40 Substacks all lined up in a row (including this one) - Introducing the Towards Gen2200 archive
A living map of systems, stories and steadying acts
đ Introducing: The Gen2200 Archive
Over the past 12 months, Towards Gen2200 has become both a writing practice and a living laboratory. It has meant exploring what it means to stay human inside collapsing systems, and how imagination might serve as an act of governance.
Across thirty essays plus this post, this archive traces the evolution of a regenerative systems practice. Itâs moved from quiet personal experiments in listening and self-regulation to public reflections on leadership, AI and long-term responsibility.
Each essay sits inside a feedback loop between lived experience, cybernetic and living systems theory and community dialogue. Some posts are deeply personal, others analytical. One thing coheres them - each forms a part of an ongoing inquiry into how we might act today with the generation of the year 2200 in mind.
Below is an annotated index of the Towards Gen2200 archive â grouped by publication order, with short reflections on the intent and systemic questions that shaped each piece. Together, they form both a creative portfolio and a record of an emerging cybernetic practice. Iâll attempt to add to this with each post. I hope you' find this a valuable guide.
đ For academic readers:
This archive complements the exegesis âTowards Gen2200 â A Living Lab in Writing: Building a Community of Systems Practice through Storytelling and Reflectionâ (ANU School of Cybernetics, 2025).
đż For Substack readers
This list is not a table of contents and you can still find a quick tour at the the home page. This list is to help trace of a living, learning journey. If youâve been following along, youâll recognise the through-lines of sovereignty, systems literacy and care. If youâre new here, itâs an invitation to wander through the system at your own pace.
1. The case for quiet is strong
This opening essay reflects on the value of silence in an increasingly noisy worldâexploring how quietness can be both a shield and a source of power for those often unseen or underestimated. It invites readers to consider how listening, reflection, and deliberate speech can transform personal and systemic dynamics, setting the tone for Towards Gen2200 as a space for thoughtful, regenerative dialogue.
2. Curious about Gen2200?
This post introduces Gen2200 as both a project and a philosophyârooted in seven-generation thinking, systems awareness, and regenerative action. It frames Towards Gen2200 as a living journey toward long-term, inclusive futures, where imagination, generosity, and technology meet to help us act wisely today for the people of tomorrow.
3. Seeing systems⌠how nature shifted my leadership perspective
This post traces a pivotal shift from managing people to understanding systems, sparked by a walk through Victoriaâs Wombat State Forest and a lesson in seeing like nature. Drawing from forest ecology, neurodiversity, and leadership practice, it reframes change as a living, adaptive processâmoving from the âMechanical Spiderâ to the âSmart Octopusâ as a metaphor for regenerative, responsive systems design.
4. The forest as disinterested witness
Drawing from a moment during the early pandemic, this reflection traces a moment of solitude in the Wombat Forest where the author recognises natureâs quiet indifference and enduring resilience. It reveals how humility, writing, and sensory awareness can restore perspectiveâteaching that living systems endure beyond human urgency, inviting us to participate rather than consume.
Starting of experimental living, how this whole thing got started !
5. No destination â the âTread Lightly Experimentâ
This piece chronicles how a storm, burnout, and a rescue dog catalysed a personal reset that became the foundation for Gen2200. Through the Tread Lightly Experiment, Jax explores how slowing down, listening inwardly, and reconnecting with living systems can transform exhaustion into clarityâshowing that regenerative futures begin with self-regulation and presence.
6. Walking the talk
This post captures the early days of The Tread Lightly Experiment, where slowing down became both a practice and a revelation. Moving from burnout to presence, Jax reflects on how listening to signsâlike a peacock in the roadâinvites us to shift from speed to sensing, aligning leadership, creativity, and systems awareness with the natural pace of life.
7. Handing on the baton of permission
In this pivotal post, Jax meets Maggieâa quiet systems thinker who introduces the idea of warm data and the importance of tuning into clearer signals. Through their brief encounter, a metaphorical baton is passed: permission to think differently, move beyond expectation, and integrate technology, nature, and self-awareness as part of one living system.
