New Reality [1]: Hysteresis, Perceptions & Spaciousness
Almost every month credible new evidence adds to the picture that major elements of the climate system have tipped. And their interactions are now leading to abrupt and cascading changes in Earth’s climate system. This is a code red situation. No government is taking it seriously enough. We must urgently seek productive collaboration between subnational, national, and international bodies to do more to combat climate issues equitably, with determination and speed — Sir David King, Former UK Chief Scientific Adviser, ‘Climate Dominoes: Tipping Point risks for critical climate systems’, Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, Australia, May 2022
KEY POINTS
1. We are past the point of being able to navigate a path towards a survivable future, we have changed the climate structure of our planet which has triggered hysteresis.
2. The unsurvivable consequences of our ‘stuckness’ are now inevitable, it is time to shift our perceptions of the systemic nature of the risk that we now collectively face.
3. It is time for finding a way with spaciousness to invest in flexibility to face these changes.
PAST THE POINT (Hysteresis)
Have we passed the point of no return?
Yes.
Imagine we’ve been pushing a rock up a hill by burning fossil fuels for the last couple of centuries. It has required a huge amount of energy to keep going up the hill. But when we reach the top of the hill the rock will accelerate away from us at increasing speed with no further effort. The rock will come to rest inevitably in a different state: at the bottom of the hill. The rock is already speeding away from us, we have already gone over the summit.
The difference in temperature between the cold polar regions and the warm equatorial region has been the single most important factor in the relative stability of climactic conditions recently (i.e. over the past few thousand years). This relative stability of seasonal weather patterns has allowed us to grow stable crops to establish our largely sedentary and urban civilization that is reliant on mostly rigid and fixed infrastructure.
But this difference is rapidly reducing due to positive feedback loops triggered by reaching tipping points due to our ongoing actions altering the functioning of our atmosphere. This is already resulting in extreme weather[i] and impacts on both soil productivity and ocean circulation.
Much more solar energy is coming in because of aerosol reduction[ii] and less solar energy is going out because of greenhouse gas emissions[iii] and the polar regions are warming much faster than the equatorial regions due to the Earth’s heat transfer mechanisms[iv] via oceanic and atmospheric flows. This change is affecting the whole world and is now self-reinforcing[v] and irreversible[vi] and has already changed the climate structure of our planet[vii].
With more net solar energy there is more melting of the ice sheets covering the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, and Antarctica. Together these rapid changes affect the global hydrological cycle[viii] and trigger more melting of permafrost and methane clathrates resulting in massive increases in greenhouse gas emissions, as well as increasing moisture content in the atmosphere resulting in more severe storms and flooding. There is already strong evidence of the breakdown of the polar vortex and the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) system[ix] affecting the Indian and West African Monsoons, coral reef systems, the Amazon, and more.
These are interdependent changes that are immanent in the phenomena[x] to together create cascading effects that result in hysteresis[xi] — in this case the rapidly increasing potential for near-term extinction of human beings due to planetary conditions that are beyond the adaptive (and evolutionary) capacities of humans and other species[xii]. This is our ultimate transition. We need to urgently recalibrate our relationship with the world[xiii], and with each other. This is not only about an energy transition. We need a shift in our perception.
STUCKNESS (Perceptions)
Is our biggest challenge to be able to perceive the world differently from how we currently do?
Yes.
We can only perceive what we are able to perceive. This may sound obvious, but it is fundamental in triggering the tipping points discussed above. It is also fundamental in changing the way we live on Earth. The more we perceive in certain contexts, the more addicted we become to that perception.
“The obvious can be very difficult for people to see. That is because people are self-correcting systems. They are self-corrective against disturbance, and if the obvious is not of a kind that they can easily assimilate without internal disturbance, their self-corrective mechanisms work to sidetrack it, to hide it, even to the extent of shutting the eyes if necessary, or shutting off various parts of the process of perception”[xiv]
Our ability to perceive our reality is constrained by the contexts which we have experienced during our lives. Our family, our education, our culture, our history, our relationships, our diets, all act as funnels to reduce our perceptions of the reality we exist within. Importantly this reduction does not confer judgement. These shorthand modes of perception are part of the nature of being human and when aggregated to an entire civilization, these patterns of meaning shape history and fundamentally the world around us[xv]. Being aware of this shaping opens possibilities for difference in perception.
We seek patterns to make sense of our reality which then become habits that reduce the range of possible choices that are available to us in any given moment. These habits are based on our past experiences of contexts in the world. If those contexts remain stable, then our limited perception based on habits will remain a roughly useful way for us to make decisions and act. But if the contexts are changing then we can quickly become stuck with habits that do not provide us with the possibility of making appropriate decisions. It is this stuckness that is preventing a shift in the perception of the systemic nature of the risk that we now collectively face and preventing appropriate actions from being possible.
