Human Consciousness and Its Implications for Justice with Activist and Author Manda Scott
Reese Brown (00:00.12)
Manda, thank you so very much for being here with me today and sharing your time, energy, expertise. I'm very excited to discuss
Manda Scott (00:07.04)
Yeah, it's grand.
Reese Brown (00:29.198)
you, your story, but also any human power and that story. So thank you very much.
Manda Scott (00:33.282)
It's such an honor to be here. I'm so looking forward to this. So thank you.
Reese Brown (00:39.658)
Absolutely. Very first question just to hopefully set the tone for our conversation is what is one thing you're grateful for?
Manda Scott (00:50.038)
being alive, actually. So I practice something called the three pillars of the heart, mind, gratitude, compassion, joyful curiosity. And the gratitude is actually I am just so grateful that I am alive in this moment. I mean, could count on other things. I'm really grateful for my relationship and really grateful for where I live. I'm really grateful for having the opportunity to write books. But basically all of that wraps into being alive is.
Reese Brown (01:03.95)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (01:16.97)
a wonder and a glory and a completely magical experience and to be alive now feels like such a privilege as well as such a responsibility. So yeah, that.
Reese Brown (01:25.752)
Hmm.
Absolutely that, the privilege and responsibility. We will put a pin in that in return. Second question is, what is your story? Hefty question. Whatever you feel called to share in this moment that feels right, please do so with the understanding that it will not be a perfect encapsulation of who you are and what you do, but.
Manda Scott (01:47.842)
Okay.
Manda Scott (01:52.69)
and we're going to edit highlights because I'm a lot older than you.
Reese Brown (01:57.486)
I'm sure not- not by much, but yes, whatever- whatever you feel called to say is perfect.
Manda Scott (02:02.848)
Alrighty.
Manda Scott (02:09.474)
So what comes up first is I was born and brought up in Scotland and I still massively identify as Scottish, but now I live on the borderlands between England and Wales. So edge places. like it. I live on the edge of a village. I live on the edge of a nation. I live on the edge of consensus reality. I like edge places. I did veer slightly towards more standard stuff. When I was younger, I trained to be a veterinary surgeon and I practiced for, I should know this by now, 16 years.
I specialize in anesthesia. I specialize in anesthesia of neonatal foals. It was very specialist. I worked in Newmarket and it's a bit like Kentucky. It's the racing center of Britain. Six thousand people, sixteen thousand horses and a lot of people with more money than they know what to do with who throw it at horses. And so they've spent half a million pounds on a stud fee. They'll put quite a lot into making sure that the foal stays alive. And I got to play with all the toys.
So and it was, it was a lot of fun. Actually, every fall that's ever born is the most amazing being that ever lived until the next one comes along. And it's just, it was a lot of fun. and then at a certain point I, I was, went on to teach anesthesia at Cambridge where I had also been a house surgeon and, and in between, I'd also started really studying shamanic practice. I'd studied Jewetic practice at college. There were some people in those days trying to rediscover what
Druidry really was the shamanic past of this country, really. And it was lost. We were colonized 2000 years ago and I'm trying to pretend that your grandmother's grandmother brought some kind of heritage. It's just not real thing. But then in the at the time when I was newly qualified, the late 80s, long before you were born, there was a brief window of time where.
Indigenous peoples who were still within a tradition, a number of them for a number of different places, but a lot from North America. Their guides, God's spirits told them they had to start teaching the white people or we were going to destroy the earth. And in the 80s, it wasn't as obvious that we were in the process of destroying the earth. Silence bringing was out, but it still felt like there was a long, long, long time to work. And so I worked with them.
Manda Scott (04:30.562)
people that came across and it was very contentious. There were people within the indigenous community that said no you can't teach these people they they don't know how to hold this and they were right largely I would say because by the early 90s there were people on both sides of the Atlantic who were basically saying pay me a thousand dollars or a thousand pounds and come and study with me for a weekend and I'll turn you into a shaman and that's not a thing that that's not this is either the oldest most powerful spiritual practice on the planet that goes back
Reese Brown (04:50.584)
Right.
Manda Scott (04:57.898)
to the origins of whatever humanity is, or you can learn it in a weekend and it cannot be both. And so a lot of people stepped back at that point and realized that the people who said, these people don't have the emotional maturity to handle this, were absolutely right. But there were still some who would come and they had given us the tools to connect to the gods and the guides and the spirits of this land, the old gods.
Reese Brown (05:13.965)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (05:26.306)
And it's not, yeah, 2000 years feels like a long time in human terms, but in overall human evolution, it's nothing. So that was still a possibility. And so that was guiding my life. And I gave up veterinary medicine. I started writing novels and the first few were, let's learn how to write. And then there came a shamanic event. I had a lurcher, which is a kind of dog. It's a cross between a herding dog and a greyhound. And she caught a hare.
Reese Brown (05:44.397)
Mm-hmm.
Reese Brown (05:52.268)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (05:55.616)
At a point when if I had not been wandering along with my brain and neutral thinking about the next crime novel, I would have stopped her. And she brought it back to me and it was a lactating dough. And that meant that the young were out in Newmarket Heath and the grass is this long. And they didn't want to be found. You're not going to find them, but they were going to die because she wasn't there to feed them. And I was completely broken. And I went and sat under hazel tree, which they let her cut down. But in a nearby forest, it was huge. You couldn't have had six people would not have been able to get their arms around it.
Reese Brown (06:14.114)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (06:25.77)
And I sat for as long as it took to sort out the question of if I'm wandering along with my brain and neutral thinking about the next crime novel and something that is sacred to me, actually many things that are sacred to me die, I need to listen to this. And then the question is, okay, if it's not that, because what I teach the students now and what I knew even then was the gods will whisper and then they will speak and then they will shout. And if you get to the point where you have not listened
Reese Brown (06:40.396)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (06:54.986)
such that they have to start shouting at you, you're going to wish you'd listened sooner. And a number of sacred things dying is a pretty big getting close to a shout. So, OK, obviously, this is not what you want me to do. What do you want me to do instead? And the answer was to write a series of books called the Boudicca Dreaming novels. I didn't know that's what they were called at time, but to write the story of our shamanic past, our indigenous spirituality before Rome came and
brought the trauma culture and destroyed it. I didn't know the language of trauma culture then, but I did know that something fundamental was broken and lost with the colonization. So I did. And it was quite challenging because my existing publisher had me as a crime novelist and they didn't want historical novels. And so I ended up with a new publisher and a whole new way of being. But it was, what I got under the tree is this will change the world and it changed my world.
