Round and Around We Go

The Aesthetic of Coevolution

There is something about the human mind and about the way we use it that is at once quirky and persistently primitive: seriously out-of-kilter with contemporary reality. Of particular interest to me in this regard is the way we try to provision for the needs of a growing global population.

Neoliberal economic theories have generated a cycle of desire and consumption. This is propelled by an arrangement where objects and services can be acquired through a widely accepted system of exchange that hinges on labour and wages, as well as credit and debt. This materialist wealth-generating fantasy has become a global infatuation. It defines our major concerns and purpose in life.

I imagine this cycle as a dazzling Ferris wheel in the theme park of human experience. It is so massive, so all-encompassing, that it blocks out the sun. All other rides look dull by comparison, even though the wheel is beginning to show its age.

Each passenger capsule houses a distinct crowd who are on the ride for a particular reason. They are all relatively affluent. Some groups might be here to buy the latest gadgets. Others seek funds to develop innovative products. A few want to buy a second home, or a more fashionable outfit. Food, drink and entertainment  are included in the price of the ticket.

Millions of people stand around and watch - envy etched on their faces. They all hope for a ticket - but the price is prohibitive for most. Centripetal acceleration means that few are sufficiently agile enough to jump onboard the moving attraction, while only an insane individual would want to get off. A few people are beginning to feel nauseous and sense that the wheel is speeding up. But their cries for assistance go unheeded in the hubbub of marketing mayhem.

Meanwhile very few people on the ground have sufficient motivation or experience to know they should be rushing to apply the brakes. They simply continue to queue up, as instructed by the owners of the theme park, in a never-ending line of forlorn hope.

That is us. Trapped on a modern-day ship of fools. A contraption of human ingenuity, no doubt, but simply unable to see that we should get off or at least slow down. We manage our affairs as though they were entirely straightforward mechanisms where one size fits all. We cry foul when others point out that our map is inaccurate, or that there are several incompatible maps. We share the illusion that establishing targets to achieve desired outcomes will work and that reality will simply bow to our aims. We persist in the belief that the resources we are using will always be there for us, even though we can see with our own eyes they are diminishing. We keep on patching up the engine of the ride, rather than designing a new one requiring cleaner fuel...

Need I go on? We are held back by a number of fallacious constructs, many related to the tree of ignorance. On the one hand we revere expert knowledge, yet tend to be guided more by opinions than science. We habitually construct arguments using only partial, inadequate, or ambiguous information. We throw tantrums when our integrity is questioned, trapping us in baffling compromises between equally wretched choices. We resist trying to find neutral ground, preferring to focus on the things that separate us rather than those that unite us. And we take short-cuts - citing extreme costs, little time, or just too much complexity - when we could be transcending most of today's wicked problems by exploring them through the lens of entirely new ontologies. Not only that...

We are fearful of challenging deeply embedded superstitions that guided the daily lives of our ancestors - indeed individuals are often pilloried when they do mount a serious challenge to widely-accepted orthodoxies. Heresy they cry! Worse, we are easily seduced by ignorant yet attention-grabbing drivel that appeals to our innate desire not to disturb the status quo. Is it any wonder that we are so reluctant to dismount the frenzied pace of the Ferris wheel?

An oft-repeated mantra heard during the global economic meltdown of 2008 was that a bank, corporation or industry, was too big to fail. I was unsure whether this meant that its size, wealth, or customer base would inevitably prevent failure, or that it was too important to be allowed to fail and must therefore receive some form of help. It reminded me of a quaint sign I once saw in the toilet of a train in Britain, which said "Gentlemen Lift the Seat". In that instance I was unsure whether it was meant as an instruction, a goal, or simply someone's assumed definition of a gentleman.

Although the axiom ‘too big to fail’ has been used mostly to emphasize the value of a particular institution, industry or enterprise to the economy, it inadvertently reveals a common fallacy - one that happens to be at the core of our thinking about business and the environment.

In fact nothing is too big to fail. Not a society, nor even a civilization. Indeed, specific traits underpinning past civilizational failures reveal a fragility in terms of hubris and aspirational errors that are undeniable.

In nature, too, nothing is too big to fail. Large, overly-complicated systems invariably crash. To understand why that is so one needs to step back from our prevailing set of beliefs, especially the conviction that we operate separately from nature's rules and limits, and can therefore exercise authority over a particular course of events. We can not. Which is why all the target-setting in the world ultimately has no real impact on dynamically complex systems like the economy or natural ecosystems. Nature is in the driver’s seat. The sooner we realize that the more fluid and adaptive our policies will become, and the less futile our actions.

The truth of the matter is that we are ecologically illiterate. Not just unfamiliar with indispensable scientific vocabulary and concepts, but spectacularly, catastrophically, tragically stupid! Some of us now appreciate that draining pristine aquifers, felling tropical rainforests, deep-ocean trawling and pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere are self-destructively dumb things to do. But when it comes down to understanding how nature itself behaves, and why, we remain outrageously naive.

