systems
Someone once asked a Zen Master, “What is the essence of wisdom?”
The Zen Master said, “When spring comes, the grass grows by itself.”
Stephen Mitchell
The Second Book of the Tao
Winter is challenging for me. Every year around this time, when I’m in deep fatigue and existential questioning, my partner reminds me that it’s been Winter for a few months, and that January and February are difficult. Being indoors, decreased sunlight, hibernation energy — everything adds up.
Yesterday we walked through a nearby forest preserve, circling the frozen lake. It took a bit of time, but eventually I felt the softening that comes with breathing some real air. One of the principal ways that humanity has deluded themselves is the invention of urgency. In Nature there is certainly time and timing, but there is no rush. No force. The Earth system is constantly in motion, yet completely effortless. Simply by being alive, things happen at their appointed time.
This is one of the many lessons of the garden: that we human keepers don’t really do much of anything. We place things in certain spots (maybe intentionally, maybe simply by scattering seeds), and then we invite them to grow. We can’t do anything about the growing itself. All we can do is gently manipulate the environment in which something might happen. In the case of the maple sapling by my back fence, the something that keeps happening is a deer eating it down by a foot or two every time it walks by.
Am I serving the maple, or the deer?
Is there any difference?
Recently I’ve been describing myself as a “systems person.” I’ve been observing and thinking a lot about how different people understand things: how they input and digest information, how they communicate concepts, and their general modes of operation. And that’s exactly what a systems person does — I observe a system in progress and learn how all the pieces work together. I see how one shift affects every other part. It’s a perspective that marries micro and macro, though I tend to enjoy the macro much more.
Some other working modes I’ve observed:
Builder: a servant of the creative impulse. Not necessarily artistic, simply someone who enjoys the process of making things: entrepreneurs, inventors, literal builders. Builders learn by building, not by thinking about the concepts. Often there’s some trial and error. (Interestingly, a lot of artistic people probably aren’t builders themselves. Imagination and construction are completely different processes.)
Strategist: optimizer. Analyst. Thinks about evidence, cause and effect, and events over time. I’ve always been resistant to this way of being because it requires some degree of discontent — not in a profound way, but simply a perspective that things can always be better. (This is closely related to planning, which arises from the judgment that things must better, controlled, or simply different in the future.)
Tactician: a resource with a toolbox. Tacticians know how their particular thing works, and that’s what they teach you. They have experience in and love doing certain things, but sometimes exhibit a lack of imagination or flexibility for new ways. (Unfortunately, a lot of business “teachers” or “coaches” out there are just tacticians. They’re not interested in empowering someone to build their character or skillset; they just have a tactical product to sell you and tell you how to use it.)
A functioning ecosystem requires a variety of components like these. Look no further than the great American lawn: uniformity is unnatural and requires constant intervention to maintain. The industrial age taught us all to be factory workers, and that’s where we got our school system with its standardized tests. The personal technology age is training us to be “content creators” and “personal brands.” None of these things is wrong, but it doesn’t really work when 95% of the population are all becoming the same “solopreneur.”
Dandelions invade lawns for good reason: turf grass has a web of shallow roots that tangle and compact the soil, leading to water runoff. Dandelions have fat taproots that cleave through compacted dirt and assemble a wide array of complex nutrients. Invaders, provocateurs — they have their purpose too.
I’m a pretty independent and self-contained person, but it’s not contrarian for anyone to say that collaboration often doesn’t work. In most cases, collaborators decide to initiate a gathering for all the wrong reasons. It happens often in my small city, which has a surprisingly high concentration of arts organizations. Everyone agrees that the local arts industry could gain a bigger following and make a greater impact if they all worked together, but the mistake comes in the execution. Someone says, “There should be a collaborative arts group!” and then everyone comes because nonprofits are understaffed and under-resourced, and they know that working together could help the entire community. But without a leading vision in place, the group tries to crowdsource a sense of purpose and some goals. Of course it doesn’t work because a symphony orchestra and a children’s theater company have very different purposes and goals. And when a group of people gather because all they want to do is hang out and feel like part of a community, that’s all that happens. Hanging out.
