00:01i'm here talking with jason snyder co-host of both and and localist bioregionalist and recent homesteader and we're here to talk to you about localism in the context of globalism or the idea that to achieve real change at a global scale individuals need to be less focused on the whole planet and more focused on their actions locally we're going to zoom in and zoom out and talk about how humans live work and play together and the rules and structures by which they do so so to start with um i want to go over sort of our definitions of different words that we're going to be talking about because i think that the bulk of miscommunication that people have especially online when you're not in person is that we hold very
00:51different meanings for the same words and we try to engage in this conversation when whatever is in our mind one's mind is very different from the other so i'm just going to go through a list of um of things and just i'd like to hear your uh definitions of these words sure and i'll sort of reflect back to you if i agree with you okay great uh so i just want to start with how you sort of define yourself i mean i called you um just the host co-host of both and but you're obviously so many things um so how do you view jason snyder like how would you define yourself to yourself and to others you know that's a moving target uh even for me um you know my my contemplative training teaches
01:38me that i shouldn't take myself my self-definition too seriously so but i also don't think we should get lost in emptiness and i think that uh embodying a certain you know agency or identity is can be really helpful in the world uh these days i could tell you what i'm interested in right now yeah maybe that's easier than how i identify uh so i'm these days i'm really uh my interest revolves i would say around food food systems and in particular i'm interested in local food systems and regenerative food systems we're going to talk about what those things mean if you want and more broadly i'm interested
02:28in not um you know surviving as a human race i think that that would be good and not not taking the planet down with us that would also be good um and i kind of you know i kind of operate in many different intellectual milieus i guess you know i used to talk a lot about metamodernism and and i still find a lot of those ideas valuable but um these days i'm i i'm much more drawn to you know localists bioregionalists um decentralization uh uh the regeneration scene writ large and so you know i'm just a person trying to develop this homestead uh trying to grow food uh you know
03:16develop community when when um covid lockdowns you know uh they're not really locked down but cover restrictions ease and you know all in teaching you know teaching young minds uh having interesting conversations and you know and [ __ ] posting on twitter and and you know that leads to things like this where i talk to interesting people about ideas that i mean that aligns with uh sort of my perception of as well and i've i've seen sort of the the shift um from i think that your focus being broader over like the last year and a half to being much more locally focused and it's something that i agree makes the most sense you know considering the the the context of the times
04:05um and i would say that so i know you as a localist i also know you just as a really nice guy that when i was starting out and i was trying to reach people i i wasn't really connected with anybody and out of nowhere usually check this guy out he's really awesome and um so i just sort of know you as a sort of like um [Music] shining node in in a network of really interesting minds and i love the way that you connect people and i love the way the ideas that you share outwards and and especially love the action that you take individually uh relative to sort of the ideas that you're that you're sharing so we mentioned a couple of things um localism i'd love to hear your
04:52definition of localism my favorite definition is minimum viable scale both in terms of economic production but also in terms of governance so it's similar it has some similarities to libertarianism but also some key differences um libertarians don't necessarily mind big business i do uh libertarians uh don't really have kind of a uh you know they don't have they don't bake into their theory atomization and loneliness and selfishness and and you know which i think some people some libertarians might tend towards uh it really focuses on you know local
05:42living systems and um you know it's not this is not always explicit in people who talk about localism but i also think that um thinking in terms of living well within the limits of the earth is best handled locally meaning you're you know the the closer you are to the sources of your sustenance the the more sensitive you are to the sense of place and to the ecology uh the less likely you are to bespoil it right um my critique of like a global capitalist system is that most of you know there's just so many negative externalities and uh so many places you know are just kind of you know extracted from
06:30both both environmentally and in terms of labor and things like that and there's just not much accountability and i think when you're thinking in terms of local systems there's you're just more accountable to your region to your neighbors to your sense of place to the ecology in that place and so i guess that's that's my attraction towards it and that's that's how that's how i generally think about it i would i would say the same and i think it's sort of the perception that people just naturally get from hearing the word i remember the first time i had just heard the word localism and it just like instantly made sense and it connected um to this idea or that phrase which is uh think global act local which i i don't know exactly is the best way to frame it but
07:18i think it's just it definitely uh what you just had to have in the lines with how i view it now in contrast sort of the dominant sort of paradigm right now is actually sort of globalism and there's really this idea that people are putting their own mental focus outwards to be able to solve the problems that are facing them but not necessarily as much focused locally so how do you define globalism well i so i i one i want to make a distinction between planetary consciousness and globalism so i think i think we need some kind of cosmopolitan localism um which uh is enabled with certain technologies like digital
08:05technology the fact that you're on the west coast right and the fact that i'm in the southeast and we're having a conversation i think that's a good thing right i think it's good for ideas to move um for you know knowledge to move inspiration to to move around and then be applied contextually you know in this local context so and i but and i think you know the minimum viable scale sometimes is a global scale uh i'll give you an example okay with climate change you know there's projected to be hundreds of millions of people displaced we're gonna have hundreds of millions of climate refugees in the next number of decades um i see that as a global problem uh it's not you know if if tens of millions of people in bangladesh are being displaced that's not a problem that's localized to
