institutional failure

mientierra – from the Spanish miente (she/he lies) and tierra (land). It means "a false sense of solid ground beneath us", says Escott, to describe the experience of not being able to trust the land near a retreating coastline. It could also be applied as a metaphor for contemporary structures and systems that seem robust, but are not

Our systems, institutions, leaders and narratives about who and what we are — our lack of compassion and limited definitions of what a valued member of society is — are failing us. They have been failing us for quite some time

Relationships and dating, wellness, and media are also categories where we see the same thing—a loss of trust in institutions that leads to a newfound looseness. In some cases things may not be loose enough yet. In other cases, the looseness is already beginning to feel uncomfortable.

Peter Zeihan, geopolitical strategist and one of my favorite thinkers, has recently raised the point that the underpinnings of the economy have broken apart. Indeed, what happens when our measurements of the economy (inflation) are no longer accurate, and our tools for controlling the economy (interest rates) no longer work?

When measurements chang

We grew up in societies built upon certain assumptions about how the world works, and how the planet around us should be seen. We now know those assumptions were wrong in profound ways,

“I am not sure if I will vote for president this year,” replied reader Liz to my election ennui. Her heart is heavy with the 40,000 dead in Palestine, and it seems like voting "uncommitted" is the only way to meaningfully express this. She has lost faith in her ability to change the system. “I never imagined a future where I wouldn't part

Before a tipping point in a complex system, there are early warning signals that may be detected.14 The most widely applicable of these early warning signals is “critical slowing down”—the phenomenon we are all familiar with before our computer crashes, and rather than heed the implications of this slower processing power, we jam at the keys in fru

What does it mean to put one's foot down, though, when the other option is so terrifying? When the system doesn't give a shit whether your foot is down?

Elsewhere, while COVID-19 may have abated from peak hellish weirdness, the narratives that collapsed then have not been put back together again