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And we begin. We begin another in our International Indigneous series of webinars of complexitorians and from the emergencia of various disciplines and areas from around the world. We’ve got Indigneous knowledge, in dialogue between Aboriginal Australia and the Indigneous people of Wales in the UK. And always with other guests coming in, this time we have from Aotearoa, we’ve got Guy Ritani… And… Yeah, they’re very big into queering permaculture and the sciences and everything, and a really good complex, complexity thinker. Chels Marshall from Gumbaynggirr First Peoples in coastal New South Wales. And of course, Beth Smith from Wales, not New South Wales, just Wales… Or is it South Wales? I don’t know, and Dave…
…we can draw from Indigenous frameworks to move forward…
Old South Wales is just fine.
Old Wales, Old South Wales and New South Wales. There and of course Dave Snowden… And yeah, we’re… I’m just, I’m happy for everyone to just jump in quickly and make a better introduction with that. And I think we should start with our guest, sibling… Guy.
[Indigeneous language]
I’m very grateful to be here. I’m very grateful to be yarning with everyone, and I really love these spaces, where we’re able to step into what might be ways that we can draw from Indigeneous frameworks to move forward and to discuss what moving forward might be. And to sit in that space. So very, very… I’ve been looking forward to this yarn. Thank you, Tyson. Oh, and I will say, I’m calling in from the beautiful rainforest country of Wanggeriburra up in the Gold Coast hinterlands.
Sweet, it’s a bit wet there, just now. We’ll be getting into that. Chels… It’s good to see you, sis.
Giinagay from Gumbaynggirr country on the North Coast, New South, and… Same as Guy, we’ve been feeling… A lot of this, it’s almost like the sky crying. But I love being in any sort of space with other Indigneous people from places around the world. And just that collective yarning and collective thinking. Yeah, it’s definitely a new realm on how to work through these complexities, especially when, where we’re deriving on and coming from our own cultural world views, and our own cultural systems, are wholly complex in themselves. And then how to bring that out and share that. It’s complex again. So yeah, it’s good that there’s other people that understand and can assist in that sort of thing.
It’s hard, as you know, Ty, to try and transfer that knowledge system and those components that make it up into plain and simple English. And you could say it’s something that you can really understand through practice, I suppose. But yeah… That’s why I love these sort of things, ’cause it makes me think and makes me use all that stuff I learnt at school in the English language and complexities.
It's hard, as you know… to try and transfer that knowledge system and those components that make it up into plain and simple English.
Beautiful. Dave, big Dave.
Hi. Yeah, it’s good to be back on this. It’s a weird time to be talking. I’ve just had three days walking in the hills, which is where I restore my balance, but then around you the whole world seems to be collapsing. So I think it’s gonna be a difficult conversation today, in that sense.
Yeah.
You've got multiple identities, multiple competition, and the nuclear danger at the moment.
You’ve got multiple identities, multiple competition, and the nuclear danger at the moment. And all of that’s going on, and if we can try and even make some sense of starting to think about that, it would be useful.
Well, I think with Beth’s help and all of us together today, we might try to pull together a bit of a methodology for our process… Our process over the next hour or so and see where we finish up, with some sense making about the world. Beth… Beth where are you?
Welsh woman in Denmark. So, out of my natural habitat, not quite in my Cynefin. But yeah, just to reflect on what Dave has mentioned there, and I think for me, and particularly in this kind of forum, and these yarns… What’s really stuck with me is this idea of decision-making and actually how do we make decisions as groups of people in, in a more decentralised and social way? Something that goes beyond a vote once every four years, and to reflect on what Dave had mentioned and what’s going on in Ukraine, and to the east of us here, is that pointing at something else in terms of how we choose to organise ourselves? And what is it from our respective cultures? Can we understand mechanisms, ways, heuristics for doing that? And doing that in a way that possibly represents more than just human needs.
…how do we make decisions as groups of people in, in a more decentralised and social way?
Alright, well. Yeah, so I’m Tyson Yunkaporta, with ties and other ties in the south here. Currently on Boon Wurrung Country, which is practically Antarctica. Down here it’s about as low as you can get, I mean… And there’s Tasmania there, of course, but people often miss that anyway, before they hit the big wall of ice, that is the ring around the flat Earth, didn’t you know?
Yeah.
I have ancestors buried in Tasmania, Tyson.
I thought you were gonna to say in the ice wall on the flat Earth.
No, in Tasmania. They were Welsh Chartists, they campaigned for one person, one vote, and they were sentenced to life in prison, in Tassie.
So the moral of the story is, children never trust anyone... Ever. And don't help anybody, because they're just gonna kill you.
You better look out for that fair voting system stuff. Don’t you know that’s anti-democratic? You gotta look out for that one. Yeah, well, I thought we might kick off with some frog stories today, ’cause that’s pretty alive for us. Guy talking up frogs there in the floods, and as they’re trying to get a feel for all that water. Guy being off Country… Not in Land of the Long White Cloud, but here in a place of lots of just all encompassing black clouds at the moment, dumping their bellies everywhere. Lots of floods, amazing floods, and just kind of embracing the frog song at the moment, and trying to feel for where that water’s going and what it’s all about.
And Chels goes and sends me a video of this snake after we’ve just been through a big think-tank yarn all about snakes and zero point energy and gecko’s feet and energy systems and closed systems and open systems and all kinds of amazing things. But mostly looking at that serpent dreaming, so… She sends me this video of this snake in the flood that was giving a ride to two mice and a frog. I think we have that image somewhere, we’re gonna try and bring it up for you as we go along. Yeah, but this made us think of a few different frog stories that we might talk to and through, just to sort of settle ourselves culturally into things. There it is there. So you got a snake with a… There’s a frog and there’s a couple of mice hitching a ride. And people keep trying to knock the frogs… Knock the frog and mice off, but the snake’s not having any of it. He’s protecting them and making sure they don’t drown. So it’s pretty amazing.
I immediately thought of that old the Aesop’s Fable with the frog giving a scorpion a ride across the river on its back, and the scorpion stings him to death in the middle of the river. And as they’re sinking, the frog goes, “What you do that for? Now we’re both gonna drown.” And the scorpion goes, “Well, I’m a scorpion, that’s what I do. I sting fellows.” So the moral of the story is, children never trust anyone… Ever. And don’t help anybody, because they’re just gonna kill you. So, I don’t know if that’s… Kind of thinking’s caused any problems in the world that we might wanna make some sense of. Especially Dave, just coming down from the mountains. The old man, he’s got his wise eyes on there.
But I think we all have some house stories. Chels and I have also, we’ve been looking in the lab at giant mega fauna stories. We did a lot of big yarns going deep… Doing a deep dive into the economies of scale and the limits of growth and all these kinds of things. And one of the big stories we looked at was this kind of anti-trust dreaming of the Tiddalik, the frog that swallowed up all the water in the landscape, this giant frog. And it took all the species acting together to get it to vomit all those waters forth into the landscape again… And for that to go all around. So speaking of water, speaking of frogs, who’s got some froggy story? Froggy, froggy…
I've been trying to listen to the different calls that this landscape has with that push and pull of the water across our landscape.
