Speaker 1: Oh boy, it's holiday time again. You know how that
Speaker 1: brings up all sorts of negative feelings for me. Well,
Speaker 1: you're not alone in that. Lots of people have negative
Speaker 1: feelings around the holiday, which is why we are doing
Speaker 1: a one you Feed community event that we are titling
Speaker 1: stressed by holiday expectations how to feel peace instead this season.
Speaker 1: Everybody is burdened by expectations during the holidays, whether that's
Speaker 1: other people's expectations of you or your expectations of the holidays.
Speaker 1: It's a struggle for all of us. So we are
Speaker 1: going to get together as a community and I'm going
Speaker 1: to teach a spiritual habit that will allow you to
Speaker 1: release these types of expectations and touch into a deeper
Speaker 1: feeling of wholeness, peace, steadiness, and presence ground yourself through
Speaker 1: a dose of genuine, nourishing connection with others in this
Speaker 1: wonderfully supportive community. Go to one you Feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash Holiday to sign up for this free community event.
Speaker 1: That's when you feed dot net slash Holiday. I have
Speaker 1: a chapter entitled the most Important Relationship in your life,
Speaker 1: which is not necessarily between you and your partner or
Speaker 1: your parents or whatever, but it's actually between I and myself.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf Y, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Jeremy Lent, an author
Speaker 1: and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our
Speaker 1: civilization's existential crisis and explores pathways toward a life affirming future.
Speaker 1: His new book is The Web of Meaning, integrating science
Speaker 1: and traditional wisdom to find our place in the universe. Hi, Jeremy,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much, a
Speaker 1: great to be here with you today. I am really
Speaker 1: happy to have you on. I have admired your work
Speaker 1: for a number of years now, and your latest book
Speaker 1: is called The Web of Meaning, Integrating science and traditional
Speaker 1: wisdom to find our place in the universe, which is
Speaker 1: a idea that lots of our listeners will love to
Speaker 1: hear because they're very into both modern science and you know,
Speaker 1: tradition in a wisdom. But before we jump into that,
Speaker 1: let's start, like we always do, with the parable. There
Speaker 1: is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second. He looks up at
Speaker 1: his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Yeah. Thanks. You know, when I first
Speaker 1: heard that parable, it brought to my mind what I
Speaker 1: feel that very wise words I heard a number of
Speaker 1: years back that really affected me profoundly, and those words
Speaker 1: were basically this that you already are who you truly
Speaker 1: intend to be, Which is this kind of an amazing
Speaker 1: kind of thought in a way because it says this
Speaker 1: sort of coming from the deep heart of who you
Speaker 1: truly intend. Of course, once you have an intention, you're
Speaker 1: not already that person, but somewhere deep within you you are,
Speaker 1: and that's what you can connect with. And to me,
Speaker 1: what it shows is the profound power of intention in
Speaker 1: how we shape our lives. And you know for me
Speaker 1: that parable is very, very powerful in that way. It's
Speaker 1: so simple, and yet it really shows how when you
Speaker 1: set the path in a way, you can sort of
Speaker 1: stop trying so hard because you already set that path.
Speaker 1: And then this is really borne out by modern neuroscience.
Speaker 1: Those neural pathways get reinforced and reinforced when you get
Speaker 1: into those habits of that path, so it becomes easier
Speaker 1: and easier to move in that direction that you truly intend.
Speaker 1: For I love that it's interesting you should bring that up.
Speaker 1: We just finished the first week of a program I
Speaker 1: lead called Spiritual Habits, and the first principle that we
Speaker 1: focus on is really that idea of intention? You know,
Speaker 1: it's really about like who do I want to be?
Speaker 1: What matters, what's important. By clarifying that, we're able to
Speaker 1: actually then follow it through. It's kind of like clarifying, well,
Speaker 1: what does it mean to feed the good wolf or
Speaker 1: what does it mean to feed the bad wolf? Let
Speaker 1: me get clear about what that means for me. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. And one thing around that time
Speaker 1: that I really discerned is being really important is the
Speaker 1: contrast between two words that we think of usually almost
Speaker 1: as interchangeable. That's between wants and intention, because you know,
Speaker 1: you can say, oh I want this, I want that,
Speaker 1: but there is a profound difference because when you want something,
Speaker 1: it's like a goal orientation. And when you set up
Speaker 1: a goal orientation, you sort of set yourself up to fail,
Speaker 1: and you also set yourself up it's almost like the
Speaker 1: opposite of intention. It's like you ignore the path you're
Speaker 1: on and you focus on the destination and you don't
Speaker 1: get this, so you fail on the failure. And so
Speaker 1: it's this continual judging that comes into the whole thing
Speaker 1: with intention. I say it almost like as if you're
Speaker 1: on the journey. You might have the sense of that destination,
Speaker 1: but that's not what intention is about. It's like shifting
Speaker 1: your orientation towards where you want to go and then
Speaker 1: just really being present in every step of the path
Speaker 1: towards that direction. And you know, if you set the
Speaker 1: intention in the right place, you can't go wrong. You
Speaker 1: might sort of waver around a bit that you're moving,
Speaker 1: you're shifting in that right direction. Right. It makes me
Speaker 1: think of again in the program, we talk about aspiration
Speaker 1: versus expectation. You know that intentions we want them to
Speaker 1: be aspirational, but we don't want to get hooked into
Speaker 1: expectation because we're not going to live up to them. Usually, like,
Speaker 1: if my intention is that I want to be kind
Speaker 1: to my children, I can move more in that direction,
Speaker 1: but I'm not always going to be kind every time
Speaker 1: to my children. So um or to use a metaphor
Speaker 1: that Stephen Covey off and uses, right, and intention is
Speaker 1: more of a compass versus a map. Right, it doesn't
Speaker 1: get us to this exact point, eat it points us
Speaker 1: in a direction we want to go. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's absolutely right. But then if I can add there's
Speaker 1: one thing in that parable that kind of troubles me
Speaker 1: a little bit, which is this kind of dualistic you know,
Speaker 1: this is a good, this is bad, or the good
Speaker 1: versus the evil or whatever. And what I fear is
Speaker 1: that it can set up this sense that when we
Speaker 1: recognize those voices or those patterns within ourselves that we
Speaker 1: don't necessarily wants as our intention, we then judge them
Speaker 1: say now that's the bad thing, and I have to
Speaker 1: not feed that. And I think by setting up that
Speaker 1: sense that there are parts in us that are bad,
Speaker 1: that rather than actually overcoming them or it can actually
Speaker 1: reinforce them. And so one of the things that I
Speaker 1: personally believe and is the power of kindness around that
Speaker 1: of like looking at those parts within ourselves that we
Speaker 1: don't necessarily aspire to, but then rather than saying that's bad,
Speaker 1: I need to overcome that, I need to fight that
Speaker 1: to actually say I can treat that with kindness. I
Speaker 1: can recognize it had a place in my being at
Speaker 1: a certain young, young age mos likely where I've tried
Speaker 1: to defend who I was at that time, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was young, it was not not so smart, maybe
Speaker 1: it didn't find understand and then it developed into this
Speaker 1: voice that judged myself or whatever. And if I can
Speaker 1: treat that with kindness, recognize it's there, I don't need
Speaker 1: to get rid of it. I can just almost like
Speaker 1: smother it with kindness so that it becomes less and
Speaker 1: less of a powerful influence within my overall being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's definitely elements of that parable that set up a
Speaker 1: dualism that I just don't think really exists, you know,
Speaker 1: to me, it just points to that basic truth of
Speaker 1: we have choices, where we choose is kind of what
Speaker 1: we get. I'd love to just have you start us
Speaker 1: off where you start the book off, which is you
Speaker 1: set up this sort of imaginary conversation between say, you
Speaker 1: and somebody named uncle Bob and uh. I thought it
Speaker 1: was interesting because I realized, is that some of the
Speaker 1: things that are coming out of uncle Bob's mouth have
Speaker 1: come out of my mouth, particularly maybe as I talked
Speaker 1: to people who are younger than me. And so what
Speaker 1: gave you the idea to start things off that way?
