Transcripts For CSPAN2 Marcelo 20240705 : vimarsana.com

Tonights speaker. Marcelo gleiser is a theoretical physicist and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at dartmouth college. His work ranges from cosmology and applications of information theory to complex phenomena to history and philosophy of science, how science and culture interact. He is a fellow of the american physical society, a recipient of the president ial faculty award from the white house and National Science foundation and, was awarded the 2019 templeton prize and has authored five books and is the cofounder of 13. 8, where he writes about science and culture with physicist adam frank. He is devoted to the understanding of science and his books have been published in 15 languages. A native of riyadh, janeiro, brazil, he lives in hanover, hampshire. Marcelo gleiser is presenting his new book, the dawn of a mindful universe, a manifesto for future since copernicus yes, humanity has increasingly seen itself as adrift in insignificant speck within a large cold universe. In donovan mindful universe, Marcelo Gleiser argues that it is we have lost the spark of the enlightenment, has guided humanity that has guided him in development over the past several centuries. While some scientific efforts have been over the past. Excuse me, while some scientific efforts have been made to overcome this increasingly bleak perspective, the ongoing search for life on other planets, the recent idea of the multiverse, they have not been enough. Overcome the core problem. Weve lost our moral mission and compassion and focus in scientific endeavors. In the words of marc oconnell, quote, Marcelo Gleiser is precise. The kind of public, intellectual or intellectual will our culture urgently needs a skilled communicator of complex ideas whose work is animated by a humane and humanistic sensibility. The dawn of a mindful universe guided by a profound sense of civilization, no urgency as it charts a path toward re enchantment. We are so to host this event here at Harvard Bookstore tonight. Please join me in welcoming Marcelo Gleiser Marcelo Gleiser here. Okay. There are three microphones, so im a little overwhelmed by sound here. Well, first of all, thank you all for coming. I know its hard these days to compete for attention. You know, there are so many things going on, including a beautiful afternoon in blue skies. So i really appreciate that you the time to come and hear what i have to say and. Hopefully have a conversation. I notice that the next two events have conversations between two people and hopefully this be a conversation between all of us. But before we go there, i will tell you a little bit what this book is trying to say. And im not sure if i i think i should stand here. Look, this way is okay. Awesome. Much better for me. Okay, so you know, ive written other books where, where i talked about basically what is general activity, what quantum mechanics, the origin, life in the universe and things related to the science narrative that we have constructed over the last 500 years or so. To make sense who we are in the universe. Right. And this book in a sense continues that trend, but with a completely different and the spin is that, i dont know about you. Im profoundly worried about future of our project of civilization and i think that the way we are dealing with the planet with its resources and with the other with which we are sharing space is not sustainable so this book will talk about science, but well talk about science in a way supporting a different kind of worldview of what it means to be human in this planet, in this universe right. So i will read some parts of it in a second, but i just to give you the general sort of idea idea, think about our species for a while right sapiens. So weve been around for about 300,000 years or so and. Of these 300,000 years, about 95 of that time, up to ten, 15,000 years ago, we were organized in bands of hunter gatherers, you know, nomadic tribes that would just go around and look for food, hunt for food, have small organizational hierarchies to keep the group together right. And that has the way has been the way in which we of for most the vast majority of our history as a species existed in this planet. And for most of those people, and including pretty much the vast majority of indigenous cultures, there are still with us today. The relationship with the planet sacred. There was, a fundamental relationship between being human and being a world surrounded by animated spirits. Now, what were those spirits . Everything. So the rivers. The mountains and the storms the volcanoes that was relationship between our urge to try to understand things that were beyond our power to understand and establish a kind of connection, a kind of conversation between this remarkable power of nature and the fragility that these people certainly felt because it so hard to survive and what happened in after these 95 of our hour, of our collective history is that we started to get together into agrarian societies starting in the middle east. Right. And those societies were extremely successful in producing more food in an easier which allowed people to into bigger and cities. Right. And as that happened the more and more people you had. Right, the more and more of an urge and a need for discipline and for hierarchy and power was also needed. So you had leaders that were supported by some sort of soldiers or police, etc. To keep everybody in check. Right. And as that happens, Something Else happened was the notion that we were beginning to become so powerful with the fire fire, with the will, with other tools that we developed that we started to feel that we were above nature, that we were not part of this collective. But we sort of grew this thing, which was really above Everything Else that we could control the Natural World, that we could the animals that we could not be affected by, all these natural things that going on all the time. So stronger the cities and the walls, the city, the less nature part of peoples lives. Right. And this trend kind of continued for a long time. And technology to become even more powerful with perhaps a little break in the in the early middle ages. But later this emergence of this idea that we are beyond the Natural World was actually supported by a different kind of revolution which the gastronomical the scientific revolution of the and 17th centuries where what happened well and im going here over thousands of years of history intense 1010 minutes. What happened was essentially that up to copernicus earth was the center of everything. Everything revolved around us. And if you are from the christian persuasion, which in europe was the vast majority, you believed that you were created by god in his image, enhanced really kind of the top. The top in a sense. We are the center. The whole universe is revolving around our planet. And and what happened then is that copernicus said, you know, there is a way of looking at this and. In the beginning of the book, i actually the only part which i fictionalize is the whole history of copernicus and and his death and, his book. So copernicus wrote one book in his life, what i call all the revolutions of the heavenly spheres and im going to tell you the story because its kind of important and he didnt really want to write this book and he had one friend and one student in all his life. He was sort of a recluse to live on top of a tower in poland who looked at the universe. Reticence sighs, believing that there some new order that was possible, the planets. And he said, you know thats reorganize everything and think the solar system with the sun in the center and the earth as just a planet going around it. He didnt really have the physics back that up, but he had this that intuition and data that was very indeed. You know, he was not a very good astronomer. He was using data that was from the that was almost a thousand years before him, which was ptolemy right in alexandria, mostly anyway. So he created this vision. He wrote this book and he gave the book to his student to be published because, you know, in those days, publishing books was a very complicated thing to do. You had to work with publisher to make sure everything was okay. So he gave it to his students, which was it was called radicals. And he went to nuremberg to publish the book as this was going on. It was a work of many months. Radicals is accused of homosexuality, has to run away from nuremberg, gives the book to the only other person nuremberg, that he believed was capable of. You know, having this work completed properly who was a lutheran theologian called andreas osi. And there who hated the ideas copernicus had. And they had to exchange all these letters in which the other said, you know, is a crazy, crazy notion that the earth is just moving around. You know, how can you prove that . And luther actually back that up. He was so the Catholic Church was not a critique of copernicus until six years after his death. You know, so the criticism first came from the lutheran church, especially from luther. And so zander accepts the job and does very perverse he writes an anonymous preface to the book so he does not sign it where he says something like, you know, this book has some very interesting ideas and it should be as a guide to kind, like, navigate and to think about calendars, etc. But for a second think that this idea that the sun is the center of everything has anything to do with reality. This is just a model, and if you believe otherwise, youre going leave the reading of this book more of a fool than you did when you started. So story is that copernicus had a stroke before and received this book on his bed. He read that book. He read the preface and he died that same day. Died of disgust because the whole the work of a whole lifetime is being contradicted and he didnt even know who did it right. And for about 50 years nobody knew who did. So nobody or almost no one took copernicus seriously. And it was kepler like in the early 1600s that actually figured out what was going on. And and this historian of science is a professor at harvard, actually on gingerich, who passed away, i think, last year, a wonderful man. He wrote a book called the book. Nobody read what book was that was copernicuss book. So he went around europe. He found all these excellent copies, tried to figure out who read the book and that very few people importance had read that book. And one of them being giordano, who in 1580 start was, i think, the first kind of like open copernican and he got into tremendous trouble with the inquisition because. Not only he said that, a, the is just a planet, but all stars have planets moving around them and theyll be people in those planets and they are people, theyll be sinners in. The plan because you know, we cant separate people from sin. And so the question is who, is the jesus that saves them is that many . Is this the same . Whats doing with these other people . So he said that he also said that mary was a virgin, that there was no eternal damnation and that there was no holy trinity. So he got into big trouble with the inquisition, did not repent, had eight years to change his mind. He didnt change his mind. And in 1600 he was burned at. The stake at this square in rome called company fury and is a big statue of Giordano Bruno. So things were ideas very dangerous at the time anyways. And in that frame of mind, what copernicus did was course vindicated later. Kepler, galileo, newton etc. Obviously the earth is a planet around the sun, but then copernican is then became something more. Something more. And to me more disturbing, which is that if you ask about the