08:52bangladesh most of the emissions that cause climate change come from the united states europe and increasingly china uh and so you know it's that's that's you know that's an example of a negative externality and so i would actually say it's anti-localist to to accept that now so so that's kind of planetary consciousness is you know paying attention to partic particulars of place to context local ecologies to the diversity of cultural expression but also seeing us all interconnected as a planetary whole okay so why did i why did i say all that i think globalism as it's currently construed has become uh what i would call an extractive system um
09:42what we see with the history of colonization and slavery uh and now neoliberal economics is that you know we see local communities essentially being undermined like their cultural traditions being undermined their resource base being undermined you know privatized by large multinational corporations uh the materials are extracted out uh to feed a consumerist beast um that's driven by the incentives of shareholder capitalism uh the you know the incentive to make short-term profits and i just think it's sucking the lifeblood out of the world and so it's it's kind of like vampire it's like a vampire globalism um you know again i want to contrast that with planetary consciousness which i
10:29think is a regenerative globalism so yeah yeah yeah there's exactly the framing that i want to get to yeah the way that globalism currently is it's kind of like autophagy you know like the planet is devouring itself yeah i mean if you see us as as we are as part of nature that's cannibalizing itself it makes sense so you you said uh global consciousness and uh my mind went to another thing i was going to ask you to define uh which was collective intelligence and i'd like you to sort of uh define both of those in compare and contrast uh collective intelligence with global consciousness collective intelligence um i see
11:19as um well there's different kinds right you can you can you can imagine an authoritarian kind of technocratic collective intelligence where yeah you know you have you know the official scientists and the official policymakers and and they think they understand local communities enough to make their decisions for them um i think that's that's that's the wrong move and i was in that world for a long time my training is in applied economics you know i was i was being you know trained as a technocrat uh to write policy reports for you know parts of the world you know all the way across the world uh in eastern southern africa and like you know like i really understand you know their cultures and societies and what's best for them um i i would contrast that with what i would hope would arise i don't think i don't think we're there yet
12:06but uh a more decentralized bottom-up collective intelligence which again digital technology can make possible uh and the idea there is that um we're able to um well let's go all the way back to localism i think for localism to work uh and again this idea of minimum viable scale um a lot of things can be done on a very local scale like food production or at least at a bioregional scale um but there are still some things like the creation of electronics that you know my neighbor is not going to make for me right and that's a larger scale um you know there's still relations trading relations between regions you know we want to prevent warfare um you know uh warlords are rising and and trying to dominate other places
12:55right yeah i want to prevent that yeah what's that i said yeah we want to prevent that yeah ideally i would um and so we're gonna need still to figure out how to you know we're still going to need some kind of emergent governance at higher scales even up to the global scale emerging like emerging or merging emergent so you know and and again i don't you know i don't think we're there yet right so the idea is you because we are connected digitally and ideally if we had better incentives in our digital connections you know not not so much what we have now with click bait and yeah and trying to harvest our attention
13:42for ad dollars that's not going to get us there but you know some other some platforms that you know that don't do that um you know various you know decentralization technologies uh alternative currencies smart contracts you know all of these things that that that people are really excited about um you know i i you know i think that's what i see as emergent governance as being able to come to larger scale decisions for a particular issue but you know uh not not not maintaining you know a larger governing structure you know when it's not necessary or not appropriate okay so so you mentioned uh one word that i also wanted to hear you define which was emergence how do you define emergence and how are you describing emergence
14:31here yeah i mean there are some pretty technical definitions of emergence and i'm not i'm not even going to approximate that so i'll just kind of uh go with my vibe on it yeah that's what you want it's it's basically uh this idea that in complex systems um you you have you might have a certain kind of order of of things um but at a certain point um you start getting these interaction effects between these different elements and suddenly you have kind of a whole new an emergent kind of whole new set of system properties uh and so a very simple you know obvious example of that is the human body and and the evolution of you know uh prokaryote to eukaryote cells you know cells being engulfed into larger organisms and and you know
15:20the human body itself right like consciousness one one theory of consciousness um and i'm kind of agnostic on theories of consciousness but one theory of consciousness is that it's an emergent property of you know all of these different um systems in the body kind of interacting with each other and consciousness kind of emerges out of that um again there's many theories of consciousness and i don't i don't want to necessarily go down that route um um yeah i don't know can you think of other examples no i thought that was a great definition and i i think the the reason i bring it up is because the a in a lot of ways localism sort of comes natural to people because i mean who else can you interact with but but the people who are
16:08immediately there um [Music] but we also see the need for the scaling up and we also see these sort of emerging um systems to be able to help us interact with each other without sort of killing each other because we tend to have the less coherence with those who we don't interact with as often yeah that's the final term i wanted you to define uh was coherence with the how i'm using that yeah yeah i think so um so let me let me let me try and let me try and get into this sideways a little bit and talk about um
