7,162 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2023
    1. as the issues have become so complex and plentiful that no one can hope to be knowledgeable enough to make competent decisions about them. This is the point at which highly complex societies start to collapse of their own weight.
      • for: complexity, collapse, polycrisis, vulnerabilities - civilization
      • comment
        • the threat of sudden collapse is that our highly interdependent world crashes
        • and we are all specialized cogs in the wheel
        • If sudden collapse happens and complex infrastructure becomes unusable, it takes a tremendous amount of global coordination of specialists to bring the infrastructure back up again
        • global society is not easy to replicate with small groups, as the specialized skills are so fragmented that no small group would likely have the collective knowhow to reconstruct the complexity
    2. It probably isn’t even a stretch to suggest that herds and flocks of many other animals use a form of direct democracy in making their decisions. Again despite the myths, “alphas” do not make decisions for others, “leadership” roles rotate regularly, the “law of two (or four) feet” tests the group’s readiness for consensus, and principles such as the “first follower” enable wild creatures to reach a decision in their group’s best collective interest. Dissenters and unpersuaded group members are free to go off and look for another group, except at critical times (such as breeding season, or when under attack), when all members of the group instinctively pitch in to share the extra burden or workload, or help work through the crisis or challenge. We’re not so different, or, at least, we weren’t.
      • for: animal decision-making
      • adjacency
        • animal herding behavior and
        • direct democracy
      • claim
        • herds and flocks of many other animals (other than human) use a form of direct democracy in making decisions
        • Alphas do not alone make decisions, as leadership often rotates
        • The law of "two feet (or four" tests the group's readiness for consensus and the "first follower" principle
        • dissenters and unpersuaded group members are free to go off and look for another group
          • except at critical times such as
            • breeding season
            • under threat
    3. story of three Inuit tribe members who get stranded in a blizzard during a hunt
      • for: governance - story, story - choice, story, Inuit
      • story
        • Three Inuit tribe members who get stranded in a blizzard during a hunt
          • They discuss their situation.
          • The two elders say their experience and instincts tell them to stay put and wait for rescue.
          • The younger hunter accepts the argument
            • but states his belief that it would be best for the group if one of them were to attempt to make it to safety and tell the rest of their community about their predicament.
          • Finally the younger hunter heads off.
          • In the end, the elders are rescued and the younger man dies.
          • There is
            • no blame,
            • no repercussions,
            • no second guessing the decisions.
          • The choices were the only ones the trio could have made in the circumstances.
          • They were respected, the young man’s death was mourned, and life went on.
    1. The Tweedledums
      • for: definition, definition - Tweedledums, Tweedledees
      • definition
        • Tweedledums
          • This is a Reactionary Caste that believes that salvation lies in a return to a non-existent nostalgic past, characterized by respect for
            • authority,
            • order,
            • hierarchy,
            • individual initiative, and
            • ‘traditional’ ways of doing things,
          • governed by a
            • strict,
            • lean,
            • paternalistic elite
          • that leaves as much as possible up to individual families guided by
            • established ‘family values’ and
            • by their interpretation of the will of their god.
    2. The Tweedledees
      • for: definition, definition - tweedledees, tweedledees
      • definition
        • Tweedledees
          • This is a PM (Professional-Managerial) Caste that believes that salvation lies in striving for an impossibly idealistic future characterized by
            • mutual care,
            • affluence
            • relative equality for all,
          • governed by a
            • kind,
            • thoughtful,
            • educated,
            • informed and
            • representative
          • elite that appreciates the role of public institutions and regulations, and is guided by principles of
            • humanism and
            • ‘fairness’.
    3. signs of collapse include
      • for: collapse, polycrisis, political collapse
      • signs of collapse
        • misinformation
        • disinformation,
        • propaganda
        • censorship,
        • scapegoating,
        • disenfranchisement,
        • suppression of dissent,
        • widespread surveillance,
        • overt and large-scale corruption,
        • emergence and use of paramilitaries,
        • widespread
          • arrests,
          • incarcerations and
          • ‘disappearances’,
        • election interference and fraud,
        • election cancellations and
        • the dismantling of democratic institutions. Over the past decade, most of these have been employed in many countries, and their use is becoming widely normalized in much of the world.
    1. Our findings suggest that the share of US$2020-millionaires in the world population will grow from 0.7% today to 3.3% in 2050, and cause accumulated emissions of 286 Gt CO2. This is equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget, and significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5 °C.
      • for: millionaire emissions, carbon inequality, inequality, W2W
      • paraphrase
        • Our findings suggest that the share of US$2020-millionaires in the world population will grow
          • from 0.7% today
          • to 3.3% in 2050,
        • and cause accumulated emissions of
          • 286 Gt CO2
          • equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget,
        • and significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5 °C.
        • Continued growth in emissions at the top makes a low-carbon transition less likely,
          • as the acceleration of energy consumption by the wealthiest
          • is likely beyond the system's capacity to decarbonize.
          • To this end, we question whether policy designs such as progressive taxes targeting the high emitters will be sufficient.
    1. According to a new study by tourism professor Stefan Gössling, the millionaires will, within just a few decades, be responsible for almost three quarters of carbon dioxide emissions.
      • for: wealth inequality, inequality, carbon inequality, elite emissions, 1% emissions, millionaire emissions
      • According to a new study by tourism professor Stefan Gössling,
        • the millionaires will, within just a few decades, be responsible for almost three quarters of carbon dioxide emissions.
    1. Two factors consistently helped hasten beneficial change in our study.
      • for: social tipping point, STP, tipping point, social norm, complex contagion
      • study findings
        • Two factors can help hasten beneficial change
          • common understanding of the benefits from change due to:
            • events that attract attention
            • opinion polls that aggregate information
            • finding an angle on an issue that appeals to a broad demographics
          • perserverence
            • leaders who persevere even at great cost
    1. We might view human social organization in general in this lens: social organization exists to maximize the extraction of energy from the environment to the group and individual (X), and the efficiency of the conversion of extracted energy into offspring (E). This is identical to the claim that social organization exists to maximize the fitness of the group (Wilson and Sober 1994) and/or the individuals which compose the group (Nowak et al. 2010), given an energetic definition of fitness.
      • for: social organization - evolutionary purpose,
      • paraphrase
        • human social organization exists to maximize
          • the extraction of energy from the environment to the group and individual (X), and
          • the efficiency of the conversion of extracted energy into offspring (E). -This is identical to the claim that
          • social organization exists to maximize the fitness of the group (Wilson and Sober 1994) and/or the individuals which compose the group (Nowak et al. 2010),
        • given an energetic definition of fitness.
    2. Ricklefs and Wikelski 2002)]. In this context, Pianka (1970) argued that, “…natural selection will usually act to maximize the amounts of matter and energy gathered per unit time.” Brown et al. (1993) likewise offered an energetic definition in which fitness is “reproductive power, or the rate of conversion of energy into offspring.” This reproductive power was taken to be a function of both the rate of assimilation of energy from the environment and the rate of conversion of energy to offspring (but see (Kozlowski 1996)).
      • for: energy offspring, natural selection energy
      • paraphrase
        • Pianka (1970) argued that, “…natural selection will usually act to maximize the amounts of matter and energy gathered per unit time.”
        • Brown et al. (1993) likewise offered an energetic definition in which fitness is “reproductive power, or the rate of conversion of energy into offspring.”
        • This reproductive power was taken to be a function of both
          • the rate of assimilation of energy from the environment and
          • the rate of conversion of energy to offspring (but see (Kozlowski 1996)).
    3. In AET, this process results in a species that is prone to niche construction and ecosystem engineering, and the scale of these processes continues to increase as the population rises. This increasing scale coupled with human propensity for niche construction leads to human unsustainability
      • for: for: ecological collapse, overshoot, progress trap, progress trap - cultural evolution, ultra-sociality, Lotka's maximum power, gene culture coevolution
      • key finding
        • paraphrase
          • In AET,
            • multi-level selection acting on the genome and
            • occurring in concert with selective and non-selective mechanisms acting on culture and technology
          • results in a species that is prone to
            • niche construction and
            • ecosystem engineering,
          • and the scale of these processes continues to increase as the population rises.
          • This increasing scale
            • coupled with human propensity for niche construction
          • leads to human unsustainability
    4. Thus, we seek to build a conceptual evolutionary model of the human socio-ecological system that is consistent with these insights from agricultural systems but is more evolutionary and more general and incorporates extra-somatic energy, defined as energy that is used by humans but not used in direct human metabolism (Price 1995).
      • definition
        • extra-somatic energy
          • energy that is used by humans but not used in direct human metabolism
    5. To Gowdy and Krall, the ultra-social nature of human groups allowed for a shift in the primary level of selection from the individual level to the group level. Thus, “With the transition to agriculture the group as an adaptive unit comes to constitute a wholly different gestalt driven by the imperative to produce surplus
      • for: ecological collapse, overshoot, progress trap, progress trap - cultural evolution, ultra-sociality, Lotka's maximum power
      • paraphrase
        • to Gowdy and Krall, the ultra-social nature of human groups allowed for a shift in the primary level of selection
          • from the individual level
          • to the group level.
        • Thus, “With the transition to agriculture the group as an adaptive unit comes to constitute a wholly different gestalt
          • driven by the imperative to produce surplus
    6. Anthroecological theory (AET) hypothesizes that human social and cultural evolution is the ultimate cause of the ecological crises currently damaging earth systems
      • for: AET, Anthroecological theory, anthropocene - causes, ecological crisis - roots, overshoot
      • paraphrase
        • Anthroecological theory (AET) hypothesizes that
          • human social and cultural evolution is the ultimate cause of the ecological crises currently damaging earth systems
      • for: gene culture coevolution, carrying capacity, unsustainability, overshoot, cultural evolution, progress trap

