Sporting events can be great miniature models to utilize to describe how systems operate, because in contrast with many of the larger and more complicated systems that govern our lives, the inputs and outputs are much more black and white. There is a team that wins, and a team that loses. There is no debate over that. Statistics are recorded diligently, and all of the functions happen physically and tangibly, out in the open where we can all see and replay it.
In basic terms, a human-created system is simply a set of procedures or principles by which we can achieve a desired outcome. Systems have interconnected parts that are often dynamic, meaning that a change to one element can have an impact on many other elements; in turn changing the entire system as a whole. For systems to function optimally, they commonly need to have some form of structure, some predictable types of behavior, and interconnectivity.
The systems we choose to create are some of the biggest influences that affect the quality of our lives. This goes not only for the large-scale systems we collectively implement to run a country or a major organization, but also for the personal systems we create on the micro level as individuals. For instance, on the micro level, each one of us chooses a personal system that falls somewhere along the spectrum of super-organized versus totally disorganized.
By simply putting one’s keys in the same place every time, keeping drinks without lids away from computers, and making a conscious effort to prevent clutter from building up, the benefits in one’s quality of life can skyrocket. This person is less likely to be late, less likely to waste money on replacing costly electronics, less likely to forget about bills or engagements, and consequently less likely to be stressed out. They will have more free time and money, be more reliable, and gain more clarity about how to be proactive to get what they want out of life rather than being reactive; allowing the external world around them to dictate their reality. Isn’t it fascinating that such subtle changes can have such a major impact on our lives? Suitably, when we create large-scale systems and cultures that affect millions or billions of lives, even actions that could be considered relatively minor on a global scale can end up having major implications.
Let’s take a look at the modern country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sitting around 20,000 square miles in total area, it ranks 128th out of world countries in land mass. If it were a U.S. state, it would rank 42nd in total area, sitting just between Maryland and West Virginia. However, as little as this piece of land may be in global terms, the actions that took place on it over a century ago have created a chain reaction of events that still affect our world today in a major way.
In the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was on its way out. It had previously been a major transcontinental force for nearly 500 years, after taking down the Roman Empire that had reigned for 1,500 years. However, a crippling loss to Russia in the Russo-Turkish War in 1878 led to its ultimate decline. By the time an internal revolution broke out in 1908, the Ottomans had lost much control of their territory in Europe and North Africa. Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro gained full independence. Bosnia and Herzegovina, though, was annexed by Austria-Hungary against the will of many of its people. This act would end up leading to widespread catastrophic consequences for humanity.
In 1914, a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, upon his visit to Sarajevo. This resulted in the invasion of Serbia by Austria-Hungary. Being Serbia’s ally, Russia mobilized for war against Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary’s ally Germany then declared war on Russia. This is where things get really ugly.
Germany, knowing that Russia would take some time to mobilize, and knowing that France and Britain were allies of Russia, was concerned about having to fight on multiple fronts at once. They believed that by surprise attacking France and defeating them quickly, this display of power would discourage Britain and Russia from wanting to get involved, guaranteeing certain victory. Germany thus invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg on their way to Paris, and this caused Britain to declare war on Germany. Joining Britain would be Italy, Japan, Romania, Greece, Portugal, Brazil, the United States, and many others. Joining the opposing side would be Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and others. The First World War was underway.
After they had lost the First World War, revanchist nationalism in Germany ended up being a major factor leading into their invasion of Poland, resulting in an even more catastrophic Second World War. The events of World War II consequently played a major role in the development of additional territorial wars in the Middle East, to which we still have not found a peaceful resolution to this day.
If we could hypothetically sit down today with the leaders of Austria-Hungary from the late 1800’s, and watch a time-lapsed summary of the entire chain of events that has unfolded since they decided to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina, do you think that they would truly believe deep in their hearts that it was worth it? As part of a chain reaction resulting from their attempt to show the world that they were a force to be reckoned with, over one hundred million people -- that’s a one with eight zeroes after it (100,000,000) -- have ended up losing their lives. Many of the best and brightest minds the world had to offer dedicated their lives to the science of creating tools designed to destroy their fellow human beings. The total amount of money and resources spent on these conflicts (in modern U.S. dollars) was in the trillions. Tens of millions of additional people were severely injured, many of them permanently. Tens of millions more were survivors of gruesome battles and inhumane torture and death camps, forever scarred by witnessing the most unspeakably dark and brutal acts humanity is capable of. Millions upon millions of families have been forced to experience the traumatic shock of realizing that their mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters were never coming back home again. Most notably among these conflicts, World War II remains the deadliest war in all of recorded human history.
