Problems are a Feature — not a Bug — of the Global System
Despair not: all systems seek equilibrium.
The past few weeks have been a mess. It is seductive to think that things are worse than they have ever (or at least recently) been.
In fact, generally speaking the world is more peaceful place than at many times in human history. Not necessarily increasingly peaceful in a linear sense; complexity theory teaches us that these patterns are cyclical. In fact, they are fractal.
Increased peace does not necessarily mean moral progress — after all, we could just as easily ascribe increased peace at the national level to the threat of mutually assured destruction. Instead, new threats vie for anxious attention and policymaking and spending. At the macro level, we could say that outright physical and institutionalized violence has largely been replaced by a structural policing of the mind. And so comparisons between now and the past become esoteric, academic. There is only now. Now matters — the directionality of now matters. The problems we choose to focus on matter.
Without constant tension and opposition between forces, we would be stagnant. Living systems do not thrive in stagnation.
On an individual level, it explains why winter hibernation gives way to spring cleaning and why we cannot experience joy in the absence of having experienced sorrow. It explains why immigrants are not always peacefully absorbed even into the most tolerant cultures, why “radical extremism” has taken the place of “communism” as “the enemy” (there must always be adversaries or there can be no adherents), why it’s a safe bet that the acceleration of technological change will be matched by an acceleration of luddism.
War. Famine. Disease. Ecological ruin. Problems.
Wicked problems. Problems that cannot, in fact, be “solved,” only affected or mitigated.
These tension spots are inflection points: opportunities. Opportunities for discourse, engagement, policy change, “progress.” It is each of our choice where to focus our energy, but it helps to have a sense of the bigger picture. It’s why so many people turn to religion or philosophy: to answer large questions about “why?”
The story that we tell ourselves about ourselves (our narrative) — whether it be that the Earth was created for man’s dominion, that everything used to be better and we should fight to get back to a previous status quo, or that we are destined to explore and inhabit the stars — has significant impact on our perspective, our analysis of events and extant conditions, and our actions.
In pre-digital times (99.999% of human history), narrative was handily established by power. Religious leaders, warlords, politicians have been the purveyors of narrative on a population level. But it is not just a top-down phenomenon: it is emergent.
In the digital age, narrative is more fragmented than ever; it is emerging everywhere all at once. Narrative no longer recognizes national boundaries, purchasing power, or polling numbers. Narrative is no longer the stuff you skim off the top of important and historical speeches, or the major takeaway from a runaway box office hit.
Narrative is a way to frame and drive shifts in the system, a priming that seeps into both macro and micro decisions. It is crucial to national security; it sets a tone for how we define and frame “problems” and how we address them. It is less of a conscious choice, and more of an invisible hand. But in order to be cohesive, we must agree that it needs to be changed.
Narrative is a story. We need a new story (the one we’ve been telling for too long is about growth, human exceptionalism, and domination). We need a strategic framework from which to approach “problems” with an eye to long-term outcomes. We will never be free of problems; this system is not debuggable. But we can consider every microcosmic system as constantly seeking balance, and find the spots to intervene to push that equilibrium toward equity and sustainability.
Know that even without human helpers, systems bias toward balance. With the guidance of a good narrative and well-informed agents, this system will gradually rebalance toward the benefit of its constituent parts.
