Understanding The System And Managing Expectations About Changing It

Everywhere there are people, just take a look and you will see a system in place. This system is set up by the people to successfully deal with their environment, with one another, and with people from other groups. This system, a way of doing things, then governs their behavior and how they interact with the world. The rules set up in the system will be largely driven by what the people value. Where this value is not explicit, take a look at what the people reward and celebrate and you will see what their true values are, even when they misstate these.

Recall that the system was put in place to regulate the people but after a while the system becomes self-sustaining. It takes on a life and personality of its own and begins to regulate things around it. A close observation often shows that the system then begins to perpetuate itself by dictating for and running the people who are in its sphere. Some call the system a matrix, way, others call it culture, and many other names.

Some of the rules that govern the people were put in place by people who have long exited the system, either dead or retired. However, their legacy is sustained by their protégés and other gatekeepers who proved loyal to the system and are kept there to perpetuate it. Before long it becomes almost impossible to change anything, the main reason being that it benefits those who have the power to change it and no one destroys himself where the other option is to thrive as an individual or elite group.

Every system is supported and sustained by people. It is these same people who can also change it. This elite core has very few people. In most families, the dynamics at home is set by the husband/father. In the organization, the CEO/Chairman of the Board may be the trigger man. Think about any country and check out the power that the President, Senate President, and Chief Justice or their equivalents have to shape and reshape the nation.

The system is very powerful, no doubt, but it can be changed. A few powerful people at the top have the power to bring about changes but the challenge is that the system allows only people who will entrench and uphold it to rise up to these positions of great trust. Sustained by this elite group, it ensures that only people who are loyal to it grow or ascend to positions of authority and responsibility. For example, if you are vocal in a system that promotes deference, you will never become a leader. If you are honest in a corrupt system that worships money, nothing for you. If you are strict in a morally decadent system, you are joking to aspire to positions of trust. If you are lazy in a society that values responsibility and hard work, you won’t succeed. Therefore, only people who have been molded by the system can rise to positions of trust. If you look closely, whether in politics, religion, academics, cultural societies, etc, it is the same. You either comply now or show that you do so early enough or you get shipped out. Anyone not aligned with it cannot make progress.

In rare occasions, an outsider gets to power either by subterfuge or the person becomes a turncoat having attained a top position or by revolution or any other means. The system will try to coopt the person quietly and where it fails, then, you see the system fight dirty. A Politician wrote about ‘Corruption fighting back’ in her fight against the Nigerian system – that is the fight for survival by the all-powerful system in place at the time.

Many things make good people fall to a bad system. One of them is that some of these people use some elements of the bad system to ascend to positions of trust and thus cannot stand or work against it in the last haul when it is required. For example, what moral rights does a candidate who wins an election through a rigged election have to stand up against such a system? The inordinate quest for power makes a lot of people with a different moral disposition to compromise and sustain the system as it is; even if they had criticized it or even promised to change it earlier. These ones begin to enjoy the lucre of the bad system and do not wish to go back to where they used to be before. Who doesn’t like breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the same day on different continents, all paid for, with shopping, medical checkups, houses, and other material benefits without enterprise? Especially, where the alternative is to go back to a life of ‘from hand to mouth’.

The system is powerful and often requires a revolution to change it. Humans, as a collective, have the power to stand up to the system and change it at the global, national, state, organizational, and personal levels but quite a few are awake and have the will to go against it. Thus, the system continues to luxuriate until powerful people willingly or are forced to make the necessary changes that will birth a new system and then the cycle begins again.

The system is always triumphant.


Credits:

Control: https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/time-management-planning-schedule-deadline-isometric-composition-with-character-worker-running-spin-cycle-vector-illustration_23246821.htm Image by macrovector on Freepik Image by freepik

Airport Check: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/airport-security-officer-using-hand-held-metal-detector-check-commuter_10748165.htm Image by wavebreakmedia_micro on Freepik

Broken Chains: https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/abolition-slavery-concept-illustration_34793436.htm Image by storyset on Freepik