Intention and Elizabeth Anscombe with Mirko Prokop

Intentions and Agency: A Deep Dive into Ecological Psychology

Join Mirko Prokop and Andrea Hiott as they examine 'Intentions in Ecological Psychology, an Anscombian Perspective' by Miguel Segundo-Ortin and Annemarie Kalis. This engaging discussion explores the concept of intention from a naturalistic standpoint, intersecting with ecological psychology. Topics include the role of intention in agency, the influence of Elizabeth Anscombe, teleology, goal-directed behavior, and non-representational nature of intentions. Delving into the idea of affordances, they shed light on how intentions shape perception and behavior across species, emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding human and animal cognition.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
01:08 Discussing the Paper: Intentions in Ecological Psychology
02:10 Exploring Key Concepts: Philosophy of Action and Enactivism
04:27 Understanding Ecological Psychology and Affordances
12:38 Agency and Perception-Action Loops
20:38 Intentional Action and Human Agency
31:58 Philosophical Perspectives on Intention
48:07 Exploring Human and Animal Agency
49:15 Intention as Organization of Patterns
50:33 Anscombe's Practical Knowledge
54:23 Naturalistic Notion of Intention
56:23 Embodied Cognition and Practical Knowledge
01:02:10 Social Context and Practical Knowledge
01:17:01 Teleology and Goal-Oriented Behavior
01:30:39 Affordances and Intentional Action
01:34:23 Interdisciplinary Approach to Cognition

The paper discussed here, by Miguel Segundo-Ortin and Annemarie Kalis, is called Intentions in Ecological Psychology: An Anscombean Proposal and is available to read here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365264374_Intentions_in_Ecological_Psychology_An_Anscombean_Proposal

Thoreau quote discussed: "In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well–known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."

Transcript

How do you want to be experienced?

Cari Taylor: [00:00:00] and so that longing asks you to recreate it again and again, right?

What can I do today that's, that is going to bring that awe and that love? And. Yeah. And most often it's a moment that can never be exactly repeated. And so there's always something new. So there's always something being created constantly. And, just that when we go back to thinking about that, you know, that literally has the power to well, hey, stop wars, right?

Like it's, has the power to create there's, there's just that deep capacity to want to, Nurture and care and tent, like I said, and to allow that recreation to just keep happening.

Andrea Hiott: [00:01:00] hi, Carrie. From all the way on the other side of the world. 

Cari Taylor: I feel like I represent the opposites, you know, our yin and yang 

Andrea Hiott: sort of sides, I like that feeling that we're sort of balancing the earth or something at the moment.

It's 

Cari Taylor: one of the things that I actually talk to people about, with that Northern and Southern hemisphere thing. Not just from that North and South perspective, but from, Sun Moon perspective, like there's that, again, a classic example of the non duality wholeness sort of component where, there's always the opposite playing out somewhere to make it whole and make it complete and, Right now this is actually happening on the other side of the world and you're 

Andrea Hiott: up there.

We're an example of it. Yeah, that's something, just jumping right in, that's something I think about all the time. Obviously, I mean, this is called Beyond Dichotomy, the podcast part of the Love and Philosophy channel and it's fascinating, isn't it, that we see things through kind, it's not really opposites, but seeing that we're on different sides of a [00:02:00] continuous process and yet at the same time.

It's never opposite. So there's something about holding that paradox. Yeah, and 

Cari Taylor: I think it sits really well in you once you become really comfortable with it. Like you can understand that somewhere else the other side of this is playing out. And it allows every moment to, again, be whole.

You know, To really be able to go, wow, somewhere else, you know, The moon is just about to set or, for me, it's just about to rise and, these sorts of things. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, it does add some kind of a comfort or it becomes a kind of practice if you began to be able to sit with that paradox or become aware of the idea that things might be completely the seeming opposite, because there's not really opposites, but the seeming opposite of where you are right now, and it's okay.

There's something comforting about that. One, one might even think of life and death in that way. 

Cari Taylor: Exactly. Exactly. And I think. Once you start to have the capacity to think of things in that way, [00:03:00] it allows you to for me, for example, especially, you know, in writing the book, it really allows it to always come back to that oneness, always come back to, you know, that complete circle flow and.

When there is this happening, there is the other side of that, exact, 

Andrea Hiott: That's what you call one, one living system. That's your book, which of course I'm going to link to, but since we already started with geography in a way, there's this really interesting idea in your book about terrain, which I like a lot.

Cari Taylor: So I think one of the things that's really important is when you're talking about from a business perspective or from how we play life itself, so to speak. We often come back to the word team, whereas, life itself would not see itself as a team but more as a terrain.

And I think I really distinguish that the difference between that and the book, because we're talking about where, with a team so many times when people come in and join as a team. They're there still as [00:04:00] themselves. They're there still as I'm showing up as me to be a part of this. Whereas within the living system, nothing is separate, nothing is individual.

And so it's constantly considering and working with the other. And so it makes it much more of a terrain environment. And that's such a buzzword at the moment in so many things. It's a big in, work with bioregional sort of areas. And. What's the terrain of the land and looking at it from that whole perspective of how's that thriving?

What's the bacteria? What's the trees? What's everything talking? But it's also really prominent at the moment within talking about the terrain of our gut. So that's another link between looking at that, the microbiome of our body and really looking at what's at play in there. What's the terrain like in there that's really working with the bacteria and the cells and everything else.

Thanks. And so it's exactly that same sort of micro macro sort of concept I worked through the book with of it being much more of a terrain in the sense that [00:05:00] it's always thinking of the other. It's always wanting everything to be whole and to find a harmony, even if it's ever so small, even if it's ever so brief.

It's working towards that as opposed to a team, and one of the reasons I think within. You see in, let's say a sporting field, good team or a business, good team. One of the things we identify in that team aspect is. Oh, they play well as a team, which means they've come together.

They're really starting to understand each other, it's something you strive towards in a team or is something that's natural within a terrain. It's just how 

Andrea Hiott: they are. Yeah, I also like it because, for me, I try to think in terms of scales or nestedness sometimes instead of opposites, to go back to that same thing, and the terrain allows for that in the way you just described, because we can look at the cellular level or inside at our bodies from our position, right?

And that's one scale or one landscape, one terrain, or [00:06:00] of course we can look at, as you were saying, this kind of wider social landscapes are different. There's different. Depending on where we're going to orient, we can look at it in nested ways. Have you found that it helps you also to get out of thinking there's one other, there's one other way or one other person and rather think wherever you are, whatever position you're in, you can always look at many different other nested scales.

