The Seeds of New Cultural Mitochondria

Podcast Nate Hagens Theory 2025

The behaviors that the current economic superstructure rewards cannot form the basis of what emerges from its ashes…we require new ways of thinking and living that put us in closer relationship to one another and the planet around us. In a system structured to serve as a dissipative structure, how do we plant the seeds of something that is more resilient and cooperative?

Cultural Mitochondria

The current economic superorganism is nearing its end, and a new social organism will replace it.
Traits and skills can be the mitochondria of a future cultural system for humans.

Transcript: Nate Hagens 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 (Time 0:00:39)

Cultural Mitochondria

Internal human traits and skills could be the mitochondria of a future cultural system for humans.
These traits could be the metabolic engines of resilience and a new coherence in how we relate to each other and nature.

Transcript: Nate Hagens 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 (Time 0:00:59)

Self-Care

Prioritize self-care as a baseline requirement for resilience, including adequate sleep, nutrition, and rest.
Nate Hagens suggests self-care isn’t a luxury but a neurobiological strategy to become agents of change.

Transcript: Nate Hagens So first, which would be number zero, actually, is self-care. Because before we engage with the world, we have to take care of our physical and mental well-being of you, the human being, the person first. That means adequate sleep, nutrition, rest, exercise, all those things. And this is not self-indulgence. It is the baseline requirement for resilience in a fraying world. Regeneration, learning, creativity arise only when the parasympathetic nervous system is active. So self-care in these times is not a luxury. It’s actually a neurobiological strategy. And so if we do nothing else, (Time 0:03:47)

Grounding

Grounding is about being tethered to one’s body, breath, and center, especially amidst information overload and disorientation.
Nate Hagens says grounding provides an inner ballast of sanity, helping one stay calm and present.

Transcript: Nate Hagens So if that’s number zero, then number one is grounding. A grounded person is tethered, not just to place, but to their body, their breath, their emotional center. And in a storm of too much information and polarization and disorientation, groundedness is the ability to stay in that parasympathetic zone, calm, present, and able to hold space For others. You may have noticed from the start of this podcast a few years ago that I am more grounded. I’m certainly not fully grounded, but through a lot of help from others and a lot personal work on meditation and time in nature and trying to find balance, I’m more grounded than I used To be in any case. Because being grounded is an inner ballast of sanity in these crazy times. And ultimately, a grounded (Time 0:04:52)

Post-Tragic Mindset

Develop a post-tragic mindset by metabolizing awareness of the meta-crisis and choosing to actively participate.
Integrate grief into a daily rhythm, like composting emotional energy into productivity.

Transcript: Nate Hagens Next is post-tragic mindset. We’re perhaps the only species that can grieve in the abstract. I do it all the time. Ecosystems, cultures, future generations of ours and other species. We don’t just grieve in the moment, we can grieve in the abstract. But unresolved grief becomes unhealthy in our bodies. It’s not metabolized. It results in cynicism or nihilism. And I believe it was Mark Gaffney or Zach Stein, I can’t remember who, who coined the phrase post-tragic. And real briefly, pre-tragic is when you’re just going about your life, seeing the world and everything looks fine because you’re unaware of all the crap under the surface. Tragic is you’re becoming aware of the meta crisis and all the things. And post tragic is, uh, after metabolizing it, understanding what’s there and still rolling up your sleeves and playing a role. So the post tragic (Time 0:05:58)

Post-Tragic Mindset

A ‘pre-tragic’ mindset is being unaware, ‘tragic’ is realizing the meta crisis, and ‘post-tragic’ is metabolizing it and still acting.
The ‘post-tragic’ human integrates grief as a daily rhythm, composting emotional energy into a productive state.

Transcript: Nate Hagens And real briefly, pre-tragic is when you’re just going about your life, seeing the world and everything looks fine because you’re unaware of all the crap under the surface. Tragic is you’re becoming aware of the meta crisis and all the things. And post tragic is, uh, after metabolizing it, understanding what’s there and still rolling up your sleeves and playing a role. So the post tragic human integrates grief as some sort of a daily rhythm. Uh, and it’s like, um, composting emotional energy, uh, into a more productive state. And studies do show that grief rituals enhance individual and collective resilience and meaning making. We’re going to have to probably repeatedly process grief in the world ahead and attain a zone of acceptance. But that zone of acceptance then leads to potential action and engagement. So post-tragic as a category of the cultural mitochondria. Category number three is networked. Biological intelligence often emerges from decentralized nodes like mushrooms, mycelium, or beehives. And humans evolved similarly. We are social animals and our cognition is enhanced by being around others that we trust. (Time 0:06:36)

Finding the Others

Social capital and mutual aid, not wealth, will be key in simplification scenarios.
Cultivate relationships for resilience and meaning, emphasizing the importance of finding like-minded individuals.

Transcript: Nate Hagens So in a collapse or great simplification scenario, will not correlate too strongly with wealth, but with social capital and mutual aid. So finding the others is not just a feel good phrase, it’s actually distributed resilience for the times ahead. (Time 0:08:06)

Co-regulation Benefits

Co-regulation with others offers strength and purpose, and biologically impacts the nervous system.
Feeling seen, heard, accompanied, and respected fosters co-regulation, positively influencing heart rate variability and mirror neuron activity.

Transcript: Nate Hagens With others, you gain strength, vitality, purpose, and vagal co-regulation of your nervous system. Polyvagal theory, which I’m hoping to find an expert guest to talk about this because I’ve been discussing it with my craniosacral therapist, but polyvagal theory tells us that safety Is not a thought, it’s a feeling. And co-regulation in our bodies happens when we are seen, when we’re heard, and when we are accompanied and respected. It’s not just emotional, it’s biological. Heart rate variability, the vagal tone, a mirror neuron activity (Time 0:08:56)

Co-regulation

Co-regulation with others provides strength, vitality, purpose, and vagal co-regulation of the nervous system.
Cultures built on co-regulation, based on trust, outperform those based on competition because trust scales.

