Upstream - A Systems Perspective On Our Current Crisis with Nafeez Ahmed

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is a journalist and researcher who uses systems thinking to support the just transition to a more equitable and sustainable future. We contacted him after we came across his article, "White Supremacism and the Earth System," connecting the worldview that underpins capitalism to the racism that the Black Lives Matter movement is working to address, as well as the climate chaos and environmental devastation that we are experiencing globally. In this conversation, we spoke about why systems thinking is a useful practice, the connection between capitalism and white supremacy, and the great potential we are in for a global phase shift to a post-capitalist world. Nafeez is the executive director of the System Shift Lab and a research fellow at the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems. He currently writes for VICE and he is the author of "A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save it," and "Failing States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence."  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Ah The convergence of events we are witnessing is a symptom of a wider process of global systemic decline. This convergence is happening due to the unsustainable nature of a system that can no longer keep going in its current form without sparking further crisis. The ultimate hidden driver is a way of living and being premised on self-maximization through plunder of the other, whether others are different humans, different species, or the planet itself. You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream.

I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. And that was an excerpt from the article, White Supremacism and the Earth System, written by the guest of this Upstream Conversation, Dr. Nafiz Ahmed, a journalist and researcher who uses systems thinking to support the just transition to a more equitable and sustainable future. to support the just transition to a more equitable and sustainable future. Nafiz is the executive director of the System Shift Lab and a research fellow at the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems. He currently writes for Vice and is the author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization and How to Save It

and Failing States, Collapsing Systems, Biophysical Triggers of Political Violence. We spoke with him virtually from his home in London. Welcome to Upstream. It's great to have you. Thanks for having me. I'm just wondering if you could start by introducing yourself for our listeners. How might you introduce yourself? if you could start by introducing yourself for our listeners. How might you introduce yourself?

So my name is Nafiz Ahmed. I'm a systems theorist and investigative journalist for about 20 odd years. I've been writing and researching about the intersection of major global crises from climate change to energy to food, water, how these bigger system crises intersect with social, political and economic crises. Most recently, I'm creating a thing called the System Shift Lab, which is a, we're calling it a collective intelligence network to really kind of bring people together, whether you're people who are experts in different fields or practitioners

or people who are doing cool stuff, relevant to understanding systems and changing systems in all sorts of contexts, and really trying to just bring people together to learn how we can do this better and increase our collective understanding. Wonderful. Thank you. So you mentioned systems several times, and you introduced yourself as a systems thinker, systems theorist. So not everyone knows what that means. What does systems thinking mean to you? What does it mean to be a systems theorist? And why is that important? Why is that view important? I think the systems theory or systems thinking lens is a really, really powerful way of being able to make sense of the

world. Often the way that we have developed our kind of way of thinking is to do things in silos. And to some extent, that's got us quite far. You know, we look at particular things and we kind of look at their parts and see how they operate and reduce things down. We see how they work. But sometimes when you hold up a magnifying glass to something, you know, you can't really see the bigger picture. And so you end up missing all sorts of massively important things. You know, how do those things I'm looking at in the microscopic way, how do they fit with all the other things

that other people are looking at in microscopic ways? So systems thinking is often a great tool to step outside of those silos. And when you do that, what you come back with is a lens which actually enriches how you see what's going on at the microscopic scale that you might be looking. And suddenly, you have all sorts of new insights. In a really simple way, it's really just recognising that the world is built up of multiple different nested systems. You know, human being, human life, human organisms are systems. We live together in social systems and we organise through multiple different types of systems.

You know, we have economic systems which are embedded in energy systems. And there's a big wider context related to the earth system which we're in which is made up of all sorts of other systems environmental systems atmospheric system the ocean circulation system you know you can go on and on so there's lots of complexity and i think it's being able to develop those tools to see and understand what these systems are, how they operate, that can then give us all sorts of insights into really what's our place in the world, how do we make better decisions, when we can see what's actually going on around us, rather than just kind of focusing on the big thing that might be happening right now, we get to kind of have a longer view and also see its historical context.

