Self-Organization at Scale

Jose Leal:

Welcome to rHatchery.live. My name is Jose Leal. Unfortunately, Matt is not available today 'cause he's feeling a bit under the weather. So he is missing out on a great guest, Sanjay Fernandes from SOLE Colombia. Welcome, Sanjay. Thank you for being here.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Thank you for this invitation. Honor to be here.

Jose Leal:

Well, its… we've had a number of conversations, one-on-one, so this is an…  a great opportunity to dig a little deeper and share that with the world and share that with both of our communities. So, we have an opportunity to talk about how Sole and Radical, kind of mesh and what they do. We've been doing some work and trying to figure that out. It's still early stages, but we're, we're doing that

Sanjay Fernandes:

And not so early anymore. Now we're, now we're doing podcasts together and we're working it to see if we get to Mexico together.

Jose Leal:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, tell us first a little bit about you, and how did you come upon Sole and what does that mean?

Sanjay Fernandes:

Okay. So… is horrible to have to talk about oneself. So anyway maybe I'll start with this story. And it starts with my mom gave me a poem a couple of years ago, like two years ago. She found a poem that I had written when I was 12 years old. And I do not like poetry, especially. So I was quite surprised to have a poem. But it was a poem where I… I read it and it was a poem about how, since I've been 12, probably maybe before, I've been concerned with inequality with some people having more and some people having less. And why do we live in a system in which that is there no, like that, that's possible that we live and we're okay with some having more, some having less. And that's been a question for me throughout my life. And I didn't know it had been such a long-standing question. But then, I studied economics. I also worked in the public sector. I also studied arts. I became… I worked like in the educational world. I always studied; education was a solution for everything. But I remember having a teacher in university, my first economics teacher saying, that the problem is not education. You can't save this with education. The problem is money, and that's what you have to solve. So anyway, having that as a background another part of my life is I never learned how to play an instrument. I never learned how to play the piano. And so I kind of got frustrated cause I love music and I wanted to make music. And I ended up making music with these devices, with computers, and with machines. And I did that after sort of working in the public sector as an economist. And in the nonprofit sector as an economist, I ended up going to do what I really wanted to do, which was to learn to make electronic music. And I learned to make electronic music with a bunch of people who were musicians. So I was like the weirdo there. And then after that, I ended up getting a scholarship to do a master's in interaction design. And my project of my master's was an educational project where I always thought here in Columbia, the government had spent tons of money putting computers in a lot of public schools. And nobody was using them. The teachers had them locked up in closets. And so I thought, wouldn't it be cool if kids could learn how to make their own music as I did using those computers? So I wanted kids to create, to make art, and so on and so forth. So after doing my masters in that, I came back to Columbia. And I started suggesting this to the public sector now, and I ended up doing a consulting for the ICT Ministries on how to get digital culture, how to promote digital culture and people. And as I was promoting this project some friends of mine came to me and said, Hey, you're working on that project. We're working on something else, which is pretty similar, which is a thing called self-organized learning. And I was like, what, what is that? And they said, no, we check out this TED talk of this guy called Sugata Mitra. He just won the TED Prize; this was back in 2013. And I saw the TED talk and I thought, wow, this is exactly what I need to do before doing my project, which was about education, art, and technology. Because this was a project for… this was a methodology for people to learn anything using the internet in groups. So I thought this was a wonderful idea. And with my friends, we were like, whichever project goes through first, we'll work on that one. So we can sort of question, but kind of the organic thing to do, was to start with Sole. So, that’s when we started back in 2014 with the little pilot project, because as the government here in Columbia had spent so much money putting computers and internet in so many public spaces and people weren't using them, this turned out to be great solution. It's like there's an easy methodology, very powerful, which you can put in these spaces with computer and internet to invite people to use the internet in groups firstly to learn. And that was how we started.

Jose Leal:

Wow. So, did you ever get back to the project that you were going to do?

