The Lament of the Bigfoot | Frankly 74
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 11 October 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
(Recorded October 7, 2024)
In a polarized and fractured society, those who draw attention to the ecological devastation wrought by human activities, and those who champion the importance of protecting non-human life, increasingly face the label of being 'anti-human.' In this Frankly, Nate reads a poem he wrote 20 years ago this month "The Lament of the Bigfoot" which highlights the disproportionate role humans have on the ecosystems they inhabit and reflects on how his attitudes have both changed and stayed the same 20 years on.
Yes, the scale of the human enterprise has resulted in unprecedented harm to Earth's biosphere. But separate from - and indeed as a result of - our past decisions, it is our actions today that will steer the future. Imagine how different that future might look if humanity harnessed its ingenuity and innovation to become active contributors, embedded within the web of life.
Is it possible to overcome 'the agenda of the gene'? And if so: how? And when? In what ways could humans actively enhance ecosystems by creating, rather than appropriating, biological productivity? And how might we reframe cultural and economic incentives to accelerate the shift towards an ecological civilization? Big open questions.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, friends around the world. |
| 0:02.0 | We live in an increasingly polarized and fractured society. |
| 0:09.0 | There are lots of dualities and schisms. |
| 0:12.0 | There's the left and the right and the global north and the global south. |
| 0:16.0 | And the climate change or climate change is not real or not human caused. There's the mechanistic |
| 0:23.0 | and the animistic. There's the technology and human cleverness versus ecology and non-renewable |
| 0:34.5 | resources. There's also natalist and anti-natalist. And increasingly, |
| 0:42.2 | there are people that are anti-human or perceived to be anti-human. And there are people that are |
| 0:50.0 | unabashedly pro-human. And what I'm going to do is read a poem that I wrote 20 years ago this |
| 0:58.2 | month right between when I left Wall Street and I started my PhD at the University of Vermont. |
| 1:04.5 | I had been traveling for several months with my golden retriever in a backpack full of |
| 1:09.5 | ecology, Herman Daly evolutionary |
| 1:12.0 | biology books and deeply reflecting about the state of the world. |
| 1:17.6 | So I was 38. |
| 1:20.7 | I think much the same way today, but today I am more informed by the broader picture and by the constraints and momentum |
| 1:29.6 | and metabolism of our system. |
| 1:31.3 | So I want to use this poem as a launch off for what I think and feel today and why that's |
| 1:39.2 | relevant to our global polarization and upcoming challenges. |
| 1:43.9 | Okay. This poem was written in September 2004 on the Elk River Trail in Vancouver Island, |
| 1:50.3 | British Columbia. It's called the Lament of the Bigfoot. |
| 1:55.2 | Up, up in the first growth furs, with ravens and jays, I make nest. In winter, seldom touch the ground when |
| 2:05.4 | white canopy is my friend. Alone with my thoughts, the silence, until a distant squeal disrupts, |
... |
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