#systems theory

[probablyasocialecologist]

Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Every word and every language is a model. All maps and statistics, books and databases, equations and computer programs are models. So are the ways I picture the world in my head—my mental models. None of these is or ever will be the real world.

Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

[noosphe-re]

In the eyes of many human beings, life appears to be a unique and special phenome­non. There is, of course, some truth to this belief, since no other planet is known to bear a rich and complex biosphere. However, this view betrays an "organic chauvinism" that leads us to underestimate the vitality of the processes of self­-organization in other spheres of reality. It can also make us forget that, despite the many differences between them, living creatures and their inorganic counter­ parts share a crucial dependence on intense flows of energy and materials. In many respects the circulation is what matters, not the particular forms that it causes to emerge.

Manuel DeLanda, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History

[eelhound]

"Andor does not answer the questions of what governance the rebellion will offer, though for the first time we really get a glimpse at a broader ideological program than just imperial overthrow. What Andor does, instead, is show that order and rebellion are shaped by the material of life, the conditions inherited and experienced by those who will make history.

In this reading, the Empire isn’t just an engine of evil constraining the galaxy. Empire is also a structure of evil, maintained by people who show up for work, send each other memos, and manage violence as it suits their career goals. For Tarkin, as for Partagaz, doctrine of Imperial Rule isn’t the best answer, it’s simply the only answer. It’s also why they both lost."

- Kelsey D. Atherton, from "Tarkin, Revisited." Wars of Future Past, 9 December 2022.

[dipperdesperado]

we need to have a real conversation about hierarchy

Hierarchy is a complex issue that can be found in many different settings. It is often viewed as a tool of oppression and is therefore a contentious topic. Interestingly, people seem to be more willing to accept hierarchy than other forms of oppression. This may be due to a number of factors, such as the belief that hierarchy is necessary for order and stability, or the idea that some individuals are simply better suited for leadership roles than others. Whatever the reason, it is clear that hierarchy is deeply ingrained in our modern worldview. Even in revolutionary projects, where one might expect to find a rejection of traditional power structures, hierarchy rears its head.

Hierarchy can be best thought of as a pyramid. The tip holds the brunt of the social power, while the foundational bricks hold the least. Emphasis on social power. Going back to our conversation about power, the foundational levels of the pyramid have the greatest power potential, (or “potential energy” that can be transformed into a kind of “kinetic energy” of collective action) due to their position in the system and sheer numbers. However, the social system that is in place funnels their power to prop up the tip at their own expense. Their collective power (“power with”) gets drowned out by the tip’s “power over”.

Hierarchy, if nothing else, is problematic because it acts as the glue for other forms of oppression such as power, domination, and coercion. It’s the space that codifies and justifies those relationships, all the way from the personal to the systemic level.

This is what makes hierarchy the most dangerous form of oppression. It is seen as ultimately pragmatic, even if it necessitates stratification by its very nature. It begs questions from those that exist under it, while not allowing space to explore those questions safely. Hierarchy occupies a space similar to capitalism more broadly; though it’s hard to deny the inherent issues from any rational perspective, there is a question of “what else is there?” Any system that can continue to justify itself, even when the agents in that system understand that it’s against their best interests, is one that has reached a spooky level of maturity. Hierarchy is seen as “realistic” and “pragmatic”, the same way that capitalism is.

This probably makes hierarchy sound like a pretty bum deal. I mean, it is. There is something truly sickening about all of the social engineering that occurs to create a system that leads to toil of the many for the comfort of the few. That’s hierarchy in a nutshell. Even more disturbing is that there isn’t any real reason that everyone can’t be comfortable. There’s nothing inherent to the materiality of the Earth that requires unsustainable appropriation. Maybe we all can’t be on the level of those who ascend the pyramid in a hierarchical system, but that is excessive by any metric you could measure. People have to come to the understanding that it is against their best interests to live vertically. Imagine being treated like you’re too unwise to have agency over your life. That’s the reality in hierarchical systems.