Does that make sense? It's something I try to deal with a lot. It's, I think, hard to explain. And 

Cari Taylor: I think it's really, it's imperative from this point in time forward, part of solving. And another thing that you and I both like a language we like to use it and another way of making way forward means we need to be able to consider everything else and all things as much as possible.

Because not doing that means that we're coming back again to that separateness. And that individuality and in part, it's that sort of concept that has allowed us to continue to drive [00:07:00] forward with things like, as much as economy and GDP is, I need to get more for me and more rich for me, as much as, just ownership and all these other things become really singular and individual.

Whereas walking into something like the system, it's constantly going How do we do this together? How can we survive this? How can we thrive? What do we do in an emergency? That sort of thing. So I think it's imperative going forward that becomes more of a 

Andrea Hiott: normality. Yeah. And it's almost like a practice you present in your book in a way.

There's a feeling of learning how to practice this in your book, even though, you say it in a. A really direct way, but there's just this kind of feeling of practicing it. And just before we came on, we were talking a little bit about our biographies and I was talking about, I had to move a lot when I was a child.

And Yeah. That kind of gives you an understanding that there are many different positions from which you can see the world when you move, because something that was really cool in one place will be totally not cool in the [00:08:00] other or whatever, as a kid, and you start to, to understand that.

And is that part of the practice you're trying to help people with in the book too, is how to understand that you can always see things from a different position and yeah what is it about that practice that's beneficial or that you see as so crucial? So I think when you, 

Cari Taylor: when we're talking about terrain, we come to that from, I guess, from that business perspective, getting even.

The living system itself getting down to business, right? Like how am I getting into this and really getting to work? And it's talking about how it all functions together and how its intentions and it act and its actions, really need to start to flow together. But at the same time, it's saying, how do we do this in a, deeply relational capacity, but how do we do this with all these other aspects that are required by all the other, People that are this system, right?

So it's always saying, how do we [00:09:00] balance harmony with all things? How do we, maintain diversity? How do we, work with trust had all these sorts of things. And so I think it's one of those things where. the more we develop that skill. And, I love that you picked up the sense of the fact that throughout the book, even though it's explaining things, it really is saying, Hey, this is what we need to be doing, pull this little tiny piece out and there's the actions of it to be able to say, pull this bit out and this is a way we can work with.

Building terrain and working in ways to move forward thing. 

Andrea Hiott: You talk about weaving, I think, some in the book too. There's that kind of sense too of, in a way, everything's already woven together, but at the same time, when you start to notice that you become part of the weaving or something like this is the feeling I got.

Cari Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. Because I think you start to realize your impact. And so you realize. What a heavy foot does compared [00:10:00] to a light foot, what a heavy touch does compared to a light touch. And so when you then fall in towards a light touch, you realize that weaves a little more gently into, everything around as opposed to this rash, harsh, grabbing, poking, pulling sort of concept, and to be honest that we've got to, we've got to all face the fact that we have been much more brash with nature. We've been with all the rest of life. We have been the pokers and the prodders and the pullers and the cutters instead of this really gentle, fragile sort of approach. And once we slow down and really do that, we recognize that we've, we go, Oh, hang on.

I actually get to, caretake and partake in this as opposed to just. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I like how you describe that because that's another thing you say in the book too is that you talk about movement, which of course another big theme of me. Life is movement. Life is It, you talk about longing too as a movement, which I want to get into, but the way you just described it, the movements are of a certain [00:11:00] kind.

Maybe if we think of the business world where you feel like you have to elbow your way through and we have all these metaphors of, climbing to the top and whatever. There's this, there is a sense of aggressive, aggression towards, Getting bigger, and that's a really different movement than the one that's, I feel like there's a kind of relaxing in your book, almost like a, take a breath and relaxing into the movement.

And then you start to move in a different way, don't you? And the way that you were just describing where it becomes more of a gentle weaving. Yeah. 

Cari Taylor: What I loved about when I was writing the book, but something that was really interesting was that I had done so much study and research on all of these components.

And that was one thing from this. Human perspective, right? This is what it means to us. In really deeply meditating on that and going back to what I would say, on call of this source of life itself and saying, how does life actually do this? And the reason I really emphasize the word movement is [00:12:00] we often just phrase it constantly as exercise, do your 10, 000 steps.

And this is what, that sort of thing, as opposed to, Life's just saying move, you are energy, you're a part of me, move, flow, be fluid, and when you actually think about that, they're the things that keep our body, our being, our mind, everything, not only at its optimum health and wellness, but it allows us to not be so rigid towards life itself, right?

Because it's always moving and it's always fluid and flowing. So it's when we become so rigid in how we have to participate that we put ourselves up in these blocks as opposed to being really 

Andrea Hiott: fluid with it. Yeah. I guess that makes sense if you start, if you think of yourself as separate, you talk about this a lot too, the.

the difference between the isolated self and this living system. And if you think of yourself as separate, then you do take on a rigidity because suddenly it's like [00:13:00] a little speck in the universe against the universe. That already makes my body a very different movement than realizing, oh, we're part of this movement, we're dancing with it.

And how have you noticed that just, I don't know, I want to get into your biography, too, a little, like, how did you come to this, but in your work or in your writing, how have you noticed that just attention to the fact that everything is moving and we're part of it changes one's own movement?

Have, has that made a big difference? Just that presence, awareness, attention? Attention's another thing you talk about in the book. 

Cari Taylor: Yeah. Look, I think what was really interesting, again, going back to studying about physical movement and everything. My specialty when I was, in that field was strength and conditioning.

So it was, that real gritty grind of and grunt, right? Like you, you want to be strong and you want to be fast and you want to be all these sorts of things. And when you pull out the rigidity of that, you allow yourself to be what you are. And the beautiful thing I find in that is.

Not [00:14:00] everything in the forest is strong and fast, right? There's soft and small and they are just as glorious as strong and fast. And everything appreciates the other and everything allows the other as opposed to our concept of this being what is, most needed or most successful or all these sorts of things.

So when we really pull back and actually look at the way life creates all these different components, which. drives itself on diversity, that diversity creates the harmony and there's this enormous allowance, right? And we talk about radical acceptance a lot in the book. And there's this radical acceptance to how everything fits and how everything plays its part and how everything flows and is fluid with that.

And so once we move out of this human mindset of the rigid ways in which we are meant to be structured, As as success and as a, an achieving, thriving person [00:15:00] sort of thing. We move into this concept where we go, Oh my gosh, we dump off about, a million kilos of stress and just.

Sort of kick back and go, wow, I can just thrive and play my part and be me. 

Andrea Hiott: That's also like you start to realize you actually are, you have more agency than you thought too. I think you talk about switching from like urgency to agency, but I want to know how you got here. Just, sketch a little bit of what your trajectory has been like in this terrain? 

