https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=_I3G7ui6duI
Thank you. Welcome everyone to another voices with Verveki. I’m really happy. This is my third time with rich Bundell, it’s great to have you back. Rich Rich has offered to give a bit of an overview of our last two discussions, times I think we got into genuine and then we’ll take it from there. There’s lots of momentum there’s lots for he and I just will talk about. And so, first of all, it’s great to be here again with you rich, so thank you very much for coming on and taking us through this recap. It’s good to see you john, and it’s been a while. We’ve got a lot of developments lot of new thinking that’s come about since the last time we spoke so I’m excited to think about that. Talk about that some more. But as far as the recap. Well here’s in preparing for this conversation I went back and listened to our previous two conversations. And they were really good I mean they, I think we, you know, we dove deep we explored some, some really sort of novel territory I think. So I thought, just to recap that a little bit. We started off with my explaining this thing that I call OIKA which is a, it’s a practice but it’s more of a, it’s really more of a mode of being in the world, or that’s that’s grounded in the intelligence of nature, which is a relational intelligence. Yes, it’s very much a commitment to the relational dynamics from which everything that is springs. Yes. So we talked about that a little bit. Then we talked a bit about my history, how my sort of engagement with the world which, which is fairly unique I think fairly accidental. And then we talked a little bit about my formal research which I think is probably the least interesting thing, which was, but my research was about how engaging with the story of the universe as a whole, totalizing and comprehensive narrative of the evolution of the universe can elicit transformative experience. And actually when I say it that way, that’s not all that uninteresting, but my research may have been a little less interesting, the way that I, you know, the methodology. And then I, but then in our second call, we got into some really interesting territory, which was around the, the religious impulse and the sort of formal, the formal ways that we can engage with the world. And then in our second call, we got into some really interesting territory, which was around the, the religious impulse and the sort of formal, the formal ways in which the religious impulse is expressed and not expressed. And I think we were starting to approach how, you know, this thing that I call OIKA, it can can can elicit some of those very same commitments and, and, and experiences of the world so that that stuff’s really interesting and exciting to me and I think And it’s something that the engagement with formal religion and sorting out new territory is really interesting to me, really exciting. So these are some of the things I also was hoping perhaps that we could do a little updating on on what we’ve been up to. Sure. I follow you whenever you post something I’m, you know, I’m right on it and I download it and study it. So, if we can weave some of that, it’d be great too. Sure. Well, what, what, what’s, as you’ve been following some of my most recent work. What comes to mind that’s relevant to that last point because I’d like to still at least start at that point that’s the thing that brought me in that that point about what you’re calling, and I like it, the religious impulse and religious formation, and what relationship that might have or might not have to the existing axial legacy world religions. And then I’ve been exploring that I’ve been exploring about, you know, in different ways, had an excellent conversation with for example, Claire Carlisle about her amazing book on spinosa’s religion, which is really just point on that topic and spinosa is really trying to provide, he wants to be in deep dialogue with, but he’s trying to stand outside Christianity Judaism Islam, and nevertheless come to some understanding that is viable within the scientific framework but also has authentic spiritual depth of, you know, the satisfaction of that religious impulse because he ultimately thinks it is absolutely necessary to the kind of life he calls the blessed life. And that that that’s the whole point of Claire’s book, and I’ve been wrestling with that I’ve been wrestling with that in an attempt to really go back and get Plato’s theory of the forms into something that is phenomenologically practice of all, not practical or practical, which I think is now a word I can’t use anymore because of what it’s degenerated into. But it’s something we can. It’s an eschisis it’s a it is a praxis for us. I might adopt the horrible sounding practical logical as my other than practical, just because practical people hear the wrong thing when they hear practical, they can give me sort of mundane useful. And that’s not what I’m trying to get at. Practizable. Yeah, practicable is also good too. And so, those are the two big things I’ve been wrestling with and try and sorry three, and then the third is an ongoing discussion with Jonathan pageau and Jordan hall others about hyper agency hyper objects. And so, these three three things. To my mind, the reason why I’m pursuing them. I mean I think they’re all inherently important but I think they’re all internally connected with each other in a profound way. And I’m trying to get them to come together, I’m trying to see what the logos is that’s drawing those three things together. So, that’s sort of a quick recap of where I see I’ve been up to, and how it overlaps with this, this point where we had left off you know this really trying to explicate and exact this, what does the religious impulse mean for us now, and what should it mean for us now. Right. And so, you mentioned spinosas blessed life how would you characterize that like, or how would he characterize that would you say, like what is in a nutshell what is the blessed life mean. So the blessed life is a life in which one is one has fully realized, not just intellectually. And I think that’s true for spinosa it’s not with the canadus with the very sort of dynamics of one’s being with that right that one has fully realized in the intellectual love of God and stand to intuitive full participation in God, where it’s been And so you have to see them like, almost like two lenses that you stereoscopically look through to something that is beyond our current notions of God, and our current notions of nature, that’s what he’s trying to do very much like initial time he’s It’s a triangulation or it’s not a choice or. And so that full participation in that sort of ultimate reality and for spinosa. This is simultaneously, the height of reason, and the deepest kind of love that a human being is capable of and for spinosa those are deeply interdependent spinosa repeatedly says he’s probably the most logical of all the rationalists, but he says that reason alone cannot bring the blessed life, because you need love to break you out ultimately of an egocentric framework, and then only within that breaking beyond an egocentric framework can reason unfold in a way that puts us into right relationship participatory knowing of God. That’s what you look. You also said that he had was considered a heretic and very much. Why, why would that why would that formulation. Bring about the claim of hereticism. So, that’s a really good point because there’s in one sense, you know the whole neo Platonic tradition within Christianity, Islam and Judaism are about, and I think Claire makes a good argument for that. I have a book called participation in God which I have to read that she made use of argues that that is actually, you know, the core of these, the Abrahamic religions and I think you can make an analogous argument for the non Abrahamic religions this is ultimate deep participation. What made it so was it a political, or was it something more, more deep, was it more ideological