The Power of Producer Consciousness

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello, ladies and gents. Welcome to South United Presents, a diverse and inclusive podcast featuring familiar names and new voices. In each episode, our guests candidly share their stories filled with triumphs, setback, humor, lessons learned, and of course, nuggets of wisdom. We're excited to share these stories with you. Now let's meet today's guest. Hey folks, thank you for hitting the play button. Welcome to Sound United Presents Podcast here in the friendly and comfortable confines of Sound United Podcast Studio. And as usual, whatever time you listen to this, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. So we are going to get into it, but before we do, is a few things I gotta let y'all know. This podcast is a little different in the way of changing the way you think. I think that's a a good way to put it. But um, so if you're cutting your grass and listening to this, I would probably recommend maybe not cut the grass, get you some iced tea and kick back and enjoy this, enjoy some learning, or fix you a rum and coke, whatever it is that you may pleasure. But before I get into talking, introducing my guests, let me give you a little historical journey so you can really understand that it the way the universe works is just interesting. So we're gonna go way back. I think I was about 23. As some of y'all know, I'm just put a five, and I'm not telling you the number that comes after that with my age now. But back then I was 23, and um there was a uh business workshop series at Rebecca Williams. It was entrepreneur workshop. And at that time, I've always wanted to run my business. I forgot how I found out, but anyway, and I've said this in other podcasts. It was me, my aunt, my uncle, we went. It was like 20-something people that totally went. By the time it was over, there was like five of us: my aunt, my uncle, me, and two other people. I don't know who they were, but we got our certificates. I still keep that certificate. It is with my GD, it is with my college diploma because it was that impactful for me. But going deeper into that workshop, there were gentlemen, I think his name was Mr. Alvin Davis, I believe. He was an accountant, and he instilled this knowledge that I keep today about my superhero team. You know, you always want to have an accountant, a lawyer, and your assurance agent as your superhero team. I had a bookkeeper in there now, too. Um, and Melvin North, there was just so many people that just instilled knowledge, and I'm as I'm digesting it and and just really absorbing a lot of what they said. And to this day, many years later, I still use that. Now, my guest today was also one of those instructors. And I would say of everything I learned, it not only impacted me, but I took that because I could use that internally with my family because I wasn't running a business then. So it was very applicable to what to how my life was as I got older and a little bit more mature. And one of the things that he talked about was a um this producer consciousness. So being a producer versus the mindset of a consumer. Now I'm 23 years old and I'm digesting this, and you know, this is what I got from it, and it helped me in so many ways, just the way that I thought. Now, I'm just scratching the surface because we're gonna get deeper in this. The interesting part of that is that was back in the mid-90s, and I might have seen this gentleman one time in the 20 teens, right? That was probably the last time that I saw him. And I still remembered, I can't remember where he was. It was some, it was a business function or something, like a nonprofit function or something. And I remember talking to him and letting him know that I still remembered that, and it still stayed with me. And then fast forward to about 2023, I'm doing an entrepreneur series. Uh, a good friend of mine, Derek Tolls, who runs Inspiring Minds, is one of the coolest people, you know, that I know. We were talking off mic about just our philosophies on business and what we learned. And I had brought up, yeah, I remember back at Rebecca Williams, kind of the story I told y'all about, you know, being a more producer and not having this consumer mindset. And he goes, Dr. Homer Warren. I was like, wait, what? You know Dr.

unknown 4:29

What?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

He was like, Yeah, yeah, I talked to him, you know, and that thing. So we got a deeper conversation. I said, Man, tell him I said, What's up? You know, that kind of thing. And, you know, fast forward a couple years later, I had reached out to Derek, and you know, we were doing season five, and I said, Man, can you connect me to you know, Dr. Warren? Because, you know, this would be amazing to have on our podcast. So I reached out, and he reached back out, and he is here. And it's an honor to have him on the show. And so the thing that I always like to ask, I like for our guests to kind of introduce themselves how they want to. So, for listeners meeting you for the first time on this microphone, who is Dr. Homer Warren?

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Uh uh, grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. Born there, raised there, stayed there. Uh, went to college, University of Maryland for uh a hot second back in 1966. You said a hot second. Yeah, hot second. I'll get into that too. So uh graduated from Rand, the so-called the Rand school. Oh, yeah, that's you're the second person. I know, I know. It's it's it's a habit more than anything else.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

I didn't know that it was called the the guest I had on yesterday said the same thing. I said, I had no clue. He's like, Oh yeah, it was he went to East or something, he said. He said, Y'all you were the Rand. I'm sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Well, I I you know, titles and things and how people identify themselves, so uh like the Ohio State, you know. Right. Sounds clumsy, but that's that's how it so the RAN of high school graduated in '66. Uh for that hot minute, I was at uh University of Maryland for about two and a half years before they kicked me out. Uh came back to Youngstown, went to Youngstown State University, um, uh business degree, uh, undergraduate, uh, decided to get a master's degree in econ, so stayed at Yshu Econ. Uh, got married, beautiful woman from uh Boston, and got out of the marriage a couple of years later. Uh not her fault, my fault. Uh letting you know who I am, okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Authenticity.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Yeah, that's what it's about. That's part of it. I have a son, uh beautiful man, uh Winslow. Uh what else? Uh started work at uh uh Youngstown uh city, city of Youngstown government. Uh did a lot of fair employment practice work, a lot of EEOC work, equal opportunity commission work. Uh that was in the 70s. Uh under uh mayor Jack Hunter at the time. He was a Republican, probably the only Republican that we've ever ever had as mayor. Well, we had some before him, but uh mostly Democrats and independents in the city of Youngstown. Uh what else? Uh in 78. Uh he didn't run for mayor again. It was a two-year term. Uh so uh there was another candidate that came in as a Republican, he lost, and so but they kicked all the people out, you know.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Kicked the administration out.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

Yeah, so I was in his administration under the Fair Employment Practice. I was the director of the Fair Employment Practice Commission at the time. So uh I had a buddy who was teaching at uh the YSU. He was the in political science, he was the chair of the political science department. Uh I was on my way to uh, since I had a master's degree in econ, I had an opportunity to go to Dayton, uh national cash register of the company. Uh so it was a choice between going to Dayton and starting a new career or staying in Youngstown. And so uh me, wife, child, we decided to stay in Youngstown. So he offered me a job part-time uh at that time, uh teaching uh econ class at the university. This was 1978. First, second in the classroom, I said, This is me, this is this is what I want to do. I just love the whole notion of being in front of young people. I was young myself at the time, and and teaching. I mean, so teaching has been sort of a uh a natural talent, if you will, or or it's something that I really enjoy doing. So at that moment I said, Well, this is what I'm gonna do the rest of my life. So I knew I had to get a doctorate, so did that at Kent State University. Uh taught there for 35 years. So I retired in 2012. So I've been retired 14 years now. My goodness.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

You're enjoying it though, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Oh yeah, yeah. Uh in fact, I'm probably doing more academic stuff now than I did when I was teaching, because I have, you know, being retired, you have the time and and then you you go into a direction that you want to go into instead of being uh kind of controlled by the uh curriculum or controlled by uh university practices. So I I don't know. I mean, what else you want to hear?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

How was your childhood?

SPEAKER_02 9:28

How was you know, how was growing up? Uh primarily Youngstown, right? You Yeah, I uh uh uh my dad died when I was five, so mom had to, you know, uh move into uh a convenient place because women at the time weren't allowed to uh not allowed that there was a practice of not uh giving mortgages to females at that time, especially black females. So uh she wanted to buy a house, couldn't buy a house, so we moved into uh the projects. So I lived at Westlake Terrace for about 10 years, so I grew up in uh the projects. Okay. Yeah, it was kind of fun too.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

You did uh was it the typical uh you know, you hang with kids, you play a freeze tag?

