Diving the Iceberg

"We usually only think about what we can see in front of us." 

The immediate, lived experiences of individuals affected by climate change are profound, as are the lived experiences of those experimenting with social change. My fellow explorers and I have been addressing and occasionally guiding this shift for the past 50 years, and sometimes we’re called Sherpas, which means that over the years, even though our role was to stay in the background and cook their breakfasts, we had more actual summit experience than the world’s celebrated alpinists. For every Al Gore there was a Roger Revelle, or several. This past week, I recalled a more fitting analogy that traces back to the emergence of systems theory in the 60s and 70s: icebergs.

Return with me now to the thrilling yesteryears of Donella (“Dana” to her friends) Meadows in the halcyon Sixties. After a year of backpacking from England to Sri Lanka and back, young hippy chick Dana became a research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she and future husband Dennis were members of a department created by Jay Forrester, the inventor of system dynamics as well as of magnetic data storage by computers (what a concept!). In Forrester’s MIT lab, Dana and Dennis became the Jobs and Wozniak of systems theory. In 1972, they organized the team that produced the global computer model “World3” for the Club of Rome, the basis of The Limits to Growth.

Ever the solutioneer, Dana became a pioneer ecovillager in 1996, the year of our first international conference on ecovillages and sustainable communities in Scotland. She founded the Sustainability Institute, which combined a cohousing community (or ecovillage) and organic farm at Cobb Hill in Hartland, Vermont. Sadly, she died of cerebral meningitis in 2001 at the age of 59. In 2011, the Sustainability Institute (SI), originally adjacent to Cobb Hill, was renamed the Donella Meadows Institute and moved to Norwich, Vermont. Other organizations that emerged from the SI include the Sustainable Food Lab, Climate Interactive, and the Sustainability Leaders Network. In 2016, the Donella Meadows Institute was renamed for a second time and now operates as the Academy for Systems Change.

Icebergs

Dana and Dennis sometimes used a tool popularized by cultural anthropologist Edward T. Hall in the 1970s called the Iceberg Model. Hall was an influential colleague of Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller. Young Eddie cut his anthropology teeth living with the Navajo and the Hopi from 1933 through 1937 during the Great Depression. In his second book, The Hidden Dimension (1966), Hall described the culturally specific temporal and spatial dimensions that surround each of us, such as the physical distances people maintain in different contexts. A progenitor of pattern language and ecovillage theory, Hall devised proxemics, the study of the human use of space, the nature of personal and public gradients, and how that may differ between cultures. I explored this in 1997 in a journal article about the Oneida Mansion House.

Piotr Magnuszewski at the Centre for Systems Technologies in Wroclaw writes:

Focusing on events alone, we see only the tip of the iceberg. This is where the majority of political, social and business discussions take place. By broadening the perspective in time and space, we dive deeper and start to analyze trends and patterns. Coming even deeper down, we are able to recognize the system structures that determine its behavior.

***

These diagrams are also called “mental model maps.” The mental models represent our deep-rooted beliefs and ways of perceiving and thinking that are so “obvious” to us that we often do not realize their existence.

“One cause produces one effect.” “Technology can solve any emerging problem.” “The effort I took determines the effect.” “Individuals have no power to change anything.” These are some examples of mental models. The analysis of mental models is the deepest level of systems thinking. It is often very difficult, as there are many defense mechanisms that hinder the possibility of changing hidden assumptions. Yet, it is the mental models that the structure of the system is based on.

This week I cobbled together the climate emergency, near-term extinction, clean energy, carbon cascades, and ecovillages into an Iceberg infogram:

 

One of the podcasts I regularly listen to is The Great Simplification by Nate Hagens. Nate puts in a tremendous amount of work and gets some of the best minds in the world to take deep dives to the bottom of the iceberg with him. We all agree: we have a polycrisis. Climate, peak everything, population, planetary boundaries, microplastics, bees, A.I., nuclear power and weapons, homicidal clowns—these are above the water line, in plain view. If we drop down below the surface, patterns and structures come into view—the capitalism growth imperative, religious indoctrination, algorithmic conditioning, ponzinomics, enslavement, and technocracy. Drop further toward the bottom and you can discern the mental models that drive the crisis, including genetic and epigenetic drivers (acquisitiveness, aggression, herd instinct), our ability to deny our own mortality (denialism), and the warm data of quantum entanglement.

