A strong identification with a relational worldview CAN actually have the opposite effect: instead of making people happy, lives more connected, more caring, people feeling like they belong, a relational understanding of the world may actually alienate people.
This was like drinking holy water spiked with existential caffeine—thank you.
You name what most “everything is connected” takes leave out: that knowing too much can turn your morning coffee into a moral crisis and your good deeds into a philosophical hostage situation.
Relational thinking is sacred—but if we don’t ground it in grace, it’ll eat us alive.
This isn’t about becoming cosmic purity police. It’s about staying in the mess, tending our tiny knots in the great web, and maybe saving a crow or two without needing to solve planetary collapse before lunch.
Within systems everything is connected to everything else.
We live in an infinite set of interdependent relationships.
You can not, not make a difference. Everything you do makes a difference. It’s impossible to do otherwise. Within systems we may not always know how and when that difference shows up.
But it is certain it will.
If half of us used one less paper towel a day we would save millions of trees. It’s that simple, complex and beautiful.
So when we, as you are, conscious and ethical, it does change the world.
Thank you, Jessica—your reflections resonate deeply. I wonder if part of the difficulty you describe comes from treating “connection” and “relation” as interchangeable, when they might be quite different.
We are all part of a web of connections—structural, ever-present, the very fabric of life. There is no me without the whole, and no we without the me. I love how you describe this interconnectedness: it gives us grounding, a sense of belonging in something larger.
But relation is the third player we often forget. Unlike a connection, a relation is dynamic, contextual, and involves commitment and reciprocity. To be “in relation” with everything all the time would be impossible and inhuman. Relation asks something of us: it is where responsibility, depth, and transformation emerge.
That’s why I find this distinction so important: connection provides the structure of belonging, while relation animates that structure, bringing context and meaning. I come to understand myself through these chosen, reciprocal relations—human and more-than-human—even while resting in the larger web of connection.
Perhaps part of embracing a relational worldview is also learning to differentiate these layers: to honor connection as a constant, while entering into relation intentionally, in ways that keep us alive to complexity without becoming paralyzed by it.
Evelien! Thank you so much for this. Such a good point - and you are absolutely right, I didn't make that distinction (neither here nor in my mind), and it makes so much sense. That's so super helpful.
You're describing the chaos that happens when you're moving to a higher order of consciousness. You are beginning to frame life differently. It's like your brain is going through a systems upgrade.
For a while, life can be all wrong and overwhelming. You will feel disoriented. Your relationships to your relationships, to your work, to your self change. My mother called it "midlife crisis." But it happens at all stages in life--from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to young adulthood, etc. The breakdown of the old way of seeing and the emergence of the new way of being in the world. Some shifts are easier than others for different people.
It's scary because our culture has no framework for this. You think that as an adult, you should be able to handle all that comes at you. Chaos is seen as dysfunction.
It's a time to slow down. To step away from fear. Frame this messy, chaotic, dysfunctional time as inevitable in the journey toward your expanding consciousness.
And before you know it, life will be back to normal. But you'll be more capable of handling more complexity. You will be less attached to whatever you were attached to before. More free to love, learn, and just be. Until you hit the next stage. Because, if you're fortunate, it just keeps coming.
Loved the post! In the book „Wir stehen in der Mitte der Unendlichkeit“ „Western Culture“ is described as a giant baby. Maybe not society as a whole is in collective adolescence, but the currently dominant parts.
I so enjoyed this Jessica.. brought beautiful blooms of color in the ecotones between your meta philosophical adventures and those of the late Carol Sanford. Carol's 'levels of paradigm' came strongly to mind (ie: Extract Value, Arrest Disorder, Do "Good", Evolve Capacity), as well as a few other key capacity honing frameworks.
While I don't disagree (and totally relate! For example: When I lost my cynicism through developing a holistic perspective, I also lost the only source of power and motivation I knew.. it has been a long freefall into the unknown and also tenuous grasping toward some form of conscious agency), I feel that an "unfolding" worldview also queers things greatly, because in this neither separation nor connection exist (ie: no'thing' was ever separate), but that the (apparent) parts and the whole have agency but intra-actively and heterogeneously (in nestedness, nodes, fields, intra-dimensionally, etc.).. The 'whole' perpetually seeking coherence to know itself consciously; while perpetually becoming unknowable.. the one and the many simultaneously (without paradox).
