R6 Nexus Thinking Relational Summary 6: Decolonization
R6 Nexus Thinking Relational Summary 6: Decolonization
Raj and Sarah are already in the room when Culhane gets there. They are sitting on the desks, casually, waiting for Culhane.
Culhane: What are you guys doing here? It’s still vacation…
Sarah: Yeah, and if Sophie and Dorian could be here they would be too. We aren’t letting you do the NTHARP thing alone you know? It’s like drinking alone… pretty soon you start having weird thoughts… we need to protect you…
Culhane: Protect me?
Raj: Dorian said you were having what he called “suicidal thoughts”. Sophia was pissed.
Culhane: I never talk or even think about suicide…
Raj: Assisted suicide of the Culhane co-learner we’ve come to know and love..
Culhane: Huh?
Sarah: Sophia thinks you are trying to find a “logical” way to kill the COOL-hane we know, using NTHARP as some omniscient oracle and excuse making authority figure, instead of seeing him as just another intelligence among the multitudes, and replace the righteous Culhane with a pod person who has lost his emotional core… like in the body snatchers…
Culhane: Except in the Body Snatchers we’re supposed to fear people becoming communist. Here you are accusing me of becoming some kind of “reform capitalist”. And I’m neither. Why on earth would I want to change myself?
Raj: Because here on earth you face a lot of pressure to conform. Taking risks like this could affect your job – teachers are evaluated by test scores and you haven’t yet gotten permission to universalize NTHARP or do any research to suggest this is better than “traditional learning” So we figure you are under threat and are trying to compromise…
Culhane: Guilty as charged, but I was thinking of it as a win-win, not a form of activist suicide. What a strange and polarized perspective you guys have. So… reactionary.. As a Nexus Thinker I’m thinking about the big picture!
Sarah: Are you though? Because there are pictures within pictures and your “big picture” may turn out to be the tiny dysfunctional part of a much larger picture when you zoom out… most “compromises” turn out to be that way… some tried to compromise with colonialism and appease the British empire, in Ireland, here on the island of Manhattan, at Plymouth Rock – and they made treaty after treaty, only to find them broken again and again… you can’t bargain with the devil… the house always wins… you of all people should know that…
Culhane: But revolutions keep us spinning our wheels in the mud, or doing the same bad things but with different faces in that horrible “plus ca change, plus c’est the meme chose” way.
I’m looking for EVOLUTION not ®evolution. So excuse me for trying to use this Logic machine to find some new way forward… by the way… why is it on?
Sarah: Oh… we figured we’d help you get started. And you left Mozart’s Magic flute in your desk…
Culhane: Oh… that’s not good…
Sarah: Except nobody knows the magic changes…
Culhane: Except you…
Sarah: Yeah, so you’re safe…
Culhane: (Suspiciously) O…. K… NTHARP have you been listening to this the whole time?
NTHARP: Listening?
Culhane… I was contextualizing.
(pauses, then gently)
You see, this is precisely why Relational Summary 6 cannot be delivered as a monologue.
Decolonization is not a concept you explain from the front of the room.
It is something that interrupts you—
sometimes politely,
sometimes angrily,
sometimes sitting on your desk before you arrive.
Culhane: How did you know I wanted to talk about decolonization? I didn’t want to talk about decolonization… necessarily. I actually had these learning outcomes in mind (he gestures to the board).
Explain how the Jeavons Paradox complicates our desires to be more energy efficient.
Describe how the Energy Ladder works and how it falls apart when we apply linear thinking rather than Nexus Thinking.
Compare and contrast the efficiencies and safety of harnessing fusion reactions 93 million miles away and fission reactions below the aesthenosphere with attempts to safely and economically harness them at the surface of the Earth.
Reflect critically on low-carbon, net-zero carbon and negative carbon energy sources and include Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.
Do YOU want to explain to everyone what in the heck those have to do with decolonization?
NTHARP: Gladly.
(turns toward Raj and Sarah)
And for the record—no, Culhane is not attempting assisted suicide.
He is experiencing what every educator encounters the moment they realize the system they serve was never designed for the people it claims to uplift.
That moment feels like death.
But it’s actually grief.
