For The Wild - ALNOOR LADHA on Capitalists and Other Cannibals ⧸49

00:00:00.000 The Silence

00:00:30.000 Somebody wishing for something to happen

00:00:43.140 Wishing to tell, wishing to help

00:00:46.560 Someone was listening, someone who cared

00:00:50.380 Never despaired

00:00:52.240 Someone to lean on and someone to trust

00:00:56.900 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with

00:01:16.180 Alnur Lada. Alnur's work focuses on the intersection of political organizing,

00:01:21.080 systems thinking, storytelling, technology, and the decentralization of power.

00:01:26.900 He is a founding member and the executive director of The Rules, a global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers, and others dedicated to changing the rules that create inequality, climate change, and poverty around the world.

00:01:43.860 Thank you so much, Alnour, for joining us today.

00:01:46.340 My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

00:01:47.760 so i was hoping that we could begin this discussion by laying down a foundational

00:01:55.240 understanding of the greater global economic system neoliberal capitalism operates under

00:02:02.420 the guise that if the global economy is allowed to grow unrestrained or without limits then wealth

00:02:09.480 will eventually trickle down sufficiently enough to alleviate poverty but when you look closer

00:02:15.440 and examine the history and origin of globalized society rooted in slavery and conquest, it's easy

00:02:22.580 to see the inherent fallacy of this idea. Nations that are considered poor, such as those in the

00:02:29.780 global south, are in reality far from poor. They are rich in natural resources that the capitalist

00:02:36.900 machine yearns for. And the entire concept of rich and poor is defined by the value that is placed

00:02:44.700 upon controlling and acquiring as much materials or really life, you know, as much of life as

00:02:51.820 possible. And while the global GDP increased by 217% since 2010, the number of people living

00:03:00.440 under $5 a day increased from 50 to 60% of the world's population. So I'm wondering if you could

00:03:08.580 demystify why collective economic growth of the global capitalist system will never alleviate

00:03:16.280 global poverty, but instead only shackle people with societal positions that sustain an uneven

00:03:22.340 concentration of wealth. I think, you know, one of the first places to start is to really

00:03:29.160 understand the ideology behind our current understanding of poverty. And the place to

00:03:36.480 start is always the language itself. And so if you look at the way the UN or the Gates Foundation

00:03:44.120 or Jeffrey Sachs or any of these sort of organs of the neoliberal system talk about poverty,

00:03:50.860 it's poverty alleviation, right? Or any of the metaphors that make it seem like poverty is a

00:03:57.400 disease. Eradication is another synonym. And the logic for them is very clear, which is poverty

00:04:04.660 is a disease. There's this germ theory sort of understanding of where it comes from.

00:04:10.720 And in that sort of guise, you look to solutions that are themselves, I guess, the antidote,

00:04:17.340 right? And it's a very sort of linear, binary, Western rationalist, reductionist way to look

00:04:23.560 at the world. And it sort of belies their colonialist logic in seeing these problems

00:04:30.360 as problems that are ahistorical, that are just solvable through technical fixes.

00:04:36.220 If you actually look at how poverty was actually created, it's a deep historical process.

00:04:41.840 So to take the piss of Bono and the One campaign and these sort of traditionalist thinkers,

00:04:48.940 they talk about make poverty history, right?

00:04:51.460 Was their campaigning rallying cry.

00:04:53.920 And it's actually history that makes poverty.

00:04:56.020 And if you fail to understand that, you'll actually never get to the right set of solutions, which are much more structural than they'd like to believe.

00:05:04.740 Because, again, ideology and self-interest comes into play.

00:05:08.620 It's not convenient for them to see it this way.

00:05:11.820 So when I say history makes poverty, part of what we need to look at is the enclosure movement in the United Kingdom that really started privatizing public lands.

00:05:22.700 that created the first big displacement of people, the sort of colonialism of the last 500 years that

00:05:28.500 had this huge transfer of wealth from the South to the Northern Empire countries like the United

00:05:34.920 Kingdom and France, Portugal, and later on the United States. And to this day, of course, the

00:05:40.940 United States and all of these Western centers of power. And this was, of course, fueled by slavery

00:05:47.040 and genocide and extraction of natural resources and wealth. And that has never stopped. So until

00:05:54.240 we really address that aspect of it, this idea of poverty alleviation as this trickle-down

00:06:00.520 phenomena, that if we just raise GDP, all boats will raise, is not only not true and sort of

00:06:08.280 illusory in nature, it's actually a deeply political and ideological approach. And so

00:06:14.960 the way the media portrays it is these people, the Gates and the Bonos and the Jeffrey Sachs of the

00:06:20.360 world, are somehow these amazing do-gooders that are trying to really figure out these problems.

00:06:26.020 But whether it's through avarice or ignorance, it doesn't really matter. What's happening is

00:06:31.100 they're perpetuating a colonial mindset and they're perpetuating a solutionist mindset that's

00:06:36.540 never going to get to the root. I'll just give you one example, and then maybe we can deconstruct

00:06:41.100 their motivations a little bit together. But if every dollar of wealth created, 93 to 94 cents

00:06:46.900 ends up in the hands of the top 1%, by definition, wealth creation creates income inequality.

00:06:54.660 It creates poverty. And this is hardwired into the logic of the capitalist system,

00:06:59.740 because of course, a certain group of people, largely white Western Europeans, largely males,

00:07:05.100 have had a thousand-year head start on this capital.

00:07:09.220 And so, of course, the system is rigged in their favor

00:07:11.780 and income inequality and concentration of wealth

00:07:15.680 is increasing ever more, which is also built into the system.

00:07:19.040 So their only solution to address these problems

00:07:21.840 is more economic wealth, and that's a convenient solution for them

00:07:25.080 when they're the prime beneficiaries of the system.

00:07:27.660 Hmm. And as we reflect on the roots of capitalism and imperialism, the pervasive ecological and spiritual destruction it has wrought in our collective journey towards decolonization, this question arises of how exactly this conditioning became so profoundly embedded within us and our societies.

