#119 Fractal Flourishing: Jeremy Lent
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Michael Reiley: Welcome back to the show. This is Michael Riley. Before we begin today's episode. I want to take a moment to say that if you'd like to support this podcast and the mission of Science and Nonduality. Please consider becoming a sand member. In addition to supporting this podcast and the production of films, like "Where Olive Trees Weep" and our monthly community gatherings. You'll gain access to the SAND member library. With hundreds of videos from sands 15 year history of conferences, webinars, and courses. Visit Science and Nonduality dot com slash join.
Or find the link in the show notes. Today, I'm in conversation with author integrator and visionary thinker. Jeremy Lent. In this conversation, we dive into the profound upheavals of early 20, 25. Examining the tensions between hope and grief in times of political, cultural, and environmental turmoil. Jeremy offers insights into systems thinking Interconnectedness and the power of integrated intelligence. To reshape our world. Stay with us for a thought provoking discussion on individual and systemic change indigenous wisdom and the urgent need for a shift towards deep transformation.
All today on the Sounds of SAND presented by Science and Nonduality. I'm here with Jeremy Lent for the Sounds of SAND Podcast. Thanks so much, Jeremy, for being here.
Jeremy Lent: Oh, you're welcome, Michael. Looking forward to it.
Michael Reiley: Me too. As we're recording this, early 2025, we're in a moment of profound global upheaval with political changes and cultural changes and environmental crises, so much instability.
How do you personally navigate between these hope and grief? Because I know you, you outline a lot of hopeful. Scenarios for the future,
Jeremy Lent: Yeah. Yeah. I think, that is such an important question. And of course, one that we're all working on, anyone who's open in the slightest bit to what's actually going on in the world. And while there's a lot of grief right now, and of course I'm speaking from, California and here in the United States, we're in the first days of what may turn out to be a very dark period of American history, perhaps the darkest that has, it's even experienced to date.
And. As you say, the whole global context is not just devastating, but is also, it seems to be just keep getting worse and rather than seeing progress towards some positive direction, we're almost seeing the opposite. And I think to me, the only way to be with that is to start off by recognizing it to really.
Take that in and obviously it helps to take it in with others around us because it's really, to really take it in, it's just too much for any single person to hold themselves. And I feel that to me where Yeah, I think it's a loaded word, hope, and I'm not crazy about that, but whatever it is, a sense of possibility, wherever that comes from, to me, it comes from the fact of the kind of deep, Unknowing that arises from recognizing that we live in an incredibly complex, incredibly nonlinear set of interconnected systems.
And, this is really a result for me of a lot of work spent in understanding how complex systems work. And one of the things that we learn from that, above all, is that they are not predictable. There is so much, there's so much happens that you can never You know, you think you can see clearly where things are going.
And there are these phase transitions, these transformations that happen when you, you don't even know that they're going to happen, which is why reductionist scientists hate systems thinking so much, and almost pretend it's not even there, because it moves away from that reductionist way of thinking.
And the impact it has on this great issue of our time, like where are we headed, is that it means that people who say, Basically things like collapse is inevitable. I just don't feel that I feel that is plain wrong. And it's as wrong as saying oh everything's going fine and we're going to be okay.
I don't think there's anything inevitable about it. It certainly looks the way that this century is unfolding. Very bleak, very grim. I think the one thing we can be sure about is that things will get worse before there is any potential transformation, any potential change. But to me, And this is the whole framing.
Of what all of our lives are about right now is to like, go into it with faith, knowing that basically each of us has our ability to do and to live our lives, the choices that we make, and that can influence whatever does happen in the future, that it's not like some sort of kind of spectator sport where it's happening out there and it's oh, we're going to go to hell or everything's going to be okay.
No, it's actually something we're involved with. There's a systems thinker, and then I'll stop now, but there's a systems thinker called Brian Klaas, who writes The Atlantic, to, written a book recently, which he summarizes, which I love, and he said, basically, you control nothing, you influence everything.
And I just love that phrase, because that kind of summarizes exactly what this is about. We don't know where it's going to go, but we know that what we do has some kind of impact.
Michael Reiley: can you say more about that? That's a very beautiful quote. So you control nothing, but you influence everything.
Jeremy Lent: Yeah so What I love about that is, we live in a world. There is dominated by reductionist thinking which essentially says that if you break things down to the very basics, you can predict exactly what's going to happen and reductionist thinking is really a core element of what happened from the scientific revolution onwards in Europe, starting from Descartes and people like that, who was the first person to define reductionism.
