Solving Systemic Problems Requires Systems Thinking

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  • Barry Kort Website: http://moultonlava.b… I am a (now retired) Visiting Scientist at the MIT Media Lab in the Affective Computing Research Group . My long-term field of research is the Role of Emotions in Learning . Most recently, I have been working on the role of StoryCraft as a traditional method of learning. I am also a (now retired) volunteer science educator in the Discovery Spaces at the Boston Museum of Science . My other affiliations have included the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis and the School of Communication and Journalism at Utah State University where I have assisted in the curriculum in Online Journalism . I was formerly a Visiting Scientist in the Educational Technology Research Group at BBN Systems and Technologies. Some of my other research interests include puzzlecraft, building online communities, and the functional characteristics of rule-driven systems. Curriculum Vita: BSEE With High Distinction, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, 1968 MSEE Stanford University, 1969 Ph.D. Systems Theory, Stanford University, 1976 Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in the Network Planning Division of AT&T Bell Labs 1968-1987 Lead Scientist in the Network Center of MITRE, 1987-1990 Visiting Scientist in Educational Technology Research, BBN Systems and Technologies, 1990-1999 Visiting Scientist in the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, 1999-2008 Volunteer Science Educator at Boston Museum of Science, 1987-2013 Retired, 2014-Present

As many of my colleagues and online acquaintances may know, my professional work has largely been grounded in the application of systems theory, to analyze and solve problems calling for a systems approach.

Now that I’m mostly retired, I’ve increasingly begun to reflect on the larger class of problems that plague humankind, above and beyond the more tractable class of problems that a person of my educational background in the STEM disciplines might have been recruited to work on at research venues like Bell Labs, BBN, Stanford, or MIT.

About eight years ago, I began to chronicle my thoughts about the ten biggest and most intractable problems, observing that, from a systems theoretic point of view, all ten of them had a common underlying structure.

Whack-A-Mole

Whack-A-Mole
Punch down any one problem and one or more
related problems pops up elsewhere.

As I assay it, the ten most intractable plagues of western civilization are conflict, violence, oppression, injustice, corruption, poverty, ignorance, alienation, suffering, and terrorism.

All ten of these hellish problems have something in common. Like cancer, they tend to reseed themselves, round-robin, from one instance to the next, in a never-ending cycle of recursion.

Systemic problems call for a systems approach to problem-solving. But that’s not going to happen until we elevate our collective problem-solving skills to near-genius levels.

I would like to see President Obama convene a national problem-solving congress, staffed with the best and the brightest systems thinkers our society has to offer, to systematically address, analyze, and solve the interlinked systemic problems of conflict, violence, oppression, injustice, corruption, poverty, ignorance, alienation, suffering, and terrorism.

How can those of us who share and promote the systems approach elevate this idea and organize an effective community of forward-looking problem solvers?

26 Comments

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  1. Dale Langdon

    I see all of those as examples of Othering. If there is a root at the bottom, I think that’s it.

    Reply

  2. Barry Kort

    In the couple of years since I first compiled my list of the ten most intractable plagues afflicting modern human civilization, I’ve since added two more: Abuse and Despair.

    The expanded list of Twelve Plagues now reads:

    Conflict, Violence, Oppression, Injustice, Corruption, Poverty, Ignorance, Alienation, Abuse, Despair, Suffering, and Terrorism.

    Reply

  7. Bob Hearns

    What if these are seen, not as problems, but as symptoms. Is there something common to all of them that point to what the problem actually is?

    Reply

    • Barry Kort

      They are both problems and also symptomatic of the root dynamics. In most cases, ill-considered efforts to resolve or tamp down any one of these problems have the effect of either seeding the next direct iteration of the same problem or triggering one of the related problems in the “Whack-a-Mole” set of interlinked problems.

      Reply

      • Bob Hearns

        So only each ‘so-called’ problem is addressed and, as you point out, only seeding or triggering more ‘so-called’ problems. Does this indicate that they are not problems at all but symptoms? As problem solvers know, only addressing symptoms will create exactly what you described has been happening and, obviously, will continue to happen. So what is the problem?

    • Bob Hearns

      Yes the symptoms are large enough that some action has always been needed to alleviate the suffering caused by the symptoms themselves. That is only putting a necessary band-aid on the effects of the problem. Those plagues have been around for millennia, so obviously, whatever action has been taken over millennia has not effectively addressed the problem. Is it possible that the problem has not yet been identified? Or having been identified, not acted upon?

      Reply

  9. Barry Kort

    The problems have been identified and named:

    Conflict, Violence, Oppression, Injustice, Corruption, Poverty, Ignorance, Alienation, Abuse, Despair, Suffering, and Terrorism.

    The root causes have been diagnosed and revealed by multiple authors down through the millennia in every medium of communication known to humankind.

    Recommended ethical best practices have been proposed and preached for at least 3500 years by hundreds (if not thousands) of world-class systems thinkers.

