SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back everyone to End of Life Conversations. I was like and our weekend our week of musings, a week of wondering what is going on around the world in the in the realm of death and dying and grieving. And I am here to just wonder. Sam, I just I'm wondering what's what's on your heart?

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Yeah. Um we talked a little bit about conversation has been up, I guess, all over the place lately. Uh regarding I guess the way we put it was like emergent strategies. But I think um by the way. Is it I can't put that in the show notes. Yeah. Um but really like intergenerational community, intergenerational dynamics, um, youth movements, eldership, stuff like that. And it's such a big topic that I highly doubt we'll get through all of it today. And I would hope that this would be one that we could circle back to and um and explore deeply because I think it's a really important piece of visioning and forming a new way to be together.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Yeah, yeah. So so important.

SPEAKER_04 1:29

We've seen it in several of our organizations. This is kind of where the conversation started, I think, was that um especially, you know, I I'm the elder here, so I'll just speak from the elder position that um a lot of the organizations I'm a part of are still um have been around for a long time. And a lot of the people who are participating in it are elders. Um and I think what uh the other thing that inspired it was that I went to the Bioneers conference a couple weeks ago, and I was so impressed because that's another that's a good example of something that was started 40 years ago or yeah, about 40 years ago. And a lot of the people who founded it are now my age, and they are doing a really good job of absolutely making it a priority to bring young people in. They, in a couple thousand people were there, about 500 of them were youths that were invited, and a whole bunch of indigenous youths as well, and people of color. So they're they're they're they're walking to talk or talking to walk or whatever, you know, um, because they really have taken that on, and they have a whole large youth group of youth, and the youth were so profoundly passionate. And I I literally was crying every single time I heard from them because they were so passionate and so doing such incredible work. And it just reminded me of how important that is. Uh, and there are other organizations that I'm a part of that are similarly weighted toward the elders, and so we need to, and what we've been talking about for years really is how as elders can we step back and really create a container and lift up the young people and allow it, allow us things to emerge in a new way and and let go of all those things we're so comfortable holding on to. So that was kind of yeah, part of where it came from.

SPEAKER_03 3:18

A clarifying quest. Yeah, go just a clear uh clarifying question for you, Joaquil. When you say that about 500, about half of these people were youth, I seem to remember you saying that those younger folks were also like presenting, not just in attendance, that they were doing a lot of the presentations. I think that's a key key piece of what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:45

Is not just you know having a multi-generational coalition in attendance, right? Right. But but allowing the young people who have things to say, who have lived enough life to learn. Or even just witnessing the world. We could put a, you know, we could put a five-year-old on the stage to talk to you know, watching die in their backyard, whatever. And we can learn volumes and volumes about how they were encouraged.

SPEAKER_04 4:18

Not only invited, they were encouraged. Um, and in fact, the executive director is a younger woman who's an Indigenous woman. Um, so she's like high up in the organization and and creating this, you know, specifically creating it. That's what I mean. They they they walked the talk, you know. They really um and and like and they had four keynotes by young women, young, young people, and um, and then several of the uh afternoon sessions were led by young people, most of them, in fact. So um, yeah, it was really um inspiring in that way.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

I have a couple thoughts, and I think it's it's I'm just really curious about uh historically, have we had younger people's voices lifted over the course of time? And if not, what has it, you know, it's I was just thinking about the trajectory of a human life a hundred years ago, right? We did they our life time was a was truncated, and you know, then the capitalist regime fell in, and every youthful person was trying to make the the capital for their own livelihood, for their own homes to w to kind of recreate what they saw their elders doing. So their voices weren't amplified in large part, I think, because they were busy, right? And older people like, well, now we're done and we have wisdom and we have, you know, retired and fat and happy. Let's just make the world more for us. And I, you know, so I don't know that I can think back personally to a time when youth's younger voices were amplified. Can you?

