October 22, 2025 • 47 mins
This week, we are joined by futures literacy and foresight researcher Sophia Bazile to contemplate the types of ancestors we want to be, putting theory into practice in our communities, how living outside of the US expands your perspective, and the importance of holding on to your curiosity.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Small dunce help from this small, small human area. Small
it's so funky, Hey, small dough, says Folks says.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Our guest on today's show is someone who I met
through my neighbor and she works in a lot of
mutual aid spaces. And I was originally going to do
the episode around mutual aid because that was the context
within which I met her. But she was like, you
know what, I'd really like to do something that's just
like a bit more expansive.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
And I was like, well, what are you thinking?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
And we had had this whole conversation because I had
called to check in on one of the mutual aid
projects that she was doing, and we ended up having
a whole convo where it just was really abundantly clear
that like, this woman has a mind that is expansive,
and I was like, I really want the small audience
to get to hear this mind.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
So our guest today, Sofia Bazil.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Works in what she explained to me as future spaces,
and there's like all these terms for it that all
sound like super just like stranger things like in a
laboratory under the earth type.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
But she's like, no, like these are.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Just fancy words for work that we're all doing, that
you're doing, that I'm doing, et cetera. So it made
sense for us today to talk about seeing ANCESTI now
you all know I have the one woman show What
would the Ancestors Say? And that show is directly related
to the concept of thinking about not just our own ancestors,
but what type of ancestors would we be. So when
(01:41):
she said this idea, I was like, Yeah, that sounds
like something that would be interesting. Now I'm not sure
if I Well, when we did the interview, I wasn't
sure if I had nailed it, if I if I
you know, so I threw it out there first, but
she was like, yeah, you know, you're You're on it,
And we really got a chance to talk about kind
of just how folks in the United States in particular
(02:05):
think about time, and how we think about mortality, and
how we think about our own individualism, and how all
of those things can be impediments to thinking about not
only the future, but alleviating ourselves in the present around
the future, which I think is something that's so stressful
for a lot of us thinking about our present in
(02:26):
the context of how we are considering the future, what
will we be, what.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Will our kids be, what will we leave behind, etc.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Etc.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I think that definitely requires some restructuring and some revisiting,
and so today's conversation it aspires to do that. We're
not necessarily going to get to any concrete answers, etc.
But what the goal is is to start breaking our
parameters of thought open to expand. And I feel like
I have spent forty three years in a very confined
(02:57):
thought space, and yet I was more liberated than most
people I know. So I invite you all to expand
with Sophia Bazilla and I on this episode's side effects
of seating our ancestral futures.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
All right, Small Doses podcast.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I told you in the intro that we have a
person whose mind is not of this realm, and it's
so dope to get to be in conversation with folks
like Sophia of you.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Okay, what just.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Happened was that me saying that your mind is not
of this realm? Then you move something with your kinetic.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Brain absolutely, like I definitely just knocked something over.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Careful what you conjure, Care about what you conjure.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
So this episode side effects of seeding ancestral futures. Seeding
our ancestral futures. So originally, you know, like I said
in the intro, I was gonna just talk to Sophia
about mutual aid and she was like, we need to
go deeper, and I was like, okay, take us there.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
Now.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
When I think of seeding our ancestral futures, I think of,
for instance, like my One Woman show, what would the
ancestors say? So I think of having a mindfulness of
the fact that we will not be here in the
physical form, but we will be here in a spiritual
form for a future. I think about the fact that
there are folks that we will be ancestors too, right,
(04:29):
And I think about how we have had our futures
seeded by our ancestors, and what we can be doing
to continue that practice of seeds.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Am I on planting seeds? Am I on the right track?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (04:45):
I mean I think you captured it so succinctly and
so well there. Like we look at time as very linear,
but we are ancestors in the making. We are derived
from ancestors who planted the seeds for what we have today,
and we are very busy becoming ancestors for future generations,
(05:05):
and all of these things exist on a really fluid timeline.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
You know, there's not a hard.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Start and stop to these causal chain of events that
led us to this moment today, and there's infinite possibilities
for how this could all manifest. And seeding our ancestral
futures is really about knowing where we came from and
knowing what we want to be planting now and leaving
behind with in mind that we will not be here
(05:31):
to be inhabiting these futures and living these futures. And
that doesn't sound like such a huge departure from what
you would think that a common understanding is. But a
lot of people cannot really fathom why they would need
to sacrifice or build something that they're not going to
be there to partake and enjoy the fruits of which
(05:54):
you know, our ancestors did that.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah, Like I feel like that's something very, very prominent,
like in our society. Do we know if that was
always prominent in society or if that's like solely just
like a residue of colonial imperialism.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
I don't feel like that's always been a part of
our society. I think with the rise of Western Enlightenment
philosophies and how they have shaped how we imagine what
futures we think are possible, and how we design our
societies to create these presents and futures.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
That it's very urgency oriented.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
It's very much about domination and extraction and really just
this immediate gratification. Whereas over the long arcs of time
and different cosmologies from like African traditions or other indigenous traditions,
we were living by different you know, measures of time,
they were far more expansive and looking at you know,
seven generations principle, for instance, in indigenous communities, seven generations forward,
(06:50):
seven generations back.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Can you speak more to that for folks?
Speaker 4 (06:53):
The seven generations principle is an indigenous principle that you know,
anything that you're planning to take up with in your society,
that you're willing to introduce into your society as a
way of organizing, you should be thinking seven generations ahead
and what are the implications for those seven generations going
forward as well as being informed by looking seven generations back.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Oh man, Yeah, what I just saw a great video.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
I hope there's show notes where we can drop links
but I was watching this dope African sister talking yesterday
and she was talking about how in a lot of
African cultures and cosmologies, they don't even have a word
for future because you.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Because it's like you're like always existing in some form.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Exactly, it's inexperiencing. Like that's not how they measure time
and events that have happened already.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
It's like how.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Many ceremonies, how many rituals, how many of this? How
many that are we experiencing? Without the experiencing, it doesn't exist,
so therefore the future doesn't.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
This sounds like an episode of Deep Space nine.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Okay, this sounds like an episode of Star Trek Deep
Space nine where Cisco landed on the planet and and
he met a being that had no concept of time,
and they were like future, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Past? What are you talking about? And he was like,
you know, like things that have happened before. And they
were like you humans, is weird. We may have to
kill you.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And he was like no, no, no, and he had to
explain explained like linear existence to them and they were
like okay. So then they like became a human form
just so that he could talk to them and they
were like, but why do you live here? And they
kept bringing him back to when his wife died and
(08:32):
he was like, no, I mean, like, I don't like
live here, but this is something that happened.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And they're like, no, you live here. This is where
your existence always is.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
And he was like, what are you talking about, and
they're like, that's why the planet looks like this for you.
Your other friend who came here, the planet looks like
daisies and roses for them because that's where they live.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
You live in this moment all the time.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And he was like, oh, wow, Star Trek, come on,
don't play with me, Star Trek, Star Trek No. I
have a song at the end of what would the
Ancestors Say? And I want to sing a little bit
of it because I feel like it speaks to this
conversation and it goes we studu.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Bloading gone the ways.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
Of ancestral imaions, we are tomorrow today lost souls with
so much unsaid Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I love that. That's beautiful? Is that an original composition?
Speaker 3 (09:42):
It is, ma'am, I love it.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
I have a playlist called Cosmos and I would love
to that little little ditty.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, I mean, I feel like one of the things
that separates my thinking from people that I feel like
I thought were my peers, and and as I came
into new levels of self awareness and enlightenment, etc. I
came to let go of thinking about only myself in
(10:10):
this now, and it really seemed natural to really tap into,
particularly because of all the craziness that's happening on such
a high level right now, to tap into something that
is supernatural, which I feel like is our ancestral emissions,
Like we are made of these beings that came before,
(10:31):
some of which we know, some of which we don't.
And part of that is also like what I feel
like is the seeding of our ancestral futures. Knowing that
we don't know where we came from, so we don't
know where we're going, but that allows us the space
to create a path forward.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I really love that you mentioned that, because, yeah, uncertainty
is something that can be held with a lot of fear,
but if you can transcend that fear, uncertainty and collapsing systems,
as we see, is an opportunity to create something new, right,
something that rises from the ashes or emerges from the
(11:07):
cracks the crack is a metaphor that you know, this
philosopher we love that we mentioned at the gathering on
Saturday at doctor biocom Lafe. We talk about what it's
like to be in the cracks and descending into the cracks,
because it's all cracked up right now if we look
around right. So seating our ancestral futures is knowing that well,
first of all, these systems that were never built for
us and were built to actively deny us our humanity,
(11:31):
our dignity, and our agency.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
They're crumbling.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
And there are people who are you know, have investments
in that system or those systems, and it's very hard
for them to see any options otherwise. But then there
are people that are looking at this as an opportunity
that I mean, let them crumble, right, let them crumble,
but in the midst of it, and let us help
usher their downfall assiduously and at the same time as dismantling.
