0:09

I'm Sarah Wilson and this is

0:11

Wild, a show where we talk

0:13

with the biggest minds in the

0:15

world about the ideas that can

0:17

help us love and save our

0:19

one wild and precious life together

0:22

on this planet. Hello

0:26

everyone, welcome to another Friday

0:28

Ask Me Anything. I've

0:30

been on tour around the countryside.

0:32

I've been in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne,

0:34

Sydney, Canberra and along

0:37

the way I've been doing a bunch

0:39

of meetups with the subscriber community. That's

0:42

a Substack subscriber community and there's been

0:45

a number of really wonderful conversations that

0:47

we've been having with some

0:49

common things coming up and some common questions

0:51

coming up and I figured I'd cover some

0:53

of them off that have come in from

0:57

subscribers who were at those meetings that kind

0:59

of pick up on what we were talking

1:01

about. I do have two

1:03

more such Substack subscriber meetups, one in

1:05

Sydney and one in Byron Bay. These

1:08

are both in March. I would love

1:10

to see you there. The details for

1:12

those are on the

1:14

Substack post that's up

1:16

now where you can also watch this as a

1:19

video and you can get all the links that

1:22

I reference in this conversation. I

1:24

refer to books and other podcasts

1:26

and so on and so

1:28

forth when I do these rants.

1:31

I also open up the comments

1:33

over there and join in in

1:36

the afternoon, Friday and also over the

1:39

weekend. It's where

1:41

the community talk about the stuff

1:44

that I talk about here as

1:46

a group and we go in a little

1:48

deeper. This is a 20-minute session. I'm going

1:50

to try to cover off three questions. It

1:53

might be a little bit top line. However,

1:55

as I say, we'll go in deeper in

1:57

the comments over on Substack. for

2:00

that is in the show notes. So to

2:02

be honest, this paid community that I'm

2:04

referencing, they

2:06

kind of sustain me both emotionally

2:09

and financially. Emotionally, I really

2:11

need to have these kinds

2:13

of conversations at the moment.

2:15

It's wonderful just to have a community of people

2:17

who are light-minded and broad-minded.

2:22

I also limit the ads, the kinds

2:24

of ads that I allow onto this

2:26

podcast so that you don't get too

2:28

annoyed. I know some slip through from

2:30

time to time. And

2:33

I basically rely on

2:35

the Substac subscriber

2:37

community to

2:40

kind of cover this work that I do,

2:42

the research, the interviews,

2:44

the concepts, the connecting out

2:47

to other thinkers in this

2:49

space. So if you'd like

2:51

to support all of this and join the

2:53

conversation and join a community of really cool

2:55

people, Substac is where we are. We'll

2:58

see you over there. And as I say, the link is in the

3:00

show notes. Okay, so a few questions

3:02

that I'll try to combine. They interweave, they

3:05

produce a bit of a theme to

3:08

this week's AMA. Amanda McGregor, who

3:10

I did meet in Perth, she

3:12

asks, how do you balance the

3:14

activism, heavy, important work that you

3:16

do with your mental well-being and happiness and other

3:18

things in your life? How do we look after

3:21

ourselves and each other on the journey to making

3:23

change? So Amanda, first

3:25

of all, activism is in fact what

3:27

balances me. I wrote in a book

3:30

diary post a

3:32

couple of weeks, well, some time back now, I think.

3:35

And many of you did chime in on

3:37

that one. I was describing how I was

3:39

talking to my mother about collapse and

3:42

how it operates, what it's about. And she

3:44

got quite upset. And she said to me,

3:46

but Sarah, I don't understand because you seem

3:48

so happy and you think calm, the happiest

3:50

I've seen you. And look, she's right. I

3:53

am really quite the

3:56

most stable and calmest and happiest

3:58

I've been in my life. And I explained

4:00

to her that this was because what I was

4:02

working on was making sense. The

4:05

cognitive dissonance had backed away because

4:08

looking into what's

4:10

happening with, and

4:12

looking at it truthfully, looking at

4:14

the facts, not kind of clouding

4:16

it with false ideas of hope,

4:19

has actually made everything settle

4:21

into a good place for me.

