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Reality Blind: Integrating the Systems Science Underpinning Our Collective Futures Vol. 1
A story about Earth’s most successful modern creature – the human being. But Earth’s most successful modern creature is now in a predicament; a predicament brought about by a compelling combination of vital human traits and our (relatively) recent discovery of vast stores of fossil flammable fuel. Human’s recent discovery of flammable rock and liquid in the form of oil, coal, and natural gas has temporarily turbocharged humanity’s energy use and biomass. This “Carbon Pulse” is a brief period of geologic time in which all the carbon fuel stored up over hundreds of millions of years is expended in just a few centuries. The resulting impacts on wealth, economies, and ecologies are Earth shattering. Humans are reaching the end of the carbon pulse. Now we face a time of change that requires a quality of systems thinking and future planning never before required of our species.
You read this from a tiny spot in our enormous galaxy where energy, matter and deep time have converged to create something wholly greater than energy, matter, and time; as life—once simply created—has invested billions of years in continually re-inventing itself, attaining qualities we are only beginning to understand and appreciate. And wonder of wonders, we are related to all of it and all of them, brothers, sisters and cousins; no known life in the universe is outside of this close family. We bring to this creation a self-regarding consciousness—learning, slowly, to understand ourselves and our family, while the more primitive, automatic and powerful parts of our same minds unintentionally collaborate in its destruction.
We are starting to recognize that we are individually and collectively held back by unexamined assumptions and illogical “feelings” about how things seem to be, but the reality is we have huge individual and cultural “blind spots.” Ergo, we are ‘reality blind’. Yet this same knowledge of “who we are” gives us at least some power over it. While the path to a profoundly wonderful human future is difficult, it is not yet foreclosed. This will be the century which tests the human potential for mediocrity against the human potential for greatness.
There are plenty of science books out there describing the current plight of humanity – what makes this one different is: Breadth: This is a wide-ranging interdisciplinary synthesis of the human predicament. We cover everything from deep time to cognitive biases to the fossil carbon monkey trap and integrate dozens of subjects that have bearing on the issues humans will face this century. Many core insights are not be about certain topics but derive from the integration of certain topics. A longer-term view: Most analysts advocate policies to adopt in the next few years or perhaps decades, with no real longer-term context. We look deep into the coming decades (and beyond)—attempting to wend a path towards the larger prize—a long-view aspiration for human existence (which optimally is long term maximization of human achievement, experience and happiness, minimization of suffering, and co-existence with other complex life in a healthy environment). A neutral starting point: We have friends and colleagues from all walks of life.
The story in the pages that follow applies to all of us: the problems we face are not really anyone’s fault, yet we are all complicit in and now responsible for rectifying them. We hope to build bridges across typical demographic labels and spur conversations on what a sapient species might aspire to beyond our current cultural directives. In the following pages, we will give short overviews of scientific themes central to our thesis that humans are in a predicament, and how we might alter the default path. It is hoped that our work will give you a greater grasp of the complex challenges facing humanity this century, as well as inspiration on how to live meaningful, effective and enjoyable lives.
You read this from a tiny spot in our enormous galaxy where energy, matter and deep time have converged to create something wholly greater than energy, matter, and time; as life—once simply created—has invested billions of years in continually re-inventing itself, attaining qualities we are only beginning to understand and appreciate. And wonder of wonders, we are related to all of it and all of them, brothers, sisters and cousins; no known life in the universe is outside of this close family. We bring to this creation a self-regarding consciousness—learning, slowly, to understand ourselves and our family, while the more primitive, automatic and powerful parts of our same minds unintentionally collaborate in its destruction.
We are starting to recognize that we are individually and collectively held back by unexamined assumptions and illogical “feelings” about how things seem to be, but the reality is we have huge individual and cultural “blind spots.” Ergo, we are ‘reality blind’. Yet this same knowledge of “who we are” gives us at least some power over it. While the path to a profoundly wonderful human future is difficult, it is not yet foreclosed. This will be the century which tests the human potential for mediocrity against the human potential for greatness.
There are plenty of science books out there describing the current plight of humanity – what makes this one different is: Breadth: This is a wide-ranging interdisciplinary synthesis of the human predicament. We cover everything from deep time to cognitive biases to the fossil carbon monkey trap and integrate dozens of subjects that have bearing on the issues humans will face this century. Many core insights are not be about certain topics but derive from the integration of certain topics. A longer-term view: Most analysts advocate policies to adopt in the next few years or perhaps decades, with no real longer-term context. We look deep into the coming decades (and beyond)—attempting to wend a path towards the larger prize—a long-view aspiration for human existence (which optimally is long term maximization of human achievement, experience and happiness, minimization of suffering, and co-existence with other complex life in a healthy environment). A neutral starting point: We have friends and colleagues from all walks of life.
