The dense and tangled web of life—the interconnected nature of reality—now reveals itself on a daily basis. In recent years, think about how much you’ve learned about people, nations, and ways of life that previously you’d known nothing about. We’ve been learning how the lives of those far away affect our own and how we affect theirs. We’re beginning to realize that to live peacefully together on this planet, we need to be in new relationships, especially with those far distant from us.
When my children were small, I had a refrigerator magnet that read, “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” Perhaps that was my children’s first lesson in systems thinking. We adults are learning this, too. If others don’t feel safe, we aren’t safe. If others are struggling, we experience the consequence of their struggle. If others are poor, no matter how wealthy we are, we experience the consequences of their impoverishment.
Many great teachers have been trying to teach us this for thousands of years. Buddhism teaches that any one thing is here because of everything else. Jesus said that if “ye are not one, ye are not mine.” Chief Seattle reminded us that “the earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth.” And the American naturalist, John Muir, commented that when we tug on any one part of the web of life, we get the whole web. But in spite of such timeless and ancient wisdom, we’ve turned a deaf ear on all these wise ones.
Why are we so resistant to acknowledging our interdependence and interconnectedness? I recall years ago sitting at a conference table in Washington, D.C., where we were discussing how to create resilient communities in the face of Y2K. I enthusiastically said that people were going to learn about all the webs of interconnections that make our lives work. A noted physicist leaned across the table, looked me in the eye, and uttered this wisdom: “Meg, people don’t want to know they’re interconnected.”
Since then, I’ve had people prove him right many times over. Acknowledging that we’re responsible for more than ourselves, that our work and lives affect many others—this is just too painful. Nobody wants to take on more responsibility, especially at this time when so many of us feel overworked and overwhelmed. Yet if we don’t wake up to how intensely we’re connected, we’ll continue to create more harm through our blind, self-serving actions.
And if we’ve grown up in Western culture, interconnectedness denies the major organizing premise we’ve been taught. In the West, people have spent many decades drawing lines and boxes around interconnected phenomena. The world has been chunked into pieces rather than recognized for its webby nature. Think of how many lines and boundaries exist: org charts, job descriptions, town boundaries, nation states, ethnic identities. All these neat lines obscure the natural messiness of this interconnected world.
Whenever people become fearful, the boundaries become fortress walls behind which we seek protection. People are rallied to war by reinforcing the lines of national or ethnic identity. At work, in times of uncertainty, the lines also grow stronger. Roles become more delineated, and individuals get measured for their singular work, even though every job and problem is connected to many others. As the organization asserts more control, people withdraw and disengage. They just do what they’re told. By failing to notice that we’re all in this together, organizations breed new levels of incapacity.
I had a stunning experience with this self-protective work attitude shortly after the first anthrax incident in 2001 occurred in Palm Beach, Florida. A friend of mine is a judge at the Palm Beach courthouse. Her secretary noticed that someone had been at her desk—papers were disturbed, things moved around. Given the danger from anthrax and other possible security threats, the judge immediately called building security. I watched as the security guard blandly told her that it was not his job to secure the secretary’s office. “My job is to secure the judge’s chambers, that’s all.” He could not be convinced otherwise, even in the presence of an airborne poison. He knew his box and refused to think about this new world where danger knows no boundaries.
But I do not fault this security guard. He, like so many, had learned to keep his head down, to not make waves, to do what you’re told. He took protection in his job description—he was just doing his job. Too many organizations, as they maintain control by managing by the boxes, have created millions of withdrawn, dependent, frightened, and cynical employees. Exactly what we don’t need if we’re to survive this uncertain time.
Our safety and future depend on each of us stepping outside the lines and participating intelligently in this complex world of interconnections. Here are two hard truths about living and working in an interconnected system that might call us out of our boxes. And that might help leaders define the work that needs to be done.
– In an interconnected system, there is no such thing as simple cause and effect. There’s no one person to blame or to take the credit. We have yet to learn this. Watch how, in any crisis or success, people immediately assign blame or take all the credit. Why has crime decreased over the past few years? Police say its more police; judges say it’s due to tougher sentences; parents say it’s better parenting; teachers, economists, social workers, elected officials—everyone believes it’s because of their singular contribution. No one wants to share the truth that it was everyone’s contribution, interacting in inexplicable ways, that gave birth to the success.
– Focusing only makes things fuzzier. The more we study a complex phenomenon, the more confused we are bound to become. Few people like to feel confused or to be confronted by messiness. But interrelated phenomena—life—are very messy. The longer we study a system, the more complex it becomes. This is incredibly frustrating. Our attempts at understanding (reading the reports, listening to different commentaries, thinking about the issue) only serve to drag us into further complexity. Instead of clarity, we experience more uncertainty. What gave rise to modern terrorism? How do we create cleaner air? What leads to smarter students? Safer communities?
Since our very survival depends on our becoming better systems thinkers, we need to learn to see the systems we’re participating in. If not, we’ll never resolve these questions: How can we act intelligently when things are fuzzy? Where do we intervene to change something when we can’t determine straightforward cause and effect? What kinds of actions make sense when we’re confronted with increasing uncertainty?
Here are a few means for being able to see a system and its webs of connections:
– Start something and see who notices it. It’s only after we initiate something in a system that we see the threads that connect. Usually, someone we don’t even know suddenly appears, either outraged or helpful. We didn’t know there was any connection between us, but their response makes the connection clear. Now that they’ve identified themselves, we need to develop a relationship with them.
– Whatever you initiate, expect unintended consequences. Every effort to change a system creates these, because we can’t see the interactions ahead of time. One very visible example of unintended consequences is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place. Fertilizer is introduced to farm fields without noticing how rain water connects fields to oceans. Over time, we’ve got bountiful crops but fewer fish. I know one think tank that created a “Museum of Unintended Consequences.” They wanted to notice all the impacts of any societal change effort. When we’re willing to look at unintended consequences, they teach a great deal about how a system operates.
– Reflect, often. The system reveals itself to us all the time. The problem is we seldom stop to notice what just happened. Without such reflection, we go blindly on our way, ignoring the learnings, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. It’s amazing to me how much we do, but how little time we spend reflecting on what we just did.
– Seek out different interpretations. Run ideas by many different people, to see things through their unique perceptions. Everyone in a complex system has, at minimum, a slightly different interpretation. The more interpretations we gather, the easier it is to gain a sense of the whole.
– Look for insights to emerge out of messiness. Puzzling and messy situations often lead us to simplistic and stupid behaviors. Either we grab onto an easy answer, or we decide to take actions that have no clear rational. But confusion can create the condition for intuitions and insights to appear, often when we least expect them. If they appear, they usually can be trusted. In fact, it’s common for many people to arrive at the same conclusion at the same time. In the Quaker tradition, this is called “a gathered meeting.” It’s far better than struggling for false consensus.
These processes work well to bring an interconnected system into focus. We’re then capable of making more intelligent decisions that respond to the complexity rather than trying to deny it. These processes also foster inclusion, so they create much improved relationships between colleagues and neighbors from different parts of the system.
I’d like us to start proving the physicist wrong and accept the fact that we live in an interconnected world. It takes courage to face this fact, yet it’s the only way the world will change for the better.