Episode 47
Follow The Host
Rewind: Ecological Intelligence & Oika Art
What if our connection with nature could be restored using art, ecology, and technology? That’s exactly what Dr. Rich Blundell has achieved through his company, Oika. Join us as we journey with Dr. Blundell into the cosmic mysteries of the universe and how the earliest light patterns have influenced the evolution of stars and galaxies, and our existence today. We will also explore the intriguing relationship between temperatures and energy levels in the early universe and how this dance of cosmic forces relates to our bonds today.
Discover the mind-bending concept of Oika, the intelligence of nature manifested through human thought and action. Let's delve into how Terence McKenna's exploration of psychedelics and scientific discoveries about the natural world lead us to this exciting realm of intelligence. Oika, as we'll find, is a potent force that can help us heal from our collective traumas and injustices. We'll also touch on the role of artists in sparking change and delve into the Gratitude Map, a structure that helps us experience nature's communication and cultivate gratitude.
But that’s not all we'll uncover. Dr. Blundell will share how Oika uses NFT technology to create an innovative bridge between art and ecological restoration. From bird habitat wetlands in Spain to coral reef restoration on Lamu Island, Kenya, you'll get an insider's view into Oika's inspiring efforts. And lastly, we'll discuss two visionary organizations, Torque United and Citizen Remote, that are revolutionizing international collaboration and creating a borderless world. Prepare yourself for an exhilarating journey of discovery, insight, and inspiration that is guaranteed to expand your mind.
Topics of Discussion
Rich’s Resources
About The Show
Thoughts of a Random (Citizen Remote Podcast) is a podcast oriented around open ideas, entrepreneurship, travel, investing, politics, philosophy, and an odd take on history. Together with Toarc United & Citizen Remote we talk with thought leaders from all around the world to stir the innovative mind. This podcast specifically talks about the importance of having an international perspective, the ins and outs of the business world, the entrepreneurial life, the digital nomad life, investing and ways to enjoy life in the new age.
Businesses worldwide have very quickly oriented themselves around freelancing, digital nomads, remote workers, and diluting borders. If you'd like to find out how you can benefit on an individual or entrepreneurial level from that change, this podcast is for you & Citizen Remote can help.
If you’re a startup, needing to find useful tools, wanting to build custom software or generally struggling with the next steps you should be taking to optimize your companies bottom line Toarc United can help.
Like the show?? Please leave a Review! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Apple Reviews
Spotify Reviews
Episode 47
Follow The Host
Rewind: Ecological Intelligence & Oika Art
What if our connection with nature could be restored using art, ecology, and technology? That’s exactly what Dr. Rich Blundell has achieved through his company, Oika. Join us as we journey with Dr. Blundell into the cosmic mysteries of the universe and how the earliest light patterns have influenced the evolution of stars and galaxies, and our existence today. We will also explore the intriguing relationship between temperatures and energy levels in the early universe and how this dance of cosmic forces relates to our bonds today.
Discover the mind-bending concept of Oika, the intelligence of nature manifested through human thought and action. Let's delve into how Terence McKenna's exploration of psychedelics and scientific discoveries about the natural world lead us to this exciting realm of intelligence. Oika, as we'll find, is a potent force that can help us heal from our collective traumas and injustices. We'll also touch on the role of artists in sparking change and delve into the Gratitude Map, a structure that helps us experience nature's communication and cultivate gratitude.
But that’s not all we'll uncover. Dr. Blundell will share how Oika uses NFT technology to create an innovative bridge between art and ecological restoration. From bird habitat wetlands in Spain to coral reef restoration on Lamu Island, Kenya, you'll get an insider's view into Oika's inspiring efforts. And lastly, we'll discuss two visionary organizations, Torque United and Citizen Remote, that are revolutionizing international collaboration and creating a borderless world. Prepare yourself for an exhilarating journey of discovery, insight, and inspiration that is guaranteed to expand your mind.
Topics of Discussion
Rich’s Resources
About The Show
Thoughts of a Random (Citizen Remote Podcast) is a podcast oriented around open ideas, entrepreneurship, travel, investing, politics, philosophy, and an odd take on history. Together with Toarc United & Citizen Remote we talk with thought leaders from all around the world to stir the innovative mind. This podcast specifically talks about the importance of having an international perspective, the ins and outs of the business world, the entrepreneurial life, the digital nomad life, investing and ways to enjoy life in the new age.
