Excerpted from James Cascio:

“What makes climate and poverty wicked problems is that they’re complex — complicated + interconnected with other systems — *and* that they’re attached at the root to fundamental political-economic power structures. That is, altering the status quo of climate & poverty will upset power balances; those with the power who stand to lose it will use every bit of that power to hang onto it.
So what do we know that can successfully attack a complex system with a great deal of defensive power?

Viruses. We have to think like a virus.

[Recognizing that viruses aren’t even alive, at least according to some definitions of life, so yes, thinking isn’t what they *really* do. But go with it.]

A retro-virus, to be precise. We need to figure out how to get in, adapt, and rewrite the system. A blunt attack would get shut down quickly; we have to be able to simultaneously weaken the system and redirect defensive resources in a way that makes the system think that it’s still working. We need to be able to turn the system against itself.

Admittedly, holding high the banner of “we’re like a virally-induced auto-immune disorder” isn’t going to bring in a lot of money and recruits, but it is a good analogy for the strategy I think is likely to work best.”