16:57bioregions um so uh what i would see you know i i see bioregionalism as intimately related to localism i see it as a very important scale a very important viable scale um i would say it's by you know thinking about designing human systems and cultures around landscapes and around you know specific ecologies specific watersheds you know as well as kind of cultural landscapes i would say that a bioregion is you know that scale is a coherent governance structure or or or could be made into a coherence governance structure it's coherent because um it will contrast that with say what we have now is like states you know most states are
17:46not ecologically coherent you know uh they're not by you know they're not really often culturally coherent and that just creates a lot of unnecessary problems i would say so you know an example let's just say that a state state line or even a county line cuts across a watershed right and then different jurisdictions you might have different laws within each jurisdiction um you it basically fosters kind of two separate agendas that might be moving a different direction and don't have larger coherence in terms of the health of the watershed for example so you know drawing from that example i would say coherence um is is something like you know many different parts of a system
18:35interacting in a way that um you know achieves some kind of legible purpose or goal yeah and i don't want to use the word efficient because you know that that term is is kind of a loaded term but um but in in in a way that doesn't fight against itself yeah the word that comes to mind for me is harmony yeah like yeah sort of like parts oscillating together and resonance basically yeah yeah that's a good it's a good way to put it yeah now you also said i didn't have this on my list but you said bio regionalism so i just wanted to have you clarify what you mean by
19:22bioregionalism yeah well so it's interesting you know i kind of consider myself both a localist and a bioregionalist and and these are kind of two separate camps which is really interesting because i i see them as you know their their interests and goals are largely aligned um there's a whole kind of bioregionalist movement going back to like the 60s and 70s and and going through but um you know it there's a couple elements of it you know one uh again is kind of like this coherence in in human structures and scales that uh allows for um well allows for one to be in more intimate contact with the the biophysical limits uh of your place and so people often talk about like creating bioregional
20:09economies uh a bioregional circular economy where um you know you try and reduce your inputs from the outside and you try and recycle your outputs you know instead of it going to waste it gets recycled into some kind of fertility or reuse somehow um bioregionalists also tend to think in terms of like you know the local community they tend to think in terms of i think they're they're a little bit more slanted explicitly towards like an ecology ecological consciousness where you know they care about maintaining you know biodiversity soil health water quality but you know to me it's just one it's it's a certain scale of localism with kind of an ecological you know
20:59overlaying and ecological consciousness onto it and again localists i would say also have an ecological consciousness but it's just it's not always so explicit um but you know small-scale farmers who tend to be localists uh they tend to take care of their land and their soil and everything as well but it's just not so much an explicit part of the ideology that's great and i i have a follow-up question which is the idea of the lines between bioregions then you know as always lines and human minds are sort of abstract but where are those lines being drawn and by who they're fuzzy they're admittedly fuzzy um you know you can define bioregions at multiples
21:47multiple scales um you know i could define my bioregion by the watershed i'm in um i could define it by the fact that i live in the blue ridge mountain range i could define it as something like southern appalachia i tend to like using southern appalachia i think it's just it makes sense both ecologically but also culturally and so you know it's fuzzy uh and i think it often times it depends on what your goal is and and this is where i think this idea of emergent level governance comes in it's like okay we're having water quality issues okay what's the relevant scale well it's the watershed okay so let's let's think in those terms um you know we're seeing uh a certain kind of species um that you know is you can find all around
22:36southern appalachia you're finding it starting to die off okay what's the relevant scale to think about that it's at the bioregion but i also think culture comes into it as well i think i don't think you can so easily separate uh culture and and ecology so an example here you know the the culture of southern appalachia i think is pretty distinctive um and when you say southern appalachian culture people generally know what you mean right and but and i think it you know the reason you can't extract it from ecology is i think you know a lot of culture arises out of the ecological constraints that human populations you know arise in right and you know not that they're i'm not an environmental determinist so i also think that humans create niches which can change the environment and and create different
23:24types of affordances and stuff but um uh yeah i think in terms of like who draws the lines um i think that also should be you know and for what purpose right so we choose a purpose and then you need to have some kind of um deliberative process to you know with people of like okay where is this natural boundary and why are we putting it there for you know um at this time that's great uh so that's great i feel like we're we're pretty aligned on like how we uh view different words and there's a couple just the the clarification help me get uh closer on the same page so now i just have some just general questions for you and yeah i'm just going to hit run them off and you can go as long as you want to on each one sure what is the most significant challenge that
24:11humanity faces right now oof um there's several but i i i think i think um and they're interrelated so it's hard to pinpoint one i mean i do think our climate ecological crisis is pretty dire um you know if if we don't get our climate emissions under control uh and we get to five degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels that's that's pretty much it for human life on earth uh as far as we know um you know even if we were to cut carbon emissions tomorrow uh the effects of of climate change are going to be with us for a long time