Businesses worldwide have very quickly oriented themselves around freelancing, digital nomads, remote workers, and diluting borders. If you'd like to find out how you can benefit on an individual or entrepreneurial level from that change, this podcast is for you & Citizen Remote can help.
If you’re a startup, needing to find useful tools, wanting to build custom software or generally struggling with the next steps you should be taking to optimize your companies bottom line Toarc United can help.
Like the show?? Please leave a Review! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Apple Reviews
Spotify Reviews
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Thoughts of a Random Citizen. This is actually an episode that you might have already heard before if you've been a listener from the start. This is because we are currently in the process of repurposing all of our old podcast episodes and cleaning up the entire feed. These changes will allow listeners to enjoy the best episodes and highlight the most insightful content. Now, if you're newer to this podcast and wondering where to find, or why you can't find, season 1 and 2, don't worry. They'll eventually be available on our website, torquianadacom. We do some fun, tear-i-say, innovative things with them, but stay tuned for that. In the meantime, we plan to release rewines every other week to repurpose older podcast episodes. This will simply just allow listeners to revisit classic content from insightful and featured guests and enjoy it in a new light at a different time in their life, to hopefully provide a new perspective. But at the end of the day, it's our intention to bring the best possible content to you. So enjoy this repurposed rewind, but at the end of the day, sticks and stones people break your bones. The word shouldn't really hurt you. I'm the kind of person who really likes to get to the bottom of things, and I don't let my own belief system get in the way of fact, it's one of the most important financial centers in the world by the terms of freedom of speech, expression and civil liberties and self-defeatorship. All right, welcome back to another episode of Thoughts of a Random Citizen.
Speaker 1:Today we pick up right where we left off last week with part two of our episode with Dr Rich Blundell. We discuss things such as his company in Oika, how they interact with artists and NFT technology, as well as the broader scope of ecology in general. If you are new to this podcast, welcome and enjoy. However, you're probably going to want to check out part one, or in a few seconds, when we dive right in, you're probably going to be a bit confused. So, without further ado, enjoy the episode. Speaking of those, that kind of holistic view, I know you did this amazing artwork with AI from the beginning of Light Waves and it was a bit of a my head, but essentially, can you talk a bit about the connection from that variation of temperatures from the beginning of whatever?
Speaker 2:Again, I'm not a scientist, guys, so I apologize, but okay, now I think I'll see if I can do this, you know, in a way that's standable. So there is this phenomenon that science has discovered. It's called the cosmic microwave background radiation. We know this because we send up these satellites that are tuned to see in the microwave band of light. And when we do that and we let them take a 360 degree picture of the whole universe, the sky, what they reveal is this pattern of the earliest light of the universe. Okay, so the universe is 13.8 billion years old.
Speaker 2:Okay, right after the Big Bang, it was super hot, super dense. Matter couldn't exist. Light was constantly going in and out of its different forms. It was a plasma, it was this chaotic moment, but as it was expanding, it was cooling. When it got to a certain critical temperature, when it cooled just enough, suddenly light could take a discrete form called photon. So suddenly, now the universe is filled with photons, but because there's nothing for those photons to reflect off of, it's completely dark. We live at 380,000 years. We, suddenly the universe went dark. It's called the moment of recombination, when all the physical forces came together as photons, then they scattered, but because there's nothing in the universe, it's transparent and dark. Okay, we sent up this satellite that can see in microwave light and as it looks out into space, it looks back in time and it looks all the way back into that moment when that cooling event happened, this recombination event happened, and what it sees, what the satellite sees, is the wall of light behind which the Big Bang is, behind which is all that plasma, which is opaque. We can't see through it. It's bright white light and then it went dark and what we're seeing is what's called the surface of last scattering.
Speaker 2:Anyway, if you look at, if you look this up, you'll see this pattern. It's called the cosmic microwave background radiation. It's an oval shape because it's actually the inside surface of a sphere and when you project that on a flat surface it looks like an oval. But what's important about that that microwave cosmic background radiation number one is that it's there, which means that most of our models for how the universe evolved, they're consistent. They agree with what we see, this thing that we see in the sky.
