https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=e2G9nuMc0RE
Welcome everyone to the fifth episode of Transcendent Naturalism, which is on the Cognitive Science Show. I’m here, of course, with Greg Enriquez, who has been my constant partner with us. Some of you will recognize from the channel Rick Langdell, who’s been here before, and we are welcoming Rita Leduc here, and I’m now going to turn things over to Greg. What we’re going to be doing from now on in the series is having people interact with the framework that Greg and I built for Transcendent Naturalism. So take it away, Greg. Absolutely. So I’m really excited. We have our then first guests, Rich and Rita. You guys are our first guests here, and I think it’s very apropos. And we’re going to be talking about Rich’s journey into OIKA and what that means and a kind of ecological intelligence that’s going to afford some spiritual awakening. So why I thought, and John and I thought that this would be really good, so let’s just summarize what the core argument is that we’ve made. So John laid the groundwork sort of for the philosophical argument for a leveling up view of nature, of evolution, emergence, and emanation across a particular kind of stack that also needed to be gripped, then cognitively, by a kind of smaller top-down, bottom-up processes of possibility. And ultimately, that model also sets the case for delineating things like what’s sacred and ultimately a strong transcendence, where the argument fundamentally is that if we afford ourselves a collective awakening to understand the world cognitively, it’s going to open up affordances and potentials and possibilities, and that’s the right kind of metaphysical religion that’s not a religion transcendent natural worldview for the time. So that’s what we’ve sort of laid up to this point. Now when we go to Rich and Rita, what we have with them is an embodiment, I think, of a lot of what it is that we’re doing both theoretically and enacting in the world. I would like to suggest that this transcendent naturalism frame is something that bridges the science and humanities in a much more conciliant way, speaks to ways where we can bridge science and spirituality, and it points to a deep natural sort of intelligence to seek resonance with in terms of our sort of cognitive, natural structures and the gripping function. And so what Rich and Rita have been doing is they have been building both a philosophy and practices and art in relationship to this, and this is what we’ll get to explore in these next two episodes. And I think it’s a really, will be demonstrably to see the connections will become apparent as we dialogue with them. So Rich, Rita, wonderful to have you here, and I look forward to diving in and seeing what OIKA and art bring to this discussion of transcendent naturalism. It’s great to be here. It’s been too long. It’s great to see you both. I’m excited to explore this, and I really think the two-part quality of it will be great because it will give us a chance to really dive deep into ecological intelligence and what we’re calling OIKA, and then later be able to do justice to the way that we’re trying to create a culture or steal the culture, whatever you want to call it, with those insights. And I hope you don’t mind if I just suggest that we also frame this. I mean, I don’t want to get too heavy, but I just think that this idea that we are in a chaotic moment is incredibly important. And I think that what we’re doing here is a serious attempt to make a difference, to kind of prepare for what everything inside of me is saying, that we are in for a really disruptive decade or two. And I think any opportunity to prepare ourselves for that in a deep and transformative way is important. So I don’t want to get too serious. I really like to keep this fun and light. And I think it can be because it is fun and light, but also just to take seriously the challenges ahead and to try and map what we’re going to be talking about onto this future. I always say the future is beautiful if there is one. What do I say? No, I say the future is beautiful or there isn’t one. And so that’s kind of the position I think we’re in, is to really map out what the beautiful part is so that there can be one. Because otherwise, I can’t even imagine what we’re headed for. That makes sense with people, but I just want to frame it as that. Yeah, no, I think that John and I have spoken when we talked about strong transcendence, both in terms of its potential, but then we placed it in sort of the chirotic moment. And certainly in Utah, we’re talking about this fifth joint point, which really does point us at the basic level to the opening of the digital. And of course, with all the LLM AI discussions, we’re really feeling that. And then the question for me then is, well, what is that open relative to the wisdom stack that we’re in? And of course, then that gets you into ecology. That gets you in a relationship with each other, embedded in a relationship with nature and what we are doing. And there is a lot, I think we all agree there’s existential elements here. And I think John has spoken certainly to the existential meaning relation that is central for this moment. And I think transcendent naturalism is very much related to that. And I think your work is very much related. I think what you just said there was that it opens up the ecological dimension. I don’t see that happening by default, actually. I think it’s going to take an attempt to do that explicitly, maybe, and continue to kind of hammer that point home that there is a source of wisdom. There is one. There is, in fact, an ultimate source of wisdom that’s available to all of us. And I would argue that it is nature. And if we need to define that, we can. But I just think that we need to actually do that. We need to enact that in a real way. So thanks for acknowledging that. So where do we want to slice into this pie? It would be good if Rita introduced herself, too. Oh, right. Hi. Hey. Yeah, Rita LaDuke. I’m sort of the doing part of OIKA, or that’s when I enter the scene. I’m a visual artist by kind of trade, I suppose. And my personal practice involves deep sort of place-based work. And then that work that I do tends to trickle up into kind of organizational, institutional, kind of human relational realms as well. So Rich and I found each other sort of in between those realms with the retreat that I run and then my art practice. And so, I don’t know, we started collaborating in 2021, met in 2019, and it’s just kind of been nonstop ever since. So the way that the, I don’t know, the things that I was trying to do really fit the things that Rich is about to talk about. It was really exciting. And so we’re hoping to maybe kind of replicate that in a way with this two-part structure. So as Rich presents everything that he sort of presented to me three years ago, then we’ll be able to share with you all the things that we’ve been doing kind of ever since and even before I showed up too. And one thing I might add to that is that ever since we met, this collaboration has worked. It’s worked in a way, I don’t really collaborate very well, but something about the two things that we bring to this table, you know, her artistry and her deep sensitivity to the world and my ecological worldview somehow created this thing that’s bigger than both of us. And so it’s been real easy to like commit to that bigger thing as a team. And I just want to say that, you know, and I constantly tell you, we’ve got a good thing here. Like, let’s put it first because it’s working and it’s good. And the only reason I mention that is because I think it’s exemplary of what ecological intelligence and what OECA tries to manifest in the world. Sweet. Lovely. Well, do you want to start to share a little bit about what OECA is and we can contextualize that in some of the groundwork that we laid for Transcendent and Naturalist? Sure. Well, OECA, it’s a term that came to me one day, you know, after I’ve been at this kind of work for probably going on three decades now. And it is a word that I had to partially invent. It goes back to the Greek word oikos, which you’ll all know refers to home in the Greek conception. So the way I think of OECA is that fundamentally it is the intelligence of nature, which is a relational intelligence. I’m an ecologist, so I see everything in terms of relationships because that’s what ecology is. It’s the study of relationships. And there’s also a latent kind of mode of being that emerges when one starts to see the world that way through that ecological lens that places one in a much more, I won’t say ambiguous, but decentered way in the world. And when you do that, it’s always seemed that it’s sort of opened up a channel of communication, a channel of some kind of intelligence transfer that happens when you really live the phenomenology of being a relational being. And I see how this is echoing, you know, your confirmation thesis, which is something