Shifting course

Bifurquer (verbe intransitif) :

1. To take a direction different from the one followed until then, used of a path, a road or a route.
   Ex. : The road bifurcates towards the valley.
2. By extension: to abruptly change orientation, activity, choice or way of thinking.
   Ex. : After studying law, he shifted towards architecture.

To bifurcate is to recognise that a straight line is not always the most just path. It is allowing oneself to leave a well-marked road in order to follow a more uncertain trail—one that opens onto other horizons. Human history is shaped by such bifurcations: moments when a people, a society, a generation decided that continuing “as before” was no longer possible. The word evokes the courageous act of breaking with inertia, of deviating from an imposed course to invent another trajectory.

Today, the term resonates in a particularly acute way. The world has organised itself around a single narrative: that of linear progress, continuous growth, accumulation as a promise of happiness. But this path is running out of steam and fracturing, revealing its ecological, social and existential limits. To bifurcate is to acknowledge that persisting in this direction leads only to a dead end.

It is not an abandonment, but a turning point. A way of saying: other possibilities exist, other ways of producing, sharing and inhabiting the Earth.

Bifurcation requires courage, because it unsettles reference points. It is uncomfortable: leaving behind a reassuring continuity—even when it is destructive—means confronting uncertainty. But it is also liberating. It breaks the illusion of a predetermined destiny and opens up a field of plural futures. In this sense, it is deeply connected to adaptation. Because adapting does not only mean making marginal adjustments; it sometimes means changing direction radically, abandoning habits, transforming structures.

It may well be one of the fundamental conditions for navigating crises—not as a spectator, but as an active agent of one’s own transformation.