Thinking in Systems: A Primer_【彩云小译】

— SEVEN —
ー七ー

Living in a World of Systems
生活在一个系统化的世界

_____________
是的，是的，是的

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is.

—G. K. Chesterton,^1
120th century writer

People who are raised in the industrial world and who get enthused about systems thinking are likely to make a terrible mistake. They are likely to assume that here, in systems analysis, in interconnection and complication, in the power of the computer, here at last, is the key to prediction and control. This mistake is likely because the mind-set of the industrial world assumes that there is a key to prediction and control.
那些在工业世界长大、对系统思维充满热情的人很可能会犯一个可怕的错误。他们可能会认为，在这里，在系统分析中，在互联和复杂性中，在计算机的力量中，在这里，最后，是预测和控制的关键。这个错误很可能是因为工业世界的思维模式认为有一个预测和控制的关键。

I assumed that at first too. We all assumed it, as eager systems students at the great institution called MIT. More or less innocently, enchanted by what we could see through our new lens, we did what many discoverers do. We exaggerated our findings. We did so not with any intent to deceive others, but in the expression of our own expectations and hopes. Systems thinking for us was more than subtle, complicated mind play. It was going to make systems work.
我一开始也这么认为。我们都这么认为，因为我们都是麻省理工学院的系统学生。或多或少的天真，被我们通过新的镜头看到的东西所迷惑，我们做了许多发现者做的事情。我们夸大了我们的发现。我们这样做并不是为了欺骗他人，而是为了表达我们自己的期望和希望。对我们来说，系统思维不仅仅是微妙而复杂的思维游戏。它会让系统运转起来。

Like the explorers searching for the passage to India who ran into the Western Hemisphere instead, we had found something, but it wasn’t what we thought we had found. It was something so different from what we had been looking for that we didn’t know what to make of it. As we got to know systems thinking better, it turned out to have greater worth than we had thought, but not in the way we had thought.
就像那些寻找印度之路的探险家们跑到了西半球一样，我们发现了一些东西，但并不是我们所认为的那样。它与我们一直在寻找的东西如此不同，以至于我们不知道该如何解释它。当我们更好地了解系统思考时，它比我们想象的更有价值，但不是以我们想象的方式。

Our first comeuppance came as we learned that it’s one thing to under stand how to fix a system and quite another to wade in and fix it. We had many earnest discussions on the topic of “implementation,” by which we meant “how to get managers and mayors and agency heads to follow our advice.”
我们的第一次报应来自于我们学会了理解如何修复一个系统是一回事，而涉足并修复它则完全是另一回事。我们就“实施”这个话题进行了许多认真的讨论，我们的意思是“如何让经理、市长和机构负责人听从我们的建议”

The truth was, we didn’t even follow our advice. We gave learned lectures on the structure of addiction and could not give up coffee. We knew all about the dynamics of eroding goals and eroded our own jogging programs. We warned against the traps of escalation and shifting the burden and then created them in our own marriages.
事实是，我们甚至没有听从我们的建议。我们就成瘾的结构进行了博学的演讲，并且不能放弃咖啡。我们知道所有侵蚀目标和侵蚀我们自己慢跑计划的动力学。我们提醒自己注意升级和转移负担的陷阱，然后在我们自己的婚姻中制造了这些陷阱。

Social systems are the external manifestations of cultural thinking patterns and of profound human needs, emotions, strengths, and weaknesses. Changing them is not as simple as saying “now all change,” or of trusting that he who knows the good shall do the good.
社会系统是文化思维模式和深刻的人类需求、情感、优势和弱点的外在表现。改变它们并不像说“现在一切都改变了”那么简单，也不像相信知道好事的人一定会做好事那么简单。

We ran into another problem. Our systems insights helped us understand many things we hadn’t understood before, but they didn’t help us understand everything. In fact, they raised at least as many questions as they answered. Like all the other lenses humanity has developed with which to peer into macrocosms and microcosms, this one too revealed wondrous new things, many of which were wondrous new mysteries. The mysteries our new tool revealed lay especially within the human mind and heart and soul. Here are just few of the questions that were prompted by our insights into how systems work.
我们遇到了另一个问题。我们的系统洞察力帮助我们理解了许多我们以前没有理解的东西，但它们并不能帮助我们理解所有的东西。事实上，他们提出的问题和回答的一样多。就像人类已经发展出来的窥探宏观宇宙和微观宇宙的所有其他镜头一样，这个镜头也揭示了奇妙的新事物，其中许多都是奇妙的新奥秘。我们的新工具所揭示的奥秘，特别是在人类的思想、心灵和灵魂中。以下是我们对系统工作原理的深入了解所提出的几个问题。

A systems insight . . . can raise more questions!
系统洞察力... ... 可以提出更多的问题！

Systems thinkers are by no means the first or only people to ask questions like these. When we started asking them, we found whole disciplines, libraries, histories, asking the same questions, and to some extent offering answers. What was unique about our search was not our answers, or even our questions, but the fact that the tool of systems thinking, born out of engineering and mathematics, implemented in computers, drawn from a mechanistic mind-set and a quest for prediction and control, leads its practitioners, inexorably I believe, to confront the most deeply human mysteries. Systems thinking makes clear even to the most committed technocrat that getting along in this world of complex systems requires more than technocracy.
系统思考者绝不是第一个或者唯一一个提出这样问题的人。当我们开始问他们的时候，我们发现整个学科、图书馆、历史都在问同样的问题，并且在某种程度上提供了答案。我们的研究的独特之处并不在于我们的答案，甚至也不在于我们的问题，而在于这样一个事实: 系统思维的工具，源于工程学和数学，在计算机中实现，源于机械的思维模式，以及对预测和控制的追求，我相信，它的实践者会无情地面对人类最深层次的奥秘。系统思维甚至让最坚定的技术官僚也明白，在这个复杂系统的世界中生存，需要的不仅仅是技术官僚。

Self-organizing, nonlinear, feedback systems are inherently unpredictable. They are not controllable. They are understandable only in the most general way. The goal of foreseeing the future exactly and preparing for it perfectly is unrealizable. The idea of making a complex system do just what you want it to do can be achieved only temporarily, at best. We can never fully understand our world, not in the way our reductionist science has led us to expect. Our science itself, from quantum theory to the mathematics of chaos, leads us into irreducible uncertainty. For any objective other than the most trivial, we can’t optimize; we don’t even know what to optimize. We can’t keep track of everything. We can’t find a proper, sustainable relationship to nature, each other, or the institutions we create, if we try to do it from the role of omniscient conqueror.
自组织、非线性、反馈系统本质上是不可预测的。它们是不可控的。只有在最普遍的情况下，它们才是可以理解的。准确预见未来并为之做好充分准备的目标是不可能实现的。让一个复杂的系统做你想让它做的事情，这个想法最多只能暂时实现。我们永远不可能完全理解我们的世界，不可能像我们的还原论科学所期待的那样。我们的科学本身，从量子理论到混沌的数学，把我们带入了不可还原的不确定性。对于除了最微不足道的事情以外的任何事情，我们都不能优化; 我们甚至不知道优化什么。我们无法跟踪所有事情。如果我们试图从全知的征服者的角色出发，我们就无法找到与自然、彼此或我们创造的机构之间适当的、可持续的关系。