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Yeah, you you do all of that you do all that, you do all that. Uh uh your uh uh interview with Dr. Wood, you know, you brought up that whole point about uh oh no, it was a lacey, I'm sorry. Uh you know, the kind of things that kids do, you know, marbles, because I shot marbles, uh did the hide and seek stuff, kick the can stuff, uh climb trees, climb telephone poles, you know. We did all the rough and tough stuff. So and the regular sports, you know, baseball, football, and basketball kind of stuff. No, so it was uh uh the we're talking late 50s, early sixties. Uh so I think the dynamic changed a little bit, the cultural dynamic, because at that time the um the administration of those those those uh the terrace, they were called Westlake Terrace, it was structured. So every family had a responsibility. You know, one week we had to cut the grass, another week we had to uh do the uh laundry room, another week we had to pick up trash. So it was structured in the in the sense of obligations and responsibility. I don't know when that changed, but I think that was a big piece of the change and the cultural kind of mindset that people have. 100%. Yeah, so so we had structure, and at the same time, we we played unstructuredly, but but the dynamics of playing was also free and unobstructed. Uh we we do we weren't, you know, there wasn't any fear of drug dealers coming around and all that kind of stuff. Because they it was almost like they respected the kids back in those days, too. And so they let us play and they let us kind of uh evolve. Now we we had bad kids, no, no question about that. Um and and there's a reason for having bad kids. I don't even like the word bad kids, I don't know why they came out of my mouth, but we had kids that kind of went in different directions. But there was still enough structure that uh if you had sort of uh goals in mind or you had a future orientation or you kind of had some dreams, you were allowed to have those. I I think a lot of kids today lack that because of the nature of uh the cultural structures.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yep, absolutely. You um because I want to get in, you know, to what we talked about, you know, the the producer consciousness thing, but before we even do that, I I I don't want to skip a lot of the history. Uh I'm very interested to find out what made you go into econ.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

Yeah, um when I went to Maryland, University of Maryland, I got a scholarship, basketball scholarship, and and so I went into engineering. Because I always thought thought of myself as a hot shot uh mathematician, I guess. I love math. I enjoyed statistics and things like that. So that kind of fizzled out in Maryland. So when I came back and go to YSU, I went into uh the business school. And uh uh business marketing, uh accounting, finance, you know, does have a math kind of element to it. And then when I graduated from the um uh with a with a bachelor's degree in business, uh I said, well, I I still love the academic challenge, I like the notion of learning, because that's always been part of my EMO. Uh where what kind of master's degree do I want? And I said, Well, let's try economics, because I, you know, under that, you know, math, statistics, uh uh understanding the flow and uh u utilization of resources and exchange processes and all of that. I that that's why I got into economics.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

I find that fascinating because I I uh yeah, I just think numbers with all of that and I fear the other way, anything involving math and numbers, I kind of like, oh, look at this squirrel over there. That's when you um so was there anybody that it sounds like you just you were set with this is what I want to do. Was there any mentors or anybody that kind of instilled some of the stuff in you? Even if even not even in the master's point, even if it was the uh marketing, because you did experience some marketing and stuff like that. Were there people that just really inspired you to do that or kept you on the steady path?

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Well, the the word mentor uh can be broad, that can include family members, uh uh neighbors, um teachers, etc. So the the obvious mentor, my mom was a great mentor, she uh instilled within me sort of a um an understanding of how to respect others and offer dignity to others, and when you offer dignity to others, you offer dignity to yourself. And by having that dignity for self and self-respect, that opens up the opportunities for the brain to begin to explore and to be inquisitive and to uh uh to ask questions and seek answers. So my mom was a a big piece of the mentor pie. I had an uncle, uh he was in politics, his name was Isidore Blakeney, he was a big piece. Uh some teachers, never not in a major sense, a minor sense. I had a uh a teacher in trigonometry when I was in high school, and so that was a part of the kind of enjoyment of math, you know, through that teacher's uh teaching in the classroom. So I uh you know if you had to put a get put together a list of people names, you know, I think mom would be at the top, you know. Top of the list, yeah. It's always mom, right? Absolutely, man.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Absolutely. When did you so I want to, you know, as we get into this topic, what are you doing now to kind of lead into that? Like what are you what are you doing now?

SPEAKER_02 15:52

I know you're a book author too, but yeah, a lot of research. Uh some articles have been written, uh, some books have been written. I have a podcast, uh uh website and stuff, and all of it's centered around uh this consciousness piece, which you know has a philosophical element to it, a big philosophical element. It has a spiritual element also to it. So uh most of what I've been doing since retirement is uh researching, writing, uh exploring, uh polishing uh a theory that I have in terms of this consciousness change as a producer consciousness.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Aaron Ross Powell So Kent, let's break that down for you know our audience and for myself to go deeper into it of what that is, because a lot of our questions is going to evolve around that. So please.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Well, a backstory, if you will, um the idea I I taught marketing for uh the 35 years I was at the university. Well, 33 years at uh 35, two years the beginning was teaching in the political science department, then I got a job in the uh business school teaching marketing. Marketing uh the I and you being a marketing consultant, you know the nature and the dynamics of marketing, but it all is predicated on the idea of consumers.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

So if you know your consumer well, uh you you're able to develop a strategy and techniques to uh sell to that consumer, you know, proper pricing, proper promotion, proper distribution methodology. And then uh whatever the product is or service is, you know how to make adjustments and modifications in your product or service based upon the targeted consumer. All right, so that's the backstory. Yes, sir. Uh I don't know when I woke up one day, and I'll say it woke up, you know. I and uh maybe about halfway through my teaching career in the business school, it kind of dawned on me that uh this whole notion of being a consumer is more of a uh dependent member in the exchange with the corporations or businesses. And corporations and businesses are elevated to more of a higher status. And consumers are those individuals who are kind of waiting around for a new fashion, a new item. Uh so we are we become need-oriented and want-oriented, right? So I kind of said, uh, is this right? Is this correct? I mean, uh human beings are phenomenal entities biologically, neurologically. So you know, there's a lot to us that is a production process. And in fact, everything in the universe we can kind of boil down to being a flow of energy, a flow of uh vibrations and rhythms. Well, that's a production process. So music, when you hear music, the sound, that's vibrations. Well, that's a production process. So I kind of said, well, why do why why? And I was teaching that stuff. I was telling students that, hey, you got targeted markets called consumers, and you got to do this and that and this and that. And it was just one day, uh, as I said, I said, this isn't right. This this is opposite of what human beings are really about, biologically, neurologically. So it was probably from that vantage point that I said, well, why are we called consumers? I mean, uh, why aren't we called something that we are naturally endowed with? And so if production processes biologically, every cell is a production process. So if production processes are a natural endowment, why don't why aren't we why aren't we called producers? Because we are the real producers on the planet, along with other non-uh human animals. And and plants can be in bot botany, plants can be considered producers also. So why are we called consumers? Because that's an inferior proposition. I mean, even the language and the word itself uh is uh I think it's a Greek or Latin origin, uh, is is means to waste. It it means to destroy. So we hear the definition of consumer as being that entity, that person that buys from corporations, right? But there's another definition if you look closely, and it's to waste, to destroy. So the word consumer essentially is that we are destroyers and wasters. So that was a big piece of the puzzle. And I said, Well, we got to stop doing this, I gotta stop teaching students that they're consumers, so I had to find another way to kind of navigate around this uh notion of that human beings are consumers, and one thing led to another, and so I said, Well, we're really producers. So then I had to kind of back it up. I had to have science to prove that, then I had to find methodologies to talk about the production process, and so that's how the books and the whole research that I've been doing over the years, that's how it evolved to kind of uh put a put a nice clothing on this notion of being a producer and not a consumer. So and and I even came to the point of start saying that uh there is no such thing as a consumer. It's a social construct, it's a false uh uh notion, a false consciousness, and that uh if you really look at nature and everything that happens, uh we we talk in terms of how the bigger animals consume the smaller animals, animals, but that's not a consumption process, that's a production process. And uh if you look at every institutional operation, uh uh you and your marketing consulting business, uh that is a production process by way of uh the language of inputs and outputs and the flow of how you strategize in terms of taking specific inputs to produce a certain output. So every Everything we do is a production process. And we can, if I don't know if we have time, but we can get into all the specific areas. We can talk about how relationships are really a production process. The church and what happens within church settings, religious settings is really a production process. Everything in education, K through 12, higher ed, is really a production process and should be viewed in that context. So if we had time, we could get into some of the specific applications of this product producer consciousness.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

