I can attest to Jeremy’s point that citizen assemblies (or something very similar) can be amazingly effective at resolving problems that long seemed insoluble at a societal level. For several years during the mid-90s, my job consisted of facilitating intensive problem-solving workshops in corporations. The workshops followed a process that got the right people together, looking at the right issues from the relevant perspectives and in the right sequence, and without distractions.
Participants would often start out highly skeptical, suspicious that this was just another corporate fad. But in most cases, in just six to eight weeks, they would have come to whole-hearted consensus on a path forward. It was immensely satisfying work. But despite its record of success, this was a very difficult process to sell; most people couldn’t quite believe there was actually an alternative approach to the failed approaches they’d tried for years.
Indeed, this work dried up after a few years, for a whole host of reasons. I spent the next 25 years of my working life trying to resurrect the process in one form or another, with just two or three partial and short-lived successes. So yes, this kind of process can indeed deliver amazing, breakthrough results, as happened in Ireland with the abortion issue. But only if enough people become willing to take a chance on a new approach. I wish I knew how to make that happen, but I don't.
I love how these emerging ideas are weaving together.
By the way, coincidentally, someone told me about Jeremy Lent's podcast interview with Manda Scott. Then I heard he's coming to Cambridge (UK) and have booked a ticket. Then I realised he was being mentioned in a book I was reading, Flourish. And now your interview here. Talk about serendipity!
How Jeremy describes the process of how complex systems transition is what, as a dancer, I know very well as the creative process. We start with an idea or concept, we go through a very messy stage that requires creativity, exploration, spacial awareness, emotion, relationship, cutting away what isn't working (even if we might be attached to it) and allowing what needs to be expressed to emerge. It's embarrassingly messy for awhile, but once the basic structure is complete we begin to embody the work, we add costumes and lighting, and when an audience arrives the energy peaks as it becomes an exchange. If all of our work was done with thought, craft, and quality, everyone leaves transformed.
The concept of "systems collapse" or "societal collapse" makes me feel like we are headed toward a pile of rubble. There is inherent weight to something that is collapsing - I'm imagining a building or a body - and I get a feeling of helplessness seeing it happen.
What if instead we changed the terminology and treated this transition as a creative process? Could we meet the moment with curiosity, exploration, emotion, and relationship? Could we expect it to be messy and therefore not get caught up in the mess but see it as the necessary pathway for true expression to emerge? Could we begin to embody a new way of operating and bring a new energy to it all?
Would the possibility of a more hopeful outcome ignite greater participation in the co-creation efforts so the range of voices contributing are more diverse?
This framing works really well for me too Emily, I think of the creative process as involving “the deep dark well” and a sense of jumping in, free fall but also bringing all the necessary process, structure and technique to bear on collaboratively shaping the emergent work. It’s exciting, inspiring, and always really scary and vulnerable but alive to the requirements of the moment and thrilling to be part of.
Thank you for this- it’s needed. I find the language of unravelling more helpful than collapse. Collapse can feel abrupt whereas unravelling feels like a release, and leaves room for transformation.
This is the kind of “prepping” I’m interested in - building the relationships, skills, kindness and imagination needed for a world we can live well in. And starting now e.g. tapping into the sense we are nature, rather than separate.
The industrial era has normalised how we live but it’s only a tiny blip in human history. There is also much we can learn from anciemt practices (yoga, Taosim etc) and Indigenous ways of being to help shape what comes next.
Hi Sarah, I wonder if Limitarianism as described by Ingrid Robeyns in her book, Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth offers part of the answer for what comes next. UK economist Gary Stevenson is calling for world governments to tax the very rich and he has made many more correct predictions than economists peddling ‘trickle down’ economics. Have you seen his YouTube channel?
Yes, absolutely! I mention Ingrid Robeyns in my book. I support her thinking as an important part of the moral reorientation required for an ecocivilization.
A beautiful conversation - weaving Islands of connection, built on shared feelings, ideas & thoughts from the past, now & into the future. Fractals In rivers systems, trees, lungs everywhere. I felt like I was on a magic carpet ride listening to you both. Thank you xxxooo
I actually would love to see implemented many of the ideas presented here but I don't find them inspirational for two reasons. Firstly, there is no chance of them being implemented in our civilisation. Secondly, they don't remotely get close to a sustainable civilisation.
