Athena:	00:00:04	Have you been zombified by chaos? Welcome to the Zombified Podcast, your source for fresh brains. Zombified is a production of ASU and the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Alliance. I am your host, Athena Aktipis, psychology professor at ASU and chair of the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Alliance.
Dave:	00:00:26	And I'm your co-host Dave Lundberg-Kenrick.
Athena:	00:00:30	And we love brains.
Dave:	00:00:31	Yes, uh, we do. [laughter]
Athena:	00:00:33	That's kind of what brought us together over this podcast. [Dave agrees] Coming from sort of different approaches, but [Dave agrees] Yeah. Um, so this episode is about chaos.
Dave:	00:00:44	Cool.
Athena:	00:00:45	And what happens when you're in the middle of chaos and whether or not you get zombified by chaos.
Dave:	00:00:53	Interesting. So what sort of chaos?
Athena:	00:00:55	So our guest, Keith Tidball has a really awesome background. So he has, um, he's a professor who works on disaster response and disaster recovery, but he actually works in the field. So he does, um, like actually when disasters occurs he, he goes to the field and looks at how the response is happening and actually tries to help with making sure that, um, the recovery is coming along. So, he worked in like post-Katrina. Um, and he has a background in the military, too. And so he has experienced lots of different kinds of chaos. So he gives us a really, I think unique, um, and you know, even within himself a diverse perspective on chaos and the role that it can play in affecting our behavior.
Dave:	00:01:47	Wow. That sounds, that sounds really exciting.
Athena:	00:01:50	Yeah. So let's, uh, let's, hear from Keith Tidball.
Dave:	00:01:53	All right.
Intro:	00:01:55	[Psychological by Temi]
Athena:	00:02:31	Hey Keith.
Keith:	00:02:32	Hey Athena.
Athena:	00:02:33	It's awesome to have you here on Zombified.
Keith:	00:02:36	I'm honored to be in the land of zombies with you. I've heard a lot about your, uh, interest in zombies and zombification.
Athena:	00:02:46	Yeah, we've known each other for awhile. You figured it out.
Keith:	00:02:49	I think it's getting close to 10 years. I remember my first meeting of you was in a talk that you gave at the 2nd International Resilience Conference at ASU. So, that would've been 2007, 2008?
Athena:	00:03:05	That was before I was at ASU. that was when I was like stalking ASU because I really wanted to be at ASU. So I was going there for every, every excuse I had.
Keith:	00:03:15	Well, clearly that was a good move. I was very impressed with your talk there. And I recognized then, what I now know is in that is that, you know, we are kindred, um, in a number of ways. I think the sort of search for scale free phenomena and essential sorts of attributes across different, um, organizational levels or scales is, uh, really cool. [Athena agrees] And um, other things too that,
Athena:	00:03:44	Yeah. We're also kind of into like, what would happen in the zombie apocalypse except you, you don't frame it in terms of the zombie apocalypse because you've actually dealt with situations that are catastrophic and [Dave suggests 'apocalyptic'] apocalyptic. Right.
Keith:	00:03:57	Well, you know not as many as many of my colleagues, but certainly I have, um, experienced some and have trained for more.
Athena:	00:04:04	Yeah. So can you tell us like a little bit about who you are, what you do and like why it is that you've had those kinds of apocalyptic experiences in your life?
Keith:	00:04:15	Yeah. Well. Um, it all starts with detouring away from my education for a little while in order to afford my education for, um, for what it's worth, into the army. I went into the army infantry, which is the sort of pointiest part of the, of the spear, if you will, when it comes to the military. The job of infantry is very simple job description, close with and kill the enemy. Um, and I learned that job and, advanced and found that I actually thrived in that environment and was happy there. And then I returned to school in order to become an officer in the military, in the infantry, and succeeded in doing that. And then I, um, took my first command as a platoon leader in an infantry mechanized infantry unit who was in the Eastern Appalachian Mountains of, of Rural Kentucky. And in that area, there were a number of activities at the time that were drug interdiction activities. Uh, Kentucky in California at the time were the largest, um, illegal markets and growth states for marijuana as well as the beginnings, then in the 90s, early 90s of the crystal meth sort of epidemic that we now experience. So I was, um, auditioning really to be a part of these very elite units, um, and was somehow mixed up and identified as somebody involved in something that infuriated, um, a local gang of a drug types and that ended up meaning that I was injured pretty badly.
Athena:	00:05:51	So you were in like Breaking Bad, but for real?
Keith:	00:05:54	You know, I don't watch television so I don't really know what that means. But, I think, I think I have a little bit of understanding what that is and probably that's at least descriptive of some of the environments that I'm familiar with or was familiar with. The upshot of all that though was that I was frustrated and um, detoured once again in terms of I wanted to end up in special forces and special operations directly and uh, the injury really sort of frustrated a lot of that. Um, I returned to serving my country in a different venue and went into the foreign service instead. Um, which took me to Washington, DC and all over the world where I never lost sight of my, um, feeling of thriving in those sort of chaotic environments. And my, I think knack for, or talent and leadership skills in those environments. And so I served as subject matter expert and other sorts of things in various places around the world. I spent a lot of time in Southern African countries. I spent a lot of time in Latin America, a fair bit of time in Asia and some in Europe, so, and Australia, frankly. So the only place I haven't been in and exercised, some of these skills Antartica, but I'm looking forward to an opportunity to do that.
Athena:	00:07:00	So what is it about the chaotic environments that make you feel like you thrive in them?
Keith:	00:07:06	The fact that they're chaotic. I think that, they're in-interesting places because most people, um, are paralyzed, uh in chaotic en-en-environments. And therefore if you just happened to be in, I don't necessarily feel like I need to pat myself on the back for this, but if you have the ability to not be paralyzed and just to instinctively lean forward and act in those environments, then you tend to thrive. You certainly can be mowed down by the situation, whatever it is. But on the whole, that has served me well and it's, and I've taken that approach, uh, out of the foreign service into academia where I've been since 2002, and I basically approach it in exact, exactly the same way.
Athena:	00:07:49	Just to bring it full circle. We're here at Cornell in your office and you're doing all sorts of work now in disaster zones as part of your academic job.
Keith:	00:08:01	Absolutely, yeah. Red Zones as I call them, to places where it is most chaotic, uh, where, where, you know, the, the pointy end of the spear kinds of things as far as academia is concerned. You know, what are the natural resources, imperatives in combat zones? What are the natural resources or environmental conservation issues in post disaster context. But most importantly, I think the thing that drives me is my own awareness that, you know, when I, when I couldn't go do what I wanted to do in the military and when I realized that my injury was going to frustrate my own career goals, both in the military and foreign service and sort of that universe, I was depressed. And then literally on the day I had a surgery on September 10th, 2001 on my eye, it was the fourth surgery on, on my injured head. And uh, and the doctors basically called me early at the morning on September 11th, um, and said, you know, "sorry, uh, Mr Tidball, your surgery is not going to restore vision in your eye and that's all that we really can do. That any more surgeries, unless the technology changes, this is what you've got." And I hung up the phone in a sort of, you know, pain stupor and uh, and an hour later, the whole world was coming apart in 9/11. And I was just in shock and I realized that I had just been told that I was going to be on the bench for the fight of my generation. So that shook me. And then, you know, over the next couple of years, units that I had been involved with deployed, um, people were killed, people came back maimed. I had a lot of survivor's guilt in there and you know, I, I left Washington DC in that environment in order to try to escape that oppressive level of uh survivor's guilt and whatever else came with all that scenario. And I found that my, the mistress of, of my farm, this farm that I bought, was my redemption and salvation. So I threw myself into, I guess what you'd call, a landscape level project and tried to regain this notion of task and purpose, which we in the military and in those sorts of communities talk about all the time. One must have task and purpose. Otherwise, you're just meaninglessly wasting oxygen that other people could use. And I felt that way about my life, especially after, uh, after 9/11.
