00:01:00.000Alnora's work focuses on the intersection of political organizing, systems thinking, storytelling, technology, and the decentralization of power.
00:01:10.200We offer this episode during a time in which many of us have witnessed the tumultuous behavior of global markets, the true price of poverty in the face of a pandemic, utterly exorbitant corporate bailouts, and the impending collapse of the U.S. stock market.
00:01:27.080This conversation with Al Noor invites us into guided conversation on neoliberal capitalism,
00:01:33.060the global economic system, and how we can work ourselves out of it.
00:01:37.560Listening to Al Noor, we ask ourselves,
00:01:40.900why does fear inherently limit our ability to build beyond?
00:01:45.520How does the myth of poverty alleviation further the colonial mindset?
00:01:49.760And most importantly, how does our relationship to spirit and place strengthen our resistance to self-perpetuating systems?
00:01:58.480We hope you enjoy this conversation. Now, on to the show.
00:02:11.820Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:02:16.520Today we are speaking with Alnur Lada.
00:02:19.200Alnur's work focuses on the intersection of political organizing, systems thinking,
00:02:24.360storytelling, technology, and the decentralization of power.
00:02:28.620He is a founding member and the executive director of The Rules, a global network of
00:02:33.400activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers, and others dedicated
00:02:39.700to changing the rules that create inequality, climate change, and poverty around the world.
00:02:45.060Thank you so much, Alnur, for joining us today.
00:02:50.120So I was hoping that we could begin this discussion by laying down a foundational understanding of the greater global economic system.
00:03:01.720Neoliberal capitalism operates under the guise that if the global economy is allowed to grow unrestrained or without limits,
00:03:10.240then wealth will eventually trickle down sufficiently enough to alleviate poverty.
00:03:15.060But when you look closer and examine the history and origin of globalized society, rooted in slavery and conquest, it's easy to see the inherent fallacy of this idea.
00:03:28.040Nations that are considered poor, such as those in the global south, are in reality far from poor.
00:03:35.200They are rich in natural resources that the capitalist machine yearns for.
00:03:40.080and the entire concept of rich and poor is defined by the value that is placed upon controlling and
00:03:47.480acquiring as much materials or really life you know as much of life as possible and while the
00:03:55.920global gdp increased by 217 since 2010 the number of people living under five dollars a day increased
00:04:03.660from 50 to 60 percent of the world's population. So I'm wondering if you could demystify why
00:04:12.300collective economic growth of the global capitalist system will never alleviate global poverty,
00:04:18.920but instead only shackle people with societal positions that sustain an uneven concentration
00:04:25.080of wealth. I think, you know, one of the first places to start is to really understand the
00:04:32.100ideology behind our current understanding of poverty. And the place to start is always the
00:04:39.060language itself. And so if you look at the way the UN or the Gates Foundation or Jeffrey Sachs or any
00:04:47.300of these sort of organs of the neoliberal system talk about poverty, it's poverty alleviation,
00:04:54.960right? Or any of the metaphors that make it seem like poverty is a disease. Eradication
00:05:00.180is another synonym and the logic for them is very clear which is poverty is a disease there's this
00:05:08.640germ theory sort of understanding of where it comes from and in that sort of guise you look
00:05:15.000to solutions that are themselves i guess the antidote right and it's a very sort of linear
00:05:21.220binary western rationalist reductionist way to look at the world and it sort of belies their
00:05:28.800colonialist logic in seeing these problems as problems that are ahistorical, that are just
00:05:35.380solvable through technical fixes. If you actually look at how poverty was actually created, it's a
00:05:41.740deep historical process. So to take the piss of Bono and the one campaign and these sort of
00:05:49.120traditionalist thinkers, they talk about make poverty history, right? Was their campaigning
00:05:53.920rallying cry. And it's actually history that makes poverty. And if you fail to understand that,
00:05:59.760you'll actually never get to the right set of solutions, which are much more structural than
00:06:05.020they'd like to believe. Because again, ideology and self-interest comes into play. It's not
00:06:10.680convenient for them to see it this way. So when I say history makes poverty, part of what we need
00:06:17.200to look at is the enclosure movement in the United Kingdom that really started privatizing
00:06:23.120public lands that created the first big displacement of people, the sort of colonialism of the last
00:06:28.940500 years that had this huge transfer of wealth from the South to the Northern Empire countries
00:06:35.820like the United Kingdom and France, Portugal, and later on the United States. And to this day,
00:06:41.780of course, the United States and all of these Western centers of power. And this was, of course,
00:06:47.200fueled by slavery and genocide and extraction of natural resources and wealth. And that hasn't
00:06:53.960never stopped. So until we really address that aspect of it, this idea of poverty alleviation
00:07:00.500as this trickle-down phenomena, that if we just raise GDP, all boats will raise, is not only
00:07:07.680not true and sort of illusory in nature, it's actually a deeply political and ideological
00:07:14.760approach. And so the way the media portrays it is these people, the Gates and the Bonnells and
00:07:21.080the Jeffrey Sachs of the world, are somehow these amazing do-gooders that are trying to really
00:07:25.580figure out these problems. But whether it's through avarice or ignorance, it doesn't really
00:07:31.500matter. What's happening is they're perpetuating a colonial mindset and they're perpetuating
00:07:36.120a solutionist mindset that's never going to get to the root. I'll just give you one example,
00:07:40.980And then maybe we can deconstruct their motivations a little bit together. But if every dollar of wealth created, 93 to 94 cents ends up in the hands of the top 1%, by definition, wealth creation creates income inequality. It creates poverty.