For those who stake their identity on the role of omniscient conqueror, the uncertainty exposed by systems thinking is hard to take. If you can’t understand, predict, and control, what is there to do?
对于那些把自己的身份押在无所不知的征服者身上的人来说，系统思维所暴露出来的不确定性是很难接受的。如果你不能理解、预测和控制，那么还有什么可做的呢？

Systems thinking leads to another conclusion, however, waiting, shining, obvious, as soon as we stop being blinded by the illusion of control. It says that there is plenty to do, of a different sort of “doing.” The future can’t be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being. Systems can’t be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned. We can’t surge forward with certainty into a world of no surprises, but we can expect surprises and learn from them and even profit from them. We can’t impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.
系统思维导致另一个结论，然而，等待，闪耀，显而易见，只要我们停止被控制的错觉所蒙蔽。它说还有很多事情要做，还有一种不同的“做”未来是无法预测的，但是它可以被设想并且充满爱意地实现。系统无法被控制，但是它们可以被设计和重新设计。我们不可能在一个没有惊喜的世界里确定无疑地前进，但是我们可以期待惊喜，从中学习，甚至从中获利。我们不能把自己的意志强加于一个系统。我们可以倾听系统告诉我们什么，并发现它的属性和我们的价值观如何能够一起工作，带来比我们单凭意志所能创造的更好的东西。

We can’t control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!
我们不能控制系统或弄清楚它们，但我们可以与它们共舞！

I already knew that, in a way. I had learned about dancing with great powers from whitewater kayaking, from gardening, from playing music, from skiing. All those endeavors require one to stay wide awake, pay close attention, participate flat out, and respond to feedback. It had never occurred to me that those same requirements might apply to intellectual work, to management, to government, to getting along with people.
在某种程度上，我已经知道了。我从白浪皮划艇，园艺，音乐，滑雪中学到了舞蹈的强大力量。所有这些努力都需要一个人保持清醒，密切关注，全力参与，并对反馈做出回应。我从来没有想到，这些要求可能同样适用于智力工作，管理，政府，与人相处。

But there it was, the message emerging from every computer model we made. Living successfully in a world of systems requires more of us than our ability to calculate. It requires our full humanity—our rationality, our ability to sort out truth from falsehood, our intuition, our compassion, our vision, and our morality.²
但是，我们制作的每一个计算机模型都传达了这样的信息。成功地生活在一个系统化的世界里，对我们的要求远远超过我们的计算能力。它需要我们充分的人性——我们的理性，我们从谬误中分辨真相的能力，我们的直觉，我们的同情心，我们的远见，以及我们的道德

I want to end this chapter and this book by trying to summarize the most general “systems wisdoms” I have absorbed from modeling complex systems and from hanging out with modelers. These are the take-home lessons, the concepts and practices that penetrate the discipline of systems so deeply that one begins, however imperfectly, to practice them not just in one’s profession, but in all of life. They are the behaviorial consequences of a worldview based on the ideas of feedback, nonlinearity, and systems responsible for their own behavior. When that engineering professor at Dartmouth noticed that we systems folks were “different” and wondered why, these, I think, were the differences he noticed.
在结束这一章和这本书时，我想总结一下我从复杂系统建模和与建模师交流中吸收到的最普遍的“系统智慧”。这些是带回家的课程，这些概念和实践深深地渗透到系统的学科中，以至于一个人开始，不管有多么不完美，不仅仅是在自己的职业中，而是在整个生活中实践它们。它们是基于反馈、非线性思想和系统对自身行为负责的世界观的行为后果。当达特茅斯大学的工程学教授注意到我们这些系统人员是“不同的”，并且想知道为什么，我认为，这些就是他注意到的差异。

The list probably isn’t complete, because I am still a student in the school of systems. And it isn’t a list that is unique to systems thinking; there are many ways to learn to dance. But here, as a start-off dancing lesson, are the practices I see my colleagues adopting, consciously or unconsciously, as they encounter new systems.
名单可能不完整，因为我还是系统学院的学生。这并不是一个系统思维独有的清单; 学习跳舞的方法有很多种。但是这里，作为一个开始的舞蹈课程，我看到我的同事们在遇到新的系统时，有意识或无意识地采用了这些练习。

Get the Beat of the System
跟上系统的节奏

Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves. If it’s a piece of music or a whitewater rapid or a fluctuation in a commodity price, study its beat. If it’s a social system, watch it work. Learn its history. Ask people who’ve been around a long time to tell you what has happened. If possible, find or make a time graph of actual data from the system—peoples’ memories are not always reliable when it comes to timing.
在以任何方式扰乱系统之前，先观察它的行为。如果它是一段音乐，或者是急流，或者是商品价格的波动，研究它的节奏。如果它是一个社会系统，观察它的工作原理。了解它的历史。问问那些在你身边很长时间的人，告诉你发生了什么。如果可能的话，找到或者制作一个系统中实际数据的时间图——人们的记忆在时间上并不总是可靠的。

This guideline is deceptively simple. Until you make it a practice, you won’t believe how many wrong turns it helps you avoid. Starting with the behavior of the system forces you to focus on facts, not theories. It keeps you from falling too quickly into your own beliefs or misconceptions, or those of others.
这个指导原则看起来很简单。直到你将它付诸实践，你才会相信它帮助你避免了多少错误的转弯。从系统的行为开始，强迫你关注事实，而不是理论。它可以防止你过快地陷入自己或他人的信仰或误解中。

It’s amazing how many misconceptions there can be. People will swear that rainfall is decreasing, say, but when you look at the data, you find that what is really happening is that variability is increasing—the droughts are deeper, but the floods are greater too. I have been told with great authority that the price of milk was going up when it was going down, that real interest rates were falling when they were rising, that the deficit was a higher fraction of the GNP than ever before when it wasn’t.
令人惊讶的是，世界上有那么多的误解。比如说，人们会发誓说降雨量在减少，但是当你看数据时，你会发现真正发生的是变化性在增加——干旱更严重，但是洪水也更严重。有人非常权威地告诉我，牛奶价格下跌时上涨，实际利率上升时下降，赤字占国民生产总值的比例比以往任何时候都高。

It’s especially interesting to watch how the various elements in the system do or do not vary together. Watching what really happens, instead of listening to peoples’ theories of what happens, can explode many careless causal hypotheses. Every selectman in the state of New Hampshire seems to be positive that growth in a town will lower taxes, but if you plot growth rates against tax rates, you find a scatter as random as the stars in a New Hampshire winter sky. There is no discernible relationship at all.
尤其有趣的是，我们可以观察系统中的各种因素是如何一起变化的。观察到底发生了什么，而不是听取人们关于发生了什么的理论，可以打破许多粗心的因果假设。新罕布什尔州的每一位行政委员似乎都乐观地认为，一个城镇的经济增长将降低税收，但如果你将增长率与税率进行比较，你会发现，这种分布就像新罕布什尔州冬天天空中的星星一样随机。两者之间根本没有明显的关系。

