Episode 52: Before We Forgot: How Modern Systems Disconnect Us from Ourselves | Aaron Scott

Author and speaker Aaron Scott joins the Choices Podcast to explore the spiritual and psychological roots of modern disconnection. Drawing from his book Before We Forgot, he discusses how societal systems pull us away from our inner reality and shares ideas on coherence, awakening, and living more consciously.

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Hello world, and welcome to Choices, Books, and Gifts, where you always have choices. This is the Choices podcast, and I'm very excited today. I'm joined by Aaron Scott. He is the author of Before We Forget and a long-time observer of how modern systems, meaning financial, cultural, and psychological shaped the way we live in tech. Aaron spent over 20 years inside financial markets before turning his attention to a request. Why do so many people feel successful on the outside yet disconnected, Anxious or misaligned in some. His work focuses on exposing the hidden scaffolding of. The beliefs, incentives, and structures we inherited without realizing it, and how the system influences our sense of identity and consciousness. In this conversation, we are going to explore how collectively forgotten how conditioning shows up in everyday life and what it actually looks like to live on an way. Not just think in a way in a world that often pulls us in opposite directions. So, if I may say, I am very excited because I want to learn more about this, I'm not even sure I understand what's going on. So please tell me what we're about to dive into. Tell me.

Sure. So you know, in the book, the way that I structure it, I try to make it as accessible as possible, but what I'm really, you know, kind of like the real underlying theme, if you will, is, it's kind of showing people on both an individual and on a societal level. Kind of like how our reality, how we have constructed society, our systems, our institutions, even those that, you know, we consider to be sacred institutions like education or health care or government. How they've been sort of, I like to call it kind of hijacked by what I call fragmentation. Right. And, you know, what does that mean? It means that, you know, when you have sort of systems and even kind of social interaction that inherently disconnects. Right? So we operate, I think, just inherently through, well, you know, what I call coherence or through connection. I, you know, kind of like our consciousness, if you will, is relational, right? Our meaning-making apparatus is relational. It's not isolated. Right. And what happens is in order to kind of scale society, we have to kind of, we have to kind of fragment ourselves. In a way, it's kind of a necessary and even more necessary is kind of like the mechanisms of abstraction that we depend on. I call them illusions in the book. But, it's kind of, and it serves kind of progress, if you will. Well, it serves our ability to scale on a, on a corporate level, our ability to spread messages. Right. So what am I talking about? These are all concepts of what the hell are you talking about? Right? So, you know,

Let me ask you this. Is there an example you can give me of exactly what we're dealing with?

Yeah. So, you know, abstraction, on a general kind of level, is when, you know, kind of like symbols, metrics, narratives, or roles or identities, right? Replace the kind of direct contact with reality. Right? And like I said, it's not inherently bad. And we need abstraction to kind of coordinate at scale. But so, you know, what is abstraction?

What does it look like? What does fragmentation look like? Right. It's when we construct systems or institutions to kind of serve a purpose, like a means to an end. So how does that show itself? How does that manifest itself in our education system? Right. We don't in many ways. We don't allow full integration in education.

And in fact, we've adopted in our country what's called the Prussian model, which, in truth, is it was structured to create a kind of compliant, docile worker to serve a purpose or serve a function right in society. It was created so that, you know, you would be disciplined, you would have structure, and you could then go out into society and excel in a job or in a profession. And in many ways it works. It does what it's supposed to be doing, but what you're losing is you're losing that kind of individual connection. Right? So as children, they learn not on this linear path. They learn cyclically. They learn through touch, emotional experience, and a back-and-forth interaction. You know, we parrot information, we make children digest information, and then regurgitate it.

That's our measure of success. They're taught that their purpose is, through some utilitarian framework, that if they produce a lot or make a lot of money in society, then they will. They were well-educated and that they have purpose. But what it's doing is it's really detaching the child from their own sort of experience. Right. All right.

So let me ask what I'm. So then, just understand whether we are teaching them the right thing today? And if we're not, what would it look like? How should we teach them?

You know, I think that certainly education specifically is a kind of a big one for me because, you know, just kind of like taking a step back, you know, we put young children at desks for seven hours a day. We box them in again. What? We're teaching them to kind of compartmentalize and internally fragment. There's no other relational lived experience. They're not outplaying. They're not learning. They're not reflecting and having discourse, you know, back and forth, how does this make me feel? What is this doing for me? What's it, you know? And more importantly, you know, what am I personally learning about myself and how I can then interact in the world? This is completely removed from the curriculum, right? It's about okay, like this guy did this at this time in history, science is telling me this about this. But the person, the individual, is disconnected, right? There's no place for the individual self, for the child, and even for you, even later up in life, for that development to kind of take place. We also see this, so, so what does it look like? It looks more like, you know, circles of people where they discuss how they feel about a topic, right? You don't get you didn't really get into that until way later on in life. You know, it looks like, you know, again, playtime. More playtime, more interaction with other children.

