Entangled World

My guest today is Della Duncan, a Renegade Economist. Areas of her livelihood garden include supporting individuals as a Right Livelihood Coach, helping transition businesses and organizations as a post-capitalist consultant, teaching and facilitating courses and retreats on the Work that Reconnects and Regenerative Economics, and hosting the Upstream Podcast which challenges mainstream economic thinking through documentaries and conversations including most recently, The Green Transition: The Problem with Green Capitalism and The Myth of Freedom Under Capitalism. 

Our current global capitalist economic system has provided many benefits to humanity AND the system was designed for those benefits to accrue to those at the top, which is one of the reasons we have such massive inequality around the globe. Della and I talk about how capitalism is more like modern-day slavery and a tool for white supremacy and patriarchy. It is fueling the destruction of the planet, from which it is compelled to extract and it’s a system that can’t last forever and will eventually topple under its own weight.

Della challenges the assumptions that are built into mainstream economics: that nature is commodifiable and we can objectify it and put a price on it, that humans are selfish beings out for our own self-interest, that work is something we don’t value or enjoy doing, that humans aren’t capable of collectively taking care of the land and that it must be privatized to be cared for, and the biggest assumption of all: that limitless growth on a finite planet is possible and even desirable. 

I hope you enjoy the episode, if you do please subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app or on the entangledworldpod YouTube channel.

Della’s Links & Resources:

Website

Upstream Podcast

Upstream Podcast, Ep 16: The Myth of Freedom Under Capitalism (Documentary)

Social Media handles: @upstreampodcast and @dellazduncan

Books mentioned:

Less is More, Jason Hickel

The Divide, Jason Hickel

Winners Take All, Anand Giridharadas

How on Earth: Imagining a Not for Profit World by 2050, Jennifer Hinton

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Persig

100 Years of Psychotherapy And the World’s Only Getting Worse, Michael Ventura, James Hillman

Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Other people and work mentioned:

Does Studying Economics Breed Greed, Adam Grant

Limits to Growth, Donella Meadows

Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, Donella Meadows

The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Entangled World explores our greatest, interrelated social, economic, ecological, and technological global challenges, their underlying drivers, and how a more beautiful world might emerge.

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Entangled World is a labor of love, I couldn’t keep this podcast going without the generosity of my listeners and fans. Please consider making a donation at patreon.com/entangledworld.

My guest today is Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.). Bayo is rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. 

This is a conversation about becoming. Bayo says “our culture sees growth and development as the only algorithm for creating sociality.” We discuss the gifts of disruption and the shackles of belonging. Bayo says, “we need to ‘dis-belong’ in order to become bodies…that disruption is how the world feels into itself.”

We talk about our challenges with parenting and how our children are our greatest teachers. What if we treated our children as cosmic disruptions?

We talk about racial inequality and what’s wrong with efforts to “bring marginalized people to the tables of power” because it still requires you to fit within the existing power regime, within the existing way of being. 

While we don’t discuss the metacrisis in detail in this conversation, everything we talk about is very much relevant to how we show up to do the work of addressing the metacrisis. In fact, this conversation is all about “how” we do the work which is just as important as “what” we do.

For those of us who are parents in particular working to address our greatest global challenges, I think this is a conversation you will love.

Links & Resources:

Bayo’s Website

What I Mean by Postactivism article

These Wilds Beyond Our Fences, Bayo Akomolafe

entangled world explores our greatest, interrelated social, economic, ecological, and technological global challenges, their underlying drivers, and how a more beautiful world might emerge.

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Entangled World is a labor of love, I couldn’t keep this podcast going without the generosity of my listeners and fans. Please consider making a donation at patreon.com/entangledworld.

My guest today is Jeremy Lent. Jeremy has been described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age”. Jeremy is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. His award-winning books, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, and The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, trace the historical underpinnings and flaws of the dominant worldview, and offer a foundation for an integrative worldview that could lead humanity to a flourishing future. He has written extensively about the vision and specifics of an ecological civilization and is founder of the Deep Transformation Network, an online global community of over 3,000 people engaging with others in facilitating a deep transformation toward a life-affirming future on a regenerated Earth.

Jeremy says culture shapes, values shape history, and our values will shape the future. He shares a fascinating story about Christopher Columbus and Admiral Zheng that points to why Europeans came to dominate the world and spoiler alert…it has to do with the differences between what these two different cultures valued.

We talk about the universal values that indigenous cultures around the world share such as looking at other species not as separate from us as humans, but as our relatives, seeing nature as one extended family. Western science has now validated this view by finding much of the genes of all species are shared. Jeremy believes we are in the process of undergoing one of the greatest transformations in human history and our work now is to transition to an ecological civilization that deeply understands humans are just one part of the web of life.

