Rich Blundell: Entangled in the Cosmos
Exploring the Creative Life Force
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Today, our search lands us in conversation with Dr. Rich Blundell, a scientist and cultural communicator who invites us to explore the profound wisdom of nature through the lens of his unique philosophy, Oika. Rich’s work challenges us to reimagine our relationship with the natural world, encouraging us to see ourselves as integral threads in a vast tapestry of life that has existed for over 13.8 billion years.
Rich's journeys across the globe have shaped a worldview bridging scientific inquiry with the poetic wisdom of nature. Offering a pathway to personal and planetary healing, rooted in the deep continuities between humans and the environment.
In our increasingly fragmented world, Rich’s philosophy of Oika is a beacon of hope—representing a call to awaken to the beauty, the joy, and the resilience that nature offers, fostering a sense of interconnectedness that transcends conventional ecological and economic systems.
Rich’s insights are a reminder that by nurturing our relationship with the natural world, we can unlock a creative potential that is vital for our collective future.
Join us as we discover the power of curiosity, the beauty of ecological alignment, and the promise of a future grounded in the wisdom of nature.
Guest
Dr. Rich Blundell is an ecologist, artist, and cultural communicator who researches Big History, an emerging field that seeks to reveal and explain the interconnections between Earth, Life, and Humanity within a cosmic context. He is the founder of Oika, a science-based, art-driven cultural movement revealing the intricate relationships between humans and nature, and emphasizing the profound impacts these connections have on our personal and collective well-being.
With a Ph.D. in Cosmic Evolution, Rich has dedicated his career to exploring and communicating the symbiotic relationships within ecosystems. His innovative approach integrates scientific understanding with creative expression, fostering a holistic appreciation for the environment.
Dr. Blundell has received numerous grants and awards including an ongoing TIDES Innovators award, The National Science Foundation grant for Science Out There and The Deep Time Values video award for An Earth Story. Blundell’s creative video work has appeared on PBS, National Geographic and numerous social media platforms. He is currently the Scientist in Residence at the Maria Mitchell Association on Nantucket Island. His unique perspective encourages us to view nature not as a resource to hold dominion over but as a partner in our quest for sustainability and harmony.
You can learn more about Dr. Rich and the principles of Oika at:
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Rich: Well, just wanted to say that I appreciate what you're doing. I had a chance to look at your content and your background and your work. I see similar just a desire to make a difference in the world and to, in some small way, we're not shooting for a small way but in any way that we can to kind of just lighten the world up a little bit, and I noticed that in your work too, so I just wanted to say that as well.
[00:00:24] John: I think we're all on the same team, right?
[00:00:26] Rich: We happen to be living in a time where a lot of chickens are coming home to roost. You know, a lot of the things that we have neglected to take care . In the world are sort of coming back to make sure that they are processed, you know, in terms of the way that our economic system has treated people, the way that old inherited narratives and things like that have kind of manifest some of that inner work, that is hard to do.
[00:00:58] And so my point, I guess, is just that it's very tempting to see the other as the enemy or the problem. And I think speaking to what you're saying there is that they're not, that we're all in this together. We are all on the same team.
[00:01:13] but I'm always a little bit cautious around that idea because it's easy to slip into a kind of naivete about that, and and it will come back and bite you. And then where are we, you know, we're just bitten, we're just bitten and that doesn't. And being bitten doesn't serve our mission either.
[00:01:34] So
[00:01:35] John: It's like there's those two truths that you have to hold simultaneously where you're sitting with this grace that you can find and allow for people, but at the same time, speak truth to power and stand for your own beliefs. And, Have that moral courage at the other side of that's, I think, many times just really difficult.
[00:01:56] But maybe that's been our struggle for forever.
[00:01:59] Rich: But now I think like we're getting to see it in a way that is new, in human history, the way that we get to see people in the way that I don't know what your politics are or anything like that, or, what you consume in terms of like news and things like that. But when I catch glimpses of. Mainstream news or even, and I listened to people that are positioned on other political spaces than myself. And I listen to what they're saying. And it sounds so foreign in some ways. It sounds so not foreign, like from another country, but foreign. And like, how do you get to that?
[00:02:43] How do you get to that way of believing? It sounds quite insane. And I'm sure the way I would talk sounds insane to them, man. But so I guess my point is just like, we're getting to hear those voices and Try to make sense of them like and I do try to make sense of them I try to understand how does a person have this point of view and I think I understand Not that I've lived their experiences But just like that how our system and how our culture has created an outlook like the one I'm hearing And I try to be empathetic with it, and I also try to see the wisdom in it, there was a time when I was listening to the other side of the political divide, if that's what you have to call it, but, and I would try to say to myself what's the wisdom in this person's view?
[00:03:31] This person must be living a life where that political opinion is grounded in their lived experience. It must be grounded in their wisdom. And I want to know what that wisdom is. And so I'm waiting for it, and I'm hoping that it's there. But more often than not now I'm realizing that there isn't a wisdom there.
[00:03:51] There's only a grievance. There's only an injury. There's only a fear or a sense of wanting retribution or a sense of, an injury really. And so, I don't know why I'm suddenly voicing all this to you.
[00:04:06] John: These are the kind of searches that I'm looking for because, I'm a very independent, but many people would look at me as a very liberal human being, right? Identify in the LGBT community. I grew up in South Texas. My family is the polar opposite of me.
[00:04:21] Rich: Mm hmm.
[00:04:22] John: I am the black sheep of that. I took off from my family a long time ago and I'm making inroads to try to reconnect with people now that I've gone through the trauma healing and all that sort of sense. But I can feel where they're coming from.
[00:04:34] Rich: Can you explain it, to talk about that.
