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Russ Johns 0:28
Welcome to the #piratebroadcast, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings where you can expand your connections, your community. #Kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let's get this party started.

That was interesting and welcome to the #piratebroadcast. Good day and I hope you're having a fabulous week. The #piratebroadcast is bringing #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Today we have Yonason in the room. We're going to be talking about a lot of different things. I want to welcome you, thank you so much for being here. If you're watching the replay, thank you all the gratitude in the world, I just want to welcome you to #thepiratecommunity, make connections, start conversations, and just do what you can to spread a little kindness in the world. Yonason, good morning, how are you doing this fine day

Yonason Goldson 1:28
After that wonderful intro. I'm just terrific. I'm looking forward to this. Thanks for having me on.

Russ Johns 1:34
Well, we met through a mutual friend Wendy, and it's just wonderful to connect with people around the world, doing amazing things like yourself, you've had some tremendous adventures. We'll get into a few of those. One of the things that I find fascinating in your story is the diversity and your experience, and where you are and what you're focused on right now.

Talk a little bit about that journey a little bit to give people kind of a framework for what you're doing now, because I think it's important for us to understand that not every time we start in one place, we end up in the same place we have a journey, we have to end up in different locations. I love your story, and I just want to share it with as many people as possible. I want to highlight you today.

Yonason Goldson 2:28
Most of us who have lived for a while have discovered that I don't often quote john lennon, but see you when you're busy making other plans and experience. I just want to pick up for a moment use the word diversity and there's so much talk about that today. What I like to focus in is on intellectual diversity understanding different points of view than just having people different for the state. Of being different, and being different for having their different perspectives, their different experiences to the conversation so that we all come away with a deeper and broader and more profound understanding of the world and ourselves. My story is one of lots of twists and turns, I graduated the University of California degree to English.

Russ Johns 3:22
Hmm,

Yonason Goldson 3:23
With a degree in English? Well, I went hitchhiking cross country for half a year. And then across the Atlantic went backpacking across Europe for about half a year, I ended up in Israel. That's where I reconnected with my Jewish roots. I've been raised with no knowledge or understanding of church tradition whatsoever. So it was all new to me. I discovered this site, my preconceptions and my stereotypes of what traditional observant Judaism was.

I discovered this vibrant community full of profound thinking ideas in values and I was just mesmerized. I changed the whole trajectory of my wife my life. I stayed there for 19 years in Israel studying that. There had two children there and became an orthodox rabbi. Immersing myself in the wisdom of 3000 years, I found that Judaism doesn't just speak to Jews.

It's the foundation of so many of our moral and ethical and philosophical principles that we take for granted them necessarily trace them back to their source. But learning studying the evolution of these ideas and how they transform the world is an extraordinary way of engaging ourselves and understanding our place in the world.

Russ Johns 4:55
Absolutely, absolutely. You know what I find mind boggling, my guess is that you're some of these ideas have been transported for years and years through families for generations through all of these ideas, and foundation of family, big ideas the concept of community and some of these things are universal. I mean, it's not necessarily unique to any specific religion. I just think that right now, we seem to be in a vironment where people want to diminish the idea of religion and community and cooperation and communication and some of these things that bring us together, rather than tear it apart.

I just find it odd that it just continues to bubble up in society, and jokes in your studies. There's always been a challenge. There's always been a balance. We're always your move. And I kind of want to talk a little bit of our uniqueness, our ability to be unique, and also find a community around other people that are unique, and how that impacts those around us and how we communicate that and those ideas and bring those ideas to the table because I can be unique without having conflict.

I mean, I don't understand some of the conflicts that are going on right now in our society today. I just wonder why people are not more forgiving about other ideas and why they feel that some people feel that you might feel this way you should feel this way. Have you studied on that at all?

Yonason Goldson 6:50
I think you're hitting the mark that Yeah, we all suffer for what I call spiritual dissociative disorder. It's just ridiculous, not quite accurate mental point of view. We're all split personalities we're individuals living as members of society, worse beings trapped in a physical body in a physical world.

Russ Johns 7:17
Yeah,

Yonason Goldson 7:18
We need to live in the present, but we need to focus on future. We are consistently bold, between seemingly incompatible and irreconcilable different aspects of our nature. The mistake we make is thinking that we somehow have to eliminate that tension or resolve that tension. When what we really have to do is learn to manage that tension. Part of it is one of the one of the and I quote this in my in my TED Talk, one of the great Jewish leaders of the last Generation religious elevation, he said all extremism and fanaticism come from lack of security.

