Pre-made mashed potato and out-of-season avocados won’t last forever. In this second part of Ben’s conversation with James William Harrup, we explore how a drive for perpetual growth and boundless consumption could be linked to an underlying trauma. It looks a lot like addiction, so if we can address that need to consume – and say a fond farewell to the things we used to take for granted – we can work towards a more relaxed cycle of growth and change.

Links

• The story of growth part 1: Why things need to die – Episode 22
• At Work in the Ruins – Episode 18, with Dougald Hine
• The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow
• In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, by Gabor Mate

Welcome to Peripheral Thinking, a series of conversations with artists, activists, entrepreneurs, advisors, all people working on or championing the ideas at the margins, on the periphery because the ideas which will shape the mainstream tomorrow are hiding today, on those margins, at the periphery.

Now this conversation is, uh, the second part of a conversation of something a little bit different.

Um, it's a conversation with James Harrup, who is a.

It's kind of specialist in story, crafting story.

This conversation is a little bit different in the sense that it's actually James interviewing me of sorts, although it's not really that.

It's a rich and lively conversation between the two of us.

As I mentioned, the first part of this, this is the second part of the conversation.

So if you haven't already, I would strongly suggest, firstly, you go to the website, peripheral-thinking.com and have a listen to part one, because the truth is, this part two is not going to make a lot of sense without having listened to part one, that being the Way of things, and also a little word of caution.

This part two has a number of what might come across as some rambling thoughts.

Rambling thoughts about mashed potato being available to buy, ready mashed.

Rambling thoughts about the importance of ending things.

As in a sense, maybe think about this episode in terms of what it is, which is a bridge from the first part of the conversation to the concluding part, which will follow afterwards.

But for now, I hope you enjoy part two of three conversations with James talking about the story of growth, the all pervasive story of growth.

I hope you enjoy.

We have a very linear idea of success, you know, and when we kind of, you know, you can swap out success for growth, you know, when often like, uh, when you're kind of, uh, finding a story for a client, it's like, you know, uh, to, to maximize growth or, you know, to, to, to improve, like impact and growth in it.

These are, these are the things.

Um, and it's very, it's in a very kind of straight line.

Um, which again is a, is a fiction that we have sort of constructed this, uh, this idea of the, uh, you know, the state of nature that human beings were in and then became agriculture and then came industry, and then, you know, and cities came around that and kind of, you know, capitalism naturally emerged from this straight line and on it goes with the, and everybody must go, go this way.

Um, there's an excellent book called The Dawn of everything.

Um, it's by, uh, David Graybar and, uh, David wek, uh, an archeologist and, uh, anthropologist.

And, and they kind of deconstruct this story.

They say this is, this is a fantasy, this kind of, whether it's sian or Russ Soen, um, this sort of like, it's, it was kind of created after the fact.

And if you go back and look, these kind of, there was no primitive state.

There was actually different, lots of different models, lots of different innovations, lots of different ways of kind of working that mixed agriculture and foraging and altogether.

And so it would last for a time, it would be seasonal and they, people would come together in cities and then go away again when they didn't need to be together.

And it was not just this kind of straight line of sort of, of, of, yeah, progress growth.

And that we sort of, like, we have now convinced ourselves that that is how our, you know, this is our vision of humanity and you know, that this is the correct line also that we should follow.

rather that, yeah, in our kind of business life, in our work life, that there must also be this kind of, yeah, straight line that kind of, you know, you can see the, the graph, you know, and it's like, yes, it must be, it must go, it must go up.

Whereas actually the way you describe it, these kind of, you know, regular sort of, uh, Pruning, you know, if death is too, if killing is too, if killing is a bit too strong, a regular sort of cutting back and kind of pruning and then letting something new grow.

And instead of this kind of one direct line, you actually have these little kind of, yeah, fern like, uh, unfurling and different things kind of coming and looping back and, you know, okay, then that one has its time and it starts, but then that it causes something else to grow.

That model, that image, that that picture is a far more inspiring and kind of seemingly realistic, view.