00:07:57.180and this is hardwired into the logic of the capitalist system because of course a certain
00:08:02.880group of people largely white western europeans largely males have had a thousand year head start
00:08:09.380on this capital and so of course the system is rigged in their favor and income inequality and
00:08:16.440concentration of wealth is increasing ever more which is also built into the system so their only
00:08:21.400solution to address these problems is more economic wealth and that's a convenient solution for them
00:08:26.660when they're the prime beneficiaries of the system.
00:08:31.080And as we reflect on the roots of capitalism and imperialism,
00:08:38.740the pervasive ecological and spiritual destruction it has wrought
00:08:44.020and our collective journey towards decolonization,
00:08:47.720this question arises of how exactly this conditioning
00:08:51.180became so profoundly embedded within us and our societies.
00:08:55.060you have an amazing article seeing we to go on capitalism mind viruses and antidotes for a world
00:09:02.580in transition and in this article you delve into the concept of the we to go and how it defines
00:09:08.880the nature of modern capitalism from what i understand the we to go is a cannibalistic spirit
00:09:15.160within mythologies of indigenous nations uh algonquin and objibwe etc of northeast north
00:09:22.340america and you know it quote delude their host into believing that cannibalizing the life force
00:09:29.380of others is a logical and morally upright way to live another quote raising the self-serving ego
00:09:35.760to supremacy and so once you live in rejection of human exceptionalism and no longer separate
00:09:43.200yourself from the web of life it's not difficult to acknowledge this cannibalistic nature of
00:09:50.340not only our political and economic institutions and societal superstructures, but also our
00:09:57.460consumptively conditioned colonized minds. So could you discuss the concept of We To Go
00:10:06.020as a mind virus, this mass psychological infection, from the perspective of cultural
00:10:13.280evolution and memetics. Yeah, to go to this route, so wetiko is the Algonquin word for this
00:10:22.140cannibalistic spirit. And in Ojibwe, it's wendigo or wintiko and Powhatan. It's a sort of, I guess,0.92
00:10:28.680common concept in some ways and literally referred to cannibalism, the eating of flesh. And what a
00:10:34.780lot of this indigenous lore said was two things would happen when someone out of necessity, even,
00:10:40.240in a northern winter or whatever, ate another human being's flesh, one would be an icy heart,
00:10:47.260and the second would be this unnatural desire to consume more flesh. And when the First Nations0.74
00:10:53.760communities of North America first interacted with the European colonialists, this word comes
00:10:59.880back into the vocabulary to describe the European colonialists, because that's how they saw their
00:11:07.000relationship with nature and, of course, with the First Nations themselves. And I think if we go back
00:11:13.740far enough, the real root of the Wettico virus, of the sort of cannibalism that's inherent in
00:11:20.360Western modern culture, comes from our separation from nature, which many argue that stemmed from
00:11:27.800the Neolithic revolution, from farming, from sedentary lifestyle. So we went from hunter-gatherers
00:11:34.140that lived in codependence with the mother our ancestors would go into nature and they would be
00:11:40.420in this natural bounty they would hunt and gather the necessary food and calories they needed and
00:11:46.720we know from a lot of the research in cultural anthropology like Marshall Salin's work their
00:11:51.720original affluent society that hunter-gatherers actually lived not what we are told the Hobbesian
00:11:57.940worldview of a sort of brutish, nasty, short live. But quite the opposite. They were working
00:12:04.42010 to 20 hours a week. Their average calories were about 2,000 calories per person. We know
00:12:10.320this from teeth samples and bone density and other things. So they were living quite decent lives
00:12:15.680compared to even modern standards of how the majority of people nowadays live. And not to
00:12:22.400say we want to go back to that way of living, but there's something really interesting that happens
00:12:26.300when our livelihood comes from taming nature and extracting from nature and this sort of farming
00:12:32.240mindset. And this initial separation happens. And we know that some of the first buildings
00:12:38.580that are built in the first city-states of Ur and Babylon are the granaries. Because as soon as you
00:12:44.380have a surplus of food production, you then create a place to store that surplus. And then you need
00:12:50.240military or militia or police or whatever to protect that surplus. And then hierarchy is
00:12:56.980created and you have your emperors and sun kings and all of that. And so from Babylon to New York
00:13:05.420is just a very short distance, both psychologically, culturally and temporally. And so you end up in
00:13:14.020this place where we value the sort of brute strength of the male, which creates this sort
00:13:19.840of patriarchal culture. There's a culture of extraction of rape. We essentially have a rape0.88
00:13:25.340culture as the dominant culture. That's what Western culture is. And I'm not just talking1.00
00:13:30.740about the effects on women in this culture. And of course, that is the dominant thread, but the0.94
00:13:34.700mother herself, right? To mother nature, to earth herself. And so it's really deeply embedded in the
00:13:39.620Western European psyche. And this is not to blame Western Europeans. When we came out of the
00:13:44.760Fertile Crescent, those were the heavily populated areas. And then through colonialism and imperialism
00:13:50.400and war and violence and expansion, this culture has become the dominant culture. And the way it
00:13:57.460sort of affects us all is through memes, essentially cultural ideas. And, you know,
00:14:04.600memes just are essentially the sort of base unit of culture. And they're transmitted in many ways.