So when I when I took your uh when you did the one class at Rebecca Williams, I was at the beginning stages of. So you know I mean I feel like I was like one of your apostles because I kind of spread it as much as I could absorb and understand. What are they gonna say?

SPEAKER_02 22:52

A lab rat or something?

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Look, hey, I still, you know, I'm learning more about it now, but what I knew then, I still No, you're at the first.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

You're at the first.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. Wow, I'm honored. I'm honored. So what part of your story matters most about understanding your message?

SPEAKER_02 23:15

Um the deeply philosophical notion, because even when I was a kid, you know, I was always kind of up in the skies, you know, up in the clouds, always thinking in the abstract, always thinking out of out of the box, trying to be a critical thinker. I didn't have that language then, but but even as a kid, I remember being 10 and around that age, going to the library, and I'd heard about philosophy and philosophers, Plato, and all that. So I would go to the library and I would just go to the philosophy section of the uh library and just pull out a book. Very complex stuff that I didn't know what I was looking at. How old were you? Didn't even know the words. Uh 10, 11 years of age. And you pulled out philosophy books? Yeah, I didn't, I wasn't able to read them. So I won't say that you know there was some genius there. Right, right. No, no, no, not even close. It was just the thirst. It was just the the the instinctive kind of um desire to to know things, big things. And I had heard that philosophers know the big things. So I said, let me go to the library and check out some philosophers. And I think that kind of is like an implant, if not, uh, or like some seeds that kind of uh you plant within your own life. And I think that's where it kind of started.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Okay. Do you um I guess I'm I'm trying to think of the right question on this one here, because um while you're talking about it, I understand it and I'm grasping it at the same time and I'm interviewing too. Was there a moment that this philosophy, because you changed up, right? Well, I don't want to say change up, your your way of thinking changed, right? Where it cost you something, like taking this position and moving forward?

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Um well, not a financial cost, uh uh not a uh sort of relationship cost, uh not a cultural cost. Uh if there if there was a cost, it it was um when you when you have an idea, and this is gonna sound a little arrogant, I don't want to do that, but I know you may speak speak your chair. Yeah, okay. Um no one's doing this. No one no one uh uh you have a f a few people, you can you know go back to Marx and a couple other um uh early notions of capitalism and Carl Karl Marx. Karl Marx, yes. Uh you know, the the socialist communist kind of thing, right? And they focus in on the producer in the workplace and the alienation of the producer in the workplace. Uh there are there are there are references to how the household, especially women, because at the time women were the housekeepers and men were out in the in the workplace. And so there's reference to how women are the producers in the in the household. So there are some references to this notion that uh humans are producers in the workplace in the in the home. Uh what I'm doing, because that's only the tip of the iceberg, uh, I'm trying to talk in terms of how humans are producers in everything they do. Every emotion, every action, every reaction, every thought uh is a production act. And so what we should do is begin seeing ourselves as producers daily in everything that we do throughout the day. So I'm trying to take it further than uh our our normal notions of what producers are. And I No, go ahead, please. Well, um uh you know, there's a lot to it. The the key idea is that so let me let me just kind of I'm I'm thinking of 101 different ways to kind of Well the question I was gonna ask you, like in plain language.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

The cost.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

Like Well, we can go back, we could do that, like the cost. Yeah. And then I got another question for you. So go ahead, the cost of this.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Well, well, the the cost becomes how to talk to others, talk to people, you know, academics, I've talked to a lot of people at the university, not only at YSU, but other universities. I've talked to a lot of professional people, I've talked to a lot of people, just people, everyday people, and and saying, okay, you're not a consumer. You're really a producer. And if you change your consciousness, watch what happens in terms of how you work, deal, live. Now, the cost becomes, there's what the cost is, uh, you know, a lot of a lot of people are really stuck in uh a certain way of thinking, stuck in a certain mindset. And in me, I'm saying, come on, we got this is the only way we're gonna really break free of the oppressive natures that we experience in institutions, or the oppressive natures that we have uh in our cultural situations, our political situations. Uh all the m my my brain is now going in different directions. I hope you don't. Well, all all the all the movements uh let's take the civil rights movement, because I was in civil rights in the 70s, I was a fair employment practice director at the city. So all the movements of civil rights that we've had, and not just in the 60s, but you can go back to the 1860s, you know, after slavery during the Reconstruction period of time, all the movements that we've had, you know, the Black Panthers or wherever you want to go, uh they're under the umbrella of a capitalistic society that is grounded in the consumer, that relies on the consumer. So a lot of our arguments in our movements is that we want to be able to consume also. We need resources, we need jobs, we want to be uh assimilated within the systems, we want integration within the systems. If not integration, we want to have the respect and the dignity of our knowledge and our ability so that we can generate the capital, wealth, so we can buy things. So there's still that consumer kind of proposition operating within movements. And so a part of my cost, if you will, uh, is trying to, and I get kind of emotional sometimes when I was talking to people, and I uh and I stopped doing that, but I would say, you know, come on, you gotta see this. You can't this is the only way that we as a people, and if we just focus in on the minority community, this is the only way that we as a people are gonna have the kind of movements that really liberate us. Because you got to liberate the mind first, you gotta liberate your consciousness, you've got to liberate your mindset first to have a successful movement. Because movements fall apart if there's no glue, a consciousness glue that keeps them together. Now they could be very active, like the uh uh the No Kings thing, or like the uh Black Lives Matter movement. But we see what happens in time. There's splinter groups, there's there's internal conflicts, uh, people get tired, people get uh frustrated. Well, that's because the consciousness is wrong, and I'll say wrong, the consciousness is wrong that in terms of keeping people in the long run, keeping people really motivated to try to accomplish a particular goal. Well, the consciousness is a consumer consciousness, which means to destroy waste. Okay, right? And and even worse, and we hadn't gotten into this, but this consumer consciousness makes us commodify one another. So everybody becomes like a commodity, and you commodify yourself under this consumer consciousness. And when you commodify somebody else, then what happens is that you you you tend to focus in on the value issue. So if I don't value the way you look or the value of the way you talk or the value how you you you operate in a in a meeting, let's say, right? So everything you say, I don't like your voice. I can even not like the tone of your voice, because we commodify people under this consumer consciousness. And just because I have a dislike for you in the movement, in the movement, there's there's a greater tendency for me to drop out, or a greater tendency to have internal conflicts. And you can't do that to have successful movements. So because of the commodification idea of the consumer, because of the idea that uh it the definition is we waste, we destroy, that kind of mentality feeds into how we interact with each other. Relationships, marriages, uh any kind of relationship that people will have one-on-one, same problem. When you commodify the other and you commodify yourself, everything is a function of value. So if you don't give me or you don't do for me as I'm doing for you, then I don't want to do for you anymore. That's a consumer transactional proposition. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

