Sense-Making in a Changing World

Episode 68: Web of Meaning with Jeremy Lent and Morag Gamble

February 08, 2022 Morag Gamble: Permaculture Education Institute Season 3 Episode 68
Sense-Making in a Changing World
Episode 68: Web of Meaning with Jeremy Lent and Morag Gamble
Sense-making in a Changing World with Morag Gamble
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Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast. I'm Morag Gamble and my guest in this episode is acclaimed author, educator and philosopher Jeremy Lent.  I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. 

Jeremy, described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age,”  investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future.

BOOKS BY JEREMY LENT
Jerermy's award-winning book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, examines the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos from hunter-gatherer times to the present dayHis new book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, offers a solid foundation for an integrative worldview that could lead humanity to a sustainable, flourishing future. 


JEREMY'S ORGANISATION AND NETWORK
Jeremy is the founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute focussing on connecting science and traditional wisdom to lay a solid foundation for a worldview of interconnectedness - a worldview that will enable humans to thrive on our planet harmoniously and sustainably.

Since we recorded this conversation, Jeremy has also launched the Deep Transformation Network Jeremy, which I am helping to moderate.

Jeremy also shares in his blog.

PODCAST HOST
This show is hosted by speaker, filmmaker, humanitarian, author and global teacher of permaculture teachers and Permayouth mentor, Morag Gamble of the Permaculture Education Institute.

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The original intro music, recorded here in the ecovillage where I live, is arranged and played my very talent

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This podcast is an initiative of the Permaculture Education Institute.

Our way of sharing our love for this planet and for life, is by teaching permaculture teachers who are locally adapting this around the world - finding ways to apply the planet care ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. We host global conversations and learning communities on 6 continents.

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Morag Gamble:

Hello and welcome. I'm Morag Gamble, and you are tuning in to the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast. My guest today is author and philosopher Jeremy Lent. Jeremy, described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as one of the greatest thinkers of our age is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. His award-winning book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning examines the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos, from hunter-gatherer times to the present day. His new book, the web of meaning, integrating science and traditional wisdom to find our place in the universe offers a solid foundation for an integrative worldview that could lead humanity to a sustainable flourishing future. He's also the founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute.

Morag:

This show is hosted by the Permaculture Education Institute. The intro music is arranged and played by my very talented friend and neighbor Kim Kirkman. And the sound is edited by my fabulous one and only niece Rhiannon Gamble. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the unseated lands from which I'm speaking with you, The Gubbi Gubbi people, and pay my deep respect to their elders past present and emerging. I'd like to recognize their ability to care for this land, the waters and biodiversity for so many thousands of years. So let's dive in. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did and make sure to check out the show notes for links to Jeremy's work. More information about the Deep Transformation Network Jeremy has initiated and which I'm helping to moderate and for a copy of the transcript and more information about our work at the Permaculture Education Institute. Oh, and make sure to subscribe. So you get notifications of these weekly podcast episodes. Leave us a lovely review. It really does help the bots to find our little podcast. And I'd love for you to share this with a friend. So sit back and enjoy this conversation with Jeremy Lent.

Morag Gamble:

Well, thank you so much, Jeremy, for joining me on Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast today. Thank you for your book. I've been diving again over the holidays into the web of meaning, and also loved, the patterning instinct. And thank you too, for that brilliant course that you just ran through the Earth's literacies program. It was really wonderful to spend that time with you and this global learning community, unpacking a lot of these ideas. And you know, some of the things that I really wanted to talk with you particularly being the start of the year is looking at well, you talk a lot about how, you know, this current, world view of our civilization is had its day basically heading towards a precipice. So what next, where to, you know, and what does that mean for where we pay attention this year and the coming years, which feel very much like their critical moments in humanities time on this planet to really look differently at what we are doing. So welcome to the show and thank you for being here. And I look forward to exploring some of these questions, particularly also through the lens of permaculture, because that being a big focus, how does, how does that fit in with your world view of this unfolding ecological civilization that you talk about in the book?

Jeremy Lent:

Yeah, well, that, that sounds so great, Morag, and it is just a pleasure to be in conversation with you. Thank you so much. And I think what you just described, what a great territory for us to explore this next hour. So I look forward to it. Yeah.

Morag Gamble:

Mm. Thank you. So if we could begin with exploring, well, what is this new worldview that you describe? I mean, I think we understand what the old worldview, the current view is. what is it that we're imagining into being here.

