De Amerikaanse schrijver, onderzoeker en podcastmaker Chris Wells, PhD, houdt zich bezig met positieve desintegratie, neurodivergentie en persoonlijke groei.
Als oprichter van het Dąbrowski Center en bedenker van het Positive Disintegration Network, maakt Chris zich hard om de discussie rondom Dąbrowski’s theorie levendig te houden en deze meer bekendheid te geven, in de academische wereld en daarbuiten.
Chris is co-host van verschillende podcasts: Positive Disintegration, cosmic cheer squad en PDA: Resistance and Resilience. Ook schrijft Chris op Substack, waar die een brug slaat tussen theorie en doorleefde ervaring van Dąbrowski’s complexe ideeën, waardoor deze toegankelijker en toepasbaarder worden.
Diens werk wordt gedreven door een diepe waardering voor zelfontwikkeling, authenticiteit en transformatie, met als doel anderen te ondersteunen bij het navigeren door hun positieve desintegratie.
In dit Engelstalige artikel verbindt Chris de maatschappelijke ineenstorting van de Verenigde Staten met een universeel desintegratieproces dat gaande is, kemerkend voor de huidige staat van de westerse wereld. Naast een scherpe analyse van eenlagige en meerlagige ontwikkeling op maatschappelijk niveau, biedt Chris ons perspectief op hoe we zelf een betekenisvolle rol kunnen spelen in dit complexe proces.
I’ve been sitting with this piece for months—not because I didn’t know what I wanted to say, but because I wasn’t sure I was ready to say it this plainly, this publicly.
To write from this place—to bring the theory of positive disintegration into direct conversation with the collapse we’re living through—feels like stepping across a threshold. It’s vulnerable. It’s personal. And it carries a kind of responsibility I don’t take lightly.
By collapse, I mean the fracturing of our collective moral and psychological frameworks—a disintegration of meaning, coherence, and trust.
That kind of unraveling isn’t theoretical—it’s happening all around us. As I watch systems continue to break—politically, socially, spiritually—I feel that responsibility pressing in more urgently. This isn’t just a political moment. It’s a psychological one. A moral one. A disintegrative one.
We need tools that help us make sense of collapse, as something painful, yes, but also potentially transformative.
For decades, American politics—and much of the Western world—has revolved around a predictable binary: left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican, progressives vs. conservatives. We’ve been told that these ideological battles are the root of our collective turmoil. But what if they’re a surface conflict—one that conceals a deeper psychological unraveling? One that threatens the very fabric of our shared reality.
What if the battles we think we are fighting—elections, policy debates, culture wars—are distractions from a more profound collapse?
What if the destruction of society isn’t just something happening out there, but something that’s happening to me, to people like me, in real time?
I don’t have the luxury of treating this as an abstract political moment. I am nonbinary. And every time the federal government, the so-called leadership of this country, declares that people like me do not exist, that I must check a box that doesn’t fit, that my reality is not recognized—I feel the collapse like a weight pressing down on me. I won’t be going back to the way things were.
The old structures that held up society are falling apart, but instead of making space for something better, we’re watching power double down on its most rigid, oppressive forms. This is more than an erasure of rights or identity. It’s an attempt to force us back into a world that never made room for us to begin with.
When those in power strip away legal recognition and reduce gender to a binary, it’s not about paperwork or pronouns; it’s a denial of reality itself. They are trying to erase us from the cultural imagination. But we were never hypothetical. We’re here. We’ve always been here.
I don’t get to pretend that society’s collapse is theoretical. I feel it every time I see my identity debated like it’s an ideology rather than my lived experience. Every time I hear someone say my existence is a “fad” or a “threat.” Every time a court, a governor, a president, or a judge erases my ability to be seen.
This is the nature of disintegration. The old world is failing. And instead of letting it evolve into something more just, more expansive, more true, those in power are clinging to its ruins, tightening their grip, suffocating anything that does not conform.
This is more than a political breakdown. It is a disintegration of our shared reality. You may feel it, too—the weight of systems unraveling, the sense that nothing makes sense anymore.
We are at a tipping point. The question now is: will we create something new? Or will we let those in power drag us backward into a world where only a few are allowed to be fully human?
Societies—like individuals—go through breakdowns. Some of those breakdowns lead to transformation and renewal. Others lead to destruction and stagnation. The difference lies in how we handle the collapse.
Kazimierz Dąbrowski’s theory of positive disintegration gives us a lens to understand this moment in history. It offers a way to differentiate between collapse that leads to something better and collapse that leads to nothing at all.
This isn’t just a political crisis. It’s existential. And as someone who’s survived inner collapse and grown from it, I can tell you: not all breakdowns lead to transformation. Some just break you. Some break entire societies.
Dąbrowski’s theory describes two fundamentally different ways that individuals—and societies—can experience crisis:
Right now, our society is trapped in unilevel collapse, or a breakdown of meaning. A chaos spiral where destruction is the goal, not transformation.
