“Our future is a race between the growing power of technology and the wisdom with which we use it.”
Stephen Hawking
A Path That Cannot Be Seen
I’m doing my best to follow a faint path. These posts are my working notes along the way.
Years ago, I was taught an aikido technique that involved entering an opponent’s attack in a way that created an unexpected opening. It was a beautiful move but no matter how hard I practiced, it eluded me. My teacher – the late Sensei Patrick Gradson - was a curly-haired Irish carpenter with rough hands and gentle sparkling eyes. He took my hands in his own and said, with characteristic compassion:
“Julian! You must take the path that cannot be seen.”
I have cherished and pondered those words for decades.
And they returned to me after a recent conversation with Tad Homer-Dixon.
Tad founded the Cascade Institute which applies the disciplined lens of complexity science to the global polycrisis. He and his team have been mathematically mapping planetary basins of attraction - plausible futures shaped by complex configurations of ecological, technological, socio-cultural, economic, and climatic variables. They’re not just scenarios; they’re patterns of coherence with the capacity to organize at a global scale.
(Skip to the end if you want a quick refresher on the concept).
You won’t be surprised to learn that most of these futures are pretty grim patterns of dystopian decline.
And one of them isn’t!
Amidst the gloom, there exists a small but remarkably stable beacon of possibility – a flourishing attractor. It reminded me of the late Hopi Elder Thomas Banyaca and the prophetic teachings he shared at the United Nations: a faint but unmistakably hopeful path we can choose in this moment of turbulent peril.
A path that cannot be seen.
There’s no guarantee we’ll take it or even recognize it.
But pursuing it is our great opportunity and responsibility.
Whatever our location or vocation, this is what Thomas Berry called The Great Work - restoring reverence and care for the Earth, reinhabiting our place in the wider community of life, and acting on behalf of future generations.
So let this be an invitation: to harness your unique calling—be it a soul longing, cultural commitment, or civic duty—to the Great Work of our times.
To think and act like a planetary caretaker species would.
We stand at a generational inflection point. Cascading crises dance alongside beautiful possibilities. A moment of perilous but fertile instability where the very process of disequilibrium can be a catalyst for emergence.
A system in motion is a system that can both tip into irreversible decline or be nudged towards new patterns of possibility.
Don’t Surrender to the Doom Whisperers!
You don’t need me to tell you that the news and trends are grim. But the Cascade Institute data is clear:
Decline is not inevitable!
Do not fall prey to the doomsayers and preppers who claim that we are inevitably heading into the long darkness. I’m not saying their perspective is without merit or statistical likelihood. But there’s a seductive fatalism here that reminds me of Grima Wormtongue whispering poison into the ears of a paralyzed king.
Fuck those guys!
How we participate in this moment matters.
There’s still a window - perhaps a generation in length - where our love, longing, and leadership can shape the trajectory of life on Earth.
And wisdom might be the guiding thread.
What is Wisdom?
I don’t claim special insight here – just a re-weaving of what so many teachers have shared. I offer these reflections to help clarify the deeper orientation behind the work we’re doing at the Wolf Willow Institute.
There’s a growing consensus that systems change requires both inner and outer transformation.
Wisdom is one name for the interface between them. It offers distinct qualities that that can serve as scaffolding for our collective work:
Wisdom integrates our many ways of knowing—including not-knowing. It embraces paradox and mystery, not as enemies of reason but as necessary companions to deep understanding.
Wisdom expands our temporal and moral horizons. It holds immediate needs in balance with deep time and the more-than-human world.
Wisdom is fundamentally relational. It arises from deep connectedness, humility, and reverence for the living web we’re part of.
Wisdom requires both cultivation and surrender. It’s not something we “have” but something that arises when we release our grip on certainty, control, and ego.
Wisdom is embodied. It involves an integration of head, heart, and gut—what some traditions call the deeper mind or true self.
Wisdom is practiced. It only really comes alive when we participate skillfully - ethically and effectively - across the web of our relationships…our families, communities, institutions, and the living earth.
Why Wisdom Matters Now
We could name thousands of ways to serve the future, but many fall into six interrelated domains. Each is a vital root in the regenerative ecosystem we must grow:
1. Living Infrastructure: Redesigning physical systems - cities, energy, agriculture - to align with natural ecosystems and circular flows.
2. Conscious Technology: Developing tech that amplifies human potential and supports collective intelligence under democratic oversight.
3. Regenerative Economics: Shifting from extractive growth to economies that reward social and ecological flourishing.
4. Adaptive Governance: Creating institutions that can handle complexity, navigate crises, and think across generations.
5. Human Development: Fostering cultures that reliably produce mature, whole, eco-centric adults.
6. Protective Stewardship: Defending the conditions that make flourishing possible – wildness, biodiversity, civil liberties, public services, and vulnerable communities.
Wisdom serves as the essential throughline across all these domains because each one requires the capacity to a) discern what truly serves life and b) act from that understanding, even under pressure and uncertainty. It specifically addresses our individual and collective capacity to navigate complexity with long-term flourishing in mind. And it does so in a way that can offer shared understanding across religious, spiritual, cultural, political and philosophical traditions.
