...Nate... I gotta say... as an Architect who has been trying to get to grips with all these problems over the past twenty years, who has read every paper, historical and philosophical book he could get his hands on looking for answers, and has gotten very ill trying to carry all these issues (along with the expectation of needing to design solutions)... you are right, these podcasts are an absolute balm... thank you so so much, and for the kind words from Kate, there are indeed people out here trying who nobody knows who they are... but are trying regardless.
Maybe he should try harder to tell the truth, America has over a thousand years of clean natural gas in the ground, over 300 years of coal, uranium mines bigger than some states for nuclear power and oceans of oil under the ground the government refuses to allow the oil companies to drill on. America is very far from running out of power or energy, America exports power and energy and yes, oil.
As a Petroleum Engineer who modeled a solar heated house for the Pacific North West in 1975, I understand exactly what you mean. Petroleum is a finite resource and Solar and Wind will not become viable alternatives due to the life expectancy of the equipment and the lack of cost effective storage. Next Gen Nuclear is an option for electricity generation and a lot of the marine industry. For the rest, synthetic diesel (and gasoline) can fill in the rest while technology in every field improves. China is looking at a 300 to 500 million drop in population over the next 40? years and the west has been below replacement birth rates for decades. Baring nuclear or germ warfare, things will start to normalize in a multigenerational time frame. China is well in to a financial crisis or potential collapse and how China deals with this over the next few years will give us an indication as to how the world debt situation should be dealt with and how bad things might get. One issue that concerns me greatly is in an electric only world world is the lack of redundancy. If (when) the grid fails, people freeze , starve, or die of thirst. Regards
The planet does not care, it does not need servicing. It works just as well with us as without us. It has no motivations; it has no feelings; it has no purpose. You are confusing the real cares of humans, i.e. your cares and my cares as well as the cares of the other 8 billion people inhabiting the planet with the planet itself and some assumed proper destiny for it, the planet we embody with some mythological Gaia spirit . The planet does not feel pain when we disembowel it for what we assign as its riches and its value. The planet has no regard for these things, neither do the untold trillions of the other individual plants and animals. They do not worry about the future. Only humans do this. We are doomed, we are doomed as individuals, we are doomed as a species, and the planet we live on is doomed. Humans will all die and our species will go extinct. This is unavoidable. Of all of the species that have ever lived on the Earth all but an infinitesimally tiny residue of surviving species that have mutated sufficiently to live in the here and now have all gone to dust. In this regard we are no different. We have lost the faith of our fathers and are trying to supplant it with one that is much inferior to theirs. Humans show far greater restraint when fighting for their human masters, when fighting for some assumed purpose they assign to the universe all such restraint is betrayal of their own limited perception of infinity. Do not worry about the future, our leaders will show us the way to our own destruction, and those clever enough to fool us with their BS all will gain what they rightfully have inherited.
Nate, I hope that the HBO thing works out because that would instantly quadruple your audience. Everyone listening here knows how important it is that your message reaches as many eyes and ears as possible.
The Great Simplification could easily be seen as one of our "natural resources" that is NOT diminishing. It has been an oasis of deliberative sense-making amidst the intellectual desert we call Capitol Hill. Good-hearted sense-makers like Nate Hagens and his many brilliant guests stand in stark contrast to the spoon-fed message coming from the status quo.
Thanks for your commitment and engagement in these core issues. I am a 21year old French boy and your podcasts have been unbelievable and the greatest source of education to understand how the world works. Much love and support !
If I could recommend anything to my 21 year old self (not that I’d listen ;) is learn all the practical skills that you can. And make and keep as many meaningful relationships as you can. Good luck young man 🙏🏻
Thank you Kate and Nate, ❤ you both. Regarding MMT. If you believe in Fiat and that Fiat can work then MMT with a universal basic income for the poor sounds like utopia. But if you think about it, it's fate is similar to any Fiat currency. It must eventually realize its true value - which has to be zero. No fiat currency has ever succeeded - all eventually fail because humans in government cannot resist the temptation to debase and debauch them. Any currency, if made too abundant, will result in hyperinflation. Even silver lost most of it's value when Christopher Columbus and his thugs invaded South America and found a mountain of 40 % silver-rich ore in Bolivia which they exploited with profideous cruelty to the natives. Spain became awash in silver and its perceived value fell off a precipice. What causes hyperinflation is not the cost of real biophysical stuff going up but currency losing value because it is too abundant. What makes precious metals hold their value is their huge embedded energy content and associated scarcity. It takes about 100 MWh of energy to produce a kilogram of gold. That's enough electricity equivalent to run my families household for about 17 years. No government can print gold and silver the way they can print Fiat into oblivion. You might think of inviting a chap by the name of Steve St. Angelo from the SRS Rocco report onto your podcast to discuss this vital concept of embedded energy as the backbone of enduring wealth preservation. I know this isn't what people want to hear but I believe it's the inconvenient truth. We need to deal with reality head on and stop searching for quick fixes. If we don't reality will deal with us. Thomas Malthus correctly pointed out, in his essay on human population, that hand outs to the poor will never eliminate poverty - this just transfers poverty onto the next poorest rung of the economic ladder. We live on a finite planet. All wealth comes from the Earth. Wealth is a zero sum game.
This is one of the best conversation on this Podcast... The idea of pro social prepping is a true gift to handle the darkness that surrounds these topics. In fact this conversation just rolled from one amazing point to another and put together really was a loving embrace and has moved me from the depression that has settled on my soul to acceptance of the future and the reality we face.... The grief part of the emotional response to these topics can be mitigated by acceptance and i have come to understand the Buddha and other wisdom teachings in far greater detail through these topics and these conversations... So i can't thank you enough Nate and Kate ....everytime i listen to Kate i get such a warm loving feeling from her intellect and her warm heart. I hope we choose to bend .... ❤
Nate, there is such integrity in the way you have offered these podcasts from the heart and free of charge. If you are looking for volunteers to do tasks to help keep this going please let us know how best to express interest.
Nate and Kate flip the script. What an incredible way to celebrate 100! As a fellow podcaster couldn't relate more with the complexity of convos and creating space for innovative ideas to shine and connect the brightest responses to our polycrisis. CONGRATS - we are rooting for you.
Why do I enjoy these podcasts so much despite the grim message? Because it's a rare and great thing to see people with different opinions treat each other with respect
I came across this podcast, this episode, today, and it was a pleasant discovery. Nate seems to be a man full of thoughtful wisdom, who understands we cannot just run with simplified activist solutions when we want to solve the challenges we are facing. Simplified solutions will end in economic collapse. While that might benefit the climate, it will definitely not benefit the environment. The idea that we need global control of the development is also dangerous. Such attempts always fail. Dictatorious leaders will never be smarter than the intelligence of distributed effort. Instead set up rewards for the proper goals, and let the distributed intelligence work at it. Great podcast all in all. I'm subscribing.
My respect and admiration for you and your work grew while listening to this entire podcast. As a 66 year old white Canadian man, I can relate to your appropriate humility and certainty about some items. The acceptance stage of grief for the ongoing death of nature is one of the things we share. Brilliant work Nate. ❤
The messages are strong and clear as well as thought provoking. Thank you Nate and guests (Kate included) for sharing your wisdom and heartfelt intentions for guiding us towards a different paradigm. A paradigm with broader and deeper considerations for the natural world and our role within it.
I loved this conversation, and generally get excited every time you pull back the curtain about the decisions behind making the podcast. It's vulnerable and it respects the audience. I agree that you're better at listening, letting the guest have the floor and asking good questions to draw out even more.
The 4 horsemen. The challenges on one screen. Everyone with a special skill set can easily “slice off a chunk” and focus on their part. You have done an incredible function of organizing all this chaos. Thank you sir!
Nate, you and Kate are great together! I’ve been watching your podcast for the last year and sharing it with my friends and family. You help us to think seriously about inevitable changes that are coming because of humans having overshot our planetary resources. I appreciate that I get to think along with you and your guests about how I as an individual can deal with these changes, and how societies can help or hinder the process. I agree with Sir David King that we need you to keep doing your podcast even up to 1000!!!
Such a great one! Thanks Kate for really opening a space for Nate to drill down into the understanding he’s accumulated during not only his lifetime, but specifically here in the last 100 episodes! Bravo Nate, this was one of my favorite episodes and I’ve enjoyed many!! Thank you!! I can see and hear the personal toll it’s taking from you to do this work, so again thank you! It’s very important that you do it, as long as you can.
"The "gold-plated super-organism", you quipped. I have come to recognize you as a benignly-intentioned, wise human being but I never realized that you were a poet too! Well said!
Mr. Nate, I found your channel from the Canadian Prepper channel, I love both these channels, gotta alot to catch up on your videos, thank you Nate, JD lex ky
I'm about halfway through and enjoying this so far. Nate, have you considered reaching out to David Wengrow? The Dawn of Everything has some stuff to say about deep history and the stories we tell ourselves about what is inevitable for us as a species. I personally think like you, that some form of, let's say "crash" is basically baked in, and it will be a doozy. And for those who want to stay and fight the good fight to try to have less-bad futures, I applaud them and think they should keep doing what they think is best, but I think there should also be space for "deep preppers" or maybe something like what's been called "doomer optimists"--people who look at the world and ask, "If we assume that this crash will occur, what can we set in motion now that will give chances to something less insane in a few hundred years?" I think that the ecovillage movement has something to contribute to this. I think we need to make a different branch of the tech culture that leans more on decentralized self-sufficiency, rather than always pushing down marginal costs through mass centralized production. Megaprojects and centralized production may have their place, but that place shouldn't be our default.
David passed away with covid, did he not a few years back? Steve is still alive. Archeologists. They wrote "The Dawn of Everything," together and David was in the wall street advocating for change in Zigatti Park in New York City.
@@cheri238 So The Dawn of Everything was written by two Davids. There was David Graeber who is the activist you're thinking of, who also wrote some good stuff on "Bullshit Jobs" and wrote another great book, "Debt: The First 5,000 Years". He was an anthropologist and died during the early pandemic, though the relationship to COVID isn't clear. David Wengrow is an archaeologist and is still alive and talking about the book.
