The Roots of Collapse, Part 1: We Haven't Learned to Think Like Architects

Brick Thinking is not a personal failing. It is a neurological default, and it is being exploited.

Why does it feel like the world is spiraling? Why do we keep rebuilding the very systems that keep collapsing around us?

We point to bad policies. We blame corrupt leaders. We rage against the symptoms. But these are just the surface-level tremors of a much deeper seismic fault running beneath our civilization.

The true root cause isn’t political. It is cognitive. It is in our brains.

We have become a world of expert brick inspectors, but we have almost no architects.

We are brilliant at analyzing isolated parts: a tax policy, a news headline, a single election issue, but we are functionally illiterate as a species when it comes to understanding the whole. We see the bricks with stunning clarity, but we are blind to the design of the building. At first glance, this is frustrating. In reality, it is absolutely fatal.

What Is a System, and Why Can’t We See Them?

A system is not merely a collection of parts. It is a set of interconnected elements whose behavior emerges from their relationships.

The key word is “emerges.”

The behavior of a system cannot be predicted by examining its parts in isolation. The whole is not just the sum of its parts; it is something entirely new that arises from their interaction. A forest is more than trees. A family is more than individuals. An economy is more than transactions. A society is more than citizens.

Systems Thinking is the ability to see those emergent patterns. It is the capacity to trace cause and effect across time, scale, and dizzying complexity. It is the understanding that every single “brick” only has meaning within the context of the entire structure.

The Trap of “Brick Thinking”

When that context disappears, we default to “Brick Thinking.”

This is what happens when the brain fixates on a single, isolated component and severs it from the whole system it belongs to. It is the cognitive equivalent of arguing over a smudge of ketchup on the wall while the support beams are being sawed through behind you.

Brick Thinking is not a personal failing. It is a neurological default, and it is being exploited.

This is precisely how collapse sneaks in through the voting booth. People are persuaded to vote based on one isolated brick:

• A temporary tax cut

• A cultural grievance

• A charismatic personality

  
  

They are never encouraged to ask the architect’s questions:

• What does this brick do to the integrity of the entire wall?

• How does it affect the structure of our healthcare system, our climate stability, our democratic foundations?

  
  

Politicians and power brokers understand this perfectly. They campaign in bricks. They weaponize wedge issues specifically designed to trigger the amygdala, the ancient, reptilian part of our brain wired for threat detection, not complex systems analysis. This neural alarm bell knows only tribe versus threat, friend versus foe.

So, while we are mobilized to defend our one, precious brick, the entire building is being sold off from behind us.

The Evolutionary Upgrade We Can’t Afford to Skip

It might be your inclination to blame people or yourself for this. But it is not just about individuals. Systems Thinking is a recent cognitive upgrade in human evolution.

Think about it: psychology didn’t even begin treating families as interconnected systems until the last century. Before that, even therapists saw human beings as isolated units. The lens through which we see interconnectedness is itself a new technology of the mind.

But now, that upgrade is no longer optional. It is a prerequisite for survival.

Our problems are no longer local or simple. They are global, nested, and deeply interdependent. To navigate them, we must activate what we might call the brain’s “architect mode”:

• Pattern recognition over fact-memorization

• Long-range consequence tracking over short-term reaction

• Networked thinking over isolated analysis

  
  

To remain in Brick Thinking is to guarantee cyclical collapse. To evolve, we must consciously build the neural pathways between the amygdala (our reactive threat center) and the prefrontal cortex (our conscious, planning center). We must learn to see the entire map.

This is not just a political or social shift. It is an evolutionary imperative. The survival of our species depends on a single, collective cognitive leap: from being reactive consumers of disconnected parts, to becoming conscious architects of living, breathing systems.

The bricks are in our hands. It’s time we finally looked up and started building something that can last.

This essay is part of a series on the cognitive roots of societal collapse. Follow along as we explore how to rewire our thinking — and our world.

(Acknowledgment: much of my understanding on the “Roots of Collapse” comes from what I have learned from the organizational culture work of my colleague and mentor Chris Armstrong, and his colleague Vince Brantley, both very excellent human beings and incredible systems thinkers.)

For Further Reading: https://www.snhu.edu/about-us/newsroom/business/what-is-systems-thinking