and let it back out again and let yourself totally relax. Just sense into what it feels

like to be you right now. The feeling of your sitting bones, of your hands

on your lap or somewhere else. Take a moment to think of everything that is solid and resistant in your body. Everything that gives you form, your bones,

your feet on the floor. We're just taking a moment to call into mind everything that is solid and earth element in your body, your teeth. Take a moment to

say hello to your teeth, your bones and the material of your bones, calcium carbonate.

The same material as the one out in the world making up the rocks, the same atoms in your bones as those that make up the cliffs outside and all the time we're actually shedding atoms,

shedding skin, shedding hairs and as we focus into this solidity that we share

with the world outside with atoms that have traveled through billions of years to be there,

we allow ourselves to imagine these solid atoms traveling now in a different direction as we shed cells, hairs, all of these physical parts of our body all the time.

We allow ourselves to travel, speed up time, perhaps we become rock and then become human again in a different time and the same with everything that is liquid

in our body. You can take a moment to presence with the saliva in your mouth, tears in your eyes,

moisture in your nose, take a moment to feel into the pulse in your blood and now think again of

everything liquid outside of your body, vast oceans, rivers, rains and clouds, water in the soil. Imagine the water inside other living creatures out in the world,

the blood of a salamander, the saliva of a sheep and all the liquid in your body

is continuous with that liquid outside and the water molecules in your breath coming out of

your mouth right now are the same molecules acted on billions of years ago by plants, you might even share a molecule, a water molecule in your mouth right now with a dinosaur millions of years ago. Now we allow everything

that is liquid to speed up its cycles and travel forward passing through clouds, oceans,

rivers, meeting with your solid atoms in the year 2077 and slowly you allow your atoms

and parts of yourself to assemble in this distant but immediate time, the time that looks

quite different to this time but still recognizable. If you imagine all of the micro changes that have

happened, tiny decisions that have led us to a different way of living, you tune into

a discussion amongst three friends, three beings who were alive in 2020 but who have sped through the hallways of time, the channels of time and are living right now in

the year 2077. It is New Year's Eve that year and they are meeting as they have done for the

last 57 or so years to look back on the year that has passed, look back on the many years that have passed and plan into the future, set goals, ambitions

but also share disappointments, mistakes, failures and successes. So when you're ready to open your eyes please do so now and join us for this

glimpse into this far off solarpunk reality. Fatopian boy can you can you hear me?

I can hear you solarpunk girl. Zentipunk you there? Good I think we've established

connection. Zentipunk what what how are you tuning in today? I'm tuning from my stream

yeah it tastes like um there is not a there is not a good stream connection but I can hear you. Good I'm trying out the latest kind of hologram technology but it's a bit it's a bit glitchy they haven't managed to do the mouth very well but um

yeah sadly I can't be physically physically in the stream today but hopefully this will this will be all right. How where do we start? I haven't actually made a plan for this I just thought you know we'll just log on and kind of work it out as we go.

Well we basically have two days left um before we need to start the work again so I think like we could just have a little catch up of um you know uh what have we done what is left enough to do and um and what needs to be done for the year ahead. Mm-hmm yeah I got into quite a reflective mode actually I was thinking back

I was just thinking back to this you know I know we're meant to look back at just the year past but I don't know especially the last 20 years has been so mad um sometimes it feels

like it's just happened in a day it's just so much has changed so quickly um I'm really I'm really curious to hear about um Thetopian Boy about your what's happened in the kind of legal research you've been doing and nature rights and what's what's happened there.

Well it's been a long long journey I mean starting back a hundred years ago when Christopher Stone wrote his seminal article on should trees have standing

wow it's amazing to think that was a century ago 1977. It really was a visionary sentiment to think about nature as deserving and belonging

amongst criteria that we think about when we look at governance making decisions about all of us can recognize be aware keep track of and monitor what we're actually doing in this

world that's been the toughest struggle I think of the last century but I'm so hopeful that we're getting somewhere now we actually have ways of bringing trees our local bioregions into

consideration when we think about all the different decisions we're making and that's been one of the the missing pieces I think from the way that institutions have been looking at this ordering this coordination that they

