Transcript: ERIK ASSADOURIAN on Dreams of the Long Future /366
Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild. I'm Ayana Young. Today we are speaking with Erik Assadourian.
Erik Assadourian It's made up of many, many species self regulating at some level, and without those other non human species we would not thrive. So recognizing that we are part of that living Earth and we have either the opportunity to live a parasitic life like we are or an actual mutualistic life where we actually could serve Gaia and improve the well-being of Gaia and many of the other species and ecosystems. That's not just a choice but a really wonderful opportunity that we've all been given.
Ayana Young Erik Assadourian is the director of the Gaian Way, a spiritual philosophy and practicing religious community. He is also a sustainability researcher and writer. Erik was a researcher with Worldwatch Institute from 2001 until its end in 2017. At Worldwatch, he directed or codirected seven books, focusing on consumerism, eco-education, global security, sustainable communities, and economic degrowth.
Well, Erik, thanks so much for being with us today. I'm really looking forward to having a cup of tea and chatting with you.
Erik Assadourian Well, my pleasure, I'm really happy to be here, Ayana, and I actually have my tea ready to go so....
Ayana Young Good. Oh, good, good, good. Yes, it's a great companion for these conversations. And as we begin to dive in, I think that I will start with asking you, if you can give listeners some background on your approach to Gaianism, and how the philosophy has shaped your life?
Erik Assadourian Sure, I would love to. I think it's been incubating for years and years, you know, both to fill a longing, perhaps, but also as a possible solution. Just to give a little background, I studied Religion and Anthropology and Psychology. Really, I think that was all driven by growing up a Christian and losing that faith and it created a hole. And I asked this question of why do people believe in superhuman beings, and me included at the time? And so I really devoted my undergraduate years answering that question. That was my culminating, final project and religion and all that. And, you know, and I kind of came to those answers and, at the same time—not that there is a definitive answer—but for myself and, at the same time, I suddenly was exposed to the sustainability crisis and really switched gears and started focusing on environmental organizing around toxins and feeling like I didn't know enough to be effective. I joined the Worldwatch Institute to start studying sustainability issues. And there, based on my undergraduate studies, everything... the lens that I saw everything through was Anthropology. The sustainability crisis, first and foremost, is a cultural crisis. This paradigm of consumerism, of growth, of empire—that is so central now to our... to dominant culture is how we relate to the world.
So, I tried to be a good sustainability researcher and write about solutions, economics, addressing corporate irresponsibility, sustainable local communities and all that. But for me, it all kept coming back to a cultural transition that we need to make to shift from a paradigm of consumerism to one of sustainability and asking the hard question of what are the levers of cultural change? Because that's not the game we're playing in the environmental community, we're doing activism, that kind of thing. We're not creating a new cultural shift, ultimately—not like corporations are promoting a shift around consumerism, that kind of thing.
So, you know, for me, a lot of my work shifted about 12 years ago as I started to kind of make these connections into this question of, well, what would a truly effective environmental movement look like? And, that really... the only model that I could really lean on was missionary, religious movements. You know, if you really look at what philosophy has shaped, the world? What philosophies have shaped the world for 1000s of years, regardless of rapid cultural changes, economic changes, technology changes, and it’s religions, right? It's Buddhism, Islam, Christianity. And we weren't really drawing from those. In fact, we were doing the opposite.
Martin Palmer, a theologian, pointed out that environmentalism kept the shame and guilt, but got rid of the celebration and joy. And that was a really striking revelation for me. And I thought, well, how do we get all that back? What would a deeper environmental philosophy that could both guide environmentalism but shape consumer choices, shaped life choices—like how many children we have, how we die, how we get married? Meaning, you know, rather than toxic embalming and burials, we actually die in a way that is restorative to the earth? How do we create that holistic environmentalism that supports community, that can spread, and that can actually make deeper and longer lasting change than the activist campaigns that had been critiqued? Frankly, since the 70s as being purely on the defensive. We stopped one coal power plant and then a company just moves somewhere else and builds another one somewhere else. So we can't play that defensive game against a much larger enemy, [unknown] are. So we have to really think much more creatively and holistically. And that's really the origins of this Gaian way.
