Understanding the Future: The Power of a Systemic View

The year 2025 may come to be seen as the spin-off into a new paradigm.

We are living in an era that will likely be remembered as a time of profound transition — a pivot point where one paradigm begins to dissolve, and another, still taking shape, emerges. To make sense of this moment, we need to adopt a systemic view of the world.

A systemic view sees the world as a dynamic web of interconnections, where feedback loops, interdependence, and evolving patterns drive change — revealing the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

A systemic view is, at its core, a holistic perspective. And yet, the word holistic — beautiful and powerful in its origins — has suffered a kind of linguistic erosion, robbed of clarity by overuse and misuse until it now seems to mean everything and nothing at once.

So let’s work with the word systemic. It offers something sharper, clearer — a framework for understanding the world as a web of interconnections.

Systemic thinking acknowledges the first principle of life: everything is interconnected.

It reveals that all systems — whether biological, social, cultural, or economic — are governed by interdependence and shaped by feedback loops. These loops, both positive and negative, drive systems into continuous evolution, a dance of opposing forces: entropy and syntropy.

The Dance of Entropy and Syntropy

Entropy — the gradual decline into disorder — is a familiar concept, often associated with collapse, decay, and endings. Syntropy, its lesser-known counterpart, represents the forces of life and renewal, the emergence of order and coherence. Together, they create the dynamic tension that defines life itself: a cycle of collapse and rebirth, of death and regeneration. Within this cycle, there are moments of relative stability, fleeting instances when the system finds equilibrium. But equilibrium is never permanent. Systems spin out, destabilize, and evolve again.

This process of evolution — this continuous interplay of breakdown and renewal — unfolds across all dimensions of life: the biological, the social, the cultural, the economic. And it is precisely what we are experiencing now, at this moment in history.

The Great Spin-Off

The year 2025 may come to be seen as the spin-off into a new paradigm. The signs have been gathering for years, even decades, but every paradigm shift needs a trigger — a disruption powerful enough to shake the old system loose from its foundations. That disruption is here, and it is a complex dynamic of entangled forces at play, what has come to be known as the Polycrisis.

This intricate web of crises demands a new way of thinking to navigate its complexity and identify pathways forward. To make sense of these shifts, we turn to the Three Horizons framework, a model developed by Bill Sharpe.

The Three Horizons framework helps us see how cycles of change unfold across time. Horizon 1 represents the dominant system — the current paradigm that governs how we live, work, and think. Over time, Horizon 1 begins to lose coherence. Its systems falter, its values decay, and its relevance diminishes. But it doesn’t disappear without a fight.

Meanwhile, Horizon 3 represents the future paradigm. It is the realm of visionary thinking, a horizon where new values, new systems, and new ways of being begin to take shape. Horizon 3 is not yet fully formed — it exists as a potential, a possibility. But for Horizon 3 to manifest, it needs help.

Enter Horizon 2. This is the space of disruption, the in-between zone where the old and the new collide. Horizon 2 is where triggers — social, economic, or technological — create the conditions for transformation. It is messy, volatile, and unpredictable, but it is also essential. Without Horizon 2, there can be no shift, no evolution.

The Technological Trigger

The current trigger is a technological one.

We only have to look at the photo of the supporters at Trump’s inaugural speech — laden with several triggers itself — yesterday to see the future unfolding.

Over the past few years, exponential advances in artificial intelligence, digital systems, and communication technologies have accelerated the pace of change beyond anything we’ve seen before. These tools are not just disrupting industries; they are reshaping the very fabric of human systems. They challenge how we govern, how we create, how we relate to one another — and even how we understand ourselves.

As the currents of disruption swell, Horizon 1 begins to fracture. The old paradigm — rooted in extraction, linear thinking, and the illusion of separateness — can no longer sustain itself. Meanwhile, the seeds of Horizon 3 — systems built on regeneration, interdependence, and complexity — are beginning to sprout. The dance of entropy and syntropy is in motion.

This is where we pause.

Part one of this reflection sets the stage — a systemic lens that lets us see our moment in history with fresh eyes, connecting the dots of disruption, transformation, and possibility.

In Part Two, we will explore what lies ahead: the emerging patterns, the possible futures, and the forces that will shape the next chapter of human evolution.

The system is spinning.

The question is: toward what?