Speaker 1: And what are the things that uncle Bob is saying? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: essentially what the book is all about is looking at
Speaker 1: the dominant world view that almost all of us, I
Speaker 1: take for granted, and showing that that world view is
Speaker 1: not only dangerous and driving our whole society to destruction
Speaker 1: and causing so many of us to feel alienated and isolated,
Speaker 1: but it's also plain wrong. We think that there are
Speaker 1: these kind of scientific truths that must be true because
Speaker 1: we've heard them so many times, but it turns out
Speaker 1: a lot of these are myths that got developed in
Speaker 1: around the seventeenth century in Europe, and modern science shows
Speaker 1: that they're wrong. And then what the book does is
Speaker 1: show that there's a different way we can make sense
Speaker 1: of things, a way that is actually scientifically valid, and
Speaker 1: also one that points to same insights that the Great
Speaker 1: Wisdom traditions of the past, indigenous traditions, Buddhism, Taoism and
Speaker 1: others have pointed to, which is our deep into connectedness.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of what the whole books about. And
Speaker 1: I really wanted to begin with something that people could
Speaker 1: sort of grab onto and so relate to. So it's
Speaker 1: been my own experience, but to protect the innocent, I
Speaker 1: obviously made up a name of Uncle Bob. It's not
Speaker 1: a really the real person, but it's this sense of
Speaker 1: when people think about what's possible and can get excited
Speaker 1: about the notion of a different kind of way of living,
Speaker 1: there's always this person, like an Uncle Bob type person
Speaker 1: to kind of shoot it down. And so I started off.
Speaker 1: I grew up in England. It was this kind of
Speaker 1: tea party. Family is getting together in London and somebody's talking, oh,
Speaker 1: we we can do this. We need to change the world,
Speaker 1: make it a better place. And Uncle Bob comes along
Speaker 1: and says, I'll tell you. Let me tell you. And
Speaker 1: you've been around the block a few times like I have,
Speaker 1: you'll know this is. But it's really all about it.
Speaker 1: He's basically the spokesperson for the dominant world view. He says,
Speaker 1: let's face it, humans are selfish. In fact, all of
Speaker 1: nature is selfish. Haven't you heard about the selfish gene.
Speaker 1: That's how evolution works. And because of that, you know
Speaker 1: our system of capitalism, that's the way it's meant to be,
Speaker 1: because everyone doing their own selfish thing. It's called the
Speaker 1: invisible hand, right, and that's the way the world worked
Speaker 1: most efficiently. And technology will save us them. Of course,
Speaker 1: there are problems, but with technology and capitalism will get
Speaker 1: through them. It's always there's been so much progress and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the conversation dies down. It's all
Speaker 1: over and uh and we move on. And So what
Speaker 1: I sort of say in the book is this whole
Speaker 1: book in a way is a refutation of Uncle Bob.
Speaker 1: But to your point, I had those Uncle Bob, not
Speaker 1: just those voices, but I live my life according to
Speaker 1: that sort of dominant world view, to Uncle Bob's idea
Speaker 1: of what it's all about for a big chunk of
Speaker 1: my life. So I know only too well what it's
Speaker 1: and what it's like to have that. Even now, with
Speaker 1: all of the well I've done so look at this
Speaker 1: different worldview and and live into it, there's still times
Speaker 1: when I still look see the world from that Uncle
Speaker 1: Bud perspective because it's what we all grow up in
Speaker 1: without even realizing that it's actually a worldview. Right, And
Speaker 1: your previous book you talk so much about worldview. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about why his worldview so important? Why is it foundational? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean when you say worldview, it seems like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be pretty important. But I'd love to have
Speaker 1: you sort of talk about why it's so important. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: we can really think of a worldview as the lens
Speaker 1: through which we see everything that happens and makes sense
Speaker 1: of it. And just like we look at the world
Speaker 1: through you know, our eye itself as a lens, but
Speaker 1: we're not aware that we're seeing things through a lens.
Speaker 1: We just think that's the way the world is. But meanwhile,
Speaker 1: as through that lens and through the patterning of our
Speaker 1: brain neuronal network, we're making sense of the world around us.
Speaker 1: That that's what I call in my first book, Actually
Speaker 1: that's the title of the book. Like the human patterning instinct.
Speaker 1: It's true in other mammals, but in humans it's way
Speaker 1: more advanced than others. That we pattern and meaning into
Speaker 1: the world, and different cultures pattern meaning into the world
Speaker 1: around them to form a sense of what is the world?
Speaker 1: Questions like who am I? What should we do in
Speaker 1: the world? Where do values come from? All those things.
