We Are Treating Each Other as ‘Political Abstractions,’ Chloé Valdary Has a Way to Fix That

[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] Chloé Valdary is the founder of an alternative model to the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training programs found in many corporations. Her alternative, called the “Theory of Enchantment,” first emerged from her work educating people about anti-Semitism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.   

“They would say to you, ‘You are a white man, and therefore you are privileged. And therefore you belong to the ‘oppressor class.’ I, as a person of color, belongs to the ‘oppressed class.’ And we are—you and I—locked in a Manichean struggle from now until the end of time. There’s no escape valve,” said Ms. Valdary.

“There are three principles to the theory of enchantment. [The] first principle is treat people like human beings, not political abstractions. Second principle is criticize to uplift and empower, never to tear down or destroy. And third principle is root everything you do in love and compassion.”

We discuss concepts such as supremacy, identity, outrage, race, and religion.

“We are a Protestant nation. Protest is our founding religion. And so, we are confronted with a great challenge, which is the challenge of growing up. We are a very young nation, and I think that all of these ‘culture wars’ are an invitation to engage in some self-reflection, collectively, and grow up,” said Ms. Valdary.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Chloé Valdary, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Chloé Valdary:
Thank you so much for having me.

Mr. Jekielek:
Chloé, you said something provocative that really caught my attention. You said all humans have had supremacist thoughts throughout all time, including today.

Ms. Valdary:
Yes. There’s a lot of people who might be unhappy to hear that.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please tell us what you mean.

Ms. Valdary:
I’ve experienced the full range of what it means to be human. I experience joy. I experience rage. I experience anger. I experience love, which is actually more about a state of awareness than an emotion. But as a human being, I experience all these things. There’s a great film out right now that explores this called “Inside Out Part 2.” This is true of all of us.

What is supremacy? Supremacy is an over compensation for feelings of insecurity. When I am feeling insecure and I don’t have a place or a way to holistically relate to that feeling, I will unconsciously project it out onto another human being in order to feel good about myself.

For example, if I’m driving and someone cuts me off in traffic, I feel unsafe. If I’m not conscious of that feeling, I will project that feeling of fear onto the person who just cut me off, and I will see them as fundamentally less than me, and I will curse them out. That’s the moment where I perceive myself as superior to that person.

But what’s going on is that I have a need, and that need was not met. I have a feeling that’s attached to that unmet need, and then I project it onto the other person in order to feel safe. Like other human beings, I experience that in a number of different contexts.

Mr. Jekielek:
It’s totally normal to feel that superior feeling briefly, and then come back and say, “Maybe that wasn’t quite right. Maybe I had a role in that.”
Supremacy is something different and more stable.

Ms. Valdary:
You are suggesting that perhaps it’s longer lasting.

Mr. Jekielek:
It’s like an approach, almost. What do you think?

Ms. Valdary:
Yes, it is an approach, but it’s an approach conditioned over time. It’s an approach that one takes as a result of constantly being in that experience that I just described. Let’s take an example that’s more head-on in terms of what people actually think about when they think about supremacy.

Arno Michaelis is a former white nationalist that fell into white nationalism as a teenager. Why did he fall into this as a teenager? He was born into an alcoholic family, so he didn’t have a space of security as a child. He didn’t have the necessary social-emotional environment that a child needs to thrive. He didn’t have the tools to deal with that insecurity and scarcity.

He defaulted to a heuristic, very black and white form of thinking that said, “All the people who look like me are good, and all the people who don’t look like me are bad.” We have to understand that was a tool he adopted to deal with the chaos in his life. He overcompensated for that feeling of insecurity by becoming a white supremacist. In this schema, supremacy is actually a coping mechanism for pain, just as it is when I’m cursing someone out who just cut in front of me. It was also the same for Arno Michaelis when he was growing up, and it was all unconscious.