So you get to see and think a lot bigger. And hopefully the idea is that you can then make much better decisions. It sounds hard, it sounds airy-fairy, it sounds difficult, but when you get down to it, really, it's a set of tools that have lots of practical implications. When you start looking at them and start implementing them, you really begin to see how useful they are. Yeah. And I love the way that you're bringing up the word seeing over and over again. And the way that you're describing systems thinking is seeing differently, that we can see what's immediately in front of us and perhaps think of change happening from our behaviors, right? Our individual actions. But when we think and see systemically,

we expand our vision, both in terms of global scale, but also in terms of time, right? So that seeing bigger, as you articulated, helps us know perhaps ramifications of larger actions or of our actions further out in ways that we couldn't physically see, but we can think of when we're thinking systemically. So I appreciate that frame. No, absolutely. So I'm wondering, because each of us are seeing the system from different places, I know you're in London right now. I'm wondering, how are you making sense of what's happening? I know we're speaking right now during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We're also speaking right now during the Black Lives Matter protests and, of course, all of the solidarity protests around the world that are also addressing things like the legacy of slavery and colonization. So I'm wondering, you know, when you sense into what's happening in the world right now, what are you seeing from where you are? What are you seeing in terms of the system? And maybe a little bit about what's breaking your heart right now and what's giving you hope, just so we can get to know you a little bit better and see from where you are in the world. Knowing that the pandemic and its systemic consequences go beyond

the immediate fatalities from the health impacts but you know there's so many ramifying consequences across different systems you know like the economic impact of everyone's aware of that in terms of the impacts of the lockdowns but also the impact of if you don't have lockdowns and you have large numbers of deaths and your healthcare system collapsing that has another huge economic impact. So we're caught within this strange place, which we've never seen before, where the economy is basically broken one way or another. And that itself is also affecting our energy system, it will affect our food systems. So all of that, I think, is that on the one hand, it's very kind of, it feels quite worrying,

you know, there's a lot of anxiety about what might happen in the future. And I think many of us are aware that there's going to be catastrophic impacts, which we're not going to be able to avert because of the stupidity of our existing institutions. But on the other hand, you know, you look at eruptions like Black Lives Matter, and you see that there is this opportunity. There is this massive awakening taking place. This movement of people who are saying enough is enough and it's been triggered by a very specific event. And it's focused very specifically, to some extent, on the crisis of structural racism.

But, you know, there's so many huge implications and so many huge impacts that we've seen from that in terms of the change of consciousness. I mean, the polling that's come out recently of opinion in America and Britain, for example, that now most people, these slim majorities, but still majorities now realise that while structural racism is real, it's a genuine problem. problem and you go back 10 years or 20 years and you look at the same polling and it was minorities of our populations who believed that there was still a real problem here so there's been a huge sea change you know perceptions are changing there's this waking up moment going on so there's this huge opportunity I think as well so that's kind of where I find myself sitting between this state of concern about the real problems that are happening right now and the impacts that are unavoidable because of the inertia that we've had but also the spaces that are opening up the opportunities the awakening that's taking place the fact that people are coming together in ways that might not have ever thought imaginable you

know a couple of years ago yeah thank you that. And the way that I came to know your work was from an article, because I know you're a journalist, is one of the things that you do, is an article titled White Supremacy and the Earth System. And in it, you really draw together a lot of these different societal challenges that we're facing. The structural racism that you spoke about, but also our ecological challenges and economic, all of the things you just spoke about. So I'd love to connect them a little bit more and see how you see those connections. So I guess first, because you do have a historical perspective as well, what do you see as the connection between white supremacy and capitalism?

Could you help make that clear for us? Because I think that that that's helpful to know. Well, I mean, yeah, it's a big question. I don't think there's a simple, easy answer. But I think, you know, you go back historically to the origins of capitalism. And I think it's first of all, you need to be quite precise about what you mean by capitalism. Because if you take standard business school economic theory, capitalism is just market economics. You have a market and you have a bit of a rule of law and you have people buying and selling and you have people making profit, that's capitalism. That's existed for millennia,

but it's not particularly distinctive. What's the distinction between different types of economies? Is there one? My view is that this is a highly simplistic view and there's a reason for that because it allows us to avoid looking at these complications in history and avoid seeing that capitalism is not a natural extension of human economic activity. It's a very specific structure and social system and I think its distinguishing feature has been identified by you know the Marxist critique doesn't matter whether you agree with Marx or hate Marx the

reality is that his very specific critique of that core social relation which identified this historical origin point that there was this point in time where through an action of violence various powerful actors in the society basically began to dispossess people from access to the earth in a way to productive resources you know means of production as you would say in conventional Marxist terminology so you're looking at things like access to land, access to resources, tools of production. And, you know, if you want to look at it from a more industrial point of view, mineral resources, technological infrastructure, information technologies. So the vast majority of people on the planet, as a result of this historical events that took place several hundred years ago don't have access to those