[00:04:37] John: You see people who've just been left behind, one of the things I found really fascinating with what you're doing. Is you're making these relational connections that there's this world that's not transactional.
[00:04:49] For me, it's all connected. Everything is connected. We are in a closed system. So when we extract the value and commodify humans without the idea that there's a circularity to it. This is only going to go on for so long. Last year I was dating somebody who wasn't from a Western society. Um, they had grown up in, um, a Lesotho village.
[00:05:17] Rich: I listened to that episode.
[00:05:18] John: And they had a profound impact on the way I framed my own belief systems and thinking. And it was really nice to have this sort of sense of like, Oh, there are, they're not just like this truth and that truth and this truth and that truth, but there are infinite truths. I think there's something really interesting in taking just that idea in and of itself
[00:05:38] Rich: How do you have that conversation?
[00:05:39] It doesn't, it never gets that thoughtful. I had a conversation with somebody from, and I don't think it has to do with any particular state or anything like that, but I happen to be in South Texas and we were sitting at a dinner table and we sat down and, you know, I'm from New England, which, it's like a tiny compared to Texas.
[00:06:00] And I was telling her about what we were talking about, the, um, the You know, there's like these little catchphrases like don't mess with Texas, was saying how The phrase that's on my license plate when I lived in New Hampshire, which I really loved was live free or die, love how it says that.
[00:06:19] And she looked at me and she goes, yeah, but I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of anybody from New Hampshire, and I had to like process that. Her whole sort of value system was am I afraid of this person? Am I afraid of it? Like, and I was trying to say, like, this is an expression of something that we value.
[00:06:41] We value our freedom, our liberty. It's that whole give me liberty or give me death thing. Live free or die. It isn't about what we're afraid of. It's about what we cherish. It's about what we love. It's about what we love. And she wanted nothing to do with that. The whole conversation was grounded in, Am I afraid of it or not?
[00:07:00] I said, Yeah, I said, but this phrase, as opposed to like, Don't mess with Texas, live free or die, is just more about an expression of what we love, not about what we're afraid of. And she was so offended that she got up and left. Like, couldn't, and that's what I'm saying, like, So how do you have this?
[00:07:17] What?
[00:07:18] John: She was hurt.
[00:07:19] Rich: Hurt or hurt?
[00:07:21] John: Hurt. She felt something that maybe resonated with her and then she didn't want to agree
[00:07:24] Rich: So I guess that's my question. It's like, well, how do you have these conversations if someone's just gonna feel hurt and leave
[00:07:31] John: yeah.
[00:07:31] him. and feel offended? It just made the, it just made the political divide worse to express I, my intention was not to hurt her or to like create another thing to divide us.
[00:07:44] Rich: It was to just say how much I love freedom, which you'd think would be kind of high on the Texan ideological radar that, that they value. Yeah. And, but it got turned into something that should have, could have potentially, we could have, in fact, I thought that was what it was. It was something that we could have agreed on.
[00:08:07] But instead it turned into something to make it just, and so that's my question is how, how do we have these conversations? How do we get beyond the superficial things into the things that the deeper infinite truth that you're talking about that unite us?
[00:08:24] John: I was listening to another episode of a podcast and they were talking about how to process through grief and trauma.
[00:08:31] And they were saying there are certain things that make up the relationship with people. And one of those things is distance. There's time there's how many types of day to day interactions you have with someone, how many nodes are connected between that sort of relationship, but then also distance.
[00:08:47] And they're having a naturalistic viewpoint of this sort of relationship, which I've, I was sensing and was agreeing with and whatever vibing with, but that made me think about something that whenever I decided to break from my family. Because of the things that I wasn't capable of dealing with that I took off my body said go and I'm wondering if we need more time together. We need to be in closer proximity to each other. I can't think about moving to California because that's where my people are. We can't maybe it's this idea of this tribalism that isn't just a natural human response, but maybe it's been propelled by some of the technological things that we are dealing with right now, like social media but it makes me think about this idea of the literal physical connection to people. If I get in a room with someone, I can light that room up. I'm a charismatic person doing that over zoom is a very different thing.
[00:09:48] Rich: mm
[00:09:49] John: So there's, there's physiological things that are going on to that. I think we're because of our isolation, we're dealing with it.
[00:09:58] Rich: Yeah. Well, I think you also kind of hit the nail on the head with the, just the social media thing and the effect that these algorithms have had, the unintended effects. Maybe they were not so much unforeseen, but they're definitely, I mean, I, you, I can feel it, you know, I can feel it.
[00:10:16] Just the, the tension and the, the fragility of relationships that the algorithms. By expressing their power, by injecting themselves into the communication and into the relational dynamics of humans, and because they are extractive, they are so transactional. I don't know if, can you feel that? I've been able to feel it. I think I started to really feel it back in like 2007.
[00:10:48] I got on Facebook really early, I think it was in like 2006. And then by 2010, I remember just not being able to even do Facebook anymore I felt like it was like an allergic reaction to what it was doing. It was trying to constrain me and was affecting the way I think, and I could feel it doing that. I could feel it. I just feel like that, man, the, the repercussions of that, we are so in the, in the throes of right now.
[00:11:16] John: I have this feeling that it's a bigger deal than like the tobacco industry I think there's a bigger societal impact that we don't understand yet, or that we're just starting to wrap our heads around with.
[00:11:28] The disassociation of the human experience from the body. Our brains are natural organic things. They exist in natural organic ways. that have existed for many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many years. And to have this sort of punctuated equilibria, right? We go through this long evolutionary trend where we're trending but then there's this massive disruption.
[00:11:55] There can only be some negative consequences from that, that we need to parse out. One of the things that I thought was interesting that you talked about Was this idea of the difference between Kronos and Kairos? And I think it's one of those things where similar to like adaptive radiation responses where you get pinged with more radiation and then you become more resilient because of it. I think that we're at that point where we got to figure it out.