4:25

Now that said, we

4:27

do need to do vigilant work

4:29

on ourselves to be a broad

4:31

vessel, to cope with the everything

4:33

that's going on, with the conflicting

4:36

feelings and considerations and crises that

4:38

are swirling. And the best thing

4:40

I find is to get super

4:42

broad myself, super broad in my

4:44

nervous system so that I can

4:46

contain my multitudes, my reactions, which

4:49

then enables me to contain the multitudes

4:52

happening outside in the world. So

4:55

I said, allow myself to, and I concentrate

4:57

on this, on being

4:59

angry and exalted, exhausted and still

5:02

fired up, ragey and

5:04

compassionate and allowing all of it.

5:06

And that's taking a vigilant

5:08

practice and it's very ongoing. So meditation

5:10

helps with this. Hot yoga is really

5:12

working at the moment. I

5:14

have been crying a fair bit in

5:17

hot yoga, silently,

5:20

silently crying. And the heat

5:22

is really kind of helping with all of

5:24

this. I've

5:27

also been, I guess, lying in the

5:29

hot mess of all of my hurt

5:31

and my emotions that have been coming

5:33

up quite a lot lately, in particular

5:35

in reaction to what

5:38

I'm watching, observing,

5:42

trying to fathom in and

5:44

around the Middle East crisis.

5:48

I've laid awake many,

5:50

many nights in a row, I

5:53

guess in a radical pain. And

5:55

I've known I can't and

5:58

shouldn't run from it. Accepting

6:00

that this is the work, this is the thing,

6:02

this is the thing I need to be doing,

6:04

this is the adulting I need to be doing.

6:07

Being in it fully, letting the hurt

6:09

course through my body, the rage course

6:11

through me. And this

6:13

in itself, lying awake in the middle of the night,

6:16

doing this kind of exercise, it's

6:19

broadened me. I don't strategize,

6:21

I don't try to fix it, I just

6:23

give in to it. And

6:26

it really has taken accepting that

6:28

it's important for me to be

6:30

awake all night with this, rather

6:32

than resisting my insomnia, which often

6:34

causes, as anyone who is

6:36

insomniac knows, it just causes more insomnia.

6:40

And invariably I do fall

6:43

asleep because this process of

6:46

sitting in the emotion and not running

6:49

from it sees me arrive once again

6:51

at that peaceful, calm, knowing,

6:53

non-cognizably dissonant place.

6:58

So yeah, I think that's really worked for me.

7:01

One final thought is

7:05

kind of going back to the

7:07

etiology of the term self-care. I

7:09

think I've mentioned it once here

7:11

before, that Audrey Law, the black

7:13

activist, came up with the term

7:16

in the late 1960s. And

7:19

she used it to

7:22

describe what blacks, the

7:24

black activists, the black women needed to be

7:26

doing. These were women who are on

7:28

the front line fighting for fundamental freedoms

7:30

for their children, for their families. And

7:33

these women had jobs, they were also looking

7:35

after families, often extended families. And she would

7:37

say, you need to go home and eat,

7:40

shower and get some sleep so that

7:42

you can be the broad vessel that

7:44

is required to do this work to

7:46

fight for these freedoms. And

7:49

we need to remind ourselves of that, that that is

7:51

what self-care is meant to be about. It's

7:53

about broadening So that we can

7:56

contain the multitudes and then go back to

7:58

the front line of being of service. How

8:00

about kooning and running away and hiding? So

8:02

I thought I just throw that in there.

8:05

If anyone who is wishing to lead in

8:07

these difficult times I can say claire and

8:09

not a subscriber us on so overwhelmed by

8:11

assume implied that I can barely do the

8:14

dishes. Someone once said to me, if you

8:16

can't even put your clothes why how will

8:18

you ever save the world I get that

8:20

point. Where does mental illness fit into all

8:23

of this end of the world stuff like

8:25

this is a bit of a similar answer.

8:28

It's. About sitting through the terror of

8:30

us not running away by going numb

8:33

which is another way. Of running

8:35

from scenes as up. So you probably

8:37

know deep down Claire, we need to

8:39

be over Live to the horror As

8:42

what we're saying, we need to kind

8:44

of. I just

8:46

settle up and sit through it

8:48

and and be adults about about

8:50

his arm and know that yes

8:53

it's not not meant to be

8:55

painful. ah as he bear witness

8:57

to what. I'm the Palestinians

8:59

in particular are going through in.