I think there are at least three insights that can unify us across boundaries of difference. People from virtually every tradition and perspective would surely agree:
1. There’s a Wisdom Gap
Many of our systems fail because they maximize short-term metrics while ignoring long-term, systemic consequences. In an age of complexity, wisdom is not just a virtue—it’s a strategic necessity.
2. Personal Wisdom is Foundational
Without individual wisdom cultivation, even the best intentions go awry. Practices that cultivate complexity tolerance, emotional maturity, and relational attunement are essential.
3. Wisdom is a Collective Practice
We need processes and structures that amplify collective discernment—deliberation, diverse perspectives, future-accountability. Our systems must reward wise decisions over clever ones, and place boundary constraints around the capacity for self-interest to disrupt the well-being of all.
Without wisdom, our so-called solutions simply become new problems.
We end up recreating the very patterns we seek to transform.
A Worldwide Network of Wisdom Schools
“We view leadership as the capacity of a human system to shape its future and specifically to sustain the significant processes of change required to do so.”
Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski & Flowers[i].
Across the planet I’m also seeing a tremendously hopeful pattern emerging: a growing number of fellowships, retreats, centres, books, courses, communities of practice, spiritual activism and regenerative leadership programs dedicated to the integration of inner (psycho-spiritual development, personal growth, healing, awakening etc.) and outer (social innovation, systems transformation, cultural evolution, planetary flourishing etc.) approaches.
Many don’t yet see themselves as part of a larger movement, but I believe they represent an important facet of humanity’s attempt to evolve the consciousness and capabilities our survival requires. Andrew Dunn, founder of the School of Wise Innovation calls them
…an emerging network of wisdom schools around the world, supporting founders and changemakers in developing the awareness and capacities to live, work, and create with greater harmony with the web of life.
Wisdom schools.
I think that describes it beautifully.
Maybe you’re running or working in such a wisdom school?
We have always understood our work at the Wolf Willow Institute to be a part of this living movement. Above all, we aspire to:
1. Serve as a living model of such a wisdom school by actively working with real people at the cusp of these inner and outer domains as they re-imagine and support the emergence of a flourishing future.
2. Ripple the field as a catalyst helping this broader movement connect, recognize itself, and amplify its collective impact.
This is what we’re up to and we’re actively looking for fellow travellers and supporters.
The Great Work Awaits
I don’t believe the primary choice we’re facing is between doom and salvation.
It's between resignation and engagement.
The mathematical models – just like the ancient prophecies - show us there is a path. The wisdom traditions remind us how to walk it. The emerging network of learning communities offer training. And the crisis offers urgency.
What's missing is you.
Your gifts. Your corner of the world. Your willingness to walk this path - not as a saviour or saint, but as a worthy if imperfect ancestor.
I recognize of course that if you’re reading this, you’ve likely put your shoulder to the wheel long ago and I offer you a deep bow of gratitude and respect.
The children being born today will come of age in whatever world we create in the next two decades. May we become the elders they need us to be.
So-called great work is all about the very next choices we make.
Let’s make ‘em count!
Stumbling in whole-hearted solidarity along the Path That Cannot Be Seen…
Julian
p.s. check out this upcoming Wolf Willow wisdom exploration - Eldering in Times of Transformation - that is being offered by Cheryl Rose, Zhiish McKenzie and al etmanski….and Cheryl’s beautiful piece on wisdom and wild magic.
In brief: Basins of attraction
Basins of attraction describe the initial conditions that guide systems toward long-term stable patterns. They are the starting points – the gateway drugs – that lead to a defined system state (attractor) over time. Imagine a 3D surface with multiple bowl-shaped indentations. Drop a ball on the surface and it will roll into the nearest bowl. Each bowl is a “basin of attraction”—a distinct future state the system tends toward. When a ball sits at the bottom of one of these it is stable. But if it is destabilized – if something pushes it out of the bowl – it rolls across a rippling landscape of attractors or adjacent possibilities.
Complexity approaches to change often begin by mapping this landscape – whether at a micro or macro level – to understand something of the evolutionary potential of the current reality. Our current reality might look something like this:
[i] Senge, P. M., Scharmer, C. O., Jaworski, J., & Flowers, B. S. (2008). Presence: Human purpose and the field of the future. Crown Currency.
This one of the most inspiring and brilliant pieces I have read of late. I may have some confirmation bias going on here because it sums up so many (if not all) of my beliefs and aspirations for our way forward on this beautiful planet. I am on this path with you and so many others. Let us take the path that cannot, yet, be seen. Thank you, Julian!
Thanks for a great post Julian. I wonder if there is another path that avoids the binary of doomsday vs wisdom. Perhaps another response to the trajectories toward inevitable breakdown of so much of what has served us well in decades past - in the economy, society and with the environment, is not giving up in a kind of dire doomsday-ish way, but embracing the 'great simplification' as Nate Hagens calls it. Perhaps collapse IS the path or at least the container for the wisdom you invite so compellingly, a wisdom that doesn't deny the tragedy and trauma, a wisdom that enables us to reset as a species.