[00:12:22] Rich: yeah. Well, first of all, I, you know, with respect to your comment about the body, I think you're right. And I think that there is a community I mean, I've kind of brushed up against it in a relatively superficial way in academia that deals with the embodiment community. There is one in, in academia, and it spills over into the arts because there's like performance people, but there's a whole thing.
[00:12:54] They just call themselves embodiment people. Like there's a whole embodiment thing. And I've watched them from the periphery. And I think they're on to some of that. I think that's an incredibly important movement. It's an, in incre, I don't mean that as a pun, but it's an incredibly important part of this thing you're talking about this, this transformation, this large scale human developmental transformation. However, I think if you take the embodiment idea and go with it to further, you end up. at another place, which hasn't been explored nearly as thoroughly yet, which is called the inactive movement.
[00:13:41] So when you do thoroughly explore The sort of dynamics of embodiment and returning to the body, understanding how our bodies carry an evolutionary story that's registered in our bodies. You also encounter the mind, as part of the body, that the mind is part of the body, the mind is embodied.
[00:14:06] And then you start thinking about, well, the mind, what is the mind with respect to the body? When you do that, and I'm saying this for a reason, because I think it's relevant to what you're talking about, when you discover the mind, you realize that not only are those two things on a continuum, but because the, you find that the body is very much a part of the world, You realize that the mind is very much a part of the world.
[00:14:33] Suddenly, there's this connection that's created between the mind and the world, and I, I think this is somehow related to what you're talking about because, and I don't want to get too abstract here, but, when you suddenly realize that the mind itself is as much a biological and physical feature of the world as the body is, You suddenly realize just how entangled, and that's the word I use in my work, our minds are, our consciousness, our emotions, our feelings, you know, our thoughts are incredibly reflective of the physical world, the geological world, the chemical, and once you realize that your mind, and by the way, when I say mind, I'm not just talking about a mind. I'm talking about the thing that makes you, you like your body. Isn't you, you know what I mean?
[00:15:28] It's your mind. That's really you. My mouth says the words that my mind tells it to say. So when you start connecting your mind to the world, and when I say world, I actually mean nature, the natural world. It just opens up a way of relating to the world that becomes available to anybody and everybody because it's the thing that really deeply unites us. It's that origin story of myself in nature. That's where, that's what my work is all about, which I'm sure I lost a good percentage of whoever was listening to this in that little thing there. And that's why it's hard. But that's, uh, oh, and so why is that relevant to what you're saying?
[00:16:18] Because I think that's part of this transition, this human developmental transition. That we're kind of moving through it. I think that that understanding that I just laid out, is going to play a part in that, you know, the successful transition from, because I study cosmic evolution.
[00:16:40] I'm just going to, I'm just going to admit it. I'm just going to, I'm just going to full disclosure. Okay. I study the evolution of the cosmos. And when I put what I just said, that, that part of the story into the context of the cosmos. It makes perfect sense that this developmental transition that you're talking about is happening.
[00:17:01] It's happened before. In fact, it's the only thing that's ever happened, is that rocks become life, and life becomes mind, and then mind becomes what spirit, I don't know, but the point is, that's the path we're on.
[00:17:17] John: My first understanding of that idea I'm connected to all these things and that maybe I kind of am these things as well was watching this movie Ferngully when I was a real little kid,
[00:17:27] Rich: What's it called?
[00:17:28] John: Ferngully. It's, I think it's a Disney movie actually, um, and it's about loggers coming in to the rainforest to chop it down and the, and the, the rainforest fairies are fighting it back.
[00:17:38] You know, they're the classic story of good versus evil, right? Um, I was a small, small child when I saw this movie and ever since then, I've always believed that I belong in the rainforest. We all belong in the rainforest. We all are the rainforest. They're our ancestors and that's that. So as I've moved through my life and through a society that doesn't believe that is on the logging side of things, right? Whenever I was dating someone last year, I was learning indigenous knowledge, that stuff has been talking about this for forever since before our society was here. And I'm curious, how do we get back to that
[00:18:19] Rich: It's tough because we have to ask that question, in the context of our current circumstance, which is, this constant barrage of media and messages and, that can contradict that sense of we belong in the rainforest.
[00:18:36] There's a lot of inherited narratives about who we are that are just plain inconsistent with the best scientific story. that we have. This is a hard thing to talk about. I'm going to see if I can do it clearly, but I'm a scientist, and I'm not so much practicing science as investigating the scientific knowledge that other scientists have garnered, have created, but that's what I do is I deal with scientific knowledge that other scientists have generated.
[00:19:11] But when I piece that scientific knowledge together, you know, in this. I honest and thorough a way as I can. I try to do it rigorously. The story that it tells about who we are is consistent with not only the indigenous narratives but also it's consistent with a lot of like biblical and spiritual traditions.
[00:19:35] There's a lot of ideas and metaphors that you find in spiritual traditions and even in organized religion that the scientific narrative, when you piece it all together holistically, they're saying the same thing. And so it's easy for me to see how of these traditions and a lot of these organized things, at their core, they've got it right.
[00:20:05] They may have a few of the details wrong, or they may have interpreted it in a way that preserves power in certain ways, but ultimately, the core experience of these things. Whether it's an indigenous understanding, or even a religious understanding, is that everything's connected, that we're on a continuum, and that there's this flow of energy, and this flow of life that flows through us, and that the world itself creates it and us, and we are integral to it.
[00:20:37] So, your question was how do we get back to it? Well, the way I've found to get back to it is to just look at the science. Not any particular science, but look at the whole of science. What is it saying? It's saying the same thing that the Lakota are saying. It's saying the same thing that the original Catholic thing was saying.