Of course, supremacy is a form of hatred. With the Theory of Enchantment, we’re trying to get people to understand that hatred is not this mysterious thing. It is a coping mechanism that we reach for as human beings to deal with pain and insecurity, in the same way we might reach for alcohol or drugs to deal with pain. Hatred and supremacy are serving the same function, but it doesn’t actually work. It’s a coping mechanism. The Theory of Enchantment serves to interrupt that cycle and give people more holistic tools to deal with pain and suffering, which we all experience as human beings.

Mr. Jekielek:
Supremacy can be used by people to catalyze political causes. That’s how many people think of it.

Ms. Valdary:
Yes, absolutely. Terrorist organizations are gangs who are often exploiting the insecurities of others. Oftentimes, these gangs are filled with people who experienced some form of insecurity in their childhood and didn’t have the tools to deal with it, and then they defaulted to supremacy. They gravitated towards each other because of this shared experience. Now, it’s a group, instead of it being just one individual.

Mr. Jekielek:
Looking back at the Rwanda genocide, it doesn’t even need to be people that look particularly different from each other. Often we think of supremacy as being related to race. In Rwanda, there were different tribes of people who were egged on by demagogues to do the unthinkable.

Ms. Valdary:
Yes, absolutely. Rwanda is a great example that all of us have the capacity to be supremacist, regardless of our skin color, gender, socio-economic status, or the country that we are from.
Mr. Jekielek:
Theory of Enchantment is your organization and also the name of your method. Please give us an overview of your method.

Ms. Valdary:
We focus on inclusion and belonging. We help companies train their employees in the necessary skill sets that they must have in order to have psychological safety in the workplace. That means you’re free to disagree, you’re free to make mistakes, and you understand the importance of having a resilient workplace. It means that your staff is not constantly being tripped up over things they are reading in the news or on social media about identity. Their identity is stable enough and flexible enough to endure conflict and navigate conflict in healthy ways.

There are three principles in the theory of enchantment. First principle; treat people like human beings, not political abstractions. Second principle; criticize to uplift and empower, never to tear down or destroy. Third principle; base everything you do in love and compassion. All the workshops and all of the products and services that we deliver to our customers are meant to train them in modeling those three principles.

Mr. Jekielek:
Can you walk us through some of this?

Ms. Valdary:
Sure. We begin all of our programs with something called a Sprint, which is a 90-minute workshop where we explore the first principle; treat people like human beings, not political abstractions. People might ask, “What does that mean? Of course I’m a human being, Chloé. I’m not a tree or a rock. Why do I even need to do this?”

The reason is because we take for granted what it means to be human and we reduce ourselves to stereotypes. Oftentimes when we talk about the problem of stereotyping others, we think about it as being directed externally. But in fact, if I am stereotyping someone else, I’m simultaneously stereotyping myself.

What do I mean by this? If I know that sometimes I am hardworking and other times I am lazy, and I not only accept that, but also give thanks for that, I will be less likely to project the stereotype of lazy onto someone else in order to feel good about myself. We open our Sprints with a practice called the “Who Am I?” practice.

It’s a very simple practice. You put a timer on for three minutes and ask yourself the question, “Who am I?” For every answer that comes to you, you say, “Thank you.” There are two challenges in this practice. I’ve observed that most people aren’t accustomed to giving thanks for the things they like about themselves. I would say the majority of people I have encountered through this practice are hyper-judgmental towards themselves, and hyper-hard on themselves. You can bet they project that onto others unconsciously.

Another difficult challenge is expressing gratitude for the things that they don’t like about themselves. People say, “This is strange to do this exercise. It feels weird. It feels awkward.” That’s totally normal. We are not conditioned to give thanks for all the aspects of who we are as a human being.

But if we engage in that practice on a regular basis, first of all, we will discover that we will never get to the bottom of who we are. Because as human beings we are inexhaustible. You could do this practice from now to infinity and you would never actually get to the bottom of who you are. You are constantly changing, constantly becoming, and constantly transforming. That is what it means to be a human being.

If you translate that into capital-T truth, that means if you can witness all these different aspects of yourself and give thanks for them without over-identifying with them, then of a state of joy and a state of grace will emerge that you will be able to direct both internally, and by definition, externally as well.

