It's the system, stupid, not the stupid system!

The world, even my own little corner of it, has been changing faster than I've bee able to adjust or adapt.

• adjust: to bring to a more satisfactory state


• adapt: to make fit (as for a new use) often by modification

That's consistent with what I was taught 50 or so years ago in my fundamentals of sociology course. I think it's also consistent with the idea that we are living in and as a complex, emergent, self-organizing, adaptive system.

For some time now I've been driving myself crazy (golfers would note it's not a drive but a very short putt) and trying the patience of those around me as I try to figure out how the world we're living in got so insane and so many people became so stupid. I can think of no evolutionary advantage to stupidity. Today I returned to some of my fundamental beliefs, including the one that notes that Donella Meadows was one of the wisest people I've ever come across and Dancing with Systems one of the best explanations for everything. I'm going to reread Dancing for the 4th, 5th, 9th time, because, if I am anything, I am one of those she describes as "raised in the industrial world and who get enthused about systems thinking are likely to make a terrible mistake. They are likely  to assume that here, in systems analysis, in interconnection and complication, in the  power of the computer, here at last, is the key to prediction and control. This mistake is likely because the mindset of the industrial world assumes that there is a key to prediction and control."

Why am I going to read Dancing again (and again until I've internalized it as second nature)? In her words:

“For  those who stake their identity on the role of omniscient conqueror, the uncertainty exposed  by systems thinking is hard to take. If you can’t  understand, predict, and control, what  is there to do?

If you are finding it difficult to impossible to understand a world overwhelmed by pandemics, biodiversity loss, climate weirding, national and international "leadership" responding to the listed crises with little more than platitudes and rearranging deck chairs, please go read Dancing. I'm convinced that the answers to our crises are laid out there, beginning with the proverbial last being first:

14. HOLD FAST TO THE GOAL OF GOODNESS.

 

Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Earth Your Dancing Place

May Swenson - 1913-1989

Beneath heaven's vault
remember always walking
through halls of cloud
down aisles of sunlight
or through high hedges
of the green rain
walk in the world
highheeled with swirl of cape
hand at the swordhilt
of your pride
Keep a tall throat
Remain aghast at life

Enter each day
as upon a stage
lighted and waiting
for your step
Crave upward as flame
have keenness in the nostril
Give your eyes
to agony or rapture

Train your hands
as birds to be
brooding or nimble
Move your body
as the horses
sweeping on slender hooves
over crag and prairie
with fleeing manes
and aloofness of their limbs

Take earth for your own large room
and the floor of the earth
carpeted with sunlight
and hung round with silver wind
for your dancing place 

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