Ayana Young I think a lot about this, quite often, almost, I'd say every single day at this point because of my own journey as a human, really, who has a strong desire to be in right relationship with the Earth, there's always this question of how much do you fight? How much do you shift culture, shift oneself within this culture that seems like maddening and so difficult to get out of? And I think you're right, you can continue fighting these resource extraction projects, but more and more will pop up even potentially in your same neighborhood. Here, where I'm working to find a mine up here in Alaska, the whole area is a mining district. So you kill one mine and another one comes up like a whack a mole game. And so what does it actually take to support a community to say no more mines, period? And then of course, there's the question of well, which communities will then be sacrificed? And it's really such a conundrum.
And it's interesting to hear where you have been looking for solace to these maddening questions. I'd love to hear more about that. And on the Gaianism website, you explained quote, "Put simply, Gaianism is a religious philosophy that grants the living Earth Gaia its rightful place at the center. Humans are not the pinnacle of evolution, but just a small and not necessarily essential part of the living Earth," end quote. I mean, you started to speak a bit about what brought you to this belief system, but I'd love to hear more about your personal journey if you want to share more details with us. What clicked for you?
Erik Assadourian Yeah, well, I think it's certainly been iterative, and it's still clicking every day. Right? So I was 100%, if not more, colonized by, you know, the consumer paradigm that I grew up in. You know, I loved my soda, and I played my video games. I was a kid of the ‘80s. I went outside a little bit, but it was pro forma—to play soccer or something, not to connect to the deep cycles of the Earth. It really wasn't until I became an environmentalist that I started to care. But I was still minimally connected, right? I was still hiking like an American, which was, you know, you have point A to point B, maybe it's a loop so you can get back to your car. You walk your five miles, and you never get off the trail and you never connect with what the names of the species are let alone their life cycles of the rest of it.
So I think saving the Earth was an intellectual battle for me for a long time where I recognized that if humans want to survive—because it's not really about saving the Earth, it's about saving people—and the many species that are now poised to be lost because of our choices. It was trapped in that kind of intellectual framework. But as I started to connect with the Earth, not even on purpose at first, I actually joined—this was a formative moment… I joined the Tom Brown Jr.'s An Introduction to Tracking and Nature Connection, indigenous ways, and you get this one week bombardment of all the ancient skills that people have used to survive for millennia. And he actually warns you at the beginning of the class that you'll never be able to walk through a forest the same way again, and it really was true. I mean, I was connecting to the land and to ancient practices and to the things that are all around you that you can eat and connect with and be in relationship with. And that really was a spiritual moment for me.
And then that kind of was happening right as I was starting to write about all this as a cultural phenomenon and in overtime at Worldwatch, I started really writing more radically about these issues. You know you talked about mines moving, ultimately, you know, the real crisis behind the environmental crisis is that there are a billion of us all being encouraged to live consumer lifestyles at different levels or another. I mean, there are some exceptions, but for the most part. And we're far beyond the carrying capacity of Earth because of these choices. So the mines are going to move because we keep stimulating consumerism. So until we shift this culture and recognize that degrowth is a process of to a new carrying capacity at a level that will work for 8 billion, 9 billion, 10 billion, which is a trajectory we're on, we're not going to actually effectively solve the environmental crisis. So for me Gaianism is a religious practice and spiritual community. First and foremost, but it's also very much rooted in the sciences. It's very much thisworldly, right? The axis mundi, if you will, of this belief system is not another world, it's not a god, it's Gaia. It's the living Earth that we're part of and completely dependent on. So it's very much thisworldly, and it's very much a sacred calling to heal, not just the Earth, but our relationship with the earth.
Ayana Young Mmhmm, I do want to understand why you see this as a religious practice. Yeah, what you were speaking about around Gaianism, and how that's different from just living, so to speak, or philosophy.
