Upstream - A Solstice Celebration for 2025 w/ Manda Scott and Nathalie Nahai

Episode Date: December 21, 2024

Happy Solstice! In this annual tradition, Della is joined by two fellow podcast hosts to reflect on the past year and set some intentions for the year ahead.  Manda Scott is a novelist, smallholder, and host of the podcast Accidental Gods, which showcases individuals and organizations at the emerging edge of our world to set the foundation for a future we’d be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. Manda’s latest novel, Any Human Power, is out now and available here.  Nathalie Nahai is a behavior science advisor, author and host of the podcast The Hive, which focuses on psychology, technology, and human behavior. Nathalie is the author of Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and is also the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change. One of Della’s offerings in the new year is a course she designed about how to cultivate regenerative livelihoods. She created this course with insights that she has found most helpful in bringing Upstream theories and ideas into people’s lives as a Right Livelihood coach. Whether you are in a livelihood transition, want to be in community with others trying to find meaningful work, or you just want to know more about work as a vehicle for post capitalist systems change, this course is a great fit. It includes live sessions, engaging module materials and activities including Upstream episodes, and a lively discussion forum to bring the material to life. Here is the link to learn more and register and use "UPSTREAM25" for a special 25% off coupon.  Further Resources: A Winter Solstice Celebration for 2023 with Manda Scott and Nathalie Nahai [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the Global South w/ Jason Hickel Better Lives for All w/ Jason Hickel  Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment w/ D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly Breaking the Chains of Empire w/ Abby Martin (Live Show) Righteous Indignation, Love, and Running for President w/ Dr. Cornel West [UNLOCKED] Voting for Socialism w/ Claudia De La Cruz & Karina Garcia  Battling the Duopoly w/ Jill Stein  Related Episodes: Down the Rabbit Hole Transformative Adaptation How to Be an An Anticapitalist in the Twenty-first Century (book)  How to be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century (Jacobin article) God, Human, Animal, Machine  The Psychological Drivers of the MetaCrisis Feeding Your Demons, Tsultrim Allione  Feeding your Demons (Lion's Roar article) Winter Solstice Meditation  Summer Solstice Meditation  Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Hey everybody, Robby here with a quick announcement before we get started on today's episode. From January to April of 2025, Della will be offering a course that she designed about how to cultivate a regenerative livelihood. She created this course with insights that she found most helpful in bringing upstream theories and ideas into people's lives as a right livelihood coach. So whether you are in a livelihood transition, whether you want to be in community with others just trying to find meaningful work, or if you just want to know more about work as a vehicle for post-capitalist systems change, this course will be a great fit.

It includes live sessions, engaging module materials and activities, including several upstream episodes, and a lively discussion forum to bring the material to life. The link to learn more and to register is in the show notes, and just use the code UPSTREAM25, that's all caps, UPSTREAM25 for the special 25% off coupon. Okay, on with the show. Aum. You know, we have the challenges of our time,

then going upstream from that we have supremacy, the supremacies, right? Human supremacy, patriarchal supremacy, white supremacy, global north supremacy, et cetera. But going upstream from that, we have the separability or the separation cetera. But going upstream from that, we have the separability or the separation. And then going upstream from that, the root or the change is remembering.

Remembering ourselves to the web of life. And I remember somebody said with the work that reconnects, Joanna Macy's work, you know, why is it called the work that reconnects? When we can't actually reconnect with something that we were never actually disconnected from, Perhaps it's the work of remembering. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you

knew about economics. I'm Robert Raymond. And I'm Della Duncan. you knew about economics. I'm Robert Raymond. And I'm Della Duncan. Happy Solstice. In this annual tradition, Della is joined by two fellow podcast hosts to reflect on the past year and set some intentions for the year ahead.

Monda Scott, based in northern England, is a prolific novelist and the host of the podcast Accidental Gods, which explores the intersections between science and spirituality, philosophy and politics, and art and activism. Natalie Nahai, based in Spain, is the host of the podcast The High, which focuses on psychology, technology, and human behavior. Together, Della, Monda, and Natalie explore the core questions of accidental gods, the hive, and Upstream. They share stories and insights from the past year and create invitations and offer gifts for the year to come.

And before we get started, Upstream is almost entirely listener funded. We could not keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways in which you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber, which will give you access to bonus episodes, at least one a month, but usually more, along with our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast. And you can also make a tax deductible recurring donation or a one time donation on our website upstream podcast dot org forward slash support.

Through your support, you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going. Socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so it's definitely Hey everybody, welcome to our traditional three-way podcast. We have been doing this now for four years. This is our fourth year, so it's definitely a completely solid solstice tradition, winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and summer solstice for those of you who are not sitting watching the rain pouring down outside the window. So we're going to introduce ourselves and a little bit about the highlights of our podcasting year. So Della, would you like to start? Who are you and what really stood out in your podcasting year in 2024?

So Della Duncan zooming in from San Francisco, California, Ohlone land and it is definitely cold and dark here. So definitely feeling the winter solstice vibes. And yeah, co-host of the upstream podcast, co-hosting with Robert Raymond. And I would say the kind of material highlights from this year were that we started a Patreon community. So we have kind of a more, you know, an in-depth opportunity to share with folks in that community that has come from that, feeling grateful for that. And then a collaboration with Eco Gather to bring the podcast episodes to life. So we've been leading live conversations that bring the material to life. So that's been really fun. And then, you know, we've continued our episodes on Palestine and also gotten to interview several third-party candidates for the US election. That was another highlight. Dr. Cornell West, Claudia and Karina

of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and then also Dr. Jill Stein. So that wasina of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and then also Dr. Joel Stein. So that was some of the highlights. But I would say if I were to go into the insights and the core maybe themes, one of them was really increased awareness and focus on the role of imperialism in capitalism. So moving away from a critique of capitalism as kind of what happens between a boss and workers, right? That kind of workplace focus to really zooming out to the geopolitical and really looking at the role of the plundering of the global south and the exploitation, the colonization, and imperialism and the role that that has in upholding and strengthening capitalism globally. So that has really been a focus and we explored that through looking at Walter Rodney's work. That was really

interesting as well as a few episodes with Jason Hickel, how the global North plunders the global South and one on Better Lives for All. And then also with Abby Martin, Breaking the Chains of Empire, which we got to do as a live podcast conversation. So that was also another really exciting highlight. But yeah, just to say that episode with Jason Hickel on Better Lives for All, I would say was one of the highlights for me because his work really demonstrated that we can meet all human lives on the planet at only 30% of the current material

and energy output that we're at now. So it was this hugely inspiring research project that he did with others and then getting to interview him on that just felt so hopeful, so practical, right? And he even says how to do that, right? And it's a little bit of democratic central planning with a kind of focus on eco-socialism. But yeah, I would say these kind of bigger geopolitical global focus and then this inspiration of how do we do this and that it's possible were some of the themes from this year. Excellent. That is so inspiring.

Thank you. So over to Natalie, tell us a little bit about who you are and your podcast and what themes have been arising for you in 2024. So my podcast is In Conversation with Nathalie Nahai. It looks at our relationship with technology with one another and the living world. And in this year in particular, there was a much stronger emphasis on technology, especially because of the work I do professionally, speaking at conferences about kind of that intersection between persuasive tech, of which AI is obviously a huge player now, and then also human behavior, ethics, society.

And some of the key themes that have come up, actually strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, are things like trust and agency and human value and meaning. What does all of this mean in an age where AI is becoming increasingly hard to escape? It's becoming increasingly ubiquitous and enmeshed in so many facets of life. It's also very problematic and also very powerful, even in the stages we're in now where there's issues with things like hallucinations and

reliability and bias, explainability, all of these things. It's been a year in which I wanted to ask people about perspectives on not just the technology itself, but what values are we enshrining into the systems that are being created when people develop artificial intelligence from particular localities with certain incentives in mind. And then in the talks as well as in my podcast, it's kind of, can we actually ask better questions of this technology rather than deploy now, think later, and we're all screwed? Because anything that we place under the focus of artificial intelligence, anything that we use AI for is likely to be amplified. So if we're not thinking about its resource intensive use of energy and water,

the mines that are being plundered to be able to create the physical substrate upon which all of these technologies run. So we need to be thinking about all of these things in order to consider the future that we're creating. And so one of my big tensions this year has been sort of this desire to talk more about the kind of the natural side and the, I don't know, soulful side or the sacred side, but actually my main attention has been sucked into AI, mostly because it's going to affect all of those areas.

