're just the results of inductive logic. Inductive logic assumes stationary is dangerous to draw general conclusions from. Because they might not always be right. Anybody, by the way, anybody, by the way, could prove this to you. Have you ever had an email, an important email end up in your spam folder? Well, the answer, of course, for everybody is yes. Understand that computers use inductive logic to decide if that message goes into your spam folder. Irregular inbox every once in a while. Your email pulls through the green light with a car that's running the red light. So be careful.
Kimberly Spencer (00:53:48) - A good example like a really powerful example. And I'm thinking about that last email.
Brent Hamachek (00:53:58) - It's a Bayesian logic that is built on inductive reasoning network computer systems used to sort our emails for us.
Kimberly Spencer (00:54:07) - So where does emotion get into this?
Brent Hamachek (00:54:10) - Again, the beautiful island of motion is the lubricant of reason. If we don't allow. If we don't allow ourselves to be emotional creatures, we lose the best of what can make us fully human. You know, let's sit on Objectivism a little bit, you know, think I am the sphere of love. Was was extraordinarily good. And, you know, it was it became for her that highest value that humans can achieve that notion of romantic love. But it was never built on some notion of co-dependence or, you know, feeling as though you need to rescue or save somebody or need someone in order to make your own life worthwhile. It was about rationally taking a look at your own complete self seen in another. That they would add to that experience and become this great value for you, and that allowing yourself to feel that emotion of romantic love.
Brent Hamachek (00:55:19) - And so for even the most rational person you could argue I have ever lived. There's certainly the queen of rationalism, the 20th century, that human emotion, the experiencing of it, was the greatest value. So we just ought not to. Certainly, we should never substitute emotion for reason. And we should never make reasons to turn into emotion. But we should embrace emotion to allow ourselves to fully experience the joy of a rational choice. I think that's a. Bit way to look. At least that's the way I try to look at it.
Kimberly Spencer (00:56:01) - Yeah, I look at emotions from the perspective that they have to be owned as the individual. Because so often our society is very programmed for conflict, addicted to it. And so instead of actually processing it and feeling those parts and all those yucky emotions of anger, sadness, bitterness, frustration, all of that, instead of processing it internally and recognizing that this is my emotion, we project it outwardly into conflict because that's socially acceptable.
Brent Hamachek (00:56:36) - Right. It isn't that tragic that it is socially acceptable and people feed off it. You know, I think one of, the best, worst examples is what we call today so euphemistically on social media influencers. I mean, the vast majority of these people that we call influencers, I mean, first of all, most of them are aimless, though. They're just imbeciles. You look at what they write, what they say, and they're, you know, if the task were to, you know, deconstruct their argument logically for whatever it is on either side, you can construct it in a matter of moment with a logical brain. So they're imbeciles. But beyond that, they're dangerous imbeciles because most of them are trying to influence people in an aggressive, hateful way. They're not trying to inform somebody to get to the thing. They're trying to gin up a mob. And this is something that we pay people to do. Advertisers pay them. Companies pay them to do this. They are.
Kimberly Spencer (00:57:49) - They're called. They're called the useful idiots.
Brent Hamachek (00:57:53) - Yeah. Well. Right.
Kimberly Spencer (00:57:54) - It's actually I heard them called that people.
Brent Hamachek (00:57:57) - Well, they're they're more the manipulators of this because let's let's make no mistake, it is. Oh, yes. All in mass that have allowed themselves to be manipulated. And, you know, to some extent. Well, here's what I think we're starting to settle a debate on. We're settling the debate that goes back, you know, 2400 years or so between Plato and Aristotle, student and student and teacher. And talking about man's nature as a political animal. Here's what we've learned in the 21st century. The answer is unequivocally yes and no. We are political animals in terms of how we behave in our individual lives, our work lives, and things. Think about what we associate with political behavior. Deal making, manipulation. Trying to win people over. Get them to our side. Trying to build groups to support our positions. Right? We are political animals in that sense.
