Ep.79 How Brains Limit Us with Anne Riley

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Hello, Hello, everyone! Welcome back to another episode of reconnect with plant wisdom. It’s me Tigrilla Gardenia. And have I got a fantastic episode for you. This episode was just so much fun to record, because my guest was just so interesting. Her name is Anne Riley, and she was born in Richmond, Richland, not Richmond, Richland, Washington.

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the 11th of 12 children. Can you believe that? Can you believe what it would be like to be the 11th of 12 children.

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She actually grew up in Illinois. So she has a little bit of that East Coast West Coast thing, which is, I think, why we get along so well, because I’ve also got the East coast. I’m the opposite born East Coast then lived in the West Coast.

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back and forth. So she graduated from Illinois State University in 1981 with a degree in accounting, earning the prestigious bone scholar award. So she actually married her high School sweetheart. She moved to the West Coast, started a family and worked in all of that like basic stuff, like accounting, because, you know, she has an Mba. Of course.

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But after she retired, though she, influenced by Michael Rothschild’s bionomics economics as an ecosystem which we’re going to talk about in the interview, Riley developed a theory known as the idea Sphere, exploring the parallels between human and ecological systems. Her theory is articulated in her novel, Dina Nature’s Case for Democracy.

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and a forthcoming which is the book we talk about here. Nonfiction book, the human idea, nature’s newest ecosystem. Look, Riley is fun. She’s funny. She’s interesting. She’s captivating. This is an amazing interview. You are really going to love this conversation. So I will leave you now to episode 79. How brains! And probably why brains! But how brains limit us.

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Welcome to reconnect with plant wisdom. I’m your host. Tigrilla Gardenia, nature inspired mentor and Certified Life Coach. In this podcast I share ancient and modern knowledge, from biology to spirituality, about the wondrous ways in which plants can help you lead a naturally conscious life.

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Hello! Hello! Oh, I am so excited about this discussion we’re going to have.

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Oh, hello! And thank you for having me. I am also excited. I’m glad we talked earlier a little bit, just to chat because it gave me so many new ideas to think about. And isn’t ideas actually what we’re going to be talking about. But before you go there before you go there. I would love for you, and to tell people who who is Ann and and how does Ann come to this entire conversation that we’re about to have.

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Okay, I will do that. I hate to usually do that, but I will.

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I my name is Ann Riley. I

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and I will tell you 1st of all, I’m not a scientist, but I like to think, and when I was 10 years old I learned I was in Catholic school and learned about evolution surprise enough as it is. But this was the early, you know, sixties where they taught education. But I learned about evolution. And I couldn’t quite figure out how humans and

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evolution work together. And I’ve been on a hunt ever since I was 10 years old to figure this out, and it wasn’t like it was like, oh, on the top of my mind, but it was just always underneath, and every time I would read something. I would sort of put it into one or 2 buckets. One was that makes sense, and I can

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keep that idea. And this doesn’t make sense I can throw that idea out. And I went through all my life like this I majored in business, in.

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in college I majored in accounting, and I minored in economics where I learned about profit maximization. And I was like

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this, doesn’t I know this is how everybody works is that they maximize profit. But this doesn’t seem like it fits in the whole scheme of things, and I didn’t quite understand why, but that was sort of in that -oh bucket. And then I read a book. I done a lot of reading. I read Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, which is amazing, and his Voyage of the Beagle, which I think is even more amazing because he

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he was such a young man, and he was just observing the world in, you know, as he went around the world on the Beagle and learned.

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I mean, just put together the idea of evolution by his sheer ability to think. And I was like, Whoa, that’s pretty amazing. But I read a book called Bionomics by a fellow named Michael Rothschild, and he proposed that economic systems really work like natural systems.

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And

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I just was amazed by this book. I think it was the 1st time anybody had tried to

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put

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put together nature and humans since social Darwinism. I think that had been a just kind of a -oh. You can’t do that very taboo. But he did it, and it made so much sense, but at the end, he said, but we always have to compete, and I was like Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Wait! You told us about all kinds of other things, and then you came up with this conclusion. So, even though I loved all his ideas, I didn’t agree with the conclusion.

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But that kept me. That was like 30 years ago. I read this book, and that was just underneath. So I kept reading and reading and reading, and of course you raised children and went to work and everything. And then, during Covid, I was like, I got some time. Actually, in 2018, I worked on a political campaign where where all of these major figures in politics came in to support my candidate. And I was like, why

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is that so important? Why is it? And what I realized is that government is our coordinating system and who controls the government controls how we live together. And I was like, Oh, I get it. And that just seemed to open up the floodworks for me, and I kind of then was able to put together this theory about how we have built from using ideas. We’ve built our own ecosystem of ideas.

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But because we do so.

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we’ve broken the rules that animals and plants have used for billions of years to survive. And so I look through how we’ve broken those rules, and how we can revise those rules to be true to our human nature, which is to choose and think, but also create coordination mechanisms and collaboration mechanisms that will benefit

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ourselves and our planet.

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So that’s the basic I love this conversation because we’re going to have so much fun, because

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I think oftentimes when you start working with plants and and even animals, let’s just take for a second. Let’s move the the human a little bit out of it.

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It’s easy for us to try to say. Well, they’re all better than us period, like with a period at the end of it. And I think what I really like about what the work that you’re doing. And as I was doing some research and going into it is that you’re saying, look, plants and animal plants especially have this innate ability that comes from the way that that plants have evolved, that gives them a leg up on some of these things.