So, what was the end result for Austria-Hungary? After considering all of the violence and grief that resulted from a shortsighted attempt to colonize a place smaller than West Virginia, did they even end up gaining anything positive for themselves at all? The answer is no. In fact, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy ended up on the losing side of World War I, and dissolved. Not only were they split up into two separate entities, but by the time they lost World War II, they also lost control of about half of their land, which today belongs to the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Montenegro, Serbia, and, wouldn’t you guess, an independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. After all was said and done, Bosnia and Herzegovina ended up becoming an independent country anyway. I will rhetorically ask: In the grand scheme of things, was there ever any point to it all? Do we truly think deeply enough to understand the massive negative ripple effects and counter-attacks we provoke by trying to exploit others, rather than realizing that they are people just like us, who also just want their freedom?
My intention here is not to single out and demonize Austrian or Hungarian peoples’ ancestors, or to harbor hatred, or to push a pro-Bosnian agenda. These examples that I’ve described to you are just that: Examples of how systems operate, from which we can draw lessons. I’m very conscious of the notion that a war in its entirety is much more detailed, and much less black and white than could ever be briefly described with words on a page by an individual born decades after it was over. Many people from many countries, on all sides of any violent political conflict, are capable of doing horrific and unspeakable things. Rather than zeroing in on Austria-Hungary for these purposes, we could have just as easily focused on Britain’s colonization of India, or the genocide of Native Americans by my very own home country, the United States. No country is completely innocent here. Besides, almost all information we collectively know today about World War I and World War II is second-hand, meaning that many parts could be slightly inaccurate, and we’d never know for sure. If stories our friends tell us from last weekend can get ex
aggerated and blown out of proportion, compound that factor over years upon years, add in the fact that the winners are often the ones who write the history books to their liking, and we often end up with some missing pieces from the truth. The most important aspect is for us to absorb the lessons we can learn from studying the darkest parts of human nature and the systems we tend to develop, in order to attempt to do a better job of empathizing with others when we are in a position of power.
Systems can become very dangerous things when groupthink, privilege and collective shortsighted thinking takes over, and common sense goes out the window. Our strong over-identification with geopolitical borders -- lines on a map, essentially -- to determine who does and does not deserve humane treatment is one of the most damaging paradigms we operate as a species. If there is a child starving in Washington state who moves a few minutes north to a homeless shelter in Vancouver, Canada, does that somehow make them a sub-human creature whose life and suffering become unimportant to me? No, of course not. My empathy does not end at the edge of some imaginary line that someone else drew on a map centuries ago. If people are suffering, and I can do something to empower them, I feel that it’s my responsibility to do so.
If we closely examine the realms of human progress, social change, groupthink, and the manner in which we create and develop large scale organizations and systems, we can identify a specific trend that seems to constantly repeat itself over and over again, every time. To put this into the form of a simple analogy that’s easy to understand, I call it the white shoes theory of eroding values.
It’s always easy to tell when someone has just purchased a new pair of white shoes, because they are spotless. When we wear our new white shoes, we are extremely careful with them. We want to keep them clean, undamaged, and immaculate. Inevitably, as time goes by, they eventually lose some of their luster. They get scuffed up while we walk, some people step on them accidentally in crowds, and when it rains, we may find that they’ve gotten muddy. At first, we will attempt to maintain them as much as possible. We’ll try to wipe them down and clean them off to keep them looking like new, but regardless, after one trek through the mud, they just don’t look the same way they used to. As time goes by, we begin to accept that they are dirty. And finally, after enough time goes by, they become so discolored, dirty and worn down that we long to get another new pair again. So, we prepare to discard the old pair, and the search for a newer and better version begins.
When we look closely, we can see that this process of the degradation of the proverbial white shoes occurs in many places. In terms of small-scale systems, while observing sports teams, we can see that they strive to create an offensive or defensive strategy that’s new, pure, and seemingly impossible to stop. That is their version of the coveted white shoes. For awhile, opponents will be baffled, and the system will seem like it’s unbeatable. But once it’s put under the microscope enough times, and reviewed diligently enough, someone eventually finds a weakness in the system and exploits it, rendering it ineffective. At that point, the system is forced to evolve, or be discarded for a completely different one.
In realms such as business or philanthropy, organizations founded upon a specific set of values or a social mission can follow this same pattern as well. In the beginning of the founding of an organization, a small group of idealists may come up with an organizational strategy to implement, in order to set up a culture that embodies the values and system they envision. As they expand, some of the newer members who get involved may have ulterior motives that clash with the foundational mission. As these newer members recruit other members, and the original core team becomes more and more removed from the processes happening on the ground level, the organization can become completely detached from the original purpose that it was created. The core mission and values can become nothing more than mindless phrases posted up on the wall and lectured about in orientation meetings; words that people can easily memorize and spout off, but words that are hardly ever truly understood, embodied, or put into practice. For a textbook example of this concept in action, consider this fact: Inconceivably, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin were all nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. I imagine that this was not what Alfred Nobel had in mind when he donated his gargantuan life savings into creating this prize. This is what happens when systems go bad. This is the white shoes theory in action.