And it was a very powerful. It's incredibly effective system. He said, yeah, his whole thing was you break things down to each part, then you can understand how they work. And we ended up with chemistry, which breaks things down into elements and molecules and physics, which then breaks things down into quarks and all kinds of things.
And then biology was then break things down into. Genes and we were told that the selfish gene determines what you're going to be all this stuff. And that is actually has been very effective so much so that it's allowed this massive human control over the rest of life on earth in many ways.
But where people go wrong with it is they see how effective it is. And then they say it's so effective that it must explain everything in the universe. And it must be the only explanation for everything in the universe. And that's what I call ontological reductionism, which takes basically a very powerful scientific methodology and then applies it to an, a sort of a theory of existence, which really is an act of faith.
It's really no more no different essentially than saying, there's a God and he created the earth. It's like you, you just, you have to make that jump in order to get there. But what systems thinking things like complexity, science. Just any like systems, biology, network theory, chaos theory, all these different different sciences, every much as rigorous with Nobel prize winners and peer review journals and all this stuff.
But what they look at is not so much the breaking down, but the connections between things. And when you start looking at those connections between things, you recognize that actually they lead. To nonlinear outcomes that are essentially unpredictable. I mean that in essence, you cannot predict them because of the nonlinear way in which so many different parts interact.
And they also lead to phase transitions. So that what you think is a system that you are making sense of every now and then something very significant changes. And it changes the whole cohering. Element of that system that can be a very negative things. It can be like, forest fire That takes a a healthy forest and turns it into ash.
It could be something like a climate breakdown which we're dealing with. But it could also be very positive things can be like Birth is a phase transition from a fetus to an organism that's out there in the world, breathing and all kinds of stuff. And that's that notion of that sort of positive phase transitions call like emergence which can leads to new ways of a total complex system cohering.
So part of the possibility is, are we moving into the system? Like we we can be pretty sure. This century, this system that we are part of right now that's been essentially defining the world order from colonialism onwards, for basically the last 500 years or so, this system is unraveling.
The question is, what is the phase transition going to lead to? Is it going to lead to total collapse? Is it going to lead to some horrendous techno authoritarian, militarized regime. Or is it going to lead to a different way of organizing ourselves so we can actually come up with a different kind of civilization that can really set conditions for beings to to thrive on this earth?
That's the possibility that exists in my opinion.
Michael Reiley: Nice. Yeah. And I think what we can get our head around or, well, let's say what, you know, the average person can get their head around is this idea of kind of cultural narratives. And we can see that cultural narratives are. Something that are very much changing right now. And we see this in political polarization in the U.
S., how people really are identified with their political party and their, you know, the label and the identity that they have in that collective. So I'm curious, how do you feel that we can rewrite these narratives to kind of bridge the divide, to explore the interconnections you were talking about that are somehow more important than our separation, while still honoring complexity?
Jeremy Lent: Yeah, there's, there's a deep answer to your question, and there's a more sort of current or sort of political answer to that question. So let me begin with a deeper one first, but then I do want to move to the one that is the kind of more pressing right now. But I think the kind of deeper way in which we need to rewrite that narrative is basically to recognize that And the fundamental basis of our worldview, and the dominates are thinking right now is essentially wrong.
It's this notion of like we are, it comes from that reductionist way of thinking, but then applies it to individuals and it looks at us as being separate individuals, and we're absolutely separate from each other, and it downplays any sense of connections and from that, if you believe that, then it would make sense that you should just look out for number one, because that's what you are.
And so that's led to Really the rise of really, that's the underlying element of capitalism, looking at just looking at the world as nothing other than a resource to exploit and extract from, and also looking at other people as resources to exploits and to compete as well as you can from which led to this rise of neoliberalism the last 50 years or so, which is ultimately the cause of Are devastating scenarios we're looking at right now, but when you look at.
Not just what system sciences tell us that I was just describing but we also see that they lead to the same underlying insights that the great wisdom traditions of the world have led to, whether it's indigenous traditions or Taoist or Buddhist traditions or others from around the world, which has Recognizing a deep sense of interconnectedness, that actually our very existence is not separate from others.
Our very existence arises from the way in which we interact with others. That's true both like biologically, it's true in terms of our human consciousness, and it's even more true of What actually allows humans to flourish. We actually are a hypersocial species and we do best as part of community.
