I watched the debate last night before bed. This morning, I woke up and listened to Nate. His insight, deep understanding and wisdom overwhelm me. It is partly the contrast, but Nate truly inspires me.
"We're going to need community again." Absolutely. Enough with the rugged individualism, which was a sham to begin with. Wonderful insights and advice. Thank you.
There is a time and a place for rugged individualism, as there is for being community-oriented. "Come on, join us at the picnic! /You can eat your fill of all the food you bring yourself....But, we'll give you a shirt and a back to go with it, if your crop should happen to die." Or thereabouts, as I try to remember the lyrics. The big cities and industry and marketing emphasized, falsely, rugged individualism, just as knowledge was excessively siloed, food and drugs were isolated and purified. The extremes end up being so detrimental. :(
@@emilymiller1792 , Individualism is simply an ideology sold by the ruling class onto their victims. To prevent organizing and strength in numbers. Individualism serves zero purpose in the function of a society. None.
The rock-solid thesis that underlies the Great Simplification seems to be a "no-brainer" to many who follow this podcast. From my own limited perspective it seems to be the evocation of benign wisdom and foresight itself. Sadly, it also seems to be the antitheses of what is actually happening in our global halls of power and economic markets. My persistent source of consternation is wondering where that wisdom has gone? The Great Simplification has been a perpetual "oasis" of searching and sense-making, and sanity that seems to be lacking elsewhere. Your never-ending, kaleidoscopic panel of wise and wonderfully-diverse guests has been a perpetual delight. As corny as it may seem, I see them all as "gifts". And I thank you for disseminating the big hearts and minds of these interesting and wise characters.
The ten areas you describe, where we can act, where we have some agency, are a combined 'gospel' for this century. Very inspiring, grounded, and desperately needed. Thank you!
It’s not like there is an alternative. Climate change tears at modernity. It can end enough ecology to end us, or primarily blow part modernity. Local self sufficiency is survival.
It's too bad that videos like this don't get more attention. These are the kinds of things that ought to be at the center of our political and cultural conversations, but they're not even within the Overton Window.
Nate, this Frankly is a thing of beauty and power! The composite of 20 little pictures at the end of the talk says 200,000 important words in one glance! Enjoy your much deserved break. ❤
i think it's more accurate to call the first 10 volume gauges, not knobs. Knobs implies that we can control them. As individuals, we don't control them at all. Excellent List! Very insightful.
Nate, an excellent piece, humble and wise. Two observations: we are, I think you said in your last point, without saying it specifically, at a point where our actions to stop the speeding train of climate change bearing down on us, overlap a lot with the actions that are needed if we are to build simple, and healthy futures. We are in a crisis- and a crisis, as the saying goes (or the Chinese word says), is a dangerous opportunity. 2. Nate, I am exhausted with vague references to spirituality, wisdom ,and virtue untethered to the rest of the evidence base by many of your guests. I agree, we do not need clues from the past to know we are capable of being more communal, more caring, and less competitive, less ruthless. Those are not the messages of angels, spirits, gods, etc., floating outside our bodies. Caring, love, evolved as behavioral (feelings, thoughts, actions) responses to the need to protect the young for an extended period of time after birth. Why? the evolutionary advantage of more brainpower, in a social animal, was a powerful evolutionary co-incidence that led to a million or more years of continued expansion and differentiation of the prefrontal cortex. We became more diversely clever at survival and reproduction, and more diversely social. Caring for one another is in our genetic, epigenetic , and social and environmental cultural history (is it cultural evolution? I don't know). I do know caring for our young may be the genetic source of caring for our tribe, and caring for life on earth. No need to transcend the facts of life on earth to find caring for - the basis of values, wisdom, morality and love. It is as hardwired into us as the social hunter-gatherer. Science is simply the best way we have found to separate fact from myth, to predict what works , and what doesn't. Love one another! Evolutionarily, resiliently, amazingly adaptive. Thanks for an excellent frankly, and well-timed, as it turns out.
Thanks for sharing. When caring leads to self sacrifice, I think we are in business. Short of eliminating ourselves and stopping the energy hog slop wagon, the rest is words. We can be heavy into brain power and shower intellectuals with all the plaudits and awards that can be plastered on their chests but mostly it just feeds a narrative of celebrating cleverness as you mention. But when I care enough to die so that a frog or salamander might survive, then we have a new story. It has always been about us. I think it will not be about us only when there isn't an us.
Nate! I'm glad to hear you've included among your 10 renewed areas of agency for the future a shift in context from critique of the human condition to awe and appreciation, ie, more emphasis on who we can be, rather than just what's wrong with us. This FIRE APE business has been and is bad mojo. Clothed as a belief, it encourages despair in those who already feel powerless, and it gives free license to those who are still ignorant enough of their true possibilities to want to harness and employ belief in the fire ape to force their own dominance over others. We need to help people grasp a more expansive truth, which is that who we are as a species is a CHOICE, not just something we inherit from the past. That choice is always present and available to us even when we don't realize it. We can't see choice if we are constantly looking to the past through a lense of our preconceptions and beliefs to define ourselves. The past is useful for teaching us about what works and what doesn't work. It is not useful as a last word in determining how we should define ourselves. In fact, with our preconceptions applied, it is a trap. What's actually true about us is that our Bonobo heritage is potentially every bit as potent and powerful as our Fire Ape Chimpanzee background. After a lifetime of hands-on close observation combined with a personal proclivity toward a wide angle view, it's obvious to me that the heart of what constitutes our next evolutionary step as a species is actualizing that choice collectively. And how that happens is through each one of us making that choice personally, and then living that choice. Living means being it, but also teaching it to others in a way they can consciously grasp, so that they can make the choice themselves. The planet is counting on us to get this done. We currently are her top investment project after life itself. Yes, I have the legacy of a fire ape living within me. I also have the legacy of a peaceful, fruit-loving, gentle, make love not war Bonobo living within me. And who I am is a Bonobo. I am because I say I am. That is my choice, and my choice in all its simplicity is magical. From saying comes being, and from being emerges doing. From doing a new world is created. It all begins with choice.
I'm generally with you Nate, but a midlife existential crisis has me seeing beyond or beneath all the drama and awfulness that we humans create, and it has really shifted my worldview. We can't even tell definitively IF we have this thing called free will, or to what extent. And everything about how we are is coming from a level of life we didn't create and don't control. Life (I don't believe in God or any anthropomorphic higher entity) set up all the conditions, and in that says yes to things like genocide and no to a trillion other things that could make us people vastly or completely less troublesome and life overall monumentally better. This is a very serious thing I'm saying. So for me, it's ridiculous to be grateful for this "gift of life" which so frequently doesn't feel like a gift (I wouldn't say it's ever felt like a gift to me). And while I can see it being a useful survival strategy to focus on gratitude and awe, it mostly feels deeply wrong to me to do that for any other reason. I mean Life itself seems to "love" violence and suffering, it's written into the fabric of existence, so I don't see a future where we aren't always in these mind-numbing and soul crushing cycles of drama and destruction. It just makes any victory or survival feel mostly empty because you know it's just a matter of time before some new corruption or nonsense sets off the next round of chaos. For what I can see, humanity could ostensibly gets its entire shit together this year and it wouldn't fix what's wrong with this world, or prevent some future scenario that's hardly different than what we have today.
It’s because life is inherently greedy-it had to be to survive long enough to evolve the complexity we see today. Consider this: Ants are arguably the most successful type of organism on earth. They have expanded into every nook and cranny on this planet that they can physically withstand. If the environment didn’t constrain them, they would multiply until the entire landmass of Earth was covered in a layer of ants. Sound familiar? Yeah, we did it too. All life would, if given the opportunity. That’s just how it works. It’s greedy. It takes everything that it possibly can, because if it doesn’t, it might not live to see another day. So we have that selfish drive hard-wired into us, as does every other living organism on the planet. The question is, how do you convince people to overcome it? The answer, evidently, is that you can’t-at least, not in time to make a difference. But what will change people’s attitudes is mass death. Right now, heat-related deaths are mostly limited to the homeless, the poor, and the elderly. But when the national power grid collapses and everyone’s AC goes out, you will see people singing a different tune. That is, if they can still sing at all, given that they will probably be starving to death due to the collapse of industrialized food production. Like the ants, nature is about to make a correction. And our population will adjust sharply downward, then equalize. What the world will look like on the other side of that is anyone’s guess. I think I’ll stock up on ammunition just in case.
Your thought process is becoming richer and more subtle and perceptive by the day or at least by the week, Nate. Never mind that rural middle America has no intellectual access to it yet. Many other people do. Thank you.
I really like the addition of awe and wonder here. Not just the critical and practical aspects of where to go, but the world can still be awesome even with the new challenges.
Control is an illusion, and the sooner people wake up to that the sooner they can start to live unencumbered. I am still not there yet. It's very difficult to accept what is coming and that nothing can prevent it. I desperately want to protect my family from what is coming, and it pains me to accept I cannot.
@@dennismitchell5276 Really? That is all you can come up with? WTF do you think preparation does? That said, what prep would you recommend for the end of all life as we know it? Smartass.
Excellent summary of the deepest issues facing humanity now: the ten issues, and, then, the ten responses to the 10 issues that each of us individually can make in clear either/or dichotomized choices for improving the "tilt" toward resolving the ten issues. Thank you Nate Hagens for being so pointed and concise.
Grinding my teeth during this whole monologue. Not because of any fault but rather because this format compels you to simplify each topic. I want to argue each subject at length! In the end, we are consumers and are addicts. If I became switched with the doe in my backyard who just dropped the fawn, I could not be enamored with all the possibilities (good and bad) and ways to hold on to my privileges. But as things are going to change, it must be that less power will be available and the SHTF moments will be overwhelming. These seeming choices look like they exist at this time but I think they will steadily dim just like the light at the end of a day. The morning after is a different place and time. The day after the party of the addicts and insane.
