On systems thinking

Systems thinking is non-hierarchical and undermines supremacist thinking.

On 'systems thinking'

A few days ago on Bluesky, Dr. Elizabeth Sawin says it's "revolutionary/radical thinking" (Bluesky)

there aren't lines in the world, just in our minds"
good: "curiosity about borders and boundaries"
dangerous: "treating made-up boundaries as real" (Bluesky)

"events unfold in multistep (sometimes circular, sometimes branching) chains of causation" (Bluesky)

She recommends this book: Thinking In Systems by Donella Meadows

Right vs. wrong

People like to perceive a Team A vs. Team B conflict and propose which side they'd be on or (as a spectator) hope will win. However, such an imagined "conflict" may not the best way of understanding what's going on. Maybe there's a place for A and B to both exist in the world and to exist in some kind of creative tension or mutual support. Jumping to right vs. wrong eliminates possibilities.

Tessa Koumoundouros shares an example of a failure of systems thinking: Instead of acknowledging "complex ecosystem interactions," we reduce it to a problem of "horses vs wildlife that can be fenced (it can't) to argue for an emotionaly charged 'ethical decision', at expense of the entire system" (Bluesky) The context is this article: "Rethinking the mantra of biodiversity: Why the past should not determine the future." Pablo Castelló and Francisco Santiago-Ávila. ABC Australia. Feb 8, 2024.

Ecological crisis

The tendency toward atomistic thinking, where you can focus on a discrete person or thing as well as on some direct cause-and-effect chain centering on that same originally perceived person or thing (whose identity is not transformed by the process), and individualistic thinking (selfishness), is a reason why people don't productively discuss or sustainably enact our relationships to natural systems.

"As Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe wrote in their book “Rewilding: The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery,” rewilding pays attention “to the emergent properties of interactions between ‘things’ in ecosystems … a move from linear to systems thinking.”" (quoted here)

Gender

"Gender" means "category." To understand someone's gender, we can look at them not only as individuals, and not only as how they individually fit (or don't fit) into the category, but at their relationships with others and how everyone's characteristics and category membership are always in flux. That would be systems thinking.

Another suggestion

See also: Systems 1: An Introduction to Systems Thinking by Draper Kauffman and Morgan Kauffman