Entering the Era of Collapse

Navigating the End of Horizon One

We are living through a profound, all-encompassing transition, one that is redefining the structures, assumptions, and systems that have governed human civilization for centuries. This is not just a shift in policies, technologies, or economies — it is a systemic shift.

The world as we know it is moving from one paradigm to another, bringing with it seismic changes to the interconnected systems of ecology, economy, energy, and society.

Much has been said about “paradigm shifts,” but the term often feels too abstract, too detached from the real, tangible transformations unfolding before us. What we are experiencing is better described as a systemic shift, a fundamental reorganization of the systems that govern our lives. To understand this, we need a new lens: systemic thinking.

Civilizations don’t collapse overnight — they slip out of what experts call the window of viability, a delicate balance between resilience and efficiency that ensures systems can thrive over the long term. When a system prioritizes one force too heavily, it sacrifices its ability to adapt, eventually leading to collapse.

The graph of sustainability dynamics illustrates this concept. The vertical axis represents sustainability, while the horizontal axis moves between greater resilience (on the Left) and greater efficiency (on the Right). At the center lies the window of viability, where systems maintain an optimal balance between these two forces:

• Greater Resilience: Systems prioritizing resilience focus on diversity, redundancy, and adaptability. However, excessive resilience can lead to stagnation and inefficiency.
• Greater Efficiency: Systems optimizing for efficiency streamline processes, reduce redundancy, and maximize outputs. But excessive efficiency strips away adaptability, making systems brittle and vulnerable to collapse under stress.

The risks of veering too far to either extreme are clear:

• On the left, systems risk stagnation from over-resilience.
• On the right, systems risk collapse as over-optimization for efficiency sacrifices adaptability.

Horizon One: Moving Out of the Window of Viability

The Three Horizons Framework reveals that Horizon One, the dominant system of our time, is nearing its end.

Horizon One refers to the political, economic, and social structures that have defined the status quo for decades. Designed to maximize efficiency and growth, these systems have sacrificed resilience, leaving them unable to absorb shocks, adapt to crises, or recover from disruptions.

As a result, Horizon One is moving dangerously out of the window of viability, putting the entire system at risk of collapse.

• Global Supply Chains: Just-in-time production and globalization have optimized supply chains for maximum efficiency. While this increased productivity and reduced costs, it also stripped away redundancies, leaving supply chains brittle. The COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical disruptions have exposed this fragility, with minor disruptions causing global shortages.
• Financial Systems: Horizon One’s financial systems operate on razor-thin margins, with global debt now exceeding $305 trillion — 3.5 times global GDP. This prioritization of short-term growth has created a system so fragile that even small economic shocks could trigger cascading failures.
• Ecosystems: Efficiency-driven agriculture and resource extraction have led to monoculture farming, deforestation, and biodiversity loss. While these practices maximize short-term yields, they erode the resilience that biodiversity provides. Today, 60% of global GDP relies on biodiversity, yet we are witnessing the sixth mass extinction at an unprecedented rate. Ecosystems operate within planetary boundaries — thresholds that define a safe operating space for humanity. Alarmingly, we have already breached six of the nine planetary boundaries, pushing critical Earth systems beyond their limits. This means we are now operating outside the window of vitality for planetary boundaries, risking irreversible damage to the ecological systems that sustain life on Earth.

Horizon One is entangled in self-terminating feedback loops, amplifying its own vulnerabilities and accelerating its collapse. These dynamics reveal that systemic collapse is not a singular event but an emergent phenomenon driven by cascading failures and the interplay of feedback loops.

Systemic Collapse: The Nature of Transition

Systemic collapse is not a binary event where systems “stop working.” Instead, it is a nonlinear process of reorganization. Driven by feedback loops and tipping points, collapse pushes systems into a new state of behavior, structure, and adaptability.

Think of a forest after a wildfire: what appears to be destruction is actually a reorganization of energy, resources, and relationships, often leading to renewal and greater biodiversity. Similarly, the collapse of human systems — whether economic, ecological, or social — can result in chaos, but it also creates opportunities for regeneration.

The Stampede Toward Collapse

The political shifts we are witnessing in many new governments are not just responses to crises — they are amplifiers of systemic fragility. Instead of addressing the root causes of instability, these governments are doubling down on policies that prioritize short-term efficiency and growth at the expense of long-term resilience.

This relentless focus on resource extraction, fiscal expediency, and centralized decision-making sacrifices the adaptability needed to navigate disruptions. Rather than solving the challenges of Horizon One, these efforts are accelerating its collapse.

This is not progress — it is a stampede toward collapse.

Horizon One’s Final Struggle

We are living in a moment of extreme fragility, where Horizon One is desperately clinging to its foundations while radicalizing itself in an effort to maintain control. Instead of acknowledging its diminishing resilience, Horizon One is doubling down on the very priorities — short-term efficiency, unchecked resource extraction, and centralized governance — that have driven it out of the window of viability.

What’s particularly troubling is how Horizon One is capturing and co-opting the innovations of Horizon Two — emerging solutions and alternative systems — using them as stopgap measures to prop up its failing framework rather than allowing true transformation to occur.

Horizon One has yet to grasp a fundamental truth: its priorities are not solutions — they are the consequences of its own demise. Without recognizing the limitations of its own framework and shifting toward renewal, Horizon One will continue its self-terminating trajectory, dragging the interconnected systems of ecology, economy, and society into further collapse.

The question is no longer whether Horizon One will collapse — it will.

The question is whether we can guide this transition into a new era defined not by fragility, but by resilience, balance, and regeneration. Renewal is possible — but only if we choose to build systems that thrive within the window of viability.