by Hugh M. Lewis

Applied systems are human systems, and in answer to the why of applied systems we may state unequivocally that they are about, first and foremost, human empowerment. I define human empowerment as ultimately an individual condition of gaining the power to control and modulate changes in one's own life, if not in a complete sense, at least in a significant and focal manner in areas that are considered important to one's identity and adjustment in life. Telephones empower people with the ability to communicate with other people remote from their own location, beyond the range of natural hearing and broadcast vocalizations. Similarly, the Internet has empowered people with nearly instantaneous, affordable, temporally unconstrained communications worldwide. 

Human empowerment is ultimately and primarily about self-empowerment by the individual in relation to the social group of which that individual is a member. It is only after the fact of individual empowerment indirectly involved in empowerment of the group. But if empowerment of the group is achieved at the expense of the individual, as it so often has been in the past, then placing emphasis upon group empower mitigates in the long run against constructive structures of human development. This is why open, democratic social organization tends to be much more productive and economically vigorous than closed, authoritarian structures. This is why capitalist-based, open market economies generally out-perform closed, redistribution-style economic systems. Ideology in fact has little to do with this kind of difference, and therefore modes of production and the dialectics of materialism mean nothing if they are not truly representative of the patterning and tendencies of human systems. There has been no greater repression of the individual, and the individual sense of empowerment for the sake of the group, than in communist societies.

Human empowerment comes through providing opportunity structures for people to achieve, through education and employment, and to gain access to greater social control over resources, along with increased responsibility in the utilization of those resources. It is primarily a matter of providing people the means to empower themselves, or to realize a form of self-empowerment that is largely independent of any external structures that are coercive or obligatory in some manner that enforces conformity. Such empowerment is not achieved either by undue restriction of opportunities or resources, nor by the undue provisioning of resources in excess of what may really be need to achieve fulfillment. In this regard we should not confuse self-empowerment with social aggrandizement and status mongering.

Issues of human empowerment underlie and underscore and provide motivation and momentum to human development processes. This is as true on an individual level, as it is true on a collective or even a global level of articulation. It makes sense therefore than any program promoting human empowerment that is consonant with larger meta-systemic frameworks, will work positively toward the promotion of human and systems development in the larger meaning of the term, and that human empowerment therefore is one of the principle objectives of any proposed human development program.

Capacity building and resource development aside, human empowerment, psychologically speaking, is about self-determination and ultimately about self-motivation and independent achievement. Of course, circumstances in the environment can frustrate or facilitate individual achievement, but without the personal drive and initiative to achieve, no amount of external facilitation or cultivation of context will conduce to satisfactory returns. In general, young children, if provided the right feedback and facilitating, nurturing effective environment, will naturally strive to achieve--this is not because they are independent, but because they are dependent in their development upon the models and response patterns of their significant care-takers.

Anything that encourages dependency without self-determination debilitates against empowerment. Children learn to walk on their own, independent of the arms of their parent or caretaker who protect them from a fall. Anything that encourages independence through self-determination promotes human empowerment and in turn promotes human development. The problem of chronic, embedded poverty in the world, for instance, and the so-called "culture of poverty" and the paternalistic implications of the poor being like dependent children, are only encouraged into a form of debilitating secondary gain by the provisioning of money or resources. Provisioning jobs that are non-exploitative, that encourage learning, capacity building, development of skills and self-confidence, is a way of empowering the poor. Of course, poverty is its own vicious cycle that begets more poverty, and in time poor people can become habitually ingrained to the condition of being poor--they adapt even under extremely difficult circumstances, and though they are deemed failures by others, they must be deemed successful as people who manage to survive extremely harsh and chronic circumstances.

General Systems Essays, Vol. I