00:00:00.000Hello, and welcome to For the Wild. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with Eric Asadorian.
00:00:09.100Earth is made up of many, many species self-regulating at some level, and without those other non-human
00:00:16.120species, we would not thrive. So recognizing that we are part of that living Earth, and we have
00:00:23.000either the opportunity to live a parasitic life like we are, or an actual mutualistic life where
00:00:29.040we actually could serve Gaia and improve the well-being of Gaia and many of the other species
00:00:34.980and ecosystems. That's not just a choice, but a really wonderful opportunity that we've all been
00:00:41.620given. Eric Asadorian is the director of the Gaian Way, a spiritual philosophy and practicing
00:00:49.300religious community. He is also a sustainability researcher and writer. Eric was a researcher with
00:00:55.020Worldwatch Institute from 2001 until its end in 2017. At Worldwatch, he directed or coordinated
00:01:02.540seven books focusing on consumerism, eco-education, global security,
00:01:07.580sustainable communities, and economic degrowth.
00:01:15.580Well, Eric, thanks so much for being with us today. I am really looking forward to
00:01:22.480having a cup of tea and chatting with you. Well, my pleasure. I'm really happy to be here,
00:01:28.920Ayana, and I actually have my tea ready to go. Oh, good, good, good. Yes, it's a great companion
00:01:35.520for these conversations. And as we begin to dive in, I think that I will start with asking you
00:01:46.380if you can give listeners some background on your approach to Guyanism and how the philosophy
00:01:52.700has shaped your life. Sure, I would love to. I think it's been incubating for years and years,
00:02:03.740both to fill a longing perhaps, but also as a possible solution. Just to give a little
00:02:11.940background, I studied religion and anthropology and psychology. Really, I think that was all
00:02:19.240driven by growing up a Christian and losing that faith. And it created a hole. And I asked this0.92
00:02:26.320question of why do people believe in superhuman beings, me included at the time? And so I really
00:02:32.440devoted my undergraduate years answering that question. That was my culminating final project
00:02:39.140and religion and all that. And, you know, and I kind of came to those answers. And at the same
00:02:46.940time, not that there is a definitive answer, but for myself, and at the same time, I suddenly was
00:02:51.880exposed to the sustainability crisis and really switched gears and started focusing on environmental
00:02:57.160organizing around toxins and feeling like I didn't know enough to be effective. I joined
00:03:04.300the Worldwatch Institute to start studying sustainability issues. And there, based on my
00:03:11.140undergraduate studies, the lens that I saw everything through was anthropology. The
00:03:18.000sustainability crisis, first and foremost, is a cultural crisis. This paradigm of consumerism,
00:03:24.680of growth, of empire that is so central now to dominant cultures is how we relate to the world.
00:03:34.300So, you know, I tried to be a good sustainability researcher and write about solutions, you know, economics, addressing corporate irresponsibility, sustainable local communities and all that.
00:03:49.800But for me, it all kept coming back to a cultural transition that we need to make shift from a paradigm of consumerism to one of sustainability and asking the hard question of, well, what are the levers of cultural change?
00:04:05.240Because that's not the game we're playing in the environmental community.
00:04:09.040We're doing activism, that kind of thing.
00:04:11.160We're not creating a new cultural shift ultimately, not like, you know, corporations are promoting, you know, a shift around consumerism, that kind of thing.
00:04:23.500So, you know, for me, a lot of my work shifted about 12 years ago, as I started to kind of make these connections into this question of, well, what would a truly effective environmental movement look like?
00:04:42.520And that really, the only model that I could really lean on was missionary religious movements.
00:04:53.440You know, if you really look at what philosophy has shaped the world, what philosophies have shaped the world for thousands of years, regardless of rapid cultural changes, economic changes, technology changes, and it's religions, right?
00:05:09.300it's Buddhism, Islam, Christianity. And we weren't really drawing from those. In fact,
00:05:16.180we were doing the opposite. Martin Palmer, a theologian, pointed out that environmentalism
00:05:21.960kept the shame and guilt, but got rid of the celebration and the joy. And then that was a
00:05:28.960really striking revelation for me. And I thought, well, how do we get all that back? What would a
00:05:35.420deeper environmental philosophy that could both guide environmentalism, but shape
00:05:41.360consumer choices, shape life choices, like how many children we have, how we die, how we get
00:05:47.840married, meaning, you know, rather than toxic and bombing and burials, we actually die in a way that
00:05:55.620is restorative to the earth. How do we create that holistic environmentalism that supports
00:06:02.940community that can spread and that can actually make deeper and longer lasting change than the
00:06:09.780activist campaigns that have been critiqued, frankly, since the 70s as being purely on the
00:06:16.500defensive. We stop one coal power plant and then a company just moves somewhere else and builds
00:06:22.240one somewhere else. So we can't play that defensive game against a much larger enemy
00:06:28.380that we are. So we have to really think much more creatively and holistically.
