Rob: Four days deep.
GL: - four days deep, he discovered that people started to shed many of their cultural assumptions and attachments after four days. Right? So he says that civilization may be fifteen or twenty thousand years old, but it's four days deep and what he discovered is that after that, people started to really bond around these small tribes sitting around a fireplace at night. You know, and he said that we have that very strongly in us, is these primordial connections; both with ourselves and with one another. And here we are in this very civilized, sending people to the moon, robotic surgery culture, and yet we have these primitive souls and I mean primitive in the best sense, as in just primordial, age old selves inside of us that are not going away, they're in there, you know, you just got to go back four days and you'll find him or her and so again, there's the need for paradox to hold our civilized selves, which has a lot of beauty to it. Our music, our art, our architecture, our -
Rob: Inventions.
GL: Inventions, I mean robotic surgery? Being able to talk to one another instantly from opposite sides of the planet. Can you imagine what that would've seemed like to somebody a thousand years ago? Being -
Rob: Magic.
GL: - magic exactly, it's indistinguishable - the computer is indistinguishable from magic I mean there's even a command key, you know. And to hold civilization and the original selves, both of them as values and they need to be in connection with each other. You were talking about connection -
Rob: Again, it's the balance.
GL: Absolutely. To be able to bring them into dialogue rather than let them retreat to opposite sides of the boxing ring. You know, I think that's really some of our work in managing the tensions between bottom up and top down is bring them together to literally educate one another; educate meaning to draw out. You know, and to work with what works and work with what doesn't work about both of them, and they both have their drawbacks. You know, I think it's easy to romanticize the primitive and you know, and demonize the civilized and even vice versa. But they both have strengths and drawbacks and I think it's important to acknowledge both of them.
Rob: So we're coming to the end. I have a couple more questions but we're going to rap it up. Not too long. So, I love your chapter on call of the wild; I love the idea of wildness, I love the idea that wildness is a part of bottom up to me. That's something that your book really gave me. I had recently added to my idea of bottom up that it's a connection to nature, but I think this idea of wildness is so important. You talk about remembering - you kind of suggest the idea of remembering our indigenous selves, our tribal selves that we find when we get away from civilization for a couple days.
GL: Right.
Rob: This is wildness and you've got - I want to read a quote from Jay Griffiths who you cite, who says freedom an intrinsic part of wildness; freedom is not polite, it doesn't knock or telephone first, it slams its hand down on your desk and says dance. And she said things now fall into two categories for me. Those on the side of death and the wasteland, and those on the side of life and the wild. So, let's start off with the definition, what is wild?
GL: Well wild I think the actual definition is about willfulness so this is something - some part of you that is innately willful, that just wants to express itself. You know, as in our natural-born selves, you know? Literally, wildness is about willfulness; spontaneity too. It comes from an Italian word that means essentially the same thing. You know? It just means wild and willful and regulated by its own system, not regulated from outside. Alright? And; in fact, the wilderness act, I think it was nineteen sixty-four in the United States, the wilderness act was defining wilderness as "nature that is untrammeled by man", I put that in quotes; untrammeled by man, but untrammeled means not un-trampled on, it means free. A trammel is a fish net, alright? And it was whatever entrapped things. So untrammeled is whatever is free and free to be its natural self. And I think of wildness as the part of us that is willful, that is spontaneous, that is intuitive, you know? And I think tapping into our wildness is a great source of passion in our lives. When we tap into what is native to ourselves, not even as human beings, but Rob and Gregg and everybody else. And I think of that as wildness, is what is my own most innate urge, urgencies, and energies? And to tap into that.
Rob: I love that you talk about how Native Americans didn't have a word for wilderness.
GL: Right, as we do meaning about place outside of civilization, you know? There's a here and a there, it was just home to them. I mean wilderness, there was no concept of here we are in our community and out there is the wilderness because they lived in it and there was no distinction -
Rob: They had a connection to it.
GL: Absolutely.
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