Thinking on the Level of the System
Focusing less on individuals and more on the networks that sustain us
Each person is “an open system continuously engaged in mutual development with the outside,” psychoanalyst Gilbert J. Rose wrote in a 1977 essay.
Open. You, an open system. “You” are a “we.”
“Everything that exists on earth — from human bodies to rivers to cities to ocean currents — does so as part of an ever-expanding, vascularized flow system,” Sarah LaBrie explains in thermodynamic engineering professor Adrian Bejan’s Design in Nature, “with individual elements evolving together over time to increase efficiency of movement and growth.”
When humans distance ourselves from our “context,” we may suffer depression.
The natural world is all around us, supporting our existence even when it may seem merely peripheral. We could not breathe without its regulation of oxygen. We would dehydrate without access to clean water.
And we depend on human social networks for our healthcare and other labor that gives us our quality of life.
We do not exist apart from everything that keeps us alive.