00:06:33.960And that's really the origins of this guy and way.
00:06:39.580I think a lot about this quite often, almost, I'd say every single day at this point, because
00:06:47.040as my own journey as a human, really, who has a strong desire to be in right relationship with
00:06:55.900the earth. There's always this question of how much do you fight? How much do you shift culture,
00:07:01.660shift oneself within this culture that seems maddening and so difficult to get out of?
00:07:10.780I think you're right. You can continue fighting these resource extraction projects,
00:07:15.420but more and more will pop up, even potentially in your same neighborhood.
00:07:20.520Here, where I'm working to fight a mine up here in Alaska, the whole area is a mining district. So you kill one mine and another one comes up like a whack-a-mole game. And so what does it actually take to support a community to say no more mines, period?
00:07:39.780And then, of course, there's the question of which communities will then be sacrificed. And it's really such a conundrum. And it's interesting to hear where you have been looking for solace to these maddening questions. I'd love to hear more about that.
00:07:58.500And on the Gainism website, you explained, quote, put simply, Gainism is a religious philosophy that grants the living earth, Gaia, its rightful place at the center.
00:08:08.700Humans are not the pinnacle of evolution, but just a small and not necessarily essential part of the living earth, end quote.
00:08:17.400I mean, you started to speak a bit about what brought you to this belief system, but I'd love to hear more about your personal journey if you wanted to share more details with us.
00:08:28.500what clicked for you? Yeah, well, I think it's certainly been iterative and it's still clicking
00:08:34.760every day, right? So I was 100%, if not more, colonized by the consumer paradigm that I grew
00:08:46.780up in. I loved my soda and I played my video games. I was a kid of the 80s. I went outside
00:08:53.140a little bit, but it was pro forma, uh, to play soccer or something, not to connect to the deep
00:08:59.020cycles of, of the earth. Um, it really wasn't until I became an environmentalist that I started
00:09:07.820to care, but I was still minimally connected, right? I was still hiking like an American,
00:09:14.120which was, you know, you have point A to point B, maybe it's a loop. So you can get back to your0.63
00:09:19.520car, you walk your five miles and you never get off the trail and you never connect with what
00:09:24.920the names of the species are, let alone their life cycles or the rest of it. So I think
00:09:31.200saving the earth was an intellectual battle for me for a long time, where I recognize that if
00:09:38.760humans want to survive, because it's not really about saving the earth, it's about saving
00:09:43.560people and the many species that are now poised to be lost because of our choices.
00:09:52.260It was trapped in that kind of intellectual framework. But as I started to connect with
00:09:59.720the earth, not even on purpose at first, I actually joined, this was a formative moment,
00:10:05.120I joined Tom Brown Jr.'s introduction to tracking and nature connection, indigenous ways.
00:10:16.400And you get this one week bombardment of all the ancient skills that people have used to survive for millennia.
00:10:26.660And he actually warns you in the beginning of the class that you'll never be able to walk through a forest the same way again.
00:10:33.200And it really was true. I mean, I was connecting to the land and to ancient practices and to the things that are all around you that you can eat and connect with and be in relationship with.
00:10:52.640And that really was a spiritual moment for me. And then that kind of was happening right as I was starting to write about all this as a cultural phenomenon.
00:11:06.060on. And over time at Worldwatch, I started really writing more radically about these issues. I mean,
00:11:13.640you talked about, you know, mining, mines moving. Ultimately, you know, the real crisis
00:11:20.260behind the environmental crisis is that there are 8 billion of us all being encouraged to live
00:11:27.640consumer lifestyles at different levels or another. I mean, there are some exceptions,
00:11:31.960but for the most part. And we're far beyond the carrying capacity of Earth because of these
00:11:39.820choices. So the minds are going to move because we keep stimulating consumerism. So until we shift
00:11:47.780this culture and recognize that degrowth is a process of getting to a new carrying capacity
00:11:56.940at a level that will work for 8 billion, 9 billion, 10 billion, which is a trajectory we're on,
00:12:04.980we're not going to actually effectively solve the environmental crisis. So for me,
00:12:11.600Gyanism is a religious practice and spiritual community, first and foremost, but it's also
00:12:19.200very much rooted in the sciences it's very much this worldly right the the the axis mundi if you
00:12:29.020will of of this belief system is not another world it's not a god it's gaia it's the living
00:12:37.300earth that we're part of and completely dependent on so it's very much this worldly and it's very
00:12:42.980much a sacred calling to heal not just the earth but our relationship with the earth
00:12:48.840i do want to understand why you see this as a religious practice yeah what you were speaking
00:12:59.200to about around dianism and how that's different from just living uh so to speak or philosophy
00:13:06.040i mean for me you can mince words about that but it really is an orienting philosophy right like
00:13:13.660Christianity. It provides an understanding of the theories of suffering in the world. It provides
00:13:20.960stories that support the right choices. It provides ethics. And that holistic orientation
00:13:30.860that hopefully helps to ground choices and even at a way that makes that behavior normalized
00:14:08.240that many environmentalists face as individuals, right?
