A Systems-Based Way of Life

by Hugh M. Lewis

We must seriously entertain the notion of the general adoption of a way of life, a worldview, and a general value orientation, derivative from and defined by a general systems based frame of reference. What would such a way of life look like? What values would be most important to such a framework? What would be the consequences of the general adoption of such an orientation?

The closest example I have found that might illustrate such an orientation, minus the extreme anti-scientific advocacy, is in Bill Mollison's construction and framework of "Permaculture" or permanent agriculture, that takes a holistic systems-based approach to redefining the human relationship with the natural world in a manner that is at once more efficient, decentralized, and more aesthetically and ethically satisfactory. Of course, such an approach has not yet addressed in a reasonable or realistic manner the redesign of tenement slums or flats in third world countries, or the challenge of educating and empowering large groups of impoverished people with the tools and means for real adaptation and change.

One would be hard pressed therefore to formulate a ready-made or canned recipe for a "systems based way of life." It would be important that a systems framework is open and tolerant of a wide range of alternation and alternative points of view and diversity of values. I see it therefore as being basically non-didactic and non-prescriptive in form--available for people to peruse, adopt or reject, but not coercive or compulsive or even repressive in any manner. Thus, I see no set of negative commandments connected to such a value system.

There might be possible some positive and constructive facets of such a general orientation that can be actively promoted in the world, though it is unlikely that very many people will ever develop or achieve a "post-conventional" moral point of view or pattern of adaptation in the world. We are therefore talking about the requirement of shifting what might be called received, conventional wisdom and morality, away from traditional or standards points of view, and moving these frameworks more toward a systems-based orientation. 

General openness and acceptance of a relativistic worldview seems part and parcel of a systems-based orientation. This in turn requires a capacity to deal with chronic uncertainty and complexity, and this is a capacity not shared equally by all people. In any given population, or in the world population as a whole, there are always people who are prone to adopting extreme points of view, and who need such extreme orientations, in order to cope with even the minimal prerequisites of daily living. And in my mind, the only thing worse than extreme intolerance, is the intolerance of such extreme orientations. The question in my mind is whether the system as a whole, or the received and standard conventional morality of a society, embraces or encourages such extreme orientations, or functions to discourage such orientations from developing. It seems to me that under healthy and constructive circumstances, such proclivity towards extremes would be reduced and more people satisfied with a middle-ground orientation.

The other aspect of this is the relative transparency of cultural values and received points of view, and the tendency to naturalize and reify orientations that are psychologically or culturally specific and unique, but not shared by very many people in the larger context of reality. From this arises ideological complexes and entire systems of rationalization and symbolic legitimization of otherwise rather narrow and intolerant. There is a sense that there is no need within a systems based framework for any received ideological system as primary or a basic statement of values that should be expressed except perhaps for the values of non-violence, creativity and balance. There is no need to stand on convention or to promulgate any single closed ideological orientation if we recognize that human cultural systems are "man-made" and that we have a wide range of alternative systems from which to choose. This is not to say that precedent and tradition cannot be respected, but only that the world of the future is not the world of the past.

The aim neither is the development of a cult or a cult-like movement. It is merely the recognition, perhaps for the first time in human history, that for once we really do have options even if many people are committed to a world still without basic freedoms to choose. Under such a circumstance, with the ready availability of global communications, there is no longer a need to think exclusively or restrictively in terms of anachronistic structures. The systems we develop, at all levels, and in all ways, are ours to do so as we choose, for better or for worse. Systems themselves have no intrinsic moral value. It is only in terms of their destructive or constructive consequences that we must measure systems, as well as in terms of their efficiency and efficacy in achieving the goals that they are designed for.

What we are referring to ultimately is the development of a global society with a global frame of reference that transcends conventional or traditional moral and cultural systems and orientations, while at the same time tolerating alternative received points of view and orientations.

Acceptance of a meta-ethical paradigm of universal natural rights and responsibilities seems to me to be central to such a framework. Providing the context within which such a paradigm can be realistically articulated and sanctioned in a larger sense requires the collective corporate organization of many different people who share a similar framework.

General Systems Essays, Vol. I