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Iain McGilchrist is an essential guide for anyone interested in exploring how humans think about the world – how we pay attention and to what we pay attention. The 2-volume Matter With Things took a decade to write and given its breath will probably take many readers as long to complete.

As it says in the blurb: Iain McGilchrist addresses some of the oldest and hardest questions humanity faces – ones that, however, have a practical urgency for all of us today. Who are we? What is the world? How can we understand consciousness, matter, space and time? Is the cosmos without purpose or value? Can we really neglect the sacred and divine?

If you have a good local bookstore that may be the first port of call. Alternatively, the books can be purchased on Amazon.

If you are looking for an easier introduction to his work and hemisphere theory, you may want to visit his official website – Channel McGilchrist – or check him out on YouTube.

Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich is about unlearning on many levels.

Although the book specifically focuses on education, its insights can be broadly applied to any established knowledge system. Illich argues for the decoupling of school and education, advocating instead for self-directed learning, skill exchange and the use of modern technology to disseminate knowledge.

What sets Illich apart, though, is his ability to usher readers into a world with very different beliefs and assumptions, prompting us to question and examine our own.

Whether or not one agrees with all his views, Illich’s work is undeniably thought-provoking and challenging and helps us both identify and step outside cultural narratives.

If you have a good local bookstore that may be the first port of call. Alternatively, the book can be purchased on Amazon. This is a slim volume (116 pages).

Pedagogy of the Oppressed advocates for using education as a tool for social justice and liberation. Written in the 1960s, the book critiques traditional education models, which Paulo Freire refers to as the “banking model” of education, in which teachers “deposit” information into passive students. This system, Freire argues, reinforces oppression by discouraging critical thinking and maintaining societal power structures.

Freire proposes a liberating approach to education that emphasizes dialogue, reflection and action. He believes education should be a mutual process in which teachers and students co-create knowledge. This method encourages learners to question and challenge oppressive conditions in their lives, empowering them to become agents of change.

Whilst Freire wrote with humanity in mind, we live in a world in which the vast majority of what we call “nature” and the “environment” are still being oppressed. The work is thus, as Vandana Shiva has described it most eloquently, to break the colonial relationship between humanity and nature. This feels like a natural (no pun intended) extension of Freire’s seminal work.

If you have a good local bookstore that may be the first port of call. Alternatively, the book can be purchased on Amazon. This is a relatively slim book but one to which you will likely keep coming back (180 pages).

Donella Meadows was one of the founders of what has become known as systems thinking. In what is in essence a systems thinking primer, Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows calls for humility; for thinking in terms of our ignorance rather than our knowledge.

Her argument (put very simply) is that “everything we think we know about the world is a model” and that whilst those models “usually have a strong congruence with the world” they “fall far short of representing the world fully”.

When dealing with dynamic systems with countless variables and complex and sometimes unknowable interplay between seemingly separate systems, there will inevitably always be a gap between any model and reality.

What then are we to do?

Meadows offers us a practical framework for navigating such systems. Through concepts such as stocks and flows, feedback loops and system archetypes, she offers readers tools to better understand and potentially influence the world around them. This systemic thinking approach encourages us to look beyond immediate events and consider the underlying structures that drive behavior over time.

Note: Whilst the link is to Amazon, I would encourage you to get the book from your local library or bookstore.

I would also strongly recommend reading this short article entitled Dancing with Systems and checking out the Donella Meadows Project.

Alan Watts is surely one of the most recognisable names from 20th century philosophy. A self-styled “entertainer”, the Out of Your Mind recordings are intended to shock the listener out of the comfort of their pre-existing worldviews and open doors to a deeper relationship with reality.

So much of our modern “civilisation” is built on narratives that rely on some form of collective psychosis. They only make sense when we deny that there is some shared “reality” and indeed that there are some immutable laws governing the physical world in which we live.

Alan is there to show us the depth of our illusions and offer us the opportunity to start afresh. The ability to question narratives – no matter how deeply held – feels central to more holistic thinking.

These recordings can be accessed via Amazon’s Audible system and offer over 14 hours of Alan performing at his best. For more information on Alan and access to further recordings, the Alan Watts Organisation is a great starting point.

The Series of conversations (or dialogues) between Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm are some of the most amazing philosophical discussions ever recorded. They explore, amongst other things, thought and the nature of consciousness. How we see the world determines how we act so taking time to reflect on the limitations within our own sensemaking feels critical to more holistic thinking.

These recordings, and some of Krishnamurti’s other recorded talks, can be accessed via Amazon’s Audible system. That said, some are available free of charge on YouTube and equivalent platforms including on the Bohm-Krishnamurti Project website.

Fluke is a wonderful primer on the randomness of human endeavours. In many ways it a book about humility, about how chance and chaos play a much greater role in the pages of history that most humans may be willing to accept. There is, as such, no storybook version of reality – no neat version of causality where we can say A led to B.

And yet, Brian Klaas is not advocating that we despair at our lack of control. Rather, his view is that, on the contrary, everything we do matters more than we can imagine. While we control nothing, we influence everything.

Drawing on social science, chaos theory, history, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Klaas provides a brilliantly fresh look at why things happen – all while providing mind-bending lessons on how we can live smarter, be happier, and lead more fulfilling lives. This is essential reading for anyone who looking to create a different future from the one that seems baked in.