At this point, you might be really interested in the answer to the “what else is there” question. Even if you don’t fully buy into the idea that hierarchy can be good, you might not feel like you have any other options. I mean, from a societal perspective, the concept of civilization as we know it has been hierarchical from the get-go. It’s been around much, much longer than the current Big Bad, capitalism. Simply put, if hierarchy is a vertical solution to organizations, then the way out of it is horizontal.

If people organize in horizontal and cooperative ways rather than hierarchical and competitive ways, there is the potential for an egalitarian relationship for everyone involved.

This is important to bake into the work being done in the present because of the rule of means-ends unity. Basically, where we want to go has to be aligned with how we get there. If we want a stateless, moneyless, classes, solarpunk society, but we recreate states, monies, and classes, then our end result will never be achieved. Recreating oppressive systems to fight oppressive systems just leads to more oppression, even if our goal is genuinely abolitionary and liberatory. Sadly, hoping for stuff while not taking the necessary actions for it to happen won’t get us to where we want to go.

All in all, hierarchy should be questioned at every turn. Not for silly reasons like “being a rebel” or an uninformed “dislike for authority”. Hierarchy is a breeding ground for oppression; any perceived gains are drowned out by the human cost. Human societies that will be able to reach their full capacities will by necessity have to be horizontal, decentralized, and systems-oriented, rather than vertical, centralized, and uniform. We should strive for the balance between order and chaos, hitting the sweet spot of emergence. That way, we can have our cake and eat it too. We can organize big societal projects like social programs, while allowing everyone to have the room to live in the ways that they see fit, exploring and creating individually and collectively for the betterment of themselves, their community, and society at large.

[notesfromatherapist]

Well-known neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel has emphasized the importance of such integration in healing and has described IFS as a good way to achieve that. He writes, “Health comes from integration. It’s that simple, and that important. A system that is integrated is in a flow of harmony. Just as in a choir, with each singer’s voice both differentiated from the other singers’ voices but also linked, harmony emerges with integration. What is important to note is that this linkage does not remove the differences, as in the notion of blending: instead it maintains these unique contributions as it links them together. Integration is more like a fruit salad than a smoothie.” This, again, is one of the basic goals of IFS. Each part is honored for its unique qualities while also working in harmony with all the others.

Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

[themightyfoo]

The purpose of a system is also in the eye of the person who drew a dotted line around it and decided it was a system in the first place.

this is so on the nose

[probablyasocialecologist]

Information is power. Anyone interested in power grasps that idea very quickly. The media, the public relations people, the politicians, and advertisers who regulate much of the public flow of information have far more power than most people realize. They filter and channel information. Often they do so for short-term, self-interested purposes. It’s no wonder our that social systems so often run amok.

Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

[noosphe-re]

There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion—the questions we want to ask.

Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

[omegaphilosophia]

Aspects of the Philosophy of Complexity

The philosophy of complexity is an interdisciplinary field that explores the fundamental principles underlying complex systems and phenomena in nature, society, and technology. It seeks to understand the emergent properties, self-organization, and dynamics of complex systems, as well as their implications for philosophy, science, and society. Some key aspects of the philosophy of complexity include:

Emergence: Emergence refers to the phenomenon where complex systems exhibit properties and behaviors that cannot be understood by analyzing their individual components in isolation. Instead, these properties arise from the interactions and relationships between the components of the system. Emergent phenomena are often characterized by novel, higher-level patterns and structures that cannot be reduced to the properties of their constituent parts.

Self-Organization: Self-organization is the process through which complex systems spontaneously organize and adapt to their environment without external guidance or control. It involves the emergence of ordered structures, patterns, or behaviors from the interactions between the system's components. Self-organization is a fundamental feature of many natural systems, including biological organisms, ecosystems, and social networks.