00:07:53.500 you have an amazing article seeing we to go on capitalism mind viruses and antidotes for a world

00:08:01.000 in transition and in this article you delve into the concept of the we to go and how it defines

00:08:07.300 the nature of modern capitalism from what i understand the we to go is a cannibalistic spirit

00:08:13.580 within mythologies of indigenous nations uh algonquin and objibwe etc of northeast north

00:08:20.760 america and you know it quote delude their host into believing that cannibalizing the life force

00:08:27.800 of others is a logical and morally upright way to live another quote raising the self-serving ego

00:08:34.180 to supremacy and so once you live in rejection of human exceptionalism and no longer separate

00:08:41.600 yourself from the web of life it's not difficult to acknowledge this cannibalistic nature of

00:08:48.760 not only our political and economic institutions and societal superstructures, but also our

00:08:55.880 consumptively conditioned colonized minds. So could you discuss the concept of We To Go

00:09:04.440 as a mind virus, this mass psychological infection, from the perspective of cultural

00:09:11.700 evolution and memetics. Yeah, to go to this route, so wetiko is the Algonquin word for this

00:09:20.560 cannibalistic spirit. And in Ojibwe, it's wendigo or wintiko and Powhatan. It's a sort of, I guess, 0.92

00:09:27.100 common concept in some ways, and literally referred to cannibalism, the eating of flesh.

00:09:32.380 And what a lot of this indigenous lore said was two things would happen when someone out of

00:09:37.900 necessity even, you know, in a northern winter or whatever, ate another human being's flesh,

00:09:42.680 one would be an icy heart. And the second would be this unnatural desire to consume more flesh.

00:09:50.400 And when the First Nations communities of North America first interacted with the European

00:09:56.200 colonialists, this word comes back into the vocabulary to describe the European colonialists,

00:10:03.380 because that's how they saw their relationship with nature and of course with the First Nations

00:10:08.840 themselves. And I think if we go back far enough, the real root of the Wetico virus,

00:10:16.240 of the sort of cannibalism that's inherent in Western modern culture, comes from our separation 0.91

00:10:21.500 from nature, which many argue that stemmed from the Neolithic revolution, from farming,

00:10:28.760 from sedentary lifestyle. So we went from hunter-gatherers that lived in co-dependence

00:10:35.400 with the mother. Our ancestors would go into nature and they would be in this natural bounty.

00:10:40.380 They would hunt and gather the necessary food and calories they needed. And we know from a lot of

00:10:46.320 the research in cultural anthropology, like Marshall Salin's work, their original affluent

00:10:50.960 society, that hunter-gatherers actually lived not what we are told, the Hobbesian worldview of a

00:10:57.300 sort of brutish, nasty, short live. But quite the opposite. They were working 10 to 20 hours a week.

00:11:04.660 Their average calories were about 2000 calories per person. We know this from teeth samples and

00:11:09.900 bone density and other things. So they were living quite decent lives compared to even modern

00:11:15.820 standards of how the majority of people nowadays live. And so, and not to say we want to go back

00:11:21.840 to that way of living, but there's something really interesting that happens when our livelihood

00:11:25.900 comes from taming nature and extracting from nature and the sort of farming mindset. And this

00:11:32.360 initial separation happens. And we know that some of the first buildings that are built in the first

00:11:39.200 city-states of Ur and Babylon are the granaries. Because as soon as you have a surplus of food

00:11:43.940 production, you then create a place to store that surplus. And then you need a military or

00:11:49.720 militia or police or whatever to protect that surplus. And then hierarchy is created and

00:11:56.420 you have your emperors and sun kings and all of that. And so from Babylon to New York is

00:12:04.280 just a very short distance, both psychologically, culturally and temporally. And so you end up in

00:12:12.440 this place where we value the sort of brute strength of the male, which creates this sort

00:12:18.260 of patriarchal culture. There's a culture of extraction of rape. You know, we essentially 0.88

00:12:22.920 have a rape culture as the dominant culture. That's what Western culture is. And I'm not just 1.00

00:12:28.920 talking about the effects on women in this culture. And of course, that is the dominant 0.98

00:12:32.200 thread. But, you know, the mother herself, right, to Mother Nature, to Earth herself.

00:12:35.700 And so it's really deeply embedded in the Western European psyche. And this is not to blame,

00:12:41.040 you know, Western Europeans. When we came out of the Fertile Crescent, those were the heavily 1.00

00:12:45.320 populated areas, and then through colonialism and imperialism and war and violence and expansion,

00:12:51.580 this culture has become the dominant culture. And the way it sort of affects us all is through

00:12:58.460 memes, essentially cultural ideas. And, you know, memes just are essentially the sort of base unit

00:13:05.680 of culture. And they're transmitted in many ways, we don't even know, which is why understanding

00:13:12.080 and deconstructing culture is so important to understand the ways in which we're controlled.

00:13:17.860 And I also think that the sort of monotheistic religions, especially Judaism and Christianity,

00:13:24.140 when they merged with capitalism in the Middle Ages, really created this toxic mix of sort of

00:13:30.900 violent, savior, male-dominated culture that has mutated into what is now late-stage capitalism.

00:13:38.880 And so we're all told that we need to work hard in a certain way to have certain status and to sort of represent our self-interest in order to create this perfect equilibrium, right?

00:13:51.480 The invisible hand, Adam Smith's theory of the invisible hand, is the perfect mimetic virus, right?

00:13:57.360 We know from 30-plus years of economic data that it's fundamentally untrue, that if people behave selfishly, there will not be a perfect equilibrium.

00:14:05.220 Quite the opposite. You'll have the culture we have here.

00:14:08.880 dominant Western culture, which is destroying the planet, which is creating mass inequality,

00:14:13.520 poverty, resource extraction, violence, et cetera, et cetera. And that is the logical outcome. But yet

00:14:19.200 in every economics textbook in the world, basically, we're told that this invisible hand

00:14:24.680 is the sort of underlying logic of a well-functioning economy. There's a great Daniel

00:14:30.500 Quinline, who's the author of Ishmael, where he says, the new world fell not to a sword,

00:14:35.200 but to a meme and this is probably the meme. You sit there handing down orders. You examine

00:14:46.180 the terms of the deal. A car is always waiting. Other hands turn the wheel. The doors slide

00:14:54.760 open before you. The doors slide shut behind. Other hands carry your luggage. Waitier matters

00:15:03.300 Engage your mind

00:15:04.980 You take the gold out of the earth

00:15:07.820 You throw the corpses in 1.00

00:15:10.040 One crop is as good as another

00:15:13.460 As long as the cash keeps pouring in

00:15:16.500 The wheels must never stop turning

00:15:19.060 The machine must be obeyed

00:15:21.660 The future has got to be fueled

00:15:24.560 And there's a price to be paid 0.99

00:15:27.060 Black like the dust 1.00

00:15:30.280 Brown like the earth 1.00

00:15:32.740 This is our land, the land of our birth, silently digging, digging our graves, choking our bodies, choking our lives. 1.00

00:15:45.740 Living on scraps, dying in debt

00:15:49.300 Digging in darkness, so our children can eat

00:15:53.940 Once we were free, greeting the sun

00:15:59.540 Sharing the earth, giving thanks to the core

00:16:03.920 Sang with the waters, sang with the wind

00:16:08.180 Danced with the drum, circled without end 0.71

00:16:13.300 now we are silent they have taken our tongues they have taken our pride they have taken our 0.99

00:16:20.460 songs only our bodies only our eyes burn with a memory of the old ways brown like the earth

00:16:30.920 black like the dust who can we turn to who can we trust it's so incredible to

00:16:40.260 look back into history and look at what we're dealing with now and at least begin to understand

00:16:46.060 these memes and the mind control that we're under. But, you know, I feel that wider circles

00:16:52.820 of people are coming into recognition that industrial society, in its unwavering attempts

00:17:00.720 to consume the last remaining intact pieces of our land and waters, is edging closer and closer

00:17:07.280 towards total collapse. And it seems that even the system itself has a knowledge of this.