00:14:10.580we don't even know, which is why understanding and deconstructing culture is so important
00:14:15.840to understand the ways in which we're controlled. And I also think that the sort of monotheistic
00:14:22.520religions, especially Judaism and Christianity, when they merged with capitalism in the Middle0.80
00:14:28.520Ages, really created this toxic mix of sort of violent, savior, male-dominated culture that has0.68
00:14:37.560mutated into what is now late stage capitalism. And so we're all told that we need to work hard0.95
00:14:43.620in a certain way to have certain status and to sort of represent our self-interest in order to
00:14:50.960create this perfect equilibrium, right? The invisible hand, Adam Smith's theory of the
00:14:55.560invisible hand is the perfect mimetic virus, right? We know from 30 plus years of economic
00:15:01.820data that it's fundamentally untrue, that if people behave selfishly, there will not be a
00:15:06.080perfect equilibrium. Quite the opposite. You'll have the culture we have here, the dominant
00:15:10.900Western culture, which is destroying the planet, which is creating mass inequality, poverty,
00:15:16.080resource extraction, violence, et cetera, et cetera. And that is the logical outcome. But yet,
00:15:20.760in every economics textbook in the world, basically, we're told that this invisible hand
00:15:26.260is the sort of underlying logic of a well-functioning economy. There's a great
00:15:31.540Daniel Quinline, who's the author of Ishmael, where he says, the new world fell not to a sword,
00:15:36.780but to a meme. And this is probably the meme.
00:16:01.540You take the gold out of the earth. You throw the corpses in. One crop is as good as another, as long as the cash keeps pouring in.
00:16:18.080The wheels must never stop turning. The machine must be obeyed. The future has got to be fueled, and there's a price to be paid.
00:16:28.640Black like the dust, brown like the earth
00:16:34.340This is our land, the land of our birth
00:17:24.520only our eyes burn with a memory of the old ways brown like the earth black like the dust
00:17:34.560who can we turn to who can we trust it's so incredible to look back into history and look
00:17:44.620at what we're dealing with now and at least begin to understand these memes and the mind control
00:17:49.800that we're under. But, you know, I feel that wider circles of people are coming into recognition that
00:17:57.960industrial society, in its unwavering attempts to consume the last remaining intact pieces of our
00:18:05.580land and waters, is edging closer and closer towards total collapse. And it seems that even
00:18:12.400the system itself has a knowledge of this. And then in response, we're seeing fearful expressions
00:18:18.600of that, such as extreme leaders coming into power, not to mention the fossil fuel extraction
00:18:25.060backed by the hands of militarism and war. So I'm wondering if you could share with us your
00:18:31.640understanding of this phase of late-stage capitalism we find ourselves in, first from
00:18:37.480a theoretical perspective, and then I'll have a second part to that question.
00:18:42.360When you say a theoretical perspective, it's interesting because I immediately go to
00:18:47.920more of a spiritual perspective. Because, you know, this crisis is not just political or economic,
00:18:54.300it is deeply spiritual. Modernity, as defined by the dominant Western culture, by a sort of
00:19:01.500democratic, liberal capitalist system, is really the height of spiritual bankruptcy.
00:19:08.900We've had this strange, like, secular Judeo-Christian ideology imposed on top of
00:19:14.980a neoliberal system that incentivizes selfishness and growth at all costs. Those are sort of the
00:19:21.480underpinnings of the sort of broader malaise that comes from this disconnection from nature that we
00:19:27.640talked about. And I think what we're seeing happening is nobody really knows what's happening
00:19:33.180and nobody really has a sort of a broader perspective because our education system
00:19:38.100of the last 500 plus years has really lost all touch with the original wisdom of our ancestors,
00:19:45.580that indigenous knowledge that was always sort of rooted in the symbiotic relationship with
00:19:50.760Mother Nature and Mother Earth. And so we have this system that's bereft of all value and all
00:19:57.120meaning that's driving this capitalist machinery. It's like we have created our own greatest
00:20:02.380artificial intelligence which is the market mechanism and it's not guided by any set of
00:20:08.620first principles like any understanding of why we're here as a species where we're going what's
00:20:14.360our purpose what's our relationship to nature or the broader cosmos we have no cosmovision in
00:20:21.940modernity and what's replaced it is this scientific materialist rationalist worldview that makes us
00:20:30.220believe that we can understand all natural phenomena categorize it and control it and
00:20:37.660that is a very poor substitute for a spiritual belief system or a cosmovision of any kind
00:20:43.940and so i think what's happening even you know with the trump phenomena is in absence of any sort of
00:20:50.360meaning or deep spiritual experience and when you have a an architecture around us that's been
00:20:56.100created to separate us from nature, the urban environment being the exemplar of that, you know,
00:21:02.640cement and high rise buildings and mass density. And we are living these lives of complete confusion
00:21:10.680and complete disconnection. And so in some sense, it's no one's fault, right? And in some sense,
00:21:16.600it's all of our fault. And so what happens is that when, you know, we want to blame the Trump
00:21:22.360voter, for example, and think that they're somehow sort of responsible. But they're also just
00:21:28.120equally as lost and equally sort of suffering under this regime of modern late stage capitalism.
