Life, Climate, Happiness, GDP
Climate tribes. Our research for our climate game. Young person fellowship (Nautilus). Jhanas
Theatre: My Death show
Theatre: Bigly Climate Game
Fellowship/Education: Nautilus project for homeschoolers, gap years and misfits
Life: Cormac McCarthy relationships
Pods: Hannah Ritchie on sustainability
Life: Jhanas, meditation (Nadia Asparouhova)
Climate, happiness, GDP charts
Our December Bigly Climate Game is at capacity, which is unexpectedly quick. Thanks to everyone who has signed up.
My next comedy show on death is on Jan 8th, do come. If you’ve ever wondered what song to have played at your funeral, this is the show for you! Ben has been to his own funeral five times, now, so who better to accompany you on a weirdly fun and interactive look at the greatest certainty in life: death*. (*Ben doesn’t die in the show).
Re: Bigly work. This form of developing work at an early stage with an audience has similarities with what stand-up comedians do. Also with people who “work in public” or trial out ideas in a public domain (like blogs!) or in business, prototyping and then trialing products and services.
Ideas often land very differently in the face of an actual audience. There are aphorisms which cover this idea, but the one on my mind is Mike Tyson suggesting
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”
In any case, this is some of the R&D that is going into our Bigly Climate Game and ideas we are toying with. One idea we are considering, but I don’t think we will fully enact is having a Discord server to give further life to the game and allow people to confer via private chat. Oscar has developed a server, but we still need to work through the complications an online server might bring.
Another area we are settling on is how many climate tribes people can join. I’ve written on this before, about seeing climate through a social anthropology lens.
We have settled on:
Techno-optimist. Techno-optimism is a worldview that is generally positive about the potential of technology to improve human society and address pressing global challenges.
Climate Skeptics reject the scientific consensus that human activities are causing climate change.
Centrists are people who hold political views that are neither particularly left-wing nor right-wing. They often believe that the best way to solve problems is to find a middle ground between the two extremes.
Lukewarmers believe that climate change is happening, but that the impacts will be relatively mild and manageable.
Degrowthers believe that the current economic system is unsustainable and that we need to move towards less resource-intensive way of life
But, I’m also also influenced by this essay by Nadia Asparouhova (see also Jhanas) who group tribes differently.
Regardless of the mapping, I think it’s an insightful way of looking at the world. The other component of the game is to think about what nations what to achieve. We then want to set the baseline for certain elements to score and here we are settling on carbon / temperature; life expectancy, health and GDP.
These are some of the underlying charts which provide food for thought themselves.
GDP has generally been up. (Below is per capita)
On happiness. Many countries are flat to up over the last few decades. (Nigeria is notable down though.)
Life expectancy has been up in many places over the decades. China notably potentially passing the U.S. here on some data sets (COVID also dipped us recently).
Climate is complex but absolute emissions in the U.S. have actually come down (arguably some of that has transferred to China). EU has been declining for a while.
and now we are looking at 2.7c in terms of warming rather than 4c.
So those are the baselines we are going to build the game around.
Cormac McCarthy is considered one of the great writers of his generation. His last years were spent around Sante Fe. It turns out - like so many of us - like all of us ? - he had complex relationships. Vanity Fair has come under heavy criticism for breaking this story in the way it has. My overall sense from afar is that this is complex.
One of those relationships were with a 16/17 year old (Augusta Britt) when McCarthy was in his 40s. In the essay she is quoted:
I loved him more than anything. He kept me safe, gave me protection. He was everything to me. Everything. He was my anchor. He was my world. He was my home, even when we didn’t live together anymore. Those things that happen to you, that young and that awful, you don’t really heal. You just patch yourself up the best you can and move on. And Cormac gave me protection and safety when I had none. I would be dead if I didn’t meet him. He was the most important person in my life, the person I love the most. He was my anchor. And now that he’s gone,” she pauses, “I’m shiftless.”
Cormac (and Augusta) knew that his letters and this relationship would out when he died, so in some ways this is getting ahead of what biographers will delve into.
There is obviously some separation between artists and art, writers and their characters - artists are not their art.
But it strikes me there is a universe of things we will never know about what happens with other people, in their minds and in their relationships. The inner world of humans is complex.
The Nautilus fellowship (which is in part Emergent Venture supported; Zelda) looks to be great for the right type of person.
Homeschoolers, passionate misfits, those who have a project they want to pursue on a gap year.
Nautilus is a three-month program for young and quirky individuals. It is designed to give you some childhood wonder back.
We select a small group of bright creatives from art, to science and entrepreneurship, that we receive in our San Francisco residence.
For three months, you live together with your peers, receive a monthly stipend and personalized guidance.
Take a break from the noise of your life to follow your curiosity and master your craft.
Apply here (by March 2025, under 22 yrs)
Nadia Asparouhova continues to do work on jhanas. If you are curious about mind states then this is worth investigating.
The jhanas are a series of eight altered meditative states that have attracted growing attention from media, researchers, and the public. They are part of a new wave of “advanced meditation,” as some call it, which promises access to a range of unusual subjective experiences – from the euphoric, to psychedelic, to voluntary loss of consciousness – all of which are unlocked solely through sustained concentration.
Many jhana practitioners report benefits – feeling more calm and joyful; detachment from cravings; improved outlook and relationships – that mirror what’s been reported about psychedelics, MDMA, and ketamine therapy. Unlike drug therapies, the jhanas are also free and legal to practice.
Thinking about sustainability makes me recall and re-read Hannah Ritchie. I think much of what she talks about in our podcast earlier this year is going to be important in thinking about sustainability.
“I think one of the best antidotes to too anxiety is to get involved in stuff. I think one of the worst feelings is feeling like you're helpless and there's nothing you can do and nothing works. I think actually getting actively involved in stuff that moves us forward can alleviate some of the anxiety.”
I think I would advise people like taking the initiative, whether it's a blog or a project or whatever you're interested in is like having some online presence where people can see what you're up to. And I think often like spontaneous opportunities come from that, like someone willing to fund you might stumble on your work and really like it and back you. So I think that would be a main piece of advice is to start putting yourself out there. It's also how you learn. I look back on my old writings and they make me cringe. They seem really bad, but I think that's just how you develop the skills. And I think it's really useful to learn in public rather than learning in private.
Thanks for reading.