Sanjay Fernandes:

Actually, it's there, in the back of my mind. Not only… not in the back of my mind, but now I'm figuring out what is the next step of how to do this with… I'll keep it quite simple, in the fact that self-organized learning is like the first step into learning how to solve a question together in groups using the internet. Pretty simple. No. So basically a self-organized learning environment in a space where you have people less than computers than people, one computer, every four or five people, and big questions. And we call them big questions because they're interesting questions, tough questions, something which is in everybody's interest. And basically, people self-organized to find the answers to the questions without the need for a teacher. So I thought, ah, that's the perfect first step. If people are going to start to create using technology and using devices, if they're going to make music videos, animations, video games, whatever, they need to be able to solve any question, you know, like, how do I do this? And they need to be able to know how to use the internet to solve those questions. And even better if they learn to do this in groups because then it's like you get together in the communication skills and the collaboration skills grow even more. So creation becomes really a collective process. So right now, when you ask me about this, I'm thinking after nine years of doing this thing of scaling Sole, taking it to tons of public spaces, now we've managed to get, make it into a program in 1,500 public libraries throughout the country. We've worked in over 2000 schools. We've worked also in the public internet, kiosks, which existed and now exist again, but they come and go with each government. Now is that moment where there are communities that have been doing this self-organized learning for enough time, that now they're saying, okay, what's next? And really what's next? They, it's up to them. But here is like, we can wink at them and say, well, why, if you start making your own creations, why, if you start making your own arts, your own music, your own stuff, and so now I'm figuring how to bring in that as a next step,

Jose Leal:

To connect the two dots that you've been working on for such a long time. So…

 Sanjay Fernandes:

Exactly…

Jose Leal:

You've described a little bit about what Sole is, and you've described what you've done in Columbia as far as, the scaling that you've done and how successful it's been. But it took me a little while to sort of wrap my head around what a Sole was in relationship to everyday learning. And certainly in relationship to the idea of teaching, because really the idea of teaching sort of goes out the window here. And so, give me a little bit…  give the audience a little bit of an understanding of, what is the difference between learning and teaching and how do we learn, if we're not being taught and why is there a benefit in that?

Sanjay Fernandes:

So, when I went to school, probably when you went to school too, we were told what we needed to know.

Jose Leal:

Absolutely.

Sanjay Fernandes:

So, my teachers told me, Sanjay one plus one equals two. Right? That was the way I was taught. I think the big switch behind self-organized learning is that now the teacher doesn't say, Sanjay, this one plus one equals two. What the teacher does is say, Sanjay, do you think you can find out what one plus one equals... how? you have your companions, you have the internet, go ahead. And that's kind of switching the whole situation because now it's through a question that I become curious about something. And maybe it would be even cooler if the teacher didn't say, Sanjay, do you know what one plus one equals? Or if the teacher said to me, have you ever wondered what one plus one equals No, I just changed the way I phrased the question, but I make it a little bit more attractive, a little bit more like mind boggling or something like that. I, or I can tell you a story, you know, like the first humans, which figured out how much one plus one, whatever. I don't know. I can make up a story. What was

Jose Leal:

Life like before counting.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Exactly! What, how did people know what was one? Exactly. So the whole point behind this was that you are trying to get people to do what they would innately do. No, I have a five-year-old kid, he asks me questions about everything, all the time. And I think the whole power behind this is to take that innate curiosity and allow it to run with it, to not be free with it. I think when I went to school, well, I had, I received a lot of, no, I was the guy kind of guy and not the kind of student which teachers would be like, either. They were, they would love because I would ask questions all the time or they would hate because it's like, can you let me get my class as I planned it? Stop asking me questions.

Jose Leal:

So, I think we both had the same experience in school.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Exactly. So, I think there's a big thing behind being able to let that curiosity take you towards like what you’re learning process should be. No. So, when you have teaching, somebody teaches you what they think you should need, you should know. And there's a very interesting thing. So that says nowadays before we used to learn just in case, no, let's learn algebra just in case. Who knows when I might need my algebra? No. Or who knows when I might need my trigonometry. And then what Sudata says, what's very interesting is, that with these devices, with the internet, you can learn what you need just in time, not just in case. And the whole switch behind that is that people are learning what they're interested in. And learning happens because you're interested in, and the whole, and the, there's a very big difference. If you be taught something and you don't like it or you're bored by it, it's very improbable that you'll keep that information or use that information. If you learn something on your own, it's more probable that you're going to use that information because it's valuable to you. So there's a big difference. So I don't think teaching in itself disappears. No, I think teaching is also cool. I, I like somebody, I like to be taught stuff. But learning it, the way you learn it is really the story you want to go to. No, it's not about how we teach people stuff. It's about how you create the conditions for people to learn.

