Shane Hanlon

Ok Leo, this is a rough take. Because you care about truth so much, are a genuine earnest thinker, and a lot of people look up to you, I will fully break this down for you. Firstly, the premise that underpopulation will lead to collapse is entirely true and a serious threat to society in its current form. Without major reform almost all global societies require exponential growth. However, this take breaks down when we say that it is a larger threat than overpopulation. Planetary Boundaries Both overpopulation and underpopulation pose risks of collapse, but their consequences differ significantly. Underpopulation threatens the collapse of human society, while overpopulation endangers not only human society but also the Earth's life-supporting systems. In essence, the fate of all life on Earth hangs in the balance. We know this because planetary boundaries (This site is rich with good information on our planet) are breached. Meaning that if we continue to extract and destroy ecosystems at the same rate we are now, we will threaten and ultimately collapse the life giving systems of the planet. Think of it like maintaining a 50% calorie deficit for months. Eventually, your human system will fail and collapse. You are taking more than you are giving. And what drives the destruction of planetary systems? To make it simple but still relatively accurate, you can think of it as destruction = average consumption/person x human population. Global GDP is over 99% correlated with energy use and materials. I know. It seems hard to believe given how almost no one knows this. But it is true. I ran the numbers myself. You can download the datasets and use chatgpt to find the correlation coefficient if you want to check yourself. (Has to be global gdp and global energy use because all of the economic value captured by selling the iphone goes to Apple in America but so much of the supply chain is elsewhere. however, not all of the energy use in the supply chain is captured by America). The data I used: Global GDP - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/national-gdp-wb?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL Global Energy Consumption - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution Result - https://chatgpt.com/share/67622af1-0dc8-800c-a87e-c62af50dca8d Technological advancement and energy. If we refer back to the global energy consumption chart: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution We have increasingly created more green energy (which costs a lot of upfornt energy and materials to create) but that has not stopped fossil fuels to continue increasing exponentially. It has just slightly lowered the exponent. Green energy has been more like energy addition rather than energy replacement. And whats worse, is that the first things technological advancement (especially AI) is being applied to is: - How to drill more oil more efficiently. This means more emissions. - How to create more synthetic chemicals. - Enhancing military tech - Accelerating mining and deforestation and resource extraction - developing more addictive products - Creating more effective marketing And to fully debunk the claim that more technology will save us, we must look at jevons paradox. The Jevons paradox is an economic phenomenon that describes how technological progress can lead to increased resource consumption, rather than reduced consumption. Further Jevons paradox reading: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Julius-Mcgee/publication/285643149_Understanding_the_Jevons_paradox/links/5bdb72704585150b2b982762/Understanding-the-Jevons-paradox.pdf? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-024-05766-0? Example of Jevons paradox: Imagine you’re heating your home. Old heaters are inefficient, so they use a lot of energy to keep your house warm. This makes heating expensive, so people try to use it sparingly—maybe they only heat one room or turn it off at night. Now, let’s say someone invents a new heater that’s super efficient. It uses way less energy to do the same job. Sounds great, right? You’d think this would mean we’d use less energy overall because each heater uses less. But here’s the catch: because heating is now cheaper to run, people start using it more. Maybe they heat their whole house instead of just one room. Maybe they leave the heat on all night because it’s so affordable. And on a bigger scale, businesses might start heating bigger offices, or new factories pop up in cold places because heating them is no longer so costly. Even beyond that, cheaper energy costs make new markets and industries profitable. For example, a factory that wasn’t worth building before might now make financial sense because running it uses less energy per unit of production. So more factories are built, more energy is used, and the total energy demand goes up, even though each machine or heater is more efficient. This is Jevons Paradox: improving energy efficiency often leads to using more energy overall, not less, because efficiency makes energy cheaper and easier to use, driving more demand across the board. It’s a bit counterintuitive, but it helps explain why just improving technology isn’t enough to solve our energy and climate problems. Agriculture: When we dive into the economic sectors that drive the most destruction of the planet, we find agriculture as the number one suspect. It isn't the most destructive in only emissions, but it is a larger driver of every planetary boundary that is currently breached. Most fresh water is diverted for growing crops, most land system change is for farmland, many novel chemicals are biocides for agriculture, phosphorous and nitrogen flows are disrupted almost entirely due to nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers and extracting nutrients from the soils without regenerating it, and it is top 3 emissions of fossil fuels. Agriculture destroys thriving ecosystems with so much biodiversity in order to replace it with a single species of plant and then soak it in biocides to make sure no other organisms can exist there. Then it is littered with synthetic fertilizer to grow as much as possible as fast as possible. This converts nutrients into the soil which then is taken and shipped across the planet. This extracts from our soils and makes them desertified and lifeless. Animal agriculture then multiplies the degradation - https://www.josephpoore.com/Science 360 6392 987 - Accepted Manuscript.pdf Some points of reference: Wildlife populations have declined by over 70% in the last 50 years. - https://www.worldwildlife.org/press-releases/catastrophic-73-decline-in-the-average-size-of-global-wildlife-populations-in-just-50-years-reveals-a-system-in-peril Toxic PFAS chemicals are in all rainwater across the world beyond safe levels. And it never ever ever breaks down. - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 Only 6% of US forests have not been degraded by human activity - https://wilderness.org/articles/blog/what-makes-old-growth-forest-it-depends-more-just-age?utm_source=chatgpt.com# Humans and our livestock make up over 96% of all mammalian biomass on Earth - https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass By 2050, there could be more plastic than fish in the ocean by weight if current trends continue. https://www.weforum.org/press/2016/01/more-plastic-than-fish-in-the-ocean-by-2050-report-offers-blueprint-for-change/?utm_source=chatgpt.com Atmospheric CO₂ levels are at 420 ppm, higher than at any point in at least 800,000 years, with the last time it was this high corresponding to a world where sea levels were 20 meters (65 feet) higher. - https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ Conclusion: Human population and consumption are what are driving the destruction of our planet. Everything we rely upon whether food or water or shelter originates from our planet. If we continue to grow exponentially the whole planet and society collapses. If we stop growing exponentially, we may save our planet but risk societal collapse. The way through is by moving to a post-growth society. Where outputs/waste become inputs and we stop extracting. You cannot have exponential growth on a finite planet forever. And if you aren't convinced by me. Daniel Schmachtenberger agrees. I'm not totally sure which podcast it was but Daniel Schmachtenberger was asked a similar question. Paraphrasing: Host: What do you think about declining birth rates? Elon Musk seems to be very worried about it. Daniel: I don't think we should continue a society that demands exponential growth just to not collapse.

