What I Want to Want for the Future | Frankly 101
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 550 Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2025
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
In today's Frankly, Nate imagines that he's looking back from an unspecified point in the future (even from beyond his lifetime), and ponders the core things he would want during his time on Earth. Breaking from what our culture steers us to seek out, Nate examines what a bedrock of human experiences might include — the things in our lives that keep us grounded and experiencing life to the fullest extent.
While naming some of the things he values in his own life, from experiencing full spectrum love to having a purpose, Nate encourages the viewer to reflect on what they might "want to want" for their respective (or hypothetical future) lives, divorced from desires tied to an unsustainable period of massive energy consumption: When stripped away from cultural inertia and sunk cost, what are the things we really want out of a life well lived?
Nate also reflects on some important questions about what factors go into these desires. Which of the things we want in the full human experience are dependent on society or external factors? Which are about internal values, and are durable through time and changing material conditions? These are the questions we must begin with in order to have real conversations about the future.
(Recorded July 8th, 2025)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Greetings. Someone recently left a comment that stuck with me. It was pretty simple, |
| 0:08.0 | made of all the things you've learned, after all the things you've learned on this podcast, |
| 0:13.0 | what is it that you want? And I found myself chewing on this for a few days. And at first, |
| 0:20.0 | of course, I had dozens of answers, but then I |
| 0:22.3 | realize that there's a bigger question embedded inside that one, which is what do I want to want? |
| 0:30.6 | Not what I used to want when I was younger. Not what our culture tells us to want. Not what I |
| 0:37.1 | see ahead of me in the road that I want, |
| 0:40.0 | not what advertising or the ghost of dopamine past or status games lure me towards, but |
| 0:46.1 | what looking back from some future date, maybe even, probably even beyond my own lifetime, |
| 0:52.4 | what would I want to have an experience in a human life? |
| 0:57.1 | So today I'm going to share a dozen or so things that I want to want, not in some fantasy |
| 1:03.6 | world, but in a grounded human one. |
| 1:06.8 | And these aren't goals. |
| 1:08.7 | These are my own personal flavor of what I perceive to be the foundations of humanity, |
| 1:14.6 | whether 50 years from now or 500 from now. |
| 1:18.6 | But before I get to these, perhaps those of you watching and listening could pause this video now |
| 1:25.6 | and consider for yourself what are 10 or so things |
| 1:29.3 | that you want to want for the future. |
| 1:34.3 | Okay, here we go. |
| 1:47.0 | Number one, of course, is basic needs. |
| 1:50.0 | Food, water, shelter, heat, cooling as needed. |
| 1:55.0 | But we don't need all the heat and cooling that modern culture says. |
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