I hope you enjoy the episode, if you do please subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app or the entangledworldpod YouTube channel.

Jeremy’s Links & Resources:

Jeremy's website

The Patterning Instinct, Jeremy Lent

The Web of Meaning, Jeremy Lent

Principles of Deep Transformation, Gaia Education

Books Mentioned:

The Tao is Silent, Raymond Smullyen

The Art of the Warrior, Sun Tzu

The Kinship Worldview, Four Arrows and Darcia Narvaez

Other Resources:

The Great Simplification Podcast, Nate Hagens

Entangled World explores our greatest, interrelated social, economic, ecological, and technological global challenges, their underlying drivers, and how a more beautiful world might emerge.

Entangled World is a labor of love, I couldn’t keep this podcast going without the generosity of my listeners and fans. Please consider making a donation at patreon.com/entangledworld.

My guest today is Samantha Sweetwater, an author, thought leader, ceremonial guide, educator, and executive coach. For over 30 years, Samantha has facilitated individual and group transformational experiences in diverse communities, cultures, and industries on five continents. Her work leading conversations about our relationship with the Earth, spirituality, and systems change is transforming the way we think about what it means to be human.

Samantha highlights that separation from the Earth that we are nested inside of has been our human predicament and that the next stage of evolution looks like a conscious reunion that organizes towards a purpose to co-harmonize and create abundance for all beings within the biosphere.

We also discuss the metacrisis, that we're reaching existential tipping points we've never reached before at a planetary scale. Samantha imagines a vision 300 years into the future where we’ve managed to co-orchestrate, through climate catastrophe, through the migration of billions of people, through massive cycles of famine and disease, a more regenerative way to live in harmony with all life. 

This was such an uplifting conversation! I hope you enjoy it, if you do please subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app or on the entangledworldpod YouTube channel.

Samantha’s Links & Resources:

Samantha’s website

Wisdom of WTF?!

Medium

Gaia Dharma: how indigenous wisdom can help us move beyond technological adolescence and orient towards planetary flourishing

Books Mentioned:

Nature and the Human Soul, Bill Plotkin

The Matter With Things, Iain McGilchrist

Entangled World explores our greatest, interrelated social, economic, ecological, and technological global challenges, their underlying drivers, and how a more beautiful world might emerge.

Entangled World is a labor of love, I couldn’t keep this podcast going without the generosity of my listeners and fans. Please consider making a donation at patreon.com/entangledworld.

Entangled World explores the global interrelated, existential social, economic, ecological, and technological challenges we face, their underlying drivers, and how a more beautiful world might emerge. 

This episode is an introduction to the metacrisis, what it is, what its underlying drivers are, why it matters, and what we can do about it.

Watch the video episode on the entangledworldpod YouTube channel.

Entangled World is a labor of love, I am deeply grateful for the generosity of my listeners and fans. If you learned from this episode, please consider supporting the project at patreon.com/entangledworld.

Resources Mentioned:

Bonitta Roy’s Pop Up School

Jeremy Lent’s Principles and Practices of Deep Transformation

Nora Bateson Warm Data Labs

Samantha Sweetwater

Daniel Thorson

Daniel Schmachtenberger: "Artificial Intelligence and The Superorganism", The Great Simplification

Zak Stein, “AI Tutor Apocolypse”, Emerge podcast

Daniel Schmachtenberger’s List of Questions related to how to think about problems and solutions

Johan Rockstrom’s et al. 9 Planetary Boundaries 

Elinor Ostrum, Tragedy of the Commons

LaDonna Harris, 4Rs

Daniel Christian Wahls’ 3 Horizons Model

Donella Meadows: Leverage Points

Nora Bateson’s article on Aphanipoesis: https://medium.com/@norabateson/aphanipoiesis-96d8aed927bc

Welcome to Entangled World, where we explore our interrelated, existential social, economic, ecological, and technological challenges, their underlying drivers, and how a more beautiful world might emerge.

I’m your host, najia shaukat lupson. I’m a daughter of Pakistani Muslim immigrants, a mom, and an inter-systems thinker. entangled world will feature conversations with artists and academics, philosophers and philanthropists, spiritual seekers and scientists, technologists and thinkers.

Join me on a journey to discover what is uniquely and meaningfully ours to do at this pivotal moment in time, in service to the sacredness of life. 

I hope you enjoy it, if you do please subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app or on the entangledworldpod YouTube channel.

Entangled World is a labor of love, I couldn’t keep this podcast going without the generosity of my listeners and fans. Please consider making a donation at patreon.com/entangledworld.