The Tower of Babel as Metaphor, Myth, or Reality
A podcast with Alex Leff
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Episode Description
Ever wondered if our technological advancements are truly making life better or just more complicated? Join Alex of the Human Nature Odyssey podcast and me as we kickstart our return with a whirlwind of reflections beginning with our reminiscing about the hands-on expertise of past generations ... contrasting true ability with the digital era.
The metaphor of the Tower of Babel serves as a philosophical lens through which we examine civilization's complexities and our relationship with technology. Are we building a society without understanding its true purpose, and how does this impact our local engagements? Alex and I also reimagine classic narratives, pondering if true heroism lies not in saving the world, but in developing a reciprocal relationship with nature and ourselves. This is a candid exploration of humanity's environmental role, challenging the notion that we're merely defenders of a world in peril.
Inspired by Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael,” our conversation turns to humanity’s impact on Earth, from ancient health paradigms to modern civilization's paradoxes. The conversation dives into embracing diverse worldviews, especially indigenous perspectives, and exploring the cultural narratives shaping our interactions with nature.
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Learn more about Alex and his podcast HERE.
Chapters
9:26 - Tower of Babel Reflections
25:02 - Reimagining Humanity's Role in Earth's Story
38:15 - The Story of Humanity's Impact
49:47 - Listening to Earth's Voices
55:51 - Exploring Kinship With Nature and Culture
1:06:54 - Engaging Stories Through Human Nature Podcast
Transcript
Alex Leff: 5:40
No, I inherently feel allergic to technology. It doesn't come to me naturally at all. I'm not mechanically minded. My grandfather was really mechanically minded. He grew up in the 20s and the 30s and loved cars and could take the entire car apart, put it back together.
Alex Leff: 6:01
I want to do it just for fun entire car apart, put it back together. I want to do it just for fun, and that's a kind of engagement with the real world that is, you know, so different from the way, you know, we interact with our laptops, which are designed to not understand any of the components that really go into it, which is a blessing for the average person, including myself. It's like I don't really want to learn how to, you know, create a circuitry board. Um, right, but I think that if I had more of that natural inclination that came my grandfather had about seeing these different parts and how they worked together, I think there is almost kind of like um, that feels a little bit more, you know what we might call natural uh, that, which is the part of technological engagement that I'm certainly missing.
D. Firth Grifith: 6:50
Yeah, I think very few of us. I know our conversation might gravitate over towards the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and I just had my copy sitting here and I don't want to jump into it too fast fast and we'll just dip our toes into it for a second. But in the foreword he actually says something. It's a joke. I mean, he I doubt it's actually a joke, but it's comedic in the current moment, I guess. Um, I think it's like the 25th anniversary edition, I think. But he says readers over the last 25 years, some have been attracted to this book, some haven't, but that's okay. Those that haven't, or those that were attracted and then decided to say mean things like you'll be the first to die, it's fine. He says that in the foreword. It's hilarious, Like basically, if you don't like this, that's fine, you don't need to like it. I ask you to like it, but you don't need to. It's actually. It's one sentence and I thought I might've highlighted it but alas, it seems like I haven't.
Alex Leff: 7:54
I missed the part where he's threatening the readers If you don't give this five stars on Goodreads. But his point is just If you know the gorilla's coming to your house.
D. Firth Grifith: 8:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's gonna bang down the door um, he'll ask you.
D. Firth Grifith: 8:08
You know, your doorknobs are not gonna save you no, no, no doorknobs are built strong enough for it. But I think so few of us you know I just I'm trying to bring this back to technology, I guess but so few of us understand the way to construct technology. But our lives are constructed by technology, and, and so if we were to have a devastating human cataclysmic event, very little technology will arise out of that event, which means that we're going to have to inevitably start to create a culture or recreate a culture from the ruins. That is not technological, like if you were to sit down every human on earth and ask them I need you right now, by yourself, to build a computer? How many of them could? But how many of their lives are built by computers.
D. Firth Grifith: 8:54
And so there's a strange anomaly, uh, to our society, where it is being constructed by that which it can't construct, and that seems to be a pretty severe limit, but like if most of the people were to die cause they didn't listen to Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, you know, after 25 years of it being in publication. Um, his point is, those that would stay alive would agree with you. So your negative reviews don't mean anything to him, not in the world he's trying to usher into being, or question.
Alex Leff: 9:25
Interesting. I wonder if honeybees different species of honeybees are able to create honey on their own, or do they need to be part of the hive, and I imagine it's an incredibly frustrating situation for them as well. They're like man I I don't even know. I'm just part of this thing. I'm clocking in day in, day out. There's honey all around me. My whole life is based on honey. But I'll tell you, if all these bees went away tomorrow, I don't know what the heck I would be doing. I couldn't create this hive, this, this honeycomb on my own.
D. Firth Grifith: 10:00
That's interesting. The only thought because I don't know honeybees the only thought and I'm still paging through this I'm going to find it, Even if it's like post-publication of this weeks from now, I'm going to find it. I don't know much about honeybees, but I do know that they don't live long, and so I wonder if that has something to do with it, Meaning that perhaps their life is the making of honey, but their life isn't spent considering what their life should be spent on. Yes, I wonder if that has something to do with it. We're very good at that. I think people like you and I, human beings modern human beings, um, born of the dominant worldview or at least around the culture that would subsist, uh, in that dominant worldview we're very good at considering what life is made out of, while we that is to say, made out of life are walking around dead or at least dying, you know, from the inside out. Man, this got deep fast, so I don't know.
Alex Leff: 10:57
Yeah, I've always kind of imagined it metaphorically. You know, I think the Tower of Babel is such a great myth that helps illustrate our current and ancient situation of us. Just you know our whole lives. All the work that we're doing is just contributing this brick onto this massive tower. And the tower is multinational, it's global civilization. People from all around the world participate in this global marketplace. We can interact without speaking the same language and just we're constructing this massive artifice. And that's very different from cultures who live outside this tower and engage with the world much more directly. They know where their food comes from, they're getting their food, they understand the medicinal value of a bunch of plants, versus us who, from the top of this tower, there's so many miracles that we're able to experience and things that we don't have to worry about because it's an incredible level of cooperation. That's me trying to think about the tower generously.
