Crisis Response in Western NC: Lessons in Civic Duty and Community Resilience

In this episode of Open Source Health, Tripp Johnson and Marcus Shumate dive into the heart of a recent natural disaster that struck Western North Carolina. Marcus shares his firsthand experiences, from evacuating his family and helping neighbors without clean water to delivering essential supplies and organizing grassroots relief efforts. The conversation goes beyond the immediate aftermath of the disaster, exploring the deeper lessons learned about civic duty, community resilience, and the importance of practical action over performative responses. They discuss how empathy can sometimes cloud effective decision-making in a crisis and why basic needs like food, water, and shelter are the first steps to addressing mental health in a disaster scenario.

Key Points:

• Western North Carolina Natural Disaster: Marcus shares the story of how a sudden natural disaster hit Western North Carolina, causing massive flooding, widespread power outages, and infrastructure breakdowns.
• Emergency Response and Rescue: Marcus and Tripp discussed their hands-on response, including evacuating people, delivering emergency supplies, and setting up generators to power wells for clean water in affected areas.
• Leveraging Networks for Fundraising and Resources: AIM (Advaita Integrated Medicine) team and community came together to raise funds and deliver supplies. Marcus reflected on the importance of leveraging personal networks during crises.
• Empathy vs. Utility in Crisis Situations: Marcus highlights the tension between wanting to stay and help versus doing what’s most useful, acknowledging that sometimes leaving to leverage outside resources is more beneficial.
• The Challenge of Information in Crisis: Poor communication and infrastructure breakdowns led to widespread misinformation, which made relief efforts difficult and caused confusion about the accessibility of Western North Carolina.
• Reflections on Civic Duty: Both hosts reflected on the importance of civic duty and the impact of coming together as a community to support each other in times of need.
• Criticism of Performative Actions: They express frustration over performative gestures, like thoughts and prayers or opportunistic marketing from companies during crises, and emphasize the need for genuine, useful action.
• Polarization During Crises: Disappointment was voiced over how political polarization surfaced, with people outside the disaster zone turning the situation into a political issue when, in reality, the community came together across political divides.

Find us on the web:

• Advaita Integrated Medicine
• Green Hill Recovery

Transcript

Tripp Johnson (00:01)
Welcome back to the internet, Marcus.

Marcus Shumate (00:04)
Yeah, place is assessable man it sucks

Tripp Johnson (00:08)
You, you are located in Western North Carolina. So there's been a lot going on. Why don't you just, catch me up? Cause like, quite frankly, based on like the work product out of your department, like I thought I was going to have to fire you, but apparently there was, there was a good reason you haven't been very productive the last 10 days. And I should say like, we're joking about this, but obviously it was a really, I mean, horrific kind of, you know,

Marcus Shumate (00:24)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Tripp Johnson (00:39)
natural disaster and would definitely like to get your take as a long time western North Carolina native.

Marcus Shumate (00:47)
Yeah. So I'll give a little bit of a timeline because I think there's kind of interesting stuff, right? So like I grew up originally Eastern North Carolina kid dealt with hurricanes before experienced a lot of that. Went to bed on a Thursday night, checked the weather report. Thankfully didn't come down to Raleigh for a leadership meeting and was like, yeah, this thing's not going to be too bad. We filled up a tub, had some water, weren't too worried.

woke up Friday morning, things looked normal other than no power. And then we started noticing that we had a doctor walking down the middle of the road and let me let my puppy out.

started walking down the road and realized one of our neighbors was going into labor. So in like 12 hours time, we went from a normal Ashevillian sort of lifestyle to living on the Oregon Trail. So cut trees that all that sort of stuff. then to help this doctor get to someone in labor, and then we sort of realized the full scope of the disaster. We're in an area that was hit pretty hard.

We were able to evacuate the next day, fundraise through a lot of generous folks and a lot of help with AIM and gather a bunch of supplies. And then you and I kind of jumped into the mix. I think I've spent a lot of time reflecting on the last 10 days and really kind of what our mission, I think, overall is at AIM. And I think both of us had some interesting thoughts as we were just getting here, trying to be of help as quickly as we possibly could.

Honestly, one of the more horrific sort of unsettling things I've ever kind of seen the juxtaposition between going to bed and thinking like, you know, whatever this is that big of a deal to, well, this place may never be the same as is. And I'm being a little hyperbolic with that, but in some way I think that'll for certain people that it will never be the same. It's quite a bit of tragedy.