00:21:36.340I think part of what's happening is we have to find that place within us that allows these things
00:21:43.100to exist in our field. You know, there's a one percenter in all of us. There's a Donald Trump
00:21:47.160in all of us. And they wouldn't exist if it didn't exist within us. And that's not to say,
00:21:53.400and I know this is sort of common spiritual and new age belief that all that matters is the inner
00:21:59.500work, therefore they'll draw that conclusion. And I don't think that's true either. I think we have
00:22:05.060to change the structure of the system and do the external work while doing this internal work. And
00:22:10.580it's not an either or, or one precedes the other. Both are simultaneously necessary to bring in
00:22:17.080this new world that we know is possible. That reminds me of your article, Mystical
00:22:22.320Anarchism, A Journey to the Borderlands of Freedom. You urge in that article that we need
00:22:29.380these three levels to happen simultaneously. And with that, I'm talking about, you know,
00:22:34.740focus on inner work in the self and building alternatives at the community level, and then
00:22:39.620tackling the larger superstructures. And I think as we envision this dissolution of neoliberal
00:22:47.100capitalism, discussions on how to move forward, grow and diversify. And what I want with this
00:22:53.020question is, what does this transition away from capitalism tangibly look like? You know,
00:22:59.000how do we practically get there? And are there any examples of the ways in which we can create
00:23:05.220positive feedback loops so this is the 60 trillion dollar question right which is the what does the
00:23:13.640post-capitalist world look like and i'm not sure there is a blueprint and not that that's what
00:23:19.400you're saying at all but i don't think there is one you know i come much more from like an anarchist
00:23:24.400political philosophy which essentially just believes that our way out is self-organization
00:23:30.220at a local level and the tough part of the situation we're in right now is what globalization
00:23:36.640has done is enmeshed us all into this matrix of violence and extraction and oppression you know
00:23:42.920none of us are free none of us are outside of the system you know some maybe more than others but
00:23:47.680even people who i know who are deeply political and deeply conscious and living in alternative
00:23:53.260communities you know they're still buying clothes that are created in sweatshops and using technology
00:23:58.400that's built by slave labor and all of that right and what a totalizing system like our capitalist
00:24:05.320system does is it really sort of enmeshes us in that and so as the system breaks down and the
00:24:10.920boom-bust cycles get deeper and sea levels rise because of the changing atmosphere and species go
00:24:17.780extinct because of climate change and all of that we're all going to be so deeply affected by this
00:24:22.120and i think one of the things we have to start thinking about is what does the transition
00:24:27.360infrastructure look like? And how do we actually start living the values of the post-capitalist
00:24:33.140world now? How do we start behaving as if we're already free? And that's going to look
00:24:38.560very different depending on your context and geography and cultural histories and all of
00:24:47.220those things. And so I think part of what needs to happen is we do need to start creating these
00:24:52.540experiments outside of the capitalist system, alternative communities and non-debt-based
00:24:58.220currencies and cooperative ownership structures and mutual aid networks and all of these things
00:25:03.160that are already happening. But at the same time, we can create the best systems outside
00:25:08.340the structure. But if we don't have a deeper spiritual practice and a community of practice
00:25:15.700to do that work with, we're just going to replace one system for another because we're going to
00:25:19.660import the values of hierarchy and oppression and patriarchy and all of those things that are
00:25:25.020embedded within the capitalist logic. And so there's a, you know, a series of things that
00:25:28.960have to happen simultaneously. And there's a great line from Dieter Dum, who's the founder
00:25:34.100of Tamera, an alternative community in Portugal, where he says, the mind is the base station of
00:25:39.340capitalism. We could create all this transition infrastructure outside of the system. But unless
00:25:44.940we do that deep programming, reprogramming, and decoding ourselves, we are going to repeat
00:25:50.520the mistakes of the system. And if we also try to opt out without understanding how deeply
00:25:56.840interconnected we all are, we're going to create these little safe havens outside of deep structural
00:26:03.640change at a global level. Yes, if we don't do the deep inner work, and let's say collapse happens
00:26:10.020this month, the masses would just rebuild something extremely similar to the system
00:26:16.720that we're in now. And I really appreciate what you've been saying about seeing Trump in all of
00:26:24.660us, saying the 1% in all of us, seeing that we aren't separate and it's none of our faults,
00:26:30.640but it is all of our faults. And just understanding that dichotomy, the self-responsibility, but not
00:26:37.600getting crushed by the shame that comes with this cultural destruction, really. I want to dive back
00:26:46.040into anarchism before we move on, because, you know, where I see global capitalism is based upon
00:26:53.300the tenets of competitiveness and material wealth, anarchism advocates self-governed societies based
00:27:00.460on voluntary institutions. So while I, you know, absolutely agree that frameworks that concentrate
00:27:06.920wealth at the top lead to undemocratic governance, you know, there just remains some vagueness
00:27:12.540to me that I struggle with. Because successful anarchy requires willing participation of every
00:27:19.420individual. So with such a varied spectrum of human temperament and determination, do you see
00:27:26.800a way in which we can scale up anarchist principles among a network of smaller communities around the
00:27:34.220globe? Yeah, I do. I'm not sure. I think we're given this like false choice that either there'll
00:27:41.720be this centralizing government that will sort of coordinate our efforts or there's going to be
00:27:48.380this sort of breakdown and disillusion of organizing at a small scale. I think anarchism
00:27:54.680is a word has been tainted because it's the dominant culture needs to taint it because it
00:28:00.120is in many ways the only sane and viable alternative. But whatever we call it, even the
00:28:03.960idea of localism, to create strong, local, resilient communities and economies actually
00:28:08.820doesn't require every single member to be actively participating. What it requires is a ratification
00:28:15.460of power. And so what direct democracy is about is not necessarily everyone voting on everything
00:28:22.200all the time, but people voting on who they want to make the decisions for them and in what way
00:28:28.380and through what processes. And that's what we don't have. So the democracy we have in this sort
00:28:33.420of like electoral system is we are given a very sort of finite set of constraints. And within that
00:28:41.100we vote one crooked politician or the other and or one crooked party versus the other. And there's
00:28:47.940no choice in that. You know, there's a principle in anarchism called subsidiarity, which is
00:28:53.720basically de-evolution of power down to the people who are most affected and allowing the people who
00:29:00.120are most affected to make those decisions on who will decide for them. And I'm not opposed to
00:29:05.660government in a blanket sense, even at a national level or a state level or whatever. But I think
00:29:11.940the role of government should be to localize power because the people who are living in community
00:29:18.020know how to best govern themselves. And that's the kind of system we have to figure out. And
00:29:23.200actually, that system will be, for using capitalist language and understanding, it actually will be
00:29:29.560much more efficient. And it would probably cost us much less. And we would be much happier. And
00:29:34.640people would have much stronger sense of autonomy and agency in their own lives. And I actually
00:29:40.320don't think it's impossible. We also have to look at this from like a historical context.