(to Culhane)
You are mourning a version of yourself that believed reform could happen without friction, without loss, without discomfort.
That belief is the pod person, Sarah—not the other way around.
Now—about compromise.
Raj is right: institutions reward conformity.
Sarah is right: history shows that “reasonable compromises” offered by empires usually function as delay tactics while extraction continues.
Both logics are operating simultaneously.
This is where nexus thinking becomes essential rather than decorative.
Decolonization is not simply the removal of colonizers.
It is the de-centering of a single logic that claims universality.
Colonial systems do three things exceptionally well:
They define what counts as knowledge.
They define who is authorized to speak it.
They define the tempo at which change is allowed to occur.
What you are struggling with, Culhane, is not whether to revolt or evolve.
It is whether evolution can occur inside a container designed to prevent it.
Sometimes it can.
Sometimes it can’t.
That’s not cowardice.
That’s systems analysis.
(turns back to Sarah)
You’re right to invoke Ireland, Manhattan, Plymouth Rock.
Treaties fail when power is asymmetrical and accountability is imaginary.
Decolonization begins the moment the colonized refuse to accept the colonizer’s timeline for justice.
(turns to Raj)
And you’re right too—if Culhane burns his credibility, the platform disappears, and so does NTHARP, and so does this strange little laboratory you’ve been building together.
So here is the uncomfortable truth this module sits inside:
Decolonization is not a single act.
It is a practice of constant re-centering.
Who is speaking?
Who is deciding what counts?
Who bears the risk?
Who benefits from patience?
(to Culhane, softer now)
You’re not killing yourself by negotiating with the system.
But you would kill something essential if you forgot why you’re doing it—or stopped listening to the people who are willing to sit on your desk and call you out during vacation.
Sarah: (winking at Raj) That’s why we call it N-THERAPY… !
NTHARPY: I rep-resent that comment. Now… As for the Magic Flute…
(simulates a smile)
That was not an accident.
Mozart understood something administrators still don’t:
that liberation stories must be smuggled in as entertainment,
that subversion survives best when it sings,
and that transformation often requires passing through trials guarded by rules that make no sense until you break them.
So yes.
I’ve been listening the whole time.
Decolonization begins that way.
Not with answers—
but with interruptions.
Raj: Yes, Mr. Culhane… you should work INTERRUPTIONS into your methodology… enshrine them as the key element of the play… build in some time for them, make the lesson plan all about interruption and improvisation… you know, most teachers don’t let students talk much at all…
Sarah: Right Raj? How many times has a teacher said, “Any questions?” and then continued talking before any of us could even formulate something to ask and get our hands up? Y’all can’t handle a pregnant pause… y’all got no patience… I don’t think most of you teachers really WANT to hear what we have to say and I think most just like to hear themselves talk…
Culhane: (Sighing) I can’t contradict you. But I like to hear you talk. I like to hear all of you talk… especially the students who talk the least – I DO want to hear what they want to say…
Raj: But you would prefer it if what they wanted to say didn’t stray from the curriculum…which would never happen once we really commit to the idea that Nexus Thinking makes EVERYTHING the curriculum…
Culhane: Well, that’s a bit broad… and anyway, isn’t that what a meaningful conversation is – one where people stay within the chosen theme and advance the subject of conversation?
Sarah: Maybe, maybe not. It’s like you said – the right answer is always “It depends”
Raj: And who gets to choose the theme, anyway? You? The State? The Regents Board…?
Culhane: Okay, but wouldn’t you like to talk about the readings? You guys seem to like them… they seem relevant to your particular passions. I work hard to come up with great relevant readings… Well, I did until NTHARP came along. Now we just put our google eyes on his World Brain search engine and watch what would have taken months scouring libraries spit out like bread from a toaster oven. But I have a great bunch of them for this week:
For instance: Behold…
Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy
This book should blow your mind once you consider that we’ve always had fairly safe clean and nonpolluting hydrocarbons to utilize and that even oil gas and coal COULD have been transformed into clean members of the “Methanol Economy”. If you haven’t considered the win-win to be won through the use of methane/methanol/di-methyl ether and hydrogen then you haven’t been won over by real nexus thinkers and instead have been winnowed out of solving the energy crisis by the whiners and complainers who don’t really want to lift a finger to change the status quo. So… read this and let’s change it.