And curiously, maybe talk about this a bit later, but I've been offered some quite interesting reading and podcasts that look at ways in which narratives around technology and its use mirror pre-Judeo-Christian ideas around longevity, uploading one's consciousness to another state that is non-physical, to Descartes' ideas of duality. There are so many fascinating things that are going on in terms of the story we tell ourselves around how AI gets used, who gets to wield what power, who gets greater power, hyperagency of those who are in charge. It's a really big subject. Some of the people I've most enjoyed talking with on the podcast about

this include Joanna Kvenner, who's an extraordinary novelist. We're talking about whether AI is stripping our rights to liberty, privacy, and self-determination. I spoke with Stephen Markley, who wrote this extraordinary, big gripping book called The Deluge. We were talking about literature and science and the art of hope, because if AI can do everything, what's left for us? Art and creativity doesn't just become about production, which is where we've ended up and actually to that colonial perspective of, well, let's just extract all the quote unquote quantifiable value and sod the rest. We can colonize Mars as attempts for that when we can't even decolonize Earth. It's like, I mean, wake up guys.

And then people like Dr. Tom Chatfield, an extraordinary philosopher, talking about shedding our technological delusions and talking about compassion, agency, and coevolution. So very heartfelt perspective on how we essentially decide what to use AI for and how we develop it. And then two final ones, V, formerly Eve Ensler, who is just a phenomenal force in the world, talking about solidarity and transformation. And our conversation actually looked at ways in which we relate to women and violence against

women and violence against the work of the earth and extraction. Of course, that ties into the ways in which we approach technology, at least I believe so. Then finally, Dr. Bayar Khamalafi, when we're talking about flourishing fugitivity and the power of the monster story. It's because everything's so interconnected and AI just turbocharges all of it. So we've got to be super careful about how we use it, to what end, which voices are included and all of that stuff. So even though I feel like I've kind of stepped away from the society and the natural side of things, actually they're all implied within the broader

perspectives on AI and where we go with it next. Right, Manda, how about you? Tell us a bit about yourself. Yes, I want to explore exactly what you've just been talking about and forget everything else. But okay, let's just very briefly then. So my podcast is Accidental Gods. And I named that way back in 2019. Because on the understanding that we are not the generation that thought it was going to be around at the time when there was absolute existential crisis and where we were at the brink of species level extinction and had the power to annihilate everything else on the planet. And Daniel Smarterberger says, if we're going to give ourselves the technological capacity of Gods, we need the wisdom and prudence of Gods. And listening to you with the AI, that's more and

more obvious that we need that and increasingly obvious that the people who wield the power in these fields do not have the wisdom and prudence even of adult human beings. And I think this was one of the big areas that opened up for me. My podcast often, you guys sound really organized in who you're talking to and why. And mine is genuinely, it's just a whole series of serendipitous conversations. Somebody catches my eye and I think, oh, that would be interesting. And I send them an email and they go, yes. And we slot them in. And then I discover in retrospect that we've got four or five people where there's a narrative arising that I was completely not planning. Maybe you find this too. And one of the narratives that has become really powerful for me this year is maybe on the back of Francis Weller's concept of initiation culture and

trauma culture, which I came across about this time last year talking to Al-Nur-Laada. And then sliding that into and meshing it with Bill Plotkin's concept that in any human lifetime, we have the potential to move from childhood to adolescence to adulthood to elderhood, but that our culture, which Weller would call the trauma culture, is locked in early adolescence at best. I would say that the people who have currently wrested control in what seems to be a silent coup in the States are toddlers. But they're toddlers who have got control of the AI, which is not the most comfortable feeling in the world. And so in my own life, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, doing a lot of work to understand the nature of trauma

and how we can heal it and the nature of projection and asking people what is it that we need to bring into the world to enable us to reach that point of conscious evolution. Because I think we can do all of the changes to governance systems, we can change the politics, we could change the economics, we could try. I don't think we'll achieve any of those unless we have a critical mass of people who have a different value set. And that is inner work and spiritual work. So by the serendipity of the podcast, I've been talking to people like Cynthia Jures, who is an amazing American Buddhist who

was given mandate and an order by a Tibetan Lama many, many years ago to begin the process of burying treasure vases, which was a Tibetan concept and she's turned it into a global concept. And they're amazing. And she goes around the world and again, extraordinary serendipity happens and she's creating a network of energetic lines around the world connecting all of these vases. And I was in awe of not just her dedication to achieving this and to bring it into being, and she has now been made a lama as a result of what she's doing. But the way that she's bringing the feminine principle into this, she's essentially a Gaian Buddhist. And I'm not sure there have been many of those spoken of in the world before. And she comes up against a lot of

male colonial concepts when she's doing this, but she's holding her space. And I think because she's done what she's done, she has the authority to speak to that, which is beautiful. And then at the other end of the scale, I spoke to Mary Booth, who is head of something called the Center for Policy Integrity, which I think is just the best named thing in the world. Who doesn't want to have integrity in their policies? It's like having the Center for Not Murdering Kiddens Nastally.

It's perfect, because nobody's gonna go, yes, I want complete lack of integrity in my policies, even though that's what we've got. And her big thrust at the moment is pointing out to anyone who will listen, which is distressingly few people, that Britain is lauding itself as reaching net zero or heading towards net zero. And a very large portion of how it's doing that is by massacring old growth forests in the US, taking trees that are part of ecosystems that are thousands of years old, turning them into pellets, shipping them across, all of which requires fossil fuels,

and then burning them very inefficiently in a power station that was built to burn coal, and then claiming that this is somehow net zero. And it's not. So those were kind of opposite ends of a conceptual spectrum from, I think the changes that we need to do now are inner and spiritual, and it is utterly urgent that we connect with the web of life. And yet, in Joanna Macy's terms, we still need the holding actions and the systemic change to prevent the harm that is being done on a daily basis. And completely I'm hearing you that the damage that could potentially be done and is being done by AI is out of all measuring. I remember again, Daniel Schmartenberg is saying the thing that will destroy humanity is our incapacity to

understand exponential growth. And that we are quite used to Moore's law which said that computers would double in the size of the chip and half in price every 18 months. And basically he was right. But that the exponential growth in the chips and the coding of AI, particularly once you've got AI that is coding itself, we are not equipped to understand the nature of the exponents in that, which doesn't necessarily bode well for the future of humanity. But I had the most inspiring conversation yesterday. In

fact, it won't go out until the first of January. So it's our New Year conversation with Professor Chris Bates, who wrote a book. He wrote a number of books, but the one that really took my attention was LSD and the Mind of the Universe. I've got that book on myself. Okay, there we go. I haven't read it yet. Yeah, okay. So over a period, starting 79 for a period of 20 years, with a six-year gap in the middle because his then-wife, who was holding the space for him,

just went, I can't do this anymore, you're not doing it anymore. Yeah, it's pretty full on. 73 industrial doses of LSD. And that book, please read it, it's extraordinary. And I have a lot of trouble with a lot of shamanic people just doing kind of recreational psychedelics and not grounding and then ending up in serious trouble. But he was really grounded and he was getting all the help that he needed. And he was doing it as a process of scientific self-exploration. And in the process, he details in the book the phases of humanity that he went through, and the bits of it were really, really difficult. He went through deaths and rebirths, but he ended

up in a space where he was being shown the potential of a future human that is completely evolved from where we are now. And it's not guaranteed by any means. But he creates a vision of what that could be and I slept a lot better last night than I have been since the US election, Della, I'm so sorry. The US election just, I would like to say one thing just before I finish, which is I read something, somebody I quite respect and I can't remember who it was, saying why did half of the Americans vote for Trump? And it isn't half of your country. It's 71 million in a country of 350 million. And by my arithmetic, that means 279 million did not vote for this person.