(12:01):
We have to think about and we have to be
actively practicing what we would build in its place.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
We've never lived these.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Futures before, and we could draw plenty of inspiration from
some blueprints that were left to us by our ancestors,
such as you know, relational technologies like mutual aid and
community care and matriarchal societies and more egalitarian ways and
different ways of governing. But seating our ancestral futures is
(12:28):
very much not only just about pulling from the past.
It's actively practicing and rehearsing those futures because we're not
going to get there unless we're actively you know, engaged
in relating with each other and within our communities. Very differently,
and I feel like we both talked about, especially in
recent times, coming to a real place of reckoning with
(12:50):
who are you know, your like minded people, your like
hearted people, who is your community?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Whom can you call on?
Speaker 4 (12:59):
I think we talked to a little bit about or
it can resonate with, you know, having these professional or
work related relationships that take up so much of our
identity and we construct our entire world and sense of
meaning of what it means to be and what's worthwhile
doing around this, you know, constructive professional identity and whatever
we're doing to earn a living. But I think for
(13:21):
a lot of people that's been shattered in the last
two years, it's been shattered, I mean even in a
literal way.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah, I saw like a statistic that said something like
over three hundred thousand black women have left the workforce
due to just federal job cuts.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Just discarded like that, either willingly, voluntarily or just discarded.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
And like if you're someone who had really aligned yourself
with like you know, I am a civil servant, like
this is my job, this is my purpose, this is
what I put my energy into. That is earth shattering,
you know, and it can really Like I was just
watching I rewided watching The Bear. I was watching an
episode where one of the characters, Tina. They tell her
backstory of how she ended up at the Bear and
(14:06):
she got let go like just one day, just one day,
she got fired from a job she had been at
for fifteen years. And she talked about when she was
talking to Mikey, she was like, you know, I just
need routine, Like I need to be a part of
something that I'm a part of and that I'm in
like an asset too, because that's just how I exist.
(14:28):
And when I don't have that, I feel like unfettered
in the world. I think that the TikTok what they
call them, what do they call the nomads?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
The computer nomads?
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Oh gosh, TikTok refugees. I have issues with that phraseology, but.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Something like that, Like it's like, you know these people
who just like travel the world and they're like my
office today and they're like in a pool with the
addigital nomads. You don't know, bads, that's right, right, I've
been called that before. Not my favorite, So like I
feel like those folks though, they like really kind of
pooh pooh the anchor that many people have made to
their careers, but they disregard how that's American culture.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
I mean, that's just what it is.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Like I don't think it's fair to like shit on
people for like getting sucked into like what the actual
like that's the norm. I mean I've been questioned forever
for not being a part of that.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Let me tell you.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
I mean I've lived in a lot of different places,
and my semi nomadic journey began as a result of COVID,
and I still feel untethered.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
It still feels like a.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Bit weird to not have a place to show up
and working with people on a similar mission.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
And having a routine and having my holidays.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
I mean I used to joke that I was in
school more years than I was out because I worked
in schools and I was literally like my clock was
on a school calendar, like I need to write months
off in the summer, like who's doing things in the summer,
Like it's okay, right, you know. And I got really
used to that, and I'm still very much adjusting because
that is exactly it. In these capitalist societies, where your
value is how much you produce for someone a small
(16:04):
group of people to get very wealthy. You're disregarded otherwise,
and it's hard to build community outside of I mean,
we're not practiced in building community outside of these institutions.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
You know.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
We have our school friends, that we have university friends,
then we have work friends, and then when she hits
the fan in your life.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
You have no friends. You have no friends.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I learned about myself, like I have a crasis and
I've been like, oh my god, I can't call anybody
that I talk to almost every day because I don't
want them to know this, like who is my community
when shit really hits the fan. In the last couple
of years, I've had some very very sobering experiences and
(16:48):
it's really the reason why I wanted to talk about
seating our ancestral futures today is because in my work
and in your work, as you continue to emerge and
find your new lanes and you know, dance through and
with them. I do work in futures, and it's like
there's a very academic approach, yes, and there's tools and
(17:08):
theories and methodologies, and even when it comes to decolonial
futures and scholarship, there's a lot of academia there. But
in terms of, like what actually happens at the community level,
I find that a lot of people are great at theorizing,
Like they can talk to you about mutual aid, and
they could talk to you about reciprocity care and all
(17:30):
these things, but it's all lipspeak, right, or whatever the
phrase I'm looking for. It's all spoken theoretically, but the
service does not align, the practice does not align. So
I find myself working talking about futures and designing futures
and designing experiences with people who then also were like
(17:51):
and that's I'm not even excluding myself from this. The
gap between what I understand theoretically and what I'm able
to practice consist.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
The chasm is wide. It's very wise, isn't it. It's
just but it's so oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Well, you know what, we have to have grace with
ourselves and be compassionate because we cannot undo a lifetime
of this in one you know.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
It's lifelong, life, wide, life, deep unlearning.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Honestly, Like I'm hoping, Sophia, that I can get there,
Like I'm hoping that in my sixties I can get
there like I because I feel like I only became
this conscious of it since forty.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I hope that.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
By my sixties I have really learned and sifted through
like the bullshit to get to the practice so that
I can be a really helpful steward to those coming
up to teach them earlier than forty.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Well, I think we're doing pretty all right. I mean,
the journey first eldership is ongoing.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
There are younger people whom I definitely look to as elders. Yeah,
let's not go there too, because I don't want to
spiral down what have you been doing?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
But yeah, did you used to be that for any elders?
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Yes, you know, I've always been an old soul, but
also I was I was quite all over the place
in my twenties and thirties as well. And I still
very much am, but in very different different ways, thankfully, But.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
You always had wisdom I did, but child, No, I
only say this because I just remember being twenty and
working in an office and there was a thirty five
year old woman in that office.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Who would stay asking me for advice.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
And I just remember being like, why is she thirty
five asking me for advice? And then I got to
thirty five and I was like, got it, fresh minds,
fresh minds, got it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
I've been Sophia a psychiatrists since I was young, so
you know, but as for my own issues, still very
much a work in progress. But I think, you know,
that's where like figuring out and designing different communities is
what's really being called for. Because we can try to
make these adjustments and reorient ourselves and expand ourselves, but
(20:12):
who's going to hold us accountable?
Speaker 1 (20:13):
You know?
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Each other?
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Yeah, you cannot grow outside of community. You need community
in order to make these steps that we are aspiring to. Right,
we are not reliable narrators of our own journeys, I
would say, right.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
We are, but we are.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Well, You're giving me an epiphany because for this whole
time that I've been in transition in the last year
and a half. I think a lot of it was
me saying like, oh, I need to change my community
because they're not on what I'm on, you know, and
like we don't think the same, like we don't treat
each other the same, et cetera, et cetera. But in
this moment, I'm realizing that another part of it was
(20:52):
I know that they're not going to keep me honest,
like we're not accountability partners, Like we're not on what
we're on right, So like if I'm slipping, they're not
going to honestly tell me I'm slipping right, And what
they're involved in is like I'm not even really like
that into it. I mean, I met this couple at taekwondo,
and when I was taking taekwondo, I had mentioned to
(21:14):
them that I was like slipping into a depression and
I said to myself, like I need to like snap
out of it and like get physical and you know, go.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
To bed on time, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
And the next day I was driving to taekwondo and
they called me. We're just calling to make sure you're
going to taekwondo. They have no idea how that hit
me like is it not. Yeah, that Sophia, because I'm not.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Used to being cared for. I'm always the one caring
for everybody.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
So it was like, oh my gosh, Like they have
a kid, they got life, they got all this stuff
going on, and they still managed to think about like, hey,
let's make sure Amanda's coming here, and then like yesterday
because we're recording this right after my surrounding episode came out,
so yesterday, So they texted me this morning. We're on
a group chat, and Ashley was like, yeah, we call
(22:06):
her husband Malcolm because he'd be on his Malcolm X
and so she was like, you know, Malcolm wanted to
text you last night, but it was after ten o'clock
and I know that that's your bedtime, and like stuff
like that I so appreciate because I know I particularly
have been like shitting on for my idiosyncrasies, but also
like just in the keeping it real with each other
(22:27):
stuff is like the other thing that you want people
to be able to do with you and tell you like, hey,
what you're doing right now?
Speaker 3 (22:34):
It ain't it. I've had people, you know, recently be like, yeah,
I know you want to be on the internet.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
But not like.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
That to be like you right, let me not backslide
you right?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Interesting? Interesting?
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Think that's so true.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
And Dona Gold, I mean, that is such a special
thing to have people just dropping a care note for you.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Oh I'm the only Wow. I love a check in.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
You know, it doesn't have to be about everything else
that you said. It's just say, are you doing this
thing that you said you were going to do? And
I think that's, you know, something that we all can
collectively work on, especially Black women who when we're not
doing the things we said we were going to do,
feel like we're failing, and that can compound into like
(23:21):
making you depressed yep, and it's like yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Then you get stuck, so you're like you're not even
able to do the thing, and then you're mad at
not being able to do.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
The thing, which pauses you to not be able to
do the thing.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
And then it's a self fulfilling prophecy and a sneep,
steep ditch to climb out of. And that's that internalization
of you know, we have to get out of this ourselves.