That's um I want you to pretend that the 23-year-old Deshaun is in front of you again. Okay. I'm not gonna force my kids to listen to this, but yeah, I will. Probably tell them to listen to it. But go back again, just in kind of in plain language, what does it mean to live as a producer instead of a consumer? And breaking it down in front of a twenty-three-year-old Deshaun or just so the audience can really connect to it, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Everyday practices can be used to explain this. Everyday practices.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Let's take something.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Anything that happens. Uh eating. Okay. All right. Uh l let's kind of preface this by saying that uh the food processing industry, uh 90% of the stuff that we buy is can can be considered fairly harmful to us, either in the short run or the long run. Uh I'm not promoting uh organic food consumption or my but even me saying consumption, that I that I did that intentionally. So um let's take food as an example. As a consumer mindset, as a producer mindset in terms of food.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

A lot of the food that we eat is short-term, long-term harmful to us. And we know that m medically because we've been told that you know a lot of the stuff that we are processing in our body uh has uh deleterious effects. You know, whether it's high blood, uh, whether it's uh diabetes, uh obesities, you know, a whole bunch of medical issues that can come from eating. If you eat as a consumer, then food becomes a commodity for only its external value. So we eat food on the basis of how it tastes, how it smells, how it looks, how it feels, how it sounds, like chips and things. So a lot of our eating processes is based upon the consumer mindset that values the taste, the look, the smell, the touch, the sound. And so we get in the habit of eating foods on the basis of those external kind of consumption aspects. And marketers know that, and you being a marketer, you do you develop the product for the purpose of tasting good, looking good, sounding good, smelling okay. Appealing. Yes, by by way of the the the nature of the food item itself, because marketers know that people see themselves as consumers and that their narrow view of this particular food item is based upon those external dynamics. And we know the consequences, not only in in terms of the the financial consequences, but the the physical, psychological consequences are very damaging. And I and we can include alcohol and cigarettes and those kind of things into the consumption process. So we're consumers, then we're very limited, very narrow in our relationship with food. If you have a producer consciousness, food becomes an input. Now we hadn't gotten into the language of producer consciousness, but the big language of producer consciousness is inputs processing outputs. So as a human being, food becomes an input. And I should see food only as an input, a raw material, a natural resource. Food is brought into the phenomenal production system. So if I see myself as a producer, I'm seeing that food is an input that comes into this phenomenal production system. And the first production process is chewing for the saliva to break the food down. People as consumers eat quickly, swallow quickly. So just the production process is lost because your mindset is that you're consumer and you want to get it in there because of the taste and because as a producer you realize automatically, because this is the way the brain functions. The brain is a production process, and this whole producer consciousness is trying to get us in sync with the way the brain works. So if your brain has been programmed to be a consumer, that's what it's going to do. It's going to have the bad habits of a consumer. But if the brain knows by way of your knowledge that you're really a producer, then when eating is you're eating, then you're saying this is an input that I'm bringing into this phenomenal production system. And the first production act is eating. So when people say you should chew your food longer, all right, most people don't because of the mindset of being a consumer. But if you have a mindset of being a producer, you realize that this is an important production process. And then when you swallow, it goes into the other phenomenal production process, the stomach. And everything that the stomach does in terms of dispersing all of the nutrition and everything throughout the body through the bloodstream. But that's a production process. So the big thing is that if I see food as a consumer, then I'm going to have that kind of limited, narrow dependency in terms of the corporation says, this smells good, this looks good, this tastes good, you eat it. And most of it's garbage. Well, I don't want to go there. Most of it's not as healthful for us. But as a producer, you're saying consciously, this is nothing more than an input that I'm going to put in my phenomenal production system. I don't want to wear out, hurt, harm the production system. So whatever I put into this is going to have an effect on the production process. That's the reason why we have the kind of health issues we have, because we're putting the wrong input, the food, in the production. And the stomach tells us all the time the body screams loudly, don't eat this stuff. Indigestion, and then the other health issues that we have by way of food, the body is screaming all the time, this is not good for you. Diarrhea, we got constipations, all those issues, right? So the body is telling us that we're phenomenal production processes and we can't process this in this food. But we don't listen to it because we have this consumer mindset.

unknown 39:08

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

Putting it off, continuing to do it. Yes. Regardless, even when the body is showing you and telling you in very subtle ways sometimes. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

And we keep eating it. It becomes addictive in many cases, becomes emotional eating in cases. And we're going totally against the production reality that human beings have. And this is only in terms of food now. So if we teach young people that, look, you're a producer, and when you eat, you are a producer putting this in your body, and you don't want this to harm your body because your body is a phenomenal production process. But the most important part is this food is an input for the purpose of this phenomenal production process, to produce the output of energy. Because that's all food is an input for the purpose of producing the energy. And then the body utilizes that energy to produce everything we do physically, mentally throughout the day. So me sitting here in my body language is a production of output from the energy that's produced by way of the food, which is an input. So it's a phenomenal production process that's operating in terms of food alone. And I don't think that's very complex for a young person or a child to understand. If a parent says, look, you're a producer, food is an input, you don't want to put something in your body that's going to mess up the production system. Food is an input for the purpose of you producing energy so that you can go out and play. So you can go out and do all the things you want to be able to do and not be sick.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

Or lethargic.

SPEAKER_02 40:45

So there's a lot of negative consequences in terms of the consumer viewing food and the producer viewing food.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

That's where when I took your class, I some of that producer, you know, as I was a guinea pig, um, but I had enough information where I thought like that, you know, and so that that really makes sense to me. I can understand why, I can understand why marketers, you know, this would make some of the some of them, not all of them, uncomfortable. But why do you think overall this message makes some people uncomfortable?

SPEAKER_02 41:22

Well, um if you are given words and language from a child and you grow up with those words and those languages, it's very difficult for you to kind of uh switch to a totally different language or uh words. So it's almost trying to teach an older person, uh well when I say older person, let's say somebody in their twenties and older, a new language. Because they're so used to learning and understanding and utilizing their their language. So I think the difficulty becomes uh that I'm asking people to have a totally different language or t totally different uh word usage, which really is saying you have a totally different consciousness, a totally different mindset. And uh it's it's it's I you know there's a psychological peace. Uh habit comes into play. Uh just normal resistance to change comes into play. Uh uh arrogance comes into play. Uh, you know, the fear who are you to tell me that I have a wrong consciousness comes that kind of thing comes into play. I mean, there's a long list of reasons why people might. And this is not their fault, it's just the way uh society is constructed. Words, language powerful. So words are very powerful. We understand that. Language is very powerful. We everybody understands that. The thing that we don't really focus in on is the words of power. The language of power. So those who have the power, the elites, whether economic elites, academic elites, they have power. And their power is manifested through language and words. Uh, you know, I don't want to get too far afield here, but uh the whole notion of making people see themselves as consumer is the words of power. For them to maintain their power, we have to see ourselves as being the masses, let's say, we have to see ourselves as being dependent on them, to be consumers of them. Words are powerful in the sense that if I'm a consumer, in my dependence there's less self esteem, there's less self respect, there's less critical thinking, there's more recessiving and recessiving and this is totally. Accepting blindly in many cases the words of power. Now uh you maybe maybe we should have this conversation off mic, but you take any in any institution and you can see how the words of power control people.