**Macro landscape of our situation knobs 1. Cooler to Warmer World - The global temperature is rising, with significant impacts on our climate and ecosystems. 2. Freedom to Constraints - Societies will experience increasing regulations, rationing, and restrictions. 3. Unipolar to Multipolar World - The global power structure is shifting from a single dominant power to multiple influential nations. 4. Credit to Cash - The ease of borrowing money will decrease, leading to a greater reliance on cash transactions. 5. Richer to Poorer - Economic conditions will worsen, resulting in widespread poverty and reduced material consumption. 6. Peace to Conflict - Increased geopolitical and local conflicts will become more common. 7. Global to Local - The emphasis will shift from global trade and interconnectedness to local production and self-sufficiency. 8. Unified Collective to Isolated Tribal - Societal focus will move from collective goals to more isolated and tribal perspectives. 9. Future to Present - People will prioritize immediate concerns over long-term sustainability. 10. Complexity to Simplification - Societies will transition from complex systems to simpler, more sustainable ways of living. **Individual knobs of our own lives that we may be able to shit consciously ahead of time 11. Isolation to Interconnectedness - Building stronger community ties and local networks will become essential. 12. Money to Real Capital - The focus will shift from monetary wealth to real capital, such as health, knowledge, and relationships. 13. Consumption to Regeneration - Resources will be directed towards regenerative practices rather than immediate consumption. 14. Narrow to Wide Perspective - Adopting a broader, systems-based view will become crucial for understanding and addressing issues. 15. Baseload to Intermittence - Embracing intermittent use of resources and energy will become a norm. 16. Technology to Reality - A greater emphasis will be placed on real-world interactions and relationships over technological convenience. 17. Critique to Awe and Wonder - Shifting from a mindset of constant critique to one of appreciation and awe for the world. 18. Apathy to Goodness - Encouraging proactive goodness and pro-social behavior in response to growing challenges. 19. Shallow to Deep - Moving from superficial activities to more profound, meaningful engagements. 20. Power to Life Optimization - Focusing on optimizing life and ecological health rather than pursuing power and social status.
Thank you. For all your time and hard work. Its been 20 + years ago.when I awoke to the climate crisis then a few years of connecting the dots. The depression the screeming about the ski is falling to anyone that I can get to listen. Only to be told I can't believe everything on the internet. I have a bad case of ADHD and I think people confuse my difficulties expressing my thoughts or even my messages as someone that don't know that much or just a dummy. I can say I've known from a child in 3rd grade that lots of stuff was really jacked in this world polluting and pollution and population alarming from the start so as someone with a mind disorder or one that has really hard time staying focused except for things are alarming or fearful of then it's weird can't pay attention nomatter how hard I try but i can pick up on something about climate on a TV in another room while people are talking in the room I'm in understanding what was reported on and will remember it more than almost anything else. I knew it wasn't going to be long before major changes concerning climate and devastating consequences We are facing I didn't think things Speed up like this but it's shifted from 3rd gear to 6th .and that's causing crazy reactions from certain groups its like there doubling down on denial the hotter it gets or become further detached from the simple truth. 😅 I still always find something new or another piece of this developing puzzle. Unfortunately its not ever good i really love your channel certainly don't like the terrible mess mankind has become we shouldn't be concerned kind as a whole but I think for most part we are kind but caught up in a fish net and brainwashed kept from the reality
Larry: greetings from the western slope of the Sierras, on the River Stanislaus. We here are having an explosion of colors to behold, and the water runs cold and fast on its way to the Pacific, another 150 miles downstream. We wish for you an equal share of resilience and awe. We feel you, Brother. ❤️
Thank you for not losing perspective concerning the risk of nuclear war, as somebody remembering the Cold War and "The Day After" is seems mindboggling in what level of ignorance huge parts of the population live and even more how nonchalant some people in positions of power seem to be about it
Thank you for this masterful summing up Nate, for your clarity and compassion, and level-headedness. This channel is the well I return to for another dose of sanity.
Nice work Nate... I still say we aren't going to come close to surviving as a whole, we're way to far past the 'point of no return'...have been for decades, the planet will keep getting warmer, and someday won't support producing the food people need, nor much else we need. It's great we try, but we just won't be able to make the changes we need to make. It was fun while it lasted, glad to be an older person.
Enjoy the fishing trip. I was just thinking as you said that I remember the last time you went and was that really a full year ago? Thanks for another year of good informative videos.
Love the *critique to *appreciation, awe & wonder shift.
6 месяцев назад+2
Nate, People are good at knowing facts and not good at applying those facts to behaviour or thinking change. Blaming other people is the same as saying I am not responsible. Valuing the natural world and being in wonder of it, we are a part of it and evolved with it... of course do that thing more! You are trying really hard to empower people with information so they can in turn, ultimately, make behaviour changes and be prepared for what's coming. Trying to shift collective consciousness to a different value system, explaining through our global situation, trying slow down the impact of current purchasing power demands. You need to show people how aggressively our purchasing behaviour is shaping the landscape. And connect the dots clearly in terms of what dopamine hit based society actually costs the world. What things we buy are the most aggressive in terms of climate change, energy consumption, deforestation, water polluting, dead zones in ocean causing and so on ... everything we do every day is linked to everything. Valuing something is not enough. We need internal renovations and self reflection about what we spend our time and $ on to push these changes. It's difficult to do that lacking the why part. Which I know you are doing, but break it down to the individual level. We have the largest population alive at the same time than ever before all pulling from the same finite resource pool for everything, a lot of times buying the same things all at the same time. No industry is powerful just because... they are powerful because we keep giving them our money. Understanding the energetic value of money is important. It takes a lot of energy in every sense of the word to acquire it and everything we buy has A LOT of energy take behind it. Every time money moves betweem people for a thing it's represents taking something from the ground. And it all ends up back in the ground eventually. These major risks to global stability you discuss are all caused by something. Climate change and where resources are located our society currently demands alone are enough to cause a shit show. And already are. We need to decide we have enough :). In order for people to act on your ten knobs they need to know why. Even an episode on what the average person consumes on the average day, what the things we use every day represent and where all that stuff comes from, how it's made, how it gets to us, might help people see that making minor changes can have huge impacts. Some examples I give to people are: What do you think would happen if everyone stopped buying one product or thing for one year around the world? And used what we currently have to make what we want? What do you think would happen if everyone ate meat one or two times a week vs every day? Why do you think anything with an energy efficient stamp means it's actually energy efficient? I can tell you with certainty from mining materials, to transporting them to be processed, to transporting that to be turned into a part, to moving it again to be turned into the finished product, to be sent to a store, to be sent to you... zero of the process is energy efficient lol. People don't know what things actually cost or why the behaviour changes and thinking changes you talk about are so important. Show them. We can't have the abundance of previous generations ... we only have one planet. No, we don't need a book to talk about the ideals of humanities greatest potential. We need to understand what we're doing right now and what we can alter right now. In saying that you and your guests who talk about the bigger picture and abstract concepts are some of my favourite people, and I've never even met you or them lol. Please keep doing that lol. Please keep giving information and topic expansion at this level! But in terms of this frankly and your ten knobs ... I feel if people took the time to learn why you say these things and everything that runs in the background behind them it would help. Everything you say comes with reason and a giant web of information behind it. Every knob could be it's own episode. People need a map or blueprint of how to look at everything around us differently. Once one thing connects to a lightbulb moment, it's easier to place that map on everything else. Andréa.
I really enjoyed this Frankly. Though I would say the world isn't becoming more multipolar, it's been multipolar. It's people's perception of the world that is changing.
That huge chunk of GDP going to medical care can, in large part, be traced back to the standard American diet and the processed food industry, and, digital tech that keeps us stressed and inside on our rear ends.
Many assume that people will have to be controlled to a greater extent by central authority in order to fix the World's problems, however, this couldn't be farther from the truth. There are several fundamental structural flaws with large complex systems being controlled from a small group of technocrats. Lack of complete knowledge about the problems facing society cause the wrong decisions and solutions to be adopted, and once these inefficient and damaging laws are put in place, someone in power would look bad if they had to admit they made a mistake in the law or policy they pushed. Because of this, bad laws can not be changed until the entire generation of lawmakers is replaced. This assumes those politicians and officials are not corrupt and have the best interests of the public at heart. They often don't. Although there are a myriad of reasons why large central governments are bad for society, when it comes to solving complex problems they are particularly bad. This is because, not only do large central governments usually pass laws that are wrong and in the long run damaging, they usually forbid anyone else from solving the problem differently. For instance, Stalin and Mao both thought they knew how to farm better than the farmers, and as a result over a hundred million people starved. When I hear that people are assuming that large centrally controlled governments are the only answer to climate change, (which is really just a symptom of a larger problem called the industrial system), I can't help but feel a sinking in my gut because not only will this aproach fail, it will prevent those who would have found the solutions to climate change and a lot of other problems (such as re generative ag), from implementing those solutions on a grand scale even when there is an economic incentive for the people at the bottom to implement that. All innovation dies in totalitarian regimes. This is a fact. For this reason alone I can say with certainty that large centrally controlled societies where people have even less freedom than they do now, will fail spectacularly at solving the many predicaments we are in and will in fact accelerate society to mass die off, and a simplification back to the turn of the first millennium.
I agree for the most part, but you contradict yourself slightly when you suggest that there are "grand scale" solutions that would solve the problem (such as regen ag). Regenerative agriculture very much exists within the current system. Its metrics are largely designed around that. Its rules, undefined, and its brand, co-opted (not always, of course). There will be a million different solutions for a million different communities, not solutions rolled out on a grand scale. If change is accompanied by a change in value system then the regenerative nature of regenerative agriculture would be a moot point.
@@ricos1497People want to maintain current quality of life while ignoring the costs so they propose absurd systems they haven't fully contemplated. Ultimately the more self sufficient people will start to create smaller, more efficient communities while discarding people who aren't as useful. Those discarded will revolt, and a good many of them will be government. This will precipitate violence that will undermine top down authorities. The pinch point will be internet access as everyone denied access cannot take seriously that they are included in the "system" and those in control of it will experience greater and greater cognitive dissonance. Consider the police officer who has to observe his siblings be arrested or detained and the constantly increasing pressure to defy authority. These types of interpersonal relations will be exponential variables in declining social systems. If you can't farm, build, or kill, there isn't much of a future for you as those who pretend to be able to solve declining quality of life due to declining EROEI will have no use for you, and neither will anyone dissenting.