00:17:13.840 And then in response, we're seeing fearful expressions of that, such as extreme leaders

00:17:19.460 coming into power, not to mention the fossil fuel extraction backed by the hands of militarism and

00:17:26.020 war. So I'm wondering if you could share with us your understanding of this phase of late stage

00:17:32.880 capitalism we find ourselves in, first from a theoretical perspective, and then I'll have a

00:17:38.540 second part to that question. When you say a theoretical perspective, it's interesting because

00:17:44.200 I immediately go to more of a spiritual perspective, because this crisis is not just

00:17:51.080 political or economic, it is deeply spiritual. Modernity, as defined by the dominant Western

00:17:57.640 culture by a sort of democratic, liberal capitalist system is really the height of

00:18:05.360 spiritual bankruptcy. We've had this strange, like, secular Judeo-Christian ideology imposed

00:18:12.540 on top of a neoliberal system that incentivizes selfishness and growth at all costs. Those are

00:18:19.520 sort of the underpinnings of the sort of broader malaise that comes from this disconnection from

00:18:25.140 nature that we talked about. And I think what we're seeing happening is nobody really knows

00:18:30.880 what's happening. And nobody really has a sort of a broader perspective, because our education

00:18:35.980 system of the last 500 plus years has really lost all touch with the original wisdom of our

00:18:43.280 ancestors, that indigenous knowledge that was always sort of rooted in the symbiotic relationship

00:18:48.720 with mother nature and mother earth and so we have this system that's bereft of all value and

00:18:55.320 all meaning that's driving this capitalist machinery it's like we have created our own

00:19:00.480 greatest artificial intelligence which is the market mechanism and it's not guided by any set

00:19:06.860 of first principles like any understanding of why we're here as a species where we're going

00:19:12.200 what's our purpose, what's our relationship to nature or the broader cosmos. We have no

00:19:18.960 cosmovision in modernity. And what's replaced it is this scientific, materialist, rationalist

00:19:27.460 worldview that makes us believe that we can understand all natural phenomena, categorize it

00:19:34.320 and control it. And that is a very poor substitute for a spiritual belief system or a cosmovision of

00:19:41.820 any kind. And so I think what's happening, even with the Trump phenomenon, is in absence of any

00:19:47.800 sort of meaning or deep spiritual experience, and when you have an architecture around us that's

00:19:54.380 been created to separate us from nature, the urban environment being the exemplar of that,

00:20:00.380 you know, cement and high-rise buildings and mass density, we are living these lives of complete

00:20:08.460 confusion and complete disconnection. And so in some sense, it's no one's fault, right? And in

00:20:14.580 some sense, it's all of our fault. And so what happens is that when, you know, we want to blame

00:20:20.360 the Trump voter, for example, and think that they're somehow sort of responsible, but they're

00:20:25.180 also just equally as lost and equally sort of suffering under this regime of modern late-stage

00:20:33.720 capitalism. I think part of what's happening is we have to find that place within us that allows

00:20:41.040 these things to exist in our field. You know, there's a one percenter in all of us. There's

00:20:45.020 a Donald Trump in all of us. And they wouldn't exist if it didn't exist within us. And that's

00:20:50.520 not to say, and you know, I know this is sort of common spiritual and new age belief that all that

00:20:56.820 matters is the inner work. Therefore, they'll draw that conclusion. And I don't think that's true

00:21:02.180 either. I think we have to change the structure of the system and do the external work while doing

00:21:07.960 this internal work. And it's not an either or, or one precedes the other. Both are simultaneously

00:21:13.400 necessary to bring in this new world that we know is possible. That reminds me of your article,

00:21:20.100 Mystical Anarchism, A Journey to the Borderlands of Freedom. You urge in that article that we need

00:21:27.820 these three levels to happen simultaneously and with that I'm talking about you know focus on

00:21:33.640 inner work in the self and building alternatives at the community level and then tackling the

00:21:38.620 larger superstructures and I think as we envision this dissolution of neoliberal capitalism

00:21:46.140 discussions on how to move forward grow and diversify and what I want with this question is

00:21:52.060 what does this transition away from capitalism tangibly look like you know how do we practically

00:21:58.380 get there and are there any examples of the ways in which we can create positive feedback loops

00:22:06.060 so this is the 60 trillion dollar question right which is what does the post-capitalist world look

00:22:13.120 like and i'm not sure there is a blueprint and not that that's what you're saying at all but

00:22:18.800 I don't think there is one you know I come much more from like an anarchist political philosophy

00:22:23.780 which essentially just believes that our way out is self-organization at a local level and

00:22:30.800 the tough part of the situation we're in right now is what globalization has done is enmeshed us all

00:22:37.080 into this matrix of violence and extraction and oppression you know none of us are free

00:22:42.520 none of us are outside of the system you know some maybe more than others but

00:22:46.100 even people who I know who are deeply political and deeply conscious and living in alternative

00:22:51.680 communities, they're still buying clothes that are created in sweatshops and using technology

00:22:56.820 that's built by slave labor and all of that, right? And what a totalizing system like our

00:23:03.400 capitalist system does is it really sort of enmeshes us in that. And so as the system breaks

00:23:08.500 down and the boom-bust cycles get deeper and sea levels rise because of the changing atmosphere

00:23:14.960 and species go extinct because of climate change and all of that,

00:23:18.120 we're all going to be so deeply affected by this.

00:23:20.640 And I think one of the things we have to start thinking about

00:23:24.120 is what does the transition infrastructure look like?

00:23:27.560 And how do we actually start living the values of the post-capitalist world now?

00:23:32.440 How do we start behaving as if we're already free?

00:23:35.560 And that's going to look very different depending on your context

00:23:41.420 and geography and cultural histories and all of those things.