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but you also don’t shy away from the fact

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that we’re still human, though, and that means that we we have to put it into a human context. We have to take the best of that and work there then. And so it’s both a way for us to see some of our limitations

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that are not limitations. Biologically speaking, there are limitations, societally speaking, or culturally speaking, that we have created. You know the famous conditioning that that I talk about all the time that have limited. It’s almost as if we’ve put our beautiful brains that we think of as what makes us so advanced. I heard somebody say to me, the other, I heard somebody say

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on an interview the other day that it’s like they were just saying, you know, because we’re the most advanced, another one of those humans. It’s like we’re the most advanced species, because we’re the ones that can do this. And I’m like, honey.

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We’re not the only ones that can do that. Like, you know, we’re not the only ones that have doctors. We’re not the only ones that have. You know, builders, we’re not the only ones that have complex societies. We’re just the ones that make it showy like. It’s not the same thing.

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Well, that’s exactly right, because the the real difference is that plants and animals have only their bodies as tools.

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They can only do things with their bodies, and some, you know. You know, animals are advanced like birds, can build nests and wasps can build these very intricate hives, and so can bees. You know, they make the honey. You know, the the honeycombs are just kind of amazing when you look at it.

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But what’s different about humans is to the degree that they do these things, we can actually take our ideas and build something from the resources around us. And like, for instance, I can write a book, you know, and then those ideas that I espouse are then stored in that book.

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and they then can live as their own thing. That book can live as its own thing outside of me. I could die tomorrow, but the book is still there, and people can learn it, which is a perfect example, I read Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. He died in 1882, but I can read it today, and those ideas can then live forward. So it’s a matter of degree. It’s not advanced or not advanced. It’s different.

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And the problem with our

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our ideas is we break the rules that animals have very, you know, have

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have made like a nest won’t wreck the environment.

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But a nuclear power plant might, you know. And that’s the difference that that I would say, humans have have done these things pell mell without really understanding the consequences. Well, and I would also say that going back to your book example, which I think is a great one, and it kind of had me thinking, as I was listening to you about the perspective, that

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we think of a book as advanced because it holds. You know, this knowledge, and then that knowledge, like you said, can be picked up.

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But I also wonder if in going in that direction. If you think about before the printing press, which we of course, think of as a revolutionary idea.

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But before the printing press, human beings passed a lot of information verbally.

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And, for example, I’m a Kabbalist, and from a Kabbalah perspective was always originally passed orally, and the reason for the oral tradition wasn’t the kind of Catholics take on to, you know. Only give it to certain people it was different. It was because they wanted to ensure that every time it was passed on it was put into a modern context.

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So therefore, it could always be understood in the modern context, and my question that sometimes, I wonder is, have we taken things that we think are advanced, and going back to this whole thing of conditioning and distorted them, and not realize that they are also what’s hurting us? I’m not saying we should get rid of books. I love my books, don’t get rid of my books. I love my books

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but a book, and we’ve seen this with the Bible, and we’ve seen it with a lot of other books, even magic books, like all kinds of books. A book doesn’t always give you the right context, and it can’t be

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updated necessarily, to a certain extent. Even some of Darwin’s ideas are already. We’ve we’ve passed the level of evolution. Some of it is still as as important and relevant today as when Darwin 1st discovered them. But there are some things that Darwin talks about in the book

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that Darwin himself can’t go back and say, Hey, guys, by the way, this part, this part, this part you’ve you’ve all gone way advanced for me. So so 86 those pieces, and you know, and because there wasn’t an oral tradition attached to it because we put them in the book, and we think that’s enough.

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I wonder if that’s another thing that is like that double edged sword that it inhibits us just as much as it, and it enhances us

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right? Right? I oh, God! You gave me so many things to think about there.

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So

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I think again, it’s not just books, but everything, a building, a spaceship, everything that you create outside of a body holds the ideas that then can be used by other people to change them. So it’s

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it’s always going to be an imperfect tool.

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And I think that that, recognizing that is the 1st step, I think we don’t recognize that anymore.

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Right? Well, and what we should understand about people is that when we have ideas, ideas don’t have any

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physical nature until we put make something right. You. You write a Bible, and then it has a physical nature. But before that an idea is just an idea, and people can accept a good idea or a bad idea, a true idea, or a false idea

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in nature. Only good ideas and true ideas exist. Right? If you go against the environment in which you live. You’re not going to last, and your DNA won’t last to pass on. But we can do this all the time. We create all kinds of ideas that are not necessarily good or true or helpful. War is a perfect example. War is an idea, an idea that some other group is different or has stuff you want or is

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inferior. And then we decide that we are justified in going and conquering them. That’s an idea. And it’s not necessarily a good one. Right? Nature doesn’t work that way. They they do compete, but they compete for food to live, and they don’t. They don’t go anywhere else besides that, because they want to live. That’s their their kind of program to live.

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But but humans can accept a bad idea and carry that idea for years and years and years and years. Look at religions, I would say there are so many religions, and they are all the right one, right, but they’re not. They can’t all be the right one, but people accept them as the right one. So something in there is false.

