When systems theory/social justice advocacy stops being human

One of the most genuinely life changing things that happened to me during grad school was learning about systems theory and social justice oriented thinking in counseling. It gave language for concepts, values and feelings I already always have had, being able to contextualize privilege, oppression, and power dynamics in ways I could not previously articulate.

For people who aren’t familiar with systems theory, it’s basically the idea that human beings cannot fully be understood in isolation from the systems around them. A person does not just become depressed or anxious or traumatized out of nowhere. Family systems, culture, religion, poverty, race, gender, politics, history, media, economics, all of these things interact with each other and shape the way people experience life. Systems thinking asks us to zoom out and look at the bigger picture instead of only focusing on the individual.

And honestly, once you start thinking that way, it becomes very hard to stop.

I remember reading Bell Hooks for the first time during my counseling program and feeling like someone had finally put language to things I had intuitively felt for years. Suddenly there were frameworks for understanding why certain groups of people struggle more than others, why trauma gets passed down through generations, why poverty and violence often go hand in hand, why healthcare in the United States feels so deeply broken, and why some people seem to move through life carrying invisible weights that other people never have to think about.

To this day, I’m still very grateful for that education. Everyone should learn this stuff. I think a lot of public discourse completely lacks context about how systems shape human behavior. When you start studying sociology, counseling, public health, feminist theory, history, disability studies, or social determinants of health, it becomes difficult to keep believing that every human outcome is simply the result of individual choices and hard work.

And to be clear, I don’t think that realization is bad. I actually think it can make people much more compassionate.

But I also think there’s a side of systems oriented thinking that people, especially in academic and leftist spaces, are becoming increasingly uncomfortable talking about.

At a certain point, if we are not careful, systems thinking can slowly turn into essentialist thinking.

What I mean by that is that when you spend years learning about oppression, privilege, power structures, patriarchy, racism, capitalism, and all these larger systems, you also start categorizing people very quickly. You begin noticing patterns everywhere. You notice gender dynamics in conversations. You notice racial dynamics in workplaces. You notice class privilege in the way people talk about poverty. You notice microaggressions that previously would have gone over your head. Your awareness sharpens, which can absolutely be useful and important.

But psychologically, something else can start happening too. People slowly stop feeling like individuals and start feeling like representatives of systems. You start feeling more angry. On the defense.

And honestly, I do not think enough of us are willing to admit that out loud.

I started noticing this in myself over the years, especially online. I would catch myself reacting to people not as complicated human beings, but almost as symbols. Men became “the patriarchy.” Wealthy people became “capitalism.” Conservatives became “ignorance.” White people became “privilege.” And again, the issue is not that those systems are fake. Patriarchy is real. Structural racism is real. Economic inequality is real. That is not what I’m arguing against.

The issue is that human beings are not very good at holding nuance once categories become emotionally charged.

And social media makes this so much worse. Algorithms reward outrage, certainty, moral superiority, and group loyalty. They do not reward curiosity, humility, or complexity. There is something emotionally powerful about finally having language for your pain and then finding entire communities of people who validate that pain. I think a lot of us underestimate how intense that experience can feel, especially for people who have genuinely experienced marginalization or injustice.

But over time, I started becoming uncomfortable with the emotional culture this can create. Not because I think people are “too woke,” which honestly means basically nothing anymore, but because I noticed that many conversations no longer seemed focused on dialogue, persuasion, healing, or even understanding. They seemed focused mostly on anger.

And anger is not always wrong. Sometimes anger makes compete sense. Sometimes it’s absolutely needed to make change. I genuinely do not know how someone working in healthcare right now could avoid feeling angry. I’m a therapist whose insurance reimbursements keep getting cut while I simultaneously pay absurd amounts of money for my own healthcare. I have watched insurance companies refuse to cover medications that could dramatically improve people’s quality of life because apparently preventative care is less profitable than waiting until someone becomes severely ill later on. We somehow built a healthcare system where both patients and providers feel exploited at the same time, which honestly would almost be impressive if it weren’t so dystopian.

So yes, sometimes I feel rage. Real rage.

But I also think rage can become self perpetuating if we are not careful. And I worry that some activist spaces have accidentally created environments where emotional escalation starts getting mistaken for political depth.

The internet especially has flattened political conversations into moral performance. Every disagreement becomes evidence of hidden bigotry. Every mistake becomes a character flaw. Every awkwardly worded question becomes harmful. People become scared to speak honestly because even asking questions can sometimes get interpreted as violence.

And ironically, I think this dynamic often hurts the exact causes people are trying to advocate for.

Because when ordinary people feel constantly categorized, morally judged, spoken down to, or treated like they are already guilty before they even speak, they stop listening. Not always because they are hateful or ignorant, but because human beings generally do not respond well to shame and humiliation. Once people feel like an ideological space has already decided they are morally defective, most of them do not become more open minded. They become defensive.

And honestly, I think some leftist spaces struggle to admit this because we’ve developed a habit of interpreting all discomfort as proof that someone is privileged or fragile or defensive. But discomfort is not always a sign of guilt. Sometimes discomfort is simply the human reaction to feeling flattened into a category instead of being seen as a person.

What complicates this even more is that systems oriented thinking sometimes seems to assume that if oppressive systems disappeared, human beings would naturally become empathetic and communal and fair. And while I understand why people believe that, I increasingly think it reflects a somewhat idealistic view of human nature. Systems matter enormously, but human beings are also capable of cruelty, narcissism, tribalism, domination, and selfishness independent of systems. We carry those capacities with us everywhere.

At the same time, I also think conservatives are deeply wrong when they reduce every social problem to individual responsibility while completely ignoring structural conditions. So now we end up with this contradiction that I think a lot of politically engaged people wrestle with: systems matter profoundly, but individuals still have agency. Human beings are shaped by environments, but they are not completely reducible to those environments either.

And I think losing sight of either side creates problems.

The more I think about this, the more I realize my concern is not really “cancel culture” or political correctness or whatever buzzword people are fighting about this week. My concern is empathy erosion. That’s the core of why I was drawn to these theories. Why I was drawn to my career. Empathy. Equality. Dignity and justice for all. I feel like I can lose sight of that.

Because once people become abstractions, it becomes frighteningly easy to justify cruelty toward them. History shows us this over and over again. Human beings are very capable of convincing themselves that dehumanization is righteous if they believe the target represents “oppressor”.

And I do not want to become the kind of person who loses the ability to see humanity clearly because I am too emotionally attached to political abstraction. I do not think I am alone in that fear either.

What I want, honestly, is a version of social justice discourse that remains deeply aware of systems while still preserving curiosity, humility, dialogue, and emotional complexity. I want us to be able to critique systems without collapsing every individual person into those systems entirely. I want accountability without permanent moral exile. I want conversations that leave room for growth instead of immediately sorting everyone into good people and bad people.

Most importantly, I think I want us to remember why many of us cared about these ideas in the first place. At least for me, it was never about superiority or purity or being the smartest person in the room. It was because I cared about suffering. It was because I wanted people to feel safe, dignified, protected, and understood.

And if our frameworks slowly strip us of the ability to extend humanity toward imperfect people, then I think something has gone wrong, even if our intentions were good.