Erik Assadourian I mean, for me, you can mince words about that but it really is an orienting philosophy, right? Like Christianity, it gives a... provides an understanding of the theories of suffering in the world. It provides stories that support the right choices. It provides ethics and that holistic orientation that hopefully helps to ground choices and even at a way that makes that behavior normalized within that sub community. Right. So it's one thing to have to explain to family every time you don't want to fly with them to a vacation or you want to keep the heat down. You have to kind of intellectually explain why I care so much about the Earth. It's another when you're in a community, that people all do that. Right? And so this is a kind of a challenge that many environmentalists face as individuals, right? They have to constantly justify why they don't want to consume or why they don't want to upgrade their computer, or whatever the thing is, and that's exhausting. Right? And so are there ways that being bound by a philosophical set of obligations but not just obligations, but opportunities? Joys? Right, so a lot of and I hope, we will have a chance to talk about some of the practices of guidance and but a lot of it is, is joyful, right? Getting out into nature, meditating, fasting with the full moons, and all these opportunities that really reconnect us to this living Earth that we're part of.
I mean, like deep ecology, that was an attempt to provide principles and shape a different way of environmentalism. And I think this is similar to that, but I do think that it's an upgrade to that system in the sense that, at that time, there was no Gaia theory, there was no understanding that the earth is really a holobiont made up of many, many species self regulating at some level, not consciously, necessarily, but at least keeping itself in a homeostasis to sustain life, right. Just like our own bodies, we are not just human, we are human plus even more non human cells, and that together makes a holobiont, and that is us. And without those other non-human species, we would not thrive. So recognizing that we are part of that living Earth, and we have either the opportunity to live a parasitic life like we are, or an actual mutualistic life where we actually could serve Gaia and improve the well-being of Gaia and many of the other species and ecosystems. That's not just a choice, but a really wonderful opportunity that we've all been given a gift.
Ayana Young In terms of population, I have heard about this term degrowth, where the rate of population is slowing down from what it was doesn't mean we won't hit 9 billion, it just... the rate at which we'll get to 9 billion is slower than how we got to seven point whatever billion we are now. So that's kind of interesting. And what would we do if we wanted to slow the rate of population growth or consumerism for that matter? I'm interested to tease apart how you see that being implemented or playing out? Is it consciousness shift? Is it government restrictions? Like how would we even get there, if we as a collective wanted to get there?
Erik Assadourian the degrowth movement especially, really, has implemented a taboo against talking even about population degrowth. And they're very much focused on economic degrowth, which I find interesting. I recognize that it's very hard to talk about population trajectories going down without a whole bunch of other baggage. And so that's a very big risk. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it. Because if we don't intentionally choose to move our populations back to a sustainable level then the Earth does it for us, and it will be more horrible and more unjust than anything that we intentionally do. And there's wonderful research on how to without taking away anybody's rights or harming anyone, how to actually encourage population reductions. Alan Weisman's book on the subject Countdown—this is the name—has this wonderful double chapter, one on China and the horrors of the one child policy and one on Iran. Where I mean, it doesn't sound like a positive story is coming out of that, but they really had... family planning experts going to midwives just going to each village setting up a little clinic, fully just through education and access to contraception, they brought the population down dramatically and humanely and justly.
So I think if we actually—instead of banning access to abortion and talking about abstinence only in high schools—in this country, for example, actually gave better access to contraception, talked about what's called comprehensive sexuality education in every school from elementary to high school. There's a whole model that's done in Europe, Amsterdam, Netherlands—is one of the kind-of the leaders—where you have age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education from kindergarten to high school, and when you do that, teenage pregnancy drops dramatically. People are making those choices for themselves and it's going to reduce population over time.
Ayana Young Many of the Indigenous folks that I've had on the podcast have spoken to being in a type of collaboration with the Earth, an interdependence, a type of stewardship relationship, and of course, humans within capitalism have really lost that type of relationship. Yeah, it challenges the idea that the Earth doesn't need us or the Earth would be better off without us. I'm not putting weight on any of these philosophies. I'm actually curious of how you would respond to that. And maybe as a second part of that we could start talking about practices because I think stewardship is a practice. I think being in an interdependent relationship with earth is very much an everyday practice. And just wanted to read a little quote from your website, quote, "The Gaian Way is a practicing spiritual philosophy, which includes practices like daily meditation, weekly forest meditations, rituals, like moon fasting and following the wheel of the year. Many of these are done in community from local forest meditation groups to a text chain to support those doing moon fasting. Understanding that helps show how we're trying to live these ideas and share them with others," end quote. So if you wouldn't mind walking us through the practices and maybe blending in this response to interdependence.
