The Death of American Dream & How We Can Recover w/ Best-Selling Author Cynthia L. Elliott

Can the American dream be revived? Esteemed author and social theorist Cynthia Elliott joins us to dissect how unchecked capitalism and corporate greed have unraveled the fabric of American society. From the golden years of post-World War II prosperity to the stark economic challenges faced by today's middle and lower classes, we navigate the disheartening realities of skyrocketing costs and diminishing opportunities. Cynthia's insights offer a critical lens on the alarming disparity in CEO and worker pay, the offshoring of jobs, and the pressing need for real, solution-focused dialogues to revitalize the American dream.

We delve into the erosion of corporate patriotism and how globalization has shifted priorities, often to the detriment of the American workforce. Cynthia and I discuss the urgent need for strategic use of technology and transparent conversations to address these issues head-on. From the struggles young people face in affording homes to the long-term impacts of corporate decisions driven by profit motives, this episode underscores the importance of recognizing these systemic problems and fostering a collective effort to revive a vision for America's future.

Finally, we explore the broader implications of economic inequality and political corruption, emphasizing uniting beyond partisan divides. As we discuss the rise of AI and its potential to either exacerbate inequality or foster a more inclusive society, Cynthia highlights the critical need for ethical technology integration. Reflecting on personal experiences, we conclude that true happiness stems from within and that taking control of our individual and collective destinies is paramount. Join us as we chart a path toward a more equitable and hopeful future for all Americans.

Learn about Ms. Elliott's work as the National Institute for Ethics in AI Director at www.NIEAI.org and about her books, appearances, and events at www.ShamanIsis.com.

Learn more about Ouida Duncan's groundbreaking emotional and mental mastery work at https://wrvrc.com/.

Enjoy the podcast teaser from Citizen Journalist 

Chapters

• 1:04 Revitalizing the American Dream
• 10:08 Rebuilding the American Dream
• 15:10 Addressing Economic Inequality and Political Corruption
• 28:41 Awakening the American Collective Consciousness
• 41:36 Raising Human Consciousness for Change
• 47:18 Taking Control of Your American Dream

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:05

I've always thought of the American dream as the heart and soul of the country. Boy has our soul taken a beating in recent years. Things are a bit of a mess, you know. I thought after the closures that the corporations would step up to take care of people, but what we've seen is a shocking level of greed and corruption. It's crushed the middle class, decimated the lower classes and brought people to their knees, and rightfully they're angry. But you know what? We stand on the edge of, the age of AI, an industrial revolution that we can actually get in front of. We can engineer and design a new America through intelligent and strategic use of technology. I truly believe that is the way forward. It is the way to provide hope to our younger generations and to reignite the American dream. The American Dream.

Speaker 2: 2:08

Hello, I'm Weta Duncan and I'm here with Cynthia Elliott, author, philanthropist and AI advocate.

Speaker 1: 2:18

And we're here, to talk about her passion and her purpose, and we hope you enjoy this conversation. Hi Weta, so good to see you All right.

Speaker 2: 2:24

So when we talked about having this discussion, I was really excited, because there are a couple of things that I knew that you had on your mind, that you wanted to talk about, and one of them was actually about the American dream and how it's evading us in a significant way. First of all, where did you get this desire to really focus on that issue and why is that issue so important to you?

Speaker 3: 2:53

Well, as an author and social theorist, I've been writing for a few years now about the issues that we're struggling with in America, in particular, when they're global. Many of them are global issues, but particularly here in America and in my sharing with other people about the issues, I started to really see that that not only were a lot of people not aware of what a lot of the frustrations were leading to, but that the issues weren't being addressed in any any serious and profound manner. They were. They had been turned, our issues had been turned into soundbites, and that was doing nothing but perpetuating a level of fear in culture and in society that isn't helping anybody. And and so you know, I decided that it was important to share a perspective that the American dream is dead and that it needs a revitalization, and that's a truth that we have to accept. And for us to be able to create solutions, we have to have an honest conversation about how we revitalize the American dream especially for younger generations.

Speaker 2: 3:59

Say more about the obituary of the American dream, more about the obituary of the American Dream.

Speaker 3: 4:05

So it's interesting.

Speaker 3: 4:06

You know the American Dream is really rooted in post-World War II America.

Speaker 3: 4:10

We came back from the war, we were heroes and a lot of the technology and progress that we made because of the war and that's sadly one of the effects of war led to a lot of prosperity in America.

