>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour goes back to Wednesday.

And I'm just going to share a little story about Wednesday afternoon from my own perspective, because what I want to do this hour is encourage listeners and viewers, if you're watching on YouTube, to just share how you've been feeling this week.

so on Wednesday, I was driving to pick up my son from school, and I'm part of a text thread with a small group of people who sometimes talks about current events or politics.

And all I saw was that the group was saying, is it true?

Is it true?

And then I saw someone say, there's video, do not watch the video.

And I pulled over and called a friend and I said, what's going on?

And he said, well, Charlie Kirk was shot at an event, in Utah.

And, you know, my first thought was, is he okay?

And my friend said, I saw the video accidentally.

It's everywhere.

I don't want to see it, but it's in these autoplays on social media.

And he said, I don't think he's going to survive.

And I just felt sick.

I felt sick because it just doesn't matter to me for the moment where you are in your politics or ideology.

I felt sick because I don't want to live in a country that chooses to solve problems or or address perceived problems.

This way.

Violence tends to beget more violence.

And the murder, the assassination of Charlie Cook on Wednesday didn't just take a father from his two young kids, three and one.

what it does is it signals something really dark and dangerous.

And it's also not a beginning.

It is part of a line of violence.

Violence in different communities.

Violence that becomes normalized.

you know, the president of the United States ordered flags at half staff for Charlie Kirk.

The New York Yankees did a moment of silence in a public announcement.

They did not do that for the Minnesota state senator, who was murdered alongside her husband three months ago.

They didn't do that.

When someone broke into Nancy Pelosi's house looking for her in her bed to kill her with a hammer and found her husband and nearly killed him.

And then the perpetrator later said his only regret was he didn't finish the job.

We could keep going back on this.

The attempts on President Trump's life, the shooting of Steve Scalise, Gabby Giffords.

I'm going to leave things out.

And and that even sets aside.

That's political violence that sets aside the violence that is so common in communities across this country.

And so over the years, I some of the conversations that have grounded me the most have been with people associated with the MK Gandhi Institute for nonviolence.

So I've asked them to come in today, because I'm really feeling broken.

I'm feeling very, very sick for the future of this country, for the health of of our society.

and I know we're not a society yet.

That is irredeemable, but it takes a lot of work.

It takes a lot of work to pull back from the abyss.

We have a White House right now that is claiming that there is only violence on one side of politics, and that they might even use extrajudicial judicial means to go after people on that side because they're angry.

It's not an easy time to be in listeners.

If you want to share your thoughts.

I you know, a lot of it's just about being human.

Please be human.

you know, we're trying to just feel what we're feeling.

This hour, we're going to close the week this way, and I'm going to welcome our guests in a moment, and they're going to help us.

this is a little bit of a clumsy hour, but that's what it's going to be.

Typically, we end with something a little more upbeat or a little bit more in the arts world or something to go into the weekend feeling good about.

And this is tough.

This is really tough.

So and and lastly, I'll just say the video is still out there, please.

I mean, please try to make sure kids are not seeing it.

I heard from a child last night who had seen it in detail.

Please, I know, I know, there's violent images beyond just the Charlie Kirk assassination that kids are unfortunately seeing all the time.

I get it, but just it's not easy when you've got kids just feeling like this is just something to be numb about.

So let us know how you're feeling this hour and we'll try to work on it together.

You can email the program Connections at wxxi.org, Connections at wxxi.org.

You can call the program 844295 talk.

It's toll free.

8442958255263 WXXI.

If you call from Rochester 2639994.

I, I texted Kit Miller to talk about this because it's just this really healing person.

Director emeritus of the MK Gandhi Institute for nonviolence.

And Kit is kind enough to be here.

So welcome back.

I always wish the circumstances are different.

We talked about some hard things, but I'm always appreciative of the conversation.

Thank you for being here.

>> Yeah, it's good to see you.

>> Jonathan Jones is here, a community trainer at the MK Gandhi Institute for nonviolence.

And it's nice to have you.

Thank you for giving up part of your afternoon to come talk to us.

Thanks for.

>> Being here.

Yeah.

You're welcome.

I'm happy to be here.

>> well, I'll start with you, Kit.

I'll ask both of you.

Just.

You know how you're how you're doing.

you know, I mean, this is not the first incident of violence.

I mean, I don't want to.

I don't want to overstate what happened Wednesday, but I also don't want to understate it.

And I want to just ask, how are you doing?

>> I appreciate you starting the show, kind of sharing in the way that you did., and I think it is an important time for us to be human with each other.