      • Title: The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability

      • Author: Brian F. Snyder

      • Abstract

      • Summary
      • Paraphrase
        • Anthropogenic changes are accelerating and threaten the future of life on earth.
        • While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied
          • climate change,
          • biodiversity loss,
          • population growth
        • the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
        • Anthroecological theory (AET) proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is
          • multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering.
        • Here, we integrate this theory with
          • Lotka’s Maximum Power Principle
        • and propose a model linking
          • energy extraction from the environment with
          • genetic, technological and cultural evolution
        • to increase human ecosystem carrying capacity.
        • Carrying capacity is partially determined by energetic factors such as
          • the net energy a population can acquire from its environment and
          • the efficiency of conversion from energy input to offspring output.
        • These factors are under Darwinian genetic selection
        • in all species,
        • but in humans, they are also determined by
          • technology and
          • culture.
        • If there is genetic or non-genetic heritable variation in
          • the ability of an individual or social group
        • to increase its carrying capacity,
        • then we hypothesize that - selection or cultural evolution will act - to increase carrying capacity.
        • Furthermore, if this evolution of carrying capacity occurs - faster than the biotic components of the ecological system can respond via their own evolution,
          • then we hypothesize that unsustainable ecological changes will result.
    7. In addition to states of socio-ecological crisis and socio-ecological collapse, human populations have spent much of the remainder of our post-paleolithic history in a state of unsustainability
      • for: unsustainability
        • humans have spent much of the remainder of our post-paleolithic history in a state of unsustainability
      • for: social tipping points, STP, social tipping point, leverage point, Sirkku Juhola

      • title

        • Social tipping points and adaptation limits in the context of systemic risk: Concepts, models and governance
      • authors
        • Sirkku Juhola
        • Tatiana Filatova
        • Stefan Hochrainer-Stigler
        • Reinhard Mechler
        • Jurgen Scheffran
        • Pia-Johanna Schweizer
      • date
        • Sept 21, 2022
      • abstract

        • Physical tipping points have gained a lot of attention in global and climate change research to understand the conditions for system transitions when it comes to the atmosphere and the biosphere.
        • Social tipping points have been framed as mechanisms in socio-environmental systems, where a small change in the underlying elements or behavior of actors triggers a large non-linear response in the social system.
        • With climate change becoming more acute, it is important to know whether and how societies can adapt.
        • While social tipping points related to climate change have been associated with positive or negative outcomes,
          • overstepping adaptation limits has been linked to adverse outcomes where actors' values and objectives are strongly compromised.
        • Currently, the evidence base is limited, and most of the discussion on social tipping points in climate change adaptation and risk research is conceptual or anecdotal.
        • This paper brings together three strands of literature -
          • social tipping points,
          • climate adaptation limits and
          • systemic risks,
        • which so far have been separate.
        • Furthermore, we discuss
          • methods and
          • models
        • used to illustrate the dynamics of
          • social and
          • adaptation tipping points
        • in the context of cascading risks at different scales beyond adaptation limits.
        • We end with suggesting that further evidence is needed to identify tipping points in social systems,
          • which is crucial for developing appropriate governance approaches.
      • reference

      • for cultural evolution, speed of cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, progress trap, Freeman Dyson,
      • comment
        • Freeman Dyson opines that cultural evolution of humans now determines the genetic fate of all species on the planet
          • and gives a warning of how human cumulative cultural evolution now has the potential to threaten, via genetic sciences to play God over biology itself -reference
        • Musician Yoyo Ma quotes Freeman:
        • https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F2fBmGXqHvk8%2F&group=world
    1. To preserve our wildlife as nature evolved it, the machinery of biological evolution must be protected from the homogenizing effects of cultural evolution.
      • for: cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, speed of cultural evolution, progress trap, Freeman Dyson, Anthropocene
      • comment
        • while Freeman spoke to the direct dangers of genetic engineering,
          • he neglected to point out the broader threat of progress itself, which has already placed our species in the position
            • of playing God with the evolution of many species on the planet already, via the enormous impacts of organized human activity - ie. the Anthropocene
    2. The story that they are telling is of a grand transition that occurred about fifty thousand years ago, when the driving force of evolution changed from biology to culture, and the direction changed from diversification to unification of species. The understanding of this story can perhaps help us to deal more wisely with our responsibilities as stewards of our planet.
      • for: cumulative cultural evolution, speed of cultural evolution
      • paraphrase
        • The story that they are telling
        • is of a grand transition that occurred about fifty thousand years ago,
        • when the driving force of evolution changed
          • from biology
          • to culture,
        • and the direction changed
          • from diversification
          • to unification of species.
        • The understanding of this story can perhaps help us to deal more wisely with our responsibilities as stewards of our planet.
    1. But it's so essential that we go to this place that our brain gave us a solution. Evolution gave us a solution. And it's possibly one of the most profound perceptual experiences. And it's the experience of awe.

      -for: awe, wonder, Deep Humanity, inner transformation, transition, inner/outer transformation, social tipping point, individual tipping point - Awe / wonder (getting in touch with the sacred) is evolutions solution to helping us transition into the unknown - This is in alignment with the essence of the open source Deep Humanity praxis - helping individuals to rediscover the sacred, to transform life back into a living experience of awe and wonder - Deep Humanity's purpose is to rekindle awe so that - we may bring about an individual tipping point, and collectively, - collective tipping point in global society to accelerate the transition out of the polycrisis

      ...moving from the scared back to the sacred

    2. Everything I'm saying to you right now is literally meaningless. (Laughter) 00:03:11 You're creating the meaning and projecting it onto me. And what's true for objects is true for other people. While you can measure their "what" and their "when," you can never measure their "why." So we color other people. We project a meaning onto them based on our biases and our experience.
      • for: projection, biases, bias, perspectival knowing, indyweb, tacit to explicit, explication, misunderstanding
      • comment
        • The "why" is invisible.
        • It is the thoughts in the private worlds of the other.
        • It is only our explication through language or other means that makes public our private world
        • We construct meaning in the world.
        • Our meaningverse is our construction. BUT it is a cultural construction,
          • it was constructed by all the meaning learned from others, especially beginning with the most significant other, our mother.
    3. Horror films are always shot in the dark, in the forest, at night, in the depths of the sea, the blackness of space. And the reason is because dying was easy during evolution. If you weren't sure that was a predator, it was too late. Your brain evolved to predict. 00:02:42 And if you couldn't predict, you died. And the way your brain predicts is by encoding the bias and assumptions that were useful in the past. But those assumptions just don't stay inside your brain. You project them out into the world. There is no bird there. You're projecting the meaning onto the screen.
      • for: meaningverse, constructed reality
    4. What is one of our greatest needs, one of our greatest needs for our brain? And instead of telling you, I want to show you. In fact, I want you to feel it. There's a lot I want you to feel in the next 14 minutes. So, if we could all stand up. 00:00:39 We're all going to conduct a piece of Strauss together. Alright?
      • for: BEing journey
      • comment
        • This was a good BEing journey for anticipation.
        • We wait for closure, anticipate what is next based on previous experiences.
        • The sand artwork performed by the artist in the background is also a demonstration of anticipation and of symbolic representation - the ubiquity of the symbolosphere.
    5. when we step into uncertainty, our bodies respond physiologically and mentally.
      • for: transition, uncertainty, uncertainty - neuroscience, ingroup, outgroup, letting go, lifetime student
      • paraphrase
        • Uncertainty brings
          • immune system deterioration
          • brain cells wither and even die
          • creativity and intelligence decrease
        • We often go from fear to anger because fear is a state of certainty.
        • We become morally judgmental, an extreme version of oneself.
          • conservatives become ultra-conservative
          • liberals become ultra liberal.
        • because we retreat to a place of safety and familiarity.
        • The problem is that the world changes.
        • Since we have to adapt or die, if we want to shift from A to B,
          • the first step is not B.
          • the first step is to go from A to not A
            • to let go of our biases and assumptions;
            • to step into the very place that our brain evolved to avoid;
            • to step into the place of the unknown.
            • to step into a liminal space
      • comment
        • Uncertainty is uncomfortable
        • and can drive us into our familiar, accepted, insular ingroup
        • In other words, lead to greater social polarization.
        • Adaptation requires us to step into the unknown.
        • Big changes in our lives therefore require us to go
          • from the familiar and comfortable space,
          • to the unfamiliar and uncomfortable
            • movement away from our comfort zone, as is happening as the polycrisis we face gains traction.
    6. others have demonstrated, for instance, Professors Haidt and Keltner, have told us that people feel small but connected to the world. And their prosocial behavior increases, because they feel an increased affinity towards others. And we've also shown in this study that people have less need for cognitive control. They're more comfortable with uncertainty without having closure.
      • for: awe experiments
      • Haidt and Keltner experimental results
        • more prosocial
        • less need to be in control
        • more comfortable with uncertainty
    7. we recorded the brain activity of people while they're watching the performance, over 10 performances of "O," which is iconic Cirque performance.
      • for: awe experiment
      • experimental results
        • awe upregulates
          • Default Mode Network (DMN) which controls interaction to multiple brain regions, increasing:
            • creative thinking
            • daydreaming
        • awe downregulates executive control
    8. If you and I are in conflict, it's as if we're at the opposite ends of the same line. And my aim is to prove that you're wrong and to shift you towards me. The problem is, you are doing exactly the same.
      • for: lifetime student, student universalis
      • definition: student universalis
        • student of life
      • comment
        • the perspective of the student universalis is:
          • I search for truth
          • truth through ideas is an ideal that I can never reach
          • I only have nearer and nearer approximations to it
          • I realize that all my ideas are tentative, provisional and temporary
          • I can replace an old idea with a new one through my own discovery or when others share their discovery with me
          • I will not be biased in my search for truth, whether it is from the youngest child or a perceived foe
          • I will not hesitate to share my truth if it is open to being received by others
          • there is no conflict, only the search for truth together
    9. A suggestion: that awe is not just to be found in the grandeur. Awe is essential
      • for: awe
      • comment
        • every baby is born with natural awe of what we label the mundane, but generally lose it as it becomes culturally conditioned.
        • the journey of the adult human is to rediscover awe in the mundane
    1. try asking questions that lead the person to question what they believe.
      • for: lifetime student
      • comment
        • we are all students of life
        • raising the question helps others to explore in an open manner, and taps into themselves as lifetime studuents
    1. what are we gonna do with all these boundaries once this is their set right 01:43:58 what I always say that this esps really need to be linked to actors if they are going to have any bearing in real world and to guide the practice so we can do that by cross-scale 01:44:11 translation try to bring down this you know planetary level kind of our boundaries into actors cities and businesses in particular so when we talk about this cross-scale translation what we are talking about is if the boundary 01:44:24 is transgressed then what we are talking about is how do you allocate the responsibilities equal um equitably
      • for: downscaled planetary boundaries, bend the curve, allocate responsibilities, fair share, science-based targets
      • key insight
        • downscaling to city scale and to business actdors
        • based on Science based targets
    1. individuals with different worldviews do not want to engage with each other. Such engagement is essential to making progress in our transition toward a more sustainable society.
      • comment
        • what polarization shows is differing worldviews, and that must be the starting point to collectively finding common ground
      • for: climate denial, climate denier, climate change denialism, climate change denial, climate change denier
      • title
        • Why focusing on “climate change denial” is counterproductive
      • authors
        • Christian Bretter
        • Felix Schulz
      • source
      • date

