Nate Hagens:

In a materially rich, modern world, the habituation of the action of consumption leads to the wanting of things culture-wide being stronger than the reward we get from having them. This is a fundamental problem for an economic system built on turning billions of barrels of oil into microliters of dopamine. […]

In a culture of vast material wealth, information overload, and social media it’s increasingly difficult for us to separate fantasy from reality. When these individual virtual worlds connect with the virtual worlds of others, the result is widespread shared beliefs that money is real, that our current widespread wealth is due mostly to our cleverness, and that technology will lead to limitless growth.

I’ve been listening to The Great Simplification for a while, but I hadn’t listened to Nate’s Film on Energy, Environment, and Our Future. Though he doesn’t capture me entirely, I appreciate nearly everything he’s about.

Here’s an example of one reason why I’m not entirely captured. In the middle of what is surely a crucial description of what’s going on all around us, he says this: “Computer algorithms optimized for profit are splintering our society by reducing attention spans, accelerating addiction, apathy, and mistrust in science.” I’m not saying that that sentence is wrong (it isn’t), but it seems really, really obvious to me that “mistrust in science” does not belong in that list in the same way or as seemlessly as addiction and apathy and loss of attention. The trust we struggle to place, and insist the public place, in science is its own beast, and surely optimized computer algorithms can just as easily result in misplaced and even harmful trust in something-called-science.

(I mean no offense to anyone who has one of these, but I am certain that a flag on my lawn declaring “As for me and my house, we believe in science” will help neither me, nor our politics, nor our science. Surely the ubiquity of flags of this sort reflect an algorithm much more than they reflect the truth or something meaningfully called trust.)

Anyway, I fully endorse the work Nate Hagens does and highly recommend his podcast. I mention my little complaint only because I think it is hindrances like these — which are not occasional but instead soak almost everything that gets said — are part of what keeps people from getting on board with what is otherwise fascinating and essential information for us today.