Bringing Science Down to Earth

This is the beginning of a collaborative effort with Rich to give articulation to the new science in a way that has genuine cultural resonance. Below is the video of our dialogue, followed by a transcript.

Rich Blundell: Have we started? If you’re gonna post this, is this it?

Matt Segall: Well, I mean, I’ll cut out the beginning.

Rich: Okay, okay, okay. We’re going to be doing that.

Matt: Yeah, no, I do tend to be informal with recordings, but I think—

Rich: No, that’s great. I love that. I just wasn’t sure if I should behave myself.

Matt: I would insist that you don’t behave. I think it’s time to break some rules, actually.

Rich: Yeah, let’s figure that out, actually. I have to admit, I’m hoping that a clear agenda will sort of present itself here as we give this a shot.

Matt: Yeah. Well, I was grateful that we had a chance to spend some time together last August and for me to get to know your work a little bit. I’ve been reading some of your stuff since then and exploring your various projects, fieldwork, and the way that you’re bridging art and science — not just art as a way of communicating science, but art as a way of doing science.

Rich: As a way of doing art, really.

Matt: And science as a way of doing art. Yeah. And I know you’ve got some exciting projects that you’re building now. So, maybe a good place to start would be if I could invite you to just lay out your vision of this new approach to science that’s rooted in experience and the sensual encounter with the living world, and how you feel it’s taking us beyond the way science has been practiced historically.

Rich: Sure, I could start. I mean, I would not want to ever try to claim that this is sort of my theory about science. It’s a new science that I hear people talking about — you, in particular, and others — that’s really exciting. It’s probably important to understand that my formative origin story is one that’s come through the sciences in a kind of very reluctant or, let’s say, rebellious way. I’ve always been sort of disappointed with our response to what we know scientifically, even though I appreciate and respect the scientific method. And I don’t want this to turn into just a big complaint about science.

But I do get the sense that a lot of people in our space are circling around a new kind of science — not in a Stephen Wolfram sense, although partly — but a new kind of science that is grounded in nature, which is what you would think it should be, right? I mean, that was the original intent as natural philosophy.

I should actually even step back a little further just to say that my onboarding into this was very much through being in the mud, in the dirt, handling the animals. Studying the humble things in nature — the invertebrates, the fossils, the processes of nature. But there’s this other conversation going on at the other end of the spectrum, which is this sort of high-minded conversation about what it is to be human and what is consciousness — that is partly, and mostly, a philosophical conversation going on right now.

And I’m trying to weave or thread a way through that, that kind of reunites those two visions of what science is: the leading edge of how we perceive ourselves and think about ourselves and the world, but also reconnects it to our origins, our lowly origins through the cosmos. And somehow trying to synergize a view that is ameliorative to the many, many injustices and contradictions and threats in the world today. So, I know I’m rambling here, because I’m trying to find — what is this thread, though? Where can we start to figure out the conversation here that needs to happen?

Matt: Yeah. Well, I think that in the middle of the 19th century, there were these two guys, Darwin and Wallace, that came up with this idea of evolution, which has deeper roots. I mean, Darwin and Wallace gave us a very powerful principle of natural selection, which helped the mechanistic imagination of modern science at least begin to get a handle on this idea of evolution. But the idea that human beings grew out of earth and this universe in some sense goes back earlier than Darwin. I would root it in some of these German Romantic thinkers in the late 1700s, early 1800s — Herder and Goethe and Schelling.

This view of the human being as growing out of the universe is quite different from how the early scientists in the 17th century imagined the project of science, which was more this idea that God made the universe according to these laws and that God made the human being with this intellect that has this mathematical prowess so as to be able to decode the laws with which the world was made. And it was this view of the human as kind of parachuted in to this material world from another dimension.

