In Conversation

Manda: Hey people, welcome to Accidental Gods. To the podcast where we do still believe that another world is possible and that if we all pull together, there is still time to lay the foundations for a flourishing future that we would be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. I am Manda Scott, your host and fellow traveller in this journey into possibility. And as we all know, that journey just changed from what we thought it might be. Our entire world changed irrevocably with the results of the US election on the 5th of November. We don’t know where it’s going, but we know that the world will be different. We talk a lot on this podcast about the need for total systemic change, and now that change is unfolding in front of our eyes, and the only thing that we can say with any certainty is that we have no idea what’s going to happen now. Clearly, there is no going back from here. So the question that I am holding most strongly just now is, how do we, who care deeply about a flourishing future, who want the survival of complex life in all its amazing creativity on this planet to continue; how do we navigate this new landscape? How do we embrace the polarities and dichotomies of an unpredictable world, so that we can also embrace the infinite complexity and unknowability of what is coming down the line.

Manda: This week’s guest, therefore, is particularly well suited to answering these questions. Andrea Hiott has devoted her life to exploring the paradox at the heart of our existence. I first met her through her Love and Philosophy podcast, which fast became a part of my essential listening list. From the outset, Andrea struck me as someone whose way of viewing life is, if not unique, then definitely exceptional and well worth exploring. As you’ll hear, she is someone who throws herself into learning. She can talk with authority on everything from philosophy and phenomenology, to neuroscience and ecology, to city planning and cars. And as we speak, she’s completing her doctorate, which is called ecological orientation. She’s the author of various books, including Thinking Small; The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle. And she has long worked on motoring and mobility as a consultant, writer and ghost-writer. She’s been on films and TV, including The Bug and Cars That Changed the World. She’s been on a whole variety of other podcasts and has worked for museums, artists, collectors and other agencies, always endeavouring to bring together this network of how we think and why we think and who we are, and how we orient ourselves in a changing landscape.

Manda: She is developing the philosophical framework of way making and the practice of navigability. And I have never in my life spoken with someone who has evolved their own philosophy to the extent that they can talk about it in depth and in detail and make so much sense. Any of us can evolve a philosophy at the end of the day, when we’re tired, or when we’re just fed up with the rest of the world. But Andrea has worked out one that will stand amongst the great philosophies of our time, if humanity manages to turn aside from the edge of the cliff. There is a YouTube about it, I will put it in the show notes. On top of all this, she’s founder of the private educational consulting platform Making Waves, and she pours her daily energy into collaborating with other thinkers and creators at the intersection of the multiple different philosophical, cognitive and ecological landscapes that she describes. So that she and we can create a deeper, more emergent understanding of the world we live in. We booked this conversation at least six months ago. I always run a six month lead time, and we were not particularly hinging it around the US election.

Manda: But we recorded this one week to the day after the vote that has completely changed our world, and it would have been impossible not to reflect on this. Andrea is a US citizen currently living in Europe, so she has a particular set of perspectives to bring to what’s going on. And she has friends and relatives back in Georgia with whom she explores their view and how we came to this place. So she has a capacity to see beyond the polarities, even were she not a philosopher. And she is. And she brings her unique capacity to engage paradox, to look at dichotomies, to embody the moment of this time. I felt a lot calmer after this conversation than I did going into it, and that wasn’t all about the pony with colic that put our recording time back by a day. So I hope this helps you too, and that you too come away calmer with a capacity to look at the landscape differently and perhaps to help us reshape it. So here we go. People of the podcast, please welcome Andrea Hiott of Making Waves.

Manda: Andrea, welcome to the Accidental Gods podcast. Thank you for sorting out all the chaos with the timetable. And how are you and where are you this rather lovely Tuesday morning, one week after the election?

Andrea: Oh, it’s one week. Hi Manda. It’s great to see you. Thank you, too, for sorting everything out. And where am I? I’m back in Utrecht in the Netherlands, which is where I live most of the year, although I’m in the States quite a lot. But I was in the States recently, so that has to do with how am I. I think like all of us, I’m trying to understand a lot of intellectual, emotional, beyond bodily experiences that I’ve had in the last week or two, just trying to get some perspective and stay open and try to shift my stance in ways that help me unrstand what’s happening.

Manda: Okay. And I think in the end that’s going to form the core of this conversation. We booked back in the summer; it was a long time ago, and I think at the time I didn’t really notice that it was going to be straight after the election. And I think I also had this concept that the arc of history bends towards justice, so of course, Kamala Harris is going to be elected. And actually even this time last week I thought that. So there are mental, there are emotional, I think there are also energetic responses to the reality that we are faced with. And you’re a philosopher who explores philosophies of mind, of how we are, of what it is that shapes us. If we were to go through the mental, the emotional and the energetic, what were your responses and now how are you beginning to reshape them? First of all, where did you go? Where did you vote?

Andrea: I voted in Georgia.

Manda: Oh, gosh.

Andrea: An important state to be voting in. I grew up in many places, so I moved around a lot as a child. I probably lived most of my time in New York. I think of it as more home, I guess. But everyone’s in Georgia now, and that’s where I did the last year of high school. And then I had a scholarship and went to college there. So I’m still registered there, and I still have my business address at my family house there and we go there often. So that’s where I was. I was in Georgia.

Manda: All right. And more important to vote in Georgia than in New York, because the outcome is more dependent on what happens in Georgia.

Andrea: Yeah, it felt important. I mean, it felt important regardless. And it is funny we decided to talk on this day. It was quite a long time ago and I wasn’t thinking about the election, but it seems like somehow that was a good thing to do. Where am I emotionally and mentally and physically and how am I dealing with it? It’s very hard to say, to understand where I am. What I’ve been trying to do as a practice is understand that I’m not fully aware of everything that’s happening. When I went back to the States, I was surprised. It does happen to me when I go back to the States, that I’m often surprised of how it feels so differently. It feels very different. It’s almost a different atmosphere. I don’t think that’s a surprise when we go to new places, when we just go to a new country, when we even just walk into a new park, we feel differently. But there is a way in which I imagine the United States, when I’m away from it, because I’m in contact always with people there. I’m working with people there and my family is all there. And so I imagine I have a feeling of how the atmosphere is. And then when I actually enter, I entered in New York, it always hits me that I did not know this.