Cari Taylor: Yeah. I think it's. It's really difficult for me because often a lot of people, come to this space after, some big awakening moment of, a crash, a fall an illness and all the rest of it.

And it just wasn't like that for me, like I grew up on the land we farmed for a lot of my early years. My father was a manager on the land and so we moved a lot, managing meant you could do lots of different things. So we were over in [00:16:00] Western Australia and so we were in the wheat belt area and so that was, a lot of grain harvesting, different types of grains and everything and a lot of sheep and pigs and different animals.

And so you had to know how to, if you wanted consistent work, you had to know how to move. Between all these different modalities and I was the youngest and probably the most rambunctious and so it was just open the door and just, let me go outside. And so I would just spend the days, outside and probably, following dad and majority of the time just.

pushing animals around in prams and getting lost in trees it was a lot 

of movement. And I think once you actually start to see so much of that connectedness, it's really hard from that space to go into this world of school and study and, such rigid frameworks.

I really knew from very [00:17:00] early that that just didn't feel like it was how the rest of the life was operating. It was like, Oh, this is how life works, but this is what you have to come and fit into sort of thing. And I think it, it was just always, I really wanted to know about the different pieces.

So I studied a lot about, the physical self and training, and I did a lot of work and studied around the mind and counseling and working with mental health and bringing that in with physical health, but always underlying doing a lot of work and studying metaphysics and really understanding what this deeper connection was.

And so for me, it was just this wave always happening of all those three things really intermingling always. And so to me, it came as no surprise for me to go, how do we bring this back together? Because one of the things that really stood out for me. As I went more into, researching and looking at academics, it was like, these worlds are separated.

Academia is over here and, ethereal or [00:18:00] metaphysical or, philosophical in lots of ways, world is over here. And they just, I mention in the book, how they've lost each other with regards to what science, actually gains from this other side and what, the metaphysics gains from the other.

And so really wanting to be able to say, they just can't stand alone. We, we need all of them to be able to bring our pieces back together.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. You described it well growing up in that physical, In the world, in the environment, with other beings, environment, and then it does, it can seem like the world of learning books, academics, whatever, is somehow almost like a little static block that doesn't really fit in with the rest of stuff.

We even tell it in our stories, right? I'm someone who grew up reading a lot of books, and you do go into this other landscape when you're in your mind, the mental landscape, so to speak, and we think as if that's separate from all the other external stuff that you described, the other [00:19:00] beings, the grass, the trees, the farm work and of course in a way, they came out of each other.

They co create each other. Is part of that understanding one living system also understanding that even all these landscapes that feel so solitary, isolating, academic which are also important, of course, but that somehow we can also understand those is still connected to this living, breathing world of being.

Cari Taylor: Yeah, and I think it's. If there's things that we are learning slowly over time, it's that, we're starting to say that, look at what the education system was, for example, and, What sort of experience it's giving and the amount of stress and pressure and what happens after academia, especially the higher you go, as like what it means and that pressure and everything else and what esteem that is given compared to someone coming up without that and experiencing life and really being a part of life and [00:20:00] knowing it's feeling and everything else.

And there being this really, weighted given to one and not the other and yet at the same, we need to be able to bring it all back into balance to be able to go, what we need is to be able to stop and really listen to all of it to get that whole, again, this goes back to, I forget when we pressed record, but you know, back to that, back to thinking about, our opposites and you being Northern Hemisphere, me Southern Hemisphere right now, and how wonderful that is that this is, the whole of the world, it's the same with, academia and experiencing life, right?

If we really listen to each other, we can start to bring that wholeness back in as opposed to, one of the other sort of thing. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, it's funny, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I kind of sense in you or maybe I'm sensing it in myself and, but this like when I ask you about your biography, we try to fit into these kinds of stories that other people have.

So either there's like some story where you had some terrible thing happen and you had an awakening and therefore you [00:21:00] suddenly could understand that the earth is one living system. Or there's like an academia where you studied for 20 years and you read all these books and you've got all these degrees and therefore now you can talk about how we are part of one living system.

And it's almost like when we ask each other about our biography, we need to fit into those stories. And part of this show and what I hope we, we try In the same way that we were talking about, nothing's really opposite. There's just many different perspectives. Start to see that we all come from really different ways into understanding something similar, which is our connectedness, that we can't accept our life and that we are part of a more, ecological world.

But I wonder, do you feel that sometimes too, that you need to fit your story to the stories everyone's used to? I 

Cari Taylor: think everyone does, right? I think that's one of the reasons why we don't tell stories. Because we try and make it something shit. How can I make that better? What's the pieces [00:22:00] I can pull out or can I, instead of just, this is my story, right?

Cause all of the stories are unique and it's one of the most, it's one of the most beautiful things about the living system is that, so much of It's so deeply similar and yet that one tiny piece, which is only very small, the way that makes us all so unique is extraordinary, right? Because that uniqueness is revealed in completely different looks and, but so much of us is the same, right?

And it's allowed, we're allowed to go, all of this part of the story is the same and this is just this tiny piece that's, unique to me and bringing voice back to that. I, I talk about that, about stories being so vital going forward and bringing that orality and bringing back our voice and bringing back our capacity to express and share because That's really where so much of the deep learning comes from, right?

No one has time to do all the reading or [00:23:00] to do all the experiencing or to do all the traveling. And so we get to have that through each other to be able to go, Oh my gosh, that's amazing. I wonder how that could work. And we just get to fill each other with all of that, instead of thinking it's not possible, we can't do it on our 

Andrea Hiott: own.

I'm so glad you brought that unique, the idea of the unique path, because you talk about space and time a lot in the book too, and we've already talked about terrain, and there is the sense that we each literally are living out creating a path through space and time that is unique. There's that's just, you can come at it from whatever scientific angle you want to come at it.

That's just how it is. We're, we have a unique spatio temporal position and that means all our experiences too. Even though we share so much of the world, it is a shared reality. So of course there's a whole lot of overlap, as you were saying, still, even in that, we got, we had a little, we were unique and that seems to be the point in a way, the [00:24:00] meaning that we find a way to share that, whether it's just in conversation, whether it's creating a.

artwork, whether it's the kind of way that we come to accept ourselves and so then open up spaces of acceptance for other people and daily life in a way, that's the most crucial work. I feel like you're saying a lot of us are starting to realize but then the way society has been structured as you, you are bringing out, in the conversation and you also bring out in the book, that doesn't, it's almost like you need to, we talk about individuality, but at the same time, all the algorithms are geared towards fitting in being like this in order to be okay.

