“There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds, and its characteristic of the system that basic error propagates itself.”
— Gregory Bateson, Pathologies of Epistemology, 1971
The spectre of genocide has always haunted human history, trailing even our most celebrated progress like a shadow. In the 21st century, this truth remains unchanged for all its technological triumphs: progress does not insulate us from cruelty; it often renders it more efficient. Algorithms designed to connect us deepen divisions instead; bureaucratic infrastructures obscure atrocities with chilling precision; and ecological collapse pushes human despair to the edge. We are angrier, more fractured, and increasingly consumed by violence and self-interest, with dwindling rights, eroding responsibilities, and a vanishing sense of shared purpose.
In this grim landscape, we are starved not just for solutions but also for frameworks—mental architectures that allow us to truly see.
Bad ideas don’t just persist—they evolve, spread, and entrench themselves, transforming the landscapes of thought, society, and the environment. Like invasive species, they thrive on neglect, exploitation, and self-serving agendas, leaving behind destruction and distortion. How can we confront, dissect, and challenge their spread, evolution, and normalization (no pun intended) before they shape the world beyond repair? As environmental, cultural, political, and technological crises close in on all sides, Bateson’s warning about the dangers of thoughtless intervention (including war making) and unexamined knowledge looms more significant than ever.
This is where Gregory Bateson steps in. Bateson’s insights feel chillingly prescient in a world unravelling at the seams.
Gregory Bateson, the countercultural thinker and systems theorist, offers a map to navigate the interconnected crises of our time. His work, best anthologized in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, is no mere collection of essays; it is a revolutionary act of intellectual reorientation. Bateson does not offer easy solutions to the crises of genocide and ecological collapse.
Bateson, an anthropologist and systems thinker ahead of his time, issued a stark warning that feels more urgent today than ever. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, he exposed the fragility of the systems we inhabit, showing how humanity’s blind pursuit of technological “fixes”—vaccines, dams, pesticides, wars—upsets delicate ecological balances. Decades before the climate crisis became undeniable, Bateson foresaw the chaos that unfolds when human purpose outpaces wisdom.
Instead, he offers something more radical: a way of seeing the world as an intricate web of interdependence, where every action reverberates through the whole. His central warning is stark: the disconnection between how we think and how the world works is not merely dysfunctional but fatal.
The genocides of our time—such as the indefinable human tragedy in Gaza, devastation in South Sudan, the plundering of Congo, or the atrocities in Myanmar—are not isolated eruptions of hatred or extremism. Nor are the floods, droughts, and wildfires that ravage our planet random acts of nature. They are the predictable consequences of systems we have built: systems of domination, extraction, and disconnection. If these systems can be built, Bateson reminds us, they can also be unbuilt. But this work begins with a simple yet profound act: learning to see the pattern which connects.
The Tyranny of Fragmentation
In the opening essays of Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Bateson articulates a searing critique of modern thought. We have inherited an epistemology of fragmentation that separates mind from body, human from nature, and individual from collective. This dualistic way of thinking treats the world as a series of disconnected objects to be exploited and manipulated. Bateson warns that such thinking does not merely invite dysfunction—it ensures catastrophe.
The genocides of our time are among the most explicit expressions of this catastrophe. We frame them as the product of evil individuals or extremist ideologies, imagining they can be surgically excised from the body politic. But Bateson teaches us otherwise: genocide is not an aberration; it is a systemic pathology. It arises from runaway feedback loops of dehumanization, resource exploitation, and ecological collapse.
Consider Gaza: the relentless bombardments, the blockades, the ceaseless machinery of suffering inflicted on a dispossessed people. These horrors are not merely military actions but the culmination of global systems of complicity. Political rhetoric, arms manufacturing, and collective apathy all feed into a feedback loop of violence. Similarly, ecological disasters—rising seas, wildfires, and droughts—are not random misfortunes but symptoms of an economic system that views the planet as an infinite resource to be plundered.
Bateson urges us to reject the simplistic thinking that treats these crises as isolated. Genocide and ecological collapse are not separate phenomena; they are threads of the same pattern, manifestations of systems that exploit, fragment, and devour. To address them, we must first learn to see them as part of an interconnected whole.
The Challenge of Feedback
One of Bateson’s most powerful contributions is his analysis of feedback loops—the ways in which systems regulate themselves or fail to do so. Healthy systems, he argues, incorporate feedback, adjusting their behaviour in response to changing conditions. Pathological systems, by contrast, ignore feedback, spiraling out of control until they collapse.
The genocides and ecological disasters of our time are examples of runaway systems. Social media platforms amplify hate speech with algorithms designed to reward engagement, creating feedback loops that escalate division and violence. Resource conflicts, exacerbated by climate change, feed into political instability, which in turn fuels further violence—a cycle with no natural endpoint.
