Embracing Paradox, Evolving Language with Lisa Maroski and Andrea Hiott

TRANSCRIPT:

 The way our language separates these concepts as opposed to like holding them together like a yin yang, has us pursuing things in like a wrong headed way. Like trying to pick one side of, of a unity and argue that that side's right, and then somebody else picks the other side of the unity and argues that that's right.

And we get stuck in these arguments of, of either or.

 the thing that I'm okay causing harm to will end up harming the thing that I care about.

how is it that we can ask a question about something that we don't know about?

there has to be some basic that we do know about and, and then what does this question do? You know, it like, it takes us into the unknown and that to me was really exciting. And so, yeah, I really, I love questions and I think that if we can humble ourselves enough to be able to, to ask, you know, I mean, it takes, it takes a, a humbling because you have to go, I don't know that.

And how, how do I actually try to get to know that? it can be, I don't know you. How do I actually try to get to know you? and if we approach the world in that way, not like, oh, I already know it. I have mastered this, we can elicit more of the, the, the potential of what's in every single one of us, every single being.

and when we do that, we can find. Our commonalities, we can find our shared, similarities and differences. and then we start understanding more of these webs of interconnections, and get off of our sort of, high horse of thinking, well, you know, we are the apex. Creature on this earth. We're, we're not, we're there are creatures that, you know, have solved a lot of evolutionary problems already, and are being able to relate to them in ways other than, oh, that's just a fill in the 📍 blank.

they, the whale might help us be able to solve ocean acidification if we only opened ourselves to what the whale knows.

Andrea Hiott: Hello everyone. Welcome to Love and Philosophy. This is Andrea Hiott, and here we explore philosophical, scientific, technological, and even poetic spaces beyond either or bounds. This episode is going to be about language, a topic you will be hearing or reading more about from me if you are following way making, and also if any of you know of anyone.

I should talk to you about language. I would love to hear. So what if the way we use language is keeping us stuck in a certain kind of world or a certain sort of cognitive idea of what our choices are? Today's guess. Lisa has written a book called Embracing Paradox, evolving Language that challenges us to question this possibility.

This either or thinking that we might be embedded in that we might be rhythmically used to because of the way we speak, because of the way things have been structured through contrast. And of course that reflects what we see, what we focus on. What reality is real or present to our senses. So Lisa's gonna walk us through this wonderful metaphor of the Mobius Strip.

If you've never seen a Mo Mobius strip or heard of it, maybe look at it, uh, online or somewhere, or just grab a sheet of paper and twist it and, uh, connect the two ends. Lisa will kinda walk us through that. If you're watching it, you can see her do that. If you're just listening. You can imagine it. She describes it very well and you can also just have a look, but it's basically a surface that looks like it has two sides, but it's one continuous hole, so you can just kind of go all the way around.

I love these sorts of figures and they appear a lot in a lot of my projects, so you've probably seen something like that before. Uh, but it's a great image for this thinking that she's inviting us into, which is. Not choosing between. So it's, you know, embracing paradox. I mean, if some of you probably know, I, I published this little pamphlet called Embracing Paradox, which is actually how I ended up meeting Lisa because someone said, oh, you have to meet her because she wrote a book called that about language.

We were at an event in the United Kingdom and uh, someone sort of put us together and that's how we ended up having this conversation, which is just wonderful. But through the Mobius Strip, she's. You know, doing, it's a way of holding paradox, embracing paradox, which doesn't mean trying to solve one side into the other.

It's not about picking sides. It's not about deciding if nature is better or nurture is better, or whatever. It's not about connection versus distinction or differentiation. It's not about. Uh, choosing one of those or championing one of those all the time, even though you might champion both of them at different times in different situations.

So it's really about learning to hold these multiple truths at once, and that's what we explore here. That's what the Mobius Strip is the metaphor of for her book, and she tries to. Focus us on how we might be doing that with our language and how a lot of things we face challenges we face might be connected to this way of thinking that is both evident in our language, how we created our language, how we're using it, but also maybe the agency to become aware of it and change it from within.

We can't change it from without. It's a living languaging. As one of my favorites, Matano would say. So, you know, it's not about solving problems, it's about holding the space of what we think are the oppositions and seeing if something else might open some kind of constellation of, of other possibilities that we didn't even know were possible.

Other ways of being alive, possibilities that we can hardly even imagine from our current vantage point, because that happens all the time. It's, it's really possible. You can look all around you at different forms of life that have particular ways of sensing the world, that seem like everything but aren't.

and we know that as humans because we have this amazing capacity to care for other forms of life, but it's also true about us. And uh, they can probably see other. Animals and other creatures can probably see ways that, um. We don't actually explore the world around us, and yet we have the possibility to change that.