narrative, right, we humans are storytellers, right . And we tell stories about everything. We tell stories about my Favorite Football Team or my my family, my childhood, what i believe in, where i went to school. We tell about who we are, where we came from, about the history of the universe which is perhaps the grandest of all the stories because it embraces all the stories. Everything fits into this and the story that came from copernican is is that the end. The advances of science that followed since the 17th and 18th century is that the more understand the universe, the less important we become. Its been a sequence of undignified discoveries, right . So first of all, the earth was the center became just a planet. But then the sun was the center. But not really, because its just a star. There are 200 billion stars in our galaxy, the milky way alone. And then of course, in the early 1920 years it was discovered that even the milky way, which people thought the only galaxy in the universe is not, there are hundreds of, billions of all the galaxies out there. They all planets, they all have these planets, moons. And for these galaxies are moving away from one another. The universe is expanding and a few decades things got even more complicated. Even the math that we are made of, you know, the atoms, the stuff were made, theyre just about 4 of whats really out there in the universe. The rest is these things we it dark matter and dark energy, which remain a tremendous mystery right of what they are. So we are really not that important in this cosmic insignificance thats the thats the story that weve been telling the world not important. And there is even a principle came out of the copernican which of course the principle of mediocrity which makes me want to cry, which the idea being that our world is mediocre because there are so many like ours. Im going to destroy that in a second, but hold the thought there is many earths there and because of that we life, therell be abundant life, the universe, and because of that we are not important. We are just mediocre observers. Theyll be others like us or similar to us, spread across the universe right. And, and then of course, to get things even more dramatic, the press, if i say even our universe, supposedly the thing that is everything is just one amongst this multitude of universes called the multiverse. So then you so every the more we we discover, the less important we become. And that is a story to tell because its a story that decreases the value we attach to who we are decreases the value we attach life decreases the value attach to the planet and to how we relate to it because has happened along way in which this vision of, the universe has developed is that industrialization had happened and the object objectification of nature happened and what was once sacred to our ancestors for a very part of our existence. And so for many indigenous cultures around the world became just something you could control, dominate, dispose of, used as wanted, right . And that world view is whats leading us to this impasse that we have right now, which is what we going to do in the next few decades, how are we going to reorient our stories so that we can actually sustain, gain some level of without self cannibalizing . Thats the point right. And then you go and i met behind me and around this bookstore, there will be a ton of books which tell us about dystopian future that we are doomed humanity finished. There is nothing we can do about, you know, because of greed, because humans bad. Theres one book by bregman, who is a dutch journalist, called me humankind, which is i think everybody should read this book because he tries to dismantle this that we are evil and construct out another narrative say actually we are not he on talking about i shouldnt talk about his book or talk about but anyways he goes on to talk about he should how many these social psychology experiments that we have been told like the Stanford Prison Experiment they are all frauds and its a real powerful thing anyways so assuming we actually not that bad that were actually good, can we rethink the story of who we are and how do we do that . So im to pause for a second and read a little bit the book so that we can see how i tried to this argument through words that written as opposed to spoken and. Then ill continue so here he goes. The universe has a history only because we are here to tell it through our diligence ingenuity we have pieced together the main chapters of the long saga that began with the big bang. 13. 8 billion years ago. This story unfolds in the vastness of space narrating the drama of matter, dancing to the tune of attract attractive and repulsive forces shaping into ever more complex structures that became stars, galaxies planets, life, us the way we tell a story makes a difference and its time to retell story of who we are under a new mindset. This book is about life on earth. Its cosmic relevance about humanity is moral mandate to rise above past, to reshape our collective future. I write it with a sense of urgency and hope, and the main argument of this book is what i call biased centrism. It has nothing to do with human exceptionalism. Its about any world that hosts life is a sacred world and needs to be respected and protected at all costs. And because we added species as far as we know that knows this, it is on us to do this. Okay. And im going to elaborate this argument as we go. The advent of life changed, everything, life mattered with purpose, with an urge to exist. Right . Compare an amoeba in a rock, right . An amoeba will sense a sugar gradient in a solution is going to move towards that somehow a rock just stays there. There is something about life that is just different. And we no idea what it is. All right. So one of the biggest mysteries of science right now is how the heck. Three