Wolves or Fire?

Fallacies of Systemic Thinking

My greatest paradigm-shift in graduate school began with learning Family Systems theory. In this perspective, we assess mental illness and behavioral problems as products of the system in which the person experiencing those symptoms is living. Rather than blaming the individual for having these problems, we see those problems as arising from relationships between people in the family. What’s more, we consider what function those problems are serving in the family. The idea is, the system—which could be a family, or a group, or a nation—wouldn’t be manifesting those symptoms if it wasn’t solving some other problem. Richard Schwartz, founder of Internal Family Systems, took this approach a step further by applying the systems perspective to the internal system, our multiple parts of self.

“System” is a sterile-feeling word, especially when used as much as I must to write about it. So I like to illustrate a system with something living and ecological—looking at the role of wolves in their ecosystems. Observations over the past decades have found that when wolves were overhunted and disappeared from their natural habitats, it had a number of unexpected consequences such as increased erosion of riverbanks and decreased biodiversity of insects and other small mammals. How? The large herbivores that the wolves hunted—like deer, for example—could now thrive without fear of predation.

The deer grew numerous and almost cocky, overgrazing riverbanks and valleys that they otherwise would’ve avoided because it was too exposed. Overgrazing meant the root systems of the grasses and other plants that would’ve inhibited erosion, and the leaves and branches that provided shelter and food for insects and small mammals, were absent. Reintroducing wolves to the ecosystem changes all of this. It is bad for the deer, but returns the rivers to their natural flow and allows biodiversity to thrive.

Thus a system is comprised of many parts and influences, and to change one part of the system forces the whole to adapt. And a system is almost itself like a living being that constantly seeks to perpetuate its own existence—it adapts to keep itself going, even if the adaptation is worse. We could take this perspective when looking at our own personal systems, our families, our communities, nature, and politics.

What is beautiful about the systems perspective in therapy is that it reduces the shame and resistance that comes up when people feel blamed for their roles in the system. Most of the time, people really think we’re doing something good, and our deepest intentions are positive. When we’re met with evidence to the contrary, or accused of being malicious, there’s a natural defensive desire to protect our self-image against that accusation, minimize the harm, foreground our good intentions, or just withdraw. When you instead say it’s not you, it’s the role you’ve been forced to do, there’s an opportunity to distance one’s self from the role and look at it with curiosity and greater honesty.

In recent years, systemic language has been quite popular in left-leaning activism, but when it’s used here it tends to be very much blaming, weaponizing, and demonizing both the entire system and those who act within it. I once had an argument with a friend who insisted “All Cops Are Bad” was a systemic message that needed to be foregrounded. In retrospect, I think we were missing each other’s points. I believe “All Cops Are Bad” demonizes cops and invites the kind of defensive, dismissive, protective response that is not open to reflection or collaboration.

What I would rather we do is look at what laws, norms, and forces make police bear so much social responsibility and put police and civilians in positions where violence is inevitable. For example, cities often task police with collecting revenue in the form of fines and property seizure. It’s a way of getting the revenue to make your city work without raising taxes, which is always unpopular. This incentives and compels police to be more active in their communities looking for criminal activity and fining people, which creates more tension and ill-will and the increased risk of violence. If we could take this pressure off policing, it could help decrease officer-involved shootings.

Reading that, however, it’s clear that this kind of thinking is emotionally unsatisfying. It’s boring policy stuff and not a charged call to action. Something in us really wants to blame and to feel righteous and to imagine we can conquer problems with blunt solutions. So instead of “change parts the system to move us toward our goal,” it’s “the whole system is guilty and must be destroyed.” Instead of reintroducing wolves to the ecosystem, we’ll just burn it all down.

What’s understandable about this shift is that, when you’ve lived long enough, it becomes really clear that the larger political and economic system will adapt to protect and preserve itself as much as possible. I once heard somebody say that the best way to kill a movement is just to give it what it wants. While a movement could genuinely threaten a system if it remains on the outside, once its views and opinions become mainstreamed, it loses that desire for burning everything down. Now those who were on the outside have a stake in protecting and perpetuating the system, even if its demands were barely met. As an illustration—once upon a time, the feminist movement argued that a woman’s natural nurturing capacity meant that if women ruled the country, we wouldn’t have war. In recent years, women who were given access to power have proven themselves very willing to use war to protect the interests of the state.

So it makes sense that some would rather just burn the whole forest down, and that even intervening to change the parts of the system you hate meets with resistance and unexpected consequences. Even people who were shocked at police violence a few years back couldn’t get on board with defunding the police entirely, for fear that removing police would allow violent criminal forces to run unchecked through the land. Some would respond to that concern with shaming, judgment, and dismissal, but others were very quick to feed the fear with stories of rampant crime in the cities.

Incrementalism is very unpopular when you want to burn the forest down, but even the abolitionist movements I am familiar with do not propose that we just remove the police and enter the socialist utopia. The whole system has to be transformed so that the conditions that create crime—poverty, inequality, and so forth—are addressed.

Along with the left-wing demonization of systems is the complementary wariness of individual therapy as a solution. If our mental and emotional distress are products of the systems in which we move, then it makes sense to take a larger liberation-focused approach. Just as recycling your cans is not enough to defeat climate change, doing personal therapy is not enough to offset the disorder and distress produced by our current ways of living. There is a way this empowers us, makes our distress less personal and motivates us to take action in the world.

There is also a way this position creates hopelessness. Because if you need the system destroyed or radically reformed to deal with your depression, you could be waiting a very long time. At some point you have to just deal with the life that you have, and do your best. Even if you're committed to reform and transformation of an unjust world. You have to live in the world while you're working on it.

What feels needed to hold the truth of both positions is a spiritual perspective, that we live in a world of suffering and brokenness, and it is our individual work of becoming awake, healed, and present that allows light to enter in and bring restoration. It’s not our fault that we’re suffering and it is a struggle to find the light. And, if we don’t make the effort, then the world is deprived of our light. We can’t wait for better conditions to be our best selves, and we must honor how the conditions impede us. As we grow larger in our own dignity, and recognize the humanity of others, it is apparent that their suffering and limitation is ours. We can only grow so bright in isolation, so it is right to work to kindle the light in others, and to do the work of changing the conditions that keep us clouded.

In the effort of bringing light to our small part of the system, that light radiates from us and affects the system around us. The more of us there are to bring that light, the more the system must respond to it. And when the system changes in response, unexpected consequences occur. We must study those consequences to know what to do next.