I thought this week's reading was going to be like the chapter on the Systems Zoo: tedious. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. Pleasantly surprised and overwhelmed.
There was a lot going on in here. The whole chapter was a study of "systems archetypes":
Policy Resistance
Tragedy of the Commons
Drift to Low Performance
Escalation
Success to the Successful
Addiction (Shifting the Burden to the Intervenor)
Rule Beating and
Seeking the Wrong Goal
That's a lot. I've spent a lot of time reading about and reflecting upon a number of these. There are books and books on each of these subjects, and Meadows just paraded them out one after another. My head was spinning by the end. I really feel like this is a book worth reading and rereading and rereading. This is a great 10ft overview of systems thinking. It's a wonderful topology that gives you the whole framework is such a compressed package.
That makes it a tad overwhelming to consume, yet it's connecting so many dots in me that weren't previously connected. The video on beauty was about the Seeking the Wrong Goal archetype. I've mentioned my deep study of the Tragedy of the Commons that never materialised into content. I've thought a lot about Rule Beating over the years, and I'm sure I've talked recently about the dangers of setting reading goals because of this. Success to the Successful is something I've reflected on a lot personally, creatively and philosophically.
In short, there's just so much in here that I've worked on in isolation, and it's been scintillating seeing them connected together through this lens of systemic thinking.
I don't have much more than that to add to that this week. I'm dazed and amused by it.
Next week: "SIX. Leverage Points—Places to Intervene in a System" (pp.145-166)