We can't rely on nobody else, We can't lean on people,
you know, that's something that really does have to be unlearned.
Like we're really trying to survive systems that people navigated
(23:54):
with whole villages, you know, with whole webs of care. Yeah,
we were not created to do this alone. And I
think especially in the US, I mean, having been out
for so long and coming back in, it's just it
feels like such a violent and isolating place.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
So where are some of the other places you lived?
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Well, a long time ago, I lived in Mexico and
Guatemala for close to a year, and that was the
beginning of my journeys where I realized, you know, you
can live outside of the US and actually be happy. Whoa,
I had no idea. There was actual happiness and opportunity. Now,
mind you, your priorities do change and they do shift
over time, especially when you navigate these places. But yeah,
(24:42):
besides that, I lived in Thailand for a year.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Well, I lived in.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
Dubai and a half years. Actually, that was the first
like long long, yeah, Dubai.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
I know, I'm like, how'd you do four years in Dubai?
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Well, at the age that I was at, honestly, it
was really fun for me. I used to work in hospital,
no I used to work in hospitality in New York.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I love my fancy fine dining things.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
I love five star, this five star, that consuming consuming,
you know.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Popping bottles, all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Yeah, So moving to Dubai for somebody who enjoys that
kind of lifestyle was great at the time.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yeah, that's the place.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, until it wasn't. Well.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
First of all, I was working at like a top
one hundred sushi place, and it was like great in
a way, but also I just realized I didn't want
to be doing that anymore. I was like, this is
not the pinnacle of my life. Not to sweat anybody
who aspires to that for hospitality, No, it's just for you.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Wasn't.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
But the conversations I was having with like my colleagues
in the place there was not like the conversations I'd
be having with, you know, the wait staff in New York,
because New York you can get anybody in New York Times, journalists,
this that you can get like anybody in the service industry.
But there it was like career career servers, and I
just found like I wasn't stimulated intellectually. So I wound
(25:57):
up going back into education. I worked in Dubai for
quite a long time, and it was great. I traveled,
you know, it was really safe and I had quite
incredible experiences there work wise. But also I didn't because
Dubai is the bastion of modernity, you know. Like yeah,
So after a while I tired of that and I
(26:17):
moved to China. What Yeah, I lived in China for
like a year.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
There in China.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
In China, I was in Fujian Province, which is just
across from Taiwan.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Can you speak Mandarin or Cantonese.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
No, not at all.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
I remember two things, yogwai and zogwai, and that's left
and right for the tuktook driver got it.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
But other than that, I forgot everything.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
But I had moved to China because like way back
in business school, I took international business and we were
talking about like different business customs, and when we got
to the East Asia customs, we were talking about, you know,
how to have business etiquette, this and that. But the
foundations of their philosophy for their societies.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Were that they're building for their grandchildren.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Like everything that they do in China and they do
in Japan is not done for this immediate gratification of
I did just you know, a mass wealth, now, spend it, now,
do all this now like it is in the West,
in Eastern cultures.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
That's what really fascinated me. So I thought I was
going to go to China and have a little spiritual awakening,
and I did in a way.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
But it wasn't pretty. It was very hard. It was
very humbling.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
China itself was very hard. Living in China was very
hard because of the racism. In some places it might
have been overt racism, and this was just before COVID,
so there's that In some places it might be overt racism.
Others wise it's just a really insular society. Like there's
billions and billions of people. It's super populous. A lot
of people have never been exposed to foreigners. And I
(27:44):
wasn't like in a Tier one city like Shanghai or Beijing, thankfully,
because those cities are just ginormous. But I was in
a Tier three city or so where there was some foreigners,
but it was still you know, pretty small and not
as diverse. So yeah, just because of racism, but also
different customs, like you know, the.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Lack of personal space.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
There was also just a different I want to say,
like there was just a different relationship with time there
as well in a way, and.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I can't really explain how that worked.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I could explain how it worked in my school a
little bit, just because it was a bilingual school. So
there was very much an American US curriculum culture as
well as their aspirations.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
To go to US universities.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
But there was also a lot of Chinese culture in
which they were very focused on their own curriculum and
that always superseded anything US wise, you know, like they
will memorize the content, but they don't necessarily believe it
right here. But China as a revelation, you know it
as a first US born daughter of Haitian immigrants, born
(28:52):
and raised in New York, to go to a place
like China and see the history there, Like there's the
Leishan giant Buddha that is carved into the side of
a mountain and it is so huge. So I went
there and I was wanting to engage and just explore
in a really old old society, you know, society with
thousands of years of history, and it was deeply humbling
(29:15):
because coming from over here, where things are only a
couple hundred years old. Seeing these giant, giant monuments clearly
chiseled into the side of a mountain by thousands of
people over time. It really was just such a humbling
thing to think about. And you know, there's a lot
of misconceptions of Western culture about China and they must
(29:37):
be doing something right. And that's part of the propaganda,
right of like demonizing China and their ways. I'm not
saying it's perfect because people are like, oh, yeah, come here,
does work blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
You know, part of my list of like dedoctrination is
learning about China exactly.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of problematic
things over there as well, just as there are here though,
but they've done they meeting. Western imperial governments have done
quite well in crushing any ideas of what alternative forms
of governance are available to us and that could actually
work for us, right, And part of that has been
(30:15):
creating the boogeyman of communism against China, against other socialist
countries and never actually giving these opportunities to come into
its full fruition as an experiment. So here we are
needing alternative forms of governance, right, and how can we
look back to look forward in terms of what's available
(30:37):
for us?
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Because was there always democracy?
Speaker 4 (30:42):
Definitely not in the form that they are trying to
sell us now. We organize our societies very differently as well.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
To be quite honest, part of the seeding of our
ancestral futures for me is really trying to reinstill or
instill curiosity not as like a nuisance, but as like
an imperative part of our safety, of our expansion of
our joy.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Like I feel like.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Once I re engaged my intellectual curiosity, it has set
me on a course where I was able to release
myself from tethers that were not serving me, and that
brought me into a much deeper, spiritual and purposeful place
because I started with that curiosity to understand things that
(31:34):
I had just told myself I didn't need to understand.
And when you do that, you are basically giving over
your life into the hands of those that do not
give a damn about your life. And so like that's
really on like a basic, basic, basic level. I feel
like I'm trying to awaken just curiosity and people, curiosity
(31:57):
as compassion, curiosity as a survival skill, right, like you
should be curious about what plants are around where you
live that you can eat.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
And like as a comic, I think that kind of.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Brought that to the four because when you're a comic
you have to have such a heightened sense of awareness
because you have to find the funny and everything right.
Like you're always stretching that muscle like all the time,
which is why some of your friends who are comics
are very annoying because you're just like, can you not.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Give it a rest?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Well, you shouldn't day comics anyway, because male comics are
typically super dark, like their comedy comes from a.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Deep dark trauma.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I know, I know, And they're like, if I go
to therapy, I won't be funny anymore. So no, but
you know, it's been very much a thing that I've
now considered to be how do I put it, Like
I feel like curiosity was something that I used to
just hear about for children, you know, and just like
you know, just being a curious little George, and it
(33:06):
just seems something that was infantilized when now I see
I have a homeboy. Shaka Sanghor he did ten years
in prison for murder and he was in solitary for
like seven of those years, like they just was not
mess with him.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
And one day I asked him like, how are you okay?
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Cause you're like okay, but how And he was like,
I'm okay because I never lost my curiosity while I
was in prison.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
And I was like, what do you mean?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
He was like, I never lost the curiosity of how
to be okay, Like I was always in search of that,
and so that allowed me to listen to elders, that
allowed me to read books, that allowed me to, you know,
be able to get over my ego.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
And I think for our future, we need to do that.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
You brought up two things for me.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
One, did you know I was class clown and most
opinionated in high school? As my senior superlatives, hilarious, I
was most talented, most talented.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I know you have the best sol around.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
I say, I was class kind of most opinionated because
I was in all these advanced classes with all these
white folks, and obviously I had commentary about what was
going on in there.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Well yeah, I got the two ends of that, but
thank you.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Humor is so important these times, and curiosity absolutely, like
I can't imagine it's really hard for me to imagine
what it's like to be an uncurious person.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
It's very hard.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
I was thinking about this, and I think I feel
a lot of frustration, especially with the amount of information
that is available to everyone, at this disavowal of curiosity
that almost feels like an exit or an absconding of
like some sort of accountability yes for what's happening. Like
(34:51):
if I'm uncurious, then I just don't know. And if
I just don't know, then there's not much that I
can be accountable for. And at the same time, these
systems and the machinations of these systems have been designed
to dull your curiosity, Like why do you need to
be curious when you can have an algorithm show you
(35:12):
your next top podcast or your next favorite song, or
what should go on your shopping cart along with what
you've bought. Who has time to be curious when you
got bills to pay right Like you go to school.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
You're forced to go to school as.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
Fast as you can, and you ain't going to deviate
or dilly dally because that's going to rack up your
student loans or your debts. Like there's no space for curiosity,
like literally killing curiosity from when we're young in school
and just flattening this whole experience and just denying us
the opportunity to engage in this process of becoming and
(35:50):
unbecoming and becoming again, you know. And I think that's
something that a lot of other cultures do make space for.
But as you know, globalization of this way of organizing
society and our economics, it makes it really difficult. You know,
folks are just trying to survive. So I do understand this.
I don't have time to be curious.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
So at the other side, I feel also that seating
our ancestral futures means like meeting people.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Where they are and letting them know that they are
vital and needed.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Like I love who is it that says this?
Speaker 4 (36:22):
Vanessa Andreotti says, you know, we all have tools and
medicines to offer in our you know, designing our futures
of the collective, and they're insufficient yet indispensable, right. I
think people maybe won't admit to feeling insufficient. How do
we make them feel indispensable though, Like, yes, we all
(36:46):
have some growing up and growing into to do, and
you are indispensable in this like we cannot and we
don't want to do.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
You what are some ways in which or what is
that way in which you feel we are hindered in
our ability to consider alternative futures? And like, what are
some or what is a philosophy that you feel like
(37:14):
you've come across that helped to break through that big
question with.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Many, many, many threads.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
I think you know you mentioned something at the salon
fugitive something and am more facial.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Oh yes, I'll get there, I'll get there. Okay, Yeah, yeah,
how are we hindered?
Speaker 4 (37:32):
There's so many layers to this, you know, I think
we're hinted, namely by we don't even understand where.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Our imagination comes from, right, Like.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
We have an imagination, we think certain things are possible
and are impossible, but why where do we get those
ideas from a lot of them are imposed on us
and we don't even understand this. So like the area
of work that I work in, which has its more
formal names futures, literacy, futures thinking, rategic foresight, and what
(38:01):
have you, which is in the systems, change and transformation,
realm complexity, sciences, blah blah blah, all those things are
really no right.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
You can't like blah blah blah, because I don't know
what none of that means.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
To do though, because you're doing it.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
And that's the point, Like I feel like straddling to
worlds I can explain very you know, technically why we
are failing to imagine different futures that we aspire to,
Like we say we want certain things in our society,
but yet our actions and what we do fail to
bring us their time and time again. And then there's
(38:35):
the doing. You know, I feel like Black folks especially
have always.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Been quote unquote futurists.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
We've always had these different ways of sense making, of complexity,
of being adaptive, of being resilient in order to you know,
navigate very complex circumstances and emerge right from you know,
everywhere from the impossible, so apocalypts after apocalypse after apocalypse.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
That's how we did it.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
And I think what we are faced with here is that,
you know, especially in terms of looking back and thinking
about how we seed our ancestral futures based on what
blueprints have been left to us, but also realizing that
we live in very specific current times and that we
can't you know, just romanticize our ancestors and you know,
(39:23):
lavish and the esoteric, like I see in Black communities,
for instance, some people want to reclaim spirituality and traditional
African religions and they're doing so number one, as an escape,
lots of ways as an escape. But that's not what
those traditional spiritualities and wisdom tradition we are at all.
(39:47):
So they're also mutating this through this funnel of coloniality, modernity,
and capitalism.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Okay, well, I'm going to push back.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
On that one.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
I'm going to challenge that because the challenge is there
something to be said for possibly looking at it through
a lens as.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yes, those spiritual tools etc.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Were existent in its original context in a particular way.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
However, we were.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Stolen from that land and forced into this space and
they are still with us in order to and it
is okay that they are an escape from this place
because we don't have one, and so it's like an
ancestral right so to speak.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Yes and yes, and like, I don't disagree with you
at all. I think you know what would I say, Like,
for example, I'm from Haiti, like we took our traditions
over to Haiti. Our rituals and ceremony are what freed
us in you know, various ceremonial events during the revolution.
And I think we're talking specifically about in Black America
(40:52):
for instance, or African Americans. I think yes, and because
it's all about a learning and a claiming. But to
do so without integrity and without seeking to be in
right relationship is where things get a little bit problematic, right, Okay,
(41:13):
Like I'm all for that, you know what I mean,
I'm very curious about voodoo.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
You can't scare me. You know, my parents probably.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Would not want to hear that, but they'd be okay
with that also because that is my culture. But I'm
not going to just go and like go into a
Facebook group, grab a book of spells and get to
like lighting candles.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
No yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no no not yet, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Ye all the time, and then they're in groups wanting
to recruit.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
Like you know, part of what when we're talking about
seating ancestral futures, we lack these journeys that a lot
of African and indigenous cultures have where there is stages
of life and ammunciation and then there's a right of
passage and these things are marked within a community and
(42:02):
over these phases, you are imbued with a responsibility to
carry forth your traditions and your culture with honor, with integrity,
with responsibility, with accountability, with discernment. We don't have those
in a meaningful way here, you know, Like I had
a first communion, but that's Catholicism.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
I had a confirmation, there's prom What else is they
don't have?
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Like us culture, we don't have, Like rights of passage
in a real are a big thing, right.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
Yeah, we don't have that in like a genuine way.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
It's pretty messy, but these times are a right of passage.
So what rituals?
Speaker 3 (42:39):
But not culturally right?
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Like, I feel like what you're saying is we need
to have rituals around these things that we don't have.
Like ultimately, the United States like place culturally is very void.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
It's just void.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
And then to suggest, like there's people who suggest like
Black Americans don't have culture, and I'm like, cut it out,
because we've ended up having to make more culture in
this place than anybody else.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Exactly. There's a serpoint, right, like.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
We've had to make it from nothing.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
And you know there's rituals that are just not recognized,
you know, like eating black eyed peas on New Year's
and making that like a thing, you know, Like, well,
Juneteenth in Galveston, Texas is like that's a whole thing,
you know, and that has been being celebrated, you know,
Marti Grass in New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
Is a whole thing. Like second Line in New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
It's like a black you know, like there's and I
guess part of it is also realizing as I'm speaking
that a lot of the black rituals in the United
States are very actually localized.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
They're not like a whole national thing.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
It'll be like in this town, these black people in
this town do these black.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Things that are rights of passage so to speak?
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Right, Like, oh, you went to your first second line
in New Orleans and that's like a thing, but it's
not like a spiritual right of passage.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Yes, what do we have for our young ladies, you know,
or our young men?
Speaker 4 (44:04):
And we've been talking about intergenerational futures and everything.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
A lot l sixteen is supposed to be that that's
what sweet sixteen is supposed.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
To be, but it's now become very material.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Yeah you remember my super sweet sixteen.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
Like of course, absolutely those are not the national futures
we want to be seated.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
No.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
I think, you know, part of the beauty in the
US is that we do have like other communities, like
Indian communities. Oh my gosh, I saw a beautiful girl
coming out of what must have been our Kinsannetta.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
That was nice, you know, like, oh yes, I was
about to say.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
Yes exactly, but I think, you know, the rituals and
rights of passage that are so absent from culture in
the United States is a source of many of the
futures that we can't seem to imagine our plan for.
That goes for birth, that goes for you know, being
a youth and maturing into adolescence. You're basically kicked out
(45:03):
the house and you got to go to college and
start paying bills. As soon as you've done, then what
is there? And then death rituals. The death rituals is
a big one, because that is probably the real underlying
cause of a lot of our issues in this society
and the need to preserve youth and.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
To have just this urgency of now and.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
This really convoluted and ungrounded relationship with mortality and what
it means to be doing with this one wild and
precious life that we have all right, we're.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
About to go over to my Patreon segment where.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
We are going to talk about undo logical fugitivity and
if you are very curious about that, which you should be,
because I know none of y'all know what.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
That means coming over to the sales squad.
Speaker 5 (45:56):
The last.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
So we're sewing seeds.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
We are sewing seeds.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
We're sewing seeds for our ancestral future. That's exactly on point.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
And I think the space that you're providing and this
podcast and all the spaces we're cultivating are inviting other
fugitives to come find each other, right, to come seek
each other out and come find each other. You know,
when you're a fugitive, just imagine like you're running, you're
not sure, you might be hiding in a bush whispering,
you know, and then like there's a question you asked
(46:30):
to know somewhere is safe and that they're sanctuary, right,
And that's kind of one of the other ideas about
like futures in certain realms is like how are we
making sanctuary for these times so that we can be
fugitive together and figure out other ways of being that
do not just uphold or prolongate that which wants to
(46:51):
die right right like this world needs tosspis care, and
we need to be letting these lessons teach us and
learning from them with grace and humility and dignity at
the same time, not trying to project and suffocate whatever
world wants to be born with our idealizations or anything else.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
It's a tenuous act.
Speaker 4 (47:14):
I definitely don't want to sound like somebody who has
it all figured out, because I do not. These conversations
are like a compass and a calibrating tool, you know,
to kind of just find a sense of groundedness and
centeredness and all of this and think about the next
little bit forward and how that might look and feel importantly,
(47:35):
how that feels, and with whom there might be companionship
Small dunce help from this small, small human area. Small
it's so funky, Hey, small dough, says Folks says.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Our guest on today's show is someone who I met
through my neighbor and she works in a lot of
mutual aid spaces. And I was originally going to do
the episode around mutual aid because that was the context
within which I met her. But she was like, you
know what, I'd really like to do something that's just
like a bit more expansive.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
And I was like, well, what are you thinking?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
And we had had this whole conversation because I had
called to check in on one of the mutual aid
projects that she was doing, and we ended up having
a whole convo where it just was really abundantly clear
that like, this woman has a mind that is expansive,
and I was like, I really want the small audience
to get to hear this mind.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
So our guest today, Sofia Bazil.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Works in what she explained to me as future spaces,
and there's like all these terms for it that all
sound like super just like stranger things like in a
laboratory under the earth type.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
But she's like, no, like these are.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Just fancy words for work that we're all doing, that
you're doing, that I'm doing, et cetera. So it made
sense for us today to talk about seeing ANCESTI now
you all know I have the one woman show What
would the Ancestors Say? And that show is directly related
to the concept of thinking about not just our own ancestors,
but what type of ancestors would we be. So when
(01:41):
she said this idea, I was like, Yeah, that sounds
like something that would be interesting. Now I'm not sure
if I Well, when we did the interview, I wasn't
sure if I had nailed it, if I if I
you know, so I threw it out there first, but
she was like, yeah, you know, you're You're on it,
And we really got a chance to talk about kind
of just how folks in the United States in particular
(02:05):
think about time, and how we think about mortality, and
how we think about our own individualism, and how all
of those things can be impediments to thinking about not
only the future, but alleviating ourselves in the present around
the future, which I think is something that's so stressful
for a lot of us thinking about our present in
(02:26):
the context of how we are considering the future, what
will we be, what.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Will our kids be, what will we leave behind, etc.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Etc.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I think that definitely requires some restructuring and some revisiting,
and so today's conversation it aspires to do that. We're
not necessarily going to get to any concrete answers, etc.
But what the goal is is to start breaking our
parameters of thought open to expand. And I feel like
I have spent forty three years in a very confined
(02:57):
thought space, and yet I was more liberated than most
people I know. So I invite you all to expand
with Sophia Bazilla and I on this episode's side effects
of seating our ancestral futures.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
All right, Small Doses podcast.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I told you in the intro that we have a
person whose mind is not of this realm, and it's
so dope to get to be in conversation with folks
like Sophia of you.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Okay, what just.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Happened was that me saying that your mind is not
of this realm? Then you move something with your kinetic.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Brain absolutely, like I definitely just knocked something over.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Careful what you conjure, Care about what you conjure.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
So this episode side effects of seeding ancestral futures. Seeding
our ancestral futures. So originally, you know, like I said
in the intro, I was gonna just talk to Sophia
about mutual aid and she was like, we need to
go deeper, and I was like, okay, take us there.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
Now.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
When I think of seeding our ancestral futures, I think of,
for instance, like my One Woman show, what would the
ancestors say? So I think of having a mindfulness of
the fact that we will not be here in the
physical form, but we will be here in a spiritual
form for a future. I think about the fact that
there are folks that we will be ancestors too, right,
(04:29):
And I think about how we have had our futures
seeded by our ancestors, and what we can be doing
to continue that practice of seeds.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Am I on planting seeds? Am I on the right track?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (04:45):
I mean I think you captured it so succinctly and
so well there. Like we look at time as very linear,
but we are ancestors in the making. We are derived
from ancestors who planted the seeds for what we have today,
and we are very busy becoming ancestors for future generations,
(05:05):
and all of these things exist on a really fluid timeline.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
You know, there's not a hard.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Start and stop to these causal chain of events that
led us to this moment today, and there's infinite possibilities
for how this could all manifest. And seeding our ancestral
futures is really about knowing where we came from and
knowing what we want to be planting now and leaving
behind with in mind that we will not be here
(05:31):
to be inhabiting these futures and living these futures. And
that doesn't sound like such a huge departure from what
you would think that a common understanding is. But a
lot of people cannot really fathom why they would need
to sacrifice or build something that they're not going to
be there to partake and enjoy the fruits of which
(05:54):
you know, our ancestors did that.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah, Like I feel like that's something very, very prominent,
like in our society. Do we know if that was
always prominent in society or if that's like solely just
like a residue of colonial imperialism.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
I don't feel like that's always been a part of
our society. I think with the rise of Western Enlightenment
philosophies and how they have shaped how we imagine what
futures we think are possible, and how we design our
societies to create these presents and futures.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
That it's very urgency oriented.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
It's very much about domination and extraction and really just
this immediate gratification. Whereas over the long arcs of time
and different cosmologies from like African traditions or other indigenous traditions,
we were living by different you know, measures of time,
they were far more expansive and looking at you know,
seven generations principle, for instance, in indigenous communities, seven generations forward,
(06:50):
seven generations back.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Can you speak more to that for folks?
Speaker 4 (06:53):
The seven generations principle is an indigenous principle that you know,
anything that you're planning to take up with in your society,
that you're willing to introduce into your society as a
way of organizing, you should be thinking seven generations ahead
and what are the implications for those seven generations going
forward as well as being informed by looking seven generations back.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Oh man, Yeah, what I just saw a great video.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
I hope there's show notes where we can drop links
but I was watching this dope African sister talking yesterday
and she was talking about how in a lot of
African cultures and cosmologies, they don't even have a word
for future because you.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Because it's like you're like always existing in some form.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Exactly, it's inexperiencing. Like that's not how they measure time
and events that have happened already.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
It's like how.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Many ceremonies, how many rituals, how many of this? How
many that are we experiencing? Without the experiencing, it doesn't exist,
so therefore the future doesn't.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
This sounds like an episode of Deep Space nine.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Okay, this sounds like an episode of Star Trek Deep
Space nine where Cisco landed on the planet and and
he met a being that had no concept of time,
and they were like future, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Past? What are you talking about? And he was like,
you know, like things that have happened before. And they
were like you humans, is weird. We may have to
kill you.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And he was like no, no, no, and he had to
explain explained like linear existence to them and they were
like okay. So then they like became a human form
just so that he could talk to them and they
were like, but why do you live here? And they
kept bringing him back to when his wife died and
(08:32):
he was like, no, I mean, like, I don't like
live here, but this is something that happened.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And they're like, no, you live here. This is where
your existence always is.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
And he was like, what are you talking about, and
they're like, that's why the planet looks like this for you.
Your other friend who came here, the planet looks like
daisies and roses for them because that's where they live.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
You live in this moment all the time.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And he was like, oh, wow, Star Trek, come on,
don't play with me, Star Trek, Star Trek No. I
have a song at the end of what would the
Ancestors Say? And I want to sing a little bit
of it because I feel like it speaks to this
conversation and it goes we studu.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Bloading gone the ways.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
Of ancestral imaions, we are tomorrow today lost souls with
so much unsaid Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I love that. That's beautiful? Is that an original composition?
Speaker 3 (09:42):
It is, ma'am, I love it.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
I have a playlist called Cosmos and I would love
to that little little ditty.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, I mean, I feel like one of the things
that separates my thinking from people that I feel like
I thought were my peers, and and as I came
into new levels of self awareness and enlightenment, etc. I
came to let go of thinking about only myself in
(10:10):
this now, and it really seemed natural to really tap into,
particularly because of all the craziness that's happening on such
a high level right now, to tap into something that
is supernatural, which I feel like is our ancestral emissions,
Like we are made of these beings that came before,
(10:31):
some of which we know, some of which we don't.
And part of that is also like what I feel
like is the seeding of our ancestral futures. Knowing that
we don't know where we came from, so we don't
know where we're going, but that allows us the space
to create a path forward.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I really love that you mentioned that, because, yeah, uncertainty
is something that can be held with a lot of fear,
but if you can transcend that fear, uncertainty and collapsing systems,
as we see, is an opportunity to create something new, right,
something that rises from the ashes or emerges from the
(11:07):
cracks the crack is a metaphor that you know, this
philosopher we love that we mentioned at the gathering on
Saturday at doctor biocom Lafe. We talk about what it's
like to be in the cracks and descending into the cracks,
because it's all cracked up right now if we look
around right. So seating our ancestral futures is knowing that well,
first of all, these systems that were never built for
us and were built to actively deny us our humanity,
(11:31):
our dignity, and our agency.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
They're crumbling.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
And there are people who are you know, have investments
in that system or those systems, and it's very hard
for them to see any options otherwise. But then there
are people that are looking at this as an opportunity
that I mean, let them crumble, right, let them crumble,
but in the midst of it, and let us help
usher their downfall assiduously and at the same time as dismantling.
(12:01):
We have to think about and we have to be
actively practicing what we would build in its place.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
We've never lived these.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Futures before, and we could draw plenty of inspiration from
some blueprints that were left to us by our ancestors,
such as you know, relational technologies like mutual aid and
community care and matriarchal societies and more egalitarian ways and
different ways of governing. But seating our ancestral futures is
(12:28):
very much not only just about pulling from the past.
It's actively practicing and rehearsing those futures because we're not
going to get there unless we're actively you know, engaged
in relating with each other and within our communities. Very differently,
and I feel like we both talked about, especially in
recent times, coming to a real place of reckoning with
(12:50):
who are you know, your like minded people, your like
hearted people, who is your community?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Whom can you call on?
Speaker 4 (12:59):
I think we talked to a little bit about or
it can resonate with, you know, having these professional or
work related relationships that take up so much of our
identity and we construct our entire world and sense of
meaning of what it means to be and what's worthwhile
doing around this, you know, constructive professional identity and whatever
we're doing to earn a living. But I think for
(13:21):
a lot of people that's been shattered in the last
two years, it's been shattered, I mean even in a
literal way.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah, I saw like a statistic that said something like
over three hundred thousand black women have left the workforce
due to just federal job cuts.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Just discarded like that, either willingly, voluntarily or just discarded.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
And like if you're someone who had really aligned yourself
with like you know, I am a civil servant, like
this is my job, this is my purpose, this is
what I put my energy into. That is earth shattering,
you know, and it can really Like I was just
watching I rewided watching The Bear. I was watching an
episode where one of the characters, Tina. They tell her
backstory of how she ended up at the Bear and
(14:06):
she got let go like just one day, just one day,
she got fired from a job she had been at
for fifteen years. And she talked about when she was
talking to Mikey, she was like, you know, I just
need routine, Like I need to be a part of
something that I'm a part of and that I'm in
like an asset too, because that's just how I exist.
(14:28):
And when I don't have that, I feel like unfettered
in the world. I think that the TikTok what they
call them, what do they call the nomads?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
The computer nomads?
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Oh gosh, TikTok refugees. I have issues with that phraseology, but.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Something like that, Like it's like, you know these people
who just like travel the world and they're like my
office today and they're like in a pool with the
addigital nomads. You don't know, bads, that's right, right, I've
been called that before. Not my favorite, So like I
feel like those folks though, they like really kind of
pooh pooh the anchor that many people have made to
their careers, but they disregard how that's American culture.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
I mean, that's just what it is.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Like I don't think it's fair to like shit on
people for like getting sucked into like what the actual
like that's the norm. I mean I've been questioned forever
for not being a part of that.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Let me tell you.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
I mean I've lived in a lot of different places,
and my semi nomadic journey began as a result of COVID,
and I still feel untethered.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
It still feels like a.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Bit weird to not have a place to show up
and working with people on a similar mission.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
And having a routine and having my holidays.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
I mean I used to joke that I was in
school more years than I was out because I worked
in schools and I was literally like my clock was
on a school calendar, like I need to write months
off in the summer, like who's doing things in the summer,
Like it's okay, right, you know. And I got really
used to that, and I'm still very much adjusting because
that is exactly it. In these capitalist societies, where your
value is how much you produce for someone a small
(16:04):
group of people to get very wealthy. You're disregarded otherwise,
and it's hard to build community outside of I mean,
we're not practiced in building community outside of these institutions.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
You know.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
We have our school friends, that we have university friends,
then we have work friends, and then when she hits
the fan in your life.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
You have no friends. You have no friends.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I learned about myself, like I have a crasis and
I've been like, oh my god, I can't call anybody
that I talk to almost every day because I don't
want them to know this, like who is my community
when shit really hits the fan. In the last couple
of years, I've had some very very sobering experiences and
(16:48):
it's really the reason why I wanted to talk about
seating our ancestral futures today is because in my work
and in your work, as you continue to emerge and
find your new lanes and you know, dance through and
with them. I do work in futures, and it's like
there's a very academic approach, yes, and there's tools and
(17:08):
theories and methodologies, and even when it comes to decolonial
futures and scholarship, there's a lot of academia there. But
in terms of, like what actually happens at the community level,
I find that a lot of people are great at theorizing,
Like they can talk to you about mutual aid, and
they could talk to you about reciprocity care and all
(17:30):
these things, but it's all lipspeak, right, or whatever the
phrase I'm looking for. It's all spoken theoretically, but the
service does not align, the practice does not align. So
I find myself working talking about futures and designing futures
and designing experiences with people who then also were like
(17:51):
and that's I'm not even excluding myself from this. The
gap between what I understand theoretically and what I'm able
to practice consist.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
The chasm is wide. It's very wise, isn't it. It's
just but it's so oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Well, you know what, we have to have grace with
ourselves and be compassionate because we cannot undo a lifetime
of this in one you know.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
It's lifelong, life, wide, life, deep unlearning.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Honestly, Like I'm hoping, Sophia, that I can get there,
Like I'm hoping that in my sixties I can get
there like I because I feel like I only became
this conscious of it since forty.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I hope that.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
By my sixties I have really learned and sifted through
like the bullshit to get to the practice so that
I can be a really helpful steward to those coming
up to teach them earlier than forty.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Well, I think we're doing pretty all right. I mean,
the journey first eldership is ongoing.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
There are younger people whom I definitely look to as elders. Yeah,
let's not go there too, because I don't want to
spiral down what have you been doing?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
But yeah, did you used to be that for any elders?
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Yes, you know, I've always been an old soul, but
also I was I was quite all over the place
in my twenties and thirties as well. And I still
very much am, but in very different different ways, thankfully, But.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
You always had wisdom I did, but child, No, I
only say this because I just remember being twenty and
working in an office and there was a thirty five
year old woman in that office.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Who would stay asking me for advice.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
And I just remember being like, why is she thirty
five asking me for advice? And then I got to
thirty five and I was like, got it, fresh minds,
fresh minds, got it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
I've been Sophia a psychiatrists since I was young, so
you know, but as for my own issues, still very
much a work in progress. But I think, you know,
that's where like figuring out and designing different communities is
what's really being called for. Because we can try to
make these adjustments and reorient ourselves and expand ourselves, but
(20:12):
who's going to hold us accountable?
Speaker 1 (20:13):
You know?
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Each other?
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Yeah, you cannot grow outside of community. You need community
in order to make these steps that we are aspiring to. Right,
we are not reliable narrators of our own journeys, I
would say, right.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
We are, but we are.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Well, You're giving me an epiphany because for this whole
time that I've been in transition in the last year
and a half. I think a lot of it was
me saying like, oh, I need to change my community
because they're not on what I'm on, you know, and
like we don't think the same, like we don't treat
each other the same, et cetera, et cetera. But in
this moment, I'm realizing that another part of it was
(20:52):
I know that they're not going to keep me honest,
like we're not accountability partners, Like we're not on what
we're on right, So like if I'm slipping, they're not
going to honestly tell me I'm slipping right, And what
they're involved in is like I'm not even really like
that into it. I mean, I met this couple at taekwondo,
and when I was taking taekwondo, I had mentioned to
(21:14):
them that I was like slipping into a depression and
I said to myself, like I need to like snap
out of it and like get physical and you know, go.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
To bed on time, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
And the next day I was driving to taekwondo and
they called me. We're just calling to make sure you're
going to taekwondo. They have no idea how that hit
me like is it not. Yeah, that Sophia, because I'm not.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Used to being cared for. I'm always the one caring
for everybody.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
So it was like, oh my gosh, Like they have
a kid, they got life, they got all this stuff
going on, and they still managed to think about like, hey,
let's make sure Amanda's coming here, and then like yesterday
because we're recording this right after my surrounding episode came out,
so yesterday, So they texted me this morning. We're on
a group chat, and Ashley was like, yeah, we call
(22:06):
her husband Malcolm because he'd be on his Malcolm X
and so she was like, you know, Malcolm wanted to
text you last night, but it was after ten o'clock
and I know that that's your bedtime, and like stuff
like that I so appreciate because I know I particularly
have been like shitting on for my idiosyncrasies, but also
like just in the keeping it real with each other
(22:27):
stuff is like the other thing that you want people
to be able to do with you and tell you like, hey,
what you're doing right now?
Speaker 3 (22:34):
It ain't it. I've had people, you know, recently be like, yeah,
I know you want to be on the internet.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
But not like.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
That to be like you right, let me not backslide
you right?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Interesting? Interesting?
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Think that's so true.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
And Dona Gold, I mean, that is such a special
thing to have people just dropping a care note for you.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Oh I'm the only Wow. I love a check in.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
You know, it doesn't have to be about everything else
that you said. It's just say, are you doing this
thing that you said you were going to do? And
I think that's, you know, something that we all can
collectively work on, especially Black women who when we're not
doing the things we said we were going to do,
feel like we're failing, and that can compound into like
(23:21):
making you depressed yep, and it's like yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Then you get stuck, so you're like you're not even
able to do the thing, and then you're mad at
not being able to do.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
The thing, which pauses you to not be able to
do the thing.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
And then it's a self fulfilling prophecy and a sneep,
steep ditch to climb out of. And that's that internalization
of you know, we have to get out of this ourselves.