So for me, when I heard about it I, you know, I was thinking about, I mean, I always think about this week of September 11th.

>> Yeah.

>> And,, once again, for probably the 500th time, I remember an interfaith gathering that we had here in Rochester just after probably November 12th or 13th.

So it could have been, you know, even on this day those years ago.

And one of the things that I heard was from doctor Shafik, who at that point was the.

>> Muhammad Shafik.

>> Yeah.

Who was at that point was, the imam at the Rochester Islamic Center.

And, and he just looked around the room with so much love and he said, you know, this is a moment for people of faith to cool down and get humble.

And, you know, we were he was talking to many people.

So maybe we don't we don't see ourselves as a person of faith necessarily, except maybe we want to have faith in the future, or we want to have faith that our kids are going to have a good life, life or whatever.

So for me, you know, that notion of cooling down and getting humble in moments when people are getting inflamed has been good medicine.

So I, I think about that and I thought about it again.

And I also know that, you know, talking to a friend who has a, a middle schooler or a freshman, I guess.

And yeah, there was a lot of conversation going on at the school about it.

And, you know and this whole idea of, you know, who deserves a violent death and, and we've gotten to the point where we think that it's okay that some people, some people meet violent deaths, some people don't.

Who whose life matters, you know, like, there's just so much into in a moment like this.

>> Can I can I just follow up with one question before I turn to Jonathan on that point?

One of the things that I've been worried about in the sort of the in the age of social media is becoming is the way we can dehumanize people that we don't agree with.

So, you know, I think about Charlie Kirk first, as he was a husband and he had two young children, and they they're going to grow up without their dad.

His work is not the kind of work that I would have personally been proud of.

His work was telling young people who hadn't had a whole lot of time to get educated themselves that actually, Dr.

Martin Luther King was a bad person.

The president of the United States now is the moral leader.

And Dr.

King was a bad person.

>> He said some things that shocked me in ways that I've found sometimes repugnant.

And yet I almost I mean, I, I was moved to tears.

I nearly wept openly, sitting in my car thinking about the way he died.

And at least in that moment I realized, like, it.

None of the what I agree with transcends.

I will never feel that ending someone's life that way is anything to celebrate or feel.

I mean, I just I'm sick of it.

I'm sick of it for this country.

I'm sick about it for his family.

And I at least felt like, oh God, I haven't lost my humanity yet.

mm-hmm.

It's so terrible.

So, you know, it's interesting because kids are now going to be thinking teenagers, adults who deserves this.

But I would prefer that we get to a place where we say, like we still have to really work hard to, to change society without this.

>> I hear that, and I mean the unraveling that you're describing and mourning.

I mean, that's been going on my whole life, you know, this.

I mean, we've been getting messages our whole lives about, you know, who the bad guys are, who the good guys are, who deserves a good life, who deserves to have their life ended.

it's it's now it's like, you know, it's it's what King said.

He said, you know, violence will beget violence.

And we have just become more and more violent over time.

And and there's a possibility now that we may finally get sick to of it and want to do something different.

And I think that there's some interesting signs that that's happening, which I'd love to talk a little bit about today.

>> Jonathan, do you want to share some thoughts on how you're feeling this week?

>> Yes.

So I mean, the first thought that came to my mind was the ends don't justify the means.

And what that means to me is that you cannot do a violent act and then expect peace to come out of that.

And one thing I think that I want for sure, and I think others want, is peace.

And so when you practice peace, then to end will be peace.

If you practice nonviolence, then the end will be nonviolence.

So, I mean, that's what I thought about.

And I've also, you know, my studies of nonviolence and practicing nonviolence also learned about, like, reconciliation.

That's something that King Martin Luther King Jr.

and others that followed this philosophy and this strategy, and his methodologies believe that reconciliation was very important is that, yeah, you have people that you disagree with and all that.

But you know what?

There's a way that we could, like, work together.

I mean, killing each other isn't going to solve anything.

I was going to do is just create this, like a sense of what King used to call negative peace.

And and one thing I want is, like, positive peace opportunity for me and others to just live a life where we could just do what we want to do without being, you know, safely, without worrying about being harmed or speaking in front of people and worrying about people killing us.

So, yeah, I mean, that was the first thought that came to my mind that this was just another senseless killing that I just wish wouldn't have happened.

>> what happens, Jonathan, when kids who have not they don't have fully formed brains, they're not adults yet when they are exposed to violence.

And again, I want to say I'm not naive and I don't want to overplay it.

It's just the ubiquity of the killing, the assassination on Wednesday was for a for hours.

It was everywhere.

