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This weekend

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This weekend's reading

Where Value Touches Ground

A weekend at the boundary where thermodynamics stops being physics and starts being theology.

  • ◇Value Is Not Arbitrary: Its Thermodynamic Roots in Existence Itself
  • ◇The Sacred as Thermodynamic Necessity in Complex Societies
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Where Value Touches Ground

A weekend at the boundary where thermodynamics stops being physics and starts being theology.

Meaning CrisisRelevance RealizationProcess PhilosophyPhenomenologyConsciousness Studies
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Where Value Touches Ground

“If mattering is thermodynamic before it is psychological, what does that do to the distinction between sacred and secular?”

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This weekend's quest

Where Value Touches Ground

Something is holding the universe together that isn't gravity. Three thinkers trace value from its thermodynamic floor to its sacred ceiling. Your task is to find the joints — the places where physics becomes meaning and meaning becomes obligation. The map has seven edges. Not all of them point in the direction you'd expect.

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  1. Observers
  2. ›Nate Hagens
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Nate Hagens

Energy, ecology, economics, civilizational risk — the fossil-fuel superorganism, systems thinking about energy descent, and the structural logic of the Great Simplification

Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future
6 ideas17 connections

Nate Hagens is an ecologist, systems thinker, and former Wall Street finance executive who redirected his career to study the convergence of energy, ecology, and economics. Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future and host of The Great Simplification podcast, he uses his "superorganism" framework to argue that fossil fuels created an unprecedented expansion of human complexity that will now undergo structural contraction.

YouTubeXLinkedInSubstackWebsite ↗

Topics

Systems Thinking6
Complexity Science5
Meta-Crisis3
Civilizational Risk3
Political Philosophy2
Epistemology1
Narrative and Myth1
Sensemaking1

Connected Observers

Daniel Schmachtenberger7Jamie Wheal3Brendan Graham Dempsey1Jordan Hall1Nora Bateson1Zak Stein

Ideas in the Observatory

  • The Inseparable Trinity of Economic Expansion
    The Inseparable Trinity of Economic ExpansionThe More We Save, the More We Burn
    I
  • Energy Quality and the Physics of Civilizational Scale
    Energy Quality and the Physics of Civilizational ScaleA hummingbird cannot feast on grass
    I

Links

YouTube ChannelX / TwitterLinkedInSubstack
Cultural Evolution1
1
  • The Fossil Labor Subsidy of Modern Economics
    The Fossil Labor Subsidy of Modern EconomicsAn army of ghosts fuels the feast
    I
  • The Structural Barriers to Shared Systems Narratives
    The Structural Barriers to Shared Systems NarrativesA truth too heavy for the elevator.
    I
  • Energy Infrastructure and the Material Foundations of Society
    Energy Infrastructure and the Material Foundations of SocietyThe material ghost in the cultural machine
    I
  • The Blind Superorganism of Global Economic Growth
    The Blind Superorganism of Global Economic GrowthBillions of hands on a ghost wheel
    I
    • Website

    Topics

    Systems Thinking6
    Complexity Science5
    Meta-Crisis3
    Civilizational Risk3
    Political Philosophy2
    Epistemology1
    Narrative and Myth1
    Sensemaking1
    Cultural Evolution1

    Connected Observers

    Daniel Schmachtenberger7Jamie Wheal3Brendan Graham Dempsey1Jordan Hall1Nora Bateson1Zak Stein1
    ← All Observers