I have been swimming in systems theory for the last three months. I have been trying to talk about the systems we live in, that we have built, in realistic ways regarding their harm but that offer both hope and insight. Sadly, I haven’t found a place to drop my favorite system metaphors of traffic and transportation as much as I’d have liked. Maybe that deserves its own small book.
One of the barriers I have discovered is that we often do not understand even the basic structures of the systems with which we interact. For example, anyone who consumes wheat based products could have been aware how much of that supply became endangered the moment Putin started his greedy little invasion into Ukraine. We are functionally dependent on each other globally, and while that may or may not be healthy for us, it is how our food distribution system works right now. But few of us consider the path taken by what we eat.
We are watching a slow take over of what it means to be American, and I don’t recognize the picture that is emerging. We have such a tenuous grasp on our prevalent systems that we are easily manipulated. This is true is many spheres, I am discovering. Take what I’d thought of as the most basic example from Civics: Checks and Balances between the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judiciary -how the interaction of three seats of power is supposed to work. But no. Few can lay these principles out, and it brings to mind CS Lewis’ Professor Digory Kirke of the Narnia Wardrobe home, “Bless me, what do they teach them in these schools?”
In my world, the last 75 years have seen a gradual change in our public facing Christian systems. Jesus never said a damn thing about -and often spoke out against- most of the issues our media now seem to think are Christian values, deeply woven into the Christian system: anti-queerness, subjugation of women, degradation of the earth, hierarchies and rules, the threat of hell and damnation. There has been such a wholesale insurrection of what it means to be Christian, that none of this is questioned. Neither is any of it biblical or Gospel based, to be sure. It is possible to twist and warp translations and interpretations to fit those things, yes. But they are not the spirit or the letter of the texts themselves, nor of the historic tradition.
Another barrier to system comprehension and adaptation is that those who manage systems are often removed from them. I was watching a televised debate for a local municipal election and the candidates were asked when was the last time they’d ridden public transit. No one had a good answer and one person asked if a taxi ride counted. It did not. But these are people who will manage that system, fund or not fund it, and facilitate or block the development of good transit systems. A friend who is an executive is so disassociated from the day to day systems of survival of the working poor that this person thought those workers who cashed in unused vacation time were running a scam instead of making sacrifices to afford The Holidays.
And so we are caught in a nutty loop of being entrenched in systems we cannot see, and being disassociated from the systems affecting others, although we are not truly separate at all.
Last week I spoke at a Symposium about changing this reality in our statewide planning systems here in Colorado. It was exciting and inspiring. I start talking with folks about next steps this week, and a local city council person who was there has asked me to have coffee in July. This is the decade of leaning into change as an asset and invitation, of building what we need to thrive -not just survive- the coming climate crises, and of growing organic systems led by different voices than got us here.
That last bit -that’s going to be the hardest part. I’m glad you’re here with us on this journey.
For we have all we need to build what is necessary. May it be so.