The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Meeting the Future Halfway | Frankly #4

Episode Date: July 2, 2022

In this Frankly, Nate unpacks the choice of the podcast title "The Great Simplification", and how he thinks about responses - rather than solutions - to the challenges we face in the decade ahead of us. He lays out the framework for the scale and degrees for how we can elevate the chances for a positive future. He also reflects about what he's learned while hosting The Great Simplification and where he hopes to move forward in the future for the podcast. For Transcript visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/frankly-04-meeting-the-future-halfway To Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qs_cBThk3U

I didn't ever really plan on doing a podcast. It was just a realization that there are certain people that are starved for the authentic unpacking of the systemic game board. That is the human predicament, how anthropology, neuroscience, energy, economics, debt, finance, climate change, the system fits together. and to understand that to better inform our individual choices and behaviors and hopefully to create a conversation, a broader awareness of what we face. So maybe some emergent responses could happen in the future. And so what this podcast has attempted to do is grow the number of humans that are aware

of, that care about, that are fluent and conversant in the systemic challenge ahead of what I refer to as the Great Simplification. I named this podcast the Great Simplification for three reasons. Firstly, because I'm trying to talk to scientists and leaders and cultural scout team to simplify complex topics into bite-sized pieces. that people can understand. Secondly, there is a truism, especially in the wealthy developed world in Europe and North America, that for many people listening to this to simplify their own lives by accessing less energy and material throughput to get the same amount or even a more

robust, holistic amount of neurotransmitters and emotional experiences will actually be great. for a lot of people, simplifying will be great, or at least good. But the main reason that I called this the Great Simplification is anthropological, archaeological, systemic reason, kind of linked to my upcoming conversation with archaeologist Joseph Tainter, that because of our access to the hydrocarbons, the buried hydrocarbons of the carbon pulse that our societies worldwide have experienced a great complexification, where humans self-organized to solve problems and in the solving of problems, including the current problem of how to keep our financial system afloat by growth, GDP, we use energy.

and the total amount of energy and the availability and cost of that energy in the not too distant future is going to be very different than it was for the past couple generations for the past hundred years. So in coming decades in the coming century, we will experience a great simplification as the benefits and complexity that we've built on top of cheap and abundant energy reverse. And that could be really grim or it could be manageable and even propel society and human cultures onto a new path where is more tethered to actually our brain experiencing holistic well-being with using less energy and materials than we currently use. And everyone listening to this knows the truism of that. for most of us, the best experiences of our lives were not correlated with lots of energy and monetary expenditure. So after basic needs are met, and again, I will reiterate for many humans today and many more in the future, basic needs are not met.

But after basic nets are met, the best things in life are free. So the great simplification is a prediction. and it is also an opportunity. So what have I learned these past few months? I've learned that I enjoy interviewing guests. I didn't think I would. I mean, I'm a smart guy. I'm probably one of the least intelligent of the people that I have on the program,

but I have a broad awareness of what's happening. And I have an ego like everyone else. does. It's not as high of an ego as many people, but I tend to think and have confidence in my worldview. But what the podcast has allowed me to do is to interview Peter Ward and Dennis Meadows and Joseph Tainter and Josh Farley and Herman Daly and Daniel Schmachtenberger, you know, all who are, you know, incredibly intelligent human beings and wise. And, and you know, and And it takes the pressure off me from having an opinion or having to say exactly what I think about XYZ topic.

And I didn't expect that. I didn't expect to fit into this role. It was a little bit awkward at first. There were a few episodes I recorded that never saw the light of day because I kind of stumbled and interrupted my guests and it was kind of all over the place. and those will be repeat guests later in the year. But the other thing that I've learned is there are so many different perspectives. Almost everyone on this show understands energy and ecology and climate change and evolutionary biology.