Then this, this, this infinitely kind of, uh, upwards straight line of kind of progress and growth and, uh, cause at what expense, you know, what is fueling it If it can't, if there isn't this circle of life where the thing goes back and dies and goes to where, where are you getting the kind of

right.

right.

And of course that is everything you're talking about there, like the, um, you know, the, the, the kind of story around that, the curve which goes up on the graph, you know, that kind of, that linear always up, always ticking up, uh, kind of slope the ramp up to some sort of eternal greatness.

Um, you know, the, the thing around that, of course, I think in a way, like what you are sort of pointing to that on a systemic level, clearly, you know, what resources are feeling that, you know, that we know is the thing which is causing huge, sort of huge problem is actually what is res, what is resourcing that?

Where is the energy for that in a kind of, you know, in a sort of literal energy sense.

And, you know, that is a hugely, that's a hugely destructive endeavor.

But also just like for me on a, like a personal emotional level actually the idea, it, it feels to me that that.

That is kind of creates this sort of, you know, you're trying to build a house on sand essentially.

Like this constant kind of race to be feeding this, you know, always up trajectory.

It's just, it's an impossibility.

It's not even like for me that it's kind of more, more reassuring.

Like just having a slightly kind of messier sort of cycle rather than, it's not even that, it's kind of more reassuring.

It's just, just so much more relaxing.

It's like, oh, thank fuck for that.

Do you know what I mean?

Because the idea like I can't, you know, exactly is the same.

Whether it's the kind of the macro resources were kind of just the personal, emotional resources to be pushing this kind of illusion because it is an illusion.

Like you talk about going from David Gray and all those kind, right?

This decided it is an illusion.

So the cost of perpetually trying to live out an illusion is fucking exhaustion basically, isn't it?

And you know, so I think just like for me, just on a personal and emotional level, the cost is too much.

And actually if you could just put it down and go, thank fuck for that, I'm not, it's not, I can't do that, that was all, that was all an impossibility.

It doesn't mean to say there is not, there is not time for growth or opportunity for growth or some points are up, but it's like, it's like not always forever.

You know, like with that, there is also then down, so how can I get comfortable in that sort of slightly more kind of messy, messy cycle?

Yeah, a messy cycle where growth is, yeah, this circular, or, I mean, it's not even, it's not even a circle.

It's more like a kind of Celtic cross or something, you know, like it's sort of this, this sort of real, kind of like interweaving, uh, loops and, um, also recognizing the interconnectedness of, as you say, you know, the, your, your emotional, your human emotional, uh, wellbeing, your human emotional self, and those resources.

You know, the, this kind of idea of like, of the story of the, of the upward curve is the story of the kind of eighties shoulder pad, like, you know, the Richard Gear in pretty women kind of going in and kind of destroying, what does he do?

He goes in and destroys companies or whatever and consumes them.

Yet somehow even in our kind of avocado on my bread.

Kind of, um, green smoothie sort of business culture, you know, which is, you know, all the people that I work with also are, are, tend to be smaller to medium sized businesses.

And these are people who are kind of conscious and aware.

But yet still there is this idea of sort of busyness of kind of work as a, as a sort of, as a badge of, uh, of, of, uh, of kind of honor.

Yeah.

A suffering with, kind of, with burnout as the ultimate sort of prize, you know, as the ultimate.

Exactly.

You've made it.

Things are really shit.

So what does, I mean, what does still drive that?

Is it still, is it greed?

The sort of underlying kind of emotion of that, you know, that, that, that exponential like curve?

Cuz obviously you don't need it.

You don't need it to always be better than the, the year before.

And is there a, at some point does it kind of slip over from, okay, look, this is what I need emotionally, physically, um, in my life to like, does it, it somehow becomes a game, it's just like, well look, I just need more zeros on my, uh, on my bank account.

And, and, and is that, like, is that shift from sort of, shift into kind of statistical thinking?