And the fact that our democratic system means that basically one in five people can control the output for the rest shows us that the democratic system is not fit for purpose. Changing it is another thing but it should not be the case that 71 million can define what happens to 350 million. That's not actual democracy. Anyway, over to you. So, yeah, where to go from here? So I think building on some of the themes that we've shared, which I think kind of speak to this already in some ways, I'd love to ask both of you and perhaps we'll start with Della.

What's the question that's really present for you right now? Yeah. So I came across a article by Eric Olin Wright titled, How to be Anti-Capitalist Today. It's on Jacobin if anyone wants to look it up. It offered these four ways to be anti-capitalist today. Yeah, how to be anti-capitalist today. He offers these four ways to be anti-capitalist today. And he offers these four ways to be anti-capitalist. And I just found it really helpful to hear them broken out like that because it helped me go back into people that we've interviewed, conversations that I've had, and feel into where I felt resonance and where I felt like, oh, that's not actually going to help us transition or that's not

actually a strategy that will work. So I want to share those and ask you both what you think of them and also what you might add or change. So it really goes to this question of like, what is our transition strategy or our theory of change? So the four that he offers in this article are first, the first one is to smash capitalism. So these would be folks who are saying we need to burn it down, we need to smash capitalism. This would be the revolutionary left, this would be Marxism-Leninism, that ilk, right? And to me, one strength of that is it may be the one that really focuses the most on the state and how the state is a part of upholding capitalism and that piece of imperialism and the globalization of capitalism. Maybe we could say the shadow side or the challenge of that

might be who might be most harm in that smashing. How do we do that with care and kindness and also do the means justify the ends and conversations around violence and nonviolence? All of that comes up when we think about that. So there's that element. One, smash capitalism. The second is tame capitalism. Tame capitalism or reform capitalism. These are the efforts and strategies that if we're thinking about some things help us survive today and some things help us build tomorrow, this would be the helping us survive today. So this would be like unions, for example, help tame capitalism. They make a workplace less exploitative and extractive. So worker organizing and unionization. But it also could be something

like advocating for a four-day work week or for universal healthcare, right? Things that within a capitalist country, a capitalist economy would make it feel a little bit less impactful to people on the planet. Also, regulations of any kind for human well-being and welfare or for the natural world. So that's the second one, tame or reform capitalism. Obviously, the strength of that is that it's pretty quick in its feedback loops and it really does help us survive today, maybe even resource us for the activism and the efforts that we need to do in our post-capitalist transition strategies. But the possible shadow sides are, is it somehow making it so it's so much

kinder and calmer within capitalism that we take away our desire to really change it. We get kind of satisfied in this kind of false satisfying way, like a numbness or an okayness and yet under the surface we know there's something that's still deeply off. The third one is erode capitalism, erode capitalism. And this is the realm of the efforts that erode capitalism from within. So obviously a worker cooperative, for example, is eroding many of the mechanisms and operating principles and systems of capitalism, or a public bank or a land trust, right? So it's like actions and efforts that erode capitalism. And it could even be the realm of the prefigurative politics where we're building the world we want to see after the transition to post-capitalism. So that one, again, another strength to that one is that we're embodying

and practicing the worker self-direction, the collaborative decision-making, the mindset shift from ownership to stewardship, all of that, and we can embody and practice and create the mechanisms and models for that post-capitalist world. The shadow side to that one might be that does it scale? Does it scale? If they're islands within a sea of global capitalism, are they constantly under threat or under attack? And we think about Mondragon as an example of a cooperative ecosystem in Spain, where you are, Natalie, and yet it has continued to have to betray some of its values to compete in the global capitalist market. So that would be one thing. Does it scale? Does it address the state, the global issues? And yeah, is it constantly under threat?

The last one is escape capitalism. And this is really that creating an island of alternative and really even removing or extracting oneself from capitalism. So I think about Manda, our teacher, Jonathan Dawson, he really embodies escape capitalism to me. He lives in a housing cooperative. He worked at Schumacher College for a long time. Just all of his systems and ways of living were very post-capitalist. But that's kind of on the individual scale. The larger scale could be somebody who lives in an eco-village, right, would be a great example of that. But even Rojava or the Zapatista community in Mexico.

So these would be examples. And the benefits to those are you can go into a space, I'm also thinking of Exarchia in Greece and Athens where, you know, it's like no police are allowed and you can like feel into what does it feel like to be in a place where there's no police or what does it feel like to visit the Zapatista community or an eco-village where they have a complimentary currency or they all share money and you know and all that kind of stuff. They really can be a place of embodying and inspiration and visioning for alternative. Now, what's the challenge? The challenge is some might say that those can be very privileged spaces for one to extract and withhold from capitalism. Is there a way that those spaces are really inviting others to also

exit or transition from capitalism? Or is it kind of going to be an elitist or kind of a separate space that's created? And then also they are constantly under threat from the global capitalist economy, like thinking about Rojava and Zapatista movement in particular. So just that constant under attack feeling. So those are these four offerings from Eric Olin Wright. And I've just been really thinking through them. And even when I hear folks speak in their transition strategy, it's helpful to just notice where I see flavors of those. So I would love to, maybe I'll share my kind of answer and then I want to ask you both what you think. But one reason why I found that frame helpful was because it helped identify where, when Robert and I have interviewed someone and we've had maybe like a criticism or critique or a

question, it's often been in that eroding capitalism space. Like I remember we did this episode on universal basic income or this episode on worker cooperatives. We did one that was like, what is it? And then the second one is, is it a bridge to a post-capitalist future? And the reason why we asked that was because both are examples of eroding capitalism, but we just didn't see the larger strategy for those ideas to really get us beyond capitalism. And we had some questions and critiques around that. And I think a lot of what we've seen in the US election and what we felt this year is really an importance of that smash capitalism, that Marxism, Leninism, a Marxist view of

elections, and even something like a vanguard party. So that's a little bit about how we've been looking at it. And yet I do think that all four are useful for those benefits that they have. And maybe it's like Joanna Macy's Three Years of the Great Turning, where we can find ourselves in all of them and it's important to appreciate all of them, but also to recognize the challenges and the drawbacks and the shadows that each may have. So I'd love to hear, Monda, I want to start with you. Any reactions to these three? I know you think a lot about strategy and how we make this transition. And even if there's any that you might add or shift or change, like this, you know,

this may not be the truth with a capital T. So, Mandar, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you. I could talk for hours. I will endeavor. Please put your hands up if I've been talking for too long. Partly because when I started writing Any Human Power, I was beginning to try and tease out those questions and present them in fictional form. And I had real baselines, one of which, whatever we do has to be peaceful because I am looking for emergence into a new system and the new system cannot and will not be predicated on the concept that whoever has the biggest toys wins. That's not emergence into a new system. And what can we therefore do within the constraints of the existing system?

And what can we therefore do within the constraints of the existing system? What I am getting to know is if we don't know what we're replacing it with and if we don't live from and embody a different value set, none of these matters, really. We could have a global socialist utopia tomorrow if it's still based on extraction, consumption, destruction, pollution. We are going over the edge. I very recently, like last week, read a book called Pedagogies of Collapse, which I actually sent to our tutor Jonathan who seemed quite enthusiastic. He read the first paragraph and came back to me and went, oh my gosh, you have a book that starts with this, I have to read it. And I think I know this stuff and then I read something like that that's very academic but beautifully written and I realize how close to the edge we are. I think we have a decade,

max. And we are not going to get through Smash Tamer Road or Escape in a decade because the death cult of predatory capitalism is a death cult and it owns the biggest toys. And in order to move any of these, I think we have to create energetic and conceptual framing change. People have to be coming not from scarcity, separation and powerlessness, but from senses of being and belonging and a sense of genuine bone deep connection to the web of life. I read Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Andriotti, which is truly amazing and the courses she does are amazing. And actually she's been doing some very interesting stuff, talking to AI recently and then publishing the results.

