Ep 013: Linda Sheehan
Please note this s a human edited, robot-generated transcript. Some errors may remain...
…begin transmission…
Caitlin McShea
00:00:06
Thank you for being on. It's nice to see you. It's been a long time. The last time I saw you was Interplanetary 2018 and so much has changed.
Linda Sheehan
00:00:16
And still a lot of the work remains the same.
Caitlin McShea
00:00:19
That's right. And so when you came there, you came to talk to our audience specifically about the work that you're doing in nature's rights battle that continues. It's still happening. And so I thought it would be good if you wouldn't mind taking an opportunity to tell our audience what nature's rights are, as opposed to what I think some people might believe to be like environmental law.
Linda Sheehan
00:00:40
Absolutely. And again, thanks so much for having me. So I've been, just as a tiny bit of background, I'm an attorney in environmental law attorney been doing practicing environmental law, clean water act type work for at least 20 years and about five to eight years or so in once you start getting a little bit better at it, we realized the limitations of environmental law. You stop thinking like, “oh, it's me. I'm not good enough” all the time and, and start to think, “wow, maybe the rules are rigged.” And so this idea of rights of nature for me came out of winning the battles, but not the war. And I started to reach out to talk with other folks to see they're feeling the same thing, and really found a group of folks around the world who were starting to think like, yeah, maybe we need to start to think differently about how we govern ourselves, because law is just a way of governing ourselves, how we govern ourselves with regard to our relationship with in this case, you know, natural systems on earth.
Linda Sheehan
00:01:40
And as a result found folks thinking about this idea of rights of nature. And it's when we can talk about it more deeply but the idea of rights of nature is different from say the Clean Water Act, our traditional environmental laws, because those current laws are really grounded in two things. One, this idea of nature is something you can sort of carve up and separate and regulate in pieces. So you have a clean air act and clean water act and endangered species act, et cetera. So there's this idea that we could sort of purse it out into little pieces, which we increasingly know now there are systems and it's really hard to pull one string without pulling on all of them. But, and then the second piece is there are environmental laws.
Linda Sheehan
00:02:20
The way they're drafted now are really grounded in a deeply flawed economic system, one that treats nature as something that can be privately owned and it can be degraded and really puts the burden of proof on people who want to live with nature in a more respectful way and allows and rewards behavior that actually degrades nature. So rights of nature came about from this realization that we're trained on a track the way that we're acting with regard to our relationship with the earth and trying to think, how can we change the rules so that we can live more harmoniously with each other?
Caitlin McShea
00:02:58
And so know, obviously the Santa Fe Institute is constantly thinking about these entangled systems. As you say, it seems that it's a bit of a struggle because the laws that are in place seem to, it's almost like you're destined to fail because of the like overarching political or economic systems that have allowed us to miss define what it is that nature is. More resources and stuff than like space. I wonder do you find that you're making strides are certain economic expectations changing around our growing recognition of something like sustainable future thinking? Or is it still very, very difficult?
Linda Sheehan
00:03:34
You know, speaking of SFI, I was really happy to read Geoffrey West book’s Scale, which I think touches on a lot of these issues. And he presumably talks about the socio-economic system that we have right now is the driver for this acceleration of damage that we're seeing. And so far we've been able to sort of push off D-Day a little bit by technological innovations. But the problem is we can't, we have to innovate faster and faster and faster. And at some point we cannot innovate technologically and scientifically fast enough. So that begs the question what is it that we need to innovate? It really needs, we need to get back to innovating ourselves, our legal systems, our economic systems, our philosophical framework, which we call jurisprudence that underlies the law, all of that needs to be shifted.
Linda Sheehan
00:04:24
So to your question about this idea of are we seeing changes with regard to how we think about economics? And certainly there are changes that we're starting to see, and this idea about economics is not just something that we use to maximize short-term profit for the few. People are starting to push back on that in recent years, which is great. We're starting to see evolution that way, but ultimately, we need to think even deeper. And some of the problem is linguistic. You know, how we talk about these things? So if you think of it, I have a colleague up in Canada, Michael McGonigal, who I credit for this. He calls it an adjective noun problem. So the things that we think about as solutions really tell us what we prioritize.
Linda Sheehan
00:05:08
So things like sustainable development, natural capital green economy. If you look at the nouns, you know, economy, capital resources, that star focus and the whole environmental thing is just a tangent green and natural and sustainable. So the language sort of stops us from really saying, well, “why is that the overarching thing? Why is our economic system the thing we're trying to protect” as opposed to the real overarching thing, which is, you know, the earth, the universe, et cetera, and then us, and then this economic construct that we just happened to invent maybe a couple hundred years ago.
Caitlin McShea
00:05:46
I really love that framework, Michael McGonigal framework, because all it does is reiterate the very system that's meant to be preserved. And what that seems to me, you tack on the word green or you on the word sustainable, and it's almost like a band-aid against a very poorly formulated system that needs to be somewhat reconsidered. And so what if you inverted that? So it seems like a big challenge, but the idea of inverting that now and adjective relationship is kind of the mission it would seem.