Jeremy Lent:

Yeah, well, primarily I think we need to understand it as a world view of interconnectedness or interrelatedness, maybe even more, uh, get to that notion of everything relates to everything else. And I think when we look at what our dominant world tells us, what we just kind of hear, and it's not like people are explicit about it. People don't go around saying everything separates. And, but the way in which people like converse and the way in which our systems work and the values we hold are based on separation, that humans are separate from each other, even separate from themselves. We have a mind separate from a body. And so if you're more awake, you try to integrate them, but we see them as separate. And then, and then of course, humans are separate from nature. And so nature, it becomes just a resource to exploit and extract. And that seems, and so then even the who again, are a little bit more progressive or aware say, oh, we need to be sustainable. Not because we're actually all part of an interconnected whole, but, you know, because we don't want to exploit it so much that there's not enough left for us to exploit in the future. So that's where we come from. And this different world view of interrelatedness is all about how we actually at the deepest layers are connected in all of those ways we thought a re separate. That actually humans and non-human nature around us were all part of the same deeply interconnected system. That in fact, we are all part of a human sisterhood and brotherhood we're actually a kind of a global community. And even within ourselves, this distinction that we have from a mainstream d ominant Western culture all the way back from Descartes he said I think therefore, I am. Like the sense that our true identity exists just in our brain. That's been shown by modern science to be absolutely false. In fact, we a re a n integrated, embedded, our intelligence is embedded. Our bodies are intelligent. The distinction between these two are simply false. So that's the worldview that offers a different path for humanity. M m.

Morag:

I was reading something that you wrote before about the objective of the ecological civilization that maybe what can help us to bring that worldview into being is that we need to create the conditions for all humans to flourish as part of a thriving living earth. and I just love that. And I think the way that you describe a lot of where we can be moving towards in, through the words like flourishing and thriving, and it's about how to bring life and into being how to regenerate life, how to design our systems. I don't know even whether to design our systems, but I think from a permaculture perspective, like how can we design our human habitats? That can be these embracing these ways of thinking. So in your book, you talk about so many different groups, organizations, leaders, where are you seeing the, the drive forward with this? Where are you finding the inspiration that there is some kind of radical hope?

Jeremy:

Yes. You know the, the inspiration to me comes from so many places and that's what, that's why it's inspiring to me because it's not like there's some hub of these are the people who we need to kind of follow because they're the ones who have figured it out. Actually, when we look at any aspect of our civilization, whether it's looking at rethinking our economics rethinking our, like our agriculture, such as we see through permaculture, agri ecology, whether it's rethinking our even rethinking our technology. Every aspect of this, there are amazing groups of people developing different ways of how we can relate. When I get excited by this notion of, you mentioned the term an ecological civilization, and in fact, I plan to write my next book with that in, in the title. What I find so exciting about that is to let people become more aware of the fact that in all these different domains, we are all actually creating something together because so many, so much of the time, people who are fighting at the, in the environmental fights on the politics or people who are coming, trying to rethink the economics or people who are working closely with indigenous communities, they're not really, they're kind of vaguely aware, but not so clear that all the, this work that's being done by them and elsewhere is all pointing to this different direction. Um, and in fact, you know, in terms of inspiration, one concept that I have found totally inspiring is actually, it was originally coined by one of your fellow Australians Glenn Albrecht, who writes about this notion of the Symbioscene. We're all aware that we're in the anthropocene right now, or some people might call it the capitalist scene because really it's a function of capitalism, but whatever, it's this period when humans have so dominated the rest of life on earth that we've actually fundamentally altered the way the systems work. This is the anthropocene, which is unstable, dangerous even though some people might glory in it, but he came up with this notion of the Symbioscene, which is like, imagine an era which might be so much longer than the anthropocene. It's almost indefinite era where we determine how to live in mutually beneficial symbiosis with the living earth, fundamentally different way of relating to the earth, relating to ourselves and how we belong on this, on this amazing planet.

Morag:

What that brings up for me is the, when you mentioned about the time that it could be a bit much longer because I think when we are in this world, we're in this frame that we are in now, we feel like it's been there forever. Where in actual fact, it's such a very short period of time that we've been in this, but yeah, we caused so much damage to the possibilities of life to thrive. What I also was thinking about as you were speaking was the fact that this, this often in a yearning for something other that yeah. And I think the term, you know, of your book, you know, meaning, web of meaning that there's something that's lacking in what we are doing. And I was wondering about this idea that you talked at some point about how, when you start to explore this new meaning, when you are unpacking that yearning for something else that you find so many other people, and in that finding, it almost feels like there's this, I don't, could you call it a collective consciousness? You talked about it being an immune system response of Gaia. Could you speak a bit more about that, about this when we find each other I often talk about it, being this myceliating network of.. I think t his i s t he theory of change.

