https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=cLbrtv5WA7A
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Cognitive Science Show. This is episode six of Transcendent Naturalism. And I’m here, of course, with Greg Enriquez, who has been my constant partner in all of the Cognitive Science shows. And there’s a lot there to make use of. Please, at some point, if you haven’t taken a look at some of the other Cognitive Science shows and you’re finding this one interesting, consider looking at the one we did on consciousness, the one we did on the self, the one we did on transformation, the one we did on well-being. They’re all there. And all of these different shows inform each other. And so I invite you to partake in that. And for their second appearance, we have Rich Bundell and Rita LeBlanc and their… Leduc, sorry. And they’re here to continue our discussion between their WICA framework, both, I guess, more theoretical on Rich’s part and theoretical, experiential. And I take it with Rita, experiential, artistic. We’re going to hear more from Rita today. So I’m looking forward to that. But I just wanted to say welcome to both of you. Amen. Thank you. Welcome to you both. So I’m excited to do this. That’s great. So last time we had a really excellent discussion. There was some, I think, welcomed and helpful creative friction as we got clear about the nature of the convergence between these two frameworks. And convergence requires, of course, a moving towards some identity, but it also requires a moving from some points of difference. And there was some difference of emphasis, particularly emphasis on a more explanatory approach versus perhaps a more experiential approach. And Rich was just mentioning that as a way of framing his summary. And I’m going to turn that framing and the summary over to him. So take it away, Rich. Okay, great. Thanks. Yeah. Well, I’ve put a lot of thought, both Rita and I did a lot of analysis on our conversation because we love this stuff mostly because it was interesting to hear your take on. Well, let’s just say we kind of got into the weeds about the hermeneutics of suspicion. That’s so widespread today and how that impacts what it is we’re trying to do. We actually agreed about how, about the importance of what it is we’re trying to do and how it’s, we’re trying to meet the moment basically that we’re in and have some small, reasonable. Neither of us are utopianist, neither of us are naive, but damn it, we’re going to try and do something worthwhile with our time. And so we agreed on that. But then we got into a little bit of the weeds on our respective approaches, maybe or understand, not understand these approaches to using propositional knowledge and or creating theoretical frameworks or explanatory frameworks. And I think this actually highlights. It highlights, or maybe it calls for us to define what we mean by naturalism as somewhat too, because I think we both are committed to scientific investigation as a valid and powerful way to understand the world. I think we both also know that it’s limited in ways that we’re just beginning to be able to understand. However, what occurred to me as I went back over the conversation was how you’re approaching this as a scientist, saying we want to, you and Greg and your colleagues, you want to explain this experience of the world. So that it has rigor so that it can be so that it’s validated and in accordance and inconsistent with the science, whereas what we’re doing, which is also committed to rigorous science, but what I’m doing and what OEK is trying to do is take what we’ve what the sciences, in particular the natural sciences, have been able to accumulate in terms of knowledge and interpret it in a way that can transform the way we see ourselves and the way we and by doing so, it transforms the way we relate to the world and the way we treat each other and the way we live. And so I think those two things are are are highly complimentary, but different enough so that we could have that friction that you mentioned, which I think is a creative friction. I’m feeling the creativity of it right now. So, does that make sense. Does that land with people as a reasonable resolution to what we talked about. Yeah, I think so. A couple things. The naturalism is not a standard naturalism which is the idea that your ontology is that which is derivable from what is given by the natural sciences. We are proposing extended naturalism which is also what is presupposed by the natural sciences what’s presupposed by the existence of science, the existence of scientists the existence of systems of meaning. And also, crucially, the recognition that propositional knowledge presupposes non propositional knowledge procedural perspectival and participatory so extended naturalism is committed to all of that. And then, and this is something Greg and I have talked at length about in other places. This is one of the ways in which I would hear what you just said, it might not be right so this is but this is I’m hearing it, but I’ll use a term that hasn’t been used here. I mean, there’s a difference between knowledge and grasping the significance of the knowledge, especially the significance for personal transformation which was what you were just talking about. So there is now, there’s an existing distinction and it’s getting very well explicated in the philosophical literature between knowledge and understanding where understanding is exactly the grasping of the significance of knowledge, especially, you know, the procedural the perspectival and the participatory significance of knowledge for transformation and then I would put it to you when when grasp that significance so that one overcomes ways in which is one is self deceptive disconnected from reality, so that one understands reality in a way that transforms one. So that one comes into a deeper alignment with reality. I think that’s a good account of what wisdom is. And I think perhaps you’re pointing towards that now of course, these are not. They’re not analytically distinct from each other, they’re not causally distinct from each other knowledge and wisdom are constantly interdependent, and I wanted to propose that to you if perhaps we were at times talking at cross purposes, because I. And I think at times I was speaking for Greg as well. I, I am concerned. I have two concerns and I was prioritizing one at the expense of the other. My other concern is that, as you said, I want to be able to explain this experience, or right, so that it’s rigorous, and it can’t be ignored or denied or dismissed by the scientific community, which they would otherwise be want to do. And other abiding concern which is, as you know, addressing the meaning crisis by affording the deep cultivation of wisdom and I think your work therefore speaks very deeply to that second concern. So I think I’m a little bit. And I guess I’m apologetic, I was being somewhat inconsistent in that I was only speaking about one of my two concerns. And I think to the negligence of the other and that meant I didn’t fully hear. Well what you were offering. But that is my way of attempting to put it together and see if that sits well with you. It sits really well and make. In fact, I can just, I feel happy. I have a better word that we found that. And, and I would also just say that I’m equally apologetic that I didn’t take the time to really ground what it is we’re doing in the natural sciences is like to emphasize that that, because that takes time it takes. Yes, that’s part of the curriculum that we’re not getting into but the curriculum is infused with nothing but science and so I don’t know I guess I just, I think that, you know, I left that out a little bit too and so it makes sense. So, so for me, yeah, I think, I think we’d all agree. I’ll borrow Zach signs just coming off of a conference hanging with Zach Stein. I’ll borrow from one of his emphases is, you know, for the, for the chiropractic moment when you think deeply about the concept of education. Okay. And then, and it means that in a really broad sense, and we need to delineate what our worldviews are. We need to do that analytically. We need to clarify our values. We need to reference the old understanding and update that. And that’s a lot of analytic work. And then we need to embody it. We need to live it. We need to transform the socialization practices. We need to transform the real world relationship practices that we engage in in nature and with each other. I think all of those are threads of the tapestry. And so I’m really looking forward to diving in more to the way in which OYCA translates itself into the doings of the world. Let’s do it. Yeah, let’s do it. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the segue into part two here at the level of revealing and sharing in that. So where to begin, because we made a list of our doings. And it’s, it’s quite extensive, I think. But I guess I just want to preface it by saying that we try to design in all that we’ve been talking about into these things. Another, another important part of like, all of the work that we do is we try to design in the things that we’re doing. Like OYCA as a, as a, as a educational experiences that we take the concepts that we’re talking, things like an activism, niche construction, cybernetics, when there’s a whole, you know, we have a whole curriculum concepts. But the idea is to take those concepts and then reverse engineer experiences that bring those experiences to the fore, bring them into awareness and, and, and do it in situ, do it in the context of an experience with nature or an explorer creative experience with art. And this is where, you know, so this is where what Rita’s and mine’s collaboration really has been, what’s the word, we’ve been on fire for the past, what, two, two and a half years in discovering this stuff. So go ahead. I want to make an observation, which is like a really probably very simple one. But as I’m hearing you all talk, it’s hitting me that like, for creatives, we don’t have a choice, but to live in the experiential mode, like that’s our job. Like, we can’t be tied to explanatory mode, because otherwise we wouldn’t be getting our work done. But yet we have to, like, like I said last week, I’m really grateful for the under labor and the architecture. I mean, Richard and I always use the metaphor of a pool, where you need the edges of the pool in order to swim in the middle of the pool. And so even just like writing about our work, trying to get our work out there, like it is, it can’t, you can’t just be swimming, you need the structure, you know, like, because otherwise, like we talked about the, the hermeneutics of suspicion, like you will encounter that very quickly if you don’t have that. But it’s just occurring to me that like, listening to you all talk about these two modes, we need both of them. And so the one that, you know, that John, you just said you kind of maybe neglected last week or however you phrased it. That’s the one that we have to be in. And what I find, you know, I mentioned my students last week, and so more and more, even with art students, they are taught to be much more comfortable staying in the explanatory mode. And they don’t want to move from that mode until they feel safe. But that trust that you brought up last week, John, you don’t build trust. If you always feel safe, like, point of trust is that you need to be vulnerable and then you need to work through that vulnerability in order to get and you’re not going to be so, so, you know, John, again, in the beginning when you said something about leaving a space and stepping, you know, we need to step. I find more and more, again, I’m sorry, students, I’m just going to keep throwing them under the bus, but it’s good. But that I have, it’s the, the teaching is about teaching them to feel okay to step without feeling safe. And that’s, I think that’s where we’re at. And I think that’s where OIKA comes in when I was talking about the the brachiation last week. Right, right. Right. So it to use the natural science that OIKA brings in, in order to help people take steps in order to feel more safe in a more experiential mode. Like that, that is the interpenetration between propositional and participatory that OIKA facilitates in order to create that continuity between essentially all four P’s. And John, I’m sorry, this is like, I’m going to just use your language and maybe misuse it, but this is like, this is the participation that I need to do. You’re doing it very well. Yeah, your point about trust requires vulnerability. I think that was a great, great point. It’s, it’s, it sounds to me also that also that the, the virtue of courage, not, you know, macho, but like tillex courage to be that kind of courage is also central to what you’re talking about here. Totally. So, because I heard you say that I just want, I don’t want to digress too long but like it sounds like your students get trapped in by their education in an explanatory mode that actually, I don’t mean to play with this word too much but it discourages them so that they can’t move out of a certain comfort zone. And therefore, there’s, there’s certain, certain truths are not available to them because they’re not willing to undergo a challenging transformation. Is it something like that? Is that a fair, am I hearing? Yes, and we can be expanded beyond the students because this is exactly what we see in OIKA, which is, if you don’t, if you don’t take that step, while you still feel vulnerable, it’s design, it’s not art, and it’s, it’s knowledge, it’s not wisdom, I would venture to say. Yeah. So in order to allow space for emanation. I don’t know, I’m trying things out. You know, I think you can’t wait until this is why I don’t, I like grant writing, it’s like you have to have everything, the burden of outcome right like you have to have, this is exactly what I’m going to do and they build no space for what happens when in fact you actually need to take the steps before you even know where the goal is, it’s process, it’s just process orientation. So anyway, that’s, you know, I think a lot of the OIKA work is getting, getting people to feel and so, you know, Rich, sorry, I didn’t mean to, we can, we can go back and start where you were going to start but I, when Rich and I go into the woods, it’s a fractal of this, where like, you know, I’m comfortable in the woods, I love the woods, like I grew up in nature, this is not hard for me, but, you know, I wasn’t a guide on Kilimanjaro, right, so like I go into the woods with Rich, and there’s, there are some things that I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, I can’t do, there are things that he provides that I can hold on to, so that I can just, just get to that space of total participatory play. And so because of that, and he does too and then I, you know, we go back and forth again there’s that, that, those boundary perforations which allows for the back and forth. And I think our collaboration is just a perfect fractal of like exactly what I’m talking about trying to, like trying to do like on a, on a cultural scale. Yeah, but don’t think for a minute that it’s not, it’s asymmetrical because it’s, it’s very symmetrical, the things that Rita showed up with in terms of her practice, and how it, you know, by some miracle, it basically puts into play so many of the concepts that Oeke has been teaching. And so that’s why, like, it’s, I’m probably surprised more than anybody at how, how well her practice, which I think we should probably talk about. Do you want to describe your specific process? Maybe, and just in your own terms and then. Yeah, I’m hesitant because I often feel like you do it better. Well, why don’t you both describe it? You do the first Rita and then Rich, you do it and we’ll pick up the dialogue between the two of you. Okay, and I’ll just say that like the reason, because I get really self conscious and all those embarrassed, but I, I think the reason why it’s important is because what it did for us was it was like proof of concept. So it allowed us to see like this really works like what we’re telling ourselves and each other that we’re trying to do is happening. And so it’s less about the my personal practice, like with this is not a prescriptive, everyone needs to do my practice. It’s just that like, when you find your, your way of practicing, this can actually happen. And so essentially, what I’m interested in, and it’s funny, John, like I, in my artist statements, I have often swapped out knowledge and understanding and felt frustrated because I, I’ve landed on understanding, which I now I’m glad for. But the idea is to just try, I go in with this attempt to truly understand a place. So I talk, I call it the process of acquaintance. And so I go in and I don’t know it and I need to just, I have a variety of methods with which I try to a spectral eyes, my understanding of that place. And that’s why I use so many different media and techniques. So every time, you know, different muscle memories, different colors, different, I’m synesthetic. So there’s like sensory things that I just trying to let as much in as possible, also let myself in. And so the exercise of the practice is really about, this is not me trying to understand a place, but this is in fact me trying to understand myself at a particular time and place. You’re doing this in situ, you go to the place, you take whatever materials with you and then, and so it’s like what you’re describing here, I’m just trying to get a little bit more of a concrete picture. Is this initially sort of, I’m just grabbing for something to try and give me an analogous hold. Is this kind of like, you