Last week, we had a video of the superorganism in seven minutes, which was actually the

superorganism in like nine and a half minutes. But near the end of it, I alluded to what

comes after the economic superorganism in the human historical and future trajectory. And I use

the word mitochondria of the cells of what might come next.

The economic superorganism period of human history where cheap fossil energy coupled with

abundant global credit and globalization and collaboration is nearing its end in the not too distant future.

Some new social organism will replace it.

We don't know what.

Mitochondria are the power centers of biological cells, tiny organelles that convert nutrients

into usable energy, keeping the organism and life adaptive and alive.

In a similar way, the internal human traits and skills offered in this short video, and others, I just came up with this on the fly, could be the mitochondria of a future cultural system for humans.

Each small, distributed, largely invisible, but absolutely essential.

They could be the metabolic engines of resilience, regeneration, and a new coherence of how we relate

to each other and to the natural world.

I want to explore that a little bit under the cultural materialism framework of Marvin

Harris, who looked at lots of historical cultures

and found that they had three things in common.

There was a pyramid.

There was the superstructure, which was our ideas and our beliefs and our values

on top of the social structure, he called the structure,

which was our economic system, our laws,

our regulations, our institutions, and all that was on a foundation of infrastructure,

...