basis. It was political, ideological and religious, all at the same time as Spinoza’s work was want to be, because what he did, I mean so he writes the ethics but he also writes the he also writes the track status politicus right all that stuff. So, I mean, Spinoza dare to claim that that the Bible was a flawed human creation. He thought it was an important document through which we could come into it under. He started biblical criticism, he literally started it. He started it, which is not the allow, which is not theology which is to stand up right to try, but he to stand aside and criticize it as a document, and you know point out, and then try to. He was trying to separate the religio, I’ll use my language he doesn’t use, he uses the one term, by the way, uses these terms that he doesn’t. And I think he uses them in a way that’s consonant with mine but it’s. He’s trying to, he’s trying to liberate the religio from the credo. He’s really trying to get back to, well, the intellectual love of God this fancy into a TV, the direct participation. And that’s the religio that sense of deep connectedness. And he sees the credo of Judaism, because he was excommunicated from his Jewish community, and of Christianity he was declared a heretic. He sees the credo of the existing religions of his time as inadequate, and even distorting of the capacity for religio. So he criticizes very deeply all the creedal like understandings of Judaism, Christianity, and more indirectly, Islam, and so that that pisses everybody off in a deep, deep way. I don’t quite see why but I’ll take your word for it and I actually I can. Well why is because all of these, you have to remember what’s happening. The things that we separate weren’t separated. So the religious wars are just coming to an end in Europe and being Protestant or Catholic is not just sort of a statement of your spiritual spiritual existential commitment. It’s a national political, even military declaration. Right. And of course, Christianity as a whole, has been standing against Islam in a military fashion. And then, right, and then of course, there has been the long standing tension, the, the anti semitism within Christianity towards Judaism because the Jews rejected Jesus. So there is there, right, these doctrinal differences are life and death at that point. So the commitment to the creedal aspects is not for many people, the creed is transparent, they can’t see it because they can only see through it. That is the to their mind that is the only way to see to realize the religious creed, the creep, whereas in our conversation or at least in my position, we can separate them analytically and perhaps even phenomenologically and existentially at that historical time. Sure, it can’t be separated, or at least it requires somebody. And this is what this is what is of the three rationalists, but knows it is the one that clearly has the most personal courage and integrity. It requires not only his brilliance, but his, his deep moral courage and integrity to take the stand he took. Well, okay, great. Thank you. That historical context, you know, definitely sheds light on it. Now, you mentioned that he wanted to, I forget the word you use extractor or separate the credo, the religio from the credo. Yeah, well then, where then would he then reattach the credo to what. So for him, he, for example, so no, not for example first, he would say he wants to change the relationship and make. I was using my language, the credo would always be in service of the religio, not the other way around. And, and he thought that that credo could be reestablished are through rational reflection upon the scientific worldview. So you have to understand that. And it’s very tempting with Spinoza to think that he means by reason logic, because the ethics is written like it’s written like you, it’s written like Euclid’s right geometry. It is a logical treatise through and through, but that’s not ultimately what Spinoza means by reason he means he means right relationship to things. And so he thought that that sense of rational, rational reflection upon the scientific worldview and upon the existing religions that he was in dialogue with would allow him to craft a credo that was more responsive and responsible to the religio properly So in a very real sense, he was doing something very analogous to the project that I’ve engaged in which I call the religion that’s not a religion. In fact, Spinoza is one of my heroes in that endeavor. And that’s why Claire Carlisle’s books, Spinoza’s religion is so important. I would argue. And so, and what, what role does the mythos play in that, that. Yeah. And so this is this is the really interesting thing in Spinoza. So he’s generally seen as you know a precursor to Boltzmann and others. And that is, I think I got the right thing in that he he he wants to, in many ways demythologize religion, and you and I would immediately go that’s problematic. Oh, what’s her name Genevieve Lloyd has gone back and said no no actually Spinoza is trying to, although he’s very critical of the imagination. He is actually trying to engage in a recovery of the imagination. And I have to go into this more. So the next thing I’m saying I want it to be understood I’m saying it very cautiously. You know, but I think he was moving towards an understanding of the imaginal sense of the imagination and criticizing the imaginary sense of the imagination. And so, and I think in so far as the imaginal could be reintegrated with the rational, there would be a kind of mythos available to him. He is willing to acknowledge the role of mythos, and that he in fact he often, I think he’s one of the first people to propose and he often proposes. Well no that’s not fair there’s the whole allegorical reading, which are sorry in the spiritual reading the spiritual reading in the Middle Ages but he in the right in early modernity he’s proposing reinterpreting right these, a lot of the Bible as mythos that can then be understood in this rational imaginal sense. All right, so that all makes a lot of sense, like, I think, and I also it makes it clear to me what our projects are, and sort of in some sense what we’re up against the historical inertia. So, how, and I hear you engaging, I hear you engaging with the modern residue of that. Yeah, that world that axial age, and later. You know, power structure. Do you think that we are still. Do you think that we’re still under the spell of that. Those dynamics. Very much. Very much so. And do you see that how your work can. In some ways, ameliorate and offer us an off ramp to that, that have that those habits of, of, of, of, how can we open up, how can we elevate this conversation, based on what we now know scientifically in such a way that they’re that the antagonism. That can be, you know, attenuated in some way that that we can get beyond that old, these old, these old dichotomies these old patterns, and then begin to really crap move into something live into something bigger and more inclusive and less, less hostile. Thank you for that. That is that that is the sort of pivot challenge of my work. That’s the, that’s the fulcrum point of everything I’m trying to do. And, and Socrates famous said, he who wants to move the world must first move himself. And this is not what I mean by that is this is not something I can propose, sort of third person theoretical. This is deeply also first personal for me. And so, I know that you’ve had that I know that you’ve had that you have a history with the, the contours of religious life, you know. It’s clear that it’s personal. It’s not only that that of course is part of what I meant. I don’t want to lose that, but I also meant that the the reformulation that’s not quite the word that I like the word inventio or reinventio reinventio that I’m undertaking is not one that can take place at just the theoretical level, it requires that Socratic commitment to to and the spin isistic commitment to profound realization and transformation. So, so it’s it’s