Turning the Dials Back on Psychopathy: Decent People, Indecent System | Frankly 157

This week's Frankly builds on Nate's recent conversation with systems theorist Greg Elliott, who came on the platform to discuss why our institutions themselves have become psychopathic and how that affects the behavior of the average human. Nate maps Greg's framework onto the global economic Superorganism through the imagery of seven "dials" that can be turned to change the incentives baked into the system – from those that might be present in a small-scale, collaborative community to those of the modern, complex society we live in today. Together, these dials help explain how a species whose ancestral social world rewarded cooperation could construct institutions that increasingly reward extraction. Nate also explores how the same prosocial people who might individually tend toward reciprocity, empathy, and coordination can behave very differently when the conditions around them change and begin to reward psychopathic traits. The carbon pulse brought forward cheap energy, abstraction, enormous scale, and concentrated power – making it easier than ever before to hide responsibility and detach economic measures from the living systems they represent. The central question of this episode asks what can still be rebuilt at the human scale, whether it's in the form of deeper local relationships, shorter feedback loops, mutual dependence, or institutions where ordinary people can still participate in writing the rules of the system. Which of these seven dials is most flipped toward the economic Superorganism in your own life, and can you turn it back – even if only partially? How do we remain more prosocial when systemic incentives reward the opposite? And what interventions might we make to bring the system itself more into alignment with our biophysical reality? (Recorded August 25th, 2026) Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie. --- Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Hylo channel and connect with other listeners