In this essay, originally penned on June 1, 2018, while I directed the Center for Applied Cultural Evolution, I revisit ideas from a three-part series I presented then. You can find Part 2 [here] and Part 3 [here].

To begin, it’s essential to acknowledge that nearly every social issue humanity faces could greatly benefit from a rigorous, evidence-driven approach to crafting effective interventions. If I hold this belief, you might wonder why I have chosen such a title for this piece.

The straightforward explanation is that I have spent 18 years attempting to establish a science dedicated to large-scale social change. Throughout this journey, I have consistently observed that individuals often prioritize the feeling of being "right" over being effective. This observation extends across my interactions with academic researchers, nonprofit staff, foundation program officers and boards, government service providers, and various social-impact businesses.

The primary obstacle to developing effective social change initiatives has been the conventional mindset that equates rigorously validated expert knowledge with personal preferences and opinions. I have rarely encountered individuals who systematically critique their methodologies, collect data to validate their assumptions, and — most critically — adjust those assumptions when faced with inconsistent data or normative judgments.

Historians of science and cognitive scientists studying human decision-making would likely find this behavior unsurprising. Yet, this widespread tendency within our modern institutions serves as a barrier against cultivating the very skills people urgently need to tackle significant challenges, from environmental degradation to the manipulation of governance by propaganda. Time and again, I have witnessed how extensive bodies of research fail to influence the beliefs, feelings, or actions of governments, businesses, foundations, or community organizations.

This scenario implies that a rigorous science of social change is more crucial now than ever, and while I firmly believe that is true, I have come to the conclusion that pursuing this endeavor may no longer be worthwhile. This realization is rooted in observable trends affecting large-scale change that drive Earth's global systems. My reasoning comprises two elements: one pertains to the consequences already inherent in future scenarios due to inertia in various dynamic systems, and the other focuses on what our accumulated understanding of cultural evolution suggests regarding the anticipated outcomes of these ecological drivers on social behavior at institutional levels in the near future.

Global Drivers of Irreversible Change

A fundamental concept from the physical sciences that remains largely unknown among practitioners of social change is hysteresis. This term refers to the effort required to reverse changes that have already occurred in a physical system. Hysteresis can be easily measured in magnets within an electric field — it quantifies the energy needed to "demagnetize" a material post-charging. The significance of hysteresis lies in its ability to measure how irreversible a system change is by calculating the work required to revert the system to its previous state.

When applied to Earth and human societies, measuring hysteresis becomes far more complex. To illustrate this often-overlooked concept, I will provide examples from geophysical systems and political frameworks where policies create pathways of outcomes that resist reversal. The crux of hysteresis is that once a system has undergone alteration, it does not spontaneously revert to its prior state, making it effectively "irreversible."

Examples from geophysical systems include extinction events, where resurrecting a species is often impossible, and the thermodynamics of the oceans and atmosphere, which exhibit time lags that establish minimum timescales for undoing harm that has already occurred. For instance, consider the thermal inertia of the World Ocean and the methane release resulting from permafrost thawing in the Northern Hemisphere.

Thermal inertia measures how long it takes for a substance to cool after being heated. It is well established that liquid water has a high thermal inertia, which is why a bathtub filled with hot water remains warm long after the heating source is removed.

When applied to the World Ocean, it becomes akin to a vast bathtub. The time required for it to cool must be considered in decades for minor changes, and centuries or millennia for substantial changes. There are two key implications of thermal inertia relevant to human management. First, warming this immense body of water takes significantly longer than the atmosphere, meaning the heating signals we observe today — such as rising average daily temperatures near Earth’s surface — reflect conditions decades delayed from the water surrounding land masses. A simple takeaway is that the World Ocean is warming approximately 40 years slower than the World Atmosphere. This disparity implies that extreme weather events we currently face, such as increasingly severe typhoons and hurricanes, are influenced by an ocean that absorbed greenhouse gas emissions up to the early 1980s.