it’s something I have to undergo not merely propose. All right. Or, or maybe better, I can only authentically propose it in a way that might be effective. If I am also committing myself to undergoing it as radically as I possibly sort of can’t. But I was also, which is again very Socratic various, and that’s very much the case also with Spinoza Spinoza was right, he was in depth, he was, he was undergoing the sapiential self transcendence into the blessed life, and he was trying to convey that as much as say that to people. So that’s, that’s what I meant. And I do, and I do. I do think that’s important because I think the movement that that inventio is exactly what is needed in order to get into that place where, yeah, that combative relationship between science and religion has been alleviated, or at least a mediated to some significant degree. I do, I, what I, what I, what I hope to do. There’s sort of two things that are happening. One is, and I don’t know how much I can separate them I’m sorry, I’m taking a while on this rich but it’s a hard question and I want to answer it carefully. One is, and I know this happens because many people say it to me and it happens. Insofar as I am trying to craft like Spinoza, a new conceptual vocabulary a new, new theoretical grammar, and a new practice of ritual ecology of practices. I’m trying to do that. I’m affording many people to do and I mean this word the way token means it to recover their religion which I think really means to get back to right relationship with religio and with reality. And that’s happening. And so, it’s a, it’s allowing people to, who have not had a religious upbringing or who have rejected it for powerful reasons like trauma abuse, etc. And I’m finding a way in which they can come to a non auto didactic, they can come to a shared and shareable kind of spirituality we need a better word that’s an actual age word and we need a better word. And those two are actually those two movements are actually. And this is not something I in any way for saw or plan. It’s something I’m realizing as it’s occurring, and I hope I’m realizing it accurately. And I think that these two groups find that they can talk to each other quite readily. They don’t come to an agreement, but the people who are doing this sort of recovery of the depths of the legacy of the actual age of recovery of religion. And the people who are engaging in the inventio of religion, as nuns actually find that, not just through my work my work and Jonathan’s work and other people’s work, Jonathan pageau and other that they can talk to each other in a really mutually transformative mutually edifying manner. They don’t necessarily come to join each other’s organizations, Paul Van der Kley has this wonderful, wonderful metaphor of the estuary, where the saltwater and the freshwater myth. And as you know estuaries are profound places for evolutionary change, because of the volatility, the volatility, how they’re also incredibly peaceful places for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I think that’s an apt metaphor for how I see this, how I see my work, and the work of all of these people in this little corner of the internet, which you which you now belong to is. That’s how I see it’s addressing that issue. I don’t know where it’s going to go. I do. There is a tremendous, I am really disappointed I wasn’t able to go to the emerge conference in Austin because I got trapped in New Brunswick. But there is this this palpable sense of something is emerging right now, and it’s growing in momentum and it’s growing in depth. And so I can’t, I can’t give you sort of a clear account that sort of renders a complete intelligibility. That’s the answer to your question I can point to the sort of two movements, and the relationship they have to each other, and they’re somehow together riding this wave of emergence. That’s the best answer I can give. Okay. Well, thank you for that. It’s a good it’s a good update, and a good reminder of where we where we are. I’d like to, there’s a couple things. First of all, in our last conversation, we, you know, I kept asking you the question like why are you talking to me. And you are very generous in explaining why and clear. And I, but I also I think I want to take just a quick opportunity to this to also cover why I’m interested in talking to you. Okay, and I was the first thing I said to you actually in our first conversation I talked about how your, your depth of inquiry, and your, you know, just your, your, your, your, your, your incredible capacity to learn, you know, to investigate and to research in a scholarly way. And I don’t mean this in a, in a, in so much as a complimentary way as a way as a functional way. You’ve got this incredible depth of in propositional and, you know, intellectual knowledge that’s based on your investigation, plus you are allowing yourself to a participant observer and in a very diverse community of people. I think those two things aren’t just by accident, I think it’s the one that actually gives permission and enables and the the the ladder so this is why I want to talk to you because I think that your, the confidence that you’ve got in your groundedness in the literature and in the scholarship and in the historical, you know, story, gives you a kind of a power a strength, a something to stand on that’s pretty solid, which allows you to then consider things that may be further afield, that may be more esoteric may be more ethereal and out there. And in light of that, I think, and in light of what you just said about the community and these two communities coming together to have this dialogue. I’d like to propose a kind of free radical into that community which is nature itself, which is this thing that spinosa, you know referred to and could feel and could embody and bring that directly to the conversations that are happening out there in a way that’s I think we need to elevate and, you know, really get more sophisticated in how we do that. Because it’s not just nature as in, you know, the natural world but nature, as in reality, as in the universe, as in what science has been able to decipher what science has been able to show us about how it works. And because if you do that and if you do that in a very thoughtful, careful, rigorous way, you realize that the imaginal and the imaginary as well, are, are integral that you know that they are not separate from this, this overall endeavor, and, and somewhere in there somewhere in this sort of courageous opening to the natural world as something greater than what we currently perceive it as somewhere within there is this opening and and and there. This is where the breakthrough is the breakthrough that’s yet to happen that, and it’s a breakthrough that can, you know dissolve and and and deconstruct all these patterns of, of, of, of conflict because there’s this, there’s this immensely unifying aspect to it. I’m not sure if this is making any sense or not but I I’m sure it makes sense you’re being in fact eloquent so keep going. Well I just, I want to figure out ways to do this seriously, not just as a sort of hobby or as a commitment to an ideology, but because it is essential for us, it is essential for us in lives, and it’s essential in for us to persist. You know, that there’s no guarantee that our species and our form and our who we are will continue, but we need to do everything that we can if we, if we love ourselves to try and do that. You know, so it’s not just an exercise in philosophy or ethical examination or even like you know some, you know, even though it doesn’t necessarily it’s not just a hedonistic thing either even though there is great pleasure to be found this is the sort of this is this is the sort of saving grace of it all is that there is this incredible source of pleasure in, in it, but, but that we need to do this in order to get through this bottleneck, we need to. And, you know, again, as always, this isn’t a utopianist vision, it’s, it’s a pragmatic vision. And