Speaker 2:But what's interesting about this pattern is that there is a pattern at all. In other words, it's not uniform. There's blotches of color. There's blotches, and the colors represent different temperatures and energy levels in the early universe. It's not uniform, which means that one spot in the early universe is different than another spot in the universe. In this case it's temperature. This temperature over here is different from that temperature over there. If they had been the same temperature, there'd be no opportunity for a relationship between those two points. But because of that difference, now we have a relationship. We have a relationship between this temperature and that temperature. If they're the same, there's no relationship.
Speaker 2:Now it turns out that the whole universe as we experience it today is built on the evolution of those relationships. The first relationships of light evolved into the earliest stars. That's how that relationship manifests. As stars, those stars congregated into galaxies. Those galaxies had stars in them that went supernova-created planetary systems On some planets, or at least one that we know of life emerged. And here we are, the entire history of the universe, in fact my relationship to you right now, which is just nascent. We've never actually met, but we do have a relationship. Our relationship is inherent all the way back to those previous relationships. Do you see what I mean If the universe hadn't unfolded the way that it did? But it did unfold that way, which means that our relationship traces its ancestry all the way back to the cosmic background radiation. The point is that that's an incredibly powerful image. That image of the cosmic background radiation can teach you how deeply interconnected and related everything really is.
Speaker 2:So I took that image and I tell this story about how that radiation evolved into us. I tried to take an artistic approach to telling that story. So what I did was I took the cosmic microwave background radiation image, fed it into an AI, into a neural network, an image neural network. What this neural network does is it takes an image and a text string that I generated, a text string of a concept that I created, compares the two things, and it goes back and forth between these two endpoints algorithmically and it modifies the image to try and match the text string.
Speaker 2:This is just how some neural networks work, and I let that run. I let that run thousands and thousands of iterations and as it did, it mimicked the cosmic evolution. It took the cosmic background microwave radiation and it let it evolve into a piece of art that it generated, given its limited sort of parameters. Now, granted, that's what you would call a teleological system, because I actually gave it an endpoint which is not really legit. That's not really legit in science, but the idea is just that it is an artistic treatment that shows how the cosmic background microwave radiation can evolve into all the complexity that we see today, and that's what those art pieces that you're referring to are trying to do. I'm not sure if that made any sense or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the second time. After I heard it it makes a bit more sense. So anyone else didn't get it out there, just replay it.
Speaker 2:Well, the idea there is that that I'm working in alliance with nature. So I go out into nature, into natural places, and I listen, I let it communicate, then I bring that intelligence, that it's communicated to me, into the AI, I become the conduit of that intelligence and I feed it into the artificial intelligence which is a misnomer, by the way, because that artificial intelligence is really just an extension of human intelligence, which is an extension of nature's intelligence. So the fact that we call it artificial intelligence, it's kind of a myth. There's only one intelligence. It just happens to take different forms, anyway, so the point of that exercise is to kind of have this conversation. It's to bring this conversation into the art community.
Speaker 1:Well, again, it's really amazing photos that were designed by AI. It's just kind of mind-blowing. So hopefully we can post a link that'll allow people to see that, because I recommend it. But kind of speaking on that connection, in that conversation and understanding, there's a quote on your site that I found that I really liked is by Terence McKenna. It says if we rise out of the human dimension, we discover larger, more integrated dimensions where mind and nature somehow interpenetrate each other. A coherent vision like that has yet to announce itself here in the post history, pre-apocalypse phase of things. So I love that, but I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about that. And how does the educating of that higher intelligence would you like to kind of elaborate, sure?
Speaker 2:Well, terence McKenna was, you know, he was like a psychedelics guy. He sort of explored psychedelics and just an incredible orator and thinker and, you know, sort of a rogue science philosopher. I didn't learn about him until after I had actually gotten my PhD, so I only learned about him like a few years ago, but then managed to kind of work my way through all of his, all of his talks, and just found a just an incredible amount of resonance with things that I had independently sort of experienced or come to not through psychedelics but through science. Like a lot of the things that he saw and understood psychedelically I understood through normal experience of the natural world and also through a scientific understanding. So so I got really intrigued by his work and what he's saying is that if we try, if we allow ourselves to, that, we can enter into this dimension of intelligence that's out there. And then he says that that's yet to be articulated. Well, actually that's just what I articulated. That's exactly what Oika is articulating, not from his path, which was through psychedelics, but through simple contemplation of nature. That's another way to actually access that intelligence. So that's what that quote is all about. That's what Oika is.
