Know Your Freedoms: Responsibility in Complex Systems

The United States, often referred to as the land of the free, has always emphasized the importance of freedom. Throughout my life, I’ve constantly heard that we Americans should be grateful for our freedom, which many have sacrificed their lives to protect it. The narrative of losing our freedom has become increasingly prevalent with both political parties warning that if the other side wins, our freedoms will be at risk.

But what do they mean by “freedom”? Are we totally free to do what whatever we want? I can’t just murder anybody or take their property. There are limitations to our freedoms in our society. But why are some freedoms cherished while others are taken?

What I would like show is that freedom is an incredibly important ingredient in a properly functioning complex system. Every component within a complex system has a responsibility, and its freedom is defined by the scope necessary to fulfill it.

Encapsulation

In order to understand how freedom is required in complex systems, one must understand its distributed nature. In order for complex systems to grow in function, it has to distribute complexity by an interconnected network of modules. These small modules “encapsulate” some form of complexity. Think about the company you work for, everybody has a job that encapsulates complexity: a salesperson and the complexity of sales, a marketer and the complexity of marketing, and engineer and the complexity of engineering, etc. These people are modules of a larger complex system: the company.

If one person did all or most of these things, the company would eventually fail. Every one of these jobs are complex in themselves. To be good an any one of them takes much time and energy. Take the salesperson: they encapsulate the responsibility of selling the product and/or services of the company. The process of selling is a very complex enterprise, the global sales and marketing industry is a multi-trillion-dollar sector. But, it’s only one small part of a company.

Your body is a complex biological system. It also distributes complexity into smaller encapsulated modules: your heart and the complexity of pumping oxygenated blood, the kidneys and the complexity of filtering waste products from the blood, the pancreas and the complexity of regulating blood sugar levels, and so on. All of these are examples of smaller forms of encapsulated complexity, integrated together to make one larger complex system.

In software, encapsulation is one of the fundamental principles of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). It’s a principle that encourages programmers to provide a simple interface to some internal implementation of functionality that will allow the programmer to easily use the code anywhere in a system without having to have intimate knowledge of how the code works. Think of a “black box”, it’s easy to use but you don’t need to know how it works on the inside. Do you know how your car works? No, there’s a simple interface (steering wheel and peddles) and there isn’t a requirement on the knowledge of combustion of aerodynamics to make it work. Same with your pancreas: your body doesn’t have to have intimate knowledge of what it does. The pancreas encapsulates a responsibility of regulating blood sugar levels and the rest of your body simply interfaces with it through vascular connections. This is encapsulation, and its an important principle in creating complex systems.

Trust

One important point of encapsulation worth repeating is that it doesn’t require knowledge of the internal workings of the module in order to use it properly. However, some confuse this idea with the more malicious concept of preventing knowledge of the internal workings. I have found that through my career that some software developers completely seal off any access to the internal workings of their code. This is the bad form of power that I discuss in my article Power To Life, Power To Death and only complicates the further expansion of the complex system. They do this thinking that if they are the only people with the knowledge, this will provide job security in the future. But this never works out long term: the system will eventually start to crumble due to a single point of failure: the software developer themself.

One can encapsulate responsibility and still be open to how that responsibility is achieved. Trust is vital to the further expansion of the system since intimate knowledge might be needed in order to expand the system. An employee of a company not only has to trust the direction that they’re given by their boss, but they need to trust others in the company that they are doing they’re job. Trust not only in that others are doing their job, but doing it with high quality. Any weak link in a system can bring it down, so its important that each module produces high quality output. This is one of the laws of tribalism in my article The Two Laws Of Tribalism: Biological Laws for Purpose and Motivation:

Each member will give their all for the tribe.

The concept of trust can also be found in other systems: your heart trusts your lungs to provide oxygen, the wheels in your car trusts the engine to produce power, your city government trusts your federal government to provide safe borders, etc. However, once a module fails in a system, the entire system will eventually fail. This is why trust in responsibility is so important: processing has to be distributed in a complex system so that it can exist and be expanded. Since responsibilities have to be distributed, all modules in the system have to trust each other. Once trust is broken, the system will fail unless the untrustworthy module can be replaced or cut out. This is why Jesus says this in John 15:1-2:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

Single Responsibility

To help with trust and robustness within a complex system, responsibilities need to be kept to a minimum for a given module. If the module has too many responsibilities, it will have a difficult time fulfilling them. In software, we have a principle called the Single Responsibility Principle. This principle states that a code module should have only one reason to change, meaning it should have only one job or responsibility.

