Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 383: An "Erotic" Approach to the Climate Crisis | Dr. Andreas Weber

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

In this episode we’re talking about increasing happiness by connecting to nature. Guest Andreas Weber is a renowned philosopher, biologist, and writer based in Berlin. He is the author of many books, including Matter & Desire: An Erotic Ecology. He has a fascinating and surprising approach: calling for an “erotic” relationship to nature. Weber calls it “erotic ecology” and argues that we have been socialized to have an instrumental view of nature and instead wants us to be in a love relationship with nature. In this conversation, we talk about how to actually practice erotic ecology, what Weber means when he says love is the foundational principle of reality, how and why to make ourselves “edible,” and how Weber manages his own pessimism when it comes to climate change.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, today we're going to talk about a route to increased happiness that has been, at least for me, vastly underappreciated for most of my life, connecting to nature. I think we're all vaguely aware

that being outside can create some calm connection, awe, even, but how systematic are we about it? And how deep do we go with this? My guest today is here to push us on these fronts. He has a fascinating and surprising approach to the subject. He calls for an erotic relationship to nature. In fact, his term here is erotic ecology.

He argues that we've been socialized to have an instrumental view of nature. We're in here, in our heads, and nature is out there. Instead, he wants us to be in a love relationship with nature. This is, of course, increasingly urgent at a time when the climate crisis is making headlines every day, nearly, in the form of hurricanes, floods, fires, and heat waves. I guess name is Andreas Weber. He's a renowned philosopher, biologist and writer based in Berlin. He's the author of many books, including Matter and Desire and Erotic Ecology.

In this conversation, we talk about how to actually practice erotic ecology. What he means when he says love is the foundational principle of reality, how and why to make ourselves edible, that's his term, which I love, and how vapor manages his own pessimism when it comes to climate change. Speaking of climate change, we've had many, many requests from listeners to address this subject in a more robust way on the show. So today we're launching a two-part series on the climate crisis. This is episode one coming up on Monday. We're going to talk to multi-hyphenate guy who's been on the show before.

Jay Michelson, he's a meditation teacher, author, rabbi, lawyer, and activist. And he's got a bit of a contrarian take on how we should tackle the climate crisis. Before we dive in with today's conversation with Andreas, Weber, one quick item of business. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you've probably heard me talk about our companion meditation app, which is also called 10% happier. The app is a place you can go to practice, what we talk about here on the podcast, and you can do so with meditations that are led by some of our most popular podcast guests. It's sort of like science, class, and college. The podcast is the lecture, and the app is the lab. So whether you're interested

in treating yourself with a little bit more compassion, having hard conversations without hurting your relationships, or pausing and taking a breath instead of snapping at your children, you can learn about the skills here and then practice them over there in the app. But just like that college lab section, motivating yourself to actually put in the practice time is hard. Those few milliseconds between closing the podcast app and firing up the meditation app are rife with possibilities for distraction, a new email, a breaking news alert, the temptation to doom scroll on Twitter,

whatever, it can all derail you pretty quickly. That's why this show, the 10% happier podcast, is now available inside our companion app so that you can toggle seamlessly between listening and practicing, learning and doing. So now when you subscribe to the app, you'll be able to transition very easily to meditation right after listening to the podcast. Not to mention, you'll receive access to our many courses, which contain a whole lot of video, our sleep meditations, and the podcast episodes are ad-free. And good news has promised the ad-free podcast is available.

Now both on iOS and Android. So to get started, download the 10% happier app, wherever you get your apps, and then tap on the podcast tab at the bottom of your screen. Okay, here we go now with Andreas Weber. Dr. Andreas Weber, welcome to the show. Thank you. I've been looking forward to this conversation and I think maybe the best place to start

would be to define some foundational terms. And the number one to me is erotic ecology. What does that mean? Yes, that's a very good place to start. And normally, when you hear ecology, you don't think of this atrobyut, erotic, it's scientific, it's technical, it's about systems, it might be about evolution and survival of the fittest, these things which come up in your imagination, because we learn the term ecology in school, in biology. But that's one side to it, that's the technical side to it. But then on the other hand, we are continuously involved in ecological surroundings. So we are part of this living, breathing earth, and we are walking around in an ecological setting. And this is totally sensual.

