The Modernity/Coloniality Complex 

Old assumptions and long held beliefs no longer hold. We are being called to face the reality of the modernity/coloniality complex under Pax Americana, which under President Trump’s ‘America First’ is producing the Third Rupture in the so-called rules based world order that we have all assumed would underpin our First World lives of safety and prosperity:

• An international order of multilateral institutions
• Social contracts – liberal humanism (human rights)
• Rule of Law governing trade, property, individual rights, and commerce
• US dollar as international reserve currency, cementing the economic power of the US, underpinned by military power, financed by debt, in international relations
• Continued extraction of resources and profits from the Global South for the benefit of the Global North under so-called free trade.

Most of us realise that we are living in momentous times. Even we children of the privileged Global North are feeling unmoored. We might ask, as the poet William Yeats did in the face of Europe’s world wars: “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Waking Up

Those of us who once felt protected, and those previously excluded but who believed the promise of future inclusion, now find ourselves exposed. And like the fate of the colonised where psychic rupture spread lateral violence, we find ourselves living in a world of increasing divisiveness, bewilderment, violence and alienation, amplified by the very information technologies that promised community connection and insight.

We are in a time of ruptures, not transitions

While conservative political strategists like Tony Barry realise that economics lies at the heart of the implosion of the Coalition: Over the past decade the (then) Coalition, and more recently Labor, steadily lost the confidence of these voters as housing became more unattainable, employment less secure and wage growth anaemic and no longer able to provide the life that work was supposed to provide. At the same time, another cohort of older, non-university-educated voters in regional Australia weren’t just anxious about the risk of falling behind, they knew they had already fallen behind—

They keep failing to realise that the failure of neo-liberal market policies is a key feature of the Third Rupture of the post WWII international order—the growing wealth divide, the sinking of working class aspirations for middle class standards of living, the reality of an intensifying future economic precarity for themselves and their children.

Can we begin to pay attention to calls to turn away from the world of Instagram Influencers, social media FOMA and AI companions and therapists, which threaten the fundamentals of our psychic integrity?

Might we dare ask—are there other possibilities? Can humanity find a new way, through the Fourth Rupture of the post WWII world order—a rupture that is largely unseen, but continues to grow like an underground cultural mycelium network beneath the noise?

Can we let go of the need for certainty and embrace living in flow, in recognition that life (reality) is the flow of change? That our sense of ground is not religious certainty, ownership of consumer products, career success, marriage and children, even national sovereignty. It lies within, our deep sense of connection to the dance of Mother Earth.

Living Within a Lie

As Carney’s speech highlighted, those of us who subscribed to this international liberal humanist rules-based order have been “living within a lie”. The rules were enforced asymmetrically depending on which side of the coin you sat: modernity or coloniality. That the systems power came not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility is coming from the same source—exposed for all to see in the crude power plays of Trump 2.0. Not only through tariffs and military interventions on allies and traditional foes alike, but also on the citizens of the US itself who refuse to submit to ICE, the para military force his government has created with echoes of Hitler’s Brown Shirts.

Carney suggests a new strategic response of Middle Powers based on values-based realism—like Canada, Australia, the UK, France, Germany—against the might and heft of the nuclear superpowers: USA, China and a somewhat diminished Russia. Australia, under Albo has already been on this path, and Carney is invited to address the Australia parliament in March this year. Australia has been busy, building its relationship with Asian Middle Powers and with the broader Pacific family of island nations.

But Helen Loshny warns that this call to arms among the Middle Powers is not aware of the full nature of the rupture.  That Carney still alludes to the scaffolding of First World thinking, still summoning the ghosts of realism, pragmatism, investment, resilience, growth, while speaking of coalitions that are neither empire nor fortress. And yet this new realism pays no attention to AI’s appetite for rivers already drying, of the silencing of [Indigenous knowledge systems) languages that were not ours to erase. That Carney is still offering an architecture for a new world, structured in the grammar of the old.

