Commentary on O’Brien et al. (2023): "Fractal Scaling of Sustainability"

Beyond Fractal Replication: A Perceptual Critique of Systemic Change and Fractal Replication

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The 2023 paper by O’Brien et al. represents a thoughtful attempt to reimagine sustainability beyond mechanistic models of scaling. By introducing fractality as a metaphor and framework, the authors try to move beyond linear growth and replication, suggesting that transformation can be self-similar across levels, rooted in shared values and a shift in meaning-making. This commentary builds on their contribution but proposes a deeper critique: that transformation is not merely a change in patterns or values across systems, but a complete ending of the psychological structure that gives rise to fragmentation in the first place. Each of the seven points below expands this perspective.

1. Self-Replication Is Not Transformation

O’Brien et al. suggest that transformation can spread via fractal patterns, with values like compassion acting as generative attractors. Yet this assumes that transformation is something that can be "replicated" or designed. But true transformation is not the spread of an idea or a behavioral pattern; it is the ending of the inner movement of becoming, identity, and continuity. A fractal is still a form. It maps similarity, not silence. Replication, even of virtuous qualities, remains within time and structure. Radical transformation is not a pattern. It is the cessation of all patterns. It cannot be scaled, because it does not begin. It ends.

2. The Self Is the System

The paper separates the "inner" (values and sense-making) from the "outer" (systems and structures), then uses fractality to link the two. But this binary itself is illusory. The system is not separate from the self. It is the self projected into policy, governance, education, and practice. It is not that the self and system influence each other; the system is the projection of the psyche. Therefore, to transform systems, one must end the self, the movement of fear, comparison, control. Without that ending, any pattern we design simply extends the self's logic into new, subtler forms.

3. Models of Value Are Still Thought

While the authors emphasize universal values as transformational, naming and structuring these values turns them into fixed ideals. A value named becomes an object of thought. A model of curiosity is not curiosity. A policy of compassion is not compassion. These are imitations, useful perhaps in pedagogy, but not in perception. Thought creates a model, which is then applied. But transformation is not application. It is direct seeing. To live in compassion is not to think of it or apply it. It is to be free of the self. Institutionalizing values traps the living into the dead.

4. Stimulus Without Perception

We live amidst continuous exposure to global suffering. Children are dying. Women are being raped. Families are displaced and bombed. We see conflict every day. There is the sun. There is the moon. There is enough light to see, and more than enough evidence. Thousands of videos circulate daily—from bodycam footage to satellite images, eyewitness accounts, and social media testimonies. Over 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza alone in less than a year. Genocides unfold in slow motion on the screen. And yet, the structure of the self survives.

TikTok feeds on tragedy. It commodifies pain. The most horrific truths are rendered into short-form content, consumed between entertainment and distraction. We scroll past the starving child and the dying mother. The mind that is fragmented does not perceive holistically, even when it is shown unbearable truth. It compares, escapes, analyzes, and numbs itself through repetition. Therefore, showing more truth, presenting more values, or framing more patterns does not awaken intelligence. Intelligence cannot be triggered by information. It awakens only when the psychological movement of the self ends. That ending cannot be induced by content. It can only occur when the mechanism of escape and comparison is seen directly and falls away.

5. Awareness Cannot Be Scaled

Awareness is not a capacity or technique. It is not a fractal attractor. It is not something one teaches in leadership programs. Awareness is choiceless perception, a seeing that is unmediated, immediate, and without center. The moment we try to model awareness, we reintroduce the observer, the doer, the one who wants to be aware. This very movement creates division. To scale awareness is to deny what awareness is. It is to confuse stillness with replication. Awareness cannot be deployed. It happens only when the projector of thought is still.

6. Designing Coherence Is Not Intelligence

Fractal theory aims for coherence, a pleasing congruence between levels of organization. But when coherence is designed, it is still built by the fragmented mind. True coherence cannot be engineered. It is the natural action of intelligence, which is holistic, not patterned. Intelligence does not align values. It sees the false and ends it. When thought ends, action is whole, not because it fits a model, but because it arises from no division. Fractal coherence is architectural. Intelligence is existential. One is aesthetic. The other is real.