It's absolutely mediated by our senses. It's by touch and by bumping into something. It's by being caressed by the wind, by breathing. And as this is so sensual, it has automatically an erotic element in it, which we normally just completely exclude from our conception of ecology, because we conceive it as this abstract, rational objectifying thing, and we forget that we are completely involved, and it's always about our skin touching other skin. So I'd say that's my starting point to see it from that perspective. And I also wanted to put together a strong combination of terms,

which was meant to sound a little bit surprising, just to open the door a little bit for this new argument that we are actually part of ecology and we know this through our senses, through our feelings, through our joys and through our sufferings. I perhaps erroneously have always thought of erotic to mean sexual.

Yes, but it sounds to me that you're broadening the term to mean sensual. Yes, and that sounds to me that you're broadening the term to mean sensual. Yes, and that's very important. I mean, what I just explained is a sort of starting point of my thinking, and it goes further than that, and we have a sensual starting point into the world, and into our relationship with the world. So we encounter also this idea that we are as breathing parts of the biosphere, we are continuously in a relationship to others. And then again, this relationship is mediated by the senses and it is also mediated by a sort of by the senses, and it is also mediated by a sort of continuous mutual transformation. It's coming very close to my essence, and in a sort it's also revealing our true natures, and these are also elements of the erotic, the idea of the erotic, but not conceived as sexual but conceived in a much broader sense of being able to be touched by what is

meaningful, important and what is moving me. And this is really part of my mission, I'd say, is to pull our gaze away from identifying the erotic with asexual. Whereas to my eyes, the erotic is a sort of primary condition of existence and not only of the human existence, of the whole of ecological, biological existence. And so I think it's absolutely important looking at our condition on this fragile planet right now to get a broader view, which is inclusive of much more of our perceptions and feelings. It's out to me that maybe you're saying that one way to save the world, to save the

planet is to broaden our concept of the erotic. Yeah, I mean, I probably, not longer go so far to have fantasies about saving the world, looking at the state of the world as it is at the moment. This would seem too big, but maybe it's about finding our right place and by this making things less violent, or making ourselves be able to relate in a more thickened way to others. And I came to this viewpoint to look at life at an erotic phenomenon, as an erotic exchange

from biological thinking. So from the idea, what is going on when an organism realises its aliveness? What is going on between living beings? If we don't look at them as just program machines, if we look at them as subjects who have a desire to carry on, to unfold, to meet others, to get into an exchange with others, to live relationships which can broaden the own existence. And as you see all these descriptions, again, border at a way of relating centrally. So again, they are part of an erotic spectrum. But as I say, I didn't start with the erotic and then worked my way into biology. As I'm a biologist, I started with biology

and I was thinking what can describe how ecosystems are working in a way which automatically includes our own perception of other beings and our feelings of encountering these other beings. In a way that is not only technical, that is not only reductionist, in a way which is truly representative of what we are feeling when we are amidst life.

And we are feeling a lot, it's not a neutral situation. That's one of these fictions of science, that the scientist, the biologist, starts to observe life, living beings, species, and does so in a neutral manner. And truly, we don't. And every biologist has a profound relation to the beings he or she is involved with, only that they are required to not focus on this relationship. But I would say that, and then it's, this is coming back to an answer to your question, I would say that this detached way of looking at

life as a phenomenon where objects are arranged in the most efficient way, and to exclude our feelings, our desires, the desires of other non-human beings, this view has directly led into the catastrophic situation we are in and the life of the planet is in. Absolutely. Let me see if I can restate some of this and then you'll tell me if I'm... Yes. Way off base, which happens. Yeah, that's what happens with philosophers. It's always important to restate them. Absolutely. Yes, thanks.

Okay. Thanks for giving me permission. But it sounds like you're saying this, otherwise, this instrumental view that human beings can have of nature, either when we're studying it as scientists or we're just operating in the world this way, has led to a situation where we now have this climate crisis, and that if we can eroticize, again, in the broadest sense of that term, our relationship to nature where we can see that, you know, I, I, having recently moved into the country from the city,

I can see that just the wind blowing through the trees, that sound of tens of thousands of rustling leaves is like a massage for the axons and dendrites of my brain. Having this much more and having this much more integrated view of ourselves as part of nature instead of something up or from nature and using it to our benefit, could be the way we get out of this climate crisis. Am I close? Yeah, you're close. No, actually, you're spot on. Only that I said, I've become pessimistic in seeing ways out of this crisis.