productive tools and resources we're just here and we have our labor power to sell to whoever who will buy them and then you have the other people who will employ us who are people who ultimately people who own those productive resources and institutions and tools and whatever you want to call them. So there is this really important historic thing that took place. Some people say that it happened in England around the 17th century and that was really where it kind of took off in the English countryside with the so-called enclosure movement where peasants were kind of expelled from the land and the aristocrats to control and that's one way of looking at it other people will say that no no no no it happened in

the caribbean and some people say it happened here and there but the important thing is to understand that distinguishing nature of that and when you do that then you see well if that's the point of origin you know where how did that social system expand? And, you know, it did pretty much expand through violent expansion, whether it started particularly in England or it started somewhere else in Europe or somewhere else. You know, it was associated to some extent with colonisation. And as we saw Western European empires expand across the globe, they may not have been fully fledged capitalists

when they began expanding. You know, there was a mix of feudalism, you know, different pre-capitalist social relations. Sometimes they were hybrid. People have argued that there were hybrid economic relations involved. When we look at the Americas, the thing that struck out to me as someone who was studying this during my PhD, my thesis was about trying to understand the dynamics of mass violence in the context of empires and my case studies were comparing British and Spanish colonization of the Americas so one of the things that struck me was how when the Spanish came to the Americas they viewed the indigenous people as a potential labor force

and they were integrating them into these kind of labor camps but what was happening is that those labor camps then became these death camps of disease so the intention wasn't yes let's kill the natives at the beginning the intention was let's use them for labor for our own purposes blah blah blah but it soon became really clear that they were literally dying out in hundreds and thousands and then hundreds and thousands. And before you knew it, you had a whole civilisation, several Native American civilisations collapsed

under the weight of this kind of biological economic onslaught. And the British had a different approach. Their approach was basically they saw the natives as a nuisance and the intensive agricultural practices that they wanted to bring, especially like growing cotton, for example, cotton production for the textile industry in England. They didn't see the natives as a viable labour source. So they just said, well, if we can't negotiate our way with these guys,

we'll just get rid of them. And that's often what happened again so you know they didn't go there setting out with this grand plan that let's go and exterminate them but in the contestations that occurred the result would be well what do we do we want this land we want to improve the land develop the land well we have to get rid of them because they're saying no sometimes they would negotiate treaties and oftentimes those treaties would break down because they were unsustainable inherently and unequal and in the end again you had exterminatory campaigns by the British which ended up wiping out many Native American tribes and so this kind of mosaic of colonization extended

across the continent and the transatlantic slave trade had already begun before columbus went to the americas and that too you know once the colonization of the americas kind of expanded then the transatlantic safe trade also transformed and changed and it moved its direction into the americas and so the colonists were bringing in African slaves, millions of them, countless numbers, in order to provide labour for these new enterprises. I'm not sure if it's right to say that that was capitalism at that time, but it was certainly the seeds of what became capitalism. And we now know that the transatlantic slave trade played a massive role in kind of spurring on industrialization especially in england the profits of the slave trade have been estimated

to have played a huge role in funding the investments that what became british capitalists you know in different industries manufacturing textiles and even in coal coal mining which of course played a massive role eventually in the kind of emergence of the fossil fuel empire as we know it today and that begins to give us a sense of how we see this intertwined nature between you know this imperial violence this is a projection of power the emergence of these xenophobic racist structures of domination and hierarchy and how these were intertwined with the sinews of capitalist enterprise as they emerged and what makes it all the more entrenched is that no one sat there and said this is the system that we're going to deliberately

design and build it emerged organically from the pressures and constraints and interests and aspirations of the time haphazardly and it's in that context that we know over the several hundred year period you know from the 1600s, we began to see the evolution of scientific racism. And again, so we begin to see this evolution. So I think under the Spanish, at that time, the racism was still very much biblical, you know, it was about religiously inspired racism, you know, there's us who are the white Christians, and then there's the foreign heathens. It wasn't biological, it was a lot more. And's why Jews were also often seen as pariahs and there was this undercurrent of anti-Semitism that was always there. And as the kind of Darwinistic ideas

about evolution became more well known, then within the context of these racial hierarchies that were now becoming more pronounced politically and economically there was this drawing on of evolutionary theory to project these hierarchies of well we have a scientific hierarchy of who is superior and who is inferior based on kind of an evolutionary theory and of course you know Darwin himself I mean something against the debate about I don't think Darwin himself really articulated a theory specifically like that he wasn't a scientific racist i don't know if he himself was racist or not i don't know enough about it but his theory wasn't really about that but people did take his theory and that view and then you know transplant it and it was used to erect this world view you know you extend that out to, you know,