Speaker 1: And the thing about a world view is that it's
Speaker 1: mostly not explicit. It's not like and somebody takes their
Speaker 1: daughter age six or seven and puts her on a lap. Now,
Speaker 1: let me tell you, this is what we believe about
Speaker 1: the world. But it's implicit. And as a child grows
Speaker 1: up first year, she learns the language of a culture
Speaker 1: without even knowing she's meant to learn it. That's our
Speaker 1: patterning instinct to play, and then she patterns meaning into
Speaker 1: the universe based on what the culture tells her. And
Speaker 1: so just like in the same way, if you look
Speaker 1: at a fish swimming in the ocean, that fish is
Speaker 1: totally unaware that it's in water, right, because that's all
Speaker 1: that knows. Similarly, we don't even realize we have a
Speaker 1: particular worldview until we look at more deeply the way
Speaker 1: other people or cultures make sense of things and realize,
Speaker 1: oh wow, they're starting from a totally different foundation, and
Speaker 1: then the pattern of values and meaning they make of
Speaker 1: things might look very different from our own. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's so true. I mean so much of you know,
Speaker 1: particularly my work in in Zen Buddhism, has been about
Speaker 1: trying to see those lenses a little bit more clearly,
Speaker 1: you know, recognizing like they're always there, conditioning is always present,
Speaker 1: but how can I peel back more and more of
Speaker 1: it to have a closer view of reality itself. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that's right, And I think what's so important
Speaker 1: is to realize that it's the way our consciousness are
Speaker 1: are human cognition works, is to pattern meaning into things
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that when we pattern the meaning, that's wrong.
Speaker 1: But it just to any pattern by definition. Almost the
Speaker 1: definition of a pattern is it looks at what would
Speaker 1: otherwise be random dots or and essences of something, and
Speaker 1: it identifies ones that are more important and puts the
Speaker 1: shape around them, and then excludes the ones that are
Speaker 1: not so important. And there's nothing wrong in doing that
Speaker 1: unless you take that pattern for reality. And of course,
Speaker 1: like you say, then itself is one of the greatest
Speaker 1: traditions that exists for looking at our own consciousness and
Speaker 1: recognizing that that's what we're doing. There's as great then
Speaker 1: quote from as Zen Master, which simply says, whatever you
Speaker 1: think is delusion, which I love because at first you say, oh, remember,
Speaker 1: but then you realize that's the whole point that it's not.
Speaker 1: It's only delusion if you think that is the truth
Speaker 1: and the only truth. But once you realize it's just
Speaker 1: a way in which I've pattern meaning, then it opens
Speaker 1: you up to look at other possibilities. And in a way,
Speaker 1: we can consider the books I write almost like a
Speaker 1: cultural version of in of like looking at how we
Speaker 1: can actually develop a practice of cultural mindfulness, and we
Speaker 1: can recognize that the sense we make of the world
Speaker 1: through our culture is also very specific to that culture,
Speaker 1: and there's not necessarily right. And that's what I try
Speaker 1: to point out in the book. Say more about that
Speaker 1: cultural mindfulness. That's a very interesting term. Yeah, yeah, sure. Well,
Speaker 1: essentially there's actually a practice that I sometimes will take
Speaker 1: people through workshops, which is exactly this notion that so
Speaker 1: through either then or basically almost any kind of mindfulness meditation,
Speaker 1: one of the things we learned when we sit on
Speaker 1: the mat is that and we make stories up about ourselves.
Speaker 1: And as we're watching our mind work, can we see
Speaker 1: that we just made up the story that, oh, he
Speaker 1: said that to me, and that means he thinks that
Speaker 1: about me, and I say that, and we and when
Speaker 1: we get to a certain point in mind from recognize, oh,
Speaker 1: I just made up a story about myself. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: some truth in it, maybe not, but it's a story
Speaker 1: I can struck did and that frees us to go
Speaker 1: beyond that story, to open up to other possibilities. And
Speaker 1: cultural mindfulness does the same thing what I often do
Speaker 1: in workshops as well, look at some of these profound
Speaker 1: concepts that are always ambiguous, but that we build our
Speaker 1: civilization and our values on say things like human nature,
Speaker 1: or concepts like prosperity or safety, or education or happiness.
Speaker 1: All of these are very ambiguous concepts and different cultures
Speaker 1: will interpret in very different ways. And what I do
Speaker 1: is actually have people on a worksheet for each of
Speaker 1: those concepts, like say human nature, to write down what
Speaker 1: are the things that we hear about human nature in
Speaker 1: normal articles and the press or just regular conversations or whatever,
Speaker 1: and things like, well, humans are competitive, humans are selfish,
Speaker 1: like those are some standard things. And then to look
Speaker 1: at what is the underlying root metaphor or some sense
Speaker 1: of what underlies some of these stories and what does
Speaker 1: that lead to in our world? And then to pause
Speaker 1: and say, what are other ways in which we could
Speaker 1: make sense of that? Supposing we saw humans as actually
Speaker 1: ultimately cooperative, what would that lead to in terms of
Speaker 1: stories and ways in which we could make sense of
Speaker 1: the world in a different way. And so in each
Speaker 1: of these what we see is you can pick any
Speaker 1: one of these big ambiguous concepts that we structure our
Speaker 1: whole culture and values on and interpret them in fundamentally
Speaker 1: different ways. I love that idea. That is really great.
Speaker 1: I'd love to learn more about the work that you
Speaker 1: do with that. Let's do that a little bit right now.
Speaker 1: Then with one of you know, uncle Bob's key tenants.
Speaker 1: Uncle Bob's key tenants that I find myself spouting is
Speaker 1: the one about progress. We've made so much progress, We've
Speaker 1: made so much progress, and maybe we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: But you just used one, uncle Bob's idea that humans
Speaker 1: are selfish. You know, we've got the selfish gene as
Speaker 1: a metaphor that has made it pretty deeply into our culture,
Speaker 1: you know, survival of the fittest. There's this sense that
Speaker 1: at base, nature is this hyper competitive thing, and we've
Speaker 1: built a society that reflects that to some degree. So
Speaker 1: tell me what we know that might say that isn't true. Yes,
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, And really there's kind of two layers
Speaker 1: to that, and you touched on both of them. One
Speaker 1: is that nature itself is selfish and humans are selfish.