I’ll jump in there. Frogs have been on my mind quite a lot. I’ve been thinking about… I was sharing earlier how I have, sensemaking with the landscape that I’m on up here in Wanggeriburra Country, beautiful rainforest that I’m just staring in to do right now. And I was looking at this incredible piece of work, whom I can actually quote the artist, an Aboriginal fellow that’s currently showing in the foyer of some art place, up in Upper Meanjin. And it was a story of… It was a visualisation of the frogs calling on the rains, and what different calls called on what different kind of rain. And I sat there staring at it, looking at all of the different visualisations of how rains could have come in different ways and different forms, and then sitting here as we’ve just had this massive flood. I’ve been trying to listen to the different calls that this landscape has with that push and pull of the water across our landscape. And it’s been interesting as this massive deluge has come through to watch a lot of the frogs creep into the grasslands that we have. And a lot more than I’ve seen here before.
So, I’ve been really trying to use these divine senses to try and recognise, what is being communicated through these frog songs? What is being communicated through these frog stories? And what are the ways that we can relate to our landscape through that? And yeah, I think that’s sort of… Chels was saying earlier about finding a little frog in the car, and I was thinking about how that exact same thing happened to me last week travelling off the mountain, and those frogs coming into new eco-systems, coming into new environments, and what that frog call would do to the water transferring through that. And it’s always a sit back into how complex and inter-dependent we are on these little creatures that play such a fundamental role in what is one of the pinnacle life sources for us. So, I’ve really been sitting and listening and observing to what is country saying to me through these various different frog calls?
So, I've really been sitting and listening and observing to what is country saying to me through these various different frog calls?
Yeah… Who else feels to jump in and build on that story?
I’m having a think, and we don’t have any really kind of strong frog stories from Welsh traditional history that I am aware of. Dave might know one or two more, but thinking from more of the systems lens to kind of borrow a story about the myth of boiling the frog. So, placing a frog in cold water, and slowly turning up the heat, the frog never jumps out. But if you were to throw the frog into the boiling pot, it would jump straight back out.
And actually, is that a metaphor for what on Earth has gone on? And if historically, particularly with Indigneous communities, that if these were things, were to be imposed upon somebody today, we’d jump straight out. And I say this particularly as a representation of the Welsh perspective, as I say, because we are so… We’ve been in this pot far longer than most. We’re sticking with the pot. And so actually, how do we potentially quite late in the day, think about, how do we jump out of the pot, and start to think about alternative systems, ways of organizing?
…thinking from more of the systems lens to kind of borrow a story about the myth of boiling the frog… We (the Welsh) have been in this pot far longer than most. We're sticking with the pot.
So some of that…
Dave, just jumped down from the mountains back into the boiling water.
I mean, most of the world collections are actually about toads, not frogs. And toads taking over things and having to be slain and stuff like that. But I think there’s an interesting… Every time the English invaded Wales, there was… There were more Welsh troops fighting for them than English troops. Because what they actually did was to exploit differences between tribal groups, which is actually how they conquered India the same way, it was kind of like, well we’ll get this group to fight that group. Yeah, and we’ll support this person and then we’ll pay these people to come and fight.
And I think part of the problem we’ve got… And you can see this in what’s going on in Ukraine and elsewhere, we all know that small situated tribal groups have battled for the land and battled for people. There’s a limit that some of the biological stuff now, is reinforcing that concept of 150 to 300, in terms of viable units. But then you face, effectively, an imperial power, like we faced in the 11th to the 13th century, which was based on primogeniture, which was based on money, which consolidated land, is how does one compete with the other, right?
…at any stage if the Welsh tried to be united, we'd still be independent. But they never did unite, and they could always be split, right?
So we’re kind of like, no one is better, but then it’s split, it’s unable to unite… Coming back to Beth’s same thing about the frog, at any stage if the Welsh tried to be united, we’d still be independent. But they never did unite, and they could always be split, right? And I think that that’s one of the issues we’ve gotta look at, as we go through this.
Well, we got Chels Marshall, first of her name, mother of frogs here. She has a daughter who’s frog totem.
I love the intro, it almost made me sound like the hot chick out of Game of Thrones, with the Dragons.
That’s it, that’s what I was going for.
… what I see in the frog is that they're essentially one of the key species or animals or our kin, they're bio-indicators…
Thanks man, appreciate that. So no, I was just sharing that my daughter’s totem is [Indigenous language], which means that little frog, and so lots of things around what we do is about the frog. And that kinship that goes to frogs, and I was just sharing a story that it sort of passed through into your other sort of little life forms in the household. The little Jackaranian dog, that has also picked up on that importance of the frog being a totem, and the caring and the custodianship around it.
And as I was opening the door the other day, going in, and I was about to slam the door, and if I would have, if it wasn’t for Sunshine, the Jackaranian, I would have slammed a little frog in the door. And it would have essentially made my day feel like shit. And luckily she brought it to my attention, like straight away, and it was like, “Oh, wow cool.” And she didn’t do the chasing thing or anything. It was almost like, “There’s our kin. That’s what we look after, so you’re about to kill it, so do something.”
And I did, and I think that’s that whole action and what I see in the frog is that they’re essentially one of the key species or animals or our kin, they’re bio-indicators, and as soon as something in the environment starts going wrong, they’re one of the species that will let us know and will tell us… And however they tell us, it’s in that form of communication. And then yeah, that sort of reverts back to that image of the snake and the frog, and the snake protecting the frog, and the snake being very much around this sort of story of being a protector, and a creator, that really sort of… That’s why I send it to you, Ty ’cause it was very deep on a lot of levels. And for something that would usually predate and prey on this species that it was carrying on its back, yeah, I just thought this is really interesting because we now see this sort of relationship, where it’s part of that helping and that moves into Tiddalik, I’m moving all over the place here, but I’m getting somewhere hopefully at the end, is when we revert back to the story of Tiddalik the frog, is that it’s about animals working together and sharing that responsibility, it’s about highlighting greed and in how greed moves into deteriorating the complexities in life, and then the importance of that teamwork.
Yeah, bringing down an oligarch is a team effort.
we revert back to the story of Tiddalik the frog, is that it's about animals working together and sharing that responsibility, it's about highlighting greed and in how greed moves into deteriorating the complexities in life, and then the importance of that teamwork.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Well, I’m just gonna not even… I’m trying not to think of the option that that snake was just taking a packed lunch to high ground.
Because that would ruin everything?
It makes me also think…
I lied. It fully destroyed it.
It makes me also think prior to the floods, when we had the big fires come through, all of the wombats, they did the same thing in their wombat holes. They were like, “Yo, Hector come on in here.” And that collective sense making for me is there’s some unknown narrative going on that’s actually just being able to look around you and all know, “Hey, this is wrong and we need to work together.” And for me that’s that sort of gap of domestication, of colonisation where we are kinda like, “Is it bad? What’s that? Is that bad? Is that good? I don’t… ” When do we get on the back of the snake, who is the snake, who is the frog? And what is the flood? Can we… How does that come? How do we make sense of that?
And why is the flood? Well, look, I think this is gonna bring us back to toads because all I can think of is JD, John Davis who’s in our lab here. And one time when we were writing up, we’re trying to write up whole heap of stuff that had come out of the think-tanks and do a whole heap of proposals and all this sort of stuff, and the writing was tough and he was supposed to be helping me but he’s just sitting there playing with his boomerangs. And then my mind was just sort of stuck. I’m trying to type this thing and he just wasn’t helping me out. Then he starts clapping the boomies together, clapping together, and then he starts singing this song cycle. And it’s a song cycle, it’s a fairly new one, there’s heaps that are like tens of thousands of years old, this one’s only like I don’t know, maybe just less than a century old.
