📚 Thinking in Systems - Week 1
Surprisingly life-changing seven pages to start the book club
Seven pages in, and this book has already been life-changing for me. Nothing to do with systems (though I’m VERY excited about that).
Reading the first pages of the book, I was struck by both excitement and, to my surprise, a little grief.
I wasn’t expecting to find something I’d forgotten we’ve lost: my (now extinct) home constellation of hippie leftism. That’s prompted all sorts of revelations for me that I’m going to dedicate a whole piece to. Suffice to say, these pages, not by the content but by their perspective, have restored something deep in my identity. What a gift. And we’re only ten pages in!
As far as Systems go, we got a concise definition of our subject matter:
“A system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. The system may be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system’s response to these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the real world.” (Meadows 2009:3)
The slinky example was the perfect illustration of this 👌👌👌
At the end of the introduction, we got another key insight into systems thinking:
“That’s what I hope to get across throughout this book, but especially in its conclusion. I don’t think the systems way of seeing is better than the reductionist way of thinking. I think it’s complementary, and therefore revealing” (Meadows 2009:6)
The binary opposition that’s going to make Systems Thinking come into starker relief is reductionism. Reductionism is the yang to the Systems yin.
On a side note, this is pretty much a 1:1 mapover with McGilchrist’s left-/right-hemisphere thesis. We could also network this idea together with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the assemblage and Wilber/Koestler’s idea of the holon.
Other than that, we’ve got some hints of key concepts to come in the book: archetypes (systems traps and opportunities) and the feedback loop (“the basic operating unit of a system” (Meadows 2009:5)).
Conceptual download incoming. But I already feel like I’ve come away with a haul.
What about you? What were your thoughts and feelings on the intro?
This week’s reading: "ONE: The Basics" (pp. 11-34)
Link to free PDF of book if you haven’t got it already: here
This really is such an important and foundational read! Systems thinking teaches that efforts to manage or control systems will fail because controlling means focusing narrowly on parts, rather than on the relationships, feedbacks, and context that sustain the system as a whole. One could easily say that this is exactly what is going on right now with the global crises (environmental, social, etc.). Reductionist thinking (like human exceptionalism) creates blind spots in recognizing that human well-being, too, depends on vibrant, functioning ecosystems.
When I read this book a number of years ago, I felt it was a call to shift from seeing ourselves as separate caretakers (overlords? imperialists?) of the planet to active participants in a living, breathing, interdependent system. This means seeking change at the deeper leverage points – our values, our narratives, and the ways we relate to one another and to nature. It means acknowledging our both our relationships and our place in this vast and interconnected network we call life.
Hum! I start to read the book and after reading your comments in this publication, I realize I missed an important thing because I don't have the knowledge you bring to this interaction. I completely overlooked this reductionist/system way of thinking. I'm looking for the last 4 or 5 years for someone able to integrate in his thoughts the ecology, the economy, the social impact, the geopolitical and political forces at play in order to find an holistic way to face our predicament. You may have find for me what I was looking for.
Therefore, in spite of my urge to read it from one cover to the other, I'll follow your lead and won't miss your understanding of what you ask us to read for next weeks. Thank you for your insight, because phylosophy is essential for me to really understand our complex world.