THE ARROW OF TIME

What Western Science Teaches

The observable Universe and everything in it moves in one direction: from birth to death, from hot to cold, from creative energy to useless energy, from order to disorder. Everything comes from what preceded it. Nothing is reversible. This is the Arrow of Time.

The Arrow of Time applies to all closed systems in the known Universe, but the new sciences revealed that it is not the predetermined fate of living systems. A living system has permeable boundaries and sense-making capacities. It is an open system, capable of exchanging energy with its environment rather than using up a finite amount. If it opens to its environment, it takes in information, a form of energy. It notices changes and disturbances that it processes, free to choose its response.

This is life’s essential process—using cognition and self-organization to adapt and change. A living system can reorganize itself to become more fit, in the evolutionary sense, to survive. Through its exchanges of information, it creates newness and diversity, sustaining itself through shifts, crises, and catastrophes. All of this is possible and commonplace as long as the system remains open, willing to learn and adapt.

However, if a living system closes itself off, there is no possibility for change and growth. Closed systems have no potential for life’s adaptive capacity. They work like machines, passive travelers on the Arrow of Time, deteriorating and losing capacity, predetermined to waste away because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics—the trajectory of heat energy from useful to useless. (The First Law of Thermodynamics states that the quantity of energy is always conserved, neither created nor destroyed as it changes form. The Second Law describes how the quality of energy deteriorates in a closed system.) In a closed system, every interaction has an energy cost; some amount of its energy becomes useless through its activities. This is entropy, the measure of disordered energy. More entropy describes greater levels of disorder.

What distinguishes living systems from machines is their ability to learn. They resist the Arrow of Time and the Universe’s movement to increasing disorder by using their cognition to adapt. They stay alert to what’s going on in their internal and external environments, and they respond intelligently.

A healthy living system is an intelligent learner. It can adapt and survive even though its environment is moving toward increasing disorder. But it must be actively engaged and aware, never losing focus on its environment. Failing to pay attention and adapt is a prescription for death.

THE ARROW OF TIME: FACING REALITY

The Rise and Fall of Civilizations

The movement of civilizations along the Arrow of Time has been a mesmerizing field of study from the time of classical Greek scholars such as Plato up to present day. Historians want to know what has gone before, not from intellectual curiosity but from a desire for their current civilization to avoid a similar fate. And there is a plethora of examples for study: Globally there have been dozens of complex civilizations during the last five thousand years of recorded human history (by 3000 BCE there were already seven known to Western scholars).¹ Every one of them illustrates the same pattern of ascendancy and collapse. In addition, excellent archeological research on the causes of decline removes any doubt about the strong commonalities among these civilizations and the descriptive accuracy of the pattern of collapse.

Still, it was astonishing to read of a ninth-century Arab moralist’s lament about the celebrity pop singers who flooded the capital city in great numbers singing erotic songs, using obscene language, whose influence on young people degraded their morality and normalized vulgarity. Or to read that in the eleventh century, education in the Arab empire changed from learning to technical training for high-paying jobs.

There is nothing new under the sun.

The pattern is crystal clear. If we humans, no matter where we are or what our cultural belief system is, establish a physical location, we will always organize in the same way. We create glorious buildings, cities, transportation and trade routes, music, aqueducts, dance, poetry, theater, sewage systems, canals, pottery, fabrics, farms, statues, monuments. And yet, these magnificent cultural manifestations are guaranteed to disappear, destroyed at the end by disease, famine, or invaders that attack a society already weakened by moral decay and internal warring. We are incredible organizers and creators, and then we are brought down by our arrogance, aggression, and greed. Always.

There are some, particularly younger generations, who believe we are stepping off the Arrow of Time because of bright, shiny technologies that promise to solve our most terrible climate challenges, even though they have not proven their worth at scale. The basic belief of these techno-optimists is that our technological and scientific genius gives us the capacity to bypass the fate of all other complex civilizations. It is unadulterated arrogance to believe that we can use our superior intelligence as never before, changing history, bounding forward in great leaps, no longer subject to the Arrow of Time. We believe we are the height of human evolution rather than just its most recent, predictably problematic manifestation.

The belief in never-ending progress is fueled by our inexplicable arrogance that we can supersede the laws of the Universe. Our constantly expanding technologies and innovations may appear to be adaptive responses to the environment, but this is not true. Quite the opposite: For the first time in history, humans have changed the planet’s environment rather than adapting to it. The Anthropocene Age began in the mid-1950s, when human activity, including growth in population and economic activity combined with disdain for the environment, created irreversible planetary changes in climate, oceans, soil, habitat, and species loss, ushering in the Sixth Extinction.²

We are ignoring scientific laws, acting as Masters of the Universe, asserting we can invent anything we want to suit ourselves, including artificial life. This is not the behavior of a living system interacting skillfully with its environment.
This is hubris of ahistorical proportions, and we are failing miserably, as you may have noted.