Manda: How long have you been away living in Utrecht?

Andrea: Oh, well, that’s a good question. I first went when I was doing my undergraduate because I was studying philosophy and I was writing my first thesis on Hegel and a lot of German philosophers. So I thought, oh, I should understand how to read German. So I went to study German at the Goethe Institute. I know, people don’t believe me, but I literally went to Berlin to learn how to read Hegel, which is kind of almost a joke, you know, that why would I want to do that? But I really wanted to. I felt like I needed to.

Manda: Yeah, because the interpretation is everything in philosophy. The meaning of an actual word is everything. So you have to be able to embody it.

Andrea: Exactly.

Manda: And did that work? Did it change how you understood Hegel.

Andrea: I’m not exactly skilled in speaking new languages, let me just say. I have the American accent. Everyone says, oh, it’s so cute, which isn’t the most inspiring for… But I learned how to read Hegel, yes, and I can read German, and I do understand.

Manda: Right. And did it change your understanding of Hegel or deepen it?

Andrea: And this speaks to, trying to answer this question and get into what we’re doing, because that’s what I wanted to understand in Hegel was precisely this. This idea of how do we move out of the stance that we’re in in order to see another stance, while at the same time you’re always in a stance. So it sounds contradictory or paradoxical. You’ve probably heard this term dialectic that’s associated with Hegel, or aufheben, which is more like a sublimation and a layering and a sedimentation that’s dynamic. It’s this kind of process. And I don’t feel he expresses it in words exactly, but he expresses it, for me at least, in the practice of the writing. There’s certain people I read, and it’s almost a practice in the reading of them.

Manda: Totally, yes.

Andrea: It’s not about necessarily exactly what they’ve said, but you’ve learned a rhythm that changes your own rhythm in a way that’s very important.

Manda: Yes, yes, it seems to me if the human race survives long enough, we’re going to understand the physiology of how language shifts the neurophysiology of who we are and creates new textures and new openings and new doorways and new essences of being, if we let it 

Andrea: I agree, I agree.

Manda: So yes, thank you. And I’ve just read some of your writing that does exactly this.

Andrea: Thank you. And yours too. Because language we seem to think of it as outside of us. But it’s a practice when we’re using it and it’s sensory. So in Hegel, learning it in German, but also reading it in English was about understanding more of that movement and that practice. Because it’s not what he says that’s important to me. I disagree, in fact, with a lot of what he says because he was writing at a very different time as a white male in a certain situation. And, you know, there’s all these things. But there’s a rhythm there that he was trying very much to share, that I think many, many people are trying to share in many, many different ways. It gets called the dialectic. There’s a lot of different ways to think about it. So learning German helped me feel that was true, that I could really understand that the writing was a practice. There is a movement to it. The German language is even better at it in a way, because there’s more room for ambiguity and different ways of thinking about words. So yes, it did help. And to try to come back to your question, that same process has helped me a lot with things like what’s just happened in the US. Because I realised that it’s like a river or it’s like the forest or it’s like everything that’s constantly sort of layering, changing, becoming itself in different ways. And I think I try to keep that movement in mind when something like this happens, because we’re speaking about it as a tragedy and as something difficult. But people I love very much see this as a really important win.

Manda: Yeah, right, I can imagine.

Andrea: And they’re very happy about this. They were very heartbroken when I was very happy in other elections. And that’s very real for them. And I see it and I love these people. And they’re not bad people, by the way. I can’t make them into monsters, because they’re not; they do really good things for people. They work very hard. So I guess I’m trying to hold all of that, and I’m trying to use that movement to understand that it’s all moving, and I can try and observe what’s happening in my own body in the world. Try to get a better stance without judging, but at the same time being very clear about what is important, what is right and wrong. It’s not relativist. So that’s kind of where I’m at. It’s a hard, confusing place, I think, to be. It’s like you’re in the chaos of the of the waves or something.

Manda: Yes. And I’m really interested at that intersection between language/mind and the languages that shape mind. I come back often to Oscar Meyer Quesada, who said consciousness creates matter, language creates reality, ritual creates relationship. And we’ve set up, in the West, these dichotomies of tribal distinction that fight and one side wins because the other side loses. And therefore the side that wins feels extraordinarily exultant, and there’s a whole bunch of neurophysiology that we feel, huge, huge dopamine hits. Particularly if you thought you were going to lose and then you win, it’s like a massive cocaine hit. And then we want it again. And the side that’s lost feels like a death has occurred. And at an emotional level. I spent most of last Wednesday watching my heart space, feeling as if I’d been hit by a sledgehammer. My heart, my physical heart felt different, and the energy around me was really difficult to connect to the web of life when there’s that much containment happening. And I don’t know many people, I’ve only had one conversation with someone in the UK who thinks this was an amazing and wonderful thing. And again, it’s someone I really like. And I had just read Nick Fuentes tweet and the repercussions of that. Are you familiar with that?

Andrea: No, I’m not on Twitter.

Manda: So he’s a neo-Nazi. I am not on Twitter either, but it was circulating in my social media because he wrote, ‘your body, my choice, forever’. And now there are boys saying this.

Andrea: Oh, yeah, I did hear that. Of course, of course, I didn’t know that was him.

Manda: Saying this to young girls in school. And I saw somebody the other day who is a teacher who said, boy said this to girl, girl hit him so hard that he was in hospital and she will be supporting this girl through her suspension. And it’s oh God. How? How? How? My world feels more constrained as a result of this.

Andrea: I really feel you. I really feel you.

 Manda: And yet the person I was talking to has no idea who Nick Fuentes is and said, no, that can’t be happening. And would you like to see my Facebook feed? And I wonder how we move beyond. I don’t want to get into litigating the details, but the emotional and energetic impact of that is enormous. I guess that this time four years ago, similar things were happening the other way. And you work a lot in moving beyond dichotomy and holding the paradox. And you were talking very movingly about that earlier. And that seems to me now the single most important thing we can do. That we can’t go on ricocheting from ‘us right, you wrong’, ‘We win, you lose’, back and forth while we’re all in a bus barrelling towards the edge of a cliff. And therefore it matters more than ever that we just stop the bus. And it’s not a question of who gets to paint the bus this time and what colour they choose. There are good people who want, in the end, for their children and their children’s children to live in a thriving world. I really believe that for almost everybody, that’s the baseline. How, in your view, do we move beyond the dichotomy of this tribalization that seems to be baked into our culture?