Erik Assadourian I would love to. I would say there's kind of three opportunities or three ways we can interact with the Earth, right? I mean, there's the parasitic way that is the dominant way now. There's interdependence. But at… even at the heart, though, that suggests that we are an equal player, right? There's a dependence, we are dependent on her. That's, I think, the last part, and that we've forgotten as we pollute and pollute, and we only now start to see the systems unravel. But I think where we're trying to aim for is that interdependence, right? When I daydream about the long future, I think that we could truly give something back to the Earth. Right? Right now we're only taking, but, you know, there is a scenario where we could actually protect the Earth from asteroids, right? If we married this kind of sustaining and sustainable culture with enough technology where we can actually redirect the asteroid, the planet killing asteroids.
But even more, if we think really long term, if we let ourselves dream that humans could be here for several 100,000 years or even a million years, could we extend the planetary organisms lifespan? Right? As the sun warms, there will be a point where the earth cannot survive, right? Could we use effective forestry and stewardship and what Indigenous people have been doing forever of strengthening soils and spreading different plants? Could we actually make this Gaian being live longer than she would have if we weren't around? So there is an actual place where we could be truly interdependent and actually a value to the earth, and that's what I hope we strive for.
As far as practices, I think that's a little bit more grounded, than that kind of long term hope. But you know, really, if you're not creating behaviors and daily practices and weekly and monthly practices, you know, that is at the heart of any practicing religion or philosophy, right? So at the very basic is a daily routine of meditating outside three times a day, right? It's not enough, I don't think, to meditate in your house, right, you have to really step out of this manufactured landscape or housescape, I should say, and get outside and observe the natural cycles and breathe fresh air or polluted air, if that's where you live, right, just to remind you of that as well. But, but really have that meditative moment, ideally, three times a day, at least in the morning to start your day. And then a weekly cycle of getting out into a natural space, ideally, with a community, right?
I mean, we do have three working Gaian guilds, one in New Orleans, one in Honolulu, and one in Connecticut. Why there? Well, that's where we have Gaians who wanted to set those up. So I hope one day there will be more. But you know, those meet weekly in a local park in a wooded area nearby, urban center, you know, some place where they can spend a little time in nature and meditate and connect as a community. Right. So there's that daily, there's the weekly, there's the monthly or twice monthly of fasting with the full and new moon. And yes, we do have a text chain just to keep nudging people along. right? That social support is really potent. When somebody says Hey, just starting my fast. Good luck, right? It's like, Oh, I was... I'm really hungry, I don't want to fast but oh, I'm in community, I'm going to do it together. And fasting for me has been really one of the more powerful experiences where it not only helps you to reduce your consumption by 230, so 1/15 of your monthly consuming, right? So there's that. There's increasing of your resilience because we've already destroyed so much of Earth's systems and climate disruptions will disrupt agriculture, will disrupt food trade, and all that stuff. And so having the ability to know that you'll be okay, if you're fasting for a while, that you don't have access immediately to food. That's a powerful bit of resilience and it's a good practice. So the fact that fasting has been an ancient spiritual practice for millennia, I mean, it is really... there's some value, plus the physiological benefits of clearing out the sugars and waste products in your body.
So there's many levels of... for all the practices, same with meditation. There's lots and lots of science behind the psychological value and physiological value of meditation. So this is not just a kind of a cherry-picked, "let's take a little of this religion and that religion." This is borrowing from these ancient traditions to build something new and unique and reinforcing of our dependence and our obligation to serve this living Earth that we're a part of.
Ayana Young Yeah, and thinking through the layers of religious complexity, beauty and trauma throughout history, I'm wondering what you think our modern times calls for in terms of religion?
Erik Assadourian Well, there's the vision for what we can be and there's also the preparation for what we have to go through. You know, we have lots of different Gaian meditations. One of my favorites is the tree meditation, where you're literally being a tree, and it's quite a nice connecting thing. But there's also a collapse meditation, right, just to kind of visualize going through collapse, just like fasting. I mean, that's... we're going to go through disruptions if we're not already. I mean, many people in many parts of the world are already fully in this…. Probably crisis, but, you know, to go through that and to not panic while you're in that will help in this transition.
