It’s almost irresistible to blame something or someone else, to shift responsibility away from ourselves, and to look for the central knob, the product, the pill, the technical fix that will make the problem go away. Thinking in Systems Pg 4
I love this quote because it relates closely to something I always tell my kids, it’s always easier to abdicate responsibility because that allows us to keep the view that we are perfect instead of confronting the parts of our lives where we fall short and need to do better. After this point I’m not sure Meadows continues in what feels like a “self-help” genre, but this quote is one to sit and think about because it’s true in almost everyone’s life.
The second thing I’ve been sitting with this week is the author’s statement that we need to understand how fast it’s possible to change something because that affects the pace of the system1. Many of us as we age gain some weight. It’s a pound here a pound there until we look up and we’re 20 pounds heavier than we were 5 years ago. We then change stuff about our eating habits to try and see a change, but often feel discouraged by the scale because it doesn’t reflect that change immediately.
If it took years to get where we are, it may take years of measured work to get to where we want to be. That means you need to not give up when you don’t see immediate change.
This can be applied to the ossified beauracracies that are our government institutions. It’s taken them decades to become institutions that are captured by corporate interests. It may take decades for the people to do the work to make sure regulation and laws reverse this trend of oligarch’s getting the laws they want. Are we willing to put in the work?
Hit reply if anything stuck out to you.