I really want to get into. So OECA is that. It’s the intelligence of nature. I also say that it’s an intelligence that can be felt and expressed through humans because it’s in us. And this is where big history or cosmic evolution or natural history, whatever you want to call it, which is the story of nature as science has revealed it, it shows how we are integral to this. In fact, we are products of this intelligence. And we are just inextricable from it. And that’s what OECA means. And so it’s also, you know, I hesitate to say that it’s an organization because we’re not really organized, but we are a growing community of people who are sensitive to this kind of relationship and this kind of intelligence and committed to tapping into it is probably the wrong way to say it. It’s more about participating with it. To participate with that intelligence brings basically the intelligence of nature to bear on what we do, what we create, how we interact with each other. And so we’ve kind of created a little microculture based on these principles of deep relationality, deep reciprocity, ontological continuity. These are some of the basic principles of OECA. And then we’ve started to try and legitimately create a culture around that. And again, this is in response to the moment. This is in response to this chaotic moment that we’re in. Yeah, so I guess that explains it, right? I mean, we’ve got all kinds of projects going on that we will talk about next time, but that’s what it is. It’s about enacting all these things. And you know, as I’ve listened to you guys over the past couple of years, so much of what you’re saying is so deeply resonant with what we’re doing, you know, and with the experience of OECA. And so I think that’s why we’re talking, I think, because, you know, we all see something. We see something very powerful. We see something very transformative, something that is wanting our attention and wanting us to take it seriously. And it’s something that’s really beautiful and like awesome to be with. And we want to acknowledge that. You know, stop me here because I’ll keep going. Yeah, no, I mean, I think I’ll make a connection here because to me, what I see in OECA and some of what we’re doing, you know, you mentioned the word participatory. It seems to me that you would state around the natural tone, there’s a fundamental shift we need to make in our participatory identity. What I was noting, or at least I want to throw this out to you, is a fundamental sort of if we’re saying, what are we, I think you can argue that the Enlightenment argued that we’re going to progress off of nature through reason and be above nature and be disconnected from it and utilize propositional knowledge to create methods of insight that enable us to then get some sort of pristine formula. But basically what I want to suggest, and I want to see, John, if you pick this up also in terms of a fundamental shift in our participatory identity with nature relative to at least a lot of the general worldview, I think that modernity, if you want to use that term, sort of embraces. So is that fair, Rich, in terms of like kind of what? Yeah, I mean, the way you laid it out there, it seems like we’re at the end of that, you know, that idea that modernity sort of run its course in some ways. And we’re beginning to realize that those those initial valiant attempts at understanding reality are limited. This is one of the things that I sort of had to come to terms with because I was trained as a scientist. And then as I really got into the philosophy of science, realized that what the philosophy of science was really showing me was just how limited reductionism is and that it’s why basic science is stagnated, is that we just don’t, you know, it’s basically run its course. And so it’s forcing us to come up with new fundamental metaphors for reality. And with that is bound to come a fundamental new metaphor for who we are. And that’s that’s that’s scary, but also exciting. And when you actually come to grips with that, it’s beautiful. It’s amazing. It’s it’s more amazing than we could have imagined in, you know, then then the enlightenment, the first enlightenment thinkers could have imagined. And I think that’s where we are. And I think that’s the sort of circumstances that we are that we are exploring this stuff in. Yeah, I’m really interested in understanding how your work, both of you collectively and individually, has come has converged on some of the deep insights that that my work has arrived upon. I think it’s genuine conciliance. I don’t mean that in a way that sort of just conflates these different lines of inquiry, but we’re about to break through into this new understanding. And everything that we’re all doing here adds a facet to that to that to that world. And I’m really excited to have that breakthrough and to get it right, to be really clear and to really understand the contours of this new understanding so that we can start to actually live as if that new understanding is true, because it is it is true or it is, you know, it’s provisionally true, like everything. But I’m just saying that this new thing is genuinely hopeful in the face of what’s to come. You know, I think so. I think, you know, one place, if I might just one place that I think might be an appropriate place to pick this up is with the last episode of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, which I revisited, you know, in preparing for this, I revisited. And, John, your conversations about Paul Tillich, is that his name? Yes, Paul Tillich. And, you know, and that that bled into Owen Barfield. But what Tillich was onto in terms of what was it, the final participation? That’s Barfield. That’s Barfield. OK, well, I think this is why you coupled those two together, though, because them together, are they’re both pointing at this. They’re both pointing at this, you know, from their from their respective worldviews. But but. The way I see it is that the period up until now, let’s just say, for example, from the Enlightenment till now, obviously, it goes way, way further back. But the point is that we’ve been searching, we’ve been really searching and investigating in good faith, for the most part, to understand who we are, how it all came to be, and what is our role and place in it? What does it all mean, whatever, or what can it mean? And then here we are, you know, here we are at the at the at the threshold of climate, potential climate catastrophe, potential AI disruption. We’ve got economic issue, you know, we’ve got just deep structural issues that are really difficult to solve. And I think they were talking about this too. And. But what I liked about that episode is how you ended it with we’re about to transition from that mode of sort of investigation into a mode of participation with with. It was about something about an inexhaustible fount of. Yeah, it was a reconception of the sacred comes out of it. So Tillich was proposing a god beyond the god of theism. And he doesn’t just mean higher or anything ridiculous like that. He means something that is substantially as ontologically different from the god of theism as the god of theism was from the gods of the Bronze Age. That’s what he’s trying to point to. And that that it will bring with it, right, something that again hooks our ultimate concern back up to what’s ultimately real, because we’ve been disconnected. Part of his proposal is the god of theism has in some sense disconnected us from both our ultimate concern and what’s ultimately real. And so I was proposing, although I have criticisms of Barfield’s argument, I like his idea of final participation. I think his argument is the argument upon which he establishes his conclusion, I think, has been largely dismantled. Although Barfield people don’t seem to recognize that, but we’ll put that aside for now. But the idea there is that this notion of the sacred as an inexhaustible fount of intelligibility, and that the psyche is in some sense a sacrament in relationship to that sacredness. And this is something that Dorley made very clear about Tillich, that we start to experience the psyche as being sacramental, which of course is, as you something you said, Richard, sacramental is an inherently relational ontology. And it is a part of it. The psyche is a participatory symbol that makes present what is sacred. And that is these the inexhaustible depths of reality. And that because we’re talking about the depths of the psyche, we have to engage in forms of knowing that reach deep into our embodiment, deep into our embeddedness in order. Now Tillich was limited by his time, all he had was sort of depth psychology and Jung and Heidegger to make sense of that. So he didn’t have some of the conceptual tools. But I took Tillich to be a prophet of the meaning crisis and the kind of alt, where a prophet, it’s not so much foretelling, but trying to get people to become aware of the pressing structures and why they they’re unjust in