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Alex Adams: I remember being in high school and having a teacher explain why people who weren't getting ahead were just lazy. Maybe she said not hard workers, but to me, it triggered a visceral response. At the time, we lived in one of the cheapest places that you could possibly rent. we had cracks in the floorboard where you could actually see down, you had the house sloping in different ways. there was a lot to be desired in where I lived. But had a bed, and I had comfort. And that was because my stepdad biked to two jobs that he had had. and worked very hard. I think he got one day off a week, and sometimes that was interrupted. I asked that teacher, can you explain to me how that isn't hard work? I don't think I ever really got a satisfying answer. But I've spent my life trying to finish that sentence. So welcome back to the American Evolution. My name is Alex Adams. today I'm gonna share my story because I asked you to share yours and it wouldn't be fair if I didn't share my own. So briefly just about where I came from. I grew up in and out of with a single mom. I had some elements of foster care and in and out of of housing. There was instability in our in our lives. but fortunate enough to meet my biological father at at six and a half and my stepdad later on in life And I had stability in that life, but I also knew that there was a difference between my lived experience and other people's. You don't Really know you're poor until later in life. And I don't know how poor we were, and it's not really about comparisons, but you do as a kid compare your situation to other people's. The point is, grew up in a situation where I knew times were were always tight. And that put some things out of reach in my mind, that others had access to. But I was fortunate enough to have a a support system that made college a possibility. It might have not been, you know, certain colleges, but community college was certainly not off the table. I went to St. Petersburg College first, junior college, which if you're in Florida, highly recommend. then I transferred over to the University of Minnesota, and completed my degree, in philosophy. So, went to college and then really put my time and effort in a in a degree that notoriously pays off. I had a job at UPS at the time. I worked there because they offered tuition reimbursement. I got my tuition reimbursed and loaded boxes overnight. I also was going to work a a second job at Staples and also was living in an apartment off campus for affordability and it turns out working a night job and and another job and then going to school full time it i i it it can be kind of difficult. So I ended up with just my UPS job, got promoted there, into operations management and then went got the opportunity to go into to HR. we had a generalist leave and I kind of just got promoted into that position and continued that track So I had an extraordinary run of career success. And then through all that, met a wonderful woman, got married, had kids, bought a house, and have a rental property. So, you know, ostensibly on the outside, at my age, several success markers and and a little bit more had felt completed. and yet I I rarely felt successful. It's the a little bit of the arrival fallacy. I I thought I'd gotten somewhere and then it I kept needing more. And it wasn't a greed factor. There's elements of life that that change, right? but there was some frivolous, you know, need as well. But I continued to need more to sustain a life, And when I looked across at others throughout my career who weren't successful, I started to blame them. I remember embarrassingly, when I was working at UPS, we would hand out our business cards to people on the street. People who were in pretty bad situations and say, Hey, if you need a job, we have one for you, And, look at me. I did this with my life. And so here's a business card where you can where you can do something with yours. And if they applied themselves, if they understood, if they learned, then they could move up. The irony didn't strike me until recently. But I saw that no matter what we were doing, things weren't getting better. and For myself, things had gotten better, but I still was seeing a world in which things had not gotten better. And I got angry. I got angry at politicians, I got angry at billionaires, I got angry at a lot of people. and so I got really upset when We elected President Donald Trump. And I have said some pretty terrible things behind the scenes about the intelligence of Trump supporters. I do want to issue apology Now, some of you listening may think, Why is he apologizing for that? That is a person who voted their beliefs. And they may be different from mine but we never really took the time, I think, to understand why some people voted that way. I remember having a conversation in twenty sixteen. I voted for Gary Johnson, and I had a friend who was mad at me because I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton I get being on the different side, and yet I continue to do it to somebody else. it took me until listening to someone at a rally being interviewed, and they had said that They had been asked, aren't you worried about some of the authoritarian leanings that Trump is talking about and going into his second term? And that individual What I was expecting was for them to dismiss it, or for them to say, this is the, fake media and all that kind of stuff. What this person did instead was to say, listen, things aren't going well today. This guy at least is saying things that sound like they might go better, and I believe it, and I'm voting for them. And they followed up with, Well, aren't you concerned about democracy and and he said, What has it done for me? Look where I am. I don't care. I know exactly what I'm doing. That hit me. This guy wasn't stupid like I thought. He wasn't misinformed like I thought, he wasn't delusional like I thought. A tyrant looked like relief. Now, this is not a commentary on.