Dougald Hine also talks about leaving good ruins, I loved the round table episode with him. Shaun Chamberlin is another good example of living in a community focused doomer-optimist lifestyle. Can't remember if he's been on Nate's podcast or not... his book from David Flemming's work is brilliant & I reread it often.
This is the first episode that I've watched--and it is so uplifting. This is stuff I have thought about my whole life, and it is so soothing to see someone talk about it in an intelligent and meaningful way. You mentioned how seeing others in person who are also working on bits and pieces of the metacrisis was helpful, and I think for me watching your podcast on youtube does the same thing. As a Vermonter I can relate so much to having a connection to animals, that then gets replaced with status seeking and wealth accumulation...that leads you right back to a humbler and more rural life. Maybe there's more of us than I realized. Thank you.
Every time you have Kate Raworth on the program it makes me want to eat donuts. But other than that, another great show. Good idea being the interviewee for your 100th episode.
Thanks Nate and Kate for a great conversation. Nate at around 1:50:10 you asked for help to see the things you cannot. I'm not sure if these words will work, but in 1978, when the paperback version of Selfish Gene was released, I bought a copy, and read it cover to cover twice in a 24 hour period. It was such a great collection of threads of enquiry, that it became clear to me then that complex life is founded on cooperation. But Richard cannot see it (David Sloan Wilson sees most of it). But it gets much deeper. When you can abstract back to what is it that defines life, it is now clear that life is defined as: systems capable of searching the possible for the survivable. The mechanism of search that biology has used for the most part, has been replication with variation, and the differential survival of variants in differing contexts has been the thing that defined the survivable. That need for cooperation, is at every level of complexity. And for cooperation to survive it must be able to detect and counter cheating strategies (otherwise the cheats win). So mammals have multiple levels of anti cheating strategies - even rat pups have to "play fair" or the other pups wont play. This recursive concept of cooperation is foundational to complexity both emerging and surviving. The details of the sorts of contexts where it can initially emerge are fascinating, it requires contexts where external threats overwhelm the threats from other members of your own population, and cooperation is needed to survive those external threats. So selection is always happening at individual and group levels. Search is happening at both levels. We now have access to new mechanisms of search. We can model things in our minds, we can think through possibilities and contexts and consequences; and do a lot of filtering before committing to instantiating anything in reality. But our models of reality are so simplistic - necessarily. Our perceptions are such simplistic representations of whatever objective reality is, and the models of reality that we subconsciously construct as a result are so simple, that experientially, we get to experience a world that is much more simple than the the real one we exist in. Our modern instruments can prove that too us, if we take the time and effort to look. So while we are this entirely new form of life, with entirely new mechanism of search, that search is happening in a vastly simplified model of whatever reality actually is, within our brains, and that leads us to take actions within that vastly more complex reality - and we wonder why it doesn't always (or often) work out as expected, I love Elon's general approach to overcoming that systemic issue - that of fail fast, fail early. Have ideas, then test them, as rapidly as possible. Observe and learn. Dave Snowden uses the approach of "multiple safe to fail experiments". What we need, is to encourage such experimentation; but the economic and political systems discourage them, because they can be disruptive to existing structures, existing power and privilege. I completely agree with Kate and Elinor that we need our systems to meet the reasonable needs of everyone, and that demands cooperation and responsibility from all of us. This over-simplistic nonsense that competition is always good, and always leads to optimal outcomes - is just that - nonsense - over simplistic dogma - but being right is often more important to people than being accurate - so learning often doesn't happen. As you have noted many times, economic efficiency leads to systemic fragility - but it is much deeper than that. Competition tends to drive systems towards some local minima on the available complexity landscape. That is antithetical to both freedom and search and thus life itself. When you can see life as Search, then being able to go beyond the known (freedom) is a fundamental aspect of Search, and thus of life itself. It is not, cannot be, risk free; and if done responsibly, is the least risk option available. But freedom without responsibility is also necessarily self terminating, it ends up destroying the very constraints that made that level of complexity possible. We can learn to do more with less. My first computer I built from an ETI660 kit, and was based on an RCA COSMAC chipset, and had 512 bytes of RAM. I was in a reasonably well paying job at the time, and it cost two months of my salary. Today I can buy a system that is a million times as powerful for less than an hours work, even if I am on minimum wage. Some things are getting much more powerful, on far less power. I used to carry a 2lb bag of carbide, for my miners lamp, when tramping. Now an LED head torch weighs a few ounces and lasts as long, and recharges from a tiny solar panel during the day. We have all the tools to meet the reasonable needs of all; but the economic and political systems will not allow it; because they have been invaded and dominated by cheating agents. If cells in our bodies stop cooperating and start taking excess resources, we have a name for that - cancer - and we either get rid of it, or it is terminal. This mythology, that competition can solve all issues, and is a general good, is cancerous nonsense. Yes energy is important, and yes our systems need to change to stop using fossil carbon; and that is technically possible, but not under current economic or political dogma. We need more freedom, more diversity, more responsibility, more cooperation.
A thoughtful long riff on seeing the notimmediatelyobvious, to Nate at least. Your logic doesn't carry the day tho when you declare things as nonsense because they are nonsense. Try pushing on that to hte next level. And how to cultivate more freedom, more diversity, more responsibility, more cooperation? Trial and error search? I agree that these should be on the short list, tho have not done the harder work of discerning if this is the sufficient few to ensure survival. Like, what about Love?
@@IanGrahamOld99 Hi Ian, From my perspective, Love is a very useful heuristic, particularly in maintaining cooperation. Search is a deeply complex topic, and there was a very interesting proof that came out of theory of search about 15 years ago - that for a fully loaded processor, the most efficient search possible is the fully fully random search. Exactly how one attempts to approximate random search in neural networks as necessarily heavily biased as ours are is another interesting topic, and evolution seems to have approximated it reasonably well in many contexts. And yes - all search necessitates some level of trial and error; and such trials are best done at small scale, in diversity, before being scaled up. And we can apply heuristic from the past to filter out those classes of error that have already be clearly identified; and sometimes there are subtleties at or beyond the limits of distinction - so not even any hard answers there, but certainly probabilities that tend to focus resource allocation. And there is definitely a need to have a substantial part of resource allocation in the random category (typically at least 30%) - David Snowden gives good theoretical justification for such allocation. Diversity is the necessary result of instantiated search, and that will always entail some level of dialectic tension between existing groups that view any diversity as threat - and the counter to that over simplification is for a necessary aspect of responsibility being to admit of the fact of strength and resilience in diversity; any form of hegemony is thus seen as an over simplification (recurs as deeply as able). So nothing fixed, nothing 100% confidence, and confidence can be very high in some contexts, sometimes very closely approximating unity.
this is an intriguing angle to 'facing the future', a way of speaking that is applicable to all life but only? self-conscious lifeforms concern themselves w ith. "Life is search" doesn't speak to my heart, I apply that in practice as it's a algorithm that, like hacking a password, just keeps on iterating, randomly or systematically. I was truly asking you if you have concluded those four qualities (cooperation etc.) are the sufficient and necessary conditions for life? And I added Love as an example of a quality that might also be necessary. Of course it depends on defining out terms: a practical def for Love is 'radical regard for other' (Simone Weil). And there may be other qualities on the short list, I haven't considered that. Thanks for the discussion. @@tedhoward2606
@@IanGrahamOld99 Hi Ian, You misunderstood me, which is not surprising, as the notion is deeply abstract, and I have been into biochemistry and computation for over 50 years, and it took me 40 or so of them to work it out. The idea of "Life as Search", applies to all levels of life, and is uniquely expressed at each level. And at each level, there are recurring themes, that need to be solved by different mechanisms. The first active search mechanism seems to have been replication with variation. This seems very probably to have been initially instantiated by RNA molecules in alkaline hydrothermal vents, most likely close to 4 billion years ago, in conditions very different from those currently present on this planet. Between that and us capable of carrying on conversations in this medium is about 10 levels of emergent complexity. And in using the term "emergent complexity" I think about that in terms that more closely align with Whitehead than with Aristotle; but I am very different from Whitehead in what I see as the underlying drivers; but the extant complexity that we face seems to be sufficiently vast as to be beyond the accurate modeling by any class of computational entity we might expect to find (biological or AGI) - the numbers are just that big. Life as Search requires only something that can replicate with variation, and some set of contexts contiguous over time, in which some subsets of such systems can survive. And each new level of complexity demands a new level of cooperation between the agents from the previous level, and new sets of cheat detect and mitigation systems to maintain that cooperation. We are the most complex form of life that we currently know of to emerge from this process. And when I say "we" in this context I mean tool using, language using, technology using, cultural, humanity. The levels of systems and processes that allow us to be us, is just mind bendingly complex (even for an autistic spectrum geeks like me); and necessarily eternally explorative (eternally going beyond the known). We are now capable of search at whole new levels, new domains, by entirely new sets of paradigms, that do not necessarily require replication with variation, and that remains a powerful algorithm in some contexts. To get to this level, we have had to embody things that are in many real senses beyond our comprehension, and to which we give essentially simplistic labels, in our faltering attempts to make explicit that which seems implicit; and we give such things labels like love, compassion, beauty, truth. We use terms like "speak to my heart" even as we know such things are not literally true, but they point in the direction of something that is undoubtedly real, but may not actually be like any conception of it extant in literature to date (in large part because we lack the tools to adequately express such complexity in any useful time). And one of the great risks we face, is that it seems beyond reasonable doubt that what we get to experience is not reality itself, but our own, personal, subconsciously created, model of whatever it is that 'objective reality" actually is. Thus what we get to experience is already vastly simplified, and we, quite understandably in that context, tend to produce simplistic models of that experience, thus doubly simplifying. And therein lies a great deal of risk. We over simplify the depths of complexity embodied within us by evolution, and over simplify our conceptual understandings of evolution as a process; leading us to multiple classes of existential level risk. Which loops me back to: The speed with which I can hold internal conversations vastly exceeds any ability to communicate with others. Hence I consistently fall woefully short of my intended abilities to communicate what I would like to - what seems both interesting and important to me.