…how do we sing these imperialist toads into some kind of balance with the environment of it also, that means everybody else adjusting their behaviours…
This song cycle and he’s singing in language. And turns out it was the song cycle for the cane toad. So that toad was of course imported here to eat the cane beetle in that sugarcane there. And of course it’s got the poison sacs on its back there. And so there was lots of animals dying from eating this cane toad that wasn’t interested in the beetles, it was only interested in having heaps of sex and spawning everywhere and spreading like the plague. It was a plague of frogs. No one knew what to do. And yeah, and so the fellas got together, all the fellas got together and they made ceremony for the frog and they brought the frog in and made sure that ceremony was all about all the little tweaks that everybody needed to do right across the entire ecosystem across everybody’s totems to sort of just tweak all the behaviours and minimise the damage and bring the cane toad in.
So, the Goanna stopped eating them in their entirety and dying. And the crows learn to flip the toad over and pick the guts out but leave the back alone. And all the old solitary White dudes just sort of living on their own out on the bush learned to lick the backs of the toad and just trip balls, because apparently it’s a pretty psychedelic experience to the toad poison. Yeah, I used to smash them when I was a kid with sticks and some of that poison shot up and went in my mouth once and that was a pretty interesting experience, so I can vouch for that. Not fun for a 10-year-old though, that can be a bad trip in some situations. Yeah, so I don’t know, but it was just at the chemical level and everything else. John Davis, he’s clapping those boomerangs together singing that song cycle. And I looked down and suddenly all the writing we needed done was done and kinda got us through it. I guess I don’t know, the provocation would be how do we sing these imperialist toads into some kind of balance with the environment of it also, that means everybody else adjusting their behaviours as well to flip the toad over and eat its guts, and you’re not trying to get too sick.
…every time we've introduced new animals into an ecosystem, it's caused damage.
It comes back to some of our earlier themes actually. In 17th century Scotland, if you were a woman healer and they found a toad in your house, that was proof you were a witch and you’d be burnt alive. That toad was a witch’s familiar. But coming back to the wider theme, every time we’ve introduced new animals into an ecosystem, it’s caused damage. So the red squirrels which are still present where I was over the weekend in the Lake District are more or less eliminated by grey squirrels which brought in a different squirrel pox, yeah. And you could go on through thousands and thousands of examples of attempts to effectively engineer nature rather than evolve it. And I think we’ve talked about this before, the engineering metaphors of the last 40-50 years, yeah and the concept of the engineer as designer who will create the perfect system is a problem. And Tyson, it’s comes back… Something I heard you on the other day on The Stoa. You’ve got the same thing with this whole game A, game B stuff. We, the engineers will now design the perfect game, yeah. We’ll take Indigneous concepts and dump them in there because that looks cute.
Yeah, yeah.
And you could go on through thousands and thousands of examples of attempts to effectively engineer nature rather than evolve it.
And now we’ve designed the perfect future rather than allow it to evolve. And I think if you look at the wombat story, I love the wombat story, I think it’s something we talked about before which is how do you create localised empathy? Because if you’re at the water hole and there’s short water, animals will not predate, there’s kinda like a neutrality around that. And at the moment, everything we’re trying to solve is engineering solutions, IT solutions, information warfare. Nobody’s thinking about rebalancing in the sense of multiple small human connections. And how do you create those empathetic relationships? Now, it’s not just for humans, it’s also with the land. I said I’ve just spent three days walking and chatting with some farmers on the route. So I parked the car, farmer comes out. The last three cars have pushed backwards and hit her fence so that there’s cows who got out, yeah, the lamb… We’re about to get… We’re about to hit lambing season, and people are taking dogs onto the fells without leads. And if you’ve ever seen lambs savaged by pets, in terms of the way it works, is people haven’t got this sense of empathy with the land that they’re in, or they see it as something which is theirs to exploit or deal with. Yeah, that they won’t walk in the right way so that they continue to damage the vegetation on the side of the paths and so on. And it’s this awareness empathy thing, I think where we seem to be lacking.
Well, in the rock, paper, scissors game of grey squirrel beats red squirrel, you got any grey coats over there ’cause we got a problem with red coats over on this continent. I don’t know, Guy, you had a bit more luck, sort of hold them off for a bit. Do we need to be building forts and sharpening up the Green-stone or which way?
And how do you create those empathetic relationships? Now, it's not just for humans, it's also with the land.
I feel… I don’t know, just on the… With what you were talking about earlier, it made me think of when we’re holding space and we’re choosing to have relationship with our landscape and with our people or whichever people, what is the convention holding that? And so, that’s for me, it was always about the energy of this Yarn space is intentional, it’s informed. But more often than not, we’re put into these spaces that aren’t intentional and they aren’t formed and they’re not centered around service of building empathy or service of building understanding to landscape. And so, what that made me think of is what our admissions of that micro-culture, that micro-exhibition in a modern context that we need to be in because… And for us, these spaces have been obviously environments where we can express cultural arts, cultural yarn and cultural learning.
But also in a more contemporary sense, where we’re kind of pushed into a more productive based social setting, what is the trade-off between where we are right now, where we need to be, and that transition space? And what I have been witnessing is these culturally informed craft spaces, to do-spaces, practice-spaces, weaving-spaces, singing-spaces, karte kya, drumming circles, all of these where we have that payoff of cultural integrity, we have that payoff of empathetic resonance, and we have that horizontal click through learning of the purpose of being in community. And hopefully, we can tack on that relationship to landscape. But like you said, Dave, where are… How are we uplifting these spaces and with these systemic infrastructures, are we steering towards more of these spaces or are we steering away from them? And even with the now Indigneous frameworks, are we still steering towards more of those praxis of empathy spaces rather than the dilution of separation, isolation? And how can you have empathy in it?
… we're put into these spaces that aren't intentional and they aren't formed and they're not centered around service of building empathy or service of building understanding to landscape.
Well, Beth and Chels, do you think it’s possible to have collective sense-making without the kinda super rational logics and processes that come with the arts, craft story, all of these things? Yeah, what do you think?
Yeah, I’m thinking back to some of the miner’s welfare and things like that that took place in Wales, particularly during the Industrial Revolution, and that people willingly contributed a part of their wage in order to create a cultural space that upheld local culture within a community in a very much cooperative sense, and they became institutions that could be used for just about anything. But being in the presence of that place and knowing where its funds have come from, this is from the toil of my father, the toil of my grandfather at this place, I think totally flips that narrative of the idea of the arts or culture being something that’s kind of imposed or brought in to facilitate change that…
And what I have been witnessing is these culturally informed craft spaces, to do-spaces, practice-spaces, weaving-spaces, singing-spaces we have that payoff of empathetic resonance…
Yeah, it doesn’t come from abundance…
It wasn’t from how…
And leisure, it comes from stress and hardship and death.
…it doesn't come from abundance...and leisure, it comes from stress and hardship and death.
And recognition of the necessity of culture and these things. These were already poor people, and they were still able to find the money to ensure that their culture continued and that people had access to that.