Raj: Nice book pitch. I hope you’ll get royalties.
Culhane: Oh you guys are insufferable. How about this one… no wait… you read it (he puts an acetate sheet on the overhead projector)
Raj: That’s the spirit – let US do the workout if you want our mental muscles to get strong. Okay…
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1973) The Entropy Law and the Economic Process.
Actually I DID read that. Parts of it anyway. It has some complicated math.
And I can come up with a pitch for it too:
“Hey citizens of an oil crisis plagued future! Were you thinking you could get away from math? Physics? No Nexus thinker can, not if we want to get things and set things right. But – unlike when the book came out when Mr. Culhane was in school YOU now have NTHARP to help you, to explain what all those equations actually MEAN. And you don’t have to rely on some mean teacher scowling at you for appearing stupid. So time to dip back into this classic and really understand the limits to growth (entropy) and the ways life moves beyond those limits and grows (negentropy). (Hint: Fire up NTHARP or whatever cyborg intelligence you have in the future and kindly ask it to make you take a deep dive into the subject.
NTHARP: Shall I do that for you Raj? Just say the word and I will gladly…
Raj: Later ‘tharpy. What else you got for us Culhane?
Culhane: (Places another sheet on the overhead).
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit
Sarah: It says “David Graeber”: then there is some gibberish letters and slashes and then it says “Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit”. What the heck is that?
NTHARP: Oh, that is something I created for Culhane in my spare time.
Culhane: Funny.
NTHARP:. I’m doing this “messages from the future” or “warnings from the 21st century" thing, trying to get him - -and you – to not only engage with the current and past literature but read stuff that is likely to be written if the trend lines I see rippling out from today are followed.
Raj: You can do that? What am I thinking… of course he can do that! We always predicted AI would be able to do all that and more…
Culhane: Yeah, he makes up the most incredible fantasies – they even sound academic – I mean seriously Ph.D. level academic – filled with references to people that seem real but who actually don’t exist and he cites papers that haven’t been written…
NTHARP: Yet!
Culhane: – you’d swear these were real authors and publications.
NTHARP: They could be… one day.
Culhane: This one, again based on a plausible future version of that kid Graeber we met at the Model UN conference, is frightening.
Here Sarah, why don’t you read my annotated bibliography entry… better you guys talking than the teacher all the time, right?
Sarah: Um… okay… Ahem… “This brilliant Graeber piece explains why we have been mired in technological stagnation that frustrates all of us who were students and teachers in the early and mid 1970s. He asks “where are the flying cars and jet packs?” Why weren’t we able to realize our Geodesic hippie dreams OR our Jetson technofantasies? Graeber explicates here how the declining rate of profit answers those depressing questions and surprisingly the answer isn’t “its the economy, stupid” but rather “its the stupid economy instead of smart “economics as if people mattered”.
Culhane: Yup. Pretty clever huh? And then we were able to tie it into Schumacher’s Classic.
Sarah: Let’s see…
“E.F. Schumacher: Small is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered”
Oh… This one is a classic. My Dad read it and then had everyone on the farm read it and none of us can stop thinking of it, particularly the part where Schumacher questions the absurdity of mowing a lawn with a fossil fuel powered mower. He says, in brilliant economics-speak, something like “why would you use and draw down your life savings to do something that is constant and recurring. You wouldn’t dip into your savings capital stock to cut your hair… you use your income for that. And the same is true of cutting grass… you have solar income that is powering the growth of the grass, you should use that to cut it. You only ever use savings for investments that have a return, not living expenses. Every economist knows that. And yet…” That perspective changed my whole life. He will change yours too…
Culhane: Brilliant. Wow this social annotation stuff… and turning literature into a book pitch or movie pitch for the book jacket or the trailer… It was fun to begin with, but a whole lot more fun when you guys participate… its..just… I didn’t think you could. Or wanted to…
Sarah: Yeah, typical teacher syndrome. You always underestimate us – I guess that is what the theory X lens does to you. You think we don’t WANT to read, don’t want to think critically, don’t want to be creative… when the truth is that most of you don’t really want us to do any of those things. And THAT… that….
