Making Democracy Accessible, with Travis Misurell | EDB 302
Autism self-advocate Travis Misurell shares how the Future Is Now Coalition is working to make the democratic process more accessible.
From the FiNC website: “They say those who don’t conform to society create the most significant changes to the world. FiNC founder Travis Misurell, a neurodivergent and atypical thinker, saw how backward, contradictory, and antiquated our political systems are and felt compelled to design a solution.
“Armed with a BA in Psychology and over a decade of experience in Operations and Process Management, Travis developed the tools to solve the increasing partisan divide, introducing the concept of Digital Politics. Travis founded the Future is Now Coalition (FiNC) using his unique perspective, passion for transparency, and the need to educate and empower Americans. Soon after, he was joined by over 40 people who felt the same and were willing to volunteer their time to bring FiNC, Digital Democracy, and the FiNC Research Hub to life.”
For more about FiNC: futureis.org
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Note: the following transcription was automatically generated. Some imperfections may exist.
DR HACKIE REITMAN (HR): Hi, I’m Dr. Hackie Reitman. Welcome to another episode of Exploring Different Brains. And today we have with us Travis Misurell. And he is a very interesting guy he’s got the Future Is Now Coalition – FiNC. He’s going to tell us all about it. Welcome, Travis.
TRAVIS MISURELL (TM): Thank you. And thank you for having me. Yes. So Future Is Now Coalition. Basically, we are trying to do an unprecedented mission to really evolve democracy and upgrade our political structure. We’re completely nonpartisan, we don’t stand by specific policies, our main goal is just to empower all Americans.
HR: How did you first get involved with this?
TM: Yes, so really, it started out really all my life when not since I was 12. I looked around in sixth grade math class and realize that I don’t think like everyone else. And I actually didn’t know I was autistic. until about two and a half, three years ago, I knew all my life, I was kind of obsessed with knowing that I was different. And I would constantly analyze it. And I looked at different different personality disorders and different different things in psychology. I’ve even come across autism, but when it was framed from like, from like, kind of old and an older narrative, I didn’t relate to it as much. But then it was about two and a half three years ago, that I ran into other Autistics explaining it from from the autistic perspective. And then immediately I knew that’s, that’s, that’s how my mind works. And like, I’m still different, even within autism, I mean, autism in general, everyone’s unique, every autistic is unique, or the skills they have the weaknesses is all unique in itself. But I still felt different, but the autistic infrastructure really knowing that I was autistic. And that’s a big piece of who I am, really put everything into the right perspective for me, and also helped me figure out who to who how to connect with other people that would think like me.
So it’s actually at the same time, literally, within learning that as autistic within two to three weeks, this vision started coming together of coming up with this huge way of restructuring and reframing our biggest society issues. And it really came hand in hand with learning my my autism in some way, all my life, I’ve been always trying to think I’m obsessively looking at the bigger picture of life of like, you know, why are we here? What What’s the meaning of life, stuff like that, I’ve always been like, always focused on that kind of in front of those kinds of things. And I always felt that I had some way to some some way to explain to talk about the reality in a little bit of a different way. And actually, even like, back in high school, I had a couple of followers here and there that like really liked what I how I would talk about reality, how I talked about the mind. And so I always had like a couple followers here and there. But then when I learned about the autism a couple years ago, that really got it really narrowed down my verbiage on it. And really, what helped me figure out the difference of like, where am I neurodiverse? Where am I just uniquely Travis? And like, where, you know, where is it just my personality. So like, really, that put all those things together, kind of like I kind of say, my, my world turned right side up at that time with autism. And like, literally, within within weeks of that I turned to my family and like I could figure out how to change the world. And then it took almost a year even after that to really formulate the whole mission in tangible enough. So then about a year from there, that’s when I started, I was able to start gathering people. And now I have a team about 40 people that that have been helping me on this mission.
HR: Boy they have been really helping you along along the way. You’ve built a good team, built a good team. Tell us about the four pillars of FiNC.