Mr. Jekielek:
What you’re describing makes me think of thanking God. You get to do this in lieu of other kinds of diversity training. You mentioned identity earlier, and a lot of diversity training these days is focused on identity.

Ms. Valdary:
We are also focused on identity, but in a deeper and more profound way. We’re not focused on the superficial identities that we carry and that over-identify us. In the current zeitgeist, at least as commentary, we don’t just over-identify with our emotions. We over-identify with certain immutable characteristics that we think are the end-all be-all of what it means to be human. But as I said earlier, if you do the “Who Am I?” practice, you’ll never get to the bottom of who you are, because you’re constantly changing.

But yes, we are very different from the other branded DEI [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion] programs that are out there. Many of those programs tend to reduce human beings to their immutable characteristics. They would say, “You are a white man, and therefore you are privileged and belong to the “oppressor” class. I as a person of color belong to the “oppressed” class.”

That means you and I are locked in a Manichean struggle from now until the end of time that we could brand as oppressor vs. oppressed. That puts us both inside of an inescapable prison because this is all that we are, this is all that we have ever been, and this is all that we will be. There is no escape valve from this ideology or worldview.

One has to dispense with that worldview entirely and see it for the reductive thing that it is. It’s not just a reductive thing, it is a failure to understand the awesomeness of the human experience. We often look to pop cultural icons to communicate some of the things we’re trying to communicate. Kendrick Lamar is one of those pop culture icons.

In his song, “DNA,” he says, “I got power, poison, pain, and joy inside my DNA.” I love that because it’s capturing what we’re trying to get people to realize about what it means to be alive, what it means to be themselves, and to really wrestle with and be in awe of this human experience, which the oppressor-oppressed paradigm cannot capture.

Mr. Jekielek:
We have a lot more in common than we have differences. How did you get into this field?

Ms. Valdary:
You mentioned that this sounds very much like thanking God. I grew up in a religious family in New Orleans, a very atypical Christian family that observed Jewish holidays in a Roman Catholic town. The iteration of Christianity that I was raised in was very much anti-Catholic. It was deeply Protestant and because of its anti-Catholicism, the belief system was that we had to observe all of the holy days in the Old Testament.

We had to go to church on Saturday, not on Sunday. We had to keep Passover and Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot and all the other holy days that are mentioned in the Old Testament, because Jesus was a Jew and he observed all of these holidays. We considered ourselves followers of Jesus, therefore we had to do the same.

I grew up with an insider-outsider relationship to various forms of Christianity and Judaism. This is relevant because it gave me a spiritual outlook in life in general. Although I no longer subscribe to that iteration of spirituality it definitely shaped the way I perceive what it means to be alive. Because of that upbringing, I developed a very strong allergy to anti-Semitism.

That influenced my decision to major in international studies at the University of New Orleans and to study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a conflict that seems to be erupting again. The Theory of Enchantment was originally a response to that conflict. The first principle originally was for Israelis and Palestinians to treat each other like human beings, not political abstractions. If you want to criticize, criticize to empower, never to tear down or destroy, and root everything you do in love and compassion.

I was very much focused on that conflict from about 2012 all the way to 2018, the time I formally created Theory of Enchantment. I graduated from college in 2015, which is when I moved to New York. Between 2015 and 2018, I was working on this project called Theory of Enchantment. I was perplexed by the threat of anti-Semitism because there was no response to the problem in college. I’m very grateful for the education that I received. But there was no response to this conflict that was explicitly rooted in love.

I had this question, “How do we learn how to love?” Then the next question popped into my head, “What are we in love with already? Maybe I can use that as a template to work backwards to discover how to love.” From there, I started to study pop culture. I started to study Disney. Again, here’s a shout out to “Inside Out 2,” an incredible film that just came out.

I started to study the Apple corporation. I started to study Beyonce. I started to study brands that have quasi-religious-like devotion from millions of people. I started to look for patterns in these brands to see if there were common denominators and common themes.