Speaker 2:Oika is the intelligence of nature, but I also like to think of it in terms of as expressed through the human thought in action.
Speaker 2:So Oika is really when we acknowledge how human intelligence and creativity is actually the expression of nature's intelligence and creativity. And once you feel that reality and that is the reality once you feel that you are living in a different world, you are suddenly in an alliance with an incredibly creative and potent force. And it's in you, it's in all of us. We've just sort of forgotten it and neglected it, but I think it's time to remember it, because we need it, because the fact that we have forfeited that understanding has manifest in all of these injuries that we're now living through. So all of the collective traumas and injustices and the toxicity of the world that we've created rise out of the fact that we have forgotten that deeper sense of belonging. And that's what Oika is trying to do is to restore that in some degree, restore it in people, restore it in artists, restore it in art so that it can be restored in culture. That's the idea. Again, I can't remember what your question was, but I'm not even sure if that answers it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does. It was just about explaining that quote that I thought was just worded beautifully and really when I read it on your side, I was like wow, but can you elaborate more on why you specifically decided I know you had mentioned to me prior to start instilling this in leaders as well, but why you chose artists?
Speaker 2:I think artists are more open to surprise. I come from a scientific community that's very skeptical, very conservative, very I mean conservative in its willingness to. I'm not criticizing this. Well, actually I am criticizing the scientific community. But I understand why it has to maintain rigor. I understand why it holds its knowledge to be not sacred. But I understand why science reveres its knowledge because it's hard won and it has all kinds of mechanisms built into it to test it, to challenge itself. I get that so like I totally respect. I've studied the philosophy of science, so I respect what it can do, but I also respect what it can't do, and I think that the creative communities, which we just collectively call artists, they have more freedom to speculate about reality. So I think that a balance of those two things is where the real energy is, that's where the real productivity is.
Speaker 1:Is that somehow the reason you chose artists in a correlation? Because of their ability to create that change? For example, Bob Marley said that he wanted to cure racism by his music alone. That was one of the quotes that he had. Is it kind of a long? And this obviously isn't going down like racism or anything, because that's not really what we're talking about, but is that?
Speaker 2:Well, actually, no, let me just jump in there and say that there is a cure to racism in this, like this is a big big thing actually that this understanding that I'm trying to articulate is so fundamental to us that curing this thing, this division, this divorce of ourselves from the natural world, will actually, by default, cure all of those more downstream injuries like racism, xenophobia, economic injustice, incompetent politics, whatever you want to look. All of those are symptoms of this deeper schism where Oika is operating. Oika is operating on that deeper schism. That, then, will help solve all those downstream problems by default. So I'm not sure if that was the question you were going to ask, but I think that's worth answering. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, that's exactly what I was trying to get at is kind of that connection between the artist and how they're the vessel to communicate, the angle of Oika, which is obviously just a deeper understanding. I know that one of the other things that you had created and I don't know if you want to talk about this quickly or whatever is the gratitude map.
Speaker 2:Actually, probably not, because the gratitude map is an amazing idea and we're going to pursue it. We're just not going to pursue it with that particular platform. I've just made arrangements with a new platform that's much more robust, but there is an important aspect to it, which is the practice part. What the point of the gratitude map was to give people a structure for getting out in the world and experiencing the communication that's going on in nature. That's what it's about. It's about taking time out of our modern life to sit quietly, listen, let yourself feel all kinds of deeper emotional things and hear what nature is trying to say to us. Ultimately, the big takeaway is gratitude. That's what the gratitude map is all about.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I was really interested in is that when we were talking and just kind of understanding and trying to figure out as much as I can about this ecology and Oica in general, was that we had this beginning atmosphere of Earth and how, when Earth had no oxygen in its atmosphere, these little itty-bitty not even like animals that you call them today, but these, you know, almost microscopic life forms emitted this. What oxygen? Because it was their waste product, right, and this is probably well known, but I just thought it was very interesting and I'll leave it into a question. But fast forwarding that to today and beyond that of global warming or whatever you want to call it, is there anything more specifically that you've seen in the field or from your life? That is almost climate comparative to what we've done since the pre-modern human era?
