Systems and Spaces

To live in the modern world is to live in a world dominated by systems. Social systems, political systems, etiquette systems, corporate systems, information systems, financial systems, healthcare systems, and entertainment systems. Little doubt, then, that this preponderance of systems has led to an over-engineered approach to how we structure our lives, while at the same time, has failed to deliver sufficient meaning.

Taking a step back, what if there is no grand narrative to the world? What if there are only a billion indifferent systems, each churning magnificently along, with all of their interactions, voids, and microscopic methods? At the risk of a too-early-in-the-morning dose of nihilism, perhaps reality is nothing more than a chaotic mass temporarily wrestled into submission by these systems, upon which we impart a story, even if there is none to be found.

In this story, though, there must still be room for the soul, for a brief brush with transcendence, for spirituality - however you define it - alongside the crush of systems that embrace our daily rhythms. I'll posit that spirituality lies in the spaces between the systems. That it is the voids as much as the mechanisms that define who we are. To know these spaces, though, we must first understand the systems that surround them, just as to know the oceans means to know the continents and headlands that rise from their depths. Let's start, then, by trying to define, simply, what a system is.

Model, Infrastructure, Participation, Connectivity

One might say that a system is an imposition of order upon an inherently disordered world. Over time, one of the chief hallmarks of civilization has been this slow discovery and creation of structured systems, by which we tame what is, otherwise, an entropic environment. If civilization is measured by its systems, and we count ourselves part of civilization's structures, then naturally, we should seek to further understand them to make sense of the complexity of the world around us. So how can we describe simply some of the components of a system? There are four key attributes we should consider:

1. Model: the idealized view of how the system should function.
2. Infrastructure: the physical manifestation of that model. This is inherently a simplification.
3. Participation: sufficient belief in the system for it to function properly. In social systems, participation is driven by belief, engagement, and reward (or lack thereof).
4. Connectivity: Very few systems are isolated. Each has an impact on other systems in its general neighborhood (though what qualifies as a neighbor is not easily defined). Systems operate as graphs - they have nodes, edges, and weights. They pull on each other with their own gravity; they are recursively composed of other systems.

When the infrastructure wanes or drifts too far from the model, participation fades. This loosens the connectivity across and within the system, leaving it exposed and vulnerable. This is often how demagoguery works and why seemingly strong ideas and robust empires collapse. Take for example the Soviet system in the 1980s. What began as years of infrastructural rot slowly debilitated the people's trust in the system. Ultimately, once this belief collapsed in on itself, the whole vast apparatus imploded. Just as quickly, new beliefs sprouted, and formed their own systems around them.

When civilizational systems collapse upon themselves too quickly, the sense of dislocation, the sense of ego death, this creates can be startling. Many people are unable to adapt; we're simply not equipped to do so. We are witnessing now a convergence of factors that erode faith in our current systems - the emergence of AI, the deterioration of political and social norms, an acceleration of the rate of change that we're simply not prepared to absorb. We, in the current AI generation (those who are experiencing the initial impacts of AI in real time), will feel this dislocation more acutely than those that follow. Future generations will either be accultured to the new technology, or society will adapt and restructure. But there will be no wholesale shift in identity or sense of meaning and place in the world in the same way that I suspect we are about to experience.

Our systems are more fragile than we may imagine, or care to admit. Infrastructure fades over time; participation wanes as generations change and mindsets shift. We tend to simplify, thinking that "a body in motion will remain in motion", or underestimate the constant input of energy required to keep a system running smoothly. But a single object in motion is not in and of itself a system. That's as true for small systems as it is for large ones, whether it's the complex machinery of government, or the more nuanced systems that keep our families, workplaces, and bodies running smoothly. They are all vulnerable when the shock is too large.

In the case of our technological reality, we are watching in real time as the systems we've created for a different age begin to clash with our present day. The reactionary fallback may be toward even more ancient systems - kindness, thoughtfulness, and individual effort. Elsewise, the churn of technology will inevitably accelerate toward optimization, whatever the cost. This isn't to play the role of AI doomer, but rather, to stop and say, "there's something happening here; but what it is ain't exactly clear". In this great unmooring, many will find themselves evaluating what is truly meaningful and what is merely surface abstraction. They will begin to look between the systems.

The Space Between

To view life through this lens of systems supposes a supremely rational view of the world, which is, let's admit, rather mechanical in its outlook. And it feels reductive to think that the soul is a result of mere ordered systems. What room does that leave for wonder? For dreams? For the vast spirituality of nature? Yes, then, what space remains for the soul in a world of systems?

In a world governed by silicon and seconds, schedules and society, I'd like to think that it is the interstitial spaces that still lend definition to our being, and that spirituality lies in these spaces between the systems. Given a choice, I prefer to bias toward simplicity and wonder, and I'm reminded of a line paraphrased as, "the more knowledge we attain, the greater the mystery around simplicity becomes". That great complexity can arise from simple foundations is indeed part of the mystery.

In this, it is, of course, quite possible that that which we call the divine may simply be the result of a system we've not yet discovered: a long-cadence, low-signal system, or the invisible interactions between nonlinear, quantum entanglements. Some things, though, are best left undiscovered, and I'll wager that the divine is itself defined by the lack of any specific system, and more so by the systems that surround it. And in this void a thousand flowers may bloom. The spirituality of the soul fills the gaps; as it does so, we embrace all the systems, learning from them each in turn.