TM: Sure. So. So the first pillar is digital politics. And the emphasis on that is it goes beyond just technology. It’s going to integrate technology, but it goes beyond it. One of the main focuses is going is transcending partisan boundaries. So we want to be able to have citizens just go policy by policy, what makes the most sense to get the most Americans the happiest and the healthiest at the most efficient way possible. And that should be the ultimate goal for government. And so we want to try to get out of this tribal the tribal loyalties of partisanship and just go you know, try to try to break those barriers allow for multiple parties and, and just generally allow America, the average American citizens to actually choose how politics should evolve. The other piece to digital politics is is focusing on the will of the majority that we want to we want peace we want to we want politicians to focus on that if most Americans agree on certain things that policies should move towards the the the agreement of what Americans want, rather than just the way the system because right now we’re like there could be 70% of Americans agreeing on a certain policy. And yet Congress will be saying, Oh, we’re 5050 Can’t get anything passed. But we want it to kind of shift the framing of politics and how how people decide who to vote for how people choose, get their information, and then choose what who represents the best. As well as eventually politicians campaign in a different way. So that’s the first pillar.
The second pillar is digital democracy. So that’s the technology in itself. So that’s going to be it’s going to be a one stop shop for all political information is going to be on a blockchain, which in itself is a is a is a democratic way of storing information. And the idea is we want just we want, it’s focused on accessibility and transparency. And we just want the average American to just be able to easily go on one place, see all the information they need about who they want to vote for. Part of the features is kind of like a dating service will show that like those at 80% match between you and a certain politician. And so it doesn’t matter to us where you stand on policies, we just want to match you with the right person that you feel is most representative of yourself. There also be permanent report cards for these politicians. So it’s going to show what their promises are, do they deliver on their promises, things like that, as well as showing where their money’s coming from who’s funding their campaigns, and taking a look at, you know, just kind of seeing where their motivations are, are focused towards. And so that’s going to be it’ll take a few years to get to this point, but it’s going to be citizen owned. So we’re going to it’ll eventually be that every American will have an equal ownership stake of the technology. And one day FiNC will actually just gift that to America, and that they’ll forever be a private entity overseeing our public election system. And so one day, I first think would be kind of a guardian of the technology, and then slowly as it stabilizes, and as enough Americans get involved in it, we would slowly pull away until it was completely up to a private vote of all American citizens, to keep continuing to run and evolve this technology to better be like a watchdog and, and just overseeing our election process.
So that’s that, then the pillar number three is about reframing society. So that gets into the psychological aspects of this, of where it’s about reframing how people see, see each other how people are framing, like politics, seeing, seeing each other within within the partisan structures. You know, a lot a lot of the divisiveness of today is about people villainizing one another and we need to understand that like everyone decides where they make their decisions based on the logic that they have of what they think is reality, what they understand the facts and how they were raised. And like, you know, the like, like, for example, a lot of Democrats will say, oh, all Republicans are evil, and like, yeah, maybe there’s some racism here and there in that group, but it’s not like 100% of them. There’s a lot of complexities to everyone. And like, we want them to understand that like there’s something to be said of like people that feel that they’re they should have less taxes and less government. You know, they’re raised that governments part of the problem that it’s can’t they’re not trustworthy, this and that, and frankly, right now, you know, there’s a lot of very low level of trust in government at this time, so it’s understandable where they’re coming from. And so we’re, we want to pillar three is really about understanding these other people’s perspectives, understanding that we do all see different realities, we all have different strengths and weaknesses. And that, you know, most people are not, like outright like evil the way some people try to villainize one another and like, yeah, there’s some bad people out there. But overall, most people in society, they want us to get along, they want us to be prosperous. And, you know, they’re just trying to make the decisions the best they can based on the facts that they know. Pillar three also incorporates neurodiversity. So that’s about like autism and, and other neuro diversity. It’s going to be big in the narrative that me that I’m autistic and that it was that I needed the actual autistic framework in my mind to come up with this complex mission to come up with all these different intricacies all the different dimensions and doing something just so unprecedented. And like and just reframing everything I couldn’t have done that if I didn’t have the autistic framework in my mind, so so that’s a big piece to pillar three as well. And and just understanding that, that, that neurodiversity is part of the key to how to tackle today’s world problems from a different angle, and like incorporating other different people’s perspectives is key to like coming up with different solutions. You know, we’ve been doing the same thing decade over decade and like we have almost the same problems that we had 30 years ago. We’re almost still talking about the same issues and they haven’t been conclusive have. And so it’s time to start incorporating other thought processes, other other ways of going about these issues, and things like that. So that’s a lot about pillar number three.