Alex Leff: 12:08
But it's hard to not be incredibly suspicious and paranoid of this tower, not even just because we can see the way that the tower is existing because it's consuming the rest of the world and that it's inherently self-destructive, but even just the complexity of it, or, as you said in your essay, that I really appreciated, maybe, the complicated nature of it complexity versus being complicated. It's really hard to wrap our heads around in any sort of meaningful way. And so we're living in this tower, we're benefiting from this tower, we're dedicating our lives to the tower's construction and we as individuals have very little agency and sense of what is happening. Who's telling to build us this? Why are we building this? When is it going to be done? Is it okay and it's a very nerve wracking experience to be a tower dweller and a tower builder.
D. Firth Grifith: 13:16
Yeah, I always and I could be completely off base on this, I could be so entirely wrong but I often find myself, I should say, thinking of the Tower of Babel, where I'm questioning whether or not it's the existence of the tower as should be called into question.
D. Firth Grifith: 13:33
What I mean by that is we have something to talk about and that something is entirely outside of us, as you so very well say, we don't know why we're building it, we don't know what is the essence of it, we don't know how long it's going to take, say, we don't know why we're building it, we don't know what is the essence of it, we don't know how long it's going to take, and so our minds are constantly there, but not actually there to be like, just there to be confused or muddled or confounded or something.
D. Firth Grifith: 13:56
I often think that it has a fine analogy, fine extension maybe metaphor is a better word into our modern life where, going back to the idea of technology, we all deploy technology to achieve a particular end, but we never, or at least very few of us, question the fact that technology is in our lives, just like the tower is in our lives, and start to truly actually question, not if we're doing the good work, but if we're surrounded by good in the good work being done. You know so, for instance, like I know many people who spend their lives digitally connected right, but entirely locally unconnected.
D. Firth Grifith: 14:37
Right, that's very easy to see A good friend of mine in the UK. He always says he wants to be a celebrity within 15 miles of his farm, and I like that, because a celebrity within 15 miles of their farm doesn't require websites or computers or Instagram. And a lot of farmers, especially here in the United States, were so concentrated on marketing our products because originally, better food was more expensive or harder to get, and then with the rise of technology maybe it's decreased in its price locally in some regions not always, of course, um, but it requires technology. Now you know, our farmer's market booths are well-designed, really well-designed.
D. Firth Grifith: 15:18
And we have banners that are printed on you know linoleum or vinyl or whatever the hell it is. You know huge things that say we're regenerative and we have computers. And you know tractors that drive themselves, of course, and tractors, when they have problems you have to call an attack with a computer, not a diesel mechanic from next door, because the tractor is like alive from some technological perspective and um. But if you're a celebrity within 15 miles like you, don't need any of that. You really don't. My neighbor, who's a diesel mechanic, he loves pork chops or lamb chops or whatever really works, and we can be that for each other.
D. Firth Grifith: 15:56
I'm not a diesel mechanic, even in the slightest, probably like you, less like your grandfather. Engines don't make any sense to me. Complex ecosystems full of hundreds of different species for some reason don't make any sense to me. Uh, complex ecosystems full of hundreds of different species for some reason makes a lot more sense to me, but tractors and diesel engines don't. And so, um, you know, having that relationship between him and I I don't even know if he had, I'm not entirely sure I mean he's we've.
D. Firth Grifith: 16:20
We've been together for many, many, many years, my neighbor and I, and I don't even know if he knows our farm's name. To be honest with you, If I were to really think about it, I wonder. I doubt he does, I doubt he does. I guess what I'm saying is to break it down more simply, going back to the Tower of Babel, how many people are walking up carrying bricks to the top of the Tower of Babel to place them? You know, every single day, and all they're doing is talking about the tower, and yet they don't even know each other's names, or they don't know their families, or they're not invested in the local community. Or, being a local, you know, homo sapien mammal, not necessarily civilian or denizen of this. You know, demoralizing, degenerating society.
Alex Leff: 17:03
Yeah, it's a really bizarre place to be in experientially, and something that I've been increasingly fascinated with is thinking of our global civilization as an immersive theater piece or something to experience.
Alex Leff: 17:27
It's been created and we've all gotten tickets to it. We're here and trying to figure out what can we do in this actual piece, I think because we feel so small in this massive tower. Uh, we've also, you know, the tower is really good at providing us a bunch of little mini games that we can get invested in. It's's like ah, don't, don't worry about that. Like, check out this little slot machine over here. You know, like, look at this scroll on this, that won't that be fun. And to think more about, first and foremost. It's like, well, actually, just what's it like to live in this tower? Because, you know, we born at this time are living in such a bizarre moment in human history. That's unprecedented.
Alex Leff: 18:10
Obviously, and I think back to what we, as a culture, like to imagine primitive peoples experienced we have this idea that man, before science, before technology, people were just walking around, having no idea how any of this worked. You know, the moon was going down, the moon was coming up, the tides were changing, lightning was coming out of clouds and they just had no idea. And now look at us. We're so smart, we figured it all out. We know what this all means. We know what this all means, but in reality, of course, there was no culture throughout human history that didn't have complex stories that explained, had a full comprehension of what was going on. Regardless of if it had scientific truth, it certainly fit into a knowledge base that made sense for them, and there's probably a much greater understanding of how the seasons worked than even though I could tell you that. Well, actually, we've learned how clouds work. We've learned that the earth is rotating around the sun, orbiting around the sun. I am so less familiar with the sun, the earth, the clouds, than cultures that told complex stories about them, and the myth that our culture tells about primitive peoples quote unquote that we're just walking the earth as if it was completely fresh and they had no idea what's going on is actually what our experience really is like.