We need to understand the difference between these two types of disintegration, because it will determine whether we find our way out of this collapse or get lost in it.
Unilevel disintegration is directionless breakdown. It is collapse for the sake of collapse, a freefall with no higher values to guide it.
This happens when an individual, a society, or an entire civilization loses the ability to differentiate between truth and lies, wisdom and ignorance, evolution and decay.
In unilevel collapse:
This is what we are seeing now. The old ideological divides—liberal versus conservative, left versus right—are dissolving as people abandon traditional political identities in favor of looser affiliations driven by emotion, distrust, and alienation. Positions that once seemed opposed now coexist in strange coalitions, united less by principle than by shared disillusionment.
A clear example of this phenomenon is the strange convergence of far-right extremists, disaffected liberals, and self-proclaimed “anti-establishment” figures who find common ground—not in shared values, but in a mutual distrust of institutions and a rejection of traditional authority.
For instance, we’ve seen white nationalists, libertarians, conspiracy theorists, and certain factions of the left-wing populist movement all coalesce around anti-vaccine rhetoric and deep-state conspiracies. Not because they actually share the same ideological goals, but because they are united by a shared cynicism toward government, media, and science.
Another example is the bizarre coalition between tech billionaires like Elon Musk, reactionary conservatives, and certain disillusioned former progressives who now rally around “free speech absolutism” as a way to attack institutions, discredit expertise, and undermine collective action. Not as a principled stance. This isn’t about building something better; it’s about tearing down what exists with no vision beyond destruction.
These alliances don’t represent a true ideological shift toward something new; they are the chaotic byproduct of unilevel disintegration, where people grasp for certainty in a collapsing system and mistake shared resentment for shared purpose.
Political figures like Trump, Musk, and Putin are accelerating the collapse, but not to create something better. They are doing it to destroy existing power structures in ways that benefit them.
Social movements that once had clear values are becoming flattened, reactionary, incoherent—easily manipulated by bad actors who know that in a world where nothing matters, whoever controls the narrative wins.
Disinformation spreads, not because people believe deeply in anything, but because they believe deeply in nothing.
This is the most dangerous part of unilevel collapse: It does not necessarily lead to growth. It is a dead end.
When societies stay in unilevel disintegration for too long, they may:
Unilevel disintegration is nihilism. It severs us from the possibility of a meaningful future.
If we want to survive this collapse, we have to move from unilevel to multilevel disintegration—a breakdown that creates the conditions for something better.
Multilevel disintegration happens when an individual, or an entire civilization, experiences collapse but begins to recognize higher and lower values.
This is the critical shift:
Multilevel disintegration is the moment when a person or a society begins to say: We cannot go back, but we also cannot stay here.
This is how revolutions become renaissances instead of just bloodbaths. This is how a collapsing society evolves.
Signs of Multilevel Disintegration in Society
Multilevel disintegration means pain and suffering, but with direction. It is collapse as a forge, rather than an abyss.
It is not enough for some of us to evolve while others remain trapped in the past.
Part of what needs to happen is a fundamental shift away from black-and-white, us-vs-them thinking. We have been conditioned to see every issue in binary terms—left vs. right, good vs. evil, us vs. them. But real transformation requires complexity.
Multilevel transformation requires seeing beyond warring factions and recognizing that a deeper shift must take place in our collective consciousness. We cannot simply replace one rigid system with another—we have to become something fundamentally different.
We have to learn to think beyond borders, binaries, and reactionary politics.
The world is changing—ecologically, technologically, psychologically—whether we like it or not. The question is: Will we evolve with it, or will we let it break us?
One of the biggest dangers right now is that most people are still playing by the old rules. They think this is just another election cycle, another economic crisis, another period of political instability. It’s not.
The illusion that we are living in the same political and social reality as before is collapsing. Those who refuse to see it will be left behind. If we want multilevel disintegration instead of endless chaos, we need more than resistance.
We need vision.
This is not just a political crisis. It is a psychological and moral one. And like all crises, it will either break us or force us to evolve.
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” –Antonio Gramsci
The time of monsters is here. What comes next is up to us.
This isn’t about glorifying suffering, but about recognizing that inner conflict and distress can be sites of transformation—if we choose to engage with them.
Michael M. Piechowski has spent years studying the lives of moral exemplars—people who, in the face of crisis and collapse, transcended fear, hatred, and despair to become beacons of transformation. He has written about Etty Hillesum and Eleanor Roosevelt, individuals who not only survived immense personal and societal upheaval but emerged from it with an unshakable commitment to peace, justice, and inner growth. He has also written about Peace Pilgrim, whose life embodied these same values through a radical spiritual mission of nonviolence. They offer a blueprint.