And I cannot even imagine how many American kids saw that in extremely gory detail, that, unfortunately, almost certainly is not the first time they've seen it.

And they might have seen violence in their own lives.

They might have seen violence visited on their own family and friends.

But what happens to children when violence gets normalized like that?

>> That is a good question that I don't have.

Like a medical or scientific answer for.

But one thing for me, you know, personally, is it's traumatizing.

And then it numbs you.

I mean, it just numbs you.

You just think that this is how things are.

I mean, you know, seeing so much violence, being around violence, growing up and hear people constantly, like, talk about violence, you think that, well, this is how I should act.

This is my, like, natural way.

Violence is like a part of like living.

So yeah, I think it's very traumatizing for young people to see images of that.

And because they just believe that this is the way things are.

And I don't believe that.

>> one word that we've heard a lot in talking about how kids feel, especially when kids start to wonder if anybody cares about them, if anybody cares about their future, is nihilism that nothing matters, that there's a meaninglessness to existence?

I have to think that when violence becomes normalized, that just pushes that further, that you might think that you know, who cares about me?

Who loves me?

Nothing really matters.

We all die anyway.

I mean, it's a I've heard people say it, and it's a terrible thing to feel.

But when there's this much violence that's ubiquitous in your life, like, how do you work with a young person who's starting to feel like it?

Nothing matters.

Jonathan.

>> Well, first of all, you have to let them know that they do matter.

And there is another way.

Now they may not see that other way right now, but you have to let them know that there is another way and that another way that I talk about is nonviolence.

It gives people a respectful, dignified, and safe way to step away from violence.

So in the face of violence, if you respond to the nonviolent way, that person who's coming at you in a violent way can walk away with their dignity, you can walk away with your dignity, they can walk away with respect, and you can walk away with respect.

So I think that that's the message that young people have to understand, because right now they're looking at acting violent.

Being violent is being tough and showing strength.

But that's not being tough.

And that's not strength.

If, you know, nonviolence, being able to stand in the face of violence, you know, with your back, you know, with your chest sticking out, you're standing tall.

That right there is what courage is all about.

And one of the things that Kenny and I violence teaches is that his first principle is that, you know, courage is what nonviolence is all about.

>> Kit, this ubiquity of violent imagery, you know, all the kids who saw what they saw on Wednesday or see what they see, perhaps in other contexts many days of their lives now, when I was growing up.

You know, I kind of came of age when the internet, when I was becoming an adult, the internet was becoming a thing.

And.

Now it's just so common.

You can't get away from it.

It didn't always used to be that way.

And that doesn't mean, by the way, that there wasn't exposure to violence.

It meant it was.

It was a lot of privileged kids who never were exposed to violence.

And it was a lot of disadvantaged kids who were.

But now it's everywhere.

And I worry about the corrosive effect of, of of that as well.

I want I even wonder, just as an aside, what the what is the responsibility of the social media companies to you autoplay these videos if you scroll your feed and you can't even stop it.

And, I'm not for policing, you know, condemning or censoring a lot of speech here.

I, I don't even know how I feel.

I just know that that did not feel right on Wednesday.

And I worry about all the kids who haven't even been able to process emotions, who are seeing that.

What do you think, Kit?

>> Well, it's interesting, you know, that you bring bring this up because for me, because I've been I've been thinking a lot about the about our attention in the last months and the fact that our attention now has been monetized.

And clearly I haven't looked up what what the actual value is of 30s of our attention.

But clearly there's a monetary connection.

And of course, we have this amazingly brilliant people who are working for the administration to make sure that our attention is being grabbed.

So I one thing I really want to suggest to people now is a, powerful act of standing for your values and resisting being sucked in is to value your attention more than anybody else does.

And that doesn't mean that, you know, every once in a while I'm looking at my phone, and every once in a while I'm scrolling, but then I'm like, nope, put it down, turn it off.

I just want to say that I think we need to be better guardians of our attention and not let any old image, you know, in any old information into our our minds, I do.

I think that that is a really important stand that we can make.

And this isn't about trying to control other people.

This is about a choice that that we can make, and we can talk to other people about making.

I put, I put this idea out in a few crowds in the last months, and I've heard I've had people come up to me and say, you know, thank you for saying that.

I'm scrolling when I'm with my kids, you know, I'm doomscrolling when I'm at home, you know, and and I'm like, this is your one life.

And also, you know, we are being shaped and manipulated by people that sometimes maybe, I would say, don't have our best interests at heart.

And so, you know, I think there's a and I also know that people are looking for certainty.

We want to know what certain.

So I want to say a couple of things that I think of are certainties.

