I’ve been thinking about the cascade a lot. It could be because of the weather, the politics, the umpteenth “living through history” Millennial Moment, or any of a variety of other whims or nuances — but regardless of the reason, it’s been on my brain.

What is the cascade?

The cascade is a concept which has existed long before the phrase — a sprawling, ominous cloud that relates most closely to the collapse of everything.

However, that concept was succinctly summarized — and perhaps bolstered against — by James S. A. Corey, a pen name used by a pair of collaborating authors who wrote the science fiction book series, The Expanse. Those books would go on to be made into a six-season television show of the same name, which is on my short list of best contemporary sci-fi.

But I’m not here to rave about media. Just know that it has a very strong recommendation from me, and we’ll both go on our way.

The cascade, as a concept in the series, is introduced by a biologist character named Prax. I’m going to shortcut an enormous amount of setup and backstory here, so bare with me.

Prax, along with the rest of protagonists, visits Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede, where humanity has established a critically important colony. In the series, as in real life, Ganymede is the only natural moon in our solar system which possesses its own magnetic field. This, along with other reasons, led to it becoming one of the chief agricultural suppliers to humanity’s efforts to colonize more of the solar system.

Prax is a native of Ganymede, and knows its systems — he’s seeking the protagonists’ help to find his daughter. Again, long story. Very good. Anyway.

While questing throughout one of Ganymede’s three domed cities, Prax notices yellowing leaves on some of the produce, and comments on it. Ganymede, you see, had come under attack and was in a state of emergency. This meant that the plants weren’t being tended to as well as they should have been, and they were showing signs of stress. Prax continues to note that in normal times, it would be easy to fix — they had backups of the beneficial bacteria necessary to help the plants maintain their nitrogen balance…but that wasn’t happening due to the crisis.

We move on.

Prax notices more issues as the storyline progresses, eventually culminating in a scene where he explains that “the station is dead already, they just don’t know it yet.”

He explains the reason as the cascade.

Natural ecosystems have large reservoirs of diversity, which allows for potential adjustments. When one system fails, others are there to pick up the slack.

He proceeds, explaining that nothing humans can build has that depth: in an artifical system, when something goes wrong, “there’s only so many pathways that can compensate. Those pathways get overstressed and fail, which leaves fewer pathways, then those get stressed and fail, and so on.”

Another character helpfully simplifies: “so it’s not the thing that breaks you that you need to watch out for.”

As a Millennial, it feels like my entire life has been spent living inside the cascade. Successive shocks ripple across our society, and each time, it feels like there are fewer and fewer options left to absorb those shocks.

We are left to mourn the past while being unable to conceptualize a future, in a society-wide malaise that seeps between the cracks left behind as things fall apart.

Nostalgia is cozy and cushy, but it is also one of the most powerful drugs that humanity has access to. And, like many drugs, it can be both solace and prison.

It can be easy to fall prey to visions of a better past and miss the opportunities which still lie ahead to build a better future.

The Expanse reminds us that hope is not lost when living in tumultuous times. Prax eventually leaves the crew, who then check in on him later. He has returned to Ganymede, where he is helping to rebuild the station’s ecosystem, bit by slow bit. It wouldn’t be simple or easy — requiring a generational effort to repair things back to even just part of what they were.

But the residents of Ganymede were doing what they needed to do.

Cascading systems take proportionally more effort to repair the closer they get to collapse, and it is incredibly easy to feel hopeless as a younger individual today. We look around at the decay that surrounds us, and we lament.

It falls to us to be the rebuilders, the shepherds and custodians. It will be hard work. Slow work. A generational effort to bring back prosperity and community.

But it’s human work — just as human as the consumptive disregard and urge to destroy that brought us to this precipice in the first place.

Focus on something that matters to you:

Maybe it’s nature — our local climate and the neverending, and accelerating, battles against invasive species and attempts to preserve treasured species like monarch butterflies.

Maybe it’s education, amidst a dystopia of standardized testing, burgeoning AI usage and dwindling reading competency.

Maybe it’s the hegemony of billionaires, chain stores, international logistics and monopolies that make it harder and harder to Shop Local with every passing year.

Maybe it’s the vulnerability of our infrastructure to floods, fires and disasters — infrastructure which has been left to rot for decades as our society subsidized the concept of neglect to line shareholder and C-suite pockets.

Maybe it’s government overreach, corruption and scandal, matched only by the indolence and laziness of far too many in the halls of ruling bodies across the world.

And on and on and on and on and on: an endless parade of systems which are increasingly failing as more pathways are closed off.

The cascade.

This has left the vast majority of us Millenials-and-under to feel despondent and hopeless.

But we can effect change. We can get involved. We can pick a pathway, seize the initiative, and work to make things better.

Little by little. The future is ours, if we make it.

Arianna McKee is Design and Editorial Page Editor at The Express.