SPEAKER_01 44:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:15

Take take any in you can just kind of fill in the blank on any institution we have in this country and look at the hierarchy and the power in that institution and look at the language and the words that they utilize in that institution, you can see where the power dynamics is. So if we take corporationship humans with corporations, right, we call them producers. We give them the power because they're the producers of things for us. We are the receivers, the consumers of things. So they have the power. Well, under producer consciousness, we are the ones that have the power. We are the producers. Corporations are only suppliers of the inputs that we as producers utilize in our everyday activities. So in the food processing industry, whether it's grocery stores or the farmers or the distributors, they call themselves producers. No, you are only a supplier of inputs called goods and services for the true producers on the planet to utilize in our production process. So, like we said about the food, you supply us food, we produce energy, we take that energy to produce our everyday activity. We are the producers, you're not going to be called producers anymore. You're only going to be a supplier. It just strips the power away. And that's the dynamics in the corporate system, that's the dynamics in politics, that's the dynamics in education, that's the dynamics in religion, that's the dynamics in relationships, that's the dynamics in all of the services that we have, like psychology services. Because we give the psychologist the power to help us when really the psychologist is only a supplier of information or ideas that we utilize to produce our own well-being and produce our own health.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

We take in what we decide is valid or what we want to and versus the other stuff that we may not, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:20

And that's versus having the authority figure, the power figure, tell us how we should navigate the world psychologically. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 46:30

Oh, good. Okay, I was on the right path. Because I could get on the topic of grief, grief counseling. Mine only lasted three months, but it was not that I was thinking of the you know producer consciousness, but with what you're talking about, you know, it was just one of them things like, wait a minute, you know, and so it just lasts me three months. That's about it. But it did help. But I got you know, I did my own thing. No, no, I'm not saying that you it it helped, but just the notion of what you're talking about of receiving that from a person who was giving this information and me having the decision to be like, okay, well, yes or no, or this or that. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Well, so I'm not saying we don't need psychologists or teachers or business corporations or preachers. No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that we have to interact with them as being the dominant producing party. And they are only supplying us with inputs that help us to produce the kind of quality of life or the balance in life or the psychological recovery in life.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

So to with that, the behavior, what what tells you that a student of this, right, or or believer of someone who like myself, who, yeah, I'm absorbing it, learning at the same time too, has shifted from that uh excuse making to more of ownership of this producer consciousness?

SPEAKER_02 47:53

Uh well, yeah, we we we kind of address that with the food example, right? But we can uh talk in terms of education, especially K through twelve.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

Uh young people are sitting in the classroom as consumers. They have a consumer mindset. And as a consumer, if I'm dealing with anything, a product, and we'll call education the product, the teacher is providing me a product. So if I'm dealing with any product as a consumer, if I don't like anything about that product, I don't buy it. So I may like a car, and I may I may like everything else, everything about the car, but I just don't like that tint of the color. So 99.9% of that thing in that car is great, but I just don't like the tint of the color, so I don't buy it. Well, the same thing happens in the educational classroom when students are sitting there as consumers because they've been programmed to be consumers, and if they don't like the teacher's voice, they don't like the teacher's looks, they don't like what the teacher's doing, the textbook, homework assignments, sitting in a classroom next to other people, there can be a thousand things in that classroom. The subject. Subject? Okay. So if I don't like it, then the profit of me buying it goes down because of the consumer consciousness. So if I'm sitting in a classroom as a young person in the classroom, and I have this consumer mindset, and if I don't like something, I'm out of there. But you can't leave the classroom like you can leave the marketplace. You can leave a store, you can leave a website, but you can't leave the classroom. So you're sitting there with a consumer consciousness and you don't like something, and we know it happens when young people are bored or don't like something, they act out. Either they shut down completely or they act out externally by being the class clown or being some problematic in the classroom. So, so to answer your question, so if a young person, so we we will know that they are transitioning, because that was your question, how do you know when they're transitioning? You will know that a young person is transitioning when they see themselves as a producer, and they see the teacher in the classroom as inputs that they as a producer will utilize to produce a desired output. So, as an example, so we get a young man that wants to be a uh a professional football star or a basketball star. He's in 11th grade or tenth grade. He's great. Everybody applauds him. Parents want him to be uh be a star. Everybody around him wants to be a star. The coach wants, because he's a great ball player, right? He's sitting in the classroom as a consumer, right? Now his brain is on being a professional athlete, making a lot of money, right? But he's sitting as a consumer and not liking what's going on because he doesn't think this relates to anything that he wants to be. I'm using football, but I can use a rap singer, I can use any any kind of uh uh projection that young people have in terms of their future. Now, if we teach that young person, that young man, that you're a producer, you want to produce being a professional football star. What inputs are necessary for you to be able to produce that in the future? Well, look at what a football player has to be able to do. They have to be able to read the plays, they have to understand mathematics, they have to understand science, because a big part of being on that court or being on that field has a lot to do with trajectories. So when I'm shooting or throwing a ball, there's a lot of mathematics involved in that. So once they can connect the fact that that's what they want to produce in the future, to being a football star or basketball star, then the key is that for them to think through what are the inputs that are necessary for me to have now to be able to, in time, produce that. So sitting in a classroom, a math classroom, an English classroom, or any other classroom, as a producer, I'm saying, now how can I help, how can this be used as an input for me to be a professional football player? That's a totally different kind of mindset. Total way of thinking, yeah. And it forces the young person to be more attentive now and to be less uh argumentative or less problematic because now the brain is processing this. The brain is saying, okay, I want to be a football player. Yeah, I got to know how to throw that ball. You know, that's trajectory, that's arc math, you know, that's arc trigonometry, right? Well, I mean, that's a different class. But even if it's a simple math class, the idea is that this may help me to be a producer. Now, on the other end of it, the teacher has to do the same thing. The teacher has to say, okay, you're a producer, you know, for all the students in the class. And so for this young man who's a star, the teacher's saying, you're a producer. This subject, whether it's math, science, history, how can this subject that we're having in class, and he and the teacher can call the student out, say, you know, you are the star quarterback. Here's a math question. How does this math question relate as an input for you to be a great football player? So the teacher can do that with all the students and say, you're producers, I'm treating you as producers, and what I'm giving you, because I'm a producer and I'm producing outputs of knowledge. That's my output, which is your input. So how can what I'm giving you be an input that would help you to produce what you want to produce in life? And we're only using an example of a sports figure, but we could be talking about a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, or just a gym.

SPEAKER_00 53:55

Just about anything. You can talk about anything. Aaron Ross Powell How how quickly can this, and not just for a high school student, right? Just for anybody, somebody in their 50s, 40s, 30s, whatever. How quickly can this shift happen, this mind shift? Well, that's back to the cost issue that you brought up before.