        • March 1, 2023
      • claim

        • We believe that the dichotomous view of
          • climate change “deniers” and
          • climate change “accepters”
        • is not helpful.
        • This way of framing the debate only stymies our path to a zero-carbon future. It does so for three primary reasons:
          • First, it creates an inaccurate picture by overstating the share and importance of climate change deniers for tackling climate change.
          • Second, a focus on climate denialism divides and polarizes society, further preventing constructive engagement with different opinions.
          • Third, it distracts us from concentrating on the more pressing question: how we should tackle climate change, not if.
      • comment

        • I disagree with some of the claims, especially when there is a spectrum of disbelief that has significant impacts on dealing with climate crisis effectively.
          • for example, there is a lot of climate change denialism in the Republican party which is holding up adequate funding for dealing effectively with the climate crisis.
      • for: extreme weather, realtime extreme weather analysis, World weather attribution
      • description
        • the World Weather Attribution organization is a group of research institutes that provides robust scientific answers to the question:
          • is climate change to blame?
        • when an extreme weather event has occurred
        • This is usually available days to weeks after the event and informs discussions about climate change while the impacts of the events are still fresh in the minds of the public and policymakers.
    1. fertiliser, the challenge is more real, but there is still an important and obvious first step – eat less meat. A large part of the world’s agricultural system is dedicated to growing crops and vegetables to feed animals, which we then eat. Reduce the last part of this equation (i.e. eat less meat), and the huge inefficiencies in the system mean far less fertiliser is required.
      • for: energy diet, energy fast, degrowth, agriculture emissions, food system emissions
    2. This is not to say the technology cannot be made to work at scale, but it is incorrect and risks being misleading to give the impression the technology is tried and tested at scale, let alone economic compared with the alternatives.
      • for: greenwashing, CCS, NET, negative emissions technologies
      • comment
        • one could interpret CCS as an oil industry attempt to greenwash and create the appearance of doing something when it is really just tinkering at the margins
        • it is an excuse that gives the appearance of being concerned which allows for BAU to continue
        • dangling the carrot of "future breakthrough" of CCS is much like all the rest of negative emissions technologies (NET)
  2. Jul 2023
    1. In addition to their high GHG emissions from consumption, high-SES people have disproportionate climate influence through at least four non-consumer roles: as investors, as role models within their social networks and for others who observe their choices, as participants in organizations and as citizens seeking to influence public policies or corporate behaviour
      • for: high-SES, 1%, W2W, inequality, carbon inequality, elites, billionaires, millionaires, leverage point
      • five high carbon emission areas of high-SES, HNWI, VHNWI
        • consumption
        • investor
        • role model within social networks
        • participants in organizations
        • citizens seeking to influence public policies or corporate behavior
    2. We focus on individuals and households with high socioeconomic status (SES; henceforth, high-SES people) because they have generated many of the problems of fossil fuel dependence that affect the rest of humanity.
      • for: high-SES, 1%, W2W, inequality, carbon inequality, elites, billionaires, millionaires, leverage point
      • definition
        • high-SES
          • high socioeconomic status
          • equivalent to high net worth individual (HNWI) or
          • very high net worth individual (VHNWI)
      • for: carbon inequality, w2w, leverage point - climate change, 1%, inequality, wealth tax
      • title
        • The role of high-socioeconomic-status people in locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions
      • authors
        • Kristian S. Nielsen
        • Kimberly A. Nicholas
        • Felix Creutzig
        • Thomas Dietz
        • Paul C. Stern
      • date
      • abstract
        • People with high socioeconomic status disproportionally affect energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions directly
          • through their consumption and
          • indirectly through their financial and social resources.
        • However, few climate change mitigation initiatives have targeted this population segment,
          • and the potential of such initiatives remains insufficiently researched.
        • In this Perspective, we analyse key characteristics of high-socioeconomic-status people and explore five roles through which they have a disproportionate impact on energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions and potentially on climate change mitigation, namely as:
          • consumers,
          • investors,
          • role models,
          • organizational participants and
          • citizens.
        • We examine what is known about their disproportionate impact via consumption and
          • explore their potential influence on greenhouse gas emissions through all five roles.
        • We suggest that future research should focus on strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by high-socioeconomic-status people and to align their
          • investments,
          • organizational choices and
          • actions as social and political change agents
        • with climate change mitigation goals.
    1. Ecology and evolution provide the scientific background needed to address the biodiversity crisis; Zen provides the deeper knowing that will motivate our action to address this problem.
      • comment
        • the Zen mindfulness practices demonstrated in the rest of the paper depend on one assumption
          • that the scientific narrative employed are within the salience landscape of the reader
        • if they are not aligned to these narratives (ie, if they are religious fundamentalists) then these practices will fail to be effective
        • this suggests that we may need to appeal to an even more fundamental human quality that IS shared by all of us, the creation of narratives
    2. I try to remember that it's not me, John Seed, trying to protect the rainforest. Rather I'm part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into human thinking.John Seed (in Macy, 1991: page 184)
      • Quote
        • I try to remember that it's not me, John Seed, trying to protect the rainforest. Rather I'm part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into human thinking."
      • Author
        • John Seed (in Macy, 1991: page 184)
    3. We will act to save “life on this planet” only if we recognize at a deep level that our “self” includes all beings. We need to recognize and feel at a deep level that ultimately we are not biologists trying to save other species. Rather, we are one emergence of life on this planet trying to save itself.
      • Quote
    4. 8 out of 10 people who reproduced in northern Europe 1,000 years ago are the ancestors of all living people with some European ancestry.
      • quote
        • interesting statistic ' "8 out of 10 people who reproduced in northern Europe 1,000 years ago are the ancestors of all living people with some European ancestry."
      • Author
        • Fred W. Allendorf
        • 8 out of 10 people who reproduced in Northern Europe 1,000 years ago
          • are the ancestors of all living European descendants today
        • if we go even further back, all humans share just a few common ancestors
        • The most recent common ancestor of all present-day humans lived just a few thousand years ago
          • Rohde, D. L. T. , Olson, S. , & Chang, J. T. (2004). Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans. Nature, 431, 562–566. 10.1038/nature02842
    5. uided meditation: When did your life begin?
      • Guided meditation
        • When did your life begin?
        • Regress to your mother's egg divided to determine which gene to pass on to you.
          • this, while inside her mother's womb
        • Regress 40 generations for 1000 years (average lifespan was 25 years!)
        • Regress a billion years, then 4 billion
        • With each regression stage, your ancestors were other species and ultimately, nonbiotic life as well.
      • comment
        • this has limitations as well, as it is bu ilt on scientific narratives subject to change.
    6. There is a traditional Zen koan which is often stated something like this: “What was your Original Face before your parents were born?” There is no such thing as a “correct” answer for a koan. This koan is sometimes interpreted as an invitation to contemplate one's ancestry.
      • Guided meditation
        • What was your original face before you were born?
        • A Zen koan sometimes used to guide contemplation of one's ancestry
    7. Guided meditation: The carbon cycle
      • Guided meditation
        • consciousness thinking about its own atomic constituent
      • Carbon cycle meditation

        • to help achieve awareness of our physical connection to the world
      • Comment

        • This is a limited practice as it still depends on conceptual models.
        • An atom is not an object we can directly experience phenomenologically.
        • Rather, it is a conceptual model and through social norm of using it as if it were phenomenologically a directly experienced object, we confuse ideas of phenomena with the phenomena itself
        • One way to determine if it is a fundamental human quality or if it is simply one narrative, is to determine if there are people such an exercise would NOT resonate with?
          • For instance, it would likely not resonate strongly with
            • climate deniers,
            • uneducated people
            • religious fundamentalists
        • to develop a method to reach ALL people, we need to look at even more fundamental commonalities - namely, how we use language to mediate reality
        • Perhaps a BEing journey can consist of two lievels
          • 1st level: conceptual
            • do the BEing journey as described using conventional concepts
          • 2nd level: meta-level
            • observe how you construct the narrative using language
        • it could be good to animate this with AI drawing program
    8. “If we want to continue to enjoy our rivers ‐ to swim in them, walk beside them, even drink their water ‐ we have to adopt the non‐dual perspective. We have to meditate on being the rivers so that we can experience within ourselves the fears and hopes of the rivers. If we cannot feel the rivers, the mountains, the air, the animals, and other people from within their own perspective, the rivers will die and we will lose our chance for peace”
      • quote
        • “If we want to continue to enjoy our rivers ‐ to swim in them,
          • walk beside them,
          • even drink their water ‐ we have to adopt the non‐dual perspective.
        • We have to meditate on being the rivers so that we can experience within ourselves the fears and hopes of the rivers.
        • If we cannot feel
          • the rivers,
          • the mountains,
          • the air,
          • the animals, and
          • other people
        • from within their own perspective,
        • the rivers will die and we will lose our chance for peace”
      • comment
        • Thich Nhat Hahn's quote reflects
          • perspectival knowing
          • situatedness
          • dissolving dualistic barriers to achieve nondual integration and empathy
      • Author
        • Thich Nhat Hahn
    9. The ecologist David Barash (1973) discussed the parallels between Zen Buddhism and ecology.
      • The ecologist David Barash (1973) discussed the parallels between Zen Buddhism and ecology.
        • interdependence and unity of all things was fundamental to both
          • the practice of Zen and
          • the science of ecology
      • adjacency
        • ecology
        • Zen
        • interdependency and unity are fundamental to both Zen and ecology
        • both share a common nondualistic view of the fundamental identity of subject and surrounding
        • a bison cannot be understood in isolation from the prairie
          • understanding requires studying the bison-prairie unit
      • quote
        • "The very study of ecology is the elaboration of Zen's nondualistic thinking".
      • author

        • David Barish
      • comment

        • adjacency
          • indyweb treats words and ideas as empty,
            • that is, they are selfless, and have no meaning except in relation to all other words / ideas
    10. The Buddhist concept of interconnectedness or emptiness (all things are empty of a separate self) is represented by the metaphor of the Jewel Net of Indra
      • adjacency
        • ecology
        • Indra's net of jewels -translation
        • of Indra's Net story
        • “Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra,
          • there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer
          • in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions.
        • In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities,
          • the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net,
          • and since the net itself is infinite in dimension,
            • the jewels are infinite in number.
        • There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude,
          • a wonderful sight to behold.
        • If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it,
          • we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.
        • Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels,
          • so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring"
          • Author
            • Cook, F. H. (1977). Hua‐Yen Buddhism: The jewel net of Indra. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. [Google Scholar]
    11. Abstract
      • The Buddha taught that everything is
        • connected and
        • constantly changing.
      • These fundamental observations of the world are shared by
        • ecology and
        • evolution.
      • We are living in a time of unprecedented rates of extinction.
      • Science provides us with the information that we need to address this extinction crisis.
      • However, the problems underlying extinction generally do not result from a lack of scientific understanding,
        • but they rather result from an unwillingness to take the needed action.
      • I present mindfulness and meditative aspects of Zen practice that provide the deeper “knowing,” or awareness that we need to inspire action on these problems.