Love. Working to alleviate their suffering and transform the world so that there are not animals in factory farms and less people are getting murdered.

This is incredibly important and might just be the only way, but often times I find that these people require understandable coherent explanations as well. Explanations that I struggle to find since Love is beyond rationality or explanation. Still, I think it would be worth having a better answer than I currently do.

LOL something tells me that wouldn't work very well

This is true and I agree with it on human time scales. However, on larger time scales (like from the beginning of time) Ken Wilbers ideas on evolution have somewhat altered my view. I'd recommend (if you don't care to read his work) asking chat gpt about his views on the direction of evolution in his book sex, ecology, spirituality.

Have you read Ken Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality? If you have, how have you integrated his insights on the direction of evolution?

How does one communicate the depth of Love and how core it is to reality to those who are quick to reduce it to a survival mechanism happening in the brain? Similar to fight or flight response. I struggle with this. Does it require personal experience? I'm not talking about lost cause dogmatic materialism, but rather those who are open minded and hearted and are open to other explanations but they struggle to grasp the immensity and pervasiveness of Love.

You will have to understand league of legends to get this. If you do then this is prime self deception. This extends to all parts of your life including moral compass, dietary choices, occupation, consumer choices, societal stockholm syndrome, and so much more. So much of our lives are driven by motivated reasoning.

@toasty7718 Good share! Here is the written corrollary. https://civilizationemerging.com/dharma-inquiry-2/

Thank you for responding and engaging with me! You bring up some important nuances. Firstly I'd like to highlight that dismissing possibilities or perspectives as anothers self-deception does not make for constructive conversation or quality truth-seeking. I'd also like to say that I don't identify as or with the term "metacrisis community". To address your concerns about being too collectively underdeveloped and dependent on our macro structures. Society and other macro structures are not a linear output of the average of the humans that make it up. There are many relationships that inlfuence large structures and in a recursive way these structures influence everything else. You can work at changing culture through technology, economics, government, or by working directly within culture. Similarly, development can change non-linearly from many directions. We have to be honest and admit that we don't truly know if macro structures can change soon enough. We have to leave room for it's possibility. But ultimately, I agree with your sentiment that we are not in a great spot collectively. Quoting Ilya Priogine "When a system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence have the capacity to shift the entire system." In my view, it is irresponsible to give up on improving our macro structures only because it sometimes feels impossible. Amazing! We need people on board for this massive endeavor and everything it entails! I think researching physical limitations to energy could be a sobering reality check for this dream. Like peak oil and current material constraints of "green energy". It is conceivable that we solve nuclear fusion at scale and have a lot of energy. Although being a spacefaring civilization can seem beautiful, if we do not improve our fundamental collective orientation towards life including macro systems, then we are just spreading our virus across the universe.

If we take our coordination capabilities, economic system, governance model, and cultures as invariant then this is likely true. But, improving these macro structures is possible and worth the effort.

This is an incredibly hard question to answer in our current societies and contexts. It is also one of the most important we can ask. GDP and energy use have a 99.5% correlation globally. This means if you are adding to GDP you are increasing energy use. Energy use means more carbon in the atmosphere, more materials used, and generally more ecological destruction. So the question becomes "How can you make money without adding to GDP?" Or "How can you add to GDP in a way that doesn't contribute directly or indirectly to energy use/ecological destruction? Some answers could be by working with non-profits with missions to address real issues, working to lobby government to make systemic changes, or working in education and taking on the responsibility to educate people on our current disaster and how to make it through. Non-profits have their own traps. If you are truly successful in your non-profits mission then you are making yourself obsolete. You are incentivized to treat the problem rather than solve it. Ultimately the answer for you is different than the answer for me which is different than the answer for every other person reading this thread. We all have unique non-fungible perspectives, skills, and contributions to make. Read up on the metacrisis to profoundly understand how our interdependent systems wreack havoc. Once you get the gestalt of it you will much more skillfully be able to assess how you and your ambitions can best contribute to a better world. I'm sorry there is not a better answer. But unfortunately, a vast majority of occupations right now exacerbate all of our problems. This is tricky work. FYI - if anyone is interested in more deeply understanding our current contexts and how they can find work that aligns with their internal compass and benefit the world you can email me at shanehanlonwork@gmail.com. I do not charge for this. (I'm on thanksgiving vacation till Friday)

Ya, it is true. Leo often gets dragged through the mud for his aggressive blunt tone, but beyond that veneer is a depth of heart that drives a body of work that is bold, honest, and ringing with integrity.

@Da77en Yay!

@Da77en I am not talking about having more new experiences to let go of. In fact, I am not talking about letting go at all. I am talking about forever deepening the understanding, richness, Love, perception, interdependency, and complexity of the experiences that you do have and integrating that into the deepest well of your being.