Second, the ramifications of our actions today will unfold slowly over time. During this period, other changes — such as continued fossil fuel consumption and further deforestation — will likely exacerbate the outcomes of our present actions. These interconnected processes complicate our understanding of how nonlinear and chaotic the eventual changes will be.

When examining the second example — methane release from melting permafrost — the situation becomes even more alarming. Methane is capable of trapping 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide. The melting of permafrost will release vast amounts of methane, potentially doubling the global warming effects attributed to fossil fuel combustion over the past 150 years within just a few decades. This phenomenon can be likened to unleashing a genie from a bottle or opening Pandora's box; once this process commences, halting it becomes increasingly unlikely. Delaying action once it begins makes it progressively harder to counteract this potent feedback mechanism.

The hysteresis effects stemming from ocean warming and permafrost melting create a scenario where ecological damage resulting from climate change will persist and intensify, even if we were to cease burning fossil fuels immediately. Unfortunately, due to extensive political capture and institutional entrenchment by fossil fuel infrastructure, a sudden cessation of fossil fuel reliance is not feasible. This leads us to the hysteresis effects observable in human social systems.

A well-known example of irreversible change in humans can be seen in a child’s developing brain. The brain undergoes a process of synaptic pruning during development, where structures form and wire together. Developing into an emergent structure presents different constraints than developing from an existing one. Hysteresis manifests here through outcomes such as the inability to acquire vision if light fails to stimulate the eyes or the absence of language skills due to a lack of social interaction during early childhood.

Applying this perspective to the emergence of political, economic, and social structures reveals hysteresis patterns in societal change. As previously mentioned, fossil fuel infrastructure exemplifies this "lock-in" effect. Multiple forms of hysteresis hinder transitioning away from oil and coal, even as the evidence mounts that continuing on our current trajectory will lead to planetary catastrophe. One type of hysteresis manifests within transportation systems. In the U.S., automobile manufacturers partnered with tire and oil companies to acquire and dismantle public bus and railway systems while collaborating with government officials to fund extensive highway projects that benefited only automobiles.

This process produced a systematic urban development model that necessitated car ownership and daily use. Public transit options, where available, were marginalized, becoming ineffective and costly while cars and oil received substantial subsidies to promote gas-guzzling vehicles. The more entrenched this development became, the greater the effort required to shift from one transit mode to another. Consequently, it will take decades for the U.S. to catch up to regions like Europe that avoided locking into these rigid structures, all while facing the backdrop of melting permafrost, climatic shifts, and gradually warming oceans — irreversible forces driving global change away from stability.

Another hysteresis form stems from the political capture of policy development by industries benefiting from fossil fuel use, including defense contractors and clandestine networks linked to drug trafficking and arms smuggling. These industries have amassed significant wealth and power throughout modern history, allowing them to hire public relations firms and media companies to promote their narratives. They have established a revolving door where politicians, funded by campaign donations for media coverage essential to their elections, collaborate with industry lobbyists to enact beneficial policies. Once their political terms conclude, they often become lobbyists or receive exorbitant speaking fees to endorse these agendas. This financial flow parallels the circulation of crude oil.

In this context, hysteresis is present in financial assets, access points, and influence mechanisms that serve the entrenched fossil fuel framework. Environmental advocates have attempted to build their counter-influences but continue to lack sufficient resources. Consequently, the system remains resistant to change.

Numerous additional examples of hysteresis exist, but my intention is to illustrate that the timeframe required for developing institutional capabilities for a science of large-scale change is incompatible with the entrenched drivers of global change. In simpler terms, even if we could establish these capacities (which I will explain is currently unfeasible), there are inertial processes propelling ecological decline that reinforce and feed the military-industrial complex of fossil fuels, easily suppressing counter-efforts. We do not have the time we require, and the time available will continue to be dictated by past and present feedbacks for at least the next several decades.

