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If you see a behavior that persists over time, there is likely a mechanism creating that consistent behavior. (Donella Meadows, Thinking In Systems)

Feedback is when the effects of a system return as inputs to the system itself. Donella Meadows defines it in terms of stocks and flows:

A feedback loop is a closed chain of causal connections from a stock, through a set of decisions or rules or physical laws or actions that are dependent on the level of the stock, and back again through a flow to change the stock.

systems thinking describes two kinds of feedback loops:

A helpful example of this is what Elizabeth Sawin in this TEDTalk calls “multisolving”. When you have multiple problems compounding in a reinforcing feedback loop, that can be scary but it is also an opportunity to solve multiple problems at the same time.

This definition comes from Systems theorist Donella Meadows’ definition in Thinking In Systems:

Stafford Beer proposed the viable systems model for understanding how systems and their various subsystems interact. He proposed 5 kinds of subsystems each with a unique role in the overarching system:

Jessica Kerr applies the viable systems model to software teams.

And according to LowImpact.org:

• “How Complex Systems Fail”, a short and influential paper by Richard I. Cook, available at the delightful URL: https://how.complexsystems.fail/

In France, tabacs are convenience stores that also serve as community hubs. This study analyzing the closure of 18,000 tabacs over twenty years compared with voting patterns found that the closure of these community hubs correlated strongly with a rise in the far-right vote, and the opening of tabacs with a decrease in the same. The effect was three times stronger in rural areas where the local tabac might be the only community hub in a town. The study suggests a mechanism: people deprived of a place to be sociable with their neighbors are more easily turned against them by politics of division and domination.

• “Do Yourself a Favor and Go Find a ‘Third Place’” in The Atlantic

With over 2.3 million Americans jailed or imprisoned (source: the Prison Policy Initiative), “the land of the free” has more of its citizens explicitly un-free (in absolute numbers and per capita) than any place else on Earth, now or at any point in history—what should we make of that? Is this Justice?

Additionally, while the constitution guarantees citizens the right to a trial, that right has been eroded to practically nothing, with only 3% of criminal cases resulting in a trial. In the other 97%, the vast majority of defendants are pressured to plead guilty, whether because they can’t afford a lawyer, the overworked and underfunded public defender’s office doesn’t have time for them, or sentence inflation resulting from minimum sentencing laws (an outcome of the War on Drugs) makes the risk of going to trial unbearable.

A factor perpetuating these policies is that those most negatively affected—the incarcerated—lose their right to vote in 48 states if convicted of a felony, and in 9 they never get it back even after serving their sentence for some crimes.

Like the War on Drugs to which it’s related, the data show that mass incarceration has had a negligible effect on crime rates, its only ostensible justification. So why does mass incarceration continue? the purpose of a system is what it does, so we should look and what effect mass incarceration actually has.

An old friend Matt Korostoff created an impactful visualization of the stats and scope of mass incarceration, including thoroughly-documented sources for the research.

I see a relationship with systems thinking: for example the effects of systemic racism are clear, measurable, and well-attested, but some deny the systemic nature of the problem and blame either its victims or “a few bad apples” (neglecting the very meaning of the phrase “a few bad apples spoil the bunch”). This attempt (perhaps made in bad faith) to deny the systemic nature of what many experience and anyone can observe seems like a kind of gaslighting.

As the Limits to Growth report made clear in 1972, the Earth simply cannot support the limitless growth and resource consumption upon which the present economic order depends. Degrowth is a movement and theory emphasizing the need for transition to a sustainable, equitable economy and society that does not depend on the impossibility of infinite growth. It is closely related to anti-consumerism, and an essential strategy to reducing the impact of climate change.

A counter-argument to degrowth is the idea that we can “decouple” present levels of economic growth from environmental degradation (this is sometimes called “green growth”). The European Environmental Bureau has a paper Decoupling Debunked which presents evidence that “decoupling on its own, i.e. without addressing the issue of economic growth, has not been and will not be sufficient to reduce environmental pressures to the required extent” while acknowledging that green_er_ growth can still be useful in the short term and should not be opposed because “without many such measures the situation would be far worse”. The tension between “decoupling” and “degrowth” reminds me of Shifting the Burden, a system trap. Even though decoupling can help, is it a short-term “intervenor” we might grow dependent on instead of addressing the root cause, which is the incompatibility between infinite growth and limited environmental resources.

Rebecca Solnit echoes Snyder:

See also, Anthropause: The Beauty of Degrowth, by Stan Cox

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292924000493

Climate change’s existential threat is not hypothetical. It is killing people now. (Dr. Leah Stokes)

I trust the evidence of my own experience, the science and delegates from 196 nations of Earth that human-induced climate change is a real, urgent, and accelerating crisis that demands concerted, systemic action on the part of humanity. In a perverse reading of William Gibson's quote that "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed," the most vulnerable among us have already been suffering the consequences (see also: The climate disaster is here), and the relative wealth and privilege which insulates people like me from those consequences won't do so forever.

A 1912 newspaper article clearly explains the mechanism by which burning fossil fuels warms the earth:

Even ExxonMobil was a public pioneer climate change research in the 1970s before a strategic shift in the '90s toward climate change denial in which they adopted the strategy (and same PR firms) as big tobacco to mislead the public about the causes and magnitude of climate change.

See this 2026 report from the Neuro Climate Working Group on the effects of the climate crisis on our nervous systems—including air pollution, trauma, heat, and more.