[00:20:58] It's saying the same thing that the Muslim traditions and Buddhist traditions are saying. It's saying the same things. And then for me, it's really just a question of, being reminded when I look out my window and I see a leaf, like I'm looking at a leaf right now, and it makes me think about photosynthesis.
[00:21:16] What is it, you know? Well, it's the way that plants have figured out a way to capture the energy of a star that's emitted through a nuclear fusion process, eight light minutes away to generate, a sugar, a carbohydrate. I don't need to get into the But the point is that Photosynthesis is a manifestation of a relationship between this thing we call biology on one rocky planet that's 96 million miles from a star over there.
[00:21:50] The point is that everything I look at is a reminder of this continuity and of this, entanglement. So that's how That's one way to do it, but that requires a tradition, some kind of tradition to, to teach and communicate what we know. And that's what an educational system should do, but our educational system doesn't do that.
[00:22:14] It teaches facts. It teaches isolated knowledge. It doesn't teach knowledge as a story of you. It teaches knowledge for whatever industrial purpose. And so, I think that that's, that's one way to do it, is to remember how to tell that story in a way that brings it home in a personal and intimate way.
[00:22:33] John: You know, you talk about that concept of Oika and that sort of deep relationship between ecology and the relationship between humans and the natural world. Is this where you're coming from with starting that body of work where you're thinking, I need to build this sort of philosophy?
[00:22:49] Rich: Yeah, I think so. Oika is just a word that I had to kind of half invent. It comes from the Greek word oikos, which means house. I think so. I think that's why I'm committed to that idea and that word, because I know how healing it can be.
[00:23:07] Cause I know how seeing and tracking the relationships that make me who I am back, not through the people around me, but through the organisms and the the plants and the animals and the, even the things like the rocks that are on this bookshelf behind me. It's a bookshelf, but there's no books on it.
[00:23:27] But tracking the relationships that make me, me has a way of healing and emphasizing the relationality of everything. There's a thing that I do where I trace it all the way back 13. 8 billion years to a time just after the so called Big Bang. And there's some, to call it the Big Bang is a little bit problematic, but I just do it for convention. But to trace it all the way back to the beginning of our knowledge, or close to the beginning of our knowledge, At this time when the only thing that was really present in the universe that we know of was light, different sort of frequencies of light.
[00:24:09] It's called the cosmic microwave background radiation. And if you look at the cosmic microwave background radiation, or if you Google it, and you come up, you find a picture of it, you realize that it's not this uniform thing. It's actually a, It's a splotchy pattern of light that's different temperatures.
[00:24:26] The splotches are because of the minute differences in temperature of the light. And it's because of those differences that there's the potential for any relationships at all. If it had been uniform in temperature, perfectly uniform, there would have been no way for there to be a relationship between this point in space and that point in space.
[00:24:45] But because there's a difference in temperature, there's an opportunity for there to be a relationship between these two things, between these two points of space. And it's that light. in relationship with other light that creates the first entities. It's because of those relationships, those differences, on that continuum.
[00:25:06] It's the same universe, but there's differences within it. That, that there's any kind of diversity at all because it's from those differences that the first stars form and then the first galaxies and then within those galaxies planets and on those planets different habitats and molecules and molecules come together in different ways to create life and then life becomes diversified into different organisms like us and then us and then here we are talking on Zoom.
[00:25:32] Okay, so the point is that once you start to see the relationality of things, and how it's baked into the universe, like this whole cosmos is grounded in ecological dynamics, in other words, relational dynamics, then you have a way of moving through the world, looking for these relationships, being aware of the relationships.
[00:25:56] And not only that, it takes the focus off of the central you. It says, wait, it's not just me. I'm not really even what's important. What's important are the relationships. Because without those, there'd be nothing. And that story goes all the way back to the beginning of the universe. This universe would have fizzled out in cold nothingness, had there not been those relationships.
[00:26:17] It's still the case today. So, yeah, that's what Oika is about. It's about becoming aware of what I call the creative life force. And that creative life force is about relationships. And those relationships, by the way, can be They can be good and they can be not so good.
[00:26:34] And so, Oika is about seeing that creative life force in the world and following it, being with it, learning from it, operating in response to it, because it feels good and because it heals things. And because it reveals beauty, it reveals the awesomeness of being.
[00:26:55] And my hope is that if we can just learn how to do that a little bit more, it might be a nice antidote. A small antidote to, what ails us. The things that we were talking about earlier, the beginning of this conversation, the divisiveness, the fear, the grievance, the insecurity and uncertainty.
[00:27:15] I'm thinking that this way of being in the world can be an antidote to some of that. Not that it's going to save the world or anything, but it can definitely bring, A small dose of beauty and, joy, if you let it.
[00:27:29] John: How is that integrated into the day to day for somebody? You're a scientist and you have a certain way of walking through the world, but let's say there's an accountant or whatever. How do you foresee that sort of transcribing into that experience?
[00:27:43] Rich: My first response to that question was how can you not integrate it into like life? I mean, I can't, I see it everywhere. My primary, um, work is to like, not get pulled into it,
[00:27:55] John: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:56] Rich: It's to keep it under wraps, keep it subdued. First of all, I have this thing called Principle Zero.
[00:28:01] Which is like the first principle of Oika, it's even before principle one, which is curiosity. You have to be curious. If you're not curious, there's nowhere to go. If you're incurious, you're incurable. And you just have to be curious as to what is it this scientist, this dude is talking about, what's he talking about?
[00:28:22] That's a necessary thing. That's a necessary precondition. And then. I think just letting yourself kind of believe it. I have this other phrase, fit, make it till you make it, because by just letting yourself believe that what I'm saying, what I'm teaching is actually a depiction of reality. I'm a scientist.