Speaker 3: 4:23

You know, we were really on top of the world in the 1950s and 60s, but as capitalism began to ingrain itself in that same system, we saw an increase in corporate greed and we have consistently seen an increase in corporate greed since the 1970s to the point where now they're just blatantly not caring about America in the way that we did in post-World War II America. You know, the American dream was possible in the 50s and 60s because corporations took some level of care with how they treated people and what their decisions caused to happen in this country, and because our politicians are really on the payroll of corporations, we've led it's led us to a system where we're now in 2024 and we have uh generations of young people who do not have a ladder decline because the cost of of the hierarchy of needs is out of control. And to to be able to address all of that, as well as seriously important issues like the mental health crisis. I think we have to be willing to have these conversations out loud and fearlessly.

Speaker 2: 5:29

When you talk about how America was seen in the 50s and even the 60s, you know we're coming back from post-World War II. You know the reconstruction of Europe, the wealth that America gained from selling arms and all of the things that America did to get themselves or ourselves fully involved in freeing people from Nazi determination and trying to, you know, overtake all of Europe. What, where did we get lost? And you talked about corporate greed. What happened to the American soul?

Speaker 3: 6:13

Yeah, I'm glad that you brought it up like that, because that's how I refer to it is that the American dream is the soul of the country and we've lost our soul. It's been a slow death of the soul, particularly since the 1970s. So if you go back to the 1970s, you begin to see, particularly on graphs, you begin to see this separation between how the workers of America were being treated versus how corporations were paying their top level executives, and the cost of goods parallels with that. And so over time, since the 1970s, ceo pay and top executive pay has increased 1,400, 1,600 percent, while workers' pay has not kept up even close. And when you add to that the fact that the corporations really are running and making the decisions in the country, they have consistently utilized our political system to move the pieces of puzzle around to benefit the wealthiest in the country and the most powerful companies in the country. Many of them are global companies.

Speaker 3: 7:15

And so it's led us to a place where we shipped our jobs out of the country. We shipped our manufacturing capabilities out of the country, we shipped our independence out of the country, we lost a lot of our blue collar jobs, and then we shipped a ton of our white collar jobs out of the country when the tech boom happened, and so now America finds itself in 2024 with almost. It's almost like a false economy in a lot of ways, because so much of what we had before is now gone. And how do we get that back? How do we create new jobs? How do we stop the hemorrhaging and becomes a maker of things again? We have to be able to support ourselves as a country, and we can't do that right now, as we saw during the coronavirus. It was very challenging, so there's a lot of work to be done, but I do believe there's hope.

Speaker 2: 8:01

So hope. That was the Obama campaign, right, Hope and change. And you talked about how corporate corporations have basically not only taken the reins of the political structure but they're not controlling that structure and making decisions that are solely self self, selffiting or self-fulfilling. Yeah, and something else happened right before the soul kind of got pulled out of America with the Vietnam War and the loss of trust in the American government the loss of trust in the American government, and you talked about corporations. You know, and basically you know the power that they have, and I remember it was Mitt Romney that said corporations are people, right, so what happened? What do you think happened to make corporations so focused on profits versus people?

Speaker 3: 9:08

I think that goes back to to our uh stocks, the way our stock system is done, and the fact that ceos job and role and their ability to make money all became about pleasing their stockholders, their investors, and they stopped caring about the customer. Their number one goal was to please people who had the biggest vested interest in them, and those people were telling them basically what they wanted them to do, which was make sure I make more money and we have a very small. Like a lot of people don't understand this, because we hear so much about stocks on the news, but less than 10% of the country owns over 90% of all stocks, so the majority of people have almost no interest in the stock market at all, which means that a very small percentage of the country actually controls a vast majority of the companies that have any influence in this country. And because our political system allows corporations to basically sponsor politicians and then tell them what they want them to do. Over time we've had this just complete destruction of a system where patriotism post-World War II there was a patriotism in corporations where they felt that they needed to and also they got called out if they weren't supporting America and the American dream and how to push America forward and, as we've seen, you know, globalization. These companies that are here aren't really just here, they're all over the world. So their interest really isn't in being good, patriotic companies, even if they started here in America. And so they, between the who they're trying to please, the influence they have over politics and and the fact that their number one goal is to make as much money as possible, they are making decisions that are long-term destructive, as we're seeing right now. You know, in two years, groceries have gone up 50% and we're wondering why our young people can't afford apartments, they can't afford homes, they can't afford cars, they can't get good full-time jobs, especially with any kind of benefits or pay, because those all got got sent away in place of the 401k that was supposed to make everything awesome. You know, there's just been this systematic destruction and if you go back to say I think it's Reagan is when we really see the disintegration, uh, there there's.

