Kalle reflects on what to do, and symptoms from not doing it

Design is about what to do. Fatal symptoms from not doing it are interesting too. But the two aspects are entirely different with regard to things like complexity, dimensions, feasible strategies and different fields of scientists who keep publishing in their respective journals. Climatologists for instance, are trained to understand the symptom Climate change. But generally not how to design this problem out of the system, along with all other sustainability releated symptoms as well. Symptoms caused by unsustainable design of our societies and organizations are enmeshed in endless interrelated connections and feed-backs, expressed in various dimensions. Leading to unmanagable levels of complexity. Whereas what to do is about design science informing strategies by operationally clear principles (boundary conditions for (re)design of goals) and logical/intuitive step-wise processes to get there (see the last paragraph in this article). So the two aspects should not be confused. But in today’s political discourse, they are! More or less everything today is about futile efforts to “back off” from Symptoms related to myriad sustainability challenges, in the belief that this would help. Which is not difficult. It is impossible. This is sad and frightening, because at the end of the day it is what we do to survive as a civilization that counts.

More in detail: Say that a piece of a car is destroyed, causing five other pieces of the car’s powertrain to also be destroyed, all from neglecting the need for lubrication of the first piece. Whereafter a family on their way to a vacation home in a remote area must spend the night in the car in the middle of nowhere, freezing and getting sick because of this. The lack of lubrication upstream, expressed in simple and cheap terms of action and gallons of oil, explains the myriad diverse, interrelated, and expensive-to-repair symptoms downstream. Most people are capable of understanding such interrelated cause-symptom chains, including the need to tackle the causes upstream in cause-symptom chains where this is relatively simple to understand as well as doing.

Or say that you are entering a flooded kitchen. Do you begin by worrying about the heights and functions of the thresholds that lead into the other rooms, trying to figure out into which room the flooding will happen next and to what consequences? Perhaps also phoning up construction experts and awaiting their answers before acting? Or do you move upstream to turn off the tap? The consequences of the flooded system that has already caused some damage must be managed too, of course, but not instead of tackling the root causes, upstream in cause-symptom chains.

The dominating number of sustainability related tools and frameworks out there, however, are solely about symptoms including strong warnings if you don’t take those symptoms seriously. In some futile hope that alarm-bells ringing for this or that would suffice. Climate change, shrinking biodiversity, poverty, toxicity, ecotoxicity, terrorism, declining food production capacity, shrinking metal reserves, reduced social mobility, accidents and geopolitical conflicts related to nuclear power/arms are but examples of symptoms. Which come in myriad different interrelated dimensions also when it comes to their respective financial, social and ecological costs. But, how should we worry about the symptoms, in as simple as possible operational terms? The dominating number of tools and frameworks don’t say! The UNs SDGs don’t, the Doughnut doesn’t, the Climatologists’ CO2 equivalents don’t, the “low-consumption Society” doesn’t, proposals to develop new generations of nuclear power don’t, Science based targets don’t, (see previous Reflections on those and many other examples). Why? Why do strategies for sustainable re-design of our un-sustainable sectors upstream, by robust and simple-to-practice principles (see bottom of the artice) not come naturally to the fore also when it is about sustainability? Or, a question perhaps even closer to reality, why are the scary and unmanageable symptoms downstream, from societies and organizations violating very clear design principle upstream, allowed to drown what we ought to do?

The most likely explanation is that our personal senses are not designed to perceive how CO2, PFAS, heavy metals and other exotoxins are increasing in biota. Or how biodiversity is declining from this as well as from physically flawed routines for forestry, agriculture or construction of infrastructure. Nor are we cognitively used to consider and act on measures that are relevant for re-design, upstream, and in cooperation, at global levels. So, for example, our societal discourse on climate, with all those IPCC reports and geopolitical summits, continue to chase myriad symptoms from, and costs related to, CO2. All by means that will not only fail to cure climate change, but all other unsustainability related problems as well. See previous reflections about this, for instance about bio-fuels in hopeless efforts to curb climate change.

So, we must not only turn to science to help us (i) first see the symptoms, e.g. from increasing atmospheric levels of CO2 (which, for this particular molecule, has been extensively and cleverly researched and published by climatologists). (Let alone that some contrarians, who “don’t believe in science”, doubt this truth as well). We must also (ii) understand how to cooperate upstream to re-design our systems for energy, traffic, agriculture, forestry, armed conflicts and international HRs to fit boundary conditions for sustainability together. Whereby the CO2 symptoms, and all other sustainability related symptoms as well, would be in tackled in strategic/economic attractive ways. (Contrary to fixing one problem only temporarily, while increasing other problems elsewhere in the system).

So, again, what we do upstream in a complex system is different from the myriad and worsening symptoms of not doing it, also when it comes to complex tasks in the complex system civilization-nature. Where we need to ask science for help to (i) compensate for our insufficient senses as well as as the more or less neglected art of (ii) developing shared mental models for cognitively meaningful strategies.

So, the FSSD Global is developed to systemically (the whole world), systematically (logical stepwise processes) and strategically (earning money, time and other resources from upfront) assist organizational design-measures upstream in cause-symptom chains. Which is simpler, more rewarding and more fun than drowning downstream in confusing symptoms followed by futile piece-meal actions.