So, so, there's multiple layers, right? So there's this kind of these practices, there's the visualizing of how to get through the transition with our humanity intact, right? And some of that is preserving practices that have almost been lost or are only being refound. Now, like, I mean, I think of midwifery, right. The difference between having midwifery as a cultural tool, and not is the difference between high levels of infant mortality and not, right? And so if we lose that, like we lost it in the United States for a long time, I mean, it's coming back now. I know Ina May Gaskin kind of helped bring that back, as did others.
So there's these questions of can a philosophy, especially in these disruptions, be a reserve for the most important cultural knowledge? And the answer is absolutely, yes. I mean, Christian monasteries did that. Buddhist monasteries did that in disruptions. So that's where we are now. And I think holding some of that information—permaculture is another obvious one there. Protecting these essential sources of knowledge will be very important, as well as providing that vision of where we go, and what we can really do as an ecocentric civilization.
Ayana Young Yeah, of course, I love believing that we can shift and change and prepare for an unruly future, one that we are already in, and that we can shift the course of our human trajectory and Earth's ecosystems. I guess I've come to a place where solutions seem more and more problematic. And I wonder if this time is about being quiet or being still, even metaphorically to start with? Because I worry about… of the confusion and the exhaustion that comes from trying to take all of this in, and then do things here and do things there and try this out, try that up. I mean, I very much have been in that boat. So you can really from my own experience of feeling so much grief when I learned about the realities of our time, and then trying all these different methods, and then coming out the other side and going Hmm, wow, I feel further away from believing it's possible than I started with. So I don't mean to be pessimistic, but I do wonder, how do we not get in the throes of that glossy solution narrative thinking? Whether it's about joining a group or practicing a religion or being a part of solution-oriented projects? How do we find this type of spiritual fortitude in the mystery, in the not knowing, in the stillness that feels to me like there's some truth in that?
Erik Assadourian Yeah, and I don't think I disagree. I don't see us getting to solutions. I don't see The Great Turning as realistic in the lifespan of us. I see The Great Unraveling as inevitable, right? But that's not a source of pessimism or that's not a ‘wring your hands’ and say, We're doomed. It's a.. Michael Dowd, the late Michael Dowd used to call it the postdoom perspective, right, where it's just... we accept that we have gone way beyond carrying capacity and there is going to be a significant societal collapse.
And, then, there's like a freedom in asking, Well, how do we plan for the next cycle? You know, one of those books that sticks with me is this science fiction novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, right, where there was a collapse, in that case this to start the book, but in that case, it was triggered by a nuclear apocalypse, right? But, the Christian monastery monasteries hold on to the knowledge and over time, civilization was rebuilt. But, oops, empire formed again and nuclear bombs were built again and the world was destroyed again, right? So we have this moment where we are at the peak of civilization, we see collapse is coming. The question: is there any way that we can shape the next upturn so that we actually stop going up at a certain level and stay in balance in an egocentric system? And that's the long thinking and that's not really what the conversation in the Gaian community is over and over. I think that's where I'm going with this conversation with you. But ultimately, we're not talking solutions when we're gathering. We're being in community. We're celebrating the wheel of the year. We're, you know, encouraging each other to stick to their fast and enjoy their meditation. And you know, so there's truly that community that is coming out of shared practices, right? And that's something I certainly missed. I mean, as a Christian, I… that shapes the year right? You go to Christmas Eve mass and you go to Easter and the priests wash your feet on the Thursday before Easter, and it's like all these great beautiful rituals that punctuate the year.
But we don't actually need all those artifices, really. I mean, the Earth punctuates the year right and you know, the wheel of the year with the spring equinox and the summer solstice, and, and on and on. I mean, that beauty of this… of this annual cycle is so powerful and it really shapes ritual, annual cycles in our community, but it ultimately does for everybody, right? [unknown], every Chinese New Year, those are spring equinox celebrations, right? It's just that we've repackaged them. The dominant religions have ultimately repackaged all those wheel of the year celebrations to sustain them themselves. But ultimately so much of Gaianism is really about being present, being connected to the Earth, recognizing that every breath that we take connects us to the Earth, every morsel of food is... we're part of this living Earth system. Sometimes consciousness gets in the way of that, but, ultimately, the spiritual practice is about reminding us of that inevitable truth.
