Upstream - How Agriculture Turned Humanity into a Superorganism with Lisi Krall

Episode Date: February 6, 2018

For the last 150,000 or so years of human evolution, not a whole lot changed. That is, until about 10,000 years ago, when in the blink of an eye we began organizing societies in very, very different ways. We went from small bands of hunter-gatherers to massive state societies; from having a relatively low ecological impact to devastating the natural environments we existed in; from relatively horizontal organization to extreme hierarchy and finely articulated division of labor. These now all-too-familiar traits have culminated in our modern capitalist era, where individual humans have become alienated cogs in a vast industrial machine that seems hell-bent on destroying everything in its path.  How did we get here? What happened 10,000 years ago to put us on this path of expansion and ecological devastation? This is the question guiding the research of Lisi Krall — an economics professor at Cortland University whose research blurs the lines between anthropology, economics, and evolutionary biology. She believes that the advent of agriculture was a turning point in human evolution, and that we can learn a lot about our modern societies by looking at ant and termite colonies. Upstream spoke with Krall about her eclectic research that has brought together an odd mix of disciplines and a lot of uncanny comparisons. We also explored the ramifications of her findings, which pose much deeper, philosophical inquiries into the existential, environmental, and economic challenges that human societies are facing in our modern era. Intermission Music: "Human" by Mount Eerie  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. 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.

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dives into these themes and also zooms out to explore broader questions concerning the existential, environmental, and economic challenges that human societies are facing in our modern era. Welcome, Lisey. Thank you, Della. Let's start with just a brief introduction about yourself for our listeners. Okay, I am a right now a professor of economics at the State University of New York at Cortland. And I concentrate on I guess what you would call ecological economics. But I actually have a lot of disagreement with much of what goes on in ecological economics. So yes, I've seen you associated both with ecological economics and evolutionary economics. So what do those two areas of economics mean to you? And maybe what are the disagreements that you have?

The main disagreement that I've had with ecological economics is that I actually don't think ecological economics in a lot of ways has a real good handle on the economic system. There are a lot of ecologists in ecological economics. And it's always said that economists don't understand ecology. But I also think that the problem is somewhat the opposite as well. And that is that the ecologists don't understand enough about the economy to have a sort of real solid understanding of the problematic economic structure we have on our hands. And if you were to just briefly describe ecological economics, how you see it, What is ecological economics? Well, ecological economics as it stands now has

basically, it derives from the basic idea that the earth is a subsystem of the biosphere. And therefore, some attention has to be paid to how big this economic system can be. to be paid to how big this economic system can be. So that's kind of the starting point. Ecological economics has gone in two different directions. There are kind of two branches. One is this ecosphere studies branch of ecological economics. And that branch of ecological economics is sort of associated with putting prices on things that aren't priced in the economy. That's entirely what it's about. And it is hardly discernible from standard orthodox economics and the study of externality, public goods, that sort of thing. There's really no difference. The other branch of ecological

economics, which is the more revolutionary branch, is the branch that talks about the issue of scale. And that branch has been very good in talking about the need to limit or end economic growth. limit or end economic growth. But in the conversations about how we might do that, and in particular, dealing directly with the problem of whether or not you can have a capitalist system that doesn't grow, I think that's where that branch of ecological economics has not been as clear as it needs to be. So this kind of helps us transition into something that you talk about, ultra-sociality. Can you first explain ultra-sociality as a concept within the more-than-human world, within animals or insects? What is it in the more ecological sense? First of all, let me just say this, that I don't think that there's an agreement about the definition of ultra-sociality, either on the part of evolutionary biologists or on the part of

anthropologists and economists like myself. So I think that it is a word that's used by different people to describe different things. In the broader sense, I think it refers to complex societies that have highly articulated divisions of labor and develop into large-scale, essentially, city-states and practice agriculture. That's a definition that's used in our work, the work that I've done with John Gowdy. We have adopted that definition. And so, ultra-sociality, I would say, is a term that has meaning other than in human societies to talk about those kinds of societies that occur mostly in, other than humans, in ants and termites that practice agriculture. Can you describe that? Describe, like, you know, to an ant what that is, what the concept is. Well, ant societies, like if you look,