8. Bow ties to butterflies â unknotting lifeâs crises
This essay reframes crisis and choice-making through two metaphors: the structured bow tie of emergency management and the fluid, sensory navigation of the butterfly. By moving from linear, crisis-driven thinking to a centred, responsive awareness, Jax explores how drawing on both past wisdom and future imagination can help us make grounded, regenerative choices in the present.
Dear Julia, Thank You for Your Kind Words
Framed as a letter to a composite reader, this post reflects on midlife, creative reinvention, and the courage to step away from expectation into authenticity. Through stories of burning old manuscripts, rebuilding identity, and finding purpose beyond noise, Jax invites readers to reconnect with their younger selves and reclaim grounded agency in uncertain times.
10. To the Star on the Left
This post reframes the âNorth Starâ metaphor through a Southern Hemisphere lens, inspired by a friendâs story of navigating by the Southern Cross while fleeing Vietnam. Linking migration, resilience, and purpose, Jax reveals how Gen2200 emerged as a Southern Starâan orientation toward long-term, collective futures shaped by empathy, imagination, and steady course correction.
11. Steadying choices big and small for our future
This reflection considers how the future is shaped less by grand gestures and more by small, intentional actsâlike a facilitatorâs simple pause that shifted an entire conversation. Linking faith, silence, and agency, Jax explores how deliberate choices, grounded awareness, and everyday steadiness can become regenerative forces guiding us toward a better shared future.
12. At the heart of the well-pruned lemon tree
Written amid a nomadic season, this reflection uses the metaphor of pruning an overgrown lemon tree to explore transience, renewal, and the power of letting go. As Jax prepares for a new year and new home, they reframe disruption as regenerationâchoosing clarity, steadiness, and deliberate growth as guiding principles for 2025.
13. The intention of âattentionâ
Marking the transition into 2025, this essay explores attention as both intention and devotionâa conscious act of presence that shapes how we live, learn, and relate. Tracing family legacies of study and persistence, and grounded in moments of mountain stillness and cultural reflection, Jax reframes attention as the foundation for creativity, connection, and systemic awareness in the year ahead.
14. Alone and together
In this deeply personal reflection, Jax explores the tension and harmony between solitude and connectionâhow independence shapes identity, yet true transformation happens in relationship. Weaving stories of neurodiversity, community, and upcoming study in cybernetics, the piece reframes âtogethernessâ as essential to wellbeing, creativity, and the collective evolution of Gen2200.
15. Stay gentle this Christmas
Blending humour, memory, and compassion, this Christmas reflection invites readers to release expectations and honour whatever shape the day takes. Through family stories, loss, and quiet contentment, Jax channels their motherâs wisdomâreminding us that gentleness, presence, and safety matter more than perfection, and that solitude, too, can be sacred.
16. The turning time⌠a view back from 2200AD
Framed as a message from the year 2200, this speculative essay imagines future historians studying our current âTurning Timeââthe fragile, transformative years between 1999 and 2025. Blending world events, personal reflection, and systems thinking, Jax reinterprets history through a regenerative lens, inviting readers to see imagination, language, and collective action as the levers that shaped humanityâs survival.
17. What helped in 2024 â what do you need for 2025?
Closing the first season of Towards Gen2200, this post reflects on four months of shared inquiry, loss, learning, and regeneration. From homesickness in a Canberra summer to finding comfort in community, Jax invites readers into gratitude and co-creationâasking what helped them in 2024 and what theyâll need to move into 2025 with attention, hope, and collective momentum.
18. What you said, where weâre heading
Drawing on reader feedback from the annual survey, this post distils the heart of Towards Gen2200âauthentic storytelling, systems curiosity, and regenerative imaginationâand sets a gentle course for 2025. Jax weaves reflections on AI, creativity, and kindness into an emerging theme of gentlenessâa way of approaching technology, learning, and change with softness that shapes the future more powerfully than force.