And have you seen that it's, I think it's very hard growing up, that people can get so lost in that, that you feel like you have to be unique, but you have to be unique by doing something another person is doing better. Have you found that confusion? 

Cari Taylor: Like it's absolutely ridiculous when you think about here's the boxes and here's the frameworks we need you to exist in, but [00:25:00] to stand out, you need to be unique.

So how do I find those unique qualities when we're all being trained and performed and treated in this same manner, right? And uniqueness is in how we experience and then how we express. I love that part of the book where we talk about expression and experience and the understanding that we are experiencing life, but each of us are a unique expression of that life.

And therefore when you and I come together right now, I'm expressing and you experience that and you're expressing and I'm experiencing. And so we get this, reciprocity happening. And it's only real when it is allowed to be unique and true, right? Like otherwise it's this cardboard boxed, creation.

And for so long, we've gone through the middle of that to have so much cut out as to who we are and how we have to look and what we have to look like. And. [00:26:00] The things we're meant to do to make it look the best or look right or to look at all these things and that comes down to clothes and body shape or face type or all these things instead of, and that's one of the things I love about the living system is that it teaches us humans the depth of the mind.

All that we are in things in most important things like diversity. There is no one terrain that's ever the same. There's no one person. There's no one creature. There's no one, any of these things. And all of it is necessary. All of it is required by life to feed something else, to support something else.

And when we start to learn that from it, we start to go, wow, actually I have a part to play and so do you and we help each other and how do we do that? And so we just get to have, I think, So much deeper learning and experience through it. That really allows us [00:27:00] to not only find our unique path, but to really be able to tell that story and follow that and appreciate that whatever it is, right?

Like I say often in the book, like no seed knows what it's going to become. You plant a tree and the tree doesn't know I'm going to become a gum tree. That's what I am. It just grows. It just becomes and it works in and fits in with so much that's around it. And. I don't know about you, but I've never walked past.

Another tree that's gone. I'm so lacking right now. This sort of stuff that we do as humans, it's just, it's there and we walk into it and we embrace it and we love it. And, for its uniqueness or its whole expression, that's some deep learning that humanity can do around how to be together.

And that even ties back to terrain and, Really a honest, and complex asset. Appreciating that, 

Andrea Hiott: closeness and complexity of it. Yes! Definitely. You as you were talking about, you said [00:28:00] that part of it is letting each other be who we are. You talk about non judgement in the book a lot. Sometimes, that comes back to attention, to being able to be present, So when you were talking you were saying that sometimes, y'know we're trying to compare the way we look to the way others look, or of course we all look different.

There's all, there's no one way to look, but we have these kind of boxes we are always trying to fit into. And of course we never can. And does that takes your attention into yourself, doesn't it? And it becomes this we'll talk about the laminos, I can never say laminoscate this kind of spiral, we start spiraling within our own self.

And I guess what I hear you saying is, how do we're trying to find a way to draw our attention back on into the world and, but in so doing become more present so that we don't lose. You, the tree doesn't know, maybe, that it's a tree, it doesn't need to, but we know it's a tree. So there's something about this [00:29:00] life coming to know itself that's very important.

So even that kind of awful process of coming to understand that you are a self, which is hard, right? As adolescents, as humans, waking up to the self, starting to compare yourself, we can move through that, right? That could be like a tool towards then being able to sit with someone and not judge them and not judge yourself.

Is that, does that make sense to you? Yes. I think, 

Cari Taylor: I think we go back to small S self and large S self, and that's almost describes the stage we go through of discovery. And I think in the concept of individuality, we judge because we are so consumed with small self, how do I fit?

Where do I become? And it's not until you start to move through that, And recognize self as a part of something much bigger that you start not to judge and really allow yourself to experience more than judge, right? I [00:30:00] feel like when we place judgment in, we hold fear and pull ourselves back to ourselves.

Oh, I need to stay in a certain manner, right? But the minute we drop all that and allow ourselves to not hold that judgment. We break it. Lean in and we want to touch and experience and feel and be curious. And that removes that judgment, right? And I think one of the greatest things you can do with your mind in that is.

Still it's conversation, right? Like one of the, one of the great tools that we can use is simply asking the mind not to have the conversation with that, right? You're walking along the street and someone's approaching you and your mind might go into this conversation of what are they wearing? Why would they wear, and it's like gently saying to yourself, you don't need to have that conversation.

It's okay. I'm happy. They're happy. This, and it's really about talking to this little self and going, You don't need to have that judgment, just lean in, experience and laugh and [00:31:00] enjoy. And the minute you do that, this other side, the curiosity comes out. There's this child likeness in us that never goes away if we allow it to be there.

And that child likes to go, Oh, who are you? Where do you come from? What is happening? Where have you been? What's doing, that sort of thing. Again. All judgment fades with that like we just want to be together. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, that's the kind of the present is this part of, so you introduced this tool, I guess you could call it, and it's Lemniscate, Lemniscate, it's basically the figure eight, the infinity symbol looks like a figure eight turned on its side.

I think everyone knows that. And this is actually, you have some really interesting, beautiful diagrams of it as you go through where you're, there's sort of spirals going through the loops. And at some point you show how we block off the two loops in a way we were just discussing and get stuck in the self instead of going into the ecological.

So it's this tool that you use through, are you using it [00:32:00] to try to open up that space of awareness or how do you see that? And where did that come from? 

Cari Taylor: Yeah. So the Le Miscut is, most commonly called the Lazy eight 'cause it's on its side, and, it's what I liked about it. When it came to me to be able to use that it was so versatile towards that. I it was just capable of explaining and I really wanted. To have diagrams right and to have the capacity to help everybody really understand and I think one of the things we don't do in academia is we don't explain with color and with drawing and with diagram and illustrations enough and So arguably I went overboard because there's a lot in there, but I really wanted people to be able to understand what I was saying, not just from reading, but to be, if you're a visual person, it really helps, to be able to look and go, Oh, I see what you're talking about. And I said, it just really helps. easily [00:33:00] explained so much as past and present and old paradigm and new paradigm and the evolving of the self and everything else. And it just flowed so naturally that it, there was no way it wasn't able to be.

And if I, the living system that is this infinite energy had a symbol, it would be, the infinity that is 

Andrea Hiott: continually going. What I like about it so much is in my, in academic philosophy and in Science, we also often talk about loops, or in technology to feedback loops and loops and those are closed things.

And here you're talking more about spiral. You talk about cycles and loops. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's something about the diagrams too. And the way we can start to see them. three dimensionally so that there's many ongoing at once, and then there's this movement going up and down, too, it's not just a loop where we're coming back to the same place, maybe we come back to a similar place and know it differently, and there's always this kind of, this feeling of, at every point on the journey, everything is changing, including this little diagram [00:34:00] itself.