Speaker 2:Well, absolutely we have. I mean, well, okay, so the thing that you're talking about is usually referred to as the great oxygenation event, when early algae in the oceans converted our atmosphere on the planet from one that didn't have oxygen in it to one that did so. It went from what we call a reducing atmosphere to an oxidizing atmosphere. The point of that really is to show that there was a time on this planet. If you could drop yourself into that moment, you wouldn't be able to breathe. There's no oxygen. There was a time on this planet when this atmosphere was inhospitable to human life. Right, those kinds of changes can happen. Notice that once you put a process into action that can run itself through, you can literally shift the habitability of the planet from beautifully designed for our enjoyment to excruciatingly terminal.
Speaker 2:It has happened many times that the conditions of life on this planet have shifted, and the point there is that we could do that, like we could shift the conditions of this planet to such a degree that it shifts into a completely inhospitable state for us. It's end game, there's no escape. If that happens, it could happen quickly. It could happen within the span of a century that this planet becomes unenhappable to humanity. Sure, you can argue whether or not that could actually happen, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that it could, that we could either initiate Well, it's already happened, right?
Speaker 2:Maybe not from us, it's happening, but it could actually go to the point where we drive ourselves to extinction like game over. It's an existential issue. Then the microbes return to dominate, but we won't be here. That's possible. It's a bad idea, but it's possible. We know it's possible because it's happened. We have the fossil record.
Speaker 2:We have the evidence that I think that alone is enough to wake us up to the risk that we're taking by denying it. Sure, maybe there are mechanisms that we don't understand that could bring it back into balance or keep it in this, but maybe not. Is it really worth risking the whole game on that when the science suggests that it could all come crashing down? To top it off, I think seeing the beauty in how it is now is a motivator to not let this go away. When you look around and you feel the complexity and you feel the diversity and you feel the kind of imperfect perfection and the beauty of this world that we've inherited, it just seems idiotic to put that at risk for something that's. We need bigger incentives, bigger things to belong to so that we make sure that we don't do that. That's the point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean your emphasis on humanity and meaning that if that did come to fruition, the earth is still going to be around. We're not going to blow the earth up, it's just we won't be around.
Speaker 2:That's been through this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:If you had dropped yourself on this planet 67 million years ago, you would think, man, this is a planet of dinosaurs. This whole planet is dominated by these large carnivorous things. But look around, today they're gone. They're gone. Being big and ferocious and ubiquitous is no guarantee of survival. Being ferocious and ubiquitous is trumped by cooperative and contemplative and peace-seeking. Those are strategies for long-term human survival. Those other ones of competition and exploitation and extraction, those are end games, man, those are dead ends. We need to come up with new ways that are not like woo-woo and pseudoscience and that are not ideological but that are instead based in natural processes. If we can embrace what that means to be natural, we have cognitive capacities to turn this ship around.
Speaker 1:When I had been doing research on this, that had been something that I had actually talked about. I'm not a scientist, but I have random stupid theories every now and again. I like to just research on them and stuff. That was something that had really just clicked with me. Is that something that you teach a lot in Oika?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is that whole conceptual basis, but the big one is telling the story, telling the story of the universe in chapter by chapter. Talk about how the universe has evolved into what we see today. That provides the narrative arc upon which we can link into. That's a big part of what Oika teaches is the actual story, by the way, the story of nature, like Big Bang, stars, planets, life societies, culture. That story actually includes all of the big religious and spiritual epics. They're actually included in that story, which is different than the way nature is excluded from those stories. In other words, the natural story is big enough to contain those stories, whereas those stories I'm not sure they're big enough to contain nature. One's inclusive, the other is exclusive. I think that matters. That's one of the things that Oika teaches is the whole story of how all of this came to be. It's a beautiful story, it's the most beautiful story, it's the most amazing story ever.
Speaker 2:The other part is the concepts. We have all of these concepts that we can explore, but here's the thing to remember this is important that they're not just concepts, they're actually experiences. These are experiences that we can have. Many people have had, many people have experienced fractals. We see them all around us. When you see a pattern somewhere and you see it somewhere else, that's a fractal. That fractal, that experience of that fractal, is a bridge that confirms that everything's connected. My point is that you see this big list of concepts. They're not just concepts, they're actually experiences that can be converted into concepts, that can be converted into relationships, that can be converted into art, that can be converted into culture. That's how we get there, I think.