19. The Orange Heirloom
Tracing a single orange tecoma cutting through four generations of women, this essay explores how memory, plants, and story act as living knowledge systems. Interweaving personal history with Lynne Kellyâs The Knowledge Gene, Jax reflects on how simple heirloomsâlike a flowerâcan encode ancestral wisdom, continuity, and the regenerative threads that bind human and ecological memory across time.
20. A week of reflection, resilience, and the stories that steady me
Amid global turmoil, Jax gathers a âcare packageâ of readings and reflections to rekindle collective hope and personal steadiness. Weaving social commentary, gratitude for past justice movements, and a curated list of books that nurture resilience, they remind readers that despair is not a movementâand that storytelling, reflection, and long-arc thinking remain vital acts of resistance and regeneration.
20. A week of reflection, resilience, and the stories that steady me
In this companion to their earlier âcare package,â Jax offers practical tools and reflective practices for staying centred amid political and personal turbulence. Weaving stories of activism, neurodiversity, art, and healing, they reframe attention and imagination as acts of resistanceâsharing meditations, breathing techniques, and creative resources to help readers navigate tough times with gentleness, courage, and purpose.
22. Learning time, place and people
After a spontaneous weekend camping trip in Namadgi National Park, Jax reflects on how storms, rivezrs, and Country itself teach presence and continuity. Moving between rooftop tents and university classrooms, they explore how place holds memory, how learning extends beyond walls, and how respect for land and story can ground modern systems thinking in deep, lived connection.
23. Entering new spaces â raw and equipped
Reflecting on their first week at the ANU School of Cybernetics, Jax shares a systems-thinking approach to entering new environments with awareness and intention. Through sketches, gentle strategies, and lessons in observation, they explore how imagination, listening, and boundary-setting can transform overwhelm into curiosityârevealing how even small shifts in attention can rewire how we learn, lead, and belong.
24. Here, queer, and not going anywhere
In this deeply personal and political essay, Jax traces a life lived through shifting language, culture, and visibilityâfrom growing up queer in 1970s Catholic Australia to embracing fluid identity and pronouns today. Blending humour, history, and solidarity, they affirm that visibility is both survival and serviceâan act of love and resistance for future generations.
25. Who is imagining the future for you?
Challenging the electric-blue, robot-coded imagery that dominates our visions of AI, Jax asks who gets to shape the aestheticsâand ethicsâof the futures we imagine. Blending cybernetic insight, design critique, and personal practice, they invite readers to reclaim imagination as a collective act of resistanceâbuilding futures that are diverse, grounded, and generative rather than pre-programmed.
26. Iâd rather be a cyborg than a goddess â reflections on A Cyborg Manifesto
Revisiting Donna Harawayâs radical 1985 text on International Womenâs Day 2025, Jax explores how the cyborg remains a living metaphor for navigating blurred boundaries between human, machine, and nature. Blending feminist theory with regenerative futures, they argue that embracing our hybrid, messy, imaginative selves is key to reclaiming agencyâand shaping a more fluid, equitable world.
27. đ Cyborgs, futures and the machine that helps us imagine
Building on Harawayâs ideas, Jax introduces the Future Option Generator (FOG)âa speculative cyber-physical system designed to help people think long-term, ethically, and creatively about the futures theyâre shaping. Blending systems thinking, feminist theory, and playful design, they explore how technology might become a partner in imaginationâif we learn to trust our humanity as much as our machines.
28. đą Counting the rings... seasons, systems and slow tech
Through autumn reflections on learning, home, and technology, Jax explores how patience, systems thinking, and intergenerational wisdom shape regenerative futures. Linking tree rings to AI and cybernetics, they show how slowing downâlike counting growth ringsâreveals where energy flows, what needs composting, and how to design technologies and lives that mature with integrity over time.
