Preface

In the Hindu religion, all the effects that follow from our actions, words and ways of thinking are called Karma, which means consequences.  “Consequences,” the [Bhagavad-Gita would say], “are contained in an action the way a tree is implicit in a seed. If you plant an apple seed with the intent of getting apples,  you don’t simply get apples;  you get the whole tree….the longer we go on making the same mistakes,  the more consequences accumulate, and the more painful the suffering” (The Bhagavad-Gita  for Daily Living, 3,  P. 14-15, by Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press, Petaluma, California, 1984).

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When an individual (or a nation) chooses any particular path of action which results in purportedly “unpredictable events” or outcomes, those involved often chose to explain away their poor analysis as being an example of the unknowable, a logical faux pas; indeed an “unintended consequence.” One of the most often used excuses for not taking responsibility for the outcome of our actions is to trot out motley versions of the trite explanation that these consequences were “unintended.”  That rationale really serves as a pseudonym for “intervention failure,” and is apparently intended to absolve those involved in the systemic interaction(s) or intervention of any personal responsibility for the outcome(s) created as a somehow unforeseeable byproduct of the original action taken.

However, if one takes a closer, more “realistic” look at the chain of events leading to the “unintended consequences,” one is often struck that the excuse of “unintended consequences” is but a simplistic explanation or ignorant assumption.  The use of this explanation underlies similar and parallel simplistic premises that exist to explain (away) and attribute that sequence of events and outcomes of the chain of events in question to unforeseeable events.

Basic Definitions: Systems and Related Concepts*

•  Systems theory was founded by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, William Ross Ashby and others between the 1940s and the 1970s based upon principles taken from physics, biology and engineering.  Systems Theory later was applied to numerous other fields, including philosophy, sociology, organizational theory, management, psychotherapy (within family systems therapy) and economics among others. Cybernetics is a closely related field. ...

• A standard definition of a system is “A group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole.”  From the Latin and Greek, the term "system" meant to combine, to set up, to place together. A sub-system is a system which is part of another system.  A system typically consists of components (or elements) which are connected together in order to facilitate the flow of information, matter or energy. ...”

• Systems Theory, the premise upon which the interaction of systems is understood, is based upon the idea that the whole is different from the sum of the individual parts. It stresses the interdependent and interactive nature of the relationships that exist among all components of a system. The family, for example, may be viewed as consisting of subsystems (parents, siblings, grandparents, etc.) in which events affecting any one member will have an impact on all family members.

• Systems Theory fundamentally proposes that all levels of an organization in any entity are linked to each other hierarchically and that change in any level will bring about change in other levels.

                                                                                                                                                    *Wikipedia

 
            If the Hindu religion understood thousands of years ago that “consequences [the [Bhagavad-Gita would say] are contained in an action the way a tree is implicit in a seed,” what makes it SO difficult for people to take responsibility for their actions and behaviors?

             One interesting explanation has to do with the structural manner in which human’s perceptual and organizing apparatus [the brain] are constructed.  There is an apparently inherent emphasis on taking in information [constructing reality] in a manner which translates the information received by superimposing how to best understand that information within a “cause and effect” paradigm.

            The brain itself is split in two halves with separate and overlapping functioning which receives and interprets information supplied by binaural hearing and binocular seeing apparatus, our ears and eyes. Both of these functions superimpose a “relational reality” on the taking in of that information, seemingly “helping the brain understand” the information, but it also does more than objectively understand.  It draws conclusions, makes inferences, assumptions, and tries to “understand” what its sense organs perceive, often at the expense of apparent reality.  For example, the brain assists us in distinguishing what is close from what is distant.  It also “participates in more complex analyses, such as the relationship between loudness and the apparent distance of the sound from the observer.

            The brain in interpreting information also often mislabels events in a “cause and effect” manner as it tries to make sense out of the incoming data stream. Yet the juxtaposition of two unrelated events, such as scratching one’s head with the simultaneous backfiring of a car often causes the brain to sense a relationship between the two apparently unrelated events, and raises the fleeting thought that “the two events are somehow connected…that scratching one’s head again might once again result in the loud, explosive backfiring if a car nearby…no matter how unlikely or wacky the notion!”