So that's what we talk about here, and we bring up everything from hummingbirds to wells to how to trust the world, to synchronicities in a more magical sense than the synchrony that we talked about through neuroscience, in the last or two episodes ago. And we talk about what Parker Palmer and I had talked about.

I think about the love being the field that holds it all together, what that might mean. We talk about a lot of stuff. So welcome to love and Philosophy. I'm really glad you're here. Thanks for trying to embrace the paradox with us and hope you enjoy this conversation, which is just. We just went at it freestyle, to talk about her book and I think it's actually really generative and beautiful. So thanks to Lisa and thanks to you for listening and I hope you have a great day wherever you are and maybe this helps you see something challenging in a little bit different way. Alright, bye.

yeah, so I wanna try to show your book. I wonder if I can, let's see. I wonder if it will come.   📍 📍 'Cause it's so beautiful this book. Wow. Oh, thank you. It's just, I love it.

this like, artwork. Um,

 Lisa: yeah, my, my friend John did that and as soon as I saw it, so cool. I knew that had to be the cover of the book.   📍 📍 You could just get lost

in that picture, you know? I mean, oh, totally. It's like very hard, I think, to draw something that actually seems to embrace paradox.   📍 Yeah, I mean, we're gonna talk about some of these figures that you talk about in the book, but this is like really doing a good job.

So I just love the title of your book and I love that it's about language and I wanna hear, how did you come to writing this or what, like what can we, what do we need to know about you that got you to this point of, uh, thinking about paradox, much less embracing it.

 Lisa: Okay. How far back shall we go? Let's go back to college.

Okay. That's a good place to start. Yeah. Yeah, because that's, that's really, that's really kind of where the seeds took root. Okay. Um, first in physics class and learning about, you know, light can be both a wave and a particle. Mm-hmm. And that was kind of like what, uh, and then reading girdle, Escher, Bach mm-hmm.

By Douglas Hofstetter and learning about the Mobius strip and the Klein bottle. And then, then learning, um, Chinese philosophy and yin and yang and how they. You know, mutually, um, you know, like you can't have one without the other. Mm-hmm. Actually, I have a, I have a very cute cartoon hanging on my refrigerator where it's like half of a yin sim yin yang symbol

mm-hmm.

In a hotel room on the phone saying, I miss you too.

that's sweet. Yeah. it's actually funny, but every page of the book you reference something that I love, you know, go to Esher B or Buckminster Fuller or something from the dao, or, yeah, it's, it's really great.

Uh, but I, let's try to give people an idea of. Embracing paradox. So you, you're in college and you started discovering those things, Was it opening the world or, it was just really exciting, a new way of, of thinking about things or

it, it was like putting on a new set of glasses and suddenly I started seeing the world differently.

I started seeing the world in terms of these, these interconnected concepts, you know, like, uh, an easy one in psychology class. Um, there was a debate about nature versus nurture. Is it genetics? Is it the way you were raised? And you know, I it's both. Can everybody see that? You know, it was like, of course it's both.

Um, and I realized I eventually that. The way our language separates these concepts as opposed to like holding them together like a yin yang, um, has us pursuing things in like a wrong headed way. Like trying to pick one side of, of a unity and argue that that side's right, and then somebody else picks the other side of the unity and argues that that's right.

And we get stuck in these arguments of, of either or. Um, instead of looking at not just the, the unity but the mutual. Codependence the way one influences the other. How does genetics influence nurture? How does nurture influence genetics? Um, and in fact, we got the whole field of epigenetics by kind of looking at, at that, um, well not specifically that in terms of child raising, but in terms of, you know, how, how the environment influences the genes and how the genes, um, then alter our behavior towards the environment.

Yeah, it's, it's kind of wild how when you look at the history of, well, just about everything, that it's often, arguments about either or, and to take a step back and realize there's another way of seeing that is.

I mean, once you've done it, it becomes possible, but until you've done it, you're just kind of stuck in that mindset, right. Of either or. It's almost like that's kind of the default as you talk about it, you talk about the default settings. Yeah. but what does that have to do with language?

Um, can we, do a little show and tell so that Yeah.

People aren't familiar with, you know, like what does it actually mean to, to embody both either or, and both and,

yeah. I hope you're gonna show a Mobius strip.

Yeah, let's do some show and tell.

Okay, great. Yeah, because that's a big, uh, part of the beginning of the book that you introduced, so Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

This is kind of like the foundation for the whole book. So, so people are familiar with a strip of paper. It's got two sides. You can turn it into a ring. And hang it on your bunch of these on your Christmas tree, but the Mobius strip, so, so the difference is a ring has a clear inside and a clear outside.