Some of that is also language and religion. So if you look at where I come from in North Wales, which is the CaBans of the slate mines. So the miners would literally carve out a hollow in slate mines and they would meet over their lunch to discuss religion and politics and keep minutes. But that link back in with the chapels, which were one of the main repositories in the Welsh language. And that was in… So that the concept of worship and language and culture was an identity issue in terms of the way it all wove together. It wasn’t… It evolved out of that culture and it indicated that culture, the same with the miners clubs in South Wales, but it’s not something you can bring in from outside and impose. And I think there’s a wider issue, there’s an old story if you go back to home, we’re about to learn to see this, which is brilliantly picked up in a story about rabbits in Watership Down, but the basic concept is you’ve got a whole a bunch of people on an island who’ve just decided the world is too hard, so they spend all day eating lotus leaves in this sort of drug induced stupor and don’t actually engage in the world. And I think that’s something else we’re starting to see, and some of the ways actually in which Indigneous ideas have been culturally taken across, yeah?
Is this concept of withdrawal into a false form of spirituality or a culture, of which you’re not a part, as a way to remove yourself from engagement. It’s all about I’ve now got this vision of how the world should be, so until the world is like this, yeah, nothing else can change. And we saw this in the ’70s when I was heavily involved in liberation theology which came out of Latin America. And you’d have people who would say, “Until everybody comes to Jesus, the world can’t be saved.” And they wouldn’t engage with social justice because they had this belief about how things should be. I’ll come back to this concept of empathy and small actions of engagement, is all of the things we’re talking about are not an excuse to withdraw from the world, they’re almost like a requirement to engage in the world in a different way. And I think that’s one of the problems in terms of this sort of fantasization of alternative realities, which is a real problem at the moment.
…but the basic concept is you’ve got a whole a bunch of people on an island who've just decided the world is too hard, so they spend all day eating lotus leaves in this sort of drug induced stupor and don't actually engage in the world.
Yeah, I was just going to talk about the same thing, Dave, I think picking up from Beth, is that whole sort of realm around arts and leisure and that it’s about time and space. So I know here in Gumbaynggirr Country, that time for having a, I call it a downtime, was primarily because of the abundance in resource. And so, that abundance meant that there was less time having to go to the supermarket or finding any food resource or any resource, so then there was time to then think and to let your mind relax, and to have that time to then develop things like the artistic form, that deep thinking, problem-solving, evolving the mind and moving into that complexity and thinking, whereas now, everything’s so fast and driven.
And it’s obviously around those factors of industrialism, capitalism, so yeah, everyone’s driving faster, and we don’t have that time to be able to let the mind rest, so that we can pick up and then also start using different components in our brain and unlocking these areas that give us this evolution of thought and mind frame and world-view. And that’s something that a lot of our ancestors had the privilege of, and why there’s all this wisdom that comes out. And, as you said, Dave, people that are picking up under a false form, because your people are finding that that’s something that they can relate to and attach because there’s not really any other guidance or leadership in any other way. I’d love to have two days off a week just to do some cultural activity or do some art and let my mind rest and I’m sure I would come out with a clearer thought process, being able to use analytical thought a lot better, and being able to focus and concentrate. I’d be like a dolphin.
We’d all love to be like a dolphin. Who wouldn’t love that?
I'll come back to this concept of empathy and small actions of engagement, is all of the things we're talking about are not an excuse to withdraw from the world, they're almost like a requirement to engage in the world in a different way
I guess what my… I don’t know if this is a question or a thought. In a context that where it… Again, would absolutely love to take all the time off to go and do these things, but we live in this Anthropocene world short of having the privilege to be able to have all these resources that our ancestors, I mean, in this context, being resourced in that way means being very wealthy, and having all the access to that time. So, how do we create conventions within this way of being that we are frankly in to get back into those spaces? Are there conventions within our workspaces or does that mean we have to lean on very strong family ritual context or… These are my questions because if this is our birthing house of this empathetic sense making in connection, and we can’t structurally be in that, where’s the dynamism into that? And what might that look like in some…
…that whole sort of realm around arts and leisure and that it's about time and space…I call it a downtime, was primarily because of the abundance in resource.
Well, that’s it. Like Dave says, you can’t design it. It’s particularly… The house is no good. The house that we’ve been asked to live in is no good. You’re not going to fix it with a coat of paint because there’s ants in the walls. And I guess, there’s no design solution for the wainscotting or whatever you gonna put around it to make it look prettier or anything like that, it’s… That analogy’s no good, I’m gonna give a different one. You’re not gonna design a better saddle for your cow, you know what I mean? It’s like the idea of being able to, I don’t know, have the necessary conditions, for the emergence of the kinds of things we’re talking about. It’s not something that can happen within a great nation, this experimental system of great nations, to maintain the sovereignty of borders, where you’ve got millions of people all crowded into one country and speaking one language and supposed to be alike enough and maintaining a standing army and all this sort of stuff. There’s a hell of a lot you got to do and there’s not a lot of time for good collective sense making, there’s only time for propaganda. So how do you design something that can only work with smaller communities living within bio-regions?
…everyone's driving faster, and we don't have that time to be able to let the mind rest…
I think…
Better ways of being when we’re basically within a structure of these juggernauts, these giant Tiddalik frogs that are squatting over the top of us and we can only do that.
I think part of the problem though is, the question is what do we design? And yeah I blame systems thinking for a lot of this ’cause it assumes… Over the last 30 or 40 years, the assumption is you have to design what the system is going to be, and that comes out of cybernetics, it comes out of systems dynamics. I think what complexity is teaching us is you have to work out where the hell you are, and you have to make changes and then see what happens.
…how do we create conventions within this way of being that we are frankly in to get back into those spaces? Are there conventions within our workspaces or does that mean we have to lean on very strong family ritual context?
So, for example, some of the stuff we’re doing at the moment is to ritualise the interaction between young people joining the firm and people about to retire from the firm by making the first journalists and investigators of the latter. Now, we’re not saying that we can therefore design the perfect knowledge system, but we do know if we capture those stories and those stories are captured at volume and they’re captured by that trans-generational pairing, the likelihood is better things will emerge. And I think that that’s what we’ve got out of the last 40 or 50 years, is a concept of how do you understand where you are and how do you change small things, how do you monitor feedback and critically, how do you initiate interactions? And I think this is a key thing, to change the way in which people interact, so that they have to face things in different ways, because if you isolate people, they work differently, in that sense. So I think we need a series of small experiments which start to change interactions between people, and we need to see what happens when those work at scale, and we’ve got to break this desire to say, “If I do this, this will be the result,” because that’s what really damages things.
There's a hell of a lot you got to do and there's not a lot of time for good collective sense making, there's only time for propaganda.
When you were saying that, and the firm and everything, all I could see was… All I could imagine was Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross mentoring a younger person for how to sell real estate, “Takes brass balls to sell real estate kid, brass balls”. So you do have that sort of a few legacy issues coming through from there, that there’s not necessarily purity that emerges from that mentoring relationship. How do we deal with that?
I’m just keen to look back to a couple of things that were said there, and Tyson’s notion of having standing armies and people optimised for efficiency and being very, very role-based, and quite often single role-based. The saying that a society that separates its scholars from its warriors will always have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools, and actually starting to think about, in amongst all of this, and I’m looking at, particularly more Indigneous communities whereby that role of thinker and doer is far more fluid.
True God. Well, look, we did… Keep going.
So I think we need a series of small experiments which start to change interactions between people, and we need to see what happens when those work at scale
So I was gonna say, celebration is also important in this. If you go back, even in very difficult circumstances, people would still sing, even to make bad work tolerable. And we seem to have lost some of those capacities. We sing at rugby matches in Wales, we don’t chant songs, we sing hymns or at least we used to that people know the hymns less well. So I think it comes back to this question of art. Our art is not something which is… It’s not the sacred and the profane. Art needs to be something which is part of what we do. It’s imagination, it’s singing. I was singing on the hills yesterday. I only sing when I’m on my own when nobody else can hear, because it would be deeply embarrassing, there are very few of us who are tone deaf Welshmen. I’m one of them, alright?