Ayana Young Yeah. And maybe another inevitable truth we could speak to is understanding human suffering. And you've talked a lot about how across religion, there is a question of why we suffer and what that suffering means. And I'd like to think through this question with you in the context of the climate crisis and the unequal and unfathomable levels of suffering happening across the world right now.
Erik Assadourian Yeah, I mean, for me, my theodicy, my theory of suffering, certainly shaped by a little report we did at Worldwatch Institute 20 years ago called “Unnatural Disasters,” right? And it was all trying to draw out that many natural disasters today are unnatural, right, because of climate change, because of the way we built on coasts, because of human choices. And I would say that there is natural suffering, because we are alive, we suffer, right? I mean, we are part of a living system where some systems are in competition with other systems and that we are, you know, things get imbalanced.
And so, we are going to suffer and part of the guiding philosophy is really about accepting those types of suffering, right? Accepting that if I go in the woods, and this is a real experience, I might get Lyme disease, which I did, and not panicking. And, you know, accepting that or accepting that my body is breaking down as I get older, and there will be days where I can't walk very well because of back issues, and that kind of thing. And those are minor sufferings compared to what's going on now but those are the inevitable normal sufferings, right? That we just have to endure, and accept.
Then there's that whole new layer of unnatural sufferings that aren't all that new. I mean, the newest ones are climate disasters and that, but we've been experiencing the exploitation and suffering driven by either greed or economic practices, or however you want to frame that. And that is the suffering that can readily, readily be addressed all the time. I mean, it's not of course, the dominant system thrives on it and actually requires it to thrive. But those types of suffering have to be addressed. I mean, there is no sustainability without justice as the saying goes, and that's true, right? Because if there is that continuing injustice there will be anger and resentment and violence. And you can't have that in a sustainable, thriving system. So, for me, I mean, there's the two types of suffering and teasing those apart makes it a lot clearer how to address each of them.
Ayana Young I am wondering how can this distinction between natural and unnatural suffering reframe how we view crisis and contribute to a more justice base lens of addressing suffering?
Erik Assadourian Well, even in the context of climate change where we've committed now, probably to at least two degrees Celsius of climate change, there's no way we're holding it to one and a half, just because of sheer momentum. More likely, three degrees, right. But that means coastlines are going to be lost, and they're not going to be held. And so the idea of building... continuing to build on them is nonsensical. And it's just going to cause human suffering in the future, right. So if we were truly recognizing that we are in control of certain types of suffering---the development choices we make, for example, and making those shifts--that would be an easy way to start addressing the unnatural forms of suffering.
You know, that going back to population, right. We inevitably are going to get to a smaller population so if we were intentionally and justly working towards stabilizing human population at 8 billion. We are at a billion already. And ideally getting to stabilize by eight and a half billion and then starting to pull it down to 7-6-5 over the course of several lifetimes that would enable a lot less human suffering because we would be getting closer to earth's carrying capacity. Again, we won't make those logical choices, most likely, because there's too much power and wealth that are working in the other direction. But you can have a philosophy talking about and working towards creating a different vision of what good society could look like.
Ayana Young In so many ways, we've been discussing the idea of the necessary paradigm shift. And I'm interested in how religion interacts with a paradigm shift, either as a driving force or as the very thing that keeps us stuck. And I'm wondering how we keep ourselves from being constrained by an ideology or just simply repeating old patterns as we look to shift towards a new relationship with the world?
Erik Assadourian Yeah, that's a key question. And it's both. obviously. I mean, I think you have the dominant religions today are otherworldly, they are not saying... even you use the word earlier stewardship, right? That's not a good for her. Because again, it puts us into this idea that we are more dominant, rather than dependent, right. I like actually, the Confucian term filial piety. Right, as you know, we have obligation to take care of our parents, and in this case, our planetary parent, that really shifts the tone and dynamic. For the most part, though, religions today have this false belief—and sorry if I offend anybody—but that we all go to heaven when we're done or we're reincarnated and come back again, rather than just celebrating the reality that we return to the Earth. We go back, and we become new life, not conscious of that anymore, but we are caught forever in the cycle of death and rebirth and renewal. And that's beautiful in its own right. If you know if anything, it's Nirvana in the Buddhist sense, where we do fully lose ourselves in that process. There's no karmic wheel anymore. We just go back and we form butterflies and bacteria and mosquitoes and flowers, whatever we become.