Tripp Johnson (03:02)
Yeah. I definitely want to kind of get your thoughts on more of what actually happened. Cause I think there's, you know, when this went down, I mean, I think there's just a lot of bad information out there too. Even, you know, now probably now even more than early on. I'm gonna, I am going to have to hit pause here in a minute and I'll probably edit it out, but, I got to take a call in a second. It's very important talking about like, you know, real serious stuff. it's one of those things.

Marcus Shumate (03:15)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tripp Johnson (03:32)
And I think it, it has put in perspective a lot, I think for us, like it was a really interesting, I say interesting, but like, really kind of a fascinating experience to be involved, but on the periphery of, but yeah, so you, you said you, woke up or, and you know, there was some rain, some heavy wind, didn't seem like a big deal. And then all of a sudden someone's walking down the road and you realize like someone went into labor and they can't get to the doctor.

Marcus Shumate (03:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tripp Johnson (04:01)
And so all of a sudden you're like essentially having to evac a route out for a neighbor. And then you all came kind of towards the triangle back to the central part of the state. And, that's when we really got connected. I think it was on like that Saturday, right? Like we started texting and what kind of happened? mean, I guess like, so you guys got out and then. mean, what did you know when you left?

Marcus Shumate (04:17)
Yeah, yeah. It a good 48 hours.

Mm.

So what we knew when we left, knew that we had enough that no one was really prepared. So this, know, there was a, well, from what I've gathered, a lot of people have essentially said that there was no warning, no evacuation stuff. And for people that don't understand Western North Carolina, there's a lot of mountains. And so we'd already had quite a bit of rain beforehand. So when this hurricane, Elaine hit, all of that water just get funneled into streams. And so what you had were

Not even hundred year floods, but floods that have never been on record or seen have been able to be tracked. So like, mean, entire areas and homes and valleys were just washed away, mountains. And no one, and it immediately took out all cell towers. It took out power and all infrastructure, water, everything. So now what you have is no one can put together what's happening, what's safe, where can you go? How do we get out? What's the game plan?

In my head, what immediately transpired was we got to figure out how to get out of here if we're to be able to do anything or be able to use. But in keeping with that lack of preparation, my in-laws had no real supplies that were going to last longer than 24 hours. We happened to have a tub full of water so that we could flush toilets and use this drinking water for need be and we had some kind of a case of water. So we had to make the kind of decision to immediately get out. We had gas in our vehicles and so

Finding a passable road was really difficult. The two main interstates in and out of Raleigh were, or in and out of Asheville were pretty much shut down from damage. you know, this is probably one of those things where some of that ADHD impulsivity pays off and it's time to get moving. We just got to pick a direction and commit and go. And so that's what we did on Saturday.

And I think there's something interesting in all of this that you and I have talked about is this idea of empathy, right? Like you and how empathy can sometimes be not terribly useful and it can be sort of clouding and the empathetic responses, I want to stay with people and I want to be of help and I want to do all this sort of stuff, right? But in some degree, that's just, there was no utility in that. was no, all we would do is strain resources further. And we had to sort of ration what we.

what we did have and make sure that our in-laws had that. And we were the ones that could get out, so we did. And we were the ones that had the larger social networks where we could leverage that to get immediate resources. And so it has to become a very sort of calculated, what's the most rational thing to do here? And that means like, yeah, you're gonna have to do something that maybe makes you look like an asshole because you're the one driving out, right? And you're the one fleeing.

because you can, and there's a certain degree of privilege in that as well, right? But it was something we had to sort of leverage in that moment to figure out what we could do to be of assistance and use.

Tripp Johnson (07:34)
Well, then let's talk it. Yeah, let's just continue the timeline. So you know, Saturday, you got Did you get down on Saturday to the triangle?

Marcus Shumate (07:42)
Yes, late Saturday night.

Tripp Johnson (07:45)
You got I mean, probably took five, six hours to get here. mean, eight hours. So like, mean, a normal three and a half hour journey took eight hours trying to find a passable route. You got here and then I think Sunday, midday, no, Sunday morning, because I was going into the office, unfortunately, we started talking and you were like, things are fucked. And we got to do something. And at that point,

Marcus Shumate (07:48)
About eight hours, yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tripp Johnson (08:14)
Yeah, so you sent out a message on teams, I'd like to give kind of a shout out to everyone internally on our team. And then, you know, we also we raised, I think, between the I don't know how much you raised, but I think we were at about $4,000 total from our team and other, you know, people who really cared. So Sunday went into tell me like, kind of what the initial requests were, and what happened Sunday.

