Broken by the System, Whole by Nature

It’s taken us far too long to see that the logic we built our societies on doesn’t work. Today’s world is like a machine, calibrated for extraction – and we’ve learned to measure value in profit, growth, and status. Our ideas of how we should be as human beings follow the same blueprint. It’s a logic that loves output but forgets to listen. That rewards speed but rejects rhythm. That celebrates what’s visible but ignores what holds everything together.

If the economic architecture is flawed – what else is broken? What else do we need to notice? Which roles did the system force us into that never really fit? And which ones did we lose – the roles evolution honed for our survival?

The same body, a different stage

Biologically, we are the same creatures we were thousands of years ago. Our bodies, brains, and nervous systems were shaped for life in small groups, in direct relationship to what the group needed to function, to nature’s rhythms, and to uncertainty. We are still those beings, able to sense changes in the air before the storm breaks – yet we now live in a society built around rigid schedules, constant pressure, an endless stream of information, and standardized performance.

We’ve traded nature’s cycles, and our own, for calendars and KPIs. Instead of valuing what once kept us alive – the ability to listen, to adapt, to anticipate – we glorify our ability to deliver efficiently and look good while doing it.

The wisdom of original roles

In many traditional societies, there was an obvious understanding: not everyone fits the same role – and that’s the point. Roles weren’t fixed identities but living functions in a collective survival system. Different senses, paces, and sensitivities were valued because differences made the whole stronger.

There were those who noticed subtle changes in weather, animal behavior, or social tensions – those who saw what others didn’t. Those who carried memories and lessons forward. Others who could sense patterns and read the signs of the season before they were visible. There were makers who shaped tools, medicines, or stories from nature’s materials with precision, and those who held the group together, mediated, and built trust.

These were roles that existed not because they generated profit, but because they sustained life.

Neurodiversity as an evolutionary asset

The historian of ideas Karin Johannisson called them “cultural illnesses” – bodily or mental conditions shaped by the spirit of the age. In the 18th century, hypochondria could be seen as a form of refined sensitivity. Today, we view ADHD and autism as deviations – but what if they are evolution’s undistorted signals inside a distorted system? What if it’s not the individual that’s wrong – but the playing field?

Neurodiversity is like biodiversity: every type of brain fills a function in the larger ecosystem.

• The ADHD brain: creativity, quick connections, hyper-awareness, the ability to change course rapidly when circumstances shift.

• The autism spectrum: pattern recognition, structural thinking, loyalty, the ability to stay with discomfort.

• Dyslexia: spatial reasoning, systems thinking, the ability to see the whole where others get stuck in detail.

Historically, these were the traits that kept the group alive. The sensitive one was the first to feel when something was wrong. The quiet one kept track of what must not be forgotten. The restless one found new paths when old ones were blocked.

The system’s immune response

What we now diagnose as disorders may, in fact, be symptoms of something deeply misaligned in society. Maybe the ones who don’t fit are exactly the ones the system most needs to hear from. The first to react. The ones who can’t adapt. The ones who refuse to maintain a pace that damages the body. The ones who feel grief where others keep pushing.

They are like the immune system of society – not malfunctions, but warning signals. Yet instead of listening, we medicate them. We train them to endure more, work more, push through.

Finding our way back

So as we imagine new economic models – doughnut, degrowth, wellbeing, zebra, regenerative – we need more than just fresh frameworks. We need to return to the human. To what is rooted in our evolution.

How would we organise ourselves if we began with human strengths, not system demands? What if we listened to the sensitive and the exhausted? To those carrying silent knowledge that never fit in the boardroom? We don’t need more tools. We need to remember what we are built for – biologically, socially, cognitively. We need to reintroduce, and perhaps upgrade, the roles evolution shaped so we can build futures that endure.

Maybe the question isn’t how we build something new – but how we remember. How we let the body remember what it has always known.

Photo by Michael Wolf.