Why Our Institutions Cannot Build a Science of Social Change Today

A potent framework for studying irreversible development patterns in human systems is termed cultural scaffolding. I will utilize this framework to elucidate why I believe entrenched institutions lack the agility necessary for an applied science of large-scale social change to emerge within the limited timeframe we face.

Before delving into cultural scaffolding, let me specify this timeframe. In the previous section, I explained how the World Ocean's thermal inertia has already absorbed decades of intensification, and the runaway heating process from melting permafrost has commenced and is challenging to halt. These examples hint at a broader narrative: a global convergence of change processes is steering us toward inevitable planetary collapse. Other contributing processes include, but are not limited to: the depletion of topsoils globally, human population overshoot beyond Earth’s carrying capacity, overproduction of chemically reactive nitrogen from industrial agriculture, landscape conversion displacing entire ecosystems, overfishing of waterways and oceans, near-exhaustion of numerous mineral resources, and the release of thousands of novel chemicals (notably plastics and hormone disruptors) into every ecosystem on Earth.

We are witnessing an epochal shift in planetary geology, ecology, biology, and chemistry, driven by human systems intertwined with ecological systems. These changes have evolved over millennia, accelerating exponentially in the past 200 years. We are now operating on a planetary scale, as will be the ramifications of our collective actions.

Forecasting the future is precarious, but it’s reasonable to assert that it would take decades to replace existing infrastructure with alternatives that harmonize dynamically with Earth's biosphere. During this time, we will likely experience the collapse of the world’s largest speculative debt bubble and are already in a "post-peak-oil" reality marked by declining yields, which will increase financial system volatility and instability—all while facing intensified storms and greater damage to an ever-expanding built environment. In essence, the next fifty years will usher in unprecedented turbulence and upheaval.

When we need collective action for planetary management, our existing systems will be strained, if not broken. This is where cultural scaffolding becomes relevant. In simple terms, cultural scaffolding refers to the emergent web of feedbacks among agents, tools, knowledge, and environments that guide evolutionary change in social practices and institutional structures. Consider teaching mathematics: a student must grasp fundamental concepts, master tools like reading and writing, and receive pedagogical support from teachers to navigate their learning journey. Support systems that nurture the evolution of tools and knowledge during challenging learning activities are critical; without them, the effectiveness of learning diminishes substantially.

When we analyze existing institutions through the lens of cultural scaffolding, two things become clear. First, we can identify the affordances (system-level capabilities) of institutions in their current operational modes. This insight enables us to recognize successful aspects, maladaptive functions, and areas requiring improvement. For instance, universities often structure academic programs that encourage specialization within existing knowledge domains but fail to cultivate practitioners adept at synthesizing and integrating knowledge across disciplines. Additionally, the globalization of the workforce has led to the decontextualization of knowledge within academic fields, meaning that what is learned in areas like psychology, history, political science, engineering, and physics is treated as contextually isolated rather than intricately connected to the learning environment. Consequently, students from diverse backgrounds enter universities, only to graduate and disperse into a job market disconnected from their educational ecosystems. As a result, universities are ill-equipped to respond to the complex social dynamics that require adaptive management.

Second, we observe that existing institutions are developmentally entrenched similarly to fossil fuel infrastructure. There are pathways for continued evolution and those that obstruct progress in alternative directions. Attempting to secure federal research funding often reveals that applicants must possess a doctoral degree in a recognized field, stifling knowledge synthesis and integration. Similar constraints apply to electoral systems in democracies, multimedia communication shaping popular culture, professional pathways in nonprofits, and acceptable funding sources from wealthy family foundations.