…I'm looking at, particularly more Indigenous communities whereby that role of thinker and doer is far more fluid.
Such a… Such a stereotype.
But it does make a difference alright?
Welshmen singing in the hills.
It's a sense of something other... The sense of something more than the individual, and we're losing a lot of that. And art is one of the ways that happens.
It does. That’s the way you are. And I think we need to make… It’s a sense of something other… The sense of something more than the individual, and we’re losing a lot of that. And art is one of the ways that happens.
And that people would have told you, “Don’t give up your day job,” to which you’d have to reply, “Well, singing is what makes my day job tolerable, leave me alone. Why can’t we sing?” Yeah, and the celebration like you say, I was thinking, guy feasting, how feasts work, etcetera. Even if there’s not much to go around, you still feast don’t you?
Yeah, and I think it’s that eating together. My daughter and I’ve been talking about this a lot lately because she’s been in Ibiza living with other people, I lived in a commune in the ’70s. We’re increasingly seeing people buy houses as multiple families and live together in different ways, and I think that sort of communal interaction, the variety in interaction is key. And, eating together, drinking together, is part of that environment. And again, I was at the pub in the Lake District, and they wanted to put me on a table in the restaurant, I went and sat in the bar. Because then, you get to talk with other people and you get a conversation and you meet strangers and you discover new things. And that concept… And that’s what travellers used to do, you’d all end up in the common room eating out of the common pot, yeah, and having conversations with people you didn’t meet before and we just don’t have the… Is that intimacy point and we don’t have conversations with strangers.
...having conversations with people you didn't meet before and we just don't have the... Is that intimacy point and we don't have conversations with strangers
I don’t know. I was always fascinated with Guy’s process of querying permaculture as a way of change, but with it, I don’t know, but particularly with the spin of… Not the spin but that foundation of Mana, and how they work with Mana, and how that emergence happens in relation in this kind of co-evolutionary thing going on with whatever landscape they find themselves in, on whatever community is around, whatever community is there, and coming into relation in that way, and these sort of just beautiful gardens growing, growing out of all this queer Mana.
I think it’s such a privilege to get a draw from those spaces and to what you’re saying about the fact that we don’t have the predisposition as much, and I’m not seeing it as much, to talk to strangers, to know what posturing we have when we come into relationship, there’s so many weird traumas or perceived projections before people get into that space, and for me, why I call it an absolute privilege is because I feel it is sacred to draw from okay, what is a Mana-full approach to this? Actually, my Mana, my knowledge of that, knows that it’s safe to talk to everyone and we’re broken down that barrier, but I think… I’m starting to recognise the difference between what should be, what is, and what is the work that we have to do preparing people to come into that space, and as someone who draws from a concept of Mana, it’s very hard to come into a space sort of modeling what that looks like and anchoring that Mana coming into it, and so I’m interested in what that looks like in different contexts, yeah.
Some of these socialisation, when I was growing up, we had geography-based schools. So you were in school with people from all sorts of backgrounds and different backgrounds. What you’ve now got, certainly within the UK, is people are clustering in schools like with like. So they don’t have a capacity to have a conversation with somebody for example, in a pub who hasn’t been to university. They just don’t have the language to have the conversation, which those of us from a different generation do, you just switch the subjects. So I think that having to constantly… And certainly when you’re young, that period up til 16 of being in a school with lots of people from lots of different backgrounds, which gave you a body of language and knowledge which you could then draw on, and you never get a chance to recover that. And we’re not increasing, it’s… The future generation thinks we need to increase those encounters, youth with youth, youth with older.
The middle aged is the problem area, because that’s all about survival and building a job and building a family and doing things like that. Again, it comes back to this work we’re doing a lot of which is combining younger people with older people, yeah, in terms of how you actually hold the community and actually historically if you go back into originally, grandparents were the primary child-carers because the parents were out hunting, and that’s where the wisdom got transferred and the knowledge got transferred. So I think there’s lots of things we can start to do in small ways and see what will happen, but it’s gonna be the small things which make a difference, not the big things.
this kind of co-evolutionary thing going on with whatever landscape they find themselves in, on whatever community is around, whatever community is there, and coming into relation in that way
It’s an increase in those relations and Chels has got a bit of a black fella gestalt, I don’t know, this kind of force multiplier of the more increased connections you have with the nodes in a system, then the more you’re gonna get surplus energy produced that’s greater than the sum of the energy of all those nodes just sort of isolated. I don’t know, we talked this the other day, I don’t know if that’s still fresh for you, but sis.
I knew you’d bring back something that was days ago.
Yeah, yeah.
But…
But, go on.
I was just enjoying listening then and really trying to understand yeah, some of these components, and I suppose, yeah, I’m probably not the best person because I tend to have grown up in that situation where I had lots of time on country and I probably understand and get along better with other kin, which is other species and not necessarily humans. As an ecologist, I’ve always struggled to understand humans, and human beings as a species, and it’s only just now we’re edging close to 50 that I’m starting to understand the complexities attached to humans, and it is all these factors, it’s what people call white noise that’s constantly around us, and it is a constant variable. And there’s so much of it that’s encompassing, an example is how many passwords or PIN words do you have to remember in a day? How many things do you have to do to serve the system or the authorities or whatnot in how you live in your lifestyle? So it’s all these encompassing factors that sort of, I feel…
It’s almost like an entrapment, but it’s definitely like a shield around allowing us to have that osmosis of being able to release those inner components of ourselves and especially to other people. Yeah, people have become so guarded in that sense, it’s like… And especially when you come through things like pandemics and it’s like well, yeah, I know I’m… For example, it was like even now, it’s like struggling to interact, what do I ask these guys? How are you going? And I know that they’ve just been through intense fire. How’s things for you? And I know that they’ve been through intense flood and lost everything. So it’s almost then like the awkwardness of having to talk about current day issues and situations, because they’re so confounding. So then, it’s almost like everything is encompassed by this, and we don’t have that free time or free thought processes to be able to think about… We do a doodle in a meeting while we’re… And that’s our art for the day.
…when I was growing up, we had geography-based schools. So you were in school with people from all sorts of backgrounds and different backgrounds.
Yeah. So that brings me to wellness, because for me, and in our way, health is something that only works at the community level, the village level, the clan level, the family level, that’s the scale of good health, that can’t scale down to the individual and it can’t scale up to public health of millions of people and the metrics that are needed and the probabilities and calculations of scoring the fewest deaths or the highest rates of this outcome for millions at that sort of national scale level. I don’t think things work at that scale. But they also don’t work the other way, right down to… That’s our other choice, is to resist public health measures and sacrifice ourselves to these wellness gurus, and give them half of our money to focus on individual health, like well, I’m gonna be an Übermensch from doing yoga and taking all of these supplements that are gonna make me this fabulous, special, healthy individual and stuff everyone else. Because like yeah, nah, nah, no, shut up. Because one day you, this fabulous bloody bendy, stretchy, big muscly MMA fighter or whatever you are, someone’s gonna have to wipe your arse. You’re gonna need care too you bastard. So…
You can’t have family centre, right?
… historically if you go back into originally, grandparents were the primary child-carers because the parents were out hunting, and that's where the wisdom got transferred and the knowledge got transferred.