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President Trump it is an acknowledgement that there is a belief for a good chunk of people that there is an authoritarian tendency. And that There is a belief, even if you vote for somebody, that might be better. And that's what's worth sitting with is why do we have a situation where a authoritarian looks better? Because everyone is saying that how things are today can't continue But nothing changes. I voted for President Joe Biden in twenty twenty, who said he was gonna be a bridge to the next generation. And whether or not you like Joe Biden, I believe, based off of the history that I understand from him, he's a good human being. That he is genuinely a good person. That he cares about doing the right thing. But he didn't. He kept running when he shouldn't have. this is about understanding the narrative of somebody, the story of somebody, and that's how I understood voting for him. he was going. To stabilize things and hand them off. To bring down the tension in the room. I still believe to this day that that was was his intention. I think it's amazing that so many people in the party remained silent. Well, he shouldn't have run. And the only person who said it out loud was my congressional representative Dean Phillips. Now, if you're not a political junkie, you may not even know that name, but he's a Democratic representative from Minnesota who ran against Joe Biden in the second run. And he ran against Joe Biden when He went around and asked all the leading contenders, the people he thought actually could feasibly run against the sitting president. Like Gavin Newsome. And asked Will you do the right thing here? And run. And he was laughed at. he was ostracized because good people were silent so they wouldn't lose. this is not unique to the Democrats. It's not unique to Republicans. In fact, it's not a political issue entirely either, because I saw it at work. In my life I have seen wonderful human beings. People who when someone came and said, payroll missed my check or there was an error or something like that and I'm worried about groceries, gas, paying rent, whatever the case is. People who w had no need to do it dipped into their own pocket, took out a checkbook. and said, How much do you need? how much do you need to get through this weekend? Those same people would turn around in a meeting the next day and dehumanize people at work. Or they would allow for other people to dehumanize people and and not speak out. And it's the same problem. Good people. But when put in the right context, they create dehumanization and degradation at scale. And why? It's not personal. It's business. Everything that we do to another human being is personal. Every single thing we do has a personal connection to that person. We may not intend it to be personal, but we abdicate our moral consideration the minute we write it off with it's not personal, it's business. In watching the series Andor, they do a very good job of showing how the banality of evil takes
hold. That small injustices that nobody stops compound. into larger tyranny and oppression. And then I was on the other side of it. I got laid off I felt like I had been Working really hard to support. people my entire career, support the work, worked hard, came in on holidays And I got laid off. drained like I was fighting against a a web and a and they were the spider and came and sucked me dry. And then when I had nothing left, they let go. That's how it felt. it's not personal, it's business. it took me a while as I was going through this to realize how much of my career was based on luck. How much of my life was based off of luck and fortune and privilege that others didn't have. When I got into HR and took the generalist spot, I got promoted pretty early. One person didn't come back from maternity leave. The top candidate for the position withdrew and I got the spot. Luck and luck. Then when I got promoted again into managing the HR function it, was because of someone retiring. at the right time and I was in the right space with very little competition for that spot. So again, we have luck that isn't to say that there isn't skill and talent and hard work and everything that goes into it, but I could have done all of that and had the timing wrong. there's so much that happened that looked like merit. That didn't actually show up that way. So I had to go through this understanding after I had gotten laid off of how to square the reality that I knew some of the people that I worked with were good people and yet this bad thing happened. I knew that being angry at them wasn't healthy. It wasn't doing me any service. Going over and over events and being frustrated and and mad. but also understanding that you couldn't just write a blank check of forgiveness. You know, the the conversation was forgive, forgive. but that again seemed to then lead This path of forgiving, but then that person never has to take account, and so then they do it to somebody else, and somebody else, and somebody else, and and we have this perpetuating cycle. And I came to an understanding or a belief in giving grace but not absolution. So being able to forgive. myself, but not offer complete abdication of responsibility. what I realized is these these folks, these