So very separate very different from this from this worldview we live in right now. What is critical is to recognize that there are ways in which we can organize society that actually start from that basis of that deep interconnectedness. And that's, and that kind of leads that answer to the more sort of current and political elements around that.
What we found really in the last 40 to 50 years now is after the. And like in the 20th century, there was like this kind of meta political dialogue between capitalism and communism, and you could choose one side or the other, and then by the 1980s or whatever, you see the Soviet Union and communism collapse, and it was like, okay, now, the And there was even that famous book.
This is the end of history, like the sense like now there's only one one answer to everything. And Margaret Thatcher at the time, as she started to take power, famously said, there is no alternative. And this is the basically the world that people have been living in now for 40 or 50 years, even the people who are meant to be on the left, the progressives, either in the Democratic Party in the US or Labour Party in the UK, or most other mainstream.
Part is on the progressive side in and developed countries around the world. They basically agreed that there was no alternative. So then they imbibed neoliberal thinking and markets and competitiveness, and they went and basically got into bed with the mega corporations and the billionaires.
And they just tried to put a slightly nicer tinge on this total devastation. Of Mark, applying Marcus to pretty much everything. And that's why people who are people feel ordinary people recognize that things are totally screwed up. They realize that the system is rigged.
They realize that they are they are getting devastated. And because the they're allowing billionaires to become centi billionaires and just take over all their, Okay. Any sort of sense of dignity they have, and this is what's going on, and then the people who should be offering alternatives on the left are not offering alternatives.
The people are right to say they are the establishments, and that's what they've done. Then somebody comes along and says, the whole system's screwed up, let's burn it down. Their gut feeling says, this is a person who's speaking to what I know, what I believe is true. So I feel that the absolute critical.
Critical need right now is for those of us who want to try to work towards forging a better and a more humane society is to actually be straight up with communicating that the system is rigged. The system is one designed to exploit and extract as much as possible. It's all designed around what's called a wealth pump to suck.
Wealth to suck people's lifeblood out of them for the benefit of the elites. We've got to start from that basis and then show that there are different ways that we can organize society That to vote then for the extreme right wing fascists who basically are Supported and part of the mega billionaire class that's not going to help anybody.
And of course people will discover that
Michael Reiley: It's beautiful. It's very refreshing to hear it, hear it framed that way because it opens channels of empathy. You know, you're not othering people who support Trump. You're saying we get it. We, you know, I feel the same as you. It's just this particular brand of a solution is perhaps going to cause more harm than good in the short term.
And we, there, there needs to be, you know, leaders who can step forward and offer that.
Jeremy Lent: Yes, exactly. And in fact cause way more harm than good, even in the long term. It's basically what they're going to find is no matter which way you look at it they are they're going to be totally screwed by the system as it's been developing right now.
Michael Reiley: Yeah, I wanted to transition a bit to talk about technology
so just broadly speaking, do you see a role for technology and AI to help to strengthen this kind of web of meaning these, these connections that we need to make with each other? Or do you feel like it's just not compatible with what we maybe biologically and somatically know as being connected with one another?
Jeremy Lent: this is a another great question. And I believe that technology, if we look deep, more deeply at what we mean by technology, it's essentially the impact of our human, we call our conceptual consciousness on the rest of the world. And at the very basic level, technology is everything as simple basic as it is.
Language the way humans have developed it or just tools or all the ways in which we construct the world to be for our benefit or not. And I feel that any any sort of way of looking at what works for humans into the future has to accept and embrace the fact of technology itself as human beings.
That's part of what we do on the earth as part of what we've always done. And so I'm certainly not somebody who is against technology for its own sake, what I think is crucial thing we have to recognize is that any, when any technological innovation or any other innovation even outside of technology that is developed within.
The capitalist context does not, even if it looks like it has the potential for good, it will end up getting abused and manipulated and turned into something that, in fact, the more powerful it is, the more powerful the innovation, the more it will end up getting sucked into that capitalist wealth pump and be used for the, to empower the elites.
So the internet is a perfect example. Yeah, as we know, like the internet, when it first started. It was not designed to make a ton of money. It was designed around scientists communicating together and developing a sort of collective intelligence. And when it first, when the internet first became mainstream, there was a sense of freedom.
Like we've, this incredible way in which humans can actually co create our intelligence together. And we see things like Wikipedia as almost like the, Icon of what we can do with this Internet. We can create this collective way of being together. But what happened was it got taken over by the capitalist the capitalist powers.
