Absolutely.

I could not agree with you more.

I think our utilitarian approach to nature has really been the source of the problem.

We've depended on nature for everything that allows us to survive.

But what we tend to do as humans is extract the parts that give us a function.

So we extract the parts that are for food and then we propagate them.

And we extract the parts for timber and we propagate them.

Absolutely.

I could not agree with you more.

I think our utilitarian approach to nature has really been the source of the problem.

We've depended on nature for everything that allows us to survive.

But what we tend to do as humans is extract the parts that give us a function.

So we extract the parts that are for food and then we propagate them.

And we extract the parts for timber and we propagate them.

Absolutely.

I could not agree with you more.

I think our utilitarian approach to nature has really been the source of the problem.

We've depended on nature for everything that allows us to survive.

But what we tend to do as humans is extract the parts that give us a function.

So we extract the parts that are for food and then we propagate them.

And we extract the parts for timber and we propagate them.

So the end of that period, was there an easing out of that or was there a, I'm sweet, I'm good after that period? How did you bring yourself through? So I

heard this podcast by a guy called Alan Watts.

Many people know him.

He's a philosopher, but he definitely tends towards the Buddhist side of things.

And I was still in this depression, just unable to think a thought that got me out of it.

And when you try and fix a problem with the thing that got you into the problem, it's obviously the classic...

And so I'm trying to think my way out of a problem that is driven by thoughts, which is not helping.

Yeah.

And I'll also maybe mention one of my favorite feedback loops you talk about, which is joy.

Well, that's the main result of the book, I would say.

Yeah, this idea of feedback loops is a pretty simple one.

I think people think of global ecology and climate change and all these things as infinitely complex things, and they are.

But actually, everything that's ever happened in the universe is through is caused by these very simple loops like when my brain thought i'd been bitten by the snake and then my body did something which made my brain believe it anything that causes something else to happen that reinforces the first thing is a positive feedback loop so like after the big bang matter is everywhere Some areas are randomly denser than others.

So they pull in more matter, which gets them more density, which makes them pull in more matter.

They pull in more density.

Okay, so what's your top tip then for us as humans to use feedback loops in the other way? Because you seem to have done it.

So give us a bit more chapter and verse on what feedback loops are in different systems and why they're

important.

Well, yeah, you've nailed it.

I think the topic of feedback loops has become very popular in the last decade or so from the perspective of climate change.

We hear that warming leads to soil carbon release, which leads to more warming.

Or You know, drying leads to more forest death, which leads to more drying.

And these are any pattern that causes something to happen that reinforces the inciting process.

What's the long-term future for human civilization in your vision?

One of the ideas in your book that I really like was this idea, and it's probably, I think we're all guilty of this, is looking at as... of looking at nature as an either or proposition you know it's either good or it's it's it's either in good shape or it's not as you say the feedback loops and the very nature of it mean that it's just as capable of repairing itself and at a very rapid rate as it is of destroying itself or being destroyed by humans tell me about that idea

Yeah, I mean, this is the crux.

If you think about our universal system through the lens of feedback loops, you can gain real agency in the process.

So, you know, we think about these climate change feedback loops and they can lead to absolute despair.

You know, you know, well, if if warming is causing the soils to emit more carbon, which is causing more warming, which is causing them to emit more carbon.

That's going to – we are useless.

That is a process that's going on separate from us, and it is driving us to destruction.

It's a bit more complicated than that, isn't it?