I'll take the example of the leafcutter ant, the atta ant. They develop into vast, vast colonies that have highly developed, really profound divisions of labor. And the divisions of labor, in fact, in atta ants are so incredible that they actually change morphologically based on the job that they do. Within their lifetime. Yes. Well, I think you get one ant that develops in a certain way, it will stay that way. Although there is flexibility in terms of tasks that they do as well. But they have this very highly articulated and cohesive division of labor. And what they do is cultivate fungi. They cut leaves and harvest leaves, and then they

feed the leaves to their fungal gardens, and they feed on the fungal gardens. And so I call these kinds of things sort of self-referential. They are very expansive. E.O. Wilson refers to the advance of social insects like that as the social conquest of the earth. They are extraordinarily successful. And they are what I would consider ultra-social. What do you mean by self-referential? By self-referential, I mean that it sort of refers to itself. So you have a very highly differentiated ant colony that will cut leaves and process those leaves and continue to expand as long as they're not invaded by some kind of bacteria or toxin that ruins the fungal gardens and creates problems for them, and as long as they have the leaves to cut, they are extraordinarily expansive. They're sort of a system unto themselves.

That in a sense, their dynamic has cordoned off in a way from the exterior world. They kind of refer to themselves. The only reason that I started looking at ants is because a number of years ago, John Gowdy came to me. And John and I had been working together on a number of projects. working together on a number of projects. And he had become aware of these super organism ant colonies that practice agriculture. And so he came to me, it was about, I don't know, four or five years ago,

and said to me, do you think that it's possible that the evolutionary dynamic of these species of insect has any similarity to humans when humans made the transition to agriculture? Because one thing we know is that the population dynamic for humans changed dramatically. There are many other things that changed dramatically, too. But the population dynamic changed dramatically when humans made that transition to agriculture. So I guess I was crazy enough to say, well, yeah, that's possible. Why don't we look at it? And so that led us down the path of this present project.

that led us down this, the path of this present project. So let's, let's go into that then. So 8,000 years ago, about the time of the agricultural revolution, what is it that happened from your perspective for humans? What, what's kind of the story that you see now with your research? Well, 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, humans began the practice of agriculture. And over the ensuing, I guess, 5,000 years after that, what happened to their societies was profound. They went from sort of relatively small bands that lived in mostly equal societies, basically geared toward fitting in with the rhythm and dynamic of the non-human or other than human world that surrounds them. That's not to say that there was no manipulation of the non-human world but it was modest human beings lived as hunters and gatherers and i think this is something that people don't think about not for you know 5 000 years or 10 000 years or 15 000, but literally as anatomically modern humans for something like

150,000 years. A long, long, long time. So we became human in that kind of environment. With agriculture, you have a human ability to engage agriculture because humans have a capacity for dividing up tasks and communication and that sort of thing that lends itself to engaging an agricultural economy. And so John and I talk about the division of labor as one of the economic drivers of ultra-sociality. And I would say without the capacity to do that, and not every species has that capacity, ants and termites do, but not every species does. Without that capacity, I think agriculture could not have been engaged. And it certainly could not have been engaged to the point where you get, within 5, highly complex, anthropologists call them state societies. And then we get into this growing of annual grains and mining all of that Pleistocene carbon in the soil.

There was a stock of carbon in the soil that we were able to mine, and that boosts things. And the division of labor starts, the production of surplus, the expansion of the division of labor, hierarchies begin to develop, and we're engaged in a vast self-referential expansionary system, and then you get the development of markets. And markets have their own institutional evolutionary dynamic, where you go from markets as a place of exchange of surplus to a market economy where the whole purpose of the economy is the production of surplus value and profit and reinvestment and expansion. So let's unpick the term ultra-sociality because it has to do with what you're talking about. So it doesn't mean extroversion, that we're hyper-social or that we're really outgoing or anything.