You know, this is removed. You're kind of taught, it's not out in the open, but, implicitly, you're taught to compete. You know, you're measured by your grades. You're measured by your gold stars. This is this again is this is again what education is again. It's in many ways kind of like a metric imposed upon yourself by, by a system. Right. This is the big difference.

Let me stop for a second. For instance, for me, you know, I'm a little older. You know, I was kicked out of the house in the morning and told to come back by dinner time at night. So there was Tag, Ringolevio, Indian, cowboys and Indians, things of that nature. Are you saying that's something we're lacking now? Or we need more of what?

I think that these issues, I think that these problems, this kind of system, the underlying infrastructure existed when you were a kid as well. In fact, I think it was instituted, at, you know, I think like 1913 or so at the turn of the 20th century by, and it was structured by industrial capitalists, and it was structured, for really for them to kind of extract, workers, two types of labor.

I'm understanding if I understand, you know, the world watching, podcast will understand, and so explain to me exactly what would be wrong and how we can do it better.

Right. So, really, it's kind of about, you know, education, you know, let me put it this way. Education separates knowledge from understanding and learning from meaning. Right. We need to find ways to structure a society where people can find meaning, can exist through their own internal meaning. Now,  let's look at religion, for example, another system, another institution. Right. Well, what is religion really? When you, when you kind of pull the veil back, what does it reveal? Again, it's another institution. It's another system of belief. Right. But what it's doing is it's telling you that to access your divine nature in order to access the divine reality, you must externalize it, right?

God exists in some distant realm. You're being judged. Your life will be measured. And then after you die, you will either burn in hell or go to heaven. You, in many ways, are submitting to a belief system that there's no room for. Kind of like cultivation, internal cultivation, learning about kind of the metaphysical nature of your reality, which is, you know, also kind of why I, I kind of tailored my book, in a kind of spiritual ranks, I think, I think it provides the right language for. But again, this is a method of, of, of really acute fragmentation, of acute disconnection. Right now, in many ways, religion serves a purpose, and it's served a purpose, to kind of corral people and create a cogent society through ethics and through morals. But what we're kind of missing is what it also did in the same vein, if we look at, you know, like media, media fragments attention, right? Until people can actually discern what they actually think or feel themselves. Right. Government, further fragments where we, we see government as self-serving, not serving the people. Right. So this sort of level of fragmentation, I think, coherence exists throughout kind of all of our modern systems. And the problem is, and this is the kind of big problem that that is missing, really, what my book is trying to tell the story of trying to tell is that We, these systems, this indoctrination, this understanding of our reality of ourselves and our reality and our relationship to the world around us bleeds into our understanding of ourselves, of our self-worth, of our identity, of the way that we look at ourselves and how we relate in the world around us. And this is kind of like the you're.

So you're saying that's why I've learned the way I've grown up, the way that society tells me to live, work, and I value there. This should or are you saying it be done differently, where it's more successful, or it's like, I guess I'm looking for something so specific so I can understand better.

Well, the answer is that if we don't change, we're going to run into a lot of problems. Right. And let's look at let's look at the prevailing paradigm. The main driving force that we all know when we experience modern capitalism is the right. And what does modern capitalism teach you? This is all about this is all about picking up what these institutions tell you, what society tells you, what your parents told you, what your inherited beliefs tell you about how to live your life, and how to look at yourself in your reality. Right? What are you learning? And then from that knowledge, how are you going out and living your life?

Well, modern capitalism, right? Modern capitalism. It trains people to live for ends rather than means. The end justifies the means, right? You sacrifice yourself. You sacrifice your present moment for a promised future, right? People endure jobs that they can't inhabit. They tell themselves that they'll be worth it later. And even when this goes back to kind of your opening, even when they reach that goal, you know, money, status, security, it never lands internally because the path required incoherence, the path required self-erasure.

Right? It required. Yep.

I do understand and agree, I believe that we should go through life being very successful financially, socially with the family, and still not attaining that happiness. Is that what we're going with? That we control these things and still inside not content with happy thoughts and..