00:23:46.680 And so I think part of what needs to happen is we do need to start creating these experiments

00:23:51.400 outside of the capitalist system, alternative communities and non-debt-based currencies

00:23:57.140 and cooperative ownership structures and mutual aid networks

00:24:00.760 and all of these things that are already happening.

00:24:03.100 But at the same time, we can create the best systems outside the structure.

00:24:07.640 But if we don't have a deeper spiritual practice and, you know, a community of practice to do that work with, we're just going to replace one system for another because we're going to import the values of hierarchy and oppression and patriarchy and all of those things that are embedded within the capitalist logic.

00:24:25.000 And so there's a series of things that have to happen simultaneously. And there's a great line from Dieter Duhm, who's the founder of Tamera, an alternative community in Portugal, where he says, the mind is the base station of capitalism.

00:24:38.280 We could create all this transition infrastructure outside of the system. But unless we do that deep programming, reprogramming and decoding ourselves, we are going to repeat the mistakes of the system. And if we also try to opt out without understanding how deeply interconnected we all are, we're going to create these little safe havens outside of deep structural change at a global level.

00:25:03.320 Yes, if we don't do the deep inner work, and let's say collapse happens this month, the masses would just rebuild something extremely similar to the system that we're in now. And I really appreciate what you've been saying about seeing Trump in all of us, saying the 1% in all of us, seeing that we aren't separate.

00:25:26.560 And it's none of our faults, but it is all of our faults. And just understanding that dichotomy, the self-responsibility, but not getting crushed by the shame that comes with this cultural destruction, really.

00:25:42.740 I want to dive back into anarchism before we move on because, you know, where I see global capitalism is based upon the tenets of competitiveness and material wealth, anarchism advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions.

00:26:00.800 So while I, you know, absolutely agree that frameworks that concentrate wealth at the top lead to undemocratic governance, you know, there just remains some vagueness to me that I struggle with.

00:26:12.880 Because successful anarchy requires willing participation of every individual. So with such a varied spectrum of human temperament and determination, do you see a way in which we can scale up anarchist principles among a network of smaller communities around the globe?

00:26:32.940 yeah i i do i'm not sure i think we're given this like false choice that either there'll be

00:26:40.380 this centralizing government that will sort of coordinate our efforts or there's going to be

00:26:46.800 this sort of breakdown and disillusion of organizing at a small scale i think anarchism

00:26:53.120 is a word has been tainted because it's the dominant culture needs to taint it because it

00:26:58.560 is in many ways the only sane and viable alternative but whatever we call it even the

00:27:02.380 idea of localism. To create strong, local, resilient communities and economies actually

00:27:07.260 doesn't require every single member to be actively participating. What it requires is a ratification

00:27:13.880 of power. And so what direct democracy is about is not necessarily everyone voting on everything

00:27:20.620 all the time, but people voting on who they want to make the decisions for them and in what way

00:27:26.800 and through what processes. And that's what we don't have. So the democracy we have in this sort

00:27:31.860 of like electoral system is we are given a very sort of finite set of constraints. And within that

00:27:39.520 we vote one crooked politician or the other and or one crooked party versus the other. And there's

00:27:46.360 no choice in that. You know, there's a principle in anarchism called subsidiarity, which is

00:27:52.140 basically de-evolution of power down to the people who are most affected and allowing the people who

00:27:58.540 are most affected to make those decisions on who will decide for them. And I'm not opposed to

00:28:04.080 government in a blanket sense, even at a national level or a state level or whatever. But I think

00:28:10.360 the role of government should be to localize power, because the people who are living in

00:28:16.040 community know how to best govern themselves. And that's the kind of system we have to figure out.

00:28:21.520 And actually, that system will be, for using capitalist language and understanding,

00:28:26.840 it actually will be much more efficient. And it would probably cost us much less. And we would

00:28:32.020 be much happier. And people would have much stronger sense of autonomy and agency in their

00:28:36.860 own lives. And I actually don't think it's impossible. We also have to look at this from

00:28:41.760 like a historical context. In some ways, globalized capitalism was sort of necessary

00:28:48.180 to get us to a certain point. It's clearly outlived its purpose. It's clearly creating

00:28:54.720 much more damage and pain and violence and the destruction of our planet than probably ever

00:29:00.220 needed to. But it did create this global infrastructure and this connective tissue

00:29:05.040 and things like the internet and sort of an understanding of other cultures in a way that

00:29:10.660 we probably wouldn't have had. And so the question is, how do we take the best aspects of this

00:29:16.120 globalized system and synthesize them and take the best aspects of anarchism and localism and

00:29:23.100 synthesize them in the best aspects of Western culture and technique and synthesize them and

00:29:29.440 indigenous culture and the original wisdom, which have been, you know, proportionately

00:29:34.840 misrepresented, if at all, in our dominant culture, and go back to those values and decide for

00:29:40.860 ourselves what we want the post-capitalist world to look like. And I don't really know the answer

00:29:45.820 to that. And I don't think there's a blueprint to that. But I think there's a possibility in those

00:29:50.460 ideas that is much more potent and alluring and mythologically resonant than the bankrupt system

00:29:58.040 of trickle-down and the insible hand and the market-based secular ideology that we've been

00:30:03.920 given to date as the only option. One thing I was thinking about in that discussion is

00:30:12.700 With so much land being gobbled up by global capitalist markets and faraway owners, I question private property.

00:30:26.240 I'm just wondering how do we tangibly dissolve the boundaries of private property on a small scale as well as larger scales such as national borders, particularly when the protection of such imaginary lines is so highly militarized.

00:30:41.520 i guess in other words i'm asking how do we re-inhabit the commons so that we can

00:30:46.620 put these other practices into place yeah so this is such a critical question because if we look at

00:30:54.980 what's happened historically we used to have many ways to access the abundant wealth that exists on

00:31:02.240 this planet we used to have trade and barter and gift and hunting and gathering and fishing and

00:31:08.460 all of those things. And now what's happened quite intentionally is that there's a monopoly

00:31:13.200 on access to goods and services through debt-based capital that is printed by private banks and

00:31:20.800 Federal Reserve systems. And so the commons itself has been privatized, and there's no other way to

00:31:26.900 access the commons except through debt-based capital. And in order to acquire that, you have

00:31:32.840 to succumb to the logic of the system, which is psychopathic and short-termist and greedy and

00:31:37.760 life-denying. So you either like opt into their system or you don't. And so one of the things we

00:31:44.040 have to start thinking about is how do we create wealth in all its myriad of forms outside the

00:31:51.740 existing capitalist structure? And there's many ways to do that, right? Just the very act of

00:31:57.420 gifting undermines the logic of the capitalist system, which is all about transactionalism

00:32:03.560 and commodification and all of those things. And so there is a way to undermine the logic,

00:32:09.340 but we have to do it at a much more structural level. And I think there's a sort of a suite of

00:32:14.640 ideas that are emerging in the global consciousness, you know, one of them being universal basic income,

00:32:20.340 right? Imagine everyone in the world got 20,000 or $30,000 a year. You know, it's an idea that

00:32:26.500 got resonance between both the left and the right. And of course, for the wrong reasons,

00:32:30.760 The right wants to cut social security and social benefits and all of those things.