the late 19th century and early 20th century, it's several hundred years of institution building and structural building that took place that was the foundation of the world international system as we had it today. And it's only really in the context of the emergence of capitalism and as capitalism became a much stronger force i mean arguably it was it was those social relations of capitalism which then created new pressures for

reconfiguring wage labor different crises said well we need to now have women as a labor force let the colonies be independent it's too costly to maintain this imperial system in this way. Let's allow people who were from these former colonies to come back into our countries and add their labour power. And that's kind of the legacy that we live with now. Often people forget that white supremacism was the bubble. It was the fishbowl. It was what people swam in about 100 years ago.

It was totally normal. And I think what we're learning from the Black Lives Matter protests is that those structures and those inequalities and those those impacts that they live on today in so many different ways in policing which is obviously the kind of the hard end but also in employment in health access in political opportunity in culture in so many different ways that again and we don't see it because our institutions are built on these layers and layers so they don't see it and so i think the point of my article was to try and get us to see that it's only when we see it that's when we can change because then we can accept this is who we are this is where we are and this is why we now need to do something differently yeah thank you for that deep historical background and i love how you shared at first the way that economics is

traditionally viewed or capitalism is traditionally viewed which even when you said it it felt quite neutral right just it's just the market and some businesses and they're profit oriented and it's just very simple. And yet when you brought in this historical perspective and also the Marxist analysis, it becomes so much more complex and interconnected. And one of the times when I had this kind of realization was viewing this game. It's a video game by David Cribb, and it's called Crisis Theory. And he tries to map capitalism and you play the spirit of capitalism. So you try to do inputs.

And the first input is primitive accumulation, which is a lot of what you're saying. It's supremacism of some kind, whether it's supremacism over nature. So, you know, the cutting down of a forest or the acquisition of land, land theft, or it's genocide or it's colonization or it's slavery. So there's some input that's a violence over. And so, yeah, just that that game really showed me that that this kind of primitive accumulation was at the heart of capitalism, the seeds, as you said, and that supremacism is baked into capitalism. And not just white supremacism as in racial, but also supremacism over women and also supremacism over land. Right. So all of that. And so I just really appreciate your historical perspective on that. And I also

appreciate how you've kind of traced the threads of how then they became baked into our institutions and how they they're so embedded in them, and how it looks either very overt in terms of policing, but also more subtle in other institutions that we're in. And so this show is called Upstream, because it's about going upstream to the root causes. So we're speaking about dynamics, we're seeing the threads, we're connecting the dots. And in your article, you write about something called otherization. And when I read that, I really saw that you're almost saying that the root cause of many of the challenges we're seeing today, the earth system challenges, as well as white supremacy, is, as you say in the article, the plunder of the other, or otherization. So I'm wondering if you could talk about what you mean by that, and how could we see otherization and the plunder of the

other as a root cause of these challenges? Yeah, that's another really big question. And I guess what I'm trying to get at is that when you boil it down to, you know, what's the kind of operating principle behind the emergence of capitalism as we know it today, and the way in which its origins and colonization and ecological plunder and all of that what's that operating dynamic that value system and i think it comes down to a sense of this kind of ideology this idea of human nature as this these acquisitive disconnected material entities that our only form of gratification is really through material consumption when you take this to its logical conclusion, it's like we don't really have a filter within our system for thinking about the consequences of that.

So, you know, people talk about the externalities. You know, how do we cost in the externalities? How come we don't factor in the costs of ecological destruction? Why is it that we don't see all of these things that I've spoken about in terms of the massive costs of people destruction? Why is it that we don't see all of these things that I've spoken about in terms of the massive costs of people's lives? It's not visible to us. What's going on there?