Andrea: Well, that’s a life process, I guess. But for me, we talked about language and I talked about this kind of movement, that it’s holding the paradox; being able to see that there’s not only two sides and that you can hold what seem like irreconcilable opposites. And when you’re holding them, they are no longer opposites. You talk about complex systems a lot, and your book is basically a complex system. And when you’re studying that, you start to see things as nested rather than polar opposites. So this is a hard practice because we talked about language, and I believe our language is very rutted and formed by dichotomies and by dualistic ways. It’s very hard for us to even get out of that because the language is formed by that. And so almost we really have to be very careful, because the language itself is broken up. Not not all languages, but most of our languages are broken up. So there’s always an other.

Manda: Western languages. The noun based languages. Which is why when they say indigenous languages are 80% verbs and ours are 80% nouns, verbs are not dualistic.

Andrea: Verbs are this movement of complexity and nestedness, yeah. And I guess what I’m trying to do by bringing that up and what I do in my work in the philosophy, is to understand that from any stance that you’re in, from any place within this nested complex system. If we imagine all of these nested systems, you can almost imagine them as planetary, it’s sort of helpful, right, all the different planets. But it just goes on and on and on, you can go deeper and deeper and you can go wider and wider. But if we take a stance in any of that ongoing amazing beauty and non-ending stuff, there’s going to seem to be an opposite and there’s going to seem to be an end and a beginning. And we’re going to be able to see from that position things that seem opposite to us or irreconcilable to us or so on. And that’s the way the language is built. But how could we try to understand that that’s just one position and even though the space is shared, this isn’t relativism where everything’s different for everyone, we’re sharing this real space, which is the world. And these situations are real with real regularities.

Andrea: They’re not different for everyone. It’s not a hallucination, sorry to tell everyone. However, my regularities are very different from yours, even though we might share so many of them. So it can look very different for us. So to try to make this a little more grounded, this election, you know, the people that I talked about that I love, we share a lot of regularities. And we also don’t, because they’ve probably never left the United States. I mean, they’ve never moved, you know, and that doesn’t mean that their experience is less than mine or mine is less than them. It means we have a richness and a depth in different ways. So they see things about the country I don’t probably see as well, because I haven’t been there as long. I mean, I’m there, but I’m not there all the time. And likewise, I see the States from a different place because I see it from here and I hear, you know, what everyone here says. And so I guess what I’m trying to say is, how we move beyond dichotomy is, first of all, we realise that there is no actual dichotomy.

Andrea: You can’t cut a hole. We cut things to understand them in a space that’s not the process itself. So there is violence when we try to break things apart. But in that ongoing system that I try to describe as planetary, you’re always just changing the energy forms. You’re not necessarily separating. You can’t separate the whole from the whole if there’s no end and no beginning. But there are all these different ways in which you can see it. You can cut it. Like I was trying to describe the different perspectives. So I try to think of it as a landscape. You know, if you’re going on a mountain, you could come up the mountain a very different way than I come up the mountain. And if we get to the top of the mountain or to some resting point on the mountain, maybe it’s an infinite mountain, I don’t know. And we start arguing about what the mountain looks like, what we saw on our way there; maybe I went through forests of beautiful greenery and you went through a desert. And if we start fighting about whether it’s a forest or a desert.

Manda: Okay. Right. This is the five blind men and the elephant and yes, yes.

Andrea: Exactly, exactly. So I think it’s about repatterning and trying to understand that we do need to break things into parts, dichotomies and so on to try to understand. That’s what science does, right? We look at every little part and we break it apart. But when we do that, we’re not actually breaking the process itself apart, we’re creating ways to understand it. That’s a really hard thing to understand. That it’s different to try to understand things by looking at them in their parts, versus there’s an ongoing whole that’s always changing that can never be fully represented. I call this holding the paradox in a way, because I find it very difficult and I could talk about it philosophically, but just in real life, you know?

Manda: Yes. What’s the practicality of this? Yeah.

Andrea: How do you hold that space when there’s so much pain? Like what you just expressed. Or from my perspective, when I hear certain words being said from the highest office and the person so many people respect, it really hurts me. Because when I was a kid, that’s the kind of stuff you’re taught don’t say that kind of stuff, it’s not decent. And I don’t understand how we got to a point where that’s how you win and that’s how you look powerful. And so what I’m trying to say is, when it comes to something so emotional like that, where I hear those words or what you just expressed, which is that’s a very amazingly painful situation, right, that someone could be told their body is owned.

Manda: And it’s visceral and energetic. Yeah.

Andrea: How do you understand that that’s one position and there’s another position from which it looks very different. How do you do that? That’s the practice that’s very hard, but which I think we have to do. It doesn’t mean we say both of those positions are equally correct or right, or that we want to orient towards them. But I think before we can start to say where we want to orient, we need to be able to understand where they came from. And to do that, you have to get to a space where you’re holding them both. And then I can understand the trajectory, to go back to this landscape, of the person who’s not seeing it the way we see it. To us it’s very obvious, but they don’t see it like that. If they did, they would agree. For them it’s a different view, which we don’t know. So how do we understand what that view is? I think the way we do it is, I talk about way making and trying to understand it as a path. From the time they were born till now, they’ve had people say certain things to them, they’ve read certain books. They’ve had what we call certain affordances, which are opportunities for behaviour. It’s just what’s at hand for you. It can be good or bad. How do we understand that and take it seriously, not try to give it some kind of psychoanalytic, like we’re trying to explain their behaviour. It’s hold the space and try to look at it as you would want them to look at your story and understand you. And I think once we do that with one another, that energy changes, right? That oppositional energy changes and we end up in a new space of what’s possible.