Jeremy:

I think that's right. And that sort of gets this notion of what we mean when we say everything is connected. L ike, you know, that can almost become just t his simple trope. Oh yeah. Everything's connected. Right. But what does it actually mean? And to your point, what I've came to realize after years of my own investigation, I d escribed t his in this book, web of meaning is that we can recognize that meaning itself is a function of connectedness. If you just think simply like, what does a word mean? Well, you know, we recognize what a word means. We l ooked up i n dictionary, i t gives you other words t hat it's related to. A nd so you sort o f triangulate, okay. That's what, but more deeply than that, when we look at what actually meaning actually signifies for us a s human b eings, we r ealize that when we think o f whatever i s meaningful to us, it's those things that we are deeply related to. It's when we actually focus our attention on that relatedness, that meaning gets to be more and more intrinsic to our lives. So that's when people who find themselves very depressed or a lack of meaning, a nd often almost always that's o ur function of separation. They feeling a loss of connection with others around them or with themselves, whatever that might be. So when we follow through what that means, we actually get to see that getting engaged a nd actually recognizing our connectedness a nd getting engaged with others, gives us a sense of meaning, which is so incredibly important, especially when we're looking o ut a t what's going on in the world today. And it's very easy to fall into despair for anybody, u h, who is sort of woken up even a little bit to what's actually happening. It gets almost terrifying to just start to connect the dots and see where things are headed. And then that can lead e asily to this place of hopelessness or despair. And it's when we connect with others that we get to find a couple of amazing things emerge. One is that we get to find that actually we're incredibly empowered because rather than trying to sense, well, I'm never gonna change anything myself. Once we connect with other groups, we get to see that we a re part just like you say a mycelial network, we're one more like sort of fiber, connective fiber in something that i s so much bigger than us. And at the same time we get to be part of this kind of collective intelligence. We know now, u m, that in fact, there's this amazing, animate intelligence in the earth all around us. We have animate intelligence in our own beings. Our own bodies, h ave so much intelligence we can connect with. But then when we look at things like the intelligence of trees, the intelligence of fungal systems, all this kind of a te intelligence i s a function of how these network are connected up in particular ways of like complex self-organized dynamics and intelligence become this emergent quality that arises from this. So when we tap into this, in the networks that we can be part of it gives us this chance to be part of something so much bigger and feel that we can actually make a difference in turning things around..

Morag:

I think it's, it's so important. I was just having a conversation with a 13-year-old the other day and saying, but, you know, what does it really matter? You know, no one will remember my life in a hundred thousand years, or, you know, what does it even matter? What I do? You know, like it was a real existential question. Yeah. It wasn't necessarily feeling even despair, very aware 13 year old who knew what's going on and think, and wasn't even saying, well, there's no point even trying. It was more that thing. Like.. What is, what is the point of life? And so what you are describing I guess, is some start of a way of having a conversation with them. And I think, I don't know, I have, I spend a lot of time talking with young people and I'm feeling into the sense of pointlessness or despair. I wonder where, where your conversations have gone with younger people possibly or in that, because I sometimes feel a little bit of despair myself in what to say and to stay hopeful and positive. And is that just a gloss that I'm putting on things when I know what's going on and try m y h ardest to stay in radical hope continuously. It's a challenging spot to be in.

Jeremy:

It is. I think you've raised really profound questions. And in my conversations with family members who are anything from sort of say 12, 13 to their twenties and looking at the, I, I see actually a wide variety of responses. And I do see young teenagers really offering more of the cynical kinds of thing, you know, like I might talk about, yeah, they it's like when young people get to see what's going on and they get, and he goes, Hey, when I talk to my friends, all they're interested is the next thing on TikTok or YouTube or whatever. And that's where, and so we have to recognize that, of course, that is part of what the system is designed to do. I mean, we live in this global system that basically is its function is to condition young people starting as early as possible to become consumers, to become basically to turn their life's energy into a funnel of making purchases, being distracted, getting sucked into the advertising that goes on and ultimately, whatever becoming, if they become productive members of a society and they earn lots of money to then funnel that energy towards massive profits for these corporations, that's what this system is about. So what I have notice though, is that I think it's oftentimes kids can go through periods and they keep asking questions at different layers, different levels. So oftentimes I seem to be seeing people in their late teens and early twenties, oftentimes I've seen them actually move their career around somebody. I know of who, for example, was just this making great headway and got some high paying, wonderful job. She spoke three different languages, she was good. And within a couple of years, she had let that job go. So she could work on development in the global south because she saw that path she was on was what I call in the book, this hedonic treadmill, that this realization that she was just part of this destruction and would never get to a sense of satisfaction. So my sense is that what we really need to do is to just offer these sort of little kind of tendrills, if you will, of potential connection to young people of any age. In fact, young people in their forties and fifties and sixties in that sense, because every one of us ultimately is a beating heart looking for connection and this is what I view as the great secret weapon that humanity has over this incredible destruction that is taking place. The forces of destruction have the dollars. They have the military machinery, they have the media, they have all this stuff, but what they have to do is take every newborn infants, and they have to work hard to condition them against what they know is true, because all of us know that what is really true is that we are living beating hearts who actually want to connect with others. We want love, we want a sense of meaning. We want a sense of community. We want to believe to feel that we are part of this earth. And we want to feel this beautiful nature around us and not feel we are destroying it. That's what this system has to basically, numb people out. So they stop feeling those things. But when we want to connect with them, it's more like leaving these potentials within their hearts. So at certain points in their life, they open up and they say, oh, what about that other path that somebody, and it connects with something deep in their heart, and then they can find that place to redirect.