Starting with the behavior of the system directs one’s thoughts to dynamic, not static, analysis—not only to “What’s wrong?” but also to “How did we get there?” “What other behavior modes are possible?” “If we don’t change direction, where are we going to end up?” And looking to the strengths of the system, one can ask “What’s working well here?” Starting with the history of several variables plotted together begins to suggest not only what elements are in the system, but how they might be interconnected.
从系统的行为开始，将一个人的思想引向动态的，而不是静态的分析，而不仅仅是“怎么了?”还有“我们是怎么做到的?”“还有其他可能的行为模式吗?”“如果我们不改变方向，最后会怎么样?”看看这个系统的优势，你可能会问: “这个系统运行得怎么样?”从绘制在一起的几个变量的历史开始，我们不仅可以知道系统中的元素是什么，而且可以知道它们是如何相互联系的。

And finally, starting with history discourages the common and distracting tendency we all have to define a problem not by the system’s actual behavior, but by the lack of our favorite solution. (The problem is, we need to find more oil. The problem is, we need to ban abortion. The problem is, we don’t have enough salesmen. The problem is, how can we attract more growth to this town?) Listen to any discussion, in your family or a committee meeting at work or among the pundits in the media, and watch people leap to solutions, usually solutions in “predict, control, or impose your will” mode, without having paid any attention to what the system is doing and why it’s doing it.
最后，从历史的角度出发，不鼓励我们通常不得不用系统的实际行为，而是缺乏我们喜欢的解决方案来定义一个问题的共同和分散注意力的倾向。(问题是，我们需要找到更多的石油。问题是，我们需要禁止堕胎。问题是，我们没有足够的销售人员。问题是，我们怎样才能吸引更多的增长到这个城市倾听任何讨论，无论是在你的家庭中，还是在工作中的委员会会议上，抑或是在媒体中的权威人士之间，看着人们跳跃到解决方案，通常是在“预测、控制或强加你的意志”的模式下，而不去关注系统在做什么以及它为什么这样做。

Expose Your Mental Models to the Light of Day
把你的心理模型暴露在阳光下

When we draw structural diagrams and then write equations, we are forced to make our assumptions visible and to express them with rigor. We have to put every one of our assumptions about the system out where others (and we ourselves) can see them. Our models have to be complete, and they have to add up, and they have to be consistent. Our assumptions can no longer slide around (mental models are very slippery), assuming one thing for purposes of one discussion and something else contradictory for purposes of the next discussion.
当我们画结构图，然后写方程式，我们被迫使我们的假设可见，并表达它们的严格性。我们必须把我们对系统的每一个假设都放在别人(包括我们自己)可以看到的地方。我们的模型必须是完整的，它们必须加起来，它们必须是一致的。我们的假设再也不能滑动(心智模型是非常狡猾的) ，假设一件事情是为了一个讨论的目的，而另一件事情是为了下一个讨论的目的而矛盾的。

You don’t have to put forth your mental model with diagrams and equations, although doing so is a good practice. You can do it with words or lists or pictures or arrows showing what you think is connected to what. The more you do that, in any form, the clearer your thinking will become, the faster you will admit your uncertainties and correct your mistakes, and the more flexible you will learn to be. Mental flexibility—the willingness to redraw boundaries, to notice that a system has shifted into a new mode, to see how to redesign structure—is a necessity when you live in a world of flexible systems.
你不必用图表和方程式建立你的心理模型，尽管这样做是一个很好的实践。你可以用文字、列表、图片或者箭头来表明你认为什么与什么相关。无论以何种形式，你这样做的次数越多，你的思维就会变得越清晰，你就会越快地承认你的不确定性并纠正你的错误，你就会学会变得越灵活。当你生活在一个充满灵活系统的世界里时，心理灵活性——愿意重新划定界限，注意到一个系统已经转变成一种新的模式，看看如何重新设计结构——是必不可少的。

Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model. Get your model out there where it can be viewed. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own. Instead of becoming a champion for one possible explanation or hypothesis or model, collect as many as possible. Consider all of them to be plausible until you find some evidence that causes you to rule one out. That way you will be emotionally able to see the evidence that rules out an assumption that may become entangled with your own identity.
永远记住，你所知道的一切，每个人所知道的一切，都只是一个模型。把你的模型放在可以看到的地方。邀请其他人挑战你的假设，并添加他们自己的假设。与其成为一个可能的解释、假设或模型的拥护者，不如尽可能多地收集。考虑所有这些都是合理的，直到你找到一些证据，使你排除其中一个。这样你就能在情感上看到证据，排除一个可能与你自己的身份纠缠在一起的假设。

Getting models out into the light of day, making them as rigorous as possible, testing them against the evidence, and being willing to scuttle them if they are no longer supported is nothing more than practicing the scientific method—something that is done too seldom even in science, and is done hardly at all in social science or management or government or everyday life.
让模型公之于众，让它们尽可能严谨，对证据进行检验，如果它们不再得到支持，就愿意放弃它们，这无非是在实践科学方法——即使在科学领域也很少做到这一点，在社会科学、管理、政府或日常生活中也很少做到这一点。

Honor, Respect, and Distribute Information
荣誉、尊重和传播信息

You’ve seen how information holds systems together and how delayed, biased, scattered, or missing information can make feedback loops malfunction. Decision makers can’t respond to information they don’t have, can’t respond accurately to information that is inaccurate, and can’t respond in a timely way to information that is late. I would guess that most of what goes wrong in systems goes wrong because of biased, late, or missing information.
您已经看到了信息如何将系统维系在一起，以及延迟、偏见、分散或缺失的信息如何导致反馈回路故障。决策者不能对他们没有的信息作出反应，不能对不准确的信息作出准确的反应，也不能对迟到的信息作出及时的反应。我猜测，系统中出现的大部分问题都是由于偏见、延迟或缺失信息造成的。

If I could, I would add an eleventh commandment to the first ten: Thou shalt not distort, delay, or withhold information. You can drive a system crazy by muddying its information streams. You can make a system work better with surprising ease if you can give it more timely, more accurate, more complete information.
如果可以的话，我会在前十条戒律的基础上再加上第十一条: 不得歪曲、拖延或隐瞒信息。你可以通过混淆系统的信息流来使系统发疯。如果你能给系统提供更及时、更准确、更完整的信息，你可以让系统更好地工作，而且非常容易。

For example, in 1986, new federal legislation, the Toxic Release Inventory, required U.S. companies to report all hazardous air pollutants emitted from each of their factories each year. Through the Freedom of Information Act (from a systems point of view, one of the most important laws in the nation), that information became a matter of public record. In July 1988, the first data on chemical emissions became available. The reported emissions were not illegal, but they didn’t look very good when they were published in local papers by enterprising reporters, who had a tendency to make lists of “the top ten local polluters.” That’s all that happened. There were no lawsuits, no required reductions, no fines, no penalties. But within two years chemical emissions nationwide (at least as reported, and presumably also in fact) had decreased by 40 percent. Some companies were launching policies to bring their emissions down by 90 percent, just because of the release of previously withheld information.³
例如，在1986年，新的联邦立法，有毒物质释放清单，要求美国公司报告所有有害空气污染物排放的每一个工厂每年。通过《信息自由法》(从系统的角度来看，这是美国最重要的法律之一) ，信息成为公共记录。1988年7月，关于化学物质排放的第一批数据出现了。所报道的排放量并不违法，但当这些排放量被富有进取心的记者发表在当地报纸上时，情况看起来并不乐观。这些记者往往会列出“当地排放量前十名”的名单事情就是这样。没有诉讼，没有要求减税，没有罚款，没有处罚。但在两年内，全国范围内的化学品排放量(至少据报道是这样，而且可能事实上也是这样)已经减少了40% 。一些公司正在推出政策，将其排放量降低90% ，仅仅是因为之前隐瞒的信息被公布了