In that sense what that leads to is ultimately companies do what they do to optimize not how to, how people can connect together, but basically how they can make more money for their shareholders. Now we look at social media and we think, we see that right now. It's it's developed in this disastrous way where creating this sense of what we call like epistemic chaos, when nobody even knows what's true anymore because of the different memes that get extrapolated around.
But we think there's something wrong then. With the system of social media, but actually it's simply to do with the algorithms that are used to make more money for shareholders. So basically the Facebook's of the world learn that and this has been scientifically shown that a statement that is untrue that's made up because it's like something extreme and something exotic, whatever, ends up getting shared six times more frequently in social media than something that is true.
So the algorithms because they're trying to get as many eyeballs as possible to make as much money for shareholders as possible, will Automatically share the things that are untrue more excessively, which leads to obviously these this kind of self reinforcing feedback effect. Then that particular thing that already would lead to this epistemic chaos is then manipulated.
By people with bad agendas who specifically want to share and shed lies. And and that's led to this kind of takeover by people like Elon Musk, who deliberately go around to basically create an absolute false version of reality. And they have so much success on that because they have so much power over that media.
But in fact the very algorithms can be designed to do the exact opposite. And there are examples like this. There's not many people know about it, but like saying, In Taiwan there was a group of techno hackers who actually ended up getting invited by the government into helping to design tech policy in Taiwan.
Some years back led by somebody Called Audrey Tang, who is now like the something like the head of digital policy or something like that for Taiwan. So they've developed a system where when there is disagreement about a certain topic, whether it's like, should Uber be allowed into Taiwan or not?
And all the things that lead to these like polar opposites and polemical and disagreements. The actual. Algorithm itself, rather than elevating these strident positions of one side or the other, they look at clusters and they help to they help to identify what are the deeper underlying needs people have.
And so then you get to things like everyone wants the yeah, the ease and efficiency of having something like Uber, but we also want to protect workers rights and we want to and so one as these elements come up in that example, a policy got agreed on as a sort of a general this among tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of users all around Taiwan, but it let's to this general consensus of what they actually want, which then became government policy.
So there are ways in which technology can be used fabulously well to help communities bind together. It's just that doesn't necessarily work for shareholder maximization.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Yeah. I think the documentary, The Social Dilemma outlined this brilliantly that, you know, the idea is that they want you to feel kind of isolated and, and, and, and now they've, they've admitted, you know, a lot of this is run by AI algorithms. They don't really know how they work. They just know if they turn certain dials, people will click on certain ads and they don't really know what's happening in the background.
And that's, that's even scarier to think, to think of that, that.
Jeremy Lent: Exactly. And just to add one more example of that, so we can see how powerful a different way of thinking can be. We, when we look at what things like Uber or Airbnb, these kind of systems that we all we love the fact that we can it. Go rent a place and connect with people or just be able to Get a ride whenever we want all this kind of stuff But the information is held centrally again for the benefit of the shareholders who want to suck all the any sort of excess wealth that's created for themselves up into The shareholder value, but you can similarly take the same technology, but apply it where you distribute the information for all the say, say like an Uber type of concept for all the people who are the drivers that actually get the information themselves.
And then rather than everything being owned by some centralized block the power and the wealth that's created gets actually pushed down on a distributed way to everyone who's part of the system. So for example, if you're a driver, you want to go from one of the one platform to another, and you could be allowed to take all the information about you to the other system.
And after years of being a driver. Your ratings are awfully important. You don't, if you lose, if you've been driving for Uber for years and you want to go to another system you'll lose a lot of what you built up, but if you can like port to another system, the information about yourself that would empower you as a person rather than that centralized authority.
These are the examples of how technology can be used. In the same way that Wikipedia actually has shown to be successful, it can be used to actually help collective intelligence, collective empowerment, rather than a few shareholder elites.
Michael Reiley: Yeah, I feel like that was some of the promise around blockchain technology to have this decentralized banking. And of course this was this, I never heard this term before, wealth pump, but I love it. Visually and viscerally of what, what happens to these technologies. They get sucked up and transmuted and just become a get with, you know, get rich quick scheme where you make meme coins, you
Jeremy Lent: Yeah. And we see how the blockchain, so utterly corrupt and yet. I don't know if you've heard of a different a different group that's working on what they call Web3 technologies that uses blockchain and they call them DAOs, which I love because I'm a lover of the Dao De Ching, but this DAO.