Alex Leff: 19:44
You know, when I go out to, I live in Los Angeles right now, and for someone who doesn't like the tower and doesn't like technology, it's a pretty funny place to live, but I am valuing at this moment in my life living in the belly of the beast and kind of witnessing it. But just outside the city there are these beautiful mountain ranges that are very sparsely trafficked by people because people usually don't move to Los Angeles for the nature. But there's this beautiful stream there that flows, and I'll go swimming there on the weekends. And you know, I grew up on the East Coast so I'm not much more familiar with East Coast tree species and birds and I still feel like such a foreigner here and I was spending time at this stream and realizing I don't know any of these species. I have no idea how the seasons change here, who eats what, what the songs are.
Alex Leff: 20:45
I'm truly experientially, like you know, the first person that's come without any sort of comprehension of what's going on and and to lean into that as something to really experience and maybe with a little bit of fun, a sadness at the loss of having not grown up with any of that knowledge, but realizing like, wow, I actually now and coming to this pretty fresh and I have a lot to learn, a lot to learn from books, but also from talking with people and then from actually just being in the landscape and directly observing and engaging with it. Hmm, yeah, a dear friend of mine, an Omaha Cherokee historian and directly observing and engaging with it.
D. Firth Grifith: 21:25
Yeah, a dear friend of mine, an Omaha Cherokee historian. He always jokes that his people came to the Oklahoma region what is today Oklahoma, I think he says seven, maybe 800 years ago, and how they're just starting to finally learn its name, or something like this, like even they are too early to finally learn its name, or something like this. Like they like even they are too early to truly have a deep relationship. And so he's like, he's like, don't tell me about you being like fifth generation Oklahoma farmer. Like you know you know nothing, we know nothing. He says the Pawnee, their neighbors, I think they're at 3000 years of you know habitation in that spot, not habitation in the Western Hemisphere, turtle Island, just that location within Oklahoma. And even they are new here.
D. Firth Grifith: 22:14
I think one of the interesting things about the conversations that are happening today I see these things from two different angles. Are there really two different conversations about the central point? And I see that point from two different angles. On the one side, you have this great uh impetus that we need to start telling new stories. I see this everywhere, whether or not it's on substack or a book. It just I see everybody saying this we need new stories. And on the other side it's, you know, regenerative agriculture or some other thing like this, green energy, wind energy, wind turbines, whatever, like, pick your poison on the green, on the green side, the secondary side, agriculture, energy, I don't care. And uh, in both of them.
D. Firth Grifith: 22:52
When you really start to look at it and you start to see from my friend, the Omaha Cherokee individual, the historian who says that even at seven, 800 years, we're still not even learning her name, we're still so young, like you, look at both of these new paradigms and it's just like, yeah, but what if we were to become old here? Like what would that take? Like what? What must we also give up? Who must we start to acknowledge? What pains must we start to attend to? What kin that we are used to stepping on Must we start to lift up? You know, in which areas do we? You know, must we fall, etc. We start to really look at it from a different angle and I think you start to see that it's that central paradigm that humans are finally here to save the day, which is the green space. And I'm not saying that's necessarily bad. I mean Hurricane Milton is just wrecking havoc in the southeast of the united states and helene obviously, is unbelievably atrocious here in the appalachian mountains where we are like there's real problems in in this fine earth of ours ecologically and at the same time, um just some large degree it she, I should say, doesn't seem to be asking for saviors, but like friends, kin, relations, cousins, you know, and that often looks very different than um you know, as I've said for a long time, this carbonic, messianic theology of today, where we look to carbon and then we stand like a freaking messiah figure against you know anything that is a against carbon, and then we start to view earth more like a damsel in distress you
D. Firth Grifith: 24:32
know some, um, unworthy but beautiful female, we ride in and our great white steed and swords ablaze. And us, you know these gorgeous, these gorgeous white Prince Charmings, you know wielding a shining sword and a sparkling kiss, and when you know we kiss her, she wakes up and it's all because of Prince Charmings. It's just like, yeah, what a white narrative, what a very boring narrative that is, wouldn't it?
Alex Leff: 25:00
be a beautiful Disney movie. I feel like we're almost, we almost could have this happen, but to have the damsel in distress archetype narrative begin and riding in to save the princess and realizing that actually the real quest is that Prince Charming has to do a lot of work on himself and that's the real quest. And actually the princess is fine. Yeah, In some like alchemist. Actually the princess is fine. Yeah, In some like alchemist way you know?
D. Firth Grifith: 25:27
Yes, yeah, maybe we should. Just. Is the Alchemist Paulo Calo's book? Yeah, is there? There's not a movie. I've never seen it. If there is, I bet it's not that good.
Alex Leff: 25:39
No, no, no. But even that, you know, is which I love, the alchemist that is kind of you know. It's about this external quest, which, of course, always symbolizes an internal one as well, about you know self-'s. All well and good and a very important story as well, but I want a story that's about how to reassess, like, what is it about our culture that views ourselves as the white knight riding in to save the princess? What's the mindset of the chivalrous knight, princess, what's the mindset of the chivalrous knight? And you've just done a good job articulating of the limits of that story. I'm wondering how could the knight reimagine himself differently and what shift in his perception needs to happen?
D. Firth Grifith: 26:41
perception- needs to have, what needs to happen? It's a huge question, you know. I think I think there's as many answers as there are dimensions Infinite. I think. I don't necessarily think I'll find the right one here, but to some degree. I said this on a very large podcast down in Texas a couple months ago and it was to a live studio audience, if you will. It was about 30 people in attendance and I'm not entirely sure many people agreed with me, but I'll give this to you anyways, because I think it's true. I think to some large degree even the essence of Prince Charming is off.
D. Firth Grifith: 27:22
I think a question that really irks people the wrong way is why do we feel like we have to do anything? We then automatically assume the cornerstone of that fundamental, be it conscious or subconscious, belief. The paradigm is constructed upon a cornerstone of we can save the world or that our interest in saving the world will rectify our historical disinterest. And so we're still, first and foremost, we're front and center, and that's really difficult for me, because I don't necessarily believe that humanity saving the world would actually be humanity saving the world, because if we have the power to write the weather, if we have a power to rectify, like in the past 50,000, in the past 50 years we've caused 7 million years of extinctions. That's what I mean by that.