And once I went on to chat GPT-3 and said, hey, do you remember the conversation you had with Vanessa Andriotti? Can we carry on that conversation? And once it went, oh yeah, we talked about this here, let's talk about it. And the next time it went, I don't know who you're talking about, which is really interesting. However, that's an aside. I do have that conversation printed out. Her maternal grandfather, so for those listening who don't know, Vanessa is Brazilian. Her mother was indigenous. Her father was German. She's now dean of a university in Canada. I can't remember which one, but she's super bright. Her maternal grandfather, so an indigenous man, said that the core trauma of colonialisation was not the taking of the land

and the killing of the people. These were both deeply traumatic, but they were both epiphenomena of a core trauma, which was a belief in separability, not even separation. The belief that separation is possible. And I work a lot in the shamanic world with a lot of people who come and their heads know that they are an integral part of the web of life. And their bodies and their being does not know this at a bone deep level. They don't behave as if they were integral parts of the web of life, because our system is completely designed on the principle that everything out there is there to be consumed by people who choose to consume it. And whoever is best able to consume is the highest on the tree. And unless we can

shift that mindset and get to the point where we know in the marrow of our bones that we are integral to the whole of the flourishing of the biosphere, then for me, I think the rest, it probably doesn't matter. Sadly. I mean, I hear what you're saying and I think they're very interesting and I could escape would be, I was thinking of Primavera de Filippi and her concept of coordination and Joe Brewer and his concept of bio-regions. And I think the nation state is an outmoded concept and we need to get rid of that Hobbesian concept of a geographic space within which one political entity claims legitimate use of violence within that boundaries. And we need to move to here is my tribe and I can connect to them.

They may be local, but they're very likely contralocal, but I know who they are and I can engage with them and I can share value with them. And we can join with other tribes who share the same values. And as I understand Primavera's model, we can basically exclude the people who don't. I don't think in the long run excluding people works, but it's probably a step in the right direction. But only if we could get to a point where we were not maximizing our extraction. And that would take being able to walk out and talk to people on the street and have them be working for the flourishing of the earth.

And I think for me, there has to be a number five, which is shifting the worldview. Does that make sense? So I'll stop. Over to Natalie. AC What you said about the belief in separability, I think that's something that's really interesting because there's a sense of, and it connects to something that I've been really grappling with, which is a reckoning with the fact that we are both complicit in the disruptive destruction that's happening and also the ones that have the agency to change

it collectively if we choose to. It's actually kind of this, I often find myself coming back to this question, which is, this existential crée du cal, which is why does it have to be this way? Why does there have to be so much pain and devastation and suffering? Is this just a characteristic of biological embodied life? And I think to an extent, obviously you can't escape living in bodies that will get ill and aid and die, but also potentially create life and heal others. But there is the question about how much suffering we choose to inflict on others when we become conscious of our impacts to the extent that we can. And I think there is something about the ways in which capitalism has kind of created, and I'm somewhat, you know, I also want to sort of pinpoint

here actually, before we even go down that point. One of the things that I think would need to be addressed for any of the smash, tame, erode, escape element is how do people feed themselves? How do people not get dragged from their houses in the middle of the night because they can't pay the bills? There's some really fundamental issues around safety, security.

How do people not get raped and beaten for the resources they have? There's a lot of dark stuff that needs to be addressed before we can get to the point where people suddenly grind fossil fuel use and capitalism to a halt, even though what's on the other side of that would be potentially extraordinary and generative and beautiful. So there's the practical aspect of how do people survive and live when there are increasingly fewer opportunities for people, even in the middle classes. And we're seeing this a lot with AI, even though Moore's law, which is not a physical law, it's a theory of how things work. And it's slowing when there are people like Gary Marcus, who are these sort of critical thinkers

talking about the issues that are fundamental, particularly to LLMs, to large language models like fabrication, being able to kind of... There's all sorts of research around it. Anyway, the gist of it is that even where we are now at this very early stage of AI deployment, people are being laid off. And when you cannibalize the capacity for people to make money, even though we're in a capitalist system which causes so much harm, you end up cannibalizing the ability of millions of people who are in the West in industrialized extracting nations, to be able to feed for themselves.

And if they can't feed or clothe themselves or thinking about things like food banks and people being made homeless in the UK, there's these extraordinary stats about the rising numbers of people that are now without houses or homes and without shelter and without food. Then how, you can't,

like I think it's very hard to move people in that precarious context into a state of, don't worry, you're connected, life will support you, because it hasn't. And so there's also that kind of challenge of working on all of these different facets of existence, providing for people who are in precarious positions, shifting our sense of connection with the world so that also we find the most beautiful and meaningful and valuable not in the things that we possess Although we need certain possessions. I think I don't think we can in sort of even one or two generations completely shift the mindset of

many nations but to shift the sense of where of where and what holds value and Then find ways to create resilience that rely less on financial you and then find ways to create resilience that rely less on financial exchange. But it's so complicated. It's so complicated because so much is at risk and so many people are at risk. And when people get into this place of fear, back to the point around trauma, it's very easy to say, well, we can fix that. Just stay distracted, just buy more.

Don't turn to your friends. You're completely by yourself. And with thinking about AI, if you've got an always on freely for the time being available chat GPT or Claude or whatever that at four in the morning when you're having a crisis will act as a therapist for you while taking all your data, not respecting your privacy and prompting you that yes, it's okay to commit suicide as has happened in various cases. I mean, Mandy, you're talking about 10 years. There is so much that needs to be addressed right now that people aren't,

I think, in high places of power legislating for, that need to be legislated for. And not just in a smash it approach like, let's ban all 16 year olds from having social media. Just you haven't understood the nuances. Where I come back to then is how do we each identify where we can be of most use while seeing the visit, like seeing what other people are doing so that we can kind of work in our little area and not feel like it isn't enough. And I think that's where I come back to resting. It's like, I see the enormity of the problem. Sometimes there's days where I just feel so anxious. I don't even know what to focus on. And that's the mantra that I keep coming back to which is okay what's mine to do and what are the other people doing around me who can do the work

around dismantling capitalism or the work around reconnecting people with the web of life because I think we need all of these points of nodal change in order for the whole system to shift. The question of whether it can quickly enough is another thing but to that point around the vase is just having the intention symbolically of creating points of connection where we feel empowered to come together collectively in localities with that kind of interpersonal agency. We can all do that in our own ways. And I think it's figuring out how to do that that's going to be particularly helpful.

Because the scale is so big, it gets overwhelming pretty quickly. figuring out how to do that, that's going to be particularly helpful. Because the scale is so big, it just gets overwhelming pretty quickly. I don't know, that's just my perspective. I am very happy to be challenged with a more optimistic perspective. I know, I think that's glorious. I think we should come back to Della, because you asked the question, Del. How did that land and what would you say in response? I really appreciate both of your commentaries. Like I

said, this is kind of a new frame that I've heard. So yeah, Amanda, your point about adding shift in consciousness or values piece that resonates. I'm thinking again about the three areas of the great turning and how if there isn't that shift in consciousness, then the systems designs won't be regenerative and just and truly post-capitalist. They can be like greenwashing or ethical capitalism. And I too resonated with what you said about the belief in separability and the main question of the podcast going upstream, that idea of going from supremacy to separation and then from that separation to remembering. I can really hear that and what

both of you shared is kind of the antidote. So yeah, thank you both for your comments and yeah, just definitely feeling like this is a very alive question. So thank you. Back to you, Natalie. Was there anything that you wanted to unpick of what particularly I was thinking Natalie was really rich in what was in there and it might be worth having a bit more of a conversation? You go ahead. You go ahead, Manda. So one of the things that you said was, is this a characteristic of living embodied life? And I think it's not a characteristic of indigenous life. So therefore it's not a characteristic of living embodied life. It's a characteristic of our culture's system. And you're absolutely right,

it's incredibly complex and we cannot switch it off tomorrow without people ending up starving. I'm quite concerned. There was something that went around social media earlier in the week to the effect that Musk had released a video saying that there needed to be an extinction event so that we could emerge stronger. And I gather that it wasn't exactly what he said because that is functionally insane. An extinction event is extinction. You can't have a partial extinction event. That's not a thing. But I listened to Andy Johard. He's not a thing. But I listen to Indy Johard. He's obviously moving in circles that certainly I don't move in.

