The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Reflections From India | Frankly #54

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Recorded February 13 2024   Description   Returning from his first visit to India for a six-week limbic reset, Nate shares insights on both his personal experiences in the country and how its history, culture, and role as a rising economic power intermingle to create a unique position into the coming decades. Despite India's history of avoiding globalization and industrialization, westernized patterns are emerging, including an expanding reliance on fossil fuels - and resultant convenience and consumption. Yet, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, significant labor devoted to agriculture, and increasing vulnerability to global heating, India will face unique challenges and opportunities within the human predicament. As many Indians remain unaware of their country's growing role in global heating and the effects it will bring, what alternative opportunities for permaculture and other restorative projects remain within the Indian subcontinent? How could India's abundant wealth of social capital and unique history/ethos help its people resist the encroachment of the Superorganism and play a larger role in the global Great Simplification?     To watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/DFSdUexPGw4   For Show Notes and More:   

Greetings, or should I say namaste. I am just back from six weeks in India and lots to report. My experience there, my insight about humans, behavior, myself, and the future. I'm just back. I've been a little under the weather, and I wanted to reenter the podcast. recording space with my reflections on India. What an amazing, crazy, beautiful, unexpected place. And I think they're at the ground zero for many of the things that are going to be coming our way in coming decades. So here's a brief reflection on my first exposure to the country

of India. Of course, I've always known that India has almost one and a half billion people. It's the Indian subcontinent. It's very warm there. It's an ancient culture. But in my mind, these were always facts. And until I went there and stayed there and met and lived with and communed with the people, it really hit me now.

It hit my limbic system. what that country is going to experience and it's no longer hypothetical. So India has 1 billion,450 million people approaching 1.5 billion. That's relative to 300 some million for the United States, so five times more. But their country is about a third the size of the United States. So they're 15 times more population density. and they use mostly coal for energy, around 5% of India's energy, is renewables. And Modi just announced last month that they plan to double their coal production by 2030.

So they recently have been pulled into the global superorganism. Their culture is really, really old with a lot of. traditions and ancient values and the way the family is and sacrifice and community. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that India was the largest economy in the world. And then there was the British occupation. And since then they have kind of been a laggard in global economy until very recently their economy is growing at over 6% a year. really integrating into global consumption patterns when I was there and you would get

YouTube ads for play gin rummy and all these sweet snacks and the consumerism of the West is slowly bleeding into this culture. So I think climate, the scene in Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the future, where the openings seen was there was a wet bulb event where millions of people died because they couldn't cool properly. I don't think that will be too science fictiony in the future. We had near the end of my trip, we had a meeting with a bunch of Indian NGOs doing environmental and social work. Some of them will be on upcoming Roundtable podcast. One of the questions addressed migration and people said there are going to be huge migrations in the future and one of the participants was like,

well, I understand the need for that, but they're going to take our jobs and we have to be cognizant that people that live here have livelihoods and we don't want migrants to take our jobs and the response was no we're talking about you having to migrate north because it's going to be too hot to live here and i was shocked to see when i was there how few people understand climate change let alone why it's happening and india's role and um what's going to happen to india in the future, certainly the NGO leaders and the elites understand it, but the common person there does not understand climate change. They understand that things are getting warmer, but not why and what that means for 10 or 20 years from now. When I was there, I was in the south of India

in a town called Oroville, which was an amazing community, not really like the rest of India. but it was 100 degrees in Mumbai a couple times when I was there in the middle of winter. So I think that some parts of the Indian subcontinent will become uninhabitable in coming decades and beyond. And migration of people both northward, perhaps into Russia or other places, but also into India from Bangladesh, is a real. real issue that I don't think is on a lot of radar screens. One of the most profound insights I had was the Indic ethic. I didn't even know what the word Indic was.

And someone said, you've heard of Indica. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I've heard of Indica. But it's, you know, it's the Indic, not religion, but just the whole origin of Indian philosophy and thinking and I was just blown away at how wonderful the people were there. And it makes me think that at less than one-tenth of the energy per capita of the United States, how generally happy and stable and outgoing and solid and warm people are there. 44% of the people in India work in agriculture relative to 2% in the United States. They do import a lot of oil, but they're a food exporter.

And in talks with Andrew Millison, and I'll have him back on to talk about this, India can do things ahead of the Great Simplification that other countries aren't doing, like massive permaculture projects, the way to have water catchment systems to hold the higher standard deviation of rainfall, planting trees for response to global heating, you can globally cool. And I need to learn a lot more about this because it's their deep culture and they're just totally non-Western. way of looking at the world. So I do think that I can't put my finger on it, but there's something huge there that could play a role in our future, like some nonviolence, Gandhi-esque approach to what's coming at a Gaian-type scale. So I'm going to be learning and talking to more people in India about what's possible and what's happening there.

To be honest, when I went over there, I thought that everyone would be angry at the United States because we've burned more fossil hydrocarbons than any other country on the planet. They didn't participate in the great acceleration economically, except very recently. And they're going to pay the brunt of the Global North's emissions And so this is kind of like the back end cost of colonialism is going to hit them.

And yet the spirit and the culture of that place just seems really resilient to me. One thing I'll add, there are 60 million stray dogs in India and only 10 or 15 million that are owned by people. There were dogs everywhere. And I'd never experienced that before. And in the north, they're like wild roving packs of dogs that it's dangerous to go out because they'll attack you. Where we were, most of them were fed at night by, you know, people would set out food for them. But there are dogs and cows and, you know, it's just such a crazy place. I didn't have alcohol because it was illegal there.

the place I was in Tamil Nadu, nor did I have meat with the exception of a fish curry and one chicken tandoor lunch. But I gained weight when I was there because there's so much rice and dosas and bread and desserts. But I had an amazing time. I'll close this brief re-entry with this observation. The day before I left to come home,

I did my second presentation as it were to a group of six-year-old Indian kids. And I showed them pictures of birds and video sounds of birds in Tamil Nadu. And we had like a test. So they would mimic the peacock or the hawkuku or some of the other birds there. And they gave me the biggest hug. They like jumped on me like a mountain and wouldn't let me up. And it was just this feeling of oxytocin fullness.

which I will explain what I was doing there and my takeaways on my necks frankly. But then the next night, but when I was leaving for the cab, about 10 of the young people that were at this mandala, this convening with my coach, they also gave me this massive group hug

and they wouldn't let me go to my cab. And I eventually made it to the cab and I had to go back to my room and pick up my backpack. And my four little dogs that I had adopted and were all on my porch, like saying goodbye to me. And so this feeling of, I don't know, love is not the right word, but togetherness and community.

I landed in Minneapolis and I had parked my car 45 miles away so I didn't have to pay for parking. There were 14 people on a van that rode for 50 minutes. No one said a word to each other to anyone, not even to the driver. It was such a stark contrast going from a poor country, extremely poor, yet rich in social capital, coming to an extremely rich country that certainly on a relative basis is poor in social capital. I have a lot more to say about my trip, about India, about the world.

I have my next 33 Franklies mapped out in my mind. There's lots to say, lots to discuss. This is a very important year. for our species and our world and our culture. More to come. Namaste. Oh, that was so nice. You sing beautifully.