Is that part of this idea of conversation, which is also a structuring element? You already talked about it a bit, but life is conversation and of starting to hear the conversation, not only in human language, but in this language of the world. And also being able to do that somehow changes this looping or spiraling movement of your own life and the life around you.

I 

Cari Taylor: it was really interesting. When I was first writing the book and everything, I was, I really wrote it talking about it being a conversation. And then I realized that within the conversation, there was a language happening, that life has its own language. And one of the things I've been asked a lot about is why have I called it a living system and especially for the people at the moment who are really system phobic, like we don't want systems.

Why is it a system? And I think one of the most important parts around that is [00:35:00] I knew that it wasn't a blueprint, right? Because a blueprint is it's so stayed. It's you follow a blueprint to a T continually to get the same result. And life is just not like that. But at the same time. It is a system where it has a set of processes that it follows, but it's so fluid that it's creating something new every time.

And when you actually sit with that, you can really hear that. And so that makes it more of a language and a conversation that's being had constantly, for most people there's a way that they can sense that the summit might be out, in forests and whatever. They can sense and they can hear, and they can feel, but others, it might be around animals, that they can sense and hear and feel.

But there is definitely a language that's happening. And I think one of the things that's interesting is that we've blocked ourselves off from thinking that something else has a language because [00:36:00] it's not our language, right? It's not in the way we structure language. And I see that same thing happening when we talk about, neurodivergence or, autism spectrums or different, different forms of language that people even use within their daily lives.

That for a long time was blocked off and seen as this, Oh, that's not okay. Instead of going, wow, there's this new language we're learning. There's this new way to communicate new way. We can connect, look what we're being taught. It was blocked as, not being normal. And so again, that's this human structure of going, this is how we speak.

This is how we do things instead of going, wow, there's all these conversations happening around us. What do I do? How can I lean in and listen and take that on board? 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, for me, it gets to this notion of how we confuse map and territory. Just to go back to terrain again, that I don't think the problem is talking about systems, but the problem is that we, confuse the [00:37:00] talking about the system or the language, the modeling of the process with the process.

So we're not saying life is a system, we're saying the living system is the way that we're going to understand it. And there's many ways and systems that we can use to understand this process that of course can never be modeled completely or is never just a system, but we need to be able to talk about that in the same way that we need language.

It's not the language is not what's the language is describing, but it's really essential for communicating about that. And it's a really hard nuanced thing, I think. And I think it's the reason people don't like the word systems, and I understand that, but because then you do, if you're, you don't want to, it's not like you're saying there is only one system, but at the same time you can look at it as an ongoing dynamic process that's best understood through looking at these systems because there are regularities and so on.

And I guess you talk about Ernanas a lot or once or twice, and I guess I'm [00:38:00] wondering what other influences came in into this for you. Are there, is it mostly from your own experience of the world and this living system, or is there any, is there anything, anyone else that really, or any experiences, books, people that kind of were important for this?

I 

Cari Taylor: really one of the things I feel really passionate about is in, in, in education. Again, let's go back to that unique. In education, we are using the same frameworks and the same books and asking us to create a new result from that each time, but being the same way from the same, books.

And often, often it really comes down to the teacher or to the lecturer, breaking out with somebody completely new. That often, here's the reading list, and this is what you're reading, and this is what you're doing. [00:39:00] It's a repeated pattern all the time. And so I like to go as far back as I can, right?

So that the most sort of ancient stuff you can dig into. Because really, for a lot of it, everything written since then is often the opinion of that person. That's written that book. And then, Oh, hang on, this one's of this book, so you're getting the read. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. You can think of that as like pathways through those books that you're just yeah, following a certain path and thinking you're, it's an open landscape, but 

Cari Taylor: you're just relearning and relearning.

And so really going back to the beginning and when I started to do that and trying to find different voices, voices that was speaking in a completely different way, there was, there's, There was a limited, I guess, conversations for our Matthews, she has written some amazing, books and everything.

I think I've referenced her once in there and finding those really different voices where life is also included in the equation was really difficult [00:40:00] because it was always either. Someone from that spiritual aspect only, or someone from academia only talking about, let's say, the biology of things, or whatever, right?

And very rarely did they come together. And so for me, a lot of it really was having to sit down and go in amongst the garden, in amongst that observation, in amongst, really watching how is life doing this? I think that is the ultimate question, we can be asking when we're looking to lead going forward saying, how does life already do this?

Because guaranteed that there is already something in a system function in a symbiotic way happening within some flow of nature, somewhere that we can observe and go. Wow. That makes sense. That's how we can, approach something completely different. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. We all need to find, we all find different portals into feeling [00:41:00] that dance of the ongoing process that you describe in the book.

And you do talk about knowing, and there's a section in the book where you talk about. There are questions because you use the elements a lot. We haven't talked about that yet. The four elements, fire, earth, air, water, are also structuring elements and structuring elements are also structuring or scaffolding words in the book.

And you talk about knowing them, I think there's a point where you ask, how do we know Or what do I know of fire? And this is an interesting process of reflection too. I can imagine that's a bit like sitting in the garden after having read all these books and just now being with the garden. It's like what, just asking that question.

Yeah. How did you come to that? Is that something you did yourself or? 

Cari Taylor: I think it's one of those things that we just, when you're coming from this other side and this other spectrum. You are coming so much more from [00:42:00] that sensed feeling component and we haven't talked about the bridge I know you, you know The bridge was one of those areas and gathering and I say specifically at the bridge that we start to bring in Something that we've never really been allowed to bring in and that is feeling and sense again And we are asked once we start to want to know this living system We have to be able to open up these feelings Two completely different parts of our bodies that haven't been, allowed as much time as other components are, right?

Crying and showing emotions and being feeling sensitive beings is not something that we're given a lot of permission to do. So it's okay, bring all of this alive again, because you need that to step out on this other side now to be 

Andrea Hiott: able to start. Let's talk about that bridge because that's important.

I don't know if I understood it but as I was describing this kind of lazy eight, I, at some point you say, Oh, it's not two things. It's three. And it's three in process. And I started to see the bridge as this point where everything is meeting and in terms of the Lazy [00:43:00] Eight this point, maybe you even say that, I don't know.

But and that's, and you also talk about that as a gathering place, which makes sense even with the visuals, because that's where everything is busiest, in a sense. But I would like to understand that a little more. Is that the bridge between these kind of worlds we've been talking about, be it academic worlds and spiritual worlds, be it inner egocentric worlds and more ecological, ecocentric worlds?