And yet everyone has a little bit different perspective. It's going to take a village. And what I'm trying to do is expand the conversation. to acknowledge the truisms of energy, behavior, and ecology, but invite questions, invite curiosity, and open thinking to what might be possible. Again, I'm in this role where I've spent 20 years trying to condense and choreograph the human situation. And so I do know a lot about how the pieces fit together, but that doesn't qualify to me. But that doesn't qualify me to be any guru or have the answers or know exactly what we should do.

I don't freaking know what we should do. I'm going to offer in a few minutes a framework of how I think about the future. But I really, there have been people asking me do more podcasts with people who are offering solutions. And my thinking there is, first of all, I want to get people aware and fluent of how the pieces fit together, how the ocean oxygen content and the history of mass extinctions and the political hierarchy and the polarization of social media and the algorithms and the history of human competition and cooperation and the DRD-7 dopamine receptor of migrant curious humans that Dr. Peter Weibrow is going to talk about. I want to put together a framework of how the big picture fits together, especially money

and finance, which I haven't talked a lot about. if you look at all that, you will come to the conclusion there is no solution. But that doesn't mean there aren't things to do. To call things, this is the solution, presumes that this is a problem that can be solved. This is a predicament which will have responses. And so what I'm interested in, everyone has a different worldview. And they also have a different thing that they care about. They're in different circumstances.

Some people only care about the oceans and the dolphins to make it through the bottlenecks of the 21st century. Other people care about their homestead and their family and how they're going to put food on the table. Other people care about social justice or their community or climate change. Everyone cares about something different. And ultimately, I would like to provide a framework. on this forum for people to take an outsized chunk of their time and resources towards the future

and play a role in what we face. So the way that I think about the future is that we can engage on three different scales. At the top scale is the global scale or the national scale. And in that we have to consider education. Like, what are we teaching our young people? What are we teaching in college to prepare people for the future? We have to consider the aspirations of our culture. Right now, we've kind of backed into using GDP as the cultural default of what manifests as success.

When GDP is really not too off of a proxy for how much. much shit we burn globally. And then we have to change our policies and our structures to meet the future halfway. Please recall, and I'm sure I've said this before on other podcasts, energy and GDP are 99% plus correlated. Materials in GDP are pretty much 100% correlated. So by the year 2050, under current trends and current government expectations, We will double our energy and material use from today, which will account for an equal or exceed all previous doublings from the dawn of the agricultural revolution. The next 30 years after that, from 2050 to 2080, we will double again. The earth cannot withstand these doublings.

But if people follow what's happening with shale depletion and with Russia and with the energy situation, the next doubling will not happen. And I think we will do everything we can to forestall the end of growth by printing more money and making more guarantees and doing the day job of 99% of the people on the planet, which is feeding the superorganism to keep the momentum. of growth going, but I think it will fail. I think it will fail this decade and the result will be, cue the name of this podcast, the Great Simplification, where we recalibrate our financial claims down to our underlying reality. So somehow we're going to have to, back to the framework of responses on the national and global level, we're going to have to figure out an infrastructure and a policy that responds to that

And right now, it's too culturally uncomfortable to discuss the end of growth. Now, there are people out there talking about degrowth. Degrowth is a different phenomenon that I'm discussing on this podcast. Degrowth, and I will have Timothy Parique and maybe Jason Hickle and other degrowthers soon on this show. But degrowth is where we democratically agree and vote to shrink our energy. prize. And I don't think that's possible. I think the superorganism dynamic is too strong culturally. And people that are poor or don't have jobs or need food to feed their families

are absolutely going to rebel against any austerity or shrinkage. So that's a global national framework for responses. Also, there's a community level of responses. The single biggest advice I can give to people listening here is to expand immediately your social context, your social capital where you live. Meet people near you. Republican, Democrat, left, right, north-south, rich, poor, black, white, old young. We need to start building bonds with other humans in our communities. And of course, it would be great to talk about oil depletion and the end of growth and changing

the infrastructure in your community, but that's unrealistic. The single biggest thing we can do is start expanding our social networks rather than spending our time on Netflix or playing games or entertainment. And we should still do all that too a little bit, of course, to say stay sane and enjoy being human. But we need to expand social capital because that will pay benefits in almost all future scenarios. On top of that, we should have changes in supply chains and infrastructure regionally, locally, that don't depend on things from South Korea or Bangladesh or where have you, because we

have a six-continent supply chain that is incredibly fragile to financial or geopolitical breakdown. On the top of that, we probably should have scenario planning for communities or watershould watersheds maybe would be a better delineation on what if X, Y, future manifest. Everyone is planning for continued growth and the same trajectory of the last 50 years. And to say this isn't going to happen is too threatening to community leaders to say, what if that doesn't happen? There would be these other scenarios.