Nonlinearity: Nonlinearity refers to the property of complex systems where the relationship between cause and effect is not proportional or predictable. Small changes in the system's initial conditions or parameters can lead to disproportionately large and unpredictable outcomes, known as nonlinear dynamics or "chaos." Nonlinear phenomena are ubiquitous in nature and can give rise to diverse patterns of behavior, such as fractals, turbulence, and phase transitions.

Networks and Interconnectedness: Complex systems often exhibit network structures, where components are interconnected through networks of relationships or interactions. Network theory explores the topology, connectivity, and dynamics of these networks, revealing important insights into the organization and functioning of complex systems across diverse domains, including social networks, neural networks, and ecological networks.

Adaptive Systems: Complex systems are often adaptive, meaning they can adjust and evolve in response to changes in their environment or internal dynamics. Adaptation involves the acquisition of new information, the modification of behaviors or structures, and the selection of advantageous traits through a process of feedback and learning. Adaptive systems are resilient and capable of self-regulation, enabling them to survive and thrive in changing conditions.

Holism and Reductionism: The philosophy of complexity challenges traditional reductionist approaches to understanding the world, which seek to explain complex phenomena by breaking them down into simpler, more manageable parts. Instead, complexity theory emphasizes the holistic and integrative nature of complex systems, emphasizing the importance of studying systems in their entirety and considering the interactions between their constituent elements.

Overall, the philosophy of complexity provides a framework for understanding the interconnectedness, diversity, and dynamism of the world around us, offering valuable insights into the nature of reality, cognition, and social organization.

[inanhourofdreaming]

It’s worth pointing out that there are two concerns with UBI:

One, is that people who get it will stop working. The most recent study on this I’ve seen does actually show a mild decline in work hours (that’s probably a feature, not a bug). It’s not overall concerning, but it absolutely has shown some dip on overall productivity, so the economic concerns are at least real there. Again — that is arguably the point, but arguing there won’t be a drop in productivity is inaccurate. Drops in productivity can be meaningful if they mean less of a necessary supply (agriculture, medicine, etc).

Two, and this one is the most concerning, is inflation. Economics are really, really complicated, but one pretty sure thing is that when you dump a bunch of money into people’s pockets en masse, prices will go up to match that reality. PPP loans and stimulus checks during Covid are likely a big part of the reason prices and inflation went up. Yes, there were other issues (price gouging, supply chain issues), but in actuality, giving everyone more money doesn’t give them higher buying power — it just raises prices. Giving everyone more money is a sure way to cause inflation. UBI pilots tend to be very small, and they mostly just show that if some limited amount of people get more money, things will be better for them personally. But that doesn’t mean that if everyone gets it, the same will be true. Everything will go up. The baseline costs will just rise along with the supply of money.

I’d argue, pretty strongly, that outside of limited tax credits, UBI isn’t the best idea. Rather than UBI, you want a few big things:

1. Subsidized healthcare. People stay in jobs, especially in America, because your ability to pay for healthcare is usually directly contingent on your job. Lose your job? Lose your healthcare. People cannot afford that, so they are stuck. No reasonable UBI would cover these costs. Doctors, nurses, and hospitals all provide a service, and the government pays for that benefit through taxes.

2. Universal child care. Child care is extraordinarily expensive (one child in NYC is an average of $20k a year!). Many parents choose to either have one parent stay home (meaning they lose an income, and usually the income increase that parent would have gotten over time) or they are paying a big portion of their income towards child care and losing out on spending time with their child. A universal child care system (just like our K-12 school system) would help parents leave jobs for different jobs without needing to find, for example, an employer that provides child care on site. If you left your job, you’d have the time and ability to find a new one without worrying about your child being safe.