Speaker 1: In fact, we're more selfish than we've done so well
Speaker 1: in our competing the rest of nature, that we must
Speaker 1: be even more selfish than the others, something like that,
Speaker 1: And both of those, at both levels, these are ideas
Speaker 1: that we think are scientific from our dominant culture, but
Speaker 1: they've been absolutely refuted by what modern science says. Why
Speaker 1: don't we begin with nature itself seems like a better
Speaker 1: place to begin. So we're told that it's all about
Speaker 1: the selfish gene. Richard Dawkins popularized that back in the
Speaker 1: seventies with one of the greatest best sellers of sort
Speaker 1: of scientific works, The Selfish Gene, And you know, he
Speaker 1: spoke for a lot of what was the dominant way
Speaker 1: of understanding things in those days. And basically what that
Speaker 1: says is like, we're dominated by e genes. In fact,
Speaker 1: we are just machines the gene uses to replicate itself,
Speaker 1: and that's how nature works. And even when we see
Speaker 1: things like cooperation in nature, it's really just the selfish
Speaker 1: gene figuring out a way to kind of play the
Speaker 1: game to be even more successful in the future. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that both the concepts of the gene
Speaker 1: dominating everything about nature and evolution and the selfishness have
Speaker 1: been refuted by modern science. First off, actually the gene
Speaker 1: is part of an interactive process with the cell. The
Speaker 1: gene is viewed nowadays in modern cellular and systems biology
Speaker 1: is more like a palette that the organism itself, the
Speaker 1: cell that holds the gene, and the organism itself actually
Speaker 1: can use to express different elements within the gene depending
Speaker 1: on what's needed with the environment, and things have seen
Speaker 1: much more interactively in terms of the organism in relation
Speaker 1: to the environment and relation to the gene being one
Speaker 1: complex set of self organized processes. So that's one thing.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like what you're saying is the metaphor
Speaker 1: we would have had for genes had for a long
Speaker 1: time was they were the blueprint that everything got built by.
Speaker 1: And what you're saying is, yes, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: the architect delivers the blueprint, but then the builder says
Speaker 1: to the architect, hey, you know, maybe we might want
Speaker 1: to think about changing that, and the architect goes, well,
Speaker 1: we could. There's a little bit more dialogue back and
Speaker 1: forth between the blueprint and the builder than just the
Speaker 1: blueprint being this is the way it is, no matter what. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's great. And what's so interesting is, again,
Speaker 1: if we look at these metaphors and how they lead
Speaker 1: us to thinking, even the very concept of blueprint assumes
Speaker 1: that ultimately there is some god out there, there's some source,
Speaker 1: there's some great mind that said this is how it's
Speaker 1: mental work. But what the sciences of self organization and
Speaker 1: systems biology show is and this is really one, perhaps
Speaker 1: the greatest miracle of all around us, is the self
Speaker 1: organization of life that life itself is. It's known as
Speaker 1: auto poesis life itself self generated through its own interactive
Speaker 1: processes with the different parts of it, where all the
Speaker 1: different parts make the whole, and the whole relates to
Speaker 1: the different parts. And so even the very notion of
Speaker 1: blueprint is part of that way of ultimately inherited from
Speaker 1: traditional Christianity, of like in the beginning that was God
Speaker 1: and Good created. But the irony is that many of
Speaker 1: these early scientists took the same concepts from Christianity but
Speaker 1: sort of made them into a crazy sort of science.
Speaker 1: And then just to finish on the nature part of it, well,
Speaker 1: of course there is both competition and cooperation in nature.
Speaker 1: We see that all around us in ecosystems, and they
Speaker 1: both play a part. But what is so fascinating is
Speaker 1: that evolutionary biologists now look when they look at the
Speaker 1: increases in complexity since life began on Earth, from the
Speaker 1: very early cells to complex cells to multi cellular life
Speaker 1: all the way up to the abundant riches of ecosystems today,
Speaker 1: there's just four or five big steps that have been identified.
Speaker 1: Each of them were the results of different organisms working
Speaker 1: out how to work together symbiotically, where the whole was
Speaker 1: greater than the sum of the parts. So it's true
Speaker 1: to say that actually it's cooperation. It's increases in cooperation
Speaker 1: that have led to the abundance of life on Earth today,
Speaker 1: not competition, which is so fascinating. So that's just nature.
Speaker 1: But then of course people say yes, but humans, I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll just look around us. Of course, we're selfish and
Speaker 1: competitive by nature. That's how our world works. And if
Speaker 1: we look back where that comes from. One of the
Speaker 1: most important sources is like Thomas Hobbs back in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century came up with this idea that originally it
Speaker 1: was this battle humans. Life was your nasty Buddhist and short.
Speaker 1: But luckily we got morality and we got society to
Speaker 1: instill some rules, and that's how we get to enjoy
Speaker 1: a more civilized life. And that is the way. Even
Speaker 1: all the way up to Richard Dawkins and beyond, people
Speaker 1: still see that in that way that our nature is
Speaker 1: to fight each other, but thankfully we've got these higher
Speaker 1: moral impulses. Well now, Actually, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists recognized
Speaker 1: that what differentiates humans from other primates is our ability
Speaker 1: to cooperate. That when humans separated from other primates millions
Speaker 1: of years ago in the savannah, it was those that
Speaker 1: learned to cooperate better in groups that were the more successful.
Speaker 1: And over millions of years we developed a group identity,
Speaker 1: and not just this identity of this male, alpha male
Speaker 1: who tries to dominate the others, But it's these feelings
Speaker 1: we have, like compassion or loving people who are generous,
Speaker 1: or a sense of fair play and willingness to even
Speaker 1: put ourselves at risk to put something right that we
Speaker 1: think is wrong. These are deeply felt. These are not
Speaker 1: like we have to overcome our instincts to do these
Speaker 1: good things. That actually what we deeply feel as evolved
Speaker 1: human beings. Yeah, and you talk about sort of a
Speaker 1: fundamental divide between sort of Eastern and Western thought, right,
Speaker 1: is that, you know, Western thought, we've been shaped so
Speaker 1: much by the doctrine of original sin. Eastern thought, at
Speaker 1: least the parts of it that I am familiar with
Speaker 1: particularly Buddhism posits that the underlying thing is good. You
Speaker 1: know that your basic nature is good, right, it gets
Speaker 1: covered over, but as you uncover it, what emerges naturally
Speaker 1: is compassion and love. You don't have to go out
Speaker 1: and then you know, make it. It's there. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: completely right. In particular, these ideas came partly from Buddhism,
Speaker 1: but also from traditional Chinese thought all the way back
Speaker 1: to a couple of thousand years ago. There was one
Speaker 1: of the great stages from ancient China was called Mensius,
Speaker 1: who talked a lot about human nature, and his point
Speaker 1: was that exactly to your point, that human nature is
Speaker 1: essentially good, but it needs to be cultivated. It kind
Speaker 1: of goes right back to your the original parable that
Speaker 1: we start off with, and he talks of thinking of
Speaker 1: humans just like we think of a plant. That you know,
Speaker 1: a plant wants to flourish, it wants to grow into
Speaker 1: its own unique place, but it's only going to do
Speaker 1: so when it's on good soil. It's only going to
Speaker 1: do so when there's no pollution around, when it has
Speaker 1: enough nutrition and water in order to flourish. And so
Speaker 1: Mensius would say about human cultivation he'd say, you know,
Speaker 1: every farmer around knows how to cultivate a tongue tree
Speaker 1: was called, or you know, any kind of and that
Speaker 1: they want, and they know what to do, but they
Speaker 1: don't spend the same amount of time thinking about cultivating themselves.
