I love systems thinking and it is the only way, I think, to truly understand the world around us.
It’s not just about understanding all of the different parts that make up the system, how they are functioning and their purpose. But it is key to understand the relationship they all have to each other and with each other. The invisible interconnected lines that bind them all together. The invisible grease in the wheel that society never sees behind closed doors.
You can cut out one of the parts. You can replace a few of the parts. But just like sports trades, changing people around doesn’t change the rules of the game or the purpose of the sports industry as a whole.
What is the goal of this interconnected system? Really? Not just the goals they put on their website.
Whenever I assess a situation I ask myself two questions right away.
1. Whose needs are being prioritized here and why?
2. What is missing from this picture, that should be here?
On this page I going to dive into systemic thinking. It’s like playing detective. Human systems are not constant immovable forces. We aren’t talking about gravity here. These are human systems, and human systems change. And yet, only if they want to.
First lets us lay out some language.
Macro v. Micro
Macro are all of the large gears in the systems. The health care system, education system, criminal justice system, the Ministries of government, etc.
Micro is about the 1:1 interaction between people.
We can experience the macro systems with ableist processes of functioning and beliefs. We can experience micro ableist interactions by a Teacher not reading an Individual Education Plan (IEP) because they don’t think the disabled child’s education is important. In the same way, we can advocate for individual learning and changes and also system changes in law and policy.
Loud Advocacy v. Quiet Advocacy
I am completing making these terms up. This is just how I see it. There is advocacy that people do in front of others. Political debate. Writing books and blogs. Making movies. This to me, is the loud advocacy.
Quiet advocacy to me happens behind closed doors. Those 1:1 conversations that happen before meetings officially get started, or happen in the hallways at work. When political parties talk to each other “unofficially”. It’s the work that is done at 2 am when no one else sees the legal submissions being written. The decisions that don’t get posted, but change how decision makers view a situation.
We need both macro & micro advocacy. We need both loud advocacy and quiet advocacy.
There is NEVER going to be one solution to fix a problem that is a social construct such as ableism, racism, classism, sexism, trans & homophobia, etc.
Some people think that if this one law gets changed, it will change the system.
Nope.
I don’t even need to know what your one idea is. You are wrong.
There are way to many layers. Too many gears all connected. Too many invisible strings. Too many invisible grease. The machine is benefiting too much. The feedback loop from the public is keeping it moving. The education of the public comes from the machine. And round and round we go.
So is there hope?
Absolutely!
Systems change. Life in the 1800’s compared to now was very different. Our morals and beliefs as a society have shifted. Our priorities have moved in. The needle has moved.
Pendulums swing. We move back and forth over the years. Liberal vales to Conservative values. When it goes too far to the publics comfort level then swing back. Conservative values to Liberal values.
We take 2 steps forward. The machine self-corrects itself months later by introducing a contradictory bill. We take one step back.
We are constantly moving up and we always swing back and return to similar issues but we are hitting them in new ways. As life advances, we have new accessibility issues that we never had before that need to be ironed out.
We are constantly moving forward and circling back to hit the topics in different places.
If you want to make any significant change in society, you will need to work in teams of people. Change happens in teams. It happens through relationships. Through communication and learning. Even when laws change, society needs to enforce that law.
If you have an interest in groups, I would suggest you learn and study how small teams function and develop.
The one topic that I want to point out about team development is the concept of Groupthink.
It’s when everyone just goes along with each other to ensure the relationships in the group stay in tack, and no one’s feathers are ruffled. It’s when nothing gets questioned. Everyone just agrees. It can be deadly.
Groupthink
Group think is an important concept to understand in team development and one of the reasons we need diverse groups with people who have different lived experiences.
Here is my page on GROUPTHINK
Open & Closed Systems
When you examine a system, look at what is feeding it, and then look at what the system produces. What is going in, and what is coming out.
Some systems can be open. Allowing lots of information to be processed through it. If you were draining pasta, how and the sive has large wholes or small ones, will the noodles fall through and how much water is passing through?
If it is a closed system, nothing is making its way in. Nothing is being processed through and considered. The doors are shut and they like it that way.
Systems can be on a spectrum on how open and closed they are. Some systems can respond differently depending on the topic. Open to some. Closed to others.
