I’m only human after all….
I can’t get Rag’n’Bone Man’s song ‘Human’ out of my mind right now. Songs come and go in my cerebral matter but this one’s been around for a few days and it doesn’t want to go. The lyrics are simple and pertinent to many of the challenges we face. I’m thinking in particular of the political shambles in the UK driven by the Brexit saga that cuts across traditional mainstream political divisions and is an example of humans displaying their worst individual and collective behaviours.
In my opinion (three words that should preface every statement I make!), one of the worst human traits is not to accept the subjective world we live in and suffer the delusion that ‘facts’ exist. The assertion of ‘facts’ can be extremely divisive. So, for example, when politicians assert “….what the people want is….” and proceed to describe an outcome that I and many others definitely do NOT want, the hackles rise and a bad situation is made worse. But politicians are “only human after all” and therein lies the problem.
History will probably portray Brexit as a good example of a highly complex human-driven system, from which hopefully there will emerge some lessons learned. Although that’s probably wishful thinking because if we learned lessons from history, why do we still have wars, famine, inequality, crime and so on? The answer to that rhetorical question could be….we’re “only human after all” and the purpose of society is what it does - adapted from Stafford Beer’s: “The purpose of a system is what it does.” Known by some as POSIWID.
I would hope that one of the lessons learned from the Brexit catastrophe, which is a long way off reaching a conclusion, is that there are no simple solutions to highly complex problems. Sound bites don’t work. So a simple Leave/Remain referendum to establish the UK’s future relationship with the European Union, raised many more questions than it was designed to answer and destabilised a relatively stable political system.
Returning to the lyrics of the song:
“Take a look in the mirror
And what do you see
Do you see it clearer
Or are you deceived
In what you believe
'Cause I'm only human after all
You're only human after all
Don't put the blame on me
Don't put your blame on me.”
A Union, such as the European Union, is a highly complex organisation that cannot be understood by making simple observations of its constituent parts. An analogy is water, which is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. But studying the properties of the two dry gases does not explain the wetness of water. Also, when we observe, we are part of the observation. Heinz Von Foerster said: “Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.” So if you don’t like what you see, “don’t put the blame on me, don’t put your blame on me.”
For me as someone who enjoys systems thinking, Brexit has been and continues to be, a welcome diversion from theory to practice. It’s just a pity that what appears to be the current direction of travel isn’t where I want to go but who knows where the complex twists and turns will take us?!