As I see many powerful, wealthy people who don't have an interest in really changing our current ways. So I'm skeptical, but it might not be needed, even if we don't manage to turn the ship around at this late hour, it's nonetheless beneficial to experience what you do. I think that was a lovely description of your experience. Have the leaves stirred by the wind massage your neurons in the brain. So you made a very close connection. And when you're, I mean,

when you walk there, and I really like your metaphor or your description, actually, of your experience. When you walk there and the wind, the breath of the atmosphere is bringing you and the trees together, then it brings you together in another sense, because you are breathing out what the trees breathe in and vice versa. So there is a very profound mutuality in this shared breath. And the good thing is like you describe, we can experience it any time. We only need to slightly shift our focus and see things we might not have paid attention to, or touch others, we might not have touched for a very long time, just touching these leaves who rustle or touching the tree or leaning to with the tree or laying in the grass or putting your feet into a little brook and all

these things, which are so simple. I want to pick up on something you said there, though, in that answer, I believe you said something of the effect of if we can view ourselves as sort of enmeshed in this erotic way with nature, then we would treat nature differently. And yet, not five minutes earlier, you also described yourself as pessimistic vis-a-vis the climate crisis. So how do those two intuitions line up? Yeah, now, I mean, I'm pessimistic because it's so late. I'm not pessimistic about my idea of getting into this very direct, sensual relation to non-human beings. I think that's, if you start experiencing this,

then this is a change with no return. So if you once turn into this direction, then you will never change back into not caring and seeing others as mere pure things. So I think this is, it's a very profound therapeutic way of turning yourself towards life. Now I'm pessimistic because all these things are Now I'm pessimistic because all these things are, they have been obvious, or they have been lying there as long as humanity exists. And I'd say that many older cultures are actively practicing this form of coming together in sharing, even in ecstatic ways. Only that we have waited so long that we're now needing to adjust in a sort of plain crash, which is already happening.

So it's very late. I'm not skeptical about the turning of the way. I'm skeptical about the hour. It's kind of past 12. But as I said, even if the world is in a disastrous state, it's always right and it's always good to do what you are truly designed for. You brought me exactly to the question I was just going to ask, which is, so you're asking us to get into this more fertile, erotic relationship with nature.

You say it's always good, but why would I want to develop a deeper, more intimate relationship with something that's in so much trouble that you're so pessimistic about? Why not just live in blissful ignorance and an instrumental view of nature if the whole ships on fire anyway? Yeah, that's an important question. Yeah, well, it's because we are not single individuals living in the world made of things, but we are part of this web of interconnection. And if we don't realize ourselves as part of this ongoing, erotic sense-making, then we are not really living in the fullness of life.

So we are, we're losing something and we're making others lose something. And I mean, you could see this, I could frame this in a moralistic perspective. I could say that we are here to keep life thickened. That's an important role of every living being in his or her way. So we are failing what we're here for. But I could also frame it in a more hedonistic way and could say,

you won't really be satisfied with life if you're only accumulating pleasures and objects. It's shallow. So it's also not good for you. And you will feel slightly empty, I'd say. And this won't go away. I mean, we humans are causing the sixth climate disaster in the Earth's history. Five of them already led to massive extinctions, and we're probably on the way to do it. But it won't change anything at the principle. It's the principle we're made. What I think I'm hearing is, yes, it may be true in a macro sense that we're in a lot of trouble, but in a micro sense, for as one person, your life will be better if you feel integrated into the whole and are aligned

with what is essentially true. Plus, the whole will be better. Yes, although you're still pessimistic about the whole. Yeah, I mean, the whole, not as the human enterprise to keep all civilization intact. I'm pessimistic about this. and alas, I'm also pessimistic about the insects keeping their numbers intact, and that makes me very sad. I mean, helping the whole in its original purpose to birth fertility out of itself in the long run is the right thing to do. And without any sort of calculation of rescuing myself, so it's a very long term perspective. And it's still the right thing to do. There's a quotation by the Czech writer Wattslav Havel, then he has become president of Czech Republic for a short time after the wall came down. And he said he was no optimist, but he had hope. And then he gave the definition.