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For those of us not blinded by the false promise of progress, we may understand the dire state of this civilization. If you’re paying any attention to the news from everywhere, it’s hard to avoid the specter of collapse. But then what happens? Do we, as most do, fall into private collapse consumed by fear and despair? Do we become one who does nothing but complain for what’s been lost? Do we succumb to grief for the suffering of so many? Do we give up and spend whatever time is left in hedonistic pursuits? Do we cocoon in self-protective bubbles with a nine-foot LED screen and video-streaming services?

Or do we acknowledge where we are and step forward to serve? Those who have studied the pattern of collapse always conclude their analyses with an urgent plea that we take notice, that we wake up to where we are to positively change where we are. The natural march of time toward disorder can be counteracted and even reversed by awareness and learning. Blind reactivity and fear are not the answer. Self-protection is not the answer. Denial is not the answer. Sane leadership is.

Sane leadership is the commitment to create the conditions for the finest human capacities—generosity, creativity, kindness—to blossom, protected from the external environment. It is the deep knowing that, even in the most dire circumstances, more becomes possible as people engage together with compassion and discernment, self-determining their best way forward.

This leadership is no longer available at the global level. There, the pattern of collapse is manifesting with astonishing speed and accuracy. But within our sphere of influence, there is so much we can do. We can train ourselves to see clearly, to fully acknowledge this time in all its painful details. And then, wherever we are, whomever we’re with, we can choose actions based on insight, compassion, and wisdom.

If we choose this role for ourselves, we are joining those few who, throughout history, always step forward to serve in a time of collapse.

While despair might permeate the greater part of the nation, others achieved a new realization of the fact that only readiness for self-sacrifice could enable a community to survive. Some of the greatest saints in history lived in times of national decadence, raising the banner of duty and service against the flood of depravity and despair.

—Sir John Glubb

The Decline of Civilizations in Ten Generations

There are many great texts on the pattern of collapse. I chose to feature the work of Sir John Glubb because in reading his work, I was continually stunned with his descriptions of the specific human behaviors our species always exhibits through the rise and fall of civilizations. I still am likely to gasp as I read his descriptions and share them with others.

Glubb studied thirteen empires in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe (where he had served as a military commander)—from Assyria in 859 BCE to modern Britain in 1950. The pattern of the decline and fall of these superpowers was startlingly clear. It didn’t matter where they were or what technology they had or how they exercised power. They all declined in the same stages, and it always took ten generations—about 250 years. The logic of this is very clear: Each generation matures in better socioeconomic circumstances created by the preceding generation; thus there is always a march to increasing materialism. In every generation youth will have higher expectations for comfort than their parents. Improved material conditions create attitudinal changes that insist on still more material benefits and entitlements; predictably then, because of its wealth and erosion of morality, the civilization declines into decadence.

Here are Glubb’s six ages as delineated in The Fate of Empires. For more detail, see the appendix at the back of this book. I hope you’ll explore these ages—they are fascinating, troubling, and convincing. As you read these brief descriptions, keep in mind that they describe all complex human civilizations, even though they read like an accurate tale of our time. This was published in 1976.

1. The Age of Pioneers. Fearless, courageous, and without constraint, invaders surprise the dominant civilization with their attacks. Strong virtues of shared purpose, honor, and a strict moral code bind them.

2. The Age of Conquest. Using more sophisticated and disciplined military actions (learned from the civilization they are conquering), they take control. Often there is a strong religious imperative to their conquest—that is, they are doing their God’s work.

3. The Age of Commerce. With a strong military to protect the frontiers, explorers embark on a search for wealth creation, seeking new enterprises as far as they can reach. Values of glory and honor give way to values of profit and personal wealth. The rich build palaces, railroads, hotels, and communications networks, depending on the cultural context.

4. The Age of Affluence. Service ethics disappear and selfishness takes over. Education shifts from learning to obtaining qualifications for high-paying jobs. The young and ambitious seek wealth, not honor or service.