know, almost like a sit spotting, a mindfulness practice where you’re opening yourself up and you’re letting all the different aspects show themselves to you and what resonates in you with those? Is that, am I getting it? Am I getting it? Yeah, so it’s kind of everything. So like, when I go, like I’ll start hiking. Joke that what, I’m the dog and you’re the cat, right? Like I have to go everywhere before I can go to one spot. Rich likes to go to like one spot at a time. You’ll be happy to know that there’s now clear evidence that dogs are more intelligent than cats. No comment. Different kind of intelligence. So, you know, there’s a lot of walking involved. There’s like sitting and reading a book, there’s talking on the phone, and then there’s like other very more, you know, artistic things where I think I’ll let Rich talk about the portal thing that I do. But I’ll give an overview first. So the portal thing that I do is that’s kind of my visual data collection. And so that’s, I think, what Rich is going to kind of dive into and talk about. But ultimately, all of these things that I collect while I’m on site, I do take back into the studio. And the idea is that you can have a relationship with someone when they’re not physically present with you. Why can I not cultivate this relationship once I have spent time with a place? So when I go back to the studio, that relationship continues. And ultimately what happens is I like to set myself up to point out how limited and ridiculous humans are. And so generally, what I end up finding over and over again is like, oh, true understanding is not accessible. But what you get instead is an infinite accrual of a never ending relationship that is forever just feeds you. And as long as you keep it alive. And so each place ends up cultivating new conversations, different conversations that are specific to that place. But then eventually what happens is I realize that I am not, in fact, separate from the place. And so the whole thing sort of culminates with this just real fulfilling feeling of belonging and becoming. And so that’s the practice. Yeah. So we’ll be able to include like links for so folks can check out some of the displays that have emerged as a function of this practice that might be really helpful for them. Yeah, good idea. So you get a sense of sort of this. Well, I’ve used the phrase elsewhere. It comes from the neoplatonic tradition, an inexhaustible fount of intelligibility. Like, you don’t get a sense of I can grasp this, but right, it just keeps on disclosing and disclosing and disclosing is, you know, and Polanyi made that his sort of criterion of contact with reality. He said that’s when you know when you’re in contact with reality, not when you’ve got a clear grasp, but when you have that sense and as to like can into that in her book. Sorry, I got it. My microphone just changed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Good that that is actually the, the criterion of realness, and so that the contact with reality. Now I wanted to ask you a question. It sounds to me like implicit in this is all of these aspects and all of these disclosures, they’re not coming at you as carcophony. They are instead somehow coherently fitting together. So, an analogy, I’m thinking of something like the notes of a melody. They’re not carcophonous like you don’t like it continues just to make more and more sense. Is that, is that an accurate explanation of your panel. Yeah, I mean I often will use just getting to know a person. Right. And so it’s about like, if you, if you, again, I usually like when I’m talking to students, if you see your friend at one o’clock after bio class every Tuesday, you’re only going to know that friend, how that friend is at one o’clock every Tuesday. So, so yeah so you you accrue these other experiences with this person place piece of music. And over time, you get to know it more and more and more and more and more and more and and and yeah that that feeling of the better you know it, the more there is to know like that is the most fulfilling. You know you go in, I release I go in, you know, it’s kind of essentially like making fun of goal orientation because you think there’s something to get. Yes, you’re not actually. Maybe it’s the having mode and the being mode right like it’s and you know and this is, I think, Richard I found you, or, you know, rich sent me to you and in the sort of relevance realization moment and that really resonated to that there’s this. Yeah. You know, Just the, does OIKA, would you say, in terms of affording you this capacity to feel the synergy between the various specializing elements would you say, does OIKA orient in that way in other words, does that afford some of the capacity to sort of orchestrate the various specializing elements and to feel the harmony or whatever term that you would use. Yeah, so it does it in a few ways. So there’s like, you know, just really baseline there’s like vocabulary that was like, Oh, you know, this is how I can talk about this thing that’s happening because, you know, again, essentially picture yourself swimming in the middle of the pool but the pool is so huge that you can’t even see the edges. And so, you know, what I find OIKA, you know, and both of your work does is like suddenly I can sort of see the pools getting smaller, so that I can see that I am in fact in a pool, and not just swimming out in the middle of the ocean, feeling completely I can talk about the importance of imagination and I can talk about like, how I think that’s really real. But these, my own hermeneutics of suspicion get in the way. If I don’t have these other knowledges to ground me and so like, again, it’s the brickeation and and like by having I’m walking through the woods with rich like I will point to something and be like, because I just see metaphor so I’ll just go straight to the metaphor and like, Oh, this reminds me of this thing that happens in society like you know how and he’ll say like oh that’s and he’ll like name the ecological phenomenon that that actually is, and it’s, it’s, you know, metaphor disappears, and all you have are fractals, you know, essentially so I’m not sure if it’s ironic geology or things like that. So yeah, the answer is yes, that it like it gave me that grounding. I’m not. I got to the point where I was interested in only, I wanted other ways of understanding a place like it’s. This is all coming from me so I was starting to look for other people who could help me understand a place in ways that I wasn’t taught to understand that place and so like, you know, enter the sky. You sort of dialogically enhance the aspectualization of a Yeah, so there’s a couple parts that interest me in this. You’ve really tweaked the phenomenologist and me now right now. So, I get a sense like you have almost like a sense of trajectory like you’re being carried into this, like, like, like when you’re getting into the place like it’s it’s not only, you’re not just passively it’s not just opening you up like a spectator, but you’re entering into it That’s what I’m sort of getting a sense that you’re conveying. So is that is that is that correct. I have to say something. Say something, because I because we need to understand what she’s doing like we have to actually be able to see her doing it and and she hasn’t described that yet so so I just, if we do that I think we’ll be able to get better handles on what’s happening. But but what you’re saying, john is absolutely true and precisely what’s happening. But anyway, so, so when I first found read I like I saw her website I saw trees I saw, you know, someone talking about their love of nature and I was like, reached out, we got together, you know, and I think we went for a hike, probably a couple of times. And I went and didn’t really get a sense for what her prior her process was what her process is and this is be a very simplified version of it but she uses a clear sheet of the plexiglass some kind of acetate or something. And she’ll go to a place like the woods, and we’ll set it up as in a frame or as a frame, and she’ll look through the plastic in in situ, and you’ll. Okay, but here’s what I saw when I. When she first did that was I saw her vanish, like she was no longer even that like she was there obviously present but I could, I could see that this practice, put her into a mode of relationship that I recognize this one that I do as a spotter with with the cosmic story on my head, you know, this abiding sense of the cosmic story, and I would disappear too and I could see read disappearing in that process, but she’s also doing a creative act where she’s capturing these textures and these tones and these colors and it and Trying to put it on this surface. Okay. And so there’s a lot going on there because what I saw her doing was we call it evicting the homunculus like a temporary