SPEAKER_02 54:12

People it it when you say how quickly, I think that's a great question. Let me let me try to answer this way. I think uh conditions and situations in life dictate how quickly m people may change their attitudes and things. I think this country and the world now is going through a real dynamic problem area with politics. We don't have to mention any names or any groups, but we got some serious problems in this country, no question about that. But it's not only in politics, we have some ecological crises. Uh people may argue about climate and the change and all that, but the reality is there's something going on that we have to address. Uh AI is really advancing artificial intelligence. Everybody is really understanding and seeing what's happening with that, you know, with all the chat GBT stuff and the things that are going on, Claude and the rest of that stuff. So I think people now are at a point where there's great transformations occurring, politics, because we may lose our democracy if we don't watch ourselves. That's a transformation. Ecological issues, pollution, et cetera, climate change, that's a transformation that's very large. In terms of technology, you know, AI and all of that, huge transformation that's occurring. And I think there are other social dynamics that are going on today in terms of relationships, how male-female relationships seem to be in the balance. Uh spiritual stuff in the church that seems to be in the balance now. There's some stuff going on there in terms of uh religion and spirituality. So I think when when the external environments are changing rapidly, people are more willing to kind of um adopt new ways or adopt different ways to attack a problem. So to answer your question, I think uh how people are might be receptive to this idea, and I'm gonna be very arrogant again. I think we're gonna have to do it. We're gonna have to have a wholesale change in the way we think, our consciousness. So I think the external forces that are occurring today in today's world may be the catalyst to get people to say, yeah, okay, maybe we do have to kind of change the way we think. Maybe this whole consumer thing has been uh corrupting and this whole consumer thing has been damaging. Because there are a lot of people, uh, academics and people that have written books over the last uh 100 years or so. Uh a fellow by the name of Thornston Veblen, not to drop names, but you know, this conspicuous consumption thing, he wrote a book a long time ago about the dangers of consumerism. So this is not a new phenomenon to say that the that the consumer can have negative effects on our culture, our on the individual psyche. What I'm saying is that let's get rid of the consumer all the altogether. Because most people are saying, let's make the consumer more intelligent, let's make the consumer more conscientious, let's make the consumer have a better understanding of what what they're doing by where their their consumption habits, you know, the plastics, uh, their food consumption. So I'm saying no, let's just let's abolish the consumer as we abolish slavery. Well, which we really didn't abolish. I mean, that's another subject.

SPEAKER_00 57:32

Right. I'm gonna I'm gonna bring this to my parents um and ask you this question, and you kind of touched on it, but where do well-meaning parents unintentionally um and I use that word unintentionally, reinforce dependency instead of responsibility.

SPEAKER_02 57:50

Again, the the language usage, right? Now this may not sound like I'm answering the question. I hope it does answer your question, but a lot of parents are well-meaning. Uh, I want you to be successful, I want you to achieve, I want you to do well in life, right?

SPEAKER_01 58:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 58:07

All right. That is contextualized under get an education or skill, get a nice job, make some money, so you can buy those buy stuff. So implicit in I want you to be successful is the consumer consciousness. So where a lot of parents, well-intentioned, want their children to do well in life, to be successful in life. If we still have this consumer consciousness where the commodification is still operating, a lot of young people hear that as being driving a nice car, living in a nice home, nice clothes, products. Well, parents under a producer consciousness will say, I want you to be productive. I want you to produce according to your natural talents. So as a parent, I'm going to be looking at your natural talents, whether it's in music, uh, whether it's in sports, uh, like in my case, you know, my my I would think my natural talent was to kind of explore and to be inquisitive. That's why I went to the library and started reading philosophy books that I couldn't read. But that that was a seed in me that the parent, in their observation with their children, should recognize and nourish in terms of you producing these things in life. Some children just dislike to uh uh help others. I mean, and so you know the altruism is a very powerful force in a lot of young people, but it's never nurtured properly because we're not seeing the child as being the producer of this and then moving through life, getting the inputs that allow them to produce this as they mature. So I I'm not criticizing parents. I'm saying that parents are also infected with this consumer consciousness, and a lot of their nurturing and a lot of their information with their children is contextualized by this consumer idea.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

Which can also be generational, like because they've gotten it from their parents as it's coming up.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:25

And then if you you look at the opposite end, it's it's intergenerational in terms of poverty. Same thing as operating. Poverty can be viewed in terms of not having the resources to consume. And if your mindset is on I can't consume because I'm poor, that just reinforces the poverty. Wow. Because of the consciousness, the consumer consciousness. So even with people who are considered poor, I don't even like that identity, but if people are poverty, lower class, poor, right? Again, I don't like that. I think that we can come up with better words. But if we would talk to people in that so-called poverty, especially children, that look, you're a producer. Right now you don't have the inputs that are necessary for you to produce things, but you're still a producer. And what I want to do, you know, as a counselor or as uh somebody working in government, because that, you know, we you know, they end up in child foster care and all kinds of government assistant programs, right? So the people in government who have to deal, like the child and family services and all of that, they should be talking to their clients, the so-called poor, right, in terms of you being a producer, and we're gonna give you some inputs to help you to produce today and also to produce a future lifestyle. But most of it, I'm gonna give you some money so you can eat. I'm gonna give you a helping hand and send you some counseling or get you some food or get you some clothing or some furniture so you can you can exist. No, we want people to see that they're natural producers, even in poverty, and they can produce themselves out of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:08

What criticisms have you heard about the produce producer consciousness that's kind of made you like pause? We'll just say pause. It was another word I was gonna use.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

Yeah. It's Marxism, it's socialism. That I'm anti-capitalism.

unknown 1:02:23

Aaron Ross Powell?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:23

They say that too. Yeah, it's it's it's against capital. Which which in fact it's just the opposite. I'm not gonna say that I'm uh capitalist because I'm not fully in line with a lot of the capitalistic uh uh theories and methodologies. You know, I I studied economics, so I have some understanding of capitalism. So uh something like the GDP, you know, the gross domestic product, right? So when they are calculating the gross domestic product, they're only adding up the value of all goods and services sold. So the higher the G and P, the you know, the better we off. Growth and prosperity, right? But a lot of that GDP uh includes cigarettes, alcohol, food products that are that are harming us, pharmaceutical products that are harming us, uh, goods and services that we shouldn't even buy. So when you look at the gross national product in a consumer consciousness, we see things and and as prosperity, as growth, and as well the GDP is up. That's great. But it's bad if you don't really parse it out and look at all the negativity that operates in that calculation. So I would argue we shouldn't include cigarettes in the GDP. I would argue that we shouldn't even include the financialization that we have in this country, how people are making money off of money.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:49

Yeah. When you said pharmaceuticals, I was just thinking like high prices and wouldn't that affect it too, you know, like certainly. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:57

No, they they they uh they they most pharmaceutical companies and the actual chemistry and the actual uh RD, right, is pennies on the dollars. Most of the price in most products are from advertising. I was gonna say, yeah. And not only the advertising, but the sneakiness in terms of uh uh trying to persuade, cajole, buy off doctors and insurance companies. All right, I guess we're getting into some territory.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

Um if someone you know listening to this wanted to make this shift, what's something they could do this week to start? Just simply say I'm a producer. That was my mindset when I left that classroom.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:45