00:14:12.900They have to constantly justify why they don't want to consume
00:14:18.340or why they don't want to upgrade their computer
00:14:21.160or whatever the thing is, and that's exhausting, right?
00:14:26.180And so are there ways that being bound
00:14:30.600by a philosophical set of obligations,
00:14:34.040but not just obligations, but opportunities, joys, right?
00:14:37.840So a lot of, and I hope we'll have a chance to talk about some of the practices of Gyanism, but a lot of it is joyful, right?
00:14:44.120Getting out into nature, meditating, fasting with the full moons, and all these opportunities that really reconnect us to this living earth that we're part of.
00:14:56.880I mean, like deep ecology, that was an attempt to provide principles and shape a different way of environmentalism.
00:15:05.160And I think this is similar to that. But I do think that it's an upgrade to that system in the sense that at that time, there was no Gaia theory, there was no understanding that the earth is really a hollow biont made up of many, many species self regulating at some level, not consciously necessarily, but, but at least keeping itself in a homeostasis to sustain life, right?
00:15:33.080just like our own bodies. We are not just human. We are human plus even more non-human cells. And
00:15:39.680that together makes a hollow biome that is us. And without those other non-human species, we would1.00
00:15:46.080not thrive. So recognizing that we are part of that living earth and we have either the opportunity1.00
00:15:53.500to live a parasitic life like we are, or an actual mutualistic life where we actually could
00:15:58.820serve Gaia and improve the well-being of Gaia and many of the other species and ecosystems,
00:16:06.180that's not just a choice, but a really wonderful opportunity that we've all been given, a gift.
00:16:14.160In terms of population, I've heard about this term degrowth, where the rate of population
00:16:23.340is slowing down from what it was doesn't mean we won't hit 9 billion. It's just the rate at which
00:16:29.300we'll get to 9 billion is slower than how we got to 7 point whatever billion we are now.
00:16:35.520So that's kind of interesting. And what would we do if we wanted to slow the rate of population
00:16:42.700growth or consumerism for that matter? I'm interested to tease apart how you see that
00:16:50.360being implemented or playing out? Is it consciousness shift? Is it government
00:16:55.540restrictions? How would we even get there if we as a collective wanted to get there?
00:17:01.820The degrowth movement especially really has implemented a taboo against talking even about
00:17:08.220population degrowth, and they're very much focused on economic degrowth, which I find interesting.
00:17:13.680I recognize that it's very hard to talk about population trajectories going down without a whole bunch of other baggage.
00:17:25.260And so that's a very big risk, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it.
00:17:28.680Because if we don't intentionally choose to move our populations back to a sustainable level, then the earth does it for us.
00:17:37.360And it will be more horrible and more unjust than anything that we intentionally do.
00:17:43.680And there's wonderful research on how to, without taking away anybody's rights or harming
00:17:52.040anyone, how to actually encourage population reductions.
00:18:00.160Alan Weissman's book on the subject Countdown is the name, has this wonderful double chapter,
00:18:07.860One on China and the horrors of the one-child policy and one on Iran, where, I mean, that doesn't sound like a positive story is coming out of that, but they really had family planning experts going to, you know, midwives just going to each village, setting up a little clinic fully just through education and access to contraception.0.89
00:18:36.840They brought the population down dramatically and humanely and justly.
00:18:42.560So I think if we actually, instead of banning access to abortion and talking about abstinence only in high schools in this country, for example, actually gave better access to contraception, talked about what's called comprehensive sexuality education in every school from elementary to high school.
00:19:04.980There's a whole model that's done in Europe, Amsterdam, Netherlands is one of the kind of the leaders where you have age appropriate, comprehensive sexuality education from kindergarten to high school. And when you do that, teenage pregnancy drops dramatically. People are making those choices for themselves and it's going to reduce population over time.