and a half billion years ago, a bunch of molecules got together and and became what we call a selfsustaining molecular machine, capable of metabolism eating and reproduction, life metabolism and reproduce ocean life. But this is all coming from stuff that was not alive. So this transition from to living is trivial at all. So the mistake, the principle of mediocrity, people that use sort of the big number is, hey, you know what, the universe huge. There are trillions of planets out. They are just in our galaxy is true now we know which is awesome. You know that of course therell be another earth kind of just like and that is just not true for several reasons. Okay. The first reason is that if you pause and look at all the worlds of our solar system, you know, mercury, venus, mars, jupiter, theyre all spectacular remarkable. They are all. Different from one another. They all had a completely different story starting four and a half billion years ago. They all came from the same initial nebula, but they all developed in different ways and. This is going to be true of every single planet and moon that exists in the whole universe. There will be no two planets or moons. Theyre exactly alike. So this thing of earth 2. 0, which is actually the of a chinese nation that is going to be launched in a few years, is looking for earth 2. 0. Ill explain that means in a second youre just not going to happen. What we do when people say like in astrobiology which is the study of life, the universe, which is awesome that we now get grants to study the possibility of alien life. This is amazing is that when people talk about earth, they are talking about another planet that a similar mass and radius to ours which therell be tons of them and that live in the habitable orbits the star what we call the habitable zone of that star which means in a distance the surface of the planet it has water. Youll be liquid. Because when we talk about life, you know, scientific elite out there, we are talking about life as we know it, carbon based, water based. And there are arguments for that wink, wink can ask me more about it later. And the thing that we have learned about life in other worlds is that we have zero proof or evidence that theres any other world in our solar system that has life. Could there have been life on mars the first billion years . Because, you know, we have canyons and it has volcanoes. It looked kind of like maybe right. But the beautiful thing about earth is that it has had life for three and a half billion or more continuous, really, despite the fact that the conditions on this planet have changed profoundly. You had the ice ball or the whole earth was a nice bowl. You had tropical earth, ocean, earth and yet tremendous cataclysms like the one that extinguished the dinosaurs. Right. 66 million years ago, there was one you know, there were four others before. And now we talk about the sixth extinction, which is happening. Thanks us. And yet life persevered. Now, the point is that if you tweet this history, if you say, you know what, theyll be no asteroid hitting the earth. 65 million years ago. So the dinosaurs would not have been extinct. We wouldnt be here. Theres tremendous contingency in the history of, life in a planet so that cannot run this movie same way elsewhere. And the corollary of this is that we are and you know, scientists dont like to say things certainty, but im going to get my neck out and. Im going to say we are the only humans in the whole universe. There will be no other human life in the universe because theres not going to be even if you have a planet that has exactly the same properties of earth, the evolution of live from that planet because its so dependent on what happens locally collisions, cataclysms is not going to evolve towards a human period. So that makes rethink a little bit that we are nothing. Are we really nothing . No, we amazing why we are the creatures that can tell story of the universe, right . Without us. As far as we know, maybe there are aliens far away. There are telling stories. Their stories are going to be very from our stories. The story we tell is the human story. And that is, as far as we know, the only the universe tells about itself. So in a sense, are the way the universe its telling its own story. And if you werent here, there will be no story. The universe would be just a sequence of events, you know, atoms colliding with atoms, forming molecules, stars being born exploding into black holes. And there would be no narrative to any of that. So there is something very profound about being human and we dont rescue this. And if we keep saying to ourselves that this planet is not important, its just a piece of rock then what are we going to do if you realize you have a diamond in your hand, you take care of it right . If you think its just a little piece of granite. I live in the granite state, but, you know, then you just toss aside right . So that is essentially the main premise that i wanted to in the book, but i want to kind of hammer down a little bit. And see im not going to about so of course, you know, the book structured so that all these arguments about life on the planets are very very detailed you know detail in the narrative but i think that for a reading like this is more important to go to the central principle behind this, which is what i call bias centrism. Okay. So here goes. And then well stop and well have some q a. A universe with all life, a dead universe, a universe with our minds, no memory. A universe without memory has no history. The dawn of humanity marked, the dawn of a mind for universe. A universe that after 13. 