By Jamais Cascio.
Is it helpful to conceive the world as Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible or BANI? What do these terms mean and what mental models can help us survive in a BANI world?
I created BANI as an acronym in 2018 to better describe an increasingly chaotic world. BANI is a sense-making framework that recognises recurring themes in disruptions that make it increasingly difficult to understand the big picture and to make decisions. BANI is not saying something about the world, but rather about how we perceive it. It comes from a human inability to fully understand what to do when pattern-seeking and familiar explanations no longer work. It involves seeing the world as it is and letting go of illusions of system strength, control, predictability and certainty. BANI sets out to illuminate systems, but operates at a human level in a visceral and experiential way.
I argue that the chaos in the world is usefully explained as:
- Brittle: Systems that appear strong but can fail abruptly and catastrophically.
What we believe about the reliability of systems, technologies, and people fails us. External forces entirely out of our control or hidden weaknesses in the system can put enormous pressure on fundamental systems, which shatter when they stop working. The strength of the systems we depend upon is an illusion.
- Anxious: Systems that elicit reactions of fear, anger, doubt, hopelessness, despair and stress.
Systems that trigger anxiety are those that pose dilemmas or problems without useful solutions, or include irreversible choices that have unexpectedly bad outcomes, undermining our belief about our ability to shape and control outcomes. Things that had been well-understood suddenly seem alien or false. Decisions that felt right are no longer quite so certain. Our illusion of control is gone.
- Nonlinear: Systems that show significant disproportionality or disconnection.
Input and output don’t match in scale or speed, and beliefs about cause-and-effect no longer seem to be true. Disproportionality is the rule, whether in scale, scope, or time and is often surprising, and counter-intuitive. Illusions about predictable systems and reliable outcomes are gone.
- Incomprehensible: Systems that are opaque and difficult to explain or understand.
It is harder to figure out why we get certain outcomes. Our world reveals itself to be unthinkable, and senseless, and absurd. We are overwhelmed by information without any consistent method of finding meaning. Our illusions of understanding what is going on get ripped away.
What mental models can help us thrive in chaos?
In 2024, Bob Johansen and I worked together to create “Positive BANI” as a way of exploring the mental models needed to thrive in chaos. Positive BANI reflects the ways in which we can strengthen ourselves, our organizations, and our communities to grapple with a chaotic world and future.
Positive BANI is made up of four concepts meant to respond directly to the challenges posed by each BANI condition:
- Bendable responds to brittle and involves being flexible, adaptive and resilient.
Bendability relies on some measure of preparation, whether material or mental, including building up resources as a cushion for the unexpected. It can mean reimagining how we live and work.
- Attentive counters anxiety and involves being empathetic and aware.
Attentiveness actively seeks to recognize and respond to the anxiety in oneself and in others by creating psychological safety and trust. Attentiveness needs communication and awareness of the bigger picture.
- Neuroflexible responds to nonlinear and involves being improvisational and experimental.
Neuroflexibility comes from an ability to recognize changing conditions and adjust our actions and choices on the fly, rather than being tied to particular ways of doing things. It also involves keeping alternative approaches in mind as we act.
- Interconnected counters incomprehensible and involves including multiple sources of knowledge, perspectives and ideas.
Interconnectedness focuses on variety, not numbers, as we deal with the incomprehensible better when we have multiple points-of-view on a situation or dilemma. Wide-ranging connections can be catalysts for transformative change.
These are not meant as solutions for specific BANI dilemmas, but as ways to empower a person or organization to respond to crises with clarity. The underlying idea of Positive BANI is that the best way to respond to a world spinning out of control isn’t with a checklist of projects, but with a mindset that embraces wide-ranging perspectives, a capacity to recognize signs of change, an awareness of how our actions — and lack of action — can affect others, and a willingness to re-evaluate and evolve our analysis and goals.
Conclusion
BANI replaces previous ideas about a “VUCA” world, where VUCA is an acronym for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous, which was introduced in 1987. In particular, BANI provides an awareness that our “possibility space”—the variety of potential outcomes and consequences of change—is larger than previously thought and that our options for how to respond to change have fewer limits than feared. A BANI world cannot be fixed and returned to a simpler time, not even a time of VUCA.
Nevertheless, it is important not to lose sight of our own agency. We need to focus on what we can do to mitigate the worst elements of a BANI world, ameliorate its harms and strengthen ourselves against their recurrence.