One is that every one of us is alive at an incredibly strategic time for our species and the planet.

>> Tell me more about strategic.

>> The kind of the the forces of of combining of of population pressures and climate changes and even the way that technology is shaping our, our behavior.

I heard a researcher years ago talk about the effect of social media, and she was saying, basically, we're running an enormous experiment on ourselves with no control group.

So there's, there's it's a very, like, difficult and amazing and difficult time to be alive.

And it's a strategic time to be alive.

That's a certainty for me.

Another certainty is that none of us can predict the outcome of what's happening right now.

Some people are already clear that, you know, we're it's game over.

We're going to be.

>> Yeah.

>> Too deep a problem.

But actually, the truth of the matter is that nobody knows.

So the the lack of information about that means that as soon as we're convinced where we want to follow someone who tells us that they have certainty, they can't be right.. I think another is that when I want what every one of us is going to die.

I'm sorry to break the news, but that's what's going to happen.

And, you know, I've done hospice work.

I, you know, I've been with people in their last days and hours of their life.

Every one of us is going to face, like the of, like a reflection at some point of, did I use my life in the ways that I wanted to?

So every one of us can be thinking right now about who do I, who do I want to be at the end of my life in relation to the times that we're in?

And then the last thing is that the the unraveling that's feeling like it's happening, I feel in some ways that it needs to happen because the world wasn't working for far too many people.

We too many people were left out.

Too many people were being harmed.

Too much consumption is happening for this planet.

The only planet that we have is a home.

The most hospitable place in the galaxy for us is being used up.

So what was what's needed?

What's happening right now?

For me, I hope it's like a birth pain.

I hope it's like a terrible time of of struggle and transition.

So we come out on the other side, but we don't know.

So what we do with our attention and our, our relationships and our money, all of it matters more than we could possibly know.

And we can't be sure.

But we what we can know is that it matters.

>> In your hospice work, how many people have told you?

I just wish I had spent more time on Twitter, on Facebook.

>> Everybody says that.

>> Nobody says it.

Zero people have ever said, I just wish I doom scrolled more.

I wish I had spent another hour giving myself anxiety, reading posts from people who have no concern for me.

So but I want to key in on a point.

That kid just said something that I think will probably just stay with me forever.

Every now and then, somebody in the studio says something, I'm like, that's it.

That's going to that's going to embed in me.

And so, Kip, you're talking about attention, fact check me on this team.

I think it was Chris Hayes who wrote The Attention Economy, a new book.

I think it was I think that's what it's called.

And, Hayes notes in his book, the way that attention has been commodified and how effective companies are, social media companies are, politicians are who knows how to wield it?

Who knows how to dominate it.

But one thing I hadn't thought about is the way you just contextualize it.

We can choose, and this is kind of a media literature, a literacy kind of point that even I think kids would understand.

You can choose to value your own attention more than other people or other companies or other politicians or or others.

You can value your attention the most, and we should.

mm-hmm.

And when we doomscroll and when we spend all day just going down this rabbit holes, we're not actually valuing our attention very much.

And I can't imagine I'm growing very much as a person when I do that.

So now answer me this kid, since you know everything why do I do that so much.

>> Oh it's designed to be addictive.

Like super smart people have been working on this for the longest.

I mean, none of us are exempt from it.

It's just it's designed to be addictive.

And so we've got to recover.

We've got to all be in recovery from it.

And in whatever ways makes sense for us and for me.

You know, I think one of the ways that makes sense is to get super clear about whose behalf we want to act on and use our life.

I think that can be a very centering thing.

You just showed me a picture of your new baby.

I mean, you're like most for many people, their kids are the thing.

I think the places can be the thing.

I think I, you know, I've got an oak tree in Cobbs Hill that, like, I just worship every day, you know, like, there's all sorts of things that can make us feel glad to be alive and that we want to be protective of.

And when we think about how we use the precious resource of our attention, when we begin to think of it as a resource.

And I think that's the that's the change.

It's not just a thing that we're doing with our consciousness.

It's actually a resource that we are using mainly unconsciously.

And I want to bring consciousness into it because it's important.

>> Jonathan, I want to ask you a question and maybe Kit can jump in on this too.

How can people grapple with their emotions when they feel such a profound negativity toward a person?

That they might react to that person's death or or harm in a way that that unnerves them.

I mentioned that I, I was almost relieved the way that I have felt this week and how sick and sad I feel, because that transcends whatever I thought about the work of someone like Charlie Kirk.

I still saw him as a human being and he was.