24:59and it's still going to create rising sea levels for a long time and it's still good you know it's still going to create these things you know similar with other other ecological you know issues so you have lost you know rapid loss of biodiversity that's an essential threat to humans um uh you know we have rapid top soil loss um we have you know a crash in a population of like pollinators bees um you know the the creature is responsible for allowing us to grow food um you know that there's there's just so many you know biogeochemical flows flows are out of whack ocean acidification i mean i could just i could just list this stuff right um so i think that's pretty dire but but i think that's also connected to you know that's obviously connected
25:47to human systems and how you know our paradigms you know the paradigms by which we make sense of the world and you know we've seen in the you know especially since the rise of fossil fuels um you know we've seen kind of this kind of modernization and creation of again kind of what i would call global extractive capitalism kind of go into overdrive um i i would add you know i i do think that um energy availability is an underrated concern um fossil fuels are starting to run out and even before they run out this can get more and more expensive to extract them such that you know the return on energy invested
26:35is gonna be decreasing um you know of course we can we can switch over to renewable energy but it's very unclear that we would be able to power this kind of global economy um without fossil fuels uh it's very unclear to me um and so figuring out you know so so so so for me there's gonna be kind of you know these kind of forcing functions from the environment that are just going to make life harder and harder for for us and i think we're going to have to um you know we might start having energy contractions um in the near future and and so what it looks like for humanity to transition from what it is today to what i think is
27:22a much more sustainable model and a viable model which is you know uh you know which is a much more kind of localist type of type of model uh where again localists you know what how does localism relate to the environment well um you know localism there's much more density of interaction uh both with other people but also with your environment uh and so learning with to live within you know ecological boundaries happens at home like that's that's the most kind of legible way to to to do it um yeah i guess i mean i heard so i heard a first spot which was the health of the planet the health of the planet as a whole and all the different maladies that we've afflicted upon it
28:11and the second was just human systems and how we interact with the planet and its resources at scale and locally does that sound about right yeah and i would just add with the human systems is i think i think that you know politically you know our institutions that are that are designed um uh the way that they're designed today um you know based on um you know based on assumptions that you know we have to maintain gdp growth which i don't think we'll be able to you know the debt cycles that fuel that you know you know i also see prospects of like economic collapse and and with that social and cultural uh chaos right and so you know all of the
28:59horrible things that we see in various movies of you know uh desperate people rising warlords um you know uh raiding bands of of you know uh bands of raiders you know going going going going around you know outside of the law you know all of these things um you know i think is a is a big concern to me it's something that i think about a lot that's great great uh that's a great answer um we keep coming back to sort of the the topic of scale which is sort of my next question and a couple of frames one um which is just that how does the idea of of localism scale upwards two which we sort of
29:47already addressed which is how broad is the local scale what does local really mean to each individual and you sort of talked on that already but also um how sort of localism connects to the ideas of isolationism and nationalism and sort of what prevents the opposite problem where people become too focused on their own people such that they drift further away from others that's my question yeah well this is why you know i introduced a term earlier cosmopolitan localism i think 21st century localism has to be a kind where you know again we're trying to provision um necessary goods and services as locally
30:35as possible um but there's still going to be trade um you know if i want to have a decentralized solar energy you know i still need to get cobalt i still need to get lithium right that's not going to come from you know my neighbor um yeah uh i think a lot of like manufacturing can you know uh can can be made more localized especially with like you know projects like open ecology what are called cosmo local systems where you have like an open source kind of global intelligence network of like you know innovative ideas but you actually have localized you know manufacturing things of that nature um i think you know i still think it's good you know the cosmopolitan part you know i think you can grow up in a place but you can
31:22visit other places right you can you can get different cultural influences bring in different ideas of course again digital technology at its best can can be you know a source of like cultural transfer information transfer um i don't think you know isolationist localism is viable because i just think that so many of our problems are planetary in scale or are region you know bioregionally or nationally you know scaled that um you know if we have a world of just kind of closed off um localities um i i don't think that would work out i think you would quickly have new empires you know you you would have new alexander the greats you would have um
32:10you know i just don't think so i think a 21st century localism has to have that cosmopolitan element to it um to you know to maintain the cultural transfer without the cultural um kind of desolation that for example you know in the united states rural areas used to be much more vibrant they used to be much more um people used to do a lot more self-provisioning i mean i know in this area where i am in the in the you know the history books uh i've read you know people used to be used to provision a lot more of their basic needs locally um and that you know with that came you know you can say vibrant village economies where you know people neighbors were dependent on each other
32:57had interdependence there was like festivals there's all kinds of you know um you know it was just a very vibrant life that you don't really see nearly as much in rural areas now because you know they've just been you know they've turned into ghost towns basically yeah so you know so having you know so for me a cosmopolitan localism where is is you have you can think of it kind of like you know the term autopoiesis um you know a cell you know has a has a does have a boundary but it's a porous boundary and so a big question is like how do you get you know like what degree of porousness is is optimal in a given situation like you need to have some some kind of boundary to kind of have some kind of internal coherence yeah internal kind of like culture um but you also need to have information