00:29:45.200In some ways, globalized capitalism was sort of necessary to get us to a certain point.
00:29:51.720it's clearly outlived its purpose. It's clearly creating much more damage and pain and violence
00:29:58.640and the destruction of our planet than probably ever needed to. But it did create this global
00:30:04.420infrastructure and this connective tissue and things like the internet and sort of an understanding
00:30:10.060of other cultures in a way that we probably wouldn't have had. And so the question is,
00:30:15.600how do we take the best aspects of this globalized system and synthesize them and take the best
00:30:20.820aspects of anarchism and localism and synthesize them and the best aspects of western culture and
00:30:28.640technique and synthesize them and indigenous culture and the original wisdom which have been
00:30:34.780you know proportionately misrepresented if at all in our dominant culture and go back to those
00:30:41.420values and decide for ourselves what we want the post-capitalist world to look like and i don't
00:30:46.500really know the answer to that and i don't think there's a blueprint to that but i think there's
00:30:50.740a possibility in those ideas that is much more potent and alluring and mythologically resonant
00:30:57.480than the bankrupt system of trickle-down and the insible hand and the market-based
00:31:03.460secular ideology that we've been given to date as the only option.
00:31:09.320One thing I was thinking about in that discussion is, with so much land being gobbled up by
00:31:20.260global capitalist markets and far away owners, I question private property. I'm just wondering
00:31:29.140how do we tangibly dissolve the boundaries of private property on a small scale,
00:31:34.680as well as larger scales, such as national borders, particularly when the protection
00:31:39.500of such imaginary lines is so highly militarized. I guess in other words, I'm asking how do we
00:31:45.960re-inhabit the commons so that we can put these other practices into place yeah so this is such
00:31:54.640a critical question because if we look at what's happened historically we used to have many ways
00:31:59.920to access the abundant wealth that exists on this planet we used to have trade and barter and gift
00:32:07.580and hunting and gathering and fishing and all of those things and now what's happened quite
00:32:12.900intentionally is that there's a monopoly on access to goods and services through debt-based
00:32:18.460capital that is printed by private banks and federal reserve systems. And so the commons
00:32:25.920itself has been privatized, and there's no other way to access the commons except through debt-based
00:32:32.280capital. And in order to acquire that, you have to succumb to the logic of the system, which is
00:32:36.900psychopathic and short-termist and greedy and life-denying. So you either opt into their system
00:32:42.380or you don't and so one of the things we have to start thinking about is how do we create wealth
00:32:49.200in all its myriad of forms outside the existing capitalist structure and there's many ways to do
00:32:56.920that right just the very act of gifting undermines the logic of the capitalist system which is all
00:33:03.840about transactionalism and commodification and all of those things and so there is a way to
00:33:09.840undermine the logic, but we have to do it at a much more structural level. And I think there's
00:33:14.500a sort of a suite of ideas that are emerging in the global consciousness, you know, one of them
00:33:19.840being universal basic income, right? Imagine everyone in the world got 20,000 or $30,000 a
00:33:25.480year. You know, it's an idea that got resonance between both the left and the right. And of
00:33:31.420course, for the wrong reasons, the right wants to cut social security and social benefits and
00:33:35.800all of those things. And the right wants to bring back some kind of welfare state and prop up the
00:33:40.100economy through sort of Keynesian style spending. But there's a broader game at play here, which is
00:33:45.980you can imagine that if we created our own currency, whether that's a cryptocurrency or
00:33:51.500just, let's say, a tool to administer this, you could create a currency that was a complementary
00:33:56.180currency outside of the debt-based system that sort of had more of the values we would like to
00:34:03.480For example, it could be a demurrage currency, a negative interest currency.
00:34:08.380Money could decrease in value like every other commodity, grain, cattle, etc.
00:34:12.480These things don't have compound interest.
00:34:14.680They're not growing exponentially and therefore debt would not grow exponentially.
00:34:20.060And it would also disincentivize hoarding.
00:34:22.260If 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.
00:34:30.880It would also free people from the tyranny of bullshit jobs and help create a spiritual creative renaissance on this planet if the sort of algorithm of that money, if you will, accounted for carbon miles or some other way to measure local spending.
00:34:47.960You could incentivize people to create strong local economies and disincentivize them from buying globalized goods.
00:34:54.060You know, there's no reason we should be shipping asparagus from Thailand to Vancouver, right?
00:34:58.780And if the externalities that are now just so casually put out into the system by corporations who don't pay any of those costs, if those were internalized within this kind of system, you would vastly shift the way goods and services are valued.
00:35:15.180And then you could also account for things like income inequality, right? If you and I are both cobblers and you're more charismatic than I am or you have a piece of technology, this type of currency could account for knowing how much income I'm getting from my livelihood versus you.
00:35:30.960And then I could have, let's say, a higher purchasing power to sort of account for those types of income inequalities.
