The Window: Why We Need New Epics Now

We’re in a window. A narrow one. And it’s closing.

Not the window for survival—humans are resilient, we’ll likely persist in some form. But the window for transformation. For shifting the paradigm before we’re forced to rebuild from rubble. For choosing a different path while we still have the collective capacity to choose.

I can feel it narrowing. Maybe you can too.

The Signs Are Everywhere

The systems that structure our lives are visibly failing. Not theoretically, not in some distant future—now, in ways we can all see and feel:

Climate disasters accelerating. Wildfires, floods, heat domes, droughts—each year breaking records we set the year before. Infrastructure collapsing under pressures it wasn’t designed to handle. Communities abandoned because they’re deemed “acceptable losses” in someone’s cost-benefit analysis.

Economic systems producing absurd inequality while insisting this is natural, inevitable, the only way things can work. Healthcare systems that bankrupt people for getting sick. Food systems that poison the land to maximize short-term yields. Water systems that sacrifice some communities so others can have green lawns.

Political systems captured by wealth, producing policy that serves extraction over life, profit over people, efficiency over resilience.

We can see it failing. That’s the opening. When the old story stops making sense, when the contradictions become too obvious to ignore, when people start asking “why does it have to be this way?”—that’s when paradigms can shift.

But there’s a limit to how long that window stays open.

The Narrowing

Complex systems don’t fail linearly. They hold, hold, hold… then suddenly reorganize. And right now, we’re in the phase where the pressure is building. Where the old structures are brittle but haven’t shattered yet. Where people are destabilized enough to question but not so broken they can’t imagine and build.

This is the strategic moment. Not too early—people still believed the systems were basically working, just needed reform. Not too late—people too traumatized and scattered to do anything but survive.

Now. This decade. Maybe this five years.

The window for proactive transformation rather than reactive crisis management.

The window while communication networks still function. While communities still have enough coherence to organize. While there’s still sufficient trust and capacity to learn new frameworks and use them collectively.

I’m not being dramatic. I’m being realistic. The acceleration is measurable. The feedback loops are compounding. Climate impacts, political authoritarianism, economic precarity, information warfare—each making the others worse. Each narrowing the window a little more.

We don’t have time to wait for perfect conditions. For institutions to catch up. For gatekeepers to approve. For the slow mechanisms of traditional change.

We need something else.

The Ancient Technology We Forgot

Here’s what I’ve discovered in my research: humanity has always had a technology for moments like this. For times when systems fail and people need to understand why and imagine something different.

Epic narrative.

Not entertainment. Not just literature. But a technology for systems thinking embedded in story form.

Homer wasn’t just telling adventure stories. He was modeling Greek civilization—showing how its structures worked, where they failed, what leverage points existed for transformation. The Bhagavad Gita wasn’t just spiritual philosophy—it was teaching diagnosis of systemic problems and transformation of the mental models that generate them. The Buddha’s life story was a complete framework for understanding how suffering perpetuates itself and how to escape that cycle.

Every culture facing existential crisis developed this technology: story that carries systems knowledge. That helps people see the patterns. That names the archetypal problems. That points toward high-leverage interventions. That shifts paradigms by changing how people see and understand their world.

Epic narrative is how wisdom about complex systems was preserved and transmitted across generations, long before we had academic frameworks or computer models or systems thinking vocabulary.

And we can use it again. We need to use it again.

Why Now, Why Urgent

Because paradigm shift takes time. Not centuries—we don’t have that. But years. Time for new stories to spread, take root, become the language people use to understand their reality. Time for mental models to shift from “this is how things are” to “this is one possible system, and other systems are possible.” Time for communities to organize around new understanding and build alternatives.

If we wait until full collapse, we lose that time. We end up in pure survival mode, triage not transformation, reactive rebuilding rather than proactive reimagining.

The epics need to be written now. While the window is open. While people are asking questions and hungry for frameworks that help them make sense of what they’re experiencing.

Not one epic. Many. A body of epics. Different communities crafting their own stories—regional narratives that model their specific systems, diagnose their particular problems, point toward their leverage points for change. But all sharing the same grammar. All using the ancient technology of epic as systems thinking.

What I’m Building

This is what The Great Experiment trilogy is attempting. Not just a story about paradigm shift, but a tool for creating it.

Book One shows the system failing—characters trying lower-leverage interventions and systematically failing, until the crisis becomes undeniable.

Book Two teaches the frameworks—showing communities how to see systems, diagnose archetypal problems, understand leverage points, and craft their own epic narratives using the ancient technology.

Book Three shows it spreading—the workshops in communities, the regional epics being written and disseminated, the paradigm shifting as better stories outcompete the failing narratives of the old system.

But more than that: Book Two itself is the teaching tool. It’s an epic that teaches people how to craft epics. It embeds the frameworks in story form so they can be learned, remembered, used. It’s both demonstration and instruction manual.

I’m writing it as fast as I can make it good. Using every available tool—including AI collaboration—because the window won’t wait for me to spend years learning craft or achieving perfect prose. The medicine needs to get out while it can still prevent collapse rather than just treat symptoms.

The Acceleration You Feel

If you’re reading this and thinking “yes, things are speeding up, something’s shifting, we’re running out of time”—you’re not wrong. You’re not catastrophizing. You’re recognizing pattern. Seeing systems approaching thresholds.

That urgency you feel? That’s appropriate. That’s your systems-thinking capacity recognizing the acceleration is real and the window is finite.

The question is: what do we do with that recognition?

Panic doesn’t help. Paralysis doesn’t help. Pretending everything’s fine doesn’t help.

But action does. Strategic, high-leverage action informed by clear seeing of how systems work and where they can be shifted.

We need new stories. We need frameworks for understanding what’s happening and imagining alternatives. We need the ancient technology of epic narrative revived and distributed and used.

We need communities crafting their own epics—stories that help them see clearly, organize effectively, intervene strategically. Stories powerful enough to shift paradigms while there’s still time to shift them proactively.

The Invitation

This is why I’m sharing my work while it’s still in progress. Why I’m not waiting for perfect conditions or institutional approval. Why I’m building these frameworks in public and inviting collaboration.

Because the window is open now. But it won’t stay open forever.

If you’re a community organizer, an activist, a teacher, a storyteller—if you’re someone who sees the systems failing and wants to help people understand why and imagine alternatives—these frameworks are for you. The teaching in Book Two is designed to be learned and used and spread.

If you’re a writer, a creator, someone with stories to tell about your community’s struggles—learn the technology. Craft your regional epic. Model your system, diagnose your problems, show your leverage points. Add your voice to the body of epics we’re building.

If you’re someone who feels the urgency, who sees the window narrowing, who wants to do something meaningful while there’s still time—this is something. Not the only thing, but one thing. One piece of the larger work of paradigm shift that our moment demands.

The systems are failing. That much is clear.

What’s less clear is whether we’ll shift the paradigm proactively, while we still can, or whether we’ll be forced into reactive survival mode.

That’s what the window determines. And why it matters that we work fast, work smart, work together.

The old stories are dying because they no longer explain our reality.

The new stories—the ones that help us see clearly and choose well—those need to be written now.

While the window is open.

While there’s still time to transform instead of just survive.

Celica Anfiteatro is a PhD candidate studying epic narrative and systems thinking, and the author of The Great Experiment trilogy. Book Two, which teaches communities how to craft their own epic narratives for social transformation, is currently in development.

To follow this work or get involved, email her at mythosandmodalities@gmail.com