Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Thursday, March 6, 2025, and today I want to talk about the tug and war of culture.

Tug and war? Tug of war of culture. So, the idea here is that often we believe culture is static. This is American culture, or this is Kenyan culture, or this is masculine male culture, or this is the culture of Gen Z or blah, blah, blah. The problem with that is that we often project it as a static image that the culture doesn't change. The culture is what it is. But culture is changing all the time. If we define culture as the collective beliefs, behaviors, actions, whatnot, not feelings of humanity, of a human group, or of a group, because you could say chimpanzees have cultures and stuff, and is maybe passed down from generation to generation, then there are many beliefs, behaviors, actions, feelings, thoughts, things like this that change the change. So culture changed when we got the iPhone. Culture changed when we got AI. Culture changed when we had a pandemic. Culture changed when Donald Trump became president. Culture changed when we had a total solar eclipse in the U.S. Culture changed when... Culture's changing all the time. All the time. Because our behaviors, our beliefs, our attitudes, things like this, are changing all the time. And so one, if we believe that, if we believe that culture is dynamic and is changing, then we might also believe that we have some influence to change culture. We could say that we're completely at the whims of it changing. You know, maybe it's just changing all the time and we have no control.

But if culture is the collective beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, et cetera, of individuals in a group, then if those individuals change, some other individuals can change.

So for example, when Donald Trump got elected, he started the first time he started on Twitter, I think it was saying sad, sad, sad. And a lot of people, even if they didn't like him, started to use the same language and, maybe to mock or to, yeah, to make fun of him. But then they continued to use the same language and actually started to embed in the way that they would speak, whether they wanted to or not.

These changes happen. So think about the pandemic when we started to be social distancing, they called it, really, it was just physically distancing, but six feet or a meter and a half or whatever it was in those countries.

And people started to adapt what we call, what do they call it, in proxemics, in intercultural communication, the distance at which we normally feel comfortable speaking with a friend or a stranger or a family member. We started to adapt something that was so deeply embedded, we would say, in our culture, that maybe Americans, when we speak with each other, if you're a friend, you stand about two feet apart. But now we were standing six feet apart. It felt weird. But over time, we started to adapt because rules were put in place and we were also scared of this virus. And so culture started to change.

And so what I want to talk about today is this tug of war of culture, the idea that culture is being pulled in different directions on many different issues all the time.

One simple one to talk about, maybe it's pretty heavy, but this idea, whether it is okay or not to cry in general, and you can get more specific on it if you want, but in general, is it okay or not to cry? Some individuals will say no. Some individuals say hell yes. Some individuals say, depends on the situation.

If you are in an interaction with somebody in a family and you start crying and they say, it's not okay to cry, you have choice. Do you continue to cry? If you continue to cry, it might make them angry. You could say, no, it's okay to cry. And then they say, but it's not okay to cry. And you say, it is okay to cry. And then there's, it's, it's, you could say it's a fight, maybe a, like a wrestling match or boxing match. Many ways you can describe it. Another way is like tug of war. You're pulling in one direction. The other person's pulling the other action. Now imagine you're in an organization and it's a hundred people, 99 of them say, it's not okay to cry. And you say, it is okay to cry. Now it's one person pulling against 99 people. The odds that you're going to win are pretty low because they probably have a lot more collective strength to pull the culture in that direction.

But maybe you're really charismatic maybe you're super charismatic maybe you're actually the leader of the organization so you're charismatic and you're the leader of the organization so now it's one pulling against 99 but it's really like your one is maybe worth 20 so it's like 20 pulling against 99 you still might not win but maybe you pull a few people towards your camp and maybe they're higher ups in the organization as well. So maybe you'll pull a couple 10s towards you. So now you're at 50 versus, and maybe 50, so you mean you pulled three 10s, 50 versus 69.

Now what if you pull a few more fives? So maybe you're at, maybe you're at 70. Now it's 70 versus 49. Now you win.

So it's this idea that culture can be pulled in different directions, whether intentionally or often unintentionally, just by how a collection of individuals or collection of powerful individuals can pull culture in that direction.

And so if you look at culture in general and you want it to go in a specific direction, what are the ways to start pulling it in that direction? One way is to get a large number of individuals to pull. And, Another way is to continue to pull so that some individuals go, wow, this person's working really hard. They're fighting really hard. They're not going to give up. Maybe I'll join them. Another way is to become more powerful.