      • comment

        • emptiness is interdependency and change
        • in Deep Humanity praxis, it is equivalent to
          • human INTERbeing and
          • human INTERbeCOMing
    12. My overall objective in this paper is to
      • My overall objective in this paper is to
        • unite the sciences of ecology and evolution
        • with the spiritual practice of Zen
          • in order to inspire actions to address the extinction crisis that we are currently facing.
        • I do this by addressing the following three points:
          • Zen and science are both based upon empirical observations of the world.
          • Zen and science both tell us that there is no separation between humans and the world around us.
        • Ecology and evolution provide the scientific background needed to address the biodiversity crisis;
          • Zen provides the deeper knowing that will motivate our action to address this problem
      • for: inequality, 1%, carbon inequality private jets, carbon emissions, patriotic millionaires
      • title
        • He’s a millionaire with a private jet. But now he’s selling it for the sake of the environment
      • source
      • date
        • July 13, 2023
      • Stephen Prince, vice-chair of the Patriotic Millionaires – a group of wealthy Americans pushing for higher taxes which also contributed to the report – is giving up his Cessna 650 Citation III.
      • for: inequality, climate justice, wealth tax
      • policy paper
      • title
        • survival of the richest
      • date
        • Jan 16, 2023
      • executive summary
        • Since 2020, the richest 1% have captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth
          • nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99% of the world’s population.
        • Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7bn a day,
          • even as inflation outpaces the wages of at least 1.7 billion workers, more than the population of India.7
        • Food and energy companies more than doubled their profits in 2022,
          • paying out $257bn to wealthy shareholders,
          • while over 800 million people went to bed hungry
        • Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes and
          • half the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax on money they give to their children.
        • A tax of up to 5% on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year,
          • enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.
      • for: inequality, wealth tax, climate justice, earth system justice
      • policy paper
      • title
        • Survival of the Richest
      • source
        • Oxfam
      • date

        • Jan 2023
      • Executive Summary

        • Since 2020, the richest 1% have captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth
          • nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99% of the world’s population.
        • Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7bn a day,
          • even as inflation outpaces the wages of at least 1.7 billion workers, more than the population of India.7
        • Food and energy companies more than doubled their profits in 2022,
          • paying out $257bn to wealthy shareholders,
          • while over 800 million people went to bed hungry
        • Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes and
          • half the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax on money they give to their children.
        • A tax of up to 5% on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year,
          • enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.
    1. The consequences of our current choices bear not juston us. They bear on the continued evolutionary unfoldingof life in the universe. This marks the scale of our currentresponsibility
      • for: human impacts, MET, major evolutionary transition, progress trap, human responsibility to life, CCE, cumulative cultural evolution, playing God
      • comment
        • Very true, in fact our species is in the unprecedented position that
        • human activity, and specifically our cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) now determines the biological / genetic evolutionary future not only of our own species, but of all life on earth.
        • In other words, of evolution itself! -This is an awkward position as we have nowhere near the wisdom to play God and determine the future direction of evolution!
      • References
    2. we now have a decade—if that—to achieve a dramatic redirection of thehuman course as a now globally interdependentspecies.
      • for: climate clock
      • comment
        • We are already, in fact a highly interdependent species.
        • We are so specialized that if the precarious system were to fail,
          • few have the breadth of knowledge to survive, much less thrive on their own.
        • The key shift that is required is therefore not from a siloed to an interdependent one as it is from
          • an unhealthy and exploitative interdependence to
          • a healthy one based on holistic wellbeing
    3. Civil society is the sector where the power of We thePeople ultimately and properly resides.
      • for: collective action, bottom-up, bottom-up movement, M2W, individual/collective
      • Civil society is the sector where the power of We the People ultimately and properly resides.
      • Consequently, in the fully functioning Ecological Civilization,
        • government and business sectors must be
        • creations of and
        • accountable to
        • a civil society of people who embrace
          • the rights and
          • responsibilities
        • of their citizenship at all system levels from - the local to - the global.
      • We can be citizens of only one locality.
        • But we are all citizens of Earth—and the many levels in between.
      • This must be acknowledged by any truly democratic system of self-governance.
    4. Human institutions are purely human creations. Theironly legitimate purpose is to serve the people on whomtheir existence ultimately depends. If institutions fail toserve us, then it is our right to eliminate or transformthem
      • for: system change, institutional change, paradigm shift
      • quote
        • "Human institutions are purely human creations.
        • Their only legitimate purpose is to serve the people on whom their existence ultimately depends.
        • If institutions fail to serve us, then it is our right to eliminate or transform them."
      • Author
        • David Korten
    5. Labor in a fully func-tioning Ecological Civilization will include three essentialelements.
      • for:UBI, universal basic income
      • for: UBI, universal basic income, futures
      • The physical labor required to maintain life’s essential conditions against the forces of entropy.
      • The intellectual labor required to constantly test and advance the individual and collective maps of our ever-evolving territory.
      • The spiritual labor required to continuously renew our sense of individual and collective connection to all that is.

      • comment

        • two of these are articulating the entanglement of the individual and collective.
    6. The surplus of life’s labor is not sufficient to con-tinue bearing the burden of a caste system devoted tocontrolling the many so a few can indulge in egotisti-cal displays of privilege on a dying Earth. The more ofhumanity’s labor we devote to maintaining the system ofdomination, the less that is available to secure life’s wellbe-ing and the more rapid the living system’s collapse.
      • for: caste system, caste, inequality, carbon inequality,

      • quote

        • "The surplus of life’s labor
        • is not sufficient to continue bearing the burden of a caste system
        • devoted to controlling the many so a few can indulge in egotistical displays of privilege on a dying Earth. -The more of humanity’s labor we devote to maintaining the system of domination (by the few),
        • the less that is available to secure life’s wellbeing (for all) and the more rapid the living system’s collapse."
      • Author
        • David Korten
      • parantheses

        • Stop Reset Go
      • new adjacency

        • articulating inequality as a caste system
    1. Ludwig firebach has this idea that religion is a place where human 00:12:22 beings sort of um alienate their intrinsic superpowers right they they turn them inside out and they push them into some kind of Heaven which is basically the future
      • for: transformation, inner/outer transformation, rapid whole system change, religious alienation, poverty mentality
      • key insight
        • Ludwig Feuerbach
          • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Feuerbach
          • quote
            • "In the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature."
            • "If man is to find contentment in God, he must find himself in God."
          • Thus God is nothing else than human: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of a human's inward nature.
          • This projection is dubbed as a chimera by Feuerbach, that God and the idea of a higher being is dependent upon the aspect of benevolence.
          • Feuerbach states that "a God who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God",

      -quote - religion is a place where human beings alienate their intrinsic superpowers - author - Timotny Morton, quoting Ludwig Feuerbach