00:35:36.780So you could see how these new systems that are emerging and these new ideas that are emerging, even though they're coming from the old logic, if repurposed, could sort of vastly shift the structure of how we interact.
00:35:49.420In some ways, it doesn't matter what the ideas are.
00:35:51.800But what matters is the values that are at the heart of these ideas, which is why localism or anarchism is such a potent philosophy.
00:35:59.780Because it's not about the mechanics or the delivery mechanism of how these things happen.
00:36:04.320The question is, do these things share the values of altruism and cooperation and generosity and interdependence and valuing the commons over privatization?
00:36:15.960And all of these things that we know are so necessary for living sort of a thriving existence and existence that's in symbiosis with nature and a sort of set of values that we actually aspire to as a civilization.
00:36:29.780And that's what's really critical about all of the post-capitalist alternatives.
00:36:35.300As you were responding to that question, what was popping into my mind was, you know, we have things that are local and, you know, putting these systems into place that, like you said, could make life actually thrive.
00:36:51.400And then it's funny because we're sold this other story that to make things thrive, we need technology. We need the solar plants. We need new and better and more efficient. Like you had said, I love how you had talked about the word efficient as this colonial word.
00:37:09.120And so I was thinking about your article from, I think it's Standing at the Gates, Our Generation Has to Convert Ideas of Change into Action. And, you know, this idea that the faithful validation of elitist science has just glorified technological advancement at all costs. And it's bringing rise to the belief that human ingenuity has the ability to overcome the limits of Gaia.
00:37:36.440So I'd love if you could speak about the danger of techno-utopian worldview and this growing field of artificial intelligence and just the flaws of such scientific progress.
00:37:50.400Yeah, I think there's many spells that are cast through the dominant Western culture.
00:37:57.780And 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.
00:38:16.300and this idea of ingenuity and competence, that somehow human beings can get themselves
00:38:21.840out of any situation and solve any problem. And I think the opposite of that is not
00:38:27.800misanthropy. It's not to say human beings cannot do that, but it's to recognize our own hubris
00:38:34.280and the limitations of the natural world. And when you combine this fallacy of progress as linear
00:38:40.380with this idea of ingenuity and what's important for us to understand is well where is this message
00:38:47.420coming from and who's actually controlling the agenda of technology and if you look at for
00:38:54.060example the sort of silicon valley the largely these people have gone to the same elite schools
00:39:01.620the stanfords and the yales and the mit's or you know the indian equivalent iit and all of these
00:39:08.320sort of highly rationalist, highly limited types of education. So they learn to be clever,
00:39:15.220but not to be wise. And they're completely disconnected from nature. They're the largest
00:39:20.620prime beneficiaries of the capitalist system. And they then have a monopoly on the human
00:39:27.420relationship with technology. And so we're actually developing our relationship with nature
00:39:33.080through these sort of elite institutions that are largely white, that are largely male,
00:39:37.680that are largely rationalist. And that is hugely problematic. And their level of optimism
00:39:44.560is also problematic because they don't really feel the effects of their own externalities,
00:39:49.740or they don't feel the consequences of the destruction that has been left in the wake
00:39:54.760of their way of living. If you're a developer in San Francisco, or working in an artificial
00:40:00.780intelligence lab at mit what do you really know about how 99 of humanity is living their lives
00:40:08.240what do they know about the people living in the slums of bombay or the townships of johannesburg
00:40:14.580very little and their concern is also very little like actually we're told that not believing in
00:40:22.200human ingenuity is misanthropic but actually over emphasizing technology and sort of linear progress
00:40:30.340is the most misanthropic act. And it's also an act that is anti-life in itself, because it doesn't
00:40:37.780take into account our symbiotic relationship with nature. We're not at the peak of evolution. We
00:40:43.760somehow think we've evolved outside of our host mother, outside of Gaia. But actually, we're just
00:40:49.900the youngest species in an evolutionary order. And we may be required in some ways as a companion
00:40:57.240species, but not if we destroy all other life, you know, as a consequence of our behavior. I think
00:41:04.920James Lovelock and others have talked a lot about this, that in Gaia theory, that we're not a
00:41:11.140necessary species in the same way as sort of a keystone species is in an ecosystem. Gaia is
00:41:18.620deciding whether we're worth it or not, you know. On the one hand, sort of 200 species a day are
00:41:24.080going extinct. And on the other hand, we may be part of some bigger plan to bring Gaian life out
00:41:30.300into the universe. Who knows, right? And I think what's being decided in some ways, the sort of0.98
00:41:35.680jury is out, is will we learn from our mistakes? And will we become, once again, a companion species
00:41:42.480that is in the service of life? Or will we continue to be sort of selfish, consumptive,
00:41:49.120wetico cannibalistic species that believes in the hubris of our own technology and our own creation0.99
00:41:55.780and in this narcissist way destroy ourselves and most of life in the process1.00
00:42:02.360take me back again to where i lost my way and gave up everything the beating of a drum
00:42:22.060to follow and become just left of center storm disheveled slightly worn right back where i
00:42:31.420started from through the gates of a sacred holy place white statues in the drapes right back where
00:42:40.860i started from right back where i started from right back where i started from right back where i
00:46:53.500of why are we contributing to the system and really go into the deep self-exploration,
00:46:59.920which is also a collective exploration. And what that requires is the transcendence of subject
00:47:05.980object duality. In the Western system, and I'm using generalities here, this is also true in
00:47:13.200Eastern systems. This is also true in Buddhism and Islam and all of these institutionalized
00:47:19.560constructs we are somehow taught that the primary identity is the individual identity just think
00:47:26.280about every interaction we have in the outside world we're filling out forms with our name on it
00:47:31.600we have to show our ids and our passports and we're asked what we do for a living and it's
00:47:36.340just this reification of the eye and of the self and of the ego and then we're told if we're lucky
00:47:43.480that occasionally there's this universal identity that we can get a glimpse of
00:47:48.180through mystical experiences or psychedelic experiences or whatever.