And to get from inside to outside, you have to like literally jump your finger around the edge here. So you have to, whereas to make a Mobius strip, you take one, one side of this and you flip it over and lemme grab my tape.

Okay, so now you have this thing that looks like a figure eight. And because we've taped opposite sides together, they have become one side. So if you run your finger around the whole Mobius strip, it takes you. From inside to outside to inside, and you can't really tell. The same thing is if you run your finger along the edge, you, you can just keep going forever and ever without ever lifting your finger off the edge.

So, so this gives you an interesting model or a metaphor for thinking about things that seem to have an either or relationship. But if you look at them as a whole like this, you can see that it's a both and relationship. So you have both either or at a local level, like if you were an ant crawling along the edge.

it would still look like a regular piece of paper that has, that has an either or. But if you, if you can stand back from it and hold it and, you know, see it in its entirety, you get that, oh, this is a one-sided surface. It's, it's, it just seems to have two sides. And so that kind of thinking where you can put the two together and go, okay, well I can hold them in their distinctness, in their seeming to have opposite sides or to be opposite sides, and I can hold them in their unity of, oh, that's kind of, you know, that's kind of just a, um, a, a.

A trick of the mind. They're actually, there's, there's actually just one side. It just seems to be two sided. And so that's the kind of, of embracing paradox that I am, talking about in this book of, of being able to hold both of those positions simultaneously. Like we need distinctions. We can't get rid of distinctions in life because, you know, then stuff doesn't work.

Um, but we also need to see that there is, there's a unity underlying the distinctions and the language part comes in, in that we've grown up thinking that because they're two different words for the distinctions, that that means they're real. That means they are indeed separate. And I'm trying to say, well, no, they're distinct, but they're not separate.

Right. So a lot of it depends on the position too. you talked about the ant and at whatever place the ant is at, if we're gonna measure it, we could say it's inside or outside relative to some position. But you could always kind of move to a different position and it would, it would be different.

But those distinctions matter. at the same time that they're not absolute in some kind of way. And that's that embracing par, that's a very hard thing to hold, I think, for people to, because even in your book, you talk about, either or, it's not necessarily that we're rejecting the either or for the both.

And, we're trying to hold because that's,

that's the same either or position.

Mm-hmm.

If you try to argue for both and. Yeah. Instead of either or. You're still stuck in either or. It took me, it took me a few years to realize that, because that's what I started doing is, you know, saying it's both and Yeah.

Until I realized that, that, um, it's, it's be both and you have to include either or.

Yeah. I've started thinking of it. I, I try to think of it through constellations or kaleidoscopic, you know, these kinds of things, which people find very hard to understand what I'm talking about. But it's because of that, it's because, it's so easy to get, because of the language into this habit again, of either or, even though we think we are talking about something more like the Mobius strip.

Yeah. we're using language right now to try to talk about it, which, um. Can make it so hard. Right. so I mean, is the premise, are you, are you saying like, we need to find a whole new way of, of languaging?

is it about, I mean, you talk about questioning a lot. Is it about are we trying to develop a different awareness of language or are we trying to develop a new language? Or how would you begin to sort of express that to people about that idea here? It's,

it's actually bigger than that. Um, because the language is grounded in the culture.

Um, and in order to really change people's ability to perceive these kinds of relationships. It'll take more than just inventing new words. It'll, it'll really take helping people see the relatedness. and, and then the language part will a little easier. Um, trying to just change language without changing the, the worldview or the paradigm or the mindset that, underlies it is, is tough.

And we see that happening all over. You know, people invent all kinds of great new words. Um, hold on. Panarchy Archy, Being there, there have been all kinds of new words invented, but because the mindset underlying the language, which is the separateness mindset remains intact, the words don't, they don't catch on.

Um, and

the the second point is that words are only one part of the system that is language. And if you've studied systems theory, you know that sometimes just tweaking one little part will not change the whole system because the system is set up to keep itself running in the way that it runs. And so just changing or adding, um, a new word I don't think is sufficient because language consists also of the way we put words together, the syntax, um, the way we put ideas together, which is the logic, the way we, um, put our experience into, into categories, you know, which is the category structure, and then the, the logic kind of enforces the category structure.

So, or no, the category structure enforces the logic. So, you know, you can, you can reason, you know, uh, Socrates is a man's, all men are mortal. Socrates is mortal. But if you said Socrates is a dog. All dogs are mortal. Whatever a socr, you know, it's like, hold it. Socrates actually doesn't fit into the category of dog.