    2. here's also a kind of Shadow side to this approach which is which we could call maybe religios as opposed to religious in in 00:03:51 English it's religious o-s-e adjective and um this is very very common actually in ecological language whether it's in newspapers or books or anything music art anything that says that there needs 00:04:05 to be a very profound sudden massive change in ourselves um is is I think a dangerous
      • for: progress trap, unintended consequence, ecological realization, ecological awakening
        • claim
          • the idea that we need a profound, sudden and massive change in ourselves in a dangerous notion
          • comment
            • why?
            • it presumes we have a deficit as an ecological being
            • when in actual fact, we cannot be otherwise
            • so instead, our job is to awaken our already ecological nature
            • by this, we mean our deep, intrinsic ecological nature as ecological (interdependent) beings
            • we humans have a strange and very limited kind of interdependence, which is exploitative to other people and other species
            • we have to become aware of that culturally conditioned limitation
    3. the entire biosphere is made out of 00:41:23 um female desire for no reason no reason to it right night not with an objective of reproducing but just with an objective of wow that's really sexy I like it 00:41:35 and that's a very very good reason isn't it to to save the planet
      • for: climate communication, mass mobilization, collective action, climate messaging, beauty, evolution
      • claim
        • the natural world is sexy, beautiful, and it would be a waste to have it all destroyed
        • the entire biosphere is made out of female desire for no reason to it
          • not with an objective of reproducing
            • but just with an objective of wow that's really sexy I like it
          • and that's a very very good reason isn't it to to save the planet
        • these beautiful qualities that have no Rhyme or Reason to them but are actually to do with creativity and Imagination
          • are not some kind of special thing that human beings impose from some kind of abstract Heaven onto Earth
          • they are actually heaven on Earth
          • they're part of Heaven and they are coming out of our embodied biological being right and this is an amazing thing
            • pity and
            • compassion and
            • generosity
          • and all these things are are traits in primates
            • sharing things and
            • being kind right
          • and so I reckon you know the kind of religious feeling that we need to inculcate
          • it is actually about this feeling inside
            • this kind of surging feeling of
              • inspiration and
              • love and
              • passion
            • and everything is exactly coming to us from our Evolution and
            • it's coming for no reason at all
            • it's just coming from random genetic mutation and the fact that having these feelings doesn't kill you
          • so this is a very good reason I think to save Earth
          • the essence of us is
            • our future and
            • our physical biological being
          • and it's always just a little bit off to the side like tomorrow is just a little bit off to the side of today
            • but I'm going to get there at some point right and
            • I think that's the attitude
    4. The Divine image
      • for: William Blake, poem, evolution, beauty, climate communication, motivation
        • William Blake Poem
          • The Divine Image
            • To Mercy, pity, peace and love all pray in their distress and in these virtues of delight return their thankfulness
            • when push comes to shove as they say in English
            • when you're up against the wall when you're in an extreme situation
              • someone's going to hit you and what do you do? Mercy Mercy you just say it or
              • you see someone else, they're about to hit someone and you say for pity's sake don't do that or
              • you find somebody very, very attractive and you feel this love right?
            • that's why he says
              • love the human form Divine
              • mercy has a human heart
              • pity a human face
              • love the human form Divine
            • these things are actually almost spontaneous intuitive things that happen and what does it mean?
              • they come from the biosphere
              • they come from your body
              • they come from evolution
            • it's very, very clear for example that art and language ritual comes from at least as far back as primates
    5. but what I do then is I get out of bed brush my teeth go in the kitchen and I make breakfast for my kids and I don't 00:38:33 share that state of mind I have another state of mind that I'm going to share with them and so I think this is the point right we need to we need um loving strong creative gentle 00:38:44 rhetoric that's going to help us to be creative and imagine something new
      • for: climate communication, role of imagination
      • comment
        • Timothy is advocating for sharing creative, gentle communication that helps us imagine something new
    6. global warming is the biggest problem on the planet therefore we have to make it be the most 00:37:37 attractive sexiest ever problem to solve
      • for: climate communication, crisis communication
      • claim
        • global warming is the biggest problem on the planet therefore
          • we have to make it be the most attractive sexiest ever problem to solve
    7. one of the reasons 00:34:46 why we don't do it is that we think there needs to also be a sudden huge change inside but actually there doesn't need to be a sudden age change inside at all
      • for: climate communications, crisis communications,
        • one of the reasons why we don't do it is that
          • we think there needs to also be a sudden huge change inside
          • but actually there doesn't need to be a sudden age change inside at all
          • that thing is funnily enough getting in the way
        • An awful lot of people who write about ecological things in the newspaper are preventing you from being ecological
        • I know that sounds a bit rude to my to my colleagues you know who write editorials for newspapers
          • but it I'm afraid it's true because you know
          • you look at page one of the newspaper and basically it says
            • you're stupid right ?
            • it gives you a whole bunch of facts that you didn't know
              • in the form mostly of quite raw data
              • it just sort of dumps the data on you which we don't do about
            • anything else we don't do it about?
              • we don't do it about racism
              • we don't do it about economics
            • we don't just dump data on on page one but we do do it regarding global warming and I think that's a bit of a problem
          • then you go on to the middle of the newspaper and you get to the editorial section
          • and the editorial section is saying
            • you're evil
            • you're a bad person
            • you're not being ecological enough
          • stupid and evil is not a good place from which to launch a successful politics or ethics or any kind of creativity
          • what is creativity fundamentally?
          • it's inviting the future
          • creativity means you're allowing the future to be different from the past doesn't it?
            • because you're creating something (new)
            • that's what creating means
            • and in order to do it successfully you actually have to be incredibly gentle
    8. you don't 00:33:51 have to be ecological because you are ecological yeah you do not require some kind of massive transformation something in here knows that you're an ecological being 00:34:06 because you are you're a life form yeah all you have to do is notice right that you are already yeah and my cat for real knows I'm an ecological being right that my cat Oliver is relying on me to give 00:34:20 him the food every day he knows that he coexists with me in some kind of relationship right so we don't have to think anything special right we have to do things right we have to do things and 00:34:33 the thing we have to do is incredibly simple to say we have to stop burning carbon um that's it right you just have to stop it
      • for: rapid whole system change, transformation, inner/outer transformation
      • key insight

        • we just have to realize we already are an ecological being
        • we are already in inter-relationship
        • we already are the individual entangled with the collective
      • comment

        • we can call this "ecological realization"
        • seeing that we already are an ecological being
    9. capitalist economics is notoriously bad at considering non-human beings and it's also notoriously bad at considering 00:10:56 the future Beyond a certain amount of time
      • for: capitalism faults
        • bad at considering the long term future
        • bad at considering other species
    10. the trouble with that film is that maybe first of all no one who is an Evangelical Christian where I live is 00:06:00 actually going to watch that film second of all those guys already know in a way what the film is saying
      • critique of Don't look up
        • "I told you so" approach
        • we don't need any more wagging the finger
        • it shouldn't be staged as missing things, as efficiency
        • it should be staged as increasing pleasure of being a living being in the biosphere
      • comment
        • the film fails to reach the audience that could lead to deep transformation
        • evangelical Christians' narrative is already that an apocalypse is coming and THAT is the transformative event that will clean up an imperfect earth
    11. this talk I've decided to give you is actually called The Human Form divine um I understand that one of the topics we're interested in is dimensional transformation 00:02:48 um of the self and and transformation of of uh the ecosystem or ecosystems um and in general I think we're all interested in the notion of imagination and and creativity and what can that do 00:03:02 for us in in actually a very practical sense
      • for: inner/outer transformation, transformation, rapid whole system change
      • description
        • this talk is called "The Human Form Divine
          • It is about dimensional transformation of the self and of the ecosystem
          • It explores the use of imagination, creativity and art in a practical way to assist in this transformation
    1. we place value on life. But I think we have  to understand that all forms of life have value,   and that we can't place human value above all  those other values and that the diversity itself   00:20:57 has value, the complexity has value.
      • for: symbiocene,
      • question

        • All living beings have values
        • We can't place human values above that of other species
        • how do we put this into practice, for example in the area of food?
          • we harvest and kill other species for food.
          • we are not alone in being a predator of other living beings
          • however, being self-conscious beings aware of the suffering that death causes, are we not in a dilemma, since we have to eat another living being in order to survive?
          • this appears to be an intrinsic dilemma of a self-conscious being
          • eating another living being is equivalent to killing another living being, which is equivalent to taking away its most valued aspect, its life
          • so eating other species is causing suffering to that other species or individual of that species
          • how do we overcome this?
      • definition

        • Intrinsic dilemma
          • a dilemma which is unavoidable
      • for: ecological civilization, degrowth, futures, deep ecology, emptiness, polycrisis, human exceptionalism, planned descent
      • source
      • Description

        • Nate hosts this discussion on what constitutes an ecological civilization with guests
          • William Rees
          • Rex Weyler
          • Nora Bateson
      • Reflections Overall,

        • an insightful discussion on the polycrisis and
        • reflections on what is in store for civilization.
      • There is consensus that
        • what we are experiencing has been decades in the making and
        • the solutions-oriented approach to solving problems has only treated the symptoms and indeed has made things worse.
      • There is a strong undercurrent of the emptiness in nature
      • Rex

        • emphasized the folly of human exceptionalism that has been socially normalized and which
        • continues to create the major separation that fuels the polycrisis.
        • Not recognizing that we are nature, not recognizing our animal nature
        • we look upon nature with an attitude of controlling nature, rather than flowing with her.
        • advocated Taoism as a more consistent way to frame nature rather than the reductionist, control methodology that separates us from nature.
      • Nora's perspective is the folly of abstraction that generates fixed preconceptions of aspects of nature that we then reify.

        • The fixed preconceptions are solidified but they are an oversimplified version of reality,
        • and that oversimplification leads to actualizing the cliche"a little knowledge is dangerous" into civilization
        • in other words, the continuous manufacture of progress traps.
      • William sees our impending crash as not only inevitable, but natural.