D. Firth Grifith: 28:22
It's a very simple phrase. The numbers make it tangible but it's not really clear. So let me make that a little bit more clear. In the last 50 years we've ended enough species that through natural generation, background extinction yeah, it will take about 7 million years for us to ever get that back if we were to stop just now. So if humanity was to save the world and we were able to de-extinctify if that's a word, it's not 7 million years worth of species in yours and I's lifetime, right? Is this really humanity saving the world? It's obviously not. It's humanity creating another world in our image, which has a lot of problems.
D. Firth Grifith: 29:00
It has a lot of problems. In addition to this, all of the ways that we're going to utilize to save the world requires more of the world to be a resource, not a relation. So, for instance, very few of us in the green agriculture space look to a meadow and ask what do you want to be? Very few of us see the meadow as a you. We see the plants as a you, you know as a they living animan force.
D. Firth Grifith: 29:27
We see the cows or the goats, or the sheep or the deer, the pronghorn, the elephants, whatever it is. Wherever you are, we see them as they, as they're alive, I guess. But the land isn't right, the meadow isn't, the meadow doesn't have personhood. Tons of indigenous authors Robin Wall Kimmerer is the most present in my mind who talk about this the land being alive, just like the water is alive, although she's talking about a bay. I believe a bay of water is alive. It has animate decision-making capability, it knows itself, it has itself, it understands itself, it has self-knowledge in that way.
D. Firth Grifith: 29:58
So very few agriculturalists, especially green agriculturalists, especially climate change, save the world type. We need to rectify these problems, whoever they might call themselves to be, look at a meadow and say what do you want to be? Because we don't look at meadows and call them ewes. They're just spaces for land. Like I was writing a book that I published earlier this spring, and a good friend of mine, an Oglala Lakota, pipe carrier, medicine man, if you will, spiritual leader of the Plains Indigenous Nation, the Lakota and he looked at me and he said, dane, when I read this manuscript, earth is lowercase and you always put the word the in front of it, as if it's just like the pen, the table, the computer right, but like, cut out the word the and capitalize earth, and you have to start writing differently because you were addressing earth as a her, as a living animate force, and that was a huge awakening moment for me. And then, and um, you know? And so, anyways, very few of us think the meadow is alive, very few of us talk to the meadow is if it alive, if she is alive, and then we want to believe that we can save earth by saving the meadow, by increasing the soil, organic matter, by sequestering and storing and cycling more carbon, by building biodiversity.
D. Firth Grifith: 31:09
All of these things want that Like what if she doesn't? Because for you to believe that she does is for you to put words in her mouth and to dictate. You know which way is better or not better? You know, in 1455, pope Nicholas V or IV or VII, or whatever the heck he was in 1455, put out a papal edict talking about West Africa. Of course that went into the enslavement and colonization of West Africa. But he says in the edict something along the lines of any nation, any country, any land that's not Christian requires the Christian's influence, and so anything that you want to do with it is, you know, obviously from a Christian perspective, very fine and good and dandy.
D. Firth Grifith: 31:51
Enslavement, colonization, eradication, genocide, all of these things come out of that 1455 papal edict, and I'm not talking negatively about Christianity as a whole, but to some degree what we have to realize is like we have a particular definition of what good is, and then, in order to save the earth, we got to make the earth good, and so what we do is we use that very modern dominant worldview, that paradigm, and we force earth into it so that it's good and healthy. Right, like, what if? Saving the world? What if? The damsel in distress? Right, what if?
D. Firth Grifith: 32:22
All of these things that you and I are talking about, what if that is the earth doing what she wants to do, having the freedom and the autonomous decision making ability, that is to say, to live autonomously, um, in her own way? What if it has nothing to do with carbon? What if it means more carbon in the atmosphere? Are we we good with this? What if it means less biodiversity? Are we good with this?
D. Firth Grifith: 32:42
You know, because the scientists will tell you oh, no, no, no, no, nature always wants more biodiversity, and it's like no, that's like saying that all women as wives, or that all women should be wives on Tuesdays, want pizza on date night. I mean, this is ridiculous, as if all women believe all of these things. The earth is not a singular. Generalized it, if you will. And so, anyways, I'm getting a little sidetracked. But the point is, I just wonder, I just wonder if humanity can save the world, should we? If humanity could save the world and we do, did we and does the earth want to be saved? And if she doesn't, how do we then live?
Alex Leff: 33:21
Yeah, and I think it's you know, this story that we're telling about the damsel in distress and the white knight. It's a two-character story and it's one story we could certainly tell about our situation and it'll provide us useful insights. The limitation of that story, of the character of capital, e, earth and us, is the separation inherent in that Right Cause, and even asking that question of like, well, what does the earth want? What if it's not what we want, seems to me there's a limitation in that as well, cause it's like, well, hold on one second. I mean, we're an expression of the earth, we have a say in this too, and that's the it's. And I totally agree that it's not, like you know, the earth wants one thing any more than our species wants any one thing.
Alex Leff: 34:19
But how do we imagine to tell another story where it's not just these two characters? How do we also see it as? Because I think that the whole damsel in distress and the chivalrous knight story really puts the emphasis on this damsel's needs, and obviously in a pretty superficial way. The knight, you know, is, he has heard that the damsel's in in distress but hasn't actually talked to her, doesn't actually know what she wants, but regardless, the knight's still putting everything on what this? Oh, I love that sound of the train it's.
Alex Leff: 34:57
It's the only noise out here besides birds, so you know what, as far as technological noises go, nothing like a train whistle, yeah, but the night is still putting everything on this projection of what the damsel wants. And I think that's kind of you know and I experienced this in my own life, I'm sure we all do in our own way it's trying to be so concerned with what externally needs to change. And how can that externally I help when obviously so much of the struggle is like wait, wait a second, how am I doing, what do I need? And it's ironically that self-interest, self-concern that ends up being significantly less selfish in an odd way.