8 billion years of quiet expansion, found a voice to tell its before life existed, the universe confined to physics and chemistry stars forging chemical elements within their entrails and spreading them across space. There was no purpose to any of no grand plan of creation through the unfolding of time no matter interacting with itself as gravity, sculpted galaxies, their stars, the emergence life on earth changed everything. Leaving matter doesnt simply passive transformations. Life is animated matter matter with purpose the purpose of surviving and by the way, animated comes from the laughing anima, which means soul. So life, you know, you cant really say it, but lets say it, you know, matter animated with a soul is how we have been describing life for a very long time. Right and the jump as i talking about before from nonliving to living remain this sort of mystery right which maybe one day will crack but maybe we wont we can talk more about that later. So eco theologian thomas berry whom i really recommend everybody should read wrote that the term animal will forever indicate it in soul being so life is a blending elements that manifest as purpose the sense of purpose this autonomous drive to survive is what defines life. The me is what defines life at its most general and in our world. The mountains, oceans and sustain every living being life may be very different from here, but if it exists you must share the same urge to to perpetuate itself in deep communion with its environment. The alternative, of course, is extinction. When life exists, it will struggle to remain existing. Life is matter within. Tension analogy. Let me see. The more we look to worlds in search of signs of life, the more we realize how rare earth is how how rare life and how rare we are. So numbers. So we now have seen about 6000 exoplanet c no have indirectly inferred their existence which is amazing. You know if, i was giving this talk 15 years ago. I could have said that so thats beautiful. We actually Giordano Bruno is right stars do have planets going around it right much almost all of them which is a beautiful thing but of all these planets now we actually have enough numbers our galaxy to have some statistical kind of guess but a good that about 3. 5 3. 4 of the planets that exist out there are earth like earth like in the astronomical earth like meaning similar in mass to our planet. You cannot from that infer that say, oh, that means that life is abundant because the jump ive been saying a lot tonight from nonlife to life, is obvious at all right and it does not depend only on chance it depends on the planet is hosting that life. And in our case mean i go through the whole history life on earth here but just just something which i think is so cool. You know, we keep saying that we are the species that have transformed the planet, right . The anthropocene, etc. However, we are only here because another has transformed the planet about 3 billion years ago, which were bacteria . Only the only bacteria that is still a bacteria that existed that mutated into a photosynthetic bacteria, meaning the atmosphere of the planet was heavy with co2 Carbon Dioxide died. Right. And these bacteria started to photosynthesize which basically meant they transferred. They start to in a very colloquial way the eighth sunlight to transform co2, oxygen. And that was the great oxygenation event. And because oxygen is such a generous, the very poison actually gas in terms of biochemical giving electron you know allowed for more complex metabolism to exist, for more complex creatures to exist here had this mutation not occurred none of the that followed would have happened. So the fact that we have oxygen our galaxy in our galaxy in our planet atmosphere essential and a serious bottleneck for other worlds to have complex life. Right. So could there be life out there . Of course. There could. Im not saying there is it quite the opposite. Yeah, sure. Most probably. If there is, it would be very simple. If there is intelligent life because again, another confusion people make and there was a great professor of biology, harvard, called ernest meyer, who hammered this point down many times, who said, let evolution has no purpose in terms growing complexity. What evolution does is it selects through Natural Selection the kinds of species that are best adapted the environment period. So example bacteria that i was talking about they were around for 3 billion years. Life. Eunice. Eunice for 3 billion years. Here before somebody discovered their unique activity when you know lets become sponges and put more cells together and from there we become more complex animals. And again, each one of these steps in the history of life is not understood from nonlife to life, from prokaryotic cells which are simple cells with Nuclear Material up to eukaryotic cells, and then these eukaryotic cells that have protected dna in the middle, some how became complex by other things that the mitochondria in our cells are probably all the life forms that were absorbed how these have happened and then mutant multi similarity and then animals with in different places and the dinosaurs just stuck about oh but eventually life will become intelligent not really because the dinosaurs were around 450 million years and you know, we no trace of them building radio telescopes, writing poetry or any sort of civilization. All we from their time is this iridium. They are around the planet that tells us about collision with the asteroid. So 150 million years is a long time, right . Hominids have been around for about 3 billion for million years. So there is no drive for intelligent. So to say that if there is there is going to be intelligence is simply not right which takes us back to the argument, you know, that we are not nothing that is something quite amazing about being in the universe right. So i keep telling because i think its an essential point now, let me see what else i want to say here. And i want to say that because its too depressing. So let me just say at the very end of the book, so the the the