• "Sustainability," “Regeneration” and “Mycelial Networks” Inspired by ecology and indigenous wisdom, these metaphors originally invoke the richness of living systems – the idea that solutions should be regenerative (net positive, healing) and that change happens through distributed, networked growth like a fungal mycelium. Powerful metaphors indeed. But watch how quickly capitalism and bureaucracy co-opt them: we now have regenerative business certifications, corporate talk of “growing our company like a mycelial network,” and PowerPoint slides with mushroom diagrams in boardrooms. The poetic metaphor becomes a container that doesn't leak; it traps the complexity in a feel-good shell. Everyone nods at the notion of “interconnection” while carrying on with business-as-usual, now draped in ecological imagery. These metaphors, meant to provoke a radically different way of thinking, instead get domesticated. It provides psychic comfort (“we're part of a change movement!”) without requiring any rupture of the underlying reductionist logic. This is benevolent Dimensional Reduction in its slickest form: using resonant narratives of systems thinking and ecological wisdom to obscure the deeper collapse one is participating in. As long as the deck is full of butterflies and mushrooms, who notices that the actual decisions still reduce everything to profit, scale, and simplified impact metrics?