        • In this, he concurs with Rex's perspective.
        • Human beings are simply another species and like them,
          • we are susceptible to population explosions when negative feedbacks are removed,
          • which can lead to nature self-correcting with mass dieoff when resources are overconsumed.
    2. tautology is a word we don't use very often.  It doesn't come up in relationship to ecological   processes as often, I think, as it should.
      • for: tautology
      • definition
        • ecology of thinking is adverse to adverse to ecology
        • tautology is adverse to new information comes in
          • Leonard Cohen
            • there's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in
    3. I think things will unfold  exactly as nature requires that they do. There   will be, unless humans actively and intelligently  implement our own process of negative feedbacks so   that we withdraw our dominance from the ecosystems  of which we are apart, then nature will do it for   01:26:57 us.
      • for: planned descent
        • negative feedbacks are nature's way of handling explosive overshoot
        • if we are a wise species, we would do it ourselves.
    4. accepting our animal  nature, and end this human exceptionalism,   which blinds us to our animal nature, just  for starters. If we have a meeting about   climate or biodiversity, in our minds we need  to invite all other creatures to those meetings.   And I'm not just trying to be foolish or silly  here. I'm serious, I'm dead serious about it. We   01:24:09 need to be sitting at the table with the elephants  and the jaguars and the wolves and the algae and   the apple trees and the bees and allowing  those voices somehow into our conversation.
      • for: symbiocene, human exceptionalism
      • question
        • how do we invite them in? if they cannot represent themselves, how do we represent them?
          • does anyone know what' it's like to be a bat?
      • remind ourselves of our animal nature
        • mortality salience counters human exceptionalism
    5. It does not make sense for   one species to command most of the energy flow  through the ecosystems of which it is a part.   That's a very destabilizing situation. And  the wise species would do everything possible   to reestablish some kind of balanced energy and  material throughput. If we don't do that, again,   01:15:52 I keep harping on this, people hate me for it,  but we will go down
      • for: anthropomorphism, apex species
      • quote
        • it does not make sense for one species to command most of the energy flow through the ecosystems which it is part of. That's a very destabilizing situation and the wise species would do everything possible to reestablish some kind of balanced energy material throughput.
    6. No fairness, again, is a human construct.   01:10:41 And I mentioned before, evolution doesn't  care. If a species is going extinct,   evolution doesn't freak out and go, oh, we  got to keep that species. It just happens.   There's no thinking being back there going, well,  should we let them go or not? And let's face it,   01:11:12 when we eat the blackberries off the vine, that's  their babies. Is that fair that we eat the babies   of the blackberries?
      • for: nature has no values, human values, purpose, purposelessness,
      • key insight
        • evolution doesn't care
        • humans care, humans construct value and want to save ourselves. Evolution doesn't care if entire species live or die.
      • comment
        • I've thought the same thing. It differentiates human beings from nature
        • Another way to say this is that humans have purpose, nature does not
    7. So I think it's fairly clear that we agree there's  going to be contraction. And the question then   becomes ,what are we really talking about? And I  think as a rough way to begin thinking about this,   could the world with 8 billion people live  sustainably in the absence of fossil fuel?
      • for: planned descent
      • William Rees talks about planned descent, planning to start breeding animals of servitude again to replace all the mechanized, fossil fuel systems, plus one or two acres to sustain those draft animals.
    8. because contraction is inevitable,   the question then is how do we do that best  together? And that the wisdom in that is not   00:57:31 going to be packaged in a book. The wisdom  of that is going to be in the particular   and a sensitivity to the particular
      • for: contraction, planned descent, overshoot,
      • comment
        • Nora basically advocates for spontaneity, winging it, but with tools at your disposal to emerge solutions as appropriate.
    9. Well, I'll say there's a danger in that question.  It's a good question and it's a question we should   be asking, but there's a danger, and that  is that we're going to come up with a model   for ecological community and then we're going  to make it happen. And that right away violates   everything that Nora just pointed out. That's  absolutely critically important.
      • for: ecological civilization
      • Rex
        • danger is we will build a model
        • question to Rex:
          • what then is the alternative?
          • admit we are animals
          • if we overshoot, we have to contract
    10. If you think of a plague of locusts or   a plague of mice or frogs or whatever, every  species, when it is situated in an environment   00:39:06 which for whatever set of juxtapositional  reasons is favorable to the expansion of   that species, it will explode and expand. And humans are no different. With fossil fuel,   we acquired the ability to exploit the planet  and provide all the other resources needed to   grow the human enterprise to realize  for the first time in human history,   our full exponential growth potential.
      • for:nonexceptional human
      • If you think of a plague of locusts or a plague of mice or frogs or whatever,
        • every species, when it is situated in an environment<br /> which for whatever set of juxtapositional reasons is favorable to the expansion of that species,
          • it will explode and expand.
        • And humans are no different.
        • With fossil fuel, we acquired the ability to exploit the planet and provide all the other resources needed to grow the human enterprise
          • to realize for the first time in human history, our full exponential growth potential.
          • up until about the industrial revolution, we were held in check by negative feedback.
          • The positive feedback tendencies of the species shared by all other species was held back by resource shortages, disease, war, and all of that stuff.
          • Well, fossil fuel temporarily relieved us of that, and we exploded just as a plague of locusts explodes during a favorable environment.
          • But then what that explosion does is deplete the resources and it crashes.
          • So I think we're on a one-off population boom/bust cycle, which is completely natural.
          • It just, it's never happened to humans before on a global scale
          • it has many times before on a local scale. But this time it's a global thing.
          • It's natural, it's going to happen, get used to it.
          • And Rex is right. Don't panic. Start taking care of what you can in your immediate environments.
    11. our economic system is a social construct  which includes no useful information whatsoever   about the ecological relationships. Or for that  matter, even the social relationships with which   the economy interacts in the real world.
      • for: separation
      • comment
        • economics is a human construct that has no useful information about ecological or social relationships.
    12. Where we get caught is thinking that  we can identify a static snapshot in   00:13:20 an ecological process and get control  over it, we can enact something upon it,   and thinking that we can do that toward what  has been perceived as a positive outcome.   Without recognizing that with all of these  different organisms that are changing each   other all the time, we're actually going to make  a mess.
      • for: progress trap

      • example

        • progress trap
          • quote
            • Where we get caught is thinking that we can identify a static snapshot in an ecological process
            • and get control over it, we can enact something upon it,
            • and thinking that we can do that toward what has been perceived as a positive outcome.
            • Without recognizing that with all of these different organisms that are changing each other all the time,
            • we're actually going to make a mess. -author
            • Nora Bateson
    13. I think this is also part of  our sense of who we are as humans, as ourselves,   and the idea of the self, the individual, and  even the humans as this individual species,   these divisions are arbitrary.
      • for: emptiness, human interbeing, human interbecoming
      • example
        • BEing journey
          • I think this is also part of our sense of who we are as humans, as ourselves,
          • and the idea of the self, the individual, and even the humans as this individual species,
          • these divisions are arbitrary.
          • I don't stop at my skin.
          • I'm breathing air.
          • I'm drinking the water.
          • I'm eating food.
          • I'm eating an apple.
          • When I eat an apple, when do the molecules of the apple become me? -When I'm chewing it in my mouth?
            • when it's in my stomach?
            • when my system has broken down the nutrients?
            • when is that point that nitrogen molecule becomes me versus the apple?
          • I would propose that apple is me when it's growing on the tree.
          • I think of the blossoms of the tree and the bees.
            • The blossoms of the tree,
            • the tree can't reproduce without the bees.
            • So is the bee part of the tree?
            • The bee is part of the reproductive system of the tree.
            • So the bee is part of the tree,
            • the tree is part of the bee.
            • The bee needs the tree.
            • The tree needs the bee.
          • This is just one simple relationship,
            • but it's not simple at all because
              • the bee needs a lot of other things,
              • and the tree needs a lot of other things.
              • And the mycelium and the soil.
          • We talk about a tree and the soil and the atmosphere and the bee as if they're all separate things.
          • And that's convenient because our language has nouns that mean certain things.
          • So we want to talk about trees.
          • It's nice to have a word for tree,
            • but we get it in our head that the tree is separate from the soil,
            • which is separate from the atmosphere,
            • which is separate from the bee.
          • And I'm saying no, those divisions are indeed somewhat arbitrary,
          • but we use them for convenience.
          • But the soil's not the soil without the relationship with the tree
            • and the tree's not the tree without the relationship with the soil and the atmosphere.
            • And the atmosphere is not the atmosphere without the relationshi to the tree, to the bee, to me and the soil.
          • So to me that's the essence of ecology.
          • And that we have to expand this sense of self,
            • individual self as well as
            • the species of humans.
        • And this isolated self, I think is a socially reinforced construct, - but we get sucked into it.
          • And we talk about relationships in ecology and we talk about the value of all living things,
          • but in our actions we come back to the individual self.
    14. we talk about human rights and we want to  protect our human rights. We have to expand   that sense of human rights to the rest of the  world and understood. We don't have the right to   00:21:48 destroy that diversity which is critical and which  has inherent value.
      • for: human rights, nonhuman rights
    15. So something about our   process is completely wrong. Something about our  understanding of ecology is completely wrong.   But for me, I look back at, for example,  the Daoists. To me, the Daoists understood   very deeply the complexity. Daoism really starts  with just accepting the mystery and the complexity   00:19:33 of the world and not trying to necessarily  explain it all, and then to pattern behavior   after these natural processes
      • for: emptiness, ecology and emptiness, ecology and Taoism
    1. people who are wealthy contribute the most to causing climate change, they are unfortunately also in the most ideal position to help us mitigate climate change.
      • for: W2W, carbon inequality, leverage point
      • quote
        • "people who are wealthy contribute the most to causing climate change,
          • they are unfortunately also in the most ideal position to help us mitigate climate change"
      • author
    2. "The top 1% use basically a similar amount to the bottom 50% of humanity.
      • for: carbon inequality, w2w
      • comment
        • it would be useful to have the accounting process used to calculate how the top1% emit carbon equivalent to bottom 50% to help us identify areas where interventions can be developed
    1. Sciences told us that if we want to abide by this 1.5 degree Centigrade uh limit of Paris agreement we have to cut our emissions by 50 00:10:35 percent by the end of this decade by 2030 almost 50 percent so but but there is this is a huge ask and you know I cannot um answer your question because a 00:10:47 million dollar question that a world should come together uh somebody like me sitting in a developing country with its economy struggling I can only hope that that 00:10:58 put together do Collective action we need the transformation of our Energy System
      • for: collective action
      • what the world needs it is to cut the emissions to stay below 1.5 degree centigrade and currently we are 1.2 degrees Centigrade warmer than the pre-industrial and the ipcc Sciences told us that if we want to abide by this 1.5 degree Centigrade limit of Paris agreement we have to cut our emissions by 50 percent by 2030 t but there is this is a huge ask and you know I cannot answer your million dollar question
      • a world should come together somebody like me sitting in a developing country with its struggling economy, I can only hope that Collective action will happen
      • we need the transformation of our Energy System
        • and especially when it comes to the use of air conditioner
      • I'm among the haves I can afford but I feel for the street vendor out at home he cannot afford
      • this year we had a record-breaking Heat Wave and then the record Bridges flooding in Pakistan both extreme events tarnish the economy of the country altogether and those were the front lines or the poorest of the poorest who suffer
      • so I'm gonna say it's a big question mark it's a big question for the developed countries to to take the action to bring the world together at one place
    1. we're also showing that these tipping elements are interconnected in 00:10:41 so-called Cascades
      • for: interdependent, emptiness, cascading tipping points
        • the Arctic which is warming three times faster than the planet on average
        • and releases cold fresh water into the North Atlantic slowing down the whole overturning of heat in the North Atlantic
        • which pushes the monsoon further south
        • which can explain droughts and forest fires over the Brazilian part of the Amazon
        • moreover the slowing down of overturning of heat means that more warm water is stuck in the Southern Ocean
        • which can explain why the West Antarctic ice sheet is melting faster than we had expected so there's a connection between the North Pole and the South Pole in this web of interactive tipping elements so
      • This is something we have to recognize we are today a big world on a very small planet and it's all interwired and we are interdependent now
    2. the graph you see here shows the two Alternatives we have 00:12:22 either we really radically reduce emissions and come to Net Zero by 2040 with limited overshoot
      • for: bend the curve, planetary boundaries, planetary tipping points, 1.5 Degree, overshoot 1.5 Degree C