Speaker 1:Speaking of that art and that culture I just kind of wanted to quickly talk about because it's something that I'm involved in myself and maybe, if there's any investors or anything out there, an idea for them as well but how you're implementing with artists and your idea with the blockchain and NFTs to then give back and help on a broader sense.
Speaker 2:Well, this is kind of where I'm at at present. This idea of integrating artists and using the philosophies and the power of decentralized finance, cryptocurrency, nfts, web 3, metaverse that whole space is the future and how the blockchain works and the part that NFTs can play in this. I just think it's this wide, open wild west. It's the space of incredible opportunity and a lot of challenge and a lot of threat. There's still a lot of inherited trauma to be dealt with, but the point is that crypto, that whole space, is providing all these new ways to empower artists to generate not just money but relationship with their audience and also develop their practices, their artistic practices and the communities that they serve, and that kind of thing. Right now, I'm also really interested in ecological restoration, so actual restoration of habitats on the planet.
Speaker 2:What I'm trying to do with Oika in the blockchain is to recouple and this goes back to what we first talked about to recouple economic concerns with ecological concerns.
Speaker 2:In other words, to reunite those echos the echos that are in economy and the echos that are in ecology to bring them back together.
Speaker 2:What that means is using NFT as a way of one creating art that embeds ecological intelligence, art that embeds Oika, but then, as that Oika gets carried, it generates revenue that can go back to the artist and also back to the habitats that inspired the artists. Smart contracts provide this amazing opportunity to redistribute funding resources where you really want them to go, without a middleman, and so there's this huge opportunity to link artists and art to actual ecological restoration that's happening on the ground, and the idea there is that the smart contracts will link ecological healing, so metrics of ecological restoration. They'll link those metrics to ecological value of the art. So as the metrics of ecological healing go up, as the number go up, it also goes up in the economic dimension within the art that recouples ecological to economical. That's the fundamental principle. So we're working on ways to do that with. I've got a pretty expansive cohort of artists that I'm working with now and I'm getting them to create art that can do all of this, that can carry ecological intelligence and recouple economic and ecological.
Speaker 1:Are there any places right now specifically that you're focused on restoring or helping?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, we have a project a colleague of mine that I've been working on a lot, actually in Spain not too far from, I think, where you are where he's restoring a bird habitat wetland, and he's actually the artist too.
Speaker 2:So he's got some amazing stuff. You can look him up, you can find him at oikaspaneeu. And then also we're just launching one in Kenya, off of the coast of Kenya, an island called Lamu that I visited years and years ago, kind of fell in love with, and this is sort of an opportunity to help restore some coral reef habitats that were damaged, if not destroyed, in a big industrial port project, and so we're enlisting local Kenyan artists to create art that can be submerged to serve as seeds for new coral reef growth, and we're going to be measuring how the habitat comes back, how the biodiversity returns, and those values of biodiversity then are reflected in the economic price of the art that's created. So there's a lot of things like that that are in the works, and I'm always looking for more artists and more habitats that have been damaged that are appropriate for restoration. So if anybody knows of that, I'd love to hear about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, excellent, and we can attach all your information obviously in the show notes. So if you do know of anything, just check out the show notes to get in contact with Rich. Speaking of that restoration in Kenya really quickly. So are you like submerging statues and stuff or how? Yes, yeah, really.
Speaker 2:The idea is that these are concrete structures created by artists, and the really cool thing, I think, is that it's an Islamic community, so you have to be really sensitive to the art. It can't just be depictions, it can't be certain things, because that wouldn't be ecologically intelligent. That organism would not do well in that ecosystem if we were to create art that was insensitive to the cultural understandings of things. And, by the way, islamic art has these really cool qualities in that it can be very fractal, it's very pattern-centric, so it has all these ways of integrating nature in profound ways. There is this opportunity there to explore that in a meaningful way. So, yeah, that's. The idea, though, is that the artists will create that art, it'll get put down where the reefs have been destroyed, and it will attract new coral growth, new organisms, reef binders, arthropods, fish, that whole thing.
Speaker 1:That's crazy.