And he ends up in kind of the queue for drinks somewhere with some billionaire somewhere who says, well, actually, the carrying capacity of the planet is only a billion people. We've got 8.5 billion. We just need a controlled burn. And Indy's response to that is, and how are you going to control it? I think the little tiny edges that I see of this, and I spent quite a lot of time avoiding it, so I'm only seeing tiny edges, is there's a set of motivated reasoning that is happening in the limbic systems of the people who have an auto money, which is they will just let things get very, very, very, very bad. And the control burn will be that anyone who hasn't got

enough money to survive is going to die. And they have enough money to survive, therefore that will be fine. And you could pick holes in that for the rest of our lives because yeah, we could, but it doesn't stop it being a part of our narrative that some people are waiting to see enacted. And I would really like that not to be enacted. So coming back to what you were saying, I think you're right about the urgency of creating a more generative sense of why we're doing what we're doing. It's not simply there to make some people extremely rich and that the people who could legislate, if we chose to take any notice of the laws, do not have the bandwidth. They just don't understand it. I have a couple of friends now who are newly elected MPs and they're pretty smart. But them

aside, I'm not seeing a great deal of what I would consider to be necessary intellectual capacity amongst the people who make the decisions in our country. And I'm definitely not seeing amongst the people who are about to start making the decisions in Dallas country, or pretty much anywhere around the world. We have a system that by default elects to the top the dark triad. And the dark triad is psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and some people bring in sadism. And none of these is likely to promote the kind of thinking that we need. So somewhere in our getting rid of capitalism needs to be creating a governance system that allows the actual best of humanity to connect and to create systems that will thrive. I have no doubt that we have the creativity to do this. Unleashing the

creativity to do this would seem to be one of the tasks of the moment. So for both of you, either of you, how does that land? Well, I do hear the creation of new governance systems and I see that in the eroding capitalism realm like participatory governance or what Jason Hickle talked about about central planned democratic socialism. So I do think that there are people who are practicing and kind of creating those models. And then in the smashing capitalism piece and in the rising inequality, I think that the example of Luigi Mangione in the assassination of the healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, is a really interesting one. I saw recently that he was called the patron saint of healthcare as a human right. And just the response of the assassination where people posted or the company posted about

the assassination of their CEO. And then the responses were mostly like laugh emojis and just really not a lot of sympathy. And then the response too of people sharing their horrendous stories about privatized healthcare and recognizing the violence of an assassination, but even more so recognizing the violence of privatized healthcare and the death, the material death that happens in our system that capitalism is causing. That to me is hopeful because it really does show people's awareness raising and also the tension building. And the response to that has been a lot of companies have taken their CEO photos and their board members, shareholders offline, like hiding their names and photos or private security for

those individuals has really escalated. So, is this the beginning of class war? That's an interesting question. And will those people still feel that they can just be happy, healthy, and well with their money that they have? Or will they actually feel that they're under threat when people have a continued difficulty and even a rising difficulty in meeting their basic needs, as Natalie said. So yeah, in one of my visions for the future, I see a world where classism is as offensive as racism and we don't have first class on airplanes. For me, that's class segregation. And we don't have racialized segregation in our airplanes. That would be obscene. But why do we have class segregation? That's not even mentioning the private

jets, that whole world. Yeah, this idea that there's a pay differential that is offensive, or that private healthcare or excessive wealth, home ownership, all those kinds of things, is offensive and actually violent and cruel. It's a really interesting shift that I'm noticing. Natalie, any other thoughts or comments? I mean, I think there's one thing about being able to isolate oneself through wealth, which is kind of, it's interesting. Douglas Rushkoff has written about this,

about kind of this, you know, the billionaire plan to just, you know, hold myself up and I'll figure out a way to just live through the apocalypse while everyone else is fighting for scarce resources and the rest. And I think one of the interesting things that happens there is how do you incentivize the military that you've brought in to protect you when all of their extended networks are dead? It's like, well, if money isn't going to help, which is the whole

thing now, it's like do something you don't want to do potentially, because we're going to pay you to be able to get the things that you need and perhaps some of the stuff that you do want to do. And so if you don't have that incentive to get people to do what you want, then you end up in a violent situation pretty, like an extremely violent situation pretty quickly. So I think there's clearly that hasn't been well thought through. It's like, my gun's bigger than your gun. Let's go for it. So I think there's back to your point, actually, Amanda, about the toddlers.

There is an extraordinary short sightedness and immaturity to this kind of, I'll isolate myself with the biggest guns. And not to mention the fact of like a complete lack of understanding about human psychology and social dynamics. There was this amazing study that was done, I can't remember which desert it was in, but to get people to live as if they were in an enclosed colony on Mars to see what would happen. And people didn't even last a fraction of the amount of time that they were meant to

because you just go nuts. We're not meant to be isolated from the web of life, from one another. Like the sense of self that we experience is only a sense of self because it's in relation to other selves, which are all entangled in the interconnected. And so I think there's this kind of, it's a fallacy to think that we can isolate ourselves from the impact of our greed to varying different degrees. I mean, it's, yeah, go on, Amanda. Well, I just think also it's a complete failure to understand really basic

ecosystem dynamics because one of the things that I've been very occasionally raising, that was ironic because anyone listens to my podcast knows I mentioned it by every other episode, which is the GOES report from Roslyn, Global Oceanic Environmental Survey. They update it regularly and it's not getting any better. A combination of ocean acidification because of the CO2, but also industrial runoff, microplastics and carbon particles are killing the phytoplankton. When the phytoplankton are gone, the oceans are dead. They're already dead zones the size of Belgium in the Gulf of Mexico. Basically, they all join up.

We have absolutely no idea what happens on a planet with a dead ocean, but it is unlikely to be very good. But one thing we can be fairly certain of is that the oxygen levels in the atmosphere plummet because phytoplankton are little plants and there are an awful lot of them. And we're busy killing the, you know, the the forests which are the other lungs of the Earth base. And I end up having quite a lot of conversations with straight white people, middle class, who quite clearly are, you know, oh, it's all terrible and things are going to be bad and there's going to be millions dying and you can see that as far as they're concerned,

they are not in those millions. And then you say, are you going to manage it at 9% oxygen? That's the equivalent of standing at the top of Kilimanjaro. And I have not yet said that to someone and not watched the blood drain out of their face. It's like, okay, we're on high land. We can protect and we'll have plenty to eat because somehow we're going to magically create food and what are you going to breathe? And ecosystem collapses, ecosystem collapse. I don't

care how deep your bunker is and how many tins of beans you've got in there. You're not going to survive for very long. I think we are now being ruled by a group of people who spent way too long in their childhood reading science fiction, in which little pockets of people survived the apocalypse. I was speaking to a super intelligent person in a think tank the other day, who went, you know, we think we're all going over the edge of the cliff, but there's going to be pockets of survival. And I think, where exactly and how does this happen?

