Praxis: A Better Way To Understand Wicked Problems
I've been thinking about interconnectedness a lot lately—how the patterns we see in folk art, the wisdom embedded in traditional practices, and the way natural systems work all point to something deeper about how change actually happens. When I learned about systems thinking for research praxis at a recent California Institute of Integral Studies event, something clicked into place.
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When we trace how a factory's pollution connects to zoning laws, economic incentives, community power structures, and regulatory capture, we're mapping systems—interconnected networks where every element influences every other element.
Key Threads
Key questions this article explores:
How does looking at whole systems change what we discover compared to studying isolated parts?
What happens when we intentionally include multiple perspectives instead of seeking one "objective" truth?
How can understanding interconnectedness lead to more effective ways of supporting change?
What makes systems-based thinking feel different to practice, not just understand?
When Everything Connects To Everything
I was captivated by Maya's story—an ethnobotanist who spent months studying why traditional medicinal plants were disappearing from a mountain region. At first, she catalogued which species were declining, measured climate changes, tracked harvesting patterns. The obvious culprits: overharvesting and warming temperatures.
But when she started mapping connections, a different story emerged. Young people were leaving for cities because traditional farming couldn't compete with industrial agriculture. As elders passed away, knowledge of sustainable harvesting practices died with them. Tourism brought money but also trampling and collection by visitors who didn't understand plant cycles.
The loss of medicinal plants wasn't just an environmental problem—it was woven into economic policy, education systems, cultural transmission, and land use patterns. Each element reinforced the others in ways that made conservation efforts fail despite good intentions.
This resonates deeply with what we see in folk traditions. The decline of traditional crafts isn't just about cheaper manufactured goods—it's woven into education systems that don't value handwork, economic pressures that demand speed over quality, cultural messages that equate old with outdated, and the loss of community spaces where skills are passed down.
What makes these "wicked problems"—challenges that resist simple solutions because they emerge from complex interactions between multiple systems. Unlike puzzles with clear answers, wicked problems shift when you try to solve them. Each intervention reveals new complexities, because the problem exists as an emergent property of the whole system, not any single part.
Sources:
Thinking in Systems: A Primer - Donella Meadows
The Art of the Long View - Peter Schwartz
Systems Theory for Research Praxis - CIIS Event, July 2024
Multiple Truths, Richer Understanding
What struck me most was Marcus's research on why community gardens kept failing. Every stakeholder had completely different explanations: city planners blamed water access and soil contamination, activists pointed to gentrification, residents worried about safety, environmental groups focused on pesticide drift, schools wanted educational space but couldn't maintain year-round plots.
Instead of trying to determine who was "right," Marcus asked: What if they're all partially right? What if gardens fail precisely because these different viewpoints create conflicting actions that cancel each other out?
This feels familiar from our work at Folk Lounge. When we're trying to understand why certain traditional practices persist while others fade, we often hear different explanations from different people. Artisans talk about market pressures. Cultural activists focus on identity and heritage. Educators worry about skill transmission. Each perspective reveals something true.
Systems thinking suggests these aren't competing truths—they're different views of the same complex web. The wisdom lies not in choosing sides but in understanding how these perspectives interact and where they might align.
Sources:
Multiple Perspectives: Concept, Applications, and User Guidelines - Harold Linstone
The Fifth Discipline - Peter Senge
Systemic Practice and Action Research - Various Authors
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Seeing What's Not Yet Visible
Dr. Elena Vasquez noticed something that changed how I think about resilience. While studying community response to climate change, she found that neighborhoods that seemed most vulnerable on paper sometimes showed remarkable adaptability. Affluent areas with better infrastructure sometimes struggled more to adapt.
The vulnerable communities had developed informal networks for sharing resources, checking on neighbors, and coordinating mutual aid. These networks were invisible to official metrics but functioned as powerful adaptive systems. Communities were already practicing resilience in ways that didn't show up in government databases.
This reminds me of the "hidden wisdom" in folk traditions—knowledge that doesn't fit academic categories but contains profound understanding of how to work with natural and social systems. The permaculture principles embedded in indigenous farming. The psychological insights woven into traditional ceremonies. The ecological knowledge preserved in plant-based dyeing and natural building techniques.
Systems thinking trains us to notice what's already working, even when it doesn't look like official solutions. It asks us to see the adaptive capacity already present in communities rather than just documenting problems and deficits.
This points to something systems thinkers call emergence—the way complex behaviors arise from simple interactions between parts. Just as flocks of birds create intricate patterns without a central coordinator, community resilience often emerges from countless small interactions that no single intervention could orchestrate. The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Sources:
Seeing Like a State - James C. Scott
The Systems Thinking for Health Actions Framework - PMC
Complex Adaptive Systems - Santa Fe Institute Research
From Seeing To Doing
Jake's story brought this full circle for me. Working with indigenous communities trying to revive traditional food systems, he kept seeing strong interest in heritage seeds and ancestral growing methods, but participation remained low despite grants and workshops.