people, they weren't villains. They're not bad people. They're good people who have the wrong incentives. And and sure they make the wrong decisions sometimes. we all do. I I've certainly made the wrong decisions at times, but Think about all the incentives I had to make those decisions? What was the most likely outcome? Did I make the wrong decision, but I had all my incentives pointed towards that decision? then how reasonable is it for me to make the right decision? How much of the burden of making a decision do we put on the person who And the circumstances and how much do we weigh all that together? And I think it's really easy to just point the finger and call someone a villain. you name your villains But when you start to peel back and understand them They've got a lot of corrupting incentives. Now that doesn't give them zero responsibility, but it allows us to give them grace to understand why they made the choices that they made. And then ask for absolution. But we may not get it. Because if that absolution requires some punitive judgment that we dish out, then it's not truly grace that we've given them. It's not truly forgiveness. We've continued to let them control it. No, accountability's tough. to enact and still hold this this grace. and it certainly isn't saying that we shouldn't hold people accountable, but we should hold people accountable while also looking at where we as a society have an opportunity. why now, I believe that there are benefits that AI can can bring, but every conversation that I've Heard around AI, the piece that I feel is missing is why we're doing it. At what point does it stop? Do we just keep going to create super intelligence and and why is that beneficial? What are the things that we as humanity get from AI? And where does it become destructive to us? And how do we stop moving there? Unfortunately inside these businesses, whether or not you've got great people They've got the wrong incentives. Because when we ask them about these big things, we kinda get a shrug and say new jobs will come. We don't really think that it'll destroy humanity. We don't really think that it can take over things like drones and robots, things like that. And yet, on the other end, they do think about it. So it's hard to understand and square those differences because all the incentives are leading them toward a path that says It's not personal. It's business. And they're blind to the losers. I was blind too. When I was doing well, I missed the understanding of the people who weren't. I I didn't understand their narratives, their stories, because it didn't square with my reality. Taking that time to listen to that voter at that rally and understand that my lived experience is very different from his lived experience. Regardless of if the conclusions that we both make are right or wrong, I understood and I empathized. And that's really one core thing that's missing in all of this. The winners write the history books. So if we're not asking ourselves where are we missing the story? We've already lost AI's got one chance to get right. And if winning is the primary drive, we've already lost. So I have no clue what this movement's gonna do. I know why we're doing it, or I'm doing it, starting it. Something is wrong. We all know that. We are unhappy with the course of the world, with the s course of the social contract. It's not working for us. We don't want the leaders that we have, and yet I haven't really seen anything that stepped up to replace it. To fix it. I believe in solving people's problems. It's what I do best is take something that's broken and find a way to make it work. And sometimes that's possible and sometimes it's not. If
it's too broken, it can't be fixed. I don't think that our world is too broken to be fixed, and I certainly don't believe our social contract is too broken to be fixed. I really do not believe humanity is too broken to be fixed because we see golden lights of humanity all the time. But we need leaders who want to solve problems, not win. We need politicians who want to solve the world's problems, not win elections. We need business leaders that want to deliver for customers and the society in which they operate in to better the people that they serve, both internal and external, Not just see the stock price go up. Currently Feels like we don't have a voice. influencers and people who we see all the time tell us the five keys to success, they miss all the failures that have tried their methodology, and it hasn't worked. And there are more than two choices in this world. you should get to vote or to buy, to consume, to vote with your your wallets, for something that you like. And if there isn't anything, then you can create it. And that should be measured by are you safe? Do you feel safe to take risks? To innovate, to experiment, to be an entrepreneur, to go out there and put your stake in where you think the world should go, And are you happy? Do you get satisfaction and meaning out of the life that you're living? Now. In reality, the statesmans who we would elect into the government, the business leaders in the world, they aren't responsible ultimately for your happiness. That's to some level an individual item, but they can set the conditions for it when they actually want to put the