Athena:	00:10:37	Yeah. Well, you're like then, in your own personal chaos, right? And trying to sort through that. So it's like the biggest challenge for someone whose good at thriving in chaos to then figure out your own personal chaos. Right?
Keith:	00:10:52	And that was chaos. And I wasn't, um, I wasn't a very effective operator in that moment, for, for awhile. And then I realized the benefit of really throwing myself into, um, farming and, and re re reaffirming my childhood interest in the outdoors and hunting and fishing and trapping and just general natural, uh, you know, being a naturalist. And then, later getting involved in restoration of habitat and suddenly I found that there was this massive redemptive quality to that and a, a whole bunch of other sort of benefits and I realized, "Hey, if this works for me, it probably works for a lot of people." And so, since that time, frankly, I have been, um, looking at, in all different dimensions, what is, what are the pathways or portals for my fellow humans into getting out of what I think of as ecological disenfranchisement and into rediscovering, reconnecting all these 're-' words, uh, our own ecological identities and what they mean to our own survival, which certainly was true of me. So I think about that in post conflict and, and I work a lot with the combat wounded veterans. I think about that in, in disaster context. I think about that in urban, hyper urban context. All of these places where ecological disenfranchisement is contributing to a larger malaise that I think explains a lot of where western society is right now- zombified, if you will. [Athena confirms] Um, and, and, uh, so that's what I, that's what I organize my work around is trying to discover those pathways and portals.
Athena:	00:12:31	That's cool. Can I, um, follow up about the sort of thriving in chaos thing a little bit? [Keith agrees] So, you know, its-it struck me as you were talking about that, that maybe there's something sort of really interesting about, you know, well what happens in these chaotic situations that sometimes make people like paralyzed or, or zombified by the chaos, right? They're not acting intentionally, they're just sort of reacting and you know, maybe even falling into, um, patterns that are really not in their best interests, but they're just sort of, you know, being driven by it versus what makes some people able to sort of take a chaotic situation and be very intentional within that.
Keith:	00:13:15	I think that there's a sort of systems view at work and I think some people just naturally sort of see the world as a system and see themselves as operating within a system. And I came to the resilience literature and resilience thinking, I think, because I have that notion.
Athena:	00:13:33	And resilience literature here, this is in terms of like how people and environments recover when there is challenges, right? Just for people who,
Keith:	00:13:42	Their ability to bounce back, um, recovery is not necessarily the systemic property we're talking about, but the ability to persist and not change function or structure entirely. And maintain its function as a system. And there are a number of indicators of that. But the thing that I like in resilience thinking is this notion of the adaptive cycle and in the adaptive cycle there is this place which is this chaotic, um, destruction and re and then [Athena suggests 're-organization'] the opportunity for re-organization. Exactly. Yeah. So in my, my personal outlook in terms of systems that I see around me and seeing the world through that lens or that frame, and then, and then in my, in my actual academic work, which is sort of integrated research and extension, that chaotic period is valuable. It's meaningful to me because it's an opportunity for reorganization and regrowth and you know, for reasserting properties, properties of, of, of, you know, um, autonomy of resilience, if you will, at the psychological level. Um, persistence, all those sorts of traits in their position.
Athena:	00:14:49	So it's almost like for some people, the chaos is like a threat to the system they know. The way things work, that's predictable and that can be sometimes paralyzing. Because its like, they don't want that to happen. They don't want to deal with it. But for other people it can be an opportunity to, to move forward, to grow to uh, actually reorganize your approach to things.
Keith:	00:15:15	Yeah, and I don't think that that it's, um, predetermined or preprogrammed. What I, what I remember about my indoctrination into the into the army and the infantry was that, I don't think I felt that way about my agency until I went through this process of, of sort of being broken down and then built back up. It's called basic training. So I think that given that, and I don't think everybody should become a soldier or everybody should go through basic training, but I do believe that the ability to recognize a chaotic situation as an opportunity isn't something that some people have and some people don't. I think potentially almost everybody could theoretically develop the ability to see chaotic reorganization, uh, situations within the adaptive cycle as opportunities. And not just threats.
Athena:	00:16:01	Huh, So you're saying that part of what happens in basic training is, is that, I didn't know that.
Keith:	00:16:05	Yeah. You, you learn that chaotic environments are not something that you should feel are so out of the norm, out of the ordinary that you're threatened and paralyzed. In fact, what they do is they socialize you to chaotic, disorganized, uh, disorganized, chaotic sorts of environments that at first threatened you, but you learn to deal with them. You learn to actually thrive in them because there are certain opportunities that only exist in them. And um, it's, it's unnerving at first. It's a lot of yelling and screaming in strange hours, switching up routine and habit and pattern. But you realize that all those things are basically figments of our own imaginations. Their kind of crutches. You don't really need, you know, some of these things, we think that if you don't get eight hours of sleep, you're going to die - that's not true. Or if you don't have certain routines and rhythms, oh my God, things are gonna be so bad. It doesn't really work that way. In fact, these chaotic periods are opportunities for growth and sort of reorganization.
Athena:	00:17:07	So people who are sort of so fixed on, things must be in this order and these rituals and habits and stuff and then when they're in an environment where those aren't the case can't function that that's,
Keith:	00:17:22	It's not very resilient. In fact, at the systems level, that's a brittle, vulnerable system because it isn't able, it's so, it's become so brittle in its need for everything to be predictable and control that the adaptation is sort of bleached out of the system.
Athena:	00:17:38	Yeah. That's interesting. But I want to be devil's advocate for a minute. Cause like I know for some people who like, maybe are really creative or like have a certain way of working if they don't have structure, if they don't have those rituals, like they can't accomplish their goals. So there's gotta be a place somewhere for those, you know for that structure. And you know, things are the way you expect and you can prepare for.
Keith:	00:18:08	Yes, I totally agree. And so the idea is not to perpetuate chaos. The idea is just to actually accept it and then reorganize. So you know, what you're referring to are all those organizational principles. Yeah. The idea is that it isn't catastrophic to have to reorganize.
Athena:	00:18:26	I see. So it's not
Keith:	00:18:27	You don't want perpetual chaos, then you're just going to die.
Athena:	00:18:31	Right. So, so it's sort of about learning that chaos itself is not something to fear.
