Beyond the System: Anomalies and Building Your Own Moat

When things you don't control don't work as they should.

Systems are sets of rules with predefined purposes. They are rigid, constant, and not to be tampered with. They are made to be specific and give premeditated outcomes. The railways, for example, are made to move on tracks from destination A to B without a glitch. Various sets of rules are made in place, components joined together, and guidelines that must be strictly adhered to achieve the needed outcome, taking passengers from A to B safely.

But what if a train on a rail track derails due to a minor issue on the rail track, a component of the system is missing, or a particular rule has been violated? Catastrophe. That is what happens. The rules of a system are not meant to be broken. There is no room for an anomaly. There is no room for improvisation. Rules are rules, and they cannot be bent or broken in a system. or we all know how it ends.

Systems are safe. They even get safer in the event of anomalies. But what happens when the “What if” situation happens to a system? It comes down crashing, uncontainably. Most lives are built on systems, you follow specific rules, you pass through specific stages of life and you through some specific institutions and you get a specific result. For the most part, it is safe and fine, but it limits you to the system.

You cannot operate outside that specific system, and if you happen to miss a step or miss a rule, you derail and come down crashing. It only takes a mistake to derail a system, and when this happens, the catastrophe is uncontrollable. In my belief, the safer a system, the more catastrophe the anomaly. Sure, systems learn from anomalies and improve, but not the victim. When a system fails, the victims become the victims of circumstances. Nothing can change this. It gets better for the next set of people until another anomaly happens, and the cycle goes on and on.

There’s no moat in following a system; you crash when the system fails, and the system gets better while you bear the repercussions. When you create your system, you follow your own set of rules at your own pace; when the system crashes, you don’t burn with it; you refine and relearn. This is your moat. The anomalies refine the system without sacrificing the users, reducing the effects of the catastrophe. You cannot control a system when in the system. You can only control what you’re outside of.

Ignore systems that you can not control the outcome, and you won’t be the victim of an anomaly. Build your systems, build your moat. An anomaly can either ruin your life or change a life, depending on the system you’re on.

Also published here.