Entangled World

Beyond the Superorganism | Nate Hagens

May 9, 2024

Dr. Nate Hagens discusses our unsustainable energy consumption, the climate crisis, and the challenges of transitioning to renewable energy. He highlights the environmental and human costs of extracting minerals for technology. Nate emphasizes the need for a cultural shift to align technological advancements with sustainability and reevaluate societal values for a more balanced future.

01:25:21

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Nate Hagens

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Quick takeaways

Transitioning solely to renewable energy overlooks the finite nature of minerals used, urging a shift in cultural values.

The podcast emphasizes the intricate balance between energy consumption, environmental impact, and cultural evolution for a sustainable future.

Discussions on AI's potential solutions for climate change highlight the importance of sustainable economic models and a systemic shift in governance.

Deep dives

The Interconnectedness of Technological Advancements and Environmental Impact

With a focus on the future driven by technological advancements, the podcast delves into the critical relationship between energy consumption and our natural resources. It emphasizes that technological solutions alone cannot address our challenges without a fundamental shift in values and consciousness. The discussion revolves around the intricate balance between existential, social, and economic factors, highlighting the need to reevaluate cultural goals and aspirations. By exploring the intricate interplay of these elements, a path towards a more sustainable world is envisioned.

Introduction

4min

Transition from Finance to Global Challenges

21min

Navigating the Transition: Fossil Fuels to Rare Earth Minerals

11min

AI, Energy Consumption, and the Climate Crisis

9min

Balancing Growth and Sustainability: Humanity's Evolutionary Dilemma

14min

Balancing Nature and Technology for Future Generations

25min

Closing Thoughts and Future Guest Recommendations

2min

My guest today is Dr. Nate Hagens. Nate is the Executive Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF), an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition.

Nate is also a fellow podcaster as the host of The Great Simplification, in which he has conversations with experts in energy, ecology, human behavior, geopolitics, technology, and the economy to provide a systemic view of the world around us, inform more humans about the path ahead, and inspire people to play a role in our collective future. As a backdrop for The Great Simplification podcast, Nate also produced a short animated film by the same title that you can find on YouTube. And he has also co-authored two books Reality Blind - Integrating the Systems Science Underpinning Our Collective Futures - Vol 1 and The Bottlenecks of the 21st Century.

In this episode, we talk about our current collective predicament, especially, a way of life built on unsustainable energy consumption, also known as the energy dissipating “superorganism” of humanity. One core aspect of our current predicament is the climate crisis and many people believe that all we have to do is get off fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy but this is an ecology-blind view that ignores the fact that the minerals that power our EVs and solar panels are finite and their extraction has devastatingly complex environmental and human costs.

Nate emphasizes how our cultural values, goals, and aspirations must evolve if we want our technological advancements to affect positive change rather than accelerate our current unsustainable extractive way of life. Nate paints a picture of the bifurcations between technology and ecology, masculine and feminine, right brain and left brain, and how these forces have fallen out of balance throughout human history.

We also talk about Nate’s recent visit to India, where he experienced firsthand some of the differences between Eastern and Western cultures, and close our conversation by honoring ancient traditions and opening an inquiry into how we might both remember the wisdom that was hard earned over thousands of years by our ancestors and apply it to our modern-day metacrisis predicament.

Watch the full video episode on YouTube.

Nate Hagen's Links & Resources:

The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future

The Great Simplification (Nate’s podcast)

The Great Simplification (short film)n

Reality Blind - Integrating the Systems Science Underpinning Our Collective Futures - Vol 1 - Nate Hagens and DJ White

The Bottlenecks of the 21st Century - DJ White and Nate Hagens

Economics for the Future: Beyond the Superorganism

University of Minnesota Reality 101 course videos

Reality 101 short course overview

Other Resources Mentioned:

The Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson