A bit of systems thinking
April 18, 2007
We arrived back in Edinburgh late last night after another long weekend back on Mull, sorting through the attic. Edinburgh obviously caught some of the warm weather while we were away, because all the trees are out in blossom and there are bluebells out under the trees. (Here in Scotland they are known as wild hyacinths and bluebells are what I call harebells.)
I've just walked over to the local library, meeting Mike out of work on the way. I haven't been there before but I prefer it to the Central library. The layout is better and the books seem more up to date. I came back overloaded with books on learning Japanese for my son. Standing in front of the foreign languages section, I had a sudden flashback to when I was a teenager and used to mooch round the foreign languages section of our local library. There are little moments like this when I start to feel quite at home in Edinburgh.
Attic clearing is going well. I seem to have got out all the boxes of old computing books and papers. I was separating out some transparencies from their paper backing from an old lecture course I gave, so that I could put the paper in the recycling bin. It was on systems theory and I spotted a bit that said all systems are ultimately contained in an environment and, whereas systems are susceptible to engineering, environments are not, but, rather, to being influenced.
I started to wonder whether this explains the disparity of viewpoint between friends of mine who are politically minded and those who are more interested in spiritual matters and don't feel that politics is of any relevance in their lives. Perhaps both are true, depending on where your focus lies. The political people are interested in the systems - healthcare systems, education and judicial systems - and so it is appropriate for them to consider how best these systems may be engineered for the common good. But other people such as artists, philosophers and spiritual thinkers are concerned with the enclosing environment and with influencing this in some way. Trying to influence one of the systems would be meaningless and trying to engineer the environment would be hopeless.