The Global Superorganism

"In a world grappling with converging crises, we often look outward – for new tech, new markets, new distractions. But the deeper issue lies within: our relationship with energy, nature, and each other. What if we step back far enough to see human civilization itself as an organism that is growing without a plan?" ~ Nate Hagens

This May 26, 2025, "Frankly" YouTube video is a 7-minute TED talk-like presentation where Nate Hagens outlines "how humanity is part of a global economic superorganism, driven by abundant energy and the emergent properties of billions of humans working towards the same goal."

"Rather than focusing on surface-level solutions, Nate invites us to confront the underlying dynamics of consumption and profit. It’s a perspective that defies soundbite culture — requiring not a slogan, but a deeper reckoning with how the world actually works. These are not quick-fix questions, but the kinds that demand slow thinking in a world hooked on speed. What if infinite growth on a finite planet isn't just unrealistic – but the root of our unfolding crisis? In a system designed for more, how do we begin to value enough? And at this civilizational crossroads, what will you choose to nurture: power, or life? "

"The Great Simplification (TGS) with Nate Hagens is a podcast that explores the systems science underpinning the human predicament. Conversation topics will span human behavior, monetary/economic systems, energy, ecology, geopolitics and the environment.  The goal of the show is to inform more humans about the path ahead and inspire people to play a role in our collective future. Guests will be from a wide range of scientists, leaders, activists, thinkers, and doers."

• Visit The Great Simplification website for more information.

• Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch their Animated Movie:    • The Great Simplification | Film on Energy

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Nick Hedland has this thoughtful commentary about the Superorganism video by Nate Hagens:

"So much of this metacrisis is driven by an underlying meaning crisis (as John Vervake calls it), and there are some strong causal links between the disenchanted, materialist worldview of late modernity and hyperconsumerist patterns that characterize the superorganism. That is, while Hagens rightly underscores the exterior material dynamics and substrate of natural capital and fossil fuels that power the superorganism, we ought to be inquiring deeply into the interior cultural, psychological, and spiritual dynamics that fuel the superorganism.

The system of perverse incentives that constitutes the superorganism is arguably somewhat less random or emergent than Hagens implies: the incentive structures of social systems are artifacts of cultural worldviews (in a transcendental relation of unilateral dependence), and thus the process of cultural and worldview transformation can be understood to be a crucial leverage point for addressing the metacrisis on the level of root causes.

Zooming in on these cultural worldview dynamics, the key problem fields and tensions have to do with working out some semblance of an adequate transfiguration and synthesis between such dialectics as faith and reason, science and religion, epistemic dogmatism and democracy, materialism and meaning, naturalism and spirituality, etc.

So, in short, the very inquiries of the upcoming IRAS conference seem to be exceedingly important - if sometimes underemphasized by the predominantly exterior gaze of systems analysis - vis-à-vis the notion of the superorganism and the metacrisis."