D. Firth Grifith: 35:53
Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think you're really right in the sense that for us to say that we are Prince Charming and Earth is a damsel, regardless if we have to go through our own personal journey through this marvelously unique Disney movie or not, is to separate us from the damsel. I love that, I think that's a great point. I think, in addition to that looking at that oneness, in addition to that looking at that oneness, I also don't think that modern humanity is owed really much at all by mother or earth in regard to our expectation of what saving looks like. And what I mean is I think it's true, I do. I think it's true that humanity's innermost beliefs about what is good, true, beautiful and needed is earth's true beliefs and innermost beliefs on what is good, true, view, beautiful and needed.
Alex Leff: 36:52
That's always part of earth's. Yeah, it's a many-factored being, but the created civilization that we currently suckle on.
D. Firth Grifith: 37:03
If you will I don't necessarily know or no, I don't I shouldn't say that that way. I have deep belief that she owes that nothing to survive, and that's where the rubber meets the road, as the phrase says. And that's where the rubber meets the road, as the phrase says, because so many of our climate-saving, our world-saving desires is to also save the modern life that we so now live. The tower, yeah, the tower, that's a great point, and so I think it's checking ourselves on why. No, I think it's checking ourselves on what we're saving, what we're interested in saving, because if it's the world that surrounds us today, not only am I not interested personally, but I don't think earth is also interested personally. I think, if it's nature, I think if it's homo sapiens the mammal, not humans the modern capitalistic and a very strange savior of the world, I don't know, I don't think that she owes that guy much. I think she owes Homo sapiens quite a bit, as Homo sapiens owe her quite a bit and are in and of that same circle.
Alex Leff: 38:09
I think that makes a lot of sense an author who I'm working on an episode now about. He wrote a book against history, against Leviathan, and he talks in the beginning about it that you know there's three different ways. We could imagine this story about the destruction of the biosphere from one perspective, and it's kind of what we're talking about now. From one perspective, it's uh, it has one character and the biosphere seems to be destroying itself. It's a suicide, you know, which, on one level is true. Humanity is of the earth. We're creating this mass extinction which seems so unnatural. Yet here the earth is creating a species that is destroying itself. So it seems to be something that the earth is doing to itself, and that's true on one level. Then you could imagine that the story actually has two protagonists and it's a murder. Humanity is actually killing the earth. This thing that has come out of it has now gone back. It's destroying the parent that created it. And then the third way of viewing it is that there's three protagonists, and that is that humanity and the earth are not at war with each other, but there's this third entity that has kept humanity captive and that is what's destroying the world. And maybe that's the whether we're calling it the tower, you know, global civilization, maybe that's what you're talking about, that's what the world doesn't owe, and I think that's a really helpful way of viewing. And I think one of the greatest insights of Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, which you know has always had a big influence on me is just reminding us that humanity is not inherently flawed, we're not destroying the world because we're just selfish. I mean, you hear this everywhere that it's like well, you know, like this is just what humans do, you know, you get, and we. Our mythology about alien civilizations reinforces this. You know, whenever there's aliens, it's like well, they, obviously, if there's intelligent life, someone in the universe, of course they're going to have a highly sophisticated, complicated civilization that's going to have interplanetary travel and they probably have destroyed their planet, because this is just what intelligent life does, not coming from humanity, but just this one culture that has these captives in it. This tower that we have to build in order to survive on an individual level, I think is really fascinating. And then, if we accept that that is kind of the story that we're going with, that humanity is held captive by something that's destroying the earth, what still is so bizarre is that, well, the tower is still of the earth. What still is so bizarre is that, well, the tower is still of the earth, and you know, the earth was, you know, created the tower through us, but is also suffering from it.
Alex Leff: 41:11
And you know, sometimes you'll hear people have this perspective of like well, you know what we have to let go, we can't save the earth. George Carlin has this joke about. You know, maybe humanity is here because the earth couldn't figure out how to make plastic, and that's our role. It's like we lament that there's all these trash bags everywhere, but actually what if that's what the earth wants? And so that's why I think there's a limitation in, you know, thinking that, well, actually, maybe the earth wants what this destruction is. There's not just one want, you know, there's not one will at force here.
Alex Leff: 41:48
It's kind of a negotiation between a bunch of parties, a bunch of species and, within those species, a bunch of individuals within them. A bunch of species and within those species, a bunch of individuals within them. And that's just what I find so fascinating and hard to reconcile is what the heck is this thing we're building? It views itself as separate from the earth. It's converting the earth into this artifice that does not naturally regenerate and is actually self-destructive. It's unnatural, yet because it exists, therefore it is natural. It's. We're benefiting from it on some levels. We're also all suffering from it on other levels. It's such a bizarre phenomenon to witness and try to wrap our heads around and then, let alone figure out. So wait, what do we do? What are we going to do about this thing? What should we do? How should we live our lives?
D. Firth Grifith: 42:44
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot there. There's a lot there, I think, something that has been very helpful for me, and this is going to unpack about 1% of what you said, so it's going to be very minor, that's fine, that's about as much as I've unpacked in my room.
D. Firth Grifith: 42:57
So that's fine, something that's very interesting if you study the health of ancient man. In 2013, I was living my life like I wanted to. Since then, I've had some serious health issues that put me in a different life, but I was studying archaeology in the Dordogne region of France and we were working in a lot of ancient cave systems so Mesolithic and Paleolithic cave systems like Lascaux and Grand Rock and Las Caballeros and others and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an archaeologist and I was always so very interested in ancient man and, like I said, my life pivoted um, but I still keep up with it and I found myself last year doing a pretty in-depth study of the health, uh, degeneration or generation of humanity, uh, within the last maybe 15, 16 000 years. Because it is interesting. I think we find ourselves quite often, and I find myself quite often, I put myself into this, thinking that modern life let's just say this one culture that's destroying earth, as you're saying, it's both negative and good to some degree, like it has some beneficial aspects.
Alex Leff: 44:15
Health was always something I love. Neopets you know, hunter gatherers weren't going to be creating neopets, it's true.