Marcus Shumate (08:19)
So cool.

Yeah, so the initial requests were food and water for most people, That's where AIM and our team jumped in immediately and started getting food and water, which was the most pressing and immediate need. So for those that may not know this sort of stuff, I totally understand why you wouldn't, so typically, Asheville is a city, and it's a small mid-size city that also has

a lot of surrounding rural areas and these rural areas tend to have water that functions off wells. Asheville sits in essentially what amounts to a rainforest so it gets plenty of water. It's very easy to have wells, that's what you do. But there's three main water plants. We would come to find out that the water plants that supply the city water were basically destroyed and completely offline. So there's not going to be any sort of city water.

But where I live is particularly rural. And so we knew if we could get generators, then we could hook up clean water sites for people, which was the most pressing need, right? So then you could take some of the burden off the grassroots bubble gum and duct tape infrastructure that's distributing water. And now you can have clean water sites that people could get to.

And for some people, I think like maybe Floridians or other people that live in the coast and all that sort of stuff, you're kind of used to like, all right, as soon as the water subsides, we just come in and there's clean water sites, there's things to distribute. It's really tough to overstate how broken roads and everything was here. And so there's just not a safe way of getting large sources of water in.

or even communicating around that. So really it ended up being this sort of town pump turn of the century. This is where all the news has to happen and get shared. So immediately started fundraising, had some really lovely people in this behavioral health industry that just started donating money. That allowed us to purchase three generators in Eastern North Carolina. And then you and I transported those back Monday along with all the AIM supplies and then

immediately we were able to get these generators to a couple of rural sites for people that were completely effectively cut off from the world. And those allowed them to power pumps for the wells and get clean water and provide that to their community. And I would say for me, there's this, again, this is where you kind of get into the empathy and all this sort of stuff can sometimes not be terribly useful. But there was this degree of like,

Tripp Johnson (11:19)
Yeah, take us through the take us through the damn timeline before you go in all your meta level discussions motherfucker. All right, listen, Sunday, we raised a lot of money. We probably had like 200 cases of water. And then again, the smart thing, I think the smartest thing you did, because you're not you're not even giving yourself the pat on the back you need is like you identified the need for generators to power wells. And so

Marcus Shumate (11:23)
Yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Tripp Johnson (11:48)
there was a bunch of actual water and supplies you got. And then you also came rolling in to Chapel Hill with three generators in your truck. And then we loaded up and we took all that shit to Asheville. And we almost, I almost died on the highway because the truck overheated. Just give us the timeline, then we'll get in your meta level discussion. mean, I know you want to, I know you need.

Marcus Shumate (11:58)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll into another shit later.

Tripp Johnson (12:13)
You need this big brain energy. You're worried that Jeremy French is going to listen and he had some better, you know, conceptualization of the... He did. It was awesome. It was awesome. But yeah, just run through the timeline in like two minutes and then give me your thoughts. No, Come on.

Marcus Shumate (12:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He totally had a better one. He always had a better one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, alright, alright, alright. So, here's how it goes. So then Monday, you and I are doing our Caravan Smokey the Bandit cosplay up the mountain. A truck that he's borrowed was overheating every couple hundred miles or something and so we get stuck coming up the mountain and we're like almost there. We just need to get like 15 more miles and it's like sitting on the highway smoking. And it was like one community that's

like needs this generator and it's like, don't know what the fuck we're gonna do with this. Like, all right, we just gotta go. I've got two, you've got one, we'll figure this out. So we pulled in probably Monday morning about, or Monday afternoon about 5.30 or so, unloaded. And it was a pretty cool thing. know, there's, we, a lot of people were immediately like this stuff was huge and saved our lives, right? And I think at this point you and I were coming up

as all the infrastructure was starting to start to show up. Truck lines, power lines, crews, road paving, all this of disaster relief stuff. Tuesday, you left, you had to go back, organize, some more stuff. Tuesday, I got the generator hooked up, ran a hose from my front yard to the, ran it up the front yard and hung a sign for free water.

period where you're like, is this just stupid? And then immediately people started pulling up and filling up water and started handing. I backed my truck up, had a load of supplies on it and people were taking them. And we basically ended out an entire garage of supplies within, you know, eight hours or so. And so around me are a lot of very poor people that don't come, don't have a lot of means. And like I said, you know, they're fairly isolated.

as is but then with the communication and stuff broken down this was like just how how communication had to be disseminated how supplies had to be disseminated early on so that was really that sort of Monday and Tuesday were spent doing that yeah

Tripp Johnson (14:40)
And you stayed I went straight back on Monday and you stayed home doing the generators making sure like you went running out, you know, on your little missions delivering generators and, some supplies to people who had no ability to get it. And then Tuesday, I can't remember what what kind of happened. I mean, I was obviously working with your wife some on additional supply requests. We didn't have much contact with you. But

Marcus Shumate (14:55)
Yeah, yeah.

