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pouring one out for the systems thinkers who can see the abyss and have to live with the darkness

i mean you can see the potential for change but you can also see the vast darkness and that you may not see substantive change within your lifetime being able to comprehend even slightly a complexity that you barely have the ability to affect

so much about systems change has to align for things to change on anything other than a decades+ timescale but for crisis events (and even in crisis events it's even odds on two steps forward, three steps back), so much is about luck and yet

I think part of the issue is that you can be a systems thinker-singular and then it feels like You Are The One Who Must Change It because You Can See but then again the whole point of the fellowship was that it was a Team Effort and you know exactly which one's the Boromir you're working with

like has anyone studied exactly how much lines up to produce systemic change because I'm pretty sure if you wrote it all out there *would* be the equivalent of "and then some fucking eagles turned up" only eagles are people doing regular people things but fuck me. eagles.

imagine carrying around fucking icebergs the entire time like yes you also have your (helpful) stock and flow diagrams but then you add PEOPLE to them ugh donellameadows.org/systems-thin...

btw this explains why systems change relies upon people which duh

viva la revolucion

Also one problem with being a systems thinker is that it's likely not your actual job. Like, you may be a systems thinker because that's how you approach change you really care about. In which case you're explicitly not in an empowered position to do anything about what you learned.

You have a job to do but you understand Too Much, and while you can do That Job for you to improve more requires you to do things that are totally Not Your Job. Doesn't help either that it is incredibly rare for anyone to have the responsibility for the gaps and the seams, or even a big picture.