Isn’t it time to re-think how we want to design and manage our country?

With all we know about the value of design iteration, with all the giant leaps in technology, why do we not apply what we’ve learned to improving a 200 year old system?

Another election season passes and where are the discussions about what we’ve learned about ourselves and human nature that we can use to improve how we run our country and imagine our collective future?

I don’t know about you, but I am so tired, sad, angry, frustrated, scared — of watching us waste every day on meaningless arguments so obviously flawed from the start. Of no one standing up and saying “Stop. Enough. We need to focus on the big picture.” Of pretending that while we are singularly focused on asinine news cycles, there aren’t so many pressing, dire needs out there in the world getting worse by the minute — any one of which would be a better use of our time, money and minds than what we spend our days ranting about. Any one of which we could significantly improve with even a fraction of the energy we are seemingly unable to stop wasting on this system we’ve nurtured to bring out the very worst in all of us.

I’d posit that 2020 election was about one thing, and it wasn’t healthcare or the economy or climate change or immigration or even Covid. It was about whether or not you wanted Trump in office. A polarized choice, sides simplified into black and white, no room for gradients of opinion or even discussion of the true motives fueling each side’s belief.

No time for thoughtful debate around the very real issues threatening the future of our society or the planet. Nothing learned except that we are all driven by fears, unable to calm our emotions long enough to fully discuss, empathize with, or understand ourselves or each other. A popularity contest. A fight for dominance. A tallying of who’s scared about what.

What has 200+ years of capitalism and democracy taught us, or any country’s attempt to design a political, social or financial system?

That no matter how well intentioned the founders were, given enough time those idealistic dreams will burn off and we’ll be left with what is in our nature to obsess about — power. Popularity. Taking sides. Slashing lines between decidedly good and decidedly evil, nothing in between.

We’ll spend our time demeaning aspirations into playground warfare, simply because it provides more dopamine and adrenaline hits than the work of learning, listening, debating and understanding. We can’t seem to garner enough self-awareness to take pause and challenge our brains to depart from ingrained neural pathways long enough to form new ones.

Communism. Socialism. Capitalism. Dictatorships. Democracy. Imagine yourself rising 20,000 feet above all of human history and look at the patterns sifting out of each experiment. Every one of them has been founded on the emotional beliefs of people who have derived their ideas from the experiences and stories of the generation prior — fleeing to the opposite end of whatever spectrum their forebearers died upon.

We should all share everything. We should share nothing. We should all contribute to one big bucket and the government will disperse it based on who they think needs it most. There should be no buckets, buckets reward the lazy and punish the motivated. People can’t make decisions as a group, we should just have one person do it all. People must always make decisions as a group, we just need representatives from each group to do the arguing for us.

Animal Farm. Atlas Shrugged. Pick a horror story, believe what you want, none of them and all of them are true.

I realize that’s such an extreme simplification, but I can’t help but see each one as so absurdly basic. So broken because of it’s inflexible, it’s exclusive, it’s limiting…it’s human nature.

The evolution of each system forcing us back to an insular focus, fighting for our own needs, fearing unfair treatment. The demise of every hopeful intent behind each system rooted in the the manic desire to simplify our diversity into a crystal clear, right and wrong decision making machine.

There are elements of our DNA we can’t seem to overcome — elements leftover from eons of lizard brain survival. Fight or flight. Pack mentality. Alpha supremacy. Elements we would no longer need if we could just stop imposing these actions on each other — but we won’t. We continue to look for a simple answer to all, thinking that will make the world manageable rather than accepting the complexity of the problems we face. We choose to solve them all poorly for the sake of efficiency. We happily exchange meaningful debate for nonsensical gossip. We make every issue that arises unsolvable, outright refusing to commit to the work and time it takes to apply objective scientific methods and ethical social inclusion.

The ironic goal of these systems that attempt to fit millions of people-pegs into their whatever-shaped holes is to take care of humanity’s Maslow needs at a national scale. Keep society fed and safe so an entire people can rise above the stress of survival and become something better, have time to provide more for our families, have time to better understand our world, have time to learn, explore, create, evolve.