I think it is where it's all just about, it becomes, uh, uh, uh, what you spoke about at the beginning, you know, GDP and these sort of like these units of measurement.

And when it all becomes statistical, when it all becomes unitary, um, it's very easy to do terrible things, uh, as kind of history sort of.

Uh, attests when it's just sort of numbers on paper and boxes to tick, then suddenly it's, it becomes very easy.

So if that's, you know, statistical thinking kind of facilitates, uh, the evils, let's call them, of sort of, uh, of rapacious capitalism, uh, what is the kind of drive?

Is it, is it, is it greed?

I mean, it's, it's, it's a good question.

There's a couple of things that sort of came to mind as you were talking there.

One just before I come to the greed thing, um, just the, the game aspects.

I think that, that, that, that can't be overlook for sure.

I remember.

Once.

Um, so the last sort of proper company I had, I had sort of, uh, was stopped working with about five, six years ago or something.

But that was the sort of the, the final ending point of a sort of, of a declining journey, which had sort of gone on for some years before that.

And I remember coming home, I remember I'd been out doing exercise early one morning.

My kids were little, very little at the time.

Uh, so I'd been out doing exercise early one morning and I remember coming home and so it was light of me like seven in the morning or something.

And outside my house was a cat, right?

And the cat had, um, a mouse, right?

But um, the cat, so was cat was singing the pavement.

So I come up the cat's just outside my sort of out on the pavement outside my.

Uh, outside my house and it has this mouse, but the cat was sitting there and the cat looked so fucking bored, right?

But it was like, it had sort of had this mouse that it was just sort of patting and holding, not patting, but like, sort of like, it was like the cat I was looking at the cat thinking.

It was also that a cat was looking at me going like, this is so fucking boring.

I just have to do this because it's somehow my job is to sort of catch this, but I can't really be fucked to it.

I don't even want to eat the animal.

I barely want to kill it.

But it's like something in me is sort of telling me that I'm supposed to be killing this thing.

It's boring, I'm bored.

The mouse is sort of dying and we're all kind of just sort of playing out this game over, which we have very little control.

And I looked at the cat and thought, fuck, I'm doing that right.

And so it's like I need to, I need to separate myself from my company I to end that because I just feel like I'm kind of playing out a game.

So this, that was sort of slightly off topic, but the point around game I think cannot be, cannot be sort of overstated.

These games that we are kind of plugged into and playing, whether we're a cat or whether we are a mouse, or whether we are a person, they can't be, they can't be overstated for sure.

Uh, so undoubtedly that potentially has, has some, some part of it.

The other thing then, so about what's, what's kind of really sitting behind it?

I mean, of course that's like a massive question in a sense.

So some of the, what I'm, one of the areas I'm really interested in studying is around kind of Buddhism or a lot of Eastern philosophy generally.

And, uh, like, so essentially what the Buddha, or is the, you know, the quirks of the mind are about greed, hatred, and delusion.

So the mind will go to greed, hatred and hatred and delusion.

And so it has a kind of natural propensity to kind of go there.

And so part of the work of meditation in that context is about understanding the movement of the mind, understanding that, you know, left to its own devices, that's where it will, that's where it will go.

Uh, and so that is why you meditate.

That is why you practice.

That's why you learn from teachers is to understand that movement and to understand how that movement turns up in your own mind, in your own life.

And the more that you understand that, then you know, so the story of the buddo goes, the more you understand that, then you get on a path, a journey beyond that, you are no longer kind of compelled by that so much.

But if you don't do that work, those things are blind to you.

Those drives are blind to you.

Therefore, you know, you are hooked into, you know, the pattern, the game, a little bit of, of greed, hatred and delusion.

So that greed is a kind of natural movement of the mind.

So for sure, like within that sort of school of thought, that points a little bit potentially to, to what's going on.

For me in a kind of, I, I also think maybe there's sort of something else like.

and you know, clearly I'm just an amateur at this.

I have, there will be people who actually know, so I'm sort of a little bit kind of careful about what I'm, what I'm saying, but it feels to me like greed in a sense is a, is is a kind of response to an insecurity.

