Systems Change From Within

We are all part of the systems in which we find ourselves. This includes economic, political, cultural and environmental systems. Try as we may we cannot extricate ourselves from them. We are embedded in historical time and place. This is both bad news and good. The bad news is that no one has clean hands. The good news is that a system can be perturbed from anywhere within it thus provoking systems change. Since we are part of a system we can change it from within.

Rosa Parks perturbed the justice system from inside a bus. Elizabeth Warren is perturbing the financial system from inside the Senate. As a citizen our vote can perturb the governance system. As a consumer our purchases can perturb the economic system. Our friendships can perturb the cultural system. Our ideas can perturb systems of assumptions and common sense.

We find ourselves in an unjust, unequal, unsustainable, plutocratic, intolerant and violent societal system. From within this system our every word and deed based in justice, equality, sustainability, participation, tolerance and nonviolence sends ripples throughout the system disturbing its equilibrium. When a critical threshold is reached the very nature and structure of the system is transformed.

Witness the challenge to the divine right of kings and the rise of democracies. Witness the legal changes supporting sexual and racial equality. Witness the fall of the Berlin Wall and monolithic Communism. Witness the collapse of Apartheid in South Africa. Witness the ban on smoking. Witness the changes in views on marriage rights. And on and on . . .

Fortunately there is only change. Nothing stays the same. The question then is where do we need to be headed next? What change can be around the corner if we each nudge in that direction?