My theory of systems change
1. Understand the system.
Few people actually take the time to do this.
2. Get comfortable and familiar with complexity as a priority. Complexity is complex. Therefore challenging. Our default is to revert to simplicity or reductionism. This is dangerous.
3. Only seek simplicity on the other side of complexity. If you go for simplicity before you understand complexity, you will succumb to reductionism.
4. Take care of your whole health – emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, relational.
If you devalue the importance of your capacity to respond, be agile in mind and body, adapt to changes, dance with emergence, move, feel and emote, you cannot understand the enormous chaos we face. Wellness is not optional.
5. Design everything considering the increased well-being of all life. Notice which lives you think are unworthy. Including our creatures. It is past time that humanity discontinued its path of eugenics and supremacy.
6. Act now, living and being the more beautiful world you know is possible. In other words, design and live new systems, maps, models, language and tools that make the existing system obsolete. Do not wait for it to fail.
7. Work synergistically. We are better together.
8. Seek the thoughts and experiences of those who have been ignored for most of history. Put down the books, expressions and ideas of the white males and seek out ideas, expressions and thoughts from others. The same thinking and worldview that got us here will not get us there. Instead read works by women, Black and Brown people, indigenous and Asian.
9. Work with your hands. Make things. Fix things. Grow things. Embodied learning is key. Theory is overrated.
Photo Taken July 13th 2024, Article written December 6th 2024