These are people who faced the worst of what humanity is capable of—war, persecution, betrayal, injustice—and instead of becoming hardened, embittered, or nihilistic, they chose transformation. Whether through resistance, service, or radical simplicity, each of them committed to inner growth as a path to outer change. They understood something we struggle to grasp: peace begins within us.
We cannot rebuild a better world until we commit to evolving ourselves. So where do we begin?
It is easy to look at the world and despair. The weight of collapse is bearing down on all of us. It is tempting to give in to rage, to believe that nothing can be done, that those in power will always win. But history—and the lives of those who have walked this path before us—tell us something different.
Change does not begin in institutions. It begins in us.
Etty Hillesum, writing from inside a concentration camp, understood this truth at the most harrowing depths of human suffering:
“Each of us must turn inwards and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others… Every atom of hate we add to this world makes it still more inhospitable.” –Etty Hillesum
We will not survive this collapse by mirroring the cruelty, paranoia, and cynicism we see around us. We must begin with our own inner landscapes. The battle for the future of society is happening inside each of us—in how we respond to fear, in what we cultivate within ourselves, in whether we choose to evolve.
So where do we begin?
Peace Pilgrim, who spent nearly 30 years walking across America speaking to people about peace, understood something essential: we cannot create peace in the world if we do not create it in ourselves first.
“Ultimate peace begins within; when we find peace within, there will be no more conflict, no more occasion for war.” –Peace Pilgrim
This does not mean ignoring injustice or refusing to act. It means recognizing that our state of mind determines our actions. A world built from fear, rage, and retribution will only create more fear, rage, and retribution. If we want a different future, we must carry that future inside of us now.
This does not happen by accident. It is a practice. Daily reflection, meditation, journaling—these are ways we clear space within ourselves for something higher to emerge. It is not enough to wish for peace; we must actively cultivate it.
Eleanor Roosevelt understood that personal transformation is not a passive process. It is a battle. A choice made over and over again.
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face… You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” –Eleanor Roosevelt
We don’t become ready and then transform. We become ready by stepping into the struggle. Readiness is forged in the act of transformation itself.
This means facing our own biases and fears, acknowledging the ways we have been conditioned to accept injustice, learning to live without certainty. It means doing the thing that terrifies us—not once, but over and over—until it no longer holds power over us.
One of the greatest dangers of this moment is the way it isolates us, convinces us that we are alone in our suffering, that no one else understands. The more disconnected we become, the easier it is for fear and hatred to take hold.
Peace Pilgrim rejected this illusion:
“We are all cells in the body of humanity. We are not separate from our fellow humans. It’s only from that higher viewpoint that you can know what it is to love your neighbor as yourself.” –Peace Pilgrim
If we do not see our struggles as interconnected, we will become consumed by factionalism and division. The goal is not to win against each other, but to rise together.
Etty Hillesum understood something that many of us struggle to accept—resistance does not have to come from a place of hatred. She saw, even as she faced genocide, that adding more anger to the world would only deepen the wounds of history.
“They can’t do anything to us, they really can’t. They can harass us, they can rob us of our material goods, of our freedom of movement, but we ourselves forfeit our greatest assets by our misguided compliance. By our feeling of being persecuted, humiliated, and oppressed. By our own hatred.” –Etty Hillesum
This does not mean accepting oppression or tolerating injustice. It means refusing to let hatred shape us. It means choosing clarity over vengeance, wisdom over reaction, transformation over destruction.
Eleanor Roosevelt believed that democracy and justice could only survive if each individual committed to their own evolution.
“If we believe in democracy and that it is based on the possibility of a Christ-like way of life, then everybody must force himself to think through his own basic philosophy, his own willingness to live up to it and to help carry it out in everyday life.” –Eleanor Roosevelt
We cannot wait for the world to become better before we start living differently. We must embody the world we want now—in our actions, in our relationships, in our daily choices.
If we want a world that is just, we must act justly.
If we want a world that is compassionate, we must be compassionate.
If we want a world free from fear, we must stop letting fear rule us.
The collapse is happening. That much is certain. But collapse is not the end. It is a crossroads.
We can let it destroy us. We can descend into paranoia, factionalism, and retribution. We can allow fear and cynicism to dictate what comes next.
Or—we can evolve.
We can take this moment as an opportunity to become something different, to reject the rigid binaries that have trapped us, to carve out a path that is neither submission nor destruction, but transformation.
The road forward will not be easy. But as Peace Pilgrim reminds us, there is a different kind of power waiting for those willing to walk it:
“When you have inner peace, you move through the world differently. No one can truly harm you. No one can take away what you are.” – Peace Pilgrim
The world will try to make us afraid. It will try to force us into choosing between destruction and oppression. It will tell us that peace is weakness, that transformation is impossible. It is lying.
The real work begins inside us.
If this piece resonates, I hope you’ll share it with others. We need new language for what we’re living through. And we need to know we’re not alone.