The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - "Islands" | Frankly #19

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

There are some pretty amazing things that can be tracked via analytics on Youtube and other podcast servers - including from where the people tuning into a podcast are watching. For whatever reason, there is a large number of people listening to The Great Simplification from the island countries of Australia and New Zealand - much larger than the population alone would predict. In this Frankly, Nate reflects on why this might be, and what it means to be on an island (geographic or other) during a massive cultural transition. For Show Notes and More visit:https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/19-islands Video version can be found here: https://youtu.be/oDjxnmZVcNM  

Hello, time for another frankly. It is freaking cold here, going to be negative 18 Celsius, which is around zero Fahrenheit. But I am my cozy, partially wood, partially propane heated office. I was going to talk about a probabilistic view of the future. But someone showed me how to look at YouTube analytics this past weekend. So I've become a bit interested in the followers of this channel and I had a discovery, which I'm going to reflect on today. If you add up the podcast iTunes and Spotify and YouTube, there's been about a million views or downloads of this channel this year, which isn't too bad for something just starting out and something. with a threatening and complex and uncommon view versus the cultural narrative. One of my hardest challenges is not understanding and integrating the story. It's finding individuals and communities of people willing to take this spot on board and discuss it.

So I was kind of surprised to see the geography of the followers of this podcast. Of course, the details are different on each podcast and on each month and the whole year and the different playlist. But generally, of the top 15 cities in the world, with people following this podcast, seven of them are in New Zealand and Australia, Wellington, Christchurch, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. and New Zealand has a smaller population than Wisconsin or Minnesota. If you expand that to the top 25 cities, a town called Nelson, New Zealand, has more followers of this podcast than Chicago or Atlanta or Dallas or Paris. What's up with that?

I wondered. Maybe it's because I remind people of Jason Mamoa. girlfriend gave an emphatic no to that. Maybe it's because I know people in New Zealand and Australia, not really, not relative to people in Europe or San Francisco, et cetera. And I thought about it, and I think the reason that the great simplification is consumed and discussed and followed is because these. places are island nations. And anyone listening to this can follow the cognitive intellectual

arc of energy, human behavior, money, climate change, and the systems ecology of it. But emotionally, I think people living in islands recognize this is their lives. They see the ships offloading products. They know they're at the end of the supply chain. And so the concepts discussed on this podcast about the coming unwind of complexity due to higher cost energy and de-complexification of our global system are acutely felt by people living in islands. It could be some other reason, but I just found it fascinating. If you look at the graph, the two countries in the Middle East are Riyadh and Jeddah. I have no idea why that would be.

The number one city in the world is London for following this podcast. But anyways, I'm going to keep considering that because living on an island and being aware of the coming great simplification, I would hypothesize that some people living on islands or remote places will want to leave. They'll be closer to the source of goods and services and the benefits of modern civilization. But I think unexpectedly, some people are going to move purposefully to these places from the center of complexity, towards a simple life, towards a communities that focus. on people and not stuff and belonging rather than belongings. And I think you're going to see some very interesting phase shifts in demographics in the coming decade. So what does this all mean?

I think this is a clue that certain communities and regions are discussing this stuff ahead of the wave, so to speak. I think it suggests an opportunity to create your own islands metaphorically, that islands of people, even if they're 10 or 20 people, having conversations about the biological and physical realities that we face, then act as attractors to have other people looking, asking questions, being curious. I wish I could have some Oprah book club toolkit to get cultural islands across this country, the United States, and have people discussing these things more urgently than they are.

And then lastly, I think about the delta between what someone knows and how they're living. And I talked to this guru yesterday, one of Daniel Schmockenberger's friends, and I may have on a podcast in the future. And he told me in some ways, Nate, you're doing a disservice to humanity because if the delta of what someone knows and how they're living their life is too wide, which someone just coming across my podcast that may be the case, it creates this internal dissonance and possible for adverse behavior like drinking or self-medicating or anxiety or depression, which is one reason.

I'd never thought about it that way before, but that's one reason I don't go on television or the large podcasts. People who want to hear this story and a wider and deeper unpacking of the human predicament, self-select to listen to this program. So I'm not foisting this on other people. I'm trying to set the table so that more people are at the table, having this conversation.

So my last point is I think I'm trying to explain the human predicament to a lot more people, how energy, oil, depletion, money, and all that fits together. And then, of course, what do we do with the infrastructure? The more local and regional supply chains focus on basic needs like water and infrastructure and food and local manufacturing. and waste and heat and those things. And that's all important. There's a middle piece that is inner development.

We live in a dopamine-centered society. And the other neurotransmitters have become, you know, ignored stepchildren relative to the grand master dopamine. And I think we need to focus more on inner development and how to be alive at these times. So I'm thinking next year I'll have more psychologists and people that are expert on changing human behavior because we have to start at islands of one. And so I'm hitchhiking a ride along on the inner development, how to be alive during these times,

knowing all this stuff, talking about this stuff. and having the community of you all and having my list serves of 40 systems ecologists is kind of like ongoing psychotherapy that it's all manageable because we're talking about it together and learning together. I have a lot to learn on the psychological, how do we consume less, but society is never going to consume less and live differently and prioritize oxytocin and serotonin over dopamine unless there are pilots, unless there are islands, real islands, islands of community, and individual islands of behavior. So that's something I think about. Lastly, I do think this makes me more interested in helping New Zealand, Australia, in acting as pilots

for what's to come because I don't think giant countries like China or the United States this story is too counter to the national goal of consumption and growth. Also, there's a cultural island in Scandinavia with Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, which is also quite interesting. So that's all that I had on this little reflection. Lots more to come. I did also notice that 81% of the viewers of this program, are male, which I have to think about that as well.

And I would love to have more female viewers and participants in this. I have a lot of women guests coming up, but it'll probably still be, you know, one in three, one and four because a lot of people in my biophysical network happen to be men. In any case, wherever you are on an island or a continent or a city, have a good week, and I will talk to you soon. Thanks.