From Fragments to Fractals

How do we deliberately scale transformative change in a world that feels increasingly polarized and fragmented? Let's explore fractal approaches to scaling transformations.

Amazing

Last week scientists at the Copernicus Climate Change Service reported two of the hottest days ever recorded on planet Earth. This is not surprising relative to climate projections, but it’s amazing. It is amazing that relatively few people seem to be alarmed.

Many who are alarmed are trying to get others to recognize the dangers of continued global reliance on fossil fuels. For example, climate activists – including concerned scientists – staged actions at airports in Oslo, Frankfurt, and other cities this week to disrupt air travel. As one activist said to the Guardian, they hope that such interventions will serve as “a shock to the system that is driving us towards climate catastrophe.”

Decades of research and observations on climate change and biodiversity loss have not been enough to shock the system into responding at the scale needed to support transformations to a sustainable world for people and nature. The situation is alarming.

Yet alarm bells for action are not ringing loudly in parliaments, city halls, town halls, corporate headquarters, central banks, health care facilities, and other institutions, including schools and universities. With the notable exception of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who has repeatedly called for a quantum leap in climate action, the scope of our responses does not match the scale of our problems.

Sobering

Perhaps we need to be clearer about the types of transformations necessary and consider a different approach to scaling sustainability solutions.

A couple months ago I participated in the Katapult Future Fest and heard an excellent but sobering talk by Indy Johar, the Executive Director of Dark Matter Labs. Johar stressed that we are having delusional conversations about the speed, scale, and materiality of the transformations that are needed for a just and sustainable world. Drawing on the latest climate change research, he presented hard facts about the scale of the problem and the implications of continuing with our “transition” mentality.  His presentation made it clear that “even our most ambitious pledges are terrible.”

For example, while the rate of renewable energy installations is hopeful, Johar pointed out that the global increase in energy demand has been greater than all installed renewables. In other words, we are not adding renewables at a fast enough rate to keep up with new energy demand. Although global energy consumption seems to be slowing to around 1 to 2% per year, energy demand is still growing. So is global production of oil and gas.

“Stacks of Transformation”

Johar went on to discuss the types of solutions that are necessary and possible if we want to avoid the devastating consequences of our changes to the environment. He invited us to embrace hard change, then described “stacks of transformation” that can generate a new material economy. He stressed the need for a new worldview and a new idea of what it means to be human in an entangled world. Turning the solution space into a reality, he added, includes expanding our theory of agency and recognizing that there is no “other.”

Indy Johar’s call for deep structural transformations underscores why quantum social change is important. It opens our minds to different ways of thinking about relationships between local and global, top-down and bottom-up, and us and them approaches to transformative change. It invites us to think about fractal approaches to scaling the types of transformations that are necessary and urgent.

Fractal Approaches to Scaling Transformations

You might be asking “what is a fractal and how do fractals relate to social change?” or “Why is this important when it comes to scaling transformations?”

My colleagues and I published a paper last year in Ambio on Fractal Approaches to Scaling Transformations to Sustainability. Below is a short video about this paper, which explains what fractals are and how they relate to scaling. I also included a chapter on fractals in You Matter More than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World — I will add the audio in next week’s newsletter.

This is a topic I have been thinking about for a long time, and I’ve been inspired by people working in diverse fields. This includes the work of Monica Sharma on social fractals, Indra Adnan on fractal politics, Marilyn Hamilton on urban fractals, and Paul Downton on cultural fractals, to name just a few. I’ve also been inspired by David Bohm and F. David Peat’s thoughts on how fractals relate to a generative order.

I’ll be writing more about the role of fractals in quantum social change in this newsletter over the next few weeks. I will focus on scale, universal values, and why you matter when it comes to ethical, equitable, and sustainable transformations. For now, here is a quote from David Bohm to remind us of why a new approach is timely and important:

What is primarily needed is a growing realization of the extremely great danger of going on with a fragmentary process of thought. Such a realization would give the inquiry into how thought actually operates that sense of urgency and energy required to meet the true magnitude of the difficulties with which fragmentation is now confronting us.

David Bohm (1980) Wholeness and the Implicate Order (p. 25)