Speaker 3: 11:20

We began that and I I actually like Reaganagan as a president, but he did bring usher in this era of pleasing, um, the biggest companies and, uh, the trickle down theory, yeah, and and so um, over time, that that whole uh, um, hot mess if you will, I'd like to call it something really formal but it's just really been a hot mess of bad decisions that were made to please people who have the most power, money and control, and we know this on a fundamental level. But it's just really been a hot mess of bad decisions that were made to please people who have the most power, money and control, and we know this on a fundamental level. But it's hard for us to sort of pinpoint. And at this point it's come to the, to the place where America's, we're sick, our soul is. You know, we're experiencing the death of the American dream, which is the soul of the country, and for us to get our soul back, we need to create a new American dream, and to do that we have to be willing to just say these are facts.

Speaker 2: 12:09

That's such a great point you bring up. Because when I think about the different factors, whether it's political, economic, social, technological, in the judicial space excuse my tongue twisted version of that that rebuilding the American dream and getting people to really have a conversation, a real conversation about what's wrong with America, and I'm sensing as someone who wasn't born here right, and I'm sensing as someone who wasn't born here right, and coming here back in the 70s with my family was kind of an interesting experience and you know we can talk about that further if you would like, but as an outsider, looking in and looking at what made sense and then things that just didn't make sense right, living in one of the richest countries in the world, yet there was so much poverty.

Speaker 3: 13:06

Yeah, richest countries, it's like you mean the 5%, 10% that own most everything.

Speaker 2: 13:12

But in terms of the GDP, right. And what? The economy? How many tens of trillions of dollars that is circulating in the economy, right? So when you talk about the soul of America being sick and that we have to come to the new American dream, how do we open up those conversations for people to hear? People are so siloed right now. Everyone is in their own media silo and the media buckets. They're not necessarily open to listening to each other, because the people in the political class understand, especially those who are trying to manipulate certain segments of the population and how they press on those fears. They press on the pluralistic society and the multi-racial society that America is becoming. So how do you open up a conversation to people who really don't feel the same way that you do and don't want to hear what you have to say?

Speaker 3: 14:07

I think it's about focusing on solutions, about highlighting. I think when I started an event series called Sound Bites to Solutions, because this is so important to me, we have to get away from sound bites. Sound bites are being used to keep people living in fear and anxiety and stress, and that allows people to take advantage of large swaths of the country. Um, I think it's by continuing to, to repeat repetition that's all that's education is repeating that we need to be in solution mode. We have some pretty serious issues. I will say that I have a lot of hope now. Three years ago, um, I didn't, because I was trying to have conversations with people about, about things that I was quite shocked and appalled by. Going back to about four years ago, I was trying to have these really important conversations to say this is actually a serious issue, and I couldn't get people to even have that conversation at all.

Speaker 3: 14:55

But in the last two years, we've seen a real shift in that, particularly on social media platforms, which is one of the reasons why politicians want to get control of things like Twitter and TikTok or X and TikTok, because they're terrified of the honesty that's actually happening on those platforms. I think that when you start to screw with people. It's one thing when the world, when the country's doing pretty good, but when the middle class is dying and it's it's dying people can't afford luxuries. That's the definition of middle class. When the middle class is dying and the lower income classes are getting crushed and you start to see a disintegration in people's hierarchy of needs being met, you get people. That's French revolution kind of, uh of energy, and that is actually where we're at.

Speaker 3: 15:38

So I think if we're going to have this conversation now, is the going to have this conversation? Now is the time to have this conversation about revitalizing the American dream. I mean, just, you know we're having honest conversations about things like politics and, uh, corporate greed and the fact that politicians can invest in the stock market, something where they oversee these corporations. These are major issues that contribute to all of this. So I actually have a lot of hope that there are a lot more people who are willing to listen and say, look, I'm seeing a lot of content to saying you know what? I don't care about being blue or red, we've got issues. So it gives me hope.

Speaker 2: 16:10

Well, I'm glad and I want to come back to this in a few minutes but I want to talk to you about going back to when the middle class was created, when Henry Ford for all of his faults, you know, because he was a Nazi sympathizer and supporter but he understood that if he's going to manufacture cars, that his workers need to be able to afford to buy those cars, and that's how you kind of kickstart the economy by having people be able to afford your products, right? And we know that the federal minimum wage is about $7.25 an hour. This administration, the Biden administration, is trying to get it up to $15 an hour, and that this administration is very pro-union and the unions are those jobs, are the ones that are a majority middle-class jobs, right? So you talked about the social media platforms and how we control information. So that's another economy that we need to talk about, and we also are noticing that AI is actually playing a role in how information is disseminated and how it's distributed and how it's altered and how the truth is becoming a lie and the lies becoming the truth.