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I’m not going to just tell you which one is true or which one is false. But the fact that there are so many complaint claiming to be the true one shows me that that’s an idea that’s accepted without being true. Yeah. And I think that this is exactly going, you know, kind of kept getting into the heart of of your theories, and I think why they’re so fascinating. Why, we ended up having this conversation. Is

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this idea, this idea I already kind of gave it away in the thing. But the fact that we generate ideas as humans

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and those ideas like you said in the natural world the idea is constantly being tested. So when and there’s no

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how do I say this? There is no set like any plant that you watch. You know that a plant might repeat an idea over and over again. Right? This is this is something that works, and I’m working. Then the moment it doesn’t. But it’s always a test. Even when it’s working, it’s always a test. So therefore, when it doesn’t work, the plant doesn’t hold on and like stubbornly keep doing that same thing.

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The plant, then says, Oh, wait! This isn’t working now. Okay, let me try something else. Right? So I keep working it up until it doesn’t work. Then I try something else, and I think that from a human perspective we generate, you know, an idea.

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and then we try it and it works. And then it becomes set in stone.

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and our conditioning then says we continue to use that idea in the same way, and when it stops working we don’t think it’s the idea that’s wrong. We think something else is wrong, and we blame something else. And so, therefore we still keep trying to perpetuate like you said this wrong idea for the wrong, for that context, right? Because it’s always a combination of it, could even be a great idea

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in a different context. And so this is what we see. That is, this is what we see very differently in. You know the animals and the you know the and plants, because we see that that fact that there is no such thing as

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set in stone. It’s always changeable, based on the conditions. It’s always about being locally attuned in biomimicry. We talk about this a lot. These life’s principles, and one of the major life principles is adapt to the ever changing conditions. And we, as human beings don’t. And so I think that that your theory is really interesting because you’re not saying

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humans don’t have good ideas. You’re saying that it’s almost like, we’re using the ideas wrong. And so, therefore, we’re no longer generating true ideas. We’re just returning what we think we already know, using what we already know to it.

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But right I’d love for you to go a little deeper, because I know you have a new book coming out, and so I’d love for you to really kind of. Go into a little bit more kind of give us a more complete

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framework of what is your premise like? What is the premise of the book.

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Okay. The premise of the book is that humans have created their own ecosystem based on ideas. It it is structured the same way

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at the core of life is DNA, and from DNA you get you go through this. You know, you get a genome and you get a cell and you get a tissue, and then you get a body right? Those are things. We have ideas that work exactly the same way with that exactly same expanding structure.

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but it’s based on ideas which can’t really be seen. But the ideas are held in a mind. The mind is held in a body. Bodies work together to create institutions and bodies also work together to create societies. So we can look at that similar structure and look at the tools that nature uses and see how they work when we apply them to humans.

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And because we’ve looked around and said, Oh, well, you know, we see animals competing. So we say we must compete well and like to your point about Darwin. He didn’t really get the whole idea of cells. He didn’t see that there were cells collaborating underneath, and that he didn’t. He missed the whole collaboration part, and you know, and that that’s something that we’ve filled in those gaps. But

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so the idea is that we humans came along. And we have this ability to think. And when we are born we have no ideas.

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And over time people throw ideas into our head, and those become our base of knowledge by which we compete and collaborate in the world.

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and it is by necessity an incomplete set. Each of us has an incomplete set of knowledge.

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and so do animals, but they have a complete set for their survival.

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We don’t. We have a incomplete set, and we have to figure out how to get as much stuff in there so that we can figure out how to survive using our brains, because that’s our big skill. And so what I talk about is how humans have sort of messed up, you know, using like our government and our institutions, how they don’t quite fit the way

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the way

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animals work in the ecosystem, and if we actually use their tools and adjusted some of our behaviors, we would have a much better society. So I spend the last part of the book saying, you know, for instance.

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one of the things that that every cell in the body does is send up a report. Necessarily, you know, an electronic report to the brain to say, Hey, I’m doing fine, or I need help. I scratched my person here, scratched their arm, and now I’ve got blood all over. What do I do?

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And they send this report up, and they can’t discern. They just send a report up periodically that says where they are, and then the brain goes. Oh, I got to send some guys out to help you, and if you’re fine, the brain says I’m not going to do anything about you. You’re fine, but we don’t do that kind of disclosure. We have all kinds of problems like, for instance, I use in my book the example of water pollution.

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What we do is that we have a government that says, Here’s our rules. And all you guys follow the rules. And then the guys go around. Say, how do I hide from that and keep polluting because it’s so much cheaper to do that. And then so they’re running around and hiding everything and lying to the government and doing all this, and then the government has to send out this. It’s, you know, people that look at them and do all this stuff.

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That is not how nature would work if nature would do it, nature would say, Hey, everybody, you know, companies of a certain size send up a report that tells me what you’re polluting and where it’s going and and how much it is. And then what we’re going to do is send back people to help you.

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We’re going to figure out. But without that knowledge. We don’t know who to help right? So we send it back. And we say we’re not going to go after you. We’re going to help you fix the problem.

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What happens out of that is these guys, nobody’s wasting resources on running after people and putting them in jail. We’re basically sending our resources to finding the problem

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fixing the problem. And then the company becomes a good citizen and they have clean water. And the government’s like, Okay, good. Keep sending up your reports so we can keep track of this, and we’ll go to the next guy.

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So if that’s if a body, if a society worked the way a body did, we would make very different decisions. We would use disclosure as a tool and figure out where our problems are and then go solve the problems. We have a very adversarial relationship with everybody. You know, governments versus business is

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well, we’re all people. And if and and animals wouldn’t do that because they would all get live shorter lives and probably die young, you know, so so they wouldn’t do it that way.