the subtitle is, a manifesto for, humanitys future, and its kind of ambitious to put manifesto in the title of a book. And i recognize that. So what do i mean by this. So i went to my teenage years and i actually the communist manifesto by marx and engels to find out how do you write a proper manifesto . What that even mean right. So and it is basically this there are two parts to it. Theres first a persuasive essay explaining why the way things are must change. In that case, they wanted destroy the bourgeoisie. You know, and create communism. And the second part is a bunch of action items of, okay, how do we promote this revolution mindset, right . And in that case, you know, the famous sentence was, you know, workers of the world unite, right . So the end of the book is the manifesto for changing our minds set as humans in this planet. And i go through my persuasive, which i hope to be persuasive enough. But at the end, i actually do list a bunch of action, you know, things that we can do as individuals and as members, different kinds of communities, religious communities, schools, hospitals, whatever it is, where we can actually implement changes at the small scale that hopefully percolate to bigger and bigger scales. Right. And if people agree with the things that im trying say here. Im not the only voice saying this. I think what im bringing, which is new, is how this all the way looking at what science is telling us, not in terms of our cosmic insignia, but our cosmic significance. So turning things completely upside can illuminate discoveries session in different ways, right . And i think ill stop here is exactly at 45 minutes. Elliot had instructed me and opened for this conversation. Thank you. Anyone. You edition another form of life that didnt need oxygen. Even if it wasnt carbon based. Thats a good question. And yes, there are different ways you can do that because even in our planet, we have forms of life that would not use oxygen like deep, that, you know, the heart vents there in the oceans, those life forms are complete. They have a completely different metabolic than but they are simple in a sense and. The question is, can you sustain a complex metabolism with Something Else . And the answer we dont know. So neither now has an initiative which is life. We dont know it. And people are trying to figure out are there any possible signatures or is in atmospheres of planets. So thats what im working right now in my research is how can we using, the james webb space telescope, how can we use what can we are learning from the atmosphere of other planets in order to inform us, whether there is any sort of biological activity in that planet because life changes a planet completely. So this is a beautiful thing, you know, the gaia hypothesis is actually i dont know about the living planet earth. Thats something to be discussed. But fact that you cannot separate life from the planet. So the planet earth is a living planet. You know, it breathes with the life that it that exists here. And you cannot not see that. So if you are an alien that is looking at planet earth from far away, looking at the atmosphere is going to say, well, there is methane and is and there is ozone and if you are really good are going to say, wow, there isnt chlorophyl. And if you can find these things, ive going to say the living planet. Thats where i want to go to make friends or to destroy or, you know, knows. So so the point is that we are on the verge of being able to do that to looking at the atmospheres of other worlds, the co the whats in there, whats there to kind of say, yeah, if you want to send a mission to planet, you know, far away to look for life. This is a good bet right. Unfortunately, interstellar travel. The is really really hard right just to give you a depressing number if you want to go to the closest planetary system to us right. Which is this the three plato planets there, the Alpha Centauri region, which is about four and a half light years away from us right. So it takes four and a half years for light to travel from us to them them. If you put a mission in our fastest spaceship, you would take about 100,000 years to get there. At about 50,000 miles an hour. You can do the calculation. So interstellar travel, at least way we know it, no good enough. If you want to have a conversation. Oh, there is life in Alpha Centauri. Lets say hello. So you say hello, and its going to take four and a half years for the light signal to get there and theyre going to say hi, thats already nine years. So you cant do this way. So you might as well just send the whole wikipedia to them. Right . And they say is what we know, what you guys know, and theyll send wikipedia to us and then and then we kind of have some Mutual Understanding way. So that is not the way to it. So the way to do it is why astronomy is so you dont have to go to these places to kind of no learn so much about them. And thats what were doing right now. But odds are for all practical that at least in terms of complex life, as far as going to know for the next few decades, we are its and thats important. Nobodys going to come and save us or eat us, you know, apart from ourselves. You. Im sorry. Okay. Uh, youre a physicist and physics breaks dont matter. And every time they break it down. They find some things, even smaller. String theory is not true. But then you ask, who am i . Why am i here . Etc. Thats philosophy and theology. And the answer you mentioned awakening, enlightenment, etc. But and say and thats understanding that i am the one collective consciousness and this is just a temporary experience having it that to seem far and thats why a face you got to believe something you think they can always come together anyway physics can achieve consciousness in a way thats particle driven or something wow. So funny. Yes, i had my first meeting and