Linda Sheehan
00:06:15
And you see it exactly right. It, what we have is, is upside down. We've prioritized something that is just a human construct in recent years and just in geologic time, just basically a blink of an eye at the most, but ultimately, it's the larger system within which we live that we need to respect and protect. And so, the movement that we're seeing forward, where we see like, if we start to have an economic system that prioritizes the wellbeing of natural systems, then we benefit. And so right now we have a system that maximizes short-term profit for a relative few, but think about even maximize anything alike. I mean, if you want to maximize sociological and biological wellbeing and have an economic system that prioritizes that, then we could do that.
Linda Sheehan
00:07:00
There's a Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zižek who asks “Why is it easier to imagine the end of the world, rather than a change in our mode of production.” It really makes you stop and think, you know, why can't we innovate ourselves and the systems that we regulate ourselves by?
Caitlin McShea
00:07:16
I think that's really interesting. I think that sort of underlines this weirdness about this particular podcast, this aspect of SFI is obviously we're talking about a living off planet eventually, or encountering alien species. And so quite often we try to challenge this very anthropomorphic perspective that we have when we think about how we live on the earth. And as you say, this sort of capitalistic system where this regard for nature is resource, as opposed to a mutual partnership, that's a human invention. And there's something about that, that we cling to in the same way that yeah, you can imagine the end of the world more easily than you can imagine the end of capitalism, there's something strange about this sort of like sunk cost holding on to this thing that we invented that's wrong.
Caitlin McShea
00:07:57
And so, yeah, I don't know. It's, it's nice to think about the anthropomorphizing, everything, because all that does is continue to reiterate that humans are kind of over and above nature. And so I like the work that you're doing in rights of nature, because you've actually created, or we've seen in Ecuador, New Zealand and elsewhere actual legal policy that's providing almost human level rights to nature itself in an effort to be somewhat more protected.
Linda Sheehan
00:08:23
And the point that you make about this being a human construct, that's really interesting because there are also humans, indigenous peoples who have a different worldview in a different frame than they have creation stories that include the universe that are not limited to earth divisions, various encompass, a larger worldview, a larger frame. And then interestingly, especially in New Zealand, the idea of legal personhood for natural systems came about because of treaty violations with the indigenous Maori in New Zealand and the Maori wanting to say, it's really about this idea of respect and duty and responsibility and rights of nature is sort of a tool on that journey to get us as humans to live in a way that is more respectful and has more of an affirmative sense of duty. Right now at the very best our laws say, do no harm.
Linda Sheehan
00:09:15
And that's an extreme best. In most cases, it's basically a controlled degradation for the most part, but really just stepping beyond that and saying, we have an affirmative duty and a responsibility as a member of this earth community and this universe community to do what we can to be able to respect these larger systems and maintain the sense of on wonder of the world that we live in.
Caitlin McShea
00:09:39
I'm glad that you made that distinction because you're right. Based on the materials that you sent me and things that I've read through, it seems that quite often, these legal changes are the consequence of something like an indigenous worldview on that specific space in nature. So for instance, the recognition of Pachamama and Ecuador, I thought that was just gorgeous. And of course we have a lot of sort of universal cosmology in the native communities around Santa Fe. So I just think about that a lot and almost kind of bolstering a more holistic, inclusive worldview as like a precedent for law is one very simple way to do this adjective noun, inverse thing, and narrative like that is everywhere. So it seems like it could be globally proliferated.
Linda Sheehan
00:10:21
And the idea of Pachamama and also other sort of indigenous driven laws and sort of right space laws, I think is really important to recognize as well. And when we talk about the artifact of peace later in the discussion, it kind of gets to that, this idea of it's not just is the river flowing the right amount to maintain the fish, is the water quality clear enough, but what I've been told and hopefully relaying this back correctly is the idea as well as Pachamama is the spirits, the spiritual world and its understanding of the world is sacred and maintaining room and space for that as well is also incredibly important. And it's something that sort of our Western idea of law and governance doesn't encompass and is something that requires further thought reflection, whatever that might be innovating ourselves along this journey that we're on.
Linda Sheehan
00:11:14
But the idea ultimately is to think that the way that we're doing this right now, maybe it was innovative in the early seventies when it was first created. These environmental laws are a half century year old now. But this half century later the sciences innovated in a way that we could start to do better, not just scientifically and technologically, but also with this understanding that we're seeing, as you mentioned earlier, with regard to economics and these growing rights of nature, legal systems is to how we can do better ourselves from different frameworks, from different disciplines.
Caitlin McShea
00:11:46
It's funny that you mentioned the sort of birth of environmental law in the seventies, because a lot of people might say that that's a direct consequence of us finally seeing an image of the earth from space and kind of realizing that we are all one and this is very precious. And that seems like the overview effect seems almost comparable to this sort of larger cosmological consideration of how we exist on earth. You were talking earlier about the difference between like whether or not the river is flowing versus like whether or not the spirit of Pachamama is like fortify and recognized. And it reminded me of a little bit of what you wrote about in your coauthor chapter with Kaufman about the difference between a healthy and a thriving system. And so I wonder, I know that it's kind of nascent a lot of these nature's rights laws are only like five, maybe 10 years old.
