Radical Coherence: Why Everything Connects to Everything (And That's Not a Conspiracy)

Most of us learn one kind of coherence in school - A leads to B leads to C. This kind of sense-making has each thought follow the last, and “well-organized” means nothing circles back or jumps ahead.

Linear coherence is powerful. It builds cases and constructs arguments. When someone says your thinking is “all over the place,” they’re usually measuring against this standard.

I want to offer another variation of coherence.

Some minds work as a fractal. Instead of building A to B to C, they recognize the same pattern appearing at personal scale, relational scale, systemic scale. Not different ideas connected by logic, but the same thought expressing itself at different sizes.

When I write about trauma, I might start with a sensation in my throat, jump to institutional violence, then land on a four-word phrase that contains both. To linear thinkers, that’s three separate thoughts. To fractal thinkers, it’s one pattern at three scales.

Here’s where I need to be clear: recognizing fractal patterns is not claiming that “everything is connected” in an orchestrated way suggesting hidden causes or intentional design.

Fractal pattern recognition observes that the same structural patterns appear at various scales - like how erosion patterns in sand resemble river deltas from space.

When I notice that personal autonomy struggles mirror therapeutic power dynamics which mirror systemic oppression, I’m recognizing structural similarity - the same pattern of control and resistance appearing at different scales of human organization.