Um, and what the new way of perceiving is forcing us to do is stretch our categories. Um, we, we've got categories that are narrow like this or that, and now we're trying to broaden the category into actually you can have this and that. Um, and so that's, that's a much, much harder thing to change. Um,

in a way we're trying to understand that the language that we use is, Is a way to communicate about what is dynamic and always moving and changing and actually never fits into any of the things that we're using language as if it contains, I mean this is very hard, but, even categories, there are dynamic.

All of this is kind of, if we're looking at what we're describing, what we're trying to talk about, they're not actually broken into categories and all of this. what we're doing with using language and communicating is actually doing something in the world that's important.

We are, making, connections together. And, and, and, life is kind of, working through this at the same time. What we're discussing is ongoing and dynamic and will always need to be sort of, reconsidered. So isn't that kind of hard to talk about too?

Yeah, yeah. So, so this is a good example of how like the culture influences the language. Um, American culture based on English, which is based on, you know, some romance and German languages, um, parses the world into things. It's a very noun, heavy kind of language. Um, there are other languages that see the, or other cultures I should say, that see the world more in terms of processes of things changing, of, you know, the.

Seasons always doing this. The sun and the moon always doing this and that, um, the, even the things that we think are static are, are always changing. And so that's reflected in their language, which, you know, could be like a very verb oriented language. I was at a conference once where they were trying to get this, this idea across to us, and so instead of.

Like just having our name on our name tags, like Lisa, Andrea, we had to turn it into a verb. So, so I was Lisa ing. That's cool. I was, you know, becoming Lisa. The, the, the Hopi have a way of, of talking about themselves that is like, they're always becoming Hopi. Like it's not a category to just put yourself into.

It's, it's an ideal to continually strive for, is to become Hopi. and

biology too. Biology sees that everything is always in process, but that's, I think a very ripe area for innovating language because, because it is always in process and, and, The way, the way a lot of biology works, you need the one and the other. You need your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

You need, um, the, the cells to open and close their boundaries to let you know, let chemicals in, let chemicals out. and where am I going with this? Um, oh, process, right? Yeah. So in a noun, heavy language process is very difficult to to convey because we tend to default back to what we're familiar with, which are the nouns.

Actually this, this would be, I think, uh, maybe something you could speak to in terms of neurology too, is that when we get new ideas, when we get an, an expansion of some sort, there's, there's often a, a pullback, you know, like the rubber band stretches, and then it'll want to go back into its old shape.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, we can think about biological habits in a way. and I think that's actually an interesting line of thinking with, with your book, because. I get the feeling and it, it is just like the body in a way, that, you know, like when you do certain exercises, you're, you're literally sort of hurting your body and you're breaking habits and you're creating nuances and, and it's kind of like that with the, with the central nervous system too, in a way.

but in the book you talk about, we can't solve problems from the same mindset in which they were, generated. And there's a reason why we should try to do this, right? It's because it's generative and it gives us, something in the sense that ex in the same way that exercise might give the body health, right?

how would people begin to understand. What the motivation is for breaking out of old habits. Right. Or because you know, it's comfortable to just have your habits, use your language, nouns. It's a very safe thing to have nouns and everything fits in their category.

And this all sounds very confusing, you know? and, and hard, well, the motivation, it was,

yeah, that's, that's a great question. Um, because the motivation is really, it's deep, it's existential right now because these habits of mind that we've had have gotten us to a point of, of. Uh, nearly destroying the world by nuclear weapons at one point.

Um, creating an unsustainable climate. Um, creating an economy that is entirely independent on getting growth and vigor is better. And, um, and on trying to grab as much for yourself, you know, without regard to other people. Like, I'm separate from you, therefore I need to, you know, have all of my stuff.

And, um, and so these things are, are all coming together in, you've heard the term, the Metris or the poly crisis. It's, it's multiple systems that are kind of all reaching, you know, um. Potentially a breaking point. And when one starts breaking, they all start breaking. And that could be really, really catastrophic for life on Earth.

And at some point we have to realize that we need to work with Earth, we need to work with the processes, not against them, um, if we're gonna survive and if everything else is gonna survive. And so to do that, we can't go into trying to solve the metris as we would go into trying to solve, you know, a, a problem, you know, how to fix your plumbing, how to repave your driveway, whatever.

Um, those kinds of, you know, simple, solvable problems because these are all. Problems that are very interdependent. And when we start breaking the interdependencies in our language and separating them into, well, you know, let's just solve this problem today and forget all the others, that's not gonna work anymore.

I mean, it worked for a while, but it's not gonna work anymore because these interdependencies are becoming very fragile.

Yeah, I mean, I guess we see it in a lot of different ways and, some people might think, well, okay, everything's bad, but then other people might think, oh, we're in the best time of our, our life right now.