Information is power. Anyone interested in power grasps that idea very quickly. The media, the public relations people, the politicians, and advertisers who regulate much of the public flow of information have far more power than most people realize. They filter and channel information. Often they do so for short-term, self-interested purposes. It’s no wonder our that social systems so often run amok.
信息就是力量。任何对权力感兴趣的人都能很快理解这个概念。媒体、公共关系人员、政治家和广告商管理着大部分公共信息流动，他们拥有比大多数人意识到的更大的权力。他们过滤和传播信息。他们这样做通常是出于短期的、自私的目的。难怪我们的社会系统经常失控。

Use Language with Care and Enrich It with Systems Concepts
小心使用语言，用系统概念丰富语言

Our information streams are composed primarily of language. Our mental models are mostly verbal. Honoring information means above all avoiding language pollution—making the cleanest possible use we can of language. Second, it means expanding our language so we can talk about complexity.
我们的信息流主要由语言组成。我们的思维模式主要是口头的。尊重信息首先意味着避免语言污染——尽可能使用最干净的语言。其次，它意味着扩展我们的语言，这样我们就可以谈论复杂性。

Fred Kofman wrote in a systems journal:
Fred Kofman 在系统期刊中写道:

[Language] can serve as a medium through which we create new understandings and new realities as we begin to talk about them. In fact, we don’t talk about what we see; we see only what we can talk about. Our perspectives on the world depend on the interaction of our nervous system and our language—both act as filters through which we perceive our world. . . . The language and information systems of an organization are not an objective means of describing an outside reality—they fundamentally structure the perceptions and actions of its members. To reshape the measurement and communication systems of a [society] is to reshape all potential interactions at the most fundamental level. Language . . . as articulation of reality is more primordial than strategy, structure, or . . . culture.^4
4

A society that talks incessantly about “productivity” but that hardly understands, much less uses, the word “resilience” is going to become productive and not resilient. A society that doesn’t understand or use the term “carrying capacity” will exceed its carrying capacity. A society that talks about “creating jobs” as if that’s something only companies can do will not inspire the great majority of its people to create jobs, for themselves or anyone else. Nor will it appreciate its workers for their role in “creating profits.” And of course a society that talks about a “Peacekeeper” missile or “collateral damage,” a “Final Solution” or “ethnic cleansing,” is speaking what Wendell Berry calls “tyrannese.”
如果一个社会不停地谈论“生产力”，但几乎不理解，更不用说使用“韧性”这个词，那么这个社会将变得更有生产力，而不是韧性。一个不理解或者不使用“承载能力”这个词的社会将会超过它的承载能力。一个把“创造就业机会”说得好像只有公司才能做到似的社会，不会激励绝大多数人为自己或任何人创造就业机会。它也不会欣赏它的工人在“创造利润”中的作用当然，一个谈论“和平卫士”导弹或“附带损害”、“最终解决方案”或“种族清洗”的社会，正在谈论温德尔 · 贝里所说的“暴君”

My impression is that we have seen, for perhaps a hundred and fifty years, a gradual increase in language that is either meaningless or destructive of meaning. And I believe that this increasing unreliability of language parallels the increasing disintegration, over the same period, of persons and communities. . . .

He goes on to say:
他接着说:

In this degenerative accounting, language is almost without the power of designation, because it is used conscientiously to refer to nothing in particular. Attention rests upon percentages, categories, abstract functions. . . . It is not language that the user will very likely be required to stand by or to act on, for it does not define any personal ground for standing or acting. Its only practical utility is to support with “expert opinion” a vast, impersonal technological action already begun. . . . It is a tyrannical language: tyrannese.^5
5

The first step in respecting language is keeping it as concrete, meaningful, and truthful as possible—part of the job of keeping information streams clear. The second step is to enlarge language to make it consistent with our enlarged understanding of systems. If the Eskimos have so many words for snow, it’s because they have studied and learned how to use snow. They have turned snow into a resource, a system with which they can dance. The industrial society is just beginning to have and use words for systems, because it is only beginning to pay attention to and use complexity. Carrying capacity, structure, diversity, and even system are old words that are coming to have richer and more precise meanings. New words are having to be invented.
尊重语言的第一步是使它尽可能具体、有意义和真实，这是保持信息流清晰的工作的一部分。第二步是扩大语言，使之与我们对系统的扩大理解保持一致。如果爱斯基摩人有这么多关于雪的词汇，那是因为他们学习和学习了如何使用雪。他们已经把雪变成了一种资源，一种他们可以跳舞的系统。工业社会刚刚开始用词汇来描述系统，因为它才刚刚开始关注和使用复杂性。承载能力，结构，多样性，甚至系统都是古老的词汇，它们的含义越来越丰富，越来越精确。新词不得不被发明出来。

My word processor has spell-check capability, which lets me add words that didn’t originally come in its comprehensive dictionary. It’s interesting to see what words I had to add when writing this book: feedback, throughput, overshoot, self-organization, sustainability.
我的文字处理器有拼写检查功能，可以让我添加一些最初没有出现在其综合词典中的单词。看看在写这本书的时候我不得不添加了什么词汇是很有趣的: 反馈，吞吐量，超负荷，自我组织，可持续性。

Pay Attention to What Is Important, Not Just What Is Quantifiable
注意什么是重要的，而不仅仅是可以量化的

Our culture, obsessed with numbers, has given us the idea that what we can measure is more important than what we can’t measure. Think about that for a minute. It means that we make quantity more important than quality. If quantity forms the goals of our feedback loops, if quantity is the center of our attention and language and institutions, if we motivate ourselves, rate ourselves, and reward ourselves on our ability to produce quantity, then quantity will be the result. You can look around and make up your own mind about whether quantity or quality is the outstanding characteristic of the world in which you live.
我们沉迷于数字的文化给了我们这样一个观念: 我们能够衡量的东西比我们不能衡量的东西更重要。仔细想想。这意味着我们把数量看得比质量更重要。如果数量构成了我们反馈循环的目标，如果数量是我们注意力、语言和制度的中心，如果我们激励自己，给自己打分，奖励自己产生数量的能力，那么数量就是结果。你可以环顾四周，自己决定数量还是质量是你所生活的这个世界的突出特征。

As modelers we have exposed ourselves to the ridicule of our scientific colleagues more than once by putting variables labeled “prejudice,” or “self-esteem,” or “quality of life” into our models. Since computers require numbers, we have had to make up quantitative scales by which to measure these qualitative concepts. “Let’s say prejudice is measured from –10 to +10, where 0 means you are treated with no bias at all, –10 means extreme negative prejudice, and +10 means such positive prejudice that you can do no wrong. Now, suppose that you were treated with a prejudice of –2, or +5, or –8. What would that do to your performance at work?”
作为建模者，我们不止一次地将标记为“偏见”、“自尊”或“生活质量”的变量放入我们的模型中，从而使自己暴露在科学同行的嘲笑之下。由于计算机需要数字，我们不得不制作量化尺度来衡量这些定性概念。“假设偏见是从 -10到 + 10，其中0表示完全没有偏见地对待你，-10表示极端的消极偏见，+ 10表示积极的偏见，你不会犯错。现在，假设你受到的偏见是 -2，或者 + 5，或者 -8。这会对你的工作表现产生什么影响?”