Since the brain has this role in “making meaningful” incoming data, people often miscue on and misinterpret “cause” and “effect.”  It is simply because two events occur in proximity, or because our eyes and/or ears complexly interpret the information as an inter-relationship, humans “logically” sense a connection which really does not exist.

There are individuals with receptive language-based learning disabilities who experience a similar difficulty when trying to extract from a spoken or written word that word’s “meaning.”  An accessible way to understand this phenomenon is a brief diversion into the relationship between Newton’s Laws of Motion and quantum mechanics or QED (quantum electrodynamics) theory.  Newtonian physical laws of motion are based upon observable events (a physical law is a scientific generalization based on empirical observations of physical behavior).  The three Newtonian Laws of Motion are:

1. Law of Inertia: An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by another force.
2. Law of Acceleration: Force equals mass times acceleration.
3. Law of Reciprocal Actions: For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.

Quantum Mechanics, however, is a more fundamental theory than Newtonian mechanics because it provides accurate and precise descriptions for many phenomena that "classical" theories simply cannot explain, as it is describing these phenomena on an atomic and subatomic level.

            In other words, what we see and how we explain the relationship of events does not necessarily parallel what occurs at levels outside of our physical senses and processing apparatus: “what you see is not necessarily what you get!”

The above is all prework to understanding that how complex systems function versus what our physical and logical thinking apparatus inform us re: cause and effect are not [necessarily] the same.

            When we work with a family (or invade a country) the apparently simple relationships between parts rarely hold to a longer term understanding of their interaction with each other. So whether we fail to appreciate the strengths of a family who present as in crisis or fail to understand the complex tribal and religious affiliations of distant cultures, our interactions with these “systems” results in outcomes which we would like others to believe are unpredictable. But there is a difference between situations in which you initially theorize or hypothesize that outcomes are not able to be determined at the current point in time at which the theory or hypothesis is being formulated  (although once more,  probability mathematics has addressed this issue in areas such as “fuzzy” mathematics and Chaos Theory.)*

In mathematics and physics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain nonlinear (systems whose behavior is not expressible as a sum of the behaviors of its descriptors). Dynamical systems (any fixed "rule" which describes the time [is time a "real thing" that is "all around us", or is it nothing more than a way of speaking about and measuring events?] dependence of a point's position in its ambient space. The mathematical models used to describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in a pipe, or the number of fish each spring in a lake is examples of dynamical systems.

            That under certain conditions exhibit dynamics that are sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random, because of an exponential growth of errors in the initial conditions. This happens even though these systems are deterministic (in a deterministic system, every action, or cause, produces a reaction, or effect, and every reaction, in turn, becomes the cause of subsequent reactions. in the sense that their future dynamics) are well defined by their initial conditions, and there are no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

QED theory applies to subatomic activity, activity not observable by the naked eye.  The behavior it seeks to describe does not replicate the apparent relationships an observer can observe and notice with the naked eye.

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            The above essay and analogies presented should inform us all that what we observe is NOT necessarily representative of what is happening…OR as accurate as other, underlying better more accurate explanations which we are unable to take in through direct observation.

          From an educational standpoint, what others [the educational system, parents] desire to simply “explain away” as the problem of just the individual (Blaming the Victim) when it comes to education or any complex interaction, most probably has a broader, better explanation which is being ignored for other reasons as equally complex and unknown!!

Please read “The Politics of Ability” and explore different ways of understanding how we have become a nation which appears to have chosen and endorsed a system of education which has chosen to explain away the failure of its constituents.  The failure of the educational system is actually a case of Blaming the Victim.  The thought that students’ under-performance and/or failure is the fault and problem of those students rather than the complex interaction of many systems, many of which are unobservable and currently “unknown,” should serve as a bellwether of both the failure of this system to deliver  what they are mandated to deliver and their failure to take responsibility for the failure of the “educational process” they endorse.

                                                                                         *Definitions adapted from Wikipedia