Like, to speak of this either or, you know, and trying to embrace the paradox. I think we're at a moment all around the world where a lot of people are living in very different realities, right? Some people will really identify with what you just said. Other people that I know will think, what, what is she talking about?

Like, the world is richer and greater and like there's so many wonderful things happening right now. and that's very hard to get your head around, especially, yeah. No matter which side you're on. And, for me that almost becomes a meta reason why we need to be embracing paradox because that is a kind of rigidity within itself that we've, we've sort of gotten into these, ways of thinking about the world, that it's either about to end or it's wonderful or whatever.

that itself kind of shows us that maybe we want to find a different way of, holding that, of understanding what that is. Not only because we do have all these issues right now. I mean, nobody can deny that there's a lot of pain in the world, no matter how good we might have it, whoever we are.

but like how do we learn to. maybe there's a whole other way of being in this world, right? I wanna open that up like that. We've assumed that this is the way things work. I think, is a narrowing and, and no matter which side we're on right now, I think there's a whole other universe of potential possible that we aren't seeing so long as we stay in this either or way of thinking.

Yeah. Because it is so limited, by, by its very nature. So I just wanna put that out there for anyone who's listening who might not, you know, 'cause everyone is on a different, in a different place. who comes to this podcast sometime, and that's kind of part of the project. But I think no matter where we are, actually, there's another possibility that's opening up with this idea of the Mobius Strip that you showed us at the beginning.

but there's actually another way of kind of being alive, which I find very exciting. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but.

Yeah, it is very exciting actually. Um, because we haven't been there yet. This is like, this is like one of those cultural jumps that is about to happen and we're, uh, we are either gonna let it happen or not, and you know, then what happens?

it's kind of a different way of thinking about who we are, isn't it? I mean, isn't that what happens when you change your languaging habits? You, you literally change the way you talk about I and you, I mean, something very Dr. Very profound really does, uh, shift, um, on the level of what am I in this world and what's possible and how connected am I to everything around me.

Yeah. Yeah. And so if you start feeling connected to everything around you, you start behaving differently toward it. If you don't feel connected, you, you feel like, well, I can exploit that. I'm not connected to that forest. I'm gonna cut those trees down and make a lot of money. Mm-hmm. But if you feel connected and you live within those connections, and you see that the tree is not just a tree, the tree is home to, you know, bunches of other creatures, the tree is, is shade.

It's keeping the earth cooler. The tree is, um, lungs, it's, it's literally keeping us alive by breathing out oxygen. Um, and so the. Nora Bateson likes to say the thing is not is is never just the thing. Mm-hmm. You know, it's, it's always a system of relationships. And when we start to see that and when we start to see how dependent we are on all those other relationships, we're gonna think twice about whether, well, that's my hope is we'll think twice about whether we're gonna cut that tree down or extract all that oil or, um, you know, burn that or dam that river or, you know, whatever it is we think we're going to do to better control our environment.

by understanding our relationship to our connectedness with everything else around us. We might think twice before just Turning it into a commodity.

Yeah. And to go to that Mobius strip idea, that old way of thinking is, I'm on one side of the paper and nature is on the other, or humans are here and trees are there.

But if you start to realize this interconnectedness where you're always on, able to go on both sides, then that changes the way you might think about, uh, the tree and that example that you gave. Or, even the person you think is your enemy or something. Because What you do on one side of the paper is literally gonna change the other.

It's actually one thing. And so you start to realize you're in a kind of a dance or, or a relationship with this thing that you think you're fighting against. And that shifts something. In the relationship. Yeah.

There's, there's a quote that I have in the book by Daniel Schmuck Berger. I don't wanna misquote him, so let me just find it.

Yeah, find it quick. Um,

here it is. He said in one of the podcasts that he did, and it just struck me as like, so perfect for understanding this kind of, um, interconnectedness. He says, the thing that I'm okay causing harm to will end up harming the thing that I care about.

Mm-hmm. And that's so true and so hard to understand. because we've kind of built our identities on defining against something else.

Yeah. I mean, and that's, uh, scary when we. We're so used to it that we think we don't have an identity if we don't have that, conflict or that pushing against. and yet what really matters and what really is, is that interrelation that's changing and growing. And, we often think we're doing something out of care, by resisting or fighting, um, the opposite.

But how do you see care in this way, or even, you know, if we think about language and how it would, would hold these things, how do you see that, that shift of Is it about questioning, for example? I mean, what, what, what can begin to kind of open those new portals into that deeper sort of care that's not just a care for the us that's versus the them.

It, it seems to have, like when I was reading your book, I was thinking you're kind of trying to get us to notice, a different way of being, in the world.

