The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - A Brief Clarification on Human Behavior | Frankly 78

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

(Recorded November 21, 2024)   Two weeks ago, in a Frankly called The Battles of Our Time, Nate commented on human behavior and said that, in today's world, only three to four percent of humans are going to do the right thing and appeal to the 'better angels' of their nature. Today's Frankly is a follow-up and clarification of what he meant.  It's true that humans are deeply influenced by our evolutionary past. It is also true that our current economic structures, cultural norms, and the inner workings of the superorganism shape our actions. But the majority of our history as a species paints a more optimistic picture than our current behavior might suggest.  If we take a deeper time lens, it becomes obvious that, in order to navigate the challenges of the future, perhaps we need not look to technological innovation – but instead must return to the intrinsic values and pro-social nature of our past. Ultimately, we as individuals, and as a species, are plastic. The biggest predictor of our behavior is conforming to what others do, and what others do is going to change in the future… because it must.    Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   --- Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Discord channel and connect with other listeners

Greetings. I was just at a conference three days ago, and I was giving a talk, and I started greetings. People looked at me like I was crazy because they don't know, of course, about the Franklys. Two weeks ago, I had a frankly on the battles of our time, and I want to issue a clarification on something I said on human behavior about the fact that in today's world, only three to four percent of humans are going to do the right thing and appeal to their better angels of their nature.

And today I want to clarify what I meant by that. So first of all, before I get into that, one of the things I'm absolutely the most confident about in my synthesis of the human predicament is that our brains and our neural architecture and our behaviors are as much a product of our evolutionary past. as our bodies, as our hair, as the sclera in our eyes, as our red lips, as the limbic, um, limbar ridges in our eyes and the bipedalism and all of those things. Um, our brains and our behaviors, our jealousy, our envy, our status, our short-term focus, our, uh, cognitive biases.

All those things are a product of 290,000 years. living in small bands in the Pleistocene and millions of generations of prehumans before then. Most of our evolutionary past, we did prosocial things. That was like the driver of our strong reciprocity behavior in small bands, where we not only punished cheaters, but we punished those who didn't punish cheaters. This exists in the animal kingdom. There is grooming and punishing of alpha males in ape species if they are too hard on conspecific and lots of examples of this social reciprocity in the animal kingdom.

So here's the clarification. What I meant was that in today's age where there's an economic superorganism dominant, where we have downward causation that this hierarchical, metabolic force is drawing down, sucking out the best of our natural behaviors because we all are compelled to live within this profit-seeking, extractive, growing institutional structure. So what I meant was is that they're only, only three or four percent of humans that will buck that trend and counter it in our current

economic institutions. And that won't be enough to meaningful change the direction of the metabolism of the superorganism. But that led me to think there are actually three distinct timelines for our work, my work. One is the right now, as long as the superorganism is dominant and debt and technology are able to kick the can forward a little more. This is a time when we can be good humans and do right by our families and our businesses and our world, but only at the margin with respect to the debt and energy field economic

superorganism. This is a period now where we are to prepare. and change the initial conditions of the coming moments. The next moment is the bend versus break moment, which in Ukraine and Syria and Madagascar and Afghanistan and dolphin populations and other things has already happened. But for many of us, the bend versus break is still ahead. During that period, there actually will be a lot more humans who cooperate

and roll up their sleeves for the greater. good because it's going to be a much more obvious emotional situation to them. Actually, there will be, there are probably the same amount of bad actors, sociopaths, Machiavellian, dark triad people alive today as there will be then. Today they're just hidden. So they will be out in the open then more than now. But there will be a lot of pro-social behavior much more than the three. than the three or four percent that I mentioned.

And that period will go on for some time. I don't know how long. And then there will be kind of a more stable state after the financial system and the international trade system, other things stabilize. And then we're back to more of a stable, here's our energy,

here's our daily economic production, here's our expectations. And again, during that period, we will have a lot more social reciprocity and much more than 3 or 4% of our populations, I expect, will follow the better angels of their future. It's just right now during the late stage gasps and traviles of the amoeba is when we feel this stress and it's not antisocial. It's looking out for ourselves and anxiety and insularity.

So I wanted to clarify that human behavior is vitally important and that I believe that we are doomed if we don't create a culture based on the already existing and actually quite dominant intrinsic values that humans naturally hold of caring for nature and caring for each other because this is the crucible from which we evolved. And in this current sad character of culture that we inhabit, especially in the global north, these values, because of the economic superorganism, because of the hierarchies and structures, have been systematically suppressed and betrayed.

I personally think it's sad to have a picture of humans merely as economic men, homo-economicus that are generally egoistic and narrow. And I think this is a desolate and dismal view of human behavior. It's not true. And there's plenty of evidence showing that it's not true. And it doesn't lead us where we need to go. So please take this as a retraction that there are only three or four percent pro-social humans.

That's not what I meant. I meant that the metabolism of the superorganism is strong and that we have to use foresight to breathe life into the prosocial pathways that are ahead. At this conference that I was just at, I met a neuroscientist who said he watched my Sapulski episode. He's like, you guys weren't talking about the real question. He's like, whether free will is true or not is not the question. You can debate it. It's interesting. So what? The derivative is the relative in question,

is that those people who believe in free will actually have better immune systems and are better able to engage with the future and are healthier and have a better outlook and are more likely to do impactful things. I did a cursory search of that and it seems inconclusive. But this guy I was a neuroscientist and I just have a podcast. But it seems true to me that if you believe that we have some agency and free will, you're naturally more likely to express it. And I was thinking on the way home that if that's true, it's also true that engaging with the metacrisis with the coming great simplification also to believe that there are pathways

ahead that we can intervene, engage, play a role with also leads to more empowered behavior and probably a more meaningful and enjoyable life. So with that, I will issue my brief retraction on human behavior, much more on human behavior to come because it happens to be my most favorite subject. And I think we are plastic. We look at the world around us and the biggest predictor of our behavior is conforming to what others do. And what others do is going to change in the future. And let's hope that we can respond in a pro-planetary, pro-future, pro-social way. To be continued, thank you.