The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Thinking and Feeling | Frankly 89

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

The human brain has proven to be particularly good at breaking down all sorts of things into categories and dichotomies - even our perception of the world itself is often split between 'thinking' and 'feeling,' shaped by the sensory input we receive. It seems that our values, beliefs, opportunities – even how we define ourselves as individuals – are limited to opposing and polarized options. Yet, does this binary mindset only lead us toward more blind-spots? In this Frankly, Nate unpacks the influence of beliefs on our feelings, and how it ultimately affects our actions. As global risks and complexity intensify and those with political power accelerate deeper divides, adopting an integrative perspective will become essential for fostering connection, cooperation, and civility. The over-reliance of the last few decades on objective facts and science is no longer enough. Now is the time to re-align our analytics with values and emotions that will light our path forward through challenges of the next few decades. What might we achieve if we moved beyond dichotomies and embraced dualities, recognizing the importance of both sides of the same coin? Is it possible for western cultures to embrace our 'feeling' capabilities, without losing our trajectory of great contributions to science and knowledge for the world? Lastly, in what ways can we as individuals shift the way we relate to the world - to integrate thinking and feeling - so that we might remain engaged and informed citizens during these uncertain times? (Recorded March 18th, 2025)   ---   Show Notes and More   Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   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 had a lot of feedback from last, frankly, on rocks in the river. A lot of people really loved it where the poem, and I was really tired and I recorded it earlier in the morning. And a lot of people were like, dude, what's going on with debt and Trump and the Ukraine war and interest rates, what's happened to you? You're talking about soft psychology topics, and we like it when you had Dennis Meadows and people talking about oil depletion and all that. So I would like to discuss the overlap and the integration of thinking and feeling. there are a lot of really important biophysical macroeconomic things happening in the world.

And I do have a lot to say about those things that are relevant in informing possible paths forward. But I want to take another stab at this dichotomy between thinking and feeling today. Yesterday I went on a hike with a friend who said, what happened in the world to make you less concerned about the future? And I said, what? I am more worried about the future than I ever have been in my life. I think the pathways to bending as opposed to breaking have narrowed in the last three months. And my friend said, but you don't seem that way.

You don't talk about it. I don't feel that emanating from you. That was interesting to reflect on. I also had a lot of people really liked and responded well to last weeks, frankly, and there were some detractors. I am blessed to have quite a large group of wise and clever women in my inner circle. and one of them sent me a voicemail last week, and I'd like to read it and then discuss the relevance of it. Nate, the frankly you recorded was such a beautiful balance of,

yes, there are all these problems in the world. No, we're not bypassing and pretending they don't exist, but there is also so much beauty and so much love and living and being and feeling in every moment. I mean the snow and the dogs playing, there is play. in every moment. To just do what so many people normally do and narrowly look at the problems, creates more of the problems,

because then the solutions are all emergency, and then onboarding everyone else to the hell that's on earth, and then everyone else only sees hell. And then when only hell is seen, then all the solutions are fear-based and anger-based and control and power. So I thought that frankly was just a beautiful balance of both parts of life, the light and the dark, the shadow and the sunshine. Yeah, that also hit, hit home to me.

And there have been a lot of people in the last five years, mostly women, to be honest, that have said things similar to me. And I didn't get it. I'm like, yeah, but look at what's happening and we're printing debt and doubling it every eight years. And our productivity and GDP is only doubling every 25 years and look at how fast oil is depleting. And we're having to run faster and faster. Don't you get it. And maybe I didn't get it. I think there are multiple dichotomies in how we approach.

the human predicament. And it's subjective and objective. It's thinking versus feeling. It's left brain versus right brain. It's masculine versus feminine. It's narrow boundary versus wide boundary. It's analytical versus embodied. And we can't be on one side of each of those equations.

There has to be an overlap between the. I was thinking yesterday, would I want to live in a community where everyone knew all the aspects of the metacrisis, but they were completely in their heads and they weren't embodied and their nervous systems weren't regulated. And they didn't have joy and music and laughter and love, but they were really smart about the metacrisis. all aspects of Marvin Harris triangle of social structure, superstructure, infrastructure. Or would I want to have a community of people that were fully embodied and dancing and meditating and in community with each other but had no skills at all and no knowledge of the metacrisis, didn't know how to plant food, didn't know how to MacGyver different energy water food systems?

and I struggle. I wouldn't want either of those worlds. I would want both sorts of people. But I increasingly encounter groups of humans that are totally in their heads thinking, overly analyzing the metacrisis. And I encounter people at parties that are like just dancing and totally embodied and oblivious to these things. And I think we need to make the Venn diagram between these two modalities with a larger overlap. The light and the candle of civilization is dimming. I both think that and I feel it.

And I expect many of you watching this, watching events in the world feel it as well. The USA, despite its international military bases and clandestine things over the last 50 years, has made major, major contributions to humanity to the global society. And these are being keystroked out of existence. United States government agencies have worked tirelessly to generate and disseminate vital knowledge of the planet and our systems. Two prominent examples are NOAA and NASA, but there's also a U.S. Weather Bureau, Fish and Wildlife, the Park Services, EPA, DOE, and the IEA. There is no other government on Earth that can boast comparable contributions to humanity.

I've been a bit blindsided. You know, I've been talking about the metacrisis, the great simplification, the integration of energy, money, technology, growth, and environmental damage for over a decade. I have been caught by surprise because I thought that values and facts and science would continue. to be available to us to have conversations and civic discourse and changing people's minds based on reality, objective reality. And what's been happening the last couple months has made me both angry and sad. I'm not depressed. I'm engaged. I now understand our situation, our global, biophysical, anthropological, macro situation better than I ever have.

And I will be soon sharing updated logic on that. But right now I'm sad and I'm angry at the same time. And it is from this place of anger and sadness where I find intense clarity on next steps in my life, next steps in my work, next steps for this podcast, this platform in society, those steps are not going to come from more analysis and more understanding of the facts. They're going to come from feeling and experiencing my feelings. So I'm not going woo on all of you. I am still a biophysical macro analyst. But I'm also integrating. call it a wide boundary humanity.

I am alive, along with all of you at this time. We have to think and feel in this time, in this moment. Next week, some analysis, I promise. Have a good one.