D. Firth Grifith: 44:22
You're probably not false. The interesting thing, though, is at the end of the Neolithic period, and as we progressed into the last, last maybe 8,000 or so years the most recent 8,000 years we see a uniform decrease in a lot of measurements and health indices that we don't see in the previous generations. When I say previous, I mean for the last 2.7 million years of human evolution. That even is a really strange number to play with, but let's just say that number is fine for now. You know, we see a particular life, generally speaking, you know, in these societies, in a cave system in just north of Africa, and I guess what today would be like the Middle East. I guess what today would be like the Middle East, like we see Neanderthal grave sites and burial sites and ritual sites, and we see a lot of really interesting things Like, for instance, neanderthals, or at least this Neanderthal culture, because you can't speak about them generatively generally.
Alex Leff: 45:25
Not all Neanderthals. Hashtag not all Neanderthals.
D. Firth Grifith: 45:28
Right, and they had developed penicillin um by a particular fermentation technique of uh tree leaves in a particular tree leaf in that region and we've actually found penicillin in their teeth and so they were actually medicating or maybe prophylactically medicating dental abscesses and other things, like it's. It's just really interesting stuff. Like we think about modern and modern. You know modernity and modern modern medicine and penicillin. But like we created penicillin in like the 1910s or 20s, but like 47 000 years ago these other humans developed it too. So anyway, it's interesting to have that context, but it is interesting before the modern medical revolution of the early 19th century we have we uh, the ages of humanity have decreased from about eight to 9,000 years ago till today.
D. Firth Grifith: 46:19
The height of humanity has decreased the pelvic inlet depth index, so that would be like the um birth canal size in females has restricted and become like exponentially smaller. I think it's 23 smaller over the last 9 000 years, if you can imagine like what that means in terms of child birth and child rearing and successful births and everything else. So all of these different metrics, both in terms of generation, that is to say, reproduction, all the way to lifespan, life cycles, life qualities, all of these things. It decreases until you get to the modern age of medicine, but you don't necessarily see them re-increase, you just see them propped up, scaffolded um by modern you know, by modern medicine. So like, for instance, like the modern uh lifespan, I think here's an eyes generation of the first to actually see this decrease recently. That's another conversation, but generally speaking, I think it's 81 years old, I think is the human expected lifespan, but the human expected.
Alex Leff: 47:21
Go boy versus yeah. I think it's states yeah it's important to realize what country.
D. Firth Grifith: 47:27
I think I'm speaking personally for the States. I think it's 81 years or 87 years or something like this, but 57 is the expected quality of life for the same humans in terms of not requiring overt medical attention. That is to say you're going to live 59 years or 57 years and then you're going to require overt medical attention.
Alex Leff: 47:52
Ah, that's a fascinating way to put it. I see what you mean with the medical scaffolding.
D. Firth Grifith: 47:57
Yeah, and so if you were to remove that scaffolding, ie. A hurricane wipes out an entire region of people in. You know southwestern Appalachia and you don't live to your 87. Mm-hmm.
Alex Leff: 48:09
Right Appalachia and you don't live to your 87.
D. Firth Grifith: 48:10
Right, we actually become who we've always been for the last eight to 9,000 years of human development, which is not actually better, it's worse.
Alex Leff: 48:19
So that's the weird thing is that we've sacrificed, on an individual level, as well as many levels, quite a bit to build this tower, yeah.
D. Firth Grifith: 48:31
Yeah, not, not, not in a good way, obviously. I mean, there are obvious ways that technology is good, like this very conversation occurs over technology and I'm glad it does To some degree. I'm glad it does For now I'm glad it does, I'll say it that way. But I think we need to keep in check this idea that many historians today, many anthropologists today, many writers today, are talking about the last couple thousand years of human development. Like what, do you want us to go back to the Iron Age? I saw that the other day. Like no, I want to go back to the Pleistocene. Like Iron Age, you know? Like what about the Renaissance? What about the renaissance? What about the renaissance? Neanderthals developed penicillin 47 000 years before you're allowed. We have a very modern view of modernity and I think that's what needs challenged in terms of the scale with which we are examining of human history yeah, or yeah, scale as, yeah, like, as in, like the scales of mott from egypt, like how do we weigh our souls?
D. Firth Grifith: 49:36
um, you know, like, if that's what you mean by that. Yes, absolutely. We live in the middle of nowhere and there's very little sounds. We recently hosted a big group out of DC, a bunch of federal agency employees of all types. Strange, but they were out here for a couple of days for this wildland event. Here, all of them slept so soundly. They were like there's no noise and I was like no, no, there's no noise out here. There's also stars plenty of stars.
D. Firth Grifith: 50:16
They laid out on the lawn one of the nights I can't remember which and just were like overwhelmed by the number of stars. It's, uh, not entirely dissimilar to what I mean when I made the comment of keeping in context the lives that we're currently living. Like, earth is still there, Silence is still there, Peace is still there, the you know sound of wind and birds and other things, stars, the sight of stars, it's all there. We've just clouded our own sights from seeing it or hearing it or participating in it. Being it A dear friend of mine from New Zealand, the Waitaha people, she always jokes that if you walk into a forest and you don't hear trees talking open your ears, it's not because they're not talking, You're not listening.
D. Firth Grifith: 51:05
So how do we listen? I think I'm obsessed with these questions. How do we take a culture that is deaf as hell you know me and you and how do we walk into the woods and how do we acknowledge that the trees are speaking? And then how do we attend to what we acknowledge right? So like, for instance, like my daughter she's three years old right, and she talks all the time and it's very easy to acknowledge that she's here talking. It's very hard to attend to what she's saying. You see, Like that's the difference.
D. Firth Grifith: 51:40
We want to believe Earth is animate, but we don't want to listen actually, because if we listen actually, we have to change. Like I do a lot of podcasting, obviously, and I get books, books. I probably get three or four books sent to me every week in the mail, people wanting me to read them, to blurb it or whatever, to interview them or something, and I've been listening to this one book.
Alex Leff: 52:00
um, they sent it as an audio book and the author that's so kind of them much easier that way yeah and um, and and there's this whole chapter in the book and it just drove me nuts.
D. Firth Grifith: 52:18
I won't say anything about it because I don't want to highlight who this person is. They don't deserve that. Um, because that's just my response. And what is my response worth? Very little, um, but there's this whole chapter dedicated to, like indigenous kinship or the indigenous pre-colonial worldview, that is to say kinship and you know concentricity and everything else. And then, the very beginning of the next chapter, she tells um how the world began and she starts it off with helium and hydrogen and everything else. And it's the scientific, it's the linear, it's the mother culture. If's the linear, it's the mother culture, if you will, using Ishmael and Daniel Quinn's language view of earth creation.
D. Firth Grifith: 52:56
But I know for a fact that all of the indigenous authors that she quoted from in the previous chapter, one don't believe in this and two all believe that we have our own creation stories and that all of our own creation stories are relative to our own culture's relationship back to the divine, the source, the creator, et cetera. Right, and so we all want to spend our time in that first chapter listening to indigenous worldviews and indigenous wisdom holders and traditional ecological knowledge being handed to us. We want to be politically correct there, or maybe we actually want to believe that we're there. I don't know which one, I don't care. But then we keep reading and then we tell our own creation story, which is the universal creation story that happens over everybody. No, no, no, it's not relative, it's universal. This is how it began, in helium and hydrogen and explosions and drifting and loneliness and space and heavens and everything else. And I'm obviously not here to tell you which one's right. That's not the point, of course. I'm not even going to believe that any one of them is right. But the point is, this book provides such a fine template, a fine canvas for us to delineate acknowledgement and attention or attending to what we acknowledge. We all want to acknowledge that indigenous peoples are here, but we don't want to actually attend to what it means for them to also be here.
D. Firth Grifith: 54:19
It requires, like Vine Deloria, I always keep this book with me. It's a marvelous book if you haven't read it. Custer Died for your Sins. Vine Deloria Jr jr. Like great title? Yes, it's. It's a very um, I don't.
D. Firth Grifith: 54:36
I don't know how to describe this book other than if you are comfortable in your own skin, read it. You won't be, and if you're not comfortable in your own skin, maybe you shouldn't read it, because you will just more so not be. But I think everybody needs to read it. So put your skin to the side and do it anyways. But he writes oh, I don't know if I can find it fast enough, but he writes okay. So again, let's pretend like he's not talking about missionaries, because that brings us into a particular moment here and I don't care to be in that particular moment. I want to be a little bit higher than that in some sort of philosophical sense. But I'll read you the start of this chapter.
D. Firth Grifith: 55:13
One of the major problems of the Indian people is the missionary. It has been said of missionaries that when they arrived they had the book and we had the land. Now we have the book and they have the land. An old Indian once told me that the missionaries arrived, they fell on their knees and prayed. Then they got up, fell on the Indians and prayed. Obviously, the first use is spelled with an A, the second one with an E prayed and prayed. Very clever, yeah, he's one of the better writers of the last couple hundred years. I think my point is simply to say there's a difference between having a belief yourself, the missionary, the writer that I'm talking about, the people who want to believe that trees can speak and then actually stepping one step further into that kinship, into that relationship, and attending to that fact. And what does that mean?
Alex Leff: 56:13
Kind of goes to what we were talking about about the knight and the damsel, in a sense that if you view yourself as the knight, it's really much more comfortable to hear that the damsel's in trouble and to figure out like, well, this is how I am going to save her, versus figuring out like what does she actually need. And then also recognizing that we, whatever that means, have a perspective that needs to be attended to as well, and I think that's kind of the Disney movie I want to see is how does the knight save himself or attend to what does he actually need and you know you're talking about these native stories to listen to and recognize that we each have our own mythology. And so then recognizing that the mythology that we might tell that has helium and carbon is the creation of the world, that is a cultural myth, and exoticize ourselves as well too, and to keep ourselves, as part of this, to remember that we're people with culture, and culture that needs to be changed and looked at and valued and retold. Yeah, retold.
D. Firth Grifith: 57:54
And yeah, really, what it comes down to is stop trying to be a kin while you still suckle on romulus and remus, for instance, when you still suckle on this thing called western civilization, not in some sort of you know all of the west's bad sense, but in the sense of separation, in the sense of a culture built upon the backs of oppressed classes. Right, whatever that might be. I do believe that that is very simple right Like, for instance I don't know, I think it's incredibly complicated.
Alex Leff: 58:18
How the heck do you stop suckling? How do you stop? You can't just get out of the tower.
D. Firth Grifith: 58:24
I don't know if it's either or no, but we can begin to Sure. You know, and I think that's another thing I don't, I don't think that we need to complete this, I don't, I don't know. I think every other previous generation of humanity, previous to whatever mother culture, started to nurse, if you will. The world that human humans were born into is the world that they passed from. We live in periods of great change. We're born into a world where, like even you and myself, my earliest memory is no internet. And then I remember dial-up, and now, obviously, we live in the 21st century, 2024. And it's just the idea of dial-up is a joke. I mean the idea that I can tell you my best friend's home phone number from my, my, like my, from my I still can too.
Alex Leff: 59:15
Yeah, yeah, you know friday dnfp. If you're listening to this, I still know your home phone number.
D. Firth Grifith: 59:20
Yeah same thing. Right, I could. My wife and I were talking about that the other day. But like the fact that you and I even know our friends phone numbers, our home phone numbers where, like I, would wait for my dad to get, he worked from home and he would have to get off the phone, which meant that he had to stop working for the day for me to then get on the phone to call my best friend to see what we're going to do that night, but their mom might pick up or maybe their sister was on the phone chatting and I didn't get to connect with him until 7pm. No-transcript.
D. Firth Grifith: 1:00:14
I think it's simple to start to acknowledge and start to listen to, like the idea of a tree talking. I think this is a fine way of looking at it. I don't know what that means. I think maybe, like 700 years from now, my children, if they live in the same region, might have a better understanding of what that means, like Taylor Keene, the Omaha gentleman, was saying. But I don't necessarily think that I have to understand what that means.