Well, yeah. Well, and and and not not only just to say I'm a producer, say that I produce everything that I do, my behavior. Uh the greatest example is anger, especially with young people. We externalize our angle. It's you made me mad, you're doing something to me that uh I don't like. I'm angry at you. And and just the word anger and hate is filled with so much baggage and luggage that you know when I say I hate you, that that's it, that's absolute. And then we can have conflicts and violence and victimization relative to that hate. But that's when we externalize our hate, our anger. You made me mad, right? So, what can a person do? Well, I'm a producer. I'm producing the anger up here. Now, you the vast majority of people are not going to say the amygdala or the Olympic system and the fight flight mechanisms that operate, but they can say, I'm producing the anger. You did something, but that's only one input in me producing the anger. There are many other inputs that Can contribute to my anger at you. I didn't get enough sleep. That's an input. I'm eating the wrong foods. That's an input. I'm mad at someone else for something else. That's an input. Had a crappy day. I had a crappy day. So if I see myself as a producer, your question was, what can we do now? If I see myself as a producer, then I see myself as producing everything that I do throughout the day. I'm using anger as an obvious example because there is a lot of anger issues and stress issues. But a lot of the problems and the anger issues that we have is that we externalize it. You made me mad. No, I'm producing the anger. You are an input. We can't deny that. You did something, but there are other inputs that are contributing to my anger. Now, once I do that, then I don't blow my anger up into an absolute sense where now I don't want to deal with you at all. Because you did something, and that's only one of the things that you may have done to me, especially in relationships, and I see this all the time. When I was a kid, I in my 20s, my first wife, uh, yeah, that was I was a consumer. So she would do something, and I would do something, and we'd be mad at each other for a whole week. And then when we had a chance to talk about it, we we we see there was something really something else going on, and or that that, yeah, I did something, and that's not my real character, and you really we don't have that conversation under the consumer consciousness. We we we we eventually move away from each other so easily because we use words like hate, anger, I'm mad at you. And those are consumer words. The producer word is you had an output that was my input, and I'm producing uh well, see, we hadn't gotten into some of the details that's in the book, but it but it but it's called farts, farts of F-A-R-T-L. Unpack that for us. As human beings, we produce farts for everything we encounter in life, everything we do in life. Right now, I'm producing farts for you, you're producing farts for me, the young lady who's uh the producer, producer, all right, that's what it's called. She's producing farts also, right? Well, the F would be feelings. So we produce negative or positive feelings. The A is action, negative or positive actions of some degree. The R is reaction, and the reaction are the visceral feelings that we have inside of us. So when you get angry, you can kind of sense it here or there, you know, anger. And when joy and love, you you can sense it in your body. That's the R, the reaction. And then the T would be the thought. So you do something, say something to me, which is my input. So you said something nasty to me. So that's your output, that's my input. I'm gonna naturally produce a feeling, an action, a reaction, and a thought for what you produced. So I'm gonna produce a negative fart for what you said or what you did to me. But that's only for that particular input. That's the key to this. As a producer, I'm focusing in on the particular input from you. I'm not generalizing your whole character, your whole being, and who you are as a as an individual. I don't do that. But under the consumer consciousness, if I don't like something about you, yeah, you're gone. Color. Oh. And now we can talk about race. We can talk about race.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:48

We don't have to have a nice two-parter on this.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:51

But that's the whole point. So if we had a producer consciousness, we can have a better discussion with white supremacists, let's just do it. The MAGA crowd, the white supremac crowd, or the Christian nationalists, right? Because they're the ones that are really kind of feeding into the problems that we have today politically. But we can have a better conversation if we change the language, because right now the language is a consumer language. And that's why we can't even sit down at the same table and talk to each other. But we can talk to each other if we see each other as phenomenal producers, and then there are certain outputs from that person that are my inputs, and I'm producing a fart for that one particular input. Now you have other inputs. You have other outputs. What are my farts for those? And if we do I know it sounds gross because, and that's another thing that people resist in me. But it's a shock, this is shock therapy to be able to say, to use a word like farts, because most people find that just distasteful, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:58

But it it opens up the thought.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:01

That's the key. Yeah. Because if you're a producer, what are we producing? Well, we're producing feelings, actions, reactions, and thoughts. And that covers every psychological dimension in any any textbook. Everything human beings do can be categorized under feelings, actions, reactions, and thoughts. And it just so happened that the acronym came up with farts. I mean, it could have been raft. It's like the military.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:26

The military comes up with those things. No. Is there a like is there a daily question that a producer could ask themselves just on a daily prep to try to get this because it would it it is a mind shift.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:40

You know. So in in preparing for that, is there a daily question that they could ask themselves to as an individual?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:48

Uh yeah, any anyway. Well, you you can randomly select anybody. Take a leader who has uh employees.

unknown 1:11:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:00

Whether it's uh profit, nonprofit organization. So what can they do? Well, the leader is the producer. Everything the leader says and does policy, uh disciplinary actions, whatever the leader is doing. That's the leader's output. So the leader sees himself as a producer of the output. A good leader is gonna say, You're a producer, you know, you may be uh uh my assistant, uh secretary, some managerial workers in the organization. So whatever my output is your input because you're a producer also. The good leader is going to say, Well, what are the feelings, actions, reactions, and thoughts that my employee has for my output? Because my output is your input. So good leaders are going to be able to make some judgment about, do some analysis on the feelings, actions, reactions, and thoughts of the employee. Most leaders don't care. They're dogmatic, they're martinets, they give instructions, that's it, you don't like it, get out of here. And we know what happens in organizations like that. Great leaders are going to be empathetic, great leaders are gonna have emotional intelligence. And a part of emotional intelligence is that I'm a producer, everybody in my organization is a producer, we have inputs and outputs, we have feelings, actions, reactions, and thoughts for everything that happens in this organization. If we want to promote the organization, grow the organization, have the organization be successful, we got to be on the same page. And we can't just let our farts go unexplored. Wow. We can't let our feelings, our actions, and thoughts not be brought to the table. So I said a leadership as an example of what people can do, but the same thing happens in a marriage. We don't put the farts on the table, we're gonna have problems in trying to develop and grow and nurture and have a beautiful relationship. Yeah. Because everybody's hiding their farts, their feelings, actions, reactions, and their thoughts. Nobody wants to be very honest and open about it. But the producer consciousness motivates that. Producer consciousness stimulates that. Because it's a natural proposition of how the neurological systems of the brain operate. The brain operates in a productive producer processes.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:41

By default.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:42

By default. But it's infected by a society that's oriented around capitalism, consumerism, the consumer, commodification, transactions, value orientations. Now that stuff can be okay under a producer consciousness. You can still keep value in exchanges. People can still buy cars and clothes and everything that they want to buy, food. But if you buy it under a consumer consciousness, therein lies the problem. Debt issues, psychological issues from stress, health issues in terms of food, pollution that we cause. So if we buy things under a producer consciousness, so you can still buy, and that that wasn't that's another resistance that I get. So I tell people, you're not a consumer, and then people think, well, I can't buy those things I like. So it's hard to get through because people see that as socialism.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:39

From this standpoint, do you see hope and this mindset evolving? And you know, you have people like me who, you know, are adaptive to it and things like that. Do you do you have hope for it?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:51

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, back to the point about AI is gonna have a huge effect on how we function as human beings in the workplace, relationships, social media, the whole thing. We're gonna have to have a new way of thinking to deal with AI. We can't survive under AI if we have a consumer consciousness. Each individual has to see themselves as a producer of knowledge. I'm producing the information that the uh internet folks are utilizing to make money. If I see myself only as a consumer, you know, of Reddit or Twitter or whatever they have out there now, if I'm only a consumer, then I'm in an infant-dependent situation with AI. So I gotta use Chat GBT as a producer, not a consumer. I gotta realize that I can't rely on ChatGBT to write my papers. Consumers do that. Consumer go to students in college now, they'll go to ChatGBT and hand in a paper because of a consumer consciousness. A producer won't do that. A producer realizes that I have to use my own brain to process that information in order to be able to really fully understand it. I can't use an external software to be able to get my education. I have to produce my education. So AI and climate change and all the political uh uh uh disruptions we have worldwide will demand a new consciousness. So my argument is that it should be a producer consciousness. So when you ask me, is there hope? Yes, because of what we are facing in the world today. AI, climate change, political corruption, uh, religious corruption. There's a lot of that going on too. Sure. We're gonna have to morph out of this, and I'm arguing that the only way we can do that is have a full consciousness shift, a paradigm shift away from a consciousness that's really a lie and doesn't exist, to a consciousness that fits the natural functioning of our body and our brain. We're producers, so why don't we think and talk and make decisions as producers? That's who we are naturally, that's our endowment.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:17

We normally um I usually go to the random question round for y'all. Look, I want you to see this paper. I actually sit and come up with random questions. Your name is on the top there. I did that, I did that this morning. But before I get to that round, I want to I want to be sure you have a book. Yes, two books. Yeah, three.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:34

Three right now. Three books. Fourth one in the in the works.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:37

Okay, so you you're doing it. Can you talk about that? Because I want to I I want to make sure that's included in this before I go into the to the random stuff and all that. So your books.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:46

