Nate Hagens

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.

Sometimes it's just what happens when active switchbacking stops.

Gravity and weather do the rest.

So when you hear me describe the composite worlds in part four, ask yourself, which passages are we switchbacking right now?

And which ones are we allowing purposefully or out of neglect to erode?

Valleys, ridges, switchbacks, and erosion.

Hold on to those ideas.

And last point, though it's not the focus of this episode,

These four things don't only apply to societies.

Each of us has valleys and ridges in our own lives.