Keith:	00:18:36	Right. It's actually, usually an opportunity for reorganization.
Athena:	00:18:40	That's interesting.
Keith:	00:18:41	And to demonstrate your own sort of agency and autonomy and be a hero to yourself, which is very self affirming, if you persist through those environments. And you know, what I've learned in my research is, you know, whether it's disaster or conflict, war, combat, um, adversity breeds a kind of resilience that would otherwise not be available to us as a species, which it would make sense. You're an evolutionary theorist yourself. I mean, you need that, that fitness comes from being challenged, not from not being challenged.
Athena:	00:19:12	Yeah. You know, one of the, uh, recent, uh, episodes that we recorded, we talked to Barb Natterson who's a physician and she also studies across species, um, basically health and behavior. And she's worked on adolescents from across species perspective. And she makes some very convincing argument that like if you look across species that, in adolescence especially, um, there is this period where like if there isn't challenge, if there isn't sort of pushing these boundaries and doing things that might seem dangerous but actually, you know, offer opportunities for learning that, um, it has a negative effect on adulthood.
Keith:	00:19:55	Yeah. I,I, you know, instinctively agree with that. I'd love to read more about that. If-it fits into some of the thinking that you're familiar with, I think, a little bit, uh, on my ideas around urgent biophilia that there is a, when we're confronted with these red zone sorts of situations that are chaotic,
Athena:	00:20:13	Yeah, so, say zombie apocalypse situation. And then like, we get rid of the zombies, but like our cities are destroyed. And so, you know, then put urgent biophilia in that context for us. What's happening after, in the, you know, phase after the zombie apocalypse.
Keith:	00:20:30	Yeah. Okay. So the zombies are, are dispensed with.
Athena:	00:20:33	Yeah, but now the real work starts, Right?
Keith:	00:20:36	And you're in a period of, of sort of mourning the fact that this has been chaotic, all the organization that you've worked on so long is destroyed and disorganized and you know, that can be so overwhelming. We find that people often when experiencing that level being overwhelmed, have a biophilic response, which is that they turn to the most basic needs to affiliate with other life. Some other life forms. Some people manifest this with becoming infatuated with saving cats and dogs. Some people plant trees, some people need more broader greening experiences. Some people go on a year long hike of the Appalachian Trail. You know, there are all these sorts of expressions of what Stephen Kellert, who, a dear friend of mine who recently left us, um, said in his just straight biophilic arguments -there were, you know, a number of characteristics, maybe 11- um, and urgent biophilia, those are expressed precisely because something chaotic just befell. And those, as you were saying earlier today, in a talk here at Cornell, which I'm very very happy.
Athena:	00:21:42	Yeah, I just gave a talk like right before this. [laughter]
Keith:	00:21:43	Yeah, it was a great, it was a great talk. One of the things that you said was that you think, and I agree with you, uh, on the face of it as a hypothesis that, you know, it's these situations of where there's some sort of crisis or vulnerability or hazard or risk that promulgate or at least create the conditions where you might see certain sorts of um, um, sharing behaviors, you were talking about. And I think that there's a number of other things that those red zones also produce. And one of them is urgent biophilia and a need at the cellular level of our bodies to affiliate with other life because what we've just experienced is so opposite life and so destructive. And so, uh, I'm just antithetical to the drive we have as living creatures to keep going. So urgent biophilia is as a part of that. Then uh, you mentioned rebuilding cities, the Yin to the Yang, if you will, of urgent biophilia, in my mind is this notion of restorative topophilia.
Athena:	00:22:41	What's topophilia?
Keith:	00:22:41	Um, love of place. So you, you want to restore your place. You want to reorganize in that phase of the adaptive cycle, if you will. Um, in order to, it won't ever be exactly the same as it was, but it may become as good or better in an analog sense. And, and bring, bring back those restorative, the feelings of place attachment that are connected to biophilia.
Athena:	00:23:05	Yeah. So there's something kind of about that process that, I mean, it sounds like almost, it's a way that people get out of the sort of, you know, paralysis of just how destructive a chaotic situation like the Zombie Apocalypse would be, right? [Keith confirms] So it can help in a way to, you know, de-zombify us all after we deal with the zombie apocalypse.
Keith:	00:23:29	Yeah. And I think the zombific, one, uh, aspect of zombification, if, to stay in the, in this beautiful metaphor, is in post-disaster especially, look at the footage, look at the photographs and the film of people who've just experienced a typhoon or uh, a tsunami or a major tornado. And I've been in many, many of these places. What? Look at the facial expressions, look at the hollow, vacuous, hopeless despair. And if there isn't a pathway at the individual and small group family level to something restorative then, your, your morale is just tanking. And unfortunately that what contributes to that kind of zombification is command and control bureaucracies that are so slow moving and, and increase the level of paralysis that you actually feel as the man on the street. And, and what we've seen is where people say, no, I'm not going to just be zombified. I'm actually going to take matters into my own hand. I'm going out. You know what? I'm, I'm going out. I'm going to plant a tree. Just because God dammit, I'm going to plant a tree. Cause that's life. Or I'm going to rescue these stray cats that are runnin around here and I'm gonna take care of. When people do that. And then that sort of aggregates. Yeah. Then, uh, then the zombification starts to abate.
Athena:	00:24:53	Yeah. So tell me more about this sort of bureaucracy that you were referencing and like, so how is it that in a disaster or post-disaster situation, people can feel more paralyzed or zombified because of the sort of command and control? Maybe tell us a little bit more about that.
Keith:	00:25:13	So, I appreciate, uh, agencies and you know, the command and control structure is certainly needed. But there's a sort of vicious feedback there where people have come to depend on that system so much that they have sacrificed and, and sort of abdicated [Athena suggests ' given up their autonomy in a way'], Totally, abdicated all that autonomy. And, and, and what, what these agencies really want is you to be, uh, au-autonomous. They want you to be self-reliant and resilient. But it, because, because generally, people aren't, they don't prepare. They don't have a, you know, go bag and all the things that we need. Um, and we've heard it over and over and over again. And yet people still don't do these things and they still don't evacuate when time to evacuate in a hurricane, for example, for whatever reasons. Um, as a result, the command and control structure has to sort of crack down in order to preserve uh essential systems and essential services. But the vicious feedback is then they, they, they introduce paralysis in, in the communities because they're trying to preserve essential services. And what the,
Athena:	00:26:17	Can you give an example like?
Keith:	00:26:17	Okay. Uh, you know, I've just talked about Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans a few moments ago. Let me go to Hurricane Sandy, superstorm sandy in New York City in New Jersey. There were a lot of people that wanted to get right after the storm, get back into the green spaces and so forth because they wanted to use those as nodes of, um, immediate relief. Um, and there were examples of community gardens where people knew, there were large networks of community gardens in New York City and people would bring their bikes and set up these little situations where people would just go in rotations biking in, in place, creating battery power so that people could continue to recharge their phones and stay in touch with the outside world because there was no electricity.
Athena:	00:26:59	So, this spontaneously just, yeah.