SPEAKER_04 6:04

Well, not not not in the history of Western capitalism, no. You have to go back to the case. And not in my lifetime, certainly.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

Right, right, right. But I think I think even I don't know, even like 50 years ago, what you're saying too about the the shorter lifespan or things like that. Like people who were in their twenties, 30s, or like leading organizing organizations. Yes, CEOs of organizations. I was uh I was listening to a really interesting, odd deep dive into the infamous music producer uh Phil Spector last night. And for all the weird, complicated pieces of that human being, by the time he was 21, he was revolutionizing the music industry in Hollywood and signing and recording some of the biggest bands in the world and like partying with the Beatles and stuff like that. So like having I mean, currently in a lot of the organizations that I'm a part of, youth is including people up to like 50 years old. Yeah. 40 to 50 years old, because there's so few people left. That's a whole other dynamic to talk about to fill out the next generation and the youth roles that that it just becomes big. And I think there's there's benefit in that because we can say the young at hearts. Um but it's just it's it's interesting, I think, as a more recent develop development that power and holding on to control and power has the the age range has narrowed and uh moved to older, like over 60. I mean house ownership, the average house owner, homeowner, right, first-time homebuyer right now is like 60. Yeah, it's gone up, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:30

And you and if you think about all these titans of industry, if you will, you know, Bill Gates and all, I mean, all these billionaires that are making our lives horrible right now, and you know, the Epstein class, if you will, they all, you're right, they all started gathering their capitalist power when they were young. And they've carried it and they've held onto it, and they've grabbed it tight and held onto it and sucked up everything, you know, since then, to where now they're the most powerful people on the planet and misusing, abusing that power for the most part, and have been. Um, so so that also begs the question um, what what could change? How could we, what can we do to help that not be the dynamic going forward, to you know, create a new group of entrepreneurs or a new group of leaders with with more morals and with ethics and with this that that know that they're part of everybody and and are united and want to work for the benefit of everybody instead of just themselves. And that's like a disease, I think, that that is part of capitalism. That I think maybe it in a way you could almost trace it to um that it blossomed in those in the 60s or 50s, maybe, and it blossomed into those people, and now they're carrying that forward and we gotta and to start over again. How do we start over again? That's a very good question, very good thought.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Well, and I'm gonna just pipe in that uh both of you know I've homeschooled my kids. And when I got pregnant and was very scared about becoming a mother because I've never had a good role model for mothering. So I thought this is so frightening. But, you know, the spirit who led me in that moment said, You are a teacher, so don't worry about it. And so when I was homeschooling the kids, uh, I actually realized that they had so much to teach me as well.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Even as two, three, five, seven, 10-year-olds, they had a voice, like Sam was saying, that is noticing aspects of this lived experience that is very different, you know, and bringing in different questions and different wonderings. So I raise these kids being like, you have a voice, you can sit at the table and also have a discussion about politics or the world or whatever, because I want to hear from you too. What I've noticed when they were out in the world, though, is that people tend to like diminish them and their voices are infantilized, or it's not the time, or you know, I'm not that interested. And I even called a teacher out on it when I sent my kids to Guatemala to to be in school. I was like, hey, Lan, don't be ageist. Because you're 50 doesn't necessarily mean you're the smartest person in the room. Um, you know, to to acknowledge that there's a spectrum of experiences, right? So I think in this country, so but then there's this other, it's bifurcated into this piece that either we allow all voices to be heard and and held with respect, or we have we don't teach young voices to speak respectfully to be heard. So, because I've also witnessed young kids who demand to be heard and insist that they are right, that you as the adult don't know what you're talking about. And I've heard them and I'm like, whoa, like I do, like let's stay a little curious to what this reality is for both of us.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

And so, you know, it's about I think expanding the possibility that age does not mean wisdom. Age does not mean knowledge. And, you know, to be curious to each of us who carry a uh a seed of something is important, right? So I d I think that we have to retrain people how to see each other and how to teach each other.

SPEAKER_04 12:35

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. Respectful listening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Yeah. And also on the other end, I have I spend a lot of time with folks in their 70s. And sometimes I have to call them out because I'm like, will you just shut up? Like you've told me this story a few times now, and you center our conversations only on your experience.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

I am not hearing you ask questions, and I'm not hearing you say, like, you know, this is how I experience this. What about your experience? And I have like two people I can think of right now that I was like, hey, like, listen, listen, learn to listen.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

You know, and and and think about where where you center our relationship. Is it just about your experiences or is it about the world experiences? So it's a both and on both ends of the spectrum.

