Negotiating Reality
Negotiating Reality Podcast
Episode 3. Islands Sculpt
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Episode 3. Islands Sculpt

Learning from Ecology on how to live in right relationship

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Introduction

Welcome to the Negotiating Reality podcast, where we explore how we understand our world and reckon with the possibility that many of our deeply held truths just might be delusions. I'm your host, Eric Hekler. This is part two of a three-part series on metaphysics—examining the fundamental nature and underlying assumptions we make about reality.

In our first episode in this series, "Life Breathes," we explored how all life is interconnected and interdependent. Today, we dive into understanding how context matters through the aphorism "Islands Sculpt."

"Context matters" is such a truism that it's practically meaningless. But what if we could understand how context matters? That's what "Islands Sculpt" attempts to capture—the essence of how our environments shape us, just as we shape them back.

What We'll Explore Today

Through the fictional story of Lyla, a 38-year-old urban planner who's also a student of ecology, we'll journey through multiple scales of how islands sculpt and are sculpted:

  • How our own bodies are ecosystems shaped by microbial partners

  • How our homes function as biodiversity hotspots that influence our health

  • How neighborhoods demonstrate the tension between efficiency and resilience

  • How cities become laboratories for unintentional evolution

  • How institutions must adapt or face extinction like any other species

  • And finally, how adopting a humble perspective reveals our relationship with nature.

We'll explore how islands exist both vertically—from bacteria to Mother Earth—and horizontally—how these islands constantly sculpt one another.

By the end, I hope you'll understand why we're all basically walking ecosystems who think we're individuals, living in cities we think are separate from nature, while life at every scale continues sculpting us whether we're paying attention or not—all while we're unintentionally sculpting nature to produce super bugs and other beings that will overcome our attempts to control them.

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

The Science Behind "Islands Sculpt"

The Lyla narrative was inspired primarily by Rob Dunn's fascinating book A Natural History of the Future, along with some additional readings such as books by E.O. Wilson like The Future of Life, Consilience and The Creation, as well as Suzanne Simard's Finding the Mother Tree, Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life, and Ed Yong's I Contain Multitudes. If you'd like to go deeper into ecology, I invite you to read any of these books but, in particular Rob Dunn's excellent one, as it provided the overall structure for this episode. If anything seems off from the actual science, it was probably me not fully understanding Dunn's and others' work. I invite you to check my work and let me know where I got any of this wrong.

The "Islands Sculpt" aphorism springs from what's arguably ecology's foundational law, co-developed by Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson in the 1960s: the species-area law. Wilson, like other naturalists before him, had a hunch that the number of different species on an island directly relates to that island's size. Bigger island, more biodiversity. Simple enough... but why might that be the case? Could they turn this general observation into a predictive, scientific tool?

Wilson teamed up with Robert MacArthur, who brought the mathematical muscle to Wilson's biological insights. Together, they developed a formal model that could actually predict biodiversity on islands. Their collaboration culminated in The Theory of Island Biogeography in 1967, giving us this foundational law of ecology—born from observations of actual islands.

Their species-area model focuses on the equilibrium between immigration and extinction rates, understanding these rates through any given island's size and connectivity to other islands—like its proximity to the mainland. Extinction happens when every organism in a species dies out, while immigration involves new "arrivals" to the island. These arrivals come through various means: species literally swimming, flying, or hitchhiking their way to new homes, plus evolution doing its creative work of diversifying life into new forms.

To summarize: larger islands have both slower extinction rates and more arrivals. But extinctions and arrivals are also affected by connectivity—if an island sits close to other islands or the mainland, new arrivals are more likely to show up.

Critically, while MacArthur and Wilson developed their theory focusing on ocean islands, they anticipated it could generalize to other "island-like habitats"—such as mountain tops and lakes.

This law, coupled with Darwin's Theory of Evolution, gave ecology its paradigmatic, predictive foundation—a structure that could guide the field's inquiries and work. From this starting point, ecology has matured considerably, with experiments leveraging "island-like habitats" as key factors shaping evolutionary processes.

Future ecologists like Dunn have extended this notion of islands in many ways, which will be highlighted in Lyla's story.