some fashion, they have to be overturned, they have to be radically reoriented. The prophets very, very rarely in the Bible actually try to tell the future. That’s not really what they do. Their job is to come in and say, King, or right, or priest, you’re not paying attention to this pattern. And if you don’t do something about it, things are going to go really, really bad kind of thing. So that’s how I understood it. Now, what I’ve been trying to do with Greg and with other people is to try to articulate, explicate, elucidate, and even develop that idea of a fundamental reconceptualization of psyche sacredness and reality that makes what Tillich was proposing possible. So that the phrase, uh, the God beyond the God of theism isn’t just an empty arrow, as it mostly was for Tillich, because he doesn’t have much to fill it in with. But Greg and I, I tried to provide, I think, something like the structure of what that ontology and epistemology would look like. And then Greg has been filling it in as a way of, and the way to do that is to, that inexhaustibility, see that the, even the word inexhaustible is inadequate in one way, because we’re going to think of it in Newtonian linear terms as a purely quantitative thing. So try to unpack that more in terms of, no, it’s inexhaustible in terms of emergence and emanation and their interpenetrating. And then the participation is deep because of this deep conformity between the fundamental grammar of the psyche and the fundamental grammar of reality. There’s a deep at one minute between intelligence and intelligibility, and both of them are living dynamic self-organizing processes. Because my, my, my hope is that by providing people with a viable, livable, and I don’t just mean like, I mean like, like you can be put into ritual and practice and personal transformation, a revitalized sense of the sacred, then we can reorient people. Because people won’t make the sacrifices that are needed to make unless you promise them a deep connection to what’s real. People will sacrifice pleasure and wealth and fame if they have good reason and not propositional, if they have good trust that deep meaning sacredness is available to them. Sorry, I didn’t mean to give a speech, but I’m just trying to draw that out. No, it’s appreciated. Greg, did you want to add, or anybody? Yeah, no, I’ll just echo that in the sense that certainly from, so what Utah is trying to do is and provide some of the content and relationship to that to afford some specificity. Yes. Give us a new way to think of mapping the natural science levels and nature, you know, dimensions, etc. Show how modern empirical natural sciences epistemology forces an exterior view that needs to be ultimately connected to an interior view and see how modern cognitive science affords us clarity about an embedded stack that organizes and orients build transjective theories in the form of recursive relevance realization and sort of a utox frames on justification, investment, influence. And this is going to give us a particular logo structure that is useful for education and sort of explaining and framing. And at the same time, then a transformation in, this gets back to my point about a participatory identity about how to grip what’s real and find meaning in life through that gripping and then that the explosion of the sacred through those possibilities. And then what does that actually look like? And this is why we have you guys here in terms of like, you know, what kind of organization, what kinds of doings, what kinds of messaging, what kinds of onboarding through the humanities, through the arts, etc. What kinds of connections of reframings for big history. All of those things are then opened up by that to expand the division and to flesh it out and to make it real, so to speak. If I could add to that too. So, I mean, Greg and I in this series have done a lot to, this is somewhat ironic, of course, but we’re bound by certain constraints, but we’ve laid out very propositionally a lot of this, right? And very theoretically. Now, I do a lot of work on practice and so does Greg, but what has struck me before in the past, Rich, and you know, I’ve talked about this, is you seem to be doing a lot both in thought and in action about translating that propositional into perspectival and potentially participatory. Like, you emphasize, and you’ve already done it when we were here together, this sort of presencing of this intelligence. And I remember talking to you about this, it’s very phenomenologically present to you in powerful ways. And it strikes me that that is something that needs, you and I’ve talked about it, but I think circumambulation, I want to come around again to it because I think that’s the, and I think that could even partially set up Rita in an important way. Can I, do you want to answer? I just want to, I want to like, I’m listening and I’m like visualizing things that I think might be helpful to just clarify or offer some context. Right, like so you’ve done four episodes, I sort of, you know, I felt like I was a guest in your home, you know, listening in almost two different homes that have kind of become one big home and I’m listening. And so I feel there’s like a ground and there’s a structure and I’m inside of that structure. If you can imagine the structure kind of being lifted up and out and away and then the ground kind of falling out and away, which may feel very like scary to some people, that may feel very like vulnerable. But when Rich talks about the community of Oika, like I haven’t found a different word to use, but I don’t, the community is not inside of a house. Like even though Oika means house, the house is actually the world. And so there’s a feeling of pointing outward instead of pointing inward. And so suddenly you can kind of rotate around almost like that, a spectralization thing. And so, but what Oika does is offer almost like a chimp holding trees as he, you know, goes through the jungle. Like there are, you can hold on to some things. Like Oika has concepts and principles that you can hold onto when you’re in this space without the house and without the ground and just like being. So there’s a continuum from sort of the Oika principles and concepts that lead directly into sort of assisting us and helping us feel really grounded when we’re practicing. So I don’t know, that’s just, I’m hearing a lot of this, like I’m feeling the house and then I’m feeling the house kind of go away and the floor drop away. And then that’s where Oika kind of shows up. And the community of Oika just never feels closed. It never feels bounded by a house. It feels very open and free, but then there are these kind of like concepts to ground ourselves really in that direct participation with nature. So that’s just, I guess that’s just kind of where my mind has been going. And I wondered if Rich could pick it up from there. Well, I could say that to swing through the trees like that, that’s called brachiation. Nice brachiation there, Reets. Yeah, I see that. I feel that too. And I wonder if we might loop back around also to what you were talking about, because we’re like, we’re just, I feel like we’re really close. Like we mentioned these things like, like your conformity thesis that you’ve been talking about lately and the phenomenology. Here’s what I find really exciting. Here’s one thing I find really exciting how, you know, my studies are really in direct contact with the natural world for the most part. My rituals all involve symbols of nature, you know, that what we think of as nature, you know, even manmade symbols are natural. I would, you could argue, I could argue. But what I’m really excited about is how when one conforms to the natural world, and I’m not proposing that everyone needs to do this. I’m just proposing that when this happens, we arrive where you guys are. We arrive at what you guys are talking about in a very lived way. And you can use the term sacred, you can use the term ritual, liturgy, you can use, those all make perfect sense to me, despite having not come at it from that angle. That’s, I just, I’m compelled to give that some kind of privileged attention, that here we are, and you’re talking my language, you know, and I hear my experience of the world being described by you guys, and who’ve come from a different lineage, a different angle. And, you know, what are we going to do with that? And I mean, we’re already doing what we are doing. So it’s not like, but how do we amplify it? How do we take this stuff seriously and build, build the worldview? In fact, build the only worldview that I think is capable of responding to the corner we’ve backed ourselves into as a civilization. I know that sounds really grandiose, but what has to happen? Some, right, some, some iteration of that has got to get traction in our culture. And I, for one, can see the difference between it happening and not happening. Not happening. We are, you know, we are just on, at best we’re on the, we’re