Denys Candy, director of the Jandon Center and my advisor for this project, lent me a packet called “The Water of Systems Change,” indeed, systems change. The “water” comes from a parable from a speech by David Foster Wallace:
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
The report suggests that in order to effect change, we must become aware of the “water” around us: systemic forces and constraints that create and perpetuate the current situation. Basically, we need to know why things are in order to change how they are.
The document — produced by FSG, a nonprofit that consults globally on issues relating to social change — creates a framework in which to begin identifying and becoming aware of the The framework theorizes that there are “six interdependent conditions that typically play significant roles in holding a social or environmental problem in place.”
They organize the six conditions in an inverted pyramid with three levels of systems change: explicit, semi-explicit, and implicit, where “implicit” is the most “foundational driver” and at the bottom.
We can position the work of the various organizations and people within this framework. I’ve set up a Miro board to map some of the ideas out.
Please browse and add ideas to the board below! Ideas can be work you’ve heard about happening or that you’d like to see happen or anything you think connects. Unfinished thoughts welcome.