FutureCast 0016 - James Carter: Organized Junk Drawers

James Carter served five years as a U.S. Navy hospital corpsman, the combat medic attached to Marine units. These days he calls himself "multi-local" — splitting his time across places rather than settling in one, most recently taking on a building renovation in Morocco. He resists fixed titles, preferring to describe himself as "an organized junk drawer": a working collection of skills and interests picked up along the way, none of which quite belong in any one category.This is the first FutureCast recorded out in nature.We get into: the difference between war and conflict and whether humans will ever see the end of either, why he'd rather we'd descended from bonobos than chimps, Buckminster Fuller's idea that you don't repair a broken system but build something new at its edge, how the social contract has been quietly rewritten since the Industrial Revolution, why an organized junk drawer is a better way to hold an identity than a tidy silverware drawer, belonging as a choice rather than a feeling and the gap between being welcome somewhere and truly living there, the study suggesting people end up happier with choices they're not allowed to reverse, Obama's rule about acting at fifty-one percent certainty, why moving somewhere to "pioneer" a community usually backfires and what integrating looks like instead. Timestamps6:38 How James introduces himself: medic, neurobiology, multi-local10:40 The organized junk drawer17:59 Choosing your chaos vs. chaos imposed on you24:32 Is the enemy real? Social media and complex systems28:41 Is war uniquely human?31:23 The social contract since the Industrial Revolution34:33 Why record these conversations in nature40:42 War vs. conflict, and whether it ever ends42:57 Chimps, bonobos, and resolving conflict45:55 Seeing people as people54:25 "Left vs. right" feels antiquated58:54 You never start from a blank slate — Buckminster Fuller1:01:21 Going multi-local and finding fertile ground1:09:01 You don't pioneer a community, you integrate1:15:16 Neutral ground (and baseball in Morocco)1:17:49 Fruit pause: rapid-fire silly questions1:30:33 Why everyone's a "Doctor," and medic vs. doctor1:35:59 The estimation game: a million vs. a billion1:42:33 What does it mean to belong?1:48:40 Welcome vs. belonging; belonging to a story1:59:45 Choosing, the art study, and Obama's 51% rule2:07:41 Three virtues for a cult2:13:54 Sentimental objects, and a gift to a strangerFind James: in the wildPeople & Concepts Mentioned:Buckminster Fuller — systems thinker; the geodesic dome, and building new structures at the edges of old onesChimps vs. bonobos — two ways of resolving conflict, and which one we resembleInternal vs. external locus of control — acting on the world versus being acted uponBarack Obama — deciding once he's about fifty-one percent sureKarl Marx — where unequal systems eventually leadMary Poppins — the bottomless bag, as a foil for the junk drawerRamadan & Eid al-Fitr — the village celebration behind the gift-giving storyThe Industrial Revolution — the last comparable pivot in how we organize work and valueA behavioral-economics choice study — people rated art they couldn't swap higher than art they could