Understanding the patterns that fragment us —
and the practices that help us stay whole.
Transilience is a framework for understanding how humans think, relate, and act under pressure.It maps how our survival, relational, and meaning‑making systems work together — or fall apart — and how that coordination shapes our personal lives, our relationships, and our societies.This work brings psychological insight and systems thinking together to help individuals and communities build integration in a time of accelerating complexity.
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Violence rarely begins explosively. It moves through a predictable five‑stage progression—from personal overwhelm to interpersonal violation, collective fragmentation, institutional breakdown, and finally, structural or physical harm.The Violence Cascade offers a clear, nonpartisan lens for understanding:
• democratic backsliding
• rising polarization
• the erosion of institutional trust
• authoritarian drift
• patterns of harm in relationships, communities, and nations
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Karen Judd Smith is a systems practitioner and researcher who has spent three decades working at the intersection of human development, conflict transformation, and institutional change—with UN agencies, international NGOs, and grassroots communities across diverse contexts. With academic foundations in physics, the philosophy of science, and graduate study in human meaning-making and development, she brings an atypical lens to how humans navigate complexity and make meaning in uncertain environments.Her forthcoming book, Transilience (2026), synthesizes these strands of experience and inquiry to explore a central pattern: that integration strengthens both individuals and societies, while fragmentation—left unaddressed—scales reliably into collective harm.
Home | What Is Transilience | The Violence Cascade | About | Media & Contact
Home | What Is Transilience | The Violence Cascade
About the Author | Media & Contact
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