Richard Taite

Yeah, well, even before we get to the question of artificial intelligence,

just the way COVID affected us by separating us, I think you can see the huge stress that that created, that we realized it's much better together, even though we may have taken that for granted initially.

And then social media, ironically, has become one of the most antisocial things that exist because people project onto the images

an imagined happiness and joy and how you're doing that for, especially for young people who are raised this way, they see these images and they say, ah, I'm not feeling that kind of joy.

My life is full of hardships.

I mean, I have joy, but I also have the pain and, you know, and social media is like curating false images of manufactured purity of joy, you know, which is

not the way we live.

So people start feeling inadequate.

They feel like they're being left out.

They feel like they're missing something and they're not achieving the kind of joy that they could use.

So, you know, I think this is a moment with COVID, with social media, and now even with artificial intelligence,

there's a moment for our human family to be realizing what are the essential needs we have for wellbeing?

And you could call that mental health.

And in my work, I've tried to point out that the mental of the word mental health is a mind that is fully embodied, not just in our heads, and it is fully relational, not just in our skin and case bodies.

When I say mental health, it's the same as relational health.

It's the same as emotional health.

They go together because the mind isn't either inside of us or in our relationships, it's both.

And then once you realize that, you can understand how you can weave together beautiful wisdom from indigenous teachings that you're talking about, Patricia, and also looking at the deep science of how the brain functions and things like that.

You know, I think this is a moment where while we understand we can get agitated because it's what's called VUCA, it's volatile, meaning it's changing fast.

It's uncertain, meaning you wake up in the morning, you really don't know how the day is going to turn out.