Donella Meadows & Systems Change - Seeds of a Second Renaissance Issue 5 (June 2025)
Introducing pioneering systems thinker Donella Meadows + the latest events and opportunities in the field of inner-led change.
Welcome to Seeds of a Second Renaissance – a monthly newsletter for explorers of the Second Renaissance & inner-led change towards radically wiser societies.
For both seasoned travellers and those new to these shores, each edition offers a bite-sized exploration of keystone ideas and thinkers whose work you may wish to know more deeply.
You’ll also find curated events, opportunities, and resources from around the ecosystem below.
Donella Meadows on Leverage Points for Effective Systems Change
In complex systems, with multiple moving parts, both visible and invisible – where is the best place to intervene for positive change? In a world that is far too vast and messy to be perfectly predicted or controlled – what kind of approach to problem solving, decision making and social change is needed? The work of Donella Meadows speaks to these questions, combining a mathematical and philosophical approach to help us understand how complex systems work, and illuminating ways to creatively and courageously (re-)design systems for the outcomes we want.
Systems Thinking 101
A system is an interconnected set of parts which interact with each other to produce effects different from the effect of each part on its own. There are systems of all kinds, scales, and functions – your digestive system, a national economy, a rainforest, a kitchen, your family. Systems can be nested within other systems and systems interact with each other. A system’s behaviour over time is governed by feedback loops and flows of information or material: for example, a university may adjust admissions standards if too many or too few students are entering.
Systems thinking helps us to better understand how interventions in one part of a system have consequences elsewhere, immediately or years down the line. Such partial “solutions” can end up creating more, or graver, problems than they address.
Systems thinking can also help us go deeper to the root causes of problems. While most political or social interventions focus on changing elements (which are easier to see and recognise than the relationships or implicit goals in a system), this generally keeps the system pretty much the same. For example, if you change one or two – or even all – the players of a football team, you’ll still have a game of football, albeit with one team playing better or worse than before. But if you change the rules of the game, which govern how players interact and the team’s overall goal, you’ll start to have a system no longer recognisable as what it was before. Similarly, swapping in and out political leaders each election cycle does not necessarily do much to change the foundations which govern a system’s behaviours and problems.
Rigorous systems analysis may reveal counterintuitive insights: because as systems become more complex, their behaviour can become more surprising.
Leverage Points
Where, then, is the best place to intervene when facing problems in complex systems? Meadows identifies twelve leverage points – places in the system where a small change could lead to large impact – and ranks them in order of effectiveness (depicted below). As we move from the physical parts of a system to the parts involved in information flow and control, to the underlying structures and intentions, more powerful leverage for long-lasting change can be found.
Let’s take a brief look at the top three leverage points in the list.
3. Goals: The purpose or function of a system
Articulating, enacting and standing up for new systems goals is a powerful leverage point because lower leverage points (e.g. parameters and information flows) will be moulded to conform to the system’s overarching goal.
2. Paradigms: The mindset out of which the system (its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters) arises
“The ancient Egyptians built pyramids because they believed in an afterlife. We build skyscrapers because we believe that space in downtown cities is enormously valuable.”1
Everything we do stems from a set of shared beliefs and assumptions about how the world works – a paradigm. What makes sense in one paradigm might seem nonsensical, or even unthinkable, in another: think of how some prehistoric cultures practised human sacrifice. A change in paradigm gives rise to totally different goals, values, and actions.
1. Transcending paradigms
The final leverage point is to loosen your own attachment to any particular paradigm, to realise that no paradigm is definitively “true”, and to remain open and humble.
Learning to “dance” with(in) complex systems
This final point gestures towards the attitude which Meadows argues is vital for learning to “dance” with complex systems. After our best attempts at rigorous systems analysis, the important thing is to let go of the illusion of perfect control or total understanding: “Living successfully in a world of systems requires more of us than our ability to calculate. It requires our full humanity—our rationality, our ability to sort out truth from falsehood, our intuition, our compassion, our vision, and our morality.”2
Pioneering systems thinker and environmental scientist Donella Meadows (1941-2001) was one of Joanna Macy’s key influences: the Work That Reconnects, which we introduced last issue, draws on Buddhism, systems theory, and deep ecology. Meadows’ work is also a direct influence for the “three layers of polycrisis and metacrisis” model which is central to the Second Renaissance theory of change.
“We can’t impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.”
~Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems
Links & Resources
Check out the following free resources on systems thinking and systems change:
Explore the field of the Second Renaissance & inner-led change…
A selection of events, opportunities, and resources recommended by readers, friends, and allies in the arena of inner-led regeneration.
👋 Help us to showcase the best opportunities and resources: please suggest items to include in the Events, Offers & Links or Jobs Board WhatsApp channels.
Upcoming Events
From Metacrisis to a Second Renaissance: A 4-week online course
📍Online 📅 2-23 July 2025 💸 €39 / $39 (scholarships available on request)
“In this 4-session course, we will come together to learn about and explore the Metacrisis and a Second Renaissance – this growing moment of civilizational breakdown and the potential paths to a better future. … This series is an invitation to those already curious about the cracks in the modern worldview — and those feeling the pull towards a more connected, meaningful, and regenerative future.” Organised by Life Itself.
Realisation Festival 2025
📍Dorset, UK 📅 26-29 June 2025 💸 Starting from £445
“The Realisation Festival is a gathering for the soul. …The weekend is an opportunity to reckon with our times, as well as unlearn assumptions and reimagine responses. The gathering uniquely brings together talks and workshops, music and other imaginative activities to broaden and explore the analysis and ideas. It is led by remarkable artists and improvisers, as well as world class speakers.” Organised by Perspectiva.
Rising Tide: Science & Mystery
📍Online 📅 28 June 2025, 17:30-18:45 BST 💸 Free (optional donation)
“How can cutting-edge science help rekindle our appreciation for mystery? Join us for an online inquiry lead by Chamkaur Ghag, leading astroparticle physicist who will be sharing about the relationship between science and the unknown.” Organised by The Raft.
Jobs & Opportunities
Emerge Lakefront: Scientist-in-Residence Scholarship Programme
📍Emerge Lakefront Campus, Stockholm 📅 Start date flexible from 1 Aug to 1 Nov. Apply by 30 June.
6-month residency programme with housing and community fees fully funded at Emerge Lakefront: “Are you a scientist, systems thinker, or research-oriented innovator longing to ground your work in real-world impact, community, and inner development? The Scientist in Residence Scholarship invites individuals to join Emerge Lakefront — a global residency for changemakers living and working at the intersection of personal transformation and societal evolution.”
Call for Papers - ‘Presencing the Future of Democracy and Governance’ - Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change
📅 Deadline for submissions: 30 November 2025
“The Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change (JASC) is now receiving submissions for our special issue on democracy and governance. … We invite practice-based contributions offering insights into questions such as:
How do non-state, grassroots, or Indigenous governance traditions challenge conventional democratic models? How might democratic futures be shaped by practices of governance that do not fit within dominant institutional logics?
What forms of governance actively cultivate cultural, social, ecological, and intergenerational responsibility? What is needed to sustain these practices?
How do governance innovations emerge under conditions of climate breakdown, economic instability, and shifting geopolitical orders? What tensions arise when governance is a site of adaptation, contestation and transformation? …”
Call for Papers - ‘Threads of Hope: Ancestral Knowledge and Feminist Futures’ - Journal of Futures Studies
📅 Deadline for proposals: 1 August 2025
“The Journal of Futures Studies (JFS) invites submissions for a Symposium on the theme “Threads of Hope: Ancestral Knowledge and Feminist Futures.” … The Threads of Hope Symposium further seeks to explore how practices often dismissed as inferior – e.g., domestic or decorative arts such as women’s textile and embroidery work – can serve as rich speculative, strategic, and narrative tools for imagining alternative futures. It invites conversations that are not only academic, but also tender, communal, and embodied.”
Second Renaissance
“Second Renaissance” is one way of framing current times as a period of civilisational crisis and potential renewal – and of pointing to an ecosystem of people and organisations working to catalyse the emergence of a new, regenerative, cultural paradigm. If you recognise terms like metacrisis, Metamodern, Regenerative, Liminal Web, Game B, Integral, conscious evolution and so on, then you’re on familiar ground. Explore the core thesis and theory of change in more detail here.
🌱 Help us to plant seeds of a Second Renaissance. If you want to support the movement, you can:
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Finally, we leave you with some —
Art for the soul…
Ice Watch by Olafur Eliasson, 2014
Twelve large blocks of ice cast off from the Greenland ice sheet are harvested from a fjord outside Nuuk and presented in a clock formation in a prominent public place. The work by Olafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing raises awareness of climate change by providing a direct and tangible experience of the reality of melting arctic ice. Ice Watch has been installed in three locations.
The first installation was in Copenhagen, at City Hall Square, from 26 to 29 October 2014, to mark the publication of the UN IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change. The second installation took place in Paris, at Place du Panthéon, from 3 to 13 December 2015, on the occasion of the UN Climate Conference COP21, and the third version of Ice Watch was on view from 11 December 2018 to 2 January 2019 at two locations in London – outside Bloomberg’s European headquarters and in front of Tate Modern.
For more images of the artwork, see here.
Donella Meadows, ‘Chapter 6: Leverage Points – Places to Intervene in a System’, in Thinking in Systems (2008).
Donella Meadows, ‘Chapter 7: Living in a World of Systems’ in Thinking in Systems (2008).
Thank you for reading the fifth issue of Seeds of a Second Renaissance.
Thank you.
Some questions:
Can we “dance” with fascism and Trump?
It’s my assessment that because of the understanding of the most significant variables and leverage points, you have shared, that Project 2025 has taken control of 10 of the 12 of the most critical leverage points.
And in a relative short time, they are achieving many of the 2025 goals.
It also seems to me that when the foundational leverages are in alignment, (2025) the goals are inevitable. Almost like being on auto pilot. Congress has abdicated its power creating a positive (?) feed back loop. Congress abdicates power, Trump takes power. His power grows daily.
The bricks that hold up our constitutional wall are continually being removed.
Exactly what Hitler accomplished. And exactly what Orwell described.
So … How would you and your system thinking experts engage Trump? (that’s not sarcasm)
How would you reclaim the 10 lost leverage points?
Related. Is systems thinking essentially a historical analysis, like global warming. We have a very sophisticated understanding of the system dynamics.
Which leads many scientists to conclude that given that we are beyond tipping points, we no longer can influence desired goals.
With Trump, have we already passed enough tipping points so that fascism is inevitable?
Is systems thinking relevant for change or just a sophisticated way of understanding history?