Secure person cannot be an extremist. What happens is when we when we're insecure in ourselves, we're insecure in our beliefs. That makes us defensive. No really know why I believe what I believe. I can't really articulate my beliefs because I haven't reasoned my way to them. Anybody who thinks differently threatens me, even if they don't have to, and because I feel threatened, so I have to either retreat into my own little enclave and intelligence group think that saying this analogy, or I have to attack I have to discredit, I have to malign I have to tear down those positions that aren't consistent with mine.

What I should be doing is trying to engage people so I can understand them better. They hear what I understand you better I understand myself better because I'm understanding my place in the world. We can discover common ground, we can understand our own positions. Occasionally we will discover that maybe we need to reevaluate. Maybe we're actually wrong. Wouldn't I rather find out that I'm wrong than in prevent, persist in being wrong?

Russ Johns 9:22
Well, I think in some cases, people feel that being wrong destroys their security. exam, life realistically, there's nothing guaranteed or promised tomorrow with that promise. It's like, we're there are no guarantees in life. I think that that false purity allows people who want tries, they diminish other people's values and views, or they can feel secure, when in reality, there is no clarity and it just seems backwards. Imagine that learning about others affected other people's perspectives would broaden our view, expand our, our understanding, and give us a much better perspective on the world. It's like God is in place because like people are closing in their view, they're hunkering down or holding on for value in a way that is destructive rather than productive.

Yonason Goldson 10:29
Sure, in order for us to respect each other, we have to understand each other.

Russ Johns 10:34
Yeah,

Yonason Goldson 10:35
I had occasion once when a Christian woman asked me She asked me a question. Why don't Jews believe in Jesus? Now I typically try to avoid these things because I don't want to dispossess Christians with their belief, a good Christian, someone who is contributing tremendously to the world. There's sincerity there and there's wisdom there. There's always Christian doctrine is going to be lifted. I'm interested in getting into the inter faith debates that do it. But she had asked me in sincerity. I laid out the Jewish view of the world and why our view is not consistent with a Christian view.

She was somewhat taken aback that I knew as much about Christianity as I did. It appeared to me that her assumption was the reason why we don't believe Christianity is because we haven't studied it. We haven't learned. I was able to articulate that this is the difference between Islam This is why we can't preach that. Yeah.

Russ Johns 11:47
Yeah.

Yonason Goldson 11:48
She was able to understand she ate a deeper knowledge of both of us. We were able to see that we really have much in common, this fighter differences and in some ways because of our differences.

Russ Johns 12:03
Yeah. Well, if we go beyond, like you pointed out earlier if we go beyond the religion, because we're all spiritual beings, and we go beyond that we're all human. We're all humanity. We all have something in common. There's a common thread between all of us, regardless of our beliefs. I struggled with the idea of how can we transport a little more kindness around the world, to allow the listening and the understanding to take place, rather than the destructive behavior that we're seeing in the media. I know it's only a fraction of humanity. I mean, there's a lot of people like you and I, we have conversation over some of the things that we have, we can have a deep conversation about the subject all day long. For a while.

Not argue about the argument about it. It's truly I want to understand this, like, Why do people behave this way? What is the course of their agitation? I realized for me, I'm trying to understand how that fits into moving their car forward, moving cars forward. Because ultimately, we've all experienced some sort of disparity, misunderstanding being feeling less than Well, we've all had being subjected to some unfortunate circumstance and it's how we react and respond to those circumstances in what we do to be resilient and push forward, making that make a difference. I think To follow up now, it's really important for us to understand those, those elements to share those elements in life.

Yonason Goldson 14:09
You just have so many different ideas there. One that's so important is that we come to us, you know, scroll our response. When I made the choice to take the teachings of 3000 years and try to distill them into a message that would be relevant to a general audience. I focused in on ethics, ethical leadership, as I mentioned, intellectual diversity, because that's really what it's all about. It's recognizing how my actions affect the world around me and affect the world who affect the people who share the world around us in our families and communities, business and ethical businesses. are more successful?

