SOCIAL SYSTEMS AND TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE
by Tom Atlee
Transformational change depends primarily on changing social systems.
A social system — an economic or political system, for example — is how a society is organized. It is a pervasive and powerful pattern of social arrangements that shapes people's lives and interactions.
Any time we seek to do something with other people, we run into the structures, processes, institutions, technologies, and beliefs of our dominant social systems. These then powerfully shape and channel our efforts.
If we want to get or give a product or service, we have to use the economic system — which in the dominant form usually involves money, buying and selling. If we want to change a law or a war, we have to use the political system — which in the dominant form usually involves fighting against those who oppose us and convincing politicians we have votes or dollars to influence their next election.
Whenever we try to do something with others, we have to use the existing systems — or else create new systems that those other people will use with us.
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The only way to change this, to reduce this habitual co-creation of messes, destruction, suffering, apathy, insanity and catastrophe, is to change the social systems that create them — or, more accurately, change the social systems that cause US to co-create these problems over and over and over again.
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