Dear Diary:
It should be clear by now that all living things are value generators. We all, humans plants and animals, take inputs from our environments and produce outputs that are of greater value for ourselves and others. And when we do so, we sustain a state of happiness.
So what is that “value“?
Part of that “value” is the definition of self. In the process of generating value, we define ourselves. And whether we realize it or not, our definition, our identity, includes others.
The human species didn’t just evolve, we co-evolved with the other species in our ecosystems. We are, by definition, co-dependents with them, both predators and prey, and everything in between.
There is no escaping this reality. If we choose to not only accept it but embrace it, and not only embrace it but make it our touchstone of truth, then we can truly ascend to our fullest identity, to take our place in the grand scheme.
This path we’re each on, has many forks, countless little ones we encounter every day, punctuated by giant ones from time to time. Each fork is a decision point. We assess the opportunities to generate value and the risks that we could lose value. With good parenting and guidance, life experience and feedback, we get better at decision making. Happiness is the result of better decision making, more value generation.
There has come a time, however, that people find themselves constrained by so many forces, demands, interruptions, disruptions, uncertainties, and ambiguities, that decision making becomes onerous. We may be generating value but we’re not sure at the end of the day.
Not only that, but we are not generating value in proportion to our potential. Its like trying to fight with one hand tied behind your back and your ankles shackled. We sit in tiny little boxes in the bureaucracy. Small businesses fill a tiny niche left vacant by global corporations. We are forced by the collective civil complexity into a small corner of our potentials. Our definition is diminishing. We are not generating much value and we’re not happy about it.
Is there a different path? Is there a fork we can take to escape this narrows?
Yes! We can construct an alternate reality. No kidding! Its not simply another escape or coping mechanism. The reality we experience today is a construct that has been constructed collectively over countless generations. Our culture, our worldview, has evolved through the lessons of millions of our ancestors. It works, for the most part. At least it has worked until recently. The hard part is addressing foundational assumptions that are not quite right.
Our shared worldview today constrains us and our potentials. In particular, it frames events in simple cause-and-effect relationships. In a simpler time that was fine and quite efficient. But in today’s world of a complex global civilization of eight billion people, it is quite insufficient. We need to recognize at least the Pareto Principle, the 80-20 rule that says 80 percent of an outcome results from 20 percent of the input factors.
Reality is not a matter of simple, one or two causes for each outcome of value. We are not simple billiard balls on a table. Moreover, whenever two or more things do come together we see emergent properties that didn’t previously exist. A simple example is the stuff we’re made of. Neither oxygen or hydrogen has the properties of water, but when you put them together in the right way, you get water. This emergence is not an exception, it is the rule, a universal law.
We can carefully deconstruct our shared worldview and reconstruct it with a foundational assumption that everything is interdependent with everything, and only the proportions of influence vary.
Over the past 75 years there has been a growing shift to this point of view in the applied sciences like engineering, medicine and management science. Holistic systems science has made progress in explaining complex phenomena where our previous frameworks denied us.
It is time we adopt the systems worldview with its systems philosophy, systems science, and the more applied systems thinking. When we do, we see the world in a different light and the narrow path opens up to a field! Then we can more clearly define ourselves and our species, our planet, as one of valued order and not chaos.
Randal Adcock 