We all exist with a double-bind:
It is scary to let go of what we think we know of our reality
and
It is scary to face the reality that we think that we may know
More specifically in relation to a “just transition” our collective challenge of perception is:
We know that our fossil-fuel powered economic system will end our current way of life
and
We know that ending our fossil-fuel powered economic system will end our current way of life
So, how do we get beyond these double-binds[xvi]? You just add contexts, and open space for new questions.
We have become stuck in metaphors, habits, ideologies, worldviews, and institutions that are not representative of the patterns and ways of nature. They are not fit-for-purpose as they are narrowly constrained within an economic system context in which “our current way of life” is measured in units that are not relevant for our ongoing survival at a time of rapid change in the climate structure.
We can choose to include the additional contexts of the patterns and ways of nature in the way that we perceive the choices that we must make. To do this we need to find a way to invest in the flexibility to be able to have greater pre-adaptive capacity. This requires a new way of being in communication, and a spaciousness to explore new ways of perceiving our reality to change the conditions of the systems in which we live to act differently compared with how we are now.
FINDING A WAY (Spaciousness)
What does spaciousness for shifts in perception feel like?
When was the last time that you wandered in a wild forest? Do you remember the sense of harmony, of peace, of spaciousness for life to live? Take a moment to recall that feeling.
Wild forests are examples of vitality, and spaciousness. They are places where there is an ecology of communication based on flexibility in the way that life is in relationship with other life. This provides space for a diversity of possibilities and a pre-adaptive capacity to a range of changing conditions. You do not need a formal education nor specific expertise to learn and be within a forest, all you need is curiosity and time — as each of us already have all the tools we need to be able to learn and to better understand this immense complexity. All the better when we do this together with mutual learning.
There are many entry points into finding a new way to be in relationship with our world. For example, energy is an important entry point because it is the stories that we tell ourselves about energy that drive many of our unsurvivable patterns of behaviour as our complex energy systems are a foundation of our current destructive and unsurvivable way of life. Another important entry point is health because…. the entry point could also be biodiversity, or inequality, or…
A good way of thinking through a different way of being in relationship is by exploring a family.
A family is a complex system where the ecology of communication (as it has been referred to by Nora Bateson) between family members allows for ongoing mutual learning about each other and about the changing nature of the overall knowledge of the family (and the patterns within and between the family members), as well as the changing nature of the relationships between each of the family members and between the family members and everyone else with whom each member is in relationship.
This spaciousness is even there to support nurturing of members of the family who may be suffering from addictions or destructive behaviours because there is a deep care and love, and humility and curiosity, that goes beyond simply transacting with each other.
This communication is necessarily imperfect as it is never possible to completely know each other within a family. But a family that communicates information well is one that invests in flexibility and can continue to function by continuously embracing new patterns of the ways that each member communicates and is in relationship with each other member. Importantly it is the possibilities for changes in the habits and behaviours of each member of the family that is only possible when there is an intention of all members of the family to create space for each member to continuously change.
Being able to perceive the possibilities for a family member to change their habits or to confront their addictions is a powerful way for a family to build pre-adaptative capacity as a relational living system in the face of constant, and unpredictable, change in their environment.
In this way a family is much like a wild forest, and by extension so is our whole human family. We need to be able to nourish the relationships between us to ensure vitality and flexibility to honestly face the consequences of the change in the climate structure and the end of stable climactic conditions.
Why is this important for the way that we are all in relationships?
We have an opportunity to establish a new way of being in relationships that is based on:
1. An ecology of communication that allows mutual learning, builds networked intelligence, and encourages neuro-plasticity practices to better understand the conditions of the systems and the contexts in which we exist
2. Spaciousness for the implicit to change (habits, metaphors, addictions, and worldviews)
3. Investing in flexibility to meet complexity with novel patterns and build pre-adaptive capacities
To find a new way of being in relationship we may approach these five major areas with the intention of supporting shifts in perceptions by investing in flexibility to create the spaciousness for the implicit to be able to change…
1. Intentionally increasing the diversity of participation in activities by inviting human beings to be human; meeting each other as humans to ensure that each persons’ full complexity can be perceived. This introduces a wider range of contexts to be explored and for relationships to be nourished by holding each other’s stories. We can reset conversations in shifted perceptions and rewire networks of relationships with care, we can rewire our memories of ourselves and of each other.
2. Welcoming a wider range of questions to be able to be asked. This is not about knowing what comes next, this is being present within the differences that are welcomed to come together as opportunities for better understanding of the conditions of the system — and in doing this to see other possibilities for systemic and structural changes that may otherwise be hidden from our stuck perceptions.
3. Welcoming multiple descriptions and being aware of who is observing what and from what perception, and where is the focus of attention, we can better hold each other’s stories (and create networked intelligence to better inform all of us about where we could focus to change the conditions of the system or challenge our habits and addictions in ways that are caring and supportive).
4. Finding a way not to generate incremental change or increased project activity, rather finding a way that is relevant for the need to unstuck perceptions in the context of hysteresis to increase the possibilities for every person to act in a way that supports systemic and structural transformations and to be differently with each other and with the world.