Science tells us that any dynamically complex system - be it an economy, a natural ecosystem, an organization or a community - tends to go through fundamental phase adjustments or adaptations throughout the course of its life cycle. There is even a name for it. We call it the coevolutionary cycle. There are four phases in this cycle. They are growth, consolidation, collapse and renewal.

The initial phase is characterized by an openness to a range of possibilities. As the system organizes itself into being, creative energies open up all kinds of options, roles to be filled, innovations to adopt, paths to take, and partnerships to be explored. The potential for growth is rich and seemingly unlimited at this stage.

After a while, however, the system begins to coalesce into fewer and less diverse activities. Efficiencies are sought, standards imposed, and innovation lessens as a consequence. As the system matures, rules blend everything together in ways that restrict further options. During this consolidation phase the system is still growing, while becoming more stable. It may also appear to be more durable, whereas it is actually becoming ever more vulnerable to forces outside of its control.

The Achilles heel in any large sprawling system is inherent in this phase. As soon as each agent is braided into an entangled whole, tiny or subtle adjustments in a remote part of the system can cascade catastrophically throughout the whole. Think of the arsonist’s match at the edge of a township or a small failure in a local generator that brings down an entire section of a power distribution network.

As we experience dramatic shifts in extreme weather, we can appreciate just how, in an overly mature system, disruptions that start small can escalate rapidly, sometimes spinning totally out of human control. For example, as the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases the oceans become more acidic. At a critical, albeit unknown point, this could potentially shut down entire food webs. Given our reliance on the oceans for food and carbon sequestration this would be sufficient to generate a crisis in its own right. But at this stage we are doing nothing to prevent such a disaster.

The question of ocean acidity also illustrates how easy it is to cross thresholds (even just a small increase in carbon dioxide can precipitate catastrophe) and fall into self-reinforcing feedback loops. Large consolidated systems are particularly vulnerable to such runaway scenarios. Think of the domino effect within the densely connected global economy where a financial product built on thin air (credit-default swaps) and fuelled by greed, led to the collapse of Bear Stearns, then Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG. What appeared to be hardly credible one day eventually happened with such extraordinary speed the next.

The third phase in the typical coevolutionary cycle is collapse. This generally transpires from a lack of resilience – the capacity of any socio-ecological system to withstand shocks, deal with disturbances and persist, either by navigating change and, if feasible, helping to shape future conditions, or returning to the previous stable state.

The resilience of whole systems has been a field mostly overlooked in management circles. Instead, we prefer to stubbornly cling to the delusion of command and control.

When I was a boy, at a time when resources seemed limitless and economic growth became the dominant paradigm, such neglect was explicable. But we are now feeling the impact of such a casualness lack of foresight. It is because everything in this world is not simply linked but intertwined, that when mature systems go into a state of shock the ensuing collapse feels like an earthquake rather than erosion. This is precisely what we are beginning to feel now we are aware of the immense damage we have inflicted on our natural environment that sustains all life.

Although it may be tricky to detect during the mayhem and commotion of a systemic collapse, enormous amounts of energy are released in this phase of the cycle. Indeed it is this energy that leads to the potential for renewal – the final phase of coevolution. After seeds are cracked open by a forest fire, seedlings thrive in the nutrient-rich loam. They soak up newly available sunlight where the forest canopy has opened to the sky. Then, as those open spaces start to fill, the growth phase begins anew.

It is important to appreciate that collapse does not inevitably lead to regeneration as we would ideally design it. On the contrary, this phase actually creates bifurcation points where many unknown paths and trajectories reappear once again. Collapse can also lead to rapid transitions and unexpected shifts in qualitatively different situations and configurations. At other times it may generate a totally new, unwanted regime. There can be no guarantee – which is why adaptation and the ability to navigate become such vital literacies.

Fire, for example, can renew woodland by clearing debris and resetting the ecological clock. On the other hand, when combined with a prolonged drought, it can set the scene for desertification. In social systems we can influence to some extent whether the outcome is positive or negative by designing with intent: establishing desired goals, providing encouragement and incentives, creating liberating policies that promote diversity, resilience and long-term viability, continuously monitoring and recalibrating the results, or even taking dramatic corrective action.

Once we are able to tune in to the transitional phases of the co-evolutionary cycle, we see them unfolding all around us. At first they may seem overwhelmingly complex, especially when compared to the tidier, more linear models that shape conventional ways of seeing the world. But ignoring that cycle as you build an economy is akin to denying gravity as you build a skyscraper. Indigenous people know this. Perhaps it is time to take more notice of their sagacity and wisdom.

‘Too big to fail’ is a warning signal. It cautions us to take deeper, far more forensic, research and consider whether the seemingly impregnable edifice in front of us is closer to collapse than it appears to be and, if so, to ask what can be done about it.