5. The Age of Intellect. The arts and knowledge flourish in the midst of decline. Intellectuals are prevalent and engage in incessant talking as a substitute for action. The belief takes hold that problems can be solved by mental cleverness rather than selfless service and courage. Natural sciences advance but do not prevent decline. Civil conflict increases even as the empire is under dire threat. Instead of banding together to preserve the nation, internal political factions seek to destroy one another.

6. The Age of Decadence. Wealth and power have led to petty and negative behaviors, including narcissism, consumerism, materialism, nihilism, fanaticism, and high levels of frivolity. A celebrity culture worships athletes, actors, and singers. The masses are distracted by entertainment and sporting events, abandon moral restraint, shirk duties, and insist on entitlements. The leaders believe they are impervious and will govern forever. This age also develops the welfare state as imperial leaders generously build universities and hospitals, give grants to university students, support the young and the poor, and extend citizenship to everyone. When they run out of money, all this benevolence disappears and these institutions shut their doors.

The Myth of Progress

The idea of progress is so ingrained in us high achievers and committed activists that you may be surprised by the word “myth.” Or perhaps you just ignored it. So many of us are motivated to do our best as leaders and good people because we assume that human societies and our species are on an upward evolutionary path, always improving. What would motivate our long hours of dedicated work and our deep longing to create positive change if it isn’t true, as Martin Luther King said, quoting others before him: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”³

Yet the idea of progress is a very recent addition to human thought, appearing in the seventeenth century, reaching full bloom in the nineteenth century, and severely challenged by the twentieth century’s wars that killed more than one hundred million people. Progress as a concept or direction does not appear in other cultures, or even in Western thought, until about three hundred years ago.⁴

This concept gained ground in the West because of the advent of spectacular machines and great advances in science. It was also supported by Christianity’s orientation to an end to time, and a misperception of the theory of evolution that confused evolution with progress. But every other culture has the perspective of cycles throughout time and history: Always the first age is golden, then human behavior and societal capacity wear down until the darkest time is upon them. This cycle takes different lengths of time in different cultures and cosmologies, but it is a cycle not a pendulum. History does not swing back and forth between good and bad states; rather, it moves from one stage to the next, wearing down in predictable stages as it moves down the Arrow of Time. Humans cannot alter the seasons—or rush past them with optimistic thinking and hard work.

In spite of its anomalous appearance in human history, “progress” is the water in which we dedicated activist fish are swimming ever more frantically, gasping for hopeful air. We want to contribute and the nature of that contribution is toward creating a better life, a better world for our children and perhaps even for seven generations, as Indigenous people have taught us. Our work is meaningful because it contributes to this arc of history. We depend on being future-focused and take pride in this orientation, rightly critical of those who ignore the future—“future eaters,” as scientist and historian Tim Flannery named them.⁵

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The deceit we are engaged in is we think we’re special, that we can transcend history, alter the seasons, and step off the Arrow of Time. Surrounded by technology that dazzles us with its capabilities and technooptimists who confidently promise ever more wonders, we believe that even as other civilizations failed, ours will not.

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It cannot because we are so talented and creative and concerned. Look at all these amazing technologies that will soon solve all our problems. Artificial Intelligence (AI); privately funded space travel; fake foods; farmed fish; pills to make us smart, prevent aging, and prolong sex; medical breakthroughs to grow human organs in animals; neuroscience to fix every problematic behavior—how could anyone deny we’re making progress? Some tech leaders are working hard to colonize Mars and beyond. No matter what we’ve done to Earth, we get a second chance. (Well, only very few of us do.)

This belief in technology to fix the messes we’ve made and to save us from decline has been labeled “the Progress Trap” by Ronald Wright. It appears in every civilization and is a major contributor to their demise.⁶

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The very innovations that gave capacity end up destroying the civilization. People fail to notice or blindly ignore what these technologies are destroying and persist in relying on them until it’s too late.

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This has been true throughout human history. Animal herds were depleted when early humans discovered they could kill thousands of animals by running them off cliffs (one prehistoric site has the remains of more than one hundred thousand horses killed).⁷ We continue to pursue industrial production using fossil fuels to give us a higher standard of living, while polluting the air and water that impacts our health and the health of a rapidly heating planet. Artificial fertilizers and genetically modified seeds were introduced in the Green Revolution to eliminate hunger; as a consequence, we’ve destroyed soil’s regenerative capacities, killed many species, polluted waterways, and caused hundreds of thousands of farmers to commit suicide. And now, who knows what we’re destroying with the ecstatic rush to automation, including self-driving cars, robots, AI in everything, and package delivery by drones.