Manda: And how does this work for you at a felt sense on the ground, as it were? Because it makes a lot of sense to me intellectually. I really struggled when I met the person who said, no, this isn’t happening last Friday, so I’d had a few days of processing, and the only thing I could do was shut down and actually glue my teeth together, because otherwise I was going to rupture this friendship to the point where it was going to be gone. And yet, I agree with you. How does it manifest as an actual lived experience for you? And I think the core thing for me seems to be… Let me float this. So I’m quite invested at the moment in Bill Plotkin’s concept which rides on top of Francis Weller’s concept, that there’s initiation culture and a trauma culture. And that within our trauma culture, we are locked in early adolescence. So Plotkin divides personal human evolution into childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and elderhood. Two phases in each; one is more social within the human world, and one is social within the more than human world.

Manda: And that our culture’s trauma is that we’re locked in early adolescence. And one of the hallmarks of early adolescence is ‘I seek to take power over because I’m emerging into selfhood, but I don’t yet know my place in the web of life’. And in fact, I probably deny that the web of life ever even exists. And if you go through that as a phase and it’s held, that’s completely fine. By the time you’ve got 10,000 years of that as your culture’s way of being, it takes us to where we are. And so my quest is how do we help a very large number of us to grow up into adulthood? And to do that, we need to change the energetic space. And you’re one of the few people that I’ve really listened to who is working at the conceptual landscape of changing the energetic space, and I’m really curious to know when the reality hits, when the rubber hits the road, how does it feel, and does it change the energetic space for anybody other than you?

Andrea: Mm. That’s a great question. First, I would say that there’s a lot of people, I think, that have been working on this in a lot of different fields. I would even include you. That we’re all working on it in a different way, because we’re all trying to figure this out, in how to hold this space and we all need each other in different disciplines to learn it. I really see a rhythm, a thread through a lot of different disciplines and organisations that are trying to do this in their own way. And that’s part of what Beyond Dichotomy, part of the research conversations I’ve been having, with so many different people from so many different areas, is recognising that pattern that connects. So I just want to say that first, because yes, I am doing this in philosophy, but I do think it’s something by another name that other people are doing too. And I’ve been in those situations too, Manda, where I just feel at my limit, at my edge, of what I can handle when I’m in a situation where those oppositions are screaming at me, so to speak. And what I’ve tried to do is, I mean, I even carry something around in my pocket, to remind me. Is just to breathe, be present and love everyone. It sounds very simple…

Manda: No, it really doesn’t.

Andrea: It’s so hard, right? But there’s always a way in which I can zoom out a bit and understand. Because when you’re in those situations, you’re so stuck in them with your sensory mentality. And for me, what’s helpful is literally to open my senses again. Notice what’s around me, notice something that the person is doing. You know, they’re often nervous and they’re doing something. Just something very human that’s going on in that situation. And that’s that’s helped me. Also, I like what you were saying about the adolescent and these stages. For me, what I’ve found is instead of trying to end the adolescence, it’s to accept that we’re always adolescents. That in that trajectory or in that movement that is the process of life, you don’t leave anything behind. You accept the path, but it’s not really left behind. There’s no beginning or end. So if anything, what we’re doing is recognising who we are as an adolescent and being okay with that person. And maybe it changes through doing that, if we can love that person. Because I feel like it’s still that dichotomy if we’re trying to push away from what we were, because what we were and what we are now are not separate. Dichotomy means to cut, so rather than cut that off as if we’re rid of it, for me it’s about understanding this is a whole process. And even that person that I’m talking to who maybe thinks very differently from me, their adolescence is in there too, and so is their adulthood and the very mature decisions they’ve made. The way they’ve worked very hard their whole life, the people they’ve taken care of, the very real sorrows that they have in their life right now, the worry they have about money. So that’s kind of helpful too, to understand these are complex systems that we’re dealing with.

Andrea: However, all that said, it’s not a passive thing. It’s not that when I’m in this situation I’m going to give up and say ‘you’re right’. Because that’s important too, that we understand that we have this path for a reason. We’re here to share this stance and part of this ongoing evolution, or that’s kind of a weird word, but this process that’s processing, this life that’s living, is about you and I having our different stance and sharing those and respecting those. And then that gives us another expanded sensory level. So I have had moments where I’m in those situations with someone who’s very different from me. And if I can do it, first of all let go of my own narrative while still respecting it, understand they’re coming from a narrative, sort of open the space up around us in my mind, sensory. The room does change and the situation does change and there’s different levels of that, I guess. But I have had moments where I’ve learned from them and they’ve learned from me. And things do begin to look differently if you’re not trying to fit them into particular categories. Which I feel like that’s what we’re trying to do algorithmically online, it’s zero-one, it’s very binary. When you’re typing on your computer as a comment on some media outlet, it’s very binary. So it’s very hard to do all that stuff I just said.

Manda: Yes, yes. Which is I think why the long form modes of connection. There’s something about being limited to 280 characters that creates certainty, because you can’t express ambiguity and get a point across in such a short space. I’m really interested to know whether Audrey Tang’s concept of trying to do a citizen’s buyout of TikTok and turn it into WeTalk and completely change the algorithm is now more likely or less likely. I know that the election was going to have an impact. I think the concept of tariffs is going to make it more likely, and so that’ll be very interesting if we could create a social medium that brings people together. We’ll see.

Andrea: I hope so. It’s a very exciting idea. I love that you talked about that in some of your shows. And just to mention, when I was back in New York and Georgia, I did notice that everyone (just talking about the sensory focus), we are very, very focussed on our phones and it was a lot of TikTok. It’s not anyone’s fault. I mean, it’s very attention grabbing and it’s very addictive and it’s meant to be that way. And it’s literally creating your habits of thought and feeling. That’s just what happens. We are regularised by what we regularly attend to. And when we are regularly attending to very short videos that need to scream at us and get our attention with really over the top kind of stuff in order to keep us from flipping, that’s what we get used to. And is that really the way that we want to live? However, I definitely understood, I was talking about how different the spirit was when I went back in the States. One thing that I realised was, I understand why the person who won the election is appealing, because the regularities that he’s presenting are those same ones that are getting our attention in those spaces.

Manda: Right. It’s an extension of the limbic hijack.

Andrea: It’s familiar. There were also a lot of stories that shocked me, just talking to cab drivers or lift drivers or Uber drivers, where people really just thought he would give them a paycheque, because that’s what he does. I mean, people literally said that to me: I voted for a paycheque. So there were these memes that wherever I was, I heard. And that was deliberate. That’s always been deliberate in politics.

