Why do so many people who claim to 鈥渟ee the whole system鈥� remain blind to power?
This question struck me while listening to a recent episode of Planet Critical. The guest was Joseph Tainter, best known for The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter is celebrated as a pioneer of collapse studies and systems thinking. Yet when the conversation turned to the genocide in Gaza, his framing reduced it to Israel鈥檚 鈥渉istorical fear of Arabs.鈥� The structural realities of colonialism, imperialism, and resource politics 鈥� central to understanding both Gaza and the Middle East more broadly 鈥� disappeared. Here was a thinker revered for complexity, offering an analysis that was Eurocentric, ahistorical, and politically na茂ve.
This is not about Tainter alone. Similar patterns appear in the work of figures like Nate Hagens and Daniel Schmachtenberger, both of whom have influenced me personally. Their mission is helping people make sense of the complex issues: Nate by weaving ecology, energy, financial systems and human behavior into accessible frameworks; Daniel by building sweeping syntheses across cognitive science, culture, and existential risk.
The often criticise most disciplines for their blindness. But their critique of blindness has its own blindness. Across their work, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, and class power rarely appear as sustained focal points. Yes, Daniel sometimes critiques modernity and gestures toward indigenous knowledge, and Nate occasionally hosts guests who reference colonial history. But overall, the crisis is cast as a species-level problem 鈥� as though 鈥渉umanity鈥� collectively overshoots limits 鈥� rather than as the outcome of specific, historically rooted systems of exploitation with identifiable beneficiaries and victims.
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