You know, we're trying to fill something up, we're trying to make something go away.

And so, you know, whether the, so that can only be a, a felt thing essentially.

So something, you know, I'm trying to fill myself up in some way.

I'm trying to make something else go away.

And so greed, kind of hunger to consume is a way that I make that feeling go away.

And so in, in part, you know, this kind of, this will to consume, this will to greed, then by that kind of, sort of that line of thinking is, you know, maybe that's what I'm doing is I'm just trying to make.

Sort of ill feeling, I'm trying to make discomfort go away.

Uh, and I kind of do that by filling myself up a little bit.

And then that, that gets to, that starts to get played out on kind of, on sort of, um, on cycles and scales that kind of reverberate out from us.

It starts to get played out on, you know, on whole kind of macro societal levels essentially.

Which is, uh, I dunno if you, if you read the, have you read it much of, uh, the Doctor Gabel Matte?

Have you read much of his, his stuff really good, really interesting stuff to read.

So he, he was a, he is a doctor, um, but his doctoring took him to working in downtown Vancouver.

And downtown Vancouver has like one of the most sort of totally sort of destroyed communities of, uh, homeless people, drug addicts, but, you know, ba basically people who society has just got, you know, no, you know, you were allowed over there and they live in this kind of one area.

And he, he was the doctor, the kind of physician for this area.

And that kind of, you know, got him into starting to, you know, sort of explore a lot around, he writes a lot about psychology now, but by his own, he's not a psychiatrist.

He's, he's a doctor essentially.

He's a physician who work with these people and starting to, you know, just see the patterns, see the repeating patterns of the relationship between addiction and trauma, right?

Like all these people who are sort of addicted and sort of have been spat out by society.

All have a fundamental underlying, have had, you know, have experienced fundamental underlying trauma.

Uh, and so, and he actually started to understand it in his own life too.

So, um, he had actually, he was born in the 1940s in, um, in Budapest to, uh, family of Hungarian Jews.

And so he w he was born, um, in, into the Budapest ghetto.

And when he was, uh, six months old, his to basically to keep him as, to keep him alive, his mom gave him to somebody else, like a friend, essentially.

And so like six month old baby, give the baby to someone else because she knew she had to give him away in order for him to have a chance of surviving because it's in the ghetto people, everyone's being taken away to, uh, concentration camps.

So she gave him away.

And, um, as it happened, he then was reconnected with his mom, like, I dunno, six months or 12 months later.

But, you know, had a, had a sort of massive trauma at the kind of, sort of start of his life.

And, um, this kind of came back to his, uh, his work that he was doing with in, in, in Vancouver, because he also started to recognize he had an addiction too, but his addiction turned up in buying music, CDs, right?

He would always be buying CDs, any opportunity having would buying ucd.

But he was, so, he had an addiction which played out in, you know, the, in, in, in consuming, in buying thing.

And, you know, he, he kind of makes the kind of very real point that his addiction is no different to the addiction.

You know, the person who's addicted to heroin or the person who's addicted to crack or whatever it might be.

And of course we, we see this in our culture all the time.

There's massive addiction.

There's addiction to these devices that we are sort of, you know, there's addiction to phone, there's addiction to work, there's addiction to, you know, the kind of technology and all that sort of stuff.

And he points this idea that, you know, in a way, the likelihood of, of sort of addiction sort of coming to root in our, in our lives is linked a lot to the idea of trauma.

And trauma doesn't need to be like what we would consider like, you know, real trauma.

Like someone like him is given away from his mother because the Nazis are coming and they're taking everybody off.

Cause you know, like we can look at, oh, righto, that's real trauma, you know, or the people in Vancouver, which may be where come, you know, first Nation people and they're taken away from their land.

It's like, although that's real trauma.

Now here's a really kind of good definition of trauma, which obviously I cannot remember right this way, but, but it's essentially, it's not about the act itself, it's about our memory of the act itself.

So, you know, trauma can, you know, turn up in all sort of different ways.

And I think for me, I kind of wonder the relationship between this, the relationship between greed, the relationship then between the need to consume, to kind of make a discomfort go away.

That consuming, that the act of consuming, the act of greed in a sense is another addiction and addiction possibly being linked to that kind of underlying sort of trauma and tension and disconnect, which is kind of happens across our whole culture in a way.

And so for me, like, um, you know, you, you made reference to the sort of 1980s film, the idea of that somehow this, the greed was like this, the time, a big shoulder pass, but in a sense that story of greed, Isn't just about the 1980s, it's about, that's like our last really in a supercharged way the last 50 or 60 years.

And I kind of do wonder whether that in part is linked to disconnects.

A lot of the systems that we had kind of been sort of depended on or connected to, whether they were familial, whether they were kind of bigger than that, whatever they might be.

As those things all kind of crumble and creak as the stories on which we had kind of always sort of relied on and told ourselves as those things no longer kind of make sense, whether there is this kind of underlying kind of disconnect and underlying anxiety and un underlying wound in a sense, which the propensity degree, the propensity to consume just builds on.

I think that's, uh, wonderfully insightful actually, to, to look at it, to pull out to that kind of macro scale and see what is the trauma of our.

Of our world, you know?

Uh, and this idea that, you know, trauma is relative, like it's, you know, your trauma, it doesn't have to be, your trauma is, uh, relative to you.

You know, it is how we, how we react, how we feel it.

And um, yeah, everybody's trauma is valid.

I mean, yeah, well, we could look to the first and second world wars as a kind of, as a, if you want to find, look for a real trauma.

Um, but also, yeah, this, uh, this disconnection and I think it's tied up with that, um, this disconnection that mechanization clearly kind of gave and this idea of like, okay, uh, uh, sort of machine gun, like production line kind of mechanics and sort of, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, take it, take it, take it.

Um, it seems that it might be as simple as to say, look, you can't have it.

You can't have whatever you want, whenever you want it.

In our kind of like, in our sort of cultural, uh, habit, like I was, I live in Berlin now.

Uh, I was recently back in London and, uh, I was buying, uh, we were staying near a Marks and Spencer's, and I was buying pre mashed potato in a plastic, in a plastic packet, you know, because I, because I could, I was busy

Yeah.

Yeah.

want mashed potato?

feed them.

there, it's there.

I bet I could have it whenever I wanted it.

Sunday Easter, like easter Sunday, whatever.

I could go buy pre-match potato in a packet.

Uh, if I couldn't get it, I'd be mad.

You know, like, where's my mashed potato?

But actually to be told, like, no, sorry, you can't have that, uh, you can have these potatoes and like, uh, and mash them and then it will even, like, you can't have that, uh, you know, I want any color of clothing at any time.

I want it sent to me.

I want four sizes of it.

I want it like, I want it all, I want it now.

Just a, a simple kind of switch is what?

No, you can't have it right now.

You, you, you can have it sometime, but you have to wait and it might cost more because of the, the sort of criteria that it has to meet.

Yesterday I, um, I, yes, I spoke to a guy who, uh, on my podcast who wrote, uh, this book, which is called At Work in the Ruins, by, uh, somebody called Dougald Hine.

And it's a brilliant book.

Uh, and it was a super, really just really inspiring conversation for me.

And so his book, it's, we'll kind of leave you to do the kind of the, the readings book, but just sort of general kind of thing.

So he, he's like a term climate activist, although he says he's not an activist because, like actually people who, you know, like tie themselves to Bridges or, uh, Greta Thunberg or, uh, Vanana Shiva, he says, these, these people are real activists, you know, they put their bodies on the line.

They put themselves on the line.

He has not done that.

He's, you know, he's, but he, he's a, he's a long-term, uh, kind of talker and, uh, campaigner for, for climate issues.

But he, um, he said some somewhere and he, he li he's, he lives in Sweden now.

He's, he's a British man, well, British by birth, lives in Sweden now.

Um, but he was sort of talking about, there was a, the kind of a sequence of things that happened around the, around the time of the Covid pandemic that brought him to the conclusion that actually you could no longer, it no longer made sense to talk about climate change.

Uh, and he was saying, like, for, for him, for somebody who'd spent the previous 15 years talking about climate change, this was like a sort of very significant thing.

And he was, he was say, he was said, he was in conversation with a friend of his, and he said that, and then he said, as the words came out, he thought, shit, I really better write down what I mean by that because that's a pretty significant sort of thing.

Anyway, the book is that writing down of what he kind of means by that.

The thing around it is that, uh, he, he's sort of talking about the myriad crises essentially that we are kind of facing, whether it's kind of climate or whether it's things around pandemic.

But, and there, you know, he's, he kind of weaves together and sort of stitches together, really very super inspiring, sort of compelling, um, sort of series of thoughts around it.

But, you know, in a, in a way to kind of super paraphrase what he's sort of talking about, the, the reason that he kind of no longer sort of talking about climate change is because he's saying that actually the conversation, the question of course needs to be much, much bigger than that.

It's not about whether I might persuade a metaphorical you that, you know, there's this whole fucking problem with the climate and it's going to, you know, do this.

It's like actually the time for those sorts of things is kind of gone a little bit.

You know, for him, like, it's like, well, you know, these crisis turn up in lots of ways actually, for lots of things that we spoke.

There's a crisis of loneliness.

There's a crisis, there's mental health crisis, there's, yes, there's climate crisis.

All of these sorts of things are kind of turning up in there.

In their own kind of way.

So they all kind of demand a, a kind of a, a reflection and question beyond the tools that we currently have, which essentially come down to sort of science.

And this is why his root into this, uh, which he was saying like for lots of the, the last 15 years, his role actually has been to work alongside climate scientists to contribute to, and kind of to help translate the, translate the story, to translate the debate.

So he comes from a place of huge respect and, um, kind of care for what science is and what scientists know.

But within that, he also then knows well where that knowledge stops and where that, where that, you know, where a knowing needs to begin is, is kind of how he starts to put it.

But the reason I sort of share all of that is that he, Essentially, in a sense, a lot of what his book is about is about the, the kind of, the requirement in a way to give up, the quiet, the requirement in a way to start to kind of let things die.

Because here's the, the kind of general sort of thesis, this idea that.

The trajectory that we are on, uh, you know, could take us in one direction.

It's not just about kind of climate breakdown, but also the idea that kind of, that the, the continuation of the story that fed the idea of growth is the story which says, you know, big tech is the solution to that.

This idea that somehow the planet is there to be managed, that somehow it is there to be controlled, which is the extension of a lot of things that we are sort of talking around, you know, around, you know, where the kind of human mind, how the human mind has kind of vomited.

Its sort of attempt to control onto the world.

But that is kind of one thing.

And then the alternative, as he's sort of talking about is you could go big like that, or you could go small and small starts to mean many, many different things.

But this idea of, uh, one of the books, which he refers to a lot, which was one of his inspirations for writing, it was a book called Hospice in Modernity.

And, um, the idea behind that book is that, um, essentially that we need to be better at endings, which are obviously my words, not, not, uh, not the author's words.

I think she's called, uh, Vanessa.

Ricardo, Dora.

Uh, and that we need to be, we need to be better at endings.

We need to start to kind of end the things in our culture, which no longer service, and also, which are, we are unlikely to be able to sort of carry on.

And so the reason I started this whole sort of, uh, sort of slight, sort of tangent was to your point there around, uh, maybe we just need to get better at sort of accepting we can't just have whatever we want all of the time.

One of the, the, the kind of, he ends with a kind of series of really beautiful invitations or questions, reflections, essentially at the end of the book, because he is not offering solutions.

It's not saying cuz like for him, that's just a continuation of the same thing.

There's a problem and here's a solution.

But he's like, climate, it's too big, it's too, it's too big.

It's too big a thing for that.