Tripp Johnson (15:09)
to I mean, Tuesday, like we knew we were like, you stayed up there. And then I don't really know what happened other than we basically did the same journey again with one generator and a ton of water, food, diapers, other products that people needed. And that I remember when I got up there.

Marcus Shumate (15:27)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tripp Johnson (15:32)
It was like, it was really easy to get up there that time. It was like straight shot through 40. So a lot of people still thought 40 was closed. Like there was a lot of bad. This is where I thought the peak of the bad information was because Monday I was even working with like people in Hickory.

Marcus Shumate (15:35)
Yeah, that's right.

close, yeah.

Tripp Johnson (15:48)
to I mean, one coordinate helicopter drops around the area. And to like, get some resources to spruce pine for like one of our team members, his mom was up there, they didn't have any supplies. So we're doing some of that. But everyone thought it was like impossible to get to Asheville or the region. But then like Tuesday, it was less than four hours door to door to get back to your house. And I pulled up and I just remember thinking, crap.

Marcus Shumate (15:53)
Yeah.

Right, yeah.

Tripp Johnson (16:17)
Like they don't need anything we just brought.

Marcus Shumate (16:19)
Yeah, yeah, that's like, it's such a like demoralizing feeling and I both you and I lamented the frustration of like, we don't know, like we know this shit's needed hypothetically, but where does it go? Right. And that was the problem. There's no, there was no ability for communication and all of that stuff sort of fragmented. It was, made everything really, really difficult. But I think by the time you left Wednesday afternoon,

the entire garage I had full of resupplies were redistributed. I some really cool, I got to meet some really cool neighbors and they were basically coming by, grabbing supplies, letting me know what they needed and then distributing them throughout some communities that have a lot of disabled and shut-in folks. And so that was kind of really that initial Monday through Wednesday.

period and then a lot of informal grassroots distribution stuff kind of started. But yeah, I remember I had the same sort of fear of like, Jesus Christ, what are we gonna do with all this stuff? No one seems to need it and then immediately, we're gone. Yeah. Yeah.

Tripp Johnson (17:32)
gone. Yeah. Now that we've covered the general timeline through Tuesday, I mean, it's still been a little spotty, I guess, like, do see if you can capture. I guess it's Wednesday through has it been a week now since then? Yeah. See if you see if you can sum that up. And tell me tell me how that went.

Marcus Shumate (17:49)
It's been a week,

Yeah. So Wednesday, you know, Wednesday you came up, we went and checked on a fam, kind of a family friend up in, Waynesville. And the real concern there was no one had heard from these folks and there was someone there dealing with cancer. and so we, we made this gnarly trip up the mountain to go make sure these people had supplies to see if they needed meds to see what was going on. and so we pull up and it's this, this,

wild scene, right? So like on the on one side of the road, there's a lady that we pull into her yard and she's gardening and it looks like a perfect, beautiful, bucolic retiree afternoon, just everything you'd want. She said they never lost power, never had any issues. And then you turn and we looked to the house we were supposed to go visit and their entire front yard was gone and basically been washed away by the river.

which was actually just a ditch that overflowed and took the entire front of their property out. And she said, yeah, they lost all the power and these things are just right next door to each other. And so somehow this lady never lost power, never lost electricity, never lost water, anything like that. And she's just proceeding like it was any other Wednesday. And then the people across the street were effectively launched back into turn of the century, no cell phone.

nothing going on and we pull up and we find out that they're actually just in fact fine, that they're okay. They just haven't been able to get or receive any calls and there was no self-service near them. So I think that was always, you know, that was one of the things that was really frustrating is there's no way to feel like you were being useful other than just to sort of grab, you just go out and try to figure stuff out. Right. And so you, you know, that was one of the things that was,

sort of, think really ended up becoming interesting in the, the law, like, is this stuff got stretched out as the, how much infrastructure just sort of was non-existent and through no, as far as we can tell, nobody's fault, right? So by the end of Wednesday afternoon, there was, you know, we distributed all the second supplies. I needed to figure out kind of what to do to be of use, and just kill some time and make sure that I was doing something worthwhile.

