Nate Hagens

Because they are this channel's work.

The landscape itself has two features.

Valleys, which are the stable states where systems settle and reinforce themselves.

And hills, or more technically, ridges.

which are the barriers between these valleys, the cost of transitioning from one stable state to another.

The valleys and the ridges are the terrain of the future.

We don't choose them.

They're given to us by physics, ecology, and history.

But there are things humans can do to that terrain, two general categories.

We can create switchbacks

use physical or social technology to carve paths up ridges that would otherwise be too steep to cross.

So building more social trust, that's switchbacking.

Restoring depleted soil, creating cooperative institutions, those are switchbacks.

They make crossings of the ridges possible that weren't possible before.

On the other hand, we can erode the trail.

Through actions or just through plain neglect, we let the paths disappear and then the ridges do become impassable.

Depleting fossil aquifers or soil, losing civic norms, building surveillance infrastructure that can't be dismantled.

These are all examples of erosion.

And if erosion happens fast, it leads to washouts of all the switchbacks that have been built.

And these washouts do not have to be intentional.