Reese Brown (07:30.999)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (07:40.086)
Mm-hmm
Reese Brown (07:51.596)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (07:52.042)
And it has changed some other people's, hasn't changed. I thought if I showed enough people, this is who we were. This is who we could be. If we let go of the value systems of Rome, then the world would change. And what I realized since obviously, and took a long time, another 10 years was it's not enough to show what we were. We need to show what we could be. Because we're not going back to tribal peoples in rent houses. That's not a thing. So.
Reese Brown (08:14.179)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (08:21.186)
I've been a novelist ever since and all the time writing whatever I think is needed, although there was a gap after the Boudicca books. There was a gap and I would go up the hill and I'd what do you want? And they go right. Whatever you like, You know, because I was teaching by then and the important thing was the teaching. And I said, but you have to tell me what to write. No, we don't care. Just write what you want. So I ended up writing Roman era spy novels because I could and it was quite fun.
And all my geeky spiness got in and then they became Joan of Arc because I discovered who she really was, which was quite exciting. The Rome novels I discovered the historical basis for Christ, which was also quite exciting, although my editors eased that back because they were frightened of possible impact. then I did Second World War and then I got another shamanic. Another thing died in front of me that was a why was I not listening? And I ended up
Reese Brown (09:07.629)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (09:21.154)
doing a master's in regenerative economics at Schumacher College and economics had been nowhere on my radar. I was a vet. I was a dog trainer. was I was all kinds of I was a shamanic trainer, but I was not an economist in anybody's reality. But again, that was a completely life changing experience. And I came home. So that I'd given up writing, started the podcast, because, as you know, this could be live. It's not going to become obsolete.
Reese Brown (09:24.321)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (09:50.179)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (09:50.282)
between recording and putting it out properly. Whereas a novel takes a long time to write and even longer to publish. And and I thought it was too slow. And then another shamanic event in the summer solstice of 21. And to keep that really short, I ended up writing Any Human Power because I was given the understanding of why it was necessary to show people what we could get to, to show and how we get there, not just
Reese Brown (10:01.102)
Mmm.
Reese Brown (10:17.43)
Hmm. Right.
Manda Scott (10:20.054)
Here's a nice future, but here's the actual steps that we could all take tomorrow that would change the existing system and give us one that's fit for purpose. There we go. was quite long. Sorry.
Reese Brown (10:31.274)
No, thank you so much for sharing. No apologies are needed or welcome in this space. That was beautiful. I, yes, thank you for sharing that. I am so fascinated with the many areas of expertise that if you're just kind of listing these things off, veterinary skills, surgery skills,
Manda Scott (10:39.286)
Thank you.
Reese Brown (11:01.102)
economics, shaman, history, author. It's like, what's the connecting thread? When actually there's this very deep and purposeful connecting thread that I hear when I listen to you tell this story, what would you call that connecting thread?
Manda Scott (11:19.538)
It's asking what do you want of me and responding to the answer and the answer changes. And I think it's being flexible enough to know, you know, yesterday I was writing novels and now I'm going to do a master's in economics. Are you serious? Yes, you are. Okay. That's what I'm to do. And that it's, it's if I put myself in service to life, I have to accept that it's not always going to be what I think it is. And then it's not my job to work out what.
Reese Brown (11:23.658)
Mmm.
Reese Brown (11:33.294)
Bye.
Reese Brown (11:45.251)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (11:49.226)
It's my job to listen really clearly. And then it's my job to do it as well as I know how to do it, whatever it is. And it's very easy in retrospect to look to see I needed to do X in order to gather the skills in order to be able to do Y, which was essential. think writing the Boudicca books, writing any human power, doing the podcast, teaching the shamanic work, teaching X and because each of these required a certain skill set.
that would have been quite hard to put together if someone had sat down and said, okay, you're going to need to do this, train yourself. And yet by the time it was obvious that this, whatever this is, was necessary to do, then I had the skillset to do it.
Reese Brown (12:30.956)
Right? How beautiful life is training for life itself and the next step. When you say it is listening and asking what do need to do and then listening to the answer, what do you envision you are listening to? I think after reading Any Human Power, I have a bit of a concept of what that looks like for you, but I would like to dive into that a little bit.
Manda Scott (12:36.352)
Yeah, totally.
Manda Scott (13:00.672)
I would really be interested, before I say anything, is to know what you think after having read Any Human Power. Because I don't, you it's like you see the top of the iceberg and I live the iceberg, but I don't know which bit of the iceberg you've seen.
Reese Brown (13:05.934)
Mmm.
Reese Brown (13:11.262)
Right. Sure, sure. I think, of course, in interpreting an iceberg, it's also like reflecting my iceberg back as well. So I want to honor that there is that within the interpretation. But to me, it really feels as though it is a getting in touch with
the frequency that remains and will remain. It is something HP Lovecraft has a quote in one of his short stories that is something along the lines of reality is a terror of older standing. And there is something about that that I think really touches on the disturbing feeling of being a human being that
Manda Scott (13:41.196)
Hmm, beautiful.
Reese Brown (14:08.088)
feels like this phenomenon has existed long before me, but that we know that it will exist long after us. And how do I enter into that and live it out in a way that feels purposeful and
helpful feels reductive, but helpful.
Manda Scott (14:29.654)
Yeah, yes, yes, where where I play my part in the web of life. And so I think exactly that. I think what I thought I was talking to is probably evolved over time, for sure. I the easiest. Shorthand is the web of life or the heart, mind of the universe. We when we're doing the work with the.
Reese Brown (14:34.55)
Yes.
Reese Brown (14:42.797)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (14:48.846)
Mm.
Manda Scott (14:52.608)
students, we connect the heart, mind of the universe through our heart to the heart of the earth and the heart of the earth through our heart to the heart, mind of the universe so that we become the hollow bone between the two. And, and yet the heart, mind of the universe is too big to wrap my head around. It's, it's beyond time and space. It's, it's very, very, very big. And I find it easier sometimes to anthropomorphize such that the web of life becomes is the web of life on this planet.
Reese Brown (15:06.839)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (15:22.462)
at this time. And if I want to be a conscious node in the web of life, that gives me a three dimensional structure, actually a many dimensional structure, but it's a structure within space and time. And so for me, that's an easier thing. And it feels like it's a hyper complex system and it has its own intelligence. And, and I can feel supported by it. I can ask for help and observe that help happening.
Reese Brown (15:35.278)
Mm.
Reese Brown (15:43.854)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (15:52.724)
And I could, I can do that with the greater heart, of the universe, but that just feels overwhelmingly big sometimes. So the web of life feels like a more manageable space. And then there's individual at individual times, there are individual shamanic, whatever we call guides that are very specifically involved in something at a given time. So there's a kind of a hierarchy and I'm not pretending that the guides are.
Reese Brown (16:02.157)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (16:13.582)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (16:24.47)
The guides are integral to the web of life also. They just exist in a slightly different set of realities than I do. And they're very fluent in their realities and I'm slightly more fluent in this reality and we interchange between them and I share with them and they share with me. And that means that we work in the ways that are useful.