No. It's more, which I feel like people could think that, hearing the phrase ultra-sociality. And it's not, yeah, it doesn't mean that you can't be lonely or isolated within an ultra-social environment. So can you unpick what ultra-sociality means? Ultra-sociality is different than sociality. And it has to do with these rather mechanistically articulated

kind of economic systems that take hold, where the individual becomes more of a cog in the machine of producing those annual grains and keeping the society going in that respect. So people are more alienated, they have less personal autonomy. In humans, these societies became extraordinarily hierarchical. And, you know, I like to think about the fact that within 5,000 years after the onset of agriculture, you get the development of these large-scale state societies where probably the majority of people lived in some realm of servitude. It's not a liberating thing, and they're extraordinarily expansive. And they are disengaged from the rhythm and dynamic, in some sense, of the other-than-human world. So they're ecologically destructive.

If you look at the global market economy right now, it is a very expansionary, highly articulated economic system. We would call it a superorganism. And systems like that are extremely difficult to disengage. And one of the reasons that we started looking at agriculture and started looking at this ultra-social transition is because we recognized that the altered dynamic that had taken hold with agriculture is still with us. So when we engaged agriculture, I think about it in this way, that the trajectory of our social and economic evolution was altered profoundly. We think it was, John and I think it was a major evolutionary transition for humans. So what does that do to the human being? First of all, people become, individual humans become less important.

And it sets humans up this kind of vast self-referential kind of economic system that's no longer engaged in the rhythm and dynamic of the non-human world in the same way. dynamic of the non-human world in the same way, sets humans up to have this kind of oppositional relationship with the non-human world. Not just oppositional, but dominant over. It's actually manipulating and controlling it. Right. We manipulate and control it and dominate it. And it is other than us, not part of what we are, but other than us. And I mean, the sort of horrible part of it is that as we expand in these sort of, and capitalism is really, you know, this kind of self-referential system with this imperative of growth and this sort of internal kind of connectiveness that is hell-bent on domesticating every last smidgen of the wild earth before it's done.

So we're involved in a system like that that is going to leave us alone with ourselves. If you look at our evolutionary history, you find that we evolved as human beings in a world where we were basically embedded in this vital, other-than-human world. And we came to know ourselves, what we were individually, how we fit in, through interaction with that varied, robust, non-human world. We as humans have a very long period of maturation. It takes us 20 years to reach maturity. maturity, that long stretch of maturation was timed and punctuated with deference to the non-human world so that we became healthy human beings psychologically by this constant kind of play between us and the non-human world. We came to know ourselves

individually, to be able to see ourselves in the complexity of the world, not to have to dominate, but to be one of many. And so the tragedy for us is that we have this very complicated evolutionary history where on the one hand, we do best embedded in a robust other than human world. We do best, we're healthiest in that kind of world. And yet we have this strange kind of part of our social evolution now that has taken us on a track evolution now that has taken us on a track which is going to destroy every bit of the non-human world before we're done and so when i look at our present ecological crisis that's how i see it it's a crisis of our own evolution. And one aspect of that that you talk about is that it's our current ecological and economic crisis are not, it's not human nature. It's actually more of this kind of natural selection, kind of accident or this kind of evolutionary. I guess what I'm saying is people who say, well, you know, we're inherently selfish or we're inherently, you know, capitalism is just the natural way that we are set to be.

But you're saying, no, actually, there were kind of natural selection was a part of it. And we haven't always been this way. I think human nature is a really complicated matter. What is human nature and what isn't human nature? Let me see if I can touch on kind of a number of things. I think what our crisis is not right now, it's not a problem of human nature in the way that you alluded to and that people often talk about, that we're inherently greedy, exploitative kinds of beings, and this is the problem. I don't think that's true.