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And that’s what I’m trying to advocate is that to learn how these things work adjusted for human thinking and human behavior and humans ability to think and choose and then respond and run our governments and run our institutions in a different way. Yeah, and this is very connected to a lot of the work that, for example, I did when I was working on social biomimicry projects, because it’s about

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looking at social structures and with a different perspective, because it seems like somewhere along the lines as brains developed

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as the brain started to develop. We can see the differences even between, you know, primates and ourselves. Because primates, yes, they are have an individuality. Yes, they still have a society, but that has, you know, some aspects that kind of mirror us, but

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the independence of the individual sort of still reaches a point where it says, Okay, this is the confine of it. Right after this, your individuality doesn’t really fit what our ecosystem needs, and so therefore stop it.

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Stop what you’re doing, or we’re going to help you like you said, this behavior is not conducive to the overall system that we have. So I’m curious as to what it was that developed in human minds and and brains human brains in particular. And I’m curious as if you have any kind of theories

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that you think

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you know as you looked in your research as you started to study, you know, plant behavior and animal behavior. And you start to look at human behavior, especially from a societal perspective, which is what we’re talking about, right? As you look at it from that perspective, what do you think developed? What are some of the key characteristics that you think developed in humans that went

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kind of in the wrong direction, that are part of what causes our issues?

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It’s a very good question, and I don’t know the answer. But I surmise that what’s really happening is that

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evolution is always pushing towards bigger brain size and bigger ability to, because brain brains equal coordination.

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And the more coordination you have, the body works better as a unit. Right? That’s it’s really true. I mean, if you compare it to a plant, there’s no more better coordination of a system than a plant, and there’s no brain in there?

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Absolutely. I don’t know. I think scientists are bullshitting on that one.

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Okay, okay, okay. But I got your point. But the brain. But the brain is still

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advancing in size and ability to do a different thing

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and and or to it’s evolving along a continuum that’s enabled it to

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create abstract thought, to create an idea from a physical thing. All those synapses working together have created a physical idea.

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I am cold today. I want to go on a walk today. Those are ideas that don’t.

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that that I can conjure up in my brain, and a plant for its neural system, that you’re right. It’s very flexible and very intuitive to living on the earth. Can’t say I’m going on a walk today, you know, it’s not because it’s it’s its neural system. Every neural system survives

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and fits within the environment it can do. And neural systems are really expensive. They take energy and they don’t provide any useful work other than coordination. So, for instance, my heart pumps blood, you know my kidneys excrete waste, but my brain doesn’t do any of those things. It just coordinates.

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so you can only have as big a brain as your environment allows you to do, and plants are so good at surviving with the world around them. They don’t need a big brain, and they don’t have one, and each animal as part of evolution. There are again

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more plants than there will ever be people or animals. But a small portion has developed these bigger and bigger and bigger brains, and out of that has come the humans who.

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you know, who can create this abstract thought and create things with their bodies outside. You know.

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they can use their hands, and they can use their brains, and they can use the resources and create something outside their body. Now, other other animals have big brains. Dolphins have really big brains. Whales have really big brains.

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Octopi have really big brains, but they haven’t yet

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gone on the path where they’ve been able to manipulate the world the way humans can. I think they still manipulate. You know the world in their own way.

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Humans are just a very big outlier. And and how how

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markedly they’ve changed their and they can change their environment.

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and they can think

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like, I said, they’ve changed the rule that they don’t have to accept. They can accept a bad idea and kill all their neighbors and be like I want. I can do that. I can do that. And and most other

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animals who just are like, Hey, I’m geared for survival, and that is not going to help me survive if I if I kill my neighbors because the other neighbors are going to come, kill me, or it’s too risky. I could die, and that

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humans don’t do it that way. They’ve changed how they operate by breaking those rules, and that’s that’s the double-edged sword we’ve talked about.

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They think that a lot of humans because of this, they’ve we’ve developed the sense of, we can do anything. And you hear it on the news all the time. We can do anything. We want to be free. It’s like you haven’t been free since you were, you know, a you know if anything, we’re more chained now because of all the conditioning and all the rules that we have for ourselves.

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Right? And we’re in these complex societies. We’re completely independent, interdependent on everybody. And yet we think we’re free because we can have an idea that’s completely opposed to the facts and live with it. I’m going to throw a theory out you a theory out at you. But before I throw that out, let’s take a very quick pause to just introduce one of our Eco business partners, and then we’ll be back. And I’m going to throw a theory at you.

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Okay, so here’s my theory.

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I don’t know where this is coming from. It’s 1 of those things that just pops up out of the air. So as I’m as I’m listening to you, I’m thinking about the whole brain size. Because also, I’ve you know, I’ve read many.

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I’ve read too many things about neurobiology, although I am in no way an expert, you know. I’m still, nor am I, nor am I neophyte trying to learn. But I have a dangerous amount of knowledge.

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Exactly. So. I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole find of brain size. Which is, it is true, you know, that that the size keeps growing in many aspects, especially in the mass that is there. But we also know that there’s a large part of our brain that we don’t actually know what the function is, or how functions, or even let me say it in this way, let me see if I say it right.

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If it’s functioning in coordination with what we think of as our brains today. In other words, there’s a part of my brain that either it is so subconscious that I have no clue, or it’s doing something that is in no way coordinated to my day to day life in any which way, shape, or form.

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So my question that I’m trying to think about is, could it be? And really this you could even just say, you’re you’re crazy. Don’t even think that way.

