Tag Archives: mental-health

272. How to Think About the Future (Part 1): Changing the Future Starts with How You Think

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Nate Hagens

In this week’s Frankly, I open a new series called How to Think About the Future. I begin with some comments I’ve heard repeatedly on this platform: why cover nuclear, plastics, renewables, or climate when something else is the real issue? I observe that these questions come from people who have already settled on a single storyline about what’s coming, and are filtering everything else through it. Our actual reality is much more complex and unknowable, and even the most well-informed perspectives may only be able to capture pieces of the bigger picture. I emphasize that even my own base scenario – that the global economy is likely to hit a wall in the relatively-near future – should be held with humility.

I introduce the idea of “scenario thinking” as a practical strategy to reflect on and prepare for several versions of the future, keeping one engaged and grounded in what matters. I also name why this line of thinking is hard in practice – 1. our nervous systems want resolution, 2. our careers and identities are attached to particular futures, and 3. cultural incentives reward confident stories over honest uncertainty. The episode closes by introducing shortfall risk, which is the danger that something essential, like topsoil, social trust, grid stability, or the nuclear taboo drops below a threshold from which it cannot easily recover. This concept will act as connective tissue across the rest of the series, which is an attempt to expand perception instead of picking the right future, and to identify what is coupled, what is irreversible, and what kinds of responses stay robust across many possible worlds.

Where in your life have you quietly settled on a single story about the future? Which of the essentials you rely on would be hardest to rebuild if they fell below a threshold? And how might the decisions you make this week change if you held more than one plausible future in mind at the same time?

230. Why Isolation Now Feels Universal

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A striking feature of life today is that almost everyone, at some point, feels isolated.

This is no longer confined to older people, those living alone, or those on low incomes.  It affects working adults, parents, young people, and even those who appear busy and socially connected.  The sense of isolation has become widespread because the structure of modern society itself is producing it.

This is not a coincidence.  It is closely linked to the long transition from an expanding economy to a contracting one. But not yet recognised as such.

Evidence from bodies such as the World Health Organisation shows that loneliness and social isolation are now recognised as global public health issues.  In the UK, government research has repeatedly found that loneliness affects a large proportion of the population and is associated with poorer health, lower well-being, and weaker social trust.  These findings are important because they point away from individual failure and towards systemic causes.

In an expanding industrial economy, isolation was partly masked.  Rising incomes, plentiful jobs, expanding transport networks and consumer activity created constant movement and interaction.  People travelled frequently, worked in large organisations, and met others through employment, commuting, shopping and leisure.  Even when relationships were shallow, there was a sense of being embedded in a busy social world.

As growth stalls and then reverses, those structures begin to fall away.

Work becomes insecure or fragmented.  Many people leave large workplaces and move into home-based, part-time or informal work.  Discretionary travel declines because it is no longer affordable.  High streets thin out.  Public transport services are reduced.  Local amenities close or consolidate elsewhere.  The result is fewer routine encounters with other people.

At the same time, mobility has hollowed out long-term communities.  People have been encouraged for decades to move away from family and place in pursuit of work and promotion.  When the economy stops delivering, what remains is a population physically dispersed and socially thinly connected.

“Hollowed out” means that something still looks intact from the outside, but much of what once gave it strength, activity or purpose has been removed from the inside.

In this context you’re using it, it has a social and economic meaning, not a physical one.

When we say a community has been hollowed out, we usually mean:

  • People have moved away, especially younger or working-age people
  • Jobs, services and institutions have closed or relocated elsewhere
  • Daily life has lost its density and continuity
  • What remains is thinner, quieter, and less connected

So a place may still have houses, roads and shops, but fewer reasons for people to interact regularly.

A couple of clear examples:

  • A village where most residents now commute elsewhere or work remotely, and local shops, pubs and clubs have closed. It looks the same, but community life has drained away.
  • A town centre with buildings still standing, but far fewer independent businesses, workplaces or social spaces. The shell remains, the activity has gone.