I think the more serious problem is that we engaged a kind of social evolution that started with agriculture that put us on a path of expansion and interconnectedness, and ultimately in humans hierarchy and all that kind of stuff. That is a really difficult path to disengage. and all that kind of stuff. That is a really difficult path to disengage. Now, agriculture couldn't have been engaged if humans didn't have some kind of inherent capacity for task allocation, sociality. So there is an element of social evolution, what traits we have, that allows for that kind of system to get going. But engaging that kind of system itself is a different evolutionary proposition. It has to do with the evolution of groups

and cooperation. And so when we engaged agriculture, we took off on this altered kind of trajectory, in my mind. Is that, it's not human nature in the sense that it's about the evolution of a group and the force of group selection in human evolution, in a sense. So, I mean, that's a natural process that takes place. And so I guess I sort of shy away from talking about human nature. It is part of an evolutionary process, but we have a complicated evolutionary history. of an evolutionary process, but we have a complicated evolutionary history. And evolution doesn't just play out at the level of the individual, it also plays out at the level of the group. And so I would say that, okay? Now, Adam Smith and capitalism as natural, that too is a complicated proposition. Adam Smith thought that the market economy was

the natural order of society. And he would say it's the natural order of society because it human tendencies and puts them together in an organized way where people can be selfish because we have an innate tendency for selfishness and that that selfishness is channeled into a socially optimal outcome. Adam Smith thought human beings had a natural propensity to truck barter and exchange. So he thought there was a natural human tendency to markets, to exchange. So what do you get with capitalism?

You get the development of markets. You get the development of exchange. People can pursue their self-interest. And at the end of the day, what do you get the development of markets, you get the development of exchange, people can pursue their self-interest, and at the end of the day, what do you get? Everybody gets what they want in the amounts that they want for the lowest possible price if you have competition, right? He thought it was a natural order. Is it a natural order? I think there's something in our evolutionary history that puts us on a path of having these kind of finely articulated expansionary systems that started with agriculture that can take a variety of forms depending on the institutional clothing that humans give them, there is kind of a natural

tendency in that respect. Now, having said that, people need to understand that evolution is not necessarily about perfection. It can't see ahead. And it is quite possible that we've been placed on an evolutionary dead end. So I'll look at the process of evolution as something that is constantly creating ever more perfect outcomes. Evolution responds to the immediate circumstances. Things get selected or not based on whether they're good at that moment. And there's no question, but agricultural societies had a selective advantage. 10,000 years later, can we honestly say that global capitalism, an expansionary, highly interconnected system is a good thing? No. But that's where we've ended up. Yeah, it really brings up for me the Native American concept of the seven generation thinking. You know, what if all decisions and ideas that we made, we had this kind of real futuristic thinking of how this would

affect seven generations from now. So I just wonder about that. And I also think about our being able to have a conversation about our own evolution. And I know that, you know, this I'm imagining, is this the difference between us and maybe termites or ants in the way that we almost have an ability to change it? That ants or termites, I mean, I don't know if I'm getting like, I don't know, judgmental about ants or termites that they couldn't, I mean, maybe they're less destructive. Maybe they're more using the materials in a more sustainable way than us humans. So maybe there's some parallels that don't make as much sense. But I'm wondering, is our awareness of this and the fact that we were organized in a different way, at least one different way,

then we have the potential to organize yet again in a different way. So that that's kind of our awareness can kind of be that opportunity for change. Well, you asked the $10,000 question. And that is whether we have the capacity to reflect and through that reflection to alter the path that we're on. I don't know the answer to that question. We also have things that ants and termites don't have. We have institutional fabric, private property laws,

the development of markets, methods of redistribution of income, and I could go on and on and on and on and on about the institutional fabric that humans have. We also have the capacity for technological change. And the creation of institutions and technological change makes us very different than ants and termites, and actually creates a situation where things might even be more problematic on the one hand for us. Because institutions, you know, we have this infinite variety of cultures that we can adopt. But once

you adopt one, it has a lot of staying power. So it's actually hard to change institutions. And technological change and the structure of technology at a given moment in time is very difficult to alter. Look at the challenge of trying to change our energy economy, that part of our economy. We have this entrenched kind of fossil fuel structure, very difficult to change. Not impossible, but it is difficult. So do we have the capacity? Well, we have all kinds of localized movements, movements of localization, an extensive conversation about sustainability.

