There's an evolution going on
Trump is a symptom of utter cultural decay
It’s not a biological evolution, but a cultural one going on. We’re moving beyond materialism for evaluating success to where it will be based on who we are and not on what we have.
When people operate from that understanding, it’s contagious. That’s what gurus of yore did for followers. They’d catch their vibe. So, as I’ve been looking for people to think with, I thought to give you the treat of introducing you to some my finds whose vibes are worth catching.
Nate Hagens and Roman Krznaric are on the frontline for inspiring us!
Nate Hagens rivets us in the serious challenges we face in The Great Simplification podcast, that’s “focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition…to inspire people to play a role in our collective future.” And, he’s searching for what that can be. In this month-ago milestone of his, The Superorganism and the Self, he says, “I don't know a lot about the more spiritual side of the human predicament, so I'm like a kindergartner there and I'm learning.” As a spiritual kindergartener with a PhD in the material world, he’d be a good bet for taking people on his journey to a bigger reality, where our oneness lives. As he says, “Maybe it's this change in awareness, this change in consciousness, this change in perspective of the critical moment that we're all alive and sharing this conversation together, maybe that's starting to bubble up.” Go, Nate!
That’s the appetizer. The interview that Nate did with Roman is the main course, where I especially liked Roman’s three-corners model for change – crisis, disruptive movements, visionary ideas -- that could seed some thinking about what we might do in encouraging the next big change. This 90-minute video, that’s well worth going back and listening to from the start, is cued up here to the last third that’s my territory about where-to-from-here, and I loved, loved, loved everything they said.
Some favorite thoughts: “A satisfying conversation is one in which you say things you have never said before…a crisis is an opportunity for change but the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around…A systems lens reveals the holistic story that explains humanity's path…seeing our future through a systems lens changes everything…Those who look through a systems lens can serve as early visionaries of a simpler life with new ways of relating to technology, to consumption, to each other, and to Earth's ecosystems.”
Nate lays out the backdrop for his work, trying help humanity cope, in a very informative 32-minute animation, The Great Simplification: an economic/cultural transition beginning in the not-too-distant future.
Roman Krznaric says these things earlier-on in the video:
“In History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity, I talk about the idea of radical hope which is being committed to making change even if you think the odds are against you, to always act as if change were possible because imagine getting to the end of your life and regretting the fact you hadn't taken action when it may have been possible to change.”
“The Oxford Muse created conversations between strangers to overcome social divides and the hyper-individualism of neoliberal consumer capitalism. I used to organize these things called conversation meals where we would invite strangers from a city, maybe a hundred people sometimes a thousand people in a public park, we'd invite them for a meal, rich and poor, black and white, different religions, and instead of giving them a menu of food we gave them a menu of conversation with questions about life on it, like what have you learned about the different varieties of love in your life or in what ways would you like to be more courageous or how have your priorities changed over the years, and it was like the opposite of speed dating where people would talk for an hour not for a minute…The Eden Project, which is like a biosphere that you can go and visit, they set up something called the big lunch where thousands of people on a particular day in the UK each year, in their local communities, put out chairs and tables in the streets and they simply have lunch together. It's totally brilliant. I think it could be improved with putting menus of conversation on the table…the coffee houses of the 18th century which exploded in popularity, they had a communal table and it would have on it periodicals and pamphlets…in the UK there are 30,000 coffee shops today and imagine if you put in communal tables in each of them and there were just 10 conversations between strangers a day. That would make over a 100 million conversations a year that's as important and serious as thinking how we're going to tax carbon…this is about actions which don't necessarily change the system right now but they start eroding it at the edges and so that when the time comes we have enough of that social capital to rebuild.”
Anybody want to open a conversation palace in Los Angeles? I made a deck of TALK cards a while back for my events, and we’d use them in a meeting place that’s still in my dreams:
As I continue to hunt up a committee to think with, point me at anyone to check out. And my $100 offer still stands for a steer to any hotbed where scheming about what to do is already going on!
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"The idea of radical hope which is being committed to making change even if you think the odds are against you." That seems like words to live by, and to follow. Thank you for sharing
"A satisfying conversation is one in which you say things you have never said before" - cool thought!