00:47:52.860But if you look at the great mystical traditions,
00:47:56.180whether that's indigenous cultures or Sufism in Islam
00:47:58.880or Kabbalistic traditions in Judaism or Gnostic traditions in Christianity,
00:48:04.180the primary identity is the universal identity.
00:48:07.540And the secondary identity is the small I, is the self.
00:48:10.780And the goal of a lot of these practices, including tantra, including the use of sacraments like ayahuasca and San Pedro and Iboga and all of these traditions, is to sort of transcend the subject-object duality, which is the most difficult thing to do.
00:48:27.300But we have this architecture around us, this social architecture, this fabric that prevents us from doing it.
00:48:33.640So it's this sort of like double challenge of not only not seeing ourselves as separate from the living world and from each other and from nature and from our ancestors, but also doing that within a context that reifies the individual at every single step.
00:48:51.520And that's really the challenge of spirituality.
00:48:53.660And this is when I talk about mysticism, what I mean.
00:48:56.020All mysticism is is the direct experience with the transcendent other, whatever you want to call it, God, creator, great spirit, Allah.
00:49:07.200For example, I come from a Sufi tradition.
00:49:10.200And in the Sufi tradition, which is the mystical branch of Islam, what we believe is Allah is just a metaphor for the universe.
00:49:16.700And we are, Allah, unfolding on itself and becoming self-aware of itself.
00:49:21.000And 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.
00:49:39.220And to hold that perspective is a very challenging thing, especially when you don't have a tradition to do it within.
00:49:45.980And I'm not a traditionalist by any means. 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. 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.
00:50:09.020And the last thing I'll say is I also really believe in the plants. 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.
00:50:27.840These plants are hundreds of millions of years older than us in evolutionary terms.
00:50:33.880All the great civilizations we know have had symbiotic relationships with sacrament master plants, teacher plants, except for Western culture.
00:50:44.440And 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.
00:51:00.200whether those are capitalistic or institutional religious beliefs or family cultural beliefs that are products of nationalism or whatever.
00:51:12.180All of these limiting beliefs are preventing us from sort of achieving this state.
00:51:16.980And without sort of achieving this state, it's very hard to get to that place of subject-object duality
00:51:21.560because it just then becomes this intellectual thing you're trying to understand rather than actually becoming it.
00:51:27.560And that's really the key, I think, and it's sort of a challenge for us as a civilization.
00:51:32.160How do we take these things from abstract knowledge to deep, innate wisdom?
00:51:36.360And I don't know of a sure method than humbling yourself in front of the plant.
00:51:41.160When I say things like that, people think I'm somehow being dogmatic, right?
00:51:51.080My mom meditates every day from 3 to 5 in the morning.
00:51:53.740she has since she was seven years old and she took a vow to do that and she can get into these
00:51:59.300states through that practice or other sufi practices like the whirling dervish practice
00:52:05.740of the dance or yoga or other forms of meditation or chanting or tantra or whatever there's many
00:52:12.880ways to sort of get to this state of transcending subject object duality but what the plants do is
00:52:20.000they're the direct emissaries of Gaia, and they hold their own consciousness. And the communion
00:52:26.960with those plants provides insight, and it's not the answer. You still have to do the work,
00:52:32.500and different plants will give different messages. I think it is another tool and another practice
00:52:38.260and another avenue to get to these states that are somehow sort of disconnected from us,
00:52:44.380largely because the dominant culture villainizes them, and that's why I overemphasize them, right?
00:52:49.240And anything the dominant culture tells us we shouldn't do or makes illegal or diminishes even culturally is sort of a clue to where we should look.
00:53:01.340People ask me, well, you know, what does the post-capitalist world look like?
00:53:04.660And, you know, obviously I don't know.
00:53:07.240But what I say is just like we take the dominant capitalist system and like turn it on its head.
00:53:11.780And it's most likely going to look pretty much the opposite of what our current system looks like.
00:53:16.500So in our current system, we value abstract thinking like high velocity trading and running a hedge fund. And we devalue important work like raising a family and educating our children. And we essentially just have to do the opposite of what wetico culture is doing. And the plants are the sort of ground zero of that starting place.
00:53:38.600Well, I couldn't agree with you more that plants are the ground zero. And from personal experience, just being with plants, whether I'm ingesting them or breathing them in or just being quiet with plants has completely guided my existence and fulfilled me in a way that I didn't even know was possible until I began a relationship with plants.