33:47transfer to you know to be viable as a larger organism we better be careful we'll start talking about walls because that that's immediate that's the immediate metaphorical analog there right right i know these are walls with doors yeah uh we've talked a lot about like what does not work with current systems but what about the current systems does work well and what should we sort of keep as we move forward well i think uh you know some you know some of our technological and scientific uh infrastructure i think is worth worth keeping i mean our medical infrastructure um
34:35you know i i also think that we should live healthier lives and eat you know eat healthier and and um and you know there needs there needs to be a lot of changes to health care system but you know a lot of kind of modern modern medicine i think has a place or can have a place you know especially in kind of emergencies like you know if i need to get um if i need to get operated on if i need you know get my appendix out it's nice to you know have the equipment around and the people who know how to do that right um you know some aspects of technology so i you know i think that uh we should be thinking in terms of appropriate technology uh not just technology for technology's sake so you know digital technology um earth observatory systems
35:22things like geographic information systems satellites you know allowing us to kind of like create this um you can call it kind of this feedback uh cybernetic uh feedback between what we're doing to the earth and then seeing what we're doing to the earth is you know is a very useful technology you know of course renewable energy technologies things like that i think have to play a role um you know so we're not getting back to like my great great grandmother's localism because our population on the earth is just is so much larger now and so we we will i think need you know certain high-tech things to make it viable right to so for all of us to to be able to live on a planet as you know with a decent quality of life um uh that's very different than what i see
36:09as the current consumeristic economy of course uh those are some some things um you know for energy uh you know i'm not i'm not close minded on nuclear i think that nuclear energy um if it can be proven to be safe and uh um you know you know it might have to play a role in the future if we don't yeah want to have a complete energy crash um i i would interject there that the thing that i think the problem with most people have nuclear is they view it as a singular route which is like okay and however long ago somebody figured out what the easiest route for them to get nuclear energy but there are other possible paths
36:56that have either less radiation no radiation or things that actually consume the nuclear waste that we've already produced so it does make a lot of sense to pursue at least the routes that consume the nuclear waste that we've made because what are we going to do with it right exactly yeah nuclear waste is a big issue and you know and as far as i know it hasn't really been proven to be financially viable yet at least the united a large scale in the united states i mean i know france has like 30 nuclear or something um you know but i knew new technology limiter of so much good human action is it's not financially viable right right well but it's not like financially viable in kind of an energetic sense either yeah return energy return on investment is not as far as i know for large scale
37:45purposes is not great yet you know taking into account all of the you know all of the safety you know infrastructure that you have to put in and all of the other things that you know and also the governance you know perhaps we had better governance it would be more viable right but the poor governance makes it more you know more expensive than it would be um yeah but i also i you know i also worry something like nuclear if it's very centralized energy that that'll lead to centralized government government um and so i i don't think that there's a silver bullet solution there i think different places will find different approaches to meeting their energy needs right like um here in uh you know where i am you know i we have you know we um you know there's various kind of mixtures some some kind of small
38:33scale hydroelectric i could see some solar some you know windmills um uh probably not so much like uh probably not so much like um uh bio uh like like bio crops um just because we don't have a lot of space to grow you know to grow food in whatever space we have we need to use it for food and so i i just think that any any uh every place needs to kind of find different solutions and have a decentralized energy grid where you know i mean i like the idea of like an energy internet where you can kind of like produce energy locally but then share it across transmissions lines lines in larger scales but you know the there's there's a lot of infrastructure that would need to go
39:20into that um and i'm not sure if we're gonna get there yeah yeah um so okay i want to talk about the idea of of of oneness for the self as well as like sort of i guess zeroness the idea that there is no real self and then the idea of oneness with others there's sort of i think a lot of people i view this idea that humanity will merge into some oneness right but there also is a lack of integration at our own scale within our own bodies that we are not as internally aligned with ourselves as much as we like so i just want to talk you to talk about like sort of it's like both the self is real and self is not real and also the idea of these larger
40:08structures is both real and not real and your thoughts about this in a maybe more from a frame of of your experience with like mindfulness and yeah yeah um so i think that many different conceptions of the self um can be useful i'm kind of a pragmatist and so you know i've spent a lot of time cultivating the no self experience you know described in buddhism um but you know i i also think the flip side of that coin is big self with a big ass and i think that it's actually a very similar at least in my experience a very similar kind of experience you know no self um you know if there's no self you're
40:55just there's just kind of like the flow of nature happening um but if you're but that's not so different than being kind of a part of a larger big self um you know you can also see self as process so it's not like you know there's not like one eternal separate thing but it's actually this dynamic evolving you know emergent property uh and i think that's a very interesting useful frame you can also think of multiple cells right like this kind of this model of like you know different different um personalities inside our own consciousness kind of fighting it out right um and so i think all of these you know my my approach to meditation and contemplative practice