Morag:

Yeah. I I've been working with young people for a long time. I've been running permaculture camps for teenagers in the eco village I live and I came across one young woman a few weeks ago, actually, she wrote to me and she said, you won't remember me. I came into your camp about 15 years ago. And she explained her journey and how she'd gone off on, like you said, the path did the right thing and has done this complete U-turn and now wants to come and actually work with us as an intern to try and find what that is, cuz she'd held that, that thread there as being something that she knew was special that touched her deeply, but it took her a while to come back and see it. So I think you're right. Everything that we say, and we do has an impact. And I'm thinking about that little rice, pile that y ou w rote in your b ook, maybe you could just talk about that a bit b ecause make you remember that e very d ay, everything that you say and do actually does matter.

Jeremy:

Yeah, exactly. I think you just said that so, so beautifully that everything matters and that is something that it does take a while to really feel into the embedded meaning of that. And so, yeah, I actually towards the end of my book that I talk about this rice pile cuz what's so interesting is that it's it gives a sense even with these inanimate, objects of like little pieces of rice and this has to do with complex systems, right. Because I'll talk about the rice p ile, b ut just by context, the way y ou understand t he context systems is that when things work in nonlinear ways, we never know exactly where they're going to go. Like in mechanical systems, you sort of know if you click here, something else w ould happen there, you can predict exactly. In complex nonlinear systems. You never know. And this story about the rice pile is so fascinating. It basically is an experiment that some s ystem scientists did because they wanted to figure out how avalanches occur and avalanches are one of those things you see in complex systems everywhere around in different parts of nature and they follow what's called a power law, which means you get lots of little avalanches happening all the time. And then very rarely one gigantic avalanche. So they wanted to kind of explore how this power will work. So they figured, well, rather than going flying around mountain tops, let's create like a little pile of rice and just, they h ad a little machine would drop a little grain of rice on top and they'd measure what happens. And l o and behold, they found exactly. And you could sort of map it out t hat every now and then one piece of rice would cause the avalanche.. So I was kind of inspired by it, so I was thinking, let me try this at home. This is one o f the experiments you can try at home. So I bought a whole pile of rice and started to watch it and, and it was k inda like a zen type thing, y ou k now, drop a m aybe a few grains, s ee what happens. And, but here's what was so interesting. I found, they showed like every now and then avalanche would happened, but then something else caught my eye. I noticed that I would drop a couple of grains of rice, n o avalanche. But then when I just kept watching the rice pile, I saw all these movements around the rice pile, like seconds later, sometimes even 30 seconds or a minute later, you see a little shift here, a little shift there. And s ometimes the little avalanche would occur without seemingly anything I had done. And I began to realize what's going on is every time I drop one grain of rice in this pile, it's causing all these massive amounts of tiny little i mpact. And one little impact is causing another little impact somewhere else. So all through hidden in this, this big pile of rice, these connections are happening. And every now and then something that w as a little b it unstable then gets to actually be activated. And that piece of rice at the top, if it were a person would've had no idea that its little impact actually causes avalanche a lot later somewhere else in t hat pile. So what an amazing understanding that can bring into our own realities. And of course with human systems, so much more complex, so much more nonlinear than any simple rice pile. And that's w as really h elped me to understand every conversation we have, every action we take a nd every even eye contact we have w ith somebody on the street a nd every one of these things can have i mpact that we'll never know, which i s in a way, it's this amazing mystery about life. And it gives a sense of meaning. Also gives a sense of responsibility because we r ealize t his future that is going on is not a spectator sport. It's not something that happens out there. It's actually something that we are engaged in. We are co-creating by every choice we make every day, it's an awesome responsibility, but it's also this incredible empowerment that we realize that we actually can have a part in that future.