The Kate & Nate show! This was great - a really important interview because it clarified many aspects of the Great Simplification and provided a deeper window into your Heart. Kate asked really challenging, Mega questions - deep, difficult, and prescient.And I am so glad Kate asked you the signature end-of-interview questions. My 'Magic Wand' answer has always been to change the Hearts of Human to Fall in Love with the Earth and thus to choose to live in Harmony with All Life on Earth. I was heartened to hear your answer ~ the same, but in different words. "Heaven know how we will get there; we know we will." Thank you, for everything. 🌎♥
Congratulations Nate on your 100th “The Great Simplification” podcast. liked your choice of Kate Raworth as the questioner, putting you in the hot seat. Seeing this was a 2 hour conversation did wonder how you’d hold up, as over those 100 podcasts you’ve covered a lot of subjects, but wasn’t disappointed, and you didn’t embarrass yourself by falling into the trap of hypocrisy. Having looked down through the comments got the feeling you and like minded others have built a wonderful “The Great Simplification” playground, of philosophical, ecology and biosphere swings, roundabouts, helter-skelter, but as soon as it’s left unattended it’s trashed and set on fire without any explanation, other than wanton destruction, and therein lies the problem of communication🤔
Thank you, Nate. Great idea to let Kate conduct the interview, she is a pearl with beautiful souls. Her loving, positive attitude was steering the interview towards bend. In contrast, your attitude showed signs of despair at times. You were mentioning loving certain things and not being able to do them, because of time. That statement didn't resonate with me. When Kate asked you :what you cared about most, your answer was kind of shocking to me. There must be a number of man who have been divorced for a lesser answer. I've asked myself is this the Nate I signed up with a year ago. My heart wants to be with my dogs, but my mind is in charge here, would have been the more honest answer, Nate The monster we fight lives of consumption, beware not to be consumed by it. It hijacks your attention and ignores your heart. Your mental health depends on a soft and loving heart. There are 44,1k of souls here, and they care about your happiness, mental health state very much. Soften your heart and the answer is,,,,,,,,of course it's my wife, my dogs, my cycling and then my work I care about most. Stay sane. The body keeps the scores.
1:40:49 "who am i to tell people what to do?" Humility is the mark of a learned man.....we need more humility! I see everyone putting on a mask of confidence....even arrogance when online, becase thats what gets you noticed. But not Nate! I hope Nate gets the recognition he deserves for doing this amazing stuff!!
I own only 13 pounds of stuff. I use only 1 gallon of water a day. I walk everywhere I go. I eat a whole food plant-based diet. The city I live in is powered by renewable energy and the water is cleaned before it is returned to the ocean. My life is beyond wonderful. I am 68 years old. I left the US to live my good life. Can I do more?
Thank you for your efforts - one doesn't know what lies down the road, but your informed and unselfish efforts are inspiring - there is a proverb, "There is such a thing as destiny, but continue with your own plans - and if they are in accordance with destiny you may reap a rich reward."
Your comment led me to google this club which led me eventually to David Baum’s Substack where I read a lovely post about why you have to be a little weird to deal with collapse, then I clicked on the profile of one of the commenters on that post, and read a nice post from them about how collapse club helps them cope! And I was like wait, is this the same person who commented on Nate’s video? And it was! (You) I just thought that was neat. And just reading your post about feeling less alone and not crazy, made me feel less alone and not crazy! So thank you :)
I agree with Nate and appreciate his honesty and about the harsh reality. I think honesty not worry, about how what we say will disturb or influence people's interpretation (which we can only guess at based on our own limited view of reality). If we are to be empowered we need to be able to deal with and continually discuss the truths of our situation.
Nate, Please continue to be a conduit to witness what is. System and all. Your simplicity approach to a complex behemoth of a system is vital to ensure the breadth of it is heard and truly witnessed. We all know the severity of what's coming down the road and how sticky patch solutions may make nice sound bites but the end game it still the end game. And as you sa, bend or break, we are still not able to act as a humanity quickly enough to change the consequences of our hypercivilization's demise.
He fails to tell people that America has over a thousand years of natural gas in the ground and 300 years of coal, oceans of oil the government refuses to allow drilling, uranium fields bigger than some states for nuclear power, lol. Keep thinking he's smart, he's funny to me. He wasted his time and life concentrating on peak oil, there's oceans of oil still in the ground and under the seas.
Thanks Nate and Kate. When you were talking about rural living and solutions for those who can't live on acreage, I thought you'd mention David Holmgren. He has a lot of answers in "Retrosuburbia". We can be greening cities and suburban landscapes to huge effect. Even apartment dwellers with porches can improve their local ecology. Imagine a world where every lawn, small or vast, is converted to a functioning habitat for food, insects, birds, bats, frogs, ducks, etc.David Holmgren is an extraordinary man who walks the walk. Thanks again! Dogs rule.
I cannot say how much I appreciate your work. Knowing there are others that view the world in a similar approach as myself helps on days when things feel bleak! You like to soar high- I view things like I am using a microscope. Zooming in and zooming back out for macro and micro viewpoints! Hope to see many more episodes 🌲
I've listened to a lot of your episodes, Nate. #100 helps to get to know YOU better and is great context for learning more from you in future episodes. I appreciate you. Keep going.
Hey Nate, just finished the last exam of my college career 2 hours ago and I'm 1 hour into this wonderful post exam gift from you and Kate. I just want to let you know out of the last 9 years I've spent in college undergrad (spent 5 years with no idea what I wanted to do), none of that education will come close to the things you have taught me over the past year and how profoundly that education from you has fundamentally shifted my view of the world and the systems around us. Nor do I believe any ounce of that college education will stick with me for rest of my life like the things I have learned on this podcast will. Thank you, and keep changing the hearts and minds! The young people ARE listeners too! P.S. I'd love to see a guest who has done research on computing what equitable material consumption budgets are for an individual over their entire life for various resources we have a good understanding of on. I.E. How many kg of aluminum am I allowed to consumer over my life? I know its complicated, you'd need to model population growth, projected recycling rates, future cost of energy and how that affects what portion of the global reserve is economically viable for extraction over time (or recycling), as well as define for how many generations are we considering in our time frame... and many more things I'm sure I know nothing about and cant imagine... I understand it probably cant be done with any accuracy, but I'd just really love to see what some of those numbers would be for different materials. Why? I'm now officially an engineer (computer engineer) after today, and as I enter the workforce and am tasked with designing products that will convert natural resources into what will eventually be landfill waste... I'd really like to know just how unfair and inequitable my designs will be for future generations. I.E. making copper in PCB's hard to remove from a product or even incapable of being detected via standard recycling equipment due to the design and where it is located in the component, etc. Having metrics, even ones with massive error margins, is a starting point. This podcast deals so much with macro overshoot... but what does micro overshoot look like? I'm sure Kate's work crosses into this quite a bit too.
I enjoyed the comments interspersed throughout about the challenges of having a podcast about the meta crisis. And Nate's comments about some of his choices about letting his guests talk. I particularly learned from the discussion contrasting the podcasts and the franklies.
Bravo Nate for this 100 ! The work you're doing is really important. It may not be viewed by millions of people like it should be but it makes many people to talk about these issues in their life. This is so important to understand what is going on with the predicament. I am following you from Quebec and I will continue at least until the 1000 th episode 😁.
Kate's question "we can't all go rural" - yeah. It's great if you can live out in the country and grow your own food (until you reach that age when you start needing serious health care, then you're gonna wish you lived 15 minutes or less away from several high quality stroke care and oncology facilities 🥰). But the great simplification is likely to be much uglier for most people. Not just less vacation travel and annual gadget "upgrades" (so what), but less general mobility, foregoing better jobs because you can't get there from here, awful communal living arragements with one room SRO dwellings and shared bathrooms and kitchens, or worse, multigenerational family living, expensive energy making every part of your life smaller and darker. I'm really hoping non carbon energy tech can help us out of this mess, because I understand what simplification actually means, for most people in the West (developing countries have less far to fall, and many of those folks might see improvement in standard of living, compared to the hell they live in now, unless development collapses with spiraling energy costs).
I am oil engineer in E&P and earn my money from extraction of fossile fuel from the ground. Some years ago I realized that I would have to find another industy for my later worklife as oil & gas would be phased out however during the last two years it seems to me that the green transition has hit a wall and been derailed just because interest rates have increased a few percents and material prices have moved towards sustainable levels for the miners. So now I think the oil business is going to stay for at least 15 years more.
I have never learnt so much since watching nearly all 100 Hundred of your wonderful podcasts And still look back at some again Empowering us all to be prepared and to enjoy the simple things in our Natural world Aotearoa is with you all the way Congratulations dear Nate and all who contribute 🐝🕊🌳🐠🌊🌏💖
Been with you since the very early days. Your thoughtful exploration of the most important and complex questions has reshaped my pov and future plans. Thanks for you and your team for this important work ❤
Oh wow, Kate of Doughnut Economics. I was walking past a small book stall last week that offers donated books to raise funds for our local scout group in small town Southern Tasmania, and acquired a copy of your book. Love this podcast interview between two great people.
So grateful for your work Nate. Rarely a dull moment in the many hundreds of hours of content you and the team curate. So much wisdom here 👏 As for focus, how about resilience rather than efficiency?
(my first youtube comment) Have listened to many of these, and loved this episode. I laughed with a tear in my eye when the intro music started with Kate introducing. I look forward to more discussion about MMT (though I don't think it's a panacea). Thank you both for your work. I hope you have a refreshing holiday season
I never comment, but am grateful. I think one of your best episodes I’ve seen. ( still many to see) I’ve wanted to know more about who you are, and felt this was achieved. You lead with humility and respect, and are self aware. Be sure to take the time for yourself to just be. It’s a large burden of commitment you’ve put on yourself. Know you are doing great work and the heavy lifting in creating awareness and education. Thank you for sharing. Enjoy the journey. Don’t stop. …if you need to get away, I’ve got a great cabin on remote island you can enjoy surrounded by large fir/ cedar trees and beach on the BC coast.