@@ricos1497 I agree, grass roots solutions are not best described as solutions rolled out on a grand scale. Its not quite what I meant, but you made a good point. Thanks. The reason I used re generative ag as an example is because it shows (at least from my perspective) how big monied interests in fossil fuels based chemiculture industry have suppressed the knowledge of re generative ag. I separate the parts of the words here because in the past when I wrote those words here on this platform, my comments always get censored. Whether grass roots solutions are censored by a dictator who wants everyone to only use their solutions, or whether the grass roots solutions are suppressed by large corporations that don't want things to change, the end result is the same. Top down control that prevents effective solutions is the main problem we face in my opinion.
Agreed. It's so much better to give people as much freedom as possible to start solving problems on a local scale, from the ground up. I do think there's some room for large-scale government action when it comes to limiting corporations, since in a lot of ways they're also a small group of uninformed tyrants acting in their own interests that individuals can't really compete with. So I see regulating them as a necessary part of getting massive unwieldy power structures off of people's backs so they'll have the freedom they need to solve their problems in the best ways.
Dude, you misunderstood what knobs do. What you are talking about are _gauges_. Knobs are used to control things, and those are what I'm interested in. What are the inputs we can tune to change outputs?
You should read Ishmael, The Story of B, and My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. In these books he reveals what "inputs" the people of our culture are made to believe which results in the "output" of being forced to live in a way that's causing the destruction of the world. The third book goes into how to change these inputs. The explanations in these books are written in the form of dialog between characters and are very engaging to read. Highly recommended.
21:02 I'd just like to point out that if you're willing to interview a guy like Ian McGilchrist then David Wengrow definitely shouldn't be off the table.
Quite an interesting way of breaking it down: The future will soon look more like the past before the "carbon pulse", as you so graphically express the "phenomenon"; --indeed, the Present already looks like the past!! How sad it is that we have not learned a thing from our thousands of years of previous history. We might not even make it past such "pulse": History shows that after periods of stability and relative affluence, hardship first and then war, always follow (only, this time it will be the "last war" -the "after carbon-pulse" war, with war-toys from "the pulse Era"). Instead of having used the relative advantage created by Science and Reason and Philosophy and Art + the affluence derived of easily available cheap energy, we have trashed everything... then we shall kill each other, as well as millions of species with whom we pretended to share this planet, whom we had been killing since the Pleistocene... (planet of the stupid apes, planet pigsty).
Thank you Nate. I have been thinking of all those you said, you are a master in summarising, condensing information. It is the social, the connectivity issue we have to emphasise most. [The present rule has been dividing us (with nationalism, racism, supremacy, exploitation). they have even succeeded to raise the sex battle in entirely new level and divide the personal identification] So we start with a handicap here. Just some side notes: what happens in {saudi Arabia, Kenya, Philippines, Brazil, ...} does not stay there at all. We will collectively suffer the pain of luck of elementary wisdom of the rich. Stay well, have a good catch
Excellent Nate, I agree. Now, there is a silent voice in the background asking: why? Why there's going to be a simplification? What is the drive? My answer for this is the increasing use of AI and automation and the less and less need for human work. In a socio-economic environment where the worth of a human is established by ones' economical value, AI is going to outcompete and outperform every human in almost every way. There is not going to be any need for us. Some will still bring value but the vast majority will have to relearn how to leave out of the land and be self sufficient. This also is a preventive measure in a world which has a great potential for social unrest not only from a multipolar world perspective (which pose right now a very big danger) but also from a civil chaos perspective: civil war, internal war. I do want to state this, and I will say it till the end of my life: the reason for human becoming irrelevant bears a name: Capitalism. Capitalism is a pyramidal economical system which can go on only as long as there is an infinite amount of resources. Earth is not boundless. I do believe on the other hand that you are a good human being, I do believe that you wish to do good but, you hold something back ... still, maybe is better that you do.
Agree with many of these comments. When I listen to Nate and guests mind and heart assent from ancestral DNA to intellect to senses. When I watch the current political debates in UK and US I wince and pull up the duvet. They are like a dangerous cosmic joke. Nate is my go to for sanity along with Manda Scott, Accidental Gods podcast.
...just a point, the burden and responsability of debt should not only be on the lender and not only on the borrower... this is because at some point the lender has to realize he made a bad deal as well and should take a loss as well....after all at some point there won't be resources to pay back all debt!
It wasn't long ago that Congress passed legislation making it illegal to bankrupt credit card debt. The story was the banks were going broke. What a joke. When the government decided to let banks do student loans it came with the problem, you can't bankrupt debt to the government. Banks are too big to fail. Citizens are too weak to matter.
Great stuff, as usual, Nate. One knob has me stumped. Can someone help me understand how Apathy and Goodness are opposites? I may be just getting hung up on the words. Is Nate really saying, move from (individualistic or antisocial) to pro social?
Intelligent and wise control nobs Nate, I’ll try and dial a few within my community and where I travel, the hard part will be accepting that most people believe someone else is going to solve their problems and ultimately the world’s problems, and paradoxes, be they ecological, energy, economic or health ones. John F Kennedy - ““Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country”🤔
Realworld a region that tries to become sustainable has to shrink in most cases. Population, consumption, production. This will set up situation we may be watching in Ukraine where a neighboring power which simply doesn't care about any of these concerns will just burn its own resources and population to grab more land resources and population. Like Russia is doing now. Yes it's a ponzi scheme but that won't help the regions taken over. Which requires the response we see: rearming and wasting social capital to fight a real war against raw imperialist expansionism. Sawyer's excellent translation of Sun Tzu's Art of War is a good reminder of what this reality looks like. While Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching (most translations awful, Legge's original still good) has always covered what folowing, and not following, the Way actually looks like. Humans aren't good at rational social planning unfortunately and consumption based economic systems have no dial position that is negative so they resist. And when they convert economic to political power you end up with debacles like US industrial medical system worst outcomes for most money, or Germany's automotive industry diesel emissions fraud.
In the coming decades? Have you listened to the news lately. Dams are failing for one. None of them, like almost all infrastructure, are designed for a warmer climate. Change is rapid enough that infrastructure cannot hope to last. The pivot that matters is how sharply and deeply modernity is torn apart by extremity.
I don't think "control knobs" is the right analogy. Control knobs imply an underlying control system stimulated by input from an interfacing switch, potentiometer, or valve that can be intentionally manipulated by a sentient "controller" with access to the knob. Most of the parameters are the result of more fundamental choices, impulses, and activities. Perhaps a better analogy is something more like blood work parameters which are the result of diet, exercise, stress, toxic exposure, rest, genetics, inner biome, sunlight, thermal stimuli, supplements, medications, infections, surgical interventions, organ health, etc. A machine paradigm analogy may not be the best place to start to address an imbalance in Gia attributable to the excesses of a machine paradigm noosphere.
Hopefully education about money and direction of society is going to enter the everyday conversation soon, everybody talks up to a point that doesn't seem to go past today, we need more future talk.
Fun. I'm reading The Dawn of Everything as of now. I completely agree with the critique you have received. The authors are good at writing and it's an.intetesting read but their politics completely take over the narrative. I can understand having issues with neo-evolutionism and determinism but the Davids completely ignore the role of natural imits and constraints on human history. Just because it looks bleak.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Let's take that unassailable truth and bump it up to the next level. Once you take action, this begins a process that leads to other actions, ideas, concepts, alternative methods and theory, and my current focus on developing paradigms for adaptation. For example, I - along with millions of others - stood up and said, "No, I am NOT going to go to Vietnam to kill innocent villagers." That simple refusal led to antiwar activism, working on alternatives, analysis and criticism of the US socio/economic/political system, back to the land, analysis of the foundations of state-level society in general and in specifics, a historical/anthropological look at peasantry, market gardening, developing spreadsheets to compare and contrast energy use of human labor vs. fossil energy slaves, research on landraces, development of new varieties of food crops, raising other people's children, writing books on alternatives, and a whole bunch of other things. And I am not unique. There are a whole bunch of old snaggle-toothed hippies who have done even better. You should listen to them. But most of all, everyone needs to take action. Going to meetings and discussing how bad things are is worthless. You need to take action. Dialing it down is a good first step. Valid alternatives start with rejecting business as usual.
I wonder which of those things are not clear to politicians and the general public? And if they are, why is everyone acting like nothing is going to change?
Frankly Suggestion: you've often mentioned that the next 2 decades (you projected -30% in living standard) will be epically life changing but I'm failing to see how. Based on your own projections, Art Berman's projections as well as the hubbard curve, isn't the hardest part of that the bottom right section which won't happen for another 100 years? what am i missing?
When you open with "I've been working to avoid WWIII" you demonstrate a lovely degree of psychosis. But sure, if it makes you feel like you matter, go for it.
You’re right- I should’ve said “miserably failing as I and millions of other anti-war activists have been experiencing recently”. In any case, these aren’t scripted- I’m just being honest about my work and thoughts. And yes I am continuing to have calls and meetings in hope of influencing a deescalation in Ukraine- we need peace for any longer term viable cultural responses to ecological crisis
Since Nuremberg, war of aggression has been regarded as the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
Yes - The 'politics of scarcity' (Odum) heavily inform general socio-political trends as an ecologically determinist factor in the process of accelerating decline and collapse. Yes - we should give voice to our concerns - however as much as we might try to raise awareness as to the USA's dangerous and provocative meddling in Ukraine, we must recognise that the forces and momentum propelling us toward some kind of global conflict are enormous, entrenched, and ideological. Plan for a New American Century? Unlikely..... All the same it remains the plan. #PNAC #JustCollapse
Some great stuff in here, and some that is a bit over simplistic; and what Nate says is the very probable outcome of "business as usual", which is why we need to fundamentally change how systems work. We don't need to be short of energy, and we do need to massively reduce our use of fossil carbon. Solar power works, and we need better cheaper batteries, and they are coming. But the idea that we can measure value from making profit in markets - in the presence of AI and automation - that idea fails. We need to rethink the ways in which we measure value. And most of what Nate talked about is just good common sense. I started today doing voluntary work at an ecological site, then played golf, then came home and played fetch the ball with the dog. Didn't have to go far to do any of them, Not a lot of energy and materials used. Good social time at golf. The future doesn't have to be worse than the present, but without some fundamental changes, it very likely will be. I think we have a reasonable chance of making those changes, and we need more people starting doing that - really soon.