We can look back at that and see how sort of childish that vision is, but at the same time, that view is what allowed — I mean, this is Whitehead’s account of the history of science — it allowed for this particular form of rational and empirical investigation to be inaugurated. Whitehead thinks it kind of took that more or less deist theology — deism, the idea that God is this external engineer and the human being is sort of God’s emissary here on earth, that has this special kind of mind so as to understand the handiwork of God. And so science comes out of that picture. It’s a very theological picture, and a particular sort of theology that separates God and the world and separates humanity from nature.

And then since evolution, we’ve realized that, well, that’s wrong. But how do we reestablish a sense of science in a context where whatever the human mind is, it actually grew out of this universe? And the universe doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing where the laws of physics just exist eternally and get imposed on dead matter. It seems like whatever the laws of physics are, they also grow out of the world in an evolutionary sort of way — more like habits that are learned over the course of billions of years. And so it’s a shock, I think, to the scientific imagination to have to all of a sudden conceive of knowledge as something participatory — that we’re not outside of what we’re trying to know. We are an expression of what we’re trying to know.

Rich: I mean, that’s it. That’s the move, right? Why is that such a hard move? I don’t know. I’d like to do something to correct that. But I also want to find out from you — where do you think the current handholds are? Like, not handholds, but leverage points. Or what amalgamation of philosophical thinkers right now presents us the best opportunity to start to articulate this new science?

Matt: I mean, it seems like there are thousands of us working on this, which is not that many, really, in the grand scheme of things. But it seems like the science is happening, science is changing. There are still some dinosaurs that are holding on to the old way—

Rich: That’s the world that I kind of come from. And they are as dogmatic as ever, and it’s frustrating. Kind of sad to see that, but it’s progressing funeral by funeral, you know.

Matt: As it always has. I think that the sciences are doing what the sciences do, which is they’re following the evidence, and sometimes it takes longer than we might want. For me, the real urgent challenge right now is actually the interface between the knowledge producers in the sciences and in academia, and the culture at large. Because if we don’t figure out how to inhabit the world that we actually live in and stop living in this imaginary world of mechanism — where we think, oh, okay, we can reverse engineer this; oh, climate change, it’s a technical problem, we can fix this with some new technology — if we don’t start living on this planet and translating this knowledge that we have, of this complex, recursive, embedded dynamic that we are participating in, then we’re going to die. We’re going to go extinct very soon.

And so it’s like, how do we get from — it’s not that we need just a new myth or something. And myth isn’t the sort of thing that you can just author like a sci-fi novel. It’s a deep collective structure that’s half unconscious, and it emerges kind of chthonically from the depths. But we can help prepare the space for that to happen. And it seems to me quite urgent, not just because of the ecological catastrophe, but because of the social and political catastrophe. The cultural meaning crisis that John Vervaeke’s been referring to it. I think these are all connections. These are all expressions of a deeper unease or disease.

And so it’s building that bridge between knowledge and culture. That’s, I think, become the most important task, at least for me and my skill set. And I also love digging into the details and understanding the new science and what its methods are, and the theories, and how do we integrate all of this new data, how do we deal with generative AI and its role in all of this — which is, I think, whether we like it or not, changing culture and changing how science is done. So it’s less about the names of the people than it is, I think, about these translation tasks.

Rich: I agree. That’s really speaking my language too now, in terms of the trajectory that my career has brought me on — how do we initiate cultural interventions that can effectively communicate this stuff in a way that changes the habits of thought that we’re all walking around with, that can respond directly to the features of this crisis?

And so, taking our cues from what we know about how we’ve gotten off the rails and how it’s gotten so ugly and dangerous and hypocritical, can we articulate a new way of being in the world, based on this science, that in its own way can ameliorate — medicate — not that we’re going to save the world, but we can do better. We can do better than what we’re doing.

I’m an eternal optimist, because I look at the story that this science presents about how we got here, and just the incredible creativity and complexity and beauty that’s all around us — therein lies an intelligence there that humans are trying to understand, yeah, but also relate to. And I think our mission boils down to: how do we relate to it? And then that can sort of just play out organically through our institutions, through our culture — something better than what we’re putting out now.