Nate, I'm in Minnetonka - any groups you recommend in the area? I'm a psychologist and increasingly see more young humans preoccupied by various parts of the meta crisis...
Sir, your podcast and your perspective, your words, and your truths are bringing us all to a level that we can actually stand a chance at adapting in a better way, defending ourselves against those who do not have our best interest in mind or life in general. if that’s not the world changing and I don’t know what it is. Thank you for everything you do. It brings a . Immeasurable value.
Thanks Nate A big question around the most efficient way to live? The concept of consolidation and the best way to consolidate seems to be at the forefront. I have desires to live rurally but I’d also think it seems more logical to live in a city environment where building complexes are constructed and you get maximum heat, resources and space resources allotted for natural growth, and you can consolidate your life in a apartment complex. That seems countered to a natural way of living but if you can open up spaces for more natural growth that would seem beneficial to the population of the planet. Just curious about what to do as the best strategy.
These podcasts are revelatory. What a body of work! One thing, Nate. How about an episode on biophysical monetary policy? Don’t we need sustainable value on the other side of Seneca’s cliff? You are right about the blindness of MMT but have you linked HT Odum’s maximum power principle with natural asset value?
I'll be among the many to congratulate you on getting to 100. I came across the podcast about halfway in, episode 50 or so, and was initially gobsmacked that there were people attempting to discuss all of this on a holistic level. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to hear the eloquence of so many minds, even if we don't agree on every aspect. It's been enriching overall. May you keep reaching people, and at the very least, get them thinking.
This was excellent. Thank you Nate for doing this episode, for being vulnerable and for sharing with us a little insight into your mind. Kudos also to Kate for being a great interviewer. These conversations are so important. I've learned so much from this channel and I believe more and more people from more walks of life are beginning to acknowledge the importance and urgency. Keep up the great work.
Excellent! Thank you Nate and Kate! :-) And congratulations on 100 episodes! That being said, and of course this is just my opinion, the new civilizational system required to address 'The Metacrisis' will not involve economics as we currently understand it - currencies, financial instruments, etc. Indeed, there may not be time for a transitional phase at all but your analyses are very helpful and enjoyable. We may need to think in multiple systemic dimensions in order to propose a new civilizational system that can solve for this. I certainly hope we can bend the current system (difficult scale-back) and not break it (catastrophic collapse) though the likelihood of that outcome diminishes as the accelerationists, who control most of the corporations and thus most of the governments, are only increasing the delta. In any case, thank you so much for all that you do! It's healing therapy! MUCH LOVE!!
Congratulations! On a sidenote, the contrast between the globe depicting this beautiful blue planet and the pretty inhospitable looking "the sea is lava" model in the backgrounds is eerily symbolic for the issues at hand
Listening to this makes me want Nate to interview Roger Hallam as he is a scholar and practitioner of civil disobedience. Using the podcast terms the bend opportunity will come as or after billions are dying to starvation. I imagine it would be a uncomfortable interview but worthwhile.
Absolutely interview Roger and the other early founders of XR. Be sure to ask what's next after you get successful enough for the State to shut you down, pre-emptively arrest you, freeze your bank account, etc. Like Trudeau did to the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. Read Full Spectrum Resistance by Aric McBay and his novel Kraken Calling that attempts to answer that.
100, let's make it to a 1000. J.R. Tolkien was a great writer. Who do you like best Orwell's "1984" or Aldoux Huxley's "Brave New World." Although I love both writers, I go with Huxley's, "Brave New World?" A doozey is the correct word. The dominoes are falling all in a linear line to the gallows of depression. I love nature and animals, insects, trees, flowers, rivers and waterfalls. My grandpa was Cherokee Indian, a great example for me. I lived in NYC when Bolskey and Mike Milken and the junk bonds, the Keaton 5 was a crisis, and from recession to when the banks fell in 2008 "A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth , beauty, adventure and art." Alfred North Whitehead. We are only human. When one knows, ones doesn't know, and when one doesn't knows, then and only then , one may. Thank you, Nate and Kate your wisdom. We are all the history of all mankind. "I am the world and the world is me." The present moment is now. 🙏❤️🌍🌿🕊🎵🎶
Well said but with due respect I doubt Huxley would’ve supported the carbon credit system and who actually benefits. Perhaps one day green tech will really be clean and not rely on natural resources.
This is a wonderful interiew. I was so glad you took this format of turning the tables. You do a great job in calming my fears while remaining realistic. Thank youf ro this wonderful gift!
Your work has been instrumental in grounding my approach to my life goals and values, learning about the land, becoming sustainable and educating people etc. Thanks for the work you do.
At 59:43, Nate responds to Kate's question about bending instead of breaking. He says, "First of all, collapse is binary, it's yes, collapse or no collapse. The simplification is more of a spectrum." Nate has fallen into a common false dichotomy. Collapse is not binary. The term is on a continuum - or spectrum if you wish. As an example, Rome was collapsing in 68-69 CE and had three emperors during those two years. Another bit of evidence is the degradation of the currency during that time. Yet the fall of Rome was not completed until 476 CE, when the German chieftain Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus. Per Ian Morris in Why the West Rules - For Now (2010:Table A.1, page 628), Roman energy capture peaked at 31,000 kcal/person/day in 1 BCE/CE. It was still 30,000 in 200 CE and dropped to 28,000 in 400 CE. The energy capture only dropped to 25,000 in 800 CE. This was the depth of the Dark Ages but the plentiful supply of slaves continuing through the Dark Ages probably kept the energy capture within 80% of the peak of the Roman Empire. [For reference, Americans use about 185,000 kcal/person/day of energy of all types, down from a peak of 230,000 from 1970-2010. In France, where I live, it is about half that.] Dmitri Orlov wrote a popular book several years ago called The Five Stages of Collapse. I advocate the variable speed of collapse, which I explain further in my own books. In a nutshell, businesses dependent on fiber optic cable (like Wall Street) can collapse quickly. Main Street will be somewhat slower, especially if you know the shopkeeper and live in a small village or city. Trucks will do all they can to deliver their loads, ships will try to get to port, warehouses will continue to hold goods until physically emptied, and farmers with crops in the ground will continue to try and get their crops harvested and new ones planted. In addition to the short-term physical restraints on collapse, there is also the phenomenon of people adapting every day to new conditions. The world is not going to collapse one day before breakfast. It will take time to play out. A case can be made that millenials are already adapting to collapse (not buying houses nor cars for example). My own take on the collapse of western civilization is that it is driven by US hegemony, so we can look for the inflection point in the US. I put it at 1968, my proxy being the inflation-adjusted high point of the minimum wage at $1.00/hour. We would need to put the minimum wage at $18-25/hour today to get the same value I got for candling eggs when I was a senior in high school, paid $1.00/hour. For those of you unfamiliar with calculus, the inflection point is where the curve changes sign and changes from open-ended up to open-ended down, or vice versa. An economy can continue to grow after it has reached the inflection point, but the amount of energy needed to provide goods and services doesn't give you as much bang for your buck. This is where EROI stops being your friend. We are now on the saddle point, which is the top or bottom of the curve. In fact, looking at our daily life micro perspective, we are on a bumpy plateau on the high saddle point. The descent does NOT have to be quick nor ruthless. It is already playing out as a degeneration of modern life and getting worse every year. For me, the tipping point is when world population starts to decline. This is something Nate and his guests don't want to discuss. Bill Rees is the exception and even he is circumspect about it.
Completely agree...this needs more debate and pushback against guests...otherwise it turns into a "positve" hopium filled fever dream that loses its appeal and real world grounding.
...Nate... I gotta say... as an Architect who has been trying to get to grips with all these problems over the past twenty years, who has read every paper, historical and philosophical book he could get his hands on looking for answers, and has gotten very ill trying to carry all these issues (along with the expectation of needing to design solutions)... you are right, these podcasts are an absolute balm... thank you so so much, and for the kind words from Kate, there are indeed people out here trying who nobody knows who they are... but are trying regardless.
Wishing you well with your health! and also hopefully you can keep adding your gained knowledge and skillset into the mix.
All the best to you!!!👍
Or we have given up. Learned to love the bomb.
Maybe he should try harder to tell the truth, America has over a thousand years of clean natural gas in the ground, over 300 years of coal, uranium mines bigger than some states for nuclear power and oceans of oil under the ground the government refuses to allow the oil companies to drill on. America is very far from running out of power or energy, America exports power and energy and yes, oil.
As a Petroleum Engineer who modeled a solar heated house for the Pacific North West in 1975, I understand exactly what you mean.
Petroleum is a finite resource and Solar and Wind will not become viable alternatives due to the life expectancy of the equipment and the lack of cost effective storage.
Next Gen Nuclear is an option for electricity generation and a lot of the marine industry. For the rest, synthetic diesel (and gasoline) can fill in the rest while technology in every field improves.
China is looking at a 300 to 500 million drop in population over the next 40? years and the west has been below replacement birth rates for decades. Baring nuclear or germ warfare, things will start to normalize in a multigenerational time frame.
China is well in to a financial crisis or potential collapse and how China deals with this over the next few years will give us an indication as to how the world debt situation should be dealt with and how bad things might get.
One issue that concerns me greatly is in an electric only world world is the lack of redundancy. If (when) the grid fails, people freeze , starve, or die of thirst. Regards
Congratulations on 100 Episodes. You are doing a great service to the planet.
A great service for sure.
The planet does not care, it does not need servicing. It works just as well with us as without us. It has no motivations; it has no feelings; it has no purpose.
You are confusing the real cares of humans, i.e. your cares and my cares as well as the cares of the other 8 billion people inhabiting the planet with the planet itself and some assumed proper destiny for it, the planet we embody with some mythological Gaia spirit . The planet does not feel pain when we disembowel it for what we assign as its riches and its value. The planet has no regard for these things, neither do the untold trillions of the other individual plants and animals. They do not worry about the future. Only humans do this.