headed where we’re going, at best. But I think we can do better. You know, I think, I think if we can come up with the language and we can come up with the experiences and we can do this, you know, with genuine commitment to each other, that we can, we can make some small difference. And so, again, I really want to get into how, how that conformity thing works. How one, yeah, because it, because it, it just, it just reveals, you know, it, it reveals how interconnected our minds are to the world. And I’m going to go further and say, no, how our minds are to nature. And so how do we, how do we, how do we turn this into something, you know, practicable and have impact? That’s my question. I think you have the answer. I think you have a answer. Well, okay. And we can get into that. I mean, I kind of don’t want to, I don’t want to cross that threshold just yet, but yes, obviously, the creativity of nature in the world as a way of creating culture makes perfect sense to me. And, and that’s, you know, that’s one way that we’re doing it. But I also want to just be really clear on what it is we’re talking about here. Like, that’s more what I meant. Like, I guess I’m curious to know, you know, because you’ve had conversations with Greg and John, we’ve worked so much. I’m kind of curious to know, you know, what’s the difference between, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I’m kind of curious to know, Greg and John, like, what do you understand OICA to be? Like, do you, or do you have questions for Rich before we move into the doing to sort of take this time to talk more about kind of the foundations of OICA? Um, yeah. Well, I guess it would be helpful to, you know, sort of maybe help bring to life the embodied experience of OICA a little bit in terms of kind of that transformation. I’ve certainly heard you talk about that, but in relationship to the awakening of the intelligence within you and the conformity that you experience, I think that might be useful at this time to kind of like, you know, round that out with principles and be, and I, of course, think there’s an enormous amount of resonance with what we delineated in there. Well, I’ll see if we can do it very quickly, but, and it, and it integrates big history, what we call big history, this emerging field of, you know, what science has revealed about what we know about the evolution of the cosmos since the big bang. You know, we can’t say anything. There’s a, there’s a period, there’s a point where this model breaks down, of course, the plank time, plank length, whatever you want to call it, but there’s a period at which we just have to admit mystery. But from that moment, we see the evolution of the cosmos. We see differentiation happening. We see, and the moment those different, I mean, right from the, right from the get-go, right, right into the earliest quantum fluctuations, those fluctuations represent minute, well, it depends on what scale you’re observing them, but differences and those differences make a difference. It’s through those differences that the first relationships can manifest. And it’s through that, through those relationships that creativity happens. And that trajectory of creativity has worked its way through photons to elements, elements and particles to molecules, to stars and planets, to life. And just knowing that propositional knowledge about the unfolding universe and how we have plausible explanations about how life can begin, the thing that we all hold, that there is this continuity and there is this creative intelligence that’s driving this thing. And we’re, and now here we are, and we’re called, some of us feel called by that creativity, called by that intelligence to participate. That’s the lived experience of the history, which is just the worst term, but that’s the lived experience of the creative life force of the universe, as far as I can tell. And so it’s drawing us forward. And so that’s, that’s what it is. And here’s the thing, when you know that, when you sort of carry that story with you, when you carry it implicitly, and then you engage with the world, and particularly with nature, nature just has a way of presenting this intelligence in a pure way to me. And so when I engage with it, it’s just so clear that I’m not separate from it. And the boundary, the so-called boundary between me and it is ephemeral. It’s ambiguous. And I can’t tell you how good that feels. It just feels so right to be aligned and to be linked into that in this deep intimate way that’s both intimate and infinite. And it’s the universe we’re talking about. It’s intimacy with that. And it, I don’t know, the only appropriate response to that is something like love, joy, something like that. And so, I don’t know, this certainly sounds sacred, when I hear people talk about ecstasy of communion and things like that, that’s what this feels like. And I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I don’t know how we got here. But I just think that that can serve as a basis for what it is we’re envisioning. Mm-hmm. I would just add, like agree, and just say from someone who has not been brought up in the sciences, that when you hear this cosmic narrative and get details that you never in your wildest dreams would have wished for. Again, the thing lifts up, and there’s just this phenomenology of lifting up, like there’s no filter anymore. So the ways that I would question, the time and the energy that I would spend doubting, questioning, judging, thinking I was silly, to feel something that I felt that was really intuitive and felt, the concepts and the science that allowed me to stop spending the energy questioning and doubting and feeling silly, so then that energy can be put towards actually connecting, that’s huge. So that’s why I mean there’s a continuity between the concepts and the principles and the actual doing, because it allows for this, it just opens, and then everything is able to flow, because you no longer have these barriers in the way of all questions and doubting, these things that we’ve been trained to put in our way. So it’s really just this open, you could just latch onto it and conform, and it wants to, so there’s a magnetic. So I think the issue about trying to get the dialogue flowing between us is, that Rich, you’re invoking of course the science of that gave us the big history, but that scientific worldview doesn’t situate us in any way within it. At present. That’s of course, and so what Greg and I see our project as, is to try and see how it is that science is sort of broken against itself, how that worldview is broken against itself. So Rita, I want to propose to you that lots of people look out at the world and they’ll never have that experience you talked about, even after they’ve read the big history. There’s many scientists who know the big history, and this doesn’t happen to them. And so my concern is, how can we greater afford what you just described so that it becomes much more possible for people who would normally perhaps even be hostile to the language you’re using. And so the structure that we’ve been trying to build is one that seeks to argue actually from the very basis of the existence of science to the worldview that Rich just articulated. It says, well, if you’re a scientist, you have to accept that science is real. And then given that, you can unfold all of this. And that, I mean, this is not meant to be sneaky or anything like that. We’re laying this out very clearly and carefully and step by step. And there’s been many arguments, but it’s meant to be kind of a jiu-jitsu move or a Nikita move to get people to realize that there is this ultimate contradiction, a performative contradiction. They’re speaking one way and living another, and they don’t go together. But getting people to recognize contradictions, especially performative contradictions, is not an easy task. I think educators will tell you that. And that’s part of my work as the work I do on thinking and reasoning. And so what we’ve been trying to do is to provide an account of that open space, Rita, that you’ve been talking about in terms of what Rich was talking about. The differences that make a difference, levels of real information, levels of real intelligibility, and then conformity, this connectedness you’re talking about. I think it’s absolutely real. I’m not denying your phenomenology at all. What I want to understand so I can explain it to others, why they can’t dismiss it. Because I can hear them saying to you, so what? You have that experience, here’s 17 other people that don’t. And so what I’m trying to say is that we are trying to articulate a way in which this way you too are, and by the way, I have this too. I have practices that I’ve been doing for decades, but I’m talking to both of you. I want to make it so that people are challenged by what you’re saying as opposed to dismissing it. Because I want you to perhaps accept on trust, Rick and I saying that most people in the academic world who