The Great Simplification

Many thinkers have concluded that the coming Transition will be a Collapse. Nate Hagen is one such person, and I co-opted the name of his podcast as the name of this event. ("Simplification" sounds much less dramatic than "Collapse": but is there a difference?)

An excellent summary of Nate's ideas is in this 32-minute animated video. His arguments deal mainly with the dynamics that are leading to the simplification, and only briefly with its nature. They are compelling:

Nate's super-power is his analysis of the evolution of life and the development of civilization from the perspective of energy extraction and use. Here are some snippets from the video:

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In the early 19th century, humans discovered how to extract fossil energy and materials from under Earth's surface to boost their economies. This changed everything.

Compared to a global labor force of around five billion real humans, the machines and work powered by access to buried carbon energy added the equivalent power of 500 billion human workers.

In our lifetimes society will have to redirect increasing amounts of our energy surplus towards obtaining the surplus itself, leaving less affordable energy to support many of our current economic activities.

We have arrived at a place where we have outsourced our decisions and planning to the financial system. We have almost entirely financialized the human experience.

The human species has become a mindless, insatiable, energy-hungry Superorganism.

A lifestyle adapted to lower energy use will reconnect our virtual and physical worlds. By necessity our lives will become less global, more interpersonally engaged, and more tethered to natural flows.

Nature has gifted us with a productive and beautiful home, the ability to understand how we got here and the creativity to imagine which paths are possible.

The future need not be dystopian but cleverness alone will no longer suffice for the next leg of our journey. We will need imagination, foresight, empathy, and above all, wisdom to navigate the path to the future that is arriving: The Great Simplification

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The wider context of Humanity's Transition is summarised in this 30-minute video where a leading thinker is interviewed.

I hope you can make it to this meeting.