somebody me almost the same question. Not quite, but they said do believe that rocks are alive, that there is some sort of living thing that is and there are people that my colleague and friend david know very well. You know that they are penn cyclists, that they believe that there is some sort of that intelligence is as fundamental in the universe as mass and spin and electric charge and is just a property that is out. And the more complex organisms are like antennas that somehow focus their thing and make sense of existence. I dont believe that. So to me and you talk about buddhism and in the book i mention i think not hard with wonderful Buddhist Monk and he has a concept, which i think is much more concrete. And i think because a little more concrete, i think its its its more appealing to most people, which is go into being. And the idea is that there is a connection, a among everything exists and you just cannot extricate john moyer. You know, the explorer said said something very similar of and so lets see think not how you would say this so you grab a book and look at a page and a page from the book. Well, that is made of paper and that paper came from a tree and that tree only grew because it had water and it had sunlight. So it needed to be part of this world. But it needed to receive something from a very faraway star in order to exist. And that star is only there because other stars. Before the sun existed, exploded 5 billion years ago. Spread there stuff into interstellar space. And that made the nebula that became our solar system condense into sun. And the planets. And so the stuff that we are made of are billions of old. So we are just kind of momentary confirmation of matter, right . Say, oh, you know, im 40 and 50, im 25. Sure. But thats just this kind of temporary thing that you are right now, because stuff that you really made off is billions and billions of years old because it was forged in stars very far away. So there is a profound interconnection between everything that exists in the universe. And that to me is, this entire being, which you can look at it in many different ways, you can look it through the equations, but you can also look at it from a spiritual way of connecting to life and the planet. And there is no one thing needs to exclude other. You can do both. So. Yeah. So youre in something for march you youre talking about matter with and im just curious and we came to get the book tonight. I havent read it yet so if you cover, i apologize. Thats okay. Im curious how you lay a groundwork or and understand for morality in this human narrative whether morality invented by us or not. You know, some forms work out better than others, like utilitarianism doesnt work very. Well, im just how you would, you know, say does that conception come from and how does it work . You know, within kind of the story youre well yeah so to share the book does go into that big time because when i tried to construct this whole narrative of the new way being a human i call it a more imperative for our time because once you understand the value of life and the and i go to the concept of sacredness a lot you know sacred does not need to be supernatural it just needs to be something i have deep respect for at least, you know somehow sometimes religion sort of takes hold of certain words like worshiping, reverence, numinous and it doesnt need to be very spiritual, you know, and you can detach these words from the different kinds of denominations and just look at the very core of them and the idea of bio centrism as i was i was mentioning before, is that if you consider a that hosts life, which it is very simple, you know we are only here because the planet allows us to be here. Right. I its obvious if you the temperature the temperature like 100 my my son in chicago told me its 102 degrees here today. If goes to 120 we start dying big time. Thats not very far you know, its a little window you know, and and the fact that this is not happening right there is not enough air conditioning or energy. Its sustained air conditioning to support a billion people. So once you start to think that way, of course, you have raise morally or grow morally in order to embrace this new at of course to me anyways, in embrace this new way of thinking that, we actually need to do all we can to change the course of civilization. And you know, you can be selfish and say yes because otherwise our species will be in trouble. Yes, it will. But its not just for us. Its for everyone. Everyone meaning every other lifeform in the planet. And guess what . We cant separate ourselves from any of that, and we cant ourselves from each other. You know, another concept apart from buddhism actually think it is. I, i say it this way. Theres only me because you we are. A sequence of interaction through relationships, right . So the fact that im tonight and you guys came here tonight will change all of us in some ways, you know, for the better, for the worse, hope for the better. But definitely the point is that through exchange of information, through interactions are changing. Who we are. And this is true not just of people relating to people, but relating to animals, looking at the sky. I was in a two weeks ago. I was i was in tuscany and i had some looking at a really nice telescope and there was a bunch of people together and, you know, just not, you know, people they are astronomers at all. And we were talking we saw saturn, which actually the way its great time to see saturn and garlock sees and things like that and then i was talking to the people afterwards and i and they were telling me that i had forgotten look at the sky for years years. So people just dont even think about nature anymore. Nature is just out there, right . Because we are in the city and the city is the anti so to speak. Right. We have a little there, but its, you