Seeing the system
The human experience in systems that shape us
I often tell my students, “Once you start thinking about and understanding systems, you can never unsee them. And they’re everywhere.”
Outside of the classrooms, we talk about the systems we see all the time, often without really contemplating them in the way I’m about to explore.
Education systems, justice systems, healthcare systems, and economic systems are often in the media and in our daily conversations. Rarely do we talk about what it feels like to live inside them. We name systems as if they are “out there,” operating somewhere beyond our personal reach. But more often, systems show up not as headlines or institutions but as daily rhythms, unspoken rules, and subtle emotional cues. We feel them in the pace of our days, the weight of expectations, and the quiet negotiations we make about who to be in a given space.
That’s the shift I’ve been noticing as I move from the deeply reflective terrain of personal identity to a broader view of the environments we move through. The first leg of this journey through The Human Equation centered around reclaiming the self from the inside out, unpacking the roles we inherit, the stories we tell, and the emotional legacies we carry.
But now, the frame expands: not just who are we becoming? But in what conditions? And who benefits from those conditions staying the same?
Systems are not neutral. They are not passive. They are designed, sometimes deliberately, sometimes haphazardly, to produce particular outcomes. And those outcomes are shaping influences in our lives, whether we want them to be or not.
Systems as lived environments
We often define systems in mechanical terms: a set of interrelated parts working toward a shared purpose. But I’ve come to see systems less as machines and more as living environments, as the dynamic spaces that we navigate, adapt to, and often internalize. Structuration Theory reminds us that we don’t merely act within systems; we reproduce them through our everyday behaviors and beliefs[i]. They are both the medium and the outcome of our participation.
We make the system, and the system remakes us.
Sometimes, the best way to grasp this isn’t through theory but through story. The more I think and write about systems, the more I think about one of the most enduring cultural metaphors for systemic awakening: the movie The Matrix[ii]. Neo begins the film believing he’s living a normal life, but small cracks appear, glitches, déjà vu, a nagging sense that something doesn’t add up. When offered the red pill, he makes a choice to “wake up” and see the world for what it truly is: an artificial system designed to keep people compliant. It’s a fantastical scenario, yes, but emotionally, it resonates. Like Neo, many of us have had moments when we realize the roles we’ve been playing, the beliefs we’ve internalized, the systems we’ve been upholding, were not necessarily our own.
What unfolds in The Matrix mirrors what systems theorists describe: waking up not just to the structure around you but to how deeply you’ve absorbed its logic. The illusion wasn’t just the system, it was the belief that it had to be this way.
When the System speaks through you
I’ve learned that systems don’t just shape behavior; they speak through people, and often through us. Not through grand proclamations, but through micro-moments such as a manager subtly discouraging risk, or a teacher’s raised eyebrow when a student challenges authority, or the silence in a meeting when an idea falls flat because it came from the ‘wrong’ person.
This is described as the presentation of self, where our identities are performed based on social expectations and environmental cues[iii]. What’s more rarely acknowledged is how tightly those cues are woven into systems of race, gender, class, ability, and culture. Systems don’t just reward ‘competence’ or ‘professionalism’; they reward those whose behavior mirrors the system’s dominant norms.
And so, we begin to contort.
We smile more. We hold back. We overcompensate. We assimilate. Not always out of choice, but out of a need to belong or survive.
This is how the system gets into us, not just into our schedules but into our speech patterns, posture, ambition, and, over time, if we’re not careful, our sense of self.
Those systems we name most easily, such as education, healthcare, and government, are often just the surface. Beneath them lie more enduring forces: invisible architectures like capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, and heteronormativity. These are ideological systems and are not limited to a single institution but embedded across many. They define what’s seen as ‘normal’, who gets to belong, and what forms of knowledge or expression are valued. And because they’re so deeply woven into our social fabric, we rarely notice them until we push against their boundaries.
Internalizing the System’s Logic
Perhaps the most disorienting realization is that systems live not just around us but within us. They shape our default thinking. The most effective way to intervene in a system is not through policies or incentives but by changing the paradigm or the shared mindset out of which the system arises[iv]. The paradigm is where systems begin and where we begin to lose track of what’s ours and what’s inherited.
