Current economic, social, environmental and political turmoil are increasingly fostering an atmosphere of uncertainty and upheaval, anxiety and insecurity. Many find themselves wondering how we can best meet this moment and rise to the occasion; or whether we can actually ‘meet’ the unprecedented circumstances at all. 

The crises may feel too deep and convoluted, the powers fueling them too strong for our actions to make a meaningful difference. In this confusion, however, there is an opportunity to re-imagine and re-pattern, to reorganize and reformulate the pieces, and take deliberate actions now that can build real transformative momentum.

This work is grounded in ‘pattern literacy’, inviting us to look beyond the events, and discern and navigate the underlying rhythms and structures that weave through seemingly disparate occurrences; thereby not just seeing the connections but the patterns they make, the interplay of forces shaping our realities, and the way they cascade in chain reactions.

Although humanity’s current socio-economic and ecological predicament as it’s unfolding in front of us may feel very unfamiliar and uncomfortable, the patterns and dynamics underlying this polycrisis are anything but random. They are rooted in the history of human civilization and in human psychology. And mimic the ways many civilizations in the past few thousands of years tried to respond when faced with a critical rupture point.

Gaining a more granular understanding in the core patterns & dynamics that fuel these behaviours and outcomes in societies and in ourselves over time, using insights from deep history as well as behavioural psychology, can help us overcome confusion and ‘action paralysis’. It can create deeper clarity around how these processes can or are play(ing) out and where opportunities lie to act or intervene in order to disrupt respectively strengthen the cycle. In doing so, we start to look beyond merely things & events and see the relationships between them; we go beyond the relationships and see the (societal and behavioural) patterns they make and how they are wired throughout society, (human) nature, and ourselves; and eventually we start to clearly recognize the loops, thereby reclaiming our agency to untangle them.

It also helps to remind ourselves that systems change is usually not linear. In dynamic systems, effecting many small changes over time can result in sudden, significant shifts. An analogy would be the gradual increase in water pressure against a dam till it reaches breaking point. This should not be confused with incrementalism, as the underlying aim is not to merely tweak on the edges of the system but to purposefully create the conditions for profound change to take root in order to transform systems at their core. This means that taking many small, promising steps now as part of deliberate early preparation and anticipation for when a "moment of the whirlwind" or "window of opportunity" strikes, as "pre-emptive peace strikes", or as a form of anticipatory disaster recovery, can result in significantly amplified beneficial impacts later on.