so, that’s what I want to sort of interject into this, into this, that, that the earth. The daily nature, the nature that we encounter on a daily basis here on this planet needs a seat at that table. Right and in ways that can be accessible to us, and that can be integrated into us in an intimate way, not just a universal out there way but in a very deep in here way that obliterate that obliterates that sort of that dichotomy between in and out. I want to explore, you know how we can do that in a way that is just that I can hear in conversations that I’m not hearing now. So, I think the imagery of the seat at the table is very profound and important so let’s not lose that. What I can, let’s start, maybe bottom up, because I’m in conversation and trying to do genuine community building with other people around this, and many of these communities are trying to find a way to give nature a seat at the table, or how I put it, they’re trying to allow nature to speak in the process. I’ll give you two examples and I’m not claiming that these are exhaustive they’re meant to be exemplary. So part of Rafe Kelly’s Evolve Move Play is you go out and do parkour in nature, you are literally conforming yourself dynamically to the dynamic patterns of the environment. And that is an, that is an irremovable part of his ecology because that is, that is the, and then he also does sit sitting where you’re sitting and you’re opening up and letting right so he is, he’s got practices that give nature, a voice. And Roy does this very interesting thing where she has people work with horses, as opposed to other human beings and to try and enter into dialogical relationship with non humans in order to give that side of things, a voice, and she claims and, and I believe her because I know her she’s not a person given to woo, or to, or to self congratulation. She says, a lot of the most transformative things actually happen in the communing communication between humans and horse that it right that’s irremovable that you can’t capture it by just being between human beings. So, and there are other examples I just pulling those out as way and I think this is an important point, and we need to foreground it and explicate it and then reflect upon it, because it is definitely something that I have been neglectful of in the practices. I used to be more responsible to it. But, I want to thank you for bringing this up because it now it’s just making this crystallize in my mind. Right, this, this giving nature a seat at the table by giving it an actual voice within the transformative process. And there are, there’s two examples there are others of people who have figured out a way in which an ecology of practice includes giving voice to nature in a profound way. I would now want to make a proposal, and I’m making it for the first time. I think, because we’re talking a lot about this, about what I’ve been calling the design features of an ecology of practice. I think this should be designed, and I’ve been talking about you know you need opponent processing and layering and virtual engineering and all this stuff and I think that’s all right. But I now think a design feature should be, you know, aligning the four kinds of knowing, but I think a design feature should be every ecology of practice should in some important way, give voice to nature within the ecology of practices. I think this is just, I obviously it’s an idea you have but it’s just come clear to me right now and I think that I guess that that is, I want to thank you. And here’s the thing, john I think and this I think this will appeal to you that these things these practices that you mentioned between me rave, and also beneath it, they make perfect sense to me that both of those, both of those activities both of those practices will deeply help you embody, especially, you know, whether it’s through the grit of the trail and or the grip on the root was you’re swinging from it or whatever it is, you know that is really powerful way to feel as, as is with, you know, with something like a horse I mean, could you could you pick, you know, you couldn’t pick a better animal with his huge eyes that has this way of inviting you in and it’s like really suspicious of us and sent asks us and demands us to be present with it in order to, you know, so those things are, yeah, they’re beautiful examples of the of the phenomenology of of it. And here’s the thing I think you might appreciate is that how can we ground that phenomenology in that mythos. That’s the question is like, and there is one there is one and it’s, and it’s a rich conceptual. It’s a rich conceptual matrix of knowledge that we have that actually gives that validates those experiences beyond just being, you know, hairy fairy spiritual experiences actually know these are these are grounded these are empirical grounded in the best scientific knowledge. And these are ways of experiencing like the true depths or, you know, start to plumb the depths of nature the sacredness of nature. They’re not just things that we conjure, but these are callings like this is like nature, this is how Nate this is what intelligibility is for. And so it’s for us to be able to access these this this what it seems appears to be infinite source of creativity and wisdom and love. It’s in there, so can we can we formalize it within the mythos from which the credo then can spring. Yeah, but I first want to, I just want to again, you there’s gems coming out here so when you said, you know, it’s a calling, Yaden has this work this recent anthology the sense of being called. Right. And this is one of the thing that distinguishes a ritual from just a pretense. Right, because the serious play, you’re being called by something other than yourself. And this is the work I’m doing on ritual right now. Right, I would call the parkour, and the interaction with a horse ritual precisely because it’s the imaginal that affords a calling from something and a calling from something that has a something like a justified ontological status and claim upon us. Like you said it’s not just a conjuring, like, we do the ritual and we’re feeling called, but we also have this, like this ontology that says, ah but there is something really they’re doing the calling. And I agree with that. For me, I’m trying, I mean so, and this is happening right now. Okay, so I was talking to Cheryl to see you and Nathan Vanderpool, they’re doing the thing in Berlin, where they’ve got artists together, they, they’ve all committed to the five precepts, and they are They’re trying to engage in ritual, that lead ritual and imaginal they’re trying to gauge into the inventive of ritual art that is trying to be at exactly this nexus point. And they’re doing it community tasks they’re living to get there talking to me they want me to be sort of the advisor I don’t know how I’m getting these positions they’re weird. But right under they want me to be sort of makes perfect sense. They want me to be the advisor. Thank you. They want me to be the advisor to that and they’re also going and in return they’re going to allow me to do be sort of the ethnographic observer of it. So they are, you know, this community tasks ritual imaginal art, they’re trying to make the mythos, but that’s even the wrong word. That’s why I want to use the word inventio, they’re trying to discover make that’s what inventio means they’re trying inventio the mythos. Okay, before we get too far. I just want to circle back for one second into when I said, conjuring, I didn’t mean to use the adjective just because I don’t think it’s just I think conjuring is actually a very powerful and real effects it’s a natural phenomena so I don’t want to dismiss the conjuring is like something that should be dismissed it’s actually it’s you know I usually use the first fricatina make it and I mean, there’s, there’s a, there is a reciprocal way to do conjuring that is very real and very can be very expensive. That’s, that’s what I properly mean by the imaginal dimension of the yes. Right. What