So you're still an individual, but you're pulling with more strength. So that can be from getting a higher position. So positional power where people look up to you because now you're CEO of an organization or you're the mayor or governor of an area. So you have political power.

Another way is to become more charismatic. So you become more charismatic, better at speaking. Now people maybe listen to you more. Another way is to get more distribution. So people just hear you talk more. So instead of just talking one-on-one with people, now you're talking to 100,000 people at the same time. So out of those 100,000 people, you might get some to join your team, quote-unquote, and pull in that direction. Or find the other people who already want to pull in that direction and they jump on and grab the rope.

Another way, frankly, and I talked about yesterday, is to get more money. Because to get more money and financial power can allow you to get more access to these people to maybe build different tools to strengthen yourself, to pull in that direction.

Another way is really just to get more physically powerful too or more physically attractive or whatever you want to call it. Have more muscle or more physical appeal. And that can pull more people in that direction.

So if we look at culture as a static thing, then we can be quite helpless and just say that is, you know, it is how it is. That's just the way the world works and kind of shrink into this, well, everything is, that's how it's always been, attitude. But it's not true. It's really not true. Things have changed drastically and they're changing drastically all the time so if we look at it that way then we can feel really helpless if we look at it as culture is changing, again we could feel helpless if we don't think that we have any ability to pull it's like seeing really big people in tug of war and being like wow that side's really big there's no way we can pull against it, But there are ways. There are ways that we can strengthen our side of the rope and pull it in the direction we want to go. Now, you may say, well, people have good intentions, like a friend posted on Facebook today. People have good intentions, and they often cause more harm. So if one side of the rope is too powerful, then it's going to cause harm to society. I don't know. Or if there's one person who's too powerful on the side of the rope, it can cause harm. I don't know. yeah i mean true but also not doing something can cause harm too trying something can cause harm and not trying something can cause harm concentrated power can cause harm but uh distributed power can cause harm too i mean there's just.

Just depends whether you want to sit and watch people play tug of war or you want to jump in or you just want to like try to convince everyone to let go of the rope. But, uh, there's this tension. I think culture is moving back and forth behaviors, attitudes, beliefs changing all the time. Um, look at Egypt, Somalia, and some of these countries that back in the day, apparently women were allowed to wear, uh, short skirts and like shoulder, shoulders. And now they're wearing, uh, full, uh, full outfits, um, covering up even when I was in Egypt, it depends on the person, but like couldn't only see their eyes, had glasses and their gloves on and everything.

Culture just goes back and forth. But which way do we want it to go? Because when we often have pandemics, culture closes off and people become a bit more resentful, a bit more angry, a bit more helpless, a bit more conflict avoidant. And then the conflict seems to boil up, boil up, boil up. And then we get into more bigger fights, sometimes wars. Or we could get better at resolving conflict, or we can get better at telling people that it's okay to cry, or we can keep fighting and keep pulling on that rope to try to keep relationships together, to try to keep societies together, to try to keep love, to try to keep the team together instead of letting it disintegrate and letting the other side, the other behaviors, not even the other people, because sometimes these people are pulled by the behaviors. I don't know if they're intentionally pulling in that direction, but sometimes these behaviors pull in the other direction. So how do we come up with behaviors that will pull in the way we want to go? I don't know if this makes sense, but for me, it really clarifies why I believe in trying to find some of the people who are the most loving and giving them more power and helping them become more powerful, especially financially, but just in general, because I want them to pull culture towards love. I want to be one of those people who is pulling culture towards being more accepting of feeling, of loving, of caring, instead of the rope being pulled towards more indifference, more apathy, more it is what it is, more helplessness, more giving up. I want to pull towards more fighting for each other. So that's why I believe in this Leading Hearts Fund idea. And that's why I believe in what I've been working on so much with emotional combat and just fighting so damn hard to not give up on people, even if they're giving up on themselves. I'm pulling that rope, whether they're pulling the other direction or not, I don't care. I'm pulling that rope because I'm not giving up on people, even if they want me to give up on them.

Not giving up on myself, even if people want me to give up on myself.

So that's the message for today man i really got to make these shorter but talk to you all monday take care.