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pouring one out for the systems thinkers who can see the abyss and have to live with the darkness

i mean you can see the potential for change but you can also see the vast darkness and that you may not see substantive change within your lifetime being able to comprehend even slightly a complexity that you barely have the ability to affect

so much about systems change has to align for things to change on anything other than a decades+ timescale but for crisis events (and even in crisis events it's even odds on two steps forward, three steps back), so much is about luck and yet

I think part of the issue is that you can be a systems thinker-singular and then it feels like You Are The One Who Must Change It because You Can See but then again the whole point of the fellowship was that it was a Team Effort and you know exactly which one's the Boromir you're working with

imagine carrying around fucking icebergs the entire time like yes you also have your (helpful) stock and flow diagrams but then you add PEOPLE to them ugh donellameadows.org/systems-thin...

btw this explains why systems change relies upon people which duh

alternatively, you don't achieve radical change by changing a system, you achieve radical change by replacing a system with a new system