Speaker 2: 17:28

Can you talk to to us about that? And, you know, going back to bringing people to the table, getting them to separate from their their labels. Right, the most powerful labels are the left and right. Right now that's left, right, red, blue. They're like swords. Right, they're becoming weapons. How do you get people to hear you when they're in a media echo chamber?

Speaker 3: 18:01

Yeah, and I'm happy to say that mass media's numbers have been dying for years now because people have been awoken to the manipulation. The coronavirus really did that for a lot of people. A lot of the repetition of inaccurate information really helped wake a lot of people up. So I do think a lot of people are listening. I think it's important to avoid getting into soundbites and that is the you know, those fence post issues and focusing so much on triggering conversations and triggering angles that have been repeated over and over and using fresh new language, focusing on solutions and getting that message repeated and out there and showing people. So, like when we did the soundbites, the solutions event here in New York city, we had politicians from New York come in and have an open conversation about immigration, and it was very important for for us as organizers to to get everybody on board with the idea of speaking about solutions, not falling into the habit of repeating language that fires people up, and so I think a lot of people are ready for more of that. We got incredible feedback. The turnout was like well, the place was absolutely packed People. Really, I think people are desperate for solutions at this point and I and uh, I think media, uh, can get, mass media particularly, can get engineered to get behind that. If you look at what's happening right now with Biden, um, there's been a real disconnect for a couple of years now, and being able to have some honest conversations about some of the things that have been have been obvious and going on and um, the fact that they're now, you know, seeing results because they're attempting to speak about the truth, I think is actually an opportunity, although you don't want to get into politics about that. But it's those, the smaller rooms across the country, where these conversations really need to take place, where actual fundamental change takes place In regard to, you know I the fact you know people can talk about.

Speaker 3: 20:15

Oh, the politicians are trying They've been trying to raise the minimum wage to a decent amount. It is nowhere near where it needs to be. It has barely increased in the last 25 years. It's killing the middle class and lower classes in this country. They can ban try to ban TikTok in four days. They can pass massive bills that send billions of dollars to foreign countries, billions of dollars that we do not have. I don't even know where we're getting it, but we can do that in four or five days but we can't figure out how to raise the minimum wage in months and years. That's because of the pressure that's being put on them by corporations who pay their bills, basically, or hire them when they're out of office to come be on their board. Like that whole corrupt system has to collapse.

Speaker 2: 20:59

So that means, in your, in your opinion, do we get rid of lobbyists?

Speaker 3: 21:05

I don't think we can we'll be able to get rid of lobbyists and special interest groups. I do think that we can get rid of their ability to put money in the pockets of politicians, and if we make it impossible for politicians to invest in the stock market which is something I've been talking about for years now and is finally getting some traction in Washington, that would help tremendously, because when you deter people who want to use the political system to benefit financially from actually even running for office, we're going to get more quality people that are actually concerned with change, like a Katie Porter, who I think is an incredible example of somebody who's speaking the truth. She's one of the few that are actually Bernie Sanders.

Speaker 3: 21:46

I, you know, I'm not necessarily a massive fan of him in terms of, you know, I'm not really a fan of most politicians, but but at least he's willing to say things that other people are too scared to say, because they care more about their money.

Speaker 2: 21:58

So when you talk about having these soundbite conversations in New York, which people you know? So you have the polarized coast, you have the east and the west. How does that conversation sound? In Iowa, in Michigan, in Idaho, in western Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin? How do those conversations where the media there is so skewed to the right and it's so read and propagandized, oh yeah, oh yeah? How do you break through those sound barriers?

Speaker 3: 22:34

I think you don't use the language that media has trained people to get fired up over. You come at it from a solution base but you come bring in facts. When you come in showing examples within their own area, you're not talking to them just from a national perspective. So as we travel the soundbites and solutions events around, we can come in with stories about what's actually going on in their real community, showing them actual factual data that shows what's actually happening, and have conversations about how to address those real issues that are happening for them.

Speaker 3: 23:21

And when you get the trust of the people by not using the language that they're used to getting fired up over, so you're not triggering them by focusing on actual factual data and how we can utilize things like technology to create great change in environments and how they can actually address some of the biggest challenges they have, then the conversation becomes relatable and you're there trying to fix their hierarchy of needs. See, a lot of the issues that keep people really distracted have nothing. One of the reasons they choose things like abortion and topics like that are because they don't actually go to the heart of everybody's real experience. But when the majority of people in this country are really struggling financially and they're worried about their housing, their food, their clothing, their ability to just function. You've now got a whole lot of people who are much more willing to listen to a different perspective.