Jose Leal:

That was my point about the question. Exactly. And, actually, I have a little personal experience with that. When I was young math was never something that I really was passionate about. But I wanted to work in architecture. And so I was at the same time doing studies in architectural design and architectural drafting. And I realized that, oh, wait a minute, in order to figure out some of these angles and to figure out how to measure things and circular shapes and so forth, I needed math. And then all of a sudden, that math made sense to me because I had a context. I had a real-world context, a real-world problem. And then, I was actually self-teaching. A lot of the stuff that I didn't want didn't, wasn't receptive to in the math class. But I became super receptive to it when it was something that was practical and I had a context that made sense for me.

Sanjay Fernandes:

So, I can tell you personally, I love math and I love math, and I still love it. And I think the other thing which is behind the learning process is the pleasure of knowing that no, there's like this flavor of knowing stuff, of being able to know stuff and knowing not only like intellectually, maybe you also want to know. No, it's like when you dance and you do like a step, which is cool, and you know it with your body, or when you do an exercise or, some kind of physical work that you feel, ah, look at how am I doing this. Or when you create something with your hands, it, there is, and I think basically that's like the big pleasures of life are there. No, it's not just knowing stuff because you need to solve problems. No, it's because life is problem-solving. No problem-solving is like a first step, but the next step is the pleasure of knowing things because you can, and because they're there and because there's… I don't know, there's something there, that's beyond the need for it.

Jose Leal:

But I, but I think it's actually two things. And that speaks to what we talk about radical. There's a… we have a radical purpose as human beings, right? We are by our innate nature, curious, right? And in curiosity, there is this sense of just discovering something new. Discovering in itself is a pleasure. But then that discovery leads to the ability to make sense of things. When that discovery makes the ability to make an impact, then we have that carry-on pleasure of, oh wow, look what I did, look what I was able to accomplish. And so, it isn't a single point in time of pleasure. It's this nature that has this beauty of being able to carry you on. And once you've made the impact, it's like, oh, I could do that better. And now it's about the becoming of, being able to grow that thing. Like, yes, I've done it, but I could do it better. I could do it more, I could do it faster, I could do something else. And that cycle of, human nature, of being able to take it from this discovery to this impact that grows me, not just makes an impact in the world, but allows me to grow and, and me to become something else. And I think that's the cycle that, both the learning process you're describing, but also the work that we do in the organizations comes together, right? This is where that thing is. And that's the beauty of thinking about not just how work is organized, but how we learn about how to organize our work and how we learn about our work in the first place. What is the work we need to do? And how can we make that impact in the world in a way that is self-fulfilling and innately driven by our curiosity? So, that really leads to why we're having these conversations.

Sanjay Fernandes:

I would add to this idea of being impactful. I think there's also an innate kind of sense of belonging. The reason why you do this is because you want to feel community. You want to, you do this because you're, in community. And, now that I read, not the topic that I suggested, I said now, like self-organization at scale, is there a way of regulating our systems of accumulation is because I do feel that we are in a social system right now. We call it, you can call it capitalism or whatever. In which it's easy to feel isolated. No, you, you are really cut off like the, like the system feeds on the fact that you are isolated and that your… you think your sense of belonging comes from accumulation. And it kind of proved that it, it's not in a sense of people's, no, it, I think we're in the era of mental health downfall basically, because we, we have lost a sense like we lost in understanding where the sense of belonging has to come through with this economic system as it goes. No. So I do think that the sense of belonging is like one of those, the essence of one is my personal realization, but the second is how am I building a community and nurturing that community through what I am and how I am.

