"We are making a shift from a machine metaphor of cause and effect to a natural metaphor of emergence...We are confused now because all we know is the machine metaphor. So we apply machine thinking about top down, cause and effect, inputs to our problems. In every case, we are not only failing but making the situation worse."

We are confused, for our institutions, where we have lodged all our social power, are all children of the past mindset. So at the moment we are helpless. They have the power and they make it all worse and we don't know what to do."

"As anyone in our age group knows, to shift gears you first have to disengage the clutch and literally give up control for a moment. In the context of the Second Adulthood transition, letting go—of worn-out demands, of old news, of empty promises—is like stepping backward off a cliff." True at all ages.