41:43is to constantly switch to switch lenses and and see which ones seem resonant and have traction you know at that time yes um i love that yeah uh in terms of like how this relates to kind of like the larger global self um you know i i do think you know i i tend to you know uh believe although you know i try and hold all beliefs lightly but i tend to believe that you know we are part of some unfolding larger process and where we are just a lens that's viewing itself with right and so you can use you can say the universe you can say nature or you know whatever you know whatever abstraction you want to use you know like i am a temporary lens by
42:31which nature becomes conscious of itself um and so from that perspective um you know there's a there's a quote um by kenneth folk that goes something like if we were perfectly self-interested and enlightened we would love everybody because we wouldn't see them other than ourselves and so this is kind of a big self perspective where um you know we all come from the same materials you know we all evolved from the same process um uh we we were all you know once single cell organisms you know at one time uh and and so uh to see ourselves as as all part of you know a larger hole i think is really healthy with the caveat that that doesn't become
43:18kind of a top-down totalitarian oppressive thing where you stamp out all diversity you stamp out you know you have this conception of this holistic conception and everybody has to conform to it i think part of being a larger self is understanding you know all of the myriad expressions of that self uh all of the manifestations of it um and you know and so i think you know it to me it's i find it fascinating and it's probably not a coincidence that i think this aligns with my kind of vision of cosmopolitan localism as well right where the individual personality i don't think should be shunned right like for me like i can observe my personality and i can celebrate it and enjoy it and play with it while not also not taking it too seriously and not like grasping onto it and
44:07but i should still cultivate it um and i and you know the same way we do in kind of this cosmopolitan localist vision where we celebrate you know uh community diversity regional diversity you know we celebrate the fact that different places around the world have different cuisines right that's that's based on kind of local ecological conditions like different kind of varieties of of you know fruits and plants and animals that you know that can be grown there and that that leads to like this great diversity of of expression of the human experience um yeah that was a great answer that was my favorite answers uh that you get so far so we're coming up in 45 minutes so i'm going to ask you just a few more questions and then move on to like a few closing sections which are just more rapid fire
44:54sure um you mentioned sort of that totalitarian thing yeah and we've talked a little bit about the idea of scale and the idea and the the way that sort of the many people say sort of u.s democracy has been one of the more successful uh organizations of people at scale and one of the the features of that is sort of that the the system itself has repeated itself within itself you have the federal government state governments and you have uh county governments and then you have yes governments and sort of this reflection of each level of the structures of what's above and what's what's going on
45:41and so i guess my question is is there is it possible to have any system at all that does not have this sort of repeating fractal organization where it's really just one unified system that you know would not result to the in this individuals within suffering or is this something that it's fundamentally necessary you have to have that sort of breaking apart of the structure you have to have that fractal nature of organization um i do think you need to have the fractal fractal nature but i i also think that um you know the way that we've you know the way that
46:28we've seen it play out in the past is not necessarily what needs to play out in the future um i think that um you know so the difference between something like localism and something like federalism which is i think what you're describing has to do with kind of the direction of intelligence and i think you know when the united states constitution and uh you know the united states kind of governance structure was being hammered out like they didn't have the technological affordances that we do today right and so you know many aspects of you know federalism still relied on kind of a federal government um you know making decisions for everybody else
47:15um and kind of imposing decisions on everyone else um but i think because we have this affordance that you know this technology that can afford us collective intelligence if we do it right uh it doesn't need to be that way it can be more of a of a bottom-up um kind of you know type of governance that um again i think is is more provisional than than we see you know you don't have like federal laws that are put on the books and that are there for like all time even though you know long after they've ceased to have relevance um just because the political processes at a federal level is so messed up um and so you know i think um yeah i mean then you know and then in
48:01terms of like how we organize you know our society right like we you know oftentimes people see things like okay well you either have kind of state control or you have some kind of like capitalist private you know corporate control of things but there's other models that have been successful in history there's the commons model right so eleanor ostrom you know her her work which she won the nobel prize for was you know develop you know kind of outlining the principles that she's seen in many case studies throughout the world and throughout history of communities figuring out how to how to live and manage their natural resource base in you know a basically kind of you know what i would call basically a democratic process even though it's not formalized you know in that way of managing say common pool resources
48:48right um and so i guess yeah i'm not sure if i'm answering your question um i i you know in a nutshell i think that it is a fractal nature but um again the the the flow of decision making and the type of how we organize you know how we you know trade share utilize resources um you know i i i don't think we need to follow you know the the you know the the the 20th and 21st century united states model oh yeah for sure for sure for sure um so you you tweeted something the other day that i thought was um i think a good why