Wellness doesn’t work at the individual level and it doesn’t work at the population of millions level either. Wellness has to be a community and a village, local thing.
You can’t have fun satirising it though, Tyson. I mean, Aunty Beryl and I in Broken Hill, had a wonderful time with one wellness guru from the States and talking to sticks, so we created a whole aboriginal…
Did she hit him with it? If I know Aunty Beryl.
…this kind of force multiplier of the more increased connections you have with the nodes in a system, then the more you're gonna get surplus energy produced…
Around the Eucalyptus twig, and I said, “This is an Aboriginal sign.” She said, “I’ll make up a good story about it, and there’s a wonderful story about a turtle.” So, you can’t satirise this stuff, alright? Which is interesting, I think… Coming back to Chelsea’s point… When you’re 50, you’re expected to do things. I mean, I’m 68 on All Fool’s Day, I’ve got the most appropriate birthday in the world, born on 1st of April. Nobody really expects me to do as much as they did when I was 50, the same when you’re young. And it’s this ability to reflect and to be… You can get away with murder once you hit your late 60s, things that you’d be beaten up with for being arrogant when you’re 50, people regard as amiable eccentricity when you hit your late 60s. So the ability to comment and bond, and I think that’s… Again, I’ve come back to trans-generational point too many times.
We don’t realise that human beings go through journeys themselves and in communities. And it’s not that there’s a universal model of what you are as a human, because you are constantly changing. That’s the whole Cynefin concept, is a weaving concept of being constantly wrapped up in different things, which you only ever partially understand, which you’re constantly living with and changing, yeah? So I think we need to… One of the big things we need to look at is what is identity in a modern world?
It was…
It's almost like an entrapment, but it's definitely like a shield around allowing us to have that osmosis of being able to release those inner components of ourselves…
Because identity has been taken over… It’s a libertarian structure, it’s the isolated individual. And that’s really damaging… One of the things which is scaring me, is a paper I read the other day, don’t know whether you’ve seen it yet Tyson, about the amount of money going into Santa Fe from libertarian far-right sources in the States. And that’s actually quite dangerous when you think about it, because the cult of the individual and the cult of individual freedom, is one of the major problems in the world today.
Just one thought on combating these larger roles of identity that become very stagnant I think, and people hold on to them very, very tight. And to Tyson’s point earlier about what is communal wellness and how do we hold each other in these conventions? And my work, I’m very attuned to what is good for our nervous system and what is good for our nervous system through cultural convention, so for example, going through COVID, I didn’t… Traditional Maori greeting of the hongi, where you press your foreheads together and your nose and you share a prayer. You breathe together, that co-regulation occurs, and this is how you’re meant to meet everyone always. And so, we have this nervous system co-regulation that’s occurring per communal meeting, per person everyday. And so now we’re in a context where we’re not allowed to do that, someone came up to me and gave me a hongi at the show a few weeks ago. It scared the crap out of me, but I was very grateful.
… in our way, health is something that only works at the community level, the village level, the clan level, the family level, that's the scale of good health, that can't scale down to the individual and it can't scale up to public health of millions of people…
But as we’re shifting into this new context, what are these micro-rituals, micro-ceremonies, micro-expressions that come in as a communal nervous system buffer, ’cause these things are being sifted out. And while we can’t necessarily make these systems or structures to support them, we can start uplifting those conventions of karte kya, of song, of blessing, of greeting, all of these conventions that ease that wellness and develop a sense of community, which I am seeing slowly disappear more and more. And we have to be more intentional about preserving.
Just had a… Thing back to Dave and Tyson. So I’m just thinking, given that we’re constantly changing, evolving, our environment is helping to assist what’s going on with us. I’m sort of thinking well, okay, how do we find these connections when we’re constantly in these states of flux, and that’s essentially… It’d probably be close to home now because we’ve been through so many environmental changes. We are enduring a lot of what nature has to lay out and lay down to us as humans because yeah, we love this built form and this design of our environment around us. And it does, it puts us in that context of constant flux and so, well, if you’re constantly in that, how do you then connect and make these connections? Or is it because everyone’s fluxing that it emulates that energy that we talked about before.
And it's not that there's a universal model of what you are as a human, because you are constantly changing… a weaving concept of being constantly wrapped up in different things…
Mm-hmm.
We practice in silence now.
I just wanted to see who broke it first. I had 20 bucks with Chels that it would be you, Dave, so there. Nah.
Gotta be smiling.
… the cult of the individual and the cult of individual freedom, is one of the major problems in the world today.
You gotta have some thinking time, it’s important, someone in that chat was asking for a bit of a definition and a separation between concepts of wellness and well-being. Which, you know, that could be fun, but I’d be also interested to think about whether there’s… Once you define them, whether or not there’s a causal linkage between the two. Or if it’s just a correlation, like if there’s some other X factor that when this improves, increases or decreases then wellness and well-being sort of are both affected at the same time. Yeah, what are your thoughts about the differences between wellness and well-being, and that sort of causal relation between them?
But as we're shifting into this new context, what are these micro-rituals…that come in as a communal nervous system buffer, 'cause these things are being sifted out.
If I’m going to be cynical, the minute you catch people out on one word, they then change the word and say it’s different.
That’s it.
The practice is done to actually change underneath it.
Yeah.
… it's all your fault as an individual. If something's wrong with the company, it's that you don't have the right attitude or the right mindset, or you haven't focused on your well-being.
And I think that, one of the things which really worries me at the moment is everything is being pushed back on the individual, it’s all your fault as an individual. If something’s wrong with the company, it’s that you don’t have the right attitude or the right mindset, or you haven’t focused on your well-being. It’s not the fault of the society, the processes or anything else. And I think that is one of the problems. It’s not that well-being isn’t important, all right? It is. But it’s not something that can be manipulated, or it’s not something which is… It’s not solely your responsibility, you’re responsible as part of the relationships.
Yeah, if you’re in good relation, then generally you will be… Everything will be working well, or your community will compensate in the areas you’re lacking. I don’t know, it kind of ends up taking wellness and well-being out of the equation really. Health becomes something that happens at your local community level rather than at the individual level or the national level. Yeah, so much you’re saying one in 68 children now have ADHD. Anyway.
Yeah but we love these labels, don’t we? It’s like you get nonsense like Myers-Briggs right?
Yeah.
And I’ve seen worse, or Spiral Dynamics or any of these, sort of, stuff that Nora Bateson and I are attacking big time at the moment.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think this is the big thing for me for Complexity Theory is it talks about interactions, not individual, not things.
We love to put things in little boxes and say you’re one of these therefore you’re like this, all right. I heard that Major Howard Don Beck, he said “You’re just an angry green, you don’t understand us turquoise people”. And you think, “You are a bloody idiot!” I had badges made “Proud to be brown”, which isn’t a Spiral Dynamics colours, right? So this desire to attach labels to things, and labels to individuals, not labels to things, not labels to interaction… And I think this is the big thing for me for Complexity Theory is it talks about interactions, not individual, not things. Yeah? And if you could just have a conversation which was entirely conversations about society and the company, which were conversations about interactions, not the qualities of individuals, and if whether well-being conversation was a conversation about interactions, not the qualities of people.
That’s it. Hey for everybody’s info, in case you’re not right across what Spiral Dynamics is, it’s basically a developmental model that’s sort of colour-coded. There’s a few different ones with different colours, and I don’t know, if there’s like karate belts, as you…
But they keep patting you once every time somebody achieves a certain thing, another colour then winds up.
