Was listening to a great podcast called Numbers and Narratives while biking into work the other week, that interviewed Yaneer Bar-Yam, founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute. What he said further confirmed this belief. To wit: “When things happen that affect everybody, they happen because of how things depend on each other…” Things happen that affect everybody. They happen because”
I’ve long espoused the belief that we are intimately connected to others and the world around us. We in the Western world in particular value the Individual with autonomy and control over our fate and like to see ourselves as largely independent of our surroundings. We hear stories like, “Well despite my poor upbringing I was able to rise above the challenge and pull myself up by my bootstraps, etc.”
Yet what we forget is how our actions, our outcomes, indeed our very identities are closely linked to those of other people and our environment. You cannot separate the two. We like to think we are wholly in control of our lives and have autonomy over our actions. But do we really?
Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than, for example, a viral or disease outbreak.
When the wealthy CEO complains about the annual flu epidemic, he forgets that the actions he has taken have had a substantive financial impact on the population, which in turn affects that population’s ability to a) take steps to prevent acquiring said flu, and b) limit the spread of said flu once it has taken hold, both of which, ironically come full circle in affecting that very same person’s probability of contracting the flu. In summary, his actions have, indirectly through a series of causal chain of events, caused him to contract the flu. Public health is inextricably linked to the health of the least healthy subpopulation. The more unhealthy populations pose a risk to the healthy populations. Thus, when our system votes down the option to support the poorest of the poor, we are ironically shooting ourselves in the foot; showing no concern for the health of those lowest on the socioeconomic ladder will inevitably cause a spread of that pandemic to those higher on the socioeconomic ladder. Our lives are interdependent upon each other.
Another example is in how greatly our driving behavior affects each other. I spend a lot of time riding on the road, and being an inquisitive and observant person, I’ve learned a lot about driver behavior. Would you believe that drivers who have a heavy foot on the gas pedal are killing people? Allow me to explain: 4,486 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq and 2,345 U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan according to the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/4486-american-soldiers-ha_b_5834592.html). When Americans drive in an aggressive manner (surging when a red light turns green, driving 15-20 mph over the speed limit, not letting off the gas when they see a traffic light turn red up ahead, etc), they consume far more gasoline than someone driving more efficiently and intelligently. Those aggressive drivers must replenish the fuel at a higher rate at the pump, which collectively increases the market demand for gasoline/oil in the US. With a natural resource such as oil in relatively limited supply domestically, our government must get its oil sources abroad. This reliance on foreign oil increases our chances of having to go to war, when diplomacy fails, to take by force the oil that Americans use and rely upon so heavily. In order to enforce this action, our government backs up its strong words with military force. Inevitably, soldiers are placed into harm’s way and lo and behold: several thousand of them die as a result of IEDs and bullets. Once again: our lives are interdependent upon each other.
Thus there is a direct causal link between flooring the “pedal to the metal” when you drive, and some mother in Michigan whose son in the US Army is dead. Complex systems like the world in which we live are partially interdependent.
So let us consider the ramifications: that same person who drag-races from a stop whenever the light turns green is the very same person who is causing soldiers to die. How’s that for a heavy conscience?
I find this particularly fascinating because so many of the massive, gas-guzzling Ford F-350 heavy-duty pickup trucks have bumper stickers reading something like, “Proud to be an American” and “Support Our Troops”. How ironic that their substantial dependence on gasoline, and thus oil, actually contributes to the killing of those very same troops that they subsume to want to support.
There is no denying that this happens, that it happens on a daily basis, and on a massive scale. And yet most (if not all) people are completely oblivious to the implications of their actions on others’. Let me put it another way: If I asked if you would like an otherwise innocent mother to lose her son to combat wounds, how would you answer? Unless you’re an inhuman sociopath, you’d answer with a vehement “No way!” Yet knowing that your driving habits would get that very same solider killed, would you knowingly continue with your same habits? A rational person, understanding this sound logic, would also reply No. And yet, the overwhelming majority of American drivers continue to behave in a way that will inevitably get more of their American soldiers killed. I call that irresponsible. I call that sad. It is a testament to just how little most people actually THINK. Most people drive in a zombie-like trance on autopilot, never thinking how their actions affect the lives (and deaths) of others. Sad. Then they weep like babies when their 18-year old is sent home from Iraq in a body basket with an American flag neatly folded over his body. Sigh: if only they understood the interdependency of complex systems.
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