Liberating the Captured Imagination
What does the climate crisis have to teach us? Are we listening to what the Earth is telling us, as planetary systems necessary for the maintenance of life continue to unravel?
systems thinking
Introduction to The Web of Meaning
As our civilization careens toward a precipice of climate breakdown, ecological destruction, and gaping inequality, people are losing their existential moorings. Our dominant worldview has passed its expiration date: it’s based on a series of flawed assumptions that have been superseded by modern scientific findings.
Feedback Loops and Climate Catastrophe, or… the Story of the Baseball Bloodbath (Episode 45 of Crazy Town)
This episode examines the fascinating world of positive feedback loops, which play an outsized role in the not-so-positive phenomena of climate change, biodiversity loss, and political polarization.
A flyfishing ecology
One of the greatest and most overwhelming conceptual breakthroughs of my life was the realization that everything in our universe is connected and interacting in networks of interdependent cause and effect through time.
The story of Adélaïde Merle: My journey to systemic thinking
The Design Studio course and Ecovillage Design Education programme are empowering courses that helped me learn how to think in a systemic holistic way and become aware of privileges and biases along the process.
Facing the Eye of the Needle
The image of the Ever Given — needing to unload its cargo in order to get unstuck — represents in a microcosm the collective impediment that rich countries and Western civilization embody today: holding on to stuff and refusing to share with those who are on the other side of the social divide.
Cognitive Bias and Global Warming, or… the Story of Cattle Prods and Ice Cream Shops (Episode 32 of Crazy Town)
Jason, Rob, and Asher take a tour of ice cream shops, Scandanavian DMVs, and the chess team to explain such cognitive biases as the Dunning-Kruger effect, confirmation bias, default effect, and sunk cost bias.
Scientists must learn how to interact with Indigenous people
It is time for the great advances of Western science to catch up to the traditional interconnected thinking of Indigenous people, to help move us all forward toward a more resilient future.
Facilitating communities of practice: from individual to ecosystem learning outcomes
The concept ‘community of practice’ is underpinned by an assumption that learning is a social process rather than a passive act of knowledge transfer between a knowledge giver (usually a master, expert or teacher) and a knowledge receiver (usually an apprentice, a novice or student).
Cracks in the supply chain: Is metastable turning into unstable?
What we are witnessing as a result of this pandemic is a widespread challenge to metastable systems upon which our societies depend. The most obvious are those related to hospitals and health care products. We often read in the news that hospitals are near “the breaking point” as if the hospital walls will burst when too many patients crowd into the building.
White Supremacism and the Earth System
The US is on the brink of becoming a racist failed state. It is no accident that this terrible moment arrives in the midst of a global pandemic; an escalating economic crisis; an oil sector meltdown. This is a perfect storm of simultaneous, complex crises. How did we get here? How do we solve this?
Koala Butts Ablaze and the Sweet Relief of the Adaptive Cycle (Episode 25 of Crazy Town)
Join Asher, Rob, and Jason as they give a guided tour of the growth, conservation, collapse, and reorganization phases of the cycle, and hash out how it can be applied to the modern world.