heard this would merely dismiss it. So that’s what our project is trying to do. We’re not trying to take anything away from the phenomenology, from the experience, from the depth of the connectedness, from the sacredness you’re experiencing. I don’t want to explain anything away. I want to explain it, and that’s a different thing. Because I want to explain it for the purposes. I know you don’t want this to be a private experience. You want this to become as public as possible. We all do. So I’m trying to say that that’s how I see our projects actually aligning. I don’t know if that lands, but I just wanted to try and articulate something. It’s beautiful. And I can’t thank you enough. I mean, John, I’m in awe of just the rigor and the passion and the compassion through which you’ve tried to do that very thing. And I want you to succeed that more than anything. But let me just say something. But I acknowledge my limitations. I have repeatedly done this. And I have repeatedly said, I want to make clear that what we fundamentally need are artists as well. Like that. I’ve been saying that for a long time, precisely because I know my limitations. I thank you for your praise. I appreciate it. But I also am starkly aware of my limitations on this too. None of us can do this alone. This is the point of conciliance, is that these things can come together. And it’s greater than the sum of the parts. So I get that. And I had limitations too. My limitation is, you know, I happen to believe that all we need to do is tell the story in enough detail. And then it becomes inescapable. This is what I try to do. I try to make it inescapable by examining every single chapter of that story through this lens. And you realize it’s confirmed at every turn. Every syllable of science that we know says this. Once you have the perspective of the lens to look through this at this story, it’s like boom, boom, boom. And then it just never stops. So everything I know, cosmic microwave background radiation, phospholipid bilayer, you know, everything, plate tectonics, all of the abiogenesis, all the science I know points to this reality, the reality that you are talking about, that you’re talking about through Tillich and the lineage of philosophers, and Greg, that you’re talking about through the cog sigh, and the things that I see Rita doing and feeling in the field in her practice, they’re all pointing to this thing. And so I think it takes all of us to do this. And so but what I know is this also, and we probably won’t have time, but you know, I do this thing called earthling theory, you know, where I pick up the story about 7 million years ago, when there were these primates living in the trees, and something some, some glimmer off a berry or something drew the primates down out of a certain portion of the primates down out of the tree. And they they’ve consumed the berries, and then they were distracted by something else. And then, you know, it, it worked, maybe maybe it happened 10,000 times, and it didn’t work. But on the 10,000 and first time, it worked. And anyway, this journey from the trees across the savannas into the, you know, across the arid zones and through the forest and along the coast and up the river and across the estuary and along the glacier and near the desert. That journey is the journey of a primate species that’s being called time and time again, to participate in the in the in the world around it. And it’s being rewarded, being by with prosperity with survival. And then in each instance, those habitats, the complexity of those habitats over eons and eons of generations are endowing that particular species with the intelligence. So every habitat has its own unique intelligence. And there’s one species that, you know, from that Sahelanthropus species to the next australopithecine and then on to the hominids, you know, to us, it has endowed us with that. And then that shows up in Shakespeare, okay? You look at the you look at the evolution of stone tools from the stone chopper, you know, the old ones and to the to the Acheulean hand tools and then to the to the Levawa technique, you see, you see it all you see narrative, you see story being taught to this primate by the stones of the earth, you see aesthetic appreciation, you see metaphor being in being taught into the human. This is I’m telling you this because we think of metaphor is this thing that humans do, right? We think about this, this these gifts of imagination and, and the capacity to dream about the future and all these things that we that we think is solely human. It’s not it comes from the relationships between that species and the world. Anybody who’s not so bogged down by disciplinarity or reductionism, who’s willing, it isn’t inescapable. It’s an inescapable view when you actually string enough of this stuff together that that that the continuity is real. And it’s not just it’s not just a physical or material thing. It’s it’s it’s mental. It’s you know, it’s it’s psychological and it’s spiritual. And it’s it’s it’s all one big story. So that’s my proposal on how we do that. If it takes more than that, if it takes a rigorous analytical, you know, excavation of of the received wisdom to get there, guess what, I think that actually it actually arrives here too. It actually like what you’re saying, John arrives at the same place. So so what’s the problem? Like, there isn’t there isn’t a problem. The point of what we’re doing here right now is to is to very much what like Greg and I tried to do. I’m not it’s not shoehorning. We’re trying to get the the languages to talk to each other in a more mutually affording and beneficial fashion. As you said, we have to do this together. And so I take it that the project here is how could we take what you just said? Right. I mean, Greg’s got a big history thing in his model, so that there’s already deep connection there. I guess I’m I’m I’m I’m also impressed by people’s capacity to not see what you’re saying. And I take it you’re speaking in good faith. I really do. I’m not I’m not doubting you, but I I have I mean, there are reasons why nihilism is becoming a pervasive attitude, even within the scientific world, because there are these deeply entrenched ways of thinking. Greg and I have been talking about it, like, that’s why I left it. Well, and and that’s a that’s fine. I’m not I’m not I’m not here defending it. I’m trying to describe it accurately. So, for example, we’re invoking notions of participation. These are notions coming from the neoplatonic tradition, as you know, that we’re just didn’t appear from nowhere. And, you know, it has to be grounded in cognition. I’ve been trying to do this with the notion of participatory knowing, and then linking that up with a conformity theory that overcomes the subjective, objective divide that, you know, just set. So when people are hearing this, one thing they can easily do is they can just say, well, that’s all just in a subjective experience of objective facts that have no value whatsoever in them. I don’t agree with that, what I just said, saying that’s what people I can hear people doing that. And so we need to say, wait, wait, wait, right, you’re invoking this science to get this big history and it’s doing well. But what does that science actually that’s what I mean by extended naturalism, not just what’s derivable from your science, but what does science actually presuppose has to be the case. Science actually presupposes a deeply connected meaningfulness that makes its truths possible. That’s what I’m trying to articulate here. So, again, I see the problem is that problems are themselves transjective entities. They don’t exist in the world are just in minds, they exist between people in the world. And so I what I’m trying to say is I think I were deep allies, I don’t think there’s a problem between us. I think what Greg and I are trying to say is, right, there are people who have perhaps in this Kairos, and I mean this in a deep way found a way beyond it. Right. But there are people who are I don’t want sorry, this language sounds conspiratorial, and I want to qualify it that that’s not my intent. But there’s people who are bound into a system in a way of thinking and being that just prevents them from literally hearing what you’re saying. Other because they’re just retranslating everything you’re saying into the established vocabulary. And it just and I and Greg want to undermine that process as deeply as possible. Now, I don’t think it can just be done philosophically, scientifically. I think it also has to be done artistically, musically, it has to be done religiously, it would ritual. I’m not saying I’m just saying this is a significant thing. I take it that this Kairos is exacerbating some deep proclivities within human beings to fall into self-deception behavior. That’s a perennial problem. And I think this Kairos and we know, I mean, just your social media are running algorithms that incentivize us to think away that actually prevents people from seeing the world you just described. Like, and that’s just one small example of just something that is massively pervasive. That was Heidegger’s point, too, right? So the problem isn’t with what you’re saying, Rich, that there isn’t a problem there. So when you ask what’s the problem, there’s no problem with what you’re saying. That’s not where the problem is placed. I’m asking you to consider the problem is placed elsewhere. And that’s what Weirwork is trying to do. And absolutely. Okay, okay, I’ll shut up. I said too much. No, no, no, no. But I mean, I agree. The only thing I would just add to that is what I’m saying. What I’m saying is like, what you guys are saying, what I know about science and the way I have interpreted the science completely validates what you’re saying. So if you’re looking for validation from science and nature, I mean, I’m here to tell you that what you’re saying makes perfect sense. It’s perfectly consistent with what with with the science. I agree that most people, most scientists are wrapped up in the in the in the in the Enlightenment, you know, framework. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what and what what part of the creativity here is creating a new understanding of what science itself is. That’s, that’s what’s going on here, precisely because of what you just said, I think is the case. And then I’ll shut up because Rita put up her hand. But we’re trying to pull apart the project of rendering the world intelligible in a scientific manner from the project of trying to establish a particular reductionist ontology. Those are not identical, even though the Enlightenment has tried to tell us that they are. So I promised to shut up, so I will. Well, no, I was just gonna it popped in my brain. I think there was a phrase that you said, John, maybe in the last episode, which was to try to reverse engineer something. How did you put it? It was like almost reverse engineer the transformation or something like that. Yeah, I don’t know. I use reverse engineering quite a different context. But I think like that’s what I was speaking to when I was describing my phenomenology. I know it comes off as hostile because I have experienced the hostility and the and the questioning and the doubt and the judgment that I was saying I feel. That is a fractal of what culture feels too, right? So I was feeling it because I was taught to feel it. And so what I see in the three of you and others that I’m listening to are like the way that I can reverse engineer so that I can feel more confident to talk about what I’m experiencing when I go create. And so that’s why I was trying to sort of tee that up to go backwards and talk about the scientific concepts that have been able to help me. Now, of course, depending on who’s looking at what perspective, the hostility comes from all angles, right? So but because we’re in this particular audience, I think for me, it’s helpful to use like OYCA grounds what I’ve been experiencing and working with my whole artistic career. It grounds it in science. And so it’s been really helpful to be able to use that to explain why what I feel is real. So I guess I just want to offer that or just offer kind of the reminder of this task to kind of reverse engineer, I think is a really good way to put it. And I see all three of you doing that for me for just like, awesome, like I’m so grateful for it. And I want I want like more of it. So one of the things that would be great as we think about maybe also the next thing. So one of the questions that I would have for both of you is when you’re engaging with people in both the art as an extension of OYCA or the story of OYCA, what do you see moving them toward you? What do you see calling them forth? What do you what do you see overcoming the barriers of resistance? I think one of the things that we need to sort of think about, there’s the there’s the logos arguments and the abstraction, and then there’s the practices and then there’s the relationship aspects of onboarding. I’ll give you an example from a Utah vantage point. OK, so you talk vantage point in terms of saying, hey, science abstracts and gives you this angle and has a tendency to reduce. And then it gets really confused between these matter and then mind knowing about matter. And it sort of splits, I call that the enlightenment gap. And then we’re really confused about kind of, well, what is consciousness and all this other stuff. And it’s like, well, what I want to do is I want to be clear about an outside in and an inside out view. And this is going to be the conforming view of sort of a scientific worldview and a psyche worldview. And I want to basically be like, hey, we can watch the big history through energy to matter, to matter, to life, life to mind, your living organism, your minded animal and your cultured person. And then I want you to sit in your psyche and I want you to talk to yourself as a cultured person that says I am. And then I want you to check out your phenomenology and then I want you to go into your animal organism. And then I want you to go into your material object self in an energy information field. And I want you to then interact with that. I want you to say hi to John on a zoom and then be in a transjective space, right across an energy matter, life, mind, culture field that then places us in a digital social tech context. And now the inside out outside in past, present, future structure is like people start saying, oh, that’s a richer vocabulary in this mind versus matter thing. And I can actually start to resonate with these different frequencies. I could see how they’ve been complexified over time and I could see both inside and out them operating. And so now you get this sort of transjective. It’s not one inside of you, outside view like science center take, but then it’s interactive view. And then it’s like, well, it’s an interactive view at a really important moment in time, this chirotic moment. And then sort of like, well, wait a minute, this is just sort of a, that’s the sort of the thumbnail sketch of a different kind of way of relating to the world. So I use that from a Utah perspective. I’d be really curious to hear, sort of an OIKA perspective. When you see people, what moves them towards this? What awakens this natural intelligence, either through the art or through your engagement with them? Rich, what do you see? Cause you have obviously felt it and I’m sure you’ve then connected with other people in the OIKA community. I think we need to speak to that so that we can get clear about what does pull people into a conscious awakening. Wow. Okay. That’s a lot. First of all, that process that you described, like that’s a future that I can trust. Like that sounds like a future worth working toward. The phrase that I learned from John about the hermeneutics of suspicion are, that’s the sea I feel like we’re swimming in. There’s suspicion. I used to think that, you know, if I could just reach 10% of people with this, then we could make a difference. And then I realized, no, it’s more like 1%. And now I’m down to 0.1%. And I’m not, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had to go to 0.01%. But so it’s rare. It’s rare. I hear people telling me they get it all the time. And that’s almost a sign that they don’t. It takes deep time and, not deep time, but deep, rigorous excavations and courageous sort of like, I mean, this is actually a better question to read. And there are other people in this community that do get it. And once you get it, you fall in love with it. And it gives more than it takes always. So it’s not like it’s a sacrifice. So it’s rare. Sometimes it’s a combination of just sensitivity, but not, you know, but not leaping into pseudoscience or woo woo or anything like that. But some people are just really sensitive and paying attention and they feel the intelligence. And then it just takes someone to come along and say, you know, that thing you feel, that shit’s real. Like, that’s actually the creative life force of the universe. And I can actually tell you, I can tell you a story that’s grounded in science that makes that intelligence palpable. And that’s why you feel it. And then we go from there. Psychedelics, I think, is playing a part in this, that people are getting their realities disrupted to such a degree that they’re willing to try anything. Unfortunately, I think the biggest thing that makes people listen is just desperation and exasperation and having gone down every rabbit hole and gotten to its end and, you know, they’ve exhausted all other options, basically. It’s not the right way to do it. So I don’t know if that answers your question. It’s a good question. And I appreciate it. Well, I think one of the things that we’re, you know, there’s a lot to this transcendent naturalism. There’s certainly the, there’s the argument, there’s the analysis of past problems that we are then arguing that you can actually fix. There’s the embodied