And I think there is this dynamic where when you have this very narrow kind of worldview and it's linked to these kind of very simplistic values of self-interest, this idea of the self-homo economicus, the self-interested kind of material entity that has to kind of self-interest, this idea of the self-homo economicus, you know, the self-interested kind of material entity that has to kind of keep accumulating, then the end result is basically that when you encounter other people in other natural spheres, the result is this commodification,

you objectify these things and you interpret it through this lens of these accumulative pressures so rather than seeing people as people which you can connect with and relate with in a different way you'll see them as well what's the value at how does this add to my value accumulation how does this work for this expanding system that I have here and then that fits into our story of our narrative of the destruction of Native Americans the transatlantic slave trade the expansion of the international system on the back of colonization and decolonization industrial capitalism kind of consolidating around the world this huge fossil fuel empire that followed the sinews of white supremacism that we had in the background all of that i think when you take that big picture approach and you see it all together you can begin

to see how we're living in a system which has otherized our own environment it's otherized our own fellow human beings it's otherized other living species on the planet. And as a consequence, the most deepest thing of all is that it's otherized our own selves. You know, we're living in dislocation from our own humanity. And it's not surprise that in the centers of power in this system, people aren't happy. We're depressed. We're suffering from all sorts of mental health challenges that were unheard of you know hundreds of years ago or even decades ago we're suffering from all sorts of confusion and polarization despite all of this material affluence that we talk about and celebrate and say everybody needs

to have the same thing that this is the path of development everyone has to follow we're not really that happy so it's interesting that at the end of it we're really dislocated from everything there's this huge fragmentation at the heart of our being and to me i think it boils down to it's you know it's more than just a an economic crisis or an ecological crisis or you know it really is a spiritual crisis and i don't mean that in a theological way it's really about our coming down to our understanding what it means to be human and our connection with nature and I think that's the core that something has gone missing in our way of being in our world view which we need to retrieve and and yeah maybe ancient wisdom and other things can help us to do that but when we're

thinking about changing our systems and changing our structures at the heart of it there also has to be this ability to reconnect with nature reconnect with other people reconnect with ourselves really really recognize those interconnections is not just fantastical but something real something deep something very very crucial and i think when we retrieve that we'll begin to surface a life-aligned and life-centric way of being and way of living and bring that back into the institutions, back into our systems, whether it's economics, politics, culture, whatever. It's that kind of big realignment, I think, that needs to take place. Big realignment. I love that. And I also love that you named that we are living in

dislocation from our humanity. And you just really beautifully connected the ecological crises that we're experiencing, as well as the white supremacy, as well as the pandemic even, and the disconnection there. So just connecting that all through this kind of upstream perspective of othering and the otherization, and then giving us also the invitation and the antidote of reconnection, re-recognizing our common humanity, and that kind of shift in mindset or paradigm shift that would allow us to see ourselves again as humble members of this beautiful universe, co-creators in a way. So I know we're at time. I just want to ask if you have anything that you'd want to add about this global phase shift, just this idea of seeing us at a particular point in time where perhaps we

have a choice. I know many folks say this, that they see really, we have an opportunity here, right? And you started the conversation with this sense of an opportunity, a possibility. So I'm wondering, you know, as you work on this network that you're building, and as you also write about this idea of a global phase shift, what do you see as that larger potential? And what are the invitations for the listeners and how to be involved? What could they do practically to see themselves as part of the global phase shift to a more flourishing and more thriving world for people and the planet? Yeah, I think, I mean, the idea of a phase shift comes from the idea of when systems kind of

go into a state of flux. And to some extent, the idea is drawn from the work of C.S. Holling, the late ecologist, and his adaptive cycle theory, where he'd studied real-world ecosystems, forest systems, and he'd noticed this life cycle in these living systems. And that life cycle was, I think he identified something like four stages. There would be a growth stage a conservation stage so the system would grow it would then kind of conserve become more stable there would then be a release phase where the system would change and the old way of structuring would kind of break down and collapse and then there would

be a reorganization phase after this release phase. And from the reorganisation phase, you then have a new life cycle, this new stage of growth, and it would be a continual cycle. And I think when you apply that framework to human civilisations, it can be really, again, it's a very useful tool to understand where we are right now. Because we know that civilisations, rising rising and falling this is the history of human societies you know they've gone through these cycles of growth and decay but it's the first time we've had a global civilization so this idea of a global phase shift speaks to the idea that when we're now looking at this convergence of these different crises what does that tell us and i think what i try to do in my piece is to kind of map out this sense that we really do seem to have moved you know we've gone through that growth phase

you know we've seen that we seem to have passed through the conservation phase and there was a point when the system seemed very stable very powerful if you challenged it you'd kind of get laughed out the room and ideas that are becoming much more current now, you know, when you speak about them, say 10, 20 years ago, they would have been seen as really fringe and really weird. Just, you know, you're just hippie, you know, Green New Deal, you're a hippie. Black Lives Matter, this is pointless stuff, you don't need to think about this. But now those things are becoming much more normalised, mainstream even. Along with other extreme crazy ideas, you know, we've seen the rise of the far right. You know, we've seen elections of illiberal politicians in ways that we would never imagined 10, 20 years ago.