D. Firth Grifith: 1:00:42
But to just acknowledge the fact that trees can talk, I think is a huge step away from suckling on this mother culture. I am not saying that we have to throw away the computer. Rather, we can take very simple steps like foraging, actually going out and looking at plants all around you, acknowledging that they're there and then spending time with them and tasting them and understanding when they're bitter and when they're ripe, when they're full of nutrients and when they're stressed and how weather and drought and monsoons and wet seasons and all of this play into the tastiness and the flavor and the nutrient richness, whatever that might mean phytochemically or you know, in any other perspective, what that truly actually means to the health of the whole, but also the health, particularly in relative to your own whole, your body as you inhabit that as you ingest it.
D. Firth Grifith: 1:01:35
I think that is a huge step.
Alex Leff: 1:01:38
I live in los angeles, as I was saying, and you know it's a perfect place. If you're trying to actually visualize the tower there's, this massive even though it's a very horizontal tower there's. You know, la is not a very tall city, it's this huge sprawl. And I was just at an intersection in my car yesterday and I was just like every single thing I'm looking at right now is made in the last, you know, 80 years and it's not an ecosystem by any means. It's just a bunch of materials taken from an ecosystem and plopped very ugly in an ugly way at this intersection. Yet I'm always interested in the cracks in the concrete and what grows in those cracks. And so there's this park across the street from my apartment and last year I was walking around it, last year at this time, which is very exciting because the trees had all this fruit in it, these small little, tiny black fruit, and I was like what the heck, what are these things? And it's just like I was like what the heck, what are these things? And it's just like you know, thousands of them. They're just falling to the ground in the driveway, and parking lot of this park is just smattered with this fruit that's now rotting. And I looked it up on my phone, this little you know piece of the tower, the cellular tower, in my phone, my pocket, and it tells me it's an olive tree. And I look up.
Alex Leff: 1:03:12
Okay, how do I process olives? I pick a bunch of my friends, we put them in bowls, we soak them for a month, we pick rosemary from the neighborhood, get some chopped garlic, put it in these little mason jars and I was able to eat olives that were growing across the street from me in Los Angeles. And then it inspired me to, when I was going on a hike, you know, seeing all these oak trees, collecting the acorns and learning how to make flour from them and make some acorn muffins. And that was such a meaningful way, just personally, to, like you're saying, kind of try to take some steps, and that's just. You know the base, the, the baseline, like you're saying, like to.
Alex Leff: 1:03:58
And then it's another thing to recognize that actually these trees, the oak tree that's gifting me these acorns or not gifting me, but it's just, you know, I'm, I'm taking them, thank you, and the olive trees are talking, and to imagine, like you're saying, that our children 700 years ago, 700 years from now, could hear them and then it seems like a whole other thing to them be able to talk back thing. To then be able to talk back because that's maybe how we get out of this white night and damsel in distress loop is to listen and to attend to these others, but then also to speak to them and and ask ourselves like what, what do we need? Am I what? What do I? What do I really need?
D. Firth Grifith: 1:05:03
Because I suspect a lot of our destruction comes at the cost of projecting the external good that we can do in the world. Hello, I always tell people say hello.
Alex Leff: 1:05:08
You know, Well, anyways, this has been fun.
D. Firth Grifith: 1:05:15
I'm really grateful to get to talk with you today. Yeah, we, uh, we never really. I mean, I, we both flirted with it, but we never really even opened up ishmael, so maybe we could do it again okay it.
Alex Leff: 1:05:26
It's so for me, you know, when I read Ishmael when I was 14, and that gave me language for the first time to ask for the questions that I was already asking and then, kind of like, sent me on a path, and so that's always the soil for me, so those ideas are always there. But there's a whole other forest that's grown since, and I'm happy that that was the forest we were walking through together today.
D. Firth Grifith: 1:05:58
Yeah, that's really good. I think good writing wakes us up. I really like that idea. It doesn't necessarily answer questions, but at least it shows us the questions, or maybe it shows us that we are interested in the questions or that we're interested in asking questions.
Alex Leff: 1:06:14
It gave me a language, certainly words, to the things that I was feeling, so now I could express them and actually pose the questions out loud, rather than feel them non-verbally.
D. Firth Grifith: 1:06:28
That's really interesting. That's really interesting. I would I would be remiss if we didn't conclude this conversation with trying to get um a little bit. I mean, like I don't think your name has been said once but that's okay, straight into it.
D. Firth Grifith: 1:06:45
Yeah, no, it was perfect. Um, alex, you run the human nature odys, I think, and I think that's all pretty accurate. How can people listen to your work? It's awesome. It's much better produced, by the way, than Unshod, this little podcast of ours. There's like good music and there's intros and you just you create a much more interesting sound than we do. So I don't want people to miss out. How can they find it? How can they download and listen?
Alex Leff: 1:07:17
You can type in human nature honestly, wherever you enjoy your podcasts. And, yeah, I I wanted to with the podcast that's now in its second season and we're we're writing the third to create some stories. That's always what I've most been fascinated with and like to do myself is, you know, to be a storyteller and to how to explore these ideas and these conversations in more maybe cinematic or mythical and epic ways, because I think we live in epic and mythical times and you know the for most people. You know climate change is something we all understand. It's almost boring, you know, cause it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. I know all about that.
Alex Leff: 1:08:09
Sixth mass extinction, yeah, yeah, yeah. So how to not necessarily be the white knight coming in to save the world, but, uh, to figure out that doesn't mean that doesn't mean there's not still, uh, an epic unfolding and to figure out what other kind of character we can be in that epic that's true to who we are and where we live, but regardless, to engage with it. So the podcast is kind of about that and so, therefore, I felt like some some good music and sound effects was and silly voices was necessary.
D. Firth Grifith: 1:09:04
It is wonderful. I've enjoyed it. I think our listeners would too, so I'm glad we got to tackle that. Thanks, alex. I appreciate sitting with you.
Alex Leff: 1:09:12
Likewise, I'm happy to be here.
Yay, we love Alex!