What do you think? Does this provide a way of thinking about the problems that you research or teach about in a useful way? Are there other aspects of chaos that it’s useful to consider? Do you have other suggestions for responses?
To find out more:
Cascio, J. (2022). Human responses to a BANI world. Medium, Oct 22 (text of presentation given to the Prestigio Leadership Forum, Colombia, 19 October 2022). (Online – open access): https://medium.com/@cascio/human-responses-to-a-bani-world-fb3a296e9cac
Cascio, J. (2025). BANI 2025 — an Overview. Medium, Aug 2. (Online – open access): https://medium.com/@cascio/bani-2025-an-overview-575d92026fe1
Cascio, J., Johansen, B. and Williams, A. F. (2025). Navigating the Age of Chaos: A Sense-Making Guide to a BANI World That Doesn’t Make Sense. Penguin Random House: New York, United States of America.
Sections of this i2Insights contribution are taken verbatim from these references.
Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)
Biography: Jamais Cascio writes about the intersection of emerging technologies, environmental dilemmas, and cultural transformation, specializing in the design and creation of plausible scenarios of the future. His work focuses on the importance of long-term, systemic thinking, emphasizing the power of openness, transparency and flexibility as catalysts for building a more resilient society. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future, in Palo Alto, California USA, was selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of their Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2009, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his life’s work by the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Arizona, USA in May 2017.
Dear Jamais and Michael,
I think that Meta-ignorance and Positive BANI have a sufficient constructive justification. I will try to explain this statement briefly and figuratively using the example of the human body. Our body consists of billions of cells. These cells are divided according to their functional purpose and nature of action. The special structure of cells allows them to fulfill their purpose. For example, red blood cells (erythrocytes) are primarily responsible for transporting oxygen and removing carbon dioxide. Inside an erythrocyte, there is a molecule called hemoglobin. One molecule of hemoglobin can carry one molecule of oxygen. This means that there is a minimum degree of freedom and a limited number of options for interpreting the results of their activity. Everything is simple and unambiguous.
On the other hand, neurons in the brain are designed to transmit and process information using electrical and chemical signals. The quantitative and qualitative characteristics of these signals can vary widely. To physically survive in such conditions, a neuron uses a multitude of dendrites, which are branched extensions on the body of the neuron. These dendrites, like the “hands of a drowning person in a raging electrochemical sea,” extend and connect with the dendrites of surrounding neurons that are not currently activated. Through these “handshakes,” brain networks are formed. If the characteristics of the signal remain consistent over time, these handshakes create a stable network of neuronal connections. In turn, this stable network organizes the brain’s functioning based on the principle of stereotypical thinking. Simply put, when there are high degrees of freedom, the brain tends to choose the least energy-intensive stereotypical thinking.
In this case, there must be different groups of people in society:
– those who have a minimal degree of freedom and ability to perceive and interpret worldview information, scientific knowledge, and current events (the so-called Deep people who strive to think and express their thoughts in terms of postulates);
– and those who have a discrete increase in freedom and ability to perceive and interpret worldview information, scientific knowledge, and current events through their desire to think and express their thoughts in terms of axioms, theses, and hypotheses. For more information, please refer to the article: Mokiy, V. S. (2024). Global conflict: Analysis of non-political factors and possible non-violent solutions in the context of sustainable development. Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & Science, 15, 355-380. https://doi.org/10.22545/2024/00261
Given this circumstance, I believe that it would be practically useful to expand the idea and methodology of Positive BANI. Instead of a single Positive BANI that applies to the “gray zone of ideas about modern society,” it would be possible to create four Positive BANIs. Each Positive BANI would be applied to a specific group of people. I believe that this would be an intellectual breakthrough.
Additionally, these circumstances allow us to expand our understanding of Meta-ignorance. The stereotypical nature of thinking, which is influenced by the specific mega-constructions of neural networks in the brains of each of these groups, implies a strictly defined range of freedom and ability to perceive and interpret worldview information, scientific knowledge, and current events. Going beyond this range or encouraging others to go beyond it would naturally disrupt psychological comfort and lead to hidden or open resistance, which can be interpreted as a manifestation of Meta-ignorance. Therefore, Meta-ignorance, in a positive sense, acts as a protective mechanism for individual and collective psychological comfort zones.