We can't rely on nobody else, We can't lean on people,
you know, that's something that really does have to be unlearned.
Like we're really trying to survive systems that people navigated
(23:54):
with whole villages, you know, with whole webs of care. Yeah,
we were not created to do this alone. And I
think especially in the US, I mean, having been out
for so long and coming back in, it's just it
feels like such a violent and isolating place.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
So where are some of the other places you lived?
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Well, a long time ago, I lived in Mexico and
Guatemala for close to a year, and that was the
beginning of my journeys where I realized, you know, you
can live outside of the US and actually be happy. Whoa,
I had no idea. There was actual happiness and opportunity. Now,
mind you, your priorities do change and they do shift
over time, especially when you navigate these places. But yeah,
(24:42):
besides that, I lived in Thailand for a year.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Well, I lived in.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
Dubai and a half years. Actually, that was the first
like long long, yeah, Dubai.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
I know, I'm like, how'd you do four years in Dubai?
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Well, at the age that I was at, honestly, it
was really fun for me. I used to work in hospital,
no I used to work in hospitality in New York.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I love my fancy fine dining things.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
I love five star, this five star, that consuming consuming,
you know.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Popping bottles, all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Yeah, So moving to Dubai for somebody who enjoys that
kind of lifestyle was great at the time.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yeah, that's the place.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, until it wasn't. Well.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
First of all, I was working at like a top
one hundred sushi place, and it was like great in
a way, but also I just realized I didn't want
to be doing that anymore. I was like, this is
not the pinnacle of my life. Not to sweat anybody
who aspires to that for hospitality, No, it's just for you.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Wasn't.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
But the conversations I was having with like my colleagues
in the place there was not like the conversations I'd
be having with, you know, the wait staff in New York,
because New York you can get anybody in New York Times, journalists,
this that you can get like anybody in the service industry.
But there it was like career career servers, and I
just found like I wasn't stimulated intellectually. So I wound
(25:57):
up going back into education. I worked in Dubai for
quite a long time, and it was great. I traveled,
you know, it was really safe and I had quite
incredible experiences there work wise. But also I didn't because
Dubai is the bastion of modernity, you know. Like yeah,
So after a while I tired of that and I
(26:17):
moved to China. What Yeah, I lived in China for
like a year.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
There in China.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
In China, I was in Fujian Province, which is just
across from Taiwan.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Can you speak Mandarin or Cantonese.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
No, not at all.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
I remember two things, yogwai and zogwai, and that's left
and right for the tuktook driver got it.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
But other than that, I forgot everything.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
But I had moved to China because like way back
in business school, I took international business and we were
talking about like different business customs, and when we got
to the East Asia customs, we were talking about, you know,
how to have business etiquette, this and that. But the
foundations of their philosophy for their societies.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Were that they're building for their grandchildren.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Like everything that they do in China and they do
in Japan is not done for this immediate gratification of
I did just you know, a mass wealth, now, spend it, now,
do all this now like it is in the West,
in Eastern cultures.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
That's what really fascinated me. So I thought I was
going to go to China and have a little spiritual awakening,
and I did in a way.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
But it wasn't pretty. It was very hard. It was
very humbling.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
China itself was very hard. Living in China was very
hard because of the racism. In some places it might
have been overt racism, and this was just before COVID,
so there's that In some places it might be overt racism.
Others wise it's just a really insular society. Like there's
billions and billions of people. It's super populous. A lot
of people have never been exposed to foreigners. And I
(27:44):
wasn't like in a Tier one city like Shanghai or Beijing, thankfully,
because those cities are just ginormous. But I was in
a Tier three city or so where there was some foreigners,
but it was still you know, pretty small and not
as diverse. So yeah, just because of racism, but also
different customs, like you know, the.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Lack of personal space.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
There was also just a different I want to say,
like there was just a different relationship with time there
as well in a way, and.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I can't really explain how that worked.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I could explain how it worked in my school a
little bit, just because it was a bilingual school. So
there was very much an American US curriculum culture as
well as their aspirations.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
To go to US universities.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
But there was also a lot of Chinese culture in
which they were very focused on their own curriculum and
that always superseded anything US wise, you know, like they
will memorize the content, but they don't necessarily believe it
right here. But China as a revelation, you know it
as a first US born daughter of Haitian immigrants, born
(28:52):
and raised in New York, to go to a place
like China and see the history there, Like there's the
Leishan giant Buddha that is carved into the side of
a mountain and it is so huge. So I went
there and I was wanting to engage and just explore
in a really old old society, you know, society with
thousands of years of history, and it was deeply humbling
(29:15):
because coming from over here, where things are only a
couple hundred years old. Seeing these giant, giant monuments clearly
chiseled into the side of a mountain by thousands of
people over time. It really was just such a humbling
thing to think about. And you know, there's a lot
of misconceptions of Western culture about China and they must
(29:37):
be doing something right. And that's part of the propaganda,
right of like demonizing China and their ways. I'm not
saying it's perfect because people are like, oh, yeah, come here,
does work blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
You know, part of my list of like dedoctrination is
learning about China exactly.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of problematic
things over there as well, just as there are here though,
but they've done they meeting. Western imperial governments have done
quite well in crushing any ideas of what alternative forms
of governance are available to us and that could actually
work for us, right, And part of that has been
(30:15):
creating the boogeyman of communism against China, against other socialist
countries and never actually giving these opportunities to come into
its full fruition as an experiment. So here we are
needing alternative forms of governance, right, and how can we
look back to look forward in terms of what's available
(30:37):
for us?
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Because was there always democracy?
Speaker 4 (30:42):
Definitely not in the form that they are trying to
sell us now. We organize our societies very differently as well.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
To be quite honest, part of the seeding of our
ancestral futures for me is really trying to reinstill or
instill curiosity not as like a nuisance, but as like
an imperative part of our safety, of our expansion of
our joy.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Like I feel like.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Once I re engaged my intellectual curiosity, it has set
me on a course where I was able to release
myself from tethers that were not serving me, and that
brought me into a much deeper, spiritual and purposeful place
because I started with that curiosity to understand things that
(31:34):
I had just told myself I didn't need to understand.
And when you do that, you are basically giving over
your life into the hands of those that do not
give a damn about your life. And so like that's
really on like a basic, basic, basic level. I feel
like I'm trying to awaken just curiosity and people, curiosity
(31:57):
as compassion, curiosity as a survival skill, right, like you
should be curious about what plants are around where you
live that you can eat.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
And like as a comic, I think that kind of.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Brought that to the four because when you're a comic
you have to have such a heightened sense of awareness
because you have to find the funny and everything right.
Like you're always stretching that muscle like all the time,
which is why some of your friends who are comics
are very annoying because you're just like, can you not.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Give it a rest?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Well, you shouldn't day comics anyway, because male comics are
typically super dark, like their comedy comes from a.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Deep dark trauma.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I know, I know, And they're like, if I go
to therapy, I won't be funny anymore. So no, but
you know, it's been very much a thing that I've
now considered to be how do I put it, Like
I feel like curiosity was something that I used to
just hear about for children, you know, and just like
you know, just being a curious little George, and it
(33:06):
just seems something that was infantilized when now I see
I have a homeboy. Shaka Sanghor he did ten years
in prison for murder and he was in solitary for
like seven of those years, like they just was not
mess with him.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
And one day I asked him like, how are you okay?
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Cause you're like okay, but how And he was like,
I'm okay because I never lost my curiosity while I
was in prison.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
And I was like, what do you mean?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
He was like, I never lost the curiosity of how
to be okay, Like I was always in search of that,
and so that allowed me to listen to elders, that
allowed me to read books, that allowed me to, you know,
be able to get over my ego.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
And I think for our future, we need to do that.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
You brought up two things for me.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
One, did you know I was class clown and most
opinionated in high school? As my senior superlatives, hilarious, I
was most talented, most talented.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I know you have the best sol around.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
I say, I was class kind of most opinionated because
I was in all these advanced classes with all these
white folks, and obviously I had commentary about what was
going on in there.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Well yeah, I got the two ends of that, but
thank you.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Humor is so important these times, and curiosity absolutely, like
I can't imagine it's really hard for me to imagine
what it's like to be an uncurious person.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
It's very hard.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
I was thinking about this, and I think I feel
a lot of frustration, especially with the amount of information
that is available to everyone, at this disavowal of curiosity
that almost feels like an exit or an absconding of
like some sort of accountability yes for what's happening. Like
(34:51):
if I'm uncurious, then I just don't know. And if
I just don't know, then there's not much that I
can be accountable for. And at the same time, these
systems and the machinations of these systems have been designed
to dull your curiosity, Like why do you need to
be curious when you can have an algorithm show you
(35:12):
your next top podcast or your next favorite song, or
what should go on your shopping cart along with what
you've bought. Who has time to be curious when you
got bills to pay right Like you go to school.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
You're forced to go to school as.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
Fast as you can, and you ain't going to deviate
or dilly dally because that's going to rack up your
student loans or your debts. Like there's no space for curiosity,
like literally killing curiosity from when we're young in school
and just flattening this whole experience and just denying us
the opportunity to engage in this process of becoming and
(35:50):
unbecoming and becoming again, you know. And I think that's
something that a lot of other cultures do make space for.