Jose Leal:

Exactly, absolutely. And I didn't touch upon that. But meaning and belonging are two central parts of, how we understand human nature. It, you know, the need for meaning is what drives curiosity, right? And the need for belonging is what drives…. We don't make an impact just for us. We also make an impact also to belong because the things we want to do we want to do with others. And so, you know, the second we turn you know, 15 or something like that, the first thing we do is we go find people that like what we like, the same music, the same things. Why? Because we want to shine in their light, and vice versa. We want them to shine in our light. And so that's the relationship between all of this. And so, you know, the focus of radical has been always at the root of work, not at the idea that work is an institutional process. The idea that work is a human process, that happens to have institutions as one way of us operating, right? And we think that those institutions can be better if we learn to learn better if we learn to organize better. And that's the juxta of our conversation today. It's how do we do this at scale, not just in a, in learning for children or for, you know, know people in college, but learning lifelong in our communities, in our organizations, in our homes. How do we learn to learn as a process of living, not as an institutional process?

Sanjay Fernandes:

Well, that's… so that's what we are inviting people to do, basically through Sole. No, it's like have a space where you come together to answer questions, big questions, together using the internet and get it as make it a habit. No, it's like you go to church or you go to Sole, or you go to the football match, or you go to the choir or the book reading club, you go to Sole. No, you go to meet in these communities. So, I'll give you an example of, of what we're working on now. I've told you a little bit about this in previous conversations. We're working in, in communities, in rural communities, in areas most affected by armed conflict here in Columbia now. And we, we've been working in around, now we're working with around 32 communities. And what we did was we went there and we asked people, what questions have you always had and never been able to answer. And so people write down, like kids, they have it super clear, they do it super quickly. Adults, we take our time, it's much slower. And maybe we need to hear someone else's question to say, ah, yes, now I know what question I can put and write another question. And that in any case, when we show them, well, what if you came together in a group of 20 people, 15, 20, 25 people here you have four or five devices, four or five laptops with an internet connection. What if you sit down together with a few very simple rules. The rules are you work in groups, you can change group whenever you want. You can copy each other if you want, but every group has to have an answer at the end of the session. So together they come, they answer this question, they do a research on the internet, and that is a bit chaotic, it's a bit messy. It's very different to a classroom. And at the end, each group has there five devices. There are five groups then, or four groups, four devices. You have four answers to the same question. You know, and depending on what you did on Google and what you clicked, what link you clicked on, you get one answer, you get the other one, you start having a conversation around that, right? And so this is what I found, and that's what you, this other group found and more interesting than the answers that you find is that you have new questions arising, you know? So why do things fall to the ground? Oh, except gravity. Okay, well, what is gravity? No gravity. Google… What is gravity? Gravity is a force that the earth produces magnetic force. And why does the earth produce a magnetic force? There you have another question. So all these questions, what they do is fuel a process of discovery, as you're saying, which could be infinite. No. That's learning about all your life. It's because one question will take you to the next one. We'll take you to the next one. And there is no bad question. There is no, like, they're simpler questions and more complex questions, but it's not, none of them are bad. All, all are good questions. So what we show these communities to do is what if you started to get together to do this? No, these, these communities, they get together to go to church, they get together to have the community council, and not even everybody participates because they're mostly monologues of the people who lead. Like, your executive board meetings.

Jose Leal:

In all those cases, exactly.

Sanjay Fernandes:

And then when they realize that this is a space to come together to have fun, to answer questions together, maybe that allows them to go to questions where they can start, for example, solving problems or for example, asking about stuff which they always wanted to learn, but they hadn't learned. In any case, what I find, which is interesting about this, is that the self-organizing process is the process of finding an answer to a question using the internet in groups. And what emerges from that process is learning, right? But what is interesting is that when you start this, when you start to create this habit of self-organized learning, well, what starts emerging is skills… skills, which you could call them leadership skills, communication skills, collaboration skills, all these things which we say no critical thinking skills, stuff like that, which we say these are important today, but what happens is that they're emerging through the interaction with others. No, this doesn't happen if you're alone in front of a computer doing, answering a question. This happens when you're in a group of 20 people looking at four or five computers. And so, what it is that I see that in that process, it comes to a state where I don't know either if the result of self-organization is a good thing. No. This morning I was talking to a lady with whom we're in swimming lessons, not, we have a teacher who says, you have to do this. And I love it because it's like, I never knew that there was so much technique to swimming. And it's very important to have somebody show you how you can go quicker, easier, faster. And she said, no. Years ago I stopped working and I don't want to work anymore. And no, and she's like my age, no, she's not so old. So, it's like, and it's like, and I said, and I looked at her like. Really, you've never wanted to work anywhere. And she was like, yeah, no, this work eight to five, I will never do that again. And I'm like thinking in my head, wow, that's a version of work, which is not at all neither the one I do nor the one that happens in SOLE’s. Because what ends up happening, is that people start connecting to answer questions, which end up resulting in projects and, hey, let's do this right? And let's do this together. So, I think it's an interesting version of understanding what work means, what it is that we are supposed to do, and well from there on, what it is that we're going to do together.

Jose Leal:

So, what I really find very interesting in my experience with your description of Sole. Cause I haven't experienced the Sole yet, right. But everything that you've described, and your team has, has described in different videos and different things that I've seen and read from your organization. It seems to me that, it's really letting people have freedom to seek what they are seeking. And you are not dictating or predicting what necessarily you want them to get to. So, you don't have an agenda, essentially. And so how does

Sanjay Fernandes:

That’s a bit of a lie.

Jose Leal:

Okay. So, tell me about that.

Sanjay Fernandes:

I do have an agenda.

Jose Leal:

Okay.

Sanjay Fernandes:

It's a little bit of a subversive agenda. Because the agenda is about what happens to people if you let go of control and you let people decide for themselves where it is they want to go with their learning. And learning is just like the first place where you're letting go. Probably one of the toughest ones. No, our education systems or super control freak kind of systems. Very industrial in their sort of framework. But it is the agenda if you allow people to have autonomy. And to choose where it is that they want to go, where will that take us at scale? No. So when I said, let's talk about self-organization at scale, imagine if instead of us, if instead of public schooling be a thing as it is right now around the world, what if it was self-organized learning environments and everybody learned this way and everybody said, trigonometry, I don't want to learn trigonometry, I want to learn about this, and I want to learn about that. And some people arrive to trigonometry and some others don't. And what would the world be like? So, I have to be very honest. No, like in a world of self-organization, you also have dictators, and you also have tyrants, and you also have systems, of organization like ways of organizing ourselves, which are not friendly with other human beings, not friendly with other planets. But what is true is that right now we're in systems where our level of control is so tremendous that it kills autonomy. And when you kill autonomy, that there, you do feel that, well, there's improvements to be made.

Jose Leal:

Exactly.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Because if we are in an unequal society, well at least people give people back their autonomy to see if we can equal no, like, rebalance the system.

Jose Leal:

So, I don't see that as you are defining what people individually should be doing or shouldn't be doing. What you're saying is, hey, there's a system that isn't working, and this is a way for people to find their place in it, in a way that gives them that autonomy, gives them that sense of purpose. And hopefully, for them, they find their way to move forward, their way to organize, their way to participate, their way to make an impact and connect with others and belong. And you know if we scale that out, maybe in the future, a better society. Right. But that's an. Pardon?

Sanjay Fernandes:

It's the hypothesis. Yeah. That's the hypothesis.

Jose Leal:

Absolutely. Right. But that's an emergent thing from a different starting point. And what you're saying is, let's try a different starting point. The agenda is the starting point. It's not where you go.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Yes.

Jose Leal:

We trust humanity enough to know that, if you're given an opportunity, you're going to seek things that are going to beneficial to be beneficial to you and beneficial to your community. Because those are the things that innately we crave.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Yes. So, the thing about emergent properties in self-organizing systems is that you cannot plan where the system is going to go.

Jose Leal:

Or predict. Exactly.

