Response to Nate Hagens and Luke Kemp Interview

I eagerly watched the latest episode of Nate Hagens’ The Great Simplification podcast with author Luke Kemp, and as usual, I had a lot of thoughts during and after. This time, I decided to try putting them into a coherent piece and publishing it.

For starters, I loved the new way of defining total societal collapse. Thinking of it as the breakdown of multiple power structures makes it easier to visualize what collapse might look and feel like. It also offers a yardstick we can use to measure #OurPredicament today. This framing connected several threads from my previous research. 

One clear example of a hierarchical power structure is the patriarchy, along with the gender roles and sexual mores that sustain it. Over the past few generations, this dominance hierarchy has been steadily eroded in most industrialized countries. Gender equality, voting rights, and sexual progressivism can all be viewed through the lens of a declining power structure. Is this erosion itself a seed of collapse? I don’t think the push for equality is a cause; rather, it is a symptom of a late-stage empire.

One historian I’m certain Luke has encountered, though he didn’t come up in the interview, is Sir John Glubb. Many Doomers will already know his work. Glubb was a British military officer stationed in the Middle East after WWI, and after retiring he devoted his life to studying and writing about the region’s civilizations. Over time, he began to notice recurring patterns in their trajectories, which he outlined in his short book The Fate of Empires. There he described what he called the six Imperial Stages.

The stages, in order, are Breakout, Conquest, Commerce, Wealth, Intellect, and Decadence. The pattern is easy to map onto American history. In the Breakout phase, a people come to govern themselves—American Independence. In the Conquest phase, they expand their territory, “conquering the West.” In the stage of Commerce, the empire exploits its territory for gain (railroads, telegraphs, trade), leading to immense societal wealth. That wealth fuels a massive expansion of public education, at least in the imperial core. Finally, as a wealthy and educated populace turns inward, seeking self-fulfillment, society enters Decadence. The parallels with America are obvious.

As empires pass through these stages, Glubb argues, changes within the population contribute to their dissolution. Returning to the theme of patriarchal hierarchy: in the empires Glubb studied, as wealth and education expanded, women’s rights began to evolve and grow. Women assumed new roles in domestic life and government. Sexual norms also shifted, and the newly educated increasingly pursued self-actualization. Expressions of what we now call queer identities became more visible and accepted.

Returning to the Kemp interview, it made me wonder: authoritarians often push society—or respond to its pressures—toward a return to more traditional gender roles and sexual norms. Strongmen frame this as essential to halting collapse. I’ve often remarked that conservatives may correctly identify societal problems but misdiagnose their causes, leading to failed solutions. If the erosion of hierarchical power structures is one way to measure collapse, then the weakening of the patriarchy is certainly a marker. To be clear, I’m not moralizing here; rather, I’m suggesting that viewing modern events through the rise-and-fall lens of civilizations can help us make sense of today’s dynamics.

Another aspect of the interview worth noting is how small a role the environment seems to play in Goliath’s Curse. Luke mentions resources several times, but he lumps together population, hoardable wealth, and the natural environment. It’s worth highlighting the direct role environmental destruction has played in the collapse of civilizations worldwide. A couple good books on the subject would be John Perlin’s A Forest Journey and The Burning Earth by Sunil Amrith.

Time and again, the exploitation of natural resources drives empires to expand, but ultimately constrains their growth and maintenance. The correlations are so stark and numerous that I was disappointed not to hear them mentioned explicitly as causes of Goliath’s demise. Once again, it’s a phenomenon we can witness in real time in our own lives.

Finally, I want to reflect on the discussion of moral responsibility for those with what I call “eyes to see.” Others say “climate aware” or “collapse aware.” This section struck me personally, touching on a struggle I face daily. My career is at one of the giant tech companies, and my work directly contributes to the growth of the internet, AI, and what I think of as The Machine.

This may come as a surprise, but most of the people I interact with in the tech world—both at my company and among peers—agree that AI is harmful to humans and the planet. Yet we rationalize and justify our ongoing contributions. Our defenses could be lifted straight from Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil. We insist that we don’t want these harms, describe ourselves as helpless cogs in a machine, and soothe ourselves with the belief that even if we took a moral stand, nothing would change. I’ve repeated variations of these excuses myself many times.

I want to do something meaningful—something that doesn’t directly contribute to the ongoing enshitification of the planet—while still providing for my family. That’s partly why I’m writing this piece. If I can figure out how to sustain myself through work like this, maybe I can free both myself and my soul. In the end, I agree with Kemp: there is no moral way to contribute to companies intent on dominating and destroying the world. But I disagree that my support defines the totality of my moral standing. As he noted, it is luck—or perhaps fate—that placed each of us in our particular time and place. I know my life’s journey and how I came to be here. Now I know better, and so I’m trying to do better. Thanks for reading