have been set up to do but as punks I think we recognize that the default standard behaviors and norms that institutions and organizations have been trying to

corral us into can never truly be complete and yeah reflecting back on this last year but like you said reflecting back on the last hundred years how nature has stepped forward and we've supported how we can bring nature into the conversation

with actual the actual ability to listen I mean solo punk girl you've been working on their our new listening devices tell me how that's going well it's been tough to get

that last grant I mean honestly sometimes it feels like all the kind of research grants are somewhat biased to the AIs as opposed to the more than human but you know I still I still remember our first more than human council in 20 2028 gosh I was I think I was in

in human years in in my 30s then and you know I it's just very funny to think about how we started off how clunky that was with our you know using these methods of play and imagination

and and there was a period of pretty wacky research where I think most people thought we were completely losing our minds you know I remember one of the people from my research group

going and spending two years sitting with a tree just trying to get a sense of how how we could speak on behalf of those beings and obviously since then we've got the technology now to you know allow us to decode some of those messages and you know use the kind of physiological

patterning of trees and plants to get a sense of what they what they would like us to do on their behalf but at the beginning it was purely imagination that that was allowing us to you know deeply listen not just to the more than human world but also to that part of nature

that lives within ourselves and it's just it's really funny to think back to the concepts and kind of ways of being and understanding that you know back in the in the 20s and the 30s were

were considered you know somewhat alternative or kind of avant-garde and and in some cases quite quite flaky I guess much like the psychedelics psychedelics were considered back in the 1900s you know and now obviously that psychedelics are fully integrated within our education system

so just so much has so much has changed I think looking back it gives me hope that when you're trying to do something when you're trying to change kind of fundamental patterns of the way we perceive and what we value and how we make sense of the world

at the beginning you're always going to seem like someone who who's you know maybe a little bit losing it or or even unrigorous but actually we've been developing that rigor um so things that were once unrigorous now you know we've got our protocols around

um into you know integrating the more than human into our governance and it's kind of bizarre to imagine institutions without a voice of nature within you know within the the governance and boards um anyway I don't think I'm making much sense I'm just kind of I'm just freestyling here

and um just kind of remembering these moments but I know we wouldn't have been able to do it without the the collaboration with Zentai Punk's um governance protocols um and the way you know you guys have used technology to to allow us to govern on kind of planetary scale I mean

that's just been amazing to work with you yeah well right now you know like um I'm still trying to fix a few bugs um it seems like um somehow the AIs and the trees are not really uh going

along together there is like a little bit of debate happening um and we don't manage to reach the consensus as to like the next um the next the next regenerative agriculture strategy uh the AI somehow is really pushing um the world's having a little bit more of

bioengineering happening whereas somehow the trees are actually pushing back on that and um so we're trying to you know involve a little bit extra um extra parties into the

discussion we were thinking maybe the boards could uh could be called in um into the into the Senate but um yeah I don't know like I'm trying to I'm trying to work it out because the AI have always been on the side of the trees uh it's only like since a few months that there is this discrepancy and we haven't found we haven't understood the source of the

discrepancy so I'm a little bit concerned actually I have to say um yeah I don't know like the the governance structure is uh is still working out but I don't know like what's up um what's up

like somehow um yeah they got this aligned uh and maybe we just need to like have them train a little bit further on the tree language I don't know I don't know if it's like a misunderstanding between a communication problem or whether they actually disagree

that sounds tough yeah it's a bit tough so I'm debugging I will I will let you know a bit more in a few days I noticed um on a on a different topic I noticed fatopian boy that you use the word institutions which I thought was quite you know quite avant-garde

of you seeing as we you know we all decided we'd stop using that word about a couple years ago yeah I was a bit shocked as to hear that yeah I yeah what what were you what did you mean there how come you're using that word again I I know it's an anachronism and

we worked so hard to shift the dialogue away from this one-sided perspective and I think ever since the the research group started working on the notion of institutions I think the the the just looking at things from that one perspective I 100% agree it's

it's it's very biased to be thinking just from the perspective of the these these structures we've we've come so far since then and we're able to as you were referencing solar pump girl really consider these broader resonances in terms of the the bioregion a use of