Realized I could go and volunteer to do wellness checks and that sort of thing. So we're doing wellness checks and supply drops Thursday through Saturday for folks that needed it. And that was still a very cumbersome sort of process. People could call into a main line, put a request in this, they hadn't heard from someone that they were particularly concerned about. then...

this organization made sure that everybody, that these people were getting checked on and their supplies going out to them. And by this point, I'm still largely without internet or anything like that. I've got some limited power on the generator, but can't really get wireless or anything like that. it's this sort of very odd experience of, man, my life goes from this digital SEO, like esoteric detached sort of existence

to my job today is in some ways quite literally to chop wood and carry water. And there's something really gratifying about that, right? Like you just show up and it's this person needs food and water. They can't get it. Let's get it to them and chat with them, give them some human connection for a few minutes. And then you keep moving on and you go through your entire list, you get done. I go home and sit by a campfire, hang out, eat a little food, relax, be in bed.

And so there's this real sort of interesting bucolic quality to it. It just felt nice and refreshing. It was like useful. You know, I think one of the big takeaways for me in that is we never, we often like miss out on some of this, like miss out on the idea of civic duty, right? Like we don't think about the idea of civic duty as being this core sort of

component of wellness. So, you know, we, I found it really interesting when I came back and all of a sudden I have wireless, I think starting like Thursday night or something. And I started seeing people posting up and little health workers saying they run all for therapy and stuff for free. It struck me wrong. It struck me in this like performative sort of like, what the fuck are you doing? These people, they're still doing body retrieval. Like what are you going to run processing groups? You're going to

see people for individual therapy. It's like, Hey motherfucker, pick up a shovel. It was like roofs that need to get rebuilt. There's like people that still need water. There's people that need supplies. what, like what are you going to do therapy? Like, it's just, can we figure out how to get a roof on someone's head first? Like, and so there was this, this odd like juxtaposition between all that sort of stuff where it's just like, Hey, this is just like, do we get the most basic needs met? And so it was like this, it was

You never know what people's motives are in this stuff, right? There could be something truly malfeasent in it, could be something that's malevolent in it, or it could be something that's just people scrambling to try to fill up use. And so I think one of the things that's interesting is, well, you can literally just drop your ego, grab some food, make some packets of food, whatever, take it out to people, go check on them.

and just rinse and repeat, and that's going to be of use to someone, right? And so what was interesting with this is when I finally got wireless back on Thursday, I started noticing all of these flies. So you got these like fucking like, I'm going to do therapy, I'm going to do therapy, it's free therapy. I couldn't think of anything, you know, potentially less useful in that given moment, right? And I like, let's just assume well intentions. But then on the other end, I come out and like, you know,

All these like Rambo wannabe like jackasses that are like screaming about how FEMA won't let them won't let them fly their helicopter like I've got eight helicopters I'm gonna fly it for supply drop but FEMA denied me won't let me and it's like dude I've got 15 helicopters flying over my house at any given moment the last thing we need is like John Boy with his like fucking brigade of helicopter buddies

just zipping around. And what's funny is like, it was all this sort of like misinformation and it's like very clearly, you know, coordinated propaganda stuff, right? That, you know, I came back and it was this, I had this experience of like, dude, I'm just sitting on my deck at night, worked hard today, sweated, took a cold shower, cooking some food by a fire, pretty nice.

hanging out, go to bed, sleep amazing. All of I've got wireless back and it's like, whoa, what the hell happened? Like this was this beautiful collective human experience where everybody chipped in and like, regardless of race and creed and did their civic duty and no one's patting each other on the back. Everybody's just doing what needs to be done. They check through egos. This is fucking great. Humans are awesome. To all of a sudden there's this crazy propaganda going around.

The government sees chimney rock because it's got lithium and something something. I did blew my mind. It was like the way it was like such a like a gut punch to come back to that. Yeah.

Tripp Johnson (25:43)
Yeah, you know what was weird for me? Like you you probably didn't catch all of this from like the you know, we have a statewide professional liaison association is what PLA stands for, you know, lot of people who are involved in behavioral health and literally starting Monday, we just got this influx of emails saying, thoughts and prayers with Western North Carolina, let me tell you about my program. And I was like,

Marcus Shumate (25:54)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, like, eww! That's so bad! Yeah, it's so bad, man!