Well, the first one is just called producer consciousness, and and that's the opening uh of all the language, you know, the farts are in there. There's other language that that had to be created. So the idea was that the first book is saying that the average person can't understand neuroscience, how the brain works. The average person is not going to really be understand psychology, you know, that's another part of the brain, or the cultural dynamics and stuff. So the first book is trying to provide language and words that capture some very complex neurological and psychological stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:28

A good base level. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:30

So the book, first book, just gives um, you know, sort of uh ABCs of uh producer consciousness. The second book is directed at uh education, especially K through 12. So I take the same language and then I apply it to the educational environment. Uh my thinking was to write other, in fact, I am writing another book on economics. I want to be able to show how the current economic theory is under consumerism, consumer consciousness, which if like in your case, being a marketing consultant, if corporations, nonprofit and profit, start to see the people that they are providing a service to or a product to. So as an organization, to take any organization, a nonprofit, if they see that they're dealing with producers, see, most organizations are now under that mindset that these are customers or clients or consumers. Yeah. Because they've been they use the business models. Well, the argument for the for other books, I want to be able to focus in on specific institutions. So the second book focuses in on education. I'd like to write other books, which I don't know, I'm getting old. I'm almost 80 years old. I don't know how much.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:55

If you enjoy writing, write on.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:57

Yeah, yeah. So the second book specifically focuses in on education. The third book is a children's book. So we want to write a long series of children's books on your producer and the fart thing and other things. So we're that we're we're in the process of writing a series of children's books. The fourth book that I'm playing around with now should be finished pretty soon. It's going to be like a PC for dummies. So I'm going to have a lot more pictures, a lot more uh AI generated. The visual learners. That's where we are with the books and everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:36

All available. Do you have a website? Okay, you on Amazon, do you have a personal website?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:40

Yes, yes. Producerconsciousness.com.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:42

Okay, I'll make sure that's in the notes. And you have a podcast. Under the producer consciousness. Under the whole under website, yeah. Good. You ready for your random questions? Do I pass fail questions?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:55

No, everybody gets worried.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:57

Fun questions that I come up with be over there, some of them be over there sweating. I'm like, what are you doing? This is this is mellow. Okay. First one. If you could make one rule that everyone had to follow for 24 hours, what rule would you pick? And I'd live.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:17

The answer's already given, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:18

Yeah, but but go ahead. What rule? It could be something different.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:21

I don't know. The rule is uh uh remove the word consumer from your vocabulary.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:29

24 hours, that's it.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:30

24 hours. Don't don't ever think or even use when you hear the word uh run.

unknown 1:22:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:36

So that's the rule. If your life had chapters, what would you name the current chapter?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:44

That's it. That's a good question. Um moving through life as a real producer.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:54

Okay. If you could pause, so again, we talked about changing rules, but this was a pause. If you could pause time for two hours, right, what would you do with it?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:04

Uh underproducer, let me give you a little preface here before I under in the book and underproducer consciousness, I I deal with a lot of quieting the mind because you you produce the voice in the head.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:17

So and a lot of people don't realize that. A lot of people think that's an external voice, it's opera. No, you're producing that voice in the head. So if I had two hours that I can pause, that would be a great time to kind of just have that absolute no voice in the head being produced. Okay. Yeah. Just nothingness. Nothingness, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:37

If you could send a text to yourself five years ago, what would it say in 12 words max? Five years ago, I sent a text to me now. Yeah, if you could send yourself a text five years ago. To now, right. Uh 12 word max.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:56

These are good questions. Um find find a much better way to make people comfortable in talking about producer consciousness. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:08

Yeah. When you grew up, you could did you color stuff like that? Did you do a lot of color and use crayons? No. This isn't the question. I'm just asking because it's leading to the question.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:19

I grew up in the projects. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:21

So it wasn't no 64 Crayola box, you know, it was the eight, maybe. Maybe you had rose on it.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:27

Stuff that we'd steal from school. Maybe we'd steal some crayons from school and some chalk from school.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:33

Okay. Uh, which crayon color best matches your personality?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:38

Oh man, wow, where'd you get these questions from? No, they're good. They're great. That makes you make you think, makes you produce an answer. Uh uh any uh uh uh nature color, but any any grounding color. What color? Give me one. Uh uh brown. I like the I like brown. Chocolate. Okay, gotcha. I like I love I love the chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:04

And then the final question is what I always ask our guests. You know, if there's one word in in currently that that you could choose to define you or or ex you know, yeah, define you, what would that one word be for you and why? Producer.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:19

That's it. Why? Because all of nature, all of the universe is a production process. So we should be called producers. Very good.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:30

Very good. I feel like I want I have a whole bunch more randoms, but I I can go all out there, but I don't want to do that because I gotta stay with the show format. But I do is there something you want to leave our audience with? A gym, something you want to say before we close out?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:43

Yeah, uh suffering, uh, stress, anxiety, frustrations, uh those things are produced. We produce that. We produce the suffering, the stress, the anxieties, the anger issues, the hatred issues. And we produce it because we've never been taught that we are producers. We've been conditioned to see ourselves as inferior consumers. And once you see yourself as an inferior anything, it leads to stress, anxiety, frustrations. If you see yourself you see yourself as a producer, you you become progressive. You become proactive and not reactive. So if there's anything that I really love for people to kind of process is that we produce those behaviors. In many cases, we live in a situation or live in circumstances that uh are hard to not be stressed and angered issues and all of that. However, if you see yourself as a producer, you're in a much better situation position to be able to evolve out of that, to mature out of that. So um I don't want this to be long-winded, but uh our culture talks too much in terms of uh survival of the fittest. Talks too much in terms of uh if you're not in a position of quality of life, it's your fault. Uh it talks too much in terms of original sin and suffering and all of that kind of stuff. Uh I don't think producers uh operate that way. I think the natural body, the way the body works, and again, I don't mean to be long-winded, but this is my baby, this is my thing, uh, the body naturally moves towards healing and wellness. You get a cut or a burn or a break, you know, you break your bone, the doctor sets it, but the body is naturally healing itself. The body moves towards wellness. And if we can, through semantics, say that wellness is goodness, wellness is wholeness, wellness is a quality, then the idea that we're naturally sufferers or sinful, or if we haven't made it to the top, then we're less than and all that goes against the natural movement of the body. The body naturally moves towards wellness, not towards suffering. The body naturally moves towards wellness and healing, not towards despair and stress. The body naturally moves towards, if you will, goodness. And we can't facilitate that movement if we go against our bodies, if we harm our bodies through wrong behavior, through poor food, poor physical activities. The body wants us to move towards the wellness that's innate within the genetic structure of the body. So if there's one message that I want to give people, is that your suffering is not how your body naturally wants to move. And so you can produce your way out of that. Stress, anxieties, you can produce your way out of that. We don't, because we live in a society that doesn't want us to produce our way out of it. It wants us to be stressful and hateful and anger issues and probably because there's a lot of money to be made off of suffering.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:37

Absolutely. Well, I really enjoyed you being on here. Uh it's been uh full circle from the time I met you to being here on the podcast. I really do appreciate it. My pleasure. So, folks, I want to thank you for tuning in. Play this again if you want to go deeper and learn more. Uh, play it again after that if you want to, but we will definitely have Dr. Warren back on this show. I appreciate him being here. This is Deshaun Scott with Sound United Presents, signing out. This episode was produced by the Sound United Podcast Studio, led by Kimberly Gonzalez, photography and video content produced by the D5 Group. And be sure to visit our website, SoundUnited Presents.com, where you can catch up on all the episodes and get some behind the scenes content. I'm Deshaun Scott. Thank you for listening.