Over the years, as I have surveyed this institutional landscape, I have repeatedly noted developmental pathways that reinforce alignment with status quo trajectories across every domain of social life. Creating a science for large-scale social change necessitates a coordinated developmental shift across educational programs, media institutions, governance systems, and financial investments (among other factors) to stand a chance of taking root at the scale needed to manage the planetary crisis. Yet, increasing scarcity and hyper-competition pervade these sectors, primarily due to the concentration of wealth among roughly 1,400 billionaires and a clandestine network of tax havens. The mechanisms for synthesizing knowledge within existing institutions have been co-opted by the military-industrial complex, which manipulates political systems globally toward an endgame of planetary ecocide.

With each passing year, funding for basic research diminishes, more knowledge practitioners with advanced degrees become unemployable in competitive job markets, global and personal debt escalates, and structural inequalities intensify. Together, these factors drive institutional evolution away from the cooperative frameworks necessary for significant interventions at this scale. What I aim to convey is that there is a pattern-level of social development that obstructs the emergence of cooperative learning ecosystems essential for adeptly managing the complexities inherent in social and ecological systems. This conclusion is not reached lightly; I have grappled with these currents for nearly two decades and have found the direction of institutional evolution reminiscent of the tidal forces exerted by the Moon on Earth — deeply pulling entrenched patterns further along their existing trajectories, requiring profound disruption to alter course, which could cause substantial harm to global infrastructure.

Compounding this issue is the developmental entrenchment of human potential, which has aligned with cultivating individuals as market-saturated consumers of goods and services. For nearly a century, professional practices in marketing, advertising, and public relations — with tens of billions spent annually to influence social behavior for corporate gain — have shaped human behavior toward emotional insecurities that can only be remedied through "brand alignment" with marketed products. While the human population has expanded significantly over this century, many individuals have matured beyond this adolescent mindset, yet they are overwhelmed by a larger population entrenched in mutually reinforcing dynamics of debt creation, consumer mentality, and identity shaping through consumption. Consequently, the material footprint of consumables has grown exponentially, depleting Earth's ecosystems.

Here, we find that the combined skills necessary for emotional regulation and the psychological flexibility to evaluate diverse perspectives—validated by decades of evidence-based prevention science and public health research as essential to human development—are inhibited by environments lacking basic nurturing support systems necessary for healthy development. This issue is particularly evident in the United States, where the average school shooting occurs once a week, reflecting extreme violence among children in deeply impoverished social conditions.

This cultural entrenchment severely limits the emergence of rigorous practices to guide large-scale social change. When entire generations grow up without nurturing environments, capacities for self-governance and collective decision-making at societal scales become severely limited. Not only do we lack institutional capacities for coordination, contextualization, and adaptive learning, but we also face a "debt bubble of social impoverishment" concerning human capacities to create, manage, and dynamically guide institutional evolution globally.

Lessons Learned on My Unsuccessful Journey to Establish Culture Design

There is much more to discuss regarding the evolutionary dynamics of social and ecological systems relevant to this topic. My aim is not to be exhaustive but rather to share troubling insights I've accumulated about the developmental processes guiding change on Earth today. This section will reflect on what I have gleaned while striving to establish a robust field of intentional social change over the past twenty years, including some associated feelings from this challenging journey.

First, choosing to tackle systemic problems in the world — while most people are educated around isolated issues defined by their existing fields of study — often means departing from established communities where one finds lifelong friends and colleagues. Had I opted for a career in atmospheric science during graduate school, I would have had a network of colleagues to collaborate with at conferences and meetings, along with new cohorts of students entering the field annually. However, after leaving my PhD program in atmospheric sciences to pursue systemic applications addressing global threats, I found myself without institutional support or a shared community of practice.

A key lesson from this experience is that without cultural scaffolding, social development cannot flourish. My journey has not been one of thriving but rather one of deprivation. Each step has rendered me less employable and diminished my chances of securing financial support for my endeavors. More importantly, I found it challenging to cultivate social support from communities of practice, as most individuals are already committed to other pursuits. This situation results from various influential factors, notably a lack of conceptual frameworks enabling people to construct relatable narratives that align with my work. I have observed similar patterns in the lives of other social entrepreneurs and now recognize this as a natural outcome for those venturing outside societal norms to address unrecognized needs.