I mean by. Right. And so. And when I say mythos, what I’m referring to is that there is this body of knowledge that we can plumb, and every insight in this scientific body of knowledge, I’m a geologist, you know, and a biologist and ecologist. But when I look at the geologic record, you know, what springs out at me is our, the stories of our becoming, you know, this is our story these aren’t just trial bites on the bottom of the issue. There are things happening down there that that implicate the earth and the, and the physicality of the earth the salt that the fact that salt water is an electrolyte the fact that gravity is a certain strength that on this size, all these things conspire to like to make us to for us. That is our story and it goes all the way back through the history of the earth and all the way back to the beginning of the cosmos if you want, if you choose to. And so, when I say mythos that’s what I mean. And so, I guess what I’m saying is, it’s the one part that I see somewhat absent from this inventio movement that you’re talking about is this is the calling in of knowledge, scientific knowledge to, you know, to help us tell these, this, this story, and I just think it’s an essential part because it amplifies the phenomenology in a way that’s hard to articulate. It’s hard to say, I think that’s a legitimate criticism in the constructive sense of that word. Part of it is ignorance on my part the science I do is cognitive science, I do not have the deep training in. I have kind of an amateur in the sense of the lover, but my son is got formally trained in biology and we do a lot I did philosophy and biology. And so I’ve got some of a bit of biology but I don’t, I don’t. I mean, but there is the natural world, the natural world to it this isn’t this isn’t necessarily an, you know, pedagogical process it’s actually. It’s an experiential process that the world is constantly showing sending us these signals and telling us these things, and, and, and queuing us to like to know more to know close to know more deeply. And so, and that goes towards the, the, the, the sort of realization I had a few minutes ago about practices that are attuning us so that we become properly receptive to those signals again. So but I hear you saying, good, and you were very, those are very good practices, but there needs to be something that gathers the signals together into and make sense of them together, a framework and you think that the scientific framework is already can do that for us. Actually I think I actually I tend toward the big history framework which is narrative in it, I don’t, you know, I guess, again, I’m a little hesitant to use big history for various reasons, but the deep history the, the cosmic history, the natural history is a story. And, and that’s more what I think it’s, when I say body of knowledge I don’t mean just this body of facts, I mean, it is a coherent continuum of evolution that we can. It’s a story to be told as a story to behold it’s a story to be. And so, yeah. I’ll show you how I’ve approached it but also the wariness I have around that. So I’ve approached it with you know basically to the work of Alicia Urero, and her idea that narrative puts us in, it actually organizes our cognition, so that we’re capable of picking up on the dynamical patterns, which you, you know, we can actually pick up on the deep history to your, your things. And so for me, I, I, I, I give voice to that and I have, and I will come back to it again and again and again, but I have, but I have two things that concern me. One is. One of the things that’s talked about in ritual. The ritual language, sorry the ritual studies, people like Jennings and Shubrack and Williams and Boyd and right is they they say they want a non reductive account of ritual. And what do they mean by that so they say, we suffer in a Protestant rain shadow. This is not. I’m not trying to dis Protestantism, but one of the things Protestantism did is it put word above sacrament. The word was more important the text was more important than the sacrament. And so we what we’ve tended to do is to see ritual as the enactment of a text. And so it’s a demonstration or a pedagogical thing but it right and many people and I agree with them are saying no no no ritual is not right just the enactment of text, it is sacrament independent of word, it has a sacramental, it is a sacramental process. And so the problem I have right is there’s a tendency to, to, to absolute ties narrative, especially within the actual age legacy religions. Gotcha. Right. And then that also often bleeds into something that I’m very wary of, which is sort of a, which I think post modernism has been trying to criticize, which is sort of a theological view of nature. Right. And those two things I’m very wary of because for me, that we, they are actually missing central things that were disclosed by the scientific revolution so that’s like like I want to acknowledge that narrative has to keep wanting to say two things narrative is necessary it’s indispensable it’s a net. It’s a powerful tool but precisely because of that, it is capable of becoming an idol. Totally understood. Totally understood. Now, let me see if I can’t add a facet to consider, which is, so we talk about, so I think we would agree that narrative storytelling this capacity for storytelling of organizing and structuring our experiences in, in some kind of linear fashion that gives them structure gives them durability so that we can carry them in memory or whatever they were carried that that that narrative has become this thing that we depend on. In fact, we make meaning of it. It’s just a central it’s so central that we can’t see it. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s become invisible to us and we and as such we become somewhat entrapped by it we become enslaved to narratives, until we’re given until we become aware of narratives and then at which point we can free ourselves, or, or at least begin to re edit re author new stories, by which to live. So, narrative is huge. And I think, you know, I think that’s the story sapiens makes the claim, you know that that it is this capacity for storytelling for holding fictions and believing in living them as if they were true is what makes us so successful. Yeah, and so dominant. Okay, but the question is, where did we get that capacity, literally like where did the capacity for storytelling as an intellectual as an embodied process come from. I talk about this thing called, I teach this thing called earthling theory which is basically this account of human history. When you know this diaspora out of Africa before we left, we, we, we, when modern humans, it’s a complicated story but when we left the African continent, you know we had already had this long and sustained relationship with many of the habitats of the African continent. And one of the things that we had developed was this capacity to create stone tool. And there’s this whole industry of different stone tools old one, as well as and Mr. And, and you can see the evolution of how these things got more and more sophisticated. And, but what you see in the earliest the older one you know these 3.5 million year old stone tools which are very crude is a hominid or an australopithecine taking a stone tool and fashioning it in such a way that it would be more effective at say, you know tearing the fiber off of a nutcase, so that we could get to the meat of the nuts and feed our family. But the point is this that when when when when the the australopithecine does that when they take a stone and and and hit it with another stone and fashion the tool. They’re seeing a sequence of causal events they’re seeing the past and the present and the future in this linear sort of way. And they’re using that capacity to to thrive. And so, it comes from the rock as much as it comes from the from the hominid, it’s the, it’s the rock that’s that’s that’s impinging on the on the hominid as much as the hominid is impinging on the