We are doomed, we are doomed as individuals, we are doomed as a species, and the planet we live on is doomed. Humans will all die and our species will go extinct. This is unavoidable. Of all of the species that have ever lived on the Earth all but an infinitesimally tiny residue of surviving species that have mutated sufficiently to live in the here and now have all gone to dust. In this regard we are no different.
We have lost the faith of our fathers and are trying to supplant it with one that is much inferior to theirs. Humans show far greater restraint when fighting for their human masters, when fighting for some assumed purpose they assign to the universe all such restraint is betrayal of their own limited perception of infinity. Do not worry about the future, our leaders will show us the way to our own destruction, and those clever enough to fool us with their BS all will gain what they rightfully have inherited.
We need a lot more Nate Hagens in the world,
yeahh
Indeed ❤
"not selling fear, selling Understanding" BRAVO!!!
Nate, I hope that the HBO thing works out because that would instantly quadruple your audience. Everyone listening here knows how important it is that your message reaches as many eyes and ears as possible.
The Great Simplification could easily be seen as one of our "natural resources" that is NOT diminishing. It has been an oasis of deliberative sense-making amidst the intellectual desert we call Capitol Hill. Good-hearted sense-makers like Nate Hagens and his many brilliant guests stand in stark contrast to the spoon-fed message coming from the status quo.
Thanks for your commitment and engagement in these core issues. I am a 21year old French boy and your podcasts have been unbelievable and the greatest source of education to understand how the world works.
Much love and support !
If I could recommend anything to my 21 year old self (not that I’d listen ;) is learn all the practical skills that you can. And make and keep as many meaningful relationships as you can. Good luck young man 🙏🏻
My daughters future is so precious to me along with all of our future generations Be Strong in the knowing of what lays ahead 😇🕊🌏
Thank you Kate and Nate,
❤ you both.
Regarding MMT.
If you believe in Fiat and that Fiat can work then MMT with a universal basic income for the poor sounds like utopia.
But if you think about it, it's fate is similar to any Fiat currency. It must eventually realize its true value - which has to be zero. No fiat currency has ever succeeded - all eventually fail because humans in government cannot resist the temptation to debase and debauch them. Any currency, if made too abundant, will result in hyperinflation. Even silver lost most of it's value when Christopher Columbus and his thugs invaded South America and found a mountain of 40 % silver-rich ore in Bolivia which they exploited with profideous cruelty to the natives. Spain became awash in silver and its perceived value fell off a precipice. What causes hyperinflation is not the cost of real biophysical stuff going up but currency losing value because it is too abundant. What makes precious metals hold their value is their huge embedded energy content and associated scarcity. It takes about 100 MWh of energy to produce a kilogram of gold. That's enough electricity equivalent to run my families household for about 17 years. No government can print gold and silver the way they can print Fiat into oblivion. You might think of inviting a chap by the name of Steve St. Angelo from the SRS Rocco report onto your podcast to discuss this vital concept of embedded energy as the backbone of enduring wealth preservation. I know this isn't what people want to hear but I believe it's the inconvenient truth. We need to deal with reality head on and stop searching for quick fixes. If we don't reality will deal with us.
Thomas Malthus correctly pointed out, in his essay on human population, that hand outs to the poor will never eliminate poverty - this just transfers poverty onto the next poorest rung of the economic ladder. We live on a finite planet. All wealth comes from the Earth. Wealth is a zero sum game.
Tu connais Arthur Keller?
Big smiles to see this 100th episode, and to see Kate interviewing Nate!
Kate really did way better than i was expecting at the beginning. Bravo to Nate for having her lead.
Yes, I think Kate did a wonderful job. Good choice!
'People are still dancing but they're getting closer to the doors'.... great quote.
Yes literally like the set up of Oct 7 in Israel.
Set up to be allowed is likely...and set up to create more suffering.
Stop the wrongdoing.
This is one of the best conversation on this Podcast... The idea of pro social prepping is a true gift to handle the darkness that surrounds these topics.
In fact this conversation just rolled from one amazing point to another and put together really was a loving embrace and has moved me from the depression that has settled on my soul to acceptance of the future and the reality we face.... The grief part of the emotional response to these topics can be mitigated by acceptance and i have come to understand the Buddha and other wisdom teachings in far greater detail through these topics and these conversations...
So i can't thank you enough Nate and Kate ....everytime i listen to Kate i get such a warm loving feeling from her intellect and her warm heart.
I hope we choose to bend .... ❤
Nate, there is such integrity in the way you have offered these podcasts from the heart and free of charge. If you are looking for volunteers to do tasks to help keep this going please let us know how best to express interest.
Congratulations! I've learned so much from your podcasts. You care deeply about our world and I appreciate what you do.
Nate and Kate flip the script. What an incredible way to celebrate 100! As a fellow podcaster couldn't relate more with the complexity of convos and creating space for innovative ideas to shine and connect the brightest responses to our polycrisis. CONGRATS - we are rooting for you.
Where does one get a screaming goat?!
Congrats on 100! Hands down the most important and informative podcast out there. Keep up the great work Nate!
Ebay! Its a children's toy and book.
I have watched almost all of these 100 episodes. This is by far one of my favorite channels. Thank you Nate! ❤
Why do I enjoy these podcasts so much despite the grim message? Because it's a rare and great thing to see people with different opinions treat each other with respect
Thank you Nate. ..these episodes have been empowering and engaging. Please keep going - we need this information.
I came across this podcast, this episode, today, and it was a pleasant discovery.
Nate seems to be a man full of thoughtful wisdom, who understands we cannot just run with simplified activist solutions when we want to solve the challenges we are facing.
Simplified solutions will end in economic collapse. While that might benefit the climate, it will definitely not benefit the environment.
The idea that we need global control of the development is also dangerous. Such attempts always fail. Dictatorious leaders will never be smarter than the intelligence of distributed effort. Instead set up rewards for the proper goals, and let the distributed intelligence work at it.
Great podcast all in all. I'm subscribing.
My respect and admiration for you and your work grew while listening to this entire podcast. As a 66 year old white Canadian man, I can relate to your appropriate humility and certainty about some items. The acceptance stage of grief for the ongoing death of nature is one of the things we share.
Brilliant work Nate. ❤
The messages are strong and clear as well as thought provoking. Thank you Nate and guests (Kate included) for sharing your wisdom and heartfelt intentions for guiding us towards a different paradigm. A paradigm with broader and deeper considerations for the natural world and our role within it.
I loved this conversation, and generally get excited every time you pull back the curtain about the decisions behind making the podcast. It's vulnerable and it respects the audience. I agree that you're better at listening, letting the guest have the floor and asking good questions to draw out even more.
The 4 horsemen. The challenges on one screen. Everyone with a special skill set can easily “slice off a chunk” and focus on their part. You have done an incredible function of organizing all this chaos. Thank you sir!
Great work Nate! We're so grateful to be able to learn from these conversations.
Why am I feeling the urge to buy a globe?
Seriously, thanks for being there. I can't recall now how I stumbled upon this channel, but glad I did.
We live in a culture where the opposite of simplification is called progress.
When the checks stop clearing and the crude starts to disappear, watch out
Simplification is progress
that is just the word to signal to all primates when there is food in the trough
Thank you @kate Raworth, especially for asking Nate about civil disobedience xxx
Nate, you and Kate are great together! I’ve been watching your podcast for the last year and sharing it with my friends and family. You help us to think seriously about inevitable changes that are coming because of humans having overshot our planetary resources. I appreciate that I get to think along with you and your guests about how I as an individual can deal with these changes, and how societies can help or hinder the process. I agree with Sir David King that we need you to keep doing your podcast even up to 1000!!!
The resource that this podcast provides to the world is invaluable. Great to see 100 reached, here's to the next 1000!
Such a great one! Thanks Kate for really opening a space for Nate to drill down into the understanding he’s accumulated during not only his lifetime, but specifically here in the last 100 episodes! Bravo Nate, this was one of my favorite episodes and I’ve enjoyed many!! Thank you!! I can see and hear the personal toll it’s taking from you to do this work, so again thank you! It’s very important that you do it, as long as you can.
"The "gold-plated super-organism", you quipped. I have come to recognize you as a benignly-intentioned, wise human being but I never realized that you were a poet too! Well said!
Smaug.
Mr. Nate, I found your channel from the Canadian Prepper channel, I love both these channels, gotta alot to catch up on your videos, thank you Nate, JD lex ky
I'm about halfway through and enjoying this so far. Nate, have you considered reaching out to David Wengrow? The Dawn of Everything has some stuff to say about deep history and the stories we tell ourselves about what is inevitable for us as a species.
I personally think like you, that some form of, let's say "crash" is basically baked in, and it will be a doozy. And for those who want to stay and fight the good fight to try to have less-bad futures, I applaud them and think they should keep doing what they think is best, but I think there should also be space for "deep preppers" or maybe something like what's been called "doomer optimists"--people who look at the world and ask, "If we assume that this crash will occur, what can we set in motion now that will give chances to something less insane in a few hundred years?" I think that the ecovillage movement has something to contribute to this. I think we need to make a different branch of the tech culture that leans more on decentralized self-sufficiency, rather than always pushing down marginal costs through mass centralized production. Megaprojects and centralized production may have their place, but that place shouldn't be our default.
David passed away with covid, did he not a few years back? Steve is still alive.
Archeologists.
They wrote "The Dawn of Everything," together and David was in the wall street advocating for change in Zigatti Park in New York City.
@@cheri238 So The Dawn of Everything was written by two Davids. There was David Graeber who is the activist you're thinking of, who also wrote some good stuff on "Bullshit Jobs" and wrote another great book, "Debt: The First 5,000 Years". He was an anthropologist and died during the early pandemic, though the relationship to COVID isn't clear. David Wengrow is an archaeologist and is still alive and talking about the book.
Dougald Hine also talks about leaving good ruins, I loved the round table episode with him. Shaun Chamberlin is another good example of living in a community focused doomer-optimist lifestyle. Can't remember if he's been on Nate's podcast or not... his book from David Flemming's work is brilliant & I reread it often.