Speaker 2: 24:19

I'm so glad that you brought up the abortion issue and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That was one of my favorite topics. I was talking, you know, studying business and marketing in school. When it comes to something as simple as January 6, 6th and we have video footage of people breaking into the capitol. We have people we have video footage of people you know beating up police officers and you know law enforcement um representatives, and fox news doesn't show the full scope of what happens. But you know you talk about. You've got to bring them facts. If people aren't going to believe their own eyes, how are you going to get them to listen to data that doesn't align with what they already believe? And then there's a follow-up question to that.

Speaker 2: 25:18

Donald trump got into office because majority I think it was a lot of white women voted for him, voted against their own interest. And now we have the reversal of roe versus wade, right, um, they knew his character, they knew his personality, personality, they, you know they they were kind of high off of his celebrity apprentice stint on NBC but didn't want to see beyond the glitz and the glamor, didn't want to see beyond what he said about himself. You know, even though his business fell for bankruptcy six times. How do you get people to see beyond that? And one more question, and this is all tied together when we look at how South Africa dealt with the end of apartheid, or legal apartheid.

Speaker 2: 26:06

And they set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the purpose of that commission was for the parties that were injured to be heard and the parties that were the oppressors to apologize, but also to be heard Right, they knew they couldn't go forward until they addressed the elephant in the room. America seems to have a very unique problem addressing the elephant in the room. America will dress up the elephant, will dance around the elephant, will burn fire around the elephant, will put perfume on the elephant, but will not talk about the elephant. What is up with that?

Speaker 3: 26:48

I think that goes back to the fear and I know we talked about fear uh, beforehand. Uh, I I think to get to. To answer a couple of your first questions um, I think it's important to be apolitical, uh in in the soundbites to solutions effort. Um, in communities, you can't come in as a red or as a blue and have these conversations and be financially supported by political parties and be highlighting political local politicians. That, right there, already sets the entire conversation up to be a battle. It has to be an independent conversation, it has to involve people within that community. You can come in and be the people who bring that conversation around and help guide that conversation and help showcase and highlight information that's factual. But you, you need people within the community that are not involved in politics to share their stories that highlight the factual information to be to be true and to test to be testimony, bare testimony, to the truth of those conversations. I think you know, in America we use a lot of those triggering and and I think abortion is a great topic, but it's a whole other kettle of fish. We can cover it in another conversation, but I think those, those issues are used to keep us distracted. We have some seriously fundamental issues that are affecting people's ability to feed their children and to have jobs and homes, and that needs to be addressed. And it's so easy for people that are benefiting from the current chaos to keep us triggered using that hat full of crap that they like to dig into, triggered, using those, that hat full of crap that they like to dig into every time. They're just like they're just digging their hands into crap and just slapping it on everybody and keeping people running. What does that smell? What does that smell? And it's like, yeah, it's the people over there who keep distracting us. That's the smell. Please, let's stop that. You know.

Speaker 3: 28:41

And I think bringing up trump actually highlights what I'm talking about. Like, the president of the united states is clearly, obviously a very important role, but a lot of the fundamental issues that we have right now are things that don't involve. I mean, we can push the president, we can get, but these are issues that go back to the seventies, that were not fixed by any blue or red president and, and I think, when the American people understand their power in stepping away from being red or blue and come together collectively to highlight those core issues and say fix this now and don't allow themselves to be distracted by talks of what Trump did 20 years ago or whether or not Biden. I mean it's pretty clear by looking at Biden that he's not running the White House, or not Biden? I mean it's pretty clear by looking at Biden that he's not running the White House. So that, to me, just highlights the fact that you know that's a whole other. That's the next level problem we need to address who's really actually running the country. But you know what? Who is actually really running the country ultimately are the people who just allowed the reins to be taken from us and by coming together in the purple, if you will, where the red and the blue bleed together, and taking those reins back and making it about actual hierarchy of needs situations. That's where we're at.

Speaker 3: 29:58

We're collapsing on the international stage right now. The american dream is dead and to revitalize it we need we need enough people in this country who are sick and tired of what has been going on to get behind fixing those core, fundamental issues, and then we can tackle all the other things. Um, but when you start to to come together as people and really command your power, we will so startle the people who've been having a good old time keeping everybody distracted while they pad their pockets, uh, with money, lots of millions of dollars. How our politicians become multi-multi-millionaires absolutely amazes me. You know, then, what we'll do is we'll start forcing the system to change, to adapt to us. You know, trying to change the king doesn't really work that way nowadays. We have to change the fabric and then work our way up. Speaking of kings.