So maybe we should — I mean, I really want to get into this. I know there’s real meat on this. And so I want to figure out what that is, and come up with a plan to do this work.

So I guess I’ll just briefly talk a little bit about how this is manifesting in my efforts these days. I’m trained in ecology — geology and biology — and I followed this curiosity through the whole academic system to understand deeply who I am and what the world is. Not so much to get a job as a professor — it was really grounded in a deep, genuine curiosity just about: what is this, and how do I fit into it? So I’ve been pursuing that since I was a kid.

And so the way that I summarize the findings — and I know I pick and choose, and I go out and sort of harvest ideas from the world — but the way that I assemble them is through these three very simple principles. And the first one is continuity. What does that mean? Specifically, what does ontological continuity mean? What does it mean that we live in a reality that is on a continuum — whether you call it time, or cause and effect, causal relationships, or whatever — but there is a continuity here from which we spring. And I think establishing that as a deep and abiding way of perceiving the world can make a difference, because it precipitates out this idea that there is no subject-object divide — that that’s a fiction.

And another one — these are the three — so the first one’s continuity, and the second one is relationality. Which I know, when I talk about relationality, and I end up talking about right relation, that sounds like Buddhist talk. I’ll take people’s word for it that this is a Buddhist principle. But the idea is just that nothing is kind of discrete, that there’s no really discrete anything. And I’ve got a rock here. And this seems like a discrete rock, but it’s really a system of relationships between atoms and molecules and minerals. This is a relational thing. It’s an expression of relationships. It’s not just rock.

Anyway, we can get into the philosophy, but the idea is just that — again, to see everything in terms of relationality, especially on that continuum that I was talking about earlier. The continuum continually manifests through relationships. And the moment you ask that question, you can also ask: well, is the relationship right or not? And I think that there are cues — there are hints to what’s right relationship and what isn’t — in the way that complexity emerges.

And the third one is entanglement. This comes out of an enactivist perspective. I use the word entanglement just because I think it’s a bit more accessible to people who don’t do philosophy. And entanglement is talking about how mind is another instantiation of relationality — that the world and the entity, the individual, together create mind, and that creates a kind of linkage, an inextricable connection to something that we experience as incredibly intimate. It’s ourself, our sense of self, and the way our consciousness narrativizes everything — and the world itself are just inextricable, that they’re actually in this niche construction relationship.

That’s, like, in a nutshell, three fundamental operating principles by which I do try to communicate. Those open up lots of others — things like fractals and cybernetic principles — so there’s lots of other things in there, but boiling it down to those three essentials, I think, is where I start to do this work of cultural communication. I guess — what do you make of that?

Matt: Well, it’s music to my ears. I mean, these three terms feel like variations on a theme, and the theme is process ontology. Or process-relational — which is Whitehead. But you mentioned this term continuity first, and I think immediately of the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. I don’t know if anyone’s ever brought his name up to you before. And his core principle was continuity. He liked Greek words, so he used the term synechism. But it’s exactly as you were describing it — this sense of subject and object and mind and nature being features of, or aspects of, this same underlying continuum.

When it comes to relationality — that anything that appears to be separate is really a nexus of relations, and anything that endures in our world, whether it’s a rock or a particular organism or a whole species of organisms — the endurance of anything is a function of continuous relationships. And I think one of the ways we could understand evolution and natural selection is to understand it as a principle of what allows for endurance. And I think in some ways, right relationship has a lot to do with that. Like, what is allowed to endure is what fits into a niche.

And in some ways, we have this mistaken idea of like, oh, “survival of the fittest” means the biggest, baddest, strongest, meanest organism is what survives — but it’s not at all the case. Fitness means fitting into a community. So those organisms that fit best into a community and help the community flourish endure. And so, that nothing is discrete means nothing endures or could endure by itself. It’s all a function of right relationship and remaining in right relationship — because we’re entangled.