Digital communication has not solved this problem.  Online interaction lacks physical presence, shared responsibility and continuity.  It is optional and can be easily withdrawn from.  It cannot replace the reassurance of knowing people nearby, nor the quiet confidence that help, recognition and shared purpose exist within walking distance.

This is why isolation now feels so widespread.  It is not primarily emotional.  It is structural.

Localism addresses this problem at its root.

In a shrinking economy, daily life inevitably becomes more local.  People travel less. Employment shifts closer to home.  Services simplify.  Informal exchange and mutual support become more important.  The question is whether this happens by neglect and breakdown, or by design and intention.

Localism offers a framework for rebuilding social connections amid ongoing economic contraction.  It does so not through programmes or campaigns, but through proximity, participation and shared dependence.

When people rely more on their local community for food, services, care, repair, and decision-making, they are drawn back into regular contact with one another.  Familiar faces return.  Trust is rebuilt through repeated interaction.  Informal support networks emerge naturally, not as substitutes for the formal system, but as complements to it.

Research consistently shows that people who feel a strong sense of belonging to their community report lower levels of loneliness and higher well-being.  This is not because communities are perfect or harmonious, but because they provide predictability, recognition and mutual visibility.  People are seen.  They matter.

In economic contraction, this becomes even more important.  As national systems struggle to maintain reach and consistency, the locality becomes the scale at which human needs can still be met reliably.  Care, companionship, shared work and shared purpose all operate more effectively close to home.

Localism also restores dignity.  Instead of people being passive recipients of distant services, they become active participants in their own social and economic environment. This sense of agency reduces isolation just as much as social contact does.

In short, isolation is not an aberration of modern life.  It is a symptom of an economic model that has stretched social connections too thin and too far.  As that model falters, the solution is not to recreate growth, but to rebuild closeness.

Localism is not a nostalgic preference.  It is the social form that fits a shrinking economy.  By rooting life once again in the locality, it offers a practical, humane response to isolation – not by treating loneliness, but by redesigning the conditions that produce it.

193. Gratitude in the Great Unraveling

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MuseLetter #391 / October 2025 by Richard Heinberg – Copied with his permission

Download printable PDF version

On one hand, terrible things are happening. Earth’s climate system is being destabilized, the oceans are turning acidic, wild animals are disappearing, economic inequality is soaring, politics are becoming more polarized and democracies more dysfunctional, and toxic chemicals are turning up in the bodies of people and other creatures in even the remotest and least-disturbed places on the planet. When you look at these problems closely and notice how they interact and compound one another, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that we are in a time of Great Unraveling.

Action is needed to avoid the worst outcomes. Effective action requires both information and motivation. For activists, who tend to be marinated in information, fear and outrage are often fuel for efforts to change the system.

Yet, on the other hand, there is substantial evidence from psychological research showing that fear and hate can harm your relationships and health. Gratitude, instead, is the most beneficial attitude for maintaining a happy, healthy life.

But how not to feel fear, if not hate, when so much of nature and humanity is under threat? How can we feel thankful when our world is being destroyed?

These are hard realities to reconcile. What follows is intended not as a spiritual homily or a philosophical manifesto. I’m just trying to work through seemingly contradictory facts, using my preferred thought-sorting process—writing.

Gratitude Research

A robust literature of thousands of published studies shows that gratitude makes us happier and healthier. In the words of Maureen Sullivan, in an article for Harvard Medical School:

Recent research has pointed to gratitude’s myriad positive health effects, including greater emotional and social well-being, better sleep quality, lower depression risks, and favorable markers of cardiovascular health. Now, new data from the long-term Nurses’ Health Study shows that it may extend lives.

Gratitude studies are typically conducted to assess the effects of gratitude interventions and to measure levels of gratitude, comparing active study participants with control groups. Gratitude interventions include gratitude diaries, conversation programs, trainings, expression of gratitude to others, and thinking of things that make one feel thankful. Control groups, meanwhile, do similar activities that aren’t gratitude-oriented (e.g., writing food diaries rather than gratitude diaries).

