The most difficult part of my framework to grasp is the keystone: our system has reached its limits. The difficulty is that this is impossible to understand if one is embedded in the system’s beliefs of how the world works and wedded to the system’s sclerosis via self-interest.
Once self-interest dominates, it locks the system into its current configuration because attempting to change anything rouses resistance from whatever interests depend on that part of the status quo for their piece of the pie.
The sustainability of the entire system is of no concern because the only thing that matters is keeping our piece of the pie intact as-is. Nothing can change because that threatens somebody’s share of the pie, i.e. how the system distributes income, gains, power and risk.
Everyone from the super-wealthy to low-income households fears any change that might reduce their security. Beneath our everyday awareness, a balance has been struck: if we just keep this exact arrangement as-is, everyone accepts the status quo.
This rigidity leads to sclerosis: the system has lost the flexibility and nimbleness needed to adapt. Any proposal that actually changes the socio-economic system is immediately struck off by those whose interests are threatened.
This leads to the substitution of artifice for authenticity – the other core concept that is impossible to understand if one is wedded to the status quo by self-interest and the fear of losing what we have.
Once a system has reached the point where authentic change becomes impossible because it disrupts the delicate balance of self-interest, it has reached its limits, and is set on run to failure, for a system that has lost its adaptive flexibility is doomed once conditions change.
Rather than face this disruptive reality, everyone wedded to the existing balance becomes dependent on expediencies that keep the system glued together, but at the cost of system stability. As self-interest and sclerosis dominate, the focus narrows to doing whatever it takes to maintain the increasingly unsustainable balance of interests.
This is how we’ve reached the point where the federal government borrows $2 trillion a year – 27% of its entire outlays – to maintain the precarious balance of every interest group. That this is unsustainable is obvious, but since real change is impossible because of the system’s limits, everyone approves of expediencies that only add to the destabilizing momentum of run to failure.
