Can Pace Layers Help Frame 2020?
Time stands still,
I’m not looking back
But I want to look around me now,
Time stands still,
See more of the people,
And the places that surround me now
~Neil Peart
We’ve at least heard if not said it ourselves: “2020 has been a dumpster fire, I can’t wait for it to be over.” Unfortunately, the sentiment blissfully ignores the notion that the events we’re living through now are simply a byproduct of past behaviors which won’t just “go away” in 2021. The historical artifacts of these behaviors underscore the importance of reconciling the past with current events lest we (and indeed have) repeat the same mistakes. So is 2020 a harbinger for a more virulent course of the past mistakes? Were Yogi Berra to witness 2020, he might have deja vu a third time as it seems we are indeed repeating history. Perhaps 2020 is just a few chapters into another cycle that began with the 18th century Jacobin revolution, reforming more prominently in the early 20th century Europe and seemingly again with 2020 as the unicorn for a renewed fascism.
An interesting lens to view this palimpsest can be found in a concept called Pace Layers, advanced in 1999 by Stewart Brand who currently leads the Long Now Foundation. His Pace Layers construct is fairly broad however, and its tenets are based on thinking about how systems work. When viewing our world as a system, the deepest and most mature layer called nature is considered the core. Surrounding nature are subordinate layers such as cultures, governments, demography, economies and the thinnest, most malleable layer: popular culture.
In Brand’s model, outside layers move and change quickly, they get all the attention but have the least impact on the core of nature. Conversely the core changes at a very slow pace; it remembers things and has all the power. This is an interesting way to think about 2020 (or any moment in time) when considering the relationship between agency and society. What really makes change happen? How does the interplay between layers of systems shift over time?
We’ve experienced a lot of drama this year. Viewed through the outermost Pace Layer, most of us are hoping that the scar from 2020 will be absorbed, much like a tree continues to thrive after a forest fire. If the system that has domain over us has a nucleus, is it slowly changing and revealing itself? Or, will 202o simply leave a scar in an otherwise orderly march to the tree it will become? Either way, there “is unrest in the forest” and if not careful the trees will be “kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw.”
Hi, I’m Jeff Heinzelman and the founder of MostlyWest. I have over 25 years of experience in leadership, business process, customer experience, and product innovation. I have led teams in many sectors, relying on a personal philosophy of people, process, and technology to deliver innovative products. I am an advocate of customer-focused product management connected to data-driven results. I am also a husband and father of two boys, and live in Austin, Texas where I enjoy Tex-Mex, BBQ, and football. Not necessarily in that order.