Technology doesn’t save us. It promises a Utopian future, but in the record of history it eventually destroys capacity with its unintended consequences. This is the true arc of history, not upward toward some just and verdant future but as dissipative movement along the Arrow of Time. We believe we can ignore information from the environment and, with intense creativity and innovation, soar off the Arrow of Time. Meanwhile, the environment we’ve refused to interact with continues its relentless march to greater disorder and destruction of human habitat.⁸

But isn’t all this fabulous, amazing growth in new technologies an example of the fiery creative energy at the start of a new civilization? Aren’t we as innovators and entrepreneurs starting a new world that counteracts the forces of entropy? Aren’t we in the Golden Age, Masters of the Universe, setting a new direction toward evolutionary progress and bright futures?

No.

Lost in the seduction of technical creativity, we fail to see what else is going on. What’s happening in society to relationships, to poverty, to violence, to alienation? What’s happening to our land, our traditions, our people? Why have more than one hundred million people fled their home countries and now live as refugees? What’s being done to address our enduring human needs for home, for community, for contribution, for good work, for safe children?

And what about the fact that the Earth is becoming uninhabitable?

Wise leaders are willing to give up the delusion that technology can save us, or that we can master the Universe. We must face the reality of decline and choose actions that support people, not technology.

The choice couldn’t be more clear. Or consequential.

The Religion of “Technological Majesty”

The Progress Trap

A seductive trail of successes that leads to a catastrophic end.

—Ronald Wright

As human civilizations expand and prosper through new methods of agriculture, new inventions and technologies, life improves for people—in the short term. The typical pattern of civilizations is to create wealth and expansion of population by exploiting natural resources.

Within the civilization’s growth period, life improves, wealth accumulates, people live longer, power and dominion increase, and it is assumed that life will continue to get better forever. In the midst of such prosperity, people fail to perceive that Nature is suffering, that the cost of prosperity is being paid for by the planet. After so many years of “progress,” the bill comes due. Short-term benefits accrue into long-term horrors.

So here we are in the Anthropocene, a new geologic epoch created by the demands of human civilization since the Industrial Era began around 1750, demands that continue to escalate dramatically since the 1950s.¹¹ Human modes of production, transportation, warfare, farming, urbanization, and our incessant demands for growth and progress have expended the Earth’s carrying capacity, the resources needed to support life. The result is that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric, and other earth system processes are now altered by humans in irreversible ways. Even if we stopped all human activity today, the Earth will continue on this life-destroying trajectory for many long years to come.

The Progress Trap has reached epoch proportions.

Tipping Points

Tipping points are frequently cited as an approach to creating positive social change. This is a grave misunderstanding of what they are—and this misinterpretation leads many well-intentioned activists to wasted actions and false expectations. We need to understand the science of tipping points so that we can respond wisely to the issues we care about. Otherwise, we get lost in fanciful expectations of progress and change that cannot succeed.

Tipping points occur in complex systems as sudden, nonlinear phase transitions into a new state of being. They are surprising because it is difficult to perceive that the system, from the interactions among its components, has reached a highly unstable point of criticality. At this critical threshold a very small disturbance can cause a very large system to change abruptly and dramatically: the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The system shifts radically and irreversibly into a different equilibrium state. It changes its form and function, a true regime shift. This shift cascades through the system, creating multiple, continuing effects and unintended consequences.¹²

Many tipping points have “tipped” in Earth’s systems because of human-induced climate change, a terrifying list of changes that are irreversible and unstoppable. Even if all human activity ceased right now, systems have shifted into new regimes and the consequences of tipping will continue for decades, centuries, millennia. The heating of the Earth’s atmosphere primarily from carbon and methane emissions has led to the irreversibility of arctic and glacial ice melting; sea levels rising; floods, fires, droughts, famines; warmed, acidified oceans; whiplash weather caused by shifts in oceanic and atmospheric currents; and the sixth mass extinction of innumerable plant and animal species.¹³

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Once a system has tipped, it cannot reverse back to its former state. We need to learn to live with it, to adapt. And this is not always possible.

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The possibility of tipping points in human behavior has been adopted by social activists as one means to create positive social change, including the evolution of human consciousness. I hear reference to tipping points all the time, not as a scientific description but as a theory of change. If we can just get a certain percentage of people to come from love rather than fear, if we can just get enough people to attain higher levels of consciousness, if we can just organize a sufficient number of people to be ecologically wise and caring, then everything will change for the good and we’ll find ourselves in a bright new future. How many people does it take to create these tipping points? Estimates have varied widely, but some speculate that as few as 10 percent of a population can create the dramatic shift. None of these estimates has been validated in experience, and they never will be because tipping points result from interactions among multiple factors not just human will and attention.