It’s ironic because the very nature of these systems is what’s preventing them from reaching that purpose. Instead of freeing us from survival, they lead us to become fully absorbed by our fears, unable to see anything past the next gossipy headline, forever trapped arguing how to survive, most people barely hanging on while decisions never come.

Maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe trying to give everyone the opportunity to create a better life, a better future, was never really the purpose. But if it is, or if it’s what we want it to be now, how do we stop this cycle of insanity and rethink how we approach the organization of society? Reconsider the very purpose of organizing society in the first place?

In my imaginary, idealistic world of the future we would argue and obsess over philosophy and ideals as vehemently as we obsess over power and fear and the mind numbing he-said-she-said.

Maybe that’s what the Greeks experienced, philosophizing about philosophy, designing new societies and cities rather than trying to force old ideas to work.

If we were to focus on ideals themselves rather than the people working on them, would it free us from the distraction of instinctual fears and allow us to work on them like we would any other project — something to be ideated, tested, iterated and improved upon continuously?

Gee Jen, what an utterly unsurprising and naive vision from someone who spends every day, all day, running design thinking workshops.

I know. Apologies for the triteness, I am by no means a political scientist, historian, or even moderately competent in anything related to philosophy, sociology or government. Feel free to leave all judgmental comments below or stop reading, I’m just seeing where this thought experiment/brain dump leads.

If we started by identifying what we know to be true about ourselves — what motivates us, turns us against each other, what we do when we’re scared, what we do when we believe in something — we could use that self-awareness to put checks and balances in place that help us manage and prevent those primal instincts from derailing our larger intents and forgive us all from succumbing to them from time to time.

With an acknowledgement of our nature, we could shift focus to define the larger intents and goals we aspire to — things we’ve believed since the beginning, but now better understand and need to revisit. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — with a new emphasis on the right to equality, respect and dignity for all humans, embracing and celebrating our differences as opportunities to accelerate our shared knowledge and understanding of the world. An intent to take responsibility for humankind’s new powers to profoundly impact the natural world, including all of its ecosystems and resources, for the future of our children and all living creatures. Even an intent for our responsibility as life forms in a vast universe where it’s unknown the extent to which other life exists.

So many more to add to this and me definitely not the person to attempt describing them. No one person can shoulder that responsibility fairly, and that’s the very point of this idea.

What would it look like if we put aside the noise and focused our minds on problems to solve together, exploring them to the best of our ability with science, philosophy and ethics?

By bringing groups of experts with diverse perspectives together to propose solutions as a team, there would be value in expertise, not fame or funding. Guidelines for debate rather than awards for who can scream louder. Elections about solutions, not parties.

It would be a system, first and foremost, about living up to the best of our ideals rather than creating idols. About embracing what we’ve learned about ourselves and using it to our advantage rather than letting it control us. Reflecting on what we’ve learned over the millennia, with awareness of our innate talents and faults, and with the added benefit of new technologies that can better inform and analyze the possibilities, to solve problems through discussion rather than power struggles.

New technologies that can better inform and analyze the possibilities…

A topic to be explored all on its own, but one I don’t want to glaze over without pause. When was the last time we looked at these products we’re all designing, building, putting our lives behind, and asking, “How could this be used to help us evolve our thinking as a people?”

AI. Quantum computing. Blockchain. And now think about the technologies available in 1787, when we drafted our Constitution. Think about how drastically technology has changed our perception of the universe, our role in it, our belief systems and just every single thing our little, human minds struggle to make sense of. Isn’t that reason enough for us to revisit the how’s, what’s and why’s of our governing systems?

Anyway…

I’m just sharing a few very unorganized ideas forming in my head on a Sunday morning after an evening with friends who, for the first time in a long time thanks to the election results, are now able to talk about our differences in political beliefs without feeling like each debate is an argument for survival. Now able to reflect, step back, ask bigger questions and wonder…

Where is the iteration? Where is the collaboration? Where are the big new ideas? Where do we think we’re going with no point on the horizon defined, no plans in place to get us there? Is there someone out there working on this?

We hope so. We want to.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the last four years, the last 12 months, it’s that things can change on national, even global scales, when we want them to. And not over decades, but days.

That’s exciting. That should give us all reason to hope and to try.

Jennifer Sukis is a Design Director and Distinguished Designer for AI Transformation at IBM, based in Austin, TX. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.