Sanjay Fernandes:

So, one of the things that I do think is interesting about self-organized learning, and the way, the reason why we do it is because not only do people, this possibility of autonomy come through, but also it creates community there. It in its nature is creating community. So, it's like, where do you want to go? Okay. But you don't have to go alone. No. Right. Which is like, it's really tough to go alone places. No, being self-taught is super tough. Trying to start being an entrepreneur is super tough. You know, like most things which you have to do on your own tends to be very energy-demanding. It's easier to do stuff together. Organizing a group is also really tough. No, it's not. It's, especially as groups grow in size, it's even more difficult. No, I've always wondered how corporations work. How do you get thousands of people to organize themselves? That's why we're so obsessed with control. Because it's like… I think I need to control it for this to work. Exactly. No, but then you have the market system. And the market system is also a self-organizing system, which works, it works very well. The problem is it spits out some people…some pay the price and some, and not, not only people, the animals, and plants also pay the price, but it's a self-organizing system. So, the question that I think is behind this, is how do you make the system healthier? Know how you make a system for I started speaking about equality. No. And being a more equitable system. I think when we talk in Sole, Columbia, we talk about how we make more equitable and more beautiful world. Because we think beauty is a sort of like a proof of health. No. Like of a healthy system. And I think it does have to do with changing our versions about how accumulation is, like behind one of these problems between the market system and how control is wrong behind the systems of organization. Like the state? No, the nation state. So, I know I'm going a bit far away, but this all, it all comes down to the essence of you start with small groups doing things, know, and you start increasing in scale. And this thing obviously gets out of hand. You cannot plan where it's going to go. But what is interesting is if, if from the beginning you have a certain ethics, no, a certain, there is a logic behind a self-organized learning environment, which is, dude, you have to share devices. And having to share from the beginning is like, well, you have to share. Right? Right. Nobody can keep it. Nobody can like, take it home and keep the computer. No, nobody can hoard the internet connectivity. The data. No. It's like, no, you have to share it. You have a big screen so we can all share. So, I feel that those sort of principles and values from the beginning are a good basis to see when you go to scale, maybe those principles will hold.

Jose Leal:

Well, and, we have an educational system for the most part around the world, that the objective is to separate. You learn individually. Your grade is your grade. Your failure is your failure. Your success is your success. Right. And we intentionally, I mean, we don't have grades for teams. We don't have success for teams. We have a system that does not look at belonging as a part of the human complex system. We look at belonging as something you do in between the learning process. Go and have recess, you know.

Sanjay Fernandes:

You can go and play. Right?

Jose Leal:

You cannot talk, you cannot interact. You cannot care for your fellow student if they're having a tough day. That that's not your job. You're here to be a student. So, we’re essentially, our learning systems are divisive. Not only controlling, but divisive. We separate each other. And I, what I'm hearing you say is one, this is about bringing us back together into, this belonging community. And that this belonging community you know, as you said, hopefully becomes a habitual way of us seeing how we live, seeing how we work, seeing how we organize, and how we build our societies moving forward.

Sanjay Fernandes:

I can tell you there's one phrase. There was this guy in one of these communities, I told you about in rural Columbia where we we're working. And he said something so powerful after the first whole session, he said, wow, it's been a long time since we came together as a community to talk like this. And we never come together like this anymore. No. And it's, I find it very interesting because I also think the technology that we have is no, it, it transforms our behaviors in a certain way. No. So I'm, I'm a big promoter of the internet at the same time as I know that a lot of it sucks. Polarization, disinformation, no. There are all these stories happening around this. But at the same time, I feel that there's such fantastic things behind what happens with this possibility. No, you and I would've never met if it weren't for the internet.

Jose Leal:

Absolutely.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Or it would've been tough for us to meet we may have, but it would've been very highly improbable.

Jose Leal:

Exactly.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Instead, nowadays, it's so powerful that we can meet, and we can do these things. And it's also very interesting how the use of the internet in groups for me, also reshapes the way the internet is and, where and how it's going to be. Because of course, no, the big corporations have designed tech for you to consume. And so they've designed it so that you use it on an individual device, which you're like, no, just me. And I can do none. And I'm stuck here, and I don't talk to the person who's next to me, and because I'm here with myself. And this is also an isolation. But at the same time, if you take, take away all these other ways of relating, and you say, okay, let's sit down together, we're not going to sit down together and look at TikTok. Well, you might to see the dance together, but after a little while, it is like, I don't want to see your account anymore. Which we can all do together with the internet.

