The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - The Great Simplification in Action: Building Resilience Through Local Communities with Christian Sawyer

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

(Conversation recorded on November 7th, 2024)     Long-time listeners of The Great Simplification may have a good grasp of the many impending crises that humanity faces. But once we understand the scope of this predicament, what changes could we make to prepare in our own communities right now?  Today, Nate is joined by local organizer and activist Christian Sawyer, to discuss how he's built a pro-social community in rural Arizona. Christian emphasizes the power of local collaboration and demonstrates how the cultivation of social capital builds resilience in the face of challenges, as well as creates better lives for those who live in the community. Together, Nate and Christian explore the dynamics of community work parties, the skills learned through cooperation, and the significance of trust and friendship in building a supportive network.  What do aspects of The Great Simplification look like in action? What are the most common challenges faced in group settings, and what lessons can it teach about the values of love, wisdom, and art in fostering meaningful connections? How can anyone, anywhere start creating local initiatives and engaging with ecological awareness? When fostering community, why should we emphasize empowering individuals in order to solve local problems and advocate towards the protection of our most important resources?     About Christian Sawyer: Christian Sawyer is a local organizer, community lobbyist, sustainable home builder, musician, researcher, and groundwater activist in rural southeast Arizona. He is a journalist for the Arizona Agenda, as well as for Ground Party Papers, a local newsletter for alternative, off-grid, sustainable lifestyles. Join Christian's Local Sensemaking Slack   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  

What I hope people might walk away with is a sense that they can apply their problem-solving minds to their local environment, their local communities, their local bioregions in so many ways that can have incredible high-value impact and also just make your life more colorful and rich and meaningful and fun. When you start providing value for your community, that value will come back to you. You're listening to The Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagen's. On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming Great Simplification. Today I'm joined by a listener of this podcast, Christian Sawyer, who is a community organization. lobbyist, journalist, and groundwater activists who lives in rural southeast Arizona.

He and I discuss his journey of putting the concepts he learned from the Great Simplification into practice, including creating unintentional community through coordinating work parties with people in his local area where they unite forces to work on different construction and housing projects at various houses in their neighborhood on the weekends. The goal of this podcast is primarily to describe the system synthesis of the human predicament, but it's my opinion that the types of initiatives that Christian and others are working on at the local level in his community are the exact type of things that we need to do more broadly to prepare for the challenges ahead, no matter which future arrives. Christian is graciously offered to message anyone interested in starting their own local workgroups and unintentional communities via Slack, the link to which can be found in the description of this episode. Additionally, if you were enjoying this podcast, I invite you to subscribe to our Substack channel where you can read of the system science underpinning the human predicament.

and there's going to be many more announcements, written pieces, surveys, etc. In 2025, you can find the link to subscribe in the show description. With that, I hope you enjoy and find some inspiration with Christian Sawyer, a TGS listener. Christian Sawyer, welcome to the show. Howdy. You're a listener who reached out to us to share some of the incredible work you've been doing along the lines of the Great Simplification for the last few years. Your community in Arizona, you're doing sense making, advocacy,

organizing groups broadly around the concept and theme of the Great Simplification to build houses and farm structures and so much more, which I'm happy for you to pass the Overton window baton to other people who are listening and watching this, wondering what they can do in their community. But before we get into those details, can you start by sharing with our viewers a little bit about what your background is and what inspired you to change that path towards these more unconventional initiatives? It's not that I was ever on a very straight path to begin with. So it's not like I did a hard fork or something. It's more like I've been wandering through the woods for a long time.

And suddenly I find myself on an interesting path I hadn't expected to end up on. but my background has been yeah like I said a hodgepodge of things and little side quests the through line for me has been being an artist and a musician and a sculptor and I've always found ways to pay the bills but there's some threads I can kind of draw between past experiences and where I've gotten now and one I think really key moment for me was was sometime in my mid-20s, I did a year long. It's called Conservation Corps. It's an AmeriCorps program. So, yeah, I did that for a year. And I loved that. I loved working with people outside, good-spirited people who have kind of a general spirit of service. And, I don't know, just friendly. I always liked that. And it made every other job situation I'd been in kind of pale and kind of pale and kind of. comparison. But I never pursued that like some of my others in my cohort that year. I went back to music. I went to New York. I went to the financial district, Nate, but in a different way than you did,

I was a plant technician. I would water the plants in the offices in the financial district of Manhattan, including black rock and stuff like that. So while I was, you know, doing music in New York, And then more recently, I've been, I got my feet wet in the world of techno-economic research is the fancy term. There's a town here called Bisbee, and there's a local engineering startup that was working with a federal grant to develop what's called solar over canal technology. And I was hired ostensibly as an office manager, but quickly drafted into doing most of the lead research and writing a comparative analysis of solar panels over canals versus solar panels over land. And that was fun. It helped me kind of build my researcher, sense maker, muscle. It's very complex intersection of water, energy, land use, economics, cultural norms and values,

policy. So that was interesting. And I spent a few. few really hard months writing a white paper for them. But then other things started happening. And I guess I'll give it back to you because we could go in multiple directions from there. So describe in a broad arc what are some of the things you're doing, what's going on in your community, is everyone have full-time jobs on their own. And then the community thing is just at nights and weekends or give us a flavor of what's going on in your community. for three seasons out of the year, we don't do summer because it's too hot and the monsoons are too wet. But for three seasons of the year, we get together every first and third Sunday.

