The proposal of Oika is that mind is wild.
Every syllable of science speaks to this reality.
Today we can trace the history of our most intimate imaginings to the stirrings of primordial light.
Our inner voices are the echoes of old supernovas.
Our speech encodes the crusty rumblings of planets colliding.
Our tongues still discern the muddy puddles of an early Earth.
We see this world only because starlight is capable of shaping water into eyes.
Our bodies still follow ancient songlines of trilobites wandering across a long-gone seabed. They do not lie.
We are the lineage of animals seduced into realms of transcendent thought by the colors, scents and sounds of Earth.
Now we are the only creatures capable of recalling the memories of a patient moon.
Oika invites us to live as if this is true. It is.
Oika asks us to heal the wound left open by accidents of history and hubris.
We are in a wicked mess. Any sober analysis of our situation reveals systemic dysfunction across personal, social and planetary scales. Oika sees these patterns as originating from a false separation of humans from nature. The same thinking that disconnects us from nature also disconnects us from each other.
The cumulative impact of this fiction has brought us to our shared moment of crisis and uncertainty. The only certainty now is that we are all in this together.
But! We live in a cosmos that also lives in us. This universal truth becomes personal through intimacy with nature. Not just the grand nature of galaxies, oceans and rainforests, but also the small nature accessible in backyards, bodies and open
minds. Oika believes this kind of intimacy with nature also presents a way to realize a better future.
We are witnessing a revolution where science is revealing a long-forgotten meta-pattern. It is a pattern familiar to animals, children, mothers and indigenous perspectives. This is not about any particular science, but how all the sciences are validating a consilient story that is everyone’s story. Oika presents this story and within it, the principles upon which to build a new reality.
To restore reciprocal flourishing, we must rediscover this story as our story and the intelligence embedded within us. Oika is this intelligence of nature as felt and expressed through humans. Through science, art and the creation of culture we align our creativity with nature to discover, decipher, heal, and feel the nature to which we belong.
There is a new beauty waiting to be discovered.
The future is beautiful. Or there isn’t one.
Humans have grown homesick. Oika is a set of ecological principles and practices that can help heal the world by reminding us of how good it feels to simply be earthlings.
Social and economic crises are two sides of the same ecological coin. Humans are injuring the planet and each other needlessly. Culture created this mess and must help clean it up. Oika is an invitation to create art with more capacity to heal than hurt.
We believe cultural leadership must be ecological leadership. Our science-based, arts-driven programs help early-career optimists and the mid-career disillusioned open co-creative relationships with nature to generate new ecological prosperity.
Dr. Rich Blundell