The world is constructed not of building blocks but of webs

Last week I attended a seminar at a wonderful organization called the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley. The CEL works with educators to integrate sustainable learning into school curricula. (I can’t think of a better mission!)

The seminar was on systems thinking. What is systems thinking, you might ask? Think of it as a worldview that connects all of the dots. It’s a wonderfully simple yet elegant way of looking at things, and we all need to do a lot more of it in our everyday work and personal lives.

Fritjof Capra, one CEL’s founders, was the main speaker. He is a physicist and theorist, and in his books and lectures, he draws brilliantly obvious parallels between natural systems and the way we humans should organize ourselves.

To fix the planet, Capra says, we need to start thinking less like auto mechanics (cars are, after all, designed by humans) and more like nature itself. Life isn’t mechanical; it’s systemic and holistic.

If you look at hard at how natural systems are organized, Capra says, you will realize that they are actually an infinite series of interconnected networks. And what are networks but simply sets of complex relationships. No man is an island, as John Donne said, and neither is any plant, animal, or mushroom.

Think about it: nothing can exist on the planet without being plugged into a much larger system. Once you realize this, you realize how flawed (how unnatural, if you will) our modern culture is, because we tend to value isolation over community. We all know there is something inherently wrong with gated communities and giant Hummers, but we don’t know exactly what. The answer is that both are ways to cut ourselves off from our fellow human beings—from the larger network that sustains us. Once we examine how nature really works, we begin to see things differently.

Who was it who said, “If you pull on a string, you’ll find that it is connected to the whole world”? Certainly he or she understood the essential concept of systems thinking. We must all be careful not to sever that string: the fate of the world depends on it.