eviction of the homunculus. She’s put up this representational surface and then penetrates it. Okay, and puts things on it. So she’s created a representational service, but there it is for all of us to see as the fiction that it is and so it invites us to see how representational. What do you mean she puts things on it like she paints on the surface. Markers, you know, yeah, I have like a backpack of like various provisional materials. But she’s gone to get remember she’s like, like, she’s not longer even talking to me, you know, we recently we recently shot some of this for a documentary that we’re working on. And I told everybody on the crew. I was like, okay, we pulled into this spot. It was this astronomical observatory and I was like, go film now because you’re about to watch Rita just vanish. She’s going to disappear. And I want you to catch that they weren’t ready. They weren’t ready. So they didn’t catch it. But, and then right on cue, like Rita disappears into this process. So, so, so to get back to what you’re saying, john about how does this draw you in? Yeah, this is like conformity on this is like conformity being induced. She’s in that conformity. Yeah. And it’s also it’s also a form of play like and like she goes into a timeless mode of play when and when she’s in that mode. It’s the same mode that I get in. You know why I was always late for dinner growing up was because I was playing. She’s playing. And now she’s in this like in this softened mode of being and the world, the natural world in particular, the colors and the leaves and the sounds of the brook and all that stuff is like coming through this portal into her. And just boundaries get obliterated, you know, not. And, and you just see it working. You see it working. So I’m sorry, but I just needed to make sure we know. No, no, no, that’s very helpful. So, I mean, that’s, I mean, so what can I go ahead? Go ahead. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, I’ll say something and then I’ll make space for you, Greg. I mean, independently, you know, Chris, Mr. Pietro and I have been talking about, you know, what the way and some of the stuff you’re doing in the transparency opacity shifting and the opacity of transparency shifting and mindfulness is you’re trying to make your mental framing translucent. You want to be able to see it, that it’s there and see through it at the same time, and you’re literally enacting that, which is just powerful. And secondly, that translucency, and the way you’re describing the, the, the, the piece of acrylic. Right. That’s exactly the orientation of an icon carver in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. They’re not carving an image. They’re doing a translucent framing so that something can shine through it. They’re affording it being, they’re affording the invisible becoming visible. I’m reading this huge tome of a book right now, which is like, look at this book. John always reading, John. Yeah, incomprehensible certainty metaphysics and hermeneutics of the image. And that’s exactly what he’s talking about what you’re just articulated. But he’s, and I’m not not to besmirch him because it’s a brilliant book. But you’re enacting it, and you’re making it an affordance of transformation, it’s not staying on the page as a theoretical argument. And that’s what I’m hearing. So that sorry, Greg, I just wanted to get that out before I lost it. So please. No, John, I actually, I was certainly in a very similar thing. I was basically just in seeing Rita’s relevance realization frame emerge and then create, you know, she herself drops out and then there’s a natural conduit. Right. It’s a conduit into an aspectualizing frame that then is aligning the conformity. And so it’s the embodiment of conformity. So we’re going to take our frame and then pull back and afford a place where a tapestry of our grip and the nature grip comes together and becomes one. And then you dissipate and then all of a sudden you have all these aspectsualizing being woven together into a symphony. That’s a that that feels beautiful to me. That’s really fascinating. I want to add. This is awesome. I mean, I would I could just listen you guys talk about. But I do want to add though, just to pull it back a little bit like this was my way of figuring out how to dissolve. Like my intention always, you know, since since I started like actual training in art was to dissolve. And so like I just this is not sophisticated. Like I just kind of came up. I mean, there’s a whole story with how it happened, but I just kind of came up with this thing again, essentially making fun of myself and my own idiosyncrasies to just try to get out of my own body, which just so happens to be one of the driving directives of an OIKA practice is to die a little bit every day, right, to dissolve your ego. And so, you know, when rich, there’s so many things that like rich and I just recognize in each other and we’re just constantly kind of floored by that. But I just want to underline that like, this is not the necessary practice. This is this is evidence that it’s working, but that like, the idea here for me was how do I distract myself enough, like my mind I’m full of anxiety, I need to escape. How do I do something and just being taught, you know, I’m comfortable in the natural world I was taught that is something that could always help. But but that was kind of the impetus for creating this practice. And so it isn’t it’s it’s there’s an accessibility here for people beyond, you know, you know, this particular practice. Yeah, totally. But I guess for me the exciting thing, right, so you enter this as an artist, you’re entering in on the creative expressive dimension. But what we’re doing, in fact, the little line at the end of the summary of the book, I think, is the idea of the creative expressive dimension. And so that’s the and so here as I’m listening to you, I’m feeling my academic you know, scientific narrator feel the embodiment of an externalizing frame that affords a conduit into nature. And that’s the and that’s what I see missing enormously in the sort of in our chaotic fragmented pluralism that’s been going on the the lack of a dialogue, a deal logos, a dialectical co creative co explanatory mutually inspiring sort of the So I feel that as you talk about it and I feel that as I talk about the journey between you two of you, that’s why I really wanted this OIKA synergy to be part of this conversation. So could I probe about that because I’m also very excited. So Could you say more because you started, Rita, and Rich, could you like chime in about how like, I know there are other practices and I heard what you said, Rita, this isn’t a necessary one. So, but nevertheless, I also understand that you’re saying, you know, you’re not you’re not explaining, but you’re somehow you’re exemplifying important concepts from OIKA. And so you’re sorry, I’m getting could you could you explicate that a little bit more like, how is that happening? What does that? How does that show up? Well, I mean, we can start with niche construction, which was the first one, you know, and again, and this is we can or I mean, we could say an activism to I think, or fractals. Yeah, was this this so part of the attention or the reason behind sort of designing this practice for myself was like, I’m here, and I want to get over there. How do I throw just the way that like a ventriloquist can float throw their voice? Like, how do I throw my self? Mind? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so to have I keep the word transjective keeps coming up because it’s this surface feels like it exists in that space where I can put things on the surface and their material and they’re from me and I know them. And they’re going to talk to things over there. Exactly. That’s beautiful. And so then I get so lost in that, because I try to make the match and I try you know, there’s, I could have to compose it has to be like good art, right? So I get so lost in that technique or the technicalities of art creation, that I completely forget that I am me and then that’s a tree and then that’s a rock and that we’re in the wood like, and so so I don’t know. I keep wanting to say pre perception, but there was some word that I came across once in undergrad that was I don’t know if it’s Merleau-Ponty, but there’s this idea that like before anything has boundaries. It’s like a baby, like when a baby’s born and they don’t know what where their body stops and starts. That was the sense that I was trying to give myself. Anyway, so then Rich comes along and he says, Well, yeah, that’s niche construction. And so I’m like, what is niche construction? Tell me about niche construction. And so, you know, just learning about how because I also am a stickler for putting that keeping myself in the art, like I find I’m writing a course right