Is D. A. O. And it stands for distributed autonomous organizations, and these use blockchain, but to create a basically a shared valuation for everyone who's part of the community, and they can work very powerfully to again, distribute power and distribute decision making among everyone who's using blockchain.
Any kind of technology. So you imagine, say, a Facebook type thing, like a big social media. But if it was a DAO, you could organize it so that the amount of use that you use the actual social media gives you that level of Decision making power in the kind of policies that gets the get determined so you could even have these distributed decisions where rather than have some hierarchy decide what to do.
The people using it actually the ones who determine what's happening.
Michael Reiley: nice in, in your book, the web of meaning you talk about animated intelligence and integrative intelligence, and it, it seems like these solutions that you're talking about weave in. these other types of intelligences, not just folk, you know, the original AI, as you called it in the book.
Jeremy Lent: that's right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And yeah. And so for anyone who's coming for whom these terms are new in that book, the web of meaning, what I look at is often like when people talk, think about intelligence, they think that intelligence is this thing that humans have. And it leads and you can measure it with IQ and then, yeah.
When you have AI or artificial intelligence, it's just what intelligence is, but even more whatever. But actually when you look deeper. What we see is that nature itself over billions of years. Has its own self organized intelligence. That all around. You see it just in how plants and figure out what to do.
Turns out the plants have multiple senses are way more than we have as humans. Even single cells are incredibly intelligent. They're communicating with other cells. They send tons of different signals and inputs all the time, and they make their self organized decisions from within the cell.
And then you think, look at things like ant colonies or whatever, which have a collective intelligence and that intelligence is part of what we are as human beings, as much as any other. mammal, any other living entity on this earth. So that animate intelligence is what we share with all of life. But then as humans, we evolved to develop something that we touched on a little bit earlier, like a conceptual intelligence.
We developed actually a more advanced prefrontal cortex, which is really like a sort of meaning making part of our brain. And that, that's led to our ability to think symbolically, then have language and then. and accumulatively develop this incredible technological power we have over the rest of earth.
But in the West, the notion of intelligence got totally associated only with that conceptual intelligence. Somebody like Descartes who thought he was getting to the ultimate roots of meaning with his statement, cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. And that was the perfect foundation for this Western way of thinking.
That basically it's saying, My very existence is only as a result of that thinking, that conceptual intelligence. And so basically for people like Descartes, like your body was just this housing for your true essence and the rest of nature, it doesn't even have a real existence because there's not thinking like humans are.
And that's, so that's conceptual intelligence. And when we look at what we a I right now, it's essentially taking that conceptual kind of quality of thinking and applying it very it's a whole level that we find almost inconceivable, but what is available for us as human beings. And this is what I believe can lead to our full flourishing, both as individual.
Human organisms as well as a species on the earth is to develop like an integrated intelligence, which is one that doesn't just choose the animate or doesn't just choose the conceptual, but looks at ways to integrate them together. So it's a separate as an individual human organism. What that means is I can honor my thinking conceptual capability, but also honor my body, my embodied intelligence.
And rather than seeing them as separate, I can actually begin to develop the faculty to recognize that what I am is this integrated being of those different kinds of intelligence together. And then as a species, if we can begin to think in that way. will no longer be thinking about nature being there as a resource for us to exploit.
And oftentimes even people who see themselves as more progressive and talk about sustainable something, sustainable agriculture or sustainable technology, whatever it might be, they're still looking at the earth as a resource, but they're saying, how do we? How do we exploit this resource in a sustainable way rather than a short term ridiculous way, but we're looking at something different and integrative intelligence looks at how can we develop a place of true mutually beneficial symbiosis between human activity on this earth and the rest of earth itself so that we can honor all of those parts and see humans as having.
a particular role to play on the earth and not give up on our technology, not give us, give up on what we are as human beings, but do it in a way that's working for the benefit of all life, rather than just for ourselves separate from the earth.
Michael Reiley: Hmm. Yeah. And of course what you're pointing to is in some ways an evolution, but it's also a recognition of, of indigenous wisdom that these ways of being have been around and have sustained cultures for since the beginning of that we've had human culture. So yeah, like, how do you feel like we can, there's a question we come back to a lot at sand, like, how do we, engage with these teachings respectfully without avoiding sort of the, the trap of extraction and just, you know, taking something as like a life hack and Looking at genuine reciprocity when we yeah, when we, when we want to integrate indigenous ways of being into our modern world.