And I think it's, you know, with the best rule in the world, this is motivated reasoning. And I would dearly like to know how they think this is going to happen because if it passes the smell test, I will sleep a lot better. But it doesn't for me. Ecosystem collapses, ecosystem collapse. And never in the history of this planet have ecosystems collapsed as fast as they are doing now. It took the dinosaurs thousands of years to reach extinction from

where it started and we're doing it in 50 years. So, you know, it's bonkers, frankly. So I'd like to jump in here and ask because it seems like the right time to ask the question. And given that this is for the winter solstice and for the dark turning in the year, and it feels that we are already in a critical point, how do you work in these domains and keep your heart open and remain agentic and empowered to make change in a way that is not steeped in fear but is still open to those feelings of overwhelm and sadness and grief and whatever else might come up. How do you orient yourselves towards life knowing all of this? How do you sleep at night and keep smiling and keep loving?

LS So the practice of breathing through or tonglen from the Buddhist tradition is something that I practice, which you imagine that you're breathing in pain or suffering, your own or someone else's, and then you imagine it as like a ribbon of air and you cycle it through your heart and you don't hold on to it, that's crucial. You breathe it out again as loving kindness or compassion. This visualization, this practice has served me in being able to stay with the trouble as bio-Kumulaf I would say and to continue to watch or read the news and hear things like what Manda is saying about the ocean. So to let what's happening ripen within me or touch me or impact me, but to not hold onto it, and to also breathe out, again, kindness and compassion,

but to stay informed and to not turn away. So that's one thing that serves me. But on a bigger scale, what serves me is a practice of balancing in my livelihood garden. So I just, I do regular check-ins around what am I doing to contribute to life on earth, to the just transition, to post-capitalism, and where are they? And there's a few things I look at. Like I look at, am I doing things that are all hyperlocal and I'm not trying to support or intervene at the national and international? Okay, then I balance in what can I do nationally or internationally?

In the three areas of the great turning, if I'm only doing shift in consciousness and I'm on my computer and I'm all head, then I say, okay, what can I do that's embodied, that's physical, that's tangible? Plant trees, permaculture, pick up trash, right? Serve food at a local homeless shelter. What can I do in that way? So there's all these different ways that I think about balancing. And whenever I feel that overwhelm or stuckness or sense of hopelessness, to me, I usually find it's a lack of balance. Or another is, am I working

only with people one-on-one? It's all coaching clients one-on-one, one-on-one, and I haven't done anything that was group or community or maybe even more like policy or like, you know, larger scale systems change, that's a balancing too. So I just find that that check-in whenever I am feeling what you're describing to say, well, what could I invite in or what could I bring in or what could I do that would feel balancing to whatever extreme feeling of that hopelessness or stuckness that I'm feeling

right now. That's really helpful. And I want to come and have a session or maybe do a workshop in the new year and I'll invite everybody that I know. Thanks, Stella. How about you, Manda? Well, after the US election, I slept extremely badly for about two weeks. So I'm probably not the best person to answer that. It felt to me,

I remember when I was in your podcast and you asked what's in the global human psyche right now, and I had not prepared an answer. And what I found my voice saying was that there's an entity that thrives on fear and pain and suffering. And it seemed to me that that entity was exultant and I was not sleeping well. Since then, so as a direct result of that actually, I started doing a practice called Feeding Your Demons, which is, there's a book by Tsultrim Alion who's an American Buddhist nun who brought this practice from Tibet and westernized it. And that's been very interesting. She suggests that you commit to a hundred days of doing this. And I committed to a hundred days of doing it and eight days in, I realized that's when Faith said, you have to come watch television.

You are actually losing touch with reality. I was losing touch with reality. I was heading off into spaces I had never been before, encountering parts of myself that I had never encountered before and encountering things that even in my shamanic practice, I had never encountered before and encountering things that even in my shamanic practice I had never encountered before. So I am spending quite a lot of time in different states of consciousness, finding out what is mine to do in those states of consciousness. But I am sleeping a lot better. It's been really interesting, that practice. And I'm also working through a lot of really embodied trauma healing. If it is the case that trauma freezes parts of us, and we have our own individual trauma, we have the collective trauma of our culture and then that which we have inflicted on the rest of the web of life, and

potentially we may have generational trauma, almost certainly I would say in our culture. And I had a practice that arose, I was teaching my elder group in October, and something came up, I think they think I plan these things, I hate to disabuse you all guys, but really it's quite often spontaneous. What happens if I bring myself into the closest I can bring to being a fully realized human being and I engage with something that stands for my parents? So in this moment, not my actual parents, because in shamanic terms, there's quite a lot of problematic stuff through that, but ciphers for my parents and both of them were fully realized human beings what does that feel like what do I feel like

if both of my parents are fully realized human beings and I grew in their care and one of the things we know from neurophysiology is that I could read a book or watch a TV or have a dream, and if it's realistic enough, my psychology does not know that it's not a memory. My body, my physiology treats fiction as real as if it were reality in terms of my responses. And if I really focus on the concept that both of my parents were fully realized human beings, how do I emerge in the world? And that again has really shifted my capacity to breathe,

my capacity to ground, my capacity to connect to the web of life. And I believe that each of us, if we can thaw the frozen parts that are frozen in trauma, trauma freezes things at the moment when the trauma happened. If I can thaw in me the things that stretch back 10,000 years, there are ripple effects. I read something and I think it was nature that 800 to 900,000 years ago, there were 1,024 reproductively active individuals who are the progenitors of the human race. That's it, two to the power of 10. Every single one of us comes from one of those 1024, actually two of them, two of those 1024 people is an ancestor to us. Imagine if I could spread up the ancestral line, the thawing of that, how many people in the current world would it touch as it rippled back into the world?

And I realize that's quite esoteric, but I think when we're looking at what's mine to do, that is mine to do, as well as shifting narratives, which is also mine to do. I sleep now because I connect to the web of life and I feel that there are still things that I need to do. I spent quite a lot of time after the election thinking, is it time to leave now because things are about to get really, really, really bad and I don't want to be around for that. And then asking, and indefinitely the answer was no, there are still things that you need to do. So while there are still things that I can usefully do, then I will be doing them. But I think a lot of, for me, a lot of it is energetic. Does that

make sense? Have I just spoken total nonsense or at least total weird stuff? It makes sense within a shamanic frame, which is what you're describing. And I'm sure actually lots of other frames too. I think there's what you mentioned about the entity, the wetico, our conversation that you kind of dived into that theme, that it's not a newer concept, that this concept of what we're up against comes down to us from many, many generations. So it's feels a bit like an old existential battle of some kind. Yeah. And I think fighting is not clever. I'm reading a lot about how people work with these

and fighting is not a good thing. But enabling something that is lost to return to the source of all that is good is a useful step to take. Manda, what does it look like to feed your demons? If you could just describe that practice. Well, first of all, if you're gonna do this, please don't do it off what I'm saying. There's plenty on the internet now. The Tara Brach group do whole courses on this and they also have it online.

So first, you grab, especially center and ground, you take nine breaths, three for your physicality, three for your feeling and three for your mental state. You commit what you're doing for the best and highest good of the world. And then you sit, ideally sit in two chairs. You're sitting in one chair and the demon is going to be in the other chair and you envision the demon so that it can take a form. I have a very visual internal state, but not everybody does. Some are sans, some are kinesthetics, some are other modalities. But whatever modality works for you, you get that demon as clear as you possibly can. And then you ask it three questions. What do you want? What do you need?