Speaker 1: And if they did, like, that's what would lead to
Speaker 1: so much more flourishing. So this this notion that our
Speaker 1: culture can lead and us to sort of really layer
Speaker 1: over that core sense of our innate goodness and end
Speaker 1: up contorting ourselves to try to do good within what
Speaker 1: our culture says are its values, when actually what that
Speaker 1: does is diminish our ability to flourish for ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something you say late in the book. You say
Speaker 1: an individual can only fully flourish within the context of
Speaker 1: a society, which is itself healthy. Our global civilization is
Speaker 1: built on values that align with hedonic impulses and oppose
Speaker 1: you'n ammonia, which is a term we may get to
Speaker 1: about a different kind of good. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: cooperation for a second, because it is one thing I
Speaker 1: frequently reflect on and look in the world is I'm like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe how well so much of it actually works,
Speaker 1: Like I'm driving down the freeway, and we are all
Speaker 1: driving down the freeway going seventy miles an hour in
Speaker 1: these cars. And yes there's accidents, Yes there's jerks of drivers,
Speaker 1: but the vast majority of it works incredibly well. We
Speaker 1: cooperate on a grand scale to make that happen. You know,
Speaker 1: we go about our business. I can go into a store.
Speaker 1: I mean there is so much cooperation. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: that is so true. I love your image of the
Speaker 1: freeway there. And there's actually a biologist somebody who's a
Speaker 1: primatologist who studies other primates, who gives this idea, like
Speaker 1: as she says, imagine when you fly on a plane,
Speaker 1: you will need to get on the plane. You sit
Speaker 1: there next to each other, you have your food, you land,
Speaker 1: and you live. If you put that same number of
Speaker 1: chimpanzees on a plane and four hours later when the
Speaker 1: plane landed, you'd have like fingers in the aisles, have
Speaker 1: blood everywhere, yet half the tempts be dead. It would
Speaker 1: be a comp mayhem. And that's the thing. We humans
Speaker 1: are actually super cooperators overall. I see that as a
Speaker 1: fundamentally wonderful, exciting thing. It's as if we were talking
Speaker 1: about these different layers. Increases in cooperation ever since life
Speaker 1: began on Earth, and I think it's reasonable to see
Speaker 1: humans as through our ability to connect and through our
Speaker 1: global consciousness, like through the internet too. Now it's almost
Speaker 1: like we're taking it to a whole other level. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, that ability to cooperate has its
Speaker 1: dark side. So when back in early agricultural times and
Speaker 1: people began to develop possessions and chieftainships, the ability to
Speaker 1: cooperate lead people to develop obviously armies to go and
Speaker 1: conquer other people, to sort of bring them into their empire.
Speaker 1: And so the cooperation when it's in group cooperation can
Speaker 1: often lead to seeing others as the outgroup, which can
Speaker 1: be one negative. And then there's the fact that now
Speaker 1: we've become through our cooperative society, but because it's been
Speaker 1: now tinged in this kind of framework of global capitalism,
Speaker 1: which is all about exploiting and extracting those who are
Speaker 1: not part of the power system, we're cooperating so much
Speaker 1: that we're basically cooperating and destroying the rest of life
Speaker 1: on Earth. We've become too effective at things that are
Speaker 1: actually destroying life and destroying actually the bones between other
Speaker 1: human beings, but not effective enough at really seeing our
Speaker 1: true deep interdependence with all of life. And that's a
Speaker 1: lot of what I tried to point out in the book.
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about broadly an idea that you
Speaker 1: explore through lots of different lenses, but it's a sort
Speaker 1: of split in human consciousness. We've recently had Ian McGilchrist
Speaker 1: on the show who talks eloquently about this in the
Speaker 1: left brain right brain ideas right. We've had Joe Balty
Speaker 1: Taylor who talks about that. But you talk about it
Speaker 1: lots of different ways. You call it our inner interpreter
Speaker 1: versus are mystic, you talk about in tao is in
Speaker 1: the idea of Wou Way versus you Way, or core
Speaker 1: and higher order consciousness. So there's lots of ways we
Speaker 1: can talk about it. But set it up for us,
Speaker 1: what is this split in human consciousness? And this is
Speaker 1: a huge central theme for anyone trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what is humanities place within all of life and within nature.
Speaker 1: And really those early Taoists were the ones so I
Speaker 1: think first sets this this kind of theme and motion
Speaker 1: is you just mentioned, and they had this notion of
Speaker 1: looking at the way all of nature, non human nature work,
Speaker 1: and they call that Wu way, which basically means effortless action.
Speaker 1: That there's just this kind of flow with the Tao,
Speaker 1: if you will, that all animals and all plants seem
Speaker 1: to do, and then humans somehow are different and they
Speaker 1: have what the Daoi is called you way, which you
Speaker 1: can translate as purposive action, which is this sense of
Speaker 1: they describe as things like using a pump to pump
Speaker 1: water up a hill, or using fire to dry up
Speaker 1: a well, like going against the flow of nature. And that,
Speaker 1: of course is what civilization is all about and what
Speaker 1: the daois said, right, and in fact, civilization is kind
Speaker 1: of like a crime against the Tao, so they kind
Speaker 1: of want to sort of they were the original sort
Speaker 1: of back to nature type group of thinkers, if you will.