Jose Leal:

Exactly.

Sanjay Fernandes:

And so yeah, I do think there's, like many little nudges to the system, which this self-organized learning environments does, but it also has made me discover that people would do this anyway. No, it is just, we gave it a name. People would do this anyway. It's just that we have such rigid systems of control. People feel they need to ask for permission for that.

Jose Leal:

Exactly. And that's, that's, I mean the radical story is around defining that system of control, right? That, that's the message that we're working on is to say, this system that we have, this fiat system is what we call it, a system of where somebody, the teacher, you know, the mayor, the boss, the CEO… they feel and have a community that says, force is okay. It's okay for somebody to tell me what to do, not because of how wise they are, and how caring they are, but because of their position. And as we know, you can have wise and not so wise people in those positions. And so that, that's the thing, the fiat system takes away from people's worth, people's wisdom and contribution, and their ability to belong with others and to give to others, which we as human beings value. But the system separates those two things. Right.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Can I ask you a question? Why do you call it a fiat system?

Jose Leal:

Fiat as in the order giving. So, a system that, like the fiat money. The dollar is worth something because I say so. Right? As a king, here's the order. There shall be X and that's a fiat command. And, that's where our society has come from, right? It comes from this idea of royalty that can make statements that are imposed on the population. Because they have this supposed innate or godly given right to tell us what to do. And we've taken that, and we've said, yeah, we kings are ridiculous, but a CEO has the same power as a king.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Or more.

Jose Leal:

Or more, right? Or more. And so that's the argument that we have about how do we reorganize in a way where we're back to community. We're back to not only learning together but working and collaborating together. And that's the next step for us. And so, the beauty of the work that you are doing is that I think that's the step we're missing. How do we join forces? How do we do more of this collaboratively, in order to find ways to take individuals who are already self-organized in their learning self-organize in their communities, and then self-organize in their work, self-organize in how we create economic systems that are based on self-organization.

Sanjay Fernandes:

You make me think of two questions. I always wonder what it would be like if there was a self-organized learning environment within every company. You know, within a factory, within like the big offices of Apple and the big offices of Exxon. I don't know, what if there was a self-organized learning environment within the government offices of the Ministry of Finance, whatever, and what would happen? Because I do think we are, we're like in a moment of generational transformation. No, it's like for kids to get what I'm showing them, it's like, obviously this is obvious that we need to be learning like this. For us who are their parents, some of us get it, some of us don't. And for my parents, they're like, what do you,

Jose Leal:

Fewer of them get it.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Man, that doesn't make sense. You need a teacher need to be taught, right? So, I always wonder, and you need.

Jose Leal:

A full-time job. What are you doing? Making crazy movements.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Exactly. How do, how are you going to make a living off this?

Jose Leal:

Exactly.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Not to say they're always supportive of what I do, but they, at the same time, do question it tremendously. And I do think that there's this transition moment in which we are at, where I also wonder, no, there, there are systems of it, it does sound lovey-dovey to say, Hey, we could all do this and this would be a great world. I don't think it's that easy. No, I do think that the reason why this system keeps working and call it capitalism again if you want….Because it's based on the fact that some people are going to pay the price. No. That some people are dispensable. No, you have rich education for the rich and poor education for the poor, so that the system keeps feeding itself. And you can have people who are paid miserable wages or not paid, working for insane hours, and other people getting insane amounts of money. And earning for not doing anything. I do think there's a big thing behind this. And its… I know you, you have a big thing about co-ownership, right? Right. And a big, a big story behind co-ownership. But I've thought about it a lot, and I would think everybody currently with our cultural mindset, it's tough to not want to accumulate. So, co-ownership might work at a certain scale, but then when you think of a state, we are supposed to be co-owners, but it's not really. I want to have a bigger piece.