The story in the pages that follow applies to all of us: the problems we face are not really anyone’s fault, yet we are all complicit in and now responsible for rectifying them. We hope to build bridges across typical demographic labels and spur conversations on what a sapient species might aspire to beyond our current cultural directives. In the following pages, we will give short overviews of scientific themes central to our thesis that humans are in a predicament, and how we might alter the default path. It is hoped that our work will give you a greater grasp of the complex challenges facing humanity this century, as well as inspiration on how to live meaningful, effective and enjoyable lives.
- GenresNonfiction
355 pages, Paperback
Published June 23, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 1, 2023
What resonated?
Resources are finite, and limited. This intuitively makes sense; there are only a finite amount of economically recoverable reserves of oil, gold, and other materials. The authors paint a compelling case for conversation of these materials. "The Carbon Pulse" is one of many central theses which describes humankind's current practice, taking millions and millions of years' worth of naturally sequestered carbon and rapidly re-emitting it.
The fact that resources are limited, and remaining reserves are of diminishing quality will increase energy and production costs in mining, manufacturing, cost of living. This is intuitively true when you think about it. If in the 1950s I needed to mine 20 tonnes of ore to get 1 tonne of copper, but now I need to mine 100 tonnes to get that same 1 tonne, copper is going to be more expensive (despite improvements in technology and efficiency).
The authors have a persuasive and convincing argument that infinite growth is not sustainable - but like J. Storrs Hall says, a growing society enables cooperation but in a no-growth society, "pressures towards morality and cooperation vanish."
The sections on supply chains and in particular how car- and truck-dependent we are in North America resonated big time. Large trucking will be hard to decarbonize and we have not designed our cities for anything *but* cars and trucks, ripping out lots of railroad over the past century.
What didn't resonate?
The structure of the book is short (think 2-4 page) chapters, where the human authors give an very brief overview on a topic, then an alien named TaaL - "Through an alien Lens" - responds. This gimmick purports to be a neutral "alien" perspective on humanity and was cute in the first few chapters but quickly got old. TaaL is often used as a rhetorical tool to "say the quiet part out loud", advocating ideas for radical degrowth and societal change that supposedly-sapient aliens have mastered. Despite all of democracy's flaws I don't see a neat way to, as TaaL suggests, "put the smart people in charge".
Fully the first third of the book is a deep dive into human evolution, with a focus on our faults and logical fallacies. The authors could have condensed this section into a neat 20 pages (dropping the snarky alien TaaL) to hit the points that were most relevant to their main section "Energy and the Economy."
The undertones - and hell, overtones - of the book were literally dehumanizing: "depriving a person or group of positive human qualities." Perhaps it's just my human post-hoc rationalization (see what I did there?) but I'm not sure the authors had a single positive thing to say about humanity. The authors may argue that my human optimism bias was not satiated (and that'd be true). But I don't think attacking your entire audience (the human race) is the best way to catalyze change.
I looked up "signs of emotional abuse in a relationship" while reading this book, here's a partial list that resonated:
- Your wants and needs feel invalidated and neglected
- You feel bad about yourself when you are with the abuser
- You feel guilty for things that are not your fault
- You are criticized and humiliated
- You are being gaslighted
No clear solutions were proposed. It is difficult to read a book that is so profoundly and comprehensively negative, especially when the authors spend the first third of the book beating you up for being a fallacious, bias-prone human - I think this was a form of advanced gaslighting to pre-empt disagreement and debate on their other arguments. As a reader I need a bit of a glimmer of hope or a lifeline somewhere in a challenging read. But, not only was my own humanity castigated, so was society, civilization, economic systems, governments, the banking system, energy-rich lifestyles, energy sources...
The solutions that were dimly floated were dark, dire, and politically unappealing (or impossible). The authors did not come right out and say "we need these" (often they deferred to the voice of the snarky alien TaaL to hint at them) but dramatic population control and a future of energy scarcity seemed like two entirely palatable solutions.
Finally, as a self-admitted nuke bro, I can't forgive the authors' treatment of nuclear energy. In a book all about how energy is about to become scarce and carbon emissions are bad, the authors are quick to succumb to their own confirmation biases about nuclear. Consider: for 300 pages, the authors dance around the idea of deep degrowth and incurring a lot of suffering to reduce current levels of consumption, then say nuclear is not feasible due to the spooky scary waste (is it as bad as the CO2 emitted by fossil energy?!). Or, spending a couple mini-chapters talking about how fossil energy costs will soar and how money and debt are just fake human constructs, but we can't do nuclear because it's "too expensive".