    Neuroscientists, Psychologists, Cognitive Scientists, Educators, Philosophers and Theologians remain vexed and perplexed to this day why our species remains so irretrievably learning disabled when it comes to mastering these classical insights, recommendations, and teachings.

    Reply

    • Bob Hearns

      Can there be a system that doesn’t divide, that is totally inclusive, no possibility of creating an ‘us and them’? Anything that divides creates conflict. Compassion, which is love for all, does not divide. However, if a system was put together to teach compassion, it would become compassionism which would create an ‘us and them’ and therefore division and conflict.

      Reply

      • Barry Kort

        In theory, one cannot rule out a perpetually harmonious system — perhaps a system comprised a single entity or a symbiotic pair.

        But the likelihood of that is vanishingly small. Any system of two or more entities almost surely will encounter passages of conflict.

        But see The Thumbs-Up/Thumbs-Down Game.

      • Bob Hearns

        Which is the first plague on your list. So the compassionate person, seeing this, does not pursue creating a system for any system is self defeating. What, then, is one to do? Is there an action, that is not a system, that makes space for compassion to flower in the person?

  10. Barry Kort

    Anne-Marie LaMonde writes:

    «Human Civilization has at least a dozen systemic plagues:…»

    Conflict: Is driven by unreasonable and unrealized wants & needs without regard for Other

    Violence: Both poverty & wealth lead to violent means to satisfy need, greed, and vengeance. Untreated mental illnesses (casualties of adverse experiences) or unrecognized mental disabilities (e.g., Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalcula, dysgraphia…) often lead to rage…

    Oppression: Tyrants oppress out of greed and fear. The oppressed stay out of need and fear…

    Injustice: The casualty of inward gazing and seeking one’s own freedom at the expense of another. A consequence wrought by not paying attention, not being aware, and not experienced in the scope of human conditions.

    Corruption: Seeking the easy way that requires nothing but clever manoeuvring

    Poverty: The old religious view that one is born into poverty by birth or merits poverty due to not living God’s truth (rather than economic inequality driven by market values)

    Ignorance: The willful and the unaware of being ignorant

    Alienation: Disenfranchisement

    Abuse: Cognitive limitations that devalue life due to excess emotions that lead to unthinking reactions (Fight, flight, freeze and fawn)

    Despair: Loss of Hope

    Suffering: Loss

    Terrorism: The tyrant’s tool…

    Reply

    • Bob Hearns

      I suggest that all of those systemic plagues are the consequences of every system. These are properties of systems and are not separate. No system will avoid these plagues nor will any system be able to address them. As long as the belief is held that a system will somehow resolve what the system creates, it is an exercise in futility. A different approach must be developed.

      Reply

      • Barry Kort

        The innovative approach is called “Systems Thinking” and it’s been suggested for at least 3500 years, but the concept is too mathematical or too advanced for most people to appreciate or adopt. Technology systems where there are no humans in the loop have long been able to employ well-regulated high-functioning architectures where pathological recursion anomalies are optimally managed, suppressed, minimized, and repaired.

      • Bob Hearns

        What difficulties arise when humans are in the loop?

      • Barry Kort

        Intentional corruption as well as erratic and clumsy departure from the protocols that ensure smooth and efficient functional operation of the system.

  11. Bob Hearns

    To what extent have systems been able to manage, suppress, minimize and repair that?

    Reply

    • Barry Kort

      The TCP/IP architecture of the Internet solved it for the machines, which can communicate efficiently without difficulty or disruption.

      Reply

  12. -roy-

    Seems to me, in a strange way that:
    conflict, violence, oppression, injustice, corruption, poverty, ignorance, alienation, suffering, and terrorism.
    define what it is to be human in this late capitalist stage of the brief reign of the killer apes,
    We are a work in progress 🙂

    I see that a systems approach to making killer apes into humans is, in progress.
    It’s a project that involves the whole system, it’s iterative, evolutionary and experimental and we, the people, have moral and practical objections to engineers lining us all up against a wall and fixing us -thanks all the same

    I notice in this blog post we are looking for the core problems, my guess is these issues you list Barry Kort are the core “problems”

    but
    You seem to be batting your head against a brick wall here?

    Perhaps it might be useful for the engineers to look towards “higher” issues.
    Things like:
    1) Reducing inequality, there is plenty of information that shows that too much inequality crashes societies
    2) Getting the financial and legal systems operating better, while the engineers can’t change human nature they can make sure that the “rule of law” is fortified and protected?
    3) Stop the ecosystems from collapsing around our ears, there is good work for an engineer.
    4)

    Reply

    • Bob Hearns

      All of these symptoms (misnamed as problems) can be traced back to the same source. The source is the way we think, isn’t it? Not all thought is problematic, but until there is a fundamental transformation in the problematic parts of thinking, we will simply be doing symptom solving when we address what we erringly think of as problems.

      Reply

      • Barry Kort

        Systems Thinking remains a niche species of thinking, even though it first appeared at lease 3500 years ago.

        The Ninth Intelligence

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