49:37idea why i like the way that you frame the world in both your action and your beliefs you said you're spiritually preparing for futures both much worse than i could imagine and much better than i could imagine yeah and i think that the focus on localism does a little bit of both because one you know if things fall apart you need to be able to know how to interact with your local environment right just just to survive yeah um but the other half is that i still see you talking about um you know the you know the tech tech uh which cosmopolitan um i see i still hear you talking about that and they're you know uh what i don't want to get really into game b
50:23but you know you talked in that space and and we both sort of saw like people's perceptions of that evolve um and so okay okay i want to ask um it's about the duality of these two two perspectives and so like one is like i've seen you move this direction while also keeping the foot into in the broader lens but what else pushed you in that direction like what what is what is the story that was like okay i really need to make a change towards focusing on my own um world and building it out out um and food production too
51:10yeah the homesteading you know yeah what made you know that you know i have to do this you know that's that's really hard i don't know if there was like one moment where all of a sudden i shifted overnight um you know it's kind of this process of accretion you know so so my you know my training my phd training again was in applied economics i was being trained as a technocrat and i was just you know i was just kind of miserable like like doing the research even in my postdoc i just didn't like it um and i you know i felt both well i just didn't like the actual work but i also just didn't believe in it um and kind of that model uh that they proposed which is more of like a you know kind of a technocratic but also like structural you know
51:58structural transformation basically like we need to make develop you know we need to make poor countries more like the west um we need to bring in like private investors and get them plugged into the globalist economy uh all of these things um and so you know and then you know i as you know you know i i got i got interested in metamodernism and and you know i was interested in those ideas still am um and game b arose um and you know for a while i started getting interested in like complex system uh thinking uh and game b i think is is deeply informed by that and so there was definitely some some influence there but also just you know talking with friends reading other books you know about complexity and and you
52:46know the the importance of kind of self-organization and emergence and and these concepts so that that started infiltrating my consciousness um i think it what really i mean so this shift for me really happened uh started happening when i moved when we moved to north carolina uh about a year and a half ago uh so my wife her she had studied for her phd in sustainability kind of you know called community sustainability um and she got a position in this department which is called sustainable development um and so you know so i started you know just being around people that that kind of aligned with these with these views and it kind of made me easy it made it easier for me to kind of you know kind of shed my my previous training
53:33right yeah and especially you know when i was able to start teaching in this department of like okay like i don't need to like be this compartmentalized where like i hate my professional life really i don't believe in it but then i'm interested in all these other intellectual scenes um so that was one i think another was you know starting you know i think joe brewer was a huge influence on me um he's you know he's one of the bioregional regeneration guys uh and he's just incredibly knowledgeable and he's like a polymath um and you know his you know his view is kind of very a very bio-regionalist kind of kind of view uh but i think of where it really kind of like became like an embodied thing was when i got land when i went based on land right and
54:24and suddenly and you know and there was also you know like even the process of deciding to get land like we were looking for houses and we weren't necessarily going to get a house with land you know i was kind of in the back of my mind like hey i'd like to have some land i was also being influenced by a time by the localist folks like joe norman and stuff so that was starting to integrate you know infiltrate my consciousness um but then you know we we just happened to get lucky and find a place within our budget and you know on five acres and we were like this is you know this is the only place like this that we saw so we got very lucky um and then it was just like okay like everything just kind of clicks and suddenly i start you know voraciously reading permaculture books um and you know and permaculture is very kind of a systems you know a systems kind of uh view of of agriculture and larger you know
55:14larger larger kind of systems in general and it's just kind of all clicked in right and once i started actually growing things myself or with my wife and i and started thinking in terms of kind of like these circular systems in terms of zones in terms of you know all of these permaculture principles um you know that that was really you know that that's what really set me on the track um and then i think when covid happened you know that just kind of reinforced my you know like i was already thinking in terms of the fragility of kind of the global economic system in an ecological sense but yeah you know you know other kinds of kind of um fragilities in the global system through various shocks is like okay like that's i think that's when it all kind of clicked into place last
56:02spring um and the rest is history that's great that's great yeah so i'm gonna move on to a couple of segments to wrap up and i'm experimenting with uh all these so if they don't work or i don't have enough questions i could cut them out um so i just want to do some rapid fire questions just sort of like what comes to your mouth without thinking too much okay uh what brings you joy growing things oh i love that uh what do you wish you could change i i nothing is coming to mind that's great that's a good answer too i mean i would like to i would like to right now i'm an adjunct and i'd like to be like a i don't want to be a tenure track professor because i
56:48actually don't want to do like that kind of research but i would like to be like um like a a full-time lecturer which would make us a little more financially you know stable um oh that makes sense yeah um and the opposite is what do you know is changing but you wish could say the same oh man this is so hard i know i just experienced the pressure of the rapid fire ask that again what do you what do you know is changing but you want to stay the same part of me wants you know part of me wants my three-year-old to be this cute little you know this cute little guy forever um yeah pardon me wants all of him to grow up but and help him put him to work but