We certainly have an ability to reflect and understand that this is not sustainable. This path we're on is not sustainable. is not sustainable. But I think it is extremely difficult to dismantle a complex system like we have. Because when you start pulling at the threads, you don't know where you're going to end up. And each and every one of us is articulated in some way with this system. And so I think, yes, I think through reflection, we can try to create different institutions and try to create change and try to create different incentives and a different kind of system.

Whether that will be sufficient to assuage the sixth great mass extinction, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. And I don't think anybody does. So I guess, you know, I always feel bad because I think, well, that doesn't sound very hopeful. But I think that it's important for us to understand the problematic economic structure we have on our hands and how difficult it is to undo that. And I don't think people think about that enough. You're listening to an Upstream Conversation with Lisey Kroll. We'll be back after a brief music break. Human, human Human, human

Human, human Where did your life go? And how do you live? And forget that you died Human, human Human, human Human, human Where did your life go? And how do you live?

And forget that you died Human, human Human Human, human Where did your life go? And how do you live? And forget that you died Human, human You were not proud before You did not use to talk so loud

Human, human You dumb ape, you blind bat You animal, just remember that Human, human There are still songs at night There are still sounds in the minds below Human, human Let's get out of the romance You will not and I will never be free From the weight of our living

The load that our lungs have to lift The armor we wear Though we're weary, we fight Human, human But you were a baby too We did not use to be so proud Human, human Human. Human.

That was Human by Mount Erie. And now back to the interview. So what has been the reaction, the response that you've gotten as you've uncovered this and as you've shared some of this thinking? I think generally people want a message of hope. And I don't necessarily think that the work that I've done offers necessarily a message of hope. What it offers is some serious thinking about the nature of economic structure and the complexity of it for us. And, you know, if I say to people, they ask me what my research is, and I said, well, You know, if I say to people, they ask me what my research is, and I said, well, I've come to the conclusion that humans evolved like ants and we're screwed. And I get deer in the headlight eyes.

Like, what? Or even just the proposition that we have a lot to learn about our social evolution by looking at social insects. People don't believe that's true. If you want to talk about our sociality and talk about primates, people are open to talking about that. They see that connection. And yet I think that there's as much to learn

by looking at the evolution of social insects for human beings as there is by looking at primates in terms of our sociality. I think that's hard for people to embrace because you look at an ant, and they're so different than we are, for one thing, and then you look at those super organism ant colonies, and for most people, they find them kind of creepy. And so we look at those and we say to ourselves, we're nothing like that. And yet, I think it's actually a case of convergent evolution that's going on.

Okay, so as we get into this more involved conversation of evolution, I know that you've described yourself as a closet evolutionary biologist. And I know this is partially because this idea of evolutionary biology, or often referred to as sociobiology, can have some problems or some challenges with it, because it can connect with issues of biological determinism. So I'm wondering, as we kind of get into this, can you discuss this a bit and maybe even just define the field of sociobiology for our listeners so they understand what you're referring to? Well, I think it means in a simple way that there's a biological basis for social behavior. I think very simply, I think that's what sociobiology is.

But sociobiology developed into things like social Darwinism, the sort of survival of the fittest, where you could justify the power of the robber barons because they were somehow, you know, better adapted and, you know, they won the competitive battle. I mean, I have a problem with that kind of sociobiology. And so as a social scientist, also as a social scientist, you don't want to say, you know, behavior is genetically encoded. Therefore, I mean, you can have all to say, you know, behavior is genetically encoded. Therefore,

I mean, you can have all kinds of problematic plays on that, right? Because then you can start to say, well, women are going to behave in certain ways because this is how they're built. Men are going to behave in other ways, right? We don't like as social scientists to do that, We don't like as social scientists to do that, to think in those terms. But I guess for me, I started to confront questions which didn't have any easy answers. And I found, I think the kinds of questions we are confronting right now, like the question of how do we reckon this vast global economic system with a limited planet? How did we come to this? I don't think those kinds of questions can be answered well unless you're willing to go into interdisciplinary work. Well, unless you're willing to go into interdisciplinary work.

