Respect for the Unknown ~ from the perspective of systems thinking ~

Now Im a graduate student. My major is kind of economics (precisely, sustainable economy).

Economics is always criticized as being unrealistic or too theoretical. Or, it is criticized as ignoring the intangible assets of human beings. (For example, GDP does not reflect people's well-being, statistics ignores the right of minority, it is based on the wrong assumption that people act to maximize their profit, etc etc )

I completely agree with all of those.

The other day, I heard somebody saying that we do not need to study economics because it does not work as it supposes or it only reflects monetary value.

I disagree with that.

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In my university, there are several majors such as Environment, Economics, Gender, Law, etc etc.

Sometimes, I hear people questioning the value of other majors.

For example, these are common sayings that I have heard.

"There are people dying of hunger in the world. I dont know why we need to care about environment under this situation. Economy is more important."

"Economics does not take environmental degradation into account. That is the arrogance of human beings. We need to take care of nature before increasing GDP. Environment first."

"Gender study is about bringing women up to the same position of man right? But men and women are biologically and physically different. Why do we have to do that?"

"Lawyers always argue to beat the other side. I dont think thats a constructive way of problem solving."

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As I argued before in the article "Etiquette of Criticizing", I dont think criticizing itself is a bad thing. Because it could be a constructive criticism.

However, there should be a manner or etiquette. At least, we should know the object of criticism well in order to criticize constructively.

Does preserving nature contradict reducing hunger?

Doesn't economics really take environmental degradation into account?

Is gender study really about bringing women up to the same position of men?

What if there is no law in our society?

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The other day, I learned about a way of peace building called "systems thinking".

For example, in the past, when there was a conflict in a community, the role of outside peacebuilders was to mediate their conflict through dialogue. In this case, skilled and trained negotiator played an important role.

However, it turned out that this kind of peacebuilding did not work well.

Why? Because the structure and background of conflicts are more complex.

Maybe, high unemployment rate was one of the causes of the frustration of young generation and they became violent. (Economic perspective)

Maybe, environmental degradation led to a violent competition for scarce resource. (Environmental perspective)

Maybe, gender inequity prevented the community from educating their children well, due to for example disproportionately heavy workload of women. (Gender perspective)

Maybe, lack of adequate social institutions such as law brought about conflict over property rights of lands.

All these factors contributed to the rise of tension and consequently, conflict happened.

Therefore, the effective solution might be lying in dealing with all these elements.

The effective solution might be the combination of all these areas of study: Economics, Environment, Gender and Law.

As I wrote the other day, "we need to stand on the shoulders of giants to see further."

This is Systems Thinking: "the process of understanding how things, regarded as systems, influence one another within a whole" (quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking)

This is why I think Inter-disciplinarity is important, as I wrote before.

We cannot be myopic in this complex world anymore.

Even if you are a specialist of economics, you need to know about gender studies.

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It is arrogant to say that what Im studying is more important than what others are studying.

Most probably, what Im studying is as important as what others are studying and vice versa.

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Our cognitive ability is limited. We cannot know all.

Therefore, we need to respect things that we do not know. This is how we keep exploring new worlds and keep adventuring.

That is more fun.