Here are the author's own positive qualities of energy systems and projects (p296), plus my two bits on nuclear. Is it just me, or are the authors being hypocritical by listing these criteria of positive energy systems, then suggesting nuclear doesn't meet the criteria?
- Energy affordability / positive EROEI (✅nuclear by a mile)
- Quality/consistent energy (✅nuclear)
- Energy investment threshold - how much of society's limited remaining fossil reserves would be diverted to build it? (not much on a per-unit-of-energy basis, so ✅nuclear)
- Affordability (debatable for sure, but non-North American countries are still building nuclear for cheap, so ✅nuclear)
- Mature technology(✅nuclear)
- Scalability (✅nuclear)
- Durability and replicability (✅nuclear)
- How much time will it take (the authors propose few implementable solutions in the entire book, but I'd argue nuclear plays a role in decarbonization and sustainability, so ✅nuclear)
- Political acceptability (this is completely dependent on where you live, but generally ✅nuclear)
- Aggregate probability (that could it happen? Sure, look at the countries pledging this week to triple nuclear by 2050; ✅nuclear)
Anyway, TaaL finishes off the section on nuclear by once again saying the quiet part out loud - that we can't risk growing nuclear because it will sustain the continued growth of the human amoeba. Because humans are bad.
Conclusion
I'm glad I read this book. It's a good balance to some of the eco-modernist and techno-futurist stuff I've read in the last few years. The authors synthesize a huge amount of knowledge and ideas into a fairly tight package, though it could have been tighter. Much of the discussion around resource limitations was insightful.
I generally love idea books and this could have been 5 stars, but so much effort was put into attacking the reader (as a member of the human race) that it was quite off-putting to read. I've read many books that were very challenging but managed to get hard new ideas across, but none that were so emotionally abusive or vitriolic (love this definition: filled with bitter criticism). So, 5 stars for ideas, 1 star for readability and enjoyment.
(readers who enjoyed this book may be quick to pounce on this review and call me out for my own biases... which I totally admit that I have. The point is that front-loading the reader with info on human biases and fallacies is an uncomfortable tactic that takes away from what could be more interesting discussions of ideas in the energy & economics chapters)
Resources are finite, and limited. This intuitively makes sense; there are only a finite amount of economically recoverable reserves of oil, gold, and other materials. The authors paint a compelling case for conversation of these materials. "The Carbon Pulse" is one of many central theses which describes humankind's current practice, taking millions and millions of years' worth of naturally sequestered carbon and rapidly re-emitting it.
The fact that resources are limited, and remaining reserves are of diminishing quality will increase energy and production costs in mining, manufacturing, cost of living. This is intuitively true when you think about it. If in the 1950s I needed to mine 20 tonnes of ore to get 1 tonne of copper, but now I need to mine 100 tonnes to get that same 1 tonne, copper is going to be more expensive (despite improvements in technology and efficiency).
The authors have a persuasive and convincing argument that infinite growth is not sustainable - but like J. Storrs Hall says, a growing society enables cooperation but in a no-growth society, "pressures towards morality and cooperation vanish."
The sections on supply chains and in particular how car- and truck-dependent we are in North America resonated big time. Large trucking will be hard to decarbonize and we have not designed our cities for anything *but* cars and trucks, ripping out lots of railroad over the past century.
What didn't resonate?
The structure of the book is short (think 2-4 page) chapters, where the human authors give an very brief overview on a topic, then an alien named TaaL - "Through an alien Lens" - responds. This gimmick purports to be a neutral "alien" perspective on humanity and was cute in the first few chapters but quickly got old. TaaL is often used as a rhetorical tool to "say the quiet part out loud", advocating ideas for radical degrowth and societal change that supposedly-sapient aliens have mastered. Despite all of democracy's flaws I don't see a neat way to, as TaaL suggests, "put the smart people in charge".
Fully the first third of the book is a deep dive into human evolution, with a focus on our faults and logical fallacies. The authors could have condensed this section into a neat 20 pages (dropping the snarky alien TaaL) to hit the points that were most relevant to their main section "Energy and the Economy."
The undertones - and hell, overtones - of the book were literally dehumanizing: "depriving a person or group of positive human qualities." Perhaps it's just my human post-hoc rationalization (see what I did there?) but I'm not sure the authors had a single positive thing to say about humanity. The authors may argue that my human optimism bias was not satiated (and that'd be true). But I don't think attacking your entire audience (the human race) is the best way to catalyze change.