Amazing piece of writing. Resonated so strongly with my own sensemaking and patterns I'm seeing about overwhelm and the antidote. Your clear and empathic framing is inspiring.
As someone who's spent the past few years writing and researching the metacrisis (particularly from a psychological lens), I resonate with this so much. What's become increasingly clear to me, especially through observing the reactions of people close to me, is that beyond the inability to think systemically or hold complexity, there's also a deeper issue of the "inability to feel".
It's the disconnection from themselves that concern me the most because when we can't access or process our own emotions, how can we possibly make sense of the world in crisis? Thank you for naming this beautifully nuanced space where relational awareness meets existential weight! It's very much needed right now.
This is a known issue with whole systems thinking.
The solution, determined by both theory and experience, is that knowing and doing your will provides the position and integration in the webwork of the System
Thought provoking post. One aspect I find intriguing is how we might expand from materialist perspectives to include non-physicalist (post-materialist) relational ontologies and epistemologies.
What dialogues might we engage in with more-than-human-world beingness/intelligence/consciousness/awareness? What messages, insights and meanings arise from engaging with, for example, ‘crowness’?
I am reminded of Joanna Macy's work, how coming together in somatic exercises, similar to social presenting theatre, guides us to be with complexity and grief. Vanessa Andreotti's metaphors of the bus, layers and the house modernity built also come to mind. Yes it is messy and uncomfortable. In somatic healing, we start with calming and resourcing our nervous system, then touch the pain, and spiral vacation and forth. Dan Siegel says integration is healing, of different parts. We can't kick out logic but how to integrate modernity, connect it with native wisdom, relational wisdom?
This was like drinking holy water spiked with existential caffeine—thank you.
You name what most “everything is connected” takes leave out: that knowing too much can turn your morning coffee into a moral crisis and your good deeds into a philosophical hostage situation.
Relational thinking is sacred—but if we don’t ground it in grace, it’ll eat us alive.
This isn’t about becoming cosmic purity police. It’s about staying in the mess, tending our tiny knots in the great web, and maybe saving a crow or two without needing to solve planetary collapse before lunch.
Clear-eyed. Soft-hearted. Still moving.
—Virgin Monk Boy
Oh my god. I love how you put that into words ... "knowing too much can turn ... your good deeds into a philosophical hostage situation" 🤩
We may all feel frustrated and feel ineffective.
Please consider this:
Within systems everything is connected to everything else.
We live in an infinite set of interdependent relationships.
You can not, not make a difference. Everything you do makes a difference. It’s impossible to do otherwise. Within systems we may not always know how and when that difference shows up.
But it is certain it will.
If half of us used one less paper towel a day we would save millions of trees. It’s that simple, complex and beautiful.
So when we, as you are, conscious and ethical, it does change the world.
How cool is that !
💚
Thank you, Jessica—your reflections resonate deeply. I wonder if part of the difficulty you describe comes from treating “connection” and “relation” as interchangeable, when they might be quite different.
We are all part of a web of connections—structural, ever-present, the very fabric of life. There is no me without the whole, and no we without the me. I love how you describe this interconnectedness: it gives us grounding, a sense of belonging in something larger.
But relation is the third player we often forget. Unlike a connection, a relation is dynamic, contextual, and involves commitment and reciprocity. To be “in relation” with everything all the time would be impossible and inhuman. Relation asks something of us: it is where responsibility, depth, and transformation emerge.
That’s why I find this distinction so important: connection provides the structure of belonging, while relation animates that structure, bringing context and meaning. I come to understand myself through these chosen, reciprocal relations—human and more-than-human—even while resting in the larger web of connection.
Perhaps part of embracing a relational worldview is also learning to differentiate these layers: to honor connection as a constant, while entering into relation intentionally, in ways that keep us alive to complexity without becoming paralyzed by it.
Evelien! Thank you so much for this. Such a good point - and you are absolutely right, I didn't make that distinction (neither here nor in my mind), and it makes so much sense. That's so super helpful.
You're describing the chaos that happens when you're moving to a higher order of consciousness. You are beginning to frame life differently. It's like your brain is going through a systems upgrade.
For a while, life can be all wrong and overwhelming. You will feel disoriented. Your relationships to your relationships, to your work, to your self change. My mother called it "midlife crisis." But it happens at all stages in life--from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to young adulthood, etc. The breakdown of the old way of seeing and the emergence of the new way of being in the world. Some shifts are easier than others for different people.