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I’m just wondering if.

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because I was recently reading a paper. If you go back through my plant consciousness commentary about 3 papers ago, you’ll see that one of the papers that I talked about was one that said

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part of the problem that we’re having is that we’re defining nervous system in this based on a human definition, and that if we instead step back out and think about nervous systems. And all these neural networks based on what they do, we would realize that there are way more species that actually have, like plants actually do have a nervous system. It just happens to be a completely different way that it works. But then my question, my question is.

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could it be that plants because they’ve been here longer than us because of their slow evolutionary speed?

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In some ways it’s almost like

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we as humans are putting on mass without actually knowing what to do with it. Where, like, we’re kind of pushing, not necessarily evolution, but more of physical evolution rather than

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cognitive evolution. Let’s put it in that way where instead plants and some other types of animals that are is still evolving way slower. Let’s tell reptiles is a great example. Right been around. For since pretty much the beginning of time, almost since animals 1st came on.

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is it possible that all of these who still have much smaller brains. It’s because they’re developing kind of as necessary right? Like, it’s almost as if humans are putting on Mass B, which could be inhibiting us rather than putting on

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and developing and evolving out, based on actually the conditions that are happening to us. I don’t even know if I made any sense with that. I think you do make sense, and I think what I’m hearing you say is that

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hue? I think I think to answer your question is, humans.

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I’ve been thinking

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a long longer time before they knew what was really going on. Right? Humans have asked the question, why, much more earlier, you know, than they knew the answers to right. That’s what religion is. Religion is the early science. Religion is the answer to

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why are we here? And what does it? You know? How does it work, and why? Why do we die? And why? Do you know? Why? Do you know why? Why are we here?

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Well, religion is trying to answer that question. They do the best they could. They did the best they could. I give an example of Apollo and the sun God, it’s like well, every day the sun came over. So the story of Apollo must be true, right? I mean that every day the sun goes across. So maybe the chariot is up there and he’s going across. But we know that’s silly now, we know, because we didn’t, hey? Hey? Don’t mess with my divinities. Man, don’t mess with my divinities. I still believe.

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Apollo. I’m still. I’m still thinking about you, hey, Apollo? Sorry. Okay.

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But what I’m saying is, we also know that the sun is a star, and how we rotate around. And we do all these things. So the point is that we think faster than the facts caught up to us. We’ve had people wondering why these things happen, and

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plants don’t do that, and animals don’t do that. They live in the world they live in, and they will produce as many offspring with as many variations as they can, and then nature, the environment around them calls them out right. Those things that fit in the environment stay. Everything else doesn’t stay so over millions and billions of years. The things that fit

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are the only things that are there. The things that survive are the only ones that are there. So everything that plants do is so is because they live in their environment. And you took you made a point earlier, and I would say, you know, if the meteor hits and kills all the plants.

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or that it gets really dark and the plant needed sunshine to live. The plant will die.

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the plant will die because it can’t adjust, but maybe well, if it’s 6 months of darkness. It might now. Maybe some of its variations won’t die, and it will come up. But if the conditions, the conditions change

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too rapidly for its ability to respond. It will die. And humans have the ability to say, Oh, man, if the meteor hits, I can go, you know, build a bunker, or I can, you know, go someplace, or they might die too. But humans have a better chance of responding because of that ability to think. And that’s why they’ve. That’s why the brain evolved

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in the way it did. Is that see? I’m going to challenge that one. But I would say, the ability to think is a survival mechanism for humans which they have used so far to their advantage. But now we’re seeing the disadvantage. We’ve got climate change coming. We’ve got nuclear, Armageddon as a possibility. We are the only beings that are that have all these amazing abilities and the ability to kill ourselves.

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whereas animals. They won’t kill themselves of their own accord. They will die if the conditions change, or if something, you know bad happens. But they won’t kill themselves. Humans, we can do that.

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Yeah. And so that’s the so the question I have is, will humans be able to evolve to a place

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where they will reduce their danger of killing themselves before we actually kill ourselves.

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Well, and if that happens, the plants and the animals will still be around. They’re going to be fine. Life’s fine. But and one other point that

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those when we talked about the big brain, that that

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that evolution, whether it’s in dolphins or whales, or anything. Those evolutions will keep growing brains will keep growing if it meets the survival needs of what they have. And this will happen again. There’s a book about convergent evolution, in which they say that dinosaurs were already building bigger brains and were going to end up being

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what humans were. But humans did it 1st before they died out in the

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in the meteor hit. That that they would have.

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you know, ultimately grown into being the thinking being on earth rather than

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primates doing it.

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I’m going to merge together some of the things you said, because I think I mean there’s so many pieces to it, so many pieces that I agree to. I agree in a slightly different configuration, and bear with me for a second, because I’m kind of almost thinking out loud. Yeah. And and I’m as I’m listening to you talk. And I’m thinking about everything. You know that we’ve worked, that I’ve worked on that I’ve studied, and all the you know, all the work that I do with the plants, and I’m thinking about the difference which we haven’t really touched on yet. But I think it’s

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it works, and I’m using the word think which I shouldn’t use the word think. But it’s going to match what I’m about to say, which is the difference between thinking which to in in my current vernacular, and especially, I’ll set the context for what I’m talking about. Thinking is

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rehashing what I already know.

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In other words, like you said, we are born blank to a certain extent, right? And then, you know, we keep getting all these thoughts put into us right. Our parents teach us this. There’s right and wrong, there’s good and bad, there’s here’s what works and doesn’t work. It’s all these thoughts.

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And then over the years as we live. We rehash these thoughts. Now, if I am a flexible person, without many fears, who who allows myself to be vulnerable. I most likely have flexible thinking in the sense that my thinking can take in additional data.

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and it could rework, even if that additional data seems out of context with what I know. But if I keep myself in a personal safety, I’m going to use that. If I feel safe it doesn’t really matter what my environment is like. But I feel safe then my thinking remains flexible enough to take in new data

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and to mish that together to create new stuff. If, instead, I live in a fear based model, where vulnerability is not, is not supported, where the ability to use my doubt is never taught where it is not safe for me to make mistakes. Then my thinking becomes very rigid, very, very conditioned, into what is around me, and

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I am no longer able to take in new data. Right? Okay? So that’s my context. And I,

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I think that part of also the difference between other species and us is the fact that plants and and other kinds of animals again, because we see this even in animals, right? When you see that safety mechanism take a dog that’s been abused. Right? They react with aggression or whatever. In other words, you see that same dynamic show up. You see that exact same type of behavior.

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And where what’s missing in all of this is the ability for you to create original thought, which is different to me than thinking thinking is, I take what exists, and I rehash it. And original thought is, I create something completely new and unexpected.

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Hmm.

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and I feel like in some ways our brains, because are so susceptible to that fear model

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because they’re so susceptible like. That’s 1 of the limitations of the brain is that it almost also

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enhances this fear model oftentimes that creates that rigidity that then inhibits us from creating original thought. And I’ll use the context of what triggered this when you were saying the whole, if it’s 6 months of dark plants are going to die.

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Yes, and it is true that most likely the plants that are currently here are going to die. But if I know plants in that dying process right over the course of those months, because the plants are going to be feverishly trying to find alternative ways to nourish themselves, that they might not accomplish in this lifetime, but

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they will throw it into the seeds over and over again. All these different variations like you said, and by the time that the plant dies they would have in some ways left something behind right that allowed it to be mixed with something else that’s behind to eventually get

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nourishment from. Because I was I. It just so happened that the last episode of the podcast was all about scototropism, which is plants growing towards the dark. That’s why you triggered it so I had just done a bunch of study on the fact that there are plants that grow towards darkness before they ever grow towards light. So they get nourished by other pieces. Yeah, yeah. So the point I was trying to make is that.

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you know, kind of going back to why we we called this episode. You know the idea of how brains can actually limit us.

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I’m wondering if part of of this everything that we’re talking about is and your theories which I agree with you. It’s like, we’re not working anymore, like natural systems, and therefore our thoughts are actually are, which are not thoughts. Our thinking is actually inhibiting us because our brains are almost passing everything 1st through a fear filter. Yeah.

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And so I think our brains are a filter. I think I think that is a definite thing. Yeah. And I think the what you say is the way I I put it is that

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nature tries everything.

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everything. They just try everything. And it’s done that since the beginning of time since a big bang, you know, energy, energy blows together and makes, you know stuff. And then that stuff blows together to make stuff, or whatever that is the story of how we exist in this universe. Things try and life just tries everything, and you’re right, and it’s the the plant, and it’s dying will do everything it can to survive.

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and it will just try everything that nature will allow. The conditions will allow it to do. It will just try everything it can, and probably some things that the conditions don’t allow. But it’s going to fucking. Try it, anyway. Don’t allow it. Then it won’t survive exactly, and the whole point is is that there’s always more

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efforts. I don’t like to say trials like as a trial and error, but there will always be more trials than successes always, and as long as there’s 1 or 2 successes it goes on. And what we see now are just multiple successes over time. And what I think your point is, it’s that plants are better at

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surviving

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in their conditions than animals and humans, because our conditions are. It’s we have more resources we need. We have more things we need. It gets more.

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Animals are I don’t. I don’t mean that as a as a no, no, I’m listening. I’m just thinking that they’re more apt to trials. I think that that trials that you just said. I think that they would would have more trials. And that’s my point. Yeah, I agree. And the more complex, the more complex being you have, whether it’s a tiger or a human

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anytime you have a variation. The whole system has to work. A tiger has 300 trillion cells that all have to work together with a variation. Sometimes those variations show up in humans as cancer. You know, when we try a variation, a whole, our 35 trillion cells have to work together. Plants have a much

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simpler system where changes might be easier to make. That’s why I think there’s so many plants in the world.

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I don’t know if that’s actually true, but I can see where you’re going with it, because the plant genome is actually more complex than the human genome. It’s more complex, but it does very straightforward things. I think the human genome

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is

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maybe less complex, but it does a lot of balancing. I mean, there’s a lot of little things have to go right in a row.

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But the plants there’s they may have more

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diversity.

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but they do shorter

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trips down the complexity lane. Does that make sense. Yeah, I get what you’re saying. I still always wonder. And maybe maybe this is just me and my own biases, because, you know, we all have our biases. And I have my biases. I always wonder

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so in the like. You said, there’s so many others. There’s so many species of plants, there’s so many species, even even if you’re talking about tigers, how many species of tigers are there? There are tons of them right? There’s so many. And yet we right now only have one species of human.

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and the homo species is only one species. Sapiens, and everything else has died out. Everything else is gone.