And what would we do with our soil and our farmland and our distribution and our The poor people and our community and our social services, let's start doing scenario analysis not to and to actually solve what's coming because it will always seem too implausible until it arrives. But what that will do is a build social capital among those leaders charged with thinking about these things so that five years in a bill and Katie and Kevin and Shannon talked about this and they understand it. And number two is it creates an imagination and an awareness of when you're in your

hypnagogic state right before you're asleep or right before you're awake, you're playing these things out and all of a sudden you wake up, oh my gosh, I didn't think about how we could reroute the farmers that are growing food with the people who want food locally and I could do a little software package. It invites creativity and imagination to get these conversations happening ahead of time. So that's on the community level. And under all that is a framework for solutions for individuals at the individual human level. And if you watch my recent Earth Day talk with the artistic tarot cards, I had categories

of coping, thriving, and engaging. This is heavy stuff to hear and to integrate into our minds and our psychology and our lives. So coping is critical. How do we cope and be aware of this stuff and live healthy, productive, sane, balanced, mentally strong lives that requires meditation, exercise, time in nature, time with friends, I'm just having joy with animals and sleep and music and love and all those things we can't forget to experience as humans. And on the thriving side, there's a lot of recommendations on how to be more effective, how

to limit our access to or our exposure to social media, how to build social capital, how to sharpen the sword because we are the swords. And on the engaging side, it depends on what you care about. And I think we're all alive at a time where the meaning of our culture is waning. And the two major meaning that people connect to are religion, which has, whether you believe in it or not, it offers the social benefits of a community and a tribe. And the other big meaning is economic growth. Let me make more money this year so I can buy more stuff and have more fun and look cool and be respected.

Those two things are slowly waning and the second is going to wane much more faster in the near future. So what are the things that bring us meaning? We have to start thinking about that. And every one of us can play a role in that. So that's the framework that eventually I'm going to go to on the solutions, although I prefer to call them responses. I think I will continue to have guests that talk about the various aspects of the human predicament. And I will continue to ask them their ideas on responses.

Once I think I've painted the picture enough of how all this stuff fits together, then I will be targeting. people who are experts in building community or a tax policy on non-renewables or some sort of a solar geoengineering project or an expert on meditation and self-awareness. But I think it's premature to get to those responses because I haven't painted the picture of the issues yet. So I've really enjoyed these last six months. It's bittersweet because finally the world is catching up to this story that I've been saying for a long time.

The Ukraine-Russia situation has kind of removed the energy blinders for some people. I wonder how many people less would be listening to this podcast if Ukraine, if Russia hadn't invaded Ukraine. that all of a sudden quickly dissolved some of the blinders between the financial and the energy economy. Because now we see how tenuous countries like Germany and Japan that rely on imported energy and materials to produce things to export to the rest of the world are on a biophysical supply chain.

But I feel like we are reaching people. The conversation is broadening. And I want to continue it. I'm not a guru or an expert on the solutions to this thing. I just want to keep pushing, having conversations with intelligent and wise people from all different demographics to meet the future halfway. What we're trying to do is build a movement of pro-social. humans who care about the future, who can kind of squint and see beyond the cultural platitudes

of renewables will solve it, the markets will solve it, and look two or three steps ahead to what is likely going to be wider and deeper poverty and continued demise of the world, planet Earth's natural ecosystems, and play a role to steer things for the better. So thank you for supporting this podcast by listening to be continued. Thank you.