Study results typically show that participants practicing gratitude score 3 to 4 percent higher in desirable outcomes.

So, gratitude sounds like a cheap tonic (though not a cure) for what ails us. Is it that simple?

Uses and Misuses of Gratitude

No, it’s complicated. Gratitude may improve our lives in many ways, but research suggests you shouldn’t rely on it during a salary negotiation with your boss. That’s the conclusion of a study led by Jeremy Yip, an assistant professor at the McDonough School of Business, who found that “in competitive contexts—such as in job negotiations, car dealerships or Facebook Marketplace sales—people who express gratitude are more likely to be taken advantage of.” Maybe that’s as much a commentary on our economic system as on gratitude itself.

Another example of a perversion of gratitude arises when people in leadership positions require underlings to express gratitude. In such cases, people with minimal social power can be kept complacent and subservient. As support for this assertion, I can reach back to my own experience earlier in life, when I was a member of a live-in spiritual community. Leaders repeatedly told recruits that “An attitude of gratitude increases your altitude,” and that complaint is spiritual poison. While those teachings held elements of truth, they also served to tamp down rank-and-file dissatisfaction with a hierarchical system of control.

How to get the benefits without the risks? There are no easy answers. Discernment and experience are required.

Gratitude “For” Versus Gratitude “In”

I’m certainly not suggesting that we should feel gratitude for climate change, extreme economic inequality, and the destruction of nature. However, given the fact that none of us individually has the power to stop the Great Unraveling, it’s fair to discuss what attitudes are most helpful under the circumstances.

Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, spent three years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. He saw some fellow prisoners survive the same conditions to which others succumbed. Frankl concluded that everything can be taken from a person, except for the freedom to choose one’s attitude, and that this inner freedom to decide how to respond to suffering can be decisive. Frankl believed that suffering is transformed by meaning, and that facing unavoidable suffering with courage and dignity can turn personal tragedy into triumph. Having a life of meaning and purpose in which I engage regularly with readers, students, and colleagues has certainly helped me feel grateful, even though my work is centered in hard truths.

So, gratitude isn’t a cure-all, especially in situations of unequal social power. But it can elevate our experiences and help us be more content and more resilient people. And we are free to choose it even in hard times.

Here’s another paradox. It may intuitively seem that people surrounded by ease and privilege would be more likely to experience gratitude than people who have few possessions and must work hard. But in fact, according to research, luck and luxury don’t seem to make people more grateful. Often, people who have very little are more likely to give thanks for life, relationships, and nature. And something that matters more than luck or privilege: culture. People who are connected with a religious tradition or an Indigenous culture tend to feel gratitude more than unaffiliated individuals.

Let Go: We’re Not Going to Fix Everything

Which brings up another problem. I’m neither religious nor a member of an Indigenous community. But I’m determined to preserve a gritty gratitude anyway. My own thankfulness is grounded in a few hard-won observations:

  • Life holds incredible beauty. Nature, relationships with friends and family, and the arts (just listen to James Booker playing “Sunny Side of the Street”: what did we humans do to deserve this?) all evoke feelings of thankfulness.
  • Still, death and decay are inevitable parts of life. Advancing age makes that fact unavoidably plain. Having a limited period of existence gives time greater value and elicits gratitude for having been granted that time.
  • Conflict is inherent in evolution, as is cooperation. Nature is always in flux and can be cruel as well as nurturing. The contrast makes me thankful when I observe and experience the cooperative/nurturing side of nature.
  • Human beings are a spectacular but deeply conflicted species. Our species’ (nearly) unique superpowers are language and tool making; with them, we can create sublime art or wreak death and destruction. I have deep gratitude for people who choose to use our superior abilities for the greater good and are able to show restraint and avoid the problems that come from wielding too much power.
  • Even with all this power, choices are limited. Our actions are constrained by history, genetics, parenting, brain chemistry—even what we had for breakfast this morning. As behavioral neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky argues in his book Determined, our actual scope of individual freedom is surprisingly small. That means both blame and praise are largely misplaced. Nevertheless, I prefer to agree with Frankl: even if our scope of choice and action is minuscule, we can still (to some extent) choose our attitude. Making the effort to understand others, especially when they are doing things that seem incomprehensibly wrong, can help us make the best of a terrible situation. We can maintain gratitude even then.