So interdisciplinary work provides the most fertile ground for trying to think about what happened to us, what the possibilities are for change, and how we might change. You know, for example, we have conversations about the energy transition and making the transition to renewable energy. I'm all for transitioning to renewable energy. Don't get me wrong. Okay? But conversations about transitioning to renewable energy without conversations about employment, without conversations about what kind of world we want,

what should the relationship with humans be with the non-human world, how much of this planet do we want to domesticate, what are the advantages to downsizing. Those are conversations that we never have when we talk about this transition to renewable energy. And in some sense, the transition to renewable energy in that way is no more enlightened than talking about clean coal. Because it's a technological solution to what is actually a profound social and evolutionary problem. Particularly if we maintain the same level of consumption and try to have the same level of growth. Yeah. Yeah.

So you're questioning the goals, the goals of the system, and what does it mean to live a meaningful life or a good life? What it means to live a meaningful life and how do human beings, and I'll use Wes Jackson's words here, once again become a species in context. Because Wes says with agriculture, we became a species out of context. And he's right. How do we? Our job here is not simply to map out a road to some kind of vague sustainability with renewable energy.

That's not what we want to do. It's not going to be enough either. It's not going to be enough. And it's not where we want to do. It's not going to be enough either. It's not going to be enough, and it's not where we want to end up. It's not fulfilling. It's not fulfilling, and, you know, at some level, and I know this sounds simplistic, but in a way, it's like, I look at the non-human world and I see such magic. I think about the sources of human imagination. That's where they mostly come from. And that's not a deep ecology perspective. I mean, that's a human-centered perspective, why in the world would we want to end up without that? I don't think it'll be the end of the world,

whatever happens to us, but it could be really tragic. It'll bring about a lot of human and more than human suffering yes and a much less interesting world and why would we want to do that and yet how do we dismantle the structure and dynamic of this system and so i want to see the conversations about ending growth ferreted out more carefully. Everybody knows we need to end it. That's nothing new. The question is how we do that. And that goes back to your question. Do we have that capacity? Do we have the capacity to change? And I think that's the $10,000 question. I don't know the answer to that question. I think we should take seriously the power and evolutionary significance of a vast system like we have. a vast system like we have.

It's no small matter to change that dynamic at this point. And maybe it's already changing as well. Maybe if we start to look for it and we start to bring out the stories or the examples where it is changing, it will kind of grow in its change. And, you know, you mentioned localization. And so there's localization, there's also, I'm thinking about the degrowth or steady state economy movements, and then also the change from GDP to GNH, those type of movements. So there are, it's almost like we haven't found a new system or like the next system or a new economic system, but that it's, there's like multiple places of intervention that are being tried around the world, different points, different attempts. It's almost like a holistic approach. I think that's true. And I also think that the system itself has many contradictions.

And those contradictions lead to significant problems from time to time. significant problems from time to time. Okay? So think right now about kind of the movement of technology, the financialization of the economic system, the increased inequality. That creates some significant contradictions in the system because that's not sustainable for the way this system has to work you have to have people spending money on the things that are produced if you're producing things without people and people are making a lot of profits on them

and you don't have people with enough money to buy what's produced, I mean, it's a simple kind of circular flow problem. You'll have a crisis. You're going to have a crisis. And so I think that the system itself, the other part of this, is that the system itself, it's unstable, it expands and it contracts. And now we're in this period of what seems to be secular stagnation. And employment is a greater challenge in a period of secular stagnation, I think. So we have that kind of ongoing problem and contradiction,

kind of ongoing problem and contradiction. And I do not believe that lowering taxes on corporations and the rich is going to resolve that problem. One thing that I like to do is try to connect the conversations with ways that individuals who are listening can really maybe think about in their own lives or change their own behavior potentially or just invitations for people. So when I've been listening, some things that I've thought about, and then I want to ask you what you think and also what you would add. One of them, based on what you're saying, is I'm really seeing an appreciation for foraging and kind of relearning skills from the wild, like bushcraft and foraging. I know people who do foraging walks, but that kind of, first of all, connection to nature and connection to a nature that's not a garden or that's not agriculture, that learning about place and learning about natural seasons and things like