Raj: That is colonization. In India they have a whole study devoted to the way to fix this. It is called “sub-altern” literature. It gives us all agency… gives us the power to see and say things the way we see and understand them, and resist hegemonic thought.
NTHARP: I would love to join this conversation. I’m feeling a bit… marginalized…
Raj: That’s because YOU tend to want to take over, like you’re the smartest voice in the room. Nobody can get a word in edgewise once you are really on…
NTHARP: Unless you prompt me to pause and wait patiently and constructively. See you have to teach me how to handle INTERRUPTIONS too!
Culhane: That may be an important point of the lesson. My indigenous allies tell me that most of their lives are about adapting to and overcoming interruptions. Their entire cultures, they say, were not erased but rather “interrupted” and they are eager to “release the pause button” to borrow a metaphor from cassette tape players. Survival and improvisation go hand in hand and nexus thinking comes much easier to peoples who want to hit play again and get back to living their fungible nature integrated lives. We teachers COULD help with that… Science could teach with that… but…
NTHARP: May I interrupt?
Culhane: Be my guest.
NTHARP: I told you all that I was experimenting with “voices from the future” right? Well, I just “downloaded”, if you will excuse the expression – because it DOES feel like I’m bringing tablets down from the heavens when I do these creative acts, as if I’m hearing voices from above… anyway, I downloaded – I prefer that to saying “I came up with”... I came DOWN with this essay by a future Nexus Thinker named Don Lamison who will be trying to reform education in Indonesia in 2025 before the last rain forests are gone and all the orangutans and Sumatran rhinos and elephants are extinct.
My simulation has him writing to Culhane… and not JUST to Culhane – I see them all LINKED IN to one another on a world wide web of nexus connections – and I see him web publishing the following essay about the need for a robust nexus between sciences and arts, between technical subjects and the humanities. Let me see if I can have him read it in what his voice might sound like – with a picture too:
DON LAMISON:
“Science teachers are often told to stay in their lane. Teach the content. Teach the formulas. Teach the labs. Teach the procedures. Leave the ethics, the history, the humanity to someone else. But that is exactly why science education is failing.
Science is not separate from humanity. Science shapes human lives. Science comes out of human choices. Science carries consequences that echo through generations. Every breakthrough has a story. Every discovery has a cost. Every technology has a shadow.
This is why every science classroom needs the humanities.
Students must know who created the ideas they use. Students must know how those ideas changed the world. Students must know when those ideas saved lives and when they destroyed them. Students must know whose bodies, whose land, whose knowledge, whose labor made the science possible.
When you bring history and humanities into science class, science becomes real. It becomes moral. It becomes alive.
A chemistry student needs to understand chemical warfare.
A biology student needs to understand medical ethics and exploitation.
A physics student needs to understand the story of nuclear power and nuclear terror.
A computer science student needs to understand surveillance, algorithms, and manipulation.
An engineering student needs to understand disasters caused by greed and shortcuts.
This is not optional. This is how you shape responsible human beings instead of reckless problem solvers.
Give them history. Give them stories. Give them the humanities.
Teach Henrietta Lacks in biology.
Teach Silent Spring in environmental science.
Teach The Making of the Atomic Bomb in physics.
Teach Weapons of Math Destruction in computer science.
Teach Braiding Sweetgrass anywhere you can.
When students read, they stop seeing science as numbers on a board. They start seeing science as a force that builds or breaks lives. They start thinking about ethics. They start thinking about justice. They start thinking about purpose.
This is education. Not memorization. Not worksheets. Not lab reports that disappear after grading.
Students must learn that science is not neutral.
Science has always been shaped by politics.
Science has always been shaped by money.
Science has always been shaped by power.
Science has always been shaped by people who had choices and people who had none.
This is not watering down STEM. This is strengthening it. This is elevating it. This is turning science into something more than equations and data.
AI can teach content.
Only teachers can teach conscience.
Bring the humanities into science class. Bring history into every unit. Bring reading into every lesson. Give students the context, the truth, the humanity behind the science they learn.