      • two alternatives

        • come to net zero by 2040 with limited overshoot
        • come to net zero by 2060 with 3 decades of overshoot to 1.6, 1.7 Deg C
      • first alternative is no longer viable
    3. this is now quantifying this this safe space but for the first time also doing it for justice so measuring the maximum allowed 00:15:33 of significant harm to people and the key take home here is the following in the outer ring here the red and green you see the safe boundary definitions 00:15:45 the blue lines are the assessment of justice so not surprisingly if we care about people the safe bound is about the stability of the planet but if we care about avoiding significant harm to hundreds of millions of people across 00:15:58 the world the climate boundary shrinks from 1.5 down to one degree
      • for: earth system boundaries, planetary boundaries, safe and just boundaries, earth system justice, just boundaries
      • key finding
        • if we include justice in the planetary boundaries, then the 1.5 Deg C target becomes 1.0 Deg C.
        • In other words, we have already breached the safe and just boundary!
    4. you may have seen last week that the global carbon budget to 00:11:43 have a chance of holding 1.5 was cut by half so no longer 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide but rather 250 billion tons of carbon dioxide remaining to have a chance of holding 1.5 that's only like 00:11:56 six seven years under current burning of fossil fuels so an orderly phase out means that we really need to start bending the curve immediately and reduce emissions by in the order of six to seven percent per year to have a net 00:12:09 Seer World economy between 2014 and 2050
      • for: bend the curve, climate clock
    5. this is 30 years of ipcc Assessments from the third assessment in 2009 all the way to the 1.5 degrees Celsius 00:09:50 assessment a few years back this is the red Embers diagram of confidence in science and what you see for each column is the assessment of risk of irreversible changes and at what 00:10:03 temperature levels 20 years ago at the third assessment the risk was basically assessed as zero because it was set at six degrees Celsius nobody was suggesting we would end up at six degrees but look at the trend line the 00:10:16 more we learn about the planet the more we understand about the coupled interactive Earth system the lower is the temperature at which we put risks of irreversible changes and it's down in 00:10:29 the less than two degrees Celsius range now blinking red so that's where we are
      • for: planetary boundaries, tipping points, planetary tipping points
    6. the Breakthrough here is that for the first time we've been able to put temperature thresholds on the 00:08:44 likely temperatures when we cross the Tipping points that's the color schemes you see in the color coding these five are the ones we really need to be concerned with because they are the first ones on the line at 1.5 degrees 00:08:58 Celsius they're likely to cross their tipping points we're talking here about the green and ice sheet the West Antarctic ice sheet all the tropical coral reef systems home to over 500 million people's livelihood 00:09:11 the Boreal permafrost a breath throwing a permafrost and loss of the barren sea ice
      • for tipping point, planetary tipping point
      • likely temperature thresholds for breaching planetary tipping points at 1.5 Deg C
        • Greenland Ice sheet
        • West Antarctica ice sheet
        • tropical coral reef system
        • boreal permafrost
        • Berent sea ice
    7. we're following a path that would take us to 2.7 degrees Celsius even if all the nationally determined contributions are implemented 00:07:39 by the end of this century let me just make one point very clear 2.7 degrees Celsius is without any doubt a disaster it's a point we haven't seen for the 00:07:52 past five million years there's no evidence that we can support Humanity as we know it on a 2.7 degrees Celsius planet so we really need to transition and 1.5 00:08:04 is the scientific limit that we now need to hold on to
      • for: BAU
    8. an extraordinary Insight a healthy 00:06:09 Planet applies this biogeochemical processes to remain in the Holocene and just look at the graph a Kindergarten kid sees the pattern the more we disturb a healthy planet is helping us trying 00:06:22 more and more
      • for: earth resilience
    9. we are modern humans we've been around as modern humans for 00:04:32 200 000 years on Earth but we are hunters and gatherers we have a rough time we live under extremely variable conditions in deep Ice Age we come into the Holocene the neolithical revolution takes part one of the biggest 00:04:44 Innovations in human history and off we go in the civilizational journey that we all know and here we are today
      • for: civilizational journey
    1. at third act where we organize old people like me over the age 00:05:36 of 60. we're concentrating on democracy and on climate they seem uh they seem the twin crises that we face
      • for: polycrisis, dual crisis, climate change and political polarization