Interest and inflation based monetary systems are not viable. “printing money” isn’t applicable to a digital ledger money world. The bloat in credit money creation is still the central problem, see interest and inflation bound monetary system.
You focus on the ‘carbon pulse’ but a more important driver for these changes is the reduction in US overseas interest. The US provided safe passage for goods in return for support from its post war allies but with the fall of the iron curtain the US has no interest to provide that carrot to keep allies between it and the USSR. So most of your multiple knobs boil down to deglobalisation primarily and fossil fuel becoming less available (although that has really not really kicked in yet)
The riots in Kenya over a new tax on plastic goods is indicative of what will happen everywhere, unfortunately. People are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to deal with this crisis, especially when they don't believe other people around the world are making equivalent sacrifices. I just don't see that ever changing.
Excellent observation. Who will volunteer to give up a privilege? Who will volunteer to give up their life? This may be a coming thing though. Suicide and self immolation seems like a radical notion at this time but maybe when the consumer craze is through, most humans will fail to see why existence is ballyhooed.
Like having full knowledge of the negative effects of man's industrial activities on ecology and the environment yet chosing to continue to take costly flights to places far and wide for leisurely breaks. People are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to deal with this crisis - they have higher priorities.
Simpler: Prevention rather than cure. But simple doesn't mean easy. And focusing on life happens to be much more rewarding than focusing on power. It's a virtuous circle. Just growing food (responsibly) has so many ripple effects on humans and nature.
Well done! But you leave out world human population. Don't you think that soon that will begin to decrease, and as environmental catastrophes become more frequent and more intense there will be huge die-offs? Also migrations of large populations will become a permanent and an increasing feature of the human world in the decades ahead.
Good points. All talk of cooperation is off the table when a community is invaded by more poor people. Especially if they are from a different tribe. So many guns, so many targets, so little self restraint in the face of populism and fear.
Hey Nate I want to quote you cirrectly, in an earlier GS episode, I think i heard you say. " It takes 40% of our energy captured to transport the energy materials? T or F? Did I misunderstand?
Wellcome to the emerging bureaucracy of post-growth future. What comes next, a hierarchical diagram with heads of offices and the associated procedures?
...I was trying to explain some of this to a younger person who said "why worry if you won't live through it?"... maybe considering I have a quarter of a century to go...I suspect I might see ugly things continue developing but the root causes probably won't be evident to many.... I guess in general we kind of look into our short term well being... and little thought if any is given to how future generations will cope... the hope I believe is for the very young to feel that this will affect them in a grave manor in their lifetimes. Population size I believe is a real factor, and although growing slower, if present rate of fertility is mantained the world (2.41 per child bearing person) population will double by century's end and will be 15 times larger by 2200!...fortunately the rate is going down though slowly. . So we should celebrate that birth rates are going down, but not fast enough... most of those alive today will still be here by 2050....in the meantime we must consume much less!
I have to disagree on your point regarding whether or not we need written information to help us understand whether or not we can live together in peace and equality. If we just go forward doing the best we can with no data on what allowed past societies to live more or less peacefully or equally without fossil fuels, we will be going into the future blind to what we need to do to make this work. We can’t afford that. Regarding the book though, I agree, the authors have a human exceptionalism bias and ignore the material conditions that shaped past societies. They also ignore the data we have about immediate-return hunter gatherer societies, which have been remarkably egalitarian. They also tend to recognize their ecological limits better than agrarian societies. I highly recommend you ask your anthropologist friends about them and look into existing ethnographies regarding them and their strict pro-social norms.
Hi Nate, as a thinker, you have such a large view view on a number of things. I believe however, that you are missing one big knob: demography. There was an article in the NYTimes "The World’s Population May Peak in Your Lifetime. What Happens Next?". There is a curve in there that shows that in less than two centuries, the global population will be less that 1 billion people. There is a global demographic transition taking place. This adds up to the human predicament as you say because, decreasing society means less people to think and to make all the good things even if it will be a relief for the environement. When on average people are older, they are stistically less prone to pro-social behaviors and cooperation. I believe that you might want to include these facts into your analysis.
Bolstering Nate's phasing "We are going to need community again" : I share here a research report from last week's in Science magazine (pub of AAAS) by Testard et al. from the U of Penn entitled "Ecological Disturbance Alters the Adaptive Benefits of Social Ties". As summed up in the Abstract, before a category 4 hurricane that devastated a population of Rhesus Macaques (a proxy for humans) that endured a devastating category 4 hurricane, social tolerance among them did Not predict individual survival, but after the shock of that event, it did, "revealing a shift in the adaptive function of sociality"
The tree, the whole tree and nothing but the tree. Some will disagree But of history, the hero cut them down, there is no hero who saves things. Of ending war, there is no hero who prevented it. Of ending poverty, there is no hero that ended it. Of imagination, there is no hero who is quiet and of village, there is only the hero of selfish destruction and unneeded, unasked for, correction. Judgement is easy, it’s why people judge. Turn off the ignition of the rocket class and the praise of the machine in an atmosphere thinner than a pencil on a soccer ball. Walking to work is a pilgrimage of nature forgotten in the zombie machine of a binary double bind world. The machine was to give us time of play, now only a weapon of rage and pastiche. Ok, pastiche: the art of memetic habits we can’t break or have forgotten how to break with educated individualism to out compete each other, while living in the wake of wasted friendships, wasted lives and the stepping on others which is called a ladder, but was other humans we objectified as rungs. A world of possibilities, reduced by the words of nature, pretending to be, but made of the plastic juggernaut. Endless growth of machines. Jevons efficiency paradox that ignores an initiative idea that uses millions if not billions of collective inputs which of each influence, uses more energy than the inventions claim of efficiency can ever get back. Gravity of thought. A rocket ship: the dirigible inflated metal balloon, so fragile yet with the appearance of solidity, sold by a slick salesman without his mother’s voice to stop him and his circus of atrophied humans, from Olympic to near death hospitalization and a weak smile from total corporate sterility and silenced by contract. “Oh gosh, I need to throw up, this space walk smells so toxic of burning plastic, I can’t breathe”. Facts, or fiction, Barbie or Ken? Bouncy castle on Mars?
Good luck with the whole 'awe' business. There's going to be plenty of critique-ing when the crunch comes. Way too many scores to settle, as it were. People are pretty cowed by and large by their socioeconomic betters. But when the mighty have finally fallen, as part of this great simplification, if that's how it plays out, I wouldn't count on being graciously received and forgiven by the hitherto trodden-upon. It's only the ready availability of all those cheap creature comforts on demand that have the kept masses relatively harmless and occupied and blaming themselves up to now. You take those away from them and you're going to see just how discontented society's discontents can be. That's what I would predict.
Sorry but I disagree that you're living in a democraty inside USA. In facts it is only a plutocracy where the rules defining it are worse than those of a banana republic: generalized "gerrymandering" where the boundaries of electoral districts are established by the elected representatives themselves according to the areas where they receive the most votes. Some take bizarre forms. A practice worthy of the worst diets on the planet. The electoral enumeration entrusted to private firms that "forget" to enumerate whole sections of the population discriminating against them in a partisan manner. The distribution of polling places, some of which are up to hundreds of kilometres away from the voters they are to serve. "Voting machines" of all kinds, provided by private companies in the pay of elected officials, making it even more difficult to carry out real control. The distribution of 2 senators per state, so that Wyoming with a population of 563,626 in 2010 can elect as many senators as California with nearly 40,000,000 inhabitants. The "grand electors", a regime imposed by the "founding fathers" to screen the expected excesses of the "populace". But above all, a democratic system where it is the billionaires who make the law through the unrestricted financing of electoral campaigns, making elected officials their only emissaries, according to the well-known adage: "tell me who pays you, I will tell you who you belong to".
The biggest control knob for civilized humanity into the future; population. Aging demographics is already in play to reduce global population. The second impact largely out of human control is depletion of commodity resources especially energy, fertilizers and food production will further negatively impact population. How well that is managed will determine how well civilised humanity survives into next century. I have little faith that any civilized society will survive into next century but humanity may. But global warming will continue through next century even though fossil fuels will be depleted.
Have tremendous respect for your frank wisdom. Have probably read and studied your writings and content multiple times. Sometimes, though, your persona as an interviewer and a wise human in Frankly creates a bit of cognitive dissonance in my mind. But, any who, I was just wondering, with respect to your recent visit to India, did it affect your views, something akin to Beatles' case?
I watched the debate last night before bed. This morning, I woke up and listened to Nate. His insight, deep understanding and wisdom overwhelm me. It is partly the contrast, but Nate truly inspires me.
I must say that one yesterday mhmahmavbam was an excellent debate, ahmbavmpswm mmmmmhhhkkk, an excellent 6-hours debate, I mean 8, mmmmkkkhhhmm, 21!
Well said. I feel the same.
Christ it was a race to see who dropped their pants first. I’m going fishing too.
@@dermotmeuchner2416😂
"We're going to need community again." Absolutely. Enough with the rugged individualism, which was a sham to begin with. Wonderful insights and advice. Thank you.
There is a time and a place for rugged individualism, as there is for being community-oriented.
"Come on, join us at the picnic! /You can eat your fill of all the food you bring yourself....But, we'll give you a shirt and a back to go with it, if your crop should happen to die." Or thereabouts, as I try to remember the lyrics.
The big cities and industry and marketing emphasized, falsely, rugged individualism, just as knowledge was excessively siloed, food and drugs were isolated and purified. The extremes end up being so detrimental. :(
@@emilymiller1792 , Individualism is simply an ideology sold by the ruling class onto their victims. To prevent organizing and strength in numbers. Individualism serves zero purpose in the function of a society. None.
The rock-solid thesis that underlies the Great Simplification seems to be a "no-brainer" to many who follow this podcast. From my own limited perspective it seems to be the evocation of benign wisdom and foresight itself. Sadly, it also seems to be the antitheses of what is actually happening in our global halls of power and economic markets. My persistent source of consternation is wondering where that wisdom has gone? The Great Simplification has been a perpetual "oasis" of searching and sense-making, and sanity that seems to be lacking elsewhere. Your never-ending, kaleidoscopic panel of wise and wonderfully-diverse guests has been a perpetual delight. As corny as it may seem, I see them all as "gifts". And I thank you for disseminating the big hearts and minds of these interesting and wise characters.