Does all this sound vaguely familiar? Perhaps that’s because it’s largely in alignment with Buddhism and Stoicism. These are what I like to think of as philosophies of limits. And it’s with a realistic sense of limits that gratitude gets grounded. It becomes a clear line of feeling tying us to the core of our being.

How to Feel More Gratitude?

Can we deliberately become more grateful? To a certain extent, yes—if we are to believe the research.

Gratitude researchers advise appreciating specific “givers” in your life by engaging in deliberate acts of thankfulness—writing a note or making phone call.

Spending more time in nature also increases your gratitude. Pay attention to non-human beings in your environment, both domesticated and non-domesticated. It’s hard not to feel grateful when you see the depth of beauty that evolution has gifted us, and when you engage with the extraordinarily varied kinds of consciousness present in creatures ranging from redwood to cricket to hummingbird, crow, salmon, raccoon, yarrow, great horned owl, coyote, and on and on. I’m particularly grateful for the non-human creatures I spend the most time with—our chickens, who teach me something new each day.

Also, as important as it is to know what is happening in the world, it’s equally necessary to disengage from news and political commentary from time to time if you want to make more space for feelings of gratitude. You are more than your opinions.

How Does This Help Now?

Deliberately feeling gratitude is not a way of insulating ourselves so that we don’t feel bad as the world around us spirals into chaos. Indeed, as Donna Jean Haraway insists, it’s important that we “stay with the trouble” in order to bear witness to this extraordinarily fraught moment.

But you can feel sorrow, fear, and pain and still feel grateful. Thankfulness builds connections with people around us and with nature. And those connections will inevitably convey pain as well as more welcome emotions.

Humanity’s only long-term solution to overshoot, the cause of the Great Unraveling, is to limit its own numbers and power. We need to partner with nature instead of trying to dominate it. Meanwhile, building societal cohesion will require reducing inequality in social power and developing our cooperative skills. Gratitude is essential to these tasks.

What if there is no long term? What if humanity is destined to run out of energy and resources and fight over the hot, polluted detritus to the point of extinction? Then maybe it’s best to go out, not with unalloyed sorrow, but with gratitude for having had the chance to experience the spark of life and be part of the grand experiment of human existence.

On the other hand, if collective survival is possible, there will be a lot of work ahead. We’ll be more effective in that work if we’re unburdened by hate and recrimination, and are instead rooted in gratitude for life, nature, and community.

186. Nobody’s in Control – and That’s How Localism Begins

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Tim Watkins’ latest piece ends with a truth that most of us have long suspected but never dared to say aloud – nobody is in control. There is no plan, no strategy, no calm hand on the tiller. The people who are meant to be running the show are mostly busy explaining why nothing is their fault, while the rest of us are left to tidy up after them.

At first, that sounds terrifying. The idea that no one’s in charge of the nation’s great machinery, or even understands how the levers work anymore, is enough to make anyone nostalgic for the days when “strong leadership” meant something. But perhaps we should relax. Maybe this is exactly how localism begins.

Because the truth is, real control has always been an illusion. Even in its heyday, the industrial economy was a sprawling collection of improvised fixes that just happened to work for a while. Now that the fixes are breaking down, the system looks lost – but the people aren’t.

When government no longer knows what to do, we quietly start doing things ourselves. We mend the shed roof rather than waiting for an insurance company that never answers the phone. We share food, tools, and gossip. We rediscover what it means to be useful, rather than merely employed.

And while the official world debates growth targets and future technologies, the informal world – our world – gets on with the practical business of living. That’s localism. It doesn’t need permission or policy. It just grows naturally in the cracks of a crumbling system.