      • key insight

        • we have to deal with climate crisis AND political polarization simultaneously
        • unless we solve the political polarization problem, we will be stuck in policy gridlock
    1. I think the first thing 00:04:49 we have to do and what governments have been reluctant to do is to say we've got to stop making it worse now the government is saying we've got to start adapting to the changes yes we do but we 00:05:04 have to stop making it worse which means for heaven's sakes we've got to get off fossil fuels as quickly as we can
      • for: stop reset go
    1. we compiled all the species that we try and get a handle on and we then tried to 00:05:06 relate those species list to Manhattan Island through a new kind of science that we call muir webs and that kind of data it turns out that you can visualize and understand as a network
      • for: progress trap, species map, indra's net
    1. The common definition of a progress trap is derived from the book’s cover text: “..it is the condition in which we find ourselves when science, technology and industry create more problems than they can solve. Often inadvertently.”
      • for: progress trap
      • definition
      • quote
        • progress trap
          • A progress trap is the condition in which we find ourselves when science, technology and industry create more problems than they can solve. Often inadvertently.
      • author
        • Dan O'Leary
      • source
    1. The concept of the purity of science should be abandoned.
      • for: progress trap, abstraction
        • comment
          • we do not recognize the power of abstraction
          • through it, we begin to construct Indra's Net of Jewels, one jewel (idea) at a time
          • but each jewel (idea) that we construct is just a little knowledge, and as Dan observes, a little knowledge, compared to the endless knowledge reflected in any jewel is dangerous.
          • this then, is our dangerous predicament - we base technology on incomplete jewels of Indra's net
          • as we know from mathematics, when the finite meets the infinite, it can never win
    1. four mitigating factors that make power appear to corrupt when something else is actually going on.
      • four mitigating factors that make power appear to corrupt when something else is actually going on.
        • dirty hands
          • people in power often are faced with no good alternatives and your hands will appear dirty, even when you choose the lesser of the evils
        • the idea of learning
          • authoritarian leaders are new to the job in the beginning and they have to learn to be good at being bad. Their leadership may appear to get worse but they are just learning how to be more effectively ruthless - on-the-job training
        • the problem of opportunity
          • a scaling effect. A leader of a country has far more people they can harm with his/her decision than a janitor.
        • the problem of scrutiny
          • people in power get more scrutiny
          • if you are not in power, you could be committing a crime but never get caught because you are not scrutinized to the same degree - think Donald Trump
    2. Winston Churchill had a secret 01:47:06 that the Germans didn't know during the middle of the war. The secret was this. They had cracked the Nazi enigma codes.
      • example
        • difficult choices for people in power
          • Winston Churchill breaks Enigma code
          • Knowledge that an Australian ship was going to be torpedoed by the Nazis but Churchill could not prevent it
          • He made the choice to allow hundreds of sailors die to save millions of people who would have died had the Nazis found out that the Enigma code was broken
    3. when you see that the rates of domestic abuse among police officers in the United States is higher than the general average in the public. So, you know, when you think about why that's happening, perhaps it's that the job is making them a bit more on edge or causing them to behave in certain ways. I think what's more likely is that people who are abusive 01:32:41 are disproportionately likely to seek out a job in which you can abuse people. Now, this is not to say that police officers are bad people, but it is to say that, for the slice of the population that is abusive, especially the people who like to wield power and carry a gun and terrorize people, for them, as one of the police officers in London told me who's in charge of recruitment for the Metropolitan Police, she said to me, "Look, if you're an abusive bigot, 01:33:06 policing is an attractive career choice. It doesn't mean that police officers are generally abusive bigots. It means that for that slice of the population, they like the idea of being able to professionally abuse people."
      • self-selection effect
        • example
          • police
            • it is likely that abusive, controlling people are on average, more attracted to being police officers because they can control and abuse others in that position
    4. Doraville, Georgia.
      • Example
        • self-selection effect
          • Doraville police department created a video of hyper-masculine SWAT team to attract new officers
          • they attracted hyper-masculine males
          • New Zealand took the opposite approach
          • We absolutely have to have oversight and very close scrutiny of police officers who abuse their authority.
          • But at the same time, we have to think more carefully about who ends up in the uniform to begin with.
    5. to eliminate the problem of self-selection bias 01:24:31 by producing shadow bodies of power that provide oversight to the real body of power, but that is randomly selected
      • recommendation
        • to eliminate the problem fo self-selection bias
          • produce shadow bodies of power that provide oversight to the real body of power, but that is randomly selected
        • So the idea here is that
          • you have to think carefully about screening people who are seeking power,
          • you have to have psychological tests for the highest levels of power, and
          • you also have to ask questions of people that would expose whether they're in it for the sake of power or they're in it for themselves.
        • And far too often, people are in it for themselves, and psychological tests would expose the fact that they are people who are not the ones that you want at the helm of a company or a country or with the sole control of nuclear weapons.
    6. I wish there was a certain question 01:22:26 that was asked to people who wanted to wield immense amounts of power that is often not asked. And that question is this. What would it take for you to think that you are no longer necessary in power?
      • critical question for all top leaders
        • I wish there was a certain question that was asked to people who wanted to wield immense amounts of power that is often not asked. And that question is this.
          • What would it take for you to think that you are no longer necessary in power?
        • In other words, what is the goal that you want to achieve with your power,
          • that if you were to achieve it, you would think it's time to step down?
        • And the reason that question is so important is because
          • it would cause most politicians to freeze like deer in the headlights.
        • They've never thought about it.
        • For them, power is the goal.
        • It would expose them as having never thought about it.
        • And for those who do actually answer that question, they would put themselves on the record as what they think their power is for, such that if they actually achieve it, they can retire.
        • And I think that's something that would be a great screening mechanism to see how people answer that question.
        • Most power-hungry people in leadership positions think, "I am God's gift to power, and therefore I should inhabit this role as long as I can stay here,"
          • which is why dictators cling to power as long as they can.
    7. most of what we do when we look at power is we say, "This person is bad, let's get them out." And then we end up with another bad person a few minutes later or a few months later. And as a result of that, we end up replicating the exact same problems over and over and over.
      • we look at a bad person
      • try to get rid of him/her
      • when we do, then another bad person ends up in the role
      • this is because we are treating the symptom, not the root cause
    8. And so when we have this simplistic view of power, we're missing the story. What you really need is a system that attracts the right kind of people 01:18:20 so that the diplomats who are clean and nice and rule-following end up in power. Then you need a system that gives them all the right incentives to follow the rules once they get there. And then if you do have people who break the rules, there needs to be consequences. So the study from UN diplomats and their parking behavior actually, I think, illuminates a huge amount of very interesting dynamics around power,
      • how to create a system that mitigates abuse, based on the UN diplomat parking example
        • create a system that attracts the right kind of people so that the people who are clean and nice and rule-following end up in power.
        • Give them all the right incentives to follow the rules once they get there.
        • If you do have people who break the rules, there needs to be consequences.
    9. So if you have a president 01:19:36 or a prime minister who's won an election, there's no training, there's no oversight, there's no scrutiny other than journalists from the outside. There's often not a criminal background check for politicians before an election. And yet when you end up as a tour guide, you have all sorts of safeguarding, you have training.
      • recommendation
        • politicians and other leaders need deep training and constant scrutiny as a condition to being in those positions
        • it is unthinkable that a tour guide position should have more training than a president of a country!
    10. if we want to end up with a world that is shaped by the best of us, rather than very often the worst of us, we have to think carefully, we have to engineer a system.
      • key insight
      • quote
        • if we want to end up with a world that is shaped by the best of us, rather than very often the worst of us,
          • we have to think carefully, we have to engineer a system.
          • think of the worst person for the job position you are hiring for
          • design the system to
            • screen that person out
            • if they do manage to get in, have oversight that can eliminate them from the post
            • have a system in place that looks upwards to the top position to scrutinize them and hold them accountable
    11. So what you end up having is in positions of power that are particularly dangerous, psychopaths are much more likely to seek those positions of power because they don't view the danger as a threat to them.
      • dark triad trait people do not see threat in a rational way
        • they think they can defeat the threat
    12. One of the interesting things about my job is I go around the world, and sometimes I sit down with former heads of state in authoritarian countries, people who basically were dictators 01:02:25 or despots until a few years ago. And what's striking about these people is that they have basically inhabited the ideal world for a Machiavellian narcissistic psychopath, somebody with the dark triad traits.
      • dictators have extreme amounts of the dark triad trait
    13. This is why, by the way, the job interview is a terrible way of sorting out people because the job interview is a performance for a very short period of time. And what psychopaths are extremely good at doing is making people like them, especially because they're chameleon-like, they can sort of morph, depending on what they think people want to hear, in this short period of time.
      • key observation
        • job interviews are poor at screening out psychopaths because they can put on superficial charm for short periods of time.
        • the psychopath can say whatever they think needs to be said in order to get the job
    14. For psychopaths, it tends to be switched off by default. But they're actually really good at mimicking a normal brain if and when they need to.
      • brain scans support the idea that psychopaths feel no empathy by default, but can switch empathy on when they need to show "superficial charm"
      • normal people cannot switch empathy off, but psychopaths can switch empathy on
    15. Steve Raucci was unable to control his impulses. He was unable to sort of dial it back when he needed to. He was unable to blend in 00:45:57 as a normal functioning member of his staff, and instead did all sorts of crazy things that made people realize that he was probably a psychopath. The successful psychopaths are in boardrooms, they're managing hedge funds, they're in politics. They're the people who are ruthless, who are very power-hungry, and are very good at getting power because like Steve Raucci, they're able to hatch extremely complicated plots 00:46:23 in order to get their way. They're extremely disciplined at times, when they're successful psychopaths, to get their way, to engineer the outcome they desire. So the successful psychopaths are the worst of every world.
      • successful psychopaths
        • are not like Steve Raucci
        • they are
          • in boardrooms
          • managing hedge funds
          • politicians
          • business leaders
        • they are
          • ruthless
          • very power-hungry
          • able to hatch complicated plots to get their way
          • very disciplined at times
          • are the worst of the world
          • terrible at wielding power
          • extremely abusive
          • very likely to inflict damage to subordinates
          • but have the right amount of discipline when to stop acting like a psychopath
    16. we have all sorts of stupid biases when it comes to leadership selection.
      • facial bias
        • experiments show that children and adults alike who didn't know any of the faces shown, chose actual election leaders and runner ups of elections to be their leaders
        • China exploits the "white-guy-in- a-tie" problem to win deals.
          • Companies hire a white person with zero experience to wear a nice suit and tie and pose as a businessman who has just flown in from Silicon Valley.
    17. the problem starts to rear its ugly head in incredibly bizarre and depressing ways. One of the ways that we know this happens is in the criminal justice system.
      • definition
        • babyfaceness
      • when a person's face resembles a baby's face,
        • it can advantage or disadvantage that person depending on
          • which race they are part of
            • if they are babyfaced white, then they will be frowned upon because they are perceived as weak
            • if they are babfaced minority, then they will be more likely to be promoted as they are less threatening
    18. Why are we drawn to people who are clearly not 00:20:59 in the business of public service but want to abuse us and often show us that they are strong men who are oriented towards conquering and dominating rather than serving us? And that puts the mirror back on us. And the answer, I think, is partly to do with evolutionary psychology.
      • key observation
        • we often vote for "strong men" who are not in the business of public service but are oriented towards conquering and dominating due to a cognitive bias developed from tens of thousands of years of evolution.
        • in ancient times, a physically strong man to lead us often increased our chances of survival.
        • This is no longer true today, but that cognitive bias is still with us because evolution takes a long time.
        • Hence, this cognitive bias to select strong men is maladaptive today.
    19. when we think about self-selection bias and survivorship bias in tandem, we have a really important understanding of how power actually operates
      • key observation
        • the dynamics and relationship between
          • self-selection bias and
          • survivorship bias
        • gives us insight of how power operates
        • The wrong kinds of people who are power-hungry, seek power more in the first place.
        • Then they're better at obtaining it.
        • They show up in our ordinary lives because they've survived,
          • they've made it.
        • So when we think about who is powerful,
          • we have to think about
            • the people who didn't seek power in the first place and
            • the people who didn't obtain power in the first place.
            • the people who didn't survive in power for very long, and therefore they dropped out.
          • The presidents and prime ministers,
          • the generals,
          • the cult leaders,
          • the business leaders,
        • those people are basically people who have survived and who self-selected.
    20. Abraham Wald
      • example
        • survivorship bias
          • Abraham Wald was a statistican who was tasked by the Allied war effort with understanding how to make the Allied war planes function better.
          • And he was presented with a series of airplanes that had bullet holes throughout them as they had gone from bombing runs over Nazi Germany.
          • And he looked at them, and he saw that there were
            • holes in the wings,
            • holes in the tail,
            • holes in the nose of the plane.
          • And the general said to him, you know, "Based on your statistical expertise, where should we put extra armor?
          • Where should we reinforce the plane?"
          • And most of the people thought they should put them where the bullet holes were.
          • Abraham Wald took one look at this, and he said, "If you put armor over the places where the holes are,
            • you're going to make the planes get shot down more."
          • Because the reality was the places that didn't have bullet holes were the most crucial.
          • The places that had been shot in
            • the fuselage,
            • the middle of the plane where the engine was,
          • those were in Germany, they didn't survive,
            • they were wrecks.
          • So they never made it back to be analyzed.
          • So survivorship bias is a bias where we look at the wrong kinds of data because we only look at what survived.
    21. What is survivorship bias?
      • There's two forms of bias around power that are really important to understand.
        • The first is self-selection bias, but then there's another bias called
        • survivorship bias.
      • And this is where we only see people who make it into power.
      • When you think about the people you know who are powerful, those are people who have survived,
        • they've sought power, and
        • they've obtained it, and
        • they've maintained it.
      • The people who didn't seek power in the first place,
        • weren't successful in achieving it, or
        • only lasted for a short time,
      • those don't show up when we think about powerful people.
    22. The same is true for power. People who are power-hungry, people who are psychopaths tend to self-select into positions of power more than the rest of us. And as a result, we have this skew, this bias in positions of power where certain types of people, often the wrong kinds of people, 00:14:51 are more likely to put themselves forward to rule over the rest of us
      • key observation
        • People who are power-hungry, people who are psychopaths
          • tend to self-select into positions of power more than the rest of us.
        • And as a result, we have this skew, this bias in positions of power
          • where certain types of people, often the wrong kinds of people,
          • are more likely to put themselves forward to rule over the rest of us
    23. the problem is that we've engineered a society in which power itself is costly to everyone, and that means that the only people who think it's worth paying the cost are those who are power-hungry.
      • key insight
        • we've engineered a society in which power itself is costly to everyone
        • cost
          • it's invasive, your life will be scritinized, your family may pay a price, and may be destroyed
            • for the power-hungry, they can often accept the cost
            • for most ordinary people, that cost is too high
    24. power-hungry literally means someone who wants power. Someone who wants power 00:11:34 is going to seek power more than everybody else. As a result of that, we have a real problem on our hands. How do we stop this, right? So there's a few answers.
      • problem
        • power hungry people intentionally seek out power more than anyone else.
        • this creates a real problem.
        • the more power a position has, the more likely power-hungry people will be attracted
      • solution
        • make systems of power more attractive for ordinary and decent people
    25. power is something that draws 00:10:21 in the wrong kinds of people like moths to a flame. So the way you deal with that is you attract more people to basically be able to zap some of the bad moths and be left with ones who are actually in it for the right reasons. And that's why recruitment is so important.
      • key strategy for dealing with power-hungry people
        • recruitment
      • power is something that draws in the wrong kinds of people like moths to a flame.
      • So the way you deal with that is you attract more people to basically be able to zap some of the bad moths and be left with ones who are actually in it for the right reasons. -
      • And that's why recruitment is so important.
    26. power does corrupt. We have plenty of evidence that it changes your psychology, it changes your neuroscience, it changes your brain, but it's only a small part of the story. And the much more interesting part of the story is how people interact with systems and why we end up with the wrong people in charge.
      • comment
        • interesting analysis that it is the system that promotes the wrong type of people to positions of leadership.
    27. Why is it that despite incredible 21st century advances in every realm of medicine and science and so on, we still are stuck with all the wrong people in charge of our lives?
      • Key question
        • Why is it that despite incredible 21st century advances in every realm of medicine and science and so on,
          • we still are stuck with all the wrong people in charge of our lives?

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    1. The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population,
      • The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020,
        • almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population,