The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens Nate Hagens

On this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by Mohit Trivedi, Abhishek Thakore, and Kejal Savla, three NGO leaders in India active in driving social and cultural change using the perspective of the Indic Mind. As a subcontinent, the Indic people have faced crisis after crisis, yet have still held onto the optimism and compassion foundational to their culture. Submerged in this history and context, there is so much for the West to learn from those active in the metacrisis space in India. How has India’s unique history shaped the way they approach coming resource constraints, as they prepare to experience disproportionate global heating and extreme weather? Why is it important to hold paradoxes that look beyond the black and white, towards more complex and nuanced perspectives of the world? How could community be at the center of the responses to converging challenges we face - and what would it mean to practice relationality across all areas of one’s life?
Mohit Trivedi is the co-found of 2069 Ecosystems. He is also a learning designer, facilitator and movement weaver, with a passion for spiritual and socio-political transformation. With a background in psychology, nursing, alternative education and social entrepreneurship, Mohit is aspiring to have harmony in his relationships with power, money, work and connections with others. He is actively stewarding a pan-Indian movement bringing together various individuals and organizations who are looking to practice collective leadership and decentralization, and nurture the next generation of spiritual and socio-political leaders.
Abhishek Thakore is a serial social entrepreneur and a systems change expert with over two decades of experience. As the founder of The Blue Ribbon Movement, he has created an ecosystem of initiatives aimed at building youth leadership, civic engagement, and thriving cultures across the social sector. An MBA from IIM Bangalore and a Senior Fellow of Bhoomi College, he uses his diverse expertise for serving humanity's evolutionary purpose and responding to the metacrisis.
Kejal Savla is the co-founder and CEO of Wisdom Tree- an organization that works with non-profits across rural and urban areas to work on organizational challenges through culture and leadership. She works with the integration of psychology, spirituality, and management to tap into organization's soul-force to reach its highest potential. Kejal is a weaver of social change for humans and systems to co-exist non-violently. She comes with a decade-long experience of working in the social space with youth on deep democracy, local problem-solving, and 100% consent-based decision-making.
For Show Notes and More visit: thegreatsimplification.com/episode/reality-roundtable-8
To watch this video episode on Youtube → https://youtu.be/XQbP4UJaiCw 
 

On this episode, Nate is joined by philosopher and educator Zak Stein to discuss the current state of education and development for children during a time of converging crises and societal transformation. As the pace of life continues to accelerate - including world-shaking technological developments - our schools struggle to keep pace with changes in cultural expectations. What qualities are we encouraging in a system centered on competition and with no emphasis on creating agency or community participation? How is unfettered technology and artificial intelligence influencing youth - and what should parents, adults, and teachers be doing in response? What could the future of education look like if guided by true teacherly authority with the aim to create well-rounded, stable young humans with a sense of belonging and purpose in their communities? 
About Zak Stein: 
Dr. Zak Stein is a philosopher of education, as well as a Co-founder of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. He is also the Co-founder of Civilization Research Institute, the Consilience Project, and Lectica, Inc. He is the author of dozens of published papers and two books, including Education in a Time Between Worlds. 
PDF Transcript
Show Notes
00:00 - Zak Stein works + Info, Civilization Research Institute, Education in a Time Between Worlds, Center for World Philosophy and Religion, First Principles and First Values 
03:24 - No Child Left Behind
03:56 - Joseph Tainter + TGS episode
03:53 - Iatrogenic 
05:30 - Daniel Schmachtenberger (TGS Episodes), Ken Wilbur, Marc Gafney
16:01 - Effects of screens and social media on teen mental health
16:54 - Marshall McLuhan
17:20 - The importance of adult boundary and limit setting for children
18:17 - How social media affects the brain
19:06 - The rise of ADHD in the 90s and effects on education - a timeline
19:58 - Hypercompetitive primary education systems
20:20 - High level of stress and cheating in primary education
22:28 - Scandinavian school systems
26:27 - Cold war effects on the education system
26:35 - Sputnik
27:25 - Tech elites don’t give their kids tech
28:35 - Elite overproduction, Peter Turchin
34:10 - Your Unique Self 
37:28 - Iain McGilchrist + TGS Episode
38:02 - Moral Relativism
43:27 - Foundations of advertising 
47:07 - Negatives of standardized testing
47:22 - Donald T. Cambell - Campbell’s law
48:57 - Nature vs Nurture Debate
49:20 - Cooperation and competition
52:10 - Effects of a competitive school environment
55:02 - The effects of an above-and-beyond teacher
55:42 - Legitimate teacherly authority
59:55 - Importance of the environment in the first 5 years of life
1:02:20 - John Dewey
1:10:31 - The best way to learn is to teach
1:11:40 - David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs
1:15:25 - How standardized testing increased high education access
1:16:08 - Civilian Conservation Corp, Lawrence A. Cremin
1:17:02 - New Deal
1:22:07 - Risks around artificial intelligence
1:24:58 - Rise of relationships with AI
1:28:41 - First Chatbot ELIZA
1:30:01 - Electricity use of AI
1:37:30 - The Future of Human Nature
1:41:19 - Peak Oil
1:42:29 - Mental Health Crisis
1:46:35 - Correlation of COVID with IQ loss
Watch this video episode on YouTube