But ultimately, the dominant religions have this... sustain this separation of humans from nature. And that's a real dangerous position to be in, especially as Earth's systems change. My fear more than anything is that we demonize the Earth as the earth becomes more volatile. And the earth is becoming more volatile, not because she's getting revenge or anything like that. It's because we've pumped more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is, you know, creating more evaporation and more storms and all that. So it's easy with this otherworldly frame of many religions to easily demonize the Earth and create fear, and use that fear to lock people even closer into the community.
This... I mean, all religions have the danger of being corrupted. I mean, we're, we're so tiny that that is not the issue right now. But the... from my perspective an Earth-centric religion, and not just this one, but others, there are many others that are forming as we speak. Those Earth centric religions that start to recognize that we, as a community, could do more if we nurtured each other, if we put the Earth's rights and well-being at the center rather than our consumptive desires, or our hopes for an afterlife. That is the power, right? I mean, I think you hinted at the burnout of activists earlier. And I think the difference between activists fighting and trying to get to solutions outside of the nurturing of a community, you burn out, right? But if you actually are doing that activism in the safe space of a community that's nurturing you, celebrations that keep you engaged, nature time that keeps you psychologically vivid, that is a very different scenario—that holistic philosophy that is the that skeletal structure that holds you in a good space as you fight for whatever solutions you're fighting for. That makes a huge difference, I think. And that's, that's the power of a religious framing around environmentalism that I think is lacking right now.
Ayana Young You cite our beloved Joanna Macy a lot. And you're thinking around these shifts, and I'm interested in how her work has shaped you and how you see Gaianism fitting in with a longer lineage of philosophers and thinkers?
Erik Assadourian That's a great question. When I first started writing about this, I heard her On Being, actually, and she was talking about how, when your friend is dying, you don't go and sit by her bed and say, Everything's gonna be alright. It's gonna be alright. No, you just sit there, and you just be there for that friend. And that was that striking moment because I was fully rooted in the solutions orientation at that time, that was 2012 or so. I was writing about degrowth and cultural change, and all that. And that kind of woke me up as I was starting to work on this. And I do think that's powerful. But I also think that it's that philosophical community, as it grows, that can amplify some of this work much more effectively.
I know you had Molly Young Brown on recently, and she talked about nuclear guardianship. And I've... I tried to actually engage in that realm, through this guy in lens and found exactly one local organization working on nuclear guardianship in the United States, in Colorado. And I wonder, you know, since the beginning, reading about the Quakers as a beautiful example—always a small community, and yet, they have been a driving force for the abolition movement, the anti nuclear movement, civil rights movement. And to kind of recognize that when you have a really committed philosophical community or a religious community, they can really have much more effect than you'd think that that small group could have. And so nuclear guardianship is such a perfect example, because there are so many potential nuclear scars that will speckle the landscape and those will be forgotten very quickly. And it's... I can imagine 100 scenarios where people go into that land which is slightly more fertile. Start using those bricks and concrete blocks for building and horrible suffering will happen because of it. So you… we'd certainly need nuclear guardianship and we need memory keepers around this. And I don't think that nuclear guardianship will grow without some sort of long-lived, religious, philosophical community, sustaining that. It could be Christians, it could be Muslims, or whatever. But I imagine an ecocentric religion would probably get it more, but that's maybe my bias.
But the bigger point is that if you don't have these longer time-framed organizations—which environmental communities, environment organizations are not—they're fighting short term for short term victories, heavily shaped by the philanthropic communities and their donors and all that. Is there a way we can have a deeper form of environmentalism that is working at timescales that we typically fail to think in?
Ayana Young Yeah, I really appreciate you speaking Joanna's presence into this conversation. She's been a huge influence, totally shaped me in so many ways, and Molly Young Brown. And so it's nice to bring them into this conversation.
And I want to come back to our conversation on practices a bit more because I think there's something relieving about being able to attach to the material. In so much, you know, esoteric conversations, things that feel deep and heady but then to balance that with the material world is really, I think, relieving for many of us. And I'm wondering about the more practical side of cultivating a relationship with nature or the Earth as well, especially as we come to face the consequences of our consumers’ worldview. In the Following the Gaian Way, you write, "What Gaian Way offers is this: a reminder that we are part of an utterly dependent on the living Earth, and it provides ways to fully understand and embrace this from parables and a sense of purpose to practices across the day, week, month, year, and lifetime." And you spoke a little bit about these basic survival skills, maybe fasting being one of them. If you could speak to how can basic survival skills serve as both a key to building a livable future, and also to cultivating a spiritual awareness?