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And again, to your point, you know, the existential cost of this structure that we've structured, the way that we've structured society, right, is what people feel but rarely name. And my book is really kind of unveiling and then trying to give people language to understand these feelings, this, this, this disconnection. Because once you identify kind of what's going on, but only then can you kind of come back into what I call reality, come back into what I call coherence, right? Because, you know, like so to your point, right? We feel like grief, a sense of being, you know, like a sense of being behind in their own life, anxiety without a clear cause, exhaustion that never kind of fixes itself. People feel restless even when things are going well. Right? Like these are kind of things that.

And this isn't pathology, right? This is this is this is my belief that it's the nervous system responding to a life that's sort of lived at a distance. Right, right, right. Lived through a blockade.

 So I knock on your door, and I say, you know, I'm a successful financier. I have a beautiful wife and children, but I'm just not there. I'm unhappy. I don't know what it is I'm looking for. How do you help me?

So I help you by exposing you to the underlying scaffolding of society. How you've been taught to live your life, how you've been taught to look at yourself. And this is really all about this is really all about a revelation of identity, of sense, of self, of purpose. And we are detached, whether we want to admit it or not. And I'm not standing on a steeple or a mountain saying that I'm not impacted by it. Right. But kind of through, you know, I think my trials and tribulations and my experiences in life, I was kind of able to outline what I see going on a societal level and say to somebody, look, you know, you aren't your job, you aren't your failures, you aren't even your success. And if you're leaning on those things to define yourself or to even find yourself, you are going to run into serious problems because you're identifying yourself and you're living your life in an illusory capacity. And if you do that, you will never come back to who you truly are. You will never reconnect with yourself again because you are living in systems.

And by the way, many in many ways, it's the only way to survive, right? And we need abstraction. We need illusion. And again, it motivates, it pushes, it progresses. It allows us to, you know, reach common goals. Things like ideology come into play. But when we mistake these illusions, when we mistake this abstraction, this progress for trying to find our own meaning again, you run into real problems. And when people can kind of see the scaffolding for what it is, in many ways. And I've heard this from a number of people, there's kind of like a moment where people kind of understand on a, on a cerebral level, on a conceptual level, kind of what's going on here, and human beings, I think, need to understand logically what's happening.

I think that's kind of like a very, I think it's a linchpin that's missed with a lot of coaches or healers. And, but once you understand it conceptually, you kind of then open up, you know, emotionally, if you will, and you allow yourself to kind of feel what's going on on a more acute level. Okay.

So you also said there was, if I'm not mistaken, a spiritual component of this. Is that part of it?

The reason I frame these, these concepts from a spiritual vantage point, if you will, is because first and foremost, I try to or I do, tie into the book, the idea of divine intelligence, of universal consciousness. That that's kind of the one of the main reasons also, and I kind of alluded this before to, to this before, you know, we are we are beholden to language and a lot of kind of what I'm, what I'm offering. There isn't necessarily an existing paradigm to explain. A lot of what I'm talking about.

Spirituality is a very good job, because spirituality continuously tries to bring people back in touch with themselves, with who they truly are. Spirituality, in many ways, kind of inherently rejects institutional religion and rejects institutional structure, and kind of does that through that framework. I think these topics, this revelation, this phenomenology, if you will, become more accessible. It's kind of in using this language through lived experience. It's right that these concepts become more digestible. And again, you kind of have a more acute, aha moment. So I talk about, you know, I use, I discuss, you know, spiritual frameworks with respect to psychology, to the way, again, that we've structured systems in society to give people kind of a grounding, to understand again, on a macro level, kind of what's going on, what the components are. So there's interest because in truth, sorry, in truth, you know, we are all, you know, we are all connected. We are all part of some living divine intelligence. We're kind of detach that. We're unconscious of that. But to ignore that as part of kind of like your everyday life is a problem.

Okay. So besides the book, is are you do you see people? Do you try to help? Do you talk to people, or type of therapy, or is it just starting up?

So you know, kind of I don't know, maybe this is a function of kind of the book's contents or how it's resonating with people. But I think my main effort, or my main, sort of other activity has been with speaking to large groups, speaking to organizations, acting as a kind of, acting, and just kind of like a consultative capacity. I have also done, you know, coaching, on our kind of individual level. I think that these topics, and also the way they're framed in the book, transcend planes. So it's really all about recognizing the connection that the individual has to their environment, that the individual has to this to the systems that they live within. Right?

Let me ask this, yes, because you came up with this concept in this whole like, yeah, I know you spent a lot of time in the financial world. So you were there for many years. You came out and discovered this. How did that actually come about? Did you miss something in your life?

Yeah, it's kind of interesting. And it's I'm thinking a life more you, it was kind of interesting. You know, it was, it was. Yeah. It was really, and this is kind of unique because I had to kind of, you know, figure this out, too. I wanted that question answered as well. Right. So, you know, what? I kind of found that, kind of drank the Kool-Aid. I bought the societal. I bought and drank the societal Kool-Aid, where, you know, life is about ambition. Life is about status. Life is about productivity. Once you get to this apex, you will then be nourished. You will then be satisfied. All your worries, all your stressors will go away slowly but surely. I realize that this is B.S., right? That that, that's not going to nourish me. That living through what I call distortion and illusion and self-fragmentation took a toll on me, and I kind of set, and I kind of took a step back, and I said, you know, I'm smart. I'm not trying to say that in an egoic fashion, but, you know, I know, I know, I have intellectual capacity. I know that I've got, you know, decent social skills, you know, kind of like I'm living my life the way that I'm supposed to. I want to figure out what's going on here. You know, what is the kind of underlying operating system?

What are our personal kinds of engines? What are our compasses that we all collectively kind of use to guide ourselves in the world?

While you were in the financial world, waking up every day? Were you very successful at it? So what led you to this? Were you unhappy? Were you missing something? What brought you to where we are today?

Yeah. So, you know, I was successful in the field. I had. I think that I kind of had this acute moment on the back of kind of the byproduct of my ambition, if you will, right where my personal relationships were deteriorating. My marriage was dissolving. My business was not thriving as it should have. I had a man had a massive rift with my partner, my business partner, which effectively, you know, forced the dissolution of my fund, you know, major events. And I had to, and I kind of like, had a maybe not. Maybe an existential crisis isn't the right word, but I kind of took what I wanted, you know, so many things were happening, so many negative things were happening that I wanted to kind of take a step back, and I wanted to kind of relinquish this egoic identity that I imposed upon myself. I wanted to kind of I wanted to look deeper, and I want to understand, you know, what caused me to look at my life this way? What caused me to create this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy? What were the deficiencies that I didn't see at first? Right. What were the reasons for that?

So, how will you change now? What is your, is your life now, coaching and speaking at large firms? What is your life, and why is it so different from what you had in the past? Tell me that.

Yeah. So, this is kind of an important part of my book because, you know, my book isn't a spiritual belief system. I'm not offering salvation. I'm looking for followers. Right. This is really about bringing people back and again in touch with who they are, with themselves, with their own internal coherence. It's not a glamorous thing. It's not like, oh, now I'm in, now I'm back in touch with who I am. And I feel amazing. I feel blissful, right?

But it's about returning to yourself so that you have kind of a clear vision of who you are outside of the distortion. Right? It's about having confidence, you know, in yourself. It's about making decisions and understanding causality more readily, where you know what happens a lot of times is, you know, we through our own, again, scaling our own systems, our own quote unquote progress, we slowly sever causal relationships where we don't see our actions, what they do, what the result is. Right. We don't see, you know, we click on something, we buy a product. But we don't see that we're exploiting labor, you know, labor in Bangladesh. We get drunk every day, you know, we drink every day after work. We don't see what that result is. We don't even I don't think self recognize what we're actually doing a lot of the time.

Right. Like it's about bringing you back in touch with, with your self, bring you back in touch with a real kind of understanding of how you live in your world, how your relationships form. So it's about clarity and what it's done for me.

I get that. Usually with a lot of things in life, you know, you're not looking for anything, you're not looking for follow-ups or telling people how to, you know, look. I hope your people know how to look differently and better, but usually there's a set of rules, or there's something you do. So when I read your book, what is it going to tell me to do? Is it just going to tell me to realize who I am? That the teaching system, my work system, all of these things are in my life, and I have to realize them and maybe look at them differently.

Yeah. So, you know, in the book, I do offer tools, I offer a kind of framework. It's really about an arc. It's about identifying what's going on. I go into what I call awakening. You know, the book is called Before We Forgot: The Guide to Personal and Collective  Awakening. And, I can hold it up if you'd like. Well, you know, I was going to ask you to do that next one.

 

 Holds up. So everybody, this is the book, and it's by Aaron Scott. Leave it up. You know, and I'm sure, you can get on Amazon, you can get it from Choices, 220 East 78th Street in New York City. And Aaron's gonna tell us where else you can get it.

Yeah, you can get it on Amazon right now. It's in brick and mortar stores, Borders, Barnes and Noble. If those are even such an open target. Yes. Those are still open targets. So it's out there. It's how or how much longer they'll be open for. But you know, in the book, you know, this is important because you know I got I, I kind of I frame it around awakening because I think again, it's a, it's an understandable concept.