7. The End of Becoming

At the heart of the fractal model is the idea of becoming: becoming aligned with values, becoming more coherent, becoming transformed. But becoming is the root of the self. It is time as identity. It is continuity. To act from wholeness is to end becoming. That is not passivity. It is total action. Such action does not move from intention. It is not a strategy. It emerges from stillness. This ending of becoming is not a pattern. It cannot be taught. It cannot be mapped. It is the revolution.

Conclusion: The Fractal Is Not the Real

O’Brien et al. offer a refined tool within the world of systemic reform. Their vision is ethical, sensitive, and thoughtfully constructed. But it remains within the framework of directed change and psychological continuity. The deeper question is not whether such frameworks can help us achieve sustainability goals, but whether they can end the fragmentation that gave rise to the crisis in the first place.

Even if we succeed in meeting every sustainability target through fractal scaling, achieving coherence across systems, embedding universal values, and transforming institutions, if the underlying human psyche remains fragmented, have we truly solved the problem? Or have we merely shifted its manifestation? A fragmented mind can replicate compassion as policy, awareness as pedagogy, and coherence as structure. But the very movement of becoming, the continuity of identity, time, and control, remains untouched. And as long as that movement persists, fragmentation persists, no matter how sophisticated the outer form. What ends fragmentation is not a better model or a more ethical system. It is the ending of the self as the center of action. Not fractal alignment, but freedom. Not scale, but stillness. Not coherence, but clarity. When this is seen, transformation is not something to be replicated. It is not a strategy. It is the ending of that which seeks to transform. In that ending, something whole is revealed. That wholeness cannot be scaled. It is already here.

The Crisis of Perception: A Deeper Critique of Fractal Scaling

While O’Brien et al. attempt to transcend mechanistic models by introducing fractality as a guiding metaphor for transformation, the deeper assumptions underlying their proposal remain unexamined. As explored in Governance Without the Self (Gupta, 2025), the crisis we face is not merely structural or institutional but perceptual. What gives rise to unsustainability is not the absence of coherence across scales, but the fragmentation of human consciousness itself. This fragmentation expresses itself through several interrelated movements.

First, there is the crisis of time. The paper assumes that transformation can unfold through developmental processes such as alignment, emergence, and systemic learning. But psychological time, the movement of the self through continuity, effort, and becoming, cannot bring about wholeness. As long as change is approached through method and accumulation, the division between what is and what should be remains intact. Time sustains fragmentation.

Second, the proposal is grounded in a crisis of framework. By advocating fractal models and values-based coherence, the authors remain within the logic of conceptual structuring. But as Governance Without the Self shows, models, however ethically grounded, emerge from the same movement of thought that produced the crisis. Structure may coordinate, but it cannot perceive. Transformation is not an outcome of design, but of insight.

Third, there is a crisis of knowledge. The authors frame transformation as a shift in meaning-making, rooted in new narratives, paradigms, or attractors. But knowledge, even when reimagined through complexity, remains the past in motion. It cannot touch the living. True intelligence is not the product of cognitive reframing. It arises when the accumulation of memory, belief, and ideology ceases.

Fourth, the model presumes becoming, the idea that individuals, institutions, or collectives can progressively align with values like compassion or awareness. But becoming is the very source of conflict. The effort to become better divides the present from the imagined future. It keeps attention locked in measurement and idealization rather than perception.

Finally, the paper operates from the crisis of the observer. It presumes a subject who can intervene, replicate, and design transformation. But the one who observes, the “I,” is itself a product of thought, a construct. As long as the self is the center of action, it replicates itself even in the language of values and change. True transformation is not the result of the observer acting upon the system. It begins when the observer ends.

These five crises are not theoretical. They shape every reform effort, every policy intervention, and every framework that attempts to scale transformation. Unless they are seen clearly, what we call transformation becomes the repetition of subtle fragmentation in new language and form.

The paper by O’Brien et al. remains a sincere and ethically motivated contribution to sustainability discourse. But without a clear insight into the movement of perception, into time, knowledge, becoming, and the self, it risks turning transformation into another replicable pattern. As Governance Without the Self argues, the root of disorder is not outside us. It is in the one who designs the solution. And unless that movement ends, what we build will carry its trace.