The common theme was that all these brands were basically telling the story of some imperfect, flawed human being who goes through a series of obstacles, overcomes some challenges, and becomes a hero. It’s a version of the hero’s journey. From there, I developed the three principles. After that, I lectured on college campuses in the United States, Europe, and South Africa on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and applied those three principles to the conflict.

Then in December of 2018 my contract was up. I was working for a non-profit at the time and trying to figure out what to do next. I was getting advice from mentors and friends and family that said, “You have something here. Why don’t you take the three principles and turn it into a full course. See what you can do there,” and so I did.

In 2019, I worked on fleshing out the course. I started speaking at a lot of high schools on the east coast, Connecticut, and New York. Increasingly, people were receptive, and people were responding. Then 2020 descended upon us like a hurricane. All of a sudden, there is this interest in diversity, equity, and inclusion. If I were to steel man it, it could be called racial reconciliation and reckoning with our history as a nation.

Obviously, there were very specific approaches to that question that were both popular and toxic in 2020. I would point to Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo as the two models of that popular, yet toxic, approach. That approach actually motivated companies and other organizations to look for an alternative. Many of them found Theory of Enchantment.

Mr. Jekielek:
For those viewers that don’t know about the steel man strategy, it means giving the benefit of the doubt, in a sense.

Ms. Valdary:
Yes, absolutely. I remember that in 2020, we had Covid, people were inside, people were craving community, and people were craving a sense of belonging. Then you had the murder of George Floyd and it was the perfect powder keg. People were very much seeking things that human beings need to thrive. Unfortunately, some of our emotions were hijacked along the way. But it’s really important to use the steel man strategy. Otherwise, we will be caught in a never-ending Manichean struggle, which is what we’re trying to ultimately transcend.

Mr. Jekielek:
What is the Manichean struggle?

Ms. Valdary:
It is the never-ending war between good and evil, and perceiving the world as a never-ending struggle between good and evil. There is some evidence that it comes out of certain forms of Christianity. Certain forms of Christianity have come to a good vs. evil mindset; the forces of good vs. the forces of evil.

If that is the only thing that characterizes your worldview and the only metaphor with which you experience the world, then in order to be a good person, you have to win every argument, every debate that you have on social media, or anywhere else in order to prove that you’re good, in order to prove that you’re worthy of salvation. You can hear the religious language there. You have to conquer your opponent as inferior to yourself.

Mr. Jekielek:
If I can use the term that we are talking about, you treat it as a supremacist would.

Ms. Valdary:
Yes, so you can see how there’s excess in everything. I was raised in a religious environment, and I’m very grateful for that. It came with beautiful things and my inclination to curiosity. I’ve learned and gained from that religious upbringing, but it also came with dogma. Everything has its excess and its balance. Regarding steel man strategy, it is my attempt to find the balance and get rid of the excess, which is all around us these days.

Mr. Jekielek:
I was just looking at Angel Eduardo’s write-up on taking the steel man strategy to the next level, which he calls star-manning. It’s not just assuming the best possible argument, but assuming the best intentions of the person. That’s the compassionate aspect. Central to the Manichean struggle is this oppressor-oppressed dichotomy.

Ms. Valdary:
Yes, and I would like to stress that I am not critical of Christianity. It’s not only my roots, but the roots of our American society, the United States being a Protestant nation founded by Puritans escaping religious persecution in Europe. They perceived England as oppressive, and saw themselves as the righteous oppressed. This script is very much within the roots of what it means to be an American.

We are a protestant nation, and protest is our founding religion. We are confronted with a great challenge, which is the challenge of growing up. We are a very young nation. All these culture wars are an invitation to engage in some self-reflection collectively and grow up.

Mr. Jekielek:
The central feature of Christianity is forgiveness, and the ability to be redeemed from all of the terrible things you did or all the supremacist thoughts or behaviors that you may have had. There is actually a way out.

Ms. Valdary:
Yes, that’s the escape valve. I’m very much influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr, a Protestant theologian of the 20th century who Dr. Martin Luther King studied. His version of Protestantism was more the enchanted version. We have two different versions at war with each other in the psyche of the United States of America. The Niebuhr version is very much capable of transcending infighting. The other, which is very much the thrust of our society, over-identifies with the war itself.