Before we dive into Lyla's journey though, there's one more key concept central to ecology: niches. Niches are the specific environmental conditions that allow a species to survive. For our purposes of understanding how islands sculpt, it's important to keep in mind the species-area law, connectivity issues, and the difference between where a species could live (fundamental niche) and where it actually lives (realized niche). Usually, realized niches are smaller because suitable areas aren't connected by corridors that allow movement. Think of alpine pikas—adorable mountain dwellers who could live on multiple peaks but may not be able to cross a desert valley between them.

This issue of fundamental and realized niches is crucial for understanding climate adaptation. Projects like the Yellowstone to Yukon corridor help species move as their current homes become too hot. The idea is to create corridors that enable species to move to where their fundamental niches will be in the future.

But here's the twist: our urban corridors also help species move—including bedbugs, rats, and infectious diseases. We've accidentally created superhighways for whatever's clever enough to hitchhike with humans and, sadly, many of these species want to do us harm and actively benefit from us harming their competitors who happen to be protecting us from them.

All of these ideas really matter and are actively studied in the field of ecology. Again, check out Rob Dunn's book, A Natural History of the Future.

OK, with that overview of some key concepts from ecology, let's start weaving these ideas together in the fictional story about Lyla to illustrate how "Islands sculpt."

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

Lyla's Island Self

Let's start with a humbling realization: Lyla isn't one organism. She's a walking United Nations of microorganisms who convinced themselves they're a single person.

Lyla hosts about 39 trillion microbial cells—roughly equal to her human cells. She literally cannot survive without them.

Each morning, Lyla reaches for coffee and yogurt, recognizing breakfast as an active negotiation between human Lyla and her microbial partners. The coffee's for her; the probiotics help beneficial microbes outcompete the harmful ones trying to colonize what we might call "Lyla Island."

Unfortunately, Lyla's microbiome had a rough start. Born via C-section, formula-fed, and raised in an antimicrobial-obsessed household, she missed nature's original welcome gift—a curated collection of beneficial microbes from her mother. Following the medical wisdom of the time, her parents sanitized everything, unknowingly creating an island habitat perfect for the most robust, potentially harmful microbes.

The result? Anxiety, gut issues, and a deadly peanut allergy. Her parents acted in good faith, following advice to "control nature and minimize risk."

Lyla's epiphany came when she learned a fascinating fact about termites—they're essentially cockroaches that partnered with microorganisms to digest wood. Termites must eat their nestmates' feces after each molt to acquire essential gut bacteria. Without this microbial inheritance, they'd starve, even when surrounded by wood.

This sparked Lyla's curiosity about her own inner ecosystem. She learned about her microbiome, what it needed, and how to shape her personal island to be a healthy habitat for her microbial partners.

Now, Lyla tends her sourdough starter Bernard like a pet, recognizing that Bernard might be one of the most influential relationships in her life. When friends are inexplicably angry, she wonders: dysbiotic? When someone never gets sick: excellent microbial diversity?

The first lesson "Islands sculpt" taught Lyla: we need other living beings to exist. We are, quite literally, much like termites and their microbial partners.

This insight made Lyla skeptical of techno-utopianism. She questions Mars colonization plans that rarely discuss how we'll "carry the right islands" with us to survive. Which essential microbial species are they planning to pack? How will they do that? Are they even thinking about that, or do they assume technology is enough?

From Lyla's perspective, we still bring our waste back to Earth from the International Space Station. To her, this sounds like we haven't figured out how to manage basic biological processes in space... but sure, let's colonize Mars.

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

Lyla's Apartment Island

Moving outward from her inner ecosystem, Lyla's apartment isn't just her home—it's a bustling metropolis for countless uninvited species. Research reveals our homes are biodiversity hotspots we happen to sleep in. The bigger your place, the more species it likely hosts, following MacArthur and Wilson's law.

When Lyla moved from her parents' home into her apartment, her allergies changed. Downsizing reshaped her entire domestic biodiversity portfolio, though that wasn't mentioned in the rental agreement.

Lyla now manages her apartment as an island habitat—for herself, her microbiome, and all the organisms evolving there. She shifted from daily microbial warfare to soap, vinegar, and natural cleaning products. Her plants aren't decorative; they're biodiversity ambassadors, bringing in beneficial organisms that can outcompete bed bugs and mites resistant to human chemical warfare. She even composts in a corner—establishing a soil embassy in urban territory.

Her friends think she's lost it when she refers to "the island habitat formerly known as Studio 4B," but Lyla recognizes an important truth: she's not maintaining a home, she's co-managing an ecosystem that shapes her health and well-being.