00:19:28.620Many of the indigenous folks that I've had on the podcast have spoken to
00:19:36.520being in a type of collaboration with the earth, an interdependence, a type of stewardship
00:19:44.920relationship. And of course, humans within capitalism have really lost that type of
00:19:49.980relationship. Yeah, it challenges the idea that the earth doesn't need us or the earth would be
00:19:56.400better off without us. I'm not putting weight on any of these philosophies. I'm actually curious
00:20:02.340of how you would respond to that. And maybe as a second part to that, we could start talking
00:20:08.740about practices because I think stewardship is a practice. I think being in a interdependent
00:20:13.820relationship with earth is very much an everyday practice. And just wanted to read a little quote
00:20:20.260from your website, quote, the Gaian way is a practicing spiritual philosophy, which includes
00:20:26.100practices like daily meditation, weekly forest meditations, rituals like moon fasting and
00:20:31.840following the wheel of the year. Many of these are done in community from local forest meditation
00:20:36.820groups to a text chain to support those doing moon fasting. Understanding that helps show how
00:20:43.900we're trying to live these ideas and share them with others, end quote. So if you wouldn't mind
00:20:49.680walking us through the practices and maybe blending in this response to interdependence?
00:20:57.420I would love to. And I would say there's kind of three opportunities or three ways we can
00:21:04.000interact with the earth, right? I mean, there's the parasitic way that is the dominant way now.
00:21:10.960There's interdependence. But even at the heart though, that suggests that we're
00:21:16.440an equal player, right? There's a dependence. We are dependent on the earth. That's, I think,
00:21:22.260the lost part and that we've forgotten as we pollute and pollute and we only now start to
00:21:28.700see the systems unravel. But I think where we're trying to aim for is that interdependence, right?
00:21:36.700When I daydream about the long future, I think that we could truly give something back to the
00:21:45.600earth, right? Right now we're only taking, but, you know, there is a scenario where we could
00:21:52.160actually protect the earth from asteroids, right? If we married this kind of sustaining
00:21:58.620and sustainable culture with enough technology where we could actually redirect the planet
00:22:05.560killing asteroids. But even more, if we think really long-term, if we let ourselves dream that
00:22:11.620humans could be here for several hundred thousand years or even a million years,
00:22:17.600could we extend the planetary organism's lifespan, right? As the sun warms, there will be a point
00:22:27.020where the earth cannot survive, right? Could we, using effective forestry and stewardship and what
00:22:37.220indigenous people have been doing forever of strengthening soils and spreading different
00:22:44.180plants. Could we actually make this Gaian being live longer than she would have if we weren't1.00
00:22:55.200around? So there is an actual place where we could be truly interdependent and actually a value to1.00
00:23:01.920the earth. And that's what I hope we strive for. As far as practices, I mean, I think that's a
00:23:09.500little bit more grounded than that kind of long-term hope. But really, if you're not
00:23:15.960creating behaviors and daily practices and weekly and monthly practices, that is the heart of any
00:23:26.240practicing religion or philosophy, right? So at the very basic is a daily routine of meditating
00:23:35.020outside three times a day, right? It's not enough, I don't think, to meditate in your house,
00:23:41.640right? You have to really step out of this manufactured landscape and, or house scape,
00:23:49.000I should say, and get outside and observe the natural cycles, breathe fresh air or polluted
00:23:55.600air, if that's where you live, right? Just to remind you of that as well. But really have that
00:24:03.020meditative moment, ideally three times a day, at least in the morning to start your day. And then
00:24:10.320a weekly cycle of getting out into a natural space, ideally with a community, right? I mean,
00:24:16.680we do have three working Gaian guilds, one in New Orleans, one in Honolulu, and one in Connecticut.
00:25:15.840And fasting for me has been really one of the more powerful experiences where it not only helps you to reduce your consumption by two thirtieths, one fifteenth of your monthly consuming, right?
00:25:33.660There's increasing of your resilience because we've already destroyed so much of Earth's systems and climate disruptions will disrupt agriculture, will disrupt food trade and all that stuff.
00:25:48.680And so having the ability to know that you'll be OK if you're fasting for a while, that you don't have access immediately to food, that's a powerful bit of resilience.
00:26:00.440and it's a good practice so that the fact that fasting has been an ancient spiritual practice
00:26:08.080for for millennia i mean it is really there's some value it's plus the physiological benefits
00:26:13.920of clearing out the the sugars and and waste products in your body so there's many levels of
00:26:20.680for all the practices the same with meditation there's lots and lots of science behind
00:26:24.960the psychological value and physiological value of meditation.
00:26:29.740So this is not just a kind of a cherry-picked,
00:26:32.900well, let's take a little of this religion and that religion.
00:26:35.580This is borrowing from these ancient traditions
00:26:41.240and reinforcing of our dependence and our obligation
00:26:46.680to serve this living earth that we're a part of.
