Srinija: And bringing our inner life to the outer world, and being in that exchange. I think that's beautiful, too, that you have left. So, is there something, in all these years of attending to these questions, and holding your own and the rest of our anxieties and confusion about it? Where do you come to?

I'm not gonna ask you the question that I don't believe in, which is what gives you hope, because I think sometimes maybe there's a role for hopelessness, maybe there's a place to hold the bottom experience of not knowing together. But I will say, is there a question, or an intention, or a prayer that you hold that helps you? Just what your wish is?

Randima: It's the serenity prayer kind of thing, but I'll say a little more, which is, one thing I've learned over the years is that the systems are very complex, and so even if you think you have a plan for something, it's going to play out differently. So it comes down to intention and effort, which come from the Eightfold Path, but the idea of saying you think about how you can be of service, set the intention, and then work hard to accomplish that thing. But it's just one input in a very large system, so there's an automatic humility that comes in because of that, once you've been around these systems for a while. And then in terms of… there's this question of optimism and pessimism, right?

And a lot of times people ask, are you optimistic or pessimistic? And I just think both of those are sort of blind faith views. I don't really believe in them, but I don't think that way, which is— It's just going to go well, because I think it's going to go well. It's not a thing.

For me, I don't think that's useful, because it doesn't match with the intention-effort thing, right? I'm like, okay, so what is it that… what do we think it's going to take? For things to go well, and how can we… what are we going to contribute to that, is, I think, a better way of asking the question, because it encourages you to go do something that would be helpful. I think it's important that— There's a lot of suffering in the world, and so whatever you can do to reduce some of that, and that's what drives me a lot.

I'm not optimistic that this is going to go well, because the default is that it's not going to go well. If you can't look at these systems and honestly say, I see all that stuff. But I think it's gonna be fine. I think it's gonna be great.

And it's like, okay, what's your basis for that? And a reasonable basis is to say, you know what, what's going to happen is we're going to run into a wall. And this is going to demand change, and I think humans are going to rise up, and we're going to do it. That I can get behind.

So I think that's the most optimistic version that I would see. And I want to help accelerate that process. But even if you don't believe that. Helping to reduce suffering at every level is a really noble and useful thing to do.

All the time. It's just a good thing, right? So, I think those are the things that work for me. Even when you know you're up against a system where there is regulatory capture and the… it's a… Trillion dollar companies competing, right, to extract and automate, and it just all seems very dire.

But I… that combination works for me, and keeps me sane, and keeps me motivated to do helpful things. Even though I think the odds are stacked against us, it's okay.