Society featured

One Ring to rule them all

By Nate Hagens, originally published by The Great Simplification

October 10, 2023

Recorded October 2 2023

Description

In this Frankly, Nate refers to a favorite timeless book series, “The Lord of the Rings”, to describe ‘the nine rings for mortal men’ -evolutionary behavioral tendencies that are common among humans but become counterproductive within the context of our modern culture. These traits combine to drive the growth of the Superorganism -but they are pulled forward by the ‘one ring to rule them all’, which today is the positive feedbacks of power resulting from the synergy of agricultural surplus, fossil energy, money, and now Artificial Intelligence accelerating it all. Can this out of control power dynamic be broken and redirected away from the influence of this “One Ring”? How do we strategize and prepare for the future given this cultural compulsion to amass power as we approach the Great Simplification? Can ‘wisdom’ counter intelligence?

Show Notes

00:00 – Lord of the Rings

02:27 – Humans are predators

03:03 – Dopamine and motivation

04:08 – Loss Aversion

05:45 – In-group/Out-group dynamics

06:28 – Discount Rate

07:03 – Populism, Consensus Trance

07:52 – Humans avoid uncertainty

08:49 – The Oil Drum

10:30 – Anthropocentrism

13:30 – Superorganism

13:44 – Moloch, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Liv Boeree

16:45 – Tristan Harris + TGS Episode

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens is the Executive Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF). Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians, and systems thinkers, ISEOF assembles roadmaps for understanding how human societies might adapt to lower-throughput lifestyles.

Nate hosts the podcast The Great Simplification, where he has conversations with experts in energy, ecology, government, technology, and the economy to provide a systemic view of the world around us.

After ten years in finance, Nate left Wall Street to study the interrelationships between energy, ecology, and economics—and the implications for human futures. He was the Managing Editor of The Oil Drum, one of the most respected websites for analysis and discussion of global energy supplies and implications of the upcoming energy transition.

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