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And I wonder, going back to this lovely, fear-based brain of ours? Oftentimes, that

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is it really that we are not

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capable of some of these things, and some of these evolutive steps that we’re talking about? Or is it? If you think about even the way we talk and the way we act going back to your original concept of, like the human idea. The human idea is that anything that doesn’t look like what I look like right now

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is wrong. Any anomaly is bad. There are only a few types of things like genius, intelligence, or certain types of stuff. But if I get, if I’m born with 6 fingers, I am. Every doctor is.

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and my parents are trying to figure out how to go back to 5. The concept that 6 fingers is actually an evolution, and that could be more adept to our current society or our current environment. Let’s not talk about society environment for a second.

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Our societal norms do not allow us to really evolve in tune with our environments. And I’m wondering if where we have like you said all these complexities. I wonder if it’s because we’ve

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forced ourselves. That little fear filter has forced us to not evolve in harmony with our environment, to continuously build these bridges outside of ourselves, these these crutches, which is technology, which is all of this. It’s kind of like that meme that says.

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Oh, if only I could find technology that allows me to sequester carbon at such and such a rate, and it’s like trees. But we want to build it with devices. And I wonder if really there’s a big piece of this, that our brains are actually not as complex as we think of it.

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but in some ways atrophied that we haven’t allowed ourselves to develop all of the variations that humans should have in order. Yeah, sure, we have different colored hair, and we have different colored eyes, very minute kind of variations that are attuned to our local environment, you know, like

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blondes versus dark skin versus, but even that we tried to demonize right dark skin that was more attuned to the harsh sun. We tried to make them slaves, and we did make that try to. We made slaves. We put all these negative connotations around it.

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and I’m wondering if there are many, many more things like having 4 legs or developing a second nose, or, you know, having other arms, things that

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you know, even Siamese twins, for you know all these different aspects. I still wonder if there is some aspect of all of this neurodivergence. I talk about that all the time is really the fact that the human brain has now limited our development, because the societal rules say, this is right, and this is wrong, and it passes through that little fear filter that does not allow us to evolve into who we should be.

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and that we would have so many more homo species, and so many more adaptations that would actually allow us to really evolve even beyond plants and and other kinds of animals, in a way that is more attuned to our environment. And what? No, what I think is your about

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several

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generations ahead of where we are as as people. I think. What is human. You’re right. We’re the only species right now, and I think we’ve made kind of a hash of it. You know we’re we’re not. But

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we’ve only been

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writing and and oral traditions, and everything for maybe 10,000 years at the most. That is a blink of an eye in time, and not only that, but

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we’re like the 1st ones who’ve really done this.

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and I think that

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we we probably aren’t going to be the last. But we may not survive because the first, st

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the 1st things that do things don’t always do it. Well, you know they like like, you know. I make a point in my my book about the prokaryotes, the little single-celled, very jumbled up they the 1st life form they were.

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They were just a mishmash of stuff, but they they survived, and they made it. It took a couple 1 billion years for the

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those those prokaryotes to organize into eukaryotes, to to to have little organelles and have very efficient

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well of the human species. We we’re probably going to. If we survive, we are probably going to create better and better versions of, if we can use. If we can figure out how to expand our brains, develop our thinking beyond, to develop our capabilities beyond our limiting ways, we do it. Now, this is our 1st try. We’ve done pretty amazing things, and we’ve done some pretty weird things. And like you said, there’s a lot of

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things that filter us and keep us from

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being more right. And maybe the next generation will evolve to do that, or maybe not. Maybe we’ll just be one of those that fail, and maybe it’s the octopus generation that’ll evolve into better, better beings than than we are. I don’t know that, but I think what you’re saying is, I would say, we’re the 1st try at this.

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And because we can think we can not only limit ourselves, but we can expand our thinking. And I look at AI a little bit like this. It’s very interesting what AI is doing is making all thinking

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more available to people. And

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now, I don’t know whether it can turn over to make original thought like you’re saying which is not really original. It’s more put together in a different way, because nothing’s really original. We’ve all come from someplace else. Right? But

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but it’s original. If it’s not been put together that way. So my book is no original ideas in it. But the synthesis of the book of the idea is new. The synthesis, the putting together of those ideas are new. And what you’re saying is, humans need to put together these ideas or put together our skills, our ability to think in a different way, to become

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better, more, more sustainable humans. Right? Yeah. And and I think we’re getting closer. Yeah, in some ways, I think I think the move towards, for example, all of our gender conversations that are happening right now, I think all the neurodivergence

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acceptance that’s starting to happen in the world like these types of pieces, I think, are taking us, cognitively speaking, into new directions that are going to allow the brain to develop in a completely different way. That I think hopefully, will.

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if we do it right again create more safety for more trials, and for more expansion into different directions. And my hope, my hope this is my hope is that as we move into more of those types of thinking, we will then allow our bodies to adapt, because I think that that’s the only way that we’re going to survive as the climate continues to change, because

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our bodies need, like you said of the whole plant having to survive 6 months without light.

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right which we know that they can do. And they have learned to do because you go to places like Finland. And there are trees, even though or north, you know there are areas where it happens. And so, but that only comes from a different expanse. You know a different thought process that we today are not able to do. And so I think that we’re moving. I think the whole quest to be more of a more accepting society, to have societies that, like you said.