And part of that is becoming aware of how we use language. Yes. Yes. Like that, that's almost, um, the most important thing is to, to hear yourself using language. and questions seem to be, you know, the way that. One can begin to do that. I love

questions. I, I, yeah. Uh, that goes back to college too. Um, when I, I wanted to know like, how is it that we can ask a question about something that we don't know about?

Like there has to be some basic that we do know about and, and then what does this question do? You know, it like, it takes us into the unknown and that to me was like really exciting. And so, yeah, I really, I love questions and I think that if, if we can humble ourselves enough to be able to, to ask, you know, I mean, it takes, it takes a, um, a humbling because you have to go, I don't know that.

And how, how do I actually try to get to know that? Um, it can be, I don't know you. How do I actually try to get to know you? Um, and if we approach the world in that way, not like, oh, I already know it. I have mastered this, um, we, we can elicit more of the, the, the potential of what's in every single one of us, every single being.

Um, and

when we do that, we can find. Our commonalities, we can find our shared, um, similarities and differences. you know, if you ask, well, how does, how does you know the hummingbird view the world? and get into like understanding like how the hummingbird actually perceives, how they relate to other hummingbirds, other birds, how they relate to the bees.

then we start understanding more of these webs of interconnections, um, and get off of our sort of, uh, high horse of thinking, well, you know, we are the apex. Creature on this earth. We're, we're not, we're there are creatures that, you know, have solved a lot of evolutionary problems already, um, and are being able to relate to them in ways other than, oh, that's just a fill in the blank.

they, the whale might help us be able to solve ocean acidification if we only opened ourselves to what the whale knows. Um,

and, and.

I do think there are ways that we will be able to develop, to communicate with these other beings, whether it's, um, psychically or whether it's, um, you know, through ai. I know there's, you know, some work being done to communicate with whales and dolphins and things like that using ai. But I, I think we can also develop our own inner abilities, not just the, the outer technologies, the, the inner abilities to, to listen to, to really feel connected.

And when, when you can get to those points of being really connected, then um,

who knows what can happen. I mean. Some people use psychedelics to, to open themselves up to that. Um, that might work. I think we actually have the capability to do it without psychedelics. Um, and

this, this being open to things that we at this point like can't even imagine are possible. We need to start imagining. We, we can start imagining, you know, things, uh, possibilities that did not seem probable before.

I love what you said about asking the question, that, that idea of how can you ask a question about something you don't know about. because that makes me think of that strip too, which it's not really just a, a strip. It's like this. multilayered, multidimensional, ongoing happening with no beginning or end.

Um, which can sound psychedelic, but I, I also think we don't need psychedelics. They just help some people. But when you were speaking, I was thinking, yeah, there is that connectedness that really is there. Yeah. Um, all the time. Like, we don't actually have a choice even though we have devised these ways of thinking of ourselves as separate.

And it is like the way that you can ask a question. So you must know something to be able to ask the question, even though obviously you're asking from a place of needing to know more. That, that feels really potent to me. and how through kind of maybe being able to bring our awareness to that we might.

Have a different possibility for what's sensually possible as life, That, that it's already there and very potent, but it has something to do with trust maybe. Um, yeah,

it has a lot to do with trust. That's a good point.

What does that bring up for you? That because this is hard stuff.

I think, um, you know mm-hmm. Life is not even when we all know that we're connected and, we have these ideas for how we can solve problems and that, you know, things can be generative. And I really believe, uh, what I, what I said about that we're just barely beginning to understand what's possible, for our connection and our relation.

There's a lot of of things that are just kind of hard to hold. And I wonder if all of this that you've been through since you were in college and writing this book, um, if you've found a way to trust in that, that connection that whatever is holding us the embrace.

Yeah. So, um, again, it's, it's a both and, um, because as Emerson, no, it was Gutta, um, who said something about boldness has genius power and magic in it. So on the one hand you do have to like be bold and, and do stuff, but on the other hand, you also have to allow and, and watch for the synchronicities.

I think, I think synchronicity is, are like when you know that like the flow is happening, um, because it, it's, it's like magic sometimes. It just feels like life happens magically and um, but when you're trying to force something too hard, the magic stops. Um, because your, your, your ego's getting in the way if you're trying to force something too hard.

But you can't just like sit back and go, okay, life happened magically that it doesn't work that way either. Um, there's, there's like this, this playful, okay, I'm gonna do this and, you know, watch and see what happens, um, and dance with life itself. And that's, that's not easy because we're not trained to do that.

We're, we're trained to go out and conquer.