00:32:35.160 And the right wants to bring back some kind of welfare state and prop up the economy through sort of Keynesian style spending.

00:32:41.700 But there's a broader game at play here, which is, you know, you can imagine that if we created our own currency, whether that's a cryptocurrency or just, let's say, a tool to administer this,

00:32:51.960 you could create a currency that was a complementary currency outside of the debt-based system

00:32:57.780 that sort of had more of the values we would like to see. For example, it could be a demurrage

00:33:04.540 currency, a negative interest currency. Money could decrease in value like every other commodity,

00:33:09.880 grain, cattle, etc. These things don't have compound interest. They're not growing exponentially,

00:33:15.620 and therefore debt would not grow exponentially. And it would also disincentivize hoarding.

00:33:20.420 If you didn't spend that money, let's say it decreased in value, I don't know, 1% a quarter or something, you'd be incentivized to use that money or give that money away or whatever.

00:33:29.900 It would also free people from the tyranny of bullshit jobs and help create a spiritual creative renaissance on this planet.

00:33:37.780 if the sort of algorithm of that money, if you will, accounted for carbon miles or some other

00:33:44.760 way to measure local spending, you could incentivize people to create strong local

00:33:49.300 economies and disincentivize them from buying globalized goods. There's no reason we should

00:33:54.160 be shipping asparagus from Thailand to Vancouver, right? And if the externalities that are now just

00:34:01.040 so casually put out into the system by corporations who don't pay any of those costs, if those were

00:34:06.680 internalized within this kind of system, you would vastly shift the way goods and services are

00:34:13.240 valued. And then you could also account for things like income inequality, right? If you and I are

00:34:18.780 both cobblers and you're more charismatic than I am, or you have a piece of technology, this type

00:34:23.820 of currency could account for knowing how much income I'm getting from my livelihood versus you.

00:34:29.400 And then I could have, let's say, a higher purchasing power to sort of account for those

00:34:33.820 types of income inequalities. So you could see how these new systems that are emerging and these new

00:34:37.980 ideas that are emerging, even though they're coming from the old logic, if repurposed, could

00:34:43.320 sort of vastly shift the structure of how we interact. In some ways, it doesn't matter what

00:34:49.100 the ideas are, but what matters is the values that are at the heart of these ideas, which is why

00:34:54.440 localism or anarchism is such a potent philosophy, because it's not about the mechanics or the

00:35:00.720 delivery mechanism of how these things happen. The question is, do these things share the values

00:35:05.460 of altruism and cooperation and generosity and interdependence and valuing the commons over

00:35:13.620 privatization? And all of these things that we know are so necessary for living sort of a thriving

00:35:19.940 existence and existence that's in symbiosis with nature and a sort of set of values that we

00:35:25.860 actually aspire to as a civilization. And that's what's really critical about all of the

00:35:30.820 post-capitalist alternatives. As you were responding to that question, what was popping

00:35:36.620 into my mind was, you know, we have things that are local and, you know, putting these systems

00:35:45.320 into place that, like you said, could make life actually thrive. And then it's funny because

00:35:51.580 we're sold this other story that to make things thrive we need technology we need the solar plants

00:36:00.080 we need new and better and more efficient like you had said that I love how you had talked about

00:36:05.040 the word efficient as this colonial word and so I was thinking about your article from I think it's

00:36:12.520 standing at the gates our generation has to convert ideas of change into action and you know this idea

00:36:20.000 that the faithful validation of elitist science has just glorified technological advancement at

00:36:26.440 all cost. And it's bringing rise to the belief that human ingenuity has the ability to overcome

00:36:33.680 the limits of Gaia. So I'd love if you could speak about the danger of techno-utopian worldview

00:36:40.080 and this growing field of artificial intelligence and just the flaws of such scientific progress.

00:36:50.000 Yeah, I think there's many spells that are cast through the dominant Western culture.

00:36:56.180 And two that are the most pernicious in some ways is the idea of progress as linear, as this sort of constantly self-improving system that has led us to this logical point, which is the height of human greatness.

00:37:14.720 and this idea of ingenuity and competence, that somehow human beings can get themselves

00:37:20.260 out of any situation and solve any problem. And I think the opposite of that is not

00:37:26.220 misanthropy. It's not to say human beings cannot do that, but it's to recognize our own hubris

00:37:32.700 and the limitations of the natural world. And when you combine this fallacy of progress is linear

00:37:38.820 with this idea of ingenuity.

00:37:42.140 And what's important for us to understand is, well, where is this message coming from?

00:37:46.640 And who's actually controlling the agenda of technology?

00:37:51.120 And if you look at, for example, the sort of Silicon Valley,

00:37:56.080 largely these people have gone to the same elite schools,

00:38:00.520 the Stanfords and the Yales and the MITs or, you know, the Indian equivalent IIT

00:38:06.000 And all of these sort of highly rationalist, highly limited types of education. 0.99

00:38:12.220 So they learn to be clever but not to be wise.

00:38:15.720 And they're completely disconnected from nature.

00:38:18.420 They're the largest prime beneficiaries of the capitalist system.

00:38:22.420 And they then have a monopoly on the human relationship with technology. 0.85

00:38:27.900 And so we're actually developing our relationship with nature through these sort of elite institutions that are largely white,

00:38:34.900 that are largely male, that are largely rationalist, and that is hugely problematic. 0.60

00:38:41.540 And their level of optimism is also problematic because they don't really feel the effects

00:38:46.420 of their own externalities, or they don't feel the consequences of the destruction that

00:38:52.020 has been left in the wake of their way of living.

00:38:54.840 If you're a developer in San Francisco or working in an artificial intelligence lab

00:39:00.240 at MIT, what do you really know about how 99% of humanity is living their lives? What do they know

00:39:07.320 about the people living in the slums of Bombay or the townships of Johannesburg? Very little.

00:39:14.640 And their concern is also very little. Like actually, we're told that not believing in

00:39:20.620 human ingenuity is misanthropic. But actually, overemphasizing technology and sort of linear

00:39:28.140 progress is the most misanthropic act. And it's also an act that is anti-life in itself, because

00:39:35.540 it doesn't take into account our symbiotic relationship with nature. We're not at the

00:39:40.640 peak of evolution. We somehow think we've evolved outside of our post-mother, outside of Gaia.

