Uncovering Future Possibilities from Humanity's Past with Roman Krznaric | TGS 142

(Conversation recorded on August 5th, 2024)

Show Summary:

While the global crises we face are on a larger scale than anything before, there is rich wisdom to glean from past civilizations who have faced existential challenges and survived – or even thrived. What lessons might we learn from history that could offer guidance for our future?

In this episode, Nate is joined by social philosopher Roman Krznaric to discuss ways we might govern or lead during moments of crisis, using the lens of former and current civilizations.

What lessons have we forgotten when it comes to being in community with and listening to each other? How have our ideas and expectations of the future been informed by seeing history as a story of individuals shaping the rise and fall of civilizations, rather than a collective effort? How could learning from the past to create better democracies, wiser natural resource stewardship, and more circular economies help us prioritize human and planetary well-being?

About Roman Krznaric:

Roman Krznaric is a social philosopher who writes about the power of ideas to create change. His internationally bestselling books, including The Good Ancestor, Empathy and Carpe Diem Regained, have been published in more than 25 languages. He is Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing and founder of the world’s first Empathy Museum. His new book is History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity.

After growing up in Sydney and Hong Kong, Roman studied at the universities of Oxford, London and Essex, where he gained his PhD in political science. His writings have been widely influential amongst political and ecological campaigners, education reformers, social entrepreneurs and designers. An acclaimed public speaker, his talks and workshops have taken him from a London prison to the TED global stage.

Roman is a member of the Club of Rome and a Research Fellow of the Long Now Foundation. He previously worked as a gardener, a conversation activist and on human rights issues in Guatemala. He is also a top-ranked player of the medieval sport of real tennis.

Show Notes and More:

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00:00 - Introduction
04:15 - Background to Roman's New Book
07:55 - Deep Time vs Attention Spans
12:36 - Biographies of Great Men
18:38 - Shifting Our Historical Perspective
25:22 - Importance of Ritual
32:10 - Social Innovation
52:10 - Democracy
01:01:00 - Citizens Assemblies
01:12:22 - UK Immigration
01:19:00 - What Should We Do?
01:27:29 - Closing Questions

[rcm]

Nate, this podcast is a repository of the greatest minds in human history. Not just of the people interviewed, but of the people, both living and dead, whose ideas, work, cultures, and deeds that have most impacted the world are called forth. I often imagine what it would be like to discover the content here hundreds or thousands of years in the future, the collection of creativity and thought and life represented here would be considered such a priceless archaeological, historical (and perhaps spiritual) goldmine. So amazing.

[seantewillis]

This is the best thing ever! Please put on notifications or leave these up to watch later.

[ozychk]

Thanks Nate and Roman another fascinating interview and another book to read 👍

[netrabantawa]

Thank you ! for Interesting conversation .

[martinmtweedale]

Thanks very much for having someone on who knows history and realizes how important that knowledge is. I've been saying you should interrupt the flow of scientists on your podcast with some people from the humanities. Roman shows how fruitful that can be.

[MendeMaria-ejbf]

Thank you for this interesting interview. ❤

[stephbailliegee]

Sitting right now at a talk by Kate Raworth in Brussels. Enjoying very
Much after
This great podcast. Thanks

[nutbagus]

Thank You Both every Discussion helps.

[allonesame]

In order to "fix" what is wrong now, we must listen to the people who are harmed by our ways, past & present. To not listen and respond with compassion is folly.

[philovon]

Great episode. The concept of Citizens Assemblies is brilliant.

[dalebirononpoetry]

Breaking through the “baselines of our imaginations, ” how absolutely brilliant and exhilarating… I loved this conversation!

[TheFlyingBrain.]

Nate & Roman: Thanks to you both for an inspiring discussion. I really hope the two of you will get together to do another one real soon, because I loved every minute of this, and could happily go deeper with you into any of these topics.
All talk of hope as a soporific aside (and it is a valid concern, though not in alignment with what Roman is really pointing to, as I heard him), listening to your conversation today for me felt like coming upon an oasis in the desert. So much of what's being expressed on the internet currently is all based in fixed binary linear time: All is lost, humans are too screwed up to change, the cake is baked. "Doom. Doom, Doom!" (In case people are getting lost now, those are the drums beating accompaniment deep in Khazad-Dun.)
Before any more Khazad-dun defenders are tempted to pile on here, I'm not denying any facts, tipping points, or recent research into human neuropsychology. I am however, asserting that we fare better when we learn to discern facts from interpretation. Because it's interpretation that generally determines the way the facts show up.
The media has been training us for decades to make fixed predictions about the future based on inflexible predetermined interpretations of the past, and now it seems that's all we ever do. This is counter to everything we've been learning lately about nondual reality, which btw, is still reality, no matter the global environmental economic everything crisis. (It doesn't disappear and suddenly cease to be because bad stuff might happen. But that's the nature of scare-mongering which the media loves to perpetrate, isn't it: It jerks you back into survival mode even when you don't need to be there, which is a state of mind that only functions well in fixed binary linear time.)
With regards to the future, we need to remember this: The cat is still in the box.
The future only ever exists as potential. Nothing is fixed until it has happened. Therefore prepare for the worst contingency as you are able, and work for the best of all possible outcomes. It really is that simple. And meanwhile, be the best version of who you want to be, now.
I really think a lot of what we're seeing being expressed here in response to the concept of hope is simply unresolved discomfort with the experience of uncertainty.
Anyway, it's totally refreshing to come upon someone like Roman talking in positive and constructive terms about gleaning experiences from the past as possibilities we can use to help us begin to reshape and redirect whatever we can of what may yet come.
I really like the idea of these dinner conversations. This is something people can easily do from anywhere. Does Roman know of somewhere we can connect with people who've done this to get an idea of how to get started? I have experience working with groups, but I'm wondering what kinds of questions people have asked these groups in the past. I want to learn more about citizen assemblies and sortition, too. I have a friend in London who is really into sortition and assemblies who has been talking about this for ages. It's the first thing I've ever heard of that seems like it could be viable as something to transition to out of the system we have now in the US.
So for now, as I await another episode with you two, I'm on my way to the bookstore... 👋💛