Yeah. I think that's the, the reason we do kind of clinging to our nouns, Yeah. 'cause we wanna have these definitions and we wanna, it is the way it's structured, it's like you meet someone, what do you do? Who are you? And you're supposed to kind of have these categories that you fit into that put you somewhere, you know, relative to wherever they are.

And, um, as you know, some of that's important as you, as you said, we need distinctions and you talk about that. what, what happens if we come into those places already knowing that we can never actually adequately answer those things, that we are multiplicities, um, and that we're going to communicate as sort of a shared.

A shared movement or a shared life to try to better understand one another. That's like a whole different place than two separate things, you know, coming to kind of tell each other who they are. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so the questioning is about curiosity and, and it's about wanting to know who the other is. Um, and so when we come together, um,

when. When we have and, and everybody like, has a different worldview. I mean, even though you and I like share the same culture, we, there's, there's enough of a difference in worldview that there's a lot, a lot of room for exploration. Um, so now imagine coming together with multiple cultures that really don't see the world in the same way.

You know, like, like say an Amazonian tribe. Um, and a,

you know, like, well I'm, I'm, you can just really pluck any different cultures and put them at the table. Um, and then, you know, how, how do we actually. Learn to see the world from their perspectives. I mean, the, the West has been sort of on this, you know, trying to force the world into our perspective. maybe it's time to, to like bring all the people with different perspectives, different worldviews, entirely different ways of perceiving into the conversation and, and be able to converse.

I mean, this is, this is a, a, a, I think, a healthy challenge to have. And if we can solve this challenge, um, we'll, we'll be able to keep the infinite game going a little longer.

Yeah.

Um. I wonder how we can, you know, that reminds me in the book you talk about speaking from wholeness, not about wholeness. I think that's what you're trying to get at a bit with saying we need to change language. maybe not saying we don't need to use distinctions in contrast, but it's the place we're starting from that we understand or come we are wholeness.

and then we're going to put, put things into kind of different categories and move it around and stuff, but only so as to understand the multiplicity that is our wholeness, And the reason I'm bringing this up is because you talk about fragmentation. This, this word fragmentation comes up through like Alan Watts and maybe David Bohm and stuff, and. speaking from wholeness and there's all these layers and dimensions.

How can we sort of embrace that without it becoming fragmentation, if you know what I mean? Because that seems to be part of the why that you wrote this book that you get to in chapter 20. I wonder, you know, like, what did, what are you, what's going on there with the language and in the that not giving way to that fragmentation.

I guess

Yeah. So language is, is, uh,

it's, it's kind of its own entity. and while we. I'll use it. Um, we don't have dominion over it. it also uses us, and, and so changing language is, is it's a collective, it's a collective thing. Um, it's been kind of arbitrary so far. You know, somebody invents a new word, somebody says, uses a word differently on TikTok and it all explodes.

And so now everybody's using the word differently. and so it's happened in a very sort of, you know, ha haphazard way. And what I'm trying to. To do is say, well, you know, maybe we need to be a little more thoughtful and, not just add new words, use old words in new ways, but actually try to, to rethink how language is structured.

but we can't like say, okay, we will form a committee and they'll go do it for us, and then we'll all just, you know, obey. No, that's colonization. That is not, that is not gonna work. Um, so it has to, it has to be like generated by people for people, um, but done in such a way that, that we are understanding where we want to take it.

Um. It's, it's a very tricky process. I don't know, I don't, you know, like have a five point plan for how to make it happen. Um, we actually, we do have to come together and, and we have to start and using the language we have to invent a language we don't yet have. Uh, and that's, that's asking a lot. I mean, we were able to use, you know, the technology we had with metallurgy and electronics and, you know, fuel to get us to the moon.

So we can do things like this. But because language also mostly operates at a very unconscious level. Um. Whereas engineering does not operate at an unconscious level. Um, this is why the, the, the questioning process, we have to understand, well, what are the assumptions that I, that I have, that my culture has that are built into the way the language is structured?

And how can we, you know, like this is one of the assumptions that there's, there's one side and there's another side. How do we build in a new assumption that those two sides are actually one side, they're distinct but not separate. Um, and

it's going to take, um, bringing a lot of people from different cultures who speak different languages. To the table, you know, um, king Arthur, you know, the Knights of the Round table, his knights were from the different parts of the country and he needed their different perspectives to understand what was going on in the whole.

And so the more we can come together and share our perspectives and truly try to understand them, you know, for a, a Wall Street broker to say, go to the Amazon and try to, and, and like, get to understand like how the people in the Amazon understand how to live with the jaguars and the monkeys and the river that floods and the, you know, um, I think is is important.

Um, I mean, it's, it's important to, to open oneself to, to all those different perspectives, um, and be able to learn from people's whose perspectives are wildly different from yours. And it could just be your neighbor who's, you know, the opposite political party. There's something to learn and there's, and there's a, a, both anding or a, not just both.

