1. Introduction

Other potential crises include asteroid impacts, mass migration waves, nuclear war, terrorist attacks or failed state scenarios.

Earth Overshoot Day 2021 was on 29 July. From 30 July onwards, we were depleting the ecosystems of our planet. However, we can reverse that trend. Reforesting 350 million hectares would give us eight days; reducing 50% of the CO₂ load in the atmosphere 93 days; using more efficient technology (both cutting-edge and well-established) globally 21 days; reducing meat consumption by 50% 17 days; reducing food waste by 50% 17 days; increasing public transportation and cutting car mileage by a third another 13 days; and cutting the birth rate by one child for every other family 49 days. It looks like it would not be an impossible mission to remain within our planetary boundaries. Instead of depleting the planet. we should avoid misaligned incentives and create a financial framework where everybody has ‘skin in the game’. See https://​www.​overshootday.​org/​solutions/​.

The idea of mental preparedness for change comes from clinical research on addiction. Motivational psychology has shown that a multistage approach can be used to achieve behavioural changes. This includes support for self-efficacy and control, developing an ambivalence between the status quo and the desired outcome and reflective listening. The first step, however, requires mental preparedness for change. And this is the stage we are all at right now. We are ready for change, but we are not yet changing. See Rollnick and Miller (1995).

For example, the current pandemic has caused the UN Human Development Index to fall back by over ten years. That means we are globally ten years behind the pre-pandemic level of human development. In some countries, an additional 14% of GDP is necessary to catch up with the SDGs. We also have to add long-term scarring effects (lockdown, lost years of education) on top of this, which comes to another 1–2% of GDP in some less developed countries.

Neuroscience has further clarified this connection in the ‘explore and exploit’ hypothesis. In order to set in motion purposeful adjustments and behavioural changes, a discrepancy between the inner picture, narrative or frame and the outside world is necessary. As long as nothing changes in the outside world, there will be no discrepancy between inside and outside and no change in behaviour. Things are different if circumstances change and the inner picture (the world model) no longer has sufficient predictive power. The world model loses its ‘predictive coding’. The discrepancy leads to a reorientation, which in turn leads to a new, unstable flow equilibrium. Developmental psychology has found that from the age of 11 months children compare hypotheses that they generate in their brains with the outside world. If the hypotheses don’t match, they must be corrected. According to the ‘explore or exploit’ hypothesis, as long as the inner picture reflects the outer world, humans will simply repeat themselves over and over again (‘exploit’). The situation changes dramatically if there is a discrepancy between inside and outside. Now ‘exploit’ no longer helps and we must switch to ‘explore’: curiosity, trying out new things, creativity, adaptation and learning. This is known as creative adaptation, and is what we are attempting to encourage in this book. See Gomez-Ramirez and Costa (2017), Gopnik and Meltzoff (2000), Friston (2012) and Friston et al. (2012).