And I think that these three terms are nice ways of coordinating around a kind of central mystery, which is: how can we be together? With acknowledging our own sense of — there is something about individuality in human life, but also in nature. But there’s also a way in which every individual is able to endure, again, as a result of being in right relationship with every other individual in their community. So we need each other to be ourselves, in a way. And that’s a deep ecological principle, but it’s also a very important political principle. So there’s continuity here from nature to human society. There’s no need for a whole set of different principles for human beings and human politics. We can actually learn this from the cosmos, we can learn this from the earth. That’s what I hear when you say continuity.

Rich: Yeah, I’m excited that you said that. I’m also excited at the fact that — where does Peirce’s continuity come from? What does he ground it in? I mean, I’m sure he grounded it in deep philosophical contemplation. But one can also ground it in the actual unfolding of the cosmos. This is one of the things that I try to do — to establish continuity as a legitimate habit of thought, as a habit of perception, really. The perceptual habit of continuity.

And I’m sure you know this, given that you’re in philosophy and cosmology and consciousness — that cosmology is a way to do that. A simple, direct study of nature’s process indicates that continuity. We don’t necessarily have to go off on some complex contortion of thought to get there. We simply need to observe. And this is what natural history — the sciences that I follow — that’s what they’re saying. I mean, every syllable of the science that I was taught as a geologist, or as an ecologist, points to that as a reality. And if we’re simply paying attention to the way that nature unfolds, it becomes an inescapable insight.

Matt: Yeah. I mean, I love thinking about philosophers in the history of philosophy, but I think — I don’t want to get too caught up on, well, this is what this philosopher thought. I think it’s more like, well, how are these ideas valuable to us?

But Peirce’s idea of continuity erupted from several different angles. One was mathematical, because he was, like Whitehead, a mathematician, and thought — you don’t get a circle out of many tangent lines or points. It’s continuous. And that upsets the reductionistic mind that wants to be able to construct a circle out of a series of parts. He’s like, no — it feels irrational to that reductionistic mindset that, like, pi — what do you mean it’s endless? Like, what? No. But it is. It’s continuous in the sense that it’s not something that you can reduce to some finite number of digits.

So initially it’s mathematical for Peirce, but it’s also — he’s a panpsychist. So he would say matter is, his words, “effete mind.” And so there’s a sort of modicum of mentality present even in the simplest form of physical process. And so that’s the continuity between mind and matter. This is the evolutionary part for him — evolution doesn’t have sharp breaks in it. It’s continuous in the sense that it’s always had an outside and an inside. It’s always had an objective and a subjective aspect to it. And so it’s not like we need to explain how at some point matter got complex enough in its configuration that all of a sudden mind was excreted. That doesn’t make sense from the perspective of this principle of continuity.

Our own sense of self, for Peirce, is a function of constantly having to reinterpret ourselves in the present based on what we’re inheriting from our own past and what we anticipate or hope for or wish for in the future. And our very sense of self is this open-ended process of entanglement with everything we’re inheriting and then everything that we desire and that could be and that we’re trying to manifest, that hasn’t yet become actual. And so our sense of self is continuous with past and future, but we’re new in each moment at the same time. And so it’s a creative continuum, in that sense.

Rich: Mm-hmm. I did this exercise where I sort of traced it down all the way down to the Planck constant. There’s this moment where physicists introduce the Planck time as a way to make that discreteness work. You slice time down into smaller and smaller levels until you get to the smallest possible unit of time. And it just always struck me as a kind of fudge factor, or a way to not have to deal with the implications of what true continuity would—

Matt: Of infinity, yeah. I mean, it seems to me that it’s a function of the limits of our own capacities for observation and our own models. I mean, it works in the sense that statistically we can treat that scale as somehow ultimate and then the probabilities pan out. I mean, we can make very accurate predictions.