I think eventually you just wink out of existence, and no one can see you. Like just stop there!
There's resources about the world flowing about, and whether we like it or not, they're being designed in a certain way to go to a certain place.
It’s like teal is the latest one. I mean, the worst book published in the last few years has been Laloux’s “Reinventing The Organization”. All right?
I don’t know how…
Idealistic framing.
I don’t know how Nora Bateson is fighting against that. I’ve done a couple of those things with her. And I don’t know, she needs a bit more steel in a voice. You’re not gonna win that battle with your ASMR tones, it’s just not gonna work.
It’s alright.
The interactions that we engage with, that's to me where sovereignty comes through.
The whole thing about the Spiral Dynamics… They call it Spiral because they kind of realised that it was just the great chain of being, and it’s got that imperial hangover of this sort of, “Well, here’s the shittiest kinds of people.” And then as your skin tone gradually lightens, or it was that sort of… I don’t know, that thing where you end up as being the fabulous Aryan at the top. Well they… Eventually what they did with the developmental model, because it’s supposed to be about human evolution and your personal evolution as well, they twisted it into a spiral, so it was like, “Look, now they’re all together now” and “look, your stone-age man Indigneous tribal, sort of, colour at the base is not on the bottom anymore, it’s right in the center Of a spiral. So we’re all good now.” So that’s the spiral dynamic stuff.
It’s happening with helixes as well Tyson. The McKinsey’s are just taking the matrix organisation, and now they called it a helix.
Yeah, Yeah.
It’s exactly the same thing. So, you can draw a circle, you can draw something as a circle, but it’s still a straight line process.
Well, I’m not gonna like to sit here and attack Spiral Dynamics today, because McKinsey gives me money from time to time for speaking gigs. And the coaching industry just loves my work, so I’m… Actually, they do enjoy I don’t know…
And there's a tolerance of a yarn or a story or even the puppets…or whatever, which is just accepted because it's a way of meaning-making.
There is a word for that Tyson…
I don’t know if it’s a desire for a, like a… A masochistic sort of desire, but they do like to watch me slapping it around a bit, which is heaps of fun.
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.
What about the rest of us? I don’t care what God and Caesar got, I want my own thing. Chels?
So I was just… I think something interesting, which was also going to be one of my questions was, this spiral, is it moving inwards or is it moving outwards?
No, it’s not moving. It’s like a game board. You move, like you get on there and you buy the supplements, and you do the training, and you get the mentoring, and you attend the webinars, and you just progress. Know what I mean? But if you roll, you know, like a four and three, you might have to go back one, or… I don’t know how it works, but anyway it’s…
Yeah, okay.
It’s a lot of fun.
This is why disinformation has become so successful, it's harnessed the power of a good story. Not good story, but you know what I mean... Compelling story.
It’s content is pretty crap, yeah?
Yeah, yeah. And I like my stoics. And I like my mummies.
Nora’s doing quite well on it though, I’m acting as Nora’s rock violet. So Nora hit something, and I get really nasty on social media. We’re enjoying the parody and we swap notes behind the scene.
You get in there and take the blows. That’s good, That’s your role. Nora’s a beautiful flower. She doesn’t need to have a Twitter storm. Smashing her about the place. Guy and Beth, you got any thoughts bubbling up? This ship is steering somehow towards either mapping the horrendous meta crisis in the world or deciding, “Hey what do we need to even map it for, unless we’re looking to design a solution for it.” Maybe we’re not looking to do that. Maybe we’re fostering emergence or having some yarns with Indigneous people from around the world. So where is it going then? Sovereignty and scale… Like at what scale does sovereignty work and how do we move towards doing that? How do we grow these gardens powered by Mana, but without measuring Mana and trying to trap it and put it in a little herb spiral. There we go, I worked Spiral Dynamics into your permaculture there.
You don't delegate authority to an individual, you delegate authority to an interaction between different people from different backgrounds.
Where we’re at with, you know, the work that we’re doing… There’s resources about the world flowing about, and whether we like it or not, they’re being designed in a certain way to go to a certain place. And so while I think, though the structures socially that we need to be creating to guide interactions with others into the right place, we need to be focused really on that critical connection, not that critical maths or critical design, whatever. But frankly, if we’re not pitching or proposing designs, someone else is. And someone who’s far more traumatised, far more, you know, less ethical and with less background will come through and this is what we see. And this is what we see the resources going towards, and this is how we see it emerging in our communities and whether or not, I don’t know… To ground that meta crisis that we’re in at the moment, you know, it can only be… It’s a high value project and can only be quantified by seeing it happen as a results appear. At least that’s my perspective.
The interactions that we engage with, that’s to me where sovereignty comes through. And sovereignty I’ve only ever experienced it or learned it being modelled. It’s not told, it’s not bestowed, it’s not gifted, you don’t get a token or a voucher. It’s just modelled and taken up. And I think there’s a place for both designing where and where these resources go that is important, so that we are putting designs out, but in the same breath, focusing that our designs… We have to take up space in where those resources are going otherwise they’ll go elsewhere. But really what we’re doing is we are exemplifying through each node of the structure, each node of this engagement that this is what self-determination looks like. And we’re speaking explicitly to what that would be expressed in each and every moment when it occurs.
But when we've held space and time for these diverse experiences and understandings and cultures to come together being held in a process of building that sovereignty.
Nice. The best thing I love about you sibling, is that you don’t employ heuristics. You’re always talking story and stuff like that. You know what I mean? Like you don’t have these little, I don’t know, these little… You know, the five things that you can do to save the world or something like that. At last, Spiral Dynamics is a good example of a heuristic… And they can break that to… What are the steps that they go? Clean up, Grow up, Show up, and what’s the last one, Blow it up? I can’t remember. All the stages of progress, yeah. I like to do…
Throw up?
I like to do…
What does your front door need to look like? And what does your back door need to look like, if you wanna maintain sovereignty?
It’s throw up?
Throw up. I like to do anti-heuristics. So I offset that with… I do downs. Calm down, slow down, step down, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. I was wondering what kind of anti-heuristics as counter-curses we might come up with. I’d be interested to see what would fall out of Beth’s head because she’s something of a poet too.
I don’t have any poems for you today, I’m very sorry. But I am reflecting back to the beginning of the session where we were talking about frogs.
Oh, yeah.
And it made me wonder we can swap that over to dogs. I’m looking at some of the interspecies relationship here. So to draw upon a story from Dave’s thoughts of Wales up north, we have that the story of Gelert the dog, who’s owned by Llywelyn, who’s a warrior and a well esteemed chap among society. And Llywelyn goes out hunting for the day and leaves his dog at home to look after his baby because he entrusts the baby to the dog. And when he comes home, he finds Gelert the dog is covered in blood. So straight away, he grabs the dog, takes it outside and says goodbye to the dog in a pretty violent fashion, and then returns to the cot to see blood all around the cot. But the baby’s perfectly fine there and sleeping. And Gelert the dog has been to attack the intruder that had come to take the baby. But Llywelyn’s immediate reaction to act before he’s actually considered the situation, you know, and how he’s ultimately killed his own hero. And recognizing that the dog is the hero, doesn’t have to be somebody, you know, wonderful and esteemed. Actually nature and animals can offer that kinship to us.
I hate to tell you this, and this is gonna be terrible, but that story was a Victorian invention to promote the Gelert pub, and Bath Gelert. And to create this tourist attraction. It has no reference whatsoever in any real world stories. It was a Victorian invention. But it shows the power of a story to create meaning, because now there’s Gelert’s grave there, and it’s the whole identity of the village.