If you have a good local bookstore that may be the first port of call. Alternatively, the book can be purchased on Amazon.

This book is an eyeopener. Most of us happily order random items off Amazon without really thinking of the real-world mechanisms that are needed to bring all the inputs together to form the product that will show up (as if by magic) on my doorstep.

In the age of AI, Ed Conway invites us to go back to first principles and to sit with the actual physical substances (from sand to salt to iron to lithium) that underpin our world – past and present. Understanding these flows is critical to any holistic discussion about any economic or energy transition.

As the blurb says: “As we wrestle with climate change, energy crises and the threat of new global conflict, Conway shows why these substances matter more than ever before, and how the hidden battle to control them will shape our geopolitical future. This is the story of civilisation – our ambitions and glory, innovations and appetites – from a new perspective: literally from the ground up.“

If you have a good local bookstore that may be the first port of call. Alternatively, it can be purchased on Amazon, where you can also get Audible version if you want to listen to Ed narrate the book.

For a condensed version of the story, watch Ed’s interview on the Great Simplification podcast.

This book is a tour de force and the result of a lifetime of research by Josephine Quinn. The central thesis, which is regrettably still a minority view, is that human history is much more interconnected than allowed for in the traditional civilizational model.

Josephine Quinn argues that civilizations are in truth arbitrary constructs that seek to create neat divisions between group A and group B, whereas the real story is a much blurrier one of constant interaction and inter-influencing. In much the same way as the Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, Josephine Quinn invites us to take a more holistic and less ‘them and us’ view of humanity.

On a deeper level, the book is an invitation to step outside deep cultural narratives and to deal with the messiness of the world and of our history rather than the neat storybook versions we may tell ourselves. There are lessons here for how we accept the world before us and plan for the future.

If you have a good local bookstore that may be the first port of call. Alternatively, the book can be purchased on Amazon.

This book emphasizes the importance of focusing on what truly matters in order to achieve meaningful results across your world. It provides actionable advice on how to eliminate distractions and prioritize tasks that align with your long-term vision.

For example, Greg shares how until the 19th century the word “priority” was singular. You could only have one. From a practical perspective this is always the case because in any one moment you can only focus on one thing – that in short is your priority. Our priority is what we do not what we say. Frustration stems from a misalignment between the two.

If you are looking to bring change to some system, then this book may serve as a reminder of the relentless focus that is required. You might ask – Why aren’t we making progress? Well, ask yourself, what are we doing that isn’t contributing to the desired outcome? What is distracting us? What are we saying No to? Jony Ive’s short video on Steve Job’s sense of focus is insightful on the latter point.

If you are looking for a real-world example of the effectiveness of the relentless focus on outcomes in the NGO world (Why am I doing what I am doing? What do I want to accomplish? Can I go about it differently?), DJ White’s Earth Trust may be of interest.

If you have a good local bookstore that may be the first port of call. Alternatively, it can be purchased on Amazon. Because of their inspirational nature, the paper version of Taleb’s books is probably preferable.

Nassim Taleb is one of a small band of living authors who offer truly original thinking. He is probably best known for Black Swan but Antifragile is equally in a league of its own. In Antifragile, Taleb argues that certain things in life not only benefit from stress, disorder, volatility and turmoil but in fact need them and thrive under such conditions.

Taleb classifies systems as fragile, robust and antifragile. Tabel briefly discusses the concepts in this video. This is a really important lens through which to think about any new system. How is this system fragile? What might knock it over? How might it be designed to make it more robust? Or ideally, antifragile?

If you are new to Taleb, pretty much everything he writes is worth reading: Nassim Taleb on Amazon.

If you have a good local bookstore that may be the first port of call. Alternatively, it can be purchased on Amazon. Because of their inspirational nature, the paper version of Taleb’s books is probably preferable.

Designing Regenerative Cultures by Daniel Christian Wahl is above all an invitation to think differently, with a view to acting differently in the future. Drawing on this wonderful quote from Rainer Maria Rilke, the author invites us to follow him on a quest for questions rather than answers:

“[…] have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and do try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” Rainer Maria Rilke (1903)

Offering a whistlestop tour through diverse domains such as the finance system, agriculture, design, ecology, economics, sustainability and much more, the author explores how we think about and might rethink about the crisis facing life on this planet and how we might look for paths through. 

If you are looking to further explore Daniel’s writing and thinking, his website and YouTube channel are highly recommended.

Note: Whilst the link is to Amazon, I would encourage you to get the book from your local library or bookstore.

This handbook, written by Peter Jones and Kristel van Ael, combines the core theory and practice of systemic design.

As the blurb says: “The modern age calls for designers, social innovators, and business leaders to address transformational challenges for which they have no relevant academic or practice training. Design Journeys provides the map for them to follow, allowing them to visualize complex challenges in a way that creates points of leverage.“

If you have a good local bookstore that may be the first port of call. Alternatively, the handbook can be purchased on Amazon. Many of the reviews reference limitations with the Kindle version so the hardback version is probably preferable.

The accompanying Systemic Design Toolkit “helps you co-create interventions to tackle organisational and societal complexity”.