Keith:	00:27:01	Spontaneously happened in community gardens, which are already, you know, they have their own sorts of community and its built around, ophelia and topophelia and these things. So, um, but because they were in spaces that were condemned or prohibited, many of them were being kicked out of these spaces. And so in efforts to maintain command and control, which I fully appreciate, I don't want you to get the idea that I don't appreciate what agencies are trying to do, cause I do. But in the efforts to preserve essential services, they actually are denaturing the community relief in the community response, which should be an ally to them. Right. And I think that my sort of ax to grind is, to help agencies see how they can rethink and shape the environment ahead of time to be able to accept community responses as part of the larger response. Not Control it, but sort of just harness it and bridal it a little so that we can experience those benefits at the community level without smashing down all that morale.
Athena:	00:28:00	So the agencies need to sort of accept and cultivate the agency of the people within the power to,
Keith:	00:28:08	Clever. I saw what you did there. That's good. [laughter] Absolutely. That's right. Um, and I, you know, that's tough because in their own sort of rigidity, in terms of the adaptive cycle, the command and control bureaucracies are resistant to change. And that's not the way we do things.
Athena:	00:28:25	Why are they so res, cause I mean that's another like, potential zombificiation thing, like, an institution that you know, is just reactive or just has this way of doing things and isn't able to change.
Keith:	00:28:38	It has to do, I think with resources. I mean in the adaptive cycle, you get into that phase up there, which is conserving conservatism. That's reluctance to change. And usually it's that that works its self to a pinnacle of brittleness and then there's a perturbation to the system that flips the thing. So that, you know, the sort of infinity loop that looks like adaptive cycle is not just an infinity loop. It's also sort of mobius strip, kind of, there's a change in that thing, hard for me to explain this, just sort of, you know, with words and I don't have a, um, I don't have a picture here to show you. But at that moment when all this conserving of resources is happening, yeah. Is when they're most vulnerable to this, this flip. Which has then swings us down into this period of reorganization and disruption. Uh, so I think that the command and control systems or, the agencies are so uh single mindedly obsessed with preserving their own selves as entities that they can't accept this other way of thinking; this environment shaping, which my colleague, Elon Weinstein, who used to be at State Department, uh, and I worked through quite a while ago which its probably 10 years ago now, this whole idea of environment shaping. And it's really about this, it's about how we can convince agencies, whether it's our own here in the US or when we're involved in, you know, sustainability and transition work in other nations. How do we shape the environment to be receptive to using their own assets to NASA -based program.
Athena:	00:30:09	Well, and ultimately, I mean, I think that there's maybe something that happens with, with agencies, with institutions when the goal starts shifting from like, okay, you know what our goal is to do some thing that is supposed to have some effect right in the world versus our goal is to perpetuate ourselves. And I think once the goal starts to be perpetuating themselves, then they kind of become like a zombie institution in a way. You know, they're like undead. They're not actually doing anything other than just trying to stay alive by eating whatever brains they can get their hands on.
Keith:	00:30:48	Interesting. You know, yes and now, I will take the opportunity to play devil's advocate. But I think fundamentally like, you know, when you, when you discover, uh, you know, a Luna Moth and you, and you want to look at it and you flip it over and it and it struggles and you see its legs reaching for the sky and that, that entity is all about self preservation. And you know, that's pretty normal in terms of biology at the end of the day. So even though these agencies may be doing that, it's not unnatural. It's not necessarily undead. It is the perverse, uh, outcome of, you know, basically our entire biology saying whether you're at the most minute organismic-organa- organism or you're all the way at this, you know, sort of collective. Just survive.
Athena:	00:31:41	So maybe the self preservation isn't really what, maybe it's not so much in the Zombie space as it is in like the, we've created a monster kinda space.
Keith:	00:31:50	Yeah. And that's kind of where I feel like we are with, when we're in that phase of the adaptive cycle as agencies and bureaucracies, they have become monsters. They, they, they want to survive at all costs. And they will consume at all costs. Um, this is painting with a really broad brush, but staying in the, in this sort of, uh, in the metaphor, it's, I don't know that you need to attack the bureaucracy as a monster in like Godzilla fashion or, or King Kong. But I think that people that are systems thinkers understand that that entity is so brutal that it's going to fall. So I need to prepare for chaos.
Athena:	00:32:32	So do you mean that it's going to fall in a chaotic situation or just in general that it's, it's brittle and even without a major challenge, it will,
Keith:	00:32:42	Probably requires, and I'm spitballing here, I think it requires a perturbation. In the, in the theory and in the adaptive cycle and all this as a sort of resilience thinking, something will befall that system that has become rigid and brittle and not resilience that will cause it to have to fall apart and then reorganize.
Athena:	00:33:03	So once you get a sort of institution or agency like this ones that you know, are involved in disaster recovery. [ Keith adds, "or nation states"] Yeah. All right. So any kind of institution. I mean ideally the, you know, collective goals that led to its creation can stay front and center. Like what, you know, how, how do you keep those front and center or if you've gotten this sort of shift to just a self preservation goal, like is there a way to arrest it back like these, you know, because ultimately these collectives should be serving the goals that they were set up to serve, right?
Keith:	00:33:44	I, I think that is really, um, insightful. I think that appropriate, it's a function of leadership. Like, so certain leaders may understand these adaptive cycles and say, you know, what we need to do is we need to manage, manage some chaos. We need to manage disruptiveness. We need to allow for smaller scale perturbations so that we continually reorganize and readapt and get better and, and enhance our resilience. Rather than be so conservative that we, you know, protect ourselves at all costs and ignore lots of opportunities for chaos at a smaller scale. And then the big one takes us completely off the map. Right. And that's a function of leadership. Some organizations do this well, I can think of a couple of corporations like Microsoft, like Apple who have probably done a pretty good job of this and reinvented and absorbed, um, perturbations that could have otherwise taken out and more brittle like they, like Kodak did not do this well. Um, if you're talking about corporations as entities and then, and then there are nation state, similarly. And we can think about some of the great quote unquote great empires, um, historically did or did not do well in terms of adapting to, um, at a scale or level, both temporal and sort of spatial, um, small perturbations of the sort of accumulation of resources got them to be in that adaptive cycle phase where they were brittle and broke and reorganization meant all kinds of things for, for the Western Hemisphere, frankly.
Athena:	00:35:13	Right? So there's almost a similarity between sort of at the individual level, like being able to embrace chaos and reorganize and at the organizational level, being able to embrace some of that chaos and reorganize.
Keith:	00:35:27	Well, once again, I, you know, I'm beaming with sort of a, um, kindred spirit with you because I feel like there are some scaler things, some scale free phenomena that exist there. That, you know, I can't, um, put, um, mathematics to you at this time. But I believe there that what you just said is, is at work. Yeah. And I think that's happening at the cellular level. I think it's happening at our organismic level as a human being. I think that's happening at our, at our community level and then scale that right up to you know.