Russ Johns 15:02
Yeah

Yonason Goldson 15:02
Does that have an ethical culture are more successful because their employees are, if you're valued, they're motivated, they're loyal, they're passionate, they're productive. The brand image shines, people want to do business with business with them. When you when you actually make the effort to listen to people, to show them that you're understanding them making an effort to understand, then they want to reciprocate, they want to understand you this brings us closer together, forges more meaningful relationships and those relationships are the source of all of our success and happiness in every aspect.

Russ Johns 15:42
I want to Speaking of which, and bringing community together I want to highlight a couple of people that are in #thepiratecommunity today. Very Good morning, guys. Thank you so much for being here. Angie, good morning pirates. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here. I'm not sure how to butcher your name. Marina. Hi, Roz, how are you marine? Thank you so much for being here. Kathy Spooner, good morning. I just want to welcome everybody to #thepiratecommunity. Andy Shuman. Good morning from Ghana. This is what we see on a regular basis, Yonason is the connection between people in this community and the conversations that take place to her off of the #piratebroadcast.

Seth Marlo Good morning pirates. Jeff, how are you playing today? Hope you having a fabulous week. And LinkedIn. This is probably Laurie Kundson, though. Well and how we're thrilled Topic I think anybody has any questions, please drop them in there in the comments. Because we are rich, and we are wealthy, from experience in our lives at times, and only a fraction of our experience, can we understand somebody else's perspective, until we have had the opportunity to learn more about it. I can begin to understand some of the things you've undertaken and explored during your life. I know that there are so many things that people can do to be a little more patient. When we talk about patients, and we talked about understanding and being open and honest, are there some things that you've practiced in your life that have led you to be more open you listening and understanding and and helping others be that way.

Yonason Goldson 18:06
Yeah. I think a lot of it has to do with mindset.

Russ Johns 18:12
Mm hmm.

Yonason Goldson 18:13
One of the things I've been doing the last few months is practicing visualizations.

Russ Johns 18:21
Okay

Yonason Goldson 18:22
I was resistant to it. It sounds a little flaky on the surface, but it has to be done the right way is for me to wake up every morning and tell myself I'm wonderful and beautiful and fantastic. Good energies flowing my way. Okay, that's that's fine. But to be much more concrete, to visualize the best version of myself the person that I want to be in or do I want to be someone who is patient who I wish I would have started this 30 years ago when I when they had first daughter was born.

I look back at the amount of tension in the home. It's hard money problems or kid problems, just community problems. It's all the uncertainties his health problems. There's no you can read all the parenting books in the world. Now when you add I was an expert on parenting until I had kids. Yeah, it's always easy.

Russ Johns 19:33
Yeah, it's always easier when it's someone else's kid.

Yonason Goldson 19:36
Yeah, people's problems and we can solve them all and then we come to myself as those of you who are still young, please start now.

Russ Johns 19:47
Yeah.

Yonason Goldson 19:49
I am a person who takes drawing in my work my family and my Can you name a person who communicates My, the value of what I do on the field. Motion to leave with passion, clarity and confidence is specifically described my best self. While I'm doing it to reflect on what do I need to do, what steps do I need to take to become that person? I'm very powerful exercise. I mean, it really only takes a couple of minutes and hey,

Russ Johns 20:22
yeah,

Yonason Goldson 20:24
Wake up in the morning and express gratitude and acknowledge all of the good things in my life. And to take a few minutes before I go to sleep and ask myself, what am I gonna write today? Where do they get wrong? Do they happen to be better tomorrow? It's just as a discipline of focus, and purpose. And there's also the study of wisdom. What do we watch on online? What are we reading? You know, the news is so toxic now. Because we're living in the Roman Empire, everything's gladiatorial. spective.

Russ Johns 21:06
Yeah.

Yonason Goldson 21:07
News has become that way to this people beating each other up, often without interest in facts.

Russ Johns 21:15
Yeah

Yonason Goldson 21:15
Always without interest in context. There's no new. There's no sum. There's no accommodation that there may be other legitimate points of view, to actually seek out people who are authentic purveyors of wisdom, whether their conversations online, what you can find, whether there are books that really quality, entertainment, even even the TV shows, you watch the movies you watch. There are presentations that have value that have substance they have. It's interesting, there was a study done. People who read literary fiction, demonstrate more moral sensitivity than people read nonfiction.