00:26:54.960Thinking through the layers of religious complexity,
00:27:20.840beauty and trauma throughout history. I'm wondering what you think our modern times
00:27:28.680calls for in terms of religion. Well, there's the vision for what we can be,
00:27:35.720and there's also the preparation for what we have to go through. We have lots of different
00:27:42.220Gaian meditations. One of my favorites is the tree meditation where you're literally
00:27:46.800being a tree. And it's quite a nice connecting thing. But there's also a collapse meditation,
00:27:53.840right, just to kind of visualize going through collapse, just like fasting. I mean, that's,
00:27:59.160we're going to go through disruptions if we're not already. I mean, many people in many parts
00:28:03.120of the world are already fully in this poly crisis. But, you know, to go through that and0.89
00:28:10.600to not panic while you're in that will help in this transition. So there's multiple layers,
00:28:18.240right? So there's this kind of this practices, there's the visualizing of how to get through
00:28:23.500the transition with our humanity intact, right? And some of that is preserving practices that
00:28:31.440have almost been lost or are only being refound now. Like, I mean, I think of midwifery, right?
00:28:36.740The difference between having midwifery as a cultural tool and not is the difference between high levels of infant mortality and not, right?
00:28:50.680And so if we lose that, like we lost it in the United States for a long time, I mean, it's coming back now.
00:28:56.760I know May Gaskin kind of helped bring that back, as did others.
00:29:00.640So there's these questions of can a philosophy, especially in these disruptions, be a reserve for the most important cultural knowledge?
00:29:13.580And the answer is absolutely yes. I mean, Christian monasteries did that. Buddhist monasteries did that in disruptions.
00:29:19.340So that's where we are now. And I think holding some of that information, permaculture is another obvious one there. Protecting these essential sources of knowledge will be very important, as well as providing that vision of where we go and what we can really do as an ecocentric civilization.0.96
00:29:42.260Yeah. Of course, I love believing that we can shift and change and prepare for an unruly future, one that we are already in, and that we can shift the course of our human trajectory and Earth's ecosystems.
00:30:07.280I guess I've come to a place where solutions seem more and more problematic. And I wonder if this time is about being quiet or being still, even metaphorically to start with.
00:30:26.620because I worry about the confusion and the exhaustion that comes from trying to take all
00:30:38.040of this in and then do things here and do things there and try this out and try that out. I mean,
00:30:42.620I very much have been in that boat, speaking really from my own experience of feeling so
00:30:49.460much grief when I learned about the realities of our time and then trying all these different
00:30:57.520methods and then coming out the other side and going, huh, wow, I feel further away from
00:31:04.340believing it's possible than I started with. So I don't mean to be pessimistic, but I do wonder
00:31:11.560Or how do we not get in the throes of that glossy solution narrative thinking, whether it's about joining a group or practicing a religion or being a part of solution-oriented projects?
00:31:30.980How do we find a type of spiritual fortitude in the mystery, in the not knowing, in the stillness that feels to me like there's some truth in that?
00:32:16.560Where it's just we accept that we have gone way beyond carrying capacity and there is
00:32:23.820going to be a significant societal collapse.
00:32:29.320And then there's like a freedom in asking, well, how do we plan for the next cycle?
00:32:38.140One of those books that sticks with me is this science fiction novel, Canicle of Leibovitz,
00:32:45.540right, where there was a collapse in that case to start the book.
00:32:50.100But in that case, it was triggered by a nuclear apocalypse, right?
00:32:53.040But the Christian monasteries held on to the knowledge, and over time, civilization was rebuilt, but oops, empire formed again, and nuclear bombs were built again, and the world was destroyed again, right?0.92
00:33:09.140So we have this moment where we are at the peak of civilization.0.90
00:33:49.300We're celebrating the wheel of the year.
00:33:51.520We're encouraging each other to stick to their fast and enjoy their meditation.
00:33:58.040And, you know, so there's truly that community that is coming out of shared practices, right?
00:34:07.480And that's something I certainly missed.
00:34:09.900I mean, as a Christian, that shapes the year, right?
00:34:13.480You go to Christmas Eve mass and you go to Easter and the priest washes your feet on the Thursday before Easter.
00:34:21.420And it's like all these great, beautiful rituals that punctuate the year.
00:34:26.520But we don't actually need all those artifices, really. I mean, the earth punctuates the year, right? And, you know, the wheel of the year with the spring equinox and the summer solstice and on and on.
00:34:42.000And I mean, that beauty of this annual cycle is so powerful, and it really shapes ritual
00:34:55.980But I mean, it ultimately, for everybody, right?