Norms
Norms of a group are both implicit and explicit.
Explicit norms are the written rules of how the groups want to function. The team leader will create an agenda and distribute it.
Implicit norms are the unwritten rules. Everyone just knows that staff meetings always start 10 min late. No one gets mad about this, its just known and predictable.
There are a lot of social rules that are unwritten. If we enter an elevator, we implicitly know that we don’t stand 2 inches apart right in front of another person who is also riding the elevator. No one has told us that this would be considered akward. We know that if we enter the bus and there is only one person on it, they would find it weird if we went and sat right beside them.
Explicit norms of society are our laws. Don’t kill someone. We do not like that. There will be consequences and this is what they will be.
Social Constructs
Social constructs are concepts that we just make up, as we try and understand our world. It’s how we categorize human things so we can try and understand it. Gender is a social construct. Disability is a social construct. Religion is a social construct. We have agreed as a collective to categorize these things and give it language so we can talk about it. Make decisions about it. Create rules about it.
Social Hierarchy
We live in a socially stratified hierarchy. This too is completely made up and invented by those in power. Picture a brick wall. Groups of people are represented by each brick. Some groups are at the bottom of the wall, and others are at the top. The people at the top are the ones with the most access to power and authority that influence or make up the rules for all the stuff that we already make up stuff about.
Hierarchy has always existed in social groups and social animal groups. We have never had a time when we existed without them. The question is just, who is going to be at the top and who is going to be at the bottom. If there is a way for over 7 billion to exist without a hierarchy, we have not figured out how to do that.
Changing the Systems
If you are sensing a theme, you are correct. Society and how we function is completely made up from our imaginations and we if we can make it, we can unmake it, change it, and completely function differently if we wanted to. And the key here is, “if we wanted to”.
During COVID the world as a whole had an opportunity to make wide sweeping changes. To do things differently with our economy, with our transport, with all of our systems. And all society was desperate for was for life to return back to “normal”. We are human. We are animals. We are driven by acquiring resources. Scarcity sends us into survival mode. Humanity is beautiful and incredibly dark at the same time. Our wiring is quite diverse. Our levels of empathy, desperations for power, sensory processing (environment frameworks) and everything else is diverse. We aren’t seeing the same world. We aren’t all seeing what is there and we aren’t all seeing the same things that are missing. People can only process the world through the mental framework that they have. Everything else will just pass them by and not even stick. Our brains help us survive, and our brains their own kind of systems. Complex. Individual. And yet…within the spectrum of humanity, we have similar drives, desires, humanistic needs, just at different levels. And there are billions of us. We are our own galaxy. Small towns, cities, provinces, countries, cultures, neurodiversity, genders, sexualities, ages… all circling and rotating around each other.
So no. Not one idea is going to “fix” our social issues. There is no one person who is going to save us. It takes teams. It will always take teams. Multiple teams.
Social Movements
There are 4 elements to a social movement.
- There is a trigger event that inspires an intense reaction from the community
- ALL of the already established community groups come together and work together as ONE
- They have a common simple message that the public can understand. (Eg. Black Lives Matter)
- The advocacy of this one common message and connection of all of the groups needs to be for a long sustained period of time.
Think of the women’s movement in the 70’s. We still have women’s issues today. But women entering the workforce was quite the shift that started it all off. The different professions women are working in today is because of that social movement.
In summary:
Movements don’t’ make the issues go away. They are changed. And nothing is ever permanent. It can always change back. Everything is fluid. No social issue will ever be done. Ever. It will just change and be altered into a new shape. Advocacy therefore will never stop. Some people think advocacy shouldn’t have to happen. Doesn’t matter if it “shouldn’t” or not. It just always will. And just when think it’s been “solved” the system will show us just how fragile it was.
Advocacy is a marathon, not a sprint.
There is no end here and there never will be. Accept that truth, and you won’t burn out. Focus on the process. Build yourself, your capacity, your learning, your skills, and do the best you can with what you can. You never know; magic happens. It happens all the time. It just happens more often in small steps than in leaps and bounds. It builds. You want systemic change, then you need to focus on building advocacy within yourself and others. We are passing these skills and learnings onto the next generation and supporting their growth as advocates to keep our work going. And we keep the work that has been built by the people before us.