This is perhaps a more realistic, more caring and more authentic approach to the complexity of the transitions ahead. This allows for learning, has the spaciousness for the implicit to change, and resists a singularity of purpose or a teleological fallacy of pursuing decontextualized and unachievable goals and targets — like GDP or the SDGs. This resistance of singularity of purpose improves pre-adaptative capacity and continuously invests in adding flexibility in ways that are currently not possible — it opens pathways for learning. By finding a way together in spaces that value the contribution of wildness and exploring, the focus of attention can shift from building structures to nourishing culture, from deliverables to stories as a means of knowledge production and transmission, and from a way of being rooted in certainties of outcomes perceiving humans-vs-nature to a curious and humble stochastic generosity perceiving humans-within-nature. That is, a seriously playful, rigorous and robust way of showing up not-knowing but with an enhanced transcontextual intuitive understanding of the whole, what may be called a living understanding as a force for coherence and solidarity.
May today be the start of our shared journey in which every day is focused on the health and vitality of living systems, not the creation of financial wealth at the expense of them. Dream. Dream. Dream. Then be. Together.
[i] IPCC AR6 WGII TS.B.4.2. Worldwide, people are increasingly experiencing unfamiliar weather patterns, including extreme precipitation events.
[ii] “Significant reduction in atmospheric sulphate aerosols contributes to albedo reduction, acceleration in Earth’s Heating Rate and could cause an aerosol termination shock.” James Hansen, Leon Simons, and Yann Dufornet, November 2021 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356378673_Climate_Impact_of_Decreasing_Atmospheric_Sulphate_Aerosols_and_the_Risk_of_a_Termination_Shock
[iii] Latest CO2 reading: https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/
[iv] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth540/content/c4_p2.html
[v] “Major elements of Earth’s climate system are now increasingly influenced by self-reinforcing warming processes — or positive feedbacks — due to climate change caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels.”
https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/_files/ugd/148cb0_2a1626569b45453ebadad9f151e031b6.pdf
[vi] IPCC AR6 WGII SPM.B.1.2 Climate change has caused substantial damages, and increasingly irreversible losses, in terrestrial, freshwater and coastal and open ocean marine ecosystems. The extent and magnitude of climate change impacts are larger than estimated in previous assessments.
IPCC AR6 WGII TS.B.2. Extremes are surpassing the resilience of some ecological and human systems, and challenging the adaptation capacity of others, including impacts with irreversible consequences.
[vii] Continuous rise of the tropopause in the Northern Hemisphere over 1980–2020. 2021. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abi8065
[viii] IPCC AR6 WGII TS.B.4.1. Climate change has intensified the global hydrological cycle causing severe societal impacts which are felt disproportionately by vulnerable people.
[ix] Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse
[x] That is, the properties of the system are not in any one part but are within the system as a whole.
“… there is no requirement of a clear boundary, like a surrounding envelope of skin or membrane, and you can recognize that this definition [of mind] includes only some of the characteristics of what we call “life.” As a result it applies to a much wider range of those complex phenomena called “systems,” including systems consisting of multiple organisms or systems in which some of the parts are living and some are not, or even to systems in which there are no living parts.”
Gregory Bateson and Mary Catherine Bateson, Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1987), p. 19
[xi] “One emergent property increasingly evident in climate and biological systems, is that of irreversibility or hysteresis — changes that persist in the new post-disturbance state even when the original forcing is restored. This irreversibility can be a consequence of multiple stable equilibria in the coupled system — that is, the same forcing might produce different responses depending on the pathway followed by the system. Therefore, anomalies can push the coupled system from one equilibrium to another, each of which has very different sensitivity to disturbances (i.e., each equilibrium may be self-sustaining within certain limits).”
WORKING PARTY ON GLOBAL AND STRUCTURAL POLICIES, OECD Workshop on the Benefits of Climate Policy: Improving Information for Policy Makers, Abrupt Non-Linear Climate Change, Irreversibility and Surprise by Stephen H. Schneider, 2003 https://www.oecd.org/env/cc/2482280.pdf
[xii] IPCC AR6 WGII TS.B.2.1. Extreme climate events comprising conditions beyond which many species are adapted are occurring on all continents, with severe impacts.
[xiii] “Climate action is a central part of a fundamental reset in our relationship with nature.” Our Common Agenda. 2021. https://www.un.org/en/content/common-agenda-report/assets/pdf/Common_Agenda_Report_English.pdf
[xiv] Bateson, G., Steps to an ecology of mind, “Conscious Purpose Versus Nature”, p435, Chicago University Press, 1972
[xv] Lent, J., The patterning instinct: a cultural history of humanity’s search for meaning, Promethesus Books, 2017
[xvi] “One solution to a double bind is to place the problem in a larger context, a state (Gregory) Bateson identified as Learning II, a step up from Learning I (which requires only learned responses to reward/consequence situations). In Learning II, the double bind is contextualized and understood as an impossible no-win scenario so that ways around it can be found.”