Morag:

Mm. And it's the quality of the engagement that you choose to have. You know, we are talking about again about not measuring and tracking and planning and marking about setting out with the quality of an intention and the quality of connection. And I think that brings me back to permaculture in a way, because one of the things for me that, I came to permaculture after studying with Fritjof Capra in Schumacher college and traveling to Ladakh and working with the indigenous communities there and coming back and going well, what is systems thinking mean in everyday life? And what does a more nature base connected way of life look like in our society? And I was early twenties at the time and I it's been the question that's kind of driven me the whole time and I landed in permaculture, something that I've heard about since I was a kid, I grew up in Australia obviously. And I remember my dad talking about it. He'd heard this guy on the radio talking about this very common sense thing. And it was just made sense to him. And so for me, it was always there in the back of my mind. And so I landed in permaculture as a way to apply this to ground it. And it's something that's easily shareable. And I like that about it because it's not, it is a complex system, but it is just so contextual and so easily adapted and it can be applied to economic systems, to housing systems, not just at farming systems. I know it's known as that, but it is about, it's an approach to how we, as people exist on this planet basically, and it's underlying principles are underlying ethics, are earth care, people care and fair share. It's easy to see, we need to regenerate the planet and care for the space and compress the footprint of humanity so that all lives can thrive. We need to, you know, care for the people, not just ourselves, but our families, our communities and, and our, how our actions are impacting people's and lives and cultures elsewhere, which we brings us to the third ethic of fair share. So it's imbued with ethics and care and a sense of responsibility. And I wonder, does that resonate with the kind of traditional systems or wisdom traditions or ecological thinking that you've been mapping?

Jeremy:

Yes. I think it profoundly resonates with it. And in fact, um, I get so excited by permaculture myself because I do see it as one of the most like as a tangible and real manifestations of actually one of the deepest, most profound insights that I've ever come across. I describe a little bit in this book, the web of meaning, it's an insight, it's an insight we see both in indigenous traditions and in traditional Chinese thoughts. And let me just kind of describe a little bit about this notion of what this insight is about, because it really underlies in a way, a shift in, in orientation and how we recognize who we are as human beings and how humans relate to the rest of the non-human universe in a very profound way. And if you essentially, you can go all the way back for example, to traditional Chinese thought with daoism. And there's this profound concept that comes out of daoism called Wu Wei, which means like effortless action. And it's this kind of flowing with all of life and all of nature and the early Daoists say everything in nature, they said had Wu Wei like birds and trees, animals, but humans acted in this different kind of way, which they called Yu Wei, which means basically like purpose of action. And they say, you know, purpose of action is like, you sort of take at pump and pump water up a hill. Like that makes no sense that's what you humans do. And so, people might have responded and said, yeah, but isn't that what civilization is all about is we build things. We actually, we have this purpose of action. That's what makes our civilization. So in a way that's difference between Wu Wei and Yu Wei frames many of the distinctions that even get to about now many thousands of years later, about how humans relate to nature, should we go with the flow? Then people say, but you can't go with the flow because as humans, we have this rational brain, unless you want to basically deny our humanity. You know, ever since we develop language, ever since we develop bow and arrows and use of fire, we've always had this purpose of action. We've always acted on our environment. That's what we are as humans. So, conflict. Right? But here's what.. In fact, I first came across this resolution, if you will, of this issue through another of your fellow Australians, brilliant ecological philosopher called Freya Mathews. Who's written these incredible papers about this. And she describes how, were looking at this issue, another one, Sun Tzu who people know about that's like the art of war is its famous, philosophical to talked about this way in which rather than being stuck between other, just let everything flow or do this purpose of action. We can actually set the conditions for what we want to achieve and then let nature take its unfolding and let nature do then what we have set up. So we don't have to work so hard that nature will do the rest. So this classic example that sums are talked about is if you've got an enemy down below and you're in the middle of this big battle and rather than go down and fight and just kind of hit the enemy, what you can do is set these rocks up at the top of the mountain, which are kind of round, but just slightly, slightly shaped so that they don't roll away. Right. But, but they're almost drowned. And then when the enemy is there in the valley, just give a tiny little nudge to those rocks and lo and behold, they down and you're using nature to then basically, do the, what you need to do rather than fighting yourself. And what's so fascinating is that indigenous traditions around the world have actually they've evolved ways of doing this. There's a billion pathologists. I should... Ethnologist think she is, Kathryn Anderson who lives actually here in California, where I live and she started how indigenous peoples in California developed[ inaudible] territory. And rather it being like either your sort of a nomadic hunter gatherer and you just kind of take what's there, or you do agriculture. She noticed that what they do is they tend the wild and she wrote a book called tending the wild and that's tending is just like this other concept, which is called Shru in traditional Chinese, this notion of setting the conditions for flourishing. So if you like pick the in a certain way, it doesn't hurt the sweet grass. It actually helps the sweet grass to then bloom more, more than if you just left it alone. And that's what I love about p ermaculture. It takes this profound indigenous wisdom and then applies it in practical terms to how we c an actually live our lives both in terms of l ike you sa y, agriculture and how we can redesign cities, how we can redesign our own infrastructures on that basis.