Caitlin McShea
00:12:33
Would you be willing to talk a little bit about how one could begin to kind of get their head around like measurably what the difference is between a thriving versus just a healthy ecosystem?
Linda Sheehan
00:12:42
And that's a great question. Many of these laws, that there's both law in this sort of a statutory sense of like a clean air act, but then also law is created through the courts. There's a number of court decisions that have brought about laws. So there's laws in different ways, but ultimately there's still there's some but relatively limited amount of actual implementation because people are sort of wrapping their heads around what does it mean, in many of these laws say that assistants have a right to exist, thrive, and evolve. So what does that mean to thrive? We have a clean water act and they've got very specific science-based water quality standards that you are not supposed to go over, but what does it mean when you throw thrive? You have to think about the system itself as a whole.
Linda Sheehan
00:13:23
And so this idea about thriving is something that we need to think about perhaps in the context of human health is one way of thinking about it. When we think about human health, it's not just sort of the physical sense, but it's also the environmental sense what's around us. And also the mental sense, what kind of stress are we under? And the same type of interdisciplinary thinking can be applied to defining environmental health. But if you want to think about sort of what it is and what it isn't, one example that I like to use is Endangered Species Act because the endangered species act people often ask me, well, isn't that sort of like a rights of species act? And I said, well, no, because all the species have a right to under the endangered species act is to not completely go extinct endangered, which is I would think as a human, I would not like a similar, law on behalf of humans.
Linda Sheehan
00:14:10
So I'm thinking that maybe we could do a little bit better and oftentimes the Endangered Species Act doesn't even kick in until the species are really, really close to that point. And we also have at that time economic systems and drivers that push back on anything that's going to help that particular species. So it's really limited as a way of thinking about wellbeing of species. The opposite of that something that would be thriving would be such as something like a healthy species act. And you would define that as a certain number of species within the needed habitat in order for them to have whatever would be called a thriving number of species. So they'd be able to exist as a species and struggle.
Linda Sheehan
00:14:51
within this larger cycles, it's larger cycles of natural evolution. So we're giving it a fair fighting chance rather than taking away all the chances that the species have and then trying to bolster a few left at the last minute.
Caitlin McShea
00:15:04
I mean, I like the idea of using human quality of life as a proxy, because if you even think like constitutionally, we have the right to pursue happiness. So when we think about what a healthy, thriving human being is, it's not someone who has access to air and clean water and protein and that's it. Like we have shelter and we have community and there's something much larger than our individual health that works with the sort of tangible metric for what something like a thriving lifestyle is. I don't want to, again, we are an evolving culture, all ideas start from somewhere. I don't want to say like the early environmental acts were silly and terrible. Of course they were the start, but they're obviously flawed and a little short-sighted and that's a consequence of our kind of short-sighted interest in different types of games.
Linda Sheehan
00:15:48
And to be fair that the early environmental laws, I think what they, I like to say is they had a good success in addressing some acute issues. I'm old enough to remember the way that the waterways were in the early seventies, which was riddled with sewage and industrial waste and you get sick every time you went to a beach and it was really bad. And so there have been some significant changes, but then ultimately we need to start to shift to address the chronic problems, which are like climate change, for example, that are really just part and parcel of the economic system, the legal systems that we have that allow nature to generally be degraded.
Caitlin McShea
00:16:25
So let's play with that acute angle a little bit, because something that we hope to do on this podcast, and just in general interplanetary consideration, is to think about these sort of invisible timescales and climate change is a perfect example of that. We are sort of narrow in our vision about what changes can be affected in our own lifetime or in our own generation. But of course, addressing climate change means being more than reactive. It means being proactive and thinking like thousands of years in the future. And I wonder how that sort of consideration factors into the type of work that you're doing, which is essentially policy and law. How do you mitigate these two clashing timescales?
Linda Sheehan
00:17:02
That's a great question. And it's so challenging because we humans are wired to be able to react to things that we can see and feel, and touch and threats that are sort of right in front of us. And so with regard to just climate change, what a lot of folks are doing is trying to link things scientifically that people can recognize, say increasing the number of storms or fires as potentially climate related, but really scientifically and rigorously trying to link those two so they can say with certainty or with more confidence to people that these things are climate related, to be able to create that distinction and create more support for actions that will help address those threats.
Linda Sheehan
00:17:44
And we are seeing that has success. Unfortunately, by the time you seeing a lot of these types of reactions, we may have already missed the boat, to be able to do anything meaningful, but you can't let that stop. You it's sort of like rights of nature. It took women almost a hundred years to get to the right to vote. And how hard is that to conceptualize? That's pretty easy. And we don't have that kind of time to think about changing our legal system and our economic system, but ultimately we have to do these things and we have to start talking about them because talking about them allows people to re-examine their ways of thought and their ways of viewing and the frames that they have and looking at the world. And we see that with the different rights-based advocacy movements that have happened on the human side, as we simply extend our circle of community out to other humans and realize that we have a responsibility to them, and we need to respect their rights as well.