I looked up "signs of emotional abuse in a relationship" while reading this book, here's a partial list that resonated:
- Your wants and needs feel invalidated and neglected
- You feel bad about yourself when you are with the abuser
- You feel guilty for things that are not your fault
- You are criticized and humiliated
- You are being gaslighted
No clear solutions were proposed. It is difficult to read a book that is so profoundly and comprehensively negative, especially when the authors spend the first third of the book beating you up for being a fallacious, bias-prone human - I think this was a form of advanced gaslighting to pre-empt disagreement and debate on their other arguments. As a reader I need a bit of a glimmer of hope or a lifeline somewhere in a challenging read. But, not only was my own humanity castigated, so was society, civilization, economic systems, governments, the banking system, energy-rich lifestyles, energy sources...
The solutions that were dimly floated were dark, dire, and politically unappealing (or impossible). The authors did not come right out and say "we need these" (often they deferred to the voice of the snarky alien TaaL to hint at them) but dramatic population control and a future of energy scarcity seemed like two entirely palatable solutions.
Finally, as a self-admitted nuke bro, I can't forgive the authors' treatment of nuclear energy. In a book all about how energy is about to become scarce and carbon emissions are bad, the authors are quick to succumb to their own confirmation biases about nuclear. Consider: for 300 pages, the authors dance around the idea of deep degrowth and incurring a lot of suffering to reduce current levels of consumption, then say nuclear is not feasible due to the spooky scary waste (is it as bad as the CO2 emitted by fossil energy?!). Or, spending a couple mini-chapters talking about how fossil energy costs will soar and how money and debt are just fake human constructs, but we can't do nuclear because it's "too expensive".
Here are the author's own positive qualities of energy systems and projects (p296), plus my two bits on nuclear. Is it just me, or are the authors being hypocritical by listing these criteria of positive energy systems, then suggesting nuclear doesn't meet the criteria?
- Energy affordability / positive EROEI (✅nuclear by a mile)
- Quality/consistent energy (✅nuclear)
- Energy investment threshold - how much of society's limited remaining fossil reserves would be diverted to build it? (not much on a per-unit-of-energy basis, so ✅nuclear)
- Affordability (debatable for sure, but non-North American countries are still building nuclear for cheap, so ✅nuclear)
- Mature technology(✅nuclear)
- Scalability (✅nuclear)
- Durability and replicability (✅nuclear)
- How much time will it take (the authors propose few implementable solutions in the entire book, but I'd argue nuclear plays a role in decarbonization and sustainability, so ✅nuclear)
- Political acceptability (this is completely dependent on where you live, but generally ✅nuclear)
- Aggregate probability (that could it happen? Sure, look at the countries pledging this week to triple nuclear by 2050; ✅nuclear)
Anyway, TaaL finishes off the section on nuclear by once again saying the quiet part out loud - that we can't risk growing nuclear because it will sustain the continued growth of the human amoeba. Because humans are bad.
Conclusion
I'm glad I read this book. It's a good balance to some of the eco-modernist and techno-futurist stuff I've read in the last few years. The authors synthesize a huge amount of knowledge and ideas into a fairly tight package, though it could have been tighter. Much of the discussion around resource limitations was insightful.
I generally love idea books and this could have been 5 stars, but so much effort was put into attacking the reader (as a member of the human race) that it was quite off-putting to read. I've read many books that were very challenging but managed to get hard new ideas across, but none that were so emotionally abusive or vitriolic (love this definition: filled with bitter criticism). So, 5 stars for ideas, 1 star for readability and enjoyment.
(readers who enjoyed this book may be quick to pounce on this review and call me out for my own biases... which I totally admit that I have. The point is that front-loading the reader with info on human biases and fallacies is an uncomfortable tactic that takes away from what could be more interesting discussions of ideas in the energy & economics chapters)
October 18, 2023
I overall like the book, it's very thought-provoking but I also found it repetitive which is why I give it 4 instead of 5 stars.
February 7, 2026
Continuing my goal to read every depressing science book written, I picked this tome up recently. Nate Hagens is the host of my favorite podcast, and I wanted to read his book to get a collective overview of his thought.
Reality Blind was often excellent. Not many books can pull from several disciplines—from economics to psychology to ecology and physics— and integrate them into a coherent whole about the human predicament. Its conclusions are inordinately bleak, and there are no real answers, so if you’d prefer “ignorance is bliss” I certainly understand. But if you’re curious what humanity is up against, this book and Hagen’s podcast are essential.
Reality Blind was often excellent. Not many books can pull from several disciplines—from economics to psychology to ecology and physics— and integrate them into a coherent whole about the human predicament. Its conclusions are inordinately bleak, and there are no real answers, so if you’d prefer “ignorance is bliss” I certainly understand. But if you’re curious what humanity is up against, this book and Hagen’s podcast are essential.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews