SYSTEMISM
Essay
c.1969

Systemism is not right, but it is not wrong either. By Systemism I mean the need or tendency to adopt a set of postulates, axioms, or rules by which to interpret and regulate your life together with the need or tendency to ask or demand that others accept and use the same set of postulates axioms, or rules.

Systemism is actually a consequence of the First Law of the Universe: If something CAN happen, it will (the pessimistic form of which is known as Murphy's Law). Thus any organiism has two fundamental and complementary needs: the need for Consistency, and the need for Variety. However Variety can only be tolerated when there is a minimum amount of Consistency to fall back on. Therefore Systemism is predictable since a system is a model or structure which provides Consistency, and therefore it is not wrong, as I said earlier. It is not right because any system is merely a structure which provides consistency, and not the structure.

Another consequence of the First Law is the fact that any set of postulates, axioms, or rules can come to be believed, dependent on the amount and sequence of experience. In other words, any System provides some consistency, and if it is anywhere near the minimum, it will be accepted and used until a system which provides a significantly greater amount of consistency is found. A System which provides more than a minimum amount of consistency, however, can rarely be shaken even by a system wh:ch provides a very much greater degree of consistency, because, as long as a system provides minimum consistency, the organism has no need for a new system, and it will tend to interpret any new system as a subset of its old system.

This means that it is probably futile to attempt to unpersuade anyone of their system and when systems clash, the best thing is to regard it as a kind of chess game, in which the outcome is a kind of checkmate, or stalemate, where one player is backed into a corner from which h can't escape, but the player never actually loses his King; the game is merely started over again from the same beginning position.

Systemism is not right, furthermore, because it inhibits satisfaction of the need for Variety. This will be vigorously denied by Systemists but anyone who is outside of any system can see how it operates on someone within that system, although he may not be able to see how his own system operates upon himself. The fact is, any system logically excludes some alternative interpretations of experience and courses of action, and thereby decreases the field from which the need for Variety can be satisfied.

The solution of this dilemma, of needing a System for consistency, but thereby obstructing satisfaction of the need for Variety, appears to be difficult to find, because it will naturally tend to be in the form of another System, with perhaps the objective of maximizing Variety.

(originally published under the name John Fitz)