On this episode, Nate is joined by maverick ecologist Pella Thiel to discuss the legal frameworks behind the Ecocide and Rights of Nature Movements. Our current economic and legal systems have no mechanisms to consider nature in our decision making - much less to make systemic planetary stability a priority. Could redefining the destruction of our biosphere to be considered a crime parallel with that of genocide alter the way we structure laws governing our societies and economies? How are countries legislating and enforcing these ideas - even going so far as to act against the flow of the superorganism? Most importantly, how could top-down legal ideas such as these interact with bottom-up individual action to create powerful shifts in cultural values and motivations? 
About Pella Thiel:
Pella Thiel is a maverick ecologist, part-time farmer, full-time activist and teacher in ecopsychology. She is the co-founder of Swedish hubs of international networks like Swedish Transition Network and End Ecocide Sweden and a knowledge expert in the UN Harmony with Nature programme. Pella was awarded the Swedish Martin Luther King Award in 2023 and the Environmental Hero of the year 2019.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JgRlgKHvKCE 
More info, and show notes: www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/121-pella-thiel 

Recorded April 22 2024
 
Description
 
For this Earth Day in 2024 Frankly, Nate walks through 7 thought experiments geared towards imagining scenarios and outcomes for ourselves, society, and the planet. While not rooted in reality, thinking through hypotheticals can be a valuable way to reflect on our ethics, ideals, and future decision points. From the perceived quick-fix of solar panels to magic solutions for infrastructure and governance, how might human cultural values impact outcomes for the biosphere? How do humans and the climate shape each other, and what does that mean for the less stable climate we’re headed towards? If they knew what we do today, could humans from hundreds of years ago have avoided the carbon pulse - and what opportunities do we have today, living in the future's past?
 
YouTube Link here 
 
For Show Notes and More: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/62-seven-thought-experiments-for-earth-day

On this episode, Nate is joined by inventor and investor Tom Chi to take a broad look at the principles guiding innovation and capital - and how we might shift these to be more biophysically aligned in the future. For the past few centuries, our global industrial system has been dominated by growth-based economics without awareness of its dependence on the biosphere - or the waste that it leaves behind. What would it mean for our technology to be ecologically centered, working in service of and in synergy with complex, biodiverse life on Earth? How can we work within our current financial and governance systems to create initiatives that benefit both ecosystems and economies? More broadly, what cultural shifts could we imagine that move beyond seeing ourselves as simply dependent on ecological systems - but rather as a part of the entangled whole? 
About Tom Chi
Tom Chi is the founding partner of At One Ventures, which backs early-stage (Seed, Series A) companies using disruptive deep tech to upend the unit economics of established industries while dramatically reducing their planetary footprint. Previously, Tom was a founding member of Google X where he led the teams that created self-driving cars, deep learning artificial intelligence, wearable augmented reality and internet connectivity expansion.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/AjGOGfzAvyc 
More info, and show notes: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/120-tom-chi 

Recorded April 17 2024
 
Description
In this week’s Frankly, Nate focuses on the importance of the Strait of Hormuz, a geographic location within a 700-mile radius of Israel called the “Black Gold Triangle” where more than half of the world’s remaining oil lies under the sand. In the midst of high-stakes geo-political events where the misery and threats from warring nations dominate discourse, we remain (mostly) energy blind to the choke points that lie at the center of these conflicts, which if disrupted could send our liquid-combustible-fuel dependent economies crashing. How could the threat of expanding regional wars - especially Iran’s potential response in the Strait of Hormuz - impact the world’s reliance on the flow of oil? Who are the people making world-altering decisions - and do they have the best interest of the future in mind? Can a heightened awareness of our global system’s dependency on fragile energy supply chains shift our focus away from escalating risks towards deconfliction and peace?   
 
YouTube Link here
 
For Show Notes and More: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/61-the-strait-of-hormuz-and-the-spice