9:02

Gaza. so. I

9:05

think this will help you put

9:07

your clothes. Wayne do the dishes.

9:09

ah and so much more if

9:11

you can accept. That.

9:13

It's not bad to be feeling the

9:15

ceilings and to resist that running away.

9:17

It's numbness the other thing and it's

9:20

sort of speaks to what I was

9:22

writing about in a post from last

9:24

week. I think that was on Gaza

9:26

once again. We need

9:28

to be mindful that we don't. Base.

9:31

Deal with these big feelings. This

9:33

pain is hurt. This horror. By

9:37

transforming it into blame. Right to

9:39

get away. From these bad

9:41

uncomfortable feelings. And

9:44

so yes, we really need

9:46

to also resist that blaming

9:48

creating another to dump as

9:50

feelings on to. That

9:53

something that I'm witnessing myself and having

9:55

to be mindful of myself. and

9:58

finally anna he's a regular com here,

10:00

so thank you Anna. You wrote in the

10:02

comments, I think in response to Claire's question

10:05

at the time, you

10:07

quoted Krishnamurti's wonderful line, which I've

10:09

been using actually for the past

10:12

week or so. It is no

10:14

measure of health to be well

10:16

adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

10:18

I find that this framing also

10:21

helps me to remember that, you

10:23

know, I'm not unwell,

10:26

I'm not deficient because

10:28

I'm struggling to cope, right?

10:32

And it's because the system, you know, I

10:34

wrote about it again on Wednesday in a

10:37

post about Moloch, which is another way of

10:39

seeing how this is a systemic problem. We're

10:41

part of it and it passes through us

10:43

and we contribute, but it's

10:45

so much bigger than what we can

10:48

handle and fix on our own. So

10:50

I find that that also helps. Okay,

10:53

finally, I think I've got time for

10:55

one more question. Steph Gorman, you have

10:57

asked about the tension between the pursuit

10:59

of sort of creating art and

11:02

amidst all this great uncertainty

11:06

you've written, yet these aspirations, I think, to

11:08

craft and to art, to create art,

11:11

a purposeful life, these

11:13

aspirations now seem to carry the burden of

11:16

privilege and impracticality. And I hate to say

11:18

it, but a sense of I don't deserve

11:20

creative freedom. Yeah, I get what you're

11:23

saying there, Steph. You're essentially asking, should

11:25

we be making art in the apocalypse?

11:27

And it's a big question because it

11:29

can feel indulgent when other people are

11:32

suffering. But

11:34

I would say, Steph, yes, you

11:37

must create art at

11:39

the moment in these times. Art

11:42

is defiant. Art asks the questions

11:44

we need to be asking right

11:46

now. Eric Fromm

11:48

writes about this quite a lot. Art

11:51

enacts a sort of spontaneity

11:53

and a positive freedom, which

11:56

reminds us of

11:58

what we're both stuck in. which is

12:00

a system of habit

12:03

and discipline and being economic

12:05

units, right, in the system.

12:08

And it reminds us of what we want to be

12:10

fighting for, which is something better than all of

12:13

that. From has

12:15

written that art may be the

12:17

best means of shaking us awake,

12:19

and that's quote unquote. Yeah,

12:22

I think art does shake us awake. In

12:26

a similar vein, the poet Teju Cole

12:29

once was talking to Christa Tippett on

12:31

her podcast, and it stuck with me. He

12:34

said that art gets us concentrating

12:37

and focusing on the right

12:39

stuff. And he wrote that the

12:41

role of the artist is to get people to

12:43

concentrate more. The artist raises a

12:45

palm as if to say hush and listen

12:47

and let's be still. Alain

12:49

de Bouton sort of talks to this a

12:51

little in a podcast I did a couple

12:53

of weeks ago where he says that art

12:55

is a weapon against despair. And I'll put

12:58

a link to that on that post for

13:00

everyone who missed that wonderful episode. My

13:03

take Steph is yes, you absolutely must create

13:05

the art. Artists create our new world

13:08

and help us move through these liminal

13:11

times. Liminal

13:13

times are when times in history as

13:15

we are in

13:17

one now where an

13:19

old world has died, an old

13:21

way of being, the old normal

13:24

is at least dying if not dead. Some

13:26

people are saying it's certainly dead. It doesn't

13:28

service any longer. And the new

13:30

world, a new way of being is yet to become.