SPEAKER_03 13:26

Absolutely. And that's an enculturation thing too. Like people were not the this whole generation with exceptions, but largely uh an entire generation not taught emotional intelligence and self-reflection and this like healthy relating. Yeah. Yeah. I have conversations with my mom all the time about my my grandparents like that and how they they s interact and see every interaction through their own lens without an understanding of who the other person is. Everything is just a projection of who they perceive themselves to be.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

Unreflectively who they see themselves to be, which creates a whole tangle, a whole tangle of things. But um, Anna Luis, I I love what you're talking about, like standing in between these two communities. And one of the big things that we're talking about and and the issue at hand is the division of generational relationships. You talk about like the capitalist sort of machine and the mechanization of humanity, we're were chopped up into age cohorts, and we don't really interact with anyone outside of that. But but when you were talking about the entitlement of small children and the entitlement of elders, is there's not this mutually respectful relationship. And so the young, the the young people who are rising see that the elders don't respect their voices. I mean, we can see this in in geopolitics too, right? Right, right, right. You know, any rising voice is like, oh, shut up. Oh, you know, we're not gonna listen to you, oh blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so it it creates an adversarial relationship where the either like, you're not fucking listening to me. It's I have good ideas. Let me speak my good ideas. And the nope, I'm not listening. You don't know, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

It's just like a turning away from too, is what I noticed. It's like not even like diminishing the voices, it's just like I hark, hark, my world and my knowledge and my powers. Like what?

SPEAKER_02 15:45

See yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:46

I I also I would love to hear from Sam. You know, what to me, what that one of the things that opens up is what would it look like from your perspective as a young person, as younger person, and um, and and Anna Luisa too, really, what would it look like for elders to be um to hold that container, to be respectful and to to how would how would how would you recommend or how would you suggest elders start thinking about being open to um carrying uh I I guess the best the best model that I hear is this container holding the container because we do have we have wealth, we have some wisdom anyway, some experience at least. Um, and that gives us some tools with which we can support and lift up the younger people in our lives. And um I would love to hear from you guys about that.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

But well, Keel, you just also said it's like you are supporting others, right? And that languaging also gives you a power dynamic that you have to support others without letting them also support you, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Yeah, that's important.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

So so it's it's a it's a mutual engagement. But what I was thinking about as you were saying that, uh, we've also lost our mentoring um framework where elders knew they were going to be dying. They had to pass down, you know, how do we tend the land? How do we collect our medicine? How do we do our prayers? What is important in our community that I have held that I am trying to train you to do? So the mentoring and training and elevating is not necessarily like, well, hey, like I have this, you know, thing, like, you know, let me let me give this in bits and pieces to you. It's more like, hey, I got work to do. You want to come with me?

SPEAKER_03 17:39

Yeah, yeah. Companionship. It's back to companionship. Yeah. And I think that's a huge part of it. I think mentorship and advising is a big, is a big piece of it. It takes a lot of internal work, I think.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Um and it's advising for both each other, right? Like we're we're we're noticing, we also have the chance to say, hey, like I noticed this happens a lot. Do you know this? And then there's like a self-reflection time. It's like, you know, and so then there's like the mentoring goes a little different way that you thought you had started.

SPEAKER_04 18:13

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's been my experience for sure.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

And I think I think it's important to bring up the power differential because like, yes, there is a mutual service relationship that needs to happen and can happen. And there is a real material difference in power between the older generations and the younger generations. We don't have the level of accumulated and generated wealth. Yeah. We are we've gone through two major, or in the midst of the second or third like major recession, the amount of like wealth uh funneling towards the wealthiest. And so there's no uh there's fewer opportunities to seed and begin wealth, like buying a house.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

Right. Simply buying a house, or you know, not being saddled with uh uh student debt, things like that. Yeah. Um and so I think that questions about material support from older generations to younger generations is a critical piece. Yeah. Organizationally or whatever, like, and it comes back to, I know I've talked about it before, but also dealing with the amount of accumulation that goes to people who are unconcerned and hoarding wealth. And so, like, yes, the older generation has more, but it's still not a lot and it's less than it was. And so we're still trading a smaller amount of the general pot if we're doing this work. And so there's larger systemic things that need to happen, but that's another conversation.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Um yeah, and and let me let me just update this with this uh the smaller pot too. And it I what I hear from some folks whom I know have have generated surplus capital for their lives, and they want it to go to only their families. They don't need they don't want to extend it out into the world because you know, on some level, I it must be a primal desire to like keep it in the family.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Tribal, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

It's very tribal. That's exactly right. So, you know, it's true, and you know, that scarcity mindset with with uh with capital get becomes yeah, it's very it's a very interesting p perspective, but carry on, Sam.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Um yeah, I mean that that harkens to the general atomization to um that there isn't that there isn't an understanding of like collective empowerment. And um I think I mean God, I just I saw I saw an infographic the other day talking about generational wealth and saying like all the people who are counting on their families' wealth or or looking forward to generational wealth don't understand that all of that or most of that wealth for most people is gonna go to end-of-life care. It's gonna go to the private, the private end-of-life industry, and it's gonna line the pockets of those Wow, corporations corporations, capitalists, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