There are other voices outside the DAVOS cohort, clamouring to be heard. Voices that demand a new way of seeing, a new kinship not just among Middle Powers, but among the kingdoms of the natural world, not just ecological science bounded in techno-rationality, but eco-metaphysics that speaks to bio-poetics, to an awareness and sensibility that defies categorisation, defies the honeyed words of promised prosperity and social cohesion, without addressing the poisonous roots, “where seeds rot before they become food.”

The Many Faces of Rupture

The First Rupture

1. The end of the dream of international socialism, sung by many in the anthem of the world’s working class united, the Internationale, in the ashes of Russia’s Stalin gulags, forced collectivisation and paranoia of pervasive secret police surveillance. Matched in the ashes of Mao’s China in its forced industrialisation and the madness of the Cultural Revolution.
2. Instead, capitalism and the sovereignty of the nation state emerged as the only viable form of economic organisation for a fossil fuel driven and growth-based economy, whether in the form of Western democratic socialism or the individualistic liberalism of the US, or with Chinese characteristics in the Peoples Republic of China, or oligarchic gangsterism in the new Russia
3. The erosion of wealth of the white middle classes in First World economies that has underpinned democratic political stability. Under neo-liberal economics, the capitalist globalisation of supply chains dedicated to profit and efficiency, increasingly benefited the few at the expense of the many, even in the hitherto privileged white middle classes of First World nation states.

The Second Rupture

1. The failure of US military might, in alliance with First World allies, to secure victory in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq to secure regime change in support of the liberal rules-based world order, marked the limits of First World Military power and the rise and rise of local insurgencies driven by ethno-religious ideologies
2. The ISIS -led dream of a global Islamic Caliphate to match the power of the Capitalist Christian West lost legitimacy among most Muslims as it collapsed into the same terrorism of Stalin’s gulags and Mao’s Cultural Revolution, only this time spread internationally, feeding into immigration fears that punished fellow Muslims.
3. Failure of neo-liberal economic theory, through the shift to the private market to deliver individual freedom and increasing prosperity for the many, while delivering massive wealth to the few, and thus lost legitimacy in the minds of the many despite the continued prognostications by the economic priesthood and the captive political and media classes. The freedom of flexible self-employment and casualisation became the menu for precarity and poverty. The efficiency of private sector delivery of public goods became the scandals of financial fraud, misappropriation and failure.
4. The COVID epidemic exposed the risks of global supply chains and internationalised industries like tertiary education. It also increased mental health issues impacting young people unable to socialise through face-to-face educational systems from pre-school right through to tertiary.
5. Social media corrupted the media-information system through algorithmic harvesting of attention to drive profit maximisation via acceleration of social division and hate speech, and through design features that supported screen addiction, particularly among young people, with negative mental health consequences, loss of trust in validity of information sources, and susceptibility to emotion-driven conspiracy thinking.

The Third Rupture

1. The growing climate change crisis, as extreme weather events cause significant impacts on:
   1. human settlements through out-of-control bushfires, river flooding, landslides, ocean storm surges, and flow on impact on the cost of insurance and funding of home ownership
   2. ecosystems and biodiversity
   3. food production and food security
   4. human migration flows to escape environmental problems
2. Intensifying Environmental degradation and chemical pollution continue to challenge assumptions underpinning the application of science into industrialised agriculture, fisheries, animal husbandry, water management, food systems and urban planning systems. Further water scarcity will be caused by AI data centre proliferation.
3. AI and its evolution into Generative AI: Personal chatbot therapy companions degrading human attachment that sustains social relationships, the AI takeover of significant work roles in the labour market, AI militarisation and surveillance, potential for AI self-replication and design.
4. End of US Dollar dominance and privilege as the rest of the world searches for a new system of reserve currency stabilisation, a rupture that will expose the US to its profligate debt, the hubris of American exceptionalism, and potentially crash its economy.

