I have recently been thinking a good deal about systems theory, following my reading of the detailed textbook created by Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi, which I have reviewed here. There are a great many ways that their application of systems theory to all sorts of subjects can also enrich our understanding of the Middle Way, so this could well be the focus of a whole series of blogs encompassing the relationship between systems theory, the Middle Way, and everything from chemistry to economics. However, the first thing to explore is the basic relationship between systems theory and the Middle Way itself. Systems theorists do not seem to use the term ‘Middle Way’ or be aware of it, but it seems to me that it could also add a helpful dimension to their thinking.

As I see it, systems theory requires the Middle Way, and the Middle Way requires systems thinking. What they most basically have in common is a focus on relationships between things rather than linear processes, an attempt to take the complexity of total conditions into account, and an appreciation of the limitations of closed feedback loops. Each of these is worth exploring a little:

• Focusing on relationships rather than linear processes means that we do not identify one ‘thing’ and treat it as though it was independent. For example, if we are concerned about a recent wave of knife crime in London we do not just look at police levels and assume that the rise in crime must necessarily be solely due to police cuts. We see crime as a complex phenomenon with lots of relationships to changes in family life, youth facilities, education, economic conditions, the internet, and individual psychological states. All of these, in turn, are complex networks of relationships between ‘things’. The boundaries that we give to things are conventional and ever-shifting rather than final, so rather than pretend that they are fixed by our language we need to try to talk, instead, about ongoing types of relationships. We can note, for example, that there is an interaction between some types of crime and the ability of the criminals to video the crime and put it on the internet. It’s not that ‘the internet causes crime’ or that ‘crime causes the internet’: rather these two networks are in a mutually reinforcing loop relationship.
• An attempt to take the complexity of total conditions into account means that although we can’t have an omniscient total view of everything, we can at least take into account the limitations of the view we have now compared to such a total view, and compensate for it as best we can. We can justify our beliefs in more or less adequate ways. If we simply assume that the view we have now is total, then this is absolutisation, an inadequate way of thinking. If we make allowance for as wide a range of conditions as we can practically manage before we make a judgement, that will aid our adequacy. Best of all, though, is to maintain provisionality in the judgements we do make, so as to take into account the possibility of unknown unknowns.
• An appreciation of the limitations of closed feedback loops. According to systems theory, living systems rely on closed feedback loops, which amplify the effects of a particular unique feature in that system. By maintaining a particular process without adjusting further to the world around it, an organism maintains its distinctiveness and its boundaries. Thus, for example, genetic reproduction involves a largely closed feedback loop by which living organisms create more living organisms of nearly the same kind, and genetic faults as well as helpful features are perpetuated. Factories, in a closed feedback loop, produce more and more of the same goods, in dependence on the economic system that produces demand for those goods. At a psychological level, an obsession with football has a tendency to produce more obsession with football. Closed feedback loops are the basis of life, but they are also rigid and interfere with adaptation to new conditions. Thus genetic reproduction became sexual so as to incorporate some new genes and produce an open, adaptive element in the feedback, factories need to redesign their goods from time to time, and football obsessives have to pay attention to their jobs, partners and houses.

The Middle Way is an approach for us, in our particular embodied situation of judgement. It involves avoiding closed feedback loops and cultivating open ones, because sticking to closed loops is the constant easy temptation for us – the shortcut that makes things worse in the long run. Yes, in the bigger picture, all life needs closed feedback loops as well as open ones. In our specific situation of judgement, however, and our practice as humans in an advanced civilisation, it’s open ones that we have to work to achieve. That’s because closed feedback loops are the easy default, constantly reinforced by group pressure, tradition and authority. To engage in an open feedback loop in our judgement is to change our minds in response to a problem we have recognised in our previous view, leading to us revising our view. That’s uncomfortable but necessary.

I think it is interesting to try to restate the Middle Way entirely in the terms of systems theory. When doing this I came up with a list of principles. The last five of these are equivalent to the Five Principles of the Middle Way but using different language.

• Absolutisation is the attempt to treat a complex system as linear.
• The Middle Way is an attempt to respond to complex systems as such.
• All systems are to some extent complex, and thus basically unknowable from our finite position – though their degree of complexity varies (principle of scepticism).
• Recognising complexity entails constant recognition of the limitations of our understanding of conditions, actively applied through openness to alternatives (principle of provisionality).
• Complex systems can be nudged but not reprogrammed (principle of incrementality).
• Linear reductions of complex systems may either take the form of conceptually reducing the whole system to a linear process (positive absolute), or denying the working of the system (negative absolute) – both of these need to be equally avoided (principle of agnosticism).
• Disruptions in complex systems are resolved by stimulating further complex development (principle of integration).

Every time we think we have got ‘truth’ or ‘falsehood’ nailed down, it is only because there is complexity that we haven’t taken into account. That applies to some extent in every judgement, but particularly in relation to living systems (including everything human as well as biology and ecosystems), because their complexity is so much greater. Every element of a complex system is adjusted to every other element (like each member of a flock of birds that wheels together) so if you change one element it will change the others in ways that are not entirely predictable.

So, complex systems cannot be reprogrammed, because you can’t just redesign a complex system from scratch – it has to gradually evolve in relation to the other elements of the system, together with all the other systems. Engineers get away with building things (like cars or bridges) from scratch to some extent, until entropy sets in and things start going wrong, but you can’t engineer genes, for example, without threatening all those complex inter-evolved relationships. That’s why living systems can only be nudged, and why change in the complex systems we call ourselves has to be incremental.

Every time we over-simplify our experience into an absolute, we’re taking some element of our experience and interpreting it in a way that may be justified under a given set of assumptions, but does not take into account that complexity. If you take the example of the complex system known as religion, you can reduce that to a linear system in one way by assuming that it is essentially all about the truth or falsity of particular beliefs (such as the existence of God), or by dismissing the entire system, ignoring the role it has developed to fulfil in relation to lots of intersecting systems. Either way, your approach won’t be adequate to the complexity of religion and the relationships it has with everything else.

When we experience some sort of conflict, that can also be seen as disruption in a complex system. Up to a point, that disruption may be handled by the checks and balances in that system. For example, a bit of stress may result in a minor illness, but then we recover. However, if you create too much conflict in a system it can go past a tipping point that destroys it: whether you’re talking about a person overwhelmed by stress or an ecosystem overwhelmed by human activity. Integration in Middle Way Philosophy is the kind of development we can make, as individuals or as social systems, to heal conflict and thus avoid that danger of destruction. As we become more integrated our system becomes ever more complex – for example we develop greater levels of awareness that enable us to regulate stress by recognising when we are in danger of being overwhelmed, and using relaxation or meditation before we reach that point. It requires further brain development to have the neural connections to develop this awareness.

What I find missing from the systems theory I have read so far is sufficient focus on the experience of those who are engaging with it. What exactly should we do in response to the recognition of systems and complexity? Middle Way Philosophy starts from this place of immediate experience, and considers the universal question of where to go next. Systems theory as a whole, however, often seems to focus on overall systemic description of aspects of the universe, whether or not that is relevant to individual judgement in our current situation. Starting from where we are in a world of systems, we need the Middle Way, or at least something like it that fulfils the same functions.

Picture: Flock of birds by Chris Rasmussen (public domain)