Ever have too many responsibilities at work? One way a company falls apart over time is the accumulation of responsibilities in fewer workers. Somebody quits, your boss gives you their responsibility and then the company never back fills the position. The company will save money today, but the accumulating of responsibilities within one worker makes the company more fragile for tomorrow. What will the company do if the remaining worker leaves? Accumulating responsibilities like this is a debt on the company. This is explained in more depth in my article Debt in Complex Systems, but if the worker has too many competing responsibilities, each responsibility takes time and energy away from the other. This inability to fulfill responsibilities over time will drain the system.

One confusion I’ve seen in my industry is the conflation of responsibility with functionality. Functionality and responsibility are not the same thing: responsibilities can require many functions. Think of your heart: its single responsibility is to pump blood throughout your body. But it has many functions: pumping blood, maintaining blood pressure, regulating blood flow, etc. All its functions are need to fulfill its responsibility. Any function that doesn’t help in fulfilling the responsibility needs to be distributed.

The Single Responsibility principle is a simple principle on paper, but pretty difficult in practice. Junior software engineers, in particular, have a difficult time implementing the principle in practice. One trick that I give them is to have them write a summary of what the responsibility is for the code module that they write within the system. If the summary has the word “and” in it, then they need break up the code into separate dependent modules with their own lower level responsibility. This is very helpful in making sure that code doesn’t encapsulate many responsibilities. It also helps to create the code in a hierarchy of responsibilities.

Hierarchy of Responsibility

Complex systems are a hierarchy of modules that encapsulate a responsibility. The higher the level, the more complex and unique the qualities are. In order to create new qualities, modules need to be combined together to create something new. The new module that is created is “dependent” on the lower level modules.

Let’s look at this from the atomic and molecular level. All elements are made from a single atom. All molecules are made up of many elements. Water is a molecule that is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. These atoms our bonded together as lower level modules in the complex system known as water. Hydrogen and oxygen have their own qualities: they’re gases and combustable. But together they create a substance that is the foundation of all life. As water, these elements create new qualities such as being a solvent, a high specific heat capacity, and expanding upon freezing.

Hydrogen and oxygen making water is a simple example of a complex system, but nature didn’t stop there. Water is a base module in most biological systems. This means that water is a module combined with other modules to create something else that is new. One important module that has water as a dependency is the cell. Water is essential in cells for forming the cytoplasm, facilitating biochemical reactions, transporting molecules, and providing structural support. But water is just one module of many: the cell membrane, nucleus, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, ribosomes, lysosomes, peroxisomes, cytoskeleton, centrioles, vacuoles, and in plant cells, chloroplasts. Each of these are a module of complexity that produces qualities that their elements alone cannot produce. Each providing a responsibility within the system that is the cell.

This hierarchy of systems continues until we reach us humans. We are dependent on a rather large hierarchy of complex systems in order to exist. But it doesn’t stop with us, humans create our own complex systems: social, political, cultural, material. Inherent in us is the need to continue the hierarchy of responsibility: to create the new by combining complex systems.

What responsibilities do you have? Some are occupational, while others are familial. Whatever your responsibilities are, they are dependent on many complex systems. And while you might not be aware, you and your responsibilities are a lower level module in higher level complex systems: you company, your town, your church, etc. You are an important piece in many complex systems. The other modules in that system trust you to fulfill your responsibilities with the highest of quality. This is why Jesus’s greatest commandment was this:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

God is the ultimate quality! Everything, and I mean everything, is striving for the ultimate quality. If you love God above all, you will do your best in everything you do. To strive for God, you must accept your responsibility within the system you are in and do it to the best of your abilities. From atoms to organisms, all modules have a responsibility. And in order to achieve one’s responsibility, one must be free to exercise it.

