This isn’t a neatly tied-together essay. It’s more like a constellation, some thoughts I’m in the midst of grappling with, loosely organized, lit by recent experience, and stitched together by instinct more than structure.
These are themes I’ve been living into lately: vision, voice, syntropy, awe. What core ideas underpin the toxic ideologies rotting our culture, and how can we transform that rot into compost, into fertile soil for the future of life?
This one is more stars than soil, but it’s all the same. Syntropic forces shape the spark of life in the fertile darkness. As above, so in the womb.
I’m thinking out loud. Feeling my way through. It’s not tidy.
But I think you can join me in it anyway, and I want to know what meaning you make, if you are so generous as to share. In the audio voiceover I am speaking from a sleepy bed, with my toddler snoring nearby. I added Alpha Wave backing track an it may be soothing to listen to, if not my most polished.
Yesterday was a very stormy rainy day, and the power went out around four pm.
It’s interesting how the absence of light shifts things.
I’d had the instinct of making dinner early, in fact I’d prepared it for my lunch, so we finished eating (and thankfully began running a bath) moments before the power went out.
The sky was glowing a sort of muted golden yellow, and that color bathed the front rooms of our house in a strange light.
We all immediately got the message: rest.
So a candlelight bath for our toddler and some texts to neighbors and the utility company later, Seth and I passed shifts of napping and being with our child between us.
So, time and rest patterns being altered by the darkness and absence of wifi, we are now a bit disoriented in time, and I am wide awake at 2:46am.
And it is perfectly appropriate as I spent all day writing and thinking about stars, and vision, and voice. It seems fitting that I should be present with them tonight, even if they are heavily shrouded by the clouds here.
I am thinking and writing about stars so much because they are the final of four teachers of the Living World we are connecting with in the Reality Reorientation Experiment, and I am preparing the material that will be released on Saturday.
Why stars? At first glance, this is the only one of the four teachers (Stones, Trees, Waters, Stars) that is experienced on Earth, but not located here. But please, look down at your own hands.
The carbon in your cells, the calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, all were birthed in a star’s ecstatic becoming, long before our sun, our local star, even existed.
So yes: stars are here, too. Within and all around us.
So many indigenous teachings tell us that the stars are our ancestors, and I have come to understand this is not metaphor, it’s the wisdom of deep time, the insight that arises from a cosmology aware that we live within a Living World.
As I’ve learned more about the subcultures brewing online that are behind a lot of the political violence we’re seeing, I’ve come to understand that a lot of the worst things happening right now are happening because scared, sad men and boys are convinced that entropy is all there is, that the inevitable fate we are all hurtling toward is chaos and heat-death. So the belief is that they must accelerate it or use the chaos to consolidate as much power as possible to secure their control and safety.
Of course, each of these strategies undermines the quality of life of many other people, and makes no one more safe, and it emerges from a tragically incomplete understanding of reality.
Some of the more disturbing ideologies gaining traction today—particularly in online reactionary spaces—treat entropy not only as inevitable, but as the truth behind all things. Curtis Yarvin, also known as Mencius Moldbug, is one of the leading figures in the so-called “Dark Enlightenment.” His worldview asserts that democracy has failed, that modern institutions are beyond repair, and that what’s needed is a hyper-centralized, authoritarian order—perhaps a tech-enabled monarchy—to restore control.
It’s a worldview of collapse as destiny. Of power-over as the only remaining tool. Of entropy not just accepted, but enthroned and managed by a rarified elite who abhor empathy.
This is entropy as ideology. A framework that sees disintegration as the natural end of all things, and thus places no faith in the human capacity to regenerate, to repair, to cohere.
It’s a vision of the world stripped of relationship, reciprocity, or possibility. It says: let it all fall apart, and let the strong survive.
This is a worldview dangerously ignorant of the reality of syntropy.
Syntropy refers to the tendency toward organization, coherence, and life—an orientation toward increasing complexity, cooperation, and beauty. It is not entropy’s enemy, but it’s dancing partner, the inhale to the exhale, the gravitational pull that brings together space dust to make new stars.
