The Weatherman: Connecting People, Finding Solutions & Having Fun In The Process
By Dylan Ratigan
The Weatherman: Connecting People, Finding Solutions & Having Fun In The ProcessJan 29, 2020
Weatherman #2: Finding Clarity in Political Chaos
"Welcome to the second edition of The Weatherman. I am Dylan Ratigan and this is an ongoing and evolving experiment in a direct conversation between all of us about anything that we want to talk about, as long as it's through the frame of The Shift.
The Shift ultimately represents complete and total change in not just our technological infrastructure, not just our communication infrastructure, even our transportation infrastructure. It's a unifying event and a completely shattering event, all at the same time, that comes with incredible darkness, loneliness and isolation, as well as incredible opportunity for creation and development, and you see it play out in personal lives constantly.
We see in our own lives. We see it in the lives of those around us, and it also plays out in incredible ways before our very eyes on the biggest stage possible. The Shift is an interesting dynamic because as intimate as it may be for each of us, it is also something that we are witnessing in the global political world and the global climate situation that we're all navigating or at least internalizing, and for that matter, in the way that we both perceive and misperceive events around the world.
The premise or the theme that we talk about a lot is “Chaos and Clarity.”
The Shift creates a lot of both. In fact, you look no further than the American political system to see the complete and utter emergence of chaos. Not just in the way that this country is run, but the very basis upon which we are even attempting to run our country. I'll talk about it because it's in the center of the news cycle right now.
The criticisms that have existed from America projected into the world in the way that both American political power and American political institutions judge and condemn and shame and sanction other countries for their political behavior, their political systems, their backroom deals, their inability to seem to function in some way that is honorable, decent, has integrity or any other positive value associated with it is obviously deeply ironic, in this particular moment, as the Democratic primary caucus process, their candidate selection process, opens with the inability to count 172-thousand votes.
What could be more emblematic of the collapse and the darkness, if you will, of The Shift than what we're seeing happening in the Iowa caucus right now?
For a long time, and even as I ran for Congress myself two years ago, there has been a tremendous amount of criticism for those who have disengaged from the American political process. A lot of shaming for those who have disengaged from the American political process, and yet, when you look at the American political process, the percentage of Americans that are even registered as Democrats, 20 to 25% of the population, the percentage of the population that is even registered as a Republican, 20 to 25% population, leaves literally the largest percentage of American voters as those who are neither Democrats or Republicans.
In fact, the biggest voting block in any election is people who don't vote. When you look at the history of American politics, it wasn't always this way. There was a time when American politics actually was at least perceived to have some integrity..."
Listen to the podcast to hear what else Dylan has to say about the Democratic primary and The Shift. Several callers discuss how they are dealing with societal and personal problems in constructive ways that support their communities.
If you want to call into the show to speak with Dylan, send us a voice message here.
Please leave your phone number so our producers can call you to get you live on air.
Weatherman Episode #1: 'Reach, Rescue and Restore'
The Weatherman Podcast Experiment Begins…
Welcome to this, the 1st edition of the Weatherman. I am Dylan Ratigan.
Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. I'm actually in Italy, so it's the evening here. Our producer Meg Robertson is in New York and David DeGraw our other producer is in Los Angeles. Our callers are all coming from North America today. If you're listening to this right now, you probably read the launch email describing our objective with this call, which is relatively simple.
It's our own unique take, if you will, on the idea of a podcast.
When David, Meg and myself were discussing the idea of doing this, what became clear to us was that we all have a lot of respect and appreciation for what's happening in the podcast universe, especially those that are doing a wide variety of one-on-one interviews with various experts on specific subjects about specific things, but we were really looking at what's missing from the podcast universe.
In our opinion, we felt that there isn't a place where all of us can speak as a group. Even if it's a series of one-on-one conversations about our collective experience, in a way to create context for each of us about what we're calling The Shift. This shift is something that each of us is feeling in our own way. Some of us are very sensitive to the technological aspects. Some of us are very sensitive to the spiritual aspect of it.
This very podcast is a demonstration of the communication aspect of it. In fact, we're across nine time zones right now, but gathered together at this particular moment to have this conversation, and you know, when you look at the chaos of the news cycle, this is not going to be a podcast about the news cycle, obviously, but when you look at the chaos of the news cycle, I look at it as a series of events that are constantly without context, that are constantly without awareness, and they are basically like an open nerve ending that is in a constant state of reactivity. Even if it doesn't know what it is reacting to.
