Resilience Mode: Confronting the Greatest Challenge of Our Civilization
A journey through collapse, complexity, and the emergence of a new planetary consciousness
Every so often in human history — and planetary history, for that matter — there’s a moment so pivotal, so unprecedented, that it marks the end of one era and the uncertain birth of another. We’re living in one of those moments right now. Not just historically or politically, but ecologically, geologically, and perhaps most importantly — consciously.
Let’s start with the idea of resilience. In the language of living systems, resilience isn’t about snapping back to what was. It’s about returning to homeostasis — a stable, dynamic balance that allows life to flourish. But — and this is key — it doesn’t mean going back to the same state as before. Resilience is not regression. It’s adaptation.
Earth, for over 10,000 years, has existed in what scientists call the Holocene epoch — a relatively stable climate period that allowed human civilization to flourish. Agriculture, cities, economies, religions, and empires — none of it would have been possible without the gentle balance of Holocene conditions. But that stability is over. We’ve entered what many call the Anthropocene — a new epoch shaped by human activity.
This is not a typo — it’s the Atropocene, not the Anthropocene — a name for an era defined not just by human impact, but by disruption, entropy, and the unraveling of old systems.
In Greek mythology, Atropos was the Fate who cut the thread of life, marking an irreversible transition. That’s where we are now — at the point where threads are being severed: the thread of stable seasons, of biodiversity, of predictable weather patterns.
The Atropocene is not merely an epoch shaped by human activity, but one defined by disruption, fire, entropy, and profound uncertainty — a time when the familiar unravels and the future remains unwritten.
This isn’t just climate change. It’s not simply ecosystems unraveling. What we’re witnessing is a fundamental shift in Earth’s operating system — from the stable code of the Holocene to something chaotic, volatile, and still undefined. The Atropocene is the age of entropic acceleration — where natural and human systems are spiraling into disorder, yet within that chaos, the seeds of transformation are being sown.
And now, we find ourselves in a liminal space. Buddhists have a word for this: bardo.
In the context of Buddhism, “bardo” refers to an intermediate or transitional state, specifically between death and rebirth, often described as a liminal period.
We are in the bardo between worlds. A state between death and rebirth.
The question is no longer how to return to the past, but how to adapt to an Earth that is rewriting its own code — and how we, as a species, will participate in this reboot.
It’s where old identities dissolve, and the new has yet to take form. It’s uncomfortable, disorienting — and profoundly fertile.
Earth is in bardo. Gaia — the living system of Earth — has exited the Holocene, traversed the Atropocene, and is now seeking a new homeostatic state. It will find it. There is no doubt. The resilience of Gaia is written into its 4.5 billion-year history. From asteroid impacts to ice ages, Gaia has always found its balance — and in doing so, created the conditions for life to not just survive, but thrive.
The real question, the burning question of our time, is:
Will we be stewards or spectators? Architects or archaeologists? Will we awaken to the magnitude of this transition — or be swept away by it?
There is, undeniably, a new level of consciousness emerging across the globe. You can feel it — in conversations about regenerative economies, in movements for ecological restoration, in the rapid evolution of technologies that can measure, map, and mirror living systems. But with that rise in consciousness comes a rise in complexity. The problems we face today — from climate chaos to biodiversity collapse to AI ethics — are more complex than anything our species has ever encountered.
But here’s the thing: humanity has always designed tools to thrive.
We’ve invented languages, technologies, and social systems that allowed us to navigate uncertainty, to create meaning, and to build civilizations. Today, we have technologies — AI, blockchain, digital twins, biosensors — that allow us to understand and interact with Gaia in ways that were impossible even a decade ago. We have behavioral science, ecological literacy, and ethical frameworks that can guide us toward regeneration rather than destruction. We have values — resilience, interdependence, humility — that align with life’s core principles.
So the question becomes: are we prepared for this transition?
Not just technologically, but emotionally, culturally, and spiritually? How will this process unfold? What will be our role in Gaia’s rebalancing act?
The truth is — we don’t know. The future is uncertain. The path forward is foggy. But what is certain is this: we have the tools, the knowledge, and the capacity to transcend this moment into something greater. A new homeostatic state — a new balance — that includes us as conscious participants in life’s unfolding story.
We are in bardo. Gaia is becoming. And the next chapter is unwritten.
Resilience, the Tennis Ball, and Humanity in the Liminal
Resilience isn’t just a theory. It’s not an abstract concept tucked away in a biology textbook or an economics white paper. Resilience triggers. It moves. It adjusts. And right now, we are living inside that trigger moment — where Gaia, the living system we call Earth, is reacting to the anthropogenic impact of the Atropocene.
