“He can upend it, but he can’t control it.”
This was a comment one of my doctoral colleagues made earlier this spring. It left me feeling the most hope I had felt in weeks. Because she is right.
I have kept this comment in my mind for months now, because at this moment, it feels like the levers of power are squarely in the hands of a few people. Every day, I open my inbox or visit social media and read dozens of stories about how the changes within our federal government have, in just a few weeks, created massive disruption for millions. It is so sudden that, in many ways, it feels like these individuals have significant control over what comes next.
But political power is not necessarily the same as control. When someone wants to be in power, seeking control becomes crucial to obtaining and maintaining it. But control of massive systems, like our U.S. government, is not simple. We’ve already seen this in action with the firing and subsequent rehiring of federal employees responsible for maintaining crucial parts of our public infrastructure. These missteps demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of complex systems. Instead, they illustrate a grappling for control and power, with a fundamental lack of understanding of what comes after. This should give us hope.
Complexity science, which involves understanding systems with behavior that is difficult to predict and control, can be a helpful and empowering tool as we make sense of this moment in our history. Examples of complex systems are all around us, including the weather, the behavior of organisms, urban environments, and the human brain. Simple rules govern each of these systems, but they can still produce incredibly divergent outcomes and behaviors. Complex systems are notoriously difficult to model due to the sheer number of relationships, unpredictable feedback loops, and interactions with external environmental forces.
Using complexity science as a framework, we can understand social systems as interrelated, nonlinear, and open, with feedback loops and nonproportional outcomes. Large organizations and governments are excellent examples of complexity science in action. Despite our efforts to create consistency and equilibrium in these systems through policies, processes, and ‘checks and balances,’ much of an organization’s future remains unpredictable. There really is no such thing as stasis in an organization – it is constantly reacting and moving toward something, even if it is not evident to the individuals within it.
This means that something small, like the evolution of a virus, can cause significant, unforeseen disruption across economic, social, educational, political, technological, and even personal spheres. The COVID-19 pandemic is an event about which we still do not fully understand the implications and will likely not be fully understood for years to come. Yet this simple biological force caused such incalculable disruption that complexity scientists and thinkers are using what we have learned to understand what could emerge in the future.
So, what does this mean for us right now?
The sheer scale of this self-imposed disruption can (and I suspect will, if carried out in the manner we have seen) be the folly of the political actors that have set it into motion. If we understand our government as the complex system it is, then we recognize that those who lead the current disruption have no more ability to predict the future than we do.
The control that some of our political leaders hold at this moment is only one aspect of the system. It appears they have much more control than they do, given that what has occurred represents a radical departure from our recent memory. However, they do not control the whole system because they can’t. Our government is an organic social system deeply embedded in nearly every aspect of our lives; it evolves, changes, responds, and moves. It is made up of us, our neighbors, and our friends. This means we, the people, have incredible power to benefit from and further disrupt the system as we push it in a different direction.
I am not suggesting that human suffering will not result from the disruption that has occurred. It will. The trend of removing programs and policies that protect our society’s most marginalized and vulnerable people is both morally abhorrent and deeply troubling. These actions will also have unexpected implications, ones that deeply wound our ability to live up to our country’s espoused ideals.
However, one feature of complex systems is nonlinearity, meaning small, seemingly insignificant actions can significantly influence the future. Nonlinearity is sometimes referred to as the Butterfly Effect – a poetic illustration whereby the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can result in a tornado thousands of miles away.
This means that all points of action, no matter how small, have the capacity to shape the future, and you have more influence in this system than you may think you do. If, at this moment, your resistance to racism, tyranny, and neofascism is planting a garden, emailing your representatives, or just showing up to a town hall meeting, then keep doing it.
The key is action – action is what shifts the system toward different outcomes. Your action is significant because it is an action, and you do not yet know what effect it will have. Do not let those in political power cast any doubt to the contrary. Do not let the sheer scale of action on the part of political leaders make you feel that your action is meaningless. A cautionary point: your inaction in this system also has implications. Because, in effect, your inaction is also action. Use inaction wisely.