The relationship between prejudice and performance actually had to be put in a model once.⁶ The study was for a firm that wanted to know how to do better at treating minority workers and how to move them up the corporate ladder. Everyone interviewed agreed that there certainly was a real connection between prejudice and performance. It was arbitrary what kind of scale to measure it by—it could have been 1 to 5 or 0 to 100—but it would have been much more unscientific to leave “prejudice” out of that study than to try to include it. When the workers in the company were asked to draw the relationship between their performance and prejudice, they came up with one of the most nonlinear relationships I’ve ever seen in a model.
实际上，偏见和绩效之间的关系曾经被放在一个模型中。6. 这项研究是为一家公司做的，它想知道如何更好地对待少数族裔员工，以及如何将他们提升到公司的阶梯上。所有被采访的人都认为，偏见和绩效之间确实存在着联系。用什么样的尺度来衡量它是任意的——它可以是1到5或0到100——但是把”偏见”排除在研究之外比试图包括它更加不科学。当公司的员工被要求画出他们的表现和偏见之间的关系时，他们想出了我在模型中见过的最非线性的关系之一。

Pretending that something doesn’t exist if it’s hard to quantify leads to faulty models. You’ve already seen the system trap that comes from setting goals around what is easily measured, rather than around what is important. So don’t fall into that trap. Human beings have been endowed not only with the ability to count, but also with the ability to assess quality. Be a quality detector. Be a walking, noisy Geiger counter that registers the presence or absence of quality.
假装某些东西不存在，如果它很难量化，就会导致错误的模型。你已经看到了系统陷阱，它来自于围绕容易衡量的目标设定目标，而不是围绕重要的目标。所以不要掉进那个陷阱。人类不仅被赋予了数数的能力，还被赋予了评估质量的能力。做一个质量检测者。做一个移动的、嘈杂的盖革计数器，记录质量的存在与否。

If something is ugly, say so. If it is tacky, inappropriate, out of proportion, unsustainable, morally degrading, ecologically impoverishing, or humanly demeaning, don’t let it pass. Don’t be stopped by the “if you can’t define it and measure it, I don’t have to pay attention to it” ploy. No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.
如果有什么不好看的，就说出来。如果它是俗气的，不恰当的，不成比例的，不可持续的，道德败坏的，生态贫困的，或人道的贬低的，不要让它通过。不要被“如果你不能定义和衡量它，我就不必关注它”的伎俩所阻止。没有人能够定义或衡量正义、民主、安全、自由、真理或爱。没有人能够定义或衡量任何价值。但是如果没有人为它们说话，如果系统不是为了产生它们而设计的，如果我们不谈论它们，指出它们的存在或不存在，它们将不复存在。

Make Feedback Policies for Feedback Systems
为反馈系统制定反馈策略

President Jimmy Carter had an unusual ability to think in feedback terms and to make feedback policies. Unfortunately, he had a hard time explaining them to a press and public that didn’t understand feedback.
吉米 · 卡特总统有一种不同寻常的能力，他能从反馈的角度思考问题，并制定反馈政策。不幸的是，他很难向不理解反馈意见的媒体和公众解释。

He suggested, at a time when oil imports were soaring, that there be a tax on gasoline proportional to the fraction of U.S. oil consumption that had to be imported. If imports continued to rise, the tax would rise until it suppressed demand and brought forth substitutes and reduced imports. If imports fell to zero, the tax would fall to zero.
他建议，在石油进口激增的时候，应该按照美国石油消费的比例征收汽油税。如果进口继续增加，税收将会增加，直到抑制需求，产生替代品，减少进口。如果进口降至零，税率将降至零。

The tax never got passed.
税收一直没有通过。

Carter also was trying to deal with a flood of illegal immigrants from Mexico. He suggested that nothing could be done about that immigration as long as there was a great gap in opportunity and living standards between the United States and Mexico. Rather than spending money on border guards and barriers, he said, we should spend money helping to build the Mexican economy, and we should continue to do so until the immigration stopped.
卡特还试图应对来自墨西哥的大量非法移民。他建议，只要美国和墨西哥之间在机会和生活水平上存在巨大差距，就无法对这些移民采取任何措施。他说，我们应该花钱帮助建设墨西哥经济，而不是把钱花在边境警卫和路障上，我们应该继续这样做，直到移民停止。

That never happened either.
那也没发生过。

You can imagine why a dynamic, self-adjusting feedback system cannot be governed by a static, unbending policy. It’s easier, more effective, and usually much cheaper to design policies that change depending on the state of the system. Especially where there are great uncertainties, the best policies not only contain feedback loops, but meta-feedback loops—loops that alter, correct, and expand loops. These are policies that design learning into the management process.
你可以想象为什么一个动态的、自我调整的反馈系统不能被一个静态的、不变的政策所控制。设计根据系统状态变化的策略更容易，更有效，而且通常更便宜。特别是在存在很大不确定性的情况下，最好的策略不仅包含反馈回路，而且还包含元反馈回路——能够改变、纠正和扩展回路的回路。这些都是将学习设计到管理过程中的策略。

An example was the historic Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer of the stratosphere. In 1987, when that protocol was signed, there was no certainty about the danger to the ozone layer, about the rate at which it was degrading, or about the specific effect of different chemicals. The protocol set targets for how fast the manufacture of the most damaging chemicals should be decreased. But it also required monitoring the situation and reconvening an international congress to change the phase-out schedule, if the damage to the ozone layer turned out to be more or less than expected. Just three years later, in 1990, the schedule had to be hurried forward and more chemicals added to it, because the damage was turning out to be much greater than was foreseen in 1987.
一个例子是具有历史意义的保护平流层臭氧层的《蒙特利尔议定书》。1987年该议定书签署时，对于臭氧层面临的危险、臭氧降解的速度以及不同化学品的具体影响都没有确定性。该议定书为减少最具破坏性的化学品的生产速度设定了目标。但是，如果对臭氧层的损害超过或低于预期，还需要监测情况并重新召开一次国际会议来改变逐步淘汰时间表。仅仅三年之后，也就是1990年，这个时间表不得不加快进度，并且增加了更多的化学品，因为损害比1987年预计的要大得多。

That was a feedback policy, structured for learning. We all hope that it worked in time.
这是一个反馈政策，是为了学习而设计的。我们都希望它能及时发挥作用。

Go for the Good of the Whole
为了大家好

Remember that hierarchies exist to serve the bottom layers, not the top. Don’t maximize parts of systems or subsystems while ignoring the whole. Don’t, as Kenneth Boulding once said, go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all. Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as growth, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability—whether they are easily measured or not.
记住，等级制度是为底层服务的，而不是为上层服务的。不要忽视整体而最大化系统或子系统的一部分。不要像 Kenneth Boulding 曾经说过的那样，费尽心思去优化那些根本不应该做的事情。目标是提高整个系统的属性，例如增长、稳定、多样性、弹性和可持续性——不管它们是否容易衡量。