Russ Johns 22:01
That's fascinating.

Yonason Goldson 22:02
Because when you put information in the context of a story, remember, it penetrates us and it stays with us. I mean, even even fiction, when you read biography, when you read history that's in story form, you can get so swept up in the narrative. I mean, how much do we really learn in school about George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln is where towering figures when you actually read their stories?

Russ Johns 22:30
Yeah.

Yonason Goldson 22:31
You just are in all of the greatness of these individuals and how much we owe them and how can we benefit by inheriting a legacy that they gave their all. I mean, the self sacrifice, to create the society that we have the opportunity to live in. It's so much easier to just wait fingers, labor, blame, focus on the negative look at all the things that are wrong in the world. What does that get?

Russ Johns 23:04
It does not add to the solution. In my opinion, it does not contribute to the solution or the outcome in a positive way, by diminishing someone else's accomplishments. It's tragic when some of the things that are taking place and I encourage people to turn the TV off, stop watching the media detox or some of this stuff. Yet, it's so important for us to have a conversation because we cannot go blind in the night and think that it's going to change unless we participate in the conversation at some degree at some level.

It's disheartening. It is being right on the basis of one aspect of promotion. It just means backward thinking by the time I search out people like myself that are much wiser than myself. Yonason help me understand. The family is not a new battle. I know, history itself. These things come through, like the Roman Empire. You talked about we are. I hadn't thought of it that way. However, we hope through this process of evolving. I'm not sure that I understand and appreciate the evolution that is taking place right now. It makes me a little bit nervous. I'm just saying. I don't know if I like what I see. I don't know what I can do. there's anything I can do to change it, except have these conversations.

Yonason Goldson 24:56
I think, Much of what we need to do, because when you look at the conversations that are going on in our lives or online right now, even before COPPA, they weren't but um, the polarization is not just between right. It's actually a much more nuanced polarization between extremists on both the right and left. When we use the term moderate, I don't mean somebody who, who plants have flags and some arbitrary middle and says let's just call it a long, moderate their voices, who moderate their discussions, who take a moderate approach in their interactions. It doesn't mean you can't be passionate. I sometimes like to call myself a passionate moderate Easter right column for local people. The manager once told me that the only mom she knew who didn't sound flaky and wishy washy.

You can have moderation to me means hearing both sides learning and understanding both sides and then trying to find a balanced response to the inevitable diversity of opinion and the passions that exists on all different sides and recognize you when you want to. I'm not a sailor, I'm often fascinated that the idea of sailing into the wind you tack back and forth. You go to the right, left, middle, right, you go to the left. If you listen to the I mean, a couple of more Awful voices we look at Jonathan Hite just righteous mind. Jordan Peterson talking about this to how the right and the left liberalism and conservatism need each other.

Russ Johns 27:13
Mm hmm.

Yonason Goldson 27:14
One without the other will just mutate into radical extremists.

Russ Johns 27:21
Yeah.

Yonason Goldson 27:21
Radical extremists. When they balance each other when there's a debate when there's back and forth, so they they keep each other in check.

Russ Johns 27:34
Yeah.

Yonason Goldson 27:35
What is conservatism it's a respect for the traditions and the values of the past. What's wrong with that? And Miss liberalism. It's a vision of how to make the future better. What's wrong with that? Why are these two labels become the basis of so much ideological warfare? when really they should be the basis of reasoned and moderated debate? Yeah,

Russ Johns 28:03
well, I think people need to listen to understand not to where I think we fall short in mid so many ways is the ability and opportunity to understand. Because it seems like right now it's so polarizing, that people are in a place where they're unwilling to listen to either side in order to the extreme on either side. For those that are moderate or willing to understand some other perspectives, it's somewhat confusing. I see the facts. And I don't see, I hear and understand what you're saying.

Your actions are not necessarily in alignment with what you're saying you want the outcome. It's like and it just seems like destruction is the destruction is the outcome that you're looking to a pod? That's like, I don't understand. This is an ongoing dialogue, honestly, it's gonna, it's probably gonna unfold. A lot of people are frustrated with COVID in the pandemic and being shut in and understanding do I wear masks? Do I not wear masks do I stay in and why? What is the truth? There's so many counter stories and stories that it's really difficult for the average individual to really grasp on all of all of the facts. Do your homework. Do your research, understand the topic before you go off in a blaze and try to take somebody down? It's like, we don't need that. We don't want that and I think dialogue like this, I think is refreshing. Open for opportunity. Thank you so much for being here today.

