End of Year Reflections: Four Years of The Great Simplification
In this week’s episode, Nate reflects on four years(!) of the podcast by answering listener-submitted questions, which cover a broad range of topics related to The Great Simplification.
Society featured
Ditching Dualism #4: Going Mental
What are the central arguments for mind—or associated consciousness—as a phenomenon unto its own, not “reducible” to mind-numbingly complex material interactions (just reducible to a label of “mind,” apparently; simpler!). What is it, in fact, that we do with our brains, and how much of it depends on matter (i.e., physiology)?
A call to makers, hackers, designers, engineers and artists
Ray Bradbury once wrote that “It’s part of the nature of man to start with romance and build to a reality.” Few things can build romance like the coming together of tech, art and storytelling in the way I’ve loosely sketched out above. You in?
The path through an uncertain future – Rebuild community by reclaiming the commons
We don’t have any certainty about the future, but we can be certain the way to address anything that is coming is through community. And the natural place to start, the one that is most available, is the communities where we live. We must build the future in place.
Post-collapse land, markets and society
In this eighth article on the collapse theme I turn to how to build trust, how to regulate access to resources, how to manage society at large and how to organise distribution and exchange.
Informers: The new drive to get Americans to spy on one another
We are now witnessing at least the fourth attempt in the United States in the last century or so to create a vast network of citizen spies.
Evergreening Transition Training
Dear friends and fellow Transitioners, I hope you’ll join me today in celebrating the launch of Transition Network International’s first-ever “evergreen” course, Transition Launch Training! This self-paced and self-directed online version of our most popular training is now available for anyone, anywhere, to take for free at any time.
Making Home in the Holidays
I want all the outraged folks to learn from this. Walk away now. In fact, run. Do whatever you can within your community to pull all your needs within that small boundary. This benefits your community as well as you, building strength and resilience in your place and creating networks of reciprocity
Ditching Dualism #3: The Divorce
In the dualist view, because we possess a mind—and a superior one, at that—we still privilege ourselves as special and separate. In other words, the destructive consequences of dualism stem more from the mind/matter split than from which beings are included in the (still hierarchical) club.
Maps & Bridges: Tackling Societal Crises Through Inner & Outer Transformation
An autonomous citizenry would be more likely to seek a nuanced understanding of its society and our collective problems, participate in campaigns to elect champions of public interests, and have the resilience to overcome the challenges involved.
Navigating Collapse Together: Toward Regenerative Public Life
Every act of care, every restored relationship, and every small step toward shared responsibility contributes to the future that is already taking shape. This is work we can keep doing, steadily and together.
Human Nature Odyssey: Time Machine 2126 (Part 1) – Has Green Energy Saved Us Yet?
What does a livable future look like 100 years from now? If we unlocked unlimited green energy, what would we actually do with it? And are our dreams of a renewable-energy utopia sometimes just as delusional as the fossil-fueled ‘drill baby drill’ mentality?