Manda: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Yes.

Andrea: But when we now look at where we are, I really hope something like that works, where we can change those social media habits and patterns in ways that do what we’re talking about here, and for all sides. Because I really feel like we’re getting narrowed. I don’t feel like this is like something people really like. I mean, when you talk to people, they’re not really happy that they’re addicted to these things, but addiction is addiction. So how can we alchemise that into something positive that opens you back up to the world and to your body and to other bodies? I think it can be done. But I do think it’s all part of all of this.

Manda: How would you do it? If you think it can be done 

Andrea: I do, yeah.

Manda: I have so many questions. How would you do this, if this alchemy was possible? What would you do if Audrey Tang managed to buy out TikTok? I had no idea. I thought TikTok was teenage girls, and clearly it’s not. That’s quite scary.

Andrea: Oh, no. No, even my mom told me she doesn’t even, she’s not really on TikTok, which she made a point of telling me often, but she at least referenced TikTok four times in a day. Because it’s everywhere and it’s eye catching and it’s like the way you would talk about television shows. You know, there’s a camaraderie. So it gives you something to talk about at work and share. It’s that kind of a space. It’s a shared space that makes you feel warm. Oh did you see that video? And then you have something to talk about at the water cooler.

Manda: Right. Which is exactly the reason I stopped watching television, but obviously I’ve not even gone there. Okay, so just as a thought experiment, how would we shift that addiction on a global scale? Because you and I could choose to step aside and then we’re just not part of the narrative. So this may be too hypothetical, but I’m just curious to know. Partly this is research for the next book. What do we do?

Andrea: Well, first of all, I think we do need to accept this and not push it away. But at the same time, we probably need to start making some hard decisions. A lot of the things I’ve seen about this election are often hard for me to understand, and they really do require holding the paradox, because a lot of what we are criticising is what we’re using to criticise what we’re using. Or owned by the people that we’re criticising as we’re using it. So there’s a very tangled, confusing thing happening. So I really think, like what you just brought up with Audrey, and this idea of really thinking about how do we make technologies, because we’re going to use them because they help us, they’re wonderful in a way. They can be.

Manda: Sure. How do we make them pro-social instead of basically anti?

Andrea: Yeah. And how do we make them so they’re less binary and dichotomous? I just finished a degree in World heritage. I wanted to do an ecological sort of degree instead of all this philosophy and neuroscience. So I did one about Unesco World Heritage and Ecological, it’s mostly focussed on liveable cities and these kinds of things. And I focussed on what I call phenomenological heritage, because there’s a tradition in philosophy of phenomenology, which I work with a lot, like Hegel wrote The Phenomenology of Spirit, for example. But then there’s a whole, starting with Husserl, a whole tradition. And just to tell you the overall idea of that, and again, for those who are philosophers, I’m generalising and I’m sorry. But it’s about lived experience. It’s about the first person lived stance that we were talking about before, and how that’s different for everyone and how when we do science, even though it’s very important that we take a third person objective stance.

Manda: That’s also impossible.

Andrea: It’s a paradox that you have to hold because it is always grounded in lived experience, which is different for every subjective stance. Because spatiotemporally we’re in different places, we’ve had different developments. How do you deal with all this? so what I was thinking about with cities is how, with something like liveability, it’s one of those third person objective scores of, for example, how close hospitals are to you, how much housing there is. And that’s important. Very important. Wonderful studies. But it doesn’t account for the lived first person experience of am I welcome in that grocery store, because of how I dress or how I look? Or, you know, all these other things that have a lot to do with if a city is liveable?

Manda: Yes. Am I proud of my neighbourhood? That seemed to be one of the key questions of the Net Zero Cities group was are you proud of your neighbourhood? And if not, how do you become that? Because pride builds serotonin mesh, which hopefully weans us off some of the dopamine addictions.

Andrea: Yeah, exactly.

Manda: Interesting. Did you get to that in your degree? This is a whole other podcast.

Andrea: well the reason I bring this up is going towards the technology, but I’m glad you said that too, because it’s also not just human. It’s all the other beings that we’re interacting with. What are their positions? And how is all this kind of complex system liveable? So there’s a lot of questions there, but I really started thinking about how we could think of technology in this way. That we could use technology, for example, to give people a way to add their perspective to that third person data, from their perspective.

Manda: How would that work in real time?

Andrea: I don’t know exactly how it would work, but there’s definitely plenty of technology… I know how to code and stuff like this, so I at least understand it a little bit.

Manda: You’re amazing. Let me just pause on that. You went to Germany to learn more German so you could read German philosophers, and you learned to code somewhere along the line?

Andrea: Yeah, because it’s a different way of thinking and I felt like I needed to understand it. And also in neuroscience, you have to do all these studies where you need to use Python. And at some point I had to learn it and I’m glad I did, even though now it’s becoming a little bit obsolete. But it’s still very important. But the point is, I can see how this could easily be done, that technology could help us get beyond thinking in binary ways if it was used the right way, because it gives us a direct way for me and for you to, so to speak, map or represent our trajectory within a landscape from our perspective.

Manda: Okay. We’re back to way making.

Andrea: So, for example, if we think of the city, if this was created in the right way, we could get something like a heat map or something visual of how I’ve felt in that city moving around it. And it doesn’t have to be only in geographical space. For example, it could be your emotional space for today. How has it felt? This could be about you only, for you only, almost like a journal that you’re writing in, so that you’re figuring out how you feel. But as you’re moving through your city or as you’re moving through your mental space, your emotional space, your intellectual space of the day; of course they’re all one, but we can think of it differently. You could register that in a certain way. It could be done in a lot of different ways on an app, and you could get a sort of drawing or a map or a diagram, and it would show you over time, oh, here’s where you were, or here’s how it’s changing. And you could begin to understand what affordances were creating that. Today I went to the park and look I have a spike here.

Manda: In my sense of interconnectedness.

Andrea: Yeah, I felt much better. Wow and I went to the park this day too and it’s the same. Or on this day, someone at the grocery store said something really nice to me, they didn’t have to do it, they just said a little phrase to me and it looked like a huge blip. So we could really start to understand how during the day these ‘little’ interactions are changing our heartbeat or our score.

Manda: Our sense of connection to ourselves, each other and the more than human world.

Andrea: Yeah. And that’s a phenomenological process that you would do. However you realise it’s just one little representation. You’re never going to have a map that’s you, but you can you use it, right? Like a tool or a journal. You’re never going to put yourself into your journal, but you’re putting yourself into your journal every time you write. But it’s not your whole self because you’re changing, and it’s changing you as you write in your journal. So I think we could use technology in this way. That we could start to understand ourselves better like that. Then you also start to understand, oh, other people are going through this too. And depending on where they came from, those same experiences will be different. And we could maybe share these kind of representations with one another if we choose to. We could do it anonymously or we could share it in small groups or we could talk about it. It at least starts to give us a way to talk about what right now seems esoteric and very hard to talk about, which is how each of us can experience the same landscape each day in very different ways, that matter very much for the decisions we make regarding how each other will experience that space.

Manda: Yes. And if we want to perhaps orient our culture towards a different set of values, we need to know what really matters to us as opposed to what we’re told matters to us. We need to discover for ourselves that acquiring more stuff doesn’t fill the void inside, but connecting to a tree or a person or a squirrel in the park really does. And it’s only, I think, when that has been presented to us as a reality, we can begin to change our own narratives. Gosh, this is interesting.

Andrea: A lot of this is just stuff we don’t… I mean, you and I think about these things and other people think about them in different ways. But just people that I’ve been around recently in the States, they’re very busy and they’re doing very good work and it’s very hard for them to sit and think about their phenomenology, about however it’s affecting them in the same way. So if there was an easy way to start to notice that, I think it would be helpful.

Manda: My conspiracy theorist brain is saying as long as it’s not hijacked by the Twitter owners of this world and then monetised.

Andrea: There are ways. There’s a lot of different things with spatial web and stuff, you know, you’ve had people on your show. I mean, there’s ways we could do this where you do have control of that. And you do decide if you share it or not.

Manda: And you decide which bits you share. And if someone’s monetising it, at least it comes to you.

Andrea: Or you decide if it’s going to be monetised. But that’s going to require a lot of us getting off of a lot of the platforms that we’re currently using, because it’s going to have to be attractive, it’s going to have to be something that’s going to be able to make a living for people. But we can create these things. It’s again, holding the paradox. Not because it makes money it must be bad or because it’s connecting us and could be hijacked we shouldn’t do it. It’s like, okay, let’s look at that for what it is. Take it very seriously. How can we do this in a way that’s less likely to happen? We’re aware of that from the start. We’re looking for it. So it’s for me like taking steps back and trying to see more clearly the bigger space.

Manda: So I have a whole avenue that I want to open. But you just said because it’s making money, it’s not bad. And I felt my physiology clench. And I would really like to unpick this.

Andrea: Me too. It’s a hard one.

Manda: Because for me at the moment, the predatory capital model and the values underpinning it, capitalism is the end extension, or an extension, of our sense of insecurity and separation and Powerlessness. And my world is predicated on the concept that we need a new value system and that something will grow out of it that allows us to exchange, account for, and store value in different ways. I have to say, as a slight input, the one thing that I’m finding fascinating is what happens if Trump does everything he says he was going to do. I think dollar hegemony stops, because dollar hegemony existed because previous presidents had been prepared to commit the military to holding it up. Our existing economic system exists because of the threat of violence. What happens if that threat is removed? It could be extremely interesting. I don’t think that’s what they’re planning, but we are about to discover what happens when ideology hits reality. Anyway, leaving that aside.

Andrea: Yeah we could be very surprised. Anything is possible in both directions right now. And it’s scary because it really is in the hands of a few people, especially when you think about how much satellite space is owned just by Elon even. But in another way, if it’s taken in a different direction it could be a very quick way to change a lot of those things that you just discussed. So I do try to hold that paradox and understand. It doesn’t mean I’m saying that it’s going to go that way. But literally there is the potential in this moment for a lot of positive change.

Manda: Total systemic change.

Andrea: And just because we don’t think it’s going to happen doesn’t mean we shouldn’t realise the potential is there right now. It does depend, weirdly, on a few intentional stances by a few human beings. But they’re human beings, and we have to realise that they could make a decision that is in that direction. And that’s not a bad thing. But with the money thing, I think that’s always been hard for me.

Manda: How do you embody that paradox and where does it take you?

Andrea: It’s a very hard one. Well, I had this idea of you’re never supposed to sell out when I was a kid. I don’t know, this whole sell out thing that came from who knows where. So I always almost assumed that if you if you are a real artist or a real philosopher, you’re kind of living this hard life.

Manda: Okay, making money is bad because you’re selling out to the system.

Andrea: Yeah. And I don’t think that’s true. There’s a lot of suffering. We’re all plenty acquainted. If you’re feeling your body fully, even when you feel joy and love, it’s almost painful, it’s too much to hold. And when you really see the people and everything that’s going on, just in nature and in the world, there’s plenty, plenty, plenty to ground you if you’re open to it. Right? If you’re really like looking at it. So I think that idea I need to suffer in that kind of way feels very narrow.

Manda: Okay, that makes sense. Yes.

Andrea: It’s thinking of money in a way that’s very dichotomous and closed. Because what is money? It’s basically language. It’s a representation of…

Manda: Yeah, it’s an agreement that we make.

Andrea: And it can change. And I think you’ve had a lot of people on your show that show how exciting and how many other ways we could think about this. And I don’t think much of the world understands that yet. That there’s so many other options and that it’s actually very exciting. And you can connect it to the things you care about. It doesn’t only have to be this very closed, cold, kind of narrow feeling I have of that you just make money and you show that you have money with the way that you dress. I don’t think that’s very satisfying. And I think that’s what we associate with capitalism. And I think most people think that’s the only option. That money is about that little weird track of power.

Manda: See, want, take. Yes. And empowering a few people at the expense of everything else that there is.

Andrea: It doesn’t have to be that way, though.

Manda: Yeah. No. That’s true. Okay. Definitely.

Andrea: And I guess it’s going to start with us changing us, like any human individual, changing their stance and when you talk about money, thinking of it in that other way. Thinking of it in this other way. Because if we think of it that way, and we don’t think of it in this way that’s associated with that closed mindset, it’s going to spread, right? Because you’re thinking of it in that way when you’re using the word and you’re talking about it. You’re already in that system and opening those other systems. And over time that will spread. And people will feel that enthusiasm and that joy, and it is for me amazing to think about what we could do together and the ways we could share economically. And that it really is in our power. We could decide to all have enough money and to share it in the right way.

Manda: Yes, yes, it’s an invention. Of course. But the inequalities would go and the people who currently control the flow of money like the inequalities. But let’s step aside from that, it’s a different conversation 

Andrea: It’s very, very real and built in very real power structure. So even though I’m talking about this in a kind of wonderful way, I also know that it’s really a different reality in most people’s lives right now. And thinking about it in this way might feel good, but actually making a change you still feel very claustrophobically in that system. And like we were talking about with the dopamine hits or this kind of way that we’ve habituated in terms of what makes us feel alive, even if it’s small hit. A lot of it is shopping or getting the next thing. I mean, not for me, but in these worlds, because that’s the way we’ve been habituated. Most people aren’t thinking that there’s other possibilities there. And if they did, they would probably take those other possibilities, you know?

Manda: Yes. This is the nature of narrative change. If we can open those possible doors, people will want to walk through them, I’m sure.

Andrea: Because it’s fun and it feels good and it’s all the things they want.

Manda: And you can see a future that’s much more alive than the one where you’re on the hamster wheel, you know, doing your bullshit job, as David Graeber said.

Andrea: Oh, I love David, that book. But it has to open from their position.

Manda: Exactly. Which is why I think what you’re doing is so valuable.

Andrea: It can’t be us saying, hey, let me plop this down in your life. Why are you doing what you’re doing when there’s this? That’s not going to work. It’s got to be organic from their path that somehow this path opens for them.

Manda: Yes. Thank you. You just articulated the thrutopian concept exactly. We have to step into where people are and be arm in arm with them as the door is open, so that we all see them open, I think.

Andrea: I love thrutopia. I mention it a lot in different contexts because I think it’s very helpful. In business context too, or business like, when I’m talking with people. Because I really think that’s one way that this can happen. I talked to Rupert Read, by the way, too, about it. And I really feel those kind of ideas, that’s a good place to start with something like thrutopia, but also with like your book or people who are writing or expressing in art. There’s many, many ways that we in practice are opening these paths to one another, that doesn’t have to just be intellectual words that we use.

Manda: Yeah. Because if we can go in at the sub intellectual level, it’s more powerful.

Andrea: Yeah, it’s in your community. It’s a practice. You see other people doing it. And the same way all these other things spread, that are so addictive in terms of TikTok and stuff. That’s the layer that changes really fast if you find the right way to do it. How do you find an authentic way to help people or to open these paths in people’s lives that will be authentic to their lives? It’s not an easy thing to do, but once you do it, it’s there. You’ve shifted the level. So I think stories do that a lot. Books do that. Movies do that. Television does that.

Manda: And tiny TikTok videos do it.

Andrea: Tiktok’s definitely doing.

Manda: Apparently.

Andrea: I was very surprised how much TikTok is doing in all age groups that I was hanging out with.

Manda: Yeah. Okay. I’m going to have to reframe that one, but I’ll get there. So we don’t have a huge amount of time left. I want to look at the book that you’re writing. But just before we get there, you said a while back that we’re here for a reason. And I’ve listened to you on your podcast talking to people, where you’ve said we’re edging quite close to spirituality. And the person who clearly exists in a world where spirituality is ‘woo woo’, says no, no, it’s fine, what we’re doing is really grounded. And I hear you and your spirituality feels to me very grounded. And that spirituality, authentic spirituality, is a grounding practice. And I wonder where you feel the boundaries between philosophy and spirituality lie, if they do. I’m guessing this is a dichotomy that doesn’t exist, that for you it’s a flow, and how you find a sense of meaning in the world as you see it. What reason do you think you have for being here? And to what higher order, if there is one, are you connecting? Does that make sense as a question?

Andrea: It does. Yeah. And it is this beyond dichotomy. Because I could go into the whole philosophy of dualism and how we are always putting things in parts. That’s one part of my life. Or I could go into neuroscience and this brain body.

Manda: Please do the neuroscience, please. Actually, genuinely it’s one of the most exciting things. So let’s go there and take that into spirituality.

Andrea: Ok. So let’s just think of mind body or brain mind and how we think of these as different. But of course there’s not a mind that’s separate from your embodied existence in the world and the ecological environmental being of that body. So it goes back again to this nestedness. And again, our language is built on this. We usually have to choose between mind, body, brain, like, you, me, so on. So it’s a real kind of granular, we really have to turn over even our language to kind of really do this. And I am trying to work on that in all these different ways, whether it’s with cities or philosophy or neuroscience. But with the neuroscience, I won’t go into all the stuff I studied, but I thought a lot about the hippocampus. Which is, again, I’m cartoon izing this for any neuroscientist, I’m sorry, but it’s the area of the brain that’s known for memory and knowledge acquisition, but also the area that’s essential for how we move through the world and navigate the world. So you find little cells there that literally fire for positions in your environment as you move through, place cells, grid cells and so on. But if you take this part of the brain out, you can’t create new memories. So in a very cartoonish sort of sense, you have the mental, the knowledge, the thinking, the memory, which seems to us mental, our mental or experience thinking. And you have this body that’s moving through the world like a little GPS system. I mean, that’s a cartoon way to say it, but people call it the GPS of the brain. Because you’re literally moving through the world and your brain is literally your ongoing in real time GPS, so to speak.

Manda: Processing the three dimensionality of physical reality.

Andrea: Exactly. And it’s the same space in the brain. So what’s happening there? We could think of the way we’re moving through our world is also the way we’re creating our mental experience of the world, our emotional experience of the world. Because here’s a kind of weird thing, too; in the brain when you’re moving through virtual space, for example, or what we might think of as conceptual space, like language space or something like that, the same thing is happening.

Manda: Okay, idea space.

Andrea: It’s the same GPS 

Manda: Okay. Oh, wow.

