Interconnected Systems
If you sit down and think about some aspect of your life as it is now, you can probably trace your life backwards in time to moments where your decision influenced the future. I could say now, for instance, that I’m particularly bloated at the moment because I had a really spicy Vindaloo for lunch and drank half of my 50 oz. water bottle to ease the wonderful pain.
When most people try to figure out how they got somewhere, they look linearly, as I did above. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but I was only discussing my bloated belly and future prediction that I would have to go to the bathroom. What about more complex ideas, like our choice for the next president, whether to de-fund police, or which bill should be paid first with limited funds?
Life usually isn’t as simple as spicy food -> water -> bloat. It’s more like this:
I had a meeting in ten minutes, so I ate quickly.
Eating spicy foods fast is dumb. Spiciness compounds itself.
With time running out, I drank a lot of water at once. Drinking a lot of water at once is dumb. It distends your stomach and fails at diluting Scoville Heat Units from your tongue.
I started my meeting full of water and still burning from spice.
By the end of the meeting, my mouth still burned and I had to pee.
There’s way more to this story. I could get into my perception of spicy. Maybe you wouldn’t have found my lunch to have been so. I could discuss the amount of food I actually ate, which for some would have more than justified the amount of water I ended up drinking. I didn’t need to have Vindaloo. I could have had a some cheese and a tortilla, but my mind was on work, so I wasn’t paying much attention. The point is that my lunch’s effects on me is not just about the lunch. There were extenuating reasons why lunch ended in bloat.
When people disagree about what should or should not, it’s because of their perspective. I hear you say, “Well, duh!” But it’s just not that simple. You say “Duh,” but what is done about it? Usually, people say, “You’re dumb because I disagree with you. I’m going to call you names until you block me!”
Stopping there. Saying, “Well, that’s how you see it, but I don’t see it that way,” solves nothing because no one is asking the fundamental question… and listening to the answer: “Why?” Why do you feel one way about something and I feel another way?
Asking why and then listening to the answer opens up a conversation to explore how one thing led to another that caused you to think that way. Following the trail backwards, sideways, and around the bend gives us multiple opportunities to locate places where we might have common ground or where we might be able to negotiate turning left instead of turning right this time, thereby revising the way both of us sees the situation through a common lens.
Graduate programs for Marriage and Family Therapy like to set themselves apart from other counseling programs because every single course is founded on the principle that life is made up of systems. Each assignment in one way or another asks the therapist-in-training to consider which systems play the biggest roles in a given situation. I’ve already told my advisor that I’m calling myself a Systems Therapist when I get my business cards. I was drawn to becoming an MFT specifically because my experiences as both a writer and a teacher had already illuminated the role of systems in my life. This awareness has shaped how I interact with the world: that I can’t know you well unless I also understand the systems that influence you.
Think of systems theory as the study of mind mapping. You are at the center. Although not every component touches you, all are interconnected in some way, influencing each other, and eventually influence your experience, including your perception of yourself.
This is the rule for all “nature” based ideas. Carl Jung gave us the concept of the Collective Unconscious — that place buried deep within our subconscious that connects us all but cannot be reached until we first untangle our personal experiences that shroud the Truth of a common reality. Buddhism asks us to honor the moment in front of us by uncovering, studying, and then letting go of what makes us suffer. Constructionist theory (in literature, education, and mental health) teaches us that to understand a whole, we must first deconstruct it into its smallest parts and then decide which aspects serve our purpose and which do not. Native Peoples understand that we are but one part of a whole, connected universe that extends back in time through our ancestors. Quantum mechanics suggests that the space between us is an illusion, and that we can never act upon one thing without affecting everything it is connected to, no matter the distance.
We can holler at each other on social media or in the street about where we disagree, but that argument will only be that and nothing more unless we allow the time to understand the systems that have influenced our points of view. Only then can we step outside of our anger and frustration for a clearer view of what’s really at the heart of the problem. From there, we can choose which systems will best support our goal of agreement or of remaking the world into somewhere in which we all can be satisfied or of not having to run to the bathroom right after a meeting.