This is a classic thing that happens sometimes in trauma responses in human beings. If a human being or group of people have been persecuted for a long time, somatically, the nervous system finds that persecution familiar, and therefore also finds the defense against that persecution familiar. It’s very difficult for the nervous system to then overcome that without intentional, deliberate practice. This is very true on a neurobiological level.

For example, say that I am conditioned to believe that I am inferior to a man, and I was conditioned to believe this as a matter of salvation. I am not in love with this belief, but this belief is familiar to me. It feels like home. If I’m not aware of that, then I will actually seek out a partner that repeats that same pattern. It is not because that is objectively good or objectively safe, it’s because my nervous system confuses what is familiar with what is safe.

We have a legacy of founding members of this country puritans escaping religious persecution but over identifying with it. There’s a great book called “The Witches” about the Salem witch trials written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Stacy Schiff. It really explores that aspect of the American consciousness. It’s fascinating because the patterns that were happening in the Salem witch trials are present in our culture wars today to a T. We’re all walking around unconsciously repeating the same patterns that our ancestors did without realizing it.

Mr. Jekielek:
Speaking of culture wars, there’s a whole bunch of folks out there that think this idea of diversity is important. There are also many people out there that feel like it’s an unfair agenda that’s being imposed on them. Let’s just take a look at the concept itself, not the politicized version. Is this something we need to address at all?

Ms. Valdary:
Sure. I want you to imagine a forest and imagine that this forest has only one crop. It’s a monocrop forest, and I’ve been in a few. Okay. Imagine that a natural disaster hits this forest. The likelihood that this forest will be able to regenerate is very slim because it only has one crop.

Now, imagine another forest with a diversity of crops and the same natural disaster comes along. Let’s say there’s corn and tomatoes.The natural disaster wipes out the corn, but, it turns out that the tomatoes are actually resilient against this natural disaster. There is enough fertility in the forest to regenerate, even in the face of that natural disaster. All of which is to say that diversity actually creates resiliency.

Let’s bring it to a human level. I am a person who thinks big picture and I see things in dreamlike fashion. You are someone who sees things in a data-oriented way. We need to track things, make sure we’re surveying our customers, and get feedback on the product.

It is better for the company to have both of us than to have just one of us. In fact, the company would be incomplete if it only had one of us, or if the majority of the people in the company were like me, or if the majority of the people in the company were like you. If the company lacked the type of diversity that I am describing, its team members would not have the necessary oppositional sparring to actually create magic.

In short, diversity is necessary if you want to create magic, resiliency, trust, or any of the other conditions that are necessary for human flourishing.

Mr. Jekielek:
Can you give me some examples where you’ve had successful implementations of enchantment theory?

Ms. Valdary:
All of our products and services are meant to train employees how to embody the three principles. One of the things we teach is how to navigate conflict and how to recognize when you’ve left the present moment when you’re in conflict with someone else. Let’s say I’m in conflict with you and I say something using a certain tone, and for whatever reason, the tone that I just used reminded you of your mother. You start thinking about some baggage that you have with your mother and you’ve exited the present moment.

Even though you’re still here physically, you’re not seeing me. You’re not having conversation with me, you’re having conversation with your past. That takes up energy and the efficient use of your time. There are certain tools and exercises that we have that train people to recognize that it is often unconsciously affecting them. Then they can clear it out and come back to the present moment.

We had someone in a company who was encountering an irate customer. This customer was yelling at them and was really upset. There’s a particular lesson in the Theory of Enchantment about recognizing the pain point behind the expression of the pain. Brene Brown, who is most famous for her TED talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” says that in the research that she’s done, blame is actually a way to discharge pain. It’s actually perceived as a way to discharge pain. If I’m blaming you for something, there’s a pain point behind the blame.