And then on the other side of that, we have two, one, two, you know, maybe Gen X and lower, who don't have that built wealth. And we don't have end of life care that is not absurdly exhausting. Exorbitantly expensive. Right. Designed to drain all of the wealth out of the health of the agent. So what are we going to do? And so I think uh that circles back to what you're talking about, Ana Luisa, is the mutual service piece. And there is looking outside of like money in capitalist paradigms of building wealth and resilience because the pot is so small. And I realized as I was saying that, and as you were responding to it, that I got caught in the trap of money is the way out. And I don't think that money is necessarily the way out. We have the wealth in each other and in our access and presence in the world. And so if we can build relational value, we can make the lack of money resources obsolete in many ways by taking care of each other.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Right. I'm going to step in because this has been on my mind for the last week. It's been very, it's been bothering me a lot. So we know that I do and uh death care, body care. Uh I've done this for free because you know, I get calls and I'm like, oh, let's do this. Uh the funeral home, unnamed funeral home, charges $1,800 just for that service. $1,800 just for that service. I just noticed that uh they're teaching classes about that. They've trademarked it. They they actually trademarked this piece and they're charging like $350 per person to learn how to do this. Which was on the heels of me sitting one morning thinking, how do I, how can I make money, right? And it's like, I also really love this work, and I want everybody to know how to do this work because it is so holy. It's so when people experience it, they're like, this is the best thing I've ever done, or you know, I want this for my family. So I was like, I'll just charge like 90 bucks or something, or get, you know, like, I don't know, whatever at sliding scale, and especially for our community of color. And, you know, so I've been just like rankled by gatekeepers around the death and dying industry. So when you say so, you when you talk about mutual aid for each other, we all have to teach each other. And it won't be about uh monetizing that moment, it's about how do we care for each other. Yeah, and this is what it means, right? So it has been really upsetting to me how I have noticed uh the death care industry become more and more capitally oriented, leaving the POC communities, LGBTQ communities, you know, not very like poor communities left out out of it. You know, super sexy for our death care from this cool boutique, you know, funeral home. And I'm like, death is for everyone.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

For everyone. Death is for everyone. Death is for everybody gets to do it. Trademark that.

SPEAKER_04 25:08

Yeah. Yeah, so you can make some money. You know, it occurred to me as we were talking about this the people amongst the elder group, like the ones at at Bioneers or ourselves, you know, who have the will and the intention and the caring and the combat, you know, that are in that mindset are not the ones who accumulated the money in the first place. You know, they're that's the and so the the that pot is smaller, really. I mean, all of the people that that I met at Bioneers are literally giving everything away as much as they can, giving their time, their money, their, you know, they're they're very, very but they don't have the billionaires. They don't the billionaires are not on board with this. The billionaires don't have those values, right? They're the tribal, still holding that tribal and that fear space of, you know, if I don't hoard this, something bad's gonna happen. Uh it really is comes right down to my own.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

I don't even think it's a bad thing. I think it's just like, look at me and my piles. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:08

Dragon dragon. Dragon energy. Somebody the other day who's saying, actually, my teacher the other day, who was saying, if you look at, I'm not gonna say his name out loud, he who shall not be named. Voldemort. Yeah, Voldemort. The it's it's such a perfect, horrible example of the dark side of all of us needing to be seen, right? And that whole deep, deep, deep part of ourselves that when we were born, wanted to make sure we've our mother knew where we were, you know, and and got wanted needed to be noticed and needs still need to be noticed. And if it goes to the absolute worst possible way, you get a person who is wanting to put his name on everything and you know, wanting to have gold and wanting to have his name on the dollar. I mean, you know, everything. And it's just such a uh an example of that fear of not being seen. And that also leads to this financial need, you know, this need to grab on and hold on and make sure everybody knows you're the one who's in charge. I I'm trying right now, I'm scrolling through my my uh Substack because there's a an article I just read, which I really loved. Um, and I think I'll put it in the podcast notes by a person we're going to be interviewing, Paula Something, and I wish I could find it and remind myself.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Give us a gist and tell us what yeah, we'll find it.

