The Age of Wildness – And What to Do About It

The world is no longer following a script.

Not just drifting off course, not just recalibrating, but fundamentally shifting—unraveling old structures and certainties in ways that feel both exhilarating and unsettling.

Look around: a politician trades government for a hospital ward. A corporate executive ditches boardrooms for a bus route. Radical career changes are not just tolerated but celebrated. Traditional life paths, once predictable, are now wide open.

And yet, contradictions abound. Conspiracy theories once dismissed as fringe now serve as counter-narratives. A voter supports both Trump and Ocasio-Cortez in the same breath. Gen Z shuns traditional careers but searches for meaning and belonging. The battle lines we thought were clear—left and right, work and leisure, truth and fiction—blur into something new.

The most profound shift? The disappearance of certainty.

The Slow-Exploding Hand Grenade

This chaos isn’t random. It isn’t sudden. It’s the detonation of a cultural hand grenade decades in the making.

Two parallel forces have shaped modern society: liberation and dissolution.

For years, we celebrated the steady erosion of rigid institutions. Gender roles loosened, religious influence waned, individual freedom took center stage. More choice, more autonomy, more ways to build a self-directed life. Digitalization and globalization amplified these freedoms, putting every imaginable option within reach.

But choice, as it turns out, isn’t always liberating. It’s also destabilizing.

Zygmunt Bauman called it "Liquid Modernity"—a world where nothing stays fixed. Political parties, career paths, identity categories—all fluid, all negotiable. The digital revolution shattered the old gatekeepers, leaving individuals to curate their own reality.

The result? A paradox of infinite freedom and infinite uncertainty.

The Emotional Brain Takes Over

In times of instability, we don’t rely on reason alone. We lean into emotion.

Our limbic brain—the seat of instinct, belonging, and survival—has become the dominant force in decision-making. And it asks two fundamental questions:

1. Who is a threat?

2. Who offers me belonging?

Politics, work, and culture are no longer shaped by policies, facts, or rational debates. They are driven by emotions, identity, and tribal instincts.

Cognitive linguist George Lakoff argues that our political leanings are less about logic and more about the family structures we grew up with—or the ones we longed for. Some crave order, hierarchy, and decisive action. Others seek consensus, care, and community. When these worldviews collide, political discourse stops being a conversation. It becomes an emotional battleground.

Freud likened reason to a rider on horseback. The horse—our instincts, our emotions—always has the final say. And in The Age of Wildness, the rider is struggling to keep control.

What Now?

The explosion has already happened. The structures that once organized life—grand narratives, predictable careers, centralized authority—are gone.

So, what do we do?

1. Resist it: Try to rebuild old structures, reinforce hierarchies, and impose order. This path leads to nostalgia, culture wars, and authoritarianism.

2. Adapt to it: Accept complexity. Learn to live with paradox.

History favors the latter. The individuals, businesses, and societies that will thrive are those that can embrace contradiction—who can hold uncertainty without losing their footing.

How to Contain Multitudes

Navigating The Age of Wildness requires a new kind of resilience. Here’s what helps:

Listen to those you disagree with. They might have a point.

Stay humble—know what you don’t know. Certainty is the enemy of wisdom.

Don’t let identity be everything. Most people care far less than you think.

You don’t need an opinion on everything. Some things are best left unresolved.

Or, as Bob Dylan put it:

"I’m a man of contradictions / I’m a man of many moods / I contain multitudes."

Welcome to the wild world. The only way forward is through.