Speaker 2:And then the ideas that it sells, and then those proceeds are distributed through a smart contract back to the artist, back to the Oika community of artists and also directly back to the habitat through the colleagues that I have that I've been working with on the ground there.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's so cool. I know that there are artists. When I was in Australia there was a bunch of Aboriginal art that really tied into the land, and then there was somebody I met in Indonesia who had a monk tattoo them and it meant specific things about what that is. Is that some of what Oika does? Or I know I saw one thing where you had a mirror or a window glass in painting from that, which was really cool. But what is the art specifically in which you yeah, well, it's genre non-specific.
Speaker 2:In other words, it can work. Look, the point of Oika art is that it embeds ecological intelligence. It doesn't matter what the material is it could be painting, it could be photography, it could be song, dance, performance sketches, it could be any sculptures, it could be any form of art, but the idea is that it has embedded within it ecological intelligence, that the oika is in there, and that's what we do. It takes months and months to make sure that happens, and so any art that's created through this process can then be called oika art. Without that, it's not oika art, it's something else, and so you know, so it can take any form. I have yet to work with, you know, like a performance artist or like a songwriter, but I'm hoping that that opportunity comes along someday.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Well, rich, I know we've talked about a whole heap of things and hopefully not too complex for anyone. Is there anything else that you kind of wanted to let people know about, maybe something that we missed that you thought was important?
Speaker 2:I think my sort of closing remark would be to just be patient, because it takes time.
Speaker 2:You know like, engage with these ideas, consider the story of the universe as a whole and consider the experiences that we have in the context of that Like, if you can let yourself feel that entire story in you, because you inherited it. It's in all of us, right? Our imagination, our thinking, our ideas, our identities are all wrapped up in this story and the key here is just to remember that and to let yourself feel that. That takes time, it takes sort of practice, and it's not hard practice, it's actually really joyful practice. But getting away from the world a little bit, sitting in silence, listening to the birds, listening to the way that wind moves through the trees or even just the way that it reflects off of the grass, and contemplating what you're experiencing in the context of nature, the whole story of nature, it's an invitation. It's an invitation to have a relationship with a much bigger story than the ones that we're all wrapped up in right now. And there's a way out of all that chaos. It's about remembering our sense of belonging to this planet, and that's really it.
Speaker 2:And I think letting that happen will heal us, and by healing us, the world heals. And at some point, the problems that we're all concerned about today will not just go away on their own, but they will become irrelevant. Solving these problems is not hard, but getting ourselves into a mindset that allows those problems to become irrelevant is actually. It's not just easy, it's good, it feels good, and so I think that's probably it, and I happen to be committed to science. I think science provides access, legitimate access, credible access to this. I can't think of anything more enjoyable to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, being able to travel the world and be in nature all day is kind of you know well, it's one of my dreams.
Speaker 2:But it doesn't have to be all day. It doesn't require that you cross an ocean or climb a mountain or live like a monk. It doesn't require that. It just requires a practice of quiet contemplation occasionally to let it in and let it cultivate in you over time. So I don't want to give the impression that it requires that you live like you do or that I have. You can manage to cultivate this sense in the world today, in your life today, you know, just by opening up a new relationship with nature.
Speaker 1:Are there ways to flag when a connection like that might have happened, or maybe it, because I feel like obviously these connections happen every day and a lot of people might not be aware of, you know, the communication that was bounced around to them, if that's just awareness of it, man, just take it seriously.
Speaker 2:That's all I'm doing. I'm taking those moments seriously and taking a moment to acknowledge them when they happen and having a framework to put them in when they do happen so that they can live. You know, it's like spend time in nature, learn the story of the universe and those experiences, those intuitions that you have, believe them, Because chances are there is a scientific concept that will validate it and that will put it in that narrative, that will bring it into the context of that cosmic narrative. I don't know if that makes any sense or not, but I'm not kidding. You know, like I'm not. This isn't bullshit and I'm not selling anything. I'm just saying look what I found. You've already got it, but let's share it Like, let's feel this together. That's really all I want to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bring to attention something that people might not be aware of. And then, I don't know if this isn't your advice, this is my advice. Maybe put down a phone from time to time, get outside from the TV and you know, don't because I mean just for my life, and me personally I found it's just so. I mean it's a distraction, obviously. We all know that's why we use it, you know, to distract ourselves.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think once you do it, once you feel the benefit you know there's this thing called force bathing Once you feel the benefit, it suddenly becomes a priority, like you start organizing your life, you start organizing your days around that moment, because it feels good and it empowers you and energizes you and calms you and all those things that we crave are there.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't require Facebook, it doesn't require new sneakers, it doesn't require a fancy car. It doesn't require any of that stuff. You just got to sit there and be open to it, invited in and it builds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Beyond that and beyond Oika and everything I always ask this for all of my guests on my show If you could narrow one piece of advice down that you've learned through the entirety of your life, what would that piece of advice be?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I mean I think I just said it which is to take time to be quiet and listen to nature. She is infinite in her capacity to heal us and to inspire us and to energize us and to befriend us. There is a deep source of joy and love in nature and my advice would be to give that idea a chance, let yourself believe it, let yourself be surprised by that possibility and find the others who are willing to do that or have done that, so that we can confirm this thing and let it take hold and heal us and planet.