Describing tipping points in terms of percentages is simply wrong. We are not dealing with physical mass, with a weight that will tip the scales on a teeter-totter. We are dealing with a complexity of interactions that can be tipped over the edge by a small influence if, and only if, the system is at a critical state, already poised on the edge.

I honor the caring and compassion evident in people’s desire to contribute to positive tipping points. But it is distressingly anthropocentric, believing that it’s possible—with human energy, commitment, and organization— to reverse the trajectories of complex systems. When applied to the intention to evolve human consciousness at the species level, I find this either disrespectful or ignorant of ancient Asian cultures where hundreds of thousands of yogis, mystics, and monks walked the Earth as fully enlightened beings for centuries. It was neither their intention nor their goal to awaken consciousness other than their own. (If you’re still drawn to 10 percent, the proportion of these beings was much greater then because there were far fewer people in those early centuries.)

If we think we can reverse the trajectory of the changes now cascading through the Anthropocene, we’re assuming that human willpower takes precedence, and is far more powerful, than the natural laws and dynamics responsible for Earth’s current state. Though motivated by a great desire to contribute to positive change, this is anthropocentrism at its worst. We deny life’s dynamics, we deny reality, we ignore complexity and rely on erroneous statistical thinking to motivate us. With this stance, we are first-class science deniers, impossibly addicted to Hopium, who have ascended to the thrones of the Gods.¹⁴

Can human behavior and consciousness be changed, or have these also already tipped? Individuals and whole societies now exhibit behaviors of increased fear and vulnerability, behaviors from multiple causes and conditions that coalesced into a critical state. No matter where people live and work, threats to personal well-being, and threats to our global future, are increasingly evident. On edge, at the edge, one small incident or report can push individuals and entire communities into survival mode. Humans under threat instinctively revert to survival behaviors, instantly shifting to self-protection, to defense and aggression as the only way to save themselves. Under threat, human beings behave as human animals. Later chapters explore this in some detail.¹⁵

But we are still human beings. There is an alternative response to fear and threat. We can choose to develop our human capacity for consciousness, to engage with every challenge as awake, fully sentient beings. If you’ve read this far, you’ve identified yourself as one of these good people, seeking a path of contribution as the fear and destruction continues.

There is zero possibility that our awareness can change the threat response that has now taken hold, or the planet that has tipped into the Anthropocene Era. Our strong will and our increased consciousness will not suddenly shift eight billion people from fear to trust, from threat to possibility, from self-protection to service.

It is not in our power to create positive tipping points. We are a small minority of people who raise “the banner of duty and service against the flood of depravity and despair.” We strive to be awake so that we can see clearly and act wisely. We are Warriors for the Human Spirit doing what we can, where we are, with what we have.

A Warrior for the Human Spirit is a decent human being willing to serve an inhumane, indecent time.

THE ARROW OF TIME: CLAIMING LEADERSHIP

Choosing to Lead Well in Collapse

What does it mean to be a leader in a time of collapse?

While there are very destructive dynamics at play as our civilization travels down the Arrow of Time, these dynamics do not have to wield influence on anyone or any group that is willing to open to its environment, use its intelligence, and bravely face reality. Whenever we open rather than close, we become alive, a living system capable of self-organizing into new order rather than succumbing to disorder. The good news is that this is happening in many places, enlivened places resisting disorder by using their hearts and minds well. And every one of them is grounded in an ethic that places people at the center of all decisions and actions. Sanity in action.

In the tragedies of the refugee crisis, in the complexities of a broken health-care system, in communities torn apart by fear and hatred, in exhausted professionals who find a new way to serve—everywhere there are communities, programs, and organizations that are learning, adapting, and creating effective responses that are making a true and positive contribution. But we need to keep this in perspective.

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These leaders cannot prevent the unraveling of our global civilization, and that is not their ambition. They aspire to make a profound difference locally, in the lives of people in their communities and organizations.

They also know that their successful initiatives that took such dedication and endurance to create are vulnerable to the destructive politics and behaviors inherent in a dying culture. At any moment, they or their programs may be swept away or severely hampered by thoughtless or venal political decisions. There are no assurances they will achieve long-term impact or be rewarded for success from the leaders above them who are possessed by fear and panic.

And yet they persevere because they are committed to doing the best they can for people. They have learned that nearly all people desire to do good work in good relationships with their colleagues. In full awareness of the trials and tribulations that will not cease, they offer their leadership skills to create Islands of Sanity, places of possibility and sanctuary where the destructive dynamics of collapse are kept at bay.