Reese Brown (16:30.702)
Mm.
Reese Brown (16:45.168)
When you say that you imagine that, I'll use your shorthand, the web of life has its own, their own intelligence,
How would you characterize that intelligence? Because it feels as though you are all good. I understand, yes. No, no. The intelligence of the web of life, because as you're talking about
Manda Scott (17:03.094)
the cat. Sorry. Is that really essential? No? Thank you. Okay. No. He'll come up on the desk and he gets bit frustrated with me talking to other people that aren't him, but it's okay. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. How would I characterize?
Reese Brown (17:22.274)
It's quite impossible for our three dimensional mind to conceptualize it with our language that we've been given. But I also have to imagine that within different dimensions of reality, there are different challenges in terms of conceptualizing of these different aspects.
This is an impossible question, as many of these are, but using our limited language, how would you characterize that next, maybe not next, but that dimension of an intelligence? Do you think it feels similar to a consciousness or something else?
Manda Scott (18:02.828)
Mm-hmm.
That's a really interesting question. We would have to define consciousness to answer that question, and that's that's a very hard thing to do. So things that are coming up or were coming up as you spoke are. As a woman called Tanya Lerman, who speaks of Citadel mind, she was an anthropologist, she did her first published study, which I think was her PhD and then became a book where she entered into.
Reese Brown (18:12.332)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (18:34.21)
joined a group of pagan practitioners in the UK and studied them as if she were an anthropologist. And I think she was expecting to come away and go, well, they just do all this weird stuff and it's completely pointless. And she came out of it going, no, this is real. And Michael Harner, who kind of codified some contemporary shamanic work and turned it into a system that was then trademarked and whatever.
Reese Brown (18:48.15)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (19:02.85)
Somebody asked him at the end of his life, know, what would you like to say? And he said, spirits are real. And yet a lot of people that I've met who follow his system are convinced that what we're doing is tapping deep levels of our own unconscious when we're doing shamanic work and bringing them to the surface. That's probably a conversation for later or a different time.
Reese Brown (19:07.214)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (19:27.872)
However, what Daniel Lerman pointed out and what Harner is saying is
spirits are real. That our reduct, what we call the trauma culture, what Francis Weller has defined as trauma culture as opposed to initiation culture, our culture that was brought to the islands of Britain 2000 years ago by Rome, Rome didn't invent it. It's been, know, whatever it was that created the schism between a small group of humanity and the rest of the all that is the rest of the web of life is not common to the rest of humanity. And so
If we were to be having this conversation in any indigenous culture, that question would have no meaning because you would simply be part of the web of life and you would know it. Vanessa Andriotti is a really fascinating woman. She she wrote Hospice in Modernity and she. She's Brazilian, she's half German and half indigenous, and she's the dean of a university in Canada, I can't remember which one, and she runs the gesturing towards decolonial futures.
Reese Brown (20:13.229)
Mmm.
Manda Scott (20:33.154)
programme. And her indigenous grandfather said that the core trauma of colonisation was not so much the taking of land and the killing of people, which are both appalling and awful and deeply traumatising, but the core, they were epiphenomena of an original trauma, which was the belief in separability. And it's not even the belief in separation, it's the belief that separation can happen.
Reese Brown (20:54.702)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (21:00.067)
Right.
Manda Scott (21:00.258)
that its separability is a thing. And all indigenous people know that it's not. And they just know it in their marrow. They've known it from before they could walk. So we're struggling, I think, in our culture to find the language. And one of the other things Vanessa says is that their language is, our language is 70, 80 % nouns, their language is 70, 80 % verbs. And it's really hard in a noun based language to be connected.
Reese Brown (21:05.762)
rape.
Reese Brown (21:23.662)
Mm-hmm.
Reese Brown (21:30.83)
to be.
Manda Scott (21:30.9)
It's very hard in a yet to be and and once we've abandoned foraging and hunting and being within the web of life as an integral part of what we're doing, we create lifestyles that are predicated on separations, scarcity and powerlessness, where we have to have a job instead of being. And in all of the indigenous cultures, the work of being is a tiny fraction of every day and the rest of the day is being in community. And we turn that
Reese Brown (21:44.728)
Mm-hmm.
Reese Brown (21:57.582)
Great.
Manda Scott (22:00.518)
so far upside down that sometimes there is no community. answering that question is more for me, how do we bridge that gap? We can't wait until we all learn to speak 80 % verbs. We haven't got time for that. We have to, within our culture, within our noun based trauma separated culture, work out how to reconnect. It's our birthright. We've had 300,000 years of human evolution and a tiny, tiny sliver at the end of that, where we cut ourselves off.
Reese Brown (22:03.32)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (22:23.81)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (22:30.582)
But even so, if it was 2000 years ago in the islands of Britain, that's still a hundred generations of trauma. Generation after generation after generation. And so my question that arises from your question is how can we be connected to ourselves enough that we can then connect to the web of life so that we can ask it and feel it? And in the moments when I am connected and they're not.
Reese Brown (22:38.19)
Mm.
Manda Scott (22:59.7)
It's not all day, every day, by any means. It takes a lot of work and a lot of time and it doesn't always pan out the way I it's going to. There's just a sense of.
Reese Brown (23:06.349)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (23:12.714)
of being part of something so much bigger and so much more sentient that our concept of what sentience is doesn't map on. It's like somebody asked ChatGPT, what's the difference between the intelligence of a human and your intelligence? And it said the difference between an amoeba and a person. And that's it's the person and we're the amoeba. And it might not be right. ChatGPT hallucinates a lot, but that was it's that's what it said at the time. And I would say that
Reese Brown (23:15.426)
Mm-hmm.
Reese Brown (23:22.328)
Right.
Manda Scott (23:41.462)
Being part of the web of life sometimes feels like that, but it's probably like being a piece of plankton in the sea, because the plankton is an integral part of everything that's going on in the life of the ocean, or even being a wave in the sea. The wave is an integral part of the ocean. And my, the visions that I had that kicked off this phase of what I'm the accidental God's face straight after Schumacher were of
Reese Brown (23:49.099)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (23:57.656)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (24:10.39)
the globe of the earth, that blue pearl floating through the blackness of space that we saw when people first walked on the moon, surrounded by uncounted millions of very fine threads of light all over the globe. they were crossing and crossing and crossing and crossing. And every crossing point was a node of consciousness. And some of them were human and most of them were not. And in the world I live in, the tree and the red kite and the river and the hill and the computer that we're talking through and the Internet are all
entities, agencies of potential consciousness. And some are more obviously conscious than some are less. And I don't spend a huge amount of time wrapping my head around how do I parse that out. I have a baseline. Does it change what I'm going to do? Does it change how I feel? And if the answer to both of those is no, then I don't need to wrap my head around it. That becomes pointless philosophy. And I've listened to a lot of philosophers and thought, really, honestly?