The Fourth Rupture

1.A new narrative takes shape—not through the analytical lens of the military-technology complex, but through the lens of the modernity/coloniality complex, articulated by Indigenous scholars like Vanessa Andreotti, as a way of re-aligning the hegemony of the world’s knowledge systems.

2. The recovery and amplification of First Nations knowledge systems have begun to challenge the hegemony of the Western knowledge system in terms of:

1. Ontology – the way we understand the nature of reality
2. Intelligence and agency—the idea that all of nature has its own agency and forms of intelligence and communication systems
3. End of Human exceptionalism – towards a view of kinship with all the of the natural world, rather than a human/nature split, around the idea of humans alone being ‘made in God’s image’, which is found in the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and elements of this also in Buddhism
4. A shift from an individualised extractivist logic in wealth creation to a community-reciprocal relationalist logic in wealth as wellbeing sustainability.

Enlivenment Pathways of the New World Order

We are being called to begin a new journey, away from techno-rationalism and the seductions of materialist prosperity. This call is growing like an underground mycelium network across the world as we become more and more aware that our lifeforce is being sucked out of us.

Earth scientists such as Lisa Graumlich suggest we need to bring together Earth system science and multiple wisdom traditions, prophetic witness and the long view, the clarity of data and the poetry of cycles. She has joined the increasing chorus of voices challenging the way science has been captured by extractivist economic thinking and human ego-inflation, calling for an eco-conversion: moving from ego to eco—from extraction to belonging; from individual action to collective transformation.

The Australian Way must respond to this possibility if it is to honour its claim that this unique way rests not just on fairness and inclusiveness, but in honouring the insights of the world’s longest living culture—that of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It must embrace the wisdom of our most ancient ancestor, the imaginary Rainbow Serpent.

In the words of the Aboriginal writer, Alexis Wright:

The stories of the Rainbow Serpent remain foremost at the heart of Aboriginal people, and should be for all people who live in Australia. These are stories of deep spiritual belief that connect us to the power of this country. They reflect a caring for country, and the cultural principles and laws that have remained steadfast and strong across millennia.

Within the Enlivenment Network, community Weavers like Saskya Clarke and N’gaire Howard are exploring new ways for of us who call Australia home to connect with Country in all its many meanings. To practice the ancient art of dadirri—Inner deep listening and quiet, still awareness—that allows us to hear the many voices of our non-human kin, alive in the natural world. Not the technology screens of the Silicon Valley tech-lords who have stolen our sensibilities. Eco artists like Catherine van Wilgenburg are reaching out to engage young people in sensate learning. Philosophers like B are part of the global community of post-humanism, taking philosophy beyond the lens of human exceptionalism. Podcasters like Mik Aidt have planted the seeds of a network of Connections Cafes, where communities meet to share ideas, worries and inspirations.

The new rallying call reads like this:

We are fighting the anti-life forces. But not with weapons. With awareness. With humility and tenderness. With joy. With laughter. With art, poetry and music. The antidote to anti-life isn’t violence. It’s finding pathways of enlivenment, wherever we live.  

Turning protests into festivals of resilience as we saw play out in the 2026 Australia Day Survival Day events that responded to Australia’s shameful celebration of  Australia as a nation to be marked by the arrival of British penal settlers, which set in train the dispossession and massacring of First Nations peoples across their lands under the fiction of terra nullius. Not remedied in law until the 1992 Mabo case.

On March 6, 2025, Báyò Akómoláfé, Erin Manning, and Alex Forrester of the Schumacher Center for New Economics convened online for “Becoming Unsettled,” an exploration of white settlement and the shapes it proliferates to keep itself aloft, as well as blackness. Not the Blackness that settles, but the blackness that unravels the settled. Becoming unsettled is becoming ‘black’.

As more and more of us find ourselves becoming ‘black’—from the citizens of the US under ICE attack to those who cannot afford a stable roof over their heads amongst unseemly profligate material wealth and Influencer narcissism, can we embrace this new awareness and join in finding new and ancients pathways of enlivenment?