And we go to someone's property. And usually it's morning to noon. We have anywhere from, you know, 15 to 35, in rare cases, we've had up to 70 people show up. And whoever's property we're at is kind of the host and the coordinator. and they tell people what to do, and they prepare lunch for us. So we work and we chat and have a good time and then eat lunch, break bread, more chat, and then that's it. And I should say, we also get together once every quarter for a group meeting to plan out the next three months of what we call work parties. And then we use apps like Slack and Discord to coordinate online and send each other all the coordination details.

So broadly in this group of people, you said at the most 70 showed up, but how many people are loosely connected in the network in the community? Depends on how loose you want to say, but you could say up to 200 people. I'd say maybe over a hundred different people have certainly come to the work parties there's a really core crew of maybe 30 or so people and then there's some others

that show up once in a while but on average we're having 30 or so people show up I'd say 25 maybe What is the area in Arizona you're in? I'm in southeast Arizona Cochee's County or sulfur springs valley more specifically but bordering Mexico so what were some of the barriers that you encountered before you kind of started to do all this work you know with the community building

not many barriers that went very smoothly i was not the sole initiator of our our homesteader community uh when i do water work and policy and what I call being a community lobbyist, certainly some more barriers there, barriers of bureaucracy and sometimes a lot of social tension when you start talking about getting the government involved and regulations and all of that. Actually, I'd say that's probably the two biggest things I've had to deal with

are trying to get people with disparate opinions and backgrounds and cultural milieus together and talking and get everyone's guards down and then on the policy side, trying to talk sense to our policymakers, which, you know, that can be very difficult as well. So what about your neighbors there and your fellow community members? Were they immediately on board with these initiatives or was there resistance? And is it all politically kind of a melting pot there or not? Oh, yeah, I call it the political potluck because we've got people,

from all different backgrounds. And frankly, we don't talk about politics that much. The driving sense of community spirit is really just that we're neighbors and we're helping each other. But no, there's no resistance. And it's not like anyone was just going around walking to random houses and knocking on doors. My friends, Kyle and Ash, especially Ash, she had been making connections in the area for

probably a couple years and then had had this idea for a while to start a community homesteader barn raiser group and i had uh adjacently been doing the same thing not as many connections uh but anyways it's all people who were down here who um kind of passed through the the social filter of myself and ash to begin with so people who we knew were kind of into this kind of thing were sustained sustainability minded. And then the call went out and the people showed up and it was that simple. Do you have any speculation? We're recording this November 7th, two days after the election. Do you have any speculation on whether this is going to increase the community cohesion and your efforts, the election results or throw a wrench in them? Oh, I don't see how it could throw a wrench in them.

Like I said, you know, a lot of people out here are a little on the non-political side to begin with. It's folks who are a lot of very smart people, but who kind of more want to put their head down and get their hands dirty with something that they have some control and creativity over. Like I said, I've never heard anyone have any kind of political debate in our group. It's, I think, very low, not, I don't know, I shouldn't speak for everyone, but I'd say it's pretty low on the tier of our sense of identity and for maybe most of us our sense of concern. I love that. That's inspiring. So my understanding is the community that you're part of is kind of based on the bioregion. So a little bit in the direction of bioregiening.

And I'm going to have some guests on that topic in the near future. How did you go about creating connections and organizing the people there? The local farmers market is kind of a shelling point for the right kind of people. you might want to meet and invite to something like this. And I know that Ash did a lot of that work, you know, very outgoing and just going up to people, starting conversation. And they used to host little get-togethers at their house and kind of built good friendships over their first few years here with people.

And then it was just, I got a text message one day and said, hey, we're going to try to do this thing. and I had met some other people who were interested in alternative building. I helped a family build, uh, helped build their house. And so at a Christmas party, I said, hey guys, you know, there's these people who want to do this thing. And they were all like, super cool. Let's go. And I was like, great.

I mean, there's really no, no friction. You know, there's one, one story I can tell, which is how did, uh, what did I have to do to get involved? And, uh, so Ashton, Kyle who started this group and Ash, like I said, really is the kind of key mover and shaker. I had ended up at their house one day for a little get-together that ended up being canceled because of rain. So it was just me and them and we chatted a bit and exchanged numbers. And then maybe two months later, I got an invite to a potluck at their place.

But my car had broken down. and I say they're my neighbors, but, you know, it's like a 35, 40-minute drive away. And I decided that building social capital is probably one of the most important investments I can make out here. So I got my bike fixed up and rode my bike about three hours to their potluck, which was a beautiful bike ride. And I like to tell people that story sometimes just to kind of illustrate how important going the extra mile, literally, to form connections is, because if I hadn't gone to that potluck, they might have thought, ah, this guy's not really interested in being our friend, and I wouldn't have gotten the follow-up invite for the

homesteader group a month or so later. But, you know, it's, maybe that's the more interesting aspect is the work that Ash did to just be socially outgubber. going and so invitational. But I think all the people involved were very open and excited about the idea. Was it a three-hour bike ride home too? No, fortunately I made some good friends who lived kind of on my side of the valley who gave me a ride home. Okay.