Reese Brown (24:42.39)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (24:58.038)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (25:07.06)
And does that change the world at all? No. So that's my baseline criteria.
Reese Brown (25:09.772)
Right, How, yeah, no, I think that's really brilliant. And as someone who also formerly studied philosophy, it is quite remarkable how you can leave a philosophy class and then say, well, I don't really have to think about that, do I? Or it can be absolutely life alteringly important to answer that question. And what do we spend our time focusing on?
Manda Scott (25:32.054)
Right, Okay, yep.
Reese Brown (25:39.158)
I also think I want to go back to one of your earlier points about the inherent trauma of settler colonialism, colonialism in general, being the belief in separation, because something that came up for me in that was how generational trauma is so embedded in our nervous system, in our genetics. And of course, the traumas that have been
enacted upon others on Indigenous people that are horrific.
Carrying the trauma of also being a colonizer is something that I have been really interestingly grappling with as I have these conversations. And I think it's interesting to think about how dehumanization to anyone, by anyone, anywhere is a threat to humanity everywhere.
Manda Scott (26:26.434)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (26:42.998)
including ourselves the same way in a smaller, I guess, example of this. One of the newer thoughts around feminism and the patriarchy is that the patriarchy is extremely damaging for men too, right? Colonialism is extremely damaging for colonizers as well, not to make this about the oppressors by any means, but I think that that is such a fascinating point.
Manda Scott (26:43.095)
Yep.
Manda Scott (26:57.45)
Yes, absolutely.
Reese Brown (27:12.482)
that really shows the way in which even sitting here having this conversation with you to wrap my mind around the idea that it is not even trying to connect with something, it is forgetting the fact that we are not, that we are disconnected and returning to this remembrance of connection. I'm very fascinated.
Manda Scott (27:31.511)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yes.
Reese Brown (27:41.206)
with how your interest in these concepts.
arose. I find that a lot of people that I have conversations like this with are like, I just always had this like innate drive or calling towards something bigger than myself. And even I think we can see that in your vet veterinary work, right? It is this healing, very deeply aligned with nature practice. How did this
Manda Scott (27:57.376)
Hmm. Yeah.
Manda Scott (28:10.348)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (28:17.696)
Where do you conceive of the inception of something like this and why do you think you are called to this work? I think we are all called to it in different ways, but...
Manda Scott (28:31.266)
But there's, yeah, different people call different hate.
So there are two pathways into that. And one of them is if it is right that we choose the life that we lead as a point between incarnations, then clearly this life was designed to be this. Because I can't remember a time when it wasn't what I was trying to do. I just didn't have the language or the tools when I was a kid. And finding those little by little, wow, there are other people who think like this.
Finding books, like The Last of the Mohicans. When I was a kid, the BBC did a black and white version, which was considerably better than any other version. I'm not a great fan of the BBC, but they did that particularly really well. And I was just mesmerized. I grew up in this little Presbyterian village in South Scotland. And then, there are people who think like I do, and they have existed. when you're eight or nine, my concept of time and distance was a bit flexible. So the fact that this was...
A while ago and B across the other side of the world didn't really register. And then I found Rosemary Sutcliffe's Eagle of the Ninth, which again, it was another, wow, wow, this is possible. And, you know, 2000 years ago, sorry, but it didn't feel like that. It opened doors to realities that I had not been exposed to at all. So. Yeah, I just I think.
I think we pick the path and we dance it as well as we possibly can. I, you know, we can ask, there are all questions about free will and what do we choose. And I have no idea the answer to those. And I don't really care because, you know, as long as you do what you're doing as well as you can do it. And it feels like the thing you need to be doing just now, then I don't know about that. And I don't think it matters.
Reese Brown (30:10.84)
Mm-hmm.
Reese Brown (30:19.936)
Hmm. Yeah, no, I think that's very fair. And kind of on this in these bits and pieces, Last of the Mohican, kind of offering this language that hadn't been gifted to you before. You mentioned you grew up in a Presbyterian village. One thing that I find very interesting about my path in relationship and something that I see in other like-minded individuals
path in this way is there tends to be a pretty radical deconstruction process and reconstruction process. And I grew up in Texas, and so the language that I was gifted was Southern Baptist Christianity. And I was Bible thumping until I was nine, 10, and realized, this is just a language that I was given to talk about these things.
Manda Scott (30:56.438)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Reese Brown (31:18.55)
And I feel so drawn to it because I feel this other thing, but what else is that? Why are there so many different ways that we can approach this conversation? So I just find that so fascinating. And then also in terms of language, you mentioned the difference between noun-centric and verb-centric. And I spoke with Jake Eagle, who is an author and a LPC meditation
Manda Scott (31:25.26)
Right.
Reese Brown (31:47.918)
teacher and a lot of his research centers around teaching people verb centric language. And it was one of the most rewardingly challenging conversations I've ever had in attempting to speak verb centeredly throughout like an hour and a half.
Manda Scott (31:55.012)
really? Wow!
Manda Scott (32:08.598)
Right?
Manda Scott (32:12.484)
that would be interesting.
Reese Brown (32:14.708)
It was very, very cool. But I think also in kind of a mirror to that, I really love the accessibility of what you're saying in. What can we do? We are all gifted these different, you have no control over the cards you dealt. You get to decide how you play them, right? Any number of idioms over it. And one of the, to,
Manda Scott (32:38.03)
Yeah, exactly. Yes.
Reese Brown (32:43.274)
make sure we talk about the beautiful book that is Any Human Power as well. One of the beautiful things about it that raised a bunch of questions, but also offered some very interesting answers is the practicality of what can we do tomorrow? And I find that that is my frustration with leaving conversations like this with trying to do this work is what can we do tomorrow? So I just mentioned several things, but
anything that's coming up for you, I'd love to hear, but also I think most pointedly, I'm curious about your draw to this practicality of listening to this voice that is slowly becoming a shout, actually quite rapidly now becoming a shout. Right, and as we mentioned before we hit record, horrific weather events that are happening
Manda Scott (33:26.668)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (33:31.508)
Yeah, it's pretty much a shout, isn't it? Yes.
Reese Brown (33:43.115)
very great example of how loudly things are shouting. Talk to me about this practicality and next steps in our lifetime, in our next waking hours.
Manda Scott (33:56.418)
And the next, yes, exactly. Because, yeah, because when I was your age, we literally thought this was going to be a problem for our grandkids. But if we could do good stuff now, then we could help divert stuff. And now it's it's happening now. We've crossed six of the nine planetary branches. The only reason we haven't crossed the seventh is that the oceans are a buffer and when they go, they're going to go very fast. And then the only two that we haven't crossed are aerosols and ozone. And that's because people took action when it was obvious that they were an issue. So we're in we're in a lot of trouble.