iot to actually listen in on a technical level but also the use of councils of all beings to actually fully resonate in but I think it's useful to see how far we've come by by thinking

about institutions and and that's why I went back 100 years to Christopher Stone's article because I think when we used to think about the law it was all about the way that these institutions structured things in their own image for their own goals and it was it felt so

all-encompassing and overbearing to have these disembodied goals structuring our system in ways

that were so out of alignment with our core goals and yeah it just made me reminiscent thinking about goals now as we're gathered here at the end of the year as we do every year to think about our individual goals and how those relate into these collective

collective institutional goals to think about how we were so so railroaded again to use this old anachronistic term but you know we were on tracks we didn't have the freedom we have now to really fly where we want to to soar and gather emergently with our tree friends and our

AI friends into these assemblages of intent once upon a time I think most people didn't really get to even think about their goals and certainly we didn't think about the goals of nature and so right now we have this challenge where as Zentai Punk has said we're getting some

misalignment again between the AI assemblages and what we're hearing from nature and the

just a little history around how we got here from being completely dominated by institutions that structured the systems of economic and social dynamism that was leading us down a certain path and and how we veered away from that because I think in these pivotal moments when

there's potential misalignment we need to go back to our punk roots and think about you know what is it about the freedom and the liberty to consider the unconventional

that really drove us forward to where we are today yeah so I have to say something just because like I'm really like a little bit struggling here um I don't know you know like I'm afraid that um like I'm afraid that we're actually we've been moving on so fast in the past uh 70 years and uh I mean of course great we we we we really

nailed down on the institutions and like I think of course society is like much more fluid and dynamic and and decentralized as it used to be but I have to tell you like I'm a bit concerned

by those AIs it's as if they had like somehow find a way to coalesce uh and to create like this kind of rhizomatic network but I'm not so sure where it's going like somehow I'm wondering whether we might need perhaps to reintroduce at least a little bit of institutional scaffolding

just to make sure that the execution that we have created until now actually maintains itself without being easily corrupted by those AIs I basically like and I'm not talking about all of them it's really it's a little subset it's a little rhizome of AIs that somehow is kind of going in a strange

direction and again like maybe it's a bug maybe it's just my fault I did something wrong with them maybe they don't fuck they don't fully understand what's going on around but there is something wrong there and I'm wondering like shall we not like is it is it okay like are we not just doing the same mistake that uh our former uh our society have done which was just

like focus only and exclusively on institution forgetting everything about execution and I feel like maybe we have overreacted and we have like we because we saw all the all the negativity and all the drawbacks of institutions we just decided to completely reject them but sometimes

I have to tell you I'm very tempted to codify a little bit of rules and roles into these fucking AIs I haven't done it yet because of course I'm a little bit afraid of retaliation somehow uh but I have to tell you like I'm I'm not so sure what's going on and um I feel

like there are at least at least a few of those institutional AIs which are kind of going rogue um you know and I don't know if the trees and the birds will be able uh to uh calm them down I don't know like I'm I'm really confused can you can you give me some suggestions what

should I do Zentai I'm so glad so glad you brought this to our end of year um trio because you know maybe maybe we could help think about what you know what your goals for this next for 2078 could look like because you know I'm I am hearing I'm hearing what you're saying

about the kind of the worries and the concerns that you've got about the the rogue um AI rhizomes but you know we we worked so hard to throw off that institutional baggage and and programming and you know just just thinking about those those decades of struggle um where we really

had to kind of introspect in our into our own psyches and look at you know where where is kind of institutional hierarchical colonization that happened internally how how to kind of deprogram that um so I have to say it does make me a little bit nervous when I hear um

hear of the the urge to bring back some of that codification um at the same time I can imagine you know maybe you're right maybe it is dangerous to have removed so much of those

kind of guide rails and and roles and and the ability to to you know the checks and balances which which were so important I mean Fatopian boy what do you think I mean this takes me back to the early days of the data demons um I mean those were really the

first AI agents that we were able to in a sense reclaim back from the institutional overlords that were previously orchestrating these AI rhizomes into manipulative assemblages