00:54:08.600and soil, and fungi, and just the whole community that creates life itself. So I am very much
00:54:15.620in agreement with that. Just getting out of the human mind, the human language, the human
00:54:21.240supremacy, and opening up to all the different forms of communication, and all the different
00:54:25.500spirits, and to me, their kin, and to be able to listen to them, and their needs, and their
00:54:32.380wisdoms is just so, it just expands the heart and the mind in a way that I think is mandatory to
00:54:42.080really begin to understand what we could transition into. I think it gets tricky when
00:54:48.520we stay too much human centered. And I know for me, it can kind of get me into vortexes where I
00:54:54.820can't get out of it. But when I open myself up to the intelligence of plants and life,
00:55:00.800things become so much more clear and priorities shift drastically where I want to go back to
00:55:09.960wrap up this conversation is bringing up the rules the organization that you founded and
00:55:16.460you know one thing I found really interesting is many of us think about the World Bank or
00:55:23.080the Red Cross or basically thinking that there's other institutions that are taking care of things
00:55:29.180you know money is going into places that are actually helping support people in other places
00:55:35.580and it's really not true you know that's just one thought i had but i would really just love to open
00:55:41.160up the floor to you and encourage you to speak about the rules but also what is the most passionate
00:55:46.760thing that you are driven towards right now with your studies and activism and research
00:55:52.940it's a great question and it's sort of an ongoing inquiry i feel like part of what we're
00:55:59.900trying to do at the rules is help bring what seem like radical ideas and alternatives into
00:56:07.220the mainstream discourse in a way that makes them feel like common sense and to expand the
00:56:13.800overton window you know the concept in sociology of what it is deemed acceptable to discuss and
00:56:20.000sort of shatter this illusion that there is no alternative. It's a broad inquiry. And a lot of
00:56:27.700what we're thinking about right now is the role of something like universal basic income, but also
00:56:32.400things like regenerative farming. We know that certain types of organic, no-till regenerative
00:56:39.720farming are sequestering huge amounts of carbon that if done on scale, we could probably not only
00:56:46.480mitigate climate change or potentially reverse it. And a lot of these solutions already exist.
00:56:53.640And a lot of the sort of community models that are inherently post-capitalist already exist.
00:56:58.960You asked me for inspiration earlier, and I think I either got distracted or evaded the question
00:57:03.740somehow. But I think communities like the Zapatistas, the autonomous community and region
00:57:09.780in Chiapas. The Zapatistas are this amazing group of people, farmer peasant activists,
00:57:17.020who have really created the post-capitalist world and have created an education system
00:57:20.560and an ideology that's deeply rooted in indigenous wisdom. And we're seeing it happen
00:57:25.260all around the world. And what we're really interested in is finding these alternatives
00:57:29.840and helping to amplify and promote these alternatives. But I think what's necessary
00:57:34.520is both resistance and renewal we can't just fight the old system which is like where the
00:57:40.760the traditional left is stuck for lots of reasons a friend of mine named bio okomalafi likes to say
00:57:47.460part of the crisis is the way we're responding to the crisis and that's definitely true for the
00:57:53.900activist community and for the left like we're in this old reactionary model of just being in
00:57:59.780the resistance. And I think we also have to be in the renewal. We have to create these alternatives
00:58:05.260and we have to live them. And part of what we're trying to do is also live those values ourselves.
00:58:11.780And this is also a sort of critique I have with the traditional left is that there's a sort of
00:58:16.900meanness and a crassness and desire for sort of efficiency that makes people not necessarily that
00:58:23.640nice to each other. And I think if we want to create a resonant field where we're attracting
00:58:29.040other people to come to these alternatives. We have to create a culture where people want to be
00:58:33.360there, where we are treating each other with reverence and awe and appreciation and bringing
00:58:40.060in the spiritual practices, not amputating one side of our life for another. And a lot of the
00:58:47.320new age sort of spiritual movement is very fearful of being in the political spectrum
00:58:54.000for lots of reasons. And, you know, I think one of them is self-inflicted by the left is
00:58:58.460we haven't created an enticing space for people to convene. And that's what I loved about Standing
00:59:04.120Rock. You know, Standing Rock really did that. It really sort of created the sense that the
00:59:08.160political is spiritual, that this is ceremony, this is prayer. And it's not good enough just
00:59:13.540to pray in absence of doing something about it, that these two actually work together.
00:59:18.480And I think that's this sort of the new way that's emerging and what we want to be part of
00:59:23.220in whatever way we can contribute. And we don't necessarily have the answers, but there's this
00:59:27.360gathering that's happening. There's this sort of merger of tribes and medicines and approaches
00:59:32.140that is coming together to create this new way. And I think what the political world is starting
00:59:37.900to understand and the world of activists is that if we're not rooted in spirit and in ceremony and
00:59:43.500in prayer, we're just operating on sort of one limited rationalist plane that actually serves
00:59:50.860the likes of the World Banks and the Monsantos and the UN and all of the apparatchiks of
00:59:57.060neoliberal capitalism. And so we actually, we have to conjure the spirits. You know,
01:00:02.200we have to ask our ancestors for help. And in that sort of merger of those, our spiritual
01:00:08.400evolution will speed up, as will our political evolution. And what I'm seeing happening with
01:00:13.620the New Age community is there used to be a lot of, well, I don't want to get involved in politics0.90
01:00:18.660because it creates dualism but fearing dualism also creates dualism and their understanding that
01:00:26.180that there has to be a more integral yoga which is like what Sri Aurobindo the great Indian mystic
01:00:32.940of the the 50s and 60s used to talk about is the aim is not to meditate in a cave but to change the
01:00:39.880third dimension that is the application of the spiritual work and somehow these two are coming
01:00:45.200together in a way that is going to shift consciousness, there really is no other option.
01:00:52.060You know, at best, we have 20 years left of the Western way of living.
01:00:55.780Can you imagine perpetual economic growth, you know, even at 3% for another 20 years or
01:01:01.520nanotechnology or artificial intelligence?
01:01:04.880It's impossible for these things to continue growing at these exponential rates.
01:01:09.320And so we have to get to a state as a species that we go from this sort of immature adolescence of both at all costs and selfishness and cannibalism to a more mature, sort of steady state, interdependent, globalized approach that is based in local community, but also in spiritual practice.