Athena:	00:35:56	Yeah. So, um, can we talk a little bit about the, the longer aftermath of like being in a chaotic situation? Cause I know, you know, sometimes like, right, there's the immediate, like in the moment there's the chaos, you handle it, you reorganize, you get through it, but there can be, [Keith confirms with, "there's aftermath"] There's an aftermath. So what, what happens in that aftermath?
Dave:	00:36:24	So this is where I feel that, in the aftermath therapeutic attributes of our, um, ecosystem are either leveraged and experience or, or they're not. And this is where this notion of ecological disenfranchisement really comes in for me. Um, where we are, where we are open and available to the rest of the ecosystem that we inhabit. Yeah. And you notice I'm using very specific language here. I don't feel that humans are outside or separate from the ecosystem. We're deeply in-in it and a part of it and of it. And when we're open and available to what that system can offer us in therapeutic contexts, in the aftermath, we seem to thrive. And there was lots of, and I'm working on this now with combat wounded veterans in and outdoor recreation as, as, as aftermath therapy. Yeah. Um, but when we close ourselves off and foreclose the opportunities of, of being in an, of our ecosystems through ecological, disenfranchised a franchise and loss of ecological identity as people, as, as, as a species, as communities, as families, then I think we only prolong the aftermath and we can create a different kind of chaos, which is what I warned about earlier, which is a perpetual chaotic environment, which is toxic to us.
Athena:	00:37:50	So, and that's sort of like the trauma that just doesn't get processed or,
Keith:	00:37:55	Or, or it's being rehashed almost on a daily basis in a, in a vicious cycle, sort of a, a vicious negative producing feedback. And you see this with my brothers and sisters who have experienced trauma in combat. The whole post traumatic stress conceptualization is a rehashing of chaos that becomes toxic to their psyche, and to their bodies eventually. Um, and on the other hand, when you can break that perpetual chaos, instead of seeing a chaotic moment as an opportunity in growing through reorganization, some we'll just be in this chaotic perpetuity. Gotta break out of that. And I feel like, um, these connections with the ecosystem within which we reside are ways to do that. And there's a number of other ways too, in terms of the therapeutic literature, but fundamentally, the more we're isolated from our ecosystem within which we arise, uh, the more isolated from that, the more we're perpetuating chaos. It's noise, at the very basic, at the most cellular, even below, smaller than cellular level. We're en-engaged in noise and chaos rather than, than harmony.
Athena:	00:39:09	So in terms of the sort of post traumatic stress that happens like in wartime, um, for soldiers, but also for, you know, people who've experienced really [Keith suggests, "trauma'] Yeah. Tragic situations. Are there sort of features of the environment that, you know, correlate more with having that, that traumatic situation, that traumatic aftermath? Is it the uncontrollability of the situation? You know, what are the features that make it more likely that that will happen?
Keith:	00:39:42	Again, hearkening back to, to Kellert, I think there's a handful of them, maybe up to a dozen of them. But I think the most important thing that I've seen in my, in my work is that, um, trauma and posttraumatic stress, and I will never use the word syndrome in this, cause I don't believe- it's an injury, it's not a disease. And there's a big difference. So post traumatic stress and, and you know, so what are these therapeutic things actually contributing? I think what happens with PTS is that we become, we as individuals become unhooked or disconnected in, at a number of levels. Uh, we become disconnected with ourselves. There's disembodiment and just, you know, sort of psychotic hallucina-, uh, hallucinations. Sometimes suicid-sidle ideation, don't forget we're, we're, you know, we're losing 22 veterans a day right now to suicide, right. Um, but being in outdoor settings has been shown and there's a great literature on this too, to cause a kind of feeling of reconnection. So I start to think of this in terms of concentric rings. The individual who's experienced trauma, whether a soldier or a disaster, um, um, victim or survivor or a survivor of abuse of some kind or an accident, a car accident, you know, airplane accidents, all kinds of trauma out there. Um, when you can reconnect to yourself and then concentric ring going out to your family and to your, your sort of the community as Aldo Leopold described it, which is all those other living creatures. Um, when you can do that, you can become restored. You can, you can, you can heal from the injury of a post traumatic stress, a PTS injury, as opposed to a disease. But often it's not easy to go with the individual then the, you know, the family and the community. So sometimes what I have found, is that the best place to start is to go outward in. Its least threatening to a combat wounded veteran, to be encouraged to go try something that they may have remembered they enjoyed as a youngster in a different life, like going fishing. And, you know, the sort of connected, reconnection that they get with, uh, an unassuming nature. And again, we're painting with a broad brush, thunderstorms are scary. We're not talking about going fishing in a thunderstorm with 20 foot waves. We're talking about, a regular day, a good day, nice weather, um, in a nice place. Um, you know, aspect, vision, scenery, all these sorts of meanings start to come to play and the reconnection can happen with, with the ecosystem. So we work our way in then to the community and the family and myself rather than trying to start with myself, which most psychotherapy does. And so I think that, that, uh, that is, and then there are, there's a cluster of meanings associated with that um, coming in from the community and the ecosystem related nature as Alba Leopold described our community. Coming in from there rather than going out to there, I think is beneficial because it provides, at least in the case of, of combat wounded veterans, opportunity to reassert mastery, to experience, challenge to gain task and purpose again, um, to experience fascination, which is, you know, there's a great, attentive, attentive, uh, yeah, uh, restoration literature around that. I mean, all these things come, come in play.
Athena:	00:43:07	Sounds like it's kind of about making life feel less chaotic in a way.
Keith:	00:43:13	It, I think it's the aftermath thing that you described, right? So the chaos has happened, but what happens in, in PTS anyway, it's a kind of zombification. Uh, you, you, you aren't able to snap out of it. Um, and, and drive. It's, and it's not, it's because you're injured and the injury is a PTS injury beyond your physical injuries. And we just have to acknowledge that, um, that kind of of zombification, I dunno if I would even use it because it's more likely there's a spell on you. Um, and you need to reconnect to yourself to recover yourself, um, in order to cast off the spell.
Athena:	00:43:55	Yeah. Oh, maybe it's a, you know, kind of temporary state of being sort of zombified by this previous trauma that just keeps repeating in your head.
Keith:	00:44:08	I think that the, the, the, the notionality of Zombification and, and spells and all, I think these are really useful because they actually, I know when people I've interviewed and I've done over 50 of these recently with combat wounded veterans that I've hunted with. Um, and I mentioned this to you earlier, they talk in terms of feeling like this, like there's a spell on them. I don't know if you are much of a, a Tolkien fan, but there's a king who has this spell on him. And he does all these terrible things in, in, in his kingdom and some, you know, Gandalf and company come through there and relieve him of his spell. And, and it is amazing. And as a- a moment in literature and later in film, it's one of those sort of, um, you know, uh, evangelical almost, you know, Paul seeing the light, the bright light on the road to Damascus kind of thing, for, for this king. And it's, I think it's indicative of what we're talking about. It's, it's somehow getting out from under this, this spell or this zombification or whatever the metaphor is.