Linda Sheehan
00:18:38
We are doing the same thing for natural systems as well.
Caitlin McShea
00:18:41
And, I think that as things become more pressing, younger generations are already aware of this. Whereas when I was a kid, I had to learn about these problems. Now I'm kind of in the middle of it. So it doesn't seem like there is more awareness, generationally speaking as more and more humans occupy the world, which has its own problem. But I'm wondering if you have any ideas on how to reincentivized the way it is that that we think about something like climate change and the individual local actions that we take in the same way that we have, as you say, have been sort of reincentivized to broaden our human community.
Linda Sheehan
00:19:14
This question, what about incentivization? You know, it's a little bit chicken and egg, and that's, it's part of what the rights of nature movement is trying to do. Because at some point you need a certain level of awareness to be able to have a rights of nature law or rights of nature case, but you're never going to get a hundred percent. So you also do a little bit of pushing by passing laws where you can, and then raising awareness among other people on hey, there's this other way of doing things. And also implementing, working to implement these laws and to show what the differences between laws and economic systems that are operating differently versus the ones that we have and highlighting the differences of those so that people see, maybe these are other things that we would like to have as well.
Linda Sheehan
00:19:56
So for example, in Santa Monica, back when I was at another organization, I worked to pass a local law on rights of nature in Santa Monica, California, which is a largely urban city on the coast in Southern California. But we specifically wrote into the law that the aquifer, the natural aquifer on which Santa Monica is dependent also had its own inherent rights to exist and thrive and evolve. And as a result of that, Santa Monica later passed a law that prohibited extraction. A new private well extracting brown water in the area until they had a better sense of what the aquifer looked like. You know, how much they were already taking from it, et cetera, being more responsible and more respectful of the aquifer, which of course was better for the wellbeing of people in Santa Monica, depending on that.
Linda Sheehan
00:20:43
But itself went far beyond light years beyond what state of California requires for management of groundwater. So as a result, you can see places like Santa Monica being much more self-sustaining in terms of water and we're facing an another year of drought here in California. There are places who have done the things they need to do to be more self-reliant and more respectful of the water that they have and others that for various reasons, under state law, it's much more challenging to be able to have that level of erroneous relationship with water systems. So comparing the results of these implementation of these types of laws is one way to incentivize people to say, “Hey, you know, maybe I'd like to look into something like that for my community.”
Linda Sheehan
00:21:27
And we're seeing more and more of that, especially in the states.
Caitlin McShea
00:21:30
I think that's very well put, but no, I was just thinking in terms of maybe not reincentivizing, but just getting people to consider alternatives. I think it's much more easily done when you can present a counterfactual. And so the implemented law or the use case adds something that can be adopted nationally seems much more effective. You have to get it done somehow. So even if it's incremental progress, just that single victory, you can go a long way.
Linda Sheehan
00:21:56
It's sort of like the early seventies get the slogan, think globally, act locally, except here we're saying “think universally act locally.” And people think like, oh gosh, what could I possibly do in my little local community? That's going to make a difference, but you know, the, what Santa Monica has done with some of the other communities like Pittsburgh and Toledo, Ohio, like Gary had done have garnered international attention. And we forget just from a legal perspective, we think that lawmaking in other countries is exactly the same as the United States, but it's quite different. And I have seen courts in some countries pulling information, not just other court decisions, but actual law journal articles in other countries as support for their decision-making.
Linda Sheehan
00:22:39
And so the work that you do locally in a community, or perhaps if you're doing research and putting it out there and turn in a journal that is the kind of thing that can incentivize or inspire other courts, other countries to pick up that law and carry it. And the thing is, you just don't know, ultimately that far that's going to go, you just have to sort of speak your truth and work the best you can with the information you have.
Caitlin McShea
00:23:04
And so, as you say, the governance systems across various countries, don't agree with themselves, therefore, just to think about the various differences in those systems, with regard to how that human life exists in that form of nature, or what systems are most important to them, whether it's ecological, spiritual, political, whatever they differ already. So the job is big, but that doesn't mean that not to just throw your hands up at the difficulty and challenge, you just have to kind of keep working.
Linda Sheehan
00:23:30
Exactly. And the idea of rights of nature laws. Again, that's not the end point. The end point is this idea of respect and sense of responsibility towards natural systems towards the earth, towards the universe, as opposed to the way that we now, which is disrespect and disrespect, leads to plunder, which leads to the challenges that we're facing the sixth mass extinction, 2.0 or more increase in temperature. It's the kind of thing that we need to start to think differently about, but it gets back to thinking about what kind of traits we want to cultivate as humans and how we want to reflect those in our laws, in our economic systems. And rights of nature is a way to sort of wake us up a bit and allow us to see, well, gosh, you know, the UN said, we all have universal human rights back in 1948.
Linda Sheehan
00:24:16
And that was because it was grounded in this idea of the value of people as just existing. The reason we have fundamental value is because we exist. Well, that logic extends to non-human systems as well. They have fundamental value because they exist in from that idea of fundamental more value, arises as idea of rights and responsibilities and duties. And we need to start to shake ourselves out of this thinking of it's just us. Science and technology is helping us along that path, but laws and economic systems and new models are helping people think of new ways of doing things.
