Culture, Globalism, and Entropy are big terms that bring to mind issues that are too big for simplicity. In my recent expert witness deposition, I was asked if one kind of analysis was more complex than the one central to the case. I replied that they were probably equally complex and it reminded me why it is better to let the experts do the work rather than generalist in so many circumstances.
Rule 5 from What it Takes focuses on how the different parts of a company are intertwined and that good management factors in each component to determine the good of the whole. The interactions between the components can be characterized as complexities and the sum of the components as a system. To understand the system, you have to understand not only the components, but how the components change and how that change impacts not only the other components, but the relationship of the components.
One of my recent work discussions covered how the dropping of pressure in an oil reservoir impacts the rate of recovery of the oil and considered both how the drop in pressure impacted the viscosity of the oil and the makeup of the oil as oil, gas, and other elements as well. A model of the system that did not account for the change in viscosity would give inaccurate results.
The same analytical limitations apply when we try to model a culture or a characterization such as globalism. If we try to look at the overall system and apply simple representations, we get bad answers. If we thought the Astros had a positive culture because they seemed to have fun playing, were active in the community, and generally were nice guys, we would have missed the rotting core that allowed the cheating to start, grow, and fester.
The culture of the Astros also included the following negative aspects: Put a crappy team on the field for years. Pay the office staff a pitance. Have a rigged TV system. Make all the merchandise too expensive or low quality. Allow poor food and drink quality and service for years. Have guy with mental issues (hitting themselves in the head) play. Trade guys with mental issues for guys under investigation for domestic abuse. Not properly treat player with thyroid issue. Repeatly treat the media with contempt and durision.The list goes on.
One of my freinds was adament that they would have quit before playing for a team that was cheating. I was on a high school football team that may have not played by all the rules. I didn’t quit, I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t run to a reporter to say anything. I wasn’t getting paid, but I was also a young person without experience or a fully deveoped brian if we believe all the scientific issues around brain deveopment.
But I also wasn’t playing at the highest professional levels where I had no alternative for an equivalent income. Once, I was at a company that was not doing things the way I liked. I quit. I got a job somewhere else. The Astros players might not have been able to do the same thing.
Globalism is a characterization of the people of the world gaining an understanding of how the world economy is a single system with each country influencing every other and not closed systems that people like to simplify each to. China as a nation decided what level of comtamination was allowed in plastic recycling for their country and impacted the refuse system on every community in the world (at least to some degree). The UK leaving the Euopean Union definitely impacts the economics of every country in the world and maybe every single individual. The move to stop cow farts from damaging the atmosphere is impacting how much it costs to have a bacon cheesburger. The move to wind power and electric cars is creating trash that can’t be recyced in tremedous amounts and no one pushing these anit-oil initiatives ever talks about these piles of wind farm blades and stacks of used batteries.
Did you ever stop to think of you and your life as a system? Sometimes we think our body is a system and we needs to fuel it, keep it clean, get it rested, eercise it, and everything else we do to stay healthy. But how often do we think of our lives as a system? We only have 24 hours a day, so we have to know that each decision we make impacts what else we can do. Amongst my other activities, I have a goal to study the book of Job and see what I can learn. However, Job is a long string of statements that each have their own meaning and yet all fit together in the puzzle that is part of God’s Wisdom given to us.
When we think of anything, we must think of it in terms of a system that has pieces, causes, and effects and we must think of it in terms of how it impacts everything else around it. When alone in the car, cussing at the person that cuts you off and goes slow in front of you only to speed away once the roadway permits seems harmless enough, but it impacts how you deal with our circumstances beyond your control when people are looking and can see you. So know a simple life is a good goal, but life is not simple.