Athena:	00:45:12	You know, early um, in the, the season we talked to, in first season, we talked to Mark Flinn who studies stress and also, uh, has been really embedded in, um, Dominica and communities there where they have witchcraft or, you know, people talk about witchcraft. And he makes this really interesting argument in this episode that when that, what's happening, when people feel like witchcraft is being practiced on them or they're practicing it, is actually people are manipulating each other's stress systems and having true physiological effects through, um, stressing people out socially. And so
Keith:	00:45:57	I love that. My first international, uh, activity was in Haiti. And so I was, um, I've got some stories about Voodoo there that some things that I witnessed there. They were really sort of, um, formative for me. And one of the things that I've often thought in, consistent with what your, your colleague was talking about, I think maybe San Grayer or some of those kinds of things that happen, uh, that similar to voodoo is that, that people do in fact feel oppressed by the possibility that, uh, they've been, something that's been cast upon them. And I honestly see something like that in many cases. Um, in the case of PTS with combat wounded veterans. Its often my, you know, if, if I can stay in this sort of, you know, free flowing blue sky thinking we're doing here, it looks like, uh, it looks to me like the person is suffering from a spell. From, from a Voodoo Doll somewhere poking on them. And they need to just be released from that.
Athena:	00:46:52	This reminds me of the conversation we were having a little bit earlier about kind of getting used to chaos and how, you know, if you think you need to get eight hours of sleep a night, otherwise you're, you know, going to die or you need to have this routine, otherwise everything's going to fall apart, then, that can kind of be a self fulfilling prophecy. Right? So, I don't know. I mean maybe there's some connection there with like, you know, almost like the pr-the fact that you're in the chaos, is-it's almost like, the only thing to fear is fear itself. Like if you're afraid of the chaos as opposed to really evaluating what's actually happening and how you can deal, um, maybe that fear of chaos can zombify you.
Keith:	00:47:40	Yeah. And now that you're talking about that, another thing that occurs to me is that in those chaotic moments, another aspect besides sort of the 'rugged individualism' of thriving in chaos is a reality in combat. And I think it's also true in disaster contexts of, of coming to the point where you know that "yes, I can do some things as an individual, but it's really not about me. It's about the person to my left and the person to my right." And so that sort of, um, collaborative of Esprit de Corps and comradery and um, dependency on the people next to you and in front of you and behind you that you get up it over the wall and you make sure to look back and help the next guy. You don't just keep rolling. Um, those things are, I think are also part of this. And, and learning that there are opportunities to really exercise that and benefit from that at an internal, in an internal way in these moments of chaos. And, and when the chaos is over in the aftermath, you actually miss that, that, that there's a void. And in most communities, you know, there were rituals and things historically you can think of the Plains Indians and others. What happens when warriors come back? There's all kinds of ritual and ceremony that needs to happen to reintegrate into a different normal. But in current society, we don't have those rituals at all. We just, people are just basically dumped and they end up in their, in their basements playing video games and being prescribed a lot of drugs, they probably really don't need. And that's zombification. Um, and so, uh, what may need to happen, in addition to sort of urgent biophilia and restorative topophilia is also, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm struck by the book "Bowling Alone" where we're losing all of these, all the social capital on the social organization, which is a fabric of an example of, "hey, I'm doing this, not for me, but for the guy to my left and the guy to my right. Uh, so I think that's another component of what is therapeutic about, um, you know, uh, greening in the red zone or outdoor recreation for veterans or these things that I'm saying almost prescriptively. I think another component of that is the camaraderie, the, the dependence that, the reawakening of that dependence on my colleagues and my, my brothers and sisters.
Athena:	00:49:50	Right, I mean, it's not just the existence of the interdependence, but like the knowledge that everyone realizes and recognizes that interdependence. Right? And that they're all embedded in this group where everyone is there for everyone else.
Keith:	00:50:06	Yes. And I think that when, again, I hate to harp on the, on the whole combat wounded veterans side of this, but I think it really is relevant to this discussion. I think that those that experience the worst PTS are the ones that feel the most alienated, the most abandoned, the least connected to people and, and that, that dependence, mutual, uh, relationship, they are truly separated from something that gave them meaning, which was those relationships and those almost kin level relationships in those units and there and suddenly, they're alone.
Athena:	00:50:39	Well, it kind of makes sense from a, you know, the perspective of like, what was life like for our ancestors, right? So cause if you look at small scale societies, presumably are they're similar to what our ancestors experienced. You know, if you're in an environment where there is some sort of combat situation, right? Um, it's likely that another one might happen, right? Like, there, usually when there's raids and there's more raids and you, you know, so, in that kind of situation, if you've experienced some sort of combat and then you find yourself alone and without those people who, you know, have your back, I mean, [Keith states "It's Despair"] Yeah.
Keith:	00:51:26	And you know, just I'm thinking of Sri Lanka right now. I mean, yeah, it is. It is a, it's not just combat. I mean, that exile is real and I think is, you know, you talk about zombification, these people, um, they're just hopeless right now cause there's nobody. They lost everything.
Athena:	00:51:52	They're in, chaos.
Keith:	00:51:53	Yeah. And I don't think that there's going to be a clear pathway and you know, immediately because there's no meaning making their, they don't have the tools. I don't think, we'll see. Um, but I think of modern societies who stripped away most of those tools that we're talking about, we'll see. In the case of Sri Lanka, which is, you know, on my mind. Um, but you know, in that 5 minutes, 10 minutes, one day, two day, three day period after a red zone, um, I think you can see these commonalities. And that love that, that zombification right there is what I, what I care about and what I'm trying to, uh, understand in terms of inoculating people, uh, from getting that kind of zombified and or, if,
Athena:	00:52:37	Can you explain a little more what you mean by 'that kind of zombified'?
Keith:	00:52:40	Yeah. I think that if you have already practiced, um, reacquainting yourself, reconnecting yourself as an ecological citizen, as an ecological self, as a, a member of the ecosystem, uh, if you've already practiced that, then you're probably ahead of somebody who hasn't and experiences the same perturbation. It will be terrible for either individual if they lose members of their family in a bomb. Um, whether or not they meant to be in combat or not, they're just, they just got introduced to it. Um, but I do believe that the person who has that, the capacity in those coping skills as I'm describing, with urgent biophilia and sort of topophilia and the social fabrics, all those things are going to put that, uh, individual who has that set of responses available to them and has exercised that in probably a better place than the person who has none of that. Um, and I feel badly that, you know, in hot, in heavy population centers, in developing countries and even, you know, what we would think of as relatively undeveloped countries that, they're not going to have the access to a lot of the things I'm describing.
Athena:	00:53:52	Right. So, when we talk about, you know, you can have a functional response to chaos by, you know, reorganizing and regrouping and kind of, you know, making things work again that, you know, all of that is dependent on there being something to make work and something to reorganize. Right? And we can't necessarily assume that's always going to be the case.
Keith:	00:54:14	That's exactly right. I mean, there are, there are structural realities at work. Um, and I don't want to seem naive, that, you know, you know, there might, my travels, I see that, you know, in one place that's a lot easier said than, than done then than another place like in, in, in the United States. Um, and you know, sort of those structural inequalities, if you really want to scale up and push this uh metaphor to its extreme. That is that structural inequality in- in this sort of ecological or environmental justice issues that are out there are, is another form of zombification that we're experiencing in, in this, in this 21st century that I don't know how that ends up. I mean, I think the Global South is, is, is getting angry. Um, and then so there's a whole nother level of what do we mean, um, about zombification there.