But so there's a whole there's again, there's a spiritual route into this and there's a kind of neurophysiological psychological route in and and they definitely they merge.
Reese Brown (34:37.303)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (34:43.158)
So.
I can't ever tell anyone what's there to do. Nobody can tell anybody else what's there to do. There is a beautiful interchange place that kind of Venn diagram intersect where our hearts greatest joy meets the world's greatest need. And I didn't make that one up. That's I picked that up along the way at Schumacher. And it seems to me when I connect to the web of life, when I'm really centered and grounded and doing my best.
There are layers at which things matter. And the most important layer above all is the energetic one. So there's a lovely woman called Nina Simons who set up Bioneers and wrote a book. Lots of books, actually. And as part of that, she brought Mirá Oscar Mirá Quesada, who's a Peruvian medicine healer. And she brought him to the States and he did a 12 hour ceremony, started eight o'clock at night.
finished at the next morning for the Bioneers. And at the end it, they're all pretty tired and probably looking a little bit wasted. And he said, if you only remember one thing, remember this. Consciousness creates matter. Language creates reality.
Language, ritual creates relationship. And the bottom line of that consciousness creates matter. And the more that I do this work, the more important it seems to me that we all engage with that. Consciousness creates matter. One of my primary guides, I was lying on a treatment table having kinesiology and Emmet in the middle of the summer and out of nowhere, I wasn't thinking about anything. I wasn't trying to do any work. This guy turned up and
Reese Brown (36:02.958)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (36:28.372)
As if it was a human being talking in the room said, the world is not what you think it is. OK, I thought I had a pretty broad concept of what the world is, because I don't really inhabit consensus reality very much. OK, the world is not what I think it is. It's really a lot weirder than anybody else thinks. Trust me on this. And yet, so then I had to come home work with that because guys don't turn up and say stuff just to entertain you.
is what is the implication of that? The implication is really that the work, the core work for me is energetic. human beings are relatively straight. We are enormously complex, hyper complex beings, but our heart space can be celebrating the extraordinary wonder and utterly in love with the process of being alive, or we can be shriveling up and afraid and in despair. One of my earliest teachers said there are only two emotions is love and there's fear.
Reese Brown (37:00.792)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (37:24.202)
And that's a bit clunky and in your physiological terms, we could pick that apart. But as an actual basic premise, am I acting from that place of being heart-explodingly in love with being alive, not just a little wiffly, you know, yes, it's a nice day. Hello trees, hello sky. but parts of me are still quite contained and constrained and angsted. Or is every single part of me exploding with the wonder of being alive?
And that's a choice in any moment. And what I find is that if I can get to that genuine heart exploding, there's also one of the reasons I teach the three pillars of the heart mind is gratitude is first, compassion, and it's raw, wild, fierce compassion. I find compassion can get quite soft and fluffy quite quickly, but it's not, it's really not. And the joyful curiosity that says, wow, this is so amazing.
Reese Brown (37:54.766)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (38:17.016)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (38:23.094)
I wonder what happens next. And that takes my head mind offline. If I can stand on the knife edge of that, I stop believing that I know what's coming next. stop. yeah, humanity, part of, think, what makes us human is this desperate need to plan ahead, foresee every possible problem and head it off at the pass and only go along the safe path, which is hallucination upon hallucination. But we tell ourselves it's possible. And
What happens if I free myself up from that? What happens if I free myself, do the inner work and free myself up from the constraints that I inherited? And exactly that, all of the traumas of inherited trauma is huge. What does it take to free myself up from that? I'm doing work at the moment and I put this out into the world with some trepidation, but what does it feel like if both of my parents were fully realised human beings? And how do I get to a place where that feels real?
And how does it change me? And actually what it does is it lifts my shoulder, it lets my shoulders change and it opens my heart space more than I knew was possible. But it takes an extraordinary amount of work to get there because it's quite hard to imagine. And the only way they got there is if their parents were fully realized. And the only way they got there and that goes back, that ripples back. How far can I send that back down the lines? From with my guys behind me going here, guys, look for realisation. What does it feel like? And that seems to me.
Reese Brown (39:30.124)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (39:35.022)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (39:39.522)
Right?
Manda Scott (39:47.638)
to be an ancestral healing that's worth it because the energetic change in me feels tangible. what's ours to do? think the energetic, doing the internal work. So I need to change my relationship with myself and my capacity to relate with other people and my connection with the web of life. There's the three layers. And if I can come to every part of those three layers with joy and wonder and gratitude,
and exactly as we said, being heart-explodingly in love with being alive, then the rest falls into place quite fast. But it won't, almost certainly, I think the one thing you can say is it won't be what you thought it was. But that's fine, because the world is not what we think it is. And that's what still gives me hope, the amount of help that we're being given.
Reese Brown (40:26.188)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (40:31.534)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (40:42.452)
is enormous and I don't think we're being helped to pile ourselves into a brick wall and it would be really easy to look at all the data points of the six mass extinction and biocide and the planetary boundaries and think we are so, so screwed. And yet the world is not what we think it is and we have no idea what's coming next. And so all we can do is throw ourselves absolutely every part of every cell and every little energetic wave of our body into being the best that we can be.
Reese Brown (41:01.454)
Great.
Manda Scott (41:11.966)
and let the web of life do what it needs to do. If we are showing up to be what only we can be and what we can be best, that's what it can take in use.
Reese Brown (41:21.507)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (41:25.24)
That is quite beautiful. One, I kind of want to let that.
reverberate in this space for a moment before my next question comes in and disrupts that energy. Yes.
Manda Scott (41:41.831)
Go for it.
Reese Brown (41:47.756)
I think also the gratitude, compassion, curiosity piece is so exciting to me in so many ways because I relate so much to this concept of leaning into it being messy and leaning into the, like even the language of heart exploding and like letting joy like rip you at the seams. Like this concept of like,
It is destructive in a way that is really constructive and beautiful to experience when you do because it is a shutting of the casing that no longer fits. And it, I just really, really resonate with the way you are discussing this. My next question goes a little bit into some of your
Manda Scott (42:34.327)
Yeah.
Yes.
Reese Brown (42:47.598)
economic work. But one of the things even at the very beginning of our conversation that you mentioned in your work with shamanic practices and training is that we have this phenomenon and people saying, pay me $2,000. Right, exactly. And then we get into this concept of financial exchange for spirituality, for purpose, for being.
Manda Scott (43:03.586)
Yeah, a thousand dollars and I'll turn you into a shaman. Yeah.