Jeremy thinks that species naturally cooperate but that goes against the way evolution works. If everything a species did also benefited other species around it, all species would rapidly become extinct. Species maximise the throughput of energy and resources. The mutations that improve that throughput are propagated throughout a population and may lead to what become new species from time to time. Yes, species in an ecosystem may appear to cooperate from time to time (e.g. the mycelium nets) but it's not that they "learned" to cooperate, as Jeremy thinks, it's just something that works for the species involved (and not for the other species), for a time. Evolution operates on what works now, not what may work at some time in the future.
When Jeremy says that the way life works "is not the way life works" he goes into dreamland. What we see is most definitely the way life works.
There were many issues I'd critique, even though I'd like them to work, but too many to mention here. In any case, all of the ideas require a civilisation, which is inherently unsustainable (partly because it needs non-renewable resources, partly because civilisations are characterised by cities, not by almost all people being involved in food production).
I'll get Jeremy to chime in here., but as a starting point - the "selfish gene" thesis has been largely disputed. We have BOTH the instinct to protect ourselves, but also the evolutionary motivation to cooperate. Which one dominates depends on culture.
Sadly, Jeremy's response is "read my book." Which isn't much of a response. Forget "The Selfish Gene" as too many people have been mislead by the title of that book.
When it comes down to it, the only sustainable way to live seems to be hunting and gathering, if only because it doesn't require non-renewable resources. The end of modernity could certainly be delayed by the ideas Jeremy expresses but the chances of this civilisation adopting them is close to zero. But maybe Jeremy has the answer in his book, if only enough people would read it.
But humans are just a species and act like all species. The selfish gene was a misnomer (as I think Dawkins has acknowledged). Genes don't make an animal selfish, it is simply that any mutation of a gene that gives the organism an advantage over other organisms, in terms of survival and reproduction will more likely be passed on than the unmutated gene. It's not conscious competition but just the propagation of what works best now, as I mentioned. That's what evolution works on. It's a shame, but that's the way it seems to be.
If you're interested in deepening your understanding, Mike, I recommend my earlier book, The Web of Meaning, which goes into this issue in far greater detail. I certainly don't suggest that "everything a species did also benefited other species around it"—this is a classic example of simplifying another person's argument to create a straw man to then reject.
I invite you to open your mind to other possibilities of interpretation. As Sarah rightly describes, there is a huge field of learning in areas of systems biology and related fields that shows the limitations and errors of Dawkins' "selfish gene" theory and the underlying thinking behind it.
Here is a recent article about how The Selfish Gene, 50 years on, is still relevant even though we have a much better handle on the details. Collaboration is mentioned but gene mutations that can influence collaborative behaviour are passed on if they are successful at maximising the number of replicators for that gene.
It's not that there is a gene for selfishness, the book is from the perspective of a gene, any gene. It has nothing to do with selfish behaviour in humans, or any species.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, Jeremy. What I'm seeking is to understand how a modern civilisation can be made sustainable. Being equitable would be great but unless it's sustainable it won't last and there will be possibly even more suffering than now.
You claimed, or at least that's how it came across, that the default nature of animals is to cooperate, not compete. In what way am I mischaracterising what you said? Cooperative behaviour can evolve from time to time, if that works better for improving the chances for that gene to be propagated. But that doesn't mean that it's always going to be the default nature for all species. And for humans, we've seen how humans developed their societies as their numbers grew. Now you're claiming that it's possible for them to develop new cooperative societies. Maybe it is but you haven't shown how such societies can come about in reality.
How do societies move to your ideal? Coercion? By Who? How? As I'd said, I am all for it but just can't see how it could possibly happen. It would be giving people hope without any basis. And it wouldn't be sustainable anyway.
Yes, you're right, and cooperative traits are also passed along too. From mycelium foriming networks between to trees, to fish creating cleaning systems in reefs to eat the parasites off others (incuding their natural hunters, sharks) and even where menopause develops in certain species, including ours, to create maternal leadership and caring to help grow the young.
I disgree that hunter-gather culture is our only option, there is definitely archaelogical eveidence of a sweet spot between hunter-gathers and cities. Where art and culture flourish, while we still remain part of the ecology around us, not dominating it. I think Tyson Yunkaporta spoke to this in his episode with Sarah last season, and a book called "The Fall: The Evidence for a Golden Age" by Steve Taylor outlines it more deeply.