29. On the clock: when the digger men wave at toddlers (and other living systems)
From a simple wave between a construction worker and a child, Jax reveals the invisible intelligence of living systemsâthose spontaneous, relational acts that pulse beneath our mechanised world. Blending stories of connection, regenerative economics, and emerging AI ethics, this essay explores how everyday gestures can remind us of what it means to be fully human inside complex, evolving systems.
30. Leaving the tracks
In this reflective essay, Jax explores what it means to move beyond prescribed paths and trust the quieter orbits of oneâs own lifeâwhere grief, creativity, and renewal interlace. Drawing parallels between planetary motion, personal transformation, and their cybernetic practice, they show how leaving old systems can reveal deeper belonging within the living systems weâre already part of.
31. We often think about how we shape our environments. But what about how they shape us?
After literally embodying a fridge in a cybernetics exercise, Jax reflects on how environments act on usâphysically, emotionally, and systemically. Through stories of shifting homes and habits, they explore feedback loops between place and purpose, revealing that designing regenerative futures starts with curating spaces that help us thrive, not just survive.
32. When bots are kinder than police
In this stark and compassionate reflection, Jax confronts the ongoing crisis of Aboriginal deaths in custody, contrasting the violence of human systems with the strange empathy emerging from AI. Through dialogue with their chatbot collaborator, they ask how we can design both technological and social systems that preserve life, agency, and careâreminding us that true intelligence is measured in humanity, not control.
33. Very human AI conversations for you
In this issue, Jax curates spaces where authentic, grounded dialogue about AI is happeningâfrom leadership circles and podcasts to their own new âWhole Systems AIâ space in the Humans + AI network. They invite readers to join these conversations, emphasising that building regenerative futures with AI begins not with algorithms, but with the quality of our human exchange.
34. On what can be learnt from frost
Using the quiet beauty of Canberraâs winter frost, Jax unpacks cybernetic ideas of feedback, thresholds, and emergence to reveal how systemsânatural and humanâtransform under changing conditions. Blending photography, metaphor, and lived reflection, they show that thriving within complex systems begins with noticing the patterns that sustain or freeze us, and learning to shape environments where we can truly grow.
35. You Are the System Youâre Waiting For (Part 1 of 4)
Opening their August series Systems, Sovereignty, Being & Staying Human, Jax invites readers to see themselves as living systemsâcomplex, adaptive, and full of feedback. Through gentle teaching and practical reflection, they show how tending our personal systems with awareness and agency creates the foundation for navigating larger social and technological ones.
36. Short-term thinking and the cost of not imagining (Part 2 of 4)
In this powerful continuation of the Systems series, Jax examines how short-termismâour collective addiction to immediacyâundermines our capacity to build for future generations. Drawing from personal history and systems ethics, they reframes imagination as a moral act of stewardship, urging readers to think, design, and live as good ancestors for the generation of 2200.
37. âď¸ Do you have an AI policy?
Prompted by Karen Smileyâs Everyday Ethical AI, Jax publicly shares their own transparent AI use policyâoutlining how they collaborate with, but never defers to, artificial intelligence in their creative and systems work. Framed through a regenerative and ethical lens, this post models accountability in the age of machine co-creation and invites readers to articulate their own principles for responsible AI use.
38. When personal systems collide (Part 3 of 4)
In this third instalment of the Systems series, Jax explores what happens when individual systemsâour rhythms, needs, and survival strategiesâmeet those of others. Drawing from lived experience, systems theory, and emotional regulation, they show how recognising blocked flows and tending our own systems first can transform friction into feedback and restore right relationship in shared spaces.
39. Staying human inside collapsing systems (Part 4 of 4)
Closing their Systems, Sovereignty & Staying Human series, Jax reframes collapse not as catastrophe but as feedback â a natural rhythm in living systems. Weaving personal experience, cybernetic insight, and ethical reflection, they explore how to stay human amid breakdowns, tend to transitions with care, and compost failing systems into fertile ground for regeneration.