now, Intro to Environmental Arts and a lot of these environmental artists take themselves out, they think that they’re like doing us a favor by removing themselves from. Sound familiar? And yeah, and just like and just speaking for the place, but you can’t take your job as an artist is to contribute to the conversation. And so what am I saying? So niche construction, this idea that like, it would just like affirmed and then like allowed me the permission and therefore enhanced. It’s like I could I could jump push off the sides of the pool that much that much harder because the sides of the pool were that much more structural. Could you? This is good. I’m getting a sense of this, the intuition, but it would be helpful for the viewers as well. Could you like, explicate, how is this an instance of niche construction? I mean, you don’t mean it biologically, you mean it symbolically, artistically, cognitively. Sorry, do you do? I want you to. Okay, well, we could run through the litany of concepts that this touches on and they’re all have overlaps. But if we could just stick with this one, just to get it really, I just want to get a clear example. Oh, niche construction is that idea that, you know, that. No, no, no, I know what niche construction is. I want to see how niche construction is showing up in the process. Because when she’s in this process, she’s letting the world shape her, right? And she’s also creating an artifact that will then become part of the world. Right, right. Through the art that she produces as a cultural artifact that becomes part of the world, which, by the way, crosses the bridge between nature and culture. See, that’s the point is to is to go into the nature, let it construct us and let and then construct a culture that reflects that. Intelligence that was transferred. So this is what I’m so we we mean it in a conceptual sense that niche construction. It can happen at this. It’s it’s it’s scale independent. It’s context independent. Right, right. Probably even material independent. It’s helpful for me to add that. So when I go to different places and I do the same practice and I end up collecting this visual data, right. And the visual data that I’m collecting responds to not necessarily just visual things, but maybe you’ll see me use like a neon color because it’s particularly like windy that day or, you know, like, right. So there’s all sorts of phenomena happening and I’m responding through visual data collection. But if you look at the work from different places, you will notice, yes, there are certain tendencies that I read a. Happen to to do often, but there are other things like colors and textures and shapes that show up in the individual places that don’t show up in the other places. And so there’s the world is shaping the work that I am. Okay, so what I’m hearing you say is that you’re not going to be able to do that. And so there’s a lot of things that I’m hearing you say that are shaping the work that I am. Okay, so what I’m hearing you say is you’ve got this translucent, transjectivity thing, right, framing. And in one direction, you’re shaping things by that framing. But in another direction, you’re being shaped by it. And those two things are looping with each other. Exactly like what goes on in each construction. Did I did I get it? Yes. But that also bleeds into lots of other things. Oh, no. So that’s the point. So then you and then what you did, Rich, as I heard you, you did you two are doing this very rapidly with each other. Right. Is it a little bit of experts fallacy? You’re doing it very rapidly because you talk to each other a lot. I’m trying to slow it down so other people can get it’s like when you hear a foreign language, you don’t hear the pauses between the words. But if you if you’re fluent in language, you hear all the words separately spoken. Right. It’s like that. So I’m trying I’m trying I’m trying to be disruptive. I’m trying to I’m trying to articulate it. So then I heard you say, oh, and so I’ve got this. And I don’t know what you actually get to use. I’m just using this as a placeholder. I have this artistic instantiation of niche construction. But because it’s artistic, it bridges between the natural world and the cultural world. And the notion of niche construction is now being used to bridge between the natural world and the cultural world. That’s to create to create to create a culture that embeds or somehow reflects or is recoupled to the natural world. So that the culture and nature aren’t so decoupled. So what you’re actually doing, I propose to you is you’re taking I mean, it is about you’re discovering new. I’m trying to do this very carefully. So if I stumble, please forgive me. But you’re discovering new significance of this concept, niche construction, and then you’re unpacking it and making it available to people so they can grasp it in a more profound manner that can challenge them. No, you’re doing that. That’s the explain that you’re doing that part. But we’re just out there doing it and doing it through. But you’re but I’m not discovering the new significances. You are. OK, we’re discovering the new significance. That you’re and you’re also discovering how they can transfer to new domains. Yes. Yes. Let me say something and then I think Rich might turn it into like, say better. When I when this is happening when this is happening. And eventually the becoming happens right so there’s like, I often say you listen absorb participate and then become becoming happens. There’s like, I don’t know. I just I like using all these terms right so like say we form a gap junction between myself and the police. Right. And then the circles of concern grow wider. And so the collective goal so suddenly my goal scale is in sync with the goal scale of that. Or whatever. And so then I suddenly carry that forest with me. These are all concepts. And so when I carry that forest with me, I’m then able to be in the world and start to put that forest into the world and however whatever that means like that means. So being ecological you can ask, you know, Timothy more and what that means but like I think that like when I carry that and this is this is the thing that was the proof of concept for us at Hubbard Brook was like, is this real like will this work and like totally works like you. And you just start spilling it out to others. Yeah. Okay. So, then here’s another possible connection. And this goes back to wisdom. Right. So, a lot of the philosophical traditions talk about a process largely trained apprenticeship, procedurally, prospectively participatory of internalizing the sage, you even see a version of it in sports psychology where you internalize the coach, but what I hear you saying is that you’re in you’re internalizing the world. And that, and that spiritual intelligence of the world you were talking about last time is now active within you through that internalization that’s is that fair to say. Yes, and like, so the world is your sage. If you have properly attuned. And so, the cosmic story affirms that like, again, like there was just, I was, you know, I’m out there and I’m doing my thing and I’m a silly little artists and I’ve got this like, very silly little piece of plastic in the woods, and I’m like, I feel these things. I don’t know if they’re real and if I try to write about them like people like, you know, and so then here comes Oika, and says, No, no, no, no, like, they are real. And let me tell you why. Right. You know, and like, you know, like you sit on the rock and open up the big book and it like tells you the whole cosmic story and so what then when I feel these things. When I’m out in the woods and I, and I feel them kind of primally and intuitively suddenly that feeling is tethered to a story that is that is propositional, but it’s like, it’s like the it’s but you feel the continuity, like the continuity becomes. What did I say, substrate independent, like it just, it just goes from the story to like inside of me, and so, so I can feel it’s like a substrate independence you’d you talking about I does platonic forms but but that’s, I mean narrative is designed to bridge between the propositional and especially the perspectival and the participatory going right. So, I understand that. Go ahead, rich. I’m sorry, but when you say we’re talking about I dose, like, that’s one way to talk about it there’s another way to talk about it which is, for example, I remember early in our collaboration I noticed that Rita is nudged along in certain ways by the world that she’s now in this mode with right. And so, I remember think and I was studying a bio Genesis at the time which is, you know, how life become how non life becomes life. And then I can see how the same thing is happening when it’s whether we’re talking about a chemical gradient or some kind of like, you know, density gradient