We are living through volatile times. The confluence of new technologies are, for better and worse, amplifying inherited ideologies. Our culture has decoupled from nature to such a degree that some aspects of our civilization have become outmoded, maladaptive, and existentially fragile.
Recent social-scale experiments conducted by media and technology corporations show how vested interests are willing to deploy their inventions to serve their own short-term goals. Anyone paying attention can feel the effects of their algorithmic interventions showing up in our political divisions, economic disparities, daily lives, and states of mind. These same forces have now given us an accidental preview of the asymmetric power of their next experimental treatment, the so-called Artificial Intelligence.
How will the unprecedented power of attention manipulation combined with seemingly insatiable monetary incentive play out in our already anxious and fragile cultural mindscape?
My proposal is to restore our deep connection to nature’s intelligence in order to withstand the windstorm that is picking up speed.
My work is an attempt to reconnect human beings with a grounded source of ecological intelligence I call Oika. My hope is that by reminding people of the original source of human intelligence - nature - we might rediscover the creative continuity that has always bound us together. By contemplating and feeling our shared experiences and embodiments, we might also realize our shared origins and fates.
I believe nature holds deep wisdoms and shares them with the organisms that are willing to listen, imbibe, and take co-creative risks with this intelligence. My work is about sharing this belief with others, helping them cultivate it in themselves, and collaborating into a beautiful future.
The future is beautiful...or there isn't one.
My goal is to communicate the happiness and healing of feeling more connected to nature, world, self and others. I do this by telling the scientific story of who we are and how things came to be while highlighting the deep continuities between humans and nature. An equally important part of my work is showing people how to live holistically fulfilling lives that integrate deep natural history.
My lived-experience is a deeply reciprocal relationship of continuity with nature. Over a lifetime this has provided access to an inexhaustible source of natural knowledge.
But when the science I "know" is coupled to first-hand participation in the story of the cosmos, it affords much more than knowledge. Living in a relational mode with nature cultivates a forgotten form of human wisdom that's aligned with nature itself. Not only does this have profound ameliorative effects on one's body and mind, I believe it has become an essential aspect of the future (if there is to be one for humans).
Every human has access to the intelligence of nature through the long and intimate histories of our ancestor's relationships with the habitats of Earth. However, very few of us have the time or opportunity to live in sustained touch with this intelligence. I believe remembering our ancient endowment has the power to heal our injuries, restore justice, detoxify our culture, and put us on a path towards a more realistic, healthy, and hopeful technological future. One way I propose and teach this idea is Earthling Theory.
In addition to founding Oika, I am currently the Scientist-in-Residence at the Maria Mitchell Association on Nantucket Island. In both capacities, I collaborate with ecosystems, artists, and other creatives on cultural transformation projects. You can learn more through my podcast and talks.
I also manifest Oika philosophy artistically by co-creating wooden surfboards (yes, surfboards) through a deeply participatory design process that I developed. Learn more about this and how it fits into my Oika worldview through the narrative bio below.
"If we are to thrive into the future, we must re-invent what it means to be humane by re-aligning our selves and our culture with nature."
A neurodivergent scientist and cultural communicator, Rich has spent his life studying - and reconnecting - the deep continuities of humans and nature. To do so, Rich traversed some of the most extreme natural and intellectual environments on Earth. But let us not get ahead of ourselves: this story of sequential transformations begins in the residual patchwork of backwoods, baywaters and cranberry bogs of coastal New England.
With the earliest inclinations of a wild child, Rich ingested the light and loam of coastal New England habitats: the smell of pine-duff warming in the sun, the glacial grit between his teeth, the chill of winter-wet socks. Doing so instilled a phenomenology of belonging.
As he grew beyond the dairy farm of his childhood, Rich’s predisposition toward the animate world also grew. Instead of attending high school, Rich worshiped the fecund Atlantic. Her green pelagic pulses thwarted any academic ambitions. As a teen, surfing was his religion and he prayed daily.
Before the rhythms of maturity could set in, Rich’s sea ilk landed him on the deck of a commercial fishing trawler. It was there, on a fateful day on Stellwagen Bank, when he hooked an 800-pound bluefin tuna. Looking deeply into the fish’s dying eye, the tuna “spoke” to Rich, rekindling the affections of his inner child and saving him from the undertow of the commercial fishing industry. A curiosity was reignited that, this time, would carry Rich around the world.
To understand the wonders of the planet in as many ways possible, Rich returned to school and applied his fluency with the natural world toward a career as a scientist. Fieldwork brought him to the Caribbean, across Africa (literally, on foot), up Kilimanjaro (as a guide, 11x), into the jungle (where he lived for six years, learning the land’s language as well as Swahili), throughout the Mississippi River Valley, and sailing research vessels in the open ocean. However, after years of such fieldwork, Rich found himself at the bottom of the well of science. There, he discovered no secret mandate nor means to explain the whispers he still heard daily between “inner” and “outer” worlds. Due to the (important, necessary) principles and practices of Science, his ever-present “phenomenology of belonging” could not be addressed in this sphere.
Staunch in his belief that humanity has lost an effable experience of continuity between what’s personal and natural, Rich partnered a master's in Science Communication with a deeper dive into the art of surfing. Between his studies, Rich applied the mind-body-world fluidity practiced by every serious surfer towards an innovation in surfboard engineering. His development of the "strip and feather" method of building wooden longboards took off in international surfing culture. It was not the first time he collaborated with nature to align human systems with the wisdom of the world, and it would not be his last.
But Rich was on a mission that necessitated a reach beyond surf culture. Without restoration of our lived-sense of belonging, he observed, humans are incapable of responding to the many maladies that define the Anthropocene. True ecological restoration is a global, psychic task asking to first heal an inherited schism from nature.
This requires more than Science. This requires emotion, gratitude, wisdom, and love. And, as he would soon be surprised to experience firsthand, this requires Art.
Rich's affair with the world - both geographically and intellectually - continued. Studying in Australia, he earned his PhD in Big History, an up-and-coming field that places human history into the 13.8 billion year story of cosmic evolution. This brought him to Florence, where an experience with a sculpture knocked him to the ground (see: Stendhal Syndrome).
Much like the tuna incident, this fanned the flames of Rich’s curiosity. PhD in hand, he went to the UK to figure out how to communicate the confluence of creativity, science, curiosity, gratitude and love in a way that tells our story of belonging. He dove in, studying dramaturgy and working in the entertainment industry in Britain. But it was the peak of the “Crocodile Hunter” era and mainstream media was not ready for such heartfelt follies.
Once a surfer, always a surfer. Rich returned to his home habitat of the Northeastern US to search for better “waves.” With his 13.8 billion years’ worth of scientific and historical knowledge - and the lived experiences to match - Oika began to clarify.
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.