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    • Home
    • 2025 Offerings
    • About Rich
    • Oika
    • Media
      • A Rich Worldview Podcast
      • Interviews + Talks
      • Rich on YouTube
      • Oika Art Interpretations
      • Oika: Living Cosmos VR
      • Oika Core Concepts 🔒
    • Ideas
      • Earthling Theory
      • A New Kind of Beauty
      • Oika Art-Sci Framework
      • Oika Theory of Change
      • Philosophy's Folly
      • Surfer's Guide
  • Home
  • 2025 Offerings
  • About Rich
  • Oika
  • Media
    • A Rich Worldview Podcast
    • Interviews + Talks
    • Rich on YouTube
    • Oika Art Interpretations
    • Oika: Living Cosmos VR
    • Oika Core Concepts 🔒
  • Ideas
    • Earthling Theory
    • A New Kind of Beauty
    • Oika Art-Sci Framework
    • Oika Theory of Change
    • Philosophy's Folly
    • Surfer's Guide

"When you're in right-relation, what feels good is good."

"When you're in right-relation, what feels good is good."

My work broadly explores the intersections of intelligence, nature, and human potential. In 2025 I will focus on how civilization (generally) and Artificial Intelligence (specifically) are built on incomplete understandings of human intelligence. I propose that many who create and use AI are ignoring, and thus forfeiting, deep and ancient continuities of mind and world at a critical inflection point in our developmental trajectory.


While new AI may employ legitimate metaphors and architectures of neurological systems, computation does not equal relation, which is the evolutionary basis of human intelligence. In other words, today’s AI is built all too human but ironically, because we have not yet embraced the whole nature of our humanity, these systems are not human enough. This presents a potentially existential paradox.


So in the throes of this technological conundrum, I'll be advocating for the deep continuities of human intelligence that are already embodied and enminded within the natural endowment of humans. This isn't about resisting technological progress, but about enriching it through what I call "Artful Intelligence" – a powerful synthesis of technological and natural wisdom. I propose we activate the best of our Earthling inheritance to empower a more beautiful future.

2025 Speaking & Workshop Menu

Artificial Intelligence

Exploring the perils and promise of AI through the lens of natural intelligence

The Intelligence Paradox

Public Talk or Interactive Workshop

Unravels how AI systems, despite their sophistication, paradoxically mirror human limitations while failing to capture genuine human intelligence. Full description here.

Beyond AI: Natural Intelligence in an Artificial Age

Public Talk or Interactive Workshop

Explores methodologies for leveraging AI as a catalyst for deepening our inherent human capacities rather than supplanting them. Full description here.

Advanced Topics in Ecological AI

Graduate Seminar

Examines theoretical frameworks for architecting AI systems that harmonize with natural intelligence principles. Full description here.

Earthling Theory & Human Potential

Exploring the source and potential of human intelligence in the universe

Earthling Theory: The Planetary Origins of Human Intelligence

Public Talk or Interactive Workshop

Posits human consciousness as an evolutionary inheritance from Earth's living systems rather than a discrete phenomenon. Full description here.

The Beautiful Future: Human Potential in the Age of AI

Interactive Workshop

Reframes AI as an instrument for human transformation rather than a technological threat or panacea. Full description here.

Oikadelics: Deep Time Medicine for Modern Minds

Public Talk or Interactive Workshop

Synthesizes neuroscience with ecological wisdom to unlock transformative states comparable to psychedelic experiences. Full description here.

Oika & Organizational Ecology

How human organizations can benefit from ecological intelligence

Natural Eudaimonia: Where Buddha Meets the Biosphere

Public Talk or Interactive Workshop

Grounds contemplative practices in evolutionary biology while preserving their transcendent essence. Full description here.

Ecological Intelligence for Organizations

Interactive Workshop

Translates biological system principles into actionable organizational strategies through immersive exercises. Full description here.

The Living Organization

Public Talk or Interactive Workshop

Demonstrates how natural systems' principles can revolutionize organizational design and efficacy. Full description here.

Artful Intelligence & The Beautiful Future

Envisioning and creating pathways to a more harmonious tomorrow

Artful Intelligence

Public Talk or Interactive Workshop

Proposes a more holistic technological paradigm rooted in ecological intelligence. Full description here.

Oika Design Lab

Interactive Workshop

Facilitates collaborative future-building through hands-on application of ecological principles. Full description here.

Oikanomics in Action

Graduate Seminar

Illustrates how linking economic value to ecological restoration can drive environmental healing through Oika project case studies. Full description here.

Book a Talk or Workshop

Who is Dr. Rich Blundell?

I have spent my entire life trying to communicate a relational (ecological) way of experiencing, feeling, relating to and being in the world. Mine is a worldview and resulting way of life that is full of intricate beauty, complexity, joy, and above all gratitude for the chance to participate at all. 


To hold and live this worldview requires a basic outline of understanding of the science of cosmic evolution or at least how life has evolved on planet Earth. 


I am simply asking people to live as if what we know scientifically is true spiritually. 


I am a neurodivergent scientist who lives immersed in the ecological dynamics of the cosmos. I believe that nature teaches us how to see the Creative Life-Force that binds and animates the world. My life is devoted to sharing what nature has taught me.


Drawing on the science of cosmic evolution, I have developed Oika as a living philosophy and source of essential cultural wisdom for our time. I help leaders access the relational intelligence of nature in order to transcend limiting identities, narratives, and habitual ways of thinking. 


I teach Oika through a process of cosmic self-discovery, healing, and fun. I show people how to engage personally with the Creative Life-Force as a source of ecological happiness, hope and belonging. I believe knowing and feeling our shared origin and fate, and living them as reality in daily life, will ultimately translate into a better personal and planetary future.


I invite you to explore this work through my social media, films, podcasts, public talks, and collaborative projects.

Follow to feel, learn, and share the Creative Life-Force

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"I'm awed by nature, and a little odd by-nature"

Rich Blundell

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Ruthless Communication:  On this site I talk about soft and fuzzy things like “feelings,” “joy,” “beauty,” and “hope”. But make no mistake, I am also an advocate for “hard” science and practical, emergency responses to global issues such as climate change, the toxification of land and water, overpopulation, human mistreatment of other humans, creatures, land and laws, stupid land-use decisions, hyper-extraction for hyper-consumption and biodiversity loss, etc.


As a geologist, I have grappled with drastic change, multiple mass extinctions, and I have seen how “objective” nature can be. I know that no species, no matter how clever or prolific, gets a free pass to be hubristic and ignorant (which are synonyms) in the long game. So while I may be invoking the ephemeral and affective part of the problem that we call the human mind, I am also for pragmatic science-based solutions - now.


That said, no amount of technological response to the symptoms of how we think actually changes the way we think (which is ultimately the source of all our problems). So count me as thoroughly in the BOTH-AND camp. It's BOTH all hands AND all minds on deck. I only advocate for joy and hope if we can also get beyond merely generating knowledge and begin cultivating joyful wisdom with it. Without joy and wisdom we are (and should be) hopeless.

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