And he said hope is what makes sense regardless of what is the outcome. And that's what I'm talking about actually. So I think it's a good attitude anyway, and it's a needed attitude. You're one of these guests who gives me a problem in a good way, which is that they're two new directions. I always think you'll give me a headache. Well, yes, but a good productive headache in that there are a bunch of, I have to really think, think aloud in this case about what direction to go in next. I do want to pursue how you do your day to day in the face of the pessimism that you're

expressing, but let's set that aside for a second and come back to it. In your book called Matter and Desire, Colin, and Erotic Ecology, you write about how love is a foundational principle of reality. What do you mean by that? I think you've already touched on this a little bit, but I'd like to get you to hold forth on it more explicitly. Yes, thank you. That's very important also because that again gives another little building block for my idea of reality as erotic encounter. So as you see, I started with this very central and physical idea of existence, which is always touch and mutual transformation and it's always skin to skin. and it's relationship mediated through our vulnerable bodies.

But then when I introduce love, it's with a thought about how individuality in this shared world can come about. And I'm going to try to explain this. First, let me say that when I'm talking about love, I'm not talking about the feeling of love. That's very important because that's again a problem in our Western societies that for us love is the feeling we have when we desire a beautiful or precious object, be this truly an object or be this another person, which then is also an object. So I really want somebody to be in my presence and then we translate this with love. And we all somehow know that this is potentially flawed and there are also other thinkers and psychologists

who point to the fact that love can't only be a feeling it also needs to be a practice. So to love for me is an action. And it's the action of allowing others to live their aliveness, or to actively helping others, to make them realize themselves as alive. The psychologist, the humanistic psychologist Erich Frum, said to love means to take an active interest in the aliveness of another. means to take an active interest in the aliveness of another. And if you see it from this standpoint, then loving becomes not a consumption of a feeling, of a good feeling, but it becomes the production of conditions which enable others to thrive. And if you're just looking for some examples in our

own existence, in our most fulfilling love relationships, we do this. So, when we care for our children, we normally do this, or at least we try to do this, to create a situation in which they can thrive. And that's one important point. So ecosystems are systems with thousands of species in which they are linked to one another in mutuality, they are mutually enabling their lives. So that would mean that you could describe ecosystems as love processes, not in the way of hedonistic feelings, but in the way of a profound understanding of what is the practice of giving life?

Much more of my conversation with Andreas Weber right after this. Life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time, pure honor, and what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short with Justin Long. If you're questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short, with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning of life?

I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times.

But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to ad free on the Amazon music or Wondering app. One of the questions that comes to mind is, if we find ourselves drawn to the natural places

on the very few days off we may have. I just came back from going to the beach with my family, for example. Is that a love relationship? Or am I just going there to get whatever heedanistic pleasures I may or may not fully understand? But it's not truly love because my goal in going there is not to help nature be,

it's not in furtherance of the nature. it's to derive pleasure out of the nature. Yes, yeah, that's what we do. And that's then what hits us when we come back and it's open, we come back and it's over. And then we have this withdrawal experience. So in a way, that's the whole problem of tourism, is that it gets it it totally wrong that many people are looking for something Which they only very partially find and then they lose again when they Come back. I'd really say that's a profound misconception in the whole business of tourism on the other hand There still are elements of the original notion of togetherness in mutuality when you go there and you want to be in the presence of this otherness,

which is also somehow part of yourself. So you want to be in the presence of the ocean, you also want to swim, so you want to have this very concrete sensual experience, and it's part of the mutuality in this life-giving relationship. So I'd say that it's it's partly healthy what we're doing and then it's partly spoiled because then it tilts into the this consumistic approach of taking as much of the good stuff as we can and then somehow live on it in the first days or weeks when we're back in office. It's very difficult for us and I absolutely count myself in to do something else, to immerse myself in a much more active way. So if we want to do it right, we should yes, consciously enjoy the erotic relationship with nature, but also to relationship with nature, but also to real love as you're understanding it would involve trying to help nature as well.

Yes. I mean, there's one level in helping nature, as I would say, in helping the other beings, the other subjects which in that togetherness with us make nature as the whole of life. And one way of helping all this is to be sitting with this in a present state of mind, and in a benevolent state of mind, this is already helping it. So to focus your attention towards the beauty and the meaning of life, which you can experience and which includes your own. That's not consuming something. And then how you get there is very important.

So to my eyes, it's important that you go there in a slow way, that you go there in a sustainable way. In Europe, it's easy to take the train. It's more difficult in the US that you stay there for a longer time, all these things, or that you maybe do it in a setting closer to your place. So there are many ways, but I think it's also an important part of it to experience your profound benevolent love and connection

to this living web, which you're part of. This is also an important thing. You talked about sitting in nature in a receptive way. Are you describing, I mean, I think this audience will hear that as meditating outside. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you could also describe as this. I think you could also say it's a sort of prayer. It's an activity which can be described from different cultural contexts as a profound spiritual practice. And I think it's a very important spiritual practice. And I think it's important to enter into this practice also on the invisible side of reality, on that side where you go with your mind or with your feelings or with your dreams. And so yes, I would say even that my meditative practice is always in togetherness with other

beings, with other life. Yes, I'd absolutely say that's a very important meditative practice. And you see, if we put it like this, if you say, okay, what we really need and what the world also needs, and I would really say this, is that people start to be in meditative practice with non-human beings in a very broad way. And you see, if you put it like this, okay, I'm taking my holidays to the Italian mountains in order to meditate with nature, in holding it in a benevolent way. That makes things sound very different from a more hedonistic description. And if people started to see their gardens as places of an encounter

between them and other existences, in this practice of holding their flourishing in a way, it would become very different from seeing gardens as places where you keep nature in a human order. So it's pleasing, like cutting your lawn three times a week. It becomes totally different and it's only a small step. Is there some, I use this word with summer reluctance just because I don't know how it is in Europe, but in this country when we say the word privilege, it does a lot of cultural work, which may or may not be constructive all the time. But anyway, I'm going to use the word privilege. Is there some privilege in all of this? Like you're, you get to spend your

summer in Italy, it sounds like I got to move out of the city to the suburbs in the middle of the pandemic. Many people do not. And they have to work in an office with fluorescent lighting or they may not have a job at all. And they live in some large building pretty removed from nature in an urban setting, whatever. Yeah. I've just worried that some people may hear this and be like, oh, these are two, you know, well-off white men getting to talk about getting in touch with nature, but I have a 9-5 and I have to live close to it, and so I have no connection to this conversation.

Yeah, that's also a very good question. I mean, I have to say that I can only be here in this Italian village due to the generosity of a friend. Indeed, I do this because I feel called by the mountain streams and by the flowers and by the metals. It's a question of privilege. I actually must say, yes, it is, unfortunately. And it's a question of having freedom to do what is good for you,

which shrinks when you're not well off. So it's a question of fairness also. And unfortunately, many people have a lot of less freedom. And they might not even know it. So they might not even have it on their radar that this would be the right thing to do. And that's one idea behind community gardens and urban gardening. So yes, unfortunately, there's a financial aspect to it. But you don't need a perfect setting, you don't need the Amalfi coast, you don't need a natural preserve, you need active love.

So it's not about gaining something, it's about giving something. And so yes, I would say it's absolutely a question of privilege, of financial means, to do this in a spectacular setting. this in a spectacular setting, but what is needed is this sort of caring for the life-giving potential of the biosphere, which you need to give to the biosphere. How do you balance an individual experience on the one hand and then also not ignoring and never forgetting, hopefully, that you are part of a cosmos, a part of a system. Yeah, that is a profound paradox built into this world and build into our individual existence. Which again, the only solution for is to organize your life as practicing love, as being interested in the aliveness around you or in the aliveness of others.

So it's a paradox in a strong philosophically strong sense that this world is a coherent whole, desiring for being born, coming forth, unfolding, developing, experiencing itself, but it can do so only through embodied individuality, or it choose to be able to do so only through embodied individuality, or if you say it in a more Buddhist way, only through codependent origination. And this creates a paradox, this creates a contradiction, and this is the contradiction of life. And that makes problems. And one of these problems is that we are all bound to die. That's a problem, as we all know, we don't want to.

And we are all bound to die because we need to nourish the whole. So we need to feed the whole by keeping ourselves edible. So I even put it in this strong way. We need to make a gift out of ourselves, but it's not nice. I mean, at least for it's the idea is still disruptive and we know from every culture that people mourn their debts and they don't want to die. So this is something, and even animals don't want to, and nobody wants to die, but it's necessary to be part of a developing whole. So I think this is one of the profound

whole. So I think this is one of the profound complications of stepping into reality, of stepping into tangible, sensible, desirable feeling reality is you buy with that the condition that you ultimately need to dissolve again into this into this whole you come from. into this hole you come from. And again, the solution, which is not, it's not a solution. It's something we can only accept. It's the paradox of existence. How do you balance self-interest and collective interest? Yeah. I try to.

I do sometimes better and sometimes worse. And I'm actually trying to very much listen to what needs I feel. And I learned that if you're really realistic with what your needs are, then many times your needs are one's needs or my needs aren't that egoistic. And I think that's also something which is part of our heritage as humans and as living beings is that our needs are actually very well in line with the needs of a world which needs to be maintained by a collective. So actually my strategy is to really feel my feelings and feel my needs and then to be

real with these, which can be hard sometimes because sometimes it leads to the necessity to die one of these little deaths of accepting what there is. But normally I really made the experience that it doesn't lead to pushing others away. It's another one of those myths we have in our civilization that if you really listen to what our feelings tell us, then automatically we are running a mock and we are only doing egoistic things, etc. And then we are pushing away these feelings and we are pushing away these needs and we switch into the automatic mode of behaving as we should to.

And then we just behaving as a society which is totally detached from relationship and mutuality and love actually, a practice of love dictates us and that's worse. But also this is a continuous ongoing way of balancing. And it's not error-free. It's this beautiful journey of life, I'd say. And it's important. I'd say it's as a last statement on that, I try to keep myself edible. In a real and in a metaphorical sense. I try to keep myself edible. I feel like there's something really fascinating there. So it's, yes, it's not to wear hair

shirt or, you know, be a monastic and the majority of, but to deny that you have any needs. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's to see that you have needs, but also to see that you want to be letting the universe feed on you in the best possible way. Yeah, I mean, my experience really is, and then again, there's a lot of empirical psychological research on that, is that one of our most profound needs is to be truly cooperative.

And that this again is underlining that we are made to exist in relationships, in mutuality, and not only with humans, and imagining that we are truly cooperative with the whole of the breathing earth, and that this is built into the way we are. This to me is a very beautiful thought, and so far I can really verify it. So this is something which makes people's eyes shine. Only that our worlds are designed in such a way that this is less and less possible. And more and more places of the world are pulled out of these all the ways. But it's something we can, on a small scale, we can try to reestablish and

we can try to exercise and to happily fail. And then exercise again. It's a beautiful phrase, ideas that make your eyes shine. But this is the paradox, right? I think that you're pointing or at least part of the paradox is that self-interest and other interests or collective interests, they are not neatly divisible. I as a unit in late stage capitalism can fantasize about getting a new car, and that may or may not need a need, but it's easy to fall down that rabbit hole of fantasizing about acquisition. And 80 is in my interest to tend to the nature that surrounds me, to the human beings that surround me, to the relationships, animal and non-animal around me. That is also in my interest. So it's a bit of a soup.

Yeah, but it's a very important observation, and thanks for making this clear, and then putting it in these, stating it in these terms, it's an important observation, and I think it's really necessary to hold this, that my interest and the interest of others do not necessarily need to be in contradiction. So there is an area where our interests overlap. So I wouldn't also say that, then it would be trivial and sweet and esoteric to say, well, in the end, we all have the same interests.

We only need to see this. That's not true. Because we talked about the fact that the world as a whole, which Jürns to realize itself needs to fall apart into codependent origination. And then we are into contradictions of interest. It's there. But it doesn't need to be total. There's an area of overlap. And that is the area when cooperation is fun. And that's the area when cooperation is so much fun that you don't even think of getting the most of everything. Because you're happy

with the collective success. And this might sound weird to many because we are so much pulled away from this. To somebody who is living in late capitalism, as you said, it might sound strange, because then it's clear if we are operating in a domain in a space where we try to keep our interests overlapping. And it's clear that nobody can skyrocket to some area where he or she is just completely above the others because then interests don't overlap anymore. And that's actually something we don't want to see. But on the other hand, we know that remaining in this field of overlap of interests, of relational ability, that means that we have to renounce to a lot of things. So we have to renounce to the dream

of becoming immortal, to the dream of finally having this beautiful villa above the waterfront down at the Riviera because you can only have so many villas and then everything is filled with houses. But I mean, it's what you get if you stop dreaming of making yourself bigger than the others is a world which will always renew itself, which will always remain fertile, which will always be able to give life, which is the most important and the most fantastic thing we can ever desire, I'd say. We have limited time, so I want to get back to, because they're just to say there are a thousand questions I could ask based on the foregoing, but I'm going to

Renounce because I did promise that we would get back to this issue of pessimism. Yes. I'm curious how do you Conduct yourself. You know, how do you live your life without falling into despair given That you can't muster much optimism about the future of civilization. Thanks for asking this question, and I must say that it breaks my heart, and I am in a continuous state of suffering and of grief and of trauma also. I don't have a solution for this, so I can't answer your question with, okay, so my way to cope with this would be because I don't have a way. I'm open and I'm suffering through this and I know that even though I know I'm very consciously living with this, there's still a part in which I shut it away.

But then again, this also makes me suffer because it's numbing me and it's somehow limiting my aliveness and I feel this. So I really feel this. So I really let me really tell you, I'm really living in despair. And I somehow try to live with this. I try to live in this dying situation, the situation of a planet dying.

And the solution, which is not a solution, or the, let's say the way I'm working with this, is to enter deeper into the world through this dying. So this dying is again a profound manifestation of the world's aliveness because dying and death are parts of life. They are parts in the cycle of life which is made of dying and of birth. And as we are at the moment living through this part of dying, And as we are at the moment living through this part of dying, this inner working, or the inner mesh work, or the inner desire of this world, in a way is more accessible. It's more able to get to it and to keep it within myself or to hold it within myself. So I would say it is a spiritually, it's a very, very important situation, which requires being with life. And maybe this is why I said so

emphatically before that this meditation with other beings is good for the cosmos as a whole, because at the moment it's this cosmos is going through this dying process or at least locally which is concerning the beautiful blue planet. And in a way it's a request to be present with it and I take it as that. But being present with it is not completely pleasurable because it needs, it's like hospice work, you know. And I'm trying to do this. And I'm trying to do this. And I'm, I think what keeps me cheerful again and again is to see the startling beauty of this whole practice of love, which is ecology, which is all the ecosystems, to see all these fantastic moving

beings to which I have contact, then this fills me again with so much joy and with so much confidence of the capacity of the whole to give beauty and to give joy as something which is unable to be destroyed, whatever happens to our epoch. So I see, I really see this as a transcendent power, or maybe as the manifestation of the power to love. That's probably as good a place as any to leave it, although I feel like we've just scratched the surface. For those who want

to go deeper on your work, can I, and this may seem well, crassly, capitalistic here as a closing note, but can I get you to plug if you would some of your books and where else we can find you, what other resources are out there, if we want to go deeper into your work? Yeah, absolutely. So we have been talking about many things which are based in this metron desire. The other one, one of them is Biology of Wonder, which is very much about why we need to understand living beings as

feeling and expressive subjects and not as machines. And it's also, it's interspersed with a lot of nature writing. as feeling and expressive subjects and not as machines. And it's also, it's interspersed with a lot of nature writing. So as I always do, it's my attempt to argue for a cause and then convince the reader as I experienced it myself. And there's another one which is a little bit shorter and more conceptual. It's a shorter argument called enlivenment, poetics for the intropposene, which has been published by MIT Press. There's the site of the

Center for Humans and Nature in Chicago, which is brilliant on changing our perception of life. Thank you so much for making time for this interview, it was fascinating and I really appreciate it. Thank you, Dan, for your questions and for taking your time and having me on the podcast. Thanks. Thanks again to Andreas. This show is made by Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justine Davey, Maria Wartell, and Jan Poient with Audio Engineering by Ultraviolet Audio. As always, we'll see you all on Friday for a brand new episode.

Hey, hey prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.