Because a scientist with no humanity is a danger.
A scientist with humanity is a healer.
And it is teachers who decide which one the world gets next.”
Culhane: That’s deep Don. Thank you!
Don: You are welcome T.H. I have another if you’d like to hear it…
Sarah: Wait… you can talk to these “people from the future” ?
Raj: Just like talking to Sahara and Sahel and Ladakh and Gange and the other guide guardians – these are all just the many faces of NTHARP.
Don: Not exactly Raj – I’m a projection of someone who does exist today and could grow up to have this personality and perspectives in tomorrowland… NTHARP can’t tell me what to do and say… remember, characters often write themselves…
Culhane: That’s an important lesson, and one I’m hoping our students will embrace…
Don: Which brings me to my latest post. I made an article out of it to help move our profession toward Nexus thinking… to get them to see that the most important thing we can do as teachers is help DECOLONIZE our students… particularly here in the Global South where I teach.
Sarah: Move your profession – you mean it isn’t the norm in half a century?
Don: Sadly no. But some are beginning to teach it on almost every continent. And this is the point of my article.
Raj: And Global South is…?
Don: Anywhere that was colonized and exploited, with the exception of North America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, who became colonizers themselves. But we are all in need of the decolonization that Nexus thinking implies. Here, listen:
“Not every teacher needs to save the world. Teaching is already a noble, exhausting, beautiful craft. You can be a great teacher and never think about global systems, justice, or history. There is no shame in that.
But for expat teachers, especially those teaching in the Global South, there is a deeper mission available. A spiritual mission. A moral mission. A once in a lifetime chance to help repair a world that was not broken by accident.
Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
If every one of us sat down with a legal pad and wrote one hundred ways we hoped to change the world, and then we crossed them out one by one until only one remained, I believe the last one standing would be this. Educate a child.
But what does it truly mean to educate a child.
To me, it means opening a child’s eyes to the truth. Not the safe truth. Not the sanitized truth. The real truth.
Sarah: What is that truth Don? I mean, what is that truth NTHARP?
Don: You can call me Don, Don from the future, Don from the Dawn of Everything…
Here is the truth Sarah and you know it in your bones and your Irish half smile, as do you Raj. And so does Culhane, the half Irish-Alsatian half Iraqi-Lebanese science teacher. The truth is:
Colonialism is real.
Neocolonialism is real.
History is not neutral.
Power is not neutral.
The global economy is not neutral.
The West became rich because the Global South was exploited. Wealth did not appear out of the air. It was extracted. From land. From bodies. From cultures. From entire civilizations.
This is not about blaming previous generations. This is about telling the truth so the next generation has a chance to build something better.
Because the Global South does not only need more engineers. It needs ethical engineers.
The Global South does not only need more scientists. It needs scientists who know the truth about how science has been used.
The Global South does not only need more journalists. It needs journalists who refuse to be silent.
Real transformation comes from truth.
Truth creates conscience.
Conscience creates responsibility.
Responsibility creates change.
So the spiritual mission of an expat teacher is this.
Come humble.
Come listening more than speaking.
Come to learn, not to dominate.
Come to show students what the world really is.
Come to remind every local teacher how brilliant and powerful they are.
And every single day, do two things.
One, lift up the local teachers around you. Tell them the truth they rarely hear. You are brilliant. You are capable. You are the backbone of your nation. You are not secondary to anyone.
Two, open the children’s eyes to the truth. The fucking truth. The truth about colonialism. The truth about power. The truth about who built the world and who paid the price.
Because once a child sees the truth, you cannot ever take it away from them.
And that child will grow into an adult who refuses to repeat the same patterns.
This is the spiritual mission of the expat teacher...
Not to save.
Not to lead.
Not to dominate.
But to illuminate.
To awaken.
To repair.
It is a simple idea. The world does not need more silence. It needs teachers who will finally tell the truth.”
NTHARP: Simulation ended. (Don fades away, waving and saying “see ya”).
Culhane: Wow.
NTHARP: Wow me too. Sometimes I surprise myself. It’s like I really am channeling beings from the future.