This is the first episode that I've watched--and it is so uplifting. This is stuff I have thought about my whole life, and it is so soothing to see someone talk about it in an intelligent and meaningful way. You mentioned how seeing others in person who are also working on bits and pieces of the metacrisis was helpful, and I think for me watching your podcast on youtube does the same thing. As a Vermonter I can relate so much to having a connection to animals, that then gets replaced with status seeking and wealth accumulation...that leads you right back to a humbler and more rural life. Maybe there's more of us than I realized. Thank you.
Every time you have Kate Raworth on the program it makes me want to eat donuts. But other than that, another great show. Good idea being the interviewee for your 100th episode.
Thanks Nate and Kate for a great conversation.
Nate at around 1:50:10 you asked for help to see the things you cannot.
I'm not sure if these words will work, but in 1978, when the paperback version of Selfish Gene was released, I bought a copy, and read it cover to cover twice in a 24 hour period. It was such a great collection of threads of enquiry, that it became clear to me then that complex life is founded on cooperation. But Richard cannot see it (David Sloan Wilson sees most of it). But it gets much deeper.
When you can abstract back to what is it that defines life, it is now clear that life is defined as: systems capable of searching the possible for the survivable.
The mechanism of search that biology has used for the most part, has been replication with variation, and the differential survival of variants in differing contexts has been the thing that defined the survivable.
That need for cooperation, is at every level of complexity. And for cooperation to survive it must be able to detect and counter cheating strategies (otherwise the cheats win).
So mammals have multiple levels of anti cheating strategies - even rat pups have to "play fair" or the other pups wont play.
This recursive concept of cooperation is foundational to complexity both emerging and surviving.
The details of the sorts of contexts where it can initially emerge are fascinating, it requires contexts where external threats overwhelm the threats from other members of your own population, and cooperation is needed to survive those external threats. So selection is always happening at individual and group levels. Search is happening at both levels.
We now have access to new mechanisms of search. We can model things in our minds, we can think through possibilities and contexts and consequences; and do a lot of filtering before committing to instantiating anything in reality.
But our models of reality are so simplistic - necessarily.
Our perceptions are such simplistic representations of whatever objective reality is, and the models of reality that we subconsciously construct as a result are so simple, that experientially, we get to experience a world that is much more simple than the the real one we exist in. Our modern instruments can prove that too us, if we take the time and effort to look.
So while we are this entirely new form of life, with entirely new mechanism of search, that search is happening in a vastly simplified model of whatever reality actually is, within our brains, and that leads us to take actions within that vastly more complex reality - and we wonder why it doesn't always (or often) work out as expected,
I love Elon's general approach to overcoming that systemic issue - that of fail fast, fail early. Have ideas, then test them, as rapidly as possible. Observe and learn.
Dave Snowden uses the approach of "multiple safe to fail experiments".
What we need, is to encourage such experimentation; but the economic and political systems discourage them, because they can be disruptive to existing structures, existing power and privilege.
I completely agree with Kate and Elinor that we need our systems to meet the reasonable needs of everyone, and that demands cooperation and responsibility from all of us.
This over-simplistic nonsense that competition is always good, and always leads to optimal outcomes - is just that - nonsense - over simplistic dogma - but being right is often more important to people than being accurate - so learning often doesn't happen.
As you have noted many times, economic efficiency leads to systemic fragility - but it is much deeper than that.
Competition tends to drive systems towards some local minima on the available complexity landscape. That is antithetical to both freedom and search and thus life itself.
When you can see life as Search, then being able to go beyond the known (freedom) is a fundamental aspect of Search, and thus of life itself.
It is not, cannot be, risk free; and if done responsibly, is the least risk option available.
But freedom without responsibility is also necessarily self terminating, it ends up destroying the very constraints that made that level of complexity possible.
We can learn to do more with less.
My first computer I built from an ETI660 kit, and was based on an RCA COSMAC chipset, and had 512 bytes of RAM. I was in a reasonably well paying job at the time, and it cost two months of my salary. Today I can buy a system that is a million times as powerful for less than an hours work, even if I am on minimum wage. Some things are getting much more powerful, on far less power. I used to carry a 2lb bag of carbide, for my miners lamp, when tramping. Now an LED head torch weighs a few ounces and lasts as long, and recharges from a tiny solar panel during the day.
We have all the tools to meet the reasonable needs of all; but the economic and political systems will not allow it; because they have been invaded and dominated by cheating agents.
If cells in our bodies stop cooperating and start taking excess resources, we have a name for that - cancer - and we either get rid of it, or it is terminal.
This mythology, that competition can solve all issues, and is a general good, is cancerous nonsense.
Yes energy is important, and yes our systems need to change to stop using fossil carbon; and that is technically possible, but not under current economic or political dogma.
We need more freedom, more diversity, more responsibility, more cooperation.
A thoughtful long riff on seeing the notimmediatelyobvious, to Nate at least. Your logic doesn't carry the day tho when you declare things as nonsense because they are nonsense. Try pushing on that to hte next level. And how to cultivate more freedom, more diversity, more responsibility, more cooperation? Trial and error search? I agree that these should be on the short list, tho have not done the harder work of discerning if this is the sufficient few to ensure survival. Like, what about Love?
@@IanGrahamOld99
Hi Ian,
From my perspective, Love is a very useful heuristic, particularly in maintaining cooperation.
Search is a deeply complex topic, and there was a very interesting proof that came out of theory of search about 15 years ago - that for a fully loaded processor, the most efficient search possible is the fully fully random search. Exactly how one attempts to approximate random search in neural networks as necessarily heavily biased as ours are is another interesting topic, and evolution seems to have approximated it reasonably well in many contexts.
And yes - all search necessitates some level of trial and error; and such trials are best done at small scale, in diversity, before being scaled up. And we can apply heuristic from the past to filter out those classes of error that have already be clearly identified; and sometimes there are subtleties at or beyond the limits of distinction - so not even any hard answers there, but certainly probabilities that tend to focus resource allocation. And there is definitely a need to have a substantial part of resource allocation in the random category (typically at least 30%) - David Snowden gives good theoretical justification for such allocation.
Diversity is the necessary result of instantiated search, and that will always entail some level of dialectic tension between existing groups that view any diversity as threat - and the counter to that over simplification is for a necessary aspect of responsibility being to admit of the fact of strength and resilience in diversity; any form of hegemony is thus seen as an over simplification (recurs as deeply as able).
So nothing fixed, nothing 100% confidence, and confidence can be very high in some contexts, sometimes very closely approximating unity.
this is an intriguing angle to 'facing the future', a way of speaking that is applicable to all life but only? self-conscious lifeforms concern themselves w ith. "Life is search" doesn't speak to my heart, I apply that in practice as it's a algorithm that, like hacking a password, just keeps on iterating, randomly or systematically.
I was truly asking you if you have concluded those four qualities (cooperation etc.) are the sufficient and necessary conditions for life?
And I added Love as an example of a quality that might also be necessary. Of course it depends on defining out terms: a practical def for Love is 'radical regard for other' (Simone Weil). And there may be other qualities on the short list, I haven't considered that.
Thanks for the discussion. @@tedhoward2606
@@IanGrahamOld99
Hi Ian,
You misunderstood me, which is not surprising, as the notion is deeply abstract, and I have been into biochemistry and computation for over 50 years, and it took me 40 or so of them to work it out.
The idea of "Life as Search", applies to all levels of life, and is uniquely expressed at each level.
And at each level, there are recurring themes, that need to be solved by different mechanisms.
The first active search mechanism seems to have been replication with variation. This seems very probably to have been initially instantiated by RNA molecules in alkaline hydrothermal vents, most likely close to 4 billion years ago, in conditions very different from those currently present on this planet.
Between that and us capable of carrying on conversations in this medium is about 10 levels of emergent complexity. And in using the term "emergent complexity" I think about that in terms that more closely align with Whitehead than with Aristotle; but I am very different from Whitehead in what I see as the underlying drivers; but the extant complexity that we face seems to be sufficiently vast as to be beyond the accurate modeling by any class of computational entity we might expect to find (biological or AGI) - the numbers are just that big.
Life as Search requires only something that can replicate with variation, and some set of contexts contiguous over time, in which some subsets of such systems can survive.
And each new level of complexity demands a new level of cooperation between the agents from the previous level, and new sets of cheat detect and mitigation systems to maintain that cooperation.
We are the most complex form of life that we currently know of to emerge from this process. And when I say "we" in this context I mean tool using, language using, technology using, cultural, humanity. The levels of systems and processes that allow us to be us, is just mind bendingly complex (even for an autistic spectrum geeks like me); and necessarily eternally explorative (eternally going beyond the known).
We are now capable of search at whole new levels, new domains, by entirely new sets of paradigms, that do not necessarily require replication with variation, and that remains a powerful algorithm in some contexts.
To get to this level, we have had to embody things that are in many real senses beyond our comprehension, and to which we give essentially simplistic labels, in our faltering attempts to make explicit that which seems implicit; and we give such things labels like love, compassion, beauty, truth. We use terms like "speak to my heart" even as we know such things are not literally true, but they point in the direction of something that is undoubtedly real, but may not actually be like any conception of it extant in literature to date (in large part because we lack the tools to adequately express such complexity in any useful time).
And one of the great risks we face, is that it seems beyond reasonable doubt that what we get to experience is not reality itself, but our own, personal, subconsciously created, model of whatever it is that 'objective reality" actually is. Thus what we get to experience is already vastly simplified, and we, quite understandably in that context, tend to produce simplistic models of that experience, thus doubly simplifying. And therein lies a great deal of risk.
We over simplify the depths of complexity embodied within us by evolution, and over simplify our conceptual understandings of evolution as a process; leading us to multiple classes of existential level risk. Which loops me back to:
The speed with which I can hold internal conversations vastly exceeds any ability to communicate with others. Hence I consistently fall woefully short of my intended abilities to communicate what I would like to - what seems both interesting and important to me.