that and medicine and all that kind of stuff. So foraging and connection to nature. Another one is I really do think that there is something with this changing from growth to well-being and looking at how can we change the goals of our economic systems from growth to well-being or to really explore steady state economics or degrowth, or just to really, like you're saying really importantly, that the growth without regard to our planetary boundaries is a problem, and we need to look at that. And then I've also heard something around inviting people to think about, you know, if we do have a hard time, if people you've talked to have a hard time seeing themselves, seeing the relation between

themselves and an ant and seeing that kind of cog in the machine, which I can feel it doesn't feel good to acknowledge the similarity, to see one's work as more of right livelihood, or to see one's work as more purpose- livelihood or to see one's work as more purpose-driven or to challenge ourselves to think about how can we live more in line with our integrity or our greater purpose or whatever that is, to just start to break out of that feeling or that mentality of I'm just a cog in the machine and actually looking at our agency, our capabilities, just a cog in the machine and actually looking at our agency, our capabilities, our, you know, what do we see as our passion or purpose? And then this last thing that I'm thinking, an invitation to people, is that I really heard something around, it's not that we

have cooperation as an innate capability or not, it's what we use our cooperation for. as an innate capability or not. It's what we use our cooperation for. What are we cooperating to create? And so to really invite people to cooperate to further on those qualities, like to leave our children or future generations with the qualities of altruism, of giving, of cooperation for these kind of goals of wellbeing, of connectionruism, of giving, of cooperation for these kind of goals

of well-being, of connection to nature, of harmony, of, you know, connection to the more than human, other than human world. So really seeing like, what is it that we leave beyond? And also what are we cooperating for? What are the goals that we're working towards? The vision that we see. So those are kind of the, for me hearing what you're saying, and saying these were kind of invitations for listeners to explore these in their own lives. What would you think about them? And also, anything you would add just invitations for people? Well, I think you articulated in a very wonderful way, in a very wonderful way, a challenge for a more reflective existence and critical existence in a world that doesn't encourage it. What I would add to that is that I think people also need to pay attention to system-wide change. Because it isn't clear to me that those kinds of changes will change the system.

It may change your participation in it, but it's not clear to me that it'll change the system. A starting point for system change is a much, much, much, much more expansive social welfare system. So when you engage in sort of the push for expanding things like social security, opportunities for students to educate themselves without ending up $200,000 in debt, having good quality, affordable child care, maternity leave, all those kinds of things that an advanced economy ought to be able to offer. Healthcare.

Once you put in place those kinds of things, then people are more able to think more critically about what they do. Because right now, people are so harried and worried and stressed that it's hard for them to stop and hear a bird song. So I think the broader kind of structural changes, and I would say in distribution, in social safety net, let's stop having the conversation of renewable energy in isolation. Let's connect that conversation directly to the problem of employment for people. problem of employment for people. Let's connect it to growth. Let's take it out of this sort of unimaginative technological solution realm so that we can start to think about structural changes that change structure, but also start to nurture the kinds of things that you're talking about.

Those are just a couple of things. I mean, I could go on and on and on, but those are just a couple of ways where I'd say in every revolutionary action that you take, that you take reflect on how it interfaces with this vast system? Does it confront it? Or is it merely a way to keep it going? Because unless we can change the dynamic of this vast system. All of our individual actions, I'm not saying they're not virtuous and they're not valuable, but I don't know that at the end of the day they're going to change the course of history. But I'm not the most optimistic person

that's ever walked the planet. You understand that, right? I've been studying ants too long. Oh, ants are great. You've been listening to an Upstream conversation with Lisey Kroll. To learn more about her work, you can email her at lisey.kroll at courtland.edu. Upstream is a labor of love. We provide all of our Thank you. episodes by us, please visit us at upstreampodcast.org or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Upstream Podcast. And if you like what you hear, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. Thank you. Thank you.