If you grew up in a system that equated achievement with worth, you might find rest uncomfortable. If you were raised in a culture that valued deference, you may feel guilt when asserting boundaries. If your workplace subtly rewards urgency, you might start equating speed with importance even when slowness is what’s needed for depth and care.
This is not a weakness. It’s adaptation. But adaptation comes at a cost.
You start trading nuance for certainty. Dignity for approval. Integrity for assimilation.
And if that system does not accommodate your full self, that is, your cultural ways of knowing, your emotional truth, your questions, it becomes easier to leave parts of yourself at the door than to risk being seen as ‘difficult.’
The danger, then, is not just in conformity. It’s in forgetting what we’ve conformed to.
Emotion as a systemic signal
We tend to think of systems as technical or organizational, but I’ve come to believe that they have emotional signatures. Systems carry affect. They make us feel a certain way. They create climates of fear or ease, scarcity or sufficiency, dignity or disconnection, and those feelings often point us to the system’s real priorities.
When a system punishes vulnerability, we learn to armor up. When a workplace praises overwork, we learn to ignore exhaustion. When a family system values harmony at all costs, we bury conflict until it erupts elsewhere. We come to believe that the discomfort is personal. We blame it on our anxiety, our imposter syndrome, our discontent, when, in fact, we may be reacting in completely human ways to inhumane structures.
This is what I mean when I say that systems are felt. You don’t just experience them cognitively. You carry them in your nervous system.
And sometimes, the most radical act isn’t understanding the system intellectually; it’s noticing how it lives in your body.
Seeing the System is not the same as escaping it
Awareness alone doesn’t dissolve a system, but it does give us a chance to choose our relationship to it. The invisible architectures I noted earlier are not dismantled in a single insight. Still, we can begin by asking:
What is this system rewarding?
What is it punishing?
What parts of me are being welcomed, and what parts are being quietly asked to leave?
That’s the foundation for change. Systems are not just structures; they are stories. If we keep participating without reflection, we keep writing the same chapters over and over again.
The book, Seeing Like a State, suggests that systems often require simplification to function at scale, but that simplification erases the richness, diversity, and nuance of real human lives[v]. Our job, then, is not to become more legible to the system but to remember the parts of ourselves that resist being simplified.
That remembering is an act of resistance. But more than that, it is the first act of rebuilding.
From systems of control to systems of care
As we continue this journey over the next few months, we’ll explore not just how systems shape us but also how we might shape them in return. Systems can be built to extract, they can also be built to nourish. If they can enforce conformity, they can also make space for difference. If they can demand performance, they can also honor presence.
And this is where the work shifts:
From naming what is to imagining what could be.
From living reactively to engaging intentionally.
From systems that consume us to systems we co-create.
This is not a solo pursuit. Systems are sustained through collective participation, and they are changed through collective remembering. As we begin to explore systems of shared purpose, the culture of work, and the conditions for authentic community, I hope we’ll stay grounded in this question:
What kind of system are we willing to help shape not just for ourselves, but for those who come after us?
Reflections on the Journey
Writing this piece has challenged me to ask more than “How do I feel in this system?” and “What is this system for?” That shift from personal reaction to systemic inquiry has been unsettling but necessary.
While identity is shaped by internal reflection, it’s also shaped by external design. We live in systems that often ask us to perform for worth, produce for belonging, or assimilate for acceptance. And while those systems may offer stability, they rarely offer wholeness.
Seeing the system doesn’t guarantee transformation. But not seeing it guarantees repetition.
So, I keep returning to this truth: Systems don’t have to stay the way they are. But change starts with the courage to notice and then act.
Because the systems we accept today are the conditions others will inherit tomorrow.
And we are always, always shaping what comes next.
[i] Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration, New Ed edition (Berkeley Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986).
[ii] The Matrix (Warner Home Video, 1999).
[iii] Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor, 1959).
[iv] Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008).
[v] James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).