Caitlin McShea
00:24:49
So you're, you're working within the realm of law, but really it's like a cultural cultivation project.
Linda Sheehan
00:24:55
You see that again with the things like Brown vs Board of Education and movement for gay rights and gay marriage, it's a process and all different voices and disciplines and talents are important to moving that along.
Caitlin McShea
00:25:07
I think that's right. Okay. So you were saying let's, let's change the wording. It used to be think globally, act locally. Now it's think universally act locally before we get to the artifact question, I wonder if we could try to apply this nature's right consideration to other planets as we kind of venture out and potentially settle in other spaces, spaces that might harbor indigenous life that we don't even recognize, or at the very least, water that we're trying to utilize. It seems that there could be two thoughts about moving off planet. And one is that it's a plan B escape hatch, because we haven't done the best job with earth. And then two is, it's an opportunity to grow as a culture, but of course, within these sort of same systems, which are like resource utilizing economically driven systems.
Caitlin McShea
00:25:52
And so I wonder if you've ever thought about how something like nature's rights might extend to other planetary bodies.
Linda Sheehan
00:26:00
Because I mean, for one it's just, so interesting you can't help it, but then, intellectually, it really does test this idea of nature's rights when you start to take it off planet. Are we thinking about rights in the context of life? Is it just half-life rights because it's alive to all systems, do rocks have rights, all of these various really interesting constructs. So a couple things in response to what you're saying, you know, one is, if we're just looking for an escape hatch and we're bringing the same people with the same frame and the same economic system and legal system someplace else, I don't know why things would change. We would still be plundering and that would be a problem. So that's another example of this idea of technological innovation.
Linda Sheehan
00:26:41
We just have to keep doing faster, faster, but ultimately we just keep looking in the mirror and we see we are the ones that we need to change. So I don't think that that's necessarily going to work, but this idea of what do rights mean and what does responsibility and duty mean once we get off planet? I think that gets back to this idea of this different philosophical theories of ethics. You've got utilitarian and dental logical and then virtue ethics, which is the one that I tend to personally like is I think it resonates the best with me where it doesn't really matter. This idea of is it alive? Is it rock? Whatever the question is, are we cultivating the traits that we want to cultivate as humans? This idea of respect, this idea of responsibility on wonder, and are we taking that with us to other worlds?
Linda Sheehan
00:27:25
And so plundering another world for its minerals, for example, is not a trait that I would like to cultivate. I'd like to cultivate respect. And interestingly, we've got a number of different treaties and laws that are in place right now with regard to universal systems that kind of illustrate different aspects of what the situations might be, the different ways that we might think about rights are not rights in space. And one is the U S space act of 2015, which is allows for privatization of stuff that you can gather outside. And that would be an example of the existing.
Caitlin McShea
00:28:00
An extension of the existing system and not a challenge.
Linda Sheehan
00:28:03
Another example would be the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which I would call like a more common space to approach kind of how we deal with Antarctica or how we would talk about Antarctica, which is idea of we're going to manage it for the benefit of everyone and primarily for scientific purposes. But again, still really grounded, ultimately in this idea of nature and natural systems is being degraded and destroyed. And once you get sort of a profit motive, really that strong enough, you're going to see a lot of pushback, which we're already starting to see. And then finally, the last one would be the Moon Agreement of 1979, which is more like a little bit more on the rights of nature side in a way without actually articulating it because it prohibits private ownership.
Linda Sheehan
00:28:45
But it also says that we have a duty to prevent the disruption of the balance of moon systems. So this is idea is a sort of like nascent sort of rights of naturey kind of idea. And interestingly, the United States didn't ratify the Moon Agreement, but did it identify the ratify the Outer Space Treaty. But nonetheless, the idea is that there are options. There are ways to think about how we use law to regulate our behavior, but it all keeps coming down to the same questions. What are the underpinnings? What is the philosophical underpinning of the law? And right now our philosophical underpinning, which we're not really articulating is this idea of individual wealth to be maximized for a short-term gain.
Linda Sheehan
00:29:29
And the rights of nature peace tries to maximize sociological and ecological wellbeing. And we can have laws that reflect that.
Caitlin McShea
00:29:36
I want to ask you a little bit about the Outer Space Treaty and in light of things that are happening on Mars now. We have rovers and helicopters and investigators, but one thing that I was reminded at the Outer Space Treaty, there's a lot of this, harm language, which seems very similar to the sort of nature's rights law or environmental law that already exists. And it's good intent, but it's almost incomplete. There's something more than just not harming something. But I wonder, obviously we're investigating for signs of life or that there was once life on Mars and we're doing this by essentially shooting chemical reading lasers at the surface of Mars. At what point do we draw the line? Obviously we want something more robust and more respectful than do no harm, but it's just like this unmeasurable little threshold.
Caitlin McShea
00:30:22
And I just wonder what your opinions are, you, Linda, about the sort of investigation that we're doing on the surface of Mars today?