Now, if you’re trained in the Theory of Enchantment, and you witness me yelling at you, you’re able to emotionally bypass all of the yelling that I’m doing towards you and look for the pain point, and then address the pain point directly. If you do that, I am far more likely to come back to my senses, which is a term that we take for granted. I come back to my senses, or return to my senses and my embodied state here in the present moment. By acknowledging the pain point that’s actually causing me to yell at you, now I feel seen now and I feel heard. Now, I feel like I belong.

Mr. Jekielek:
What if you are saying that I made a mistake, which cost the company a lot of money. You’re blaming me and yelling at me for making that mistake, but I’m not taking responsibility for it. But I’m thinking to myself, “She must have some issues with her mother.” Then I tell you that and now you would probably feel angrier.

Ms. Valdary:
But that’s not the pain point in that scenario. In this scenario that you just described the pain point is, “I need you to get things done and you’re not getting things done.” Let’s say that I’m a manager and you’re a frontline worker, but you’re not being accountable. I need accountability on my team. Otherwise, operations fall apart and things get neglected. It negatively affects the whole team.

Now, people are also looking at me to take responsibility, because you haven’t taken responsibility. That’s the pain point. But you get distracted by the fact that I’m yelling at you and you internalize it and you feel slighted. Because I’m yelling at you, then you’re probably going to roll your eyes or become passive-aggressive or yell back at me, and now the conflict is escalating. Whereas, the conflict would have been short-circuited if you had been trained to recognize my reaction and address it directly.

There are examples where people who are trained in the Theory of Enchantment were able to recognize that and respond to that. It immediately changes the energy of the conversation. The person who was yelling apologizes and asks the other person how they’re doing, because they were seen and heard for what was actually present and causing them to discharge that pain in not the healthiest way possible.

Mr. Jekielek:
Are there times when your method has not worked out? It seems that it would work all the time because caring for the other person is a central part of the method, which is transformative. But have you found it doesn’t work out sometimes?

Ms. Valdary:
Yes, absolutely. It doesn’t work out all the time. If they haven’t gotten buy-in on this method from their colleagues and try to push ahead, it actually fosters the seed of resentment. That is a situation that is not ripe. I’m using a lot of gardening metaphors that I find very useful. The soil has to be tilled in order for these things to actually penetrate, otherwise, it won’t work.

But that’s more of a structural issue than anything else. There has to be the right amount of buy-in from people. The people you want to train have to take ownership of the experience. Ultimately, at some point, our partnership is going to end and they will have to carry that mantle forward.

It requires having the necessary structural conditions in place so that these things can actually take root. You need to have 10 to 15 percent of the initial cohort that you train take ownership of the project and then be the coaches for the rest of the organization moving forward. You need that or it’s not going to work.

Mr. Jekielek:
Often when we’re communicating across a computer screen, there’s a filter. You can’t see the person’s face and you can’t see their body language. Then mass communicating to large groups of people through social media could be interpreted in many different ways. You really don’t know who you’re communicating with in the first place.

Ms. Valdary:
One of the barriers to inclusion and belonging, which people are hungry for, is living in a world in which our primary means of communication are disembodied. We’re not necessarily meeting in person. People have Zoom fatigue. People are at work for the major part of their day. If they’re forced to sit through Zoom meetings all day, that really takes a toll on connection. As human beings, we are wired to connect in person. That’s level one.

Level two is social media. Level two is far worse than Zoom fatigue, because social media basically makes us think we’re connecting. But we’re connecting in very superficial ways, and certainly not connecting in deep ways. I say this as someone who’s very active on social media. I say this as someone who loves certain aspects of social media.

Social media is a platform where you can be very creative in terms of the messages that you want to transmit. Social media actually gives me an opportunity to try to be as thoughtful and intentional as I possibly can. However, at the same time, the social media algorithms are not designed to have us get along with each other. They’re not designed to have us create societies of human flourishing.

They are designed to have us spend as much money on advertising dollars as possible, and the currency is our attention, right? The reason why all these social media platforms can be free is because we are the product. Our attention is the product, and the things that hold our attention are the things that make us outraged. The algorithms on social media are set up in such a way that they are incentivized to show us things that make us outraged.