Tripp Johnson (26:14)
This is so off color. this is like, was like, wait, everyone who did that, was like, immediately like, okay, I will never want to work with you. Like this is just opportunism at its finest. You know, one thing, so, and I want to go back to like social determinants of health in a second, but you know, the

Marcus Shumate (26:36)
Yeah, I with that.

Tripp Johnson (26:38)
The one thing I did see, I saw really cool some pictures, because you and I had the discussion early on, why are we talking about therapy right now? People's mental states aren't good because of food, water, and shelter. Their mental state will be much better once that's relieved, and then once the financial burden is relieved. Those are the prime movers in the mental health piece.

Marcus Shumate (26:48)
Bye.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly, yeah.

Tripp Johnson (27:06)
And then I've actually seen, know, I, you know, maybe I'm getting soft or something, but like I have seen some pretty cool, you know, I think from, from pivot point and I've got some other friends up in the Asheville area, like a couple of people who were like body workers. And I was like, do we really need body workers for, the, you know, first responders and everything?

Marcus Shumate (27:31)
Yeah.

Tripp Johnson (27:31)
But then I saw pictures of like, you know, them out in these sites, like, given massages and stuff. And I was like, damn, like, this is actually like really like, you know, number one, like, let's let's address social determinants of health first. And it was, it was cool from the Western North Carolina community to see it band together.

Marcus Shumate (27:41)
Yeah.

Tripp Johnson (27:55)
Think outside of the Western North Carolina stuff is performative bullshit quite frankly, but I was There was a you know, there was a I was a lot of my faith in humanity Was restored in the I think Tuesday was a low point for me last week thinking people are just schmucks But then by this weekend and into this week it seemed like

Marcus Shumate (28:00)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tripp Johnson (28:24)
like some really cool community just coming together.

Marcus Shumate (28:26)
Yeah.

Yeah. And so I, you know, this is one of those things that I, I spent a lot of time thinking about. There's this like a,

You know that there's this like idea of like heroism and stuff that sort of thrown like people will throw around when they see people doing What you know what they perceive to be good stuff, right? So I come from this one of the most influential sort of things for me is like my is my background in classical Greek philosophy and there's this idea in Greek philosophy of like like service to your to your society service to your your like your civic duty right like that that is

core component of being a good human being, not even like being a good human being, but just being a human being. you, if you want to be, you know, embody that idea of eudaimonia, like human flourishing, then a necessary part of that is, is service to others. Right. So I think about that in the same way that like, wouldn't champion someone for doing exercise, right? Like we wouldn't champion someone for sleeping eight hours a night. We wouldn't champion someone for

doing the most basic parts for their mental health, what we would say is like, no, that person's doing what they should do to function as a human being, right? And so I was thinking about this, because it's something that's like, for me, since not being religious anymore, I've just not done, right? I've done jobs that, in theory, were helping people. But this idea of civic duty became really pronounced to me. And I noticed that I felt

Like it just, feels better to be of service and so it's a very practical way to other people. And so what I find beautiful about that, right? Like is arguably we're a higher primate because we're entirely this collaborative species, right? I can swing a hammer and I'll hit a nail 50 % of the time. And like, I'm not particularly useful in that, but like, you know, people can sometimes tolerate my company. We go to the dick joke, you know,

That's about it, right? I can do Jiu-Jitsu sometimes, right? Like I'm not great. Yeah. Like I can't, there's not a whole lot that I'm great at, right? But like there's some utility in that, right? Like there's a social, like I can help connect some sort of resources or things like that. And then I find like, like what you were saying, right? These people show up, like what they can bring to the table is like, listen, we're not going to be operating a bulldozer or something like that. We can toss off some massages.

Tripp Johnson (30:37)
Your dick was a joke.

Marcus Shumate (31:02)
And in that moment, it's like, okay, this is a social glue that like binds us together as a species. And this is why we have survived and formed what we have. And so, you know, I think my big takeaways from this are that one, civic duties, so probably, you know, an underrated intervention for mental health, right? Like doing being of service to each other. you know, I know a lot of people love to shit on AA and all that sort of stuff. They're like, listen, one of the things they do probably get right is this idea of like,

Hey, serve your community, right? Like this is what you're here to do. Make coffee for other people, be of service, right? Get out of yourself and do something for others. And it's like, listen, it's not sexy. There's nothing sexy about it, but it's like in the same way that like, I'm depressed. Well, yeah, sleep eight hours a night, drink water, get some exercise, and let's talk about your depression later. Because if those things don't address your depression, then we have a real serious issue, right? Or whatever those things may be. But first things first.

