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Jun 22, 2021

"We can't control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!" --Donella Meadows

Donella Meadows: Dancing with Systems

"We can never fully understand our world, not in the way our reductionistic science has led us to expect. Our science itself, from quantum theory to the mathematics of chaos, leads us into irreducible uncertainty. For any objective other than the most trivial, we can't optimize; we do'nt even know what to optimize. We cant keep track of everything. We can't find a proper, sustainable relationship to nature, each other, or the institutions we create, if we try to do it from the role of omniscient conqueror. For those who stake their identity on the role of omniscient conqueror, the uncertainty exposed by systems thinking is hard to take. If you can't understand, predict, and control, what is there to do?" Influential environmentalist, farmer and writer Donella Meadows explores this question in one of her many, thought-provoking pieces here.