Jeremy Lent: Exactly. Yeah. I think thi this is a key question and I think it really begins with a true honoring of whatever it is the culture or the groups of people that we are relating to. And part of that honoring is also not to put people on a pedestal and, it's just as wrong, I feel, to basically to look at something that looks cool for an indigenous culture and exploit that and in some way that reduces, that takes power away from that group.
There's also wrong to just assume that because somebody is indigenous they are better and there's a right way that we have to look at and understand. Part of honoring an indigenous person is to recognize they're also human beings with flaws and everything else, but they do come almost every indigenous culture.
Comes from that deeper understanding of the relation between humans and nature as being one in which we are all part of a big extended family, basically. The Miku, oh yes. Sin is that phrase meaning we are all related that the Lakota people in North America speak about. And so part of that is to.
I think what is crucial is to give the platforms for indigenous people to speak for themselves about what they understand and not try to interpret for them. And so I think really ensuring that whatever whenever political power is is developed, that indigenous people get to not just be given certain amounts of power, but they get to be the ones to Who are part of that organization of looking at how power should be devolved so not just inviting indigenous people to a seat at the table, but an indigenous people being the ones who are helping to design that table to begin with.
So I think that's absolutely crucial in every aspect. Of overall sort of power distribution, whether it looks at for example, UN policy setting on sustainability or the environment and recognizing that an indigenous people know. how to manage their their ecology and the space they're in so much more regeneratively and so much better than Western people have been able to do, and invite them into that, invite them into that position to actually lead the way on those things.
Michael Reiley: Yeah, I love, I love that. It, it is so important because we're, it's, it's hard to escape our worldview, you know? So when we, when we approach indigenous cultures and practices and traditions, it's so hard. Or not, it's not hard, but we have a tendency to create hierarchy, like you said, to put people on a pedestal, to put a, you know, say, you know, this person is up here because they're indigenous and I'm white, so I'm down here.
But I've heard you describe yourself as an an integrator and, and, you know are you a fan of kind of integral theory from Ken Wilbur? Or is that
Jeremy Lent: Yeah, no, it's interesting. I respect it. And I, there is some significant overlap between integral theory and the way in which my books is trying to make sense of the world. But there are some places I depart somewhat from integral theory and one has to do with a certain there's a certain hierarchical way of thinking that's embedded within integral theory.
It's this sense of. There's different levels of human development, and each level is better than the others, because it incorporates, but so it it has a bigger view, but it also takes in what's below sort of thing. So that has a little, to me, it almost infantilizes indigenous people oh they're the first ones, and then we incorporate and integrate and bring them up to.
This kind of the higher levels that we can get to and I don't I think that can lead to normative ways of thinking that there is a better way of being and somehow it always seems to be the white males from Europe always seems to be the one who end up being at that very highest peak. And And I don't buy any of that.
And I, I think that there is another way. I think we can get rid of the hierarchical thing entirely. And we can just recognize that indigenous people bring a great level of cultural wisdom that are really part of the core human heritage. And they develop cultures around what is needed for human flourishing and things.
And I know that you've recently talked with Dasha Narvaez. Who's one of the best thinkers in the world today of looking at what is the true core and human nest. That's the set of capabilities that really lead to human flourishing indigenous cultures. For the most part and not all of them, but for the most part has stayed true to those values.
Now, And in that sense, there's a lot to learn from that. And it's not that we can take that and then raise it to another level at another level. But there are ways in which we can integrate more. The some of the technological and the sort of complexity of the sort of globalized society today, along with that, to integrate that doesn't mean to it.
And put ourselves above the indigenous people, but the opposite, to invite them to help others of us who don't have that core level of cultural heritage to look at the ways in which we can take the wisdom from all different kinds of groups and apply a really more integrative wisdom for humans to flourish on this earth.
And so that goes not just to indigenous peoples, but to great traditions like Buddhism, Neo Confucianism or Daoism. They also have incredible wisdom that's available to us. And if we've ever needed to take all the best wisdom that is available, that is our human heritage, that time is now when we're headed for potentially such a disastrous outcome this
Michael Reiley: . Yeah. It's, it's going to really require a radical letting go of linearity and, and, and hierarchy, as you said. And yeah, I haven't, I haven't Engaged with Ken Wilber integral theory for a long time, and that just came into my head as we were talking. But yeah, that does ring very true that there's this kind of almost like the hierarchy of needs pyramid of and like you said, Yeah, there's like this upper tier, and it's almost an integrative approach that's extractive because it's like this vacuum cleaner on the top that sucks up everything below it.