The goal with the Weatherman is to try to create some of that context to help understand why our politics are so extreme and so reactive. It is responding to the threat that The Shift represents. The threat of all of us connecting with one another. The threat of creating a system of power and solution and problem-solving that's not based on centralized command and control, enemy versus tribal enemy, in blame culture, but rather one of mutual awareness and mutual understanding that can be driven into not a world of fear and reactivity, but to an increasingly clear and calm place where we start to understand at the very least how and why our emotions and our thoughts treat us the way that they do, or why we experience them the way that we do....
I will do my best to serve as a moderator and as a literal Weatherman giving you a sense of what I'm hearing as I move around the world and have the benefit of talking to so many of you. Ultimately, in the spirit of the relay radio of the past, my ability to serve as the Weatherman will only be as good as your willingness to report in what you're feeling, thinking and experiencing, so that everyone else that is gathered around this broadcast can not only hear my perspective but can get a sense of your thoughts and your perspective.
It is our collective experience that will potentially create a way for us to move through the chaos that is being created by an unprecedented global paradigm shift and start to move us incrementally, moment-by-moment, breath-by-breath, day-by-day into increasingly longer periods of clarity.
If you want to call into the show to speak with me, send us a voice message here.
Dylan Ratigan Introduces the New Weatherman Podcast
The world is rapidly transforming at a scale that is without precedent.
We are experiencing a paradigm shift, which affects everything at the same time - technology, transportation, communication, economics, production, distribution, governance, culture, spirituality and socialization among individuals across generations, demographics and countries worldwide.
While the old paradigm collapses, a new one is being born before our eyes. This shift is the biggest risk and biggest opportunity in human history.
Our fate rests on the urgency with which we understand our changing circumstances and help each other adapt. For all of our critical problems, the resources, time, talent and capital to solve every problem that exists in the world today is at its highest potential it has ever been.
Unfortunately, there's not much overall context for what's happening, which can create an incredibly untethered experience and a feeling of utter chaos. Each one of us is so close to our own specific set of experiences, with our own personal fears, needs and concerns. Whether it is outside of ourselves, or emotionally inside of ourselves, or both.
The crucible of this chaos can also create clarity, as we are forced to make decisions, adapt and evolve in the face of dramatic change. Chaos and clarity are something that is caused by this shift, and at the same time accelerates the very shift itself.
The idea behind this podcast is a simple one. We are in uncharted territory, riding over quickly shifting terrain with no maps to guide us. We need a higher resolution GPS to help us navigate the chaos that is spiraling around us.
We need to connect and align around our shared interests to find solutions.
As the pace of the shift quickens, I am reminded of the time that I raced the Baja 1000. Each race car out on the track in the Mexican desert has their own isolated experience, with their own set of problems, disconnected and unaware of the experience of anyone else who is participating in the same race.
Each of us were just at different points on the track. In order to coordinate and understand what was happening to all of us collectively, there was a single relay-radio man named, “The Weatherman,” who gathered, analyzed and reported on all the critical information that came into him from every different point on the track.
The Weatherman then relayed the information back to everybody else in the race. That's the goal of this podcast; to create a context for each of us collectively and individually, so that we have a better sense of where we are and what we're experiencing.
However isolated we may feel, we are actually part of a larger collective experience. Think of how isolated you might feel, or how I felt at 3 AM in the middle of the Mexican desert, broken down on the side of the road, oblivious to all the other issues and challenges that faced other participants in that race. That's how so many of us feel each day as we navigate the chaos of our own lives and feel a sense of disconnection that amplifies the fear and makes it more difficult to get any clarity or make any decisions, which only accelerates the chaos.
My hope with this podcast is to create a community dialogue, for all of us, in a way that helps to calm the chaos and connects our experiences, to help us find clarity and move forward in a way that allows us to help each other, without having to be so concerned all the time about our own well-being or so obsessed about what might be happening or who is to blame.
It is in the context of this unfolding shift that we look at the race track of all of our lives and seek to reconcile our experiences, individually, with each other, through shared information, shared experience and dialog, in a way that can help all of us make it down the track, in a way that's more fun, less scary and less upsetting for each and every one of us.