Reese Brown (43:16.744)
And we live very much in a society where money is a financial exchange and it is a necessity. And that has been another challenge for me in doing this work of how do you, how do you let that become a layer that you can shed when it feels as though it is around you at every corner? And I think also for me as a very privileged individual who has been
gifted a extremely privileged life by my parents and in my childhood do not experience this even to the same extent that a lot of individuals do like in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? There are certain things that must take priority. How do we lean into this work with that in mind? How do we allow the
Manda Scott (43:58.89)
Yeah.
Reese Brown (44:18.758)
Because it's, I have conversations like this and I'm like, I don't even want to think about how I'm going to pay for the grocery store because that feels so right. And yet we must. And I know that that's also a big part of your work in kind of the economic rebel, right? And yes, that's what it is. That's the language. That's the language. It's
Manda Scott (44:24.106)
Hmm. No. It does, isn't it? Yes.
Manda Scott (44:38.773)
Renegade economist. That's actually that's Kate Rayworth. I stole that. I stole that totally from Kate Rayworth who wrote Donut Economics. But yes, yes.
Reese Brown (44:46.296)
beautiful thing to steal. Yes, I would love to hear thoughts.
Manda Scott (44:51.296)
Yeah. So and this brings us back to also Ursula Le Guin who said we live in capitalism, its power seems unassailable. And yet so did the divine right of kings.
Reese Brown (44:58.958)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (45:03.692)
Capitalism is the manifestation of the trauma culture. It's devastatingly destructive. And the fact that people still support it in spite of the fact that it's got us to the edge of extinction is, I find, really terrifying. I can't remember who it was. Stuart, I think, he said, it's easier to imagine the total extinction of all life on Earth than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. And he's right for so many people.
Reese Brown (45:07.286)
Mm-hmm.
Reese Brown (45:30.179)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (45:31.2)
Because it's so embedded in every part of our lives. And I've been reading again with Vanessa Andriotti who's really wrestling with this and Nora Bateson, Gregory Bateson's daughter who does all the warm data work. And how do we step out of something that is so intrinsic? I have one of the people that I met at Schumacher, a wonderful young man, and he's written a book now, but he's written a book of the fact that he stepped off the top of a multi-story building because he did not want to be part of this anymore.
Reese Brown (45:34.723)
Yes.
Manda Scott (46:00.98)
And he didn't die, but he lost both of his legs from the knee down and crashed a lot of other parts. And now he's got to the point where he started off not wanting to live in this world and now he's got to not wanting to live in this world. And what can he do to change it? And because my default, I could go and live in a straw bale hut in the West edge of Wales and basically be totally off grid and nothing would change. I could do it. Charlie didn't take myself out of the equation and nothing would change. And so.
Reese Brown (46:14.382)
Mmm.
Manda Scott (46:31.17)
I where I am at the moment, this is, you it's a work in progress. I am very much anchored with Joanna Macy's three pillars of the great turning. Three is a great number. So she had holding actions, systems change and shifting consciousness. And when we, I discovered this at college, it was one of the first things we did. said, okay, these, there's these three, put yourself in the room where you think you are. Here's, here's the one that's holding actions over here. Here's systemic change and here's shifting consciousness where you and I stood right in the middle.
And we did it again, pretty much the last day at college and I was still right in middle and it wasn't a conscious thing as this is my place. And other people are in other places. And there are other people who will lie down in front of the bulldozers that are going to frack. And that's not mine to do. I've done a few XR things and sitting, the most likely that I was going to be arrested was outside the BBC and I was terrified. And all of me, was brought up with that. Policemen were nice people.
And I know some of them are not, but it was a really weird experience. And it felt really important and I wasn't arrested, but I friends who've been to jail now and the whole system is so inherently violent. And we're back to Hobbes definition of a nation status being that political entity that claims a legal monopoly of violence within its set geographic boundaries. And the violence of the state is getting greater. That's why I wrote what I wrote in Any Human.
Reese Brown (47:55.117)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (48:00.896)
And yet, there's the holding actions, there's the systems, how we need total systemic change, how do we achieve it? And at the root, there is the shifting consciousness that gives us the value base on which we can predicate systems change. And your question, the practical question is what do do in the meantime? What I do, I think everybody again comes to this differently, is minimize my engagement with capitalism.
But I'm talking to you on a computer that costs thousands over an internet that costs thousands to keep going. And yet if I wasn't, what difference could I make in the world? So every action, think being conscious of a reaction, checking in with the web of does my body feel okay with this? And there's, you know, I don't know, I need any pair of slippers. No, I'm just going to go down to the charity shop and find some that didn't feel right. learning that using
Reese Brown (48:43.618)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (48:54.754)
the real subtle indications of what feels okay. And is it that it feels okay because it is okay or does it feel okay because a part of me wants the dopamine hit of having a computer with a big screen? And then there's also a sense of one of the things that money is such a weird thing because indigenous cultures do not have this and when they didn't barter the whole concept that money rose out of barter is wrong.
Barter arises in places where there used to be money and there is none, like prisons. Barter is not a thing. There's a brilliant, brilliant book if anyone's interested called The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber, who is now dead sadly, and David Wanker. It took them 10 years to write and it's completely reframed my concept of who we are as humanity. And one of the things they look at is the social technologies that exist within
whole healed initiation cultures, indigenous cultures that exist to facilitate flows of value that we have replaced with money. Money inherently arises out of violence. You cannot have money unless it is imposed by violence. If I turn up, so the island of Britain, there is no money. It's a completely flowing culture. There's a lot of trade going on. We send flint hand axes from Norfolk to southern Spain.
Reese Brown (50:01.175)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (50:21.478)
there's lots of but there is no money and then somebody turns up and goes see this little bit of silver with somebody's face stamped on it you've never seen it's worth two of your kids you're going I beg your pardon what? I've got plenty of silver look I've got gold and they're going no that's worth nothing this silver see this silver I've got 10 guys out there with swords who will kill you and enslave your children if you argue with me this money is worth something and not only that I'm going to give it to you yeah why would I do that because then I'm going to take it back as tax
And you can only pay tax in those little silver things with faces on, so you need to find some more by this time next year. What? What? And if you don't, I'm going to kill you and enslave your children. So it's, you know, that's making it flippant, but actually money is predicated on violence. It does not exist until or unless you have people who need to pay other people to commit acts of violence in order that they can take value from the people who have created it.
Reese Brown (51:04.792)
Right.
Reese Brown (51:12.365)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (51:16.142)
Well, and one of the most powerful things that's come up for me in the course of our conversation is thinking about truly if I am a heart explodingly in love with being alive and every entity around me, I am not gonna ask you for money to do anything. It is a joy and a privilege to connect, to cook, to host, to invite you into my home.