Jeremy Lent: Exactly. And it probably not And not a coincidence that reminds us of the wealth pump that I was just describing up because it's almost like a cognition pump. But similarly.
Michael Reiley: Yeah, yeah. And whereas the integration you're talking about is much more, as I said, non linear, it's more flat, it's non hierarchical, it explore, you know, it doesn't have a beginning and an end, it's, it's emergent too, which is something we talked about earlier.
Jeremy Lent: and it's based on how living systems work. If you look at anything from a single cell to an entire ecosystem, we find that's actually what leads to flourishing is the different parts really being fully integrated. And what integrated means in that sense is differentiated, but part of a shared unity.
And in an ecosystem, there's all these kinds of, you've got your trees and your elephants and your dung beetles and all these different parts. And it's not one is better or more important than the other, but it's when they all work together and evolution allowed, has allowed them to find ways.
Over millions of years to work together in this harmonious way they actually create something that is greater than all of them, which is the ecosystem itself. And that's what we have as a really the invitation for us as humans in this next sort of phase transition. Whatever emerges is to find a way of being able to be with the earth in a way that we can actually Be in a place of mutual symbiosis, which is the foundation of that ways in which a colleges work.
Michael Reiley: And we've been really focused on the sort of system use of the, the the broad view, but I'm curious how you see the relationship between individual transformation and systemic change, like at San, for example, over the past decade and a half. We've had a lot of spiritual teachers who, who talk about, you know, the need for meditation and spiritual practices where you're really working on the self where that's been broadened and grown to include communities and talk about trauma and intergenerational trauma and the kind of yeah, all the things that you write and talk about that interconnectedness there, but there's still, do you feel like there's still an important need for that individual transformation?
Jeremy Lent: Yeah, so absolutely I think that for the vast bulk of people who are born and raised in this dominant culture the right away from infancy onwards the dominant culture basically puts ways of thinking and being and acting in our habitual ways and in our very deep layers of consciousness in our embodied existence which cause all kinds of suffering and cause us to feel separate from the world and cause us to feel a loss of meaning because meaning itself really is a function of connectedness and so the more separated we are.
The more that our lives feel meaningless. And then when we get to this place of recognizing that it leads to this incredible opportunity for liberation of shedding some of those layers of conditioning. You can almost call that decolonizing our own psychism in many ways. And then opening up to this possibility.
of recognizing that we are part of life and what that actually means and what it means to develop that integrated consciousness which is really much more embodied. But along with that, I think another of the ways in which our dominant society and even capitalism itself has subverted some of that notion of awakening is it has focused much more on the awakening as this individual sort of discovering your true individuality and the sense that you can somehow achieve.
awakening or achieve some kind of liberation within your own single autonomous consciousness as a human, as a single human being. And that's, I feel is actually a wrong term. I feel that's actually mistaken because part of that process of awakening is that recognition of our deep interconnectedness with all of.
Life around us with other human beings around us. But with all living entities and it's really awakening to life Is a very different form of awakening because it's one where we actually and get empowered By our very sense of connection. We get a sense of meaning from that and but along with that It's not when we're not separate then from all that's going on in the world.
And part of awakening is to recognize if I'm many of us might have economic or a racial or ethnic privilege as a result of the 500 years of colonialism that's caused all these divisions in the earth and all this extraction exploitation. Part of awakening is then to recognize. the actual privilege that someone like me might have as part of that.
And then to go beyond that to saying what do we do about it? And in the same way that like if it goes, it's not so much as should, it's not oh dear, I should feel guilty and do something about that. It's a different kind that a true awakening to this leads to a different kind of activity, because it's almost like.
Imagine if someone is hitting you on your arm. You don't say, Oh, I should stop that person hitting my arm. You instantly have a drive to do something to stop that from happening. So similarly, we look at the terrible exploitation. of other human beings around us on the earth. We look at the devastation to the living earth itself.
And once we awaken to that sense of being part of life, we're drawn to want to engage in doing something about it. So awakening in that sense, does it, it's not like this kind of blissful place of, Oh, everything is okay. And I can just be with what is, and that's all I need. And all those things are wonderful places to be.
And I, I don't want to say that in the, I shouldn't really say in the disparaging tone I did because there is an absolute place for being in that. But as part of this recognition that everything is not okay for those around us that we share a core bond with. And being part of all of life is to want, is to engage in doing something about that as skillful as we can.
