The Old Operating System Is F*cked
(and We’re the Glitch)
I have spent a considerable amount of time recently in some deep conversations. The types of conversations that lead you to squeal with delight because you are resonating so profoundly with the points of view expressed, or because you want to get EVERYONE to hear right here, right now.
Many of these conversations are led by names you will know and love, and are available to you all via brilliant podcasts, with links I have embedded in my essay below. I highly recommend bookmarking the links and diving in.
I wrote this essay from a place of profound optimism and joy, not despair, despite the ‘power over’ imbalances that some white dudes in the world are perpetrating and the swift multi-systems collapse that is now happening no matter how much we wish it were not. I’m publishing it on the eleventh day of the eleventh month explicitly because it is Remembrance Day and also the day I married Mr Joy and stepped into the mystery of figuring out what the energy of Joy really promised.
My report back from meditating, reading, writing and circling the sun for another year is that I think I can see some light - whether it is at the end of a tunnel is not a metaphor I can jump to right now. Perhaps you will recognise core-Kaama-Joy idealism - my yearning for our collective futures and the transformation of humanity.
What is evident is that I have now learnt to hold two truths simultaneously: My grief for the collapse and suffering, and my joy in being alive in this present moment.
My invitation to you is to enjoy engaging with this essay, holding both truths for yourself and that what becomes possible for you from that frame is as it is for me: joy and creativity.
Thanks for being here with me, Kaama
“We’re emotionally dysregulated. We’re distrustful of each other.
We don’t trust ourselves very much, and we’re disconnected.”
Brené Brown
The Crash
We were coded for connection, but we’re running malware called productivity.
We worship speed, call exhaustion “success,” and continually update our devices while our inner software deteriorates.
The screen scrolls.
The inbox breeds.
The nervous system screams.
And still we whisper: just one more update, one more launch, one more fix.
We’re not broken. The code is.
Can you bend your knees and sit a while?
“Dadirri is in everyone. It is not just an Aboriginal thing.”
Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann
The Spiritual Bug: Disconnection
Brené Brown is right. We’re numbed out, logged in, and starved for intimacy.
We confuse visibility with belonging and “followers” with friends.
In Unlocking Us, Esther Perel calls this living “beyond human scale.” She asks, How do we create real-life relationships where we see and value others and feel seen and valued ourselves in the context of constant scrolling and using digital technology as armour?
On A Bit of Optimism she notes, We’ve never had more freedom in our relationships, yet many of us feel more disconnected than ever.
Simon Sinek circles the same theme. The virus of our time is disconnection. And on that, I find myself nodding in fierce agreement with Sinek, Brown and Perel.
The Systemic Glitch: A World That Fractures, Divides and Drains Us
We’re fed a story that success means doing more, achieving more, always reaching for “better.”
Society has taught us that joy is indulgent, that feelings need “managing,” and that purpose only counts if it serves productivity.
This story keeps us trapped in cycles of scarcity, fear and separation, denying us rest, intuition and even our own voices.
The cost is everywhere.
Ecosystems are breaking down. Communities are fragmenting.
A crisis of identity and purpose at every scale.
The climate emergency, polarisation and collective anxiety all mirror a worldview that distances us from our inherent wisdom, divides us from each other and disconnects us from the living world that sustains us.
Economies chase infinite growth on a finite planet.
Profit becomes the measure of worth while the systems that sustain life collapse under the weight of denial.
Algorithms monetise our outrage.
Attention is the new currency, and division is its most profitable product.
“Wellness” became another word for monetised guilt.
We’re told to fix ourselves: buy the app, take the class, optimise, while the deeper sickness of disconnection goes unhealed.
We’ve been hacked by the myth of more.
It promised freedom but delivered exhaustion, an endless chase that keeps us scrolling, striving, consuming and comparing.
Now we’re living through a loneliness epidemic that kills quietly, not with bullets or smoke, but with disconnection.
A generation that can’t rest.
A planet that can’t breathe.
This disconnection doesn’t just exist between people. It stretches beneath our feet, severing the thread that ties us to Country — the land, the rivers, the ancestral Mother that holds us.
In the Australian First Nations practice of Dadirri, we are invited to engage in deep listening with Country, nature, and the self.
“Dadirri is inner deep listening and quiet still awareness. Dadirri recognises the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. This is the gift that Australia is thirsting for… When I experience Dadirri, I am made whole again.”
— Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann, Dadirri: Inner Deep Listening and Quiet Still Awareness
The Human Debug: A Blessing Wrapped in a Paradox
Every time we measure worth by output, we reinforce the virus.
Every time we choose outrage over listening, we fragment further.
We are the glitch.
And paradoxically, that’s the invitation.
Cracks are where light gets in.
Glitches are how new systems emerge.
Reinvention begins here, in the refusal to keep running corrupted code.
Repair and reconnection can look like this: perhaps within Reinvention Architecture we can find the upgrade we didn’t ask for.
As Esther Perel writes, “The cycle of connection, disconnection, and reconnection exists in every relationship.”
Simon Sinek notes that sometimes growth comes from stepping back — a slingshot move, where you pull back before moving forward. It’s radical in a world addicted to acceleration.
Because what if forward is the wrong direction?
What if the next evolution is inward?
Reinvention Architecture isn’t another productivity patch or ten-step hack.
It’s a system rewrite for being human in an age of collapse, reconnecting the circuits between self, community and planet.
Stop optimising. Start aligning.
Stop performing. Start belonging.
Stop hustling. Start listening.
This isn’t self-improvement.
It’s self-reclamation — the slow, satisfying work of debugging your life until it runs on truth again.
The New Code for Living
How about considering a five-point plan to reframe our narratives?
Connection > Competition: We thrive together or not at all.
Presence > Performance: Your aliveness is the point.
Wholeness > Hustle: Rest is resistance.
Community > Consumption: No one survives the algorithm alone.
Joy > Despair: Joy is rebellion in a collapsing world.
These aren’t slogans.
They’re survival code and the point is to imagine what they might look like and see how that makes you feel.
The Outrage and the Possibility
Look around. Every system is glitching: political, ecological, economic, relational.
Polarisation has become a blood sport.
We’re terrified of silence because it might reveal how lonely we really are.
And yet, beneath the static, something ancient is stirring — a knowing that this can’t be it.
Reinvention is no longer self-help.
It’s civilisational triage.
The courage now is not in the grind, it’s in the grace.
The courage to feel. To gather.
To tell the truth, when the world demands performance.
The Reboot
If your system feels overloaded, consider saying “good, I am feeling” instead of “I’m broken.”
It means you’re awake.
You’re not the problem.
You’re the early adopter of a new human code.
So pull the slingshot back.
Let the old story crash.
You don’t need an upgrade.
You need a reconnection.
“You want to know what vulnerability is? Joy.
Joy is so vulnerable that people choose to live disappointed rather than to get excited about something and risk getting sucker-punched by disappointment.
There is no courage without vulnerability because courage is the willingness to show up and be all in when you cannot predict the outcome.”
Brené Brown
Join the Quiet Rebellion
Reinvention Architecture is the framework, but you are the frontier.
We begin not by fixing ourselves, but by remembering we were never separate from each other, from nature, from the hum of the planet beneath the noise.
That hum is home.