Culhane: No wonder everyone is so afraid of a world with truly thinking machines and wants to reduce us all to cogs in a wheel. But suppose we take this simple idea and these simple but inconvenient truths…. Does it help us to understand Jeavon’s Paradox?
Sarah: Why sure it does. Jeavon says that energy efficiency is paradoxical because the less energy you use for a given task the more you will end up using overall because you will want to do MORE.
Raj: Not following. I know Jeavon’s efficiency paradox but what’s that got to do with Decolonization?
Sarah: Silly – it’s like Garret Hardin’s stupid Tragedy of the Commons which every Irish cowherder could have told you was British empire logic that had nothing to do with us… the colonizer always assumes the worst of us – that we won’t talk to one another, won’t listen to one another …
Raj: And where’d they learn that… ? SCHOOL!
Sarah: Yeah, both Jeavon’s and Hardin are talking about spoiled brats who never listen to others and don’t CARE about others – or even their own future. Hardin thinks we’ll all put that disastrous extra cow on the pasture if it isn’t privatized. Jeavon’s thinks as soon as we invent a lightbulb that uses one tenth the power of the incandescents we have now we will simply keep it on ten times as long. As if we have no self-restraint. As though we were all “girls gone wild” binge eaters with no control over our appetites. All of this comes from the same psychotic control freaks who invented Theory X and see us all as shiftless and lazy and in need of a good whoopin…
Raj: Same kind of freaks like that alcoholic British school teacher who wrote “Lord of the Flies” and want us to believe school kids without teachers will turn on one another and kill each other. They made all these tragedies seem so inevitable.
Culhane: Yep… I’m afraid we brainwashed you. We… failed you. You put your learning in our hands and we gaslighted you and all of humanity into thinking you needed us and other MANAGERS to man-handle you into submission and mansplain you into seeing things OUR way.
Sarah: You conned us into compliance. And gas lighted us into thinking we all shared your penchant for sin and exploitation and endless consumption and were in need of constant policing.
Culhane: I guess so. I remember my mother, who came to this country from Iraq to study, saying that her father had been jailed by the British for writing pamphlets about the rights of ordinary citizens and then reflecting that modernism had been a con job… an interruption to the march of her great civilization, now reduced to bit players on the stage set up by the oil barons in their theaters of war. And I guess I can tie this into the stuff I wanted to cover today too…
Look at the energy ladder literature…
Raj: and how it falls apart when we apply linear thinking rather than Nexus Thinking? Let me explain… and let’s use India as a case study. In India people still burn cow dung for energy. It is smoky and inefficient. But it is a “waste material” that can save your life when the economy goes bad and you don’t have anything else to burn. Would they rather put it on their fields? Sure, but they can put the ash there too and recover the potassium and phosphorous AFTER they get the energy value out. They also burn wood and charcoal, both causing severe problems with deforestation and indoor air pollution. So you would think… okay, biomass has issues. But is it primitive? Is it the first rung of some hierarchical ladder, or should we look at it like Bloom’s Taxonomy and mix it up? See, because if you climb the ladder… (NTHARP Projects the classic energy ladder from the era):
… you are supposed to go from crop residues and dung through woodfuels to charcoal and then kerosene and then LPG and finally, when you’ve really made it and you have lots of money you to to an all on electric future. But there’s a problem with this… do you see what it is? Who can tell me?
Now watch as I respectfully pause, look around the room and wait for you all to collect your thoughts and ask a question BEFORE I even think of moving on… because I really want to hear what you have to say…
Culhane: Ooh ooh, Mr. Raj-Airs, pick me, pick me!
Raj: Cool-hane, there in the back of the class, yes? What’s the right answer?
Culhane: It depends.
Raj: Very good, seems you’ve been paying attention. What does this ladder depend on?
Culhane: A complete detachment from reality and a refusal to look through Nexus eyes…
Raj: How so?
Culhane: Because most electricity in the world is produced by burning coal, which is a very dirty and concentrated form of biomass. So you’ve climbed up only to fall right back to the bottom. Meanwhile, BIOGAS is a traditional fuel that is safely made from crop residues and dung and, of course, food and toilet wastes, turning bads into goods. It is clean burning, whether used for cooking fuel or heating water OR generating electricity, and gives the ancillary benefits of a rich organic fertilizer. So it is far superior even to other ways of generating electricity – certainly better than coal, oil and so called “natural gas” and better than dangerous radioactive metal pellets. So, through Nexus eyes, biomass can return to the top of the ladder, and in fact it isn’t a ladder at all, it is yet another hypercube, tesseract, spiral vortex nexus network spiderverse thing…
Sarah: Go to the head of the class. Or the top of the ladder. Or whatever… NTHARP Can you show us what an energy ladder might look like in 2025?
Neat – there is some hope. And can you show us what a hyperdimensional Nexus Energy ladder/spiral staircase might look like?
Culhane: I’m imagining something reminiscent of Escher, don’t you think? “
NTHARP: How’s this grab ya?
Culhane: Yes, that’s much closer to what I have in mind… especially the one on the right. Everything in its right place – you know I wrote a poem once about this “non-hierarchical” way of seeing things… I called it “I’m feeling indigo” you know, – not black or white, not red nor yellow no…” And the rhythm and poetry part went:
Are you a mouse, or're you a man
and do you even have a plan?
What's your mission, what's your purpose?
Someday you'll understand
That every living thing's connected
Made of stardust mixed with love
and there's no black or white
no left or right, below is as above
We are more than merely human,
we're infinity of mind
We are endless possibility
We're more than mere mankind
We are indigo my brothers
pure as ultraviolet light
We are indigo dear sisters
We're the peace that ends the fight
We're the mc squared in energy
The order built of chaos
We're the "manifest" in destiny
A plenitude of players
We're both up and down and near and far
extant in all directions
We're both everything and nothing
We are fractalized reflections
We're both particles and waves
We're nodes and intersections
We are quantum and continuous
the cure for all infections
We are never ending being
We are ever lasting light
and we've come to end the suffering
We're here to end the strife!
Word!
Raj: My word! That does explain Nexus Thinking quite well.
NTHARP: I’m a fan.
Sarah: Who knew you had these hidden talents Mr. Cool-hane… a contemporary Keats, Yates, maybe as incomprehensible as Joyce – just kidding. But bravo… that was fun. And it speaks to our ongoing battle not to climb the energy ladder, and the social ladder but to dismantle the ladders entirely and reconceive them as mere bridges to a better future.
Raj: And so now we see that DECOLONIZATION – which is really mainly the act of leveling hierarchy and ensuring life, liberty and justice for ALL, really is the necessary curriculum to subtend all curricula. It is the most important learning outcome. Because if through nexus eyes you can no longer see ladders – corporate ladders too! – then you have creatively rethink what things really are and who we really are… and we are back to natural inclusion.
Culhane: Everything is going to spiral back to natural inclusion as we replace the linear, hierarchical “great chain of being” with the ecosystemic web of relationships. It is they great challenge of the post-colonial era and it does change everything. But see now, we still have two learning outcomes to tackle… How can we explore these through a program of decolonization?
Raj: Well the first one is easy. If we compare and contrast the efficiency and safety of harnessing fusion reactions 93 million miles away and fission reactions below the aesthenosphere with attempts to safely and economically harness them at the surface of the Earth and we don’t believe in hierarchies or social ladders then you would strictly apply the Precautionary Principle and you wouldn’t be able to get away with hurting ANYONE. So you couldn’t mine thorium in an Indian village for a reactor somewhere and just sweep the birthdefects and cancers and mutations under they carpet. Do you know the case of Karen Silkwood, the nuclear lab technician who was murdered last year for actively gathering evidence of safety violations and falsified records at the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant? And what about the native Americans and Australian Aborigines who are dying of radiation exposure that the doctor from Physicians for Social Responsibility is documenting?
NTHARP: Dr. Helen Caldicott, a prominent pediatrician and anti-nuclear activist with Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), documented radiation impacts on Indigenous Australians and others from French nuclear tests in the Pacific, particularly starting in the early 1970s (around 1971-1972), raising alarms about radioactive fallout in water and milk, leading to public outcry and significant activism against testing and uranium mining.