know, blocked by those concrete walls and, you know, and and there is the little park, which is this enslaved little piece of nature there that is. But if all you have in the big city is that, then you go there. And if you pay attention, if you are mindful of where you are, you will see life because life is incredibly resilient and you see this connection and people say, i went for a hike after formal sort of not doing it anyways is really awesome. Oh yeah. For 95 of our existence, you know, evolutionary history, we out there in the mountains, in the field everywhere. So of course is going to be good for us. Look at this. We could be doing this on a campfire. Thats how people have done it for, you know, hundreds of thousands of years. But there is zero life form here, partial of goodness we dont see in ourselves or anything. So we have created this world of Straight Lines and sharp angles. You go find in the Natural World it exist. We made this stuff and its different and it pushes rest out and then we feel kind of lost and confused. You know and depressed about the concrete, this and that. Yeah. So one of the action items in the manifesto is find a way to to the Natural World. And if you live in the big city and you dont have a park or you dont have the river, dont have the ocean. I did not grow bonsai tree because are going to have a relationship with that thing. There you are nurturing and through that nurturing you will transform yourself and we are capable of these things so the idea here is to build moral imperative, you know, without calling it utilitarianism. But on non utilitarianism, pragmatism, whatever we want to be. But actually being or rediscovering the human, the word human comes from humans is earth, you know, thats where we came from. Right. And thats we truly belong. Yes. Because you maybe share more of the action items. Say that again. Could you please share more of the action . I sure. Ill read one of. How is that . All right cool. All right. So ill do it. So otherwise think this guys bluffing. Im not bluffing. I mean, they may not be. The answer for everything, but they are hopefully. See, thats the finding here. Sorry. Okay, here is action item. Five. Each individual has a to play. This role involves sacrifices that are entirely distinct from those of a bloody revolution instead of pay with our lives, celebrate and preserve life, align our values and actions according to three principles. The less to sustainability. Ill explain the more approach to engagement with the Natural World and the mindful approach to consumer. So here we go. The last approach, the sustainability to individuals should critically examine what eat how they use energy and water, how much garbage they and how they dispose it. The approach should focus on you dont have turn vegan overnight, but you could. But its going to have but less meat, less energy, less water, less garbage. Thats the last the more approach that engagement with the Natural World whenever possible individuals engage more with nature. If and natural parks, oceans and trails are not available, then take walks on waterfront, explore city squares and parks and plant gardens, gardens at home schools and families can take children on hikes and excursions into the woods and organize visits to positive examples of environmentally mindful farming and industrial practices. Such initiatives will greatly help change the overall mindset that nature is expendable. The approach should focus on more, more awareness of the life around us, big and small, more gratitude for the planet that allows to be alive and flourish. More kindness to all forms of life. And finally, the mindful approach to consumerism. Consumers, the power to shape corporations and their policies. The logic is simple, if consumers dont, corporations dont sell and are forced to change their practices. So you probably know that there is this whole movement of corporate ethics going all around the world right now. And there are these corporations called big corp. So big corporations, which are corporations being rewarded by best when it comes to the environment use of energy, etc. So you identify those and there are quite a few of them on and you say, okay, these people actually the way i think. And so going to focus on from them right and i could give a whole lecture this but i wont unite it consumers have great power to make changes. Individuals should be mindful the companies they buy products from this is what im saying to this company. Do these companies align with biosensor values . Do they strive to their Carbon Footprint . Do they promote best practices with high ethical environmental values . Do they promote inclusivity and equality in their hiring practices . Do they have a do they have a philanthropic practice giving back to society and the planet . Are they mindful their production chain . And do they respect workers . Do they create a partnership with their clients or do they see clients as targets for their Marketing Campaigns right. I mean, even the language is is is evil as more people buy products from companies, embrace a sustainable and forward environmental ethic, the prices of those products will go down because yeah, organic foods are expensive. Now. But if more and more people do it, guess what you know is, is a fundamental law of economics and price of will go down and become affordable for more consumers. Consumers of the world unite so nature can. There you go thats one example. Okay. Well, i think that is a great note to end all time. Unfortunately but thank you so much to Marcel Glaser for speaking with us tonight. Thank all for coming out. The books available at the register, the next room and were so and here at this table thank you so much. Thankim going to be conversatin with dr. Lots. Lots is going to talk a little bit about her book which just came out today. The book