Listen to the Wisdom of the System
聆听系统的智慧

Aid and encourage the forces and structures that help the system run itself. Notice how many of those forces and structures are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Don’t be an unthinking intervenor and destroy the system’s own self-maintenance capacities. Before you charge in to make things better, pay attention to the value of what’s already there.
帮助和鼓励那些帮助系统自我运转的力量和结构。注意这些力量和结构中有多少位于层次结构的底层。不要做一个没有思想的干预者，摧毁系统自我维护的能力。在你为了让事情变得更好而冲锋陷阵之前，注意一下已经存在的东西的价值。

A friend of mine, Nathan Gray, was once an aid worker in Guatemala. He told me of his frustration with agencies that would arrive with the intention of “creating jobs” and “increasing entrepreneurial abilities” and “attracting outside investors.” They would walk right past the thriving local market, where small-scale business people of all kinds, from basket makers to vegetable growers to butchers to candy sellers, were displaying their entrepreneurial abilities in jobs they had created for themselves. Nathan spent his time talking to the people in the market, asking about their lives and businesses, learning what was in the way of those businesses expanding and incomes rising. He concluded that what was needed was not outside investors, but inside ones. Small loans available at reasonable interest rates, and classes in literacy and accounting, would produce much more long term good for the community than bringing in a factory or assembly plant from outside.
我的一个朋友 Nathan Gray 曾经是危地马拉的救援人员。他告诉我，他对那些意在“创造就业”、“提高创业能力”和“吸引外部投资者”的机构感到失望他们会径直走过繁荣的当地市场，在那里，从篮子制造商到蔬菜种植者，从肉贩到糖果销售商，各种各样的小规模商人都在展示他们为自己创造的就业机会中的创业能力。内森花时间与市场上的人交谈，询问他们的生活和业务，了解这些业务扩张和收入增长的障碍。他得出结论，需要的不是外部投资者，而是内部投资者。以合理利率提供的小额贷款，以及识字和会计课程，将比从外部引进工厂或装配厂对社区产生更多的长期利益。

Locate Responsibility in the System
在系统中定位责任

That’s a guideline both for analysis and design. In analysis, it means looking for the ways the system creates its own behavior. Do pay attention to the triggering events, the outside influences that bring forth one kind of behavior from the system rather than another. Sometimes those outside events can be controlled (as in reducing the pathogens in drinking water to keep down incidences of infectious disease). But sometimes they can’t. And sometimes blaming or trying to control the outside influence blinds one to the easier task of increasing responsibility within the system.
这是分析和设计的指导方针。在分析中，它意味着寻找系统创造自身行为的方式。一定要注意触发事件，即从系统中产生一种行为而不是另一种行为的外部影响。有时候这些外部事件是可以控制的(比如减少饮用水中的病原体来降低传染病的发病率)。但有时却不能。有时候责备或者试图控制外界的影响会使人们忽视在系统中增加责任这个更容易的任务。

“Intrinsic responsibility” means that the system is designed to send feedback about the consequences of decision making directly and quickly and compellingly to the decision makers. Because the pilot of a plane rides in the front of the plane, that pilot is intrinsically responsible. He or she will experience directly the consequences of his or her decisions.
“内在责任”意味着系统被设计成直接、快速、有说服力地向决策者发送关于决策结果的反馈。因为飞行员坐在飞机的前面，飞行员本质上负有责任。他或她将直接经历他或她的决定的后果。

Dartmouth College reduced intrinsic responsibility when it took thermostats out of individual offices and classrooms and put temperature-control decisions under the guidance of a central computer. That was done as an energy-saving measure. My observation from a low level in the hierarchy was that the main consequence was greater oscillations in room temperature. When my office got overheated, instead of turning down the thermostat, I had to call an office across campus, which got around to making corrections over a period of hours or days, and which often overcorrected, s One way of making that system more, rather than less, responsible might have been to let professors keep control of their own thermostats and charge them directly for the amount of energy they use, thereby privatizing a commons!
达特茅斯学院减少了固有的责任，当它把温度调节器从个人办公室和教室，并把温度控制的决定在一个中央计算机的指导下。这是一种节能措施。我从等级制度的低层观察到，主要的后果是室温出现了更大的波动。当我的办公室变得过热时，我不得不给校园另一头的办公室打电话，他们会花上几个小时或几天的时间来纠正错误，而且经常纠正错误。“使这个系统更负责任的一种方法可能是让教授们控制自己的恒温器，并根据他们使用的能源量直接向他们收费，从而使公共空间私有化！

Designing a system for intrinsic responsibility could mean, for example, requiring all towns or companies that emit wastewater into a stream to place their intake pipes downstream from their outflow pipe. It could mean that neither insurance companies nor public funds should pay for medical costs resulting from smoking or from accidents in which a motorcycle rider didn’t wear a helmet or a car rider didn’t fasten the seat belt. It could mean Congress would no longer be allowed to legislate rules from which it exempts itself. (There are many rules from which Congress has exempted itself, including affirmative action hiring requirements and the necessity of preparing environmental impact statements.) A great deal of responsibility was lost when rulers who declared war were no longer expected to lead the troops into battle. Warfare became even more irresponsible when it became possible to push a button and cause tremendous damage at such a distance that the person pushing the button never even sees the damage.
例如，设计一个内在责任系统可能意味着要求所有向河流排放废水的城镇或公司将其进水管道置于其出水管道的下游。这可能意味着，无论是保险公司还是公共基金，都不应支付因吸烟、摩托车驾驶员没有戴头盔或者汽车驾驶员没有系安全带而导致的医疗费用。这可能意味着国会将不再被允许立法规则，它豁免自己。(有许多规则国会已经豁免自己，包括平权法案雇佣要求和必须准备环境影响报告。)当宣战的统治者不再被期望带领军队参战时，大量的责任就失去了。战争变得更加不负责任，因为按下按钮就可能造成巨大的伤害，而且距离如此之远，以至于按下按钮的人根本看不到伤害。

Garrett Hardin has suggested that people who want to prevent other people from having an abortion are not practicing intrinsic responsibility, unless they are personally willing to bring up the resulting child!⁷
Garrett Hardin 认为，那些想要阻止其他人堕胎的人并没有履行内在的责任，除非他们个人愿意抚养这个孩子！7

These few examples are enough to get you thinking about how little our current culture has come to look for responsibility within the system that generates an action, and how poorly we design systems to experience the consequences of their actions.
这几个例子足以让你思考，我们当前的文化在产生行为的系统中寻求责任的程度是多么的低，以及我们设计的系统在体验行为的后果方面是多么的糟糕。

Stay Humble— Stay a Learner
保持谦虚——做一个学习者

Systems thinking has taught me to trust my intuition more and my figuring- out rationality less, to lean on both as much as I can, but still to be prepared for surprises. Working with systems, on the computer, in nature, among people, in organizations, constantly reminds me of how incomplete my mental models are, how complex the world is, and how much I don’t know.
系统思维教会我更多地相信自己的直觉，更少地相信自己的理性判断，尽可能多地依靠这两者，但仍然要为意外做好准备。在系统中工作，在电脑上工作，在自然中，在人群中工作，在组织中工作，不断地提醒我，我的心理模型是多么不完整，世界是多么复杂，我有多么不知道。

