Make It Obsolete
The future does not arrive. It emerges through us.
Author’s Note
This reflection began with a familiar question: how does one reconcile meaningful insight with the visible limitations of those who convey it? Recent writings by Dr. Lissa Rankin brought renewed clarity to this tension, though the underlying issue is not new. It is encountered wherever learning deepens beyond reliance on personality and begins to test ideas against lived experience.
Yet over time, a further realisation emerges. The challenge is not confined to individuals. It extends to the systems through which knowledge is organised, transmitted, and sustained. What begins as a question of discernment—separating insight from its source—develops into a broader enquiry: what happens when the structure itself proves insufficient for what it claims to carry?
The reflection that follows considers that transition. Not as critique, but as development.
—Baruti KMT-Sisouvong, PhD
There comes a stage in learning when discernment replaces dependence.
Early on, understanding arrives through trusted forms: a teacher, a book, an institution. Authority provides orientation. It stabilises meaning while comprehension is still forming. One does not merely encounter an idea; one encounters it through a structure that affirms its validity. This is not a flaw. It is a necessary beginning.
Yet, as I have argued previously in the essay titled When the Scaffold Has Done its Work, what begins as scaffolding can, if held too tightly, become enclosure.
Experience introduces a complication. The messenger reveals themselves to be a complicated human—sometimes subtly, sometimes unmistakably so. Insight and inconsistency appear side by side. What once seemed unified begins to differentiate. For a time, this feels like disruption. If the source is imperfect, what becomes of the truth of the message it conveyed?
The familiar responses follow predictable paths. One may discard the teaching along with the teacher. Or one may preserve the teacher to protect the teaching. Both responses, though opposite in form, share the same structure: they keep understanding dependent on personality.
Discernment introduces a third path.
The learner begins to ask a different question—not Who said this? but Does this illuminate experience when applied? When that question becomes primary, authority relocates. The teacher is no longer the ground of truth, but its occasion. Insight is tested in lived reality, not secured by origin.
With this shift, understanding becomes portable. One can learn from many sources—including imperfect ones—because verification has replaced reliance. Respect remains, but it changes form. It is no longer anchored in the idealisation of individuals or institutions, but in the recognition of what proves stable across both time and experience.
For many, this marks a significant moment in maturation. It is often where the enquiry pauses.
But not always.
There comes another moment—less discussed, though no less consequential—when discernment reveals not only the limitations of individuals, but of institutions and their structures.
At first, this recognition is subtle. It does not present as a dramatic failure, but as a series of not-so-subtle misalignments. Decisions that do not fully cohere with stated aims. Processes that seem to constrain rather than support. Friction where one expected flow. At times, an idea I learned long ago—that the process is the product—appears to have been set aside in pursuit of questionable ends. In either case, one may initially interpret these as isolated inconsistencies—exceptions rather than patterns.
Yet over time, a different picture emerges.
Constructs cannot reliably steward what transcends them.
What appeared to be occasional misalignment begins to reveal itself as deeply structural. The issue is not simply that individuals within the system fall short. It is that the system itself operates at a level that cannot consistently express the depth of understanding it seeks to convey.
This distinction is critical.
A system is not merely a collection of people. It is an arrangement of assumptions—codified in policies, incentives, boundaries, and modes of operation. These assumptions determine what can be expressed, what is prioritised, what is constrained, who is protected, and who is vulnerable. When those assumptions are misaligned with the nature of the knowledge being transmitted, distortion becomes inevitable—not through malice, but through design.
Every action is preceded by a thought—albeit subtle; and every thing is an echo of an idea made manifest.
Systems are no exception. They are thought made durable. And like all thought, they carry the limitations of the level from which they were formed. And the level at which they become comfortable—and remain.
When a system built upon fixed constructs attempts to steward a field of understanding that is dynamic, experiential, or transcendent in nature, tension arises. The structure seeks stability; the knowledge requires openness. The system privileges consistency; the insight unfolds through variation and direct verification. What begins as an effort to preserve integrity can, over time, constrain the very thing it was designed to protect.
At this point, a familiar instinct emerges: reform.
One attempts to adjust the system from within. Policies are refined. Communication is clarified. Efficiencies are introduced. These efforts are often well-intentioned, and at times they produce temporary improvement. But they do not address the underlying issue if the limitation is structural.
Reform operates within the existing framework. It assumes the system is fundamentally sound, requiring only correction or optimisation. Yet when the misalignment lies in the framework itself, reform becomes a form of maintenance rather than resolution. It preserves the structure while asking it to perform beyond its design.
There comes a point, then, when a different approach is required.
Not resistance. Not opposition. But redesign.
Or, in some cases, replacement.
Buckminster Fuller articulated this with characteristic clarity: one does not change existing systems by fighting them, but by creating new models that render them obsolete. The insight is often quoted, but less frequently understood in its full implication. To make something obsolete is not to defeat it. It is to outgrow it—to operate at a level where the previous structure is no longer necessary.
This shift carries a different quality of energy. It does not require conflict. It does not depend on recognition or agreement. It simply builds—quietly, steadily—according to principles more closely aligned with the reality it seeks to express.
In this sense, the emergence of new systems is not an act of rejection, but of continuity. It extends the original intention beyond the constraints that previously limited it.
One sees this pattern across domains. Structures arise to organise understanding. They serve their purpose. Over time, as insight deepens, those same structures may become insufficient. Not because they were wrong, but because they were partial. What once provided access may later restrict it.
The question then is not whether the system should be preserved, but whether it can evolve.
Some systems can. They are designed with sufficient flexibility to adapt—to revise their assumptions, expand their scope, and realign with the level of understanding they carry. Others, however, cannot. Their foundational logic is too fixed, their incentives too entrenched, their identity too bound to a particular form.
In such cases, continuation requires radical transformation—not of behaviour, but of structure.
This is where many hesitate.
The impulse to remain within familiar frameworks is strong. There may be a lengthy history, significant cognitive or identity investment, and/or historical relationships. There is also the hope that with enough effort, alignment can be restored. And at times, it can.
But when it cannot, clarity becomes necessary.
To remain within a structure that cannot hold what one has come to understand is to divide oneself—to think at one level and operate at another. Over time, this “two-mindedness” becomes unsustainable. Not because of external pressure, but because of internal coherence. One cannot indefinitely maintain alignment with both truth and constraint when the two diverge.
The alternative is not withdrawal, but reorientation.
One begins to build differently.
Not in opposition to what exists, but in alignment with what has been seen. The emphasis shifts from participation within inherited systems to the creation of environments that more accurately reflect the principles one has verified. These may begin modestly—small in scale, local in reach—but they carry a different quality. They are not organised around preservation, but around expression.
In such environments, authority is not centralised but distributed through verification. Access is not mediated solely by structure, but supported by experience. The aim is not to maintain coherence through control, but to allow coherence to emerge through alignment.
Over time, these new models reveal their own viability, longevity, and contributory nature. Not through argument, but through function. They work—or they do not. Where they work, they invite participation. Where they invite participation, they expand. And in expanding, they gradually reduce reliance on the systems they do not replicate.
This is how obsolescence occurs.
Not as a collapse, but as a slow, silent transition toward irrelevance.
The older system may continue to exist in one form or another, but it is no longer necessary for those who have found a more aligned mode of engagement. Its role diminishes, not because it was defeated, but because it was surpassed.
Seen in this light, the question of whether systems must evolve or be replaced resolves itself.
They must do one or the other.
For those within them, the task is discernment—not only of ideas, but of structures. To recognise when a system continues to support understanding, and when it begins to limit it. To participate where alignment remains possible, and to actively build where it does not.
This is not a call to abandon all structures. Quite the contrary. It is a call to recognise their place.
In the end, systems are tools. They serve. They organise. They extend capacity. But they are not the source of what they carry. When they function well, they facilitate access. When they do not, they require revision, transcendence—or dissolution.
The movement from dependence on individuals to discernment of ideas is a significant step in development. The movement from reliance on systems to the creation of new ones is another.
Both are part of the same continuum.
Understanding matures. Expression follows. And where existing forms no longer suffice, new ones emerge; not in defiance, but in accordance with what has been seen—the future already in motion.
Suggested Practice
Where Structure No Longer Serves
Consider a system, organisation, or framework you currently engage with.
Ask: Does this structure support the level of understanding I have reached, or does it require me to operate beneath it?
Notice where alignment is present, and where it is strained.
Where strain exists, ask: Is this something that can be reformed—or does it point to a structural limitation?
Finally, consider: What would it look like to build or participate in something more aligned—not in opposition, but in continuity with what you have come to understand?
The aim is not to reject systems, but to recognise when development calls for new forms.
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About the Author
Dr. Baruti KMT-Sisouvong is a scholar of consciousness, researcher of human development, and Certified Teacher of Transcendental Meditation® based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work explores the relationship between Pure Consciousness, neuroscience, and social systems, and how deeper awareness can inform both personal growth and institutional transformation.
He is the Founder and Chief Meditation Officer of Transcendental Brain, an initiative examining the intersection of consciousness research, cognitive science, and high-performance decision-making. He is also President of Serat Group Inc. and Founder and Director of Radical Scholar Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to consciousness-based research and public scholarship.
Alongside his wife and teaching partner Mina, he co-directs the Transcendental Meditation program for Cambridge and the Greater Boston area. He is also the host of the On Transcendence Podcast and Founder of International Meditation Hour, a quarterly global gathering dedicated to the unifying power of silence.
His writings—spanning frameworks such as The Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress and The Seven Layers of Manifestation—explore the evolving relationship between consciousness, leadership, and society.
He writes from the conviction that the most important race is not between nations or machines, but between the conditioned mind and the awakening soul.
To learn more about him, visit: https://www.barutikmtsisouvong.com/.