If we were more ecologically astute we would probably intervene by breaking it up, thus creating space for new niches and for the more dynamic diversity that flows naturally into such a system. The last thing we would do is to prop it up in the futile hope that it would not collapse. Nor would we contemplate setting meaningless targets that achieve absolutely nothing at that stage of the game.

Our ignorance of the coevolutionary cycle is an example of our ecological illiteracy. In truth we are inept at reading all sorts of natural signs. Take the idea of thresholds, for example. Those points of criticality where the slightest nudge can tip an economy into recession or a climate into a new regime of monstrous floods and epic droughts.

Thresholds are the gates between the phases in the coevolutionary cycle, except that they are often one-way: once you stumble through them, it is impossible to get back. Which is why it is crucially important to understand where they are and to be able to identify them. Although we are familiar with the notion of ‘tipping points’ (mostly because we have figured out, albeit belatedly, that we have already crossed too many of them in terms of the climate crisis) we are still abysmal at perceiving, and therefore avoiding, critical thresholds before we reach them.

Understanding exactly where a threshold is located may be tricky. But we can at least look for signs of their boundaries and deliberately try to avoid crossing them when the unintended consequences of doing so can be both unpredictable and dire. There are usually ample warnings after all: the reservoir level is lower each year; the colors in the coral reef are fading; mercury levels in the lake are increasing; severe droughts are becoming more frequent...

Once you have driven off a cliff, it does you little good to realize that you are falling. The time to practice water conservation is prior to the dams and the wells running dry. In other words before the threshold is reached.

Still, if we really were attentive to the natural cycles unfolding around us, we would not be attracted to growth like moths to a flame. We would not equate more growth with success, but with risk, heralding imminent collapse. We certainly would not be aiming today to rebuild yesterday's busted economy so that, tomorrow, we can resume our unlimited looting of nature's storehouse. On the contrary we would try to acquire prosperity and well-being without the need for rampant development.

Until recently we had imagined ourselves unconstrained by limits or rules imposed by nature. Encouraged by ancient scriptures urging us to dominate the Earth, we obliged with unimaginable zeal, building an extensive economy where faster, cheaper, bigger, more (and still more) added up to the winning hand.

Then we behaved as though our ultimate authority over everything, from resource scarcity to those melting ice sheets, was a foregone conclusion. Facing thresholds where the red lights were visibly blinking we simply told ourselves that we would figure out how to tweak the engineering a bit, add a new technology here and there, make room for a few more billion passengers, and push down on the throttle.

We got it terribly wrong. A capitalist economy based on constant, unlimited growth is a reckless whimsy because natural ecosystems can not be limitless - there are only so many pollinators, so many aquifers, so much fertile soil. In nature, unchecked rapid growth is the ideology of the invasive species and the cancer cell. Growth as an end in itself is ultimately self-destructive.

If ‘recovery’ from economic meltdowns, pandemics, and the impacts of shifts in the climate is just another word for a return to business-as-usual we will be squandering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to construct a civilization that might remain viable for generations to come, without overloading the Earth's carrying capacity and courting catastrophe.

Remember that renewal phase of the coevolutionary cycle? Here's where that comes in. Yes, collapse can be a nightmare, but it also presents new possibilities. If we were more conscious of the thresholds we have already crossed, we might think differently about the next iteration of the global economy. Humans can always cross a threshold of their own making and decide to live differently. Unrestrained growth, after all, was never a prerequisite for health, happiness, equity or justice.

What would an end to separation from nature and from each other feel like? How might it be expressed daily and in policies that are both liberating and intelligent? The renewal phase that is dawning even now urges us to answer these questions.

This much is clear. Our external world is merely the manifestation of an internal state of mind. The problem is not global warming, soil degradation, water scarcity, extreme weather events, or ocean acidity. It is not even all of these combined. The real issue is how we think about ourselves in relation to nature. That is what we need to change.

If we want to avoid endless hardship, conflict and ecological catastrophes, we must become ecologically literate – and deeply so. The future is, you might say, too big to fail. Which is why developing a new literacy of regenerative praxis is so important and why there is so much to learn from nature itself.

Regenerative practices derived from nature, like permaculture, rewilding and holistic grazing, are at once an admission of our inability to solve problems independently of others (divorced from the environment that is the support system for all life on this planet) as well as a solution staring us in the face.

Albert Einstein famously said that we cannot solve the problems we have brought on ourselves by using the same cognition that created those problems. He was right but we have yet to agree!

Adaptive literacies can help us to shift to higher levels of consciousness from which to comprehend the more critical issues facing us. They are about inquiring together into the motivations and values that compel us to act in ways that are self-destructive, while instituting policies to change these. They are about changing our innate cultural guidance system so as to wean us off waste, greed, profligacy and excess – installing frugality, responsibility, resilience and sustainability in their place. And they to do with becoming sufficiently literate to act in time to avoid crashing through thresholds that promise only further uncertainty and risk.