The ten areas you describe, where we can act, where we have some agency, are a combined 'gospel' for this century. Very inspiring, grounded, and desperately needed. Thank you!
It’s not like there is an alternative. Climate change tears at modernity. It can end enough ecology to end us, or primarily blow part modernity. Local self sufficiency is survival.
It's too bad that videos like this don't get more attention. These are the kinds of things that ought to be at the center of our political and cultural conversations, but they're not even within the Overton Window.
Nate, this Frankly is a thing of beauty and power! The composite of 20 little pictures at the end of the talk says 200,000 important words in one glance! Enjoy your much deserved break. ❤
i think it's more accurate to call the first 10 volume gauges, not knobs. Knobs implies that we can control them. As individuals, we don't control them at all.
Excellent List! Very insightful.
I loved the point of moving from negativity to wonder. Thanks, Nate!
Nate, an excellent piece, humble and wise. Two observations: we are, I think you said in your last point, without saying it specifically, at a point where our actions to stop the speeding train of climate change bearing down on us, overlap a lot with the actions that are needed if we are to build simple, and healthy futures. We are in a crisis- and a crisis, as the saying goes (or the Chinese word says), is a dangerous opportunity. 2. Nate, I am exhausted with vague references to spirituality, wisdom ,and virtue untethered to the rest of the evidence base by many of your guests. I agree, we do not need clues from the past to know we are capable of being more communal, more caring, and less competitive, less ruthless. Those are not the messages of angels, spirits, gods, etc., floating outside our bodies. Caring, love, evolved as behavioral (feelings, thoughts, actions) responses to the need to protect the young for an extended period of time after birth. Why? the evolutionary advantage of more brainpower, in a social animal, was a powerful evolutionary co-incidence that led to a million or more years of continued expansion and differentiation of the prefrontal cortex. We became more diversely clever at survival and reproduction, and more diversely social. Caring for one another is in our genetic, epigenetic , and social and environmental cultural history (is it cultural evolution? I don't know). I do know caring for our young may be the genetic source of caring for our tribe, and caring for life on earth. No need to transcend the facts of life on earth to find caring for - the basis of values, wisdom, morality and love. It is as hardwired into us as the social hunter-gatherer. Science is simply the best way we have found to separate fact from myth, to predict what works , and what doesn't. Love one another! Evolutionarily, resiliently, amazingly adaptive. Thanks for an excellent frankly, and well-timed, as it turns out.
Thanks for sharing. When caring leads to self sacrifice, I think we are in business. Short of eliminating ourselves and stopping the energy hog slop wagon, the rest is words. We can be heavy into brain power and shower intellectuals with all the plaudits and awards that can be plastered on their chests but mostly it just feeds a narrative of celebrating cleverness as you mention. But when I care enough to die so that a frog or salamander might survive, then we have a new story. It has always been about us. I think it will not be about us only when there isn't an us.
Nate! I'm glad to hear you've included among your 10 renewed areas of agency for the future a shift in context from critique of the human condition to awe and appreciation, ie, more emphasis on who we can be, rather than just what's wrong with us. This FIRE APE business has been and is bad mojo. Clothed as a belief, it encourages despair in those who already feel powerless, and it gives free license to those who are still ignorant enough of their true possibilities to want to harness and employ belief in the fire ape to force their own dominance over others.
We need to help people grasp a more expansive truth, which is that who we are as a species is a CHOICE, not just something we inherit from the past. That choice is always present and available to us even when we don't realize it. We can't see choice if we are constantly looking to the past through a lense of our preconceptions and beliefs to define ourselves. The past is useful for teaching us about what works and what doesn't work. It is not useful as a last word in determining how we should define ourselves. In fact, with our preconceptions applied, it is a trap.
What's actually true about us is that our Bonobo heritage is potentially every bit as potent and powerful as our Fire Ape Chimpanzee background.
After a lifetime of hands-on close observation combined with a personal proclivity toward a wide angle view, it's obvious to me that the heart of what constitutes our next evolutionary step as a species is actualizing that choice collectively. And how that happens is through each one of us making that choice personally, and then living that choice. Living means being it, but also teaching it to others in a way they can consciously grasp, so that they can make the choice themselves. The planet is counting on us to get this done. We currently are her top investment project after life itself.
Yes, I have the legacy of a fire ape living within me. I also have the legacy of a peaceful, fruit-loving, gentle, make love not war Bonobo living within me. And who I am is a Bonobo. I am because I say I am. That is my choice, and my choice in all its simplicity is magical. From saying comes being, and from being emerges doing. From doing a new world is created. It all begins with choice.
I'm generally with you Nate, but a midlife existential crisis has me seeing beyond or beneath all the drama and awfulness that we humans create, and it has really shifted my worldview. We can't even tell definitively IF we have this thing called free will, or to what extent. And everything about how we are is coming from a level of life we didn't create and don't control. Life (I don't believe in God or any anthropomorphic higher entity) set up all the conditions, and in that says yes to things like genocide and no to a trillion other things that could make us people vastly or completely less troublesome and life overall monumentally better. This is a very serious thing I'm saying. So for me, it's ridiculous to be grateful for this "gift of life" which so frequently doesn't feel like a gift (I wouldn't say it's ever felt like a gift to me). And while I can see it being a useful survival strategy to focus on gratitude and awe, it mostly feels deeply wrong to me to do that for any other reason. I mean Life itself seems to "love" violence and suffering, it's written into the fabric of existence, so I don't see a future where we aren't always in these mind-numbing and soul crushing cycles of drama and destruction. It just makes any victory or survival feel mostly empty because you know it's just a matter of time before some new corruption or nonsense sets off the next round of chaos. For what I can see, humanity could ostensibly gets its entire shit together this year and it wouldn't fix what's wrong with this world, or prevent some future scenario that's hardly different than what we have today.
It’s because life is inherently greedy-it had to be to survive long enough to evolve the complexity we see today.
Consider this: Ants are arguably the most successful type of organism on earth. They have expanded into every nook and cranny on this planet that they can physically withstand. If the environment didn’t constrain them, they would multiply until the entire landmass of Earth was covered in a layer of ants.
Sound familiar? Yeah, we did it too. All life would, if given the opportunity. That’s just how it works. It’s greedy. It takes everything that it possibly can, because if it doesn’t, it might not live to see another day.
So we have that selfish drive hard-wired into us, as does every other living organism on the planet. The question is, how do you convince people to overcome it? The answer, evidently, is that you can’t-at least, not in time to make a difference. But what will change people’s attitudes is mass death. Right now, heat-related deaths are mostly limited to the homeless, the poor, and the elderly. But when the national power grid collapses and everyone’s AC goes out, you will see people singing a different tune. That is, if they can still sing at all, given that they will probably be starving to death due to the collapse of industrialized food production.
Like the ants, nature is about to make a correction. And our population will adjust sharply downward, then equalize. What the world will look like on the other side of that is anyone’s guess. I think I’ll stock up on ammunition just in case.
Your thought process is becoming richer and more subtle and perceptive by the day or at least by the week, Nate. Never mind that rural middle America has no intellectual access to it yet. Many other people do. Thank you.
I really like the addition of awe and wonder here. Not just the critical and practical aspects of where to go, but the world can still be awesome even with the new challenges.
inspiring. thanks
Control is an illusion, and the sooner people wake up to that the sooner they can start to live unencumbered. I am still not there yet. It's very difficult to accept what is coming and that nothing can prevent it. I desperately want to protect my family from what is coming, and it pains me to accept I cannot.
Maybe you can prepare rather than protect.
@@dennismitchell5276 Really? That is all you can come up with? WTF do you think preparation does?
That said, what prep would you recommend for the end of all life as we know it? Smartass.
You might want to check the work of Michael Dowd on Post Doom.
@@peterclark2374 I'm familiar with him and his work.
Excellent summary of the deepest issues facing humanity now: the ten issues, and, then, the ten responses to the 10 issues that each of us individually can make in clear either/or dichotomized choices for improving the "tilt" toward resolving the ten issues. Thank you Nate Hagens for being so pointed and concise.
Grinding my teeth during this whole monologue. Not because of any fault but rather because this format compels you to simplify each topic. I want to argue each subject at length!
In the end, we are consumers and are addicts. If I became switched with the doe in my backyard who just dropped the fawn, I could not be enamored with all the possibilities (good and bad) and ways to hold on to my privileges. But as things are going to change, it must be that less power will be available and the SHTF moments will be overwhelming. These seeming choices look like they exist at this time but I think they will steadily dim just like the light at the end of a day. The morning after is a different place and time. The day after the party of the addicts and insane.
Great stuff Nate. Love your work
**Macro landscape of our situation knobs
1. Cooler to Warmer World - The global temperature is rising, with significant impacts on our climate and ecosystems.
2. Freedom to Constraints - Societies will experience increasing regulations, rationing, and restrictions.
3. Unipolar to Multipolar World - The global power structure is shifting from a single dominant power to multiple influential nations.
4. Credit to Cash - The ease of borrowing money will decrease, leading to a greater reliance on cash transactions.
5. Richer to Poorer - Economic conditions will worsen, resulting in widespread poverty and reduced material consumption.
6. Peace to Conflict - Increased geopolitical and local conflicts will become more common.
7. Global to Local - The emphasis will shift from global trade and interconnectedness to local production and self-sufficiency.
8. Unified Collective to Isolated Tribal - Societal focus will move from collective goals to more isolated and tribal perspectives.
9. Future to Present - People will prioritize immediate concerns over long-term sustainability.
10. Complexity to Simplification - Societies will transition from complex systems to simpler, more sustainable ways of living.
**Individual knobs of our own lives that we may be able to shit consciously ahead of time
11. Isolation to Interconnectedness - Building stronger community ties and local networks will become essential.
12. Money to Real Capital - The focus will shift from monetary wealth to real capital, such as health, knowledge, and relationships.
13. Consumption to Regeneration - Resources will be directed towards regenerative practices rather than immediate consumption.
14. Narrow to Wide Perspective - Adopting a broader, systems-based view will become crucial for understanding and addressing issues.