Michael Reiley: beautifully said. Yeah. And it's, you know, it said the Buddha, when he had his awakening experience, he was contemplating dependent origination, which you talk about in your book, that the interconnectedness was that thing that really for, as, as he said, when he was teaching, that was what, what kind of did it for him or what he
Jeremy Lent: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And that, that deep interconnectedness I feel is the source of a different kind of awakening. One that keeps us alive every day because it's never, it's not so much like a matter of get to some place and then you've hit the destination, but it's a matter of being with the contingencies, being with our embodied existence, being with the pain that's out there in the world and finding ways to be with that in a way that doesn't necessarily take a away from our own flourishing, but allows that flourishing to be used for the benefit of others too.
It's a concept that I call fractal flourishing. This recognition that, a lot of the time when people think of individual awakening, and it's again part of this whole paradigm in the West of looking out for the individual and it's this notion of a zero sum game. If I get a, if I can make more money for me at the expense of somebody else, that's good for me.
I get to, enjoy the swimming pool or I get to have this luxury or whatever, but the notion of fractal flourishing, it's fundamentally different. It recognizes that as being part of our communities, being part of a larger. system of life all the way to all the earth itself, that just like in an ecosystem for me to flourish as a single entity actually can help for the rest of all the different systems in which I'm embedded to also flourish.
And so the fractal is a sense of patterns that repeat themselves at different scales from the small to the very large, and the flourishing can do that too. If I'm recognizing that I'm really core foundationally a part of life, then I don't have to feel guilty about feeling happy, feeling joy, feeling a sense of all the beautiful qualities of life.
But then, cause I know that as part of that, I'm going to be acting in the interests of those different layers of life around me from that place of strength.
Michael Reiley: I love that. Thank you so much for that fractal flourishing. Hey, so this has been a really delightful for me to spend this time with you. And I was having a meta awareness that I've listened to a lot of, a lot of you on podcasts and often I'll pause and I'll say, what was that he said? And I'll rewind, or I'll go check the links that you talked about, but I had to really embrace the.
Animate intelligence of us being in conversation now and just kind of go with it and be like, well, I have to stay, stay with Jeremy, stay, stay with what he's saying. You can't look that up right now.
Jeremy Lent: That's great. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. It's a, it is a pleasure to riff with you. I really appreciate the way you are making sense of things and exploring things here.
Michael Reiley: thank you. Yeah. So we'll have links in the show notes to your websites and your books and your podcast as well. Are there other things coming up in the near future for ways that people can connect with you?
Jeremy Lent: Yeah. I guess a couple things I'd say is if you find any of this interesting and you really want to be more engaged in what we call like deep transformation, there's. Global community called the Deep Transformation Network. That's a community of almost 5, 000 people from around the world who are engaged in really exploring what deep transformation actually means, but individual transformation like we were talking about as well as systemic.
And Yeah, keep your eyes peeled. I'm working on a book right now called Eco Civilization, How We Can Reclaim Our Future. And it's really a book that looks at an alternative way of organizing our life towards one that is based on a life affirming future, setting the conditions for all regenerated earth.
And that should be still working on finishing the manuscript this year, but by Early next year it should be coming out. So yeah, perhaps at some point we'll have a chance to talk about it.
Michael Reiley: I would love that. Yeah. Will that be a, that's a nonfiction book or like a.
Jeremy Lent: that's a nonfiction book in a way it's a, in a way it's almost like the third of the trilogy. It's like my first two books, one looking at the history, one looking at a found a, an integrative worldview. This one looks at what a future could look like if we actually organize life according to that sense of deep interconnectedness.
Michael Reiley: Okay. Nice. Yeah. I was going to ask about this earlier, but I'll just do you know the author Amanda Scott? The Threetopian? Yeah.
Jeremy Lent: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. She's a friend and a great thinker. And yeah, so this book very much follows the kinds of themes that she's looking at. Like how do we move through into that more positive future? Yeah.
Michael Reiley: Nice. Yeah. We had her on the show last fall, I think I'll have in the show notes a link for people to, yeah, hear the sort of fiction version of that, of the, you
Jeremy Lent: Yes.
Michael Reiley: about through utopian of a, you know, not dystopian, not utopian, but actually showing the steps that groups and communities could make to create a better future.
Jeremy Lent: Exactly. That's great.
Michael Reiley: Nice. Thanks again, Jeremy. It's been an honor and let's definitely do this again.
Jeremy Lent: Absolutely. Yeah. Been a pleasure. Thank you, Michael, for the conversation.