Skin in the Game

Humans naturally believe that we control more than what we really do. This is called “illusion of control.” It’s common in situations where outcomes are uncertain but individuals still feel they can influence or control the results, such as in gambling or investing. However, this is also true for items that humans believe they have complete control: their own body.

Ever tried to control your heart? Try it right now, without moving. Try to slow it down. Try to speed it up. You can’t, can you. The heart is a module in the complex system of the human body and its responsibility is pumping oxygenated blood throughout the body. Just because its a part of your body, doesn’t mean you can control it. It has the freedom to implement its responsibility as it sees fit. You controlling your heart would be oppression within the complex system that is you, the human.

You can’t control your heart, but you can ask it to help you achieve something, like running across the room. This is a human level activity that the lower level dependencies will help achieve. As soon as you start running, your heart will start pumping faster to help get more oxygen to your leg muscles so they can keep contracting at a higher pace. You didn’t control your heart, but your heart implemented its responsibility so that the higher level of the system can achieve what it needs. When you stop running, the heart will still keep pumping at a higher rate to help get oxygen to your depleted muscles. It needs this freedom because it knows more about its responsibility than the human does, and it knows that if it fails at its responsibility, the whole system fails. This means that the heart has “skin in the game”.

If one has “skin in the game” but no freedom to implement their responsibility, they will lack motivation in implementing their responsibility. Ask anybody who has been micromanaged at work. It doesn’t take long until they will either leave or get fired for not fulfilling their responsibilities with quality. Why? Because they didn’t have “skin in the game”. Another name for this is “ownership.” This is central to motivation within complex systems. All responsibilities must be tied to the survivability of the system. But in order to survive, qualities must be either improved or created. If a system isn’t improving in qualities, it will perish due to the central unseen force in this reality: entropy. You can read more about this in my future article “This Dynamic Reality”.

Scope of Freedoms

The scope of freedom is directly linked to what is needed in order for individual modules within a complex system to fulfill their responsibility. Back to our extreme example above: killing. Do I have the freedom to kill? For the majority of humans, no. But some do: law enforcement, military personnel, and, in some places, judicial systems have legal authority to use lethal force. They have this freedom in order to fulfill their responsibility in society.

Back to our example of the body’s heart, it has the freedom to pump blood within the circulatory system how it sees fit. When the human does different activities, the heart will use its freedom to pump the blood through coordination with the brain. The brain doesn’t control the heart, it’s a coordinator. People assume that everything has a top down power structure, like the heart is directly controlled by the brain. But that’s not true. The brain coordinates the different organs, like a director of a symphony. The heart has its own electrical system that generates the signals for contraction, primarily through the sinoatrial (SA) node, which acts as the natural pacemaker. However, the brain influences the heart rate and the force of contraction through the autonomic nervous system. The hearts freedom is scoped to its responsibility which is to pump blood through the circulatory system. And part of that freedom is adjusting heart rate and contraction strength.

What freedoms are scoped for a complex system such as a human society? The important ones are freedoms of speech, press, assembly, religion, political participation, economic activity, movement, and privacy. All of these freedoms are scoped to individuals in a high quality society to allow them to take on responsibilities at many levels: political, economical, social, etc. These freedoms are necessary for individuals to create new qualities through their responsibilities. Without out these freedoms, the complex social systems will crumble through oppression and subversion. But these freedoms alone will not keep complex systems alive, humans need to assume responsibilities. Without the adoption of responsibilities, the system will collapse. There are virtues needed within individuals to make these complex systems successful: duty and honor.

Duty

A good sense of duty is an understanding of the responsibilities one has within the complex systems they are in. What is your duty to your family, company, church, etc? Each has their own system that has expectations on your responsibilities, and they all differ in scope and impact. My responsibilities to my family are much different than to my occupation. But I must have responsibilities in these systems in order for them to grow. It is vital that I, as a module in these complex systems, fulfill my responsibilities, or the system will collapse. Duty is the virtue for ensuring us humans continue to be a module in these systems, to continue its growth and vitality.