[00:28:42] So I'm really committed to scientific understanding of things. And even though I speak sometimes in spiritual terms, or I come across as being kind of like I'm on drugs or something, like I must be, I must be high all the time, which I'm not. Well, I am in a way, but not on like drugs. The point is that There's a scientific basis for this.
[00:29:03] And so I think allowing yourself to believe that the world that I'm describing is actually a pretty accurate depiction of reality. Just give me the benefit of the doubt for a minute and, and then investigate the science yourself. With that curiosity, you'll start to see it more and more, and eventually you'll get to the Big Bang too, you know, especially if you go back, if you go back in time to see where your origins are, and you tell that story in a way that connects history, you know, connects deeper and deeper and deep time, you're gonna see what I see.
[00:29:40] But if you're too distracted and too busy and too consumed with grievance It's tough.
[00:29:47] John: Why do you think our friend in Texas was lacking curiosity?
[00:29:52] Rich: And well, this is why I'm trying to kind of come at it from a different angle in terms of not coming at it from the science necessarily, but come at it from the fun, come at it from the humor, come at, just to kind of be silly with it in some ways to, to disarm that habitual response that people to put up a block or to put up some kind of like resentment or put up some kind of fear. Who knows I mean I wish I had been more tactful I guess and been able to see that coming and been able to detour. I didn't see it coming You know, I was just blissfully involved in the conversation and then I realized she was mad She was upset or offended.
[00:30:36] John: when you said your version of the slogan for the state, I took it the same way of, Oh, that seems actually kind of Texan.
[00:30:45] Rich: Yeah, but I think it's habitual. Like I said, I mean One of the ways i've been thinking about it lately is like You And it goes back to the phrase you use, which is like people that haven't been heard. What was the phrase you said that they haven't, they've been ignored or left behind? It must feel good to be a part of a community where you feel like that's all going to be resolved.
[00:31:10] Like to have spent decades in a state of not being heard, being left behind, being betrayed by leadership, being betrayed by, governance. And having lost your access to dignity. Which is the case, and this is what our system does, is it transacts.
[00:31:29] And what it takes is people's dignity and access to prosperity and that's what it does. It erodes over time people's dignity and so it must feel good, really good, irresistibly good to be at a rally where everybody feels like we're going to get justice for the way we've been treated for decades, for all that's been taken from us. My only like heartbreak is that it's that they might be being betrayed even deeper. And that is the real, I don't know. I don't know. This is, this is, this is what I want to. Try to intercept that. I want to intercept that.
[00:32:18] This is another wisdom that nature has taught me. That emergence happens in ways that we can't foresee, and it's always a surprise.
[00:32:27] Sure, there's going to be this incredible momentum for something ugly.
[00:32:33] There might be. A hidden sort of humanity that shows up.
[00:32:40] And it's gonna force us to do it. It's gonna, it's gonna force us into that state, which is, hey, frankly, that's the way it always happens. That we always do with our best against the wall, right?
[00:32:51] It's gonna bring out the best of us as much as it's gonna bring out the worst. What we need then in that case is something to believe in, And something to cushion the fall. I'm all for getting hurt, skinning your knees, breaking your bone, whatever.
[00:33:04] I'm not trying to protect to the point where we don't get hurt. But what I am saying is that thing, when that shoe drops, we need something to say, Live free or die, you know, like we believe what you believe. We're all in this together. We all got betrayed and so We hear your suffering we and we're trying to right it
[00:33:32] John: Yeah.
[00:33:36] Rich: to put our faith in Proven grifter you know you couldn't you couldn't script this.
[00:33:47]
[00:33:47] John: One of my favorite movies growing up was a movie called Contact. It's a book first. You may be familiar with
[00:33:54] Rich: I know that one well
[00:33:54] John: Yeah. Yeah. Um,
[00:33:56] Rich: I'm a big fan of Carl Sagan
[00:33:58] John: me
[00:33:58] Rich: and I was actually friends with his widow Ann Druyan for a while still am still in
[00:34:03] John: Ann is one of my biggest living inspirations in life and
[00:34:07] Rich: Annie Druyan?
[00:34:09] John: Yes, straight up.
[00:34:10] Rich: Oh, wow. Cool. Oh cool.
[00:34:12] John: I have imagined, um, their work and looked at their work and The reason why I even think around branding and this idea of being heart centered and this relationship between science and art and math and, and love, um, is because of, of Anne's work on the golden record and this idea that she had that, she really wanted to express what it meant to be a human.
[00:34:38] And so she thought Oh, I should record my heartbeat. thinking of love.
[00:34:44] Rich: Yeah,
[00:34:45] John: And so she recorded this and she had just gotten engaged or married. I can't remember exactly what that story is, but she had just gotten engaged or married to Carl and they were deeply, deeply in love. And she had just imagined that moment.
[00:34:57] And that was a very, very beautiful thing to me.
[00:35:01] Rich: totally totally and and just the chemistry or the the explosion of their particular creative energies. Their particular chemistry was just and and not replicated since. You know, I, and I think you, as much as they've tried with, you know, with Neil deGrasse Tyson, he didn't have what Carl Sagan had, you know, and, um,
[00:35:31] John: There's only so many mystics in the world.
[00:35:34] Rich: especially with his scientific, uh, capacities too, he was truly in love with the world and he just couldn't extinguish that in any, you know, and, um, and, um, Yeah, I yeah, so that's interesting to hear you say that because I hold the same admiration for that team like
[00:35:55] John: Yeah, that the movie contact, um, has totally influenced my life and, and many, many rabbit holes. It was just, yeah,
[00:36:04] Rich: There's that moment when Jodie Foster's, you know after she's gone through the wormhole and she first comes through and there's this moment where she goes She says something like they should have sent a poet or
[00:36:14] John: I didn't know. I
[00:36:16] Rich: yeah, I didn't know it gives me the chills every time
[00:36:21] John: cry every time I think about it.