Andrea: Again, I’m kind of cartoon izing it, but you can think of it like this. So we separate all these different things, but actually the body and the environment are nested levels of ongoing movement that are co-creating each other. And our thoughts are like gauges. Our thoughts and feelings are like homeostatic tools that we’re using to find our way, make our way through all of these ongoing worlds. So that sort of collapses that dichotomy. And if you think of it like that, then you ask me like, what’s the meaning? All this world is real, Manda, and we’re both part of it. We’re not in it, we ARE it. And as were those beautiful systems moving as the earth, there’s no other person,  there’s no other position that’s come to awareness of that position except you and me. And it’s true of everyone.

Manda: Right, right. And whatever it is that connects us all.

Andrea: So the more we can express that and share that with one another, the more potentials we create for what we can become and expand into. And I really think that it’s much more than we imagine right now. People would say that’s spiritual, but I think it’s a very literal, practical reality that as we change what we can share with one another and what we think of as ourselves, we’re changing what’s possible for everything around us.

Manda: My goodness, that’s… Yes.

Andrea: So I don’t see it as all separate. But I do think we need to take certain stances. Sometimes we are the doctors, sometimes we’re the philosopher, sometimes we’re the writer. And that’s good. And we work with that space, that throughway. But overall, we’re one living, moving, co-creating system. Many, many systems of systems.

Manda: Right. Yes. And I read something by Michael Mead last night which said, “In troubled times, it becomes more important to know that at every threshold there are creative energies waiting to enter the world through us, as everything else seems to crack or fall apart. The deeper, knowing self within us moves closer to the surface and seeks to become known”. And that meshes quite well with what you just said. That sense of the potential is unknown and unknowable hypercomplex systems. And we bring the best of ourselves to the table because we don’t know what is just around the corner.

Andrea: It’s a portal. I think that’s great that you brought up that word threshold, because threshold, portal; there’s this Rumi poem about I meet you in the space beyond good and evil, and everyone’s moving across the threshold, don’t go back to sleep. There’s this kind of liminal space. There’s a kind of way in which we learn how to be more sensorily engaged. We learn how to handle more because it’s hard to do all the stuff we’ve been talking about. To be able to hold what the world is capable of giving you takes time. It’s a lifelong practice, and we need each other and it can be overwhelming. But I think the more you can hold the paradox and open yourself, you have a different sensory experience and it does feel like you’re going over a portal or a threshold or beyond what you had imagined was reality, you know? And in so doing, you are kind of changing what is possible for reality.

Manda: Which brings us back to the early question of the energetic space as we hold that dichotomy. If we can change the energetic space that we hold, then we change reality in a way that that we can’t predict, but we don’t have to.

Andrea: And we do it in everyday, practical ways, just in how we hold the moment we’re in with one another in the most everyday situations, with people that you might not ever see again. That stuff matters a lot. So when it comes to the meaning of your life or my life, I would just say you’re changing the equilibrium of the world each day. I mean, don’t freak out about that, but it’s very important that you’re here. Everything you’re doing and feeling is important. That you find ways to accept and love that being that you are is really important, because that’s going to spread. And it might not be visible, and it might be that other people don’t see it right now, but I really, really believe if you’re trying to do that and you’re in that organic space and you’re loving yourself and trying to love the world, and it’s hard, you’re doing something that maybe you can’t understand, but it’s so important and it’s so powerful. And it matters if you just go to the grocery store and are in that space. It really matters, you know?

Manda: And you carry something in your pocket to help you remember. That struck me as an extraordinarily useful thing for people to do. Find whatever it is that’s going to, when you put your hand in your pocket, in that moment of conflict internally, you feel it and it brings you back.

Andrea: Because it’s hard to remember. There’s moments where it’s so clear to me and then I think, oh, I’m always going to stay in this clarity. I’ll be here. And then, of course life is full of all kinds of things. So we need reminders, I think.

Manda: Brilliant and beautiful. I really wanted to talk about the book that you’re writing, The Four Embraces. But we are out of time really. And I think that’s a whole podcast in its own right. So what I would really like to do is when that book is complete and ready in the world, that we come back and have another conversation about the Four Embraces, because without question they take what you just said in all of its beauty and rightness, and bring it forward with more detail. Does that sound like a good thing?

Andrea: That sounds wonderful. Yeah, that would be a more specific way to talk about all these big things. So thank you Manda.

Manda: Thank you so much. This has been such an enlightening conversation. So thank you.

Andrea: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you and all you’re doing and giving.

Manda: Oh, likewise. Yes. We can have a mutual appreciation moment, but definitely I love your podcast. I love your writing. I love the way that you see the world. It’s so heartening. And we’re going to need more of this. So thank you so much.

Andrea: Yeah. Thank you.

Manda: There we go. That’s it for another week. Enormous thanks to Andrea for all that she is and does. For her ways of looking into how we think, who we are, how we manifest in the world, and offering different landscapes, different pathways, different doors to walk through. I definitely feel calmer than I did at the start of this conversation, and I really hope that you do too. And that if you know of other people who would benefit from reframing the way that we are, from putting something in their pocket to help them reconnect, to help them remember that we are more than the sum of our parts, that we are more than the binaries and the feelings of defeat or relation. That we have more to offer the world than the binaries of our current system often let us see. I strongly suspect that this podcast is going to become more hardcore as we go on from this. That there’s no more playing around at the edges. That the old system is not fit for purpose and by our being, we can sketch out the roadmaps towards that future that we would be proud to leave as our legacy.

Manda: Feeling a way into that, creating what it looks like, living it into being. Those are the challenges now. And Andrea embodies this with every thought that she offers into the world. And I am enormously grateful that we are all part of a network of change. We need each other now. So build your connections. Build your communities of place, of purpose, of passion, and share the ideas that matter most to you. If this is one of them, then please do share it 

Manda: And that apart, we will be back next week with another conversation. In the meantime, thanks to Caro C for the music at the head and foot and for this week’s production. Thanks to Lou Mayor for the video, to Anne Thomas for the transcripts, to Faith Tilleray for working tirelessly to keep all the tech together, and for the magical, thought provoking, optimistic conversations that keep us both going. And as ever, an enormous thanks to you for giving us your time and your attention and your care, and for being part of the world that we want to build. So here we are, building together. See you next week. Thank you and goodbye.

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