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Are you starting to lose your grip on what we are doing here? We are diving into strange, unfamiliar territory. The purpose is to explain why and how the world is constantly changing: how we get stuck in the old, how the new creates fear, and why this is destructive in a transitional phase where the rational response is to adapt, not become paralyzed.
We are standing in the middle of a historical shift, and if we do not handle it wisely, things can go badly. But it is not given that this must happen. It is becoming increasingly clear what we need to leave behind, and gradually clearer which structures can actually work better than the ones we have now – in the face of war, climate change, resource scarcity, loss of nature, and psychological strain. First and foremost, it is about understanding the dynamics we are part of before we can act wisely. Okay, that was a few words about the project. Here is today’s post.
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Over the past few days, we have seen how experience organizes itself through mental models, attractors, and emergence. How old patterns lose their power, and how new forms of understanding always arise when the old ones no longer carry.
Today, we will look at this from a broader perspective: how such processes do not only happen in individuals, but also in entire societies and cultures over time.
Many traditions have described this long before modern science. In Hinduism, people speak of yugas – ages in which humanity’s way of understanding the world changes. Other cultures have had similar ideas about cycles, epochs, and transitions.
The point is not whether these models are “literally true.” The point is that people throughout history have observed the same pattern:
Periods of stability → gradual loss of meaning → crisis → reorganization → new stability.
What we today often call “collective awakening” can be understood within this framework. It is not about some people becoming “more evolved” than others. It is about many people simultaneously beginning to question ideas that were previously taken for granted.
When enough people stop taking the same things for granted, the foundation of experience changes. New questions become possible. New perspectives gain space. Old answers lose authority.
This does not happen because people suddenly become smarter. It happens because experience no longer fits into the old frameworks.
An example: For long periods, many people have lived with the idea that work is primarily about submitting to a system. When this understanding no longer matches how people actually experience their lives, it begins to unravel. Then new ways of thinking about work, meaning, and value emerge.
Or: For long periods, many people have lived with the idea that authority always comes from above. When experience shows something else, people begin to relate differently to power, institutions, and responsibility.
This is how what we can call collective awakening arises: not as a spiritual achievement, but as a broad shift in what is experienced as true, reasonable, and meaningful.
This rarely happens harmoniously. When old worldviews lose their power, confusion, polarization, and conflict often arise. Some cling more tightly to the old. Others throw themselves uncritically into the new. Both are normal reactions in transitional phases.
The important thing is to see that this is not a sign of decay, but of transformation.
In such periods, there is no single correct way of being “awake.” Some people process change through reflection. Others through activism. Some through silence. Others through resistance. All are parts of the same collective process.
Awakening is therefore not something one “has.” It is something one participates in, more or less consciously.
When many experiential circles shift at the same time, a new field of possibilities emerges. New forms of cooperation. New values. New priorities. New forms of society. But these cannot be fully planned in advance. They grow out of lived experience.
What we are in now can be understood as such a phase. Many old collective attractors are losing their power. Many people feel that they can no longer live as before. At the same time, there are not yet any fully stable new patterns.
That is why the time feels both unsettled and open.
Next time, we will take a closer look at how such transitional phases are often connected to breakdowns and system limits – and why this is not a deviation, but part of the same dynamic.
Question:
In which areas of your life have you begun to ask different questions than you did a few years ago?
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