in a, in a, in a substance in a solution and it’s pushing things are, and how that process ends up becoming the precursor to the thing we’re later going to call life and see so it puts this might sound really abstract and like I’m grasping for. But when you do this enough you start to see how it’s that the precursors to what we now, especially when I hear you talk about it john and describe what cognition is and how it works, I can see I can see mechanisms happening in the pre biotic world that will then complexify into. Yes, I do. Yeah, the symmetries that show up in this practice so this is the thing. So, I’m constantly bringing like, wait a minute, I learned about that in physics I learned about that in chemistry I learned biology I learned about that and because you know and and there’s all showing up in this process, which just betrays the cotton the deep continuity, the deepest continuity that. And so, yeah, I guess that’s all I’m saying it’s like, it’s another way to bridge between the philosophy of this stuff and the science and the natural history of all of this. I don’t know if that makes sense. It reminds me it reminds me of Bartoff’s work on good to and him seeing the plant. And, and then he, that was just a precursor to him seeing the phenomena. But good to did understand that as a new way of phenomenologically realizing the platonic forms. Unfortunately he lost out to Newton, but he lost out to Newton about light, but he didn’t lose out to him about other things that are now coming to the fore about perception and cognition right I think there’s a resurgence of that. Yeah, very much so. So I, I’m just coming off this conference, I was with Zach Stein and one of the core elements was a reawakening of intimacy. I would say into the sea across the stack, you know, from energy to matter to life mind to culture, and to situate ourselves there’s a call to situate yourself in the field of value, or the field of value particular kind of orientation toward a complexified intimacy of sorts you know through through the inner relation. I’ll put it this way sometimes in a conversation is like well it’s not like I’m an animal. It’s like, okay, actually you are an animal and an organism and a material object, you know, and we get these justifications I think through technology and through propositional analysis and other world views it and the separation of the self the separation of technology, and they sort of diagnosis having this global alienation disorder. And I’m thinking about what OYCA affords in relationship to the embodiment of intimacy across our ontological continuity, and the rediscovery of that or awakening of that potential that is lost in so much of our modern socialization. Great, could I ask you a question because I thought that what that movie made is a really good one. Could you, could you unpack a little bit, and I know I’m pushing right here. On the. But could you unpack a little bit. You know, I think there’s a lot, because you know when I’m when I’m doing the dialectic into the logos people move, they discover a kind of intimacy that’s not just a kind of sexual and not familial and it like, and they’ll say things like I discovered this kind of intimacy but I was always looking for it. It’s this weird kind of I’m remembering something I didn’t know like platonic anemesis or something. And so they’re like, are you talking about like, like something like that a recovery of dynamicity, or something like that? Yes, that that that there’s so I think they described by a shared identity, a recognition of the relative otherness, and a shared mutual understanding of the relationship between the two. And so, I think that’s a really good one. I think that’s a really good one. I think that’s a really good one. I think that’s a really good one. Yes, that that that there’s so I think they described by a shared identity, a recognition of the relative otherness, and a shared mutuality of feeling of purpose of fail value. I may not get that exactly right but basically there was a call in the thing to say that we, we can be oriented in this way and when we do are oriented this way, there are a whole host of things that happen and then there are anti value things that pull away from that. And the argument is that modern society may be having many many forces that pull away from that. The failure of a worldview that situates us in the field of value that recognizes sort of the ontology of intimacy is one of the things that we needed to both an explanatory set, a value set, a participatory set that would rediscover, recultivate, and address the sort of they had 13 sort of disorders of intimacy elements of alienation that we needed to uncover. So I think that I don’t know if that answers exactly the question you’re asking. So I’m really speaking from their frame because I’m just coming off of a four day conference. Oh no, that’s valuable. What I’m trying to get at is why, I mean, I think I, like I’m getting a sense that intimacy connects with this niche construction loop that we’ve been talking about here and then intimacy is like intimacy isn’t familiarity is what I’m trying to get at there’s something beyond. That’s what I was using with the example of people said this is not familiarity. This is not erotic attraction. It’s just something else and it’s something like this reciprocal opening within a niche construction. I’m trying to articulate what, is that landing for you? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And the, so what are the opportunities, what are they again, sort of the socialized educational opportunities for this embodied practice? And the argument is that we need to, for the meaning crisis and the current situation, we need to fundamentally reverse forces that afford a lot more of that. And OIKA I think is exactly, it seems to me the connection thing that does that. Yeah, I see the connection. Does that land with you Rich? It does. I mean, I hate to say it, but I kind of gave up on formal education a long time ago, you know, like that was my, so that’s why it’s just so much more fruitful to work with artists trying to create culture as opposed to trying to change an educational system that is so entrenched. And it just seems more productive to do this the other way. I just wanted to also just mention real quickly that some of those things that show up, like those are part of the concepts in OIKA too, there’s like radical affection is one, like this, this new kind of affection shows up. Like there are these practices we do where we, and you can feel that affection all of a sudden, things like gratitude, and gratitude is this, it could be this like panacea, like I usually say gratitude is the antidote to grievance, which is what we’re living in now. So these things show up too, like, and falling back in love with the world again shows up. And when you’re, and when you also start talking on the scale of the cosmos, when you really bring deep natural history into this process, your circles, your cognitive light cones expand. Yeah, yeah, Michael Levin’s idea. Yeah. Yeah, we can use it as a metaphor, fine. That’s what isn’t a metaphor. He’ll be, you know, he’s always clear to say that all science is metaphor. So if we can accept that, then suddenly you’re, you care more about more and more and more things. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a care that, that comes out of that, that continuity that arises. There’s a reformulation of irrelevance realization in a very profound way. Absolutely. Oh yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s why we’re following your work. Like, both you guys, so, so, yeah. The intimacy thing, like, because all the concepts that Richard has said, the way that you access them is through intimacy with the natural world and so, you know, radical affection sure that might feel like a big broad concept but it’s, how do you practice it? Well, I’ve been doing it with spiders and it’s working. So, and this is what you don’t, you know, we’re not going into the curriculum or the core or even just what happens when you take a walk in the woods with rich but like, everything is tied to just a very small, very easy, but deeply tethered experience with the natural world. And when you accumulate those, like we’ll talk about, I’ve been like the the intimacy is the baseline of intimacy is shifting. There’s a baseline shift. That’s a learn, that’s a term that I use, I learned from the scientists and I love it because there’s baselines are constantly shifting. There is no baseline, but you can see, I think we can all feel how like intimacy, you know, what people think is intimate now, you know, there, there was intimacy is possible before that we just started. And I think that’s tied to beauty to like rich and I also talk about beauty a lot and like, we find over and over again that like what