Linda Sheehan
00:30:28
Well, unfortunately I'm not as well versed in the specifics of the exploration as you are, but again, the rules, are kind of the same. The rules are the thought I think in analysis are the same as they are on birth. What we tend to do when we say do no harm is we don't, we don't gather the information that we need to understand whether or not we are doing harm. And the point of being out there is to do research, which is fine, but ultimately, it's again, a little bit of chicken and egg and where do you place the line in terms of justification of what you're doing. But if the justification is, hey, I'm going to go out and I'm going to learn things and that's going to be great.
Linda Sheehan
00:31:08
Rubber-stamping forward. I'm going to do my best not to do any harm. That's a very different thing than saying, I have this information, I think that this particular way of doing additional research will do this amount of harm and then doing something that says, I'm going to maximize the amount of care that I take. And this is exactly how I'm going to do it. I would doubt that we are at that point with regard to outer space because we're not at that point here on earth. So again, really the same people and putting them someplace else without changing the frame of reference and how we think about how we interact with other systems other than humans, I think is ultimately the same, no matter where we are.
Caitlin McShea
00:31:46
I love the idea of sort of metricizing the amount of caretake in versus the amount of harm taken in almost any scientific investigation because, don't get me wrong. I work for a science institution. I absolutely love scientific investigation. And I think that it is a method through which we've gained so much information about our place in the universe, the universe itself. I think it is important that you continue to investigate, but there's this way of doing it, which is sort of like over and against nature. And there is this other way to do it. I'm not sure what that is, but if there was even the idea of a metric in place, we'd start to recognize other options. And that's kind of a cool possibility.
Linda Sheehan
00:32:21
You have to have the frame of reference to be able to start to think there might be other metrics. Again, that's the linguistic trap that we tend to sort of box ourselves into. And I can say that just having done sort of traditional environmental law for many, many years, and not even contemplating the idea that we might doing so that we might be doing something different, we could be able to do something different. We could think about nature's rights as we think about human rights. It just wasn't even in my lexicon. After some time you do start to reflect and start to think that there may be other options. So I think it's really challenging for us as a species to be able to do it, but it's entirely possible as indigenous people, for example, have shown us.
Caitlin McShea
00:33:00
That's a sort of weird question. I think in 2017, there's this sort of terrifying looking robot named Sophia who received a human citizenship, I think in Saudi Arabia and therefore has all the same rights and protections as a human being. And that's interesting in and of itself in terms of our cultural evolution and the way that we're thinking about things. But of course there was this pushback and a devaluing of my rights. And I wonder if you've encountered any opinions about that in terms of giving almost human rights to non-human entities. Is there pushback?
Linda Sheehan
00:33:31
Absolutely. And just on the robots. I wish I could remember the author, but there's a book out fairly recently on the rights of robots in nature. I mean to read, I've read bits of it and it's wonderful, but at some point, but absolutely. I hear all the time. What does this mean? I can't step on a cockroach. Does this mean I can't cut down the tree in my backyard? There is this sort of like this whole thing is silly because the thing is that our frame is that natural systems nature is an object. We objectify it. And so it's not a subject of this larger circle of community that we think of as earth. It's just a widget. We laugh, but you know, we laughed quite a bit.
Linda Sheehan
00:34:12
Are there great editorial cartoons. They go back in the early 1800s when women tried to get the right to vote, that thought this was hysterical, they'd be in the voting booth and they'd be fainting from the excitement of the voting because we're so weak and it's challenging. But that's how movements work, Ghandi, they laugh at you, then they mock you. Then they fight you, then you win. And so this idea here that people are laughing, that's the first step, but ultimately we're starting to see things move forward and through the type of work where people are passing laws in these countries and communities all around the world and trying to start to implement them is really starting to push on the dialogue as to what it is that we need to do in order to move forward effectively.
Caitlin McShea
00:34:53
Thank you. And thank you for in such great detail explaining the sort of foundations of the work that you're doing. I think it's really fascinating. And I hope that this sort of becomes like an artifact that meander throughout the world, this podcast, so that people can start to kind of reconsider what constraints they've been thinking in any way. I would like to transition to the weird question. I'm not sure if you are ready, did you have a chance to either read the book or watch Stalker?
Linda Sheehan
00:35:16
I did both. I did so much for, I just hadn't heard of either and I can't believe I missed it. So thank you very much for highlighting those flagging those for me.
Caitlin McShea
00:35:29
That you took the time, do you well, so do you see anything about your work that maybe belongs to the zone?
Linda Sheehan
00:35:35
I mean, and that's just podcasts in and of itself. I don't know if you want to talk about more generally or the artifact piece, but I could say just more generally, the way that the book ended, I thought was incredibly powerful because this idea of this golden sphere and in the movie, it was a room. They could give you whatever you desire, and I don't want to give away the book, but I would say that in general, the idea was this idea of looking in your soul, but not really being able to put your finger on what it is? What is it that you as a human ultimately want? And if you're really asked that question, how many of us can truly answer it? And the idea that the answer that came was this idea of happiness and happiness for everyone.
