Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We do not all have to be working in the same way to confront urgent challenges of Trump 2.0. But if we foster a robust ecology of change, we may yet see the movement resurgence that we need.
The climate crisis is not only an extreme case of a collective challenge, but also an extremely complex one. Conventional notions of expertise and specialisation are therefore failing. The essence of radical honesty is to recognise this failure of our conventional ideas and to draw lessons from it.
The old bromide goes: If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog. In today’s Washington, the joke would be to buy a DOGE.
Rather than retreating into the world of brains and their fancy constructs—responsible for initiating a sixth mass extinction that would wipe us out, too—we ought to break free of their grip.
As both China and the U.S. go hurtling ever faster toward Armageddon in the race to dominate in AI, they have both bought into techno-utopian ideologies, lock, stock and barrel. We should all take a deep breath and ask the question: Is accessible, open-source AI really a good thing for anyone?
In my 2021 book, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival, I traced how social power arose among humans and how it has been used in societies large and small, ancient and modern. Whatever insights that book contains, now is a good time to put them to the test.
One conceptualisation of this new narrative is as a ‘Thrutopia’. This is the middle passage between utopia and dystopia. The hour is too late to avoid reaping the destruction we have sown, but neither is complex human civilisation beyond hope.
Personal computers and the internet were supposed to democratize information and the power to analyze and use it. Instead, they are contributing to the increasing concentration of wealth and power and putting us on the road to authoritarian rule.
In this episode, Nate is joined by complexity scientist, Peter Turchin, to discuss his work modeling the key factors that drive patterns of peace, turmoil, and revolution in nations throughout history – and how those connect to the situation in the United States today.
This focus on resilient agrarianism underlines the point that ‘taking care of ourselves in a world on fire’ – to invoke the subtitle of Adam’s book – is going to be a heavily rural affair.
So rather than take from the world, take yourself out of this system and go responsively and responsibly contribute to living. Go live your whole and healthy life in the edge spaces. And pretty soon there will be no center. (Because we all know it can’t hold…)
The Great Unraveling of environmental and social systems calls into question the very basis of modernity. In this online event, Vanessa Andreotti and Dougald Hine held a rich and honest discussion of the implications of modernity’s decline, and how we – individually and collectively – can hospice what is dying and give care to what may emerge.
