Decolonizing Systems Thinking
Posted on October 18, 2019“All too often, Western science will make a so-called discovery after years of research really confirming what elders have been telling us for decades, for tens of thousands of years in some cases,”[i]
Photo Credit – https://www.barnesandnoble.com
Somewhere around halfway through our conversation, Angel said something that blew my mind.
I had been rereading Donella Meadows’ famous book Thinking in Systems and we were speaking about the power and beauty of systems thinking. Then Angel, a friend and a doctoral student, pivoted the conversation to tell me about the seven generations concept – an approach taken by the Indigenous First Nations communities in Canada where they consider their actions across seven generations forward and backward. In other words, when taking an action, one considers the lessons of the previous seven generations and considers the impact on the next seven[ii]. Angel then went to ask – “imagine if all of us did this – what kind of world would we live in?”
Wow, that’s incredible, I thought. Why have I never heard of this concept?
To give context to my moment of surprise, let me rewind about a year and a half when I begin to explore systems thinking. I was at work in an education policy think tank and my team had been assigned an impossible research task – identify the binding constraints to achieving better learning outcomes in government school classrooms in India. After some initial exploration into the world of randomized controlled trials, someone from the donor community pointed us towards systems thinking. More on systems thinking here >[iii]
To say that systems thinking changed the course of my life would not be an understatement. Partially for work but mostly out of a deep personal interest, I began voraciously digging into systems thinking –reading Meadows and her MIT colleague Peter Senge, author of the Fifth Discipline and taking every Coursera, EdX, Udemy course I could get my hands on. My team and I began to reach out to dozens of systems thinking ‘experts’ around the globe trying to understand how might we apply systems principles to our research work.
A few months into my journey, I came upon an upcoming workshop in upstate New York with Senge his protégé, Otto Scharmer (developer of Theory U) amongst others on something called Generative Social Fields. I didn’t know what Generative Social Fields was but decided, despite the enormous expense & time (not to mention carbon footprint) of traveling to the U.S. from India, to make the trip and find out. The lessons from the gathering layered in the concept of ‘systems sensing’ to my jargon. While systems thinking focuses more on analytical capabilities using a set of tools, systems sensing is more about an intuitive and embodied understanding of complex interdependence[iv]. I was mesmerized. A few months later, I quit my job and joined a small non-profit dedicated to bringing the ideas into education systems around the world and attended additional workshops with Senge and others. I became an avid advocate for systems thinking in professional and personal aspects of life.
Given all this time and effort, I thought I knew a lot about systems thinking. So when Angel told me about the Seven Generations concept, I had to ask myself – why have I never heard about this despite the fact that it embodied what systems thinking was all about? Angel kindly gave me additional readings which awakened my consciousness to a whole world of Indigenous practices which embody systems thinking far more than the models or frameworks I became obsessed with. Practices such as storytelling, emphasis on relationality and the circular nature of creation and destruction have been part of indigenous cultures for decades and in some cases centuries.[v] Case and point is the indigenous activism against climate change and deforestation started long before the global environmental movement really took off because the ideas of sustainability and maintaining a balance was deeply embodied in many indigenous cultures.[iv]
Indigenous protests demonstrate against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. credit vox.com
In fact, as I started reflecting, I realized the only time I’d ever hear about indigenous ideas related to systems thinking was from small anecdotes shared by white facilitators speaking to a room of predominantly white participants, many of whom had paid thousands of dollars to be there. Why was it that the wisdom of indigenous cultures not recognized in these rooms? What gave a group a right to claim a discovery that wasn’t a discovery at all (the way Columbus ‘discovered’ America)? It reminded me of the many Western authors who have colonized Buddhist teachings for their economic benefit– something I found deeply disconcerting. And now to realize that in my ignorance, I became part of a colonizing movement.
This realization hit me at my core. I felt a pit in my stomach, a mixture of shame, guilt and embarrassment. It made me question my beliefs and my judgement. I had been engaging in an intellectual pursuit with blinders on. I did not want to see the small questions and hints that were clearly present in my environment. Yet I also had gratitude that I arrived in this moment even later than I’d hoped. My perspective is now broadened on a very important topic and I have learned something important about myself. I am also deeply grateful for my exposure to systems thinking. I remain committed to my continued study of systems and hope to look continue to look at the work of Senge, Scharmer and others for guidance as they do have important ideas to share. Yet at the same time, I am now deeply committed to exploring and expanding my knowledge base on indigenous practices, rituals and history.
ZJ writing from Lenape Lands
End Notes
[i] https://quillette.com/2018/05/22/indigenous-ways-knowing-magical-thinking-spirituality-one-name/
[ii] Blackstock, Cindy, 8 Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring 2011 http://www.socialworker.com/jswve
[iii] For those who don’t know, Systems Thinking in the modern context started in 1956 with the Systems Dynamics Group created by Jay Forrester at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Forrester and his students (Meadows included) wanted to apply engineering into management with the goal of trying to understand and control social systems, particularly in corporations. The result of their work led to the development of a new set tools and frameworks for modelling systems behavior that helps us engage complex problems. Complex problems, unlike simple or complicated problems, are un-ordered. There is no clear apparent cause and effect. You can read more here https://www.systemdynamics.org/origin-of-system-dynamics
[iv] https://www.systemsawareness.org/about/#lexicon
[v] Wilson, Shawn. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Black Point, N.S: Fernwood Pub, 2008. Print.
[iv] https://earther.gizmodo.com/we-are-nations-what-environmental-justice-looks-like-f-1839028507