Athena:	00:55:05	Yeah. So what do you think of like how zombification processes or dynamics are sort of playing out in that structural inequality? What,
Keith:	00:55:14	I just remember my colleagues telling me stories about, uh, about Somalia and our, our, our failure in our US militaries. Um, we did not perform well in that, in that situation. And I remember hearing uh, from colleagues, uh, who were the same age as me, that were there, um, that it was as if hordes of zombies were descending upon them.
Athena:	00:55:40	Really?
Keith:	00:55:41	Yes. And, and, and this isn't to denigrate people from Somalia. This is just the perception that some of my colleagues had. And when I probed deeper on that, it is because there-there's a single minded, um, notion that the intruder, which in this particular case was US troops, needs to be consumed and just in, in, in, you know, removed. Um, and so there was a lot of history, historical explanations possible for how that all happened and the warlord situation in Somalia and all that. But as I think more about the increasing level of injustice, environmental injustice in especially the global south, the implications of climate change and that sort of vulnerability that is going to manifest itself across the globe. And especially in the global south. I start to see, uh, I start to have a recollections of what my colleagues' stories were about hordes of people saying that this time to take matters into our own hands, uh, outside of normal norms or normal systems. And that was simply a demonstration to me, uh, you know, the Somalia situation back there of um, organisms or organisms, either social organisms basically going, uh, rogue. You know, outside the rules and norms entirely. There's reasons for it. I'm not making a judgment, but I think that we can learn something about zombification as, as it's as it is, um, manifested when we think about environmental injustice and, in the global south. I fear that, frankly.
Athena:	00:57:29	Yeah. Yeah. Well, so then, maybe that kind of brings us to this question that always Kinda try to come to at the end of an episode or near it. Which is, if we take this notion of chaos as something that can zombify people, it doesn't have to but can. Um, and we sort of amplify that potential for chaos to sort of zombify people. What does the world look like when people are just completely paralyzed, zombififed by chaos or, or maybe even not even full chaos, but just levels of change that don't even necessarily approach chaos. So if we sort of, you know, say, okay, people are even more sensitive to, to chaos and can get paralyzed with even smaller things. What is, what is the, what's the, what's the zombie apocalypse, the zombification apocalypse of people being, you know, zombified by, chaos?
Keith:	00:58:37	I think, um, if we stay with this story that I was just describing that, in an era of climate change and in an era of, um, political, sociopolitical instability, let's just say, and an increasing concentrations of wealth in certain places. Um, while these vulnerabilities are increasing, having to do with climate change and so firth, sea rise, sea level rise, the zombification looks like, um, retaliation in response to all of that, that is disorganized in such a way that the very people that the, the, the, the rising sort of feral, uh, society wants to rest power from, are the only ones that will benefit from the zombification.
Athena:	00:59:28	Woah. That is dark. [laughter]
Keith:	00:59:30	I'm sorry, but that's actually where my mind is. You started with the zombie stuff. Yeah. It is dark. You know, and I'm aware of it. Um, am actually a little scared of the, of this getting out because it is dark, darker than normal, yeah. But at the end of the day, I think this is real. I think that, um, I sympathize with the Global South and care about the plight of, of uh, all of those fellow humans. And I don't like the idea of concentrations of wealth monopolizing and manipulating and zombifying for their own profit. Um, so the antidote there is to resist um, you know, sort of "Lord of the Flies" level, uh, chaos. See the chaos as an opportunity and seize it for reorganization rather than succumbing to the chaotics or zombification, uh, and retaliation, which will end up only ruining, uh, those that are zombified.
Athena:	01:00:34	Right. Well, and it sounds like there's also sort of this issue of making sure that, in these environments and situations where, you know, chaos is starting to grow or take over, that there is some capacity there for reorganization and restructuring. As opposed to just descending into complete chaos with that rep-right? Cause people can't reorganize and regroup if there isn't some something to reorganize.
Keith:	01:01:07	And again, I will use the word despair. I think fundamentally when you don't see an optimistic path forward of, seizing chaotic moments as opportunities to demonstrate thriving, when you descend into despair, uh, it's not, it's an ugly, it's zombieland.
Athena:	01:01:26	Right. Right. So there has to be sort of both, this ability to see a chaotic system as an opportunity and reorganize, restructure to take advantage of that and the environment and the sort of structural issues actually have to afford that ability. Right. It has to be possible to succeed in doing that.
Keith:	01:01:50	Right. And you know, I remember how impressed I was in, in the early Jurassic Park movie with, with the, the, the scientist who says, you know, nature finds a way. I don't, I think that the structural problems, despair and the structural issues can be defeated. And it may not make mathematical sense, but I believe in my heart of hearts that, that this despair is, you know, our human agency, life itself as against the odds, in the first place. So our ability as humans, our ability as life, um, likely there's, you know, it may be against the odds in terms of what structurally stacked against, let's say the global south, but that doesn't mean they're out of the game. I think that we've shown time and time again, not only as a species, but may be even as a planet that, you know, it may not be about the odds. It may be that, um, you just persevere and persist.
Athena:	01:02:47	Yeah. Well, I mean, I totally agree with you on the sort of like, "let's be optimistic about this", but it seems like there's also potentially a danger in saying, "oh, they'll figure out how to make it work." Right. And not sort of like recognizing if there's the capacity there to actually restructure.
Keith:	01:03:03	I'm so glad that you raised that point. That's one of the big sort of bulls eye, um, black eyes that resilience thinking gets, is that, too often it's, they'll figure it out instead of we'll figure it out. So, you know, ultimately what resilience thinking as applied to, you know, um, international development conversations is exactly as you just articulated. They'll figure it out. They'll have to come up with the resilience and the capacity and all these other things as buzzwords. But it should never be 'they'll', it should be, "We'll figure it out". And, and, and that to me is where, you know, the, the sort of, um, um, sharing work that you're doing when you talk about, I think it's the Fiji example, where communities over here recognize communities in need here and sharing happens and interaction happens. Rather than zero sum game where it's like," oh, too bad for them.They'll have to figure it out and be resilient."
Athena:	01:03:58	Yeah. Well, and so then there's this sort of very delicate balance of like, you want to support communities and you know, larger, you know, groups of communities and things who are able to solve those problems on their own. Right. You want to support that. You don't want to command and control, tell everybody what to do. Um, but then on the other hand, there needs to be some mechanism for like recognizing when that, that structure that is there maybe isn't sufficient for recovery and then figuring out how to help make it work without necessarily destroying that capacity that's there or, or overriding it.