For as long as they can.

We do good work because we do good work.

—Angela Blanchard, CEO (retired)

Leading an Island of Sanity

What does it take to lead an Island of Sanity? What does the practice of sane leadership look like? Is it possible to create protection from the wild irrationality raging about us?

This is where it gets simple.

Even though there is now a vast body of work on leadership, I find it far more enlightening to consult personal histories. All of us have had multiple experiences with good and bad leaders, from kids working in fast-food franchises to retirees with more than forty years of work history. When asked (which I’ve done thousands of times), “What is good leadership?” people in all places, of all ages, come up with the same descriptors. I feel confident that there is only one style, type, form of leadership that people respond well to. And they respond because it honors and supports them to be fully human. Just like we respond.

For You: What’s Your Own Definition of Good Leadership?

1. Recall those leaders you’ve most admired, those you happily served. What were their behaviors? How did you feel working for them? What kind of worker were you, including the quality of what you produced? How do you feel about them now?

2. Recall your own moments when you were proud of the leadership (either formal or informal) you provided to your organization, family, friends, community. What did you do? How did you behave toward others? What were the results of your leadership? Are you still in a relationship with any of these people?

Answer these questions and you’ll know how to be a good leader on your island. (Please don’t bring in images of reality TV shows when I use this term.) And if you’re frustrated that I haven’t specified the traits of good leaders that I find common among all human beings, may I refer you to my other books?

I’m approaching this lightheartedly because a core survival skill in difficult situations is to maintain a sense of humor. Even with the intensity of feelings that flood over us as we contemplate collapse, it’s essential that we not take everything so seriously.

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The Hopi prophecy for these times teaches: “At this time in history we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves, for the moment we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.”¹⁸

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I should like to think that prehistoric man’s first invention, the first condition for his survival, was a sense of humor.

—Andre Leroi-Gourhan, paleoanthropologist

Where Is Your Organization on the Arrow of Time?

It is easy, although painful, to observe the decay and degradation of the human spirit and of our planet at the global, national, and local levels. But what’s going on in our own organizations? How can we assess health versus decay? As we attempt to fortify ourselves with sanity rather than fear, to open rather than close, what requires our attention?

Here are some of the characteristics of systems in decline. In all the descriptions of the pattern of collapse, there is both the human element of moral decay and the systemic element of institutional rot. Increasing disorder is fueled by money replacing service as the core motivator, hierarchical leaders focused on maintaining power at all costs, the disappearance of the future from decision making, the preservation of the status quo by the few elites who prosper from it. As things deteriorate, relationships disintegrate into distrust, self-protection, and opposition. Internal conflicts increase, and no one even notices threats to the whole as they fight for their tiny piece of the pie. Leaders use fear to control and manipulate people, and everyone moves into self-protection. Distractions, entertainments, and entitlements become primary instruments of allaying people’s fears and for controlling them.

Translating these predictable behaviors into assessments of an organization seems quite straightforward. Please develop your own; here are some assessments that have proven useful in my work. It’s more helpful to answer these questions in terms of trends rather than snapshots. The real learning comes from noticing what’s changing, and in which direction, as you explore each topic.

THE ARROW OF TIME: RESTORING SANITY

Each of these explorations demonstrates your commitment to opening to what is. This in itself is important. It gives you a start to interrupting the destructive trends of our culture and offers possibilities for engaging people to join you in developing an Island of Sanity.

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Quality of Relationships. If you were to create a trend line from a few years ago to now and a few years ahead, how are people relating to each other? Has trust increased or declined? Are people more self-protective or less so? Are they more willing to be there for one another, to go the extra mile, or not? What’s your evidence for any of your conclusions?

Fear Versus Love. If these are the two ends of the spectrum of human emotions, which I believe they are, consider where you see examples of each. Also look for tendencies: Which reaction, fear or love, is more likely in specific situations or with specific issues? Are either of these emotions coming to dominate as time goes on? In your leadership, what role does fear play: Are you more fearful? Are you using fear to motivate people?

Quality of Thinking. When a crisis happens, how do you respond? Are your values used to resolve the crisis? Do you consider the future? Is long-term thinking still happening (in conversations, decision making, planning)? Has it made an impact? If so, is this visible to people? How difficult is it to find time to think, both for yourself and others?

Willingness to Contribute. What invitations to contribute have you extended and why? How have people responded? Ongoing, what are your expectations for people being willing to step forward? Are those higher or lower than a few years ago?