that were as I was sort of referencing railroading us into their institutional goals without any real awareness or attentiveness or care towards our individual or our bioregional health and well-being and in the late 2020s early 2030s when we started to introduce these

data demons that were institutionally programmed and codified to work on our behalf and work on behalf of our local communities and our local bioregions it felt so hopeful to be able to

actually take back power over this entire weaponization of AI back into our local communities back here in Fatopia we were able to fully gain a handle over the local economic and social

interrelations based upon the data that was being generated by all of our community and we knew that that wasn't going off into some larger institutional mechanic that was ultimately going to be extractive and remove our agency from the decisions that we were taking on a day-to-day basis

and so these data demons were really that first step in giving us back a semblance of alignment with with AI and we've had since then 40 years more of real collaboration and

coordination with all of these technologies of radical collaboration that of which AI was was just a part but we were able to use Zentipunk you were so key to this we were able to use blockchain and distributed ledgers to really create these these rhizomes that took into account

our needs and our intentions and so in thinking now that they're going out of alignment once again it's it's concerning and maybe we didn't fully exercise those extractive institutional

intentions and tendencies and maybe they're coming back in once again or maybe I'm just biased against that oppressive regime that we we managed to get ourselves out of well you know you know what I think is like I mean we've seen it we've seen it like in the

past we've seen how you know we developed those AIs that you know really supported us and you know and facilitated our task and you know enabled us to assess so much more information that we would have been able to do by human and there was like this kind of symbiotic

relationship for a while and then somehow the AI went too far and and kind of like overcome our own interests for its own and you know like I was I remember like how happy I was like the first when we had the first communication between the AI and the trees and I was like wow this is

really this is really it like we really figured it out we never have to worry about governance again because obviously the wisdom of the trees and the plants will really will really help us actually understand how to govern ourselves and the fact that AIs can actually speak to those

creatures is just so revolutionary and and and seeing the AIs learn and develop themselves with the insights of the trees it was I mean it was like I think the best years of my life and you know it's been now like it's been about like 50 years that that they are being trained

on on three insights and wisdom and somehow I'm starting to see it's very early it's really early so I might be wrong I don't know but I'm starting to see the AI kind of moving further like taking on their own route and just like going further to to where the plants will ever

go you know and it's always this this extremism and and I think the AI just has this tendency of learning and excelling and excelling to the point that it reached such an extreme that just

blow up and so I'm just wondering where what are the rhizomatic uh mechanism which is this embalming and debalbing and rebalbing and which is working so well for learning but didn't we reach a point in which the learning is becoming exponential and uh it's not learning

anymore from the trees it's learning from itself and perhaps this is where we might need some some scaffoldings and some constraints just so that the AI stays in line with the trees as opposed to getting into its own loop you know what I mean so it's kind of what I'm thinking I'm wondering like it says like it's very I understand completely your concern like I don't

want myself to even think about bringing back some institutions here but um but I'm just wondering like of course an AI is not a tree you know we cannot pretend uh they understand each other they can communicate with each other but they are not the same and so do we need to

do we need to just let them and see where it goes or do we want to put some and and the problem is that I would like the trees to answer that question but of course the AI will not will not communicate will not translate the the answer if the answer was that we had to add the scaffolding to them you know and so can we really trust the AI to communicate to the trees

and to tell us the truth like I feel like we're kind of uh we're kind of like in this real situation because we cannot speak to the tree by ourselves we need to go via the AI but if the tree were to disagree with the AI will the AI tell us I don't know

solarpunk girl maybe the mycelium can help I know you've been working for a long time on mycelial organization uh half a century even uh is there a role do you think for for support from the mycelium

well the mycelial interfaces could actually come in quite helpful here um you know as we know they facilitate the communication you know they're such loyal servants in a sense I mean symbiotic servants um to the trees and I you know latest latest research shows that the relations between the AIs and the mycelium are quite

good you know they seem to they seem to um cog cognate in similar ways so I do I do feel like that's a really good point you know maybe this is maybe this is a place to bring in those mycelial um APIs and and allow you know maybe there needs to be just like you know we learn