Speaker 1:Rich. Thank you so much, man. I absolutely love this conversation. I hope that everyone has learned a bit. I mean, there was so much to unpack and learn in that. So if you guys are intrigued, want to learn more, want to research more, Rich, is there a way people can get in contact with you specifically or anything?
Speaker 2:Just go to oikacom, reach out via the contact forms and send me an email. I'm on Twitter at thisisoika and check out my YouTube channel, I guess, where there's a lot of earth stories there, little interactions that I have with nature. You can use those as sort of like a model for how to kind of have this relationship with nature, the usual stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'll throw all that in the show notes as well. So Rich, thank you so much. Thank you, dude.
Speaker 2:Good talk with you. Let's stay in touch.
Speaker 1:That's great. Seriously, if you are interested in any kind of creative path or ecology in general, reach out to Rich. He is just a great human being. And speaking of great human beings, we actually have a really great interview next week as well with Sean Banks. We talk about a heap of things his magazine, his startup, youth camps that he's done in Georgia and also Africa and we dive a bit into how that has changed him and the orphanage that he is helping run over there. So really cool entrepreneurial conversation next week. So hopefully you guys will tune in for that, but otherwise, enjoy your week.
Speaker 1:And that wraps up another episode of Thoughts of a Random Citizen. If you guys have a question for the podcast, head over to torqunitedcom. It's in the show notes and you can record a question. Feel free to email us if you don't want to record a question On there. You'll also find information about financial advice, travel tips and destinations, broad market analysis and there's a whole heap of stuff on there for you guys. If you like the show, please review, like, subscribe, share with a friend. It goes a long way and, as always, these are thoughts of a random citizen or citizens. There are experts that do come on the show and I always do my best to research before each show. However, do your own research. This is an advice. This is generalizations, so there is your free disclaimer. Enjoy your week and I'll talk to you next week on. That's a random citizen Cheers. This is where Makes ه请 жел rope example sheet. And that wraps up another episode of Thoughts for Random Citizen. Thank you everyone so much for tuning back in. For those who are new listeners, welcome and I appreciate you joining. I hope you enjoyed the podcast and our guest today.
Speaker 1:If you are new and you're doing anything remote, be sure to check out Citizen Remote. It is fantastic. If you're already traveling the world. It's a great app to join a very quickly growing community. It's a great tool for those who are just about to begin traveling and figuring out how to navigate that, especially if you work remotely. It's a fantastic platform and we continue to build more and more tools for you guys, weekend in, week out. Otherwise, if you're an entrepreneur and you're looking for tools or assistance with the next steps of what you need to do with your startup, or if you're looking for software development network connections, reach out to us at Torque United.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, if you're just tuning in for the conversations, thank you. That's why I love doing what I'm doing. Keep tuning in and actually keep a lookout for the not-for-profit that we're about to open up. Its main focus is going to be on international collaboration and helping build a borderless world, because it's something that I'm very passionate about. That's why I'm not only doing Torque United but Citizen Remote as well. Really exciting stuff on that horizon. Please keep up to date with all of that stuff the not-for-profit and entrepreneurial side of things at Torque United. Again, if you're traveling the world, check out Citizen Remote. If you're wanting to travel the world, if you're a remote worker, check out Citizen Remote. Check out the app we've built for you guys. Check out the platform we've built. It's only growing every single week. Hopefully, you guys will take part in that with us. Otherwise, I will speak with everyone in a fortnight. Well then, cheers.