But as you know, globalization of this way of organizing
society and our economics, it makes it really difficult. You know,
folks are just trying to survive. So I do understand this.
I don't have time to be curious.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
So at the other side, I feel also that seating
our ancestral futures means like meeting people.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Where they are and letting them know that they are
vital and needed.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Like I love who is it that says this?
Speaker 4 (36:22):
Vanessa Andreotti says, you know, we all have tools and
medicines to offer in our you know, designing our futures
of the collective, and they're insufficient yet indispensable, right. I
think people maybe won't admit to feeling insufficient. How do
we make them feel indispensable though, Like, yes, we all
(36:46):
have some growing up and growing into to do, and
you are indispensable in this like we cannot and we
don't want to do.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
You what are some ways in which or what is
that way in which you feel we are hindered in
our ability to consider alternative futures? And like, what are
some or what is a philosophy that you feel like
(37:14):
you've come across that helped to break through that big
question with.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Many, many, many threads.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
I think you know you mentioned something at the salon
fugitive something and am more facial.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Oh yes, I'll get there, I'll get there. Okay, Yeah, yeah,
how are we hindered?
Speaker 4 (37:32):
There's so many layers to this, you know, I think
we're hinted, namely by we don't even understand where.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Our imagination comes from, right, Like.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
We have an imagination, we think certain things are possible
and are impossible, but why where do we get those
ideas from a lot of them are imposed on us
and we don't even understand this. So like the area
of work that I work in, which has its more
formal names futures, literacy, futures thinking, rategic foresight, and what
(38:01):
have you, which is in the systems, change and transformation,
realm complexity, sciences, blah blah blah, all those things are
really no right.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
You can't like blah blah blah, because I don't know
what none of that means.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
To do though, because you're doing it.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
And that's the point, Like I feel like straddling to
worlds I can explain very you know, technically why we
are failing to imagine different futures that we aspire to,
Like we say we want certain things in our society,
but yet our actions and what we do fail to
bring us their time and time again. And then there's
(38:35):
the doing. You know, I feel like Black folks especially
have always.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Been quote unquote futurists.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
We've always had these different ways of sense making, of complexity,
of being adaptive, of being resilient in order to you know,
navigate very complex circumstances and emerge right from you know,
everywhere from the impossible, so apocalypts after apocalypse after apocalypse.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
That's how we did it.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
And I think what we are faced with here is that,
you know, especially in terms of looking back and thinking
about how we seed our ancestral futures based on what
blueprints have been left to us, but also realizing that
we live in very specific current times and that we
can't you know, just romanticize our ancestors and you know,
(39:23):
lavish and the esoteric, like I see in Black communities,
for instance, some people want to reclaim spirituality and traditional
African religions and they're doing so number one, as an escape,
lots of ways as an escape. But that's not what
those traditional spiritualities and wisdom tradition we are at all.
(39:47):
So they're also mutating this through this funnel of coloniality, modernity,
and capitalism.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Okay, well, I'm going to push back.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
On that one.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
I'm going to challenge that because the challenge is there
something to be said for possibly looking at it through
a lens as.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yes, those spiritual tools etc.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Were existent in its original context in a particular way.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
However, we were.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Stolen from that land and forced into this space and
they are still with us in order to and it
is okay that they are an escape from this place
because we don't have one, and so it's like an
ancestral right so to speak.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Yes and yes, and like, I don't disagree with you
at all. I think you know what would I say, Like,
for example, I'm from Haiti, like we took our traditions
over to Haiti. Our rituals and ceremony are what freed
us in you know, various ceremonial events during the revolution.
And I think we're talking specifically about in Black America
(40:52):
for instance, or African Americans. I think yes, and because
it's all about a learning and a claiming. But to
do so without integrity and without seeking to be in
right relationship is where things get a little bit problematic, right, Okay,
(41:13):
Like I'm all for that, you know what I mean,
I'm very curious about voodoo.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
You can't scare me. You know, my parents probably.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Would not want to hear that, but they'd be okay
with that also because that is my culture. But I'm
not going to just go and like go into a
Facebook group, grab a book of spells and get to
like lighting candles.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
No yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no no not yet, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Ye all the time, and then they're in groups wanting
to recruit.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
Like you know, part of what when we're talking about
seating ancestral futures, we lack these journeys that a lot
of African and indigenous cultures have where there is stages
of life and ammunciation and then there's a right of
passage and these things are marked within a community and
(42:02):
over these phases, you are imbued with a responsibility to
carry forth your traditions and your culture with honor, with integrity,
with responsibility, with accountability, with discernment. We don't have those
in a meaningful way here, you know, Like I had
a first communion, but that's Catholicism.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
I had a confirmation, there's prom What else is they
don't have?
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Like us culture, we don't have, Like rights of passage
in a real are a big thing, right.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
Yeah, we don't have that in like a genuine way.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
It's pretty messy, but these times are a right of passage.
So what rituals?
Speaker 3 (42:39):
But not culturally right?
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Like, I feel like what you're saying is we need
to have rituals around these things that we don't have.
Like ultimately, the United States like place culturally is very void.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
It's just void.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
And then to suggest, like there's people who suggest like
Black Americans don't have culture, and I'm like, cut it out,
because we've ended up having to make more culture in
this place than anybody else.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Exactly. There's a serpoint, right, like.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
We've had to make it from nothing.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
And you know there's rituals that are just not recognized,
you know, like eating black eyed peas on New Year's
and making that like a thing, you know, Like, well,
Juneteenth in Galveston, Texas is like that's a whole thing,
you know, and that has been being celebrated, you know,
Marti Grass in New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
Is a whole thing. Like second Line in New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
It's like a black you know, like there's and I
guess part of it is also realizing as I'm speaking
that a lot of the black rituals in the United
States are very actually localized.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
They're not like a whole national thing.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
It'll be like in this town, these black people in
this town do these black.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Things that are rights of passage so to speak?
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Right, Like, oh, you went to your first second line
in New Orleans and that's like a thing, but it's
not like a spiritual right of passage.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Yes, what do we have for our young ladies, you know,
or our young men?
Speaker 4 (44:04):
And we've been talking about intergenerational futures and everything.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
A lot l sixteen is supposed to be that that's
what sweet sixteen is supposed.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
To be, but it's now become very material.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Yeah you remember my super sweet sixteen.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
Like of course, absolutely those are not the national futures
we want to be seated.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
No.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
I think, you know, part of the beauty in the
US is that we do have like other communities, like
Indian communities. Oh my gosh, I saw a beautiful girl
coming out of what must have been our Kinsannetta.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
That was nice, you know, like, oh yes, I was
about to say.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
Yes exactly, but I think, you know, the rituals and
rights of passage that are so absent from culture in
the United States is a source of many of the
futures that we can't seem to imagine our plan for.
That goes for birth, that goes for you know, being
a youth and maturing into adolescence. You're basically kicked out
(45:03):
the house and you got to go to college and
start paying bills. As soon as you've done, then what
is there? And then death rituals. The death rituals is
a big one, because that is probably the real underlying
cause of a lot of our issues in this society
and the need to preserve youth and.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
To have just this urgency of now and.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
This really convoluted and ungrounded relationship with mortality and what
it means to be doing with this one wild and
precious life that we have all right, we're.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
About to go over to my Patreon segment where.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
We are going to talk about undo logical fugitivity and
if you are very curious about that, which you should be,
because I know none of y'all know what.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
That means coming over to the sales squad.
Speaker 5 (45:56):
The last.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
So we're sewing seeds.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
We are sewing seeds.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
We're sewing seeds for our ancestral future. That's exactly on point.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
And I think the space that you're providing and this
podcast and all the spaces we're cultivating are inviting other
fugitives to come find each other, right, to come seek
each other out and come find each other. You know,
when you're a fugitive, just imagine like you're running, you're
not sure, you might be hiding in a bush whispering,
you know, and then like there's a question you asked
(46:30):
to know somewhere is safe and that they're sanctuary, right,
And that's kind of one of the other ideas about
like futures in certain realms is like how are we
making sanctuary for these times so that we can be
fugitive together and figure out other ways of being that
do not just uphold or prolongate that which wants to
(46:51):
die right right like this world needs tosspis care, and
we need to be letting these lessons teach us and
learning from them with grace and humility and dignity at
the same time, not trying to project and suffocate whatever
world wants to be born with our idealizations or anything else.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
It's a tenuous act.
Speaker 4 (47:14):
I definitely don't want to sound like somebody who has
it all figured out, because I do not. These conversations
are like a compass and a calibrating tool, you know,
to kind of just find a sense of groundedness and
centeredness and all of this and think about the next
little bit forward and how that might look and feel importantly,
(47:35):
how that feels, and with whom there might be companionship
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