3. Build a fuckton of new housing. You can’t afford your rent because there simply aren’t enough places to live, at least in most high population cities. So that rent bill gets sky high due strictly to very basic supply and demand. This is almost entirely determined by the market, and by property taxes. Your property is taxed on its estimated assessed value, not on what rent you are charging. If demand goes up, and suddenly every apartment in your building is going for $4k a month, you’re going to be expected to pay taxes on that value, even if you only charge $2K for rent. Those taxes are what pay for your public benefits like school, and we can’t really afford to lose them. How do we fix that? Increase supply! Places like Austin are doing this and seeing great results. The government doesn’t care if they���re bringing property taxes on two $2k/month apts or one $4k/month apt.

4. Give government agencies the ability to truly enforce antitrust and price gouging violations. There are genuine bad actors out there who use situations like the pandemic to raise prices and maximize profit. Empower the government to actually investigate and enforce rules around price gouging, antitrust violations, and other actions corporations take to maximize profits to the point where they negatively affect people. Note though, that corporations must actually make a profit to exist. So “corporation continued to make a profit during Covid” is not actually a bad thing for anyone. “Corporation quadrupled their profit margin for a full three years during and after Covid”, on the other hand, is a big warning sign unless that company happened to be Zoom or a pharmaceutical company. Likewise, government enforcement over utilities monopolies, etc, can go a long way towards limiting negative impacts for the average renter/owner.

Systems theory is where it’s at, here. Our economy is a highly complicated system, and thinking through impacts is necessary. Where does the UBI come from, if people are off making art they can’t sell and not paying taxes? If they’re taking lots of time off for family, or to grieve? I mean this honestly. Who is paying for that? We cannot make money from nothing, it has to come from somewhere or your entire economy crashes and your dollar has no value. And no, the answer isn’t just “tax the rich” because there is not unlimited wealth. You could drain every billionaire in America dry (even considering that billionaires aren’t liquid and mostly own stocks in their own and other companies that go up and down with the value of those companies AND that stock only has value if there is someone else to buy it) and it would barely cover a few years of a smaller UBI.

The U.S. has about 345 million Americans. A monthly $500 UBI would cost over $2 trillion dollars annually. That is an enormous amount of money, and because it isn’t taxed, it’s money that doesn’t support any subsidized system.

Simple seeming solutions can seem really nice and clean, but actual governmental policy is incredibly complicated in large part because all our systems are immensely complicated.

This post was way longer than I intended, but I’m going to end it with this: back in 9th grade, many eons ago now for me, my history teacher told us all a story about how Americans spent a ton of money developing a pen that would work in space. The Russians, on the other hand, gave their astronauts pencils! This was shared like Americans were just dummies who never thought to use a pencil.

Well, it turns out, pencils break! And guess what’s worse than spending a bunch of money developing space pens? How about having little pieces of poisonous lead flying around endangering astronauts and getting into sensitive electronics equipment?

Usually, if a simple answer has been passed on a bunch of times, it’s not because nobody has thought of it before. It’s because there was probably a pretty good reason why experts said “probably not the best idea”.

UBI needs to happen. via antiwork

[dipperdesperado]

If you want a great guide on how to think about what areas we need to focus on in order to create a liberatory, solarpunk society, this is a great place to start.

[unofficialchronicle]

INCULCATE (v).

to instill (an attitude, idea, or habit) by persistent instruction. to teach (someone) an attitude, idea, or habit by persistent instruction.

"We are inculcated about certain ideals by our society."

[trans-axolotl]

one of the reasons it's really hard for a lot of intersex people when intersex topics are on the news cycle is because the public's reaction reveals how little anyone knows or cares about intersex people, including people who call themselves our allies. almost every time intersex topics are trending, the discourse surrounding them is filled with misinformation. people who only learned today what the word intersex means jump into conversations and act like an authority. endosex/dyadic/perisex people get tripped up over things that are basically intersex 101, with tons of endosex people incorrectly arguing about the definition of intersex, who "counts," DSD terminology, and so much more. i've seen multiple endosex people say today that they've been "warning intersex people" and that we should have known that transphobia would catch up with us eventually, which is an absolutely absurd thing to say given the fact that consistently over the past ten years, it has often been intersex people sounding the alarm on sex-testing policies and also the fact that many, many intersex people are also trans, and already are facing the impacts of transphobia. there is an absolute failure from the general public to take intersex identity seriously; people seem not even able to fathom that intersex people have a community, history, and our own political resources. instead, endosex people somehow seem to think they're helping by bringing up half-remembered information from their high school biology class which usually isn't even relevant at all.