The real barriers weren't lack of interest—they were structural. Unpredictable work schedules made consistent plant care impossible. Younger people felt embarrassed about not knowing ancestral skills. Families worried about food security and couldn't risk crop failures when grocery stores were reliable.
The food sovereignty programs had focused on cultural desire while ignoring the systems that made traditional practices difficult. When Jake shifted to creating flexible community support—rotating care schedules, elder-youth mentorship pairs, crop sharing that reduced individual risk—everything changed.
This is what I find most exciting about systems thinking: it's not just analysis, it's praxis—the integration of understanding and action. It asks us to work with the forces that keep patterns stable rather than fighting against them.
In our Folk Lounge community, this might mean understanding why traditional crafts struggle not just as isolated cultural phenomena but as part of larger webs including economic systems, educational priorities, community structures, and cultural narratives about value and meaning.
But systems thinking also demands reflexivity—examining how our own position within these systems shapes what we see and don't see. When I explore traditional crafts, I need to ask: How does my perspective as someone with access to education, time for creative pursuits, and platform for sharing ideas influence what I notice? Whose voices might I be missing? What assumptions am I bringing that could blind me to other possibilities?
Sources:
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System - Donella Meadows
The Principle of Hope - Ernst Bloch
Praxis (process) - Various philosophical sources
Thinking In Circles
Understanding systems means learning to think in loops rather than lines. Linear thinking asks: A causes B. Systems thinking asks: How do A and B influence each other over time?
This changes everything about how we approach supporting traditional practices and community resilience. Instead of looking for root causes, we map reinforcing cycles. Instead of individual solutions, we look for places where small changes might shift larger patterns.
Environmental degradation displaces communities, which disrupts traditional ecological knowledge, which reduces capacity for environmental stewardship, which enables more degradation. But positive cycles work the same way: community gardens improve nutrition while building social connections while creating neighborhood pride while developing civic engagement. Each element reinforces the others.
Systems researchers learn to ask different questions: Where are the reinforcing loops that keep problems stable? What would happen if we interrupted these cycles? Where might positive feedback loops amplify solutions? Most importantly, where are the leverage points—places where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything?
Leverage points aren't always obvious. Sometimes the most powerful intervention is changing the mindset or paradigm that created the system in the first place. Sometimes it's shifting the goals the system serves. Sometimes it's adjusting the information flows so people can see the consequences of their actions.
The most effective interventions often work indirectly by changing the conditions that allow problems to persist. Rather than trying to convince individuals to change behavior, we might focus on removing barriers and creating environments where healthier choices become easier.
Woven Wisdom
Truth worth holding onto:
Web Thinking: Persistent challenges exist because multiple forces keep them stable. Understanding these webs reveals intervention points that single-cause approaches miss.
Perspective Integration: Different viewpoints aren't competing truths—they're information about how systems actually function. Including multiple perspectives reveals dynamics no single view can capture.
Hidden Wisdom: Communities often contain adaptive strategies and traditional knowledge that official metrics miss. Effective approaches build on existing wisdom rather than imposing external solutions.
Patient Action: The most lasting changes often happen indirectly by shifting the conditions that keep harmful patterns in place.
Practice Toolkit
Connection Mapping: Choose a challenge in your creative practice or community. List factors that contribute to it. Draw connections between elements that influence each other. Look for cycles where problems reinforce themselves—and where small shifts might create positive ripples.
Perspective Weaving: Talk with people who have different relationships to the same issue—those experiencing it, those trying to address it, those with historical knowledge about it. Notice how their different viewpoints reveal different aspects of the whole system.
Wisdom Recognition: Look for examples where things work better than expected in your community. What informal systems, traditional knowledge, or adaptive strategies already exist that might not be officially recognized? How might new efforts build on these existing strengths?
As I've been exploring systems thinking, I keep returning to something that feels familiar from traditional wisdom: the understanding that everything is connected, that change happens through relationship and patience, and that the most profound transformations often begin with shifts in how we see rather than what we do.
This framework offers tools for the kind of work many of us are already drawn to—supporting community resilience, preserving traditional knowledge, creating alternatives to systems that harm both people and planet. It validates approaches that work with complexity rather than trying to control it, that honor multiple ways of knowing, and that trust in the adaptive wisdom already present in communities.
Every project becomes an opportunity to practice systems awareness: How do our methods reveal or obscure connections? Whose perspectives are we including? What would change if we understood this work as part of larger webs of relationship and influence? Through careful attention to patterns and connections, we participate in the ongoing work of weaving healthier systems for all.
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