00:39:47.100 But actually, we're just the youngest species in an evolutionary order. And we may be required

00:39:53.660 in some ways as a companion species, but not if we destroy all other life, you know, as a

00:40:01.880 consequence of our behavior. I think James Lovelock and others have talked a lot about this, that in

00:40:07.620 Gaia theory, that we're not a necessary species in the same way as sort of a keystone species is

00:40:14.580 in an ecosystem. Gaia is deciding whether we're worth it or not, you know. On the one hand, sort

00:40:20.840 of 200 species a day are going extinct. And on the other hand, we may be part of some bigger plan

00:40:26.680 to bring Gaian life out into the universe. Who knows, right? And I think what's being decided 0.98

00:40:32.400 in some ways, the sort of jury is out, is will we learn from our mistakes and will we become

00:40:38.640 once again a companion species that is in the service of life? Or will we continue to be sort

00:40:45.300 selfish, consumptive, wetico, cannibalistic species that believes in the hubris of our 0.99

00:40:52.020 own technology and our own creation, and in this narcissist way, destroy ourselves and 1.00

00:40:58.540 most of life in the process.

00:41:15.300 way and gave up everything the beating of a drum to follow and become just left of center storm

00:41:25.860 disheveled slightly worn right back where i started from through the gates of a sacred holy place

00:41:35.460 white statues in their drapes right back where i started from

00:41:40.500 Right back where I started from

00:41:46.420 Right back where I started from

00:41:51.320 Right back where I started from

00:41:55.460 There's a circle that someone has drawn

00:42:01.940 Follow it back home where I belong

00:42:06.700 Right back where I started from

00:42:11.100 Right back where I started from

00:42:16.240 It seems mandatory that we must re-inhabit a deep spirituality

00:42:34.160 because this monopolization of this reductionist worldview has severed many people their mind from

00:42:41.540 spirit. The other side of that, though, is that it seems that many look towards spirituality as

00:42:47.340 a means to better themselves, where even inspiration is commodified and fetishized

00:42:54.920 for selfish interests. And to me, this can be described as just another symptom of

00:43:00.540 the we to go the extractive manifestations of spirituality so could you speak about

00:43:08.240 the inseparability of spiritual and political philosophy and perhaps shed some light on how

00:43:15.740 mysticism can actually guide us as we envision a new political and societal framework i think it's

00:43:23.520 part of what's happening is that language itself is such a limiting construct. And so the idea of

00:43:31.520 spirituality, and even words like mysticism or whatever, we almost can't examine them outside

00:43:38.500 of the construct of the modern capitalist system, which is this all-consuming sort of omnipotent

00:43:45.480 deity, right, that we're all somehow embedded within and entangled with. And so, you know,

00:43:51.220 if you haven't deprogrammed yourself from the idea of capitalism, which most of us haven't,

00:43:56.820 we're not taught to critique the system, to see the superstructure. We're taught to

00:44:02.440 fulfill a role that somehow contributes to that system. And those are very different educational

00:44:09.300 ends. And our entire educational system is essentially vocational now. And it's about

00:44:16.520 creating good consumers and good citizens that sort of help perpetuate this existing system that

00:44:24.080 we should be so grateful to, if it would only accept us, right? And that's how most unemployed

00:44:29.260 people feel, because that's how what our culture has sort of made them feel. And so to see

00:44:35.100 spirituality outside of that is very difficult. And industries like the self-help industry and

00:44:41.020 the sort of dominant culture of they make such an easy target but i'm not trying to target the

00:44:46.940 new age but this idea that spirituality is personal development outside of any traditional

00:44:53.140 culture or practice is also hugely problematic because again it is where to go it is consumptive

00:44:58.940 right people go to ceremonies of all kinds whether that's a sweat lodge or an ayahuasca ceremony

00:45:05.300 and they think of it as a transaction and they're like what am i getting out of this how is this

00:45:09.580 going to help my personal development. And the idea of development, again, is a colonialist

00:45:16.420 capitalist construct. The idea that there is some arrow of development. And if there's development,

00:45:22.420 then there's the underdeveloped and there's the less developed. And we have to sort of free

00:45:26.700 ourselves from all of those constructs. The way Eastern mysticism or yoga or Ayurveda are being

00:45:33.320 used now is in order to help Westerners become better capitalists, you know, so they could

00:45:38.380 be more flexible so they could be faster day traders or have more balanced minds when they're

00:45:44.140 going into the office environment. This is why the deep programming has to be so all-encompassing.

00:45:49.300 We have to question every aspect of why are we contributing to the system and really go into the

00:45:56.000 deep self-exploration, which is also a collective exploration. And what that requires is the

00:46:02.980 transcendence of subject-object duality. In the Western system, and I'm using generalities here,

00:46:10.060 this is also true in Eastern systems. This is also true in Buddhism and Islam and all of these

00:46:16.580 institutionalized constructs. We are somehow taught that the primary identity is the individual

00:46:23.360 identity. Just think about every interaction we have in the outside world. We're filling out

00:46:28.780 forms with our name on it we have to show our ids and our passports and we're asked what we do for

00:46:34.160 a living and it's just this reification of the eye and of the self and of the ego and then we're told

00:46:41.040 if we're lucky that occasionally there's this universal identity that we can get a glimpse of

00:46:46.600 through mystical experiences or psychedelic experiences or whatever but if you look at the

00:46:52.280 the great mystical traditions whether that's indigenous cultures or sufism in islam or

00:46:57.680 Kabbalistic traditions in Judaism or Gnostic traditions in Christianity, the primary identity

00:47:03.860 is the universal identity. And the secondary identity is the small I, is the self. And the

00:47:10.340 goal of a lot of these practices, you know, including Tantra, including the use of sacraments

00:47:15.900 like Ayahuasca and San Pedro and Iboga and all of these traditions is to sort of transcend the

00:47:22.040 subject object duality, which is the most difficult thing to do. But we have this architecture around

00:47:27.960 us, the social architecture, this fabric that prevents us from doing it. So it's this sort of

00:47:32.700 like double challenge of not only not seeing ourselves as separate from the living world and

00:47:39.460 from each other and from nature and from our ancestors, but also doing that within a context

00:47:45.600 that reifies the individual at every single step. And that's really the challenge of spirituality.

00:47:51.700 And this is when I talk about mysticism, what I mean. All mysticism is, is the direct experience with the transcendent other, whatever you want to call it, God, creator, great spirit, Allah.

