Jennifer Baez

A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. If you look at that definition closely for a minute, you can see that a system must consist of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose 

“Once a core belief is formed, you engage in what’s called a confirmation of bias; information that does not conform to your beliefs is discarded or ignored in favor of information that does.”

Such philosophies emphasize that we humans dwell within, not apart from, the network of felt relations, human and ecological, that shape our lives; and that we have possibilities for living creatively and compassionately amid these relations

My favorite Wikipedia entry begins: “Ronald James Read was an American philanthropist, investor, janitor, and gas station attendant.” Ronald Read was born in rural Vermont. He was the first person in his family to graduate high school, made all the more impressive by the fact that he hitchhiked to campus each day. For those who knew Ronald Read,

A system is a set of things-people, cells, molecules, or whatever-interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time

Fifteen billion people were born in the 19th and 20th centuries. But try to imagine how different the global economy—and the whole world—would be today if just seven of them never existed:

Adolf Hitler

Joseph Stalin

Mao Zedong

Gavrilo Princip

Thomas Edison

Bill Gates

Martin Luther King

Another way to put this is that 0.00000000004% of people were