Brent Hamachek (00:59:05) - We behave that way. But not in the public square. We're not. It's provably false that people are political animals in the sense that we talk about politics. Most people don't get involved to the extent they are involved. They're uninformed. They're involved. Every maybe October of an election year, they go put signs out or something. We're not political animals in the public square. And I think that anybody wants to make the argument otherwise. I think again because the evidence against it is overwhelming. Never in history have men or women been afforded the opportunity to be political animals like they have been in the United States. And yet the vast majority of our 330 million people, many of them are legally the vast majority of our 330 million people. They stay out of the game. They're not really interested, Did you condemn them for that? Or do you simply say we had man's nature wrong? You know, Ben Franklin famously said, we all have the line that, you know, what kind of government did you create for us? And he said, A republic if you can keep it.
Brent Hamachek (01:00:21) - All of our founding fathers understood the need for citizen vigilance in order to maintain our system. Well, they didn't get it. And that's what we're living with today.
Kimberly Spencer (01:00:35) - Oh.
Kimberly Spencer (01:00:36) - How do we develop that? Care for communication. To find common ground and unity as a human race. Because I think otherwise. I have been programmed on massive amounts of division. And I personally think that if we don't want to be like, you know, y'all can't handle this, I'm going to take over because of the divisiveness. And we have to rise to another level of consciousness and communication to show unity to some degree.
Brent Hamachek (01:01:15) - All right, well, first of all, thank you. I think you're the first person who ever used the word brilliant associated with anything I said who wasn't on mushrooms.
Kimberly Spencer (01:01:23) - So I say I'm not a fool.
Brent Hamachek (01:01:28) - Thanks for the silver compliment. Um, look, what do we do? Well. We'll go back to the book that I mentioned that's coming out. And, you know, one of the key tenets of recovery is that you have to approach it with honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness.
Brent Hamachek (01:01:47) - And to some extent, it's really just that simple. And I don't want to answer such an important question with something that sounds overly simplistic or like a catchphrase. But let's think about it for a minute. You're saying, how do we get past this? Well, first of all, we have to be honest about acknowledging not just the problem in the country, but the problem in ourselves. Right? The answer lies not in the stars, but in ourselves. We have to be honest about it. We have to own our share of this, right? We have to acknowledge that we're responsible. Then what we have is we've got to be open-minded enough. To be able to start to listen to other people, think about, challenge our own positions, get rid of this notion that you can't save your face and your house at the same time. Decide that maybe we want to save our ass now as a people, as individuals, as a country. And then once we have all that.
Brent Hamachek (01:02:52) - We've got to be willing to do something. And you know what? I say this all the time, Kimberly. And, you know, I've said it to suggest the two of us talking. You know, I'm I'm proud of us. Right. And the reason I say I'm proud of us. And it might sound bad to anybody listening. Not if they're an objectivist, though. They probably would like to. But everybody in the country says that those things are. And, you know, it's not sustainable and we can't survive this way. Well, listen, I feel the same way, except we're not in our armchairs. We're on the street and we're on a campus. We're sitting down, we're working with students, and we know we can't do everything, but we know we can do something, and we know we can't go on a campus and solve their problems. But we know we can go on a campus and show them the problems can be solved. Selfless and I, God, love us for those who so believe.
Brent Hamachek (01:03:50) - But we're doing something and we do it without naivety or any sort of overinflated sense of self or what we can do or not accomplish. We're simply doing the best we can. And I think if everybody would do the best they could, then we would all do better. Which is Phyllis's tag phrase for the Common Ground Campus program.
Kimberly Spencer (01:04:14) - Friend. I would love this conversation and definitely a beautiful intellectual conversation that is so desperately needed in these times about the power of logic and reason how to process emotions as humans and how to communicate. And I would love to shift Gears and Austin to a little bit of rapid fire to realize that.
Brent Hamachek (01:04:41) - All right.
Kimberly Spencer (01:04:42) - Who is your favorite female character in a book or a movie and why?
Brent Hamachek (01:04:48) - All favorite female character. That's easy. It's. And it's obvious it's Dagny Taggart. It has to be. She is. I wrote about her as the ideal woman. She hit a spot on deck, and Taggart is the ideal woman.