Think of it like this. Picture a tennis ball soaring across the court at high speed, spinning freely, dancing with momentum, aiming to score. At that moment, it embodies potential — maximum freedom, velocity, purpose. But then — contact. It hits the ground. And in that moment of impact, the ball distorts. It compresses, twists, seemingly losing its shape, its integrity. For a split second, it looks like it might explode under pressure.
But it doesn’t. The ball rebounds. It snaps back, adjusts its shape, and keeps moving — shaking off the red clay dust from the court, reorienting toward its next destination. That, right there, is resilience in action. And that, metaphorically, is exactly where we are today.
Gaia has been soaring — 4.5 billion years of dynamic movement, adaptation, evolution. But the last few centuries? Impact. Industrialization, fossil fuels, deforestation, pollution. Anthropogenic forces have struck the surface, compressing the biosphere, distorting the balance of ecosystems, reshaping the climate.
And yet, like the tennis ball, Gaia is rebounding. Entering a mode of adjustment, seeking a new homeostatic state, not to return to the Holocene — but to establish a new dynamic equilibrium in the wake of the Atropocene. The Earth has entered resilience mode — and we are part of that process, whether we realize it or not.
This moment is what biology calls a liminal space — the space between what was and what will be. The space of transformation.
It’s the chick inside the egg, pressing against the shell, feeling the tightness, the limits, the finitude of its world — and realizing it must break through, without knowing what lies beyond.
It’s the caterpillar dissolving inside the chrysalis — its old cells deconstructing, reassembling as imaginal cells, sharing information, reshaping the environment of the cocoon into something altogether new. Wings where there were none. A whole new mode of existence.
That’s where we are. In the egg. In the cocoon. In the bardo.
Humanity is in liminal mode. The world we knew is no longer holding. The future is not yet clear. The pressures are immense. But just like the ball, just like the chick, just like the caterpillar, we have a choice: respond or react, awaken or implode.
So how can humanity react to these changes? What tools do we have to navigate this unprecedented terrain? What values can guide us through this bardo space into a thriving future?
That’s where we go next. Because while Gaia rebounds, humanity must awaken — and there is a possible path forward, built on foundational principles, technologies, and a different kind of intelligence. One we’ve barely begun to understand.
From Sumer to Silicon — How Humanity Responds to Complexity
Let’s get something straight: this isn’t the first time humanity has faced a complexity overload. The stakes are higher now, yes — the planet’s systems are wobbling, the atmosphere is shifting, and our digital footprints are growing faster than we can track. But the pattern — the deep pattern of human evolution — is familiar.
Let’s rewind 5,000 years. We’re in Sumer, in ancient Mesopotamia, in one of the first cities ever built. Thousands of people living together — not in tribes where everyone knew everyone — but in dense, chaotic clusters where trust was stretched thin and privacy didn’t exist. The complexity of urban life was off the charts. Think about it: no formal rules, no logistics systems, no stable currencies. Just people, food, needs, and conflict.
In the ancient city of Lagash, over 40,000 people lived together — an unprecedented scale of complexity. Without formal systems, they developed writing and mathematics to organize trade, resources, and relationships — laying the foundation for civilization as we know it today.
You couldn’t go back to the tribal village. The genie of complexity was out of the bottle. So humanity did what it always does: we created systems of organization.
Enter writing and mathematics — not just tools for communication, but technologies of trust. New languages. I’m not talking Shakespeare here — I’m talking mud tablets and accounting. When Matthew came to you with two bags of wheat from his early agricultural surplus and you stored them in a makeshift shack, you reached for a slab of wet clay. You scratched in: “Matthew — 2 bags — date.” That was it. A record, a shared understanding, a primitive ledger. That act wasn’t trivial — it was revolutionary. It allowed cities to function. It allowed scale.
This leap — from oral to written communication — did more than just record transactions; it reshaped how humans thought. Known as the Alphabet Effect, the introduction of writing — and later, the alphabet — not only enabled abstract thinking, categorization, and logic, but also transformed human consciousness, social organization, and governance. Writing externalized memory, allowing for systematic reasoning, legal codes, and long-term planning. It marked a cognitive shift: from a fluid, oral world rooted in narrative and memory, to one grounded in analysis, structure, and control — a prerequisite for cities, states, and civilization itself.
And with scale came more complexity, which triggered more innovation. Let’s list them.
- Architecture: not just shelters, but the invention of the arch — a breakthrough in structural design enabling temples, granaries, and public spaces
- Navigation by the stars: enabling travel, trade, and timekeeping.
- Irrigation systems: engineering to manage water, the lifeblood of urban life and agriculture.
- Extensive agriculture: transforming landscapes to feed growing populations, powered by the invention of the plow, which revolutionized soil cultivation, increased yields, and enabled the surplus needed to sustain city life and complex societies.