Linda Sheehan
00:36:19
And it's free everybody line up. It's all it's up for everybody. I found that was incredibly powerful because I think ultimately it's very consistent with this idea of rights of nature because this system that we're in right now and prior to the economic system itself, prioritizes this idea of the invisible hand. You know, it's like the actor, this individual actor making decisions to maximize their own personal well-being in their own personal profit. And ultimately that that's not, that's kind of a sad way to exist. It's not really consistent with this idea of humans in living in interconnectedness and interdependency with each other in this larger earth. And there's so much more happiness, I think, to be had by realizing that those interconnections and really deeply understanding what you can do, what you can do to give care and help to other elements.
Linda Sheehan
00:37:11
rather than just focusing on yourself, I think that that's allows for much more happiness. And I think that the lead character, the protagonist recognize that at the end, that that was something that would bring that level of happiness to him is to recognize that everybody needed it.
Caitlin McShea
00:37:27
That's a beautiful summary of the conclusion. I will say. I talk about the book and the movie all the time. So our audience, there's no spoilers. Like it happens. I kind of want to talk about it. I think it's the porcupine, but it's, as you say, there's the thing that you think you want, and then there's the thing that the zone recognizes you actually want. And at the time I think, what happens is that porcupine says that he wants his brother back, or he wants to stay the life of his brother, but in the real world, he has no brother, but he's very wealthy and it's almost like it was this kind of like subservient subconscious thought that he couldn't even address as something that he wanted as a reflection of the sort of invisible systems that we occupy and can't think ourselves out of. So I think that that's kind of a really interesting overlap with what we were talking about earlier.
Linda Sheehan
00:38:11
I mean, to me just seemed like the book was in the movie, just sort of dug into the more philosophical elements of the book, but I saw the book is as much more philosophical than I think some other folks I've talked to since about the book. They saw it more in terms of the artifacts and the technology and the scifi element of it. But I just saw it as a reflection on the human condition. It’s a very unforgiving thing, this life on earth in a lot of ways and how is it that we can best maximize our own wellbeing? How can we be happy? And this idea of rights. Too often people think of rights is just that's the end of the story, but it's tied with responsibilities.
Linda Sheehan
00:38:52
You can't have rights without responsibilities and really to be effective, you need to be able to exercise those responsibilities first. And I'm not a sociologist, but, sociological studies show that my is my understanding that you are more happy in a community where you're doing care for other people and other things and less happy just alone. And I think the character porcupine was he the one that got really rich and then, he died? So it's not necessarily, I think the book was saying that you're going in a better direction. If you start to think about happiness for the larger whole.
Caitlin McShea
00:39:26
And if you compare like the lavish parties that the porcupine was having before he died kind of miserably that the very modest lifestyle that Red has with his wife and his daughter, it's just like there's so much more there in that bit of community and care. So I think that's very well. I like your gloss of this book. I agree. I think that it is a really interesting ideological exploration of a lot of elements of human existence in nature, in society, in prison, in science and family. It's great, but I do want to turn it to the artifact question now. I'll ask you the question and you can tell me what you thought of at the risk of great personal injury, imprisonment, even death. What object would you hope to uncover from the zone?
Linda Sheehan
00:40:04
I love this question because it's just so much fun to think about. And my artifact gets to this idea that we've been talking about our responsibility to protect the moral value of all elements of the earth in the universe. And that's the rights of nature comes from the sense of moral, ethical sense of responsibility. And the laws help us start to regulate and modify our behavior so we can act better. And so my artifact was actually inspired by this. It’s like a teeny tiny microscope, a little teeny tiny break was scope it. And it was given to me actually by a man whose name was Red. We could talk about it because he was a great guy. He was one next door neighbor when I was a child and I was about nine.
Linda Sheehan
00:40:45
And he found out that I liked science and he said, well, I've got this old microscope. This old vintage is brass. It's really cool. It's kind of beat up, but it was something that a child might use to just look at bugs and grass stems and things like that. And it really just opened up a world. I was just so excited to have this gift. And it was just opened up a world that had been invisible to me before. I couldn't see, you know, it, it just sort of looking at these things under the microscope, normally with my own eyes, what that looked like. And so I'm thinking of my artifact is something similar, something that might've been left behind at, by a child, but something that helps alert or activate senses that we don't know that we have, or that senses that we might be able to develop that allowed us to be able to increase our sense of awareness and connection with other systems.
Linda Sheehan
00:41:33
So you look at the microscope and it opens up this whole new sense of this world that I hadn't even known existed. And it gets to your question earlier about climate change. How do we think about climate change when we can't see it and touch it and understand it? And I would love an artifact that might be something like the microscope, a future microscope, but allowed us to tap into a sense that we don't have right now, there is out there that I really do feel that there are, you know, energy. Is there something that a way of sensing our connection with the larger system within which we live, but then we just can't put our physical finger on it. So it's not about touching necessarily or seeing, or hearing or sniffing, but what helps us better understand our place in the universe and really start to act with a sense of respect and responsibility in ways that we’re not now.