To interrupt such runaway systems, Bateson calls for cultivating an “ecology of mind.” This means fostering systems that are adaptive, self-regulating, and attuned to the needs of the whole. It requires more than technical fixes or policy reforms; it demands a shift in how we think, relate, and act.
In Gaza, for instance, this might mean not only addressing immediate humanitarian needs but also dismantling the global systems of complicity—economic, political, and ideological—that perpetuate the violence. In the face of ecological collapse, it might mean reducing emissions and reimagining our relationship with the earth, rejecting the extractive logic that treats the planet as a resource to be exploited.
The Pattern Which Connects
At the heart of Bateson’s philosophy lies a deceptively simple phrase: “the pattern which connects.” For Bateson, the world is not a collection of discrete parts but a tapestry of relationships, each thread inextricably linked to the others. Genocide, in this framework, is not an isolated event but a catastrophic disruption in the pattern of connection—a collapse of the relationships that sustain life.
This insight compels us to rethink the causes of violence and our responses to it. Too often, international interventions address only the symptoms of genocide—delivering aid to refugees and imposing sanctions on perpetrators—while ignoring the underlying systems that produce violence. Bateson’s work challenges us to go deeper and rebuild the feedback loops that sustain balance and prevent runaway systems of hatred and exploitation.
The same is true of ecological collapse. Addressing climate change cannot be reduced by reducing carbon emissions. It requires reimagining our relationship with the planet, rejecting the extractive logic that treats the earth as a collection of resources rather than a living system. Bateson reminds us that the solutions to these crises will not come from isolated actions but from systemic change—an integration of thought, action, and vision.
Building Capacity in an Age of Crisis
If Bateson’s diagnosis is fragmentation, his prescription is integration: to build our capacities by cultivating an ecology of mind. This means rejecting the dualisms that divide “us” from “them,” human from nature, and problem from solution. It means learning to think in systems and see the relationships that bind us to each other and to the earth.
This work begins with humility—a recognition that the crises we face are too complex for simplistic solutions. Genocides and ecological disasters are systemic problems; they demand systemic solutions. Addressing not only the immediate causes of violence but also the underlying structures: the technologies that amplify hatred, the economies that prioritize profit over life, and the ideologies that dehumanize the other.
It also requires an investment in learning—learning not in the narrow sense of acquiring knowledge but in the more profound sense of cultivating understanding. Bateson’s ecology of mind challenges us to see learning as a relational process that connects the individual to the collective, the present to the future, and the human to the more-than-human world.
Why Bateson, Why Now?
We live in a world where truth feels slippery, not because of outright lies but because of pervasive double binds that no one can escape or dismantle. We’ve grown numb to the gap between what we’re told and what’s real, assuming deception is part of the job. Bateson’s work remains vital here—he saw that anger alone can’t break these cycles. Until we confront the structures that enforce these binds, truth-telling will remain rare, and the systems meant to stabilize us will continue to falter in an age where runaway forces demand clarity more than ever.
The genocides and ecological disasters of our time are not inevitabilities. They are warnings—urgent signals that the systems we have built are failing. But they are also opportunities to unbuild and rebuild, reimagine and reconnect.
The 21st century demands a new kind of literacy—not just the ability to read texts but the ability to read systems. Gregory Bateson offers us the tools to do so. Steps to an Ecology of Mind is not an easy book. It resists the soundbites and simplifications of contemporary discourse. But it is precisely this difficulty that makes it essential. In an age of runaway systems, Bateson’s insistence on seeing the whole is radical.
To read Bateson is to confront uncomfortable truths: that the crises we face are not isolated events but symptoms of systemic failures, that our ways of thinking are complicit in these failures, and that meaningful change requires more than outrage or technical fixes—a radical shift in perception.
But to read Bateson is also to find hope. He reminds us that the pattern which connects us has always been there, waiting to be remembered. To rebuild our capacities in this crisis is to follow that pattern, rediscover the connections that sustain life, and honour them in how we live, think, and act.
This is not merely an intellectual task but an act of survival. The catastrophes we face are not the end but the beginning. Bateson has given us the map. The rest is up to us.
Perhaps the first step is to listen to his talk “Versailles to Cybernetics,” delivered in 1966 at the “Two Worlds Symposium” at California State University, Sacramento. In it, he reflects upon 20th-century History in terms of critical moments in which profound attitudinal changes are produced. According to him, the most significant events were the writing of the Treaty of Versailles and the cybernetic breakthrough.
Narendra Pachkhédé is a critic, essayist and writer who splits his time between Toronto, London and Geneva.