rock. And so it’s this. But what we’re seeing is the emergence of story, we’re seeing that we’re seeing a very primitive form of that storytelling capacity in the stone tools. And so what we fail to recognize is that it’s not just coming from the hominid it’s coming from the earth. This is a rock it’s a piece of earth that’s teaching us how to tell stories. And this is the thing that’s missing. I forget why I’m on this track but but because of your suspicion or your sort of your caution around narrative which is well founded. But the point is that we don’t ever ask well where did we get this capacity, and it was, it’s a gift from the earth and I can’t fill out the details of this, it, every step of the way as we watch these stone tools evolve they get more and more. Well, the next phase of stone tools actually takes on this incredibly symmetrical beautiful faceted surface, and it has, it’s perfectly designed for it to be actually it’s not perfectly held, it’s not perfectly designed it’s actually designed with a sharp edge around it. Because what we’re seeing is this, whoever made it, the habilis or whoever it was, they made it less functional as a tool. In order to make it more aesthetically appealing so it’s like we see, we see this like we see this gradual or abrupt sophistication and we see the earth, constantly sort of egging and nudging us into more and more sophisticated and and by the time you get, you know the modern humans leaving Africa. We’re leaving with this highly developed sense of storytelling and aesthetic value and even the capacity for metaphor which is all, all recorded in the stone tools. And what’s lost in this is that art, which is a further, you know when you get to, to, you know, like, Western Europe where the cave are, you know, they just see this incredibly beautiful and abstract parietal art on cave walls. And so, I think there’s this sense that that was the earth. That is us expressing the earth’s gifts, the endowment of the earth. And so, I guess, I’m offering this as a way of saying that, yes, narrative can be abused, but I think it’s, it’s more inclined to be abused when we don’t know where it comes from. When we don’t have this grounding narrative that grounds us in the process of the earth, then, then we’d be more inclined to use this power for inhumane things for in for, you know, to further separate and this is what we see happening we see this capacity for really And so, I think that’s the way that we see this abstract expression being, being appropriated to serve an ideology, one ideology or another, which is, you know, which is now, you know, and this is our inheritance we’ve inherited that. And I think we’re in a moment where we need to recover, remember those that earlier form of art, which is one that was deeply, you know, deeply connected to our experience of the habitats of this earth. Sorry if this has gone way off track. I think it’s instrumental. I want to try I want to try and do something convergent with it, not a novel turn it into convergence. And one of the one of the central conceptual metaphors for narrative is journey. We talked about, you know, the beginning and the middle and the end and we move through a story and we start here and we end up there. We use the journey. And I think, I think it’s another important source of narrative, and it even better, I think, gives voice to the earth is is tracking. So when you’re, so when you’re tracking an animal, who are following a course, and you’re reading signs, but like if you watch, especially, like I’ve seen the song film of the song hunting, and they will stop and if they lose sight of the animal, they will, they will take they will They will become the antelope. So that they, they, because it becomes the antelope and they go the antelope went that way because as they become the antelope, so they’re taking on characters, they’re moving, it’s imaginal, it’s inherently fictional but in the sense that’s also factual, right, it’s imaginal and conspicuous means to make and so does fact, right. And so they are right, they are moving on a winding journey. And right, it that has a beginning, a middle of problem solving. It has an end to it, they are taking on characters, and they’re right and they’re doing all of this. And what they’re doing is they’re there. That’s, as you said, the earth is it is speaking to them, it is signing to them, it is giving them significance, the animal is speaking to them as they are enacting it. And that for me is proto narrative and why I say that is because, right, that that tracking ability it seems, you know, that as we have exacted that in order to track through conceptual space, our navigate, I’m proposing to you that our navigational and our narrative abilities are are co evolving, and then we actually exact those into how we move through conceptual space, because what narrative science gives us causal principles narrative how allows us to track causal pathways. And that’s something very different from what science does right and that that so that’s why you know you don’t get a scientific answer to why did Napoleon. That’s okay because to do good science you’ve kind of kind of constraint it in that sense and that’s like, that’s just a trade off that I think good scientists are willing to make exactly is and that’s why things like Darwin’s theory of evolution are so important, because we move between the nomological structure of things like physics, and the narrative structures that we find in history, because you have there’s a historical dimension that’s built into that very, which is why I think the, which is why I but but so limited though like the Darwin’s are initial conceptions or our initial interpretations of what that meant or what it could mean are so limited. And it’s in it. I was actually about to say what this is why the philosophy of biology I think is the most important philosophy of science right now, because precisely trying to explicate and correct our understanding of that, which like my colleague, you have to Dennis Walsh is doing in his work. I don’t I don’t I don’t, I’m not dismissing the the the stool, the tool making as, but I’m saying, but notice how it’s going to be bound up with it but the tracking has so much proto narrative. Well, but but the capacity to even do that though had to had to have a precursor. And, you know, and again it’s this constant sort of nudging calling impinging on upon what we’re doing. It’s speaking to us all the time. And we’ve just what we’ve just so lost that and and part of and I don’t want to go into grievance mode here but part of the conversations that I hear out that they don’t really take any of this into account they say, I deduced that this is the nature of reality, and everything I see is going to is going to. We need to step. We need to just get disrupted from that. Yes. Anyway, we don’t need to go there but yeah I see what you’re saying is like a whole really rich dimension of this. This story, by the way, this story goes further back it goes further back into it into, you know, more simple organisms. Oh yeah. Did you see the conversation I had with Michael Levin. No, I want to see that you got to see that. All right, good. Okay, well, you just send me the link to the meaning code Michael Levin we’re going to have another conversation. Amazing, like the, the key yeah taking, taking, you know, intelligence down to the depths of the cells. Well, even further to like and so this is where I don’t actually been falling like just started to think listen to this Douglas Hoffman who’s talking about. I would not be able to do it justice but how consciousness is fundamental, and that once you once you do that once you adopt a sort of an evolutionary, an evolutionary approach plus define a probability space you realize that space, time is really just a mess space time is a construct construct. And what’s actually primary is consciousness which my point in saying that is that I think this intelligence that we call consciousness or cognition or