Siegfried Othmer is a physicist who over the last 33 years has been engaged with neurofeedback as a technique for the rehabilitation and enhancement of brain function. He is Chief Scientist at the EEG Institute in Los Angeles. Coming to understand the brain as a complex, self-organizing system also gives one insight into the core workings of our economy and society as a complex, self-organizing system. Of particular interest are the failure modes in both cases. Complex self-organizing systems tend to live near the edge of instability. The brain manages to contain instabilities in the general case. In our economy, however, constraints can be overridden, leading to substantial risk of instability at the macro level.  In a complex technological society, the risk factors have progressively shorter time constants, whereas the compensating stabilizing factors have increasingly longer time constants. The consequence is an increase in societal risk of major instability over time. Promoting societal resilience must therefore become a policy objective in its own right. This has become my overriding concern in my involvement with OpEdNews.