But it is easy to feel like someone you might know in your social circle, someone you might see online, someone in politics, someone whatever that some some harm comes to them.

And and if you if you start to feel something even positive, I mean like that seems dark to me.

It also seems very human to me.

But how do you want people to think about, differentiating how they feel about someone versus what you hope may happen to someone?

>> Man, that is an excellent question.

it makes me reflect on some of my some of the things in my own, like personal life, is that it's not like an easy task.

It's not something that if you never practiced, any type of, like, self-healing, any type of, like, nonviolent self connecting practices.

And then it's not going to be something that you could just do immediately, or you could just turn on like a light switch.

And so it's like I like to think about it's like weight lifting.

And so, I mean, so when you experience something like that, you may immediately feel like, yeah, I'm celebrating this person's death because of their views and, and perspectives.

But for many years, if you've been like practicing like self-connection, trying to connect to the humanity within yourself and the humanity of others, and you've been able to go from a 5 pound weight to a 20 pound to a 50 pound, you know, you strength it.

So then when you hear news like this, you understand, you're able to put it in like the context.

And just like I heard you say earlier, like he had children, I mean, he's a human being just like you.

And you begin to understand, I don't want to wish that type of violence or death on nobody else, because I don't want to wish that on myself.

And so I think the way to do that, I call it like self-defense.

And I'm just blessed to be in a situation where, like each year, I co-facilitate another participant in like many workshops that like teaching me how to connect with myself on a deeper level and to connect and see the humanity of others also.

So by me constantly doing things like this, like increasing my ability or my weightlifting ability to deal with like situations that come up I think that right there is what helps.

I mean, but it's not something that a human being could just do like that.

It takes practice.

So just like it takes practice and nurture and to be violent, it also takes practice to get back to our humanity and who I believe that human beings are supposed to be.

>> I want to share one thing that I read this morning that I thought was really powerful.

And then I want to ask you if there are steps that people can take, if they if they don't like the way they feel, if they feel that they have become too consumed by anger or negative feelings, or even spend too much time on social media and dehumanize others, so John Podhoretz, this is not someone that I thought I'd be quoting on this program, but he wrote a really interesting piece this morning in which he said that before 2007, before the advent of social media, human beings were capable of some pretty dark thoughts.

And he said, we'd all be lying if we claimed that we've never had a dark thought ourselves.

And the difference is this a dark thought is not something that's ever been actualized.

It's not something that you act on.

It's a thought that you have.

And it may be fleeting, it may be passing, and you may think about it and it may go away.

And we have them at times.

It's a human thing to have them at times it doesn't always feel good.

It doesn't mean that we are evil or irredeemable or bad or even interested in actually acting on whatever dark thoughts we have.

Then social media comes around and the dark thoughts that we have, that what used to be internal, that you had no idea that I held or that you held, or that anybody held there, now just spit out to the world.

And we just normalize the darkest ideas that we have as if they're just something to throw away.

instead of realizing we all have these.

But thank goodness we don't act on them.

And, you know, and then you put them out in the world, and then people start consuming them and they start reading them and they go, oh, this person's the worst.

Look how terrible this person is.

Look at this thought that they just expressed what a terrible human being, because they're not thinking.

And now we dehumanize them.

Now something bad happens.

That person I think, oh, well, they got their comeuppance here.

Social media has convinced us that we're all ghouls, and I'm not saying there's no differentiation and everyone's the same.

I'm saying that human beings are capable of highs and lows, and before then, we didn't immediately just broadcast that all and and then consume all the worst.

And that's what I kind of want to get away from.

So I want to practice not assuming the worst of everybody all the time.

I want to practice that.

I want to be intentional about that.

I don't think people lie in bed at night and just laugh at how bad they are and how much they got away with, because they're so bad.

And I hope they don't think that about me.

What would you say to people who haven't done the work of nonviolence and haven't practiced how to work through your emotions, that are good tools that you find when you're either really heated, when you're amped up, when you're angry how do you dial it back down?

>> one of the things I would suggest is that a path that I took was that I've always wanted peace of mind, and I wanted to like to live by what I claim, to make decisions based on what I valued.

And I realized that I wasn't making decisions based on what I value.

I was making decisions based on whatever situation I found myself in at that moment.

And so, yeah, so that right there was the motivating force behind some of the decisions.

I later began to make in life.

And one of the things I think that helped people, and I would suggest is that you just workshop, get yourself involved in like workshops, be around other people that are seeking like similar things and then like, yeah, and then like open up, be honest, begin to like start trusting and like, share what's going on with you.

And then in that container or that safe space, you able to express yourself in some real feelings and some real stuff will come up amongst other members in the group.