So you are a longtime follower of the Great Simplification podcast. And one of the buckets in my bend, not break portfolio, is pro-social prepping, which isn't guns and beans and bullion, but is based on what you just said social capital. So of the 100 or 200 people that are loosely affiliated with your community, how many of them are metacrisis or great simplification aware? Or is this just focused on helping each other with projects and building and social capital, irrespective of worried about the ecology, economy, and politics of our world.

Yeah, it's a little bit of a tough question because I, our conversations tend to be pretty, well, either leaning on the side of visions for a cool future or just, everyday chit-chat or what are you working on at your place what are you working so but that's not to say that people don't think about that stuff and research that stuff and once in a while i've been having chats with someone and they just say a little something where i i get the sense that oh you kind of think about this stuff too uh but for whatever reason nate uh we don't sit around chatting about the all the ways the world could go to other shit um But there are people who are more explicitly interested in, for instance, re-greening the valley out here and undoing the impacts of overgrazing that happened 100 years ago. I have a few friends who work with local restoration groups.

I have a friend who goes down to Mexico and helps build rotational grazing systems for the farmers down there. and I know other people in our group who do a lot of earthworks and streambed restoration and stuff like that, both privately and professionally. But then there's other people who, you know, that don't really think about that stuff much at all. They're more DIY, off-grid, gritty kind of just want to do my own thing and do it cool. But who happened to not be isolationists, they're like their friendly. people and want to be a part of a community. So yeah, it's a mixed bag when you have so many people. But it sounds like it's not primarily about some post-growth living situation.

It's primarily about the projects and the social capital and the other stuff is in the background and secondary, which makes sense to me. What are some projects you're working on now in the community? Mostly just going to everyone's house and helping them with whatever they're working on. But what that looks like is typically some form of alternative building. So we do geodesic domes. We do Hyper Adobe, Straw Bail. What's Hyper Adobe?

Hyperadobie is a modification of what's called Super Adobe. And Super Adobe was developed. a while back by a smart guy whose name I can't remember is kind of disaster, emergency shelter technology, and it's bags or plastic tubes that you fill with dirt and then layer on top of each other and tamp them down as you go. So it's a mostly earthen building technique. And then Hyper Adobe is just that you use mesh plastic tubing so that the earth in every layer that you build up, kind of like a human 3D printer. We build these houses layer by layer. And the mesh plastic allows for the earth in each layer to bond to each other layer.

So you have a monolithic earthen structure. So have you learned yourself? When did this start? like three years ago, four years ago? January will be our three year anniversary. And have you personally learned skills, like DIY skills, from others in the group? Absolutely. I mean, we all learn from each other.

And some folks in the group have been doing this kind of thing for decades, actually. A lot of people have different specializations. And we're also experimenting a lot and saying, hey, I tried this. or maybe we don't have to do that. That's just unnecessary time and cost and blah, blah, blah. So we learn from each other and we're also exploring new things as we go. So let me just ask you some core human behavior questions. Is there some sort of an internal, unofficial calculator on tit for tat?

and we went over to Bill and Sarah's place to help them and they've never helped us. Is there that sort of thing or not really? People aren't keeping track. They're just showing up and helping and having a good meal. And it's just this is what we should be doing. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, we have a few provisional rules we have in place. We don't have like a book or a master rule book anywhere.

but we have decided on a few things so for instance if you're new to the group you have to help out for at least a full season before you can get on the roster for the next season's work parties and we're you know pretty we like to encourage people to make sure that their work party day works out so that we don't have to cancel it last minute and lose one of the few work party opportunities we'll have to. that year. But it's one thing I love about this group is that for the most part, it's pretty

low tech. There's not a lot of bureaucracy or explicit policy. We keep it as simple as possible. And for the most part, it works. But I'd say to some extent that has to do with just the quality of people who are in the group. It tends to be friendly, trustworthy, generous, responsible which means you don't need to have so many rules. But there's also a filter though. You said you and your colleague Ash kind of act as a gatekeeper to not let antisocial people into the work parties. There's a, I think a two-way filter. There's a little bit of a filter on who ends up coming in.

You know, I have this rule is, and I think I might have said this to the, I have said this to the group of for only invite people who you would trust to invite other people, if that makes sense, right? You're not just inviting someone who themselves will do a good job, but someone whose discernment and judgment you could trust to invite other people. I don't know that everyone sticks to that rule, but that's kind of my filter. But then also, even if you invite someone who decides to come, People who are more antisocial just probably aren't going to fit in very well there. And they will drop out when they're surrounded by people who are very friendly and inviting, it's maybe just kind of a vibe.

So there's kind of a natural scale limit to what you're doing, right? Because it's in your Cochise County and your bio region and you go to someone's house for a work party. can't have a thousand people show up at someone's house. So you're, you're kind of approaching the limits right now of 35 people or so showing up for a project, uh, correct? Yeah, I would say we're at a pretty comfortable number right now. If it got much bigger, we would probably have two work parties on any given Sunday so that we can split the group up. And do the people that come to these work parties, just to be clear, this is not like an intentional community or anything. You all have your own residences or what have you. And you have jobs, many of you. So this isn't all working 24-7 together.

It's you have your own lives, but you show up for community, work parties and other projects, yes? Correct. I call it tongue-in-cheek a little bit, unintentional community, because There's not some kind of shared ideology. We are geographically dispersed, so decentralized throughout the valley. And yeah, it's just every other week. And, you know, I think we all feel like we're good friends with each other. And a lot of us do hang out outside of work parties, but not all of us. Right.

So this is a kind of a dumb question, though I've come to believe there's no such thing. But presumably if there were a natural disaster or a financial or economic or any other shock that would hit Cochise County, presumably the loosely 100 or 200 people that are affiliated with your group are going to be much more resilient and prepared to respond to that because you've already built a little bit of trust and social cohesion with these 100 other humans, yes? I think so. And I've thought about that, Nate. And of course, you never know what a really dire situation like that might do to anyone's psychology. But I'd say we're in a much better position than, you know, someone in the suburbs who doesn't know their neighbors and all of that. We have a pretty high amount of trust. And, you know, once in a while, people talk about that kind of, you know, what would we do if the shit hits the fan anyway and blah, blah, blah.

So it's probably in the back of most people's minds. And I think another thing is we have a little bit of infrastructure for being able to help each other out in material ways. Most half are off grid and have solar panels, chickens, vegetable gardens, sometimes quite extensive growing operations, but usually not more than an acre. So there's, you know, I can't say we're totally disaster proof or something like that, but I think we'd have a pretty good time doing our best in that kind of situation. Does anyone there have ducks? I'm just curious. Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. Ducks are freaking hilarious, man. But they're so messy. I love my ducks because they give me oxytocin and serotonin and they make me laugh. But they can turn just a thing of crystal clear fresh water into a muddy slur. in like three minutes. Yeah. But it's kind of dry where you are, though, so I don't know.

Yeah, the people who I know have ducks typically have a very small duck pool. Yeah, but I've got a fun story a couple months ago. I was at my place. There was, I noticed a little juvenile raven that had been hopping around the front yard. And after a few days, it was up on the port. and it started knocking on the glass pane of my front door. And I go out and I open the door and it just kind of stares at me and I close the door. And then an hour later it knocks again.

So I opened the door and I just left it open. And sure enough, little dude hops in. He's hopping around everywhere. He let me pet him. He's just perching. But he relieved himself absolutely all over my house. There was a lot of cleanup afterwards, but it was pretty fun to hang out with a raven for a day. He wanted to join your unintentional community.

Well, he did for a short time there. So what is the barrier to other people around the United States or around the world to starting something like you started? It might just be their own internal Overton window to some extent. we had a friend who someone in the group had a friend visiting from what was it Chicago maybe and came out to her work party found it really inspiring and went back and tried to I don't know if she was successful but she tried to do the same thing with her local communities there which was obviously they're not building earthen homes in the city but I presume it was more along the lines of local friends

and families all staying connected so that they can help each other with various projects, maybe building out gardens or something like that. But, you know, it's, I don't know that there's a ton of barriers per se, maybe more just, I mean, I'll speak for myself. Before I came out here, I wouldn't really have imagined that it was possible to do something like that. I used to live in New York, like I said, L.A., big, cities, Austin, and it just never occurred to me that I might have a kind of pro-social,

local, decentralized community that helps each other with stuff. It's just never thought about it. And so that's one of the reasons I was motivated to reach out to you is because I figured even just being aware of the concept might kind of open people's minds to that kind of thing happening. Well, that's why I invited you, because I agree. And I think a lot of people kind of dream of doing something. I mean, it's, it's kind of like this is a postmodern, uh, non-religious Amish light trajectory. And I think people kind of, uh, are longing for such a thing, but don't know how to get started. Let me ask you this.

I get the sense from talking to you, this isn't a bunch of rich people that have extra money and extra time and everything is paid for. I get the sense that these are working class people that don't have excess money and this is part of help that they actually need physically on properties and learning skills and building the social network. Yes? Yeah, absolutely. It's a community of friends for sure and kindred spirits for sure, but also, also of necessity. And I think that's part of why the group works so well, because the glue that that kind of more technically holds us together is just helping each other get our basic needs met, shelter, growing gardens, doing earthworks. How did you get funding for these

type of projects? And were there any notable ways that you were able to reduce the cost because of the community orientation of the projects. We have not gotten any funding for these projects. This is, the materials that are built with are going to be supplied by the property owner. And people contribute in different ways by bringing their own tools and whatnot. But there's no outside funding. It's all privately funded by the people who are doing the projects. So most people are volunteering to do the projects, or have you found ways to compensate them in some way?

Well, the compensation is I go to your place and help you build, and when it's my turn, you come to my place and help me build. And that's it. No money involved. What were your biggest struggles during this period? You said it's going to be three years. What were some struggles and learnings that you had? You know, it's, I think we're, we're all learning in different ways. No one came into this group, having ever been a part of a group like this before. And I think it's character building to do this kind of work, especially like I said, when you're, you're learning to let go of maybe any remnants of whatever. identity politics and stuff that that might kind of trail along from the big cities and

mainstream culture. And I know of those like Ash and myself who have done a little bit more of the organizing, we're always learning. It's not roles that we've been in before, so we're making little mistakes and we're correcting, but the only thing that's been really tough and I don't know that we've even learned the lesson yet was we had to to kick someone out of the group and I won't go into the details but it's just like oh sorry dude you can't you can't be here anymore um and that was pretty tough for people because we all were friends with this guy and then you ask yourself questions like do we need to how do you prevent that kind of person from being in the group in the first place or how do you

do you say goodbye to that person? It's, that's kind of the, the most difficult situation. I think any of us have had to deal with so far. But I'm happy to say that it's all gone pretty smoothly. It didn't kill the group or cause any major drama. We've been kicking out parts of our group for thousands of generations. It's, it's part of the dynamics of being a social primate. We get new people into the group and people leave the group. And, you know, there's a dynamic dance of how that all happens. So at what point did you have like an aha moment or this feeling while you were in one of the work parties when you knew that these community elements were sticking and they were solid? I don't know that there was an aha moment. I mean maybe the very first inaugural meeting we had

because that went so smoothly and we quickly hammered out our whole kind of organization. organizational schema and it was just like boom boom boom boom boom okay let's go and i was like wow great it just it feels like we're all kind of jelling and there's you know i i don't know i was i don't know that i was surprised that it worked out so well but it felt good and i and i felt positive about it are you aware of other groups in kansas or missouri or new york that are mimicking what you're attempting here. I mean, maybe there's tens of thousands of these unintentional communities that are organically happening. I just happened to learn about yours because you reached out to me. Well, there's at least one. So we're in the south side of the valley,

but there's the north side of the valley. And I heard about a group of alternative off-grid builders up there who were getting together more for just mastermind meetings and potlucks and stuff and I decided to spread the gospel of the work party format and so I got an invite to one of their potlucks and went up there and showed them how it's done and they started doing it and we overlap a little bit but no I haven't heard of anyone else doing this I know of many intentional communities, but not this kind of more like neighborly. You put it well, a kind of postmodern Amish light kind of deal. But I don't doubt that there might be such things. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure there must be. So you also went to start yourself a local newsletter during this time.

What made you decide to do that? What stories were you sharing and what's that all about? Yeah, it was a few things. So on Facebook, there's a few groups for our area. And I should explain this is part of the reason why our community exists is because in Cochee's County, we have what are called opt out permits for rural owner builders of houses. and it basically, virtually, allows you to build however you'd like. You don't have to conform with international building code.

And so people who are interested in doing the kinds of alternative building we're doing or just want to save a little money and, you know, get out of my face, whatever, there's those kinds of people as well, just don't like regulations. they're attracted here. And so there's these online communities, which dwarf our little homesteader builder community of people on Facebook, maybe thousands, who are all out here doing opt-out building.

And I noticed that the same questions get asked over and over and over again, and I just thought maybe it'd be nice to kind of centralize a lot of the collective knowledge and wisdom that people have about opt-out building. So that was one thing. The other was that I've gotten involved with groundwater policy and activism, which then opened the can of worms of getting very involved with local politics and state politics. And I thought, you know, it's just not really good way to get information to everybody that's important.

So, for instance, the county supervisors are going to have a meeting, and this happened a few years ago. They might get rid of the opt-out permits. Well, we need to make sure everyone knows. We need to rally the troops, so to speak, and show up and say, please don't do that. And there's lots of other things, too, and opportunities, grant opportunities for people who need grants for their help, so on and so forth. I just figured I was doing so much of that work anyways without a newsletter. people asking me questions all the time, helping people on Facebook, sending emails. I just thought better to have it all in a one-stop shop. And so I started the newsletter. What is your real job?

These things are all on the side, right? Having a newsletter and helping people build houses isn't a real job. No, what is your real job? So right now, my only real job is a part-time job as a copy editor for another newsletter in Phoenix that hired me after they, they found my newsletter and liked it. And so I do that part-time. And now I've started writing articles for them as well. So I guess I'm a part-time journalist. And then I do some odd jobs around the valley. I help people with their contract work, manual labor, home building and stuff like that when it's paid work. So if there are people out there who feel a kinschevail. with you that they're in a similar place,

but they have no idea how to start some unintentional community, not a full on intentional community sort of thing, but work parties helping with other projects and with, you know, approximate goal of helping others with things they need done on their property or building or something, but an ultimate goal of building social capital, capital in their geographic region area.

How would they start? What would you recommend? How would they think about it? What would be the first steps? I mean, you've gone through this and it's obviously working. What would be your recommendations? A lot of the work was done by Ash. And I did some as well in terms of bringing people together.

And, you know, when I moved out here, Nate, maybe it was because it was so secluded out where I live, Ruraly, middle of nowhere, that I decided I have to be purposefully and actively socially outgoing, which is not how I've been most of my life, a bit more reserved, a little bit too nerdy and all of that. And so I think, you know, maybe especially for other people who fit into the sensemaker archetype, that to simply become more social. and to say hi to people more when there seems to be an opening to do so, to to carry yourself in a way that's approachable and friendly and open. I think that can't really be understated as a key

thing because otherwise, you know, you can sit around and mastermind some solution, but to build social capital means being a sociable person. So I'd say that's maybe one of the number one things. And like I said, I went on that three-hour bike ride and Ash walks up to those people at the farmer's market. So obviously, not everyone has a local farmer's market or potlucks that they're getting invited to. But I just started saying yes to any opportunity to hang out with other people that came my way. Oh, someone so is having a party. Oh, sure, I'll go. I'll go. I'll go. I'll meet. I'll meet. And when I think about, okay, so when I used to live in New York City, how my I have done the same thing. I think I would have been more outgoing at, you know, the local used bookstore coffee

shop that I would frequent. I would maybe look online. I don't know if this exists in urban areas, because I never looked for it when I was in urban areas, but out here, every little town in our valley has their own Facebook community group where you can meet people. Do neighborhoods in Queens have that? I don't know. But then, hey, maybe you could start one and meet people that way in clubs and stuff like that. But, you know, it's harder maybe in big cities. But in rural areas, like I said, farmers markets are an easy shelling point for meeting like-minded people if you're into sustainability and homesteading and all of that. Could you define shelling point for our listeners?

Sure. It's, it's a, it's a, I think it typically refers to like a geographical place, but it, in more abstractly, it's just a, a locus within maybe a geographical space, like a community, but also maybe an idea space, where people are likely to show up. there's just like a stronger likelihood that people will end up at that locus point. So it's kind of a fancy way of saying the water cooler. The farmer's market is going to be a place that attracts people who are into localism, who care about healthy food, who like to be out and about in the sunshine around other people who like to support local businesses. So, you know, it's a good spot to find people. who are into community and healthy, sustainable pro-social community.

Unfortunately, well, my understanding is shelling point comes from game theory, which is a theory of mine anticipating the most likely default path in a situation. And I think, unfortunately, in today's age, most people's shelling points are their computers on their couches. So I'm, but I understand that farmers markets are a different sort of more social, uh, shelling point. So what about ecology and the local ecosystem? Is this really focused on building and projects and help like barn raising metaphorically? Or are people, um, at least some of the people in your unintentional community, uh, aware of and directly working to buttress and support the local flora and fauna and ecosystem health.

Definitely. I touched on this a little bit, but there's a good number of people. There's some people who do that professionally, and they work with local NGOs to do these kinds of conservation and restoration projects. Sustainability and permaculture and these kinds of things are kind of a popular topic among certain people these days. and a lot of people who have moved out here have that kind of vision. Like, I'm going to buy a piece of land, I'm going to build a house, and I'm going to do all those cool permaculture things.

I'm going to restore the native grasses. I'm going to swale the flood water so that it enriches the soil and all that kind of thing. It's not everyone, like I said, but yeah, there's quite a few people that have that mindset out here. So you seem really busy with all these projects and your part-time jobs, et cetera. What personal practices have you maintained that keep you going through all this, whether they're physical, mental, spiritual? All the time, I think, Nate, wow, would I've been able to do that or that if I didn't have some practice and hadn't done a fair amount of healing? so to speak, therapy and whatnot. And I'd say those are the, I mean, I probably spent four years or so, maybe three, focusing almost all of my energy on trying to take care of myself, heal trauma,

build psychic muscles. So I was doing everything. I started doing, you know, hours of meditation every day. I started doing group meditation practices, yoga, chie gong, working out, just head first, all in, let's do everything we can. And then I did some really important therapeutic work with plant medicines in Costa Rica, which changed my life. And I honestly don't know that I would be able to do even half of what I'm doing today, if not for that experience. And all of the the other things have done. It'd be hard for me to like wrap up any advice in that regard, except to just generally say self-care, therapy. For me, Chi-Gong is one of the most easy, beneficial things that anyone can start doing at any time. Look up on YouTube, 20-minute

Qigong routine. Do it every morning. Your nervous system gets regulated. You move into your parasympathetic nervous system. That allows you to have a little more comfort in your body, you're thinking clearer, you're making better decisions which have knock-on effects. It's like, it's amazing how just a little bit of self-care goes a long way. I agree. I don't, I don't do Qigong, though I did kind of imitate the Chinese people out my window when I lived in Taiwan.

But I am doing breathing, especially exhaling and holding my exhale for a while. while because I have a coach because especially the people that gravitate towards this podcast and the world events with climate and debt and war and poverty and all the other crushing things that we are hearing, they cause us to default to our sympathetic nervous system. And so we're constantly in this fight or flight situation. So to spend a lot more time in the. parasympathetic nervous system is kind of a prerequisite, I think, for being a healthy human,

especially one involved with the work that we're doing. I agree. So are you single? Do you have a partner? Now I'm single. Yeah. And it's hard to even be in the dating pool when you're so busy. But one day, I hope that things calm down a little bit.

and I can get back out there and look for a partner. I've been thinking a lot about family lately. Maybe that's because I'm surrounded by so many of my friends, beautiful families. And you see these kids running around. And you're like, man, that'd be a beautiful, fun life, hard life, demanding life. But yeah, but for now I'm single.

Well, I wasn't trying to pry. I was just wondering if there are hurdles when couples want to get into this unintentional community and one of the partners is really fired up about it and the other is not. And I think that's also an interesting dynamic, yes? Yeah, I'm not, I don't know personally of any examples of that. Maybe one I can think of, but for the most part,

it's in our group you have those who are couples are married will both show up unless there's you know other responsibilities like taking care of the kids or something that that prevent that from happening but yeah i don't i guess i don't really have any insight for you there so with the group of 15 to 35 that show up and sometimes 70 is it a pretty even split male and female yeah i think I've never sat down and counted. I think I know a couple more single guys like myself than I, but no, there's single gals who show up too.