Speaker 2: 30:52

The Supreme Court just passed a ruling last Monday that would essentially make Donald Trump the next king, or any president going forward who chooses to use the reins of power with no repercussions, with no. There's no way to hold them accountable. How do you? For people who point to the different metrics, the stock market is the highest it's ever been. Unemployment is hovering at 4%. Unemployment is hovering at four percent. The uh biden administration has created 15 million new jobs good jobs. They have a chips act that brought the, the manufacturing of chips back to america. They passed the infrastructure bill and you know there's all. If you turn everywhere you turn, in new york state at least there's construction going on.

Speaker 3: 31:50

So when you have all these metrics that point to how well things are going, I don't believe they're going well at all and I don't believe most statistics, like in inflation, is an absolute. A lot of people don't know this. Inflation is a manipulated statistic, that is, that is dictated by people who benefit by actually making it look as good as possible. So if they don't like the way the numbers roll out, using the system that they had the last time they did it, they can actually switch the numbers out for other categories to manipulate it. And this is why the data, the source of the data, is so important.

Speaker 3: 32:24

So when you're looking at historically, what's actually been happening with real jobs and those jobs, but jobs numbers are so manipulated by companies reporting jobs that they're they're hiring for. But there's a whole that's a whole other can of worms. Those jobs don't actually exist. They're fake jobs because they benefit from the system by pretending that they're actually hiring people Almost. There's been a lot of stories lately about this but a lot of those jobs are actually fake because they're trying to give the illusion that the country is in good hands. The country is actually in serious in a serious state, it's in dire straits.

Speaker 2: 32:55

So, knowing that, and you talked about manipulation and, and you know, there's a edict that says numbers don't lie, but if the person but they do person behind the scenes is pulling the strings, they, they can lie, which brings me back to the conversation of AI and the threat of AI. So many, so many people are afraid of artificial intelligence. Is it artificial intelligence or is it just intelligence?

Speaker 3: 33:20

Right, that's a good question. You know, I, in my next book, A New American Dream, or my new book, A New American Dream I, the whole book is about the death of the American dream. And, uh, or my new book, a new American dream I, uh, the whole book is about the death of the American dream and how we can actually use technology to, to help re-engineer it. Um, the the truth is, whether we like it or not, AI is is here to stay.

Speaker 3: 33:42

It's been here for a long time now and it's advancing rapidly. Right now it's going to completely alter everything, and we have this precious time right now to actually uh ethically engineer, design, uh implement it in ways that can actually benefit us, that will allow us to utilize its data capacity to engineer, re-engineer our systems so that they benefit the average person and they stop benefiting a handful of people at the top. And so the premise of that book is all around the fact that you have to accept. You know it's it's a lot of people have said to me what do you mean AI? Aren't you scared yes, I am. I'm not naive to what can happen when we start mixing. You know we're going to be cyborgs in three years. We're already cyborgs, it's just not in our bodies, but we're all walking around with a phone in our hands all the time Looking down. Looking down, not in the world or of the world. We're in this phone that we think of as being the world, and in a couple of years, we're going to be actual cyborgs. People are going to be manipulating their bodies like they do with tattoos and piercings, and so that AI is here and it's extraordinarily powerful and it's going to completely transform everything.

Speaker 3: 35:01

And we have this time right now. In this brief there's just a brief, like couple of years right now that are so precious, where we can ethically have conversations about all the stuff. That's good. It's small enough right now that we can still do this in terms of how, what, how much research and how much is actually rolling out the door and being implemented, uh, into the world, that we can actually do this right now. But if we wait, if we just stand back, like we did with the tech boom of 2000 and we just go, oh, wow, which is what everybody did, including the government, we're going to find ourselves in a situation that could actually happen, like Terminator is actually kind of realistic in many ways. Um, because you know, as we've seen historically, our scientists and our engineers and I have mad respect for them but sometimes they get so caught up in their creation process that they really don't. They give themselves this arrogance of assuming that they'll be able to control the outcome of everything, and we've seen that that's not always possible. So so we can. You know, right now is such an important time where these things that we can, it's just manageable enough and we still have that. The door is still cracked.

Speaker 3: 36:10

We need to kick it in and be having open and honest conversations about the ethics around AI, about the ethics around everything that's coming out right now the chat, gpts, the NVIDIAs of the world and be able to not only foresee where it can lead, make sure that it's benefiting as many people as possible, that it's ethically done, that it that its data is, you know, is is respectful of privacy and all of that, and and really push it to be benefit most people.

Speaker 3: 36:40

Because one of the problems that we see when we go back to the tech boom of 2000 is that that benefited a handful of of very powerful companies that have a stranglehold on the world now, like the Google and I have mad respect for Google, but Google is way too powerful, the apples of the world. They're massively powerful companies and there should have been more competition in there. There should have been more ethics and if you look at what Facebook did with Cambridge Analytica, that should have never happened and there were people like myself who've been screaming about the issues going on there ethically for years and no one was doing anything about it because we were making too much money and it was too cool the new technology. We can't have that happen again. So I'm a I'm a big advocate for AI, but also AI safety and AI ethics. But but I believe that we have this moment to engineer it.