The Role of Money. How big an influence, as a percentage of other criteria, do financial issues have on decisions? Has money become a motivator for you? For staff? Has selfishness replaced service? How do you know?

Any of these questions, answered with curiosity and concern, can yield enormous benefit to your aspiration to be a good leader for this time. These questions also give critical information on the state of your organization as you attempt to encourage sanity in staff and among colleagues.

Leading from the Future

In 1993, I was invited by the Army Chief of Staff, General Gordon R. Sullivan, to be his “scout.” The Army, under his leadership, was focused on bringing the force out of its worst period of decline, the Vietnam War era, and preparing it for the twenty-first century. For the next two years, and many times thereafter, I got to know the military. It was where I learned about dedication, service, and warriorship. This experience was my introduction to a rare form of leadership, vigilantly focused on the future, rapidly absorbing and making sense of information, with no room for failure.¹⁹

General Sullivan remains one of the most extraordinary leaders I’ve known. When he asked me to be his scout, I heard it as a cute metaphor, the kind we consultants might use. I quickly realized this was a specific role, familiar in the military, to be taken very seriously. I was sent out to many places where innovations were taking place, met with all ranks of soldiers, and became familiar with the Army’s change initiatives. I reported back to General Sullivan, and we delved deeply into what I had seen and the potential meaning of my observations.

To this day, my respect for soldiers has never wavered. Their leadership training is far superior to anything I’ve encountered elsewhere: They are taught how to process large amounts of information, to think systemically, to develop situational awareness, to lead in chaotic situations, to lead from behind as well as out front, to use their intuition. And everything depends on teamwork. Soldiers know their lives depend on each other. I’ve relished every chance I’ve had to teach military officers. Their intelligence, curiosity, and esprit de corps are palpable; it’s easy to engage them in vibrant and complex learning.

General Sullivan had invited me because of my work with self-organization and the role of information. In working with the Army, I learned more than I could have imagined about the power of self-organization to bring order out of chaos. At the time I came in, soldiers had just been armed with new technologies that gave them real-time information about the battle. Once they could see what was going on, they demanded to be involved in decisions. Unlike most organizations, the Army quickly realized that with such information, soldiers could self-organize their responses and make better decisions in the chaos of battle than any command-and-control system.

Starting in Iraq, the quick exchange of electronic information from soldier to soldier saved lives—moment by moment they could relay where the explosives were hidden, what new traps to watch out for. A now famous self-organized community of practice emerged among captains, known as Company Command.²⁰ They became adept at rapidly communicating tactics and strategies faster than the established protocol of Army Lessons Learned. Company Command is credited with saving thousands of lives.

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Senior commanders learned that well-trained soldiers could be trusted to process information in real time; the soldiers would make better decisions about the battle than if they had to wait for a command from above. Rapidly exchanged information became the critical factor, rather than rank or procedures, to reduce the chaos of conflict.

General Sullivan once told me that he spent 50 percent of his time focused on the future. In one conversation I will never forget, he said, “Sometimes I get afraid. What if there’s another war and we’re not prepared?” In that brief moment I had a humbling glimpse of what it means to carry the defense of the free world on your shoulders. We had just been in an inquiry, which included the Army historian and a few four-star generals, as to whether the Army should keep investing in tank training. What would warfare look like over the next decades? (This was in 1994; by 2005 the Army had prioritized resources for Special Operations, small cadres of brilliantly trained soldiers to operate in war zones and as undercover against insurgent groups.)

When General Sullivan voiced his deepest concern about being prepared for an unknown future, our inquiry about future battlefields became deadly serious. Perhaps the generals had been viewing it that way all along, but for me it was a dramatic wake-up call to be in this deliberation with the greatest intelligence and insight I could muster. It stands out as memorable because of the thousands of conversations I’ve been in with senior leaders since then that lacked this sense of consequence.

General Sullivan was unique in focusing 50 percent of his time and efforts on the future. Sometimes he spoke about the challenge of not getting too far ahead of the troops, of having to bring them along—and how difficult that was. The more clearly he saw the imperatives of the future, the greater his frustration with the Army’s ponderously slow movement, so laden down with tradition and bureaucracy.

How many leaders spend time in the future? How many decisions are made using information from both present realities and future scenarios? How many organizations are willing to open their boundaries and absorb as much information as they can, knowing that it is only these exchanges that prevent deterioration and death?

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How many leaders understand how to step off the Arrow of Time and consciously engage with the future so as to influence its direction, not with complex strategies but by using information well? General Sullivan’s leadership was rare then. Now it is an endangered species.