Speaker 1: But what I try to explore in the book is
Speaker 1: this possibility of integrating those two elements of human consciousness,
Speaker 1: recognizing that we do have them. There is the symbolic thinking,
Speaker 1: this conceptual consciousness that does seem to make humans unique
Speaker 1: among pretty much any other creatures. And as Jill Balti
Speaker 1: Taylor and Ian mcgulchrist explains so well, that relates to
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere and the interpreter, and the way in
Speaker 1: which that part of us and makes stores out of things.
Speaker 1: It creates the sense of an eye, of a separate eye,
Speaker 1: and separate from others around us, and separate from really
Speaker 1: kind of the rest of life all around. But then
Speaker 1: we also have our animate consciousness. That's where Western civilization
Speaker 1: sort of went off the rails, if you will, when descartes,
Speaker 1: and that probably the most famous statements in philosophy, says
Speaker 1: Cogito Ergo Sum. I think therefore I am basically what
Speaker 1: he's saying, is my only identity is that thinking capacity.
Speaker 1: Is if you're saying, my only identity is that prefrontal
Speaker 1: cortex mediated left hemisphere um and the rest of me
Speaker 1: doesn't even exist. It's just this kind of machine. And
Speaker 1: that's what our society says, that the rest of nature
Speaker 1: is just this kind of you know, doesn't have an
Speaker 1: intrinsic value. But within ourselves we are nature, and just
Speaker 1: we have this conceptualizing faculty, we also have that wou
Speaker 1: way within ourselves. We have forty trillion cells. Even the
Speaker 1: single cell has incredible intelligence, what we can call animate intelligence,
Speaker 1: forty twlli of them all working together, to create this
Speaker 1: amazing organism that is each of us, and we can
Speaker 1: recognize that we are actually mind body organisms, that we
Speaker 1: have both this conceptual and an animate consciousness. I talk
Speaker 1: about it in terms of the eye and the self,
Speaker 1: like call that. I have a chapter entitled the most
Speaker 1: Important Relationship in your Life, which is not necessarily between
Speaker 1: you and your partner or your parents or whatever, but
Speaker 1: it's actually between I and myself. And you know, we
Speaker 1: see this normal language. If I'm chatting with you about
Speaker 1: this new job I had, I might say to you
Speaker 1: things like, I'm really I've been pushing myself too hard.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm you know, I'm really beside myself with
Speaker 1: like anxiety. And who's I and who's the self that
Speaker 1: is pushing It's like there's two different parts of our identity,
Speaker 1: and we can think of that self more like this
Speaker 1: animate part of us that lives on a moment moment,
Speaker 1: present moment, and that's the self that we're always kind
Speaker 1: of relating to and trying to make one way or another.
Speaker 1: And my point about this is that that we can
Speaker 1: actually find ways for I and the self to live
Speaker 1: more harmoniously together, to live basically in a state of
Speaker 1: full integration, where we recognize that both I and the
Speaker 1: self can actually be working together for the whole of
Speaker 1: our organism, and that within sort of nested within larger
Speaker 1: identity even beyond that. Yeah, I love the way you
Speaker 1: frame it up as conceptual consciousness and animate consciousness, you know,
Speaker 1: conceptual being sort of that left brain symbolic thinking and
Speaker 1: them being more or that holistic knowing. And I think
Speaker 1: you know, it often comes across in these discussions when
Speaker 1: we start talking about these things as if the right
Speaker 1: brain or the animate consciousness is better, And I don't
Speaker 1: think that's at all what is being said. I think
Speaker 1: what's being said in the way I relate to it,
Speaker 1: is that we've gotten so overreliant on one type of
Speaker 1: consciousness that we want to cultivate the other type in
Speaker 1: order to sort of balance these things out a little
Speaker 1: bit and bring them into a little bit more harmonious
Speaker 1: relationship with each other. Although to say that they're actually
Speaker 1: separate is perhaps debatable. Also, yes, right, it's interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I mean, because they are separate and related, it's as though,
Speaker 1: almost like we can think of them this kind of
Speaker 1: as Siamese twins that are absolutely joined integrally and also
Speaker 1: have separate manifestations but also manifesting out of the same hall.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think this is so important to point
Speaker 1: this out by the way that everything that I'm saying
Speaker 1: in my book and my writings can easily be misinterpreted
Speaker 1: by people who don't look so closely. Is always saying like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the West is bad and the East, the
Speaker 1: mystical East is good, and our civilization is bad, and
Speaker 1: the indigenous way of being was good, and right brain
Speaker 1: is good and left brain is bad, all these things.
Speaker 1: And that's absolutely to your point, not what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: but just like Ian McGilchrist talks about so eloquently, and
Speaker 1: it's as though that left brain consciousness has actually come
Speaker 1: to dominate our global society right now, so that there
Speaker 1: is in fact a massive imbalance between the power of
Speaker 1: those two ways of cognition within each of us individually
Speaker 1: because we grew up in this culture and within our
Speaker 1: global culture as a whole. So my point is that
Speaker 1: we can recognize the benefits of scientific thinking, that the
Speaker 1: reductionist way of making sense of the world that tries
Speaker 1: to understand how each little part works has driven us
Speaker 1: these miracles of the Internet, of you and I are
Speaker 1: being able to talk with each other thousands of miles
Speaker 1: away in real time, antibiotics, hygiene, so many things we
Speaker 1: can be grateful for, and at the same time we
Speaker 1: need to recognize that some of these have come at
Speaker 1: the expense of our separateness, even from within ourselves, from
Speaker 1: others and from all of life. And we can rebalance
Speaker 1: that not by rejecting technology, not by rejecting this incredible
Speaker 1: unique gifts that humans have, but using those towards integration,
Speaker 1: towards a sense of making something whole even while it's differentiated.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to like get rid of our richness
Speaker 1: of the differentiation around us, but to recognize there is
Speaker 1: a whole, and right now we are cutting that whole apart.