The thing to do, when you don’t know, is not to bluff and not to freeze, but to learn. The way you learn is by experiment—or, as Buckminster Fuller put it, by trial and error, error, error. In a world of complex systems, it is not appropriate to charge forward with rigid, undeviating directives. “Stay the course” is only a good idea if you’re sure you’re on course. Pretending you’re in control even when you aren’t is a recipe not only for mistakes, but for not learning from mistakes. What’s appropriate when you’re learning is small steps, constant monitoring, and a willingness to change course as you find out more about where it’s leading.
当你不知道的时候，你要做的事情，不是虚张声势，不是呆住，而是学习。你学习的方式是通过实验——或者，正如巴克敏斯特 · 福乐所说，通过试验和错误，错误和错误。在一个复杂系统的世界里，带着严格的、不偏离的指令向前冲是不合适的。只有当你确定自己在正确的道路上时，“坚持到底”才是一个好主意。假装自己在掌控一切，即使你并不在掌控之中，这不仅是犯错误的秘诀，也是不从错误中吸取教训的秘诀。当你学习的时候，适当的方法是小步骤，持续的监控，以及当你发现更多关于它的方向时愿意改变过程。

That’s hard. It means making mistakes and, worse, admitting them. It means what psychologist Don Michael calls “error-embracing.” It takes a lot of courage to embrace your errors.
这很难。这意味着犯错误，更糟糕的是，承认错误。这就是心理学家唐 · 迈克尔所说的“拥抱错误”拥抱你的错误需要很大的勇气。

Neither we ourselves, nor our associates, nor the publics that need to be involved . . . can learn what is going on and might go on if we act as if we really had the facts, were really certain about all the issues, knew exactly what the outcomes should/ could be, and were really certain that we were attaining the most preferred outcomes. Moreover, when addressing complex social issues, acting as if we knew what we were doing simply decreases our credibility. . . . Distrust of institutions and authority figures is increasing. The very act of acknowledging uncertainty could help greatly to reverse this worsening trend.^8
8

Error-embracing is the condition for learning. It means seeking and using—and sharing—information about what went wrong with what you expected or hoped would go right. Both error embracing and living with high levels of uncertainty emphasize our personal as well as societal vulnerability. Typically we hide our vulnerabilities from ourselves as well as from others. But . . . to be the kind of person who truly accepts his responsibility . . . requires knowledge of and access to self far beyond that possessed by most people in this society.^9
9

Celebrate Complexity
庆祝复杂性

Let’s face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity and uniformity. That’s what makes the world interesting, that’s what makes it beautiful, and that’s what makes it work.
让我们面对现实吧，宇宙是混乱的。它是非线性的，动荡的，动态的。它把时间花费在通往其他地方的短暂行为上，而不是在数学上的整齐平衡中。它自我组织和进化。它创造了多样性和统一性。正是这些让世界变得有趣，让世界变得美丽，让世界运转起来。

There’s something within the human mind that is attracted to straight lines and not curves, to whole numbers and not fractions, to uniformity and not diversity, and to certainties and not mystery. But there is something else within us that has the opposite set of tendencies, since we ourselves evolved out of and are shaped by and structured as complex feedback systems. Only a part of us, a part that has emerged recently, designs buildings as boxes with uncompromising straight lines and flat surfaces. Another part of us recognizes instinctively that nature designs in fractals, with intriguing detail on every scale from the microscopic to the macroscopic. That part of us makes Gothic cathedrals and Persian carpets, symphonies and novels, Mardi Gras costumes and artificial intelligence programs, all with embellishments almost as complex as the ones we find in the world around us.
在人类的思维中，有些东西被直线而不是曲线所吸引，被整数而不是分数所吸引，被一致性而不是多样性所吸引，被确定性而不是神秘感所吸引。但是我们内心还有一些东西有着相反的倾向，因为我们自己是从复杂的反馈系统中进化出来的，并且被它们塑造成复杂的结构。只有我们的一部分，最近出现的一部分，将建筑设计成有着不妥协的直线和平坦表面的盒子。我们的另一部分本能地认识到，自然界的设计是以分形的形式进行的，从微观到宏观的每一个尺度上都有着有趣的细节。我们的这一部分使哥特式大教堂和波斯地毯，交响乐和小说，狂欢节服装和人工智能程序，所有的装饰几乎与我们在周围的世界发现的一样复杂。

We can, and some of us do, celebrate and encourage self-organization, disorder, variety, and diversity. Some of us even make a moral code of doing so, as Aldo Leopold did with his land ethic: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”¹⁰
我们可以，而且我们中的一些人确实可以，庆祝和鼓励自我组织、无序、多样性和多样性。我们中的一些人甚至制定了这样做的道德准则，就像奥尔多 · 利奥波德(Aldo Leopold)对他的土地伦理所做的那样: “当一件事情倾向于保持生物群落的完整性、稳定性和美丽时，它就是正确的。如果不是这样，那就是错误的。”10

Expand Time Horizons
扩展时间视野

One of the worst ideas humanity ever had was the interest rate, which led to the further ideas of payback periods and discount rates, all of which provide a rational, quantitative excuse for ignoring the long term.
人类有史以来最糟糕的想法之一是利率，这导致了更进一步的回收期和贴现率的想法，所有这些都为忽视长期提供了一个合理的、定量的借口。

The official time horizon of industrial society doesn’t extend beyond what will happen after the next election or beyond the payback period of current investments. The time horizon of most families still extends farther than that—through the lifetimes of children or grandchildren. Many Native American cultures actively spoke of and considered in their decisions the effects on the seventh generation to come. The longer the operant time horizon, the better the chances for survival. As Kenneth Boulding wrote:
工业社会的官方时间范围不会超过下次选举后的情况，也不会超过当前投资的回收期。大多数家庭的时间范围仍然远远超过这个范围——通过子女或孙辈的一生。许多美洲土著文化积极地谈论和考虑他们的决定对第七代后代的影响。时间跨度越长，生存的机会就越大。正如肯尼思 · 博尔丁所写:

There is a great deal of historical evidence to suggest that a society which loses its identity with posterity and which loses its positive image of the future loses also its capacity to deal with present problems, and soon falls apart. . . . There has always been something rather refreshing in the view that we should live like the birds, and perhaps posterity is for the birds in more senses than one; so perhaps we should all . . . go out and pollute something cheerfully. As an old taker of thought for the morrow, however, I cannot quite accept this solution. . . .^11
11

In a strict systems sense, there is no long term, short-term distinction. Phenomena at different time-scales are nested within each other. Actions taken now have some immediate effects and some that radiate out for decades to come. We experience now the consequences of actions set in motion yesterday and decades ago and centuries ago. The couplings between very fast processes and very slow ones are sometimes strong, sometimes weak. When the slow ones dominate, nothing seems to be happening; when the fast ones take over, things happen with breathtaking speed. Systems are always coupling and uncoupling the large and the small, the fast and the slow.
在严格的系统意义上，没有长期的、短期的区别。不同时间尺度的现象彼此嵌套。现在采取的行动有一些立竿见影的效果，也有一些会在未来几十年内辐射出去。我们现在经历着昨天、几十年前和几个世纪前所采取行动的后果。非常快的进程和非常慢的进程之间的耦合有时很强，有时很弱。当慢的占主导地位时，似乎什么也没发生; 当快的占主导地位时，事情发生的速度快得惊人。系统总是耦合和解耦大的和小的，快的和慢的。

