See beyond the B.S. with Donella Meadows

Can\’t make sense of all of the social media posts and news articles that you read? That\’s because you are only paying attention to the tip of the iceberg:At that \”events\” level, all you can really do is react and let news feeds beat you over the head with information. You are not asking questions that get to the heart of what is really going on. If you are looking to go deeper, the best place to start is with Donella Meadows\’ Thinking in Systems.Meadows is the like the Godmother of systems thinking. She worked on the MIT Systems Dynamics team lead by Jay Forrester back in the 1970s, which used computer modeling to predict when food production, and  population and economic growth would run up against planetary limits. They called for a global rethinking about progress and environmental degradation before it was cool. Donella Meadows then distilled their expertise into this book, which shows how systems thinking can help us solve huge intractable problems like climate change and poverty.Meadows makes it fun to learn about systems, and since reading the book, I have looked at the world with completely new eyes. This is definitely a book that I will continue to reread and apply, so I recommend that you check it out as well. Here are some of my quotes and notes on the Primer:

The problem and the solution both lie within the system\”We each choose how much complexity to look at\”Slow is sustainableWe sacrifice long-run resilience for short-run productivity and stability. Or, in the language of Nassim Taleb, we\’re making ourselves fragile to black swan eventsPeople invent boundaries\”Education is what remains when one has forgotten what one has learned in school\” – Albert EinsteinThe question you ask determines the answer you get