Collapse rarely looks like fire and ruins. Most often, it feels like drift, a slow unraveling of institutions, the loss of confidence in systems that once seemed unshakable, a spreading sense that no one is in control anymore. The question that haunts our time is not whether society will collapse, but whether it already is.
Over the last few decades, researchers across economics, ecology, and complexity science have been circling around the same idea: our world is entering a transition phase. The mechanisms that once allowed civilization to grow and adapt are breaking down. And yet, from the midst of that breakdown, a new kind of order is trying to emerge.
