Two Lenses
Many lenses can be used to bring our current time into focus. Clear seeing is available by studying history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, theology. Each of these disciplines provides concepts and beliefs that explain human behavior both individually and collectively. In this book, I use two lenses: the new science of living systems, and the pattern of collapse in complex civilizations. Each of them is a powerful lens on its own;
I have found that together they offer tremendous explanatory power for where we are, how we got here, and the choices we must make as leaders.
Science of Living Systems
The science of living systems is a powerful explanator of human behavior and the world we inhabit. We are alive, we inhabit a living planet, and we are subject to the dynamics of living systems whether we acknowledge them or not. These dynamics are “scale-independent” and can be used to explain what’s going on—cause and effect—from single individuals to the entire planet. Why are we witnessing exponential increases in narcissism, polarization, conflict, aggression, dictatorships, climate change, species loss? Each of these terrible realities can be understood using the lens of living systems.
New science revealed, through decades of experimentation and evidence, that living systems organize using dynamics that include self-organizing based on identity, relationships woven together in complex networks, an inherent order displayed in chaos and complexity, the role of shared meaning to create coherent yet nonpoliced actions among individuals.
Globally, a noteworthy minority of leaders in all types of organizations and professions were inspired by these images of creativity and chaos, order without control, interdependent systems growing in capacity and complexity, the primacy of relationships. Such promises motivated many to work to create healthy communities, organizations, and societies. Now, in spite of our years of dedicated efforts, we are greatly fatigued and in deep inquiry as how we might best contribute. And no wonder. Our work, as good and wise as it was, has not born fruit at large levels of scale, even though we have shining examples of what’s possible at local levels.5
Life’s dynamics do not change. They are reliable ways of understanding how life organizes, functions, and responds. This is my intention, to bring a level of understanding to what has happened in the past decades, not so that we can fix the large systems that now dominate and destroy, but so that we can do our work wherever we are, whatever it is, refusing to comply or participate with dominant culture and instead, as leaders, continue to work in partnership with life, restoring sanity wherever we can.
The Pattern of Collapse of Complex Civilizations
As many have commented, the only thing evident from the study of history is that we humans fail to learn from history. Yet those who do study the history of civilizations have illuminated the pattern of the rise and fall of complex human societies. The pattern of collapse is remarkably consistent, describing how humans always behave, even down to specific behaviors. To learn about this pattern is at once very troubling and very relieving: it’s good to understand where we are so we don’t keep struggling against inevitable behaviors and grievous to see where we are because of what can’t be changed. I have delved into the excellent body of literature on the collapse of civilizations for several years now; for this book, I’m primarily working with two: The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter and The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival by Sir John Glubb.
Both Glubb and Tainter have derived the pattern of collapse from studying complex human civilizations since Sumer, 3000 BCE. (I have also brought in anthropological research that reveals patterns of behavior going back more than 300,000 years, before hominids were sapiens.) Tainter’s work, first published in 1987, is acknowledged as the seminal work in establishing the pattern of collapse. He is a superb and dedicated scholar, both humble and clear. Over several years, he studied in depth many different societies; as he did so, the pattern became so clear that he felt no need to continue to study others in detail. “Collapse is a recurrent feature of human societies, and indeed it is this fact that makes it worthwhile to explore a general explanation. . . . The picture that emerges is of a process recurrent in history and prehistory, and global in its distribution.”6 (See the appendix for Tainter’s descriptors of collapse.)
Tainter’s analysis of collapse included civilizations on all continents and focuses on the sociopolitical aspects. Sir John Glubb studied thirteen civilizations in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, observing the process of moral decay from generation to generation that ends in collapse after ten generations. “The life-expectation of a great nation, it appears, commences with a violent, and usually unforeseen, outburst of energy, and ends in a lowering of moral standards, cynicism, pessimism and frivolity.”7 As you will learn here, he describes specific behaviors and attitudes of each age that read like news stories of our current time, but that are characteristic of all civilizations in their final days.
While each scholar highlights different aspects, the pattern is the same: No matter the geography, ethnicity, or spiritual traditions, humans always develop high culture, hierarchy, civic institutions, religion and the arts, and then, when in decline, our negative behaviors are also identical. I feel confident in labeling this the true DNA of our species, how we organize and behave through generations of creation and decline, no matter who we are culturally, where we are geographically, or when we lived in human history.
As I worked with both of these lenses—the science of living systems and the pattern of collapse—I found they were an excellent pair. They could explain how our unique digital culture has intensified our civilization’s movement through the last stages of collapse, yet also how the behaviors of each stage are predictable and inevitable.
The reason why complex societies disintegrate is of vital importance to every member of one, and today that includes nearly the entire world population.
Joseph Tainter
The DNA of Human Civilizations:
What We Always Create
When the Spaniards reached the American mainland in the early sixteenth century . . . what took place was truly exceptional, something that had never happened before and never will again.
Two cultural experiments running in isolation came face to face and each could recognize the other’s institutions. When Cortes landed in Mexico he found roads, canals, cities, palaces, schools, law courts, markets, irrigation works, kings, priests, temples, peasants, artisans, armies, astronomers, merchants, sports, theater, art, music, and books.
High civilization, differing in the details but alike in essentials, had evolved independently on both sides of the earth.
Ronald Wright