Four documentaries to tickle your systems intelligence
What do soil, smartphones, and your shiny new trainers have in common?
More than you might think.
In my last article, I explored my working definition of systems intelligence and shared my belief that a collective shift to a deeper, more systemic way of seeing the world would benefit us all (If you missed it, you can find it here: The Cat, the Cake, and Complexity.)
In this article, I would like to invite you to a thought experiment. I have selected four documentaries that, through different lenses, illuminate some of the key hallmarks of systems intelligence: awareness of mental models, questioning assumptions, seeing connections and feedback loops, and adopting a systemic lens on the world.
Documentaries are a wonderful tool for this kind of exploration. They immerse you in different perspectives, reveal patterns and relationships, and can move you both intellectually and emotionally.
Below is my interpretation of each film, a look through my lens as someone who loves to coach others into thinking differently. I wonder what your interpretation will be. Write back and let me know!
1. Reflecting on Mental Models: I Am
In this documentary, Tom Shadyac focuses on two primary questions: “What is wrong with the world?” and “What can we do to make it right?”
He looks for answers by interviewing various philosophers, scientists, writers, and spiritual leaders, and weaves it all into a beautiful, thought-provoking story.
My highlight from this documentary comes at the start. It begins by reminding us that we create our own stories, our mental models of the world. These mental models influence what we pay attention to and how we act, but they can be wrong.
I Am proposes that two dominating models, or narratives, have shaped our modern world: The first is that of a reliable, predictable universe, where separate objects and people operate according to mechanistic laws. The second is rooted in Darwin’s concept of competition for survival. These models have led us to see ourselves as separate from one another. As a result, we created educational systems that celebrate and enforce independence and competition. In business, we created zero-sum games, in which you need to separate yourself from the pack, be number one, and win, mostly at the expense of someone else.
Humanity is going to require a substantially new way of thinking if it is to survive. (Albert Einstein)
The documentary then goes on to challenge these dominating models and to explore alternative views on happiness, human connection, and the meaning of success. What would happen if we chose different mental models?
Aside from the stories told in the documentary, it is an invitation to reflect on your own mental models. Think about your perception of any complex situation, and entertain the thought that it might be wrong, or incomplete. Can you create an argument against your own perception? Can you find any gaps in your reasoning? Is it based on proven facts or assumptions, or does it come from old habits of thought?
2. Recognising Feedback: Kiss the Ground
I love everything about this documentary! I learned so much from it. I’m forever grateful to Nikiforos Steiakakis for introducing me to it through his own work transforming agriculture in Crete.
Kiss the Ground is a documentary that focuses on the vital role of soil in addressing climate change. It features experts, activists, and farmers who explain how regenerative agriculture can support healthy soil, increase food security, and reverse environmental damage.
But it’s not just about farming. It’s also about seeing the interconnectedness of soil health, carbon cycles, environmental, and human health.
If you watch it, pay close attention to the language used to describe these connections: vicious circle, addiction, and feedback loops.
Listen to the farmers who decided to change from conventional to regenerative practices. They did so when their lands dried up and their crops were decimated. They tried to find better solutions, and in doing so, they realised that they were creating the very vicious circles that they were suffering from: by using synthetic materials to increase yield quickly, they eroded the quality of the soil, making their land even more reliant on synthetic fertilisers, thus perpetuating and aggravating their problems as time went on.
They broke the cycle once they could see the cycle.
We’re not just treating the symptoms, we’re changing the system by healing the soil. (Kiss the Ground)
Kiss the Ground calls for a shift from short-term fixes to long-term systemic thinking, showing that healing the soil creates positive feedback loops that increase food security and economic benefits, while also helping to address the issue of climate change.
How many feedback loops or cycles can you recognise in the documentary?
3. Appreciating emergence: Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy
This documentary delves into the manipulative strategies employed by major corporations to keep us buying. Through interviews with insiders from companies like Amazon, Apple, and Adidas, the film exposes marketing tactics such as psychological nudging and planned obsolescence. Importantly, it also highlights the environmental and ethical consequences of overconsumption.
I included this documentary in my selection because it illustrates how small individual decisions can have catastrophic, far-reaching impacts. An example is the fast fashion that we buy on a whim and end up discarding after a short time. When we discard the items, they are out of sight and out of mind. We say that we throw them away, but there is no away; they go elsewhere and become someone else’s problem.
The documentary shows us who that someone else is. We learn that over 15 million discarded garments are sent to Ghana each week, overwhelming local waste management systems and polluting the environment.
We also learn that the new phones we buy, not because our existing phone is no longer serving us, but because we want the status associated with owning the latest version, become part of the 13 million phones that are discarded globally each day, contributing to toxic waste that often ends up in developing countries, posing health and environmental risks.
We also see how the toxins from all the waste that we throw ‘away’ contaminate the air and water, eventually making their way back into our bodies.
[Fashion] brands don’t really think about the whole cycle. When you dispose, what happens?
Brands are not responsible for that today. This is a problem that affects everyone on Earth. (Buy now! The shopping conspiracy)
We can now buy things at the click of a button, and we often don’t think beyond that click, but that click triggers a whole set of intended and unintended consequences. These consequences may first appear in faraway places, or take time to manifest. They may interact with other unintended consequences. Eventually, they will come back to haunt us: Environmental pollution in Ghana or Pakistan will not stay in Ghana and Pakistan; it will affect us and our children too.
French chemist Antoine Lavoisier said: Nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed.
I invite you to be cautious of the word ‘away’. Anytime you find yourself using the word, pause and consider what it means, are you transforming one problem into another? Are you shifting the burden from you onto someone else?
4. Embracing a systemic lens: Yesterday, Tomorrow, and You
An oldie, but a very goodie is “Yesterday, Tomorrow, and You,” the final episode in James Burke’s documentary series Connections.
In this episode, Burke does a great job of explaining interconnectedness. He starts off with eight technological innovations and illustrates how they are connected to each other, and how they were the culmination of previous innovations throughout the history of mankind. He argues that all man-made inventions are not isolated events, but a giant network, in which each part is connected to other parts. A change or failure in one part triggers a series of changes throughout the network.
Burke invites us to think about the accelerating pace of technological change and the unintended consequences that ripple outward in ways that are hard to predict.
Although the documentary dates back to 1978, Burke asks questions that are even more pertinent today: Should we attempt to control change? Should we abandon technology? Or should we develop new ways of thinking and living with rapid, interconnected change?
Instead of giving answers, he runs through four potential scenarios and the implications of each.
Can we look into the past and see the future? You may not care, except, of course, you’ll have to live with the result. It’s YOUR future. (James Burke, Connections)
If you decide to watch this documentary, try to apply the same lens as Burke. Look around you and see how different objects or technologies are connected. How do they impact your day-to-day life? If one of today’s technologies suddenly disappeared, what would change? Would we replace it with something else? Would other technologies become obsolete or unsustainable? How would life change?
On perspectives
This documentary selection presents various topics from the perspective of the filmmakers. You may disagree with some of their thoughts and ideas (I certainly do). The point is not whether they are right or wrong. The point is to get better at seeing connections, better at probing the past and exploring the possibilities of the future. The point is to stay curious.
So pick one, or four. Watch with an open mind. Let the stories pull you in.
And let me know what shifts.