Rich: The physics works. It works. So it’s a good enough approximation. Right, but it hints that there’s something more that we’re just not capable of or ready to deal with. And I understand that. And I appreciate the physics as they play out.

Matt: Right. So, when you’re trying to communicate about this, it seems to me that one of your main methods is to restore people’s sense of wonder and amazement. Just the fact that all life is fed by light from the sun, for example, and that we exist, we live by virtue of that — again, it’s another form of continuity. It doesn’t mean that energy isn’t constantly transforming, but we are made of components that were forged in dying stars, and then we are fed by a still living star. And so this energy flows through us, and somehow human beings have become so — I’ll say misenchanted — with certain abstract symbolic conceptions of whatever: money and different sorts of political ideologies and identities that are very small and thin in comparison to our true nature as earthlings and cosmological beings.

And so it seems that a lot of science has become so abstract and complex that the average person can’t really get a handle on it. I mean, this relates to the question of how we translate into story and myth, but also, I think, just concrete experiences of encounter with the beauty and wonder of the natural world around us. And I got a little taste of that from you, and it’s not theoretical. I mean, we can geek out about these principles and these theories — I have a lot of time for that, I love that — but I think for the average person, it’s like, well, how does this help me make sense of my own struggle to find a romantic partner in life, or to work through an argument with my loved ones or my family, or how does this relate to my ability to feed myself and to make a living?

And I think we have so many ways nowadays that our imaginations get shrunken and cut off from the larger context and the point of any of this, of existing at all. And I feel like being able to broaden our horizons and shift our attention away from these very small issues — I mean, we all want to survive and thrive — but I think this deeper cosmological identity gives us a way of experiencing our continuity with something that doesn’t die.

Or at least — I mean, there are many ways in which death is an essential part of life and evolution. So there’s lots of death.

Rich: Obviously, it’s part of right relation, you know? I mean, yeah, we have to know when to die.

Matt: Yeah. But it seems like we’ve reached the point of absurdity in this industrial, techno-industrial, capitalist civilization where it’s like, oh, we need to defeat death. Like, that’s the project now. Let’s figure out immortality. Well, there is a kind of defeat of death in feeling that there’s something in us that’s part of the continuum. But it’s the difference between a technological mastery so as to avoid personal death, versus a participatory, almost release into that larger life that includes the death of us as individuals.

Rich: Yeah, I don’t want to make a judgment on what that is, but I think that part of that wanting to avoid death is part of life too — that’s an impulse that we have that serves a purpose, and I want to respect that as well. But I do wonder what we forfeit if we achieve that, or if we achieve some simulacrum of immortality. What are we missing out on?

Yeah, and as far as our culture being disenchanted or misenchanted — I think it’s because we just don’t have any institutions or educational structures to onboard us. The way we do education is not set up to integrate all this stuff. And that’s just a technical issue right now that we could resolve. A lot of it is about giving people permission, because we do have the perceptual capacities to feel awe and wonder and to delight in the mystery of it all, the sense that there’s something more going on. So that’s part of our perceptual apparatus too.

And that’s the work. So that’s why I do what I do — trying to create a source or an option for finding this stuff, finding this story, and let it do its work. I don’t want to get political, and I don’t want to impose some kind of doctrine or anything like that. But just to share in it is a way of instilling it.

Matt: Yeah. No, I didn’t mean to suggest that the instinct to survive, and to thrive — organisms want to live. I think that’s a very important data point, as it were, that doesn’t often show up in — I mean, I guess in Darwinian pictures of evolution, you get the sense of a survival drive. I mean, that’s basic for the theory to do anything. You need organisms that want to survive.

Rich: But not necessarily by eating your compadres — by relating to them.

Matt: Well, I mean, predator-prey dynamics are very creative.

Rich: Only one — but they’re only one type.

Matt: Yeah. And sometimes you think you’re about to eat your prey and then they end up becoming part of your body and then symbiogenesis occurs.