Another recurrent experience has been the social exclusion of those who are different, which often mirrors how the immune system rejects foreign bodies perceived as threats. By discarding disciplinary structures that failed to serve my purpose, I became a potential threat to individuals who had gained high status and prestige within their established professional domains. There are valid reasons for this conformist feedback dynamic in human groups, primarily revolving around preserving the stability and benefits within a community. However, the persistent exclusion by those who could be allies highlights the powerful role of cultural entrenchment in resisting structural changes, even when such changes are urgently required.

We are navigating unprecedented times, facing threats fundamentally unlike any our communities have previously confronted. As a result, we lack adaptive responses to the crises arising from an expanding human population and its social complexity, which have escalated to planetary scales over the past few centuries. The preservation dynamics that once suited community needs were well-matched to the typical sizes and rates of change prevalent in earlier eras, yet they are grossly ill-suited for the current rapid transformations.

Another lesson stems from my studies in calculus and differential equations during my early training as a physicist. It taught me that the human body lacks perceptual feedback for intuitively grasping changes in acceleration. We can sense forces, including impulse forces (such as feeling a car crash), but we cannot readily perceive alterations in the intensity of these forces. This inability is exactly what we are experiencing amid cascading, mutually reinforcing, exponential changes.

Compounding this issue is the bombardment of our social networks with cascading threats nearly every day. I have noted that a new “global crisis” tends to circulate through social media every 5 to 7 days, resulting in people losing the capacity to orient themselves for strategic actions on the longer (decadal) timescales that are critical. Even more challenging is the difficulty of considering century-long timescales while planning actions over decades. Instead, we observe institutions organized around response cycles for quarterly earnings (publicly traded companies), annual budgets (municipal governments), and electoral cycles (national governments) — all myopically focused on short-term outcomes. This environment is further complicated by communication systems inundated with highly emotive content, artificially constructed media narratives, and propaganda that have "weaponized" the information age in favor of powerful elites. Those who benefit from the status quo are incentivized to resist structural changes, readily deploying unethical campaigns to divert attention, sow confusion, and overwhelm people with crisis-oriented information.

Collectively, these lessons reveal that the path to establishing a science of large-scale social change is fraught with challenges, often leading to martyrdom (at best) or obscurity (at worst). This journey has taken a toll on me personally, with declining prospects for realization each passing year. The entrenched institutional landscapes continue to evolve along pathways that dictate their future developments, mirroring their historical trajectories. I struggle to see viable prospects for this endeavor's success despite my Herculean efforts throughout my adult life.

I hope this clarifies my thoughts regarding the title and opening of this essay. I have poured my heart and soul into creating a body of knowledge and practices for social change that aligns with the urgent needs of our times. Yet, despite my dedication, I have little impactful evidence to present that operates at the necessary scale. Time has run out for the extensive institutional buildup needed to realize such a vision on a planetary scale.

A Final Reflection on “Best Practices” Today

In March 2007, I joined the Rockridge Institute, a think tank based in Berkeley, CA. Our mission involved applying insights from cognitive linguistics to assist the progressive political movement in the U.S. with strategic communication and values-driven engagement.

My primary focus during that period was to initiate what would evolve into a decade-long inquiry into the framing of global warming and related environmental issues. I authored editorials and blog posts addressing findings from cognitive and behavioral sciences that elucidate why so little progress has been made in tackling the planetary ecological crisis. That was eleven years ago, and I often felt like a lone voice in the wilderness, as few institutions then focused on the behavioral and cultural dimensions of these challenges.