and this frustrates me so fucking much. not because i want to deny the impacts of transphobic oppression--i'm a trans intersex person, trust me when i say i am intimately aware of transphobia. this frustrates me because there is no way we can achieve collective liberation if our "allies" fail to even engage with basic intersex topics and are seemingly unaware of the many forms of intersex oppression that we are already facing every fucking day. if you are not aware of compulsory dyadism, if you are not aware of interphobia, if you are not aware of the many different ways that intersex people are directly and often violently targeted--how the fuck do you think we're going to dismantle all of these systems of oppression?

if you were truly an intersex ally, you would already KNOW that this is not new, and would not be surprised--interphobia in sports has been going on for decades. you would know that we do have a community, an identity, a history--you would have already read/listened/watched to intersex resources that give you the background information you need for allyship. you would know that although there is a really distinct lack of resources and political education, that intersex people ARE developing a political understanding of ourselves and our oppression--Cripping Intersex by Celeste Orr and their framework of compulsory dyadism is one example of how we're theorizing our oppression. It's absolutely fucking wild to me how few people I've seen actually use words like "interphobia" "intersexism" "compulsory dyadism" or "intersex oppression"--endosex people are seemingly incapable of recognizing that there is already an entrenched system of oppression towards intersex people that violently reshapes our bodies, restricts our autonomy, and attempts to eradicate intersex through a variety of medical and legal means.

you cannot treat intersex people like an afterthought. not just because we're meaningful parts of your community and deserving of solidarity, but also because intersex oppression impacts everyone!!! especially trans community--trans people will not be free until intersex people are free, so much of transphobia is shaped by compulsory dyadism, the mythical sex binary, all these ideas of enforced "biological sex" that are just as fake as the gender binary.

it makes me absolutely fucking livid every time this shit happens because it becomes so abundantly clear to me how little the average endosex person knows about intersex issues and also how little the average endosex person cares about changing that. i don't know what to say to get you to care, to get you to change that, but we fucking need it to happen and i, personally, am tired of constantly being grateful when i meet an endosex person who knows the bare minimum. i think we have a right to expect better and to demand that if you're going to call yourself our ally, you actually fucking listen to us when we tell you what that means.

okay for endosex people to reblog.

[fenmere]

Totally derailing this a little bit for laughs, but not discrediting or distracting from it in any way (exposure is exposure and this seems important and right).

But, as a plural system, we've decided to apply this analysis to ourselves.

It turns out that the purpose of our system is to eat Dutch babies, get a mocha, charge our phone, fart, write novels, be asexual, eat nacho flavored Doritos and sleep, like, a LOT.

A cartoon from 1914 that could have been written today

[parrotvoid]

Balance

For System Builders / Maintainers:

Systems can be incredible at building stability and prosperity, but no system is perfect. Systems are constructed to increase the efficiency of normal operations / circumstances. There will always be outliers which need to be handled on an individual basis otherwise the system will become invidious.

For System Deconstructors / Rebels:

Systems serve the majority. Tearing down a system for the sake of an outlier often causes more harm than good. If that outlier wasn’t already a pariah, you can bet they will be when their demands come at the cost of others. Because of these considerations, it’s almost always better to work within the system than against it.

[hobo-rg]

boy oh boy are there a lot of people on my dash this evening not comprehending how something can be, at the same time, a completely normal and valid thing for any one person to do or desire or whatever, and a harmful pattern of erasure / speaking-over / exoticization / normativity / (pick your poison) when so many “one person”s do it, so loudly and to the exclusion of other possibilities, that it starts to look like the only possibility.