It's scary because our culture has no framework for this. You think that as an adult, you should be able to handle all that comes at you. Chaos is seen as dysfunction.
It's a time to slow down. To step away from fear. Frame this messy, chaotic, dysfunctional time as inevitable in the journey toward your expanding consciousness.
And before you know it, life will be back to normal. But you'll be more capable of handling more complexity. You will be less attached to whatever you were attached to before. More free to love, learn, and just be. Until you hit the next stage. Because, if you're fortunate, it just keeps coming.
🖤 thank you Lynn. I look forward to keep it coming :)
Loved the post! In the book „Wir stehen in der Mitte der Unendlichkeit“ „Western Culture“ is described as a giant baby. Maybe not society as a whole is in collective adolescence, but the currently dominant parts.
😍
Thank you for spelling it out that clearly.
I so enjoyed this Jessica.. brought beautiful blooms of color in the ecotones between your meta philosophical adventures and those of the late Carol Sanford. Carol's 'levels of paradigm' came strongly to mind (ie: Extract Value, Arrest Disorder, Do "Good", Evolve Capacity), as well as a few other key capacity honing frameworks.
While I don't disagree (and totally relate! For example: When I lost my cynicism through developing a holistic perspective, I also lost the only source of power and motivation I knew.. it has been a long freefall into the unknown and also tenuous grasping toward some form of conscious agency), I feel that an "unfolding" worldview also queers things greatly, because in this neither separation nor connection exist (ie: no'thing' was ever separate), but that the (apparent) parts and the whole have agency but intra-actively and heterogeneously (in nestedness, nodes, fields, intra-dimensionally, etc.).. The 'whole' perpetually seeking coherence to know itself consciously; while perpetually becoming unknowable.. the one and the many simultaneously (without paradox).
Thank you, Adrian. And I fully agree 💚
Wonderful piece Jessica. The clarity and kindness is profound and helpful. Many thanks for shining this kind of light on our path. Dearly appreciated.
Thank you Laurent.
Thought provoking and insightful. Thank you 🙏🏼☮️🌎
Amazing piece of writing. Resonated so strongly with my own sensemaking and patterns I'm seeing about overwhelm and the antidote. Your clear and empathic framing is inspiring.
Thank you, Irene.
This came at such a good time for me and I’m grateful to have read it this morning. Thank you. 💚
Thank you Lauren, I am so happy to hear that it matches others experiences.
As someone who's spent the past few years writing and researching the metacrisis (particularly from a psychological lens), I resonate with this so much. What's become increasingly clear to me, especially through observing the reactions of people close to me, is that beyond the inability to think systemically or hold complexity, there's also a deeper issue of the "inability to feel".
It's the disconnection from themselves that concern me the most because when we can't access or process our own emotions, how can we possibly make sense of the world in crisis? Thank you for naming this beautifully nuanced space where relational awareness meets existential weight! It's very much needed right now.
Thank you Chusana. And especially for your writing on the metacrisis - I find your thoughts on that incredibly helpful and refreshing.
This is a known issue with whole systems thinking.
The solution, determined by both theory and experience, is that knowing and doing your will provides the position and integration in the webwork of the System
Thought provoking post. One aspect I find intriguing is how we might expand from materialist perspectives to include non-physicalist (post-materialist) relational ontologies and epistemologies.
What dialogues might we engage in with more-than-human-world beingness/intelligence/consciousness/awareness? What messages, insights and meanings arise from engaging with, for example, ‘crowness’?
https://www.spiritanimal.info/crow-spirit-animal/
What kind of relationships and communions might we experience?
Those are excellent questions. Something I am deeply curious about.
Lots of great ideas and analysis in this piece. You described the paralysis I sometimes feel, without fully understanding it, beautifully.
Thank you Tim!
I am reminded of Joanna Macy's work, how coming together in somatic exercises, similar to social presenting theatre, guides us to be with complexity and grief. Vanessa Andreotti's metaphors of the bus, layers and the house modernity built also come to mind. Yes it is messy and uncomfortable. In somatic healing, we start with calming and resourcing our nervous system, then touch the pain, and spiral vacation and forth. Dan Siegel says integration is healing, of different parts. We can't kick out logic but how to integrate modernity, connect it with native wisdom, relational wisdom?
Thank you.