whatever you want to call it actually isn’t isn’t just biological, it’s it’s it’s part of a physical universe it’s part of Levin goes further down he goes deeper down. Oh, right, I won’t get into it I have very deep criticisms of Hoffman I think he’s making okay. That’s really exactly the wrong way around. Yeah, he’s redoing conch and I think that’s a mistake I think we should, we should properly try and let go of conch. Can you give me the gist of it so I can try it out. The idea that consciousness. So, how does he know that consciousness exists. Well, okay. What con does is he gives a privileged epistemic unjustified relationship to conscious, so I know my quality directly. Why, how do you have quality about your quality. Well no, well then why do you need this intervening thing like this is part of a long philosophical of this whole framework that you know start that we know and Spinoza was actually part of the trying critique it. And you know and you get the Heideggerian critique and the Vic and Stinney and critique and then the postmodern critique, you can’t just sort of ignore all of that and say let’s go back and say, right, it’s, it’s all a conti and that’s constu that you know the space and time are just constructs that’s that’s explicitly what he argues for in the critique of pure reason. And the problem you have with that is you what you end up doing is you end up privileging some epistemic relation without justification. For example, you, I’m going to make use of all these evolutionary arguments. So evolution is real. How is that, how do you know that out there there’s evolution but you don’t know right, like you like you, you have to. Do you understand what I’m trying to say, like, when you try to make everything a property of, I mean, Bernardo and I had a long arguments about this, you get into some very problematic places about it and I’m worried. I have a lot of arguments with Bernardo Bernardo is very, very consistent in challenging a subjective soul of sips thick thing. Like my question to Hoffman would be, and how do you know there’s not only just your consciousness. If it’s all a construct. How do you know that there’s any other minds. I’m not sure he’s saying that consciousness is the construct he’s saying that the space time. I’m not saying that I’m saying consciousness is the constructor. How do you know there’s only one, not only one. How do I know there’s not only one what consciousness. Yeah, constructor. As far as I can tell all I got from you is space and time and behavior. And if they’re not real, then how are you real to me. I mean, we may be getting beyond my pay grade, but, well, that’s it. So, we don’t have to resolve but but but but I would say I would just suggest one thing you said that we can’t ignore, we can’t ignore the lineage of thought that. What if we did, like, my question would be what if we did ignore that for a moment and say, and just look at what we have recorded in the fossil record or in the, you know, in the astronomical record like look, instead of thinking about how later versions of cognition, try to interpret reality. Let’s let’s temporarily suspend all of that let’s temporarily ignore that and consider the purely naturalistic evolution of energy informed by, you know, informed energy, let’s, let’s consider that and then see where consciousness shows up and how it shows up later on down the evolutionary path. So, what I would say to you there is science never takes place in a conceptual vacuum. Sure, sure. So, okay. And there’s a there’s a worldview there’s a framework there’s, you know, even the idea that you know, the presupposition that mathematical measurement is the way absolutely. I actually agree, like, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m very, very, very critical science actually, and, and, and what we what we ask it or expect it to be able to do. So, I’m not arguing that the scientific worldview, I’m talking about the, the coherent narrative that has that has dropped it’s you know that we have been able to discern, which of course is not complete its course it’s not. Yeah, it’s impossible that it would be complete. In fact, so, I agree with you. Okay, so let’s say we’re in agreement, then I would say, I think you, I would propose to you or ask you to consider that you might be in a deep disagreement with Hoffman at that level. Perhaps, but what I am also saying is that so many of the things that he says and maybe this is the lure of it is that it makes sense to the phenomenology that I that I that I happen to hold that I happen to, you know, happen upon that. But when I say consciousness, especially in these pre sort of sophisticated forms of our particular. Yeah, our particular our particular biology is capable of that conscious, I’m not projecting this form of consciousness onto the cosmos. It’s something much different it’s not different but it’s on a continuum anyway, but it wouldn’t look at it and say well that’s consciousness, but I would say it’s a precursor to consciousness. And, yes, and I think that’s right. But you see, you are it throughout what I’ve heard you say, you’re ultimately thinking that right there that there’s a reality, you’re being a realist about these things, he also, he, at least I’ve heard him say it in multiple places, thinks that your phenomenology is actually a simulation. It’s not a, it’s not disclosing reality to you. It’s actually showing you that you that you’re in a simulation, which is very problematic, because I think like you that there’s a real story about a real universe. There is but I don’t think it’s the whole story obviously I, and I know you would agree with that too. But, but, but, but, but, but, but. Okay, so here maybe is the pivot point. If partial knowledge doesn’t count as real knowledge, we are deeply screwed. Because you face me knows paradox, you know as paradoxes goes like this. Right. If I know it, I don’t need to learn it. And if I don’t know it, I can’t possibly recognize it. And the way out, and the way everybody comes back to is partial knowledge, I have partial knowledge that guides me. And so partial knowledge has to be real knowledge and a parcel knowledge is falsity or illusion or simulation, you are trapped in And that’s where I mean where you’re trapped inside your head in a profound way. Okay, I, I, I don’t feel trapped inside my head so I must be okay with partial knowledge. In fact, I think it’s the fact that it is partial is the kind of clue that we are continuous with it because I can never hold it all and or whatever that other part is that you know is is the thing that binds us to it. Something like that. So, I agree. And I think that’s the, I think that is the deep platonic answer. That’s why it’s by Leah Sophia, we are lovers of wisdom, because we only partial knowledge, but that partial knowledge has real capacity to call us further and further. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. And that’s, and that’s, and it’s just by accident that’s that’s a deeply pleasurable experience. I doubt it. I think we’re evolved for that pleasure. I feel that. So, this has to be useful, like this, you know, wherever we land on Hoffman or whatever you wherever there’s something deeply unifying deeply transformative about this way of being in the world, and I, I, I see nature, singing this every day like yes, everything I encounter is saying is sort of saying yes you’re right rich. Yes. Okay. And that has a profound effect on the way that I live and the way that I just, just my attitude toward the world. And so, it’s got to be useful we’ve got to figure out a way to like, again, bring it to the table, bring. Yeah, no, I could be wrong but it feels like my, my, my, my investigation my exploration of the natural world has somehow. Given access to the intelligence that creates the intelligence that’s that’s there that’s been unfolding. That’s the nose’s claim I don’t find it, I don’t find it an absurd claim. I don’t think I don’t find it absurd but I but I think everything we’ve learned since Finoza is is is showing us saying the same thing it’s, and somehow we’re off contemplating some, you know, some chapter of the Bible or some credo that’s like, didn’t know any of this stuff. And so I guess I’m just again, sorry to harp on it but I just think that there’s something really valuable in this in this exploration in this relationship to nature that can that can empower us to I think you’re right and I do think along. I think like I said I think it should be designed feature. And I want to extend it a little bit in recognition of what you, what you’ve been arguing for very well by the way. First of all, and so I guess we’re running out of time here but I just did want to mention because you mentioned the artists, and I’m actually deeply involved with artists. We have a whole handful of artists as a cohort that sort of evolved. And these are, these are people that they’re very sensitive to the natural world they have, they already have a very this abiding sort of understanding and relationship with nature, and we are And I think you’re referring in many like the ways you say about communitas and and fellowship and apprenticeship and all that we are, we’re, we’re doing deep immersions into nature, letting ourselves be open to what it has to teach us or, you know, and then bringing that to the art. But it has, it’s got to be, and this is where kind of my research comes in, there has to be this motivated use element to it where you spend time in the natural world in this open state, it gets into you. And then you transport it somewhere else which is sort of the, the, the, the confirmation that it’s in you, and then you bring it to the art and then the art brings it to the culture. That’s exactly what I was going to say, I was going to say now I wanted to say, I wanted to add to my initial proposal the design feature should have practices in which nature speaks to us like parkour and the horses, but we also need an artistic. And an intellectual, I think, and, and intellectual, the intellectual is going to happen in any ecology of practices I’m not worried about that as a design feature. I’m not worried about things that are live right now. I’m worried about things that I, for example, have not thought to make explicit as design features for an ecology of practice. One is there should be ones in which nature speaks to us, and then others should be one like artistic ones in which we are doing exactly like you said, we are, we are making the voice of nature transposable into other domains. And so with the parkour, the problem, and I’m doing this for a reason with the parkour and the horse is, it’s, it’s, it’s very much in that situation. Right, you can’t transpose that to the boardroom. But if you’re doing those things and then you have artists that figure out how to transpose the voice of nature to the boardroom, then you’ve got to my mind, much more viable ecology of practices that’s what I wanted to agree and I’m with you 100% of doing that with, you know, with artists. I would just want to make the plug for the intellectual part again though because it’s, it’s in the details, it’s in the, it’s in the layout of those concepts those that propositional knowledge holds within it. You have insight into the continuity of everything and without that, you’ve just got a body of knowledge, whereas if you if you if you if you have enough knowledge about. There’s a reason we talk about trilobites is a reason we talked about the cosmic microwaves background radiation and the fossil lipid bilayer, which is all sort of science, but the point is that that science makes it inescapable that everything is on a continual, I agree. What I meant when I sort of put aside the intellectual I take it as a fundamental almost meta design principle that we have to be bridging between the scientific and the spiritual. And that’s properly the role. You take that that’s hard work and you take that you know that’s your work you you you find great joy in that work. Most don’t, or some don’t, I should say. Right, but we need every ecology of practice to have some people who take joy in it. But that way is what I’m proposing to you or absolutely auto it’ll bifurcate again because there is so much, there is so much magnetic pull to bifurcate these things and pull them apart again. That’s right and that’s right because we have this deeply Cartesian contian cultural inheritance. Yes, yes, very much. Well, just keep chipping away at it and telling you, once nature gets once nature starts to speak, it’s a it’s a it is a reciprocal opening process. And it and I, the hardest though the hardest reciprocal process to find an off ramp for I think is the, the current conversations around, you know, religious experience because they’re, they’re very good at policing their borders, it seems to me, and I don’t know how to make inroads but I’m trying, I want to I want to have conversations with, you know, with devout people in a way that, you know, that that would be helpful. That, you know, that we can, we can come to deeper understanding. Right. And so I need to, and I’m trying to engage in it and I’m trying to make non theism, a recognized position distinct from pantheism, because whenever you try and talk about Spinoza, you usually get you usually into pantheism and then that is dismissed as being inadequate account and blah blah blah blah blah blah. And instead of always running that argument. I have tried to make a case that we actually have a long history of very well developed tradition that is running through, although typically not foregrounded but running through the actual legacy religions of non theism. And that is what naturalistic non theism, right, Neil platonic naturalistic non theism is exactly what I’m trying to propose as a place in which we can have the courtyard of genuine and the logos. Agreed and and we find ourselves as john russon would say, at the beginning of that. Yes, yes, yes we are we are children, infants. And that’s where shelling backs work on, you know, the fact that the most plausible hypothesis about us is that we’re very spiritually immature, but not that we finished our spiritual maturation and we have now the conclusive answers that we’re choosing between. Yeah, but but but but but that but that assertion that we are actually spiritually mature is really tough not to crack I think this is a big frustration is one frustration is perhaps it’s not even the most important frustration, given, you know, given the ecological crisis but it’s one that I think clearly places places this kind of understanding out of reach for some for many. Yes, I think I’m getting it right. I hope I am is really good. I think his religion after science is one of those thin beautiful books. Yeah, you keep mentioning that to me. We should wrap it up for today I think we will never be done talking. And that’s a really good thing because I like being in relationship with you. But as always I want to give you, you know, a final sort of brief word before we shut things down. I really, you know, I think I think I can’t think of anything off the top of my head I just, I just hope we can keep up the conversation, make. We need more breakthroughs. I firmly believe that this thing that we’re talking about even though we may be, I may be clumsily groping around in here. And I think the only thing that’s clear in here is the future. Or there isn’t one, you know, it’s like we just were on. We’ve gotten off the rails, and, and we need to be very careful thoughtful compassionate generous with each other and you are by the way you know like. You know we’re going to start to see cracks, and the light will start to shine through and we should just, we should just follow that word work leads us. Well, I think we did that today I think you know, for me at least, right, the insights around some crucial design features for any ecology of practice. I think that’s real gold that we mind today, and I want to thank you for that very much. Thank you, john, appreciate it.