Manda Scott (51:36.67)
No, no. Yes. Yes. Yes. And to do what you are good at, knowing that I will do what I'm good at and we share it for the good of the community. Yes. Yes. And yet you in the current culture, if you don't engage at some point with somebody giving you some money, then you're going to end up on the bridge somewhere. And that's been very carefully set up such that that's the case because it frightens people into continuing to stay in the system.
Reese Brown (51:45.687)
great.
Yes. Yes.
Reese Brown (52:04.514)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (52:07.362)
So I think for me, stay in the system, accept money from the people who want to give it and flow it out again. Make sure that it flows. One of the things that you learn when you learn a bit about how money functions is that the velocity of money, which is I give it to you, you give it to the person who cuts your hair, gives it to person who walks your dog, who gives it to the person who, I don't know, makes her shoes. It goes in circles and eventually it flows back out of the system as tax. I think one of the things we need to really, really
Reese Brown (52:14.094)
Hmmmm
Reese Brown (52:32.844)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (52:35.828)
What blew my brain early on doing economics was the understanding that banks lend money into existence, governments spend money into existence, and they take it back as tax to even out the money supply. And if the government decides to create less money out of nothing, then either the money supply shrinks, in which case you have massive deflation.
or the banks have to lend more to private people in order to maintain the money supply. And the banks are making money out of nothing and selling it to us at a profit. And Henry Ford, who was fundamentally a white supremacist, said a very long time ago that if ordinary people understood how money was created, there would be a revolution tomorrow. And the whole narrative of, no, it's our tax dollars. No, no, as soon as you take money as tax, you destroy that money. ceases to exist.
Reese Brown (53:20.782)
You
Reese Brown (53:28.951)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (53:29.588)
It's not going into a vault somewhere and being recycled. The government spends money into existence that did not exist before. And so we have money is it's partly a way of exchanging value. It's a way of storing value and it's a way of accounting for value. And all we have to do, people listening, is to create another way of exchanging, storing and accounting for value that isn't dollars. And then the people who have a lot of dollars have got
used to be bunches of bits of paper that are worth nothing and now it's zeros in a bank on a screen that are worth nothing. And it's not hard to imagine other ways of creating storing and accounting for value that are much, much more equitable than the capital system we have just now and not a single one of them involves capital growth. And so that's the commodification of land, labour and capital is the foundation of capitalism. That's Polanyi, that's years and years years ago. And
Reese Brown (54:04.942)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (54:21.144)
Right. Right.
Reese Brown (54:27.565)
Yeah.
Manda Scott (54:28.322)
And it doesn't have to be like, I think the thing that really, really struck me and why obviously in retrospect I had to go and do a master's in economics was first of all to understand the extent to which we're being lied to. Sometimes by people who know and quite a lot of the time it was a group called the God, I can't remember one of the greenish leftish think tanks in the UK who went to the European, the British parliament in 2014, I think, and discovered that only 10 %
Reese Brown (54:39.597)
Right.
Manda Scott (54:57.002)
of the members of parliament understood where money came from.
and the rest believe what they've been told because it's not actually their job to explore are we being lied to comprehensively by the system. Their job is to shake babies hands and tell enough lies to get elected so that the people who really control the park can tell them what to do.
Reese Brown (55:02.04)
People write.
Reese Brown (55:10.242)
Well...
Reese Brown (55:14.018)
Right.
And that really goes back to like, what is your job, right? And within this commodification of land labor people, is also a, in having moved from the States to now Italy, and I have not been here for a very long time, but already seeing the difference in, know, live to work versus work to live and.
Manda Scott (55:20.716)
Yeah.
Manda Scott (55:40.716)
Right.
Reese Brown (55:41.26)
all of that good stuff, but also breaking down the idea of any separation between life and work for me has been majorly empowering now that I work solely in ways that fulfill me. Right. is, you wake up, live your life on your terms. And I feel massively fulfilled in contributing to the world around me and creating things that I believe in.
Manda Scott (55:54.882)
that you love. Right, right, yes.
Yeah, isn't it amazing?
Reese Brown (56:10.61)
and still being able to enjoy life. it's like, it actually breaks down any idea of a dichotomy between life and work. There is just living and then things you need to live. how, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to be mindful of time. I have so many questions about this specifically.
Manda Scott (56:25.75)
Yeah. Yeah.
Manda Scott (56:35.112)
I've completely lost sense of time.
Reese Brown (56:38.474)
And do not worry, that is my job to keep track of. But one thing I do want to make sure we discuss is more specifically the novel Any Human Power. I think, of course, a lot of these questions are woven into the narrative quite beautifully. But I think one thing that I really, really want to ask about is what draws you to fiction?
You are the first author, I actually have had the pleasure of speaking with Nina Simons and several other authors doing this kind of work. And you're the first author I've spoken to that has written fiction in this way. And I find storytelling to be massively powerful, specifically when we're talking about oral history, like indigeneity and trying to return to you those histories and cultures, but talk to me about story.
Manda Scott (57:25.762)
Yeah, absolutely.
Manda Scott (57:32.191)
Yeah, well exactly that. You've just said it. We are a storied species. For all of human history, we've sat around the fire in the evening. Building a fire and telling stories around it is what we are. It tells us who we are. I tell stories of myself to myself and to you. And it cements our relationship. It changes our concept of what's possible. It gives us a moral foundation. It gives us
sense of things that we can aspire to. Everything that any human does pretty much out of choice. They do because they've told themselves a story of the world being better as a result of, I know, getting in the new relationship or the new job or ditching the old relationship or finding a new house or moving to a new country or buying the new car because we're told so many stories of how our life will be perfect. Now, you know, that's the weaponization of a make-delight activity. But
But absent that, indigenous, in initiation and trauma cultures, story is everything. And so there are Nina Simons, Kate Reworth, they write beautiful, beautiful non-fiction books. But the number of people who are going to read economics and power generation and possibility for political change and...
enough social constructs that we can begin to develop a new value system and stitch all those together into a coherent narrative that takes us forward is vanishingly small.
And so, but people read stories. More people read fiction than read nonfiction is the bottom line. And it's much, I think, easier because I can, I've read stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks of books. Reading is my thing. But it took a lot of work. When I got the instruction, this is what I needed to do. I came down the hill. So you guys are going to have to help a lot with this because this is hard compared to writing historical stuff where I just have to get my head around a particular historical era.
Reese Brown (59:12.344)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (59:35.648)
This is different and difficult, and I can kind of see where we need to get to, but see how we might get there. That was hard. And then stitching that into a narrative. So but I think it's essential because one of the things that I realized, I did my dissertation at the Masters on the neurophysiology of language. It was called Whispering to the amygdala, the role of language frame and narrative in the process of transition. There we go. So while ago and I looked at how does language work?