00:48:05.620 For example, I come from a Sufi tradition. And in the Sufi tradition, which is the mystical branch of Islam, what we believe is Allah is just a metaphor for the universe.

00:48:14.720 And we are, Allah, unfolding on itself and becoming self-aware of itself.

00:48:19.960 And the Vedic traditions, the Vedas are the sort of pre-Hindu spiritual texts that both Hinduism and Buddhism and other branches of Eastern mysticism come from, have a very similar belief set that we are essentially consciousness becoming self-aware.

00:48:37.200 And to hold that perspective is a very challenging thing, especially when you don't have a tradition to do it within.

00:48:44.720 And I'm not a traditionalist by any means.

00:48:46.580 I don't believe in sort of old style lineage and, you know, needing to sweep up the ashram for 10 years and getting transmissions from a guru and all of that.

00:48:55.420 I believe in direct experience, but I think it's also helpful to study and learn and understand the mystical aspects of these great traditions in order to synthesize and create our own way.

00:49:08.140 And the last thing I'll say is I also really believe in the plants.

00:49:11.220 I think having a direct experience with plant intelligence, whether that's through ayahuasca or psilocybin mushrooms or San Pedro or what have you, is one of the most effective and direct ways to have that type of Gnostic communion.

00:49:26.840 These plants are hundreds of millions of years older than us in evolutionary terms.

00:49:31.800 All the great civilizations we know have had symbiotic relationships with sacrament master plants, teacher plants, except for Western culture.

00:49:41.220 And we can see where that's led us.

00:49:42.860 And I think there's a beauty in humbling yourself in front of a super intelligent plant that holds these psychedelic keys and go into the boundary dissolving space where we can see the programming of our culture and our limiting beliefs and how they've been foisted upon us.

00:49:58.620 Whether those are capitalistic or institutional religious beliefs or family cultural beliefs that are products of nationalism or whatever.

00:50:10.280 All of these limiting beliefs are preventing us from sort of achieving this state. And without sort of achieving this state, it's very hard to get to that place of subject-object duality because it just then becomes this intellectual thing you're trying to understand rather than actually becoming it.

00:50:25.980 And that's really the key, I think, and it's sort of a challenge for us as a civilization. How do we take these things from abstract knowledge to deep innate wisdom? And I don't know of a sure method than humbling yourself in front of the plant.

00:50:39.580 When I say things like that, people think I'm so having dogmatic, right?

00:50:42.800 And the plants are the only way.

00:50:44.300 And I really believe truth is a pathless land.

00:50:47.480 I see my mom's practice, for example.

00:50:49.520 My mom meditates every day from 3 to 5 in the morning.

00:50:52.360 She has since she was 7 years old, and she took a vow to do that.

00:50:56.560 And she can get into these states through that practice or other Sufi practices like the whirling dervish practice of the dance or yoga or other forms of meditation or chanting.

00:51:08.440 or tantra or whatever, there's many ways to sort of get to this state of transcending

00:51:14.700 subject object duality. But what the plants do is that they're the direct emissaries of Gaia

00:51:20.960 and they hold their own consciousness. And the communion with those plants provides insight

00:51:27.480 and it's not the answer. You still have to do the work and different plants will give different

00:51:32.540 messages. I think it is another tool and another practice and another avenue to get to these states

00:51:39.600 that are somehow sort of disconnected from us largely because the dominant culture

00:51:44.360 villainizes them. And that's why I overemphasize them, right? And anything the dominant culture

00:51:49.440 tells us we shouldn't do or makes illegal or diminishes even culturally is sort of a clue

00:51:56.280 to where we should look. That's how I see it. When people ask me, well, you know, what does

00:52:01.360 the post-capitalist world look like? And obviously, I don't know. But what I say is just like we take

00:52:07.120 the dominant capitalist system and turn it on its head. And it's most likely going to look

00:52:11.620 pretty much the opposite of what our current system looks like. So in our current system,

00:52:16.240 we value abstract thinking like high-velocity trading and running a hedge fund. And we devalue

00:52:22.140 important work like raising a family and educating our children. And we essentially just have to do

00:52:28.720 the opposite of what wetico culture is doing and the plants are the sort of ground zero of that 0.97

00:52:36.300 starting place well i couldn't agree with you more that plants are the ground zero and from

00:52:42.980 personal experience just being with plants whether i'm ingesting them or breathing them in or just

00:52:52.380 being quiet with plants has completely guided my existence and fulfilled me in a way that I didn't

00:53:01.780 even know was possible until I began a relationship with plants and soil and fungi and just the whole

00:53:09.200 community that that creates life itself so I am very much in agreement with that just getting out

00:53:17.080 of the human mind the human language the human supremacy and opening up to all the different

00:53:21.880 forms of communication and all the different spirits and to me their kin and to be able to

00:53:28.080 listen to them and their needs and their wisdoms is just so it just expands the heart and the mind

00:53:37.100 in a way that I think is mandatory to really begin to understand what we could transition into

00:53:44.980 I think it gets tricky when we stay too much human-centered and I know for me it can kind of

00:53:51.520 get me into vortexes where I can't get out of it but when I open myself up to the intelligence of

00:53:57.280 plants and life things become so much more clear and priorities shift drastically

00:54:04.420 where I want to go back to wrap up this conversation is bringing up the rules the

00:54:12.320 organization that you founded and you know one thing I found really interesting is many of us

00:54:19.540 think about the World Bank or the Red Cross or basically thinking that there's other institutions

00:54:25.520 that are taking care of things. You know, money is going into places that are actually helping

00:54:31.540 support people in other places. And it's really not true. You know, that's just one thought I had,

00:54:38.160 but I would really just love to open up the floor to you and encourage you to speak about the rules.

00:54:42.700 But also, what is the most passionate thing that you are driven towards right now with your

00:54:48.700 studies and activism and research? It's a great question. And it's sort of an ongoing inquiry.

00:54:56.540 I feel like part of what we're trying to do at the rules is help bring what seem like radical

00:55:03.320 ideas and alternatives into the mainstream discourse in a way that makes them feel like

00:55:08.960 common sense and to expand the Overton window, you know, the concept in sociology of what

00:55:15.100 it is deemed acceptable to discuss and sort of shatter this illusion that there is no alternative.

00:55:23.160 It's a broad inquiry. And a lot of what we're thinking about right now is the role of something

00:55:28.400 like universal basic income, but also things like regenerative farming. We know that certain types

00:55:35.560 of organic, no-till regenerative farming are sequestering huge amounts of carbon that if done

00:55:41.800 on scale, we could probably not only mitigate climate change, but potentially reverse it.

