No Reform or Leader Is Going to Save the Status Quo–We’re on Our Own

The key takeaway here is: don’t count on a simplistic ideology or reform or a “supreme leader” to save the status quo from internal failure.

Humans prefer simplicity to complexity. This is why mythologies still resonate with us, despite our hubristic claims to rationality and “following the science.” What we actually crave isn’t the challenge of teasing apart highly complex systems of interconnected dynamics in which each subsystem influences every other subsystem.

What we crave is a simplistic ...