conditions in place I am not gonna lay out all of what I think got us here and what we can do to fix it in one video. I will do that over multiple and that's just my idea. I can't stay quiet because I've got two kids and when I walk into their bedrooms in the morning to get them up for the day, I imagine a world. in which they're graduating into functional servitude. If the worst version and not even an improbable version of the world takes form, if we continue down this path, increasingly they will be subjects of a growing class It's not a cabal that gets together and says, let's extract from these others who have less. It just naturally forms. The tyrants aren't gonna think they're tyrants, and there's no unmasking of the villain at the end of the scene. There's no Scooby-Doo villain that we get to pull off the mask of and say, Well, it was this person all along, And we have to design in the controls to prevent our natural tendencies. to evolve over revolt. What this turns into I'm not sure, but I do want to see change in the world, and I hope that this starts us on the path to do it. I want to see a world that's focused on everyone's happiness and safety. Because when we're sitting across from another human being, no matter who that human being is, we want that person to have a better life. I think very rarely do we ever get into a circumstance in reality, even
if we really don't like somebody, and sit across from them and go, I wish your life was worse. Maybe in the heat of the moment, in the anger. But when we step back, a world where everyone felt safe and happy is a world we'd want to live in. Not a world of efficiency. Not a world of everyone hacking life. And that's what I want people in power to know. I want them to know that They're missing. The stories that they've isolated themselves, that they are servants of the people, and to embody that servitude, they can't be isolated from the people. So if there's one thing I would change, it would be that our elections have far less friction to entry and support of a belief. And what I mean by that is you should be able to vote for what you want, not against what you don't want. And the barrier to entry should be far lower. Than millions of dollars that are needed to run a campaign. Because once you have millions of dollars that are needed to run a campaign, you are serving something. All the politicians that say they're serving you and not X, Y, and Z because they don't take PAC money and all this other stuff. They still serve somebody to get that money. which is the parties. They serve under the parties. They have a certain confine in which they can operate in. Because once they buck the party too much, they lose the infrastructure. And that infrastructure is what funnels the money. So when you get the one dollar campaign ad that's what that infrastructure is. And the party gets their money based off of support of the other people with money. So it is a system designed not to support the people who vote for it. out of no ill will, these folks will try to do their best to change the world. The problem is they operate in a system that doesn't want it to get changed. So electing one person or these midterms isn't going to change much. the system is still there. And that's what needs to change. That's what we need to evolve. Two things. If you could learn about my life, people in power. It's that success blinds you to the luck that you have. And there's a lot of countervailing voices that you aren't hearing. And it is a design for you not to hear. You need to go out and find those voices. That's part of what this channel is designed to do, One thing I'd change is I would ask you to. Recognize that you do not support everybody. You have a belief set and that will appeal to a certain group of people. And in a democracy, you want the greatest number of appeal to win out. That doesn't mean you should try to inauthentically appeal to more people. That means you should go out and listen. to those people and respond with the message that you think that they should have. And then you should want the people to elect whoever best represents them and then go back to whatever you were doing. That means more people in government. That means easier entry. I want people to go serve. I want it to be accessible I want people to go, I could, if I wanted to, enter the election next time. That doesn't mean it's easy. but it does mean that anybody could do it. Not in theory, but in practice. And not because they're beholden to somebody else, because they are advocating for their neighbors. And when they're done, they're gonna go back and live amongst their constituents and answer for what they've done. I appreciate you taking the time to listen. Please go ahead and let me know where I'm wrong, something that resonated with you. I'd love for you to come on and tell your story. Because the whole idea of this is that if we hear each other's stories, it doesn't mean we'll necessarily change our minds. But it means we'll understand each other and be able to push for a movement that isn't looking at an ideology, it's looking to change the system so that it responds to us. Not that we're responding for them. Thank you for your time. Please let me know what you think in whatever form is most comfortable for you.