The Second Law of Systems Thinking

Since everybody is talking about firearm laws this week, I'll take the opportunity to talk about some laws of my own. Well, not my own, but close to my heart. The laws of Systems Thinking, as laid out by Peter Senge in his book "The Fifth Discipline."

The harder you push the system, the harder it pushes back.

I'll start with the second law of Systems Thinking, because I have a great story about it:

I used to live next door to a young couple. They had a spaniel, except for when they went away for a weekend. Then I had a spaniel, because Snoopy would eventually dig underneath the fence to come and visit. Snoopy would dig, they would fill it up. Snoopy would dig somewhere else, they would fill it up. Eventually, at high expense, they laid concrete underneath the entire fence. Snoopy's digging days were gone forever...

But it took Snoopy less than a day to figure out that he can climb over the fence. Where he previously had to dig for half a day to go underneath, he learned that he could go over in 20 seconds.

Systems thinking has a name for this phenomenon. Compensating feedback: when well-intentioned interventions call forth responses from the system that offset the benefits of the intervention.

 

Many of the best-intentioned government interventions fall prey to compensating feedback. In the 1960s there were programs to build low-income housing and improve job skills in inner cities of the United States. Many were even worse off in the 1970s, despite the largesse of government aid. Why? Low-income people migrated from other cities and, eventually, the new housing units were over-crowded yet again and the job-training programs were swamped.

Peter Senge - The Fifth Discipline

Unintended consequences

"Unintended consequences" has become a bit of a buzz-word. Both sides will use it. They will say licensed firearms falling into criminal hands is an unintended consequence of me trying to defend myself.

I will say, no. Look at the way people are killed in farm- and xenophobic attacks. People will find new ways to kill, and the more vulnerable the victim, the more horrific the method.

Systems thinkers say unintended consequences is just one aspect of systems behaviour. There is more to it. They have recognised patterns (called archetypes) and guidelines (called system laws) that bring structure to our view of the system that we live in.  And that is what this series of articles is about: Bringing lessons that we have learned elsewhere to the gun debate.

(And proving that gun owners are not the only people who think we should focus on core problems rather than symptoms.)