The Spicerack > On Systems
On Systems
Written by Andrew Lebowitz
“There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum.”
Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer
The world is made up of systems big and small, simple and complex. A tree is a system, as is a forest. You are a system of systems working together to keep you alive. A school is a system, a business is a system, and religion is a system. Every day we engage with hundreds of systems that we take for granted. Until, that is, they no longer work the way we expect them too.
Anyone who’s used the New York subway system knows exactly what I’m talking about. When the subway’s on time you cram in, go to your stop, get off, and get on with your life. What we remember though, are the times when things don’t work so smoothly. Those times when you’re stuck in a car for an hour in the middle of July with 50 other people who are just as hot and miserable as you are.
We don’t care why the system is failing us at this particular time, only that it is failing us. But that delay happened because of a complex web of interrelated parts. Maybe it’s because the track is poorly maintained, because of limited budgets, because of taxes, because of views on the economy and the role of government. Or maybe someone dropped their phone on the track because they were trying to do too many things at once because they have to manage a career and a family and a personal life while taking care of the sh-t they don’t want to but have to.
There is no event that happens outside of the influence of a system, and systems are not so neatly separated from one another.
We tend to perceive the world in a series of causes and effects. A sequence of events, each one leading neatly to the next. We most likely evolved to perceive things this way because it was a model that best served our survival. We didn’t have to understand why a lion was chasing us to know that it was time to run.
As we evolved, however, we have created more complex systems of our own. Self-organizing into communities, towns, cities, organizations, businesses, economies, states, and countries. We didn’t give a whole lot of thought to how these systems impacted other systems, or even how they impacted the parts of the systems of themselves.
Usually, the part of the system we focused on was our part. The human element. Everything else in that system existed around us. Either becoming a stock (cows, pigs, chickens), a resource (trees, oil, water), or otherwise inconsequential (the ozone layer, icebergs, polar bears), neither necessary nor worthy of consideration.
Take a moment to think about your own body.
A problem in your liver doesn’t just affect your liver, it affects everything because everything is connected. The liver relies on certain organs and other organs rely on the liver, and you rely on everything working together seamlessly and effortlessly. Not paying attention to the system until there’s something wrong with a part.
Businesses, ecosystems, countries, and communities are no different. Tangled webs of interconnected and interdependent systems, sub-systems, and meta-systems. It’s all too much to think about.
So we don’t, we specialize. Focusing on little parts of the system. Becoming experts in a chosen area.
Look at doctors and surgeons, specializing in different areas of the body, different age groups, and different sexes. Specializing makes the world manageable, but it also causes some unintended consequences.
When you specialize it’s difficult to understand how your area of expertise might be affected by another area.
We call these unintended consequences “side effects”. That pill for cholesterol destroying your knees? Anti-depression medication causing bleeding? Don’t worry about those, they’re just side effects. Extinction, pollution, poverty? Just side effects.
There are no side effects in systems, only effects, and these effects are the result of a series of relationships.
The issue is whether or not we choose to deal with the unintended consequences — i.e. “Side effects” — of our actions, or if we just want to lump them under the category of “unfortunate, but what are ya gonna do?” What good is having low cholesterol if I can’t walk? What good is economic growth if we’re destroying our natural resources? We can’t solve waste unless we’re willing to talk about consumerism. We can’t solve global warming unless we’re willing to talk about manufacturing, transportation, and deforestation. We can’t improve access to education and housing unless we’re also willing to talk about racism and classism.
It can be tempting to say that a system is broken, but systems aren’t broken. They work exactly the way they work. For example, we could easily call our modern economy a “waste economy,” as ultimately almost everything we produce ends up as waste. That’s a function of the system, hell it might even be the goal of the system.
The system isn’t broken, but it is harmful to people — and some more than others. The same goes for racism. It’s not a broken system, some people prefer that system as it benefits them. This means that changing a system may become even more difficult because there are those fighting just as hard to keep the system as it is or push it even further in the opposite direction.