Right. It's about, again, using nomenclature that people are familiar with. And it's about kind of opening people's eyes up to the underlying scaffolding. But more importantly, it's about providing a kind of guidance and giving people tools to come back in touch with who they truly are. Right to not be allowed. I call it distortion and inversion to dictate your actions and your lived reality. And again, this is also where spirituality offers some nice tools. So, you know, I talk about somatic practices. I talk about meditative meditation practices. I talk about breathwork. Right. Because what you find often is that we are so pushed and pulled all the time. Right? And we operate in many ways through habit and reaction. Right? And these practices bring you back in touch with kind of who you are, bring you back in touch with who you were even before the indoctrination, before the habits, before.

And oftentimes what you find is people don't do these things, right? It's, it's my belief that when you can, you know, calm yourself, when you can feel yourself, when you can. It's just about, you know,  transcending planes of consciousness. Right? This is a great tool for that as well. But it's about, you know, kind of, you know, on a deep metaphysical level, these tools allow you to really kind of take control of your life, of your agency reclaim agency if you can, you know, in meditation what one of the kind of biggest eye opening things is you can kind of experience that you aren't your thoughts or your emotions even, right, like you're experiencing them. But when you can kind of detach from that, right? This is going very deep. But I take the book goes deep, when you can detach from that. This is kind of the root of all of these modern-day psychological, spiritual manifestation affirmation techniques. It's about reclaiming agency. It's about saying, you know, I'm experiencing this negative emotion or even this elated emotion, seeing it for what it is, and choosing, with sovereignty, whether or not you want to go down that emotional path, whether or not you want to go down that.

Let me ask this. Is it for anyone, or is there a specific target audience, or is it more successful people, ordinary people, or more people? Is it for everyone? What do you think?

Yeah, I wrote this book specifically to not be academic, to not be dogmatic, to not be. I wrote it in a way that.

In many ways is hard to market because I didn't care about recognition again. I really wrote it so that anybody, anywhere, no matter their social status, no matter the circumstance, can utilize the tools in the book and understand for the, you know, for themselves, what the message is about. For me, it's not about, and I just had a conversation with an academic about the book, and he's like, look, he's like, you know, you're really pushing the boundaries. He was using a lot of kind of complicated ways of expressing that, which I don't need to get into right now. But, you know, and I was kind of happy that he said it, because the whole point of the book is, again, to make it accessible, to make even kind of some of the more complicated topics,

that I'm sure I've confused your audience with on this podcast.  Easily digestible and easy to use, kind of in their everyday life. And what's kind of cool about I think the book after you read it is, and this isn't getting mystical or anything at all. It's kind of like a new reality opens up, and kind of like you're brought back into that field of awareness, if you will, where you're kind of more of the observer, where you're kind of observing and with awareness, kind of seeing the cues, right?

Seeing what pushes and pulls you, seeing how you respond to things. You kind of have a kind of heightened perception of a heightened awareness, and what I believe life is all about. If you want to get philosophical, here is what I believe: you know, we're kind of here to experience life as consciously with as much awareness, with as much autonomy, with as much sovereignty as possible. If we can do that, I think that you find, again, a different world opens up, and I think you find increased happiness just by virtue of kind of, again,

greater coherence to yourself and relationally, to every aspect, every part of your life. You regain control. Right? And I think that, at least for me, that's hugely valuable and important, and kind of self-governance, well.

I think you explained it very well. And I think that I know for me, I'm looking forward to the read, because if you look at it, if you have a high school reading level, yeah, it's true that we find that, and you can grow and learn something from it. So, Aaron, I really want to thank you. It was such an interesting conversation, and I really enjoyed it, as we said.

So the book, you can get it at Choices, you can get it on Barnes and Noble, and probably. Well, what else is there? Still borders? even know.? Well, I'm still not even sure.

I think there are a few borders. I'm not really sure, but I there's, I've got, you know, the I've got the e-book version, soft copy, hard copy on Amazon. I'm coming out with an audiobook for those who don't like to read. I think like 40% of people would prefer audiobooks, so I'm going to do that as well.

And how about your website to learn about you and understand a little bit more? Do you have a website? Can we contact?

Yeah, I do, it's called the Aaron Scott. And again, I offer just a way to connect. If people are looking to discuss what I say in the book. On a deeper level, if they're looking to hire me to speak, to get personal, kind of coaching or consultation.

There are different ways that what I'm offering can be, can be used for. And we learned that on the website. You have everything on the website. It's all on the website.

All right. Absolutely. Well, I would thank everybody for coming in, taking a look at our podcast, meeting Aaron, as you know, I do, gentlemen, nice man. think we should all look forward to reading his book. I want to say thank you. God bless you. And we'll see you next time at Choices Podcast, where you always have choices.