00:34:59.120Nauru's, every Chinese New Year, those are spring equinox celebrations, right?
00:35:04.860And it's just that we've repackaged them.
00:35:07.020The dominant religions have ultimately repackaged all those Wheel of the Year celebrations to sustain them themselves.
00:35:18.080But ultimately, so much of Gainism is really about being present, being connected to the earth, recognizing that every breath that we take connects us to the earth.
00:35:31.900every morsel of food, we're part of this living earth system.
00:35:38.060Sometimes consciousness gets in the way of that,
00:35:41.680but ultimately the spiritual practice is about reminding us of that inevitable truth.
00:35:52.720And maybe another inevitable truth we could speak to is understanding human suffering
00:36:00.260And you've talked a lot about how across religion, there is a question of why we suffer and what that suffering means. And I'd like to think through this question with you in the context of the climate crisis and the unequal and unfathomable levels of suffering happening across the world right now.
00:36:23.540Yeah, I mean, for me, my theodicy, my theory of suffering is certainly shaped by a little report we did at Worldwatch Institute 20 years ago, called unnatural disasters, right? And it was all trying to draw out that many natural disasters today are unnatural, right, because of climate change, because of the way we built on coasts, because of human choices.
00:36:51.260And I would say that there is natural suffering because we are alive, we suffer, right?
00:36:56.940I mean, we are part of a living system where some systems are in competition with other systems and that we are, you know, things get imbalanced.
00:37:10.720And part of the guy in philosophy is really about accepting those types of suffering, right?
00:37:16.800accepting that if I go in the woods, and this is a real experience, I might get Lyme disease,
00:37:22.700which I did, and not panicking and accepting that or accepting that my body is breaking down as I
00:37:29.600get older. And there will be days where I can't walk very well because of back issues and that
00:37:34.700kind of thing. And those are minor sufferings compared to what's going on now. But those are
00:37:39.680the inevitable normal sufferings, right, that we just have to endure and accept. Then there's that
00:37:45.580whole new layer of unnatural sufferings that aren't all that new. I mean, the newest ones are
00:37:52.040climate disasters and that, but we've been experiencing the exploitation and suffering
00:37:59.400driven by either greed or economic practices or however you want to frame that. And that is the
00:38:06.460suffering that can readily, readily be addressed all the time. I mean, it's not, of course,
00:38:12.980The dominant system thrives on it and actually requires it to thrive. But those types of suffering have to be addressed. I mean, there is no sustainability without justice, as the saying goes. And that's true, right? Because if there is that continuing injustice, there will be anger and resentment and violence. And you can't have that in a sustainable, thriving system.
00:38:41.240So for me, I mean, there's the two types of suffering, and teasing those apart makes it a lot clearer how to address each of them.
00:38:56.740I'm wondering how can this distinction between natural and unnatural suffering reframe how we view crisis and contribute to a more justice-based lens of addressing suffering?
00:39:11.240Well, even in the context of climate change, where we've committed now probably to at least two degrees Celsius of climate change, there's no way we're holding it to one and a half just because of sheer momentum, more likely three degrees, right?
00:39:28.320But that means coastlines are going to be lost and they're not going to be held. And so the idea of building, continuing to build on them is nonsensical.
00:39:41.240And it's just going to cause human suffering in the future, right?
00:39:44.420So if we were truly recognizing that we are in control of certain types of suffering, the development choices we make, for example, and making those shifts, that would be an easy way to start addressing the unnatural forms of suffering.
00:40:05.580You know, going back to population, right?
00:40:07.980we inevitably are going to get to a smaller population. So if we were intentionally and
00:40:16.620justly working towards stabilizing human population at 8 billion, we are at 8 billion
00:40:23.360already, and ideally getting to stabilize by 8.5 billion and then starting to pull it down to
00:40:30.780seven, six, five, over the course of several lifetimes, that would enable a lot less human
00:40:39.360suffering because we would be getting closer to Earth's carrying capacity. Again, we won't
00:40:47.220make those logical choices, most likely, because there's too much power and wealth that are
00:40:53.840working in the other direction. But you can have, you know, a philosophy talking about and working
00:41:00.900towards creating a different vision of what a good society could look like.
00:41:23.840in so many ways we've been discussing the idea of the necessary paradigm shift and
00:41:47.220And I'm interested in how religion interacts with the paradigm shift, either as a driving
00:41:53.860force or as the very thing that keeps us stuck.
00:41:58.960And I'm wondering how we keep ourselves from being constrained by an ideology or just simply
00:42:04.860repeating old patterns as we look to shift towards a new relationship with the world.
00:43:35.340We just go back and we form butterflies and bacteria and mosquitoes and flowers, whatever we become.0.96
00:43:44.040But ultimately, the dominant religions sustain this separation of humans from nature.0.89
00:43:54.860And that's a real dangerous position to be in, especially as Earth's systems change.
00:44:00.440I fear more than anything is that we demonize the earth as the earth becomes more volatile.
00:44:08.300And the earth is becoming more volatile not because she's getting revenge or anything like that.
00:44:13.820It's because we've pumped more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is creating more evaporation and more storms and all of that.
00:44:23.120So it's easy with this otherworldly frame of many religions to easily demonize the earth and create fear and use that fear to lock people even closer into the community.
00:44:40.540This, I mean, all religions have the danger of being corrupted.
00:44:45.580I mean, we're so tiny that that is not the issue right now.
00:44:49.340But from my perspective, an Earth-centric religion, and not just this one, but there are many others that are forming as we speak, those Earth-centric religions that start to recognize that we as a community could do more if we nurtured each other, if we put the Earth's rights and well-being at the center rather than our consumptive desires or our hopes for an afterlife.
00:45:19.340That is the power, right? I mean, I think you hinted at the burnout of activists earlier. And I think the difference between activists fighting and trying to get to solutions outside of the nurturing of a community, you burn out, right?
00:45:40.080But if you actually are doing that activism in the safe space of a community that's nurturing you, celebrations that keep you engaged, nature time that keeps you psychologically vivid, that is a very different scenario, that holistic philosophy that is the skeletal structure that holds you in a good space as you fight for whatever solutions you're fighting for.
00:46:09.580That makes a huge difference, I think. And that's the power of a religious framing
00:46:16.120around environmentalism that I think is lacking right now.
00:46:22.620You cite our beloved Joanna Macy a lot in your thinking around these shifts. And I'm interested
00:46:30.420in how her work has shaped you and how you see Guyanism fitting in with a longer lineage of
00:46:38.340philosophers and thinkers? That's a great question. When I first started writing about this,
00:46:45.040I heard her on Being, actually. And she was talking about how when your friend is dying,
00:46:52.760you don't go and sit by her bed and say, everything's going to be all right. It's
00:46:56.280going to be all right. No, you just sit there and you just be there for that friend. And that
00:47:01.560was that striking moment because I was fully rooted in the solutions orientation at that time.
00:47:22.120But I also think that it's that philosophical community as it grows that can amplify some of this work much more effectively.
00:47:34.340I know you had Molly Young-Brown on recently, and she talked about nuclear guardianship.
00:47:42.080And I've tried to actually engage in that realm through this kind of lens and found exactly one local organization working on nuclear guardianship in the United States, in Colorado.
00:47:55.760And I wonder, since the beginning, reading about the Quakers as a beautiful example, always a small community, and yet they have been a driving force for the abolition movement, the anti-nuclear movement, civil rights movement.
00:48:15.180and to kind of recognize that when you have a really committed philosophical community or
00:48:25.040religious community, they can really have much more effect than you'd think that that small
00:48:29.580group could have. And so nuclear guardianship is such a perfect example because there are so many0.90
00:48:37.340potential nuclear scars that will speckle the landscape. And those will be forgotten very
00:48:46.540quickly. And I can imagine a hundred scenarios where people go into that land, which is slightly
00:48:52.060more fertile, start using those bricks and concrete blocks for building, and horrible
00:48:58.860suffering will happen because of it. So we certainly need nuclear guardianship, and we need0.54
00:49:04.880memory keepers around this. And I don't think that nuclear guardianship will grow without some sort
00:49:14.200of long-lived religious philosophical community sustaining that. It could be Christians, it could
00:49:21.720be Muslims or whatever, but I imagine an eco-centric religion would probably get it more,
00:49:27.380But that's maybe my bias. But the bigger point is that if you don't have these longer time framed organizations, which environmental communities, environmental organizations are not, they're fighting short term for short term victories, heavily shaped by the philanthropic communities and their donors and all that.
00:49:50.240is there a way we can have a deeper form of environmentalism that is working at timescales
00:49:57.740that we typically fail to think in? Yeah, I really appreciate you speaking
00:50:05.060Joanna's presence into this conversation. She's been a huge influence, totally shaped me in so
00:50:12.640many ways, and Molly Young Brown. And so it's nice to bring them into this conversation. And
00:50:18.120And I want to come back to our conversation on practices a bit more because I think there's
00:50:23.800something relieving about being able to attach to the material in so much esoteric conversations,
00:50:31.960things that feel deep and heady, but then to balance that with the material world is really,
00:50:38.400I think, relieving for many of us. And I'm wondering about the more practical side of
00:50:45.480cultivating a relationship with nature or the earth as well, especially as we come to face
00:50:51.480the consequences of our consumerist worldview. In the following The Gyan Way, you write,
00:50:58.140what The Gyan Way offers is this, a reminder that we are part of and utterly dependent on
00:51:03.720the living earth, and it provides ways to fully understand and embrace this from parables and a
00:51:08.180sense of purpose to practices across the day, week, month, year, and lifetime. And you spoke
00:51:13.860a little bit about these basic survival skills, maybe fasting being one of them. If you could
00:51:19.540speak to how can basic survival skills serve as both a key to building a livable future
00:51:24.600and also to cultivating a spiritual awareness? Yeah. The spiritual awareness feels more tangible
00:51:33.840in the seat I'm sitting, which is very much rooted in a consumer culture.
00:51:38.900uh you know very few people are going to see the immediate value of making a fire with a bow drill
00:51:46.780when matches and lighters are so ever present uh and you know maybe passing that down will one day
00:51:54.260be valuable again but there was a moment of sheer ecstasy when i first made a fire with a bow drill
00:52:03.180You know, just to be able to understand that I shaped that piece of wood, I made that bow, I spun and spun and used friction and science and ancient skills that had been passed on for millennia to make a coal out of wood dust.
00:52:21.720And I cried. I mean, I literally was so emotional with that moment that I cried.
00:52:29.320And it was one of those beautiful moments of nature connection.
00:52:36.720I mean, just foraging and asking permission of a sassafras seedling to take its life to make tea for the forest bathers in the little forest bathing group that I teach each month here in Middletown.
00:52:51.720You know, those kind of moments where I'm fully embedded in the natural landscape that I'm part of rather than just driving through it at 65 miles an hour, which is 90% of even my time and 99% perhaps of most people's time.
00:53:11.660And, you know, to find ways to not just occasionally reconnect, but to really be connected daily, right?
00:53:21.960So being outside and, I mean, I sit on my little back stoop and I look at the same river birch, you know, 365 days a year.
00:53:37.920I'm outside every morning at least and watching that river birch and seeing it go through its
00:53:42.900life cycle. And I mean, I've even written about that river birch because it's isolated, right?
00:53:47.640It's trapped in the middle of three backyards and it's out of community, right? It's stunted
00:53:53.840to some degree, right? And that's a beautiful metaphor for where we are, right? Even the most
00:53:59.020excited Gaian is most likely living primarily a consumer life, even if they don't want to,0.97
00:54:07.040We're trapped by the infrastructures that we're part of, by the relationships that we're in.0.99
00:54:14.020So we make the best choices that we can.
00:54:17.040And to have a community supporting that, nudging you to make even stronger choices, to be able to pull up and call on practices that are no longer conscious, but they're starting to become part of you.
00:54:35.160So the idea of not meditating in the morning to start my day is uncomfortable at this point. In the beginning, it was work. Now it's work and discomfort to not do it. And that's what religion offers in its own right.
00:54:50.320This kind of idea that you start to systematize these behaviors or unconsciously them, where they become just part of you rather than you have to say, oh, should I eat that extra dessert?
00:55:06.600But when you have the systems in place and say, well, I'm not going to because enough is abundance.
00:55:11.920You know, it's those kind of non-conscious kind of framers that help you to go through life and not constantly be tempted by all the consumer opportunities around you.
00:55:24.820Yeah, it's really a challenge and it makes sense. It's a multi-billion dollar industry to lure us into consumer choices. And so it takes a ton of willpower and I think spiritual fortitude to turn the other way, whether it's from the dessert or the new shiny thing that we really don't care about.
00:55:48.400But still, it has such a powerful pull. And I think filling our time with other practices that are regenerative and fill that need for connection or that space for presence in our life is really so important.
00:56:04.900And I'm really grateful for this conversation, Eric, and happy we got to spend some time together. And of course, there's so many questions left unasked. But as we wrap up, if there's any other topics you wanted to mention or any ways that you'd like to close this conversation, the floor is yours.
00:56:24.060Thank you, Diana. This was really great to join you. One thing I would say, just an invitation
00:56:31.900to all your listeners to join us for some conversations. We have one of the main
00:56:38.960practices that I didn't talk about is just the opportunity to learn about Gaia. So we set up
00:56:45.480lots of book conversations, discussions with authors. We're actually just launching the
00:56:51.180Guyon degrowth pod, the GDP, to talk about degrowth. So there are lots of opportunities
00:56:58.060to connect with our community. And if anyone is interested, Guyonism.org is the best way to
00:57:05.780learn more and to connect with us. Wonderful. Thanks so much, Eric.