Speaker 1: We're disintegrating our world the way it is right now
Speaker 1: through dominant culture. I think that's a great place to
Speaker 1: transition into another idea that runs through the book that
Speaker 1: I love, which is this difference between what I say
Speaker 1: it as Chi and Lee exactly that's right, And that
Speaker 1: is another very profound idea about the universe that came
Speaker 1: from East Asian thinking and actually came from a school
Speaker 1: of thinkers about a thousand years ago during the Sung dynasty,
Speaker 1: and they called themselves a school of the day. We
Speaker 1: actually know them nowadays as Neo Confucians. But what's fascinating
Speaker 1: about this group of thinkers is they ended up synthesizing
Speaker 1: three of the great wisdom traditions of the East, both
Speaker 1: Taoism and Confucianism, and also Buddhism, which had become very
Speaker 1: central in China for hundreds of years before then. And ironically,
Speaker 1: they were trying to refute Buddhism and Das, but it
Speaker 1: was so much part of their thinking they ended up
Speaker 1: incorporating these ideas. And they tried to say, no, we've
Speaker 1: got to make sense of the entire universe in a
Speaker 1: comprehensive way. And they did that, and they said, basically,
Speaker 1: all of the universe and is comprised of chi, which
Speaker 1: we can translate in today's terms, is basically matter and
Speaker 1: or energy, like all the stuff of the universe. And
Speaker 1: we know from Einstein that matter and energy are essentially
Speaker 1: relating to each other in that famous equation. So if
Speaker 1: you think of that as she and they said, that's
Speaker 1: the entire universe is made of that, but it's organized
Speaker 1: in certain ways and the ways in which that she
Speaker 1: is organized, the principles of organization they called LEE. So
Speaker 1: they felt that what we needed to do is try
Speaker 1: to investigate that LEE, investigate the way things are organized
Speaker 1: and in all the different elements of the universe to
Speaker 1: understand it. And what I found so fascinating as I
Speaker 1: was doing research years ago, looking really for my own
Speaker 1: search for meaning, is I was reading a lot of
Speaker 1: modern sister and scientists at the same time who were
Speaker 1: arguing against that Richard Dawkins type of reductionists say that
Speaker 1: the whole world is meaningless, just a little bits of
Speaker 1: selfish genes and little bits of molecules, and that's all
Speaker 1: there is. And there's one particular great systems scientists called
Speaker 1: Stewart Kaufmann, one of the leading complexity theorists, who was
Speaker 1: talking about what we're learning from complexity science is that
Speaker 1: everything in the universe has these patterns of self organization,
Speaker 1: and we've got to explore it's never been explored before.
Speaker 1: It's like new territory for humans to understand what it
Speaker 1: means to recognize we live in a universe is fundamentally
Speaker 1: self organized. According to these principles, we're uncovering at the
Speaker 1: same time, I was reading about these neo confusions as going, well, Stewart,
Speaker 1: I agree with you totally. But there's been actually these
Speaker 1: great traditions of the past that have also recognized that
Speaker 1: the universe is ultimately self organized and the relationship between
Speaker 1: things some times more important than things themselves. And that's
Speaker 1: where I began to realize that that was almost like
Speaker 1: the Rosetta Stone, that we can see that and these
Speaker 1: deep spiritual traditions from the past are not anti scientific.
Speaker 1: In fact, they add a richness to what modern science
Speaker 1: is telling us when we feel when we maybe we
Speaker 1: have a peak experience and we sense this deep into
Speaker 1: connectedness of everything and being part of something so much bigger,
Speaker 1: and what modern science, oftentimes all the modern world view
Speaker 1: tells us is, oh, well, you know that's that's might
Speaker 1: be a nice feeling, but of course that's got nothing
Speaker 1: to do with science. But you know, you go ahead
Speaker 1: and feel that. But what I'm really offering in the
Speaker 1: book is this realization that actually those deep intuitions we
Speaker 1: have as humans, as peak experiences, are actually our internal
Speaker 1: validation of what science is in fact saying, is how
Speaker 1: the universe really is. Yeah, I like you share a
Speaker 1: lot of love for systems theorists and complexity theories and
Speaker 1: the idea that this self emerging intelligence. When I heard
Speaker 1: Chi and Lee and I read it, I immediately thought
Speaker 1: of the most famously chanted Zen scripture, which is the
Speaker 1: Heart Sutra, which says over in about ten different ways,
Speaker 1: emptiness is form. Form is emptiness. You know, emptiness could
Speaker 1: be the ch it's the potential, it's the unbound stuff.
Speaker 1: And then there's form, the way it all shows up,
Speaker 1: the different shapes it all takes, and that those are
Speaker 1: their form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. And and you know,
Speaker 1: to your point, it's talking about Chi and Lee, you
Speaker 1: don't have one without the other, Yes, exactly. And I
Speaker 1: think you've really hit the heart of it. That is
Speaker 1: that Buddhist perception that actually was part of what led
Speaker 1: to that Neo Confucian synthesis of Lee and She. There
Speaker 1: was actually a Buddhist school called the Hawaiian Goal, which
Speaker 1: was the first place we know of where they actually
Speaker 1: talked about Lee in the way that the Neo Confucians did,
Speaker 1: and they had this beautiful image. You might have come
Speaker 1: across it what was known as Indra's web, and it
Speaker 1: was it was a sense of the ancient guide Indra.
Speaker 1: Indra's net it's also called made this incredible golden net
Speaker 1: where it was filled with jewels, and each jewel it
Speaker 1: was so perfectly shiny that it reflected all the other
Speaker 1: jewels in this web, so much so that it didn't
Speaker 1: just reflect the other jewels, but it's even took the
Speaker 1: reflection from the others and reflected those two, so that
Speaker 1: if you could look at one jewel, you saw the
Speaker 1: entire universe of all these other beautiful jewels reflected in
Speaker 1: that one. And as this profound concept of how and
Speaker 1: each of us really like these kind of fractal entities
Speaker 1: of something so much larger, and the principles of our
Speaker 1: own existence, the principles by which our selves themselves self
Speaker 1: organized and come alive, the same principles by which we
Speaker 1: are and our society and all of life. And we
Speaker 1: can see ourselves embedded basically in this kind of injuries
Speaker 1: net of all of life around us, and this amazing
Speaker 1: sort of fractal unfolding of reality. You led me right
Speaker 1: where I wanted to go next, which was this idea
Speaker 1: of sort of this fractal nature of existence. So first
Speaker 1: share what that means, and then let's talk briefly about
Speaker 1: sort of the implications. Yeah. Sure, Well, basically, when scientists
Speaker 1: recognize that these connections between things is so important, one
Speaker 1: of the things they do is try to look at
Speaker 1: principles of these connections, and one of the most important
Speaker 1: principles they come up with is fractals. And basically, a fractal,
Speaker 1: in simple terms, is just a pattern that repeats itself
Speaker 1: at different scales. And what scientists have discovered is that
Speaker 1: every time you see fractals in nature, they are evidence
Speaker 1: of self organization, and you see it everywhere in nature.