This brings Lyla's second key insight: our strategy of thinking we're separate from and in control of nature is false. Our "nuclear" approach often kills what we need while creating perfect conditions for harmful organisms that overtake our defenses.

As a student of ecology, she knows about the famous "megaplate experiment." Scientists created a huge petri dish with zones of increasing antibiotic concentration. Bacteria with zero prior resistance evolved and conquered every defense in just 10-14 days. The lesson: the only choice is to live in right relationship with the rest of life, instead of trying to control it.

Lyla's approach offers good advice for all of us: stop killing everything and start understanding what's living with you. Learn what organisms care for you so you can protect them from the ones that want to hurt you.

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

Lyla's Neighborhood Island

Expanding her perspective to the community level, Lyla's work as an urban planner reflects lessons learned from her childhood in classic Levittown suburbia—perfectly optimized for the "average" American family. While safe and comfortable, something felt off. The neighborhood was designed around one major employer. Everything was great until that company left, devastating the region.

This taught Lyla that optimization comes at a cost: the more efficient a community becomes through tools like zoning, the less resilient it becomes. As a student of ecology, Lyla knows what Dunn calls the diversity-stability law—diverse ecosystems are more stable and resilient to shocks.

When Lyla struck out on her own, she chose a beautifully chaotic neighborhood—small shops, odd apartments, light manufacturing, the kind of economic diversity economists call "resilient" and traditional urban planners see as messy. When the pandemic hit, this diversity proved its worth. The neighboring luxury condos collapsed when wealthy residents fled to the woods. Lyla's neighborhood? It was hit but bounced back stronger than ever, just like more diverse agricultural systems.

As an urban planner, Lyla advocates for "productive messiness"—development that encourages the complexity that makes planners nervous but communities resilient. The lesson: efficiency and resilience often exist in a healthy non-dual (i.e., a both-and, dynamic instead of an either-or dynamic) tension.

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

Lyla's City Island and Climate Reality

Studying climate projections for her city, Lyla encounters sobering data: an estimated 1.5 to 3.5 billion people will be living outside the human climate niche by 2080. Six thousand years ago, humans were decent climate generalists. Now? We're specialists who built civilization around specific agricultural conditions—like evolving to live only in climate-controlled malls right before the power fails.

Lyla's southern city will soon have Venezuela's climate, becoming a fundamental niche for parasites that thrive there. With this knowledge, Lyla develops plans to keep out malaria-carrying mosquitoes while helping local species migrate north for survival. She focuses on partnering with other cities and creating natural corridors to help our fellow species survive the Anthropocene.

But Lyla is also aware of unintended consequences. Her subway ride is a corridor for anything that lives well with us. Cities aren't separate from nature—they're petri dishes with really good coffee shops. The megalopolis from DC to New York has resulted in pigeons interbreeding into a new subspecies. Our urban planning creates a version of the megaplate experiment, but now for species that move well with us: pigeons, rats, and various others.

The sobering realization: humanity has turned Earth into interconnected human-created islands that are breeding grounds for things that make us sick—viruses, mites, bugs, and rats. Every strategy we use to control other living beings often selects for organisms that can overcome these controls.

It's like building bigger levees to hold back floods while the floods get bigger and overtake our defenses.

This has led Lyla to approach urban planning differently. Instead of asking, "How do we control and fight forces that harm our city?" she asks, "How can we dance with nature to shape our island city in ways that nurture species we live well with and work with those species to protect us from those that harm us?"

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

Lyla's Professional Crisis

Over her career, Lyla has developed a deeper realization about a fundamental problem. Her entire training focused on problem-solving—learning to notice that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and figuring out how to put Dumpty back together. But ecology taught her Rob Dunn's "Humpty Dumpty Challenge": it's easier to break something than rebuild it.

Lyla learned this firsthand early in her career. When the city faced deteriorating water quality, her boss chose technological solutions—treatment plants, industrial filters, chlorine. It worked, but over 15 years, this "solution" has required continual upgrades, increasing chemicals, and rising costs just to maintain the same water quality.

She began to see how any city is both an island AND part of a broader bioregional island that shapes the city. A watershed—where a city gets its water—provides a good starting point for understanding the broader bioregion. Cities like New York that focused on honoring and preserving natural ecosystems in the Catskill Mountains north of the city found that these natural processes did "the hard work" of creating clean, healthy drinking water. Care for the bioregional island and it will care for the city island within it.

But when urban planners treat their city as isolated from the broader ecosystem—cleaning water only after it reaches the city instead of caring for the bioregional island—the broader bioregion may decay as the city strains the island it depends upon.

Lyla learned about cities that chose to protect their watersheds instead of relying on technology. Those cities generally have fewer problems. Then she connected this to Dunn's Humpty-Dumpty idea.

If a bioregion is a healthy ecosystem working in harmony with the smaller island cities within, it's much easier, cheaper, and healthier to manage issues within the city itself. But the more degraded any natural system becomes, the harder it is to put the system back together again.

You can't just plant a rainforest. You also can't simply plant a watershed and its supporting ecosystem. It must be continually tended, nurtured, and lived with in right relationship. The less we do that, the bigger our problems become, and the harder it gets to "put Humpty Dumpty back together again."

Lyla started seeing this pattern everywhere—the default approach of many urban planners: break the natural system, attempt technological replacement, discover new problems, add more technology, repeat until you either spend more to maintain the status quo or give up and let the "solution" collapse.

Lyla's approach shifted from "How can we fix this?" to "What are the broader islands shaping our city and how can we support them in being healthy and vibrant?" Her focus now is working with natural systems rather than replacing them. Preserve wetlands instead of building sea walls. Create healthy urban tree canopies instead of trying to air condition our way to habitable cities.

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

Lyla's Institutional Evolution

As Lyla's understanding deepened, she began examining her own professional environment through an ecological lens. Her department was designed when climate was stable and suburban sprawl was humanity's greatest achievement. But institutions, like species, must adapt to changing conditions or face extinction.

This realization crystallized when Lyla learned about the dusky seaside sparrow. This bird thrived in Florida marshes for 200,000 years until humans paved them for the space program and sprayed them with DDT. The last one died in 1987 at Disney World—which seems like dark humor from the Universe.

When Lyla looks at her department, even with amazing colleagues doing their best, she sees how rules, procedures, and approaches developed for a different era now limit their capacity. Institutionally speaking, they're like the dusky seaside sparrow—perfectly optimized for an ecosystem that no longer exists.

It's not about bad faith or ill will. It's the power of precedent, default options, and embedded patterns from institutions formed when optimization, efficiency, and technology ruled.

Lyla found inspiration in crows. Unlike the seaside sparrow, crows have amazing capacities to observe, understand, and adapt to changing island conditions. Crows exemplify resilience through ingenuity, resourcefulness, and adaptiveness.

For Lyla, this translates into constantly questioning her work and department: Why are we doing this? Are we just following how past colleagues solved problems? Are we living in the same island conditions? What's changed? How can we change with it? What are we ultimately trying to bring forth? How would we know if we're making progress? How would we know if our institutional approaches are no longer useful? What can be done to let go of old ways institutionally while still meeting our responsibilities?

Recognizing that she's part of an institutional island that shapes her and that she can shape, Lyla models what it looks like to be more like a crow than a dusky sparrow. She shares the sparrow's story as a metaphor for her department: Are we more like dusky sparrows or crows? Do we have the cognitive capacities to adapt to changing conditions, or will we keep doing what worked before until conditions change so much that our institutions collapse?

Her colleagues initially thought she was being dramatic, drawing weird analogies from birds unrelated to urban planning. That was until three "100-year" floods occurred in ten years. By the third time, they started thinking seriously about what they could learn from crows—not only as individuals but as an institutional island partially responsible for shaping the city and bioregional islands where they, their neighbors, and friends live.

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

Lyla's realization: It’s not about us

Before we explore Lyla's integrating realization, let's pause to recap her journey. Through studying ecology, practicing healthy living, and working as an urban planner, Lyla has discovered that "Islands sculpt" operates at many scales: fromL the microbial communities within her body, to her apartment ecosystem, to her neighborhood's resilient diversity, to her city's role in global climate patterns, to her institution's need to adapt like any other species.

Each level has taught her the same fundamental lesson: we're not separate from nature—we're embedded within nested ecosystems that constantly shape us while we shape them back. The question isn't whether we'll be sculpted by our islands, but whether we'll participate consciously in healthy relationships or unconsciously create destructive patterns.