SPEAKER_04 27:28

But she she writes a lot about the um the way uh hospice is broken down. She writes, she writes about end-of-life stuff, but and she's can be accused of dumping on hospice, but she's very clear in this in this article. I'm not dumping on hospice, I'm talking about the way hospice has been taken over by the capitalist system and fails because of that. You know, and because they they are after money instead of taking care of people. It used to be a nonprofit organization that was there for caring and compassionate care. And now it's been taken over and it's all about the money. In fact, everything is about, you know, cutting back on staff, um, you know, getting as many visits in as possible, making sure you document it and get your money, you know. Uh, and I I witnessed that, you've witnessed that. Anyone who's worked in hospices witnessed that. Um so what she said was exactly right on, and what was good is at the end, she talked about just she went got to where we're getting to right now. What it has to come back down to, and it always and all of it comes back down to is we cannot expect the billionaires to bail us out or the government to bail us out of this or to change what they're doing. They're not going to change. And what is what is in our capacity to make a difference is to start gathering together at mutual aid groups, taking care of each other, create recreating that compassionate care way of being with each other. So we could do that with hospice, we could do that with end-of-life care, the pot there, the uh nonprofit I'm talking about, I'm working on right now, to just gather people together and say who will be willing to help in the legal parts, who will be willing to help in the in the burial parts, who will be willing to help in any of these parts as a community. Um, and instead of like expecting the government to change or the billionaires to change, we kind of have to let that one go, I think.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Well, it's not even that we have to make sure that's a good question. How do you make sure what goes?

SPEAKER_03 29:21

Well, how do we make sure that the person providing those services doesn't lose their house and has enough to eat and get to where they need to be doing this work?

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Or they they volunteer for a year or so and then they're like, oh, I'm gonna make money off of this and I'm gonna start trademarking it and I'll sell it. Because I see that with like, you know, psilocybin, with all kinds of spiritual work, every freaking person who does a weekend event is going back out there and being like, I am now. I mean, I've gotten calls from somebody who's like, I just brought back 70 pounds of cacao. You know, I want to start doing uh I want to start doing ceremony. Can you help me?

SPEAKER_03 29:56

And I'm like, absolutely not. It's that grind, it's that grindset thing too. Monetize all your hobbies, monetize it's and and the neoliberal mentality of commodify everything. Everything has to become an extractive, monetized thing. Everything. And it's yeah, it just kills the soul of everything.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

So it does. And I'm gonna I we before we scat on, we were what Keila and I were sharing with Sam about uh the Center for End of Life project in Creststone, Colorado, who has the most beautiful funeral pyre. I yeah am in love with this place.

SPEAKER_04 30:32

The only one like it in the United States.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

More than anything is uh when I talk to Melina, I spent a lot of time talking to Melina both prior to the meeting and the next morning, but she talked about how many people volunteer for this. She's like, we've got 250 volunteers, say I don't remember the number, but it's it's a big number. The email goes out, you know, somebody in our community is transitioning. If you have time, like slide into your lane, right? And they have like people who show up for body care after the body's gone. There's like all these little small jobs that are are like fill it in, you know, just put your name in it. To the point that they actually have people who do parking attendance on the day of the funeral, who do the cleaning and the sprucing up of the funeral pyre to collecting the juniper bundles. Um, but she's like, it takes all of us to do one funeral, and they charge like 500 bucks.

SPEAKER_04 31:33

Yeah, yeah. And it's it's you know, in that community, that's a small community. So there's probably half the people in the community are participating in this at some point.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

That's right. That's right. And for people they don't hard they hardly know, right?

SPEAKER_04 31:45

So that comes back to who were we talking to that was talking about the Africa, um uh the African way, you know, the village shows up.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Even if it is a just bring a chicken.

SPEAKER_04 31:55

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Somebody brings a chicken, somebody brings the kindling, somebody brings the water to boil the pot, the boil. Like there are small pieces that we can all just like you know, slide into and do the thing, and we've helped.

SPEAKER_04 32:08

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 32:09

Any hands makes like light work.

SPEAKER_04 32:11

Yeah. I think we could talk about this for a lot longer, and maybe we could put the put a you know, uh call this call this part one. And and let's just don't call it anything.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

We just have a conversation.

SPEAKER_04 32:25

We will have more of this conversation, I think. Let's have more of it.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

We will continue. We will continue when it comes up again. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 32:33

Yeah, yeah. All right, maybe next time. All right, thank you all. You guys are amazing. I love you all so much, and all of you out there. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

I love you.

SPEAKER_03 32:44

Like and subscribe, do all the things. Yeah.