Unfortunately, we are 7+ billion above what should have been rgrolmitsn this planet, so I do understand your question "how do we get there from here". I don't think anyone knows, we're just trying to problem solve and find a way out of the mess we've been in for centurie, even, dare we say, 6,000 years?
Any form of society that is not sustainable must end. So I'm not sure of the sweet spot between a hunter-gatherer existence (which is the way all other species live) and cities. Whatever that sweet spot is, it cannot make use of non-renewable resources, otherwise it will be unsustainable.
Maybe that's the best we can hope for: a long lived (thousands of years?) way of life where non-renewable resources are sparsely used. However, as we've used up all the ores that are easy to get and refine, it's hard to see how a relatively primitive society will be able to use much in the way of non-renewables. That sweet spot will not be remotely modern.
100% agree, and we just cannot exist like that at our current population rates, but with birth rates dropping and climate extremes, that issue may be resolved in it's own way sooner than we think.
From what I understand, that's exactly what that sweet spot is - sustainable "civilisation". Dwellings were built completely from the natural environment and would be moved from easily if needed, pre-agriculture in harmony with soil/ecology, with plots moved frequently and animals semi-domesticated but no fences or sense of "this is mine". Socially better too, social and gender equality, trade with other groups, and war was unknown, though battle happened but ritualised to avoid death. Lore existed, not laws, and nature was at the heart of it all. So a little less mobile than nomadic hunter-gatherer, but not modern civilisation as we would term it. Becky Chamber's Monk & Robot series imagines it so beautifully, if you're into fiction.
I can attest to Jeremy’s point that citizen assemblies (or something very similar) can be amazingly effective at resolving problems that long seemed insoluble at a societal level. For several years during the mid-90s, my job consisted of facilitating intensive problem-solving workshops in corporations. The workshops followed a process that got the right people together, looking at the right issues from the relevant perspectives and in the right sequence, and without distractions.
Participants would often start out highly skeptical, suspicious that this was just another corporate fad. But in most cases, in just six to eight weeks, they would have come to whole-hearted consensus on a path forward. It was immensely satisfying work. But despite its record of success, this was a very difficult process to sell; most people couldn’t quite believe there was actually an alternative approach to the failed approaches they’d tried for years.
Indeed, this work dried up after a few years, for a whole host of reasons. I spent the next 25 years of my working life trying to resurrect the process in one form or another, with just two or three partial and short-lived successes. So yes, this kind of process can indeed deliver amazing, breakthrough results, as happened in Ireland with the abortion issue. But only if enough people become willing to take a chance on a new approach. I wish I knew how to make that happen, but I don't.
It's great to hear your experience of citizens' assemblies, which aligns with virtually everything I've heard elsewhere.
There's an increasingly powerful movement toward deliberative democracy. Take heart—and join in!
I recommend signing up for the Democracy Next newsletter as a way to get and stay connected with the movement: https://www.demnext.org/
I love how these emerging ideas are weaving together.
By the way, coincidentally, someone told me about Jeremy Lent's podcast interview with Manda Scott. Then I heard he's coming to Cambridge (UK) and have booked a ticket. Then I realised he was being mentioned in a book I was reading, Flourish. And now your interview here. Talk about serendipity!
A beautiful conversation - thank you.
and Manda Scott has come up in my orbit twice recently too!
Looking forward to seeing you in Cambridge, Elisabeth!
Likewise Jeremy!
How Jeremy describes the process of how complex systems transition is what, as a dancer, I know very well as the creative process. We start with an idea or concept, we go through a very messy stage that requires creativity, exploration, spacial awareness, emotion, relationship, cutting away what isn't working (even if we might be attached to it) and allowing what needs to be expressed to emerge. It's embarrassingly messy for awhile, but once the basic structure is complete we begin to embody the work, we add costumes and lighting, and when an audience arrives the energy peaks as it becomes an exchange. If all of our work was done with thought, craft, and quality, everyone leaves transformed.
The concept of "systems collapse" or "societal collapse" makes me feel like we are headed toward a pile of rubble. There is inherent weight to something that is collapsing - I'm imagining a building or a body - and I get a feeling of helplessness seeing it happen.