Is that the place where We gather and bridge those, or how do you see that? You do talk about the bridge as the gathering point. So I place 

Cari Taylor: the living system actually in the bridge of the Lemniscate. The left hand side of the bridge is really identifying so many things. It's identifying our old self.

And that's talking about how we work from self awareness. up to self realization. There's, you unravel a lot more of this. You start to discover there's more of who you are and you realize you come to a lot of deep realizations, but it's also this field of [00:44:00] learning, deep learning and recognizing so many things.

And because we're now opening up this other side, which is the other side of, the living system, but nature and the rest of who we are in our wholeness, I describe it as this, gorgeous slide through this bridge in the middle coming over to the other side. And that the bridge is actually the gathering space where you come to know the living system and you understand its values.

You understand it's, what it means and what it's asking of you. And at any point that we pass through that, we allow ourselves to take on board what resonates now. So whatever amount of awareness I have right now, I can gather those values with me or to the depth I can take them in right now.

And so it's almost like this, picnic basket of Oh, I can take all these things in. I'm ready. And I go over to this other side to start to leave these values because now. I'm wanting to live as this more [00:45:00] full self as a part of nature and as a part of all of life and to be able to really bring myself into this lived experience of that.

And I've got all these tools now that have, that I'm now just learning because like you said before, in that early section, I deliberately put that line down the middle before we're introduced to the bridge. Because it's saying we've never known that we're a part of this living system. We all never know, knew that we're a part of life.

We're just human and there's nature over there. We just grab what we need every now and then and just deal with it over here so we can keep going. The minute we pull down that wall and allow ourselves to see it as the bridge and come over, we get to see ourselves as a part of all of the rest of life.

And so that bridge, that gathering point is a really important part where we actually learn to understand who we What is the living system? What are its values? What's it, what are we expecting? And we pick up those pieces and bring them with us over into the other side. 

Andrea Hiott: And that's what you call taking [00:46:00] the human position and I think you say raising it or lifting it to the echo centric position, right?

So you slide down. I like the way you described it. And that's all the unraveling of the human. Who you thought self was or who you thought the world need you needed yourself to be and then you there's the gathering and the opening to this idea of radical acceptance or is how does that connect between the radical acceptance of self and the Raising to the eco centric position.

Cari Taylor: I you know, one of the things I really talk about in the book is separated 

From 

the rest of life, right? Not seeing ourselves as a part of nature of any way, shape, or form. We are human. We are superior. We hold, the highest rank in the normal little triangle. We're at the top, lies beneath us and everything is there for our use, our need.

What do we need? And so that dramatic disconnect means that we are [00:47:00] actually only trying to You know, evolve our small letter self into something that is just human. And it's like being asked to find a part of yourself, but you're without even knowing the whole of who you are. And so we're over here struggling and building really.

On this ego and the human need and the human greatness. That when we actually open up this other side and realize that we're a part of nature, not only we're part of nature, but we hold a really important part. in caretaking and shepherding and loving this nature and life that literally allows us to live, eat and breathe here, so working with it that all of a sudden we are having to move into this space of radically accepting so much more of who we are and so much more of everyone else around us.

So [00:48:00] parts of us have to fall away. Parts of us have to, And, I don't necessarily want to, it's a whole conversation, but an enormous part of that is really allowing ourselves to D even to decolonize our minds, right? That whole old self that is filled with all of this, ego self, where I call human centric self, becomes this eco centric because we all of a sudden realize, if I want to keep going here, everything else has to keep coming with me.

We're just not going to survive, right? Like without all of us as one. So how do we play this together? How do we become a terrain again? How do we start to consider each other as a whole and work together and. Not just live, but thrive. 

Andrea Hiott: That's what you talk about of we inherit.

And also there's the idea of returning, that it's not, so the way you just described it, I imagine we've, we build this knowledge ladder, we learn all this stuff in order just to be able to wake up to who we [00:49:00] are just to become present in a sense, which can be hard process. But then if we can do that, we can kick away the ladder.

Which was never really there anyway. And then it's a kind of returning into the movement that you already were, but you were blocked off from. Does that make sense? Yeah, 

Cari Taylor: And return, it was really important for me to be really specific with my language in the book. It's not to reconnect with nature because that presumes that we were disconnected, right?

Reconnect means that at some point and we never were, nature never saw us as disconnected. Life didn't see us, we just did it. So using the word return means allowing ourselves to come back to what we have always known and come back to our absolute truth, right? So it was just this really being able to open words and language up that allows us to go, Oh, I always belonged there.

I always was there. And that was, I noticed actually one of the things that you asked me was around raveling and unraveling and return was part of [00:50:00] that, right? That was one of the only words that could really understand how that all came together. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I think that fits also with the Lazy Eight process that it's, and again that we're drawing maps in order to understand the terrain and the territory, but it's not the terrain and the territory.

But there's something, when I was reading your book, even from the very beginning, there's this visceral sense to it. I think it happens in a lot of books that I like where there's, the language itself is a kind of, Giving you a kind of sensation or practice and I, before we go, I want to talk to that because you spoke of it earlier and I wanted to bring it out, but we got off on something else, but there's this, you do talk about touch a lot and this, there's this visceral feeling of, again, being in your body in a world that's to be touched and touching you.

So I wonder, I guess I just want to bring up that word touch and what that means for you and what that's in this book, [00:51:00] what it's doing. 

Cari Taylor: This goes back to that whole bridge concept, and I speak quite a bit towards the fact that voice was removed, for us to stay in this space.

So many parts of this human centric system have, removed so many, capacities of us and our voice, which meant our storytelling and our truth, and all these other aspects were taken away. And as well as that, we weren't really Connecting, feeling, sensing weren't things that were necessary.

What's necessary is for you to stay on track and stay in the game and stay in the field. And all these sorts of things, keep pushing higher. And like you said, elbow on your way to the top and climbing and everything else. So it wasn't really about having any capacity to sense or to feel and to touch.

And those things are really inherent. To not only who we are as humans, but who, what [00:52:00] life is right in general, life is this feeling sensual. It requires us to not only participate, but to really deeply be involved in. And that requires us to allow ourselves to touch as much as we can. And that's not just touching connecting with each other and touching nature and all the rest of it.

Bye. It's how we touch life, like it's how we place ourselves in there with feeling and with this capacity for that to really be experienced. I think one of the really beautiful questions to come out of the book, when we discuss it in book clubs and stuff is how do you want to be experienced when you understand that you are an expression that another person is experiencing, how do you want to be experienced and you want people to feel you.