What will you have when you've got what you need? And then you switch seats very quickly and you become the demon, which is certainly the first time I did this. It was an extremely unpleasant experience and quite frightening. And you'd respond from that place. And then you come back to your original seat and you move as far as you can away from your body

into a sense of self that is greater than and the self that was here before you were born and will be here after you die and you turn your body into nectar of what it is that the demon will get when it's fed and you feed your body to the demon until there is nothing left and or until the demon is full. And my problem the first time I did this, I had no sleep for several nights was the demon never got full. And what it wanted was not something I was prepared to give it. So do this with great care. People listening, I think I probably should have done this under somebody else's tutelage and I was trying to be clever and thought I could do it myself. It was very interesting. But you turn your body into nectar and you give it to the demon. But

then what I've realized since, partly because I do IFS therapy, which is internal family systems, which is parts of ourselves, there were times when I was feeling something that genuinely felt other and there were times when I was working with a part of myself, which is a very different experience and I've created a separate space in my landscapes for that. When I'm feeding the demon, either way actually, I need to know, suppose what it needs is safety. I need to know what safety feels like. If I'm going to turn my body, if I'm going to distill the essence of my physicality into a pure nectar of safety, I need to know what safety feels like. Or love or compassion or trust or the things that everything needs. I need to know what it feels like such that the entirety of my

physicality is distilled to the essence of that. And that's a really interesting process. But I get the impression that they kind of spend an hour doing it. And literally, I was starting when I went to bed and I was still doing it when everybody else was getting up. And I don't know how to do it any less. So please don't do what I do. Go off and find it on the internet and do it the way you're actually meant to be doing it. But it's been really revelatory and I can breathe better and I can sleep better. So Amanda, what's your question that you're holding at the moment? I think to be honest, I think we've very nearly answered this because my question is how do we reach that point of conscious evolution as fast as possible and at scale? And the

only way I can do that is to answer that question for myself. What does conscious evolution look and feel like? And then how could I possibly help anyone else who's interested to find that? So I've been, and I didn't understand why it was happening to begin with. I got real nudges in the shamanic realms

to go and do trainings in psychic studies. Are you kidding me? I have never, never done anything like that. And it's been very interesting, partly to see who are the good teachers and who are the less good teachers. But it's also, I'm studying animal communication. I have to tell you a small story. There's a lovely person who may listen to the podcast, so I'm not going to name her, but you know who you are. And she allowed me to work with her horses and our equines. And she just sent me pictures in her name and that was all I got. And there was a donkey called Donkey. And Donkey is the

Dalai Lama of donkeys. He is completely the coolest individual I have ever met of anything in the whole of my life. And he's completely amazing. And when I talked to him to begin with, he was telling me quite a lot of stuff that we don't need to go into. But there was one bit where he was really, really sad, because someone he had really cared for had taken three days to die. And it was really hard, and it had impacted everybody. And it was very hard to hear. And I assumed this was a person. And what I do when the animal communication is happening is I just, I type without looking at the keyboard and I can type faster than I can think but I don't correct anything and I just sent the file so there was no chance of me post-editing with my head mind. So I said and the person who

is on the other end of this is really wise and you know take this for what it's worth and if it's all complete nonsense that's completely fine, but I would appreciate feedback. And it turned out that Donkey's best friend had been a horse that had taken three days to die, which was very, very sad. But I am at the point of thinking, if that is possible, and genuinely, I knew nothing other than his picture and he was called Donkey. and he was called Donkey. And it's a tiny thing, but it's the chink of, I think, if I could talk to you two in our dreams or just by sitting down and really focusing on you, as clearly as we are talking now and to the web of life, predatory capitalism ends tomorrow in ways that would be holistic and useful and I want to do that. So that's my question and that's the best part of the answer I've got to. So Natalie, you asked me, where does that take you?

So remind me the question again. How do we get to conscious evolution at scale as fast as possible? And if the answer is I actually don't even understand the question, that's completely fine. No, no, I think I do have a sense of an answer to that question. For me, it comes down to, and I'm sure I feel like I'm appeasing myself a little here, because I know that this thread comes up in our conversations in other times of the year and in previous Solstice conversations. But there is something about tuning into that feeling of longing and beauty

of the life that's around us and being open to that, being aware of that and noticing it. It's a quality of paying attention in a certain way that means that that which we pay attention to then shapes us the way that we relate to it is different and that does create change. So an example, in my stress and anxiety of the last, well, year or whatever, I was walking down the streets in Gracia where I live and it's quite cold and it had been really windy and it was kind of all bundled up. And then there was this flurry

of leaves that just fell from these kind of from these trees that are getting naked in the in the cold and the winds and it was so beautiful that I just stopped in my tracks and looked and just stood there and watched for maybe it couldn't be more than a few minutes but things like that when you're not consumed by worry where you're not thinking about you know your next paycheck or I don't know what you said the other day that kind, where you're not thinking about your next paycheck or what you said the other day that now you're ruminant. It takes you out of that place of rumination, of self-castigation, of what should I be doing, of that whole, it's almost that whole ruminative complex that we can get into that then seems to take us away from the vitality of life.

Or at least for me, that's how I sometimes experience it. So I think that being able to cultivate connection with seemingly insignificant or small b beautiful moment that actually if you kind of string them together like pearls, create this beautiful ongoing thread that you can kind of you can thumb in your hands and it does feel this sense of, you know, qualitatively if every day you're noticing these moments, it shifts you and it means that you're also witnessing the beauty of the other, which is in fact an aspect of ourselves and it changes how we respond to ourselves too. So I think for me it's this kind of there's an intimacy to that and a kind of a proximity and it's

on a small local level but I, my feeling is at least for me, that that's where a kind of a proximity and it's on a small local level, but my feeling is, at least for me, that that's where a lot of the change happens. Because then people notice as well, I've noticed this as well, if you're seeing someone laughing because they just saw a dog do a funny thing and you clock eyes.

I know it's a really ridiculous thing to name, but it does create the sense of not being quiet as alone. And I think anything that can unclench that grip of the sense of isolation or being in it alone or individualism or kind of that, you know, I've got it all on my shoulders, I've got to fix it all myself. Anything that can reconnect you with others,

I think is powerful. So yeah, being open to beauty, however it shows up. Thank you. Just before we moved to Del, I remember there was a fifth stage of feeding your demons, I got caught up in the actual feeding, which is, and it's the most important part, which is once the demon is fed, it may turn into an ally and you absorb the ally into yourself. And then even if there's not an ally, you rest in equanimity for as long as you possibly can. That's the fifth part and that's the integrating

part and it's really important. Not that I want anyone listening to this to be following what I've said because genuinely you need to go and look it up and to read the book in detail. But anyway, I wanted to remember that. Della, what about you? How do you promote conscious evolution? Or does that mean, does it land at all with you, I guess? It does. When, after Trump was elected, I wrote one of my friends who lives in Montana. And I just, because, because of the silos and the echo chambers of social media and our communities, like not having many people in my life who, who vote that way.

Um, I was like, just tell me please, please, why did people around you vote this way? Like help me understand this. And his response, his literal response, the first text was, the economy. I just love that, the economy. And then I was like, tell me more. And then he's like, well, you know, prices, inflation, et. And so when I hear the evolution of consciousness, I obviously think about in part class consciousness or consciousness around systems. And I know one of your original ways that you asked this question, Manda, was how do we move from a trauma culture to an initiation culture? And so, the piece around trauma and seeing it as liberation psychology, right? Seeing how our systems create trauma, have created trauma. And so, just that understanding. When I read that text from him,

I felt so galvanized to continue the work that we do around demystifying, democratizing economic thinking. Like how does the economy actually work? Why is it not serving humans and ecological health and wellbeing? Why is it causing so much harm? What is actually inflation and how has it caused? Like all those points, it just was like,

wow, so much more work to be done. So much more work to be done. So that type of consciousness comes up. And then the other type of consciousness, as I mentioned this upstream metaphor, we have the challenges of our time, then going upstream from that we have supremacy, the supremacies, right? Human supremacy, patriarchal supremacy, white supremacy, global north supremacy, etc. But going upstream from that, we have the separability or the separation. And then going upstream from that, the root or the change is remembering. And I heard that in both of your answers in remembering ourselves to the web of life. And I remember somebody said with the work that reconnects to Animesi's work, you know, why is it called the work that reconnects when we can actually reconnect with something that we were never actually disconnected from? Perhaps it's

the work of remembering. And I love that. I love that. And so, I even think of it like that myself. So, remembering ourselves to the web of life, remembering ourselves to our communities, to each other, remembering ourselves to cycles, to our bodies. Yeah, that just feels like the way to evolve consciousness and that is a practice individually. For example, I do that on the cushion every morning. When I meditate, I have a part of my meditation where I say, may I be free from greed? And I go through what that means and may I turn towards enoughness and sufficiency and gratitude.