What if instead we changed the terminology and treated this transition as a creative process? Could we meet the moment with curiosity, exploration, emotion, and relationship? Could we expect it to be messy and therefore not get caught up in the mess but see it as the necessary pathway for true expression to emerge? Could we begin to embody a new way of operating and bring a new energy to it all?
Would the possibility of a more hopeful outcome ignite greater participation in the co-creation efforts so the range of voices contributing are more diverse?
This framing works really well for me too Emily, I think of the creative process as involving “the deep dark well” and a sense of jumping in, free fall but also bringing all the necessary process, structure and technique to bear on collaboratively shaping the emergent work. It’s exciting, inspiring, and always really scary and vulnerable but alive to the requirements of the moment and thrilling to be part of.
Thank you for this- it’s needed. I find the language of unravelling more helpful than collapse. Collapse can feel abrupt whereas unravelling feels like a release, and leaves room for transformation.
This is the kind of “prepping” I’m interested in - building the relationships, skills, kindness and imagination needed for a world we can live well in. And starting now e.g. tapping into the sense we are nature, rather than separate.
The industrial era has normalised how we live but it’s only a tiny blip in human history. There is also much we can learn from anciemt practices (yoga, Taosim etc) and Indigenous ways of being to help shape what comes next.
Hi Sarah, I wonder if Limitarianism as described by Ingrid Robeyns in her book, Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth offers part of the answer for what comes next. UK economist Gary Stevenson is calling for world governments to tax the very rich and he has made many more correct predictions than economists peddling ‘trickle down’ economics. Have you seen his YouTube channel?
Yes, absolutely! I mention Ingrid Robeyns in my book. I support her thinking as an important part of the moral reorientation required for an ecocivilization.
I don't know Robeyns' work...I'll take a look
I follow Gary's stuff closely
A beautiful conversation - weaving Islands of connection, built on shared feelings, ideas & thoughts from the past, now & into the future. Fractals In rivers systems, trees, lungs everywhere. I felt like I was on a magic carpet ride listening to you both. Thank you xxxooo
That's a lovely thing to hear!
I actually would love to see implemented many of the ideas presented here but I don't find them inspirational for two reasons. Firstly, there is no chance of them being implemented in our civilisation. Secondly, they don't remotely get close to a sustainable civilisation.
Jeremy thinks that species naturally cooperate but that goes against the way evolution works. If everything a species did also benefited other species around it, all species would rapidly become extinct. Species maximise the throughput of energy and resources. The mutations that improve that throughput are propagated throughout a population and may lead to what become new species from time to time. Yes, species in an ecosystem may appear to cooperate from time to time (e.g. the mycelium nets) but it's not that they "learned" to cooperate, as Jeremy thinks, it's just something that works for the species involved (and not for the other species), for a time. Evolution operates on what works now, not what may work at some time in the future.
When Jeremy says that the way life works "is not the way life works" he goes into dreamland. What we see is most definitely the way life works.
There were many issues I'd critique, even though I'd like them to work, but too many to mention here. In any case, all of the ideas require a civilisation, which is inherently unsustainable (partly because it needs non-renewable resources, partly because civilisations are characterised by cities, not by almost all people being involved in food production).
I'll get Jeremy to chime in here., but as a starting point - the "selfish gene" thesis has been largely disputed. We have BOTH the instinct to protect ourselves, but also the evolutionary motivation to cooperate. Which one dominates depends on culture.
Sadly, Jeremy's response is "read my book." Which isn't much of a response. Forget "The Selfish Gene" as too many people have been mislead by the title of that book.
When it comes down to it, the only sustainable way to live seems to be hunting and gathering, if only because it doesn't require non-renewable resources. The end of modernity could certainly be delayed by the ideas Jeremy expresses but the chances of this civilisation adopting them is close to zero. But maybe Jeremy has the answer in his book, if only enough people would read it.
But humans are just a species and act like all species. The selfish gene was a misnomer (as I think Dawkins has acknowledged). Genes don't make an animal selfish, it is simply that any mutation of a gene that gives the organism an advantage over other organisms, in terms of survival and reproduction will more likely be passed on than the unmutated gene. It's not conscious competition but just the propagation of what works best now, as I mentioned. That's what evolution works on. It's a shame, but that's the way it seems to be.