15. Baseload to Intermittence - Embracing intermittent use of resources and energy will become a norm.
16. Technology to Reality - A greater emphasis will be placed on real-world interactions and relationships over technological convenience.
17. Critique to Awe and Wonder - Shifting from a mindset of constant critique to one of appreciation and awe for the world.
18. Apathy to Goodness - Encouraging proactive goodness and pro-social behavior in response to growing challenges.
19. Shallow to Deep - Moving from superficial activities to more profound, meaningful engagements.
20. Power to Life Optimization - Focusing on optimizing life and ecological health rather than pursuing power and social status.
Many thanks, excellent!!
Thank you. For all your time and hard work. Its been 20 + years ago.when I awoke to the climate crisis then a few years of connecting the dots.
The depression the screeming about the ski is falling to anyone that I can get to listen. Only to be told I can't believe everything on the internet. I have a bad case of ADHD and I think people confuse my difficulties expressing my thoughts or even my messages as someone that don't know that much or just a dummy.
I can say I've known from a child in 3rd grade that lots of stuff was really jacked in this world polluting and pollution and population alarming from the start so as someone with a mind disorder or one that has really hard time staying focused except for things are alarming or fearful of then it's weird can't pay attention nomatter how hard I try but i can pick up on something about climate on a TV in another room while people are talking in the room I'm in understanding what was reported on and will remember it more than almost anything else.
I knew it wasn't going to be long before major changes concerning climate and devastating consequences
We are facing I didn't think things
Speed up like this but it's shifted from 3rd gear to 6th .and that's causing crazy reactions from certain groups its like there doubling down on denial the hotter it gets or become further detached from the simple truth. 😅
I still always find something new or another piece of this developing puzzle. Unfortunately its not ever good i really love your channel certainly don't like the terrible mess mankind has become we shouldn't be concerned kind as a whole but I think for most part we are kind but caught up in a fish net
and brainwashed kept from the reality
Larry: greetings from the western slope of the Sierras, on the River Stanislaus. We here are having an explosion of colors to behold, and the water runs cold and fast on its way to the Pacific, another 150 miles downstream. We wish for you an equal share of resilience and awe. We feel you, Brother. ❤️
There's nothing wrong with you. You are a sane person living in a crazy world.
This was an excellent tool, thank you.
Thank you for not losing perspective concerning the risk of nuclear war, as somebody remembering the Cold War and "The Day After" is seems mindboggling in what level of ignorance huge parts of the population live and even more how nonchalant some people in positions of power seem to be about it
Thank you for this masterful summing up Nate, for your clarity and compassion, and level-headedness. This channel is the well I return to for another dose of sanity.
Happy fishing
Nice work Nate...
I still say we aren't going to come close to surviving as a whole, we're way to far past the 'point of no return'...have been for decades, the planet will keep getting warmer, and someday won't support producing the food people need, nor much else we need.
It's great we try, but we just won't be able to make the changes we need to make.
It was fun while it lasted, glad to be an older person.
I'd love to hear a discussion between Nate and Nicole Shanahan on either person's podcast.
Thank you, very inspiring 🙏
Thank you for this summary 🙏
Love what you do. Thank you so much ! Found you on Canadian prepper channel. One day there will be Nate Hagen's statues, god willing.
Enjoy the fishing trip. I was just thinking as you said that I remember the last time you went and was that really a full year ago? Thanks for another year of good informative videos.
Quite the optimist.
enjoy fishing! I am discovering your channel now, thank you very much for your work and profound messages
The most important knob is wants to needs
Love the *critique to *appreciation, awe & wonder shift.
Nate,
People are good at knowing facts and not good at applying those facts to behaviour or thinking change. Blaming other people is the same as saying I am not responsible. Valuing the natural world and being in wonder of it, we are a part of it and evolved with it... of course do that thing more! You are trying really hard to empower people with information so they can in turn, ultimately, make behaviour changes and be prepared for what's coming. Trying to shift collective consciousness to a different value system, explaining through our global situation, trying slow down the impact of current purchasing power demands.
You need to show people how aggressively our purchasing behaviour is shaping the landscape. And connect the dots clearly in terms of what dopamine hit based society actually costs the world. What things we buy are the most aggressive in terms of climate change, energy consumption, deforestation, water polluting, dead zones in ocean causing and so on ... everything we do every day is linked to everything. Valuing something is not enough. We need internal renovations and self reflection about what we spend our time and $ on to push these changes. It's difficult to do that lacking the why part. Which I know you are doing, but break it down to the individual level.
We have the largest population alive at the same time than ever before all pulling from the same finite resource pool for everything, a lot of times buying the same things all at the same time. No industry is powerful just because... they are powerful because we keep giving them our money. Understanding the energetic value of money is important. It takes a lot of energy in every sense of the word to acquire it and everything we buy has A LOT of energy take behind it. Every time money moves betweem people for a thing it's represents taking something from the ground. And it all ends up back in the ground eventually.
These major risks to global stability you discuss are all caused by something. Climate change and where resources are located our society currently demands alone are enough to cause a shit show. And already are.
We need to decide we have enough :). In order for people to act on your ten knobs they need to know why.
Even an episode on what the average person consumes on the average day, what the things we use every day represent and where all that stuff comes from, how it's made, how it gets to us, might help people see that making minor changes can have huge impacts.
Some examples I give to people are:
What do you think would happen if everyone stopped buying one product or thing for one year around the world? And used what we currently have to make what we want?
What do you think would happen if everyone ate meat one or two times a week vs every day?
Why do you think anything with an energy efficient stamp means it's actually energy efficient? I can tell you with certainty from mining materials, to transporting them to be processed, to transporting that to be turned into a part, to moving it again to be turned into the finished product, to be sent to a store, to be sent to you... zero of the process is energy efficient lol.
People don't know what things actually cost or why the behaviour changes and thinking changes you talk about are so important. Show them.
We can't have the abundance of previous generations ... we only have one planet.
No, we don't need a book to talk about the ideals of humanities greatest potential. We need to understand what we're doing right now and what we can alter right now.
In saying that you and your guests who talk about the bigger picture and abstract concepts are some of my favourite people, and I've never even met you or them lol. Please keep doing that lol. Please keep giving information and topic expansion at this level!
But in terms of this frankly and your ten knobs ... I feel if people took the time to learn why you say these things and everything that runs in the background behind them it would help. Everything you say comes with reason and a giant web of information behind it. Every knob could be it's own episode.
People need a map or blueprint of how to look at everything around us differently. Once one thing connects to a lightbulb moment, it's easier to place that map on everything else.
Andréa.
P.S. Great fishin' and big fun!!!
I really enjoyed this Frankly. Though I would say the world isn't becoming more multipolar, it's been multipolar. It's people's perception of the world that is changing.
I love dawn of everything by Davids Wengrow and Graeber
Yeah have been hoping for an interview of DW for ages.
would be wonderful to somehow connect with Great Simpl community off-line somehow...don't know their geo/city distribution etc
Brilliant. I’m getting to work.
That huge chunk of GDP going to medical care can, in large part, be traced back to the standard American diet and the processed food industry, and, digital tech that keeps us stressed and inside on our rear ends.
💯
Franklys make sense to me, I don't want to miss a single one.
Agreed, I have never missed an episode of Frankly or The Great Simplification! Such a great use of my time
Many assume that people will have to be controlled to a greater extent by central authority in order to fix the World's problems, however, this couldn't be farther from the truth. There are several fundamental structural flaws with large complex systems being controlled from a small group of technocrats. Lack of complete knowledge about the problems facing society cause the wrong decisions and solutions to be adopted, and once these inefficient and damaging laws are put in place, someone in power would look bad if they had to admit they made a mistake in the law or policy they pushed. Because of this, bad laws can not be changed until the entire generation of lawmakers is replaced. This assumes those politicians and officials are not corrupt and have the best interests of the public at heart. They often don't.
Although there are a myriad of reasons why large central governments are bad for society, when it comes to solving complex problems they are particularly bad. This is because, not only do large central governments usually pass laws that are wrong and in the long run damaging, they usually forbid anyone else from solving the problem differently. For instance, Stalin and Mao both thought they knew how to farm better than the farmers, and as a result over a hundred million people starved.
When I hear that people are assuming that large centrally controlled governments are the only answer to climate change, (which is really just a symptom of a larger problem called the industrial system), I can't help but feel a sinking in my gut because not only will this aproach fail, it will prevent those who would have found the solutions to climate change and a lot of other problems (such as re generative ag), from implementing those solutions on a grand scale even when there is an economic incentive for the people at the bottom to implement that.
All innovation dies in totalitarian regimes. This is a fact. For this reason alone I can say with certainty that large centrally controlled societies where people have even less freedom than they do now, will fail spectacularly at solving the many predicaments we are in and will in fact accelerate society to mass die off, and a simplification back to the turn of the first millennium.
100% agree with you.
I agree for the most part, but you contradict yourself slightly when you suggest that there are "grand scale" solutions that would solve the problem (such as regen ag). Regenerative agriculture very much exists within the current system. Its metrics are largely designed around that. Its rules, undefined, and its brand, co-opted (not always, of course). There will be a million different solutions for a million different communities, not solutions rolled out on a grand scale. If change is accompanied by a change in value system then the regenerative nature of regenerative agriculture would be a moot point.
@@ricos1497People want to maintain current quality of life while ignoring the costs so they propose absurd systems they haven't fully contemplated. Ultimately the more self sufficient people will start to create smaller, more efficient communities while discarding people who aren't as useful. Those discarded will revolt, and a good many of them will be government. This will precipitate violence that will undermine top down authorities. The pinch point will be internet access as everyone denied access cannot take seriously that they are included in the "system" and those in control of it will experience greater and greater cognitive dissonance.
Consider the police officer who has to observe his siblings be arrested or detained and the constantly increasing pressure to defy authority. These types of interpersonal relations will be exponential variables in declining social systems.
If you can't farm, build, or kill, there isn't much of a future for you as those who pretend to be able to solve declining quality of life due to declining EROEI will have no use for you, and neither will anyone dissenting.
@@ricos1497 I agree, grass roots solutions are not best described as solutions rolled out on a grand scale. Its not quite what I meant, but you made a good point. Thanks.
