Seeking Sageship: Beyond Leadership

Seeking Sageship: Beyond Leadership

Is Our Problem That The System Is Broken?

Or Are We Experiencing A Symptom Of Something Else Being Broken?

Dr. Cody Dakota Wooten's avatar
Dr. Cody Dakota Wooten
Feb 13, 2026
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Is Our Problem That The System Is Broken?

Or Are We Experiencing A Symptom Of Something Else Being Broken?

No matter where you go in the world...

You will find someone who will tell you...

And everyone else...

About how the system is broken.

This is a story that we hear about over and over again.

The specific system changes over time and place.

Sometimes the system is a political system.

Other times, it is a business system.

Or a legal system.

It could also be a religious system.

No matter where you go, though...

You will discover that the system in question will have problems.

True...

Some are better than others...

Some are better in theory than in practice...

But there has never been a system that has been created...

That everyone...

Everywhere...

Agreed was perfect.

Everyone has thought at one point or another...

That the system they were looking at was broken...

And that it was a problem.

But this brings us to an interesting question...

Is the problem that the systems are broken?

I ask because...

If the problem was as simple as the system being broken...

All we would need to do is to fix what is broken...

And we would suddenly have the system we are looking for.

But this never happens.

We create a system...

People figure out problems with it...

Some people try to fix the problems...

Others try to replace the system...

But every single time...

The result is exactly the same...

The systems that we have end up being broken.

What this tells me...

Is that the system is not really the problem...

At least, not directly.

It is a result of something else being broken...

What you call a second-order consequence.

What you discover every single time that you try to fix a second-order consequence...

Is that it never works.

You work hard to fix that problem that you see...

But then it happens again...

Or suddenly a new problem pops up...

Or both.

We see this in the western healthcare establishment in today’s world...

Chasing diseases...

Without fixing the upstream problems that cause the disease...

Leading to 75% of the world today experiencing at least one chronic disease...

With many experiencing multiple chronic diseases...

New second-order consequences that develop over time from failing to address the real problem.

But if this is the case when it comes to our systems in today’s world...

What is the real problem?

What is it that causes the second-order consequence of every single system we build being broken?

The cause is very easy to figure out...

Broken people create broken systems.

Broken people who want things they do not need...

To fill holes that they struggle to understand.

Broken people who are sick...

Physically, Mentally, Emotionally, and Spiritually...

Who are seeking respite from it all...

But often become preyed upon by others who are equally sick.

It also does not matter that most individuals...

Actually do intend well...

Believe that they are doing the right thing...

Truly do hope that they will create something better.

But the challenge is so much deeper...

Hitting us from a variety of angles.

This happens because as humans...

We exist as biological complex systems...

Who live in societal complex systems.

There are so many different factors that are at play...

Which, even if we actually knew what they all were and how they worked...

Which we do not...

We would still struggle because of the extremely complex interactions between these different systems...

Where many, if not all of them, have different levels of brokenness...

Even at birth.

So we are not even aware of what all is broken within all of the complexity...

And much of it we simply understand as “normal”...

Because it is all we have ever known.

So is the system broken?

Absolutely.

But the problem is not that the system is broken...

The system is only a consequence of the deep brokenness that exists in us as humans.

So before you run headlong into trying to fix a broken system...

You should consider...

Have you fixed yourself...

And understood what other humans truly need?

Only in understanding this will we ever hope to create a system that is not broken...

It begins by getting to the root of our challenges...

Our brokenness.


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