If you're interested in deepening your understanding, Mike, I recommend my earlier book, The Web of Meaning, which goes into this issue in far greater detail. I certainly don't suggest that "everything a species did also benefited other species around it"—this is a classic example of simplifying another person's argument to create a straw man to then reject.
I invite you to open your mind to other possibilities of interpretation. As Sarah rightly describes, there is a huge field of learning in areas of systems biology and related fields that shows the limitations and errors of Dawkins' "selfish gene" theory and the underlying thinking behind it.
Here is a recent article about how The Selfish Gene, 50 years on, is still relevant even though we have a much better handle on the details. Collaboration is mentioned but gene mutations that can influence collaborative behaviour are passed on if they are successful at maximising the number of replicators for that gene.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2525646-the-selfish-gene-at-50-why-dawkinss-evolution-classic-still-holds-up/
It's not that there is a gene for selfishness, the book is from the perspective of a gene, any gene. It has nothing to do with selfish behaviour in humans, or any species.
Thanks for reminding us of this clarification!
Thanks for taking the time to reply, Jeremy. What I'm seeking is to understand how a modern civilisation can be made sustainable. Being equitable would be great but unless it's sustainable it won't last and there will be possibly even more suffering than now.
You claimed, or at least that's how it came across, that the default nature of animals is to cooperate, not compete. In what way am I mischaracterising what you said? Cooperative behaviour can evolve from time to time, if that works better for improving the chances for that gene to be propagated. But that doesn't mean that it's always going to be the default nature for all species. And for humans, we've seen how humans developed their societies as their numbers grew. Now you're claiming that it's possible for them to develop new cooperative societies. Maybe it is but you haven't shown how such societies can come about in reality.
How do societies move to your ideal? Coercion? By Who? How? As I'd said, I am all for it but just can't see how it could possibly happen. It would be giving people hope without any basis. And it wouldn't be sustainable anyway.
I recommend you read my Ecoocivilization book, Mike, which will hopefully begin to answer some of your questions.
Hi Mike
Yes, you're right, and cooperative traits are also passed along too. From mycelium foriming networks between to trees, to fish creating cleaning systems in reefs to eat the parasites off others (incuding their natural hunters, sharks) and even where menopause develops in certain species, including ours, to create maternal leadership and caring to help grow the young.
I disgree that hunter-gather culture is our only option, there is definitely archaelogical eveidence of a sweet spot between hunter-gathers and cities. Where art and culture flourish, while we still remain part of the ecology around us, not dominating it. I think Tyson Yunkaporta spoke to this in his episode with Sarah last season, and a book called "The Fall: The Evidence for a Golden Age" by Steve Taylor outlines it more deeply.
Unfortunately, we are 7+ billion above what should have been rgrolmitsn this planet, so I do understand your question "how do we get there from here". I don't think anyone knows, we're just trying to problem solve and find a way out of the mess we've been in for centurie, even, dare we say, 6,000 years?
Any form of society that is not sustainable must end. So I'm not sure of the sweet spot between a hunter-gatherer existence (which is the way all other species live) and cities. Whatever that sweet spot is, it cannot make use of non-renewable resources, otherwise it will be unsustainable.
Maybe that's the best we can hope for: a long lived (thousands of years?) way of life where non-renewable resources are sparsely used. However, as we've used up all the ores that are easy to get and refine, it's hard to see how a relatively primitive society will be able to use much in the way of non-renewables. That sweet spot will not be remotely modern.
100% agree, and we just cannot exist like that at our current population rates, but with birth rates dropping and climate extremes, that issue may be resolved in it's own way sooner than we think.
From what I understand, that's exactly what that sweet spot is - sustainable "civilisation". Dwellings were built completely from the natural environment and would be moved from easily if needed, pre-agriculture in harmony with soil/ecology, with plots moved frequently and animals semi-domesticated but no fences or sense of "this is mine". Socially better too, social and gender equality, trade with other groups, and war was unknown, though battle happened but ritualised to avoid death. Lore existed, not laws, and nature was at the heart of it all. So a little less mobile than nomadic hunter-gatherer, but not modern civilisation as we would term it. Becky Chamber's Monk & Robot series imagines it so beautifully, if you're into fiction.
Overpopulation ?
Sooo inspiring… thank you💚💚
Love this idea!
Beautiful… Thankyou 💖🐛🦋✨
I love this and align with the general direction of this conversation - thanks so much! 💕💕💕