To create something in the world is to have a vision; to imagine something that literally does not exist yet. Sometimes the thing that doesn’t exist is simple community — and that’s how you end up with monthly “meetings” that do nothing. (In my neighborhood it’s that most insidious of useless governments, the Homeowner’s Association.) Of course community is incredibly important, but acknowledge that you’re there to change hearts and feelings, not necessarily birth a new structure into the world.
In the Taoist Five Element framework, the Wood element is associated with Spring: upward movement, growth, creativity, momentum, springing. It’s also associated with a vision for the future, and the determination and flexibility to execute it. As I was contemplating this in my garden last year, I realized that wood (literally, the plant coming out of the ground) has determination, but no plan. The sunflower knows it’s supposed to follow the sun, but it doesn’t care one bit how it does so — nor does it get angry when it has to turn its head. The word “determination” comes from “terminate,” which describes the end or limit of something. This is critical: determination knows where it ends. Determination knows when it’s finished, successful, or complete. It has nothing to do with the process of getting there. Think of a potted plant in a dark room: it knows where it’s supposed to go, and it will generate the longest, skinniest, winding vine with a single leaf on it to get to the sunlight it needs.
Systems organize themselves around a purpose. You might say that good ideas are magnetic: a variety of interesting, creative, and ambitious people naturally assembles whenever a strong vision is presented. This is a human-centered way of describing it. You could also say that good ideas will always find a way to be created, and that the creative force of existence assembles the correct systems (i.e. people) to express itself.
Regardless of the source, the order of operations is key: first comes the purpose, then comes the system.
Collaboration can be executed effectively, though, in part because it takes so many forms. The vigor of the forest system is dependent on the life and death of trillions of organisms, many of which create the thick layer of decaying matter on the forest floor. One can interpret this in a number of poetic ways: growing from “failures,” standing on the shoulders of giants, etc., but it’s not really that profound. Any lifetime is just one of many, just a brief moment in the great tragicomedy of humanity. Some realize this as a call to action, as Whitman did: “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” (from “O Me! O Life!”) Others, more like Shakespeare’s darker moments: “Out, out, brief candle! / Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no more.” (Macbeth, 5.5.) All this to say, human collaboration spans many, many lifetimes. Whatever is in front of you at this moment may not be determined (terminated) until hundreds of years from now, if ever.
It’s often been said that the Wright brothers built the worst airplanes ever made. They were the first, since they were the only ones to sustain flight until that point, and for that reason they were also the best. But since then they’ve become the worst, and they will continue to be rewritten and revised as the play goes on. Different people will find this perspective either liberating or incredibly depressing.
But that’s the nature of being part of a system: there’s tension with the ego, which wants to be independent and known. “Ego” is not a bad word! It’s part of the human being, just as neutral and important as the legs or lungs. The ego wants to be known the same way that the lungs need air. It’s self-protective. It ensures one’s survival. But the left hand doesn’t really know what the right is doing. The lungs don’t worry about the pancreas or anything else in the body; they just breathe. In the same way, the ego just does its job — self-obsession — exactly how it was designed to.
The science keeps evolving: it seems that every day we learn how plants are communicating with each other, insects are reading hidden messages on flower petals, and whatever’s happening down in the deep ocean is literally changing what we see in our backyards.
What is the purpose of this system?, we might ask, as if thousands of years of poetry and philosophizing hadn’t already tried and failed to answer. Does it terminate at human society, or human apocalypse? Does the system want to be complex (entropy) or simple (natural selection)? (Humans’ unwavering dedication to false binaries suggests our own preference for simplicity.)
The Wright brothers built the worst planes ever made. We look back at the Romans, at Mesopotamia, at the early hominids, and we learn and judge. We move closer to or further from these things — paleo and “re-wilding” vs. AI and the smartphone. The Life system keeps on going, regardless of how we think about it. The ego squirms to consider that it doesn’t really matter all that much — maybe that’s why our only model for human “advancement” is destruction. Significance, in such a Christian way, often means dominion. Conquest.
The wolves of Yellowstone remind us of our incredible power to manipulate outcomes, but at a certain point the “purpose” paradigm extinguishes itself. Purpose exists at a human level only, invented as a balm for the knowledge that the cosmos continues on with or without us, with ice ages and flourishes in equal measure. So what if you don’t contribute a verse? Get over your Self. The play is already half-done.