[00:36:22] Rich: Me too. It's beautiful. So beautiful.
[00:36:24] And the way that they decided to just metaphorically depict, you know, I, you know, people get turned, kind of turned off by like the return of her father and all that. But I, I just think it was so beautifully done. And, um, once you get past the cringe factor of that, and you realize it's deep, you know, and, and the Cosmos series, the original Cosmos series, I didn't see it when it first came out.
[00:36:55] It was, I guess it was kind of, maybe it was, I was too busy being a punk or something, but, yeah, it, it has not been replicated since.
[00:37:07] John: So in that story, when she's visiting her father on the beach in Pensacola.
[00:37:12] Rich: Yeah. Right.
[00:37:13] John: She, you don't understand. I've seen this movie over a hundred times.
[00:37:17] Rich: No, I do understand.
[00:37:20] John: There's this moment where she's saying, what's next? What's next? And she's talking about this idea of I want to go, I want to go. Everyone needs to see this. This is so profound. This is, this is what, this is the medicine everyone needs. Like let's go. And he just says, small steps.
[00:37:34] Rich: Yeah.
[00:37:35] John: Um, and it's just what it is,
[00:37:38] Rich: Right. And so that's kind of like the epiphany thing. It's small steps.
[00:37:43] John: right?
[00:37:46] Rich: That's really cool that you, that you appreciate that. That makes perfect sense then that you would even see my work in some way,
[00:37:55] John: Oh yeah. It's the same thing to me.
[00:37:57] Rich: Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. That means a lot. There are other movies too. In fact, you know, see remnants of it, you know, I don't know if you saw interstellar and there's a lot, I don't want to spoil things, but people probably seen it by now, but the end where you learn, some of the implications of quantum mechanics, you know, and time perturbations and things that we're just now, beginning to even be able to consider.
[00:38:25] I'm releasing a video in a little bit. There's one of those little quick little social media things. I call it the quantum fun run. I go snowboarding and I feel the quantum effects of things. Anyway, the point is that, um, these quantum mechanical dynamics. Maybe this is the surprise that is going to suddenly show up when the shoe drops that there are going to be quantum effects.
[00:38:52] And we won't identify them as such. They will show up. Superposition, non locality, these things that are hard for us to even conceptualize are gonna show up and at some scale. And so, and I'm not one to say, you know, there was that whole, what the bleep do we know baloney, but the point is, that these effects manifest in ways that we have a hard time quantifying and articulating, but they do.
[00:39:26] And I have faith in that, and that we are a part of it because when I look at the history of how humans came into existence, it's like an asteroid, you know, dinosaurs looked up and saw that thing. They didn't register what the hell it was, they probably looked up at it, went back to grazing, but the, but the implications of it were, were quantum.
[00:39:46] John: Right.
[00:39:48] Rich: I think that's kind of thing can happen in the wake of 2024 election.
[00:39:58] John: As I'm searching through, science and in that world, I get pushed to the edge. And I think everyone who goes to that search, you get to this point where you don't know. And maybe that's the point, right?
[00:40:10] Rich: That's where you start too, right? Yeah.
[00:40:12] John: Fair enough. Right. You start with the assumption that you don't know anything and then you're going to make a guess and then you're going to test it and validate it and keep going. There's this sort of relationship to religion and the mystery that I'm so fascinated by because I think scientists experience it maybe more than anybody.
[00:40:30] Rich: I wish, I wish I could agree with you, but by and large, the scientists that I work with on a day to day basis or encounter, they're so wrapped up in the politics of science, and the politics of the day, and the economic, and the institutional demands, that kind of stuff, that if, even if they do experience this thing you're talking about, they don't either have time or the inclination to voice it.
[00:41:01] I do, but for the most part, that is stripped away by, just like it is for everybody, you know? And so, I, maybe you're right. I just think that, in the day to day, worker day scientific world, they're all just trying to get the next grant, get the next 10 year position, or get tenure. And, get published, publish or perish, you know
[00:41:29] John: Are there industries maybe not like the science world, but that you feel like there could be potential for more exploration around these sorts of ideas where we relate science and religion and, and I think a lot of times healing too?
[00:41:45] Rich: Yeah, I think, that would be nice. I would love, and that's kind of where I want to position myself is that is at that convergence point of healing and science and nature and culture. There's this phenomenon the cart before the horse, which I've also come to understand is known as bypass, like spiritual bypass, or any kind of bypass.
[00:42:08] John: Not familiar with that. I know the cart for the horse idea, but I haven't heard the bypass.
[00:42:13] Rich: Like bypass is when you fail to address problems at a deep enough level, but, think that you've solved them, you know? I've run into this a lot in academia, like in philosophy, that there are philosophers who are trying to use philosophy to solve big, big, existential, the perennial problems of humanity, but they're grounding their philosophy in ancient Greek philosophy.
[00:42:39] And ancient Greek philosophy is nascent. It's adolescent. It doesn't understand the deep indigenous continuities, it's basically Western white reductionist thinking. That isn't where you're going to find deep sense of continuity and belonging to the world. It's inherited Descartes dualisms.
[00:43:04] And if you think that you're going to build the worldview of the future on Western philosophy. I'm not saying that those Socrates and all those guys weren't brilliant thinkers, they were, but my point is that the bypass is, is to think that you only have to go as far back as Socrates.