And the [00:53:00] way you do that is by touching them. And that can be through a word, through a sound, through. Physical illness, but energetically, there's so many ways that we can do that. And when we start to practice that, we realize that we can touch everything constantly through our energy, through so many different elements from ourselves, that it means that we are placing ourselves and deeply connecting ourselves constantly.

I 

Andrea Hiott: like that a lot. And you were talking about language before, and I think it's also important just in that orientation you just set up that You're not talking about human language, as you said, but all these many conversations, ways of communicating that we exist in as life all these other beings are doing.

And there's something about touch and sensation that is itself the language. You start the book with this really beautiful quote. I think it's your own, I guess it's you your words where you talk about the [00:54:00] language of life is love. How do you see that connection between this? It's opening up to all these other languages and then this sensation and this idea of love.

And before we go, we also have to talk a little bit about longing, which is also in that early beginning. And it's a word that comes, threads its way through the whole book. So yeah, that's a lot, but what does that bring up in you when I say those things? So you know, 

Cari Taylor: When you actually deeply listen and observe life and witness what it's creating constantly.

If you had to give it a word, you can only use the word love, right? Like it's how it constantly recreates. And I consider life. To be the most intelligent, energetic force of existence that there is. And it flows through everything and it expresses through everything. And one thing that I'm marveled by is it was so intelligent that it [00:55:00] created the capacity to love.

in order to continue to recreate itself. And so when you think about that, it's saying, if you keep loving, I can keep recreating. Now that can be from human, procreation. It can be from, loving something and tending and caring for it so that it continues to create. And if you come down even further from that, to, in order to love, It allows beauty and we all see beauty in such a different way that we become enamored and want to love and want to care and want to tend.

So it's so smart. It says how am I going to allow myself to keep creating and expressing myself in so many ways with colors you can't even begin to imagine, with shapes and creations of. Long noses, long snouts and tails and big ears and all sorts that it creates. And yet there's this deep capacity to love it.[00:56:00] 

And that allows it to just keep going. When you witness that, you understand that this crazy thing called love that we all at the end of the day go, it can't just be back to that, but it's powerful. It does so much. It heals, it tames it. It really can. do so many things. And when you stop and realize that it's creating life constantly, you have to sit back in awe of it and go, wow, and that's why at the beginning I say, it yearns for itself so much that it creates love.

So you just make love create 

Andrea Hiott: More and more. Yeah. It's the same movement for me as the conversation to the Life is movement, life is conversation thinking of love as that ongoing conversation in all these languages we have yet to even, we're just at the tip of really starting to understand all the [00:57:00] ways that there are to communicate between us and all these beings as one living system, so to speak.

And I do, it's really beautiful, the idea of that you express of life being creating such.

That's what a really good conversation does, too, isn't it, or any kind of touch with the world. You feel a longing for more in the very act of feeling it but you're also very present. You don't need it, but you long for it. Yeah. And, 

Cari Taylor: and so that longing asks you to recreate it again and again, right?

What can I do today that's, that is going to bring that awe and that love? And. Yeah. And most often it's a moment that can never be exactly repeated. And so there's always something new. So there's always something being created constantly. And, just that when we go back to thinking about that, [00:58:00] you know, that literally has the power to well, hey, stop wars, right?

Like it's, has the power to create and 

Andrea Hiott: to, or even change the whole terrain. So war is not an option and we don't even look at that option, yeah. 

Cari Taylor: Because there's just that deep capacity to want to, Nurture and care and tent, like I said, and to allow that recreation to just keep happening.

And part of that is that, one of the things this is going a little off track, but into sort of one of my connected things around addiction, right? Like people look at addiction and go, Oh my gosh, how can someone, we all have the capacity to be addicted. And a part of that is to laugh, right?

We're so addicted. You see a beautiful sunset, you are out there again the next day. You're like, I want to see if it's going to be like that again. 

Andrea Hiott: That's true. That's true. That's part of that wanting to fulfill that longing can go that way too. And that 

Cari Taylor: longing and attached to [00:59:00] that, or I'm wanting to be able to create these moments.

And arguably, in this other field of addiction it's from having the trauma and the wounding around not having that love and that deep connection and not experiencing that. All that allows you to go down this addicted to other things path as opposed to addicted to life and love, right?

So we all have this capacity to be addicted to this feeling that allows us to want to create. More beauty and allow that beauty to create more love and allow that love to 

Andrea Hiott: create more life. Yeah. It's addiction. It's good you brought it up. That's a powerful word that I think a lot of us deal with, either in our own lives or lives of people we love.

And it's it interesting that you bring it up here because. It is a delicate space, that space where, of awakening, of longing, of touching, because it's so powerful that you can it is easy to lose your presence and just [01:00:00] start to focus on wanting to feel that way and do it in kind of ways that ultimately are numbing.

That, that's also that interplay between, waking, as you say, I think and numbing it, it is in the same way we started the conversation with also not an opposite, but a connected, there's a connected process there too, that we have to be aware of, I guess. 

Cari Taylor: Absolutely. Yeah. And when you think about it, it's, it is exactly the opposite, not opposite being played out, right?

It's the same, longing that's happening. It just being in search of in different ways because of the different sorts of experiences that we've had. So again, we go back to you had a chance to change that. How do you want to be experienced? Because you are a part of that. The deep change that can happen, that deep movement that can happen to alter the course of life, be it a person's life, nature's life, and you want to be experienced.

And at the end of the day, if all of us turned around and said I want to be experienced [01:01:00] as love as people go, wow, that was such a positive, wonderful, happy, embracing, beautiful connection that just, keeps rippling out then doesn't it, and I get for a lot of people that it sounds.

Simple, but at the same time, that in itself doesn't need to be complex. 

Andrea Hiott: I think it's a wonderful question. How do you want to be experienced instead of what do you want to experience, which is usually the angle. But I have to ask too can't that also be a little bit dangerous?

Coming from the States where I always hear that people say Americans just tell you what you want to hear or something. And if you, can't you also create a kind of role of how you want others to experience you? Or can't you also get, or can you also get In the same way you were talking about addiction, or we were talking about addiction, there's, there can be a way where you start to also fall into creating how others will experience you.

So that question is powerful when you're in that state of [01:02:00] presence. I don't know. How do you see that? 

Cari Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. And that's, that can be, into a manipulated sense, right? But that's clearly going to come from someone who's still on that left hand side, unevolved part of the spectrum where they are still human centric and still thinking that their self is the greatest self.

And, when you actually, one of the things I talk about in the book is often that's guised, especially in the old Frame of self help sort of movement is as a rise to consciousness. You're never going to be able to become conscious of something you don't know that you're a part of right?