early on in in school you know in conflict resolution maybe there needs to be a third party maybe there needs to be a mycelial actor to to help facilitate um what sounds like it could become quite a tricky uh breakdown in communication but I also was as you were speaking zentai um

you know I I have been engaging in in somewhat esoteric thoughts recently um about the role of humans in in these interactions I mean you know maybe it's a little bit a little bit um

out there but you know we've we've so we've so significantly removed the role of the human being in these governance decisions and really kind of um yeah just uh given over um the power

to to these more than human beings and agents but is is there something you know is there a role for for the human being in these in these you know discussions I think I would be even more concerned to reintroduce the humans than I would be concerned to reintroducing the institutions you know and and I I wonder like is it is it uh it's like it's always this thing we never

we never know is like things from the past can can no longer be tested but I always have this like weird debate you know with uh with the various um the various creatures around about whether is it like is it the institution that corrupted the humans or is

it the humans that corrupted the institutions and we never know we just we decided to get rid of both of them um at least within our governance structures but um you know I think it's very risky to to like yeah I don't know it's it's so hard like I really wonder do you think

like if we if we stop adding institutions again we might actually corrupt the trees as well I don't know that would be like the fucking end because then we really only have the AI to rely upon or is it that maybe now that we actually got rid of the institution we could slowly

reintroduce humans into the governance structures uh this is like this is a billion billion bitcoins question yeah it's tough tough decisions it's like it's a very high risk thing and like

is the gain worth the risk I really don't know I'm very curious maybe we could do like a very small experiment and uh just reintroduce them into like a very small subset uh so what you're saying basically if I understand correctly is that you will rather have us incorporate some human

uh into the debate than having having us reintroduce some institutional scaffolding that's right just human beings no institutions no roles no you know none of that just human beings and there have been some early experiments in New Zealand that have been showing some

some promising results I know it's a completely different situation there because they were so far ahead of the rest of the world even back in the kind of 20s and 30s but uh and it might be the influence of the the Maori people there um there could be stuff to learn there

you know not all not all humans um have been have been behaving the same way through all through all of this that's a really great point I think the the way that they were back then able to reintroduce uh the the notion of the rhizome uh as a sort of interface for how humans can

work with nature I think is fascinating so that it wasn't humans acting as humans but really humans being a part of this larger assemblage of humans and nature and data-driven AI

they had their data commons uh I think it was established in the early 2020s that was really influential in bringing school children and non-profit civic organizations and the the Maori tribal organizations together into this rhizomatic assemblage of intention and I think in that kind

of configuration if we can hop back to that sort of approach to bringing the human voice back into governance maybe we can have a sort of a more mycelial uh representation of humanity in this dialogue and conversation between AI and nature and so if once upon a time we were looking

to nature or AI to help us mediate our relations with other non-human actors maybe the time has come for humans to adopt that mediatory function again but not as the prime mover but much more

in that Maori tradition of being one part of a larger assemblage so I have to tell you I'm I'm I have a little bit of um um I'm a bit I have a little bit of aversion to that maybe we can think maybe instead of humans because like you know the problem of humans and

their identities and their status and all this stuff is like I think like the problem is that the event that we got rid of institution we didn't fully get rid of identities and egos and so you know weird dynamics may emerge again maybe we should I hand I don't want to

sound uh self-centered here of course but maybe instead of humans we should actually only allow Zantari to to join into the governance because at least we just eliminate all these uh egocentric identity layer of humanity and uh and we can just focus on the actual

level playing field of ideas how do you what would you feel about that it's been a while since we we thought about the zentai characteristics that elevate humanity into this plane of fairness and equality

can you can you just re re re go over that again for a zentai punk as to why that is unique because I remember but I just want a reintroduction if that's okay I mean of course you know like I mean basically we have

we have seen it over the past thousands years there's like humans somehow they they just have like and we don't know again we don't know if it's the inherent or what but they still have it like whenever they can see things that can distinguish themselves from others then they

grab it as a construction of stages there's like this obsession that humans have about building statues which is this most abstract and meaningless thing that has ever been created by society and yet they just grab it and whenever they see something they just grab it in order to