Here’s an essay I wrote about it because I felt frustrated that barely anyone I knew, knew this word, and I wanted to change that:
You don’t need to know the word to know the phenomenon.
Syntropy is present in every ingredient of every meal we eat, and indeed the meal itself. It is the living process of life coming together. It happens in the creation of spiral arm galaxies like our own, and the soil beneath our feet and the visions we bring to life.
Human activity is profoundly syntropic, most all of the time. Even when faced with devastating experiences of entropy: fires raging through a city, collapsing climate conditions, patterns of distrust and poralization, even so, so many of us choose to come together, to feed one another, to shelter, to organize, to love.
This is real, and this is possible, and this is happening everywhere.
Perhaps we can see it best in the dark, when syntropic visions and the will to move toward them are more vitally important than ever.
Movements that embody syntropic principles include regenerative development, mutual aid networks, restorative justice practices, sociocracy, and bioregional organizing. These aren’t utopian fantasies, they’re dynamic ways of being with one another, and with the wider Living World that can be easily adapted to your life, your place, your community.
They are grounded, emergent responses to collapse, and they are pathways to profound connection, joy, and healing.
And vision, I believe, is essential to human syntropy.
Vision is what begins our reorientation from fragmentation and collapse toward regeneration and mutual thriving.
Syntropy is not a passive process. One could argue that entropy is what results from passivity, and that is why people see it as the tragic fate we are all hurdling toward. But while we are living, we act, we engage, we create. We cannot help it.
The only people utterly passive are the ones for whom everything is done. It’s no accident that groypers and other entropy accellerationists are most often characterized as grown men living in their mothers’ basements, never needing to take meaningful creative action to truly care for themselves or those they love. This is a byproduct of a culture of hyper-convenience, a male loneliness epidemic, a total failure of our culture to nurture authentic potential and emotional capacity in our boys and young men, and a patriarchal sense of entitlement that leaves these lives profoundly empty when they should be full of love and meaning and connection.
Syntropy, on the other hand, arises through our active choice to bring things together. To weave. To remember. To reconnect what has been separated by fear or force. This is not just philosophical; it is practical. It requires our thoughts (our visions), our words (our voices), and our actions to align in order to shape change.
And syntropic living is available to all of us, each of us, every day.
Syntropy is a choice.
We must use our will and our energy to shape reality, and there is nothing more dignifying or beautiful than bringing a syntropic vision to life. A syntropic vision shows us what is possible when we stop waiting for harmony to arrive and begin participating in its creation.
Vision can be anything, and in fact, I invite you to look around. Look outside your window. With few exceptions, pretty much everything you see exists because someone had the vision to create it. Our objects, materials, social systems and norms, even most plants you encounter, someone had an idea, a vision, and they experimented until it took form.
So, knowing you have this incredible force, this incredible potential within you, what do you envision?
When we give ourselves permission to imagine a life-affirming future (not just for ourselves, but for all of life), the vision reveals to us who we are in relation to that future. Our unique longings, values, potentials, our particular way of loving the world.
I’ve felt this most powerfully through motherhood. Through giving birth and raising a child, I’ve come to know in my bones that life does not enter this world to destroy. No baby arrives wanting to exploit, extract, dominate. We are born with the capacity—and I believe, the call—to create life-affirming realities. We are living. We are meant to participate in life.
But we’re born into systems that confuse and constrict us. Systems that reward disconnection. That incentivize narcissism and sociopathy. That make it easier to dominate than to cooperate, easier to accumulate than to share. And so we forget. We begin to think that harm is just human nature. That oppression is inevitable. That our job is to survive in a system that profits from our disconnection, rather than to shape change toward the way we know, deep in our hearts, that the world can truly be.
That’s why vision matters so much. When we dare to imagine what a different world could feel like—what it might mean to live in harmony, in reciprocity, in co-creation—we begin to remember ourselves. We begin to locate our authenticity not in reaction to the system, but in relationship to the world we want to help birth.
So what helps us make this shift from entropy-focused resignation, burnout, and management to a vibrant, inspired, syntropic, creative way of life?
One essential element is awe.
Scientists studying awe have found that when people spend time looking at stars, waterfalls, or great trees, something profound happens in the nervous system. The brain’s default mode, generally looping in self-focus and worry quiets down.
Stress hormones decrease.
Empathy increases.
People report feeling both smaller and more connected — what psychologists call the “small self” experience, which paradoxically expands our compassion and creativity.
Awe is the body’s way of remembering scale, reminding us that we are part of something vast, ancient, and ongoing.
These are the states from which we are best able to connect with our authentic visions for life affirming futures.
Please don’t take my word for it, please go see for yourself. Take yourself outside some night this week and gaze at the night sky. The moon is bright and full right now, and many of you may live in cities or areas with light pollution, so if you can’t see many stars, you can still see the moon, and maybe some of our local planets.
If the night sky doesn’t do it for you, go to an ocean, a mountaintop, meet a newborn baby, watch a dang sunset, take time to appreciate the people you love. There are infinite gateways to awe and they all can help us connect with our capacity for vision.
Whatever you do, genuinely spend some time practicing presence, relaxing your body, opening up to the moment. Allow this moment to connect you with your ancestors, and therefore with the future, as deep time capacity is omnidirectional.
And from that place, invite your imagination to play.
Imagine best-case scenario futures, ones in which we’ve learned the hard and essential lessons of the times we are currently living through.
Futures in which we have agreed that all life truly is sacred, and have worked together to right the wrongs that had pit us against one another for so long.
Futures in which we remember our place in the family of life, and commit to supporting all forms of life to thrive.
Futures in which poverty and incarceration and hunger are distant memories.
Futures in which children are safe and know themselves deeply in relation to community and wilderness and their own dreams for the world.
Futures in which we’ve transitioned fully to restabilize the earth’s systems, and redesigned our cultures and built environments and technologies to support the whole system’s thriving.
When your brain is operating from its default mode (which it likely is now), you might find these ideas ridiculous, impossible, absurd. You may be scoffing or rolling your eyes now. That’s fine.
But you should still make time for awe, and in that awe, please revisit this question. Please see what elements of life affirming futures show up as essential and important to you.
There’s something for you there, in the visions that will come.
Some clue about what your unique contribution and gifts are.
Over the years, I’ve facilitated visioning sessions that have resulted in such beautiful, powerful visions and inspired big changes, pivots, repair, and growth steps. I’ve seen people connect dots of all the different things they’ve loved and longed for and worked on laying the groundwork for what they can uniquely do to serve life affirming futures.
And lately I’m deeply aware of how lost and disoriented so many of us are feeling as we feel the world hurtle toward a lot of worst case scenarios.
But the story is still unfolding, and we are co-authoring it.
When we commit to living into our vision, we find the world conspires to support us, and we may be surprised by the blessings that flow. A vision of deeper care, reciprocity, belonging, and collective healing brings those things about. You learn to live your vision, and the world responds in kind.
A big part of my own vision is to be in deep relationship with people I share strong mutual resonance. I am blessed that this describes all the work I do.
I’ve been quietly opening space in my calendar to offer more 1:1 support to those seeking grounded, clear eyed, open hearted reflection and/or strategic support.
A few nights ago, another rainy night, I stepped through Seth’s office doors, outside onto the driveway, barely dressed, and pulled him out after me. I was beaming with joy, present to the wonder and sweetness of one moment of far deeper awareness of sharing the blessings of place and time with stone (in the asphalt under my feet) and trees (the giant oaks surrounding my house, through whose branches thicker drops of water fell) and water (the rain falling, the rain puddling at my bare feet on the warm asphalt) and the stars (again made invisible by the clouds but present by virtue of darkness anyway).
All of these teachers, and so many more, coming together in that one moment, giving me such a jolt of aliveness, and from there, energy, will, and clarity.
And they’re always there. Syntropic forces are always here, all around us, inviting us to live into our relationship with all of life.
When we’re present and paying attention, we can see the small miracles in the everyday, even where others see things falling apart. We are, if we choose, to fall together, and to find ourselves again and again in a mysterious future of our own making.
May we continue to be able to delight and surprise ourselves as we stumble, and find rest, and create wonder, through the night.