Hi Ted, nice to k now a bit about you to see where you're coming from, thanks. You must be a fast typist too! @@@tedhoward2606
I enjoyed you sharing your path to here
The Kate & Nate show! This was great - a really important interview because it clarified many aspects of the Great Simplification and provided a deeper window into your Heart. Kate asked really challenging, Mega questions - deep, difficult, and prescient.And I am so glad Kate asked you the signature end-of-interview questions. My 'Magic Wand' answer has always been to change the Hearts of Human to Fall in Love with the Earth and thus to choose to live in Harmony with All Life on Earth. I was heartened to hear your answer ~ the same, but in different words. "Heaven know how we will get there; we know we will."
Thank you, for everything. 🌎♥
Congratulations Nate on your 100th “The Great Simplification” podcast. liked your choice of Kate Raworth as the questioner, putting you in the hot seat. Seeing this was a 2 hour conversation did wonder how you’d hold up, as over those 100 podcasts you’ve covered a lot of subjects, but wasn’t disappointed, and you didn’t embarrass yourself by falling into the trap of hypocrisy. Having looked down through the comments got the feeling you and like minded others have built a wonderful “The Great Simplification” playground, of philosophical, ecology and biosphere swings, roundabouts, helter-skelter, but as soon as it’s left unattended it’s trashed and set on fire without any explanation, other than wanton destruction, and therein lies the problem of communication🤔
Absolutely outstanding - thank you so much Kate and Nate.
Congratz Nate... Thank you so much for all the insights and wisdom you brought to the biosphere. Deeply respecting the work you do.. 🙏
Thank you, Nate. Great idea to let Kate conduct the interview, she is a pearl with beautiful souls. Her loving, positive attitude was steering the interview towards bend. In contrast, your attitude showed signs of despair at times. You were mentioning loving certain things and not being able to do them, because of time. That statement didn't resonate with me. When Kate asked you :what you cared about most, your answer was kind of shocking to me. There must be a number of man who have been divorced for a lesser answer. I've asked myself is this the Nate I signed up with a year ago.
My heart wants to be with my dogs, but my mind is in charge here, would have been the more honest answer, Nate The monster we fight lives of consumption, beware not to be consumed by it. It hijacks your attention and ignores your heart. Your mental health depends on a soft and loving heart. There are 44,1k of souls here, and they care about your happiness, mental health state very much. Soften your heart and the answer is,,,,,,,,of course it's my wife, my dogs, my cycling and then my work I care about most. Stay sane. The body keeps the scores.
1:40:49 "who am i to tell people what to do?" Humility is the mark of a learned man.....we need more humility! I see everyone putting on a mask of confidence....even arrogance when online, becase thats what gets you noticed. But not Nate! I hope Nate gets the recognition he deserves for doing this amazing stuff!!
I own only 13 pounds of stuff. I use only 1 gallon of water a day. I walk everywhere I go. I eat a whole food plant-based diet. The city I live in is powered by renewable energy and the water is cleaned before it is returned to the ocean. My life is beyond wonderful. I am 68 years old. I left the US to live my good life. Can I do more?
Congrats Nate. Hopefully I’ll still be around for podcast 500!
Thank you for your efforts - one doesn't know what lies down the road, but your informed and unselfish efforts are inspiring - there is a proverb, "There is such a thing as destiny, but continue with your own plans - and if they are in accordance with destiny you may reap a rich reward."
Collapse Club is a community that supports each other in processing these difficult realities.
Your comment led me to google this club which led me eventually to David Baum’s Substack where I read a lovely post about why you have to be a little weird to deal with collapse, then I clicked on the profile of one of the commenters on that post, and read a nice post from them about how collapse club helps them cope! And I was like wait, is this the same person who commented on Nate’s video? And it was! (You) I just thought that was neat. And just reading your post about feeling less alone and not crazy, made me feel less alone and not crazy! So thank you :)
David is a genuinely lovely person. You will feel welcomed there we are sure
Excellent. Kate Raworth was a great choice for guest hosting this 100th episode. Keep up the great work.
Congrats on the 100th episode! Thank you for bringing on interesting guests. Kate is a natural! She needs her own podcast in 2024!
I agree with Nate and appreciate his honesty and about the harsh reality. I think honesty not worry, about how what we say will disturb or influence people's interpretation (which we can only guess at based on our own limited view of reality). If we are to be empowered we need to be able to deal with and continually discuss the truths of our situation.
Nate, Please continue to be a conduit to witness what is. System and all.
Your simplicity approach to a complex behemoth of a system is vital to ensure the breadth of it is heard and truly witnessed.
We all know the severity of what's coming down the road and how sticky patch solutions may make nice sound bites but the end game it still the end game.
And as you sa, bend or break, we are still not able to act as a humanity quickly enough to change the consequences of our hypercivilization's demise.
He fails to tell people that America has over a thousand years of natural gas in the ground and 300 years of coal, oceans of oil the government refuses to allow drilling, uranium fields bigger than some states for nuclear power, lol. Keep thinking he's smart, he's funny to me. He wasted his time and life concentrating on peak oil, there's oceans of oil still in the ground and under the seas.
Thanks Nate and Kate. When you were talking about rural living and solutions for those who can't live on acreage, I thought you'd mention David Holmgren. He has a lot of answers in "Retrosuburbia". We can be greening cities and suburban landscapes to huge effect. Even apartment dwellers with porches can improve their local ecology. Imagine a world where every lawn, small or vast, is converted to a functioning habitat for food, insects, birds, bats, frogs, ducks, etc.David Holmgren is an extraordinary man who walks the walk. Thanks again! Dogs rule.
Nate, you are going to have to tell more people, you can make them understand! You are a great teacher
If each of us shares these podcasts with our own social media contacts, that would go a long way in helping Nate share his message.
@@karenkoerner6015 I do/did, but I have dropped all of them.
I cannot say how much I appreciate your work. Knowing there are others that view the world in a similar approach as myself helps on days when things feel bleak! You like to soar high- I view things like I am using a microscope. Zooming in and zooming back out for macro and micro viewpoints! Hope to see many more episodes 🌲
I've listened to a lot of your episodes, Nate. #100 helps to get to know YOU better and is great context for learning more from you in future episodes. I appreciate you. Keep going.
Hey Nate, just finished the last exam of my college career 2 hours ago and I'm 1 hour into this wonderful post exam gift from you and Kate.
I just want to let you know out of the last 9 years I've spent in college undergrad (spent 5 years with no idea what I wanted to do), none of that education will come close to the things you have taught me over the past year and how profoundly that education from you has fundamentally shifted my view of the world and the systems around us. Nor do I believe any ounce of that college education will stick with me for rest of my life like the things I have learned on this podcast will. Thank you, and keep changing the hearts and minds! The young people ARE listeners too!
P.S. I'd love to see a guest who has done research on computing what equitable material consumption budgets are for an individual over their entire life for various resources we have a good understanding of on.
I.E. How many kg of aluminum am I allowed to consumer over my life?
I know its complicated, you'd need to model population growth, projected recycling rates, future cost of energy and how that affects what portion of the global reserve is economically viable for extraction over time (or recycling), as well as define for how many generations are we considering in our time frame... and many more things I'm sure I know nothing about and cant imagine... I understand it probably cant be done with any accuracy, but I'd just really love to see what some of those numbers would be for different materials.
Why?
I'm now officially an engineer (computer engineer) after today, and as I enter the workforce and am tasked with designing products that will convert natural resources into what will eventually be landfill waste... I'd really like to know just how unfair and inequitable my designs will be for future generations.
I.E. making copper in PCB's hard to remove from a product or even incapable of being detected via standard recycling equipment due to the design and where it is located in the component, etc.
Having metrics, even ones with massive error margins, is a starting point. This podcast deals so much with macro overshoot... but what does micro overshoot look like? I'm sure Kate's work crosses into this quite a bit too.
I enjoyed the comments interspersed throughout about the challenges of having a podcast about the meta crisis. And Nate's comments about some of his choices about letting his guests talk. I particularly learned from the discussion contrasting the podcasts and the franklies.
Bravo Nate for this 100 ! The work you're doing is really important. It may not be
viewed by millions of people like it should be but it makes many people to talk about these issues in their life. This is so important to understand what is going on with the predicament. I am following you from Quebec and I will continue at least until the 1000 th episode 😁.
Kate's question "we can't all go rural" - yeah. It's great if you can live out in the country and grow your own food (until you reach that age when you start needing serious health care, then you're gonna wish you lived 15 minutes or less away from several high quality stroke care and oncology facilities 🥰). But the great simplification is likely to be much uglier for most people. Not just less vacation travel and annual gadget "upgrades" (so what), but less general mobility, foregoing better jobs because you can't get there from here, awful communal living arragements with one room SRO dwellings and shared bathrooms and kitchens, or worse, multigenerational family living, expensive energy making every part of your life smaller and darker. I'm really hoping non carbon energy tech can help us out of this mess, because I understand what simplification actually means, for most people in the West (developing countries have less far to fall, and many of those folks might see improvement in standard of living, compared to the hell they live in now, unless development collapses with spiraling energy costs).
Keep up the great work, Nate. We appreciate all you do. :)
I've been here in South Korea reflecting a lot on your conversations from your farm and abroad. Congrats on your steps here and there.
Please keep your podcast going, you help us so so much, thank you, don't stop, please
SO MANY good ideas and important concepts mentioned and discussed in this episode! Thank you!
Been around since the Oil Drum days. Keep up the great work! Also, shout out to Kansas making the episode!
Felicitations! Champagne! et Merci Monsieur Nate Hagens!
I am oil engineer in E&P and earn my money from extraction of fossile fuel from the ground. Some years ago I realized that I would have to find another industy for my later worklife as oil & gas would be phased out however during the last two years it seems to me that the green transition has hit a wall and been derailed just because interest rates have increased a few percents and material prices have moved towards sustainable levels for the miners. So now I think the oil business is going to stay for at least 15 years more.
I have never learnt so much since watching nearly all 100 Hundred of your wonderful podcasts And still look back at some again
Empowering us all to be prepared and to enjoy the simple things in our Natural world
Aotearoa is with you all the way Congratulations dear Nate and all who contribute 🐝🕊🌳🐠🌊🌏💖
Been with you since the very early days. Your thoughtful exploration of the most important and complex questions has reshaped my pov and future plans. Thanks for you and your team for this important work ❤
Oh wow, Kate of Doughnut Economics. I was walking past a small book stall last week that offers donated books to raise funds for our local scout group in small town Southern Tasmania, and acquired a copy of your book. Love this podcast interview between two great people.