Speaker 1: So you see those repeating patterns and everything like the
Speaker 1: patterns on trees, on the veins of leaves and clouds,
Speaker 1: branch lightning we see, and fractal patterns in our lungs,
Speaker 1: in the neuronal connections of our nervous system. You even
Speaker 1: see it in the way cells are self organized. So
Speaker 1: basically everything is like as fractal within a fractor within
Speaker 1: a fractal, And this notion of these fractals forming coherent
Speaker 1: holes but within bigger holes is also sometimes called the hilarchy,
Speaker 1: this sense of nested entities there are coherent in themselves,
Speaker 1: but have small innsted entities within them and a part
Speaker 1: of bigg inested entities, and that basically describes an ecosystem
Speaker 1: and described aids our own bodies. It describes basically the
Speaker 1: way life itself evolved over billions of years. So that
Speaker 1: is a key element of understanding sort of where we
Speaker 1: are in the universe. We're actually sort of fractal self
Speaker 1: organized patterns within larger fractal self organized patterns, and that
Speaker 1: has profound implications. One, it has profound implications for our
Speaker 1: identity that rather than seeing ourselves as fixed individuals with
Speaker 1: sort of this adamantine sort of structure and everything else
Speaker 1: outside is separate and everything within me is mine, we
Speaker 1: begin to realize that actually we're just kind of these
Speaker 1: temporary ed is in these much smaller and much larger
Speaker 1: patterns which we just happen to form a coherent whole
Speaker 1: for a certain while. And there also leads to this
Speaker 1: concept that you mentioned a little bit earlier, that I
Speaker 1: talked about in the book of what I call fractal flourishing.
Speaker 1: The once we recognize that all of nature is a
Speaker 1: fractal once we recognize that our societies are fractals, and
Speaker 1: part of the living earth. We realize that there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as true flourishing of any one of those
Speaker 1: elements in the hilarchy without all the others being flourishing too.
Speaker 1: So in just the same way, if I feel heart
Speaker 1: is having problems, the rest of your body feels bad,
Speaker 1: or any elements in your body if it's having difficulty,
Speaker 1: the rest of your body has difficulty too. And it's
Speaker 1: only when all the different layers of feeling health that
Speaker 1: you can feel the true sense of integrated health. I
Speaker 1: think that's a great way of saying that we could
Speaker 1: take that example a little smaller and a little bigger.
Speaker 1: We could say that if certain cells in my heart
Speaker 1: are not doing well, then my heart will not be
Speaker 1: doing well. When my heart is not doing well, the
Speaker 1: me eric as I think of myself will not be
Speaker 1: doing well. And then thus lee the way I react,
Speaker 1: and the burden that puts on my family means that
Speaker 1: my family won't be doing as well, and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. It just keeps going out in that way,
Speaker 1: and I love that. I d I often when I
Speaker 1: think about, you know, the Buddhist ideas of you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote non self right, I often think of it
Speaker 1: and you say this very well in the book. It's
Speaker 1: not saying that at a level from a certain view
Speaker 1: that I'm not sitting right here being who I am.
Speaker 1: Of course I am, but I am made up of
Speaker 1: lots of other little things, and I am part of
Speaker 1: lots of bigger things. And depending on what level you
Speaker 1: look at in that system determines how you would view me.
Speaker 1: You know, to a cell a cells like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty big deal, right, you know, I'm like the center
Speaker 1: of things, right. But to us we're like, well, you're
Speaker 1: one of forty trillion cells, right, you know. And and
Speaker 1: then I'm like, I'm a pretty big deal. And nature
Speaker 1: is like, well, buddy, you're like one of seven billion
Speaker 1: who's alive today, like all context, you know. And you
Speaker 1: you say that so well about you know, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about ch and Lee, that idea that the ways
Speaker 1: in which things connect are frequently more important than the
Speaker 1: things themselves. Yeah, And in fact, that Buddhist notion of
Speaker 1: of non self, based on the conversation we've already had,
Speaker 1: I like to sort of really think of it, it
Speaker 1: may be the best way to translate it is the
Speaker 1: no fixed I, because basically that's what it's saying is
Speaker 1: that when I say I am like this, I am
Speaker 1: like that. The recognition that that is a construction and
Speaker 1: it's not fixed is what allows us to then free
Speaker 1: ourselves from those constraints. And to your points, everything you said,
Speaker 1: I just love how you describe that, and what I
Speaker 1: feel is crucial is to realize how true that applies
Speaker 1: to us in our society too. So we're told in
Speaker 1: our society, you know, be successful, and it's a zero
Speaker 1: sum game. You know, you gain at the expense of
Speaker 1: those around you, and and our entire culture is based
Speaker 1: on exploitation of those that were are stronger than in
Speaker 1: order to be successful. But once we realize this principle
Speaker 1: of fractal flourishing, we realize that actually, I can only
Speaker 1: be healthy when those around me are how feel happy,
Speaker 1: when actually our society, our community, and in our society
Speaker 1: is doing well, when humanity has the conditions for flourishing,
Speaker 1: and fundamentally, when all of earth can be regenerated and happy,
Speaker 1: and it's not a zero some game. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the biggest shifts I think we can do for
Speaker 1: ourselves and our culture is to realize that that we're
Speaker 1: all part of this hilarchy. Well, I think the way
Speaker 1: you ended it there, Jeremy, was really beautiful. And so
Speaker 1: you and I are going to talk some more in
Speaker 1: the post show conversation about this question of how could
Speaker 1: things be in continual flux yet remain persistent. And we
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about it with g and Lee.
Speaker 1: But we're going to talk about the ship of theseus
Speaker 1: and then I also want to talk about a line
Speaker 1: that you used to end the book, which I think
Speaker 1: is so important, which is what is the sacred and
Speaker 1: precious strand that you will weave? And I'd like to
Speaker 1: talk about how some of us find that for ourselves. Listeners,
Speaker 1: if you'd like access to the post show conversation AD
Speaker 1: free episodes episode I do every week called a Teaching
Speaker 1: Song and a Poem, where I present a song, a
Speaker 1: poem and a teaching that I love. You can get
Speaker 1: all that at one you feed dot net slash joint. Jeremy,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the show. I've
Speaker 1: really enjoyed it. We'll have links in the show notes
Speaker 1: to your books and where people can find you. And
Speaker 1: this has been really fun. Thank you so much. It's
Speaker 1: been a great pleasure talking with you. Today. If what
Speaker 1: you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making
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