Morag:

As you were speaking, I'm sitting in my garden thinking about how all of those different principles and philosophies that you described are playing out right there in the midst of his garden. And I wonder, you know, I'm just thinking, you know, it would be a wonderful thing to describe permaculture in relation to all those things you, because I think it makes it very accessible. You can walk through this very tangible, delicious space. That's so easy to manage and beautiful, absolutely beautiful and visibly thriving and see these principles in action. And I think there's so much power of the possibilities for change and the possibilities of seeing that there is another way that we can move forward simply through a garden, which is another way why I kind of landed with permaculture too, because it is, it does have that tangible aspect to it that that is also about food. Cause unless you breath air and you need to eat and you know, our food systems are causing some of the biggest impact on the planet. So addressing that, um, straight on seems to be something that for me made sense to do. So coming back around then to that concept of care and, and another word that you used, another phrase that you used to was revolutionary love and these kind of concepts of care and feeling, and love and heart, you know, they feel to me something that, you know, I'd had to speak with care before and somehow through reading your book, I feel like I can speak it out a little bit more. I don't feel so, you know, woo. About it anymore. I dunno.

Jeremy:

That's the thing. Yeah, because our culture has developed such hardness that it's as if we sort of get stuck in this mode to think that if we want to sort of show that we are hardcore are and scientific and rational, we need to be cynical and hard. And if y ou start talking about love, in relation to anything sort of practical, well then we gonna get w ritten o ff a s wooh need to kind of stay away from it. And part of, I really wrote this book, the web of meaning, to accomplish is to show that actually we don't need to make that distinction. That is actually a function of this expired worldview, this worldview that is based on false notions of science, and false notions of our true humanity. And in fact what's so fascinating is s ystem s cience, the k ind of science that Fritjof Capra has done such a great job of sort of expounding and showing which applies to virtually every aspect of life. If you look at the deeper layers of s ystem science, it leads to t his sense of this deep connectivity. So much so that this other distinction that we a re told exists between science and spirituality is another made u p nonsense. In fact, what s ystems science basically leads us to is a profound sense of spirituality, which we can even understand in t erms of that notion of connectedness t hat we were saying earlier, we can understand spiritually itself i s really, kind of focusing our attention on th e s pace between things, the ways in which things interrelate and finding basically are the meaning that arises from that as infusing each of us and the distinction it no longer makes any meaning at all, between a scientific understanding of how things relate and a deeply embedded ou r c onnection with that. Be cause o f course, what sy stems s c ience s hows is that we ar e n ot different from what we analyze. We actually are part of that system in i tself.

Morag:

Another thing that I find really interesting about what Fritjof Capra brings forward to is that of that at the very core of life is this creative force that again, it's that distinction between art and science, that they sit on the other sides of the university campuses as well, that they're not in the same place. Whereas in fact, you know, a scientist is a creator and an artist does need to be a scientist. And in all of us, we are all those things simultaneously.

Jeremy:

Yes, I think, I think that's right. And I think ultimately what that leads us to, and it's led me to really, explore like a profoundly kind of deeply, not just spiritual, almost a sense of connecting with a sense of divinity of life itself. That what we get to when we get to actually understand how life has emerged on this planet, what it's done over billions of years and the richness and abundance of it, we get to see that each of us so far from being separate from life. It's not just like we have life within us or we're connected with life. We are life. Each of us is a manifestation of this unfolding force, this force of negative entropy, this miracle, which to at least as far as we know right now, we don't know of any other place in the universe where this miracle has happened, of this where sort of the entropy of the universe has gone the other way. And through life is self-organized into this amazing abundant, fluorescence of like that is so rich and beautiful. And then we get to say, oh, it's not like we it's, I'm this separate Jeremy who gets to enjoy all this stuff. It's like, oh, I'm actually a manifestation of that. That's what I am. There was this incredible, quote from the great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer of the 20th century, who said, I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live, which when I came across that quote, it just stirred me so deeply. I've never lost that sense of that, that it's this recognition of this kind of fractal place in which we live, that we don't need to look elsewhere for greater meaning or for something bigger than ourselves. We realize that what ourselves really are, is something so massive and amazing to begin with. We just need to recognize that.

Morag:

I love too the way that Nora Bateson talks about it, you know, is that life.

Jeremy:

Right? Exactly.

Morag:

So coming to the thread of looking at, what do we do with this understanding, how does this then guide us in where we need to sort of be paying our attention to how we can help to possibly shift the flow? Because we are still happening. One of the things I heard you say or read in your book was talking about how the weave is loosening, which gives the chance for the possibilities of new threads to be woven in there. And sort of makes me realize, again, that it's not just, well, there's this, and there's that there's this dichotomy that sort of, we just slice it in half and we kind of abandon that we're on this. There is actually a reweaving that happens that some of this will continue and it's not, you know, it's not the good, bad, it's not that dichotomy. And I think that is really important to keep in mind cuz sometimes, um, I feel a sense that there's a holding on because thinking, well, I don't wanna let go of the old because there's some things about that that I like. I think it's, I wonder whether you can just talk a little bit about it.