57:36part of me is like he's just you know it's growing quickly yeah uh is homesteading harder or easier than you expected i would say it's easier and it's easier because i i actually get a lot of energy from doing physical labor like i find it incredibly invigorating you're so predictive i was just about to ask is physical labor meditative for you absolutely absolutely especially physical labor outside you know working getting your hands in the soil you know working with living systems incredibly yeah uh do you think that the world you leave for your children will be better than the one you entered into hard to say because so much of it is not up to me you mean
58:25the world that i specifically leave them that i build that or or the world in general it can be any answer you want um i i would hope to build a little you know i want to build basically a garden of eden on our property that's the long-term goal great but you know if the world is unstable there's going to be people invading it so you know uh do you miss anything about your life before homesteading that you somehow can't get now well i miss like having house parties and seeing friends but that's that's more about covid yeah like we moved here right when right when the pandemic was started was starting that makes sense yeah um so i'm a big
59:13believer that it's good to not think of what is true or false in terms of dualities and then it's really good to think about it in terms of a spectrum of being like you're completely sure that it's false you're completely true and like halfway between is um sort of you have no idea so i'm going to list some statements and uh predictions too and i just want you to say uh zero means that you completely disagree 100 means you completely agree and anywhere in between is okay okay um humanity is in the greatest period of prosperity that it has ever experienced in terms of physical stuff
60:02we have more physical stuff than we've ever had yeah you gotta do a number though number though um i would say 25 on that one but i would give a very long nuanced answer if you left yeah no i i feel the nuanced answer uh humanity is at a turning point 100 yeah that's a good one yeah um okay some predictions capitalism will be the dominant socio-economic system in 50 years wait hold on the last one i want to give a 95 because i don't think i don't think we could be totally sure of anything okay that's great capitalism will be the dominant system economic system in 50 years yeah well to me the scale is what matters like you might have localist scales that are more capitalistic let's say globally x scale
60:52um i would give that a 30. cool um okay humanity will be multi-planetary within 50 years definitely not the way that our mind is thinking but it's something that people think it's the solution i mean you might have some larpers on mars that you know like live horrible lives uh does that count as more than homesteading on mars but they can't grow anything except for in a tiny little tube um well that assumes that you know there's still going to be a civilization in 50 years which um multi-planetary um i mean i think that there will be people on mars
61:38and there will be people on earth um i don't know how civilized it will be so yeah that sounds like a it doesn't need to be that civilized so just number for that would be so i'd give i'd give a 70. i mean you know musk and bezos seem pretty serious yeah makes sense what they're doing um within two years will people be able to go back uh to life without having to wear a mask in public within two years yeah i'd give that an 80. that's good i like that feeling yeah um okay uh the dominant human social structure within 25 years will be localism i'd give that um 33. okay okay uh
62:30oh produce within 25 years will have significantly more nutrients than it does now i'd also give that 33 because i think that depends on if it's low you know if we adopt localism or not okay the next question is that the bulk of food within 30 years will be produced locally like physical mass of it will be mostly produced locally in 30 years 33 all right all right all of those are all those are tied together i say i say 33 because i i you know i think there's many there's many alternatives there you know global capitalism i gave a certain percentage i also think neo-feudalism uh large-scale and new new large-scale empires and new dark ages i think all of that is also has you know is very much in the cards as well
63:18yeah yeah trying to move the needle the other direction but it just really wants to swing that way yeah um okay and then one one final one looking back which is uh the internet has had a net positive effect on collective consciousness over the last 10 years no [Laughter] um i give that i i'd give that a i'd give that a 25. um there have been for me man there have been a few gems but yeah and the potential is there is is is there but right now we're like a schizophrenic you know if you were if you were imagine the information economy as a human it would be a schizophrenic human not not functional
64:07that's good now i am just using all the facts sadness using all the facts using all the facts using information and so finally just wrap everything up uh i just want you to make one prediction and to say one thing to your future self i like i focus on the future as you can tell if one prediction i will have a food forest on this property in 10 years i love it i'm gonna make it happen uh to tell my future self something i would want to tell my future self now yeah that you currently would tell maybe somebody yourself in five years huh that's such an interesting question
65:01no these are mind benders um i would say man i mean we always frame that question is you know what would you tell your earlier self right um uh what what would i tell my future self um kind of like what you not want to forget yeah yeah so i would go back to like you know all of these moments um with my son and you know all of these all of these memories would i would say don't forget those that's great yeah so you would tell your you you tell your future self about the experience with your children today that's great yeah i think so and you know and i think i'll also i would also tell my future
65:49self you know like right now i'm in the mode where i'm still like in learning mode right there's a steep learning curve with home studying with permaculture and so but it's very it's very joyful uh uh it's it's very it's also very challenging and so i would i would hope that my future self who's hopefully much more of an expert does doesn't doesn't forget kind of like the process that that got that got him there that's great uh it's been great talking with you talking with you jason until next time you