- Social hierarchies and governance: crude at first, but they emerged to maintain order.
- Religion: as a system of values and a unifying story to navigate the unknown.
Each of these was a response to complexity — and each triggered a leap forward.
Fast forward. Every time we’ve hit the ceiling of what our systems could handle, we invented new ones. And with them, new languages. Speech was humanity’s first tool to organize primitive coordination — enabling cooperation in hunting, gathering, and early social bonds. But as complexity grew, speech alone was not enough. Writing and math emerged as new languages — not just for communication, but for organizing societies, managing trade, resources, and relationships at unprecedented scales.
Then came science — a language of inquiry and evidence. Then computing — a language of logic and code. Then the Internet — a global language of networks. Each built on the last, encompassing, extending, and amplifying the previous languages.
This isn’t a random sequence. It’s what Robert Logan calls the six languages — each a response to complexity, each a new mode of organization.
And here’s the kicker: we’re now entering a new language moment. The resilience trigger Gaia is unleashing isn’t just ecological — it’s cognitive, technological, spiritual. We are developing a new language for organization, one that could encompass all the previous ones and reshape everything: economics, values, finance, technology, governance, even spirituality.
This is the resilience of humanity — mirroring the resilience of Gaia. When things break, we invent ways to hold them together. When complexity overwhelms us, we design new maps, new tools, new codes.
And now? We’re at the threshold. The crust of the egg is cracking. The cocoon is dissolving. A new language is forming. It’s not fully born yet, but it’s emerging — and it will define how we reorganize ourselves in this liminal time.
The Tools We Hold, the Choice We Face
Let’s take stock.
In the face of collapse, in the bardo of the Atropocene, it’s easy to focus on what’s broken — our climate, our ecosystems, our social contracts. But let’s pause, zoom out, and ask a different question:
What tools do we actually have at our disposal, as a species, right now?
The answer is more powerful than most realize.
First and foremost, we have love, empathy, and compassion — not as abstract ideals, but as survival traits. In the most dire, uncertain, and chaotic moments, these qualities emerge — not from policy or markets — but from us. From the human heart. From the innate capacity to feel, to care, to connect.
Next, we have ancestral knowledge — a vast, global inheritance encoded in the stories, rituals, and practices of indigenous and traditional peoples across the planet. Yes, much of it has been decimated — by colonization, industrialization, consumerism. But not erased. It’s still here, pulsing beneath the surface, in the shared understanding that we are part of nature — not separate from it.
This knowledge wasn’t academic. It was lived. It was the knowledge of nature — of cycles, seasons, reciprocity, and balance. It was the knowledge that got us to this point, that carried humanity into the Anthropocene — not through domination, but through alignment.
And here’s the kicker: we still have the capacity to create.
Not just gadgets and apps, but entire systems of organization, new languages of civilization. We’ve done it before. Writing. Math. Science. Computing. The Internet. Each of these was a tool for organizing complexity — and now, facing the greatest complexity yet, we are on the verge of developing something more profound: a language of interconnection, of mutualism, of resilience.
This isn’t just philosophy — it’s reality. We are nature. We’ve always been nature. We are not apart from Gaia; we are expressions of it. And at our core, we are a spiritual species. Whatever your faith — Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Indigenous, atheist — there is a common basement of belief: that we are part of something greater. That we can reconnect — to our gods, our ancestors, our Earth.
This isn’t theory. I experienced it.
I was invited to Plum Village, in Bordeaux, France — a monastic community founded by Thich Nhat Hanh, affectionately called Thay. Though he had passed, the spirit was alive. The air, the people, the land — they embodied a concept that can guide us forward: interbeing.
What is interbeing? It’s the understanding that nothing exists independently. That to be is to inter-be — to be part of a web of relationships, causes, and conditions. Your breath depends on the trees. Your food on the soil. Your life on countless others.
What is interbecoming? It’s a step further. It’s not just existing together — it’s evolving together. It’s co-creation. Symbiosis. Mutualism. Regeneration. It’s being aligned with nature, not as passengers, but as partners in the ongoing creation of life.
You don’t need to travel to Bordeaux to find this wisdom. It lives in every indigenous culture, in every ancestral tradition, on every continent. It’s there in the teachings of the Amazon, the Arctic, the African savannah, the Australian outback. It’s there in your bones.
And it’s from this reconciliation — with our deeper selves, with nature — that we will find the strength to thrive.
This is the resilience impact — not just bouncing back, but waking up.
We already have everything we need. The tools. The values. The knowledge.
The only question left is the hardest one:
To change how we live, how we govern, how we value, how we relate.
To choose interbeing over isolation. Regeneration over extraction. Courage over convenience.
Because in the end, resilience isn’t just about Gaia — it’s about us.
And whether we choose to become something greater — together.
