Thinking in Systems:
A Primer by Donella Meadows
(It’s the bestseller in A-z’s cybernetics category? And I heard about it from Permaculture books, so I assumed the receptive audience would likely be in socioeconomics! Not to mention that it’s published by Chelsea Green…)
There’s a Slinky on the front of the book. In the introduction, Meadows uses that Slinky to sum up what a system is. “The hands that manipulate it suppress or release some behavior that is latent within the structure of the spring.” Like a Slinky, a “system” is a coherently organized interconnected set of elements—something with many functioning parts that impel a certain behavior or behaviors.
Everything from trees to a football team to a human body to a population can be classified as systems according to these parameters. How systems work depends on the relationships between their structure and behavior.
So, what is this book trying to do? Give us a thinking tool. Help us be able to think helpfully by switching to a mode in which we identify some things as systems or parts of systems that we may not have looked at that way before. If we do perceive things in this way, we can both appreciate what is working, and respectfully and humbly intervene when things aren't going well--not to CONTROL but
enhance a system, to help it do what it does more optimally. The examples throughout the book really made me think--I think this is a great mental tool!
I don’t think the systems way of thinking is better than the reductionist way of thinking. I think it’s complementary and therefore revealing. --Thinking in Systems, p.6
I rather suspected the book would be filled with jargon and painfully abstract descriptions. However, it was very accessible, and I enjoyed the author’s personal style very much. Everything around us is connected, which makes common sense, and the better we get at observing the connections and understanding them, the better we will be able to further make useful connections in our lives, and in the world.
I’ve already started rereading this book, taking notes chapter by chapter, so I will have more to say soon, I expect!
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