I'd say it's pretty close to 50-50, Nate. Don't hold me to it, but. That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. So I want to ask you some, the personal questions that I ask all of my guests, but on this topic,

on your work in Coach East County, County, the unintentional community that you're a part of and you've helped to build. What are the key messages that you hope the viewers of this show take away from this interview in your work? Well, you know, my hope is that people who have an interest in solving problems. and I feel like that's a through line with sense makers. Sense makers love problems. And a lot of the time we spend, at least for me and my online sensemaker friends,

is like, let's conceptualize and really define the nature of problems. But there's, that often doesn't leave so much room for solutions because we're talking about big global level stuff and not local immediate. environment stuff. So what I hope people might walk away with is a sense that they can apply their problem-solving minds to their local environment, their local communities, their local bioregions in so many ways that can have incredible high-value impact and also just make

your life more colorful and rich and meaningful and fun. And again, I didn't come out here expecting that that's what my life would turn into. I thought it would more be a hermit. So I imagine that many other people similarly, they don't see opportunities around them to apply themselves to problems that might be there. But, you know, I could, I can just kind of hypothesize, but maybe your local library needs some help with figuring out a problem. Maybe a local business that you love could use a little help applying for a grant or maybe the local park in your community has some issues

and you could think of some interesting solutions to fix it up or make it better. I don't think a lot of people give themselves license to put themselves in that position of, oh, hey, I can work on this real problem with my own mind and my own hands and my own voice. And maybe there's a little less barrier to that kind of activism in a smaller rural area like this. But what I find is that for the most part, a lot of problems just don't have people trying to work on them. And when someone steps up to try to work on it, everyone says, great, thank you. That's so awesome. And then what I have found is that when you start providing value for your community, that value will come back to you, maybe not immediately, but you will start to see it come back to you

in really great ways with the people that you meet. Because when you start doing kind of service-oriented work and helpful stuff. You meet other helpful people who tend to be pretty cool people, and you'll get people who appreciate what you're doing and want to support you. So it's something I think a lot of people don't realize is a very viable thing to do is to just take the initiative in any number of ways to get out in your local environment and start doing stuff. Well, what you just described, I believe, is that the foundational kernel of what, we need to do in our country and in the world ahead of the great simplification. That's where it starts, what you just said, I think. Yeah, I think that's certainly part of it. Yeah. So do you

have any personal advice as a listener to this podcast? You've heard all the details of what's going on in the world. Do you have any personal advice to the listeners at this time of upheaval and anxiety, what some call the metacrisis? Yeah, you know, it's a tricky thing to talk about politics, especially the high-level national politics and all that. For me, I tend not to catastrophize, but that's also not to say that I diminish the urgency of something. I kind of think of it like surfing. And I love surfing, Nate. And, you know, a really big wave can crash on you, or you can ride on it. So when I see what feels like a lot of energy bubbling up from the collective consciousness and culture,

and it's big and it's scary and we don't know which way it's going to go, for me it's like great. This is an opportunity to navigate forward and feed off that energy and kind of take a Zen-like approach. a Taoist approach maybe of this is just what's happening and I'm going to you know work with it be like water as Bruce Lee said rather than try to run away from it or fight against it I don't know if that's that's very helpful but I just see it as pure potential we don't know what's going to happen the stakes can be very high but that's not reason to push your mind into darkness and then allow that to, and then identify with that future. Sure, we should think about possible futures. Oh, it could go that way. Then what would happen? And then that would happen. And what if it went that way? But that can all be held with a little bit of distance

and inner peace, I think, even when energy is high. And always do Qigong. Do a 30 minutes of Chi Gong every day. I promise you you'll handle all of the political chaos much better. Wise words from a young human. How old are you, Christian? 39. 39, okay. Late 30s.

So how would you change that advice to people half your age, give or take, who are just finding out about all this stuff and the world is changing rapidly before their eyes? What advice do you have for a 22-year-old? It's a really good question, Nate. I think, you know, when I was in my early 20s, I was, I think, highly conditioned by culture that someone out there has all the answers to my questions. And there's some authority who knows what's really. going on and can tell me what's what and right from wrong and all this kind of thing.

And certainly there's a lot of wonderful sources of wisdom and knowledge and all of that out there. But what I've learned over the journey of my 20s was that very much of what I need comes from within me and just comes from life itself. There's no one who, I tell people you can't take the universe and turn it over and see all the rules on the back. There's not an instruction manual. We're all very much figuring it out. The previous generation, they were just figuring it out.

The next generation, they'll just be figuring it out. So it's not like how we might be conditioned to think that there's a textbook somewhere that will reveal all or some teacher who has the perfect instruction for us. It's kind of a big journey that's ongoing. And part of the reason I think it's important to realize that is to give yourself some autonomy within that story. Right? It's you are, we all are, I would say, equally important characters, whether you have pedigree and high stature or a humble reputation. Every life is as meaningful as the next, I believe. And if you can feel that within yourself, I think it can open up your sense of, power and your internal energy and passion and your appreciation for life. But that's all very easy to say.