Donella Meadows, a prolific systems thinker, noted that “a system generally goes on being itself, changing only slowly if at all, even with complete substitutions of its elements — as long as its interconnections and purposes remain intact.”
However, “if the interconnections change, the system may be greatly altered.” So if you’ve ever felt like a cog in a machine, a replaceable, interchangeable part, it’s understandable. Systems are like that. They don’t care who you are only where you fall within them; and then, they treat you accordingly.
As Meadows put it, “you have to look past the players to the rules of the game.” Football teams continue to be football teams regardless of who the coach or quarterback might be. It’s not the members that make it a football team, it’s the rules they all agreed to. A lineman, a running back, and a linebacker are all positions that exist because of the game, not because of the player. Each one can be replaced without having any impact on the game itself. It may impact the ability of a team to function at its best within the larger system of “football” but it doesn’t change the rules. And any team that tries to change the rules for their own benefit is looked at as cheating.When you think about it, we carry that same mindset outside the gridiron and into our homes.
There is an underlying belief, or maybe feeling is a better word, that whatever system we find ourselves in exists for a reason. That we shouldn’t question it or try to change it, because who are we to question something so much bigger than ourselves.
If that’s the case then why did we invent clothes? Stone tools? Electricity? Why didn’t we just stick to the original system our ancestors were born into? Some people feel that we should go back to these simpler times. Others believe that our salvation exists in systems yet discovered and realized.
The systems that we find ourselves in today are a combination of human-made and environmental. We all need oxygen, water, and food to survive. No way around it. Those basic elements don’t just exist on their own. They are each part of an interconnected system made up of minerals, animals, plants, the rotation of the planet, and our orbit around the sun. That’s one system that we didn’t create, but we still influence greatly.
Other systems are all our doing: economies, governments, technologies, highways, countries, and schools; all of them created by people. Last I checked we’re not the omnipotent beings we seem to think we are. I’m not religious but I think Jesus said it best, “forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.”
Leveraging Systems
“The man of system…is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it… He does not consider that in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.”
- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiment
Now that we know all about systems, what are we supposed to do? Well, I don’t think we’re supposed to do anything, but there are plenty of people trying to figure things out. Organizations dedicated to solving world hunger, international conflicts, extinction, global warming, you name it. There is no shortage of brilliant minds dedicated to tackling the direst challenges of our time. Smarter people than I have studied systems and policies and economics and written books, published papers, and started consultancies. Yet here we are.
We know what we need to do. Like anyone who knows what they have to do to lose weight, the answers are all there. Eat real whole foods, limit sugar and processed foods, and exercise. We all know what to do, yet we still struggle to combat obesity. I’m not going to go too heavily into why — as I said, smarter people than I have written volumes on the issue — but, I will say this:
Knowledge of an issue isn’t enough to drive people to act.
Ask anyone who smokes, they know it’s bad for them, but they don’t care, or if they do care, they still don’t seem to be able to quit. There has to be a reason for them to change, even then sometimes the realization that you need to change can come too late.
What does this have to do with systems you ask? Everything.
Our habits are self-reinforcing systems, built off of and around internal and external systems.
Sugar gives us a rush of dopamine, makes us feel good, then we crash, then we want more to make us feel better. The lethal combination of delicious and oh so un-nutritious processed foods and their enticing advertising wreak havoc on our minds driving us to make decisions that are counter to our best interests. We struggle with obesity because obesity is a symptom, not a cause. It’s a symptom of economies of scale, assembly line fast-food restaurants, and the drive of the all mighty dollar.
When you start to understand systems you can start to understand why you act the way you do. None of us would eat junk food if it wasn’t available. Not saying we should ban junk food, just saying that accessibility contributes to consumption. So-called healthy foods are expensive, whereas fast food is cheap. Another dangerous system.
When you start to understand systems, you can begin to understand their effects on you. Then, maybe, one day, you’ll be able to effect change on them.