And then the fourth pillar is uniquely think. So that’s how how we’re going to run ourselves as a company, how we’re going to build our own accountability and transparency within ourselves. And for one example, we’re kind of building what would be kind of it’d be akin to like an employee owned nonprofit, where instead of a board of directors, the employees or the Board of Directors, the employees, or the check and balance, and the idea is that you know, you can’t control if we have 50 employees, 100, hopefully, eventually 1000 employees, you can’t control them, there’ll be new people coming in people coming out and overall, like, so they’re not gonna be controllable, they’re not corruptible, and just in itself, that would develop a healthier checks and balance. So like me, as the founder, can go out of control in a certain way, they’re gonna choose salary caps on me and any, any other executives on the team, they’re gonna have to go, they’ll set up committees to go over like our expense accounts. So they make sure like, I’m not expensing like $10,000 business dinners, or buying a car with the money, things like that, I’ll have a set salary, like everyone else is gonna have a salary, no profits, no commissions. So that’s a big piece of it, as well as we’re gonna be doing a lot of ethical business practices, just that our management styles are going to be very different. We’re big on work life balances and giving employees a bigger voice, even from the from the associate level. And, and just really creating a better a different atmosphere, a different way of doing of running a business and really to prove to society that you can be ethical, you could be socially responsible, environmentally responsible, good with your employees, and still be a very financially viable organization and be very successful even with those those things. And so a, it’s to build an unprecedented trust with America. So they understand that, that we have the proper checks in place, as well as become a model for the future for other organizations to follow this new corporate structure that we’re designing. And I’m also with the uniquely think is tying again, with the neurodiversity is building our management styles in a way that’s more conducive to neurodiversity, and we’re really handling everyone as individuals, and, you know, people might need a little bit of an adjustment of environment, some people needed certain communication methods work better for them, some people need a lot of structures, some people want very little structure. And so we’re building different processes and operations to be more allowing for the for people as individuals, rather than just fitting everyone inside a box.
HR: Good stuff everybody’s different, every brain is different. What are some of the accessibility issues neurodivergent individuals may run into by being politically active?
TM: So a lot of it is, you know, being like, today’s politics is very socially oriented. So you know, some people don’t feel like they could be part of part of interacting with a lot of people, some people kind of want to be, but kind of gonna be to themselves, but still have their voice heard and still be able to, to be represented properly. So like the Digital Democracy platform, they don’t necessarily have to be social on there, there’s that there’ll be a polling system where people can vote on where they stand on policies, where they stand on social issues, things like that, to get a real, a real accurate map of what Americans want. So their voice will be heard in that light. And then also, the other thing with politics is it’s very stuck, where it’s more it’s overly academic, and like the verbiage that’s being used in politics, like it’s more like people have to be like super knowledgeable about these different policies and different issues in order to even understand what’s what’s going on. Whereas what we’re trying to do is make politics more digestible and be able to give bite sized pieces of just like an overarching concept of you know, like it going over a certain policy just in in just a few minute video, you could kind of go over a general gist of like the concepts behind it. Some of the facts and evidence of what of what goes for certain policies against certain policies. And just so making it easier for like an average person or neurodivergent people to understand this information without having to spend hours and hours or even like a whole education to learn learn a certain background before they can understand what the policy is or what the politician is going towards.
HR: Where do you hope to see the Future Is Now Coalition five years from now?
TM: So yeah, we, we plan we have very high hopes that we want to become a name in every household we want people to be taught thinking about this as the future of politics that digital politics is the future of politics. We want people to start learning to reframe it. So instead of like, Oh, I’m a Democrat, I’m a Republican, or I’m a third party or whatever, that we start branching out to this kind of new verbiage and new new framing of it, where, you know, we are able to go policy by policy, and not just subscribe to an entire set of policies by one one group. And so we want to be a big influence on society where people, most people would go on the digital democracy platform, and they would, they would use that to gather the information they need to make an educated vote. As well as we’re going to get into media getting into journalism, we’re going to do our own media channel, like a YouTube and podcasts, things like that eventually. So people will get some of the some current events from us as well, civic education, as well as we’ll even have an entertainment aspect of it. So we want to be like this really big influence of like how to do things differently, as well as how to be how to run a business more ethically. So there’s like lots of different branches of what where we’re looking to be in five years from now we plan to be really big organization with a lot of different tentacles and a lot of different services that we’re providing. Right now the biggest focus is that digital politics and all that, but then it’s gonna even branch out to just other ethical business services and also helping other organizations learn how to be more conducive to neuro diversity as well as generally more ethical.