Reese Brown (59:44.577)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (01:00:06.602)
And one of the things that I realized was that dystopias or even the process of telling people how bad things are is never going to change them. And we've proved that, you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing time after time, expecting a different result. And the ecological movement, whatever we want to call it, has been telling people how bad things are for 40 years now, and it hasn't made anything different. It's getting worse. And the reason is because you can't frighten people.
Reese Brown (01:00:19.278)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (01:00:35.732)
into behavior change unless you show them what behaviors to change and what to change them into. It's not going to work. It can't work. It's not how we're wired. So people go into denial because it's easier to pretend it's not happening. Don't look up than I look up and I don't know what to do. You have to give people a sense of agency. And so so any human power is an attempt at creating a vision that gives us agency.
Reese Brown (01:00:49.9)
Mm-hmm.
Reese Brown (01:00:54.828)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (01:01:05.142)
and there will be squillions of others. And I want other people to be writing the others. Nobody said of capitalism, there's only one way to destroy the planet. They just said, who dies with the most toys wins, go. And it doesn't matter who you destroy in meantime, you just have to accumulate stuff. And it matters that you accumulate it because if you don't, someone else will take it from you. Those are the founding values of capitalism. And it's worked very well. So now we need new founding values.
Reese Brown (01:01:27.971)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (01:01:32.362)
And we need to all agree, enough of us need to agree what we would really like to live by. And I would say integrity and connection and compassion and agency and accountability are all going to be in there. And given that, if we want your grandkids, grandkids to wake up in a world that feels good to them, where they wake up with that sense that you've got of, wow, that tastes amazing. And I'm just doing things that I love in a world that
is working and doesn't feel like it's collapsing around my ears. How do we get there?
Reese Brown (01:02:04.578)
Yeah, how beautiful would it be you have just given me this vision of a future wherein instead of having a constitution, a declaration, a document that explains all of these things, we have a beautiful story that we tell one another, which does harken back to initiation cultures and
Manda Scott (01:02:24.962)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (01:02:33.834)
oral histories that that that is how these things are communicated. And what a beautiful return to innate humanness than telling stories to communicate messages. And it I'm also now thinking about all of the wonderful creation stories there are and how they all tell such varied and yet similar narratives.
Manda Scott (01:02:43.488)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (01:03:03.895)
additional question about any human power that's slightly different but I think very important to the conversation we're having. And one of the things that initially sparked our connection is how do you motivate young people specifically? And as a young person who is very passionate and curious about this work and is trying to do the thing,
Manda Scott (01:03:30.21)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (01:03:31.448)
Talk to me about why that is so important to you.
Manda Scott (01:03:36.512)
Because I haven't got that many years left and you've got you're inheriting what we're leaving you. And so so the question, I think, from my generation is what do you need of us? I can ask that of the Web of Life, but it doesn't hurt to ask the people who will be picking up the baton when we're not here anymore. You know, when we've gone round us and one of he was connecting with a not embodied entity and he said, what's death like? And they said, it's like taking off a shoe that's too tight.
Reese Brown (01:03:54.702)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (01:04:04.396)
Yes.
Manda Scott (01:04:04.618)
So while I'm wearing the two tights, you, I need to work out how, what is it that you guys need from us? Because if I go tomorrow, my life has been amazing and I've loved every second of it. That's probably not true, but I've loved every second of the recent past and even looking back, I can love what happened even when it didn't feel great at the time. But I don't want to leave a world where you guys are facing apocalypse and Armageddon. How do I help you?
to take the agency that you need to take or that you want to take. How do I help you find what is yours to do where your heart's greatest joy meets the world's greatest need and be that? What can I constructively do to open doors for you that might not otherwise be open? And so in the book, one of the key protagonists, the person who kind of kicks off the entire global movement is 14 and a half. At the point when she sends a tweet that is designed to...
Reese Brown (01:04:36.887)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (01:05:04.226)
trigger something and you can't tell what it's going to she can't doesn't know what it's going to trigger. I didn't know when I wrote it what it was going to trigger, but I knew it was going to trigger something. And so how do we facilitate? How do we who are no over the hill? Basically, I identify quite strongly with the primary protagonist in the book, and she's dead by the end of the first chapter, but she's still doing her best to bring the whatever wisdom of age she has and the.
privilege of her position, even when she's dead, to help the generations yet to come. It's essential. I think we have to do this.
Reese Brown (01:05:37.932)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (01:05:44.302)
Hmm.
Manda Scott (01:05:44.458)
And then the question is how? can't answer that. Only you and your peers can tell us what you need.
Reese Brown (01:05:49.836)
Right? Amanda, I cannot thank you enough for your time and expertise. I do have two final questions to wrap us up. Yes. Firstly, in light of our conversation and everything we've talked about, is there anything that we didn't get to that you would like to return to that you want to reemphasize space for you to offer?
Manda Scott (01:06:01.57)
Good timing.
Manda Scott (01:06:17.83)
we didn't. didn't. Yeah. OK. This whole avenue is we didn't look at how to facilitate how to affect political change away from the system that's designed to perpetuate the system or and or. I think an integral part of that is how to change the media narratives and particularly the social the way that social media functions. But a lot of my ideas and both of those are taken from Audrey Tang. So you could just talk to Audrey Tang and that might be easy. But those two, think, are
Reese Brown (01:06:20.44)
Yes.
Reese Brown (01:06:25.679)
Mmm. Yes.
Reese Brown (01:06:34.157)
Mm.
Manda Scott (01:06:45.866)
We can't change the economy without changing politics and the media, those and business, actually, is a kind of quartet. We have to change all four simultaneously. And how we do that. And I think it has to be done peacefully and it has to be done soon. How do we do that? So, you know, if we wanted a second round, that would be that.
Reese Brown (01:06:50.222)
Mm-hmm.
Reese Brown (01:07:00.856)
Mm-hmm. Mm. Yeah.
Beautiful. Thank you. Yes, I will everything that you've mentioned in terms of books, names, work for people to look up, it will be down in the description down below for everyone to explore and research, as well as a link to any human power to explore access and your website, your podcast so that people can dig more into the world of Amanda Scott.
Manda Scott (01:07:20.684)
minutes.
Manda Scott (01:07:28.514)
Thank
Manda Scott (01:07:36.258)
Thank you.
Reese Brown (01:07:36.295)
and everything that you are creating. Final question. One word to describe how you are feeling right now.
Manda Scott (01:07:49.494)
Grateful. I know it's where we started, but I just genuinely am really, really grateful for this and for being alive, but for connecting, really. Totally. Thank you. It's been a joy.
Reese Brown (01:07:50.808)
Hmm.
Reese Brown (01:08:00.27)
Absolutely, me as well. Thank you so much.
Manda Scott (01:08:04.066)
Thank you.