Why Whole Systems Thinking?
Interbeing with a living planet
“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. ‘Interbeing’ is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix ‘inter’ with the verb ‘to be,’ we have a new verb, inter-be.
If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in the sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.
Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can see that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here — time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. ‘To be’ is to inter-be- we cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.
Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper would be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to its mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of ‘non-paper’ elements. And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without non-paper elements, like mind, logger, sunshine, and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
The poem, entitled Interbeing, by the Vietnamese monk and poet Thich Nhat Hanh offers a great example of whole systems thinking that illustrates the fundamental interconnectedness of our planetary system which we are now also beginning to understand through physics, complexity science, ecology and earth systems science.
We are participants in a dynamic whole within which we define ourselves and create our reality through our participation in relationships. To be is to inter-be. In many ways, the word ‘inter-being’ lies at the heart of the emerging whole systems understanding of sustainability which demands a regenerative approach.
The world we live in today began to take shape in that remarkable period in European history called the renaissance and the scientific revolution that followed. The powerful scientific method with its mechanistic metaphors aims to understand whole systems by taking them apart, explaining the functioning of each part in order to get an understanding of the whole.
Along with the specialisation of human knowledge and activities, the scientific method has enable a breathtaking explosion in knowledge, insight, and technological development. The flipside of reductionism and specialisation is that we run the danger of not paying enough attention to the fundamental interconnectedness and interrelatedness of all these fields. This can lead to many unintended and often negative consequences.
The whole systems understanding of the world recognizes that a whole is always more than the simple sum of its parts.
Many of the interrelated problems we face, as change agents in the transition towards a regenerative human presence on Earth, have their root cause in a way of thinking that has not paid enough attention to whole systems and their dynamic interconnectedness and relationships.
Reductionism and specialisation are very useful tools, but over the last 500 years they have turned into our culturally dominant way of working and way of seeing the world. Whole systems thinking can help us to overcome this potentially dangerous bias.
Experts and specialists are important contributors to most sustainability projects, but we also need integrators and generalists that help to put the contribution of each discipline into systemic relationships and help to contextualize these contributions made by the specialists. Too often we employ limited progress indicators or inadequate measures of success based on the dominance of a particular discipline or perspective.
“When we limit ourselves to fragmented approaches of dealing with systemic problems, it is not surprising that our solutions prove inadequate. If our species is to survive the predicament we have created for ourselves, we must develop a capacity for whole-systems thought and action.”
— David Korten, 1995
One way to define the word ‘system’ is as a set of interconnected elements that together form a coherent pattern we can refer to as a ‘whole’. Such a system exhibits properties that are properties of the whole, emerging out of the interactions and relationships of the individual elements.
This systems definition could be applied to a molecule, a cell, a human being, a community, or the planet. In many ways a system is less a ‘thing’ than a pattern of relationships and interactions — a pattern of organization of constituting elements. The Greek root of the word system is ‘synhistanai’ which literally means ‘to place together.’
“From the moon, the Earth is so small and so fragile, and such a precious little spot in that Universe, that you can block it out with your thumb. Then you realize that on that spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you — all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it right there on that little spot that you can cover with your thumb. And you realize from that perspective that you’ve changed forever, that there is something new there, that the relationship is no longer what it was.”
— Rusty Schweickart, Apollo 17 Astronaut
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Daniel Christian Wahl — Catalyzing transformative innovation in the face of converging crises, advising on regenerative whole systems design, regenerative leadership, and education for regenerative development and bioregional regeneration.
Author of the internationally acclaimed book Designing Regenerative Cultures