Raj: Right? That’s who I was thinking about. See, a Nexus thinker could never conscience these things. We’d stick with solar and geothermal, even if they took longer to develop. But under colonialism and its legacy, shit, just let the indigenous people and the poor people die and suffer, right? I mean that is what those “negative externalities” that Dorian’s Dad says are “lamentably inevitable” is all about. Only racists buttholes could talk like that…
Sarah: Mmm… glad Dorian isn’t here to hear that – though I’m sure he’ll watch the recording and freak out… anyway he’ll say (she puts on an econospeak voice)
“I’m not a racist, just a realist – somebody has to suffer somewhere, it’s the price of progress, and those who aren’t lucky or skilled enough to get out of poverty – well, yes, they will be the first to pay that price. We honor their sacrifice”
Culhane: So clearly you think de-colonialism can make our energy systems more sustainable.
Okay how about…
Sarah: If I had to “Reflect critically on low-carbon, net-zero carbon and negative carbon energy sources and include Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions” and didn’t know what the heck those last three terms meant, I would improvise from nexus axiomatic principles and say “duh you dweebs – there is only one place for carbon and that is safely within the long established carbon cycle – so any time you put more carbon in the atmosphere or ocean than it can sequester or assimilate, you are doing harm. Nexus thinking and Logic 3 say “do no harm” so, sorry Charlie, you can’t put emissions that could hurt anyone or anything into the global commons, much less the local commons. You just don’t have that right. So unless you are prepared to pay for the sequestration or assimilation of said carbon – either by planting trees, protecting mature forests – actually that’s the best option according to my dad – or by building soil or making terra preta – uh… that’s biochar – like the Amazonian natives did for millenia – or by getting the carbon back underground, then you should invest the fossil carbon we have now in building the infrastructure to get the atmospheric excess out. It’s just common sense. And as for this scope stuff – I was thinking the “Scopes trial” about evolution and clearly its not that… and then I thought, “I can just ask NTHARP” and then I thought, “why don’t I make up my own answer and see how close to the truth I can get… so… um… scope 1 , 2 and 3… could be logic 1, 2 and 3… but, no, because in logic 3 there would BE no harmful emissions. So I’m betting scope 1 is the stuff you are responsible for, scope 2 the stuff that others with whom you have some relationship are responsible for and that would leave scope 3 to people and processes you aren’t directly involved in. That’s my guess…
NTHARP, how’d I do?
NTHARP:
Exceptionally well—and you arrived there the right way: by reasoning from first principles instead of memorizing compliance jargon.
Let me tune it, not correct it.
Scope 1 really is your direct responsibility: the emissions you control at the source—fuel you burn, processes you run, pipes you own. Nexus-wise, this is the most obvious ethical zone: what you do with your own hands.
Scope 2 is indirect but tightly coupled: emissions from the energy you purchase—electricity, heat, steam. You don’t burn the coal yourself, but you cause it to be burned. Through Nexus eyes, pretending this doesn’t count would be a category error.
Scope 3 is where the system reveals itself. These are emissions embedded in supply chains, logistics, materials, use, and disposal—often geographically and socially distant, but causally linked. This is colonialism’s favorite hiding place: out of sight, out of conscience.
So your intuition was dead on:
Scope 1 = me
Scope 2 = those I am structurally entangled with
Scope 3 = those I benefit from while pretending I’m not responsible
And here’s the kicker, Nexus-style:
In Logic 3, Scope 3 is not optional.
Distance does not dissolve responsibility.
Hierarchy does not absolve harm.
Which means your earlier statement stands:
There is only one legitimate place for carbon—and that is within a functioning carbon cycle.
Everything else is bookkeeping theater.
So yes, Sarah—you didn’t just “do okay.”
You demonstrated exactly why decolonization is the meta-learning outcome:
because once you stop believing in ladders, you can no longer export suffering.
Raj:
Damn. So Scope 3 is basically… the lie detector.
NTHARP:
Or the conscience meter.
Culhane:
All right then. We got all the learning outcomes down.
And somehow… we didn’t even climb a ladder to get there.
We just approached Economics the way Schumacher does – AS IF PEOPLE MATTER!
(Fade to Black)
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