Archiv der Kategorie: Interconnected thinking

In this area it is all about systemic thinking, chaos and complexity.

That’s all there is

On 24 December 1968, a photograph, taken by William Anders while orbiting the moon with Apollo 8, changed its global identity. Through this unusual change of perspective, mankind was suddenly presented of how finite our lifeworld is. At the same time, computers made it possible to carry out simulations that facilitated the anticipation of the development of the world. The study The Limits to Growth appeared in 1972 and predicted that the absolute limits of growth in terms of world population, industrialization, environmental pollution and food production would be reached by 2072. At the same time, the Gaia hypothesis emerged, which sees the Earth as a self-regulating organism that resists its destruction when necessary. Regardless of what idea we have, we should be aware that we are on the only planet we can reach. Everything that happens here always happens to everyone sooner or later.

Given this interconnectedness, it is difficult to understand why some people still think they are not affected by the fundamental developments.

  • Shared atmosphere
    Without this air cover that surrounds the earth, there would be no life on earth. The interaction of fauna and flora is crucial for the 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygen. Natural chemical and physiological processes maintain the vital balance. Some people seem to think that the borders of their country also apply to the airspace and that they are not part of the problem.
    The Earth, though, is a closed system in which, at first glance, problems are pushed from the left pocket into the right pocket – without realizing that you cannot get rid of the disadvantages.
  • Shared water
    We have 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of water on earth – 97% salt water, less than 1% of fresh water in the groundwater and thereof just three thousandth in surface water. Life on Gaia depends on fresh water. Polluting this resource hurts everyone, also those contaminating.
    To ensure that we will still have the quantities of fresh water we need tomorrow, we have to take care by ourselves, i.e. not to destroy this resource with nitrate from fertilizers, microplastics, oil, medicines and fracking for the benefit of a fistful of dollars.
  • Shared resources
    We are sitting on finite resources – coal, oil and gas, copper, lead, gold and rare-earth elements. Without these materials we cannot maintain our current standard of living – food and water supplies, energy, mobility, as well as information and communication. The related estimates are limited to the deposits known to us. These are sufficient between 30 and two hundred years. After that, game over.
  • Shared destiny
    The spaceship Earth is so large that it seems to us as if it were a flat disc. We are protected and kept alive by the atmosphere. Our vital supplies are what we produce on land and draw from the soil and the sea. That’s all there is. We consume more than twice as many raw materials nowadays, as we did fifty years ago. Every year, twelve million hectares of agricultural land gets lost through overgrazing, unsuitable cultivation methods, erosion as well as road and urban development. At the same time, the population will rise to nine billion people, who want to be supplied by 2050. Whatever happens on one side of the earth has an impact on the rest – without using the current, magic keyword.

Bottom line: The view of the rising earth has shown mankind how limited our scope of action is and will remain for a long time. There is only one atmosphere, shared water reservoirs and finite resources that make us ONE community of fate. Shifting resources from one side to the other harms the other side and adds nothing to the earth. Despite all the clues, influential people still haven’t understood the limits of growth, although they are also affected, because that’s all there is.

P.S.: At this point thanks to Greta.

Unintended consequences

Most of our working time, we take care of routine tasks that need to be done and are not a challenge or a fun factor. Since they are neither difficult nor particularly complex, they are decided and processed on the side without eagerness. Somebody purchases USB sticks for the employees, who quadruple the memory and only cost a fraction. Due to the cheaper Chinese manufacturer, you can save a few Euros based on the required quantity. That afterwards employees regularly lose their data or are not able to connect the stick, that because of that customer conversations fail, that as a result important contracts do not materialize and therefore eventually the company’s turnover slumps dramatically, is incommensurate with the 1250 Euros saved. It’s the old story that short-sighted savings can destroy the basis for business success – just like the supervisor, who shoots a staff member, although the employee is the reason for his own position.

Decisions usually do not only produce the desired results, but you also pay for it with unintended consequences. The reasons for this are manifold.

  • Blindness
    In extreme cases one cannot imagine consequences at all – neither the wanted nor the unwanted. This results from a context-free consideration of a decision: Do I choose solution A or solution B? Since there is an interest behind a decision, it is easy to forget that there can also be consequences which subsequently burden the result.
    For this reason, when a decision is taken you should not only ask what you enable with one alternative or the other, but also whether there are unwanted consequences that you do not want to suffer from under no circumstances.
  • Simplification
    The trivialization of a decision-making is the unintended creation of the aforementioned blindness of the unwanted effects. This happens by oversimplifying the influencing variables through generalizations, stereotypes and ambiguities so that the findings become arbitrary. Although this popularization makes the decisions more comprehensible, it does not improve the decision.
    For this reason, decisions should not be trivialized. There is no guarantee that the forecasts made will come true. However, predictions improve when the decision parameters are adequately considered.
  • Ignorance
    A further variant that leads to a form of blindness is the lack of understanding caused by too little or too much information. How is one supposed to make a reasonable decision, if one does not sufficiently know the circumstances? The butterfly effect has taught us that you can never know enough to make a reliable prediction. However, that does not mean that you should forego more clarity to be able to make better decisions.
    For this reason one should always question the own view. Is the important information available? Is my view consistent? Do I understand everything? Since you can never understand everything, there always remains a residual risk that decreases with more clarity.
  • Acceleration
    Unpleasant decisions are often rushed. You act with the attitude: If you don’t know what the outcomes are going to be, you should at least make the decision quickly. And this, although this form of hurry results in more unintended consequences.
    For this reason, ANY decision should have an appropriate timeframe. In business, there are rarely matters of life and death that should be decided in seconds. Common sense suggests that you should sleep on every decision – in order to come to a better conclusion during the nightly batch processing.
  • Bias
    Opportunities that require a decision are burdened with unconscious distortions of perception, remembrance, thinking, and judgment. These filters are called cognitive distortion or bias. An example is groupthink, in which an individual is influenced by the opinion of the group that leads to making worse decisions than one would make without the group. Another example is the control illusion that tells you that you can control random influences.
    For this reason, a decision should be objectified, for example by taking the neutral positions or those of other people and by creating a Pro-Con list from their different points of view.

Bottom line: Decisions do not only contain desired outcomes, but also consequences, which may have little to do with the result, but can be very harmful. One should ensure that shehe sees the (un)wanted consequences, does not draw conclusions by exaggerated simplification, knows more through adequate information, thinks everything through with sufficient time and avoids distortions of perception, remembering, thinking and judging, in order to not suffer from unintended consequences.