Another aspect of duty is the moral emphasis on the importance of fulfilling one’s responsibilities. With our free will, we must constantly choose to fulfill our responsibilities, to be dutiful. Jesus tell us in Matthew 16:24:

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

We must understand the complex systems we are in, the responsibilities we have, and sacrifice for them. When we don’t, we put ourselves first. This leads to hedonism, a form of debt, which takes resources away from the system to fulfill the desires of the individual. Thus slowly destroying the complex system one is in. One must understand their duty, just like what Mr. Knightly tells Emma about Frank Churchill: “There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty.”

Honor

If duty is about what responsibilities one has in complex systems, honor is about the quality in which one fulfills them. If the only way to defeat entropy is to improve or create quality, then we must constantly try to fulfill our responsibilities to the best of our abilities. To fulfill our responsibilities with the highest quality is to do it with honor.

One aspect of honor is integrity: fulfilling one’s responsibilities with the highest quality through discipline. One definition of integrity is to do the right thing when no one is looking. With software engineers: it’s fixing a bug when they find it instead of ignoring it. Or with medical doctors: helping clients cure their diseases by dieting instead of prescribing drugs. Each example strengthens a complex system, but requires integrity. It’s easy to ignore a bug or prescribe a drug, but it will harm the complex systems through time.

Another aspect of honor is accountability. Mistakes happen to all of us. Learning from mistakes strengthens systems. Accountability is the action of fixing our mistakes with regard to fulfilling our responsibilities. It is also the ability to not use oppression to fulfill responsibilities. I see in my industry a belief that accountability means who can be fired for making a mistake. But as Yogi Berra once said “If you don’t make mistakes, you don’t make anything.” I have made many mistakes in my career, and they all helped me become a better software engineer. Facebook has the famous motto “move fast and break things”. We learn from our mistakes, and accountability is the ethical virtue of fulfilling our responsibilities even when we make those mistakes.

What does it mean to do the right thing? It is to put the needs of the complex system before your wants and desires. Remember our tribal law “Each member will give their all for the tribe.” Honor is the virtue to help guide us in our journey in our complex systems. Without it, the systems will fail.

An example of honor is the actions of the lawyer Atticus Finch in the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. While facing social ostracism in the racially charged Deep South in the 1930s, Atticus represents Tom Robinson, an African American who has been falsely accused of rape. Even with the knowledge that the case is unwinnable due to prevailing prejudices, Atticus stands firm in his commitment to justice and equality. He fights against oppression that will only harm the local social systems, and doing so with the knowledge that he will have to face the oppression himself. Doing this with the option to turn a blind eye, to easily walking away without incurring any oppression to himself or his family makes him a great example of honor.

Biblically, honor is an important virtue, but emphasizes the importance of honoring two specific entities: God and parents. In my article Power to Life, Power to Death – Power in Complex Systems, there are two types of power: influencing change through responsibilities and forcing change through the usurping of responsibilities. Complex systems thrive when power flows through it, through the responsibility of modules. The other type of power, usurping responsibilities, is destructive to complex systems except for a few aspects. One of them is parenting. Parents wield power by temporarily usurping responsibilities from their children, a vital aspect in early life. This dynamic is essential for the protection and guidance of children who, lacking the mental capacity for independent functioning within complex systems, require parental authority. This is why the Bible emphasizes the importance of honoring God and you parents: both temporarily usurp responsibilities for your benefit by taking on responsibilities we are unprepared to handle. Honoring them acknowledges this sacrifice and the vital role they play in equipping us to thrive within the larger complex system of life.

What is right is fulfilling one’s responsibilities in the complex systems they are in. Duty and honor are necessary to help overcome our original sin of using oppression to solve problems and thus helping us defeat entropy and continue our ongoing quest to create new qualities in our world through complex systems.

Overview

Every module within a complex system has to have a responsibility. In order to fulfill its responsibility, the module needs to have the freedom to fulfill it. These freedoms are scoped to what is needed to accomplish its responsibility. Our human freedoms, such as freedoms of speech, press, assembly, religion, political participation, economic activity, movement, and privacy are needed in order to continue to create new qualities within the human complex systems that we are apart of. Without our freedoms to implement our responsibilities, our systems will collapse due to centralization of responsibilities and the accumulation of debt that exponentially drains away resources.