[drdeanrea]

Brilliant episode. Thanks Roman and Nate :)

As a long-time admirer of the work of E O Wilson, I couldn't agree more regarding biophilia. I believe that a complete transition from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism, individually and collectively, is a requirement for human futures. No transition, no futures. It can happen and is happening, but the transition needs to accelerate dramatically, preferably by choice rather than forced by necessity.

I also think we must acknowledge that collapse isn't something for the future. Collapse is happening already. Humans are nature, nature is beauty, and beauty is truth. We are not separate from nature. Separation is an illusion. We've lost 70% of wildlife (bioabundance) in 50 years (in the UK). Globally, humans and domestic animals account for 32% and 64% of mammalian biomass, and wild animals account for only 4%. The biomass of poultry is more than double the biomass of all wild birds. We are causing and experiencing the sixth great extinction. This is truly shocking and depressing if we allow ourselves to process it and genuinely engage with the emotions. If we are nature, we're already in collapse!

This may seem counter-intuitive because the human enterprise (population, production, consumption, waste generation; see William Rees) is still expanding, but it soon won't be. The general narrative is that expansion of the human enterprise is a good thing, and arguing against it makes you a misanthrope. I'd counter that if the desire for contraction is grounded in empathy for other species (to allow them space and resources to survive and thrive alongside us), that's noble and loving, and honestly, I'd rather be a misanthrope than an expansionist, colonialist, human supremacist. Also, despite this expansion, I'd argue that we're increasingly distracted and disconnected, from ourselves, each other, and the rest of nature, and therefore losing more and more of our humanity. We're losing what's truly valuable (life, which is sacred). We're becoming increasingly left hemisphere-dominated and machine-like (see Iain McGilchrist).

John Vervaeke (a potentially interesting guest Nate!) talks about the meaning crisis alongside the metacrisis. He suggests asking ourselves the following three questions to test for meaning:

(1) What do you want to exist even if you don’t?
(2) How real is it? Is it really real?
(3) How much of a difference do you make to it right now?

He argues that how we answer those questions reflects to what degree we have meaning in life (distinct from meaning of life).

Hope is discussed elsewhere in this comments thread. Hope may be important but only if it facilitates action because it's change that we need. It is our individual and collective behaviours that are causing the problems, underpinned by our biology and psychology, and buttressed by our history, culture, and the stories we tell ourselves. Stories are important, but not as important as what we feel. My advice, for what it's worth, is to get out in nature, remember and feel that you are nature, and remember that you love nature and you love yourself, not as an individual "self" but as a wholly interconnected, interdependent part of nature; as an agent, with agency, to partake in and serve the continuity of this miracle of life.

[MNRKgrey]

I got to help facilitate a citizen assembly, I love the concept ❤

[JessieLydia]

I am always amazed by listening to great thinkers and readers like Nate ana Roman, here looking for examples to learn from, that don’t seem to read from the billions of natural examples.

The lives of organisms, cultures, and other natural forms of working organization. There are great similarities in the succession of events and processes for such systems surviving their own growth, their common start-ups. Growth is their self-organization process, and to survive it, its powerful access to resources and ever faster acceleration both will urgently need a new purpose. Generally that shift is reorienting growth from multiplying past design to focusing on maturing physically, developing new relationships, learning and coordinating with the new contexts growth opens the gate to and leads then into.

[danielaherzog]

Nate, every episode of your podcast is utterly fascinating; this one with Roman especially so, for me. It left me flying, and brimming with ideas. Thank you both so much!!!
There is a book by a German historian, Annette Kehnel, about sustainability/regeneration in medieval times in Europe. An eye-opening book. (German title: Wir konnten auch anders - Eine kurze Geschichte der Nachhaltigkeit. It was first published in 2021 and already is in its fifth run. It is now also available in an English translation: The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability.) Reading it I had the same kind of "why did I not know about any of this before!? - experience that Roman reported. I thought I might share, maybe someone is interested in reading it. 
Again, thank you both for this incredible episode! <3

[susanmehalick]

That’s it!! You had me forever with the mention of Asimov!!!!

[kated]

I used to LOVE fishing. Then I started to feel terrible for the fish and that took all the fun out. Haven't fished in years...

[treefrog]

"HOPE", as ennobled as that concept has become, in many ways functions as a soporific. Every sane person on the planet wishes that things could be different. We HOPE for World Peace.We HOPE for a pristine environment. We HOPE for economic equity amongst all people. It would be the sane way to proceed. But when you compare the things that most of us HOPE for to the way things actually ARE, then HOPE becomes merely delusional, enervating, wishful thinking. I personally HOPE that a benign space alien would land in Washington to warn humanity about the error of its ways (as depicted in "The Day the Earth Stood Still") but I am not holding my breath in anticipation. As ludicrous as that wish may seem to many, I don't think that it is any more outlandish than the HOPE for World Peace, meaningful ecological improvements, or economic fairness. HOPE only postpones meaningful action.

[zweiberg_betterliving]

Brilliant, thank you!
sustainable greetings, Gernot