 When I talk about the water cycle or I talk about the physiology of earth as a living planet and its organs and tissues, that is a step beyond what is conventionally assumed to be the way that the planet works and the way that the climate is maintained. It's a step into saying that maybe we don't know after all, and you could take many, many more steps into that. I've had conversations with indigenous people and people who work with indigenous people asking, what do you think is causing climate change? What do you think is the biggest threat to this planet? To maintaining a planet suitable for human habitation? And they do not say, oh, it's fossil fuels and carbon emissions. They say things like, for example, to Dogon who said the worst thing that your society is doing is removing sacred artifacts from the places in Africa and elsewhere where they were ceremonially placed and taking them away and putting them in museums in London or New York. Because we put those there deliberately. They're part of the maintaining of a covenant between humans and the powers of the earth. They're part of a communication. And when we dig those up and take them away, then this covenant is broken. And earth is no longer going to make things easy for us. So that's one viewpoint. I've heard Brazilian people, a woman I know who works with indigenous people in Brazil, and I've heard this from other sources too, that they say that the problem is that you're taking the gold from the heart of the mountains. The gold is the heart of the mountains. It's the soul. And if you take that away, then how can the mountains make wise decisions in administering the land? Of course, things are going to spin out of control. I ran into a woman recently who works with a Kogi mama, so the name for a Kogi shaman, who came to California and said, wow, you really got to do ceremony at this spot. If you don't, there's going to be forest fires, terrible fires. And he did ceremonies there, but he said, you have to do them every week. And of course, no one did them every week. And there were terrible fires. And he came back and he said, I thought I told you to do ceremonies here. I'll do it again, but you have to do them or the fires are going to be even worse. And again, it came to pass. And a third time, he made the same warning. And people were like, how could they be worse? And then the campfire happened. And then later, the woman I met, she did some research and discovered that the site that he had gravitated toward was the site of a genocidal massacre a couple of centuries ago. And so his view, I guess, is that where there has been trauma, that really upsets the land and the earth spirits that are in communication with humans and that they are in disarray, and that the earth can no longer maintain a stable climate, stable conditions, when we're not holding up our end of the bargain, when we're not doing the appropriate ceremonies. So this is a step way out into the deep end, I guess, from a normal climate activist perspective. But when I go there, and I think from what worldview are such suggestions, such an orientation, from what worldview are they a matter of course? Are they not ridiculous, but seem logical? And it is the worldview, simply put, that the world is alive, that it's full of beings that are watching and listening to us, that are in communication with us, that are impacted by the choices that we make, and that can help us or harm us. When we believe that, when we have the understanding that we are in the presence of the sacred, that holy beings are watching us, that we are never unobserved, then in that knowing, then we tend toward a more ceremonial way of life or a more prayerful way of life. Like if you know somebody's watching you, mom, for example, or Jesus or somebody, if you really believe that, then you're going to be more careful. You're going to be more attentive. The basic mindset of ceremony, it's not just about like some ritual and chanting something or doing something like that, it carries over into everything else. It carries over into doing things just right. It carries over into the One Straw Revolution, Fukuoka, the understanding that there is a beingness here, an intelligence here, that I'm humbled in its presence. And in that presence, we do things better than we need to for any instrumental reason. If you place things on your altar, you do it just right. If you make art, you do it as beautiful as it needs to be for the sake of that artwork, not for the market, not for the client, but for itself, because you are in service to the sacred thing. If we approach agriculture that way, if we approach our interactions with the rest of the world, the rest of life, the planet in that way, everything will change. So this emphasis on ceremony, this isn't just like some religious superstitious belief system. This is a way to program ourselves and to bring ourselves into the habit of seeing the world as sacred and conscious and a being, to reunite us with the rest of life, because we've been separated. And that's what unifies a kogi shaman doing ceremony at a traumatized piece of earth, and the permaculture farmer observing the plants and the animals and the soil and being in service to those beings. It's all the same attitude of ceremony. It doesn't exclude any of our ways of knowing. The permaculture farmer's observations could include soil tests. It could include everything that goes under the name of science. It's not that science is the wrong road. It depends on what it's in service to. By itself, it is not enough to save us or not enough to enable our transition into a more beautiful world. Technology and science are not going to deliver us to utopia. But when we put them in service along with all of our other gifts, to life, to all of our companion beings here, then they are precious.