Kimberly Spencer (01:05:02) - What percentage do you want to trade places with just for a day? To live in their life, in their mind, in either a line or when they were living?
Brent Hamachek (01:05:13) - So does that mean a current living person, a.
Kimberly Spencer (01:05:17) - Living person, or someone living in their time?
Brent Hamachek (01:05:20) - Someone living in their time. Oh, that's that's easy. I think that every human being should have the same answer to this question. No matter what their belief system is. There's only one you pick, and that's Jesus Christ. Because if you could actually live inside him, as him, you would have all the answers to what people have been fighting about for 2000 years. Might I like the answers? Or you might love the answers, but you'd have all the answers. So anybody who didn't pick Christ is making a bad pick. They just wasted the choice. You have the answers to everything about human existence one way or another. If you live inside of him for a day, so easy is the answer.
Kimberly Spencer (01:06:04) - Awesome.
Kimberly Spencer (01:06:05) - You are actually the first person to Christ. Most people pick it. Oprah.
Kimberly Spencer (01:06:12) - Well, here I say that if.
Brent Hamachek (01:06:14) - You were to live inside of Oprah, at least there would be plenty of room where you were living.
Brent Hamachek (01:06:18) - But that's probably it. I won't.
Kimberly Spencer (01:06:22) - Say.
Brent Hamachek (01:06:22) - That, but certainly it would be a spacious room.
Kimberly Spencer (01:06:26) - So what is your morning routine to set you up for an epic, successful day? Facilitating conversations.
Brent Hamachek (01:06:34) - At roughly 80oz of black coffee, an extra struck Starbucks, and usually sitting with a combination of reading a handful of trusted morning news sources and then listening to either lectures or books. Audio-wise, I find now that I'm an old man. Readings of the challenge for me to read a book just because it kind of gets distracted. I kind of start to do the whole nodding off thing, like as old people do. So I listened to tons of audiobooks and especially lectures. I like to listen to lectures, always non-fiction, no fiction allowed in my day. And so lots of coffee, a little bit of news, a little bit of intellectual stimulation, and off I go.
Kimberly Spencer (01:07:27) - And what is your nightly routine?
Kimberly Spencer (01:07:29) - To set you up for a superior morning?
Brent Hamachek (01:07:32) - Well, there's usually a trip to the weight room in between the morning and the evening, so I'm properly exhausted.
Brent Hamachek (01:07:39) - The evening routine is pretty darn simple. It's British television and Fresca. So I love I love British TV. Subscribe to all this. All the various platforms. All I watch are British sort of crime shows. The Brits keep their politics mostly out of their television. The actors are better than American actors. The stories are better than American storywriters. It's not even close. And so I love to watch shows in particular about brilliant people figuring things out that no one else could figure out. So I'm drawn to those kinds of characters. So fictional superheroes of intellect.
Kimberly Spencer (01:08:29) - So Sherlock.
Kimberly Spencer (01:08:30) - Holmes is.
Brent Hamachek (01:08:31) - Right in the middle. But as you say that right in the middle, as we record this of watching the 1980s British Sherlock Holmes show star Jeremy Brett, if I can give your audience a television recommendation, it is. Watch the original Sherlock Holmes series. It is extraordinarily good.
Kimberly Spencer (01:08:52) - Oh, I would love to.
Kimberly Spencer (01:08:54) - I'm such a detective nerd.
Kimberly Spencer (01:08:56) - Oh, I'd love to do it.
Brent Hamachek (01:08:58) - Here's a fun tip about it.
Brent Hamachek (01:08:59) - It's.
Kimberly Spencer (01:09:00) - You'll see.
Brent Hamachek (01:09:01) - Right away. It's overacting a bit, but it's overacting on purpose. It's like it's a TV show that was done for the British stage. And Jeremy Brett was a stage actor. I learned, so it feels like a little bit like you're watching theater, right? A little bit of overplayed overacting, a little, but on purpose. And so well done. And the mysteries are amazing and he always figures it out.
Kimberly Spencer (01:09:27) - Well, of course.
Kimberly Spencer (01:09:28) - He's Sherlock.
Kimberly Spencer (01:09:28) - Holmes.