Speaker 2: 37:31

I'm so glad that you said that. Does America have the capacity and the willpower to have this conversation? Does America have the ability to save itself from the death of the American dream?

Speaker 3: 37:48

Yes, I believe I'm a huge patriot. I love America. I believe that we can have a new American dream. I believe that there are enough Americans in this country that care about the country and the future generations and the quality of their life experience that they will be willing to have these conversations about solutions versus sound bites, and actually get behind pushing for solutions. I feel that's well happening and that's why it's so important that it's not a political conversation or movement.

Speaker 2: 38:26

Thank you for that. How do we quiet the political voices while raising the voices of the people?

Speaker 3: 38:34

You know, I think that's goes back to the, the purple. I mean, I was going to call it a purple movement at this point, because when politicians you know nobody's more chicken shit than a politician that sees which way the wind is blowing and when we have a movement, and that's already happening, you're already starting to see politicians seeing they're. They're starting to eyeball because they also have Twitter or X and Tik TOK. I keep doing that, uh and Tik TOK. They are seeing how much honesty is actually starting to happen and they can see that there's no way to actually stop that.

Speaker 3: 39:05

Um, the biggest mistake that the handful of people that are in power made was getting too greedy. So they were getting away with it for decades by being just greedy enough, just unpatriotic enough, just screw everybody over enough, and then they had to go and mess with people's food, and that was their huge mistake. They messed with the medicine, they messed with the healthcare, they messed with jobs and then they had to go and mess with people's ability to feed their children, and that's that, to me, has been the turning point and it will continue to be the turning point as people really begin to absorb and acknowledge. In the last two years food has gone up 50% because the corporations that benefit the most in this country decided to screw over the American people and that was their biggest mistake and that the politicians. They have to be smelling that people have had it. It's time for this conversation.

Speaker 2: 39:54

I think the American people are ready for it how do we get the American people who are distracted? Years ago I read this book called the bloodline of the holy grail, which is the hidden lineage of Christ, and in it it talked about the caesars. And during the time of the caesars they used to have breads and circuses, and the breads and circuses were the coliseum with the gladiators and the lions and all that stuff, and then they would toss bread into the crowd to satiate the, the hunger, the appetite of the crowd, and the circuses was the gladiators and the lines and people fighting to the death, and all of this to distract them from what the senators were doing. Yes, it's so true. So we're living in the time of breads and circuses.

Speaker 2: 40:41

And you know, so I call the media conglomerate, whether it's, you know, the sports entertainment complex, the political media complex. You have all these different complexes, the military industrial complex, all these complexes designed for control and for distraction. How do we get people to open their eyes to see that this is really happening and that they need to be? You know, now, woke is a bad word. Now right, every term that we come up with about enlightenment or the you know the masses come up with about enlightenment, gets turned into a bad word. So how do we flip the script and make woke a good terminology going forward?

Speaker 3: 41:31

Uh, I don't think we can say that word at this point, uh, uh, your language is so important. I think that that, um, it would be awesome to believe that you can get people to listen when they're not ready, but I think if we focus, it's just the truth. You can't get people to hear something they're not ready to hear yet. You can't get people to change if they're not, if they're not in that in the in enough pain to change. But there are enough people in this country that are in enough pain, if you will, that are ready for change, and when you get them collectively coming together to create a shared voice and a shared power that can force change, just by sheer numbers and volume and voice. What will happen with repetition is those people who weren't ready to hear will become more ready to hear, and then they'll be able to open their ears and then they'll be able to slowly shift in, and then we create this sort of groundswell that will sweep a lot more people up and then we can see a fundamental change. I really believe that if there was ever a time in the history of humanity, particularly the history of America, where the average people would come together apolitically and force some seriously important conversations, that is now, and there was never a more important time in which that needs to happen, because AI, which I'm a huge fan of, is so powerful and is going to be so transformative.

Speaker 3: 43:00

We have two options right now, and that is a much more dystopian future, where a handful of companies and a handful of people control the majority of the wealth in the world, which they already do. But we have time now to scrape it back by creating more equality within artificial intelligence and focusing on the average person's life experience. Or we can actually have this much more beautiful, harmonious world where we're utilizing the beauty that AI can offer, the abundance that AI can offer, to create a great life experience and career experience for the average people and create a ladder for our children to climb that they're actually excited about, because when we destroyed that ladder in recent decades, we haven't given them the hope that they need. People need hope. That is what the American dream is. That's why it is the soul of America, because it is the ladder that people are willing to climb to be a part of the system, and our younger generations need a ladder.