The reason I used re generative ag as an example is because it shows (at least from my perspective) how big monied interests in fossil fuels based chemiculture industry have suppressed the knowledge of re generative ag. I separate the parts of the words here because in the past when I wrote those words here on this platform, my comments always get censored.
Whether grass roots solutions are censored by a dictator who wants everyone to only use their solutions, or whether the grass roots solutions are suppressed by large corporations that don't want things to change, the end result is the same. Top down control that prevents effective solutions is the main problem we face in my opinion.
Agreed. It's so much better to give people as much freedom as possible to start solving problems on a local scale, from the ground up. I do think there's some room for large-scale government action when it comes to limiting corporations, since in a lot of ways they're also a small group of uninformed tyrants acting in their own interests that individuals can't really compete with. So I see regulating them as a necessary part of getting massive unwieldy power structures off of people's backs so they'll have the freedom they need to solve their problems in the best ways.
Dude, you misunderstood what knobs do. What you are talking about are _gauges_. Knobs are used to control things, and those are what I'm interested in. What are the inputs we can tune to change outputs?
You should read Ishmael, The Story of B, and My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. In these books he reveals what "inputs" the people of our culture are made to believe which results in the "output" of being forced to live in a way that's causing the destruction of the world. The third book goes into how to change these inputs.
The explanations in these books are written in the form of dialog between characters and are very engaging to read. Highly recommended.
21:02 I'd just like to point out that if you're willing to interview a guy like Ian McGilchrist then David Wengrow definitely shouldn't be off the table.
Quite an interesting way of breaking it down: The future will soon look more like the past before the "carbon pulse", as you so graphically express the "phenomenon"; --indeed, the Present already looks like the past!!
How sad it is that we have not learned a thing from our thousands of years of previous history. We might not even make it past such "pulse": History shows that after periods of stability and relative affluence, hardship first and then war, always follow (only, this time it will be the "last war" -the "after carbon-pulse" war, with war-toys from "the pulse Era"). Instead of having used the relative advantage created by Science and Reason and Philosophy and Art + the affluence derived of easily available cheap energy, we have trashed everything... then we shall kill each other, as well as millions of species with whom we pretended to share this planet, whom we had been killing since the Pleistocene... (planet of the stupid apes, planet pigsty).
No problem with your analysis. The thought leaders just can't say this. Who wants to go down with the ship anymore? Rescue is always on the horizon.
Thank you Nate. I have been thinking of all those you said, you are a master in summarising, condensing information. It is the social, the connectivity issue we have to emphasise most. [The present rule has been dividing us (with nationalism, racism, supremacy, exploitation). they have even succeeded to raise the sex battle in entirely new level and divide the personal identification] So we start with a handicap here. Just some side notes: what happens in {saudi Arabia, Kenya, Philippines, Brazil, ...} does not stay there at all. We will collectively suffer the pain of luck of elementary wisdom of the rich. Stay well, have a good catch
Excellent Nate, I agree. Now, there is a silent voice in the background asking: why? Why there's going to be a simplification? What is the drive?
My answer for this is the increasing use of AI and automation and the less and less need for human work.
In a socio-economic environment where the worth of a human is established by ones' economical value, AI is going to outcompete and outperform every human in almost every way. There is not going to be any need for us. Some will still bring value but the vast majority will have to relearn how to leave out of the land and be self sufficient.
This also is a preventive measure in a world which has a great potential for social unrest not only from a multipolar world perspective (which pose right now a very big danger) but also from a civil chaos perspective: civil war, internal war.
I do want to state this, and I will say it till the end of my life: the reason for human becoming irrelevant bears a name: Capitalism. Capitalism is a pyramidal economical system which can go on only as long as there is an infinite amount of resources. Earth is not boundless.
I do believe on the other hand that you are a good human being, I do believe that you wish to do good but, you hold something back ... still, maybe is better that you do.
Agree with many of these comments. When I listen to Nate and guests mind and heart assent from ancestral DNA to intellect to senses. When I watch the current political debates in UK and US I wince and pull up the duvet. They are like a dangerous cosmic joke. Nate is my go to for sanity along with Manda Scott, Accidental Gods podcast.
Nate is by far more left on the spectrum than me , and im not as fearful of climate as he is but this was a good list.
...just a point, the burden and responsability of debt should not only be on the lender and not only on the borrower... this is because at some point the lender has to realize he made a bad deal as well and should take a loss as well....after all at some point there won't be resources to pay back all debt!
It wasn't long ago that Congress passed legislation making it illegal to bankrupt credit card debt. The story was the banks were going broke. What a joke. When the government decided to let banks do student loans it came with the problem, you can't bankrupt debt to the government. Banks are too big to fail. Citizens are too weak to matter.
Extremely intersting. Thank you for your analysis
there is an error on the link in the description
Great list, Nate but most importantly I deeply appreciate that you are trying to avert WW3. I agree this needs to be a top priority.
Nije ni prvi još završio..❤❤❤
We are going to live in the world of the in-between for a while
Great stuff, as usual, Nate. One knob has me stumped. Can someone help me understand how Apathy and Goodness are opposites? I may be just getting hung up on the words. Is Nate really saying, move from (individualistic or antisocial) to pro social?
Intelligent and wise control nobs Nate, I’ll try and dial a few within my community and where I travel, the hard part will be accepting that most people believe someone else is going to solve their problems and ultimately the world’s problems, and paradoxes, be they ecological, energy, economic or health ones. John F Kennedy - ““Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country”🤔
I agree with this lot ^^
Realworld a region that tries to become sustainable has to shrink in most cases. Population, consumption, production. This will set up situation we may be watching in Ukraine where a neighboring power which simply doesn't care about any of these concerns will just burn its own resources and population to grab more land resources and population. Like Russia is doing now. Yes it's a ponzi scheme but that won't help the regions taken over. Which requires the response we see: rearming and wasting social capital to fight a real war against raw imperialist expansionism.
Sawyer's excellent translation of Sun Tzu's Art of War is a good reminder of what this reality looks like. While Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching (most translations awful, Legge's original still good) has always covered what folowing, and not following, the Way actually looks like.
Humans aren't good at rational social planning unfortunately and consumption based economic systems have no dial position that is negative so they resist. And when they convert economic to political power you end up with debacles like US industrial medical system worst outcomes for most money, or Germany's automotive industry diesel emissions fraud.
The "freest times" can be seen as the "most careless times"
In the coming decades? Have you listened to the news lately. Dams are failing for one. None of them, like almost all infrastructure, are designed for a warmer climate. Change is rapid enough that infrastructure cannot hope to last. The pivot that matters is how sharply and deeply modernity is torn apart by extremity.
And let's not forget the human body also isn't designed for such a warmer climat either.
I don't think "control knobs" is the right analogy. Control knobs imply an underlying control system stimulated by input from an interfacing switch, potentiometer, or valve that can be intentionally manipulated by a sentient "controller" with access to the knob. Most of the parameters are the result of more fundamental choices, impulses, and activities. Perhaps a better analogy is something more like blood work parameters which are the result of diet, exercise, stress, toxic exposure, rest, genetics, inner biome, sunlight, thermal stimuli, supplements, medications, infections, surgical interventions, organ health, etc.
A machine paradigm analogy may not be the best place to start to address an imbalance in Gia attributable to the excesses of a machine paradigm noosphere.
Hopefully education about money and direction of society is going to enter the everyday conversation soon, everybody talks up to a point that doesn't seem to go past today, we need more future talk.
Fun. I'm reading The Dawn of Everything as of now. I completely agree with the critique you have received. The authors are good at writing and it's an.intetesting read but their politics completely take over the narrative. I can understand having issues with neo-evolutionism and determinism but the Davids completely ignore the role of natural imits and constraints on human history. Just because it looks bleak.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Let's take that unassailable truth and bump it up to the next level. Once you take action, this begins a process that leads to other actions, ideas, concepts, alternative methods and theory, and my current focus on developing paradigms for adaptation.
For example, I - along with millions of others - stood up and said, "No, I am NOT going to go to Vietnam to kill innocent villagers." That simple refusal led to antiwar activism, working on alternatives, analysis and criticism of the US socio/economic/political system, back to the land, analysis of the foundations of state-level society in general and in specifics, a historical/anthropological look at peasantry, market gardening, developing spreadsheets to compare and contrast energy use of human labor vs. fossil energy slaves, research on landraces, development of new varieties of food crops, raising other people's children, writing books on alternatives, and a whole bunch of other things. And I am not unique. There are a whole bunch of old snaggle-toothed hippies who have done even better. You should listen to them. But most of all, everyone needs to take action. Going to meetings and discussing how bad things are is worthless. You need to take action.
Dialing it down is a good first step. Valid alternatives start with rejecting business as usual.
I wonder which of those things are not clear to politicians and the general public? And if they are, why is everyone acting like nothing is going to change?
None of these things are clear to politicians, nor do they care.
Without a Resource Based Economy humanity will reach oblivion in the next 60-80 years.
go pack go
Frankly Suggestion: you've often mentioned that the next 2 decades (you projected -30% in living standard) will be epically life changing but I'm failing to see how. Based on your own projections, Art Berman's projections as well as the hubbard curve, isn't the hardest part of that the bottom right section which won't happen for another 100 years? what am i missing?
When you open with "I've been working to avoid WWIII" you demonstrate a lovely degree of psychosis. But sure, if it makes you feel like you matter, go for it.
You’re right- I should’ve said “miserably failing as I and millions of other anti-war activists have been experiencing recently”. In any case, these aren’t scripted- I’m just being honest about my work and thoughts. And yes I am continuing to have calls and meetings in hope of influencing a deescalation in Ukraine- we need peace for any longer term viable cultural responses to ecological crisis
Since Nuremberg, war of aggression has been regarded as the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
Yes - The 'politics of scarcity' (Odum) heavily inform general socio-political trends as an ecologically determinist factor in the process of accelerating decline and collapse. Yes - we should give voice to our concerns - however as much as we might try to raise awareness as to the USA's dangerous and provocative meddling in Ukraine, we must recognise that the forces and momentum propelling us toward some kind of global conflict are enormous, entrenched, and ideological. Plan for a New American Century? Unlikely..... All the same it remains the plan. #PNAC #JustCollapse
I wonder if old computers like the commodore 64 will become useful again as complexity unwinds
Some great stuff in here, and some that is a bit over simplistic; and what Nate says is the very probable outcome of "business as usual", which is why we need to fundamentally change how systems work. We don't need to be short of energy, and we do need to massively reduce our use of fossil carbon. Solar power works, and we need better cheaper batteries, and they are coming.