So civic duty, right? I think that's important. I don't think you get lauded for that. If an old lady falls down and you help pick her up, you don't get a gold star. You just weren't an asshole. That's good, right? We need that. Two, there's this idea that I kept noticing coming out of this. What I would describe is like, saw this meme pop up from a lot of people that were like, you know, I didn't see any PhDs out here helping. And it was the,

one rednecks worth 10 PhDs and then they would show them like riding, you know, like a redneck or something, a blue collar dude on a bulldozer, like moving a tree or something. It's like, yeah, but a PhD did the engineering to build the piece of equipment that he's on. Like the beauty in this isn't that people are self-sufficient. I think none of us are self-sufficient, right? Like we exist in a social fabric that's necessary.

for everyone to do their part, right? And I think we'd be a lot kinder and a lot better off mentally if we owned and acknowledged that sort of stuff, right? Like we live in a cool globalized society in which like everybody can find a role to play and everybody's necessary. And I think there's something really genuinely like moving to me in a way that it gives me a sense of the sublime that, you know, I don't think I've experienced to this degree since, you know, becoming

atheist or whatever. So, those are the two big takeaways for me, I think.

Tripp Johnson (33:27)
Yeah. Dude, I'm reading, you know, I gotta go in a second here. But I'm just started you've all know a Harare's newest book, which is like all about information and information systems and how like, it's you know, but it really, I think the most disappointing and predictable thing that we you hit on was like the polar like, people turned this into like political polarization.

Marcus Shumate (33:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Tripp Johnson (33:55)
from the beginning. And it was so disappointing. Because if you were actually doing the work, like, it wasn't like that. It was just the bystanders and like, and it was the bystander and not just bystander, I shouldn't say bystanders, but people not involved in it who are making those statements because like, I mean, I've got pictures of you delivering supplies to people with Trump signs in the yard and people with Harris signs in the yard.

Marcus Shumate (34:03)
No,

Tripp Johnson (34:24)
And I mean, it just wasn't it wasn't a political thing. And it was just really disappointing to see like that part of the polarization, especially from like a far.

Marcus Shumate (34:38)
There's one thing you said that I've been thinking that I've thought a lot of that struck me as really insightful. You said something along the lines of like in a crisis, you know, it's become apparent to you that there's really sort of two type, like there's a line and there's usually like three types of people. There's one type of person that's going to lean into the crisis as with openness and curiosity, like what can I learn from this? Like, let me throw myself into the mix.

And it may not even just be crisis, but just sort of any situation. And then on the other end of that line, you have two types of people. You have the type of person that's just fearful that something bad's gonna happen, so they don't act, right? Like they stay in this close-off sort of preparatory sort of existence where they're afraid. And then you have this, like adjacent to that with similar behaviors, but from maybe a different place, is a person that thinks the world's out to fuck them over.

And the thing is like when you own that side of the line, just sucks because you're like, you don't have to live that way. You're just living in a sort of total defensive existence where you're contracted all the time. And I don't think anybody's listening to this that that would apply to or that would be used to, but man, that was a really, that was a really cool little thing. said they're like stuck in my brain as a way of like framing that, right? Like lean into life with a little more curiosity, assume the best in people and usually like,

You're going to be rewarded with some sort cool rewarding experience, right? yeah.

Tripp Johnson (36:06)
Yeah. I think that's a good place to wrap. mean, be curious and like just try and be useful in these situations. And it's not always like a, you don't know what needs to be done. You can get out there and try or just let other people try, but don't, don't post AI generated images of puppies and people and life rafts.

Marcus Shumate (36:15)
Yes.

Tripp Johnson (36:31)
you know, don't tell me about your treatment program with thoughts and prayers as the first line and then go into a really shitty half hearted marketing pitch. So just be a good human help out your neighbor and I really like that piece like you mentioned about a because it's something like we don't we don't always talk as much about but like we have really robust social supports if people lean into them and like

You know, get out there in your community, not on your smartphone, and you might be surprised at what you see. That was good. That was good. And that's a wrap. All right, I'll talk to you.