[and, as a quick aside, this has been known for quite some time in a number of indigenous cultures…for now, I’m focusing on what is learned from ecology; that, in no way, diminishes what has been known and how it was learned from other ways of knowing; we’ll return to this in future episodes]

Now, Lyla's final breakthrough from ecology is simultaneously the most ego-deflating and liberating: humans aren't Earth's protagonists. At best, we're recurring guest stars who get too attached to our own subplot and then try and make our story the main plot line.

Most life is nothing like us. Not only that….most of life doesn’t pay any heed to us at all. complete indifference. But here's the kicker—we absolutely need a good deal of other types of life to be healthy, including cosmic, geologic, and biological life. We depend on species we love and need. And yet, we're systematically destroying the very relationships that sustain us.

To illustrate, think about this… Even if we cause mass extinction, we won't eliminate biodiversity. Most biodiversity consists of ancient single-celled organisms that survived the five prior mass extinction events. When people worry about "the end of nature," they're really worried about the end of nature that looks like us and that is the part of nature that we love and need. What we risk isn't the eternal loss of biodiversity—it's killing ourselves along with all the life we love and depend on.

Lyla's perspective on humanity shifted when she started thinking about our species in relation to the typical life course of species. Our branch, homo, separated from apes about 17 million years ago. The climate conditions humanity is adapted to have only existed on Planet Earth for about 1.9 million years, a blink of an eye in geological timescales, as discussed n the previous episode. Homo sapiens appeared just 200,000 years ago, which is not even a blink of an eye. Given that species typically last 2 million years before going extinct, we're essentially toddlers—toddlers with nuclear weapons and delusions of grandeur, believing we hold dominion over Earth and all other life.

And, just like any toddler, that belief, at some point during development, just might have been healthy. It provided us, as a collective, an initial foundation in feeling valued, loved, and important in an infinite universe where, at those scales, we are radically small and insignificant. Still, just like toddlers need to, we, as a species need to grow up and find more stable and true beliefs that still allow us to feel our sense of worth without them coming at the cost of other beings.

This humility—recognizing it's not all about us—has created profound shifts in how Lyla approaches her work and life. She still asks questions like: "What do my community members want and need, and how can I support that as an urban planner?" But she also asks: "What can I do to nurture the life I am inextricably linked to? How can I live in right relationship with the rest of life? How can I support not just surviving but flourish in the islands I’m part of?

Through this broader lens, Lyla has learned that she, and indeed all of humanity, is not at the center of the universe, our planet, or even our biological community. AND… that doesn't mean we don't have a valuable role to play in living in healthy relationship with the rest of life.

From this understanding, Lyla has discovered that her value doesn't come from being "better than," "in control of," or any other narrative that places humans at the center of the universe or individuals above others. At the same time, life isn't meaningless just because it's not about you.

Through studying ecology, Lyla has recognized the black-and-white thinking deeply embedded in Western culture—what scholars like Edward Said have called the legacy of Orientalist thinking that creates rigid categories of "us versus them," "civilized versus primitive," "good versus bad." This cultural pattern says you're either the best or you're nobody. There's no in-between.

Lyla has learned an alternative way of understanding her worth. She has learned that her sense of worth, fulfillment, and growth is directly tied to the quality of her relationships. The more relationships she has that are healthy, reciprocal, honoring each other's strengths and balancing each other out, the happier and more fulfilled she is, becomes, and acts.

Beyond that, she's grown into a deep love and appreciation for life—all of life—and the ways in which, when living in right relationship, she can hold what might seem like contradiction, but is a non-dual whole (one of those both-and dynamics, instead of an either-or dynamic): On one hand, all beings—individual humans, animals, plants, insects, bacteria—have their own unique ways of manifesting the beauty and magnificence of life, expressed on their own terms. On the other hand, all beings are unconditionally and universally connected, drawn to one another in what Lyla can only understand as deep, sacred, eternal, and universal love. Both are true and reflect two sides of the same single coin.

This realization—that all flourishing is mutual and grows from living in right relationship with all other life, guided by love and nurtured through wisdom that can only mature through living—provides the foundational frame for all her actions.

(which, again, as a side note, is aligned with what a range of indigenous cultures have know for quite some time. Indeed, “All flourishing is mutual” is a direct quote from, surprise surprise, Robin Kimmerer. For me, I see this as an indicator of consilient resonance… an idea we will return to, but, if you are curious about it, read the text only supplement to the previous life breathes episode.