HR: Is the website up and running?
TM: It’s up and running futureis.org We’re, it’s it’s continually evolving. Right now, we just finished our for our four pillars are now fully articulated on the website, all the written contents done. So we’re very literally just in the last couple of days, we just finished it off. So um, so people could go on our website to learn about the four pillars, they could go into details of each of the four pillars learn a little bit about the team. There’s some of the visuals are still not done within like the next week or two, there’s going to be more images and also a lot of videos on there a lot of videos of me explaining each of the pillars. So for people that are not good at that don’t want to read as much we’ll have a lot of video content very soon to learn, learn about all these intricacies to video as well. So it’s good enough at this stage. But then in the next couple of weeks, it’ll be It’ll be finished off.
HR: How can people learn more about you and your work?
TM: Yep, yeah. So they could go right on the website, like the there’s a page about the team page about what I’m doing. And then there’s also my LinkedIn is there’s a link to our organization’s LinkedIn as well as mine personally. So they can look at my background. And another big piece is that as we as we get on our feet, we’re going to be very big on on interacting with America, we want to engage people, eventually, we’ll even be doing focus groups. Earlier on, we’ll just do like surveys and polling and kind of get some feedback from people of how we’re doing as well as what are they concerned about politically, and just generally in society, we want to really build a partnership with citizens. So a lot of that is about our own transparency, really want to practice what we preach. So we’re talking about accountability and transparency for politicians. But before that, we have to show that we’re holding ourselves accountable and that we’re also transparent everything that we do.
HR: On a final note, I just wanted to want you to give your impressions of your thoughts on neuro diversity in our society.
TM: Yeah, so that’s a good question. I believe that there’s a lot more neurodiversity in society than we know about. You know, they’re even saying back in history, like Einstein was probably neurodiverse. And like, you know, a lot of people of today, just just, I mean, really even even like people, genius levels and things like that. They have their, they have like these powerful strengths, but they also had weaknesses. You just they don’t, they don’t that’s not in our history books as much, but they do have their weaknesses. And so I feel like neurodiversity is really key to understanding consciousness, understanding the human mind understanding how different each of our minds can work separately from one another. And it should be a really big focus and, and I see it just talking to people, even neurotypical people talking about neurodiversity, and about seeing other perspectives that can really relate to being able to see the world from different perspectives and talking about it from the way the way I’m talking about it that like, you know, it’s not as simple as like, you know, the way TV makes it out to be of like, everything just so black and white, and like these, these are good, these are bad and like, there’s a lot more gray in society and like people, try to oversimplify how the world works.
But humans are complex and like there’s so many complexities and we’re still figuring out our potential. You know, I feel as we develop technology, we’re still we’re still not even at the potete near the potential that we are. We’re still basically cavemen in society and we’re still learning What what we’re supposed to do how we’re supposed to work together find better ways to work together as one, one country, one planet. And so I think neurodiversity and understand and studying different people’s perspectives and comparing it is a great way to have that understanding. Like another way to say it is like, like as if we’re all blind and like, we’re trying to feel out what the real reality is, but like each of us sees a piece of it. But none of us see the whole picture. Because we all have different experiences. None of us have had all experiences. And so if we piece together different pieces from the puzzle, eventually one day we could start really mapping out like, this is what reality is and kind of come to like a consensus reality of society. So yeah, so I think neurodiversity is such a huge piece, and it’s like it’s really built into the fundamentals of everything. We’re doing at Future Is Now.
HR: Well, Travis Misurell. The Future Is Now Coalition. Thank you very much for spending time with us here at Different Brains. And we hope you’ll come back and we want to wish you good luck with all that you’re doing.
TM: Thank you so much. It’s great having you here.