So when Tim says nobody’s in control, we might take that not as a warning but as a sign of progress. The old order is stepping back, albeit clumsily, to make room for something smaller, humbler, and far more human.

The lights may flicker in Whitehall, but in the streets and kitchens of ordinary people, a new kind of intelligence is quietly switching on.

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147. The Uncanny Valley of Growing Up: When Traditional Milestones Meet New Realities

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From the Institute for the Future: June 20, 2025

Picture a 12-year-old in Brazil who has already survived their country’s worst climate disaster, uses AI to do their homework, and will join the largest adult generation in human history. Yet society expects them to follow the same path as their parents: college, career, family. This is Generation Alpha’s uncanny valley — where the traditional markers of becoming an adult persist, but the foundation beneath them has fundamentally shifted.

Generation Alpha is pursuing three paths: strengthening local resilience against climate disasters, setting nuanced, sophisticated boundaries with technology, and transforming personal finance into a public journey. However, a fourth path — Redefined Adulthood — may hold the most promise. This approach reimagines maturity itself, not a diminished version of traditional adulthood, but a more adaptable, community-oriented, and technologically sophisticated way of becoming an adult.

  • Shifting from centralized disaster response toward community-based resilience networks. This includes transforming local spaces into multi-purpose emergency centers, developing neighborhood support systems, and building climate adaptation knowledge into everyday community life.
  • Moving beyond binary tech relationships toward nuanced digital engagement patterns. This approach balances AI-assisted learning with intentional disconnection, while embracing new forms of digital usage that prioritize wellbeing over constant connectivity.
  • Transforming financial health from private concern to “loud budgeting.” This includes normalizing transparent discussions about money, gamifying responsible spending habits, and leveraging social networks for collective financial wisdom and accountability.
  • Evolving traditional adulthood markers toward contextual definitions of success. This means recognizing that stability might come from strong community ties rather than employment, and that mastery of selective tech engagement may matter more than constant digital presence.

As the largest cohort in human history comes of age, Gen Alpha is not just adapting to a changed world — its actively rewriting the rules of what it means to grow up. This version of adulthood may look strange to their parents, but it’s precisely what their future demands.

This forecast brief is the seventh in a multipart series exploring uncanny valleys across society, culminating in a full anthology for IFTF Vantage Partners in July 2025. Contact our team to explore how we can help your organization prepare for Generation Alpha’s emergence into adulthood.

***

Explore all briefs in the series here:

137. Key Proposals of the Government’s Health Plan Relating to Social Care

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1. Closer Integration with Health Through ICSs

  • Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) will work with Integrated Care Partnerships (ICPs), where local authorities are equal partners alongside the NHS.

  • The plan promotes “joined-up care” between the NHS, social care, and community services—particularly for elderly and disabled people.

  • It seeks shared accountability across health and social care services for outcomes.

Implication: Local authorities will still manage social care, but their services are expected to be coordinated with NHS provision at the ICS level.

2. Single Shared Plans

  • ICSs must produce “Joint Forward Plans”, co-produced by the NHS and local authorities, setting out shared priorities across health and care.

This supports localism, as decisions are expected to be tailored to local needs and made collaboratively.

3. Workforce and Digital Support

  • The plan aims to improve career pathways across health and care, potentially facilitating smoother transitions between the NHS and care homes or domiciliary care.

  • Promises improved digital infrastructure to allow shared records and more coordinated care.

However, it falls short of funding or reforming social care salaries, which are determined by local care providers and councils.

4. Prevention Focus

  • It highlights that better social care can reduce demand on NHS services (e.g., through reduced hospital admissions and delayed discharges).

  • Local authorities are encouraged to focus on housing, community resilience, and rehabilitation, though no new funding streams are clearly allocated.

