We spent over a trillion dollars, killed tens of thousands, including thousands of our own, and destroyed a functioning country. And more than a decade later this is what we have to show for that grievous error.
Phi Beta Iota: Iraq was not an error. It was treason by Dick Cheney (VP) and George Tenet (DCI) enabled by complicity on the part of Colin Powell (SecState) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Al Qaeda is over-sold. What this is all really about is the complete loss of legitimacy by all governments, the corruption of all governance processes, and the emergent realization by the public that a populist uprising is necessary to restore intelligence with integrity to how we govern ourselves.
Systems are everywhere. They shape us and we can, do, and should shape them. Our destiny is tied up with them but they are pretty invisible. In this essay I explore some useful systems dynamics and perspectives and share two essays by others exploring the same vast territory in search of insights we can use to make the world better.
Dear friends,
We live amidst all kinds of systems. We ourselves are living systems. We are also active participants in political systems, economic systems, information systems, ecosystems. These social and natural systems shape our lives, shape our beliefs about what is real and possible, and shape our destinies. Remarkably, they are almost invisible to us. We can see their parts and their impacts quite vividly all around us and even inside us. But we can’t see THEM.
We can only get a handle on them with systems thinking.
Now, I like to think of myself as a systems thinker. But there are ways in which I am and ways in which I’m not. Systems thinking comes in many forms. I’m fairly good at some of them and fairly clueless and incompetent at others.
But one thing I know, which is not necessarily common among many systems thinkers, is exactly what I just said above: Systems thinking comes in many forms. I have a broad definition of systems thinking:
Systems thinking is any style of thinking that delves into the interconnectedness and wholeness of reality.
That covers a lot of ground.
I think this idea of systems thinking – in any and all of its forms – is one of the most important factors in our collective fate. Our main source of folly – our lack of wisdom – is our tendency to take too narrow a view of an issue or problem. Our solutions then run into the factors that we overlooked because we weren’t thinking in terms of interconnectedness and wholeness. This failure to notice important factors undermines our solutions, making them less effective or even causing them to create problems elsewhere. We end up on a down escalator that feels like a hamster’s wheel to hell.
That’s why I define “public wisdom” as taking into account what needs to be taken into account for long-term broad benefit. What we don’t take into account will come back to haunt us, big time. Reality bats last. Over and over.
So we really need to include information and people who can help us stretch into “the big picture” and its important interconnections.
Here are just a few examples of systems thinkers we’d be wise to include in our deliberations:
systems scientists – ecologists, cyberneticists, chaos and complexity scientists, evolutionary researchers, and various multi-disciplinary scholars;
holistic and evolutionary philosophers, historians and ethicists – perhaps especially those who come from marginalized groups;
sociologists, cultural anthropologists, neuroscientists, and other specialists in the dynamics and relativity of what we think we know, individually and collectively;
indigenous spokespeople and shamans who know how to enlighten modernist minds.
To give a sense of the eclectic nature of my view of systems thinking, here are some of the interconnected system-related understandings and resources that I believe we can and should be attending to and using more consciously:
feedback dynamics: incentives and disincentives, reinforcers and magnifiers, resistance dynamics, resilience…
self-organizing dynamics: the intrinsic nature of things and motivations of people, actual and potential connections, diversity, shared purpose…
positivity: the attractive powers of possibility, appreciation, fun…
collectivity: networks, relationships, community and tribal dynamics, mutuality, empathy, interdependence…
ultimate oneness: the non-local, non-dual, intuitive, resonant, synchronous, transcendent unity of life, its manifestations and dynamics…
inquiry: humility, curiosity, and exploration in the face of complexity, novelty, contradiction, paradox, and uncertainty….
While the above are my own reflections on what the systemic approach involves, I also believe it is important to ground ourselves in some of the more advanced mainstream disciplines and thought leaders of systems thinking. The excerpts below represent two perspectives that I particularly respect among systems thinkers seeking to make the world a better place.
I gave a talk on “The future of Humanitarian Response” at UN OCHA’s Global Humanitarian Policy Forum (#aid2025) in New York yesterday. More here for context. A similar version of the talk is available in the video presentation below.
Some of the discussions that ensued during the Forum were frustrating albeit an important reality check. Some policy makers still think that disaster response is about them and their international humanitarian organizations. They are still under the impression that aid does not arrive until they arrive. And yet, empirical research in the disaster literature points to the fact that the vast majority of survivals during disasters is the result of local agency, not external intervention.
Given the amount of confusion that has existed about the role of external actors in Venezuela, the article seeks to present the key facts and data regarding Chinese loans, oil investment and other support to the Venezuelan petroleum sector, in the context of Indian and Russian activities in the sector as well. I would like to offer my sincere thanks to a number of experts in the Venezuelan petroleum, financial, and other sectors who shared their knowledge and dedicated the time so that I could get the story right.
Dr. Evan Ellis is a professor of national security studies, modeling, gaming and simulation with the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University, with a research focus on Latin America's relationships with external actors, including China, Russia and Iran, as well as work on populism in the Andes, transnational criminal organizations and gangs in Mexico and Central America, energy security, and non-traditional national security topics. Dr. Ellis has published over 50 works, including the 2009 book China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores, as well as articles in national security, finance, and technical journals.
This latest essay is an excellent short description of chemical weapons, a history of their use since WWI, and it lays out an analysis of the question of whether or not President Assad used them against his own people. He also examines the grand strategic implications of President Putin's intervention, which effectively put a stop to an American intervention, opened the door to greater Russian involvement in the region, and may have changed the strategic dynamic in the Middle East, particularly from the perspective of Israel.
Polk's argument in this essay is also an excellent bookend to Seymour Hersh's' explosive report in the London Review of Books, which I discussed in The Syrian Guns of August (Counterpunch, Dec 10, 2013).
When you think about it, Santa Claus and the NSA have a lot in common—both can tell when you’ve been sleeping and know when you’re awake…
So our civil liberties elves here at the ACLU decided to make an NSA version of that classic holiday tune, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” taking a cue from Santa’s own secret surveillance program. And as one of the more than 35,000 supporters who signed our petition to Congress to rein in the NSA, we want you to have the first peek at the hysterical new music video!
This new video is the perfect way to show your friends that while Santa’s spying operation may be magical, the NSA’s is very real—and why we should all care.
The NSA has used every excuse from here to the North Pole to justify their unlawful spying operations, but we’re not buying it. And after all their deception, we’re not trusting them with a program so open to abuse of power.
There’s already good legislation pending in the House and Senate—we just need to get as many people as possible to stand with us and push Congress to pass it now.