[00:43:27] and forward. If you don't go further back to the more indigenous ways of knowing, to even the more unicellular ways of knowing, to even the more molecular and geological ways of knowing, and even the more astronomical and cosmic ways of knowing, you have to go all the way back to the beginning to found your wisdom tradition, right?
[00:43:57] And so the bypass is when you say, I'm just going to bypass all that, That 13. 8 billion year story that it holds all that wisdom, that doesn't matter. What matters is what Descartes said. That's the bypass. It's to say, I don't care about any of that natural stuff. We're humans.
[00:44:13] We don't care about nature. We're humans. So I see that a lot. I see that kind of like, that's what I mean by cart before the horse. These people have these amazing carts, and they're full of all this knowledge and ideas and really valid wisdom. But they got a horse that's behind it.
[00:44:31] And I think is just a folly, and it's, they don't want to hear that because they're invested.
[00:44:37] John: So then your idea is that producing content where you're not just trying to sell someone something, that are engaging and entertaining more than just this idea of having to teach someone a certain thing about a certain thing. Is that your kind of first step towards building that sort of community and that's the sort of right relations that you talk about?
[00:44:59] Rich: Yeah, I'm trying to, exemplify a way of being in the world that's kind of relational first. And it's just the way I am. That's the way I go through the world is seeing and remembering the natural history of things. And then that connects to me and that always feels good.
[00:45:15] Because it places me in the context of this amazing story. This is Carl Sagan stuff. It's to feel like you belong to the cosmos. But it's hard to do that if you don't know the story of the cosmos. So I start with what it feels like. And the beauty and the fun and the sense of belonging, the joy that comes from that.
[00:45:35] And then slowly just throw some of the language in there. And if you're curious, you'll look it up, you know, I use the word ontological continuity, and I'm not going to explain what that means, but if somebody's curious, and if they, and if they see me enjoying what ontological continuity is, and they're feeling like they need some source of joy, maybe go look it up, maybe go try to understand what it means and what it feels like, maybe go see if you can't have a bit of what this guy's having.
[00:46:04] And I'm not really the teacher, ultimately it's going to be nature, the nature that's outside their door, or even in the city, it doesn't have to be a lot, it can just be a vacant lot, it could be a blade of grass. So I'm not saying that you have to have the privilege of having expanses of nature.
[00:46:19] This can happen. In a cloud, you can find this, and if you don't have access to a cloud, then, get some. So yeah, that's what I'm trying to do with the videos is just provide another entry point and try to offer it as an antidote to what most social media is doing. Which is just further distracting us, further separating us, further giving us some superficial experience of the world.
[00:46:44] I'm trying to open up a deeper experience with the world. I'll start where they are, but offer them ways to go deeper. Whether it's, you know, start with TikTok, Go to a deeper video, go to a podcast, you know, deeper and deeper engagement. And then ultimately, and this is the new thing for me is to create.
[00:47:06] And by the way, I work with lots of different artists and people that I call cultural creatives who have taken the deep dive into OIKA principles and learned the principles and integrate them into their work, into their creative work, and so they're really helping to create a culture. And so what I'm also trying to do is create OIKA, you know how people say, um, you know, I, I found this thing online or this person and then I, I looked into their work and then that opened up a whole rabbit hole and I went down the rabbit hole.
[00:47:35] I want OIKA to be that rabbit hole because if you go to OIKA, And you start to learn about the projects that we're involved in and the artists that are involved and the products. Even like, I've started to go to these wellness conferences where I'm talking to people who create soaps and people who design spas and people who do these sound healing things.
[00:47:54] This is the rabbit hole, this is the culture of OIKA and also the, like, the products and the people and the services and the experiences that can help you to experience OIKA in your life, because they're in the products. So the idea is that we're going to build this out.
[00:48:11] We're going to offer it as a kind of a place to go to meet other people who, who understand this appreciation for nature. And for the sense of deep connection that we can all have access to because we're all human. We're all human. animals. We're all biological beings. We're all earthlings. And so that's the point of OIKA is to formalize it in a bit.
[00:48:37] And, Oika used to be me, but I realize now that it can't be me. I'm, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to live forever. So Oika is going to be owned by the cultural creatives who create it. And so they're going to be the ones to own it and to bring it forward.
[00:48:54] John: Sounds like a
[00:48:55] Rich: if that answered
[00:48:55] John: fascinating platform to not just witness, but to get to experience, um, whether you're a creative or a person that is, searching right?
[00:49:05] Rich: Searching. Great word for it. Yep. Spiritually curious. Or intellectually curious, what's the difference?
[00:49:14] John: Right. It's fair enough. It's all the same thing to me. I like to say I'm an artist because I think it's all art, right?
[00:49:20] Rich: Yeah. I, I agree. I have artist friends, um, who are constantly trying to call me an artist, but I, I usually resist, but I think, I have to admit it,
[00:49:30] John: At some point, right?
[00:49:32] Rich: there's artistry to what I do as well.
[00:49:35] John: I like to think that if I'm going to live a life, would I rather live a life that's filled with art? And experienced as art and artfully,
[00:49:45] Rich: Artfully?
[00:49:46] John: there's no other, like, it's a, that's a, yes, that's a yes to me.
[00:49:48] Rich: Yes. Well, and then the question is, can we make a living, you know, can we create a living and so we're trying to also answer that question. And so we're doing that with this thing we're calling oikonomics.
[00:50:03] So I'm trying to recouple ecological dynamics to economic dynamics so that the people who do participate in this have a way to prosper, you know, in whatever that means. And it often means economically. Um, so there needs to be some transaction, and I'm not, you know, so I don't want to completely just say that, you know, paint transaction is bad because it isn't.
