The Great Rewiring

The Great Rewiring: Are You a Forward-Looking Person or a Relic of the Past?

You feel it, don’t you? That low-grade hum of anxiety, the feeling that the ground is shifting beneath your feet. You see it in the headlines, in your social media feeds, in the way you work and live. Remote work, AI writing your emails, a global pandemic that re-wrote the rules of social interaction overnight. This isn’t just another turn of the news cycle. This is The Great Rewiring.

We are living through a fundamental restructuring of human society, a phase transition on a global scale. And let’s be brutally honest: most people are completely unprepared. They’re clinging to old models, old certainties, old ways of being that are dissolving like sugar in hot water. They are, in the words of my friend and mentor Dr. Bob Melamede, Backward-Looking People (BLPs), and they are terrified.

They’re the ones complaining about the “good old days,” trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and wondering why their tried-and-true methods are suddenly failing. They’re trying to build a dam to hold back a tsunami. It’s not just foolish; it’s a recipe for extinction.

The problem is that we’ve been taught to think about the world in the wrong way. We’ve been sold a bill of goods about stability, equilibrium, and balance. We’re told to seek balance in our lives, in our work, in our societies. But what if I told you that balance is bullshit? What if I told you that the very essence of life, of growth, of evolution, is to exist in a state of constant, dynamic, far-from-equilibrium flux?

The Problem: Our Addiction to a Balanced Universe That Doesn't Exist

Our entire society is built on the myth of equilibrium. We crave certainty. We want to know that if we follow a certain path, we’ll get a predictable outcome. Go to school, get a good job, buy a house, retire. A to B to C. It’s a comforting thought. It’s also a complete and utter fantasy.

The universe doesn’t work that way. Nature doesn’t work that way. And you, my friend, don’t work that way. You are not a closed system. You are a dissipative structure, a whirlpool of energy and information in a constant state of exchange with your environment. You are a far-from-equilibrium being.

The problem is that our brains are wired for a world that no longer exists. We evolved to spot patterns, to create mental shortcuts, to build models of the world that help us survive. But in a world that is changing at an exponential rate, those models become obsolete faster than ever before. The very things that helped us survive in the past are now holding us back.

This is why so many people are feeling lost, anxious, and overwhelmed. They’re trying to navigate a 21st-century world with a 20th-century mindset. They’re looking for a map in a world that is being redrawn in real time. It’s a recipe for disaster.

The Application: FLPs vs. BLPs in the Great Rewiring

So what does all this have to do with social media, AI, and remote work? Everything.

The Great Rewiring is a massive injection of energy and information into our social systems. It’s a phase transition, a jump to a higher level of complexity and organization. And just like any other far-from-equilibrium system, it’s creating new forms of order out of the chaos.

This is where the distinction between Forward-Looking People (FLPs) and Backward-Looking People (BLPs) becomes critical. BLPs are the ones who are trying to resist the change. They’re the ones who are clinging to the old models, the old ways of doing things. They’re the ones who are terrified of the chaos. They see the Great Rewiring as a threat, a loss of control, a descent into madness.

FLPs, on the other hand, see it as an opportunity. They understand that chaos is the raw material of creation. They know that the future is not something that happens to you; it’s something you create. They are the ones who are leaning into the change, experimenting with new ways of working, living, and connecting. They are the self-organizing agents of the new world.

Think about the shift to remote work. BLPs see it as a loss of control, a threat to productivity, a breakdown of company culture. They want everyone back in the office, where they can see them, where they can maintain the illusion of control. FLPs, on the other hand, see it as an opportunity to create more flexible, more autonomous, more human-centric ways of working. They’re building distributed companies, asynchronous workflows, and cultures of trust and ownership.

Or take AI. BLPs see it as a threat to their jobs, a source of misinformation, a tool for creating deepfakes and sowing chaos. They want to regulate it, to control it, to slow it down. FLPs see it as a tool for augmenting human intelligence, for automating drudgery, for solving some of the world’s most pressing problems. They’re building AI-powered tools, co-pilots, and creative partners.

This isn’t about being a Pollyanna. This is about recognizing the fundamental nature of reality. The universe is a process of self-organization. It’s a constant dance between order and chaos. And the winners are the ones who learn to dance.

The Takeaway: How to Be an FLP in a World of BLPs

So how do you become a Forward-Looking Person? How do you thrive in the Great Rewiring? It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about asking the right questions. It’s about embracing a new way of being.

Here are a few practical things you can do:

1. Embrace the Suck. Change is uncomfortable. It’s messy. It’s chaotic. Don’t fight it. Lean into it. See the discomfort as a sign of growth. As Dr. Bob would say, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.”
2. Nurture Your Endocannabinoid System. Your ECS is your built-in adaptation machine. The better it’s working, the better you’ll be able to handle the stress and chaos of the Great Rewiring. This means eating well, sleeping well, moving your body, and finding healthy ways to manage stress. And yes, for some people, it might mean using cannabis as a tool to support their ECS. Don’t let the old propaganda fool you. This is about health, not hedonism.
3. Become a Learning Machine. In a world that is constantly changing, the most important skill is the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn. Be curious. Read widely. Talk to people who are different from you. Experiment. Fail. Learn. Repeat. The half-life of a skill is shorter than ever. You have to be constantly updating your own software.
4. Find Your Tribe. You can’t do this alone. You need to connect with other FLPs, other people who are leaning into the future, who are building the new world. Find your tribe of fellow travelers, your co-conspirators in the Great Rewiring. Support each other, challenge each other, create with each other.

Closing

The Great Rewiring is here. You can either be a victim of it or a participant in it. You can either be a Backward-Looking Person, clinging to the wreckage of the past, or a Forward-Looking Person, surfing the waves of change into the future.

The choice is yours. But remember, the Arrow of Time only moves in one direction. The past is a ghost. The future is unwritten. And the only way to navigate the chaos is to become a part of the creative process.