Jeremy:

I think that's very true. When we look at our civilization, um, it, it's, it's becoming increasingly clear what some of the terrible things are that the civilization is doing to the living earth and to other people within it. All these incredible divisions, but absolutely there's so much to be grateful for in what our civilization has produced. And while, we started talking about right from the outset, I've been talking about how there is something so fundamentally wrong with this dominant world view, how we need to shift to this other world view of interconnectedness. We also need to recognize this dominant world view brought incredible, wonderful benefits to so many human beings around. It's like whether it's understanding the germ theory of disease and recognizing how we can actually, how things like hygiene can help, whether it's this incredible technology that allows me to talk to you right now, we're on other sides of the world and yet we can connect and other people can then connect with what we are saying, these things are wonderful. And when we look at where we are headed for, which is accelerating at a faster rate, it looks like we may be looking at something that could cause a collapse of the civilization. And I don't view the idea of a collapse of this civilization in any which way as a positive thing. In fact, it would be the greatest disaster to ever happen to humans ever since we evolved on this planet. It's like something to be avoided at all costs. And so then we lead to this question, well, how do we change it if we need to transform it at this deep layer? Um, but we can't let it collapse. How does that change happen? And that comes to this notion of this reweaving. And I like to think of that simple kids game called cat's cradle where you, you sort of, you have the string and you have it in a certain pattern on your fingers, and then you set it up so much in the, just the right way that you, you do one change and the patterns can completely different. And so it's a kind of a cool game to play. Well, basically we need to perform that cat's cradle on our civilization. What that basically means is that while this civilization is kind of unraveling, that weave is getting looser, all, these incredible ways in which it doesn't make sense is beginning to show itself. We need to take that weave. And then reweave things that are life affirming within the middle of a civilization that itself is leading to actually a negation of life. So we have to do that. You know, it's really like, that notion of Buckminster F uller w ho used to talk about the way we need to change the system we don't like is not to attack the system, but to build a different system so much better that other, that everything gets drawn to it. Similarly, we need to basically do just like y ou're doing with permaculture in every aspect of our civilization. Build what is better within it. So that when finally this civilization does kind o f unravel to the point that it no longer works, it no longer makes sense. It's g onna be more like shedding a skin. So it'll be as if people then c an then look back and say, oh when did it happen that t hat o ld civilization was no more? And this other civilization actually started to become the one that was dominant. And it, so it becomes something that i t it's like a p hase transition in a system, but we need to do it in such a way that the p hase transition is not like an avalanche, not like this total destruction, like a house of cards collapsing, but actually the system itself, the energy that people get drawn to becomes that more life affirming system rather than the one that is degenerating. M m.

Morag:

Yeah. I really love that. Because as you say, the, the concept of collapse I can't even begin to imagine, you know, where you could go from there. And so my energy and all that I do is about just what you just described of trying to create possibilities for connecting with a different way and something that's really tangible and something that's very shareable and something that's very attractive as well. And I totally agree with you on that idea that it needs to be something that draws people in rather than pushes people away. But I also see that t here, there is the role, as you mentioned earlier, too for the fighting for the saying no, yes. And I was talking to Satish Kumar the other day, and he said t hat we need to, we need to be saying no to this. We need to be saying yes to this, creating something new and also connecting as much as we can. And so these different f aces of this transition, I think all need t o be nourished and connected and valued, rather than what we a re sometimes seeing is like, well, what you are doing i s n ot t he r ight w ay o r what you a re doing i s not t he right way, o r I've got a better way of going forward, but actually seeing that all these different dimensions of transformation a re p art of the whole. And so the way of doing that connecting, is that what you're saying?

Jeremy:

I think, I think that's right. And, and it's a very important, uh, distinction and you are bringing into the conversation that, we, can't only just focus our attention on what's positive and think that by ignoring the bad that's going on, it'll just kind of go away or we actually have to resist it at the same time. And that's where this concept of revolutionary love comes in, that you mentioned earlier. That's actually a phrase that is the title of a book by a radical activist rabbi who actually lives here in Berkeley, California called Rabbi Michael Lerner, brilliant, campaigning for decades. The notion of revolutionary love is to recognize that we do have to fight against the stuff that is wrong. We have to demonstrate and do everything to resist the, the coal mines that are taking that are getting like doubling down in Australia, as well as political polarization that's taking place. And we have to not just t urn away from that, but resist that. But here's the key thing. We have to resist it without turning the people who are doing t hat stuff that is destructive without othering them, without seeing them as the enemy, without making them like lesser than what we are are. But actually, and that's what revolutionary love is to recognize that each of those people who w ere causing the harm, actually, they themselves also were once infants who just wanted warmth and love and, and belonging. And they didn't get that. And instead they got harshness and as they grew up, they got told by their patriarchal culture and their everything around them that they had to basically just shove down anythose feelings they had and become hard and then t urn their hatred that became hatred of s elf o ff into o ther a nd hate others and all that stuff. But they are deeply suffering within themselves as they're doing that. And that doesn't mean that we should allow them to get away with what they're doing. We have to like push back hard against the results of their actions, but we have to do it recognizing that they are sharing our planet with us, that they want to also love, they want to feel good about themselves. And it's only when there's enough connections like that to take place that we can actually transform to this kind of Symbioscene, to this ecological civilization. Because as long as you know, we are the good guys, they're the bad guys, w e'll be stuck in the very worldview of separation that's cause these problems in the first place. So even if we think we win a few victories here, or there, that's actually gonna be like a p ure victory, because we need to deeply connect with people until they themselves start to dissolve the barriers within themselves and start to feel more connected.