Linda Sheehan
00:42:25
So it'd be really a tool because right now we don't have that sense of connection really in a, sort of a more physical way. So for the most part, we just act like nature is something separate and we can manipulate it. But if we really felt like as we intuit, as we have a sense that we're connected, but we can't put our finger on what that is. If we had like a future microscope or some tool where we picked it up and we had that, that sense of connection, something a child might play with to enhance their awareness. I think that that would be something I would go into the zone for.
Caitlin McShea
00:42:57
That's beautiful. But first of all, the actual item that you have for our audience, please watch the video. Like the microscope itself is so adorable. I'm just trying to think of how I was enamored when I use microscopes when I was young. And it's because it's this invincibility thing, like the invisible timescales, there's something about scaling up. It kind of suddenly make manifest this complex complexity that you couldn't witness yourself. So it's not that we can't see it's that we can't see well enough at a certain resolution that would sort of resolve this issue of us over nature, as opposed to us within the system. And so I like that your device is sort of like a resolution enhancer or something for the actual relationship that exists between everything of earth and maybe the universe, too.
Linda Sheehan
00:43:44
And you think about it, ultimately, if you want to step really far back and sort of think about not just this idea of the moral value of nature and natural systems and how we develop laws from that. But really when I was thinking about all these issues, you step back and you think, well, why are we here? You know, why are humans here? And, and to me right now, and this could change, the idea is to help to see what we can do this expression of care, this idea of happiness, extending what we can do to help accelerate or increase or help along this evolving, this unfolding of complexity and consciousness of the universe, and better understanding, better awareness of that complexity, as you say, and consciousness, and the universe is unfolding of that.
Linda Sheehan
00:44:29
If there's something that can help us become more aware of that, that would be something that would be amazing to have, because right now, what we're doing is exactly the opposite. We're actually reversing through the extinctions and through the destruction of the planet that, with which we have, co-evolved, we're destroying this idea of complexity and consciousness. We're doing the reverse. So we need to start to think about how we can shift that and really exercise our responsibility to move things forward.
Caitlin McShea
00:44:56
Can I ask, I mean, I think I have a hypothesis, but I want to hear you say why you suspect that this item was left behind, not by an adult, extra-terrestrial, but by a child extra-terrestrial, why don't adults think this way across, you know, no matter what species.
Linda Sheehan
00:45:09
You just, you just answered it. I think because it is this childlike sense of awe and wonder that when we're children, we are much more tapped into this intuitive sense of our connections with the larger world and larger systems. Everything is alive to us. Everything can connect with us, could talk to us. It, you know, there are much more deep connections that we intuitively accept as children. And as at least in this current culture that we're in right now that tends to get drilled out of you as you move forward, like these are the things that you need to do in order to succeed in society, et cetera, et cetera. And you put that away as something childish. And I've had people say to me, this is just childish, this idea of rights of nature.
Linda Sheehan
00:45:51
It's naive, what's for kids. That's not the way the world works. And I'm like, well, you know, it, it is the way the world is. And it is when I was when I was a child and that was a human. And there are many humans of all ages that believe this and feel this, and haven't lost that sense of intuition. So that's exactly it. I thought of it as a toy because it's the kind of thing that a child would just want to be accessing a lot, and it'd be something that they would hang on to, and they'd be unhappy that they lost it, but hopefully they could get another one.
Caitlin McShea
00:46:22
They're probably yours isn't the only microscope on the earth. They're probably many of these, these machines are these devices. Because again, I think the implication in Roadside Picnicis that this society, that species is so much more intelligently advanced, so they didn't even really notice what was going on on earth. And so I liked the idea that this alien child is so sophisticated that it's boy that it left behind might reinvigorate something like this child, like intuition for the humans that find it.
Linda Sheehan
00:46:51
I also had that very last page or so, and the novel. I remember the other character who died in the meat grinder. He was emphasized in the novel as a young person. He was still in school isn't university. So it wasn't that young, but he was young. He was probably a boy. He was treated as a young person. So it was sort of like this childlike enthusiasm, happiness for everyone, which is the main protagonist Red sort of internally mocked a bit, but ultimately realized and accepted for himself. That was something that, that deep down inside his soul wanted and acknowledged. And I think that that deep down inside our soul wants and acknowledges us, at least mine does. I can always speak for myself, but I do think that that type of artifact that allows us to connect a little bit better to help us acknowledge that and bring it forward would be absolutely something I'd go on zone four.
Caitlin McShea
00:47:41
I think that we should end right there on that beautiful and optimistic note. I think that the device is so clever, this kind of sensate recalibration of what we want for the world to be stewards within the world, as opposed to like overlords. I think that's really beautiful, so well done. Well then you, that's a really good artifact. Thank you very much, Linda, for taking the time to do your homework and to think through the object and to explain what that object means to you to us.
Linda Sheehan
00:48:08
And then thank you so much for the podcast and actually for all the work that you all are doing. I mean, it will be during these incredible and so important to the larger work that I'm doing, the rights of nature folks are doing and just really important for the planet as a whole. Thank you.
Caitlin McShea
00:48:25
Thank you, I can say the very same for your work. It's why you were one of our first invited guests for Interplanetary. It's so very important, the work that you're doing and I am very grateful. So thank you for that and thank you for your time.