Hair-on-fire catastrophes and pace layering breakdown

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In the light of our screens, we are consumed by a world aflame with hair-on-fire catastrophes, a whirlwind of urgent problems, a landslide of critical tipping points, a flood of spiralling crises.

Each is an avoidable consequence of our collective choices. The frenetic urgency drags our attention to the surface. These aren’t just accidents, they’re symptoms of a deeper malaise — a breakdown in pace layering, the intricate dance of change across different timescales which underpins societal stability.

Pace layering, simply put, is the idea that different aspects of our world change at different rates. Fashion flits by in the blink of an eye, while deep cultural values shift with glacial slowness. This layered structure, with fast layers innovating atop slow, stable foundations, has been key to human progress and resilience.

When these layers misalign or collapse into each other, the pattern breaks down, and our ability to align our response fractures. Rapid technological shifts, without cultural adaptation, create instability, uncertainty. We’re left staggering from one shock while the next impacts before we have rebalanced.

This breakdown isn’t as flashy as a burning rainforest or a market crash. It’s subtle, creeping, easy to miss. But its consequences may be far more profound.

Take the Grenfell Tower tragedy. It’s not just about the materials used or the lack of firebreaks; it’s a failure across layers of pace. The cultural layer of safety norms, the governance layer of regulations, and the immediate physical layer of construction — all misaligned, leading to disaster.

All, as revealed by the enquiry, avoidable, but for each of them, critical people were looking the other way.

We’re navigating through a dense, tangled forest where the paths (our societal constructs) are not only overgrown but shifting beneath our feet. The hero (all of us, humanity) must learn to harmonise these discordant layers, finding a new way forward that embraces complexity without succumbing to chaos.

What does this mean for us, staring at our screens, feeling the heat? The task is monumental, but also deeply human. It’s to weave our past, present, and future into a story that works, embrace complexity without being paralysed , find hope not in easy solutions, but in our capacity to learn, adapt, and create.

It’s a task fraught with paradox. Act with urgency while cultivating patience. Think globally, be rooted locally. Embrace change while preserving continuity. But the tension is the hope. By engaging with the full spectrum of pace layers, from the fleeting to the eternal — and realising they were never separate — we might just find our way through to a world more capable of weathering crises, and perhaps reducing them.

Not a bad little canter, eh?

Today, I’m just going to keep this in my mind, and try to focus on my work — read a little less social media — and think how, in doing what I do, I can do it in a way which might plant some seeds. What about you?