Religions can follow this same route as well. Often times throughout history, there have been spiritual teachers who diverged from the status quo path and popular religious beliefs of their era to a place of solitude, in order to decide for themselves what it meant to live a truly righteous life. They would discover spirituality and what felt right in their own way, and begin to live in a more pure and ideal manner. Their core messages often sounded strikingly similar: Love others, and be good to them as often as possible without condition. Treat people the way you want to be treated. They would take it upon themselves to do as much good as possible, and attempt to shed the illusory labels that divide people based upon surface level prejudice and hatred. They would spend time with those who society considered worthless, and worked towards empowering those who needed it most.
As a result, many others would sense the spiritual teacher’s good-natured presence, and realize that they had lost their way. They would try to become more like the highly admired spiritual teacher, and attempt to follow their ways of living. However, as the generations passed, it became too easy to copy the actions -- traditional rites and rituals -- while completely missing the core intentions beneath them. If you’ve ever seen people fighting over a parking spot outside of a house of worship, or attempting to promote widespread hatred of others for lifestyle choices that don’t hurt anyone, then you know exactly what I am talking about. This is a classic example of losing the forest for the trees, and focusing so much on the small, literal details that we lose sight of what’s really important in the big picture.
Predictably, when a rigid set of religious beliefs strays too far from the original core message of truly being as good a person and loving others as much as possible, a courageous member will diverge, begin thinking independently, and the cycle will begin again. From my perspective, the most important lesson I’ve learned from all of these spiritual teachers is that I do not need to subscribe to any one particular pre-conceived set of symbols, rites and rituals to live a righteous life. I don’t believe that any one person or group could ever have a monopoly on wisdom and spirituality. I can open my mind and learn from all different types of books, accept different people from all different walks of life without judgment, and figure out my own unique formula that utilizes my own best attributes to make the world a better place for others, while doing the least harm.
Another very significant set of systems that get distorted as per the patterns of the white shoes theory -- the elephants in the room -- are those of political governance and economic systems. When a new form of government or economic system is born, it is often based off of ideal principles, in hopes that it will ultimately lead to greater prosperity for all. Through time, people inevitably find loopholes to exploit, the system is corrupted, and it is forced to either evolve or be discarded for something else. What complicates matters here is that methods of governance and economic systems are closely intertwined, even though they are separate entities -- leading to the highly theoretical and highly polarized nature surrounding them. Neither of them exists independently, and so when things go wrong, there will always be a wide spectrum of opinions about the exact reasoning behind it, preventing the proper solutions (or any real solutions) from being implemented. Political beliefs and economic theories can and often do become as subjectively biased as someone attempting to prove that their religion is the only valid one, and that all others are false. Realistically, most of these arguments are not based off of what makes the most sense and what is most objectively moral, but rather what the arguer’s parents and community taught them to believe at a young age, a
nd what results in the most convenient and beneficial outcomes for them personally. Remember that at this same young age, we may have also been taught to blindly believe in things such as storks delivering babies via airmail, and the tooth fairy magically leaving money underneath the pillow -- but that doesn’t make them true.
In current times, it is evident that money has such a powerful effect on representative democracy that it can easily shift into an oligarchy. This is why we can observe very strong and polarized arguments in the United States today about capitalism versus socialism; as the nature of modern American capitalism has created steep economic inequalities that have also distorted opportunities for equal representation in government. Does a working class person in America today -- someone who truly represents the majority of the population -- honestly have a fair shot at running for positions of high office right now, without pledging allegiance to corporate interests that enjoy the status quo, and would rather keep things the way they are?
On the other hand, many people alive today can still remember the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and use that as evidence that communist ideals could never work, thus concluding that the current form of crony capitalism that exists is the best we can create. But is this really the best we can do? Does this mean that our systems can remain just as they are, and stay static and unchanged forever? When observing our large-scale systems through the lens of the white shoes theory, and paying attention to the rising levels of dissatisfaction with current affairs, it’s fairly obvious that at some point, we will either have to choose to evolve, or do nothing -- through which we would essentially be choosing to collapse. We can choose to change, or we can choose to perish.
It's All My Fault: How I Messed Up the World, and Why I Need Your Help to Fix It Page 4