00:55:49.600 And a lot of these solutions already exist. And a lot of the sort of community models

00:55:54.180 that are inherently post-capitalist already exist. You asked me for inspiration earlier,

00:55:59.460 and I think I either got distracted or evaded the question somehow. But I think communities

00:56:03.940 like the Zapatistas, the autonomous community and region in Chiapas, the Zapatistas are this

00:56:11.400 amazing group of people, farmer peasant activists, who have really created the post-capitalist world

00:56:17.520 and have created an education system and an ideology that's deeply rooted in indigenous

00:56:21.360 wisdom. And we're seeing it happen all around the world. And what we're really interested in

00:56:27.040 is finding these alternatives and helping to amplify and promote these alternatives.

00:56:31.680 But I think what's necessary is both resistance and renewal. We can't just fight the old system,

00:56:38.060 which is like where the traditional left is stuck, for lots of reasons. A friend of mine named

00:56:44.020 Bayo Okomalafi likes to say, part of the crisis is the way we're responding to the crisis.

00:56:50.360 And that's definitely true for the activist community and for the left, like we're in this

00:56:54.920 old reactionary model of just being in the resistance. And I think we also have to be in

00:57:00.740 the renewal, we have to create these alternatives, and we have to live them. And part of what we're

00:57:07.580 trying to do is also live those values ourselves. And this is also a sort of critique I have with

00:57:13.100 the traditional left is that there's a sort of meanness and a crassness and desire for sort of

00:57:18.720 efficiency that makes people not necessarily that nice to each other. And I think if we want to

00:57:24.700 create a resonant field where we're attracting other people to come to these alternatives,

00:57:29.340 we have to create a culture where people want to be there, you know, where we are treating each

00:57:33.900 other with with reverence and awe and appreciation and bringing in the spiritual practices not

00:57:40.660 amputating one side of our life for another and a lot of the new age sort of spiritual movement

00:57:47.800 is very fearful of being in the political spectrum for lots of reasons and you know i think one of

00:57:55.100 them is self-inflicted by the left is we haven't created an enticing space for people to convene

00:58:00.800 And that's what I loved about Standing Rock. You know, Standing Rock really did that. It really sort of created the sense that the political is spiritual, that this is ceremony, this is prayer. And it's not good enough just to pray in absence of doing something about it, that these two actually work together.

00:58:16.360 And I think that's this sort of the new way that's emerging and what we want to be part of in whatever way we can contribute.

00:58:23.420 And we don't necessarily have the answers, but there's this gathering that's happening.

00:58:27.300 There's this sort of merger of tribes and medicines and approaches that is coming together to create this new way.

00:58:33.980 And I think what the political world is starting to understand and the world of activists is that if we're not rooted in spirit and in ceremony and in prayer,

00:58:42.440 we're just operating on sort of one limited rationalist plane that actually serves the likes

00:58:50.000 of the world banks and the monsantos and the un and and all of the apparatchiks of neoliberal

00:58:56.120 capitalism and so we actually we have to conjure the spirits you know we have to ask our ancestors

00:59:02.080 for help and in that sort of merger of those our spiritual evolution will speed up as will our

00:59:08.600 political evolution. And what I'm seeing happening with the new age community is there used to be a

00:59:14.700 lot of, well, I don't want to get involved in politics because it creates dualism. But fearing

00:59:20.440 dualism also creates dualism. And their understanding that there has to be a more

00:59:26.420 integral yoga, which is like what Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian mystic of the 50s and 60s used

00:59:33.380 to talk about is the aim is not to meditate in a cave, but to change the third dimension. That is

00:59:39.380 the application of the spiritual work. And somehow these two are coming together in a way that is

00:59:45.620 going to shift consciousness. There really is no other option. At best, we have 20 years left of

00:59:52.580 the Western way of living. Can you imagine perpetual economic growth, even at 3% for another

00:59:58.900 20 years or nanotechnology or artificial intelligence. It's impossible for these

01:00:04.680 things to continue growing at these exponential rates. And so we have to get to a state as a

01:00:10.860 species that we go from this sort of immature adolescence of growth at all costs and selfishness

01:00:16.300 and cannibalism to a more mature sort of steady state interdependent globalized approach that is

01:00:24.120 based in local community but also in spiritual practice well thank you so much alnur for your

01:00:31.860 work in the world and for all you out there who are listening you can find alnur and his work at

01:00:38.120 the rules.org he'll also be speaking at the eclipse festival in oregon actually right around

01:00:45.700 the corner this month in august and alnur is there anywhere else that you'd want to direct

01:00:50.600 people to to learn more about you or other events you're speaking at or just other resources that

01:00:56.920 you want to share no i think the rules is a great starting place and you can follow me on twitter

01:01:02.520 or send me a message it's at almarlada feel free to reach out directly i don't do that much public

01:01:08.780 speaking and i'm more focused on the work of the rules but it's always a pleasure to speak with

01:01:13.300 people like you ayana and others who are also on the same mission of being in service of gaia and

01:01:19.760 unfolding evolution. Yeah, I'm honored to be on the journey with you.

01:01:24.060 Tall western cedar, drifting on the wind, through the mountains like a river.

01:01:45.420 Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.

01:01:49.160 I'm Ayanna Young.

01:01:50.080 this episode is in partnership with organ eclipse and living village culture who will be hosting

01:01:57.080 the shrines to the cosmos facilitating the community eclipse ritual and teaching their

01:02:02.360 ritual performance immersive at the festival this year head over to living village culture.com

01:02:07.860 and organ eclipse 2017.com to learn more al noor as well as myself will be talking this year at

01:02:16.320 the festival i'll be sharing a talk called for the love of the wild and then hosting a panel

01:02:22.280 governed by nature rethinking society from earth up which elnor will also be on so please come

01:02:29.500 say hello if you're there today's music you heard was leon russell on with who reaps the profit

01:02:36.580 who pays the price then sally seltman with right back where i started from the theme music is

01:02:44.840 Silence Returns by Bo, and Like a River by Kate Wolfe.

01:02:49.000 I'd like to thank our research director, Madison Migulski,

01:02:52.480 and reach out and march young for their production expertise.

01:02:57.640 Be sure to head over to forthewild.world to sign up for our newsletter

01:03:02.100 to find out about upcoming podcast events and the One Million Redwoods Project.

01:03:07.780 And please make a contribution, as we need your support to keep the show rolling.

01:03:12.820 Thank you so much, and until next time.

01:03:14.840 It sounds like a river

For The Wild - August 14, 2017

ALNOOR LADHA on Capitalists and Other Cannibals ⧸49

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