And I would say I wouldn't have realized all of that stuff if I hadn't done a lot of work and stayed true to pursuing beauty and truth and goodness. And importantly, if I hadn't been willing to accept help from people along the way, one of my biggest life lessons. That's beautifully said. There is no instruction manual, but there are rules and constraints, and that's why I'm doing this podcast,

is we have to understand the game board, but a huge amount of autonomy we still have. I love that answer. What do you care most about in the world, Christian Sawyer? Well, besides people and animals and surfing and everything else, It's a little bit of a tough question, but this is so cliche, my friend, but I care about love. And if I were to give a slightly less universalist answer, I care about wisdom and I care about art and I care about caring. I think these three things are essential for us to be in love with each other and with life.

And I'll guess I'll take a moment to highlight art as one of my things that I care most about, because it's something often overlooked in the sensemaker conversations. But I think art is so important. And I tell myself, you know, even if the world falls apart and blows up and comes to the end, if there was a really good soundtrack, it would still be kind of sweet. We might all go sinking down to the bottom of the ocean with a smile on their faces as long as we could hear the human spirit expressing itself. And music and art, they help us remain in touch.

touch with who we are, our emotions, our subconscious, our bodies when we're out there dancing, it's so important. And I hope that there's, I believe, I know that there will be opportunities for arts to play a role in the great simplification. So if you could wave a magic wand and there was no personal recourse to your decision, what's one thing you would do to improve human and planetary futures. This is one I've thought about because I've heard you ask this to other guests many times. And if I could wave a magic wand, I would, well, you know what? Sorry, but I'm going to rephrase your question a little bit because I thought there's a more fun way to ask this question for me.

if the superorganism were to produce one thing that would survive its own collapse, perhaps, or its own transformation into a better form of itself, what would that thing be? And for me, it is the lifting of humanity out of the dark ages of mental health care. I think at some point, I hope at some point in the future, we will look back at the early 2000s and look at that the same way we looked back at the early 1900s where people were selling snake oil and putting leeches on each other or whatever. Weird things people used to do that didn't really work. And that's not to say we don't have a lot of amazing healthcare options for people. Of course we do. but I see so, so much more work to be done.

And it makes me so bummed out when someone has a singular bad experience with a therapist and they say, ah, therapy doesn't work for me. And I'm like, no, that's like you went to one village doctor and they couldn't fix you. So you gave up on going to doctors. I think we need a much better diagnostic system for helping. specific people with specific personalities and psychologies who are dealing with specific problems get connected to the right people who have the right skills and work with the right therapeutic modalities to help them and that needs to be way better understood in my opinion so

that that when someone has a problem with their mental health boom they can get there And of course, I think that a lot of mental health is going to need to be addressed by just having healthier communities and kind of more organic, bottom-up forms of keeping us in good graces with ourselves. But it would be really, really helpful, I think. And there's two reasons why I think mental health is so important, at least two reasons. one, I think if everyone, if we like raised the tide on everyone's mental health, solving these bigger problems that we see before us is going to be exponentially easier. Because the problems themselves come from, I think, largely within ourselves, our decisions, our social habits and patterns.

So if everyone's happier, everyone's healthier, everyone's healthier, everyone's more open-hearted with each other. You have more headspace. You can think more clearly. You're less afraid. You're less acting in fear. So you can make decisions, which, okay, this is a little bit different than what I'm used to or it's going to cost me something.

But I see that it's for the greater good. I almost don't know if we can really solve our problems unless we bring up the quality of the mental health care people have. access to, or at least the quality of mental health people have access to. But the other reason is that it's just intrinsically valuable for people to be having a better time and to be healthy, to be able to enjoy the gift of life that we all have here. Even if, again, all shit goes south and, uh-oh, we're going off a cliff, hey, it's like that Buddhist proverb about the monk who's getting chased by the tiger and he chases him off the cliff and he grabs the branch

halfway down and there's a strawberry growing out of the cliff and he he plucks it, he eats it, he enjoys it, he falls to his death. It's maybe a little bit dark, but it's, I think there's, there's just no reason to not be putting a lot of focus and energy on mental health care. Well, one of the other bend, not break categories is libraries of healing. because I think in the next five to ten years, mental health crisis is going to explode in our country and beyond. It's already here. It's just still kind of under the surface.

We're a species and a culture out of context and have lost our meaning, and now things are getting more stressful. So I agree with you. And a good start is 30 minutes of Chi Gong and think about starting an unintentional community where you are. This has been great, Christian. Thank you for sharing your time and your story. Do you have any closing comments or words of wisdom for the people watching and listening today? Just thank you, Nate, for doing your work. If you didn't dedicate yourself to that work, I wouldn't have this opportunity and other people might not have the opportunity to take something away from it. It's a pleasure.

That's all I have for you. Thanks so much, Christian. Good luck in everything you're doing. And and please stay in touch. We'll do. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of The Great Simplification, please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. You can also visit ThegreatSimplification.com for references and show notes from today's conversation. And to connect with fellow listeners of this podcast,

check out our Discord channel. This show is hosted by me, Nate Hagan's, edited by No Trouin's, edited by No, Troublemakers media, and produced by Misty Stinnett, Leslie Batlutz, Brady Hyann, and Lizzie Siriani.