I mean, we have to start somewhere. So I started with two. I started with, you know, either or in both. And, but where we're going is to multiplicity and, and getting to then be able to hold multiple perspectives. Um. So that's, I I'm not sure that actually answers your question. Uh, but it's, it's sort of my, my vision for like, where's this going next?

And, and what do we need to do to get there? And we need to come together.

So would it be fair to say that we're trying to question the water that we're swimming within in a sense? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Use language to question language. Is that sort of the praxis and, and, and even what I heard you kind of saying there and what comes up, is that when you do notice these kind of things that jar you, which often are those kind of things that you think are the opposite side of the paper, right.

Not the Mobius strip. Mm-hmm. That maybe we start to understand those are ways to know ourselves better or to deepen our connection and care. And so that becomes a different kind of. Endeavor, doesn't it? Yeah. That we're gonna then use language to know ourselves through this thing that seems like the opposite of us, that we, we seem to hate.

just that very kind of orientation comes through the questioning a bit, doesn't it? The questioning of the way that we're using this? or do I have that right? I mean, that's what I'm kind of Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. So is that a, do you see that as a way to deepen how we can care, and, I mean, this is love and philosophy, so I don't know if this word love comes into embracing paradox for you at all.

or how you, you know, if you have any experience of love relative to all this that you might want to share or, you know, what that word could possibly mean. but before we go, I just at least wanna kind of put it there and see.

love is very important.

Um, because you need, it's, it's not, it's not just a feeling. It's not just the rush of oxytocin. It, it's a field. And, and so when you're in this field and you, you actually love, let's use the metaphor of a field. If you love the meadow, then you are in, in a real connection with it. Not just like a cognitive connection, not just like an intellectual connection.

You're actually in a feeling being kind of connection. With whatever, whatever it is, the field, the forest, your house, your friends, the city.

that's that kind of transformation that we, we can't put into words exactly, but that we've been talking about this whole time of.

Taking what seems, what you've been taking for granted, right? Like, let's say the, the field, the meadow. And once you understand that it's some part of you that, uh, you're gonna get to know, then you, you start looking at it with a different way. Maybe you start looking at the soil and how you can make it healthy.

Maybe you start realizing you can grow all these amazing beings that then feed you, on this meadow. And, you know, it just becomes like a fractal possibility of, of, of things. And actually that is just from that turn of attention to considering it as part of you and as in relation with you.

So I think that's actually a really beautiful, idea there. And it's very Mobius strip, like, right? Yeah. Yeah. It is. Is there anything about the book that you wanna be sure people know or that we talk about before we go?

Um. Well, I just, I'd like to, I'd like to say that. Okay. So, so this book is, um, is,

it's not easy. It's not sitting on a beach read. Um mm-hmm. If, if you like stories. Some people like the, you know, like the cognitive challenge, if you like reading a story, you can get a lot of these same ideas in my earlier book, which is a novel, which, um, it's, it's not quite as developed as this, but the, the early and the important things, if you just wanna sit and read a story and try to get it, you know, it's, it's like philosophy.

It's, it's like, it's like the way Socrates taught, you know, he, he taught philosophy by engaging people and questioning and, and so, um, I wanted. Initially to try to engage people that way as well. So whatever your cognitive style is, if you like to learn by reading stories or if you like to learn by reading, um, you know, a, a developed set of thoughts, um, there's a book for

each

style.

The one that is both, that's a great title. I don't know that book. I haven't read that one. So that's an actual story, like that's a fiction or it's a novel. Yeah, it's fiction. Oh, that's great. I'll have to look at that. It reminds me of not one, not two, by Francisco ll it's a philosophical, very hard paper, but I love these kind of ways.

Or, or Gregory Bateson, um, takes two to no one, you know? Yeah. So there's like always three. I really love that, and I think that's, uh, another kind of Mobius strip with language. So yeah, thanks for bringing that up and yeah, thanks for, for talking with me

and thanks for having me. This has been fun. It's always wonderful to meet other people who are, um, already like in the embrace, in the paradoxical embrace.

so many people are trying to figure out a way to be in the world in this way, that embracing paradox, holding paradox or whatever. And, yeah, it's, it's good to. Get together and try to explain it from these different positions. So, and thanks, and thanks for the work you do.

I really, the book is really, uh, has so many interesting things in it, so I think people will really enjoy it.

Well, thank you Andrea. This has been a lot of fun and I really, uh, as you can see, you know, I love talking about this, so Anytime.

Okay.

Well, I really appreciate it All right. Thanks, Lisa.