we think is beautiful, or what we think is not beautiful is like not what most people, you know, when you’re used to. I think it boils down to people who look really closely and I say look but I mean like people who listen really closely like both of you like you’re you’re you’re you’re really delving deep like you’re intimate with your work, which is intimate with his work and I’m and so when you get intimate enough, you find the source and the source is the world. And so that’s I think where this consilience starts to show up is because we’re all looking at working at Mariah Mitchell Association right now and she was an astronomer and so like she’s using literally using a telescope when you look so closely at something that you’re essentially face plant into the world and become it. You know, you can’t you of course you’ll find consilience because we’re. And that’s a transformative experience like that’s the transformation. Yeah, so I just wanted to underline yeah I think like because intimacy is just, I mean I feel like it’s almost becoming one of those words that I don’t want to use anymore but, but I do think it’s like, it’s kind of really part of the problem because it’s where you find the infinite. It’s like a bait and switch like you don’t think, you know, I see all these people getting speaking in universals, but they don’t do anything they’re really vague and they’re just surface level and they’re just like, and they don’t, they don’t help they don’t, they don’t. And I think that’s when you go deep and intimate and just look a spider in the eye. That blows you out the other side to the cosmic story in a way that makes you feel part of it. I think that is the, that’s a way of saying the final participation or the ultimate concern or the fount of inexhaustible intelligibility I think that’s what you’re talking about And I think that’s the Tillichian turn. That’s the Tillichian turn. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s very much a. Well until it since then it’s a kind of faith, not the assertion of false belief or the pretense of certainty but that that sense of identifying with some something radically real and and entrusting yourself to it, as we’ve talked about earlier. So, what like what does it, what does it look like, like, do you like is there a specific. Do you like what do you do with people they do they is there a course or they’re like, is there, is there a curriculum that you move through in a regular sequence or like what is it that I got it. This was an excellent, by the way, just fantastic having Rita here. I’m not sure I’m going to be for that, both of you. But, like, how does this generalized beyond the two of us when I’m asking, like, what do you do to make it so that other people can catch what you’re, you’re exemplifying. How does that work. Yeah, I mean it makes me, I want to reemphasize those entry points that we talked about last week, because this is sort of the work is like how do we offer a variety, how do we cultivate that curiosity that we talked about last week how do we model it. How do we then also cultivate it in a way that kind of offers some tendrils for people to attach to if they want to, but there’s going to be people who their entry points are going to be more propositional there’s going to be people who aren’t going to care about the science until they experience something and then they start to care about the science. So there’s a course, and there’s a course that’s like specifically for our flanks because it and then there’s another one we’re doing for artists and creatives. There, like we go to conferences and talk. We try to do as many panels as possible we have like an art show coming up at Plymouth State. And we’re hoping to, there’s a couple other universities that are kind of interested in having us so that we can just kind of go, we give workshops. So I’ll do a little workshop with the, my little portals we call them the little acrylic things and help people kind of escape themselves in that way. And then we find others right like we find the others and find other people who have been able to access this through other practices. So, so that the more we can show the multitudes, the more entry points there will be for people so we’ve got like the thing in Nantucket right now there’s a sound walk, there’s going to be a stomp dance. And then there’s there’s sculptures and drawings and outdoor pieces with text which will do videos that interpret the art which is also really great because, you know, the other hurdle we have is that like art has decided over the years to make itself very pretentious and inaccessible. And I make it oftentimes abstract art which is even worse and so to have a scientist show people, hey look you too can come in and start talking about this work like there is no right or wrong again because these people are trained. Now we’re all conditioned to think that there is a right and wrong and so it’s it goes back to taking that step into the space when you still feel vulnerable so any way that we can show that or help guide these steps, help people take a step. So, kind of all of these things that we’re doing are ways of trying to kind of get that for people. So, like, that people like come to you and take courses with you like, how many, like, do you have like 10 people in a class 20 people in a class. It’s, it’s been pretty much word of mouth we have a very sort of tight knit community of mostly artists right now like I’ve got collaborators also in in Europe. We just opened up this, I’ve got a long time collaborating Fred Adam, who, you know, he’s just really taken to it and has. He’s a real special character and he’s, he’s found this abandoned hut at the edge of a wetland in southern Spain, and basically just converted it into this big ecological restoration project and he’s got the community involved, and he does his own art in this place, and then there’s also we’ve got one that started up in Greece with a with a group of artists, and we commissioned an expedition. Recently where a handful of people who have taken the OICA for artists course can, you know, we, we support them to go and do a residency somewhere, and they each, each of these things has had its own output. There’s so many of these things going on, but this year actually, because of all the additional people that are coming on board, decided that it’s going to be important to to create an economic model that can that can support these projects so we’re this year we’re starting economics, which is an idea to. That’s the original etymology of the word which is really cool. Yeah, it’s to recouple economic and ecological concerns and so what we do is, and I’m not going to get into like crypto and NFTs or anything like that just because it’s got it’s you know it’s been drug through the mud so poor, you know, with all the scandals and everything. But what we do is we’re using art. So, so you take a place on Earth that needs to be restored in, like, where I am now there’s a lot of abandoned cranberry bogs that are no longer economically viable so we’ll take an old cranberry bog and we want to restore it back to its original wetland diversity. And as we do that we can measure ecological metrics, like for example when fish start to come back or birds start to come back and we can we can document as, as the ecosystem comes back to health. We can use blockchain and smart contracts to link the ecological metrics to an economic metric that’s associated with an art so you get an artist. Let’s just say for example just to make this simple they, they do a piece of art that depicts a turtle, like with this amazing eastern spotted turtle which is an endangered and it’s got these really cool spots on its back and you can, it’s very art, it’s a very charismatic turtle. So, somebody can create a piece of art that depicts the turtle that becomes that becomes tokenized and then through a smart contract that piece of art is linked to ecological metrics that we can measure in the field. Every time, you know, a turtle swims past a sensor or gets, or gets noticed by an observer. It’s like, ka-ching, you know, like, another turtle, ka-ching. So as the turtles come back, the economic value is tracked on the blockchain. So you’ve got the economic value of the, of the artwork going up with the ecological health. So these things are now recoupled because what we have now is they’re decoupled. That economic wealth comes at the expense of ecological health. We’re trying to get them back in sync so that they go up like this. So things like that, that, I mean, we’ve got a lot of like projects like that that we’re, that we’re trying to initiate with the artists that come and take an OICA course because once you’ve got the concepts and the experiences they can just design their own, you know, bring their own practices to manifesting all