[00:50:28] It, there is a place and a time for a transactional relationship. It just can't be extractive and exploitative. It has to be genuinely transactional. That's an ecological principle. Ecosystems are transactional. And if they're overly parasitic or overly extractive, they fail. And so that's just a reality.
[00:50:51] So, we're implementing what we're calling this oikanomic model where, we're going to try and use the algorithm for what it should be used for, which is to manage and govern the economic relationships such that the people and the places that we work all prosper together so that there isn't this consolidation of wealth or prosperity in the hands of the few.
[00:51:16] That's not to say it's like communist, it's just to say that it's more moderated by ecological principles.
[00:51:23] John: I was thinking about something similar to this idea. I was reading a book, I can't remember this person's name and it's going to really bother me, but, she was like a leader in biomimicry and a
[00:51:35] Rich: Um, that would be, um, Jeannine, Jeannine Benyus or,
[00:51:39] John: I think that's, I think it started with a J.
[00:51:41] The idea that was in my head was that these large language models could. Take some lessons from the ideas of biomimicry,
[00:51:50] Rich: Absolutely.
[00:51:51] John: better organize things.
[00:51:54] Rich: You should try to get invited to, like, maybe a, uh, Facebook , board meeting and bring that idea in and see if you can get them to listen.
[00:52:00] John: Well, I'm sure they would, they would be all over that idea.
[00:52:03] Rich: Yeah, right.
[00:52:05] John: What's the future of Oika?
[00:52:07] Rich: We've got a lot going on. I'm currently based at a little scientific organization out on Nantucket. We have a lot of things planned this summer, around the idea of curiosity. So, we're going to invite people in to Be Curious Like Kids again, the Adult Curious Kids Club. There's a Nature of Cities conference coming up in Berlin in a couple of weeks where we're doing both virtual and in person program with one of my artistic collaborators, Rita LaDuke. You can get to through my website, oika. com. There's a lot of projects. We're doing a lot of OIKA research, which is research that integrates the culture and the nature of places. Let's see what else. I'm doing a lot more social media stuff, which I've been really reluctant to do.
[00:52:51] But now that I've found a way to do it that's fun for me, creating these short videos, we're hoping that that will garner at least some small following. I've been so allergic to social media, but now, you know, I think it's time just, just to have fun with it. I'm trying to also, not so much do my own podcast, but to guest on other podcasts and integrate the content that's created with other podcasters into my podcast. So do some, you know, cross posting and sharing of, of podcast content. My podcast is called a rich worldview.
[00:53:30] I really just want to focus on creating just engaging. Short form content. Just have some fun with that.
[00:53:39] John: Yeah. I think it's essential to have fun with this content stuff. It can get overwhelming and it's, um, a never ending burn of stuff to get done and all that. So my
[00:53:48] Rich: Absolutely.
[00:53:50] John: I've been doing design for 13 years and to see this world turn into the social media stuff has been fascinating.
[00:53:57] Rich: We'd be nice if we could rescue some small parts of it. I know it's going through a lot of changes right now, and, it's probably not going to look like it looks right now in, in two years. So,
[00:54:09] John: with you. No, I think it's going to be super personalized.
[00:54:12] Rich: yeah. So what does that mean? And what's the opportunity there, I'd be curious to kind of keep in touch on that.
[00:54:20] John: Yeah. I do work as an artist. Yeah. But the work as an artist, um, it's funny, a lot of my work I've been pulling back from social media significantly, but a lot of my work is centered around this idea of healing and creating space and experiences for people so that they can have opportunities to experience things like transformative moments or just moments of being as opposed to working.
[00:54:45] Rich: You, you, I mean this, you have a gift for that, John, you have a, just a way, you know this, I'm sure that you have a way of putting people at ease and that I, in some ways I envy, you know, because, um, so it's, it's wonderful to just. been able to experience that of yours, that gift of yours. So thank you for that.
[00:55:08] And, um, I'm, I'd be really interested to see how, you know, how are you, how are you, you put it to use and, um, and how, uh, how we might collaborate on something.
[00:55:20] John: Yeah. Right.
[00:55:20] Rich: this is. That's what we're all about. Right. I can sense lots of potentials
[00:55:26] John: Yeah. How deep does that rabbit hole go?
[00:55:30] Rich: Yeah. And how, how wide?
[00:55:32] John: Right. I appreciate you saying that. It definitely means a lot to me, uh, going through my life and experiencing the things that have shaped me to become the kind of person that I am today. Uh, this has been something I have known since I was a child. Or that other people have called out in me since I was a child, and then I just totally disregarded.
[00:55:51] I'm an introvert. Please leave me alone. I don't want to talk to you. I'm never going to go out in public, all that sort of stuff. I'm still an introvert, but I'm pretty extroverted now because um, some nice healing that I've had in my life.
[00:56:02] Rich: Well, and also because we need it. We need it now more than ever, you know, like times change and the world has changed since then and we need your gifts. So stop hoarding them.
[00:56:19] John: Roger
[00:56:19] Rich: You know. I think that, um, the world calls on us. And I think that's kind of really what leadership is, is to be called into the role and to take it on reluctantly as opposed to, you know, you can take a leadership course, but that's not leadership.
[00:56:37] Leadership is something that there's a demand for you to do it. And you clearly have a gift for what we need, which is healing and to be heard. And you've got that. I mean, I feel so heard. So thank you.
[00:56:57] John: Definitely. I look forward to continuing this conversation. I really do. I want to say thank you for taking time today. And I'm going to assume over the next few months that we might have a few more conversations. And so I just, I want to say thank you. And I look forward to Potentially collaborating.
[00:57:16] And if anything, seeing what you do with OIKA and for sharing this OIKA message with other people and to fellow searchers who are listening. So thank you.
[00:57:24] Rich: To you too, John. Thank you so much.