Sometimes, visualization of problems—especially being able to place them within their larger or more comprehensive context—helps us envision solutions. Intervening across all these layers undergirds social impact and supports systemic transformation. By adjusting our mindset—the bottom of the iceberg—we can choose to view the impending, now inevitable, natural disasters associated with climate change as catalysts for cultural transformation. Every time disaster strikes, it also sows seeds of collective strength, recovery, and a better future. Tibetian Yoga and Secret Doctrines says, “tribulations, being teachers of piety, are not to be avoided.”

危機=機遇
Wéijī = jīyù
Crisis = Opportunity

References

Bates A, ”The Oneida Mansion House: When Architectural Design Fosters Community Goals” Communities (Summer, 1997), Permaculture Activist 36:4-5 (March 1997)

Bateson, Nora, “Warm data: Contextual research and the evolution of science.” Rocznik Naukowy Kujawsko-Pomorskiej Szkoły Wyższej w Bydgoszczy. Transdyscyplinarne Studia o Kulturze (i) Edukacji 12 (2017): 35-40.

Chastain, McKenzie. “The Application of Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory.” Volume XXVII Spring 2023 University of North Georgia: 111.

Gompopa the Physician (Sgam po Lha rje, 1079–1153), The Precepts of the Gurus: Garland of Precious Gems, (c. 1110 CE)

Grousset, Rene, and Mariette Leon, In the Footsteps of the Buddha (London 1932).

Keating, Adriana, et al. “Disaster resilience: what it is and how it can engender a meaningful change in development policy.” Development Policy Review 35.1 (2017): 65-91.

McLeod, Saul. “Freud’s Theory of the Unconscious Mind.” Simply Psychology 25 (2024).

Santhosh, The iceberg model of culture: A deep dive into workplace dynamics in 2025 (2025).

THE TEN THINGS NOT TO BE AVOIDED
(Sgam po Lha rje, 1079–1153)

(1) Ideas, being the radiance of the mind, are not to be avoided.
(2) Thought-forms, being the revelry of Reality, are not to be avoided.
(3) Obscuring passions, being the means of reminding one of Divine Wisdom [which giveth deliverance from them], are not to be avoided [if rightly used to enable one to taste life to the full and thereby reach disillusionment].
(4) Affluence, being the manure and water for spiritual growth, is not to be avoided.
(5) Illness and tribulations, being teachers of piety, are not to be avoided.
(6) Enemies and misfortune, being the means of inclining one to a religious career, are not to be avoided.
(7) That which cometh of itself, being a divine gift, is not to be avoided.
(8) Reason, being in every action the best friend, is not to be avoided.
(9) Such devotional exercises of body and mind as one is capable of performing are not to be avoided.
(10) The thought of helping others, howsoever limited one’s ability to help others may be, is not to be avoided.

These are The Ten Things Not To Be Avoided

Meanwhile, let’s end these wars. We support peace in the West Bank and Gaza and the efforts to cease the war in Ukraine immediately. Global Village Institute’s Peace Thru Permaculture initiative has sponsored the Green Kibbutz network in Israel and the Marda Permaculture Farm in the West Bank for over 30 years. It will continue to do so with your assistance. We aid Ukrainian families seeking refuge in ecovillages and permaculture farms along the Green Road and work to heal collective trauma everywhere through the Pocket Project. You can read about it on the Global Village Institute website (GVIx.org). I appreciate your support. 

And speaking of resettling refugees, did you know? A study by Poland’s National Development Bank found that the influx of Ukrainians added between 0.5% and 2.5% to GDP growth and paid more in taxes than they received in benefits.

Could you help me get my blog posted every week? All Patreon donations and Blogger, Substack and Medium subscriptions are needed and welcomed. You are how we make this happen. Your contributions can be made to Global Village Institute, a tax-deductible 501(c)(3) charity. PowerUp! Donors on Patreon get an autographed book off each first press run. Please help if you can.

#RestorationGeneration.

When humans are locked in a cage, the Earth continues to be beautiful. Therefore, the lesson for us is that human beings are not necessary. The air, soil, sky and water are still beautiful without you. So, when you step out of the cage, please remember that you are guests of the Earth, not its hosts.

We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the tremendous old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. Coral reefs rebuilt with biorock build beaches faster than the seas are rising. It is not too late. All of these great works of nature are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize, not destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.

And now we have our own swag store at Red Bubble. Swing on in for the latest wearables and chachkas....