Module 1.2
Dancing With Systems
—
Martin Lorenz in admiration
of Donella Meadows
This is an excerpt from the essay “Dancing With Systems” by Donella Meadows:
We can never fully understand our world, not in the way our reductionistic science has led us to expect. Our science itself, from quantum theory to the mathematics of chaos, leads us into irreducible uncertainty. For any objective other than the most trivial, we can’t optimize; we don’t even know what to optimize. We can’t keep track of everything. We can’t find a proper, sustainable relationship to nature, each other, or the institutions we create, if we try to do it from the role of omniscient conqueror.
For those who stake their identity on the role of omniscient conqueror, the uncertainty exposed by systems thinking is hard to take. If you can’t understand, predict, and control, what is there to do?
Systems thinking leads to another conclusion–however, waiting, shining, obvious as soon as we stop being blinded by the illusion of control. It says that there is plenty to do, of a different sort of “doing.” The future can’t be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being. Systems can’t be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned. We can’t surge forward with certainty into a world of no surprises, but we can expect surprises and learn from them and even profit from them. We can’t impose our will upon a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.
We can’t control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!
Reflections from Martin:
Questions that I am responding to:
1.2 What does a Systems View of Life feel like?
1.3 How can we design with the Planet in mind?
3.1 Why map a system?
4.3 How can designers be creatively strategic?
The relationship between this text and Martin:
I read Donna’s texts quite late, after finishing my dissertation about flexible visual systems in graphic design. When you look at systems from the graphic designer’s perspective, you see them as design rules you invent to coordinate design elements. Josef Müller-Brockmann’s “Grid Systems” is an example of such systems. In a design system the designer seems to control everything. When I started reading Wilson, Kauffman, Meadows, and Capra, I became aware of a different system lens and how absurd it is that we, as graphic designers, barely consider the real world in our designs. Is it because reality is too messy for us? Impossible to control? Because deep down, we know design services promise something they can’t keep? Donna’s text is a reminder that we can’t control systems, so we shouldn’t even try. We should learn to dance with them.
Why is this relevant?
Seeing the world in systems is a 21st-century skill. Without a doubt. It allows us to examine the multiple relationships among the system’s elements. What Donella Meadows teaches us is that the systems we see are only models of reality. They are simplified and subjective perspectives of a moment in time. System visualisations are really good at pretending to be objective. So good that even their makers start confusing representation and reality. As students and makers of (representations of) systems, we should be aware of that power.
Questions for the students:
- What is the first thought that comes to mind when you hear of systems?
- Where do you see systems?
- Of which systems are you part of?
- Have you ever shifted a system?
- Have you ever built a system?
- When did you realise you can’t control systems?