But I think that the drive — not only to survive, but, well, as Whitehead says, to live, to live better, and to live well: life seems to be dissatisfied with the status quo and is seeking, again, in Whitehead’s terms, intensity of experience, not just repetition of experience. Life isn’t content to just find a niche and then hang out. There’s continual construction of new niches. Sure, some species will last a very long time — they found a particularly more or less stable niche; there’s no fixed niche, but there can be more stable niches, and you get alligators or sharks or whatever that are around for a hundred million years.

But life seems to always continue to find new forms, new niches, and to be willing to totally transform itself in the process of seeking intensities of experience.

And so we’ve got all of these different mammalian species and primates and human beings, who are — I mean, human beings are quite capable technologically. We can make tools that make new tools. But our bodies are comparatively fragile relative to, say — I mean, a bacterial colony can survive nuclear winter if it’s sufficiently sequestered. Sharks, alligators — they’re pretty tough. They’ve been around for quite a long time as species, and humans barely got here and we’re already on the verge of driving ourselves and many other complex mammals into extinction.

And so, what is it that’s driving evolution if we end up with species that are comparatively deficient in survival power and way more sensitive — in terms of eyes and ears, and not just physical senses, but our capacity to suffer? It’s really intense as human beings. Every organism feels pain, but we can spiral into hellish forms of suffering.

Rich: But joy too. We can do joy in a way that — crocodiles, I’m not sure they can. Maybe they do, maybe they’re in touch with it in their own way, but—

Matt: Yeah, I’ve seen an alligator appear to enjoy a belly rub, but maybe I’m projecting.

Rich: That’s all right. That’s what we do.

Matt: But yeah, so there’s this joy, this enjoyment factor, that I think often gets left out of the scientific picture of evolution — that life wants to enjoy itself. There’s this other side. I mean, you get it in sexual selection in Darwin, but that’s still kind of a reductive understanding of it. It’s not all just about reproduction. That has to happen or we wouldn’t be here, but there’s this cosmic celebration factor that I think a particular approach to science has made us — I mean, a scientist would be embarrassed to talk about that, or say, well, that’s not science. That’s just speculation.

Rich: Yeah, but I think they do it secretly. And just because we’re saying that there’s this inherent joy, it doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be as intense as an orgy or anything like that. It can be — it could just be noticing the way that a bird sings or moves, or the way a bird notices you. There can be an overwhelming joy in that too — the simple sort of wholesome things that they present all the time. I think it’s trying to signal to us.

Matt: Right. Yeah. And I think that the pain and the joy, they do go hand in hand. I mean, when sexual reproduction itself had to evolve at some point, it produces a whole other level of struggle between organisms to find mates, which asexually reproducing organisms didn’t have to deal with. And bacteria are functionally immortal. Sex introduces this whole other dynamic that’s quite traumatic and painful, but also — oh man, it unleashes so much creativity. And the joy of love. Humans aren’t the only pair-mating animals, but I think it’s always the good with the bad. The intensity of experience comes with both poles being enhanced. So that’s the responsibility that comes with being human.

Rich: Yeah. Right.

Matt: Well, I was gonna ask a big question. Human beings are continuous with the rest of life on this planet, but do we have a unique role here? And if so, what is that role? I mean, we’ve got scientists — there’s this drive to understand. We’ve got artists — there’s this drive to contribute to the further expression of beauty. We’ve got theologians who are orienting towards this creative process as a form of worship and praise to the creativity that underlies it. I mean, we have these different modes of response. And responsibility. And I just wonder from your own work and learning, how you envision the human role here and what’s our task?

Rich: All of those that you mentioned — theological concerns and all of that — I think is completely within the realm of what humans are here to do. But I think ultimately we have the responsibility to represent the Earth. You know, we are — and this gets at it — if I do have a theory, I call it Earthling Theory: that we are the only species on this planet that has had a sustained and intimate and sequential relationship — if you look at the human diaspora — with every habitat on this planet.

