Out of all the readings, class discussions, and media I’ve covered so far for this class I was by far the most taken aback by Donella Meadows’s piece, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. Reading this piece turned into such a delight for me, a rare experience where just reading her writing made me fully aware of how gifted and intelligent she must have been. I’ve felt that the course has presented me with some pretty challenging concepts to approach so far, but throughout the beginning of her piece I was as lost as ever. I didn’t know what she was really getting at and I admittedly grew a bit cynical of the notion that she had this great understanding of how the world worked. (I would realize later that she has said in this article that the system was too complex to be boiled down into a recipe for making change in the world. (my bad)). By the end of it, I found myself questioning the way I think AND trying to figure out how I even stumbled upon the system I had been living within. It’s pretty far out stuff.
My whole life I’ve subscribed to the belief that growth is good, and while Meadows points out the flaws with that idea, I still don’t feel ready to abandon it. Growth means so much to too many people for me to say that it’s wrong. There’s probably a better, more efficient way to achieve happiness for the people that need growth the most. Though, it’s been difficult for me to create a new solution after I’ve lived my whole life thinking I had already known the answer.