And so over here Disconnected from all that you are the only thing you're going to become conscious of is more of yourself. Hence us, you know Really creating more of these ego centric narcissistic sort of personalities because we're just feeding into ourself constantly like Where else does it go?

It's me. It's me. It's me. That's all I'm discovering, right? Instead of being able to go, wow, [01:03:00] I'm actually a part of all this. And there's more to me. And there's, there's more to my existence than just me. There's more to my awareness than just this. I would challenge that you would not find someone in that mindset.

Who has come over and really understood the, the other side that, 

Andrea Hiott: that. And part of it is really sitting with yourself and the way that you talk about it in the book, where when you think about your own experiences on a surface level, it can seem like, yeah, I want to be the person. How do I want to be experienced?

I want to be the person that everyone's liking and following. And, but it's not. Everyone wants to look like and all that's a kind of surface level But if you really start to look at your own experiences, what's the experience in your life? That's opened you that's meant the most to you We do come back to that love level of even if it's a beautiful Walk in the forest or it's sunset or it's amazing conversation or all these things.

That's actually how we really want to be experienced, [01:04:00] right? That level. 

Cari Taylor: And if you think about all those things that you just described, all of those are things you've been touched by. So that's where that touch comes back in again, right? We get touched the moment we experience somebody else from these, deeper levels.

It sparks something in us, right? Something comes alive in us. Ask any person who's been out in a boat and, being surrounded by whales, they've been deeply touched, they come back and there's something different from that, right? Because all of a sudden they go, wow, like how do you get your head around something so enormous and majestic and gentle and all of this sort of thing and it does change you.

So being touched, having awe, allowing love, all of those things deeply change us. 

Andrea Hiott: And part of that is not 

Cari Taylor: having those things, right? 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. So that just to return to where we started with the terrain and [01:05:00] the movement of coming to know yourself. How do you. What would you like to leave people with in terms of, if they haven't thought about this before, thinking about living, returning, being part of this one system, what's I don't know if you have something in your own life that you do daily that, how do you stay in that, that, that space where you are asking this question, how I want, how do I want to be experienced from that level of sensuality and touch that's beyond the body and beyond judgment?

Cari Taylor: I think one of the things that's really important for us to understand is our place in all of this. There is so much happening in the world, right? And we can't all understand all the different moving pieces that are being called for at the moment. So relying on each other to be able to go, Oh, you [01:06:00] understand that bit and that bit, this bit.

So we can, we just can't know it the same as back to we can't have read all the books. But so much has to change that we need to allow so many different, pieces to break away, to understand, to know what places we change, but the most important thing is to understand that we all have a place in making this change and we all hold an enormous role in making this change.

And I get that we need big system change. We need big government change, but what we do forget is that they respond to how we are working. And if we make those changes down here, it has to influence them to make those 

Andrea Hiott: changes. It's that nestedness we talked about where it's, you change your biome and your stomach, you change your body.

Cari Taylor: You change everything, right? You change your mental health, you change your physical health, you change everything. So one tiny piece of that terrain [01:07:00] changing, one person changing something. Local localization is enormous. It's an enormous component to play in both the regenerative movement as much as local government movement, right?

Doing things locally is important. You as a one person can make that change by you doing things the way you want to be experienced in the world and that then being, how can I make that impact my street? How can my street make that impact my community? How can we start supporting and making that change?

Then all of a sudden, it's crazy how much you come to understand we are monitored not in a, big brother sort of government monitor in a sense of going, hang on a minute, we've noticed that location now isn't buying or doing or responding in this way. And that sort of thing.

So as these little pieces change, it makes a difference, right? And so just really being able to go, how do I want to be experienced and how do I want to [01:08:00] express my truth? And how do I want to start to have a voice and how can I use that means you then get to. Be brave enough to take that into your street and then be brave enough to take that into your 

Andrea Hiott: community.

And that's the conversation again. It's not one voice, you're in a conversation. So it's noticing that conversation, participating and at different scales. Yeah. And a 

Cari Taylor: part of that, when we want to bring in the living system components of that, I'm really, big in the book and talking about know your land, sit down today.

If you listen to these. What land are you on? Whose land are you on? Who's bled for that land? Whose stories are hidden in that land? Know the waterways there. What, what happens in those waterways? Where does it come from? Where does it go? Know everything. Don't just know your street. Know where you are.

Know your place. Because that place is about where you belong and where you belong is what you will then care for and tend to and love. And it will just, [01:09:00] continue to grow the deeper you go into that. And so the more we take time out to really, truly understand, not just ourself, but our place in amongst each other, life, the nature that we have around us, everything else.

We start to work, realize that symbiosis that's happening, work better to be able to stay in a great relationship with those things. And we start to realize that we can, build this small living system amongst the living system and it, just starting 

Andrea Hiott: to spread out from there.

Yeah, thank you. That's beautiful. Because we can all do that. We can all sit wherever we are, go to the nearest green space, and just think, okay, where am I? What is this place? What's the history of this place? And you can start to do that in all kinds of parts of your life, and it really does open up this fractal sensory world, especially when you start it.

Actually conversing with the world about those things. So thank you Carrie for the work you're doing for the book. How do people find [01:10:00] you? Is there anything we didn't cover that you really want to say? Tell me, what you, anything you might want others to know before we go. 

Cari Taylor: I just, if people want to find the book it's just under onelivingsystem.

org. And I think it's just, I think it's really asking people to, Take time to look at something from a completely different perspective and bring yourself back to a lot of the truth of who you are and the truth of life that's happening around you. And I start the book by saying, referencing actually what I loved was a great TV show around inspiring alternatives and everything, and we can't, ask ourselves to go somewhere where we can't see what it is, so building this inspiring alternative to. How do you want to actually live, right? If this is not working, how do you want it to be? And how do I make it, that life experience is that? How can I start to create that? It's powerful. I want, if nothing else, people to understand the agency and [01:11:00] the power that they have in being true to themselves and true to, the life and the existence around them.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. And I think your book shows that there's a sensory. power and connection that it can just get better and better. It doesn't mean it's not hard and you don't feel vulnerable and, there, there are all these things, but I think you show that by going deeper and also just sitting and returning and relaxing and touching you do find new ways.

And as you also say in the book, which we haven't brought up really clearly, it's really, we have to do this now. We need a new way of being. That's not egocentric and is ecocentric. So yeah thanks for the work you're doing for that. I've really loved talking to you. Thank you so much for the 

Cari Taylor: time.

It's been, I, these are the sorts of conversations, right? Again, that touch us, fill us with awe and allow us to deeply connect and most importantly, change us. 

Andrea Hiott: [01:12:00] Yeah. And we're all changing each other together, so let's keep talking. Thanks so much. Thank you, Cari. Be well.