13:33

We haven't actually quite worked out what

13:35

it's going to look like amidst all the uncertainty.

13:39

And I have actually written something on this and I dug

13:41

it up. It might make

13:43

its way into this book that I'm

13:45

writing. I've written about 100,000 words worth

13:47

of notes. So,

13:51

yes, anyway, I'll share this little chunk

13:53

with you because I think it answers

13:56

your question in part, Steph. Philosophers in the

13:58

world. late 19th

14:00

century, which was another liminal time,

14:03

saw art as the necessary tool

14:05

for tempering human excess and volatility

14:07

that can surface when we're between

14:09

worlds. Frederick Schiller

14:12

famously wrote that cultivating aesthetic education might

14:14

have actually tempered some of the fury

14:17

of the reign of terror that took

14:19

hold after the French

14:21

Revolution. The gist of his theory

14:23

is that engaging in art sees

14:25

us nurture our emotional responses and

14:28

attention. It fosters agency and this

14:30

becomes a tempering force against the

14:32

fervor of ideology. The influential

14:34

historian Jacob Burkhart, also writing

14:36

the same era, argued that

14:39

the great upheavals in world

14:41

history necessarily clear the ground

14:43

of discredited ideas and decaying

14:45

institutions. Invariably, it's the creatives,

14:47

the artists, who first noticed

14:49

that we are shit

14:51

suddenly between worlds. They sniffed the

14:53

zeitgeist early and realized they are

14:55

left without a world and so

14:57

their work, by necessity, turns to

14:59

creating the next one. So

15:02

make art. Make art amid all the

15:04

uncertainty, Steph, and despair because we have

15:06

a new world that needs to be

15:08

created. This

15:11

is one final point I'll just throw

15:13

in here. I think art also differentiates

15:16

us from AI, which is

15:18

increasingly becoming important. It's

15:20

an increasingly important distinction that I

15:22

feel we're wanting to make amid

15:24

discussions of the singularity and transhumanism.

15:26

These are themes that if they're

15:29

not familiar to you, I've written

15:31

about and I've also interviewed

15:33

people about on my podcast.

15:35

Again, I'll put those links in that sub-stack post if

15:38

you'd like to catch up. AI

15:42

basically is trying to make art by

15:44

combining data. That's what all these new models

15:46

are doing. Then perfecting it, it's

15:49

advanced mimicry of what we humans

15:51

do. We humans

15:53

create art by combining data

15:56

with experience, with emotions, with notions

15:58

of awe and and the

16:00

sublime and without relationships and

16:03

in messy and imperfect ways.

16:06

And it's that kind of messy imperfect

16:08

juncture that resonates for us. We see

16:10

ourselves in it and it takes us

16:12

to broadening or broader

16:14

expansive places. That's what art

16:17

does. And so I

16:19

feel that whatever we're creating art, AI

16:22

can't be us. It's the thing

16:24

that distinguishes us from AI because

16:27

AI can't access these

16:30

shared human experiences of

16:33

awe and sublime, et

16:35

cetera. So we need

16:37

to create art to remind us of

16:39

what it is to be human. So

16:43

these are all things that kind of interweave.

16:45

I love talking these slightly

16:48

esoteric, emotional, liminal ideas and

16:50

putting them through these new

16:52

kind of lenses that we've

16:54

been exploring here. But

16:56

I reckon it would be super interesting to apply

16:59

this way of thinking to sort

17:01

of some chunky material current affairs

17:04

concepts. So if you've got some questions about

17:06

what's happening in the world today that you're

17:09

listening to on the news or you're reading

17:11

about elsewhere and you're wanting a different take,

17:13

why don't you send

17:15

them through as a question to be

17:17

addressed by me in one of these AMAs

17:20

in future episodes? I think that could be

17:22

fun. So again, in the sub stack post,

17:24

the questions there, Stephanie,

17:27

Claire and Amanda, thank you very much for your

17:29

questions from this week. I

17:31

will see you next week for

17:33

more of this wild kind of fun.

17:37

And I'll see you at the meetups,

17:39

Sydney and Byron soon. Thank you. Thank

17:54

you. you