Limitations and Unanswered Questions

Issue Comment
Funding No significant new money for social care has been announced. Local authorities continue to face pressure from growing demand.
Workforce Pay and Conditions NHS reforms don’t extend to care workers, many of whom earn minimum wage under private or local authority contracts.
Governance While local authorities are “partners” in ICSs, the NHS retains substantial control. It’s not clear whether councils can veto or redirect ICS decisions.
Autonomy The plan encourages partnership but does not shift any decision-making powers to local government, thus not expanding localism in social care.  Instead, in effect, the NHS will gain control of social care, with local authority services forced to follow their lead.

132. The Dunbar Number

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The Dunbar number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of stable social relationships a person can maintain. It is typically cited as around 150.

It is relevant to thinking about the future of localism.

The concept was developed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who discovered a correlation between the brain sizes of primates and the size of their social groups. Extrapolating this to humans, he suggested that the average person can maintain about 150 meaningful relationships – that is, people with whom you know well enough to keep in touch and care about their status within your social world.

Key Points:

  • 150 is not a strict limit but an average; real-world numbers can vary (from around 100 to 250).
  • The number applies to “stable” relationships – those involving regular contact and emotional closeness.
  • The 150 limit is often cited in military units, company departments, and village sizes in traditional societies.
  • Dunbar also proposed layers of relationship closeness:
    • 5 intimate friends (loved ones), 15 close friends50, 150 meaningful contacts, 500 acquaintances
    • 1500 people you can recognise

Why It Matters:

The Dunbar number has been influential in designing social networks, organisational theory, and community planning, especially in contexts like localism, where maintaining strong personal ties is vital for resilience and mutual support.

The Dunbar number aligns closely with the logic of localism, particularly as the economy contracts and social systems transition from formal, institutional structures to more informal, relationship-based ones.

Here’s how the Dunbar number supports the case for localism:

🔹 1. The scale of Community Life

Localism works best at the human scale – villages, neighbourhoods, or districts where people can recognise, trust, and support each other.

The Dunbar number (≈approximately 150) mirrors the size of traditional self-regulating communities, ranging from hunter-gatherer bands to pre-industrial parishes.

A local community of around 150–200 people enables mutual obligations, shared memory, and informal decision-making to flourish.

🔹 2. Governance and Trust

In systems where people know each other personally, enforcement of norms relies less on police or regulation and more on reputation and accountability.

Local governance becomes relational, not bureaucratic. The shrinking economy may favour this shift, as informal systems are less costly to maintain.

🔹 3. Design of Future Services

Local food production, shared child care, energy cooperatives, or health support networks (like neighbour-led care) all become more viable and resilient when grounded in groups small enough to be cohesive.

Dunbar-sized groups can self-organise using common sense and shared values rather than top-down management.

🔹 4. Rebuilding Social Capital

Modern life has eroded meaningful relationships. The transition to localism presents an opportunity to reweave the social fabric based on what humans are cognitively and emotionally equipped to handle.

When economies no longer offer purpose through jobs and consumption, relationships become the primary currency of well-being – and Dunbar’s number defines their natural limits.

🔹 5. Application in Design and Planning

New settlements or restructured towns could be organised in clusters of ≈150 people, with local governance councils, shared gardens, and communal spaces.

Rather than thinking in abstract zoning categories, planners could begin with the question:

In many ways, the Dunbar number is the natural unit of localism. It defines a scale at which social systems become personal. Within a group of 150, reputation matters. Kindness is remembered. Selfishness is noticed. Mutual help thrives. Formal institutions become unnecessary because people enforce social norms through personal relationships rather than relying on regulation.

Modern society has outgrown this scale. Services are remote, housing is anonymous, and people make decisions we’ll never meet. However, as the formal economy contracts and public services weaken, we may find ourselves returning to the older, more human-sized structures that our minds and hearts are built for.

Designing future settlements, neighbourhoods, or service hubs around this scale could bring profound benefits. Shared child care, neighbourly support for older people, communal gardens, food production, and even dispute resolution become feasible without bureaucracy. The Dunbar number provides a biological foundation for rebuilding localism – not as a nostalgic dream but as a practical necessity in a shrinking economy.

The lesson is clear: if we are to live within nature’s limits, we must also live within our own.