So there's a downside to it as well, which is that all sorts of things can come into play. So I think we've moved past that conservation phase and we're moving into that release phase and there's all sorts of indicators and climate change and biodiversity collapse and a lot of the things that many of us are concerned about are those earth system indicators of the fact that our civilization is moved into this kind of overshoot it's moved into this phase of instability and breakdown but from an information point of view we're seeing that breakdown in the way in which ideas which were fixed and much more certain are now in flux and there's a lot of confusion almost that sense of acceleration that we're experiencing when you look at social media and not just social media even

normal media that there's an acceleration in events there's an acceleration and confusion in the polarization of information all of this is is really important to look at from a systems point of view because information is actually really a crucial thing that begins to play a huge role when we're looking at its role in the evolution of systems and one of the things that we've seen in evolutionary theory is that it's the ability of an organism to basically interpret information or process information about its environmental conditions and to have that translated into adaptations that is so crucial in the evolutionary process. And of course, again, we don't want to transpose that kind of learning in a kind of weird, fixed way into our current predicament,

but we can learn from it. And what it's telling us is that I think, I do believe that there is this, you know, when you take all of this learning from systems thinking, it does suggest that the global system has actually objectively moved into a new phase. It's a phase of deep uncertainty. It's a phase of where the old structures are beginning to collapse.

But when that happens, you know, we learn from the work of Holling that there is this opportunity for reorganisation. And one of the things that Holling, one of the insights that he had that was so, I think, in a way exciting for us now, is that, you know, small scale actions within the system can have these huge outsize impacts in ways that they weren't able to earlier on in the conservation phase. And that's what we're seeing. You know, we're seeing that fringe ideas can actually become normal and mainstream. that fringe ideas can actually become normal and mainstream and again that's a sword that cuts both ways but it also shows that as this system is failing and breaking down and entering into multiple spheres of crisis it's becoming weaker and there is much more opportunity now for us to

engage and to educate and to learn and to interconnect and to reorganize and I think that's the crucial thing that we must realise is that as we move into that opportunity for reorganisation, we have to then extend our vision towards that next life cycle of civilisation that can emerge from that phase of reorganisation. And that's really our task. And I think what I would urge our listeners to do is to kind of sit with that to reflect on

what does that mean for you in your context you've now learned and heard about this idea that we're in this momentous historic time and that's really there's two things one is an acceptance that there are things that are going to pass and with that passing there is definitely going to be huge crisis that is unavoidable and in many ways unpredictable there's a lot of things that we're not going to be able to stop and we have to accept that and there's going to be a lot of grief that comes up about that so that's a process that we're going to have to engage in and go through but at the same time I think when you're going through that is that recognition of that opening where we're suddenly finding ourselves in really new paradigm shifting territory we've never been here before this is a

genuinely new world that we're seeing opening up and we're right at the cusp of it and at this moment in time in our context we have an opportunity as individuals to see what does that mean for me in my context how can I leverage this to increase my learning increase my my systems understanding and capacity and then to bring that into my context whether it's my workplace whether it's my home whether it's with my family and friends what are the leverage points that I have where I can extend this newfound understanding and I think that's really where we need to start is what's available to us in our context you know don't try to we can't change the

world with the click of a finger but it starts with each of us kind of upgrading our understanding and kind of finding ways to leverage that and extend that into the different systems in which we are part and seeing how we can create that paradigm shifting change in our own actions, in our own behavior, in our own life, and then bring that into a wider context. Thank you. I love opportunities for bringing in ecological wisdom. And I'm familiar with that model that you shared as the panarchy cycle and definitely resonate with that. And yeah, I definitely hear and agree that we're in a sense of release and in that how we hold folks who are suffering, hold our own grief

and the grief of the world. How do we equitably distribute that suffering so that it doesn't just fall on anyone in particular? And then of course, in that reorganization, how do we center the values that we want to center in this new world and work towards that collaboratively? Beautiful invitations. Thank you so much for your analysis and for the work that you do. It's been a real great pleasure to speak with you. And I wish you all the luck in all that you do. Thank you.

Thank you. you've been listening to an upstream conversation with dr nafees ahmed executive director of the system shift lab investigative journalist for vice and author of a user's guide to the crisis of civilization and how to save it and failing States, collapsing systems, biophysical triggers of political violence. Upstream is a labor of love. If you like what you hear and you want us to be able to produce more content, please consider donating at upstream podcast.org forward slash support.

Thank you.