Kimberly Spencer (01:09:29) - What do you define to be or kingdom?
Brent Hamachek (01:09:33) - My kingdom would simply be that the people in and around my sort of circle of life, either who I've pulled in by choice or who I touch inadvertently and trying to make some sort of lasting contribution. To them that's meaningful. Perhaps. I don't know if fear is the right word, but all sorts of folks have some level of concern over legacy, right? And they would hope that, hey, they wouldn't be completely forgotten when they go and then be if they are remembered that perhaps they're remembered well and then see the remembered well because of something they actually did that might have benefited someone else.
Brent Hamachek (01:10:26) - So these are these are the things that weigh on my mind as I enter the winter of life. And so my, my kingdom is the, the folks they touch trying to be a benevolent member of the kingdom.
Kimberly Spencer (01:10:40) - Right.
Kimberly Spencer (01:10:41) - And lastly, how do you crown yourself?
Brent Hamachek (01:10:44) - Well, I think.
Brent Hamachek (01:10:47) - It kind of relates to the question, the last question you asked, my greatest level of satisfaction comes from someone turning to me. And sometimes, by the way, this is what I've been hired to do. And sometimes it's just me doing it for free, just helping. Sometimes it's business related, sometimes it's personal. When someone comes to me because something is extraordinarily important to them and they are in a jam. And imagine that moment when you're in a tough spot. Whatever it is, you're thinking, what do I do? Who can I call? And so they reach out to me. That's incredible in of itself that somebody in that moment would reach out to you. But then if and when that situation resolves in a way that's that official to that person.
Brent Hamachek (01:11:42) - There's no amount of money you can pay me or applaud. You could give. That to me is. I know the compliment they paid by coming to me for help. And I know what I was able to do to help them get through whatever it was. And that is extraordinary.
Kimberly Spencer (01:12:03) - I mean, saying, Brent, how do we find you? How do we get Common Ground Campus on our campuses, on our alumni campuses? How do we spread the word about what you're doing and bring a little bit more unity to this country?
Brent Hamachek (01:12:18) - Well, you can.
Brent Hamachek (01:12:19) - You can find me at the gym in a little while. So. But beyond that, look, you can go to CommonGroundCampus.com, and you can fill out all the simple contact form. You can also go to. We have started a foundation in support of the Common Ground Campus Initiative. So Phyllis and I have built this with our own time, treasure, and talent. We've proven the concept in the first year, and so now it's time for us to do what any entrepreneur would do in a business setting, and it's time to turn to the outside world for that next round.
Brent Hamachek (01:13:00) - So if you go to Bridge heritage.com Bridge Hurricane, you will find our foundation and how to contact us, and so on. And if somebody believes in what we're trying to do needs or we need people to put their money where their concern is, if you're one of those people that feels like the nation, its current course isn't sustainable and something has to be done. But your own demands of time in your life are such that you can't do it yourself. You can do something. You can help us do something. So I'd encourage you to do that. And anyone who writes for an email. Rented bridge charities. Thoroughbred to bridge charities. Com. I read back to every human being since the note. I love them all and am happy to hear from anybody. Even if you want to say I'm insane, I won't rebut that. By the way, I'll just try to explain why I'm.
Kimberly Spencer (01:14:02) - Because we're all about finding that common ground.
Kimberly Spencer (01:14:07) - You know, debating.
Kimberly Spencer (01:14:09) - There's no debating it. So, Brent, it has.
Kimberly Spencer (01:14:12) - Been a pleasure to have you on the Crown Yourself podcast. Thank you for this conversation. And as always, my fellow sovereigns on your throne, mind your business, because your ray is now. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If what you heard resonated with you. Be sure to subscribe and start creating a bigger impact now by sharing this with a friend.
Kimberly Spencer (01:14:32) - Just by doing that one simple act of kindness, you are creating a royal ripple to support more people in their sovereignty. And if you're not already following on social media, connect with me everywhere at Crown Yourself. Now for more inspiration. I am so excited to connect with you in the next episode, and in the meantime, go out there and create a body, business, and life that rules because today you crown yourself.
