The Environment

You are a system. You:

• take things from your environment


• input these things into yourself


• do things to these inputs


• put different and reformed things back out into the environment


• those things affect the environment.

The inputs you take in and the outputs you put out (and the affects, or 'outcomes', those outputs have) will vary with each different environment you as a system spend time in. You, in turn, will be affected, perhaps sometimes radically changed for better or worse, by those environments.

In order to maintain it's existence a system, any system, must be in an environment that both provides the necessary inputs and is also willing to accept the resulting outputs and outcomes of that system.

As a system you come with feedback mechanisms that tell you whether or not your environment is a place you can thrive in (or if it's actually 'killing' you).

Almost all systems are 'open' systems in that all systems are open to being affected and changed by their different environments. If you want to thrive as a system you'd better pay attention to what's going on in your different environments - you'd better pay attention to all that feedback.

Some types of environments include:

• natural (jungle; sea; countryside; space; animals)


• designed (cities; work; legal)


• emotional (family; colleagues; social events).

We could add the word 'system' to the end of all those words bulleted - because all environments are systems in themselves. Your body is an environment in which millions if not billions of systems currently exist - you are an extremely well regulated and synchronised environment.

So are all the environments you spend time in.

Every time you enter the presence of another living creature (including another person) or enter a different building or take up a new hobby or even look at a website - you have entered a new environment.

And not only do you live in real life, touchable, environments - your imagination is able to construct completely non-existent environments purely on the basis of your emotional biases - in other words, what kind of mood you're in at any one time.

What can you say about the different environments you've experienced? What did you take in? What did you give out? What caused you to stay or move away?