Keith:	01:04:40	Yeah. And I don't know what the answer on that is. Honestly. I think that I, I continue to fall back to, and you know, in my little slice of what I analyze and what I try to take action in, I feel pretty comfortable looking to other life, uh, and other models and other forms of organization within this community that we live in as Aldo Leopold described it and trying to replicate that, uh, seems to be a good bet. And I think as we try to tease out, so what do we do in a, in a hyper connected world now in the 21st century, what do we do with sea rise and climate change? And the possibility of zombification [laughter] at a sort of dark scale that I'm talking about. I think that we need to, you know, there's this whole field of biophilic design that is pretty architectural and landscape architectural, but there's no really reason we can't take biophilic design and, and use that way of thinking in terms of the way we think about politics and social structure. Uh, and we just haven't yet. So, and to me that's the, that's the great a new frontier, is how do we apply biophilic design to uh, social institutions so that, um, we're thinking more about persistent life and less about my pile is bigger than your pile.
Athena:	01:06:01	Mmhmm. So in terms of ,sort of ways of reducing this global burden of zombification, you think the biophilia and sort of doing more of creating infrastructure for that is one mechanism for?
Keith:	01:06:17	I do. I think being more like ourselves are being more like our natural selves, um, and embracing that is probably better than sort of a dystopian machine future. That, that, that sort of, I mean, a machine future in my mind and I remember studying this in anthropology, you know, 20 years ago where, at that time it was all sort of um, droid thinking and you know, there's this whole field of, of thinking about this. I don't feel like the machine, uh, technological pathway is the right one in terms of figuring out broadly, globally sharing networks and, and um, finding our way through what will will inevitably be a chaotic period for human society, anyway. I really don't know how chaotic it is in a geological timescale, maybe not that chaotic, but to us as a species, it is. And I think finding our way through that, doing what I was talking about at the beginning of this conversation, recognizing chaos as an opportunity for reorganization at a structural level, the ability to do that, I don't see yet. I think that's the, that's the evolutionary leap as a society, as a gl- now networked global society that we have to, that's the project.
Athena:	01:07:33	So in terms of dealing with this chaos that could paralyze us, to see it as an opportunity to restructure, maybe reconnect to nature, to our communities, that those are all things that can potentially help us deal with these.
Keith:	01:07:52	Yeah. We model some of it's hybrid, hybrid models, but we model- biophilic design builds buildings based on honeycombs and in structures that work. Uh, as opposed to some of the things that we've, we've come up with elsewhere. And I think biophilic design as applied to social structure is probably also an area of opportunity that we're not, we're not doing yet.
Athena:	01:08:14	Interesting. Well, Keith, thank you so much.
Keith:	01:08:18	Hey, thank you. This was an interesting and farrer ranging uh, conversation and I appreciate the, the zombie metaphor to be able to, to, to peak into places and show some, uh, bright light into little corners of our minds, maybe collectively where, where the rules are suspended so we can actually talk about these things. Uh, I think that's a great way of, of getting into some of these topics we would otherwise shy away from, maybe. And I appreciate that. So thanks for the opportunity.
Athena:	01:08:46	Well, thank you so much for joining us. It was awesome having you.
Outro:	01:08:50	[Psychological by Lemi]
Athena:	01:10:07	Thank you to the Department of Psychology at ASU and also to the Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative and the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics for their support. Thank you to the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Alliance for supporting all things Zombie and all things apocalypse. If you're looking for us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, we are zombified pod. Our website is zombified.org and if you would like to support us, we're Patreon. Um, consider just $1 a month that will help support us to continue our educational, no ads zombification free podcast. Thanks to all the brains that helped make this podcast happen. Our sound is by the unbelievably talented, Tal Rom. Our awesome illustrations are by Neil Smith and the song that has zombified me Psychological is by Lemi,. Uh, thanks also to everyone in my lab who helps to make this podcast happen. You guys are awesome. Thank you for sharing all of your brains to, to help make this happen.
Athena:	01:11:21	Speaking of brain sharing, now it's my turn to share a little bit of my brains. Um, at the end of every episode after the credits, I offer a story, a connection to my work or a speculation. And today I wanted to talk a little bit about some of my work that is connected to this issue of sort of chaos and disaster and what happens in the aftermath of disaster. So Keith, in this episode talks about this, the importance of seeing chaos as an opportunity instead of sort of being paralyzed by it and about how people can be really resilient in chaotic situations. So, you know, he looks at this sort of drive to create and to, um, engage in greening and connect to natural spaces that often happens in the aftermath of really serious disasters. And one of the things that I look at in my work and in The Human Generosity Project is how people help each other in times of need.
Athena:	01:12:28	And that includes in post disaster situations. So one of the things that we've noticed across the societies that we've looked at, and we've now looked at nine societies around the world, including societies in Africa. Um, we have a village in Fiji that we study a group in Mongolia. We have a few field sites in the US, also. We find that across all of these sites, people are very inclined to help others when there's need. And you know, that could be because of illness or injury or because of a natural disaster. And oftentimes, um, they'll help each other without expecting anything in return, especially when that chaotic event, that disaster was something unpredictable and uncontrollable. And so this, I think raises a really interesting question about whether our helping and our cooperation in chaotic situations is kind of qualitatively different perhaps than the way that people help each other when things are kind of, you know, all going along fine and relatively predictably.
Athena:	01:13:48	Um, so perhaps when things are more chaotic, we actually go into a mode of not really being as kind of account keeping oriented and we're more focused on that of helping based on need. And so that's one of the things that we're seeing with our, our fieldwork and with the experiments that we're doing also. And so if we kind of pull this together, uh, and kind of pull it together with some of the things that Keith talks about in this episode, it makes me really think about whether chaos might be kind of creating this drive to strengthen relationships and to build these networks of helping, um in the aftermath of disaster that not only help deal with the disaster at hand, but might also increase the resilience in the longterm to other disasters. So, I think there's a really interesting process that we could potentially study.
Athena:	01:14:59	Um, and when I say we, I mean interdisciplinary scientist interested in these questions, including, you know, people in disaster recovery, people in sociology, people in psychology and anthropology, um, to look at this question of how this sort of post-disaster process might actually create and strengthen relationships that provide resilience in the future for potentially more serious disasters. So I think it's a, a really important topic and something that, this framework of sort of thinking about the zombie apocalypse maybe as a way for us to, um, to, to maybe even try to build some of those relationships, you know, just imagining, imagining potential disasters like a zombie apocalypse and, um, you know, playing that out and maybe having some fun with it. So all that being said, I think uh, that maybe, brings us back to something we talk about, uh, in this, uh, podcast of like, who would be on your z-team and why.
Athena:	01:16:12	So, uh, so yeah, so maybe we should be, be thinking about whose on our z-team, who we want on our z-team, and, um, that those might be the people who, uh, you really could depend on in a chaotic situation, in a time of need. And, you know, it might not be a zombie apocalypse, but who knows what kind of challenges we might be facing in the future and who we might need to depend on. So, uh, it's worth thinking about now and it also can potentially enrich our lives, now. If we build and invest in those relationships. So, um, why don't you go and, um, call your z-team or someone on your z-team? I think maybe I'll, I'll call one of my um z-team members now and let them know just how much I appreciate them. Thank you for listening to Zombified, your source for fresh brains.
Dave:	01:17:08	Psychological by Lemi