And then from there you will begin to like, like myself, begin to understand that, see, I can deal with like people that have opposing perspectives of me in a way that doesn't like create like tension and violence between us.

We're able to like, talk to each other, work with each other, like connect with each other.

So I would just say like take workshops and at the M.K.

Gandhi Institute for nonviolence, that's one of the things that we try to do within our workshops is to bring people together, have them start talking with each other, and then if it's disagreements that come up and conflict that come up, then how could we, like, resolve this conflict in a way that's like respectful and dignified for both parties?

>> Any ideas or tips you want to leave with people here?

Kit on what we do with this?

These negative feelings?

>> Sure.

I mean, I just want to acknowledge that we're talking mainly in this program about what I would call the inside job.

You know, the inside job of managing ourselves.

You know, there's a whole world of of strategies and ideas for when we're doing it in relation to other people.

And then when we're trying to affect change on systemic or structural changes.

But I, you know, I'm rejoicing in the focus on inside job because that's where it starts.

You know, with our thoughts.

We make the world so but I just want to name that because for some people they might be like, well, they're not talking about this or that, and we're not talking about this or that today.

We're talking mainly about the inside job.

I appreciate what you said about how important it is to extend an assumption of innocence to people.

even, you know, like some of the work I do now is like really relates to how people in workplaces get super frustrated with each other.

There's a real increase in what's called lateral violence, which is that, you know, all the everything that's going on in the world, the way that we take care of it is we're spraying our stress out on those around us, at home and at work.

So one thing is just to be able to take a deep breath.

I grew up in a family.

I think I've talked about this here with violence, and when I became a mom, I was a single mom back in the day, and it was scary for me because I had, you know, I was come home at the end of the day.

I had a baby by myself, and it was a lot.

And somebody so smart back then, said, Kit.

Don't believe your first thought, your first thoughts on God.

Believe and act on and relate to your second and your third thought.

So that's been an idea that has really saved my bacon about 10,000 times, because I don't even take my first thought like it doesn't.

It doesn't reflect who I am.

It doesn't reflect my values.

It's just some thought.

I mean, literally, I remember having a baby and being like, I just want to throw her out the window right now because she's screaming and I don't have anybody here to help me.

>> That's the dark thought that like, exactly.

We've all had those thoughts.

>> That's exactly it.

And so like if and if we if we go to town judging ourselves or having that thought then then oh, my goodness, you know, like so you can just spin out.

But it's been a great source of freedom and fun for me to to share this idea with a lot of people over the years.

First, it's not yours, it's the throwaway, the second, the third, the fourth thought.

Now what do we what that's going to call in your volition, your morals, your values.

I never wanted to throw the child out the window, but a part of me did for a split second, and that was true.

So, okay, you know, I also think it's important.

and one of the things that that I'm, you know, going on and on about, I think for me, a really important space for grassroots mental health these days is in grief groups.

because we need to be able to, defrost.

We need spaces that are safe to, you know, to counter that, all the numbness where we could be checking out, checking out on ourselves and the people around us.

And so, you know, I'm delighted that the institute continues to do grief Works every other week.

And we've got people from all over the world who come to the grief groups.

We do.

I also really honor 12 step programs.

my sweetie has been in 12 steps for our entire marriage and so much goodness comes in those spaces.

So, you know, for everybody you know, involved with 12 step work, there's so much support that gets exchanged in those spaces.

so there's there, you know, like, what are the ways, where are the spaces where we get called in to be our best self?

We need to take that very seriously right now.

>> I'm late for a break in.

I'm gonna we're gonna take it.

I've got a few emails of yours to share.

Listeners.

as we kind of work through this, I'm so grateful that Kit Miller and Jonathan Jones are here.

And let's take that break and come back with some of your feedback on the other side.

I'm Evan Dawson Monday on the next Connections some confusing messages from the Trump administration regarding solar energy.

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This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Just a note, thank you to the team.

I did mention Chris Hayes's book.

It's actually called The Siren's Call How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource.

It's a new book.

It's a very smart book on attention, and it's the kind of book that will help you think about the way that your attention gets commodified and then think about what Kitzmiller said.

Value your attention more than anybody else values it.

Put a value on it.

Realize that if you don't, others are going to take it, and they're very good at that.

let me grab a phone call from Judith in a hi, Judith.

Go ahead.

>> Good afternoon.

Thank you for this discussion.

I'm very grateful for it.

And of course, I empathize with all of the things that you're saying.

But I wanted to comment if you would just allow me to, to comment that I'm very elderly.