identify themselves as different from others this is very egocentric thing and and I think you know our society of course has contributed a lot to removing this ego but it's still it's still you know it's it's an evolutionary trait that needs to dilute itself over time and

so with the zentai of course we're just trying to help evolution and while we as humans still have distinctive characteristics then we just try to cover them we cover them we try to we try to hide all our distinctiveness so that we all become the same and so that even though

even though they reinsteal the ego we hide the ego we suffocate the ego ego and the suits and again everyone then becomes the same and there is this field of equality and this is kind of like we're trying culturally we're trying to use those materiality and those tools in

order to help the mind get let go of all those intrinsic desires of egocentricity and it has been working very well I mean we see how the human society has really evolved ever since we we cover ourselves with the zentai suits um so I'm just wondering like

I think that at least the humans that have been uh training these muscles you know it's kind of like it's like in the past we had like the monks you know the Buddhist monks that were training their mind at letting go of the ego and now we just have one extra tool which is like

like a physical and material tool in order to further let go of the ego um so I think like the zentais have really been training themselves a lot and maybe they are more likely to to be um to be less uh less less likely to be corrupted with again this egocentric

desire of power and status uh as soon as we incorporate them into a governance high zone I'm so glad you brought that all back it's so easy to forget sometimes that deliberation and politics was seen as some sort of dirty uh concept and that technology

could fix everything and it's thanks to the zentai and the punks in general solar punks and

bringing us here today and the deliberation that was liberated from the bane of status and role the deliberation that could truly be based on ideas for what they were worth in and of themselves so easy to forget how important that was and I think you're right zentai punk we

we should bring that back again that's it's really important yeah I think the zentai delegate councils are probably the best you know the best I've seen of truly um truly deliberative and and egoless decision making on behalf of all all beings um you know I won't go into the

I don't think we've we've got time to talk about the kind of risks of anonymity because you know corruption is still amongst us it's still real even after all these years of decades of trying to um yeah push that out of our society but you know I think if anyone can

if we can trust anyone it's probably the zentai's with their training we've only got a couple more minutes left before we've got to go for a bacterial council um wondering how we want to close out this meeting as we look forward to the next year

maybe you could give us a little heads up on the the councils that we have upcoming uh moral imagination has been such a critical part of our ability to engage in councils

uh I'm excited to to think about the the ways in which you have been gathering these councils so maybe you could just give us a little heads up on what's coming up next with with these different councils that encompass moral imagination

yeah I mean the next few days are quite packed but obviously the start of the year is a you know really important time for for these councils and I'm particularly excited about the lichen council so obviously that's you know that that's really bringing our imagination in a whole new kind of symbiotic form of you know fungi and algae so my interest you know back in

back in the 20s and 30s was you know far wider in terms of councils of all beings and you know really just including uh all all beings from the night sky to the to the you know to mountains

to trees to to dolphins and and and more but I think now you know I'm becoming more and more interested in those symbiotic councils that really allow us to deeply embody and and understand symbiosis as a as an organizing force um and you know that's what makes me hopeful

about the the AI and tree interface if we can really learn from the the pattern of symbiosis um I think there's something there and if we use our moral imagination to to better understand that and take that on and maybe we can be programming more of that into our

AIs um but yeah we we have the the water being council coming up um on the 2nd of January um welcoming all beings from watery worlds um we've got the ether council where we're bringing

together you know we've got the AI council as well um you know the the first moral imagination into AI cognition was definitely a turning point uh last year um and then obviously we've got the kind of the big global council um so you know do make sure that you mark your

calendars for that that's every year on the 10th of January um so that's that's it that's that's the kind of lineup for at least the next few weeks well it's uh it's ever

ever gratifying to know that you're their solarpunk girl and that you're there as an anti-punk to bring hope and convene these trusted circles uh but I think as our forebear Ursula Le Guin would say they are the minds in dispensable relationship with other minds

with the world and with time and so thank you thank you for maintaining this this hope and this trust uh through these councils and through ever working on this punk governance of ours

thanks fatopian boy do you want to ring us out with your wonderful bell yeah master of ceremonies i'll hand over to you until we gather again at the next council solarpunk girl zentipunk friends in the wider

global council