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According to the competitive exclusion principle, if a reinforcing feedback loop rewards the winner of a competition with the means to win further competitions,
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
system* is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. If you look at that definition closely for a minute, you can see that a system must consist of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose.
The word function is generally used for a nonhuman system, the word purpose for a human one, but the distinction is not absolute, since so many systems have both human and nonhuman elements.
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.
The elements, the parts of systems we are most likely to notice, are often (not always) least important in defining the unique characteristics of the system—unless changing an element also results in changing relationships or purpose.
Stocks are the elements of the system that you can see, feel, count, or measure at any given time.
That means system thinkers see the world as a collection of “feedback processes.”
characteristics: resilience, self-organization, or hierarchy. Resilience Placing a system in a straitjacket of constancy can cause fragility to evolve. —C. S. Holling,2 ecologist Resilience has many definitions, depending on the branch of engineering, ecology, or system science doing the defining. For our purposes, the normal dictionary meaning will do: “the ability to bounce or spring back into shape, position,
Hierarchical systems evolve from the bottom up. The purpose of the upper layers of the hierarchy is to serve the purposes of the lower layers. Resilience,
The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance—almost is the revelation of ignorance.
Everything we think we know about the world is a model.
At any given time, the input that is most important to a system is the
one that is most limiting.
There always will be limits to growth. They can be self-imposed. If they aren’t, they will be system-imposed.
Because of what World Bank economist Herman Daly calls the “invisible foot” or what Nobel Prize–winning economist Herbert Simon calls bounded rationality
We are not omniscient, rational optimizers, says Simon. Rather, we are blundering “satisficers,” attempting to meet (satisfy) our needs well enough (sufficiently) before moving on to the next decision.
the Native American “potlatch,” a ritual in which those who have the most give away many of their possessions to those who have the least.
the goal is the direction-setter of the system, the definer of discrepancies that require action, the indicator of compliance, failure, or success toward which balancing feedback loops work. If the goal is defined badly, if it doesn’t measure what it’s supposed to measure, if it doesn’t reflect the real welfare of the system, then the system can’t possibly produce a desirable result. Systems, like the three wishes in the traditional fairy tale, have a terrible tendency to produce exactly and only what you ask them to produce. Be careful what you ask them to produce.
Suppose taxpayers got to specify on their return forms what government services their tax payments must be spent on. (Radical democracy!) Suppose any town or company that puts a water intake pipe in a river had to put it immediately downstream from its own wastewater outflow pipe. Suppose any public or private official who made the decision to invest in a nuclear power plant got the waste from that facility stored on his or her lawn. Suppose (this is an old one) the politicians who declare war were required to spend that war in the front lines.
As we try to imagine restructured rules and what our behavior would be under them, we come to understand the power of rules. They are high leverage points.
The ability to self-organize is the strongest form of system resilience. A system that can evolve can survive almost any change, by changing itself.
You insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. You don’t waste time with reactionaries;
Systems modelers say that we change paradigms by building a model of the system, which takes us outside the system and forces us to see it whole. I say that because my own paradigms have been changed that way.
keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible, to realize that no paradigm is “true,” that every one, including the one that sweetly shapes your own worldview, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension.
There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work hard at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of not-knowing. In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly, letting go and dancing with the system.
Social systems are the external manifestations of cultural thinking patterns and of profound human needs, emotions, strengths, and weaknesses.
Living successfully in a world of systems requires more of us than our ability to calculate. It requires our full humanity—our rationality, our ability to sort out truth from falsehood, our intuition, our compassion, our vision, and our morality.2
Be a walking, noisy Geiger counter that registers the presence or absence of quality.
No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.
Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as growth, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability—whether they are easily measured or not.
Interdisciplinary communication works only if there is a real problem to be solved, and if the representatives from the various disciplines are more committed to solving the problem than to being academically correct. They will have to go into learning mode. They will have to admit ignorance and be willing to be taught, by each other and by the system.