In this case, it is not possible to directly overcome Meta-ignorance. However, it is possible to use certain elements of this mechanism to create so-called “hybrid” arguments. These arguments, which are formulated in the language of a specific type of knowledge, can “bypass the general mechanism of Meta-ignorance” and achieve the goal of mutual understanding while maintaining existing psychological comfort zones.
In conclusion, I would like to draw attention to the fact that this discussion has not only revealed new directions for the development of the presented concepts, but has also outlined a platform for possible fruitful cooperation among the participants themselves.
With respect,
Vladimir Mokiy.
Positive BANI offers several important ways of dealing with VUCA-type conditions. I have two suggestions for augmenting positive BANI. First, it can benefit from psychological insights into how to cope with meta-ignorance (i.e., where we don’t know what we don’t know). There are two kinds of meta-ignorance: misbelief and unconsidered ignorance. Misbelief can be mistaken agnosticism about a truth, disbelief in a truth, or belief in a falsehood. Unconsidered ignorance can be never having considered a proposition and being unaware that a proposition exists.
The most important property of meta-ignorance is that we cannot attribute it to ourselves. Statements such as “My belief about X is false” or “I’m unaware that X exists” are nonsensical. Only other people can attribute meta-ignorance to us, and we can only self-attribute it retrospectively (Smithson, in press). To overcome meta-ignorance, dialogs with people whose views, backgrounds, and/or expertise differ from ours are crucial. People who share our views, backgrounds, and expertise also will likely share our meta-ignorance. Thus, it will most likely be detected in dialogs with those who think differently from us.
Second, positive BANI can be augmented with guides to effective decision-making strategies when formal decision models are not viable. In Smithson and Ben-Haim (2015) we presented practical guidelines for employing adaptive strategies as a proxy for robustness in the face of VUCA-type conditions. Our guidelines include being prepared for more surprises than we intuitively expect, retaining sufficiently many options to avoid premature closure and conflicts among our preferences, and prioritizing alternative choices whose outcomes are steerable or corrigible, whose consequences are observable, and that do not entail sunk costs, resource depletion, or high transition costs.
References:
Smithson, M. (in press, due out in May 2026). The Psychology of Ignorance. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Smithson, M., & Ben‐Haim, Y. (2015). Reasoned decision making without math? Adaptability and robustness in response to surprise. Risk Analysis, 35(10), 1911-1918.
And thank you. In my work, I do have broad answers for some of these observations. “The World,” for example, in my work is a combination of the geophysical systems (the Earth, in your framing); the history, current manifestation, and future of human civilizations (society); and — critically — the ways in which these two meta systems interact and combine. I use “chaos,” conversely, in a much more metaphorical and emotional way, a label for the feeling of systems, processes, and structures that we thought were under control spinning apart and misbehaving.
My creation of BANI emerged from a visceral sense of chaos, not a solemn research program. As such, I don’t have immediate responses to the more philosophical or theory-grounded observations.
As for whether this all has been just happening in my head… well, as awful as that would be to experience, I do think I would prefer that over the alternative. Unfortunately, I do believe that the alternative is what we’re stuck with.
thank you for your response
Jamais
Dear Jamais Cascio,
Thank you for your interesting message.
Indeed, it allowed me to take a fresh look at the problem I am working on. Thanks to this message, I have come to the following conclusions:
1. Before making quantitative and qualitative assessments of the world, it is important to clarify what we mean by the term “the world”: the world is the cosmos (the universe); the world is the Earth (a collection of planetary biological and non-biological objects); the world is society (human society); the world is the individual (his inner cosmos); the world is the interdependent collection of the above-mentioned worlds; the world is the independent collection of the above-mentioned worlds.
2. It is important to clarify for oneself whether chaos is a quantitative characteristic of the mechanical movement of these worlds or whether chaos is a qualitative way of achieving the results of their activities.
3. It is important to provide a well-founded and convincing answer to the question of how chaos manages to overcome the inevitable hierarchy of objective laws of nature that determine the predetermined outcomes of physical and chemical processes, which are the material basis of all the above-mentioned types of worlds.
4. It is important to understand whether the “chaos concept” can provide convincing counterarguments against the existing concepts of “General order” that have been proclaimed by many philosophers and scientists, such as L. Bertalanffy, the founder of General Systems Theory.
Finally, it is important to honestly answer the question of chaos, similar to the question Harry Potter asked Professor Albus Dumbledore:
“Professor, tell me one last thing. Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
Thank you again for this message.
With respect.
Vladimir Mokiy