Speaker 2: 43:56

Yeah, how do you envision the world raising its own consciousness?

Speaker 3: 44:04

I think the people who have already benefited from the beauty, the beautiful experience that is raising their human consciousness like yourself and myself and we're both human consciousness advocates by openly talking about sharing, about having workshops and events around human consciousness and spreading the understanding that raising your human consciousness is not only a tool for creating a beautiful life experience and career experience and family experience, but it's also the answer to the mental health crisis.

Speaker 3: 44:36

We have a massive global mental health crisis and, as we continue down the road with AI, that's actually going to get worse if we don't do something now. So not only do I want to advocate for utilizing AI in the most conscious uh way for the average person's life experience, but I really believe that, in parallel with that, by raising human consciousness, uh and spreading the word and making it a part of that same shift you know, by educating people about mindset and emotional and mental mastery while we're educating them about artificial intelligence we can raise human consciousness across the planet and raise the vibration across the planet which sounds like hoey nonsense but, as you know, this is science, this is quantum physics, and uh and.

Speaker 3: 45:20

by handing people the tools to raise their human consciousness, they'll be able to manage and handle this extraordinary change that the world is undergoing and is going to continue to undergo. For the next, you know it's going to just keep going, but for the next five to 10 years is going to be mind blowing.

Speaker 2: 45:36

What I think is really interesting.

Speaker 2: 45:38

When we talked about consciousness and we talked about mental health issues and that globally there's a mental health crisis, you reminded me of what happened during the pandemic right, where there was a really deep sense of isolation, a tremendous amount of fear.

Speaker 2: 45:56

People didn't know what to do, where to go, who to trust.

Speaker 2: 46:01

And then you had conspiracy theories about the vaccine and it didn't work. Or it was put out by this pharmaceutical company and Dr Fauci, blah, blah, blah, blah, right, but look what happened post-pandemic, how people I'm personally witnessing there's a sense of freedom that, because people went through this together, unfortunately, millions of people died around the world, but there was a sense of let me let my hair down, let me let my hair grow, let me let my gray come in, let me you know, I don't care what size I am, who cares about body shame, right? And so you know that gives me hope. Yeah, that me hope in in a place where it looks hope looks like it's a distant island, like it's it's far, far away, it's out of reach. Um, so I'm going to keep and I know that you're going to keep raising awareness and talking to people about their inner journey and why it's important to have that inner journey, because you can't have the outer journey, self-actualize, unless you have that inner journey. Yes, any final thoughts as we close?

Speaker 3: 47:22

you know, it was something I learned the hard way. I spent a lot of years chasing, chasing the american dream, in an unhealthy way. I was trying to succeed because I wanted other people to approve of me. I wanted to, uh, to win, because I was told that that was how I would learn to be happy. Uh, you get the house, the car, the 2.5 kids, all of that.

Speaker 3: 47:45

That, that, that that version of the American dream, didn't actually work for most people, because life, joy, is an internal experience. It has absolutely nothing to do with your external world, and so the circumstances of your life can't dictate whether or not you're happy. That's a choice in what you allow to repeat in your mind and what you allow, um, the repeating thoughts that you allow, uh, to generate your life experience. So that you know, we, we, we have our thought habits, which are usually gifted to us by our life experience, but mostly by our family, and by allowing unhealthy thoughts to repeat, we create an unhealthy mental state, which creates an unhealthy emotional state, which creates an unhealthy energy in motion, which is what emotion is and that creates your life experience, their circumstances, and it can't be a reaction to what's happening outside of them.

Speaker 3: 48:49

That is actually a choice that they make in every given day and every given moment, every given hour. They're making that decision by choosing what thoughts to allow to repeat and if they practice choosing healthy thoughts that create a great mental state, they create a great emotional state which creates a great energy in motion. Now they're high, they're in a great vibration and frequency and they're enjoying life. And if they understood that cycle was within the palm of their hand, they would be at the wheel driving their life experience, and I think that really is the message that for me is at the end of the day is the American dream is really important, but sharing with other people that by getting command of that they can actually be blissful. That's the most powerful message I had to share and it's a lesson I learned the hard way, and what I'm also hearing is that we are in control of our destiny.

Speaker 2: 49:37

It's up to us, it's our choice, and you didn't say this, but if people don't go out and vote in their interests instead of against their interests, they're going to be putting politicians in place who will continue to corrupt society. This is true. It's up to you, it's up to us All. Right, thanks, lita, thank you.