practice. And then there is the, you know, there are essentially the influence structure, like what, how is this going to bounce into people’s lives given their current inertia, given the hermeneutic suspicion, given whatever, all the other contingencies are, and what would be, what would enable a transformational process? To occur. So that’s certainly one of the things I’m looking about is like, how do you interact and cultivate the emergent emanation of this process in people? What wakens them up to what? All hands on deck. All hands on deck certainly is part of the issue, right? And, and different recognizing where people are in the zone of proximal development and given many different kinds of onboarding pathways. That’s a good one. Yeah. I would add, and I don’t want to get too much into the, the art stuff, but I think that we could, with, so with, with my students, I just noticed by the time they get to the university, they’re sort of robotic. Like they’ve sort of been trained to not be open. So, so with OIKA, we talk a lot about being open to surprise and just being able to be curious. And so like, a walk in the woods or really even just a walk around your house and, and in a way, in a, in a stance that allows you to be open to noticing. And then when you notice something, so with OIKA, it’s like you notice something out in the world and that thing, I mean, and I see it with my kids all the time, right? Kids do it all the time. They, dogs, like they just get distracted by something because they notice what is different. And so when you notice what is different and you’re curious about that thing, you kind of can follow it. And then when you start to follow these things, it just kind of changes your way and going about the world. And you start to go about the world in this very kind of open, curious way. And that’s something that OIKA teaches or trains or cultivates. And so it’s like, you know, Rich will, you’ll notice something and he can explain it scientifically. Like, what is that rock? What is that saying about the sediment that’s here? You know, but then it takes you into this journey through deep time. And there’s, so it starts with the science, but then it takes you through continuity. And it allows you to then drop, you know, kind of drop at the doorstep of your present moment and you here now, and then you’re there participating. And so I have found with the work that we’re trying to do, it’s like, how do we create these entry points? And because the house is lifted and the floor has dropped, there can be entry points anywhere, right? There’s like, it’s like a disco ball of entry points. And so it’s just a matter of like, how does it catch people? And it’s not gonna catch everybody like Rich just said, but like, it’s just learning how to see the world in a way that has been trained out of us. And so it’s really hard work because of that. But I do think nature is, you know, nature is like the ultimate creative curious surprise. And so that’s why it’s been really helpful to just use it to find that there’s the source, right? So what, what does it mean to teach people a new way of seeing? What do you mean by that? Yeah, I don’t know, like seeing, because it’s not necessarily seeing. It’s not, I get it. You’re using it more broadly, but go ahead. Right, right, right. Again, I’ll just use my students as an example, because when you do art critiques, you need to ask them to verbalize something that they feel. And I’ve noticed that it’s become increasingly hard for them to, Greg, you do a really, it’s like mind one, mind two, like, like, that’s essentially a journey through art, right? Because they have to like, they feel it, and then it like goes up, and then they have to like verbalize it. And it is, so it’s gotten increasingly hard, I think. And so yeah, how do you teach that? And I just think the answer’s nature. Like, I think nature teaches that. And so that’s, so I keep trying to volley the ball back to Rich, but like, you know, I think that’s what Oika does. Oika, you know, again, it doesn’t have to be there, but he needs to run into the woods, like the woods doesn’t want that either. But you can find it, you know, the crack in the wall can be a curiosity. And so it’s just a matter of, yeah, I’m not answering your question, John, because how do you teach, how do you teach that openness? I think play, go ahead, Rich. Well, I’ve tried lecturing it, it doesn’t work, very rarely. So now I just model it. I can give people permission to believe what they feel, and try to exemplify it in some way. Because that’s a hell of a lot more fun. You know, it’s I go, I spend time in nature every day, like religiously. And so I carve, I’ve organized my life around it, you know, like that’s what I mean by modeling it, by taking it seriously, by committing to it, by allowing myself to fall in love with the world, and giving people, showing people that that’s okay, you know, despite the critique, despite the dismissal, despite the hostility, the doubt. What else can you do when you’re with it? It doesn’t go away, you know, this isn’t a fad. And it is contagious, right? Like anybody who’s spent time with kids, it’s contagious. And so when you know, you don’t get to, you don’t get this over the screen. But when you walk in the woods with rich, like, it’s contagious. So, you know, that is, yeah, I think modeling is that’s a good answer. Well, and then obviously, it’s about finding the others and finding people who are willing to, to live and create, and also reference it. And this is this leads straight to the artists, you know, this is why who else is going to create this culture, you know, it’s going to require artists to get it. And so that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s why that’s why this collaboration works. That’s why it’s energized. And you go ahead. Well, talking about it, like you, you know, in art school, you know, it used to be that, like, the arts not successful, if it doesn’t completely standalone, and it just contains everything, and you shouldn’t have to say anything. And so something that, you know, Rich has been really good with helping me understand is like, no, actually, if you speak, right, like, it’s more entry points. So I think, you know, the phrase bearing witness to, you know, also, it was like, okay, we lead by example, but we also have to figure out a ways, again, entry points. But you know, we got it. And it’s, and it’s, it’s almost inevitable, because it just spills out of view, like, I actually don’t want to hold it. The, the, yeah, I like need to give it. So it sort of just happens. It’s a good book called bearing witness to epiphany. Yeah. And what I heard you saying, Rich is very, very Socratic. You can’t lecture it, you have to exemplify it and try and get people to catch it. An important way. But that’s not, that’s not, that is not a noble thing. It’s because that’s what feels good. It’s really, you know, that is a self, that’s a self-interested approach, because then you get to experience it, you know, it’s, it’s, I’m not sure why those two have to be at odds with each other. It could be noble and self-interested at the same time. Yeah, that’s the plus. That’s, yeah, that’s, that’s I mean, that’s, that’s very much the Socratic project. He was trying as much to understand himself as he was. He clearly says that he’s trying to give birth to other people, but in doing that, he gives birth to himself. Like, I think the idea that, I mean, we, I’m not here to dismiss Christianity or anything as ridiculous as that, but the idea that nobility is always complete self-sacrifice is that’s not, that’s not a necessary argument. That’s a historical one that we have inherited from a Christian, particular Christian history. I think, I think we can put it aside, because I think we, we want to be able to tell people, no, no, you can come here in ways of life in which you can find an abundant life, and then you will want to share it with other people. Like I say, I, I don’t hear any of us saying this, but what, when I find problematic, about people dealing with the kairos is they propose kind of a, you know, we must save the world and it’s, it’s kind of, it’s kind of an asceticism to it. We’ve got to do all this self-denial and we have to give to the cause, and that’s not going to win, because what people are starving for is an abundant life, a life of deep realness, a life of connectedness. And you just, you just say, well, if we all just starve together for the greater good, I don’t have much hope for that as an option. So I think it’s important that, that you, you’re exemplifying it and you’re doing that with joy. I mean, I think that’s an important, I think that’s a very important thing. You know, again, think about how we’ve lost what the word enjoyment means. We now equate it to pleasure. We’re not talking about pleasure here. We’re talking about joy, which is a very different thing, but even being able to recover that and exemplify for people that, like, like