Erik Assadourian Yeah, the spiritual awareness feels more tangible in the seat I'm sitting, which is very much rooted in a consumer culture. You know, very few people are going to see the immediate value of making a fire with a bow drill when matches and lighters are so ever present. And maybe passing that down will one day be valuable again, but there was a moment of sheer ecstasy when I first made a fire with a bow drill. You know, just to be able to understand that I shaped that piece of wood. I made that bow. I spun and spun and used friction and science and ancient skills that had been passed on for millennia to make a coal out of wood dust, and I cried. I mean I literally was so emotional with that moment that I cried and it was one of those beautiful moments of nature connection. And there have been many since then, I mean, just foraging and asking permission of a sassafras seedling to take its life to make tea for the forest bathers in the little forest bathing group that I teach each month here in Middletown.
Those kinds of moments where I'm fully embedded in the natural landscape that I'm part of, rather than just driving through it at 65 miles an hour, which is 90% of even my time and 99% perhaps of most people's time. And,you know, to find ways to not just occasionally reconnect, but to really be connected daily, right? So being outside and I mean, I sit on my little back stoop and I look at the same river birch, you know, 365 days a year. Sometimes it's snowing in my face. Sometimes it's cold. Sometimes it's hot. Sometimes the mosquitoes join me. You know, it doesn't matter. I'm outside every morning, at least, and watching that river birch and seeing it go through its lifecycle. And I mean, I've even written about that river birch, because it's isolated, right? It's trapped in the middle of three backyards, and it's out of community, right? It's stunted to some degree, right? And that's a beautiful metaphor for where we are, right.
Even the most excited Gaian is most likely living primarily a consumer life, even if they don't, if they don't want to, right. We're just... we're trapped by the infrastructures that we're part of, by the relationships that we're in. So we make the best choices that we can and to have a community supporting that, to nudging you, to make even stronger choices, to be able to pull up and call on practices that are no longer conscious, but they're starting to become part of you. Right? So this... the idea of not meditating in the morning to start my day is uncomfortable at this point, right? In the beginning, it was work. Now it's work and discomfort to not do it. Right. And that's what religion offers in its own right, right? This kind of idea that you start to systematize these behaviors or unconscious-ify them right where they become just part of you, rather than you have to say, Oh, should I should I eat that extra dessert? Right? But when you have the systems in place and say, Well, I'm not going to because enough is abundance. You know, it's those kind-of unconscious kind-of framers that help you to go through life and not constantly be tempted by all the consumer opportunities around you.
Ayana Young Yeah, it's really a challenge. And it makes sense. It's a multibillion dollar industry to lure us into consumer choices and so it takes a ton of willpower and I think spiritual fortitude to turn the other way, whether it's from the dessert or the new shiny thing that we really don't care about. But still it has such a powerful pull and I think filling our time with other practices that are regenerative and fill that need for connection or that space for presence in our life is really so important.
And I'm really grateful for this conversation, Erik, and happy we got to spend some time together. And of course there are so many questions left unasked. But as we wrap up, if there's any other topics you wanted to mention, or any ways that you'd like to close this conversation, the floor is yours.
Erik Assadourian Thank you. This was really great to join you. One thing I would say, just an invitation to all your listeners to join us for some conversations we have. One of the main practices that I had…. didn't talk about…. is just the opportunity to learn about Gaia. Right, so we set up lots of book conversations, discussions with authors. We're actually just launching the Gaian Degrowth Pod, the GDP, to talk about degrowth. So there are lots of opportunities to connect with our community and if anyone is interested, gaianism.org is the best way to learn more and to connect with us.
Ayana Young Wonderful, thanks so much, Erik.
Erik Assadourian You bet. My pleasure.
Evan Tenenbaum Thanks for listening to For The Wild. The music you heard today was by Algorhythm.Code. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, Jackson Kroopf, José Alejandro Rivera, and Evan Tenenbaum.