I'm 84 years old and I was born just before World War II.

I remember World War II.

I remember the blackouts.

I remember the many terrible things that happened.

And of course I was only about four years old when when the bombing took place in Hiroshima, our our country, our country did that terrible deed in Hiroshima.

And in the 50s, I when I was growing up, we were hiding under our desks because of the threat of violence.

The 60s, of course, saw the three major assassinations of our political leaders, including the great Martin Luther King, whose photograph is here in my living room., the 70s, of course, was Kent State, Vietnam.

So I guess, you know, you can tell from my comments that through my entire life has basically I spent a life of witnessing the violence that it seems to me, is very much a part of living in the United States of America.

And of course, we know all about the history of our country.

We know, we know about racism, which, of course, was a very significant problem that I also observed in the 60s and continuingly.

And of course, even in the town where I grew up.

In New York State.

So I make these comments because.

I'm so grateful again for your, your, your guests today.

There is only one response, and that is that is nonviolence.

That's that we must begin to understand the great principles of nonviolence that were taught by Jesus, that were taught by Buddha, that were taught by Martin Luther King, that are very much, very much possible even in the time that we're living it.

I truly believe that they're the only way, for the only way that we can go forward, especially now during an administration that seems to have no grasp whatsoever about nonviolence.

And so I just commend you for the program.

I'm so grateful that we're talking about this today.

I pray that we will continue to talk about it publicly, that will will continue to witness publicly to nonviolence, because, again, it's the only way that I know to to go forward.

>> Judith, thank you for that phone call.

that remarkable set of thoughts.

I'm going to let our guests respond in just a moment.

I'm just going to give you one thing that tries to pin a little bit of optimism, not false optimism.

but it's this.

Yes, we've been talking about the corrosive effects of modern technology and social media.

And you see this week people saying, well, civil war now, and you know, this, I saw someone say, well, this this administration will use this as their own Reichstag fire.

And, you know, there's going to be payback.

But the vast majority of Americans don't want civil war.

The vast majority of Americans don't want violence.

The vast majority of Americans understand that.

They may disagree.

And we do disagree, but that is part of being in a healthy society.

You are not free if you don't think you can go outside, leave your home, be in your home, or speak without the threat of violence.

You're not free.

You're not fully free.

And we're losing that freedom, but we're not going to lose it.

I don't think we're going to lose it because the vast majority of people don't want those things.

Yes, there are strong political forces that are going to challenge us, and they're going to try to manipulate and exploit this moment.

But I don't think people want that.

I don't know how you felt personally, Judith, about Charlie Kirk, but I have no doubt that you deplore what happened to him this week.

And that's how we all should feel.

Just as I don't know what people thought about the Minnesota lawmakers or Nancy Pelosi, I hope you deplore what happened to Nancy Pelosi.

I understand the president's son made jokes about it online, but the vast majority of people don't.

I don't think I don't think we're there yet.

Kit and Jonathan it's pretty remarkable.

Phone call from Judith.

She's seen a lot in her lifetime.

I think there's a lot of wisdom there.

It tells us that we've been through a lot as a country.

This is not the first time we've felt this way as a country.

Probably.

Right.

And there is some comfort in that.

The discomfort is, when are we going to get out of that cycle, you know, so what side of the coin are you on there?

Jonathan?

>> No, I just want to just thank, Judith and,.

Yes, that is the question.

When are we going to break this cycle of oppression?

And I think we are moving in that direction.

I totally agree with you.

I believe that the majority of Americans don't want a civil war.

We don't want violence.

We want to be safe.

we want to be respected.

We want to feel dignified.

And I think that we want to see our young children, man, grow up and do some amazing things.

And it's hard to do that, man, if you don't feel safe and you always feel threatened and scared and things like that, it's hard to let that the brain of a young child just grow to its full potential.

And you always interfere.

>> Kit.

>> Yeah.

also appreciating the framing.

Judith, you know, this is not our first time, and we bear a lot of responsibility as a nation.

that's true.

And we still, like, we can't just get shut down or numb from feeling guilt, and.

And it is a truth that just by virtue of being alive right now, we're sort of somehow implicated in different kinds of harm, you know, and and.

Yes.

And we still need to move.

So that's where for me, the grief work in the morning.

I don't like that.

I feel so implicated in so many ways by virtue of being white or by virtue of having, like a life expectancy that far exceeds people in so many other countries.

I don't like any of that.

And if I just get shut down from like overwhelm or guilt, I'm not going to be useful to anybody.

so I think it's behooves us to be thoughtful, conserve our resources of time and attention for for being able to be good ancestors and face this historic moment that we're in.