when we do some, when we do the circling into dialogos and people get this connectedness to each other, they’ll say things and they’ll say things like, well, this is a kind of intimacy and connection I’ve always been looking for, but I didn’t realize it. They’ll say these weird, almost platonic things. I’ve always been looking for it, but I didn’t know I was looking for it. And then they start to use religious language regardless of their background for, because they got this. I think exemplifying that joyful connection and articulating it, not necessarily just in words, but in your manner of making it infectious or contagious. Contagious is better. Sorry, infectious sounds horrible. Contagious to other people. I don’t think that’s selfish. I get it that you enjoy doing it, but. Well, that’s something, and this is one of the Oika principles actually, enjoyment, but we focus on the end part of enjoyment too. We’ve come to think that enjoyment is something that’s served to you on a platter. No, you have to act. It’s an active verb. You have to actually enjoy, like you would enrich something or enliven something. Or encourage. Yes, right, right. To actually conjure it. And often you have to sometimes you have to fake it to make it, but you do make it. If you conjure joy, you will feel joy and you will create joy. And so I guess one other thing I might just add about the circling thing. I know that that is a incredible power, incredibly powerful entry point into a new into new intimacies. I think we need to be careful with it, but I also think that it’s possible to circle with trees, and turtles, not in the same way. Obviously, it’s hard to do that with a turtle, but one can cultivate that as a practice to be in a reciprocal relationship with some element of the natural world. And it teaches, I mean, it shows it teaches it’s inexhaustible. It is the inexhaustible infinite creative. Oh yeah. I mean, you know, sit spotting as a practice is a very powerful way of, yeah. And I should let you like, that we do we do circling, but circling goes beyond that. It goes into course, dialectic and the dialogous and you don’t stay with interpersonal connectedness towards connectedness to intelligibility in the world itself. You’re trying to open up. I think that’s essential, right? I mean, that should be like, like an essential part of it to what we talk about it like this. We talked about the first is Phyla. You get that fellowship between people and then they, you can turn the Phyla towards Sophia, right? Where they’re starting to get the wise connectedness that is so important. Yeah. I think that brings up a good point that I’d like to make, which is imagine if everything that we did in terms of practices, in terms of knowledge, received wisdoms had, if we reconsidered it all in the light of nature, you know, Theodosius Devansky had that phrase, nothing in biology makes sense, except in light of evolution. I’m thinking of something similar to that, that imagine if, if, if what we knew know now about how nature has evolved and then we brought that to bear on everything we know and all the practices that we do and the way that we organize and manage and coordinate ourselves, the way we build civilizations and the way we create art, bring that relationship to nature back, you know, even religion to reconsider religion in the light of nature. I agree. I agree. I agree. And last summer I went to return to the source with Did the Rafe Kelly, where everything you do is re situating it within nature in this deeper sense. And add to that, the, that story that I was telling about how those experiences that you’re having in those environments and in those, in those exchanges have deep, deep history that, you know, that every living organism that has ever been, every planet that’s ever spun around some other star, that it’s all embodied in those, in that moment. Like talk about, Well, that’s what I want to talk maybe about next time. See what you do. Well, sorry, what it seems to me you’re doing is you, you talk about deep history in a way that emphasizes actually like deep participation, like this thing is this to see the world in a grain of sand, Blake’s idea, right? Yeah. Right. So, but I, and I think that’s really, really important. And so I want to explicate, cause I think, right, I think that’s the right word. I’m not, I don’t want to explicate the connections between deep history, which is a historical notion and participation, which is an epistemological ontological and get them all talking to each other so that they can work in concert together. That’s, that, that’s what’s really intriguing me as a possibility too. I do too. And, and I’m, and I’m here to tell you nature’s, nature’s game, you know, nature’s game for this. This is what I meant by nature needs to see it at the table. Like it needs to be present, you know, whether it’s that’s all just somebody needs to be there speaking for it, to bring it into the conversation, to expand it out and to give them to validate it with. Yeah. And I think, I think that’s an important thing. I think I want to, I want to make sure we come back to that in the second thing, giving a voice to nature. You know, I think, I mean, that’s a, that first of all, it’s a beautiful phrase. I’ve used something similar, but like giving a voice to like, what does, what does that mean? And how could we get people to take that as something, not as just sort of hallmark poetry, but as a socially legitimate thing that has to be recognized and taken into account and to which we have to be responsible. That’s, that’s something I’d like to try and explore next time. We’ve already done that really your, your provenance through the received wisdom is doing that already. Well, okay. Thank you for that. But I, I want to, I, I, I also think I have to learn and I want to learn. And I think there’s something to be said if we get into discussion with that. And I’m hoping that Rita can speak to that. Let’s not take that up right now, because we, we should stop. We’re coming to the end. But I do want to give everybody, first of all, if I came off as a little aggressive at one point, I didn’t mean to, I just get sometimes very passionate. And that’s why we love you, John. Come on, like, and, but I want to give everybody a chance to, you know, just the final word, not, not, not too much, because we’re going to, we’re going to come back and pick up on some of these points and threads, but just so people can feel that they’ve at least situated the conversation in the memory of the watch, the viewers. So go ahead, Greg. Yeah. So for me, basically, I, OYCA for me then is basically situating yourself in sort of the resonant frequency of nature across the various scales, again, inside and out, and recognizing where we are locally, but then recognizing that in deep time, historically, and getting and encouraging multiplicity of different pathways to get in touch with that. And I, you know, give a voice to nature. I see Rich doing that a lot. And I think at a transcendent naturalism, anchoring that is absolutely central. And I think the levels of nature and the conformity of our cognition or psyche to that is key. And I think the OYCA system sort of embodies and exemplifies that both in terms of the messaging, the way it frames ecology, and then especially as it extends the arts. So I deeply appreciate that. And I’m glad that we had a chance to kind of review and grind that. So Rita, could you go next, please? Good, except I don’t exactly know. I mean, I, this was, I’m feeling, I don’t know, like there’s a, it didn’t, this conversation was sort of a preliminary, but also essential. I am excited about some of the things that we sort of, like, I’m excited about talking about this hostility, because it’s something that I wasn’t expecting to talk about, but something that Rich and I talked about quite a bit. And I’m excited about some of the questions, like this last question that you just posited, John, I’m really excited about. And I’m just excited to try to link together. I keep talking about this continuity between like, you know, this underlaboring and the deep time science, and then the present participation. And I just see it as so, you know, it almost just like is one, like there’s no linearity to it at all. And so I’m excited to hopefully kind of maybe create that somehow in the next conversation. I don’t know. Well, we’re already creating it. I mean, so, but I guess I would just say that I think nature holds a wisdom that we’ve forgotten, that we’ve overlooked recently, since the Enlightenment and probably before, that and that that wisdom is available, and I am powerful. And I think it presents what probably the best chance of us getting through this upcoming threshold that we’re in right now. And that I’m serious. I’m serious about that. I guess that’s it. Thank you, everybody. So I’m looking forward to part two. And see you all there. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much.