So grateful for your work Nate. Rarely a dull moment in the many hundreds of hours of content you and the team curate. So much wisdom here 👏
As for focus, how about resilience rather than efficiency?
(my first youtube comment)
Have listened to many of these, and loved this episode. I laughed with a tear in my eye when the intro music started with Kate introducing. I look forward to more discussion about MMT (though I don't think it's a panacea).
Thank you both for your work. I hope you have a refreshing holiday season
I never comment, but am grateful. I think one of your best episodes I’ve seen. ( still many to see) I’ve wanted to know more about who you are, and felt this was achieved. You lead with humility and respect, and are self aware. Be sure to take the time for yourself to just be. It’s a large burden of commitment you’ve put on yourself. Know you are doing great work and the heavy lifting in creating awareness and education. Thank you for sharing. Enjoy the journey.
Don’t stop. …if you need to get away, I’ve got a great cabin on remote island you can enjoy surrounded by large fir/ cedar trees and beach on the BC coast.
Nate, I'm in Minnetonka - any groups you recommend in the area? I'm a psychologist and increasingly see more young humans preoccupied by various parts of the meta crisis...
Sir, your podcast and your perspective, your words, and your truths are bringing us all to a level that we can actually stand a chance at adapting in a better way, defending ourselves against those who do not have our best interest in mind or life in general. if that’s not the world changing and I don’t know what it is. Thank you for everything you do. It brings a . Immeasurable value.
Thanks Nate
A big question around the most efficient way to live? The concept of consolidation and the best way to consolidate seems to be at the forefront. I have desires to live rurally but I’d also think it seems more logical to live in a city environment where building complexes are constructed and you get maximum heat, resources and space resources allotted for natural growth, and you can consolidate your life in a apartment complex. That seems countered to a natural way of living but if you can open up spaces for more natural growth that would seem beneficial to the population of the planet. Just curious about what to do as the best strategy.
Loved this episode!! Congrats on the 100th!!! Thank you!!
Kate is Amazing.
Never heard anyone like her.
Love her
These podcasts are revelatory. What a body of work! One thing, Nate. How about an episode on biophysical monetary policy? Don’t we need sustainable value on the other side of Seneca’s cliff? You are right about the blindness of MMT but have you linked HT Odum’s maximum power principle with natural asset value?
Amazing concept for the big 100th! Kate is great!
Congrats on reaching 100 episodes ! You're a voice of sanity in the rising darkness ❤
I'll be among the many to congratulate you on getting to 100. I came across the podcast about halfway in, episode 50 or so, and was initially gobsmacked that there were people attempting to discuss all of this on a holistic level. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to hear the eloquence of so many minds, even if we don't agree on every aspect. It's been enriching overall. May you keep reaching people, and at the very least, get them thinking.
So grateful for you and what you do 🙏🏼
This was excellent. Thank you Nate for doing this episode, for being vulnerable and for sharing with us a little insight into your mind. Kudos also to Kate for being a great interviewer.
These conversations are so important. I've learned so much from this channel and I believe more and more people from more walks of life are beginning to acknowledge the importance and urgency. Keep up the great work.
Excellent! Thank you Nate and Kate! :-) And congratulations on 100 episodes! That being said, and of course this is just my opinion, the new civilizational system required to address 'The Metacrisis' will not involve economics as we currently understand it - currencies, financial instruments, etc. Indeed, there may not be time for a transitional phase at all but your analyses are very helpful and enjoyable. We may need to think in multiple systemic dimensions in order to propose a new civilizational system that can solve for this. I certainly hope we can bend the current system (difficult scale-back) and not break it (catastrophic collapse) though the likelihood of that outcome diminishes as the accelerationists, who control most of the corporations and thus most of the governments, are only increasing the delta. In any case, thank you so much for all that you do! It's healing therapy! MUCH LOVE!!
Congratulations!
On a sidenote, the contrast between the globe depicting this beautiful blue planet and the pretty inhospitable looking "the sea is lava" model in the backgrounds is eerily symbolic for the issues at hand
Thankyou for sharing and caring
from New Zealand
huggies
Listening to this makes me want Nate to interview Roger Hallam as he is a scholar and practitioner of civil disobedience. Using the podcast terms the bend opportunity will come as or after billions are dying to starvation. I imagine it would be a uncomfortable interview but worthwhile.
No thanks
Absolutely interview Roger and the other early founders of XR. Be sure to ask what's next after you get successful enough for the State to shut you down, pre-emptively arrest you, freeze your bank account, etc. Like Trudeau did to the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. Read Full Spectrum Resistance by Aric McBay and his novel Kraken Calling that attempts to answer that.
As a software engineer, I relate strongly to the feeling of using the devil's tools. Appreciate this video and your work.
Fantastic 100th episode. CONGRATULATIONS NATE!
( - Regular watcher from Tasmania, Australia.)
Congrats on the 100th episode,
and thank you for what you do.
Thank you for being authentic and facilitating these great conversations.
100, let's make it to a 1000.
J.R. Tolkien was a great writer.
Who do you like best Orwell's "1984" or Aldoux Huxley's "Brave New World." Although I love both writers, I go with Huxley's, "Brave New World?"
A doozey is the correct word. The dominoes are falling all in a linear line to the gallows of depression.
I love nature and animals, insects, trees, flowers, rivers and waterfalls. My grandpa was Cherokee Indian, a great example for me.
I lived in NYC when Bolskey and Mike Milken and the junk bonds, the Keaton 5 was a crisis, and from recession to when the banks fell in 2008
"A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth , beauty, adventure and art."
Alfred North Whitehead.
We are only human.
When one knows, ones doesn't know, and when one doesn't knows, then and only then , one may.
Thank you, Nate and Kate your wisdom.
We are all the history of all mankind.
"I am the world and the world is me." The present moment is now.
🙏❤️🌍🌿🕊🎵🎶
Well said but with due respect I doubt Huxley would’ve supported the carbon credit system and who actually benefits. Perhaps one day green tech will really be clean and not rely on natural resources.
This is a wonderful interiew. I was so glad you took this format of turning the tables. You do a great job in calming my fears while remaining realistic. Thank youf ro this wonderful gift!
Thank you Nate. You’ve helped me to feel less alone in this knowledge :)
In the deep grief of this moment, your coherence is most welcome.
Thank you both! Critically important information, and great inspiration. You are having necessary, positive influence on the world. Brilliant.
Wow - I needed that, especially the last 20 mins, thanks so much Kate & Nate. I'm off now to do some bending AND breaking.
Your work has been instrumental in grounding my approach to my life goals and values, learning about the land, becoming sustainable and educating people etc. Thanks for the work you do.
Great interaction between Nate & Kate. Very sweet!
At 59:43, Nate responds to Kate's question about bending instead of breaking. He says, "First of all, collapse is binary, it's yes, collapse or no collapse. The simplification is more of a spectrum."
Nate has fallen into a common false dichotomy. Collapse is not binary. The term is on a continuum - or spectrum if you wish. As an example, Rome was collapsing in 68-69 CE and had three emperors during those two years. Another bit of evidence is the degradation of the currency during that time. Yet the fall of Rome was not completed until 476 CE, when the German chieftain Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus. Per Ian Morris in Why the West Rules - For Now (2010:Table A.1, page 628), Roman energy capture peaked at 31,000 kcal/person/day in 1 BCE/CE. It was still 30,000 in 200 CE and dropped to 28,000 in 400 CE. The energy capture only dropped to 25,000 in 800 CE. This was the depth of the Dark Ages but the plentiful supply of slaves continuing through the Dark Ages probably kept the energy capture within 80% of the peak of the Roman Empire. [For reference, Americans use about 185,000 kcal/person/day of energy of all types, down from a peak of 230,000 from 1970-2010. In France, where I live, it is about half that.]
Dmitri Orlov wrote a popular book several years ago called The Five Stages of Collapse. I advocate the variable speed of collapse, which I explain further in my own books. In a nutshell, businesses dependent on fiber optic cable (like Wall Street) can collapse quickly. Main Street will be somewhat slower, especially if you know the shopkeeper and live in a small village or city. Trucks will do all they can to deliver their loads, ships will try to get to port, warehouses will continue to hold goods until physically emptied, and farmers with crops in the ground will continue to try and get their crops harvested and new ones planted. In addition to the short-term physical restraints on collapse, there is also the phenomenon of people adapting every day to new conditions. The world is not going to collapse one day before breakfast. It will take time to play out. A case can be made that millenials are already adapting to collapse (not buying houses nor cars for example).
My own take on the collapse of western civilization is that it is driven by US hegemony, so we can look for the inflection point in the US. I put it at 1968, my proxy being the inflation-adjusted high point of the minimum wage at $1.00/hour. We would need to put the minimum wage at $18-25/hour today to get the same value I got for candling eggs when I was a senior in high school, paid $1.00/hour. For those of you unfamiliar with calculus, the inflection point is where the curve changes sign and changes from open-ended up to open-ended down, or vice versa. An economy can continue to grow after it has reached the inflection point, but the amount of energy needed to provide goods and services doesn't give you as much bang for your buck. This is where EROI stops being your friend. We are now on the saddle point, which is the top or bottom of the curve. In fact, looking at our daily life micro perspective, we are on a bumpy plateau on the high saddle point. The descent does NOT have to be quick nor ruthless. It is already playing out as a degeneration of modern life and getting worse every year. For me, the tipping point is when world population starts to decline. This is something Nate and his guests don't want to discuss. Bill Rees is the exception and even he is circumspect about it.
Completely agree...this needs more debate and pushback against guests...otherwise it turns into a "positve" hopium filled fever dream that loses its appeal and real world grounding.
It's like there are levels of grief that have to be achieved to even comprehend the level of zen that Nate has quietly mastered
Just wanna drop some appreciation for your work. Keep it up!