But the idea that we can measure value from making profit in markets - in the presence of AI and automation - that idea fails. We need to rethink the ways in which we measure value.
And most of what Nate talked about is just good common sense. I started today doing voluntary work at an ecological site, then played golf, then came home and played fetch the ball with the dog. Didn't have to go far to do any of them, Not a lot of energy and materials used. Good social time at golf.
The future doesn't have to be worse than the present, but without some fundamental changes, it very likely will be.
I think we have a reasonable chance of making those changes, and we need more people starting doing that - really soon.
Interest and inflation based monetary systems are not viable. “printing money” isn’t applicable to a digital ledger money world. The bloat in credit money creation is still the central problem, see interest and inflation bound monetary system.
The last 70 years of planned obsolescence with economists ignoring the depreciation of consumer garbage helped a lot.
What is Net Domestic Product?
These aren't really "control knobs", more like output measures... But cool takes!
Lack of control knobs.
You focus on the ‘carbon pulse’ but a more important driver for these changes is the reduction in US overseas interest.
The US provided safe passage for goods in return for support from its post war allies but with the fall of the iron curtain the US has no interest to provide that carrot to keep allies between it and the USSR. So most of your multiple knobs boil down to deglobalisation primarily and fossil fuel becoming less available (although that has really not really kicked in yet)
The riots in Kenya over a new tax on plastic goods is indicative of what will happen everywhere, unfortunately. People are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to deal with this crisis, especially when they don't believe other people around the world are making equivalent sacrifices. I just don't see that ever changing.
Excellent observation. Who will volunteer to give up a privilege? Who will volunteer to give up their life? This may be a coming thing though. Suicide and self immolation seems like a radical notion at this time but maybe when the consumer craze is through, most humans will fail to see why existence is ballyhooed.
Like having full knowledge of the negative effects of man's industrial activities on ecology and the environment yet chosing to continue to take costly flights to places far and wide for leisurely breaks. People are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to deal with this crisis - they have higher priorities.
Simpler: Prevention rather than cure. But simple doesn't mean easy.
And focusing on life happens to be much more rewarding than focusing on power. It's a virtuous circle. Just growing food (responsibly) has so many ripple effects on humans and nature.
More local, less global. More human community and connection, fewer rugged individualists living like princes and princesses.
Well done! But you leave out world human population. Don't you think that soon that will begin to decrease, and as environmental catastrophes become more frequent and more intense there will be huge die-offs? Also migrations of large populations will become a permanent and an increasing feature of the human world in the decades ahead.
Good points. All talk of cooperation is off the table when a community is invaded by more poor people. Especially if they are from a different tribe. So many guns, so many targets, so little self restraint in the face of populism and fear.
Yes, recent events only confirm that this will be a very real problem in the early stages of the Great Simplification.
One breath at a time. Stay in the moment.. An impossible debt will never be repaid. What ! ? Me worry. AEN ❤❤
Hey Nate I want to quote you cirrectly, in an earlier GS episode, I think i heard you say. " It takes 40% of our energy captured to transport the energy materials? T or F? Did I misunderstand?
Wellcome to the emerging bureaucracy of post-growth future. What comes next, a hierarchical diagram with heads of offices and the associated procedures?
Enjoy fishing, we'll miss your wisdom but you need to reboot as well. So take your time and thanks again.
...I was trying to explain some of this to a younger person who said "why worry if you won't live through it?"... maybe considering I have a quarter of a century to go...I suspect I might see ugly things continue developing but the root causes probably won't be evident to many.... I guess in general we kind of look into our short term well being... and little thought if any is given to how future generations will cope... the hope I believe is for the very young to feel that this will affect them in a grave manor in their lifetimes. Population size I believe is a real factor, and although growing slower, if present rate of fertility is mantained the world (2.41 per child bearing person) population will double by century's end and will be 15 times larger by 2200!...fortunately the rate is going down though slowly. . So we should celebrate that birth rates are going down, but not fast enough... most of those alive today will still be here by 2050....in the meantime we must consume much less!
Ahh, the old annual flying up North for leisure hunting.
Nate, how much of our harvest do you think we've lost already this year?
You kept saying 10 instead of 20. But thanks for all you do.
I have to disagree on your point regarding whether or not we need written information to help us understand whether or not we can live together in peace and equality. If we just go forward doing the best we can with no data on what allowed past societies to live more or less peacefully or equally without fossil fuels, we will be going into the future blind to what we need to do to make this work. We can’t afford that.
Regarding the book though, I agree, the authors have a human exceptionalism bias and ignore the material conditions that shaped past societies. They also ignore the data we have about immediate-return hunter gatherer societies, which have been remarkably egalitarian. They also tend to recognize their ecological limits better than agrarian societies. I highly recommend you ask your anthropologist friends about them and look into existing ethnographies regarding them and their strict pro-social norms.
Hi Nate, as a thinker, you have such a large view view on a number of things. I believe however, that you are missing one big knob: demography. There was an article in the NYTimes "The World’s Population May Peak in Your Lifetime. What Happens Next?". There is a curve in there that shows that in less than two centuries, the global population will be less that 1 billion people. There is a global demographic transition taking place.
This adds up to the human predicament as you say because, decreasing society means less people to think and to make all the good things even if it will be a relief for the environement. When on average people are older, they are stistically less prone to pro-social behaviors and cooperation. I believe that you might want to include these facts into your analysis.
Bolstering Nate's phasing "We are going to need community again" : I share here a research report from last week's in Science magazine (pub of AAAS) by Testard et al. from the U of Penn entitled "Ecological Disturbance Alters the Adaptive Benefits of Social Ties". As summed up in the Abstract, before a category 4 hurricane that devastated a population of Rhesus Macaques (a proxy for humans) that endured a devastating category 4 hurricane, social tolerance among them did Not predict individual survival, but after the shock of that event, it did, "revealing a shift in the adaptive function of sociality"
The tree, the whole tree and nothing but the tree.
Some will disagree
But of history, the hero cut them down, there is no hero who saves things.
Of ending war, there is no hero who prevented it.
Of ending poverty, there is no hero that ended it.
Of imagination, there is no hero who is quiet and of village, there is only the hero of selfish destruction and unneeded, unasked for, correction.
Judgement is easy, it’s why people judge.
Turn off the ignition of the rocket class and the praise of the machine in an atmosphere thinner than a pencil on a soccer ball.
Walking to work is a pilgrimage of nature forgotten in the zombie machine of a binary double bind world.
The machine was to give us time of play, now only a weapon of rage and pastiche.
Ok, pastiche: the art of memetic habits we can’t break or have forgotten how to break with educated individualism to out compete each other, while living in the wake of wasted friendships, wasted lives and the stepping on others which is called a ladder, but was other humans we objectified as rungs.
A world of possibilities, reduced by the words of nature, pretending to be, but made of the plastic juggernaut.
Endless growth of machines.
Jevons efficiency paradox that ignores an initiative idea that uses millions if not billions of collective inputs which of each influence, uses more energy than the inventions claim of efficiency can ever get back.
Gravity of thought.
A rocket ship: the dirigible inflated metal balloon, so fragile yet with the appearance of solidity, sold by a slick salesman without his mother’s voice to stop him and his circus of atrophied humans, from Olympic to near death hospitalization and a weak smile from total corporate sterility and silenced by contract.
“Oh gosh, I need to throw up, this space walk smells so toxic of burning plastic, I can’t breathe”.
Facts, or fiction, Barbie or Ken?
Bouncy castle on Mars?
"but this one goes to 11"
As material good become more scarce sadly the volume knob of the importance of them socially will go up .
Good luck with the whole 'awe' business. There's going to be plenty of critique-ing when the crunch comes. Way too many scores to settle, as it were. People are pretty cowed by and large by their socioeconomic betters. But when the mighty have finally fallen, as part of this great simplification, if that's how it plays out, I wouldn't count on being graciously received and forgiven by the hitherto trodden-upon. It's only the ready availability of all those cheap creature comforts on demand that have the kept masses relatively harmless and occupied and blaming themselves up to now. You take those away from them and you're going to see just how discontented society's discontents can be. That's what I would predict.
I’d like some idea why Elon musk seems to believe we have no material shortages or population issues.
Sorry but I disagree that you're living in a democraty inside USA. In facts it is only a plutocracy where the rules defining it are worse than those of a banana republic: generalized "gerrymandering" where the boundaries of electoral districts are established by the elected representatives themselves according to the areas where they receive the most votes. Some take bizarre forms. A practice worthy of the worst diets on the planet. The electoral enumeration entrusted to private firms that "forget" to enumerate whole sections of the population discriminating against them in a partisan manner. The distribution of polling places, some of which are up to hundreds of kilometres away from the voters they are to serve. "Voting machines" of all kinds, provided by private companies in the pay of elected officials, making it even more difficult to carry out real control. The distribution of 2 senators per state, so that Wyoming with a population of 563,626 in 2010 can elect as many senators as California with nearly 40,000,000 inhabitants. The "grand electors", a regime imposed by the "founding fathers" to screen the expected excesses of the "populace". But above all, a democratic system where it is the billionaires who make the law through the unrestricted financing of electoral campaigns, making elected officials their only emissaries, according to the well-known adage: "tell me who pays you, I will tell you who you belong to".
Where’s your foiled hat?
The biggest control knob for civilized humanity into the future; population. Aging demographics is already in play to reduce global population. The second impact largely out of human control is depletion of commodity resources especially energy, fertilizers and food production will further negatively impact population.
How well that is managed will determine how well civilised humanity survives into next century. I have little faith that any civilized society will survive into next century but humanity may. But global warming will continue through next century even though fossil fuels will be depleted.
I would add: find more ways to get into flow in your daily life
Have tremendous respect for your frank wisdom. Have probably read and studied your writings and content multiple times. Sometimes, though, your persona as an interviewer and a wise human in Frankly creates a bit of cognitive dissonance in my mind. But, any who, I was just wondering, with respect to your recent visit to India, did it affect your views, something akin to Beatles' case?