So he kind of offers with these, uh, these, um, ends with these, uh, reflections, these invitations and um, one of them is about kind of mourning the things from the culture that we are not able to take into the, into a new way of being.

And so that idea of, you know, my, the, that I can have mashed potato ready mashed for me, whatever I want, you know, might just be one of those things that we practice mourning.

It's like, that was beautiful that we were able to do that, you know, that and, you know, kind of childbirth and mothers not dying and all those sorts of things.

These, these kind of things which have been the kind of benefit of the culture.

We are not also like, we are sort of joking, you know, that I can eat avocado on raw bread.

All year round from the south coast of England.

You know, maybe again, that is just a thing from this culture that we kind of mourn and we say, that was great.

It was beautiful that that was possible and that we are not, we are not able to kind of carry it forward.

And part of the act of kind of mourning is about telling the stories of what was good.

So he kind of points to which is comes from, uh, Vanessa's book.

That is part of what kind of mourning is, is about telling the stories.

Celebrating the life that was led.

And the life that was l the life that was led equally includes mashed potato whenever I want, or avocado whenever I want, or you know, like I said, the kind of wonders, those aspects of kind of sort of science which have been hugely sort of, uh, powerful and, and kind of positive, some of those things we're going to be able to carry forward into the new version of culture.

Some of those things, it's just not gonna be possible to carry, carry forward and those things that it's not possible to mourn them well, to end them well, to tell the stories of those things in the right and positive way.

And so in that we should include mashed potato available whenever you want.

Yeah, I, you know, I would take a day of morning, what's the little plastic packet sale off as it, as it give it the, the Viking burial it deserves.

The way you describe it is great because it's not, you're not turning people off for, for this thing.

You're not making them feel bad about it.

You're not like, uh, giving everybody like a hard time.

It's like, yeah, these things, it was the peak of civilization.

We had mashed potato whenever we wanted it, you know, like it was, it was beautiful.

But it like, you know, it took, it took, we took it too far.

It, it, it took us to the edge.

Uh, but it was a, it was a golden age, um.

Cuz I think that's, uh, there's, there's some, there's kind of danger in the story of, and maybe, uh, um, he also felt this way, this kind of, you know, the climate kind of crisis, a kind of alarmist story of kind of, uh, climate catastrophe.

It's not an empower, it's not a motivating story.

It's not a, like, it feels too big and it feels too scary and it feels like I kind of, uh, I just wanna hide, hide away and not, and not have to face it, but actually little, these little kind of sacrifices or these little sort of deaths, you know, with love and able to kind of let go and kind of give, give it, give it with love and tell the, tell the story of it and sort of, you know, shed a tear and then be like, okay, we, uh, we can, we can move on now.

And, uh, it's, it's for the greater good.

Yeah, and, and just with, because the other thing he kind of goes on to talk about is in that moment of moving on, which you had just sort of got to, there is also, which kind of links to the other thing you were saying around the, the kind of catastrophizing, not being an empowering story.

But in, in that moment of kind of moving on to move on, with the spirit of wonder, with the spirit of curiosity, with the spirit of inquiry.

Because the other thing can happen is that somehow we also assume that, you know, if I, you know, as I say goodbye to the mashed potato, which I can no longer carry through to, to the new culture, that you know that, that it's easy to default to actually somehow things are going to be worse, right?

And all, I think what he's talking about is not that there will not be hardship, cause of course there would be hardship by the, the story he's talking about.

But equally it's really important.

We don't know.

Because of the mystery and kind of the mystery and magic of it all.

We don't actually know what is going to come to part, what will, what will happen, what will be created once we've said, once we've sailed the mashed potato off down, down the river, you know, we don't know.

And to, to step into that with a spirit of hope to start into that with a spirit of curiosity and inquiry and sort of positivity, I think is really important because we just don't know actually what, what comes to pass when we say goodbye to mashed potato.

Thank you for listening to that part two of my conversation with James.

I hope the talk of mashed potato and ending things, it wasn't too off putting for you.

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