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send the signal, and the signal doesn’t come back and says, No, you’re wrong. Screw off, but instead says, Oh, there’s something going wrong, or this is different. Let’s go investigate or help, or whatever all of these types of things, I think, will allow that eventually our bodies will be able to also kind of

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move that fear filter out of the way and say, All right, let’s develop something different. Let’s change what’s going on, and this will be always more attuned because to what is happening in society like to what is happening environmentally. Excuse me. So I do think that that’s the path forward. Well, and the way I approach that in my book is, I agree with you, is my approach was to go back to nature and say, How does nature collaborate? How does nature coordinate? And it comes down to one sentence.

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and for people people should be able to do whatever they want as long as they don’t harm another, or the society, or the the world in which they live. So that means that if you take a look at how you should make decisions, what it did was it calmed me down

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because I can look at the world like

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nature does, and decide how to solve a problem or how to look at a problem. For instance, you know, gender, you gender choice. It’s like

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boy nature does all. 1st of all, nature does all kinds of things.

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So, second, it doesn’t hurt anybody.

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so go for it. Gay marriage, same thing that doesn’t hurt anybody. Go for it. But guns do hurt people so they need to be regulated. So I can make a very simple rule that says, anytime a human behavior is going to harm another behavior. It gets regulated in some way, whether it’s a coordinating a government function. The coordinating factor in your family is is your parents. You know, the coordinating

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function in a business is the CEO or the management

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anytime. Those people are required to make sure that they do

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do no harm, that their their function, their functionaries underneath them, do no harm. And that’s the way nature works in your body. Those 35 trillion cells work together. They do not compete.

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and they all work together to keep you as the unit alive, and to keep each other alive. Well, if our societies ran that way, we would make many different decisions. We would take private money out of elections in government, because those private, what that money does is it allows the coordinators to make decisions for the benefit of those private money people, not for the good of the people.

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and so that has to be removed. That’s that has to be a law that says Nope, we can’t do that because that’s going to harm the good of the people. That’s not our goal.

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And you know, taxation is the same way. Taxation is nourishment, you know, in our body, your mouth and your stomach take in the food, and everybody else gets fed. Everybody. The whole body needs to get fed in order for the body to survive. But our societies don’t work that way.

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and they should work that way, at least for health care and affordable rent. And you know, food and education. Those those things are basic to making sure a person creates the best ideas they can and become a member of the full society. But we don’t do that. So that’s what the book is a lot about. It takes this one sentence that says, this is how bodies work. You get to do what you want, but you can’t harm anybody.

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and humans have the do what you want as the bigger thing, and the oh, don’t harm anybody as the littler thing.

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and they it needs to be the other way around, you know.

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So that is how

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that’s how I see if and what I want is for you, and people like you, or study plants. Plants don’t harm anybody. I mean, the biggest thing they do is sometimes they put out a poison to say, don’t grow too close to me, because you’re not going to make it where neither of us are going to make it right. But other than that plants are the most peaceful things on earth.

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Don’t harm anybody, you know, except some in self-defense, right? But so that

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knowledge of how to be a plant and not be limited, is a very good lesson for us to learn as to bring forward. And I would. And I love what you’re doing because I can start to see

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how we can use plants as an example, not just animals and cells, but plants. As an example of how to make better decisions and be better people and make a better world.

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I love it, I love it sounds great. I was going to ask you for final thoughts, but I think you just gave us your final thoughts, and I think that’s awesome. So tell tell everybody the name of the book, and where it when it’s coming out and where they can find it.

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Okay, it’s called the human idea. Earth’s new ecosystem. Earth’s newest ecosystem. Sorry about that.

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And it’s coming out everywhere. It’ll be on Amazon, but it’ll be everywhere. It should be in bookstores, or I’ve got it to where libraries can order it. But I don’t know when that will actually happen. But you can find it on any kind of ebook platform or any kind of basic bookstore. You can order it there.

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It comes out November 19.th I just got heard that the the final printed version is in the mail to me. So I get to look at that. So it’s pretty exciting. Yeah. And

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mostly, I want to say, thank you for giving me this chance to think about. I hadn’t really thought about plants a lot, and I see how rich this

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area of thinking is for making the world a better place. And I think what you’re doing is really

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amazing, and and and has a very important place in our conversations in the world.

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Oh, thank you, and I love what you’re doing, too. I’m looking forward to. I have a copy of the book. I’m excited to get my hands into it more, and so I’m looking forward to everybody being able to get the book. I will make sure that when it comes out we’ll also add it hopefully. It’ll show up on bookshop.org, which we have a bookstore for, so I will make sure that I add it in there so that people can find it there. Yeah, I love your recommendations. I’ve already. I just got this one

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came up today. Oh, yay, that’s the newest book that is the newest book of our of our Plant Wisdom Book Club. So yes, ways of being. I’m excited about this. I’m really enjoying reading that book. So I think there’s a big movement coming that where people are starting to really put together, that we need to coexist, and that we need to turn off some of our freedom. Talk right? Exactly so

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fantastic. Thank you again, and and thank you to everybody who is here all the way to the end. Remember, if you, if you enjoyed this conversation and you want more of them, please make sure you like you make a comment. You share it that everything that goes to helping this message reach a wider audience. So that’s it. For this episode. Another episode. I can’t believe it. We’re at episode 79. And so

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so beautiful. So thank you again, Anne, and remember, everyone resist the urge to hold back your emerging green brilliance. This is me Tigrilla Gardenia. I’m out bye.

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Thanks for listening to this episode of reconnect with plant wisdom, intro and outro music by Steve Schiuli and poinsettia from the singing life of plants. So join me, Tigrilla Gardenia and my plant collaborators next time on reconnect with plant wisdom.