this. Is this making, does that make sense? I also want to add, like, it’s just amazing what, what, like, ecological intelligence, how it informs, there’s things that Rich is doing that I have not found in other kind of art spaces, which is that he’s not asking the artist to make any particular kind of art because he knows better, right? He’s not just asking the artist to create, like he’s asking the artist to do what the artist is there and trained and like gifted to do. And then he’s tying it to the restoration. He’s not asking the artist to put anything specifically or depict anything specifically in the work so that the work can truly be whatever the artist feels it needs to be, but it’s still there supporting the ecosystem and he’s creating an ecosystem like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a interdisciplinary ecosystem that supports the actual ecosystems help. Yeah. Nice. I like that. I see that re links nature and culture. That’s the whole idea, right? Is to just continually reconfirm the continuity of nature and culture as a way to, as a way to respond to the shit show we’re in. Yeah. Sometimes I joke that rich is really good at like, no matter who you are telling you why what you do is important. Like, you know, like to the degree that I’m like, wait, do you really think that this is important or you just say this to everybody, but he does say it to everybody because he does think that what everybody does is important. And so instead of trying to get everybody to do the same thing, it’s about, wait, how do we find again? What was important about art and actually ask art to do that. And then couple it with the science, with the culture with, you know, and then, and then we work together in a kind of parallel play that turns into an ecosystem, instead of asking people to conflict, like, yeah. So, I mean, and I don’t mean this in a trivial sense. I mean, this and I hope you can, I’m trying to convey a depth here. I mean, you really art is now back in service of the sacred in a really deep way. And that’s a very interesting overturning of the whole thrust of modernity in art, which is a very, and post modernity, of course, as well. Just, just on that note, if you, I know I only touched on it briefly in the other in the earlier episode, this idea of earthling theory, which is really about tracking the human diaspora out of Africa, and how our, our sequential intimate relationships, you know, over eons, relationships with habitats manifest ultimately in the expression of art, in the expression of what, you know, prior to agriculture, it was, there was art, you know, we were doing art before we were doing accounting. We were doing art before the end. It’s about, it’s about remembering that like re invigorating the deep function of art to help us understand who we are, because you can see it and you can see it in the anthropological record in the function that it has played. And, and, you know, go back to eat happily and stuff like that showing that the art around the sacred predates agriculture and is probably the precursor to civilization, which is very, I mean, that just ruffled so many feathers because it, it sort of really undermined a particular rightly so rightly so yeah, a particular reductionist account of human behavior. Unfortunately, we’re getting to the end of our time and I would like to give each one of you a chance, you know, to have a final word but before we do that. I found today. Very rich and very powerful, and I just wanted to thank both of you. I thought this was excellent and it’s it’s. Well, I mean, it’s about conciliance in action and I’m using the word in action not just in action. And so that very grateful for that, but now I’ll shut up and I’ll. Why don’t we do rich then Rita and then you Greg, and then lovely. Okay. Yeah, I mean, first of all I just want to say thank you, you know, thank you for giving us this time, and this opportunity to speak. It’s rare. And, but I suppose the thing is to just feel again, you know, and redefine our relationship to nature. I guess this one other thing I just want to address that came up earlier to was like you said to me you said, you know, rich. It’s, I believe that you feel this way when you when you experience the world, but I can show you 17 other people who, who would just dismiss this as I thought about that, and I, what I came to believe is that it’s because of the ecological training, when you when you’re trained as an ecologist you’re trained to focus on relationships. And if you don’t have that it’s easy to dismiss, but if you do have that if you do have you highlight and really pay attention to the relational nature of things the relationships. Then it’s, it’s a very short step to include yourself, because you are part of that relationship and I think, I think that might be one of the secret ingredients that makes the difference between really grasping this and and being, you know, as you were saying dismissal dismissive. It’s that so anyway that’s that’s my that’s really all I wanted to say everything else you can get to OIKA.com. And I think that’s maybe why artists come in because we are taught to see the world that like when we you know composing something looking at objects in in space like it’s all relational. And so, I think that’s coming into play with the artists that are coming to OIKA, and how they’re then able to communicate this outward to others, because we sort of align, we understand that we learn that we have to learn the science, but, but we can meet at that And then, you know, those are those of us that teacher those are just do it we know how to help others try to understand through maybe a more creative mode how to get to that ecological thinking and worldview. But I was thinking, I don’t know I want to. I don’t want to create like a dichotomy because that’s not what I’m trying to do but back to my house thing from last week, where like I’m just feeling I’m feeling gratitude for being in the house and I’m feeling gratitude for being that, like, outside the house and I’ll speak to both so one is like, you know, I listened to you, you guys. I think a lot. And I always felt like an outsider like I’m, words are not my first mode of expression and so to be here and to be able to kind of speak not for other artists but to at least sort of start to bring creativity and art I mean you guys are very creative so I don’t mean to say that But just to kind of be here is is awesome. And I just really appreciate like you welcoming me and and having this, this is just really fun. So thank you. And then, let’s lift the house up while maintaining the gratitude for the house. And, like, the, the perspective that I think we started speaking to towards the end that like a provider the cosmic story provides to be able to kind of zoom out and reconnect all of our purposes to their kind of original source purpose and so I’m feeling gratitude to OYCA for really being like strong in insisting that art needs to be put back to where it was originally supposed to be. And for that I’m really grateful and so that was something that just sort of started to come up at the end but I wanted to make sure that it was like stated and noticed. Thank you. It’s been really lovely having you here. When I when John and I were talking about it I was like we got to have the OYCA and the bridge that it affords to art, and we want to show what that embodiment and enacting an experiential element is and I really feel like we were able to achieve that today in particular so thank you Rita, Rich, it’s been great. I am, you know, my journey started, you know, 1997 and then conciliance comes out E.O. Wilson. I’d like to thank E.O. Wilson would appreciate this. And I like to think that what we’re doing at the explanatory level in cognitive science psychology, filling in certain gaps and affording the explanatory big picture in a way that does justice to our embodied cognitive world and situating us so that we can appreciate our natural intelligence as we explode into the artificial world and five-inch point we better get this stack right if we’re going to do this wisely the wisdom stack better be grounded. And I feel like what OYCA is pointing to and showing and embodied and doing that. And if we’re going to, and so for me this idea of the others levels in nature and there’s levels in our cognition and there’s a transjective interface and we need to re-ignite and re-steal the culture so we have a strong transcendence in relationship to the potential of the moment. How will we educate? And I mean that in the broadest sense of what kind of education socialization processes would afford that. Well, I think OYCA is an exemplar of that. And so it’s been lovely to see. And so I appreciate that. Thank you very much. That’s great. That was amazing. That’s a really good place to end. Thank you so much.