I want to highly recommend a free e-book downloadable by a civil resistance scholar, John Paul Lederach.

it's called the Pocket Guide for Facing Down a Civil War.

Free downloadable.

The Pocket Guide for Facing Down a Civil War, and it reflects it's framed to reflect on questions posed about the likelihood of divisive polarization in the U.S., leading towards political violence and even civil war.

There's so much wisdom in that book.

I let a couple of groups this summer looking at it.

I, I, I beg you to take a look at it if you're interested, because it'll be very grounding for people.

>> Again, Judith, thank you.

And I feel I get pulled in two different, very different directions when I think about where we are and where we're going.

When I think about my own neighborhood.

So I live in just this lovely little small street with people truly of very different political backgrounds.

I know that from science and conversations and whatnot., different socioeconomics, different race, different sexuality.

I mean, that's the neighborhood.

It's very diverse.

If this neighborhood only existed online with, you know, whatever fake online handles and whatever picture you want to put up yourself.

And some of the, the blank posting that we do, in our worst moments.

And that's all of the neighborhood knew of each other.

My neighborhood would would really not like each other.

Instead we have little parties in the park and people are constantly baking for each other and people with very different political views are plowing each other's, you know, curb and raking each other's leaves.

And it's really lovely.

Yeah.

And I've got a new baby and everybody has been so kind to everybody because you know each other in real life, you got to know each other in real life.

If we only know each other through these worst forms of ourselves online, it's very dangerous.

But if you know each other in real life, then all of a sudden you go like, well, okay, I know that they're they want the same things and we can have hard conversations to to kids point.

It's not just like, well, everything's fine.

It doesn't mean it's fine, but it means you can have these hard conversations because you see them as humans and you don't want to hurt them, and they don't want to hurt you.

Yeah, that's where we that's where I want to go.

But here's, William on YouTube, watching on YouTube says Charlie Kirk rejected empathy explicitly.

He said, empathy causes a lot of damage.

It doesn't make me feel good to give him empathy, knowing he would not give me the same.

William, I want to say I understand, but if you don't like that Charlie Kirk said that about empathy, I would encourage you maybe not to go down that road yourself about him.

You know, maybe rise above that if you can.

I understand if you can't.

But, you know, I don't think it's healthy to say this person had this habit.

I don't like.

Therefore, I'm going to adopt that habit in response.

I don't think that's healthy either.

But at the same time, I am guilty of so many, you know, things that I'm not proud of too.

And it's been a hard week.

So I'm going to give Jonathan a kid about 30 to 40s a piece just to leave you with anything they want to leave you.

Jonathan, as we head into the weekend, what do you want to leave with listeners here?

>> Yeah, just find your, like, safe spot.

I mean, I totally agree with what Kip was saying about grief circles.

I believe that the work that needs to be done can't be done alone.

I believe we should do it in groups.

I mean, so just connect yourself with others around you.

And just, like, get whatever's on your chest off.

I mean, just talk about it and and check out the MK Gandhi Institute for nonviolence website.

We have some upcoming, workshops that you might be interested in.

And I just love to just continue to work with you and have discussions that, like, connect us, not separate us.

>> Get.

>> I want people to remember right now that violence is a gift to the current administration, that, that there is no no one in our country that can match the amount of violence that the state is capable of bringing.

So to be nonviolent right now is not being taking the moral high ground.

It's being smart.

And I'm I'm over the moon about the fact that literally tens of thousands of people have been learning about civil resistance through indivisible and other national organizations that they're scholars and, and, practitioners that I followed and studied with for years are now being featured.

it's it's remarkable.

I'll Donald Trump is like, practically the patron saint of nonviolence, in my opinion, right now, because so many people are learning about it.

so I think that that's important.

I also want to urge people to remember that there are people like the indigenous people where we live, who know so much more than we do about the long haul and suffering, and so come to Indigenous Peoples Day next month.

I'll be there.

It's on what used to be called Columbus Day, and we'll be over in Cobbs Hill Park, and it'll be a wonderful time to learn more about how to have a good mind.

Regardless of what's going on around you.

>> It's worth asking.

In a crisis, if your political leaders want to diffuse the tension or profit from it, it's an important point.

>> A lot of money can be made from violence and is being made.

Yep.

>> Thank you.

Thank you to Kit and Jonathan.

Thank you both for being here.

Listeners, I do not I just don't care what your ideology is today.

I just want you to know if you spend time with us and you're willing to have these conversations, I appreciate it.

We love you.

Have a great weekend and we're back with you next week.

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