What are the things that make us outraged? They are things that might bring us insecurity or a lack of psychological safety. It could be anything that is an affront to our values and makes us outraged. Imagine being constantly exposed to things that are against your values. If you are not intentional about how you use your time on social media, that is what you are being fed.

Overall, it’s not purposeful in a sinister way. Obviously, there are bad actors. There’s a great book called “Outrage Machine” which goes through this that everyone should read. The folks in Silicon Valley didn’t set out to ruin the world. Many of them were very much empathetic to the suffering of human beings.

But one of the things this book talks about is that empathy is an emotion that can be easily hijacked. If I feel empathy for you and your plight, then I will feel outrage against all the people I perceive as being against you. My empathy for your plight can easily be hacked into outrage and antagonism against your enemies. You scale that up and you have the culture wars.

Mr. Jekielek:
It’s a vicious cycle of increased polarization. I’ve been reading Andrey Mir’s work in post-journalism. He would say that polarization is actually the software of today’s media. It’s the very nature of how media works today, with technology being able to transmit emotion without a shared sense of reality.

Ms. Valdary:
The other deception that takes place with social media is that with the people we think we’re connected to, we have never met, and we haven’t actually gone through any shared experience. We’ve gone through the shared experience of being on Twitter, but that’s not a real shared experience. We haven’t even had a meal together, let alone gone through any seemingly insurmountable challenge, which helps bind people together and build trust and build resiliency.

None of that is present in this conversation. You think, “I liked this post and you liked this post, and now we are bonded. Now I feel close because you also liked it. “The dopamine receptors in my brain are firing and it becomes an addiction loop and we confuse that with connection. It just creates a cascade of problems if we are unconscious of how the algorithms work.

Mr. Jekielek:
I recently started searching for content that will specifically teach me something. Over a few weeks I saw my Twitter feed respond to that. It’s quite significant and quite obvious that it responded positively.
That’s a good sign, because it could just keep feeding me the outrage.

Ms. Valdary:
Sure. I also noticed that when I started to look for these long-form threads talking about the wonders of the world, places to visit, or cool photographs from history, Twitter has been showing me more and more of this, as I pay attention to that type of content. I do think there’s some co-creation happening.

There are also conversations between government and tech about the adverse effects of social media on mental health. There’s a lot of factors involved in the shaping of these social media platforms. Overall, we need to be far more intentional about how we direct our time and attention. As a society, we need to incentivize those good habits a lot more.

Mr. Jekielek:
This has been an absolutely wonderful conversation. Any final thoughts as we finish up?

Ms. Valdary:
If anyone’s interested in the Theory of Enchantment, they can check out theoryofenchantment.com. If you would like to work with us please reach out and I would love to work with you as well. I have a lot of fun designing for different organizations and learning, no matter what ecosystem Theory of Enchantment is dropped into. The question is, “How can we create an environment of human flourishing?” That’s the ultimate question that we’re trying to answer.

Ido believe that the answer is that if we can come back to a state of grace and express gratitude for being alive, then we will be in that state of enchantment. It will extend out to everything, who we speak with, who we relate to, our friends, our family, and our colleagues. It will extend out from there. And that’s an awesome project to be a part of.

You want to ask yourself, “How can I create a resilient team? How
can I create a resilient employee culture that is able to problem-solve productively and achieve company objectives? How can they arrive every day to work in a state of flow, in a state of gratitude, and a state of joy?”

If your employees are arriving for work with that set of emotions, then the likelihood that you will be successful is just tenfold, compared to your employees coming to work feeling like they’re being misjudged, they can’t speak out honestly, openly, and transparently about what they think, they’re not actually giving their input, and they’re not able to take ownership of what’s actually happening in the organization. Those two states are like night and day. I would invite you all to come work with Theory of Enchantment to see what it’s like to be in that state of gratitude and of joy.

Mr. Jekielek:
Chloé Valdary, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Ms. Valdary:
Thank you so much for having me.

Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Chloé Valdary and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.