That is an exceptional origin story. Despite — and in addition to — the cosmic story and all of that, the story on Earth here is that our species is the recipient of the innate intelligence of every one of those habitats that we had those relationships with as we moved through this planet. And I hear a lot of people characterizing it as, you know, we come in and we exploit habitats, and that’s the mark of human. No, it’s not that. We’re curious enough, and we have the initiative and the motivation to go and know new habitats, and to thrive within them in right relation. And the reward of that is to perpetuate the species. And that process played out since the split with the chimps six, seven million years ago. Our species went on. And if all you need to do is look at the chimps — they didn’t do that. And they’re still living essentially the same way that we were living when we were the same species.

So I think this is just sort of something that I use — it’s aspirational. It’s just to know that this is where we get our capacities, our competencies, the things that truly make us human. And instead of just saying, well, we have these capacities and we use them on planet, and we use the planet — we are in cahoots with this planet in that way. And I think when we understand that, it changes the world that we’re living in. We suddenly feel a sense of commitment that arises from our shared history and extends into our shared fate.

The fact that we have this relationship with the Earth, and the fact that the Earth guided us in this way — now we have to return the favor. Now we need to speak for the Earth, because we are its special offspring. Not to say that we’re better or on a hierarchy, but the fact of the matter is that we are the recipients of the entirety of this Earth’s intelligence. And that’s why we do all these things that break the rules. This is what makes us unique, for better or for worse.

And so, just to answer your question — what is our responsibility? I think that’s the first one: to simply take ownership by way of belonging to the Earth. The ownership of our humanity by way of belonging to this Earth. And we’ll see where that takes us. We’ll see if we can get to the stars that way, or to Mars. I don’t know. I’m not sure if that was the question you were asking, but it just strikes me that even our capacity to do all this philosophizing and to do all this math is a capacity endowed upon us by the intelligence inherent in the Earth’s habitats.

Matt: That’s right. Yeah. I mean, it seems to me that one of the problems with environmental thought and the ecological movement since the late ‘60s and ‘70s is that it’s often been a story of retreat and a story of sacrifice or guilt, shame. Humans are bad. Humans are messing up the planet and it would be better if we weren’t here, or at least if Western industrial civilization were to go away. And there can be a romanticization of indigenous lifeways, which, yes, we have so much to learn from.

And at the same time, I think there’s a certain story to be told about this human diaspora where, as humans spread to all these different habitats, it seems to me that there’s at least some evidence that the megafauna in those areas were driven into extinction. And so it’s not like human beings haven’t been having an outsized impact on their local ecologies long before industrialization, even before agriculture. And of course, there are many indigenous communities that found right relationship with their local ecology after some time, but there are also plenty of examples of the opposite — it seems like Mayan civilization collapsed rapidly because of some ecological overshoot, for example. And so it’s not just Western modern industrial societies that have done that.

And so we’ve been learning, I think, over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, how to be in right relationship with the Earth. And it seems to me that an ecological worldview would need to be one that doesn’t emphasize the guilt factor, that doesn’t emphasize the need for humans to go away or disappear or that we don’t have something to contribute to the Earth, but instead allows for a new sense of adventure. And so how do we articulate that adventure?

I’m less excited about going to Mars per se. I think it might be rather difficult to live on a planet with one third the gravity and no magnetic field to shield us from cosmic rays. And I think people like Elon Musk are a little bit naive about how difficult that environment is and how inhospitable to life it is.

Rich: Absurd. Yeah. Well, no — it just completely ignores the deep entanglements of species and the geologic process.

Matt: Right. We’re earthlings.

Rich: I think, Matt, that we have a lot to talk about, and I’d love to figure out a way to really dive deep and do this in a way that’s really compelling.

Matt: Yeah. Well, we have just begun to scratch the surface. I’ve got to run in a few minutes here, but we need a couple hours to really get warmed up and allow our minds to meet.

Rich: Yeah. I know that there’s some synergy here that’s just waiting to find expression.

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