In today’s post, I am looking at absurdity in Systems Thinking. Absurdity is an official term used in the school of philosophy called existentialism. An existentialist believes that existence precedes essence. This means that our essence is not pregiven. Our meaning and purpose are that which we create. In existentialism, the notion of absurdity comes from the predicament that we are by nature meaning makers, and we are thrown into a world devoid of meaning. We do not have direct access to the external world; therefore, our cognitive framework has been tweaked by evolution to seek meaning in all perturbations we encounter. We are forever trying to make sense of a world devoid of any sense or meaning.

We like to imagine that there is greater meaning to this all and that there is a “system” of objective truths in this world. In this framework, we all have access to an objective reality where we can use 2 x 2 matrices to solve complex problems. In the existentialist framework, we see that instead of a “system” of objective truths, we have multiplicity of subjective truths. Soren Kierkegaard, one of the pioneers of existentialism, viewed subjective truth as the highest truth attainable.

When we talk about a “system” we are generally talking about a collection of interrelated phenomena that serves a purpose. From the existentialism standpoint, every “system” is a construction by someone to make sense of something. For example, when I talk about the healthcare system, I have a specific purpose in mind – one that I constructed. The parts of this system serve the purpose of working together for a goal. However, this is my version and my construction. I cannot act as if everyone has the same perspective as me. I could be viewing this as a patient, while someone else, say a doctor, could see an entirely different “system” from their viewpoint. Systems have meaning only from the perspective of a participant or an observer. We are talking about systems as if they have an inherent meaning that is grasped by all. When we talk about fixing “systems”, we again treat a conceptual framework as if they are real things in the world like a machine.  The notion of absurdity makes sense here. The first framework is like what Maurice Merleau-Ponty, another existential philosopher, called “high-altitude thinking”.  Existentialism rejects this framework. In existentialism, we see that all “systems” are human systems – conceptual frameworks unique to everyone who constructed them based on their worldviews and living experiences. Each “system” is thus highly rich from all aspects of the human condition.

Kevin Aho wrote about this beautifully in the essay, “Existentialism”:

By practicing what Merleau-Ponty disparagingly calls, “high-altitude thinking”, the philosopher adopts a perspective that is detached and impersonal, a “God’s eye view” or “view from nowhere” uncorrupted by the contingencies of our emotions, our embodiment, or the prejudices of our time and place. In this way the philosopher can grasp the “reality” behind the flux of “appearances,” the essential and timeless nature of things “under the perspective of eternity” (sub specie aeternitatis). Existentialism offers a thoroughgoing rejection of this view, arguing that we cannot look down on the human condition from a detached, third-person perspective because we are already thrown into the self-interpreting event or activity of existing, an activity that is always embodied, felt, and historically situated. 

We are each thrown here into the world devoid of any meaning, and we try to make meaning. In the act of making sense and meaning, we tend to believe that our version of world and systems are real. We often forget to see the world from others’ viewpoints.

Every post about Systems Thinking must contain the wonderful quote from West Churchman – the systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another. This beautifully captures the essence of Systems Thinking. Existentialism teaches us to realize the absurdity of seeking meaning in a world devoid of any meaning, while at the same time realizing that the act of seeking meaning itself is meaningful for us.

Always keep on learning!

References:

[1] Aho, Kevin, “Existentialism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2023/entries/existentialism/&gt;.