Holling’s original research told him that living systems are not abject to chaos, but actually seek out the edges of choas where they thrive. Previous notions of ecological health were based on metaphors of homeostasis and balance, not chaos and resilience.
In Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Arturo Escobar, describes ontological design as 1) examining primarily how design, through its very materiality, “hardwires” particular kinds of politics into bodies, spaces or objects” [here citing Rubio and Fogue] and 2) focusing on design’s ability to broaden the range of possible ways of being through our bodies, spaces, and materialities. Escobar identifies the prevailing practices as defuturing, because they all lead to a singularity — a kind of post-humans AI-led, techno-authoritarianism— instead of opening the possibility space to many new possibilities. This practice he calls the futuring of the pluriverse.