Yonason Goldson 30:05
It's been a pleasure.

Russ Johns 30:07
I want to just say hi to a couple of people there a lot of a lot of distracting buzzing sound and audio. Kathy, sorry for that. On that before we got here, how do we reconcile role model ethic behaviors when we live in an instantaneous social media immediate response society? Our that is an amazing, great question. balance between instant gratification and actual patience and consideration. Would you want to add to that response there?

Yonason Goldson 30:47
Well, yeah, they're really hums in on the essence of giving back to this idea of this associative disorder. We have a short term I the other day we have the amygdala, the part of our brain that that wants instant gratification and short term goals. The frontal lobe which is the more reasoning, forward looking aspect of our minds that plans.

Russ Johns 31:25
Yeah

Yonason Goldson 31:25
High school. I would occasionally tell my students when they were complaining. Imagine high school students complaining. I said if you don't want to be here, you don't have to stay.

Russ Johns 31:41
Yeah,

Yonason Goldson 31:42
They said what do you mean. Just get up and walk out the front door. Nobody's gonna stop you. We can't do that and said why not? My mother will kill me. Your mother won't kill you trust me. She won't kill you. I would force them to articulate it. Now extend that I'm better off enduring something that I may not really enjoy all the time, because I recognize that it's going to serve me in the end.

Russ Johns 32:17
Yeah.

Yonason Goldson 32:18
When we live in a world that is become so focused on on instant gratification. We have to discipline ourselves. No one's gonna do it for us. If you go to the gym, you hire a coach. You want to learn a musical instrument, you hire a teacher, but it comes down to you doing the work and focus the culture is on network, the more it falls on my shoulders, to take that responsibility. It's tough. It takes tremendous resolution, and tremendous commitment. Ultimately, we have to recognize that we're serving ourselves better.

Russ Johns 32:59
Yeah.

Yonason Goldson 33:00
When we develop that discipline, and serving ourselves better we serve the world.

Russ Johns 33:06
Absolutely. Personal Responsibility, I think is something that we can always improve on. Yeah, it goes back to what you were saying earlier where you meditate, or you project or you think about what did I do right today? What did I do wrong? What can I improve today? How can I become a better person tomorrow? Sitting on those reflections and you're projecting that thought, and what does that mean to me? How does it how do I fit into the world?

Where do I go with this? What do I need to do to improve my circumstance and those around me, and I think that's important and so many people are, are not thinking those thoughts. I would really like to imagine that that can be that can be have changed. love the idea of, of living in a Roman Empire culture and media as a gladiator spectator sport definitely feels that way. Kathy Spooner, you actually nailed that one. It's like, sometimes culture and media. Feels like a gladiator sport right now. Oh. Oh, we can get this off there. For one. Thomas. Hello. Anyone in the mood for something amazing. I'm not sure that we want to love her perspective. Yeah. stog it is looking, promoting a book. Good morning, Russ. Thank you for bringing amazing people in such fantastic gifts. Were us your treasured gifts to the world. Thank you so much.

Yonason. We're fine and I know you have a lot of things on your plate and got things to go take care of and do and I thank you so much for the opportunity for you to join in the pirate broadcast. You're a pirate now. So you're in a loving community that's combined in and willing to have a dialogue like this on a regular basis. So thank you so much for being here. And for anyone watching or watching the replay. How is the best way for them to reach out to you be honest and connect with you?

Yonason Goldson 35:28
Well, certainly I'm very active on LinkedIn so you can find me there. And please visit my site. yonasongoldson.calm. I'm always eager to make new connections and to continue the conversation offline. There's so much that we can do together. And so it's always good to find people who wanted to partners and maybe in their society.

Russ Johns 35:57
Well, and it's all about the oppurtunity that we can actually have open and honest conversations as well. Because it's something that we need to understand that it's not necessarily having a different opinion is not necessarily a bad thing. Not listening to understand is not necessarily the most productive thing you can do in your world, you might learn something new that is important for your future. So let's all get along. Thank you guys. Appreciate you. As you all know, #kindnesiscool. #smilesarefree, and you #enjothe day.

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