When you’re walking along a tricky, curving, unknown, surprising, obstacle-strewn path, you’d be a fool to keep your head down and look just at the next step in front of you. You’d be equally a fool just to peer far ahead and never notice what’s immediately under your feet. You need to be watching both the short and the long term—the whole system.
当你走在一条复杂的、弯曲的、未知的、令人惊讶的、布满障碍的小路上时，如果你低着头看着你面前的下一步，那你就是一个傻瓜。如果你只是盯着远处看，却从来没有注意到你脚下的东西，你同样也是一个傻瓜。你需要同时关注短期和长期——整个系统。

Defy the Disciplines
违抗纪律

In spite of what you majored in, or what the textbooks say, or what you think you’re an expert at, follow a system wherever it leads. It will be sure to lead across traditional disciplinary lines. To understand that system, you will have to be able to learn from—while not being limited by—economists and chemists and psychologists and theologians. You will have to penetrate their jargons, integrate what they tell you, recognize what they can honestly see through their particular lenses, and discard the distortions that come from the narrowness and incompleteness of their lenses. They won’t make it easy for you.
不管你的专业是什么，或者教科书上怎么说，或者你认为自己是什么方面的专家，都要遵循一个系统，无论它指向哪里。它肯定会跨越传统的学科界限。要理解这个系统，你必须能够从经济学家、化学家、心理学家和神学家那里学习，同时不受他们的限制。你必须深入了解他们的行话，整合他们告诉你的东西，认识到他们通过他们特定的镜头可以真实地看到什么，并且抛弃由于他们镜头的狭窄和不完整而产生的扭曲。他们不会让你这么容易。

Seeing systems whole requires more than being “interdisciplinary,” if that word means, as it usually does, putting together people from different disciplines and letting them talk past each other. Interdisciplinary communication works only if there is a real problem to be solved, and if the representatives from the various disciplines are more committed to solving the problem than to being academically correct. They will have to go into learning mode. They will have to admit ignorance and be willing to be taught, by each other and by the system.
看到整个系统需要的不仅仅是“跨学科”，如果这个词的意思是，像通常一样，把来自不同学科的人聚集在一起，让他们相互交谈。跨学科交流只有在有一个真正的问题需要解决的情况下才能发挥作用，如果来自不同学科的代表更致力于解决问题而不是在学术上保持正确。他们将不得不进入学习模式。他们必须承认自己的无知，并愿意接受教育，接受彼此的教育，接受系统的教育。

It can be done. It’s very exciting when it happens.
这是可以做到的。当它发生的时候，是非常令人兴奋的。

Expand the Boundary of Caring
扩大关怀的范围

Living successfully in a world of complex systems means expanding not only time horizons and thought horizons; above all, it means expanding the horizons of caring. There are moral reasons for doing that, of course. And if moral arguments are not sufficient, then systems thinking provides the practical reasons to back up the moral ones. The real system is interconnected. No part of the human race is separate either from other human beings or from the global ecosystem. It will not be possible in this integrated world for your heart to succeed if your lungs fail, or for your company to succeed if your workers fail, or for the rich in Los Angeles to succeed if the poor in Los Angeles fail, or for Europe to succeed if Africa fails, or for the global economy to succeed if the global environment fails.
成功地生活在一个复杂系统的世界里，不仅意味着扩展时间视野和思维视野; 最重要的是，它意味着扩展关怀的视野。当然，这样做是有道德原因的。如果道德论证不够充分，那么系统思考就提供了支持道德论证的实际理由。真正的系统是相互关联的。人类的任何一部分都不能与其他人或全球生态系统分开。在这个一体化的世界里，如果你的肺衰竭，你的心脏就不可能成功; 如果你的员工失败，你的公司就不可能成功; 如果洛杉矶的穷人失败，洛杉矶的富人就不可能成功; 如果非洲失败，欧洲就不可能成功; 如果全球环境失败，全球经济就不可能成功。

As with everything else about systems, most people already know about the interconnections that make moral and practical rules turn out to be the same rules. They just have to bring themselves to believe that which they know.
正如其他有关系统的事情一样，大多数人已经知道使道德规则和实际规则变成相同规则的相互联系。他们只需要让自己相信他们所知道的。

Don’t Erode the Goal of Goodness
不要侵蚀善良的目标

The most damaging example of the systems archetype called “drift to low performance” is the process by which modern industrial culture has eroded the goal of morality. The workings of the trap have been classic, and awful to behold.
被称为“向低绩效漂移”的系统原型的最具破坏性的例子是现代工业文化侵蚀道德目标的过程。这种陷阱的运作方式是经典的，而且看起来很可怕。

Examples of bad human behavior are held up, magnified by the media, affirmed by the culture, as typical. This is just what you would expect. After all, we’re only human. The far more numerous examples of human goodness are barely noticed. They are “not news.” They are exceptions. Must have been a saint. Can’t expect everyone to behave like that.
人类不良行为的例子被媒体高举，被放大，被文化肯定，就像典型的一样。这正是你所期待的。毕竟，我们只是人类。更多的人类善良的例子很少被注意到。他们“不是新闻”他们是例外。一定是个圣人。不能指望每个人都这样。

And so expectations are lowered. The gap between desired behavior and actual behavior narrows. Fewer actions are taken to affirm and instill ideals. The public discourse is full of cynicism. Public leaders are visibly, unrepentantly amoral or immoral and are not held to account. Idealism is ridiculed. Statements of moral belief are suspect. It is much easier to talk about hate in public than to talk about love. The literary critic and naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch put it this way:
因此，人们的期望值降低了。期望行为和实际行为之间的差距缩小了。更少的行动被用来肯定和灌输理想。公共话语充满了愤世嫉俗。公共领导人是明显的，不知悔改的不道德或不道德的，不被追究责任。理想主义被嘲笑。道德信仰的陈述是可疑的。在公共场合谈论仇恨要比谈论爱容易得多。文学评论家和自然主义者约瑟夫 · 伍德 · 克鲁奇这样说:

Thus though man has never before been so complacent about what he has, or so confident of his ability to do whatever he sets his mind upon, it is at the same time true that he never before accepted so low an estimate of what he is. That same scientific method which enabled him to create his wealth and to unleash the power he wields has, he believes, enabled biology and psychology to explain him away—or at least to explain away whatever used to seem unique or even in any way mysterious. . . . Truly he is, for all his wealth and power, poor in spirit.^12
12

We know what to do about drift to low performance. Don’t weigh the bad news more heavily than the good. And keep standards absolute.
我们知道如何处理向低性能漂移的问题。不要把坏消息看得比好消息更重。保持绝对的标准。

Systems thinking can only tell us to do that. It can’t do it. We’re back to the gap between understanding and implementation. Systems thinking by itself cannot bridge that gap, but it can lead us to the edge of what analysis can do and then point beyond—to what can and must be done by the human spirit.
系统思维只能告诉我们这么做。它做不到。我们又回到了理解和实现之间的鸿沟。系统思维本身无法弥合这种差距，但它可以把我们引向分析能够做到的边缘，然后指向更远的方向——人类精神能够而且必须做到的事情。