Jose Leal:

Oh, now you're starting something. Don't, don't get me started because we've got to wrap this up. But let me tell you, let me tell you something, co-ownership, the way we think of co-ownership in traditional terms is that we have a corporation, and we all own our corporation. That's not what we're talking about. Right? What we're talking about is that, we as a community own this one effort, this one thing that we're doing. But I don't want to just do this thing. I'm also doing the other thing over there. Just as I'm working with Radical and I'm working with Sole, right? I want to do both things and not all of my colleagues on Radical will want to be working with Sole. Not all the colleagues at Sole will want to be working with Radical. Yeah, that's okay. And, but I want to be a co-owner in the sense that my benefits from this are shared to me, not equally by the way, by deserving. The more I contribute, the more I want to get out of it. I don't want to be treated like everybody else if I'm working harder, and I don't want to be you know, be a fly on the wall in, in one of these things and getting compensated equally to those people that are working really hard. So, I think we need to be clear about what co-ownership means.

Sanjay Fernandes:

I agree. I understand what you're saying, and I agree with it. My question comes when you put that in the context of if I make money. And I don't want to lose my money. I have to make it produce a profit or produce a revenue. And that's the capitalist thinking. I have accumulated, I can't lose the value in this. Or what I do is I do, I invest in stocks, I invest in bonds, I, and there's this whole world of owners who are owners, which have nothing to do with what they own, right? Because they're not involved, but who are trying to preserve value. That's all they're doing. Why to inherit it, to give it to their next generation if they want, or at least to spend it and to feel the power and reputation of having so much. I think there, there's like a big jump between, like, one thing is what you drive yourself into, and another thing is when you've accumulated how you keep value, right? Cause that is like the big concern. No, that's like.

Jose Leal:

So, now that's your economist mind thinking, and I'm going to suggest that we have a conversation, a follow up when you come back in a few months. And we take your soul hat off and bring your economist hat on, and we have this conversation.

Sanjay Fernandes:

I love it.

Jose Leal:

We're over time, 20 minutes, which is awesome. I just want to call out. One of the comments that was made Michael Linton is a colleague over at 2045, and Michael's talking about interactive communities, right? And interactive communities are, it's what it's about. Everything emerges from these, right? And, and we're, there'll be small communities and big communities as he points out, you know. The idea is that communities are the starting pinpoint of the work that Michael's doing, the work that Radical is doing. The work that you're doing isn't an accident, right? This is not an accident. The reality is it has to be about connection and bonds and people and community. And so the work you're doing… kudos to you, kudos to the Sole Columbia team

Sanjay Fernandes:

Thank you.

Jose Leal:

For the beautiful work that you guys are doing. And kudos to Paty in Mexico, who is working with both of us and trying to figure out how to, how to do some of this work in Hermosillo, Mexico. Just thank you for being who you are, and doing what you've done and taking the time to be here with us today. It's been an absolute pleasure. I am going to announce you've been talking about capitalism. You've said it sort of as this, you might call it capitalism a couple of times… next week….

Sanjay Fernandes:

I know it's real.

Jose Leal:

It is and it isn't. Next week we've got Cory Doctorow, famous author and the co-author of “Chokepoint Capitalism”. Cory is in Toronto. I'll be in Toronto next week. And so, I'll be coming from the same place that Cory is… I'm assuming he'll be in Toronto as well next week, but I know that that's his home base. So again Cory Doctorow, for “Chokepoint Capitalism”, join us here next week. And we'll probably follow up from the conversation that we had today. Sanjay, again, thank you. It's been awesome.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Thank you so much. This is, this just got me started.

Jose Leal:

We'll have to get you back in a couple of months.

Sanjay Fernandes:

We'll do it.

Jose Leal:

Continue the conversation.

Sanjay Fernandes:

To be honest, I've been… I've always read about Cory, and so I'm very curious. I would love to have a conversation with him eventually, if that's possible, because I think,  there are many things here, which resound in our mutual work.

Jose Leal:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you again.

Sanjay Fernandes:

Thanks so much, Jose, for this invitation. I've enjoyed it a lot. Thank you to everybody who's been listening to Michael Linton, for your comments. Thank you. Have a lovely day.

Jose Leal:

Cheers.