The last time I was with General Sullivan was at a scenario-planning session hosted by Shell Oil Company at Windows on the World atop the World Trade Center, just a few years before the terror attacks of 9/11. He voiced his frustration about the behavior he was encountering on the corporate boards where he now served. “We spend hours debating how to get the stock price up a penny. Nobody is thinking about development of leaders or the future.”

THE ARROW OF TIME: NOTES

¹ There are much older great civilizations whose records were kept in stories and oral traditions. Most Western archeohistorians discount these because they assume that records passed down orally will be distorted and changed in transmission. The opposite is true: There are many examples in Buddhist, Hindu, and Indigenous traditions of individuals who have memorized the equivalent of volumes of texts that they recite impeccably, even now.

² Anthropocene videos I favor: “The Anthropocene: Where on Earth Are We Going?,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvD0TgE34HA&t=461s; and “The Anthropocene: The Age of Mankind,” 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW138ZTKioM.

³ I’ve been puzzled by this assertion of the arc of justice growing stronger over long periods of time because it cannot be verified historically. But within the last stage of collapse, the Age of Decadence, human rights, social justice, gender equality, education, and health-care benefits all surge as leaders create the welfare state. The leaders, acting as if they’ll always be in power with unlimited resources, are hugely beneficent in offering a progressive society to all. So it appears that justice and the social good are moving forward, which they are in the context of the moment and the past few years of the civilization. However, the tragic irony is that all this progress in human rights occurs at the end of the civilization and cannot be sustained because of all the other forces at play. The arc of justice indeed seems to surge, but it is actually a sign of imminent collapse. Such a harsh truth to contemplate.

⁴ For a brilliant explanation of evolution confusion, and the way “historicity”—a belief in the future—appears everywhere in US culture, see John Michael Greer, “On Evolution, History, and Progress,” https://thegreatstory.org/JMG-evolution-history-progress.pdf.

⁵ Tim Flannery, The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People (New York: Grove Press, 1994).

⁶ Wright, Illustrated Short History of Progress. The concept of Progress Traps is the basis of this brilliant work.

⁷ Wright, Illustrated Short History of Progress, 50.

⁸ Guy McPherson, “Abrupt, Irreversible Climate Change to Cause Planetary Extinction,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlRk6NjlCe4&t=264s. Trigger warning: Guy’s website is a treasure trove of science that you need to know but will be sorry you know because this is so hard to take in.

⁹ Nicholas Carr, Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016).

¹⁰ Mark Zuckerberg, “The Metaverse and How We’ll Build It Together,” at Connect 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvufun6xer8.

¹¹ One look at the many charts displayed in this video removes all doubt of human’s impact: “The Anthropocene: Where on Earth Are We Going?,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvD0TgE34HA&t=461s.

¹² For an example of tipping points for coastal systems, see Patrick Boland et al., “Multiple Climate Change-Driven Tipping Points for Coastal Systems,” Nature, July 30, 2021, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-94942-7.

¹³ Google the topic “Sixth Mass Extinction” for a variety of presentations. Trigger warning again!

¹⁴ I felt compelled to identify our addiction in an October 2021 article, “Freeing Ourselves from Our Addiction to Hope,” https://margaretwheatley.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Freeing-ourselves-from-addiction-to-hope.pdf.

¹⁵ Robert Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (New York: Penguin Books, 2017).

¹⁶ Michael Dowd’s site www.postdoom.com is a treasure trove of resources, including conversations with a wide variety of experts, artists, writers; his presentations; and his audio recordings of significant books and articles. He defines “post doom” as “what opens up when we remember who we are and how we got here, accept the inevitable, honor our grief, and prioritize what is pro-future and nourishing.” I urge you to explore this site: https://postdoom.com/resources/.

¹⁷ Chögyam Trungpa and Carolyn Gimian, ed., True Command: The Teachings of the Dorje Kasung, Vol. I, “The Town Talks” (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Trident Press, 2005), 55. Jesse Jackson described Dr. King’s leadership in very similar ways in a private conversation with me in Athens, Greece, 2009.

¹⁸ See my book Perseverance (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2010).

¹⁹ Colonel Ryan C. Kendall, “Playing War: US Military Experimentation and Innovation During Peacetime,” PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, May 2022. A detailed account of General Sullivan’s brilliant leadership.

²⁰ Nancy Dixon et al., Company Command: Unleashing the Power of the Army Profession (West Point, NY: US Military Academy, 2005) tells the history of this powerful community of practice, written by its founders.