It’s like a really horrible Old Yeller.
But I think it’s… The point of that story is that…
It’s really sad.
There’s a saying in Wales that, “Nobody should spoil a good story for the sake of the truth.” And the point about a story is that it provides meaning, and it’s made up. So there’s nothing wrong with making up the story per se, provided it’s a story, it’s not purported to be true. And there’s a tolerance of a yarn or a story or even the pub at night or whatever, which is just accepted because it’s a way of meaning-making.
I think just like in nature and in ecological processes, everything that's in there has a role and a purpose. And so I think having that person in that group, whether it be a triangle, three or five.
This is why disinformation has become so successful, it’s harnessed the power of a good story. Not good story, but you know what I mean… Compelling story.
Yeah, I thought I’d share a poem in the chat, by the way, if you haven’t read RS Thomas.
Oh, nice.
RS Thomas is one of the great world’s poets. A savage cantankerous old man living in North Wales who wrote really beautiful poetry, but it’s never nice, alright?
“All in vain. I will cease now. My long absorption with the plough. With the tame and the wild creatures and man united with the Earth. I have failed after many seasons, to bring truth to birth, and nature’s simple equations in the mind’s precincts do not apply. But where to turn? Earth endures after the passing, necessary shame of winter, and the old lie of green places beckons me still from the new world, ugly and evil, that men pry for in truth’s name.” It’s a difference beyond the old lie. Thoughts to end with beautiful people. As we wrap up, on the arm stretch here last 10 minutes. Tie them together in a beautiful big neat bow.
What is meaningful representation versus meaningful presence versus participation in the space. And it is very much about what is that process of building sovereignty.
Let’s go back to the sovereignty question. Go back to something earlier. What does it mean for sovereignty to exist in the interactions between people. Not in people or things?
Well, it’s a…
You have sovereignty because… Not as an individual, but you have sovereignty in a series of interactions.
And there’s a difference between self-determination and self-administration.
So we’ve been playing with ideas of trios, if three people from a different background say something will happen, then it’s okay, that’s the way of delegating authority. Alright, so again, there’s that focus on interaction, not things.
My big gripe here, to take it a back to the issue of [1:19:02.6] epistemic injustice, is that, you know, if you bring these three people together, and let’s say there’s one woman of colour, one young person and a white old man. Even if we bring them together as equals, there’s dynamics at play where by somebody feels a greater sense of power or believability over a conversation. And actually how can we be more mindful at that level of the interactions as opposed to just merely turning up and being represented. How do those relationships become authentic and just, as opposed to merely by number of representations.
Well, optimal size for small team dynamics is important too. Five, five. We reckon. So that’s why we’ve got five here. And then, I think the agile people have got a similar thing. You can have seven plus or minus two or three. You know what I mean? And you find most of the research lands at about five or half a dozen people. But no less than four, no more than six or seven, before things… You get real power imbalances happening. If you’ve got three people and they’re saying about, if there’s a secret, and there’s three people and you gotta kill one of them or something like that, or one of them’s gotta kill the other two. I think things get like that. Jeff Bezos says, “The most optimal team size is a group of people who can be fed by two pizzas.” But I think that’s saying…
Yeah, but then people just produce bigger pizzas.
Yeah, that’s it. Oh, yeah, American pizza’s horrendous. What do you think, Guy?
In terms of loving things in the Wales, I think the value of tough love, that sometimes doing the right things by people and by the system isn't always a lovely experience.
To the emergence of sovereignty by action, I think that’s what you saw that, the interaction there. I can only really comment on how I’ve sort of witnessed. And even then I’m not entirely convinced, but I feel to your point if on… What is meaningful representation versus meaningful presence versus participation in the space. And it is very much about what is that process of building sovereignty. What is that brave space agreement? And what is that process of collective sense-making between them? And without that explicit convention that sits through that somewhat of a consensus process, which is time-consuming. And so that’s not that available in the world that we live within. But when we’ve held space and time for these diverse experiences and understandings and cultures to come together being held in a process of building that sovereignty. Thus I have seen what I would call sovereign actions and interactions occur after that. But it’s as a result of that process of that time keeping and ceremony and heart-share or resonance. And I have yet to see that occur without that process, unless this pre-existing understandings or cultures or experiences that sort of glue that experience and sovereignty together.
Is it important to exclude people, do you think? Is it just as important who you exclude and who you include? What does your front door need to look like? And what does your back door need to look like, if you wanna maintain sovereignty? Because that’s the thing in the end. And that’s what half of our problems at the moment come down to is selection. All of us in terms of selecting for the dynamics of who’s gonna be in our group. We like to anathematise people and boot them out the door and hate them forever. But they can end up somewhere, wrecking someone else’s yarn. So, what do we do about that.
There are other ways that… Wikipedia does it really well. So there was this famous fight over Ayn Rand, right?
Yeah.
I got banned from editing the Ayn Rand page. And I was allowed to contribute constructively to the talk page. Now the pro Ayn Rand people got banned for over a year, so I consider myself a necessary sacrifice. But that being allowed to, for a period to talk about a subject, but not edit directly. And we don’t think about… You think about societies at all sorts of ways of partially excluding people or putting people into a period where you could or couldn’t do things. So there are the other ways, with total exclusion.
I recently described half a Silicon valley as being the… Like the Californian ideology. I said that was like the love child of Ram Dass and Ayn Rand. Chels?
I would say that love is about loving your mind and loving the places that it can take you and the different experiences it gives you as an individual.
I was just gonna say that I think just like in nature and in ecological processes, everything that’s in there has a role and a purpose. And so I think having that person in that group, whether it be a triangle, three or five. Yeah, that’s how a lot of our stories evolve. So like that rock over there on the landscape that looks like a dickhead that takes us back to Old Mate, he was part of our group. And he behaved like a dickhead. And so we now have that forever to remind us about not being a dickhead. You with me?
Nice.
So that person has a role and a place and a purpose. And whether it’s bringing chaos or whether it’s bringing a different way of thinking or it’s bringing… Yeah, it’s altering that purist process, I think. And I think there is a role and a purpose. But then Tyson saying what you were saying earlier, is it? Yeah, if that’s the case, you’d definitely wanna have a pathway to the back door if things get outta hand. You know what I mean? But there is a… I feel there is a place and there is a purpose. And whether it’s a positive or a negative or whether it’s neutral, I suppose that’s part of that organic process that you just need to let happen and unfold. Or it could be like osmosis, you just let them come in, and they’ll eventually move out.
Yeah. That’s it. It is a difficult thing to gradually change a group’s perspective on things with… In loving ways. Guy, what you’ve got some love for us?
You gotta water that plant, bruvs. She’s miserable. Look at her.
This one’s been leaning over to try and get out to the rainforest out there, because it sees how much more fun it is. Yeah.
Beth, last words.
In terms of loving things in the Wales, I think the value of tough love, that sometimes doing the right things by people and by the system isn’t always a lovely experience. So you Welsh Mam, we’ll force feed you but it’s so that you grow up healthy and strong. So recognizing that, yeah, sometimes it is not always an easy experience.
So mother will slap. I think that’s a good place to leave it.
Just taking up on the comment, yeah, in the channel. I would say that love is about loving your mind and loving the places that it can take you and the different experiences it gives you as an individual. So having time to let it do its thing.
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