Fast forward to the present, and "best-in-class" work at formal institutions can be exemplified by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which regularly surveys the U.S. population for insights into beliefs, values, and attitudes regarding various policy issues related to global warming. What I find disheartening is that their approach employs methodological individualism — a deeply flawed perspective rooted in Neoclassical economics — which treats individual behaviors as arising solely from personal decision-making processes. They neglect to adopt an integrative social science perspective that explores the broader situational factors, institutional frameworks, and cultural patterns that significantly shape and constrain behavior. In practice, they utilize social science tools that were cutting-edge back in the 1970s. While these tools possess strengths warranting commendation, they fall woefully short of addressing the current challenges and fail to incorporate advancements across other social science fields over the past half-century.

For instance, consider what is now considered standard practice in user-centered design. This approach emphasizes the situated experience of users to understand their desires and motivations, alongside detailed behavior analysis. Initially developed for web design, this methodology has expanded into more complex domains like transportation improvements and policymaking participation. A user-centered design approach would quickly reveal the numerous structural constraints in people's lives that lead their behaviors to diverge from their stated values. In other words, measuring values and attitudes alone is a poor predictor of behavior, as it overlooks the foundational causes of social behavior in deeply scaffolded (and entrenched) contexts.

The second example emerges from cultural evolutionary studies, utilizing cultural multilevel selection to identify various hierarchical organizational levels within social systems (e.g., individual, family, business, neighborhood, municipality) and the specific cause-and-effect mechanisms at each level that facilitate the spread of social behaviors. This framework was employed in a study illustrating how an environmental policy in New Guinea failed to gain traction due to a misalignment with the appropriate level of social organization, providing mechanisms at the federal level when regulatory feedbacks were predominantly expressed at the chiefdom level.

These examples highlight the significant insights gained in social sciences, yet due to the fragmented and competitive environments of universities, cultural selection mechanisms for knowledge synthesis and integrative applications are absent. While we have collectively learned much about guiding large-scale social change, our institutions are poorly positioned to leverage this vast knowledge in its current structure. We continue to witness "issue silos" and fragmented knowledge ecosystems, as the pre-existing structures within universities and funding bodies select for advancements at topical or disciplinary levels.

I frequently observe that piecemeal approaches to behavioral change regarding climate policies emerge only when a forward-thinking funder — often a private philanthropist with a personal interest — champions a specific issue. Conversely, larger funding mechanisms, such as federal programs like the National Institutes of Health or major foundations like Gates and Robert Wood Johnson, may excel in specific interventions but fail to grasp the broader ecosystems of possibilities that their programs represent.

Progress in this area has been painfully slow during my tenure (roughly since 2000). I consistently find myself at least a decade ahead of the leading institutions in my efforts. This is because I consciously adopt a systemic approach, seeking root causes, gathering all relevant information across fields, and engaging in experiential learning that compels me to continually refine my assumptions and evolve my methods. Consequently, I am able to navigate the emerging landscape of hundreds of research programs in ways that our institutions are not designed to manage or promote. Thus, when I assert that cultural scaffolding processes, combined with global systemic hysteresis effects, will inhibit the manifestation of sophisticated cultural management, I fear I am becoming a modern-day Cassandra, aware of impending harms yet powerless to effect change.

As a result, I am shifting my focus and will no longer pursue this grand vision. I no longer perceive it as feasible and intend to introspect deeply about how I might contribute meaningfully during these serious times, having accepted that my life's work cannot succeed. In the spirit of the foundational challenge posed at the start of this essay, I invite you to prove me wrong. Critique and analyze my assumptions. Collect your own data to confront and challenge the arguments presented here. See if you can find a way to realize an ambitious vision where I have failed.

I would much prefer to be proven incorrect and witness effective solutions emerge than to be right, experiencing the hollow satisfaction of saying, "I told you so," as the world descends into systemic collapse in the coming decades.

Onward, fellow humans.

Joe Brewer is a co-founder of the **Design School for Regenerating Earth*. If you're interested in joining this work, consider becoming a member. You can also support me on Patreon if you feel inspired to do so.*