Systems Thinking

Systemic thinking involves observing feedbacks and delays.
It also means refraining from blaming individuals for issues that stem from the structure of a system.

Transcript: Nate Hagens So to think systemically is to notice feedbacks, delays, thresholds. It’s also at a wider, even a wider boundary sense, it’s to stop blaming individuals for structural problems. (Time 0:10:45)

Restraint as Sovereignty

Practice restraint by saying no to consumption or unethical cultural norms; this is an act of personal sovereignty.
Signal that you can’t be bought by resisting dopamine-driven supernormal stimuli.

Transcript: Nate Hagens Next is restraint. And I mean this in two ways. This trait of restraint sounds radical in a culture of more, which we have today. So saying no to consumption or convenience or to what could be described as a or even unethical norms of our current culture is an act of personal sovereignty. It’s rewilding the self into alignment with our biophysical reality. And it’s also (Time 0:11:31)

Status-Free Mentality

The current economic system is built on hierarchy and constant comparison, and the mitochondria of the future will require escaping that grip.
Divorcing your self-worth from the status ladder is important and recognize the futility of chasing social approval.

Status-Free Mindset

Escape the trap of seeking external validation and status, as the current economic system thrives on constant comparison and hierarchy.
Embrace intrinsic motivation and seek depth over superficial displays of status to avoid being devoured by the game.

Transcript: Nate Hagens Next is status free or status aware and status free because the current economic superorganism thrives on hierarchy, image, identity, and constant comparison of yourself to others. And escaping the grip of this is going to require divorcing your self-worth from the status ladder and recognizing the futility of chasing all these likes and social approval and stimulation. It is really the rat race of our times. A post superorganism human, the mitochondria that I’m hypothesizing, will seek depth as opposed to display. And remember that no one wins a game that’s designed to devour its players. So being intrinsically motivated instead of externally validated would be a trait in this sea of humanity surrounding Marvin Harris’s hierarchy. Number eight is recognizing feeling beyond knowing, but actually feeling how interconnected we are to the web of life of earth. Indigenous worldviews and deep ecology tell us what science now confirms, that life is relational. The human microbiome, the Gaia hypothesis, earth system science, all confirm this. (Time 0:12:37)

Interconnectedness

We don’t protect nature because it’s sacred, but because we are it, shifting from an ego-centric to an eco-centric worldview.
Feeling interconnected leads to compassion, long-term thinking, and ethical coherence.

Transcript: Nate Hagens You know, ultimately, I love nature, but we don’t protect nature because it’s sacred. We protect it because we are it. This is also something that’s shifted for me in the last few years, especially the last year. I’ve loved nature and the biosphere and animals and organisms my entire life. But I was looking at them from me. In the forest or I go for a hike or I go to my sit spot, I do truly feel like I’m meshing in, merging in with the ecosystem. I feel interconnected. I don’t just know that I’m interconnected. And I think this is an important trait that more and more people are starting to feel. Number nine, emergence. In chaos theory, sensitive dependence on the initial conditions of a situation means that small changes in those initial conditions can create vast outcomes in the future. This is the heart of the concept of emergence. And I think a lot more people, (Time 0:14:21)

Emergent Thinking

Adopt an aerial view, avoid binary success/failure goals, and alter conditions and relationships.
Thinking in an emergent way frees us from purity and perfectionism and invites curiosity and experimentation.

Transcript: Nate Hagens Number nine, emergence. In chaos theory, sensitive dependence on the initial conditions of a situation means that small changes in those initial conditions can create vast outcomes in the future. This is the heart of the concept of emergence. And I think a lot more people, um, need to take a aerial view and without trying to have binary success, failure goals, uh, and rather than aiming for final outcomes, we alter the conditions, Relationships, norms, incentives today now. And I think thinking in an emergent way and not being wed to certain outcomes frees us from purity and perfectionism and invites curiosity, iteration, and experimentation on the things That we do. The future is not planned. It’s seeded. And we are seeding it now with these conversations. So I just don’t think it’s a black and white, block and tackle, get this thing done. We are changing the initial conditions of the next period. And then the next period, people, maybe us, maybe you viewers (Time 0:15:11)

Hold Gravity and Retain Levity

Hold the gravity of collapse, but retain levity, music, play, and joy.
Integrate levity and play into your life because humor is a survival trait.

Transcript: Nate Hagens And this one’s optional, but powerful. Also something I’ve learned personally, so I’m throwing it in here. Number 10 is the ability to hold the gravity of collapse or the great simplification, if you prefer, and retain levity and music and play and joy. Because humor is a survival trait and it creates space, it builds resilience in groups, and it keeps (Time 0:16:48)

Retain Levity

Retain levity, music, play, and joy even when facing the gravity of collapse, as humor is a survival trait.
Integrating levity into your life builds resilience and keeps the heart supple.

Transcript: Nate Hagens Number 10 is the ability to hold the gravity of collapse or the great simplification, if you prefer, and retain levity and music and play and joy. Because humor is a survival trait and it creates space, it builds resilience in groups, and it keeps the heart supple and your body and mind young. I think integrating levity, play and joy into your life, despite the circumstances, or probably because of the circumstances, would be one of the characteristics, one of the traits Of the emergent mitochondria of the next culture. So again, I’m no expert on these things. I just think that this is not a bad quiver of arrows to aspire to, to play a different role in our culture as things become a little more chaotic and nonlinear and topsy-turvy. These traits aren’t boxes to check. They’re muscles to grow. And begin where you are. I’m on the (Time 0:16:53)

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