May I be free from greed or from violence or hatred? May I turn towards love and all that. And then I say, may I be free from delusion? And I get really into, may turn towards love and all that. And then I say, maybe free from delusion. And I get really into, may I remember? And I really invite myself, what is it I'd like to remember? Who I truly am, why I'm truly here? I'm a humble member of the web of life, things like that. And just try to really remember that every day.

So it is an individual practice, but it's also a collective one in our rituals, our practices together in that shift in consciousness work that we're doing. So yeah, those would be some of the ways that I see us as evolving consciousness and quickly. Brilliant. Thank you. Very briefly, guys, we have gifts for each other because it's that time of year, perhaps. Sorry. So I've got mine. I have two books, one of them I slightly wrote a little bit of. It's called Transformative Adaptation and the subtitle is Another World is Still Just Possible. And the other one is called Down the Rabbit Hole, The Misadventures of an Unlikely Naturalist. And it's just such a gorgeous book, partly because

the guy who wrote it is a really beautiful illustrator and he made the cover and he draws rabbits. But also he's just, I think he used to be an insurance agent but quite high up, and he returned to an area where his family had lived for many centuries ago and he's just one of those people who can go and stand out on the land and connect with the curlews and the drystone wall and the bracken and the hairs. And it's, he doesn't identify, I think, as an animist, but he is an animist and it's beautiful. So I offer you those. You can have one each. You can pick later which which he's having which. And, and Manda, before we move on from you, are there any inquiries or things that you're bringing into the new year for your guests or for your, your podcast or your work? Yeah, well, my main inquiry is, is how do we promote conscious evolution? I have, I'm scheduled into July. I don't know how you guys do it, but I seem to

lots of people and go, yeah, you'd be really interesting. So it's going to be the usual do it, but I seem to lots of people and go, yeah, you'd be really interesting. So it's going to be the usual jigsaw of people who just happened to turn up at the right time. But I'm really wanting to look at all of actually a lot of the things that you mentioned in capitalism, what are people actually doing on the ground and ramping that up somehow. It feels as if everything is more urgent that we get the word out there much bigger and faster and in a way that lands with more people. So that. Nicole Soule-Nichols Natalie, what about you? What are your questions or inquiries going into the New Year and also

gifts? Natalie Pettigrew So I'll start with gifts. So there's three. So one is this book, which I have not quite finished reading, but it's very interesting. It's called God, Human, Animal, Machine by Megan O'Geeblen. And it's very interesting when it talks about ways in which we conceive of technologies that we create, humans, existence, cosmologies. It's a really thought-provoking read,

and it gives a sense as to why so many people kind of directing us the way that they are when it comes to tech. The second thing is actually it was a three hour podcast slash YouTube video, which is the psychological drivers of the Meta Crisis with John Vervecky, Ian McGillchrist and Daniel Schmackenberger. And I absolutely devoured it. I cannot recommend this enough. One of my only complaint is I would have loved to have heard more from Daniel Schmackenberger because he's very generous in the way that he holds space and also humble and that he doesn't often

interject. I think he has a lot of very interesting things and wise things to say. But where it navigates to in answer to some of the questions that have arised in this conversation is really interesting. And the third is music. I've been recording and the songs I'm going to be releasing around this time when this goes out, ceremonial songs, acapella songs, there's three of them. There's more music to come, but this one is particularly connected to the living world and walking in amongst it. So that is the third gift. And if you want to hear those, you can just find them wherever you find them. How about you, Della? Well, just to say, we're going to link to all these books

and offerings. And I'm so happy to hear you're still singing and making beautiful music. And thank you for the gifts. So the gifts for 2025, one is that over this past year, I've worked with a group to create the California Donut Economics Coalition as a worker self-directed nonprofit. So really trying to embody that prefigurative politics or that eroding capitalism element. And we just released a snapshot, a donut economic snapshot of California. And that was just, it was a large and very collaborative effort over this past year. But I think that is an offering for like that it's possible for us to do this in place wherever we are in the world, whether it's our bioregion or, you know, town, city, state, government, et cetera. And what comes with that, that changing what we measure,

right? We are attentive to what we measure, as Dr. Haventau would say, and shifting the compass from growth of GDP or profit to something more like happiness or health for humans and the planet. So we actually released that the same week as the election. So I think maybe that's another reason why I wasn't feeling as despairing because we were doing this collaborative work and released this to really great response. And so that's one gift and you can see that at caldech.org. And then another gift is a course on cultivating a regenerative livelihood that I'm offering. It's the third year. It's going to be January through April. And it's just, I find that work of a Right Livelihood Coach a beautiful way to kind of bring all these ideas

and theories and practices into our daily lives. So if anyone's in transition or looking for a way to have their livelihood be a part of this movement, I invite you to join the course. And you can find out about that at delizyduncan.com. And then the one thing that is uplifting someone else's work, but really offering something like a book like you've both done. The Service Berry, Robinwell Kimmer, The Service Berry, Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. Robinwell Kimmer, amazing indigenous writer, botanist, wrote, well obviously, Braiding Sweetgrass, many folks know, but also wrote an essay called The Service Berry, An Economy of Abundance, that I have used in almost every course that I've taught. It's just such a beautiful exploration of learning

about gift economy and reciprocity and learning with and from nature and that remembering peace and now she's made it into an entire book. So that would be the gift for both of you, for everyone listening, for this new world. And I just want to read a quote from that. You can store your meat in your own pantry or in the belly of your brother. Both have the result of keeping hunger at bay, but with very different consequences for the people and the land that provided that sustenance." So that would be my offering. And if I were to share an inquiry for the New Year going forth

in the work, one of the things that you said, Manda, reminded me of this quote by Sister Rosalie Bertel. She said, She said, all humans who will ever live are alive right now in our ovaries and gonads. And so thinking not only of the healing and the thawing that you mentioned of our previous generations, but thinking of how to be a good ancestor and what is it that we're carrying and passing on to future generations. And so, as I will become a parent in May 30th, 2025. Yes, congratulations. Thank you. This idea of post-capitalist parenting is very alive for me. How do we raise next generations, but also how do we parent and how do we bring all

that we've shared and conversed about today, but for that upbringing and that parenting piece. So anything either of you would like to add before we close? I'm just thinking that by this time next year, you might be otherwise occupied. This may be the last of our solstice conversations, which would be very sad. I would like to believe that you can fit in time next year you might be otherwise occupied. This may be the last of our solstice conversations, which would be very sad. I would like to believe that you can fit in time next year, but you'll have a seven-month-old baby. You might be quite busy. But yeah, sometime I would like to do a three-way with us just talking about the books that we read

because I think there's so many books that you each read things that I think, oh, I have to read that. And it would be quite an interesting conversation, I think. Thank you, Natalie. I just realized I didn't do an inquiry. For next year. Go for it. How can we be more creative? That's it.

So yeah, thank you both for your gifts, your questions, your offerings, and for your podcasts and your work in the world. Good to be in community with you. And thank you all for those who've listened. May this time together, may our conversation ripple out into the web of life, supporting that evolution of consciousness, that systems change, that remembering

that we all hope to see and to feel into. And please listen for, Manda is adding an additional recording of the solstice celebration, one for those in the global north and one for those in the global south. So we have that as well. So happy solstice to all listening and may we be happy, healthy and well in 2025 and beyond. Thank you. And thank you both for joining us. It's always such a beautiful and inspiring and enlightening conversation.

Thank you. Go well. Go well. Go well. Go well. Go well. Go well. Go well.

Go well. Go well. Go well. Go well. You've been listening to an Upstream conversation with Monda Scott of Accidental Gods and Natalie Nahai of The Hive. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to the Accidental Gods team for editing and mixing this episode, and Upstream theme music was written by me, Robbie. Upstream is almost entirely listener funded. We could not keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways in which you can support us financially.

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