Morag:

Absolutely. So what's next for you, Jeremy? What are you working on this year? I heard you say you're writing another book, which is very exciting and you also have other things happening I understand.

Jeremy:

Yeah, yeah. That, and that's right. And all has to do with these very themes that we've been talking about in this conversation. So, um, well first off, just in terms of this next book, that I'm very excited to be sort of now turning my attention to. While the working title of that is actually gonna be future flourishing pathways toward an ecological civilization. And we can just think of the ecological civilization as basically being a civilization that actually is built on this life affirming foundation, rather than this extraction and exploitation wealth accumulation foundation of our current civilization. Really the idea behind this book is to show how it's actually being done right now in all these different parts of the world. People such as yourself and the people that you're training in the permaculture. And in so many different fields are actually planting the seeds actually or if you take the notion of pathways laying the groundwork towards that ecological civilization. So my book is really more than anything just to flesh out what is actually being done and put it all together so we can realize there is this vision we can move towards rather than just moving into some sort of haze and not knowing where it's at. And what I get excited about right now in the short term is that everything we've been talking about has been in terms of this notion of networking, that it's not like what one of us is doing, but what each of us is doing only gets to be effective when it's part of what others are doing. And as I was, giving these courses I gave online last year about these themes of the web of meaning or about ecological civilization, the primary response I was getting from people is they were getting inspired and want to connect but wanted some sort of platform to stay connected with around the world to share these ideas with others and not lose them because so many people get this notion of what's necessary, but then they're in a world view and in a community and with other people who don't get it. And then you feel like, well, am I kind of missing something? You know, it is very easy to get isolated and lose the energy. So this new initiative I'm working on right now is to set up a network. It's gonna be called the Deep Transformation Network, an online network where people can actually come from around the world, change makers, or just thoughtful people or people who are curious, or just wanna be connected and actually find a nurturing community to share their ideas, to like nurture each other, to share about what's taking place to share visions of like this notion of future flourishing to get engaged in near deeper conversations about how should economics look like, or how can we transform technology and basically build this global network where we actually feel, we are part of this connective tissue, this mycelial network that could lead to this transformation.

Morag:

Mm, fantastic. I look forward to being part of that. I'm very excited about that, Jeremy, because it is like you're saying we, it is a global network and the more that we do connect and have these conversations, it feels stronger. And there's something about what's happened since everyone's been in lockdown that more of this type of conversation has been happening more connections happening online. While there's been so much suffering, there feels like there's been also a level of opening for a deepening of conversations within communities, but beyond communities as well

Jeremy:

That is very true, Morag. I think in a sense it's been this terrible trauma of loss, our physical shared community with others like friends and people around and family. And yet what has happened is the kind of seeds of this notion of our human super organism. The sense of a planetary consciousness has expanded massively. As people have gotten, they've had no choice, but to get used to these kind of zoom calls or whatever, or just, uh, realizing we are part of something bigger. Hopefully before too long, it's hard to see where the light is at the end of the tunnel. But we know this will eventually, uh, go back into where we can connect with each other's more in more kind of intimate physical ways again, but maybe we've expanded that sense of planetary consciousness to a level that would not have happened without this, forcing it to the point where we can, that can actually be part of what unfolds in the future in a very powerful way.

Morag:

Mm. Well, thank you so much for joining me today on the show, Jeremy, it's been just wonderful to take this time to communicate with you about ideas that have been, you know, I spend my lifetime thinking about and, um, it's just wonderful to connect with you.

Jeremy:

Yeah, well thank you Morag and thank you so much for all that you are doing. And it's just been a great pleasure talking with you and asking the deep questions and being able to explore them together. Thank you.

Morag:

Thanks Jeremy. Thanks everyone for tuning into this Sense-Making in a Changing World episode, I'm delighted to be able to share my conversation with Jeremy with you and thrilled to be now collaborating with Jeremy in the Deep Transformation Network. Remember to check out the show notes below for more links to leave us a lovely review and to subscribe. So you get notification of our weekly podcast episodes. I wish you all the best and look forward to seeing you next time, take care.