One Ring to Rule Them All | Frankly #45
Fans of this podcast will know that this Frankly is in reference to one of my favorite, timeless book series, “The Lord of the Rings”. Today, I’m using it to describe ‘the nine rings for mortal men’ - evolutionary behavioral tendencies that are common among humans but have become counterproductive within the context of our modern culture. These traits combine to drive the growth of the Superorganism - but they are pulled forward by the ‘one ring to rule them all’, which today is the positive feedbacks of power resulting from the synergy of agricultural surplus, fossil energy, money, and now Artificial Intelligence accelerating it all. Can this out of control power dynamic be broken and redirected away from the influence of this “One Ring”? How do we strategize and prepare for the future given this cultural compulsion to amass power as we approach the Great Simplification? Can ‘wisdom’ counter intelligence?
In case you missed it…
This past Wednesday, financial analyst Luke Gromen joined me to discuss how the availability of cheap energy has underpinned our current financial architecture and expectations - and what peak cheap oil and unsustainable debt levels imply for the not too distant future. A central part of this story is the rise of the US dollar as a global reserve currency tightly linked with the ability to purchase oil - subsequently leading to the US becoming a major exporter of debt. What are the implications for this dynamic in a future with depleting economically accessible oil?
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The ring of power is the ring of the left hemisphere (see Iain McGilchrist). It needs to be counter balanced by the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere thinks it is the master (hubris), while it only should be the emissary. The economy of production and consumption is not the economy that is in power. The power is in the extractive economy of financial assets that extracts wealth from the real economy. Majorie Kelly explains this brilliantly in her new book “Wealth Supremacy. How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises” (see: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/736352/wealth-supremacy-by-marjorie-kelly/). This book has been praised by Kate Raworth. Majorie Kelly gives a systemic view that can complement and improve the Great Simplification. I recommend reading her book.