From her daily dance with her microbiome, to her rhythmic relations with the ecosystem living in her apartment, to her healthy relationships with friends and neighbors, to the ways she nurtures and sculpts her city to be in right relationship internally and with the broader bioregional island, to living in right relationship with colleagues and shaping her department to be more adaptable and effective.

All of this is supported by her recognition that we are all islands, and all islands sculpt and are sculpted. This sculpting is only healthy when it happens in right relationship in all directions—vertically, horizontally, and diagonally.

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

Living the Aphorism

Through Lyla's story, I hope hope you can see how "Islands Sculpt" is more than description—it's a guide for living in right relationship with the rest of life.

Every boundary is a membrane letting some things through and others not. Every separation is a possible invitation into relationship.

Every individual is an ecosystem, every ecosystem an individual.

We're simultaneously sculptor and sculpted at every scale and connected vertically, horizontally, diagonally, and in any other direction one might go.

Lyla tends her microbiome like a garden, manages her home like a habitat, moves through the city as a conscious participant in evolution, advocates for institutional adaptation, and approaches everything with appropriate humility about the interdependencies she's embedded in.

She asks better questions like: "What kind of island are we creating? What will these islands sculpt? How can we design for healthy relationships rather than control?"

Living "Islands Sculpt" means approaching choices with an eye towards ecosystem management, designing for reciprocity over control, recognizing our influence while accepting our limits, and developing skills to participate in processes much larger than ourselves.

It also means laughing at the cosmic joke that humans, at least us Occidental “Westerners”, spent the past millennia trying to separate from nature, only to discover we ARE nature, nature IS us, and the joke was always on us. Thankfully, nature, is infinitely gracious and always ready to laugh and dance with us, once we turn towards living in right relation.

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

Episode Recap: Key Insights from "Islands Sculpt"

Before we close, let's recap the core insights from Lyla's journey, as inspired by Rob Dunn’s book, through the many scales where islands sculpt and are sculpted:

At the microbial scale: We learned that we're not individuals but walking ecosystems. Our health depends on nurturing beneficial relationships with the trillions of microorganisms we host, rather than trying to sterilize our way to wellness.

At the home scale: Our living spaces are biodiversity hotspots that shape our health. Working with natural processes rather than against them creates healthier environments for us and our microbial partners.

At the neighborhood scale: The tension between efficiency and resilience teaches us that diversity creates stability. "Productive messiness" in communities mirrors the diversity-stability law from ecology.

At the city scale: Climate change reveals how our urban planning has unintentionally created island chains perfect for species that can harm us, while threatening those we need. The solution isn't more control but better partnership with natural processes.

At the institutional scale: Like species, our organizations must adapt to changing conditions or face extinction. The choice is between being like the inflexible dusky seaside sparrow or the adaptable crow.

At the cosmic scale: Perhaps most importantly, recognizing that we're not Earth's protagonists—but we're not meaningless either. Our value comes from our capacity for right relationship with all life, guided by love and mutual flourishing.

The overarching insight: We are all islands, and all islands sculpt and are sculpted. This happens whether we're conscious of it or not. The question is whether we'll participate in creating healthy relationships or destructive patterns.

"Islands Sculpt" offers us a framework for understanding our place in the web of life—not as controllers, nor as meaningless mass or as victims, but, instead, as conscious participants in the endless dance of life sculpting life, who have the capacity to see and understand all of these dynamics and to choose right relation over domination.

[MUSIC INTERLUDE]

Conclusion

In our next episode, "Beings Adapt," we'll delve into neuroscience and psychology to understand how, at our core, we are beings that are constantly adapting to our various islands at various scales, and, critically, how we do that through the capacity to invent social realities.

Together, these three aphorisms—Life Breathes, Islands Sculpt, Beings Adapt—offer a framework for understanding the nature of reality that provides the foundational assumptions that will be built on and leveraged throughout this podcast.

Until then, tend your islands well, and remember: you're not separate from the forces shaping you—you're an active participant in the endless dance of life sculpting life.


PS A shout-out to Donna Spruijt-Metz who offered the word “sculpt” when I shared very early versions of the 6 word metaphysics. She suggested it was more poetic and, the more I engaged, the more I liked it. Thanks, Donna! =)

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