The world is a big mess, and getting worse by the day. Ukraine escalation. Inflation. Enormous debt. Supply chains still struggling. Petrodollar collapse. U.S. hegemony falling apart. Nuke war threats. And much more. Are we doomed, or is this actually some good news? The world is a complex system, and system collapse is how things get fixed. There may be no other way out for us.
Fragile means easily damaged or broken. Like our world today. Why should this be so? Our world, physically at least, looks pretty sturdy and robust. The problem here is how we define our “world”. Our world in reality consists of a huge number of semi-autonomous complex systems that are deeply interconnected and interdependent – and inherently fragile. Is our world truly survivable?
Big things are definitely happening today, even if they have not yet managed to reach broadly catastrophic dimensions. What we are clearly facing, almost certainly, is a set of major threats to our business and organizational survival. These threats are largely or completely unforeseeable in nature, magnitude, and timing. You can’t realistically “prep” for these: You can only tackle your survivability.
The Russia-Ukraine-NATO conflict has virtually chased COVID from the news. Fears of a Russia-U.S. nuclear World War III are going off the charts. End-of-the-world stuff. But do these media-stoked fears have any real basis in fact? If so, what do we actually have to do to be among the majority who will certainly survive?
Life in the old normal was stable, predictable, manageable. Life in the new normal of constant major change is creating Darwinian survival challenges. Size and strength, or being the fittest, will not make you a winner (i.e., survival-plus-success). As Darwin wisely observed back around 1870, it is the most adaptable who ultimately come out on top. Just how do you go about this adaptability thing?
